Shownotes
Why your lived experience is the most important credential you’ll ever need.
Movements rarely begin with experts or institutions. They begin with ordinary people who decide that “enough is enough.” In this episode, Tonya explores how lived experience — not degrees, titles, or training — qualifies you to take the next right step toward change.
You’ll hear how everyday advocacy can look like:
- Naming harm and creating safety for your people
- Turning personal heartbreak into community action
- Challenging the “I’m just a…” myth
- Why Nikki James Zellner’s story (Episode 6) proves you don’t need to be an expert to make an impact
- Tonya’s own lived experiences with neurodivergence, clutter, and motherhood (and how they shaped her advocacy)
Advocacy isn’t about doing it all forever. It’s about starting. And if you’ve lived it, you’re ready.
Timestamp Highlights
- 0:00 – 1:23 Movements start with lived experience, not credentials.
- 1:24 – 6:00 Busting the “I’m just a…” myth.
- 6:01 – 12:30 Nikki James Zellner’s daycare safety advocacy story.
- 12:31 – 17:40 Lived experience as a qualifier for leadership.
- 17:41 – 23:00 Why solutions must come from the people living the problem.
- 23:01 – 27:01 The cost of advocacy and setting healthy boundaries.
- 27:02 – 27:20 Final takeaway: If you’ve lived it, you’re ready.
Resources & Mentions
Meet Your Host
Tonya Kubo is a community strategist and fractional CMO/COO who helps founders and organizations turn connection into a competitive advantage. She’s the host of Find Your Freaks, a podcast about belonging and building spaces where people can show up as they really are, and co-host of The Business You Really Want with Gwen Bortner. Tonya believes what makes you weird makes you wonderful—and that normal was never the point.
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Transcripts
Ep 7 - Audio Only - If You've Lived it, You're Ready
(0:00 - 1:23)
A lot of movements just start with one person showing up to a meeting, speaking their mind, and then looking around the room and seeing other people nodding their heads. People living the problem understand the contours better than any outsider could, because people living within see the context. If you've lived it, you're ready.
Maybe you aren't cut out to run the whole movement, but you can mobilize yourself and maybe a few others to get things started to get things off the ground. It's easy to feel helpless. It's easy to feel hopeless, but you just have to get started.
And just because you are carrying the mantle right now doesn't mean that you have to carry the mantle all by yourself forever. We're wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in. I'm Tanya Kubo, and this is Find Your Freaks, the podcast that flips the script and spotlights the quirks you thought you had to keep quiet.
Subscribe now and head to findyourfreaks.com for show notes and extras, because around here, what makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point. What if the thing that broke your heart is the only credential you have been waiting for? Today, we are talking about a simple but potentially disruptive idea.
-:If you've lived it, you're qualified to lead it. Maybe not everything. I'm not saying soup to nuts here, but potentially the next right step.
I'm not talking about turning you into a professional advocate where you eat, sleep, and breathe, becoming a change agent 24-7. I'm talking about community building as safety building, asserting a group's right to be safe and seen. And in today's I want to bust the I'm-just-a-insert-noun-here myth that keeps too many people quiet when they're already the most qualified people in the room.
And you've heard this, right? I'm just a mom. What can I do? I'm just a student. What can I do? I'm just your average homemaker.
What can I do? And nobody is just in anything when they find themselves specifically called to step up in defense of a community or of a population. Community building takes many forms. One of them is advocacy.
If you haven't already listened to episode six, which was my interview with Nikki James Zellner, I highly encourage you to do so. This episode is building off of that, but this episode works as a standalone as well. At its core, advocacy is really about creating safety.
It is recognizing harm, naming it, then asserting the rights of people to be safe from that harm, and then building the guardrails those individuals need in order to thrive. Okay, so while some people will sit back and wait for an expert to emerge, right, the answers actually are almost always found inside the community that is most deeply affected by whatever the issue is. People living the problem understand the contours better than any outsider could, because people living within see the context.
They see the nuance that no outsider could ever imagine, much less understand deep down. And my job, and maybe your job, isn't to become the hero in any of these situations. It's to help the people closest to the issue to be heard, to be equipped, empowered, and protected.
Now Nikki, who I interviewed in episode six, the title of that episode is not on my watch. Nikki didn't wake up one day and say, hey, I want to change policy. I want to change policy at the state level.
Okay, she didn't even wake up one day wanting to change policy at her kid's daycare. She was a mom doing what a lot of moms in this country and around the world do, just dropping her kid at daycare. But the furnace malfunctioning, the lack of carbon monoxide detection in that daycare center, kids getting sick because the law didn't require them to be protected, right? All of that happened regardless of her education level, regardless of what she had set out to do with her life, right? But that was the catalyst for her to stand up and say, oh, no, no, no, no, this is not okay.
Now the reality is that she could have just stopped at the level of keeping her kids protected moving forward, right? She could have said, you know what, come to find out there is actually no law in my state that requires carbon monoxide detectors to be in daycare centers. So what I'm going to do is from here on out, every time my child is at a facility where they're going to be cared for in my absence, I am going to donate a carbon monoxide detector to that facility. I'll have one for their classroom, I'll have one for the building, right? She totally could have done that and made it a very, you know, private endeavor.
And I think a lot of people would do that, right? Put stuff in their kids' backpacks, keep things on their kid's person to keep their kid safe. But instead what she did is she started asking questions, you know, how did this happen? Why did this happen? Wait, what do you mean there's no carbon monoxide detector in the building? Why isn't there one? Did it break? You know, what happened? Figured out that there was a loophole in policy and because she found out that, okay, so policy adheres to the law, oh, there's no law in place that says this, she pushed for a law change so that all kids would be safer because she recognized that it wasn't just about her kid's safety, it was about all kids' safety. And that's the difference between solving for an individual problem and then creating community safety.
Nikki took a very personal scenario that affected her, it affected others as well, and said, you know what, like, this is not okay. We've got to do something to make sure kids are protected moving forward. And so what she did, that decision to allow this to be bigger than just her, bigger than just her kids, widened that circle of care.
And what her story does, and again, I don't want to rehash the episode specifically, just give you a little bit of background, but her story directly challenges that, we'll call it a false belief of being just a mom, right? That, well, she's just a mom, she's not a professional advocate, she's not a lawmaker, she's not an elected official, there's nothing she can do about this, right? So many parents don't mobilize because they feel like they don't have what it takes in order to make a change happen, right? They don't go to the school board meeting, they don't go to their elected officials and advocate on behalf of their schools or activities that their kids are involved in, or even their community. And so what I hope that Nikki's interview does for you, what Nikki's story does for you, is remind you that your lived experience is your qualifier should you choose to be a change agent in your community, or whether that's a physical community or a more interest based expansive community. So again, what I would love to remove from the English language are these terms of just a mom, just a teacher, just a private citizen.
Because what that does is it diminishes, first of all, it diminishes the harm that people experience, but it also takes people who are closest to problems, closest to situations, and convinces them that they don't have the qualifications to speak up about them or against them. And that's not true. If you have lived it, you are qualified at the very least to lead the next right step.
Now, maybe that's just the next conversation. Maybe that's just doing a little bit of Google searching to figure out what the root cause is. Maybe it's sending an email.
Maybe it's generating a resource that helps people stay safe. You know, one of the early things that Nikki did was create an online tracker that tracked the instances of carbon monoxide poisoning in K-12 environments that were severe enough that they required an emergency medical response, right? Somebody had to call 911. Paramedics had to come out.
And that was it for a while because people challenged the idea that it was that big of an issue, that it was widespread enough or serious enough for it to warrant any policy change. So that was something simple that she could do. And that resource doesn't just keep track of the number of incidents.
It helps people stay safe, right? It creates awareness. It provides a resource for journalists who may be covering this situation in their areas. Okay, you don't, being an advocate doesn't mean you have to do everything.
It doesn't even mean you have to do whatever it is forever. It just means you take that next right step to expand the safety and belonging of the community that is affected. So I think when we talk about advocacy in general, and you know what, I think what moves me so much about Nikki's story, aside from the fact that I'm a mom too, right? I have kids.
I've gone to daycare, all those things, right? I understand how much of my children's lives now are lived 100% away from me, right? They are gone from my care for large chunks of the day. And so I understand that kind of powerlessness that comes with what happens to them when you're not there. I also understand how important it is to feel that you can trust their safety.
It's hard to work. It's hard to keep your focus on what you have to do if you're constantly worried about what may be going on with them. My own lived experience, there was no shortage of causes that I could devote my life's work to.
I was raised by a single mom who was a hoarder, who was on public assistance. I was a first-generation college student. Right now, I live in a neurodiverse household, and I'm married to a man who's on the autism spectrum and has ADHD.
I parent children who have ADHD, autism, and OCD, and all sorts of other like little, you know, they call them comorbidities. We just call them a little extra spice. In the mix of our family, we rescue animals, right? Like we are pet owners who have rescued every pet that we've ever owned.
As a former journalist, I believe in public information. I believe in the public's right to know. I believe in sunshine laws, open transparency, like very open government.
My kids are in public school. My kids have been in charter schools. My kids have been homeschooled.
I'm a big advocate for education in general, and I'm also an advocate for educational choice. I work with private schools. I work with public schools.
I care deeply about all of these things, but when we want to talk about what really lights my fire, right, I am most passionate about supporting moms because I see and I have experienced that society has very different standards for mothers than they do for fathers, right? We have lived that in our household, and I also understand that motherhood is the nastiest competitive sport that most of us will ever play, and we play it for life. I am deeply, deeply passionate, and if you've listened to episodes two and three, you know this, deeply passionate in advocating for what I call my cluttery peeps, right, especially folks who have hoarding tendencies and the people who love them. As the child of a hoarder, I know the pain that hoarding tendencies and hoarding can cause for the people you love.
I also understand the mental illness that's behind it. I understand that even on the clutter spectrum, right, it's not really about housekeeping. It's about these deep embedded emotions, and it is a daily struggle, and it's one of those things that you can't fix today and never have to worry about again, and that adds to the difficulty in overcoming it for good, right? So I love my cluttery peeps.
I love moms and supporting family units in general. I am a big advocate for people who are neurodivergent on any type of spectrum, right? I have raised my children from the time that they could walk and talk that different is not effective. I have a daughter who owns that to the level that she has her own like merchandise company where she has all these neurodivergent affirming messages, and she has a point of pride around how she's wired differently, and she has an appreciation for what parts are her superpower and what parts are a little bit of a challenge for her, right? I am passionate about all these things, and I do everything I can in these very small sectors of the world to make change.
I didn't go to school to be a therapist, right? So I'm never going to be able on a one-on-one environment to heal somebody from like the pathology that comes from hoarding or that causes hoarding, okay? I'm not a home organizer. I'm never going to be able to go into somebody's house and solve their clutter problem. My degrees are in journalism and public relations.
My superpower is that I can take like deep, first of all, I love research. Second, I can take deep, complex information. I can synthesize it, and I can distill it into clear steps that people actually can use.
I can make it easy to understand for the average person. That's my gift, and so I don't need to lead every community where I've decided to plant my flag. The reason that I'm so passionate about community building and community strategy is because this is where I can make the greatest change by equipping other people to lead their communities effectively so that they can create change in their own sectors of the world, just like Nikki is writing a book about how to be a watchdog so that other people can benefit from her playbook where she created change in her state around carbon monoxide detection in schools.
Other people can take that same playbook and apply it to whatever they're passionate about. Maybe that's animal rights. Maybe that is safe sidewalks or safe communities.
Maybe that is more public lands for kids to play on. Whatever that could be. Maybe it's repealing a gas tax in their state.
Who knows? It is not up to her to decide what people will do with the information. It's up to her to create the playbook so that she can equip anybody who feels called to follow in her footsteps. So, like I said, I don't need to lead every community.
My role is to equip people to lead theirs, and that's how I choose to amplify my impact. Now, when you are somebody who is looking to make change, so if you're sitting there right now and you're thinking there's a problem in my town, but I don't know the first thing about it, and somebody should make a law about this, but I don't know what that law should be or how to do it or whatever. What we don't realize is we don't have to create a non-profit.
Like, very few movements start with the creation of a 501c3. Very few movements even start with a petition. A lot of movements just start with one person showing up to a meeting, speaking their mind, and then looking around the room and seeing other people nodding their heads.
And so if there is something that you are experiencing right now that you feel should change, whatever that could be, you know, what you can do to follow in Nikki's footsteps, what you can do to lead the advocacy of that is you can very simply just write a few things down, right? Write down from your perspective what's actually happening, write down what you see working, and then write down what safer would look like to you and what's the most immediate safety measure. As I say this, I think about when I was working for a research university, I came to the university about three years into a five-year research study, and part of this study they were looking at very, like, rural hard-to-reach communities and thinking, like, how could they improve the quality of life for people in these communities? And they had a lot of thoughts. The researchers had a lot of opinions of what these folks needed.
They thought maybe what they needed were better schools. Maybe they needed a local hospital because there wasn't a local hospital there. They thought about maybe what they needed was access to cheaper food or a food bank satellite there so that they could get access to free and low-cost food.
(:And they had all these opinions about what folks needed, and they were trying to get grant funding and such in order to make strides toward this, to fund these endeavors. But when they sat down with the residents of the community to talk to them, they were shocked. What these individuals wanted were sidewalks because it was really hard.
They didn't feel like they needed a car. They didn't feel like the town was, like, that big to require a car, but they couldn't safely walk their children to school because there were no sidewalks between where they lived and the school. They wanted stop signs.
They wanted controlled four-way intersections. They didn't even want streetlights necessarily. They just want stop signs so that they would have an opportunity to cross a busy street with their children.
They wanted crosswalks. And it was one of those things, right? Without sidewalks, they couldn't get crosswalks. And of all the ideas these researchers had, installing sidewalks in the community was actually the cheapest.
(:Sidewalks and crosswalks were the easiest, cheapest solution, and it was what the people who lived there wanted most. The people who lived there would not have been that excited about a food bank because they still would have difficulty getting to the food bank without the benefit of sidewalks. So really think about what's actually happening, what's working, and what would safer look like in your specific circumstance.
And then that right there can be the framework for a letter to the editor if you enjoy writing and that's what you want to do to make change. It could be a great framework design for an online community if you feel like it would be easier to gather people together in a Facebook group or a Reddit thread or whatever it could be. It could also be a great outline for an article if you wanted to write an op-ed, an opinion piece, or a commentary for your newspaper, or if you wanted to write a letter to decision makers, whether that might be an elected official or maybe it's an administrator if it's a school issue, right? A simple just off the top of your head notes of what's actually happening, what's working, and what safer would look like could frame up a great persuasive argument that could be used in a variety of instances.
So now that I've given you kind of just a short way of like following Nikki's footsteps because her book's not out yet and when her book's out we will definitely link to it in the show notes but until then what you can do is you can just follow these steps to try to make change for yourself. But if there is something that you're looking to make change toward, I recently just started a non-profit to benefit the arts media and entertainment program at my daughter's school because they don't have anything other than school funding to rely on and without a non-profit that supports them there's no way for them to get grants or additional funding. It can be a full-time job, okay? Making change, being a change agent or an advocate, whatever you want to call it, could be a full-time job.
It does not have to be a full-time job and so one thing that I hope you appreciate is that when you choose change over comfort there's a price and it's not a price that's necessarily too high to pay if you go into the situation with open eyes and I think this is what causes a lot of people to say you know what somebody else can fight this fight it's not for me. Some people won't even throw their hat in the ring because they're so afraid that the fight may be all-consuming. But the first thing is you recognize that if you really want to be an advocate, right, there is some relational aspects, right? Not everybody is comfortable with advocacy.
Nikki and I talked about the fear of being that mom, you know, you don't want to be the mom who when she walks into the school everybody goes running or maybe you do, right? Maybe you do. If that's what it takes maybe you're like well why not me? Why not me? I am somebody I used to resist being that mom with my kids at their IEP meetings, right, which is a special education meeting. I didn't want to be that mom but then I realized that I have resources available to me that other special education parents do not and by being that mom I can actually create change in school systems that benefit everybody even if they don't know as much as I know.
And so I'm not afraid to be that mom in that case because I think it's worth it but I'm not that mom for everything, okay? I'm not the mom that's going to write a letter complaining that there's soda at my kids campus. I'm just not. I'm not going to complain about the snacks that they have, okay? If they feed the kids PB&J or they feed the kid juice boxes I'm like okay if I cared that much I'd pack a different lunch for my kids but I don't have a child with a peanut allergy, right? If I had a child with a peanut allergy I would feel very differently about after-school snacks including PB&Js.
(:So if I had a relative with a peanut allergy, if I had a close friend with a peanut allergy I might feel very differently as well and that may be the hill that I want to die on. There's no wrong motivator. You just have to know, right? You have to be willing to be that person and have people understand and maybe some people will be uncomfortable by your advocacy efforts.
(:There's time and energy involved in advocacy, okay? Nikki laid it out. I mean she spent a lot of time on phones not just with elected officials and decision makers as she was trying to change policy where she lived but other parents in other areas who were similarly affected who are wanting to make the same change in their areas. If this is a path you want to go on, right? It's really about just establishing some boundaries.
Maybe right now you can give it an hour a day or maybe just an hour a week and that's okay. Also advocacy comes with opportunity costs. There are things you have to say no to in order to say yes to other things.
We only have 24 hours in a day so you just have to decide how much time energy and effort you're willing to spend, okay? You don't have to kill yourself for any cause because chances are when you step in you'll probably find other people who are just as committed as you or who maybe saw the same things you were but they didn't know what the next step was and then together you can join forces to push things forward. So ultimately the reason that I am talking specifically about this piece of advocacy is because I think that there are a lot of problems in the world that could be solved if the people most deeply affected by them felt that they could change them, right? It is just so easy to feel that problems are too big and too maybe long-standing that just as one person what am I going to do, right? It's easy to feel helpless. It's easy to feel hopeless but you just have to get started and just because you are carrying the mantle right now doesn't mean that you have to carry the mantle all by yourself forever, right? Nikki is no longer carrying this mantle all by herself.
She was able to get policy change in the state where she lived. Now she lives in a different state. She's working on changing the policy there but meanwhile there are other people who have been energized by her work and who are able to take what she has already done and use that as a starting point to make similar changes in their areas.
Not just on this issue of carbon monoxide poisoning but in other issues that have affected them, right? Because that's the thing is it's not in a topic-specific endeavor. The ability to be a watchdog lies in us all. So consider this your permission slip.
If you've lived it, you're ready. Maybe you aren't cut out to run the whole movement but you can mobilize yourself and maybe a few others to get things started to get things off the ground. You can take the next right step that makes your people feel safer.
Now maybe that's creating an online community. That's my favorite way to mobilize individuals from different backgrounds and different sectors around shared purposes. Or maybe it's four moms meeting at a coffee shop to discuss how they're going to make the walk to school safer from their neighborhood to the school.
Maybe that's all it is. It doesn't matter. If you have lived it, you are ready.
(:That's the takeaway here. That's it for this episode of Find Your Freaks. To help more weirdos find their way here, subscribe, rate, and leave a review.
And if you're craving connection, join the Freak Show at findyourfreaks.com. What makes you weird makes you wonderful. Normal was never the point.
