The family farm will change hands in ten days. The countdown is on.

I’m disappointed in the decision. But maybe the heartbreaking decision is saving me from myself.

“Miss Fix-It, take a seat! You can’t fix that.”

What to do then?

Obstacles

Sometimes bad decisions and obstacles give you permission (or just the time) to take a closer look at what matters deeply to you.

This decision—bad? unfortunate? heartbreaking, for sure—gives me permission to focus on something that matters deeply to me: words. Writing words. Sharing words. Supporting words.

I thought I would do those things on the farm.

What I’m coming round to is that my words never required the farm.

I’m not pretending that seeing another family in those fields won’t sting.

Memory

The new family doesn’t carry the memory of the woods that used to be, before Hurricane Katrina. My cousins and I played in those woods, followed deer paths through tree- and bush-tunnels all the way to the pond hidden deep within. We climbed deer stands, built forts and rooms for houses, spied bobcats, ran from snakes.

The new family won’t know where to look for the rogue patch of daffodils that made their way from the beds of bulbs Mom planted to the north edge of the fields.

They could never appreciate the history of color that Mom captured when she sanded the beaded boards that her mother-in-law, over the years, had painted with different Sherwin Williams blues and greens.

Were they even told that the wooden floors on the west side were taken from the roof of the original farm house? That the middle bedroom used to be the living room, and the new living room was built over the root bed of the old pecan tree?

Will they use the garden that was tended with so much care, first by Dad’s mom and then by mine?

Some of us carry the memory of the chicken coop, the giant white oak in the backyard, next to the shed and the storm shelter. The older cousins remember the windmill that was later replaced by an electric pump for the well.

Permission

As the our family history in this place (eighty-eight years) becomes confined to aging photographs and faulty memory, we’re forced or freed to move on, with or without our emotions.

Moving on, I explore retreat venues in other countries that, tethered to the farm, didn’t seem necessary or even possible.

Forced to release one place, I discovered writing communities that have become integral to my routine and life.

I’m not minimizing the emotions I have around this transition. I still want to kick a hole in the damned door, kick it down then open all the windows anyway.

But the obstacle did force me to look beyond my original vision, to create new paths through a different wood. Maybe that’s what I’m learning about obstacles: to turn my focus from a collapsed path to look for—or create—a different one.

The countdown is on. Bring it.

My first big path through the woods and turn of the page leads to Tepoztlán. I invite you to join me and Susan Wadds for a nine-day writing adventure. Explore with us, write with us, wander with us in Mexico April 8-17, 2027: Write Your Way In a Pueblo Mágico.

How have obstacles reshaped your life? What unexpected directions did they send you in?

©Pennie Nichols. All Rights Reserved. 2026.