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People sometimes ask me how I became so tough.

The truth is, I didn’t become tough in one big life-changing moment.

The beginning of tough came in a barn.

I have made the comment as an adult, that, “You can’t scare me, I worked cattle with my dad.”

I became tough in the early mornings, the late nights, and the ordinary days of growing up on a farm where work wasn’t something you chose, it was simply part of who you were.

As a girl, my days often started before most people were even awake.

I bottle-fed lambs and calves that had lost their mothers or needed extra care.
I gathered eggs from under stubborn hens who acted like every nest belonged to them personally.
I fed hogs that could hear a feed bucket from half a county away.
I helped care for rabbits and ducks and turkeys and guineas that depended on us every single day.

There was always something that needed doing.

Always.

My brother milked the cow in the evening, and I would separate the cream from the milk afterward, standing there listening to that old separator hum, as I cranked the handle all the while learning that even the smallest jobs mattered.

Nothing on a farm was unimportant.

Every chore mattered.
Every animal mattered.
Every hand mattered.

Sometimes the hard parts came without warning.

If feral dogs got into the flock, we doctored wounded sheep with that purple medicine that stained everything it touched; our hands, their wool, our clothes, as if the farm itself wanted to leave its mark on us.

And when frightened sheep crashed through a fence and ran toward the highway, there was no time to panic. We ran after them, hearts pounding, trying to get them turned around before fear carried them somewhere they couldn’t come back from. And then fixing the fence with a scrap of old baling wire and a quiet prayer.

Even the cattle taught me something.

I can still remember standing near the chute, waving my hands at a stubborn Hereford bull, my dad yelling to stand my ground, trying to convince him to move where he needed to go. It was strange learning as a child that something so much bigger than you could sometimes be guided by nothing more than false confidence and a little nerve.

Looking back now, I realize the farm taught me something even deeper.

It taught me how to work through my fear and find courage.

Not because I wasn’t scared. I often was. You can ask my brother and sisters. I was literally afraid of everything farm. But that wasn’t an excuse. The work still had to get done.

But country life has a way of teaching you that fear can sit right beside you while you do what needs to be done anyway.

And then there were the moments that softened all the hard edges.

Those moments stayed with me just as much as anything.

One of the memories that stays with me most happened during lambing season.

My dad was working in the mines.
My mom was in the hospital.
And that left my brother and me at home with the sheep.

Sometimes in the middle of the night a ewe would be struggling, and there was nobody else there.

So, my brother and I learned how to pull lambs ourselves.

Two kids.
Half asleep.
Cold.
Worried.
Doing a job some grown adults would hesitate to do.

And then suddenly, after all that fear and effort, a lamb would slide into the world, and for a moment everything stood still while that tiny body took its first breath.

Seeing that little cloud of steam rise from a newborn in the cold night air felt like witnessing something holy.

Back then I didn’t have words for it.

I just knew it felt like a miracle.

Or seeing a baby Hereford calf kick up its heels and run through fresh snow, all awkward legs and red-and-white sweetness, as if winter itself had suddenly turned playful.

That’s the thing about growing up that way.
You don’t realize while you’re living it that it’s shaping you.

You think you’re just feeding animals.
Just gathering eggs.
Just helping your family.
Just getting through one more day.

But all those ordinary moments quietly build something inside you.

They build grit.
They build responsibility.
They build resilience.
They build a kind of strength that doesn’t need to announce itself.

It simply becomes part of who you are.

Because sometimes toughness isn’t loud.

Sometimes it looks like a little girl holding a bottle for a lamb.
Sometimes it looks like purple medicine all over your hands.
Sometimes it looks like waving down a bull with a racing heart.
Sometimes it looks like two kids in a barn at midnight doing what had to be done because no one else could.

And most times, that kind of life leaves you stronger than you ever realized.

Donetta’s Takeaway

Sometimes the strength people see in us today was born in chores nobody else noticed; in responsibilities we were too young to carry, and in the moments that taught us fear and courage can live in the same heart.