Leisha For anyone who has ever wondered how we keep going when the ground underneath us shifts…..
Living Ground isn’t a perfect system. It isn’t polished. It isn’t always smooth. It is shaped by real lives, by people learning as they go, and by the land itself. Some days it feels like we’re building something strong. Other days it feels like we’re holding it all together with threads of will and a shared understanding that we have to keep trying—because if we can’t create together, then we’re missing the whole point.
Since losing Jim, everything has felt different. He was part of this story, even if his hands weren’t always in the soil. His spirit is in the foundation. His absence is a silence that hums through everything. Some days I sit alone and feel the weight of it.
“Yes, I understand
That every life must end
As we sit alone
I know someday we must go.”
I always knew life was fragile. I always understood cycles. But knowing does not prepare you for the empty spaces left behind. And still, here I am. Breathing. Creating. Holding onto the living parts of the dream because that is what love asks us to do.
“Oh, I’m a lucky man
To count on both hands
The ones I love.”
I know how lucky I am. I have known great love. I have known deep partnership. That is not something everyone gets. Some people have only glimpses. I have had the real thing. That is a gift I will carry for the rest of my life.
Living Ground was never about perfection. It was about effort. About staying with the work, especially when it was hard. About believing that if we kept tending the land, kept building relationships, kept listening to the soil and the stories, something true would grow.
“Stay with me
Let’s just breathe.”
Some days that’s all I can manage. Breathing. Sitting with the grief without running from it. Letting it pass through me while I plant seeds, mend fences, make plans. Other days the work pulls me in completely—the gardens, the market, the teaching, the building—and in that rhythm, I find small moments of healing.
Grief strips away illusions. It reminds us what matters and what doesn’t. It teaches us to let go of control, to trust in the process even when we cannot see the outcome.
“Under everything
Just another human being
Yeah, I don’t want to hurt
There’s so much in this world
To make me bleed.”
There is so much that can make us bleed. But there is also so much that can bring us back to life. The soil is alive. It breathes. It reminds me every day that death is not the end. It is part of a larger story. Part of the cycle that feeds everything else.
This work—this life—is not about escaping pain. It is about staying with it long enough to let it become something new. It is about taking what was broken and using it to grow something stronger.
“Did I say that I need you?
Did I say that I want you?
Oh, if I didn’t, I’m a fool, you see
No one knows this more than me
As I come clean.”
Jim gave everything he had without asking for anything in return.
“Nothing you would take
Everything you gave.”
That way of being has shaped me. It shapes the way I approach Living Ground. To give fully. To create without guarantees. To offer my energy, my time, my heart, to something larger than myself.
Living Ground is not about control. It is about participation. It is about breathing through uncertainty. It is about remembering that every relationship—between soil and seed, between people and place, between past and future—matters.
It is about love made visible through action.
It is not perfect. It is not easy. But it is alive. And it is enough.
“Hold me ’til I die
Meet you on the other side.”
I don’t know what the other side looks like. I just know that right now, in this moment, I am still here. I am still breathing. I am still building.
Living Ground is the continuation of what Jim and I started together. It is the soil into which I have poured my grief, my gratitude, my stubborn hope. It is where life keeps rising, even when it has every reason not to.
And for that, I am grateful beyond words.
