05/27/2026
Here we are. 10 years.
A decade of saving lives, showing respect, granting dignity. Crying, sweating, bleeding. Cheering, hoping, failing. And everything in between.
I started this month with a dream⌠one that, on paper, couldnât fail.
Step 1: post every day, telling our stories in my own voice, my own words, an original photo alongside each. All dressed up to please the algorithm overlords.
Step 2: a big ask on May 27th. $10,000 to mark 10 years - enough for new fencing and shelters for our oldest residents, the ones whoâve been here since 2016. Theyâve earned a little room of their own: more comfort, less competition⌠more chill, less CHARGE!
A perfect fundraiser, perfectly themed. Hook and Nubs. Gemma, Baldr, and Buttercup. Boris. They werenât young when we met them ten years ago, and they certainly havenât gotten younger. Theyâve been with us through every up and down, every blistering summer and every numbing winter. They deserve a little space to call their very own.
But somewhere around Day 4, I remembered who we are. We donât have a million followers. We didnât pull the lucky straw of going viral. We donât draw salaries, and weâre definitely not getting voted Americaâs Favorite Couple.
Who was I kidding?
Still. I pushed on, and I posted.
Then, on Day 12, I hit a wall. The âlesson learnedâ Iâd planned for that day was one Iâve tried to forgive and forget since the week it happened â a devastating thing I wanted, desperately, to be a nightmare I could wake from.
It wasnât.
Then, adding insult, the set of worksheets I developed to make sense of the tragedy - to help others avoid similar trauma - was met with darkness. Evil comments. Evil-er DMs. Interrogation and blame. It all but killed my soul beyond repair the first time. I couldnât share the story again.
The lesson set for the 15th was just as painful. The one scheduled for the 20th remains the one story Iâve never typed out for anyone.
I really wanted this campaign to land. Not only for the money, and not only for our Super-est, Senior-est residents, but because Iâd hoped that sharing our hardest-learned lessons might spare others.
When it came to the wire, I couldnât write.
Five, six, even ten years onâŚI havenât recovered. Havenât moved on, havenât shaken the weight of it all from my shoulders. And that, I suppose, is the real story of a decade in rescue.
This life is hard in every direction⌠harder still in the long shadow of the big money-makers, the social-media famous, and the savage keyboard warriors. So, to everyone in the trenches with us, the whole point of this post is simply to say: I see you.
The small sanctuary owners losing sleep over the daily math of income vs. expenses; the tender-hearted crying over the cruelties of an exploitative world, wishing you had a magic wand; the donors who support boring bare-necessities, even when drama elsewhere is begging to be fed instead; the beaten down and broken, still getting up each day to try again.
I see you. I thank you. You are loved.
Happy 10th Birthday,
Steampunk Farms Rescue Barn. đđĽłâ¤ď¸
