Hello and welcome to the Teen Life Coach podcast. I'm your host Sammy and today we are talking about having difficult conversations with Mary Allard.

Hi guys. Welcome to the podcast. I have a special guest today and her name is Mary Allard. And I wanted to have her on today just because I get a lot of requests from you guys about having difficult conversations and maybe when you get into difficult conversations with your parents, you don't know what to say. Or sometimes your parents

want you to say a certain thing and you say what you really mean and you get in trouble for it.

So Mary is a really great resource for difficult conversations. So go ahead and introduce yourself.

We're so happy to have you here today. Thanks, Sammy. And hello to everyone

listening. I'm really excited to be here too. A lot of people have asked me, like, why am I attracted

to difficult conversations? Because it's a weird thing to have a desire to cover. And I think it

really starts with the fact that I was the youngest of five kids. There was a lot going on. I was always navigating a lot of different dynamics, a lot of different personalities, carry that on into being I was a national athlete in my high school years and someone that was really driven in academics. And there's just always conflict that arises, I think, when you're relating with people.

So it doesn't really take much to get to that situation.

And that really drove me to do some studies in psychology where I learned holistic model

to psychology, which is like thinking of the whole person, what's the body, mind, spirit approach

to psychology, as well as the more traditional approach. And since then, have founded a podcast that we

actually just host awkward conversations. That's pretty much the premise and a platform for teenage

girls that revolves around all different types of life skills,

including communication skills, to be able to navigate and talk about, you know,

honor yourself, but bring down the defenses when you're in a situation that can be challenging.

Yeah. And I just, I think that there's so many reasons why we

tend to avoid difficult conversations. And especially with the teens that I work with, you know,

they don't want to hurt somebody else's feelings or they don't want to feel awkward themselves.

You know, there's just so many reasons why we really, we tend to just like want to

run away from those difficult conversations, but they're so important to have. And so I think if

you can help the listeners today, help them learn some tools to navigate those difficult

...