This Prepared Life
Welcome to This Prepared Life, a podcast for women where preparedness feels peaceful, practical, and possible. Hosted by Allison Michael, this show is about creating a calmer, more resilient life through everyday preparedness and intentional living. Inside the episodes, you’ll find realistic food storage tips, Allison’s Three Layer Food Storage system, preparedness skills, homemaking rhythms, and encouragement to help you care for yourself and your family with more confidence and less overwhelm. From emergency preparedness and food preservation to homemaking and building a well-stocked pantry, this podcast offers practical guidance to help preparedness feel more natural in your everyday life. Whether you’re filling your first pantry shelf or have been preparing for years, you can expect simple action steps, honest conversations, and a reminder that preparedness does not have to come from fear. Here, we believe in being prepared, not scared — one pantry shelf, skill, and intentional step at a time.
This Prepared Life
Can We Normalize Preparedness? Prepping Isn't Crazy. - Ep9
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Can preparedness be normalized? Can we, should we? Is it even possible? Join me for a discussion all about what making preparedness the norm might look like.
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Welcome to this Prepared Life podcast where homestudying and the apocalypse meet. I'm Alison, your host. Hello, and welcome to This Prepared Life. I'm Allison, your host. And if you follow me on Instagram, you have probably had the joy of hearing me use my mom voice. And I do that sometimes. Sometimes I just I get a little fired up about a topic, and um I don't hold back. And today is going to be one of those episodes. So you can bear with me, and I hope that you will listen to the end of this. And um, I hope that you are encouraged to take your next step, no matter what that step is. When I first started this podcast, that was my hope and my goal. And it still is to this day that we can be encouraged, that we can learn something and gain knowledge, and that we can know that we are not alone in this. Today I want to talk about just the concept of normalizing preparedness because so often I hear people online or even in person, and we end our sentences about being prepared with laughter. Like it's something that we need to negate a little bit. We're not crazy preppers, we're just a little bit prepared. And I think it's okay to be a crazy prepper. Be a crazy prepper. I think prepping is nothing more than planning for the things to come. That's our definition here. Each of us gets to decide what that looks like for our families. And I think that our world would be a different place if each and every one of us was minimally prepared for emergencies. At the bare minimum, if you had two weeks or one month of supplies to get your family through. And think about what that would look like if all of your neighbors had the same. When a tornado or a hurricane or a wildfire ripped through an area, everyone would be able to work together. And I think that that is a beautiful picture. Do I think that that will happen? Sadly, no, just because I think too many people are so dependent upon the system and then they believe in that system. The Pollyanna in me still holds some hope there. So, how do we normalize prepping? And I'm not sure if I have an answer for this one. So, you guys are just gonna have to listen to me ramble. Prepping used to be normal, and it wasn't called prepping, it was just life. Some of our grandmothers, our great-grandmothers, our great-great-grandmothers lived in a way where they prepared for the things to come. All summer and fall, they planned for winter. They didn't just get to run to the grocery store, and that's a modern convenience that we have. And I think that that is a lie that our society has gotten us all to believe that the store is better. I don't think the store is better. I think we each need to have skills and knowledge to take care of our families and our food supply. Because when we are dependent upon that grocery store to provide our families' food needs, something's broken. It's not always gonna work. And I think this last two years have been a great awakening for a lot of people in that our system is broken, our food chain is broken, our supply chain is broken, we need to separate ourselves from these things. We gave away our security when we believed the lie that we no longer need to do these things for ourselves, whether that is growing our own food or raising our own food or canning our own food or preserving our food or even knowing how to cook our own food, those things are important. And we need to get back to that. And I think that normalizing prepping, because prepping is not just stuff, it is not hoarding and amassing piles of things. Prepping is a mentality and it is a way of life and it is skills and it is learning things. When we can pull away from that system and learn to do these things on our own, we are all going to be so much better. I posted something on Instagram recently, and I'm gonna read that to you. It may make some of you uncomfortable, and and that's okay because uncomfortableness will move us to action. So I posted, being prepared doesn't make you crazy. Staying willfully ignorant does. What is willful ignorance? It is intentionally avoiding information to avoid having to make decisions about a specific topic. I have family members that I try and talk to about preparedness and they don't want to hear it. Not because they do not think it's needed, but because they just want to ignore it, and that is willfully ignorance. That is a choice. If we are presented with information, we have choices. We can choose to research that further or we can ignore it. And so every day on Instagram, information is being shared. And those of you who follow me and follow the other women who prep, you are being presented with this information. What are you doing with it? How do we normalize preparedness? Because a lot of us prep, and we are just normal people. We are mothers and daughters and grandmothers, we are students, we are clerks in the grocery store. So many of us prep. It doesn't matter if we're prepping for a power outage or an EMP, a wildfire or a Civil War, a hurricane or the collapse of society. What matters is that we prep, that we are not hiding from it. How are we bringing that up to the others in our lives in a way that we are not revealing too much about ourselves, but bringing this topic of preparedness out into the open so that it is more than a laugh out loud at the end of a sentence? I'm not just a crazy prepper because we need to be having these conversations. Are we sharing that we stocked up on batteries just in case there's a power outage? Because power outages happen, especially if you live in an area with winter storms. Are we saying, I stocked up on food and water just in case of hurricane or tornado? Those things are normal everyday events that happen in our lives. And when we prepare, we're not preparing for if something happens. We're preparing for when something happens, because things happen in our lives. Job losses happen, hurricanes happen, wildfires happen, earthquakes happen, tornadoes happen. And yes, these are scary things, but we do not need to fear. We need to prep because prepping helps us and helps our families get through these things. Sometimes I'm torn on this topic of normalizing prepping because yes, I want everyone to prep. And and I I do, I fully believe that. If you are not a prepper yet, please get started and please do not hesitate to reach out and ask questions because prepping should be normal, shouldn't be something we need to hide that we do, and sadly it is. So if you do not prep, please, please reach out and ask questions and get started. And if you do prep already, how can you and I normalize prepping? This is such a big, big topic, and I don't think it's one that anyone has an answer for because our society has made preppers crazy. We have been labeled as hoarders and doomsday preppers, and we live in houses and bunkers with piles of stuff that expire and go bad. And that's not what we are. We are, like I said earlier, we are mothers and wives and daughters and grandmothers and grocery store clerks and students, and we prep. So this was a ramble, and um, it's just a lot of the thoughts that have going through my head, and I hope you will think about them too. How you can normalize prepping in some way to those in your circle. Thanks for listening today, and until next time. Remember, every little thing matters, and a goal without a plan is just a wish. If you have any questions, feel free and find me on Instagram at this prepared life. You can also visit this preparedlife.blogspot.com. If you enjoyed today's episode, I would love it if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts.