(Slightly Misinterpreted) Gifts.

August 9, 2013 was the first time I first stood on the picturesque farm in East Bridgewater, Massachusetts. 

As I noticed the golden sunshine lighting up the rustling birch trees, I involuntarily imagined, with complete clarity, a high school graduation that would someday take place on that field.

So I decided, perhaps impulsively, to start the school that had been whispering to my heart for quite some time… and I deeply believed that it belonged on that farm. I understood that it wouldn’t be easy, but I wholeheartedly knew that it was possible. 

So one step at a time, the school began, and quickly, regularly, unexpected challenges started popping up. 

I clumsily found my way around each roadblock- usually with help, and always with intense effort and naïve determination. 

After a couple of blurry years, I was chest-deep in the murky daily operations of a tiny, ever-evolving school. While the school wasn’t on the farm yet, my family was. After each school day, I learned new skills, from operating a tractor to shearing fleece, while mothering children who intuitively raised chickens and wrangled goats far bigger than their tiny bodies. 

From Instagram photos and snapshot stories, the farm school project probably looked manageable, maybe even inspiring. But a quick peek from the outside never reveals a full story.

The farm brought crushing debt. Growing a school from scratch made for a bulky, unending, to-do list. My vision to bring the school to the farm ignited a lawsuit that deeply cracked my life open in ways that I never could have imagined. 

Slowly, painfully, it became clear that the school would not be on the farm. 

My heart broke a million times over for the farm school that would never happen. I struggled to accept that the graduation I had so clearly envisioned was nothing more than a sweet passing thought. 

With time, questions were answered, problems found solutions, and hard decisions were finalized. 

The farm was sold to actual farmers, and I began to sort through the pile of issues, in both the professional and personal parts of my life, that the farm had torn open and discarded like a bag of trash on the side of a congested highway. 

I continued to grow my little school in a modest office park. The students were learning and thriving through middle school, then moving on to find success in traditional high schools.

But I had one student who never seemed quite ready to jump into her next school, so she stayed… all the way through 12th grade. After a ton of hard work, she earned her high school diploma and we planned a lovely little graduation ceremony at a local auditorium. 

Then COVID cancelled her graduation plans, and I twisted my brain trying to come up with a place to hold an outdoor, pandemic style graduation. I lamented that I no longer had access to the giant, open space on the farm for moments like this. 

In a sudden flash of passing bravery, I sent a text message to the current owners of the farm. I explained the situation and shared an idea. 

They said yes. 

This past weekend, we celebrated Kerry Mealey’s success at the one and only high school graduation that The Accord School will ever hold. It wasn’t until I pulled onto the farm and was reviewing my remarks for the ceremony that I realized what was happening… Kerry’s was the graduation that flashed through my mind seven years earlier.

I brought myself back to the hot August day when I first stood on the field. 

Curiosity nudged me to flip back through my digital calendar and check the date- it was August 9, 2013, exactly seven years to the day before Kerry’s graduation on August 9, 2020. 

I gleefully laughed out loud, because somehow, things were exactly as they were supposed to be. Despite the challenges she had encountered in her time as a student, including the COVID shutdown, Kerry was getting her graduation- a moment that I was given a miraculous glimpse of exactly seven years earlier. 

As I let the realization wash over me, I couldn't help but feel that along with Kerry, I had also just completed an education: a seven-year-long struggle of work, growth, disappointment, change, and acceptance. 

The farm has turned out to be one of my most patient teachers. It has shown me who I really am, and what I am truly capable of. It’s reminded me to always stay in service to others, even when it feels impossibly difficult. It has gently encouraged me to let go, without guilt, of what no longer fits. 

Before heading over to set up for Kerry’s graduation, I paused in gratitude for the hard-learned lessons and invaluable gifts that the farm gave me. I looked across the sun-drenched field, and said a thankful, peaceful, final goodbye. 

Sometimes, our plans and visions go terribly sideways, and we write them off as failures. But what if that’s not the case? Maybe all of our stacked-up failures are actually invaluable lessons learned, slightly misinterpreted, but still overflowing with gifts of bravery, growth, and love.