Join Dr. Lara and Jackie Brewton in a conversation geared for parents on how to approach their children about relationships and how to start communicating with children early on according to age appropriateness. These conversations start by talking about safety at an early age and building a relationship with the child where they feel safe to go to the parent. Learn some great tips from Jackie. Jackie Brewton left a thriving corporate career over 20 years ago to follow a higher calling. For over two decades, Jackie has been on a mission to empower teens and equip parents with the essential knowledge and guidance they need on the topic of love, sex and relationships.
She has authored two books for teens, 7 Secrets Guys Will Never Tell You: A Teen Girl’s Guide on Love, Sex, and Relationships AND The Truth About Sex: Real Stories from Teen Guys Like You, and a free e-book for parents, 7 Things Every Parent Needs to Know Before Having The Talk. She has also created a number of engaging e-courses for teen girls, guys, and moms. Jackie has dedicated the past 22 years of her life to equipping parents to become the dominant influence in their teen’s life so it will be possible to drown out all the other voices that their teen hears.
Podcast 30 Transcript
Welcome to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast empowering you to take a whole-person approach to your wellbeing, spirit, soul, and body. Join me, your host, Dr. Ana Lara, nature pathic, doctor, entrepreneur, and a servant of Jesus Christ. We are not just a body. We are spirit and soul. It’s time to integrate medicine and spirituality into our healing. Let’s get started. Welcome back to Physician Heal Thyself, the podcast. I’m your host, Dr. Alara, and we are welcoming back Ms. Jackie Bruton. We’re going to be talking and continuing with the last segment on speaking to your teens about sex. This is going to be more of a guide to parents on what to do before you start having that conversation. So welcome back, Jackie.
Thank you. Thank you. I enjoyed the last conversation, so I’m looking forward to this one, too.
Absolutely. One of the things that we’re going to get right into the conversation with this segment is one of the questions that I get from parents a lot because I believe in prevention in every area of life. So how soon or what’s the right age or even maturity, appropriateness of when to start having conversations with our children, and how do you suggest approaching having those conversations early on with children, not just about sex, but relationships and love and what’s safe, what’s not?
Yeah, I’m glad you said that because one of the things that you talked about earlier is, well, I’ll tell you that you talked about the book that I have for parents called The Seven Things to Know Before Having the Talk, and when I titled that book I thought, you know what? That’s kind of a misnomer because there’s no such thing as the talk. There’s no one talk. It should be a continuous conversation. And I think one of the biggest mistakes that parents make is waiting until a certain age and then springing on them. We’re going to have sex talk versus starting with age-appropriate conversations at a young age about relationships and love friendships because I just think the basis of any relationship should be friendship. I think part of the reason why teenagers end up with so much drama in their relationships that probably shouldn’t even be taking place to start with is because they start out in a relationship versus being friends with people. I always ask the girls in the class, why do you have to put a title on it? Just be friends. Why do you have to put a title on it? But I think you can start out number one about what’s appropriate and what’s inappropriate as far as your boundaries, your personal boundaries, and that can be kids who are, I mean toddlers even, but this is appropriate. This isn’t appropriate, especially with the amount of molestation that happens with kids.
What does real love look like? We don’t even have to talk about romantic love, but if we can talk about what love looks like when they’re younger all the way through elementary school, then when you get ready to talk about it in relation to a romantic relationship, you’ve already built, the foundation of this is this can’t be love if someone’s asking you to do something that’s not what’s best for you. And so it’s not as hard of a sale for your child when you’re trying to convince them not to have sex because you have been showing them all along what love is. One thing I remember once interviewing a dad, and he said the way bank tellers can recognize counterfeit money is they make them study real money, and by the time a counterfeit bill comes along, they recognize it right away because they’ve spent so much time studying what real money looks like.
And I think that applies to relationships. If kids are shown what real love looks like by the time somebody comes along and says, if you love me, you would do this. They already know that that’s not what love looks like. Real love is unconditional. You shouldn’t have to do anything in order for somebody to love you or to show your love to somebody. And so I think that one of the biggest issues is that parents wait and have a conversation about sex when it should be respect, boundaries, and love. What does selfishness look like? How can you tell when somebody respects you? They respect your decisions, not just your decision not to have sex, but if they want to hold your hand and you don’t want to hold their hand, they don’t respect you. I think we oftentimes miss out a lot by not having those foundational conversations and then want to talk about sex, and the kid gets freaked out like, yeah, this is awkward. This is awkward.
Yeah, I’ll tell you as a mother and as a daughter who was raised that way, but also as a clinician, as a physician, because I work with pediatrics and so when as early as moms bring in their newborns baby to do their good child’s visits, there’s a time I start having these conversations, just like you said, where we do need to start early on with boundaries. Because if you don’t want your child to fall victim to molestation or rape, one of the statistics showed that the number one people who are the aggressors are oftentimes people who are family and friends, people who you’re close by. So these are things that we need to know as parents so that you’re aware of that and you’re having those conversations that age appropriate and start saying, this is our body and respect our body and no one has to touch you.
I’ve gone as far as telling my girls when they were small to let them know, and if an adult ever tells you, don’t tell mommy or threatens you or things, they’re going to threaten me, don’t fall for those tactics. We already know the tactics that people use to groom and set these young children up. So I would have these conversations of no one touches your body. If anyone touches you or makes you feel uncomfortable, even if they get close to you, you have the right to get away or tell ’em to get away. I don’t care if it’s the principal if it’s your teacher, if it’s an uncle, if it’s a family member or a friend, if it’s a child, it doesn’t matter who it is. I really believe that if from a very young age, we give the child empowerment to make decisions on their own, they know that mommy’s not going to get mad if they run off or kick someone and run off, and then they come and tell me, we really want to start that conversation very early on and have that open door policy where we’re making ourselves available, we’re checking in, we’re talking to, we’re the adults.
We have to initiate those conversations and educate them and let them know that we are safe to come to us no matter what’s going on in their world, even if they make a mistake, I want to know. And so to parents, I tell the parents all the time, somehow you have to verbally, it starts with verbally telling your child that there’s nothing that they need to do to earn your love.
There’s nothing they have to do and there’s nothing that they will do to lose the love. You love them no matter what. And when children hear this, and it gets engraved in their minds and in their souls, they know they know this. So I remember my daughter was in kindergarten, and one of her classmates took her over to a room where they had crafts and they took little clay things and the little girl gave them to my daughter. She’s like, Hey, take this. And as parents, we have to be very in tune. Moms, we are all the time. But when I picked her up, she looked, something was off and I said, what’s going on? She’s nothing. And so we get home, and I know something happened, and I’m like, she then decided to tell me without me asking again. She says, Mom, I have something to tell you. I’m like, what’s going on? And she said, I went to this room and this little girl gave me these clay things, and we stole them. She said, I feel very bad. She’s like, but I have the solution. She’s in kindergarten. She was, she’ll have the solution. I want to talk to my teacher tomorrow, give them back to her, and apologize because I took them.
So she identified at such a young age that she made a mistake and she came up with a solution. But what I was most impressed about was that she was able to express that to me, which means she felt safe. She knew I wasn’t going to lash out in anger. I said, it’s okay. We all make mistakes. We all do things sometimes that we shouldn’t, but now you learn from it. And so just the same way this little girl influenced you to take these things, just know that you’re going to come across these situations when you get older. So, you need to learn to speak up. And so you need to make almost all of these experiences a teaching opportunity to teach them. But yeah, start the conversation as early on. That’s age-appropriate, but where is, I know there isn’t a right time to just get in there. Like you said, it is something you slowly have to start talking about. But I feel that as they get closer to the preteens, parents really get flustered when it comes to having that conversation. So I’m sure your guide would be a great resource for them to turn to. Or even you have some content, like an e-course on your site that people can turn to.
Yeah, I have courses on the site too, but one of the things I say is there needs to be a conversation before they go to middle school because you think about from fifth grade to sixth grade, which I’m assuming is when middle school happens in most areas. Now they’re going to be around older kids, and so they’re going to be exposed to an older group that is making that group’s making other choices. As I said before, this is what I always say, you have it before you need it. And it’s best to have the conversation before they start having these crushes in a relationship because then it’s just a conversation in general, and it’s not about a particular person. If a parent waits to have a conversation until after their child has started dating, now they think you just don’t like the person they’re dating versus if you had had this conversation before they ever got in a relationship, they can accept it and receive it a whole lot easier because it’s just in general and they don’t think you’re just talking about them and their relationship at the time.
The other thing too, that is why I agree with you completely on that, that it should happen before entering middle school because keep in mind, before they are, hormones are changing, believe it or not. This is a point where they’re actually a little bit more logical than you can get through them. Once they start going through puberty and those hormones start increasing and shifting, it starts to affect their emotional regulation and all of these things. It gets a little cloudy in there. And so then trying to get through them could be very difficult. But so having that conversation before they get into middle school, especially relationships when they’re four and really prepping them up saying, Hey, you know what? You’re going to see other girls and boys that I always say it’s natural to have a crush on people. It’s okay to like the boy, it’s okay to like that girl, but you don’t have to be fully committed to a relationship. You’re still young.
So your job is to develop friendships, like you mentioned, develop the friendships learn how communication works, you’re learning that part of life. And so until you’re older to enter a relationship, then, my mom always used to tell me, when you enter a relationship, it’s because you’re entering that relationship with the intention of getting married. And so if this person is not someone you see yourself getting married to, then don’t date them. That to me, just for me it might not work for everyone else, but for me, that made logical sense even as a young girl. Yeah, that’s true. Why would I, just because I like him doesn’t mean I should date him. I could like him from a distance, I could have a crush. There’s nothing wrong with that.
So many of them are dating people that they don’t really know their character. That’s the other thing. It’s all based on physical attraction and it’s like, oh, they’re cute, or this person is so fine and they don’t know their character, so they’re often dating somebody that they would never want to be a parent to their child in the future. So I’m like, why would you waste your time with somebody? This is one thing that I tell students all the time is I say, you know who most of y’all are dating in your future.
Oh, I say, because either going to marry him or break up with them. As a teenager, the chances are much, much greater that you’re going to break up than you’re going to marry him. So
What do you see in terms of family dynamics within so there’s going to be different family dynamics. What is the difference between seeing a single-family household versus having two parents or even having the full family, the parents and having more of the Christian upbringing? I want to talk about these things. I feel like in the Christian community, these are the same problems, and so it’s just overwhelming sometimes to think about it. But let’s talk first about, I guess the family dynamics of having two parents versus a single parent. Is the risk for young people to be involved in relationships and being sexually higher in a single-parent household, or is it just hey, it really is. It’s equal because it’s always going to go back to the communication that parents are having with their young.
I’ll start by saying kids get what they need from both parents. What I’ve found increasingly is that even when both parents are in the home, if one is a silent parent, it’s the same as them not being there. They can be physically present but not emotionally engaged. And there’s the same void. High school boys tell me, they say, Miss Jackie, every girl I’ve had sex with had daddy issues. And I say, what do you mean by that? They say either she didn’t have a good relationship with her father or her father wasn’t there, and she was expecting me to make up for something she didn’t get from her father, which was to give her validation and acceptance. And I’ll tell you, one of the most common things I read in girls’ letters is the reason I had sex because he was the first guy who made me feel special.
And in a healthy society, that would’ve been her father. But because we don’t live in a healthy society now, we have girls who often run in the arms of guys, expecting a guy to do something that’s not his job and he couldn’t fulfill even if he wanted to. The void is still going to be there. But I also believe that fathers are, because so many of the boys tell me that they were encouraged to lose their virginities by their fathers or other adult males in their lives. Coaches like, what’s wrong with you? You’re scared of girls. You haven’t had sex yet. I just think these parents don’t understand how much influence they have by their presence and their absence and by what they’re saying and what they’re not saying. So it is very important for both parents to be a part of the conversation.
And when either one is missing, whether it’s, they’re a single parent. It’s a dad raising a daughter or a son without the mom or mom, there’s going to be a void that’s not being filled. They have to be intentional about getting that void filled with other people in the community, whether it’s a cousin or uncle or somebody, a person of faith, somebody in the church if it’s a single mom, then especially if she has a son because they need a man to speak into them to teach them how to be a man. So it’s like, of course, you have to be careful and make sure it’s somebody that’s safe, but you need to make sure that that void is being filled as much as possible if it’s a single-parent situation.
Now, I’ll tell you, oftentimes, it happens in other areas where there is a lot of divorce in the family, girls can be very jaded about it, I don’t even want to get married because my parents got divorced. My dad cheated on my mom. I don’t trust guys, or My mom’s been married three times or My dad’s been married three times. So, I don’t believe in marriage, just like they say, so much more is caught than taught. I just don’t think parents always understand the role model that they can be for their kids. I know things happen and divorces happen for different reasons, but I think there needs to be a conversation with the child about don’t give up on the institution of marriage just because you didn’t see it work with your dad and I or your mom.
I think without those conversations happening, then you have kids who are jaded and think it doesn’t matter.
I think the problem with parents who, because I’ve had these conversations mostly with women who did go through several divorces, didn’t make the best decisions in relationships, and they feel like they’re not the appropriate person to have that conversation with their daughter because they messed up. I always have to encourage ’em and no, let’s heal through that and remove the shame of you didn’t get it right because who taught you, who spoke into you? Nobody. So you have the experience and this is where you need to reflect and grow and develop yourself. And at the same time that you’re raising yourself up, you’re speaking life into your children and teaching them from firsthand experience of, look, I fail. Just being honest and vulnerable depends on the age of the person of the youth; if they’re 10 versus they’re 16, they’re able to comprehend a little bit more, but just be appropriate at their age level.
I mean, if they’re watching porn, you can’t really ruin the conversation by saying, Hey, look, I made the mistake of entering relationships too young. I didn’t understand what relationships were about, and these are the things I made. These are the mistakes I made learned from them. I wasn’t perfect, but I would like to lay the foundation for you to grow from that so that you don’t make the same mistakes I’ve made. I always think that parents need to not feel ashamed take responsibility and ownership but don’t carry the shame as a heavy burden on you that you feel it’s a block for you to have a conversation with your children because they could be learning from your mistakes. What better way for, go ahead, go.
I’m sorry.
I was just saying, what better way for them to learn than from their parents’ mistakes?
And I’ll tell you when I see this play out the most is a mom who was a teen mom, and she comes to me, and she says, I don’t feel like I can have this conversation with my daughter about not having sex when she’s a teenager because she knows I did because she was born to me when I was a teenager. And what I say to that mom is when you tell your child, then they say, because I feel like a hypocrite.
I said, when you tell your child don’t do as I do, that’s a hypocrite When you tell your child don’t do as I did, that’s a teacher. I said you can’t allow any past choices that you made that might not have been good choices to handicap you and keep you from being able to have those same conversations. For whatever reason, it seems like sex is the only area where parents feel this shame and inability to have a conversation if they didn’t make the right choice in that area, right?
Because there are so many other things that we’ve made mistakes and that we don’t stay stuck in the place of shame. So because we’re on that topic, I want to transition into bringing God into the conversation because this is where I say that a lot of people, if they don’t have a relationship with God and they don’t read their Bibles, they don’t understand what’s in there, then this is where the enemy is going to come in. I see a lot of shame, the enemy will keep you in that bondage of shame and guilt, and you’re not the right person to talk to your kid about this conversation. I mean, I can share so many stories of situations where I continuously see the attack on families and on children because four-year-olds and five-year-olds should not be exposed to pornography online.
They just shouldn’t. It happens and it’s happening and they’re on platforms and they’re watching things that are geared for young people, for children, and there’s always something there subliminally. So let’s transition into the importance of parents raising a child with a relationship with God because that’s really the ultimate relationship of love. That’s our first love. God loves us so much, and how do we incorporate that? Say there’s someone watching or listening to this and they don’t have a relationship with God.
What are some complications of not having that relationship that you see, and what are some things that parents can start making a change and an impact on their family?
Well, I think the root cause of so many poor choices is trying to fill a void that only God can fill.
Amen.
And sex is no different than any other choice. I mean, some people try to fill the void with sex, with drugs, with alcohol, with food, but it’s this void. I have to reach you. Interesting that you got to this point. I left this letter that a high school junior girl wrote me, and she says from the time we were born, we were taught to chase momentary satisfaction. We were taught to find the largest high to fulfill our greatest lows. For me that was sex. I gained my ultimate satisfaction from the opinion of man. It wasn’t until I discovered that a righteous, pure, man died for me that I found my true value and worth in Jesus Christ. Now, I no longer have to chase momentary satisfaction because I found a permanent one. Thank you for planting a seed in all of our lives, Ms. Jackie. What you do matters. It takes someone like you to inspire others and lead them to the answer to their quest for worthiness in Christ.
Amen.
I was so impressed when I read this letter from a student.
I always say that the ultimate work that we do, whether it’s mentoring, guiding these young people or a doctor or whatever kind of a teacher, is really that, as believers of Jesus, we are direct. All we’re doing is we’re pointing to the way he is, the way that is the way. And that’s all we’re doing is pointing them in that direction. And that’s my hope for this podcast, for my work. And I know that the work that you do is that people have this connection with God and have this relationship with God, and they become informed because this knowledge that God’s knowledge, God’s wisdom, is what’s going to help you get through in life in the most difficult times. And there is way more to life than sex. This is just an act. And without love, without having that connection in a good relationship, it’s always toxic.
It really is. I don’t know of anyone who can say honestly, sincerely from their soul that they’re happy being promiscuous. Jackie, I’ve had actually male patients in their forties and fifties and older share how they regret being promiscuous when they were younger and no one ever talked to them about the soul ties, the emotional complications, physical, all of the complications that would come of their actions. When I asked him, what do you think kept you just seeking woman after woman? It sounds like this is what you wanted during that time.
He said they were trying to fill the void of wanting to connect with someone. They wanted a deep connection. They desensitized themselves from really having a connection. It was just one after another and they were just moving along. So I see this problem still being prevalent in Christian teens now if they’re going to church and they know God. And sometimes people say, I grew up in a Pentecostal church. I grew up in a Baptist church, and we went to church, and we did all these things. We knew, I think they did all the things, but did they know God? And how do we really bring children into the space where they develop a relationship with God themselves, not just go through the activities of church?
Yeah, right. I can’t tell you how many letters I have from Christian teens who are in public schools who write me letters and they’re sexually active and they’ll say, I’ve heard all my life that I shouldn’t have sex because it’s in the Bible. But I just thought just because in a book doesn’t mean that I should follow that rule. Or nobody expects us to follow some imaginary friend in the sky because for them, that is what church looks like for them. It is just this imaginary friend in the sky or nobody’s really talked to them about how they haven’t been disciplined. You know what I mean? They’ve been taught about a real relationship. It’s not just about religion. It’s about having a relationship. So I think finding a good church with a good youth group that focuses on helping kids have a relationship, finding other like-minded peers because when they’re in a public school or they’re out with, it’s really tough to stand out and stand up for what you believe is right. I read that in the letters all the time, and they start to if it’s not really deep down in them…
They give up on it.
They do.
I don’t care how much they’ve been taught, but they also know that this is another area where more is caught than taught. What are the parents modeling?
I agree with you. You can’t just rely on a youth group. You can’t just rely on a youth group. It has to happen in the home as well.
I believe in the last conversation, we were talking about the peer pressure that parents face because as a mom, my child does go to a public school, but I’m just different. I get that. I am very determined, and I raise my girls the same way. You have to have these desires. You must know who you are in this world and not let the world tell you who you are. And so when it comes to parenting a child that is in this age group, there’s so much influence from what these other parents want to do, or they want, as you said earlier, they’re going to go see this movie. And I am the parent asking, who’s the parent? What are they watching? And it’s like a flat-out No. The other thing I did as a mom that I truly believe was like the Holy Spirit just got into me at that moment.
My daughter was nine years old, and she danced competitively since she was five. She was dancing. She still does. And so I remember a lot of the girls in her school dance studio, they were going to do some things. Here’s the thing: this is just me. No one has to believe me or agree with me, but I don’t believe in giving our young children so much freedom at such a young age. I don’t believe in that. I don’t let my kids sleep at anyone’s house. I have a really hard time with that. I just can’t hear the numerous stories, even from when I was in my twenties, of people that were molested and raped while spending the night at someone, or they saw that was their introduction to pornography because they accidentally saw someone seeing it in the home. And I’m like, no.
So before I even had kids, I was already thinking about all these things and convincing myself not to have kids out of that fear. But my daughter was nine years old and they were going to go to the state fair or something like that, and I didn’t have time to go. So I was not going to let them go with these other little group of girls. Some of them were a little bit older than her. So, I understood that influence. And I remember I got down on my knees, and I looked at her right in the eyes, and I said, baby girl, I need you to listen to me. And I said, there are some things that are not going to agree with me, and you might not like me moving forward into your life. There’s going to be times that you’re probably going even to hate me, and you’re not going to be in agreement when I tell you no.
But here’s the thing, I said, Mommy loves you, right? She’s like, yeah, mommy, I know you do. I said, I love you. I would give you a kidney. If you needed a kidney, I would give my life for you. I stopped my career to stay home with her. I love this little girl so much. And so I told her, I love you so much and there’s nothing you need to do to earn it, and there’s nothing you can do to lose my love. But I said, but here’s what I am going to need you to learn to do. You’re going to need to learn to trust me when I say no to you because there are some things that your little brain does not understand in this big world that I do. There are some things I cannot share with you right now at this age.
And I will as you get older, and you will start to see things for yourself, and as these things start to happen, you’re going to be like, my mom told me about this and look, it’s happening. So I just need you to trust me in this. We could do something fun. What do you want to do? We could do something else, but I’m not okay with you going for four or five hours with people that I really don’t know. You think you know them because you see them every day, but you don’t. I know enough to know what their core values are and they don’t align with mine. I am comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable having these conversations with my children or with other parents because, at the end of the day, I know that God entrusted me and my husband with these children, God entrusted parents with these children.
And it is our responsibility not just for their physical wellbeing, not just for their mental and emotional wellbeing, but what is going to happen to their soul? What is the spiritual component? And I feel like this is one that a lot of people shy away from because maybe they didn’t have the education, the upbringing in that. So, what are some ways that parents can start to bring in the spiritual component and explain it to their children? So I really ultimately think it’s our responsibility. It’s great if the church has it there, but ultimately it’s my responsibility. Let’s be honest. Humans are humans. They’re not perfect. There are imperfect people in churches and we hear whether it’s a Catholic church or a Christian Church or that church, there are always things that happen there too, where people who are still hurt from their wounds haven’t healed and they impose harm on children sexually or in some other ways. Ultimately, we are the parents. We are responsible for preparing these children in all of these environments.
So before I get to that, I must go back to something you said because I absolutely love it. I love the fact that you are that parent. First of all, I love how you had a conversation with your daughter about trusting you at such a young age. But there is. And then when you talked about you’re the parent that doesn’t let her spend the night at somebody else’s house, and for all the reasons, I started asking eighth-grade girls in the class, how will you parent differently? And then, I started asking co-ed high school students. And one of the things that a young lady said in the class she said, I’m never going to let my child go to somebody else’s house when I don’t know the parents. And every time they tell me what they’re going to do differently, I know there’s a backstory.
I said, why is that? And she said I have gone to my friend’s houses and seen things I should have never seen. I have heard things that I should have never heard. And she said, when I have kids, I am never doing, I’m never allowing my kids to go to somebody else’s house. I remember my sister would never let my niece spend the night at anybody else’s house all the way through high school. My niece did not understand it. She would get upset with my sister, and all my friends think you’re horrible, blah, blah, blah, blah. I sat down with my niece, and I told her about all the stories that I had read and heard of students who got molested at a sleepover by an older brother, by the stepdad, by the whatever of things that happened. I said, your mom is here to protect you, and your mom doesn’t know the values of those people. My niece understood it when I finally explained it to her. She gets it. Got it. The interesting thing is people at my sister’s church told my sister that she was overbearing and too protective. And when your daughter goes away to college, she’s going to go buck wild because you’re so protective, and you won’t allow her to do this. You won’t allow it. And I think secretly some of ’em were wishing that she would.
It’s terrible that they would even wish that.
It sounds crazy. So, my niece ends up going to college, graduating from college, gets married at 24. She was a virgin when she got married. And she said, like you said about your parents, she’s like, there were many situations in college that I could have gone the wrong way. And she said, I kept hearing her mom’s and my voices like you said about your parents. That is what kept her. And so when parents think that if I put these boundaries and if I don’t allow them to if I tell them no about this, other parents are going to tell you, oh, they’re going to go crazy when they get out on their own because you’re too protective. I know too many cases where that has not been the case.
Yeah, I agree with you. My mom continuously had these conversations and things that happened not to her but to her family and the family and so forth. And so I knew that she was coming from a place of love, and she wanted the best. I knew innately that she wanted the best for me. I also grew up in a big family. I’m number eight of nine. So she just really wanted the best for me. And I’ll tell you, when I met my husband, I always tell this story. When I met my husband, I’m finally telling it in public. I tell it to people I know. When I met my husband, I was out of high school, so I didn’t date. I knew I did not want to have a boyfriend. I didn’t want to have distractions. I was very focused on my academics. I had a goal.
That’s one of the things I encourage parents: help your child find what they’re so interested in and fascinating and they want to do and help them focus on that, their energies on that. They can have friendships. They can do all that. But I knew I didn’t want to have a boyfriend. So, I got through high school, and right after I was in college, I met my husband. It was at a quinceanera, a sweet 16 party, and I had no interest in going, but my brother invited me, and I decided to go, and that’s where I met him. And so the next day when we would talk on the phone, right? This is like 1997. We talked on the phone the next day. He seemed like a very nice, respectful guy. And we talked on the phone the next day, he asked me, Jackie, how many boyfriends have you had? And I told him none. He’s like, yeah, right. I don’t believe that. A pretty girl. You haven’t had any boyfriends. I said, wait, hold on. I didn’t say that the opportunities didn’t present themselves. There are plenty of opportunities. I just knew I didn’t want to have a boyfriend. And I said, and since we’re on that conversation, let me just tell you this.
I need you to know who I am. I said, I do not drink. I don’t do drugs. I don’t party and I don’t have sex. So if those are any of the things that you think, these are things that you do or that you think that you’re going to want me to do with you, this is a good time to just stop the conversation. There was this dead silence over the phone. I wish I had told him that in person, but there was a dead silence. And he said, wow. He said I’ve never ever had a girl tell me any of that. I said, I know I’m different. So I know I told him I know what I want to do in my life and I don’t want any distractions. And I said to him so we could be friends. And you’re right.
A guy who loves you, who really loves you, is going to respect your choices. And he did. We were friends for over a year, then we dated, and he always talked about getting married. I’m like, man, you don’t even know what love is. So then we would have these conversations about what love is to you and what love is to me. And have that dialogue. And then we ended up getting married. We’ve been married for 21 years. We have our two daughters, and life is not perfect. But one of the things that I can tell you and that I teach, my oldest, my youngest is seven, we’re not there yet, but with my oldest that I have had the conversation with her is like, honey, I have no regrets. There’s not one man or woman apparently these times that can say anything negative about me, how maybe I was inappropriate sexually or whatever.
There’s no one that can say anything that dishonors me. For me, I can’t speak for everyone else, but for me, that gives me a lot of peace in my soul. So, having worked with women and men who have had just turbulent times in their lives and the decisions they made, I see the implications on their physical, mental, and emotional and spiritual well-being. And God is the redeemer of all. And he will forgive, and he will heal all. But if people don’t make that relationship with God, if they don’t turn to the way, then it makes it very difficult for them to forgive because they feel like they can’t forgive themselves. I just can’t let that go. I was a terrible person. Only God can bring that deep healing that people really need. Jackie, this has been an amazing conversation.
I didn’t answer, I didn’t answer the question that you asked. I kind of went off on a tangent, but I just think one of the things for parents as far as the relationship with God is oftentimes I’ve heard kids say that even when they were serving God, they were doing it out of fear because it was like the negative of if you don’t, this is what will happen to you versus out of a positive of these are the benefits of having a relationship with God. And I think it’s how you present it to the child. But like I said, you start at a very, very, very young age and talk about nobody else is going to fill that void. And you can try with a whole bunch of things, but nothing’s going to fill that void.
You’re going to always, I agree.
I even say as much as I love the natural medicine that I do and therapies, even that can never fill the void. It can never. So we need to have that divine connection relationship with the one who created us, right? Which is God. So, Jackie, this conversation’s been amazing. I really appreciate you, and may God continue to bless you in the work that you do in the many lives that you’re touching. May he grant you your heart’s desires, that you live a long and happy life, and that he always fills you with his light because you are a beacon of light in this world? And we need more Jackie to share such real, profound teachings to our young people. So if people are interested, I mean, I’m going to put your access to your social media, your website, all of the goodies, access to all the books on there, and descriptions on there. Would you say the best place for parents to start is to get that ebook, that guide for them?
Yes, that would be the best place.
Just get ’em all three guys, it’s not that expensive. You spend more money at Starbucks. Just go get the books that are there, the two books, and I’m going to be putting links on there to get your information out. Jackie, thank you so much for your time, for these two episodes that we’ve recorded, and I hope that people really take a lot of value from it. If they have any questions, they can reach out to me, reach out to you or comment on the section of these videos. And thank you so much for your time. And to our audience, thank you for joining us on this difficult conversation, but very, very needed in our time. I hope you’ve taken a lot of great value from it. And as always, until next time, be blessed. Thank you for listening to the Physician Heal Thyself podcast. If you like what you’ve heard, please like, share, and subscribe, help this message, and reach more people who may need to hear it. Leave your comments. I want to know what you think. If you’re interested in learning more about Raices, visit our website. Until next time, be blessed.