I Thought I Had Moved On

Illness, Grief, and the Lives We Leave Behind

Grief is a funny thing. You can be totally fine for months moving forward, finding joy, convincing yourself that you’ve made peace with the past and then, out of nowhere, it hits you like a ton of bricks. One small, ordinary moment pulls a thread loose, and suddenly you’re standing in the unraveling fabric of loss, feeling that deep ache for what once was.

What do I mean?

Well, today my dog Eleanor had an accident. (More like a full-scale blowout, if we’re being honest.) In true dog-mom fashion, I grabbed a change of clothes, rolled up my sleeves, and went outside to clean up the mess in her kennel. Midway through scrubbing, I heard thunder then in classic Florida style a sudden, drenching downpour followed. Within seconds I was soaked through, except for my feet (thank God for water boots, if you know, you know).

And as I worked in the storm, a strange memory crept in. The sound of rain pounding on tin, the smell of earth, the way the water rolled down my arms it all brought me back. I remembered the years when working in the rain wasn’t an occasional inconvenience, but an almost daily occurrence, especially in the summer. Only then, I wasn’t scrubbing kennels. I was tending plants.

For those who know me, you know that one of my first loves, beside music was agriculture. It’s ironic, really, because as a child I hated gardening. But somewhere in my mid-to-late teens, I fell head over heels for agricultural science and the practice of farming.

I loved everything about it: tilling the ground, the sweat running down my back, watching seedlings push their way into the world, harvesting baskets of fresh produce. Days at the farmers’ market, planning CSA shares, even the awkward-but-beautiful camaraderie with other introverted small business owners as we strategized how to attract customers without draining ourselves dry on “people-ing.”

I was a farmer. I was an educator. I loved creating agricultural aware/informed community. My dad and I even built a tunnel greenhouse together, I am even thinking right now about all the times we’d race to secure it whenever a Florida storm rolled in. I can still feel the rush of throwing on boots and running out into the storm to protect seedlings, pickup tools or close the flaps/windows laughing through the chaos of it all.

I was blessed to have the most amazing mentor in Clara Coleman (Clara’s Substack), the daughter of Eliot Coleman—often called the grandfather of market gardening. I would call her for advice, sit at her feet soaking up wisdom, and pour out my frustrations about why I was still running into random nutrient deficiencies in the soil (irony is I still am, but it’s me and not my soil).

But it wasn’t just about crops. It was about justice. I care deeply about food insecurity about the families living in food deserts, the neighbors unsure of where their next fresh meal would come from, and the people who wanted to get into gardening but had no idea where to start. I wanted to make knowledge accessible, I hosted workshops and created resources, to show that you could grow food anywhere: on 15 acres, on a balcony, in a single pot on a windowsill. Agriculture wasn’t just science to me it was empowerment, it was hope, it was community.

And then, it was gone.

It hit me today, out there in the rain with Eleanor’s kennel, that the life I once lived, the job I once loved, is history. I won’t be running a farm again, at least not in the way I did. I won’t be meeting interns who later invite me to their weddings, or hauling fertilizer bags like they weighed nothing, or collapsing into bed at 1 AM after an exhausting day only to rise with the sun to do it all again.

Because the truth is: my illness took that from me.

Chronic illness is a thief. It’s complicated, unpredictable, and cruel. It takes far more than it ever gives.

And grief, especially disability grief isn’t neat or linear. It doesn’t follow stages. It doesn’t offer closure. Sometimes you don’t even realize what you’ve lost until years later, when something as simple as rain brings the weight of it crashing down on you.

When my health declined, I didn’t sit with that grief. I didn’t acknowledge the magnitude of what was being stolen. I had another job that demanded my attention, and in the busyness, I just packed away that part of myself. “It’s fine,” I told myself. “You’ll move on.” And in many ways, I did.

But grief doesn’t respect timelines. It loops back around. It sneaks up on you in kennels and thunderstorms. And every few months, I find myself revisiting the loss missing the rush, the satisfaction, the dirt under my nails. Missing the girl I used to see in the mirror.

That girl was strong in ways I can’t be anymore. She wasn’t heat intolerant. She didn’t have to calculate the risk of central line infections before getting drenched in rain outside. She didn’t pace herself around fatigue like it was a shadow she could never outrun. She carried fertilizer bags without a second thought. She didn’t measure out her life in doctor’s appointments and medication schedules.

And so, I grieve her. I grieve the life my illness stole. I grieve the farmer, the educator, the builder of communities, the dreamer who believed she could eliminate food deserts one workshop at a time.

But here’s what I’m slowly learning: it’s okay to grieve later. It’s okay to grieve again. It’s okay if the ache never fully goes away. Grief is not a task to complete; it’s a companion you learn to carry.

Maybe someday I’ll garden again, not on the same scale, not in the same way, but in some form. And maybe it will be just as beautiful, because it will be hard-won. Until then, I’ll let myself feel the loss when it comes. I’ll sit with the rain, with the memory, with the ache.

And when the storm quiets, I’ll remember that even though this life isn’t the one I imagined, it is still life. And that, in itself, is a blessing.

— The retired farmer (Abigail)