I think my next few Grandma Challenges are going to be hard for me and so I want to share a piece of my own story because it may help you understand why I feel prepared to take on these and other challenges throughout the coming year.

Six years ago, I was stressed to the max.  I had just started a nonprofit organization from the ground up, I became a mother for the first time, my husband and I were living in a struggling urban neighborhood and renovating our third old home.  I was working hard to raise funds for the organization which included a salary for myself and my husband because he was preparing to quit his job as a university professor to join me in a 50/50 split of parenting and nonprofit work. 

To say we had a lot of ideals we were trying to live out all at once is an understatement. 

We were on a high speed train, bound for one very big crash.  And crash we did.  My body physically started to shut down, my husband and I did more yelling than talking, and I realized the only reason my son was happy was because he spent most of his days with his grandparents.     

Drastic measures had to be taken.  We closed down the organization, my husband returned to school as a full-time student to rebuild his career, and I spent the next four years clearing out the debris from the train wreck that was once my life.  I ruthlessly tossed everything out of my schedule except the bare essentials - husband, kids, husband’s job, food on the table, a semi-clean house, and a tight circle of extended family and friends. 

There are seasons of life that are busier than others, but when I look back on my life six years ago, I know that much of the busyness and stress was there because of choices I made.  It took four years of soul searching to learn to integrate a new set of choices into my life.  These choices have helped me slow to a speed that feels more like a train chugging along at a reasonable pace.  I can take in the scenery of my life at this speed.  When I was on that high speed train, every moment went whizzing by at breakneck speed.

I still have my days and weeks and months where I feel like I have jumped back on that high speed train, but now I know how to hit the emergency stop button. 

Many of you have kindly expressed concern that I may stress myself out by making too many changes at once.  However, I feel prepared to take on the challenges of this year because I will hit that emergency stop button whenever I need to.

I did not really intend to pose a new Grandma Challenge today but I guess I just did.  Slow down.  It is the first step I had to take to begin living a more sustainable and simple life.  I think my grandparents probably have a lot to say about the pace of modern life and I plan to ask them.

What do you think?  Do you want to slow down?  What can you do today to begin that process?  Cut out one weekly activity?  Take one day off each weekend?  Or maybe just grab a good friend and have a conversation about slowing down and take one, small step in that direction.

Last Friday, I wrote about slowing down.  My subconscious must have been trying to tell me something because I ended up feeling sick and exhausted the next few days.  That is the way my life goes.  Just when I think I have mastered something, like slowing down, I fall flat on my face.  I feel like I may have replaced one kind of busyness with another - especially as I learn how to manage this project. 

On Saturday I spent most of the day interviewing a friends’ grandmother who is going to be 104 years old next week.  It was an amazing experience and somehow very tiring.  I came to the interview prepared with a list of questions and quickly realized I needed to put them down in order to help my interviewee feel more relaxed.  So there we sat on my friend’s porch swing, gently swaying back and forth for close to four hours, chatting, drinking coffee, and watching my friend’s children and my own scamper around the yard.  The interview ended when another couple joined us and we ate a late lunch together.  I pretty much remained sitting next to my friend’s grandmother for another couple of hours as the interview process took on the informal flow of our lunch conversation.

By the time we packed up to leave, I was exhausted.  My body felt tired from sitting in one spot for close to six hours and my emotions were on overload as I tried to process the experience of interviewing the only centenarian I will probably ever meet. 

After my interview, I came home to an enormous pile of green beans from my mother in law’s garden, eight quarts of blueberries, and four bunches of basil from the local Farmer’s Market.  All of it was waiting to be prepped so I could freeze it for winter eating.  I felt overwhelmed but dove into the work of washing, sorting, snipping, blanching, bagging and cleaning up for the next six hours.  It was a very quiet six hours.  My husband kept the kids occupied and left for some quiet time of his own after they were in bed.  I finally finished putting away my mound of goodies at midnight.

On Sunday I met a friend for coffee at 7 am and then volunteered in my church nursery.  I came home and my husband left to pick up a window we special ordered from Home Depot for a future house project.  He also made a stop to pick up a small chest freezer we bought off Craigslist to store all of the food I am attempting to freeze.  When he got home, we immediately packed up and went to the beach for the day with a small group of family and friends.  The evening ended with a round of baths and then bedtime.

On Monday, my husband left for work and I confronted a mound of zucchini that has been accumulating from various sources over the past few weeks - a few from my own small garden, a few from my Grandpa’s and a few from the Farmer’s Market.  I needed to put them to use or they were going to land in the compost pile.  Thanks to the evening air our house felt cool that morning but after baking four loaves of zucchini bread and two zucchini quiches, it turned into a sauna.  In the few moments my kids were resting in the afternoon, I tried to write what was supposed to be my post for Monday on my site.  Rest time ended and my post was not done.  I finished a little more baking as my kids ran inside and out and then my husband came home.

After he settled in with the kids, I went to a nearby coffee house to finish writing my Monday post.  I wanted to include a little video in it.  It took most of the evening before I figured out how to get the video from my camera to YouTube and then embedded in my post which still was not ready to be published.  The coffee house workers began flashing the lights, signaling that I needed to pack up.  I went home and worked on my post a little more.  I then attempted to go to bed but after a brief review of my day with my husband, I wound up in tears because I felt so overwhelmed.  I couldn’t sleep and so I came downstairs and wrote until around 1 am.

Not surprisingly, I woke up groggy on Tuesday.  After I got myself moving by drinking way too much coffee, I did five loads of laundry.  Laundry always seems to take all day no matter how early I start.  It probably has something to do with the fact that I do not like doing it and so I procrastinate.  I proofread some of my writings while my kids were resting.  I then resumed the task of laundry and found myself half laughing and crying as I contemplated going without my clothes dryer for the sake of living like Grandma.

Now it is Wednesday.  I want to be as honest as possible about the process of learning to live more sustainably and simply.  I think it would have been misleading if I skipped to my next post without writing about feeling overwhelmed.  I want to make some significant changes this year but I am struggling as I learn how to manage this project - especially the website and writing.  The problem is I am not so sure I would try to make these changes unless I was writing this blog.  It is great accountability.   

My year of living like Grandma is going to have its fair share of ups and downs as I learn to balance my goals with the demands of my everyday life.  I can already tell my house is going to be a lot messier and the remodeling projects I want to get done are going to have to wait.  This is an important reality check for me which entails a simple formula: with each Grandma Challenge I try, I will probably have to let another thing go for the time being or I am going to wind up feeling exhausted and overwhelmed all year long.  It is all part of the process.

As part of my two week break from blogging, I spent three days at a monastery called, St. Gregory’s Abbey in Three Rivers, Michigan.  There is almost no quieter place on earth than spending time in the company of monks.

It was just what I needed.

From the moment I arrived until the minute I left, I found myself pondering one thing - the fact that my life has grown too noisy (again).  I knew very little about the blogging world prior to starting my own and while this has been a deeply satisfying journey, it does not fit well into the other parts of my life.

And so it is with a true sense of sadness that I have decided to close down My Grandma Was Green. 

I have struggled with this decision because on the surface it seems my reason is as simple as my life has grown too busy and full.  And in the American culture where a full schedule is praised, personal busyness hardly seems a reason to step away from something.  However, I have discovered that busyness can be and often has been a source of disconnectedness and pain in my life.  Consequently, busyness hardly lends itself to creating a more sustainable and simple lifestyle.

I never took time to define the word sustainability while writing my blog but I think I have started to form a working definition for my own life.  I believe living sustainably means taking only that which I need to live a meaningful, generous and connected life. 

In order to do this I need to be diligent in learning how to distinguish between wants and needs - no small feat in a culture that is saturated with advertising aimed at turning every single thing into a need!  I realize my definition is somewhat ambiguous because the words meaningful, generous and connected can be defined in a variety of ways.  However, when I view sustainability in this context, it puts me on a path of wanting to take less and give more.  It breaks down the walls of my everyday, ordinary life and forces me to consider the well-being of others in each decision I make.

I seem to have a passion for “s” words such as simplicity and slowness.  I am now committed to moving forward in my journey with another “s” word to pursue - sustainability.  Each of these words is connected in so many ways but the tie that binds them together for me is relationships.  I believe I can pursue deeper and more meaningful relationships with self, God, my family, friends, neighbors, community and the world if I commit myself to simplicity, slowness and also sustainability. 

Therefore, I am going to persist with the changes I have made and I will continue to make more changes in the future.  Only now I will have to record my journey in the old-fashioned way - in the pages of my journal, through conversations with friends and family and in the quiet moments of my days.

I am not sure which part of this short journey has been the most important - recommitting myself to a slower pace, my growing awareness of important changes I need to make toward a more sustainable lifestyle, or reconnecting with my grandparents and my own history.  I guess each one is important in its own way.

If you are interested in learning from and connecting to your grandparents or any older person who is significant to you and/or learning about sustainability by looking to the past, I would encourage you to make use of the extensive questionnaire developed by Virginia Allee called, A Family History Questionnaire.  It proved to be an invaluable resource in asking my grandparents to share their story.  I trust you will find the same.

Thank you for all of your support in this endeavor.  I have learned a lot and will continue to be inspired by the stories I have read and by those individuals who are making great changes through the blogging world.

Goodbye for now,
April