Tending the Fires: Slow Growth for Kinship Family Resilience

What are you fueling your inside fire with? Is it the quick dopamine hit of gasoline, the flashes of crisis and high-speed chaos, or are you doing the quiet, heavy work of stacking oak logs that keep the house warm for a lifetime? Today we're talking to Jake Knox about how to slow down the pace of a high-conflict household and find the campfire moments in the middle of the mess.

Nurturing Through Adversity. In this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren as we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care. We'll discuss how we can change the. Course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future, all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you. Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, Your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored. I sat at my kitchen table last. Night with my granddaughter battling over spelling words and the desperate urge she had to just be distracted by a phone call. In that moment, I realized I was reacting to her flash fire with my own gasoline I had to stop, breathe, and remember that my job is to reimprint her brain with stability. I had to choose to be the oak log. This conversation with Jake Knox changed how I look at those

30 AM wake-ups. Today's guest is Jake Knox, author of Oak Logs and Gasoline. Jake is a writer and mentor who explores slow growth, responsibility, and what it means to tend the things that matter over time. His work centers on mentorship, meaningful conversations, and building strong foundations in leadership, work, and life. Jake brings a steady, thoughtful perspective to growth and invites people to think differently about the fires they're building and how they care for them. Hi Jake, welcome to our show. Thank you. I'm so happy to be here. I love it. I just love that I get to meet interesting people. There's so many wonderful people out there in the world and you're one of them. Thank you. Thank you. Well, you, you obviously are one of them too. It's obvious to me in just the few minutes that we were speaking earlier. Um, I'm just honored to be here and having this conversation. Well, it's interesting when I was introduced to you, um, and I read a little bit about what you're doing, it's a topic of conversation that's going on in my family right now, because as a child who found peace in nature, as I grew up, my comfort was hiking and more solitary sports. Because that was my peace and that's where I found my grounding always. As we were speaking before we began recording, your book Oak Logs and Gasoline, and the reason that you began writing that was because you wanted to share stories that you'd put together a set of standards that you wanted to live by. And you realized that the real work The work that keeps our homes warm and keeps our relationships healthy between our spouses and between our children is a very slow, steady act of tending the coals of the fires that burn in our hearts and in our homes. So tell us a little bit about your journey and how it started and what brought you to write the book Oak Logs and Gasoline? I am a father and a husband. My wife and I have 4 sons. 2 of them are adults now, and 2 of them are still in those high school years. A lot of my language, a lot of the things that have come out of my mouth in the last 20 years have been around shaping boys to be good men, to grow up to be good men. My sons have on their pinboard in their bedrooms a note handwritten from me that says, "My most important job is to raise you to be a good man." And it's a centering piece that we've always had that's, you know what, sometimes I'm going to ride your butt and sometimes I'm going to tell you things that you don't want to hear and I'm going to make you get up. I'm going to make you show up. I'm going to make sure that you're fed and you're healthy and you're happy and that your feelings are being heard. All of those things. Are my promises to you as your dad. Along with that then comes the thousands of 2-minute conversations that happen between me and each of my 4 boys as they've grown up. And there's recurring thoughts and recurring language that keeps coming up all the time. I just said it earlier, you got to get up and show up. All of these different things that I've said to my boys. A few years ago, my second oldest said to me, he was struggling with something and we were sitting in the living room talking about it and we really just talked our way through it in a mentorship type of way. I said to him, how did you get to this place that you think that instead of no, that's not right? It's more of how did you get to that place? And we come out of the other end of that conversation both having grown a little bit and a little bit closer to each other and that understanding. And, he looked at me and he said, "Dad, every kid growing up should get to have these conversations that we're having." And, I said, "Well, you know what? Let's just start writing down these little thoughts and who knows what'll come of that one day. Maybe we'll write a book." And, that was 4.5, almost 5 years ago when that started. And, we did start writing notes. It became a basket on my desk that was heaping And a year and a half ago, that same son who's now in university said to me, "Hey, how's that book coming?" And I said, "You know what? Let's dump this stuff out and take a look at it." So, we organized all the notes one day when he was home and we said, "You know what? Let's write a book." And he goes, "Well, what are you going to call your book?" I said, "Well, what do we always talk about? What are you tending your inside fire with?" this is a mantra. That's the— I was meditating one time a long time ago and really thinking about my life, my own personal life. And I had this vision inside of myself that I had a fire in my core, in my belly, that was mine to tend. And was I taking care of it? What was I fueling that inside fire with? Was I fueling it with good fuel or was I fueling it with splashes of gasoline because it's flashy and quick dopamine hits and that's way easier right now to get than doing the work to chop and stack and turn over my stock of dry logs so that when I needed fuel, I could turn around and have something that I had already prepared for myself. That was our analogy. So it was really, it came to me immediately and I said, we're calling this book Oak Logs and Gasoline. And then you're inside fire, tending the firewood side inside. And we just looked at each other and went, that's it. I rewrote the book 8 different times, 8 different frameworks. It started out real preachy. It started out as, you know, from all of the different books that I've read in my life, trying to write it in that same voice. And it just was never really working for me. And then this last spring, almost a year ago, I started writing and I was writing in my voice. I was writing like I was speaking to my sons and the book just came out of me. I went, okay, stop. What are the chapters? Okay, here they are. I mean, I had 28 different chapters. The book is 19 and there's a volume 2 coming. But this is— these are the 19 things that are going to come at you as a young person, whether you like it or not. These things are coming to you. We're going to talk about stress. We're going to talk about looking good on the outside versus feeling good on the inside. We're going to talk about giving respect. And when you show up giving respect, all of a sudden respect starts coming back to you from the external. So do you want respect? You need to start by giving respect. Talking about how we treat people around us, how we identify what our own superpowers are, what our own purpose is. These aren't conversations that are, well, hey, I got 5 minutes. You want to talk about stress with your kids? They just don't come up like that. And they're hard for mentors to find language around. And they're hard for kids to express those needs or young people to express those feelings, to get help or to get into those conversations. And so I really wanted to make all of those topics handy, easy to read, and accessible for both mentors and the people who they're walking with and guiding. That's where the book came from. As soon as I found that purpose for myself in the book, I wrote the book and it came out in 4, 4 and a half months of diligent on the side writing this book. And it has already helped me. Writing the book helped me with my own reflection in my life. It's helped my relationship with me and my wife. It's helped for honing my relationship with all 4 of my boys, my own inner peace.. And the feedback that I've already gotten from the book from everybody who's looked at it is giving me that same thing. A friend came back. He said he bought it for his kid, wanted to read it first, read it, and realized that it helped him make a career change that he has been struggling with for 3 years and found the language within himself to do it. It's a better review than that, right? There, there is none. He told me that at a wrestling tournament that we were at watching the boys. He also has a son who's a high school wrestler. And when he told me that, it just hit me like, I'm helping people. I've already fulfilled everything that I've always wanted. And I can't wait for that to happen more. It's really, it's not a conversation that I started. It's a conversation that I joined that's been happening forever. Sometimes really well, sometimes not well. These are all conversations that are going to keep happening forever. So how can we make it more meaningful and easier transition? Don't get the feeling that you're a very judgy person either. Not at all. Very. Empathetic. And you mentioned, we spoke a little bit about your background. Your mom was in mental health and education. And she brought you up with a very down-to-earth, kind of well-rounded, would you say, upbringing? Open-minded. Open-minded. Absolutely. And very empathetic and caring very much. And I'm grateful for that, having that foundation. It's a wonderful place for all of us to get back to. And I do think as children, somewhere along the way, no matter what our upbringing has been, that there are things within ourselves that feel very foundational and very grounding. And as I was saying, many of us in the situations we're in, grandparents raising grandchildren, we either have children that have been, come from a very high-acting or emergency-type situations, otherwise we wouldn't have these children. And our lives have become very tumultuous because of that. So I know I can speak for myself in that it's taken almost 4 years for it to really settle down, for us to settle into the situation we've needed to adjust to locationally and also internally as a family, because this is a new family for us. We're raising kids the second time around, raising kids that have issues that we've not experienced before and subjects that we just haven't had to speak about with our kids that we raised the first time around. So I think to begin with, I'd really like to talk about how we can move out of these fast-paced lives that many kids are living today. Many young families are living today. Kids are doing 2 or 3 sports. They're on online games. And life is pretty fast and crisis-oriented in many situations, especially in ours. So how do we move out of that into getting in touch with a little slower pace, a little more boring for some of these kids, pace from, from where, where we, where we've been in You know, where we're coming from. Yeah. You know, I know that everyone's situation is unique and everyone's working with the tools that they have and the hand that they've been dealt. In a lot of cases, a hand that maybe they've chosen, which is incredibly noble. And I want more than anything for people to be gentle with themselves. For the situation that they're in, especially your audience. As I've reflected on that, it's hard when things are moving really fast, especially in today's world is so fast. It's fast for me. I can't, I can barely keep up. And my kids are running circles around me with a device in each hand in, in a world that I can't even comprehend. And I'm like, hey, you're not listening to me. They're like, yeah, I just heard everything you just said. And I was playing this video game and I was texting my friend about getting me in that hoodie back. I went through that this morning at breakfast. Yeah. Right. So it moves so quickly and it almost feels like it's being fed to you. And I, and I think when I was reflecting about it and I, and, you know, I don't have grandchildren. I mean, I have a 21-year-old. It's in my future. I would imagine at some point, I hope they're in thinking the advice that I can share that sounds authentic is language that I think I can speak to anyone. About, and I hope it lands the right way in that you do need to give yourself grace. When I'm feeling anxious about where I'm at, I remember the position that I'm in. I am a husband and I'm a father. I know how to do this. I don't have all the answers. I know that I don't have all the answers and I won't pretend like I do, but I am here and I am present. And I will do what I need to do to be the head of my household, to lead my pack, to have the conversations that need to be had. And it's hard for me. A little bit calmer now that we have 2 in the house instead of 4 in the house, but we had 4 going to different practices and getting picked up and getting dropped off and all those different things. Just remember who you are. Remember who you are and what your intentions are and what your purpose is and take it from there. And not every fight has to be fought right now. Not everything needs to be answered right now. And being intentional and choosing calm when that's the next best thing is oftentimes the best thing you can do. To sit back and relax and invite the chaos to take a deep breath. I think that that's a stellar piece of advice. I have to be reminded constantly that the most important thing is that I'm just there for them and that it's regular and that it's the same every day and it's been the same every day for 4 years. Our routines are the same. And as much as they fight that, I have to also remember that it's their familiarity. For my granddaughter, it was 6 years out of the 10 she's been alive that were total chaos. They moved every 3 to 6 months. Everything she owned was left behind when they moved. Their schedule was never the same. They never went to bed at the same time. They've had to feed themselves. There was never a meal at regular times. There were never people that spoke to each other, that communicated with each other. And if they did, it was usually in an angry way or in a drug-induced way, right? You know, I was telling her, it was so funny. We were doing homework together last night at the table and she did not want to do it. She just wanted to make a phone call. To her other grandmother because it happens to be that her mother is in jail again now. And she missed being able to talk to her grandmother. And I said, you're just not focused on your work, are you? And she said, no. And I said, well, I'll tell you what, I know it's

30 at night and you should be going to bed. But I said, if you get this work done and you do it right, because the whole point of you writing these words over and over— she was working on spelling and she has dyslexia, so it's a lot of work for her. And I said, if I know you did this yesterday and you're just not there today, if you sit down and do this, I don't care what time it is, I'll give you 15 minutes to call your other grandmother if that makes you feel better before you go to bed. But I want you to do it slowly and carefully because the reason for doing it this way is so that your mind becomes familiar with the way these words are spelled, and you're going to have a spelling test tomorrow. She got that, and man, she just applied herself. And she was like trying to go through quickly. I said, no, no, no, no. I want you to do it slowly and carefully because you're training your brain. On what looks familiar. And I don't care when you get done, you'll still be able to call your grandmother and talk to her for 15 minutes. So there's no reason to rush. There's no deadline. And she understood. And I said, you see, that's my job because our job as parents should be to teach you lessons that become imprinted in your brain, just like these words will. For your life. Because when you're 14 and 16 and 18 and older, these are the things I want you to fall back on. They're very basic. I'm teaching you how to care for yourself, personal grooming, because when you get a job and after you leave home, this is the impression you're going to make on other people. And to the people that hire you. And if you don't know how to read and you don't take care of yourself, your health and your outward appearance, you don't know how to be clean when you need to be, be dirty around the campfire. Believe me, I mean, I, I'm, I'm a comfort girl. I like to be in sweatpants and comfortable clothes and I love smelling like a campfire and I like being outside and sweaty and dirty. And then I love coming in and taking a shower, you know, but, and with people that you're close to, that shouldn't be a concern, right? But I told her, that's my job is to teach you these things because I want to reimprint your brain with the things that are important to you because you didn't get that early on. And We've got to take the time to do that. It's interesting. As I was telling you, it's, it's the brain is a fascinating thing to me and how trauma affects it. Now we can diagnose that as attention deficit or ADHD or defiance disorder. But when you think about it, it takes a lot of patience to slow down their pace and their minds an hour. Ourselves when we get into that fight or flight state, as we react to the things that they're doing or the kids are doing. And when things get traumatic in the household, it's very easy for me to get upset by the noise or upset by the confusion or get angry that everybody's on their devices. You know, I react to it too, and then I have to find my quiet place, which I have in me and it's such a big part of who I am, but I get affected by it too. Yeah. Yeah. But when, when I explained this to her last night, she got it, but it was strange to her because she hasn't ever had a parent talk to her about that. And that's a small win. And you just stacked a small win in the building block of that trust. And that would be behavior. Another good, good heavy log on the fire. That's right. That's exactly right. Slow burning log. And that fire that she knows that she'll learn to know over repeated, repeatedly being able to see that that's what is normal now, that she'll walk away from the fire, knowing that the fire is still there when she comes back. So we're getting into camping terminology and I love how you associate terminology with what we're talking about in your book. I like, you know, slow burns and flash fires and, um, I can relate to that. So if we have these flash fires that happen all the time, reacting to them in a common sense way, it's kind of like, if you know there's a fire on the other side of the door, you don't open it. Because you put too much oxygen in, right? Too quickly. If we've got a flash fire burning, the way to look at it is assess, evaluate, let's, let's get it to where we got a good slow burn going and manageable so that everybody's calmed. Down and we're— that's intentional, right? Logs are tools. And when we were using our tools, we can build. Gasoline is a quick fix and a quick fix usually comes at the expense of a mess in using that metaphor. Absolutely. It's harder to go, you know what, we need to, we need to stop and stack, or we need to go out and grab some, some logs. And that's going to require us to go and get some logs, put them in a basket, bring them into the house, open up, clean the ash from the fire, put some logs in there. That's how we build our lives with our families very intentionally. That's cooking, going to the grocery store, getting some good nourishing food to cook a good meal as opposed to, oh, let's just grab some fast food quick. You know, those, that's the Okaloks, the gasoline of life. I don't ever preach to anyone that it's not a good idea to go to get some fast food sometimes because sometimes it is okay to do that. Right. But what is our relationship with each one? And are we taking the time to build that slow, steady fire in our lives to have those? Are we taking the time to stop and say, okay, I understand that you're freaking out right now. Let's dig into that. Or, you know what, here's the iPad. I got to do something right now. You know, like what's the, those are the oak logs and the gasoline of that. We're not perfect entities, any of us. We all have our own things going on. And again, give yourself the grace that you need. You won't be perfect every day, but if you understand that language that you can come back to, now you're driving in your car and you go, hmm, you know what? I threw gasoline on that fire earlier instead of taken the time to go put some oak logs on it. Okay. I understand that I can go back and tend that fire a little bit better when I get. Home. What have you found in this analogy that you've applied to your daily or weekly home life routine? You touched on this earlier, talking about predictability. It can be Sometimes it's boring. Sometimes it's our job to be boring. My job is to raise you boys to be good men. And part of that means, you know, it's going to be boring sometimes. And sometimes the refrigerator is only going to be filled with good options. And most of the time our routine is going to be this.

30 PM. You're not on your device anymore. You are going to brush your teeth every night. These are routines and these are things that you can live by here. You know, it's coming. Boy, that'll start a wildfire, taking away devices. Right, right. But I mean, this is our, this is our way to be normal. This is our way to find normalcy and predictability. And I'm your parent. I'm the one that's guiding you right now. To be a better adult one day. Another, I think, great realization is an adult. I've been on this planet for many years and my children are children and they've been on this planet for a finite number of years. I've been where they are in my life. They've never been anywhere near where I am in my life. And so when we need to connect, I can't ask my kids to meet me where I'm at, but I can certainly go to where they are and meet them where they're at. And that's where they can grow forward and grow up in those conversations. If they can't meet me where I'm at, I can't expect them to understand the adult. World. I've spoken to many others that have shared how much their stories make a difference in kids' lives. And when I was telling my granddaughter the story really of what a parent is, what I think a parent should be, and I was thinking about a teenager that you'd just taken a device away from and how angry they get. And it's like, you have no right to do this. And what you can say to reengage them at those times. And you can't— when kids are angry, you can't talk to them about this stuff. It takes a little bit for them to be removed from the anxiety. But once they do, there's always a story, I think, that can bring them in somehow. Or in our case, I have a 6-year-old, all you have to do is tickle him. And the thing is, sometimes I don't have the energy to have

30 at night. There's that slow burning flame that you can bring them back into when they're cold and removed. I'm thinking about fires again, because we are the heart of our families. And if we remember that, that, that we are the heart of the family and that we're trying to reignite a flame. In a child and how do we reconnect with them? So oftentimes we can do that through a story from our own childhood or connecting with where they are, whether it's wanting to be more popular or wanting to be distracted, maybe whatever's going on in their world is— Yeah. Wanting to be seen, wanting to be heard. Yeah, absolutely. And hearing their stories and what they feel about that. Taking the time to listen and validate. And validate their feelings from where they're coming from in their life right now, instead of correcting to ask questions. Oh, really? How did you come to be? How did you come to think that? Really? That's an interesting perspective. You know, I thought like that once in my life, and then I thought of this. Have you ever thought of. This? How do we bring them back around the campfire? I think about The best times, many of the best times I've had in life have been around a campfire. And sometimes people are just sitting observing. Sometimes someone's entertaining. Sometimes we're singing a song or telling a story. Sometimes we're having a drink. It could be coffee, it could be hot chocolate, it could be a hot rum toddy. But could be filled with laughter. It could be quiet. It could be. Peaceful. Contemplative. Yeah. But there's a fire at the center of it that everyone's engaged in. So finding the fire is so important when we're not feeling connected. Absolutely. And understanding what your, what your fire looks like in understanding and relating what you're fueling yourself with to begin with. And are you taking the time to steadily tend your fire? Because the better yours is inside of yourself, the better you'll be for other people. And we can all enjoy a good bonfire. Absolutely. A blazing bonfire. You bet. Absolutely. And you know, that's why I talk about that too. It's sometimes it's appropriate to have a big raging bonfire with your friends and that's okay. You just have to be able to keep that fire under control. Right. Right. Without calling the fire department and knowing that you're going to wake up tomorrow with a well-tended fire inside of yourself. Again. Well, I love this conversation. And why don't you tell us before we get into some of the other questions I want to ask you, tell our listeners where they can find out about your fire tending techniques and conversation in Oak Logs and Gasoline. Sure. oaklogsandgasoline.com. Is my website for my book. I've just recently now, because I've been doing a lot of writing, contributing a lot of op-ed articles to different publications, a lot of podcast conversations. So I started a Substack. It's Jake Knox Mentoring. Jake Knox Mentorship Coaching is my Substack. It's an, it's a writer's media site that people can subscribe to. There's everything that I'm putting on there now is free. Eventually I'll start teaching classes through there where there'll be paid subscriptions to access some deeper content. But for now, everything that I've ever written for other publications, I'm going to be putting on there. All of the podcasts that I'm on will be featured on there so that people will be able to find you as well through my media sites. But Jake Knox Mentorship Coaching and oaklogsandgasoline.com. My book is available on Amazon, Oak Logs and Gasoline by Jake Knox. It's on all of the different Ingram starting to pop up in bookstores now as well. Walmart is available online at Walmart, 140 different places throughout Europe. And it's just fun how it's building. And it's just the momentum has just been a wonderful affirmation. I think the analogy to campfires is refreshing. All the psychological terminology sometimes is a little bit sterile to all of us. I'll make sure and put all of those links in the show notes. Wonderful. Well, the 3 book-ready questions that I have for all of those that I interview are both a systematic question, a taboo question, and a policy question. I want to ask you, as a mentor who looks at long-term structures, what do you see as the primary flaw in how our fast-paced society fails to support this slow generational work that we really need to do to support our kinship families? I think the world now is requiring us to move very quickly. And I think that our children are being raised in an era where multitasking is the norm. I still believe in my home, there is time and space because we've created it intentionally to slow down. We have family dinners, not all the time, but at least once a week, we have a family dinner. We have a check-in and phones aren't at the table. This is our time to just sit together and catch up. I think that it's most important now more than ever to be present or to create intentionally that present time. And do kids fight it? Sometimes, but I think that my kids genuinely enjoy it. And even though they don't want to break out of that cycle of having their face in their phone or doing what they're doing, or they really do enjoy and they feel the love of us being present with them. I think that we just need to not when we think of it to knee-jerk, but to slowly be contemplative and think of different small ways that we can be present together. If that's nothing more than a 5-minute car ride to say, hey, let's chat. It can be just, just that, but finding ways to intentionally be present. Have you found personally any creative ways of getting your family together around the table and have a unique conversation for dinner? I think in my family, it organically comes up. We're very lucky that way, but we've been doing that for a long time. And I think that once a spark of a conversation starts, it kind of rolls through and everybody's just kind of then like excited and waiting their turn to contribute in the conversation. And I hope that for everyone that they can have that or that they can get to that point where those conversations just naturally come up. I know that there's apps out there again. Now you're going to get your phone at the table again. There's little card games that that invoke conversations. Or maybe it's just while you are sitting before your kids get home and write down 4 or 5 different ideas and say, all right, here's 5 different topics. Who wants to talk about this? And make it something interesting or fun or imaginative. If you could go on a vacation anywhere in the world, where would you go? You know, if you could have any job, what would you— anything in the world, it doesn't matter. What would you want to do? Them and just enjoy hearing where, what comes out of them. I love that. My taboo question for you then is, what is the one thing do you think that nobody tells a leader about the shame of slowing down? Why is it that we feel like we're failing when we're not constantly in firefighter mode? I think that we live in a culture where being dynamic and doing more and juggling an extra ball feels impressive and it looks impressive. And I think that a lot, a lot of times this has happened to me where I'm looking at all the other parents of the football players on the team and, you know, everybody's got their stuff together and they're showing up early and their, and their kids' hair is combed. And I'm thinking to myself, wow, they're really doing all this stuff. They're on the PTO, the the committee for this and then that. And it looks impressive. And I just think that a lot of times we feel like we're, we have this need to also keep up and it's false. It's not reality. The reality in life is that we should feel peace. We should feel calm and we should feel like we are able to be the best versions of ourselves. I'm not saying that sometimes we're not running around like firefighters because sometimes that's just what it is. But we can do that so much better if we're tending our fire inside as the base, the baseline of our lives is this is what I need to feel healthy. This is what I need to feel calm. I need some quiet time. I need to take a walk and get some exercise. I need to prepare good food for myself and for my family. Because if it's fast food, if it's no time for yourself, if it's running from one thing to the next, you're not serving yourself and you're certainly not serving or being the best version of yourself for other people. It seems counterintuitive, but I really believe that if you take the time for yourself, if you take the deep breath, take the quiet time that you need, ask other people for help, ask for the things that you need, that you'll find down the road that all of a sudden you have more strength and more power and more energy than you did before because you are serving yourself as well and first. It's okay to take care of yourself. It's okay to put yourself first sometimes. And it's certainly okay to let your needs be known to other people. It's not weak. It's honest. Yes. Good words. If you were COO of the country writing a national advocacy toolbox, what one non-negotiable rule would you implement to ensure ensure that we prioritize oak log stability for children over gasoline temporary fixes? Wow. That's a big one. That's a big question. What would you do? Man. One policy. One policy that I would create. I'm a deep thinker here. And so where my brain is going with this, I wouldn't have to write this. We like deep thinkers on this show. I have a good one. Like, you're right. I rubbed the bottle and now the genie is granting me one wish. What is this one wish? You get one wish. Oak Logs and Gasoline is like a required reading material for every family in the world. Yep. I would say I would open the door for there to be time in people's lives to be able to have quiet time with each other. Built into our, uh, built into our. Day for, for couple, for spouses, for families, for Right. I think for, for anyone that there be time for us to relax and to be present with each other and to be able to slow down. That's a, it's a really tough, you know, ask. That's one of the best questions I've ever been asked. This is sort of an aside, but please, if I were designing communities, I would make sure that there was a park in the center of every community where you could have a fire and get time away from your family. And it didn't cost any money. I love that. I love that vision, having accessibility to community space, to togetherness. And I think we've gone down that road before in the history of the world. And I think that there are beautiful places like that available and, and maybe we just need to make that cool again. Yeah. And it's become so inaccessible getting to national parks anymore. And the communities that are successful are ones that have free open space around it. So if we can find a safe space in our community where we can do that, sit together, share stories, be a safe place. I'm putting words in your mouth, but that's fine. Well, that's what a conversation is, right? There's, we're, we're, we're here, not me to tell you and you not to tell me, but for us to, to have the conversation and discuss it and grow together. Well, I love this. I love this philosophy. You know, camping and the woods and the outdoors have always been my, my happy place. And even where we live now, although I don't live around beautiful, clear blue streams and flowing water here in Louisiana, I moved away from that and our home was in the middle of 250 acres of wilderness. Which I just loved, but it, but it didn't work for the kids. That's not what they needed for the time being. So we moved, but we live on a bayou around a lot of, um, really a lot of beautiful nature as well. It's different. And that time when my husband and I get out on the boat and go explore the bayou, I feel like we're around a campfire. And I feel like we talk about the things that matter. We're not talking about, you know, the problems we have. The laundry that needs to get folded. The dishes that need to get done. Yeah. So wherever we can do that, I think that that's good. That is a campfire. 100%. And that's, that's my big part. Where's your campfire? You were saying that earlier. You find your campfire wherever you go. Tell us a little bit about that before we leave the show. Sure. Absolutely. Yeah, we were talking about, I grew up in Wisconsin, in Northeast Wisconsin, and lots of opportunities to camp, lots of wilderness, lots of nature. On that note, nature does allow us to slow down. It's a, it's a place where we can go to slow down. And so jumping back into policy, I would make it accessible for every person in the country to get out into nature. I would make that accessible. To everyone, and you suggested it and it's catching up in my own mind right now. The best thing I do for myself is to get out into nature or to sit by the campfire and watch the crackle and slow down, get away from the media, get away from the lights and let the sun be the guide and let the sounds of nature be the speed of what's happening around us. I grew up in around all of that. I'm so fortunate to have 15,000 lakes, countless acres of forest, Opportunities to go on trails and hike, rivers, the Great Lakes. I live 4 miles from Lake Michigan. To have all of those things accessible to me. Every moment to connect with someone that you love is sitting by a campfire. That is sitting by the campfire. 8-minute drive to school with the boys. That's our campfire. Here's dad sitting with his boys at the campfire. Everyone's gone to bed at night. One of my sons says, hey dad, can I talk to you about something quick? Yep. We're in the dim nightlight of the kitchen. Everyone else is away. That's our campfire. My wife is driving to work. I had to drive to my work. We're on our phones talking to each other for 10 minutes while we're both commuting because we didn't get a chance before we left. That's our campfire. It's everywhere where you can connect with someone to bridge that conversation. Like we are doing now, we're sitting out at the campfire having this conversation together. I'm growing and hopefully you're growing from talking to me and we're going to both walk away from this with maybe a little bit better perspective, feeling a little bit more clear about something, a little more confident that we're walking in this world with someone else, you know, at our shoulder, shoulder to shoulder, and that we're not doing this by ourselves. And that's a wonderful feeling. Thanks for that. I'm going to get the kids all out on the porch tonight. It's actually a warmer evening here for the first time in a while and sit by the river because we have a busy evening, basketball in one direction, softball in the other direction. When we get back before we go to bed, I'm just going to say everybody's got to go sit outside in the dark by the river. That'll be our campfire tonight. Yeah. Jake. Wonderful. Wonderful. Thanks for sharing. All the best for you and your family. Thank you. Thank you. So nice having you on the show. We'll have more conversations, I hope. I hope so too. I very much look forward to it. I hope that conversation was as inspiring for you as it was for me. Our family did sit out on the porch that night and it was lots of fun. We were a little late getting to. Bed, but it was worth it. So I am asking you to look at your schedule for this evening. Is there a place where you can invite the chaos to take a deep breath? Maybe it's not a literal campfire, but. You can find 10 minutes to meet your grandchild exactly where they are, without correcting, without fixing, just being there. What oak log can you set on the fire tonight? I hope you'll join us next week as we sit down with Laurel, a grandmother who's faced the front lines of the fentanyl crisis and financial grit, and yet still finds the strength to see life as a precious gift. We are 2.7 million strong, still nurturing, and still here. Sometimes it's our job to be boring, and in a world of flash fires, predictability is the greatest gift we can give a traumatized child. We're moving mountains, relocating lives, and tending fires when the world feels cold. Your heart is the most important asset on the balance sheet. Keep nurturing, keep leading, and I'll see you in the next boardroom.