It's the moment you realize that everybody is just a little bit broken. We're all hurting somewhere. And in that moment it seems impossibly sad. Disappointment so deep it carves a hole in you. So you take a deep breath of the crisp autumn air and you drink in the reds and oranges, and you remind yourself that there is joy to be had. Not just in the simple pleasures of today but right around the corner. Waiting for you to find and exclaim    "I didn't know I could ever be this happy"       and you'll hold on to it when the skies are grey and the pain is real and you've pretended happiness for so long you're afraid you've forgotten what true happiness actually feels like. And on some unexpected day in some unexplainable moment you'll realize you're happier than your last happy moment. Something new to hold on to. So keep your head up and your eyes clear, because it's just around the corner.

The barn was so old it appeared as if it had grown from the ground. A product of Mother Nature herself. But the memories it held. Of hard work and sacrifice, love and loss, habit and ritual, life and death. The thick earth-and-sunshine smell of hay and alfalfa and oats. Horses warm like the safest most natural place in the world. With an innocence only creatures of instinct carry. Living and breathing exactly the way they were meant to live and breathe. The quiet settling over you as if you were the only person in the world, but without the loneliness solitude can bring. A blissfully heavy awareness of your existence and that no matter the scars from the past or the troubles of the future, every little thing will find a place and that place will be perfect. It's faith. That old barn and those horses were trust and faith and truth and acceptance in their most comforting forms. And she loved every heavenly moment of it. This place fit her. She settled right in. Some deep part of her, maybe it was her heart or soul. But maybe even deeper than that, to the very depths of her being she fit here. The sunrises, the stars, the gravel roads and wild blackberry bushes. The blue jays and deer, the cattle and sheep. Even the run down houses and pathetic convenience stores settled with her. If you find a place like that. A place so full of everything that is the deepest part of you. You'll never leave. You'll stay and become a part of the earth like she was your very own mother. When you never even knew or guessed you could.