It is June 25, 2022, the day after the Supreme Court of the United States began to take away our human rights with the reversal of Roe V. Wade, and the Republican party could blatantly roll out its conspiracy to uproot our freedoms.

Two and a half years ago, I was on the cusp of deciding to leave my thirteen-room home in the country; my life, as I knew it rested on the threshold of changing drastically and forever pointed in a new direction. It was a scary time. I could not afford to live in the house where I had raised my son and taken care of my family of three, including me, for twenty-five of forty-two years.

I had been collecting tree cuttings in the room in the back of my kitchen. Most of them were from the dwarf apple trees that grew on either side of the…