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
