If you haven’t tried her Cowboy Casserole Recipe you are missing out. The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond, makes whipping up dinner, caring for a large family, and working on a ranch look easy. But she wasn’t always at home on the range. Explaining how she ended up on a remote working cattle ranch – with her own TV show, she said, “I didn't even know any cowboys growing up. When my friends heard that I was marrying a cattle rancher and moving to the country, they literally could not believe it. They started calling me the Pioneer Woman as a joke.” The joke has become reality because Ree embraced a true Pioneering Spirit.
Pioneer spirit is defined as: a willingness to endure hardship in order to explore new places or try out new things. When Ree moved away from her country club lifestyle to embrace rural adversity, she stepped into the unknown. Each of us is born with a pioneer spirit inside of us. Women are especially blessed with a inner strength that allows them to adventure and persevere. I love this quote from the Ladies Home Journal in October 1932. “When money is plenty, this is a man’s world. When money is scarce it is a woman’s world. When all else fails the woman’s instinct comes in. She gets the job. That is the reason why in spite of all that happens, we continue to have a world.” As we embrace new crusades or are faced with trials and tribulations, we can call upon that female pioneer spirit to lift and sustain us.