The Elders Knew Something We Forgot | The Lost Skills Modern Life Left Behind
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.
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
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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.
If this episode made you think of another woman, send it to her.
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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.
Creators and Guests
Host
Maggie
Maggie | Co-creator and co-host of Womenfolk Revival. A natural mama and lifelong artist and unconventionalist, Maggie offers conversations that invite reflection, courage and a return to the wild that our Creator gave us to tend.
Host
Meara
Meara | Co-creator and co-host of Womenfolk Revival. A mother of seven, Grandmtother, and LPN with over a decade of clinical experience, Meara bridges medical care with a deep respect for the land. Through intentional rhythm and mindful tending, she invites a return to the quiet wisdom found in nature.