Interview

Episode 183 – Baring it All with Jenn Taylor The Naked Podcaster

Mark Leslie

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Mark interviews Jenn Taylor, Mom of 18 and The Naked Podcaster about raw, open and honest conversations, vulnerability, and more.

Prior to the interview, Mark shares a word from this episode’s sponsor.

You can learn more about how you can get your work distributed to retailers and library systems around the world at starkreflections.ca/Findaway.

In his personal update, Mark shares a number of things:

  • The audiobook release of Fear and Longing in Los Angeles, and the inclusion of Alicia Witt’s music
  • The launch of Wide for the Win and multiple events associated with that
  • The release of Pulphouse Fiction Magazine #10 which Mark guest edited

Mark also welcomes new Patron David Perlmutter, thanking him and all patrons for supporting the podcast.

In their conversation Jenn and Mark discuss:

  • What Jenn does, coaching women executives, primarily Moms and what that can do to stress levels, sleep, motivation, exercise, and time
  • The coaching certifications that Jenn has and the fact that people don’t ask often enough if a coach has a certification
  • NLP (Neuro-Linguistic Programing)
  • Jenn’s role as Mom, executive, single mom, etc.
  • The importance of not feeling that you’re failing on all fronts when juggling all the balls and how it can happen to the best of us
  • How we take our own struggles and use that to make it faster, harder, smarter for others to do the same things
  • The numerous Jenn Taylor brands
  • When the opportunity to write a book first happened to Jenn and how she treated it like a job, and had tremendous support for her husband to make it happen
  • How, as of April 8th Jenn will have been a Mom for 29 years
  • How having a book was like having a child and the way Jenn was inspired to want others to have the same feeling
  • The way that learning about abuse her children had suffered allowed Jenn to open up regarding stories of struggles toward success
  • Jenn’s book HELLO, MY NAME IS . . . WARRIOR PRINCESS
  • How we don’t have to accept the labels that people put on us and letting go of those negative labels
  • The origin of the creation of Wonder Woman and how that resonated with Jenn
  • How a joke about wanting to be able to work at home without having to wear pants lead Jenn and her husband to come up with The Naked Podcaster brand
  • Jenn asks her guests to bare it all in an uncomfortable moment emotionally, so she’s willing to be uncomfortable and bare it all physically in support of them
  • How everything that Jenn does has to come from a place that is raw and genuine
  • How in Western culture we often see nakedness as something sexual
  • The fact that Jenn has only has two rude comments in the past four years of The Naked Podcaster show
  • The “Stripping with my Daughters” segment of Jenn’s show that’s about being very raw and is always on a topic that they choose to discuss
  • Why Jenn asks her guests for a bullet-point list in advance of the interview
  • The time Jenn found out during a live chat with her daughter about a planned suicide that was prevented via a circumstantial phone call that happened
  • And more…

After the interview Mark reflects on those who have opened up and been vulnerable in order to reach out and ask him questions about writing and publishing and how hearing Jenn talk about her experiences, reminded him of the great honor this has been.

Links of Interest

Jenn Taylor is Mom Of 18 and The Naked Podcaster and is a Mindset Coach and Motivational Speaker.

She is an NLP Practitioner and has 15+ years in the foster care sector as both a parent and a trainer, has written the blog – Mom’s Running It – for 9 years, and is a published author of a self-help memoir “Hello, My Name Is… Warrior Princess”.

She teaches Compounding Joy, bringing fast, easy, actionable exercises to people to increase their joy and gratitude. She is also married to an amazing man in Reno, NV, is a runner, minimalist, and healthy lifestyle enthusiast. Find her at momof18.com

The introductory, end, and bumper music for this podcast (“Laser Groove”) was composed and produced by Kevin MacLeod of www.incompetech.com and is Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0

The following automated transcription of the interview portion of this episode has not been human-verified

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Hey, Jen, thank you so much for joining me here.

Jenn Taylor: You’re welcome. Thanks for having me on.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: So I’ve got so many things to ask you about. Um, I think I want to start, obviously let’s start with your background for anyone who’s not familiar with you. So, you know, let’s say we met at a conference somewhere and I says, Hey, so what do you do?

How do you answer that question?

Jenn Taylor: What do I do? Well, I mean, there’s lots of spokes to the wheel, right. But it’s the same wheel. And what I do is I coach women executives, predominantly moms, right. My goal is to change the lens. You view the world with more gratitude and joy, because I know there’s science behind it, but I also know in my own personal life, what that does to your stress level, your sleep, your desire to exercise your motivation, even your time.

Um, so yeah. A lot of what I want to do is just coach him. And I want more positivity in the world. I want women to be kick-ass and bad-ass, I really want them to embrace who they are. I don’t want them to feel lost as parents. So we go through all of, all of those things. I’m licensed, which, you know, coaches don’t have to be licensed.

So, and, and people don’t ask often if you are and where your licensing came from, because you can just say you’re a coach and be a coach.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Is it, I mean, it’s not a business license, it’s a therapeutic license.

Jenn Taylor: Like how does that, uh, certification? So I have three, I call them smaller coaching certifications.

They were courses that I took that gave me a little certificate at the end and I can hold up and say, you know, I’m. And they’re great, but I’m actually an NLP practitioner, which is neuro-linguistic programming super hard to explain super easy. Uh, actually in theory, it’s basically connecting your unconscious mind, the things that play the tape in the background, the, the negative things that you say are the negative things that have happened to you and connecting them with your con conscious mind and healing them.

So it’s very different from talk therapy where you could be sitting with me and we could be talking about the same thing for six years and we’re having the same conversation. It actually is the way that I don’t need to hear your story. I don’t need to know your story. And yet still you can kind of get all the glitches that are working in the background of your mind.

To mesh together and have healing to move forward. So I do that through timeline therapy, breakthrough sessions, through timeline therapy. One-on-one I do that through hypnosis. I do that through pendulum work, and then I have a coaching certifications as an NLP practitioner, which is just. Way above and beyond what you need to have for coaching, but fantastic, because basically I can tell you that I have it and show you all my credentials that I’m licensed and I’m insured and I it’s the American board and all of that stuff.

So I feel real confident in my ability, but also I have tools in my bag that I can use depending on who you are and what’s happening in your life to make sure we get the outcome that we want. And that’s really exciting.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Okay. Now you said before, I kind of cut you off. That’s another question, but you were starting to say people don’t ask for that when they’re looking for a coach, why is that important?

Jenn Taylor: I, you know, it’s important to me. I don’t have to be the right coach for you. Right. But if you are looking for a coach and you want to make changes, it’s a question that I wish people would ask. Not because I have this great certification and it’s all wonderful. I did that because I respect the people I’m working with.

And I want to know that not only do I have the confidence to work for them, but I have the letters behind my name, so to speak. I mean, in a manner of speaking, right? Yeah. It’s important to find someone who’s well suited to you, your personality and what you’re looking for, that the program is what you want.

That’s huge, but also that helps you understand the, how they’re getting their results. And their ability to get the results and kind of where they’re coming from in the background. And I’m not the right fit for everyone. And that’s perfectly okay. I think everybody needs a coach. Every coach needs a coach.

I think it’s super important. I believe that I believe in the power of being able to heal and get past and move forward. And there are lots of coaching modalities that get that done. But I do want to encourage people if they’re looking for a coach just to ask, because it’s kind of like health food.

Right. There’s no, there’s, what’s the barometer of calling it health food, right? There are organic. There are no FDA regulations. There’s no testing. There’s no quality control. So when something is said, you know, organic or healthy or health food, and I’m a health food fanatic, I love it. So you have to be really careful about reading the label.

Knowing who’s making it where they’re coming from, what the company looks like, and coaching’s the same, there’s really no regulation on it. So all I would say is, regardless of who is the right fit, find out where they got to know what they know.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Okay. I like that. I like that. So let’s, let’s, let’s turn that question on Jen Taylor.

So, uh, you’re coaching, uh, women executives, for example, uh, where did, where did that come from? Because you talked about, I mean, you talked about a lot of things that are impact and, and, and one of the things that I think was predominant was that, that balancing. Right because that’s something that’s very, very much doesn’t tend to happen to privileged men.

Is that, is that okay? I can be an executive, but you know, she’ll take care of everything for me. Whereas when you’re a female executive with a family, with, uh, with a partner that potentially is a different beast, is that, is that something that comes up a lot? Yeah.

Jenn Taylor: And I wouldn’t say I wouldn’t take men or stay at home moms where it came from from me was I was a stay at home mom for about a decade.

Okay. And then I went back to work in the corporate world and I was a single mom at that point. I had gotten a divorce. So not only I had eight kids at home at the time and I hadn’t been in the workforce for a decade. And I had not finished my bachelor’s degree. So here I was a woman in her mid thirties, eight kids at home, a mom divorced, single, and having to jump back into the corporate workforce, which for me, started out as three jobs and ended up w.

Where I found more of my niche, right. I found kind of where I fit and I made good money and I had great jobs and I, I worked well, but then you run into, and you do this as a stay at home mom too, but it’s a different way. You’re failing on all fronts. Your boss wants more, your kids want more, your significant other wants more, the house wants to be cleaned.

You got to still cook dinner. Right. I was a stay at home mom, which is the most. Difficult and underrated job that there is, but I was, at least they aren’t available all the time. So to clean the house or take care of the kids or cook the dinner didn’t mean it all happened perfectly and there wasn’t stress involved, but I was present.

I was there. In the home, when you remove yourself and you go to another office several times during the day, well, you have to figure out a whole lot of things. Where are those kids going? Who’s watching them. How are they the pickups, the drop-offs, the reconnecting with them, which I hadn’t had to do before that.

Cause I was super connected as a stay at home mom. And I just feel like it’s a time or a place or a. When you’re an executive or a corporate mom, you just feel very acutely how much you’re failing on all fronts. And it doesn’t have to be that way. So I went through that process of being the corporate mom, the single mom.

Having the kids at home needing to figure it all out. And then five years ago I became an entrepreneur. So I am a mom and I am a woman and I’ve experienced parenting through all three of those. And then I remarried and blended families and you know, all of that. And so I have that experience of balancing all of those things.

And that’s the word that you used? Thanks. Sometimes that word is overused, but it’s very true that we need to find a way where like, you shouldn’t feel like you’re failing on all fronts. So how, how do you do that? And you’re losing yourself in the process. Like, remember when we were young, you know, I used to do this and I used to love this and I used to paint and I used to.

Okay. So where did you get lost in that somewhere? And it happens to the best of us. It’s, it’s really difficult for that to not happen. So I, I love working with women who are trying to juggle all the balls and feeling like they’re going to drop all of them or any of our, all of them is really hard.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah.

Yeah. So how has that was five years ago? Was there a, was there an inciting incident or something that basically, you said, I want to do this and obviously I’m, I’m making an assumption that you saw a need. That you could use some experience and understanding that you had to help other people. I’m assuming there was a crisis in there, but what was it?

Was there something you said, wait a minute, why am I not leveraging my

Jenn Taylor: right. That’s a great way to put it. I was a foster parent for 12 years. And then I actually, there were two of us. They took the program director of a nonprofit and split it into two program supervisors. So another woman and I ran this nonprofit and the nonprofit trained it recruited and trained foster parents to work with treatment level kids, which are the toughest of the tough.

Situations, not that the kids are necessarily the toughest of the tough, although they tend to be, but they come from the toughest of the tough situations. Right? So my part of that was the recruiting and the training. And I really switched gears from focusing on the kids, not my own children, but the kids outside in foster care.

So really focusing on parents, adults, From all walks of life who wanted to make a difference with these kids. And it was a stark realization at the stress level of these parents, whether the stress level of them getting licensed or wanting to, or having a desire or on the home front with their own children or the children that they wanted to foster or adopt.

And I thought, how did I get through this? So I took the training that I had. From being a foster parent, which was very extensive. And I had done a lot of speaking in that realm. I got licensed and certified as the highest level that I could possibly get at. And so I had a lot of training and experience from that.

And then the teaching that I was doing, I took all of that training experience that I. Talk to all of that. And I looked at the stress level of parents and I looked at my own experience from my childhood, from being a stay at home, mom and executive mom, foster care adoptions, blending families, all of it, and realize I have a very unique the skillset from this combination and my personality of not wanting to lose myself and not wanting to live in stress that came from my childhood.

Right. And I used all of that. And then I got the additional training and certification that I really wanted and needed to work with people on that unconscious level with those issues that are really deep rooted and seeded. I. I was, I think traditional talk therapy is wonderful and it’s one of the modalities that I’ve used, but I don’t think it’s the only thing that can be done.

And I wanted to kind of look outside of the box a little bit. And a lot of that came from, well, what did I do? To have less stress to have more balance, to not lose myself. And I, I just realized that there was a pattern in my life of exceptional opportunity that I definitely capitalized on and curiosity that I always have and really, really wanting to heal myself and really wanting to make a positive difference in the life of the kids that came into my home and to the parents who are training.

And I. That’s how it came to be. And my demographic is me. And I think that that’s super common with entrepreneurs. We take a struggle actually on my podcast, I found it a hundred percent to be true. We take our own struggles and the skills and gifts that we learned from that kind of on the other side of it.

And we, we have a desire. To make it faster, easier, and more supported for someone else. A hundred percent of entrepreneurs that I have interviewed that is their goal to make it faster, easier, and more supported for someone else. So your avatar is your younger self or yourself in the worst darkest moments.

And that becomes the people that you want to connect with and help. If that makes sense. Yeah.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah, yeah. As that’s that’s intriguing. So I wanna, I want to start digging into, uh, the Jen Taylor brands and I add an S to that because there’s multiple ones, there’s, uh, a mom of 18, which is, you know, the name of your website and much of your, a bunch of your persona, but then you also have the naked podcaster and they associated, and I know they’re tied together, but there’s also.

In individual core, uh, like how did those brands evolve or form?

Jenn Taylor: Actually, when I was in the corporate world, I, I didn’t try to not talk about foster. I mean, I was in the foster care world for a lot of my corporate time. And you had asked me why I became an entrepreneur and yes, I saw a need, but also the job ended.

The corporate job ended. And I had to decide, I mean, they’re nonprofits, there’s funding, there’s all kinds of stuff. And I thought I was going to retire doing that. I absolutely loved it, had a passion for it. And I have an amazing husband who said, we have financial, you can take a few months off. Why don’t you write the book?

You’ve always wanted to write. And then I had to decide, do I want to be the person who writes a book or the person who talks about writing a book, but never actually does it, which are two very unique. Personalities. It’s super easy to talk about it until, you know, you, you are presented with an opportunity to do it.

And I decided I wanted to be the person who wrote the book and I treated it like a job. And I dropped the kids off at school, the bus stop and. Until I pick them up. I had about six and a half hours a day and I wrote the book in two months and it was published two months later, I treated it like a job.

And I was so grateful for the gift of time, which you never have. Right. So that was what launched me doing this. And then I realized, hi, I really don’t fit in the corporate world as well anymore. So in the corporate world, People ask you about your life or someone will know who I am and say, Oh, this is Jen.

She has 18 kids, obviously that when I say I have 18 kids, not one who’s 18, like I have 18 individual children that I call mine and have called me mom, you know? So that’s, that’s, they’re not all adopted, but they’re all mine. So once that is dropped, There’s not much more to the conversation. There was a while in the corporate world, I was really trying to get ahead in the corporate world.

So I wanted a separation of church and state, so to speak. I was mom of 18 at home, but in the corporate world, I want Jen. Right, right. Yeah. Yeah. And so I would try to divert that conversation and in that process realized that is who I am. That’s a huge part. I’ve been a mom for 29 years now, April as of April 4th, April eight, as of April 8th.

Uh, I have been a mom for 29 years biologically. So instead of trying to be Jen Taylor and. Not let people, cause we all want to be seen. Right. We want to be seen for who we are. And I was trying to be seen for who I was in the corporate world. And then I realized that yeah, like 95% of who I am is being a mom to these 18 kids.

And it’s also what I learned in how I got my training. And so instead of trying to have other conversations, because if I say foster care or adoption, I can guarantee. That’s where the conversation is going to go. People are going to ask me, how did you do foster care? I’ve always wanted to do that. Where did you do your adoptions?

Anyone who has questions about that stuff is going to come out of the woodwork in those conversations. And anything else that I had wanted to talk about is not going to happen, right? So instead I full on embraced mama of 18, and that is the overarching, I mean, that is. Yes, that is who I became. I became a mom of 18 kids over time and everything I do comes from that experience comes from that part of who I am.

So that is the brand and yeah, sure. It’s got some shock value to it, regardless of whether it’s my website or not. It’s got some shock value to it, but it really is where I gained my experience. My time in the trenches. So that that’s that brand and that is everything. Everything I do, my coaching comes from that part of who I am.

Sure. There’s more to it than just mom of 18 Jen Taylor’s in there too. Right. But like I’m two personalities. Right. But my gen Taylor’s drive is what, how I became mom of 18. Right. The naked podcast was, so I wrote the book and then, you know, you’re an author. So I was like, I want everybody to have this feeling.

And it is just like giving birth. I’m a woman who has physically given birth. So I feel very confident in saying when you write a book, it’s like a child. It is, it is incredible. I wanted to give everybody the ability, my story. It was about my story growing up. It’s great story. I love my story. It’s one.

It’s one story, right? My goal was to make a difference to people who read it. And the catalyst was my husband telling me I had the time, but it was also that a year earlier, six of my kids had come forward and reported abuse from a family member. And I didn’t want them to be afraid of their story. Right.

I wanted them to embrace their story and feel okay about their story and their story became more. It became well, there were bullying incidents and dating incidents, where they were pushed out of their comfort zone and the, all of these other incidences that hurt them, had a negative impact on them. And I wanted them to not be afraid of their stories.

So where I had been afraid, well, I don’t want to hurt my mom, or I don’t want somebody to be offended by me writing the book. Once my children had this experience. I didn’t care. I don’t want to hurt anyone. Yeah. Yeah. But that’s not that fear is no longer holding me back. And I wanted everyone to experience that and helping people write a book, just.

Didn’t fit. It wasn’t a fit. I even worked for a publishing company and I loved it, but it was not a good fit for me as much as I wanted it to. So about nine months after the book was released, my husband’s best friend who had a very successful podcast said, Jen, you should say, you should start a podcast and handed me my first microphone.

And that is how basically you can write a book with me in an hour. You share your story. So it was a way for me to get a lot of people to share their stories of struggle, to success. And allow my listeners to feel less alone and build a toolbox, which is exactly what my goal was with my book feeling.

Let’s

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: backtrack for one second. Go ahead. What is the title of your book? Cause I know my listeners are going, Oh my God. What’s the book. What’s the book

Jenn Taylor: it’s called. Hello. My name is warrior princess and you can get a free PDF of it on my book. You can order it all, sign it, you can buy it, but I offer a free PDF of it on my website.

Because I want to make a difference.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: So what, so wait, you’re, you’re giving it

Jenn Taylor: away because you’re giving it away. I want to help people. Right. Okay. Wow. And

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: it is available. People can order it through like online bookstores.

Jenn Taylor: Okay. It’s on Amazon. You can buy, I actually I’ll grab one. I have one right here.

So here we go. There you go. Hello. My name is warrior princess. And

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: so let’s, let’s talk about the cover design, the purposeful cover design, where you’ve crossed out the different, what are those different things you’ve crossed out on that?

Jenn Taylor: It says victim abused and survivor. So brilliant. Yes. And my daughter, who’s 11 now was four, five, five, and I wrote the words and I had the little labels and I had her copy what I wrote in her little kid writing, because from a very small age, we either allow people to label us or we label ourselves.

Right. And so she wrote on those and I crossed them out and I crumpled them up. And. Hello, my name is Horia princess. It is all honestly about allowing other people and ourselves to label us. And that those, we don’t have to accept that no matter where it comes from, and you can step into who you are. So there’s a little trend here.

This was, I wrote this before I started coaching. But really it’s about stepping, letting go of that baggage and those negative labels and the things that happened to us and shifting the lens, we view them in and stepping into who we are and warrior princess is wonder woman. And when wonder woman was being designed, the man who was designing her to had a conversation with his wife and.

Her, she has, you know, the lasso of truth and she’s, she’s a giant, she’s an Amazon I’m five, nine. So I, one of the things I talk about in the book is how much it hurt me to be called an Amazon in high school. Right. It’s like the sexiest thing ever, honestly, but I could have let it define me right. And felt ho you know, uncomfortable about it.

I could have allowed that label to be negative. So warrior princess wonder woman’s her biggest thing was that she was victorious through love. And so this man’s wife said, well, then she has to be a woman. And that’s a huge part of how wonder woman was designed that she, her, her biggest weapon is through love.

So that’s the book. And through that, I realized through the book and through all the training I had, I realized I had a very unique way of working through really traumatic events. And I wanted to help other people to be able to work through really traumatic events and turn them into a warrior princess moment, not into a label.

I love

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: that. I love that. Um, so what you did is you, you got the mic, uh, based on recommendation from a friend. And so you should start a podcast. So you said, okay, I’ve got the book. People can read it, but I also want to help other people tell their own stories. Yeah. And, and that’s how it is. Is that when the brand, the naked podcaster came out or was that, did that come later after you’d realize what you were doing with

Jenn Taylor: people?

I realized I had a coach several years ago that asked me what my dream job was. And I remember one of the things I said was not to have to wear pants. Like I don’t want to have to wear pants. My, my, my number one virtue, or is, uh, Freedom. And that means a lot of things to me, but one of them is just being able to set my own schedule and do my own thing.

And so that whole theory of how I feel about the word freedom, really. I wanted to just like this we’re on zoom like this. Right. I don’t have to be wearing pants, so I am, but I don’t have to be. Yeah. And what I was doing, the podcast, it was called Jen Taylor, hashtag rerouting because it’s how life. Puts us in different directions.

It was very fitting. And like, you think you’re going one direction and all of a sudden it’s like buffering. Nope. Just kidding. You need to go a different way. And how point a to point B is not a straight line. It’s windy up a Hill. There’s a mountain. It’s winter. There’s a Sherpa. You have some base camps.

You need oxygen. You know, life does not send us on a journey that we expect. My husband walked in, you know, cause you can be in my room without being seen on camera and I wasn’t wearing pants. I don’t remember why I wasn’t wearing pants, but that would be a great part of this. It was a hot summer day.

Let’s say it probably was. I don’t know if my stomach was bothering, like, I don’t know. And so afterwards she’s like, so you really don’t wear pants, but it wasn’t just something you said like it’s. It wasn’t just figurative. It was literal. And I said, look, I could be naked and do my podcast because you only see me from the armpits up.

And he’s like, so you could be the naked podcast. And I went, wow. I could be the naked podcasts are. And he’s like, Oh my gosh, you, you need to do that. And I was, I said, wait, Yes, it’s great branding, right? It’s great branding, but it has to, for me, it has to still be raw, vulnerable and fit everything. Right.

And I looked at my description of my podcast at the time where I asked people to be raw, authentic, vulnerable, and bare it all. That my goal isn’t to make them cry. But my goal is to tap into that energy you’re at that place in telling your story, because I really want the listeners to resonate and feel not alone.

And in order to do that, you have to tap in as raw as I was in my book. I want people to be that raw in their podcast. And that made sense. So I’m asking them to do something very uncomfortable and bear it all emotionally. And so I’m willing to do something that. Is uncomfortable by bearing it all physically in support of them.

And so I, I switched it a few months into the podcast. The podcast will be four on May 3rd, and that was the naked podcast. So it was a complete and total accident. With again, tons of support from an amazing man and the, but the connection had to be there for me. It can’t just be, I mean, mom of 18 is who I am.

That might be great branding, but it’s who I am. There’s I’m not making it up. It’s not clickbait. I I’m mom of 18. I also am the naked podcaster. So in that sense, I’m very legitimately the naked podcaster, but there is much deeper part to that. It really is who I am. I feel honored and privileged that people are willing to share the deepest, darkest parts of themselves.

They’re trusting me in allowing me to hold space, to get their story out in the hopes that it helps another human being. Right. And I am so beyond honored that people sign up to do that with me and. I am asking them to be raw and emotional and absolutely stripped down naked emotionally. So, yes, it’s great.

Brandy. So high five, the great branding. I mean, there are marketers out there that see mama of 18 and the naked podcast and are salivating at the, what could be. And I don’t like that because it’s not coming always from a genuine. Place. And for me, it has to everything about what I do is raw and genius.

So yeah, that’s how it was born.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: So that’s interesting because I can imagine, I can only imagine with, with a brand like the naked podcaster, uh, and then tying it to mom of 18 that there’s just like, wait a second. What am I getting here? Like, you’re probably getting some of the wrong people who are clicking it because they, they think there’s going to be titillation and stuff going on as opposed to the raw authenticity.

But then part of me has to, has to ask the question is. Nakedness emotional nakedness in society, right. Where, where we wear our hearts on our sleeve or nudity in general is, is often frowned upon in Western culture. It’s not as acceptable to be open, to share or to be nude. Uh, and then, and then reconciling that with, well, wait a second.

What will my kids teachers think? Or, or any of those things, like, how do you, how do you deal with some of those things?

Jenn Taylor: I haven’t had a lot of negative feedback. I also, that’s interesting. You say Western culture because in other cultures, it’s just so not a big deal. We see nakedness as something sexual and there’s nothing sexual about this at all.

Uh, I haven’t had a lot of negative feedback. I can tell you with brutal honesty that I am a Christian woman. That is probably the hardest thing. And it’s not reconciling with anyone else or people’s teachers, no matter what my podcast is named or about people are going to like it. And just like same thing with coaching, right?

Baskin Robbins has 32 flavors. You pick the one that you like. We connect with people that. We feel connected too. So regardless people are either going to like it or not like it, or listen or not. Listen, I’ve I just need to stay true to who I am. The name makes it more difficult because it’s click baity or potentially I’ve had two rude comments in four years.

Okay. I delete the comments. If they’re not super useful, I’m

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: surprised because it come on. Let’s be honest. We’re in social media every day. Yeah. There are jerks out there. There are, there are not nice people who are constantly not nice. Uh, and you only, I’ve only had two I’m I’m actually. I’m shocked. Now I do believe in the goodness of people, but I’m shocked because the way people come out of the woodwork.

Jenn Taylor: Right. And on my, yeah, I’ve had to, the thing is, is that, you know, when I go to church on Sunday, And people are like, what’s your podcast called? And I say the naked podcast, I have no embarrassment over it because I know what it means. And I can’t be concerned with navigating other people’s thoughts.

That’s ridiculous. What a rabbit hole of insecurity that would be right. It’s about bearing it all emotionally, but that is the only place where I personally. Struggle with, am I putting something out there? What I put out there is aligned perfectly with society, with emotional content, with being Christian, with being spiritual with it doesn’t matter.

Right? It’s all. Trying to make people feel less alone, more supported, have tools, connect with people that might be coaches for them, uh, build self-esteem and positivity. So there’s nothing in what I do, but in the name it could be misconstrued. And so there are times that I have questioned whether I should name it differently or.

Not show up naked and have it just be figurative, not literal. Right. And I’m okay with myself and who I am. So I guess in the end, if people have an issue with it or they comment poorly, um, that’s really on them. And I just don’t take much stock in it because I feel real strongly in who I am and what my motives and intentions are.

So I don’t really worry too much about it. But if I did it, wouldn’t be about what other people think. And yeah, I’ve had two really obnoxiously rude. And if they’re rude, I would prefer to just answer it, like thank you for watching. Cool. Thanks. Thanks for noticing, you know, all news is good news sort of thing.

Like it’s. And these were above and beyond. I actually screenshot them reported blocked. It was, it was a sexual harassment at a level that nobody needs to. Experience. And that’s a shame because it’s not that negative comments that are bad. It’s the absolute, blatant, disregard and disrespect. That’s not appropriate, but I really haven’t had that experience much.

And as far as my kids are their teachers. Yeah. You can go to mom of 18 and to the naked podcast or, and it explains my kids came forward and stated that they were abused by a family member. And I took action a year later. I wrote my book, uh, nine months after that I wanted to share other experiences and it all came from me wanting my kids to be so.

Comfortable with their story, not sharing it and verbally vomiting at places, but working through it and embracing it and being okay with who they were within that story. And it came from a very healthy place. I’ve had several of my kids on my podcast.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah. Yeah. You have a, you have a segment called stripping with my daughters, daughters.

Yeah. As well. And that’s, that is sharing emotional, like at different phases in their lives, as they’re, as they’re going through different things

Jenn Taylor: or how on a naked podcaster, we wanted to come up with a name of this segment. And actually it was my daughter, one of my daughters who said, well, we’re kind of baring it all together.

Like stripping. Right. And I was like, so I’m stripping with my daughters. And again, it’s sure it’s click baity, but it’s very, very raw and they have come on. And what that is, they discuss a topic that they choose, right. Bullying being a child of divorce. Growing up in a large family, what traditions were wonderful, but usually except for the traditions and the things that were really important to, for me to pass down and how that child felt about them.

It, it was things that they went through that was difficult and it was their perspective as a child and my perspective as a parent. So what they were going through and how I was trying to parent them. And they’re the hardest for me because. I haven’t always done an absolutely stellar job. I’ve been a fantastic parent.

Who’s very human and fails forward on a regular basis. And I know that you can have both, you can do a phenomenal job and still be a human being who doesn’t always react well or the best way that you could. And I raise my voice too much and there are all of those things, right. It was a wonderful experience for my kids to be really raw about bullying or being a child of divorce and the things that were really difficult that maybe I didn’t do well.

And for me, for them as adults to hear me say, this is what you were going to, and this is what I did and why I did it that way. And that reconciliation between us, what it was, it, it was started because my kids had their own story. Right. And I wanted them to be able to start sharing that in a way that was a little easier.

Like, just talk about bullying as a kid and what that was like, people can relate to that. And I’ll talk about how hard it was to parent you through that. I learned things that I didn’t know, live and on the spot and react to them. They are all, yeah, they were all recorded. They weren’t unedited. Let’s put it that way.

How’s that there? I don’t edit them. So they were recorded and released and yeah, I mean, it’s a live and I don’t know what’s coming. Just like with my regular guests, I don’t know what they’re going to talk about or what they struggled with. And some of it is a direct reflection on my parenting and I have to handle that in the moment.

So they’re hard for me. They’re really cathartic for our relationship and amazing that they can get that part out without like what, what was my biggest fear writing my book? Well, what if I hurt my mom’s feelings? Right, right.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: So I, I mean, I’m, I’m fascinated as a parent, is there are conversations you want to have with your children that are not easy to have and sometimes around the dinner table or when they get home from school or whatever is not, they’re not in the mood.

How was your day? Fine is a typical, right? Like what happened? Nah, nothing. We went there. We had a test, whatever you have this very purposeful. Discussion framed in a way that probably allows a connection that most parents never have the privilege of having.

Jenn Taylor: I think it does. And I’ve out of 18 kids. One of my sons died and.

One of my kids, who I had extended in foster care is not an adult yet. I’m connected with her, but peripherally through social media. Right. I follow her. I watch her. She was with me for several years, but I don’t have conversations with her. So I, if you take that 18 and remove those two, that 16 of those 16 kids, I don’t have a good relationship with three.

I want to have a good relationship with those three, right? It’s their choice that we don’t speak often. And I respect that because they’re adults. And honestly they have their own story that they need to work through. It’s not what I want. Right. But I respect their decision. So that puts us down to 13, right?

Yeah. 13 kids. I have a really great relationship with wow. And two, I can’t right now. Ha well, if my son died, I clearly, I, we, we can’t have a, we had a great relationship and he’s gone right. When you look at that from a statistical perspective. That’s awesome. Awesome. I’m crushing it. Right. Although, although I respect my adult kids decision.

To keep me at arms length, the three that do I don’t, that’s not what I want. I want a close relationship with all of them, but I have a really close relationship with 13, four of which have wanted to come on the show and yes, it gives me, so I feel blessed to have really, really close relationships with most of my children.

Yeah, blessed beyond measure and have phone calls and conversations. You know, I’m down to one at home, out of 18. I have phone calls and conversations with them and connection with them several times a week with those 13 kids, I feel tremendously blessed in that. And then, yes, this was a way to take that and say, are you comfortable having this conversation about anything negative in your life that happened?

I’ll give you some. Examples bullying. We had one on sexuality, um, and sex for the first time and dating and relationships, you know, they can choose whichever topic they want. So they’re in control of the topic and they’re in control of sharing what it was like as a child. I think that piece of it removes them slightly.

They’re not talking about who they are right now, so it’s, it’s very vulnerable, but in a different way, they’re talking about something they experienced as a child, being the only girl on a baseball team and hating baseball and having short hair. Right. That’s not who she is now. That’s something that occurred an event or a time period that occurred that she really struggled with.

So there is an amount for them that maybe remove some of it from them. Cause it’s not. Triggering them and they get to choose what they talk about. And even in the discussion, I’m not like digging for them to share something that I want them to share. It is an open conversation of a struggle that they had and how that was difficult for me to manage as a parent.

What I did that I think was good, how I would do it the same again, and maybe what I would have changed in that situation. It definitely calls me out and it’s not always pretty, but it does allow us to have a closeness at a different level. Absolutely. Wow.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Wow. So I want to, I want to do parallel here for a second.

Cause you, your life goal, you are committed to helping other people. You are committed to helping pull things out and, and, and, and that coaching it’s that’s, that’s the essence of, of Jen Taylor. When you look at, um, professionals who deal with physical trauma, Medical professionals, EMT whenever. Um, sometimes there’s a PTSD that happens when you spend all your time healing wounds, treating people, stopping blood flow, broken bones, all those things.

You’re dealing with a lot of emotional scars from a lot of people and helping them process. Those things. Do you ever, um, need to take a break or step back from that? Or can that be an overwhelming thing for you? Because you’re like, okay, I’m listening to you have a conversation on your podcast or in any of the coaching sessions you do where the things that people bear are unexpected because you don’t know what’s coming.

Uh, they may resonate with something that’s happened to you personally, or they may bring back, uh, Very dramatic, traumatic and dramatic things. Does, is that a, is that something that, that comes up? Great

Jenn Taylor: question. Yes and no. And part, I was, I’ve been asked many times if the book was hard for me to write, because it’s about my dysfunction growing up, I grew up just like foster kids.

It was an in foster care, but I grew up and it was a dangerous situation, a lot of my life. And no, it wasn’t hard for me to write those parts because I had done so much work on myself. I think that that’s where I come from. I come from a place where I know you can go through being molested, losing your virginity to date, rape, being beat, being below poverty level, having dangerous men in your house, having a threat, having a backpack under your bed.

That was my life growing up. And you can experience those things and come out on the other side, very healed and not triggered. And that’s a huge part of the work I’ve done to myself. And we’re all onions. We’re all like, I’m going to quote Shrek here, right? We’re all layers of the onion. So you made you a huge amount of work to yourself, which allows.

And here’s an example of your unconscious mind. You’re laying in bed, you’re exhausted. You can’t wait to fall asleep and all of a sudden your brain picks that time to go, Hey, remember that unresolved thing. When you got bullied as a kid, it’s at back, you’re talking, right. And every time I bring it up, you get really freaked out and hurt and upset, and you’re not going to.

Sleep all night. Let’s think about that for a while. Okay. That’s unresolved trauma, or that’s an example of how it can con your mind wants to resolve things. It does not want the conscious and unconscious do not want to be in conflict with each other and they want resolution. And that’s a lot of the work that I do.

And I know how powerful it is because I’m an example of doing that work. And I’m also an example that things are going to continue to come up. But the massive bulk of work that I did to get rid of those really initial, horrific traumas I have done, I’m surprised often on the podcast. And I love that because I want it to be an organic conversation.

I asked for a bullet point list. Part of that is just to keep us on track or if you’ve written something. Uh, yesterday I had a live podcast and the guy had written that his grandfather had committed suicide and he always, he missed out on that relationship. I didn’t know anything surrounding that, except I wanted to make sure I was going to ask that question.

Right. So it keeps me on track in the sense that I have some guidelines of, of things that I know I want to know more about, or I want to touch base on. And if I. If we go on a tangent, it kind of brings me back to Oh yeah. But wait, there’s this thing that you want to ask and in our live talk yesterday, he’s talking about his traumas when he was growing up.

Which is what we talk about. It doesn’t have to be growing up. And I said, your wife seems like she’s been the backbone of support in your adult life. And he said, yes. And that’s really hard because she just died February 6th. And it was March 3rd. Okay. We’ll see your reaction right now in a live interview.

I learned that his wife died three weeks ago of cancer

and that’s a really new, fresh. Trauma for him that he is sharing willingly without me having any knowledge of that question with me and what an honor that is. So in that regard, do I get triggered? Yes. I guess the word trigger is okay. I get. Surprised by things people share with me. And I immediately feel grateful and honored and know how important it is for me to recognize that they are allowing me.

And I use the word hold space. They’re allowing me like you and I are in this conversation together. Millions of people might listen to it, but right now I’m trusting you. I’m allowing you to ask me anything you want and that you’re going to be there to hold that space for me. And there is a massive giving of that person.

And what an honor that is, I have cried twice as the host and once was with my daughter. So it was in, it was in her. I knew that she had had suicide attempts. I didn’t know specifically how often that had occurred. It didn’t happen at my house, but the last time did happen at my house. And I didn’t realize she put parameters on her suicide.

She had figured out how to do it well, and I’m, uh, 99.9% convinced that she would have been successful in this attempt because she’d been unsuccessful before. And she decided that if someone in the family called for her and wanted her, that that would stop, that would interrupt. And it was her then five-year-old sister who for the first time that she could remember asked her to please tuck her in and cuddle her.

Yeah. That night as a parent. Right. So I cried on that podcast and I cried one other. And it’s actually, I just looked a couple of days ago. It’s my number one. Most of you just on YouTube. It’s been watched almost 11,000 times, which I mean, numbers are numbers, right? People have millions and millions of views.

So that’s really low. But if I have 500 on average, 10,000 is pretty big. So it’s all relative. But Nancy Allen. Her business is called Taylor, the bell. And I knew we were going to talk about sexual abuse from her father. And she talked openly about how her biological father raped her from the age of nine to 21.

Now I was molested by a stepfather, so I can only imagine.

Connecting that from my experience to her experience and she was very open in it. And that is the only podcast other podcasts that I’ve ever actually cried on. I feel like it’s my job in holding space to connect with the person emotionally, but not become emotional because that, that makes it more difficult for me to be there, to, to help them.

Okay. And sharing their stories should be consorted and healing. That’s my goal. I’m not actually doing coaching or therapy directly, which I have considered shifting the podcast to that where you’re talking about your story, but I actually interrupt you and say, would you like to go through something right now with me that can potentially heal that even more?

But I’m not sure how I feel about that yet. Right. So I, but I, because I, so my desire is that through that sharing, it will be one more layer of the onion of healing them. Right. And I think that it is, I really feel strongly that it is, and I’ve gotten that feedback. And so, yeah, it’s been, yes, it’s it’s as a host to hold space for people when you don’t know what to expect and you’re live.

I’m live when I do it. That’s that could be daunting. And I just believe so strongly in the process of healing and the ability to hold space for another human. And I know that if in the end I have never had to go back and delete parts. I’ve done hundreds of interviews over four years, but I know that if I need to, I can.

Yeah. So I guess that the bottom line is I can delete it. If we need to, if something goes sideways, I can edit and deleted if I need to. But in editing podcasts, what we usually see is, Oh, the dog barked, or she said, I’m too many times. Or it’s those things. It’s not the actual, like raw content that we’re editing, but I could, if I needed to, so we’re safe.

It’s a safe space. Okay.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: I like that.

Jenn Taylor: Okay.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Yeah. Uh, well, I feel, I feel privileged that I got to hold this space with you. So thank you so much for sharing your story with me. Can you please let my listeners know where they can find out more about you, about your coaching, about your book, about your podcast, all, all that is Jen Taylor.

Jenn Taylor: Everything’s on mom of eighteen.com and every social media that I’m connected on. So essentially my emails, they’re my Google phone numbers. They’re my. Social media is there. So whatever your most comfortable with and connecting, you can use the contact form, or you can find me on Facebook. It really doesn’t make any difference, but just to encourage people to reach out and that every story is good enough.

Mark Leslie Lefebvre: Thank you so much, Jen.

Jenn Taylor: Thank you. Yeah. Thanks for asking such unique and great questions.

Published by Mark Leslie

Writer, editor and bookseller who haunts Southern Ontario. Craft beer enthusiast. Author of thrillers and horror novels such as A CANADIAN WEREWOLF IN NEW YORK, EVASION and I, DEATH. Also writes a series of stand-alone non-fiction titles exploring ghosts and the paranormal which include HAUNTED HAMILTON, SPOOKY SUDBURY, CREEPY CAPITAL, TOMES OF TERROR, HAUNTED HOSPITALS, and MACABRE MONTREAL. Editor of the anthologies CAMPUS CHILLS, TESSERACTS SIXTEEN, FICTION RIVER: EDITOR'S CHOICE and FICTION RIVER: FEEL THE FEAR.

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