When the Budget Tightens: I remember those that came before me.

The winds of change have arrived this March, along with summer temperatures.

Out here in Colorado, we know something about change. From the weather to the headlines, it seems everything is changing and probably is where you live, too.

A clear morning can turn into a towering thunderstorm by afternoon. The sky darkens without much warning, and the wind carries something you didn’t quite expect. A spark in the afternoon can burn a thousand homes by midnight.

Lately, the landscape of our lives has felt a little like that—budgets tightening, costs rising, policies shifting in ways that are hard to predict.

For us, as families, supporting someone with a disability in our home or in their home, those changes don’t stay in the headlines.

They arrive at our kitchen table as we sip our morning coffee. We see it in our news feed, in a text from a friend, or on the morning news.

Last year, I lived in a kind of quiet vigilance. I watched every policy update, read every article, and tried to anticipate what might come next. It came from love. It came from responsibility.

But it also came at a cost.

There is a weariness that settles in when you live that way too long—like standing outside in a storm, waiting for the next gust of wind.

This year, I am choosing something different.

I am still paying attention. I always do.

But I am also remembering something deeper. I have been here before, and most likely, you have been here, too.

When I think about uncertain times, I don’t start with policy.

My mind often wanders to a small mountain two-story “cabin” in Breckenridge, Colorado, long before the ski town took root.

The old house was already a hundred years old when I knew it. Rough-hewn logs sealed with plaster. A potbelly stove in the corner that held the whole place together in winter. Coal would be delivered and slide into a shed outside, not far from the outhouse—there just in case the plumbing decided not to cooperate.

Inside, there were small gestures toward modern life—knotty pine on the downstairs walls, an electric water heater, and an oven. But the real heart of the home was the coal stove, where breakfast was always made.

Upstairs, the floors were uneven and worn, nailed down with handmade nails. The windows rippled the light, softening the edges of the world. The wallpaper breathed with the wind, insulated with a hundred-year-old newspaper.

My two sisters and I slept under down comforters on iron beds, and in the morning, no one moved until my dad went downstairs to light the fire.

One by one, we would follow down the steep stairs with no handrails.

The smell of coffee greeted us. The sound of ironstone mugs clinking as our grandparents and parents poured their very strong, hot coffee. My grandpa used to say you should be able to stand a spoon up in your coffee if it was strong enough.

As girls, we preferred orange juice to hot cocoa. It was the quiet, comfortable rhythmic start to the day.

Simple things.

But they were enough.

That cabin held more than warmth.

It held stories.

Stories from people who had lived in tent homes. Who had driven mule teams over Independence Pass, hauling silver ore from Leadville to Aspen and the railroad. Stories of the Scots who built a lumber business in Montana—hard work that shaped a life, and loss that shaped it even more. One brother gone too soon from dehydration and sunstroke. Another carrying on, eventually making his way to Denver.

There were stories of my Swedish grandmother’s family on the Nebraska plains, living first in a sod house, coaxing a life out of stubborn land.

And the Irish side—honored this time of year as St. Patrick’s Day comes around—who crossed an ocean with next to nothing, only to find themselves in the coal mines of Pennsylvania. Dangerous work. Violent labor disputes. Lives shaped by the rise of great wealth and the exploitation that came with it.

Rockefeller.
Morgan.
Carnegie.

Names written into history.

But it was the workers who carried the weight of that time, dark, dirty, and completely unforgiving.

Eventually, like so many others, my family moved west in a covered wagon—seeking something steadier, something safer, a place where the sky was blue, and the air was clean.  Somewhere that might allow a life to take root.

There was hardship in those stories.

Children lost to influenza. A brother lost to the cold, slipping into a snowbank and never coming home.
Wars that took young men away—some who returned, and some who did not.

World War I.
The Great Depression.
World War II.

The kind of history that doesn’t just pass through a family—it settles into it. The everyday part of life becomes part of their legacy and our DNA. And still…

They did not give up. They had very little and made a lot out of it. They depended on each other. They planted victory gardens.
They lived season by season, trusting that something would grow.

And what has always stayed with me is this:

Some of them didn’t just endure.

They grew.

They held onto a kind of curiosity about life—something open and unguarded—that stayed with them well into their 90s… even their 100s.

Those are the people I have always looked to when I felt lost.

And without fully realizing it at the time, they shaped the way I moved through my own life.

There was a time when the school systems did not quite know what to do with Mikelle. When inclusion was not something you could take for granted. When we had to push, and advocate, and build something that didn’t yet exist in the 1980’s.

Looking back now, I can see it clearly.

That same spirit was there.

The same quiet determination.
The same belief that a better life could be built—even if the road ahead wasn’t clear.

Today, the challenges look different. Budgets are tightening. Costs are rising. Systems feel uncertain in ways that are hard to navigate. But when I think about that cabin… When I remember those stories… I come back to something simple.

But systems have always shifted.

What has sustained people—generation after generation—is something else.

People showing up for one another if the car wouldn’t start or hail rained down, and the laundry was still on the clothesline.
Families building lives together. Successes celebrated, failures mourned.

Circles of support forming quietly, steadily, over time.

That is what held back then.

That is what holds now.

The people who came before us were not just surviving their moment. They were setting a trail. Every home they built.
Every mile they crossed.Every season they endured made life more possible for those who followed. And whether we realize it or not…

We are doing the same thing as our parents and grandparents, and those who adventured to a new land. Every time we build a community around the person we love. Every time we advocate for inclusion for students with disabilities and our adult family members. Every time we choose courage over fear and the tears—

We are leaving something behind.

Not just systems.

But examples.

Examples of tenacity.
Examples of love.
Examples of what it looks like to believe in a life fully lived.

Out here in the Rockies, the old wagon roads have mostly disappeared.

Snow covers them in winter. Grass grows back in summer.

But if you look closely along the mountainside, you can still see faint lines where the wheels once passed. Someone made that trail long ago.

Today, in our own way, we are doing the same.

And sometimes I think…

It started in places like that cabin.

A fire lit before anyone else woke.
Coffee brewing–Mikelle starts that every day.
Stories carried forward in the morning light as her team gathers.

Simple things.