Why our differences matter less than we think — and curiosity might be the cure.

You can look at someone’s family, politics, or religion and think it’s nothing like yours. But underneath, most of us are fighting for the same things: safety, belonging, and a shot at raising the next generation, or at least leaving the world a little better than we found it.

In solo episode, Tonya unpacks her conversation with parenting coach Jen Gerardy (Episode 8: Becoming Who You Were Waiting For) to explore how labels, scripts, and moral judgments keep us divided when shared humanity could bring us together. This one’s for anyone who’s ever wondered if belonging is possible across differences. Spoiler: it is, if you lead with curiosity instead of judgment.

You’ll hear how:

• Parenting “off script” can teach us to question inherited beliefs
• Curiosity opens doors that judgment shuts
• Shared goals connect families with very different values
• Chosen family models belonging in action
• Most of us are fighting the same fight, just from different angles

Timestamp Highlights

• 0:48 – 2:23 The surface differences that distract us from shared humanity
• 6:23 – 9:13 Parenting “off script” and redefining what works for your family
• 9:14 – 11:12 Political, faith, and cultural scripts we inherit — and how to rewrite them (if you want to)
• 11:13 – 13:57 Chosen family as a model of community care
• 15:42 – 20:50 Labels, dehumanization, and curiosity as a leadership skill
• 20:51 – 23:28 Compassion across difference: seeing the same fight in others
• 29:03 – 31:42 The heart of it all: different families, same fight

Resources & Mentions

• Episode 8: Becoming Who You Were Waiting For with Jen Gerardy
• Episode 5: Whose Suffering Counts?
• MomCo (formerly MOPS) – a ministry supporting mothers of young children

Meet Your Host

Tonya Kubo is a community strategist, marketing consultant, and rebel with a cause: helping people find the place where they truly belong. For nearly two decades, she’s built online spaces that feel less like comment sections and more like chosen family. She’s the fixer you call when your Facebook group has gone straight-up Lord of the Flies and the bouncer at the door of internet nonsense. As the host of Find Your Freaks, Tonya brings together unconventional thinkers and bridge-builders who know “normal” was never the point. Her favorite spaces? The ones where the freak flags fly high.

Support the Show

If Find Your Freaks matters to you, help us keep it ad-free by buying us a coffee (or two!). Every dollar goes to production so more weirdos can find their people.

You can purchase Find Your Freaks merchandise online through Abilities and Attitudes.

Let’s Stay Freaky

• Facebook Group
• LinkedIn
• Instagram
• Podcast Hub

What’s Next

Tonya and her biz bestie, Mary Williams of Sasquatch Media Grounds, discuss the quest for fame among creators and how it might not be such a bad thing.

(0:00 - 0:20)

How often we let labels and lifestyles divide us when, at our core, we are so much more alike than we are different. Nobody ever felt accepted, loved, or wanted through judgment. So the best thing any of us can do is to just practice curiosity.

(0:21 - 0:47)

Curiosity is what opens doors. We don't dehumanize people just because we don't agree with them. We don't dehumanize people because they vote differently from us.

We don't dehumanize people because they live differently from us. You don't have to agree with someone's structure to recognize the fact that the fight that they're fighting is similar to the fight that you're fighting. We're wired for connection, but most of us are faking it to fit in.

(0:48 - 1:20)

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. You can look at someone's family, their politics, their religion, and think it is nothing like yours. But underneath, most of us are fighting for the same things.

(1:20 - 1:32)

Safety, belonging, and a shot at raising the next generation, or at least leaving the world a little bit better than we found it. Hey there, freaks. Tanya here.

(1:32 - 1:57)

Today I want to unpack what might be my freakiest interview yet here on Find Your Freaks, which was episode 8 with Jen Girardi, a parenting coach who works with non-monogamous families. Now, if the vocabulary already has you shifted in your seat, hang tight. This episode is not about the practice of engaging in multiple romantic relationships with the consent of all people involved.

(1:58 - 2:23)

It's about the way surface-level differences, whether in family structures, politics, religion, you name it, distract us from the deep sameness that actually connects us. That human thread that connects all of us. And let me be clear, this is not about changing your mind on polyamory or politics or faith.

(2:23 - 2:33)

I am not qualified to do that. It is not my calling, nor is it my desire. But what I am qualified to do is to ask you to look under the surface.

(2:33 - 3:08)

Because what struck me most in my interview with Jen and what continues to rattle around in my brain rent-free ever since is how often we let labels and lifestyles divide us when at our core we are so much more alike than we are different. Jen's community exists, so the community that she hosts, exists because most parenting groups assume a very specific mold for families. One mom, one dad, one maybe general set of values.

(3:09 - 3:25)

And if you don't fit that mold, of course you can show up. But you can only show up if you're willing to hide big chunks of yourself. And, you know, that happens a lot outside of parenting, too.

(3:25 - 4:07)

I mean, how many of us have sat quietly at a family dinner because we know voicing our political opinion would set the room on fire? Or we keep our doubts to ourselves in our faith communities because we don't want to be labeled as somebody who doesn't belong or isn't a true believer. The pain is the same, right? We all want support without having to lie about who we are or pretending we're something we're not. And Jen teaches one simple principle to the families that she works with that I think we can all agree is a really good idea, which is don't ask kids to keep grown up secrets.

(4:08 - 4:29)

And when she said that, I was like, huh? If you've listened to the episode, you heard me go, huh? We have a similar rule in our house. Our rule is no secrets, only surprises. And because, well, we thought of all the cases in which our kids may be asked to keep secrets from us.

(4:29 - 4:40)

And we realized in most cases that those would not be situations that were in our children's best interest. Those would not be healthy situations. Those would be toxic, potentially criminal situations.

(4:40 - 5:05)

And so we thought, well, if we don't want our children to be susceptible to a predator who tells them to keep something secret from mom and dad, we shouldn't be people who start planting the seeds of it's okay to keep, you know, it's okay for mom to ask you to keep secrets from dad. It's okay for dad to ask you to keep secrets from mom. So we do surprises.

(5:05 - 5:18)

We never refer to like birthday gift planning, Christmas gift planning as secret keeping. It's just we're planning surprises. And the girls are totally welcome to tell their dad that we went shopping today for a surprise for him.

(5:18 - 5:25)

Like they'll never get in trouble for that. Because we all are aware and we're all on the same page. Surprises are okay.

(5:25 - 5:33)

Surprises are positive. Secrets are not. And some rules, just good human rules.

(5:35 - 5:59)

And thinking of my lifestyle and Jen's lifestyle being so different, but yet we both believe the same thing when it comes to adults asking kids to keep secrets. And that's just one area that we're the same, right? Like we really, really want to raise good, well adjusted kids. We really want our kids to grow up and be capable adults.

(6:00 - 6:22)

Jen does not have to parent like me or live like me in order to see that we have a similarity in what we want for our children. And the same is true for me, right? I don't have to live like her, make the same choices as her in order to be on the same page with that shared goal for our kids. You may not agree with somebody's choices.

(6:22 - 6:40)

You may never make the same choices as them. But you probably, if you're a parent, desire to raise good, compassionate kids as well, right? It seems to be a fairly universal goal of parents. I spent years involved in MOPS, which is now called MomCo, but it's a ministry that supports mothers of young children.

(6:40 - 7:07)

Hands down. And the desire to live honestly, to not have to hide. I think a lot of us want that.

(7:07 - 7:28)

A lot of us who talk about places where we feel like we belong, places where we feel accepted. A lot of that acceptance, that feeling of belonging comes from being able to be honest about who we are and not feel like we have to hide, not feel like we have to lie. Right? That's common ground I think all of us stand on.

(7:29 - 7:49)

And one of the phrases that Jen used in our interview that I think is also applicable to most of us was this term she called parenting off script. And the reason it stuck with me is because I think a lot of us, whether it's parenting, politics, faith, I'm thinking of other things. Just some of us just like the habits we have, the grocery stores we shop at.

(7:50 - 8:07)

I mean, it's a silly example, right? But even the grocery stores we shop at. A lot of it is just running the programs we've inherited. Right? If you're raised in a home that tells you that babies should sleep alone in a crib, then you feel like a failure if you have one baby who only sleeps when they're with you.

(8:07 - 8:18)

Jen had that situation. I told her that we had a Velcro baby too. And in her case, she was given a script that said you have to force independence, sleep train, do this, do that.

(8:19 - 8:42)

She stopped and said, OK, what's in my best interest? What's going to work for me? What's going to work for my child? What's going to work for my family? And found that by co-sleeping, everybody in their house slept better. In our case, we were not raised by parents who practice co-sleeping. But before Brian and I ever had kids, we were like, yeah, we had decided we were going to do whatever worked for our kiddos.

(8:42 - 8:56)

And that meant that with baby number one, we had a nursery with a crib. But we started off with a bassinet in our room and we started off co-sleeping. And then we realized very quickly that she slept much better all by herself where she couldn't hear her father snoring.

(8:57 - 9:13)

And baby number two came along and baby number two was in the crib once, screamed bloody murder. And co-sleeping was a way of life for us for a very, very long time. The thing is, is parenting aside, we all have scripts.

(9:14 - 9:35)

My family had a very deeply ingrained political script. People in our family vote like this. We vote for these candidates.

We don't vote for the other candidates. My family had the same kind of script when it came to religion. People in our family go to this church with these people and do these things.

(9:35 - 9:49)

And we have nothing to do with people who go to other churches. We have nothing to do with people who subscribe to other systems of belief. And as an adult, I've made different choices.

My husband's made different choices. You know, we recognize that we don't have to vote like our families vote. Our families don't have to vote like us.

It doesn't make us any less family. We happen to really enjoy academic discussion in our home. We have really rich conversations and sometimes they are heated around faith, around what makes sense, what we were always told is true.

And what even now as adults, we're kind of like, yeah, we just kind of go along with it because it hurts our brain to think too deeply of it. But what things that we do really enjoy thinking deeply on. We love having these kinds of conversations with our girls.

We love it when our girls ask us why. We love it when they challenge our thoughts. That's something that we just value in this home.

We value that kind of discourse, but not every family does. You know, and a lot of families are just following the programs, the scripts that they were given. And when the script doesn't fit, you're at a crossroads.

You can either force yourself to fit into it and everybody around you, which likely will land with somebody, maybe all of you being quite miserable. Or you can pause, get curious, and write a new path for yourself. It's up to you.

Just like it's been up to me, it was up to Jen when she made her choices. In our family, for instance, because I was raised by a single mom, I was raised around a lot of chosen family. The people who I would tell you are my cousins, who I am so closely connected to, aren't even blood related.

But I feel fortunate to have had this like sort of village that helped to raise me up. All these single women who had children that were my mom's friends. My mom died over a decade ago.

And these are women that I call up now for those things that I would have called my mama, right? You would never know I was an orphan. Most days I don't feel like an orphan because I have this wonderful village of women that I can still lean on. My kids do not lament lack of grandmothers.

They're very fortunate to have Brian's mom still alive. They're very fortunate to still have Brian's grandmother alive. But there are so many true like blood related aunties.

And there are so many of this chosen family dynamic of aunties that my girl's lives have always been rich. And even for them, they have their own chosen family even now. The women who were our teenage babysitters when they were born are still a valuable, highly, highly loved part of our lives.

And so for Lily, my oldest, the fact that there were so many trusted adults in her life growing up has given her a level of confidence. You know, she knows that no matter what happens, even if I'm not there, there will be somebody there in her corner. And she loves it.

You know, if I can't go to a school event, she's like, well, can this person go or can that person go? And then she's just as happy with them in the stands. They take pictures, they take video, they send it to me. And there is no resentment there.

Right. That that that chosen family aspect works really well for us. It doesn't work for everybody, but it works really well for us.

And, you know, if you're not somebody who has a lot of chosen family that, you know, if for you it's really more of your nuclear family or your actual blood relatives, it may seem like super kooky that my kids call people auntie and uncle who actually share no blood with us. But I don't pretend like my kids do know that those people do not actually have blood relations, but they also know that they are in their corner no matter what, just as I would be just as our blood relatives would be. And really, it's a way of expanding the circle.

And I think that is something else that is a side effect of really embracing the fact that there is more that draws us together than separates us from each other. An expanded circle is a good thing. An expanded circle is a positive thing.

I think we're all better when we surround ourselves with people who think differently, live differently, because it allows us to fully appreciate all that makes up the world, all that makes up the rich fabric of a community. And as much as this episode isn't about polyamory, right, because even my interview with Jen, I mean, polyamory was a very small percentage of that. I do think that we have to address the elephant in the room here, which is the morality piece, right? Because it would be easy to write off the entire interview with Jen if you feel a strong moral pull against how she lives and the families that she supports.

But, you know, what it makes me think is who counts as good and who counts as bad? Because there's more to morality, I think, than a one-dimensional definition, right? All good people do these things. Because I think we all know good people who do some things that we would never do, some things that we don't think is their best interests. Smoking.

Okay, does smoking make a person bad? Well, it is my personal opinion smoking does not make a person bad. But I don't necessarily want my kids smoking. I don't want my kids looking up to people who smoke.

And so then I have to kind of go, well, huh, how do I reconcile that opinion in and of myself? I honestly don't have an answer for you. I wish I did. That would make this episode so much neater and nice.

But, you know, find your freaks. This is a messy show. This is a show where I will oftentimes admit that I don't have answers.

But, you know, I'm quick to say that people who smoke cigarettes are not bad people. And yet I am just as quick to say I don't want my kids smoking. I don't want them to grow up to be adults who smoke.

I don't believe it's healthy. I don't believe it's a path toward living their best life. But I also know that my kids would be the ones who would confront me with, well, how can you say you don't want that for us, but then still say that it's okay for so and so to do it.

And all I can, all I would ever be able to say is that, well, so and so is an adult and adults get to make adult decisions. And you will grow up as an adult and make decisions that I don't like too. And though I may not like the decisions you make as an adult, I will respect your adult right to make them.

And then I'm sure I will go into a bad choices don't necessarily make you bad people. Just like bad people can still make good choices. Right.

It's just it's not a monolith. All good people don't always make good choices every minute of every day. All bad people don't make bad choices every minute of every day.

You know, there are good people who experience bad things. Bad circumstances happen to them. There are bad people who never get what the rest of us would think is coming to them.

This is the conflict in the world. It's just how it is. But this idea of who counts as good and who counts as bad.

You know, I've said many times, maybe not on this show, but motherhood is the nastiest competitive sport I ever played. It's probably the nastiest competitive sport I ever will play. I didn't know that how I chose to birth a baby, whether I slept with my baby, didn't sleep with my baby, how I fed my baby, how I diapered my baby, when I fed my baby solids, if I fed my baby solids.

I did not know all of those things individually put a mark in the bad mom category or the good mom category, depending on who I was thinking or who I was talking to. And we see the same thing right now with politics. Everything right now feels politically charged.

It feels like everything is a political statement. I will oversimplify it because I'm not a political expert at all. But there's a lot of good people vote this way, bad people vote that way.

In religion, the faithful do ABC and the faithless do not. Something that we grappled with early on with our girls was we saw that a lot of parents around us were raising their kids to believe that all Christians were good people. Well, I've lived on the planet long enough and have read enough news coverage and seen enough courtroom cases to know that that is not true.

There are people who say they are Christian who do things that are very bad or who have done things that are very, very bad. Right. So it is not accurate to say all Christians are good any more than it would be accurate to say there are no bad people who live in a particular state or there are no good people who live in a particular country.

Right. There are good people and bad people everywhere. And they say they subscribe to all different manners of thought and belief and philosophy.

It just is. But the thing with good versus bad and just labeling anything, anything, whether it's a lifestyle, it's a belief system, it's a value system. Anything is abjectly good or abjectly bad is we are making a judgment and judgments shut doors.

Curiosity is what opens doors. You know, when we're talking about belonging and community, nobody ever felt accepted, loved or wanted through judgment. So the best thing any of us can do in order to expand community, to be the person who helps somebody feel like feel safe in our presence is to just practice curiosity.

Okay. It's to recognize that different isn't dangerous. It's just data.

Right. When you talk to somebody who lives differently from you and you go, I'm curious, like, what led to that? Like, what was the sequence of events that led you to this without trying to do some big gotcha and trap them in their bad choices? Right. Your curiosity can turn the data into wisdom.

You might gain a new perspective. You might get an appreciation of what led somebody to believe that their most recent choice was the best choice for them, given the circumstances and the information available to them at the time. And curiosity looks different in different circumstances.

In parenting, that filter can be consent, can be honesty. It can be no secrets. Right.

And just being open and curious, but making it really clear that our non-negotiables here are consent of all involved. Our non-negotiables here is that we will always be honest. Our non-negotiables here that we're not going to keep secrets.

In politics, your filter may be dignity and integrity. Right. We don't dehumanize people just because we don't agree with them.

We don't dehumanize people because they vote differently from us. We don't dehumanize people because they live differently from us. They have different priorities than we do.

That's a hard one right now because we see a lot of dehumanization happening and a lot of us versus them languaging. That is a lot of what episode five, if I recall correctly, episode five talks a lot about that dehumanization of our enemies. And then when we're talking about religion, approaching everything with a filter of compassion and humility versus coercion.

You know, not having this agenda to convert somebody to our way of thinking is going to do so much more for opening doors and building like an actual connected relationship than otherwise. You know, they're not suggesting that you have to agree with other people. Right.

You don't have to agree with someone's structure to recognize the fact that the fight that they're fighting is similar to the fight that you're fighting. Right. If you're just trying to raise good kids to be good adults and good humans, you can recognize somebody else who's raising their kids totally different from you is doing the same thing.

Right. You guys just may have different definitions of what that means. Most people are out there trying to live with integrity, trying to love their people well, trying to give everybody in their family a better shot at life than they had.

Right. I mean, these are things, you know, I know that that's what my mom wanted. She wanted me to have a better life than she had.

So many people I talk to just want their kids to have a better life than they have. I know I want that for my kids. I'm sure my kids are going to want that for their kids.

It's pretty universal. So even when we have all these differences, there is so much that is actually the same. So this is the problem for solo episodes.

They can get babbly if I'm not careful. I think what I want to leave you with today are just some ideas for experimentation. Because I know like this, this episode's a little bit heady, but it's also just one of those things that if you can't, if you can't move past the idea that there are people who live like completely different from you, and that that might be okay, that you might still have some similarities to you, and that you don't have to agree with how they're living in order to appreciate those similarities.

Some experiments you might want to try just to see how comfortable you are looking for similarities over like stopping with differences is consider replacing a snap judgment this week with a curious question. So whenever you find yourself thinking, how could they, or like only animals would do such a thing, think about, you know, ask yourself like, what need is this meeting for them? I feel like that is a really curious question. Like there's anybody who does anything differently than you, like what need is this meeting for them? Another thing you can do, very safe, very simple, is think about your ecosystem of support, right? You know, thinking of like, what is the community online, in person, that you have around you? You know, I talked about how I was fortunate to be raised around this village, and these are women who I can still call upon as mentors even now, as an adult, even though I'm orphaned.

You know, who shows up for you? Who are those friends, those mentors, other trusted adults in your children's lives, whether they're blood relatives, chosen family, send them a quick thank you text. Just send them a text and say thank you for being part of my community, being part of my village. And, you know, think about what your world would look like if you didn't feel the need to keep secrets, right? Just think on if belonging requires hiding, that's not real belonging.

What does that mean for you and what you've got going on in life right now? And if you want some deeper reflection, I have a few more questions. These are ones I'm personally chewing on. Again, I have no answers, just asking the questions, right? But here's what I'm chewing on right now.

Where in my life am I confusing what's familiar with what's right? This is a big one for me right now as I feel like so much of what I always thought was true or would be true, I see it changing in front of my eyes. Where in your life are you confusing familiar with right? Where do you silence yourself or who do you silence yourself around because you fear judgment? That's what I've been thinking a lot about. I don't feel like I silence myself a lot, but I'm paying closer attention to the spaces where I feel safe to speak up and those spaces where I kind of think maybe I don't need to say anything here.

And what's the one script you inherited that no longer fits and what would it look like to rewrite it? This is a question I've been thinking about ever since I interviewed Jen, is when she was talking about going off script, you know, for her, the fact that she lives this non-monogamous lifestyle kind of made everything for her safe to question. Because she felt like that was such a core belief that, you know, families were one man, one woman, that when she said, okay, I'm making a different choice, that opened up her world to making all sorts of different choices and made it feel safe to question everything she thought she knew. I've been thinking, what are scripts that I've inherited that no longer fit? Like, can I even recognize them? And I'll tell you, like, I'm constantly curious about that.

One of them is respect. I was raised in an environment where compliance equaled respect. So to be respectful meant that I did not speak up.

I shared no disagreement with my mom. So I wasn't allowed to disagree with her. I couldn't speak up against anything she might say.

I had to go along with everything. And I had to have a pleasant personality with it all. And so in the back of my mind, I still think of that as respect.

But I happen to enjoy raising spirited girls. I happen to enjoy hearing how their brains work. And I can't fully appreciate how their brains work if I don't allow them to entertain ideas that are different than mine, if I don't allow them to question things.

One of the funniest things that ever happened, and there's a lot of funny things that happened in this house, but I was frustrated with Lily for not doing something around the house. And I'm like scolding her the whole time about it. And I don't realize as I'm scolding her, I'm doing it.

And she called me on it. She says, Mom, like, what's the point here? Like, do you want me to do the chore that you reminded me of three times that I keep forgetting? Or do you just want me to feel badly about the fact that I didn't do it? And I said, Huh, what do you mean? And she says, Well, you have this thing, like you get upset with me for not doing something. But then you start doing it yourself as you're lecturing me about the fact that I didn't do it.

And I'm just not sure how I'm supposed to respond. Am I supposed to get up and like, get in front of you and start doing it myself? Or am I just supposed to sit here and be lectured? And I just started laughing. I absolutely started laughing because I was like, I had no idea I did that.

But as she said it, and as I looked at what I was doing, which was washing the dishes while griping at her about the fact that she hadn't washed the dishes. I was like, you know, you've got a point there. And no, I didn't know I was doing this.

But thank you for bringing it up. I have no idea why I do this. And I'm gonna have to go and think about that.

That's one of those examples of a script that I obviously inherited. It doesn't actually fit. But if somebody hadn't brought my attention to it, I never would have known about it.

So in some of these cases, we can ask ourselves these questions. In some of these cases, we just have to be open to somebody else bringing it up and being willing to explore it rather than to bite their heads off. So in closing, you know, really, what we've talked about today is families can look different, but still be fighting the same enemies, still have the same goals.

You can have different families, same fight, you can have different faiths, same fight, different politics, same fight, the surface shifts, but your heart rarely does. And so if today's episode made you think, good or bad, indifferent, even, share this with somebody you know, and open up a conversation about that. Tell them the one thing that made you go, huh.

Ask them what makes them go, huh. And if you've missed the full interview with Jen, go back to episode eight, check that out. I think you'll get a lot out of what she shares, regardless of what you think about polyamory as a lifestyle or not.

And you know, this is Find Your Freaks. I'm Tanya Kubo. And remember, normal was never the point.

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.