The Rhythm of the Seasons
Nature moves in cycles—seasons of growth, harvest, rest, and renewal. Yet so many of us try to live as if we are machines, expected to produce and perform without pause. Over time, this leaves us depleted, disconnected, and longing for balance.
As a nurse practitioner and trauma-informed coach, I’ve seen how honoring our own natural cycles can bring healing. Just as autumn reminds us to let go, winter invites us to rest, spring awakens us to possibility and summer calls us into fullness — our lives also move through these phases. When we align with them instead of resisting, we create more clarity, energy and peace.
This is the intention behind the monthly Sister Circles I host in Bend. Each circle follows the rhythm of the seasons, offering women a sacred space to reflect, share, and reconnect with themselves and others.
In addition, I offer a monthly Nervous System First Aid class, where I teach practical tools for restoring calm and resilience in daily life.
As we welcome autumn, may we each find ways to honor the wisdom of the seasons and allow them to guide us toward greater balance and wholeness.
In our fast-paced, high-pressure world, burnout has become a quiet epidemic. Women in particular often carry the invisible weight of work, caregiving and community responsibilities —leaving little time to tend to their own well-being.
Willow Merchant
High Cost of calling someone a NIMBY
If you’ve spoken up at a city council meeting lately, you may have noticed something strange.
If you raise questions about fire safety, infrastructure or water supply, you’re not met with dialogue, your met with a label: “NIMBY.”
Not a neighbor. Not a taxpayer. Not a citizen. Just a “NIMBY.”
This label is more than lazy rhetoric. It’s a calculated attempt to discredit residents who dare to question the wisdom of Oregon’s high-density housing mandates. And it’s part of a larger strategy to make it politically toxic to care about your neighborhood.
The YIMBY movement, short for “Yes In My Back Yard” and now also known as WIMBY (Wall Street In My Backyard) likes to claim the moral high ground. They speak of equity & affordability while pushing policies that, in practice, produce thousands of market-rate rental units, in cities already grappling with overburdened infrastructure.
The promise is affordability. The result is investor-friendly projects that produce mostly rentals owned by Wall Street corporations or billionaire landlords, with the intention of supporting their vision of a renter society.
In comparison to apartments, few real homes for real families are being constructed, & even fewer that are affordable.
Meanwhile, local communities are left holding the bag. Let’s talk about that bag:
When hundreds of units are fast-tracked into a built-out city like Bend, someone has to pay for the expanded sewer systems, storm water drainage, road maintenance, increased fire protection, water reliability upgrades, & school capacity.
But under many of these “by-right” development policies, developers aren’t required to fund those upgrades proportionally, or at all. They walk away with their profits, while residents are left with the consequences.
Prudent inquiry isn’t opposition. It’s common sense. And calling it “NIMBYism” doesn’t make the problems go away.
Worse, these labels shut down nuanced discussion & vilify anyone who doesn’t subscribe to the state’s central government approach to planning. It’s a dangerous precedent: disagree with the orthodoxy, & you’re morally suspect.
The truth: Opposing poorly planning density is not immoral. Pretending we can pile people into high-cost rentals with no investment in schools, infrastructure or public services — that’s what’s immoral.
It’s time we stop letting name-calling drive public policy. Residents aren’t against housing. They’re against being steamrolled by policies that ignore ground truth realities.
A community’s ability to say, “This project doesn’t fit here, for these reasons,” is not obstruction, it’s stewardship.
Let’s not forget the irony: The very people calling for dense rental development in the name of affordability are often the same ones fighting to block single-family starter homes in other areas, because they don’t align with the ideology of “build up, not out.”
They’re not fighting for ownership opportunities or long-term affordability. They’re fighting for density as a virtue in & of itself.
But density isn’t a moral category. It’s a planning tool, & one that must be used thoughtfully, not ideologically.
Communities deserve a seat at the table when it comes to shaping their future. Local input is not the enemy of housing; it’s the key to getting housing right.
We can build more homes & protect the character, safety & integrity of the places people already call home. But we’ll never get there if we continue to demonize those who speak up.
Shelly Dowd
Support for Memorial
Dear Bend City Counselors,
My name is Jenni Peskin and from 2002-2012, I was the Executive Director for Human Dignity Coalition, a former local human rights organization. During that time, one of the actions I am most proud of my city for doing was unanimously passing the Equal Rights Ordinance. This was in 2004, and at the time, it was still legal in the state of Oregon to fire someone, not rent to someone or refuse services to someone based on the color of their skin or who they love. Bend was part of a patchwork of local governances that eventually changed the state law.
If you were around at that time, perhaps you remember the full-page ad the Catholic Diocese put in the Bend Bulletin against our ordinance. Or perhaps you remember the rumors that the opposition was going to fill City Hall with their hate. Perhaps you remember that Bend had to host the public meeting about the ordinance at The Tower because so many people, both for and against, were meant to show up and speak out.
We did have the meeting at The Tower with an overflow room at City Hall. And yes, there were some “fire and brimstone” speakers. But overwhelmingly, there were people who supported equality and fairness. There were soccer moms and faith leaders and doctors and teachers who all said that they wanted to live in a place where all people can go to work, rent a home and eat out without being discriminated against. It was an easy win that night — and a unanimous vote from the Bend City Council.
I understand that you are receiving letters from people who do not want a memorial for Barry Washington. I can only imagine the fear that lives in these peoples’ hearts that is being stoked by the current political climate. I know our town does better when everyone is lifted up. The memorial is one way to do this lifting. Let’s remember who we were back at The Tower in 2004- where love won out over fear and we could be proud of our little town of Bend.
Jenni Peskin
Letter of the Week:
Thank Jenni. As letter of the week, you can stop by our office for a gift card to Palate coffee.
This article appears in the Source September 18, 2025.
MAKE LOCAL JOURNALISM HAPPEN
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Shelly’s letter reads more like privileged classism more than a valid criticism of Bend’s development policies; it is both insensitive and uninformed. Instead of citing verifiable facts, the letter relies heavily on unsubstantiated claims, straw man arguments, and appeals to emotion… nearly every single paragraph contains one of those.
Most apartments are owned by Wall Street and billionaire landlords? Seriously? And even if so, who cares? Housing is housing, and mom and pop landlords can be just as greedy as some nebulous, shadowy Wall Street boogie man.
And Bend is building few REAL homes for REAL families? Are families that live in apartments not REAL families? Can they only become real if they buy a “real” multi-million-dollar single family home? Is this part of the“caring about your neighbors” you speak of?
Despite it’s attempts at proving otherwise, NIMBYism and “at least I got mine” is exactly what this letter represents.