Eps 305: Unpacking Violence in Schools with Lisa Sabey

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Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Hi friends. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place where we tease apart what it means to be a conscious parent and a conscious human on the wild ride of parenting teenagers. I'm your host. Casey o'rourdy, positive discipline lead, trainer, parent, coach and mom walking the path right next to you as I imperfectly raise my own two kids. Joyful courage is all about grit, growth on the parenting journey, relationships that provide a sense of connection and meaning and influential tools that support everyone in being their best selves. Today's show is an interview, and it's a doozy. It's a doozy, my friends and I encourage you to listen for how grit shows up as my amazing guest and I tease things apart. Thank you so much for listening. I am deeply honored to lead you. I am grateful that what I put out matters to you, and I am stoked to keep it coming. Thank you for who you are and for being in the community. Enjoy the show.

Hey everybody. My guest today is Lisa Sabi. Lisa is most Hi. I'm so glad that you're here. Lisa is mostly a wife, mother and grandmother. She has six children, 11 grandchildren, and a husband who supports her as she launches into all the projects, Lisa's life changed when her daughter went down the rabbit hole of anorexia nervosa. For years, mental illness ravaged her daughter's physical and mental wellness, and after spending 1000s of hours researching, reading and talking with professionals, Lisa increasingly realized that parents needed much more education and support. She self funded the creation of a documentary anorexia, what we wish we had known. She has committed her life to this work and founded parents to parents, a 501, c3, NPO, parents to parents has now produced two full length documentaries, going sane, which won an Impact Award, an American tragedy, which won Best Documentary at the Boston Film Festival, and has been viewed by over half a million people. It's also the documentary we're going to be talking more about during this interview. Under Lisa's leadership, parents to parents, is working directly with Zero Suicide to produce a parent resource for parents who have had a child attempt suicide, and also finishing up a documentary about adverse childhood experiences. Lisa's youngest son, Daniel, was in Arapahoe high school when Carl Pearson came in with a gun and killed Claire Davis with the intent to kill many. She has great compassion for all mothers, and I'm just so honored to get to be in conversation with you. Welcome to the podcast, Lisa,

Lisa Sabey 2:54
thank you, Casey. I'm thrilled to be here, and so proud of you and your work. Thank

Casey O'Roarty 2:59
you so much

we are going to talk about school shootings. So heads up for anyone who's listening to this with young kids or sensitive kids around, just know that that is the topic for today. And before we get into that, I also want to acknowledge that violence in schools is not new, and that many families and communities of color specifically have been navigating shootings and violence and the fear that comes along with it. For decades, not having to worry about our kids' safety out in the world has really been a privilege afforded mostly to white parents, and I want to acknowledge that. And while, of course, there are exceptions to the rule, this is an unfortunate truth due to the institutional racism and inequities that exist in our culture. And then Columbine, Columbine happened, and the narrative of what could happen at school really shifted and changed. And I remember I was in school to be a teacher when Columbine went down, where were you that day, Lisa, I

Lisa Sabey 4:05
was in my home, and I had four of my children in from middle school down to elementary school, and I live seven miles away from Columbine, so I remember going grocery shopping, and the whole atmosphere was just that of, of, like a numbness, like an unawareness, like, how could this have happened? And then constant news? I remember greeting my kids as they walked home and asked if they knew about it, and they had been told in their schools. And it was a day that changed the world and a day that

Casey O'Roarty 4:41
changed me. Yeah, I remember a lot of conversation, and it could have been because of the context that I was in with being with learning to be a school teacher, but I remember this, this weird contrast happening. There was this conversation around that schools were becoming so big and it was. Easier and easier for kids who were having a hard time to not be noticed and fall through the cracks. And, you know, there was talk about just paring things down and making sure every kid had a healthy adult. And in the meantime, I'm driving to and from the University in my program, and I'm driving right by this construction site of this massive, massive brand new high school. And I just remember it the contrast really being present with that at the time. It seems like we just like the message was lost.

Lisa Sabey 5:35
Yeah, people need individualization, understanding as an individual and being in great big schools have their has its own problems, for sure. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 5:45
And then fast forward to 2019 and you are the executive producer of the documentary American tragedy. Will you talk a little bit about that film and and how it came to be? Yeah? So

Lisa Sabey 5:57
American tragedy is a story that mainly focuses on Sue Klebold story. She is a mother of Dylan Klebold, one of the Columbine shooters, but she did not want it to be her only her story, so she asked us to include other stories. So it's also two friends of hers who's had who had sons die by suicide. So Lisa and Lori both gave us their stories and told talk to us about the pain that they had to go through when their child both of them had sons, had died by suicide. It says, you know, Sue has written a book, a mother's reckoning, where she tells her story, and I have to honor her, because I cannot imagine a greater nightmare for any mother than to have your son be one of the most notorious school shooters ever and Sue she talks about. And I think the most poignant point of the part of the movie is how hard it was for her and getting, you know, even getting socks on. And we didn't tell about other things, but she wanted to die. She wanted to disappear. And when we talked with her, you know, it had been almost 20 years we started, we we started talking with her 18 years after Columbine, and filming her then. And we said, how are you able to talk about it now? And she goes, Oh, I have been through so much therapy, but she has literally gone towards it, sought to understand it, and by doing that, she has lost the fear of it, so she can talk about it, and she can be a voice of compassion to all those, from the parents of the shooters to the people who are the schools and the administrators of the schools. She has, she has been asked by every major TV station and production studio to have her story. And she told them no, every single one of them no. And she said yes to me, because she knew the messaging we wanted was one of compassion, one of building mental wellness and empowering parents. So that's how the movie came about.

Casey O'Roarty 8:09
Well, and it's so interesting because I watched the movie and it was so interesting to hear from, you know, because I think most of us are guilty. Well, I'll speak for myself, I am absolutely 100% guilty when I hear about acts of violence like that, that, you know, school shootings, I immediately think of like, what's going on with that parent, you know, right? And to lean back. And also, you know, I also think a lot about the depth of pain that anyone who's going to inflict that much pain on others, the level of pain that that person must be living with and inside of, absolutely and and so to listen to sue really tell her story from such a beautifully raw place was really powerful. And it just reminded me, I mean, you know, in little ways, there's plenty of opportunity for parents of especially of adolescents, you know, are their kids make mistakes, and we're like, Oh, my God, I had no idea that was going on, right? And it feels like if our kids were gonna go out and do something so dramatic and drastic that there would be some kind of indicator. But, you know, clearly, not always,

Lisa Sabey 9:21
definitely, not always. But also, I think we have to understand that a mind of a parent doesn't go to the possibility, will my son become a school shooter? They just that's not part of their psyche, right? Sure, sure. So we just, even though there may be red flags, and still acknowledges there probably were some red flags, you just don't acknowledge it. You just don't go there. And I don't think parents should have to go there very often at all. And I think that is a great fear and such a rare reality.

Casey O'Roarty 9:51
So what did you Yeah, what did you learn about school shooters in the process of making that film? What were some of. The big surprises? What were the big things for you?

Lisa Sabey 10:02
Well, the biggest surprise is that bullying is not the common denominator. That was a surprise. I assumed that that was kind of common to most of the shooters. Also that there's a wide range of socioeconomics in the shooters. I thought it was pretty much upper middle class that there are almost always signs, but it's usually in hindsight that we see them. There's almost always darkness and also kind of an isolating personality. Now with Dylan, the isolation happened with his partner, Eric, right, right? But they start to isolate from their own other groups. So all of those were just interesting to me. I think one of the biggest takeaways, honestly, is just truly honoring Sue as a mother, that she really was a good mother, and she deeply and loved and still does love Dylan, and that she still doesn't make sense of it. She acknowledges it and has worked through it, but it is that complex, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 11:09
yeah. And you, I mentioned in your bio, so your son was a, I mean, can you talk about the day that that your son was, was he witnessed, like, what was his experience to the school shooting that he was, I don't want to say a part of because that's not the right language, but that happened at his high school. What was that like? Right? I can't even,

Lisa Sabey 11:30
well, I have a very vivid memory of being on Littleton on Broadway and Littleton Boulevard, which is about not even a mile from my house, going to a friend's apartment, and all of a sudden, five different police cars turn on their sirens. I had no idea what was around that many police cars, and started zooming down Broadway, and I remember thinking, there's been a shooting at Arapaho High School. And then I said, That's worst case scenario. Thank you, Lisa, and I just kept going, and I walked into my friend's apartment building, and I had gotten a text from another friend, and I looked at it and it said, there's been a shooting at Arapahoe High School. Do you know where your son is? And I immediately turned around, went back to rappaho, no, I stopped and I wrote a text to all my family, my sons and daughter and my husband. My husband left work, we met down at the tennis court and with all sorts of parents, and most all parents had heard from their child. I had not, but my daughter had communicated with a music teacher at Arapahoe high school who had Daniel with her, and she had not let any of the kids have phones. So she said Daniel's with with her. That's how we knew our son was okay. At that point, the police said it's an active shooter situation, which it actually wasn't. But in hindsight, we learned that, but we were told it was an active shooter for at least a half an hour. So that made it much more fearful. The beauty of it, if you can call something beautiful in such a horrific time, was the community, the love we all had to line up at a church where they had dropped all the kids up and all the community businesses around were bringing blankets and waters and donuts and pizza, and people were hugging each other, and there was a sense of we will get through this. No one here is alone. We are here together. And then when you see parents hug their children and the children just weeping, you realize this has been so traumatic for these kids. And then you have the months and months of learning about what happened, and then the journal and all the police investigation came help became public, and my son read all of it. I did not, I chose not to, but he had, he had known Carl Pearson As a little bit of an abrasive person, but a person who had a great sense of humor. The day before the shooting, they were in a class together, AP, econ, and laughing together. And that's what's haunted him, is, you know, as a person who had a class with the shooter the day before, there was no sign, no indication, even in hindsight, that he had these plans. So it's that's probably been the most complicated reality for my son, both, is that Carl Pearson wasn't just a horrific shooter, but there was some fun in him, and that even the day before, no one would have guessed. Yeah. So I think we've realized personally, how impactful emotionally it is to have a child in a school shooting. How beautifully a community can come together, but how long lasting the trauma may be, yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 14:47
I mean, has your son had to do any kind of work since then is, did he see a therapist or

Lisa Sabey 14:53
right? Well, yeah, my son has been, has done some EMDR, which is trauma based therapy, and. You've you know, he's written his whole story. He was given a Linus blanket. All the students at Arapahoe high school were given a Linus blanket, which I didn't know about it, but it's so beautiful. People from around the nation make blankets for people who go through trauma and after school shootings. They send those blankets to every single student in that school

Casey O'Roarty 15:19
interview. I do not interview?

Lisa Sabey 15:23
Isn't that beautiful? And that's that's a very special blanket for Daniel, and he has written to that person and written his story and thanked him. So he's processed it, through it. He doesn't think that he is triggered by loud sounds. He did hear the bullets. I mean, he did hear the gunshots, but he wasn't at the library or close to the library or in the hall. He was actually the opposite side. So I, you know, I don't know. I mean, he did have some other issues that happened during his adolescent years that perhaps contributed to some need to process through trauma. But, you know, not anything different than most boys, so sure, and as a family because of our daughter's mental illness, so Daniel's right below our daughter. He's the sixth, and she's the fifth. And we had learned a lot of processing skills before, and we talk through it a lot, and mostly there's a sense of sadness that the kids had to go through that. But they asked me to come and do a health class A month after the shooting, and I was wondering what I would do, and I decided to focus on what we focus on makes a difference. So as a group of health students, every single 11th grader came to my class right they I talked about what happened, and that was very real and horrific, and something they will always have as a scar in their life. That happened. Then I said, But what went right? And there was silence, just like they were looking at me, like, What in the world are you asking? And I said, I really want you to think again. What went right? Then the person raised their hand, and I'll get emotional again. She goes, I knew my teacher would die for me, and someone else rose their head and said, I knew the first responders would put their life in front of mine if need be. And then somebody else said I knew people around my the country was praying for me, and I knew my family was wanting to be with me, and I knew I wanted to be with my family. The whole atmosphere just changed when we focused on not just we're not we're not dismissing the horrific act, but we're also acknowledging the greatness of humanity and that there was more good, even that, in that horrific, horrific, traumatic day, than there was bad. And after that, after each class, the teachers were just crying and gave me a hug, and they said this was such a healing understanding, and I think that's something we all need to realize. We can focus on, that we need to acknowledge that there are horrific acts, gang violence, horrific acts, school shooting, horrific acts, racism is a horrific act. All of these are horrific acts. Yet even beyond that, I see such goodness in humanity, such desire in in parents and in community. So I think that's one thing that I would take away, both from talking with Sue clebold And from my own experience with my son in a school shooting. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 18:37
Yeah. I mean this whole pandemic, right? I've, we were housebound, and I kind of forgot about school shootings, you know, I had the privilege of not, you know, of not having it as part of my memory. So I didn't really think about it. And when I looked it up, when I looked up online, how many school shootings have happened this year? 2021, 32 32 according to Ed Week, 32 this year, resulting in injuries or death lots taking place outside of the school, like in the parking lot during sporting events, others like you know, Oxford High School on the 30th following this pattern of students you know, showing up with the intention to take lives. And then, you know, for me, a couple weeks ago, I had, you know, the Oxford happened, and then it just at least in our little area, which I found out was not just our little area across the country. There have been these threats, and this is going to happen on Thursday, and one of we have three high schools in our district, and one of them went into lockdown like three or four times over the course of a week. And I was so overwhelmed, and I knew that I had to talk to somebody about this, and I reached out to my parent group and my big parent community, and I said, Does this just happen? Thing where I am, like, what else is going on? And I was amazed by how many people said we are in my kids in a lockdown right now, or we have threats going on in our community. I mean, all over the country, some parents in Canada, it's so overwhelming, and it's nothing that any of us really have. Like, I grew up with earthquake drills. I grew up in California, you know, so we had earthquake drills, and I had lived through earthquakes. So I can tell kids, like, okay, yeah, earthquake drill. And this is why we do it, and this is how it actually feels to be in an earthquake. You'll probably live it'll probably be fine. I don't have that for my kids when it comes to school shootings. And I remember when my daughter was in ninth grade and her high school did active shooter drills, like, like, Let's reenact it. Let's send someone in who looks like an active shooter. And she was so scared. And I would say, like, you know this is before I talk to you, Lisa. But I would say like, you know what, honey, I don't know anyone who's experienced a school shooting. I think you're probably, you're gonna be fine, like it's, it's very low likelihood that it'll happen to you. And she would come back with, yeah, but you you don't know that for sure. You don't know that for sure. And she was right. And so how do we you know? And I'm thinking about you and all those kids you had in middle and elementary school when Columbine happened, like, what were the conversations that you felt really, that were really useful having with your kids? Then that would be something that we can think about now. No, no small questions here, Lisa,

Lisa Sabey 21:39
small questions and, and there's no, no absolutely simple or clear answer. I've been thinking up the of the power of the word, and I think often we use the word, but, you know, there you're safe, but there are some school shootings or and we use the word, but which just undermines, you know, the safety. But this can happen to you, and I think we need to be comfortable with the word and and be comfortable with dialectics of emotions so we can simply truly acknowledge, of course, you're afraid. That makes sense. It would be abnormal to not be afraid. These are scary things. Give yourself grace. Be kind to yourself. That's okay. And this is a rare event that does not affect even a small portion of the population, and it is less likely than being hurt by a bee. And you go out all the time and there are bees, and you can face your fears and be safe. So I think the dialectics of Yes, you are experiencing fear that's normal. I love you, and I get it, and I can't take away the possibility from you, what I can do is add an and, and the probability is you are safe, and I love what you did with your son. Give them some control, because not having control is anxiety inducing, right? And that's one of the reasons why we have such great anxiety around school shootings because we have no control. Yeah, and I love that you did if there was, you know, threats, you know, listen, I get how you feel. You said to your son, you can choose to go when there's a threat, that can be your choice. You can have control over that, and if you choose to go, I will support that too. I will support you in deciding your actions on that day. Now, if it ends up that the child won't go to school for weeks and weeks and weeks, then we have a different discussion, right? Sure, sure. The discussion says, I totally get how scared you are, and we still need to face the fears and go to school. So let's figure out what we can do to put in place to help you go to school. And so, you know, there's extremes that we have to deal with, but generally the power of the word and and the understanding of the complexity that very seldom do we ever have one emotion. We can have fear and we can have courage.

Casey O'Roarty 24:17
Yeah, well, and I love that you know, your share around going into the high school and talking to the kids and creating a container for them to tease apart their experience from the lens of what went right. I have a really good friend who is a middle school teacher, and they, they didn't have a shooting, but there were a lot of threats the whole district just, kind of, you know, going through a bunch of stuff right now, and her administration told them, under no circumstances should they even bring up the fact that this was happening in the community. And I just, you know, with Ian's school a couple weeks ago, they had some threats, and the principal was great communicating with the parents. He's. Acknowledge some of you are going to be on. We do not find these threats as viable. We have a police investigation going on. And if you're uncomfortable with your kids coming to school tomorrow, we complete like they were so great about it that even though they still let kids go to sports practice and extracurriculars if they didn't go to school that day, which I was really grateful for. And then, yeah, I left it up to Ian, who is very, you know, he is where his sister is really emotional, like, just it comes out of her body, her emotion Ian is, you know, if you look at him and talk to him, very easygoing, which, in and of itself, is a little tricky, because I really want to know, like, what's actually happening, because I think there's some compartmentalizing going on. But what I appreciated, and what I'm actually going to reach out to the principal and say, is, how is the school navigating the unfolding of this intensity, even though the worst thing didn't happen? I mean, I don't know exactly how the brain works, but I'm pretty sure that even the threat, I know that it like the when I had a conversation with somebody else about drug use, even the idea of doing a drug is going to spark that dopamine. So I do imagine that the idea that something as scary as a shooting happening is doing something to the brain, so I'm really curious, and we'll be reaching out to the administration around so, so what's the aftermath of that? What's the unfolding? And how are you holding a container for the kids to make sense of all of this?

Lisa Sabey 26:34
Yeah, it's such a balancing act. Such a balancing act, because if we just refuse to talk about it, but the kids hear about it through other kids or the news or whatever, then they're just thinking, Oh, this is really scary, and we can't even talk about

Casey O'Roarty 26:53
it. Yeah, the adults can't even handle the conversation, so we're screwed, right?

Lisa Sabey 26:57
So that's we don't want that, right? We also don't want an overexposure of constantly talking about it, sure. So, you know, parents need to be aware that. They need to be able to address it when it happens and then leave it and not keep bringing it up. You are correct that the brain is going to interact in the same way, whether or not it's real or imagined, the brain doesn't have this part of the brain is going to imagine it, and this part of the brain it is real. It all is at the same place. So we've got to realize that all these drills and everything else are giving these kids experiences. And we can say, Oh, they're giving these kids experiences of fear, or we could say that is fearful, and now you've been through an experience where something fearful could happen, and you made it through. You know what to do. You empowered yourself. Look what you know. So if anything were to happen, you would know the steps that you can take. So again, we put use the power of and we understand this, and look what you're doing, right? The more we can help directly identify what the kids are doing right, the more we reinforce those right actions.

Casey O'Roarty 28:07
And that came up, that came up in our principals emails to us, he really highlighted the way the kids were reaching out when they saw things on social media. You know, they were reporting what they were seeing. The parents were getting in touch, and he really offered a lot of gratitude for that. So good job to our principal, and proud

Lisa Sabey 28:26
of him. Yeah, yeah. I'm proud of him. I'm proud of him, and I think, I do think most schools, all schools, I'm sure the administration is doing the best they can with what information they have, yeah, yeah. And we as parents need to become informed, like what you're doing right now and learn skills at home, because, as we were talking about the big school versus the small school, the smallest school is probably the home school, right that you're home with your kids after and before school, and that is also a schooling that you're giving them. And you know, acknowledge that I can have an impact in calming my child and acknowledging the emotions and and then helping them identify their strengths that can help them deal through complexity

Casey O'Roarty 29:08
well. And I would also say, if you're listening right now, and you're someone, you're a parent, and you're really dysregulated around all of this, which I get, I get, I get how scary this is being a parent, and so the importance of making sure that as you show up for your teen or your young kid in these conversations, you've done your own work around being able to show up as that confident authority, grounded present, You know? And when you are having conversations with your friends about, oh my god, what is happening right now, making sure that's not an earshot, right? And just really, I think it's really important, too. And I'm saying this to myself as much as I am to to the listeners, but just kind of doing your own processing around the fact. Of the matter is, this is something that we're going to continue to hear about. This is something that our kids, you know, along with friggin global pandemic and climate change and racial injustice and all the other layers that make right now the unique time in history that it is. Parents don't forget, we cannot show up for our kids without first showing up for ourselves and really digging into our own discomfort, our own beliefs, our own you know, wobble inside of these challenging times, right? And then

Lisa Sabey 30:34
I would add and our own strengths. Thank you, past experiences and our own resilience and our own community and our own connections, that as many as we're dealing with all the processing through complex trauma, globally or within a school or within a home, there's always strength and always humanity, and The more we can acknowledge the complexity and the darkness. Sometimes we can also focus on the strengths and the humanity and the connection and what we have done in the past as humans, we have done amazing things, and that's a much more hopeful focus.

Casey O'Roarty 31:17
I love that. I really appreciate that so in your work, and I know that you're working on a new project, and you've had access to some really incredible people in your work, I love thinking about, I mean, it's all like, there's Okay, active shooter drills. The kids need to know what to do if the shit goes down and and what is coming to the surface as you do your work around upstream solutions that are going to decrease the amount of violence that we're seeing in schools. Yeah,

Lisa Sabey 31:50
and I think what you're doing with your podcast is one of the upstreams, you're educating parents, and then parents are helping give their kids this information. I think that there's a lot of mental health information out there that is saying, parents, these are things you can learn, and there are skills you can learn that will benefit your life and your children's lives, and you can implement them, and you can teach them. And I think that's the best upstream we could ever do, is focus on the parents who are then working with the children. But then we need to have and schools are there are schools. One of the positive takeaways from a horrific thing of a pandemic is that schools are working on Mental Illness more than ever, on mental health more than ever. You know, I don't know any school that isn't focused right now,

Casey O'Roarty 32:41
choice. It's either do it no. Choice, yeah, right. Do it alone. Let's

Lisa Sabey 32:46
celebrate that they're doing it, that they are trying to do it, and that's upstream. I love that preschools are learning breathy like a balloon or starfish breathing. I love it that elementary schools are learning a little bit about their thinking and learning to challenge negative thoughts. I love that, and that is all upstream that can benefit the individual at that time and in their whole life.

Casey O'Roarty 33:11
When my daughter and I went through DBT therapy, which I talk about all the time on the podcast, so I'm sure my listeners are like, Okay, hit snooze, one of the things that I remember saying to the therapist, was like, Why isn't this? This is for everyone. Like this should be, you know, just like we do math and get gets more complex, like DBT should be like, let's start in seventh grade, and then it'll be DBT two in ninth grade, and then advanced DBT in 12th grade, like these. And I remember reading when I was in teacher school, like all of these, mental health, well, they didn't call it mental health. They called it like, well, they called it soft skills, as if, right? I mean, these are life skills. These are the things that we get to practice, to be in relationship with each other, to be good teammates at work to be powerful parents and and partners. So I love that you're highlighting that. And, you know, grateful yes to schools that really recognize that. I mean it a mental well child. And that's the other thing I loved in your movie, too. You guys talked about that drive. I think it was, was probably, was it in the 80s when the whole presidential physical fitness thing started happening. So I was that I was in elementary school in the 80s, and I remember, man, oh God, sit ups. And it was the only time things got really tight around PE and we had to actually do something. But I love the idea of, like a mental fitness challenge. Well, I mean, we can talk the word challenge might not be the great word, but, you know, a focus on that as ever, more, you know, not as like a one standalone unit, you know, we do. I'm a positive discipline trainer and and some of the work that we do is in schools, but. And teaching teachers how to integrate, I mean, it's mental health, really, but social emotional skills into every aspect of of interacting with the students, of supporting the students and interacting with each other. They get trained to run class meetings, and I'm hopeful, as I hear you are that one of the powerful things about the forced, you know, reset of this pandemic is going to be a schools take so long to change. So hopefully this will be enough to really move everybody in the in the direction of really more value around mental health, and that's something I bring up to parents a lot, too, because, you know, the people that find me are typically parents of teenagers. I love my parents of teenagers, or in my classes, and I have to remind everybody like, Yes, you are. This is challenging right now, and this is the behavior that's showing up, and we cannot erase the fact that this pandemic is something none of us have ever been through. It is completely uncertain like that is a real big underlying discomfort that is, you know, and when we're inside of that uncertainty, and you asked me for my phone, I might tell you to f off, right, like it's just, you know, the way that it shows up in our teenagers. And so it makes sense that, I mean, they're in so much pain, and yeah, it's a little terrifying, actually. So thank God for schools and parents and us having this conversation and just continuing. And

Lisa Sabey 36:40
I totally agree with you that we should be teaching mental health as much as we teach math and reading. That it is as much it is probably more a life skill than either of those. Yes, and we should be teaching it from preschool through 12th grade. And if we were to do that, if elementary school taught mindfulness, and middle school taught CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, and high school taught Dialectical Behavioral Therapy.

Casey O'Roarty 37:07
Oh, I like that progression. I

Lisa Sabey 37:10
like that right? And by the end of 12th grade, our student body in the nation would be prepared for life right now we're not. Yeah, right, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 37:21
leaders that we actually, you know, that we truly need. Oh, yeah, yeah. Will you tell me a little bit about the project that you're working on right now? Can you talk about

Lisa Sabey 37:30
it? Yes, I'm working on a wonderful and and heart wrenching project. We followed seven at risk, boys at Boys Town, which is an organization founded by a Catholic priest named Father Flanagan, who believed there are no bad boys but bad environments, bad thinking, bad modeling and bad examples. And I would add an intergenerational patterns that trauma actually affect the genetics, and, you know, the epigenetics of intergenerational patterns, and we followed them, and we learned to love them and got to know their stories, and realized that each one of them had incredibly complex childhoods and that they got involved in two of them are very involved in gangs. Both of those are back in jail now. One got shot three times three weeks ago when he had a gun going against a rival gang, and the reality of violence, that is kind of the expected response to any violence, is becoming very real to our hearts, and we're realizing how these boys are not bad boys. They have done bad things, but there's so much more to them than that, one or two or 10 or 20 actions, and you know, some of these boys are responsible for feeding their grandma every day, or responsible to take care of their little nephew. And we realize that there's so much good, and we kind of come to the conclusion that there's a difference that we need to tease out between guilt that These boys were guilty of a violent act, and we can't just dismiss that. That needs to be responded to. And then there's blame. Are they totally blameworthy? Or has the society somehow failed them? And if we are all implicated in this society that has somehow failed them, then there's hope. We can make changes. We can improve society by understanding what the needs are for these families and these boys. And of course, there are girls too, but we followed boys, and to me, it's a very hopeful, but a very sobering concept we're working on right now.

Casey O'Roarty 39:39
I'm so grateful for you and and the the places where you have said yes to diving in. I imagine that's going to be a really powerful conversation to have. What's the unfolding of that? When can we expect to get to watch that? Probably

Lisa Sabey 39:56
in about a year, we hope before, before the 2020, Me three. So we'll see. We'll see. Okay,

Casey O'Roarty 40:02
well, I'd love to have you back to talk about that project too. And I would love to we didn't even dip into the eating disorder stuff. I mean, Lisa, I've got many hours of conversation that I want to have with you. Oh,

Lisa Sabey 40:14
and I would love to have with you too. Mostly what I want to tell parents, and you know, they're welcome to watch American Tragedy and it's on Amazon and it's free, or it's on canopy at public libraries or school libraries and it's free. But mostly what I want is parents to feel that they are comfortable enough to open up about mental health, open up about a mental illness, open about their own journey, and find not just the dark journey, but the human journey, and connect with each other and realize I am a part of humanity, and humanity has to deal with the darkness of a lot of the mental illnesses. So I just I love that we can talk about it. This is my commitment for my life. The rest of my life. Is doing whatever I can to bring this subject up in a raw way, but also in a hopeful way.

Casey O'Roarty 41:10
Yeah, it feels very real and authentic.

I always end my podcast with the same question. So Lisa, what does joyful courage mean to you?

Lisa Sabey 41:31
Joyful courage means loving even the unlovable and staying faithful to those children who are struggling, even when it seems like they're struggling so hard that there's no hope. But I know that some of the most struggling kids in any family, my own daughter, can end up being brilliantly radiant in their life. So going forward with both love and faith in the individual and in the possibility of flourishing, regardless of the past.

Casey O'Roarty 42:07
I love that. Where can people find you and follow your work? Where can they find parent to parents? Which you do talk a lot about that organization would you like? Which

Lisa Sabey 42:15
is just fine. This is just fine. We don't really have a very big network for people just to reach out to. Mostly we just put movies on online streaming. But we do have going saying, G, O, I N, G, s, a n, e.org, which it, which houses what we're working on now. We're working on simple ways of teaching parents mental health skills grant and understanding how they can teach them to their children, and we're writing grants right now to work with, providing resources for parents, to work with teenagers, and what that would mean to identify what the mental illnesses are, what their red flags would be, and what are skills you can work with to help a child navigate. So those are projects we're working on now.

Casey O'Roarty 42:59
Awesome. I'll make sure those links are in the show notes. Listeners. Lisa, thank you again. So great to be in conversation with you. Oh

Lisa Sabey 43:07
Casey, thank you.

Casey O'Roarty 43:16
Okey dokey. Wowzer. What an amazing conversation. Thank you so much for listening. I am just so head over heels in love with this community. I'm so happy that I get to bring you conversations that matter to you. I love it when I hear from you and you let me know how impacted you are by the podcast. There are some really exciting things happening with joyful courage, some transformations, some changes in the new year, and I can't wait to share them with you. I've been dying to tell you, actually, so stay tuned. Are you on my email list? If not, go to joyful courage.com/email and get signed up now, so you stay up to date on all the things, and when you sign up, you'll get seven tips over seven days to support you in nurturing stronger connections with your tweens and teens. If you feel inspired and you haven't already, do me a favor and head over to Apple podcast leave a review. It would be amazing. It's a great way to give back to the show that gives so much to you. I'm working really hard to stand out make a massive impact on families around the globe. Your review actually works for me and the algorithm of things and helps joyful courage podcast to be seen by even more parents. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Have a beautiful winter solstice and holiday weekend. However you're celebrating, I'll see you next week. All the love you.

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