An answer for Jill

it's the great female filter

Photo by Michael Kirsh on Unsplash

Years ago when Jill Winger wasn’t a name but just some random woman with a young family who bought a homestead on the bare, windswept prairie in Wyoming, she started a blog called The Prairie Homestead to share what she was learning about self-sufficiency in all its forms: cooking from scratch, animal husbandry, growing a garden when you regularly get hail the size of tennis balls, and other handy-to-know stuff. Not long after its inception, I became a follower.

(In the spirit of full disclosure, Jill also has a successful essential oils business with a popular MLM-structured company, which is how she—at least in the beginning—could afford a lot of their larger projects. So don’t feel bad if you can’t do everything she’s done on her homestead.)

I began learning about the difference between heirloom seeds and hybrids and why, if you want to grow the same vegetables next year, you should find heirloom seeds. I followed along when her family began raising beef cattle, and then when they added a few dairy cows. I learned a little about keeping chickens and cooking basic, homemade food. I bought her cookbook as soon as it was released and learned how to make homemade yogurt without the help of a fancy machine. I learned the pros and cons of raised beds.

When Cov*d hit and sourdough bread became a thing, I dutifully bought a kitchen scale because, according to the experts, you must weigh your ingredients rather than measure them like a barbarian. And if you weigh them in grams instead of lowly American ounces, your bread will rival that of the most accomplished European bakers. I followed all this advice and produced failure after failure (and stressed myself out) until Jill said I could throw the scale out and keep my starter perfectly happy with a measuring cup and a wooden spoon. I’ve been keeping us in homemade bread ever since.

And her salted caramel coffee creamer is to die for. Thanks, Jill.

I’ve learned a ton from her, and I’ve enjoyed her ramblings and nodded along with her lack of interest in the Grammys, the latest political scandal, or her AI-generated caricature.

This essay is in no way intended to diss Jill or all of her accomplishments, which are many. It’s just to share my observations and maybe explain the trend of statements I’ve been listening to her make for the last few months.

Because I am a subscriber, I receive Jill’s essays (aka blogs) in my email inbox. A few weeks ago I read her article called “Unfiltered Confessions of a Small-Town Restaurant Owner.” A few years ago she and her husband purchased the old Chugwater Soda Fountain (I actually have a photo of my parents standing in front of it years before Jill bought it.) and refurbished and added to it. What a fun project for her. But because her area of Wyoming is so sparsely populated, she depends on the locals to keep her business running.

In this article, she begins by talking about how she’s proud of what they’ve brought to life there in their little corner of Wyoming (as she should be), and how the locals keep them going, even though there are only 200 of them (locals, that is). Then she says, “But today I’m going to say the parts I usually don’t say out loud because, well… I feel like it. And some of it just needs to be said.”

Uh-oh.

When you say the parts you don’t usually say out loud because you feel like it and some of it just needs to be said, you might be approaching a slippery slope. Not that you can’t say whatever you want—you certainly can. But there will be repercussions. People will have opinions.

Then in other articles she talked about how not belonging is a gift (I agree) and how she is no longer allowing social media and the internet as a whole to hijack her nervous system with the pressure to be and do and create (also agree and support her in this 100%).

But then a new article showed up in my inbox and my eyes got big and I said right out loud, “What the world?”

The title said (I’ll clean up the language for you), “What the H*** Happened to Homesteading?”

Excuse me?

Then the most recent one came today: The Cage Was Never Locked. In it, she shared this quote: “Mid-life is when you finally do the things your sixteen-year-old self wanted—but stop apologizing for it.”

And I knew.

I’ve seen this before. I’ve lived this before. Been there, done that.

Jill is 40. All the frustrations she has been voicing in the last few months are really just on the surface. The bigger issue is way down deep and it’s as old as humanity—at least, female humanity.

It’s not her personality and it’s not that she’s getting hateful or bratty. It’s that she’s losing estrogen.

The great female filter

Obviously I don’t know Jill personally, and I don’t know what’s going on in her body. But here’s what do I know: when a woman is a few—or ten or fifteen—years away from menopause, she enters a phase of life called perimenopause—literally “around menopause,” when hormones begin to fluctuate and wreak havoc. Estrogen begins to diminish and with it goes the great female filter.

It’s not character, it’s hormones. Let’s talk about the biology.

When women are younger (think teens and 20s and 30s) and specifically of child-bearing age, they need to be able to find and keep a mate in order to reproduce, which is what the female body wants. There is an innate drive in women to have babies, and in order to do that, a female must attract and keep a mate. In our day, in our culture, the best way to do that is to “be sweet.”

During this time, her prefrontal cortex is in control, monitoring her social behavior and decision making and making sure she is “sweet” (read compliant) enough to snag a man.

Does he leave his dirty clothes all over the floor for you to pick up? Be sweet. Does he expect you to read his mind? Be sweet. Put up with whatever he dishes so that you have someone to help you make babies. (We’re only talking about the biology here.)

Somehow this works when you’re young and your primary drive is to procreate, but only because you are loaded with estrogen. This magical hormone enables you to put up with things that bother you and helps you keep your mouth shut about them so you can “be sweet.” Remember, it’s all about finding and keeping a mate.

But when you hit your 40s, you’re usually at the end of—if not finished with—child bearing and you don’t need a mate for that anymore. Estrogen begins to fluctuate wildly. One day you’re “sweet” and the next you want to throttle the man who helped you make babies. By this time, your relationship should be about a lot more than having children, but what if it’s not? What if he still leaves his laundry everywhere and expects the impossible from you? What then?

This is where it gets complicated. Your estrogen is dropping, and with it your willingness to tolerate the things you used to tolerate. No longer do you have patience for his self-centeredness. The dirty clothes lying around infuriate you. You stop caring whether he wants you to read his mind or not. It’s the age of the big Whatever.

Your give-a-flip meter has pegged and your filter has broken because lack of estrogen has hijacked your whole body.

Have you ever wondered why women “lose their minds” in their 40s and 50s? It’s not that they’ve lost them; it’s that they are just now honestly seeing what’s in them, what estrogen has filtered all these years.

Why do people get divorced in middle age after 30 or 40 years of marriage? Because wives suddenly feel like they don’t have to put up with their man anymore. They are sick of his nonsense and they don’t need him to make babies, so why stay? It’s hormonal.

Except that’s not the whole picture.

We are more than just biology and praise the Lord for that. While we are definitely physical, we are also emotional and spiritual. And when we go through life only paying attention to the physical and ignoring the emotional and spiritual, we are trying to sit on a one-legged stool and we will eventually fall.

So what do we do? How do we get through this eye-rolling, I’m-sick-of-your-garbage phase of life?

How to prepare for the loss of the filter

1. Don’t outsource your biology. You are responsible for what you know about your body. Don’t wait for a doctor to tell you what your hormones are doing. Learn about them for yourself and that knowledge will help you conduct yourself with understanding.

2. Explain the biology to your husband. Chances are about 99% that he does not have a clue what is happening in your body. If you want him to dwell with you according to knowledge (1 Peter 3:7), you have to give him the knowledge.

3. Start preparing while you’re young. If you wait until you and your husband are in your 40s or 50s, it’s too late. When you’ve only been married a few weeks and there’s tension in your relationship—even if it’s over something as silly as dirty laundry—don’t ignore it. Speak the truth in love and with honor, but speak it. If something irritates you now, when the filter is gone it will infuriate you and you’ll think it’s grounds for divorce. Again, if he is to dwell with you according to knowledge, he needs to know you and what you need/want and how you want to be treated. Don’t be a mystery.

4. Don’t suppress your emotions. As a young married woman, I was taught that no man wants an emotional wife, and if that’s the case, then no man should ever get married. God himself has emotions and we are created in his image, so obviously we are going to have them as well. Stuffing emotions down inside is unhealthy for both parties. Learn how to handle your emotions in a healthy way, seeing them as indicators without letting them rule your life, but do not suppress them. That’s akin to dropping Mentos in Diet Pepsi—there will eventually be an explosion.

5. Don’t be a victim of your physiology. Understand what is happening in your body and practice acting in a godly way. You won’t always get it right, but you can always get back up and keep trying. That’s character.

6. Invite God into the process. It’s not like he doesn’t know what’s going on—he created you. “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men [and women] liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him” (James 1:5).