Episode 9 - Challenging Purity Culture: Empowering Children through Age-Appropriate Sex Education and Open Conversations

Did you know that the language we use, or neglect to use, to educate our children about their bodies can directly affect the safety of our young ones? It was a harsh lesson learned through a sobering story of a young girl who suffered prolonged abuse, a situation that could have been detected earlier had she known the proper names for her anatomy. In this episode of All Our Little Messes, we challenge the dangerous implications of purity culture on sex education and confront the negligence of withholding crucial, age-appropriate conversations about sex and anatomy from our children. 

Devoting time to the distortion in perceptions of Christian and Catholic sexuality, we highlight how culture, the internet, and even religion, are culprits. These influences can often warp our concept of sexuality, leading to confusion and shame, especially in our kids. We passionately advocate for parents to address the taboo and open up the conversation about bodies and sexuality with their children. The episode tackles hard topics but underscores a critical point: an informed child is an empowered child, less likely to fall prey to misinformation from potentially harmful sources.

In the spirit of fostering a positive body image and promoting well-being, we stress the significance of using correct anatomical terms while educating our children. It's not just about anatomy, though. Our approach to the conversation can instill confidence in our children to open up with their concerns. Our final segment delves into exploring resources for age-appropriate sex education and the potential dangers of an inadequate understanding of biblical sexuality. Let's drop the shame and bring light to the conversation about sexuality. Your kids are worth it!

Chapters

• 0:04 Purity Culture's Impact on Sex Education
• 10:17 The Importance of Age-Appropriate Sex Education
• 17:06 Kids' Anatomy and Sex Education Conversations
• 32:46 Exploring Resources for Sex Education

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:04

Hello and welcome to All Our Little Messes, a podcast focused on healing through intentional conversations about parenting, relationships, religion and more. I am your host, veronica Winrod, and I'm so happy to have you here listening in on my thoughts today. I hope you enjoy this episode. Hello and welcome back to All Our Little Messes. This is episode 9, and today we'll be continuing our short series on purity culture and the impacts it's had on society. Today I wanted to talk about the impacts it's had on sex education and how that's affected our youth, and I wanted to start off by just briefly touching on the importance of open conversation about sex and anatomy for kids. I mean, I'm sure you're all aware of how today's culture is and how it's affected. You know Christian sexuality, we have the effects of pornography and you know technology has really spread those effects really far, far and wide and, as a result of you know technology and pornography and stuff, we also have the increased danger of our kids potentially being molested, and so, to my mind, that is probably the biggest reason why we need to focus on teaching our kids the correct terms for their anatomy. I have heard way too many stories and I know way too many people personally and what I've heard people tell me is just absolutely appalling, like the names they teach their children to associate with their anatomy and just instead of just actually calling it by their you know their actual, correct anatomical terms. And I mean, I'm sure most of you have heard this story about. You know the young girl she was, oh goodness, I think she was in preschool or no, maybe she was old, I think she might have even been as old as elementary school age, but anyways, she told this story to her teacher. About you know how her uncle kept licking her cookie and the teacher didn't think anything of it and just told the student to you know, please tell your uncle, don't do that. If you don't like it, just ask him to please stop. And it later came out, after a discussion with the girl's mother about how her cookie was itchy, that the teacher finally like put two and two together and realized what was going on. But at that point the abuse had already been happening for months and months and months and it likely would never have happened in the first place if the student, if the daughter, had been taught correct anatomical terms for her anatomy, like if she had been taught boundaries. And you know, this is what it's called, this is what is an isn't allowed to happen there, and on and on and on, and then like situations like that would never have happened. And so that's like a huge reason why, like my husband and I chose to teach our kids the names for their anatomy.

Speaker 1: 4:10

And I mean, I have, I have a young toddler, just over two years old, and he knows his the names for his anatomy. He knows, he knows them all. He's two years old and he he'll list them all. You know my butt, my penis, my testicles. He'll, like, he'll list everything down for me, and there is nothing sexual attached to what he's saying, because for him I'm just peeing and I'm pooping and these are my body parts, this is my hand, this is my arm, this is my foot and this is my penis, moving on with my life. He doesn't attach any shame to that.

Speaker 1: 4:53

And so I feel like it's very important to teach kids early on to you know, know the names of their body parts and to not hide them. Because when we hide and this is something that I I it kind of struck me a couple of years ago, before I even had kids, I was kind of thinking about it and I was like, you know, we don't. We don't hide the names for our arms or our legs or our nose, but we will try to hide the names of our you know, our, our anatomy and other areas from our kids, and we try to attach shame, like sexual shame, to it in a, you know, in a toddler. And that is just so concerning to me because one, you know, we're all made in the image and likeness of God and in the beginning there was no shame attached to our bodies. And a little child is, I mean, I feel is, as close to that innocence in, you know, the Garden of Eden that we will ever get.

Speaker 1: 6:15

And so the first steps that a child takes towards being ashamed of their bodies are the steps we put them out on. So by teaching them oh, you can't say, penis, that's a bad word, yes, that's attached to that body part, that's a bad word they're subconsciously going to take the shame attached to that word and attach it to that body part, and there is absolutely nothing to be ashamed of, zero. The only shame there is is the shame that we give them. And so it is very important that we don't start that cycle with our kids, because, again, it is. It is. We are all made in the image and likeness of God and he made these parts for a very holy and sacred purpose and there is no, absolutely zero, absolutely zero shame in that and we have no right to be starting our kids off on that path.

Speaker 1: 7:17

So I, yeah, I teach my kids the names of their, of their body parts and things like that. And you know, by teaching them the names of their anatomy, like the proper terms and things, I mean there's like a lot of benefits to that. I mean you have, of course you you can help guard against not completely, but you can definitely help alleviate concerns when it comes to a potential abuse situation. So if something were to happen, then you know your kid will feel like they can actually describe what happened to them. Instead of my uncle licked my cookie, she would actually be able to say my uncle touched my vulva or whatever happened, and that would have I mean, that would have stopped everything right there. If that little girl had known the proper way to describe what had happened, it would have stopped the situation right in its tracks. But instead she wasn't taught what to say, what her body parts were actually called, and the situation continued on for months. And so those conversations are very important because you know, again, it stops, you know it can stop potential abuse situations from happening.

Speaker 1: 8:41

And then you know, also it kind of opens the door to age appropriate conversations about sexuality, and my oldest is almost five, so I haven't really run into too many conversations in that area. I mean, he's asked some questions that I was a little bit. I mean I wasn't shocked that he asked them because he's, you know, he's a smart five-year-old and he's very observant and there was nothing overly sexual or anything in the questions he asked. It was, you know, about body, hair why is there hair on your legs, kind of thing. And the questions just kind of, you know, escalated into am I going to have hair, am I going to have hair all over? And then it just yeah. So I mean those conversations like when your kid feels comfortable discussing his or her body to their parents, like these kinds of conversations that you know I had on my couch with my four-year-old. They're very organic and they just kind of happened naturally and there was no shame attached. He didn't feel like he was in trouble, he didn't feel like, you know, there was something horrible or bad or anything in the questions he was asking. He just genuinely wanted to know and there was no. I mean, I experienced this growing up Like I would ask a question and the automatic response I received was where did you hear about this?

Speaker 1: 10:17

Who told you about this? And at that point I was in my mid teens and so, like I, in my opinion, I should have already known about these things. Like these conversations need to be happening by like nine years old. In my opinion, by the time you're 15, 16 years old, you should know everything that there is to know. And so you know I was asking questions and the response was who told you these things? Who have you been talking to? And so I learned very quickly don't talk about these things, don't bring anything up. And so, yeah, it was shameful. You know, these questions were shameful, something to be hidden. I wasn't supposed to ask questions, but at the same time I was.

Speaker 1: 11:12

You know, I was still curious, obviously. So I would learn things from friends and from you know, books I would find at the library and things like that. And from the internet. Later on, I would find things from the internet. And so you know the and it definitely in the beginning.

Speaker 1: 11:33

It definitely warped my concept of what Christian and Catholic sexuality was, because, you know, the world tends to portray sex as something very, very transactional. And it's not. It's not a big deal. You can give it to whoever it's. No, it's no thing. It's, you know, it's no problem. And you know the statistics show that that is not true. I mean just the rates in sexual disease and the way, you know, aids has skyrocketed through the roof and the rates of, you know, children born out of wedlock and you know our abortion rates just very simple. Things like that show that we should not, we should not be looking to the internet and things like that for sex education, obviously because, again, it warped my concept of sexuality. So that, again, is a very important reason why we need to start having age appropriate conversations with our kids about their bodies and about sexuality.

Speaker 1: 12:48

And it was actually someone I know, who you know, mentioned this to me. He said what was it? He said better a day too early than years too late, and that is very true. Like children's, innocence is very powerful and if their minds don't have the ability to absorb information, it tends to just go right over their heads and so like when you're having a conversation with them and they don't grasp the concept of something. Oftentimes it just you know they may misunderstand it and that's always a risk that you would take and take. You know, having this conversation with them, you know, a day too early.

Speaker 1: 13:38

But again, better a day too early than you know years too late, because then again they're going to learn. They're going to learn about their bodies, they're going to learn about sex. They're not. I mean, kids are not stupid. They know that something's going on. You know when they start experiencing puberty and things like that, and so you want them to learn from you and you want them to learn, you know, from a healthy standpoint. You don't want them learning from the internet, which has its own risks. I mean, a lot of people I know who learned sex education from the internet and from friends later on went on to have pornography addictions. And it's because you know when you go to the internet, the first place you're going to find sex education is porn sites. That's just where you're going to learn about sex is porn sites on the internet. And so it's extremely, it's vital.

Speaker 1: 14:46

It's absolutely vital and important that we teach our kids at home and we teach them, start teaching them from a young age and we also impress upon them, you know the fact that there is nothing shameful, there's nothing shameful in sexuality. There's nothing that they need to hide from themselves or from us, like if they have a question, encourage them, tell them. You know you tell them that it's natural, tell them that it's healthy that have questions. They're going to be curious and there's nothing wrong with being curious about their bodies. Their bodies are constantly changing and they're going to want to know why. And our job is to teach them why. I mean it even says that in the Bible to raise them up in the ways of the Lord, like raise them up in the way that they should go. And so if we don't do that, then we have failed in our job. And so, again, teach them that there is nothing shameful about their bodies and the natural processes it goes through, and encourage them to come to you with questions.

Speaker 1: 15:53

And I think one of the first things we can do to kind of help our kids not attach shame to their bodies is, you know, when kids are very, very young and I'm talking like six months to like two years old, during diaper changes, I'm sure, like all parents and caregivers have noticed this, kids have a tendency to grab themselves and it is the most annoying thing ever because you're like trying so hard to hurry up, finish that diaper change, so you know it doesn't get messy. And this little kid is trying to, you know, grab themselves. And I like when I first, when I first had my oldest, I would tell him oh don't, we, don't touch our wee-wees. And my husband heard me after about a month of me doing it my son was like seven months old at this point. He heard me say wee-wee and he kind of looked at me, funny, he's like wee-wee, where did that come from? I was just like I don't know what else to call it. He's like why don't you just call it a penis? And I was just like, but that's weird, babe, we don't say that, that's a weird word. And he just kind of looked at me and he's like why? Why is it a weird word for you?

Speaker 1: 17:06

And so I I mean like I had already kind of thought, like before I get married, got married like I mentioned, like I had already kind of thought about the whole, like why do we attach so much shame to our bodies? And, like you know, it's the adults that do that to the kids. These innocent little babies are programmed. These innocent little babies are being programmed by adults to attach shame to their bodies, often before they can even walk or talk. And it's just, it's horrific. But like I'd never. I'd never thought about like actually teaching my kids you know proper anatomical terms, because everybody knows what a wee wee is right, like it's. It's not it's. It's a very common, it's a very common term for that.

Speaker 1: 17:53

But at the same time I'm like I am still in a sense attaching shame to that because I am ashamed and too scared to say the word penis. It's not a bad word. It's not a bad word, it is a body part. Why are we so scared of it? And so I just was like okay.

Speaker 1: 18:13

So it took me, it took me a couple weeks to finally say the word out loud. I had never said the word. I don't think I'd ever said the word before in my life until that point. And I was oh goodness, I was like 24 years old, I had never said the word before and I finally said it out loud and I felt so awkward saying it. But he was, I was again, I was changing his diaper he was trying to grab himself. I said, oh no, we don't grab our penis while I'm changing you, we'll get poop everywhere. And that was it Like and that was kind of how I introduced the word into, like, my sense of vocabulary. It's we don't grab our penis while I'm changing diapers, that's, you know, we don't touch that. And so Now my son is very, very comfortable talking about it, like saying the word, not talking about it saying the words.

Speaker 1: 19:13

And it's actually turned out to be a very good thing because, you know, for health reasons, I mean, he's had, he had a health problem, just you know, a couple of months ago, and he was able to actually come up to me and say, hey, mommy, my penis, et cetera, et cetera, and actually tell me what was going on, using actual terms and explaining where it hurt and why it hurt and things like that. And if I hadn't taught him those terms, he wouldn't have been able to describe what was, you know, actually going on. And so, also because he's he's very comfortable with his anatomy too, I mean I've, and as a result of being a boy, mom, you know, you come into those the situations where you all kinds of things happen that I won't get into, but I'm sure all boy moms out there can, you know, stand in solidarity with me. Boys, am I right? But yes, it's.

Speaker 1: 20:17

It's a good thing to normalize conversations about your kids anatomy because they're going to have questions why is my body doing this? And even at three or four years old, your kids bodies are going through huge changes, even even then in those areas, and so you want your kids to to be comfortable coming to you with questions. Why is this happening? Why is this happening? Hey mommy, look what I you know, look what I can do, look what just happened. And that's that's good, that's healthy, because you need to know at one as their parent, what is going on, what is happening, and that's good too.

Speaker 1: 20:58

I mean, later in life, if something does happen, that is is difficult and and hard to get through for both of you. The fact that you established trust and took away the shame associated with those conversations is going to help you get through those and it's going to make it easier for your child to actually come to you when there's an actual legitimate problem. And that, again, is like I mean teaching them the correct terms early on in life and just introducing it into you know conversations again while you're like you're changing them and things like that or or bath times or things are just whenever you know it would come up organically again is going to also establish trust and communication with your kids and that would be that. That's a huge, that's extremely important later on in life when, again, you might have problems. You know, if your teenage daughter you know happens to to have sex, you know, before marriage, or or your son has again he has sex before marriage or anything happens or somebody unfortunately you know God forbid is abused or something happens, then they're going to be, they're going to trust you enough to come to you and have those difficult conversations that they might not want to help with anybody else, and they'll also be able to accurately describe what happened to them, which is huge, because I personally know teenagers that do not know what their body parts are called and like. When I found out that these kids don't know what their body parts are called, I was shocked. I could not believe that this was even a thing anymore. But they didn't. They didn't know and it was, it was. It was very strange to me to find that out, but you know it should be also these conversations that you have with your toddlers about you know, correct anatomical terms. They generally they're going to gradually morph into conversations about, about sex. So this is really just like the gateway to that and it's just a gradual leading up. And we're I'm not quite sure I mean my husband and I are, you know, we're still because I still consider us infants and our whole parenting journey, so we're still starting out. But we, we definitely want to start teaching our kids from a younger age about, you know, about general sex education.

Speaker 1: 23:50

And when Christians think sex education, they think that it means you know the nitty-gritty of it all. And to me, sex education is so much more than that. It is describing puberty, it is describing childbirth, it is describing breastfeeding. It could be describing the postpartum period. I mean it can be describing child development within the uterus. It could be describing how the uterus works. It can be describing periods, it can be describing the women's menstrual cycle. It is everything. And there are so many places to start without actually discussing sex. And you can start as young as six years old, in my mind, I mean, because why can't you describe how a baby grows inside of its mother's belly to a six year old. Why can't you describe the placenta and the uterus and go through the whole process of childbirth and how sacred and how beautiful it is to a six year old. Why can't you describe that? And so I feel like, again, the younger you start, it's better to start a day too early than years too late. And so it's an ongoing process.

Speaker 1: 25:00

It's not just a one-time conversation where you sit your kid down and you just show the book at them, or you just unload all this information on your 10-year-old, your 12-year-old, your 14-year-old, however old. You end up having this conversation with them and just unload all this information, because that in itself can be so traumatizing, like again. I know parents have put it off for so long and then they were like, oh shoot, my daughter's about to go through puberty and they just unloaded all of this information on their daughters and I, oh goodness, I can think of half a dozen girls that this happened to and they were just absolutely traumatized. I had a friend tell me that she cried and then she told me that it was disgusting. She was 14 at the time when she found out and she told me that it was disgusting and she was never going to do it, and that was actually my initial reaction when I found out. I was like 15 or 16 and I had to like blatantly ask my mom, is it? We had puppies and I was like, is it like the dogs do it? And when she was like, yeah, sort of, I was like ew, gross, I'm never going to do that. And because that was I had never.

Speaker 1: 26:16

I didn't have that gradual introduction into it and I also didn't have that aspect of how beautiful and sacred it is and how it's such a God. It's a God-given gift. Our sexuality is a God-given gift. Another thing that I've discovered in I've been studying my faith more over the past two years and, like so many things that I have learned about sexuality within Catholic teaching is just absolutely beautiful, and it is so sad to me that I didn't grow up with this, this introduction to Catholic sexuality. Something that always stuck with me was for the Catholics out there. I'm sure you'll know what I'm talking about, but Pope John Paul II wrote this series of letters that were later compiled into a book called Theology of the Body and within.

Speaker 1: 27:13

When you are reading Theology of the Body within like the first chapter or second chapter somewhere in there I can't remember. It talks about the union between a man and a woman and the fruits of that union being like the fruit of the union between God, the Father, god the Son and the fruit they produced of their love, god, the Holy Ghost. And that just struck me as being so beautiful and I was moved to tears because, again, like sex education for me growing up had always been shameful and hidden and I was always so confused after discussion, and I learned about it from friends and from the internet and you know, books at the library and my idea of sexuality was warped. And so when I read that and I just it kind of just, even after being married for a couple years, at that point it struck me how beautiful and sacred it is. And it really is like.

Speaker 1: 28:17

You know, when you get married you take a vow of commitment and love and you know to honor and respect your spouse until death do you part and like every time. And within Catholic teaching it's actually it's a general belief that every time you engage in the sexual union with your spouse you are sacramentally renewing those vows to your spouse every time. And so to read that in theology of the body, like that our union mirrored the union between God the Father and God the Holy Ghost. God the Father and God the Son was just, it was beautiful. It was so moving, and I never thought of sexuality in that way before, and so that's another reason why, like these ongoing conversations with your child are so important because you can introduce that kind of thing to them, you can show them how beautiful and how sacred sex should be and that there's nothing to be ashamed in it.

Speaker 1: 29:24

There's nothing to be ashamed in our sexual natures. They're a God given gift. I mean, the whole point of our sexual natures is to, you know, is one union with our spouses within the context of marriage. That is the primary purpose of sex, and the secondary purpose was procreation of children, and so, like having those conversations and helping them to understand how beautiful and sacred it is and that it's something to be cherished and not something just to be for one, not something to be thrown away, but also not something to be ashamed of. There's no shame in our sexuality. It is one of the greatest gifts that God has given us and it's something that we should treasure and be proud of. Honestly. We should be proud of it and we should guard it and you know this whole culture and in a lot of Christian and Catholic circles now, of hiding our sexuality and guarding it as like a shameful secret that we don't talk to our kids about, because if we talk to our kids about it then they're going to want to go have sex. It's crazy. It's crazy.

Speaker 1: 30:36

If we introduce our kids to sex early on as something beautiful and sacred and holy and a God given gift, why is that considered dangerous? And I don't understand why parents would see it that way. Like kids are not gonna just run off and go have sex because you had the sex talk with them. Hiding it from them is gonna make them curious and then they're gonna go run off into it because they're gonna want to know what it's all about. If you introduce it to them at home in a safe setting, you tell them what's going on, you show them how sacred it is, you teach them a biblical foundation for sexuality, they're not gonna run off and go have sex because their curiosity will have already been satisfied essentially within the safe context of your home and within the same context of your faith and the Bible, it's not going to be a problem. If it is a problem, then again, you need to be that safe place and that place where they can communicate to you about what happened, a place where they can land after their mistake. Then we shouldn't shame them for that mistake because, trust me, they're already going to be ashamed enough. They don't need more shame. We need to help them get through that and show them the love and forgiveness that Jesus gave to sexual sinners within the Bible the woman at the well, mary Magdalene. He did not shame them for their sexual sin. He said to give up your sin and follow me, and that is something that we need to bottle for our kids if all else fells and they do fall. That is something that I feel like we should definitely try to focus on.

Speaker 1: 32:46

I personally don't have any resources. I'm still trying to compile a list of resources for parents or, honestly, just for myself. I have a couple of books that I'm going through reading right now. I've heard kind of iffy things about some of the books that I'm looking at purchasing and one of the books in particular I forget the name of the series. I'm going to see if I can pull it up for you guys. I know another series that I'm definitely interested in reading and if any of you have already read this book or this series of books, then please let me know how you liked it.

Speaker 1: 33:35

It was a series of books written by Luke and Trisha Gilcherson. I guess Luke Gilcherson used to work for Covenant Eyes, which is the internet filter that is very commonly used in Christian Catholic circles. It's a three part series. He has a book called the Talk Seven Lessons to Introduce your Child to Biblical Sexuality. He has a book called the Talk Changes, which is seven biblical lessons to make sense of purity, and then he also has one on relationships eleven lessons to give kids a greater understanding of biblical sexuality. So if any of you actually have read that, then please let me know. You can either email me, I believe, on Apple or Spotify. You can actually leave a comment on the episode. And, yeah, please let me know if you've read these books and if you liked them.

Speaker 1: 34:32

There's also another series of books called God's Design for Sex. Now, this one I was a little iffy about. I ordered it, I haven't started reading it, but it's a six part series of books starting at the age of three years old, going through the ages of sixteen, I guess it's supposed to. It covers everything. It even goes into. I guess their updated versions, their updated editions, actually also cover same sex marriage and sexual diseases and things like that within the context of the Bible.

Speaker 1: 35:21

So I have heard some rather iffy things about that. I had one parent tell me that they read I believe it was book number four and they were talking about the risks of having sex before marriage and one of the things that the author suggested was that if they did have a baby before marriage then they were going to be abandoned by all their friends and they were going to live a life of poverty and the dad was going to abandon them and life was going to suck. They were never going to find a good husband and she was really bothered by that, understandably and basically saying, because you've had this kid, your life is over and which is so damaging not only to the mother but also to the baby, to attach all of this blame on to the baby. If only I didn't have you, then my life wouldn't suck and that's just so sad to do that. So, yeah, there were some things in those books she didn't like. That was just one of them. So again, it's a six part series of books, so it's going to take me a while. I guess four or five of the books are for the kids to read along with the parents and then one of the books is a parent's guide to the series on basically just how to get through the series. So those are two series of books I have been personally looking into. Again, I'm reading the Gods Design for Sex series and if it's any good I'll probably do a blog review, blog post review and post that for you guys to look at. But yeah, those are the two books, the two series that I'm currently looking into for Sex Education for my kids.

Speaker 1: 37:29

Thank you very much for listening to this episode on sex education within the context of purity culture. Just a couple of key takeaways for all of you listeners today. I would really encourage you guys to really take action in you know promoting age-appropriate sex education and you know teaching your kids proper anatomical terms and really you know studying and if you have a hard time with you know calling a body part by, you know it's name, really examining within yourselves why you have such a hard time, you know attaching that name to that body part and why it's such a problem for you. I mean because a lot of us, we attach shame to different things for different reasons that make for much childhood from trauma or you know, for we honestly would have no reason why. So I would definitely try to, I would definitely encourage parents and you know, and educators and caregivers to really examine the reasons why they would not want to, you know, attach proper terms to their anatomy and to not teach kids about, about sex until you know, basically until it's too late, which is it's becoming an epidemic in Christian circles. I mean, I know way too many, like I mentioned before. I know way too many teenage girls that know nothing about sex. I personally know of a girl who did not know about sex until the night before she got married and I cannot even imagine how traumatizing that must have been for her.

Speaker 1: 39:16

So yeah, I would definitely, I would definitely encourage parents to to reexamine those beliefs, if they have them, and then also to to look into different. You know books and you know organizations that can, that can help support you in, you know, having biblical, biblically based conversations with your kids, and you know books and you know organizations, websites that can, you know, guide you in that process, because it is very difficult. I I know I mean just from personal experience. It's very difficult to have those conversations, especially when you haven't even really thought of or been used to, you know, having to have those conversations or thought that it would never happen or you would never have to get explicit because it wasn't something you should do. We like we shouldn't be explicit with our kids, kind of thing. So, yeah, I would definitely, I would definitely encourage you to, you know, look up resources and as I, as I get more resources and more books and things together, I will. I will actually be writing a blog post for that and if you follow me on Facebook or Instagram, I post about two to three blog posts per week on on different subjects, and so if you follow me, you'll be sure to get that blog post posted on one of those two places. So, yeah, just just let's keep an eye out for that.

Speaker 1: 40:57

But anyways, thank you guys very much for listening to this episode and I will see you guys all next week. Thank you for tuning in to this episode of All Our Little Messes. Please let us know how much you enjoyed it below and add any questions you have about this episode. Also, don't forget to follow us on Patreon for amazing exclusive perks, including early access to podcast episodes and bonus episodes every month. We've also recently added a support group for all of our paid patrons. You could check us out on Facebook and Instagram for daily updates and insights that mirror podcast topics. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week.