Subscribe
Share
Share
Embed
The Bad Mom Podcast is where raw parenting stories meet real solutions for raising resilient kids in today’s anxious, digital world. Hosted by humanitarian and Just Like My Child Foundation founder, Vivian Glyck, each episode blends unfiltered conversations, expert insights, and lived experiences to help parents swap guilt for grit—and discover how imperfect parenting can still support and encourage strong, thriving humans.
Bad Mom Podcast
Lisa Nichols
Season 1, Ep 4
Vivian Glyck: Hi, it's Vivian Glyck Glick and today's episode is incredibly personal. I sat down with my dear friend and world renowned speaker, Lisa Nichols, and what unfolded was one of the most honest, emotional and healing conversations I've ever had. Not just the podcast host, but as a mom. We talk about it all, about those moments that no one prepares you for.
When your child is in pain, when you feel powerless, when you have, when the love you have for them is so big, it hurts. I open up about my own experience with my son and Lisa shares stories from her journey, not just as a world renowned speaker, but as a mother who's been through it all. Depression, judgment, guilt, resilience, and radical love.
If you've ever felt like you were failing your child or like you were losing yourself along the way, I want you to know you are not alone. This is part one of a two-part conversation and I hope you'll take a deep breath and join us for all of it. There is healing here.
My story is very, very personal and, and I think I
Years ago I was texting you across the EERs and just saying, I'm so brokenhearted. What's going on with my son? You know, I can't, I love this person more than anything in the world. Um, I don't feel like I can do anything, right? He's sad, he's depressed, he's anxious, he's non-communicative, and I know he's brilliant and he's kind and he's funny.
Right? And all of those things. And you gave me a lot, you gave me a lot of, um, a lot of balm at the time, and you were like, okay, this, this is a momentary thing. And you know, you had gone through it, but I couldn't help but feel like a bad mom. Yeah. And so I have a really important question for you, Lisa Nichols.
Have you ever felt like a bad mom?
Lisa Nichols: Uh, many times. Many times. Um, for many different reasons. Um, uh, and, and they range, um, from the, from when Jelani was five months old and I didn't have my money to buy him Pampers, so I had to wrap him in a towel. I felt like I had one job to do, feed him and keep him protected and keep him dry, and I couldn't do that to, um, um, his father's choice to make business, uh, decisions that were out of integrity, landed him in prison.
And, I remember when my son was 13 and his energy toward his father turned to anger. Mm. 'cause he had not been in his life. And then his anger toward his dad began to spill over to me. And I felt like I was a bad mom for who I chose to parent my child with. And then my son went through depression, and I want her to sing that says, you're only as happy as your sad child.
And, um, I just felt like I couldn't figure out how to make this human happy. Mm. And to add to it, I, my light, my life had so much light on this other. [00:04:00] Side, I mean, just miraculous things happening.
Uh, the Chicken Soup for the Soul and then The Secret, and then Larry King and then Oprah, and then the world, you know, and everyone all around the world has given me accolades for my contribution and I don't know how to make my son happy. So yeah, I felt like a bad mom before for long periods of time
Vivian Glyck: And, yeah, I can, so I can so relate.
Like it's so bright over here and it's very dark over here and this is where my heart is, right? Yeah.
Lisa Nichols: I feel powerful and I feel powerless and, and I don't do well with feeling powerless. I'm a leader.
Vivian Glyck: Yes, you are. That is for sure.
Lisa Nichols: So I needed to, I needed help.
Vivian Glyck: Yeah. I feel like one of the things that I'm always struck by in your just being in your presence, because we've had the chance to be friends and to be near each other, is just how you can find the light in any darkness and how you can take any situation.
And I can just imagine with the masses, the hundreds of thousands of people whom you've motivated that you have heard and seen the, you know, the darkness, the darkest of the dark, um, and been able to turn that around. And I'm just wondering, you know, can you tell me a little bit about, I know motivating the teen spirit was really where your heart started.
Yeah. So can you tell me a little bit about what that inspiration was and where that came from, and some of the, like a story about darkness that you've turned, you've been able to enable a young person to see the light. Yeah.
Lisa Nichols: If I can, if I can tell you too, 'cause the first is mine. Uh, when I was 19,my mom was amazing and my dad was amazing.
But I could not get myself out of this feeling of sadness. I felt lost. I felt scared. I felt angry. I felt confused, and I didn't know how to tell anyone about it because they would look at my lifestyle and go, that doesn't make sense. You have a great mom and a great dad. And so I found myself in my bathroom with a handful of, uh, I never forget, it was eight.
Extra strength Tylenol in my hand. Wow. And I, Vivian Glyck, I didn't decide not to take the Tylenol because I decided to live, and this is really important that, you know, I decided not to take the eight Tylenol because I didn't know if it would work. And I realized I fell to my knees that day and I cried out to God, God, please remove this pain that I can't explain.
I can't explain why I feel so hollow inside, and so scared and so angry and anxious. And I said, if you help me get through this feeling, I'll help as many other teens as possible. To do the same. Wow. So I, you don't, you never, with all the time we spent together, you never knew the origin story of why motivating the teen spirit was born.
But that's why, 'cause I was a suicidal teen and I had no reason technically, physically, financially, none of that made sense that I was this sad. I had access. I had a great dad, a great mom. And so I said, I wanna help as many other teens as possible go through this really crazy emotional turbulence.
And so 11 years later, uh, God came knocking and I launched motivating the teen spirit. So I just wanted to tell you that. And, I think one of my best stories is a young woman who called me at 10:30 at night and I had given out my number at an assembly at a high school.
And two years later, she called me and she said, uh, gave me her name. My name is Tamil. I'm valedictorian of my high school. I have a 4.3 GPA, uh, I lead [00:09:00] everything. I'm on the city council, uh, in the city of Los Angeles representing teens. I've been accepted to six universities. Wow. And I don't plan to attend any of them.
I said, why? She said, because I'm looking at my suicide letter. And I talked her into, um, meeting me the next day and we started a journey and I started with Tamil at 18-17, I think. And, um, today Tamil, uh, has an MBA and she does Child Protective Services. Her daughter has gone through our program. She is the first student in the program because I created it with her and she has for, it's, it's been, I don't 30 years now.
Literally 30 years now and wow. And she is, she still comes to our events and she still tells her story. And now her daughter is in a private high school on scholarship. And she said, motivating the teen spirit helped me put words to my feelings. They helped me process my emotions.
So I wasn't emotional, I was emotionally aware of how I felt. And so motivating the teen spirit helps with your eq, your emotional intelligence. How do we identify how we're feeling? 'cause feelings guide your actions. And so often we're asking our kids, what were you thinking? Right? When they do something really crazy, “What were you thinking?”
And they rarely answer us because they actually don't know. But if you can get them to feel safe enough to tell you what they were feeling. That's very clear to them. And so I realized that what I wanted to do was help teens unpack and [00:11:00] identify and navigate through and control their feelings. And so we spend time online virtually, and we spend time at our camp just helping teens become more emotionally, uh, uh, uh, aware and evolved.
And it was what I needed. I created what I needed. Yeah,
Vivian Glyck: We all write the book we need to read, right? We all teach that thing that we need to learn, learn. Um, that is, it's just such important work, Lisa. And I know you have just a, you know, a huge calling and. You know, my passion is just like my Child Foundation and Girl Power Project, and now with Project Grit and the Bad Mom podcast, I can't help.
Uh, and it comes from my stories also. I can't help but want to protect kids from things that yeah, they really should be protected from. I mean, we, there, there's that boundary, right? Like, we all have to fall on our face and we need our parents to get the heck out of the way, and we need to be able to have those experiences.
But then there are those things where, you know, predators and uh, and, and, and, and abusers and, and substances, et cetera, show up before we can know what we're thinking.
Lisa Nichols: You're absolutely right. There are things, there's, there's this space of purity that allows development, allows awareness, allows problem solving.
And when our children are thrust, when we were coming up and, and I get it's a different world and I embrace that world and I wanna be a part of it and I wanna add to it, but there was this bubble we had called our family unit, our community. And now, um, through technology, you wake up and at. At six, the world, all of a sudden it's too big, it's too hollow, it's too insensitive.
Where's the safety net? Where's the bubble? Where are the rituals? And where the um, where the things that you always do together. And because what I found when I was working with a psychologist is when teens become adults and they go through hard times, it's the memories of family rituals that will help them to feel grounded and safe again as an adult.
And if we don't give them that, if they don't have that, and it doesn't have to come from a family. It could be friends, it could be, but they need to have something to feel grounded on. And, um, so I agree. I, I, and I think that, I think that because we weren't taught emotional iq, right? We weren't taught eq, we weren't taught how to be emotionally intelligent.
We figured it out. Uh, and we just, you figured it out really well. Well, well, I'm a trial by fire kind of girl, so I, uh, you know, I got fired from five jobs in my twenties.
Vivian Glyck :You know, I was talking to my son two days ago and he's, you know, he's getting it together.
He's looking for jobs, you know, it's a different world and I can just feel it. I mean, and he's got the EQ now, which I'm grateful for, where he says, I'm really scared.
Lisa Nichols: Yeah. And that's a powerful thing that's really powerful to be able to articulate, because now we know, now we know what feeling we're dealing with.
Vivian Glyck: I, so you're, I just want to go back to where you said you lost five jobs, right? I think that. I think that there's a bit of this world where these kids, this generation, have not had to skin their knees as much. And so there's that horror of, I'm going to fail, and how can you, you know, with what you do, and I wanna come back around, how do you teach or work with young people to help them really understand this moment is not forever.
Yeah.
Lisa Nichols: Um, so one of the key four things that, um, that I teach when we work with teens is the freedom to fail. And so we don't talk about what it takes to win. Everyone has a masterclass on that. Everyone has, uh, you know, everyone has a YouTube channel on how do you win, but no one has, uh, the conversation of the permission to fail as long as you fail forward.
So, um, I, I often say the reason why I run and leap more than most. I run and I leap more than most. Yes, thank you. I've fallen in more than most. I've lost more money, more than most, I've also had a lot more success than most because I allow failure to be in the equation. I don't try to avoid failure.
I do everything I can to, I don't plan to fail. I create a system, but I'm not afraid of falling. And I think the best gift we can give our children, uh, and young adults is the courage to get back up. Yeah.
Lisa Nichols: So the, to me, the attention, where the energy goes is showing and sharing and, and giving them evidence. That they can get up. If you just focus, you get up every time. Getting up is in your blood. It's what you're made of. Your glutes, your hams, your quads, your calves, your spirit, your backbone is designed to get you up every time.
[00:17:00] Sometimes you'll spring up and sometimes you'll stagger up, but you will always get up
Vivian Glyck: \Anxiety is rampant. I mean, it is rampant. And that, that has been one of the most difficult things for me to maneuver with my son because I see how painful it is.
You know, I see how debilitating it is. And because I'm like a world class Jewish mother, I wanna come in and at the end of the day, save the day, make it better, put the rate medicine on it, and be able to cover it up. And that doesn't help
Lisa Nichols: anybody. And by the way, that crosses over to world class black mama too, that we do the sound.
I know, I, you know, you know, we sit very close in our, in our practices. I wanna remove the pain from my baby and we can talk about it later.
Vivian Glyck: And so at that moment, what is it that you would, what are the words that you would recommend to the parent, whether it's a 2-year-old or a 22-year-old?
Lisa Nichols: Um, so for me, I, you know, I I I'm so excited I'm, I can't wait for you to come to one of our teen camps 'cause Yes, I'm
Vivian Glyck: coming.
Lisa Nichols: Um, uh, what it, what it does for so many people is it restores hope.
'cause you watch the process happening, you watch how they come in and then you watch the transformation and you're like, if I hadn't seen it myself. So we've been doing this now for 28 years and um, I remember when I was, I was developing my board of directors and I had a criteria that qualified not only my board of directors, but my investors and someone said, I have to be qualified to give you my money.
I said, you do. You have to believe in teen transformation. You have to believe that they have the ability to transform. And [00:19:00] so one of the things that I sit in their space is permission, because anxiety is a rigid feeling when you've. You've eliminated options. It has to be this way, and then the anxiety goes up and it has to work.
Remember, our children are watching filtered lies. They're watching the fifth version of the video edited as if it was number one. That's all they're seeing. And so they then look at their life in its real form, not the edited video. And they're like, this does not, I suck. I suck because there. Huh, I can never be like that.
I can never be like that. And so one of the things that we do, number one, is we create a safe space. We assume our children feel safe, and uh, their worlds are much noisier than our worlds were. But even in our world, even when you were [00:20:00] 15 and I was 15, our parents assumed that we felt safe. While we may have felt physically safe, you don't always feel emotionally safe in your relationships.
You feel like there's consequences. You feel like there's judgment. You feel like there's repercussions. So consequences, judgment and repercussions cause us to feel emotionally unsafe. We live in relationships that way all the time. So one of the first things that I do with our teens is I establish emotional safety.
So we establish a safe space. We don't call them rules. We call them agreements because teens are also inundated with rules. So in an agreement, we allow them to buy in to the three agreements that create a safe space. And if anyone doesn't, can't make that agreement, we remove them from the space, talk to them and so they can agree and bring them back.
So the rule, so the person one-on-one or one to many can see. Wow. Okay. First [00:21:00] agreement is no judgment.
Vivian Glyck: No judgment.
Lisa Nichols: The agreement to reserve all judgment of you when you speak. And the agreement to reserve all judgment of myself when I speak. Wow. The second agreement has no repercussions. What's said here, stays here.
And if we bring it up later, we only bring it up later to support each other, or we don't bring it up. And then the third agreement is unconditional love, which most people have incorrectly. They think unconditional love is Lala, I love you so much. Unconditional love actually is truly defined as, please love me through my ugly.
And so when our teens make those three agreements, they automatically are in this whole new ecosystem in their head. The walls melt down. Now let's talk. So that's number one, is intentionally, every time recreating a safe space.
And they get so used to that safe space when we come together, like, can we do the safe space? I'm like, absolutely. Can you show my mom the safe space? Absolutely.
Vivian Glyck: how would you create that bubble to be like, okay, crap happens all the time, right? We're mad at each other, we're yelling at each other. The rules are broken. We get frustrated. But how do you create a sphere where, yeah, we're gonna do this. Once a week or whatever. Yeah, yeah,
Lisa Nichols: Yeah. And make that ritual, the new norm, make that part of our norm.
So with Jelani, I was a single mom. I was a single mom and a CEO establishing and growing a global brand in business. It was insane. So, I gave Jelani permission. Ask me for a safe space when you need to tell me something that you might be nervous to tell me.
And I. And so he was 13 once, and we're sitting at the Marriott, having lunch and he says,mom, mom, I need a safe space. And I immediately freak out. I'm like, Ugh. He says, you only need a safe space when stuff is happening. And so I say, okay, it's safe. He goes, no, no, no. Do you agree to reserve all judgment?
I said, I do. He goes, raise your hand. I'm like, we're not in a workshop. So he goes, raise your hand, mom. I go, okay. He goes, do you agree to no repercussions? Yes. Do you agree that, uh, unconditional love? Yes. And then he added another agreement. He goes, do you agree to not tell grandma? I said, A safe space only has three agreements.
And my son said something that really, really hit me, hit home. He goes, mom, I, I get to decide what makes me feel safe. Yeah. I went, huh? Okay. I agree not to tell grandma and, uh, he just got a bad grade in English, but boy, I was bracing myself for, I was like, that's, oh, so, so number one, [00:24:00] you're like, phew. Yeah, yeah.
So, number one, to answer your question, we can actually teach our children, even our adult children, to ask for what they need. Jelani is 31. Jelani will still call me to this dangled mom, I need a safe space. I said, okay, great. There's, and now we do it faster. There are no repercussions, unconditional love, and no judgment.
And at the end of the conversation, as parents. We're always giving advice. We get to ask for feedback. Son, daughter, did you feel safe? And that's feedback for us. Parents rarely give their children permission to give level feedback that this is a relationship. A relationship is a relay. We often enter into a monologue, not a dialogue.
We actually call it disrespectful if our children talk back to us, not if we've taught them emotional intelligence and how to say it. Yeah, [00:25:00] my son is, my son is far, far, far from perfect. But what he does understand, 'cause he had to grow up in the work 'cause he was the little tissue box holder the entire time.
Yes. He.
If they get to have a feeling and feelings are neither right nor wrong. Parents' feelings are real. So the moment you tell someone you shouldn't feel, you've now negated a very real feeling. Now they don't feel safe enough to have that feeling in your space. So the next time they have the feeling, they won't mention it because you told them that they shouldn't have it.
So recognizing that feelings are neither right nor wrong. Feelings aren't opinions, feelings are emotions, and feelings are always real. So the second thing you can do, the first thing that's created a safe space. The second thing is to allow the feeling to be real. And the words that we say is, you shouldn't [00:26:00] don't feel that way.
Don't cry. You shouldn't be sad. We do it all the time. It's embedded in our language, it's embedded in our communication. We learned it from our parents. It's not that we're bad parents. It's just that we learned some un um, just, just some, some behaviors that don't support emotional intelligence.
Vivian Glyck: Well, I think it's our way of making it better, right?
So we're, we're going to control it. Right. And, um, that's the, I I, I think I mentioned what this, when I last saw you, that the, my, my guiding light this year has been the serenity prayer. You know, God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change. I can't change the way that you feel. You know, the courage to change the things I can, I can change my response to it.
Right. And the wisdom to know the difference, right? Yeah. So
Lisa Nichols: the, and the patience and the capacity to hold the space for, and the wisdom to cut the umbilical cord of codependency. Oh. Yeah, it's all in there. So I do this thing, I've been doing this now, Vivian Glyck, literally for maybe 26 years, where I physically have to do this.
I cross my body. And when I'm doing that, it's because I feel my codependency. I feel my need to fix it. I feel my need to be the solution. I feel my guilt that you're feeling that way. And this is me cutting the emotional umbilical cord.
Vivian Glyck:
Lisa Nichols: And it's not about them, it's about me falling into a behavior that doesn't support the growth of the person that I'm in this relationship with. It's the struggle that builds the muscles of resiliency and patience and compassion and empathy. And so I really look at that a lot as it relates to my parenting. Uh, I have to constantly, Lisa, are you, are you coaching? Are you supporting, are you holding the space for or are you cutting?
Vivian Glyck: t wasn't until I really. I took care of myself and let go when my son started to stand up. Yeah. And do better. Uh, you know, I, I
Lisa Nichols: So appreciate that because, uh, a lot of my, my supporting Jelani was me giving myself permission, um, to be a good intention mom who may not have made all the right decisions.
Um, but I, my heart was always in the right place, right? For me to give myself permission to learn while he was growing up. Like a lot of his evolution had to do nothing with him and had to do with me learning how to navigate, hi, my journey [00:29:00] parallel to his journey. And I love
Vivian Glyck: that.
Lisa Nichols: Yeah. Learning how to navigate my journey parallel to his journey, bearing witness to his life unfolding and not interrupting or intervening.
So much so that I am, uh, I'm, I'm stifling his growth and I, when I saw it that way, 'cause we love the sacrificial martyr mama statements. I just love my son so much and we can really use that as a reason to stay inside these dysfunctional behaviors and practices. And so I remember there was a time when Jelani was like 22 and I, I just felt so defeated.
Because I couldn't put my finger on what had I done, what all had I done? And I was talking to my spiritual mentor. She came to my house and stayed at my house and she really [00:30:00] bonded with Jelani and spent time with him. And at the end of the trip, she set me down in the backyard and she goes, you know, it's not easy being your child.
And I went, what? Wow. I, I'm like the cool mom. I do the sleepovers. I listen. I got a safe space Africa. I like, what do you mean? And she says, you cast a big shadow. She said, everyone's amazed by your life because they look at your history and you made so much of your life. She said, but now they're looking at your son's life.
He was introduced to the world in a New York Times bestselling book. Everyone has such a big expectation of him and all he's doing is trying to find out who he is from under your shadow. But your shadow is so, oh my God. It was like she said, your shadow is so big, he has to walk away far enough to see his own.
Oh,
Vivian Glyck: I love that.
Lisa Nichols: Well, I cried for three days so much. I cried for three days before I could love it.
Vivian Glyck: It's so hard to see the shadow that you cast.
Lisa Nichols: Well, we're in the frame. You're in the frame with your child. You're in the frame with your child. She was a blessing.
And then three years later, Vivian Glyck, three years later, my son called and said, mom, can we go out to lunch? and he said, I just wanna let you know you've done a great job.
You've always been there for me. He said I needed to find it. Out who I was. Now he didn't know my spiritual mentor said any of that stuff. I didn't repeat any of that to him. But here's this young man now saying, I just needed to figure out who I was. I need to see who I was not being your son only. I wanna lift the weight mom.
And then tears came to his eyes and I saw how much it meant to him. He goes, I wanna, I want you built. I watched you build mom. I was there when we ate beanies and weenies. I remember eating spaghetti for four and five days. I remember getting free cheese and free pasta and then you've changed our lives.
I wanna know that I'll have it in me without you,girl. I was done. It made sense though.
Vivian Glyck: It's so, it's such an important lesson I think, for all parents and, and, and I think there is this thing where. The more successful we are and the more we want them to see that it's possible to do these things. Like follow in my footsteps. I have an organization called Just Like My Child Foundation.
Like if that's not a to live up to. We could go on forever, ever here. I love this conversation.
Lisa Nichols: I'll just have to come back and visit you for bad mom part two with Lisa.
Vivian Glyck: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, um, I just, I think you gave us so much gold here