Futuresteading
This is a conversation about the future. About creating a culture that values tomorrow. We reckon a slower, simpler, steadier existence is the first step - one that’s healthier for humans and the planet. We call it Futuresteading. Each week we chat to community builders, ritual makers, food growers, health wizards and environmental wisdom keepers, gathering practical advice and epic solidarity - so we can all nut this thing out together. Join our nitty, gritty, honest and hopeful convo every Monday during our 16 episode seasons. Support the pod by shouting us a cuppa >>> buymeacoffee.com/futuresteading
Futuresteading
Ep 204 Meg Ulman - The Beautiful Weight Of Living a Neo Peasant Life
In this conversation, Jade sits down with Meg Ulman (sadly not in person) — heart led writer, mother, educator, maker & one part of Artists as Family — to unpick what it really means to live on your own terms.
They trace the winding road toward a neo-peasant life — one defined less by nostalgia & more by intention. They talk about living with a fundamental trust in yourself to make decisions, parenting within community & the grit & grace of staying true to your values.
Meg describes herself as cash poor but time rich, together they explore what that trade-off really feels like.
They talk about the ache of impermanence — how everything we love we will lose — what it means to become good at grief rather than trying to outrun it. What it feels like to feel alive, trusting your instinct to survive & holding a desire to be part of that holding — the invisible web that keeps us tethered to one another & to the earth itself.
Meg shares her reflections on solitude, on listening deeply to the land beneath her feet & on the quiet privileges of aging — not as decline, but as initiation. There’s talk of ritual, of story & of the small daily acts that remind us who we are.
It’s a conversation that doesn’t romanticise simplicity but celebrates the beauty & honesty of a life well noticed.
Links You'll Love
Loved this? Want More of Meg: Artist as family - rites of passage and grief
Pod Partners Rock:Australian Medicinal Herbs Code: Future5
Show notes:
- The path to a neo-peasant life begins with tiny, conscious seeds — small shifts that grow into whole new ways of being
- To live authentically is to let your values lead, even when the world is shouting for you to do otherwise
- Raising kids in a web of real connection builds belonging that no algorithm can match
- To feel the full weight of love, we have to make peace with loss — grief is proof that we’ve lived deeply
- Parenting (and life) gets easier when we trust the quiet tug of intuition more than the noise of advice
- Simple living isn’t always easy — the work is real, but so is the satisfaction
- None of us are meant to do this alone; community is the net that catches us
- Feeling the whole spectrum — joy, ache, awe — is what it means to be truly alive
- Sometimes self-discovery starts with walking away from the script you were handed.
- Rites of passage & initiations remind us where we’ve been, and mark who we’re becoming
- Listening with your body — not just your head — tunes you into the language of the earth
- Solitude isn’t loneliness; it’s the quiet space where truth grows roots
- Moving from maiden to elder
- Aging is a privilege — each wrinkle a story of survival & grace
- Being time-rich beats being time-poor every single day
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