Bonus | The Keeper of the Story: Navigating Loss, Soil, and the Sacred Slow with Ingrid Hanson-Popp

speaker-1 (00:05)
Today we're sitting down with Ingrid Hanson-Pop, the author of cellophane farm life in the slowly and becoming an orphan lovingly letting our parents go. Her work speaks to two parts of life that don't always get talked about together, where we come from, and what happens when we start to lose people who shaped us. She shares what it looked like growing up in a slower, more grounded way of life. And also what it means to walk through the raw reality of caregiving.

and that shift into becoming the one who carries the story forward. This conversation really resonates with who we are here at Women Folk Revival because it honors our roots, it navigates real life transitions, and being intentional about what we pass down. Welcome to Women Folk Revival. I'm Mira. I'm Maggie. And welcome, Ingrid, for the third time to Women Folk Revival. You are our first guest, and we are so blessed to have you on our show.

speaker-0 (00:59)
I am glad to be here and we are going to overcome technology. I'm sure of it, but I'm happy to be your first guest.

speaker-1 (01:07)
Final take, first guess.

speaker-2 (01:08)
I'm

speaker-1 (01:11)
Okay, so Ingrid, you've written about the beauty of the slow lane and the transition of becoming an orphan. Looking at those two parts of your life, what is one lesson from your childhood roots that helped you survive the season of losing your parents?

speaker-0 (01:27)
I have to say, so my dad passed away when I was 15 and that spiritually for me was a reinforcing moment. So I was raised in a Christian home, it was an evangelical church and so forth and so on. so church and real personal belief in Jesus was a thing. It's like just part of our family, our world, our week, year to year.

And so I was called out of study hall in high school and I was only told, your mother needs you at home right away. Okay, that's a little weird. And my first thought was that my father had died. And then my rational brain took over and like, no, no, no, no, let's not jump to extremes. So that my school counselor drove me home and within a half a mile of our farm, we were just straight down the road.

I could see, this is the irony, half a mile, there's a cemetery on either side of the road, which of course I'm sure my counselor never knew. But he said very carefully, your father died today. And my response to him was, I'm so glad that my dad knew Jesus. And what that meant was, dad may be gone now, but he's not gone forever. That was my hope. That was my entire foundation and hope and...

speaker-2 (02:46)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (02:56)
And what really locked it in from a physical standpoint, ⁓ just before the funeral at the church with the casket in the back of the church and all that, my mom wanted me to touch my dad's hand. My dad had these huge, massive hands. And I was a little wigged out about it, but I'm like, well, okay. And she was doing her best to help me realize this was real.

speaker-2 (03:23)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (03:24)
She didn't have any psychology background, but actually it wasn't a bad idea. And when I did that and I looked at his body, I'm like, yeah, no, a body is not a person. That's not the whole person. Who he is, his spirit and his whole entire personality, he's just not here. He is not in his box. And it just solidified all of my Christian faith at that time.

speaker-1 (03:48)
⁓ Wow. Okay, Ingrid, so let's start with your first book, Salafing Farm. ⁓ In it, you describe your father as the matriarch, the emotional heart of your home. What was one specific daily rhythm he led, maybe at the table or in the morning, that made the house feel safe and grounded?

speaker-2 (04:13)
Mm.

speaker-0 (04:15)
Well, yeah, don't know if that's quite accurate with an emotional. ⁓ But nonetheless, his habits or his modeling was.

think ⁓ on a week to week basis, ⁓ sorry, I'm trying to answer this properly. ⁓ That church was like the center of our family life. mean, didn't skip going to worship and going to church unless you were home with the like stomach flu. It was the only time. And once you were old enough to be alone, you stayed home alone. ⁓

But he also taught us rest, resting on the Sabbath, not in a terribly legalistic way, but on a farm, a dairy farm. And he raised crops to feed our cattle. Work is never done. And that was the lesson I learned even then was, no, no, we're going to just wait till Monday to pick up the work then. We're going to rest today.

And one of the other things I observed in my dad was he the only times I saw him read I think were the newspaper at home and he was probably checking the price of grain. He was probably checking. But the only other time I saw him was late at night after all the chores were done and he would grab his his worn out old Bible and he would be reading that.

speaker-2 (05:50)
Check

speaker-0 (06:02)
And so these types of things, along with principles like...

He never spoke them. There were not words for this. As I became an adult, I have put words, too. Principles like, you always do the right thing no matter what it costs you.

Really? Another one was, do you tell the truth?

Not telling the truth is not an option. It wasn't in our household. So I think it was all those principles ⁓ that gave us a grounding and the fact that ⁓ on a farm, okay, first of all, when you're a farm kid, you're just weird. I mean, to the rest of the public, you're just an oddball out. It's just like, but at home, we belonged because everybody belonged.

speaker-2 (06:34)
Right.

speaker-0 (07:00)
through the process. all had chores from as long as we can remember. And then those chores would advance. Like you learn how to drive the tractor or shovel corn or take care of the calves or plow or whatever. And so that sense of belonging was also, I think, a really a powerful thing. You know, and, you know, when I, when I work with young people with kids and like, or I meet their dads or whatever, and I asked them,

So what do you do for work? And then they tell me some, like let's say a complicated, either marketing or technology thing. I'm like, okay, I don't quite get that, but great. And so for most homes, mom and dad or mom or dad or just dad, they just leave every morning and then they come back. But the children have no idea what dad's doing or why.

speaker-2 (07:50)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (07:57)
or observing the frustrations. You know, we observed the frustrations. Now this from an emotional standpoint, unfortunately, dad had, he was either angry or he was level or he was making jokes. And you didn't want to get in the way of his anger, unfortunately. ⁓ But ⁓ we were all,

speaker-2 (08:16)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (08:27)
We were all together and we all belonged. And he would just teach us in his own way what the next chore was. And we could see his frustration. That's where I was going with that. Sorry, I trailed off for a minute. So it hadn't been raining. And the crops were starting to, you know, the leaves were starting to curl. Or the hay wasn't growing to get a second cutting. And so, or the tractor wouldn't work again.

speaker-2 (08:47)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (08:56)
And so we would observe him doing real life. This is not, work isn't easy.

speaker-2 (09:02)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (09:04)
And he just kept going. So we observed perseverance and all sorts of other positive things.

speaker-1 (09:10)
Yeah, I want to touch on that real quick. My father, witnessed him passing away actually. And when you said that when she asked you to touch his body, and you realized that he was no longer there, also being a nurse in the medical field, I have also been the one to have to ⁓ take care of the end of life for many clients. And it's almost that sense of

it's almost a natural sense where when you walk up to them after they pass away, it's almost like you're just looking at a shell. And it's very transformational, knowing that, wow, we really aren't made of these bodies, you know, it really all is about spirituality. And I love the fact that you bring up that you're an evangelist and how to say it, evangelical Christian. ⁓ As at Women Folk Revival, we accept

speaker-0 (09:57)
Thank you, Vangelis.

speaker-1 (10:04)
everyone from all walks of life. And I have studied and practiced lots of religions in my past. And it's just, you you don't have to be a specific religion to or walk a certain faith to fit in, especially here at Women Folk Revival. Whatever your beliefs are, is what makes you who you are as a person and what shapes your spirituality and

all are welcome. So I just also wanted to add that in there. So we are very blessed to have you here with us explaining and expressing, you know, your background and where you come from, because that's what shapes who we are as people, know, but we all come from the same from the same dirt. We're all created from the same mud.

speaker-0 (10:45)
Yep.

speaker-2 (10:47)
I don't know.

speaker-1 (10:50)
I wanted that touch base on that real quick.

So Ingrid, you talked a lot about growing up in the farming life. ⁓ You do not currently run a farm today. And I know many women today feel called to live differently than how they did grow up. Were your parents OK with you taking another path? And do you have any?

speaker-0 (11:05)
Nope.

speaker-1 (11:24)
Do you have any advice for women on how we can honor our parents while choosing a different path?

speaker-0 (11:32)
Yes, yeah, I hear your question. they're so

I think some of what happens...

Some of it's being a farm, growing up on a farm, but maybe the broader umbrella is that ⁓ being an independent farmer, just used family. didn't employ or hire other people out to help us with the work, is an entrepreneurial life. And I think that

speaker-2 (12:12)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (12:17)
And I'll get back to the honoring our parents and their view and what they had worked towards. ⁓

There just weren't distinct lines between this is work and this is fun, or this is work and this is life, or this is work and this is rest. It just all was blended together. ⁓ So I'm the youngest of three. My brother is six years older than me and my sister is 16 years older than me. And so with only one boy, I don't remember how old my brother was.

speaker-2 (12:39)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (12:53)
But it was pretty early on, maybe junior high or whatever, that ⁓ it was made very clear that he had no interest in taking over the farm, which just wasn't his thing. He went into construction and carpentry and is very good at it. And dad just went with it. And for me, ⁓ so I got married, I was 30 years old and

We can talk about this a little bit later on, but some with losing dad at a young age, there became some difficult dynamics with my mom. And so the fact that I didn't want, like I didn't have this pressing need to want to have children, wasn't too surprising to me. So my husband and got married, I was 30 and

For the first maybe three years, my mom would ask, so are you gonna have kids or anything? I'm just like, no, no. And then she stopped asking and she was okay with that. She was like, okay. And it didn't fit her dreams, but she always allowed me to have my dreams. And even educationally,

Mom and dad, dad did not have a high school diploma because he had to take over the farm from his failing ailing father. And mom had a high school diploma. And so when it got to me graduating high school, they were very supportive. Like whatever I wanted to do, they're like, okay, you know, whatever. yeah, so they were really hands off on

what all the three of us wanted to do. Yeah. And so that honoring, I think, just comes in. They started it. You know what? They honored us by letting us be individuals. Really. Yeah. So.

speaker-1 (15:04)
Yeah.

Okay, for the women listening who feels like her life is chaotic, what's one habit that you feel that women can start doing tonight to bring peace and stability into their homes that you felt growing up and maybe you practice in your home today?

speaker-2 (15:29)
Hmm. Mm-hmm.

speaker-1 (15:31)
Yeah, give me that good advice, because I need it. We all do.

speaker-2 (15:36)
⁓ Starving.

speaker-0 (15:38)
⁓

Well, even forming the words in my head, feel this pull or this really is more of a conflict even within myself. So we learn to work hard growing up on the farm. You just work till you get it, which is a good thing with technology. You just keep trying until you get it. ⁓ But really when I look back at it,

Then and now we have this wind down time at the end of the day. And it's harder for me to, in my, I have my very own office space for all this stuff I do with music and piano and the household stuff and book stuff and author stuff. I have to be real specific of, okay, nine o'clock, nine PM, the computer is off. There's no more, just stop. And every,

Every couple months I start trying to ouch that a little earlier, like quarter to nine. And that is so that my husband and I can have some wind down time together. And it might mean watching an old ⁓ rerun of Batman. We watched the whole original Batman season. It's so funny. And they always have these like teachable moments. Anyway, it might be that it might be what we call library hour, which is just sitting in our living room.

speaker-2 (17:01)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (17:01)
where we

have all of our books. And we may be chatting or we may both be reading or I may be reading and he's doing something on his iPad. And it's the wind down time. And we had it at home. So at home, this is so funny because it was so not my dad. He was one of the first people in our neighborhood, neighborhood, little town, little village, whatever, to have a TV when TV's came out. And I was black and white.

and he used to watch boxing. But anyway, in the evenings, because he used to be an amateur boxer, ⁓ anyway, in the evening, he'd watch three different shows like Bonanza and I don't know, I don't even know what they were, but I'd sit up there with him. Sometimes mom would be up there and ⁓ every time a commercial would come on, we'd change the channel and this was, I would change the channel because it was before we had remote control for the

So we'd be watching three different shows at the same time and he was drinking a glass of port and we were just goofing off and sometimes we'd have pillow fights and you know eventually it'd just be I don't even know if I had a bedtime really but eventually I guess my my switch would go off I'd just be too sleepy.

speaker-2 (18:15)
I'm

like, I gotta go to bed.

speaker-0 (18:17)
So that wind down time. I don't know. That's a good habit. Whatever that wind down time might work for you. Letting go. Letting go of the work that's not like Sabbath. You know what? It's too late. I'm not going to be good at anyway. Time's up.

speaker-1 (18:23)
I remember it.

remember

the last conversation we had, ⁓ we had the same discussion and I told you, you're a night owl compared to us. in bed at a clock over here. That's just a non negotiable for us. Sleep and wind down time. You know, all the kids are in bed by seven o'clock in their rooms. Some are in bed sleeping and the others are reading until 730. But that's our time, if I'm not working where we just sit and talk and sometimes we're just on our phones sitting next to each other but

The house is quiet and you have to have that time before you go to bed, I believe, just like you, where you just need that quiet space in your head. Time to shut down.

speaker-2 (19:07)
Yeah.

speaker-0 (19:08)
And what's ironic is my husband and I just had some dealings with a functional doctor to help him with some issues, blah, blah, blah. And she's really big on the sleep, the circadian rhythm. And we've just noticed after kind of a month of practicing some of that, those things that my husband is dreaming like.

like really in depth and in detail and I'm thinking that he's sleeping more soundly. yeah, sleep is a thing. I mean, it's important.

speaker-1 (19:44)
It is so important, yeah. We couldn't stress that enough. No. And we, in our house, we do not have... My husband and I talk about it all the time. We need to come up with, you know, a routine for the evenings where we wind down. And we have intentions to start that every day. We just haven't gotten there. And some days we do and I'm like, wow, this is so lovely.

I, we just still live in so much chaos right now that we're, we're having a difficult time making it every single night. You'll get there. So Ingrid, when your father passed away and your mother and you and your mother initially became very close, what did that closeness look like in your day to day life?

speaker-2 (20:21)
Over there.

What?

speaker-0 (20:35)
⁓ I refer to that season as Mom and Me Against the World.

You know, I think it, I think it.

⁓ it's almost like your entire, the entire, like you said, day to day life is.

is upended because our whole lives revolved around the chores related to the cows, related to the farm, which of course she had to get rid of right away. There was no way she could continue that, which meant we ate differently, we drove to church differently, like together, and

I guess really we didn't necessarily grieve together, but at the same time, we also did a lot of talking. Well, my mom and dad were both talkers, our whole family. You can't get us to stop. So mom and I talked a lot and it was never, there might be just a teary moment of

you know, I miss your dad or I wonder what dad would do or I wonder. ⁓ But it was it was it was more just the. Well, what are we going to make for dinner tonight? Or how late are you working? Because by then, as those years, I got to be. ⁓ Graduated high school and just starting into college and. ⁓

So I was becoming more independent, know, had part-time jobs and all that good stuff. but let's say my first job, um, and she would still have to drive me to it. Um, then, and pick me up and then we'd talk about it. Like she'd want to hear about it. So I don't know that I can't quite put that into words, but we also had a problem solve together. Like.

whether it was a health problem, whether it was an automobile problem, you know, and, ⁓ okay, my car won't start or I need new tires or whatever. And then she would ⁓ say, well, you should call so-and-so because that's who she and my dad always called or the mechanic that they always went to. So it's very practical things like that.

speaker-2 (23:19)
So you guys.

speaker-1 (23:20)
It sounds like you two are extremely independent and opposite, but you came together and worked together as a team and that was your closeness.

speaker-2 (23:26)
huh.

speaker-0 (23:27)
Very much so. Yeah. And because you share the same... Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's the same. It's the person that we both were missing is the same person.

speaker-1 (23:32)
Grief.

Yeah, and everything changed again when she got remarried. What was that moment for you when you realized that the anchor you had found in her was starting to shift towards somebody else?

speaker-2 (23:45)
Yeah.

Ugh.

speaker-0 (23:55)
It was, it was an emotional landmine. ⁓ So I have to preface this with, know, none of us in our family would say any of us ranked really high on the ⁓ intimate relationship skills, you know. ⁓ We got along with people, but sometimes just the nuts and bolts of really knowing a person or really connecting.

Not so good. So anyway, so I was probably a little bit emotionally stunted in the first place and then you lose your dad and you just, you just gut it out and you keep going. And so, yeah, what that was like was when she started dating people and they were all decent, decent men. It was this battle inside of intellectually and, ⁓

Morally, I'm like, absolutely fair game mom, you know That's fine. You go for it. But emotionally I was like, I can't go there with you. I'm not excited I don't want to hear about your dates. I'm I'm mmm This just too weird. It's just too weird and she did try but that kind of level of communication like that's what I'm getting at is that level of communication of trying to explain to your Just about grown-up daughter

why you're doing this or what it's like or ask me how did I feel about it. That never occurred. That never occurred. And so I was 19 and I was getting ready to leave to go visit some friends at college. And that's when my mom announced that she and Ken were going to get married. I'm like, yay, but I gotta go. I was stood up for her as her maid of honor. And if you see those photographs, ⁓ I'm not a happy camper.

And so, ⁓ it was, always stayed respectful of him and her, but I kept my distance. And that's one thing I regret, especially with, with, ⁓ Ken was his name. was a, he was a kind, gracious man in many ways opposite, as far as temperament of my dad cared about mom.

was a Christian guy, whatever, all good. But I kept my distance and I'm really sorry, because they had a marriage of, I don't know, it 25 years or more. And they never expected to have that long. And I was sorry that I always held him at arm's length. He never wanted to be my quote unquote dad. That was never an issue. So yeah, so it pushed me to be more independent.

speaker-1 (26:33)
Yeah.

Yeah. We talk a lot about independence, but sometimes that independence is actually a wall that we build to protect ourselves from feeling that abandon abandonment again. is that wall why it might have taken you a while longer to decide to get married back then? Because nowadays people are choosing to get married, you know, later than later than they were years ago. But was there a fear that letting someone close ⁓

that close, did that mean like it was giving them the power to leave?

speaker-0 (27:22)
Oh yeah, yeah, for sure. And again, it's the intellectual versus the emotional interior battle. so when I, my husband and I knew each other all the way back through grade school, but we didn't start actually dating, you know, till I was almost 30. And it just felt so natural. We had so much fun. It was easy to talk to. We grew up in the same,

speaker-2 (27:28)
Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (27:51)
like a mile and a half from each other, went to the same grade schools, et cetera, et anyway, so one day we go for a walk and we walked the farm and it was winter. he says to me, at the beginning of the walk, he says, so how about we get married?

speaker-1 (28:13)
I love it.

speaker-0 (28:15)
Okay, I need to talk about this later. Let's just go for a walk. I was pretty wigged out. was surprised. I was happy. was like, wow, shocked. so smart man. And he is very real. He's very good relationally and, and, ⁓ conversations and whatnot. And, ⁓ he just, at the end of our walk, I think it was, said, well, I, I know I've been around the block here and I know that you're who I want.

speaker-2 (28:19)
I'm

speaker-0 (28:45)
and you tell me when you're ready. Smart man. Because to push me at that time would have pushed me away. So I was considering that, thinking about that, and it was a habit of mine to fast and pray at important junctures. And so I'd been fasting and praying and I stopped in at church and I ⁓ was talking with one of the pastors there that he and I served together. He was the youth pastor, whatever.

He said, so what are you doing today? So I shared with him when I was fasting and praying and like, you know, I like David, it feels really great and natural and he's a believer. and I said, but, ⁓ I'm concerned that he could die. Everybody's like, ⁓ getting married, getting engaged. it's such a happy thing. But in my experience, heard my mother,

sobbing, gut wrenching, crying. And I don't think it was even more than twice, maybe only one time did I hear her in her bedroom. And it only takes one time when you're 15 to hear your mother grieving like that to go, yeah, it's all fun and games until they're dead. I don't know if I want to sign up for that. Do I want to sign up for that? And this pastor Mike said to me, well, you know,

We're called to walk by faith. Whatever that looks like. You have to walk by faith if you stay single. You have to walk by faith if you marry. You have to walk by faith if you have kids. If you don't have kids, it's all about walking by faith and trusting God. I'm like, okay then, I get that. I can get behind that. Let's go. And so. So. ⁓

speaker-1 (30:40)
Yeah.

Yeah. understand abandonment wholeheartedly. I was adopted and I always had abandonment issues. I was always scared that I was going to be left, even though my mom raised me. She did a good job. ⁓ But that fear is always there. Is someone going to leave me? Am I not good enough? So I understand that. But what I would like to know is how do we start to soften that? What is the first step in trusting the creator to hold us when we have spent years

being our own protector. What is that? How does that look?

speaker-2 (31:14)
Mmm.

speaker-0 (31:17)
Well, even just recently, in being an independent author, self-published author, I mean, I have a publisher, Morgan James, which they're great, but you're still an independent author and it's not easy. And so I'm bringing this up because for me,

I mean, all my married life with David and we have 30 plus years going on this. 32, something like that. That's wonderful. Yeah. So, um, but he, first of all, that's how, that's where the creator started to fix things was my husband, David is wired for team. He is wired for team.

He's he, he can work independently. He's a hard worker, whatever alone, but he's, is a thousand times more creative and inspired and entered energized when he's working with someone and whatever that might be. And so I've been learning from that, but what really got my attention is the frustration of I'm doing all the things that all the

All the gurus tell self-published authors to do, and all the marketing, and all the this, that, and 1,600 other things. I'm trying. I'm trying. And I'm not seeing any results. It's a...

So discouraging. I just, go-to is, well, the answer must be, I'm not working hard enough. no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. And God's like, that is not true. It's great that you know how to work hard and persevere, but that is not the answer. And so ⁓ what I've done recently is, so really it's frustration that has driven me back to...

⁓ it's my Achilles heel of independence. It's my Achilles heel of working alone. And it was my husband who suggested, who watches me be frustrated, watches me be disappointed in this part of my work and my life. And he's like, well, what we do at work is we have a team meeting every Monday, whatever. And we just like, look at the week's coming and you say like, you need to get ahold of your, my editor is also, ⁓

a dear friend. She's known me my whole life. So my editor of both my books, Terry, and my tech guy who does the website, he's like, just do a zoom meeting every week with them, the three of you, and go from there. And it changed my entire attitude because I wasn't working in a vacuum by myself. And it's just been so healthy. So it for me to, to, to, to shave off some of that independence took

me to be incredibly discouraged before I would. I gotta look at this differently.

speaker-2 (34:30)
Yeah.

speaker-1 (34:33)
So Ingrid, let's talk a little about your second book, Becoming an Orphan. In there, you talk about the weight of the caregiving season. ⁓ And this is where you discuss the loss of your mother. ⁓ So tell us what's something that many women hold onto about their parents that actually makes that season of caregiving harder.

speaker-0 (35:00)
Yeah, yes. as I talk more and more with people becoming orphans, you know, they can see their parents aging or they've lost one or whatever, whatever stage you're in in that. ⁓ And I felt it myself. So of the three of us kids, I happened to be the one that was close by and probably the closest to mom. so the

tasks, like she lost her driver's license. so taking her places fell to me. And at first, there was this panic of, okay, I have no idea how I'm going to take, how I'm going to keep managing my life, which is full to the edges, no margin, which is not a good thing. ⁓ And then all of what she's done, she was very active.

She was very active and a lot of it involved driving her car to go wherever she was going. So I think what people, I think women especially, have the misconception in their head that two really powerful ones is either one, I have to do everything. I have to do everything.

speaker-2 (36:20)
Hmm.

speaker-0 (36:22)
That is not healthy and is not true. But if you don't combat it right from the get go, you'll get buried by it. You don't have to do everything. and secondly, and I'll give an example of, of, of combating them. And secondly, that I have to do this perfectly, that I should know, I should know how to do that. That's like, wait, wait, stop.

speaker-2 (36:45)
Yes.

speaker-0 (36:49)
So my other work is as a pianist. And so I teach lessons every day of the week for years, a lot of years. And even though I don't have children, it's the, here's the example there of I have to do this perfectly. No, I don't think so. Why would I say that? Why would I say those harsh words to myself when I would never even imagine thinking that or you as moms saying that

to one of your little ones who's trying to learn how to do something. Even like when they try to learn to walk and they fall. Do we scorn them? Do we like, what's your problem? No, because they're learning. Any of my students, when I'm teaching them a new concept, some of them may get it a little quicker the next week than the others, but it's just learning. So.

speaker-1 (37:22)
them.

Yeah.

speaker-0 (37:45)
I don't know why we have in our head that we should do it perfectly when it's something we've never done before. It's it's ridiculous. It's just not even logical. And the second is I have to do it all myself. I don't think so. So great example was, and one of the chapters in my book, a caregiver's guide is, ⁓ creating your team. What does your team look like? You need a team.

speaker-1 (37:51)
Cause we're

speaker-2 (37:52)
Thank

speaker-0 (38:15)
And so I had the simple piece of, can't go down. I don't have three or four hours to go down to Illinois every week and help them on grocery shopping. I don't. So at that time, Peapod was a grocery, come to your house, you order it online and they drop it off at your house, long before COVID, right? And so I'm like, dang, okay, we're going to use that.

speaker-2 (38:25)
I

speaker-0 (38:42)
And mom was a little wigged out by it, but it created a wonderful weekly connection. And once we got it done and she understood how it worked. Great. The other huge thing was when she lost her driving privileges, I called the church secretary at the church. She knew who I was because I grew up there. She knew who mom was. I explained, you know, she's got cardiac rehab and she visits friends and she comes on Sunday to teach Sunday school and she's blah, blah, blah. And I said, I just need somebody to drive her.

everywhere. She's like, and the secretary said, I know exactly the person to call handled. She'll set it up. She'll set up a driving team. That was it. I was on the phone for five minutes and it was a beautiful thing. They got to know mom. She got to know them. They even the people on that driving team got to know each other because when they'd have to like, shoot, I have an appointment that day. Can you pick Marianne up? yeah. Not a problem.

speaker-2 (39:39)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

speaker-0 (39:41)
So created this beautiful network.

speaker-1 (39:43)
No.

Community. love it. And I that is such great advice. My my next question for you was, you know, how can we prepare ourselves when we find ourselves in that next season of, you know, becoming the elders and the caregivers and, you know, how to work through that. And I think you just explained that perfectly, you know, to give ourselves grace to

allow ourselves to learn the process and to reach out to our communities. Yeah, that's what we are going to do and are in the process of doing here at Women Folk Revival. That's what we are all about. We are all about networking, building this community to network because somebody might know something that you don't know. So if we all come together as women, because we all like to do everything,

I know I like to do everything by myself without his help. I will build a house without this man. I'm telling you. And don't, if I ask you to do it now and you don't start, I will get started immediately. So, you know, that's just how we are. We're, we're strong, we're fierce and, and we're just, know, we're about that, but we need help. We need, we're not here to teach everybody everything. We don't know everything, nor are we trying to know everything. We need to be resourceful.

and we need to build our community with networks. Somebody may know something others don't. That's how we thrive. We're a village, a village of women folk. So as you're listening today, take a moment to reflect on your own story, the home you came from, the patterns you've carried, and what you are choosing to protect and nurture for the ones coming after you. If you wanna dive deeper into these stories, we invite you to check out Cellophane Farm and Becoming an Orphan.

They are beautiful reminders that even the quietest lives hold extraordinary meaning. Thank you for being here with us at Women Folk Revival and until we gather again, stay rooted and stay wild. Stay wild.