I consider it one of the great fortunes of my life to have had my grandmother Etheldra K. Miller well into my adulthood.
But on November 13, 2024 she departed the physical plane, on the same day The Rest Revolution was released to the world.
While the grief is having its way with me, I'm choosing to interpret the timing of her transition as a spiritual message to me:
"Amanda, you've got this. I see you are finally walking in your light, and in your purpose. I think you can take it from here..."
My granny had been a kindred spirit since my childhood when I would spend summers with her and my grandfather at their home in southeastern Georgia. While I didn't know it then, I was unwittingly soaking up a way of life and understanding of nature that underlies the PURPOSESCAPING philosophy.
While many of the ideas I've stumbled upon in recent years seemed novel to me upon discovery, I realize now they're actually principles the farmers and educators in my family have lived by for generations.
I had the fortune and honor then to interview my grandmother in person at her home in the fall of 2019.
As I was starting to put scaffolding around the PURPOSESCAPING framework, I wanted to hear directly from her how the concept of self-actualization through the seasons directly corresponded to the seasonal activities she remembered from farming. My grandmother offered a beautiful interpretation of how farming or cultivation of any kind is a vivid metaphor for clearing a pathway to your purpose.
As we continue to reflect on the winter season, I thought it would be fun to hear directly from my grandmother as I continue to process how much she meant to my life. We recorded a capsule podcast series several years ago, and I'm so grateful to still have her wisdom to guide me from the other side.
Here's the text from an interview we did for my podcast back in 2019.
Amanda: So after a successful fall season, given that the weather has been cooperative, we've harvested our early crops, our late crops, we've gotten everything out of the ground for the most part, we've sorted, sold, and the season of growth essentially is over.
But what does winter look like for farmers especially in this part of the country? I think a lot of people think about farming and wintertime as just being this dormant it dead time where nothing is really going on. But from your perspective, a lot is happening during winter. So tell me from a farmer's perspective, what would you be thinking about working on and doing in those December, January, February months on a farm?
Granny: Basically, in this part of the country in winter, farmers begin as soon as they get all of the cotton out of the field, all of the soybeans out of the field, they begin plowing and getting the soil ready for the spring planting. And that takes a while because if you have cover crops, you've got to either harvest them or if they are being used for your animal feed then you have to, what farmers generally call, turn the soil over. That means you plow it to give it air and you just let it breathe. Then you're busy getting your soil ready to get your corn crop in for the spring.
Comments