“But you have Bob.” I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard that refrain about my husband since I first began promoting the ideals of radical homemaking. I rarely hear it publicly. It usually comes up in private conversations following lectures; it is whispered at book signings; it finds its way into my email inbox as would-be radical homemakers confess the single greatest obstacle to changing their home from a center of consumption to a center of production: the unsupportive partner.

I’ve held hands with strangers as they cried about their marriages, read long anonymously written letters of love and pain. My heart aches for these souls. I’ve repeatedly wanted to post a piece addressing this problem, but it has taken me two years of listening to these personal stories before I could find some universal themes in them that might be helpful for those folks who are facing similar situations.

The truth about radical homemaking is that single people can do it, and married people can do it. But if all the adults in a household aren’t on board with the efforts, it is damned near impossible. It is easy to vilify a partner who refuses to carry a water bottle, buys coffee every day in a disposable cup, discourages anyone from leaving a job they hate and still thinks Hummers are cool. But as anyone who has faced this problem in a marriage will tell you, it is not a black-and-white matter. These unions are typically made when love is true and ideals are high. The person who wants to start down the radical homemaking path cannot always write off an unsupportive partner as ‘a jerk,’ file a separation agreement and simply move on. The people we love are complex. There are reasons a partner may be derisive about this radical homemaking idea and still buy the mocha frappaccino with the domed plastic disposable lid—even if they love the earth and care about social justice:

Despair. The most obvious difference between the would-be radical homemaker and the unsupportive partner that I’ve observed is that the would-be radical homemakers still have hope. They still believe that their daily choices will have an impact on the future of the world. There is enough optimism lingering in their souls that they believe changing how they live, even if it must be incremental, is still possible. They believe that, with time and perseverance, a new and better life can unfold. The unsupportive partner often wants a better world, too. But he or she has given up believing that it is possible. The act of keeping a garden, of mending one’s clothes, of any earth-saving effort, seems fruitless to a person who feels it may be too little too late. While the wish for a healed planet may be the same, the unsupportive partner may simply be taking comfort from a consumptive lifestyle because he or she can no longer take comfort from hope.

Fear. There are so many things we are taught to be afraid of in our culture: fear of not having a steady paycheck, fear of not having our children enrolled in the best schools, fear of not blending in with the neighborhood, fear of existing without two or more cars in a household, fear of relying on family and friends for support. The radical homemaking path requires a person to confront those fears. The would-be radical homemaker has been able to do this, and has discovered that many, if not all of their fears, are little more than a hall of mirrors keeping them from a deeper, more pleasurable and empowering way of life. The unsupportive partner may still be clouded by the fears, so committed to them that they are unwilling to engage in a dialogue that might challenge them.

Lack of a Dream. Despair and fear alone are problematic attributes in an unsupportive partner, but everyone who considers a different life path confronts them. In order to put up half a fight in dispelling them, a person must be able to imagine what a life could be like without them. What does a life look like where one is not afraid? Where one lives with optimism that our collective individual choices will add up to a new earth community? What would a happy life look like?

Fear and despair creep their way into everyone’s life. They overtake our daily decisions without our even noticing, smothering our imagination … unless we take the time to dream. Dreaming about what we truly want for our homes, for our families, for our land and communities, and for our time is the best antidote I know for fear and despair. Each time we reflect on what we most want in our lives, we are pushed to examine the barriers that are keeping us from our dreams. And each time we examine and express them, the barriers grow a tiny bit weaker, the dreams grow a tiny bit more clear.

We dream constantly in our family. And every few years, Bob and I write down whatever the current dream is. We write down all that we want for the land—the land that we steward, as well as the land that we impact with our life choices. We write down what we want our time to be used for, what we’d like our financial resources to be, and what we want our home to be like. The dream we write is a shared one. It contains what we both want—no compromises, no negotiations. It sits up on a wall in the room where we meet every morning to share a cup of coffee or tea. And every decision we make together, whether it is a simple choice about what to get done that day, or a big decision about a financial investment, reflects the dreams that are posted on our wall. It reminds us that playing music together is as important as making sausages for the farmers’ market, or returning phone calls, or doing paperwork. It reminds us that keeping the car turned off as much as possible keeps us closer to our deeper dreams. When we make choices about our money, it reminds us of the world we want to create.

That is not to say that fear and despair don’t enter our lives. But with our shared vision on our wall, we are constantly reminded to challenge them, and to see fear and despair for what they truly are: obstructions to our dreams. The dream holds fear and despair at bay for us. And it enables us to support each other, because we both know what we are moving toward.

Not every union is worth preserving. Sometimes couples must go their separate ways. But sometimes all the pieces for a happy life together are present, but need help coming out. If you are pining for the radical homemaker path and feel you have an unsupportive partner, before you abandon your relationship, consider if fear and despair are holding the other person hostage. They are very real for the person who is experiencing them, and it is important to honor their existence. But then, if you can, try dreaming together again, as you may have done once a long time ago. Your mutual dreams may not resolve the fear and despair, but I promise they will soften them. And better still, those dreams instill hope and inspire courage. And hope and courage inspire good change, even though it may be slow.The radical homemaker path may have more bends in the road for your family than for others, but the journey will still be interesting, beautiful, and powerful.

******************************
Shannon Hayes wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Shannon is the author of Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, The Grassfed Gourmet and The Farmer and the Grill. She is the host of Grassfedcooking.com and RadicalHomemakers.com. Hayes works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York.

As publishers of a book about ecological, values-centered living, my husband Bob and I have experienced many moments of guilty squeamishness. Because I spent so much time studying the subject, and because we believed in the ideas strongly enough to pony up the cash and take Radical Homemakers to the printer, we feel we’re supposed to be some kind of paragon of the lifestyle. That is an ideal that is impossible to attain. I write and research to learn more about something I feel is important, not because Bob and I are experts at implementing all the concepts. We published Radical Homemakers as a result of being on that path, not because we have mastered the lifestyle.

Looking around our home, there are plenty of signs that we haven’t. Most of the blueberry bushes limped through the winter, but I lost two of them owing to my imperfect stewardship from prior years. One of Bob’s beehives died out because we divided the colony at the wrong time last year. This year’s mistakes are already forthcoming: Sitting cozy by the fire in February, we decided to plant a small orchard and mail ordered eleven trees. That’s a stupid thing to do. It is fine to decide to plant an orchard, but that decision means the next growing season should be devoted to preparing the soil for the following year, not to planting and watering baby trees. In our zeal, we skipped an all-important step, and now those poor trees must struggle to survive in soil that is nutrient-poor and nearly devoid of microbial life.

This is not to say we are complete failures as Radical Homemakers. There are some things we’re pretty good at. One hive died out, but the others have survived, with no chemical inputs. Later today, I’ll be down at the farm making some of the best tasting sausage to be found in the region. We’re great at getting along with our extended family, turning out home-cooked, locally-sourced and healthy meals, sharing resources, and managing our finances to guarantee there is cash for the things that matter. But the truth is, there is always someone who can do it better.

We had lunch with such a family a few weeks ago. They were amazing. The parents met while she was in the Peace Corps in Africa, and set their sights on organic farming. With relatively few resources at their disposal, they found a farmer interested in seeing his unused land transitioned to a new generation that would farm sustainably. They worked out a flexible and affordable land transfer. By reading books and talking to friends, the husband figured out how to build a timber-framed Dutch barn. When they realized their finances were not going to allow for the construction of a house, they made the loft into a beautiful, small, energy-efficient family home that can keep them cozy through Northeastern winters on a single cord of wood. Their electric needs are supplied off-grid by a small windmill and a tiny solar array that they installed themselves. The soil on the land they work is positively alive with microbial activity, their crops are bountiful and nutrient-rich. Their homeschooled daughter is lovely, their hands skilled and powerful, their souls beautiful.

By the end of our visit, we’d worked out some arrangements to help take care of each other’s children; smiling warmly, we loaded up our girls and drove away enthused that such wonderful people were living nearby.

Then it happened, on the drive home. We both tried to suppress it, but we couldn’t stop it. We didn’t mean for it to boil up inside us, but there it was: A wicked case of envy.

They must have money from somewhere. They must have some advantage that we didn’t have. They must have some wretched, horrible secret we don’t know about. There must be something imperfect about these people….some reason that they were able to do everything so much better and smarter than we could.

These thoughts were horrible. I liked these people!

I reflected on the phenomenon of envy. What is it, actually? In truth, it is nothing more than admiration with a splash of poison thrown in. But where was the poison coming from?

Ourselves, of course. Our own insecurities and imperfections. We didn’t try to hand-hew our own house. We didn’t feel skilled enough to tackle off-grid technology. If we tried to subsist entirely on my gardening efforts, we’d starve.

I wondered what would happen if we could separate the poison of our insecurities from the admiration we felt, and which these folks justly deserved. We needed to explore our self-doubts with self-love.

When we did, we saw something totally different. These insecurities were actually tied to our ambitions and dreams—things that Bob and I think are important, things that we would still like to learn. If we had it to do all over again, we might have done things differently. As it is, we don’t need to build another house, and going off-grid with our solar array is not the most important move for us to make right now. Those things, however, are tied to deeper aspirations. We want to learn to do more with our hands. We want to tackle challenging self-reliance projects without fear. We want to learn more about how to live harmoniously with our land, how to become more beneficent creatures to the Earth.

Understanding this, we looked back over our visit. What was there for us after we put aside our envy? Inspiration—a deeper understanding of what’s possible, of how wonderful it would be for this planet if more people were able to make better decisions than we have. The envy melted away, and was replaced by a renewed energy for what we can learn, what we can improve today, what we can work toward in the coming growing season, in the coming years.

With a lighter step, I make my way out to the blueberry bushes to test the soil and see how I can nurse them through my past mistakes. Bob cleans out the dead hive and readies for his new colony. He preps the ground for a new top-bar hive, this year’s experiment in more humane bee-keeping. We bring manure up from the farm to build up organic matter; we mix compost, dried blood, rock phosphate, and green sand into the soil where we planted the baby trees, and hope for the best. For good measure, we till up a new plot of ground that will be planted with cover crops for the time being, in hopes of maybe doing things right for the things we plant next year. We put our notions of failure and insecurity aside, and focus instead on where we want to go, what we want to do next, inspired by the fact that there are others who have succeeded.

——————————————————————————–

Shannon Hayes wrote this article for YES! Magazine, a national, nonprofit media organization that fuses powerful ideas with practical actions. Shannon is the author of Radical Homemakers: Reclaiming Domesticity from a Consumer Culture, The Grassfed Gourmet and The Farmer and the Grill. She is the host of Grassfedcooking.com and RadicalHomemakers.com. Hayes works with her family on Sap Bush Hollow Farm in Upstate New York.