11/05/2026
There is a kind of sunrise that only people who have spent the night with a sick animal will understand.
It's not the sort of sunrise you admire from a beach chair with a cup of coffee. It's the one you've been waiting for all night, bargaining with God and checking for signs of life, wondering whether you've done enough, whether you should have done something differently, and whether the little creature in your charge will still be breathing when the light comes.
After nearly thirty years of tending animals through illnesses, injuries, births, and deaths, you'd think Kim would have developed a little immunity to the heartbreak. Apparently, nobody told the tiny Silkie chick who recently stole her heart at Lavender Hill.
This week's Stable Roots begins with a chicken who wasn't supposed to matter quite so much and wanders through the peculiar territory of anticipatory grief, the holiness of dawn, and the rather inconvenient reality that loving an animal doesn't give us the power to save it.
There is also a small funeral beneath the oaks, a dearly departed chicken whisperer whose ghost may still be hanging around, and a nine-year-old who understands mortality better than most adults.
And somehow, all of this leads to fountain pens, expensive stationery, and the possibility that Kim might finally write the book she quit her real jobs to write nearly thirty years ago.
Because grief is a peculiar thing, and apparently one of its symptoms is an uncontrollable urge to purchase notebooks.ďż˝
I Didn't Expect to Fall in Love with a Chicken: How anticipatory grief forces me to purchase stationery.
Read or listen to this week's Stable Roots. Link below 👇�
(And for everyone who has ever spent a long night tending a sick animal, wondering whether morning would bring relief or heartbreak, this one's for you.)
