Hello there!

My name is Jessie. I used to be a women’s magazine editor in New York. I

had an expense account and rode around Manhattan in a town car, entered

nightclubs at dark and exited at daybreak and spent a lot of time flapping

my arms at $25 kundalini yoga classes. That was my life. It wasn’t

perfect, but I was independent and making money. My friends were smart and

deadpan hilarious. That I required two glasses of wine before going to

therapy each week didn’t seem a big deal.  I wouldn’t have called my state

of mind ‘happy.’ More like ‘caustically content.’

PICTURE OF ME HERE

I was sent on assignment to write a story about a rodeo in Montana where I

met a lean, brown-eyed bullrider named Jake who worked with his hands and

made bar stools out of old tractor seats. He fashioned my name out of

barbed wire and liked to bake coffee cake. He went to church. I was still

trying to rave. He knew how to two-step.  I knew about my Third Eye Point.

He was red state. I was blue state. He read the Bible. I read Star.   He

was a captain in the Army Reserves.  I sorta knew what that was.  He was

the sunrise to my dusk.

PICTURE OF JAKE HERE (I’m sending a new one)

We moved to rural Virginia, the closest place where I could retain ties to

Eastcoast civilization and he could wear a cowboy hat without being

mistaken for one of the Village People.  We bought a charming little house

on a pristine chunk of acreage and got hitched. We had an adorable baby

girl named June Rose.

There are now cows to the left of me and horses to the right of me.  I’ve

traded Whole Foods for Tractor Supply. The skills that made me successful

in New York have no currency here and I find I’ve had to re-learn how to

live life.   I drink boxed wine. We heat our house with wood and own 65

chickens (at last count). I belonged to a Ladies Bible Club and have been

bucked off horses.  I’ve built fences, dug ditches and swung hammers and

realized I’m actually much better suited for the quaint domestic arts such

as cooking, canning, gardening and sewing. That my life now resembles my

grandmother’s more than even my mother’s is not lost on me.  Is this

progress?  Mmm, debatable.  But I can make a mean Coca Cola Ham!

ANOTHER PICTURE OF ME, ME ME!!!!!

I really don’t know where this journey is taking me. And sometimes I

wonder if by writing about my experiences I have turned myself into some

sort of bumbling caricature (cue the Green Acres theme song). But one

thing I’ve learned is that it’s not the place that makes you happy.  It’s

having enough resourcefulness to make the best of it once you’re there.

These are my stories.

Want to contact me directly? I can be reached at www.jessieknadler.com