Welcome to the Strong Women Podcast, where each week we explore a deeper understanding of the humanity, value, intellect, and creativity of women.

I'm Sarah Stone Street.

And I'm Erin Kunkel.

Glad you're here.

On the Strong Women podcast today, Aaron and I are sitting down and reflecting about our conversation with Debbie Grayson.

Now, just a quick side note, we found out about Debbie through her brother, Steve, who is a good friend of both Aaron and myself.

Steve has a wild and crazy life as far as like stories that you're just kind of like,

what in the world? Well, come to find out it must be a grison thing because his sister has lived

quite a life as well. But anyway, I wanted to start with this. One of the quotes that stood out to

both Aaron and I was at one point in the

conversation, we were talking about her mom and how, wow, her mom just kind of let her do a lot of

things. Like, Debbie was traveling all around the place, doing somewhat risky things. And Debbie came

back with a quote that stuck out to both Aaron and I, and she said,

if your kids are doing dangerous things carefully, let them.

And I thought it would be fun to unpack that.

Aaron, tell me what you think about that quote.

Well, as a mother, thinking about dangerous things, all these dangerous things come flowing through my mind

and thinking, oh gosh, I'm supposed to let my kids do that. But I was really struck with when Debbie was

just 17, being in China, coming back to America for school. Anyway, it just really struck me that today,

you know, the posture of so many parents is like our decisions are made with safety in mind

first instead of maybe considering if this would be good for our kids to be stretched or even, let's

even just take it to ourselves.

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