In this conversation, Jade sits down with Meg Ulman (sadly not in person) — heart led writer, mother, educator, maker & one part of Artists as Family — to unpick what it really means to live on your own terms.

They trace the winding road toward a neo-peasant life — one defined less by nostalgia & more by intention. They talk about living with a fundamental trust in yourself to make decisions, parenting within community & the grit & grace of staying true to your values.

Meg describes herself as cash poor but time rich, together they explore what that trade-off really feels like.

They talk about the ache of impermanence — how everything we love we will lose —  what it means to become good at grief rather than trying to outrun it. What it feels like to feel alive, trusting your instinct to survive & holding a desire to be part of that holding — the invisible web that keeps us tethered to one another & to the earth itself.

Meg shares her reflections on solitude, on listening deeply to the land beneath her feet & on the quiet privileges of aging — not as decline, but as initiation. There’s talk of ritual, of story & of the small daily acts that remind us who we are.

It’s a conversation that doesn’t romanticise simplicity but celebrates the beauty & honesty of a life well noticed.

Links You'll Love

Artist As Family You Tube

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Show notes:

• The path to a neo-peasant life begins with tiny, conscious seeds — small shifts that grow into whole new ways of being
• To live authentically is to let your values lead, even when the world is shouting for you to do otherwise
• Raising kids in a web of real connection builds belonging that no algorithm can match
• To feel the full weight of love, we have to make peace with loss — grief is proof that we’ve lived deeply
• Parenting (and life) gets easier when we trust the quiet tug of intuition more than the noise of advice
• Simple living isn’t always easy — the work is real, but so is the satisfaction
• None of us are meant to do this alone; community is the net that catches us 
• Feeling the whole spectrum — joy, ache, awe — is what it means to be truly alive
• Sometimes self-discovery starts with walking away from the script you were handed.
• Rites of passage & initiations remind us where we’ve been, and mark who we’re becoming
• Listening with your body — not just your head — tunes you into the language of the earth
• Solitude isn’t loneliness; it’s the quiet space where truth grows roots
• Moving from maiden to elder 
• Aging is a privilege — each wrinkle a story of survival & grace
• Being time-rich beats being time-poor every single day

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