I’ve never been good with asking for help; it seems risky, but at some point when things are really dicey, your stubbornness gives way to a certain form of humility that, after you get over...

That obstinate sense of independence was the biggest challenge I face in building my little house (that, and not always knowing what I was doing). I was stubborn in the way I hated to ask...

I wanted to say a lot but wasn’t sure where to start; people don’t want to hear about how your heart has melted into the dirt under your house.

I went to Guatemala to help build a school but left wondering what “help” would really look like… I hadn’t prepared myself for how humbled I’d feel, or how hard it would be to find...

I was a let-er-goer and she was a hanger-on-er, but that doesn’t mean I don’t lean into her territory every once in a while.

I recognized that I was small and soft; I wanted to believe in people – that they were kind and good, and given the chance, everything would turn out okay – but bad things do...

I think I’m more curious than I used to be – curious about why people live like they do and how they make sense of their time… Do they see how the sun has made...

If more people understood how nice it is to have a sense of home that extends past our locked doors, past our neighbors’ padlocks, to the local food co-op and library, the sidewalks busted up...

When I mentioned my early morning waking to the old witch down the street, she explained that this is the time the “ceiling is the thinnest,” the moment that the earth’s creatures have the greatest...

For me, the idea of living small has always involved being curious – taking a look at how my day-to-day is connected to the larger world around me, and to the delicate universe that sits...

Oddly, I found myself calmer than I’d been in a long while. Maybe it was simply because my muscles ached or maybe because I felt that nothing was more compelling than the stack of wood...

Ultimately, I hoped the tiny-house guy was similar to me: a sane person without a big agenda, who simply wanted a way to make sense of the world, to create a new map with a...

The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.

These days I find that I am happy enough in the same way that I am warm enough – the goal isn’t bliss or even comfort in some cases. The goal is to feel alive.

It was true; books had saved me in my home remodeling projects, but they fell short in teaching me how to trust my instincts, and how to stop thinking with my educated brain and more...

My friends stood on the ground two feet below me, and miles away from understanding why I would want to sleep on a trailer platform… I couldn’t possibly begin to explain what was only beginning...

I had turned myself inside out working on the house, and had come to love it; at least, I supposed I loved it. Maybe it wasn’t love so much as a fear of losing everything...

I felt like a champion because I was figuring shit out. I was a doer and a getter-doner, and it was okay to be identified by the neighbors as the little lady who had a...

Over time, I discovered that learning new things doesn’t always liberate you. Instead it makes you wonder if your pants are on backward or if the trees are holding the sky up – it makes...

Perhaps the current state of my health should have raised a bright red caution flag, but instead it fired me up. I wanted to do what I wanted. I didn’t care if hefting plywood and...

Maybe is wasn’t love so much as a fear of losing everything I’d accomplished. I was afraid to let go.

Letting go of “stuff” allowed the world to collapse behind me as I moved, so I became nothing more or less than who I simply was: Me.

I never saw this coming – the little house was working its magic, connecting me to people and materials I never would have guessed would find their way into the picture.

The space reminded me of the small hay-bale clubhouses and scrap-wood tree forts that my brothers and I had made as kids – high up spaces where you could see things differently, where you could...

Fear and logic belong together.

he had kidded with us that if we didn’t let go at the proper moment, he would slap our hands with a stick, and we had all laughed because who would be silly enough to...

Books had rescued me when i most needed saving… Books were smarter than me and words inspired me… to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, because “given...

Sometimes the word ‘gratitude’ feels too thin to explain things.

I took a deep, overly exaggerated breath, the sort of over-the-top gesture that was filmed for commercials about scented laundry detergent, but in this case was my way of trying to absorb every molecule of...

The Internet is dumb. The Internet, with all its access to brain research, anthropology journals, social studies networks, and biographies and autobiographies, can’t begin to map the complexity of our lives, or how we each...

I thought: This is what the living do. And I swooned at the ordinary nature of the task and myself, at my chapped hands and square palms, at the way my wrists bent and fingers...

I had worked my way through a thousand problems, like when the tar paper bulged on the corners so I used a strap wrapped around the whole house and ratcheted it tight to attach the...

Change what you can, darlin’. That’s my best advice.

We were taught not to offer or invite aid, because, like it or not, helping is a messy, confused proposition; sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong, and sometimes you have...

I had no idea that “letting go” would be so complicated; that it would sometimes feel liberating and other times more sorrowful and lonely. In the long run, most of it was like standing on...

Whose idea was it that we should all get jobs, work faster, work better, race from place to place with our brains stewing on tweets, blogs, and sound bites, on must-see movies, must-do experiences, must-have...

Over time, I realized I wasn’t necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were.There didn’t seem to be a moral high road to take...

Whatever you call me, my parents encouraged me to go to college and become a book lover, and to trust that I could do nearly anything if I could find the right book at the...

I didn’t do anything but sit quietly and pay attention to the fact that my hollow chest was still beating. I was still alive and could see that the new normal wasn’t so bad.