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How To! with Mike Pesca

How To Embrace Your Anti-Vax Family This Holiday Season

How To! with Mike Pesca

Peach Fish Projects

Education, How To

4.32K Ratings

🗓️ 23 November 2021

⏱️ 31 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Jackie is newly engaged, but thoughts about her big day fill her with dread, not excitement. Jackie and her fiance want to have only vaccinated people at their wedding to protect some vulnerable family members from COVID-19. However, requiring vaccination means Jackie's parents and sister likely won't attend, which would break Jackie's heart. On this episode of How To!, we bring on Nwandi Lawson, a former journalist who now runs a communications firm specializing in difficult conversations. She's had her own challenging family discussions during the pandemic, and has some surprising tips for how to speak truth to power while keeping your relationships intact, and maybe even change a few minds.

If you liked this episode, check out: "How To Talk Politics Without Wrecking Relationships."

Do you have a question with no easy answers? Send us a note at howto@slate.com or leave us a voicemail at 646-495-4001 and we might have you on the show.

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Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

you know part of me was like well if I said an ultimatum they're not gonna want

0:03.9

to miss my wedding of course they'll go ahead and get vaccinated but the other

0:07.3

part of me is like no there's a very good chance that they won't and that they

0:11.3

will see this ultimatum as kind of a threat and it yeah I really think that if I

0:18.6

was to say an ultimatum it could devastate our relationship welcome to how

0:24.4

to I'm Amanda Ripley this is a podcast for people who are struggling with

0:29.6

something really hard and don't know where else to turn and by the way if

0:33.8

that's you you can always write to us at how to at slate.com and that's how we

0:38.2

first met this week's listener who we're calling Jackie thank you so much for

0:42.4

getting back to me I was really shocked to excited honestly Jackie who lives in

0:46.9

Virginia works from home as a graphic designer and though something very

0:50.8

peaceful about your work space I don't know it's like very soothing but the

0:55.5

plans once I decided I was going to be working from home permanently I just I

0:59.8

was like if I'm gonna spend all my time in here I need to make it a little bit

1:03.5

more relaxing which is good because there's another part of her life that is

1:08.9

really stressing her out I recently got engaged my fiancé Tom and I are

1:19.4

planning to have our wedding in October of 2022 and while there's a lot to

1:24.9

plan that's not what's worrying her we have some family members with health issues

1:29.5

and we're still concerned about the pandemic and making sure that this event

1:34.4

isn't going to turn into an event that might spread disease to people that we love

1:38.8

or people in their circle so it immediately became an issue where I'm

1:44.0

starting to think how am I gonna have this conversation with my family that I've

...

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