Womenfolk Revival

We have machines that wash our clothes and our dishes. We can have food brought straight to our door. We can buy almost anything without ever leaving the house. We have more things saving us time than probably any generation before us. So where the heck did all that saved time go? Because somehow, we're still rushing. We're still exhausted. We're still saying we don't have enough time. This week on Womenfolk Revival, we're sitting down to talk about something we've both been noticing in our own lives: somewhere along the way, we started treating normal human effort like something we needed to escape. Cooking became a chore. Growing food became a hobby. Making things became a craft. Walking became exercise. Sitting outside became self-care. Things that were once simply part of living became things we had to intentionally add back into our lives. And it made us wonder: have we confused an easier life with a better life? Why has modern convenience saved us so much time, yet somehow left us feeling busier, more distracted and more exhausted than ever? In this episode of Womenfolk Revival, Meara and Maggie explore slow living, modern convenience, convenience culture, digital distraction, traditional skills, meaningful work, intentional motherhood, family connection and the quiet ways modern life may be separating us from actually participating in our own lives. We have machines that wash our clothes and our dishes. We can have food brought straight to our door. We can buy almost anything without ever leaving the house. We have more things saving us time than probably any generation before us. So where the heck did all that saved time go? Because somehow, we're still rushing. We're still exhausted. We're still saying we don't have enough time. This week on Womenfolk Revival, we're sitting down to talk about something we've both been noticing in our own lives: Somewhere along the way, we started treating normal human effort like something we needed to escape. Cooking became a chore. Growing food became a hobby. Making things became a craft. Walking became exercise. Sitting outside became self-care. Things that were once simply part of living became things we had to intentionally add back into our lives. And it made us wonder: Have we confused an easier life with a better life? Why hasn't modern convenience given us more free time? Before we even get into that conversation, we're trying something new. Quite a few of you have told us that you want to hear more about us, not just the topic we're discussing that week, but what's actually happening in our homes and our lives. So we're pulling up our chairs a little earlier and catching up before we get into the episode. And this week, there was plenty to catch up on. Maggie somehow managed to turn a barefoot family hike into a six-hour adventure lost in the woods. Meara is still moving into her family's new little homestead, had their first fire outside, is making plans for the garden and is preparing to bring her older girls home for homeschooling. We're talking about fall, old books, bread making, gardens, family life, slowing down and everything else that naturally comes up when two friends sit down at the table together. Eventually, it brings us right back to the question at the heart of this episode: What if some of the work we're constantly trying to eliminate isn't getting in the way of living? What if some of that work IS the living? Can a harder life sometimes feel more meaningful? Since moving onto land, Meara's life has technically gotten harder. There is always something that needs to be cleaned, planted, moved, fixed, planned or taken care of. But something else is happening too. The days feel fuller. The family is outside more. They're making things. Planning things. Working toward something together. They're talking more and listening to one another more. Instead of simply existing in the same house, one person on a phone, another watching television, everyone waiting for the day to pass, they're participating in their own lives. And Maggie has experienced much of the same thing as her family has intentionally slowed down and brought older skills and rhythms back into their home. We talk about milling grain by hand, baking bread, hanging laundry in the sun, growing food, puzzles, old-fashioned games, looking at the stars, sitting outside, allowing ourselves to be bored again and teaching our children that everything in life isn't supposed to happen instantly. What has technology taken away from our everyday lives? We also talk about our phones and what happened to all those little empty spaces we used to have. Waiting somewhere? Phone. Sitting in the car? Phone. Standing in line? Phone. When was the last time we simply sat somewhere and had absolutely nothing to do? Because boredom wasn't always useless. Sometimes that empty space was where we thought. Noticed. Imagined. Created. Figured things out. And maybe our children need some of that space too. Does boredom help children become more creative and capable? We want our kids to make things, grow things, wait for things, mess things up and try again. We want them to experience what happens when something is difficult and they finally figure it out for themselves. That moment of realizing: I did that. That's how we begin to understand what we're capable of. It's how children build confidence. It's how people learn patience. It's how skills are passed down. And it's one of the reasons we're becoming more interested in traditional skills, simple living, homeschooling, growing food, making things by hand and raising capable children. Is convenience bad? No. None of this means we're throwing out the washing machine and rejecting every modern invention we own. Absolutely not. We like convenience too. Sometimes convenience genuinely gives us more room to live. There are times when an electric grain mill makes a whole lot more sense than sitting there turning a hand crank. There are days when the washing machine is exactly what we need. The question isn't whether convenience is good or bad. The question is whether it's helping us live our lives,or slowly replacing our participation in them. We want convenience to help us live. We don't want convenience to replace our living. And underneath all of this is something even deeper for us. Our connection to our families. Our connection to the earth. Our connection to our Creator. Maybe we weren't meant to rush through every ordinary part of life just so we could hurry up and get to the next thing. Maybe making dinner matters. Maybe caring for our homes matters. Maybe sitting outside with a cup of coffee matters. Maybe tending a garden matters. Maybe learning a skill mat...

Six months ago, we sat down behind two microphones with an idea. We thought Womenfolk Revival would be a podcast about slow living, intentional living, natural living, forgotten skills, motherhood, faith, homemaking, ancestral wisdom, and reconnecting with the ways women once lived. We thought we'd be talking about the revival. We didn't realize we'd start living it. In this six-month check-in, we're looking back at where we were when Womenfolk Revival began, what's actually changed in our lives, what we've learned, what we still haven't figured out, and where we're going from here. And when we really started comparing our lives then to our lives now...we realized a lot more has changed than we thought. We're cooking more food from scratch. We're learning skills that once intimidated us. Maggie is hand-milling grains, making homemade stock and becoming more comfortable in the kitchen. Meara has moved her family onto acreage, started building the little homestead she'd dreamed about, pulled her kindergartner from online school, and begun homeschooling her children through everyday life. Breakfast has become a lesson in measuring and math. Old books have become treasures. Cooking has become something our children participate in. Homeschooling has made us rethink what learning actually looks like. And slowing down has forced us to confront something neither of us expected: Why are we so uncomfortable doing nothing? Why do we feel like every minute of our day needs to be productive? Why does a five-year-old need hours of structured work before we believe she's accomplished enough? Why do we need to check fifteen things off a list before we believe we've accomplished enough? Somewhere along the way, modern life taught many of us that being busy means we're doing life right. But what if it doesn't? What if slowing down isn't about doing nothing? What if it's about finally having enough space to notice what we're doing, and decide whether it actually matters? That's been one of the biggest surprises of this journey. When Womenfolk Revival began, we thought returning to old ways meant learning traditional skills: making bread, growing food, cooking from scratch, becoming more self-sufficient, reconnecting with nature and remembering knowledge that previous generations took for granted. Six months later, we're realizing it's much bigger than that. This isn't about recreating the past. It's about returning to yourself. It's learning to make something with your hands again. It's thinking for yourself. It's raising your children according to what makes sense for your family. It's reconnecting with your Creator. It's spending time outside. It's rebuilding community. It's questioning the things you've always done simply because everyone else was doing them. And it's deciding what pieces of modern life you actually want to carry forward. Because you don't have to become a homesteader. You don't have to homeschool. You don't have to mill your own flour, make sourdough, grow every vegetable you eat or throw away every modern convenience. There isn't one correct way to live a slower, more intentional life. That's something we've learned from each other too. We're at completely different stages with different skills. One of us may know something the other hasn't even attempted yet—and the women listening to us undoubtedly know things neither of us has learned. That's the village. Womenfolk Revival was never supposed to be two women standing behind microphones telling everyone else how to live. We're learning too. We're experimenting. We're changing our minds. We're failing at things. We're laughing about it. We're trying again. And we're discovering that some of the things we've spent years searching for weren't actually missing. They were buried underneath schedules, productivity, convenience, expectations and the constant pressure to keep moving. Six months ago, we thought we were starting a podcast about women coming back to themselves. We didn't realize we were going to become part of the story too. And perhaps that's the biggest thing that's changed. We don't know exactly where Womenfolk Revival will be six months from now. We don't have a perfectly mapped-out content plan. We don't have all the answers. And we don't want to. We want to keep meeting women. Keep asking questions. Keep learning forgotten skills. Keep challenging the things we've accepted as normal. Keep reconnecting with the women who've already joined us around these microphones. And keep seeing where this revival takes us. Whether you've been here since our first episode or you're discovering Womenfolk Revival today, we're glad you're here. This is our six-month check-in. No giant lesson. No perfectly packaged transformation. Just two best friends looking around and realizing... Wow. We really have changed. And next week, we're taking this conversation somewhere we have a feeling a lot of women are going to relate to: When Did Living Become So Much Work? | The Convenience Trap Because after cooking from scratch, caring for property, homeschooling, making things ourselves and trying to live more intentionally, we've caught ourselves saying: "This is so much work." But is it? Or have we become so accustomed to convenience that normal parts of living now feel like work? Maybe the goal was never to remove every bit of effort from our lives. Maybe some of the work... is the living. Until next time, Stay rooted. Stay wild. Meara + Maggie Womenfolk Revival

The Elders Knew Something We Forgot | The Lost Skills Modern Life Left Behind One day, we're going to be the elders. And when our children and grandchildren look back, what will they know because they knew us? Somewhere along the way, generations of knowledge stopped being passed down. Not just the practical things our grandmothers and elders knew how to do, but the stories behind them who taught them, why they did things a certain way, what they learned through hardship, and what they understood about family, land, community, patience, resourcefulness, and simply showing up for one another. We live in a time when we can ask Google or AI almost anything. How do I grow this? How do I preserve that? How do I make bread? What plant is this? And we'll probably get an answer. But an answer isn't the same thing as inherited knowledge. A recipe online can't tell you why your grandmother made it, who taught her, what was happening in her family when she learned it, or what she changed during the year the garden didn't produce enough. Knowledge has a history. In this episode of Womenfolk Revival, Maggie and Meara talk about what our elders knew that many of us were never taught — and why maybe our generation is the one that needs to start learning it again. Meara shares what she learned simply by watching her mother care for the people she loved: staying beside her husband after a major heart attack, advocating for him, asking questions, paying attention, and later making sure her own mother was cared for after a stroke. Nobody sat Meara down and said, This is how you care for someone. She learned because she watched her mother live it. And that opens a much bigger conversation between Maggie and Meara about caregiving, aging parents, family history, growing food, preserving knowledge, self-reliance, modern convenience, technology, motherhood, and the skills and stories we want our own children and grandchildren to carry forward. Because this isn't about pretending the past was perfect. It wasn't. And it isn't about throwing away modern medicine, technology, washing machines, or everything progress has given us. It's about asking a different question: What was worth keeping? Maybe our elders understood patience because everything wasn't immediate. Maybe they understood resourcefulness because sometimes there simply wasn't more. They knew how to stretch food, make something from almost nothing, work with their hands, grow things, wait, tell stories, care for people, and make do with what they had. And maybe some of the inconveniences we've worked so hard to eliminate were teaching us something. An aging parent walking slowly through the store. A little child wanting to help cook when you could do it twice as fast yourself. Someone who needs you to sit beside them when there's nothing you can do to fix what's happening. We're obsessed with saving time. But what are we saving all that time for if we don't have time for each other? Maybe some of the things we've been calling interruptions to life are actually life. And as Maggie realizes during this conversation, eventually there isn't going to be an older person there to ask. It has to become us. If nobody taught us, maybe we become the women who relearn it, so our children don't have to start from zero. So instead of only asking: What am I going to leave my children? We're asking: What am I leaving IN my children? What will they know because they knew us? What stories will they remember? What will their hands know how to do? Who will they know how to care for? And someday, when one of our children or grandchildren is asked, “How did you know that?” Maybe they'll be able to say: “Someone I loved taught me.” In This Episode Maggie and Meara talk about: Generational knowledge and the wisdom of our elders Forgotten and disappearing traditional skills What our grandmothers knew that many of us weren't taught Caring for aging parents and showing up for family Learning by watching the women who came before us Family stories and preserving the history behind what we know Gardening, growing food, homemaking, and practical skills Self-reliance without rejecting modern life Google and AI versus lived and inherited knowledge Patience, resourcefulness, and learning to make do Why convenience isn't always the same thing as progress Raising children who know how to care, create, grow, and provide Becoming the elders our children and grandchildren will someday remember What it really means to leave a legacy Join the Womenfolk Revival Community Come continue the conversation with us in the Womenfolk Revival Facebook Community. We're building a space for women who want to live more intentionally, relearn what was worth keeping, share what we're learning, and pass something meaningful forward. Womenfolk Revival Facebook Community: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1ZsSWdug6T/ If this episode made you think of another woman, send it to her. And if you've been coming back to listen with us each week, follow Womenfolk Revival on your favorite podcast platform, like the episode, and share the show. Coming Next Week Somehow, it has already been six months since we started Womenfolk Revival. Next week, we're sitting down for something a little different: Where We Are Now | Six Months of Womenfolk Revival Where were we when we started? Where are we now? What's changed in our lives? What have we learned? What did we think Womenfolk Revival was going to be, and what has it actually become? And where are we going from here? No big lesson. Just the two of us sitting down six months later and talking about where this whole thing has taken us. Stay rooted. Stay wild.

The Quieter You Become, The More You Notice We spend our lives trying to find ourselves while filling nearly every quiet moment with someone else's voice. So what happens when we finally turn down the noise and listen? In this episode of Women Folk Revival, we talk about something that can happen when you begin slowing down and becoming quieter: you start noticing everything. You notice how distracted people have become. How often people aren't really listening to one another. How quickly we respond before we've even understood what someone is saying. How much rushing, reacting, opinions, phones, and constant stimulation have become such a normal part of everyday life that we don't even realize how loud it has become. And sometimes, once you become quieter yourself, everyone else's noise suddenly feels a whole lot louder. Meara opens up about how this has been showing up in her own life, including a recent interaction where she felt like she had explained something clearly, only to realize the person on the other end wasn't actually hearing what she was saying. It was frustrating. It was a trigger. And it would have been very easy to keep pushing, keep explaining, and let that frustration take over. Instead, she stopped. Not because it didn't bother her. Not because she suddenly became perfectly peaceful. But because she's learning something that is much harder than simply slowing down: Noticing something doesn't mean you have to respond to it. That realization becomes a much bigger conversation about what happens when we stop reacting to everything around us. We don't have to fix everything we notice. We don't have to make everyone understand us. We don't have to have an opinion about everything. And we don't have to allow someone else's frustration, distraction, or chaos to follow us into the rest of our day. But that doesn't mean we never get irritated. We are human. We still have triggers. We still have bad days. We still get annoyed when someone isn't listening, when someone misunderstands us, or when something seems completely obvious to us and somehow isn't to someone else. The difference is learning to recognize what is happening inside of us before we react. Sometimes the most peaceful thing we can do is simply notice it, take a breath, and let it be. We also talk about what happens when becoming quieter allows you to see yourself more clearly. Because slowing down doesn't just make you notice other people. It makes you notice yourself. You may start noticing how tired you really are. What isn't working in your life anymore. What you've been tolerating. What brings you joy. What you've been missing. Your creativity. Your intuition. Your relationship with your Creator. Your relationships with the people closest to you. And sometimes that can be uncomfortable. When you finally become quiet enough to hear yourself, you may discover that you're not exactly who you thought you were. But that can be a gift. Because once you can see yourself honestly, you can actually begin to change. We also talk about community and how much harder it can be to give people grace when we've become disconnected from one another. When we don't know the people around us, it's easy to assume the worst. We don't know what someone is carrying. We don't know what happened before they walked into the room. We don't know what kind of day they're having. And sometimes choosing not to react isn't about letting someone "win." It's about choosing your own peace. It's about remembering that you can see someone's chaos without stepping into it. Because there is a difference between noticing and judging. There is a difference between being present and becoming hyper-aware of everything everyone else is doing wrong. We don't want slowing down to turn into another form of chaos. We want it to give us the ability to choose. To pause. To listen. To notice. And then decide what actually deserves our energy. Maybe peace isn't about never being bothered. Maybe peace is being able to say: This bothered me. And I'm still okay. As we become quieter, we may begin seeing things we didn't see before. We may notice the distractions, the rushing, the constant noise, and even the ways we've participated in it ourselves. But we don't have to carry everything we notice. Sometimes we can simply see it, take a breath, and come back to our own lives. And maybe that's what we're really learning to do. Not escape the noise. Not make the whole world slow down. Just learn how to live our lives without letting all of that noise pull us out of them. So the next time something gets under your skin, pause before you respond. Take a breath. And ask yourself: Does this actually need me? Because sometimes... it doesn't. And that's okay. Next week on Women Folk Revival, we're going a little deeper into something we've been thinking about since we started slowing down: the things our elders knew how to do that we weren't always taught. The knowledge that used to be passed from one generation to the next. The skills that were part of everyday life. The wisdom we may have lost because we stopped practicing it, stopped teaching it, or simply stopped paying attention. Because maybe some of the things we're searching for today aren't new at all. Maybe our elders already knew. The elders knew something we forgot. Come join us in our Women Folk Revival Facebook community and continue the conversation with us. Facebook community page https://www.facebook.com/groups/www.womenfolkrevival.transistor.fm/ Stay rooted and stay wild.

Returning to Your Creator | What If You Don't Have to Leave Your Life Behind? What if returning to your Creator doesn't mean leaving your everyday life behind? In this episode of Womenfolk Revival, we talk about what happens when we begin to slow down enough to notice the Creator in the life we're already living. The dishes. The garden. Our children. A quiet cup of tea. A meal at the table. The ordinary moments we so often rush right past. Maggie and Meara talk about the growing disconnect between modern life and the natural world, how busy and distracted we've become, and why reconnecting with our Creator doesn't have to mean checking another box on the calendar. We talk about gratitude, intention, prayer, nature, putting the phone down, being present with our families, and remembering that returning doesn't have to be a huge life-changing moment. Sometimes it's simply stopping for a breath and remembering. You don't have to have everything figured out. You don't have to change your entire life overnight. Sometimes, you just have to slow down enough to notice what's already there. Because maybe we were never meant to choose between the Creator's world and our own. Maybe we've been living in His world all along. In this episode, we talk about: • Reconnecting with our Creator in everyday life • Why modern life can leave us feeling disconnected • Finding God in nature and ordinary moments • Gratitude and daily remembrance • Slowing down and becoming more intentional • Creating moments of prayer and gratitude with our children • Putting the phone down and being present • Reconnecting with family, community, and the natural world • Why change doesn't have to happen overnight • Learning to live with more intention, one small step at a time If this conversation resonates with you, subscribe and follow Womenfolk Revival on your favorite podcast app and come join our Facebook community. Facebook Community Page https://www.facebook.com/share/g/1BttLY7Q9p/ Stay rooted. Stay wild.