Still Here. Albeit Slowly.

I almost didn’t write this post.

Not because I don’t have anything to say. I always have something to say. But because putting this winter into words means sitting with it long enough to find them — and honestly, I’ve been too busy surviving it to do much reflecting.

It’s May now. I’m only just coming up for air.

Here’s what the last several months looked like.

It started in the fall. Epstein Barr — the kind of exhaustion that gets into your bones and doesn’t negotiate. I was still fighting that when late November hit and a neck injury decided to join the party.

I was already two fights deep when a week after Christmas the first bottle baby arrived. A kid — tiny, loud, needing feeding every few hours around the clock the way newborns do whether you’re healthy or not.

January brought Influenza A. And then on the 21st — right in the thick of it — the second kid arrived.

Late March. Triplets.

Five bottle babies total. In the house. All spring. And a Dysautonomia that was progressing in ways I was still trying to understand, dropping my blood pressure without warning and taking me down with it.

I want you to picture that for a second.

Epstein Barr. A neck injury. Influenza A. Progressing Dysautonomia. Two bottle baby goats in the house by January needing around the clock care. An Alaska winter outside that does not care about any of your problems.

And then three more in late March.

I have never been so simultaneously exhausted and kept alive by something in my entire life.

I couldn’t have done it alone. I want to say that clearly because I spent a lot of years believing that asking for help was a kind of failure and this winter dismantled that lie completely. People helped with animal care. People showed up. And I am grateful in the bone-deep way you can only be grateful when you genuinely needed something and someone actually came through.

We lost a few ducks. We lost a turkey hen. I won’t pretend that doesn’t hurt — every animal on this farm matters and every loss is felt. But the goats made it. The kids made it. The flock held. The farm held.

I held.

Barely. Slowly. On the days when my body fainted and my neck screamed and my energy was so depleted I measured it in minutes rather than hours — I held.

Not because I’m strong in the way people mean when they call disabled people strong. Not because I have some inspirational relationship with suffering that makes it meaningful instead of just hard.

Because I’m stubborn. Because there were animals that needed feeding. Because five bottle babies don’t care that you have Influenza A and they will absolutely scream about it until you get up.

It’s May now.

The kids are growing. The farm is still standing. I am still standing, slower than I was in the fall, quieter than I’d like to be, still finding the edges of what this winter took from me and what it left behind.

But still here.

That has to be enough for today.

Because tomorrow there’s more to do.

And I’ll be here for that too.

Dana Eden’s Edge, Nikiski Alaska