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Season 3: Reminiscing on a Decade of Red Tent Living with Katy Stafford and Tracy Johnson
90 Plays2 months ago
To start Season 3, co-hosts and founders of Red Tent Living, Katy Stafford and Tracy Johnson, reflect on the beautifully ordinary community of women who have chosen to share their stories through the online magazine, Red Tent Living. Through laughter and tender memories, Tracy and Katy express gratitude for the brave sharing and generous acceptance they have experienced through the Red Tent Living community and also dream about ways that community will continue to grow even as the magazine is archived. Join this mother-daughter duo for a sweet conversation on the power of women affirming each other across different seasons and perspectives.
For more stories from brave, ordinary women, join us at Red Tent Living.
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Transcript
Introduction to Red Tent Living Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
I'm Katie Stafford, and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about our beautiful and hard ordinary. Each week, we share stories with the hope of seeing one another a little better and affirming each other across different seasons and perspectives. We're excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table.
00:00:28
Speaker
Hello. It's good to see you. Good to see you.
Season 3 Changes & Format
00:00:32
Speaker
o Welcome to season three of the Red 10 Living podcast. I know. Here we are. Here we are. It's fun. It's fun to hear season three. i It was just a year ago. We were wondering if it would work at all. And here we are recording season three. So it's fun. Yeah, I agree. on I agree and we're we're making some changes this season. um You and I are on more regularly. Sometimes it'll be us with other red tent women. Sometimes it'll be red tent women on their own. I'm hoping to to run a longer batch of regular weekly episodes and I think that's going to be really fun and hopefully a good connective space.
00:01:14
Speaker
Yeah, hopefully hopefully it gives women a chance to really settle into a rhythm of of listening weekly and and not feeling like that ends and then there's this big stretch of time.
00:01:26
Speaker
so you know that um'm I'm excited about that. That feels like ah something that we're doing to respond to some of the things that we've heard women saying about what they what they've enjoyed and also what they would like to see more of. so um i think it's going to be I think it's going to be good. yeah you good I'm looking forward to the conversations.
Evolution of Red Tent Living Community
00:01:49
Speaker
so We talked about for this first episode, kind of reflecting back, Red Tent Living as an online community has been around for 11 years. And we were both there in the beginning. um And it's it's kind of traversed all of those seasons of Blogging an article sharing on the internet and so it's kind of it's had highs it's had lows and more and more we've recognized recently that people are Consuming their content in other ways. So as we're preparing to kind of archive the online writing of red We're wanting to
00:02:29
Speaker
remember and reflect on what this community has been and hopefully carry that as a continuous torch into the other red tent living spaces, including the podcast where we'll be continuing conversation and story sharing.
00:02:46
Speaker
top You know, I actually love that that what it feels like our community has been telling us that is that what they want, what they need, what's resonating for them are more actual conversations. um Whether those are face to face or whether those come in the form of a podcast in ah at a retreat setting or at a red tent living dinner, that that's what they're hungry for. and I actually love that. but So i I feel the sadness over the closing of you know what has been the writing space. But at the same time, it feels it feels to me like there's a lot of hope um for for more ah you know what I would call maybe reciprocal connected relationships.
00:03:42
Speaker
as we make this shift. So yeah, agreed.
Impact of Writing Space on Women
00:03:46
Speaker
And I'm hoping that everybody who enjoyed reading, whether it was in the morning or whether they got back from the close of their day, like that those people still get to tune in to what we're doing here and feel like they have that dose of connectivity and yeah the me too feeling in the world. Yeah, I hope so too. i know i mean we I've been hearing from women you know that have been either emailing or leaving comments on the posts that are being written you know about what the space has meant to them. and
00:04:27
Speaker
And there are a fair amount that have used the writing on red tent living as as part of their reflective beginning to their day or you know maybe even like the devotional space that they that they bring into their life. And so, and I mean, there's a loss there for sure um in that. I don't know that our voices replace that.
00:04:52
Speaker
um but but I it's been good it's been good for me to hear um more about you know what the space has meant to women so I I've enjoyed that for sure it's it's been fun this last month of publishing articles to see how many women are choosing to comment to kind of honor how long you've been a part of the community. Like voices we maybe haven't heard from before or very regular voices who have always commented are making sure to like indicate gratitude. And it's really
Personal Journeys & Transformations
00:05:29
Speaker
sweet. I think it's a really special group of women. I do too. I do too. And it has been it has been really sweet. I think a fair number of the women um that
00:05:44
Speaker
have have been writing this month have kind of been telling their own journey of what what the space has been for them, how they came in and and how they've experienced it. And it's been, I've loved reading those.
00:06:00
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. And those are the stories that you and I want to share today too. Yeah. Yeah. A little bit of our own and then yeah and then some reflecting on that together. I think it's going to be good. Yeah. Should I go first? it it is I was just about to ask you, what do you want to do? Do you want to go first or do you want me to? Sure. I'm happy to. Let me get situated.
00:06:30
Speaker
All right. So I called this a merciful disruption, 11 years of red tent living. Stretching my legs in the gas station parking lot somewhere along I-70 East, I had never felt so lost in my entire life. Not lost in terms of directions, lost on a deeper level.
00:06:52
Speaker
Age 24 and along for the ride as my parents headed to a week on the Atlantic Ocean with both of my youngest sisters, ages six and eight, I decided my life was officially in regression.
00:07:06
Speaker
Maybe it was the lack of a set direction or any stable job prospects. Maybe it was my current inability to support myself financially or my complete void of current friendships. I just felt so stuck, like my life had jumped off a track.
00:07:26
Speaker
Beneath the canopy of that Exxon Mobil, I peeled my tank top from my sweaty midriff and took in my surroundings. I'd just killed about an hour of this drive researching how to become a substitute teacher in Virginia Beach.
00:07:41
Speaker
Why? Because that's where we were headed. Virginia Beach. And maybe I'd just stay there. Maybe I'd leave the numbing niceties and subdued culture of West Michigan behind and become a Virginia Beach mom. I could manage unruly junior hires by day and cast myself into the ocean's waves each night to body surf.
00:08:01
Speaker
Substitute teaching sounds so terrible, I thought. With a gnawing pit of anxiety in my stomach, I exited the application portal, locked the screen of my phone, and piled back into the car. Three days later, on Libby Kurtz's back porch with glasses of Prosecco, I was helping Mom and Liv create the website for a wild idea we just had. Red Tent Living.
00:08:24
Speaker
With the tingle of bubbles on my tongue and the glow of our conversation, I felt, for the first time in such a long time, excited. This would be a place where women could come and share their beautiful ordinary, and those women would include me. All I could bring to this endeavor was a messy sea of longings. Longings so vast, I feared they would swallow me whole.
00:08:52
Speaker
but they didn't because instead I started to write about them. At Red Tent Living, I wrote about my perfectionism and how I long to be kinder to myself. I wrote about my restlessness and longing to see the world. I wrote about my longing to live deeply and my longing to have a beautiful love story. Each month I wrote whatever it was I wasn't saying out loud in polite conversation.
00:09:19
Speaker
And over time, I started to realize I wasn't the only one getting honest. Because you were writing, too. You wrote about mothering when it is impossibly hard. You wrote about grieving the death of a parent. You wrote about divorce and how bad we sometimes are at loving someone through it. You wrote about church, the highs and the lows of it.
00:09:42
Speaker
You wrote about gardening, dietary restrictions, and stories of abuse. You wrote about sex and chicken. You wrote about racism. You wrote about miscarriage. You wrote about graduations and weddings. Together, we all wrote about womanhood as we were finding it.
Power of Storytelling in Community Building
00:10:01
Speaker
And together, we commented for with encouragement for each other along the way.
00:10:07
Speaker
Against all probability, over a million of us have turned to red tennis at some point for a bit of solidarity. We show up here to confide in one another and to bear witness. It's been the loveliest way to live womenhood womanhood out loud. Taking it all in, I at times feel find myself overcome.
00:10:30
Speaker
I can't help but think back to that 24 year old woman so afraid she was moving in the wrong direction with her life. She had no idea that she was only in the middle and that most of life includes a nagging question. Am I doing this well? Am I making the most of these days?
00:10:50
Speaker
Red Tent Living has taught me that the point is not to do life according to the plan. The point is to share the questions and the hopes as you you carry, as you let the plan go. The point is to love your way through as you wrap your arms around anyone who's chosen to come along for this leg of the journey. The point is to risk wanting what you want and moving towards it in a small, ordinary way.
00:11:18
Speaker
11 years later, I'd tell that 24 year old, there are no backward steps. Instead, there are merciful disruptions that jolt us to be present to the divine thread of our interconnected stories.
00:11:37
Speaker
ah There's so much there. You know, from
00:11:45
Speaker
from what was you know true about your life, as you sat in the backseat of that car, to your reflections you know on what you wrote about and on what other women have written about. It feels like you you touched like so many threads.
00:12:10
Speaker
and in what feels like the fabric of of what the writing space has been and was. um
00:12:22
Speaker
I think I found myself thinking about how much becoming happened for you over the last decade and and how how much of it happened. I loved your your words. It's like you just, you started writing about it.
00:12:39
Speaker
I, as I, before I wrote this, I went back to just read like what was I writing at the beginning. ah And I almost could write the exact same stories today. Like one of my very first posts was about painting and how pissed I get at not painting perfectly. And you and I had literally just finished painting our house and I had been so pissed that I couldn't like it was just this living reflection and then like wondering about my own sexuality and being in a great love story and like how that has unfolded and that the character it's unfolded with and like so there was just this i've I felt this smirk and also this
00:13:32
Speaker
sense of delight of like the stories have stayed that the themes have stayed the same. And I've become so much and it's the telling and the sharing of the stories that so I think transformative in that becoming product like that lets you become someone more
Diverse Voices & Backgrounds
00:13:50
Speaker
as you face it. Yeah. Yeah. Um, it feels like you know, you're you're not the only writer who went back and read the things that she has written, you know kind of reflecting and trying to connect like what has this space actually been. I know Susan did that and has actually chosen weekly to post something on her own and from her favorite essays, I think. And she counted, I think she'd written 80 essays.
00:14:30
Speaker
Beth Bruno did the same thing, 60 essays and recounting that, you know, she posted for the first time on her 40th birthday and she just celebrated her 50th birthday. yeah ah So, you know, I think there's something, it's 10 years, it's a long time. Yeah.
00:14:52
Speaker
yeah It's a really long time and you know ah a decade in someone's life, not just a decade of red tent living, but a decade in someone's life is is long enough that really big transformation happens.
00:15:12
Speaker
And I think also you you just live a lot of life. Yeah, and what happened at red tent You could tell.
00:15:25
Speaker
you could tell when somebody was coming to Red Tent with a story that they had been looking for a safe place to, like it was an epic story in any number of ways, like the epically hard, epically beautiful, epically bittersweet. And those, I always felt like those posts resonated and carried and it was such a generous space for people to tell those stories and know that they were gonna be held well.
00:15:54
Speaker
It was also a place where women were writing like just the everyday-ness of things, right? And so to have that kind of ebb and flow of depth felt, it actually felt like really human and honoring. It wasn't like everything's super intense and dramatic or everything's just the everyday stories of moms. You know, like there was just this huge gradation and we were there for all of it with each other.
00:16:29
Speaker
who
00:16:32
Speaker
Yeah, and i and I think also one of the things for me that has been so important about the space has been ah the vast <unk> of the ages, you know, everything from 20-somethings to 70-something year old women that that have written and responded and and offered connection to one another. And that seems, that feels to me that, you know, that it is so rare
00:17:06
Speaker
um So often you you put generations together and it and it often becomes about one generation giving advice to another generation. yeah um and And that really hasn't hasn't largely been what this space has been. This has been much more just the shared experience of womanhood. And so if you want to learn, you want you want to learn from someone else in the space that's available, but the the connecting point is is that we're all women, not that anybody has some particular role.
00:17:46
Speaker
you know in the room. Well and to that point I was often the people who called I was not always called out as wise, but if somebody said, like, that is just such a wise post that's caused me to rethink things, nine times out of 10, they were over 50. Like, it was Becky Allender, or um Madeline Biecki, or, you know, like, it was these women further down the road who just appreciated a 25-year-old's vantage point. And I was deeply aware of,
00:18:19
Speaker
the generosity of spirit they were carrying, right, to choose to read me in a way that was uncovering something new for them in their lives. Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Supportive Story-Sharing Environment
00:18:33
Speaker
um You know, i I have the advantage, that you have this advantage, too, you know, of the back end of the website. And so, you know, to be able to go in and and and read through all of the posts that are archived and housed there. you know And i I did that, I went back but to the beginning and just, you know who were we? Who was writing and what were we saying? And um and and to slowly watch you know what the the depth that began to unfold and and then the women who who early on risked
00:19:16
Speaker
sending something in, you know those early guest contributors, um how how brave they were to bring their stories. And I and i think like you said, you know there was a there was a tentativeness um with most of them like, does this belong here?
00:19:41
Speaker
Like, are you serious? Can I really? you're You'll really take something written by, you know, somebody else. and um and And that was, you know, surprising to me as I watched it happen.
00:19:59
Speaker
It started happening so quickly. I mean, I think that was part of what shocked me when I think about that first year is like people were tentative, but we were hungry too. And so women were like, I'm going to risk it. I'm going to send this. Apparently this is a place where I can send this. And then things got published and people were different. Well, we were different in that. You know, we weren't we weren't a We weren't a red-butt writers group for women who wanted to, you know, write. That's not who we were. And ah we were we were ah just a bunch of regular women saying we value, we value storied spaces. We value the stories of other women. And so your stories are welcome.
00:20:46
Speaker
and And that was something I don't think enough credit is given. I shouldn't say that. I think it's really important to give credit to women like Susan who created a ministry of like any story is welcome and will create safety to help like edit in a way that you get to have feedback on. You get to make sure it honors what you wanted to say and you get to feel confident that it's grammatically correct, right? like anytime I've submitted to any sort of organization, publication, it's like they may accept it or not. And they have full rights to like, chop it up how they imagine we just didn't ever do that. No, I mean, it was never about it was never about
00:21:32
Speaker
editing something in order for it to say what we wanted it to say, or ah or or like you just said, to to get it grammatically correct. i mean And and that was ah that was an unfolding process too, especially as we as we started having more women sending stories, and but because the stories needed to be tended to.
00:21:56
Speaker
and And I think that was another thing that made us unique is that you you didn't write for Red Tent Living and and send a story in and and get back, OK, we've edited your piece and you know and here's here's when it's goingnna here's when it's going to post. You got back a response that tended to what you had said, what you had sent in.
00:22:19
Speaker
um ah and And you were going to get care in that. So I think that too was ah was a way in which we were different, for sure, for sure. And Susan was a big susan was a big part of that. and and then And slowly, and again, these are sort of the backside, right? Would be there were other women who knew that they had a gift for editing and and a desire to share that gift.
00:22:53
Speaker
and did. Yes. Shared their gifts. Shared their gifts for different seasons and stints. Sometimes they were writers, and then they transitioned just to editing. Sometimes they wrote and they edited. There was a whole cast of women that right I did that for a season. Lib did that for a season. Right. Just right hikea like Mm-hmm. Melanie Wright. Yep. And yeah i mean and and that it was it was, again, such such a gift. Yeah.
00:23:25
Speaker
for women to do that, to offer that and ah and to yeah to say, i oh, I can offer this. this is This is something I'm good at. I would like to i would like to do that. Yeah. What piece of the red tent living legacy did you write about? No, so it's interesting. I'll read it in just a second. i
00:23:52
Speaker
I think i think i i think i my my closing piece is is probably to some extent reflective of my opening piece and and reflective of something like that over the last decade.
00:24:06
Speaker
in in the space of red tent living, think I think i I suspected this, but I think I've come to know it more deeply in this space that part of who I part of who i am and part of what I i bring is is that I offer spaces that that create context and space for women to become and um and to empower them to do that.
Creating Spaces for Women's Growth
00:24:34
Speaker
And so my my first piece was sort of a welcome to this space and and maybe less about what was going on for me personally, but more about like what this could become. And I think that's my last piece feels that way also.
00:24:49
Speaker
um
00:24:52
Speaker
And yeah, I mean, so I think that that feels ah feels reflective of me. i you know So I felt a lot of responsibility as I was trying to decide what to write and and and worked on it more than once. It's like you know this feels like it's less about me and more about honoring.
00:25:12
Speaker
what this space has been and and what my hopes would be for what it will be or how it will continue. So here we go. um The humidity greets me with a sticky embrace as I step outside onto my back porch in Austin. I question whether to turn and walk back into my office. No, I need to breathe something other than air conditioned air this morning.
00:25:38
Speaker
The air is heavy as I rock back and forth sipping my coffee, and the weight of the air mirrors the weight of my heart. My parents are in need of more care. I've flown to Phoenix twice in the past six weeks, and I'm headed back again tomorrow. The time of independent living has come to an end for them. Ellie's room is filled with piles, things going to college, things going to Goodwill, things she's not sure of. Her suitcases sit ready to be filled.
00:26:08
Speaker
We leave in a week to drop her off. And I awakened more than once during the night thinking about red tent living and my final words to honor all the writing that has taken place here. Over the past decade, I've written more than 100 essays and we have published more than 2000 essays written by other women in our community. We dreamed and talked about this red tent over glasses of sparkling water on a hot summer afternoon. My daughter, my friend and me.
00:26:37
Speaker
A couple of hours later, we were marking the space where the tent would be built over cold glasses of Prosecco as we toasted to what might become. The dreaming felt like oxygen, giving expanded life to the dinners that had been birthed around my own table five years earlier. I had recently stepped out of a job I loved, sensing that I was meant to do something different. Perhaps building red tent living was what I was called to put my energy toward.
00:27:03
Speaker
The air on my friend's back porch was thick with hope that day. The sacred storied space of this tent has been marked by generosity and welcome. I have heard more than once that the strength of red tent living has been the stunning beauty of how the women have borne witness to one another in the comments left on the story shared. The absence of judgment has been a hallmark of who we are as a community of women.
00:27:31
Speaker
And I love being part of that and watching as it organically occurs. Some of my dearest friends have been part of this writing community, helping to build it and lead it to birth, to lead, to dream, to build, to hope. Each is inherently filled with risk. Red tent living exists because of the women who said yes to risking with me. The original dreamers on the back porch in Virginia Beach the original writers sprinkled across the United States, the original guest contributors who sent in their stories, Sarah Bessie, Nicole Nordeman, Jen Hatmaker, Latasha Morrison, Melissa DeArabian, the women who said yes to partnering for the Brave On Conferences, and hundreds of you who said yes as you hit send on your submissions. Thank you.
00:28:24
Speaker
Thank you for risking and for cheering on one another so faithfully and with such kindness. It has been an immense honor to hold this space with you and for you. Nearly two decades ago, I sat with a women's ministry director from a large church as we talked about my passion to provide places of deeper connection for
Role of Risk & Connection in Community
00:28:45
Speaker
women. And she told me, Tracy.
00:28:48
Speaker
I've been leading women for over 30 years and I can tell you that the majority of women just don't want the kind of depth you are talking about. Don't waste your time trying to build that. I didn't agree with her and the defiant part of me felt activated.
00:29:04
Speaker
I was sure that I wasn't the only woman who ached for deeper connection. I wanted to know what it was like to have women who stood in solidarity woven together out of a shared commitment to change the status quo of how Christian women found belonging. My response was to risk inviting women to my table for the very first red tent dinner. You're here because, like me, you long for depth.
00:29:30
Speaker
for connection and belonging, forged in storied space with other women. You ache to know the goodness of the gospel, tasted into you experience what Jesus said would happen when we gather together and love one another. As we close the writing space of Red Tent Living, my hope is that you will consider taking a risk by asking one woman to join you and hosting a few mutual friends around your table.
00:29:55
Speaker
Over 100 women have signed up for the red tent dinner packets in the past few months and you can join them and build your own beautiful red tent right where you are. Every ending carries with it the hope of a beginning. Cheers to what is yet to come for all of us as we step forward with hope. I love that.
00:30:24
Speaker
Yeah, it is so striking. I don't know what that, I i know who that ministry leader is. She shall remain nameless. I won't know that she'd be the only one that would claim like, well, that's just not what women want, right? Like, I think there is this perception that it's like women are busy, women are, you know, like they don't necessarily want to go that deep. um And I just love,
00:30:51
Speaker
I love how you held on to the belief in something different and how that started with personal risk, right? Because there's I don't know that there's anything riskier than hosting a dinner party at your own table.
00:31:07
Speaker
people youve Yeah, you have no idea. I know like i don't know how this is gonna go. Every time I've done it. This is ridiculous. Every time I've done it, even though I want it, I'm just a basket of nerves, right? Do people actually want to be here? And it's always magical because women do want depth. They do want authenticity.
00:31:25
Speaker
um And that that doesn't mean, that can mean so many different things. Depth and authenticity can show up in a story about a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Or it can show up in like one of the deepest traumas of your life. Like, but we're craving the real, we're craving the honest, not- And I think that's it. Yeah, I think it's, I, so I think two things are true. I think that she was both right and I think she was wrong.
00:31:57
Speaker
Because because there is there are there are a lot of very successful women's ministries that that are bringing goodness and that don't offer what we offer. It's not what my soul needs. I don't need i don't need those kinds of spaces. So for me, that doesn't mean a need that I have.
00:32:25
Speaker
But it doesn't mean that she was wrong. It meant that I was i was banking on the fact that I'm not the only one. That needs darker waters. that that that That needs it, right? That there's an oxygen that comes that my soul needs from being in those spaces. Just like I believe there's probably an oxygen that comes for for the women that choose the other the other route.
00:32:49
Speaker
and so I don't wanna have judgment over that. I just knew that day that it was like, oh, I need to know if more can happen. and And that defiant part of me that's like, and I would love to prove to you that you're wrong. Because that is part of my shadow side.
00:33:09
Speaker
um it it It's there, it's there also. um And and ah you know we're we're aware that there has been, we have watched, we watched explosive growth happen in the space of writing these stories and sending them in and having them engaged in one sense, almost with the safety of a screen.
00:33:36
Speaker
but it it It required a lot of vulnerability for sure. To write to write and to send and to put your words out into the universe, that requires vulnerability. And to sit at your own table, to to invite women to come, to risk like, will they say yes? Will they say no? What will happen? what kinds of sort That's a different That's a different risk. That's a different level of vulnerability. For sure.
00:34:12
Speaker
oh and And yet, ah you know we what we're hearing right is is that women wanted something more. It's time to take another step.
00:34:31
Speaker
i think like um what felt to me like another area of unique magic at Red Tent Living was the comments section.
Community Building Through Comments
00:34:40
Speaker
Not all online magazines even necessarily allow comments and it's often not like quite as intimate a space. And the commenters were like a whole part of what Red Tent was like to have write your story seen and responded to graciously. I think the history of the of the whole website, we may be deleted one comment.
00:35:10
Speaker
maybe I think twice. I mean, you know, I think there were two times and it was both of those after engagement where we were yeah is that that's not what we do here. But like it's true. Like think about it. Thousands and thousands and thousands of comments. And it was just it was never a space that got trolled. And as.
00:35:31
Speaker
I think as the pandemic happened and there was just this massive screen fatigue, we just started to notice that people weren't commenting anymore. And so this beautiful piece of the genuine community that was happening online was starting to shift. And I think that's what we're sensing now is it's like people are craving face-to-face conversations. People are craving what we were giving online was like a safe taste of it, but it's like we've all now lived through this season where we didn't have each other's skin to touch and say like, I'm here with you. And that's just such a high value now. Right, right. I think so too. And um and and it's risky.
00:36:23
Speaker
It's risky. are Everything about this space like has has had the has had some level of risk to be to be involved.
00:36:37
Speaker
Each step deeper into the red tent has come with more risk.
Inspiration & Meaningful Conversations
00:36:42
Speaker
Yeah. What are you hoping this iteration of Red Tent with the podcast invites women to? You know, i I think one of the things that I, one of the things I would hope for is that, you you know, I i think ah a question that we would hear from women around having a Red Tent and I was like, well, how how does that go? ah You know, what do you say after somebody shares something?
00:37:12
Speaker
and um And so I think that this, what we're doing on the podcast is is some tastes of that. it It is as we go back and forth and you you share a story and I respond you know that that we're giving women, it's like, this is what it sounds like.
00:37:32
Speaker
You know, this is what this is what it looks like. So I hope that um I hope that the podcast helps maybe like inspire that maybe it feels empowering.
00:37:47
Speaker
that it feels like we're giving an example of what we're talking about. um I hope that it offers a resource maybe even for women that are talking about wanting to do a dinner. And some of their friends might be like, what would that even look like? You can listen. like They have a podcast. ah you know And these are the kinds of stories that could get told. And this is kind of you know what it looks like to be with one another. um So I hope for that.
00:38:14
Speaker
um I hope that that just like ah what happened as women would read stories, they would go, oh, me too. like It felt so affirming to know I'm not the only one. ah you know And we watched as different women kind of inhabited these different spaces. like Bethany was the first woman to write about having neurodivergent kids. Totally.
00:38:42
Speaker
And, you know, she was writing about it in real time as it was happening. And we found that, you know, there was a whole niche of women that were like, followed her, like, you know, waited for her monthly writing and the comments that would come because they felt like somebody was putting words to an experience that that they were having, that there hadn't been any words around before.
00:39:11
Speaker
um Casey Davis who wrote about getting remarried after and and being young and but you know and again it was it was like oh my gosh like somebody is putting words to that um I think you know you put words to like singleness and what that was feeling like for you so This, the space of the podcast, it's just it's another iteration of that. it I hope that it will continue to be a place that women can come and feel like they're hearing something that offers some validation around their experience, that feels that that some somewhere in the different people that we have, it's like, oh, I resonate with her.
00:40:01
Speaker
Um, that feels helpful to hear that that's what it looked like or, you know, that it, it gives some hope. Um, you know, maybe for women that are feeling stuck in, in hopelessness. So yeah, I mean, though that, that would be my thought, my desire. Um.
00:40:22
Speaker
Yeah, I loved that. And I think to that point, there are episodes of this podcast between women like you and I who have at as much context and intimacy as is humanly possible. And there are years between women who are strangers. right And it still can carry this really sacred, lovely depth to it where it's like, I see your human experience, I affirm it, and now I'm going to bring my own.
00:40:52
Speaker
And just to model that at different levels of relationship brings a lot more comfort and courage when it's like, I'm going to risk saying something a little bit tender to someone that I work with or someone who has a kid in my kid's class right where I see something human happening for them. And I'm just going to honor it because I've been listening to women do the same thing week by week and I can do it too. Exactly.
00:41:21
Speaker
Exactly. As you were talking, it made me think about there's an episode, I think it's in season one with Mallory Redmond and Lindsay Ribble, who had never met. And they'd never met. Never met. had Had seen one another's writing, but had never met. And it's such a it's such a beautiful exchange between the two of them. So Yes, and I love that you named that. you name that like Everybody isn't friends. We don't just have conversations with our friends ah you know or or people that we're more intimate with. ah you know You're gonna get a variety of levels of relationship. um So I think that's a beautiful thing too.
00:42:12
Speaker
I'm excited for it. I'm with you in feeling the, feeling the shift, right? There is something that's ending and I think it's really, I think it's really important to honor all of the women. Hopefully we haven't even named enough of them, but started to name the women who've contributed in this space. Um,
00:42:38
Speaker
yeah But there are there are so there are so many. And you know again, in over a decade, you know there are women that have stayed with us for that whole decade. There are women who have left us. There are women who have actually passed away over the last 10 years. So we we have seen a lot shift and happen. I think one of the ways that we're honoring that those women is that the the archives stay.
Closure & Impact of Writing Space
00:43:05
Speaker
you know All of that writing is still there.
00:43:08
Speaker
and and is going to remain there um because the the stories are too precious to just take them down or have them disappear. You know, they're timeless. They're timeless. Yeah, agreed. And and I think, you know, I think we're doing a good job of honoring, like there is, an ending is ending.
00:43:30
Speaker
You know, and and we can't, I think our tendency or or our our proclivity often is like, well, I just want to jump to the beginning. I just want to go to the new thing. I just want to talk about like, what are we going to birth or what are we going to start or what's going to come next? And and that's not honoring.
00:43:52
Speaker
You can't jump over it. And ah you know I could say a lot more about that. But I think as women, we know because our bodies carry a life, death, life cycle inside of them, we know the importance of of honoring the the the pain that comes with an ending.
00:44:15
Speaker
yeah And even if it's an ending that is that is that is bumped up right against an unfolding of something new, it doesn't change the fact that a decade of writing is ending. And there's loss in that. and And there are some women in our community, there are some women that are feeling that more deeply than others because of what the writing space has meant to them.
00:44:40
Speaker
um and And so I don't want my energy or our energy at all to be like, well, just be excited about the new thing that we're offering. It's not about that. It's not about that. It's like i what I want women to hear is ah we know that this has been beautiful and and we have felt that beauty too. We know that it needs to close and we feel the pain of that closure and this is not the end.
00:45:10
Speaker
and A rentent living, right? It's on end, not the end. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's good. Well, on that note, I think this is an end also.
00:45:28
Speaker
yeah And we're excited for, for what's coming next. Yeah. So thank you for sharing. Thank you for sharing. Bye. Talk to you soon.
00:45:42
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by myself, Katie Stafford, and edited by Erin Stafford. Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson, and all our guests are part of the Red Tent Living community. You can find us all at redtentliving.com, as well as on Facebook and Instagram. If you love the stories shared here, we would be thrilled if you left us a review. Until next week, love to you, dear ones.