Bubbly Water and City Life: Exploring What You Never Thought You'd Want

What if the thing you’ve sworn off is the door you need to walk through next? That’s the spark behind a candid reflection on moving from quiet country life to a small city with more diversity, more community, and more ways to serve. I share how an unexpected love of bubbly water on a trip to Germany softened a lifelong certainty, and how that tiny shift opened space for a much bigger one: choosing a place that aligns with my values and offers real opportunities to volunteer, connect, and contribute.

We dig into practical courage—how to test change with reversible decisions, why trade‑offs are built into every choice, and how fear shrinks when you run small experiments. From master gardener projects to neighborhood ties, I map how service becomes easier where paths cross and needs are visible. Along the way, I challenge a common habit: dismissing what we’ve never tried. Whether it’s mushrooms on a menu or a new ZIP code, direct experience beats assumptions, and curiosity becomes a reliable compass.

You’ll hear honest talk about what’s shifting across the United States, how clarity emerges when old issues are brought into the light, and why purpose thrives when we choose environments that match our intentions. If you’re feeling stuck, this is a gentle, grounded nudge to prototype your next chapter, one small test at a time. And if plant wisdom and resilient living speak to you, I’m inviting listeners to join my book launch team for Nature Knows: Growing and Thriving Through the Wisdom of Plants—early reads, cover votes, and a chance to help ideas take root.

If this resonates, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs a push toward possibility, and leave a quick review so more curious listeners can find us. Your next experiment might change more than your mind.

Chapters

• 0:00 From Rural Roots To City Plans
• 0:52 The Carbonated Water Conversion
• 2:27 Why A City Feels Right Now
• 3:16 Openness, Trade‑Offs, And Trying Things
• 5:55 Join The Book Launch Team

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Hi, and welcome to a mini-episode of No Shrinking Violets. I live in the country. I mean, it's pretty rural, and I have always been a country girl. I never lived in a city. I love visiting New York City. And my husband is from an area outside of Cincinnati, so we've spent a lot of time in Cincinnati, Ohio. But recently we decided that we're going to move to a city that is about an hour away. And it is not huge compared to Cincinnati, and especially compared to New York City. But it is a city that is in the county where I grew up. And I had never thought that I would live in a city. And I think it's interesting. It brings up a lot of kind of ponderings for me because it's not something I would have ever considered. But I think sometimes in life things conspire to create a situation or conditions where you do something that you never thought you would do. I'm going to give you a really silly example first. And my husband loves carbonated water. We call it bubbly water. And I've always hated it. I could never understand why he wanted to drink it. Well, if you travel at all, you know that a lot of places in Europe, carbonated water or water with gas is very common. And as an American, they will bring you water, but Americans are used to drinking usually ice cold stuff, you know. So you have to adjust a little bit because often there isn't ice, or you have to drink water that has bubbles in it. Well, we recently went to Germany and I decided to just go with it. And I started to want to have the carbonated water instead of flat water. And I ended up loving it. Now we have one of those little things that carbonates your water. And it's one of the times in life where I was, I'm just like, how did I end up here? Because it was something that I just couldn't stand. And now I'm obsessed with it. So that is a small and silly example. I think that our choice to move into a city, it's a much bigger example. And I think what is conspired in this situation is there are things changing pretty rapidly in the United States. And I think some of the things, and I'm not going to get political, but I think if I'm being a little philosophical, a lot of what is happening is basically just taking the cover off of some things that have always been here. And it's just putting them in the glaring spotlight. But there are some things that are really troubling and concerns that I have about other people that maybe aren't now able to get things that they need to live or to live well, or they they're needing to live in a different kind of situation. So I think that is a situation that has partially led to our wanting to go to a city where there is a lot more diversity, a lot more opportunity, because I would love to get involved in volunteer work again. I used to do master gardener work, and when I moved away from the county where I was trained, I just didn't um get involved in that county. But I think there are so many opportunities. And I think if we can keep our mind open to things, we find that there are things that we'd we would have never imagined doing. But if we let them be possibilities, then it can really change the direction that your life is going, or it can enrich your life. And it could be something as simple as deciding you're gonna drink a different kind of water to actually fully changing what you want to experience in your everyday life. And I think too, sometimes we get so worried about making a decision, or we have a sense that we want to make a change, but we let fear stop us. And sometimes it's simple fear, or sometimes it's just stuckness. But there are so many decisions that if you try it, it doesn't mean that it's forever you can change your mind. And not that it would be easy for us to buy a house in the city and sell it again, but I think it's just something where it's a beautiful, lovely city. There are so many things to experience. And I think allowing the concerns, because you're never gonna have 100% of what you want. It's not possible. Not in a job, not in a relationship, not in living conditions. There's always a trade-off, even if it's something small. There's something where you, I guess I shouldn't say never, but I've never heard of someone having 100% of what they want. Unless it's for just a moment. I believe we have perfect moments of joy. But I think allowing things to be possible, just pondering them and seeing how you feel about them can really open up and enrich your life. So if there's something that you've been thinking about, or maybe there's something in your life that you say, um, I would never do that, maybe let it be a possibility. And actually, that made me think about something that one of my dear friends said uh a couple weeks ago. We were having lunch together. There are three of us that I worked with them decades ago, and we still get together for lunch every other month. And she was ordering soup. And when she found out there were mushrooms in it, she said, I'm not gonna get the soup. And then she laughed and said, Well, I've actually never tried mushrooms. And it cracked me up because I have done that exact thing. I have an idea about something, and I refuse to um entertain the thought of actually experiencing it because I've convinced myself that I'm not gonna like it. So think about an area in your life where maybe there's something that you have been pondering, or maybe it's simply something where you've told yourself you would hate it. Experience it. Maybe you'll end up being able to say, honestly, okay, I tried it and don't love it. But it could be the opposite. It could be something that you end up, like that scene in a movie where you fast forward and the character is doing the exact thing they said they would never do, and you can laugh at yourself and then you've enriched your life a little bit. So that's my thought for today. And okay, there is something that I would love your help with. My book just went off to the editors, and I should have it back in about a month to accept the edits and format it and get it off to the printers. So that's pretty exciting. But I want to launch this thing into the world with the best chance of getting it into as many hands as possible and helping so many people to see how they can live with the ideas from nature that plants show us. So my book is Nature Knows: Growing and Thriving Through the Wisdom of Plants. And it has so many examples from my clients, it has my examples from my own experience as a gardener, and a lot of actually examples from my life. So, what I need is a launch team. And a launch team is just a group of people who will buy the book at cost. I don't make a profit from it, but they get the inside track. They get to read the book, the real physical book, before it's available to the world and read enough of it, hopefully the whole book, but read enough of it to be able to give an honest review so that when it goes live and is birthed into the world, other people have some input. And, you know, reviews are important. So it can give my book the best chance to grow, pun intended. So if you would like to be on my launch team, no obligation, but I'm also doing some fun stuff. Like you'll get to vote on which cover we should have. And my sister is doing beautiful illustrations, and you could win some note cards that we're gonna make from those illustrations. We just have so many fun ideas. So I would love to have you be part of it. You won't get all my emails. You will just get emails for the book launch. If you would like to do it, there is a link in the show notes. It's maryrothwell.net forward slash launch team. And it's just a quick sign up first name, email, no must, no fuss. But I would love to have you be part of it. And until next time, go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant violet that you are.