The Making of a Non-traditional Life.
After two long, delicate, and transformative years of living together while working through our separation, Will and I are selling our house. It’s been weeks of mindfully moving through this giant home, getting new carpet, refreshing the paint, and decluttering every nook and cranny. Exhausting as it has been, one night Will and I found ourselves up late, sharing a smoke.
“It’s like I finally just see you,” I said to him. “Without all the projection from myself, I just see you, and it’s really nice.”
After everything we went through, Will and I have found ourselves in a beautiful friendship.
Our commitment to building a friendship after ending our marriage wasn’t just for the sake of our daughter. Will and I had a shared dream that we were on the cusp of reaching, and in the conversation of ending our marriage we both agreed neither of us wanted to walk away from this lifestyle we were building.
Before marriage and parenthood became reality, we bonded over how we wanted to move through the world, both deeply committed to not beating down the earth with overconsumption. The week I met Will, it was the dead of winter in Michigan. I had just given up my car to cut back on CO2 emissions and was walking to work every day through snow and ice because my convictions ran so deep. On our second date, Will took me into the forest, and I saw that his tenderness with the earth surpassed even my own. I had met someone who walked through this world the way I do: slowly, gently, and with purpose.
It’s easy to confuse such camaraderie for romantic love when connections like that are so rare. We took a path that looked right for the world but never sat right in our spirits. Inevitably and quickly, we ended our marriage just over a year into it.
When we made the decision to separate, we grieved the idea of letting go of our land even more than our relationship. Somehow, miraculously, we owned this place—more beautiful than anything we’d ever dreamed of calling ours. Two creeks, lush hills, hiking trails, and the opportunity of off-grid living right at our fingertips. But we could only keep it if we both wanted it. One couldn’t walk away and leave the responsibility to the other. It’s too big of a job, too expensive—and, to be honest, too lonely.
“So let’s keep it,” we agreed. Why let go of the shared dream just because we were letting go of the marriage?
That conversation was over two years ago, and now we’ve reached a major milestone.
The work we’ve both done to heal after the emotional wreckage of a failed marriage has been deeply painful. But we made it.
Now, as we prepare to sell our house, we do so side by side—in deep and sincere friendship. The house and the 40 acres it sits on will be sold, while we continue developing the lower 40 acres we co-own. The septic, water, hydroelectric system, building pad, and driveway are already in place. I’ll move into an apartment with Willow in the nearest town, just 30 minutes away while Will moves onto the land to live in our converted school bus. We will spend the next year working together building our off grid homes there.
In some ways, this feels like the beginning of a whole new chapter. In others, it feels like the continuation of a promise we made to each other two years ago:
Teammates in life. Our future is bright.
