A Hard and Honest Update • The Prairie Homestead

I have some personal news to share, and for weeks, I’ve been trying to summon the courage to write these words.

Christian and I are separating.

I use that word because “divorce” still gets stuck in my throat when I speak it. It feels foreign to my fingers when they attempt to type the letters.

But there’s no easy way to say it. No way to wrap it in a tidy bow and make it feel less jarring than it is.

This is not a category I ever planned to fit into. That label was for faraway people whose lives looked nothing like mine.

And yet, here I am.

We have chosen this. Both of us. Consciously. With full awareness of the weight of it.

The decision was mutual.

We’ve been married for nineteen years. We have built homes, businesses, a family, and a life I could never begin to untangle in a blog post. And because of that, I know there will be questions.

I also know there is no way I can explain nineteen years of marriage in a few paragraphs.

Nor should I.

Some things belong between two people. Some things belong to our children. And some things simply do not belong on the internet.

So I want to say this clearly from the beginning:

You will not see me airing private details or disparaging comments about him here. This decision was not born from scandal or drama, but rather from a series of revelations and honest conversations that brought things to a slow, grinding halt.

That does not mean the story is simple. It just means the whole story is not public property.

I also want to say this: Christian and I have always been good business partners. That part was real. We have created many things together and I will always honor that.

I don’t regret our years together or what we’ve built. We plan to remain friends and will continue to be partners in raising our children. We are both committed to navigating this in a way that protects them as much as possible.

This decision did not come lightly. It was not flippant. It was not casual. It was not born from one bad day.

And if it doesn’t make sense to you, that’s fine.

You haven’t lived my life. You haven’t been inside our relationship.

I realize that’s blunt, but I don’t mean it cruelly. It’s simply the truth.

So yes, from the outside, this looks fast. But from the inside, it has been a long time coming.

You see, I was raised to NOT air marriage troubles. Maybe that was right. Maybe it was wrong. I’m still sorting through that (yes, I have a therapist…). But that is what I did. I protected the private places. I kept the struggles off the internet and out of the community. I did not perform my pain in public so people would be prepared for the ending.

And I’m not sorry for that.

Therefore, I know people are surprised. Some are confused. Some may even be miffed that they didn’t know sooner.

But the truth is, people were not owed earlier access to something I was still trying to understand myself.

One of the most jarring parts of this process has been realizing how quickly people throw their own fears, beliefs, theology, pain, assumptions, and expectations on me when I tell them the news.

I know many don’t realize they’re doing it. But still…

When you’re in the middle of the most disorienting life change you’ve ever experienced, it is absolutely exhausting to be fielding everyone else’s reactions on top of your own grief.

So I will say this gently, but firmly:

Please know I have already wrestled—and continue to wrestle— with all of the questions, concerns, and judgments you may be tempted to send my way.

The disappointment.

The fear of what people would say.

The fear of being misunderstood.

The fear of letting people down.

The fear of blowing up the version of my life everyone thought they knew.

It is everything I can do to keep showing up in my tiny community and not become a complete hermit until people stop whispering and speculating.

But I am no longer willing to live my life from a place of fear of what others will think.

That doesn’t mean this is easy.

It is not.

It is grief and fear and sadness. It is also relief and clarity and hope. And everything is tangled together in an impossible knot.

As for what this online space will look like moving forward, I’ll still be here. Probably even more than before.

Writing is how I make sense of my life, and this next chapter will give me plenty to untangle, rebuild, and understand.

I’ll still be cooking. Still riding. Still gardening. Still building (I’m keeping the Soda Fountain and nothing will change there). Still asking hard questions. Still chasing old ways in a world that seems hell-bent on making us forget them.

But some things will shift, because my life is shifting.

I’ll also be writing about starting over, solo homesteading, and creating a new home. (I’m closing on a new homestead this week, just a few miles from our current one. I’ll tell you more about that soon.) I won’t be sharing private details of my relationship, but I will share what it means for me to grieve, rebuild, start over, and become.

Some of my more personal pieces may live behind a paywall, because that feels safer to me right now. Not because I’m trying to be mysterious, but because there is a difference between being honest and handing the rawest parts of your life over to the entire internet to critique.

People will make of this what they will. Some will understand. Some won’t. Some will stay. Some will leave.

Some people have already fallen away. Others have shown up for me in ways I’ll never forget.

That has been one of the surprising gifts in the middle of all this. Pain clarifies.

It shows you what was real and what was performative. And it shows you who can sit beside you in the ashes without needing you to explain every flame.

So this is where I am.

I’m not fixed. Not polished. Not finished. I’ve cried in public more in the last month than I ever have before. I’m certainly not offering a five-step lesson from the other side.

I’m just here.

Starting over.

Grieving what was.

Feeling hopeful for the future.

And walking toward what comes next.

-Jill

P.S. If you are a personal friend and this is the first time you’re hearing this, I’m sorry. I’ve tried to directly tell as many people as I could, but these conversations are heavy, and I’m tired. I know I’ve unintentionally missed some people. Please know that wasn’t because you don’t matter.