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My Husband and I Spent a Week at an Amish Farm Stay Last September. The Farmer Asked Him to Help Build a Fence. I am writing this because a woman who had been my client for six weeks earlier this year sent me a card in March. She and her husband had been working with me in my therapy office twice a month. I had told them something in the second session that I had never told a client in twenty-one years of practice. She and her husband had been doing the work since. Her card in March had been short. She had written: "Rebecca. The fence is being worked the way the fence wants to be worked. Thank you." I have the card on my desk at my office. I am writing this for her and her husband. For the farmer in Holmes County, Ohio, who watched my husband drop a hammer twice last September. For the farmer's wife who brought me bread to the cottage table on a Tuesday afternoon and told me what her husband had said when he came back from the pasture. For the next wife who is married to a man whose body has been telling her something for a year and who has been telling herself she does not know how to bring it up. I am Rebecca. My husband calls me Becca. My clients call me Rebecca. I am fifty-nine years old. I have been a marriage and family therapist in private practice for twenty-one years. I see couples and individuals at a small office on the second floor of a converted Victorian on Main Street. I have a waiting room with two chairs and a small table with magazines and a sound machine outside the office door. I see about twenty-two hours of clients a week. I am married to my husband Daniel for thirty-three years. He is sixty-two. He has been a carpenter and a small custom-furniture maker for forty-one years. He built his own shop in our backyard twenty-five years ago. He works out of the shop most days. He has a small clientele of people who want hickory rocking chairs and small dining tables and the occasional bookcase. We have one grown son. He is thirty-one. He lives in another state. He works as a graphic designer. I want to tell you about the farm stay in Holmes County, Ohio, in mid-September last year. Because the farm stay was the week I stopped pretending I had not been watching my husband for a year and a half. I have to back up first and tell you what I had been watching for a year and a half. I had been watching Daniel's hands. Daniel had been a man who worked with his hands for forty-one years. His hands had been the steady thing about him. He had hand-tool competence the way other men had reading competence — automatic, deep, without thought. About a year and a half before our farm stay, Daniel's hands had started losing fine motor control. Not dramatically. Quietly. He had been dropping things at the breakfast table. Small things. The butter knife had clattered onto the plate twice in one week in February. He had picked it up both times and continued with his toast without commenting. He had been needing to use clamps in his shop where he had previously worked freehand. He had been telling me at the kitchen table at dinner about the new clamps he had bought. He had been telling it casually, as if buying clamps had been about precision. Daniel did not need precision clamps. He had been needing the clamps because his hands had not been holding the work steady the way they had been holding it for forty years. He had been working slower. He had been finishing fewer projects. He had been telling me about a rocking chair he had been working on for the last six months that had been turning into eight months and then ten months. He had not been telling me the rocking chair had been sitting in the corner of his shop covered with a tarp for the last three months because his hands had stopped working on it. I had been watching all of this. I had not been bringing it up. I had been a marriage and family therapist for twenty-one years. I had been listening to couples in my office say things they had not been saying with each other for years. I had been helping them say the things. I had been the woman who had been the room where the things got said. I had not been bringing the things up with Daniel. I had been ashamed of that. I had been telling myself I was waiting for the right time. I had been telling myself a lot of things. I want to tell you about the other thing I had been watching. The small physical things between Daniel and me in our marriage had been quieting for the same year and a half. I am not going to describe the specifics in this ad. They are between Daniel and me. I want to tell you that they had been quieting and that I had been watching them quiet and that I had not been bringing this up with Daniel either. I had been ashamed of that too. I had been a marriage and family therapist. I had been listening to couples in my office say things about their bedrooms that they had not been saying to each other. I had been the room where they had said the things. I had been telling them, with the calm professional voice I had spent twenty-one years building, that the body's quiet was often the body trying to tell the mind something. I had not been listening to my own body and my own husband's body in our own bedroom. The two patterns — the hands and the bedroom — had been running in parallel for a year and a half. I had not been making the connection. I had been the marriage therapist who had not been seeing what was in front of her in her own marriage. In late August last year, I had started thinking about our thirty-third anniversary trip. Daniel and I had been doing an anniversary trip most years. Different region each year. Small bed and breakfasts mostly. A cabin in the Smoky Mountains one year. A small inn on the Maine coast a few years ago. Nothing extravagant. I had been looking at options online at the kitchen table one evening in late August. I had landed on a small Amish farm stay in Holmes County, Ohio. Holmes County has the largest Amish settlement in the country. The farm I had found took guests in the late summer and early fall. The guests stayed in a small guest cottage on the property. The host family — a couple named Jonas and Sarah Mast — provided breakfast and dinner. The guests could spend the day exploring the area or, if they wanted, helping with the work on the farm. I had picked the farm stay for a reason I had not told Daniel at the time. I had been wanting Daniel to be doing something with his hands in a setting that was not his shop. I had been wanting him to be away from the rocking chair under the tarp. I had been wanting his hands to be in someone else's work for a week. I had not told him this was why. I had told him the farm stay would be a nice change of pace and that it would be good to be off the grid for a week. He had agreed. We had driven out to Holmes County on a Sunday in mid-September. The drive had been about six hours. Daniel had driven the first three hours. I had driven the second three. He had napped for most of the second three. We had arrived at the Mast farm at five in the afternoon on Sunday. Jonas and Sarah had been at the gate to greet us. Jonas was sixty-six. He had the long beard of a Plain man past marriage. He had been wearing the dark work pants and the broad-brimmed hat the men in his settlement wear. His hands had been the hands of a man who had been a farmer and a chair-maker for fifty years. Sarah was sixty-three. She had been wearing the long dark dress and the small white bonnet the women in their settlement wear. She had been carrying a small basket with two jars of preserves she had brought to welcome us. Jonas had shown us to the guest cottage. The cottage had been about fifty yards behind the main house, at the edge of the small orchard. The cottage had been simple and clean. One main room with a small kitchen and a sitting area. A small bedroom off the main room. A wood stove. Two propane lamps. A small bathroom Jonas had built himself fifteen years ago. Sarah had set the basket on the kitchen counter. She had said: "Daniel. Rebecca. Supper is at six in the main house. Breakfast is at seven. Come whenever you are ready. Help yourselves to anything in the cottage kitchen between meals." Jonas had said: "We are glad you are here." They had walked back to the main house. The first two days of the farm stay had been quiet. We had eaten breakfast and supper with Jonas and Sarah and their two youngest children — a fifteen-year-old daughter named Mary and a thirteen-year-old son named David. The two older sons were married and had their own farms a couple of miles away. The two older daughters had married and lived in nearby settlements. We had spent the days walking. We had driven into the nearest town on the second afternoon. We had bought a small loaf of bread at a local bakery. We had sat on a bench in the small town square. Daniel had been tired by mid-afternoon both days. He had napped at the cottage for two hours each afternoon. I had been at the cottage kitchen table during his naps reading a book. I had been watching the orchard and the small pasture beyond it. I had not been making notes about my husband. I had also not been not making notes. The third morning of our farm stay, Jonas had come to the cottage door at seven. He had been holding a small canvas bag. He had said: "Daniel. Sarah told me you do carpentry. I am going to replace a section of pasture fence today. About forty feet. Would you want to help me?" Daniel had said: "Jonas. I would love to." Daniel had been more awake than I had seen him in months. I had been at the small kitchen table in the cottage with my coffee. I had said: "Have a good morning, you two." Daniel had gotten his work jacket and his work boots from the small bedroom. He had put them on. He had walked out of the cottage with Jonas. Jonas had loaded a small wagon with the materials in front of the main house. Fence posts. Hammers. A post-hole digger. Wire. Two pairs of gloves. The two of them had walked to the pasture together. About a hundred yards from the cottage. I could see them clearly from the cottage kitchen window. I had watched out the cottage window for the next four hours. I want to tell you what I had watched. Jonas had dug the first post-hole. Daniel had held the first fence post while Jonas had set it. Jonas had picked up the small sledgehammer. He had handed Daniel a regular framing hammer for the brace work. The two of them had worked on the first post for about thirty minutes. Daniel had dropped the framing hammer twice in the first hour. He had not dropped a hammer in twenty years of building furniture. I had been watching from the cottage window. The first time he had dropped the hammer, he had bent down to pick it up. He had bent slowly. He had taken about twice as long to pick it up as he should have. He had stood back up. He had wiped the hammer head on his pant leg. He had gone back to the work. Jonas had not commented. The second time he had dropped the hammer, Jonas had bent down and picked it up himself. He had handed it back to Daniel without saying anything. He had gone back to the post he had been working on. By the third hour, Daniel had been sitting on a small overturned bucket at the corner of the pasture watching Jonas finish two of the post-holes. Daniel had not been able to swing the post-hole digger for more than a few minutes at a time. By the fourth hour, the fence section had been done. Jonas had done about seventy percent of the work himself. Daniel had done about thirty percent. They had walked back to the cottage together. They had finished by lunchtime. I had met them at the cottage door. Daniel had said: "Becca. Jonas is a good fence-builder. I am going to take a small rest before lunch." He had gone into the small bedroom of the cottage. He had taken a two-hour nap. I had been at the cottage kitchen table. Jonas had walked back to the main house to clean up. About twenty minutes after Jonas had gone back to the main house, Sarah had come to the cottage door. She had been carrying a small basket with a loaf of bread and a small dish of butter and a jar of plum jam. She said: "Rebecca. I am bringing you and Daniel some bread for lunch. May I sit with you for a few minutes?" I said: "Sarah. Of course." Sarah sat down at the small cottage kitchen table. She set the basket on the table. She did not speak for about thirty seconds. She had been looking at her hands on the table. Then she said: "Rebecca. Jonas came back from the pasture and he said something to me at the back door. Will you let me tell you what he said?" I said: "Yes, Sarah." She said: "Jonas said your Daniel is a fine man with strong intentions. He also said your Daniel is carrying a body that has been giving out on him for some time, and that Daniel has been pretending it has not. Jonas said this not as a criticism. He said it as a man who has watched another man at work." I did not say anything. I had been crying quietly at the cottage table within about ten seconds. Sarah had reached across the table. She had put her hand on my hand. She said: "Rebecca. I am sorry. I did not want to make you cry. I wanted to tell you what Jonas had said because I have been a wife for forty-two years and I have been a host for many couples in this cottage. I have noticed some things about you and Daniel over the last three days. Will you let me tell you what I have noticed?" I said: "Yes, Sarah." She said: "Rebecca. You have been watching Daniel. You have been watching his hands at the breakfast table. You have been watching him when he gets up from a chair. You have been watching him when he reaches for the salt. You have not been making small talk with him the way most husbands and wives at the kitchen table on a vacation make small talk. You have been watching him. I have been watching you watching him." I said: "Sarah. I am a marriage therapist. I have been watching Daniel for a year and a half. I have not been telling him I have been watching." Sarah said: "Rebecca. The body knows when it is being watched. The body also knows when its wife knows." I said: "Sarah. I do not know what to do." Sarah said: "Rebecca. I want to tell you about my younger brother Reuben. Will you let me?" I said: "Yes, Sarah." Sarah told me about her younger brother Reuben. Reuben is fifty-eight. He runs a small harness shop two miles from Jonas and Sarah's farm. He is married to a woman named Hannah. They have eight children, six grown and two at home. About three years ago, Reuben had been struggling with the same kind of carrying-a-body Sarah had just described in my Daniel. Reuben had been dropping his harness-making tools. He had been needing to sit down in the middle of the workday. He had been quieter at his own kitchen table. Sarah paused. She said: "Rebecca. The small things in my brother's marriage to Hannah had been quieting too. I am not going to say more about that. That is between Reuben and Hannah. I will say only that Hannah had noticed." I said: "Sarah. I understand." Sarah said: "Reuben had been to the English doctor in town. The English doctor was the doctor on Main Street. He had run the full workup. Bloodwork. The heart tests. The vascular tests. Everything had come back clean. The English doctor had given Reuben the framing about a layer of cardiovascular and cellular wellness that the standard panel does not capture. The body's natural antioxidant balance. The body's natural circulation. The body's natural cellular function. The layer underneath the lifestyle layer." She continued: "My sister-in-law Hannah had been the one who had read about a supplement after Reuben's English doctor visit. She had landed on a small company called Rosabella. They cold-press beetroot at low temperatures. The active compound — the betalains, the deep red pigment in the root — is delicate. Cold-pressing preserves it. The capsules in the bottle are a deep, dark crimson when you open it." She said: "Hannah had brought a bottle to Reuben's English doctor before Reuben had taken any of it. The doctor had said it was a sensible thing to add to whatever else Reuben was doing. Hannah had told Reuben to take it." She paused. She said: "Rebecca. I am not going to describe to you what happened in my brother's marriage over the next year. That is between Reuben and Hannah. I will say only that my brother is fifty-eight, and he is making harnesses again, and he is dropping fewer tools, and Hannah has stopped looking the way you have been looking at Daniel." Sarah did not say anything for a moment. She said: "Rebecca. I am going to give you a bottle. Hannah gave me a bottle a year ago because I had been carrying my own version of what your Daniel is carrying. Mine had not been as visible. I had been to the English doctor with Jonas. The doctor had approved the supplement. I have been on it for almost a year." She got up from the table. She walked back to the main house. She came back ten minutes later with a small bottle and a small piece of paper with the name of the supplement written down and a phone number for her sister-in-law Hannah's settlement barn phone, in case I wanted to write to Hannah at some point. She handed both to me. She said: "Rebecca. I am not going to tell Daniel about this. You and Daniel will figure out how to talk. I am going to tell you what I have told the three other women I have given a bottle to in this cottage in the last year. Take it home. Talk to Daniel. Talk to Daniel's doctor. If Daniel's doctor agrees, add it around whatever else Daniel's doctor recommends. The bottle is not the thing. The conversation with your husband is the thing. The conversation with the doctor is the second thing." I said: "Sarah. Thank you." She hugged me at the cottage table. She walked back to the main house. I sat at the cottage kitchen table with the bottle in my hand for the rest of Daniel's nap. Daniel came out of the bedroom at two thirty. He saw me at the table. He saw the bottle. He said: "Becca. What is that?" I said: "Daniel. I will tell you on the drive home Saturday." He said: "Becca. Okay." He did not push. He poured himself a glass of water. He sat at the table with me. I had put the bottle in my overnight bag before lunch. We had bread and butter and plum jam at the cottage table together. Daniel and I drove home from Holmes County on Saturday morning. The bottle was in my overnight bag. About forty minutes into the drive, I said: "Daniel. I need to tell you about a conversation I had with Sarah at the cottage table on Tuesday after you took your nap." I told him. I told him about Jonas's framing of his body. I told him about Sarah's framing of how I had been watching him. I told him about Reuben. I told him about the bottle. I told him I had been a marriage and family therapist for twenty-one years. I told him I had been listening to couples in my office say things I had not been saying with him. I told him I had been watching his hands for a year and a half. I told him I had been watching the small things between us in our bedroom quiet for the same year and a half. I told him I had been ashamed. Daniel was quiet for a long time. He drove. Then he said: "Becca. I have not been telling you what I have been carrying either. I have known for over a year. I have been ashamed." He told me. He told me about the hammer he had dropped in his shop three times in March. The third time it had landed on his foot. He had not told me about that. He had been telling me his foot had been hurting from a wood-shop accident he had had years before. He told me about the rocking chair under the tarp. He told me he had been quieter in our bedroom because his body had been quieter and he had not known how to bring it up with me. He told me he had been telling himself it was sixty-two. He had been telling himself sixty-two was sixty-two. He told me he had not been to a doctor in two years. His old doctor had retired. He had been letting it slide. He drove. I held his hand on the console for the next forty miles. I said: "Daniel. Will you go to Dr. Halvorsen with me when we get home?" Daniel said: "Becca. Yes." I called Dr. Halvorsen's office Monday morning. Daniel went to Dr. Halvorsen the following Thursday. I went with him into the exam room. Dr. Halvorsen has been our family doctor for sixteen years. He is in his late fifties. He had been my doctor when our son had been in middle school. He had not seen Daniel in two years. Daniel told him about the year and a half. He told him about the hammer. He told him about the slowing down in the shop. He told him about the rocking chair under the tarp. He told him: "Doctor. The small physical things in my marriage have been quieting too." He did not say more than that. He did not need to. Dr. Halvorsen listened. When Daniel was done, he said: "Daniel. I am going to run a full workup. Bloodwork. EKG. Blood pressure. I want to refer you for an echocardiogram and a vascular screening. I want to refer you to a urologist for a more direct evaluation as well. I want to be thorough." Daniel did everything over the next three weeks. The bloodwork came back unremarkable. The EKG was normal. The echocardiogram showed nothing structural. The vascular screening showed mild reduced blood flow in the small vessels — consistent with age, nothing that needed a procedure today. The urologist had seen Daniel and had done his own evaluation. He had found nothing pathological. He had told Daniel what Dr. Halvorsen had been about to tell him: there was nothing structural to fix today. Dr. Halvorsen called us back in. He said: "Daniel. Rebecca. The standard tests are clean. The vascular screening shows some mild reduction in small vessel flow that is consistent with age. The urologist found nothing structural. There is nothing I need to address with a medication or a procedure today." He paused. He said: "What you have been describing in your hands and what you have been describing in the small physical things in your marriage are both consistent with the wellness layer thinning at the level the standard panel does not capture. The body's natural antioxidant balance. The body's natural circulation. The body's natural cellular function. The layer underneath the lifestyle layer. That layer quietly thins with age. It is not a disease. It is real." He gave Daniel the standard advice. Keep walking. Keep working with his hands. Keep eating well. Keep sleeping. I pulled the bottle Sarah had given me out of my purse. I set it on Dr. Halvorsen's desk. I told him about the farm stay. Dr. Halvorsen picked up the bottle. He turned it over in his hands. He said: "I have been hearing about beetroot for cardiovascular wellness for several years from a few of my patients. The research is decent. It is sensible. It supports the layer underneath. It is not a treatment for what Daniel has been feeling. It is support for the layer." He approved it. He told Daniel to start. Don't change anything else. Come back at six months. I ordered a second bottle from the website that evening for me. Daniel had Sarah's bottle. He started the following Monday. I called Dr. Halvorsen myself the next week. He approved the supplement for me too. I started the same week. We have been on it together since. I want to tell you what happened over the next twelve weeks. I am not going to make a claim about what caused what. I am going to tell you what happened in the order it happened. The first thing was the chisel. About two weeks in, on a Saturday afternoon, Daniel was out in his shop. He was working on a small piece of trim for a cabinet. He had been about to drop a chisel. He had been about to drop chisels and hammers about three times a week in his shop for the past few months. He had a kind of small flinch he had been making when something was about to slip out of his fingers. That Saturday he did not make the flinch. He held the chisel for the full afternoon. He came inside at five thirty. He said: "Becca. The chisel held." I said: "Daniel. The chisel held." We had dinner. He went back out to the shop after dinner. He worked for another hour. He held everything he held. About four weeks in, on a Tuesday evening, I was at the kitchen counter cutting vegetables for dinner. Daniel came up behind me. He put his hand on the small of my back. He had not put his hand on the small of my back in over a year. He did not say anything. I did not say anything. He stood there for about thirty seconds. He kissed the back of my neck. He went to the dining room to set the table. I cut the vegetables. I cried at the counter for about a minute while I cut them. I served dinner. We ate at the dining room table. He did not say anything about the small of my back. I did not either. The body had said what the body had said. About six weeks in, Daniel went out to his shop on a Saturday morning and pulled the tarp off the rocking chair. He had been working on the rocking chair for ten months before it had gone under the tarp. He worked on it for three hours that Saturday. He worked on it for three hours the next Saturday. He finished it the third Saturday. He brought it inside to the front porch the Sunday after he finished it. He set it on the porch. He sat in it. He said: "Becca. Come sit on the porch with me." I sat in the chair next to his. He rocked. He did not say anything for a long time. Then he said: "Becca. The chair is finished." I said: "Daniel. The chair is finished." He rocked. I rocked next to him. About week eight, I want to tell you the canary that the prior ads in this series have referenced about the men's marriages has been singing again in our marriage. I am going to use the framing the prior ads have used. Not the way it sang at thirty. Better than it had been singing at sixty-two. The rest is between Daniel and me and Dr. Halvorsen. About week ten, Jonas and Sarah wrote us a letter. They had asked us to come back to the farm for a weekend in late November. They had wanted us to come back for a Saturday morning fence-building day. Jonas had another section of pasture fence that needed work. He had been saving it for Daniel. Daniel said yes immediately. We drove out to Holmes County on a Friday afternoon in late November. We stayed in the same cottage. Saturday morning at seven, Jonas came to the cottage door. He had the same canvas bag he had been carrying in September. He said: "Daniel. The pasture is waiting." Daniel said: "Jonas. I am ready." They walked out to the pasture together. I watched from the cottage window the way I had watched in September. Daniel dug the first post-hole. Jonas held the first fence post while Daniel set it. Daniel picked up the framing hammer. He did not drop it. He worked the brace into the post. He moved to the second post. He dug the post-hole. He set the post. He held the framing hammer. He worked the brace. Jonas worked alongside him. Jonas did not pick up the hammer to do Daniel's work. The two of them worked for three hours. Daniel did about seventy percent of the work this time. Jonas did about thirty percent. They finished by mid-morning. Two hours earlier than September. They walked back to the cottage together. Sarah and I had been making lunch in the cottage kitchen. The four of us had lunch at the cottage table. After lunch, on the porch of the main house while Sarah and I were inside doing the dishes, Jonas said something to Daniel. I did not hear what he said. I learned later from Daniel that Jonas had said: "Daniel. You worked the fence the way a fence wants to be worked. I am glad." Daniel had said: "Jonas. Thank you." Jonas had said: "Daniel. Will you and Rebecca come back in the spring? I have another section of pasture that needs work." Daniel had said: "Jonas. Yes." We drove home Sunday morning. Daniel drove the whole way. He did not nap. Daniel went back to Dr. Halvorsen for his six-month follow-up in March. She ran the bloodwork. Took his blood pressure. Listened to him describe the previous six months. She sat back in her chair. She said: "Daniel. Your numbers are in the best place they have been in years. Whatever you have been doing, keep doing it." Daniel told her about the chisel. About the rocking chair. About the November fence. About the small of my back at the kitchen counter. He did not say more than that. He did not need to. Dr. Halvorsen smiled. She said: "Daniel. I am so glad." She did not say anything else. She did not need to. I want to be careful here. I am not a medical doctor. I am a marriage and family therapist. I am one fifty-nine-year-old wife who watched her husband for a year and a half and did not tell him. I do not know for certain that the Rosabella was responsible for what changed. I know what Daniel was doing before. I know what we added. I know what I have seen in his shop and in our kitchen and in our bedroom and on the pasture in November. I know the timing. I also know Daniel is sixty-two and I am fifty-nine and we are going to keep aging, and there will come a day when no supplement and no farm stay and no fence-building Saturday in Ohio will hold back the slow turning of the years. There will come a day when Daniel will not be in his shop. There will come a day when no canary will sing in any marriage. I am at peace with that day coming when it actually comes. I am not at peace with our marriage pretending it had already come for a year and a half when it had not. What I am telling you is what we tried. What I noticed. What our doctor said about it. That is all. If you are a wife who has been watching her husband's hands and her husband's body and her husband's small things for a year and you have been telling yourself you do not know how to bring it up, here is what I would say. Bring it up. You will know how. The words will come when you stop waiting for them. Tell him. Tell him you have been watching. Then tell him you want him to go to his doctor with you. Get the workup. The full workup. The cardiac. The vascular. If the body's quiet has been telling you something about his circulation, ask his doctor for the vascular screening and a urology referral if his doctor agrees. Rule things out at depth. If everything comes back clean and the standard answer is keep walking and keep sleeping, ask his doctor about adding one more thing in the additive layer. If the doctor agrees it is a sensible thing to add, add it to what your husband is already doing. Do not subtract anything. Do not change anything else. Give it a few weeks before you decide anything. Bodies are different. Some men notice something within the first week or two. For Daniel, the first thing I noticed was a chisel that held for a full afternoon in his shop around the start of week two. The bedroom is between you and your husband. The hands are between you and what you see. The doctor is between you and what the body has been quietly trying to say. That is the whole story. P.S. In January, a new couple came into my office. They were in their early sixties. The husband was sixty-three. The wife was sixty-one. They had been married for thirty-seven years. The husband had been a contractor for forty years. He had been having a slower year. He had been dropping things. The wife was the one who had booked the session. The husband had come reluctantly. In the second session, I said to them — for the first time in twenty-one years of practice, with explicit professional permission to do so: "I am going to tell you something about my own marriage. I had been a therapist for twenty years and I had been ashamed to tell you something I am going to tell you now." I told them. Not the bottle. The story. The year and a half of watching. The farm stay in September. The hammer Daniel had dropped twice in the first hour. The conversation Sarah had brought to the cottage table with the bread. The drive home on Saturday. The conversation in the car. The husband listened. The wife was at the other end of the small couch in my office. When I was done, the husband said: "Doctor. I would like to make an appointment with my own doctor this week." He did. His doctor ran the full workup. Everything came back clean. He gave the husband the wellness-layer framing. He approved the supplement around it. The couple has been seeing me twice a month for four months now. They have been doing the work. The husband has been in his shop again. The wife had sent me the card in March. The card was short. She had written: "Rebecca. The fence is being worked the way the fence wants to be worked. Thank you." I have the card on my desk at my office. I look at it most days. That is how this works. A marriage therapist who has been watching her husband for a year and a half drives out to a farm stay in Holmes County, Ohio, in mid-September. A Plain farmer asks her husband to help build a section of pasture fence. Her husband drops a hammer twice in the first hour. The farmer's wife comes to the cottage at lunch with a basket of bread and tells the therapist what the farmer said when he came back from the pasture. The therapist goes home with a bottle. She tells her husband on the drive home. They go to their doctor. The doctor runs the full workup. He approves the supplement. Three months later the husband finishes a rocking chair that had been under a tarp for ten months. Two months after that they drive back to the farm. The husband builds the next section of pasture fence at seventy percent. The farmer says one quiet sentence to him on the porch after lunch. Two months after that, a new couple comes into the therapist's office. The therapist tells them about her own marriage for the first time in twenty-one years. The husband makes an appointment with his own doctor that week. Four months later the wife sends the therapist a card. The card sits on the therapist's desk. The fence keeps going. P.P.S. Here is what I would tell you to do if you are thinking about trying it. Check with your husband's doctor first. That is the most important step. Ask for the cardiac and vascular workup, plus a urology referral if the small physical things in your marriage have been telling you something. If your doctor approves it, take two capsules with a glass of water in the morning. Do not change anything else. Just add this. Give it a few weeks before you decide anything. Some men notice something within the first week or two — a chisel held for an afternoon, a rocking chair pulled out from under a tarp, a hand on the small of a wife's back at the kitchen counter while she is cutting vegetables for dinner. Others take longer. Be patient with the body. Be patient with the marriage. Be patient with what you have not been saying to each other. P.P.P.S. Rosabella has a 90-day money-back guarantee. If you are not satisfied for any reason, every penny back. No questions asked. That is a sensible policy for a supplement. It gives you time to actually see whether it helps. P.P.P.P.S. Rosabella is a small operation. They harvest and bottle on their own schedule. I keep an extra bottle in the house just in case. Sarah wrote me a letter in February. She had been thinking about us. She had wanted to tell me that her sister-in-law Hannah was now giving bottles to women in their own settlement. Hannah had been giving them carefully. To the wives, at her own kitchen table, after the wives had asked. Hannah had been telling the wives what Sarah had told me at the cottage table. The bottle is not the thing. The conversation with the husband is the thing. The conversation with the doctor is the second thing. The bottle is the third thing. Sarah had wanted me to know. I had written back to her in March. I had told her about the couple in my office. I had told her about the card on my desk. She had written back in April. She had asked Daniel and me to come for the spring fence weekend in May. We are going next weekend. Daniel is going to dig his own post-holes. That is what I want to tell you about. The supplement is one thing. The full workup that Dr. Halvorsen ran is another thing. A Plain farmer's wife at a cottage kitchen table in Holmes County, Ohio, on a Tuesday afternoon in September with a basket of bread and a piece of paper and a small bottle is a third thing. It is the thing I had not known I had been needing. It is the thing that has been holding the fence steady. https://track.tryrosabella.com/14309c20-4d60-44e3-9565-5ba6bb358986 Individual experiences vary. These statements have not been evaluated by the FDA. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease.