Aug 16, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
You need to take up your space because you use couching language too much. And it’s like, I don’t use couching language because I lack confidence. I use couching language because I’ve been around the block enough times to know that while I’m 80% sure this answer is going to help you, there is a 20% chance that you are a special case that I have seen in the past that it won’t work for.
There’s a 20% chance that there’s something else circumstantial that neither of us are thinking about in the moment that affects the outcome. And there’s a 20% chance that, you know what? It might be great advice. It might be valid advice, but it’s not useful advice right now.
It’s not because I lack confidence. It’s just because I’m confident that there are no absolutes in anything. And I am somebody who prides myself in honesty and integrity, and I think it’s important to say that.
We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tanya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras.
Because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. Hey there, Tanya here.
So since I recorded my last episode, which was my conversation with Jen McKinnon of Practical by default, something big has changed in my home and my household. I’ve started homeschooling again. So if you’ve been listening for a long time, or if you’ve been part of my ecosystem for a long time, you know that I have two children.
They’re four and a half years apart. So my youngest is 12. And shortly, kind of middle of spring, right before spring break of this year, we started homeschooling again.
And it’s so funny because it’s such a full circle moment for me to sit here and think about my interview with Jen, because it was a few months ago that we talked. But the whole reason that I encountered Jen for the first time is because I was considering homeschooling my eldest. And at that time, I was working full time at a university.
If you’ve listened to my interview with Jen, you already know this. And I was like, there’s just no way in the world I could homeschool like I’d have to quit my job. And somebody introduced me to Jen’s online community.
So she has a Facebook group called the Working Homeschool Mom Club. And it is like it sounds a Facebook group specifically for moms who work in homeschool. Now they can work inside the home, they can work outside the home, they can be self employed like I am, they can be a remote worker for somebody else, contract worker, you know, W2, whatever.
And there are now over 30,000 members to the community. And they come from all over the globe. And so, you know, I record this episode very differently than I initially had my episode planned for speaking about my interview with Jen.
But a lot of the core points are still true. I would say the heart of my conversation with Jen is a much bigger question that we were toying around with, which is, who do you trust when everyone online sounds like an expert? When I was interviewing Jen, you know, one of the things that we discussed is she leads one of the largest communities for working homeschool moms, one of the only communities for working homeschool moms. She has not only spent years supporting families trying to balance work and homeschooling, but she has graduated two children, right? Her kids are young adults.
And the thing that as soon as we hung up, like, I wish I would have come up with the words when we were talking in real time, because I think she would have had remarkable things to say. But really, as we were talking, you know, one of the things that Jen has found, and if you are a homeschooling parent I think you’ll, you know, you will agree, is that the internet rewards confidence. The internet does not reward experience, and it does not necessarily reward success.
The internet is a great place for finding ideas, right? You type it into your browser of choice, and you come up with a ton of ideas. And these days, you don’t even have to go through 10 different websites to get the answer to your question or to get the full context, right? You don’t have to go read the ultimate guide to whatever. You can just read the AI summary, and, you know, whatever paragraph strikes your interest, just click that particular link, and, you know, you’ll go to the website that has that paragraph in it.
And that’s assuming, you know, you think to type into a search engine to begin with. A lot of people are having their conversations and doing their searches directly into an LLM, right? A large language model, whether that is chat GPT, it is Claude, it is Perplexity, Gemini, Insert, whichever one is your favorite. Because I’m sure by the time, even though I’m recording this episode, very close to its air date, I am sure by the time this episode airs, there will be a new AI assistant tool on the market that people are talking about.
So the internet and AI and social media, great for finding ideas, great for surfacing ideas. But it’s terrible at showing you which ideas are sustainable, which ones have last, which ones have been through the ups and downs of the last five years, 15 years, 50 years in some cases. And it makes sense, right? I don’t believe that anybody is out there trying to project a false narrative, for the most part.
I mean, I shouldn’t say that. Most people are not out there trying to project a false narrative. But algorithms reward certain things, right? They reward what they call authority or credibility.
And part of that is how you speak, right? When you speak with certainty, when you speak with absolutes, when you say you have a framework, right? And you list your framework on your website or in your social channels, that automatically tells an algorithm that you have credibility, you actually have authority in this space. Now, it doesn’t mean you do. It just means that you have used a language that it associates with authority and credibility.
The internet and algorithms, they reward simple language, things that are high-scoring readability, easy to understand. Quick wins are rewarded, right? The posts that get the most engagement in the first 45 minutes are the posts that get shared far and wide. The posts that take three weeks to spark interest, those aren’t shown as much.
And they will be if they get enough interest, right? Enough clicks, enough likes, enough shares in a short period of time. But slow and steady doesn’t really get you anywhere on the world of the internet. And people who have real experience very rarely speak with certainty and absolutes and give simple answers and focus on quick wins and come across as 100% confident.
I mean, I think I come across as confident, but I know for a fact, I come across as confident to people who know me well. Either they’ve been following me online for years, they’ve come to my workshops, they’ve heard me speak. The average person who hears me speak, and this has actually happened to me in person and online and networking events where people will say, Oh, you know, you need to step into your power.
You need to take up your space because you use couching language too much. And it’s like, I don’t use couching language because I lack confidence. I use couching language because I’ve been around the block enough times to know that while I’m 80% sure this answer is going to help you, there is a 20% chance that you are a special case that I have seen in the past that it won’t work for.
There’s a 20% chance that there’s something else circumstantial that either or neither of us are thinking about in the moment that affects the outcome. And there’s a 20% chance that you know what, it might be great advice, it might be valid advice, but it’s not useful advice right now. Okay, it’s not because I lack confidence.
It’s just because I’m confident that there are no absolutes in anything. And I am somebody who prides myself in honesty and integrity. And I think it’s important to say that even when somebody says something to me, and I’m like, yeah, I, hmm, that does not sound right.
I will say things like, you know what, I would love to see that work. I will tell you, though, I’ve never seen it work. In my experience, that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.
It just means I’ve never seen it work, right? Again, it’s not because I lack confidence. It’s simply because I know enough to know that there are no absolutes. And I find like now, you know, we joke about me being an internet dinosaur, my collaborator, Rachel Allen, and I, we co-host Dino Chats on Instagram.
And we have a blast, right? And Mary Williams, who owns Sasquatch Media Grounds, you know, she’s had Dino Chat panel conversations on YouTube that have had Rachel and me and other people on them. And I will tell you that veterans very rarely say, this is the end all be all answer. They say things like, well, you know, you ask them a question, say, well, it depends.
Do you want this? Or do you want that? A lot of times they’ll say, well, it depends on what your goal is. It depends on what you’re building for. Like, it depends, right? Give me more context.
Because my answer, I’ve been around the block enough times to know that the right answer has to do with some contextual things or circumstantial things that you are facing with that other people maybe are not. They’ll say things, you know, in the homeschool space, like Jen, she’ll say, you know, she never says this is what you have to do when working moms reach out to her. She’ll say things like, you know, she’ll ask a few questions and she’ll say, well, here’s what worked for our family.
Here’s what worked for me when I was working outside the home. However, working inside the home, this worked. Here’s what worked for me when my kids were little.
Here’s what worked for me when they were in middle school. Here’s what worked for me when they were in high school, right? It changes as the children age, as your circumstances change and so forth. The other thing that veterans often say is I used to think this, but then I realized that, right? Veterans in any space with any area of expertise are confident enough to be honest about when they changed their minds and what led to them changing their minds.
You know, back to the homeschooling example, I hear Jen and many of her peers. There’s the Canadian homeschooling mom, Lisa Marie Fletcher. There is Dachelle McVeigh.
And I’m thinking of like old school, old school, like homeschooling experts like Pam Barnhill and the woman who started Brave Writer, whose name I cannot remember right now. Read Aloud Revival. Like all those like old, old school homeschooling experts, you know, will say, well, you know, how old are your kids? Because I will tell you right now, what worked at seven didn’t work at age 13.
And what worked at age 13 never would have worked when they were seven. And again, it is really hard to build a large following around a platform that is known for saying it depends. I used to think this, I then thought that.
That’s the other thing is social media followers in particular, they really want you as a person, they want to be able to take a snapshot of you right now and have you never change. Think about some of the viral stars you’ve known and some of the scandals that have happened over the years. And a lot of times it happens because there has been some change.
Some well known marriage author and speaker gets a divorce. Well, now we question all of the advice they ever gave, right? Because how could they be experts if they’re now divorced? Somebody talks about, you know, the importance of positive thinking and faith in in the face of a health crisis. And then if they talk about a low moment where they were considering that it wasn’t worth continuing on with life when they were at a low point when they just really were hoping that they would die quickly because the pain was too much, then readers will go but how can you say that and have written this? Were you lying in this book? Is that what happened? You were lying, weren’t you? No, right? They’re saying like, I believe this at this point in time.
And this is something I believed in another point in time. But it’s hard, right? It’s hard to build a large following. It’s hard to get recognized as an internet, quote unquote, expert, when you are a 360 degree, fully functioning, and complex human.
And bringing this back to the homeschooling thing, because you know, because that’s what Jen and I were talking about. But also, when I decided to start homeschooling my daughter again, this year, I went back to my conversation with Jen, you know, I went back to Jen also, because she is my resident expert on all the things. And you know, and I talked to a few other people about homeschooling.
And it was funny is kind of when I decided to start homeschooling again, you know, I spoke with Jen, and I said, you know, we should do I was we were talking about this interview. And I said, we should do a summit, like for the homeschool dinosaurs. Like, I’m not a homeschool dinosaur.
But I know that I value the guidance from the dinosaurs, especially now that I am going to be homeschooling a child who will be going into sixth grade and where I live, sixth, seventh, eighth grade or middle school. So you know, those middle school years are not easy on anybody. So I know who my chosen experts are.
But my chosen experts aren’t the ones that show up on the For You page a lot on Instagram or on YouTube. And so you know, at first we were joking. And then Jen’s always like, well, I mean, if you wanted to pull that together, I’d totally be on board.
I’m like, you would, like, what do you you know, then it’s like, what business do I have doing this summit on homeschooling? Well, I’m a community builder. So I know a lot about building community, I’ve facilitated tons of online events, like I know how to put on a really good online event. And I know how to build community.
And I definitely know how to build what I would enjoy participating in this space. So I went to somebody who specializes in summits and online business and things like that and told them the idea. I said, you know, I’m thinking about putting together this summit, that would be for newish homeschoolers, you know, say first three years.
And what was funny is the suggestion that was made is I should narrow the target audience to just first year homeschoolers. And the person who suggested that said, you know, I’m in my second year, and I’ve already got things figured out, like, I don’t need help. So I don’t think you’re gonna get very many people in their second or third year who’d be interested in what you’re talking about, you really just need to grab the first year people, because only they would be interested.
And I thought that was funny, right? Because again, that would be like me saying, well, I homeschooled for two and a half years before, like, I don’t need any help now. Because I already know everything, I’ll just go back to the old curriculum that I use. I’ll go back to, you know, all the things that I was doing before, and it’ll be perfect.
Well, I already know it wouldn’t be perfect. First of all, what interests my younger daughter is not the same as what interested my older daughter, who was being homeschooled at the same age. Also, their their capabilities are different, their interests are different.
You know, my older daughter is very mathematically inclined, and my younger daughter is much more artistic. And I don’t want to throw shade on anybody, because the reality is, is like, how would any of us know whether our advice holds up in an experience we haven’t yet had? Right? So if I’m a brand new homeschooler with, I don’t know, my oldest kid is 10, how am I going to know whether what I’m doing right now will work in middle school, or in high school? Right? How am I going to know whether what I’m doing right now is going to avoid me from ever becoming a burned out homeschooling parent? How do I know it’s going to avoid my kid getting burned out? Right? How do I know it’s going to support successful launch into adulthood, you know, until I figure out what my child wants to do, and they start looking around for college or tech school or, you know, career options, right? Certain things you can’t know until you get there. And so, you know, the issue isn’t intelligence.
It’s not information. In many cases, the issue at hand is time. There are certain things you can only learn through time.
Perspective only comes through the accumulation of experiences. Yes, we try to borrow secondhand experiences from experts, but their perspective is limited to their experiences. And, you know, and we can’t pretend it’s not.
So some things that I think are important to just bring up and I’ll say tease out from my conversation with Jen is number one, there is no one right way to homeschool. And I think that is something that like sets Jen apart from a lot of people. She is like adamant.
It’s also why it benefits her to serve working homeschool moms, because a lot of people out there are like, this is the literary or this is the language arts curriculum to rule them all. And she could say, yeah, that’s a great literature arts curriculum if you’ve got the time and ability to be shoulder to shoulder with your child, because it requires a lot of parental involvement. Not all working homeschool moms have that.
So if they need something that’s a little bit more hands off, there are some other options, right? So number one, there is not one right way to homeschool. She built an entire community around the idea that families have to create systems that fit their own lives rather than copying somebody else’s approach. And I know for a fact, that’s what attracted me to her initially, all the way back in 2020.
When I first met her, I think it’s what still attracts people to her. It’s why she still has a very thriving, vibrant Facebook group, even when everybody wants to talk about how Facebook is dead. The other thing, you know, speaking of that Facebook group is that community matters almost more than anything because the context matters.
And if you listen to my other podcast with Gwen Bortner, right, The Business You Really Want, you probably don’t listen to it. But if you’re into a business podcast, that’s a good one to listen to. Working homeschool moms oftentimes feel like they don’t fit in anywhere, right? Because advice from each community that focuses on traditional homeschool families ignores half of their reality.
You know, they can get homeschool advice, but a lot of times the homeschool advice assumes that the person who’s homeschooling doesn’t work for money outside the home or that whatever they do that generates income isn’t a higher priority or as high of a priority as educating their child. You know, they can go and get advice about working remotely, working from home. They can get advice about being a working mom.
But all of that advice typically assumes that their kids are in some type of traditional school, either public school or private school. So there really isn’t any place where they can have their entire context served other than Jen’s community, other than the Working Homeschool Mom Club. So none of us can really fully realize our potential if only half of our identity is being served.
And the third thing that I really appreciated about my conversation with Jen is her strong, strong stance that perfection is not the goal, right? Like she talks openly about how it took multiple tries with math programs and curriculum to figure out which one fit. And then by the time she figured that out for her son, she then had to go through that whole exercise all over again for her daughter. And yet now as an adult, that daughter who hated math growing up works in a job that’s pretty much all math.
Like she’s just crunching numbers all day long. And that doesn’t happen by getting lucky, right? Oh, I just happened to pick the right curriculum. Or you know what? I found myself an influencer with three million followers and I just did everything they said.
Those are the kinds of lessons that you pick up when you stick with something year after year. When you’re honest to others about your challenges, right? You accept feedback. You offer feedback like, hey, this isn’t working because of this reason.
I don’t know if it’s a me problem. I don’t know if it’s an it problem. I don’t know if it’s a her problem, but you know, maybe you can help me tease this out.
And there are lessons that come from sticking with it, right? Not just dropping and running when things get hard or when you start to feel lost or inept. And so, you know, going back to this idea about the summit, right? It’s like Jen would say, Tonya, I did not give you the idea for that summit. That idea came up all by yourself.
And you know, she’s partially right because before I interviewed her, I was talking with Rachel about creating a series of dino summits. And you know, so it’s the those of us who are internet business dinosaurs, right? Having the series of summits that cater to a few different markets. So yeah, I was already planning to host some summits this year.
I wasn’t planning to host a homeschool summit though until I started homeschooling myself. Went back to my interview with Jen and realized like how much knowledge and experience and like librarian-like perspective that she can offer that a lot of other people can’t, who are, you know, right now the favorites in the homeschooling market. And you know, there’s also, and she knows a lot of dinos, right? Because she’s been at this a long time.
So, you know, Dashelle McVeigh from Literary Adventures for Kids, which was the language arts curriculum that we used when we were homeschooling before. And it is language arts curriculum we’ll use again because my daughter hates, she says she hates reading. Reading’s hard for her.
There are two different things, right? But again, it’s Dashelle who has taught me that. It’s not that my youngest hates reading. It’s that it’s difficult and she needs me to help her make that reading more accessible.
And Dashelle, her curriculum does have some ways about doing that. And so, you know, so now I just want to tell you a little bit about the summit because it is coming up and this show is not really about pitching offers. That’s never what it’s been about.
It’s really been about shining a light on the fact that what makes you weird makes you wonderful. But one of the weirdest things in homeschooling is being a working homeschool mom. It was weird in 2019 when I was first looking into it.
It was definitely way weirder before that when Jen was, Jen and Dashelle were doing it. It continues to be weird now. You know, one of the ways that we made homeschooling work for us instantly this spring is there is a day program in our community meets twice a week.
I don’t know any of the other moms who are working unless their work is tied to the day program. They work at the day program. So when I talk about like I work full time, I, you know, I have to do these things and that things and I’m working this all around meetings.
And so no, I can’t volunteer on the days that the day program’s going on because I rely on that child free time in order to have meetings and do podcast recordings and things like that. It’s a big gap to fill is what I’m going to say because there are thousands of homeschool creators online. There are thousands of people.
Most of them are selling you a thing, right? Some of you, some of them are true creators, right? They’re making money off of views. They’re making money off of a day in a life. This is how we do story time in our house.
This is how we homeschool, you know, 10 kids ages two to 20 in our house. You know, this is how we do this. This is how chores are part of our home education program.
Yes, there are creators doing that, but a lot of, you know, homeschool experts are selling something. They’re selling a homeschool curriculum. They’re selling a homeschool planner, a homeschool plan, courses, et cetera.
But for me, you know, I look at all that stuff and now because I’ve homeschooled before, I realize that what I need is really what everybody needs, especially those first three years, right? I need advice and perspective from people who have homeschooled through the hard years, people who have tried and changed methods more than a few times. So they can tell me what worked, what didn’t work and why. So I can see like, okay, you know, where does my experience and my circumstances fit in the overall picture? I need to learn from people who survived burnout so that I can maybe avoid it because I will tell you the first time I was homeschooling, I was a crispy critter when it comes to burnout.
I mean, I was fried to an absolute crisp. I was sleeping maybe three hours a night. I was working and we were homeschooling seven days a week.
There was no off time for me at that point. Part of that was work demands. Part of that was, was the pandemic because the pandemic hit shortly after I started homeschooling.
And part of it was just my own lack of awareness of knowing what was enough when it came to homeschooling, right? Realizing that I didn’t need to do public school at home. I didn’t have to teach my kids uninterrupted for six hours straight. I need to hear from people who have balanced careers and different types of careers, right? Because the way that I earn money now is not the same as the way I earned money before.
I was much more of a freelancer, kind of like direct service contractor. Then I’m much more of a business owner now. I need to learn from people who have navigated neurodivergence, right? Like both of my kids are neurodivergent, but they do not have the same neurodivergent architect, right? They’re just very different phenotypes to how their brains are wired, what works for them, what doesn’t work for them.
So I can’t just rinse and repeat what I did for my older daughter. And because right now the plan is to homeschool for three years and then to transition to a traditional high school, that may or may not happen. So I also need to learn from people who have successfully launched their children into adulthood because I either need to make sure that my child is well-prepared for high school or well-prepared for college, tech school, workforce, whatever may come after high school.
But with sixth, seventh, and eighth grade being middle school years, I don’t feel like I’ve got much time to make mistakes. And so I really need to hear from these experts. And to be perfectly honest, that’s why I’m creating the summit.
So I can handpick the experts that I know I want to learn from, and then also create a community of other people who are like me, you know, homeschooling. They don’t have to necessarily be working in homeschooling, but homeschooling relatively new in the homeschooling journey and wanting to learn from people who have been there, done that. And so the name of the summit is called Been There, Homeschooled That, right? Like you guys know, I am clear, but I’m very rarely clever.
But it seemed like the appropriate name for a summit built around practical guidance, the human side of homeschooling, and the long game of raising independent learners. Because that is the one thing I will tell you I loved about homeschooling the first time around. I missed about homeschooling when my children were attending, you know, a charter school.
And even when my older daughter went into public high school, I love homeschooling focus on cultivating independence, and like, ownership over learning, you just don’t see that in public schools where I live as much these days. And so I’m just gonna want to bring this back to like, why am I hosting this thing? Like, I feel like I’ve talked about that a little bit. But also, there’s a little bit of imposter syndrome going on.
Back to you could be confident without experience. I don’t want to be that person who sounds like they think they’re an expert when they’re not. The reason I’m hosting the summit is because I am not a homeschooling expert, right? I’m not a veteran homeschooler, but I am a veteran community builder.
And so if I want a judgment-free community of early stage homeschool families to connect with, to learn with, and to learn from together, learn from veterans together, then I may as well be the person to lead it. Because, you know, there are a lot of summits for homeschooling families, but a lot of them are led by veterans and experts, and some of them have the curse of knowledge. You know, they forget being at that stage of not knowing what they didn’t know.
And so that’s what I feel like I’m bringing to this table. DeShelle McVeigh and Jen McKinnon, as my co-hosts, are bringing the expertise and the connections to the homeschool experts. I know how to vet remarkable people.
I know how to find people who actually care about the people they serve. I know how to create spaces where different perspectives coexist. One of the things I’m most excited about in this summit is facilitating a live panel of experts and just doing a really great job of moderating a Q&A.
I also am really good at helping people discover the community that they didn’t know they needed. People who thought they were perfectly okay just going it alone, only to find out when they encountered people with a shared purpose and a shared vision that they actually did have a gap to fill all along. You know, that’s what Find Your Freaks has always been about, and that is what the Been There, Homeschooled That Summit is all about.
So if you are in your first few years of homeschooling and you feel like every expert online is telling you to do something different, if you’re wondering whether you’re already messing up and you know what, you’re like secretly raising serial killers and you just don’t even know it because of all the mistakes you’ve made, or if you’d rather learn from people who have actually made it through the teenage years than from somebody who just settled on the curriculum for the very first time, then the Been There, Homeschooled That Summit is exactly for you. Now it is free. It is going to be free.
It goes from, we are in the midst of registration right now. It is going to take place free from September 1st through 3rd is when you will be able to participate in the live sessions, but the recordings are going to be available all the way through September 8th because if you are anything like me right now, it sounds like, yeah, I can do that. September 1st, 2nd and 3rd, and then on August 30th, something’s going to happen.
Kid’s going to need a doctor’s appointment, you know, the dental appointments you scheduled six months ago, you’ve realized that they’re taking place tomorrow or whatever, and suddenly you can’t make it like you thought you did and you think all is lost. Not the case, right? Replays will be available through the 8th, so really, there’s no reason why you can’t come. You can’t can’t attend and it’s free, so it’s not like there’s any money out of your pocket even if you do register and you can’t make it.
All of our speakers are going to be veteran homeschoolers, every single one of them. Been doing this for years, at least a decade, and they’ve launched their kids out into the wild. Some of them are still homeschooling, some of them will be speaking on the other side of homeschooling, but they will definitely have been there, done that, and you know, we’re really going to focus on practical advice, we’re going to focus on a variety of perspectives, and ultimately, you are going to encounter no one-size-fits-all philosophy.
It’s not going to be like this is the end-all be-all for you. It is choose your own adventure, your mileage may vary, but no matter what, we’re here to hold your hand along the way. Now, there is going to be a paid upsell, which will allow you to instantly implement everything you learn.
If you choose to go register, you will find out all that information then. You will find everything at the dinosummits.com slash registration. Everything you need will be there, and if you have any questions, you know how to get in touch with us.
So, let’s bring this to a close because we’ve talked enough about this. Every episode of Find Your Freaks asks the same question. I ask the same question of my guests, I ask the same question of you.
Who are your people? Sometimes, the answer to that question is not someone who is exactly like you. Sometimes, it’s the person 20 years ahead of you who is generous enough to turn around and tell you what they wish they knew when they started. That’s what the Been There, Done That Homeschool Summit is all about.
It’s not about finding perfect answers. It’s really about finding and gathering together experienced people who can help you ask better questions so that the answers you come up with are the right answers for you and your family. Hope to see you then.
Aug 2, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
And so I really felt like I didn’t belong anywhere because I couldn’t get advice that wasn’t telling me to either quit my job or put my kids in school. And that was really difficult. And the thing is, I think so much pressure on all moms, on all people, is that we have to get it right and it has to be perfect.
And they forget that making mistakes and learning with your children is part of the process, right? So if you’re out there panicking and you’re feeling like, I’m messing up, it’s not good enough. I’m never going to get this right. It will get easier.
Step back and remember why you’re doing this. And what is the goal for home educating your children? We all have different goals, but in the end, hopefully it is teaching your child how to learn. We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in.
I’m Tanya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras, because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
We love to talk about community here, how to build it, grow it, sustain it. But today, we’re going to talk about what has been emerging as a much more common occurrence than I think anybody realizes, which is what happens when you live between two communities that aren’t actually built to overlap. In this case, we’re talking about working moms and homeschool moms.
Each has its own challenges, expectations, and ideals. But what happens when you belong to both? Well, to answer that question, I can’t think of anybody better to bring on the show than Jen McKinnon, the founder of Practical by Default, where she helps working homeschool moms juggle career, education, and everyday life with confidence. Now, I actually encountered Jen prior to the pandemic when I was thinking of homeschooling my eldest, but thought that I would have to quit my university job, which was a full-time gig and had a lot of nights, a lot of weekends, and a lot of overtime.
And a friend who was a consultant had told me she’d been in Jen’s community for a few years. So I was like, well, let me see about this. I ended up, I did end up leaving the university job before I started homeschooling, but that had nothing to do with what was possible.
That just simply had to do with personal choices. So what I have found so intriguing about Jen’s story over the years is that she really started off as just one mom trying to make sense of her own chaos, and a bunch of other moms jumped in to join the party. So Jen, let’s kick this off with our signature question, which is, who are your freaks and why do you love them? Hi.
So I’ll say my freaks, I would say, are working moms who are homeschooling and they’re trying to do both at the same time. And it’s getting more popular, but when I started, it was definitely not something people did. Yeah.
And so when we were talking before the show started, you referred to it as a bold choice because you were saying that the world still sends this message that that is not possible. So tell me how you came to that perspective and like what has happened, maybe tell everybody like how long the community has been around, how long you’ve been on this journey and what you have found, you know, what is different now or the same now that it was back then. Okay.
So I’m not really sure exactly when I started the community. I think it was in 1996, 1997, maybe around there. But the reason I created the community is because I was a working mom who was homeschooling and I didn’t know anyone else who was doing this.
So I was like, I’m all by myself. Am I the only crazy person who wants to do both? Is this even possible? I was making it work, but it wasn’t going very well. I still had a lot to learn.
And so I was talking to a friend and she’s like, I said to her, I said, maybe I should start a Facebook group. And I really thought I might get like 10, 15 people to join. Like there’s gotta be more than me.
I can’t be the only crazy person doing this. And so it kind of took off and became a life of its own. So was this in 2009? Because I think that’s when Facebook groups started, it was 2009.
Yes. Not 1996. I was going to say, wow, you look good.
You look good for being a mom in 96. Let me tell you. Oh my goodness.
No. So yes. 2016.
I do that all the time now. My kids get so frustrated. They’re like, I wasn’t born until 2020, 2002.
And I’ll be like, right. I knew that. Of course I did.
Yeah. But the years, they blur together. It’s totally fine.
Okay. So you started the Facebook group, like right when Facebook groups were a thing. So that’s 2009 to 2016.
Okay. 2016. Still four years before the pandemic.
I think the dates are important, right? Because a lot of people right now, people are like, oh yeah, everybody I know homeschools. Well, everybody you know homeschools because of the pandemic. Okay.
We need to talk to the homeschool dinosaurs is what we need to do here. So 2016, so you had four years of this group pre-pandemic. Yes.
Then pandemic hits. Okay. Just walk us through briefly how life has changed for working homeschool moms as a result of all that has happened in the world since 2016.
Yeah. So one major difference I’ve noticed is that the thought process of how it works has really changed. So before the pandemic, and I should clarify, not everybody works at home because every time I say working homeschool mom, they’re like, oh, you work at home.
I did not. Many, many do not. They go to the office or they have an office.
They have all kinds of different jobs that they do. And so before there was a very particular way that working moms were trying to homeschool. You know, they had a few methods.
I haven’t had a few ways of making it work. And in our community, we really talked about how to make it unique for each child, for each family, that there was a lot of rule breaking. You know, you didn’t have to have a method.
I never had a homeschool method. It was kind of whatever worked. That’s what I did.
It was a lot of trial and error. And so we had a lot of conversation around that when the pandemic hit, we had a lot of parents who were used to putting their kids in public school, now home with their kids doing an online public education. Right.
So they were like trying to, you know, I have one picture stuck in my head. A father actually sent it to me and he had his kids lined up. He had four computers, four children.
And the whole day he was trying to keep up with like all the things. And then he would go to work and his girlfriend would come in and she was trying to do it. And it was like, that was what homeschooling to them was, was very much a school at home approach.
And so we spent a lot of time as a community saying, that’s not exactly what homeschooling is. And kind of helping them mentally transition from like, because that’s what the idea was, right? Like, oh, now we’re all homeschooling. Kind of terminology is important, but it’s also like the thought behind it, right? Like, yes, you’re there to support your children and make sure they get an education.
But did you know you can unplug, do what needs to be done to support each child that doesn’t take you right there from morning to night, because they were getting burned out and they were getting exhausted. And so we had a lot of conversation, especially in my group about, you know, not chastising them or making them feel like they didn’t know what they’re doing because we’ve all been there. We’ve all done that and we’re still learning and it’s okay to start one way and make those changes and to start one way.
And if that’s actually working for you to keep going. Yeah. Well, and so in my area at that time, the schools and even the state was very careful to refer to it as distance learning because the big thing, of course, with homeschooling, and this is what I found out as a new homeschooling mom pre-pandemic, is that a homeschool day can check all the boxes of a public school day in like a fraction of the hours.
And that blew my mind. I thought homeschooling was six hours because public school was six hours. And so I remember when I was in your community, and we’ll talk about this a little bit, like the first advice I got is, well, you’re going to have to figure out childcare if you work more hours than your child is occupied by school.
And I was like, oh, it didn’t occur to me that that would be a thing. But with the distance learning model, and I remember when our schools came out with it, I’m like, I’m not sitting my kid in front of a computer for six hours, which is why we ended up homeschooling our second for a while. But you just said something that I think it’s important to talk about this piece is you talked about how there were a lot of conversations in the community about how we were going to talk to this new crowd of people who didn’t have the same basis of knowledge, didn’t have the same, I mean, it wasn’t their choice either, right? That’s the other thing is, you know, talk a lot about how passionate homeschooling families are, because you kind of have to be to do a thing where there’s not a lot of playbooks.
And so something that I have seen in your group before, right, is that, and I think you may have said it on a live stream at one point, but that working moms and homeschool moms individually face a lot of judgment, but that when you do both together, or when you make it known that you want to do both together, that judgment doubles. What does that look like in real life? So I’ll share my personal experience because I just feel like that’s what I have the most knowledge about. So I was a reluctant homeschooler.
I did not want to homeschool. So I’m just going to put that out there because I know some people have dreamed about this before they even had children, that this is the lifestyle they wanted. And I did not want to homeschool, but it just happened that it was the right fit for my oldest.
So, you know, I started homeschooling and then I returned to working full-time outside the home. And that was for financial reasons. We needed money.
So, you know, kids, they like food and clothing and shelter. So I needed to go back to work. And so what happened is I ended up with these friends who were homeschooling, but they stayed home all the time.
Not all the time, but like they didn’t go to work. And so then I had the people I went to work with and their kids were going on the bus every day. And so what happened is I was in a place of where I felt judged if I said, boy, work was really hard today.
And to my moms who homeschooled because they’d be like, well, then just quit work. And I’m like, we like to eat. Like, I don’t know, but like I could not make it work.
And so if I said it at work that, you know, the kids were just really having a hard day. Oh, this homeschooling thing is challenging because it is, they would say, put your kids on the bus. And that was not the right choice for our family.
And so I really felt like I didn’t belong anywhere because I couldn’t get advice that wasn’t telling me to either quit my job or put my kids in school. And that was really difficult. Yeah.
Well, and I can see how, you know, I’m sure to them in each scenario, they’re like, well, I’m just being helpful. Right. It’s like, I mean, this happens a lot of times in mom circles, right? Well, they’ll go to a therapist, right? Because they’re stressed out.
They’re sleep deprived. They’re all these things, you know, new mom and the therapist big thing is like, well, instead of breastfeeding at night, why don’t you, you know, let dad get up in the middle of the night, feed formula, and then you can get a good night’s sleep. And the moms are like, why is that the solution? Like I breastfeed because I want to, and I’m sleep deprived.
Like, why can’t we have a different idea? Like, I don’t know, like dad does dishes during the day or something, right. Or we hire a housekeeper or whatever that could be. So I understand that they think they’re giving helpful advice, but when the advice is to go against your values, go against your choices, it feels like judgment.
So what do you wish working moms understood about homeschooling moms and homeschooling moms understood about working moms? That’s a good question. I think, well, one thing I wish that they would both come from is more maybe empathy or grace, like understanding each mom is making the best choice for their family. Right.
So instead of immediately going to whatever preconceived notion they have about working moms, because some, not everyone, I don’t like slapping labels on people, but you know, some homeschool moms are very proud of the fact that they don’t work, get paid. And that’s great if they’re able to do that and still do all the things. And they’ve worked very hard to develop these skills and these systems that allow them to save money and, you know, all of the things, but they forget that that’s not for everyone, that we don’t all have those skills or even those choices, or maybe we have a career or a job we love.
And that idea to them is like, doesn’t make sense. Right. So they feel like we’re putting a choice of like choosing our career or our job over our kids.
And that’s not true. But also the working mom sometimes has that flipped, you know, like, oh, you gave up your career and why would you do that for your kids? I feel like that kind of like meeting in the middle of understanding that both of them are trying their best, they’re making choices. And so to offer each other grace, you know, just like whatever works for you and your family is what you should be doing.
And unfortunately, or fortunately, however you want to look at it as a working homeschool mom, it often comes with being a bit of a rebel and going against what society has you doing. Yeah. You just get really good at being okay with that.
Right. I mean, to some degree, as a working homeschool mom, you have to develop a thicker skin. But I also think there is something that we can all learn.
And what you’re saying is just because something is the best decision for you, or something is your personal primary driver, doesn’t mean it is somebody else’s primary driver, or it’s the best decision for them, even if you think their life is just like yours. So now I’m curious, because you walked us through the timeline a bit. But at what point did you realize that this wasn’t just a you problem, right? You weren’t the only person struggling with the working homeschool mom intersection, that it actually was bigger than you.
More people had the same issue. It was when I opened the Facebook group, I really didn’t expect it to grow. So I didn’t really do what a lot of Facebook group owners do, where they promote their group, and they talk about their group.
I kind of never really did that. The members did that. And it kind of just kept growing and growing.
And I was like, where are all these people came from? And it’s incredible now when I go in there, because it’s a worldwide group. The moms come from all these different backgrounds. They have all these different jobs, and some have one child, and some have like eight or nine children.
And it’s so fascinating to me to one, not feel alone, because I really did for a long time. I just felt like I’m the only one over here trying to make this work. And then seeing how everybody makes it work differently.
So that was kind of like, I think when we hit like 1000 members, I was just like, okay, I am not the unicorn that has no idea what they’re doing. I am not the only one. That was really neat.
And now you have what 27,000 34,000 the last time I checked, or 34,000. I think you had 27,000 when I joined. Okay, so how much did it grow during the pandemic? I’m just now this is just the community strategist and me being curious.
I am not really sure, but it grew fast. Now it’s slowed down a bit, we get probably 15 to 20 ish new members a week. But there was a period where we were getting like 50 to 75 a day.
And it was amazing and overwhelming at the same time. And it was really, really hard, because I really care about these moms. And a lot of them were in this situation, the pandemic just kind of threw them in.
And they were like, okay, this distance learning, as you called it was not working. They’re still stuck with their kids at home. And so they just needed a lot of help and a lot of guidance.
And so that’s when I started bringing in moderators from your advice and started asking for help and realized I didn’t have to be the only voice in the group, which was really nice. And my community is amazing. So many will step up and share, which I really appreciate.
Yeah, so in the community that we’re talking about is the Working Homeschool Mom Club, right? Because I want to make sure I get all the words correct in the right order on that. And something that’s a little bit different about the Working Homeschool Mom Club, from my perspective is one, and you said this earlier in the show that there is no specific model or methodology that it is framed around. It’s not a Charlotte Mason group, it’s not a Reggio Emilia group, it’s not a Montessori group, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? Not an unschooling group, right? It’s just do you homeschool or want to homeschool and do you work not to work? Are you a mom? Are you not a mom? I mean, it’s very simple criteria.
But the other thing that makes it a lot different from other groups is its secular focus. Like you have really made it, it’s like this is about working and homeschooling. And so you don’t really lean heavily into any of like religious curriculum or, you know, religious reasons around homeschooling, because there are a lot of families that homeschool for religious reasons.
And, you know, and you also keep it kind of out of politics, right? Because people live all over the globe. Some people do live in places where homeschooling is actually not legal. Other places live in areas where homeschooling is tightly regulated.
So you kind of keep the right or wrong of the regulation piece out of the conversation, which I think is why you have to have the admin team you have to have, right? Because a group that was just like Wild Wild West didn’t care what anybody posted. A group leader that didn’t care as much for the members as you do could get away with a lot less moderation, even at that size. Yeah, I completely agree.
And I feel like that might be something that sets a group a little bit apart, because there are groups for that. You know, if you’re a Charlotte Mason group, you know, you can go join that group. And if you’re secular, you can go join that group.
So the criteria for my group is, are you a mom who wants to homeschool or is homeschooling? And do you work or are you returning to work? Or are you going to start a job? So it’s very, very basic or simple, because those are the moms I want to support. And we all have a lot of the same struggles. I mean, it’s hard.
It is. So speaking of the moms you really want to support, the moms maybe who most desperately need your support, your brand, you know, let’s pull back from the community in and of itself, because the community is just a small part of what you do now, right? Because this community has become your business, your focus out in the world. So your brand itself is called Practical by default.
What do you mean when you say Practical? What do I mean when I say Practical? I think it needs to be something you can do that makes sense for your family and yourself, something you’ll use is kind of where I guess it came from. So my husband actually named the business because he’s always complaining that I’m so practical. So we’ve been married 25 years.
When he buys gifts, he’s like, what do you want? And I’m like, well, this broke. So I want this thing to make my life easier. And so he’s like, everything you want is practical.
And so I feel like that is very fitting for working moms. You need to have systems, tools, things that make sense, that make your life easier. And what makes sense to each mom is a bit different.
But I think if it’s better than something shiny, that’s pretty that you put on the shelf and you never use, because that’s not helpful. It’s kind of a waste of time, energy, resources. Yeah.
So really what you’re talking about is like, what is sustainable for you, given all your circumstances? And what I just heard is, when you’re talking about systems, you’re really talking about systems that work with your life versus against it, or systems created as if you don’t have a life. So what do systems that work with your life look like in practice? What do they look like in practice? Things that support what you’re trying to do. So for example, one of my favorite systems is meal planning.
And meal planning looks completely different for each person. So I have food sensitivities, things I cannot eat. So going to the store and picking up food is an option for me, but it’s a really hard option.
It takes a lot of time. I have to read the ingredients. I have to do this and that.
Meal planning is a system that just supports my life. It makes it simple. And the way I do it for me is, you know, I don’t have meals assigned to a day.
So some people have like, Monday we’re eating this, Tuesday we’re eating this. I don’t do that. But I have like a list of meals that I have the groceries for in the house to make these.
And then I look at each day. So if I know it’s going to be a long day, I’ll pick something that I can either throw in the slow cooker in the morning or pull out and throw in the Instant Pot really quickly. I have meals, because I do like to cook, that I have time to, you know, kind of play in the kitchen, cook, chat with the kids.
Or my husband, as I’m doing that, use it as like a connection while I’m still providing food for me and my family. I know breakfast is really, really hard. So we’ll do some meal prepping as a family sometimes.
So it’s very like works with your family. How is it going to make your life easier? Is it going to save you time? Other periods of my life when I didn’t have so many food allergies, we did a lot of pickup. Like we’ll pick up a roastery chicken and salad and bring it home because that was fast and easy and still got food on the table.
You know, we’d pick up pizza. Sometimes I miss those days. But like having a system that supports, the same as your planner.
I am a big believer in having a planner, but I don’t have like one planner that I recommend for everybody, because everybody’s so different, right? Some of us need a planner that goes with us wherever we go. Some are home a lot. So we like to write it all out.
It’s very much like how you make it work for your life. Yeah. And do you sell, you sell planners, right? Yeah.
What kinds? So I have a printable planner that’s on dated, because some people just like to write in the dates. I have a dated planner and I also have Trello boards. Oh, okay.
All right. So for people who like that more digital organization, I know that there are planner addicts out there. So I had to ask the question because if they’re listening and they’re a planner addict, they’re like, why did she not ask about planners? I will say one thing that’s different about the paper planners, like the printable planners or the on dated planner has the same layout and because everybody has their own thing, but my planners, I try really hard to have room for like your, it helps if you show the right day.
It has like a weekly review in it because to me, that’s so important at the end of the week. Like, are you doing what’s working? Are you doing what’s, are you going to keep doing what’s not working? So many of us get in the habit of like, well, I’ve been doing it this way for years, but it’s not working. So make that small change, but to make sure there’s lots of room.
So if you’re a paper planner and you work and you homeschool or you do a bunch of things, make sure you have lots of room to write everything down because so many planners today are just little, little, and I can’t fit my work and my homeschool and my life in one planner and I don’t have time to hunt around and find them. That makes sense. That makes sense.
So one of the systems that you taught me that I think is really valuable is the buffer block. Is that something you want to talk about? Sure. Yeah.
So the buffer block is a time block in your week. Some people choose a whole day. Some people choose a half day.
Some people just choose like an hour or 30 minutes that you keep empty on purpose. And that is because life is always changing. So it doesn’t matter what your life is.
Something’s going to come up, something’s going to go off the rails, child’s going to get sick, deadline’s going to get shifted, and you need time to make up that time. And so what happens is we overpack our week and we don’t have time to make adjustments. So knowing we have that empty space that we’ve kept, you know, when we did our original planning, it’s kept empty.
So we can put things in there. And if you have a really great week and everything goes according to plan, you can use that for a nap or doing a load of laundry or going for a walk or playing with the kids or something. Yeah, I love it.
So my buffer block is now, it is nine to noon on Thursdays. And the reason I mentioned that is because we are recording during that time right now, right? Because you, because you work outside the home, you’re running a business and you live very rurally, all of that combines to where you don’t actually have, and we are in dramatically different time zones, I should add that. So with all of that combined, you don’t have a lot of work hours during my work hours.
And so like, we weren’t, not for this buffer block that you taught me several years ago to use, we would not have been able to get on the calendar for several more months than we were able to. But it was so easy for me to say, yeah, like just, you know, to tell Sophia, just, hey, go ahead, just book it within the buffer block on any given Thursday, and we can make that work. And that works really well.
I have now found, it took me a long time to do this, but I’ve now found like anytime I’m trying to make an appointment, I just automatically ask, what do you have on Thursdays between nine and noon? Because I know that that’s guaranteed to be open. Yes. And the reason I bring all of this up, aside from the fact that it is my favorite of systems that I’ve learned from you, is I want to talk about energy, specifically energy and routines, because you know that for years I ran a clutter community, a clutter-focused community.
And you know, routines are everything for cluttery people. Like the fastest path out of your clutter is a daily decluttering routine. And yet so often, cluttery people will fight those routines, right? Because they don’t feel like it.
I don’t have any energy to do that today. And what I have found, and I just want you to tell me, is this true for you, true for other people? Am I the weirdo? Because it could be. But I have found that having those routines actually saves me so much time and energy.
Like I was just saying, knowing that nine to noon is always open, unless I choose to fill it, saves me a lot of hemming and hawing when somebody calls me when I’m on the road and they want to book a meeting with me that I know I need to have for whatever reason. Yeah, I agree that routines and it just, for me, it just removes that mental fatigue of like, oh wait, and you know, you’re second guessing and then you’re trying to think. So any type of routine, just yeah, it works with your energy.
And I think that’s one thing that as moms, we kind of forget to budget is our own energy. Like when do we have the most energy? And it’s true, we don’t always get to do the things that need our energy when it is ideal, because life just doesn’t work like that. But if you can, or at least be aware of like, okay, this task that’s coming up is really, really exhausting.
It takes a lot of my mental energy. Can I do lighter tasks before that so I can save a lot of my energy for that? And yeah, I agree. Energy is really precious.
So that is why I love the buffer block. I use it all the time as well. And mostly for appointments too.
I’m like, okay, mine just shifted, actually. And that’s what I love about planning, knowing what’s on your planner. Because mine used to be Wednesday afternoon, and now it shifted to Wednesday morning.
Right. And I think, you know, kind of to tie a bow around this, I think a lot of people resist systems because they view the system is trying to control them and they don’t want to be controlled. Right.
They want their creative spirit. They want freedom. They want flexibility.
But what I have found is that a strong system that is structured, but allows for some flexibility to fit within your life is actually quite freeing. Yes, absolutely. And then there’s all this freedom, free energy, free time that is left over to do things that you really want to do.
Yeah. I always say when you’re planning, the purpose is to have that framework. Mm-hmm.
Right. I mean, you need to have enough flexibility, but if you don’t know the pieces that hold your framework in place, I don’t know. I spend all my time wondering, like, what am I forgetting? What isn’t getting done? Getting surprised by time deadlines and things that I knew about, but didn’t keep track of because I didn’t want to keep controlled.
And so, yeah, you need enough structure. I always tell people, don’t overpack it so tight that you can’t breathe, but put in enough structure so that you don’t wake up every day going, okay, what’s going on today? Yeah. Because it’s exhausting.
Definitely. Definitely exhausting. And speaking of exhaustion, kind of going back to this community because you’re a homeschool dinosaur.
I get to call you that. That’s fun. Right? I mean, you’ve been doing it since before it was cool.
Homeschool moms and then adding working homeschool moms. When I was in it, I was exhausted. Very little free time.
What have you seen that community looks like for these working homeschool moms? I think community is more of an online piece for working moms. It is very hard because it’s very hard, as you said, to make that time to meet in person. If you can, that’s great.
So when they’re looking for in-person community, I find a lot of moms are resorting to meeting for coffee because it’s quick. It’s easy. It doesn’t take a lot of time or eventually as the kids get older, but when the kids were smaller, we did park dates like, okay, we’re going to meet at the park.
We’ve got 15 minutes. The kids are going to run around and play so we can have this community. It takes a lot of effort.
It takes a lot of planning, a lot of juggling, a lot of what’s it called when you make plans and they fall apart and then you make them again. Rescheduling. Yes.
Thank you. Words, words are hard, but I find when it’s online, Zoom became popular whether we wanted to or not. A lot of us learned how to use Zoom and Zoom is a great way to meet because you can see the other person.
You can see, you get the tones. Voxer has been a really great tool. I find my moms in one of my communities absolutely love it because you don’t have to get dressed.
You don’t have to meet at a certain time. You’re not plugged into your computer. Finding ways to connect with other moms, text messaging, Facebook messaging.
I’ve done Facebook video calls for coffee dates with friends who are in different time zones in different countries. It’s a lot of thinking outside the box, a lot of getting creative and really plugging into what is working for you. I think that is across the board, basically in everything.
You take an idea and you say, oh, that’s cool. How can I make it work for my life? Then giving yourself the freedom to do that. First of all, for the uninitiated, Voxer is an app that works on your phone, can also work on your computer, but it’s considered a walkie talkie app.
People pass voice notes back and forth and you can also do text notes. I heard from somebody, you can do video. I haven’t figured that part out yet.
Voice and text is all I use it for, but it’s fun. Most people use the free version. I pay, I think, $30 a year to use the paid version.
That just allows me to not have Voxer eat my messages when they’re too old. In theory, Voxer likes to eat my messages every now and then just to keep me on my toes, just to make sure I’m paying attention. When you’re talking about community, what I like about what you’re saying is it’s really about, it’s not so much you have to break the rules of community, but you’ve got to be really flexible with your rules.
For some people, and I saw this when I was in a mom’s group, when I was running a mom’s group, that so much of mom community is focused on stacking life. It’s a play date for the kids that allows the moms to socialize during the play date. It is a park picnic because we all have to eat lunch.
Our kids would love to have picnics, but they get unruly, so if there’s a bunch of adults and a bunch of kids, this can make it work. Potlucks were popular because we all have to eat dinner, all of that stacking life stuff. That’s not possible when everybody’s at the park during your prime working hours.
I found every single co-op, I got invited to so many co-ops as a homeschooling mom, every single co-op met during my standing meetings that I had. My standing meetings were Tuesdays and Thursdays, and that’s when our co-ops all met. You do have to be open to what is community to you may not be feasible for somebody else.
What I heard you say is you really just have to prioritize, how bad do I want to connect with that person? If it’s bad enough, then what works for them? Is it a video call? Is it a Zoom call? Is it a phone app where we can talk asynchronously throughout the week? I have a good friend. We use WhatsApp. We have conversations every day, but there are times in our lives where it’s five days, six days before I can respond to any of her messages.
The same goes for her, but it doesn’t feel like we’ve missed anything because we just pick up. We just listen to the messages we missed on. I think what I would like to do now, because you’ve given us such good information, good information about giving yourself grace, giving other people grace, good information about building structures that allow for flexibility so that you don’t feel boxed in, really great insight into that very unique challenge that the working homeschool mom gets that homeschooling moms don’t have, working moms don’t have independently.
Then also, you’ve even added a little extra flavor in there for us, Jen, talking about how there’s working homeschool moms who work outside the home, working homeschool moms who work inside the home. I would imagine there’s also a different layer of complexity depending on whether you work for yourself or you work for somebody else. All of that adds to even tighter sub-communities within this smallish, larger community.
For the person listening today who didn’t even know you could work and homeschool at the same time, much less know that people do this by choice or necessity or whatever, and they’ve just never really thought about what it takes to work and homeschool or to work or homeschool, what do you think is one small step they could take to be more supportive or more understanding to the people like you in their life, maybe early in the journey even? I think not to assume that the work or the homeschool was the problem. Usually, the first thing someone would say is, well, you don’t have to do both, so just give one of them up. It was usually the opposite of whatever they were doing.
If they were working, then just give up homeschooling. I think just assuming that that’s the problem immediately puts the other person on defense. They’re defensive, like, no, I made this choice.
I think coming from a part of understanding, I think instead of saying, assuming that they need to quit, the thing is to listen. I think having someone to just stop and say, that sounds really difficult, and then trying to figure out what is actually the problem, because it’s not usually the work or the homeschool. It’s usually the lack of space, the lack of time.
Even just making small changes can make a huge difference, but if you don’t know what to change, then that’s really hard, so having a listening ear. Okay, so listening without judgment sounds like the number one thing that any of us can do. It doesn’t even cost money.
It doesn’t even cost money to listen without judgment. Novel concept there. Okay, so now let’s flip it to the person who is personally impacted, right? That mom who is out there living this every single day, up late lesson planning after work, trying to juggle fractions.
Remember how fractions were the bane of my existence? I could never teach Lily fractions. I tried my best. Trying to teach fractions in between work meetings.
What would you say to them if they’re listening now, and they’re like, my best is simply not good enough, and it never will be? That they’re wrong. That their best is exactly what they need, and the thing is, I think so much pressure on all moms, on all people, is that we have to get it right, and it has to be perfect, and they forget that making mistakes and learning with your children is part of the process. You know, I was thinking of fractions because I also had the fraction problem, and I passed it off to my husband.
I was like, I cannot do fractions. You have to do fractions, and he did fractions with the pizza. Months my child would not eat pizza.
Hated pizza because she hated fractions, and we ended up going through one, two, three math programs before we found the right one for her, and then once we hit that, it wasn’t joy and colors and, you know, perfect land, but she understood fractions. She got through the lesson. She moved on to what was easier for her, and just for those who are panicking because they’re like, okay, my child needs to know this thing, and I’ll keep this short, is that my youngest hated math.
Weakest subject does not like it, doesn’t want anything to do with it, and her job now is in cash balancing, which is math all day, every day, and she loves her job, and she has, yeah, it just amazes me that that’s the way life works, right? So if you’re out there panicking, and you’re feeling like, I’m messing up. It’s not good enough. I’m never going to get this right.
It will get easier. Step back and remember why you’re doing this, and what is the goal for home educating your children? We all have different goals, but in the end, hopefully, it is teaching your child how to learn. If they know how they process information, if they know how to research, once they can read and research and they can learn pretty much anything because we can’t do it, right? It’s changing too fast.
Look at technology. I can’t keep up. I’m years behind.
So, you know, as long as your children know how they learn, they understand that, they’ll be okay. All right. That’s great advice.
So just for folks listening, especially if you are in that particular group, Jen has a plethora. I don’t resources on her website, which is practicalbydefault.com. You can find her on most social media, but especially Instagram, Facebook, Practical By Default. We’ll put the information on the Facebook group here in the show notes as well.
So that’ll be on the show notes. The blog article will share to stories all the places. Now, we’re at my favorite part of the show.
We call it Freak Flags Fly. And Jen, it is a rapid fire segment, which means five fast questions, no wrong answers. You’re just supposed to tell me the first thing that comes to mind.
Are you ready? No. Spoken like a true planner. Okay.
The first one, everybody thinks is easy, but oftentimes stumps them. Finish the sentence. You’re my kind of freak if.
I think if you just do what’s right for you and your family, seriously, like whatever that is, when it comes to, I want to say education, because that’s what I talk to people mostly about. But like so many people come to me, they know I talk about homeschooling and they’re like, I want to put my kid back in school. And they freak out thinking I’m going to be like, absolutely not.
No. If your child does best in public school, please put them in the public school system, like do what’s right for you. So I think you’re my kind of freak if you could just make that choice, talk to somebody, talk it through, but yeah, do what’s right for your family.
Okay. What is something you love that your friends just don’t get? Sourdough. Hey, we have sourdough.
I get the sourdough. We can talk about sourdough offline. I do.
I love making sourdough. And my friends are like, you can just go to the store and buy it. I’m like, not the same.
No, not the same. And do you do gluten-free sourdough? I do not. Okay.
I had somebody else on the show who does gluten-free sourdough. Okay. Yeah.
I didn’t know that was a thing, but it’s a thing. This is what happens when you start talking sourdough with people, you find out all sorts of things you didn’t know you needed to know, but now you do. Yes.
What community would you infiltrate just to understand it better? Maybe the homesteading community. It intrigues me. Like, how are they doing this? I don’t know.
Yeah. Yeah. Sounds good.
What tool, ritual, or practice helps you stay connected to your people? I would say probably a routine. And that is every day I check in with my people. So I check in on all the platforms.
I usually start with my morning cup of coffee and, you know, I start with Facebook group and then I move into Voxer and all the things. So yeah, just making like, it’s important. No, it’s a priority.
All right. Finally, who’s someone doing freakishly good work who deserves a bigger stage? Okay. That’s a really good question.
And I would probably say Lisa from the great, the Canadian, great Canadian homeschooler or Canadian homeschooler. I’m not sure if it says great in there or not, but her audience is Canadian homeschoolers. And as a Canadian homeschooler, it is really, really hard to find resources and support just for Canada, especially when in math, like money, because we used American curriculum for our children and it was, they didn’t understand your money at all.
That was really hard, which is total, like, relatable because I’ve talked to American people. They’re like, you have monopoly money. I’m like, and you guys don’t have any other colors.
Like it all looks the same. So we had a lot of fun with that, but it was really hard. So I think what she does is like, she steps in and she supports other homeschoolers with heart.
And she’s very based on like finding Canadian resources. Awesome. Okay.
So that’s Lisa at the Canadian homeschooler. We will look up the information. We will have the correct information for her in the show notes, blog article, all the places.
And don’t feel bad about not understanding our money because, you know, we don’t understand your money. We don’t understand metric system and we totally do not understand the Celsius conversion. It’s simple, but yet not.
All I know is that it gets hotter than 45 here. And all of you Canadians look like you’ll melt when I tell you that it’s 45. That’s all I know.
All right, Jen, thank you so much for your time today. Thank you for especially putting words around this tension that we have. I mean, no, millions of women are not working in homeschooling every single day, but there are so many.
And like you said early on, so many people around them want to make the problem, the fact that they work and homeschool and ask them to quit one or the other. And that’s not necessarily the answer. So what you have shown us, I think is that doing both doesn’t have to fracture you.
It can actually just make you more dynamic and give you full permission to be the rebel that we all love. That’s why we find our freaks around here, because we have a deep appreciation for good rebels. Everybody listening, though, I just, even if you’re not a mom, you don’t work and homeschool or any of that, if none of the circumstances of this episode fit you, I hope you take away that if you’ve ever been told you have to choose between two things that are really important to you, that you don’t, right? Belonging does not require you to split yourself in two.
Somewhere there is somebody out there that has built community for people just like you, who love both of those things, whatever they are. And if you can’t find it, this is your permission slip to go out and build it. Until next time.
That’s it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird, makes you wonderful.
Normal was never the point.
Jul 15, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
There are people who are not making themselves known, but they are paying close attention, and they’re evaluating, and they’re back to belonging. It’s not about proximity, right? It is about alignment. They’re checking.
Are you in alignment? Is there unity in everything you say and do, right? Is your moderation consistent? Are your rules real? Are they enforced? Do people who cause problems, do those problems get handled? Do those people get excused? You can’t pretend that long, okay? They’re watching. They’re waiting. They’re looking.
Do you mean what you say? We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tanya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras, because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful.
Normal was never the point. Most people think loneliness is a math problem. More people equals less lonely, right? Very simple.
Big network, active social life. If you’re surrounded by family, you must be fine, but that’s not actually how loneliness works. You can be in a crowded room and feel completely alone.
You can move away from everyone you’ve ever known and still feel connected than ever before. Alicia Shidler did that. She left California where her family was, where she grew up, lifelong friends, everything familiar, and moved to a homestead in rural Michigan.
By most people’s calculations, that should have been isolating, moving from a city out to the middle of nowhere, but it wasn’t. And the reason it wasn’t is the point of today’s episode. We have been sold a version of belonging that really is just about proximity and numbers.
I know I’ve said that before here on the show, but today I really want to unpack it. This is a hill I am going to die on. If people are around you, if you’re invited to places, if you have a full calendar, everybody assumes you belong.
You’re a social butterfly. Life must be great. You have this huge network, right? You’re connected.
You’re fine. Belonging isn’t proximity. It’s alignment.
It’s that feeling that the people around you actually see you. They don’t just tolerate you. They don’t just conclude you out of politeness, but they actually get who you are, what’s important to you, and why you do things the way you do.
Alicia lived in California near family her whole life. She was nothing if not surrounded. And yet the life she wanted, a garden, chickens, goats, and intentional food choices wasn’t something that the people around her understood.
Now, they didn’t fight her on it. They didn’t tell her she was stupid. They didn’t disinherit her, kick her out of the family, the family estate as it were.
They just didn’t get it. And there is a particular loneliness that comes with being loved by people who probably wouldn’t say this, but kind of inside their heads think you’re a little crazy. So when Alicia and her husband moved to Michigan, they weren’t running toward family, running toward community, like a lot of people who move.
They were running toward a life that they wanted, that didn’t exist yet, that they had hoped to build together. You know, the property, the space, the ability to actually do the things that they had been talking about for years, all of that motivated them to move. And community was something that they had to build from scratch.
And yet, you know, Alicia’s not homesick, wasn’t homesick, right? She doesn’t talk about her home in Michigan as rural as it is, as being isolating. She describes it as the place that she finally feels she has room to be who she actually is. The people who found their way into her life there share her priorities in a way people back home didn’t even understand.
And I think that’s what happens when you stop optimizing your life for proximity and you start optimizing for alignment. It’s the whole purpose of the show here, right? We call it Find Your Freaks, right? Because when you find your freaks, you are optimizing your life for alignment and not just focused on who happens to be nearby. You get to decide where you belong, right? Other people can extend their welcome, but they can’t give you belonging.
That’s an inside job. Alicia knew what she was looking for. She moved 2,000 miles, as it were, to get it.
And she’s less lonely now than when she was surrounded by people who loved her but didn’t understand her. Now, this interview took place a little more than a year ago. Alicia is actually one of the first people that I interviewed for the podcast.
And initially, this interview was supposed to be part of launch week. But some circumstances changed that made it more appropriate to go out now. And one of those circumstances is me and my life.
Because my interview with Alicia, along with this book, which I’ll hold up now for our YouTube viewers, this book, this book, if you can see it, Sustaining Humanity by Phil McKay. Get it? It’s tiny. You can read it.
It’s easy. But this book, along with my conversation with Alicia, played a major part in combination with a decision that I have made in my own life for the last several months. My family and I, but mainly me, me and my oldest daughter, are converting our front yard into a victory garden, right? My oldest has this vision that she has had since she was five years old in Girl Scouts, thank you Girl Scouts, of having a yard with food that is accessible to anybody who walks by and wants it.
Her vision is that, you know, no fence, no gate, anybody walking by could freely help themselves to whatever is growing there and happens to be ripe at the time. Now, we live in a suburban neighborhood. We live in a very large, like, large city in terms of geography and population, but because it’s such a big geographic space, it doesn’t feel huge.
It feels more suburban. So this isn’t a homestead, right? I cannot raise livestock. Even if my husband were to let me have chickens and rabbits and goats, he wouldn’t.
But even if he would, like, my neighbors aren’t going for that, nor is the city and code enforcement going to go for that either, right? So it’s not, I’m not aspiring to be Alicia. We couldn’t be Alicia if we wanted to. But even this very small, very safe, and I would argue modern, like I said, suburban version of this choice confuses the bejesus out of people.
In fact, when I mentioned this online back would be, I’m trying to count months, probably eight months ago, several friends immediately said, oh, your neighbors are going to be furious when you start attracting unhoused people to your neighborhood. In fact, some even drove by to say like, oh, we’re just trying to check out the situation and see if any unhoused people are pitching tents yet. You know, not, oh my gosh, what a cute idea.
Oh my gosh, you and your daughter are bonding. This is going to be so sweet. The thing that she has been talking about since she, you know, she was five for like 10, 11 years, you’re actually on board with helping her make that into a reality.
Not like, oh my gosh, I can’t imagine what you are going to be teaching the girls or what you and your husband are going to learn or how much fun you’re going to have or any of that. The only response we got initially was about danger as if hungry people are people to fear. Now let’s be fair.
These are people who care about me. They care about my family, right? They’re not trying to be mean. They’re not trying to discourage me.
Really what they’re doing is projecting their own discomfort onto my yard, onto my choices, onto the people they imagine showing up at it, right? They’re thinking like, oh my gosh, worst case scenario. And you know, when I think about Alicia and our conversation where she’s talking about her family members who are in the medical field, who like think she’s lost her mind because she doesn’t cook with seed oils and how she handles it, right? And she says, you know, I’m not going to convince them. So she doesn’t waste her breath.
She doesn’t even try, right? This isn’t a you’re either with me or you’re against me sort of thing. She’s like, you know what? They’ll see how I live. They’ll make their own judgments and we will all move on, right? Their opinion of how she wants to live doesn’t really have any bearing in how she’s living and she doesn’t expect how she’s living to have any bearing on them.
You know, there’s a patience. I mean, if you’ve listened to the episode, if you haven’t, you really should. There’s just a quiet, patient acceptance that Alicia has that is really beautiful because what I got from her and what I hope you get from her is, you know, she just has this willingness to just live without needing everybody’s approval.
And you know, when I compare that to seeing how uncomfortable some people are by our little front yard project, I realized how much that has nothing to do with my front yard. It has nothing to do with what we’re doing. It has to do with their own beliefs about who is hungry, what kind of person is hungry, and what hungry people may do out of desperation and whether those people are safe.
And that’s not up to me. Just like Alicia has decided that people who know her and how they feel about how she lives isn’t really up to her. And you know, this idea of intentional living, because I really think that is the crux of Alicia’s story, right? She is making very intentional decisions about how she lives, how she raises her children, and what she’s doing.
You know, intentional living to any regard makes you inconvenient to some people, because a lot of people just don’t think about anything, right? They just kind of go about their day not really thinking about what’s next, taking each moment as it comes. And being inconvenient to others, I think it’s important to point out that doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing anything wrong. Sometimes it means that you’re just holding up a mirror that they don’t want to look at.
And where I think some of us go wrong is we think it’s our job to make them look in the mirror, but it’s not, right? It’s not our job to make them look in the mirror, but also it’s not our job to necessarily put the mirror down, right? We get to keep holding it up if we want until other people with the same mirror find us, or we find other people holding up the same mirror. And then we’re like, hey, you, me, we should chat. We seem to have a lot in common.
And that brings me to another point. I’m going to carry this silly metaphor of mine just a little bit further, if you’ll indulge me. You know, you might not find your fellow mirror gazers where you live or work, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
There’s a persistent assumption I have found, at least in my work, that in-person community is the gold standard. An online community is some kind of consolation prize, right? You do online stuff because you can’t find real people nearby. It’s viewed as a substitute, as a proxy, not the real thing, and definitely not nearly as good as the real thing.
And my conversation with Alicia totally tears that apart, right? She has found online community to be much more rich with the resources and the supports that she needs as she’s going from being an urban Californian to a rural Midwesterner. So when it’s come to finding community and resources and advice and help around food and health and homesteading, she had to go online to get that information long before she even picked which state she was moving to, right? Before she decided whether she was going to have chickens or was she going to get chickens and then goats, goats then chickens? Was she ever going to be brave enough to get a cow? When she was back home figuring out food allergies and all of these other things, it was online community that was there for her while the people in her real life really didn’t see how canola oil had anything to do with how her family’s health and well-being was. So in this case, and I think for a lot of us, even me, right, the online spaces are not a backup plan, right? They often, for many of us all over the world, are a primary source of the knowledge and community we need because the people who understand us and especially certain aspects, you know, if you’re dealing with health issues, if you have a specific industry you’re working in, if there’s a major life change you want to make, right? Many times the people who understand you or the people you’re really comfortable being honest with are scattered across the country if not across the world.
They’re not clustered in your little neighborhood. So online and in-person communities, spaces, friends, they’re not better and they’re not worse. They’re just different tools for different things.
One example that Alicia gave that I thought was so brilliant is that, you know, her church small group in Michigan shows up with equipment when she needs a field plowed, right? When she needs something big done on the farm because they’ve all got that stuff and they understand how to do that because they live in similar spaces. But it’s her Facebook groups that helped her figure out how to acclimate from California to a cold Michigan winter, right? You need both. Alicia needs both this in-person community and she needs her online community.
Equally valuable just for different things and, you know, I found the same to be true for me. When it comes to what grows well in my area in the month of June or in the month of July or in the month of August, I talk to my friends who happen to have gardens here because they can tell me. When I’m talking about like issues with our soil, right? I’m talking to my friends here because they’ve got the same soil.
They’re dealing with the same thing. But when I’m talking about how to maximize my space so that I can feed my family, I can grow enough food to feed my family and share food with others in our community, I’m going online because nobody in my town shares that passion that I have for doing that. Both valuable.
I need both. I just need them for different things. You know, Alicia is not an online community manager.
She’s not a strategist but she gave a great playbook of what works and what doesn’t work in community building online from her perspective and I think it’s important to chat about that. You know, she talked about joining multiple chicken groups and the dramatically different experiences she had in each and as we were talking, you could track those experiences and the differences to how the communities were run. What worked for her were groups.
She’s a Facebook fan so almost all of her communities were on Facebook. They weren’t on different platforms and you know what worked for her were groups that were searchable. They used keywords and had their content highly organized.
They had key resources pinned to the top of the group. You know, the featured post section. They made it easy to get answers to common questions especially those beginner questions without having to ask.
They had moderators who were present and responsive who enforced the rules consistently, right? It wasn’t like, oh, I enforced the rules on Monday but I don’t enforce them on Thursday. Oh, this person can do get away with this one thing but that person can’t. She very easily could see what the written and unwritten rules of engagement were in in the groups that she favored.
She found that the groups were sized appropriately for their topic and she found that the shared purpose was clear and the moderators protected that shared purpose. Hey, we are all here for this purpose and anything outside of this purpose doesn’t belong here. Now, what didn’t work and she had a longer list of things that didn’t work than things that did but I’ll sum up.
You know, what didn’t work were groups that were so large. Either groups that were so large or it’s really the ratios that were off, right? It was not enough moderators or admins to manage the size of the group so that the rules became unenforceable. Spam was constant.
It was just too unwieldy or admins who refused to delegate and kind of disappeared, right? They got overwhelmed and they just took off and let the group just become a little bit of a lord of the flies. No accountability when members cross lines. She had a situation where somebody in the group didn’t like something that went on in the group and was targeting her on her personal profile and like that’s not okay but the moderators didn’t do anything about it and that’s a group she left immediately, right? Like as soon as that happened and she realized that the moderators and admins were not going to protect her, she was out and it wasn’t because she was necessarily scared.
It’s just like if you’re not gonna protect me, why should I continue participating with my whole self here, right? A community that doesn’t protect its members isn’t a community, right? It’s just a crowd. I always say to be a community you have to have first of all you have to have a leader. There has to be somebody in charge.
There has to be a way for members to connect with that leader. There has to be a way for members to connect with content or you know whatever the topic is of the group and there has to be a way for members to connect with each other around that topic or that leader depending on the focus of the group. There’s a social contract in communities and it’s imperative that everybody in the community honor that social contract.
The only person or people who can enforce the social contract are those in charge and they need to not shirk that responsibility. The other thing that I have found is that this homestead gardening, grow your own food, what else can you call it? Maybe like this self-sufficiency sort of space can get really clicky, right? There is a particular flavor of gatekeeping in communities built around lifestyle choices in general I would say that kind of feel countercultural, right? It’s like if you’re not doing it the right way, if you’re not a purist then you’re not really committed and if you’re not really committed then you can’t be part of the cool kids, right? And I hear about this a lot of times like in health and fitness spaces where it’s like okay so if you’re not getting up at 4 a.m every single day cold plunging and downing your like all-natural electrolytes and you know using red lights in your home so your home looks like a lizard aquarium then you don’t really care about health and wellness. You’re not really optimizing your life and you know I’ve seen it the same way it’s like okay well it’s not enough to just grow your food, right? There’s spaces where you like you’re not allowed to till, right? There’s a whole segment of the world who believes in no-till gardening and there’s other people who are like I just want stuff to grow, right? There’s the anti-pesticides, there’s the pro-pesticide people, there’s the anti-insecticide pro-insecticide people and herbicides and all of that sort of stuff and people get very entrenched, right? If you’re not 100% with me you’re 100% against me and you know Alicia’s way of navigating this very similar to mine, right? She calls herself a hoverer.
I would use the term lurker, right? Where you kind of go into a group and as the newbie you sort of sit back and you consume, right? You go there, you get your questions answered, you’re looking in the resources, you’re reading people’s posts, you’re reading comments, you’re seeing how the group responds to questions. Is this a mean group that slaps your hand every time you ask a question without searching at first? Is this the kind of group that acts like you’re an There’s one group I’m in that’s about growing berries in my particular garden zone and you know somebody will post a picture of their berry plant and they’re like what’s going on with my raspberries and there are at least 10 people who will say, have you tried google? How about googling instead of wasting our time? It’s mean, it’s nasty. So you know what? I don’t post anything in there.
Why? Because I know I don’t know and I knew I could google it or ask somebody else but good golly, I’m in this group to learn stuff and I’m gonna ask here because this is the highest concentration of people growing berries in my garden zone that I know but not everybody does that. Some people jump in and they start asking questions, they get their hands slapped, they get their feelings hurt and they bolt. So you know for Alicia, she watches before she participates, she gets a feel for the room because she doesn’t want to invest her time, her energy in a space that isn’t going to value that time and energy and in many cases she shared that she uses a lot of groups just as databases or libraries, right? Searching them for resources, finding what she needs and then leaving and she doesn’t ever feel obligated to perform as a member and so for anybody listening who has a community of any sort, I want you to think about that.
Think about the fact that you have some people who will never make themselves known because that’s just not the place, it’s not the purpose the group serves for them regardless of the reason you set up the group and you know as a group leader, that may not be my favorite thing, right? Because I like to have conversations with the people in my group and I like to do all these things but as a group member in some of these spaces, I get it. I get it. You know, I would rather somebody go take the approach of sitting back, watching, observing, getting the resources they need and sort of tiptoeing into a space than going all in and then dismissing it because of one off comment.
You know, like everything that Alicia does, right? Her approach to community just like her approach to life and living is intentional. It’s slower, it’s deliberate and she knows what she wants and she seeks to get it and when she can’t get it, she looks for it somewhere else. So think about that.
I’m not saying that you know you have to resign yourself to that. I’m not saying to design around it. I’m just saying keep in mind whether you’re posting to social media, you’re running a community of some sort, that more is caught than taught.
There are people who are not making themselves known but they are paying close attention and they’re evaluating and they’re back to belonging. It’s not about proximity, right? It is about alignment. They’re checking.
Are you in alignment? Is there unity in everything you say and do, right? Is your moderation consistent? Are your rules real? Are they enforced? Do people who start or who cause problems, do those problems get handled? Do those people get excused? You can’t pretend that long, okay? They’re watching, they’re waiting, they’re looking. Do you mean what you say, right? So group leaders either do the work or they don’t. Members who are careful will eventually figure it out and that’s all.
So just because people don’t comment, don’t make themselves known, doesn’t mean that they’re not paying attention. So to land the plane as it were, I think what is beautiful about Alicia’s story and I do have the gift of recording this episode months after our interview so I’ve really had time to think about it, is that she’s not lonely, right? And she, if anything, proves the point that loneliness isn’t about the number of people around you. It is about feeling seen, feeling heard, more than anything being understood.
And I would say accepted. Accepted and understood. And it comes from, you know, in her case specifically, right, being very clear about who she is and what she values so that she has learned over time to recognize her perfect people when she finds them.
And I think that is something that all of us could benefit from doing. Whether it’s online, it’s in person, it’s around the corner, or it’s across the nation. Sometimes it might start with Facebook group.
Sometimes a Facebook group about chickens, in her case. Sometimes it might start in a Reddit thread or a Discord or Harpy or anywhere else it could be. But the thing is, is it starts somewhere.
And as long as you are exactly yourself in all the places, I think you’re gonna find your perfect people. You’ll find the people who feel like home. Now, if you haven’t listened to episode 28 yet, go do that.
Alicia is exactly herself for the entire conversation, which is increasingly rare. If you want to learn more about her or her family’s business, you’ll find all the links you need in the show notes, along with a link to the book I mentioned, Sustaining Humanity. And you know what, I think what I’ll do is I’m also gonna add a few of the spaces that I’ve found helpful as I’m growing food for my family and community, just in case that’s something that you want to explore.
But in closing, if this show has been a place where you feel a little less alone in your version of weird, please share it with a friend. As our listener base grows, so does what we can do with the show. I’ll see you next time.
And until then, if you do anything, just let your freak flag fly. That’s it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review.
And if you’re craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird, makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
Jun 30, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
[Speaker 1]
Did you know there’s food dyes in marshmallows? And of course, that makes you start looking into the food industry. Why are all these things in our foods?
Why are these chemicals being put into our foods? Do we really need these preservatives? Do we really need these crops, this wheat, all these things that are treated with all of these harmful chemicals that are hurting our bodies?
And so that made me start looking into products, and what is in these products that I’m putting on my body? What is in this lip balm that I’m putting on my lips? What is in this cream that I’m putting on my face?
One thing at a time, don’t try to eliminate everything at once. Don’t question everything at once. Question, look into, research one thing at a time.
Because anything else is going to overwhelm you, it’s going to make your head spin, it’s going to make you feel like you can’t eat anything at all because everything is poison and everything is going to kill you and everything is going to make your family sick. When I tell them, no, I don’t eat canola oil, I’d rather use beef fat or butter, they think I’m crazy. But I’m not going to convince them, they’re going to have to see the difference in me over time.
[Speaker 2]
We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tanya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras. Because around here, what makes you weird, makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. We love to talk about community around here, how to build it, grow it, and sustain it.
But today, we’re talking about what it means to live with intention, even if your version of intentional living is a lot different than the rest of the world’s and maybe even quite inconvenient, if we’re being honest. Today, I am here with Alicia Scheidler, a wife, mom, and small business owner who is just likely to be moving chickens as she is to be rendering tallow or reading package labels with the kind of intensity that some of us actually don’t read anything, to be perfectly honest. We just don’t read with that level of intensity.
So Alicia, I just want to get us started today by you telling us who are your freaks and why do you love them?
[Speaker 1]
Well, my husband, he’s right up there with me. I have a couple of friends who are just incredible. It’s spread throughout the country.
They’re definitely my freaks. I’ve only lived here in Michigan for a couple of years, but I’ve started to collect some freaks here too. And I have a couple of friends who are already just priceless in my life.
And then the support of my parents and my kids too. Freaks turn out freaks. My kids are freaks too.
[Speaker 2]
Well, it sounds to me, just based on how you answered that question, personal relationships are important to you.
[Speaker 1]
Very. Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
And you didn’t always live in Michigan, right? You lived in a different state.
[Speaker 1]
Right. I was born and raised in California and we moved to Michigan a little over two years ago in 2023.
[Speaker 2]
So what’s that been like? Because I, native Californian over here, lived my whole life up and down highway 99 for the most part. I happen to know it’s a little bit different culture in other places.
What was that culture clash like for you or was there one?
[Speaker 1]
I think we were pretty well prepared for it because we were just, we were ready for the different lifestyle. We wanted to do the things that we didn’t really have the availability to do in California. We wanted to have a bigger garden than we could have on our 8,000 square foot property.
We wanted to be able to raise chickens and we raised chickens for eggs and for meat. I’ve always wanted goats and that was like a lifelong dream of mine. And I have goats.
I couldn’t have goats in California where I lived. And I did live in a much different part of California than you. I lived down south of LA.
[Speaker 2]
Right. There’s a lot more open space where I’m at than there is south of LA.
[Speaker 1]
There is not down there. Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
So Alicia, it sounds to me like you left California and you started a homestead. And I’m really curious because first of all, coming from a very urban part of our state into a much more rural area. I know just because we talked before we started recording that the homestead life was already a dream.
Yes. But talk us through how that evolved because there is a big, big leap one must make from I kind of sort of would like to do that one thing one day and actually having chickens not just for eggs but for meat and goats and a garden that’s much larger than you would fit on an 8,000 square foot property.
[Speaker 1]
So I really think my journey with all of this started like in 2009, 2010. My older son, so another thing that’s kind of freaky, I have a 22-year-old daughter, a 19-year-old son, and a three-year-old son. So there’s like 15 and 18-year age gaps with my kids.
But my 19-year-old was just out of control hyper all the time. It was like his ears were stopped up. He couldn’t listen, had his hearing tested.
It worked. But I just couldn’t figure out what was going on. And I’m like, there’s got to be something.
This is not normal. And somebody that I know had told me, oh, well, you know, I just read an article recently for work. She worked in the science industry that, you know, food dyes can cause hyperactivity in kids.
And I was like, okay, well, you know, I found some articles. I found some things. And it’s like, well, let’s try this.
So I started reading package labels, which I had never done before. And I started eliminating food dyes from his diet. Did you know there’s food dyes in marshmallows?
[Speaker 2]
Actually, no. I want to tell you I did because I know a lot of things.
[Speaker 1]
But no, I did not know there is food dye in marshmallows and in most pickles. So I had to read.
[Speaker 2]
That makes sense because pickles are a very unnatural color.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So I started reading every label. I started just being really careful with what he ate.
It meant we weren’t, you know, we didn’t eat out a lot, but it meant we weren’t, we were eating out even less because I was trying to be so careful of what he took in. And over the course of about four weeks, he was a different kid, completely different kid, so much more mellow, listened better, just incredible difference. And then we had a busy day one day, somebody offered him a bag of Skittles, not thinking.
I said, yes, my crazy child was back. So this food dyes has been a thing for me for that long. And then about probably 12 years ago now, I was diagnosed with celiac disease, which for those who don’t know, is an autoimmune disorder, where when you eat gluten, your own body attacks itself, and it kills off parts of your small intestine causing malabs, you know, you’re not absorbing nutrients.
And I lost 40 pounds in two months, and it was terrifying. And then I had to read labels even more diligently. And of course, that makes you start looking into the food industry.
Why are all these things in our foods? Why are these chemicals being put into our foods? Do we really need these preservatives?
Do we really need these crops, this wheat, all these things that are treated with all of these harmful chemicals that are hurting our bodies? When I married my husband almost five years ago, we’re like, well, let’s see if we can start a little garden in our backyard. And we started raising whatever food we could.
And just being really different and really intentional with how we ate. And we noticed the difference in how we felt. What was that difference like?
I didn’t feel bloated all the time anymore. More clarity in my mind, able to focus easier. One of the big things we’ve cut out is seed oils.
So like your canola oil, sunflower oil, vegetable oil, all of that. And we don’t sunburn very easily anymore. And I had heard that that was a thing.
But I was like, I don’t know. We’ll see. I used to have to put on sunblock if I went outside for 15 minutes, and I don’t sunburn anymore.
[Speaker 2]
That’s fascinating because I have seen that too, because I was doing a lot of Googling about avoiding sunburns in Hawaii and summer months, because I have a redheaded daughter. But I’ve never been able to talk to somebody firsthand who said, yeah, no, we eliminated seed oils, and now we don’t sunburn as much.
[Speaker 1]
Most of the time, you mention stuff like that to somebody, and they look at you like you’re from outer space.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, see, this is the beauty of talking with me because, yeah, nothing shocks me these days, just not much. And also, I think I just have a natural curiosity. And, you know, and I think for the purpose of this show, in particular, what I am enjoying is the ability to just pull back the curtain on all these different experiences and versions of community or efforts to escape isolation that people might see a 45-second clip on social media that presents one very specific picture.
But in the context of a half-hour, 45-minute conversation, we can add so much more context to it.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, definitely.
[Speaker 2]
So what you’re saying is, so really, your journey started with noticing that you had a child who was affected by food dye and then doing the whole thing of making that choice and then, out of convenience, making a different choice and then seeing the cause and effect of that. Yeah. Then your own health issue, and I know a lot of women with autoimmune disorders that sometimes they creep up overnight, and sometimes it’s one of those things where it’s like, oh, that’s why I felt like this for the last 25 years of my life, no idea that wasn’t normal.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
And then that sort of has just put you on a path where other things have come your way, right?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
Avoiding seed oils. How does all of that, because that’s kind of been the path, very incremental, how has all of that led to the choices that you’re making today? What does life look like in the Scheibler house right now?
[Speaker 1]
So you did mention I’m a small business owner. I render tallow. I render suet into tallow.
And from that, I make body butters and lip balms. And that started even before I met my husband, really, so probably like seven years ago. And I just was tired of finding things.
Like I was using a popular mall store that sells products for bath and body. I was using their hand sanitizers, which are really popular. And then one day, because I never thought to look at a label on a hand sanitizer.
It had weed in it. I’m like, if I’m using this at an amusement park to clean my hands before eating a snack while I’m waiting in line for a ride, I’m glutening myself. You know, there’s gluten in this.
And so that made me start looking into products. And what is in these products that I’m putting on my body? What is in this lip balm that I’m putting on my lips?
What is in this cream that I’m putting on my face? And it’s been a gradual thing with us looking at things like, oh, you know what? Well, we’ve learned that this thing doesn’t work well with how our bodies are meant to function.
So let’s take this out. Grocery shopping, we don’t get a lot from the middle aisles of the store. You know, they say shop the perimeter of the store.
We don’t even buy milk at the grocery store. I drive to a dairy once a week and pick up four half-gallon mason jars with raw milk in it that was milked from the cows the day before. I have shelves lining my laundry room that are filled with foods that I’ve canned, that I’ve grown.
And my goal ultimately is to do more of that every year. You know, I don’t want to buy store-bought salsa anymore. I can grow all the ingredients to make it myself.
You know, dinner time tends to be either chicken we’ve raised, beef or pork that we’ve bought that’s been pasture raised locally, and we aim for certain vegetables and fruits have to be organic. We won’t eat conventionally grown of certain fruits and vegetables, just knowing the pesticides and things that are on those and how they make us feel over time.
[Speaker 2]
I mean, there’s a couple of questions that I have, but before we kind of go to the community aspect, because even though we have the internet, I know some of the things that you’re doing are best learned and adopted when you can talk to other people who have learned them and are adopting them and getting those best practices. So we’ll definitely talk about that, but I think we have to talk about the elephant in the room, because as you know, right, we’re a dual income household over here. You know, I spent many of my kids’ years working outside the home.
I think the elephant in the room is there’s going to be people listening who are like, oh yeah, must be nice, because we’re all so judgy-judgy when we listen to other people’s lives, especially when those people can’t see us, right? We can be super judgy. You know, oh, must be nice, or somebody just might say, you know, that sounds so inconvenient.
[Speaker 1]
It is inconvenient. It’s inconvenient making three meals a day and cleaning up after three meals a day, but when I look at the alternative and what it can do to the health of my family, I push through that heaping secret dishes and then I dirty more dishes and make another meal, because to me and to my husband, the alternative isn’t worth it. And my husband does work.
He works a full-time job outside of the home, and without that, we couldn’t just do all of this. We have days where literally from sun up to sun down, we’re both going all day, all day, all day, just to get everything done around here. We don’t sit and watch tv in the evening, because we don’t have time.
[Speaker 2]
Well, and how big’s the property you’re on?
[Speaker 1]
We have 7.49 acres, so almost seven and a half acres, which coming from an 8,000 square foot property is a lot, and we do have a small barn. We have a pretty sizable garden, and we have a couple of other fields that part of our community is going to help us come plow them over and use these big mowers called a brush hog. I’ve never actually seen one in action, so I’m excited to see this.
[Speaker 2]
We’ll google it and figure out what it looks like.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, well, and he’s going to drive it over here, because they live around the corner. So we’re going to brush hog that field, and we’re going to see about growing a cut flower garden. Why not?
[Speaker 2]
Why not?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, we have the property for it, so why not?
[Speaker 2]
Okay, so husband works outside the home. I’m assuming gone all day, right? Yep.
You have the, is it a bath and body company at this point?
[Speaker 1]
I would say more just body, because the only things I make is body butters, lip balms, and then I do have another balm that we kind of use as an all-purpose balm. Like, we use it in place of neosporin, burn cream, you name it.
[Speaker 2]
Okay, so tallow-based body care, all of it.
[Speaker 1]
Yep.
[Speaker 2]
And then you’ve got this property. I’m guessing a lot of that property care, the chickens, the goats, the garden, that falls to you, because you’re the one who’s not gone.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, we have morning chores and we have evening chores, and most days the morning chores are on me, which is fine. It takes me 20-30 minutes. It’s not hard.
And then in the evening, my husband and I work it together, and we try to do the harder things, the things that are a little more laborious, in the evening when we can do it together.
[Speaker 2]
Okay.
[Speaker 1]
So things like hauling water out to the meat chickens that are out in the field, that takes a little more time and it’s a little more work, so that gets done in the evening.
[Speaker 2]
Got it. And then how do the kids, like, do they factor into the homesteading life? Do they not?
Because I know you’ve got older ones, but I don’t know who’s inside the house and who’s not inside the house at this point.
[Speaker 1]
My daughter does work full-time, and my son started a new job where he’s currently working full-time, and they’re going to work, or part-time, and they’re going to work him up to full-time. When they’re here, if I need their help, they’re super willing to help. My daughter does get up to be available for my three-year-old every morning when I go out for chores, because I don’t want him to just wake up and wander the house alone, and a lot of times he’s not awake when I go outside.
But yeah, they’re helpful when we need help. They didn’t choose the chickens and the goats in the garden, so we don’t put a lot of that on them, but we’re not afraid to ask them for help if we need it, and most of the time they’ll step up and help, especially if it’s keeping an eye on their little brother while we’re doing something that he can’t be involved in.
[Speaker 2]
Oh my gosh, that’s lovely. That is probably the best review and endorsement of having a large age gap that I have ever heard.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, they adore their baby brother, and he adores them, and they all work together, and I love it.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, gosh, that’s like a mom’s dream right there. So it sounds like you’ve lived a lot of life, right? So, you know, you’ve started over in a new state, and you, let’s just say, in a world maybe obsessed with convenience, you’ve chosen to live, like you said, a fairly inconvenient life, but that is very on purpose.
What is choosing what’s best not necessarily easy? What does that look like day to day? Like what is sort of a choice that maybe it was hard to make initially because the convenient route was so much more programmed in, but now you can’t think of doing a different way?
[Speaker 1]
So the cooking three meals a day has been hard because, again, it’s a lot of dishes. We don’t have a microwave, just personal choice, so, you know, heating up food is a little more complicated than throwing something on a paper plate and nuking it for two minutes. You know, I generally have to take something and put it in a baking dish and put it in the oven on low or heat it in a pan on the stove, which, again, creates more dishes.
The dishes, the dishes are always there for you.
[Speaker 2]
Oh my gosh. Dishes, your constant companion.
[Speaker 1]
And laundry. Oh, the laundry. Oh, yes.
So yeah, there’s that. I think that’s been a big, big challenge, and then I think the other thing that’s hard too is the time I have to take to research and look into products and their ingredients and what’s in them and, well, what is this big, long, complicated word that I can’t say? What is this stuff and what does it do and where does its purpose and where does it come from?
And a lot of times, like, I get partway into reading about it. I’m like, yeah, I don’t want to use that. So then I have to search for and find things that I am okay with using.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, and that’s hard. And I’ve had people in my life, my best friend is gluten free. She’s gluten sensitive.
And I remember, you know, seeing her work so hard to clear her diet because she was somebody who initially was like, if I had to give up pasta, you know, I’d rather just die than ever give up pasta or give up bread. And then you get to a point where you’re like, oh, well, me feeling this poorly was caused by that thing. I guess it’s not that important.
But I think she was probably gluten free for about 18 months before somebody brought up her shampoo and conditioner. Nobody, you know, no doctor had ever said, oh, by the way, look at your beauty products. Oh, by the way, look at this.
Oh, by the way, look at that. It was her hairstyle. She was just offhandedly mentioning to her hairstylist that as clean as her diet was, something was still bothering her.
And the stylist was like, oh, well, you know, that line has gluten in it. Yeah. And so that vigilance, I think there’s some people out there who would say, well, you’re just being paranoid.
A little bit won’t hurt you. I’m sure you’ve heard that.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
I’ve heard people say that to my best friend so often. Oh, a little bit won’t hurt you. So there’s that component of it.
And then there is the fact that you’re operating under a level of vigilance that other people aren’t, whether by choice or simply just by ignorance. Right. Like there’s a lot of people who don’t know that there are choices to make.
They just don’t. They don’t think that deeply into it. Right.
And then there is sort of this in-between space trying to go from one place to the other, because I have never met anybody who was able to completely wipe allergens, contaminants, whatever you want to call them, from their lives all in one day. And I think most people kind of are able to make that transition because they find other people who have walked that path before. So how has community played into your journey?
[Speaker 1]
Well, I know you’re familiar with Facebook groups, so that’s mostly where I’ve learned things. Yeah. So, you know, I was like, I’ll be in I think the Facebook group that really started all me finding this is a birth class Facebook group that I joined when I was pregnant with my third.
And it came with access to the Facebook group. So I joined that group. And that was good for learning a lot of things that have changed since I’ve since I had had kids before.
And it’s also a more naturally minded group. So it’s like, okay, well, you know, I’m looking for cleaner, safer products for my baby. And I’m like, wait, you mean that J&J brand that everybody uses to wash their babies is toxic?
What do you? Oh my gosh, yeah. You know, you read about these chemicals and things that are in them.
And you’re like, Oh, okay. So that, you know, leads you to make different choices. And then of course, in those groups, people are always sharing about other groups for related to other topics.
And so that gosh, that sent me on just quite a tailspin ride of finding different groups and different things. I had, you know, friends will share about groups of another friend who eats gluten free, and she shared with me a gluten free sourdough group. So, you know, I’ve found these groups.
And I’m, I guess you would call it a hoverer. Like I’ll join a group and I don’t say anything. I don’t post anything.
I don’t comment. I just kind of hover and watch the group for a few weeks. And I’m like, what can I learn here?
Am I going to be comfortable in this group? Because some of the groups have all their featured things across the top where they’ll have like the gluten free sourdough group has all their recipes pinned to the top that you can find for easy access and everything. And some of the groups I’ve still never commented in, I’ve still never made a post in or anything.
I’ll just go use the group and search it like a library. Because it’s just such a fantastic resource. And I’ll find what I’m looking for.
You know, there’s a non-toxic group that I’m in that’s all about non-toxic products. I’m not gonna lie, I snooze them from my newsfeed because their posts stress me out like crazy.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, yeah.
[Speaker 1]
So I just snooze them all the time. I’ll see a post. I’m like, oh, it must have been 30 days and I re-snooze them.
And then if I’m wondering about something, like I want to know about a certain product, I just go search the group, see if anybody mentions that product, do my looking, and then I go back on my happy life where they’re not in my newsfeed.
[Speaker 2]
Oh my gosh. So there’s a few things I want to pull out of what you just said. So first of all, I think what you mean is it’s like just being constantly confronted with all the toxins that are out there is overwhelming in and of itself.
And there’s only so much you can allow yourself to be exposed to for your own mental health.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
I remember feeling that way as a brand new mom with like parenting and baby groups. Like there was one group that would tell you like all the different things that were recalled all the time. And I was just like, you know what?
I just can’t. Like I don’t care if it makes me a bad mom, but I cannot be confronted with everything that I want within five feet of my child is somehow going to kill my child. Like, right.
No way to live. So from there though, some other things you said that I just really love. So first of all, you know, you call yourself a hoverer, which I love so much more than what we call in the community spaces as a lurker, right?
Because, and it’s funny as when I talk about lurkers, because lurkers are actually one of the six archetypes of a healthy community. Like they are considered a healthy part of a group. And in most groups, you have at least 45% of your community are lurkers.
A lot of groups are more than that, like 85%. And because a good 15% of your community will never, ever let you know they’re there. No matter what your group is about paid or unpaid, a good 15% will never make themselves known.
And you know, in the spaces I run and a lot of people like, I need to activate my lurkers. I need to get my lurkers out there. And the thing is, is if you didn’t have lurkers, if you had zero lurkers in your group, you would actually not have a healthy group.
That’s just, that’s what research says.
[Speaker 1]
I help make groups healthy.
[Speaker 2]
You do. You help make groups healthy. And here’s, here’s the thing that people don’t realize is because I think most people think, well, it’s not a community unless everybody’s talking.
And then I always have to say, but does any of us have the time, energy, or just emotional space for everybody to be talking all at the same time? No, right? Like, I mean, I don’t, and I do this sort of thing for a living.
Like part of what makes me able to be in so many communities and work in so many communities is knowing that on average, only 25% of the group is active at any given time. But what I love about lurkers in particular is lurkers give you the data that you need, right? Clicking on things like you described, clicking on stuff, you’re reading stuff, you are actively consuming the information and that can all be tracked, especially if we’re talking specifically about Facebook groups.
So the data is there, but quite honestly, you’re not asking me 25 million questions that I have to answer every day.
[Speaker 1]
No.
[Speaker 2]
And I just want to say on behalf of all the admins out there, Alicia, thank you. Well, and that’s, thank you. You’re welcome.
[Speaker 1]
And that’s one thing that I will say that irritates me about a group. Like I will be in a group and people will come in and be like, like, let’s say a chicken group. Somebody will come into a chicken group and be like, hi, I’m new here.
I’m a first time chicken keeper. These are my two week old chickens. Can you tell me, is this one a hen or a rooster?
You know what? Give it like six more weeks and you’ll know. Like they grow really fast and, and honestly, like if you would have just joined the group and done some searches, you would see that all the experienced chicken keepers are going to tell you, you can’t really tell at this age.
You’re just hoping for the best. So.
[Speaker 2]
Well, so, okay. So first I want to like unpack a little bit about what you said about your experience with Facebook groups specifically. And then before we started recording, you had referenced that you searched high and low and you really couldn’t find a good online chicken group.
And so what I want to do is I just want to know from your perspective, what makes a good group and a bad group, right? Or a good, let’s, maybe say a useful community and a not so useful community. But before that, so, you know, the things that I think that are important for anybody who’s listening, who’s in communities, especially online or hosts them, is your tendency to come in and get a lay of the land, like observe, access the information in order to, first of all, get answers to the questions that you have, right?
Because I don’t know anybody who needs another community in their life. Nobody wakes up at 2am going, golly gee darn, if I could just have one more Facebook group. Oh my, if I could just have another online membership, that would just totally complete my life.
People join communities to solve problems, whatever they are.
[Speaker 1]
Exactly.
[Speaker 2]
And you go in, you look for the solutions. You’ve already said some of them you choose to only participate in when you have a problem that you know that they can solve. Others, you probably just need to stay more current with them because of the lifestyle.
For instance, 24-7, you need to be free of gluten.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
So it makes sense that you would be actively plugged into a community that talks about gluten-containing areas and also ways to stay safe from gluten. Yeah. I’m curious, though, the chicken thing with Facebook groups.
What made them not useful, more useful? Like what does that look like?
[Speaker 1]
So I was in three chicken groups. I was in one that was ginormous, like absolutely ginormous. And then I was in one that’s run by a gal I found on Instagram when I started learning about chickens.
And her Facebook community is great. It’s not huge. It’s pretty small.
She has a really good moderator who helps her run the group. And you don’t see a lot of spammy posts in there or anything. So it’s good.
And then I’m also in one local to my state, because there are situations with raising chickens in Michigan that you may not, I wouldn’t have had an issue with in California. I didn’t have to worry about how to weatherproof my coop for snow and ice in California, but I do have to be concerned about that here. So I had those three groups.
And the one really huge group, the group owner asked me to be a moderator. And I’m like, okay, yeah, I’ll give it a try. But then that group is so out of control.
And there are the rules are so loose. And there are hundreds of thousands of people in it. So many spammy posts, which, you know, spammy posts make people mad.
People get ticked off. And they’re like, the admins and moderators aren’t doing anything here.
[Speaker 2]
It’s like, well, and they always blame you. They never blame the person who posts the spammy thing.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, like, we’re trying. Okay, we’re trying. Like, do you know how many like human, I’m a human, I only have two hands.
And I don’t get paid for this. You know, this is just when I have five minutes to sit down and look at the posts, I will. But that group got pretty intense.
And one of the group members actually started personally coming after me and was searching my personal profile and like trying to grab any public pictures of my family and do things. And the group owner was like, Oh, just let it calm down for a couple weeks. And I’m like, No, this is this is too much.
You refuse to do anything about these people. And like, yeah, I can block the guy from the group. But there’s going to be another one in two days.
And because the group owner I kind of saw and again, this person hides behind a fake name. So I have no idea if this is a man or a woman or what, you know, for all I know, it’s a giant rooster.
[Speaker 2]
But um, you do live in Michigan.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, but and this and this person also didn’t seem like English was their native language. And so I was like, you know what, I’m done. And I left the group.
And then this person kept messaging me like, well, you can come back, you can come back. And I’m like, block. Bye.
No. So I just have the two chicken groups now. But you know, and I have left groups, because it’s obvious the groups don’t have good rules set in place to keep things.
And I’m not saying like, there’s other groups that are just too strict. It’s like, you can’t use the word pineapple in this group. Why did you say pineapple?
I’m like, excuse me. Okay, you know, and that’s just a silly example.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. But you’re right. I mean, so what you’re saying is, is in terms of for you personally, because this is the thing is there are certain things that are best practices for communities, especially online.
And then there are certain things that are individual, there are people who love supersized groups. They love the fact that it’s like ping ponging all day long and their notifications that they can always go there and see new content that makes them happy. They love the fact that if they ask a question, they can get 52 responses, many of which tell them like 38 different answers.
Right? They love that that makes them really happy. And then there’s other people who, you know, it seems like you’re kind of in that category where you like midsize to smaller communities, you know, so those are personal things.
But then there’s things that like, it’s just a good practice, right? To me, it’s not a community unless a person can come in, connect with whoever is the boss of the place, whoever’s running the place, or the admin team, if there’s multiple people, connect with the content, whatever the shared purpose or the intent is of the community, and then connect with each other.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
And what I think is, in some of these groups where there’s, we’ll say, weak moderation is in folks mind, the ability to connect with each other means that we just kind of let the inmates run the asylum, so to speak.
[Speaker 1]
Yes. And that’s exactly how that chicken group felt. And it was insane.
[Speaker 2]
And right. And the reality is, you can’t connect with anybody else. If there’s all this chaos, and all this noise, all these spammy posts, as you mentioned, rules, and enforcing the rules are actually what keep everybody feeling safe.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
Both safe to participate, safe to honestly represent their lives. I mean, nobody wants to be in a community, if they know that there’s a person in there that’s going to go hunt down their personal profile and look for pictures of their kids. I mean, that’s just creepy.
[Speaker 1]
Yes, very much so. And it was like, within hours of that happening, I was like, Nope, I’m done. I’m out of here.
Like you can take your crazy group that you were used to tighten up the ship on and you can go sail away because I’m not doing this.
[Speaker 2]
And I find a lot of times faith based groups that I’ve worked in almost do this the worst because they’re trying so hard to be inclusive of everybody that they realize that they’re actually making their place unsafe for others.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
What else do you value when you go to online community, specifically, since that seems to be where you look for a lot of these homesteady sort of scenarios and solutions?
[Speaker 1]
I do value, like I said, where they have the things pinned at the top, and the groups are searchable. I value in that the moderators and admin teams are responsive. Now, I know they’re human, and they can’t be there all the time.
But I forgot about there’s another chicken group I’m in. I’m in one specifically for like when you have a sick chicken, and how to and how to help them. And that group, the admins and moderators do run a pretty tight ship there.
But they’re also extremely responsive. I believe that’s one of the groups where when you submit a post, it has to be approved. And they do that because they don’t want anybody giving bad advice that’s going to hurt a chicken.
They don’t want anybody giving advice that’s going to harm rather than heal. And all of these people are professionals in some way, shape or form and have years and years and years of experience with these chickens. So that group, I do appreciate that a ton, the responsiveness of the admin team.
Because then there’s another group that I left, where the admin, you could tag them by name, and they wouldn’t allow any moderators or help. They were like, no, I’ve got it. I’ve got it.
But you need help, and they don’t help you. You have a question, and they don’t respond. And why are you going to have a community if you’re not willing to be a part of your community?
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, that is a great question. I wish I had an answer for you. But I think there’s a thing, it sounds like a great idea, right?
We should have a chicken group. And then the reality of what it means to be a community leader does not always match the assumption or the idea or the concept they had in their mind. Because humans, as you know, humans are predictably unpredictable.
And you just never quite know how things are going to turn out. So for you, you lean into online community, especially when it comes to solving problems that you experience. Well, how has the in-person community played in for you?
I don’t know anybody who cans all by themselves. Maybe you do. But like, do you have community around canning?
Or you had mentioned you’ve got neighbors who are going to help you plow fields. What is that like?
[Speaker 1]
So my best friend in California actually helped teach me how to can. And my mom used to do some when I was a kid. But it was mostly like apricot preserves from the apricot tree we had in our backyard in California.
And so I don’t remember us canning much else than that when I was a kid. But my best friend actually taught me how to do some canning and pointed me to some resources and things because her family does live on a little bit bigger property in California. And they have a huge garden and they grow and can stuff every year.
So she’s actually the one who started me on that. And then I just kind of got into it a little more. And with the plowing those friends, it’s friends we made at church.
You know, we connect with that community in person at our church. We were involved at our church in California, and it was important to us to find that community here. And we love our church family here in Michigan.
We love the people that we’ve connected with. And after we’d been here, oh gosh, about eight months, we joined a small group within our church. We’re like, well, we can’t really become a part of this community if we’re not willing to step into this community.
So we did join a small group. And that has brought us some of the most incredible friends and people that we sit and talk with and share life with once a week in the evening. You know, and we have a group me thread, that texting app group me.
And we can shoot a quick message. Hey, guys, this is what’s going on. This is a problem we have that we need a solution for.
Does anybody know of anybody who can help us with this? And there have been times where it’s one of those people in that group who show up at our house and help us.
[Speaker 2]
So what I’m hearing is, is really a beautiful blend between modern community building, which for many of us is in the online space, but also old school, traditional eyeball to eyeball, gathering around faith, family, friends, and food. And food. Yes.
Yes. Food is my favorite. So speaking of food, I’m curious for you, to some degree, you’re kind of swimming upstream, not necessarily in your community, but kind of in wider society.
You’re raising your kids differently than a lot of people raise their kids. You’re feeding your family way differently than the average American feeds their family. People would say you’re just doing things the hard way.
I’m curious how this life that you have very intentionally chosen to live, what has it taught you about belonging?
[Speaker 1]
It’s shown me too, that sometimes people don’t see you for who you are. They see you for what you do. And because let’s be real, I don’t have like a huge, vast array of friends.
I have, I have a fairly small circle of friends and I’m okay with that because not everybody’s going to be okay with coming to my house and eating homemade fries that I’ve cut up from organic potatoes and baked in my oven in beef tallow that I rendered from locally raised suet. Not everybody’s going to be okay with that. They’re going to think that that’s weird and that’s gross.
And why can’t you just fry it in canola oil like they do at McDonald’s? Well, because the canola oil that they fried in at McDonald’s is disgusting. And McDonald’s french fries have like 18 ingredients.
These have three. Right. So, you know, just people don’t always accept it.
You know, you think, you would think that doing things a simpler way would be more acceptable, but it’s not. And I’ve have had people who were like, okay, you’re crazy. Bye.
And just kind of stepped away because they don’t like the way we do things. You know, people hear that we’re raising our own chickens and they’re like, okay, I just don’t ever want to see them because I can’t see the face of something I’m going to eat. And I’m like, well, how do you think people did it centuries ago?
Like, you know, 150 years ago, you couldn’t just walk into the grocery store and buy a whole chicken and cook it and its head was already gone. You know, somebody had to do that.
[Speaker 2]
Right. Right. Well, there is, I mean, we could talk about this another time, but you know, a whole population of people who are very far removed from how the food gets on their plate.
[Speaker 1]
Exactly.
[Speaker 2]
And I think part of what you’re talking about is there are people who are blissfully ignorant, whether I think a lot of times it’s like their brain is already full. They already have so much that they’re worried about. They don’t need one more thing.
And it is very inconvenient for you to force them to be aware of the thing that they’ve been very ignorant of. For the person who is listening and says, hi, you know, maybe I’ve seen some of, of what you’re talking about online, but I haven’t really had time to explore it. Or, you know, everybody around me thinks I’m a big weirdo.
What would you suggest? Like just a small step that they could take if they’re starting to question the status quo, especially around just the food aspect, how they nourish themselves, how they nourish their families, what advice would you give?
[Speaker 1]
One thing at a time. So, you know, don’t try to eliminate everything at once. Don’t question everything at once.
Question, look into research one thing at a time, because anything else is going to overwhelm you. It’s going to make your head spin. It’s going to make you feel like you can’t eat anything at all because everything is poison and everything is going to kill you and everything is going to make your family sick.
And so one thing at a time, you know, for me, that one thing at first was food dyes and it’s slowly graduated to other things, you know, the seed oils and, you know, the gluten is absolutely necessary. And yeah, maybe all the other things are not necessary, but over time they’ve become necessary to us because we know we feel better without them. And, you know, find somebody who maybe knows something or knows some resources or can point you in the right direction.
You don’t have to change everything all at once. You don’t have to do it all today. You can say, okay, you know what, I’m going to go ahead and pay more attention to those food dyes and see, you know, does it make me feel better?
Does it not? And make a choice for yourself. What’s right for one person isn’t going to be right for everybody.
[Speaker 2]
Excellent advice. And that makes me think of the flip side. So the person who’s listening, who thinks just like you, believes just like you, wants to live just like you, but this person does not have the same compassion you have.
This person is frustrated that they can’t get their friends and family to see what they see. What advice would you give to them?
[Speaker 1]
Don’t push it. Like, I can’t push people into living life the way that we do. You know, I have family members who are in the medical field and they are trained on the way that the medical schools tell people to eat.
You know, they tell people that canola oil is heart healthy. And when I tell them, no, I don’t eat canola oil. I’d rather use, you know, beef fat or butter.
They think I’m crazy, but I’m not going to convince them. They’re going to have to see the difference in me over time. And some people have done that and seen things in me that are different over time, or they’ve seen something different in my three-year-old and be like, what do you do with this kid?
Why is he so different? Or like, wow, your kid eats, you know, ribs straight off the bone. My kid will only eat chicken nuggets.
That kid loves ribs. That kid loves a good steak because that’s just how he’s always eaten. You know, so you can’t, you can’t force somebody to change.
You can just show them.
[Speaker 2]
I love that. I love that. So it’s not about forcing people to do anything that they want to do, don’t want to do.
It’s just about showing them what it’s like and letting them love their life while they hopefully let you live yours. Yeah. So Alicia, we, we have all the information of where to find you.
So listeners can definitely check out Shidler Goods on Instagram, Shidler Goods on Facebook. You have a website, which is notmusic.com slash Shidler Goods, LLC. There is no C in Shidler.
I had to train myself on that as I wrote it out.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
Now though, I wanted to bring us to Freak Flags Fly, which is our rapid fire segment of the show. Are you game? It’s five questions.
Okay. No wrong answers.
[Speaker 1]
Okay.
[Speaker 2]
Fill in the blank. You’re my kind of freak if.
[Speaker 1]
You have chickens.
[Speaker 2]
Awesome. What is something you love that your friends just don’t get?
[Speaker 1]
Oh gosh, my goats. A lot of people don’t get my goats.
[Speaker 2]
Goats are an acquired taste. Oh, I love them so much. Okay.
So third question, what community would you infiltrate just to understand it better?
[Speaker 1]
What do I want to understand better? Probably the products I make. I want to understand why different things work the way they do a little bit better, but it’s one of those things I haven’t had time to delve into.
So.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Okay. So what tool, ritual, or practice helps you stay connected to your people?
[Speaker 1]
The stinking phone. Because, you know, I can text people. I can call people.
I can, my three-year-old, he likes to push the green button, which is FaceTime, to see Nana and Papa. So, you know, just it helps me stay connected with my people.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. And then who is someone doing freakishly good work who deserves a bigger stage? Can be anyone, anywhere.
[Speaker 1]
I think it’s my best friend. She doesn’t think she is, but I think it’s her. What’s her name?
Her name is Sonia Tucker and she runs a small business called Hope and Stay. She is a single mom and she makes reclaimed wood pallet signs and garden markers and stickers and just the things that she makes, I feel like inspire hope and just give little glimpses of sunshine in people’s day. You know, I have one of her signs on my chicken coop that says the fluffy butthut.
Last one in is a rotten egg. You know, we have, we have some of her signs and garden markers in our garden. I have a sign of hers in my laundry room.
Like her work is all over my house. I have some of her stickers all over things. And she just puts so much thought into care and everything she does.
And she does this, you know, while raising a little one as a single mom and helping her parents with caring for her grandma and her aunt. And I just, I think she’s an amazing person and I love her to bits.
[Speaker 2]
Oh my gosh, you are such a good friend. You’re going to have to give us her information so we can put her shop in the show notes because that will be super fun for folks. And Alicia, I just want to say thank you.
Thank you for giving us just like the whole picture of what your journey has been, the perspective that you have brought to it, but more than anything, your voice, because there’s a lot of loud voices in this particular space, in this holistic living space.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
And you bring such a voice of reason. And to everybody listening, if you’ve ever been made to feel like you’re too much or too different, or maybe too behind the times, I hope this episode reminds you that the life that’s right for you won’t necessarily look normal to others, but that’s exactly the point. That’s it for this episode of Find Your Freaks.
To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird, makes you wonderful.
Normal was never the point.
Jun 22, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
Sometimes the most accessible thing to do is just offering multiple ways to participate. Talk it out, write it out, doodle it. That’s the piece that reduces the cognitive load and gives more people points of entry to engage fully.
It’s lowering the barrier to access. And that is what accessibility is, right? It’s care. It’s caring enough about the other person to make sure that they get the full benefit of the experience.
It’s how you show somebody, your customer, your client, you know what, I was thinking about you before you ever walked in this room, before you ever gave me any money. I was thinking about you and what way to make this the best possible experience you could have, the best possible investment of your dollars. And that is what sets the stage for belonging.
We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tanya Kubo and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras.
Because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. Hey there freaks, Tanya here.
In my conversation with Dr. Katrina Mitchum, one line jumped out at me. Accessibility isn’t an add-on, it is the foundation of belonging. And the more I sit with that, the more I realize that it actually applies far beyond online courses.
I mean that is Katrina’s area of specialty and that is what we spent a majority of our time talking about during the last episode. But even though accessibility online tends to get reduced to captions and transcripts, which matter, Katrina gave us another frame which I think is equally important and maybe even more so. And that is cognitive load.
Accessibility is about removing unnecessary friction so people can actually participate. Now this doesn’t just make life easier for people with disabilities. The thing that Katrina said that keeps sticking with me is it makes things easier for everyone.
And I think if you don’t already see that, I hope kind of by the end of this conversation that you’ll see some signs in your own life about how making life easier for people with disabilities makes life easier for everyone involved. And like I said earlier, it goes way beyond the internet. Think about an in-person event where the only chairs available have arms, okay? You may not think that’s that big of a deal, but the fact is is chairs with arms only accommodate a certain body size, right? Or they only accommodate up to a certain body size.
So if you were somebody who lives in a larger body compared to the norm, or at least who chair manufacturers consider the norm, you walk into a room and you see chairs with arms and the first thing you’ve got to think about is is that going to fit or not? Second thing is do I want to risk it in public with everybody else or not? And then third, you know, if the answer is, yeah, I’ll risk it, then you go try it out and maybe experience physical pain, maybe experience embarrassment if it doesn’t work out for you. Or if you say it’s not worth risking it, then the next thing you’re doing is surveying the room looking for where to sit. Like what makes sense? What is the appropriate seating that gives you access to the speaker, access to what’s going on, but also allows you to sit comfortably? Okay, that is one example of the mental load experienced by people when they enter a space that hasn’t thought of them in advance.
Another example would be, you know, a workshop that pairs attendees up for discussion and doesn’t actually think about whether that structure supports the goal. Because the reason it’s important to not just do activities for the sake of doing activity is like, oh, we’ll just have them pair up here. That’ll be a great way to cut time in the agenda, or that’ll be a great way to fill time in the agenda.
If that peer-to-peer sharing structure doesn’t support the goal of the lesson or the goal of the workshop, then if you’re trying to do a hybrid event, where you want to replicate that, your instinct may be, okay, well, we’ll just put people in breakout rooms, you know, we’ll pair them off in breakout rooms. But if there’s no purpose or goal to the pairing off, then it’s going to be really hard for you to ensure that you are achieving the goal that people are getting the maximum experience when you pair them off into breakout rooms. Because the thing that we don’t think about in an in-person space versus an online space is when you’re running an in-person event and you pair your folks off, you actually have eyes on everybody in the room, right? So you can see when the conversation starts to dull.
So you know if, okay, well, I was going to give them 15 minutes, but they don’t actually have enough to say. I can tell by walking around the room that people are just chit-chatting now because they’re done with the exercise. So you can say, okay, it sounds like everybody in the room is done, it’s eight minutes, we’ll move on.
But when you pair people off in breakout rooms on a Zoom call or, you know, Google Meet or whatever, you don’t actually have the privilege of hearing their conversations. So room one may be deep in the conversation, while room two never did the exercise to begin with, and you wouldn’t have any idea about that. So that’s why it’s so important to really be thinking about every aspect of an event, whether it’s your an online course or it is a workshop or some other, you know, even a meeting, really making sure that you have a goal in mind behind each of the activities so that you can reverse engineer the best way to achieve the goal, but then also you can test each activity in terms of figuring out, is this actually as effective in achieving the goal as I thought it would be? Because when you don’t do that, then you run the risk of excluding people rather than inviting them in.
In the case of breakout rooms, right, if everybody in the online space takes that opportunity to go get a drink of water to have a restroom break, then they come back into the main group. Nobody has had the benefit of that unpacking of the material in a peer-to-peer situation. So along those lines, what I want to unpack today are kind of two threads from the conversation, or let’s just say we’ll pull two threads from the conversation.
The first, because I think, you know, we’ve come a long way since the pandemic, but we’re not all the way there yet, I do want to address the ethics of charging premiums for basic access, especially, you know, transcripts, captions, recordings, things like that. And then I also want to address the broader frame of accessibility online and in person, and the that this broader frame is really about care, it’s about belonging, and it’s about building communities that don’t leave core people behind. So when Katrina was talking about cognitive load, you know, I have to say, it’s one of those things that I’ve done a lot of work around cognitive load because I live in a neurodiverse household, so I’m always looking at how to reduce the mental load of the people who live with me, the mental load of myself, because it’s hard to operate as everybody’s executive function.
And so decision fatigue, mental load is big. It’s something that we have dealt with historically in Clutter-Free Academy, because we find that a lot of times people get overwhelmed, and their house gets out of hand, simply because by the end of the day, they’re just tired of making decisions, right? There’s just too much going on in their head. And so when Katrina is talking about the lens of cognitive load, which she helped me to appreciate, at least, is that when we’re talking about accessibility, it’s not just a question of can someone technically see the information? Can someone technically hear the information? It’s also about how easy is it for them to take the information in? How easy is it for them to make sense of the information, make sense of what I’m asking them to do? And how easy is it for them to use it and apply it in their day-to-day lives, right? Because there’s no education if there’s not an ability.
You can’t say you learned something if you don’t walk away with an ability to implement what you’ve learned and apply what you’ve learned, right? Then it’s not learning. It’s just reading. It’s just information collection.
But in order to learn, you’ve got to be able to make different decisions or do things differently as a result of this knowledge that you’ve gained. And so thinking of a course, for instance, you’ve got a course. And again, we don’t see this so much nowadays, but we used to see it a lot before the pandemic, right? 10 hours of video, but no transcripts.
And for someone who processes information better by reading, that’s overwhelming. For somebody who needs to hear an instruction multiple times, they would have to watch the video over and over and over again, or watch a portion of the video, pause it, implement, or do whatever exercise they need to do, restart it, potentially rewatch that section again, and keep going, right? It would just be so overwhelming to have to go through that material over and over and over again. Whereas if they’re given a transcript, they can follow along and they can make a note on where they leave off, they can go and do their exercise, and then they can pick the information back up much faster than starting and stopping a video and replaying and replaying and replaying.
Parents who listen with kids around, there are people who need to access information online, especially like DIY or self-study courses in busy locations. Maybe the most quiet scenario is they’re in a public library, but a lot of times they’re in a cafe, or they’re watching their kids practice, or maybe they’re in a dorm, right, with roommates and such. And so there’s all these folks around, it may not be easy for them to listen.
Maybe they have earbuds, maybe they have headphones, maybe they don’t. But even like captions may not be enough for them if they’re finding themselves having to look away from the screen. But being able to skim a transcript again is a way where they can get that information fast, they can get that information effectively, and then they can do what they’re being asked to do without having to sit through five minutes of video, 10 minutes of video, whatever it may take.
You know, we see the same thing, I’ll probably never not mention neurodivergence or neurodiversity in any episode because it’s so much a part of my day-to-day life. But you know, for individuals who are neurodivergent, many of them need to understand the why behind the what in order to do the thing correctly, otherwise they’re going to overthink it. You told me to write my name on the line, but when you say write my name on the line, do you mean like all of the letters need to sit on the line? You know, in my case my name’s Tanya, like does the bottom of my Y have to sit on the line? Like to you, you may be laughing and thinking that’s a ridiculous example, but that’s a real life concern that held up my eldest daughter from being able to write her first name on an assignment for years because she couldn’t figure out where the bottom of the Y was supposed to go in her first name.
But if you give individuals the what behind the why or the why behind the what, that enables them to take much quicker action on the information that you’re asking them to take action on. And the best part of all of this is that when you lower the cognitive load for one person, you lower it for everyone. When you tell me, hey, when I say write your name on the line, what I’m actually asking you to do is have, you know, most of the letters sitting on that line or somewhere above the line, but you know, your Ys and your Gs and your Qs, those drop underneath the line.
It’s just kind of a guide so you can write your name straight and it’ll also help you write your name in a way that’s easier for me to read. Well, now I understand I probably would have written my name on the line like you expected anyway, but now I fully understand what the purpose is behind that and now I can meet your expectations better and I don’t have to worry about if I’m doing things the right way or not. Captions help people who are deaf and hard of hearing consume content that is delivered via video or verbally, but they also help people in noisy environments.
They also help people who have a difficult time processing information that they hear. You know, a transcript will help a blind student who uses a screen reader to access information, but you know what? It also helps those of us who are Gen X and Goonies generation who learned to read at a young age and had to read everything that we read way faster than anybody can talk and we find ourselves frustrated at having to consume a ton of video content because of the amount of time it takes, right? Because I can understand some people at 2x speed, but I can’t understand everybody at 2x speed and I read a lot faster than 2x speed of most videos and I retain stuff that I read much better than I retain information that I have seen somebody deliver. Now, if it’s an over-the-shoulder tutorial, that’s a totally different story for me and it’s a totally different story for a lot of people.
The main thing is that, you know, accessibility isn’t extra credit. It probably never was, but it surely isn’t now. Accessibility isn’t extra credit.
It’s the baseline that we all need to be searching for if we truly want to create spaces of belonging. Now, again, right, I’m kind of dating myself here and I think a lot of people listening will be like, Tanya, that’s not even a thing anymore, but the fact is it is still a thing. If it wasn’t still a thing, if I wasn’t still seeing it, I wouldn’t still be talking about it.
And I know that if I’m still seeing this happen, it’s happening way more often than it should be, which is people putting tools for accessibility behind paywalls. Oh, that burns me up. And what I mean is this used to happen a lot in the podcast space.
It doesn’t happen so much anymore, but I still see it happen, right, where you need to be some kind of financial supporter to get access to transcripts. You need to be a financial supporter if you want a captioned video versus a non-captioned video. Now, this is where social media and technology is our friend because so often now, if something’s on YouTube, it’s almost always automatically captioned.
If something’s on Facebook or Instagram, depending on your user settings, it can almost always be automatically captioned. Sometimes it’s frustrating because the creator puts captions on the video and then the platform’s captions goes over the creator’s captions, but at least everybody’s trying, right? It’s a little frustrating, but at least everybody’s trying. And when we see this with Summits, and Summits are a little different, I think it’s a little bit different when it’s like everybody can get it this way for free, but if you want the luxury of watching things on your own time or getting this time-sensitive content or this limited-term content, if you want access to that on demand, then that’s a paid benefit.
And that’s a little bit different just because the content expires for everyone after a certain point in time. Now, my preference on Summits and the Summits that I prefer to participate in are ones that during that limited time period where everything is free, I prefer Summits that all the videos during that free period are captioned just like they would be with on-demand access and transcripts are made available. Now, I know that for some people, they’ll say, well, if the transcripts are made available, people can print those out.
And then, you know, there’s no reason for anybody to pay for the all-access pass. I would argue if the only benefit to the all-access pass is being able to print out a transcript, there’s probably not a lot of value to your all-access pass. Maybe it should have some other value.
So that’s just, it’s like one of those things where it was never okay. It’s never been okay to force people to pay a premium price to have the same experience as people who don’t share their disability. But it’s really unacceptable now that we have technology that is free or ridiculously low cost that makes it so easy for us.
And the reason that I’m talking about this is because I think there’s probably other instances that are similar to this enough that you may be able to draw some parallels that I might not even be thinking about well enough to be able to mention explicitly. But charging people for access to access content or an experience the same as a non-disabled peer is the same as saying you can be part of this community, but only if you fit these specific criteria, right? You can only be part of this community if you already can hear well, already can see well, process information quickly in real time. And, you know, you wouldn’t put a sign up like on the door of a meeting room that says, you know, do not enter if you are deaf, hard of hearing, visually impaired, or struggle with cognitive processing, have a sensory processing disorder, an auditory processing disorder.
You would never do that. Because if you were to do that, I mean, you’d be holding an event where worth one-third of your attendees could not participate, right? You know, if you’ve got one-third of the U.S. population has some form of a disability, by charging a premium for basic access is saying, you know what, sorry that you paid for that conference, but you’re just going to be watching Lipsmooth unless you pay a premium to get that headset that will, or that video monitor that will give you captions. It’s so much easier, I think, and this is part of why I invited Katrina onto the show, is that it’s so much easier to see that it’s exclusionary and discriminatory in an in-person environment.
It’s a lot harder to see online, but we still have to hold ourselves to the same standards. In conversation with Katrina, one of the things that, you know, she kept talking about is just designing for the intended experience, for the goal, for what the person’s going to get out of it. And that’s a powerful reframe for any course creator, group program creator, even if you are building a community online or in-person, right? Thinking about, because I think oftentimes what we do, and especially this time of year, you know, it’s online course season, right? Everybody’s selling a course or a program, and many of those courses and programs will be selling you on a method or a process for creating your own online course or online program.
And so many times, you know, they’ll be focused on how to validate the idea, how to create a program that is worth the amount of money that you want to charge that fits your financial goals, right? It’s all about your goal as a business owner, and your goal as a business owner is very important. You need to build the business that you want to run. I do not disagree.
But when you are creating these online education experiences, if you’re not designing them with your student or your participant in mind, you are setting yourself and them up for failure. And so just like if you were to have a lecture, invite everybody to a lecture, you would want to make sure that that room was easy to access. You wouldn’t want that room to be on the fifth floor with no elevator, because there are so many people who could not climb five flights of stairs, right? There’s ages, life circumstances, somebody just had an ACL repair, they would have a very difficult time climbing five flights of stairs.
So you wouldn’t want to do that. You want to be thinking the same way about everything that you produce. So really going back to thinking, number one, when we’re talking about accessibility, when we’re bringing it beyond transcripts, captions, recordings, being able to speed up, slow down, pause, all of that sort of stuff with our technology, just think about, one, what is the goal, right? Like not just what is the goal of the whole program, what’s the goal of this specific lesson? What does success look like? My student will have succeeded if by the end of the lesson they can.
It’s a program learning outcome, right? So what is the goal? And then think about after you’re done with the goal and, you know, defining what success looks like, just think about who might be left out. Based on everything I’ve written down here, who might be left out? It might be like, oh, somebody may be left out if they are brand new to online business. If they don’t have offer market fit already solidified or already validated, they’re probably going to be left out of this exercise because it depends on them having that.
Or it may simply be, well, this actually really only works if they’re a service provider or if they’re interested in being a service provider. This would not work for a product-based business. This may not work for somebody who is using a Chromebook, right? Because the technology that they’re going to need in order to do this is going to be a lot more high power than a Chromebook can support.
Or this may not work for somebody who only has access to a phone, doesn’t even have a laptop or desktop computer. So you think about what is the goal, who might be left out according to how you’re currently designing it, and then what small changes could make this easier for everyone. Now, in some of these cases, let’s just say you’re like, oh, this is actually better for service providers than product-based businesses.
Well, then you just write that into your marketing, right? You just make it upfront and honest. This is a program for service-based businesses. This is not a program for product-based businesses.
Easy. But if you do want it to be open to the both of them, then you need to think about how do I make my content accessible to both business models? One thing Katrina talked about is using a variety of examples and giving your students a variety of options on how they can participate in the activity. And this goes more back to the ability argument on accessibility, which is, you know, you can turn it in by giving me a voice note, writing it down.
You can record a video. You can draw a picture. But when you’re thinking about what small changes could make this easier for everyone, realize that some changes you might think are too small actually are exactly what they need.
So kind of just to recap there, right? So building in that accessibility, no matter what it is, is going, what is the goal? Who might be left out? What small changes could make this easier for everyone? And then just recognizing that sometimes the most accessible thing to do is just offering multiple ways to participate. Like I said, talk it out, write it out, doodle it. That’s the piece that reduces the cognitive load and gives more people points of entry to engage fully, right? It’s lowering the barrier to access.
And that is what accessibility is, right? It’s care. It’s caring enough about the other person to make sure that they get the full benefit of the course, the lesson, the workshop, the experience. It’s how you show somebody, your customer, your client, you know what? I was thinking about you before you ever walked in this room, before you ever gave me any money.
I was thinking about you and what way to make this the best possible experience you could have, the best possible investment of your dollars. And that is what sets the stage for belonging. It isn’t paying a human to hand type your dictation when you can have Zoom for free, transcribe everything, and then you can just spend some time cleaning it up.
It’s making people feel considered because when people feel considered, they feel connected. When they feel connected, they stay, they contribute, they thrive, and they pay it forward. Community without access isn’t community.
And like I’ve been saying, and like Katrina said, access isn’t just about ramps or captions. It’s about making that path easier, lowering the cognitive load, and designing spaces where people can succeed no matter what background they had before they came to the table. So sometimes that can look like including transcripts with every video or every audio track that you produce, like we do here with this specific podcast.
Sometimes it’s explaining the why, the reason behind the activity before you ask people to devote time, energy, and resources in doing the activity. Sometimes in an in-person environment, it is as simple as swapping out chairs or rethinking how you facilitate small group discussions. Listen to Katrina’s interview and you got nothing else out of this.
I hope what you realize is the point is not perfection. It’s intention. There is always going to be more that you could do if you had more information, if you had more resources, if you had this.
It’s not about perfection. It’s about intention because one step at a time, you can remove one barrier at a time, you can open one door at a time, and you’re making a constant step forward toward improvement. So what I want you to be thinking about today is in all the spaces that you lead, in all of the spaces where you have some measure of control over the environment or the delivery, online or in person, ask yourself, who still can’t get in here? Who is here but unable to fully participate? And then take just one action to change that, to better serve the people who are already there or to open the door to more people who should be there but don’t quite have a way in.
That’s what belonging is, and belonging can’t happen without access. That’s it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review.
And if you’re craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
Jun 8, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
[Speaker 1]
When you’re building a community, you are not the only expert in the room, and that’s how it should be. Like, if it’s done well, that’s how it should be. And when you think about accessibility broadly and build it into your foundations, you can bring people from different walks of life in ways that make your community better.
Remembering that there are other people outside of your sphere, outside of your experience, that have had different experiences, you won’t ever be able to think of all of them. But asking is a really good first step. It’s okay if you don’t know what other people need.
You can anticipate some of those needs, but asking is the best way to understand, you know, what someone might need. I really think that asking, you know, hey, what do you need? How can I make this accessible to you?
What would make this a pleasant experience?
[Speaker 2]
We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tanya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras. Because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. We love to talk about community around here, how to build it, how to grow it, how to sustain it.
But you cannot have community without access. And all too often, I have seen in my life, I’m sure if you’re listening or watching, you have seen it as well, accessibility gets reduced to a compliance checklist or a really narrow conversation about disability and who actually has the right to access information. So today, I have invited Dr. Katrina Mitchum to join us because she’s been teaching adults online since 2009. She’s a learning experience designer and recovering academic on a mission to revolutionize the online course creation space. Because the great thing about online courses is anybody can create one. And that sometimes is also the problem with online courses, is that anybody can create them and they don’t necessarily understand instructional design or accessibility.
So Katrina specifically works with overwhelmed small business owners and aspiring course creators who actually care about their learners’ success. Katrina, I feel like what you’re really here to do today is to remind us that accessibility isn’t optional. It’s actually foundational to belonging.
Would you agree or disagree?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, absolutely. It absolutely is. It’s foundational to being part of a community.
You introduce this as spaces for communities. And if you don’t feel like you’re included, like you were considered, like somebody thought of you, then how are you going to really feel like you’re part of a community?
[Speaker 2]
Oh, I couldn’t agree more. So let’s get into it with, why don’t you tell us who are your freaks and why do you love them?
[Speaker 1]
My freaks are people that actually care about learning. And so it’s a very small nerdy group. But really, I think everybody cares about learning, right?
Everybody that I talk to has a learning experience in their past that was horrible. For some people, it was scarring. For other people, it was just, it emptied their wallet.
But everybody has something in their past learning history that made learning harder for them, right? And we join or sign up for learning experiences because we want something to change. We want new information.
We’re interested in something. We want to do a deep dive. We want to change something in our lives.
Like when we get to be an adult and you buy courses, that’s usually what it’s for, whether that’s like you’re buying a certificate, a degree, just a one-off course from Jane down the street. It’s to make that change. And if we are putting up barriers to access, then we’re not helping enough people make the change that they want to make.
And when we make things accessible to more people, it helps beyond the people that we’re trying to help, right?
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, say more about that because I don’t, I’ll be honest, coming from working in the online space prior to the pandemic, you know, I was one of those people that got tapped a lot when the pandemic hit from so many people who didn’t know how to take what they were teaching in person to teaching it online. And I don’t encounter resistance as much now as I used to, but there seems to be this resistance of, but I already work hard enough. That’s harder.
Why should I make it harder? Why do I have to make it harder on myself?
[Speaker 1]
You and me both. I’m not alone. Part of the reason I left the full-time admin faculty gig was the amount of tapping that happened when everybody shifted online.
And I get that, right? As a teacher, I get you are doing a lot. And to me, if you’re in a formal situation, that institution better be helping you make things accessible.
It is their duty. They are being paid to help you make things accessible. So that’s my first to that point of people saying I’m already doing a lot.
But also 27% of the U.S. population has some sort of disability. And if you think about that statistic, how many, you’re leaving out almost a third of your potential client base from whatever it is you’re doing, if you are not making things accessible. And you can go crazy trying to do every little thing.
And so I always encourage folks, every time that you jump into your course to make a change, every time you run it, one step at a time, you don’t have to go in and overhaul everything. That would burn you out to the point where you can’t help the people that you’re trying to help. And we don’t want that either, right?
But if that’s the looking back retroactively, right? If you know your course isn’t accessible. If you’re just starting now, you can build it in a way where it’s already accessible without having to do too much extra work.
Especially now. Thinking back to when I first started teaching and having to caption my own videos, oh, my gosh, I had to listen and write everything I said. Nowadays, there are so many programs that have really good speech to text.
You still have to change things. You still have to listen, pop in and change a word. I always have to change my name.
It wants me to be Katrina with a K. And it wants to spell Mitchum with an EM. All of them do.
But there’s so many tools that can make it easier to make things accessible. And the example I just gave is a very easily seen kind of accessibility issue, right? You say captions on something, people automatically understand.
But captions are not the only way to make something accessible, right? So let’s say I’m just going to stick with the video. Let’s say you do the video, you do the captions.
If you pull out that transcript and give them access to this transcript as well, then you’re also helping people who, one, want to skim, do better skimming, don’t have the time to actually watch the video because they can’t read it the two times speed that the captions show up, but they want to be able to skim what it is you’re saying. And so that’s a really remembering that it’s not just about, it is always about people who have disabilities. I have one.
And it’s always about the people that have disabilities. But also, it’s about helping people that don’t have disabilities as well as a byproduct. It’s a very pleasant byproduct.
[Speaker 2]
It really is. And so I think before we go too much further, because there are a million questions that I want to ask you. And part of them aren’t necessarily being an advocate for the listener.
They’re just like, Ooh, this makes me wonder.
[Speaker 1]
I love that about you.
[Speaker 2]
But I think we still in 2025, when we’re recording this, we still have this issue where when people hear the word accessibility, they think very narrowly. They think sidewalk ramps, they think maybe screen readers. I know it’s so much more.
And I bet I don’t even know how much more it is. So can you just sort of paint a picture of all the things that fall under that umbrella of accessibility that you think are pertinent? Because I know we could be here, it would be like Bubba Gump, right?
You’d be like talking about shrimp for an hour. So we don’t need to do that.
[Speaker 1]
Exactly, exactly. I think if we’re pulling it back into thinking about people who are creating courses, part of it, or a good umbrella to think about these things is the previous experiences that they’re coming to you with. Right.
And so one of my favorite examples was actually a study. And they did a study on this was back when Microsoft Word first came out. But so what we would say is this is historical data.
But so it’s about the experiences that you have helped define the experiences that you’re going to have. So if you didn’t have experience with a word processor at all ever, right, and then you’re thrown into something like Microsoft Word, how do you navigate it? How do you process it?
Like now it’s easy to go back and forth between Word, and Docs and all of the different processors, because they all are similar enough, right. But if you came into a word processor without that previous experience, how is that going to impact your ability to use it and use it as efficiently and effectively as someone that already has that background knowledge? That’s basically the premise of it.
So if I have never attached, this is a question I get a lot, still adjuncting in higher ed, I’ve never attached something to an email before, it might take me 10, 15, 20 minutes, an email to the professor to say, hey, I don’t know how to do this. Right. And so as someone that’s designing learning experiences, getting out of your own sphere of experience and remembering that not everybody got to the point where they need your help from the same path.
They’re all coming from different areas. And that’s just within US culture, right? If we start to expand beyond that, different cultures have different experiences of time, they have different experiences of what it means to make an argument, there’s lots of different things that culture shapes in us.
And so those things are also going to impact the experience that they have. And so designing, not for you, but for other people is probably the broadest way to make sure that things are accessible.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. So I think what I’ll ask first is the barriers, because I think, from my perspective, at least there are some common boxes to check, I am creating something for an online audience. And so I think of things, for instance, like internet connections, how is this going to work for somebody who has, who lives in South Africa, where they still turn the internet off and on for the whole country at various times?
How is this going to work for somebody who maybe lives in an apartment complex? And so there’s a lot of people tapping into that internet bandwidth at the same time. I’ll think of different styles of learning.
I think my perspective, though, is a little bit more generous than most people, because I live in a neurodiverse household, I’ve got kids on IEPs and 504 plans, my husband teaches special ed. So that’s a non-traditional perspective. And then there’s things like time zones and languages, and just life.
Like, your point was, some people just do better reading than watching video. The big joke in my peer group is, Gen Xers, we can read a lot faster than you can talk on a video, so can you just give us the transcript and we’ll call it a day. But for other people with life context, not everybody lives in a quiet place where they can listen to a video.
What would you list out? Are there any other kind of common barriers to people accessing your material?
[Speaker 1]
Yes, and it’s less about accessing content, and more about accessing the doing, right? Any good course should start with what they’re going to do first, and only give the content that they need to be able to do the things that they’re trying to do, accomplish the task that they came to you to accomplish. And when we start thinking about it that way, we also need to think about the ability to access the course without increasing cognitive load, right?
So cognitive load is this idea that we can only hold so many things and do so many new things at once without, like, our brain going, yeah, no, we’re done. And so sometimes content is the thing that gets in the way, but a lot of times it’s overwhelmed. So content they don’t need, or activities and content that don’t talk to each or activities that don’t give enough context for them to be able to do the thing.
So saying something like, why do you get up in the morning? Well, for me, it’s because my kid has thrown up all over me or, right? Sometimes it’s your kids.
Some mornings, it’s my hip hurts because I slept on it wrong, or my neck hurts because I cough. When you’re not giving enough context for people to latch on to the thing that they’re supposed to be getting out of the activity, that becomes a cognitive load and accessibility issue because the instructions aren’t clear, right? So accessibility isn’t just about being able to consume the information in a course, because I would argue if you only have information, then you don’t have a course.
It really is about being able to use it and use it in ways that are going to help your clients to get to the goals that the course set out for them.
[Speaker 2]
Okay, do you have a maybe a common example or a recommendation of what that could look like in a specific instance?
[Speaker 1]
What an activity, an accessible activity might look like?
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, like what would be an example of an accessible activity versus a non-accessible activity?
[Speaker 1]
Okay, so an accessible activity would look like your content speaks to the activity. So just giving the information that they need to do it and also talks about the activity, draws the connections between this is why we’re doing this, right? It’s very transparent.
Transparency creates buy-in and also helps people to make those connections between what your course is having them do and what their real life is, right? And that to me is also, I think everything is an access issue, Tanya, but to me that’s also an access issue. If I can’t access the why behind what I’m doing in order to make it useful to me, then I’m not going to be successful.
So anything that prevents me from being successful would be an access issue. And so making those connections, explaining why, having the activity be something that is, I’m going to go back to my earlier example of why do you get out of bed in the morning? Usually that question, right, is to help you figure out what to do with your life, with your purposes, what your job might be.
That’s a very simple question for a really big answer. And so painting a scenario or painting a few scenarios, giving options, remembering that people like to have options. When they have an option that feels easier to answer, that also reduces cognitive load.
And not just easier to answer, but easier to answer in a way that makes sense. So something that I like to do is I like to give, I like to give reflective questions because they’re a good way to think about your thinking in a way that makes things stick. And so I’ll say you could write or voice note or draw a picture, right, like giving different modes and methods of doing the work can make it more accessible because they’re going to choose whatever feels easier.
If writing makes my eye twitch, and I like to just talk things out, I’m going to pick up my phone and I’m going to talk those answers. If I’ve got coughing kids in the background, and the idea of like catching that in a voice note, like, just causes the anxiety, then I can write it out. If I just like to doodle because words are hard, then I can do that too, right?
And so that makes the cognitive leap of the thing they’re trying to learn to do lower, because we’ve removed a second cognitive barrier for them. Does that make sense?
[Speaker 2]
It does. So it’s interesting, because at first when I heard, I was like, oh, yeah, that makes perfect sense, right, is as instructors, whether we’re doing a workshop or an online course, I think online courses, to me, it’s a little bit more important to get them right, because so much of that is self study, whereas when you’re teaching a workshop, people can ask questions in the moment. And so you have a better chance of preventing them from getting off on the wrong track too quickly.
But it’s important to tell people what to do, how to do it. But what you’re adding is they need to know why. And they need to know not just why you’re asking them to do it, but why it’s going to matter in their life.
It’s like the classic eighth grade answer of I’m never going to use algebra when I grow up, because I just, I want to be in agriculture. And you’re like, actually, everything’s algebra. And if you learn it really well, right now, you’ll never know everything is algebra, because it’ll be so intrinsic.
But then what you’re also adding to that is an acceptance as an instructor that just the very act of learning is going to be a struggle on some level for everybody, because learning is hard. And so whatever you can do to minimize the struggle benefits everybody. So I mean, that to me is community building.
It’s like at its very core. How do you think rethinking accessibility shifts how we can build community in these learning environments? Because I think learning community is really popular right now.
I don’t think that’s ever going out of style. So how does it shift with rethinking accessibility?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, when we rethink accessibility, and what it means, and how broad it should be, right. And we also build it into our foundations, then we’re already creating spaces that invite more people in to be successful, and to lean on each other and to come from different walks of life, because community isn’t just about gathering people, right? It’s about gathering people that can help and support and love on each other, for lack of a better phrase.
But everybody, when you’re building a community, you are not the only expert in the room. And that’s how it should be. Like if it’s done well, that’s how it should be.
And when you think about accessibility broadly, and build it into your foundations, you can bring people from different walks of life in ways that make your community better.
[Speaker 2]
Well, I could not have said that better. I mean, that is like, thank you. I think I might have you like, write my life’s beliefs for me, because you are so just so good at synthesizing what that value is.
Now, one thing I’m curious about, because I think that, you know, sometimes we meet somebody like you, and especially if this is not on your radar, right? If you’ve never thought about accessibility, you’ve really never thought about, hey, there are people like, this is not as plain spoken to others as it is to me. I think they think like, oh, well, you were just born like that at four years old.
You were like this, Katrina. I find that’s rarely the case. It’s usually some kind of evolution.
For you, where did the passion for accessibility come? And at what point, if any, did it shift from being compliance focused to actually more about caregiving? Because what you just described is very much caregiving in a professional and collective sense.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Well, I think it always started there. So my youngest sister, we found out later in life, has hearing loss.
And we’re seven kids, we were allowed. So she didn’t get noticed, didn’t get picked up right away. It was very nuanced.
But that was the first time like, oh, well, she can’t hear that sound. Oh, we have to make her look at you so that she can see. She’s scary good at lip reading.
But those kinds of things. And then my husband’s sister is completely deaf. Same thing, like making sure that I’m looking so that she can see and understand what I’m saying.
So it kind of started there. And then when I was an undergrad, I was a reader for a blind professor in the sociology department. And that was such a such a fun job, because I’ve just always been good at reading out loud.
Right. And so he he liked me as a reader, I would read student papers, I’m old enough that I read a textbook onto a cassette tape for him, almost put myself to sleep. I was like, you should this isn’t the book that you should adopt, because I’m reading this out loud and I’m dozing off.
And so it was also about him taking care of him. I worked for him between 2004 and 2006. And when the pandemic hit, he called me, because he was moving to zoom.
And he didn’t know that keyboard shortcuts and his current reader didn’t know how to go find them. They weren’t easily accessible. He couldn’t control the room, he couldn’t control the room, he didn’t know who wanted to nothing, he couldn’t quote unquote, see anything, because he didn’t have his keyboard shortcuts.
So it’s also kind of been just the people in my life that made it important. But also, I been teaching online since 2009. And in 2010, it’s been online only.
And so just the simple act of having to be in those spaces and be as accessible as possible to the student population that I always liked to serve. And that was non traditional, community college students who were often not served the first time they went into formal education, right? For whatever reason, but it was often because of an accessibility issue, either the language, or they had an undiagnosed disability, or whatever it was, they were living out of their car.
Sometimes that was the access issue. And so for me, it’s always been about people. And then, as I learned more and progressed in my, you know, in my studies, I realized, oh, yeah, there’s legal compliance, that’s good.
But it’s also not enough. Because all of these people were supposed to have been served by this legal compliance and aren’t, they haven’t been. And so that’s kind of when I got a little angry.
But even there is a popular system for evaluating courses in higher education, and they do have accessibility as part of their checklist. And it doesn’t always include the things that to me would really make it accessible, like that pulling out the transcript. That’s not part of it.
But it’s a very small, simple step. If you’ve already got captions, that can just make something that much more accessible to that many more people.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Okay. So I want to talk a little bit about tactics.
But I feel like in order to really do this conversation justice before I can talk about tactics, because I do think there are people who would do better. And because they don’t know what they don’t know, they aren’t even aware of what’s out there or possible. But before we talk about how to do this stuff, I want to talk about something that I don’t see as often as I used to, but I still see it enough that makes me feel like it needs to be addressed.
And that is and I’m going to use my own language around it. But forcing people to pay premium prices for accessible information, when I’m talking about, you know, this is a podcast, I have seen for years, right, if you want to get access to a podcast transcript, you’ve got to pay a certain amount to the Patreon or some kind of membership listener supported thing, right. And a lot of times that premium content or what is pitched as premium content is a recording that you can watch at 1.5 or 2x speed. It’s the transcript. Sometimes it’s backstory, right to really give you context to the interview. Give me your thoughts on that.
And I guess I’ll leave it there. I don’t want to put too much of my it is all bullshit.
[Speaker 1]
I’m just gonna call it like it is. Nobody should be doing that you should not be withholding that kind of information, right? Because all of those things paint a full picture for different people coming from different perspectives.
And so some people need that context to really understand the episode, knowing my background is going to help you a lot in understanding this episode, the thought of withholding a transcript from someone for a podcast that just makes my blood boil. I’m just gonna put that out there. Because that really is like a whole group of people that can’t get the information.
They can’t be part of the conversation, right? Like a good podcast. I want to jump in on that conversation.
I want to ask questions. I want to participate. And they can’t be part of that asynchronous conversation if they don’t know what the conversation is.
So yeah, that’s my answer. All right.
[Speaker 2]
I like your answer. So let’s talk to the business owner, because this is the follow up, right? Because I always hear like, you have to charge for that, you know, before platforms just auto caption things, that would be the same thing as it costs, it costs to create these things, even if you’re using something like, say, Otter, which will do machine transcription for you.
What would you suggest for business owner, course creator, that they could do right now to make their spaces more accessible? Or how is it maybe easier than that?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So for me, the low hanging fruit that I always suggest is two things. One is a checkbox.
Captioning your videos or your audio, getting a transcript for your audio is so easy. Right now, there’s really not an excuse to not do it. There are lots of free and cheap programs that will do it for you and do it pretty well.
You do want to make sure they’re correct. Because my favorite example is one time I was recording a video, this was years ago. And I said, the rhetorical act and the AI thought that I said rhetorical crack.
And that completely changes the tone of what I was saying. And so you don’t want to have rhetorical crack in your videos. So that’s an easy checkbox legal issue, right?
The other one is something we’ve already talked about. And that’s the why. It is easy to go in and say, okay, well, why am I having them do this?
And then just tell them why you’re having them do this. If you let’s say you already have a course, it’s something you can go in and just put in text, right? It doesn’t have to be like, I have to rerecord all my videos.
No, you don’t. You can write why big bold, why this is happening, make it a box in your course, we’re doing this because make it a transition from one lesson to the next. So it becomes a little mini module.
And maybe that’s just a recording, right? Just an audio recording with a short transcript, a few sentences of this is what we did. We did it because of this.
This is how it’s going to help you next. We’re doing this because it’s going to help you get to that goal. The explaining of the why is another really easy one that can have a really big impact.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, I like how you mentioned just how easy things like transcription and captioning are now. Because this is one of those things, and I’ve been guilty of it as well. We use software tools, we take some time and effort to learn them when we adopt them.
But then we don’t necessarily stay updated with their improvements. You know, now Zoom will auto transcribe and send out notes. So you don’t have to pay extra for a tool like Fathom or a tool like Otter.
You know, you used to have to have like rev.com in order to have live captioning. But now Zoom will do that. Google Meet does it not nearly as good as Zoom.
I wish Google Meet did it better. And then you mentioned, you know, I do think the most common mistake is that people trust technology a little too much, and they don’t review their transcription. So I’m really glad that you mentioned that.
Do you see any other common mistakes that people make in it, you know, in an honest attempt to be accessible, that they just didn’t know what they didn’t know?
[Speaker 1]
I would say that those are the big ones, but also having images that don’t have alt text.
[Speaker 2]
Talk about that, because I think most people don’t understand the way the text. I’m not sure I do, actually, I’ll be honest. Like I know what I’ve read about it, right.
But it doesn’t stop me from second guessing myself every time I work with, say, a web designer who tries to get me to just put the SEO keywords in the alt text.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, don’t do that. So the way that all text functions, and this is very much for screen readers, is that it will give whatever you put in that box is the description of the image that it will read out loud. And so the things to consider is what’s important about that image.
And this really kind of gets to like my rhetoric base, like, why is that image included? Is it adding something to to what you’re trying to say? People tend to get in trouble if they use tables, because screen readers and tables have a difficult relationship sometimes in terms of the order in which things are being read.
And that can depend on the screenwriter. Like there’s so many things that go into making something accessible in that way. I will leave tables off of the table right now and just talk about alt text.
I saw your face. But really, it’s about providing a description that matches the way that you are anticipating the visual working with the text on the page. That’s what should be in the description box.
So like I also include like when I post on LinkedIn, right, I have the alt text. But then I also have an image description in most of my posts. And sometimes I’ll be like cute and funny about it.
Because it’s part of the reason why I included that particular image was to be cute and funny about it. I had a picture of the ocean and I was like, and I think there might be a boat back there. Little things that that tell someone who is listening to your page, what that image is and how it plays into the purpose of what you’re trying to do.
That’s the goal.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, and I have to say, I love it when people put little Easter eggs or injections of their personality in alt text. I picked that up from somebody I follow online. So I’ll point it out if there’s a picture of me with straight hair, because I almost always have curly hair.
I have straight hair today. But I will say, you know, contrary to her norm, Tanya is pictured here with straight hair, probably because she hasn’t washed her hair in five days. And it feels to me like what that does is it invites people who need the screen reader into the full experience of working with you of processing your content versus a light skinned woman with medium brown hair and slight streaks of silver.
[Speaker 1]
I have an image that I use sometimes on my YouTube thumbnails where I’m like, my fingertips are together and I’m looking at the camera like I’m plotting an evil plan. And I will literally put that in my description.
[Speaker 2]
I love it. I use uploading world domination in mind. Yeah.
I’m just like, there’s that little Dr. Evil expression that we can all get. And I feel like you picture that when Yeah, when you hear the same thing we do every night pinky. Yeah, exactly.
See, that’s another good one. So we’ve talked a lot about education, but how do you see accessibility benefiting, even if we’re focusing on it in an education environment? How does that benefit outside of education?
Because you’ve mentioned like, we’re all better when we strive to make things more accessible.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Do you mean what do you mean outside of education, like formal or you mean education in the online business world or So I’m thinking of say, okay, so we have an educational perspective, we have an online business perspective.
[Speaker 2]
But I bet you like me go to and sometimes have to organize a parent meeting at our kids school. Or maybe we have a social club that we’re a part of, right. And we’re planning an event for that social club.
There are things I think about now that I didn’t used to think about, right, I think about, if we’re communicating important information at the social event, how are the people in the back of the room gonna hear me? Yeah, I didn’t used to think about, you know, when I was 24, I was not thinking about that sort of stuff. So that’s what I’m curious about is how does that overlap?
What is that practical life application to this accessibility that we may be using an online business?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, that’s a good question. And so I think that the practical life application is just getting out of your own head. Honestly, but you know, I, you know, when I was still doing full time higher ed, I had been hired at a distance.
And so I was always a distance employee. And we tried to do meetings that were hybrid. And I had to do a whole proposal about how to actually make the online experience, something that was it can’t be the same, because it’s different, but it can be equivalent.
Right? We can still have a good experience if they’re not forgetting that the group of us is over there sitting on zoom, listening to them in pods, and we were just left to our own devices. And so just remembering that there are other people outside of your sphere outside of your experience that have had different experiences, you won’t ever be able to think of all of them.
But asking is a really good first step. It’s okay, if you don’t know what other people need, you can anticipate some of those needs. But asking is, is the best way to understand, you know, what someone might need in those parent meetings, or if you’re organizing the party at school, right for your kids class.
And these are all parent related, because my kids just went back to school this week. And that’s all I can, that’s all I can think about right now. But I really think that asking, you know, Hey, what do you need?
How can I make this accessible to you? What would make us a pleasant experience?
[Speaker 2]
I think asking, yeah, what would make this a pleasant experience is an excellent question. Because I think sometimes people don’t know how to answer because nobody’s ever asked them before. Right?
And so when you just, you know, it’s like, if you say what do you need? They’re like, well, gosh, I’ve been figuring out my own way all this time. I don’t need anything from you.
But you’re like, well, what would make it more pleasant? They go, Oh, actually, now that you bring that up, this would be nice. And then I also think following through, even if you’re not able to accommodate that request this specific time, because of timeline, budget, whatever, being able to say, Hey, this is what we were looking at doing, we’re not able to do, we’re gonna try this instead, would that be okay?
Or do you have another idea that maybe we haven’t thought of? I think the most important thing is that conversation and not treating it like an elephant in the room that we don’t talk about.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, absolutely.
[Speaker 2]
All right, a couple more questions before we start to close. So I think the first thing, and I know you have a Course Creator playbook, right? Yes.
And you have a pretty extensive YouTube channel that people can get a lot of resources on. So we’ll put all that information in the show notes and also on the website. That way, it will be accessible to everybody, no matter where they look for it, because that’s how we do things around here.
But if someone’s realizing for the first time that their space is not as accessible as maybe they thought before they started listening to the two of us talk, what would be the first step you would suggest that they take?
[Speaker 1]
Prioritizing, right? We have already talked about some of the low-hanging fruit, but it’s not just low-hanging fruit, it’s low-hanging fruit with the biggest impact. So I would suggest asking who’s taken your course, right?
It always comes down to like this communication factor, right? Like, hey, I’m considering doing this, this, or this to make my course more accessible right now. Which one would make this a better experience for you or would make you more successful in this program or, you know, whatever the thing is, you know, helping, letting the people that are in your programs help co-create an accessible space with you is a really good place to start because you know that it’s having a bigger impact and so should hopefully feel like less of a lift if you’re retroactively making things more accessible.
[Speaker 2]
Okay, and then I think there’s that person and then there’s the person who’s already wrestling with it, already knows and just feels like they have so much distance to go from where they’re at now to where the ideal is, right? So they feel like they’re never going to get this accessibility thing right. What would you suggest to them?
[Speaker 1]
Remembering that it is always a moving target. As painful as that might be to hear, you know, there are always going to be things that we could do to make it better for other people. And so as long as you are taking the next right step for you and your community, then you’ll be okay because you burning out is the last thing that we need as well.
And so again, it is about prioritizing but also not letting your brain run away with the 80 million things that you could possibly doing and just focusing on what the next right thing is.
[Speaker 2]
Right, letting that perfectionistic mindset get in the way of you doing anything. Oh, I love that. That’s so encouraging, you know, because it it would be easy to say, well, this is the ideal and do this or nothing.
But letting people know that there’s there’s grace, we’re all making incremental progress the best that we can. And technology advances all the time. I mean, there’s things like you said earlier, we can do now that we could not do before.
Or at least we couldn’t do it as easily before. Like I remember listening to my recordings and hand typing my transcripts. That was fun.
So painful. So painful. I don’t know what was worse the typing or the hearing my own voice.
I think it was the hearing my own voice part. Yes, it was.
[Speaker 1]
But you do eventually get used to that. So you do.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, no, you’re right. But thank you for taking me down that walk on memory lane there. So okay, now we’ve come to the end, which is our freak flags fly segment.
And it’s just a quick round five fast questions. No wrong answers. You get to just give whatever comes to mind.
Are you ready?
[Speaker 1]
Sure.
[Speaker 2]
All right. So finish the sentence. You’re my kind of freak if you’ve won a trophy for reading.
Oh, I want to see that trophy if you have one. All right. What is something you love that your friends just don’t get?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, spreadsheets.
[Speaker 2]
I don’t get it, but I appreciate you. What community would you infiltrate just to understand it better?
[Speaker 1]
A community filled with the full scale and spectrum of neuro diverse folks.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, that would be a fun community.
[Speaker 1]
It would. And I think that sometimes, like, the diversities, right, kind of grouped together, at least in my experience, by having everybody in a space. So it’s a made up space, I think.
But that would be the space.
[Speaker 2]
That would be a fun one. Okay. Two more questions.
Which tool ritual or practice helps you stay most connected to your people?
[Speaker 1]
I write every morning, which sounds cliche. But with a background in writing, I can’t help it. But it’s also just like a brain dump.
Sometimes it’s just a brain dump. And I need to just like, get it all out that with a cup of coffee. If the coffee doesn’t come with the writing, then then my my system is messed up.
[Speaker 2]
That’s good. I have to be caffeinated as well. All right.
And finally, who is someone doing freakishly good work who deserves a bigger stage?
[Speaker 1]
I think the folks that are helping people in transition. And specifically, the folks that are helping people in transition, that are helping them to not throw the baby out with the bathwater, right? I think a lot of times people talk about transitioning to things and starting fresh and starting all over.
But as human beings, that’s not how we function. And so I know some folks who are doing that kind of work where they’re like, okay, but that’s that’s part of you. And that’s okay.
And we don’t have to get rid of it just because you’re shifting and changing and doing those kinds of things. I think I think they need a bigger stage.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, I love that. I love that. All right, Katrina, thank you so much for being here and for challenging us to think differently about accessibility.
What I’ve gotten out of this is a picture of accessibility, not as a burden, not as a box to check to avoid bad things happening, but as a way to truly care for people and make sure that they belong. And for those listening today, I would just say here’s an invitation to look at your spaces. Take advantage of what Katrina said, right?
Your course, your community, even your conversations. Ask yourself who’s missing. Ask yourself who still can’t get in and then just take one step to open that door.
Right? Normal is not the point around here. It’s belonging and belonging can’t happen without access.
That’s it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re craving connection, join the Freak Show at findyourfreaks.com.
What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
May 27, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
If you are somebody who runs a community or even if you’re in a community and it doesn’t feel quite right and you’re not sure if you should stay or you should go, I want you to ask yourself these questions. What behaviors does the community reward? Does it reward sharing knowledge or does it reward hoarding knowledge? Does it reward visibility, being openly participatory or does it not? Does it reward generosity? When somebody jumps in to help somebody else out, does the leader call attention to that in a positive way? People will always adapt to the emotional temperature of the room. Communities will always respond to what is incentivized.
If you realize that the community will behave in a way that they see rewarded, then you can make a community that should be territorial by default a very collaborative space. We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tonya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet.
Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras, because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. Hey there, freaks.
Have you ever noticed how some communities feel like a potluck? And, you know, everybody brings something to the table, people swap recommendations freely, new folks get welcomed in with grace and enthusiasm, and somebody else’s success feels exciting because it expands the whole room. Everybody needs a slice of Aunt Martha’s pie and they want the recipe. Then there’s communities that feel like a cage match.
Right? People guard the information, they avoid revealing too much, they don’t want to share resources, and collaboration always feels surface level at best, right? It’s performative, there always feels to be something underneath, right? Like everybody’s angling for something under the guise of seeming collaborative. And everybody who walks in who has a similar idea rather than creating super friends, they start to feel like a threat. You know, when I spoke recently to best-selling mystery author Michelle Chouinard, our conversation covered a wide swath of space.
I mean, we talked about everything from fandom to serial killer tourism and even true crime writing ethics. But underneath that conversation about books in fandom was a much bigger question. Why do some communities become collaborative while other communities become territorial? One thing that Michelle said is that mystery writers were one of the most gracious, inclusive communities she had ever encountered.
And while she used terms like generous and kind to describe the writers who supported her throughout her career, I don’t think the difference between this community and others is as simple as certain people being nicer than others. I think actually what matters more is structure. In fiction, readers usually consume broadly, right? Like readers are super fans of the genre, maybe they’re super fans of specific aspects of a storyline, you know, but nobody ever says, I already read one mystery author, I’m done forever, right? Nobody read one Agatha Christie book and said they never needed to read another mystery again.
Nobody said, oh that’s it, it’s Agatha Christie or bust, I’m never gonna read Poe, I’m never gonna read Tom Clancy, I’m not gonna read anything else, it’s just Agatha Christie for the rest of my life, right? That’s just not how fiction operates. But in the non-fiction world, it’s a totally different story. When you look at non-fiction, I mean, non-fiction covers a wide variety of genres, right? There’s memoir in there, there’s autobiography, but when you look at the top selling titles, they usually fall under business and self-help.
You know, we oftentimes refer to prescriptive non-fiction, which is like a how-to book, but really it’s a self-help book. So if you think about it, right, self-help can be relationships, right? It can be parenting books, it can be marital romantic relationship books, it can be books about friendship, can also be, you know, books about yourself, like hacking your own brain, how to handle neurodivergence, neurodivergent parenting, neurodivergent friendships, like all of that falls under that self-help category. So does, you know, anything that’s diet and fitness, living with chronic illness, couch to 5k, like any of that stuff, right, all falls under self-help.
And then you’ve got your business books, right? I think that’s the other main seller in the non-fiction category. And in those cases, which is very very different from fiction as a whole, but especially from mystery, is that the value proposition of the book oftentimes is or is very closely tied to the author’s lived experience. So the book is often their framework, right? It is their baby, this the methodology that they have birthed into existence.
And even if it leans on other experts, right, even if it, you know, dates back to other theories, other methodologies, you know, they have a specific spin that they’ve put on it that makes it their own, that makes it sound, feel, or be presented as proprietary, right? So again, the book often is their framework, their methodology, their philosophy. And what we see, at least in 2026 and beyond, is that the author’s business model very frequently is based on presenting their book as the best solution to the problem it was written to solve, right? So let’s take clutter, right, because that’s an area where I have a lot of experience. You know, I worked with best-selling author Kathy Lipp, who authored Clutter-Free, Clutter-Free Home, and Clutter-Free for Life.
She’s got the Clutter-Free for Life membership committee. I mean, there’s a lot of things focused on clutter. Now, around the time that Clutter-Free came out, which would have been 2014, Marie Kondo’s, I think it’s The Magical Act of Tidying Up, I can’t even remember, was a bestseller as well, right? Everybody was talking about the KonMarie method.
But, you know, a lot of people who found Kathy’s book Clutter-Free and who fell in love with it, fell in love with it for all the reasons that it was different from Marie Kondo’s book. And the people who loved Marie Kondo’s book loved it for all the ways and reasons it was different from other books about organization and decluttering and such. And so because of that, because you’re either usually in one camp or the other, you know, nobody says, I’m following the Clutter-Free method with some inspiration from the KonMarie method, it makes collaboration a lot more complicated.
It makes collaboration a lot more complicated across the spectrum. You will typically find in nonfiction, an agent will typically only represent one author with one specialty. You won’t find an agent who says, I represent all authors who focus on home organization and decluttering.
Usually they’ll say, you know, I represent prescriptive nonfiction or I represent nonfiction. I’ll take, you know, history buffs, but I can’t have five World War II historians. I can only have like one or two World War II historians, depending on your focus.
I have one self-improvement health and fitness coach. I have one diet coach. I have one home organization clutter author.
And then that’s it, right? And then with publishers, they may publish titles with similar focuses, but there’s usually three to five years between those titles, right? They’re not going to publish them all at the same time. So again, it’s a lot harder to collaborate in that nonfiction space than it is in a fiction space just because there truly is more scarcity involved. And so what I thought would be interesting is to, with you, explore this idea of why some communities become rising tide communities, right? Like everybody’s in it together because they know when one of us wins, all of us win.
And why others are more scarcity driven and what happens when belonging gets tangled up with the competition. So going back to the interview with Michelle, one thing that I think is important to remember is that the ecosystem of fiction is additive, right? So I would say fiction ecosystems are more about like more is merrier versus there can be only one, right? It’s a Highlander. You know, one thing that Michelle said that I wrote down is that nobody in the world ever said, I only read one mystery writer, right? Like I brought that up, you know, at its core, mystery, like other fiction genres, you know, thinking of romance, romanticy, fantasy, they’re an escape from reality and readers hunger for that escape regularly.
Like people who love to read a good novel are people who really want to just take a step from reality for a moment. They want to immerse themselves into a different world. They want to either become a character or be part of the all seeing narrator who is guiding them through the story with the character.
And then the other piece, which, you know, I’ve kind of described, but I want to call out is that fans oftentimes become bridges between creators instead of gatekeepers. So what I mean by that is back when Clutterfree came out, I remember, you know, that’s part of how I got to work with is that book came out and as the daughter of a hoarder, it totally changed my life. It changed my perspective on the challenges I had with clutter personally.
It also changed my perspective on my mom’s challenges with stuff. I mean, I knew my mom was a hoarder. I knew that was a mental illness, but I didn’t know, right? Like there’s like one thing to know at the surface level, there’s another thing to know to the core of your being.
I didn’t know how deeply that affected me. And also all the other stuff around the hoarding disorder and also what I could do to stop that cycle. I learned a lot of that from reading Kathy’s book.
Now I have not read The Magical Art of Tidying Up. I’ve read like the first two chapters and like chapter one, I was like, oh yeah, this person doesn’t get me. And then I saw a couple of like interviews on TV with Marie Kondo and I was like, oh yeah, we are not cut from the same cloth here, right? Your life is not my life.
My life is not your life. And so, you know, when I was at a social event, if somebody was talking about how they were like con marine their whole house, I was like, oh yeah, I do not see myself in that picture. And I instantly knew that wasn’t somebody that I could discuss my own decluttering journey with because they had a very different perspective of what the priorities were with decluttering, what a kept house meant, didn’t mean, all of that.
And because clutter-free is a system. Sold a system for decluttering your home and keeping it that way. Magical Art of Tidying Up sold a system for decluttering your home and keeping that way.
I would argue it was much more about organization, but I’m not going to split hairs there. So you either follow one type of system or the other. You’re either passionate about this system or the other system because the systems don’t intertwine.
They don’t work together. They’re not designed to work together. It’s one or the other.
It’s the same thing with parenting books, right? Are you a gentle parent? Do you follow the connected parent philosophy? Do you follow the positive discipline philosophy? Do you follow the spare the rod, spoil the child philosophy? Do you follow something in between, right? There is like no shortage of different types of parenting books out there. But if you have a friend and she has got like 10 different parenting books on her shelf, it’s not because all 10 of those books worked. It’s because it took her 10 books to find the method that worked for her.
It’s almost like her bookshelf is almost her resume of what she has done to try to solve her parenting challenges. So with non-fiction, you’re either all in on one author’s way or you’re on the search to being all in on an author’s way. It’s rare that you will find different methodologies that work together.
It does happen in some cases, but not always. And most authors are hopeful that their way is the one way to rule them all for you, right? Because that is their future job security of writing more books. Because if you can buy into this one methodology, right, then they can take you to say level two, level three, level four with subsequent books.
Or if you buy into that methodology, then they can present that methodology with different angles and you will buy those, right? You’ll become all in on their ecosystem. And if they’ve got offers on the other side of their book, which some do, some sell courses, some sell programs, some have just like merch lines, whatever that is, you’ll buy those things too, right? Because their one book changed your life. Their one book is the one way to rule them all for you.
So that in and of itself, I think explains objectively why you don’t see the level of collaboration in nonfiction spaces that you see in fiction spaces. And I think, you know, while Michelle is a mystery writer and she can only really speak of mystery writer communities, I have heard the exact same thing said about communities with fantasy writers, communities of romance writers, and then communities of writers that merge genres or books with paranormal speculative fiction. That’s what it’s called, speculative fiction.
Those are much more collaborative communities than your nonfiction spaces. And again, it’s because when you read a fiction book, it’s done, right? You immerse yourself into the story. You close the book.
Maybe you talk about the characters. I wonder why they did this, or what about this, or when’s the next book coming out? Are we ever going to hear so-and-so story? For the most part, my experience with the book was done the moment I closed it. And, you know, I’m waiting for the next book to come out.
When I read a nonfiction book, I mean, sometimes the reason that I will finish a book or not finish the book has to do with the fact that they ask for implementation, and some are easier to implement than others. And some of them, if I’m not quite in a place where that book necessarily applies to me 100%, I can’t even implement it, right? And so then I have to go, okay, well, is there enough story here to move me through the book if I’m not doing any of the exercises? Can I share the identity of other fans of this book if I’m not able to check all the boxes the book is asking me to check? And many of these books do require some form of long-term commitment. Mystery writer is just saying, just buy my book and just read it, or at least give it a check.
Very different. So, you know, with any type of fiction, not just mystery, all readers are invited to explore. Explore this book, explore this series, explore other authors, explore other, you know, similar topics.
And when you’re looking at non-fiction, especially, you know, the self-help books, the business books, they’re asking you to make a commitment. And there is this feeling of infidelity if you try to commit to more than one author who writes about the same thing. The other thing that we see, and this comes down to framework, right? Because mystery books aren’t selling you a framework.
The writer may be following a specific framework to tell you the story, but they’re not selling you on the framework. And so with non-fiction, you know, your trust in the framework gets tied directly to trust in the creator. Because this book solved this problem better than anything else, you now trust anything that author puts out to solve that problem.
And so what that, you know, speaks to really is the difference in how we bond, right? So fiction readers as a community bond to the story, they bond to the characters, they bond to the worlds being built. And in non-fiction, you bond to authority, to the credibility of the author, maybe to the author’s personality, to their lived experience. Maybe their lived experience is similar to yours, or maybe it’s completely opposite, but their perspective on it is very interesting to you.
Or maybe it’s their expertise. Maybe you have bonded to this particular author because they have a PhD and 20 years of research on the topic, but you bond to another author because they’re a journalist who has been covering this topic for 20 years and is now writing books based on, you know, the compilation of all the reporting and all the sources that they have spoken to over the years. And so you feel like they’re giving you a much more holistic picture, but it comes from you having faith and trust in the experience that they’re bringing into the book.
And so when trust in the book gets intertwined with trust in the author, you can see where criticism and competition feel much more personal. But with non-fiction, you’ve got not only does the criticism feel more personal because to some degree they’re arguing with your lived experience. The other thing that I don’t think non-writers think about very often, but when we’re looking at community and that difference between what makes them competitive versus collaborative, we also have to think about plagiarism and theft of intellectual property.
Plagiarism is an issue across the creative spaces. I am not even going to go down the rabbit hole of all that is AI, right? But whether you write movies, you write books, you write courses, like there is copying going around. There just is.
But the plagiarism fears, I think, run higher in the non-fiction space because it all goes back to the author’s credibility. I said, I write this thing. I say, this is, this is the way to live till you’re a hundred.
Somebody else comes in. They publish that same exact thing, same exact story under a different title because their cover is prettier. They sell more copies.
And now suddenly everybody thinks I copied them and not them having copied me. That’s a real fear in the non-fiction space. Like everybody’s rushing.
I think that’s why we have so much self-publishing happening with business books is because everybody’s rushing to become the known expert on a thing before somebody else who has a bigger audience, bigger platform gets known for it. And so naturally creators do become protective of their work, protective of their frameworks. You know, they want to trademark them where in, when we’re talking about fiction writing, it’s like, there’s no shortage of cop dramas.
There’s no shortage of, you know, alpha male romances. Nobody’s got the market cornered on that. Everybody writes it a little bit differently, but everybody writes it kind of at the same time.
It’s just like, what trope are you using? You know, it’s almost a mix and match, right? This kind of trope with this kind of topic in this kind of setting. And it becomes an entirely different story. And even if all the Lego blocks of the story are the same.
And so I think that’s why you see a lot of territorial behavior happening in online business spaces. Like some of the most difficult communities I have ever had to manage or to repair have been business communities. And I see that a lot in a lot of online business spaces, a lot of fishing in other people’s ponds, you know, people even teach that.
So I think the fact that they become territorial is natural, you know, back to in fiction, we sell stories and in nonfiction, we sell trust, we sell expertise. And that in and of itself just makes for a more competitive environment. So with all of that being said, does that mean that nonfiction authors don’t have communities? No.
Does that mean you can’t have great community as a nonfiction author? Or does that mean that if you aren’t an author, episode has nothing for you? No, I don’t think so. I think that back to what I said about structure, you know, communities will always respond to what is incentivized. And so if you realize that the community will behave in a way that they see rewarded, then you can make a community that should be territorial by default, a very collaborative space.
And I have seen this also in online businesses, when you’re rewarding the collaboration, and you’re calling out the collaboration, people naturally want to be more collaborative, right, because they want to be viewed on that elevated platform. And so in Michelle’s case, right, in the writer community, you see writers will share editors, they’ll share their resources freely, they welcome new writers, they celebrate nominees of awards, you know, when you look at business spaces or other communities that can be more territorial, you can build that same sort of camaraderie, right, you create your systems that shape behavior, like I was talking about in the group track community, where you have collaboration being elevated, working together being elevated, people who are elevated and amplified for a variety of different contributions, not just like, oh, this person closed a $10,000 deal, but like this person just crossed 1000 people in their Facebook group. This person just, you know, developed like an end-to-end pipeline to personally get to know every person on their friends list or whatever that could be.
So those systems in place, having that structure tells people how to behave in the space and tells people how territorial they get to be, how collaborative they need to be. Going back to the earlier points, the scarcity that creates defensiveness, when people feel like there can only be one expert on this topic, they’re naturally going to get defensive, they’re naturally going to clamor to be that one expert. But if you can create an environment of abundance, right, there is enough pie to go around, there is more than enough for all of us, then you get that openness and that collaboration.
If you remember nothing else from this conversation, what I want you to remember is that communities, any community teaches its members how to behave. So if you are running a community or if you’ve been in a community and you want it to be much more collaborative than it is, recognize that it is the way it is because of how the structure of the community has taught the members to be and to change the culture and the climate is as simple as changing the structure to support different behaviors. So if you are somebody who runs a community or even if you’re in a community who doesn’t feel quite right, you’re not sure if you should stay or you should go, I want you to ask yourself these questions.
What behaviors does the community reward? Does it reward sharing knowledge or does it reward hoarding knowledge? Does it reward visibility, being openly participatory or does it not? Does every time somebody tries to answer somebody else’s question, do they get shot down because they’re not an admin? I’ve seen that happen, it’s awful. Does the community reward shared discovery or does it reward exclusivity? Does it reward generosity? When somebody jumps in to help somebody else out, does the leader call attention to that in a positive way? People will always adapt to the emotional temperature of the room, whether that room is online or in person. So to kind of tie this all up, what I would say is that belonging grows when people stop treating each other like threats.
I think a big part of that is finding your perfect people, right? When you come into a space where people understand your obsessions, you feel at home. And then there is a difference between fitting in and being understood. And so if you are somebody who runs communities, think about that.
Think about how you can help members feel understood versus making a place where they have to figure out how to fit in. And then always be thinking of ways to establish and promote safety. I talk a lot about psychological safety.
That is just that feeling that I can let my guard down when I’m in this space. But know that when people feel safe, they tend to be more generous, right? That scarcity mindset, that territorial behavior comes from fear and it comes from feeling like it’s not safe here. And so if they can feel safe, they’ll feel secure.
That will make them more generous. And then for your part, it really comes into just rewarding more of that collaborative, generous behavior. So I think the thought that I would like to leave you with today is that what sets, you know, Michelle’s description of the mystery writer community apart from other author communities is not ambition.
It’s not that nonfiction authors are more ambitious. They want to be bestsellers more than mystery authors. It’s not that mystery authors are kind of ambivalent.
They don’t care if they sell books or whatever. It’s that you can be ambitious in the mystery genre without having to step on other people’s heads to get to the top. Everybody can climb the top of the ladder together.
They can give each other boosts. And when one mystery writer gets a boost up, you know, they get on the bestseller list. It actually elevates the genre across the board and people start reading more mystery across the board.
On the nonfiction space, ambition doesn’t have to come with isolation. It’s just, that’s kind of the nature of the beast these days, but it doesn’t have to be like that. So if you are a community leader, regardless of what kind of community you’re running, I want you to kind of explore how can you make it so that ambition and isolation aren’t synonymous, don’t have to be synonymous, right? How can people be ambitious in this community, be super active, be thought leaders in your community without overshadowing anybody else? Like rising tide raises all boats.
And if you are somebody who is active in communities, you’re not running a community, I just want to encourage you that if you haven’t yet found the room where your intensity matches everybody else’s, where everybody is as enthusiastic as you are about the topic, keep looking, keep looking. There’s a million and one communities out there, I kid you not, maybe two million. Your perfect people are out there, you just have to look for them, but you don’t need to waste your time in spaces where you feel like you have to hide your true self in order to be accepted.
So to kind of land the plane here, the deeper issue between collaborative and competitive communities isn’t really about the publishing industry, right? It’s really about this is kind of a case study in what scarcity does to people. When people believe that there isn’t enough room, enough opportunity, enough recognition, or enough safety, they will start protecting themselves and that protection will supersede any attempts at connection. And that changes how people share in a community, whether they collaborate, how they treat newcomers in a community, and how they respond to other people’s successes.
So when I think of my conversation with Michelle, I don’t just think of how supportive the mystery writers have been to her, I think of how that community structure allows every writer to believe that others’ success does not prevent them from succeeding, does not get in the way or delay their own success. And that’s a very powerful, encouraging belief. So remember, it’s not about ambition, it’s about the absence of threat.
And so if you’re building a community, leading a community, or just trying to find your people, the number one question worth asking is what behaviors does this space reward? And if the space doesn’t reward generosity, curiosity, or shared enthusiasm, then maybe it’s not doing its job. Or maybe it’s just not doing its job for you. So until next time, I want you to stay weird, stay freaky, and join us for the next interview, which will be all about accessibility.
And I can’t wait to hear what you think. That’s it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review.
And if you’re craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird, makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
May 13, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
[Speaker 1]
Mystery readers and mystery writers are my freaks, and I love them because we are puzzle obsessed. We all love cats. Well, most of us love cats.
The mystery writing community is one of the most supportive communities I’ve ever been a part of, and this is one of the reasons why I guess I finally feel like I’ve found home. In the real world, I always felt like the craziest person in the room. In the academic world, I always felt like the most normal person in the room.
And in the mystery writing community, I feel like this is it. It’s like Goldilocks. It’s like the perfect fit.
The mystery writing community is very much about rising up all boats. So, you know, nobody in the world ever said, I only read one mystery writer. So if I read a quality mystery, it’s just going to get somebody else’s books a chance to thrive as well.
And I love that mindset.
[Speaker 2]
We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tonya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras. Because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. We love to talk about community.
We love to talk about how to build it, grow it, sustain it. But today, we are talking about the people who obsess over red herrings and stay up all night, and I kid you not, I mean all night, trying to guess the killer. I can’t actually think about a better person to have this conversation with today than best-selling mystery author Michelle Shunard.
Michelle, we kick off every single episode with one big question, which is who are your freaks and why do you love them?
[Speaker 1]
Oh man, I have so many. I have a number of different freaks, but in this context, mystery readers and mystery writers are my freaks, and I love them because we are puzzle obsessed. We all love cats.
Well, most of us love cats. The mystery writing community is one of the most supportive communities I’ve ever been a part of, and this is one of the reasons why I guess I finally feel like I’ve found home. So you know I used to be an academic, and my joke used to be that in the real world, I always felt like the craziest person in the room.
In the academic world, I always felt like the most normal person in the room, and in the mystery writing community, I feel like this is it. It’s like Goldilocks. It’s like the perfect fit.
It’s just right for you. Yes, and they’re very, very supportive because I’m not a competitive person by nature, and I don’t really care to be in hyper-competitive environments where my success comes at the cost of yours, and the mystery writing community is very much about rising up all boats. So you know, nobody in the world ever said, I only read one mystery writer.
So if I write a quality mystery, it’s just going to get somebody else’s books a chance to thrive as well, and I love that mindset.
[Speaker 2]
Oh my god. Okay, so we can go in so many directions, but first of all, I just want to say what you say about nobody reads just one mystery writer. Oh my gosh, that’s so true, because I’m not a big mystery reader, but my mom was, and when your first book came out, which was Dancing Girls, I had posted about it, and I was just like, oh my god, you know, my mom was a big fan of J.D. Robb, and she would have loved the Dancing Girls. Like, I could totally tell, and I can’t even tell you the number of people who messaged me privately, thanked me for the recommendation for the Dancing Girls, and then said, I had never heard of J.D. Robb. Thank you for introducing me to her as well. So you’re right.
They’re rabid fans, and one of the things that I wanted to ask you is, because you know, right now, especially with book talk, romance readers and romance writers are totally having their heyday, and romance readers get this reputation of being write-or-die fans, and what you’re saying is mystery readers are just as devoted. I’m curious though, how are they different from your perspective?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, you know what? I’m not sure I would say that they are. I mean, other than they like, you know, a slightly different genre, although romance as mash-up part of mystery is really happening right now.
But yeah, I mean, I think that to be write-or-die, like I was write-or-die for Sue Grafton when she, you know, unfortunately she’s not with us anymore. I write-or-die Mary Higgins Clark. I’ve got some authors that no matter what book they release, I will buy it.
The instant it comes out, I will buy it in hardcover. But that doesn’t mean I’m not always looking for my next person that I’m going to write-or-die for, and I think that romance writers are the same. I also think that both communities read ravenously, and I think that the reasons for why we read ravenously in our genre are similar, if maybe slightly different, which is that we are looking for a world that has a kind of order.
So with romance, we want that happily ever after, right? That’s H-E-A is the short thing for it, and you want that order to be restored. The same thing with mystery writers.
We want the killer caught, or at least brought to justice. And we want that order to be restored. We want to believe that we live in a world where the good is going to win out over the bad, and I think that’s true for both of these genres.
So I don’t know if that answered your question or completely went off track, but…
[Speaker 2]
It’s perfect because you’re right. We want justice done in one way or the other, right? And so in the romance genre, it’s the happily ever after.
We want the girl to get the guy in the end. Or the guy to get the guy in the end, or the girl to get the boy in the end. Yeah, however it works.
It reminds me of a friend of mine recently started publishing romance, and when her first book came out, it was so well done for what I’m used to reading when it comes to independently authored and published romance novels, especially ones that just kind of go direct to Kindle. And so I reached out to her, and I was like, I love you and hate you, because I stood up, like I was up until 3 a.m. to finish this book, and my alarm goes off at 4. And her response was like, wait, I don’t get it.
Like, Tanya, you know it’s a romance. Like, they get together in the end. Why wouldn’t you just pick it up the next day?
Like, they’re stuck on a page, Tanya. Nothing’s going to change. And I’m like, but I didn’t know how it was going to happen, and I had to stay up to figure out how.
That’s my point. And I feel like it’s the same thing with you, right, with the thrillers. Okay, so we all assume that the killer is going to get caught or going to get brought to justice, but it’s the tension of when that happens, how that happens, and what happens to our beloved main character in the process.
And talk to me a little bit about binge reading, because that is something, I thought I was the weirdo until I started getting, like, working more into the publishing industry and stuff. I thought I was the weirdo who, when I discovered an author, suddenly wanted to read everything they had ever written in their entire life, even if it was really bad stuff from high school. But now I hear, like, that’s just a thing that we as readers tend to do.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, no, and as a matter of fact, the publishing industry is very well aware of that. It’s something I’ve heard multiple times since the beginning of my career, is that your sweet spot is when you get at least five books in your back catalog, because then each new book that comes out, your readers are hopefully going to go, you know, a new reader is going to go, oh, and go back, and then, you know, they’ve got something they can latch their, you know, teeth or claws or whatever mixed metaphor I’m trying to use here into. You know, I find that I’m not only that with books, but I’m that way with TV. I’m actually annoyed.
So I have this new thing that I love. It’s called Castle Impossible. It’s a renovation show about these people that have this chateau in France that they inherited from their grandfather.
And it’s on regular TV, and there’s only one episode a week. And I’m very annoyed about that. I want to binge the series.
So this is what we do, right? And I think also, the bigger chunk that we’re able to get our hands on, the better it stays in the memory, so that we remember, you know, a year from now when that next book comes out. So I think that it’s all of those psychological processing things going on.
[Speaker 2]
Right. And then there’s the folks who, and I didn’t know this existed either, I learned so much every single day, that they will not read a book until the series has been completed, because two reasons. One is they’re terrified that the series won’t finish.
And so they don’t want to get invested in the characters, only to have the series not be completed. And the other is they’re afraid something will happen to the author, and they’ll have to go too long in between books.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. Well, I think that’s one of the things I’ve heard about George RR Martin, I think the Game of Thrones, that he takes a really long time between books. And I mean, to be fair, his books are long, and they are complicated.
And they, I’m not surprised that they take a while. But I’m not, yeah, I’m not that person. I’m not that person.
When there’s something I want to read, I want to read it today. The instant gratification if I can have it. There’s a couple of books I’m waiting for on pre-order that I’m like, seriously, why can’t I have it today?
Right now?
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, I’m just like, um, dear author, can you please send me each page as you write it? That would be working really well for me right now.
[Speaker 1]
I do, I gotta say, though, I do like the JK Rowling method of writing the last book, or not first, but midway and then putting it in a thing somewhere so that even if something did happen to her, her fans would get closure. I thought that that was very cool.
[Speaker 2]
That’s actually quite thoughtful. Yeah, I like more authors could do that. I think we would all be okay with that.
Yeah. So thinking about, like, I have a lot of questions about your readership, especially with mystery versus other genres, because like, you know, in the nonfiction realm, so many books kind of just stand alone, people will follow their guru. But in fiction, it’s like everything kind of there’s this world building piece about fiction, that I think people who don’t read a lot of fiction, maybe don’t appreciate.
I’m curious with your mystery readers, because I know this happens with romance readers a lot. And I’ve seen it happen even with, like, especially with sci fi, right? Well, they’ll read book three, and they will notice one little detail that seems contrary to something that happened in book one.
Right? And then they’re just like, you must explain this to me. Do you have those kinds of stories?
[Speaker 1]
You know, I live in great fear of having a character who has blue eyes suddenly have black eyes, you know, like, but and I’m going to say that I do my best to try to track those details, of course. But this is why I will always say that editors are worth their weight in titanium. Because, like, my copy editor so many times has been like, suddenly, she’s got blonde hair.
That’s not what you want. Oh, geez. Yeah.
So because readers are smart. They are super smart. And especially if they’re invested in your characters, which you want them to be.
They are looking at that with eagle eyes. And, you know, as a writer, I mean, this is a case of my glass shoes are too tight because I love what I do. And what I get to do is basically have fun.
But, you know, you’re juggling a lot of things in the air. And so keeping track of them, editorial help is really super important. And that’s one of the things I think if you’re a self-published writer, finding an editor that you trust and who does a good job is so critical.
[Speaker 2]
How do you recommend that they would do that? I’m just curious.
[Speaker 1]
Well, this is one of the great things about the mystery writing community is that there are organizations like Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, where you can go and, you know, we have databases of resources or if what you’re looking for isn’t there, you can ask a fellow member and, you know, you’ll have hands shooting up everywhere going, oh, here’s somebody that I work with that I love and that does a great job with this. And that’s another thing is like I’ve been in other sorts of communities where if you’ve got this great resource, you’re going to keep it and not share it, right?
I don’t understand that. And so we all share and we all play well in the sandbox and I love that.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, great. Well, that actually kind of leads into my second question because I was going to ask, like, I know how, you know, you’ve shared how engaged your readers are and how mystery readers are highly engaged as a community and of themselves. I was wondering if that transferred into the writing community or if it was a much more competitive writing community.
[Speaker 1]
No, no. The writing community has been amazing. And I have, so I have a friend that she’s a YouTuber that talks about the publishing industry and she used to write in a different genre and she started writing in the mystery genre.
I didn’t know her. I ran into her at a conference in the elevator and I was like, I know you. And she was like, oh, that’s so cool because I don’t know anybody here.
It’s my first time in a mystery writers conference. I was like, that’s it. We’re going to introduce you to everybody.
And she came up to me later and she was like, you know, this is such a different experience from the other community that I used to be a part of. She’s like, everybody is so welcoming. Everybody is so amazing.
And that had been my experience too. So it was nice to know that it wasn’t just, you know, me imagining it, but that she really was embraced and brought in. And we were like, oh, you’ve got to do this or, oh, try this or, oh, join this.
Or we all want each other to succeed. And I know as I’m saying it now, I can hear it and I hear that it sounds ridiculous, but it’s really, really true. And I’m sure there are some bad apples out in there, but for the most part, I haven’t been around them.
And I think we do a really good job of standing up for each other.
[Speaker 2]
And yeah, well, and speaking of that, so you were recently nominated for an Edgar award, which was so, so exciting when I saw that on Instagram, I was like, but before we started recording, you said, well, I actually read every single title that was nominated with me. And like you then proceeded to tell me all the great things about the winner. So I think that that showcases that it really is the rising tides, raise all ships sort of metaphor.
Now I’m curious from your perspective, what makes a good mystery story?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, okay. So there’s a lot to that. And here is what for me, if you can make me gasp at some point like, and I didn’t realize.
So if you can give me a twist like that, I’m going to scream your butt from the rooftops. My writing career has basically been trying to recapture or recreate for other people, the effect that I had in when I watched The Sixth Sense, and I’m not going to ruin it in case anybody hasn’t seen, if it’s watching this, if you haven’t go watch it right now. But when the, the reveal came and my mind just raced back over this entire movie and I’m like, oh my gosh, to me, that is a good mystery and what I try to do with mine.
So like, I hope I’ve had people tell me that they’ve had that moment with the dancing girls. I’ve had other people tell me that they figured it out, you know, when the relevant sort of, they figured it out earlier. But my goal is if you figure it out, I assume that there’s going to be a percentage of my readers who’s going to figure out who my killer is or what my twist is.
So then my job is to make it a fun ride. Even if you figured it out, I want you to have a fun ride and be like, oh, I see what you’re doing. I see what you’re doing.
And then like you said, go, I want to see how this is going to play out so that they can’t stop reading the pages, even if they know, you know, what the ending is going to be. I think both of those things make really good mysteries.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, I would totally agree. And speaking of a fun ride, the serial killer guide to San Francisco is so different to me from the detective Joe Fournier series. Yes.
Talk to me about what led to that, right? Cause I really did think you were going to be like dark serial killer suspense for like your entire career. And then when you drop the serial killer guide to San Francisco, like I told my 15 year old, I’m like, we have to read this together because I think we’re going to have good laughs when we read this book.
And she like looks at me, she’s like, mom, it has serial killer in the title. That just doesn’t seem like your thing. And I’m like, but it looks so fun from the back cover copy to the endorsements.
Talk to me about what led you to go from one to the other.
[Speaker 1]
Okay. So I’ve always had, well, there are two kinds of things going on in my brain at any given time. Most authors will tell you that they’ve got 10,000 ideas, right?
And it’s a question of mining, which ones that you want. There are some stories that you want to write that are going to lend themselves to darkness. And that if you want to explore the themes, you really have to tell it in a certain way.
There are other stories that are more fun and a little bit lighter. And I’ve always loved books that make me laugh. And I personally think that there is a natural and actually a necessary marriage between darkness and laughter.
I think that we as humans use laughter to be able to cope. And I think there are all kinds of psycho neuro-immunology studies that show that those of us who find ways to laugh, we heal better, we are healthier. So for me, it is a good marriage.
So I’ve always had these two sets of things I wanted to write. So my goal in life that I hope to always have is one series or a string of standalones that can explore the darker side and another series or set of standalones that are a little bit more fun and a little bit more quirky and a little bit more veering. I don’t particularly call this a cozy, but it veers more towards that cozy vein.
So like, for example, I saw a thing about feet washing up in the shores, I believe of somewhere near Seattle, right? Like feet. Okay.
That’s interesting. And so my mind instantly goes to, oh, there’s a serial killer who has a foot fetish and, or, you know, or the opposite or whatever. And now I want to write that book, right?
Now that’s a Joe Fornier book, or I should say a darker thriller book. By the way, just so you know, it turns out that these were people that like had unfortunately drowned at sea and all of the feet were in athletic shoes because what would happen is when you decay, you disarticulate and then the shoes are buoyant. So the shoes would make their way back while other things didn’t.
That might be too much. Feel free to edit it out if that’s way too much.
[Speaker 2]
Fascinating. Okay. We’re going to circle back to that in a moment.
Keep going.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. So, you know, as I have this idea, my brain goes off into the story. I know that it’s going to fit over here.
So this is why one of my career goals is to have an outlet for both of these types sides of my brain.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. So what triggered the idea for the serial killer guide?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, okay. So this was the pandemic. So during the pandemic, I have a cat who has been trying to kill herself for years.
She eats anything and everything she can get her teeth into. I’m not kidding. Fireplace insulation is the kind of thing I’m talking about.
So she randomly ends up in at the vet during the pandemic though. Right. You couldn’t go in.
So I had to sit on my car for four hours while they were doing their thing. So I was listening to true crime podcasts because that’s one of the things that I just do. I’ve been fascinated by true crime since, you know, probably I was in diapers if I’m honest.
So a podcast about the doodler had just dropped. The doodler is a San Francisco serial killer who to this day unfortunately has not ever been found. So as I was listening to this and I can visualize these different locations, I was just bitter that I couldn’t go see any of that because of the pandemic.
I’m like, oh, when it’s done, I’m going to go on a little tour of all of these places. And I was like, a serial killer guide tour. Somebody should give serial killer guide tours.
And it turns out, I’m not sure that that’s the best idea for like a way to solve crimes or, you know, whatever. But it’s all I could think of from that point on was who would give a tour like that? What would they look like?
What would their history be that would lead them to this sort of fascination? And and that’s where the book was born.
[Speaker 2]
And what was it like for you to be able to write a book? You know, because a lot of times when you’re a novelist, you have to like make up a town. And so you have to do, you know, kind of this fictional world building, but you got to use an iconic city.
You know, I happen to know it’s in your backyard. What was that like for you to be able to write in popular landmarks, but also places that you’re connected to?
[Speaker 1]
That’s a really cool question. Because my Joe Forney series is set in Western Massachusetts, which is where my family’s from. So I know it, but I fictionalized it for a bunch of reasons.
I fictionalized it. San Francisco is it has been so much fun to write because I have loved San Francisco since the day I set foot in it when I was four for the first time. And there are just so many things about it that I adore.
So being able to open this up and let this floodgate of things that I love about this place come out. It’s just been so much fun. So I do still fictionalize certain things, certain places, certain locations.
They’re all inspired by something real. But, you know, like, I don’t necessarily want to, if something bad’s going to happen in a place, I don’t necessarily want that to be associated with an actual business that might have to deal with that. And it’s been a relief in a lot of ways to be able to just, you know, like, so when I described Alcatraz, that was one of my favorite things about the first book was my was writing about Alcatraz, because I’ve always loved going there and the atmosphere and the history of it.
And so being able to pull on this thing that I know and bring it to life for someone else. It’s just so much fun.
[Speaker 2]
Now, have you had any readers reach out to you about the landmarks you’ve chosen or some of the places you’ve fictionalized and going, Hey, I know what you were doing there. I know what you’re talking about.
[Speaker 1]
It has been one of the coolest experiences of my life to have San Francisco natives reach out to me and tell me that I did their city justice. So that has been, yeah, that is a, that is a tear jerking moment that happens for me. And I have had people ask me things like Salerno’s pizzeria.
Is that based on a real place? And I’m like, yeah, it is. It’s based on a place in a completely different part of the city.
That’s one of the reasons why I fictionalized it called Giorgio’s pizzeria that I go to and I love. And they’ve actually recently updated the decor a little bit, so it doesn’t quite fit the description. But when I wrote it, the description was dead on.
And so I actually had a local book club ask me about locations and things that were inspired so they could go do a tour of it. So cool. Yes.
[Speaker 2]
So it’s, I mean, that’s the kind of rabid fandom we’re talking about, right? Like what let’s just take a deep departure into a different industry. You know, what massage therapist or bank wouldn’t love to have somebody reach out and say, where are all your locations?
Because I want to take a group of my friends to tour them. I can’t even think of like a better endorsement of Offer Market Fit and really of meeting your people where they’re at and filling a deep need.
[Speaker 1]
And that’s actually, I’m starting a sub stack. I’ve started it. I’m going to be building it more.
I’m going to be doing basically like tour guide stops from things from the book, fictional, non-fictional, because all I, you know, she’s a tour guide. So she talks about real stuff. And of course the fictional stuff happens.
And I’ve had people say, oh, are there, are there real tours? There’s one murder, mayhem and music tour in San Francisco that people can take, but people seem to really want to do this. So I’m not the person to do it, but there is a writing conference coming up in San Francisco.
And so as my author event, I’m going to do a little tour of downtown and see if I can channel Capri.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, I would love that. And we will get the details because that sounds like an absolute blast. And it’s one of those things, like you said, you’re not necessarily the person to do it, but maybe somebody listening is like, I am the person and there could be a partnership.
I absolutely. And we’ll definitely put the sub stack information in the show notes. Cause I can imagine other listeners will want that.
I want to go back though to, this is something I observed early on. And I want to say it’s shortly after you made your Tik TOK debut where you were doing these crime scene, I’m just going to call them crime scene tutorials, but where you were like breaking down what is important information and why we get certain things from television. And you were talking about blow fly activity specifically in this one video that is forever burned into my mind, but I apologize.
Oh no, it was awesome because there was that video. And then there was the blood splatter versus blood spatter video, which was incredibly meaningful to our family because my daughter at the time was taking a university like summer camp course and she was learning about blood spatter. And that was one of the things they talked about is the difference in the words.
And she was learning like what gun shot blood spatter looked like versus knife wounds versus carotid artery, like arterial bleeds versus other things, spray versus drops and yeah, deep, deep conversations with my 12 year old at the time. And so I was showing her and she was very impressed cause you knew what you were talking about. Cause part of what they addressed is how, what TV gets wrong and what TV gets right.
But this all came after, I think it was on Twitter, like way back in the day where you had referenced something about, I don’t know if it was spending a shift or spending a whole night in a morgue.
[Speaker 1]
That was not me.
[Speaker 2]
That was not you. You weren’t talking about doing it cause it would have been after dancing girls came out though.
[Speaker 1]
I would 100% do it if I could. I have not done it. It might’ve been, I was talking about a book that was written by a coroner.
Okay. Might’ve been that, but yeah, I would, if I was given the opportunity, 100%. I did see, I did watch someone be embalmed.
Maybe that’s what I was.
[Speaker 2]
That is exactly what it was. Cause I was just going to go, but you wouldn’t get embalmed in the morgue, right?
[Speaker 1]
Not in the morgue proper, but like the room adjacent. Yeah. But yeah, so it wasn’t like a whole night, but I did see the process of an embalming.
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. Which actually leads to the question of talk about going to great lengths for research for a book, right? It’s like, I don’t think non fiction readers appreciate how much fiction, like the links that fiction writers go to in order to present a believable story.
What for you drives that level of dedication?
[Speaker 1]
I’ve always had more questions than answers in life and everything always fascinates me. So one of my high school jobs was working at McDonald’s and learning how the system worked and the timing of the fries and then this and getting it right. I loved learning that as an intellectual exercise.
So I would love to learn any job, anybody who can put in front of me, tell me about your job. Tell me how you do it. Tell me all the things that people don’t know.
Tell me about the questions you wish people asked. It’s just fascinating to me. So basically writing is a way for me to get to goof off all day and research, whatever the heck I’m currently fascinated by.
[Speaker 2]
At any point, do you like, does the responsibility to the reader enter in when you’re doing the research piece? I mean, I know it does when you’re doing the writing piece.
[Speaker 1]
I mean, I think that is part, yes, you are correct in that, you know, I’ve never been a police officer. I’ve never been a police detective. I’ve never been a district attorney.
I’ve never been any of these things. So yes, it is my responsibility as someone who is trying to capture this effectively to talk to those people and learn the things that I need to learn in order to be able to do that effectively. There are times when I have finessed things, because one of the things you learn as a fiction writer is that you can write something that’s impossible, but you can’t write something that’s implausible.
So sometimes reality is implausible, unfortunately, and you have to shave corners off of things. But for the most part, I try to be very meticulous about that. And it is my nightmare to have people write me, I shouldn’t say it’s my nightmare, but I’m always afraid of, I want to make sure that I preempt people that write me and do things like, oh, well, you use clip and magazine interchangeably, and they’re not interchangeable.
And that’s a real thing that a real reader taught me. And I now know to keep that straight. And that’s all well and good.
But sometimes, you know, I don’t want to let somebody down. You know what I mean? We all make mistakes.
But I want to get it as right as possible.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, and so first, when you say clip in magazine, I was thinking newsprint. But you mean for like firearm?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, exactly.
[Speaker 2]
So the girl who knows absolutely nothing about firearms will have to have a firearms expert on here at some point. But you know, it reminds me I just recently on threads, there was an author, and she was talking about how she was kind of up all night and fixating in front of her husband about how to write this scene about somebody who was dying of liver failure. And she wanted it to be interesting, but she also wanted it to be accurate.
And he was just like, write whatever you want, nobody’s going to notice. And then she put it out to beta readers. And she goes, and let’s just talk about the number of healthcare professionals who wrote in asking all of these super detailed, meticulous questions about what I was describing.
She’s like, all I could do was show it to my husband and say, huh, nobody cares, huh, honey?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, yeah. And there there is that balance as well. So there are things like if I’m writing Joe, and I just talk about a gun.
Well, that I mean, that’s not real, because there is no detective on the planet who’s going to look at a gun and think gun, they’re going to think, well, that’s a Beretta, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, you know, that’s how their mind works. So in order to be able to represent that effectively, I need to be able to get those details right. Capri is going to look at a gun and go gun, that’s a gun, you know, and she’s actually in book two, learning that she may have to learn some things about guns.
So as a fiction author, you have to always be writing in a way that’s veridical to your character. So sometimes you’re gonna have to research things in a different way than maybe you really even want to. I made a mistake, since your original question is going to great lengths.
Here’s the only thing I regret, and that I will be careful about in the future. One of my books, I have somebody fall off of a building. I wanted to know, I needed to know what would happen when somebody falls, when they hit the ground, because that’s obviously going to matter for CSI, for autopsy, etc.
Right. And for the crime scene, when I’m setting what it looks like when this body is found. So I googled what happens when someone jumps from a height and clicked on a video that and it was a live person committing suicide.
Oh, so I would say a little piece of advice, just read the descriptions of the videos before you click. Yeah, you might see things that you can’t unsee.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Well, and that, I mean, that brings up a whole other topic of what we can find on the internet when we don’t necessarily intend to, that we don’t even realize, because it doesn’t occur to us that that’s what we would find.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, it would never occur to me that someone would put up a video of that. I thought it was going to be, you know, a professional talking about physics or the effect of impact on a body or, you know, yeah.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Oh, and that has to, and that’s heavy too. Right.
And I think some of that is also, you know, there are books that stick with us because they cause such visceral reactions. You know, we just see something in our mind that we can’t see that sometimes I think is even worse than what reality would have been.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
And I don’t know that we stopped to think about what the author had to go through in order to be able to paint that picture. Yeah. So that’s a good cautionary tale.
So going back to the Edgar nomination. So it’s a huge deal. So anybody here who doesn’t read mystery needs to understand that that’s a huge deal.
It’s a huge deal to have, by the way, Edgar Award named after Edgar Allan Poe, just to give folks an idea of what a big deal it is. Did it change anything for you, your process, your confidence? Has it affected the audience at all?
[Speaker 1]
The audience? I don’t, I don’t know. I hope maybe, I don’t know, but it definitely has in my mind.
I’ve always, and I think a lot of women suffer from imposter syndrome. I always have suffered from imposter syndrome. There is nothing that my brain can’t undermine.
It’s just, I’ve got this panel in my head that’s here to tell me, you know, all the ways I suck. And that’s how it always is. This is the first thing that my imposter syndrome has not been able to undermine.
And I think the reason for it is because of the way that this particular award works. So it’s a committee of mystery writing authors who read all of the books that are submitted. Now I’m sure they break it down into whatever, but then by the end, the people that are shortlisted, every one of the judges has read this book and says that it’s worthy to have risen to the top of this pile.
So far, my brain has not been able to find a way to undermine that, to say you were in the top five books in this category. My particular award was the Mary Higgins Clark award, which I, Mary Higgins Clark is one of my ride or dies that I’ve always read every single book that she’s ever put out without even, you know, reading the blurb on the back kind of situation. So to be honored for writing that sort of fiction was amazing.
[Speaker 2]
I can imagine. And I don’t know the specifics of the award criteria, but how many books total would have qualified for it? Is it like all the mystery books that were published in that year or is it in a calendar year?
[Speaker 1]
It is in a calendar year. Mary Higgins Clark has some specific criteria that it has to be a young or youngish woman who has generally speaking, good family relationships, who is thrust into the middle of some situation that she did not ask for. She’s just trying to get along with her life.
And then she has to get herself out of this situation. And there are a few other things like there can’t be, you know, massive profanity and there can’t, you know, so there’s some other stuff like that. But so yes, it is a subset of the crime fiction genre.
I’m not quite sure. I don’t know exactly how many.
[Speaker 2]
But still, it’s like, it’s not like you were one of five nominated in a field where there were only 20 qualifying books.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, correct. Correct. And it’s also not an award where it’s a question of there are lots of there are lots of awards out there where you can pay to enter.
And then they it’s still legit that they pick the best, whatever. But I don’t like that because not a lot of some people can’t afford to pay these entries. Right.
And so I think, you know, and the Edgar Awards are sponsored by the Mystery Writers of America. And so this is an organization that’s been around for, you know, 80 years. And books like The Maltese Falcon, you know, have won Edgar Awards, I think The Maltese Falcon won.
I should fact check myself, but some really incredible books. So to be in this company has been amazing for me. And it’s for the first time I feel like, okay, I am good at what I do.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, it’s one of those things where an outsider said, you’re good at what you do, enough to where they nominated you for an award. So it is hard for the inner critic to fight that. Yeah, I’m curious, doing this as long as you have, do you still geek out over fan emails and reviews?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, 100%. Yeah. I mean, I try to be careful about reviews, because I have a philosophy when it comes to reviews.
You’ll hear authors say, you know, reviews are for readers. They’re not for writers. And I think that that’s 100% true.
So like, I have a one star review on my on The Dancing Girls that I absolutely love. And it’s on the landing page. And it says, I hated this book, I hated spending so much time in the killer’s head.
And I love that. Because if you don’t want to spend time in the killer’s head, you don’t want to read that book. So yes, thank you for alerting people to that.
So there’s a purpose for reviews. And it’s not necessarily meant for me. Right?
So you got to be careful about that. But yeah, when someone writes me and says, Oh, I really loved this, I really loved that. One of the best ones I ever got was for the second Joe book, she goes back to Cajun country in Louisiana and visits family.
And spoiler alert, I’ve never been to full on Cajun country. I’ve been Cajun adjacent, I visited, but I had somebody write me and say that my writing took them back to visiting their grandmother in Cajun country. And I just, that’s when those hours doing the research and watching the videos and interviewing people and everything else is 100% worth it.
Because you know, when somebody can say that, and I think we were still under partial lockdown when that book came out, and they were like, it transported me at a time when I can’t go myself. Yeah, that was amazing. What I thought you were gonna ask me is I thought you were gonna ask me if I still fangirl over other mystery writers?
Well, answer that question. That’s a really good question. That so at another conference that I was at, I was in an elevator, I turn around and it’s David Baldacci.
And I was just like, I said, lobby, please. And he hit the button. That was all I managed.
And I’m just gonna say this, he was the toastmaster for he did a bunch of stuff. And we had an active auction. And we made a certain amount of money.
And he on the spot doubled it. He’s a great guy. Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
Wow.
[Speaker 1]
But no, I did not work up enough courage to ask for his autograph.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, I get mute when I run into like, people who are famous to me, whatever. And I had a situation where somebody who a very famous writer, and we were like this far apart. And the person next to me was one of those like, hyper enthusiastic fangirls.
And so she was like squealing and screaming. And then she looked at me and she was like, you don’t like her and I’m like, can’t speak.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, barely breathe. Like all I could do was like control my breathing. And I have to imagine that when you’re you know, at that level of fame, you know, like when you’re like Tom Cruise, you’ve had enough squealing fangirls in your face, you probably all set.
Right, exactly.
[Speaker 2]
Stoned face, like I’m sure it was like resting serial killer face. But I was just like, I just need to make sure I keep breathing, right?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yep.
[Speaker 2]
So I’m wondering, because you mentioned that one star review, and having somebody who doesn’t want to spend so much time in the killer’s head. I think the average person would ask, do you worry? That’s not the question that I really want to ask.
What are your thoughts around maybe the perception of glamorizing dark topics? Because I think an average person would say, well, do you ever worry about glamorizing the dark topics you explore? But really, it’s like, what are your thoughts about exploring these dark topics?
[Speaker 1]
You know, I think that’s a really important question. And I that’s one that Capri struggles with in the serial killer guide to San Francisco, right when she’s being told, oh, you need to write this book or do this podcast about your grandfather’s purported killings. And she’s like, well, isn’t that exploitation?
And I think there’s a movement now in true crime, podcasting and documentarianism to really focus on that we’re doing this, not to glamorize, not for sensationalism, but because a we want justice, right? We want to see justice done. And B, we want to warn you, it’s good to know, like, if you are in this situation, maybe don’t do this.
Or if you you know, being aware of what is out there, I think is really important. And then the other thing is mentioning the victim’s names. So that’s one of the things that I try very hard to do, like in Capri’s inserts, I mentioned the victim’s names, because a lot of times, and I’m guilty of this, I’ll talk about, you know, oh, you know, the Golden State Killer, right?
It’s a lot easier to reference this by just the one killer rather than the 50 victims, right? I’ve noticed a lot of podcasts are taking time to spend time talking about the victim and who they were, and what this took away from the world. Oh, I’m sorry, hidden answer number four.
There are podcasts out there that are contributing to finding killers. Like, let’s talk about Michelle McNamara, right? Which, why, of course, did the name of the book just fly right out of my mind?
But she helped to solve the Golden State Killer. Yeah, she helped bring that killer to justice through her armchair, you know, detective work, right? So, and yeah, I’m sure that there are cops right out there.
If there’s cops watching this right now, they’re like, please don’t encourage people to go and do our job. They don’t know what they’re doing. We do not need vigilante justice.
And yet. We don’t need people screwing up, you know. But at the same time, to the degree that we can shed light on cold cases and things where maybe there just aren’t enough resources to keep these stories alive and keep eyes on them, I think that that’s a really important thing.
Okay, so that’s all nonfiction, right? What I’m doing is not nonfiction. But I would argue that some of the same goals are there.
So I want to reinforce notions of victims. And so one of my books, the theme of the book, or one of the underlying issues of the book was statutes of limitation on rape, and the fact that they are still extant in so many states in our nation, where, you know, you basically have a year if you’ve been raped to report it. And if you don’t after that, oh, well.
So I told a fictional story that was designed to shine light on what I consider to be an extreme injustice in our justice system, and hopefully raise awareness through this work of art about something that I think needs to change. So I would argue that, you know, it’s our job to do it responsibly, for sure. But I think that there are really good things that come out of the mystery genre.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, and I think sometimes, if you can fictionalize it, right, you can actually highlight things that would come across as inappropriate if you were telling the real story of real people, right? We never want to victim shame. So we don’t want to highlight the errors in judgment a victim made that made it easier for her to be killed, or him to be killed.
But we can highlight those things in works of fiction as, like you said, the cautionary tale to the person who’s reading, who’s like, oh, you know what, if I find myself in that circumstance, maybe I make decision A instead of decision B. Right.
[Speaker 1]
Well, and, you know, we live in a world where we should be able to go out and have a night drinking with our friends wearing tight clothes, if we want, that should be all right. But the truth of the matter is there are certain kinds of attention or certain kinds of behaviors, like stumbling drunk out of a bar on your own to your car, that’s maybe not the smartest thing to do. And we should be able to be safe.
I wished that we were. And actually, a really great movie about this is Woman of the Hour. It’s a Netflix movie.
It’s based on, they call them the dating game serial killer. But this guy pretended to be a photographer and killed a bunch of people in the 70s. And it was actually on the dating game in real life.
But what I love about this story is it focuses on how women are ignored. And it focuses on how we are afraid to speak up for ourselves. And spoiler alert, in the movie, she’s face to face with this killer, she’s getting a vibe that something’s not right.
And she finally finds her voice to say, I’m not going anywhere with you. And if that gets one more woman out there who is in an uncomfortable situation to say, No, I’m not going to allow this. I don’t care if it hurts your damn feelings.
I’m not going to do this. Then that is a brilliant piece of art for me.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, and I, I’m seeing more fiction doing that lately in across genres. And I find it very interesting how norms are being shaped among younger generations. So like the 20 somethings I know, based on what they’re reading versus what you and me read, as we were growing up, you know, they’re much more, I will say conversant in consent culture.
And in you know, sort of red flags that we just didn’t have any awareness to because we weren’t that wasn’t represented in what we were paying attention to at the time.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, absolutely.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, my gosh. Okay, so we’re gonna put all the information of how to connect with you because you and me could talk for hours.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
Before we let you go, though. So we have a little a little quick round that I like to call freak flags fly. And it’s five fast questions.
No wrong answers. Okay, just whatever comes to mind. Are you up for it?
[Speaker 1]
Yes, let’s do it.
[Speaker 2]
All right. Fill in the blank. You’re my kind of freak if you’re passionate, kind and empathetic.
Oh, like that.
[Speaker 1]
What is something you love that your friends don’t get? Oh, you know, I think I think I, my vibe attracts my tribe. So my friends, but the world at large.
I think there’s a lot of people that don’t understand why I’m fascinated with or you know, they would call it fascinated with serial killers and true crime. That’s macabre. It’s dark.
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. And what community would you infiltrate just to understand it better?
[Speaker 1]
Law enforcement. 100%.
[Speaker 2]
It’s a fascinating community.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah.
[Speaker 1]
What tool ritual or practice helps you stay connected with your people? Connected with my people, write-ins, write-ins and organizational events. So I belong to Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America going to meetups going to as a matter of fact, we’re having a reading this next weekend, doing those kinds of things, but either over zoom or in person, I personally prefer zoom for, you know, bunches of reasons, but whatever makes you comfortable do it.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. Last question. You’ve dropped a lot of names so far, but who is someone doing freakishly good work who deserves a bigger stage?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, doing freakishly good work that deserves a bigger stage. I mean, a lot of the people that I know that I think of that are doing freakishly good work or getting recognition for it. Okay.
Katie Tietjen. She was one of the nominees for the Mary Higgins Clark Edgar award. Her book was called Death is in the Details.
She writes, it’s a 1940s mystery series. There’s, I believe two now about this person who does miniatures. And so she does crime scenes in miniatures and that helps her solve one of the best books that I’ve read this past year.
[Speaker 2]
I feel like I need to read that book. That is just very amazing. Oh, Michelle, thank you so much.
Thank you for giving us a glimpse into the world of a writer into crime fiction in general, but also just what writers think about when they’re thinking about their fans and they’re thinking about creating work for their fans and everybody listening. I just, what I want people to take away from this, because this is what I’m taking away from it is no matter how intricate your interests are, you’re never too much too different or too out there for your perfect people. Michelle, thank you again.
[Speaker 1]
Thank you so much for having me. This has been a blast. I so appreciate it.
[Speaker 2]
That’s it for this episode of find your freaks to help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird makes you wonderful.
Normal was never the point.
Apr 29, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
I was wearing a mask. Not intentionally, not trying to be fake, but you know how it is, right? That mask you put on when you decide that whatever is being said right, it’s just not worth the fight. The mask can only come off when the person willingly lets it go.
And that can only happen when the cost of keeping the mask on finally outweighs the cost of taking it off. Ellie’s guests don’t drop their masks because of the weather, the recording environment, or because she pushes them with investigative reporting tactics. They drop them because Ellie is unguarded herself.
She is fully present in the moment and genuinely curious the moment they get on screen. And that’s something you can’t engineer. You can’t fabricate that type of radical acceptance.
You can only model it and reinforce it. We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tonya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet.
Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras. Because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
For years, I thought I was the only person who approached community the way that I do. Like, not the only person building community, especially building online community. Obviously, there’s hundreds if not thousands of us just in the US and North America alone.
But the only person who believed what I believed about how connection between humans happens. In person and online. That you can’t manufacture it.
Shortcuts don’t work. At least not in the long run. That the thing that most community builders are optimizing for, growth, engagement, retention, that those are outputs, not inputs.
And if you get the inputs wrong, nothing sticks. I have never, since 2007 that I’ve been at this game, had a problem saying any of that out loud. Really, I am not shy.
But I’m not gonna lie, it has long felt a lot like spitting in the wind, right? The people saying community building was nothing more than simple mathematics had bigger audiences than me, fueled by much bigger ad budgets. So when someone would repeat the recycled nonsense about bigger communities are better, or how there’s just no money in this niche, or that niche, I just finally at some point, stopped pushing back. I’d nod, smile, just let the conversation move on.
Because it just wasn’t worth it, right? As I think about it, I was wearing a mask. Not intentionally, not trying to be fake, but you know how it is, right? That mask you put on when you decide that whatever is being said, right? It’s just not worth the effort. And then in 2021, I had the opportunity of being hired by Rachel Allen, who has been a past guest on the show, and was a client of Ellie Trier’s.
And somewhere in my work with Rachel, I found out that Ellie and I had been thinking about online belonging and relationship building almost exactly four years in parallel without ever knowing the other one existed. And I remember sitting with that for a moment and going, huh, and then feeling relieved. Not like the kind of relief that’s like, oh my gosh, thank gosh, I’m not crazy.
But the kind of relief that you feel when you realize that you just let out all your air after holding your breath. Maybe like you didn’t even know you were holding your breath, you know, that kind of feeling. And that’s what today’s episode is about.
Today’s episode is about what it actually feels like when the mask comes off, either your mask or somebody else’s mask, and what is possible in that moment. Before we get into it, though, I want to take a moment for the people who make this show possible. If you support Find Your Freaks at tanya.link slash coffee, you are literally the reason I get to have the conversations I get to have on this show, like with Ellie in episode 22.
So thank you. Thank you for funding this passion project of mine. And today I’m especially thankful for Chris Duran, our newest monthly supporter.
If you want to join her, all you have to do is buy me a coffee over at tanya.link slash coffee. And you know what, just know that we’re always so appreciative. So let me tell you about a mask that I didn’t realize I was wearing until I took it off.
When this show started, I showed up to record the way that I thought I was supposed to write makeup, hair, accessories, camera ready, as they say, because I’m a woman who makes her living being visible on the internet. And there are very clear, very unspoken, not always unspoken, oftentimes spoken quite loudly expectations about what that’s supposed to look like. And I just met those expectations without ever questioning them, because it just felt like what you do, right? Can’t be a female creator without having hair, makeup, and you know, worrying about what you look like from about here up.
Gotta be dressed up at least from the neck up, they say. But lately, if you watch the video version of the show, like you’re watching the show right now, you may have noticed something different. No makeup.
Hair, right now it’s pulled back into a ponytail with a little bit of frizz. I’m like looking at myself right now. The frizz is less than usual.
But sometimes I look like I stuck my finger in a light socket, or as my youngest says, doing my best impression of Einstein. But these days, I just show up as myself, whatever I however I look, whatever I’m doing before I have a chance to come over here and hop on the mic is what I look like when you see me. And the thing is, that I’ve come to terms with, is that you don’t listen or watch this show for my looks, right? You’re here because you’re searching for belonging of your own, or because you like me love a really good human interest story.
And I don’t need lipstick, eyeshadow, or styling products to make any of that happen for you. In fact, I’m a better host delivering better content. Now, I would argue that I was before, because spending less energy on my appearance leaves me more energy for the conversations we’re having, I get a double my prep time, because I don’t have to worry about getting ready.
I just like I said, I get on the mic when I have something that I feel like is important to say. And speaking of energy, this reminds me of a visit that I had with a close friend, probably over a decade ago, she had recently left her career to become a stay at home mom after her third child was born. And a few months into that, I had the opportunity to be the very first person from her old life to pay her visit, I went and we had coffee on my lunch break.
And the moment I walked in, I could see that she was next level exhausted. Like mom to mom, we know when the bags under your eyes are from sleep deprivation. And we know when the bags under your eyes are from feeling like you’re carrying the weight of the world.
And there’s nobody offering to share that burden with you. See, my friend knew that she was supposed to be living the dream, right? Like we gave her going away party at the office. And all of us working moms talked about how she was so lucky, right? So lucky that she and her husband had made some choices to make it possible that she could stay home with their kids.
No more daycare bills for them. She made that choice deliberately. It was planned.
She loved her kids. And she was lonely to the very depths of her bones. She said so herself.
And probably without meaning to, in fact, I don’t even think she knew what she said until she said it. I also think that she got to the point where she was too weary to pretend. And I didn’t give her a reason to take it back.
I didn’t act shocked. I didn’t argue with her, remind her of her why, or suggest that she made a mistake when she left the company where we worked. I just sat with her, let her talk about whatever she wanted to talk about.
And once she confessed her loneliness, what I found interesting, or at least when I think back on it, what I think is most interesting is everything else that came bubbling out. Like she had broke the seal, so to speak. The complexity of being needed by everyone yet feeling seen by no one.
The way her husband and oldest would come home at the end of the day and her world got bigger, right? The house got fuller and it got more demanding. And yet she still didn’t have any more attention on her and her needs than she had when they were gone. Her mask, as I think about it, was a performance of contentment, right? The one that says, I chose this, so I am not allowed to struggle with it or admit that it’s hard, right? I’m lucky.
Other women would give their right arm to be me, so I can’t complain. I can’t let anybody know that this isn’t the dream I thought it would be 24-7. And a lot of us wear that particular costume, don’t we? Or mask.
Looks different for you versus me versus somebody else, but it’s still a mask. And so if you haven’t listened to episode 22 with Ellie Trier, you’ve missed hearing firsthand what happens when you build an entire body of work around making it safe for people to be exactly who they are. For example, guests on her podcast, Zuzu’s House of Cats Presents, often go way deeper than they planned.
In fact, Ellie is just that person, right? She is that person that there’s just something about her that has you saying things you never thought you’d say. And afterward, her podcast guests almost always email her apologizing for info dumping on her, or they’re suffering from a vulnerability hangover, and they’re apologizing for that. And she said on the show that she lives for the moment right before that email, the moment where they’re thinking, oh, I said too much.
Is this okay? And for Ellie, it always is. Ellie’s guests don’t drop their masks because of the weather, the recording environment, or because she pushes them with investigative reporting tactics. They drop them because Ellie is unguarded herself.
She is fully present in the moment and genuinely curious the moment they get on screen. And that’s something you can’t engineer. You can’t fabricate that type of radical acceptance.
You can only model it and reinforce it. So think about my friend, the lonely mom. She didn’t open up to me because I delivered the right script.
She opened up because I showed up without a script. I walked in. I had no agenda.
And when she shared what was hard, I didn’t give her, you know, vague words of encouragement. I didn’t show her the latest inspirational meme. I didn’t try to fix it for her.
And in the absence of me trying to give her encouraging platitudes or fix her problem, she found enough room to tell the whole truth. And that’s the thing we don’t realize about masks, especially those of us who pride ourselves on community building. You can’t pry a mask off of someone.
The mask can only come off when the person willingly lets it go. And that can only happen when the cost of keeping the mask on finally outweighs the cost of taking it off. Our job as friends, community builders, or humans who genuinely want real connection is to make that cost calculation a no-brainer.
So everything I’ve talked about so far involves a quiet kind of unmasking, something that’s a bit more internal, maybe even invisible. The mask I stopped wearing, you know, that contentment costume my friends stopped wearing, my bold opinions about community building and belonging that I no longer hold back. But Ellie, Ellie’s next level.
She takes that all the way to the extreme. She has this art collection called Things Men Have Said to Me Instead of Hello. And I will warn you before you go Googling this, it can be triggering if, I mean, it talks about some things that can be described as nothing other than outright like misogyny, sexual harassment.
It’s intense. Let me see how I can describe this. She saved screenshots from her online dating life, like the most graphic, creepy, outright bizarre opening messages she received from men.
So like the first message a man would send her. And instead of deleting them or laughing them off the way I have done in the past, the way a lot of my friends do, because we feel like as women we’re expected to, she blew them up, like monumental scale, and rendered them into mixed media in the form of these art pieces that feature things like lace and vintage jewelry, safety pins, pearls. She plays with these symbolic feminine materials as she uses them to communicate a deeply unfeminine, if not misogynistic, message.
And in her own description, I mean, she’ll tell you firsthand that the collection isn’t about demonizing men. She has no problem with men. Not at all.
It’s about asking a harder question, which is how did this become so normal that most women, when they hear about it, aren’t even shocked. They just respond with weariness and like, yeah, that’s how it is. Because they’ve been dealing with similar messages their whole life.
In fact, I have shared several pieces from the collection with friends, because almost every one of Ellie’s experiences aligns with either something a friend has told me about or something I’ve experienced myself. And at first when I share it, we groan, we roll our eyes, we kind of laugh it off, but Ellie’s work encourages us to go deeper than that. In fact, when I’m sharing it, I’m usually like, okay, I know when I told you this story it was really funny, but after reading this, I like, I can’t believe that I blew that off like I did.
Or, you know, I can’t believe we blew that off when that happened to you like we did. Because the words are nothing new, I feel like Ellie’s collection reveals a pretty big impact that we have overlooked. And it’s also a mask drop in like the largest possible scale, right? Ellie has named something that millions of women quietly, if almost embarrassedly, if that’s a word, file away under, this is just how it is.
And by creating these large art pieces, she makes it impossible to look away. And what it creates, when you view it, is the same thing every mask drop creates, whether it’s big or it’s small. There’s this moment of relief from those who have felt invisible, have felt like they were the only ones having that experience.
There’s a moment of recognition from people who are like, yeah, you know, that didn’t sit well with me either, but I, you know, like I didn’t know any different. And then there’s that exhale that comes with realizing that affected, like you’re still holding on to a piece of that effect that you didn’t even realize you were holding on to. And now that you’ve seen somebody else break it down, reflect like the harm in it, like that little piece gets healed.
And so bringing this back to how we started this episode, talking about the professional mask I’ve worn for years, or I wore for years, nodding along, letting it go, deciding it wasn’t worth the fight, until meeting Ellie in 2021. Finding out she existed didn’t give me like a sister in crime or a co-conspirator. What it really did was give me hope.
By finding out she existed, thinking the same way that I did about the intrinsic worth of humans and everybody’s right to belong made me realize like, maybe I wasn’t like a sideshow freak in this space. If she was already out there saying the thing, like I was out there saying the thing and we hadn’t met each other yet, maybe there were others like us working parallel to us and we just hadn’t had the opportunity of our Venn diagrams overlapping. And if that were true, then maybe we really could change the perception of what belonging looks like online.
Maybe I wasn’t spitting in the wind after all. And for you, because you’re maybe a community builder, but probably not if you’re listening to this show, what I want you to take away today is that the masks we wear aren’t always elaborate costumes, right? We’re not always intentionally faking it until we make it or acting the part that we want, right? Sometimes it’s feeling like you’re not allowed to hit record until your hair and makeup is camera ready. Sometimes it’s pretending to be content when you’re not, because you chose difficult circumstances and so you feel like you don’t get to complain about them.
And sometimes the mask comes off, not because you’re brave, but because you’re just too tired to keep it on. And there just happened to be someone there when you took it off who didn’t flinch at what was underneath. I would encourage you to be that person when you can.
And when you’re the one who’s too tired, let the mask come off in the hopes that you have been honest enough and shown up naked enough, as it were, that the person that is there when you let your mask come off won’t flinch at what’s underneath either. Because I do believe we all have someone in our life who is waiting to witness us. And if we don’t, let this be your invitation to go find someone.
And if you haven’t met them, good golly, reach out to me, reach out to Ellie. Ellie would love to hear from you. If you have a cat, she wants to see the picture too.
But I do believe that there’s someone out there also who you haven’t met who is going to find you without your mask and finally feel at ease. And that is worth showing up for, with or without lipstick. Now, if you haven’t listened to episode 22, please go listen to it.
The full conversation is there. You’ll get to know Ellie on a much deeper level. And like I said, you’ll know how much she really wants to hear from you.
Now, you can find her at Zuzu’s House of Cats, which is H-A-U-S for house, slash keep in touch. She doesn’t do a lot on social media, so I would sign up for the emails. And if this show has been a safe place for you, if you’ve ever felt that exhale of recognition listening to it, we’d love to have you buy us a coffee.
We’d love to count you among our wonderful monthly supporters. Every cup keeps this going. And I will see you next time where I have another really amazing person to introduce you to.
And until then, let your freak flag fly. That’s it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review.
And if you’re craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
Apr 15, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
[Speaker 1]
People feel safe enough to let the mask drop and I love it. I live for those moments where you see that they think like, oh shit, I’ve done that thing, is it going to be okay? I’m so glad that that came out of you, it’s made my day.
I really, really love it. I really love getting to the heart of somebody and really finding out who they are because nine times out of ten, the stuff that you’re like pushing down and trying to hide and gloss over, that’s the stuff that makes you radiant. It’s the stuff that makes you most interesting.
It’s the stuff that makes you shine and I want to see that in everybody, you know? I hate that we live in this world that makes us feel like we have to squash down our individuality and our personalities and become these slickety perfect versions of ourselves.
[Speaker 2]
We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tanya Kubo and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. We love to talk about community, how to build it, grow it, sustain it, but today we are talking about what it feels to be an outsider and how powerful it can be to create spaces where being different is not just allowed, it is celebrated and I can’t think of a better person to have a conversation about celebrating your own differences in addition to the differences of others than our very own Ellie Trier.
Ellie is an artist, a writer, a podcaster, and my favorite term that she has ever used for herself is dopamine dealer and she loves working with weirdos and misfits and what I would say is her work is a virtual love letter to all of us. And so Ellie, I’m just going to let you kick it off by telling us who are your freaks and what do you love about them?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, first of all, what an incredible introduction and thank you so much for having me. It’s an utter delight to be here. I’ve been looking forward to this conversation very much, so thank you.
And my freaks, ah, my freaks are generally literal freaks as in people who are outside of the mainstream and I don’t really differentiate beyond that because I find it’s quite a good sort of self-filtration system. People either feel like they’re a freak or they don’t. For my purposes, I mean, I come at it from my own sort of freakery, which is as a neurodivergent person, I’m ADHD, which is autism and ADHD smooshed together.
I’m a queer woman. I’m an expat living in a foreign country. I am just generally out of step with the world and I find that I speak most clearly and most resonantly when I’m speaking to other people who may have different sort of identifiers but have that same feeling of being out of step with the world.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, and you know, I’m thinking back to when we first met and you were a communities expert, which is how we got connected. But what I loved is you specialized in communities for introverts because of course people used to tell me all the time, oh, you’re my hired extrovert. And I would laugh because I’m like, I am so not extroverted.
If I was extroverted, I would do in-person events, not virtual events. But that was another piece where I remember being inside your community and so many people feeling that there was no other community for them because everything else was built around the extroverted nature. And you made it safe to be an introvert who still wanted to build a space of people.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, absolutely. There’s a common misconception that if you’re introverted, that’s somehow synonymous with antisocial. And I think the clearest definition that I’ve come across is that extroverts get their juice, get their power from being with other people and introverts get their juice from being by themselves.
So a lot of us love being out there with people. We love talking to people. We love that feeling of connection, but because it costs us, it has to be worth it.
It has to be more valuable.
[Speaker 2]
Right. Well, I love what you said. It has to be worth it, which is why I think a lot of introverts suffer with small talk, right?
Because there’s no value exchange to small talk and they don’t actually leave feeling like they made that connection. So I love that you’re able to put words around that because I think the average person really can’t. So what I like about you being a communities person and your focus on anybody who just doesn’t feel like there’s a place for them is that you understand finding your freaks better than most.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, absolutely.
[Speaker 2]
So what do you think we should talk about today?
[Speaker 1]
Well, something that I have been really excited by lately is this idea of, of being a beacon for people, of being, I think it was a, there’s a Lady Gaga quote. I was looking it up just before we started to talk and I couldn’t find the exact quote, but there’s something that she says where it’s like, I had to show that I was the freakiest freak so people would know that it was safe to be a freak around me.
[Speaker 2]
I can’t remember the exact words, but yes, but oh my gosh, I resonate with that so deeply.
[Speaker 1]
Exactly, exactly. And this has been something that’s been sort of percolating in my brain for a long time. And it wasn’t until very, very recently.
In fact, it was just last month as we’re talking now, where that thinking has kind of culminated in a big sort of fuck it moment, really, if you don’t mind the swearing, because what happened was I was just so fed up of everybody telling me what to do and how to be in order to be an artist on the internet. I was so frustrated with, oh, you have to have an Instagram account, you have to present your website like this, you have to talk in this way, you have to do this, you have to do that. And I just said, you know what, I don’t want to be told what to do anymore.
None of it’s really like gelling for me, it feels formative, it feels wrong. So what I’m going to do is just go all out at building the home on the internet that I want to inhabit, something that feels really juicy and really fun, and sticks two fingers up at all of, you know, the rules, what you’re supposed to do. And I did it for myself just as a like a pure like cathartic what would happen if I did this.
But the response that I have had from people has blown my mind. I have never done anything in my entire career of bringing people together that has had such resonance and such stickiness and such capacity for personal connection.
[Speaker 2]
So can we talk about the validation that comes from that? Because so many I mean, I get this all the time, right? People want to hire me because they want to build their community, right?
They’re so afraid of spending time and energy investing in something that doesn’t pay off, which I get, right? Because there’s a cost of time, energy, money for everything. But so much of it is, well, so and so said this, and so and so said that, and this other person said this, and I can’t filter who’s right.
So here, just do it for me. And, you know, and I always this is why we get along so well is like, okay, well, what do you want? Because if you hate it, it doesn’t matter if it follows best practices.
So for you to build this space that you love, you enjoy, and for people to actually show up despite, or maybe because it’s so different from what everything else is or should be. What does that feel like?
[Speaker 1]
It’s absolutely incredible. And it sort of feels like magic. I think because I have been I mean, I’m an autistic person, I love rules.
And I will internalize those rules. And I will follow those rules to the letter, even if you know, sometimes it’s not working. But it took a lot to push me to the point where I was ready to throw those rules out of the window.
And I know that that’s always a magic place where you get to that moment where you’re just like, all right, enough, no more. And I made it for me. I think this is the real difference.
Like I set out to make something that if no one’s going to be watching this, if no one’s going to be, you know, reading what I post, if no one’s going to be looking at my photos, what do I want? What makes me laugh? What makes it feel like this lovely, fun, happy place for me to hang out in?
I don’t want to make content anymore. I want to write about the stuff that is coming up from inside me, even if it doesn’t fit into a content pillar. I wanted to be I love this.
Yeah, I wanted to be a 360 degree human person on the internet rather than condensing my brilliance into, you know, three catchy buzzwords that are easy to understand. And I never expected this is the magic part. I never expected that to be the thing that people really cottoned on to.
And I found that the places where I have been weirdly like completely specific to the point where I’ve thought like, oh, this is going to be the bit that completely alienates everybody. This bit’s just for me. Those have been the bits that people have glommed onto and have been like, oh, my God, this makes me think of this really personal story in my own life.
This makes me feel like this. I had one of the pieces on the website is a page where I share my outfits. You know, it doesn’t have anything to do with selling art or anything like that.
But it feels like an important piece of the puzzle for me as a form of self expression. And I thought this is like, who cares? You know, it’s silly.
It’s fun. It’s just for me. And somebody sent me a nine minute voice message, like just this week, saying that it had reminded her of her grandparents who were this really dapper couple and they love to go out and get dressed up.
And and she was almost in tears as she was telling me the story of her grandparents. And I realized, like, this is this is what we mean when we say that the specific is universal. Like the more specific you can get, the more universal your message becomes.
And weirdly, the more it can connect with more people.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Well, and it’s a part of the specific, I think, is the permission you get.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, right.
[Speaker 2]
Like, I mean, like, I’m not surprised people want to know what you’re wearing, because I love to picture the people who I read from, right? Whatever author, like, on one hand, do I care what Stephen King looks like? No.
But when I’m reading something authored by Stephen King, I do like to have this like mental picture of seeing him in an interview or something.
[Speaker 1]
Right.
[Speaker 2]
So I get the whole outfit. I also can imagine where somebody looks and they’re just like, they see things, I think, sometimes that they don’t like about themselves in someone else. And they’re just like, huh, that person’s okay with that.
Like, that’s what I get all the time, right? People because I don’t, you know, I don’t wear a lot of makeup anymore. I used to wear a ton of makeup.
I’ll wear clothes like I’m very comfortable with the fact that I’m extremely pear shaped. And people will say, well, you don’t Photoshop your images, do you? And I was like, not if I can help it.
I mean, sometimes I can’t control a photographer. And they’re just like, huh? Oh, well, I wish I had that confidence.
So I’m like, well, you know, it’s okay that you don’t. Right. And so I can see how you showing up as yourself, whether somebody completely identifies with that representation or not, still makes it feel very safe for them to be themselves.
[Speaker 1]
Exactly. And we’re back to the freakiest freak thing, you know, that right, if you can show up in the, in the complete Eunice of you in all the you Eunice, then you give other people permission to show up fully as them. And I think that’s really magical when people feel that like, oh, if they’re okay to be them, then I can be okay to be me.
And that’s really what all of my work is all about.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. So I’m going to ask this question. Has there ever been somebody in all the years that’s just been way too freaky?
And you’re just like, wow, I have found my limit.
[Speaker 1]
Oh, that’s fascinating. That’s a really interesting question. I don’t know that there has, I think.
I mean, I’m, I’m just fascinated by people of all stripes. Like, I always say to people, like, whatever you’ve got, just bring it. Like, it’s fascinating.
I might not want to be best friends with you. But I think you’re fascinating and I want to hear your stories, you know?
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. Well, that’s, I agree. Like, I find people to be fascinating in general.
And I find the interaction of people to be fascinating. One of the things that I find most interesting in talking to people about what they view as their weirdness and their freakiness is so often what people think makes them really extremely strange. Like doesn’t even register on my stranger.
So they’re like, there’s times I remember one time sitting with somebody and I’m and they were like, like, like, did I shock you? And I’m like, No, I’m just waiting for the show. Is there more?
And they just kind of looked at me and we’re like, uh, that wasn’t shocking enough. I’m like, Oh, oh, that was it.
[Speaker 1]
Oh, okay. It’s so true. It’s so true.
I think if you’re open to people, like, if you’re if you’re open to people, and you keep this, like, I don’t want to say non judgmental, because I think we are all judgmental to a certain degree. But certainly just a willingness to accept whatever comes at you. Yeah, there is very little that can actually shock you.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, and all that talk. So you said accept. Do you see a difference between acceptance and tolerance?
[Speaker 1]
I think so. But I think it’s semantics, really. I mean, tolerance means putting up with something, to me, and acceptance means just allowing it to be.
That’s the sort of distinction.
[Speaker 2]
No, I agree. Totally. I feel like tolerance, it oftentimes presents as But yeah, and acceptance is just a declarative statement.
Yeah, this is my friend and they are right. And it’s, there’s no buts about it. There’s no ands there’s no in spite of it just it just is exactly, exactly.
So talk to me about what community is looking like for you now, now that you’ve kind of come out and you’re loud and proud in who you are, and all the pieces of who you are, you’re not trying to box yourself in, who’s in your circle, some of the most interesting people I’ve ever had the pleasure of being connected to.
[Speaker 1]
It’s amazing. Like when you do that, when you step up and say, Look, this is me, what’s at all 360 degrees, you get the people who really click with you coming out of the woodwork, I think, because people are responding to who you actually are, rather than who your avatar is, or who it is that you would like them to think you are. And I think it makes the depth of relationships so much more compelling.
And I think it’s worth stating at this point, like, my community is, we’re not talking about a group or a membership or anything like that. I’m not on social media anymore. I don’t do Instagram, I don’t do Facebook, I’m a little bit on Substack, but very sporadically, and I’m not really interested.
And a little bit of on YouTube, same kind of thing. My community really sort of is congregated around the people I know, and most of them are on my mailing list, where I send love letters really to weirdos. But it really is about one to one communications with me, like my happy place is being one to one with people.
I’m fine in a group if I can be the leader. But otherwise, it’s just not a place that I shine. And I think that one of the things that I do when I’m sending out emails, I suppose you could call them their newsletters.
But what I do is I make a point of addressing them to the group to the community, which again, is completely anti email best practice. But one of the reasons I do that is because I want people to know that they’re shoulder to shoulder with all of these other freaks and weirdos who are also connected to me. And that you’re reading this, you’re in a group, like it might be just you reading an email in your inbox.
Also, it’s incredibly disingenuous to pretend that it’s just going out to one person. But that’s a very autistic thing of mine. But I also I love the idea that you’re reading this and you’re feeling alone, you’re feeling like I don’t know, maybe you’ve had a bad week or someone’s called you a freak or something’s happened, like what’s happening in the US at the moment where you feel like you don’t know anyone in your actual real life community who has your back.
But you can this is so grandiose, but you can read an email from me and know that you’re not alone. There are people who are also in this community. We’re all in this together, you know, and that feels really important, even though it’s such a tiny, silly little thing.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, so because I’m on your email list, I would say what I’ve always appreciate because they’ve always all the years, they’ve always felt like love letters to me. They’ve always felt like, oh my gosh, like Ellie sits down and she cares. This isn’t, oh, must write Sunday email check.
Oh gosh, it’s 6am. What am I going to write today? I better get something out.
It has always felt very personal, very intentional. But what I’ve noticed recently, there’s a feeling of safety. I feel like I am safe with Ellie, I am safe in this community.
And it doesn’t matter like who I am or what I am. You know, I told you before we started recording that my daughter who’s 15 and also autistic with ADHD and has a hard time with the social structures, loves cats more than people. We go to your website, like, and we go to your website on bad day.
She has a rough day. And I was just like, do we need to go to Zuzu’s house of cats? And she’s just like, and she never wants to say yes, because she doesn’t want to be needy.
Right. But she’s like, well, maybe. And I’m like, okay.
And so you know, she just pulls up her chair next to me, because I have a large monitor. And we just go and we click around. And I’m like, just tell me when you’re ready for me to keep clicking.
But it’s that whole, like umbrella. And it’s not a maternal safety. That’s what I think is different.
Like it’s people tell me all the time, they associate me with a mother, right? Like I am maternal, I am nurturing to them. That’s not what I feel.
It’s just like, you’re my safe friend. And I think that’s what you provide. And I think a lot of people have a hard time with that.
We know how to present safety as a caregiver. We know how to present safety as a rebel advocate. But just like no, come sit next to me.
You don’t have to talk. We can just be that’s hard, Ellie. And it goes back to your statement of performative.
[Speaker 1]
Right?
[Speaker 2]
You can only accomplish that because you’re not trying to Yeah, exactly.
[Speaker 1]
Exactly. The thing that I’m sorry, I’m all choked up now. I’m so moved by that story.
I can’t even tell you. But I think the website just fell out of me like it literally just came out the end of my fingers. It’s the first draft of everything.
Like it’s literally what just came out. And there was this sort of sticking point afterwards. And I remember talking to my mastermind about it was like, this was so effortless.
But now I want to keep in touch with people. And I’m worried that I won’t be able to like maintain that tone. And they all sort of rolled their eyes at me.
And they were just like, well, just do what you did with the website. Like just, just, just do the thing you do. And as soon as I kind of got over that hurdle, and that’s just what comes out.
Like I don’t, it’s all me. I don’t have an editor. I don’t have anybody else.
It’s literally me sitting down to write to you. Because I genuinely do care. Like I really, I’m so moved by you saying that you find it a safe space and your daughter finds it a safe space.
Because that is literally the point of every single thing I do with the art that I make with the writing that I do with the communications and the marketing and all of it. It’s all to celebrate people who feel like the world is not a safe space for them and to give them somewhere where they feel like someone’s got their back, you know, because it’s so hard to go through life feeling like it’s a hostile place. And so many of us who have whatever identifier of difference you have.
It’s brutal. It’s brutal. And sometimes all you need is somebody else to sit down beside you and go, Hey, this sucks.
Do you want to watch a cat video?
[Speaker 2]
Well, and you know, I can say this to you because you get it like the average person doesn’t but masking is exhausting.
[Speaker 1]
Oh, completely.
[Speaker 2]
You know, that’s what I see on my own children, like at the end of the school day, right? I’m just like, you can see that it’s like they have run a marathon without a water break. And so anytime I’ve talked to you, it’s just like, Oh, you are somebody anybody can drop their mask with.
[Speaker 1]
And people do. Right.
[Speaker 2]
So maybe tell us like another story, if you can think of one of maybe it’s somebody who dropped their mask with you. But where it’s just another evidence point that this is exactly what you Ellie should be doing right now.
[Speaker 1]
The first thing that comes into my mind is that I’ve been recording the second season of my podcast, which is Susie’s house of cats presents. And so often, I will do this interview. And they’re wonderful.
We go into all sorts of different places. Ostensibly, it’s about the creative process, but it’s never actually about that. It’s always about something completely different and wildly interesting.
And nearly always afterwards, I get an email from the guest saying, I don’t think I really meant to go that deep. Like I didn’t mean to say that or very, very rarely, they’ll ask me to edit something out because they feel like they’ve gone a bit too far. But nearly always, it’s like, Oh, I don’t know how I ended up saying all of that.
That wasn’t what I intended. It just sort of came out. And I love that it happens in my day to day life as well with friends and things like people feel safe enough to let the mask drop, they’ll be a bit sillier than they usually are.
Or they’ll, I don’t know, they’ll just be a bit funnier or a bit more risque or a bit more inappropriate. And I love it. Like I live for those moments where you see that they think like, Oh, shit, I’ve done that thing.
Is it going to be okay? And they’re just like, Oh, you know, great, brilliant. I’m so glad that came out of you.
It’s made my day. And it’s just, I love it. I really, really love it.
I really love getting to the heart of somebody and really finding out who they are. Because nine times out of 10, the stuff that you’re like pushing down and trying to hide and gloss over. That’s the stuff that makes you radiant.
It’s the stuff that makes you most interesting. It’s the stuff that makes you shine. And I want to see that in everybody, you know, I hate that we live in this world that makes us feel like we have to squash down our individuality and our personalities and become these slickety perfect versions of ourselves.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah, well, and you know, back to your earlier point about you don’t really enjoy community unless you’re the leader. I think it’s because whether it’s conscious or unconscious, it would probably be very painful for you to see somebody else in charge who doesn’t honor the full presentation of who somebody is.
[Speaker 1]
I do like to say that out loud, like no shade to other people. But yeah, it’s okay.
[Speaker 2]
You don’t have to say that. Because I just said it for you very much how it doesn’t sound nearly as egocentric.
[Speaker 1]
It’s true. It’s true. I hate when people in positions of power, people in positions of influence.
And I don’t mean like, you know, running countries and stuff like that, although that also applies. But I mean, you know, we all have certain degrees of power and influence and things. And I really hate it rubs me up the wrong way when people are out of integrity, when they talk down to people, when they feel like they’re better than somebody.
There’s a lot of guff about follow accounts. And that is an indicator of worth that has happened over the internet over the last five years. And it’s something that I think most of us know is absolute tosh, but we still sort of buy into it to a certain degree.
And I think that there’s all sorts of like things that muddy the waters and get in the way of one human being standing in front of another human being and trying to have a connection.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. So to the person listening, we’re just about to wrap up, which is painful for me, because I would have three hour long podcast with you. I don’t know that anybody else would want to listen, but we would have fun.
To the person listening, though, who’s like, Oh, my God, first of all, I can imagine a lot of people are going, Oh, my gosh, I didn’t know you could not do what everybody tells you. And number two, wait, how do I do that? What would you advise them?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, I think it’s a difficult one to give advice on because everybody’s journey is going to be so incredibly unique. And that’s kind of part of the thing. You know, me telling you how to be yourself is not it has to come from you.
But I think fair. Yeah, I think if I could say anything, it would be like, trust yourself, like cultivate self-trust and self-compassion and learn your own voice, like pay attention to the things that bring you joy, the things that make you laugh, the things that make you feel like you’re, you know, all the way up against the edges of yourself and you’re not chopping pieces off or trying to be more palatable. And I think if you create anything from that place, you can always edit later, although I would, you know, advise doing that with caution.
But if you if you can really cultivate the practice of going within and understanding yourself as much as possible, then you’re much better suited to be able to show that to other people. And it’s a process. I mean, I’m in my mid 40s now and this is it’s been a journey.
This is probably the most well expressed, well actualized I have ever been in my entire life. And it has come about through a very long, often painful process of self-examination and that complete, you know, fuck it point of I just cannot do what everybody else is telling me to do anymore.
[Speaker 2]
So yeah, I don’t know if that’s helpful, but that’s All our listeners said, I was like, I think that’s great advice, but we’ll see what the listeners say. They can tell us if it’s helpful or not. That’s the nice thing about having a show, right?
People get to respond. So we are going to put all your contact information in the show notes. We’ll make sure that it’s shared out when we share the episode, but would it be fair to say that email is probably your favorite form of communication?
[Speaker 1]
Absolutely. You can come to the website, you can come to Zuzu’s House of Cats and that’s house, H-A-U-S just to be really complicated dot com slash keep in touch. And there you, I mean, you can sign up for the email everywhere, but that’ll give you a little update of what the emails actually are and why you might want to get them, sign up and then come and say hello.
Like introduce yourself, send me pictures of your cat. I love it when people do that.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, well then you’re going to get a lot of cat pictures because we just rescued a kitten. You are so going to get it.
[Speaker 1]
Yes. Give it to me.
[Speaker 2]
So sweet. Okay. So now we’re at the rapid fire segment.
We call it freak flags fly. It’s five questions.
[Speaker 1]
Hit me.
[Speaker 2]
No wrong answers. Just answer best as you can. I love that.
So finish this sentence. You are my kind of freak if…
[Speaker 1]
You feel like a total fucking weirdo most of the time in your life.
[Speaker 2]
Love it. What is something you love that your friends just don’t get? Oh God.
So many things.
[Speaker 1]
I’ve got very eclectic tastes. Probably the film team America world police. It’s one of my absolute favorites.
I think it’s a cracking piece of satire.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. I’m going to look that up. What community would you infiltrate just to understand it better?
[Speaker 1]
Ooh, these are good questions. I’m not very good at the rapid fire thing though. What community would I infiltrate?
Ooh, I’d like to be Lady Gaga’s inner circle. I think she’s got some very interesting ideas.
[Speaker 2]
Now, what tool ritual or practice helps you stay connected to your people?
[Speaker 1]
Email.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. And then this one could be a thinking one too. Who is someone doing freakishly good work who you think deserves a bigger stage?
[Speaker 1]
Ooh, excellent question. Excellent question. There are so many people, but my mind has gone completely, completely blank.
You know what? I’m going to come back to you on that one. And we can put it in the show notes.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. I was going to say, you know what’s awesome? Yeah.
You can just, we can just circle back to that at another time. That’s the beauty of pre-recording. Nice.
So Ellie, okay. Thank you for being here. Thank you for being so unabashedly you being honest and demonstrating that though it probably doesn’t feel courageous to you.
It is okay to have the courage to just be yourself because what you’ve really done is invited all of us to just lean all the way into our weird. And so anybody listening, if you’ve ever felt like you’re too much, you’re not enough. I hope Ellie and this episode has reminded you that you’re really not the odd one out.
You’re one of a kind. And there are others who are just enough like you that if you show your true colors, they’ll feel comfortable showing theirs. Thank you.
That’s it for this episode of find your freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com.
What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
Apr 1, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
What I want you to be thinking about, whether you’re a community member or community leader, is what would happen to your community if you were to disappear tomorrow. Communities need to be self-sustaining. Gone are the days where one person, the leader, is willing to martyr themselves for the good of the community.
Somebody still has to care. Somebody still has to show up. But self-sustaining though means that anybody can step in to fill the gaps because the structure is in place and the structure will support it.
People mistakenly think that what kills communities is apathy, whether they’re online or in person. It’s like, oh, people just don’t care. But that is actually not what kills communities.
It’s not apathy. It’s the burden. It’s when all the labor falls on one person, even the most committed leader will eventually burn out and everything burns with them if the community was built to revolve entirely around them.
We’re wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I’m Tonya Kubo and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet. Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful.
Normal was never the point. Welcome back to the show. I have so much that I want to talk about today, but let’s first start with what the episode is about.
You know, if you’re paying attention to the title, this is the community that runs without you. But what we’re really going to be talking about are self-sustaining communities. What I want you to be thinking about, whether you’re a community member or community leader, is what would happen to your community if you were to disappear tomorrow? OK, I’m not talking about getting hit by a bus or a train or what other worst case scenario disaster planning event that you usually think about when you’re doing your, you know, crisis planning.
I just mean like if you step back, you know, if you just said, you know what, I’m busy today, I’m just not going to duck in. And then that day ended into two days, maybe two weeks, maybe two months. What would happen? Would it keep going, do you think? Do you think it would just the activity would quietly diminish until it disappeared? Just think on that, because if you listen to episode 20, that is the question that Stacy Morgan, our guest from episode 20, who is a military spouse and her husband is the commanding officer of a base, which puts her in charge of all the spouses on the base to some degree, all the dependents, making sure all the families are getting what the families need and all of that good stuff.
That is the question that her work is asking. And it’s one of those things where we did not plan for the episode to go that direction. But when it did, I could not deny the importance of it.
And so we’re going to come back to that. But before we do that, I want to say first, I just need to give a shout out to the people who make this show possible. You know, we are 100% listener supported at this point, we do not have sponsors, we do not have ads, we are only existing on the generosity of our listeners.
And so I haven’t yet done a proper acknowledgement to the listeners who are making this show possible. So I want to say thank you to Sherry Gregory from the Great and Grace podcast. She is our newest supporter.
Also, thank you to Rachel Alexandria from the Lonely at the Top podcast. She is also a supporter. I want to thank Brenda Ortiz, who is a monthly supporter.
And one of our first she and Sofia Gonzalez came in at episode one, and they have been supporting us ever since. And I want to say thank you to Lisa McComas, another listener who came on board as a supporter in the last month. And if you were somebody listening to the show, enjoying the show, and you want to throw 5, 10, 15 bucks our way, we are happy to take that go to tanya.link slash coffee, like a cup of coffee.
And you can choose a one time contribution, you can choose a monthly support, whatever makes sense for you. Sometimes we do have special supporter offerings, not always really, it’s just about paying for the editing, paying for the hosting and all the little things that go into the show. So I just want to say thank you to our supporters.
And if you’re interested in supporting, we would love to have you. That’s tanya.link slash coffee. And then I also need to do you the service, the respect required to address the audio issues we had in episode 20.
If you’ve listened to episode 20 already, my interview with Stacy Morgan, kudos to you. Kudos to you. I applaud you.
I owe you a debt of gratitude, because my audio on that episode is trash. Stacy sounds amazing. Stacy is always amazing.
I’ve known her for years. But what I will say is my audio is trash. And you know what, I want to give credit to Stacy.
Stacy offered to make time to rerecord to do the interview over again. But I said no, simply because an hour of her time is precious. You know, I’m not saying an hour of my time isn’t precious, but an hour of her time is precious.
And the idea of taking another hour out of her very busy schedule, just so I could sound better on the audio made no sense. That was not a trade I was willing to make. If her audio was the problem, I would have moved mountains to redo our interview.
But because it was my audio, and she sounded amazing, I didn’t see a need to fix it. What I will say, though, is that is the kind of choice that connects directly to the subject matter of my interview with Stacy, right? If you want a community that lasts, if you want a self-sustaining community, you have to be willing to build a community where your comfort as the leader is not the priority. So we’re going to come back to that as well.
So if you haven’t listened to episode 20, because I’m going to reference that one a lot more than typical, I just want to give you a quick kind of summary. I don’t want to rob from the interview because Stacy has so many good nuggets to share. But as a military wife who is now in a position where her husband is a commanding officer, you know, Stacy, first of all, you have to understand Stacy’s been doing this for 20 years.
And a lot has changed in marital relationships in the last 20 years. A lot has changed in military life in the last 20 years. You know, when Stacy first became a military wife, when they got their first installation, and that is how they refer to it.
It’s like a co-installation almost. The veteran military spouses had told her, oh, she didn’t have to worry about anything. She’d get there.
People would see her unpacking. Women would come over with a cake and they would invite her to tea. And she said, to this day, she has never had that experience.
When it has come to community, she has never landed on a base where everybody was laying out the red carpet to invite her in. She always had to go first. She had to make her own way.
In recent years, what she’s finding is there are a lot of bases where there’s not a military wife to run the civilian side of things. More and more, we are seeing people get into positions of power and positions of leadership who are not married. Maybe they’re divorced.
Maybe they’re bachelors. But the installation she’s at right now, the base that she’s at now, has had two prior commanding officers who were both unmarried. So she’s not stepping into an established system of community for spouses because they didn’t have spouses to start that.
And they were busy enough with their own side of the role that they weren’t able to carry both. So there is this traditional model. And I think a lot of you listening are going to recognize this from any civic organization you’ve been part of, any nonprofit you’ve been part of.
The traditional model of community, of clubs, of organizations is very top down. Everything runs through the person who’s in charge. And then when the person who’s in charge leaves, so does the momentum.
Everything goes with them. It’s why nowadays it is so hard to find somebody to take over these leadership roles. I live in a relatively small town, but a lot of our youth organizations, our schools, whether it’s sports teams, your FFA club, in our case, it’s theater arts, but your musical program, they’re very much supported by boosters organizations, these nonprofit organizations that fundraise to fill in gaps, but also provide that volunteer army that make a lot of these groups successful.
My daughter’s in marching band. I’ve talked about this before. There’s 220 kids in the marching band.
So we’re talking like four buses of kids go to all these competitions within Northern California. They travel up to four hours every single season for these events. And these kids have to be fed breakfast, they have to be fed lunch, all of these things.
The only way that happens is parents stepping up, giving up their Saturdays in order to make this happen, to volunteer. And the only way that that happens is through the efforts of the booster club. But the booster clubs had the same president for three years.
And she’s wanting to step down because her band kid is getting ready to graduate. And nobody wants to fill her shoes because the job feels too big. And she’s talked about this all the time.
She’s like, I get it. On one hand, I’ve done a great job as booster president. And on the other hand, I’ve made it look like you have to have it all together in order to be successful.
And so you know, this idea of a traditional model of community where everything runs through who’s in charge. On one hand, it sounds great, right? You’ve got great quality control there. Awesome, right? Nothing.
If nothing moves forward without your stamp of approval, you’ve got great quality control, like nothing goes out that’s subpar. But the flip side is, is when you step away, and you’re not there to rubber stamp everything, nothing happens, right? Nobody pushes it forward. And so what I loved about what Stacey was sharing, and what you should know is Stacey was originally scheduled to be my very first interview for the show.
And if she was my very first interview for find your freaks, we would have had a very different conversation. Because at that time, she was in the Marshall Islands, wrapping up their time there, and had not yet been stationed in New Mexico. And so the conversation that we had was still fresh on the heels, like she was still kind of getting her sea legs there in New Mexico, finding her way, getting the kids acclimated to a different school, all of that good stuff.
And what that duty station allowed her to do, because they were stepping in after a long period of nobody being in the spouse role, in the commanding officer spouse role, and nobody leading the, you know, military, I think it’s the military wives club, army wives club, maybe is what it’s called. But you know, she always refers to the spouse organizations, because also, there’s no guarantee that the civilian dependent is a wife these days, right? Sometimes the active duty, career military person is the wife in the relationship, and it’s the husband who’s the civilian dependent. So when she set foot there, and her number two on the wives side was coming in behind her, she thought, you know, what if we took this opportunity, this opportunity where nothing has been in place for a long time, rather than cry about the fact that, oh, my gosh, we have to build the structure from the ground up, there isn’t a culture established here of spousal activity, and, you know, mentoring the younger generation of spouses, and really supporting the younger families, you know, we don’t have that, rather than complaining about having to build it from scratch, she thought, well, if it doesn’t exist, what if we looked at building it differently? What if we didn’t follow the supposedly tried and true model of the last 20 years that we have recognized is tried, but is no longer true, because it’s no longer relevant to society.
And so what she did is said, you know what, we as the spouses organization are not in charge of events. We exist here to create a culture of activity of mentorship, to create a culture where every new person on this base feels welcome, and feels like there is something going on that they can plug into immediately. We’ll take that responsibility of making sure there is stuff out there.
But we don’t own any of it, we will send out the newsletter that talks about when the events are, but we don’t host the events, we don’t own the events. Instead, you, as civilian dependents, wives, husbands, whatever, you get to plan events that are important to you. You get to create the activities that you want to develop friendships around.
You host them, tell us when you’re meeting, right, we’ve got some things, you know, you’ve got to, you know, be consistent, we recommend once a month, right, so you don’t like bite off more than you can chew, you don’t have to do it every week. And then just let us know when you stop meeting. But if we are going to sponsor you, be consistent.
And then they let it go, right? There’s no, no special skills, you didn’t have to be part of the cool club. You didn’t have to prove that you had leadership skills, and you had successfully implemented this at your last base. You just have to say, hey, I’m interested in pickleball.
That’s the example she used, right? It was somebody was like, can we get a pickleball group together? And she was like, you can get a pickleball group together. We will put the pickleball group in our newsletter. We will make sure everybody knows the pickleball group is, you know, approved and sanctioned by our organization.
But when it comes to creating pickleball teams, and your pickleball team names and all of that good stuff that is on you, you figured out what will provide the space to make that happen. And what is amazing is the pickleball group is very passionate, right? The pickleball group is growing like gangbusters. And there is now a pickleball group for anybody who comes on to the base.
And Stacey doesn’t need to be the person to make it happen. She’s not, she’s not figuring out the teams. She’s not worrying about how many people are coming to the next session, right? All she has to worry about is, is it still happening? Do we have the date and the time and the location correct? And that’s it.
And what I want you to be thinking about is how do you duplicate that? Because Stacey is really just making decisions based on the survival of what’s important. She knows after 20 some odd years of military life, of being a military spouse, that loneliness is the biggest threat. And she talks about it from a perspective of military retention, right? If spouses get lonely and they are miserable, they will oftentimes create an ultimatum for their spouse.
It’s like, I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep moving. I can’t keep starting over.
I can’t keep holding things together while you’re gone. You need out. Like, like we, we need to stop doing this or couples are divorced, you know, but ultimately there’s not a lot of continuity in military life because it has been so hard to maintain those relationships and maintain that functioning ecosystem.
And so Stacey said, well, you know, what if we were to make it easier? What if we made it easier on commanding officers’ wives and officers’ wives to manage this so that if they are working full-time outside the home, because that’s another thing, right? When Stacey started her military spouse career, the assumption was they were wives who were homemakers, right? Their whole career was supporting the home front. And nowadays, even in the military, we have a lot more two income households, right? We have a lot more geographically separated spouses where the civilian dependent spouse doesn’t want to do the moving. They want to push forward in their career.
So maybe they live apart. And so Stacey thought, you know, how do we create community, which is still desperately needed, right? Community is not outdated, especially not on a military basis, but how do we make it relevant for the modern world, for the modern woman or man who is facing the constraints of competing priorities and everything else that makes it so much easier not to make friends than it is to make friends. And, you know, something that Stacey was talking about that I thought was really interesting, and this got me thinking about a conversation I had had post-pandemic when somebody was lamenting the loss of the volunteer spirit.
They were like, you know, you used to be able to like send out a text for volunteers, and they weren’t trying to be gendered, but they were really referring to, you know, send a text to a bunch of women, and you would have volunteers lining up. And she was like, you know, women just don’t have that volunteer spirit. And I had told that person at the time, I said, you know, it’s not that women have lost the volunteer spirit.
It’s that we’re burdened. Like, we realized during the pandemic how much society leans on us, and when it was our time and need, we didn’t have very many people to lean on. So now, in 2026, when I’m recording this, a lot of women, in particular, are choosier about how they spend their time.
And so in talking to Stacey, my perspective kind of shifted a bit, and what I realized is that people mistakenly think that what kills communities is apathy, whether they’re online or in person. It’s like, oh, people just don’t care. People don’t care.
They don’t care about me. They don’t care about each other. They don’t care about this topic.
But that is actually not what kills communities. It’s not apathy. It’s the burden.
It’s when all the labor falls on one person, even the most committed leader will eventually burn out, and everything burns with them if the community was built to revolve entirely around them. You know, so to Stacey’s point, to Stacey’s credit, she has solved this. And I don’t even know that she realized she was solving it when she did it.
I think it’s been more of an after-the-fact reflection. But she has solved this by distributing the work before anybody had the chance to get tired, anybody had the chance to get burned out. There’s no chance for burnout in this model because it never relies all on one person.
And so what I want you to be thinking about, especially if you’re listening to this from the perspective of wanting to build a community, right? Because this show kind of has two audiences. We’ve got the folks who are just interested in how the other half lives, whoever the other half is. And you love the interview shows.
And you love the insight into military spousehood from Stacey. And you love the insight into cluttery people from Kathy Lipp back in episode two. And you love the insight into the lives of spouses of the incarcerated, like Rachel Allen, or Nikki James Zellner, and citizen advocacy.
That’s what you’re really into are the interview shows. And then there’s the other half of you that are interested really into these solo episodes and going, okay, what is it that makes these communities tick? What is it that people are looking for nowadays that they’re clinging to? Or is community dead? Because we hear that all the time too. And what I want you to take away from this particular episode is that I refer to what Stacey created as a self-sustaining community.
And this is something I am talking a lot about publicly this year. And it is because while everybody else is saying like right now, what’s all over my feet is like, Facebook groups are dead, right? Death of the algorithm. Facebook groups are dead.
There’s no reach. There’s no this. There’s no that.
It’s not that Facebook groups are dead specifically. It’s not that memberships are dead. It’s not that, you know, in-person communities are dead.
It is that the communities need to be self-sustaining. Gone are the days where one person, the leader, is willing to martyr themselves for the good of the community. Yes, you will always find martyrs if you look hard enough.
To quote a good friend of mine, Margaret Markison, who is the author of Sustainable Ministry, you will never find somebody to stop you from over-functioning. In any organization, in any environment, they will allow you to over-function. They being people in positions of power will allow you to over-function for as long as you’re willing to do it.
Because it benefits them. The more you over-function, the less they have to function. The more they get to under-function.
So when I talk about a self-sustaining community, let me be clear, I’m not talking about a community that runs itself. Although that can be synonymous for some people, that’s not what we’re talking about. Somebody still has to care.
Somebody still has to show up. But self-sustaining, so, you know, and because self-running means nobody’s in charge, right? We have this complete flat hierarchy, and that can get chaotic, especially in conflict. Self-sustaining, though, means that anybody can step in to fill the gaps because the structure is in place and the structure will support it.
Back in my university days, what I used to say is if you invest in the intentional design of your communities, right? Because I was building all these communities, student communities, I was building alumni communities, I was building donor communities. If you invest heavily in the design and the initial build of the community, and you get really solid about building that culture and protecting that culture, that the community will police itself. And in times of crisis, in times of conflict, the community will rise up, and not only will it police itself, it will stand up, and it will defend.
It will defend you. It will defend the mission. It will defend the culture.
And it is a beautiful thing to see that happen. Unfortunately, we only see that happen usually when bad things occur, but sometimes it’s when good things occur, right? Sometimes there’s a person in need, and everybody rises up. The community will rise up to police itself.
But most communities will fail this test when they are built around a personality instead of a purpose. So that is one of the things I want you to write down, right? The strongest communities with the longest shelf life are built around a purpose instead of a personality. I have a Facebook group.
It’s called The Secret to Thriving Online Communities. Many people will talk about Tanya’s Facebook group, but very rarely. Like, there’s people in there, I think don’t even know I’m in charge.
They don’t even think that I know I’m the creator there. And that’s my bad. That’s not theirs.
But it’s because we have built that community around the purpose of building thriving communities. How do you foster belonging to your own perfect people, whoever they may be, right? Part of the success of the Clutter-Free Academy community, even though I have not actively run it in half a year, right, is even though it’s founded by Kathy Lip, right? Like, I started that community for her. That was the request.
But the purpose is to help people break free of the bondage of clutter. And that purpose supersedes whoever is on the admin team. So in that case, Kathy is not the infrastructure, right? When a community is built around a personality that the founder is the infrastructure, and that’s very fragile.
Because if the founder gets sick and has to take a sabbatical or a hiatus, the community will collapse because it’s only built on people showing up for them or showing up when they show up. But when you build around a purpose, anybody can further that purpose, right? So when the leader leaves, it doesn’t matter because the members still know how to keep going, right? Because they were invited to keep the ship running from the beginning. So one of the things that I’ve been thinking about is, you know, because I keep talking about intentional design.
I talked about intentional design in the last solo episode, which would have been, let’s see, this is 21. So that would have been episode 19, is I have a habit of saying that this only works if it’s built into the beginning, that you can’t retrofit belonging. And I’m going to stand by that cautiously, because I don’t know that that is 100% true.
All I can say is that in my experience, I haven’t seen success at trying to retrofit the belonging, because when members are conditioned to wait for direction, it’s like pushing a boulder uphill to redistribute the labor later. I have been pulled in to rescue a lot of communities where this has happened. The community was really strong, really vibrant, but the owner sold it.
Believe it or not, this happens. People sell Facebook groups all the time. And they say, hey, we’ve got, you know, 10,000 members.
We’re running like 70% active. We sell a $2,000 offer. We’re selling about $20,000 a month out of this group.
And then somebody buys it. They don’t have the connection to the people. They don’t have a connection to the purpose.
And they’re repeating all the tactics that the former owner did. And they’re failing miserably. They’re losing money hand over fist, because they’re missing the one critical piece is that everybody was showing up in support of the founder.
People trusted the founder. People were happy to give their money to the founder. They’re not giving their money to the founder’s replacement.
I’m using the example of a business group, because that’s what typically gets sold oftentimes. But you see that also when public service groups change hands. When you have the I love insert your town name here group, and it started by somebody who’s passionate, they walk away after five years, 10 years, whatever, somebody else steps in, they run it differently.
People just aren’t as engaged. And you know, in Stacey’s case, she didn’t try to recover anything. She just created an original design.
And that’s why it worked there. So I definitely can tell you that if you are thinking about building a community, if you’re thinking about relaunching a community, baking this aspect of shared ownership and structure of processes where everybody is gathering around a shared purpose, their shared ownership, and therefore, there is a self sustaining component to it. Like it works, it totally works takes a little bit of time on the front end, because people don’t believe you, right? They don’t believe that they don’t need your rubber stamp of approval.
But they once they catch on, it is a beautiful thing to watch in action. But when it comes to retrofitting, it’s hard once people have been conditioned that everything goes through the leader, or this is all about the leader all about the founder, it is very hard to teach them otherwise. So if you remember back to the beginning of the episode, and when I declined Stacey’s invitation to rerecord episode 20, because of my bad audio, I just want to tell you like the same logic applies, right? My reason for saying no, we’re just going to move with it as is, is the same reason that more of us need to be building communities that aren’t built around us as individuals and are built around the shared purpose of the members.
Because when we start thinking, it’s about us, then we start looking to everything happening in the community as a reflection of us. And that leads us to make different decisions than when we’re asking, what does this community actually need? Sometimes the answers are the same. Sometimes what makes us look good, and what reflects well on us is exactly what the community needs.
Other times they’re not. And I want you to think about that with your communities where the answer may be the same and where the answer may be different. Thinking of a community like Clutter Free Academy.
In many cases, like we had that community on post approval just because it was so busy. That was actually not the greatest thing for us, right? Because people didn’t like having their posts held for approval. They oftentimes felt like we were trying to censor them.
It definitely made more work for us because we had to actively approve posts. We had to read them and do all these things. But it was best for the community because having that post approval process prevented bad actors from having access to our very, very precious members.
Prevented the community from being overtaken by spam. I mean, we’d only have like a really bad spam incident about once a year. It was more work on our end, but it was better for the community in the long run.
And so those are the kinds of things that you have to think about is what does the community actually need? Now, if you’re building something new, here’s what I want you to ask yourself before you launch. If I stepped away in a year or two, what would need to be true for the community to keep going? Okay, if you’re building to last, ask yourself that. If I step away in a year or I step away in two years, what would need to be true for this community to keep going? If you are already in a community, because this would be a very, very discouraging episode if I was like, nope, you got to bake it into the beginning or else.
If you’re already leading, here’s what I want you to think about because I have successfully pivoted in this way. It’s just kind of, it takes a while to turn the ship, but it’s worth it. Find one task you’re doing alone that a member could own.
Not delegate. This isn’t like, oh, do this for me for a bit, but actually have them own it. You know, you could say, hey, we’re getting a lot of new members.
Would you do me a favor? And every time I post a welcome new members post, would you do me a favor and comment on that and, you know, reach out to the new members individually and just see if there’s anything they need. You don’t have to fulfill their needs. Just see if they need anything.
Let me know what comes up, right? You could do that. And some people are going to be like, oh no, like depending on what they need, I’m happy to help. But there’s a difference between delegating a task and just saying, hey, you own it.
100%. It is all yours. In one of the groups I run, anytime there is a question about a specific community platform, there is a member who answers those questions because she is much more of an expert on that platform than I am.
And she doesn’t have to ask my permission. Hey, is it okay if I answer that question? She knows. Please, by all means, because if she doesn’t answer it, I’m going to tag her and say, you know what, I can tell you a little bit, but really if you want straight from the horse’s mouth, true expertise, you’re going to go to Jodi over here.
So definitely think about what is one task a member could own. And then if you are a member of a community, here’s the other thing is we’ve got to stop thinking that our communities have like leaders and followers. Okay, that’s not the true nature of a community.
There needs to be a lot more like equity in a community. So if you are a member, I want you to ask yourself, do I wait for permission to contribute? Am I waiting to be invited to the conversation that I have every right to already be a part of? And if you’re in a community where you really do have to wait to be invited, ask yourself if that’s what kind of community you want, right? No wrong answers. I have been in communities where you’re not allowed to comment or ask any questions for your first 30 days.
You’re supposed to just observe the culture and see how things are. You’re supposed to read all the content, right? There’s nothing wrong with that being the ground rules. But if you’re a member, I just want you to ask yourself, are you waiting for permission? Are you that person who waits for somebody else to post and you comment on the posts? What is stopping you from creating a post yourself? All right.
So bringing us back to the original question at hand, what would happen to your community if you disappeared tomorrow? I hope if you’ve listened to episode 20 or by now, if you’re still listening, that the question feels a little less scary. It’s not an easy answer, but I think if I’ve done my job here, you know it’s a question worth asking before you have to. If episode 20 is still in your queue, go listen to it.
Please white knuckle through my bad audio. What Stacey has to say is well worth it. If this episode in particular has resonated with you, I would love for you to share it with somebody you know who’s trying to build something right now.
Let’s save them from making some of these classic mistakes of building it around them and their personality versus building it around the shared purpose. They will be so grateful to you. And if you want to support the show, again, tanya.links.coffee. Every contribution matters.
It matters to me. It matters to the team. And I so appreciate you.
Now here’s what I want you to do after all that. I want you to go out. I want you to find your freaks.
Okay. I want you to find your freaks. I want you to drop me a line.
Tell me who your freaks are, right? Info at tanyacubo.com. Tell me who your freaks are, and I will see you in the next episode. That’s it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review.
And if you’re craving connection, join the freak show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
Mar 18, 2026 | Episode Transcripts
[Speaker 2]
Quick heads up before we dive into today’s episode. Stacy sounds fantastic. I, however, do not.
My audio had some issues despite our best efforts. There are a few spots where I’m really hard to hear. We chose not to re-record the conversation because there are just parts of it that are too good to risk losing.
So bear with us. I want to say special thanks to my editor Anita for working absolute magic to get it to the place that it is now. It is 10 times better than it was before.
I really hope you will stick with the episode despite my bad audio. I promise you it is worth it.
[Speaker 1]
I sat in my house for six months thinking that some magical person who somehow would know I existed even though I was doing nothing to make myself known was going to call me up and be like, do you want to be best friends? I’m awesome. You’re awesome.
Let’s be best friends. It’s like, that’s not how this world works, right? There’s no rescuer coming for you.
And as sad as that sounds, there’s freedom in it because so many people, whether it’s because they’re lonely, whether it’s because they’re unhappy in their job, like whatever it is in life, they’re waiting for someone else to come rescue them. No one’s coming because everyone’s waiting for someone else to come. It doesn’t have to be that way because I’ve experienced what, you know, military spouse community can be.
And the same things that make military life hard, make it incredibly meaningful when you are in community that is supportive.
[Speaker 2]
People do, but others, I would argue maybe the smart ones, or at least the motivated ones, build it from scratch. Even if it means starting over every two years on a new continent with no familiar faces, no guarantees. I’m Tanya Kubo.
This is Find Your Freaks, the podcast for people who were never meant to fit the mold. And today’s guest is the perfect example of what it means to go first. If you don’t see a way, make a way.
That is Stacy Morgan right here. Now, Stacy, I have that you are an Army spouse of 25 years, Mama Force speaker and author of the book, The Astronaut’s Wife, How Wanting My Husband Into Outer Space Changed the Way I Live on Earth. What year did that come out?
[Speaker 1]
That came out three years ago.
[Speaker 2]
Wow. And you are also on staff with the MomCo as an executive leadership coach.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
Membership manager and lead for military and online groups. And you’re in a new duty station.
[Speaker 1]
Yes, I live currently. We just moved back overseas this summer. We were overseas for two years, and now we are at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico, which is, listen, if we’re hiding aliens, they’re here.
OK, we are remote. We test everything here. It’s a really cool base, but I tell you, it is small.
It is remote. 30 minute drive to get from to anything from my girls high school to Walmart. So it’s a very unique place because there isn’t an outside like town right outside the gate like you normally have at most duty stations.
[Speaker 2]
Wow. OK, we are going to talk a little bit more about that. But first, let’s kick off the episode like we typically do.
Tell us, Stacy, who are your freaks? Why do you love them?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, that would definitely be military spouses. I love them because, listen, they’re gritty. Sometimes they’re dark.
You know, we have to face mortality in a different way than the average person does. We’re highly independent by necessity, and we’re incredibly diverse in so many ways. But the military experience across branches, across no matter how many years your spouse has been in or if you were in or all the different places you live, there’s this very universal experience and this immediate bond with each other when we get together.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, I love that. And I love it when you were saying gritty. So the town I live in, we used to have an Air Force base about 15 minutes away.
And I have a client who grew up here. She’s 61 now. And she talks about how, you know, whenever people would talk like when she was a teen about, oh, we just don’t have the volunteer spirit here that we used to have, or it’s like civic organizations just aren’t as successful as they used to be.
Her parents would always say it’s because they closed down the base, because military wives ran every organization in this town, and they knew how to get things done.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
And in conversations before, like before we started recording, you talked about how that is one way where community has historically developed around military spouses is in the leadership circle. What have you seen in almost, do we say almost 30 years? Or are we not quite close enough?
[Speaker 1]
I think quarter century. So it sounds really old. That sounds really good.
I mean, it is crazy to be a quarter century, because I don’t think of myself as old, but when I think back to when my husband was a second lieutenant, right? And we were like brand new, so green, so naive, like everything’s going to be amazing. At that time, the pendulum had started to swing.
However, it was just started. So we were still at one end of the spectrum where there was most definitely the mentors that I looked up to. Their spouse had joined in the 70s.
And then their mentors had been in the 50s. And there was very little change, really, in how spouses and the spouse community were treated by paid military leadership, really, right up until the early 2000s. What you had then was a culture of an expectation that you’re going to be white, a mom who stays home, you’re going to be a woman.
If you’re a spouse, you’re a white woman with a couple of kids and you’re staying home. And there is a clear cultural expectation that you are a part, like you’re going to get plugged in. You’re going to volunteer with the spouses group.
There’s going to be older spouses who organize those things, but your attendance is not required, but as close to required as you can get. Like volunteer with mandatory participation, right? Optional mandatory participation.
You’re going to be there because it’s important for you to be plugged in. We’re going to have volunteer opportunities where we need manpower, right? There was just this expectation that you’re going to be involved and love it or hate it, it created culture.
And that was a support network for a lot of spouses. Now, as time went on, so very soon after when we got in, the pendulum started to swing the other way because very slowly military culture started to catch up with real culture. And oh, shocker, there are men.
Many women are working. Many people don’t have kids. They don’t live on base.
They don’t want to host white glove tea parties with older ladies, right? And so the actual kind of verbiage that came out from the top was you don’t have to participate in anything you want to do. So it went from, you must participate if you want to help your husband’s career to, because of course the assumption was you have a husband.
Then it swung all the way to the other side of, you don’t have to do anything you want to do. And I understand. I think it was out of, I don’t disagree with that.
You should be able to do whatever you want to do. But in that full freedom, we lost some things because some people took that at every level of the spouse community chain to be like, great, I washed my hands of this. And so the mentorship chain started to fall apart.
The place where you can naturally go and meet and connect with other spouses began to fall apart. And so you started to have this slow degradation of what used to be a really strong support network within the unofficial military community, to now it’s really struggling. I mean, just as the new generation of moms come up.
So now when I talk to young military spouses in their twenties, they don’t want to volunteer. And this is across the board, not just the military spouses, but culturally, very little interest in volunteering. I don’t want to be a part of your philanthropic, I don’t want to help you with your fundraiser.
I don’t even necessarily have kids yet. So why would I care about raising money for high school senior scholarships? I don’t need, I have a job.
I have outside interests. I’ll just find my own friends. And that kind of works until it doesn’t, because then you add in a lifestyle where you’re moving every couple of years, or the harsh reality that the job your spouse has is different than the accountant down the street who never goes anywhere and doesn’t have to worry about getting shot or dangerous training.
And so this idea of, oh, I’ve got this freedom. I don’t have to be involved. What you end up with is where we sit today, which is where there is no official support network.
The old model of spouse, what they call military spouse groups is what we call. That old model still exists, but it is currently on life support with in general, stereotypically older military spouses, and we’re not getting new military spouses into it. And it’s not actually serving the needs of what military spouses today need in terms of community and support.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. So I see the history in that, but I’m wondering, like, what do you see as the actual impact? Because this is an interesting intersection.
Like most of us are used to, like, my husband’s a teacher. I can know his coworkers. I can not know his coworkers.
Six of one, half a dozen of the others, right? Maybe I go to the Christmas party. Maybe I don’t like it is his work life is so far removed from anything that I do or the girls do.
It doesn’t have to be, but it can be military life though. Doesn’t strike me as quite the same. I’ve got housing that shares the workspace.
And then of course the coworkers travel for various periods of time. The guys, I say guys, because I make those assumptions to the active duty players build close relationships with each other. And it would make sense to me that it would be easier for everybody if their spouses also had close relationships.
Yes. But the picture you just painted to me indicates that not happening. I’m just curious.
[Speaker 1]
That’s right. It’s not happening across the board. Like it used to be the structure that once brought every military spouse together, whether you liked it or not is gone and something has to change.
And you’re right. It is what we have created. Now, what I find now is these military spouses of all ages.
And it used to be like, Oh, it’s just the younger spouses who are struggling. Now I see it across all, all ages, all ranks, all branches, this increased isolation of the people around me don’t understand me because you may live on base. You may live off.
If you live off base, you probably feel like your neighbors do not understand your lifestyle. All they know as time has gone on, even within the military, not everyone served in the last conflict. And so like my husband deployed to Afghanistan and Iraq, the younger soldiers, their spouses did not.
There’s a divide there. Right. And so credible opportunity for mentorship, but also that means there is, there’s a difference in experience, right.
As you get older. And so what you have is a generation of spouses who are unhappy because they are isolated. They feel disconnected from the spouse community and their surrounding local community because my neighbors don’t understand me, but I’m not connected to the unit that my husband is assigned to.
And so I’m unhappy. And the source of my unhappiness is my spouse’s job. And so what’s interesting about spouse contentment and connectedness is that it’s not just like a, Oh, we want spouses to be happy.
It actually becomes a retention issue for the DOD, right? Because the number, they do these surveys every year of military families. And they ask service members like, what’s your determination of whether or not you’re staying in or not.
And a huge one that comes in the top three every year is spouse employment and whether or not the spouse is connected because, and we know that this is true because you know that if you have a job that you hate, or you go home and you’re like complaining to your spouse and your spouse is also unhappy, she’s like, well, let’s go back home. Let’s get out. You’re not going to encourage you to stay in.
They’re going to be like, the easiest solution is we move back home to wherever and we get out and whatever, which creates a retention problem. I know there’s a lot of big voices and really smart spouses who advocate for this and trying to put the dots together to higher level military leaders that understanding spouse problems like employment and community and connectedness, this isn’t just like a fun side project. You should be concerned about this because at the end of the day, that guy gets in bed with his wife and she rolls over and she goes, I want you to get out.
I don’t want to do this anymore. And it doesn’t have to be that way because I’ve experienced what military spouse community can be and the same things that make military life hard, make it incredibly meaningful when you are in community that is supportive. And when you’ve experienced it, you start having spouses who tell their spouse, I don’t want you to get out.
You may want to, no, I want you to go do 30 years because I don’t want to leave this community because it’s so awesome. So that’s what we want for people is to feel so connected and so unified in this unique lifestyle that they’re like, yeah, I want you to do this job as long as you want to do it because I can find my people here. And that’s also why people who have community retire in areas with tons of other military because they want to even in post-military life until they’re 90, there are retirement homes that are only for military people and military spouses because they’re like, listen, literally until the day I die, I want to be surrounded by people who understand me.
That’s what it is at the core, right? I want to be surrounded by people who know me and there’s no judgment. I don’t have to answer a million awkward questions about deployment or death photos or who I’m giving my belongings to.
If you get killed in Afghanistan, like I don’t have to explain any of those things because you were in it too, and you got it and you understand this lifestyle. And that’s what I want every day from now until the end. And it makes me sad that not everybody has that.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. And so before we get to the community piece, because I think there’s a lot to impact there, I’m thinking about when I worked in higher ed, people have a lot of opinions of what determines a student’s ability to succeed in college, right? Some people think it has to do with whether they were coddled in their high school years or not, how academically prepared they were, blah, blah, blah.
The number one determinant of being academically successful in college and graduating within four and a half years of social fit. So to your point, it is when I look around, do I see people who look like me? Do I think these people can at least somewhat understand my experience had a similar experience?
And we think that 18 year olds don’t have that, but humans are hardwired for connection. I don’t think we are conscious about it until we’re later as adults, but we’re always looking for it. And you touched on this a little bit in your responses for listeners who really don’t have familiarity with military, because I think, first of all, people stop to think about it, they would realize that they have a lot more touch points with military families than they would typically think.
But I still think a lot of people romanticize military life based on entertainment. I happen to know military romance novels, like one of the top selling books, like of all time. But what is it that you wish the average person understood about the weight that military weighs?
[Speaker 1]
That’s a great question. I wish they understood that emotional burden of having to start and restart so often. And not just for the kids.
Like this transition back to the States, like it was rough. You know, we had a great two years. And then returning back to the States where like, physically it was uncomfortable.
We had to live in a hotel for a month. And then we were in our we didn’t have any of our stuff for a month. And then I’m trying to process my kids into a school that is clearly like not designed to help people come in at different entry points.
Some schools with military communities do a much better job of explaining acronyms and explaining sites and stepping you through that kind of thing. And then even through all the logistics, at the end of the day, I haven’t even begun to try to connect with people, while also managing my kids connecting with people. And also our identity, not being 100% dependent on what their dad does, or what my husband does.
Who am I, apart from him, but at the same time, so much of my life is dictated by what he does. And so it’s just, it is a heavy burden. And I wish that people would realize it’s okay to ask questions.
I think you’re right. People make a lot of assumptions, positive or negative, because of movies they’ve watched. Either they think that every military guy has PTSD and he’s just one like firework away from going berserko.
Or that he’s like this blood hungry, can’t wait to take revenge on somebody. He’s got a set of skills and he’s not afraid to use them. Right?
I’m like, most of these guys skills, paperwork. Okay. And then, or that, or that we’re like these fragile people to be pitied.
And, but actually like we bring a really interesting life perspective because we’ve lived different places and we’ve experienced different ways of doing things. Like we’re really valuable people to have on your team because we don’t have just one way of thinking. We probably have a more diverse circle of friends and acquaintances from living different places than the average person of all just like socioeconomic status, ethnicities, all those kinds of things.
And help us jump in and then don’t be afraid to ask questions about what it’s like to be a military family. You’re not going to scar us. You’re not going to shock us.
We’d rather you ask questions and learn about our story because every story is different. Some have deployed, some haven’t, depending on your job, your branch, all the kinds of things like, but please take the time to get to know us because it is, it can be isolating already. And then if nobody takes the time to ask you questions, then that can be frustrating as well.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. So there’s a part of me, right? This like social justice, like there should be a law kind of person who says, okay, I can understand how just evolution of people, gender norms, stereotype roles, all that stuff has dismantled this mentorship structure that used to exist in the military spouses.
I also think the military, I mean, they know what they do. They like protect countries and stuff like that. They have a kind of a big job.
Surely they have a system in place to support families. I’m wondering as this mentorship model fell apart, I guess I’m curious, did the military support model fall apart or was the military support model actually built around the mentorship model and nobody realized that to now the whole thing was falling apart?
[Speaker 1]
It was definitely a system built on the backs of assuming that spouses were going to volunteer their time and their effort and take care of it. And so when those bodies got pulled away because they retired, those spouses are working, they don’t have an interest, whatever, these huge support gaps are exposed because the old system, the old family and spouse support system was 100% propped up by the volunteer hours of current military spouses. We were in many ways what they call self-licking ice cream cone.
We are working hard to support ourselves. And then you’d have an advocate who can connect you to some decision makers, but pretty much the old system was the commander’s wife was the head of all the spouses, right? And her job was to rally the troops and in whatever mission she has, support, running a thrift store, doing all the things, right?
Connecting with resources and all that stuff. And as time has shifted and demographics have shifted, that’s not the case anymore. You only have to have one bachelor commander for it to fall apart.
Or you have these big gaps when there isn’t a spouse or that spouse just can’t or doesn’t want to participate in that, right? Because she’s got a full-time job or he lives in another state because that’s where his job is or whatever. So yeah, the system has not repaired itself.
We have not found a new system for family and spouse support to replace the old system, which just cannot work anymore. It just can’t. The world has changed and we did not evolve with it fast enough.
So now we sit in this current space of some places there’s things happening, other places there’s not. It’s just very spotty and can vary wildly from place to place, which also breeds frustration and disappointment. You’re at this awesome place and there’s great support and there’s mentorship and there’s friendship, then you move somewhere else and it’s like a ghost town.
And that can be frustrating. And I’m just really disappointing for spouses too.
[Speaker 2]
Oh yeah. Like you see that, I think that’s community across the board, right? People will say, Oh, elementary school was like this.
And then if their kids go to a middle school that didn’t have the same level of parent involvement, they feel a sense of betrayal. But we had this, where’d that go? So for you, I mean, you were at a brand new duty station.
So you’re very much in the scenario that you have described.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
Brand new duty station. You’ve come overseas to get there. You’ve got kids who are school age.
You’ve got a husband with a big, important job. What does this all look like for you right now in the day to day?
[Speaker 1]
Well, I got here and realized pretty quickly that I needed to do something. Now it helps that my husband is the guy in charge. And listen, old stereotypes die hard, right?
I got here and the vibe from other spouses was, Oh, thank God you’re here. Finally, you can tell us what to do. Because listen, no knock, the people came before us.
It was two bachelors.
[Speaker 2]
Oh yeah.
[Speaker 1]
Right. So we had four years where there was no command spouse and the old system again, was a top down, right? The commander spouse leads the leads on the front, rallies the troops, moves everybody in the same direction.
And then, Oh gosh, for four years, that person wasn’t there. And there’s a lot of really amazing things going on here on this base. But what I realized was nobody was talking to each other.
Nobody was organizing it because everybody was waiting for the command spouse to show up. And we’ve got to get my vision for community in the military going forward for spouses. We have to change.
We have to change things. We just have to, because you can’t wait for someone like me to show up and tell you what to do. I have realized for a long time, like I’m a little unusual, right?
In that I own the fact that I work full time. I do all these things, but I also fully want to help everybody find this community. And I’m willing to do the work and do that.
Not everybody has the ability or the time to be able to do that. So you can’t wait for someone like me to show up and be like, okay, here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to organize this new thing.
We’re going to put this together. We’re going to keep going. We just can’t.
It doesn’t work that way. So what I realized here was while it was disappointing that there wasn’t any kind of organized community here, there was also an incredible opportunity to create something new. And that’s what we’re doing.
So I rallied a couple of key people, pretty much only two people I knew. I mean, I got here, I mean, like typical military spouse. I connected with the guy that was going to be working closely, like my husband’s right-hand man.
I connected with his wife and thank goodness she’s a go-getter like me. And they were in Germany. We were all the way out in the Pacific.
It could not be more opposite places on the globe, but we started connecting before we got here. And I hadn’t even met her. And I was like, Hey, just so you know, you’re my kid’s emergency contact for school.
That’s just how this is. In fact, she was like, I’m not actually showing up until three months into the school year. I’m like, not a problem.
School doesn’t need to know, but it requires a name and a phone number. You’re going on the list. Right.
And she and I just were like, we got to create something here. And so what we’re doing here, I think we have to think differently about military spouse community. We have to, the old model, just it’s on life support where it still exists.
Most places it doesn’t even exist anymore. There just isn’t anything. So what we’re trying here, the old model was top down.
You have this leadership team, probably led by the command spouse. She’s probably old like me, like she’s at least a one generation away from the newest spouses. Right.
And this team drives everything. The problem with that model is that it becomes top heavy and the lower, the main participants are just passive receivers. Like you, the board will tell me what to do.
They’ll create activities. I show up. What today in places where that still exists, incredibly hard to recruit new leaders for these boards.
Like I’m on this Facebook group for military spouses, group leaders, and everyone’s constantly complaining about, I can’t recruit new people. And I’m like, yeah, I’m not surprised because all the older people are retiring. And then the new people don’t want to get involved because they go, why?
I already have a full-time job. I already have these kids. I’m doing both.
Why would I also kill myself for this, this job? So they can’t recruit any leaders. And what in many cases, what started as a support structure, like a way to get connected to others, they added extra things on that were good things like scholarships, thrift stores, all kinds of fundraisers.
And then the focus over time shifted away from support to philanthropy. And as soon as you go into philanthropy, oh my gosh, the tax reporting, because anybody who’s run a 501c3 knows what a headache that is. Now add it onto a military installation and you just created why you would put yourself into that third circle of hell.
I do not know. Like it’s just, it’s a nightmare. The paperwork is a nightmare.
That’s the second number one, second complaint that all these groups have. They’re drowning in tax requirements, audits, all this kind of crap. And then they can’t find leaders.
And so consequently they’ve strapped weights to themselves over decades of this old model and they’re drowning, right? If they aren’t already drowned. So this new model that we’ve proposed here, and we’ve just got, we’re only like a month into it, still- Yeah, heard it here first, folks.
It’s a bottom up. So what we do is there’s three of us and that’s it. And so to join a spouse group, traditionally you have to pay dues.
And then there’s always traditionally like everybody’s complaints about drama, like officers versus enlisted and older versus younger. And which neighborhood do you live in on base and blah, blah, blah. No.
And the younger spouses also don’t want anything to do with that. I got enough drama in my life. I don’t need any of that.
So we’ve literally created a logo that kind of mirrors what we’ve been doing for a long time. Our installation logo, and then it has two rockers, one on top, one on the bottom, and it says no dues, no drama. So we don’t touch money because, hey, philanthropy is great, but not for us.
We’re singularly focused on support and support only. And we’re not going to let ourselves get bogged down in 501C3 audits, taxes, all that kind of crap. The way you get away with not doing that is they just don’t touch money.
So everything we do is free, open to everybody. So how do you become a member? You just get on our email list.
That’s it. It’s an online Google form. And we have a Facebook group.
And then what we did is we tell everybody, hey, if you’re doing something cool, so instead of the board, there’s no board. It’s just three people. We pretty much manage that email list and the Facebook group.
We’re the Facebook admins to make sure it doesn’t go sideways. If you have an interest and you like doing something, then what we want you to do is create an interest group underneath our spouse group umbrella. But we don’t run it like you do, the regular member.
So like right now, we have a pickleball club and a crafting club. I love that they’re totally different. Each has a person who’s like, I love playing pickleball, but this is what currently happens when you don’t have any kind of structure to bring community together.
Suzy loves pickleball. So what’s she going to do? She’s going to go on the base Facebook page and she’s going to be like, does anybody want to play pickleball?
And people go, who the heck is this? I’m not going to show up and play pickleball with some rando. Like, I don’t know who this is, you know, whatever.
Right. So then nobody shows up and then Suzy’s disappointed. She has nobody to play pickleball with.
However, if she brings it under the umbrella of our spouse’s group, now it’s not Suzy’s random pickleball get together. It’s the White Sands Spouses Group Pickleball Club hosted by Suzy. So now people are interested in joining because it’s vetted and it’s not going to Suzy’s pickleball club.
I’m going to the Spouses Group Pickleball Club and now I feel more comfortable going. It’s free. It’s open to everybody and she can host it as often as you want.
And I, as the like leader of this three person team, totally hey, freedom to you, Suzy, as long as you follow some very basic guidelines, which is don’t do anything illegal, don’t do anything embarrassing to us and don’t charge any money because we’re not talking. We cannot touch money. That’s what this is.
So it’s a community. And so you can have our hope is that in the next year, we will have dozens of interest groups of all types from book clubs to walking clubs, to stroller groups, to crafting clubs, pickleball, bird watching, bowling, name it. We’ll have a group so that when you show up here and you ask them, how do I get connected?
Like, ah, you just join that email list and you join that Facebook group and then you can join any of those things. And that’s how you meet people. And there’s no money.
There’s no drama. And the awesome thing about it, and this is the part that I love the best, is that we don’t need you. Like the problem with the old model is it’s drowning because the leaders are desperate because they’re like, we need you.
We need bodies. We need your money. We need you to work at this fundraiser or in the thrift shop.
And we can say, listen, we have no tolerance for drama. You start causing trouble or whatever, you’re out of here. You’re off the roster because we don’t actually need you.
We don’t need your money. You’re not leading the group, you know, either abide by our guidelines, which is like fun and support and that’s it. And anything other than that, otherwise pound sand, buddy, we don’t need you.
And I think it’s just, it’s a complete upside down way of the old model. And honestly, I think it’s the future of what we have to have going forward because the focus has to be solely 100% connected community and everything else. Those are great things, but they’re just not what we’re going to do.
And that’s what we need on every base.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. So I have to ask, like, where’d you get this idea? Cause it’s a complete inversion of the old model, but the Stacey, I know I didn’t, I don’t see you like drawing a little funnel and then going, Oh, what would happen if we put the funnel sideways?
Let’s turn it this way. Right? So like what made you go, huh?
Instead of doing it this way, what if we just flipped it upside down?
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. I don’t know. I mean, I do, I read a lot of leadership books, you know, in my job, I think a lot about organizational practices and studying the old model.
We had to do something. I was like, we have to think differently. We have to one, because I’m selfishly, I don’t have time to lead or handle audits or all that other crap though.
I’m like, I have no interest in doing that. And if we want this to survive into the future, it has to be like the future is it’s got to be light and nimble and flexible and it has to be member led and not like where members are like the community itself is driving the content and what’s happening. Not some small group of people who, you know, are now stressed and exhausted.
And honestly, maybe don’t even have a good thumb on the pulse of what the community of those, especially younger spouses want and need in their life.
[Speaker 2]
What you’ve developed it. I saw this university is many times like a small city that people will support that, which they help create. Yes.
Interests do drive a lot of motivation. So when you can put people in small groups around shared interests, everybody has a better time.
[Speaker 1]
Everyone does. And then, so we also, we have these interest groups and so they’ll meet. Those are for people who want to lead something on a regular basis.
Right. But I also found that there’s a lot of people who are very passionate about things, but they don’t want to do it all the time. And so we also have this special events category.
And so I had this woman come to me and she was like, I’m really passionate about sound therapy. And I was like, I have no idea what you’re talking about. And she was like, I have these bowls for people who would know that they know it’s these bowls, like these kind of Tibetan bowls.
I watched the video. I was like, okay, this is like totally like weird, but I love it. Right.
[Speaker 2]
Right.
[Speaker 1]
Whatever. Right. And she’s like, I want to lead a sound therapy night.
Now, does she want to lead that weekly? Of course not. And if you tried to do that all the time, people would be like, no, your attendance would dwindle off.
And I think that’s one of the traps that a lot of people, when they create community also fall into, which they think that if you’re going to start something, it has to be like on the regular, we’re going to like make this something that happens weekly, monthly, whatever. And I was like, actually, a lot of people just want to do a one-time thing or twice a year, maybe quarterly tops. So let’s let them do it.
And so literally, I was like, great, let’s do it. Again, nobody wants to show up to Beth’s sound therapy. Is Beth going to murder me?
Like what is happening? Right. But so she sets it up.
She went, I was like, find a place, pick a time, pick a day, whatever you want, and then we’ll help you push out the interest. And it goes under our umbrella and our little, I’ll make a little graphic for a little logo on it. Like now it’s come join us for a sound therapy night with the Whismur spouses group.
Now, you know, I’m probably not going to get murdered. It’s vetted. It’s interesting.
And it’s great. It’s happening next week here. And someone else wants to do a yoga class once a quarter.
Someone else wants to do, you know, like a line dancing lesson. That’s awesome. Are people going to show up for line dancing lessons every week?
No, but they will twice a year for a fun, like event. And so I think you have to flip community on its head. And like you said, you have to figure out a way so that the people, if the community itself is deciding, what do I want?
And then I got to be willing to put some skin in the game. And part of that is explaining to people, like, if you want it, you got to be willing to host it. Like, we’ll help you.
But enough of this culture of complaining about what doesn’t exist. And instead, let’s find a way that you can give back in even just some small way. And in a way that feels good to you, because it’s interesting to you, it fits your schedule, it builds this community that you claim to want so badly, and which we all do.
And then when you do that, inspire someone else to do that. And then together, we build this thing instead of being like, no one’s building this for me. I’m sad.
Nobody wants to do this fundraiser with me. Boo. No, no one.
Everyone hates fundraising. Everyone.
[Speaker 2]
That is true. That is true. I run a nonprofit.
Everybody hates fundraising, even the people who run nonprofits sometimes. So what’s been the early feedback? What have you heard so far?
[Speaker 1]
It’s been nothing but positive. And I think it’s now we know we’re gonna this is totally different than what people have experienced if they’ve been in the military for more than five minutes. And so we know it’s going to take some time to like, in essence, convince people that this is different.
We’ve got two groups going now we get the special event next week, we got a special event the month after that, and the more you do it, then people are like, Oh, I get it now. And so they need to see it. And and then it’ll start to snowball.
But I had an open house. And I invited every spouse in the entire community to show up. And after we had a few drinks and ate some cookies, I gave a presentation on here’s the vision.
And here’s what we’re gonna do. Here’s the basic guidelines. And it’s revolutionarily simple.
I told them, like, I’m gonna explain this to you. And you’re gonna be like, duh, like, it’s gonna feel so simple. And that’s why it’s revolutionary in its simplicity.
And also, you have to let go of control of it. The old model made sense, but it was like, it’s overly controlled by this leadership board. And then you just lose it over time.
It just you just can’t. So now, you know, you got to be willing to be like, Hey, I’m not interested in that. But I bet other people might be.
Yeah, let’s do it.
[Speaker 2]
Well, and that’s the thing, because it’s not driven by you, you don’t have to be interested. I love that you don’t have to be with everything. And it doesn’t fall apart when one of the three of you who got it started, moves on.
[Speaker 1]
Exactly. So when my time here is done, instead of being like, I need to recruit a board president who’s willing to fulfill this giant list of requirements, and all this kind of stuff, instead of, hey, can you manage an email list? Can you be an admin of a Facebook group?
Can you just make sure nobody’s doing anything illegal in these interest groups? It’s so simple that anybody could do it. And it but it does require in the rethinking of it, like that we’re not going to do these things that traditionally spouses groups have been doing.
And that’s a hard thing for some people to understand. But I believe it’s the future of where it has to go.
[Speaker 2]
Now has the military had a hard time with this shift?
[Speaker 1]
Well, what’s interesting is, I think the old model allowed the military, and I use that term in the kind of like official structured paid, to not provide certain services that they should have been. And now that support structure has eroded, those gaps have appeared. And yet in this environment of budget cuts, and personnel problems, and whatever, there are these gaps.
And then the DoD, the Pentagon, whatever is not currently equipped to meet these needs. As we had talked about prior to this, you know, there’s no spouse at the decision making table, right? And so if you don’t have a seat at the table, your voice is not really considered when it comes to things that are going to affect you in some very real ways.
No, they have not adjusted.
[Speaker 2]
They’ll figure it out, right?
[Speaker 1]
I mean, there are, I should say this, there are so many really good advocacy nonprofits out there, and they do amazing work. And I also think let’s not reinvent the wheel, right? I look at Blue Star Families, I look at Military Spouse Advocacy Group, and they’re doing amazing work.
And their job, their mission statement is to collect the input of military spouses and push it up to Congress, to the White House, to Pentagon and advocate at that like legislative and regulation level. Great. I’m so glad they’re passionate about that.
My mission is local community building. And I’m going to create what I need. And I’m going to invite other people to join me in it.
And hopefully, it also becomes what they need and something that they can multiply going to other places. I think the goal should not be not just that you don’t feel bad, but that in creating that community you need, you bring other people into it so that it multiplies for others as well. Like not waiting, creating.
And then in doing so, it spreads, and then it multiplies everywhere you go.
[Speaker 2]
Oh, I love that. Okay, before we run out of time, I do want you to talk a little bit about your book, The Astronaut’s Life. I’m assuming you’re okay with that.
[Speaker 1]
Yes.
[Speaker 2]
Well, I’ve read it. I think I was like unofficially on the book launching just in that I followed everything that the book launching did. And I will just, spoiler, my favorite part’s the T-Rex.
T-Rex, absolute favorite part of the whole book. I was just like, I want to be her when I grow up, but I sweat. So I’m not going to wear the T-Rex costume.
But I want to start off with, okay, your husband goes off into space, which not many of us can actually say we even have a remote idea of what that’s like. There are a million and one things you can do when it is your job to parent children and all of this stuff while your husband’s in space. What made you decide, oh, let me add a book to the mix?
[Speaker 1]
That’s a good question. Okay. So we probably should clarify.
My husband is in the Army. He has been in the Army for 25 years. Active duty military, just any civilian, when NASA has a window to apply to become an astronaut, can apply.
And so he’s also a NASA astronaut. It was for 10 years. We lived in Houston for 10 years.
So our military journey has been unusual in that he was commissioned and then went to medical school. He’s a medical doctor. And then we worked in the special forces community for a long time.
And then we worked at NASA for 10 years. And then he was still on active duty, but that was a kind of a whole different lifestyle. We were like assigned to NASA.
And then he did fly in space for nine months. He had a nine month mission. And then after he came back from space, we transitioned back into leadership in the Army, commanded overseas the last two years, and now he’s commanding here.
So we have had a very varied journey. And so he launched in 2019, came back in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. That was crazy.
There was a period of time where he and his two crewmates were the only three people on the planet, because he was off the planet, who hadn’t been affected by COVID because it all hit while they were in space. And he came back and I did this podcast with a… I made a friend and I didn’t really know a ton about her when I became her friend.
And little did I know she had this massive podcast and is now like a New York Times bestselling author. But we did a podcast together about just the unique experience of living with a spouse in space and what that’s all about. And then because of my appearance on her podcast, it opened up some doors to write this book.
So I did not intend to do that. I kept some journaling of some stories and I encourage every military spouse to do that, because they’re just things that happen as a military spouse. You’re like, if I didn’t write this down, you wouldn’t believe it, right?
Just write those things down, even if for nothing else than a record for your kids to learn about what your life was like during that time. And so I started writing it. So my husband was home.
He had just gotten back. We were locked down at the house. And doesn’t that feel like a million years ago that we were locked in the house, even though it wasn’t that long ago.
It was like five years ago. Everybody was looking for something to do to keep themselves sane. And so I ended up getting a contract to write this book.
And so as difficult as the pandemic was, there were some real opportunities in it, at least for me. I don’t know if it wasn’t for the pandemic and the fact that I could not go anywhere. I don’t know that I would have had the self-discipline to sit and crank this book out.
It also helped that I was under a contract that kept me really working hard because it’s a grind. Book writing is an absolute grind. Anybody who tells you that it’s just like them sitting and staring out the window delightedly is lying to you.
It is a grind. You have to have a really thick skin. But it was a really good process for me to sit and just put thoughts to paper and then have to figure out how to tell that story and in a way that is relevant to everybody, whether you’re military or not.
And I do want to add because I always like to get this in there. All of my 100% of my book proceeds, I set up a 501 something trust. So all of my book proceeds go into that and that money is donated to charities that support military families.
And I just like to make sure that gets out there because talking about your own book sometimes can be a little cringey because you’re like advertising for yourself. And I like to get that out there. So it’s listen, I’m not even keeping the money, right?
I hope you read it. If you read it and you hate it, the worst thing that happened is you just gave a few bucks to military families. If you love it, buy 10 copies, buy 100 copies and put a few more bucks towards military families.
But it really is, it became a passion project more than like some kind of business prospect for me. And so it’s really a joy to talk about it because it was really cool.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. So first question, do you know how much you’ve raised for military families yet?
[Speaker 1]
So I put a huge part, the majority of my book advance into that. So to date, so I have money. The nice thing about it is I can keep it in there and as opportunities arise, I can do it.
There’s no timeline of having to dole it out by a certain date. But to date, I’ve given away $10,000 of that money to charities that support military families. And it’s great.
So, you know, obviously the more copies I sell, hopefully I will sell, I will, for people who aren’t familiar yet, you’re paying off your advance for a long time, depending on how long and how big that advance was. And so need people to buy a lot of books available on Kindle, on audio book, on hardcover, softcover, get it anywhere.
[Speaker 2]
We will link it every time we talk about this episode, we will buy books, we will do all the things in order to get more books because military families, as this whole episode has discussed, really need support. And there’s not a lot of infrastructure for that. Yeah, I want to share what I want to say the word impress, but that’s not really accurate.
What I found most interesting about your book is because a book like that a book that’s all about how you’re spending basically a year away from your husband and how life is going on without them. And there’s really no way to pull them into it, right? In like an accurate way.
That book could have gone a lot of directions. And the fastest track to a bestseller would have been to talk about all the hardship and how awful it was. And people love a good revenge memoir.
[Speaker 1]
Oh, yeah.
[Speaker 2]
Right. And it wasn’t it was the most positive, hope filled book, not that there wasn’t hardship mentioned, right? So oh my gosh, it was the best thing ever.
If we could just do that forever, we would. That had to be your decision. Because I think a publisher would have jumped on the idea of having it be a lot more negative, and a lot more hard in a heartbeat.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah, I’m sure I could probably make a lot more money get a lot more attention if it was some kind of sexy tell all. I mean, it’s like if any organization, there’s always dirt, you can dish right, I can write a book called so and so is a real jerk, like spill all the beans, because you can’t work anywhere and be part of like, I was the president of the astronaut spouses group for the entire time that we were there for 10 years. And so intrinsically involved in everybody’s life, and you really do become the astronaut corps is not very big.
And so you know, everybody’s life and laundry and career highs and lows and all that kind of stuff. And yeah, you can always go negative. And the same thing with on the military side, you know, in the book, I talked about what we were doing while drew is in space.
And but I also hearken a lot of stories back to time in his deployments, because a lot of similarities in some of those things. And like, yeah, like you said, I didn’t whitewash the fact that it was hard, we dealt with death, and disconnection and difficulties in connection with other people and community, all the things that make the lifestyle hard. But at the end of the day, are you gonna sit in that?
Or are you gonna like, what are you gonna do? What do you get? What are you gonna do now?
And I think one of the lessons that I try to teach in there is there’s no rescuer coming for you. Right? Like, and as sad as that sounds it, there’s freedom in it.
Because so many people, whether it’s because they’re lonely, whether it’s because they’re unhappy in their job, they like whatever it is in life, they’re waiting for someone else to come rescue them. Like, why is it? Why am I?
Why don’t I have friends? How come no one’s like beating down my door to be to be my friend? No one’s coming.
Because everyone’s waiting for someone else to come. And it’s one of the chapters in the beginning I talk about how I hit this like rock bottom, I was so lonely. And I’m crying in the YMCA parking lot, we’d hit rock bottom at that point.
And I called my friend who lived on the other side of the country. And she listened, she was so great. And then she said, So what are you gonna do about it?
And I was like, what? I’m calling you.
[Speaker 2]
Like, what do you mean?
[Speaker 1]
I was like, I’m the victim. I shouldn’t have to do anything. And and we carry that mentality everywhere we go.
This life is too hard. I don’t want a single parent while my husband’s away. I can’t have any friends.
I’m like, and it’s boohoo me who so who’s gonna come and help me and it’s okay, have your pity party. But then what are you gonna do about it? And that question, it changed everything.
It changed how I found friendships there. It changed how I viewed whose responsibility is it? Whose job is it to make me happy?
It’s no, no one’s but my own, you know, you know, I have a tattoo on my wrist from Esther, you know, the voice of like, you know, for such a time as this, everybody should have this tattooed on. I’m a little biased, but I think everybody should have this tattooed on. Because it’s like, yeah, you were put in this place at this time.
And instead of being like, and this sucks. It’s like, what’s your role here? And not only improving your life, finding friends, creating community and all those things doing meaningful work.
But how can you do that in a way that draws others into the story with you? And expanding that for everybody. And when you do that, it only changes your perspective, it’ll probably be the most favorite place you’ve ever lived, no matter where it is, or what the job was, or any of the other variables.
Because in the truth, none of those things actually are what make you happy. It’s the relationships you make and how meaningful the work you’re doing there is. And that’s up to you, whether or not you use that time wisely.
[Speaker 2]
Yeah. So for the person who’s listening and going, yeah, I want this community. And maybe they’ve been sitting back, like waiting to be rescued.
I love how you put that. Oh, some people come and save me. Where do you suggest they start?
[Speaker 1]
You got to get out of your house. I mean, literally, you got to get out of your house. That’s always step one.
And I’m like, depending on the climate where you live, figure out what time of day it is that people go outside. And just start, take your dog for a walk, take your kids for a walk, walk by yourself, take your earbuds out and go for a walk and start talking to your neighbors. And I say this with no judgment, because I did this.
I sat in my house for six months thinking that some magical person who somehow would know I existed, even though I was doing nothing to make myself known, was going to call me up and be like, do you want to be best friends? I’m awesome. You’re awesome.
Let’s be best friends. That’s not how this world works, right? So step one, you got to get out and go where people are and go where people who do things that you find interesting go.
So if you’re really into arts and crafts, go to a place where people are doing arts and crafts. If you’re really into physical fitness, flip and go to the gym, right? If you’re into reading, go to the library.
If your faith is important to you, then get plugged in to a local church and join a small group. But you got to get out of your house. And it’s going to feel like you’re going first, but you just got to keep putting yourself out there.
And so that’s step one, is you have to get out of your house. No one’s going to come pounding down your door. It just doesn’t exist.
No one will even come and ring your doorbell and introduce themselves when you move into a neighborhood anymore. Like back in the day, that was the stereotype in the military that you got moved on base and someone’s going to show up. And I think that was true 50 years ago.
But here’s what I say. So you do it. Like how awesome would it be to have a revival of people who show up at someone’s house like your own little military welcome wagon with a plate of cookies and an old school three by five card with your name and your spouse’s name and your kids’ names and ages on it and your email address.
Like if that’s what you want, which I think most of us want. We want to know our neighbors. We want to feel like we’re part of something, part of a community that feels safe and warm and welcoming.
Okay, what are you going to do about it? That’s what you want. What are you going to do about it?
Guess what? There’s no like government organization coming in to do that. There’s no government welcome wagon, right?
So why not you for such a time as this? Maybe it’s you, right? Maybe it’s you.
And do it. Like the risk is so much less than our brain tells us it is. What’s the worst thing that happens?
The person’s thanks, grabs the cookies, and slams the door in your face. Okay, on to the next house. You just got to get out there, literally and figuratively.
You got to get out of your house and just start introducing yourself to people.
[Speaker 2]
Get out of your house, talk to people.
[Speaker 1]
Yes. Get out of your house, talk to people, and don’t be afraid to show up not knowing anybody. So if you see something going on, a book club, a walking group, my daughter is so good at this.
I wish, I’m like, oh my gosh, I wish I had this ability to do things when I was her age. She will walk up and introduce herself to other people and be like, so what are you doing here? And then they’ll be like, oh, we’re doing this.
And she’s like, great, can I join you? And you’re like, oh my gosh, like the audacity, the boldness. Really, it’s not like it’s so simple.
She introduces herself. She asks if she can join them. It’s, again, revolutionary in its simplicity.
We’ve lost the ability to do the basics, and that’s what we got to do.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. All right. So now this brings us to my favorite part.
I don’t know if it’s anybody else’s favorite part. Nobody has been like, oh my gosh, Tanya, that is my favorite part of your show. I should say all the ways to reach Stacey are going to be in the show notes.
They’ll be on the website. Trust me, just DM me anywhere. Like Fungus, I’m everywhere.
I will put you in contact with Stacey directly. But now we have the freak flag slide. So this is a quick round.
It’s five fast questions. There are no wrong answers. Just answer whatever comes to mind.
The first one is complete the sentence. You’re my kind of freak.
[Speaker 1]
If you like to laugh, if you can laugh at yourself, you can laugh at yourself. Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
Yes. That’s a good one. What’s something you love that your friends just don’t get?
[Speaker 1]
Leadership books.
[Speaker 2]
I get that. I like leadership books.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
You and me, we can have our book club of two.
[Speaker 1]
Yeah. It’s a little intense. I get it.
[Speaker 2]
What community would you infiltrate just to understand it better?
[Speaker 1]
I think the people who are really into renaissance fairs and they do the full like Henry VIII costume where they grow a beard all year and they gain 20 pounds so they can fill it out. And then the woman next to her, she’s got hair down to her butt because that was traditional. Like the all in renaissance fair people.
[Speaker 2]
All right. Ren fairs. That is a first.
Nobody has said Ren fair community first. I like that. Okay.
What tool, ritual or practice helps you stay connected to your people?
[Speaker 1]
Marco Polo. I’m a big fan of Marco Polo app. I got introduced to this when my husband was in space.
I talk about in the book when you’re single parenting and things are hard. I couldn’t call people because it was like, I’m not free when you’re free. I don’t actually have time to stop what I’m doing and have a conversation with, but I still want to be connected with you.
And for people who aren’t aware, Marco Polo is a free app. You can upgrade for money, whatever. But you send a video message to someone else and they can watch it whenever they want.
And then they send you one back. So it’s like sending voice mails, but you get to see the person’s face too. And sometimes with friends, like I’ve seen my friends in towels, they’ve done it on walks, like, yeah, but something about seeing the face and I’m just, it’s just different than if you got a text or an email or, but it really helps.
I think I have about six different active threads with six different people right now. And some of them, it’s only like once a month or whatever, but others it’s like multiple times a day because we’re BS and about stuff at work or stuff between other people. But yeah, I love it.
[Speaker 2]
Okay. And the last question, who is someone doing freakishly good work that you think deserves a bigger stage?
[Speaker 1]
Oh, that’s a really good question. Uh, I’m a big fan of Sharon. What’s her last name?
She has, she already has a bigger stage, but she’s on social media and she’s that civics professor who Sharon McMahon and she, I mean, she’s not a small name by any stretch, but I love how she is educational teaching civics, which unfortunately, like you can’t say you’re not into politics anymore. It’s impossible.
[Speaker 2]
Right.
[Speaker 1]
And, but she does it in such like, do you ever watch, like she’ll have stories on Instagram, she’ll have like story all about the newest constitutional crisis. And then she’ll have a post about like her dog and then a whale and then something. So I like that she’s still a real person.
And I think she’s doing God’s work in just helping lower temperatures through explaining things in a very neutral way. And we need more people like her in the world in every, not just in politics, but we need some people like Sharon in every genre who can just explain things to people with no judgment and easily pretend I was out sick that week in sixth grade when that was explained in class or whatever. Yeah.
I do think she’s awesome.
[Speaker 2]
I feel like she makes a lot more sense than my government teacher did in high school. I was like, Oh, that’s what he was trying to tell me. Okay.
[Speaker 1]
This makes sense. Yes. There’s so many things.
I’m like, was I sick that week? I don’t remember any of this. And I consider myself a pretty educated person.
Like how am I just learning this right now? Like, Oh, I get it. Yeah.
[Speaker 2]
I was listening I learned. Yeah. Stacy, our time has come to an end, but I just want to say thank you.
Thank you, first of all, for shining some light into a segment of the population that we are all surrounded with, but very rarely do we actually get to see how it works. But also for sharing what I think is a great model for anybody who is looking around and feeling like the spirit of community is fractured in their local environment. Because what you’ve shared with us today, this idea that one, you can go first and two, like you don’t have to be in charge of everything, right?
You just need to find a couple of people who are interested in the same stuff you are and get that going. And then maybe more can branch off from that. So I think that is something that doesn’t matter who you are, where you live, what you do, anybody could take that and make it their own and actually see great success.
So thank you again, Stacy. Thank you.
[Speaker 1]
Thank you for asking me to be here. It’s always super fun to talk to you, Tanya.
[Speaker 2]
That’s it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review. And if you’re craving connection, join the Freak Show at findyourfreaks.com.
What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
