How to Talk to Kids About Hard Things: Sonya Renee Taylor

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Speaker 2 Sonia Renee Taylor is one of many hands currently called to Midwife the New World. She is a guide, poet, storyteller, vision holder, intuitive astrologer, and evangelist of radical love.

Speaker 2 She is the author of seven books, including the New York Times bestseller, The Body is Not an Apology, The Power of Radical Self-Love, and her most recent offering for young readers is the Book of Radical Answers.

Speaker 2 Today, we are learning from Sonia how to talk to our our kids about the hard stuff.

Speaker 2 Money, sex, the planet, the things that we want so hard to get right with our kids that we often freeze up and don't try at all. Sonia's going to help us try.

Speaker 2 This conversation is so important, not just for parents or anyone who has a kid in their life, but just for any adult who's trying to get any clarity around these incredibly nuanced but important human issues.

Speaker 2 Let's go.

Speaker 3 How are you? Are you in LA?

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 2 Yeah. So we, Sonia, are right outside of LA.
It's a beach town that's 15 miles outside of where everything's happening. So we are both in it and out of it.
We have people staying with us.

Speaker 2 We are feeling it and seeing it in the sky. We don't know anyone.
who hasn't been evacuated.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Exactly.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 And also we're safe. It's a very confusing time.
And this morning we're talking about how sometimes it just feels like the universe is just like really hooking us up.

Speaker 2 I can't believe we're talking to you today. This is just,

Speaker 2 we're in it now. We're in the climate crisis, the Armageddon, the apocalypse situations that we have been warned we would be in.

Speaker 2 You know, that idea that you will see climate change happening on your phone until you see it in front of you. And that's the way this goes.

Speaker 2 We have been been talking about our dear friend Adrian Marie Brown and how she's been telling us to, you know, gather your people, get your go bags. And I've been like, okay, Adrian, like, let's just,

Speaker 2 you know, I'm lovely. Settle down.

Speaker 3 Let's just

Speaker 3 let's not be extreme. Yeah.

Speaker 2 And now I'm texting her, like, fuck, what was I supposed to put in my go bag?

Speaker 3 I know you said it was going to be too late.

Speaker 3 So extreme has happened. Yes.

Speaker 2 Sonia, the reason why I am

Speaker 2 so grateful that you're here is that we are also people who are watching this all happen around us.

Speaker 2 And for many of us, the most important part of this is: how on earth, literally, do we speak of this to our children?

Speaker 3 How do people

Speaker 2 who are of the consciousness that we're in

Speaker 2 speak to a generation who we love so much,

Speaker 2 whose reality is completely different

Speaker 2 than we even experienced. And you

Speaker 2 have written, of course you have written a beautiful book about, it's behind me, the book of radical answers. And it's like, if you

Speaker 2 struggle with how to talk to your kids about everything that's important,

Speaker 2 sometimes the most important thing is not the what. of what you're saying, but the who is saying it.
And you are a person that if I was like okay

Speaker 2 kid i don't know what the to say to you about sex because i don't get it so but i but i'm just going to put you in this room with sonia renee taylor and i feel confident

Speaker 3 that whatever you say

Speaker 2 will not put them in a rigid dogmatic box that they will spend the rest of their lives trying to fight their way out of

Speaker 2 but that what you will say will allow them to be that acorn you talk about that is just returning to self-trust and self-love and not a cage, but sort of like a fertilizer, if you will.

Speaker 3 Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 So Sonia, can we just start by how do you talk to children

Speaker 2 about the planet right now?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, well, first of all, I'm just delighted to be back with you all. It's really warming my heart and remembering just like, yeah, what a kinship I feel in this space.

Speaker 3 And so thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 It's truth telling time

Speaker 3 is really what it is that I'm experiencing is like, there is a way in which we have,

Speaker 3 based on our own traumas, based on our own fears, based on our own conditioning, have

Speaker 3 thought that we were doing young people a service by lying to them. And we haven't.

Speaker 3 And what that actually has done and what we've seen it do throughout history is it makes them ill-prepared for the world it is that actually exists.

Speaker 3 And it is possible to say to young people,

Speaker 3 here's what we have been doing. And here is what it's created.

Speaker 3 Here is where we got it wrong.

Speaker 3 We

Speaker 2 have

Speaker 3 overvalued consumption. We've overvalued stuff.

Speaker 3 We've decided stuff was more important than the actual physical world we live on.

Speaker 3 We've decided that new phones and new iPads and new skyscrapers and new companies were more important than healthy soil and a lot of trees and good water.

Speaker 3 And our decisions have impacts and we are living in the impact of our decisions. But the other thing that we get to remember is that we get to make new decisions.

Speaker 3 Just because we didn't make a great decision before doesn't mean that we are forever

Speaker 3 stuck inside of the cycle of bad decisions. We get to say, oh,

Speaker 3 we can change and pivot. Now, does that mean that we don't have to live in the consequences of our decisions? No, we do.
And we're looking at that right now.

Speaker 3 We're looking at the consequences of some really poor decisions that we made.

Speaker 3 And we also from this point can say, we want to do something different. What would that look like?

Speaker 3 And the power of young people is that this is where we get to elicit the brilliance that is their imagination. Guess what?

Speaker 3 You haven't spent as much time living in the idea that these other things were the right things, which means that you are so much closer to what the right things might be.

Speaker 3 Like you're so much closer to actually what Earth might really want. So let's imagine together.

Speaker 3 What do we think we could create together and then we become partners with young people in envisioning a new world rather than just saying sorry we saddled you with absolute devastation go figure it out kid right

Speaker 2 that's good

Speaker 2 yeah i always think about i'm from fundamentalist Christianity, so you can take the girl out of the church, but it's just there. It's like my native language.

Speaker 3 I grew up Pentecostal Latin.

Speaker 2 you're taking us through a process of truth first we call it first the pain then the rising or like first the crucifixion then the resurrection but kids can smell it when you jump to the resurrection before so you're your level setting we skip something yeah

Speaker 2 here's the truth of it all here's the truth of it all and then we move into imagination and creativity which leaves them not hovering in the terror because you can't really be creative and terrified at the same time.

Speaker 3 You can't. And here's the thing.
If we don't tell the truth, we become unreliable narrators of the world. Yes.

Speaker 3 And then kids rely on themselves and each other to narrate with the level of information and skill that they have at that time, right? Which is limited.

Speaker 3 And so our job as adults are to be reliable narrators, such that we are trustworthy, so that when we tell them, hey, we together can imagine something new, they believe us.

Speaker 3 Because if we don't say that, then they don't believe us, which means they don't trust their own imagination, which means they won't lean into the natural skill set that they have.

Speaker 3 So our job is to be solid enough narrators of the experience that they're living that they feel their own self-trustworthiness through the trustworthiness that's the foundation that they're interacting with through adults.

Speaker 2 Yeah. They will not believe our what could be if they don't believe our what is.

Speaker 3 Is absolutely. because why would they right like you're you're not telling me the truth about life so how could you be telling me the truth about me

Speaker 3 so if you're saying I have the ability to do all this but you're lying about everything else then you're probably lying about that too yeah everything out of your mouth is bullshit yeah all of it's not true now all of it's not true That's what happens when we lie to kids.

Speaker 3 And so our job is to tell them the truth so that when we tell them the truth about themselves, they believe us.

Speaker 4 okay what do you say to people who think that their kids can't handle it and so they just don't talk about it because or think like that's too much for kids because i can barely i grieve and i get so upset when i start thinking about the reality of the climate or of police brutality or of the administration coming in like that you're just like it's too much to saddle this poor kid with when i can't even handle it what do you say to that

Speaker 3 i think the first thing that comes up for me is like,

Speaker 3 if the truth is, it taps into a bit of anger in me. I'm like, there are kids handling it right now.

Speaker 3 And the idea that your kid can't handle it is a position of deep privilege.

Speaker 3 Because there are children all over the world right now figuring out the most atrocious of situations and at many times doing it without any support or infrastructure.

Speaker 3 And so your job as the adult in that young person's life is to create create the conditions for them to be able to handle it, which means that you're loving, you're compassionate, you're present, you're willing to hear, and that you have checked enough of your own stuff because the thing we're really saddling them with is our stuff.

Speaker 3 That's right. That's really when we say like, I can't, I don't want to saddle them with it.
It's like, I don't want to saddle them with my terror or my fear or my disbelief about what's possible.

Speaker 3 Well, then guess what, grown person? Go tend to that. Go tend to that so that you can be a loving steward of the young person who will inevitably have to handle it.
Because guess what?

Speaker 3 The fire already burned their house down. They don't have a choice about whether or not they're going to handle it.
It is what life is.

Speaker 3 So pretending that we don't have the capacity to handle what life is, it's just the story we're actually making up. Because the truth is, you're handling it.
Now, could you be handling it better?

Speaker 3 Do we want to feel more powerful, more sovereign, more connected inside of our handling it? Absolutely. But one way or another, you're going to have to handle it because life delivered it.

Speaker 3 And so the question becomes: how do I say life is going to deliver my young person's circumstances that are going to be difficult?

Speaker 3 What is my role in equipping them with the most powerful manifestation of themselves so that they can deal with life on life's terms without being dramatically

Speaker 3 impacted in really negative and traumatic ways later on. That's by dealing in the now, dealing in the present.

Speaker 2 Requires, I think I've changed my mind about this. Like I used to think, you just walk in with them and you just don't know with them.

Speaker 2 You just say, I don't know, and you circle around the I don't know. And that is true-ish.

Speaker 2 But the more I think about it, the more I think the reason we don't know what to say to our children about the planet, about racism, about sex, about money, is because we don't eff-ig know.

Speaker 2 We have not taken the stillness, the time, the therapy, the community, the books. We have not done the work to have a theory.

Speaker 2 Whether it's evolving and changing as it should, it should. It shouldn't be fixed.
But we should have an idea about what we think about things.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 And not only an idea. Like, here's the thing.
I think we do know. We just don't like the answer.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 I know that I have been really afraid of money. I know that I've been really stuck in scarcity for a long time.
And I don't like that answer. I feel like it makes me not look good.

Speaker 3 I feel like it makes me unworthy. It activates all my own childhood wounds.
And so, no, I don't want to say that to my kid, except that then you become an unreliable narrator.

Speaker 3 And so the job is to say, I know that I have been afraid. And I know that I don't want you to be.
And so here's, I may not know how to fix it, but we can go research that together.

Speaker 3 Let's go on a journey together. And then you become a companion in exploration with this young person in your life.
So the answer isn't that we don't know. There are things we don't know.

Speaker 3 And I think it is fair to say, I don't know. And then to say, like, but let's be curious together.
Let's imagine. Let's read.
Let's explore, right?

Speaker 3 But there are things that we do know and we just don't like the answer. And I think our job in that place is to still be real honest,

Speaker 3 right?

Speaker 1 Not only don't like the answer, but know the answer and do not want to do the work to change because the change fit is a tough one for us oldies.

Speaker 3 Exactly. And this is the thing.
Every question from a young person is an opportunity for the older person to step into a new possibility for themselves.

Speaker 3 Basically, every time a young person says, what about this?

Speaker 3 we get to assess for ourselves where we are on that journey and pivot should we we so choose. But we get stuck and contracted and in our own fear.

Speaker 3 And then we do a disservice to young people by avoiding ourselves and our own level of work.

Speaker 3 People often ask me why I didn't write a book for young people before I wrote The Body's Mind Apology for Grown People. And I was like, because We got to change first and foremost.

Speaker 3 Actually, if we don't transform, then we beget all of our trauma and disconnection and fear and shame onto the young people who we are the shepherds of, the stewards of.

Speaker 3 So, actually, it's our job to transform first, such that we demonstrate the transformation is possible

Speaker 3 for young people.

Speaker 2 Because, God, we can say the words. I think all the time about the amount of time that I spent teaching my girls and my boy about

Speaker 2 bodies and freedom while being anorexic.

Speaker 2 It's just, it really matters the actual work we're doing.

Speaker 3 I had the word reliable or an unreliable near wave. Yes.
It really is the theme of this conversation.

Speaker 2 I imagine the kids being like, Thanks, mom. And when you're done with those six almonds, could you finish this conversation we're having about food and freedom?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 4 Okay,

Speaker 2 Sonia,

Speaker 2 a kid comes to you and says,

Speaker 2 sex,

Speaker 2 what is it?

Speaker 2 How does Sonia of the radical self-love of the acorn kind of wisdom talk to a kid about sex?

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 You know, I mean, my immediate thought was like, oh, it's this awesome thing that sometimes makes humans and then sometimes not.

Speaker 3 You know, it's like sometimes, sometimes, sometimes not, depending on how we're having it.

Speaker 3 But I think, you know, for me, the first conversation is like, oh, our bodies were made to experience pleasure.

Speaker 3 And part of the reasons our bodies were made to experience pleasure is because it ensures that humans continue. Because if something's pleasurable to do, you're likely to do it.

Speaker 3 And since sex is one of the things that makes humans, it usually feeling good,

Speaker 3 you know, motivates us to decide to do that. And so part of it is just the biology of how humans continue.

Speaker 3 But part of it is about our right to pleasure in our bodies and our right to connection with pleasure in our bodies and to experience pleasure with each other.

Speaker 3 And that how we decide to experience pleasure with each other and inside of our bodies is a function of how we know ourselves, how we know each other, where we want to be vulnerable with ourselves, where we want to be vulnerable with other people,

Speaker 3 where we are trustworthy with ourselves, where we want to be trustworthy with other people who have established themselves as trustworthy. All of those things go into sex.

Speaker 3 So there's the physiological part, which is about our anatomy and about our genitalia and putting genitalias together and the ways in which that feels pleasurable and also can do procreation.

Speaker 3 And then there's this other,

Speaker 3 what I think is actually the juicier, bigger piece, probably because I didn't decide to procreate.

Speaker 3 And so all the sex I've had has been for pleasure. It's been because

Speaker 3 it feels good and it's connecting and it's deep and it's beautiful when I know myself and I know my body and I trust the other person. Those things.

Speaker 3 And so I think that's part of the place where I'd start the conversation.

Speaker 2 That's beautiful.

Speaker 1 And at what age do you recommend starting these conversations?

Speaker 3 Well, here's the deal. In the world of social media and mass information dissemination all the time, You want to say it before the internet says it.

Speaker 3 And so as soon as your young person has access to externalized information, I believe that's when you should start having these conversations at age-appropriate levels. So,

Speaker 3 you know, five-year-olds are like, where do babies come from? That's the time to start having a conversation about sex, right?

Speaker 3 And in a way that is age-appropriate, that doesn't. And here's the thing.

Speaker 3 Sometimes I think we adults get in our heads and then we overcomplicate stuff when folks really need super simple answers, right? The five-year-old's just like, where do babies come?

Speaker 3 There's a penis and there's a vagina. When a penis is inserted into a vagina, it has the potential to make a baby.
And then a baby will grow inside of a body.

Speaker 3 And eventually, nine months later, it'll come out. That's where babies come from.

Speaker 3 Okay, boom, bye. I'm certain this kid's done.

Speaker 3 And that was already maybe more than they needed to know, right? And so.

Speaker 3 Keep it simple, keep it concrete, and leave the space for them to explore more if they want to explore more.

Speaker 3 But we don't have to like start dumping out the, you know, Encyclopedia Britannica, I'm dating myself

Speaker 3 of information.

Speaker 3 Yeah, just answer simply what they ask and like, don't get into our panic. Oh my gosh, what does this mean? Brah.
Yeah. Stuff that I think we can do sometimes.

Speaker 2 I really appreciated in your book the way that you talked about porn.

Speaker 2 Can you just, for the pod squad, real quick, just say briefly what you said in the book about keeping your eye out for what porn is actually doing?

Speaker 2 How would you talk to a kid about that?

Speaker 3 So, you know, I think, and I may or may not be, because I haven't read my book in it and I'm in another country, so I haven't even seen it. But I'll tell you what's present right now.

Speaker 2 It's good, Sonia. It's really good.

Speaker 3 Thanks.

Speaker 3 But, you know, I think one of the things to talk about is how sex and so many things in our society get used for money, right? Get commercialized, right?

Speaker 3 And so one of the ways in which sex, which is about like pleasure and trust and vulnerability and connection, gets used for money in our society is through pornography, where people are paid to have sex with each other, whether or not they trust or know each other, whether or not they have a relationship.

Speaker 3 And then it gives us a distorted view about what sex really is, right?

Speaker 3 Because the job is to make money from this experience, not to connect, not to feel loving, not to even necessarily experience pleasure.

Speaker 3 And so what we're seeing in porn is not a realistic experience of sexuality. It's an experience to sell a thing.

Speaker 3 And sometimes, like many of the other systems in our society, when we're trying to sell a thing, it can involve exploitation. It can involve oppression.

Speaker 3 Oftentimes, the exploitation and oppression of women happens a lot through pornography.

Speaker 3 Also, the like reaffirming of messages of men about women's bodies as objects, about only being allowed to feel if it's about feeling something sexual.

Speaker 3 of those messages can get reinforced through pornography because it's trying to sell you something.

Speaker 3 And generally, when something's trying to sell you something, it doesn't care so much about the deeper issues of human connection, of love, of trust, the vulnerability.

Speaker 3 And so porn can give us a distorted vision. And there are way better.

Speaker 3 more nuanced, exciting ways to learn about sex that are going to give you more of what's really happening than pornography will.

Speaker 2 Do you see how when Sonia's talking and you're hearing her, you're not presenting it in a fear-based way that I was a third-grade teacher, so you can present things in a way, not you, you, you, universal, where your fear comes out so much that the kid is automatically curious about that thing.

Speaker 3 It's like,

Speaker 3 oh, you're so scared of this.

Speaker 3 If you have banned books energy about porn, your kids are going to be a single-your kid is on the the porn site right now. Yes.
As soon as they got done talking to you.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. They are logging in immediately.

Speaker 2 Yes. So I just appreciate how you're

Speaker 3 because the fear makes a thing enticing, right? It's like, oh, they said I shouldn't do it. So I should totes do it.
As opposed to, yes, it exists.

Speaker 3 And here's actually what it is, not from a place of fear, just from here's what it is. But again, we go back to what we have not tended to in ourselves shows up in the the conversation.

Speaker 3 So all of our anxiety, our stuff around sex, our stuff around pornography, if we haven't sat with that, and this, it is useful and helpful to say, when a kid comes and asks you a question that feels like it's activating all your stuff, to say, thank you so much for that question.

Speaker 3 I'm going to sit for a minute because I want to really be able to give you a good, honest answer that I thought about. Can I come back to you in an hour? Or can we talk about this tonight at dinner?

Speaker 3 Or can I talk about it to you tomorrow when you get home from school?

Speaker 3 Buy yourself some time to go sit with yourself, to go get yourself in order, to touch into the places where it is leaning up against your stuff and get quiet, get centered, get aligned so that you get to come to this young person from your most grounded, aligned self and not your reactionary, fear-based self.

Speaker 3 It's going to help all the like tricky conversations go so much

Speaker 3 easier. Absolutely.

Speaker 3 And And so chill out on the urgency energy and buy yourself enough time to come back to yourself so that, again, you can find your own reliable narrator and then bring that version of yourself to the young person.

Speaker 3 I love that.

Speaker 2 That's helpful.

Speaker 4 I'm just wondering how we got to the place where we viewed these things as like,

Speaker 4 you have the sex talk and you have the whatever.

Speaker 4 It's so odd that these things are just omnipresent that they're some of the most important things in life and we're like well thank god we held our breath and got through that 30 minute conversation and never have to talk about it again how do we weave these things so they're just part of what we talk about all the time yeah well you know if we're organized to these subjects through the lens of shame then of course we don't want to talk about them Oh,

Speaker 3 I'm ashamed of this. I'm ashamed of sex.
I'm ashamed of money. I'm ashamed of what we've done to to the climate.
I'd rather ignore it or pretend like we didn't do it.

Speaker 3 So, whatever it is that we are bringing our shame to,

Speaker 3 we know that it's inevitable.

Speaker 3 And so, yes, we're going to, you know, grant and bear it, suck it up, and have the conversation, but we prefer to never have to have that conversation again because every time we talk about it, it touches our stuff.

Speaker 3 And this is why we keep saying that the work we don't do on ourselves

Speaker 3 impacts our young people. It becomes their template for how it is they move through the world.
And so, if you find yourself with deep shame in these subject areas, then you're right.

Speaker 3 You're not going to want to weave it into life. Every time it shows up, you're going to be like, turn the TV off.

Speaker 3 You know, I remember when I was a kid, I think we were watching like Purple Rain or something. And I remember my mother putting her hands over my eyes over the sex scenes or something like that.

Speaker 3 And I was like, I'm so confused because whatever we're watching, what's happened there, right?

Speaker 3 Because I was allowed to see all the rest of it, but now something has come into the screen that I'm not allowed to see. What is that?

Speaker 3 And I think that there is this

Speaker 3 invitation to say, what are the subjects? Like, I would love if all parents, as soon as you just were like, oh, I'm about to bring a young person into my life.

Speaker 3 Where are my edges?

Speaker 3 Where are my pain points? Where are my shame still?

Speaker 3 And I'm going to say that I'm going to intentionally

Speaker 3 work on tending to and healing these aspects of myself so that I can show up,

Speaker 3 not from my fear, not from my shame, but as a legitimate,

Speaker 3 like

Speaker 3 intentional guide to this person I've decided I'm going to be an intentional guide for.

Speaker 3 When we said yes, in whatever ways we said yes, we said, yes, I'm going to guide you. That means I got to actually do the work to clear the things in my my path so that I can lead you yeah no

Speaker 2 and it doesn't have to be a leading from a podium where you're an expert a guide can just be right on the path with you but just a couple steps forward a couple steps ahead just a step

Speaker 2 steps ahead yeah and Sonia do you think I think one of the challenges with the paradigm we've had about this that there's a talk

Speaker 2 is that's not how people are. Like we evolved.

Speaker 2 Abby just had this beautiful, Abby has had so much fear and shame about what she was taught about heaven and hell from her family and her church when she was little.

Speaker 2 She's done so much work to break out of that paradigm. She talked to her mom about it recently.
And her mom said, oh, honey, I don't believe in hell anymore.

Speaker 2 And Abby has been carrying this belief that

Speaker 3 for not catching me up.

Speaker 3 That would have been great to know, mom.

Speaker 2 That's what she said.

Speaker 2 So I am sure that by omission and by what I taught my kids when I had them inside of a very fundamentalist church when they were little, if I just had the talk then and never showed how I have changed and grown and struggled out loud, it's okay to have a different talk now than you would have last year and maybe in fact imperative.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. I'm thinking about it like software, right? Like every once in a while, my phone is like, hey, you need a software update.
Yes. Right.

Speaker 3 And if I don't do the software update, then things stop working. My apps don't open.
All kinds of wild stuff happens. Right.
And that's very much what these conversations are.

Speaker 3 Where you were, the model of you when you had the first conversation will not be the same model in five years, certainly maybe not in 10 years, might not be in five months.

Speaker 3 And so as your information, as your system, your software gets updated, all the things connected to your software need to be updated too, including your young people. Oh.

Speaker 3 My ideas have changed. We haven't talked about that in a while.
You know what? I'm thinking differently about that. What are you thinking thinking about that?

Speaker 3 You know, one of the things that I do in the book of radical answers is I really try to instill in young people that they have the ability to be critical thinkers and to ask questions and to be curious and to actually dissect the world they're living in.

Speaker 3 Every time we as adults come and say, hey, I've changed my mind. We give young people permission to change their minds about things.

Speaker 3 Every time I'm like, you know what, I used to think this, but I don't think that anymore. Then all of a sudden there is a softening of the edges of possibility for young people.

Speaker 3 And they're like, oh, things shift. Things change.
They shifted in my parent. They shifted in my mom.
Oh, that means they might shift in me. Oh, that's okay.

Speaker 3 So there's a permission giving in our own transformation for young people to transform, for young people to have thought a thing at one point and then think a new thing.

Speaker 3 Every time we demonstrate that, we say, it's totally all right, which means we cultivate the evolution of our young people. And ultimately, that's what we're here to do: evolve, all of us.

Speaker 2 All of us. That's the success.
It is not success to keep old software and stick to it and say, that's the thing forever. That is not success.

Speaker 3 That's called obsolescence. That thing will no longer work and then it will like.
This is the thing I think is fascinating: is like, even inside of the

Speaker 3 imagination of the market,

Speaker 3 the things that we do with humans don't transcribe. You have to update the thing or else it becomes non-viable and then it goes off the market.
Guess what? That might be true for humans too.

Speaker 3 If you don't update the thing, it becomes non-viable and then it goes off the market. So what does it look like to just create the space where change is inevitable? Because guess what?

Speaker 3 Change is inevitable. And the more that we try to create a world that pretends like that isn't the truth, truth, the more we create suffering for ourselves and for young people.

Speaker 4 And the other thing that is essential to survival and essential to evolution, like the updating, is what data we collect, what inputs. Another thing a guide does is just say, look,

Speaker 4 and points to something.

Speaker 4 Our kids are being raised in a culture where it's very specific things that schools and government and whatever are pointing to, and a entire universe beyond that, that they will never be pointed to unless we just say, hey, look, huh, what do you think of that?

Speaker 3 Hey, look, look over there.

Speaker 4 And so I think for me, it's honestly been,

Speaker 4 I have a 12-year-old and a 10-year-old. And this period right now of that has been the most fun,

Speaker 4 intimate part of parenting for me. Just talking about what is there and things in the news and what they think of them, because they're thinking about them anyway.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Yes, they are.
We are not going to, you know, inoculate our young people from the realities of life. It's everywhere.

Speaker 3 That is what we've made in the world of social media is a world where everything is accessible all the time. So if everything is accessible all the time, right?

Speaker 3 And everything is vying for your attention.

Speaker 3 In the economy of attention, the adults and young people's lives have to figure out what their currency is.

Speaker 3 We've got to figure out how we are and what we want our young people to understand and experience is as valuable as all the other millions of things trying to get our young people's attention.

Speaker 3 And the more that we are honest, transparent, curious, engaging, want to know their thoughts, right?

Speaker 3 That's why kids like the internet. That's why they like social media platforms because somebody wants to watch them all the time and look at them do something somewhere out there

Speaker 3 if we get to be those people then we have not shuffled them off to the digital space to get that need met which means that they're going to come to us with that place of curiosity, with that thing they're uncertain about, with that thing they want us to see, because we've become the exciting audience, the audience that's actually interested and invested.

Speaker 3 That piece of work is how you get young people to listen to what it is you're offering and guidance rather than to be guided by these billions of other locations that usually just want to use them for profit.

Speaker 4 And it's like an inside thing where you're able to be like, just the tiny little things, like when you're walking through an area with stores and there's benches, but then there's little raised things on the benches.

Speaker 4 And they're like, what are those?

Speaker 4 You say, those are there so that unhoused people don't lay on the bench.

Speaker 3 Bench.

Speaker 4 Like you tell them the truth about that. And then they're like,

Speaker 4 why wouldn't we want unhoused people? Do you mean there's unhoused people in our neighborhood? Yeah, there sure are, but we don't want them here because it makes us feel less comfortable.

Speaker 4 Why does it make them feel less comfortable? Then it opens up this whole world where you're sharing this like

Speaker 4 open secret, but that no one else is talking to them about.

Speaker 4 And then you have this shared thing where now their eyes are peeled for what else is going on around here. and they're looking for it.
And it's really interesting.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And our kids are naturally, you know, like they're inquisitive and naturally relatively compassionate.
People are always like, kids are mean. And like, yes, absolutely some of that.

Speaker 3 But actually,

Speaker 3 the thing we notice first is like young people, they're like, oh, I hit that person. And then the baby cries and they're like, I'm so sorry.

Speaker 3 They feel terrible, right? There is a natural compassion. But if we don't point out the ways in which the world is incompassionate, then we normalize lack of compassion.

Speaker 3 We tell them that that's okay, right? That you shouldn't question it and you shouldn't think about it. And actually what we want are young people who question and think.
Yes.

Speaker 3 Those are the young people that actually, that's how you know you can have a young person who makes it safely into adulthood is because they question and think.

Speaker 2 Yeah. You want them to see the water they're swimming in.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. Otherwise, the sharks will get them.

Speaker 2 That's right. That's right.
Or they become the sharks, which is,

Speaker 3 Or they become the sharks, which to me is still the sharks got them.

Speaker 2 Oh, yes, of course. Shit, Sony.

Speaker 3 Of course you think.

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Speaker 2 okay

Speaker 2 i need to know for my own personal self because i really believe that

Speaker 2 when i'm listening to you talk how do i talk to my kids about this i'm also just like how do i think about this okay

Speaker 2 i'm clear that this book is for the kids but it's just really also for the adults for all of us yes it's for the kids and all of us yes

Speaker 2 so how do you coming from the pentecostal church, being this incredible acorny,

Speaker 2 radical self-love prophet,

Speaker 2 all right, my kid comes to you and says, what the hell with God?

Speaker 2 Like, what, what's God?

Speaker 2 What does Sonia Renee Taylor say right now at this point in evolution?

Speaker 3 Right now.

Speaker 3 Well, you know, I'm most likely always to turn the question back to the kid first, certainly in that place.

Speaker 3 What do you think God is? What do you know about this already? Where are you? Right. Which says, I actually am curious about you.
I again become the interested audience, right? Immediately.

Speaker 3 And then, you know, Sonia Renee Taylor says, there are

Speaker 3 so many ideas about what God is. And I can tell you what mine is.
And I want you to find what's true for you.

Speaker 3 Here's what's true for me, is that God,

Speaker 3 as I describe God, is a manifestation of the divine. It is whatever the energy is that thought that there should be oceans and bumblebees and Gerber daisies and

Speaker 3 farts and

Speaker 3 rainbows that also thought that there should be a sonya.

Speaker 3 Whatever that energy is, that's God to me.

Speaker 3 God creates and creates and creates and then means for creation to grow and evolve and learn and to be deeply connected to how amazing and magical it is.

Speaker 3 And part of the challenge of creation is that sometimes we forget we're amazing and magical and then we rely on other stuff. But God

Speaker 3 is the energy of love that decided that all of life should exist. That's what God is to me.
And I want you, I want you to think about it a little bit.

Speaker 3 And maybe, like, let's check in next week, like, just be out in the world. And then let's check in next week and tell me sort of what you're thinking about God now.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 2 That's beautiful. Cause when they're coming to you with a question, you can bet, and I remember this from my teaching days too, that's not coming from nowhere.
They are having inner ideas.

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 there's an inner dialogue already happening. It's just now being expressed.

Speaker 3 And so, again, affirming that that inner dialogue is allowed to exist, that you want to know what it is, that they should dig into it, that it is a fertile, fecund ground that they should get into.

Speaker 3 That's what we want to do.

Speaker 3 We want them to get connected to these things that are in here so that they don't just stay in here and then they believe that no one really wants to know and then they squash them down and then it gets tamped down and tamped down and then they no longer hear what's in here.

Speaker 3 Then the only guidance is what's out there, right?

Speaker 3 We want to keep cultivating that.

Speaker 2 I sometimes feel bad for, it's like you and I and probably everyone on this pod does have a sort of literal love language with words.

Speaker 2 Yes. It makes me feel like it's unfair for

Speaker 2 people who are with young children who that's not their sister, can you tell Sonia about what John, your husband, does with music?

Speaker 4 Yeah, because he's not a big words guy. But first, I want to say that question about God, a couple months ago, it was my son just out of nowhere.
I was like, it was the end of the night.

Speaker 4 And he said, do you believe in God?

Speaker 4 And I was like, wow, that is a huge, really good question. What do you believe? And he said, I wrote it in my notes section because I was like, okay, I want to document this for him in the future.

Speaker 4 But he said, yes, I believe in God. I feel God the most when I believe in something strongly, like rights for other people.

Speaker 2 that.

Speaker 4 If you feel something strongly that is evidence of God, I was like, that is a great.

Speaker 3 I was like, cool, man.

Speaker 4 Yeah, let me think about it.

Speaker 3 I was trying not to be like, react too strongly in any direction.

Speaker 2 Have you ever noticed that these little shits only ask these questions at bedtime? Cause they know that they brought us.

Speaker 4 They're like, she's a sucker for this. I can ask her 47 of these.

Speaker 3 I'll ask her about it. I'm going to be at all.
I'm not going to be asleep no time soon.

Speaker 4 My husband has a cool way of bringing things up. His love is music.
And so he's constantly trying to think of like, if the kids will ask a question, he'll be like,

Speaker 4 I want you to listen to this song. And he'll give them his phone with the lyrics on it.
And he doesn't say anything, but he just lets them read the lyrics and then ask questions.

Speaker 4 And so just last week, something happened where I, I don't know, something at dinner, something about like police or something.

Speaker 4 And they started asking some questions. And so he played them the American Skin 41 Shots, a song, which was about Amadou Diallo, who was the immigrant shot 41 times by NYPD.

Speaker 4 And he usually tries to connect it to like one of their heroes. So Bruce Ringstein is like a big guy to them and about how he was threatened not to sing that song

Speaker 4 in New York City and that the NYPD refused to give security to his concerts and boycotted the show and everything and he played it anyway.

Speaker 4 And they were like, why would they not want to go to the show? It ended up being this whole conversation about Blue Line, et cetera.

Speaker 4 But they were reading the lyrics and there was a part of this song where it's about this woman before school says, you know, on these streets, Charles, you have to understand the rules.

Speaker 4 And they were like, what is she talking about? I don't understand.

Speaker 4 So it was this whole conversation about, oh, if you were Black children, by this time in your life, you would have already had the discussion of how you have to act with police versus how we.

Speaker 4 And so I don't know. It just like the songs and then movies and that there's just like ways that you can do it.
If your kids into sports, there's a ton of movies out there that are really.

Speaker 4 beautiful and roads and then they ask the questions it's not you're like here's what the truth is you just answer the questions.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And I love this idea that your husband found the thing that resonates for him and is like, oh, this is the place where I actually have some juice and some access.
Let me share this.

Speaker 3 Let me share this. So it doesn't have, you know, I do feel bad for the people who aren't word people because, you know, we're word people.

Speaker 3 And I recognize that there are infinite ways in which we convey messages and communicate with each other. And so, whatever that is for you, do that, right?

Speaker 3 Like art, movements, songs, a walk in nature, watching how the natural world operates. There are endless ways.
There's no one right way to be in this exchange with young people.

Speaker 3 finding the methodology of communication that works for you and then inviting young people into that by asking them what the methodology of communication that works for them is and finding the meeting point that's really i think the sweet spot there's no one right way to do it well especially now because kids, especially as they get into their teenage years, they're being exposed to telephones, cell phones, and the internet and social media.

Speaker 1 And their one-on-one connections become so vulnerable that it is really difficult. to have some of these conversations that are super important.
Right.

Speaker 1 And so like what we've found that works in a few ways is just going for a car ride.

Speaker 2 So there's no-sonia.

Speaker 1 There's no eye contact.

Speaker 3 You just lock them in.

Speaker 1 I mean, listen, Tish and I went on her tour together and we drove 4,000 miles and we talked about things that we had never talked about before.

Speaker 1 It was time and you're kind of like locked in the seat and you're bored out of your mind. So like stuff comes.

Speaker 4 You don't have to have eye contact.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 Absolutely. It creates a literal and physical, like a physical container to hold the conversation, right?

Speaker 3 and there's a way in which the attention is all in one location right and that again the economy of attention where is and how do we find the time to be the sort of central focus for young people right so that these questions can arise because there's so many distractions there's so many other places they'd rather be there's so many other folks they want to text all this is happening and so finding the location where it's like oh here's the little the sanctuary that we can create and i love the idea idea that the sanctuary is the car where it's like, oh, this is where we get to meet and be in intimate connection and dialogue with one another.

Speaker 3 That's sweet and beautiful. I love it.

Speaker 2 I want to ask this question for our pod squad, because one of the things that gets brought up the most is, and I know you talked about this in the book, what do we do when our kids

Speaker 2 are hurt by other children? Oh, when they're left out. Our kid comes home and somebody was terrible to them.

Speaker 2 And Sonia, you know, it activates every part of us that felt left out when we were seven and last week. Yeah.
And

Speaker 2 we just, how do you,

Speaker 2 would you go about that? When a kid came and said, they left me out, they teased me.

Speaker 2 How do we know when it's bullying?

Speaker 3 What's your take?

Speaker 3 Yeah, I mean, I think the first thing I do is just be like, oh, honey, I know. I understand.

Speaker 3 I'm sorry. Because I do know, because I was a kid who was bullied, who was left out, who was teased, right? And so there's a place in me that absolutely understands that.

Speaker 3 And so the first location is just deep empathy and witnessing. I'm really sorry.
That's really got to not feel good. Or tell me more about how that felt for you.

Speaker 3 Tell me more about what it brought up for you. Because one of the things that I think we get to do in that moment, those experiences are the

Speaker 3 germination of the seeds of stories that we then keep for the rest of our lives.

Speaker 3 I don't belong. So, you know, as folks may know, I've been deep in my astrology bag for the last however many years at this point now, and I've been doing readings for people.

Speaker 3 And so, right before I came on here, I just did a reading for someone.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 her entire chart was this manifestation of being of service to others, being of service to others, being of service to others. And it was so clear that she had neglected being of service to herself.

Speaker 3 And the reason she had neglected being of service to herself is because she felt so ostracized and outcasted as a young person, as a teased, disliked young person, that

Speaker 3 so much of the labor of her life is about trying to earn favor with the collective again, trying to figure out how to work hard enough to be liked.

Speaker 3 She's 40-something.

Speaker 3 She's a whole adult now.

Speaker 3 That's how those stories start.

Speaker 3 And so what we want to do when young people bring us those moments is we want to hear them and we want to witness and we want to notice where the seed of a story is starting and we want to interrupt it.

Speaker 3 That's what we want to do first. So I, oh, that's got a really big heart.
Tell me how that made you feel. It made me feel like I don't belong.
Tell me more about not belonging.

Speaker 3 What does that mean for you?

Speaker 3 It means I'll always be left out.

Speaker 3 I hear you saying always.

Speaker 3 You know, always means forever. And this was just a moment.

Speaker 3 So I hear you that it hurt, but we don't have to think that what happened right now has to be the rest of your life because that's what always means, right?

Speaker 3 So let's acknowledge where we are right now in the present, but it doesn't have to be forever. I promise it actually won't be unless we decide that it is right now.

Speaker 3 So can we make a different decision? How would you tell this story if it wasn't always? Right.

Speaker 3 And then we give them the opportunity to start reframing the story for themselves so that that seed doesn't keep growing and building on itself and building on itself till it becomes their identity as an adult.

Speaker 3 So that to me is one of the key moments that we have to intercept what becomes a lifelong pattern by acknowledging, witnessing, and then reframing the experience so that their most empowered self can actually be activated in it.

Speaker 3 Well, what's true? Who are those people? Are they actually people you want to hang with? Let's talk more about it, right? We get to sort of dig into it.

Speaker 3 But for me, the most important moment is catching where that story wants to like dig itself in the soil and start growing and saying, uh-uh, we don't have to do that though.

Speaker 3 We can absolutely 100% feel what we felt. And we don't have to say that it's forever or it's always or I'm never or

Speaker 3 make a story about who we are.

Speaker 3 We get to interrupt that part. So that to me feels like one of the most key pieces.

Speaker 2 It's tied to your other part so much clearly. Like I hear when you're saying that, I'm thinking,

Speaker 2 if we are people who have not been reliable narrators of

Speaker 3 how

Speaker 2 people can be cruel and people can be short-sighted and the world can be very unfair, if we have not been reliable narrators about that, if we have been toxically positive, if we have avoided, if we have been like I was when the kids were little, everything's fair, it's all fair, everything's good,

Speaker 3 okay.

Speaker 2 Then when this shit happens to them, when they are at school and they are left out, when they see the spikes on the bench, when they experience the world as it is, they will not know that that's the way the world is.

Speaker 2 They will think there's something wrong with them.

Speaker 3 It's them. Exactly.
It's me. I'm the failure.
Something's wrong with me. And then when you try to tell them otherwise, you're not believable.
You're not reliable.

Speaker 2 So the child experiences, like I'm thinking back to my teaching days.

Speaker 2 The kid is in the classroom and goes through what all kids go through at some point, some to unacceptable degrees that are some just a little bit exclusion, left-outedness, unkindness, unfairness, injustice.

Speaker 2 The kid who hasn't had a reliable narrator at home who has presented the world as it is in developedly appropriate ways

Speaker 2 says, oh, this is the world. This is uncomfortable and this hurts, but this is the world.

Speaker 3 And this is the world towards me.

Speaker 1 Yes.

Speaker 2 But the kid who has not had a reliable narrative thinks, what is my doing wrong? It's me. Why am I like this? Why is this happening in this world that my mom told me is fair and perfect and beautiful?

Speaker 2 They both go together absolutely inevitably, right, Sonia?

Speaker 3 Yeah, absolutely. If we

Speaker 3 say,

Speaker 3 here's reality,

Speaker 3 when young people encounter reality, they understand the context they're in.

Speaker 3 This is reality. It doesn't mean I'm a bad person.
It just means, you know, my mom told me sometimes this is how stuff goes. All right, I understand that.

Speaker 3 But if we have not presented the world in its reality, then when young people get confronted with reality, the only place they have to look is themselves. It must be me.

Speaker 3 It must be something I did. That's what young people are.
trained to do, right? Like that it's part of the developmental orientation of life is that we are first self-reflexive. It's about me.

Speaker 3 It's about something that's going on here.

Speaker 3 If we haven't said there are other things happening that are going to be outside of your control, that are going to be unfair, that you're not going to actually understand,

Speaker 3 if you don't prepare them for that, then the natural instinct to be self-reflexive will kick in. It must be me.

Speaker 3 It's the reason kids blame themselves for their parents' divorces. It's the reason that they blame themselves for when they've been abused.

Speaker 3 It's the reason that they blame themselves for when harm happens in the family, because we haven't presented the rest of the world as independent players who also are moving through things, which just means I did it.

Speaker 3 I created it. That's right.

Speaker 1 I'm not a words person like you are. And Glennon, you are, and you are, Amanda.
And I sometimes feel in my body a little

Speaker 1 reluctance to want to have some of these difficult conversations, these honest conversations with our kids. And I sometimes defer to Glennon to do it at times because she is better with words.

Speaker 1 But what I will say is when I did go on that trip with Tish,

Speaker 1 I grew so much closer to her

Speaker 1 because we were able to share each other. And I fumbled and it wasn't perfect and all of the things.
But I just want to say, like, if you are curious and you might want to start.

Speaker 1 creating the bond and that relationship with your kid that you're talking about these really difficult things, please get this book.

Speaker 1 Read this book that Sonia has written because it is important to know what your kids are thinking.

Speaker 1 And that is a good basis to start thinking about how you want to start talking about this, because it's not going to maybe come to you like this, like it comes in a lightning strike to Glennon, but it will slowly come.

Speaker 1 And as they age and get older and they start asking you questions, you're going to be prepared. Get the freaking book, you guys.

Speaker 2 And it's all curated from kids. Yep.
So it's their questions. Yeah.

Speaker 3 What Abby, you're pointing out, I think, is so important is that there's a difference between between a reliable narrator and a perfect narrator. Your job is not to be a perfect narrator.

Speaker 3 Your job is not to have all the answers, to have the perfect, most eloquent, you know, description or response to your young person.

Speaker 3 Your job is to be as authentic as you can be inside of the connection, which means if authentic is fumbling, sort of trying to figure out the words, like

Speaker 3 what you do. is then you say, oh, if that's their experience too, they get to have model to them that it's okay.
Yeah. Yeah.
They get to have model to them that it gets to be fumbly and messy.

Speaker 3 And I don't have to be the most eloquent to still be allowed to be in connection with others. That is so important, so invaluable.

Speaker 3 So reliable narrator does not mean perfect narrator, does not mean most eloquent narrator. It means honest, authentic, and connected and trustworthy with the young person you're talking to.
So good.

Speaker 2 We love you, Sonia Renee Taylor. Yes.

Speaker 3 I love y'all.

Speaker 2 And we're so grateful.

Speaker 2 Every time you give us an hour of of your time i just i know how important it is and i'm just grateful thank you for this hour it's going to help so many people and everybody go get thank you i appreciate you supporting the book supporting my work and i just appreciate the light you all are in the world thank you keep shining right back at you see you next time pod squad

Speaker 2 If this podcast means something to you, it would mean so much to us if you'd be willing to take 30 seconds to do these three things. First, can you please follow or subscribe to We Can Do Hard Things?

Speaker 2 Following the pod helps you because you'll never miss an episode and it helps us because you'll never miss an episode.

Speaker 2 To do this, just go to the We Can Do Hard Things show page on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Odyssey, or wherever you listen to podcasts, and then just tap the plus sign in the upper right hand corner or click on follow.

Speaker 2 This is the most important thing for the pod. While you're there, if you'd be willing to give us a five-star rating and review and share an episode you loved with a friend, we would be so grateful.

Speaker 2 We appreciate you very much.

Speaker 2 We Can Do Hard Things is created and hosted by Glennon Doyle, Abby Wombach, and Amanda Doyle in partnership with Odyssey.

Speaker 2 Our executive producer is Jenna Wise-Berman, and this show is produced by Lauren Lograsso, Allison Schott, Dina Kleiner, and Bill Schultz.