Dr. Shefali: Heal the Childhood Patterns Affecting Your Relationships

0:05Hi everyone, welcome back to Jillian on Love. Do I have something very special today. I have Dr. Shefali. She is a clinical psychologist, New York Times bestselling author, and the founder of the Conscious Parenting Movement. Blending Western psychology and Eastern wisdom, she has redefined how families understand selfhood, connection, and the inner life of children. And she's written two books, Raising Conscious Sons and Raising Conscious Daughters. Actually, Raising Conscious Sons just made the New York Times bestseller list. These books are unbelievable. I don't care if you are a parent, if you want to be a parent, or you are just someone who is reflecting on your relationship with your parents.

0:53This will even help you relate better to your spouse, husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend. We have a profound conversation about the crisis that children are facing today in terms of technology, in terms of self-esteem, the very unique challenges that little boys are facing and men are facing, and the unique challenges that girls are facing and women are facing. And she gives very, very relatable, practical advice on how to actually help your kids become better people. But it all starts with you as a parent. Our conversation gets super vulnerable. All I can say is take out your notepad, your pen and paper, your phone, get ready to take notes because this is probably one of the most important conversations I've had.

1:48so without further ado Dr. Shefali. Dr. Shefali. Hello. I'm so excited. I'm so excited to have you and I have to tell you that um you wrote two books and you just made the New York Times bestseller list Raising Conscious Daughters and Raising Conscious Sons which we are going to read out of today because there are some passages in here that literally took my breath away. So we have to get right into it. But why these two books now?

2:25Dr. Shefali: Well, because I think we are at an unusual, unprecedented cultural inflection point like we've never seen before. In my practice as a psychologist, I have seen parent after parent come in bedraggled, beleaguered, disheveled, totally desperate for help. We're giving our children everything. They have the world at their fingertips, yet they are falling apart. And what is this mental health crisis? And seeing the ubiquitous epidemic of a generational collapse, I just went inward and asked myself, what can I do to help? I can keep complaining. I can keep yelling about the laws and the protection and the oligarchs and the technocrats.

3:13Dr. Shefali: And I can do this all day. But what can I empower parents with? Because parents have lost confidence. They are helpless. They're hopeless. And I wanted to empower them. Look, there are things you can do. I promise you, try these things once a week, these strategies, this blueprint, and things will change in your home. And so I created this guide post this kind of beacon for parents in these dark and troubling times what i find so um relevant and potent about these books is that in my view they're not just parenting books they're actually they're also for the the adult the adult child of a parent right you know the adult looking at this and being like wow now I understand where things got a little intense between me and mom yeah or when things got a little intense with me and dad and so I think it's such a brilliant way to help people really understand their relationships with their parents yeah I mean I healed myself by writing the daughter's book and I had greater compassion for my male partner, my father, my brother, and all my male friends by writing the boys' book.

4:34Dr. Shefali: So it's very healing what I've offered because I had to dig in myself and not blame anybody, but find compassion. Because this male-female war that we're in, this culture... Which is a major war we're in right now. What is going on? It's insane. It's insane. Yeah. And we can keep casting aspersion to the other side, which is why we're in this problem in the first place. the only way to protect women and daughters, mothers and daughters and women in general, is to heal the male broken soul. There is a deep problem in the male psyche. And we can keep casting accountability, sure, blame, sure, shame, even, but that's not going to solve the problem.

5:21Dr. Shefali: That's not going to protect women and children. We have to heal the male psyche. And this book, my book, Raising Conscious Sons, now a New York Times bestseller, this was my kind of gift to all the men in my life who I myself have blamed, shamed, yelled at, gotten angry with, and not understood. And it's to really help parents raise that boy so he becomes that conscious, masculine powerhouse who will protect us. okay we are going to get into uh raising conscious sons and i want to get more into what you refer to as the broken soul of what's going on with men but i actually wanted to start with a passage from raising conscious daughters okay there is in the introduction of this book where you write or basically write a sample letter that a daughter sends to her mother.

6:22Mm-hmm.

6:28And you want to know the truth about why I act the way I do? I am really scared most of the time. I don't really know how to believe in myself. Everything feels warped and shaky. I know that what I see is based on what I saw last in my feed, meaning algorithm, and not the truth. And this freaks me out. I want to know the truth, but I cannot find it anywhere. When you were growing up, you could trust the news at least. But now, none of us can rely on anything to be real. Most are not. And that is an awful feeling. you go on to say I don't think you realize how much pressure I'm in at school I feel like I need to ace every test or else I am a deadbeat with my friends I need to feel like I feel the need to be invited to every single party or I will feel like a total loser with my boyfriend I feel the need to always be perfect or else I'm afraid he will leave me with you and dad I feel I need to be the good girl who is always obedient or else you go you both go crazy on me you describe the anxiety that so many girls and even women live with and you're giving a window into their psychology in the way that they think can we get into this a little bit more because it's really it's it's very intense i was very i saw myself in this um you know there was this passage here you ask why i'm anxious that's why you're supposed to be the ones who have it together but you guys are literally the most stressed out people i've ever seen i can hardly believe you're the adults in charge, if you're anxious, burnt out, and angry all the time, how am I supposed to feel safe?

8:33I know.

8:34Dr. Shefali: This is why our children are experiencing a mental health crisis. We can blame the screens, yeah? It's so easy, so convenient, and mostly true. But that's not the answer. The answer is that there's been a collapse of parenting. So I wanted to give parents a real window into the soul of these children because we keep calling them entitled and apathetic and lazy and unmotivated. What do I do with my child? My child has no motivation. Because your child has discovered that this world he's being told or she's being told to step into is a quagmire of quicksand, of endless pitfalls and angry adults who are looking like toddlers.

9:19Dr. Shefali: They are telling themselves, shrink, stay small. Don't expand. Don't fly because there is no safety net. And we parents need to wake up and stop blaming the generation or stop blaming the outside elements and start realizing that you have power. And I can't tell you how many people have read that letter, especially the women. And they've called me up and said, these are the words I wish I had told my mother. Or just two days ago, a client called me and said, that letter to me is my daughter's words, word for word, word for word. And so in the son's book, I write this book to the father and the mother.

9:57Dr. Shefali: Because I interviewed over 50 children for each book, girl and boy. And I understood that these kids are growing up in a hopeless world, which is why they have pessimism, apathy, nihilism, existential crisis. It's not a joke what we have done to them. Now, what is the missing piece? The missing piece is our lack of attunement, lack of understanding who they are, what they're going through, and then a lack of strategy. We don't know what to do. And that's why I was like, I know parents are not evil. I know parents are not lazy. They want to do the best. Let me help them. And so I created strategy after strategy, which are simple, free, always available to us, that can empower parents to do something on a Monday and do it right away.

10:47Something that was very interesting and very real for me was the fact that, you know, you talk about women, girls psychology and just female psychology and how we kind of feel everything. Yes. And that we are governed primarily by our emotions. And and so do you think that girls pick up on the stress of their parents more than boys? Or do you think it's both? Or do you Do you think that girls internalize it more? So girls, because of higher levels of estrogen,

11:21Dr. Shefali: which binds to oxytocin much more actively than what happens in boys, you know, testosterone in boys allows them to compartmentalize, allows them to seek outward. But estrogen and oxytocin combine the bonding hormone make girls especially sensitive to relationships and relational cues so they're looking for the tone. They're responding to the clench of the jaw. They are reacting to the chest heaving of, you know, the parents' chest heaving. They, I mean, my daughter will tell me stuff like, why are you looking so angry? And I'm like, am I? Like, I'm not even realizing, but she can pick up the undertone.

12:04Dr. Shefali: Ask any parent of her daughter, especially a teenage daughter, and they will feel micromanaged. They will feel stalked. I'm like, yeah, my daughter's a stalker. Not in the real sense, but she's watching. And even if they're not watching, they're just so attuned because that's the neurochemistry. You know, we have learned because of our wiring and our smaller size and how our biological roles have created caregiving, nurturing, you know, responding to each other in community and sisterhood. It's made us very, very acutely aware. And therefore, we internalize these signals, these relational signals.

12:42Dr. Shefali: Do I belong? Do I matter? Do I am I being approved? Am I being seen for who it is I am? Am I good enough? We're picking up on this way more than boys are. And this is so important also for adult relationships. I mean, this is honestly what women go through in relationships, particularly with men. And I think also with women, which is this constant, like, almost like hyper vigilance about picking up on tones. And what I what I actually find frustrating is that everything has been blamed these days on attachment style. Yes. And what I think is missing, even though I think it's a wonderful lens and I think it's very valid, but it's not the only lens.

13:22And what I think is really missing is that, you know, everything is like, okay, well, if you're picking up, if you have some sort of vigilance about picking up on tone, then you must be anxiously attached. Or you could have a female brain. Yeah, exactly. Or you could be a girl or a woman. Exactly. And not that there aren't men who pick up on that as well. And I just think that it's so important to understand that before all the women who are listening to the girls and women who are listening to this right now in particular before you call yourself anxious or anxiously attached sometimes you just have to just realize if you are someone who is just particularly sensitive and also understand the way your brain works and your hormonal system works that you're wired to pick up on subtleties in a way that boys and men are not.

14:13Dr. Shefali: I mean, just think about it. If nature were a person, right? If evolution were a person, evolution may have told the female, like, look, because you're going to caretake for a young baby, an infant, you have to be very sensitive. You have to listen to its cry at night. You have to know when it's fussy or cranky or it's in pain or colicky, you have to know the different kinds of cries because you're going to be the primary caregiver. You have the breast milk. And so evolution wired us women to have that capacity. It's inbuilt in us. Now add in some trauma, add in an unusually sensitive being anyway, a temperament.

14:58Dr. Shefali: And then you have a kaleidoscope of this, you know, tornado going on inside you where you're like, oh my God, I'm picking up on all this. Now, put this female brain, this acute sensitivity into the algorithm, right, on a platform where she's not only being given feedback on a Thanksgiving table or by the neighborhood bully or by the schoolyard children, she's being given constant 24-7 vigilant feedback by strangers who are trolling her. That young brain, impressionable, vulnerable, is prey and she feels predated on and she cannot manage it. It is traumatizing for her. And we are not providing the protection.

15:43Dr. Shefali: We expect her to understand how to manage it. We expect her to show up for herself and defend. She cannot. So she feels pulled in all different directions. So the modern girl and woman is looking amazing on the outside. She's crushing it. She is got her morning routine, her afternoon thing going. She is a hustle culture babe. She's bossy, she's in her masculine. But on the inside, it is too much overstimulation, too much overexposure, too early, too much, too soon, too early.

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17:15That's betterhelp, H-E-L-P dot com slash onlove. What do you say to the parent right now who's like, shit, I've been really stressed out. I've been really in my head. I'm burnt out. my nervous system is wrecked and here I am not making a creating a safe space for my child and then they go into a self-blame story how do you deal with that well this is not about blame because blame is another albeit different um kind of you know oh my goodness poor me for me it's not

17:51Dr. Shefali: directly victimhood but it can become yes self-blame can become a way to just distract us from self-compassion and self-agency. So I encourage parents in this book to realize that conscious parenting is not a destination. I fail at it almost daily. It is not about winning or succeeding or arriving or completing. You can never complete conscious parenting. The premise of conscious parenting is to understand that you are constantly being beckoned to look in the mirror, to look at what's showing up, to do your inner work and try again and again and again. So if you have screwed it up, as all of us have, and if you are now looking at your children and they both are screen addicts or they both are anxious, you have a choice to either enter relentless regret and even resentment or guilt and shame and blame, self-blame, or you can understand that you didn't know better and you're going to now show up differently right from now.

18:53Dr. Shefali: The other day, I had a client of a 32-year-old woman. So she's an older woman, but her daughter's 32. And she said the same thing to me. I've fucked it up. My daughter doesn't want to talk to me. I feel so bad. And I had to literally pull her out of the ditch and tell her, you could have only done what you knew based on the emotional information and literacy you had. Yes. And we have to start right now. And so it's been two, three weeks since I last saw her. She began reading this book, and she began tweaking her parenting just a little. And her daughter begins to open up because I always tell parents, no matter how hard it is with your child, I promise you, there's a kernel, even if it's a pea-sized kernel in your child that is still longing for you.

19:39Dr. Shefali: And only you can show up for your child. Yes, your child will be defended. Yes, your child will give you hell. Yes, you'll have to go for therapy and hear endless hours of how you were the worst parent in the world. But after that, if you can survive that, Trust me, your child is longing for reunion, for repair, for recovery, for redemption. They want you in their life. Do you think a parent, even when their child is an adult, should be going more of the distance to repair than the adult? Look, that's really tough because I had a 28-year-old come to me recently complaining, complaining, complaining about their mother and their father.

20:19Dr. Shefali: And I let her because she was 28. Now, if she was 38, I would kind of be a little stronger. But I'm like, you know, 28 is the new 22. There's still babies. Damn it. But she was righteous in her entitlement to her anger. And listen, I'm being facetious. Pain and trauma from childhood is a real thing. So I had deep compassion for her. She was right in many ways. But I had to teach her that at the end of the day, it is now time, my dear one, to parent up, right? And this doesn't take away your desire to have boundaries, your desire to have estrangement even, I understand. But this blame is keeping you stuck.

21:03Dr. Shefali: And with deep compassion, I try to awaken the inner parent of a child. So on that vein, if I have a 50-year-old parent who tells me that their 25, 30-year-old daughter or son is estranged from them or alienated from them or whatever, how much effort do I do? I say, look, make a genuine effort, like for six months to a year. Send a letter, send a text every week. Genuinely show them that you're sorry, that you see your part, that you take accountability, that you want to recover, you want to repair. Do it for a real concerted period of time, right? Don't just do it one time and get offended again.

21:48Dr. Shefali: Check your ego, dismantle it, feel the rejection, feel the pain, understand that your child is rejecting you because they feel some pain on some level. Yes. So it's real. After a year of really trying, like really trying, like come to my courses, do my program and really clean up your side of the highway, then maybe you can lessen it but never give up keep sending the note how how much time does it take to send a letter or a note or drop a box of cookies or just be there you know just let them know when you're ready i'm here yeah but what i find with parents is that they'll try once or twice but their their own sense of guilt and self-blame is so high that very quickly they get offended, you know, and feel like, oh, okay, you're going to reject me again.

22:42Dr. Shefali: Yes, exactly. And I have to teach them, this is not about you now. This is about you understanding that your child is in pain, whether justified or not, it doesn't matter. Just give them that platform. Allow them to have their pain. And all you need to do is really hear it. You don't have to agree with it. You know, there's a big difference between understanding and agreeing. Yes. But parents feel like if they understand, they have to give in and agree. And I tell them, you don't have to agree, but you have to deeply understand from their point of view as much as you can. That has been so healing for couples, for parent-child relationships, that depth of understanding.

23:22Dr. Shefali: Because that's what people want. They want to be understood. Yeah, it's making me reflect on, I don't know if I ever told this to you, but I was estranged from my father. from the age of 21 to about 34. Yeah. So my father, he was diagnosed, and what's even more interesting is that he was a child psychiatrist. Right, right. And so my father was diagnosed with narcissism by a psychiatrist. and he also as when i was a child he had undiagnosed bipolar disorder very severe and also like was would self-medicate so he was and even though he never physically harmed me or my sister he was a very for me very scary now i i was a very sensitive child i'm like the girl on steroids so I was just born with this nervous system and so um he felt like this very scary thing and I never felt comfortable around him I always felt very frightened he was also very passive aggressive and he didn't know I think also generally generationally and the fact that um uh even though he got American citizenship he's not he's he was an immigrant and so culturally just different.

24:50And, um, you know, I, and I talk about this in the book. It's, it's the straw that broke the camel's back was, um, there was a few things. The way he treated my mother was horrific. He was very, he weaponized money. There was a lot of things. And also I think my mom, who I was very close with, I think, you know, she also talked badly about him. That's never great but anyway so there was just some things going on and there was tension there and it was father's day and we all went out for lunch and i never wanted to be around him i was always so tense like my whole system tense and we were passing around photos from my college graduation because i just graduated the month before and uh i looked at this photo and there's like this giant pimple on my chin or like I think it was like my chin or my upper lip I don't remember but I was it was just so big and I'm a 21 year old so of course I'm just looking at my pimple right and because we're so conditioned as women to just think about what we look like and I was like oh my god I cannot believe this pimple and he said something in this underhanded way the way he would he would do it he would just say you know don't just focus on you Jillian not everything's about you and he said in very quietly in front of everyone and that might seem like nothing but it was again just stacked of years of just being around him and never knowing what mood he was going to be in that you never ever knew um he didn't even have a key to the to our apartment he would ring the doorbell when he would come home from work and we would all have to like gather around like a welcoming committee and so I felt like I'd just been punched in the gut and I went home and I made a decision to never answer his calls again wow and so he did try but he didn't try the way that you are suggesting he did you know one show up in my apartment.

26:56I didn't let him in. He did send a few emails. This is over 13 years, but my father's ego was extremely fragile. Sure. And, um, and I'm sure mine was too. Right. And, uh, so he could, he could have tried a little harder. Right. But that, so it just made me think about that. But, you know, so, so much of my journey is just about forgiving him and just kind of the estrangement didn't solve anything for me. It didn't. No, no, no. It was the ultimate form of avoidance, but it was the only thing that at that age and that stage of my life that I knew how to do was survival. Absolutely. How did you decide to end the estrangement?

27:37Well, um, few things that were, were going on, which was like, I started to notice that I had a really lovely relationship in my 20s that lasted a long time, six years, which I think is a very long time, especially for your 20s. And it was a beautiful relationship. And after that relationship ended, I had a series of relationships with men who didn't deserve me and men who were not that nice to me. Or just, even if they weren't, or just not, I think I was like, oh, I need to get married and have children. So there were just some men who I just was like, I was going against my better judgment. I was like, oh, this isn't right.

28:22Like one just drank way too much, even though on the surface everything seemed perfect. And I was like, this is kind of messed up. But I wouldn't leave them. They would leave me. And it was my sister got married when I was 34 and he was going to be at the wedding. And that kind of, that was the turning point. I got, I'm not a drinker and I got wasted. Like I was so, I was having panic attacks for weeks before that wedding. But it kind of, when I saw him at the wedding, I saw this very, this much older sort of vulnerable man. And I just thought, you know, okay, Jillian, like this isn't like, this was before I was really started doing the work that I'm doing well before.

29:14And before I even got married and got on this journey, but I'd been practicing yoga and very entrenched in yoga since I was 28 years old. And I think those years I realized, I had the self-awareness to realize that running from this is not healthy. And I have to learn how to face the monster. Yes. Yes. Wow. This episode is sponsored by Masterclass. Have you ever just wanted to learn how to communicate better? or how to cook better, or how to negotiate better, how to act better. In Masterclass, I have learned how to cook. And I've learned how to cook in such a way that I enjoy it. My friends love it.

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31:09Dr. Shefali: And what's your relationship like now? Well, he passed away while I was writing my book, my first book. But I reached a level of a lot more peace. Like I would have phone calls with him.

31:25And, you know, he also wrote a book called The Difficult Child and that was based on me. Oh my goodness. Yes. so there's a lot which is why I wrote a book there's a lot but I think you know I've reached a piece now because I I really realized that um people do what they can with the tools that they had and something that you said about the 28 year old and like the righteousness and even though you validated it and you could see it. It's like we get so stuck on a story and that it doesn't mean you have to have like this amazing relationship. It may even be safer for you to have certain boundaries.

32:10But if you're holding on to a particular story where they're the villain, it erodes something inside of you and it and it and it rears its head in your romantic relationships. So somehow letting go of that story, regardless of what the outcome is with that particular parent, I think is so incredibly important. Yeah.

32:32Dr. Shefali: And I think many people feel dismissed in their trauma when we say things that may sound glib or trite, like let them let go. Yes. You know, there's been so much controversy around estrangement, both from the parent's side and the child's side. But I think both need to understand that there has been a disconnection. There has been a rupture. And while we cannot get defined or identified by that rupture, that does demand validation, healing, true repair. And the parent can't be so defensive and justify themselves. And yet the child also cannot be so rigid, right? Both have to come out of that pain just a little bit if they want to repair, you know?

33:21Dr. Shefali: So children get very outraged when I tell them that, you know, okay, can we look at the story a different way? Can we just look at the other person's point of view? They feel as if I'm taking away their right to their history, to their past. And I'm not, right? And neither are you. We're saying the past did happen in your idea, in your story, but now you're clinging onto it. So now the story becomes the ruler of your life. And we're asking you to step into your own power. That's really what this is about. Not to deny or to dismiss any of the pain. Yes, exactly. And, you know, I mean, perspective is most often the key to happiness, isn't it?

34:01Right. So seeing things sort of differently. This is why I so appreciate your book and why I think it's so brilliant is that, you know, sometimes I think as I was reading Raising Conscious Daughters in particular, I reflected on I wonder I don't know if it would have made a difference but like it's it's ironic that my father was a child psychiatrist but if he really understood what his daughter needed from him because my father lived in his head there was no presence yes and so if and who knows if it would have made a difference for his brain but like if he had actually known that yes because this is not something that's talked about in in in older psychology and psychology and psychiatry books when it comes to parenting right this is new and that you're bringing forth into the world and really understanding it and and what and people are going to also understand how to deal with their partner I know I know and that's

35:08Dr. Shefali: I had to put them into two separate books, boys and girls, because each one's neurochemistry demands a different response and how they develop. And this has a lot of science, a lot of research, but a lot of concrete strategies as well. Like I don't, it's not a heady book. It's not a easy read. Absolutely an easy read, which is exactly what it needs to be. There's another passage here that I want to read from. Here, this is what you write on page 25 about voice. Here's the honest truth. What parents don't realize is that they are living inside a movie of their own making in which the child plays a role the parents wrote long before the child ever arrived.

36:03This script is rarely about who the child actually is. It's about the parents' unmet needs, unspoken fears, and unhealed wounds. Talk about personal accountability. I know, I know.

36:22Dr. Shefali: And parents will be so cut off from that awareness, right, that they won't even know that when they bought the baby grand piano, it was with the vision of their child having piano classes, right? Or the fact that they moved to a particular neighborhood is because the synagogue or the church or the mosque or the temple was right there. They're not aware that they are casting the net into which their child is going to fall, but they are casting that net. They are choosing the foods that will be put on the buffet table that the child will then choose from. So it appears as if there's an illusion of choice, but it's really been masterminded and orchestrated by the parent.

37:05Dr. Shefali: Now, of course, the parent has to do some of that, right? Parents will tell me, what do you want me to do? I have to choose where to live. I have to decide what, you know, activities, what I can afford. No problem. The point is not not to do it. The point is to understand the impact of what our choices are and to, as best as possible, examine those choices. to ask ourselves, how much are we driving the ship? Especially when it comes to play soccer or be on the travel team or learn this language. So much pressure. So much pressure that we're putting and we don't realize it's draining us. It's exhausting.

37:39Dr. Shefali: It's exhausting to be a super parent of a super child. It's so much easier and more success oriented to be an average parent of an average child. And that's what most of us end up being anyway. In fact, the super parents of the super child, usually mess it up. Yeah. Right? Because they are trying so hard to create a puppet or an ambassador or a trophy that they're missing a tuning with the child. The average parent who isn't out there to become a super parent, you know, applauded by everyone on Facebook, ready and okay to raise an average ordinary child. Now that child will grow up more secure, paradoxically, because that child is relying on their own internal awareness and their own internal essence to deserve worth.

38:28Dr. Shefali: They're not relying on accolades and trophies and grades and shiny objects to get worth. They have gotten worth by being ordinary. Who will be more secure? Tell me. Absolutely, the ordinary. And it's so fascinating because I have friends who are great. All my friends are great parents, but I have a couple of friends who are really trying to raise extraordinary daughters. and um and i could see that it's coming from something that is sort of like some sort of like unfinished business that's sort of stirring inside of them yes and sometimes i i want i i i fear that that there's just maybe a little bit too much pressure now some kids i feel like can handle it and rise to the occasion, but no two kids are exactly the like.

39:21And so you could be putting pressure on the one child who just like wants to be in their room and paint to be something extraordinary. Right.

39:28Dr. Shefali: So parents often ask me, how do I know how much pressure to put or how much to push a child? And that is actually the wrong question to ask. The question to ask is, how deeply am I listening to my child? How deeply do I know my child? Because to your point, if you're fully present and attuned and ready to accept the child as they are without this pressure to create a child or to upgrade the child, then the child will tell you, put more pressure, mom. I'm just whining and I'm complaining because this is what I do. Or no, I know this from every fiber of my existence that this is not for me. So you have to just know your child.

40:08Dr. Shefali: And of course, with every child, you can push a little, you can try to tweak, you can expand them as far as you think they can go, but you have to be doing that out of an awareness that ultimately that the child gets to be in the driver's seat of their existence, except when it comes to safety, except when it comes to finances, except when it comes to adult decisions, of course. But in the child's life, the decisions that the child needs to make need to be empowered decisions, decisions that they allow to feel like they can own as their own. Yes, it's so true because then that child grows up and then they realize that they're in a job that they never really wanted.

40:50They're not on the path that they wanted because even as like what you said earlier about there's, even if you're so angry at your parent, the child, even as an adult, there's that kernel of longing. And I think that every child, even when the child grows up, Like every single one of us, like we crave the approval of our parents, particularly at least one of them. And so many of us are living lives based on what we think our parent wanted of us. Yes. And like, and we're doing that well into adulthood.

41:23Dr. Shefali: I know. I know. It's quite tragic. Yeah. If we really uncover our patterns, we will come to the deepest kernel of truth, which is we're longing and hoping and waiting for our mom or our dad to tell us that who we are as we are is enough. And that is just the fundamental tragedy of our life that we don't realize that this is the eternal quest. Yes. So in the absence of that, I teach parents and in these books that you have to parent yourself and you have to help yourself rise to a level of healing so that you can show up for your children. So in these books, I not only provide parents with the blueprint to understand and empathize and attune with their children, boy and girl differently, but also to do that for themselves.

42:11Dr. Shefali: So it was really tough when I was writing these books because I didn't know how do I teach conscious parenting when I have so much to teach the parent about the child. But as you can see through storytelling of cases and clinical examples, I made it very relatable and down to earth. Oh yeah, no, that you did for sure. This episode is sponsored by Aria. Lately, everyone I know is too busy to make time for their partner whether it's work or kids or both, by the time the day's over, just people are totally exhausted. And when you do finally get a small window of time to actually be intimate with your partner, you don't have the energy to think of how to make it different or special.

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43:37This offer is only for our podcast listeners, so use my link to get this discount. So getarya.com slash Jillian for$10 off your first month. That's getarya.com slash Jillian. What's your relationship like with your parents?

43:54Dr. Shefali: So I have to say that I really struck gold. My mother is the best human being in the world. I've never met someone better. She's funny. She's interesting. She's artistic. She's creative. She's playful. She's cute. She's imperfect, but self-assured. She's present. She's empathic. She just knows how to do this stuff, man. I don't know how. She's far more conscious parent than I will ever be. And I just blame, you know, I tell her, oh, it's only because, you know, you have such impeccable children. But no, I think she's just, she's just forgiving, understanding. I don't get it. I mean, so I had her as a model.

44:32Dr. Shefali: Oh, that's amazing. And I feel so safe with her. And I think because I had that, I almost feel like I'm a little guilty. And I felt like I've received too much and I want to give the world. That is my neuroses for having the disease to please and to give. I feel like almost like embarrassed because I grew up in an apartment building in India where the children upstairs were being beaten up and yelled at. I could hear the children next door were being beaten and being punished and yelled at. And I'm like, how come I have parents who don't punish me, beat me, yell at me, take me to church, synagogue, temple?

45:05Dr. Shefali: I go nowhere. I'm just like chilling on Sunday and Friday and Saturday. And they used to tell me, you're so lucky, you're so lucky, you're so lucky that the empath in me almost felt guilty. Oh, interesting. So I grew up with a big guilt concept. Like survivor's guilt. Yeah, yeah. So I'm like too privileged. I'm like, you know, and then looking unusual the way I do compared to most Indian personas or profiles. I got a lot of attention there, but then I got jealousy and I got hated on. So I felt guilty for being like how I looked. Yes. So, but that, you know, you have to create a problem out of everything.

45:38Dr. Shefali: So I created a problem out of too much, too much loveliness. And I allowed it to mess me up because I had to do that. And I have a very loving, gentle, beautiful father who was not the same to my brother. though, I have to say, was extremely easy with me. And it was very hard on your brother, very hard on my brother. And which is why this book, Raising Conscious Sons, allowed me to understand my father better. And I wrote this book for the boy in my brother who was yelled at, screamed at, never understood, because I saw my brother being misunderstood. And I felt I felt guilty about that, too. Like, why am I the favorite one or the favored one?

46:16Yes.

46:16Dr. Shefali: But it was cultural, you know, fathers in India and patriarchal societies are very hard on their sons. Well, speaking of sons. Yes. Raising Conscious Sons, which made the New York Times bestseller list. You must say that a few times. Yes, I'll keep saying that. This is amazing. And literally just made the list last week. Yes. Or this week. This week. This week. Unbelievable. The week goes by so fast. And I think, you know, because people are so like worried about the future of sons and men. And I think there's a lot of depression. I mean, I, I think with girls, there's a lot of, um, and a lot of anxiety, right?

46:54But there's more suicide, I believe when it comes in boys. Oh my

46:58Dr. Shefali: God, there's loneliness, disconnection, uh, dopamine, addiction, escapism, numbing. It's a tragedy. What's happening to our boys. Why is it happening? It's happening. I think because the cultural tide has really been shifting so drastically and so fast that the young boy who used to rely on a very rigid idea of what it means to be a man, that has been collapsing. And nothing has filled its space. So we have two extremes now. We have the manosphere that provides an exaggerated caricature of what it means to be a man, even more than what the toxic patriarchy he used to talk about. It's insane. It's a whole other level where the boy is now objectified.

47:45Dr. Shefali: The boy now has an eating disorder. The boy is now watching his calories, but for the, for the false illusion and promise of world domination, so to speak, right? Like the Andrew Tates of this world. Right. And then on the other hand, we have this post-feminist movement where women are tired of men and they're like, you need to be more feminine and you need to be more vulnerable and you need to use your words and you need to be. And they become too feminized and too weak. Because it's not authentic. Yeah. So the boy is going, okay, I can't be like my sister. It doesn't feel authentic. And that asshole out there doesn't feel authentic.

48:17Dr. Shefali: Can't be like that. So he doesn't know what to do. So he doesn't know what to do. So it's an identity crisis. It's an identity crisis. And the boys are falling through the cracks, as we can see by the droves, and step in the manosphere, pornography, and video games. That's why our boys are being lost, lost, escaping into the digital world and just sitting there and all that testosterone, which was supposed to be out there in nature and playing and is just imploding. And our boys are so lonely and single motherhood makes it very hard for the mother to be there. There are no real conscious male role models often and the mother is overwhelmed.

48:58Dr. Shefali: On one level, the screens are a great respite for her and it's a great babysitter. And on the other hand, she can see her boy drowning. The boy is turning away from her, as he should, because he needs to move toward older male role models. She's feeling completely disoriented and disheartened. She doesn't know where to go. And this is leading all to the collapse of boyhood. And so I wanted to, in this book, really intentionally create a map for conscious masculinity, which is very hard to do, but I created a blueprint for parents to follow. And if you do even take some elements of it, you can turn this epidemic around.

49:39You have a section that's called why regulation is the path to inner mastery. The biggest mistake we parents make when we try to help our boys is in talking to them and demanding that they, quote, use their words, end quote, and talk to us in response. This is a dead end street. Why? Because boys don't process life verbally. They process life physically. Their emotions rise from the body upward. Emotion rises in them from the body up. It doesn't start in the mind and work its way down. If we can understand this, we can help our sons contain their physical energy in the right way. When we do, we actually help them master their emotions as well.

50:34Can we talk about the emotions rising from the body up?

50:38Dr. Shefali: I was just with a four or five year old boy and his mother a few weeks ago and the boy was just all body he just couldn't talk he was growling and roaring and biting and ramming and kidding and he just didn't know what to do with his body it was just like all body yeah it's just so physical and so kinetic and so exhausting to watch especially for females yes who are prototypical feminine yeah it just feels It feels assaultive. Yeah. It feels violent. It feels dangerous. Yes. And there goes the first misunderstanding of our young boys. We don't understand testosterone peaks at four before it peaks again at puberty.

51:22Dr. Shefali: And this crazy child looks like a criminal, looks really dangerous. He looks like a violent abuser. He's biting. He's kicking. He's rude. He's snatching. He's out of control. He's out of control. Yeah. But he's actually trying to regulate. if we could understand that we have to be like the wind tunnel to allow this wind to go through rather than trying to clamp the wind down under a shutter we would change the trajectory of our boys the education system is anti-boy anti-male doesn't understand male energy starting from the age of three and four mothers are getting phone calls your son is out of control he doesn't sit in circle time he doesn't know how to answer questions he's always squiggling and wiggling and move.

52:04Dr. Shefali: And then they're being diagnosed. ADHD, of course. Yes, exactly. It's straight a pipeline to diagnoses. And then the mother's feeling like a loser, a failure. Like if she's single, all eyes are on her. Yeah. And it's a, it's a repetitive cycle. It is abusive. It is false and we need to break it. So this book is my passionate plea to parents to wake up and start advocating for your boys. And you tell that teacher, my boy is allowed to go out every 20 minutes if you can, of course you can do this in my fantasy school, but it's not fair. It's not fair to make a boy sit at his desk. That's why they're failing miserably.

52:36So what do you, what does a parent do if the child is sort of biting others and kicking and screaming and doing that where they're, it's affecting another child? How do you, where does discipline quote unquote fall fall into all of this?

52:49Dr. Shefali: Yeah. Well, it's teaching. It's, it's constantly training them to do it differently, but not through punishment, shame, or, you know, demeaning them or suppressing them. it's like oh that really hurt me let's go get a band-aid and here bite this or where's your bitey toy or where's your squishy toy or where's your you know channel just keep channeling the energy look at yourself it's like here comes the tornado let's channel it kind of reminds me of training a puppy yeah it is it is yeah i mean you know in the most wildest most organic way it is just how do i take all this energy and not shame it do you whack a puppy no you don't whack a puppy And I'm not demeaning the puppy or the boy, right?

53:32Dr. Shefali: It's just about talking about that energy and it's physical. And I think mothers have a really hard time. Fathers don't have as hard a time. Fathers understand it. The other day I told this mother who was trying to get the kid to go and brush their teeth. I was like, don't tell them to go brush their teeth. Who are you talking to? You're talking to this wild, feral beast. Yes, I remember. Can you talk about how you, like when the young boy is not listening, you're saying, go do this. And he's just not listening. Of course he's not going to listen because listening takes this kind of connection here and then activation coming from the bottom, from the top down.

54:06Dr. Shefali: Boys don't work like that. So how do we get him to brush his teeth? So you have to just lead him into an adventure going, where's the toothbrush? Whoever finds the toothbrush first and make it exciting and activate his testosterone and dopamine and get him moving and he's going to do it. You know, let's look for the toothpaste. It's gone missing. Who's going to find the toothpaste? I can hear the toothpaste crying for me. Where is it? Whatever. It's so easy. That could also work on some girls, I would imagine. Of course. Of course. It's the excitement. It's children's imagination. Yeah. But for boys, it is understanding that testosterone, just like estrogen and oxytocin are the bonding relational hormones that allow us to caretake and be sensitive and be nurturing.

54:51Dr. Shefali: Testosterone is the hormone of pursuit and novelty and adventure and risk-taking and competence and achievement and ambition. So you have to understand what's coursing through your boy's blood and attune to that. And if you don't, don't worry, because the algorithm has it all sorted out. That's why, you know, Dragons and Dungeons is so popular, because it understands the boy's neurochemistry.

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56:09Experience the world's number one blanket with Lola Blankets. Get 40 % off select Lola Blanket products at lolablankets.com using code Jillian at checkout. It really is truly incredible. You talk about purpose and why it's so important for boys to have purpose. I want to get into that. And I also think it would be interesting for us to talk about this idea of girls and women with purpose, because I think that girls need purpose too. I mean, you and I are two women sitting here and we're sitting here because we have very strong Yes. So let's talk about this with little boys, and then I'm curious to hear your thoughts and how...

56:56Because, you know, I think young girls, we tend to center our lives around romantic love. Whether we have the boyfriend or the girlfriend or whatever it is. Like, that's the highest value. And I think historically or classically, boys go more towards purpose. But I actually think that girls need to have a little bit more purpose so that a relationship and boys and love and girls, just all of that isn't so important. Yes.

57:27Dr. Shefali: Yes. So I think the missing purpose for all children, all humans, boys or girls, male or female, is to connect to yourself, right? That is the greatest purpose of being here, is to know thyself. And that is one we're missing all the time, whether we're looking for purpose on the outside or in our relationships. If you can understand that every moment in your life is about you discovering you and taking a few risks and expanding yourself and trying things out and learning about who you are every moment, every relationship, every decade, you will always be on purpose, right? Because you'll always be doing the work that you need to do.

58:08Dr. Shefali: But I hear you that we have been conditioned to believe that our purpose needs to be wifehood or motherhood and taking care of people. And I think things are changing now that we are realizing that we cannot do that at the cost of self-abandonment. But so it is with our boys. They cannot be ambitious and achieving on the outside if they are abandoning themselves. And that self-abandoning piece is really the tragedy because we are in many ways leaving ourselves disembodied, dislocated, finding, you know, things on the outside to fulfill us. That's why these platforms are doing so well. Yeah. Because we will not be able to sit for five minutes waiting for a train before we pull the phone out.

58:56Because our purpose of connection here has been replaced by self-abandonment and

59:01Dr. Shefali: the screens just come in and fill that void. Really true. And the more we sit on screens and video games and or looking at the corporate ladder as your biggest achievement, the more we will abandon ourselves. So my work is, and your work, I think, is ultimately about coming back home. Yes. And teaching our children to stay in their home, their inner home. That is the place where they truly belong. But no one can truly be at home if they don't feel self-accepting and self-honoring. So that's the gift we give our children because they learn about themselves first through us. So if we are showing them you matter, I honor you, I accept you, I like you just the way you are, that becomes their inner voice and then they begin doing that for themselves.

59:50Dr. Shefali: That is the main goal of parenting. Become the kindest, most benevolent, most empowering inner voice for your child, right? Let them internalize the most self-honoring, self-accepting voice from you. It really is a spiritual journey for a parent, isn't it? Like having a child is, is a major mirror. It's an epic journey, man. I mean, I only have one and let me tell you every day. And I think if you have four or five, the journey becomes more of an opportunity. I think one or four or five, it depends on how much we can bravely look in the mirror, right? You can have seven children and never look in the mirror and you cannot have children and look in the mirror.

1:00:33So use whatever you have, parenthood, singlehood, motherhood,

1:00:39Dr. Shefali: it doesn't matter to look in the mirror. If you do that, then every experience in your life is birthing you. So don't wait till you are a mother. Don't regret not being a mother. And don't think I need to be a mother of many children in order to be more spiritual. That's not, none of it is true. It is, do I use this moment to show up in the most authentic way and to dismantle my ego as much as possible? Whoever you are, wherever on the spectrum of life you are, that is the eternal question. Can I dissolve my ego so that I can love more, be more open, be more humble and be more brave it's really true you touch on sexuality and sexual impulses um of which i think that men have sexual impulses that are i don't know i don't i don't know if stronger is the right word because I think that female sexuality is so misunderstood.

1:01:48But the people, most of the people who are consuming porn are men.

1:01:52Dr. Shefali: Well, let me tell you, this may be unpopular, but whoever has the more testosterone is going to have the more sexual thoughts and desires. It's not about, oh, we're preferring males or putting females down. No, it's hormonal. I mean, it is hormonal. I mean, any woman in her menopause who takes testosterone shots tells me, yeah oh my god i want to go to sleep right now with everybody i want to have sex with everybody i'm serious i mean they they often get off the testosterone because they're scared yeah because there's too much and i have so many men who tell me oh please can you take can you please help my wife take a little testosterone so she can understand me yes right yes so it's not about women feel very put down as if they should also have the same drive yeah it's just hormonal it doesn't matter yes and the reason is because sperm is cheap and sperm was made to be cheap for a reason to be spread.

1:02:39Dr. Shefali: And so evolution wired men this way. And women don't need to feel like it's a demotion. They have other things going for them that men will never have. So yes, testosterone is the defining hormone. And men often are not initiated into understanding how to manage their sexuality. Nobody gives them the talk or the several talks. Nobody talks to them about their erections at 14 or 35. You know, many studies of penile erections show that men are having an erection like every hour, I think. And it's out of their control. It's the penile brain that responds to stimulation, that responds to visual cues very strongly because it's evolutionarily wired for males to be ready to reproduce at the drop of a hat.

1:03:27Dr. Shefali: But they have to learn to manage it, right? They have to learn to manage this. Yeah. So how do we teach our sons to not feel ashamed of their sexual energy, but to manage it in a way so that they, you know, I think that sexual discipline is very important. Yeah, yeah. You have to have discernment. Yes. You have to know the difference between your wild impulses. Yes. And your ability to restrain them. Yes. And when to impose, or never impose, but when to expect to manifest them. Yes. And when to be gracefully rejected and fall back. But if you don't talk about this, and if you don't teach men that it is hard to be vulnerable, it's hard to show desire and be rejected, there should be classes on how to be gracefully rejected and to fall back in high school.

1:04:20Dr. Shefali: Because that is the number one reason why men rape, is because they will not accept rejection. When the female is fighting, they override the fighting and they misread cues as consent because they cannot handle the rejection. How these things are not taught in school is beyond. Because the education system is a relic and so we cannot blame the education system. That's why I wrote a whole chapter. That's why we write it. Yeah. And so parents can take charge and have the messy conversations as embarrassing as it may sound. Let the males in the boy's life have the conversation. They'll be able to tell them, but they need to have a map on how to talk about these issues.

1:05:00Oh, yes, absolutely. Which is why you provided this, wrote this amazing book. Boys don't process things verbally. They process things with the body. You know, I'm reminded of the fact that I believe it was John Gottman and through his research that men, when they're in an argument with their spouse or just with anyone, will will get their blood pressure will skyrocket much faster and much higher than a woman's. And so they get emotionally flooded, even though they might seem withdrawn and shut down. What's going on behind the scenes is a tornado inside. And women, we just like to gab. We want to talk about it.

1:05:45We want to process it. We can yell or cry or scream. Yeah, we can yell. We're getting it out. We're getting it out. and we want to talk about it and we don't, we want to close the loop because we tend to feel more insecure, I think, in relationships. And then the man typically tends to withdraw more. And so I think what, what I, what's, what's challenging to reconcile is, okay, so understanding that this is how boys sort of process is not verbally, but at the same time, we need men, grown up men to be able to communicate in their relationships. It's not about talking about it constantly. You know, I think if you're in a relationship with a man, you have to realize that sometimes he's going to need a little space to process and he may not be able to like emote and articulate in the way that you want him to that moment.

1:06:32But we need our men to be able to communicate. Yes. So where, how do we do this?

1:06:37Dr. Shefali: How do we reconcile this? It's hard. I seriously, you know, strongly suggest to women who are dating, you know, Now, please vet the person on his emotional articulation skills. Don't complain later that he doesn't communicate because it is what it is at the end of the day. And you can try to teach men to talk more, but it may just not be their forte. So you have to learn to be okay with the language that your man does use to communicate he loves you. It could be he fills your car with gas, he fixes the tire, he makes the beds, he gets you coffee going in the morning. Men have a different way of expressing their love, their desire for you.

1:07:16Dr. Shefali: And if you expect them to talk in the same language as you, you will suffer. I've suffered in relationships expecting the man to just get it, to be psychic, to pick up my cues. And they just have a different dictionary. Yes. So then how do we teach that level of emotional intelligence to the young boys? Yeah, well, we can try. We can teach them to understand their body, even if they're not talkers, but they can understand themselves. When somebody understands themselves, then they can use words to describe what that emotional experience is. But if you just tell them, use your words, like the other day I was with a mother of a nine-year-old.

1:07:55Dr. Shefali: I hate that phrase, by the way. Yeah, use your words. Or she was trying to teach him to show up for himself, stand up for yourself. And I was like, he has no idea what that is. You have to give them the words, right? So you start early, you know. Is your body feeling out of control? Yes. Do you feel like you're just going nuts and you don't know what to do with all this energy? You have to fill in the missing pieces and then slowly over time, they will learn. But first you have to help them to understand what's happening in their body. Then they can put words to it later. But if they're being misunderstood, if they're being overlooked, so many - Or judged.

1:08:29Dr. Shefali: Or judged, right? Many parents are not even talking to their boys because they think they're fine. Because the boy just said, I'm fine and he looks fine. but he isn't fine. So we need to fill in the gaps and use words. And I will say again, that no matter how hard you try, ultimately, most men will not talk or process emotions like most women. It just will not happen. And if you have a man actually who processes emotions just like you, you may actually be turned off by that. Yeah, I know. Right? And you'd be like, why is he so weak? Why is he such a crybaby? He needs a mother. Right? So the man is doomed either way.

1:09:03Dr. Shefali: if he shows too much feeling, then we're told he's like needing a mother and we refuse to be the mother. Or we're like, can you talk more? So, you know, we women also need to recalibrate our expectations and make sure we get a lot of our emotional sustenance from other women. Yeah, I agree with that a thousand percent. Yes. Is there anything today, Dr. Shefali, that we did not talk about that you think it's important to talk about? I think just I'll go over the three things for boys that I feel every parent needs to start implementing in their boys' lives right now. Number one, more movement, more sweat, more physicality.

1:09:41Dr. Shefali: Exhaust them, burn them out. Get your kid so tired at night because all that movement is their way of regulating. So motion equals emotional regulation for boys. So keep that in mind. even with your male partner, if he's pissed off with you, if he's fidgety, if he's frustrated, it's either going to be sex or movement. So pick movement. I relate to that though. Pick movement. That's me though. Yeah. You need to move. Oh, I have to move. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm psycho that way. Okay. Yeah. Also don't force your boys to do direct face-to-face conversations. It is the death of them. Do side-by-side activities, walk with them, play a game with them, join their universe, don't make them come to your universe.

1:10:25Dr. Shefali: The next one is regulate yourself, right? Don't talk to a dysregulated kid in a dysregulated way. It'll never work. So no matter how crazy your kid is acting, somewhere you have to be wise enough to go, okay, I can't engage right now. I just cannot talk. I cannot move or I leave, but I cannot use logic right now. Don't even talk. It's not worth it for any child, and especially with your boys. Number three, but provide a safety for yourself. Provide a boundary. And remember, you're the wind tunnel. Keep channeling the wind. How do I channel it? How do I take it outside? How do I take it down? How do I take it up?

1:11:03Dr. Shefali: Where do I put it? Do I put it into a game, into a challenge, into an adventure? Where do we go with this energy? But we don't suppress it. Get more adult male role models, conscious ones, into your boy's life. Especially if you're a woman, step back, let them step in, take them into the wilderness, fishing, sword fighting, archery, something physical and a little bit dangerous and risk-taking so that the boy learns the limits of his physical edge. I love that. I think that's very important, especially if there's two women who are in a relationship and they have the son to make sure they have a male role model.

1:11:39Dr. Shefali: And then talk to the boy about his sexuality, about his penis, about his erections. I mean, be real about it. I know, we're so uncomfortable, but you have to do it. Oh my goodness. From the four-year-old who keeps touching the penis, you know, teach him how to take care of it. And it's a beautiful thing. Don't shame it, but we got to keep it private. We got to take it somewhere else. Don't take it out. Don't take it out. Don't love it in public. Don't stroke it. And don't put it anywhere until you have a lot of permission after you're 19 or 20. And you really can understand that. But we have to teach him how to manage it.

1:12:12Dr. Shefali: Otherwise he's like, well, I can't help it. It's like doing things and have compassion for the boy, because as much as boys have privilege living in a patriarchy, let me tell you, they also have been grossly misunderstood and actually not been given conscious guidance. The toxic patriarchy has been harmful for boys as well. Dr. Shefali, your two books, Raising Conscious Daughters and Raising Conscious Sons, total, total, like, life-changing, just, like, game-changing. And I just wanted to thank you for writing them and thanking you for your contribution to the world and to parenting and to, and, you know, again, I'll say this.

1:13:00It's like, this is not just for if you are a parent. This is for if you ever plan to be a parent. Yeah. This is for all of us trying to reflect on our childhoods. And for anyone who just wants to make the world a better place. Thank you so much.

1:13:23Dr. Shefali: Thank you. Thank you for helping me spread the message. And for anyone listening, if you're curious even about your partner, I would say pick up this book. Oh, I would agree with that. You will understand them so much better. Yes, I would. I actually wanted to add that. Absolutely. It's incredibly important. Yeah. Thank you, Jillian. So thank you for being here. Of course. Jillian on Love is a Q-Code production, executive produced by David Henning and Steve Wilson, produced and edited by Travis Howe. Music by Will Tendi. From the studio that brought you WandaVision. I was an Avenger, but I'm not a hero anymore.

1:14:02The Vision returns for the final chapter of the groundbreaking trilogy. That family wasn't real. You sure about that?

1:14:08Dr. Shefali: I had a father called Vision. How is this possible? Don't miss the two-episode premiere of Marvel Television's Vision Quest. Nothing bonds a family together quite like Mortal Jeopardy. Now streaming only on Disney+.

1:14:26Fall never arrives all at once. first the air then the light and slowly the things you love begin to find each other a jacket meets a dress a hoodie slips beneath a blazer an old cap finds a new scarf because you don't simply step into the season you create it layer by layer until it finally feels like fall find fall your way at Ross