I thought about giving up, throwing in the towel, but then I grabbed the edge of the dry, musty wallpaper and peeled it off in one clean sweep. The tearing sound of the paper, revealing the smooth surface of the wall beneath, reminded me that sometimes you have to give it another go before giving up.

This house was built in the 1800’s, a gem in the middle of the Green Mountains. Its bones are strong like the foundations of this life I’ve made; it just needs a little love. With enough barn and acreage for a homestead, I’d say it has the potential to become quite a journey. But what a journey it was to get here in the first place.

I’ve had to unlearn a lot of things from what I was once taught. Like scraping underneath just the right layer to unveil what’s hidden beneath, we all have things to shed.

I sometimes have the pleasure of finding angles in the paper and following them up with my scraper. I can almost feel my predecessor gluing it on. I wonder what they were thinking. I sometimes look back on the snags in my layers, shedding in tiny pieces, floating through the air. “Keep going” was a phrase I recited more often than I’d like to admit.

My hands are still bleeding from pulling myself up, tearing at the walls. But my hands will heal; they have before. And the final product will be the love poured into this life, returned to me in whatever form it may take.