Greater Works Vision

11/05/2025

“I never saw a wild thing sorry for itself.” - D.H. Lawrence

The whole situation was unfair. He was only 8 months old when he stepped into an illegal trap that would cost him one of his front legs.

I cried for him.
I cried for the loss of his limb.
I cried for the injustice of it all.

But he did none of that…

When he woke up from his amputation surgery, he immediately tried to stand. It took him a matter of seconds to realize that the limb wasn’t there and to adjust his weight accordingly so he could still move around.

He didn’t sulk.
He simply adjusted.

In the coming weeks, he taught himself how to dig, hunt and run all over again. Even with only three limbs, he passed all necessary tests for release back into the wild. Up until then, it was assumed that foxes in rehab in our state would not survive in the wild after an amputation. I was thankful the state allowed me the opportunity to test that theory.

He was named Phoenix and he taught us far more than we ever taught him.

We will all experience loss in our lives. Some of those losses can make us move forward in life feeling unwhole. Maybe it’s a break up, the loss of a job or a dream that just didn’t turn out how we hoped it would.

Phoenix taught me that healing doesn’t mean what’s missing comes back. It means we have adjusted. We have shifted as needed to push forward - to persevere.

We are not defined by our losses, but by our strength, our endurance and all we are willing to conquer and overcome. We are forged through the fire.

09/14/2025

“The very least you can do in your life is to figure out what you hope for. And the most you can do is live inside that hope. Not admire it from a distance but live right in it, under its roof. What I want is so simple I almost can’t say it: elementary kindness. Enough to eat, enough to go around. The possibility that kids might one day grow up to be neither the destroyers nor the destroyed. That’s about it. Right now I'm living in that hope, running down its hallway and touching the walls on both sides.” -Barbara Kingsolver, Animal Dreams

08/14/2025

Peace is not the absence of conflict
if that absence comes at the cost of your own voice.

If you constantly find yourself staying quiet,
pretending you're okay,
or agreeing just to avoid discomfort,

you’re not keeping the peace,
you’re suppressing yourself.

That kind of peace is fragile,
one-sided,
and unsustainable.

Real peace includes your voice.
Your boundaries.
Your truth.

It welcomes honest expression,
even when it’s uncomfortable.

If you have to abandon parts of who you are
to keep things calm,
then what you’re maintaining isn’t peace,

it’s control,
it’s fear,
it’s performance.

Your well-being should never depend
on how much of yourself you’re allowed to show.

Protecting your peace
means honoring your voice,
not silencing it.

So speak your truth.
Even if your voice shakes.
Even if others resist it.

Because your voice matters.
And if you lose it, you lose yourself.

~ 'Speak Your Truth' by Spirit of a Hippie

✍️ Mary Anne Byrne

~ Art by Klara Hawkins

07/08/2025

07/07/2025

Coming Soon… from the skies above.

Narrator (deep voice):
In the burning sun of southern Texas and the jungles of Mexico… an ancient terror is crawling back.

[Thunder rumbles. A swarm rises on the horizon.]

Billions of flesh-eating monsters… born to devour, programmed to die.

They feast on the living, burrowing into wounds, laying their eggs in raw flesh. Once inside, there’s no escape. Cattle collapse. Wildlife vanish. Even pets are at risk. It’s not a virus. It’s not a parasite. It’s screwworm and it’s back.

[Cut to government scientists in hazmat suits, staring at glass chambers filled with squirming larvae.]

The only hope? A strange experiment. Inside secret U.S. labs, a bizarre weapon is being bred:
Sterile male flies, irradiated, winged and released by the billions from airplanes. Their mission? Mate, fail and die.

Professor Edwin Burgess (voiceover):
“It’s weird science… but it works.”

[A montage: cargo planes unleashing shimmering clouds of buzzing insects, flies crawling across lab trays, a rancher examining a wound oozing with larvae.]

Michael Bailey, AVMA:
“A thousand-pound bovine can be dead in two weeks. You don’t treat it fast, you lose everything.”

From Panama to Kansas, the war is on. The USDA is opening a new fly factory in Mexico. A fly distribution center rises in Texas. The clock is ticking.

[Cut to Don Hineman, silhouetted against a dying sunset.]

“I saw it once as a boy. You don’t forget what it looks like… when they eat a cow alive.”

“Operation Screwworm: Rise of the Flesh Flies” Based on horrifying true events.

Coming Summer 2026 — Don’t Look Up.

Sources =
Present:

https://www.avma.org/news/usda-unveils-texas-screwworm-facility-eradication-strategy-amid-reopening-southern-ports

https://abcnews.go.com/Technology/wireStory/us-plans-begin-breeding-billions-flies-fight-pest-123398866

https://www.agdaily.com/livestock/screwworm-eradication-lessons-from-a-longtime-veterinarian/

Past: https://www.fdacs.gov/Agriculture-Industry/Pests-and-Diseases/Animal-Pests-and-Diseases/New-World-Screwworm

https://www.flaentsoc.org/webbaum/baumhover.html

06/22/2025

Instead of saying, “I know what it feels like,” let’s offer something gentler—something more honest:
“I cannot even begin to imagine the weight of your heartbreak, but I want you to know that I’m here, and I care. Deeply.”

Instead of saying, “You’re strong, you’ll get through this,” let’s say something that makes space for the ache:
“You will hurt—maybe in ways words can’t reach—but you won’t have to go through it alone. I’ll be right here, through every wave of pain, holding your hand when the nights feel endless.”

Instead of saying, “You look like you’re doing well,” let’s be more tender, more present:
“How are you holding up today, really? Not the smile you wear, but the truth behind your eyes—how’s your heart managing the storm?”

Instead of saying, “Healing takes time,” let’s honor the journey with more grace:
“Healing doesn’t follow a schedule. It’s not a race or a deadline—it’s a tender, unpredictable unfolding. Some days you’ll feel okay, other days will feel like starting over—and both are valid.”

Instead of saying, “Everything happens for a reason,” let’s not try to explain the unexplainable:
“This must feel so painfully senseless right now—and maybe it truly is. Sometimes there is no reason. Sometimes it just hurts. And that hurt deserves to be seen, not solved.”

And when words begin to fail—when nothing you say feels like it could possibly be enough—
Just be there. Hold their hand. Sit beside them in the silence. Because sometimes, love speaks loudest when it says nothing at all.
It lives in the stillness. It breathes in the pauses. It comforts in the quiet presence that says: “You don’t have to carry this alone. I’m not going anywhere.”

05/10/2025

03/29/2025

“I saw that worrying
had come to nothing.
And I gave it up.
And I took my old body and went out into the morning and sang.”
Mary Oliver

Henri Manguin - The Aloes in Bloom, Cassis, 1912.