Instead of asking our kids what they want to do as a job when they grow up, what if we asked them who they want to be? Popular television host Paula Faris joins Julie Lyles Carr on The AllMomDoes Pocast to talk about why we need to change up how we ask our kids about their futures.
Special thanks to Seattle’s Union Gospel Mission, for powering the AllMomDoes Podcast this Christmas season!
Show Notes:
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Transcription:
Julie Lyles Carr:
You are not ready. You’re not ready. I’ve got such an amazing guest today who I cannot wait for you to meet. I’m Julie Lyles Carr and you’re listening to the AllMomDoes podcast on the Purposely Podcast Network. This is someone who has been in the public eye for a long time now, has done all kinds of cool things in the course of her career, and she is also raising three kiddos. Paula Faris, thanks so much for being on the show today.
Paula Faris:
Thank you so much, Julie. It’s my honor to be here with you.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Well, I can’t wait for our conversation. Now, a lot of my listeners are going to know you because of your work in television and all of the things that you’ve done, and you’re also an author and podcaster and all the stuff. So back us up and tell us where you live, and the kids, and some of the job CV and all of that.
Paula Faris:
Yeah. So we are living in a small town in South Carolina. About 2300 people. We kind of blew up our lives three years ago. We were living in New York City and decided to try something different, so moved to South Carolina. My sister’s here. And the kids are now in high school and middle school and elementary school, but we’ve kind of lived all over, Julie.
I was born and raised in Michigan. My husband’s born and raised in Indiana. We met in college, we’re college sweethearts, at a small school in Ohio. Lived in Ohio. And then in TV you got to work your way up from smaller market to bigger markets. So I was in Dayton, Ohio, Cincinnati, Ohio, Chicago for six years, and then New York City, which is where I had the opportunity to work at ABC News and Good Morning America and The View, so.
But then like a lot of moms, I lost my job at the beginning of the pandemic and had to figure out what was next. So part of that was moving to a small town, kind of resetting our lives and figuring out what was important. So came down here, formed a company called CARRY Media. We want to help carry the burdens of working moms, and we provide load lessening content for moms in the workplace. And that’s really kind of been my passion is beating the drum for moms and celebrating motherhood, and making sure families are supported. So that’s kind of the lens through all of my work right now.
Julie Lyles Carr:
That’s amazing. What’s the biggest change? And maybe it’s something that wouldn’t seem as obvious. What’s the biggest change going from New York City to small town South Carolina?
Paula Faris:
Just one? I mean, it was a welcome change. So I don’t want to be dismissive of moving to the South. We love it down here. We love the weather, we love the slower pace. I think the South gets a bad rap. Because you’re from the South you’re not as smart or things are backwards down here. And look, we’ve lived in the Northeast and the Midwest, so we love the slow pace.
I think one of the most difficult things for us to get used to though, was how slow it is. We’re so used to working at that frenzy pace living in big cities, but it was very much a welcome change. I do not miss traffic. We don’t have traffic here, although it takes us 15 to 20 minutes to get anywhere.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Anywhere.
Paula Faris:
Though. But our family’s doing so well. And you could live a big life in a small town. So I no longer buy that lie that you have to live in a big city to make a big impact, so.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I love that line, you can live a big life in a small town. That is awesome.
Paula Faris:
We should write a country song about that, shouldn’t we?
Julie Lyles Carr:
You know what? I think the lyrics are already starting to spin, Paula.
Paula Faris:
Already, yes.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I’m like, “Wait a minute, let me get a pen.”
Paula Faris:
Yes.
Julie Lyles Carr:
“Hang on.” I love that. How did your kids do?
Paula Faris:
I will not be singing that.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Okay. Okay.
Paula Faris:
I will not be singing the song though.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Well, but you can get a songwriter credit. It’s all good. It’s all good.
Paula Faris:
There you go.
Julie Lyles Carr:
How did the kids do? Because you’re taking them out of, within our culture, what is seen to some degree as the pinnacle of having arrived. You’re in this city that is known worldwide and you’ve got access to all of these major players and all the things, and you’re raising kids in that vibe and then you go, “You know what? Let’s spin the record a different direction.” So how has that been for your kids? How did you prepare them for that big a change?
Paula Faris:
Right. Well, my kids are thriving down here. And I think that one thing I’ve learned as a parent is that my kids are going to feed off of whatever I’m putting out there. So if I say, “Oh my gosh, there’s nothing to do here. Oh my gosh, I can’t believe… There’s very little culture, or there’s no shopping,” it’s like your kids are going to pick up on those sort of things.
My kids, it was a big adjustment when we first moved, and they were in seventh grade and fifth grade and I think kindergarten, first grade, when we moved down here three and a half years ago, and it was a huge adjustment at first. We thought when we came down here, Julie, we were only going to come down here for two weeks. That was the plan. We were just going to get out of New York just because COVID was shutting the world down.
We came down here thinking we’d be here for a few weeks. So the hardest part was the lack of closure. My kids left and didn’t know that they were actually leaving. We all left and didn’t know we were actually leaving for good. But getting used to a different pace. I think learning to appreciate what a different culture, a different tradition or different part of the country has to offer. And we love it. The people are so kind down here.
My kids are really just thriving, but I’ve realized I have to, my kids are going to mirror whatever I say about it. If I say, “This is the most amazing place,” then they’re going to mirror that. But if I’m like, “Oh, I miss, I’m pining for what we once had.” We’re trying to be grateful in this new chapter. Yes, there’s things that we miss, but we’re super grateful for this new chapter and not every chapter can be wrapped up with a tiny red bow.
So we are embracing all of the joys and the challenges that come in this next season. But overall, it’s just been, I recommend hitting that reset button for anybody that’s considering. I’m a big fan. It can be scary. But kids are super resilient and they pick up on your narrative and what you say about it. So make sure that you’re speaking kindly.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right. Right. I think that is really powerful that how we present certain situations in our life, definitely our kids are modeling from what they’re hearing from us and learning how to interpret it as well. So I think whatever is going on, that’s an amazing, amazing tip when it comes to thinking about what we’re saying in front of our kids and how we’re thinking about things.
Paula Faris:
Right.
Julie Lyles Carr:
It’s really great.
Paula Faris:
Yeah. Thank you.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Well, talking about being in New York and having hit some of the things that you got to hit in that point in your career as a working mom, as someone in media, that leads me into what I want to unpack with you today because I for sure in my upbringing, the leading question people would ask me when I was back in school was, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Or, “What do you want to get your degree in? Or, “What do you…” All these things.
And in that way, Paula, it led me to almost try to reverse engineer what I understood about myself as I would select and kind of try on these different ideas about career or degree or all these things. Well, if I go and do this, that means I will be X, Y, Z. Well, someone who is a doctor is going to be really driven and compassionate and this that and the other.
So maybe if I want to be a doctor, I’ll be those things. Or maybe if I want to be a teacher, I’ll be these things. Or maybe if I want… and fill in the blank. And we’ve have had that kind of vibe in this country for a long time, even the way we relate to each other as adults. If we end up at a party together, you and I meeting, whatever, we’re going to go through this recitation of all the stuff that we’ve accomplished within a career.
It’s a place too, that sometimes women culturally can feel a little less than because if they haven’t chased career accolades, they may feel like they don’t have as much to contribute or as much to say about their lives. So how do you think we got to this place where part of how we introduce who we are is by starting with what we do?
Paula Faris:
Do, yeah.
Julie Lyles Carr:
How did we get there?
Paula Faris:
Yeah. I mean, Julie, it’s systemic. Like you said, you walk into a room, you introduce yourself to someone, you say, “I’m Julie,” and they’re like, “I am Paula.” And then we say, “Well, what do you do?” And it’s so baked into our culture that we don’t even realize that the question that we’re leading with is, “What’s your job?”
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right.
Paula Faris:
And like you said, as a child, you’re asked, “What do you want to do when you grow up?” And the implication there is that you’re only as good as your job. You’re only as good. That’s going to be your big contribution to society is your career and that’s where your worth and where your value is. And so kids, we’re raising these kids who can perform but can’t perceive and who can earn but can’t empathize because we’re like, “Do, do, do. Figure out what you want to do for the rest of your life.”
And again, I don’t think we realize how much of an emphasis that we have put on it. So I wanted to kind of flip that because it was born out of my own struggle, pouring everything that I was into my job. Then when my job changed, I had an identity crisis five years ago and I realized we’re putting those same pressures on kids as if this is all you’re going to provide and contribute to society is your job. And so I have this kid’s book which is coming out called, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
And yes, it’s a kid’s book, but it’s also a book for all of us to kind of push back at that message from society, one that we all struggle with. Right? Of look, work is necessary for most of us. We have to work. Love what you do, but don’t be defined by what you do. But how can we frame that in a healthy way where the kind of person we want to be, who we were uniquely created to be is more important than what we do?
Because what we do is going to change throughout our lives and if we put so much emphasis in our identity and what we do and when that shifts and shakes, we’re going to have an identity crisis. But who’s the kind of person that we want? Who do we want to be? Right? What kind of person do we want to be? What are our unique talents and gifts that don’t change? I want to start having that conversation. I think if we really want to change it, we have to start asking the right questions. And I think the place to start it is by asking our kids, “Who do you want to be when you grow up? What kind of person do you want to be? Instead of, “What do you want to do?”
Julie Lyles Carr:
Do, yeah.
Paula Faris:
So…
Julie Lyles Carr:
Absolutely.
Paula Faris:
Just get that conversation going.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Absolutely. When I was doing my research on my book, Raising an Original, part of the data that I can come and tell you about for sure is that this pressure we put on kids to even declare their major when they start college, which is understandable based on the cost of college these days, but statistically, they’re going to change their majors five times while they’re in college. And-
Paula Faris:
And they might not even use it when they’re done.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Exactly. It may be something completely other that they end up doing vocationally. The other thing that I learned too in doing that research is that for most of us, the average is that we will change jobs and not just employers, but even nuances and aspects of what we actually do work-wise seven times in the course of our lifetime. And so the whole notion of how we come to the table with this question about what do you do and somehow use it as an identifier with each other or use it as a way to help our kids identify who they are is really not based on good math.
Paula Faris:
It’s not.
Julie Lyles Carr:
The math just doesn’t math.
Paula Faris:
But Julie, we don’t know any better. It’s almost like a force of habit that we ask this, “What do you do?” And I’m like, how do we get out of that? How do we stop? What’s another question we could ask? Maybe, “What are you into?”
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right.
Paula Faris:
“Julie, it’s nice to meet you. What are you into?” And that right there, that will reveal to me the kind of person you are, what’s important to you, what do you love. And I think we have to realize that there is an issue here and we have to start by asking the right questions. But recognizing that it’s systemic and then starting to ask the right question. Especially for adults, we ask, “What are you into?”
Or, “What kind of person do you want to be? What are you working towards?” And then for our kids, “What kind of person do you want to be? Who do you want to be?” We have to start asking the right question and tackling that, but it’s crazy. These kids, I have a friend who’s in college or she just sent her baby to college and having that same wrestle with, “I don’t know what I want to do.” And I’m like, “You guys, you don’t have to have it all figured out.”
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right.
Paula Faris:
“Because you’re going to be called to different things in different seasons.” Yes, you have specific talents and gifts that were God-given, that you have, that are unique to you. For me, Julie, I’ve always been really curious. I like to ask questions. I like to advocate and champion people. Worked well in the broadcasting field, but guess what? It also works well on a lot of other different platforms. So I think giving ourselves the permission to try new things in new seasons.
We don’t have to do one thing for the rest of our life. And knowing that our work isn’t our entire worth. Yes, it’s okay to love what you do, and yes, work is necessary, but don’t allow it to define you, and you have to give yourself permission to try new things and new seasons knowing that you are unique in your talents and gifts, but how those will be manifest in different chapters and different seasons will be different. You don’t have to figure out the next 10, 15, 20 years. Figure out this next chapter of your life. Figure out what you’re being called to in this next season.
Julie Lyles Carr:
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For a lot of us coming through the pandemic, a lot of us did have a great reset. Many of us walked away from certain things that we had been part of. We walked away from certain positions or certain endeavors. And then there were others of us who were just waiting for what we felt like was the pandemic to end so that we could go back to quote unquote “Normal.”
Paula Faris:
Normal.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Now, I do know people who re-entered into a way that had been very familiar to pre-pandemic. They kind of went back to work in the same way, and they’re back sort of in that same routine. And I know other people like yourself, like me, who made some really big wholesale changes. What’s interesting to me in all of it is that I don’t think the question anymore of what do you do, following some of this reset for a lot of people, is working very well. Because hopefully one of the things that we all carry from that wild season that started in 2020-
Paula Faris:
Right.
Julie Lyles Carr:
… was an evaluation of how much of ourselves we have given to a lot of these work endeavors and how fragile we can all realize now, some of that really is. I was just recently at a conference for some media folks and everybody spooled up about AI because in my world and in writing and broadcasting, there’s a lot of question about how AI is going to influence things.
And you could feel across the room as this discussion was happening, people who are really wrestling identity wise and what this will mean for them if they get replaced by some kind of AI technology and people who are kind of excited, who might see what that might mean for them in their next. How do we stay in a posture for ourselves, for our kids where we are integrity filled, we do a good job, we work hard, but we don’t allow it to somehow lap over the line to where it’s gathering so much of who we understand we are?
Paula Faris:
Yeah. I think that’s the struggle too, Julie, is that fine line of loving what you do but not being defined by what you do. And it’s not just in society, it’s in faith circles. You have to find your calling. Your calling is always related to your career. It’s so often that our worth is work, our value is vocation, our calling is career. We have to find that one thing. And I think understanding first and foremost, we can’t demonize work.
It is necessary for almost all of us. We have to work, right? Finding something that you’re good at and that you love that’s important to you. Now, for me, when I got to the quote unquote “Pinnacle of my career,” when I was anchoring GMA, co-hosting The View, I had this mindset of I could walk away and still know who I was. And in 2018 when I pumped the brakes, because I was just so burned out as a mom with three little kids and burning the candle at both ends, and I demoted myself at work, I stepped away from anchoring GMA.
I stepped away from co-hosting The View, and I demoted myself, Julie, into a much less prestigious position where I was just a general correspondent, which is basically saying if you’re a head coach, it’s like, “Hey, I don’t want to do this anymore. I just want to be the quarterback’s coach.” It’s really, it was self-imposed because I wanted to get my life back. I wanted to work Monday through Friday.
I didn’t realize how much of my identity was totally wrapped up in what I did until I pumped the brakes. And that’s what’s tough about it is we can say all the right things and do all the right things and say, “It’s not my identity,” but when you can’t introduce yourself with that swanky title or you can’t introduce yourself as, “This is what I do” and that changes, you have an existential identity crisis. That’s what I had.
I was like, “I don’t know who I was outside.” I didn’t know who I was outside of these titles, and I had to really learn that… I think that’s when I really, really realized that A, we’re putting way too much emphasis on what we do, but B, my value, yes, I can be good at something, right? But just because I’m good at something, it doesn’t mean that I should place my identity in it. Right? It’s just a fine line, it really is.
Love what you do, don’t be defined by what you do. I had to realize that I had to give myself permission to try something different, Julie. Because then a year later when I lost my job, they chose not to resign me. Yes, you said a lot of people reset in the pandemic, some of it was forced. Mine was kind of forced. They forced my hand. Do I stay in TV? Do I do something different? I had to give myself the permission to try something different knowing that that wasn’t my identity.
So I have to be careful with, “Hi, I’m Paula. I’m a mom, I’m a wife. I’m a curious question asking champion, advocate for people. I love to help people live their best life and reach their potential. That’s what I love. That’s who I am.” So I no longer really introduce myself as the doing, but it’s more who I’m created to be, but realizing my and really embracing that my value isn’t my job. It’s going to change.
I have to give myself permission to try new things in new seasons and however it works out, I can be called to different things in different seasons because that’s not my sole value. I can shine my light in a lot of different ways in a lot of different chapters and seasons using my particular gifts and talents, which we all have. And it might be as an entrepreneur and founder, which I’m doing right now, and hosting a show, it could have been, I did that in the broadcasting space for a long time.
But I think realizing what are we good at, what do we love, what’s important to us. For me, I love to ask questions. I love to advocate and champion for people. So that’s really, that’s how I know I’m called to something. If I could use those gifts and talents of asking questions, getting to the bottom of things, I realized I could use that in a lot of different ways. It doesn’t have to just be in one capacity.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right.
Paula Faris:
So find out what you’re good at, what you love, what’s important to you. Use that in every season, in every chapter, right? That you’re called to. And it’s going to be something different.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right.
Paula Faris:
It’s going to be something different, but give yourself permission.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right.
Paula Faris:
To try new things, knowing that’s not your worth. Always relying on the gifts and talents that you’ve been given.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I love that you talk about this tendency toward conflation that we have of thinking that our calling is going to be our career. And we have all kinds of really cool quotes that we can stick up on our vision boards and all kinds of things that say, “Find the thing you love and you’ll never work a day in your life,” and all those kinds of things.
Paula Faris:
Yeah. Blah, blah, blah, right?
Julie Lyles Carr:
Blah, blah, blah. Right, exactly. And I think this can even get heightened when we talk about things in terms of spiritual, because then it feels like, “Oh, well, if I could just vocationally do X, Y, Z, then I would really be walking in my calling and doing things for God.” And I always think about the Apostle Paul who had this huge call on his life, but vocationally made tense.
And we tend to kind of forget that he was needing to support himself in a particular way that probably didn’t feel like it had anything to do with what he was really good at, really passionate about and had been called to do. How do we help our kids avoid some of the same traps? Because to your point, as we talked in the top of this conversation, what we mirror for our kids, how we present certain things, whether that is moving to a new town all the way to certain careers and certain jobs and all that kind of stuff, they’re going to really pick up on.
Paula Faris:
Absolutely.
Julie Lyles Carr:
And I think we can be doing a better job at home, doing things like getting your book and reading it to our kids about helping really firm up that idea, “Let’s talk about who you want to be.” But they’re going to get a lot of external pressures. They’re going to get a lot of questions at school. And you know, you’ve got a high schooler. Boy, those conversations really get the heat turned up underneath them.
Paula Faris:
Oh, yeah.
Julie Lyles Carr:
How do we help our kids keep that in balance so that they feel equipped and powerful to go and support themselves and pursue certain paths while at the same time making sure that they understand this does not have to be the end all be all for them?
Paula Faris:
Right. Yeah. At the end of the book, I don’t know if you have a copy of it, I have a whole section for parents. It’s a parent’s guide to get your kids started. Ask them these three questions and it’s, “What are you good at? What do you love? What’s important to you?” And you’ll find for my kids, my daughter, she’s really good. She’s analytical and she’s creative. And what does she love and what’s important to her?
What’s important to her is really working hard and standing up for her friends. And so asking your kids these questions, what are some of their God-given talents? What are they good at? And what did they love? Because so often you see kids declaring a major because, “I’m really good at math, so I’m going to be a math teacher.” But guess what? They don’t love it, Julie.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Right.
Paula Faris:
What are you good at and what do you love and what’s important to you? It’s that combination of questions to help them uncover their unique talents and gifts. That’s how I was able to uncover that I’m curious, I like to ask questions, I like to advocate and champion people. I want to help people live their best lives and be the best version of themselves. Right? But I think what’s so important for kids or for parents is not just asking your kids, “What kind of person do you want to be?” But it’s praising the things that should be the most important to us.
Praising them for, “Hey, Caroline,” which is my oldest, “I really love how you responded to your brother in that situation,” or praising your child for sticking up for somebody else or praising your child for doing something really generous or just the way they responded to someone. Maybe they hold the door open for you or they hold the door open for somebody else. My son, my nine-year-old, I’m always like, “Hold the door open.” He holds the door open when we go to the gas station for everybody.
I’m like, and you praise them for that stuff, “Thank you so much, son. That was so kind of you to hold the door open for all of us.” When you praise the right things and you start to foster those in your children instead of, “Oh, you just got straight. Oh, yeah, you just made the varsity basketball team.” I’m not saying we don’t praise that stuff, but what we say should be most important in our kids, which is character and virtue and fostering their talents and gifts and raising a kind respectful human being who fears God and loves others and allows Jesus to, I tell my kids every day, shine your light for Jesus.
Shine your light wherever you are. Praise the right things in your kids because we’re such a society of accomplishment, achievement, spotlight, and we praise those things. And I’m not saying those things are wrong. I have a daughter who’s off the charts. You know what? Literally every test score, she’s as a 10th grader being pursued by some of the top colleges already in the country. And then my middle child, awards day, he gets nothing. So it’s like, how do you?
I want to value, I want to honor my daughter for the hard work that she’s put into it, but also honor my son because the accomplishments and achievements will only get you so far. Again, are we raising kids who can perform but can’t perceive, who can earn but can’t empathize? What kind of kids do we want to raise? We have to foster the right things and really, really speak life into those when we see them living the right way and treating people well and loving people in their unique way. So just speaking life into that.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Paula, it reminds me of something that I’m seeing, that I’m actually excited to see, and I’m curious to see what some of the response is. I’ve seen a meme or two around this about the idea of if your kid is great at this, and let’s say they’re not great at math, then why don’t we really invest into what they’re great at? And instead, we seem to have this mythos in our culture that you have to be, get ready for it, well-rounded. Well-rounded can actually be a pretty confusing thing. I mean…
Paula Faris:
It can. It can.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I don’t know many people who, if we asked the question, “Who do you want to be?” they would say, “I want to be well-rounded.”
Paula Faris:
Exactly.
Julie Lyles Carr:
And we turned it into a value statement, “Oh, she’s very well-rounded. Oh, he’s very well-rounded. Well, yes, he really excelled at X, Y, Z, but because he was already so good at that, we doubled down on math. We decided he really needed to make sure he could get through calculus. He hated every second of it.” How do we get away from some of this overvaluing in a sense being well-rounded?
Now again, you and I want to raise kids who have seen things, experienced things, have been exposed to enough that they know how to manage different situations. They know how to dig in. I mean, those are great skills to have, but it seems like we have a subset of things that we put a higher value on that we want our kids to excel at that may or may not have anything to do with their God-given giftings and talents. So-
Paula Faris:
A hundred percent, yeah.
Julie Lyles Carr:
… how do we release some of this well-rounded mythology that we’ve developed?
Paula Faris:
Yeah. It’s amazing how caught up, even as believers, we get into the accomplishment and achievement and the well-roundedness of our kids when we’re like, aren’t we supposed to teach our kids to love God and love people and use their God-given talents and gifts to shine their light for him? I’m guilty of that too, but that’s just because it’s how we’re trained in society. And I think it’s funny you say this because my middle guy, he’s in eighth grade and he’s like, “Mom…” He’s taking algebra and he’s taking ELA and he’s taking a financial literacy class and science and social studies.
He’s like, “Mom, literally the only class I get anything out of, the only class I need right now is financial literacy because it’s teaching me how to budget my money, what to do, how to invest.” He’s like, “I don’t need algebra.” He’s like, “I guess, I need ELA.” And he’s like, and you know I could drop out of school at 17?” So he’s proposing this. And as a parent, I don’t have the answer to a lot of that.
I don’t know why aren’t we teaching kids basic life skills, how to take care of themselves, how to balance a checkbook, how to do their laundry, how to cook a meal, how to be a good partner, how to be a good parent, right? How to be a great leader, actual life skills. And so I have just as much of a struggle with that, and I had a hard time explaining it to my son other than, “Look, honey, I don’t understand the school system and all of the curriculum, but I do know that everything you do, you’re supposed to work hard is if unto the Lord.
So just work hard at it. This is your work ethic. You may not love it, but you have to work hard because everything you do, even when the doors are closed, is unto the Lord.” So I’m like, “Just work hard.” But I think as parents, it’s really important that we see, really each of our kids are so different. What are they naturally good at? What do they love as well? Make sure those two things are married, something that they’re good at and they love.
Julie Lyles Carr:
And they love. Yeah.
Paula Faris:
And what’s important to them. Right? And just releasing them too to, It doesn’t matter what you do, what you declare, that’s not your value. Let’s think about your unique talents and gifts. How are you uniquely wired and created?” Because there’s only one. What do you really love?” And foster those things in your kids and speak life into that.
And again, it’s just, one other way we push back at it is just praising the right things. “Okay, I don’t understand this. I don’t understand how that this is the way things are. This is how the curriculum is. But what I do know is I appreciate your work ethic. I appreciate that you’re still respectful of your teachers, even though you don’t really understand it and you don’t really love. It’s really important.”
So continuing to praise how they respond to situations like that when they don’t really… Because here’s the thing, life’s not always going to be great. You’re going to be faced with situations where you’re like, “I don’t really want to be here,” but how you respond to it really is indicative of your character. So yeah, I mean, just helping our kids be good human beings, right? That treat people well and love people and encouraging them to shine their light, so.
Julie Lyles Carr:
That can make a big, big difference in the world.
Paula Faris:
Yeah.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Well, Paula, I’m so excited for listeners to get ahold of this new book of yours, Who Do You Want to Be-
Paula Faris:
Thank you.
Julie Lyles Carr:
… When You Grow Up? Tell the listener where they can find you and also be able to interact with-
Paula Faris:
Sure.
Julie Lyles Carr:
… a lot of your other content because you’re out there.
Paula Faris:
Great. Yeah.
Julie Lyles Carr:
You’re advocating, you’re wanting to equip women. So where can we find all the good stuff?
Paula Faris:
Yeah. So you can keep up with me on Instagram. It’s at Paula Faris and it’s F-A-R-I-S, just one R. I launched CARRY Media, which means we want to help carry the burdens of working moms, mothers in the workplace. I launched it a couple years ago. We have a weekly newsletter that’s for and by working moms. It’s free, it’s all load lessening tips. You can sign up for that at carrymedia.com.
And pretty much everything that I’m doing kind of goes through that filter of is it helping families, is it helping mothers, is it helping children? So that’s the work I’m doing for CARRY. That’s why I’m donating all my proceeds to the Boys and Girls Club for this book, Who Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up? I’m a trustee and an ardent supporter of the clubs, and I think kids are our future.
We need to invest in them, we need to invest in families. It’s something that we talk a lot about in this country, but we don’t do a good job both from an attitudinal perspective, from a policy perspective, from a societal perspective. Kids are either our future or they’re not, so. And we need to support families. We need to support mothers. And that’s really the heartbeat of everything that I do right now, Julie.
Julie Lyles Carr:
That’s awesome. So listener, go to the show notes. Rebecca puts all those links in and all that great content-
Paula Faris:
Yay.
Julie Lyles Carr:
… every week, so you can go check it out. Paula.
Paula Faris:
Thank you.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Can’t thank you enough for making time-
Paula Faris:
Aw.
Julie Lyles Carr:
… to be with me today and for this really important conversation for our kids and for ourselves.
Paula Faris:
That’s right.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Who do we want to be when we grow up? Because one of these days I’m going to grow up. It’s really going to happen.
Paula Faris:
Julie, next time we’re together, I’m going to ask you that question. So I want you to start thinking of who do you want to be when you grow up, what kind of person do you want to be now that you are grown up. That’s what I’m going to ask you.
Julie Lyles Carr:
I need that accountability. So thank you.
Paula Faris:
Same. Same, girl. Thank you for having me on, and thanks to everybody for listening and supporting this book and message and allowing me to shine a spotlight on the Boys and Girls Clubs, so.
Julie Lyles Carr:
Absolutely. Just a delight to have you here. And listener, again, go to those show notes. You’ll be able to check out all the stuff we’ve been talking about. And I also love to interact with you. You can find me at Julie Lyles Carr on all the socials, usually on Instagram the most. Be sure and go to AllMomDoes, allmomdoes.com, AllMomDoes on the socials. You’re going to find a community there of women who are walking the same seasons of life you are, asking the same questions. Some have even figured out a few things. So you might find some things to help you along the way. And I will see you next time on the AllMomDoes podcast.
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