Life is hard. On its journey, we will face good times and bad times, seasons of growth and seasons of death, seasons of change and seasons of waiting for change. We will grapple with what it means to be alive and what it means to return to the dust of the ground. We will find ourselves planted, like flowering trees, and uprooted, left to slow and inevitable decay – over and over. It is a cycle, an ever-evolving mixture of life, death, rebirth, and reorientation.

 

This website, Skins of Dirt and Dust, is meant to be an examination of life’s muddled nature – a consideration of how beginnings and endings are sometimes the same, and an exploration of what it’s like to live as a human in this world. Skins of Dirt and Dust is an acknowledgement that we are two parts of one whole – an ever-shifting amalgamation of all the growth, decay, grit, and toil that have shaped us.

 

The idea of this website was born from my own life experiences. Over the course of my life thus far, I have traversed hard and painful things. I have wrestled with the rising and sinking of impactful events, and I’ve been shaped by the process of that erosion and accretion over time. I’ve been battered by life, but also planted, and I’ve come to realize that sometimes hard earth must be tilled before seeds can prosper.

 

In this way, Skins of Dirt and Dust is both an anthem and a requiem. It is a place of reflection – both for me, and for you. It is an opportunity to hear some of my stories and think about some of your own. It is an invitation to look at things a little differently – not just as hardships or tragedies, but as the beginnings of a gradual rebirth.