Dee Williams

“Change what you can, darlin'. That's my best advice.”

“Books had rescued me when i most needed saving... Books were smarter than me and words inspired me... to try something new, charge forward without a clear understanding of what would happen next, because "given something like death, what does it matter if one looks foolish now and then, or tries too hard, or cares too deeply?"In the end, Thoreau, Whitman, Hafiz, and a dozen other writers put me up to the task of seeing if I dared to "live a life worth living.”

“I felt like a champion because I was figuring shit out. I was a doer and a getter-doner, and it was okay to be identified by the neighbors as the little lady who had a dump truck of manure delivered, a load that made the entire neighborhood smell like a dairy barn for weeks.”

“My friends stood on the ground two feet below me, and miles away from understanding why I would want to sleep on a trailer platform... I couldn't possibly begin to explain what was only beginning to bud inside me: I wanted a home. I wanted to be at home, in the world and in my body (a feeling I had been missing since I'd woken up in the hospital) and somehow, in some as yet undefined way, I knew that windows in the great room and a skylight over my bed were going to help with that.”

“Being an entrepreneur is a mental job...It takes patients! YOU are doing more motivation to yourself than anyone on this planet.”

“I thought: This is what the living do. And I swooned at the ordinary nature of the task and myself, at my chapped hands and square palms, at the way my wrists bent and fingers flexed inside this living body.”

“I went to Guatemala to help build a school but left wondering what "help" would really look like... I hadn't prepared myself for how humbled I'd feel, or how hard it would be to find my footing when witnessing a cycle of poverty that seemed to defy any sort of help.”

“We were taught not to offer or invite aid, because, like it or not, helping is a messy, confused proposition; sometimes you get it right and sometimes you get it wrong, and sometimes you have no choice but to trust that the man holding your tire iron, cussing at your old lug nuts, is a deeply kind human after all.”

“Perhaps the current state of my health should have raised a bright red caution flag, but instead it fired me up. I wanted to do what I wanted. I didn't care if hefting plywood and climbing ladders weren't on my doctor's recommended list of activities, or if I was foolhardy to think I could lift a fifty-pound roll of tar paper into and then out of my car. I was going to do it because it sounded like a blast, like the best possible way to have fun.”

“If more people understood how nice it is to have a sense of home that extends past our locked doors, past our neighbors' padlocks, to the local food co-op and library, the sidewalks busted up by old trees - if we all held home with longer arms - we'd live in a very different place...We wouldn't feel so alone, no matter the size of our houses or our bank accounts, no matter whether we had good health or congestive heart failure. We would begin to see that each moment presents an opportunity to relax, to notice that the wind has shifted and a storm is coming, or that our friend's toddler has decided to wear dinner instead of eating it. We would see that each minute counts for something timeless and, if we want, we all can find our way inside these big, tiny, moments.”

“I've never been good with asking for help; it seems risky, but at some point when things are really dicey, your stubbornness gives way to a certain form of humility that, after you get over yourself, feels liberating. I started to believe that the universe was conspiring to help me finish my house, sending people along at the right moment.”

“The space reminded me of the small hay-bale clubhouses and scrap-wood tree forts that my brothers and I had made as kids - high up spaces where you could see things differently, where you could get your bearings.”

“I had no idea that "letting go" would be so complicated; that it would sometimes feel liberating and other times more sorrowful and lonely. In the long run, most of it was like standing on the shore, watching your family set sail for America, and they're smiling and waving good-bye, and getting smaller and smaller, but you are still the same size with no one to talk to.”

“Ultimately, I hoped the tiny-house guy was similar to me: a sane person without a big agenda, who simply wanted a way to make sense of the world, to create a new map with a big X in the middle labeled "Home," even if that meant shrinking his world down to the size of an area rug.”

“It was true; books had saved me in my home remodeling projects, but they fell short in teaching me how to trust my instincts, and how to stop thinking with my educated brain and more with my kneecaps and butt cheeks.”

“I never saw this coming - the little house was working its magic, connecting me to people and materials I never would have guessed would find their way into the picture.”

“The library made me feel safe, as if every question had an answer and there was nothing to be afraid of, as long as I could sort through another volume.”

“Sometimes the word 'gratitude' feels too thin to explain things.”

“Over time, I realized I wasn't necessarily seeing people or things at their best or worst; instead, I was simply seeing things as they were.There didn't seem to be a moral high road to take in most situations, and "What's the right thing to do?" wasn't an easy question.”

“Maybe is wasn't love so much as a fear of losing everything I'd accomplished. I was afraid to let go.”