I have been nominated for the Gratitude Challenge by the lovely @trucklife-family who is one of my most favorite people on all of steemit. If you haven’t checked out her posts, you are so missing out. She is an incredibly heart-filled, loving mama who is all about encouraging us to love and appreciate ourselves and our amazing, beautiful bodies. Yes, I’m going to keep that paragraph for all seven days!

Now, guess how I got so connected to @trucklife-family?! Through the @ecotrain! My day 3 gratitude is…

Choo choo! The ecoTrain

I was a little slow getting the hang of this Steemit business. I came way back in August. I totally understood the deal with consistency and not getting discouraged. I could easily roll with that. I was piddling along writing two or three posts a week. I was meeting some really beautiful people and having some amazing conversations. I wasn't making hardly any money, though, and wasn't too sure how to rectify that. I was committed anyway because of all the wonderful people, but, you know, money is nice too.

One day I stumbled onto @eco-alex and one of his posts on earthship building. I was totally enamored. He’s so knowledgeable and enthusiastic. It got me super excited about my earthbag building project that I am going to get going one of these days. The beauty of earthen buildings is unmatched. At some point in my gushing about how awesome his project looked, he invited me to hop on the ecoTrain, but he mentioned a dirty word. Slack. I didn't know what it was, but it sounded a lot like Discord, which I was having none of.

I feel like I have a lot on my plate, and I know it’s true that I do, but I also know there are lots of other people with lots more going on, so sometimes I feel kinda bad for complaining about it. I mean, I only get in my car once a week. It’s a pretty good life to be sure. That said, I like to give a lot of time to my children. I like to play with them, snuggle with them, color with them, chat with them. Anyway, between Steemit, my other business, kids, and cleaning, I just couldn’t think of adding in another thing to check on. So I resisted it, but @ecoalex kept showing up in my feed, and I came across a post that talked about the importance of joining up with one of the many communities, so I decided that, since it wasn’t discord, I would give it a go.

Honestly, this is one of the best decisions I ever made, and that’s not hyperbole. The ecoTrain is my tribe. Some of my most favorite people on all the earth are a part of the ecoTrain. We all love and support each other - steemit posts and real life. We are all united by the ecoTrain mission to make the world a better place. We do so in lots of different ways. I was worried when I joined that I may not be a fit because, even though I’m the SOLARsupermama, I don’t actually talk about solar that much, and I haven’t started on my earthbag building yet. Honestly, we don’t even have land yet. As it turns out, though, Alex and the ecoTrain support people making the world better in lots of different ways. We do have some incredibly knowledgeable people who know a ton about permaculture, natural building, food forests, homesteading, and more. I totally dig all that stuff, but my jam is changing the parenting and educational paradigms and advocating for children’s rights (and a whole bunch of other stuff too), and that’s totally cool. We are out here doing what we can to make the world better in a lot of different venues, not the least of which is Steemit. There are several projects and curation efforts to support minnows coming out of the ecoTrain family. To me, though, the most important way the passengers on the ecoTrain are making the world better is by loving and supporting each other and lots of other people too. Through a number of significant challenges, my ecoTrain tribe has supported me perhaps more than they realize. We also support each other with our upvotes, and my post payouts jumped dramatically. Again, not the main thing but definitely awesome.

We’re mostly anarchists, so I guess there’s no leader, but Alex built the train and is driving the train, and I am incredibly glad for him, who he is, and what he does. He heartily supports each of us with all the upvote and sweet encouragement he has. He also has a bot that offers guaranteed ROI that is used to support a minnow support project and ultimately to help build more physical communities so those of us who might not be able to otherwise afford it will be able to live in self sustaining, healthy, natural building, permaculture based, love fest communities. And of course he’s done a lot of wonderful things in the past, including building beautiful earthships, sometimes out of his own pocket, for spiritual communities. He has shared his knowledge and passion with lots of people, and he’s an awesome train driver.

Aside from our support for each other, the coolest bit has to be the Question of the Week. Thinking back over my time on the ecoTrain, we have talked about an incredibly wide variety of topics from patriarchy to emotions to technology to parenting. They’re always important topics, and I feel like we get some really good, innovative ideas going in our posts and subsequent discussions.

Honestly, I’ve never been in a community quite this powerful. We are all driven to make positive change. We are all kind and thoughtful and supportive. When we come together, we are a powerful train, and I really and truly believe this is how we change the world.

Oh, and by the way, we moved from Slack to Discord, so joke's on me! Yes, it eats a lot of my time, but it has also allowed me to connect me with all the amazing people on @tribesteemup, @steemitmamas, and @teamgirlpowa.

Much love, y’all!

As always, all pics are mine or pixabay unless otherwise noted.

)](https://discord.gg/qfu4yRE)