Pivotal People
Join us in conversations with inspiring people doing amazing things. Their insights and experiences help motivate all of us to find our purpose that fits with our abilities, gifts and life situation. Get a "behind the scenes" look at successful people making a difference in the world and benefit from their advice for the rest of us. Our guests include authors, artists, leaders, coaches, pastors, business people and speakers.
Pivotal People
Brenda Yoder's Guide to a Compelling and Balanced Life
Author, educator, speaker and counselor Brenda Yoder shares her journey from being a stay-at-home mom to a mental health counselor on this episode of Pivotal People. Brenda's new book, "Uncomplicated: Simple Secrets for a Compelling Life" is thought-provoking and inspiring. She guides readers in understanding how to have balance and fulfillment in spite of life's complexities, finding contentment wherever they are.
Brenda shares her perspective of living in an Amish community, learning how their timeless virtues can lead to a balanced and vibrant life. Throughout the conversation, Brenda emphasizes the importance of integrating traditional values and modern advancements, drawing valuable lessons in wisdom and sustainability that inspired her book, "Uncomplicated."
Connect with Brenda at https://brendayoder.com/
Order Stephanie's new book Imagine More: Do What You Love, Discover Your Potential
Learn more at StephanieNelson.com
Follow us on Instagram @stephanie_nelson_cm
Follow us on Facebook at CouponMom
I would like to welcome Brenda Yoder to the Pivotal People podcast. Brenda is an author. She's a counselor, a speaker and an educator. We're going to talk today about her second book. Her first book was Fledge Launching your Kids Without Losing your Mind, and she also was a co-host of the Midlife Moms podcast. She also hosts a podcast I've listened to which is really great, called Life Beyond the Picket Fence.
Speaker 1:She covers a variety of topics on faith, life and family beyond the storybook image. I love that. She's currently a part-time elementary counselor and a therapist in private practice. She's a mom, she's a grandparent. She lives in I can't pronounce it a small community in Indiana where she loves gardening and spending evenings sitting in her front porch rocker. She makes it sound very calm and peaceful, and today we're going to hear more about what her real life is and how she has managed to have it be calm and peaceful and experience contentment in the middle of real life. Her book, which we're going to talk about her new book, which I have read and I loved this is such a great book. It even has a beautiful cover. It's called Uncomplicated, simple Secrets for a Compelling Life. We all need that. So welcome Brenda. Thank you so much for being here.
Speaker 2:Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited about our conversation.
Speaker 1:Yes, we talked a little bit before we started recording. I would love for you to share your story who you are, how you do life and how you came to write this book for the rest of us.
Speaker 2:Sure, so I'm Brenda Yoder. I'm a licensed mental health counselor. As you mentioned, I'm a former teacher, so I was a stay-at-home mom when my kids were little. I have a. My BA is in education. So I was a history teacher for several years, then went back to graduate school when I was about 40 and got my clinical mental health counseling license. But I also wanted the opportunity to still work in the school, so I did a dual program and got my school counseling license at the same time from a different university.
Speaker 2:So go big or go home. If you're going to do it, get as much out of your education as you can. And I did that while my four kids were still at home. My oldest was in high school, getting ready to go to college, and our college experiences actually overlapped for about a year. I do have four kids. They're all three years apart. So we always had kids at different stages, right, you had a high schooler, a middle schooler, elementary and a preschooler, and then we had a junior high and a high school and a college and out of college on the mission field.
Speaker 2:So our life has always been active, it has always been full, and I currently am a part-time school counselor. I job share in a K-4 building. Covid kind of sent me from speaking full-time and doing my private practice on my own back into the schools because I needed to be with people when everything shut down. And it has been a blessing to work part-time in a school which then allows me to do things like write books outside of school. So I'm married to my husband. We've been married for 35 years. He was raised on a dairy farm his whole life. By the time we got married we were high school sweethearts and we went to Purdue University, came back to our small town of Shipshawana, indiana, which is the number one tourist destination of the Midwest, voted that this year, wow.
Speaker 1:Now say the name again, because I couldn't say it. It has 147 letters. It does.
Speaker 2:It's Shipshawana, indiana. Okay, so I'll get to that story about our town in just a minute. So my husband and I came back home and he was a dairy farmer and a teacher for about 20 of our 35 years. He managed the dairy while he also taught high school math. So I was a dairy farmer's wife for the first half of our 35 years. He managed the dairy while he also taught high school math. So I was a dairy farmer's wife for the first half of our marriage. He is one of four boys, so the older two brothers farm full time. We farmed as long as we had the dairy and now we have our own little mini farm within the larger family farm. We raise goats, chickens, we raise Bernice Mountain Dogs, we have an Airbnb in our home and he currently drives for an Amish lumber company because he retired from teaching. So that's kind of what we do now. We have three little grandbabies. We've got two on the way. Two of our kids are married, two are not. They all live out of the area. So I'm speaking less because I'm on the road visiting my kids and my grandkids more.
Speaker 2:And your question about what drove me to write this book? So I've lived my whole entire life in this small little community where we have a lot of Amish neighbors about half of our community is Amish and growing up and even being an adult in this life, I have always probably believed this narrative that the best life is always someplace else, and I think that's maybe true for all of us. But when you live in a really small town where things take a long time to get to you like trends take a long time to get to you you look around and you have Amish horse and buggies on the road. There's not a lot of change that happens in your community. I believe the lie that I couldn't fully thrive unless I really was living someplace else, and I'm really embarrassed to say that because God had provided me a vibrant life. But I think when we're always looking at the thing outside of our reach that discontentment we tend to believe that lie.
Speaker 2:When COVID happened, it was the very first week of the shutdown and I think, if all of us remember back to that, it was in mid-March and I was really in a place of fear, like we all were. But I kept on asking when is this going to change? Like when is this going to get better? And I was out on my porch, our front porch, and I was just kind of asking God, like what's happening here, and I was reading in Psalm chapter 90, and there's a verse in Psalm 90 says that says we need to number our days, that when we number our days that we will gain a heart of wisdom. And that really struck me and I thought what if these days are all that there is? And there was an email that came to me during that time from a mentor that had. The question in the email was what if this life is as good as it gets? And I sat with that and I just thought, what if things don't change?
Speaker 2:And then that's when a horse and buggy went by in front of my house on a busy well, normally a busy highway, but not during COVID, during the shutdown. And it's then that it was like the Lord showed me. You know what your old processes in your community still work Like everyone else can't figure out how to go on with the next steps of their life. But guess what? My Amish neighbors, their life is still going on. It was spring planning time and I remember talking to my brother-in-law over at the farm, probably about the second or third day into the shutdown and you know it was spring planning time and he was going to get the tractor out and go start disking the fields like we always do every spring, like Ron's grandpa did 100 years ago, like generations of farmers have done every year. And it's then that I started realizing that these kind of old fashioned but natural systems of life still work. And it doesn't matter how much technology we have, it doesn't matter what is happening in the broader world, god's ways still work. And it's then that God really started showing me that the life he had given me here, in this very small town, here as a farmer's wife, here as someone who has always believed that that vibrant, compelling life was always in the fast lane, where you know, in the big cities and the suburbs, that maybe we had something here that the world needs during this time.
Speaker 2:And then fast forward just a couple months later when our Airbnb had opened back up again and some of our guests were leaving and they said you're so rich, I envy you. And I looked around and I thought we live on a teacher's salary, we're not high flyers here. But it's then, as we had this discussion, that he said you guys have something here, not just us personally at our farm, even though they meant that. But people come to our community for a reason, even though they meant that. But people come to our community for a reason, and one of the reasons they come is because there is an element of that old-fashioned, grounded lifestyle that in most other places is lacking. But at the same time we are not like stuck in time. We are the most visited tourist destinations in Midwest. We have big name people coming to our town, jay Leno's coming to my town next year and we have the one, the largest light praise. That just happened a few days ago. About 35,000 people came last year and yet when the tourists aren't here, life still goes on for us. We still shop at our hardware store, we still go to church on Sundays. Everything shut down on Sundays because our values are that that's not how we do things here. We're in church on Sundays. So that's what really started compelling me to write Uncomplicated and probably the final piece that tied it all together was something I had observed in the counseling office even before the pandemic, and that was a lack of kind of balanced thinking in a lot of the people that I work with of the resources that we used to always have in our back pocket of being able to think more reasonably, think in more common sense and not vacillating between fatalism and idealism.
Speaker 2:And I started noticing that probably around 2016, 2017. And I think all of these things kind of snowballed to this place where I realized, you know, god's ways are the best ways. Humans don't change, even though our environments change around us. And with social media and with technology, with AI, you know we think we have to do those things in order to have a thriving personal and professional life, or we have to sell everything and go, move out on the back 40 and buy a homestead or become Amish in order to have this peaceful lifestyle we really desire. And my answer is it uncomplicated, which is no, we just need to look at the ways that used to be lived out in front of us all the time of people modeling a more balanced, sustainable, grounded life that doesn't change like shifting shadows, but is also a vibrant and full life that knows how to tandem modern technology, our values, old fashioned systems that still work.
Speaker 1:That's what I loved in your book, and you have what I would call what? 10 virtues or 10 skills or just 10 values. You said who knows what it's really called but that we can all practice in the midst of where we are right now. Yes, In the midst of our life. We don't have to be somewhere else because guess what? The common denominator is me.
Speaker 2:Right, it's humanity and I think that's it. I think this book really came from this back to basics mindset that I've been thinking about for about a decade. I was working in a public school system 10 years ago and it was a much larger urban school and I just remember thinking, man, we have just lost the basics of how to think, how to just act, how to be human. And then fast forward these 10 years when all of these big things have happened right, Technology has gotten greater, Social media is more present in our lives, but yet we also have this public discourse that is just chaotic and extreme.
Speaker 2:And this book really is kind of a reintroduction to say, hey, guess what? God created us as human beings? Not just to be in relationship with Him, but to be in relationship with people and with nature and to adapt. And still, like this is a fighting for humanity book, because I want to say you know what? It doesn't matter what problems you have, we have the capacity, because God has created us with a brain that is the best computer there is to problem solve. And it's that component, that lack of problem solving, practical skills of thinking and working things out, that this book really is almost like a reintroduction, like hello welcome. Let me reintroduce you to a skill and a virtue and a life skill called resourcefulness, or practicality, or contentment stewardship.
Speaker 1:Let's relearn what these are. I'm sitting here nodding like crazy. This is a podcast you're listening to, so you can't see that. But as I was reading this, you talked and we will go through a couple of these, because I so liked everything Brenda said about all of them. We're not going to be able to cover them all today, which is why you're all going to order this book and give it to people you love as a gift, but I'm 61. So, as you were listing all these values, they are familiar to me.
Speaker 1:This is how we were raised. You know, social media wasn't even a thing growing up. You know, iphone I didn't get one until you know what was what? 45 years old, 50 years old, I don't know the whole idea of. I just spent a weekend with two cousins of mine who have each been college professors for 30 years. So they have seen quite a change over 30 years, and one of the things we really spent a lot of time talking about is what you would describe as resourcefulness. My professor cousin who is so darn smart these academics.
Speaker 1:She calls it neurological load, but basically it's this it used to be that we didn't know something and so we had to think about it. Wait, okay, wait, okay, I don't have it anywhere in my brain. Let me ask the person sitting across the table from me if they know the answer. No, they don't. Okay, worse comes to worse. Brenda, we go to the library, look up the Dewey Decimal System in the card catalog. Okay, we find a book, but we don't want to go to the library, we want to figure it out, and that neurological load is kind of like going.
Speaker 1:The top layer of your brain is thinking, deep thinking. Okay, now I'm going to move to the second layer, now I'm going to move to the third layer. Even as adults I'm not just talking about students now we don't get past the first layer, because if I say to my husband now, what other movie was so-and-so in Google, google, google, I just Google, I just Google. I don't even need to think for half a second. We are Googling things that we never, or guess what? Sometimes you would have a question and think does it really matter? I don't need to know the answer to that, do I need to clutter my brain with that? And so students who are 20 years old have had Google their entire lives, and so is it retraining for them to learn how to do this what I would call deep thinking and resourcefulness.
Speaker 1:And what's interesting, brenda, is you mentioned AI, and we're not going to talk about that today, because what a topic that is. And I said to my you know professor cousin do you think AI, the advent of AI, is as scary as everyone says it is? And she says far more so. So, okay, but here's what she's doing as a professor. It used to be that you wrote a paper and came to class. Well, no, it used to be that you got those blue remember those little blue test books.
Speaker 1:Yeah, hand wrote the test answers in those. Now they're back to that. They're back to you have your composition book and you're in class and you're writing your essay and maybe that's a good thing.
Speaker 2:It's an incredibly good thing because our brain is designed to help us function and without our thinking part of our brain being connected with the amygdala, which is our feeling part of the brain, then we can't think, and that's why we have so much emotional dysregulation is because we are not learning how to regulate our emotions so that we can think clearly in difficult situations, and that's what resourcefulness is. Resourcefulness is the ability and creativity to cope with difficult situations or unusual problems, and the reason that I chose resourcefulness as one of the virtues or the values or the mindsets behaviors they're kind of all. Someone asked me once are these mindsets, are they behaviors? Are they life skills? What are these? I was like well, what you think is what you do, like that's just it. What you believe is what you think is what you do, and, honestly, on a farm, you don't have time to sit around and think well, is this a skill? No, if, if there's a, something breaks down and something has to be done right now, you've got to figure it out, and that's what I've learned as a dairy farmer's wife. Are these practical skills and resourcefulness that you can't go to Google for? There's not a solution for every problem. That's right in front of you and that includes our personal problems, that includes our financial problems. We have a brain that God has given us and it's this creative ability to cope with difficult situations. It's problem solving, it's practical problem solving, and it doesn't matter whether it's, you know, like the other.
Speaker 2:About a year ago I was lost. My my phone died and I was at a speaking engagement in Chicago and I didn't have the ability to wait for my car to charge my phone to get back. And I didn't have a map with me because, dumb me, I used to always travel with a map and I was like I don't need it, I've got Google Maps. And I didn't know how to get back on the interstate because I was in a suburb and I looked around and I thought how am I going to get back? I used to go into a store and buy a map. Well, you can hardly buy maps anymore. So anyway, long story short is, I looked around and I was like there's a realtor's office, they're going to have a printer and a computer. Someone there can help me, or at least do it the old-fashioned way like throw me a map. You go down this road and at this landmark you turn right, you go this way.
Speaker 2:But resourcefulness really is something that everyone has the capacity to do. And one thing I love doing with clients, especially when it comes to mental health or with personal problems, is that we tend to think a problem in front of us is too big and yet our brain really does pull from our life experiences and so I love matching the problem solving that has happened in other parts of an individual's life and then really encourage and affirm that Like that's a strength. You have figured out this really difficult problem over here, so let's apply that resourcefulness to this problem over here. And working with students I work with kindergartners to fourth graders now and they have some pretty big problems and many of their problems they don't have the ability to make the decisions about. If they're in a very dysfunctional home life, many of their problems they don't have the ability to make the decisions about, you know, if they're in a very dysfunctional home life, they don't have the ability to get out of that home life or to figure out how to solve these really big problems that parents might have. But as an eight-year-old, as a 10-year-old, even as a six-year-old, we can help them problem solve for how to keep safe, how to speak up, how to solve problems at their level.
Speaker 2:And I just really want all the listeners to really understand that, no matter how complicated technology gets, no matter how complicated life systems gets, god's ways are still pure and simple and they don't change and we have the capacity, as humans, to be able to really do anything that is in front of us, because it's what's been done over time for thousands of years. And you know, recently I was traveling on route 66 to go visit my son in Oklahoma and what I loved, what I love about something like that, is that really brings me back to think about the ways that people solve problems. You know, several generations ago they still had some technologies, right, they had cars, they had phones. But the ways that that people did things whether it's a hundred years ago, 200 years ago, they were using the technology that was the height at that time, but they still also had to use common sense, they still had to use problem solving, they still had to learn how to add and subtract in their own head.
Speaker 2:And I think, as humans, even with AI, I love seeing the movement, just like you were just saying. I love seeing the movement, just like you were just saying, of educational institutions starting to throw out what really is no longer healthy for us as humans because we don't know how to use it in tandem with a balance. And in Australia they have out. I think they've outlawed cell phones from schools. Jonathan Haidt, in his new book the Anxious Generation, is really creating a movement to show the negative effects of social media and technology with kids and there's a whole movement of kind of reclaiming childhood and I think as adults we have to be vigilant about.
Speaker 2:The same thing is that we don't have to accept everything that comes to us, and I think that's what I love about living in my community, that I the same thing is that we don't have to accept everything that comes to us, and I think that's what I love about living in my community. That I want to share is that everyone can do this. In our community, especially the Amish around me and even in my own faith culture, we don't take on everything that comes down the pike. We sift it through our values, and I see that in my Amish neighbors they are going to sift through whatever is new and if it's beneficial and it's not going to completely disrupt their lifestyle that they hold so dear to, then they often take on new systems, new technologies, new trends, new opportunities, but they do it with modesty. They do it with prudence.
Speaker 2:Prudence is one of the other values in uncomplicated. They do it with a sense of we don't have to do everything, but we're going to take this part that is beneficial for us, but weighing all things in tandem. One of the main verses of uncomplicated is 1 Corinthians 10, 23, which is everything is permissible but not everything is beneficial, and that really has been a life verse for me. That really helps us think about these values clarification and what is good for us and what isn't you know the day that I read that verse in your book.
Speaker 1:Earlier that same day I was having a discussion with a doctor about something and they said that verse to me.
Speaker 1:I thought okay, wait a second, god, what are you telling me? I mean, you've only got like 780,000 words in this book and you pulled out six or seven in the same day, so I'm holding on to that. So what I love is talking about the Amish and you talked about this in the book is they are not being completely closed-minded, they're not being black and white. They are saying what is beneficial and what parts of it can we use. So, thinking about as new technology comes our way, we can all do this right. Could you tell the story of the phone shed?
Speaker 2:Oh, yes, yeah, so there's an element.
Speaker 2:I'm just going to read the quote actually that is in the introduction it says we find ourselves inwardly yearning for that something the Amish seem to possess with their lack, and which we lack the serenity, the quietness and the sense of where you belong in a defined community. But the discussion about the phone jack is that just something simple as a phone? For different Amish communities will look different, and so for some of them they have what is called a phone shack, which looks like a little outhouse that's alongside a road. But it's what many communities do. They allow families to join together to purchase or to subscribe to a phone that's away from their properties. So they may have to walk several miles to get to the phone shack to make a phone call.
Speaker 2:And in one of the quotes that I had from an interview that someone had done with some Amish is that the gentleman said it makes you think about that phone call that you're going to make. Is it worth walking five miles or riding your bike in the snow to go make this phone call? And if it's not worth that, then the phone call doesn't need to be made. And if you just think about how quickly now we communicate with text messages and just shoot something off, whether we're irritated or mad or even just passing around information. What if we really thought a little bit more about what we're going to be putting our hands to with technology, or even what we busy our life with? You know the word busyness? It makes me cringe, because busyness is kind of a catch-all of like oh I'm just doing many things. I think what's more important is thinking are we filling our life with the most important things? And when I think about my mother and father-in-law, who were dairy farmers they were elders in the church. They gave to their community and their family 100% and I watched them as a young bride and as a young mom, have incredibly long days getting up at two in the morning milking cows, raking hay, having lunch, going out milking cows again and then rushing off to do visitation for someone who was in the hospital at church before they went to one of their grandkids ball games Like it was a full day, but what I saw them is this was what was important to them and they lived it out.
Speaker 2:And I think we have been so inundated with being busy or filling our days with things that really are not our best priorities, and then that's when we get so conflicted and we feel like life is so complicated and I was at this point too, at one point in my life, where what I was living was really not what was in my heart.
Speaker 2:For me it was realizing that I only had a couple more years with all of my kids at home, and how I was kind of living and where I was putting my time and my energy and my emotions was mismatched with what I really desired for our family and for those family memories to be, and it caused me to actually leave the classroom and really pursue a degree that would give me full-time and flexible or part-time employment with a job that was not so draining as teaching high schoolers was. But I was also a very stressed mom at that time and my reactions at home were not really healthy for my kids. We had a lot of conflict at home and it was driven mainly by me. So I think many people can hopefully identify with some of that of you know, having seasons in our life where we really just have to stop and pause and say is what I'm doing right now, is what I'm filling my life up with? Is this really what's most important for this season?
Speaker 1:I love that and I love that in talking about your virtues, you start out with contentment. And when I talk to my sons, you know everyone the word is happiness. Everyone wants to be happy, everyone wants to be happy and I'm not going to argue with that. But really, when you think about it, I think everyone wants to be at peace and content, at peace and content, at peace and content.
Speaker 1:And when you start looking at your life through a different lens, you change some things in your life. So when you start looking at your current life, it's not again, as we said, it doesn't mean you have to move. It doesn't mean you have to leave your husband. It doesn't mean you have to lose 30 pounds. It doesn't mean you have to. You know you fill in the blank All these things that we have to do. That would be dramatically different. It probably just means that we look at what God has given us in a different light. And also to your point is perhaps that gives us permission to let go of some things that we think we should be doing but we actually don't need to be doing. And the shoulds if we can get rid of the shoulds, we're going to be a lot closer to peace.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I really want to encourage people that getting rid of those shoulds. I think sometimes we hold onto those things because if we think if we don't, then I'm not going to achieve my dream, and I think that's one of the things I really want to encourage people with. Because this is why the title compelling in this book is so important is because compelling is a life that draws us right. Something compelling is something we want to move towards and be like boy. I want to know more about that because it looks like something that I really want or want to learn about, and I think that's what I see among many of the people in my community is that, you know, most people in my community aren't Wall Street business people. They're not on the New York Times with sellers list. They're pretty much just ordinary people who are living really a vibrant, thriving life that is so winsome, and it's been these people in my life and all throughout, uncomplicated. At the end of every chapter, I asked the reader to really think about the person in their life who models this virtue that they look up to, because we all have those people, and there were people in my church community, older women and even people that I've watched from afar, that I have seen their life be so vibrant but also so content, so full, and I want that and I think for ourselves. We think, well, when I retire, then I'm going to be at that place in my life where these things are going to happen, and what I realized when I was at a place where I needed to make a change in my life that well, when I retire, well, if I waited until then, then the memories my kids would have had when everyone was at home would have been full of conflict, a stressed mom, something probably a home they didn't want to come back to when they were adults because there was so much strife and heaviness, a lot when they were home.
Speaker 2:So I had to really come to a reckoning to say, really, the only life we have is the life we have today. And that goes back to that initial question of what, if today is as good as it gets and if today is all that it is, can I be happy, can I be content? And when I answered that question to myself, kind of on the porch, you know this life that I saw that was always a cup that was half empty. You know, living in a small town, we live on a farm. The best life is always someplace else. All of a sudden, it was like God showed me this half full cup to overflowing full, to overflowing cup that he'd given me, and I've, and I've been discontent, thinking that the best life was always just outside of my reach and not quite attainable. And I think for most of us that's what drives a lot of our discontent.
Speaker 1:Yeah, drives a lot of our crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and you know, discontentment was the first human struggle. It's what Eve struggled with.
Speaker 1:That's right. Well, I so love this conversation and I told you I would keep you a certain amount of time and I've gone over. But would you mind just quickly just top lining list the 10? Because I want people to buy this book, not because you need to sell books, but because we need to read it, and I just have to tell you I read it, I'm going to read it again. It is soul filling. It is soul filling. Just reading it gave me a feeling of peace and contentment, which I, as I told you, I think is what we all really want. So could you just run down your list so people would know what they can look forward to learning? Sure.
Speaker 2:They can learn about contentment. They can learn about resourcefulness, prudence, and not the kind you think is, it's a much richer kind Practicality, fidelity, forbearance and equanimity, which are big words for a calm even-mindedness in difficult situations, stewardship, interdependence on people, god and nature, groundedness and humility, and then foresight that is set in the element of the heritage and legacy that we leave behind.
Speaker 1:And so what I love is, as you walk us through what those you know mindsets are. Let's call them mindsets. You also share a whole bunch of really interesting personal stories. I love stories, people love stories. You weave that in so it's really applicable. And then, just as a practical tool because I like books that are practical tools you then have a list of next steps books that are practical tools. You then have a list of next steps, like here's a list of 10 or 12 things that you could do in your life. Pick a couple that makes sense for you and that will help you with this mindset and I highlighted a couple of those in each section that worked for me. And then reflection. I love that you asked you know, three or four questions of each of these, which really makes you think. So it's a nice book to read, but I also kind of feel like it's a life reference book.
Speaker 2:And I love that. And I'll just finish with someone reached out to me to say that they had done a Bible study based on this book. That it wasn't just a book group, you know, but they really were able to take the Bible verses and each chapter has a scripture application section that you can really go deep. And it is a book that I wrote that I want people to want to go back to over their lifetime. There's a book by Elizabeth Elliott that I have gone back to over my lifetime because when I need that grounded voice, that's what I go to. And I really did have that as my prayer as I wrote this.
Speaker 1:When I read a book, I like I always go through the back section of all the footnotes and the notes because I want to see the other books they're referencing as other books to read too. So you have a great list of possible books. What is the one? The Hoosier Housewives one, or what's Hoosier?
Speaker 2:Memories of Hoosier Homemakers. So that is. That's a series of books that I came across that were published in the 1980s by the Indiana Homemakers Extension Association and they interviewed women who lived in the 1890s through the 1940s about their lives, and I think you can probably buy them online. I found them first in our local library and I bought a group of them. I bought the series back in the early 2000s and they're right here and, honestly, when hard times come, these are the books that I go through, because reading how other people lived in more complicated times than our own, without technology, when life was hard, and then hearing their stories, that is what grounds me. Those are the examples that I want to see, because we don't see as many of those examples in modern culture.
Speaker 1:Right? Well, I don't think my Atlanta Georgia library is going to have the Hoosier Homemakers books, but I'm going to look online because I love books like that. It's amazing how well. Look at the Bible. 2,000 years ago they were dealing with the same things we're dealing with today.
Speaker 2:Yes, exact same issues.
Speaker 1:So, brenda, thank you so much. People are going to want to get in dealing with today yes, exact same issues. So, brenda, thank you so much. People are going to want to get in touch with you. Where can they find you?
Speaker 2:They can find me on Instagram at Brenda Yoder speaks. They can find me on Facebook at Brenda Yoder speaker, and my website is Brenda Yodercom. They can email me at Brenda at Brenda Yodercom, and you can. If you're a midlife mom, you can join me on the midlife Moms podcast too. That's where you can listen to more of this.
Speaker 1:That's great. More of her wisdom. I love your wisdom, my son, by the way. My favorite thing is popcorn. For my birthday last week he gave me Amish popcorn that he found at. Amazon. Let me tell you what I am a popcorn connoisseur. Those Amish know what they're doing. I don't know what they're doing, but the popcorn is really great. So that's my little plug for the Amish industry. But thank you so much for your time. I look forward to seeing how your book does and if there's another book I want to hear about it.
Speaker 2:Okay, thank you so much, Stephanie, and thank you for having me. You're welcome. Have a good day.
.jpg)