1KHO 875: Feelings Are Welcome Anytime | Joy Stephenson-Laws, Secrets That Sparkle, Secrets That Sting

**Ginny** (0:00)
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I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. We're going to be talking about a critically important topic this morning about helping our kids stay safe by being able to listen to their feelings, to their intuitions, and keeping them all the way throughout their life. And it is such an honor to have Joy Stevenson-Laws here today. Welcome, Joy.

**Joy Stephenson-Laws** (1:24)
And thank you so much for having me today. It's a pleasure to be here.

**Ginny** (1:27)
You are so accomplished. Joy is the author of a new book. It's for kids. It's called Secrets That Sparkle and Secrets That Sting, a phenomenal book. That's what we're going to be talking about mainly today, but also a health care attorney, child wellness advocate, founder of a national nonprofit, PH Labs. And you're really helping kids to recognize when something feels off. These are words and this is language that we may not ever consider using with our young kids. You've also written other books. There's one called From Chains to Wings, A Poetry Revolution for Healing. That's all about your feelings as well. You have a book called Your Labs Are Fine, You're Not. So when you feel like I'm off, but the doctor says, nope, you're okay. And you're like, no, but I don't feel okay.
You have a book about minerals. So can you give the audience a sense of how you learned it was so important to be in tune with our feelings because you're a lawyer.
So you're doing all of these law things, all of these rules. But these books are all related in the way that they prioritize and bring to light the importance of feelings.

**Joy Stephenson-Laws** (2:31)
Yes. You know, sometimes the best teachers experience, life experience.
And we learn so much from our kids because, but for my child, I would not have been on this path.
I, I, I grew my, I, I reared my child in a way that I was taught, meaning you give them rules, give him rules, and you hope that by being there, that he would be coming to you if he felt a certain way, or if anything went wrong in his life, he would come and talk to you because you're always there, you're home, you're playing with him, you're, you're, you're thinking that you lived your life in such a way where you could be the perfect mom, right? And, you know, at 30, he told me a secret and I was flabbergasted. And I'm going, we've spent so much time together. How is it that you never said anything when you were younger? And he said, I just didn't think that anybody would believe me or that anybody would want to hear. And that floored me.
So I went on a path where I read a bunch of books. I spoke to a bunch of people. I did a ton of research because it didn't really make sense because I literally lived my life. I structured my professional career around my child.
So because you wanted to do things differently. And what surfaced was we were asking kids to do things that their brains weren't ready for yet. The first thing a kid does is feel. No explanations. The brain accommodates that tummy, the tummy sinking, the heart fluttering. They feel things. They can't regulate it. But they feel. So, for example, if they come to you and say, mom, my tummy feels yuck. Sometimes when we're cooking in the kitchen, okay, go take something for it. Or here, we don't engage in the conversation to where we're trying to explore the feeling. We think it's not that big of a deal.