Latest / Storycomic Presents: Interviews with Amazing Storytellers and Artists / (Ep: 511) Stuck in the Tree: Turning Embarrassment into Courage

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(Ep: 511) Stuck in the Tree: Turning Embarrassment into Courage · Storycomic Presents: Interviews with Amazing Storytellers and Artists

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  Welcome to Story Comic Presents, where we interview amazing storytellers and artists.
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  This is Episode 511. I'm your host, Barney Smith of StoryComic.com, and we're excited
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  to have with us the internationally acclaimed and highly talented children's book author,
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  Joel Conwell.
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  Joel.
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  Wait, wait, did I? I'm internationally acclaimed? How did?
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  Yeah, of course.
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  Wow. I didn't even know. This is a surprise to me. This is news. What news? What a great
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  way to start my night. I'll take it. Well, hey, Barney, thank you for having me on. It's
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  a pleasure. I mean, you and I were just, I think we chatted for about 10 minutes, and
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  we could have kept going. You're already a joy to chat with, so thanks for having me
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  on.
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  Yeah, I know. So recording, we've recorded at least 12 minutes, but we were also talking
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  for at least 20 minutes ahead of that. So we've been actually on for like 30 minutes.
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  30 minutes.
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  That's amazing.
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  Oh, I feel bad. I'm taking up all of your night.
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  Yeah. Well, no, this is great. You can tell there's good banter here, so that's fantastic.
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  So we're here to talk a little bit about your latest book, The Boy in the Tree When Weak
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  is Okay. So talk to us a little bit about that. Then give us kind of like what your
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  elevator pitch is on what The Boy in the Tree is all about.
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  So ideally, The Boy in the Tree is a story for both parents and kids, right? Because
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  as a parent myself, right, I have a seven-year-old and six-year-old. The world comes at them
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  very quickly, and you don't get your innocence back. You don't get your naivety back, and
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  you don't get your perspective on weakness and embarrassment and risk. You don't get
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  that very youthful, innocent view of that back once the world's kind of attacked it
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  with whatever, right? Whether it's school, you're at school, and especially now with
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  social media, it's threatened by, hey, everyone can see what you're doing. People might talk
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  about it. People might gossip about it. So you should just stay within your little bubble
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  or you never want to be embarrassed. You don't want to get hurt.
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  It all comes from this idea that I came up with when I was younger because I was The
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  Boy in the Tree. It was I never want to be embarrassed. I hated it. I hated how it felt.
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  And so I thought, I'm never going to let that happen again. Never. And it significantly
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  hindered my life in ways I didn't even know until later. And so if I was going to pitch
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  it to anyone, I'd say like, hey, if you are someone who's intentional about the way you
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  interact with your kids and the way they interact with the world around them, this is the book
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  for you because it's been so cool to me to see, I have done readings now with special
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  needs kids. I've done readings with kids that are in middle school. I've done readings
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  with kids that are in kindergarten. And every single demographic is able to take something
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  away from this book because it's a story that I believe is kind of transcends the age. And
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  it's that, you know, it's life is too short to live at avoiding risk because you're afraid
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  to be embarrassed. And what's the why? Why do that? Why? Why not try this one thing you've
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  always wanted to try? Like you're, you're a kid. I mean, don't, don't be that 30, 45
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  year old. Who's like, Oh, I always wanted to do this because when you were younger,
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  you thought about it and someone said, don't, right. Or you got embarrassed and you never
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  wanted to do it again. Like that's, that's not what your life is supposed to be like.
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  You're a kid. You're supposed to be able to enjoy and try and fail and try and fail and
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  you don't need to, to get embarrassed about it and feel like the whole world against you
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  as a result. So that's why I wrote the book. It was, it was even a part of my own journaling
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  journey of just kind of working through things. And then yeah, and, and I was, I was going
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  to counseling and my counselor had, I, this is, this is the funny story behind it. My
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  counselor said, let's do, let's do a trauma inventory. Like, so you basically go through
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  all the different traumas of your life and you have to start as early as you can remember.
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  And so, you know, the counselor goes, Hey, what's, what's the earliest trauma you can
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  remember? And I say, I don't, I don't, I don't know. I'm 35 or at the time I was like
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  33. I don't, I don't know. I can't remember that early. He's like anything, any time in
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  your life where you didn't, something didn't go well, the earliest memory you can think
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  of. And I said, I don't know. I got stuck in a tree. He goes, let's, let's talk about
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  that. And so we talk about that and lo and behold, uh, I was so embarrassed by getting
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  stuck in the tree that I thought I'm never going to have this happen again. And that
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  was the first, you could say like concussion of avoiding risk and being embarrassed or
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  controlling things. Uh, and that was the thing that started all the other stuff. And I had
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  no idea. And so, uh, as we talked through that, he said, you should, you know, since
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  you're a writer, you should write a, write a poem about it or story about it. And so
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  I did, I wrote a very rough kind of poem about it and, uh, I showed it to him the next time
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  and he said, this is really good. You should finish it and you should publish it as a kid's
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  book. And, uh, because I had already published a book that no one read already, I figured
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  why not make it too. And so I decided I'm going to turn it into this kid's book. And
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  I was already kind of talking to ripples who is my publisher now. Um, and they were like,
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  this is a great story. Let's do it. And so that's how it came about. Um, and I think
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  that's why it's so powerful too, because it wasn't just this fun story I came up with,
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  but it was a story that was effective to me, uh, in my own journey. And it just every time,
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  I mean, it sends ripples, you know, into whatever group I'm at. And there's always
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  a couple of kids that really resonated with it, no matter the age group. So
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  what, what would you say adults often get wrong when a child is scared or overwhelmed?
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  Oh my gosh, that's a great question. I speaking from personal experience, the thing I get
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  wrong is I interpret their fear, their embarrassment through my perspective. Um, and, and it's,
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  I mean, that's wrong in two ways because my perspective, uh, if we're honest as a parent,
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  I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm jaded by something, something, you know, I always make the joke. If someone
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  looks down, I'm like, what burden of the world is hurting you today? You know, like as an,
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  as an adult, you just feel burdened by the world. And so then the problem is you've,
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  you look at your kids interaction with the world through that burden, jaded lens, or,
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  um, you, you filter it through your, your personal frustrations with maybe yourself.
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  And so, you know, you're not looking at this, this child as like, okay, this person is literally
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  being still formed. So these, these things seem huge to them. And then to me, even though
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  I'm later in life, I can be like, it's not that big of a deal. It's the biggest of deals.
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  Um, and these are opportunities to help them be resilient or help them be avoidant. And
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  so I think that's what we get wrong. Cause we, we, as parents and as adults, we'll look
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  at it and go, that's not a big deal. Um, either because we're so frustrated and jaded by the
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  world that we live in, or we're so busy that we can't be, we can't even have the, the time
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  or the mind, the mind space to even process this. So we're like, you just need to get
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  over that. Um, and it's not this we're creating snowflakes and participation, trophy kind
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  of stuff. It's more that, I mean, you just imagine, I mean, you, when you're a kid, everything
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  new is new and because it's new, it's the biggest thing that you've ever faced. And
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  so why not get, meet them in that moment and go, yeah, it probably is incredibly impactful
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  right now to you. And let me help me understand why, and then I can help you be resilient.
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  Um, I think that's what we should do, but we far too often don't.
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  Now, then what would you say then, you know, uh, regarding the book? Um, what does courage
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  look like in this book and, and how is that different from say, like just being tough?
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  Hmm. I honestly, the courage. So as, as you kind of read through the book, um, it moves
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  through this boy loves climbing trees, gets stuck in a tree. Dad has to save him, um,
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  is embarrassing. He says, I'm never going to have that happen again. And it just kind
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  of talks about how he grows up living that way. But then eventually realizes like, that's
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  not the way to do it. Um, that's courage is saying, I may have lived a certain way for
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  20 years, but I'm going to now take the steps to change that. Um, that's courage. I mean,
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  as an adult and courage as a kid is saying, you know, I may have gotten stuck in a tree,
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  but I want to try again. Why not try again? And I honestly, I think to my, uh, my daughter
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  one time got invited to a birthday party at a roller rink. She's never roller skated and
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  she fell so many times. Uh, but every time she'd start to cry and get upset, she'd go,
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  I want to go back out and try again. And I'm like, that's courage. And then even more so
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  she was like, Hey, can we buy some roller skates? Cause I want to get better so that
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  if I get invited again, I can actually have more fun. Like that's courage. Cause that's
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  I don't want to be embarrassed. It's I mean, like I want to practice, you know, just cause
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  it wasn't fun this time and it was difficult. Doesn't mean I can't keep trying. So I think
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  courage just really can take different shapes for whatever season you're in.
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  Well, hey there, if you're enjoying our podcast, don't forget to subscribe on YouTube or leave
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  us a five-star review on your favorite podcast platform. Your support means the world to
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  us and helps us keep this show going. We love hearing from you. So any feedback is welcome.
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  And thank you for being a part of our podcast family and for all your support. It truly
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  means a lot to us. So let's talk a little bit about the book itself and just, uh, putting
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  on your author hat. Um, how did you kind of decide like the pacing of where like tension
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  rises and where it softens because you, it's a, it's a, it's a books that people expect
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  to flip the pages through, right? I think the, the, the, which is a great question.
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  What I filtered it through was, um, as so I've, I've a master's in counseling and one
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  of my favorite things is asking good questions. Um, but then also at the same time presenting
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  the logical progression of a thought process or behavioral, um, kind of framework. What
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  I mean by that is, okay, if you keep thinking this, here are the possibilities that are
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  probably going to happen, right? So let's say, you know, I'm someone who doesn't control
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  my anger. Well, eventually you're probably going to say something to someone, not even
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  close to you, but you know, maybe out on the road or in public and they're not going to
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  be as kind as other people are that are close to you. And you might have a very bad circumstance
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  to happen and you might end up going to jail or something like that. The idea of just what
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  is the logical progression of a current idea or framework or mindset or behavioral framework
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  you have. And so as a, as a storyteller, I wanted to emulate that in that story in the
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  sense of, okay, this kid, me get stuck in a tree says, I never want to be like that
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  again. I don't want to be embarrassed. So I'm going to avoid that. Okay, well then what
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  does that look like? Well, then this, what this does is it gives a kid who's reading
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  this who has no frame of reference for what it's like to be an adult, gets to see a story
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  of here's what happens when that's how you live. This is what an adult like of an extension
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  or logical progression of that kid's mindset looks like as an adult now. But that's not
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  the end because the adult still can change their mind and try to be different and risk
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  and take courage and stuff like that. And so that, that was why I structured it that
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  way. And honestly, with the next kid's book, which will be the girl in the house, similar
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  kind of the boy in the tree, it's the same, it's going to be written the same way. It's
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  going to have, you know, here's something happens, an inciting event. That's not something
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  that's so traumatic that alienates you as a, as a reader, but is, but isn't so mundane
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  that you can't really understand it. But an inciting event causes a reaction, a thought
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  process change. And then you see what happens as a logical progression. Because I don't,
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  I don't think we tell enough of those stories to kids. You know, we're, we're so in the
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  moment of this happens to like this dog or whatever, and that's fine. There's nothing
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  wrong with that, but the kids can handle deeper, more elaborate stories that show the consequence
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  over time. I don't think we give them credit. And so I wanted to do that with my story was
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  what would I have really wanted to hear when I was a kid, I would have wanted to hear,
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  Hey, I get what you're going through. But also if you sit like this, that's like five
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  years, 10 years down the road, it's not gonna be fun, you know, to, then I've, I have, I've
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  done those in readings. When I've read this book, I've said, well, I've asked for what's
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  something that happened that was embarrassing. And someone said, you know, I missed a soccer
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  goal or I fell off my bike. And I said, okay, so imagine you never used to decide you're
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  never gonna do that again. That means you'll never play soccer ever again. And you, what
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  if you know, you're still good at it and your friends want you to try out for the
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  high school team, but you said, I'm never doing that again. That, that would be so sad
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  if you decided now to change your future because of that. And kids, when I say that to them,
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  you can see them understand that. And that's one of the reasons I paced it like that. And
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  I structured it like that was to show you show parents to kids can have these conversations
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  about making decisions that could change their future.
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  Now, because you have a counseling background, Joel, how did, how did that influence you
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  when you wrote this book?
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  I think, honestly, great question too. I, it falls more in line with, with that thinking
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  through the logical progression, but also being okay with harder, harder realities,
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  right? Like in, in presenting those kinds of harsher realities of making decisions like
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  that about your future based on a present emotion and how, how we do that still as adults,
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  but then also how there are things when we were younger that we didn't think might have
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  been, you know, formative sounds a little too intense, but formative or, or, you know,
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  impactful as adults. And we never would have thought of that until we were presented at
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  that situation. Like when I was presented in counseling, so it's the same thing with
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  this book. It's why I wrote it in the degree of as an adult, who's reading this to their
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  kid, maybe they go, hi, there's a tree I'm stuck in still. Right. And that's actually,
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  I've had a couple conversations with adults when I did like a pop-up at Barnes and Noble
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  and they said, yeah, I, I'm still stuck in the tree. I never even thought of that. But
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  now as I'm reading this, I'm going, I'm, there's a tree I'm still stuck in and it's, you know,
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  it's X, Y, Z. And so that influences my counseling background influences me too in that because
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  it was, you know, you're, you're never too old to make these epiphanies about something
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  that happened when you're younger. And everyone always likes to make the joke in the counseling
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  world that, you know, if you're facing some issue now, it's, it's one thing or your mother,
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  meaning like something traumatic happened when you were younger, what happened when
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  you were a kid or what did your mom do to you when you were younger that traumatized
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  you. It's, but it is true that in those heavily formative years, stuff does happen. And then
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  we don't think about it until later. And so I'd say that was really a big part coming
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  from a counseling background. How many times I was in a counseling session with couples
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  because I did a lot of crisis, marriage, addictions, counseling, and seeing the essentially the
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  outcome of what happened so much, so much time ago, so long ago in their lives, I am
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  now seeing the fruition of whatever happened now. And I'm counseling the outcome of what
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  happened, not like this realized person who has the emotional intelligence and understanding
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  of what happened, but the ability to work through it and the handles to work through
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  it. I am seeing this person that's just the sum of whatever happened when they were younger,
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  trying to figure things out. And, um, I became very passionate about, okay, you know, you
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  should, let's reach them before that happens so that we don't have as many people going
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  to counseling sessions later in life being like, I don't really know what happened. Oh,
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  this happened when I was a kid. Oh man. I mean, like, I don't know, Bernie, it, uh,
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  you're a parent. How many times have you been working through things? Right. But you still
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  have to parent. Like, wouldn't it be better if we got to the people and the kids and work
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  to help them work through things so that when they're parents, they're not trying to work
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  through heavy things that impacted them when they're younger while also doing bath time
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  and doing homework and planning field trips. Like that. I'm only saying that as someone
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  who literally does these things and you know, I'm supposed to like be emotionally intelligent
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  and available to my kids. And I'm like, I'm working through my own crap. How am I supposed
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  to help you work through yours? And I just, that's what my mind always goes is like, well,
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  what if we had, you know, fixed the problem earlier on so that these parents aren't feeling
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  like they have to choose my mental health or my kid's mental health, you know?
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  So then if teachers read this aloud, uh, what, what's a good simple follow-up questions that
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  you would recommend? Oh, that's a great one. I honestly, I think a really good follow-up
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  question would be what's something that's happened to you. Like what's something that
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  happened that was embarrassing and how did it make you feel? And then the follow-up question
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  is, um, what would you, would you still do it again? Because I think that, that, that
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  gets to the, to the heart of it is are, are these kids so much more concerned now about
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  never taking a risk again? Or are they saying, yeah, I would do that again. Cause then you
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  just like, you praise that because that's a resilient mindset. Uh, and so if a teacher's
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  reading this to their kids and their, their follow-up question is what's something that
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  was embarrassing to you, how did it make you feel? And then if you ask them, would you
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  do it again? And they say, yes. I mean, that's an opportunity to heap, I think valuable praise
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  to say, that's an awesome mindset. Never, never forget that because you, you see the
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  value and the joy and the fun in life. And if they're on the flip side and they're like,
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  I don't want to, then it gives you an opportunity to kind of lean in and say, well, why, why
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  not? And then as they say, well, you know, I don't want to be embarrassed. Like, Hey,
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  that's, that's a normal feeling. It's, and I get that. And I, I still feel that way too
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  about things, but at the same time, wouldn't, how, how sad would your, would life be if
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  every time something bad happened, we said, I'll, I'll never want to do that again. Life
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  is so fun. Remember how fun it is when you get to do these things, enjoy that again.
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  Right. And so, um, I, I've had teachers say that they've kind of done similar things and,
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  and seen great results. So now, um, but so what's the most common thing kids do when
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  they're nervous that, that you mentioned like adults misread?
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  Uh, I think this is really good. Honestly, I think they lash out is a big one. Um, they
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  get angry, they get short. Um, and I only say that cause my oldest daughter is very
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  much like me and that she hates to be embarrassed to which I went, man, is it really hereditary?
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  I, but where did, where did you learn this from other than getting it from my genes?
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  She, when she gets embarrassed, when she's nervous, she, um, she gets defiant. And I
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  think this is, and I think it's because as a kid, right, you, you understand that there
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  are a lot of things that are outside of your control, but you don't know how to then react
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  to not having that control. And so what you do is you try to take control back into your hands.
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  And oftentimes that's just saying no, right. That's, or being defiant towards your parents.
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  And we, as adults, we know that that's something that we do, but we have the,
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  I don't know what, what the word is, the understanding that life continues. So you,
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  you can't just stop. Like you can't just be defiant and say, no, you still have to do
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  the daily things of your life. But for kids, they feel like I have some, ironically, I have
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  the autonomy, even though I don't to say no and be defiant. And that's how they take control back,
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  when they're nervous. And so if you have a child that's, it's being defiant, that's being
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  obstinate, that's saying no a lot. It could literally be like my daughter is, she was going
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  to a play for the first time with her school. She was really nervous because she's never done it.
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  And she later then said like, I am, I'm just, I'm really nervous about that. I don't, I don't know
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  what it's going to be like. And so thankfully she told us what was going on. But I remember my wife
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  and I were looking at each other like, what is, why is Lucy being so difficult? And we would even
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  ask her like, what are you, why are you being so difficult? Why are you being so defiant? What's
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  going on? And she'd be like, I don't know. I just am, you know? And then later as she calmed down,
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  she realized what it was. So I'd say that would be what it is. Look for that. Look for defiance,
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  obstinance, no a lot. And you probably won't even get the answer if you, even if you know the
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  question to ask, like, is there something that you're nervous about or anxious about? Because
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  they haven't come down from that emotional rollercoaster. And so presence is a big thing,
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  just being there and reminding them that it's okay. And that, and then, but then also not letting it
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  go in the sense of, you know, just saying, well, they'll maybe talk to me later. That's why I think
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  it's really good that, I mean, we do this. I don't tell people you have to, I just think you should,
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  but we do at bedtime, we'll do good and bad. And so last, just before I got on this podcast,
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  I did bedtime for my two daughters and I said, what was your good and bad today?
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  And, and sometimes more often than not, that's what, like the segue that they use, not me,
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  that they use to kind of talk about, well, I was actually, I'm nervous about this.
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  Just because I presented the environment of let's talk about, hey, what was your good and bad? I'm
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  going to say mine. I'd love to hear yours. And I created that environment for them to then go,
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  okay, well, I can talk about maybe something else that's on my mind or on my heart. So.
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  So when you talk about weakness, what word would you rather kids grow up with?
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  I would just say, maybe it's the, maybe reality. It's just like, it's just reality. I mean,
• 22:49
  we're never going to be perfect. There's weakness. I think weakness is a fine word to use. I think
• 22:54
  the connotation people have, it got ruined a lot by that. Even my generation as a millennial,
• 23:00
  the whole manhood thing was changed because Gen X, boomers to Gen X to millennials was very much
• 23:06
  this kind of like man, what's manliness, what's manhood look like. And so weakness became a taboo
• 23:13
  word, but it's weakness is just reality. I don't think that's, there's no other connotation. It's
• 23:19
  just reality. You are not, you were never so strong that you could never be hurt. You're
• 23:23
  never so, you're never so smart that you could never be wrong. So it's, so that's what I'd say.
• 23:29
  I think reality is a good word. Okay. Wow. So now Joel, if people want to learn more about you
• 23:35
  and your work, where's the best place they could go to? Honestly, the website jconwell.org. I post,
• 23:43
  I'll be posting more stuff there as I do more, but also follow me on socials. So jconwell on
• 23:51
  Instagram, on TikTok, on YouTube. You're talking about marketing. I'm terrible at it because I
• 23:57
  hate those. I hate social media. It's not because I don't know how to use social media.
• 24:01
  It's because I hate it. I cannot stand using social media because like so much of the content
• 24:06
  that I've come up with when I've worked with videographers and stuff has been my brain child.
• 24:12
  So a lot of the videos you'll see online, the things that I've posted, those are all my idea.
• 24:19
  And then someone helps me kind of bring it to reality. But I just like, it's just the social
• 24:25
  media, the, I don't know, like the death cycle of what it is. You just keep going through the
• 24:31
  same thing. You post, you have to post, you have to post, you have to do the algorithms.
• 24:36
  And I'm like, I don't know. I wrote a kid's book. I probably should care more about my family than
• 24:40
  what the algorithm is telling me to do with my kid's book posts. So it's hard. It's a hard
• 24:45
  balance. But yeah, socials, jconwell. That's actually my middle name. My last names are
• 24:50
  cheery, but no one knows how to spell it. So jconwell is what I go by. So you can find that
• 24:55
  on Instagram. I am on TikTok too, YouTube. But yeah, that's the best way to probably to follow
• 25:02
  me there. Excellent. All right. Well, listen, so we had a blast talking before we even hit the
• 25:08
  record button. So next year you have a book come out, you know, Joel, come back on. This was,
• 25:13
  this has been great. I would love to. I mean, I, you know, we could talk for hours. I,
• 25:18
  I have a bunch of, of book ideas. The problem is, you know, paying for them. I have this
• 25:23
  sci-fi trilogy. I'm almost done with the second book of, which is actually a very good story.
• 25:30
  I'd send it to you if you want the rough draft manuscript for the first, first book,
• 25:33
  cause it's so good. I'll send it to you if you want, if I got your email. I saw it.
• 25:40
  But I just like, I think storytelling, I hate to say it like is a lost art, but like
• 25:47
  really good storytelling that engages within emotional intelligence. I think that's just a,
• 25:51
  it's a, it's a, it's niche, but not for a good reason. I think it's because we just don't tell
• 25:56
  those good stories that force you into those. And so I love it. I, I told, I tell people,
• 26:02
  I want to die as an author in, you know, I'm 35 by 45. I want to have at least five or 10 books out.
• 26:10
  I want, I want to die with like 50 books out. I don't, it's just, I found what I love doing,
• 26:15
  which is writing stories and writing in general. And I never want to stop. So hopefully we'll have
• 26:21
  countless more conversations. That's the hope. Well, thank you so much, Drew.
• 26:26
  Yeah. Thanks for having me.
• 26:56
  Bye.