A community built around two questions and one life togethe,
with room for yours, whichever chapter you're living right now.
A community built around two questions and one life togethe,
with room for yours, whichever chapter you're living right now.
The nosebleed that changed everything.
I was good at my job. Really good.
Then, one morning, in a routine meeting with my boss,
my body made a decision my mind hadn't been
willing to make. I had a nosebleed. Then I passed out.
High blood pressure.
A few days later, my wife asked,
"Do you want to die never having known if you could have made it as an artist?"
I left the restaurant industry.
I picked up my brushes with a sense of freedom.
I began to understand what memento mori actually means,
not as a dark idea, but as a liberating one.
One-way tickets and the hand on her back.
Michelle and I married in May of 2022. On our honeymoon, her father told us he was fighting cancer for the second time. Days after we got home, my own father died suddenly. We bought one-way tickets and spent three months wrapping up his affairs.
I never got to say goodbye.
Over the following year, Shell felt what she calls "the hand on her back," telling her it was time to be with her family. I didn't want her to go through what I had. So we sold the home we'd built together in the woods of Alaska, bought a 1993 RV we named "Peace Arrow," and headed South. We chased autumn across Canada for a month. It was one of the most beautiful things we've ever done.
We landed in Central Arkansas to care for her parents. Things didn't unfold the way we'd imagined, but we stayed. We adjusted. We found our footing.
I'm now a garden programmer at the Faulkner County Library. Shell is training to become an end-of-life doula, helping others the way she'd hoped to help her family. Four years ago I would never have pictured this life.
We are learning to love like we're going to live here; fully, imperfectly, and with everything we have.
— Shawn B Standley, artist
Every person has a story, a moment of urgency, a choice made out of love, or both.
We're collecting them here, one honest voice at a time.
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