In a fluorescent-lit office, Mary sat at a reception desk—the center spoke of a wheel of cubicles. One after the other, every cubicle around her went vacant. Were her coworkers on vacation, working from home, or gone for good? She didn’t know. To the soundtrack of phones ringing at empty desks, Mary picked up her pen and scrounged for scraps of paper. She had always loved creating stories, but because of her neurodivergent patterns in school, Mary never thought of being an author as a career. Even now, as she penned her first book, she had little thought of doing it professionally.

Long years passed, and many story iterations. She majored in film production in college, moved to Boston and wrote the screenplay for an award-winning short film.

But something happened Mary did not expect.

First, she’d pause halfway through a sentence, desperately searching for the words to finish her thought. Her days lost their vibrancy, everything melting into gray. Mary felt bone-weary with an exhaustion that sleep could never touch. Crying in the arms of her roommates, she would try to convince them she wasn’t usually this prone to weeping. She made jokes about early Alzheimers while locked deep inside, dread grew.

Her fellow filmmakers moved to California. Mary moved back to her Rocky Mountain home in Montana with plans to follow once she’d recouped her finances. But deep down she knew the gray she’d fallen into would only increase in the hustle and lights of LA.

Only writing beat back the creeping fog that muffled emotion and numbed her mind. When her heart squeezed strangely in her chest, Mary knew she had to figure out what was really going on. All the threads led to one cause: pernicious anemia. An illness that is aptly named. It comes on gradually and erodes away the will and the wit that it takes to solve the problem.

Mary scrabbled her way back to happiness and full sentences. Now, she celebrates vibrancy in all aspects of her life. While her love of adventure and travel and her yearning to root deep and create her own spot of paradise, she . You will find her writing or working on the beginnings of her regenerative farm.

If you’re wondering whether it is hard to farm in a northern, high altitude, semi-arid climate—yes, yes, it is. But what would be the fun of transforming an already lush landscape into a paradise?

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