My guest today is Sara Ernst. Sara is a nature lover, a singer, a musician, an artist, a poet and a writer. She is the whole package! She is a wife and mom too, and lives with her family in Virginia.

A childhood experience with a tricky person, her love of music and wanting to help protect kids all unexpectedly led her to write a song and a book that teaches and equips young children to use their voice to protect themselves. Her book, her music and her work are fantastic and so helpful to many families. You are going to come away with so many practical, helpful tips for keeping your kids safe from tricky people. I am really glad to have Sara on the show today!

Some links from today’s show:

Visit Sara’s website here

Follow Sara on Instagram here

Find Sara’s music here

Find Sara’s book, Shout No! here

Download the Shout No song and coloring sheet here

Find Sara’s book, Poetry for the Wild and Curious Ones, here

Find Greta’s book here

Some of my favorite quotes from today’s episode:

*”Parents don’t want to talk to their kids about tricky people because they want to protect their kid’s innocence. But we have to tell our kids that tricky people exist so we can give them to tools to protect themselves from the tricky people.” Greta Eskridge

*”I wanted to write something gentle yet effective that would equip kids from an early age and would give the words to shout no and run away from tricky people.” Sara Ernst

*”We can react to our experiences by simply moving on, or we can let them fester and turn to bitterness or shame or we can say, “I wish that wouldn’t have happened, but I’m going to do something positive with it now.” Greta Eskridge

*”When we tell our kids not to cross the street without us we don’t go into graphic details about what can happen if they get hit by a car. We just tell them, “you could get hurt” because that is all they need to know. It is the same with giving our kids information about predators. We don’t give them scary information; we give them empowering information.” Greta Eskridge

*”Music is sticky!” Sara Ernst

*“Teach your kids that anyone can be a tricky person, because most abuse happens with people the children know. And teach them how to respond to tricky people.” Sara Ernst

*” We are empowering our kids not making them afraid.” Greta Eskridge

Today’s episode is extra special to me because I got to talk to Mary Jo Hoffman, someone I have followed online and admired for more than 10 years! Mary Jo is an artist whose art form is taking photographs of found nature on black or white backgrounds. As an avid nature collector myself, I absolutely loved her beautiful art and became a fan instantly.

Mary Jo is a rocket scientist turned artist, blogger, and now author of the book, Still, the Art of Noticing. She married to a James Beard award winning food writer, a mom to 2 kids, and she lives in St. Paul Minnesota.

Mary Jo’s art has made her into a “noticer”. Collecting pieces of nature and photographing them daily has made her slow down and really notice all the beauty there is in the natural world, no matter the season. We have a great discussion about her art and her book and the ways we can help our kids become noticers too, even though they are growing up in a world that doesn’t really celebrate slowing down. I know you’ll come away inspired by this episode. And maybe you and your kids can start a habit of noticing nature and loving the beauty of nature, just like Mary Jo has.

Some links for you from this episode:

To see the art of Lisa Congdon, the artist who was an inspiration for Mary Jo, go here

To learn more about the 72 micro seasons in Japan, go here

Find the Beatrix Potter book here

Find Mary Jo’s book here

Read Mary Jo’s blog here

Follow Mary Jo on Instagram here

Some favorite quotes from this episode:

*“The natural world drew me in first not as a source of beauty to observe, but as an expression of mathematics, and physics: I loved natural shapes for the trial-and-error perfection of their function; I loved seed pods for the ingenuity of their dispersal mechanisms; I loved the algorithms of spirals, saw toothed leaf tips, and the shapes of trees that imitated the shapes of rivers and their tributaries.” Mary Jo Hoffman

* “We don’t value slowing down very much as a culture and we miss out as a result.” Greta Eskridge

*”As the project progressed, so too my definition of seasonality was redefined. I noticed not big sweeping changes in temperature and light, but daily changes. I noticed the exact day the sap began to run. The day the first catkins exploded. The day the lilacs opened. And the day the first orange maple leaf appeared. And I captured it all, one high-resolution image at a time, for ten years. The attentiveness required to make an image a day led to a depth of understanding I had not expected. The more narrow and deep I went, the more my world expanded.” Mary Jo Hoffman

*” Kids don’t know the names of anything in nature anymore. How do we grow tomorrow’s stewards of the environment if the kids don’t have an attachment to it?” Mary Jo Hoffman

*” Learning names of things in nature makes you care about them more. Because then you have a relationship and connection beyond, that’s a pretty flower.” Greta Eskridge

*”How do you raise creative kids? You model it every day.” Mary Jo Hoffman

*”Give your kids space and time for creativity.” Greta Eskridge

*” Part of being a noticer is having childlike wonder.” Mary Jo Hoffman

*” Owning the responsibilities of sharing the awe and wonder of the natural world is one of the duties of being a parent.” Mary Jo Hoffman

*” Look for micro joys in your life!” Mary Jo Hoffman

If you haven’t already, please take a minute to subscribe to this podcast. I’d also be so very grateful if you leave a 5-star rating and write a quick review.

Reviews are incredibly helpful to me as a new podcaster.

Thank you for listening and being part of my team.

I love you guys!

Greta