Welcome to my first blog post here on the Roots & Arrows Homestead website. This is a new venture that I’ve taken on after being inspired by Jessica Sowards, or Jess, from
This video spoke to me, as many of Jess’s videos usually do. I so often feel as if I could be the one saying what she says. Things like her dreams as a child and being passionate about more than just one thing sound very familiar to me. We even share, or have shared, many of the same passions like, writing, photography, wanting to be home with the kids, and having the dream of one day owning a farm.
These reasons and more are why I want to point to Jess as the inspiration behind my finally starting down this road of blogging and vlogging and treating it like it’s my job, like God is my boss.
It finally feels like the right time.
In many of her videos, especially those over the past year, which I may or may not have been binge-watching lately, Jess urges her viewers to just start. So, even though I have started similar ventures before, her inspiring words really hit home with me over these past few weeks. Of course, being able to watch her dreams come true just 45 minutes from my home place definitely lit a fire in me and pushed me to believe that maybe, just maybe, I could do it. I could grow something, inspire someone, and make a difference in some way that maybe I can’t see right now.
So, here I am. Moving forward with a new blog, my camera, and beginning my YouTube channel. Wish me luck as I push forward and try with everything in me to make my dreams come true. Maybe, in 10 years or so, I’ll be a published author, a coffee shop/bookstore owner, and growing the food for my family plus some.
On the off-chance that Jess ever reads this post, I just want to say to her,
Thank You! – Thank you for being unapologetically you, always true, and for seeing the beauty in everything around you. You are a true inspiration to me and I’m sure many other people. Like you, I love my family, faith, writing, photography, gardening, and coffee – always coffee. Also, like you talk about in your videos, I have felt very lost for quite some time now. Trying to find my footing, finishing my undergraduate degree, mothering little babes over the past 5 years, etc. Being a wife and a mother is wonderful, but finding who I am again as our littlest babes get closer to their 2nd birthday is proving to be more of a challenge than I expected. I’m hoping that this gardening season, this blog, and the YouTube channel I’ll be starting along with those things will all help me rediscover my passions.
Jess, I feel as though your videos and your messages have, not only helped me choose a passion project in this season of life, but have also very much pulled me out of a certain underlying depression. A depression that I know I have chosen to ignore for so long because if I think about it, I fall apart, and since it feels silly to fall apart, I avoid dealing with it. So, thank you. You are a special person and your channel, I’m sure, reaches more people than you could ever imagine. Also, since you live about 45 minutes from my home place in Greenwood County, one of my dreams is to meet you and be able to thank you in person. <3
NOW – To my growing Roots & Arrows Homestead Community, thank you so much for being here. I hope you will grab a delicious cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and join me for the ride.
Let’s Do This!
-Victoria (Tori)
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