Election season is here again. Sigh.

Between the seemingly endless challenges facing our world, it's easy to feel disillusioned.

I've been reading through the ballot measures, trying to understand the issues and decide how to vote. And I keep coming back to the same question: Are we trying to solve problems that run much deeper than the solutions we're proposing?

We debate who should pay, which policies should change, and who should be in charge. Then another election rolls around, and there we are again, hoping this time we'll finally vote our way to a more harmonious world.

I don't think the answer is to give up on voting. Laws matter. Accountability matters. And the right to vote was hard-won. I'll be voting.

But this isn't a letter about whether you should vote. It's a letter about the power of our focus. Because what if the transformation we're truly longing for actually resides not just in changing laws but in transforming ourselves?

I recently became curious about the word vote. It comes from the Latin votum, meaning a vow or solemn promise. And from the same root comes another word: Devote.

Vote. Devote.

Kinda interesting...

We vote periodically. But what we're devoted to shows up in how we live every day.

A vote expresses a choice. Devotion asks what we're willing to dedicate our lives to.

Like many of us, much of my earlier life was devoted to wanting to change the world, as time went on, I shifted my focus to changing my own little corner of it; growing food, building with salvaged materials, reducing consumption, and questioning things I'd once accepted as normal.

I still believe in living consciously. But now I've been working on a deeper layer. And as usual, the garden has been teaching me a thing or two about this...

This year at Goldifarms, I wished for more rain, cooler summers, an irrigation system that could withstand one little gopher nibble, and for all the plants to cooperate with my grand vision. A simple request ;)

But while I was busy noticing everything that wasn't working, the rosemary was thriving, and the grapes were flourishing. Goldifarms was still growing.

The garden wasn't becoming exactly what I'd imagined, instead it was becoming a garden that could thrive in the conditions that actually exist here.

And I realized that perhaps my job isn't to impose a vision on this place, but rather to co-create with it... not with what I think "should" grow here, but with what actually does.

Because I am the student, and the garden is the teacher.

And in this season the lessons seem to be patience, acceptance, and presence.

As I learn them, I'm more able to see the beauty of an inland California garden, even after a 104-degree summer day.

I'm still devoted to growing food, restoring the land, and creating more beauty in the world. But I'm learning to hold my vision a little more loosely, to be curious about what life is showing me, and to allow myself to grow alongside the things I nurture.

I know that the world I want to live in isn't something I can simply vote for and wait to arrive.

But I do believe a more beautiful world is possible.

And maybe that's what devotion really means to me.

Not just what I believe in, but what I'm willing to give my time, attention, and energy to.

So as election season approaches, I'm asking myself a slightly different question.

Not just:

What am I voting for?

But:

What am I devoted to?

Yours in love,
🧡 Erin

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P.S After a bit of a hiatus, I'm back on YouTube. Come see what I've been devoted to lately at Goldifarms 🧚🏻‍♀️