Latest / The Lila Rose Show / E28: Why I Left the Left and Discovered True Compassion with Gina Florio

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E28: Why I Left the Left and Discovered True Compassion with Gina Florio · The Lila Rose Show

0:00
What's the best way to change someone's mind?
0:02
It's by living a life that is so great and that is so loving and
0:07
shine so bright that people can't look away.
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And they look at you and they say, what does that person have
0:11
that I don't have? We need to remember that we have
0:13
truth on our side and what is true is also beautiful and good.
0:23
Hey guys, Today I'm going to talk with Gina Florio, who is a
0:26
podcast host herself, a writer and a Women's Health expert.
0:30
She's someone who is passionate about Women's Health and
0:33
femininity, a wife and a mom. But she has an amazing story
0:36
because she didn't always, I think, have the value she has
0:39
now, and she's public about that.
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She shares kind of her history of being a graduate student at
0:45
Harvard and then before that working and, and after working
0:48
in women's magazines and in some ways doing the opposite of what
0:52
she's doing now. So Gina, I'm so excited to talk
0:55
to you. Thanks for joining the podcast.
0:57
Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.
1:00
So I've kind of watched you from a distance and I think I first
1:03
was D Ming with you, maybe back when you had just left San
1:06
Francisco or you were just leaving San Francisco.
1:08
So I'm from the Bay Area and I was like, oh cool, someone who
1:12
is sharing values, you know, pro marriage, pro family values,
1:16
pro-life values in the middle of San Francisco.
1:19
You don't see that a lot. But the more that I kind of saw
1:22
of your work, I was like, wow, she hasn't.
1:24
She has an amazing body of work sharing about femininity and
1:27
womanhood. But you didn't always have your
1:30
values. So I really want to hear your
1:32
story. You're highly educated, very
1:34
passionate, and let's start from the beginning.
1:36
Where, where are you from originally?
1:38
Where Where are you born and raised?
1:40
Yeah, I grew up in South Georgia, a little town right
1:43
outside Savannah, GA I grew up in a very quintessential
1:47
American family. My mom immigrated here from
1:50
South Korea, but my dad born and raised in the States.
1:53
He's Italian. And my parents didn't raise me
1:56
in a political home, but we were always conservative and we were
1:59
Christian, and I was just raised that way.
2:02
It was all that all that I knew during my childhood.
2:05
But then as it happens, I got to college and during college and
2:09
Graduate School was when everything changed for me.
2:13
I was presented with critical race theory and I was told that
2:17
I was oppressed because half my family is immigrants and because
2:20
I'm a mixed, I'm a mixed race woman and I'm a woman in
2:23
general. And so things really changed in
2:26
college and Graduate School. And I always like to tell people
2:30
this little tidbit. When I went to Harvard for
2:31
Graduate School back in 2011, they were, people were using
2:36
they them pronouns back then. So this is, you know, over 10
2:40
years ago before it was anywhere close to being mainstream.
2:42
But that's the the kind of school environment that I was in
2:47
for six straight years. And so that completely changed
2:50
the way that I saw the world and everything that I thought was
2:53
true about being patriotic and marriage and motherhood and
2:57
family just being the norm for people.
3:00
That all got flipped on its head.
3:02
And suddenly I left Graduate School hating the world,
3:05
especially hating America, thinking of marriage as an
3:10
oppressive patriarchal system that was meant to keep women in
3:14
the home and stop them from living their full dreams.
3:17
I, you know, I would probably have described myself as
3:20
pro-choice back then. I was kind of in the mindset of,
3:24
well, I would never get an abortion myself, but who am I to
3:28
stop a woman from expressing her freedom of choice, right?
3:33
And it's so funny even thinking about that now because today I
3:36
don't even use the terms pro-choice because I find that
3:40
to be a propaganda term for me. I'm you're either anti abortion
3:43
or you're pro abortion and that's it.
3:45
But it was really during Graduate School and the couple
3:48
of years after where I like to say I went off the deep end.
3:52
I shaved half my head. I dyed my hair blue.
3:56
I lived overseas and I swore off capitalism and I even swore off
4:01
my family for a while. And it was it was a time of
4:04
darkness. Looking back on it now, it's one
4:06
of those things where you see a lot of these women at protests
4:10
or a lot of these girls in colleges and universities,
4:13
they're angry. And of course they're angry
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because they are denying the the natural order that God has given
4:19
us. And it makes you bitter and
4:22
makes you resentful. And that's the phase that I was
4:24
in for a few years of my life. And after I graduated from
4:29
Graduate School, I sort of went on this wandering path where I
4:33
was teaching yoga. And that's when I started
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writing for some mainstream media publications, women's
4:38
digital media, the kind of websites that were not only news
4:42
and culture, but lifestyle and health and beauty and fitness.
4:46
And that's what I did for a few years.
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I started freelancing and then I was a part time writer and
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eventually I was a full time editor and that's when I was in
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San Francisco. I, I was in San Francisco full
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time, 9:00 to 5:00 in the editorial room.
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And it's funny because in that job, that was the time where my
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life flipped back around again. I can't, it's hard to explain
5:09
exactly what it was, but it was in San Francisco.
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I think that San Francisco was almost so crazy that it flipped
5:15
me back over to the other side. So before I before that flip,
5:19
which is so interesting that, you know, you went through this
5:24
journey and you had the original flip of coming from this, as you
5:27
said, kind of idyllic childhood and then you go this other
5:30
direction. But just so folks listening can
5:32
understand this, your your whole story here.
5:35
Did you have a faith during those six years, 6 plus years
5:39
when you were at university and Graduate School and then you got
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to San Francisco? Like during that time, did you
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feel you had a faith or was that part of the process for you,
5:46
rejecting faith? Rejecting faith was a huge part
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of it. I, I, I grew up in a, in a
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Protestant non denominational church and towards the later
5:56
years of my teenage life it would, it turned into a mega
5:59
church. And that was a really big part
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that made me kind of turn away from the faith.
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And then when I got to college and Graduate School, I
6:07
considered myself agnostic. I flirted with the term atheist
6:11
for a little while. And then I remember in grad
6:13
school, I was attending Unitarian Universalist churches
6:17
because I acknowledged that there was some some something
6:21
that was bigger than us, but it definitely wasn't.
6:24
It definitely wasn't the God that, the Judeo-christian model
6:26
of God that I knew before that I had grown up with.
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But rejecting my, my faith and rejecting Christianity was a
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really big part in that time in my life.
6:37
Because when you reject, like I said, the natural order, and
6:41
when you reject, you know, the model of marriage that, that,
6:45
that Christ gave to us, of course you're going to reject
6:48
all tradition and, and everything that comes with
6:51
womanhood and femininity. So that was definitely a big
6:53
part of it. I'm really interested in if
6:56
you've done, as you look back on that time, you know, I'm sure
6:59
you've thought a lot about, OK, what were the moments that kind
7:01
of got you into this totally different world view you could
7:05
call it from where how you were raised.
7:08
But do you think part of it was you?
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You know, when we're raised in a certain belief or certain
7:12
values, they do embed themselves, I think deeply on
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our DNA, so to speak, our kind of psychological DNA.
7:17
But unless we really like choose it, you know, as an adolescent,
7:21
we it's easier for us to reject it, right, As like kind of a
7:23
rebellion. What do you think it was for
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you? You know, and again, it's, it
7:27
can be hard to answer too, because it's like, well, what is
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the reason anyone chooses something that's not true?
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I mean, there can be 1,000,000 reasons, right?
7:34
In the end, does it make sense that some people would say it
7:36
does, some people that doesn't? But can you kind of walk through
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what you think it was for you that was the reason that you
7:43
just totally entered into a different ideology?
7:46
Yeah, into an ideology. The thing that what hooked me
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and I think what hooks a lot of women is fake compassion.
7:55
It seems like real compassion. And, and part of it is because,
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you know, half of my family is Korean and that whole entire
8:03
family, English is their second language.
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And I remember seeing some moments growing up where someone
8:08
would make fun of my mom or because my grandmother can't
8:11
speak English, and if she would come visit us, people would make
8:13
fun of her because of the clothes that she wore, because
8:16
she looked different. And when I was a kid, it was,
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you know, one of those hurtful things.
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But when I got into college and I was sitting in these diversity
8:25
and inclusivity classes and groups and seminars, I was told
8:30
that that was because of structural racism.
8:33
That was because of structural oppression.
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And I was told that if you had true compassion, then you would
8:41
believe in things like equity, then you would believe in things
8:44
like feminism, then you would believe in things, even things
8:46
down to the abortion industry, right, supporting that.
8:49
And so it was the compassion that hooked me.
8:52
And I think again, this is something, I forgot who who said
8:56
this, but I read it on Twitter. It was this long thread about
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how the woke ideology is inherently feminine because what
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it does is it hinges itself on compassion and equality and
9:05
equity and inclusivity in these terms that that naturally women
9:10
are drawn to. Because women, it is our
9:12
greatest gift to be compassionate, to be empathetic.
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When we hear a baby's cry, we hear it differently than a man
9:18
does. These are gifts from God,
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especially when they're used in the right context of nurturing,
9:24
even if it's not necessarily nurturing our own biological
9:27
children. But to be a mother, I believe is
9:29
to be a woman I believe, is to nurture in some way.
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And so that's why the the woke and progressive intersectional
9:36
ideology appeals so well to women.
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And that's why statistically, women support it much more than
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men do, because it is the left has been so successful as
9:47
framing the intersectional ideology as a compassionate
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thing. And it even comes down to the
9:53
the transgender ideology, gender theory, the LGBT community, all
9:57
about compassion, acceptance, tolerance.
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And that to me was a hook because I had recalled some
10:04
moments in my childhood. I grew up in a very small
10:07
Southern town where everyone, it was half white and half black.
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And there was nobody Asian or Indian or really Hispanic.
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And when I was very young, I'm six years old, I kind of
10:16
remember feeling different because we were different.
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And at the time, my parents didn't ever say anything about
10:21
racism or oppression. My dad would just say you're
10:25
different, People look at you because you're different.
10:27
You're a little bit exotic. But then that was reframed into
10:30
being something negative. So that's really what hooked me
10:33
into the progressive ideology until I realized that it's
10:37
completely fake compassion. And and that can be applied to
10:41
anything from feminism to abortion to the to gender
10:46
theory. It's all fake compassion.
10:49
Such a good point. And that's why it's also so hard
10:52
to oppose it because even opposing it makes you look mean
10:56
or, you know, people think they're living it.
10:58
They feel like you're being mean because I'm just trying to be
11:00
compassionate. At least that is for many of
11:02
them as the intention. So when you got to you, you
11:05
mentioned you got up to the point of San Francisco.
11:07
You're in San Francisco, you're working, and things start to
11:09
change for you. Tell me more about that.
11:12
I, I spent, I don't know why, but I started spending my Friday
11:16
and Saturday nights watching YouTube videos.
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One of the first things I did was I watched one of President
11:22
Trump's speeches unedited and I hated Trump like any liberal
11:25
woman did. I, I, you can look up my name.
11:28
I wrote articles about how Trump was causing a mental illness
11:32
issue in our country because I hated him so much.
11:34
And I wrote articles for women's magazines about how he he hated
11:39
women and he was a misogynist and he was a sexist.
11:42
But someone asked me to watch an unedited video of Trump's
11:46
speeches. And I just knew in that moment
11:49
that I was being lied to about something.
11:50
And then that's when I went down the rabbit hole.
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I started watching a lot of videos from Candace Owen,
11:56
started watching a little bit of Charlie Kirk.
11:58
I would I'd love to watch Victor Davis Hanson videos.
12:01
I watched some of Dinesh D'souza.
12:03
I started to watch a lot of Dave Rubin because I think his
12:06
content, especially back then, was very appealing to people who
12:09
were classically liberal kind of interested and maybe the other
12:13
side listening to Larry Elder and and that's when the wheels
12:17
really started turning. And then I will never forget
12:20
Lila. I watched a live action video.
12:23
I like I said, I would have described myself as pro-choice,
12:27
but like many women, I didn't know what an abortion actually
12:32
was. And I think This is why so many
12:35
people support it. Like a lot of the live action
12:37
videos of the sort of man on the street videos where this person
12:41
asks someone on the street, do you support abortion?
12:43
Well, yeah, I do. Have you ever seen an abortion?
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And they show the video and the person is horrified.
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That was me. I watched what happens in a
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medical abortion and a surgical abortion.
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I cried so much that I called my mom.
12:55
My mom has always been very conservative and anti abortion.
12:58
I call my mom and I said, I cannot believe this is what
13:02
abortion is because I think a lot of women are under the
13:04
impression that you just go to the doctor, you take a pill and
13:07
the baby just kind of goes away and you don't really understand
13:10
the violence of it and the brutality of it.
13:13
And that was a really big turning point for me.
13:16
And I said to myself, again, this is fake compassion.
13:19
This is there's, it's got nothing to do with choice.
13:21
I hated that term pro-choice. From that day on and watching
13:26
all these videos, I decided to be quiet for about a year.
13:30
I deleted my Twitter account. I kept going to work, but I went
13:34
to work with many, many. Everyone there was very liberal
13:37
and outspoken feminist, but I just stayed quiet and I read a
13:40
lot of books and I kept consuming.
13:42
And it took me about a year to really come back.
13:46
And in that year I started pulling a feeling, a pull back
13:51
to to Christ and a pull back to God.
13:54
And during that period, it was, you know, I, I was still a
13:57
little bit disenchanted with the kind of churches that I grew up
14:01
in and getting a little bit disheartened with a lot of what
14:05
I saw in Protestant Christianity.
14:07
Today, my family and I are on the road to converting to
14:10
Orthodox Christianity, which has been a really, really big
14:12
blessing. But returning to the ancient
14:14
faith has been monumental for us and especially for me and, and
14:19
continuing to reframe the way that I see the world.
14:22
But that period of time was it was about that year where I just
14:27
saw a lot of the videos online because that was a really big
14:30
year. I think 2017, right after Trump
14:32
was really elected and the media kept doubling down on
14:35
everything. And I think that was a big year
14:37
for a lot of people because the the veil was pulled back was
14:40
pulled back. And that's what one of the big
14:43
things that brought me back. Did you have friends during that
14:47
time who had more, you know, you could call them conservative
14:51
values or you know, were there? What was your community like
14:55
during that time? I mean, you mentioned calling
14:56
your mom. Sounds like you're close with
14:58
her and would talk with her sometimes.
15:02
Yeah, in San Francisco, of course, as you can imagine,
15:05
everyone hated Trump. Everyone was very, very
15:08
progressive and but at the same time, I was very into the
15:13
fitness community and people and I eventually I started doing
15:16
martial arts. I started doing Jiu Jitsu, which
15:18
is where I met my husband actually.
15:21
And the fitness and the martial arts world tends to lean a
15:25
little bit more to the right just statistically.
15:30
And you know, you can, that's a different tangent you can go
15:33
down about why that is. But I was spending time with a
15:36
lot of people who maybe were leaning a little bit to the
15:41
left, but they were not very, very progressive like most of
15:44
the people in San Francisco were.
15:46
They were actually very open to discussions.
15:48
They were very open to hearing different viewpoints.
15:52
So I wasn't surrounded by a lot of people that were rabidly
15:56
progressive for a lack of better term.
15:58
I was just, I had a lot of really close friends that I
16:01
connected with on a level that wasn't necessarily about
16:04
politics or culture. And having that community of
16:08
friends that didn't really like talking about politics, that was
16:11
actually really helpful for me because I felt like I didn't
16:13
have to fight with people all the time.
16:15
And at work, I kind of kept my head down and I didn't really
16:18
spend too much time with the people that I worked with
16:20
because that was really, I would say, the place where where
16:24
people around me were the most progressive.
16:27
But, you know, All in all, it was good to be around people who
16:29
were kind of neutral about politics, and they just didn't
16:32
really want to talk about it very much.
16:34
So it sounds like you had space, you could call it, in your
16:36
personal life to explore these other viewpoints without getting
16:42
the blowback. And I find that just really
16:45
interesting and meaningful because, you know, we are so
16:48
influenced by the people we spend time with and you know,
16:51
they can really prod us One Direction or another or whether
16:54
it's intentional or not. Do you think if you had like,
16:56
let's just say the people you were hanging out with, like
16:58
having brunch with or working out with, we're sort of like
17:01
passionate, you know, anti conservative, anti religion
17:06
people. Do you think that would have
17:07
affected you? Or how would that, how do you
17:09
think that would have affected that process?
17:11
It's a little bit of a hypothetical.
17:13
I think it maybe would have encourage me to argue more,
17:18
which is why I'm really glad that the people that I spent
17:21
time with didn't want to talk about politics because I tend to
17:25
be a bit more of a confrontational person.
17:27
So I don't shy away from arguments.
17:29
But I'm glad that in that time I didn't argue with people because
17:33
I wasn't ready to have a fight. I really wanted to just sit back
17:36
and consume and, and sort of let things unfold.
17:40
So I think that if I had people close to me in my life who
17:44
wanted to really talk about politics and who were very anti
17:46
conservative, it probably would have ended up getting into these
17:50
kind of aggressive arguments and aggressive conversations because
17:54
I'm never really one to back down from a verbal confrontation
17:58
like that. So I'm glad that it wasn't like
18:00
that because, you know, I, I, people ask me all the time.
18:03
They say, how are you still friends with your friends from
18:06
San Francisco? And I still have friends who may
18:11
have very different viewpoints from me, but I established such
18:16
a different connection with them that we can see different parts
18:19
of each other and we can see that that we still have common
18:22
ground. And I think that I was very
18:24
blessed. I think I think God blessed me
18:26
and putting me in a circle of people that were not very
18:28
combative and that we're truly welcoming and were able to see
18:34
me for who I really was and and not see me for my politics.
18:39
Do you think with friendships like that, because you know, I,
18:41
I have friends who are also like you're like you're describing,
18:44
you know, not aligned, you could say politically or even faith
18:47
wise or values wise. And but it's, it's you don't
18:52
spend a ton of time talking about those things, but that can
18:55
also be hard and those things are very important, you know, to
18:57
you. How do you navigate that?
19:01
You know, it's, it's always finding the common ground and
19:04
it's always kind of finding the humor in it.
19:06
I definitely have a couple of friends that they like to talk
19:09
politics sometimes, but laughter goes a long way.
19:14
And I think sometimes if we're, if we spend too much time
19:17
online, which many of us spend a lot of time online, it's so easy
19:21
to feel angry. It's so easy to feel combative.
19:24
But I think once you kind of remove yourself from the world
19:26
of social media and the arguments that can take place
19:29
there, you realize that, I mean, even just 1015 years ago, people
19:32
didn't really like to talk about politics in the workplace, you
19:37
know, in social events. They just didn't like it.
19:39
And so now we're in this very heightened time where it's just
19:44
kind of the default. People love to fight about it.
19:46
So if I do approach these conversations, maybe with older
19:49
friends or acquaintances through those friends, it's, it's kind
19:53
of just finding a way to make people laugh and kind of make
19:56
light of it and kind of and, and just be kind about it.
20:00
Because one thing that I've learned is you're never going to
20:03
change anyone's mind by arguing. You're never going to change
20:06
anyone's mind by raising your voice.
20:08
And one thing that I have found even through health and fitness
20:13
and Wellness, is that what's the best way to change someone's
20:16
mind? It's by living a life that is so
20:19
great and that is so loving. And shine so bright that people
20:23
can't look away and they look at you and they say, what does that
20:26
person have that I don't have? And so when I do, if I do ever
20:29
approach these conversations and things can get a little bit
20:31
sticky, I try to remember that that if if I am combative, that
20:35
that's not going to make them change their mind.
20:37
If anything, it's going to push them away.
20:38
So is there a way that we can approach this with some laughter
20:41
and a little bit of light? And how does that work?
20:44
I think you're spot on about that in a personal relationship,
20:47
you know, showing respect and like the humor and and openness
20:51
and the ability to listen and not just argue.
20:53
Those are all really valuable. And then finding what you do
20:56
connect on and what you do agree on.
20:57
What about when you are, you mentioned social media, you're
21:00
using social media to share your view on something that you think
21:05
is about most important to the public good.
21:07
You know and I know we both do this and a lot of our friends
21:10
that are in that space right about that and the tone or the
21:14
approach for that. Do you think that that you think
21:16
is effective versus not effective?
21:19
Yeah, that's a great question. I always come back to what is
21:23
true, and I always try to remind people that the the
21:27
intersectional progressive ideology is rooted again in fake
21:30
compassion. And So what we need to do is we
21:33
need to remember that we have truth on our side and what is
21:36
true is also beautiful and good. And so I think that we, we have
21:41
to remember that and we have to be bold enough to speak the
21:44
truth and kindness. And sometimes the truth can be
21:47
very hard to hear. It can be very difficult to
21:51
hear. And this is something that I
21:52
especially approach when I talk about health and Wellness and
21:55
the obesity rates in America. It's, it's not an easy thing to
21:58
hear. I think especially in America,
22:00
we, we are uncomfortable talking about health, talking about the
22:03
rates of obesity. Almost half of Americans are
22:05
obese today, 70% are overweight. This has a very real effect on
22:09
our society, on our culture, on the well-being of our neighbors
22:13
and our loved ones. And so when we talk about these
22:15
difficult topics, we have to do it in truth.
22:19
And truth is inherently kind. You know, we should not lie to
22:23
people and tell them that abortion is compassionate.
22:25
We should not lie to them and tell them that feminism is is
22:27
good for women or something like free the nipple is good for the
22:30
women or that obesity is beautiful and healthy.
22:33
Like we have to approach these topics with firm truth and along
22:36
with truth it naturally, inherently you can't separate
22:40
truth from compassion. To be compassionate is to be
22:42
truthful. So that's the kind of tone that
22:44
I tend to take online. And at the same time, I really
22:49
try to to point out how the progressive side manipulates
22:54
women. They manipulate when they do
22:56
such a good job at manipulating women and taking advantage of
23:00
some of their best qualities. Again, some of our best
23:04
qualities are being compassionate, being empathetic,
23:07
worrying about the well-being of others.
23:09
That's what we do as nurturers and as mothers.
23:13
But the media has done such a good job of capitalizing on that
23:16
and capitalizing on our insecurities too.
23:18
And that really applies to the body positivity and fat
23:22
acceptance movement, but it's malicious.
23:24
And so at the same time, we have to point out that it's
23:28
malicious. The abortion industry preys on
23:31
women, the fat exempted. This movement preys on women and
23:34
their insecurities. So as we speak truth and
23:36
kindness, we also have to very boldly point out that these
23:39
mainstream machines do not want the best for women.
23:42
And so they lie, and they take advantage of women's compassion
23:45
and empathy. It's so tough when you have the
23:49
truth is seen as unkind, inherently right?
23:52
And then you know what? What do you do when someone says
23:55
the truth is hurting me, therefore it must be unkind.
23:57
Mm hmm. Yeah, I mean, I shared a video,
24:00
it was a public video I found on TikTok of people's eating habits
24:03
in a day and just the amount of fried food and fast food that
24:08
they eat. And you know, when you share a
24:10
video like that and you just remind people, look, guys, we
24:14
need to worry about the health of our neighbors.
24:17
Half of Americans are obese. We're the mean ones for saying
24:21
that. We're the ones who are unkind.
24:23
We're the ones that we're called the bullies.
24:24
But we have to be able to understand that that's not true.
24:28
Like if we're speaking the truth and kindness, we're actually the
24:31
good guys here. And so you mentioned, Gina, that
24:35
you've come all the way from, you know, having this ideology
24:39
to losing the ideology. Now you're married, right?
24:43
You have a baby, if I understand.
24:45
And what's that been like for you?
24:49
Motherhood, I think. I think motherhood changes you
24:52
for the better if you allow it. If you really just allow it, I
24:55
think it's it, it makes you see the world very differently and
25:01
it makes you, I think, care much more about the well-being of
25:03
others and care more about the state of society because you
25:06
deeply care about the world that your children are going to grow
25:08
up in. Becoming a mother has been such
25:13
an incredible magical experience for me because it, it really
25:16
makes me think a lot about how I used to reject marriage and
25:18
motherhood when I was younger. 10 years ago, I thought, I'm
25:21
never going to get married. I'm not.
25:23
I used to think that having kids was a selfish thing and it
25:27
actually is the most selfless thing that you can do is to, to
25:34
bring another life into the world and to devote your time
25:36
and energy and your love to this helpless little baby that comes
25:41
from you. And it's it, it has really, it's
25:45
made me more compassionate. It's made me more patient.
25:48
I think I, I always say this, I think that women would be,
25:54
they'd be surprised at how much of A better person motherhood
25:57
makes them, you know, and when I say that online people are like,
26:00
well, you know, there are abusive moms out there.
26:02
There's some people who are really terrible mothers.
26:04
Of course there is. But if you allow motherhood to
26:07
really change you the way that it naturally does, I think it
26:10
makes us into better human beings.
26:13
And I think it makes it into more resilient women, makes it
26:16
into more caring women. And it's, it's, it's good for
26:20
society to have more moms, you know, because it really, it
26:24
teaches us that there's so much more after our life.
26:27
We have to worry about our children and our grandchildren.
26:30
And it makes us really concerned about the future of our society.
26:33
I mean, Miley Cyrus said, I don't know what it was a few
26:37
years ago. And there's other comments like
26:39
this coming from some very influential celebrity types and
26:42
and a lot of like ideologues who say it's actually selfish, like
26:45
you said, to have kids and, you know, you're hurting.
26:48
I can't hurt Mother Earth with new human lives.
26:52
What would you say to someone listening who, you know, maybe
26:54
they have a friend or maybe they themselves struggle with that.
26:57
They hear so much, so many of the problems that, you know, the
27:01
extra carbon footprint of another life brings.
27:03
Or they're just worried about another life growing up in a
27:06
toxic world, or they're worried about being able to be a good
27:09
enough parent for another life. What?
27:11
What would you say to those sorts of objections?
27:13
So one thing that is rampant in women today, especially women in
27:18
their 20s and 30s, is high rates of mental illness, anxiety,
27:22
depression, the use of antidepressants, feeling
27:26
isolated, feeling lonely. A lot of these women that feel
27:28
unworthy. I truly believe that most of
27:32
these women would feel very different about their lives if
27:37
they did the selfless act of bringing life into the world.
27:40
Because the thing that's most amazing about motherhood is that
27:44
it forces you. It allows you to take the
27:47
attention away from yourself and that sounds in the world of
27:51
self-care and self love. That sounds like the worst thing
27:55
that we can do. We are hammered by society,
27:58
whether it's through TV, movies, social media, influencer,
28:02
celebrities. We are constantly told to focus
28:05
more on ourselves. We're constantly told to improve
28:08
our self love and our self-confidence and our self
28:10
acceptance. We are born naturally selfish.
28:14
That's how God created us. From the day that we come out of
28:16
the womb, we are selfish human beings and we actually need God
28:21
to help us be more selfless. And that was the perfect, the
28:25
perfect thing that Christ did in this world when he came down to
28:28
earth is that he lived the most selfless life and he died the
28:31
most brutal death because he loved us.
28:34
It was the most selfless act. And I think that a lot of women
28:38
who struggle with feelings of anxiety and they are so obsessed
28:42
with self-care. The self is a bottomless pit.
28:45
You will never, ever, ever you will find that you you're going
28:48
to get enough self-care because we are just naturally selfish.
28:53
And so it's, it sounds counterintuitive, but I really
28:57
think that for many of these women, bringing life into the
28:59
world and devoting your attention to this beautiful baby
29:03
that needs you every step of the way is the antidote to these
29:08
feelings of unworthiness, to these feelings of depression and
29:12
anxiety. And when I say that, people are
29:15
shocked because they think, well, I'm not going to have time
29:17
for myself care if I have a baby.
29:20
I'm like, that's the point. You don't need to obsess over
29:23
yourself every second of the day.
29:24
Imagine it's actually freeing. There's so much freedom and not
29:28
having to be changed to our own selfish desires to have a child
29:32
that needs us. And like I said, I think it
29:34
makes, in many, many cases, it makes women into better human
29:39
beings. And you know, of course, the,
29:41
the carbon footprint and it's the, the left has done such a
29:44
good job at feeding us the propaganda that our planet is
29:48
not able to handle any more humans.
29:50
But I mean, it's complete nonsense.
29:53
I mean, even Elon Musk talks about the decline of the birth
29:55
rate and how that's going to significantly affect future
29:58
generations. We're I think we're below birth
30:00
replacement rate right now. And that's really concerning.
30:03
So not even for our own reasons do we need to have more
30:06
children, but even to just further the human race and
30:09
continue our society, we need to get more serious about having
30:12
more children. Well, the natural state, you
30:16
know, of Adam and Eve in the garden, so from a theological
30:18
perspective is sinless. I mean, Adam and Eve in the
30:21
garden were created just with a bounding love for each other and
30:25
for God. And you mentioned the natural
30:27
state of, you know, a woman is to have love for her child, and
30:30
that's a beautiful gift from God, just like you're saying.
30:32
I think it's the idea that we're just naturally selfish.
30:34
Well, we're wounded right, by sin, original sin is a wound.
30:37
So that is actually, it's not, it is actually in a way natural
30:40
to us in that we, we suffer this wound, yes, but it's actually
30:43
not how we were designed. We weren't designed to be
30:45
selfish. We were designed to be
30:47
abundantly loving, to love and receive love.
30:50
And that's the beauty of another person is an, you know, to be a
30:53
subject, not an object, but a subject that we can love and
30:56
that can love us in return. And it's a, it's also a
30:58
vocation, right? It's a calling to be a mother.
31:01
And how do you know? People say, well, how do you
31:02
know if I'm ready for kids? I said, well, did you get
31:05
married? You know, is it a, is it a
31:07
marriage? Are you married?
31:08
Yes, OK. The purpose, the design of
31:10
marriage, if you're blessed is to be fruitful.
31:14
So yes, there you go, you know, love your spouse, love your
31:17
child. And you know, if God gives you
31:19
that child, love that child. And that's just an incredible
31:22
blessing and a way to way to live a life fully and truly
31:26
alive. You mentioned, and I want to end
31:30
on this. I know we've got a wrap here in
31:32
a few minutes, but you mentioned exploring or you're on a journey
31:36
to find, I think you call it an ancient faith.
31:38
And I love that that language about, you know, the idea that
31:41
Christianity is not some like modern, modern fad, you know,
31:45
it's a 2000 year old faith. Why?
31:48
Why Orthodoxy? And what do you mean by
31:50
Orthodoxy? Yeah, So Orthodox Christianity
31:54
is not so well known here in the States.
31:56
You know, it's kind of very easily broken down into the
31:59
Christianity of the West is the ancient Christianity of the West
32:02
is Catholicism, and the ancient Christianity of the East is
32:05
Orthodoxy. And there are a few, you know,
32:09
very big differences in terms of theology between Orthodoxy and
32:12
Catholicism. But we share many of the same
32:15
sacraments and many of the same rituals.
32:17
And I growing up Protestant, I always felt confused a little
32:23
bit because there are over 35,000 denominations and every
32:26
church believes something different.
32:28
And I realized that the older I got, the more I learned a little
32:31
bit more about Christianity and you know, the Reformation and
32:36
the Great Schism of 1054 that separated Orthodoxy from the
32:39
Roman Catholic Church, the more I realized that church authority
32:43
is a good thing. Having that authority is
32:46
actually a relief for us. And I think that for me, being a
32:51
Protestant for most of my life had and, and abiding by Sola
32:55
scriptura had left me feeling a little bit lost.
32:59
And there were so many different answers, you know, the self
33:01
interpretation and, and, and extreme individualism of
33:05
Protestantism really left me feeling just kind of lost and,
33:10
and lost in the mix. And I had Jay Dyer on my podcast
33:15
a little over a year ago, I think now.
33:16
And he, he grew up Protestant like me and he spent I think
33:20
maybe 10 years in the Catholic Church.
33:22
And I don't know, however many years ago now, he converted to
33:25
Orthodoxy and he introduced Orthodoxy to me and my family.
33:29
And after, you know, a little less than a year of just of, of
33:32
kind of studying a little bit more.
33:34
And we started attending an Orthodox Church last year.
33:37
We're on the conversion path now.
33:39
And it has been a real great sense of peace for us.
33:44
And there's something about the ancient faith that makes sense,
33:49
and it puts the whole world into a perspective that feels very
33:53
peaceful and very healing. And I think that what many
33:59
Americans need is not only a return to Christ, but a return
34:03
to the church. There's a lot of comfort there.
34:06
As, you know, as a Catholic Lila, there's a lot of comfort
34:08
and peace to be found in the church.
34:10
And I feel really blessed and grateful that we're able to find
34:16
this when my daughter is so young so that she's able to grow
34:18
up in the church. Because I think what our society
34:23
needs more than anything else now is, is, is more devout
34:27
Christians, people who are going to speak about their faith
34:30
openly and to support one another in these Christian
34:34
communities. So that was one of the things
34:36
that really brought me back or brought me to Orthodoxy, was
34:40
seeing this, the authority of the church, as a really good
34:43
thing, as as a source of peace, instead of this sort of self
34:47
interpretation that I found a lot in Protestantism.
34:51
It's so interesting and that deserves its own podcast because
34:55
my, my story was similar to yours raised, you know,
34:58
interdenominational kind of Protestant background.
35:00
And I actually would end up going to an Orthodox Church in
35:04
high school because I was searching for the ancient faith.
35:07
And then I would end up, as I learned more, I would end up
35:11
becoming Catholic as a, you know, as a college student.
35:14
So a little bit of a different journey.
35:16
I mean, it, it is the same Eucharist that the Catholic
35:19
Church recognizes the Orthodox you, you, you crystal says, hey,
35:22
come under the come under the Catholic Church.
35:25
Let's all unite. You know, that's like the last
35:27
two denominations, right? Catholic and Orthodox, like,
35:29
can't we just be 1? And it was actually my, my
35:31
father. He became Catholic too, a few
35:35
months after I became Catholic. And I said, Dad, what, what's
35:38
your, what are you waiting for? You know, because so much of my
35:40
journey was actually tangled up in his own theological, I would
35:44
say excursions. I mean, he would love to study
35:46
the church fathers and doctors, as, you know, as a, you know, an
35:50
adult old man. And I would that kind of bled on
35:52
to me because I would learn about it from, you know, his
35:55
Western civic course that he taught me and friends because I
35:57
was homeschooled. So there's all these like
35:58
crossovers. But he said, well, I'm waiting
36:00
for the Orthodox Church to unite again, reunite with the, you
36:05
know, Roman Catholic. And I was like, dad, if you're
36:07
going to keep waiting on that, you know, you're missing out on
36:09
the Eucharist. Meanwhile, you know, so anyways,
36:12
we, but I, I need to check out Jay Dyer's story because it's
36:15
all very interesting. And my my ultimate heart is I'd
36:18
love to see, but that would be our debate, right?
36:20
The Roman Catholic come under obedience to the, I mean, you
36:24
know, the Orthodox Church or, or vice versa.
36:26
What does that look like? So exactly maybe.
36:27
Maybe next time. Yeah, we can go down that rabbit
36:30
hole next time, but it is so great.
36:32
You know, I just, I love my Catholic brothers and sisters
36:34
because there's so many similarities and I think there's
36:36
so many things. I think there's a lot that we
36:38
can bring to our culture that is going to be really helpful to
36:42
hopefully turn things around. Gina, thanks for sharing.
36:45
I think it's very inspiring and encouraging to hear, you know,
36:48
that the journey you're on, you've you've been on and that
36:50
you're still on and thanks for sharing.
36:52
You know, so generously, you know, not just on this podcast,
36:55
but also in on your platforms. And I encourage everyone to
36:57
check out Gina's podcast and her platforms will link it in the
37:00
YouTube bio and on the on the podcast on your podcast apps.
37:04
But thanks for just sharing sharing.
37:06
Truth so generously you and. So passionate in near pursuit of
37:09
the truth. Yeah, well, you know, I have to
37:11
say Lila, and I want everyone to hear this too.
37:13
You were, you were a really big influence for me not only
37:17
through live action, which I think a live action, you guys do
37:20
the best work when it comes to anti abortion advocacy like you,
37:24
you really do. But I, what I loved most about
37:27
you from the very beginning is that you are able to speak about
37:30
very difficult topics with such compassion and love.
37:34
And I, I don't remember exactly which interview it was, but it
37:36
was probably a couple years ago at this point.
37:38
You went on Tucker Carlson and, you know, he was asking you, I,
37:42
I forgot even what the, the top the issue was, but it was about
37:45
abortion. And you said something, you
37:47
said, I, I, I'm so sad that that this is what women think is the
37:52
right decision for them. And you were like, I'm really
37:54
sad that women have been fed this lie about what it means to
37:58
be empowered and to live a fulfilling life.
38:02
And that was so it, it was a big pivotal moment for me because it
38:05
wasn't an accusatory attack on women who have had abortions.
38:10
It was compassion. It was sadness, this deep
38:14
sadness that this is the mainstream culture that so many
38:17
women have fallen prey to and that this propaganda that has
38:21
been programmed into women for so long.
38:24
So your compassion and your work over the last several years has
38:28
been a really big influence on me.
38:30
So I want to thank you for everything that you do.
38:32
I think that the way that you live and the way that you speak
38:36
has such a big impact on young women.
38:38
And I think that you and Live Action are doing such a
38:40
fantastic job at moving the needle.
38:42
So please don't ever stop. I mean, I pray for you guys
38:45
because you do such fantastic work, So thank you.
38:48
Thank you, Gina. That's so kind and encouraging.
38:50
Thank you. We're in it together.
38:53
Yes, till the very end. Till the till the beautiful and
38:56
not the bitter and the beautiful end.
38:58
That's right. That's right.
38:59
Thanks so much, Gina. Thank you, Lila.