The Athenais Short Set

For twenty-five years, I taught second grade the two hardest lessons there are: how to tie your shoes, and how to let go of someone's hand.

Every October, I loaded a school bus full of muddy sneakers and cider-stained fingers bound for Mercier Orchards, just down the road from where James and I still live. Thirty-one Octobers of hay bales and pumpkin patches, if you're counting. I was.

Eight years ago, after my last class walked out the door for summer, a small storefront came open on Main Street, two doors down from the hardware store. James looked at me across the kitchen table and didn't say a word. He didn't have to.

I'd spent twenty-five years helping children discover confidence. Now I wanted to help women rediscover theirs. That same year, I opened the door of Betty's Blue Ridge for the very first time.

Now I'm sixty-four, and it's time to close this chapter. Not because something went wrong. Because something went beautifully right — and it turns out twenty-five years of teaching children to let go of a hand was good practice for doing it myself.

I never ran a sale in eight years here. Not once. This is the first, and the only one there will ever be.

Every cardigan, every dress here was chosen with one woman in mind — the real one, not the one on the hanger.

Find something that makes you stop. Trust that feeling. I built this place around exactly that moment.

With love,
Betty Wilson
Betty's Blue Ridge ❤️