I have some personal news to share, and for weeks, I’ve been trying to summon the courage to write these words.

Christian and I are separating.

I use that word because “divorce” still gets stuck in my throat when I speak it. It feels foreign to my fingers when they attempt to type the letters.

But there’s no easy way to say it. No way to wrap it in a tidy bow and make it feel less jarring than it is.

This is not a category I ever planned to fit into. That label was for faraway people whose lives looked nothing like mine.

And yet, here I am.

We have chosen this. Both of us. Consciously. With full awareness of the weight of it.

The decision was mutual.

We’ve been married for nineteen years. We have built homes, businesses, a family, and a life I could never begin to untangle in a blog post. And because of that, I know there will be questions.

I also know there is no way I can explain nineteen years of marriage in a few paragraphs.

Nor should I.

Some things belong between two people. Some things belong to our children. And some things simply do not belong on the internet.

So I want to say this clearly from the beginning:

You will not see me airing private details or disparaging comments about him here. This decision was not born from scandal or drama, but rather from a series of revelations and honest conversations that brought things to a slow, grinding halt.

That does not mean the story is simple. It just means the whole story is not public property.

I also want to say this: Christian and I have always been good business partners. That part was real. We have created many things together and I will always honor that.

I don’t regret our years together or what we’ve built. We plan to remain friends and will continue to be partners in raising our children. We are both committed to navigating this in a way that protects them as much as possible.

This decision did not come lightly. It was not flippant. It was not casual. It was not born from one bad day.

And if it doesn’t make sense to you, that’s fine.

You haven’t lived my life. You haven’t been inside our relationship.

I realize that’s blunt, but I don’t mean it cruelly. It’s simply the truth.

So yes, from the outside, this looks fast. But from the inside, it has been a long time coming.

You see, I was raised to NOT air marriage troubles. Maybe that was right. Maybe it was wrong. I’m still sorting through that (yes, I have a therapist…). But that is what I did. I protected the private places. I kept the struggles off the internet and out of the community. I did not perform my pain in public so people would be prepared for the ending.

And I’m not sorry for that.

Therefore, I know people are surprised. Some are confused. Some may even be miffed that they didn’t know sooner.

But the truth is, people were not owed earlier access to something I was still trying to understand myself.

One of the most jarring parts of this process has been realizing how quickly people throw their own fears, beliefs, theology, pain, assumptions, and expectations on me when I tell them the news.

I know many don’t realize they’re doing it. But still…

When you’re in the middle of the most disorienting life change you’ve ever experienced, it is absolutely exhausting to be fielding everyone else’s reactions on top of your own grief.

So I will say this gently, but firmly:

Please know I have already wrestled—and continue to wrestle— with all of the questions, concerns, and judgments you may be tempted to send my way.

The disappointment.

The fear of what people would say.

The fear of being misunderstood.

The fear of letting people down.

The fear of blowing up the version of my life everyone thought they knew.

It is everything I can do to keep showing up in my tiny community and not become a complete hermit until people stop whispering and speculating.

But I am no longer willing to live my life from a place of fear of what others will think.

That doesn’t mean this is easy.

It is not.

It is grief and fear and sadness. It is also relief and clarity and hope. And everything is tangled together in an impossible knot.

As for what this online space will look like moving forward, I’ll still be here. Probably even more than before.

Writing is how I make sense of my life, and this next chapter will give me plenty to untangle, rebuild, and understand.

I’ll still be cooking. Still riding. Still gardening. Still building (I’m keeping the Soda Fountain and nothing will change there). Still asking hard questions. Still chasing old ways in a world that seems hell-bent on making us forget them.

But some things will shift, because my life is shifting.

I’ll also be writing about starting over, solo homesteading, and creating a new home. (I’m closing on a new homestead this week, just a few miles from our current one. I’ll tell you more about that soon.) I won’t be sharing private details of my relationship, but I will share what it means for me to grieve, rebuild, start over, and become.

Some of my more personal pieces may live behind a paywall, because that feels safer to me right now. Not because I’m trying to be mysterious, but because there is a difference between being honest and handing the rawest parts of your life over to the entire internet to critique.

People will make of this what they will. Some will understand. Some won’t. Some will stay. Some will leave.

Some people have already fallen away. Others have shown up for me in ways I’ll never forget.

That has been one of the surprising gifts in the middle of all this. Pain clarifies.

It shows you what was real and what was performative. And it shows you who can sit beside you in the ashes without needing you to explain every flame.

So this is where I am.

I’m not fixed. Not polished. Not finished. I’ve cried in public more in the last month than I ever have before. I’m certainly not offering a five-step lesson from the other side.

I’m just here.

Starting over.

Grieving what was.

Feeling hopeful for the future.

And walking toward what comes next.

-Jill

P.S. If you are a personal friend and this is the first time you’re hearing this, I’m sorry. I’ve tried to directly tell as many people as I could, but these conversations are heavy, and I’m tired. I know I’ve unintentionally missed some people. Please know that wasn’t because you don’t matter.

The post A Hard and Honest Update appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

“Jill, you’re up first.”

The second I hear the words, my stomach flops. My hands quiver as I pull my rope from the saddle and fumble through the coils, trying desperately to look competent while feeling the exact opposite.

You see, the movies have it all wrong.

They make you think when you finally do the thing you’ve wanted your whole life, it will feel heroic. Cue the epic soundtrack. Slow-motion victories. The triumphant moment where everything clicks into place.

But in real life, it feels more like a red face, pounding heart, and waves of nausea.

Sometimes the victory is hidden right in the middle of the most cringey, exposed, embarrassing moments your brain can conjure up.

Honestly, I think we need to talk about that more.

Learning to rope at age 40 has been humbling in every possible way. And not just privately humbling. Publicly humbling. The kind where you think, I cannot believe I just did that in front of actual people.

Missed shots. Dropped ropes. Bad swings. Lost dallies. Hitting my horse in the head with the rope. Hitting myself in the head with the rope. I’ve done it all, and then some.

And it does NOT feel good. It’s mortifying and horrifying and yet… I keep going back for more.

Now more than ever, I understand why it’s so hard for adults to learn new skills later in life.

It’s acceptable for a child to be a beginner. We expect it. We even cheer it on.

Adulthood is different. By the time you’ve built an identity and gathered some life experience, you’re used to moving through the world feeling somewhat capable. You know your lanes. You know how to protect your image and avoid looking like an idiot.

But when something new calls to you—or life demands a new stage of growth— just like that, you’re a beginner again.

And let me tell you: awkwardness hits a lot harder when you’re 40 than when you’re 14.

The humiliation is thick, man.

So lately, I’ve been repeating one phrase to myself over and over:

Embarrassment is the cost of entry.

I think one of the biggest reasons people stay stuck is not because they lack discipline, talent, or information. I think it’s because they cannot tolerate the feeling of looking foolish.

Because embarrassment rarely feels like a simple, harmless, Oh well, I messed up.

It feels more like: Oh no. I didn’t just mess up— I got exposed!!

And it burns. It burns right through the polish and performance and exposes the part of us that says we like growth—but only if said growth happens in a dignified, aesthetically pleasing way.

But my darling, that’s rarely how growth works.

Growth is awkward. Clumsy. Stretching. It kicks your ego square in the teeth.

But that is the cost of becoming. And it is worth every penny.

Because what is the alternative?

Whenever I feel scared of being seen in my fumbling beginner hood, I weigh the options. My conversations with myself go something like this:

Option A: Protect your ego. Stay in your lane. Keep up the appearance of competence. Avoid embarrassment. Avoid gossip. Avoid looking silly. But go to your grave never exploring the thing that tugged on your soul.

Option B: Go all in. Chase the dream. Ignore the peanut gallery. Let yourself be seen trying. Maybe look foolish. But actually live my one wild and precious life (thank you Mary Oliver.)

When I frame it that way, things get clear, fast. So I lean in.

Even when my face is red. Even when I feel like I’m drowning in self-consciousness. Even when I miss yet another calf with six cowboys watching.

Being a beginner has a way of stripping you down to the truth. It forces you to face yourself. It shows you how attached you were to that shiny image you’ve so carefully curated.

But if you can stay in that discomfort long enough, you eventually earn the greatest reward of all:

Real confidence.

Not the curated, surface kind. I mean the battle-tested kind. The kind that comes from walking straight through the fire, sticking with the thing, and coming out the other side with a few scars and a head held high.

That kind of confidence is life-changing.

And that’s why I keep putting myself in these wildly awkward situations.

Not just because they might eventually make me better, but because they’ve taught me I can trust myself.

And once you realize you can survive embarrassment, it loses some of its power.

That’s a superpower you’ll use for the rest of your life.

In starting a business.

In shifting your worldview.

In learning to cook, to ride, to lift, to lead, to make art, to build a life that actually fits you.

Even in leaving behind an old identity and fumbling your way toward a truer one.

So many people aren’t stuck because they’re incapable. They’re stuck because they are unwilling to be seen starting at ground zero.

So these days, when I feel the familiar flush of self-consciousness rise up… when I miss yet another calf… when I feel the weight of not being good yet… I try to remember:

This is not proof I’m failing.

This is proof I was brave enough to enter the arena. This is proof I have not arranged my whole life around protecting the illusion of competence.

And that feels like a worthwhile trade.

I doubt I’ll ever be a great roper, though I hope I get better eventually.

But I do know this:

Every time I pick up my rope and try again, I become someone I respect a little more.

And that is reason enough to keep going.

-Jill

P.S. My embarrassment mantra comes from this quote by Ed Latimore: “Embarrassment is the cost of entry. If you aren’t willing to look like a foolish beginner, you’ll never become a graceful master.”

P.S.S. These photos make me look way cooler than I am. Kudos to our amazing photographer, Kelly from Rugged Grace Photography.

The post Embarrassment is the Cost of Entry appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

I don’t cook like I used to. 

Actually, let me rephrase that. I cook a ton. I own a restaurant, and I just finished the manuscript for my second cookbook (it’s coming in October—eek). I cook every single day for many people.

But my personal cooking rhythms have drastically changed over the years.

I don’t know why that’s surprised me. I guess I naively assumed I’d be in the same little kitchen pattern forever. But life changes, and I now find myself with three (busy) older children, shifting businesses, and a more community-focused life than I ever envisioned.

The common belief, if you live a life like mine, is that home-cooked food isn’t possible…

…which is a rational and reasonable train of thought. Yes, it’s certainly harder to cook when you’re not home all day. And yes, I succumb to convenience more than I used to.

But the tension for me is that I still like cooking. I still love the process. And I still stand by the fact that it saves money, tastes better, and is healthier for us.

It just has to be on my terms these days… which means that anyone else’s system, spreadsheet, app, or color-coded meal plan absolutely does NOT work right now.

(Okay, let’s be honest— they’ve never worked for me… even in my most classic homemaker-ish era… but especially not now.)

So how DOES one cook in the midst of a somewhat full and slightly feral life?

I’m so glad you asked.

I don’t know.

Kidding… sort of. I’m actually do have some answers for you. Maybe.

But the answer certainly hasn’t been to strategically prep seven coordinated meals in matching glass containers on Sunday evening with pretty labels which I store in a spotlessly clean and organized refrigerator.

(Not only NO, but my fridge resembles a war zone complete with half-wilted celery, unidentified leftovers, and mysterious mason jars full of things I swore I didn’t need to label.)

Anyway, I’ve started to realize the problem wasn’t necessarily me. (Okay, maybe it is me… but I digress.)

 

The problem was me trying to force my life into a system that only works when the schedule is tidy and predictable. And my life is NEVER tidy or predictable.

So I decided to cook in a way that fits the life I actually have.

And that required a considerable flipping of the script. Aka: I don’t start with a recipe; I start with the ingredients that are in my fridge, pantry, freezer, or garden.

Yes, I realize that may sound obvious to some of you, but I don’t actually think it is. If it were, people across the country wouldn’t still be standing in front of their fridge every evening wondering what to make for dinner.

But this little, perhaps obvious shift, is everything. A pound of ground beef (or random bowls of browned beef left in the fridge) can become tacos, pasta, soup, a skillet meal, or something involving potatoes (always, always potatoes) if that’s the kind of day we’re having.

A bowl of leftover rice is a head start— not a cast-off.

The lingering veggies in the produce drawer can be rescued with a hot pan, a jar of broth, generous amounts of garlic, or a handful of cheese.

Basically, I’ve stopped asking, “What recipe am I making tonight?” and ask, “What can these random, somewhat eclectic ingredients become?”

It’s such a simple shift, but it’s changed everything. And it’s made me a better cook, too. Because when you stop needing an exact recipe for every meal, you start to see the patterns:

Soup is a pattern.

Tacos are a pattern.

Pasta is a pattern.

Hash is a pattern.

Once you know the patterns, you can just start building, and cooking becomes a fluid (dare I say magical?) process that borders more on art than science. It’s also how you get closer to that elusive, ever-mysterious “grandma cooking style,” where everything is measured by heart and tastes amazing with no recipe in sight.

 

You see, most of us were taught how to follow recipes, but NOT how to think in meals. How to open the fridge and spot possibilities. How to work with what we have instead of constantly running to the supermarket. How to turn a chaotic evening into a decent dinner anyway.

And THAT kind of real-life kitchen confidence is worth so much more than another pretty meal plan printable.

Now, just to be clear—I’m not anti-planning. But my planning has to be painless, (which means if it takes more than 90 seconds, I’m out). I can muster the energy to I write out the next two or three days’ worth of rough dinner ideas at the top of my planner. That’s it.

But because I think in patterns—not color-coded shopping lists or rigid recipes—it takes hardly any brainpower, which deeply matters to me these days.

My other big shift: I’ve stopped expecting every meal to be ultra creative.

Many of us have absorbed the idea that being a good cook means constantly reinventing the wheel—new recipes, new flavors, new ideas. But real-life cooking is far less glamorous than that. It’s repeating yourself a lot, relying on a handful of fallback meals, using up what’s in the fridge before it dies a slow death, and figuring out how to turn leftovers nobody wants into something people will actually eat. Mostly, it’s learning to make peace with “good enough” more often than your fantasy self would prefer.

But oddly enough, I’ve discovered I prefer cooking this way more than anything else. There’s a sort of alchemy to it that inspires me—the challenge of looking at what I have, knowing the constraints, and still making something good out of it.

 

That, more than anything, is why I built Meal Craft.

It didn’t come from some color-coded kitchen fantasy. It came from years of attempting to answer the same question over and over again: how do I feed people well when life is full, I only go to the grocery store twice a month, and I’m operating in a near-constant state of decision fatigue?

Eventually, I realized I didn’t need more recipes. I needed a different way to think about supper.

A way to look at what I already had and turn it into dinner without needing a brand-new Googled recipe, a perfect grocery haul, or some imaginary reserve of mental energy I did not possess that day.

That has been far more useful to me than rigid meal planning ever was.

So if you’ve struggled with meal plans in the past, maybe you don’t need a stricter system or more willpower.

Maybe you simply need a plan with a little more grace woven into it…

One that flows with real life…

One that helps you look at what you already have and say, okay… now what can this become?

If this way of cooking sounds like the kind of relief you’ve been craving, that’s exactly why I made Meal Craft. It’s the frameworks and systems I use to make supper work in the middle of real life, and maybe it’ll help you do the same.

—Jill

More of My Thoughts on Real Life Meal Planning:

• How I’m Cooking These Days (podcast episode)
• Yes, Home Cooking Matters. Here’s Why. (podcast episode)
• Why Meal Planning Doesn’t Work for You (and what to do instead!) (podcast episode)
• How to Cook for a Crowd (Without Losing Your Mind) (blog article)

The post My Anti-Meal Planning Manifesto appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.

Man, do I love efficiency.

I always have.

If I can make something more streamlined, less clunky, and even faster, that’s my love language. And I suppose it’s the love language of our modern world, too.

It can be a beautiful, useful impulse.

Until it isn’t.

After I published my last essay about celebrating humanity in the things we create, someone emailed me about a Bible camp they’d attended, where the curriculum they used was prepackaged videos and scripted lessons. The writer of the email wondered how effective it could truly be and if the kids could find meaning in something that felt so impersonal and canned.

The same day, a friend emailed to tell me about someone they knew who was so excited to discover that AI could edit their book manuscript. My friend shared her sadness at what might be lost when words aren’t shaped and crafted by human hands.

I nodded my head to each of these emails, while also feeling a rumbling sense of uneasiness.

Easy vs. hard.

Human vs. machine.

Meaningful effort vs. wasted time.

The kind of struggle that shapes you vs. the kind of struggle you should be outsourcing.

How do we know the difference? How do we find the balance? Can we have our easy cake and eat it too?

This is a non-stop wrestling match for me. And I’ve come to the conclusion that, once again, two things can be true at once.

This isn’t binary. It’s not “easy good, hard bad,” or vice versa.

I find the question I’m asking these days isn’t whether choosing efficiency is right or wrong, but rather:

Where are shortcuts serving me, and where are they flattening something that brings color and depth to my life?

And like anything juicy and useful in life, the answer is always: It depends.

Sigh. That’s my least favorite answer. Black and white is so much nicer… But the gold is always found in the gray.

You see, what’s right for you in the easy vs. hard debate will look different depending on the person, the stage of life, and the situation.

There is no simple formula.

For example, I have a little bot on Instagram that sends people information when they ask about a specific podcast or one of my online courses. (It’s not AI—just an automation.) It saves me HOURS each month of cutting and pasting the same replies over and over. It helps me serve people better and keeps me from spending dozens of hours in my DMs, which isn’t great for my mental health (or my eyesight). In that case, I’m thrilled to hit the “easy” button and let Mr. Robot do the repetitive work.

On the flip side…

I’ve been a content creator since 2010 and have tried countless “easy breezy content systems” over the years. In the past, if a guru told me they could help me turn one idea into fifty pieces of content, I’d beg them to take my money. I’ve signed up for more of those programs than I can remember.

Do those systems work?

Technically, yes. And they can indeed produce mountains of content.

But every single time, they fall flat for me. The material I’ve produced through them has been content, sure… but it always feels like it’s missing something and no one interacts with it. People can feel the difference.

And so, I continue to produce my content the old-fashioned, rather inefficient way: I create bits and pieces for each individual platform… and almost always, the things I create in the heat of the moment, the off-the-cuff observations, and the slightly unhinged sermons I write in my head in the shower at 10:37pm resonate the most.

I couldn’t optimize the process if I tried… and I’ve since realized I don’t want to.

This same tension shows up in my restaurant.

A restaurant has a billion moving pieces and there are some aspects where I BEG for convenience. We started using reservation software for our dinner nights a few months ago, and it has been a LIFESAVER. I have zero desire to manage 60 reservations each night manually.

But at the same time, I refuse to put QR codes on the tables for people to use as menus.

I could if I wanted to. I know how to do it. And it’d certainly save my staff time by not having to deliver menus to each table.

But I want people to hold the menu. I want my young servers to connect with guests when they walk in. I want the guests to feel seen. I want there to be at least one tiny pocket of life left where not everything has been frictionlessly optimized into a screen. I want the experience of dining with us to feel human.

And so, I contradict myself. A lot.

Sometimes people accuse me of being a hypocrite… which makes me laugh and say, “Well duh!”

I will absolutely preach efficiency in one breath and choose deliberate inconvenience in the next.

I will buy store-bought tortillas to save time one day, while making a loaf of sourdough bread that requires a 10-hour rise the next.
I will automate repetitive DMs while refusing to let AI turn one podcast into 89 pieces of content.
I will use software to book restaurant tables, edit my photos, and build sales pages while simultaneously rejecting QR code menus.
I will streamline one part of life and purposely keep another part gloriously inefficient.

And it bothers me zero percent.

The point isn’t to form a rigid philosophy we can apply across every square inch of our lives. Rather, the point is to be awake enough to notice what certain shortcuts are stealing from our lives.

Is technology removing meaningless friction from my days? Or removing meaning from my life altogether?

Is it protecting my energy so I can use it elsewhere? Or simply saving time so I can spend more hours scrolling my phone?

Perhaps one of the strange luxuries of being alive in this modern moment is that we get to choose. Our ancestors couldn’t opt out of most hardships, but we can. And we can also decide to opt-in to meaningful struggle when it makes sense.

We get to decide when convenience is a gift and when it is a thief. We get to decide which frictions are worth removing, and which ones give shape and meaning to our days.

And we get to remember: not every hard thing is holy. But not every easy thing is harmless either.

More Deep Thoughts on Modernity:

• In Defense of Imbalance
• The Cost of Cheap Information
• When Modernity Leaves Us Wanting
• Being Old-Fashioned on Purpose
• When the Old Ways Make More Sense

The post Easy isn’t Always Better, but Hard isn’t Always Holier appeared first on The Prairie Homestead.