LIFTS Out Loud: Mindy Petranek - Just Showing Up

Guest Bio: 

Mindy Petranek is a fourth-generation rancher in central Montana, where her family has lived and worked the land since 1914. Together with her husband and son, she embraces life “at the end of the road,” finding joy in the rhythm of rural living and the adventures that come with it. Passionate about connection and community, Mindy hopes to shed light on the beauty and challenges of ranch life while helping others find meaningful ways to connect with the land and each other.

Episode Description: 

In this episode of the LIFTS Podcast, host Emily Freeman talks with Mindy Petranek, who shares her story of finding connection, support, and community as a mom living on a cattle ranch in rural Montana.

Mindy reflects on the challenges of isolation, balancing motherhood with ranch life, and the power of taking small steps to build a support network. Through her experience with the Bad Moms group, she discovered how showing up and creating space for connection can transform your well-being and sense of self.

Highlights include:

• The challenges of finding adult friendships and support in rural life
• How a simple compliment sparked a mom’s group connection
• The role of mom’s groups in providing understanding, compassion, and community
• Encouragement for moms to take small, brave steps to create connections and prioritize self-care

Takeaways:

• Small gestures and showing up consistently can create meaningful support networks
• Mom’s groups can be started anywhere, with minimal resources
• Self-care and personal time are worth prioritizing, even in busy seasons of life

This episode is a heartfelt reminder that connection matters, and sometimes all it takes is the courage to show up.

Resources: 

Read Mindy's story in LIFTS Magazine: https://hmhb-mt.org/magazine/

Enjoying the podcast? We’d love your feedback and ideas for future episodes! Take our LIFTS Podcast Listener Survey at hmhb-mt.org/survey.

Connect with Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies

• Website
• Facebook
• Instagram 

For statewide resources to support Montana families in the 0-3 years of parenting, check out the LIFTS online resource guide at
https://hmhb-lifts.org/

Transcript

Emily Freeman, HMHB-MT: 0:04

Welcome to season five of the LIFTS podcast, where we connect with parents, caregivers, providers, and advocates for Montana families in the early years of parenting. Through personal stories of lived experience and expert insights, we highlight the people and programs that are helping families thrive. I'm Emily Freeman and this is The LIFTS Podcast, A project of Healthy Mothers Healthy Babies, the Montana Coalition.

Mindy: 0:31

I'm Mindy Petranek and this is Just Showing Up. It can be challenging to make friends in your adult life. I can't count the number of times I've tried to connect with people and then they don't ever call back. I just really crave that community. We live on a cattle ranch, so things run around the schedules of what's happening at the time, calving branding, ranching kind of stuff. One Christmas, my husband got me a gift certificate to a pottery class. I was super excited, but when it came time for the class, calving had begun. He said he thought I'd be able to sneak away for a couple of hours in the evenings, but when it came down to it, we couldn't make it work. We didn't have any childcare and it was just too crazy of a time. Sometimes you have to cancel plans and do what maintains your livelihood. I was stuck in a period of feeling really low and lonely and didn't know how to break the cycle. I started looking for resources and found a baby story time in the nearest big town. So I took a chance. My son had really long hair at the time, and one week this gal came up to me and complimented his hair. That's all it took. Just her kind openness to tell me it was okay to do things differently. The next week I went to library again and saw the same gal. I thanked her for what she'd said about my son's hair. She told me she was starting a mom's group and invited me to join. We exchanged numbers and that's how I started going to the Bad Moms group. The name of the group either sparks an interest or people are turned off by it. I love the truth of it'cause as a mom, there's so many moments where I feel like I'm botching the job. The drive to the Bad Moms group was an hour long. The first time I went, I was nervous, but excited to be out of the house by myself, listening to music as loud as I wanted. I felt like I had a grip on a little of me. When you become a mom, you can lose yourself, and it's all about figuring out how to reinvent. The way the group works is you just show up. Each meeting starts with the mission statement. To create a safe space for mamas to share in order to gain understanding and compassion for ourselves and others. Zero judgment No one is to repeat what we say here, no interrupting, and only give input if the person sharing welcomes it or is asking for advice. Connecting with other women about the challenges of motherhood gave me reassurance, comfort, and camaraderie. It was so much better than just packing all my feelings in a into a hole and telling myself that I'm tough enough to handle it. A friend in the group once said to me, you're always so tough. Do you ever get tired of being tough? A mom's group can help you find a better head space, which will be tenfold worth it for yourself and your family. You can't understand how much you need that outlet till you're on your drive home and thinking, oh, I feel like me again, just stick with it and go out of your comfort zone. It'll be worth it. A little bit of discomfort will help you grow.

Emily: 3:56

So you are holding a copy of LIFTS magazine. You got it in the mail. Tell me everything. How did you feel when you saw it?

Mindy: 4:04

I'm so excited. It's all amazing like I open it up and there's a picture of me. look, I'm right there in the magazine. It's magical. Like my husband, he says, my eyes are getting sweaty, honey. He's just like, you're so famous, sweetheart. And I'm like, oh, it's just not about that. But, um, it's really cool though. And my little boy, I was like, well, Henry, you're in a magazine. And he Doesn't get it. He's five. But it's still, it's really cool. But he is an adult and I give him the copy of this and like, look buddy. Sure. Um, I'm sure that'll be much more effective than his wow factor.

Emily: 4:38

When you were first approached about being in the magazine, did you have any. Trepidation or anxiety around that? I mean, at

Mindy: 4:50

first you have that inkling of like, Ooh, oh, am I, am I ready for this? And then mm-hmm. Just typical me like, no, go for it. That's just kind of like that my go-to with how I felt about the whole thing. Just always for sharing our story and you know, helping other people relate to. It's like to be a mom and all that, it's just so much that needs to be out there in the world to help moms feel more seen.

Emily: 5:17

Yeah, and I think especially in Montana, you know your piece talks a lot about rural isolation and how much more difficult it is for moms in Montana to connect when you live kind of in the middle of nowhere. And so sharing your story, it probably was really relatable and will be really relatable to a lot of moms who read the magazine, and if you're listening to this episode and you haven't seen the Lyfts magazine, we will link in the show notes to a PDF copy of it. So you can see Mindy's piece and all the other wonderful stories. What was your story about?

Mindy: 5:53

Yeah. It was talking about how I really needed to find a way to connect or reach out to find community and, I just happenstance ran into a gal and she was brave enough to go out of her comfort zone and invite me to her mom's group, and bam, the spark happened.

Emily: 6:12

I love your focus on mom's groups because that is something that can be created anywhere by anyone, right? Like it doesn't depend on an existing program or funding. Or really much of anything. You could have a moms group in the park. It doesn't have to cost anything, it's just, it's more that matter of being brave, vulnerable, willing to go up to another mom who you don't know particularly well and say, Hey, it seems like we're in the same stage of life here. Maybe we could hang out. Hey, I see you. You're not alone. What is the state of the moms group now in your area? So your, your kiddo's a little older now. The period of time you were writing about was a few years ago.

Mindy: 6:57

So, I just had a lot of stuff come up and when the the main creator left, it was like really hard'cause I just wasn't able to like full fill her shoes in a way that I felt could be consistent enough for what the group needed. Mm-hmm. So I kind of stepped back and was gonna see if any of the other moms kind of stepped forward and took it over. But sadly, no one has. But every time I run into these gals in town, they keep telling me like, oh, we miss bad moms so much. So, I've really been doing some soul searching on it and trying to get to a place where I have more space for it.

Emily: 7:34

Mm-hmm.

Mindy: 7:35

It's so worth it. Yeah. And I just, if they need me to step forward again, I need to probably do that. Maybe we get more people involved in someone who has more of a easy location access.

Emily: 7:49

Where my mind goes with this is like you were at a season of life when you needed it, where you made it a priority because it was so important and you don't need to now feel like one more thing that you're supposed to do. So when you and I spoke about your story, what was it like for you to revisit that time and again, when you read the piece in the magazine? 

Mindy: 8:11

It was so emotional. 

Emily: 8:11

Unexpectedly so? 

Mindy: 8:13

Um, yeah, until I read it, I had no idea. I remembered what we talked about, but it just felt like a regular, easy conversation. And then once I did it in this it was so powerful to me to read. I remember I got it late at night and i'm really terrible at checking my emails. And I checked it and I was like, whoa. And I couldn't go to bed. I was like, no way- I'm gonna read this. So I sat there and read it in bed and, I was like, honey, you gotta read this. And he's like, okay. Yeah. So he read it and he's like. Wow, honey. I don't know what to say. I'm literally speechless. It's just like amazing. So it was then just reminiscing about the disappointment of not being able to go to my pottery class. We all had the best intentions for trying to get mom this little piece of herself. Sanity time of you know, just you time. And then the reality of, yeah, this isn't quite gonna happen. Having to recalibrate and readjust. Did you ever get to that pottery class? We totally did, and it was great because we got to a point where Henry's old enough now that grandpa was able to like step in fully. So my husband and I actually went, so we actually did dates. It's a three part class we did. And we also did another one. I just did one by myself.'cause I loved it, so I wanted to take it from another artist to get their perspective. So I've been able to actually do it twice and we've actually made some pieces. But, yes, I was able to do the pottery. I was able to make space to do that. So, uh, it's been really, really great.

Emily: 9:49

That's good to hear and encouraging. 

Mindy: 10:04

These things that even if you can't figure out time to do it in the beginning. There will be time. We will all get our pottery class. Maybe not now, but later. Sometimes you just have to hang onto the, it'll be later. As long as you make it a priority.

Emily: 10:09

Yeah. It's an exercise in patience. And as we look towards the next issue of the magazine, we're always looking for unique voices from all around the state. What would you recommend to someone who maybe has seen the magazine, is listening to this podcast and thinks I might wanna be in the magazine?

Mindy: 10:28

I would say all of our stories are so unique that you just never know when your story's gonna touch someone and encourage them to step out and make their lives better. And if that's what this does for women, I will be just over the moon grateful. That's the, biggest Thing is we want women to be seen and know that they're not stuck. You don't have to stay there. Does it require effort? Yes. But what doesn't? Everything requires effort. Eating healthy, exercising all the stuff that makes you better, requires effort. So don't be scared to just push yourself. You'll be surprised with the results

Emily: 11:08

Okay.

Mindy: 11:09

That was great.

Emily: 11:09

I'm so excited about this episode!

Emily Freeman: 11:15

The LIFTS Podcast is a project of Healthy Mothers, Healthy Babies The Montana Coalition, a nonprofit dedicated to improving the health, safety, and wellbeing of Montana families in the zero to three years of parenting. Visit us at hmhb-mt.org to learn more about who we are and what we do. Views and opinions expressed in these interviews do not necessarily represent HMHB as an organization. If you have feedback on the podcast or an idea for a future guest or episode, we'd love to hear from you. Take our LIFTS podcast listener survey at hmhb-mt.org/survey or email us at stories@hmbmt.org. Thanks for listening.