Welcome to Nobody Told Me. I'm Laura Owens, and I'm Jan Black. How can you raise open-minded and morally grounded kids these days with an approach that's rooted in science,

psychology, and faith? And how can you help your children experience a holiday season filled

with spirituality and gratitude? To help parents answer those questions, we're joined by our

guests on this episode, Reverend Molly Baskett and child psychologist Ellen O'Donnell, who've co-authored a new book called

Bless This Mess, a modern guide to faith and parenting in a chaotic world. Thank you so much for

joining us. Thanks for having us. Tell us a little bit about your background and why you decided to

write the book. Molly, why don't you go first?

Sure. So I am a progressive Christian pastor. I was ordained at 28 and became a mom at 30,

and it's basically been on-the-job training for both of those things since then. And I met Ellen

when she came to our church in Somerville, Massachusetts, with her baby Luke

in a sling. And we found just real mindmates and heartmates in each other, having lots of

important conversations about the nexus of spirituality and faith and how they really collaborated, how they really formed a whole.

Ellen, do you want to say a little more about some of those early conversations?

Sure, yeah.

So at the time that Molly and I met, I was finishing up my dissertation and graduate program

in clinical child psychology, so I felt like I knew a lot about parenting and was relatively prepared, even though I was a

little bit on the young side to have my first, Luke, I was in my mid to late 20s at the time.

But once he arrived, I found I just didn't know how my own little family was going to handle faith and

religion and spirituality. I grew up really Catholic, but was looking for a practice for my family

that fit us and fit all of us, fit our political beliefs, our social justice bent, our intellectual ideas. And so I googled

liberal Christian churches, which is what brought me to Molly's church at the time, where her son was

one of the very few other children in the congregation. And we started sending our kids to the same

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