The most important question you'll ever ask yourself

It helped me overcome my guilt for being harassed

“What’s on your wish list?”

That’s the question real estate agents always ask on those house hunting shows on TV. Their wish list refers to square footage, the number of bed- and bathrooms, stainless steel appliances, and real hardwood floors. But it’s a question that’s important to ask yourself in regard to your life: what are the values, things, and people on your wish list?

I asked myself that question four years ago. I was sitting in my room at the staff house I stayed at from Friday-Monday every two weeks, taking stock of my life. There were parts I loved—my marriage, my dogs, my profession, the town I lived in, my hobbies. But there were also a lot of things that were wrong with it. I couldn’t get a handle on my depression and PMDD, I started having serious anxiety issues, and worst of all: I had a dark, shameful secret.

The previous four years had simultaneously been the best and worst of my life. We had become debt-and mortgage-free after selling our house, and we moved to a small town filled with ranchers and cowboys. The valley we chose to settle down in was a ranching community, and Rich, now retired, was excited to do what he’d always wanted to do: breed horses, buy some cows, grow a big garden filled with flowers and vegetables. All I wanted to do was write books, work at the local hospital, and take my dogs for long walks in the beautiful countryside we both loved so much.

But within months, our dream turned into a nightmare. While the area we had moved to was ranchland, our immediate neighbourhood prided itself on being different. They had a vision: manicured lawns, two or three pretty horses grazing in front of their houses, uniform fences, the right amount of vehicles parked in the driveway. Everything neat, tidy, and just so.

We didn’t fit.

At first, there were phone calls. Emails. Social media posts.
Then phone calls in the middle of the night. Meetings about us. We were told that one neighbour allegedly said this about Rich while he was seriously ill with Lyme disease: “He’s already sick, if we increase the pressure, maybe he’ll have a heart attack and die”.

Then they started calling the SPCA. They tried to provoke our dogs to run off our property, with someone waiting to cart them off to a local shelter. Letters started to arrive, filled with threats and cease and desist demands. When nothing worked, they threatened to shut off our water, stating we weren’t allowed to use it for “agricultural purposes”. All we wanted to do was water our animals and ourselves.

This went on for years. It would be quiet for a few months, and then it would start again.

I became a nervous wreck. I started having breathing problems, wheezing and puffing like I had emphysema. Stress causes me to have fluid-filled, painful blisters in the sacral area of my lower back, and I had them all the time. I would scratch them open at night and wake up with blood on my sheets. I jumped every time the phone rang, worried it was one of them, so I stopped answering it. Getting the mail made me break out in a cold sweat. I didn’t want to go outside because several houses had a clear view at our place, and I felt watched all the time. When Rich was gone, I was scared senseless, covinced they would come to my door and start harassing me in person.
I was also afraid that they would harm the dogs. One of our neighbours lost a dog several years before we arrived, and she was convinced that it had been poisoned by one of them. Was it true? I don’t know. But it certainly seemed possible.

Our marriage suffered.
I stopped writing.
I didn’t know what to do.

I needed to escape, to numb, to drown out my reality, so I did what millions of people have done before me: I started drinking heavily.

Not feeling safe in your own home is almost unbearable. If you don’t feel safe at home, you don’t feel safe anywhere. I started to believe that everybody hated us. I thought I was a terrible, despicable person who must deserve to be treated that way. Unresolved childhood trauma only enforced this belief.

As women, we are taught to blame ourselves for being harassed. What did you wear? How did you behave? What were you doing outside after dark?
In my family we were all blamed for my mother’s erratic moods, her rage and her despair. It was second nature to me to automatically assume guilt. They don’t like me? It must be because I’m unlikable.

After a year-and-a-half, I took a job away from home for a year, working two weeks out of every month in another town where nobody knew me. I couldn’t take the pressure anymore.
There was another reason why I took the job: Being on call, I wouldn’t be able to drink a week at a time, and I needed to prove to myself that I could do that. My drinking had started to scare me, because it wasn’t me. I had never drank like that before, and I didn’t recognize the person I was becoming.

One of the biggest obstacles to healing is denial. During those years I was swinging wildly between trying to convince myself that everything was fine, blaming my husband, and defiantly declaring that I didn’t care. I told myself that my drinking was under control, that being universally liked was impossible, and that assholes will be assholes. I told myself that I had a great life, that I was happy, that everything was a-okay.
My body knew otherwise though. My breathing problems wouldn’t go away, and I underwent every test under the sun: x-rays, CT scans, a camera shoved down my nose into my trachea, breathing tests. Results? Inconclusive. Physically, nothing was wrong with me. My sacral blisters kept bleeding and hurting, my depression kept coming, my rage kept our marriage in turmoil, I kept drinking. Anxiety had joined the chat, giving me vivid images of my husband dying, making me terrified of being left alone.
I was in crisis.

One day, I sat down and wrote myself a list.

What’s on my wish list?

Safety
Privacy
Quit drinking
Stop being scared
Get help
Deal with my issues
Become unapologetically myself

I stared at it. Most items seemed impossible to achieve. There was no privacy here. How could I feel safe? And if I didn’t feel safe, how could I stop being scared?
One step at a time, I told myself. I could ask for help to deal with my issues.

In 2020, I went to therapy for the first time in my life. I used the pandemic as an excuse, because I was too deeply entrenched in self-denial to come right out with the real reason.
The first therapist was fine, but not the greatest fit. We parted ways after a few sessions, and I was discouraged. See? I told you it wouldn’t work, the self-destrutive part of me said gleefully. Have another drink instead, it will make you feel better.

It took several months before I defied that part of me and gathered enough courage to try again. And oh, how glad I am that I did!
It was the beginning of my healing journey.

I started seeing my current therapist in 2021. By the end of the year, after several failed attempts, I quit drinking for good.
I still had my wish list, with several items ticked off now:

Quit drinking ✔️
Get help ✔️
Deal with my issues ✔️
Safety
Privacy
Stop being scared
Become unapologetically myself

In 2022, we finalized the sale of Rich’s estate in Germany and started looking to invest in real estate here in Canada. We found a piece of land not far from us that we bought, not having any plans for it beyond letting our cows graze there.

I kept thinking of my wish list. This piece of land was extremely private. It was peaceful. I could breathe there.
But it didn’t have power, water, or a road leading to it. There was nothing on it but trees and grass. It would take months, if not years, to make it habitable. Rich was 68. Did we have the time? Did we have the money? Was this crazy?

Here’s the neat thing about making lists. Once you start working on one item, you get momentum. When you achieve that first goal you get a thrill of accomplishment, and it becomes easier to start the next.
Since privacy and safety were our utmost priorities, we decided to give it a shot.

Now, almost three years later, we are weeks away from making it a reality.

The last few years have been filled with hard lessons. They have also been filled with beautiful experiences, new friendships, and cherished memories. It’s been equally hard and rewarding, difficult and fulfilling. I have come to realize that I will never be fearless, but I know that I can do difficult things while being scared. Discovering that about myself is an invaluable gift.

I never talked about the harassment in detail, because I was so ashamed. But as Gisèle Pelicot has taught the world: shame must switch sides.

Were we completely blameless? Of course not. Despite the public’s desire to see cases of assault or harassment as black and white, the reality is always many shades of grey.
But the punishment didn’t fit the crime. While we did go over the water limit some months (and then making up for it by staying under it, using less water per year than allowed), the only “crime” we committed was not fitting into the neighbourhood.

What I found out after years of being worried that everybody hated us was eye-opening: it was one couple. They managed to get a second couple involved before they moved away. So it was back to one couple again. In the summer of 2022, being fed up with yet another threat to turn off our water during a heat wave, I posted an open letter detailing some of the harassment. It stopped after that.

Becoming clear about what you want is the most important step towards a fulfilled life. How can you live your best life if you don’t even know what that looks like?

Write yourself a wish list for your own life—and then start working towards it. No matter how long it takes, I can promise you one thing: it will be worth it.