Amy Huber is a failure.
She failed out of college, then finished and failed out of law school. She failed the bar exam the first time she took it. She was diagnosed with a learning disadvantage in her 20s.
“You just keep going,” Huber said. “The forces can’t push against you forever.”
Now, Huber works as a lawyer and is a “usual millennial,” keeping up several side hustles, like woodworking and drawing. She and her husband moved from Berlin to Shamong six years ago, after their honeymoon to Montana inspired them to live a more off-the-grid lifestyle.
In February 2020, the Hubers settled into a 10 acre property they lovingly call the “Huber Homestead.” They built a chicken coop, started caring for two hives of bees and opened a roadside stand where they sold fresh eggs.
Last March, Huber was furloughed from her job as an environmental lawyer. No stranger to roadblocks, she used her quarantine time to sell farmhouse style home crafts and write two children’s books.
“I’ve wanted to write my whole life,” Huber explained. “It was kind of like a therapy for myself.”
Her books, which she calls “children’s books for adults,” cover complicated themes that she hopes will make parents and kids alike think deeper about their lives.
The first, “Perfect for Me,” was inspired by her young daughter’s insecurities. She worried about her eyes, which she said were two different sizes.
“Everybody’s eyes are different sizes. That’s what we look like,” Huber said with a laugh. ”She keeps feeling this need to be perfect, so I wrote that to teach self acceptance and self appreciation.”
Her second book was more complex than the first. “The Bear” follows a family of bears whose protective mama bear keeps her cub away from toxic people, even if those people are family members.
Huber hopes her books will help adult readers embrace their inner child and enable the children in their lives to get what they need.
“I’ve read a couple children’s books to my kids that at the end, I felt better,” she noted. “Even if you don’t have kids, this is great to almost reparent yourself.”
Reparenting, Huber added, is facing the shortfalls of your childhood as an adult and reconciling with them.
Despite the rocky road to get where she is now, Huber is going to take her own advice and keep pushing forward. She plans to write more. She and her husband want to expand their homestead, and are taking in five new beehives in April. Huber wants to see her crafting business take off, hoping it will eventually bring in enough income that she can quit her day job.
“I am a failure,” she said. “A dedicated, proud failure.”
