A Sound Mind (Fight or Flight in a Scary World)

Roots and Refuge Podcast

Jessica Sowards

Home & Garden, Leisure

5 • 646 Ratings

🗓️ 2 April 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Hey y’all, welcome back to the Roots and Refuge Podcast! I’m your host, Jessica Sowards—my friends call me Jess—and around here, we talk about all things homesteading: growing food, raising animals, preserving and preparing what we harvest, and living more mindfully in relationship with each other and with the Earth.

This week, I’m sharing something that’s been heavy on my heart—how we care for our minds in a world that feels loud, fast, and anxious. I’ve been spending long hours in the garden, weeding and thinking, and it led me to reflect on the nervous system, trauma, and the way we sometimes try to bully our way into peace instead of nurturing it. I’m talking about what it means to pursue a sound mind—what that really looks like on a practical, daily level—and how I’ve found surprising healing in something as simple as crochet. This is a conversation about choosing slow and quiet in a world demanding fast and loud. It’s about protecting your peace, holding space for healing, and doing the inner work that creates a secure home for ourselves and the ones we love.

Thank you for spending time with me today. If you’ve found encouragement here, consider supporting the podcast on Patreon, where you can listen early and join our monthly Q&A.

As always— I bless you, until next time.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey there, darlands, welcome back to the Roots and Refuge podcast. I'm your host, Jessica
0:12.4	Sauer. It's my friends call me Jess, and I hope you will too. And here on my podcast, we talk about
0:16.7	all things homesteading, growing food by growing gardens, raising animals, preserving,
0:21.2	preparing and enjoying that food, and just trying to live a little more mindfully in relationship
0:26.1	with each other and with the earth.
0:30.7	It is a beautiful spring day in the Midlands of South Carolina.
0:34.9	I've spent quite a few hours this week in my garden, weeding,
0:40.0	kind of unearthing my cottage garden, I guess you could say. There's a lot of perennials coming up
0:46.0	among the weeds, so it's kind of slow work. I can't just go in there and rake it all out. I've got to,
0:51.4	with precision, go in and intentionally pull each weed and then of course it's warm and we're
0:57.8	getting a lot of rain and so they're growing it's so fast so like the longer it takes me to get to
1:03.7	the weeds the more established they are so i've been really plugging away at that um i really got
1:08.4	to get my potatoes in and thankfully when I miss a window it it stays open a
1:14.1	long time. I miss like the beginning of a window. I don't fully miss a window. I have like a 220 day
1:20.1	growing season. So, you know, my seedlings are a little on the small side because I probably could
1:25.6	have started them a little earlier and things
1:28.0	like that but not really late I'm just not early so I'm I'm in the throes of spring though I'm
1:34.8	milking my goats we got some bottle babies we have of course a cow and milk and I've got my boys home
1:42.6	for homeschool and this is getting to be the time of year and at least
1:47.6	for the next few months it is really crunch time it's time to really work hard and so what we will
1:56.4	be reaping for really the rest of the season we're getting it in in right now. And it's lovely. I love this time of
2:02.5	year. I've been doing a lot of thinking this week because I've been waiting a lot. I actually realized
	...

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