Rooted | Season Finale | Full Episode

If there's meaning in life, then there has to be meaning in death. And if there's meaning in death, there's meaning in suffering.

Papa, is it all right if I'm putting everything in a bag?

Yes.

Not in a bad bag, but this in a—

let me see the bag.

Where is the bread?

Oh, don't put it— did you put an ice pack in that?

Yes, I put two. Oh, you want the jelly in?

No, that's not the jelly.

Do you have hairspray? My hairspray lights fires.

Put it away, we brought it.

I brought my fruity hairspray to light a fire.

There's a couple things that are different about Rebecca and I's relationship from most is one, we spend practically all our time together. You know, we work from home. We school from home. Heck, we even home birth.

We've never really had traditional family roles, ever. I mean, I guess he, like, had a job when we first got married. And that was pretty traditional. But then, like, once we had kids, he was always like, "I'm gonna be the one that reads to them at night." Our ability to question the norm, to go against the mainstream, you know, that was starting with, you know, starting to homeschool.

And then eating healthy, organic food and eventually growing the food. Well, I have this terrible sense of direction. This and I daydream. So I have two things going against me. So I'm constantly missing turns. I'm constantly getting in trouble, yelled at from her, and she's taking it personal and wrong. I'm missing her turn. We're going to her appointment. You're off in la-la land. You know what? You know how to get around town. You drive. And she doesn't daydream. She's focused. I'm sitting in the passenger seat answering member texts, going through emails, writing sales pages, whatever, doing something for the business.

Lily says that Justin doesn't know how to turn on the washer and dryer, but I'm pretty sure he does. Justin cooks. Justin cleans.

You know, I'll do so much for baby Henry. You know, I can hold him. I can rock him. I can even put him to sleep. But I don't have boobs. So she ultimately, eventually, Henry needs her.

Papa can pretty much do anything.

He can't cook as good as you.

Because like the kids will be like, this is so good. He's like, that's because your mother cooked it.

Yeah, he doesn't drive that fast either.

He doesn't drive as fast as me?

It doesn't matter if— who's doing it or who's not. Does it work for us? It's not a stretch for our kids to have to do the chores. It's not a stretch for our kids to cook because again, Mom doesn't cook every day at 4. Pop doesn't cook every day at 4. We actually all cook. We all do chores. It's not even traditional roles or non-traditional roles. It's just about us doing as much as we can together.

How long is that? 6:30 right now. It's probably like, probably gonna be here like 8 more minutes to 5.

There is an ugly side to homesteading.

The—

what you see on Instagram, and it's all the pretty gardens and happy animals. That doesn't necessarily hold true all the time. I hadn't realized how sick he was. Like, I knew he was sick, but we were over here for the Fourth of July and fireworks had scared the sheep and a couple of the cows, and they busted out of their fence, and we had to go chase animals. Well, when we were chasing the sheep and the little cow, there was one point he had reached out to grab the cow, and it got away from him, and he slipped, and he fell flat on his back on the ground, didn't even try to catch himself. And, you know, I'm like 10 feet away from him, And I see this, and that was when it dawned on me how bad it actually was. He was moving around like he was 80 years old. It was hard to watch.

This time, the level of care that I had to give him was so much more intense than when he had Lyme disease. Sure, he was in pain, but this was like debilitating, excruciating pain that I've never seen before. Before. Like, I've never seen anything like this. I definitely had some PTSD happening from the Lyme, you know, like going back to that, like, is this that? Is this like another chronic illness that we're going to be dealing with 10 years from now?

My story has been Lyme disease, this chronic illness that's just plagued me, but it plagued me in this sort of subtle way, you know. Just a nagging foot pain that just never goes away, is constantly there, you know, but it's been bearable. This has been the 10 years struggle with Lyme disease, boom, compacted into 3 months where I'm actually bedridden. Like, I actually can't get up and push through this pain to help you if I want to.

When we had, when he had the Lyme disease in the beginning, we didn't have such a a homestead. We were homesteading, but it was easily scaled back. Well, we had Ethan, and he was helping us keep the chickens basically alive. So he was doing that, and then we didn't plant a garden. We went from, you know, growing massive amounts of food and selling it to not even having a garden.

Here's Pop, who's been chronically ill for a while, and it's just this annoying, nagging pain, but he's been able to push through. But now we get this thing out of left field that totally takes him out. Things are gonna have to shift and change in the dynamics of the home and the dynamics of the farm. To make that big change, like selling livestock, that's a big decision because if I'm better in 5 months, well, the livestock's gone. And that's something that takes 2 years to build.

We have breeder sheep. We have breeder pigs. We, you know, our milk cows, breeders. I was like, let's just sell it all. Like, all the animals. Like, let's just downsize it right now because it's hard.

It's not the easiest thing in the world to be a 42-year-old man on a cane in front of tens of thousands of people. That's my job, to show our life, good, bad, or ugly, and it's been ugly now for months. Something has to change. Are we gonna put these kids in school? We're gonna have to put these kids in school. And do you see what's happening here? If we're gonna— nothing wrong with putting your kids in school. There's a total place for that. But do you see what's happening here? If we're putting our kids in school, which was one of the very first things we did to buck the system, to go against the mainstream, we're putting our kids in school, our world's getting rocked. Because that means we're gonna question everything. The organics, the food growing. What's next if the kids go to school? The farm, that's what's next. Because we need them to run it. Like, this is going to be a drastic world change for us. The family that is so insistent on being together is now thinking about breaking it up? And it would force the question of, who are you and what are you doing with your life?

When we told them back on the tour that we were going to sell this place, and move. They all just cried. And it really took me back. I was shocked. I was like, what? Like, why? They're really attached to our animals. They're really attached to this way of life. When we kind of talked to them about, like, well, should we downsize? They were like, no, we don't want that. It really changed— I think it showed Justin and I how much they're invested here.

One of the things that was really cool to see through all of this was how his boys really stepped up. All of them, the whole family stepped up. The boys are doing all the chores. Lily's milking cows. It was amazing to watch.

Basically, without even asking them, they get— it's like they get up earlier now.

I don't think they would have stepped up if this hadn't happened. Nobody's going to work that hard if they don't have to, especially a kid. I mean, my kids are hard workers. But at the same time, they're still kids and they still need time to play and be kids.

It's amazing to see that even though he's down, down for the count, they never missed a day. They never had a day where it's like, yeah, I guess the cow's not getting milked. The kids stepped up. That's, that's a testament to their raising. It's a testament to the kids. It's a testament to Justin and Rebecca.

I'm super proud of them, like, for all that they've given. You know, like, when push comes to shove, like, they got our back. We've been married for 20 years, and then we dated for 5 years before that. And we started dating when we were 16 and 17. And it's like, I don't know, we just, like, get each other. We are like peanut butter and jelly. Like, it's just— we've— I don't know, it's like an honor to give back to him what he's given to me. Like, he has taken so much care of me in times You know, I mean, having 5 children, that's just that alone. The postpartum part of giving birth to a child that a husband gives to his wife. I have been able to give a fraction of that back to him.

I need her for so much more now. But I've seen her flourish. Her love is so rooted and deep that she now gets to express it in a way that she didn't before. This is nothing compared to to what so many other people are going through. This isn't terminal. I have a 3 to 5 month hope window. You know, I thought about it recently when I hit a goal in my business. We had hit 12,000 members for Abundance Plus, and I thought, am I happy now? No, I actually wasn't any happier at 10,000 members than 12,000. I'm not any happier. And I thought, well, what is— what— what— then that needs to be my goal, not 12,000 members. Happiness needs to be my goal. But what is the secret to happiness? Because once I kick this, I'm not happy. I thought the secret was in health. I mean, if you don't have your health, who cares? You could be Jeff Bezos, the richest man in the world, $5 million an hour, and you feel like this. Life sucks. And I thought, would I be any happier though if I were better? And I actually thought, no, actually, no, no. Even health is not the secret to happiness. There's so much more to my life than me being healthy.

Doing.

We don't serve homesteading, homesteading serves us. So what is this secret? Well, it's, it's just contentedness and thankfulness. You know, it's just been surviving and getting by. But now, little hope. A step. Getting out of the bathtub without swearing.

I mean, when you don't have hope, You don't have a future, it feels like. My quest to, to help him heal is not going to be over until he can walk pain-free. We have each other's back, like we really do. No matter what, it doesn't matter. Like, we're here for each other. We're here for it.

My roots go deep here. Being the third generation to farm this land.