Turning Panic Into Motion…

I just finished a ten-day horsemanship clinic.

It was exactly what I needed.

Horses have a way of bringing me back to the present moment. Considering we were also roping, there’s very little room for distraction when you are connecting your thousand-pound animal to another live animal with a rope… And your fingers are somewhere in the mix.

It’s fairly dangerous, but that also makes it exciting and forces me to be fully in my body instead of lost in my head.

So even though I ended the clinic tired and sunburned and rope burned, it was a very good week.

Then I came home.

Funnily enough, all the things I left unfinished did NOT magically fix themselves while I was out living my best cowgirl life.

Weird.

The garden plants are still dying from some mysterious herbicide situation.

The half-done bathroom remodel is still staring at me every time I walk past it.

The fence still does not exist.

The financial accounts still need to be addressed and organized.

The dust from the next-door field continues to enter my house through closed windows and coat everything in a fine layer of silt.

As I surveyed the situation, my brain did what it loves to do when life gets loud: it took five separate problems, threw them into a blender, and handed me one giant smoothie of panic.

Nothing was actually on fire, but it sure felt like it was.

This is the part where another content creator might would tell you they lit a candle, journaled peacefully, and surrendered to the process.

But I didn’t.

I freaked out for a minute… Cried a little… Walked in circles for a bit…

And then remembered I actually do know how to handle this.

Whenever my life starts feeling like a junk drawer, I have learned the most merciful thing I can do is to stop trying to hold it all in my head.

I don’t know much about neuroscience, but I suspect our brains were not meant to be storage units. At least mine isn’t.

They are not meant to hold the garden troubleshooting, the bathroom timeline, the fence supply list, the financial questions, the dinner plan, the kid schedule, and the vague dread of “what if this all falls apart?” at the same time.

Yet we carry it all around like a tangled ball of yarn, then wonder why we feel exhausted before we’ve even begun.

For me, the antidote is ALWAYS mapping.

It’s not about fixing everything or becoming a higher-capacity woman or even more coffee.

Just mapping.

For me, that looks like writing down everything swirling in my brain and then attaching the next smallest action to each thing, like this:

The garden plants are struggling big time. I know there is some sort of herbicide damage involved (more thoughts on this soon…) So my action is: test the soil and call the Wyoming Department of Agriculture for ideas.

The half-done bathroom remodel feels overwhelming and halted and gross. So my next action is: paint the vanity (and watch a bunch of videos on how to change out a light fixture).

The fence is still just a vague, looming idea. So my next action is: meet with a friend, walk the space, and make a supplies list.

The money and accounts feel scattered. So my next action is: have the call with my financial advisor.

The dust in the house is making me crazzzzy. So my next action is: order a crapload of weather stripping.

None of those actions magically fixes the whole problem. But the weirdest thing is that even before anything is technically fixed, writing it out makes me feel better.

Because once it’s written down, the problem is defined. It’s no longer just a foggy, looming mass taking up space in my brain. It has edges. It has shape. It has somewhere for me to start.

I’ve learned that overwhelm thrives most in vagueness.

It feeds on the big, sweeping, dramatic stories our brains love to tell: Everything is too much. I’m behind. I don’t know where to begin. I’ll never get caught up.

No wonder we freeze.

But the moment I can turn the swirl into a sentence, and the sentence into one small action, something shifts.

The problem may not be solved, but it is no longer shapeless. And for me, that makes a huge difference.

This is why I always include brain dump sections in my planners. They give the chaos a place to land.

When I can take the swirling ideas out of my brain and put them on a page, they lose their stranglehold on me.

I love the old adage, “action cures fear.” But action cures a lot of other things too. It cures fog and paralysis and that dreadful feeling that everything on your plate is too big, too tangled, too late, too much.

And simple action is enough.

It may not always be Instagram-worthy, but it is how life gets built. And rebuilt.

One phone call, one errand, one coat of paint at a time.

So if your life feels like a junk drawer right now, maybe don’t try to solve the whole thing today. (Speaking to the choir here…)

Just name the thing.

Write down the next smallest action.

And do that.

I’ll be doing it right alongside you.

-Jill

The post When Everything Feels Out of Control, I Do This appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

I’m writing this in between moments at a horsemanship clinic, with dust on my boots, sun-burned lips, and approximately fourteen other things I’m supposed to be doing.

And that feels oddly appropriate, because this thing I made was never meant to be a glossy, perfect-life sort of project.

It was built in the middle of real life… Around full days and late dinners. Around kids and animals and business and weather and the never-ending question of what in the world we’re going to eat tonight.

But somehow, right in the middle of all that, there’s still room for the ordinary magic: flour on the counter, onions sizzling in butter, a pot of soup on a dark winter night, and the quiet satisfaction of making something with your own two hands.

So today, I finally get to officially share it with you:

My new cookbook, The Old-Fashioned on Purpose Cookbook, is coming Fall 2026.

This book is very much a sister to The Prairie Homestead Cookbook, but it also feels like a reflection of where I am now.

Still from-scratch. Still practical. Still deeply rooted in home and the land… But a little more seasoned now— in every sense of the word.

Inside, you’ll find the recipes and kitchen rhythms I return to again and again: simple meals for real life, flexible frameworks, everyday bread and sourdough, from-scratch staples, preserving guides, and the sort of food that reminds us the kitchen doesn’t have to be fussy to be meaningful.

There are no gold stars for doing it perfectly.

There are no rules that say you must churn your own butter while wearing linen and smiling serenely at a spotless counter. (Hallelujah for that!)

This book is for the days when you have beautiful garden vegetables spilling across the counter… and also for the days when you’re staring into the freezer at 5:12 p.m. hoping inspiration appears.

It’s for the old-fashioned cooks, the aspiring old-fashioned cooks, the tired cooks, the curious cooks, and the ones who just need a little nudge back toward the kitchen.

More than anything, I hope this book feels like an invitation: Back to your hands, back to your instincts, and back to the steady, grounding work of feeding yourself and your people with what you have, where you are.

I’ll be sharing more peeks behind the scenes soon—the cover, photos, recipes, and all the little details that went into bringing this project to life.

But for today, I just wanted you to hear it from me first:

The Old-Fashioned on Purpose Cookbook is officially on its way.

And I’m so glad I finally get to tell you.

-Jill

P.S. The book will hit shelves in October, but Barnes & Noble is running a preorder sale this week. Now through Friday, June 26, B&N Rewards members can get 25% off with the code PREORDER25. So if you already know you want a copy, this is a lovely time to grab it.

The post I Made You Something (and it’s finally feeling real….) appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

When a lifelong people-pleaser starts telling herself the truth.

I’ve spent most of my life trying to be easy….

Dependable. Predictable. Agreeable. My biggest aim was to never make waves or cause others to be uncomfortable…

But lately, I’ve become less willing to be easy. I’m not trying to be contrary for the sake of being contrary, but I’m finally telling myself the truth about what I can carry and what I can’t.

Now when I say truth, I’m not talking about scandals or shocking reveals. I’m referring to the quiet kind of honesty… the kind where you stop pretending something fits when it doesn’t. The kind where you realize you’ve been calling self-abandonment “peace.”

That’s the truth that will really rock your world.

You see, we like to believe truth will always make things easier and smoother, just like the platitudes promise:

“The truth will set you free.”

“Honesty is the best policy.”

Those statements are true and good. But what they fail to mention is that sometimes, before the truth sets you free, it burns the whole thing down.

As Lyz Lenz writes in her book, “Telling the truth is often a demolition project.”

The truth will show you which parts of your life were truly alive, and which parts were held together with duct tape and denial. And once you see the duct tape, it’s got to come off. But pulling it away tends to take skin and hair with it and that sort of thing makes people incredibly uncomfortable. And there is nothing I hate more than making people uncomfortable.

I’ve been a good-girl people-pleaser since birth. My specialty has been never making waves…. I was always the rule follower, the role model, and the good example. As a child, I was literally the girl people would pair up with the “trouble kids,” hoping I’d rub off on them.

I also hate conflict. I can sense a shift in someone’s tone from a mile away and immediately start adjusting myself to keep things from escalating. I’m very good at smoothing things over and keeping the peace, (usually at the expense of myself, but that’s a story for another day)….

And more than anything…. I really, really hate disappointing people.

Therefore, telling the truth in a way that cannot be smoothed over or polished up makes me want to crawl out of my skin.

I’ve learned that becoming more honest with yourself sounds lovely from the outside, but it actually makes things much messier first.

It confuses people who liked the older version of you. It unsettles the folks who preferred you predictable. And while there may be freedom on the other side, the crossing-over can feel a lot like death.

Maybe because it is a death of sorts: the death of old identities, old patterns, and the versions of yourself that once helped you survive, but can no longer carry you where you’re going. After all, most kinds of growth require something old to die first. That is the cycle of life.

Lately I’ve had to sit with the reality that becoming more honest with myself has disappointed people, simply because I stopped shaping myself into the version other people found easiest to understand. And sometimes when you do that, people don’t know what to do with you anymore.

I wish I could say it doesn’t sting, but that wouldn’t be true. It hurts. Especially since for so long, I measured my goodness by how little trouble I caused.

But the question I keep coming back to is this:

Am I going to disappoint others or disappoint myself?

Because at some point, we must stop abandoning ourselves for the approval of everyone else.

And there is a cost to becoming… To changing in front of people who prefer us unchanged.

But I know there is also a cost to staying the same long after the old version of you no longer fits.

Because the longer we pretend, the more expensive the pretending becomes.

And maybe that is where true becoming begins: when disappointing others becomes less terrifying than losing yourself. <3

Check Out These Related Writings:

• When Good Identities Become Cages (and how to break free)
• The Cage Was Never Locked
• The Gift of Not Belonging
• A Hard and Honest Update

The post The Cost of Becoming Yourself appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

I was one of those Breyer horse girls.

Surely you’ve known one. Maybe you were one.

My obsession ran deep. At my peak, I had hundreds of models. I showed them, traded them, painted them, and arranged them. It was intense, to say the least.

I was loading a beat-up old icebox into the back of my car the other day and had a déjà vu moment. There it was again: the same ridiculous thrill I used to feel when I’d find a Breyer horse at a garage sale.

Not a brand-new one in a box—those were boring. I liked the ones with scuffs or chipped ears. They were usually stuffed into a toy box with a bunch of other castaway things, but I could spot them immediately. I’d snatch them up and get the biggest thrill from cleaning them up and giving them a place of honor on my shelves.

And standing there that day, huffing and puffing with this old icebox wedged halfway into my car, I realized that part of me hadn’t disappeared.

She’d just been waiting for the right time to come back around.

I saw a post slide past my Instagram feed recently and it stopped my thumb mid-scroll.

It said, “Midlife is just coming back to who you were at sixteen and learning to love her again.”

I find a lot of truth in that… to a point.

You see, my sixteen-year-old self was wildly dogmatic, highly self-righteous, and convinced she had most things figured out. I’m not interested in ever returning to that version of myself.

But I also don’t believe that was actually my true nature—it was conditioning. The product of years spent trying to be the right sort of girl for the rigid religious environment that shaped so much of my youth.

No, the sixteen-year-old I’m talking about returning to is the girl underneath all that.

The one who loved horses since she could walk.

The one who constantly created.

The one who spent hours rearranging her room, writing stories, dreaming up little worlds, and seeing possibility in things other people overlooked.

The girl who was drawn to the old, the worn, and the forgotten.

I’ve talked a lot lately about shifting identities and what it feels like to shed old versions of ourselves. But I’m realizing I never really lost myself completely. Some of the truest pieces were just buried—under expectations, obligations, and the cages we so often build for ourselves.

But they’re still there if we dig a little.

And one of those pieces for me, as silly as it sounds, is my deep love of old and well-worn things.

There are various reasons that part of me got quiet for a while, but one of them is that I thought I needed to make things look more polished and professional. Unfortunately, somewhere in the pursuit of “put together,” I drifted away from the part of me that so loved the mismatched and imperfect.

Yet, as I set up my new house, this old love is coming back with a vengeance. And it feels amazing.

I’ve dragged home more old, tattered, chipped, worn, forgotten things in the past three weeks than I have at any other time in my life. And even though I haven’t started painting or wallpapering yet, this little house of mine is taking on the coziest, most eclectic feel.

And I’m saving so much money—even on the practical, unromantic stuff. (I found a super nice garden hose for $10 last week and it made my whole day. Because I am a nerd.)

The thrill of the hunt is addicting as it was back then. But now, instead of beat up model horses, now it’s a dining room table painted an awkward baby blue that’s begging to be refinished. The world’s coolest (and heaviest) antique ice box. A nondescript lamp waiting for a coat of emerald green spray paint. An old rocking chair with a lumpy cushion that will shine after a quick fabric swap.

The possibility is thick.

If you’ve listened to my podcast for any length of time, you know railing on the Industrial Revolution is a hobby of mine… and one of the things that’s bothers me the most is how quickly we learned to treat things as disposable.

Up until recently in human history, materials were hard to come by and things took effort to make. This meant people took care of what they had and there were entire industries built around repairing things.

I think about this when I’m wandering through an antique store and see a carefully preserved china dish or an ornate hairbrush or a handmade wooden chair.

Someone held onto that for a long time on purpose.

Why?

Because it had value and meaning. Because it would have been difficult to replace.

D.H. Lawrence wrote:

“Things men have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into
are awake through years with transferred touch, and go on glowing
for long years.
And for this reason, some old things are lovely
warm still with the life of forgotten men who made them.”

That’s what I feel when I find old things. Not always, of course. Some old things are just ugly old things. But sometimes you pick something up and it still has a pulse.

Can you imagine saving a hairbrush to pass along to future generations now?

That’d be ridiculous. Because most of the modern things we own—from hairbrushes to dishwashers to couches—are designed to serve us for a short time before making their way to the landfill while we run out to buy another.

Maybe that’s why secondhand things feel so grounding to me right now. I’m craving their weight, their history, and the evidence that life happened before me and will keep happening after me.

I don’t want this new old house of mine to feel like a furniture store showroom. I want it to feel collected, layered, human. And most of all, like me.

So I’m taking my time with it and gathering slowly. Seeking out sturdy things with evidence of time and wear. Objects with a story and plenty of life left in them as they wait to be useful again.

In the process, I’m coming home to a piece of me I had forgotten for a little while.

And I’m reminded that we can walk through the ruins and find bricks for a new path. (Literally, in my case—I’m picking up some old bricks from a friend next week for a garden path.)

Maybe that’s what coming back to my sixteen-year-old self really means:

Not returning to all her certainty or bringing back the self-righteousness or the narrow little boxes she thought would keep her safe.

But remembering the girl underneath.

I’m glad she’s still here.

And I think she’s going to love this house.

-Jill

P.S. Next week I’ll share a few of the more practical ways I’ve been finding my secondhand treasures, in case you’re inspired to do the same. I’m not a thrifting guru, but I have some ideas.

The post The Girl Who Saw Treasure in Junk appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.