EP 144 How Principles Prepared Her to Lead
In this episode, Audrey talks with MDM Academy graduate Cadie Hatch about homeschooling, higher education, classical learning, motherhood, and the journey that led her to help launch a classical charter school in her community.
Cadie shares how her experience in the Academy showed her what principles are and how to use them, the confidence, and clarity she needed to lead, serve, and persevere through a difficult but deeply meaningful project.
This conversation is a beautiful reminder that moms matter, education matters, and ordinary women can do extraordinary good in the world.
AI GENERATED TRANSCRIPT
Introduction
Audrey:
Welcome back to the podcast. I am Audrey Rindlisbacher. I’m excited to be with you today. If you are new to the podcast, make sure and go back to the beginning. Listen to some of those early podcasts so you can learn about the seven laws of life, mission, and mission-driven stories, and all of those things, so you can have an understanding of what we do here at the Mission-Driven Mom and on this podcast.
I’m joined today by Cadie Hatch. She is a dear friend and an MDM Academy graduate, and we get to dig into her experiences and learn a lot from her today. I’m really grateful to her for joining us and for being willing to share herself, her time, and her experiences.
Cadie, welcome. Thank you for being here.
Cadie:
Thank you, Audrey. It has been a dream of mine to be on the podcast one day, so I’m excited.
Audrey:
There you go. Here we are, fulfilling dreams all the time.
Cadie:
Yeah.
Audrey:
Yeah. So tell us, just introduce yourself briefly. I’ll ask you more questions, we’ll dig into your story more. Tell us just a little bit about yourself.
Cadie’s Background
Cadie:
Sure. So I was born and raised in New Mexico, and I have to say that because I feel like there’s not very many New Mexicans that you hear about.
Audrey:
So yes, that’s, you are very kind for sure.
Cadie:
So I am a New Mexican. I grew up in a home where I was the youngest of five children. My father was self-employed. He and his first cousin were business partners for their entire career. My dad was a logger, and he logged on the Mescalero Apache Indian Reservation near where we lived. And so with that we got a lot of really unique experiences as kids, the things that we got to do. We spent a lot of time out in the woods, and he was an avid hunter, sportsman, and he loved being out in the woods. And it was just great. He gave us an amazing childhood, which I’m very grateful for.
My mother, she homeschooled us.
Audrey:
Wow.
Cadie:
My oldest brother, when he was going into eighth grade, my mom decided to pull everybody out and homeschool. That was the year that I would have gone into kindergarten. So I was homeschooled my entire K through 12 education.
Audrey:
What made her decide to do that? Do you know?
Cadie:
I think she was just, I want to do something different. I think I remember her saying a couple girls called my brother, and she was like, oh no, we’re not doing that. It’s way too early for that.
Audrey:
Oh, that’s funny.
Cadie:
So anyway, because of my dad’s work, we just had some really unique opportunities where the boys could go and they could work with him.
Audrey:
Oh.
Cadie:
And they were able to be out in the woods working with him and all of our extended family, and it was a really amazing opportunity for them.
Audrey:
Wow. To just gain some life skills in that way. And so I think if there was a theme for my life, like three things, it would probably really be faith, family, and education.
Cadie:
Because I think growing up as somebody who had been homeschooled and was used to doing things differently in terms of education, I have not been too put off by going my own route in education throughout my life. And I think that kind of really set me up for some of the things that I ended up doing as I became an adult and as I continued in my education.
Early Adulthood and Meeting Her Husband
Cadie:
When I was younger, I got my GED when I was 16.
Audrey:
Oh wow.
Cadie:
And I ended up moving out a few months before I turned 18. I moved to Arizona and I went to a little community college in Arizona, and that’s where I ended up meeting my husband. I got my associate’s degree in business administration, and we met there and I just fell in love with him, almost like on first sight, which is so silly, but it’s true.
One of the things that attracted me so much to him was his, I almost hesitate to use the word ambition because I feel like sometimes that can have this negative connotation of it’s all about me. But he was just a doer. I could see that in him when we would be walking across campus, and I would just watch the way that he walked. He was going somewhere. He had a plan. He always had a planner. He’s always been an avid goal setter. And so he sets these goals and he reaches these goals.
And so I knew from pretty early on, when I first met him, that he was going to be doing things in his life. Life wouldn’t happen to him. He would be doing things.
Audrey:
Oh, that’s awesome.
Cadie:
And I really wanted to go with him and be part of that with him.
And we met there at college. We were married, and it’s been an adventure ever since. We thought we would stay in Arizona, but we got a job opportunity that brought us up to northeastern Nevada. And we’ve been up here for about 12 years, almost 13 years.
We thought that we would just be here for a little while and go back down to Arizona. But we’ve loved it so much. I just don’t know that we’ll ever leave. I love it up here. It’s been great.
Life in Nevada and the Pumpkin Patch
Audrey:
And you are on some land.
Cadie:
We have a little, a small town. So we live, Elko is the main city. I mean, it’s not huge, but Elko is the bigger town, and we live about 20 miles outside of Elko. And so we’ve got about 10 acres. We moved to that property in 2020, and I was just thinking about this morning, when we moved, we thought, we’ve always just bought all of our furniture from yard sales. Let’s get, like, new furniture.
Audrey:
There you go.
Cadie:
That would be so exciting. We’re getting this new house, we’ll get new furniture. So we sold all of our furniture. We moved to our house in March of 2020, and the next week everything shut down and there was no furniture to be had.
Audrey:
I did not know that. That’s hilarious.
Cadie:
All we had was this giant overstuffed beanbag, and that was the one piece of furniture that we had in our living room that we would all just sit on.
Audrey:
Did you at least have beds?
Cadie:
We did have our beds. We did save our beds. So we had that. But we didn’t have a kitchen table, so we ended up yard saleing again and buying more yard sale furniture because you couldn’t get it from the furniture store, which was fine.
Audrey:
Wow. That’s hilarious.
Cadie:
But the thing also about moving to that property in 2020, and again, I think this kind of highlights Tim, my husband, as a doer, is that when we moved there, I knew he wanted to plant a garden, but I thought, oh, eventually, in a couple years we’ll plant a garden.
Audrey:
Yeah.
Cadie:
But we moved there in March and by June we had cleared off the property and we had put in an acre garden.
Audrey:
Wow.
Cadie:
And we planted, almost all of it was pumpkins. We had a few potatoes, but I think it was all pumpkins that first year, and he was so driven to get that done. And I couldn’t understand, like, why are you needing to plant this garden so much?
Audrey:
Yeah.
Cadie:
And he just kept saying to me, I just have a feeling that this garden, this will make people happy. That if they come out here, it will help people. They’ll just be happy when they come get pumpkins.
Audrey:
Wow.
Cadie:
And again, that was COVID. That was March 2020. Everything shut down. By the time we got to October, we hadn’t really met many people because our churches were closed at the time. Our communities, different things that we would normally do to get together with people, just weren’t happening. We didn’t really meet our neighbors.
And so by October everybody was ready to get out of the house. And because it was outside, we could say, come over, and we just put a sign out on the field and said, come in, get a pumpkin, we’ll come and meet you. And that’s how we met most of our neighbors.
Audrey:
Wow.
Cadie:
And it was a really great experience, and it’s always been something that we’ve done as a thank you to the people who my husband works with in his business, his career. We’ve planted those pumpkins for the last four, we’ve done four out of the five years.
Audrey:
Wow. And that’s coming up. That’s this week, right? Didn’t you say that?
Cadie:
That’s this week. We are having our pumpkin patch. It’s early October.
Audrey:
So great.
Discovering the Mission Driven Mom
Audrey:
All right, so let’s talk about your MDM journey. How you learned about what we do and what that looked like for you. So go back. Here you are, you’re a mom, you have a few children, and you were a full time mom, right, a stay at home mom?
Cadie:
Yes.
Audrey:
And starting to homeschool. Did you always know, was that always the plan? I’m going to get married, I’m going to have kids, and homeschool them?
Cadie:
Yeah, that was always my plan. I did tell Tim that when we get married, because he was in school, we were both in school, and I said, my goal, I want to be a stay at home mom. I really believe in the importance of moms at home with their kids. So I want to have kids, I want to stay home with my kids, and I want to homeschool because I was homeschooled. I loved it. I want to do that.
And bless him, he went along with me.
And how I ended up actually finding MDM is interesting. At the time my sister and I would talk a lot about books that we enjoyed, and I remember her saying, oh, you’ve got to read, you’ve got to go online to this website, Books You Love, or I don’t remember if it was a website. You were doing something called Books You Love.
Audrey:
Mm hmm.
Cadie:
And you were doing these book reviews. I think you did them with your kids, right?
Audrey:
Mm hmm.
Cadie:
Yeah. And I just remember, I was like, oh, all these cute little kids, these book reviews, like my dream, right? Like how cool.
And so we would get on there, and what I appreciated about you at that point, I only had my associate’s degree, and again, that was in business administration. I had taken like one literature class during my associate’s degree time. And so I had read enough literature through that degree program to be like, every time they read a book, it’s just all about some kind of sexual revolution, right? Like, how are women being oppressed and that they needed to be liberated through their sexuality.
Every story that we read, and I would read some of these, I’m like, I really don’t think that’s what this story is about. And they were like, no, no, it is. This is what it’s about.
And so I was like, okay.
So when I read the books that you were suggesting in Books You Love, you had a way of reading the books that was so much more authentic to what I felt the author’s actual intent was.
And when I would leave there, I felt, I would read something and I would come away feeling noble, like I was a better person for having read that.
Audrey:
Wow.
Cadie:
Even if it was something that I didn’t agree with, like the author may have said some things I didn’t agree on, I still felt like I came away a better person because I had learned something from you and how you had read that book.
Audrey:
Oh, that’s great.
Why Her College Degree Disappointed Her
Cadie:
At that point, I think I had three kids when I would read Books You Love. And we got busy and life just got away from us, and so I got away from what you were doing. But every once in a while I think I would check back in because I just had this thought, one day she’s going to have a school or something, and I just want to go to her school. That would be so great.
So in the meantime, I have to admit here, when my husband was getting his bachelor’s degree, I was not a very supportive wife.
Audrey:
Wow.
Cadie:
This goes back to this idea of me being, my dad was an entrepreneur, I was a homeschooled kid. If you wanted to go the college route, that’s fine, but if you don’t want to go the college route, you can start a business, that’s fine too.
And so when my husband was getting his bachelor’s degree, there were just times when it was really hard, and when it would get really hard, he’d be like, I don’t want to do this right now. And I’d say, you don’t have to. We’ll just go start a business. It’s fine.
Audrey:
Yeah.
Cadie:
And so he was like, that is not helping me in this moment. And I’m like, but really, we could, you don’t have to do this. We could do something else.
And so I regret that. I do regret that I was not more supportive of him in getting his bachelor’s degree.
So what ended up happening was years later he wanted to go back for his master’s. And he had always known he wanted a master’s degree. And so he told me, I feel like now is a good time for me to go back for my master’s degree, and I feel like if you were getting your bachelor’s degree, it might go better than last time. Maybe you’d be more supportive.
Audrey:
Oh, funny.
Cadie:
So I was like, fine, sure. I’ll go get my bachelor’s degree.
So at that point, my husband is getting his master’s, I’m getting my bachelor’s, I think I had a second grader, a kindergartner, and two toddlers.
Audrey:
Wow.
Cadie:
And we went back to school, and he got his master’s degree and I got my bachelor’s degree.
Audrey:
How did you do it? What did you do with kids and how did you afford it?
Cadie:
Yeah. We are very blessed that he has a really great job that has been a blessing to our family. And so we were able to afford it. We were able to just manage it with his income.
And then with the kids, it was one of those things I was like, I haven’t been sleeping for years anyway, so now that the baby is sleeping, why sleep now?
Audrey:
Yeah.
Cadie:
The baby is sleeping through the night, so I can get a solid six hours, and then if I get up at five, I can study for an hour or two before the kids wake up. And then we can just go with the rest of the day.
And that’s how it went for a while. A lot of early mornings and late nights probably got us through that.
And it was a really good experience. I’m really glad that I went back and got my bachelor’s degree. I got my degree in English language and literature.
So now this time everything that I was doing was reading. And I had such high hopes. Oh, we’re going to read some Shakespeare. I’m going to read some of the greats. This is going to be amazing. I’m so excited. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to read some really good classics and have great conversations.
Audrey:
Yeah.
Cadie:
And that is not what happened at all.
So I was highly disappointed in the education that I got for my actual degree. One of the things that was really, preached maybe is not the best word, but it seems like the most fitting word to use, one of the ideas that was most heavily preached to us as students was postmodernism.
Everything was falling apart. Humanity was awful. There was nothing that was going to get any better. So it was just, do whatever you have to do to survive and get yourself on top. That’s the goal.
Audrey:
And there’s nothing that’s objectively true.
Cadie:
No. And you could argue, just do whatever works.
And so when we would read books together, we were told never to go back and look at the author, never to research the author, or to consider the time in which that person lived, but just to take the book, open it up, and just start shredding it.
Deconstruction was the thing. Just deconstruct, deconstruct. And so any bit of beauty that was ever in this book or intended to be in the book was gone.
Audrey:
Yeah. Wow.
Cadie:
And it was soul searing. It was a horrible way to go through reading books. I felt awful about myself. I felt awful about the world. I would look at things that my fellow students would say in these forums, these conversations that we would have, and it was just heartbreaking to see that any argument always came down to men are evil, white people are awful, and every system is designed to make you fail.
And I just didn’t believe that.
But you surround yourself with that for two years and it just starts to eat into your psyche. It’s very degrading.
How She Found Audrey Again
Cadie:
And so I remember at one point I had completely forgotten about you, Audrey. I’m sorry, but I totally forgot about you during this time.
Audrey:
That’s perfectly fine. That’s funny.
Cadie:
But I had forgotten I had read with you until we read a play, A Doll’s House.
Audrey:
A Doll’s House. Yeah. I can’t remember the author. Do you remember the author?
Cadie:
I had it written down.
Audrey:
Oh, Henrik Ibsen.
Cadie:
Ibsen. That’s right.
So we read the play A Doll’s House by Henrik Ibsen, and I remembered, oh my gosh, I remember this play because I read it with that lady Audrey in Books You’ll Love.
And so at that point I was maybe six months away from finishing my degree, and it’s like, I’ve got to go see what that lady said about Ibsen and A Doll’s House. Surely it got better than this sludge that I’m working through with this college class. This is just terrible.
So I went back and I found Books You’ll Love, and by that point you had started The Mission Driven Mom and it was just getting going. So I found some of the information I was looking for about Ibsen, and then I told my husband, when I finish this degree, I really want to go and study with Audrey. I want to go to her online academy.
And he was much more supportive of me and was like, if that’s what you want to do, we can make that happen.
And I graduated in April of 2020 and I think I started with you in May of 2020 at the Mission Driven Mom. And that was a very eye opening experience because it was all those things I thought that I was going to get in my degree program, but it was not at the college, it was at your academy.
I was like, we’re reading great books, I feel really good about what I’m reading, I come away ennobled, these authors are being honored for the good work that they have done, or we are looking at the things that they have written that are not correct and we’re able to objectively see why they are wrong. But I am coming away a better person after having experienced these books.
And so that was, it’s a long story, but it took several years, and eventually I made my way back to MDM.
What Level One Gave Her
Audrey:
Yeah. So you were in it for the more intellectual piece, the academic, the reading. So with that expectation, did you feel disappointed that there were some children’s novels or that we vet the content so much and it’s just selections from different books? Or how did you feel about that?
Cadie:
No, actually in a lot of ways I appreciated it because I could see that you were trying to hone a skill. Like you were trying to give me a specific skill.
And when I went through level one, I’m not sure how things are now, but when I went through level one, things were much more self paced. And I had an accountability partner, the most amazing lady. I loved my accountability partner going through level one. She did me so many great services.
We would reach out to each other about once a month or once every two weeks and say, here’s our goal. We want to get through this much of the workbook. At the time there was a workbook that we had. So we want to get through this much of the workbook and the readings, and then we’re going to call each other and see how it went.
And the two of us together, you had a celebration coming up that fall, and we wanted to finish before the celebration so that we could come.
Audrey:
That is pretty fast.
Cadie:
We went through it pretty fast. I want to say it was six months, somewhere in there. But I was so glad that we did because I felt like we were laser focused on, this is the skill that we’re trying to learn. These are the principles that we’re learning. This is how we’re implementing them.
And it was a great blessing. And I think part of that came because I had just come out of my degree where I was used to having some deadlines, and I had already worked my schedule out with my family. That helped me be able to accomplish that goal so quickly.
Audrey:
Yeah. So what are a couple of your takeaways from level one?
Cadie:
You had created a card, there was a card that you had given out at one of the celebrations, but you had also created the 12 characteristics of a true principle. And that has stuck with me. I used that often. I used it very regularly, especially at that time. I still pull it out and use it and look at it to try to figure out, is this thing that I’m studying right now, is this a true principle?
The main characteristic that has stuck with me is the win win. Is the thing that I’m doing right now creating a win win situation for everyone? If it’s not a win for everybody, then it’s not done yet. I have to keep working until everybody has won and feels good about it.
And the other thing that was a huge takeaway from level one was your willing versus willful lesson. You compared C S Lewis to Nietzsche, and I have listened to that one probably a couple times a year because it made such an impact on me.
This idea of, are you willing to let go of the things that you want, let go of the way that you think things need to be, to let God take over and move you where you need to be? Are you willing or are you willful?
I had never considered my attitude in that way. Is this a willing attitude that I have right now, or is this a willful attitude? That made a huge impact on me, and it is something that I still think about regularly when I feel like I have a decision to make and I do not necessarily know which way to go.
I think often about, am I being willing or willful right now?
Why Principles Mattered So Much
Audrey:
So what do you think about the whole emphasis on principles? Why do you feel like that matters?
Cadie:
Interestingly, I remember for years something had been niggling at me in the corner of my mind, and it was like, I do not understand when people say this word principle. I do not understand what they mean.
Sometimes I hear a principle and it is just a one word thing, like forgiveness might be a principle, or service might be a principle. And then other people would say something and it would be this big long phrase and that was a principle, and it was like, I do not understand. Help me understand. What are we talking about?
And when I went back to MDM and I saw that principles was such a heavy emphasis in the academy, I was like, this is the thing that I need because I do not understand what people are talking about when they are talking about principles. I feel like they are important, but I do not know what they are.
And so it helped me so much to come into MDM and start studying, looking for principles in the things that I read. And the principles being, what is a truth that is in this book, whether it is fiction, nonfiction, biography, whatever. What is a truth that I can find here that I can then take into my life and apply to my circumstances that will make my life or my family’s life better?
And the fact that we practiced that across so many genres of literature was really valuable to me.
The Princess and the Pea Example
Cadie:
Fairytales have been something that I have been thinking about recently because I have been listening to someone who is talking about C S Lewis and Tolkien as myth writers. They were great at telling story through myth. How we have this idea that a myth is a lie, but really they would say a myth is a way of telling the truth that is different than any other way of being able to tell the truth.
And so I think about that with fairytales. Fairytales tell a truth that is hard to convey in any other way.
I was thinking about this with The Princess and the Pea. We were just talking about it the other day, me and my husband. I will give you an example maybe of what it was like to read something like that from my degree perspective.
You have this queen. Her son, the prince, is wanting to marry this princess. And so she puts her through this test where she puts the pea underneath all of these mattresses and she wants to know, can this princess feel if there is a pea underneath all of these mattresses.
And the princess wakes up the next morning and she is all black and blue and she says, I have been all beat up. There is something underneath my mattresses. And the queen says, oh, you really are a princess because you could feel that pea underneath all those mattresses.
A lot of people would be like, this is the most ridiculous story. This girl is such a wuss. She is full of drama. She is not someone you would want to have marry your son.
But if you look at it through the lens of myth, and that it is telling the truth, if the princess, her role in a fairytale is to be the virtue, she is the symbol of virtue. She is the symbol of what is good. Her job is to be the compass for everybody else to know what is right and what is wrong.
And this pea that is underneath these mattresses is something that is wrong. It is something that is bad, and she can sense it. Even underneath all those layers of comfort, she can sense that something is wrong.
And so this test that the queen puts her through to see if she is a good match for the prince, the prince’s job is to defend all of that truth. He cannot defend it if he does not have the compass to point him to what is good and what is wrong. There is an equal match between a prince and a princess, and they each have their job.
That is a myth to teach us about the roles of men and women. They each have a really important role, and it is okay that they have a different role.
So the woman’s role, she points to what is virtuous, what is good, and the man’s role is to defend that. And we need each other.
And so that idea of, okay, I just learned a principle from The Princess and the Pea. There is a principle here about, are there gender roles? I think there are. And should we notice them? Should we give them any credence, any credibility? I think we should.
How do I apply this in my life? I know what my role is in my marriage. My job is to seek out virtue and to notice when it is around and to notice when it is not there, and to be this compass for my family. That is my job. And so I have to be careful about the things that I take into my mind. I have to be careful about the things that I think about, that I dwell on, because my role is to help us discern what is good and what is virtuous.
Audrey:
Wow, that is so beautiful.
How Level Two and Level Three Changed Her
Audrey:
Tell us a little bit about building a principle centered home and life. What difference has it made for you to have this understanding about principles and this ability to discern them better? How has it changed things for you and your family?
Cadie:
When we were in level two, we read The Ox Bow Incident, and that book had a really great impact on me, partly because of when we were reading it. It is about cattle rustling, and some cows have been stolen and this town has been having problems with rustlers for a while. And so they mount up a posse and they go and they find the guy that rustled these cattle and they administer justice, in their own idea.
And I do not want to spoil the book for people, because it is a fantastic book.
But when I read that book, we were discussing mob mentality. And I think January 6th had just happened like a couple of weeks before. We had just seen a bunch of riots happening all across the country during that summer of COVID and all of those things. We had seen a lot of mob mentality happening in real life.
And so I have my book and I went to the back and I wrote down, I found 11 characteristics of a mob.
And when I saw what the characteristics of a mob were, I started to really check myself when I would start feeling very passionate about something, because mobs are always very passionate.
Passion is not a bad thing, but it is all about how are we directing it, and are we allowing our passion for something to turn off our ability to think and to be objective and to search for truth first.
I think to a degree it comes back to what I was saying about being this compass within your family. I think women are the compass of the family. And so we have to watch where our passions lead us.
Those passions are important. They are valuable. We need them. But we need to make sure that we are directing them in the proper place.
As far as things that we read in level three that really helped me, human action laws. Talking about the human action laws, which basically was just understanding that everybody does what they are doing for a reason. You may not agree with the reason, you may not like the reason, but they are not just out of control acting. People do things on purpose for a reason. They are motivated by something. Every action is motivated by something.
And when I learned about that and the human action laws, it helped me understand that I need to build better bridges with people. That people can have a difference of belief or a difference of opinion than what I have, but there is something driving that and motivating that, and I need to try to understand what that is.
And it helps me have greater compassion for other people and to connect with them more. It helps me to recognize, this is a person who at the very base of themselves is probably acting because they have heard some principle, some truth, that is motivating them to act, but that truth has been twisted in some way.
So how can I get back to understanding that they are motivated by some truth somewhere back in there. Something is motivating them. Where is it that we finally meet? What is the truth that they are acting on, that if it is a truth, then I should be willing to act on as well? How do we get all the way back to that first principle so that then we can build off of the first principle and come to a position that will work for all of us, that will give us that win win situation?
That was pretty huge for me in level three.
Her Charter School Project
Audrey:
Talk to us about what you have done since MDM, this big major project, your C to B that you were involved with. How did you get involved? Why did you get involved? How did the education you had had make a difference? And where is the project now?
Cadie:
It is a pretty incredible story. I feel like a very miraculous story, and my involvement in it at all still feels miraculous, that I was even a part of it.
So the project that I took on, I think it happened because I asked God for it.
We were reading the book Christie. It is about this girl, 19 or 20 years old, and she goes up into the Appalachian Mountains and she teaches school to some people up there, and it is an incredible story. In some ways it reminded me somewhat of this area that I live in.
Because where I live, we are pretty rural. We have a lot of ranching families, and for many of those families, for their kids to be able to go to high school, it can often mean that they have to move away and live in town for those four years of high school.
And I had just talked to somebody who was saying, our oldest is getting to the point where we are needing to decide, are we going to keep her out here with us on the ranch and kind of homeschool through that experience, or are we going to send her to live with some friends in town? That happens pretty regularly for these families.
And it just reminded me a little bit of the people in the book Christie. And I just fell in love with this idea of having a school, and I really wanted to have a school that promoted virtue and goodness in the students.
And so I had just been thinking about Christie for a long time. And a lot of things happened in 2020. It was the Christmas of 2020. I stumbled upon Hillsdale College K through 12 schools. I just came across it on my phone, and I saw that and I was like, that would be cool if we could start a little charter school.
And so I emailed them and I said, can you tell me what it would look like? What do I need to do to start one of these schools? And the list they sent back was gargantuan, and I was like, that is not going to happen.
I knew one person in my community who had started a charter school, and I sent her that list as a gag. If you ever wanted to start another charter school, here is one we could do.
And she was like, yeah, that is funny.
And time passed, things moved on, and two years later she reached out to me and said, hey, did you know that there was a group of people from Elko that went and toured a Hillsdale school in Idaho? Were you part of that group?
And I said, no, I had no idea that anyone was going to tour a Hillsdale school in Idaho. I totally would have gone.
And she said, here is a contact for this group. Maybe you could reach out and just see what they have to say.
So I called the number she gave me. I got an answering machine and I left a message. And while I was waiting to get a call back from this person, I learned a little bit more about who he was and his political career in Nevada and that he had run against Harry Reid.
And I was like, this guy will never call me back. He is an important person. What was I thinking?
And probably about a week after that, I was sitting in my living room doing morning time with my kids. We were reading a story, and I get a call back from this man. And I ran into my bathroom because that was the only quiet place I could find. And I answered the phone and he said, I am so glad you called. We would love to have your help. Go to this place at this time, get the information for our next meeting, and we will meet you there.
And I said, okay.
And so when I went into that first board meeting, I only knew one other person in the room and there were probably about 12 people. These were all various people from our community who had done incredible things. We had county commissioners, people who owned businesses, people who had made a career in education. These were people who had a lot of influence and a lot of background in what we were doing.
And every meeting for the first six months, I walked in just scared to death because I was like, I have no idea what we are even doing really, or talking about, but I am just going to keep showing up.
And I learned so much about the process of what it would be to start a charter school.
I was very ignorant. When we first started, I was like, six months, we will get this thing open in six months. It will be great. And again, I learned quite a bit. It took us two and a half years to finally get the charter school open, and it just opened a couple months ago, August of 2025.
That is why I say to me, it is very miraculous that I even was involved in this group and was in the room at all. But I truly think it happened because I asked God, I want a school. I really want a school that teaches kids about virtue. I have seen what postmodernism does in education. This is a horrible thing. I do not want children growing up with this. Can we get a school that teaches virtue?
And my role on the school board for the charter school was, I had the most experience at the time with classical education and children because I had classically educated my children their entire education. And so I could speak to the more classical elements of what a Hillsdale K through 12 charter school was intended to be.
And so I could help inform on that level what was going on.
It became my role over time, and everybody on the board did everything, everybody was pitching in wherever they could, but generally my role was to do some of the community relations, public relations. I did several interviews on the radio here locally with another one of our board members. We did community events where we would try to educate the community on what a classical charter school was and what that meant. And I was also the liaison between our charter school board and our public school district board.
And it was an incredible experience.
The Resume Story and the Value of Motherhood
Cadie:
One of the things that I know we talk about a lot at the academy is when you have something that you are wanting to do, take your family with you. Have your family be involved in the mission work that you are doing.
And I have to tell you this story because it is an important story.
I struggled a lot with not feeling very qualified to be part of this board. And I remember we were turning in an application and we needed to have everybody’s resume on the board, and I was like, I do not have a resume. I have little kids. I am a stay at home mom. I do not have a resume.
And I was really having a freak out moment over this stupid resume. It feels dumb now when I look back at it, but at the time it was a big deal to me. And I remember saying to myself over and over again, you are not a professional. I am not a professional. I do not have anything to put on here to convince anyone why I should be on this board. I have no experience that is meaningful to anybody.
And I remember praying about it that night and asking God, what am I supposed to do? I am freaking out here about this stupid application.
And I remember the answer that I got was, I did not make you to be a professional.
And I was surprised. That took me back, and I was like, I feel like I need that right now though.
And so in the months that came, we held a community event where we had basically a big information meeting for anybody in the community who would want to come and learn about this school.
We had a gentleman who was very gracious, who was running a Hillsdale school. He was the principal of a Hillsdale school. He was willing to come and speak to our community and tell them about, this is the school that we have in Idaho, this is how it is going, you could have the same thing in Elko.
And as we were putting together the program, the board asked if there was a student who would be willing to recite a poem at this meeting. And I was like, that is me. I am the one with the students.
So I went home and I asked my son, he was 12 at the time, would you be willing to memorize a poem to recite at this meeting?
And he was like, I guess. He does not like memorizing things, but I was like, could you just, it would be great.
And so he memorized the poem If by Rudyard Kipling.
Audrey:
So good.
Cadie:
It is such a great poem. And he had been working on it and he just could not say it correctly when we practiced. He could not get through it without messing up a little bit. And so he was nervous when it came time for him to get up and give that poem.
And I told him, you are going to be great. It is going to be fine. You have got this.
And he went up there and he had never said that poem so well. He did not make a single mistake. There were like 80 people in there watching him, and he got up and said that poem and it was excellent. He did so well. I was so proud of him.
And when our speaker got up to talk about the schools, he stopped and he said, but wait, I want to tell that boy what a good job he did on that poem. He said, we have kids memorize that poem in our school, and it is a requirement that they pass off that poem.
And he said, that was one of the best recitations I have heard of that poem. You did such a great job.
And so at the end I went up to meet him, and I had my little lanyard on with my little name tag that said board member. And I walked up to him and I was there with my son, and he complimented my son again, and then he looked at me and he said, you are the mom, aren’t you?
And I said, yes, I am the mom.
I am not the professional. I am not the board member. I am the mom. This is my job.
And it was such an incredible experience to me of the value of being a mother. This project, this school, was valuable and important to me, but that was not my job. I was not made to be a professional. I was made to be the mom.
And moms have such a power for good in this world.
And I loved that when I came to MDM, MDM celebrated moms. It gave me an opportunity to do this big project that was something I never would have done without MDM. But first it helped me understand, you have an important role to play as a mom. That it should not be undervalued, and you should not undercut yourself because you are just the mom.
Like moms are really important, and they are the ones that get a lot of the great things done. They are the compass for the home.
And nowhere else was I hearing this. My degree was not going to tell me that I was valuable to the community, to society as a whole, because I was a mother. No one else was saying that.
And so to come to a place where I could study and feel so much value in what I wanted, my dream was to be a stay at home homeschool mom, and it helped me be better at that.
And then to go on and do some other things, which I am very proud of my school, I love it. I love being there. My kids and I go now, we volunteer, we go in on Tuesdays and we spend a couple hours every Tuesday at the school helping the little kids. And I love it. It is great.
But my kids are with me when I do it. And they are my focus at this time in my life. And I am really grateful for that because there are times and seasons, it is not always going to be this way. But I did not leave them behind to fulfill some big project that I wanted to do. They came with me and they were a part of it with me the whole time. And so has my husband. It has been a family affair, and it has been great.
What the Project Did for Her Personally
Audrey:
How do you feel that committing to that project and seeing it through, what did it do for you personally?
Cadie:
I think one of the things that I learned about myself through that project was that if the Lord asked me to do something, I would say yes.
Even if it was hard. That school was extremely difficult. There were moments that were very exhausting and hard, and it was just perseverance over and over again. We would try, we would try, we would try. We met with a lot of rejection, especially at the beginning. We met with plenty of pushback. Some people were very concerned about what a classical school would mean and what it would look like.
And so it had to be learning how to communicate with people that you did not agree with. And I am still not great at it. I wish I were better, but it gave me a lot of opportunity to practice.
But ultimately what I learned about myself is, if the Lord asks me to do something, I will do it. And I know I said that I asked for that school, but I asked at the beginning. By the end, he was asking me to finish, because I did not want to finish. It was hard.
But with him, I was able to stick it through and we were able to finish and we were able to get the school to opening.
We are still early on and we are still a growing organization. We still have a lot to learn, but I am so grateful that when the kids come in, they have a place to come where they are being taught to be honest, to persevere, to serve each other, to finish their work. They can do this. They can do hard things. And they are told that all the time when they come in. You can do hard things. We believe in you. We encourage you. Be courteous. Be kind to the people around you. It feels good to be in a space like that.
But ultimately, how did that school change me? It was to know that I really can do all things through Christ.
Audrey:
That is beautiful. I think it is so ironic too, that it is such an open handed gift of servant leadership because your children will not even ever attend it.
Cadie:
Yeah, that is true. At the beginning I thought that they would be able to attend, but over time we realized that in order to open and to be financially solvent through these beginning years, the school would have to open as a kindergarten through third grade only and add one grade level every year. And all of my kids were past third grade.
So we are continuing to homeschool, but I love having them come with me when we go volunteer in the school. It is a great opportunity.
Cadie’s Encouragement to Moms
Audrey:
What would you want to say to moms out there who might be listening?
Cadie:
For anyone who is listening, I would say, as women we have an incredible influence on the lives around us, and I do not think we realize how big that influence is. I still do not really realize how big my influence is and often struggle with really considering that I have much of an influence. But I know that it is there.
It is not unlike the story that I told you about The Princess and the Pea. As the women, our role is to find goodness and virtue and to point it out.
If I could give any encouragement to women in general, it would be guard your marriages. Keep that relationship sacred. Respect it. Show respect to your husband, and be grateful for the support that he lends to you, and lend him support. Because marriages that fail really impact your children so much.
So if you want to have a really positive impact for your children, guard your marriage. Show your kids what a healthy and happy marriage looks like, and give them that gift.
Why She Recommends MDM
Audrey:
What is the last thing you would say to anyone who is considering the academy or coming to the event, getting involved in some way with the programs at the Mission Driven Mom?
Cadie:
I would have to say, again, I have had a lot of different educational experiences. I was the homeschooled kid. I was someone who has gone to college. I have helped with a charter school. I am all about education, wherever you can get education.
What I would say about MDM is, I never got a better education anywhere than in the time that I spent studying at MDM. That was the most foundational in helping me realize the good that I could do in the world.
And when I graduated from college, I had this belief that when I graduated I would feel competent, like I could go out and do something in my community. And that did not happen. If anything, it was the exact opposite of that. I felt like I did not have any tools to be able to serve people. Even if I were to get a job teaching in the literature department, I did not feel like I had the tools to do that.
MDM is an online academy. You are not going to get an accredited degree from there. But if you want an actual, true, solid education, go to MDM, because you will finish and you will feel that you can go out and do some good in the world.
And I would never have taken on the charter school if I had not done MDM first. I would never have done it. Because I had some of that background that helped guide me in knowing where I could find true principles. I knew that I could find principles of education that would help guide what the school would be. I knew I could find principles of relationships that would help guide my marriage to be the best that it could be. I got actionable tools that helped me to live a great life.
And so if you are wanting a good education, it is not always about the career at the end. Sometimes it is just being educated in how to live well.
And I think MDM does that so well for moms. And I just love and appreciate you, Audrey, for what you gave me because that was what the academy did for me. And I am so grateful because I know it has not been an easy road for you either to keep this up and going. And it is a huge gift and a huge blessing to have been a part of it. And I just want to thank you for that.
Audrey:
Oh, thank you. Yes, you are right, it has not all been easy, but such a joy. I have met some of the most incredible people in my life, you included. And it is a joy and a privilege. It is just like your experience with the charter school, there are highs and lows, but looking back, boy, so glad you did it.
Cadie:
Yeah.
Audrey:
So glad you did it. Absolutely. And you come out of it such a different person.
So thank you, Cadie, so much for everything that you have shared. You are such an inspiration. I hope that moms will take to heart what you have said and really understand their incredible worth and the need that the world has for them to rise to the occasion in their motherhood and be the best mothers and wives they can be. It is so critical for all of us.
So anyway, such a joy to talk to you. Thank you so much for being with us.
Cadie:
Thank you, Audrey. It was great. I appreciate it. Love you, friend.
Audrey:
You too.
If you want, I can turn this into a polished downloadable document next.
