January 10, 2019 • 35 mins
Amy & her sister chat about how to talk to their daughters about periods. Amy explains why hot lemon water is part of her daily routine. Our listener Erica asks Amy for advice about adopting kids of a different race. Jack Ryan is Amy’s binge-watching obsession.
(Episode 8)
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Okay, cast up a little food for you. So life.
Oh it's pretty much. It's pretty beautiful than that's a
little moth you're kicking with four an Okay, episode eight,
(00:33):
here we are. I've got my sister coming on this
episode to talk about aunt flow, if you know what
I'm talking about. Because our mom did not talk to
us about girl time periods whatever. She really just didn't.
And then when the time came, my sister and I
were both kind of in the dark. And then by
the time you know, I started, my sister was in
(00:54):
college or she wasn't really around. I was just so
in the dark. And I had to call my sister
the other day freaking out because I've got a daughter
now and my sister has a daughter and obviously they're
both going through a lot of things where we're like
trying to handle it differently than our mom did. Now.
Our mom was awesome, don't get us wrong, like she
was really a great mom, but there was some areas
she just she just didn't do well at talking with
(01:15):
us about and I kind of wish that she would have.
So maybe if you're a mom or a girl, you'll
be able to relate to our conversation about this, and
I also have Jamie Ivy coming on. I got an
email from a listener um talking about being white and
having people in your life of another race, like her
boyfriend is black, and they talked about having children and
(01:35):
that's the whole thing. And Jamie and I are both moms,
adoptive moms of children that are not white, So we
touch on some of that. And then I talk about
hot lemon water why you need to be drinking it
every day, and then a show that I just got
done binging with my husband that I'm pretty obsessed with
and I love and I think that you need to
know about it and you need to be watching it.
So there you go. That's kind of a little outline
(01:58):
of what is to come onto days episode. So let's
get started. Okay, I've got my sister Christian and Christie,
do you have any nicknames for periods? Well, there's Aunt's flow. Yeah,
that's the only one I could think of it if
you had more right, Yeah, like the the Crimson Tide.
(02:19):
Oh yeah, that's what we're discussing. It came up because
we're both moms of daughters and you know, dealing with
some of that as moms. Now you kind of reflect
on how it was dealt with you by your mom,
and in our case, it's our mom, and our mom
just did not talk to us. She did not She
did not talk to us about periods, about shaving, about bras,
(02:42):
about I know, bees and all the things. Why, I mean,
she was a good mom. Why do you think she
just yeah, totally, Why didn't she do that? I don't know,
but I think it's a common thing of some moms
of that generation because I definitely have friends that were
totally in the same boat. It just made me want
to be sure that I was a lot more direct
on being sure. I've mentioned all of these things to
(03:03):
my daughter, who's now fifteen, so we've kind of crossed
some thresholds of all of that. But you know, several
years ago, just kind of getting her ready around fourth grade,
I think is when we really started conversations, and then
they've been kind of going ever since. But no, mom
did not mention it to us. In fact, I didn't
even want to tell her when I went through it,
did you know? And she never talked to me about it.
(03:25):
I just knew, Okay, I think I need a pad
or I know that there's something about a tammon. But
I didn't know how to really use it. And I
was on drill team and I was I started it
way late, like I was probably in the ninth grade
when I started. I didn't have you to come to
because you were in college. And I put on like
spandex every day and went to drill team practice and
(03:46):
would be using the using a pad because nobody helped
me and nobody told me, and it was so embarrassing
and that's really difficult to do. Like the reason why
tampons are amazing is if you're a dancer, or you're
in sports, or you're swimming, but you know, when you
get in water, it sort of stops, right, Is that true?
Because it's true to me, Like if you get in water,
you're I don't know if it like it does I
(04:09):
know the looted or I don't know exactly what happened.
But for me, I was able to swim without any
issues because again I didn't know how to use the sampon.
So you would not use the tampon when you went
swimming because I didn't know how get out because I
would still we had a pool, we would go swimming.
We would have friends over and oh yeah, it was. Yeah,
(04:31):
it was at our house. Like I wasn't like out
of the public pool, like being at the public pool. No,
but I would. I would have my friends at were
and we would be able to go swimming. And then
I was too embarrassed to talk to some of them
about it. And then finally one of my friends, who
obviously her mom was someone that was super open and
talked to her about everything. She just sat me down,
and I don't know how many months I had been
experiencing a period, but she finally shoved me exactly what
(04:55):
to do with tampon, and I was like, thank you.
Had you told mom you started at the time. I
don't like, how did you have had? I have no
recollection of ever talking to mom. I mean, I'm sure
I just went to the store and bought them. Probably
is my allowance, but talk mom either and I just
go her stuff and I said it under my mattress,
and um, I don't know why I get these things.
(05:17):
But I remember I told my best friend Emily, and
I remember we kind of were going through conversations and
I would go through a period and I still wouldn't
have told my mom but I would like hijack her
tampons and paths and stuff, and like heidel under my mattress.
And then finally I got up the nerve to just
tell her. And I don't know why. It was so embarrassed,
and I don't even remember who was a big deal
or not. But then all of a sudden she she
(05:38):
still didn't really talk to me much about it, but
all of a sudden it was on like her radar
for grocery needs and things like that, so she would
use stuff at the store. I'm sure she did eventually.
Mean I honestly don't remember me neither. I have no
memory of any of it other than my friend Kensey
showing me how I also talked to my friends. But
I mean, I read cover to cover are those little
(06:00):
folded instruction pamphlets that come inside the camp on box,
especially I don't know, in the pads, and you know,
I was scared to death of toxic shock syndrome, like
oh that, I just knew that was going to take
me down. You know, they really had some major warnings
in that paperwork. I mean, that's kind of how I
learned it. But I know, you know, Mom didn't really
either take me no brawl shopping. I stole that also
(06:22):
from my neighbor. Um, so, okay, same thing. She never
took me braw shopping or talk to me about it.
And I remember in sixth grade, which by sixth or
seventh grade, a lot of my girlfriends had boobs and
they were wearing brawls. If anything, you kind of just
wore a brawl or a training brawl to like be
(06:43):
in with it because you're in my little breath. But yes,
so in sixth grade a guy goes to pop my
brawl in class, Oh my gosh, and I wasn't wearing one.
That was so and I just I've remembered that clear
as day. I was mortified. It was it full more
sure that was a game that was going on when
I was there too, And that is the exact same
(07:05):
reason I stole the bra from my neighbor. If you
weren't worrying one, they would just call you out. And
it was like this major thing. And yeah, you know,
I think that mom could have if she would have
talked to us, I would have known more. But yeah,
she didn't, and she didn't take a shopping and I
didn't have braun and I was scarred from that for sure.
But I think as moms of daughters, we have to
(07:25):
be more intentional, and we learned that from our mom. Okay,
this is not how we want to do it, So
now maybe we're overly intentional. Like I'm trying to talk
to my daughter about certain things and I'm like, look,
I even tell her, I say, my mom didn't talk
to me about this stuff. So I'm just trying to
be proactive and I want to talk to you about it.
And you know, if I say the word vagina, she
looks at me my daughter and like freaks out. She's like, what, No,
(07:48):
but my daughter is a living We need to be
talking about this stuff. And I don't know how that.
How involved is your husband in talking like period or girls?
Because my husband cannot he can't even handle that I
as an adult, Like he's forty one, He can't even
handle that I at thirty seven, a woman. He's tried
(08:09):
to have children with that I have a period, Like
he doesn't want to have anything to do with it.
Rather he knows it's necessarily for tim that doesn't exist. Yeah, well,
I mean my husband grew up. I know we're husband
had a sister too. So, but my husband grew up
with um several sisters, you know, so that was just
normal talk for him, and he took a little bit
(08:30):
different personality, so he doesn't mind bringing up like uncomfortable situations.
That kind of thrives on it. He likes, you know,
it depends on the dad's personality. As far as like
talking with you know, my fifteen year old in the
in the year's past, I have honestly have liked having
kind of this leeway into kind of difficult conversations and
(08:53):
just saying, you know, my mom never ever spoke to
me about any of these things. So that's kind of
my segue into saying, so I want to be sure
that we have you know, gone over you know, this
or that or or whatever. And so I remember when
I was kind of you know, she was probably around
fifth grade, and I was just thinking this might be
something helpful for you know, moms that are out there
(09:14):
that maybe have girls that are third grade fourth grade,
just kind of getting prepping for those conversations. But I
think it was fourth grade. Actually, we put this little
dash in the bathroom of in a little pouch and
it had you know, pads and tampons, in there, and
I would just letting her note was in the bathroom
and that that was something that may or may not
happen soon. You know, I didn't know. I think I
(09:36):
was seventh grade. Maybe it was the summer after seventh grade.
When we were coming back from a beach trip. I
was wearing a yellow and black swimsuit, and I remember
I noticed it when I went to the bathroom and
I was like, oh my gosh, I cannot tell my mom.
And I just kind of figured things out. In fact,
I think Dad was with us because we were driving back,
So I don't know that was that was a weird time,
you know, but I didn't know what to do. And
(09:57):
I mean I kind of knew what was happening to
an extent, you know, but I didn't have a little
prepared kit that I was carrying in a bag with
me or in my bathroom at home. So you get
your daughter a prepared kit, right, So I just think
that helps kind of pave the way a little bit
of you know, this is something that maybe coming up
soon for you, and I just want you to know
these are the items that she'll use. You know that
(10:19):
these days there's so many other things you know, like
I still think this day, haven't told her about, you know,
the Diva Cup, which is like a whole other thing.
And then there apparently there's just these paintings you can
wear that can stick up like two tampons worth of
you know, there's this necklace you can wear at your
neck carry it to my part. There's actually a lot
of stuff I still have not heard with her, and
(10:42):
I've just been kind of thinking through it. Maybe I
need to do a little more research and bring some
more things to the table, just to be extra thorough options.
People love people love that, So okay, So if any
of you moms out there listening, you're like, Okay, I
need to start having these conversations. One book that was
helpful for me with my daughter was these books that
(11:03):
an American girl doll makes and they're called The Care
and Keeping of You, and it dives right into a
lot of stuff for you. So I found that to
be super helpful. And then Christie, I know you used
like particular books to write with like heavy illustrations, right,
well I had. I mean this has been probably starting
ten years ago, so I'm not sure when these came out.
It's series Cup God's Design for sex. It really goes
(11:26):
into more depth than just talking about periods and body
changes and things like that. But it really will start
kind of the first book, it's for ages three and
four and up, kind of just to start discussions. And
then the second book is for ages five to eight,
and so it gets a little bit more in depth,
and then there's kind of eight and nut book gets
a little more clear, and that's kind of covering all
(11:46):
your basis for boys and girls, and it is teaching
girls about things that happened to boys, and boys about
things that also happened to girls, just so people don't
walk into puberty and adolescents just completely naive. And I
think it's a great time to start even earlier, you know,
kindergarten or earlier, just getting those conversations go and get
(12:07):
a coward to dine and how we're made. And that
is definitely something we didn't have growing up, and it
created sort of the stigma about the whole conversation where
we didn't even want to bring it up to our parents. Yeah,
you never talked to dad about any of Oh my gosh, no,
is sure not you know, and not mom either until
we were older. I mean as we were adults. Of
(12:28):
course all of that stuff you know comes up. Yeah,
but I think that so hopefully this can be some
encouragement for people listening if you haven't had these talks
and you've got kids, Like christ you just said that
the first book for what was the name of that
book the series is called God's Design. There's a book one, two,
and three. Yeah, so I mean ages three and four
(12:50):
you could start. And I've had tons of friends that say, yes, absolutely,
the younger you start, the better You've got to start
this communication. So if you haven't started, it's time to
get on it. And I'm probably gonna have to order
those book Christie, because I think that we need something
a little bit more in depth than the American Girls
All books. But we just need to make it more
of an easy topic because obviously it's something that's happening
to girls and women every single day, all the time.
(13:12):
Every month. My daughter is like, wait, how long does
it last? Like seriously, how long does it last? I said, well,
until you hit menopause, basically until you're a grandma, And
she was like what, So, yeah, it's something we're gonna
be dealing with for a long time, so might as
well get comfortable talking about it. So thank you for
coming on to chat with me. You are so welcome.
And I don't know if you're thinking of our getting
(13:35):
the idea to do any type of life period party.
Have you heard of those? Yes? I have where her
mom's like throw. I think that might be a little
bit overboard, I know, but I've heard they too. They
have like a cake and you cut into it. The
cake is red velvet. Yes, I would have died. I
would die of literally, I don't know. There there's extremes. Yeah,
(13:59):
So okay, to talk about periods, Okay, I'll have you
back to talk about something else. Love you, okay, love
you fine, Fine, Okay. So I want to talk about
hot lemon water and why I drink it every morning.
I started doing it back in like two thousand eleven
or two thousand twelve or so, when I started following
(14:19):
Kimberly Snyder's plan when I really went vegan and plant
based and gluten free. And one thing she recommended for
sure to do every morning before you have her glowing
green smoothie was to have hot water with lemon. And
I have never done it before, and I really honestly
have done it pretty religiously since now I don't follow
her diet to a t anymore, just because I've changed
(14:41):
a little bit in the way that I eat and
I'm not as strict with some of that stuff. And
I really was trying to do it to get pregnant
and I never got pregnant. But anyway, I still like
a lot of the recipes that I learned from her,
and I definitely changed my body when I did that
and learned more about food as medicine and how it
can be healing to the body. I learned so much
from Kimberly Snyder highly recommend you check her out. But
(15:01):
there's other nutritionists that kind of counter some of some
of her thoughts that I really respect in the door
to like Kelly Loveck. She has a book called Body
Love you should definitely check out, So there's something for everybody.
And Kelly has meat in her plan where Kimberly doesn't.
But anyway, back to the point hot lemon water. One
reason why Kimberly recommends that you drink it is because
(15:23):
lemon supports your liver, which is your main fat burning
organ and then also your main detoxifying organ. Like everything
you process goes through your liver, so if you're looking
to detox, it's going to be coming from your liver.
And the healthier your liver is, well, the more you're
gonna be able to detox and be in better shape.
So if you really want to transform something like like
your skin, sometimes people gonna have really bad breakouts and
(15:44):
they want to fix it topically, but really it could
be something going on in your in your liver and
your organs and your gut and how you're processing things.
So she tells all of her celebrity clients start your
day with hot lemon water, and then some people are like, well,
can I just put lemons in my co old water?
But she goes into a little bit about that. In
one example I remember reading, she said to picture cheese,
(16:06):
and when it's cheese is warmed, it's like melted. But
if it's in the fridge, it's hardened like a block
or a ball, and then when you put it heat
underneath it, it starts to melt and relax and release.
So if you're trying to relax and release things in
your body, the hot water will help you do that
faster and greater. For digestion and stuff like that. So
check it out, go to the grocery store, add Lemons
to your list, because I really think that you'll start
(16:29):
to see some benefits if you start doing that every
single morning. Okay, so I have to give a quick
exciting update about a squaw, like if you bought a
four Things tote or four Things pull over, a little
pouch or a born your hat. At the end of
last year, especially leading into Christmas, we were supporting My
Life Speaks and orphanage in Haiti that works with special
(16:50):
needs kids. But they offer family based care instead of
institutionalized care, so these kids get like a real family
that they live with. It's super cool and we were
able to send them a hundred thousand dollars at the
end of the year. So I mean it's pretty amazing.
I mean the impact, it's just so nuts. So so
if you shopped, thank you so much. You made a
huge difference. And I also get a lot of questions
(17:11):
about this star necklace that I wear, and that is
under the Espua line, which supports Haiti and a spa
means hope in Haitian creole, so each purchase supports spreading hope.
Throughout Haiti, So thank you for that, and check out
the star necklace at the shop for dot com if
you want to do that. And this that goes is
super cool because yeah, it does support Haiti, but it
also supports women locally in Nashville, providing economic opportunity for them.
(17:33):
So it's made here in the US, so has local
and global impact. So now I want to address a
question I got from Erica about being an adopted mom
to children of a different race. And here's what Erica said,
You've adopted two beautiful children from Haiti as a white woman.
(17:53):
I too, am white and the man I'm dating is black.
I very much want kids, but he said he's hesitant
to have children because he doesn't want them experiencing the
racism he has. I was wondering if that's something you've
had to address with your children as a white woman,
and any advice you may have. So for this question,
the first person that came to mind was not me myself,
(18:14):
which I know that this question was for me, but
I thought of my friend Jamie Ivy, which I have
here with us now. Jamie and she now she's an
adopted mom as well, from two kids from Haiti, and
then you have a biological son and another adopted son
from San Antonio, right, Okay, So yeah, and Jamie is
(18:36):
very vocal about her family and kind of how awesome
y'all are. I mean, you have to deal with certain
race things with your kids. So I thought it would
bring you in to kind of tackle this question with
me because I still feel like I'm new to this
whole thing, even though it's been a year and you've
been dealing with it for a lot longer or I
don't even know if I want to use the word dealing,
(18:57):
but you've had to address it for a lot longer
than and I have. So I wanted to bring in
your thoughts. Yeah. First of all, I just want to
say that this is a really great question because it's
just real life, you know. And again, like Amy said,
I'm a white woman, and so I come to it
with zero experience of being black, and so there's just that.
But my experience, like Amy, like you, is having black children,
(19:19):
and so Erica her boyfriend is he has a good point.
I mean, there is racism still alive and well in
two thousand nineteen, and he probably has dealt with a
lot of things that as us women being white will
never experience and so I think like there's a part
of this. What you have to do, Eric is just
to acknowledge, yes, this is real. What you're saying is true,
that's really happened. You know. As a mom me dealing
(19:40):
with my kids, we have had so many conversations about
um prejudiceness and racism and people thinking looking at you
different because your skin is different. For me, my advice
to Erica is to really listen to your boyfriend, like
to listen to his experiences, listen to what he's saying,
and never say, can't be that bad or I'm sure
(20:01):
you didn't really experience that, because his experience is true
and real, and I think it's hard for us understand
as um white women. I don't know if I told
you this, Amy, but about a year and a half ago, Um,
we had someone say something to our kids. We live
in a city outside of Austin and it's a kind
of smaller town type field and it was at a
football game. A man looked at my two boys and
(20:23):
it was daring the national anthem, and he said, you
boys better not Neil and my boys are not on
the football team. They were in the stands like it
was just and so my boys came home and told
this to us, and they were just like what what
is what's going on? Like what's happening? And it led
to so many conversations in our house. And so I
don't know. I don't have like the answer for Erica
in her situation, but one thing that I do encourage
(20:45):
you is just to listen, listen, and to validate and
validate and then just offer like love and listen because
as white people, we can't change the experiences that they've had,
you know what I mean. And I don't know if
you've been through anything with this amy with your kids yet,
but you will, you will for sure, And so I
think the best thing that we can do is listen
to the experiences you know that they're real, validate them.
(21:06):
But I don't know what to tell her about having kids,
all right, I think that your advice to just listen
is valid and I think really wise because sometimes we
can shut it off because we are naive to it,
because we haven't had to personally experience it. At times,
we're sort of live in la la land at times
about it, like Okay, we're past that we're past that.
(21:28):
But really there's so many things that are not And
I've only had to deal with looks and stairs and um,
some little questions, but nothing that has really caused us
to go into like, Okay, we need to sit down
and have a talk. But I know these talks are coming.
And when we were preparing for a domestic adoption, we
ended up going international, but domestic was our first route.
(21:48):
You know, we were open to any race, and so
we had to do some training through our adoption agency.
And one of the parts that things we kind of
had to we had to check some boxes and one
of the things we had to check off was we
had to go put ourselves in a situation where we
were the minority. And so they were like, an easy
way to do that is find a black church and go.
(22:10):
And so I was mentoring this little boy named Trevion
at a junior high I lived in North Carolina at
the time, and I knew Trevion went to a predominantly
black church, so his grandma led worship. I knew, I mean,
he would tell me about it. So I just went
to him one day when we were meeting, and I said, Hey,
would you mind if my husband, and I joined you
at church this weekend, and he was like what, He's like, well,
sure that'd be awesome. So we ended up going and
(22:33):
we literally were the only white people there, and it
did feel like, Okay, people were looking this is different
then the pastor. I mean, everybody was really friendly and awesome.
But he he asked if there was any visitors and
we were like, um, yes, we're like raising our hands,
but it was so obvious that we were visitors. But
(22:53):
the point of that exercise, if you will, was that
you know, when you adopt a child of another race,
depending on where you live, where you go to school,
your neighborhood, your kid may look around and be like,
why am I the only one that looks this way?
Depending on how you choose to diversify their life, and
and then you know, in part of the training, to
the guy that was speaking, he's like, look, what you're
(23:15):
not going to understand about your kids is that you know,
one day they may be driving and they may get
pulled over simply because of their race, and you don't
understand that. And when they come home and talk to
you about it as their mom or their dad, and
if you try to blow it off like, oh, well,
maybe that's not really happened. You need to understand that
that could be what really happened, and you can't you
(23:35):
can't relate to that. So an advice some advice that
he gave, and that was find a mentor or someone
that is the same race as your child that could
have likely experienced that or life or has wisdom or advice,
and make sure that they have people in their life
that they can relate to. And I think the reason
that it can seem as though for us who are
(23:57):
of the predominant race white, it can feel like it's
not that this doesn't really happen anymore because it's never
happened to us, because it will never happened to us
because we're white. If that's called white privilege. And so
I think the advice to people gave you to go
spend some time in a predominantly black church is so
good for you to experience what that feels like. And
so I think Erica's number one step is just to
make sure that she is acknowledging what her Beyonce or
(24:19):
her boyfriend is saying is really true. And then his
experiences are real. Um, they're not like he's not exaggerating,
they're not made up, like these are his real life experiences,
and maybe she could understand a little bit more. I'm
not saying that that's going to make him change his
mind about having kids, but maybe she could understand a
little bit more. Yeah. No, I mean I think it's good.
So we've kind of got I feel like for erikas
she's walking away, it is hard. This is a long
(24:40):
topic to address. This is a journey if she ends up,
you know, depending on what happens with her and her
boyfriend and if they decide to, you know, have a
family or get married or do whatever it is. I
love that you started off strong with the with the
just listen. We've got to be open, and that really
can go in any relationship that you have, especially in
alving the topic of race. We have to listen totally.
(25:03):
And I think that's something that I have learned that
is preparing me as parenting black children, as like what
you just said earlier, and when they do have these
experiences that don't look like my experiences, that they're still real, right.
And so that's the other angle I guess Erica could
approach with her boyfriend is that you know, first of all,
she she can listen. Secondly, she can take from some
of the training we had to go through for our
(25:25):
adoption and maybe just expressed to him that they can
find good mentors or he can be like they can
have by racial children. I don't know if he's concerned
too that maybe because she's white, she's not gonna understand.
And then there's the whole the child grows up with
and my my dad's black, but my mom's white. But
what race am I? Where do I fall? Then there's
(25:45):
that whole. I'm sure he's worried about that whole angle too.
But I think that you know, with good when you
surround yourself with good people and a strong foundation, like
you can still raise a child and they don't have
to feel whatever he scared of is going to happen.
Like I feel like there's there's avenues to get them
through that. Yeah, And I think like this is not
(26:07):
diminishing what he's what this spear of his. But we
could all list like a thousand years about bringing kids
into the world. I mean, you know, like we live
in a hard place. It's a scary world. There's scary things,
and so not to diminish anything about that fear that
he has. But I think that there's always to hear
about bringing a kid into the world, right because it's hard.
There's hard things that happen in life, and I think
it's just it's hard. So it's a it's a big decision,
(26:29):
and I think I'm proud of her for not taking
it lightly though I know I just when I got it,
I was like, I'm not totally equipped to answer this
on so I'm gonna bring Jamie to talk about it.
And Jamie is awesome, y'all. If y'all want to follow
her on Instagram, you're just at at Jamie Ivy, right
j A M I E, I V E y at
(26:51):
Jamie Ivy and you can see her beautiful family. She
posts a lot about them and they are just precious.
And stories probably my favorite, it's everybody's favorite, let's be honest. Yeah,
I think I saw in your you know, best nine
of twenty, like her your most liked pictory. Yeah, it
was like a story, story, story story, So she's she's precious.
(27:14):
She's a precious little girl. So Jamie, thank you for
coming on and kind of tackling this. I know I
put you on the spot a little bit, but you're
another white woman that I know that's going through this,
and I just wanted to get your experience. And I
feel like I walked away from this little talk to
knowing that I probably need to listen more and then
be ready for some hard talks with my kids. And
when that time comes, I'm probably gonna call you. There
(27:35):
you go, I'll be here. Okay, great, awesome, Well, thank you, Jamie. Okay,
so I want to talk about Jack Ryan for a minute.
If you haven't heard of this show, you've got to
watch it, or maybe you've read Tom Clancy's books about
Jack Ryan. But it's an Amazon original show. And if
(27:56):
you didn't know that this, Amazon has TV shows just
like Netflix. They create their own content, but they also
have other shows up there and even movies that you
can just log in with your Amazon Prime account and
boom you can watch Amazon TV, which is super awesome
and oddly like, some people don't know you can do that.
So this is me sharing with you. Yes, you have
this if you've got Amazon Prime, and then if you
(28:17):
don't have Amazon Prime, probably should get that too, because
it's pretty awesome and I'm totally in the Amazon Prime
Now because I'm a mom and working and super busy
and sometimes I just can't get to wherever I need
to get something, and I Amazon Prime Now and it's
so crazy. It shows up in like an hour or
two and it's pretty amazing. But back to Jack Ryan.
So the first season follows Jack Ryan, which is played
(28:40):
by John Krasinski, which is weird to me because when
he's Jim on the office, you don't picture him being
able to play this crazy c I agent out in
the field like looking awesome and he's pretty legit, like
I'm buying it. I'm like, okay, this, this is cool.
I kind of like him as this role. So Jack
Ryan is played by On Krasinski, and Jack Ryan's a
(29:01):
CIA analyst and he has a desk job though, but
he's taken away from that and thrown into the field
because he's the one that discovered a string of crazy
bank transfers which are being carried out by this rising
Islamic terrorists. And then he goes out and it's all
action packed. I loved it. My husband loved it. We
binged it over Christmas break. I almost some people that
(29:23):
I know now they're just now starting it, and that's
what made me think about doing it. Is one of
my things because I feel like you guys need to
know about the show. But some of my friends are
just now starting it, and I'm kind of jealous, like
I wish I was starting it. Another one of those
times that I have that feeling is Eddie. He's a
producer on the Bobby Bones Show. He is about to
finish up Friday Night Lights, and I'm so jealous. I
remember the first time I started. I was way late
(29:44):
to the game when it came to Friday Night Lights.
If you haven't watched that, you have to such a
great show. But I didn't watch it when it was
actually on. I binged it later, only like a couple
of years ago, and I loved it. It was so good.
So when other people started, like Eddie started it and
he's about to finish it, I'm jealous of that feeling
of like, oh, I wish I was watching it and
(30:06):
binging it for the first time. So I'm not saying
that Jack Ryan is at the level of Friday Night Lights.
Don't get it twisted. But it was a cool show,
especially to watch and if you've got a husband, sometimes
it's hard to find husband and wife shows where everybody
likes it, but my husband and I like this one,
so check it out. And then seeing John Krasinski on
there will make you crave The Office, and then you'll
(30:28):
start putting that on, which I go to Netflix for
that type in the Office and I start watching old
episodes of that when I need to laugh. And The
Office is just so funny, And the more I watch it,
the funnier it gets. And I'm not this like crazy
Office fanatic, but I have been watching it a lot
more ever since Jack Ryan ended, because I guess I'm
craving some John, but that show is so funny. So
(30:51):
send me email me some of y'all's favorite shows. What
you like to binge right now? If there's something new
that you're watching, that is my new recommendation, Jack Ryan
and you can email me at four Things with Amy
Brown dot com. Okay, let's wrap on today's episode. Big
thank you to Jamie Ivy for coming on to talk
(31:12):
with me for a little bit. She's just so awesome.
I hope you'll check out her podcast. If you're not
familiar with Jamie, you got to check out The Happy Hour.
That's her podcast. It's really good. She has a lot
of amazing guests, and she also has her book If
you only knew another cool thing you could check out.
And then if you end up listening to our podcast
and you really like it, you've got to check out
her live events. I participated in one last fall. I
(31:33):
was one of the speakers up there and it was
really really cool. And she has another one coming up
in April in Austin. I know tickets gone sale later
this month. I don't have the exact details because I
don't know that she shared that yet, but Happy Hour
Live and you can always check out Jamie Ivy dot
com to see what she's up to. And then shout
out to my sister Christie for coming on to talk
periods with me. I always love when she takes time
(31:54):
to chat with us. Definitely will bring her back for
a few other ideas that we have going on, but
we just had to end up talking about the whole
period thing because now we're both moms and we had
an experience with our mom and how we're handling our
daughters so differently. So hopefully that helps some of you
out there somewhere, And if you're a guy listening and
(32:14):
you were like, what is happening? I'm so sorry, but
you know, you might have daughters too, and you might
need to be involved in these talks and conversations, so
you know, maybe or you can fast forward. You can
always fast forward. That's the thing about podcasts. You could,
you know, go onto the next thing. Um, A big
thank you to Elizabeth and Mike d for making this
(32:34):
podcast possible. They're the ones that get it up on
iTunes and I heart radio and then I mean, y'all
are awesome. I was just on iTunes checking out something
and I saw some new comments and reviews, and I
just appreciate that so much that y'all are doing that,
and that's how people learn about the podcast. So you
can also share this with others if you think it's
something they would want to listen to. I love when
(32:56):
people tell me about new podcasts to listen to. So
hopefully if it's your jam, it could be their jam
and we could grow this thing and it would be awesome.
And then shout out Walker Hayes. Some people still email
with They're like, wait, who sings your song? And so
I'm always going to be grateful for Walker and the
theme song that he wrote. For this podcast and how
it reminds us to be kind, choose joy, laugh a lot,
(33:17):
eat cake. So now I'm gonna get into a quick
email shout out, and this email came from Julie. She said, Hi, Amy,
I just binge listen to your podcast, love it. Longtime
listener of the Bobby Bones Show. And I'm very curious
about your beauty routine. It seems you're very focused on
health then natural products. What do you use on your skin? Also,
(33:38):
you really shave your face. I really want to do
it because I have a very fuzzy face, but I'm
scared you really do it. Question Mark question Mark, question
Mark question Mark. Thanks Julie, So to answer your question, Julie, Yes,
I really do shave my face and I have for
several years now and it's amazing. I can actually probably
make it a thing and do a whole beauty routine talk.
(33:59):
I can ring Um the Nashville Beauty Girl in to
probably talk about this, and even Kelly from Velvet's Edge,
because Kelly from Velvet's Edge is the only reason I
shaved my face and she's done several blog posts about it,
so you can check that out at Velvet's Edge. Dot
com and just type in I'm sure just search shaving
face or face shaving whatever it should come up. But
I can definitely do a whole you know thing about
(34:21):
it coming up soon. But yes, shave your face. Once
you shave, you won't go back. Not shaving is whack
or something like that. Okay, all right, I hope you
all have the great day. By cass up Little Food
(34:47):
for Yourself life. Oh it's pretty bad. It's pretty beautiful.
A little moth kick in it with four things with
Amy Brown
Okay, cast up a little food for you. So life.
Oh it's pretty much. It's pretty beautiful than that's a
little moth you're kicking with four an Okay, episode eight,
(00:33):
here we are. I've got my sister coming on this
episode to talk about aunt flow, if you know what
I'm talking about. Because our mom did not talk to
us about girl time periods whatever. She really just didn't.
And then when the time came, my sister and I
were both kind of in the dark. And then by
the time you know, I started, my sister was in
(00:54):
college or she wasn't really around. I was just so
in the dark. And I had to call my sister
the other day freaking out because I've got a daughter
now and my sister has a daughter and obviously they're
both going through a lot of things where we're like
trying to handle it differently than our mom did. Now.
Our mom was awesome, don't get us wrong, like she
was really a great mom, but there was some areas
she just she just didn't do well at talking with
(01:15):
us about and I kind of wish that she would have.
So maybe if you're a mom or a girl, you'll
be able to relate to our conversation about this, and
I also have Jamie Ivy coming on. I got an
email from a listener um talking about being white and
having people in your life of another race, like her
boyfriend is black, and they talked about having children and
(01:35):
that's the whole thing. And Jamie and I are both moms,
adoptive moms of children that are not white, So we
touch on some of that. And then I talk about
hot lemon water why you need to be drinking it
every day, and then a show that I just got
done binging with my husband that I'm pretty obsessed with
and I love and I think that you need to
know about it and you need to be watching it.
So there you go. That's kind of a little outline
(01:58):
of what is to come onto days episode. So let's
get started. Okay, I've got my sister Christian and Christie,
do you have any nicknames for periods? Well, there's Aunt's flow. Yeah,
that's the only one I could think of it if
you had more right, Yeah, like the the Crimson Tide.
(02:19):
Oh yeah, that's what we're discussing. It came up because
we're both moms of daughters and you know, dealing with
some of that as moms. Now you kind of reflect
on how it was dealt with you by your mom,
and in our case, it's our mom, and our mom
just did not talk to us. She did not She
did not talk to us about periods, about shaving, about bras,
(02:42):
about I know, bees and all the things. Why, I mean,
she was a good mom. Why do you think she
just yeah, totally, Why didn't she do that? I don't know,
but I think it's a common thing of some moms
of that generation because I definitely have friends that were
totally in the same boat. It just made me want
to be sure that I was a lot more direct
on being sure. I've mentioned all of these things to
(03:03):
my daughter, who's now fifteen, so we've kind of crossed
some thresholds of all of that. But you know, several
years ago, just kind of getting her ready around fourth grade,
I think is when we really started conversations, and then
they've been kind of going ever since. But no, mom
did not mention it to us. In fact, I didn't
even want to tell her when I went through it,
did you know? And she never talked to me about it.
(03:25):
I just knew, Okay, I think I need a pad
or I know that there's something about a tammon. But
I didn't know how to really use it. And I
was on drill team and I was I started it
way late, like I was probably in the ninth grade
when I started. I didn't have you to come to
because you were in college. And I put on like
spandex every day and went to drill team practice and
(03:46):
would be using the using a pad because nobody helped
me and nobody told me, and it was so embarrassing
and that's really difficult to do. Like the reason why
tampons are amazing is if you're a dancer, or you're
in sports, or you're swimming, but you know, when you
get in water, it sort of stops, right, Is that true?
Because it's true to me, Like if you get in water,
you're I don't know if it like it does I
(04:09):
know the looted or I don't know exactly what happened.
But for me, I was able to swim without any
issues because again I didn't know how to use the sampon.
So you would not use the tampon when you went
swimming because I didn't know how get out because I
would still we had a pool, we would go swimming.
We would have friends over and oh yeah, it was. Yeah,
(04:31):
it was at our house. Like I wasn't like out
of the public pool, like being at the public pool. No,
but I would. I would have my friends at were
and we would be able to go swimming. And then
I was too embarrassed to talk to some of them
about it. And then finally one of my friends, who
obviously her mom was someone that was super open and
talked to her about everything. She just sat me down,
and I don't know how many months I had been
experiencing a period, but she finally shoved me exactly what
(04:55):
to do with tampon, and I was like, thank you.
Had you told mom you started at the time. I
don't like, how did you have had? I have no
recollection of ever talking to mom. I mean, I'm sure
I just went to the store and bought them. Probably
is my allowance, but talk mom either and I just
go her stuff and I said it under my mattress,
and um, I don't know why I get these things.
(05:17):
But I remember I told my best friend Emily, and
I remember we kind of were going through conversations and
I would go through a period and I still wouldn't
have told my mom but I would like hijack her
tampons and paths and stuff, and like heidel under my mattress.
And then finally I got up the nerve to just
tell her. And I don't know why. It was so embarrassed,
and I don't even remember who was a big deal
or not. But then all of a sudden she she
(05:38):
still didn't really talk to me much about it, but
all of a sudden it was on like her radar
for grocery needs and things like that, so she would
use stuff at the store. I'm sure she did eventually.
Mean I honestly don't remember me neither. I have no
memory of any of it other than my friend Kensey
showing me how I also talked to my friends. But
I mean, I read cover to cover are those little
(06:00):
folded instruction pamphlets that come inside the camp on box,
especially I don't know, in the pads, and you know,
I was scared to death of toxic shock syndrome, like
oh that, I just knew that was going to take
me down. You know, they really had some major warnings
in that paperwork. I mean, that's kind of how I
learned it. But I know, you know, Mom didn't really
either take me no brawl shopping. I stole that also
(06:22):
from my neighbor. Um, so, okay, same thing. She never
took me braw shopping or talk to me about it.
And I remember in sixth grade, which by sixth or
seventh grade, a lot of my girlfriends had boobs and
they were wearing brawls. If anything, you kind of just
wore a brawl or a training brawl to like be
(06:43):
in with it because you're in my little breath. But yes,
so in sixth grade a guy goes to pop my
brawl in class, Oh my gosh, and I wasn't wearing one.
That was so and I just I've remembered that clear
as day. I was mortified. It was it full more
sure that was a game that was going on when
I was there too, And that is the exact same
(07:05):
reason I stole the bra from my neighbor. If you
weren't worrying one, they would just call you out. And
it was like this major thing. And yeah, you know,
I think that mom could have if she would have
talked to us, I would have known more. But yeah,
she didn't, and she didn't take a shopping and I
didn't have braun and I was scarred from that for sure.
But I think as moms of daughters, we have to
(07:25):
be more intentional, and we learned that from our mom. Okay,
this is not how we want to do it, So
now maybe we're overly intentional. Like I'm trying to talk
to my daughter about certain things and I'm like, look,
I even tell her, I say, my mom didn't talk
to me about this stuff. So I'm just trying to
be proactive and I want to talk to you about it.
And you know, if I say the word vagina, she
looks at me my daughter and like freaks out. She's like, what, No,
(07:48):
but my daughter is a living We need to be
talking about this stuff. And I don't know how that.
How involved is your husband in talking like period or girls?
Because my husband cannot he can't even handle that I
as an adult, Like he's forty one, He can't even
handle that I at thirty seven, a woman. He's tried
(08:09):
to have children with that I have a period, Like
he doesn't want to have anything to do with it.
Rather he knows it's necessarily for tim that doesn't exist. Yeah, well,
I mean my husband grew up. I know we're husband
had a sister too. So, but my husband grew up
with um several sisters, you know, so that was just
normal talk for him, and he took a little bit
(08:30):
different personality, so he doesn't mind bringing up like uncomfortable situations.
That kind of thrives on it. He likes, you know,
it depends on the dad's personality. As far as like
talking with you know, my fifteen year old in the
in the year's past, I have honestly have liked having
kind of this leeway into kind of difficult conversations and
(08:53):
just saying, you know, my mom never ever spoke to
me about any of these things. So that's kind of
my segue into saying, so I want to be sure
that we have you know, gone over you know, this
or that or or whatever. And so I remember when
I was kind of you know, she was probably around
fifth grade, and I was just thinking this might be
something helpful for you know, moms that are out there
(09:14):
that maybe have girls that are third grade fourth grade,
just kind of getting prepping for those conversations. But I
think it was fourth grade. Actually, we put this little
dash in the bathroom of in a little pouch and
it had you know, pads and tampons, in there, and
I would just letting her note was in the bathroom
and that that was something that may or may not
happen soon. You know, I didn't know. I think I
(09:36):
was seventh grade. Maybe it was the summer after seventh grade.
When we were coming back from a beach trip. I
was wearing a yellow and black swimsuit, and I remember
I noticed it when I went to the bathroom and
I was like, oh my gosh, I cannot tell my mom.
And I just kind of figured things out. In fact,
I think Dad was with us because we were driving back,
So I don't know that was that was a weird time,
you know, but I didn't know what to do. And
(09:57):
I mean I kind of knew what was happening to
an extent, you know, but I didn't have a little
prepared kit that I was carrying in a bag with
me or in my bathroom at home. So you get
your daughter a prepared kit, right, So I just think
that helps kind of pave the way a little bit
of you know, this is something that maybe coming up
soon for you, and I just want you to know
these are the items that she'll use. You know that
(10:19):
these days there's so many other things you know, like
I still think this day, haven't told her about, you know,
the Diva Cup, which is like a whole other thing.
And then there apparently there's just these paintings you can
wear that can stick up like two tampons worth of
you know, there's this necklace you can wear at your
neck carry it to my part. There's actually a lot
of stuff I still have not heard with her, and
(10:42):
I've just been kind of thinking through it. Maybe I
need to do a little more research and bring some
more things to the table, just to be extra thorough options.
People love people love that, So okay, So if any
of you moms out there listening, you're like, Okay, I
need to start having these conversations. One book that was
helpful for me with my daughter was these books that
(11:03):
an American girl doll makes and they're called The Care
and Keeping of You, and it dives right into a
lot of stuff for you. So I found that to
be super helpful. And then Christie, I know you used
like particular books to write with like heavy illustrations, right,
well I had. I mean this has been probably starting
ten years ago, so I'm not sure when these came out.
It's series Cup God's Design for sex. It really goes
(11:26):
into more depth than just talking about periods and body
changes and things like that. But it really will start
kind of the first book, it's for ages three and
four and up, kind of just to start discussions. And
then the second book is for ages five to eight,
and so it gets a little bit more in depth,
and then there's kind of eight and nut book gets
a little more clear, and that's kind of covering all
(11:46):
your basis for boys and girls, and it is teaching
girls about things that happened to boys, and boys about
things that also happened to girls, just so people don't
walk into puberty and adolescents just completely naive. And I
think it's a great time to start even earlier, you know,
kindergarten or earlier, just getting those conversations go and get
(12:07):
a coward to dine and how we're made. And that
is definitely something we didn't have growing up, and it
created sort of the stigma about the whole conversation where
we didn't even want to bring it up to our parents. Yeah,
you never talked to dad about any of Oh my gosh, no,
is sure not you know, and not mom either until
we were older. I mean as we were adults. Of
(12:28):
course all of that stuff you know comes up. Yeah,
but I think that so hopefully this can be some
encouragement for people listening if you haven't had these talks
and you've got kids, Like christ you just said that
the first book for what was the name of that
book the series is called God's Design. There's a book one, two,
and three. Yeah, so I mean ages three and four
(12:50):
you could start. And I've had tons of friends that say, yes, absolutely,
the younger you start, the better You've got to start
this communication. So if you haven't started, it's time to
get on it. And I'm probably gonna have to order
those book Christie, because I think that we need something
a little bit more in depth than the American Girls
All books. But we just need to make it more
of an easy topic because obviously it's something that's happening
to girls and women every single day, all the time.
(13:12):
Every month. My daughter is like, wait, how long does
it last? Like seriously, how long does it last? I said, well,
until you hit menopause, basically until you're a grandma, And
she was like what, So, yeah, it's something we're gonna
be dealing with for a long time, so might as
well get comfortable talking about it. So thank you for
coming on to chat with me. You are so welcome.
And I don't know if you're thinking of our getting
(13:35):
the idea to do any type of life period party.
Have you heard of those? Yes? I have where her
mom's like throw. I think that might be a little
bit overboard, I know, but I've heard they too. They
have like a cake and you cut into it. The
cake is red velvet. Yes, I would have died. I
would die of literally, I don't know. There there's extremes. Yeah,
(13:59):
So okay, to talk about periods, Okay, I'll have you
back to talk about something else. Love you, okay, love
you fine, Fine, Okay. So I want to talk about
hot lemon water and why I drink it every morning.
I started doing it back in like two thousand eleven
or two thousand twelve or so, when I started following
(14:19):
Kimberly Snyder's plan when I really went vegan and plant
based and gluten free. And one thing she recommended for
sure to do every morning before you have her glowing
green smoothie was to have hot water with lemon. And
I have never done it before, and I really honestly
have done it pretty religiously since now I don't follow
her diet to a t anymore, just because I've changed
(14:41):
a little bit in the way that I eat and
I'm not as strict with some of that stuff. And
I really was trying to do it to get pregnant
and I never got pregnant. But anyway, I still like
a lot of the recipes that I learned from her,
and I definitely changed my body when I did that
and learned more about food as medicine and how it
can be healing to the body. I learned so much
from Kimberly Snyder highly recommend you check her out. But
(15:01):
there's other nutritionists that kind of counter some of some
of her thoughts that I really respect in the door
to like Kelly Loveck. She has a book called Body
Love you should definitely check out, So there's something for everybody.
And Kelly has meat in her plan where Kimberly doesn't.
But anyway, back to the point hot lemon water. One
reason why Kimberly recommends that you drink it is because
(15:23):
lemon supports your liver, which is your main fat burning
organ and then also your main detoxifying organ. Like everything
you process goes through your liver, so if you're looking
to detox, it's going to be coming from your liver.
And the healthier your liver is, well, the more you're
gonna be able to detox and be in better shape.
So if you really want to transform something like like
your skin, sometimes people gonna have really bad breakouts and
(15:44):
they want to fix it topically, but really it could
be something going on in your in your liver and
your organs and your gut and how you're processing things.
So she tells all of her celebrity clients start your
day with hot lemon water, and then some people are like, well,
can I just put lemons in my co old water?
But she goes into a little bit about that. In
one example I remember reading, she said to picture cheese,
(16:06):
and when it's cheese is warmed, it's like melted. But
if it's in the fridge, it's hardened like a block
or a ball, and then when you put it heat
underneath it, it starts to melt and relax and release.
So if you're trying to relax and release things in
your body, the hot water will help you do that
faster and greater. For digestion and stuff like that. So
check it out, go to the grocery store, add Lemons
to your list, because I really think that you'll start
(16:29):
to see some benefits if you start doing that every
single morning. Okay, so I have to give a quick
exciting update about a squaw, like if you bought a
four Things tote or four Things pull over, a little
pouch or a born your hat. At the end of
last year, especially leading into Christmas, we were supporting My
Life Speaks and orphanage in Haiti that works with special
(16:50):
needs kids. But they offer family based care instead of
institutionalized care, so these kids get like a real family
that they live with. It's super cool and we were
able to send them a hundred thousand dollars at the
end of the year. So I mean it's pretty amazing.
I mean the impact, it's just so nuts. So so
if you shopped, thank you so much. You made a
huge difference. And I also get a lot of questions
(17:11):
about this star necklace that I wear, and that is
under the Espua line, which supports Haiti and a spa
means hope in Haitian creole, so each purchase supports spreading hope.
Throughout Haiti, So thank you for that, and check out
the star necklace at the shop for dot com if
you want to do that. And this that goes is
super cool because yeah, it does support Haiti, but it
also supports women locally in Nashville, providing economic opportunity for them.
(17:33):
So it's made here in the US, so has local
and global impact. So now I want to address a
question I got from Erica about being an adopted mom
to children of a different race. And here's what Erica said,
You've adopted two beautiful children from Haiti as a white woman.
(17:53):
I too, am white and the man I'm dating is black.
I very much want kids, but he said he's hesitant
to have children because he doesn't want them experiencing the
racism he has. I was wondering if that's something you've
had to address with your children as a white woman,
and any advice you may have. So for this question,
the first person that came to mind was not me myself,
(18:14):
which I know that this question was for me, but
I thought of my friend Jamie Ivy, which I have
here with us now. Jamie and she now she's an
adopted mom as well, from two kids from Haiti, and
then you have a biological son and another adopted son
from San Antonio, right, Okay, So yeah, and Jamie is
(18:36):
very vocal about her family and kind of how awesome
y'all are. I mean, you have to deal with certain
race things with your kids. So I thought it would
bring you in to kind of tackle this question with
me because I still feel like I'm new to this
whole thing, even though it's been a year and you've
been dealing with it for a lot longer or I
don't even know if I want to use the word dealing,
(18:57):
but you've had to address it for a lot longer
than and I have. So I wanted to bring in
your thoughts. Yeah. First of all, I just want to
say that this is a really great question because it's
just real life, you know. And again, like Amy said,
I'm a white woman, and so I come to it
with zero experience of being black, and so there's just that.
But my experience, like Amy, like you, is having black children,
(19:19):
and so Erica her boyfriend is he has a good point.
I mean, there is racism still alive and well in
two thousand nineteen, and he probably has dealt with a
lot of things that as us women being white will
never experience and so I think like there's a part
of this. What you have to do, Eric is just
to acknowledge, yes, this is real. What you're saying is true,
that's really happened. You know. As a mom me dealing
(19:40):
with my kids, we have had so many conversations about
um prejudiceness and racism and people thinking looking at you
different because your skin is different. For me, my advice
to Erica is to really listen to your boyfriend, like
to listen to his experiences, listen to what he's saying,
and never say, can't be that bad or I'm sure
(20:01):
you didn't really experience that, because his experience is true
and real, and I think it's hard for us understand
as um white women. I don't know if I told
you this, Amy, but about a year and a half ago, Um,
we had someone say something to our kids. We live
in a city outside of Austin and it's a kind
of smaller town type field and it was at a
football game. A man looked at my two boys and
(20:23):
it was daring the national anthem, and he said, you
boys better not Neil and my boys are not on
the football team. They were in the stands like it
was just and so my boys came home and told
this to us, and they were just like what what
is what's going on? Like what's happening? And it led
to so many conversations in our house. And so I
don't know. I don't have like the answer for Erica
in her situation, but one thing that I do encourage
(20:45):
you is just to listen, listen, and to validate and
validate and then just offer like love and listen because
as white people, we can't change the experiences that they've had,
you know what I mean. And I don't know if
you've been through anything with this amy with your kids yet,
but you will, you will for sure, And so I
think the best thing that we can do is listen
to the experiences you know that they're real, validate them.
(21:06):
But I don't know what to tell her about having kids,
all right, I think that your advice to just listen
is valid and I think really wise because sometimes we
can shut it off because we are naive to it,
because we haven't had to personally experience it. At times,
we're sort of live in la la land at times
about it, like Okay, we're past that we're past that.
(21:28):
But really there's so many things that are not And
I've only had to deal with looks and stairs and um,
some little questions, but nothing that has really caused us
to go into like, Okay, we need to sit down
and have a talk. But I know these talks are coming.
And when we were preparing for a domestic adoption, we
ended up going international, but domestic was our first route.
(21:48):
You know, we were open to any race, and so
we had to do some training through our adoption agency.
And one of the parts that things we kind of
had to we had to check some boxes and one
of the things we had to check off was we
had to go put ourselves in a situation where we
were the minority. And so they were like, an easy
way to do that is find a black church and go.
(22:10):
And so I was mentoring this little boy named Trevion
at a junior high I lived in North Carolina at
the time, and I knew Trevion went to a predominantly
black church, so his grandma led worship. I knew, I mean,
he would tell me about it. So I just went
to him one day when we were meeting, and I said, Hey,
would you mind if my husband, and I joined you
at church this weekend, and he was like what, He's like, well,
sure that'd be awesome. So we ended up going and
(22:33):
we literally were the only white people there, and it
did feel like, Okay, people were looking this is different
then the pastor. I mean, everybody was really friendly and awesome.
But he he asked if there was any visitors and
we were like, um, yes, we're like raising our hands,
but it was so obvious that we were visitors. But
(22:53):
the point of that exercise, if you will, was that
you know, when you adopt a child of another race,
depending on where you live, where you go to school,
your neighborhood, your kid may look around and be like,
why am I the only one that looks this way?
Depending on how you choose to diversify their life, and
and then you know, in part of the training, to
the guy that was speaking, he's like, look, what you're
(23:15):
not going to understand about your kids is that you know,
one day they may be driving and they may get
pulled over simply because of their race, and you don't
understand that. And when they come home and talk to
you about it as their mom or their dad, and
if you try to blow it off like, oh, well,
maybe that's not really happened. You need to understand that
that could be what really happened, and you can't you
(23:35):
can't relate to that. So an advice some advice that
he gave, and that was find a mentor or someone
that is the same race as your child that could
have likely experienced that or life or has wisdom or advice,
and make sure that they have people in their life
that they can relate to. And I think the reason
that it can seem as though for us who are
(23:57):
of the predominant race white, it can feel like it's
not that this doesn't really happen anymore because it's never
happened to us, because it will never happened to us
because we're white. If that's called white privilege. And so
I think the advice to people gave you to go
spend some time in a predominantly black church is so
good for you to experience what that feels like. And
so I think Erica's number one step is just to
make sure that she is acknowledging what her Beyonce or
(24:19):
her boyfriend is saying is really true. And then his
experiences are real. Um, they're not like he's not exaggerating,
they're not made up, like these are his real life experiences,
and maybe she could understand a little bit more. I'm
not saying that that's going to make him change his
mind about having kids, but maybe she could understand a
little bit more. Yeah. No, I mean I think it's good.
So we've kind of got I feel like for erikas
she's walking away, it is hard. This is a long
(24:40):
topic to address. This is a journey if she ends up,
you know, depending on what happens with her and her
boyfriend and if they decide to, you know, have a
family or get married or do whatever it is. I
love that you started off strong with the with the
just listen. We've got to be open, and that really
can go in any relationship that you have, especially in
alving the topic of race. We have to listen totally.
(25:03):
And I think that's something that I have learned that
is preparing me as parenting black children, as like what
you just said earlier, and when they do have these
experiences that don't look like my experiences, that they're still real, right.
And so that's the other angle I guess Erica could
approach with her boyfriend is that you know, first of all,
she she can listen. Secondly, she can take from some
of the training we had to go through for our
(25:25):
adoption and maybe just expressed to him that they can
find good mentors or he can be like they can
have by racial children. I don't know if he's concerned
too that maybe because she's white, she's not gonna understand.
And then there's the whole the child grows up with
and my my dad's black, but my mom's white. But
what race am I? Where do I fall? Then there's
(25:45):
that whole. I'm sure he's worried about that whole angle too.
But I think that you know, with good when you
surround yourself with good people and a strong foundation, like
you can still raise a child and they don't have
to feel whatever he scared of is going to happen.
Like I feel like there's there's avenues to get them
through that. Yeah, And I think like this is not
(26:07):
diminishing what he's what this spear of his. But we
could all list like a thousand years about bringing kids
into the world. I mean, you know, like we live
in a hard place. It's a scary world. There's scary things,
and so not to diminish anything about that fear that
he has. But I think that there's always to hear
about bringing a kid into the world, right because it's hard.
There's hard things that happen in life, and I think
it's just it's hard. So it's a it's a big decision,
(26:29):
and I think I'm proud of her for not taking
it lightly though I know I just when I got it,
I was like, I'm not totally equipped to answer this
on so I'm gonna bring Jamie to talk about it.
And Jamie is awesome, y'all. If y'all want to follow
her on Instagram, you're just at at Jamie Ivy, right
j A M I E, I V E y at
(26:51):
Jamie Ivy and you can see her beautiful family. She
posts a lot about them and they are just precious.
And stories probably my favorite, it's everybody's favorite, let's be honest. Yeah,
I think I saw in your you know, best nine
of twenty, like her your most liked pictory. Yeah, it
was like a story, story, story story, So she's she's precious.
(27:14):
She's a precious little girl. So Jamie, thank you for
coming on and kind of tackling this. I know I
put you on the spot a little bit, but you're
another white woman that I know that's going through this,
and I just wanted to get your experience. And I
feel like I walked away from this little talk to
knowing that I probably need to listen more and then
be ready for some hard talks with my kids. And
when that time comes, I'm probably gonna call you. There
(27:35):
you go, I'll be here. Okay, great, awesome, Well, thank you, Jamie. Okay,
so I want to talk about Jack Ryan for a minute.
If you haven't heard of this show, you've got to
watch it, or maybe you've read Tom Clancy's books about
Jack Ryan. But it's an Amazon original show. And if
(27:56):
you didn't know that this, Amazon has TV shows just
like Netflix. They create their own content, but they also
have other shows up there and even movies that you
can just log in with your Amazon Prime account and
boom you can watch Amazon TV, which is super awesome
and oddly like, some people don't know you can do that.
So this is me sharing with you. Yes, you have
this if you've got Amazon Prime, and then if you
(28:17):
don't have Amazon Prime, probably should get that too, because
it's pretty awesome and I'm totally in the Amazon Prime
Now because I'm a mom and working and super busy
and sometimes I just can't get to wherever I need
to get something, and I Amazon Prime Now and it's
so crazy. It shows up in like an hour or
two and it's pretty amazing. But back to Jack Ryan.
So the first season follows Jack Ryan, which is played
(28:40):
by John Krasinski, which is weird to me because when
he's Jim on the office, you don't picture him being
able to play this crazy c I agent out in
the field like looking awesome and he's pretty legit, like
I'm buying it. I'm like, okay, this, this is cool.
I kind of like him as this role. So Jack
Ryan is played by On Krasinski, and Jack Ryan's a
(29:01):
CIA analyst and he has a desk job though, but
he's taken away from that and thrown into the field
because he's the one that discovered a string of crazy
bank transfers which are being carried out by this rising
Islamic terrorists. And then he goes out and it's all
action packed. I loved it. My husband loved it. We
binged it over Christmas break. I almost some people that
(29:23):
I know now they're just now starting it, and that's
what made me think about doing it. Is one of
my things because I feel like you guys need to
know about the show. But some of my friends are
just now starting it, and I'm kind of jealous, like
I wish I was starting it. Another one of those
times that I have that feeling is Eddie. He's a
producer on the Bobby Bones Show. He is about to
finish up Friday Night Lights, and I'm so jealous. I
remember the first time I started. I was way late
(29:44):
to the game when it came to Friday Night Lights.
If you haven't watched that, you have to such a
great show. But I didn't watch it when it was
actually on. I binged it later, only like a couple
of years ago, and I loved it. It was so good.
So when other people started, like Eddie started it and
he's about to finish it, I'm jealous of that feeling
of like, oh, I wish I was watching it and
(30:06):
binging it for the first time. So I'm not saying
that Jack Ryan is at the level of Friday Night Lights.
Don't get it twisted. But it was a cool show,
especially to watch and if you've got a husband, sometimes
it's hard to find husband and wife shows where everybody
likes it, but my husband and I like this one,
so check it out. And then seeing John Krasinski on
there will make you crave The Office, and then you'll
(30:28):
start putting that on, which I go to Netflix for
that type in the Office and I start watching old
episodes of that when I need to laugh. And The
Office is just so funny, And the more I watch it,
the funnier it gets. And I'm not this like crazy
Office fanatic, but I have been watching it a lot
more ever since Jack Ryan ended, because I guess I'm
craving some John, but that show is so funny. So
(30:51):
send me email me some of y'all's favorite shows. What
you like to binge right now? If there's something new
that you're watching, that is my new recommendation, Jack Ryan
and you can email me at four Things with Amy
Brown dot com. Okay, let's wrap on today's episode. Big
thank you to Jamie Ivy for coming on to talk
(31:12):
with me for a little bit. She's just so awesome.
I hope you'll check out her podcast. If you're not
familiar with Jamie, you got to check out The Happy Hour.
That's her podcast. It's really good. She has a lot
of amazing guests, and she also has her book If
you only knew another cool thing you could check out.
And then if you end up listening to our podcast
and you really like it, you've got to check out
her live events. I participated in one last fall. I
(31:33):
was one of the speakers up there and it was
really really cool. And she has another one coming up
in April in Austin. I know tickets gone sale later
this month. I don't have the exact details because I
don't know that she shared that yet, but Happy Hour
Live and you can always check out Jamie Ivy dot
com to see what she's up to. And then shout
out to my sister Christie for coming on to talk
periods with me. I always love when she takes time
(31:54):
to chat with us. Definitely will bring her back for
a few other ideas that we have going on, but
we just had to end up talking about the whole
period thing because now we're both moms and we had
an experience with our mom and how we're handling our
daughters so differently. So hopefully that helps some of you
out there somewhere, And if you're a guy listening and
(32:14):
you were like, what is happening? I'm so sorry, but
you know, you might have daughters too, and you might
need to be involved in these talks and conversations, so
you know, maybe or you can fast forward. You can
always fast forward. That's the thing about podcasts. You could,
you know, go onto the next thing. Um, A big
thank you to Elizabeth and Mike d for making this
(32:34):
podcast possible. They're the ones that get it up on
iTunes and I heart radio and then I mean, y'all
are awesome. I was just on iTunes checking out something
and I saw some new comments and reviews, and I
just appreciate that so much that y'all are doing that,
and that's how people learn about the podcast. So you
can also share this with others if you think it's
something they would want to listen to. I love when
(32:56):
people tell me about new podcasts to listen to. So
hopefully if it's your jam, it could be their jam
and we could grow this thing and it would be awesome.
And then shout out Walker Hayes. Some people still email
with They're like, wait, who sings your song? And so
I'm always going to be grateful for Walker and the
theme song that he wrote. For this podcast and how
it reminds us to be kind, choose joy, laugh a lot,
(33:17):
eat cake. So now I'm gonna get into a quick
email shout out, and this email came from Julie. She said, Hi, Amy,
I just binge listen to your podcast, love it. Longtime
listener of the Bobby Bones Show. And I'm very curious
about your beauty routine. It seems you're very focused on
health then natural products. What do you use on your skin? Also,
(33:38):
you really shave your face. I really want to do
it because I have a very fuzzy face, but I'm
scared you really do it. Question Mark question Mark, question
Mark question Mark. Thanks Julie, So to answer your question, Julie, Yes,
I really do shave my face and I have for
several years now and it's amazing. I can actually probably
make it a thing and do a whole beauty routine talk.
(33:59):
I can ring Um the Nashville Beauty Girl in to
probably talk about this, and even Kelly from Velvet's Edge,
because Kelly from Velvet's Edge is the only reason I
shaved my face and she's done several blog posts about it,
so you can check that out at Velvet's Edge. Dot
com and just type in I'm sure just search shaving
face or face shaving whatever it should come up. But
I can definitely do a whole you know thing about
(34:21):
it coming up soon. But yes, shave your face. Once
you shave, you won't go back. Not shaving is whack
or something like that. Okay, all right, I hope you
all have the great day. By cass up Little Food
(34:47):
for Yourself life. Oh it's pretty bad. It's pretty beautiful.
A little moth kick in it with four things with
Amy Brown
Feeling Things with Amy & Kat News
Host
Amy Brown
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