There's a particular kind of heartbreak I've come to know well. It's not the kind born of betrayal or personal loss. No, this one comes quietly—like a sob beneath the soil—and it stirs whenever I see another ancient tree torn down, another patch of earth flattened for someone's fleeting vision of "progress."
What aches me most isn't only that our sweet little sleepy town of Brooksville, Florida, is changing. It's that so many don't seem to care—or worse, that they pretend to care. Another notion that is maddening is that there are people, many of whom don't even live here, buying up land as though it were lifeless — as though the trees, the wildlife, and the memories tucked into every blade of grass were somehow expendable.
They tear through the woods like they're swiping crumbs off a table. They call it "development," but to those of us who feel it's devastation.
Our foxes are driven from their dens. The deer have nowhere left to wander. The owls who once called in the dusk now cry out to empty lots and hollow silence. I walk these lands and feel the echoes of what was — and I wonder how many more trees must fall before someone hears the forest scream.
And let's be honest — many of those voting for this change are not being led by vision but by money. There are those who accept payments to look the other way. Those who sign without a pause. Those who smile in public and scheme in private, and while intentions are hidden neatly in paperwork, they cannot hide from Spirit.
I do not seek to ruffle feathers, nor do I arrive with disdain in my heart—but let it be known: I see through the silken smiles and honeyed words of those who cloak self-interest in the guise of preservation. Some would wear the wool of the lamb whilst bearing the cunning eyes of the wolf, weaving tales of care for our historic sites whilst quietly tucking coins into their own back pockets or chasing the shimmer of local adoration. Yet I, with no need for vanity nor applause, shall go on—gracefully, intelligently, and without retreat—speaking truth wrapped in velvet, dressing fools with the lace of my tongue, and walking ever more boldly into the heart of this town. For I do not plan to go anywhere save to delve deeper into relevance and further into the legacy I came to tend.
A Protest of a Different Kind
I often ask myself: what can I do besides weep and remember?
And then I remember Elizabeth Robins.
A suffragette, a writer, an actress, and one of the fiercest women ever to wield a pen — Elizabeth protested not with shouting but with Spirit. She didn't march with fists raised. She wrote The Convert, a novel that carried the message of women's rights straight into the parlours of those who might've never given the issue a second glance. She changed minds not through aggression but by revealing the soul behind the cause.
She lit fires not with matches — but with words.
And I intend to do the same.
I will write. I will speak. I will show others what is being lost — not in terms of tax brackets or housing counts, but in butterflies and branches, in the hush of moss-laced mornings, in the sound of spring water that once ran clear.
Elizabeth once wrote, "It is the quiet work, the secret protest, the honest record, that lasts."
And I believe that.
Manifestation as a Sacred Rebellion
I am not waiting for permission. I am not asking for approval. I am manifesting from the end — and my end is this:
A land restored.
A town remembered.
A future shaped not by greed but by reverence.
When you claim something in Spirit, the outer world must rearrange to reflect it. I know this. I've lived it, and so I walk forward, knowing that even if I stand alone, I do not stand powerless.
Those who destroy for profit may think themselves victorious now. But the law of the harvest is older than politics.
You reap what you sow.
And not every seed sown with a smile is one that will grow.
That's the moral behind my book, The Tale of Merrymaid Scarlette Rose — a story for children and grown-ups alike about what happens when you reap what you sow.
To Those Who Feel the Ache, Still
If you read this and your chest tightens with recognition — if your eyes sting when you see the land cleared and the trees lying like corpses — know that you're not imagining it. That's real grief, spiritual grief. That's what happens when the soul recognises a place meant to protect being slowly, systematically unmade.
But we were not made fragile.
We are made for this.
To remember what others forget, restore what others disregard, and to bear witness.
To speak with conviction — and to do so with charm, with heritage, with truth draped in grace.
And when they ask, "But what can one voice do?"
I shall answer:
"More than you know. More than you dare to believe."
Because we are the ones who walk in the footsteps of Robin's.
We are the ones who turn heartbreak into heritage, and we are the ones who plant acorns for futures we may never see — and we do it anyway.
Most affably yours til' my next swim, R
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