Thank You So Much for Telling Me

What’s on my mind today?

I’m trying to build a new reflex with my kids.

Anytime they come to me—big stuff, small stuff, weird stuff, anything—I want my first response to be the same:

“Thank you so much for telling me.”

I’m not saying it because it’s cute. I’m saying it because I need it.

That one sentence buys me a few seconds I usually don’t take. It gives me a breath. It slows down the part of me that wants to jump straight to fixing, teaching, correcting, minimizing, or controlling the moment.

And more than anything, it’s my attempt to build something that matters more than any single conversation:

A safe place to tell the truth.

Because we all have thoughts we don’t know what to do with.

The “Is this normal?” thoughts. The embarrassing ones. The dark ones. The ones that feel too weird to say out loud. The ones we test in our own head and then swallow back down because we’re not sure how they’ll land.

Do we all have someone we can run those thoughts past? A sounding board? Someone we can say, “You know… I was thinking ____,” and not get punished for it?

Most of the time, I don’t. I’m still too self-conscious. I still want to appear like I have it together. I still want control over how I’m perceived.

But I’ve learned something that keeps coming back around in my life:

Something special happens when two people are together and one of them has the courage to say, “I’m broken.” It gives the other person permission to say, “Oh… me too.” And then the real connection can begin.

I heard a story recently—Mel Robbins was talking with a therapist—about something that happened to her when she was a teenager. When the therapist asked who she told, her answer was “no one.” And he pointed out that the deeper trauma wasn’t only the event. It was the isolation. It was the fact that she didn’t have an adult she felt safe telling. Someone who could help her name it. Someone who could help her understand she didn’t do anything wrong.

That hit me hard.

Because I can’t control what my kids will go through. I can’t protect them from everything. I can’t follow them around and block every painful moment like some kind of human shield.

And if I’m honest, the fear underneath all of it is simple:

I’m afraid my shit will become their shit.

I’m afraid the things I wrestle with—my blind spots, my habits, my fears—will somehow become the water they swim in.

And I’ve noticed something else about fear.

What we fear has a way of becoming our truth—not because it was destined, but because we start looking for it everywhere. We find it in everything, even when it isn’t there. It’s like tracking a number in sales: The checker gets what the checker checks. And fear is a relentless checker.  What you pay attention to grows teeth. What you hunt for starts showing up in every shadow.

Which leaves me with a humbling question:

If I can’t control what my kids experience… what can I control?

I can control my response.

I can try to be the safe space they can come to. The safe person they can tell anything to without fear of judgment.

Not because I’ll always have the perfect answer, or because they’ll always get what they want.

But because I want them to be able to tell me anything—and to witness my reaction without fearing it.

This has been showing up in our house in ways that are hard to explain unless you’ve lived with kids up close.

Sometimes something “small” can feel enormous to them. A worry can get stuck. A thought can spiral. They can end up convinced that a mistake—or a fear, or a moment they can’t shake—means something terrible about them.

And in those moments, it can be very hard not to minimize it.

It can be hard not to say, “You don’t mean that,” or “That’s not a big deal and you know it.”

But if it’s the biggest deal in their body in that moment… then it’s the biggest deal.

So I’m practicing my sentence.

Not as a trick. Not as a script. But as a standard.

Because the sentence doesn’t just help them. It helps me.

It reminds me to stay curious. It reminds me not to rush to control.

And it reminds me that this isn’t only a parenting thing.

This is a leadership thing.

At my office, we literally have a one-page process called “Safe Space.” If someone says they need a safe space, it’s a cue: no interrupting, no judgment, stay curious, open heart, open mind. Just get the truth into the room.

Because the truth is: mistakes happen.

And the danger usually isn’t the mistake.

The danger is what people do when they don’t feel safe telling the truth about it.

I had a team member years ago who routinely wouldn’t tell me when something went wrong. The mistakes were always discovered—and often in the worst way. It eventually cost them their job, and cost me a friendship.

That situation is still with me because it taught me something I don’t want to learn twice:

If people don’t feel safe telling you the truth, you will get less truth.

And when you get less truth, you make worse decisions.

So whether it’s my kids or my business, I keep coming back to the same idea:

Make it safe to say the thing.

Which brings me to another phrase that’s been following me around:

“Be still and let the forest find you.”

I’ve heard versions of this in meditation for years, and I still struggle with it. When something feels like a crisis—at home, at work, in my own head—the hardest thing to do is often the thing I need most:

Stop.
Breathe.
Observe.
Then proceed.

Stillness feels like doing nothing. It feels like losing control. It feels like wasting time.

But when I can actually pause long enough to observe what’s happening—especially what’s happening inside me—I notice patterns. I notice stories. I notice thoughts that aren’t useful.

And once I can ask the question “Is this useful?” most of the noise falls away.

Ninety percent of what I’m spiraling about isn’t useful. It’s just loud. It’s old. It’s familiar. It’s my brain trying to protect me with control.

Being still doesn’t magically fix the situation.

But it gives me a chance to see the way forward.

So today, I’m making a small commitment. Not a perfect one. Just a real one.

To be a safe space for my kids.
To be a safe space for the people who work with me.
To be a safe space for myself.

And when someone I love walks into the room carrying something they don’t know how to hold yet—something small, something huge, something messy, something embarrassing, something “weird”—I want them to hear the same sentence every time:

“Thank you so much for telling me.”