Author Sara F. Hathaway
The Changing Earth
"Dream, Survive, Thrive"
Episode 152 S4-28
When Friends Become Family
Featuring:
Battle for the South Ch 28
Special Guest:
Jane Austin
In the Battle for the South adventure, Erika and 1st Sgt Bennet try to hash out their rift and Vince intercepts. Today on the podcast, Jane Austin aka Survivor Jane joins us to discuss the intricacies of what happens when friends become family.
Sometimes friends can become just like family. In a long term survival situation it will be imperative to surround yourself with people you can trust. Some friends can be more loyal and trustworthy than your family. Plus, you can choose your friends but not your family. There are times when we come to mentally rely upon family members to instruct, guide and help us. When we lose those family members it can be devastating but the void can be filled by friends. In a long term survival situation, it is guaranteed that you will lose love ones but you may gain new ones along the way.
Friendship is subjective. You may think that because you guys laugh together and share good times that you are friends but in a long term survival situation you will be living and working with that individual everyday. You have to know if that person would drive you crazy. You can't just get caught up in the emotions of the friendship. Rifts can happen very rapidly.
A sure sign that your friend has become as close as family is you could trust them indefinitely. Trust is absolutely paramount. It is not something that comes instantly but must be earned over time. Trust is a sacred bond. Ask yourself: will they truly have your back? You can overcome quarks and personality traits but if there is no trust, there is nothing. You need to know how that person will really respond when the stuff gets real. Put yourself in the scenario to test the relationship and see who they really are. Go on a couple day camping trip with only your go-bags and see how there emotional status holds up. Really listen to what and how they say things. Watch and listen to how they interact with other people.
In any relationship there will be conflict. Having a set of tools to handle conflicts will be essential to the stability of your group. Communication is key here. A lot of conflicts are direct results of misunderstandings. Discuss any problems right away and do not let them fester. One miscommunication can ruin your day and then you may find out that it was all a misunderstanding and there was no need for ill feelings. Watch their body language, listen to their tone of voice. Try to talk it out without wanting to kill each other. Choose your battles is a conflict even worth it? Respect their opinions and try to find a middle ground.
To meld families together you need rules and guidelines set up before you start. This is essential if the relationship is going to last. Have roles and expectancies for every individual set up. Make sure everyone knows what is acceptable and what is not. Use an individual's talents to highlight their roles and what is expected of them. Set boundaries and make sure they are understood. The elements of individual marriages and relationships between individuals in your group will effect the whole group. If there is a separation, what happens to the individuals? Who stays and who goes? Do you accept the new partner? If an individual broke the trust of the person they love, will they do that to the group? Try to consider all of the possible dynamics. Think outside the box, anything is possible. When connecting with another family it takes a long time to develop trust, respect, and a real working relationships. There may be differences in child rearing ideals and family dynamics when interacting with spouses, etc. This all needs to be taken into consideration.
The Changing Earth Series
Jane Austin
Like so many women, Jane was a self-professed "oblivious-to-what-was-going-on-around-me" city girl. She was clueless about politics, the economy and the ever changing weather patterns around her.
It wasn't until she personally experienced a life-threatening assault at gun-point, live through several violent hurricanes, and watched as her 401k dwindled down next to nothing that her eyes began to open to what was going on around her.
In 2008 she took a huge leap of faith - quit her corporate job, sold her home for next to nothing, cash-in my 401k which was even more next to nothing - and moved to Western North Carolina to learn to live a more self-sustaining and self-reliant lifestyle.
Giving up the life of eating at different restaurants each night and having her nails and hair done every two weeks - she began to research how to prepare for uncertain times and still retain her "girlie-ness". While searching preparedness web sites she noticed that most were "male-oriented". Frustrated at the need to research a word, phrase or term that she didn't understand each time she went on one of these sites, it began to dawn on her that the reason she didn't understand these sites was because a lot of them were written by men, and as we all know, men and women speak a different language and therefore process information differently.
Jane decided then and there to make it her mission to educate others; with an emphasis on women, on how to better prepare themselves by creating the website SurvivorJane.com - writing on a multitude of topics dealing with disaster survival and preparedness; while interjecting bits and pieces of humor on personal experiences, discoveries and her journey along the way.SurvivorJane.com also reaches preparedness-minded men who may have just begun their preparedness journey, or have sent the women in their lives, albeit, girl-friend, wife, daughters, mother, aunts or grandmothers to the site and in the process was also helped to better understand preparedness from a women's perspective.As an additional outreach, Jane uses social media networks. She is the creator of the internationally recognized hashtag #PrepperTalk on Twitter that brings preparedness-minded people from all over the world together to discuss preparedness ideas, suggestions and information with one another. It is currently the Largest Prepper Community on Twitter.
Jane has been featured on National Geographic Channel's Doomsday Preppers (Season Four) and in Newsweek Special Edition Off-Grid, Prepper and Shooter Magazine, Prepared Magazine. She is a contributing writer to National Geographic Channel's Doomsday Preppers BlogTV.
"Where There Is No Cosmetic Counter" and it's 1st Revision: "Emergency/Survival Hygiene" were written out of a need to bring more awareness to one of the most overlooked areas in Preparedness: "Personal Hygiene" by showing easy ways to make survival personal hygiene products. After all, infectious diseases are the number one cause of death worldwide.
In her book "What Could Possibly Go Wrong: How To Go From Completely Clueless to Totally Prepared" she "talks to the reader" in easy to understand language about her personal experiences and what she has learned could go wrong around us and how we can better prepare ourselves and family for these uncertain times.
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