Alice Vol. 4 No. 2

teenage sons, Carson and Marshall, and uncertainty about
what the future might hold began to sink in, Espy-Brown
said that her husband steadily reminded her, “You can do
this.”
Warren Brown passed away a year and a half later,
but she held tightly to his encouragement and took on
her new role as a single mother. In the face of terminal
illness, she said Warren declared that his time was not to
be considered “a life cut short, but rather a life completed.”
Raising two teenage boys without a father figure
present meant that Espy-Brown had to begin adjusting
her approach to motherhood. That same year, her sons’
grandmother and close friend also passed away. Seeing the
significant need for flexibility, she took a teaching position
with The University of Alabama’s New College that would
allow it. She said the move landed her the job of her
dreams, combining her loves for geology and teaching. It
was a fresh start.
Inspired by her sons’ passion for outdoor
sportsmanship, a hobby of theirs that had previously left
her uneasy, she began the search for a piece of property
to foster healing and a new sense of family. Espy-Brown
said she never wanted her sons to feel like they had been
cheated out of life experiences because they no longer had
a father. She soon realized that being a parent, and not just
a mother, required her to loosen her white-knuckle grip
on security and allow herself and her sons to do things that
scared her.
New Beginnings
On Christmas morning of 2013, Espy-Brown woke
her sons to tell them that she had bought 130 acres of land
in her own name. The trio drove out to the property to see
the location of their new beginnings, and it was then that
Espy-Brown began scheming the plans that would soon
turn into blueprints for her tiny refuge. She said signing
the deed without her husband’s signature to accompany it
was equally surreal and empowering.
“You have to be so, so intentional about rebuilding in
a way that honors and leaves room for the person who is
gone but also respects the need to carry on,” Espy-Brown
said. “ I never, ever say ‘move on’ because we don’t do that;
but we are obliged to ‘carry on,’ and I wanted to do that
with joy and purpose.”
Alice Spring 2019 57