Welcome to Platteville

I stared at the blank page for a while before being able to put these words on a page. This piece was harder for me to write than others have been. There is something about putting words on paper that make it seem more real. There is something about anticipating the response of others that makes me hesitate. And that something? It’s fear. It’s fear of defeat. It’s fear of vulnerability. It’s fear that when I put these words on paper, things cannot or will not change. However, when I really stop to think about it, I do not want things to change.

You see, I never wanted to live in a small town. Up until 5.5 years ago, I had lived in big cities. I grew up in Waukesha and then went to school in Eau Claire. Both of those cities are beautiful and have so much to offer. There are shops, bookstores, coffee shops, recreation, coffee shops, bookstores, food options, and did I mention coffee shops and bookstores? All my favorite things were easily accessible.

My junior year of college I met my now husband and he lived in a small town called Platteville. I had never heard of it.  When we started dating and then again when we started talking about marriage, I said I would never move to Platteville. I told him I did not want to move to a small town. Well, here we are, 5 years into marriage and I have lived in Platteville for 5.5 years.

The first 4 years of living in Platteville were hard for me. I did not have a community (or so I thought). I did not have places I felt comfortable. When college friends would ask me about my community, I would tell them that I did not feel like I had one and I that I often felt alone. There is only one coffee shop. Just one; that was a hard thing for me to get use to. Shopping options are limited (even though I do not like shopping, this felt like a big deal). Everybody knows everybody and that drove me insane. I just wanted to be able to go to the grocery store and not run into 4 other people I knew.

Then we had Bren. That changed my entire view of our community. We did have friends. We did have people that cared. We had (and still have) a church that loved us. In the middle of our trauma, we had people surround us. In the middle of our crisis, people stepped up and asked what needed to be done around our house so we could focus on being at the hospital. They constantly brought us food and coffee. Family started a GoFundMe Page and the donations that came in blew us away. We didn’t have to worry about any of Bren’s medical bills. Our sense of community changed during those three weeks in the NICU and we came home feeling so surrounded in love from our Platteville community (and our families too).

Around 2 months after we got home and things were just not panning out how we thought they were going to, we considered moving. We considered moving to a bigger city where Bren could receive more intensive therapies and where I would not feel so suffocated. We considered moving for about 5 minutes. Then we decided there was no way we were going to be moving. Bren’s medical team and therapists in Lancaster were too near and dear to us by that point and we could not imagine getting that kind of care in a big city.  They all truly cared about our son and us. We clearly were not (and still are not) just a patient number. The friendships we have formed are unbelievable and we cannot imagine leaving them. I am not lying when I say the most unlikely friendships have formed out of Bren’s brain injury and I have loved watching every moment of those friendships change and grow.

We never planned on staying Platteville long term but now we cannot imagine leaving. This big city girl has been defeated in the best possible way. It is no longer hard for me to call Platteville my home. Now when friends outside of Platteville ask about my community of friends, I get to tell them with a smile on face how great the people around us really are.