How grateful I am to have such amazing friends- what a dream come true for our entire family. Thank you Erin and Southern Living for the kind words.

Southern Living

https://www.southernliving.com/news/erin-napier-instagram-helen-gets-first-purse

Erin Napier's Daughter Helen Gets Her First Pocketbook and There's Such a Sweet Story Behind It We want one for ourselves.

By Perri Ormont Blumberg

June 15, 2020 Now that we can all breathe a collective sigh of relief that HGTV's Home Town is being renewed for a fifth season (check out our video below for more details), we can get back to our regularly scheduled Ben and Erin Napier-obsessing. And swoon we will over Erin's latest Instagram update, where she shared the sweetest story behind her daughter Helen's first purse. "In 2013, on the eve of her major surgery, @farmhandmadeco and I connected thanks to the random magic of her finding my old online journal. We became close friends and sent many letters between Mississippi and Indiana, grown up pen pals, the mentor (Lisa) and her student (me). She has taught me lessons about motherhood and creativity and blooming where you’re planted, and has been such an influence on my life, you’ll even find her name in the acknowledgements of our memoir, Make Something Good Today," writes Erin, alongside a photo of two beautiful matching tan purses. "She happens to be a masterful leather worker and jewelry maker and Helen and I are the luckiest because we are her new product guinea pigs! Look at Helen’s first (tiny) purse! If you want to support an artisan, mama, wife, farmer and breast cancer survivor who makes the world a better place, see the link in my profile!"

You can buy "Erin's backpack bucket tote" on the website of Lisa's small business, Rural Route 3, here for $275. The pocketbook Erin is gifting two-year-old Helen, the "Girl's mini-crossbody" is available here for $78. You can shop Rural Route 3's full collection,which includes jewelry, tool belts, belts, baskets, and more bags, here.

Right now, more than ever, supporting small businesses is a great way to help these independently-owned operations recover in the wake of the coronavirus outbreak. We'd love to hear if you have a favorite small business you're loving these days.
—Southern Living Magazine - June 15, 2020

Why Rural Route 3?

I was fortunate enough to grow up in the country, where rural roads connected gravel and pavement, weaving between farmhouses and corn fields. It was long enough ago that our mailing address was simply identified as Rural Route 3, our carrier knowing each family well enough to notice when the mail piled up from vacation or an influx of get-well cards was cause to mention it at church. My heart will always return to the days playing in the hayloft, driving the tractor, trekking in the foot-high snow in rubber boots for the Christmas cedar tree or racing bikes down the lane. Summer days eating warm strawberries straight from the garden with my mom and slow afternoons sitting under the tree with my grandpa as my dad raked the hayfield on the old John Deere all combined to create a magical childhood.

My hope is as these items are used and travel on your own journey -- each scuff, mark and show of wear challenges you to slow down, dig deeper and dream bigger to create your own magical memories wherever life takes you.

I can't wait to hear all about it.

~ Lisa

This is it.

These are my best tools.

I woke up from surgery years ago, no longer worried about what cancer was taking, but instead worried about I was giving.
My chest hurt, my arms were plastered to the bed and I looked at my hands realizing that what I wasn’t using: my creativity and able hands—were not promised to me forever.

I didn’t have any fancy sewing machines or cutters, so I became determined to get better at this- the slow old-fashioned way—Learning that every stitch, knotted by hand, is so much stronger than a machine.

Our hands are amazing machines, our hearts and minds even more—please decide to write, sew, build, make, paint or draw something and give your heart to the world. Use everything you have, right now, to get started today.

Much love and gratitude to you all that have cheered me on in every step.

GOOD GRIT MAGAZINE - Under the Armor

 Article first appeared in the November 2017 Issue of Good Grit Magazine. I was asked to write about the topic: Warrior Moms.  Visit the good people at Good Grit, they are doing amazing things.

It’s happened more than once.

Reaching for my phone, fumbling for the camera app just at that perfect moment-at the party, or the school play, or with friends playing in the yard.  The noise rising, the moment just impossible to recreate and the alert blinks: Cannot take photo. There is not enough available storage.

In the rush, I start removing apps, swiping right, deleting the shaking icons or the duplicate video.  Frantically deciding in an instant what is important and what is not.  What should be removed and what should remain. The sounds start to fade to the next scene, about to be lost forever and I promise myself it will never happen again.

I don’t feel like a warrior mom.  Even if the definition eludes me as I scan the room imagining the other warrior mom’s lives. The ones that are doing it all and the ones that are not.  The ones that have survived the disasters and the decisions, the worrying and the wondering. And how they are all probably still managing to pack healthy lunches and complete school forms on time.

The call comes like any other, a phone number not recognized so ignored, not to be distracted while out shopping with my children. But then a second call and a third, and finally my doctor, a number and voice I recognize telling me that the office that conducted my routine mammogram needs to speak to me immediately. And in an instant, the world blurs and there is not enough available storage to process it all.  Taking a deep breath and hitting the x’s of my life icons--frantically deciding what is important and what is not.  What should be removed and what should remain.

In that moment of grief and worry, reaching out a hand before I fall, others clutch it in theirs.  Family and friends come with open arms and casseroles. Listening, waiting, offering wisdom and clarity and filling in the gaps.  Food is left at the door, notes and emails fill my box and church ladies I do not know knit a blanket as encouragement arrives from strangers.

An acquaintance calls, “Can I bring over food?”

“Oh thank you, we are overflowing, but thank you so much for offering,” I say.  Alone for the first time since the surgery, my family resuming normalcy, I shuffle back to the couch. About to hang up, I hesitate. “On second thought, do you have a few minutes to come over to help me wash my hair? I’m so unsteady on my feet and…”

“I’ll be right over.”

Confirming the address, I hang up embarrassed, wondering what I have just done. My house is a mess, I look like a wreck.

Within minutes, another friend arrives with sleeves rolled up and ready to help. Standing over the white sink, in pajamas and chest bandages, juggling drains from where my breasts once were, hot tears mix with the cool water as I listen to these two women laugh and share and reach out a hand. Filling in the gaps, this is what warrior moms do.

Generations before us have done the same, gathering the good and passing it forward. As my grandmother edged closer to the end of her life she grew quieter, her memories fading faster than the words to describe them would arrive. Glassy eyes stared past me searching for the moment forgotten as location and details tangled in the fog with memories of love, happiness and comfort lingering behind. A life of wisdom guiding her failing memory to what could be let go and what needed to remain. My mother, her experienced hands worn by years of sewing and gardening, tends her flowers or pieces together a quilt from stashes and scraps of fabric, always illustrating how to curate and discard, keep or share.  Always guiding the goodness that is allowed to stay for the next season.

The party sounds fade to the next room, the moment gone.  And then the friend I don’t know touches me on the shoulder, waves her phone and says, “I got it, don’t worry about it. I’ll send it to you.”  And together, regular moms become warriors realizing that we need each other, in the small and in the big moments.  Our definitions of warrior moms as unique as we are, helping each other become the mom our children need. Joining forces to become the warrior moms we’ve always wanted to be.

Laurel Mercantile January 2018

FAMILY PHOTOS

There’s a photo that hangs on my office wall that was collected from the local newspaper’s archives during a community history project.  It’s an old black and white, probably taken in the early 70’s of a group of older women, sitting in their lawn chairs, purses in their laps, laughing and waving as they wait for a fall parade to pass by.  Visitors to my office usually look over my shoulder and notice it immediately because it’s such a unique image.  I love asking them to take a closer look, stopping the business conversation and asking them which one of the women they suspect they would’ve been or who bears a resemblance to anyone in their own family.   Is it the lady in pearls with the brooch on her coat? Or the one waving at someone she knows? Is it the one in slippers and a housecoat or the one in her Sunday best quietly smiling taking it all in?  I learn a lot about my friend by just learning their answers.   How they admit which one they probably would be or as they smile knowingly and say “This one, would’ve definitely been my grandmother.”

My husband’s grandmother was the family historian.  She would always have a story to tell about a great uncle or a great great someone at every visit.   She would famously laugh so hard during one of her stories, that the listener was often left laughing along satisfied with an incomplete version of the event.  To this day, if someone starts a story they can’t finish because of the laughter, we’ll yell out her name “ROSE!!!” as homage to the storyteller that made the telling just as interesting as the story itself.  Afterwards, she would lean into my husband and tell the rest or gather a newspaper clipping to show him, so he would always know the ending.

My husband was the heir apparent Keeper of the Stories. The one that would become the history teacher that continues the tradition of storytelling in the classroom every day.  Maybe it’s a throwback to my old yearbook days, but I’m the one that keeps the photos.  Not so much the ones that are the stoic faced student photo from the 20’s or the 50th anniversary pic taken with someone’s shaky Brownie camera—but the ones where the subjects are caught off guard or unaware of the photographer. The ones where they are laughing and  holding hands, or working at the big church picnic or probably talking to their brother about cattle prices next  to the old farm truck.  The ones that remind me that their lives were not as black and white as the ink that portrays them.

I’m getting out more photos these days.  Enlarging the tiny prints so I can walk by and see the stories behind the faces.  It’s comforting to know that they’ve lived through sunny and dark seasons.  That they have laughed and loved and celebrated.  They have worked and survived economic disasters and personal loss. In this brief capture of a moment, I feel them telling me, “You’ll be just fine… Just like I was.”  And I walk on a little stronger and prouder knowing the family and friends that would’ve thrown their arms around me and asked me to pull up a chair to listen to just one more story.