Mom learns a lesson

Dear friends,

You may have noticed that I removed my latest episode from the “How to Be a Girl” podcast feed.  And because you have been supporting us with your love, kind words, and hard-earned dollars, I wanted to explain why I did this.

Basically, Mom made a mistake.  I included material in the episode without getting my daughter’s clear approval in advance.  When she realized what was in the episode, she asked me to take it down.  So I did, immediately.

This all happened, in part, because my daughter does not listen to the podcast. I’ve invited her to do so many times (and she knows exactly how to find it on the internet!), but she politely declines, and says she’ll listen “later on,” when the time feels right.  I respect her decision on this.

The other thing that happened is that I failed to realize how fast my daughter is growing up. When I started the podcast, she was only six years old. Asking for her permission to share our stories didn’t make much sense back then, given that she didn’t even know what a podcast was. So I made the decisions for both of us, guarding our privacy with pseudonyms and carefully choosing what to share - and what to keep private. But she’s almost 13 years old now. And she does know what a podcast is, and she knows that quite a few people (both strangers and people we know) are listening. In my latest episode, I covered some ground that she didn’t want shared publicly, even under the cover of a pseudonym.  And I made the mistake of not clearly explaining to her, in advance, what the episode was about.

So I apologized to her, took the episode down, and made a promise to get her clear prior approval on everything that is shared about her in the podcast (and on my blog) from now on. I added that it’s up to her if the podcast even continues at all. If she wants me to stop telling stories about her, at any time, I will.

She accepted my apology graciously, and then she said that she likes knowing that our podcast is helping other people, giving them hope. She said she would like to keep doing that.  So we will, as long as she’s cool with it.  We are working right now on an episode about the fact that she’s about to start “blockers,” medications that will prevent her from going through the wrong puberty.  She wants to help people understand what blockers are, and why they are so important for kids like her.  So do I.

I’m so grateful for my daughter’s forgiving spirit and so proud of her ability to stand up for herself, even when it means telling her mom that she screwed up. I hope that when she finally does listen to the podcast, she’ll like it and approve of what I shared. And if not, I hope she’ll at least be able to hear how much I love her, and how hard I was trying to get it right.

There was a portion of the latest episode that covered ground that my daughter was OK with me sharing, so I’ve created an audio clip of this daughter-approved content from that episode, for you to listen to anytime.  (Only for my Patreon supporters!)

Whether you heard the complete episode or not, I feel badly that you were charged for an episode that is no longer fully accessible to you. Unfortunately, Patreon doesn’t have a means for me to refund your contribution. To make up for this, I have decided not to charge for my next episode. I hope that sounds OK to you.  However, if you would like a refund for this (now vanished) episode, please contact me and I’ll figure out a way to make that happen.

Thanks for your understanding. And for all your amazing support.

Love and gratitude,

Marlo