The reality of prepping is that it is mostly a man’s field; manuals are written with a masculine audience; most websites & forums are written by men for a male audience; most books are written by men for a male audience; fictional stories are written by men (and quite sexist, I might add).
The alternative is the food storage mom or homestead/farming mom who focuses mostly on storing food or homesteading. It is rare to see someone bridge the gap between the two.
Survival Mom Summary
Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family for Everyday Disasters and Worst-Case Scenarios by Lisa Bedford (Harper One) is definitely written from a mom’s perspective on things for other moms beginning to feel the need to go further than just storing a few week’s worths of food in their pantry for some reason. It goes beyond a simple tornado or hurricane disaster mentality to more serious concerns of longer-term situations that we really need to be prepared for, but not done so in a voice fueled by testosterone-driven fear, panic, and mayhem.
Taking you through each level of preparedness, Lisa’s book talks you through the ideas of preparedness from the viewpoint of a Mom taking care of her family. She starts with basic emergency preparedness for everyone – storing water, storing food, sanitation, and alternative cooking/energy and talks you through more worst-case scenarios and how to handle becoming a long-term preparedness expert in your own home. She does it with a voice like the next-door neighbor you’re having over for coffee who is explaining how to get your kids into the best preschool – with care and humor, but serious about her subject.
Chapters from the Book
While focusing on the basics of food water and sanitation issues, Mrs. Bedford also gives focuses on accomplishing each step by giving you Baby Steps, Prepared Family Checklists, Family Preparedness Plans, and stories from other Survival Moms to encourage you to do more. And do more you can. This isn’t just about a checklist of what to put in your pantry and your To-Go-bag. This is more – such as 10 Non-Edibles for Your Stash, First Aid Every Survival Mom Should Know, Do I Really Need to Learn How to Shoot a Gun?, Survival Mom Extras (recipes and resources), and The 4 Awareness Stages of the Survival Mom.
Personal Review on the “Survival Mom” Book
See? I said with care and humor….but totally serious! I feel the same way!
I’ve read a lot of books on prepping, and usually feel myself being bogged down with military-style checklists, being told I can’t possibly survive because I don’t have military training or am not a man (silly women aren’t worth more than having babies and doing the food preps and wringing their hands), or have the personal prepping budget of a gazillionaire. The Survival Mom: How to Prepare Your Family makes preparedness accessible and encourages me to push past any fear of what might be coming to empower myself to take care of my family and do what needs to be done. I recommend it for anyone interested in learning how to prepare for the smallest of inconveniences to the most major of life-altering catastrophes.
How to Get the “Survival Mom” Book
Disclaimer: When The Survival Mom book was released, I was really excited but had to put off purchasing it because all of my spare money was going into stocking up my family for our own world-ending circumstances, and my public library did not carry the book. A year later, I entered a blog contest from Simply Preparing and won! Mrs. Bedford has not paid for this endorsement nor traded any services for such.
Don’t have a Kindle? That’s okay – with Amazon’s app, you can still read it on the cloud, on your e-device, through a .pdf, or on your computer.
Check out other Chick-Lit books I’ve reviewed.
Emily as an MFA in creative writing and a strong passion for cooking! She started trying out her mother’s recipes from a very young age, turning the time she spent in the kitchen into a career. She will soon publish her very first cookbook, and in her free time, Emily contributes to our blog with resources for all our readers, whether beginners or advanced chefs.
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