Facing Fear and Finding Joy with Jessica Teich
Dr. Dan joyfully welcomes author and Rhodes Scholar Jessica Teich. Jessica’s memoir The Future Tense of Joy has been universally praised by many including Meryl Streep, Steve Martin, Daniel Silva, countless reviewers and a diverse group of bloggers for its honest, courageous, and real discussion of fear, suicide, violence against women, sexual abuse and rape.
Through her writing and her own harrowing story Jessica advocates for victims of violence and sexual abuse as well as anyone struggling with anxiety and mental illness. Ultimately, Jessica is a real life role model for purposeful parenting, facing fears, equality, philanthropy, and volunteerism. Her writing has built a community of connection and a safe place for truth telling. Jessica’s deeply personal take on how she is a survivor and how her own resilience is a daily process that she cultivates for herself and her daughters and family – by tuning into the noises and violence she experienced when she was sixteen she freed herself through the book and writing. It’s through her daily ritual of facing her own fears that she has found joy and is now passing that skill to her daughters.
Dr. Dan and Jessica Teich talk about real life parenting experiences during their conversation and all parents will relate to topics ranging from perfectionism to homework to the viral Netflix series “13 Reasons Why” and how as parents we need to model how to filter and how to help our teens sort through new — and oftentimes — frightening adolescent experiences. We are our children’s best and most influential resource — we need to listen and really hear them.
Dr. Dan emphasizes how our children are always watching: they see and hear what we are doing and then learn from our examples. This episode deeply connects to how Parent Footprint challenges us all to be our best for ourselves and our children. Dr. Dan asks Jessica about her one piece of advice to work through fear and to find joy – be present.
This thought-provoking episode wraps up with Jessica’s Parent Footprint moment about her own unfounded fear of a particular ice cream when her children were young and she poignantly describes how she had to push away this irrational fear in order to open up the whole wide world of joy to her children – ice cream and all!
About Jessica Teich: Jessica Teich graduated summa cum laude from Yale and received an M.Phil degree from Oxford, where she was a Rhodes scholar. Her previous book, Trees Make The Best Mobiles: Simple Ways To Raise Your Child In A Complex World, appeared in Vanity Fair, People, Us, and The Chicago Tribune, and was featured on the Today Show. For almost a decade, Teich worked as a literary manager at the Mark Taper Forum, commissioning and developing plays. She subsequently received a grant to write and direct a movie for the Directing Workshop for Women at the American Film Institute. Teich served as head of the Biography committee for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and her articles have appeared in The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times, and numerous other publications. She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two daughters, and dog.