A Heart That Beats for Home

47. Welcome to Season Two!

• Nikki Smith • Season 2

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Time is a precious yet fleeting element of life that shapes our experiences, especially within our families. In this episode, we reflect on the past year of the podcast, celebrate growth, and share exciting plans for 2025, including discussions on women's health, intimacy in marriage, and parenting young adults, all framed by inspiring stories of resilience.

• Reflecting on the swift passage of time and its impact on family life 
• Celebrating the success of 46 podcast episodes and a global audience 
• Discussing the unique challenges of solo podcasting and gauging listener engagement 
• Importance of taking breaks for rest and personal reflections 
• Plans for season two: sustaining quality content and adapting to listener needs 
• Upcoming topics include women's health, intimacy in marriage, and parenting young adults 
• Introducing "Beauty from Ashes" series featuring inspiring life stories 
• Gratitude to listeners for their support and engagement throughout the journey

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Speaker 1:

Hey friends, I'm Nikki Smith, your host here at A Heart that Beats for Home, the podcast where we're ditching filters and diving headfirst into the raw beauty of all things home. Now, I am no expert when it comes to this whole parenting and marriage dance. I'm simply a gal who's been riding the mom roller coaster for 22 years and a wife still untangling the mystery of it all 25 years after saying I do. My goal is to bring you unapologetically messy and boldly genuine conversations about cultivating strong families. We're going to laugh, possibly cry, and straight talk about the joy and chaos that comes within the four walls that we call home. No judgment and certainly no perfection, just real talk from my heart, a heart that beats for home. Let's dive in. Hello friends, welcome back to another episode here on the podcast. So great to have you here with us Coming back after a little bit of a break.

Speaker 1:

We took about six weeks off for just some rest and holiday craziness, just to be able to pause and put all of my energy into family and focusing on finishing 2024 strong, but so excited to be back here in 2025. I don't know about you guys, but the fact that we are living in the year 2025 still kind of blows my mind and it makes me realize just how quickly time goes. I've been reminiscing with some friends about Y2K. Probably some of our listeners weren't even alive yet when that happened. But getting married in 1999, our first New Year's Eve was 2020, y2k and everybody was unsure if the world was going to end, if the computer systems were all going to crash, if the banks were all going to go dark. And it's just funny to think now we are 25 years past that. I think there's always going to be milestones in our life that we look back in these big, monumentous years, and Y2K 2020 was a big one. Obviously, for all of us, 2020 is a really big one that we'll look back on, and already to be five years removed from 2020 is so crazy. So just constant reminders all around us in so many different ways. When we look at the calendar, when we look at the face of our children, when we look at the date of our maybe wedding anniversary or the age on our driver's license maybe wedding anniversary or the age on our driver's license, it just is reminders of how quickly time really does go and also how precious time is. So I wanted to spend some time today, just kind of reflecting back a little with the podcast, talking to you guys through some ideas and thoughts of what we have coming ahead for the podcast in 2025 and just kind of kick us off for season two I went back and did a little bit of digging into some statistics and at the end of the year I know I've said it before, but when I came into this last January, I had been thinking on the idea of having a podcast for several years and really had taken six months with my family to really pray through and make sure that this was something that I wanted to commit to and that I had the backing of my family, because I knew that it was going to be a process.

Speaker 1:

I knew that it was going to be a learning curve, that there was going to be a lot of hours and dedication that had to go into this and that some other things might have to be put a little bit on a side burner in order to make this dream, this passion that I had, that I really do believe was something that God was pushing me towards. So if I was gonna jump into it, I knew that it was definitely gonna be a learning curve and for sure, for sure, the last year has been a learning curve and will continue to be a learning curve, as there is a lot that goes into every single episode the content, the script, the recording, the editing, the posting. I mean all of the different angles that go into this, and I had just made a commitment that if I was gonna do it, I needed to learn all of that, and so this last year has been absolutely a labor of love. There has at times been tears when technical issues have come up that are beyond my scope, but we do live in a day and age where a quick Google search or a YouTube video often can pull us out of a crisis and help us get to a finished project, and so I am so grateful for the internet and the different just places and resources that I have been able to find to just kind of figure this out as we go. Some of us like to have all of the information before we start, and some of us are willing to jump out of the plane and try to figure out the parachute on the way down, and I feel a little bit like this journey has been jumping out, not 100% sure where the parachute cord is. But the good news is we found the cord before we hit the ground and we made it through our first year. So 46 episodes in 2024.

Speaker 1:

When I launched this on January 18th, I just kept saying to myself don't miss a Thursday, don't miss a Thursday, don't miss a Thursday. And I am super proud of myself, just because of life and the things that go into it, that we went 46 episodes strong every single Thursday without fail, and for me that is a huge success and a victory. It was kind of a challenge for myself that I just wasn't going to allow life to get in the way of sticking with this commitment that I felt I was supposed to plow forward with. And so 46 episodes. We had 15 different guests on those different episodes, so much great content, so much wisdom from so many people and so many more that are coming in this next year that I am so excited for you to be able to sit at the feet of, to learn from their life experience, from their highs, from their lows, from their years of schooling and education and just doing life. So, 46 episodes, 15 guests.

Speaker 1:

We were in six different continents, which is super crazy to me. Our podcast was listened in all six of the continents. I'm assuming Antarctica is the one that did not make the list, and so we'll have to work on that. I don't know if there's some ice hut somewhere with some internet that maybe we can get that one listen on that seventh continent, but six continents in 44 countries, and as I was looking through this list today just doing some review some of the few that just kind of made me go. This is crazy. The internet is a crazy place. The World Wide Web certainly is just that. It is worldwide. A couple of the countries that stuck out to me of the 44 where we have listeners Zimbabwe, israel, netherlands, brazil, ukraine, iceland, singapore, malaysia in a closet or in an office in a home in Illinois in the United States can go into a computer and that people all over the world have access to it. 44 countries, 1,149 cities where there's listeners. Two main places that you guys are tuning in is Apple and Spotify from iPhones, and I am just so grateful.

Speaker 1:

I know we've talked about this in the past as well. A podcast is kind of a. It's a weird platform for the person behind the mic. So in all other areas of my life whether it be in my business, when I'm speaking to groups or on a stage or even on a zoom teams call, where there's, you know, 20, 30, 40, a hundred people on little picture screens that you can see when you are talking. When you are talking, when you are training, when you are having conversations, you get feedback and so you know okay, this is working, this is making sense. They're engaged, they're asking questions, they're putting comments in and a podcast outside of the fact that when there's somebody that you're interviewing, it's more of that feedback, that conversation.

Speaker 1:

But to be a solo host on a podcast and to put content out where you're literally just staring into a computer screen and then you're uploading a file onto the internet, giving it a title, giving it some show notes and sending it out to the world, it is very hard to know. Is this making a difference? Is this filling a need? Is this really truly helping what? The main mission that I have with this podcast is? To help cultivate strong, faith-filled families. Is this podcast really doing that?

Speaker 1:

It can be very hard to gauge and monitor that, and so I have just had to have a lot of faith and go on the fact that I have felt called to this. I really do believe that God is orchestrating the steps of that and he's putting the right people in my path and the right technology and just all of the things that he is putting together. And so it has been a different process for me to have to kind of have a blind faith that I am just doing this alone in my house, and then I'm trusting that God's going to do whatever it is that he wants to do with it, and so being able to dig into some of this stuff and see the physical evidence of it is making a difference. It is going places. There are people that are listening, and my prayer is that there are people that are listening that maybe feel alone or lonely or overwhelmed or just needing support, and that somehow, through an air bud in your ear or a computer or through your car radio, that you have somehow stumbled upon this podcast, a Heart that Beats for Home, and that your heart is being encouraged, that you're being rejuvenated, that you're being kind of renewed when you're hearing other moms, other stories, and that it is, in turn, helping you take the stuff that you're learning and go back into your own home and cultivate a strong family, because that, to me, is where the true success is, and so I'm grateful for these statistics that we're able to grab and see.

Speaker 1:

And when I had made the decision in November that I was going to take off Thanksgiving through the end of the year, I battled with that a little bit, but I just felt like even listeners not just me as the person producing the podcast, but listeners there are just seasons of life where we have too much stuff coming at us it's coming from every which way, especially through the holidays and just felt like it was a really appropriate time just to take a couple of weeks and rest and relax and get rid of some of the normal programming, to just create more space mentally, physically, all of it, to just be intentional with our family and with our people. And it was refreshing for me for a lot of reasons. Number one, just to get a break from the actual production of the podcast, but also just to mentally a break from the actual production of the podcast, but also just to mentally disconnect a little bit. And it was also just a really I'm grateful for a couple of things that happened in those six weeks. I was able to really walk away.

Speaker 1:

The last episode that I recorded in November is actually one that's going to air next week, which I'll talk to you about in a minute. So I recorded that episode and put all of the equipment away and started to get people asking mid to end of December like when is the podcast coming back? I've been missing it on Thursday mornings. It was just a refresher for me and kind of an encouragement to know that people are, on Thursday, excited to hear a podcast, they're excited to hear from other moms, they're excited to get maybe a little nugget to take into their week. And then this last week, specifically when it didn't come out on the very first Thursday of January which I intentionally made that decision just to let people kind of settle back in to a new year after crazy schedule I have had so many people say wait, there was no podcast last week, where is it? When is it coming back? And it was just kind of just a little thank you, lord, for a reminder that this is important. I do need to stick with it, because anytime that we take a break from something you go oh, wow, that was kind of nice. Maybe that was like a one season thing, but I'm like, no, I am supposed to keep going, and I know that there's lots of evidence of that.

Speaker 1:

And then at the end of the year, I received a really fun email and I'm only telling you guys these things because it's you. You are the ones that are making this happen and I'm so grateful for it. A Heart that Beats for Home landed in the top 25% of podcasts across all platforms, so wherever people are streaming, that data is collected and in the top 25% of podcasts, and so I am so grateful for you, for you moms, for you dads, for all of the listeners that come here week after week and are listening to the podcasts that are being put out. So thank you so much for that and thank you for just being a huge encouragement to me, whether it's through social media messages, through just being a listener every week. The ratings, the reviews, all of those things they do add up and they mean a lot, and you having that input and you listening and you rating and reviewing make a difference in other people finding us, and I believe it's this community and how engaged you are that has allowed us to get into the algorithms, that has allowed A Heart that Beats For Home to make it to six continents, 44 countries and 1,149 cities. So thank you so much for being just the best tribe on the other side of the mic.

Speaker 1:

So what do we have planned for year two, season two of A Heart that Beats for Home, in really doing some soul searching and just thinking and praying through what is sustainable and what makes sense and what allows me to come here week after week with content that matters, not just making a commitment to we're going to be here every week, no matter how strong the content is. I want this to be a place that, when you show up, there is solid content for you and there's something that you can take from it. And so, in looking at all of the data from show views and listens and patterns over the last year, the audience that we have here, I believe, is truly primarily women who are raising families, and the trend that I noticed was that we had really strong views in the beginning of the year. We had a much lower weekly listening over the summer. So June, july and August, although we were putting out podcasts every single week over the summer, the listens per episode were just lower. And that makes total sense to me because in summer right, our kids come home, we're not in the car as much driving to and from school without kids with us. We're not home when the kids are at school, where we're cleaning and we're doing things with podcasts on.

Speaker 1:

Our summers look different and we're in a different kind of routine and so, although we had great listeners through the summer, and a lot of those episodes just got played in later times in the year, the summer months did seem to have a dip, and so, just looking at sustainability for myself and also what it looks like the lives of our listeners, what we're gonna do this year, in 2025, is we are gonna do weekly podcasts, from now this week, the second week in January, all the way through the end of May. So every Thursday, like we've been doing, there will be a new podcast that drops every Thursday morning. Then I'm gonna take June, july and August off. We're just going to pause the podcast, we're going to go do our family stuff, our mom stuff. It's going to allow me time to really take a chunk of time to process, to record, to create content that is strong, because there's some break and rest in there, and then we will come back and we will do September, october and November until the week before Thanksgiving and then, just like in 2024, we will take Thanksgiving week through the end of the year as just another little pause and reset, so that format we'll do it next year. If it's the winter, then we'll keep doing that. I know that every year we need to look back and reflect and examine what's working and what's not, and that gives about 30, depending upon exactly how the weeks work out between 33 and 36 podcasts a year, and I feel like that is a great amount of content and it gives listeners a time to catch up on maybe episodes that they missed because of scheduling, kind of just to be more involved in the summer with our kiddos and just to guarantee that we are bringing solid content that adds value and not just wordsmith every week when you listen in. So what are some of the things that we're going to cover in 2025?

Speaker 1:

I am excited about a couple of different things that I'm working on details of this year. I want to spend some time talking about women's health. I think it's super important. I am on a serious women's health journey of my own through menopause, perimenopause, post-menopause. Just recently I don't think I haven't talked about it on the podcast, but definitely have talked about it on my social media platforms had a bladder surgery that has changed my life. That is not the typical surgery that we always hear about as women and I'm excited to share kind of that journey with you guys, because I know that there's a lot of women that will benefit from that. If you were given a clue and I said what do laughing, coughing and a trampoline all have in common, and you raised your hand and said I would pee my pants, then that will be an episode that you will want to be a part of. A very quick, easy outpatient procedure that I had in November, right before Thanksgiving, that, in a matter of an hour, changed my life more drastically than hours and hours and hours and days and days of searching and therapy, pelvic floor therapy and so many other things have been able to do for me, and so I am super excited to share that with you guys.

Speaker 1:

I think it's important that we talk about some of this real stuff, that we go through the different stages. So excited to have some women's health experts, some doctors and nurse practitioner just some different people on that can just help us navigate and understand these different stages that really start happening when we're young women and then when we have babies, all these different hormone changes, so excited to dive into some women's health, really diligently talking to and praying through a couple of different guests that I would love to have on that I feel would be really great. Talking about marriage and intimacy I have received some private messages asking for more on this content, and this is one that's super hard because you all know that I have high school and young adults and I know that the very last thing they would ever want their mom talking on a podcast about is marriage, intimacy and all of the things that go into that. And so have just really been praying through who are some really qualified, knowledgeable, gifted people in this area and in working on some conversations with that that I think could be really wonderful for our listeners and so looking into doing some series on that. And then I have also been digging into obviously because we always research and lean into the stages of life that we're in but parenting young adults and parenting young adults well, not just managing through it and surviving through it, but thriving through it.

Speaker 1:

And I can honestly tell you that high school and young adult parenting has been my favorite, and I know that every stage right, I look back at the baby albums and I see the little kid pictures and the toddler pictures and the sweet little preschool pictures. I've truly loved every single stage, and every single stage comes with awesome memories and also some heartache and like, oh my gosh, that was super hard, different kinds of hard at different stages. But I have absolutely loved the high school and young adult ages. I just feel like it is this beautiful transition where you're starting to actually see the fruit of the labor the fruit of the physical and mental and emotional labor that you put in for so many years. And now, all of a sudden, there's these young people who have brilliant ideas and who are funny and who can carry on conversation and who can go to coffee with you and who want to take trips, and it just has been a beautiful stage.

Speaker 1:

But we're still learning and we're still growing and next year our oldest daughter, madison, graduates from college in May and will move home for a year to 18 months as she prepares to go off to grad school and she needs to accumulate some work hours for that next transition. And so we next year will have a 23, a 20-year-old and a 15-year-old living in our house and it's important that we do it well so that relationship continues to grow and isn't hindered. And so just really trying to lean into that, reading some great books and have a list of some people that I would love to have on the podcast this year to just talk to us about that transition from young kids and we talked about it a ton in our summer series when we go from teaching and disciplining and instructing and then we move into more of a mentor role, and I just in one of the books I was listening to called the Do's and Don'ts of Raising Adult Children, was the importance of moving out of all the roles that we've had and becoming a mentor. And a mentor is somebody that has really no personal attachment to the outcome. Obviously, they want all of us you know our mentors. They want us to do well, but what they're doing as a mentor to us in our life is they're giving us the tools and equipping us to go and make our own decisions, to suffer our own consequences to.

Speaker 1:

You know, have the high highs and the low lows, but a mentor is more just offering guidance and then releasing us to go do whatever we want. And how do we do that with young adults when maybe they're living in our house and maybe it feels like I should be able to have a little bit more control and doing that with grace and just reminding my kids that you're at a stage where you're doing this for the first time and I'm at the stage where I'm doing this as a parent of somebody your age the first time and just walking through that with grace. And you would talk so much on here about battling the will of do I want to be right or do I want to remain in relationship with my children? And so just doing a lot of of searching and reading and learning on those topics and excited to bring some people in this year to help us talk about how to start building that foundation early on. And then the other thing that I'm excited about for this year is a series that we're going to do, and instead of doing it for, like you know, five or six weeks in a row, I am going to sprinkle these throughout the entire year, as we are just here together and learning about all these different topics, but we're going to call them Beauty from Ashes stories, and the more I listen to people's stories, the more I just fall in love with learning from other people's real life experiences from unbelievable heartache and where they saw God and how that either caused them to lean in or pull away and just learn from how they have come through that.

Speaker 1:

I'm reading right now the Bible in a year on the Bible recap, and it's taking us chronologically through the Bible in a Year on the Bible Recap, and it's taking us chronologically through the Bible. And so right now we're in the book of Job and just reading Job's story and learning about just the suffering that he went through and how his friends often came back to him and said well, there must be sin in your life, there must be things that caused this to happen. And there are so many times when we hear people's stories and it is no sin that has caused this. There's no consequence from bad decision. It is just earthly heartache, whether it be diseases or death or loss, and being able to talk and hear stories from people who have walked through unbelievable difficulties. And you're gonna hear one story next week.

Speaker 1:

This is an interview that I recorded in November that literally will wreck you. It will wreck you and it will encourage you in the very same moment that you're listening. And I am just excited to have these stories sprinkled in, because I think so often we forget that suffering and pain is part of the refining process to mold us into exactly what Christ wants us to be. It's in that suffering, it's in us choosing to lean in and trust him, even in the darkest times that often are caused by no doing of our own. Obviously, there's gonna be stories where choices created consequences that created unbelievable hardship, but there's also stories that have horrible things that have happened to people that are just because the fact that there is hurt here on the earth, and so to be able to hear these stories and to listen to women that have come through these things that we're going to hear about, I think will be encouraging and it will be a reminder for us.

Speaker 1:

Somebody said that either you are walking into a struggle, you're in a struggle, or you've just come out of a struggle, and when you look at your life, that's probably pretty accurate, and so I'm just excited to lean into some of these hard stories so that we can be encouraged, no matter what stage of that that we're in. Maybe right now there is no struggle, but what we don't know is that right around the corner there is something coming, or maybe we're in the midst of that struggle and hearing somebody's story will help us be able to navigate and trust and lean into the Lord instead of pull away by hearing their stories. You might have just come out of a struggle and maybe you have a story that needs to be shared with our community so that people can see how God was faithful to you and how you actually became a better Christ follower, a better parent, a better mom, a better wife, a better follower of the Lord through that crisis, and so I'm really excited about those Beauty from Ashes stories that we are going to just sprinkle in throughout the year and we are coming up. I said we were at 46 episodes, so we are coming up on episode 50. So, just like last year when we hit a big milestone and we did a giveaway, we're going to do another giveaway here at episode 50. So be watching for that.

Speaker 1:

Again, it's tied directly to anybody that leaves a review and a rating is going to be eligible for that, and the reason that we do this it's not just because I want to rake in reviews and ratings. Reviews and ratings are the single thing that lead to algorithm and other people being able to find our podcast and obviously, if we're going to be here week after week, we're going to put the energy in, we're going to bring content and we're going to bring the guests who have a ton of knowledge on. We want it to touch as many lives as possible and so getting those ratings, getting those reviews, are the single thing that help that. So thank you for all of you that share the podcast thing. That helped that. So thank you for all of you that share the podcast, that text it to a friend, that have left reviews and ratings. We so appreciate your involvement in this.

Speaker 1:

So I'm excited about season two here on the podcast. I'm excited to dive in. I feel like there has been a good soul and mind break for the last six weeks. I had all these visions of having a ton of podcasts recorded and backlogged and ready to go so that it was a much easier transition. But life, you know period but life and just took the time off to be with kids that were here and my husband who was off work. We got to do some traveling. There were some high highs over Christmas and some low lows. We lost a dear friend in our community, a young mom with two little kiddos, and just so many reminders that life is precious, we're not guaranteed tomorrow, and how we show up every single day matters, but I am just excited and ready to dive into season two. I'm grateful to have you here with us, and so next week we will be back with our very first Beauty from Ashes episode, where you will just hear the most gut-wrenching story, with just the most beautiful threads of God's grace and God's goodness woven throughout it. I'm so grateful for people who are willing to share the really raw and vulnerable parts of their lives so that we can learn from them and become better Christ followers from listening to what they have endured, and so I'm excited for you to be back next week for that, and so there's kind of our recap of season one where we're heading for season two.

Speaker 1:

I've got a handful of projects that I'm knee-deep into here at the house. I think most of us get into this purge and come into the new year with less, and so we're going to finish those up here before school starts back up. We jump into homeschooling again next Tuesday. Have a daughter at college orientation today for nursing school and another that started classes this week for her final semester of undergraduate. I just can't believe it. Time flies and I'm so grateful for every single blessing that we have been given in 2024. Excited to share so many more with you in 2025. So come back next week where we will jump in for season two of A Heart that Beats for Home. Thanks so much for being here week after week, friends. Until next week, take care.