Jill Underly

For the past few years, I’ve been intentional about seeking more peace in my life. Peace doesn’t come easily in a noisy world, but I’ve always known where to look for it: in nature. Walking, listening to birds, watching trees sway in the wind, noticing flowers and grasses, breathing deeply of the morning air—all of this centers me. And no day captures this rhythm of peace more than Sunday. I rise at 5:00 a.m., just as I do during the week. The coffee maker is always set the night before. Even though no one else in the house will be up for hours, I look forward to this quiet time. I feed the dog. If the sky has begun to lighten, I let out the chickens. Then I take my coffee to the back deck, wrapping myself in a blanket against the cool morning air. My deck faces west, so I don’t see the sunrise, but I see the stars still scattered across the sky, and the moon slowly fading. I listen to the birds, to the wind, to the gentle quiet of the world waking up. My Labrador sits beside me—my se...

The Last Five Years The last five years have been difficult for me. COVID was part of it, but not the whole story. I know I’m not alone in saying those years were heavy—most of us were carrying grief, uncertainty, and change in ways we never expected. This is just my story, my piece of what those years held. The top photo of me—the one at the very start—is who I am today, and yes, I look different than I did five years ago. But the weight I carry isn’t only physical. The other night, I was on the phone with my mom, talking about how the past five years have been some of the most emotionally challenging of my life. After that call, I scrolled through my friends list to remember some of those I had lost—and I stopped cold. Since 2020, fifteen of my friends have died. Fifteen. Their names and faces came rushing back, and I realized just how much these years have been filled with loss, change, and survival. The second photo—the one just below—was taken the month before COVID shut everythin...

This is my favorite week of the year—the last seven days before the autumnal equinox, or, if you like, the final week of summer. After 44 years in schools, it has become a familiar rhythm: the first “normal” week of the school year, when the classrooms settle into their hum, the routines click into place, and there is a quiet, steady pulse to the days. I walk in the soft light of morning, I bake and fill the house with warmth, I carve out moments for self-care, and I care for others. There is a gentle fullness to these days, a sense of being present in small, deliberate acts. And this week carries birthdays of some of my favorite people: my youngest brother, my high school best friend, a college friend with whom I share countless memories, and my adult bestie and travel companion whom I only met 10 years ago. Each of them occupies a season of my life, and their presence lifts me through the week like sunlight through leaves. But this week carries its ache too. It is my grandfather’s bi...

January 2018 I have this room above our garage. It's connected to my "office" in our home. The room is not insulated, although the door that connects and separates our rooms is a sturdy steel door. The temperature of my study rises and falls with the seasons, and after a couple of years of this, we decided that insulating the garage attic was a top priority. As a result, I’ve been cleaning out the room. It has to be cleared before the insulation is blown in. Since Christmas, I’ve been pulling in a box every night and going through it. Many of these boxes haven’t been touched since I moved from college to my first apartment in Indianapolis, or my second in Frankfort. Others hold college memories — lovely reminders of friends, roommates, classes, and wistful notes from a beloved ex. I get lost in them for hours. A historian by craft, I am grateful that I didn’t throw anything out then, and undoubtedly, I probably never will. I have boxes of baby clothes that bring back m...