Jill Barnett

17 J

Jill Barnett was born and raised in Southern California, in the kind of idyllic coastal town the Beach Boys made famous. But as a young girl she spent plenty of summers on her grandparents’ farm in Texas. Among her Southern family she was the lone native Californian. “My dad used to tease me and say I was the only prune picker in a family of cotton pickers.” A gap in jobs in her mid-thirties sent Jill back to college and working toward her Masters degree. “I intended to finish school and teach, perhaps write college textbooks that wouldn’t bore all the enjoyment of history out of the average nineteen year old.” But the gift of a baby daughter (something Jill had been told she could never have) changed everything. Soon she was juggling childcare and classes, motherhood, marriage and home, and found herself in the shoes of so many women, trying to be everything to everyone. “It was October and I took my daughter to a local pumpkin farm to pick a pumpkin. I stood there watching the absolute, pure delight on her two year-old face as she ran through the rows, finding each pumpkin more wonderful than the last. It was a seminal moment in my life. The ordinary world from your child’s eyes is a magical place. You see that joy in something you take for granted--if you notice at all--and suddenly you remember to stop and pay attention to life around you, to not pant through every day but pause to really take deep breaths. You find wonder all over again.” Four days later Jill quit school

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