Finding Faith, Practicing Gratitude: A Convert’s Story

Girlfriends (A Podcast for Catholic Women)

Danielle Bean

Religion & Spirituality, Parenting, Kids & Family

4.9 • 810 Ratings

🗓️ 17 June 2025

⏱️ 27 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

In this powerful and inspiring episode of Girlfriends, I am joined by newly-baptized Catholic convert, writer, and journal creator Abigail Austin. Abby shares the incredible journey that brought her from atheism to the Catholic Church—including a life-changing walk along the Camino de Santiago, meeting her husband, and discovering God's presence through beauty, storytelling, and grace.

Together, we discuss:

* Abby’s unexpected path to the Catholic Church (baptized at age 41!)

* How literature, beauty, and storytelling played a role in her conversion

* What she discovered about forgiveness, peace, and truth through Catholicism

* Her project Faith in Five Minutes: A Catholic Gratitude Journal and how it’s transforming lives—including in Catholic schools

* The power of practicing daily gratitude, especially as a couple or family

* Her return to fiction writing and how her Catholic faith is now central to her creative work

* The importance of offering faithful, beautiful storytelling in today’s culture

Learn more about the journal:

🔗 faithinfiveminutes.com

Free offer for Catholic schools! Get 50 free copies to try the journal in your classroom. Contact Abby via Instagram to learn more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Girlfriends, episode number 475, Finding Faith, Practicing Gratitude, A Convert Story with Abigail Austin.
0:10.1	Hello, and welcome to girlfriends. I'm Danielle Bean. I'm a wife and a mom, and I'm on a mission to help you.
0:16.2	Know your worth as a woman so you can find peace, balance, and joy in daily living. This week, we are talking with
0:21.2	special guests, a convert who teaches us about gratitude. Abigail Austin, can't wait to share
0:26.3	this special conversation with you. Let's get started. Hey, girlfriend, thank you for being here. I am so
0:33.5	excited for this week's episode. So Abigail Austin is a woman that I met only on Substack.
0:39.1	There's no way I would have met her any other way. She's an Australian woman that's living in
0:42.7	Spain. And we're living in completely different parts of the world and our paths never would
0:47.6	have crossed except for the miracle that is Substack and the fun that is a podcast. So I love that technology allows us to make
0:55.7	these connections with people because I find that I have so much in common with Abby and it's been
1:00.1	a ton of fun getting to know her and reading some of her content over at Substack. And then she
1:05.6	agreed to come on and tell us a little bit about her story. So I'm super excited to share that
1:09.3	with you. Before we get to that,
1:10.9	though, I just want to mention, I talked with you here before about my grace and growth
1:15.3	substack, which is for Catholic creatives. And if you're interested in signing up for that, you can go
1:19.5	over to Danielle Bean.com and click the mentoring tab and get yourself signed up for free. There is a paid
1:24.6	option if you want access to more of the content there. But there is a free
1:28.4	option. You can just check it out that way. But part of what I've been doing there are these small
1:32.6	group mentoring sessions. So I've got a group that's going on right now, six weeks of weekly
1:37.6	sessions with Catholic creatives and small groups on purpose. So I've got 10 women that are
1:42.9	signed up for this. And I am just so moved by how
1:46.4	beautiful it is when we come together as women and share our stories. Now, this is particularly for
	...

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