Using the Shame of Your Past To Find Your Purpose with Jami Nato

Hey there, Dr. Zoe. Welcome to Stronger in the Difficult Places. I'm so glad you're here today. Today we have a phenomenal guest. Her name is Jamie Naito, and she is a serial entrepreneur. She is a social media influencer and a writer. She's known for her humor, and she speaks candidly about the real ups and downs of life, specifically her own, to encourage women from a Christian perspective. She's opened about her husband's infidelity, her struggles with parenting, and how she views women need more encouragement to find their passions and purpose. She's been everywhere on the Jamie Ivey Show, the Daily Grace Podcast, 700 Club behind the scenes with Jeremy and Audrey Roloff. She is a phenomenal person. I've read her whole book cover to cover, and we're going to talk about using your past shame, uh, to find your purpose in your life. You know, I don't like the term Pollyanna. I actually love the term Pollyanna because right now in our day and age, we don't— we talk about toxic positivity, which I don't believe in, because we can always find something good out of something bad. And it's not to say that that good is okay, but bad happens. It just does. Life sometimes sucks. Sometimes bad things happen to us, and if we can find the good from it, I know that what we also find is health and some peace and some happiness. So I'm excited to talk to Jamie. Tune in. Jamie.

Hi.

Hi. How are you?

Good.

Good.

I am darling. I look like a trash can, and I'm sorry.

You know what? All the white, it just makes you look so nice. You have a beautiful tan. Yeah, it looks good. Looks good. So thank you for coming on today.

Oh my gosh. Well,

go ahead.

Oh, I love it. I like— how cute is your room too? I'm studying it. The beams are magnificent.

Okay. This, and I know you can appreciate this, this is a shed I built when I let go of my private practice. So I am in my backyard. I built this shed and I put everything in it. I write here, I podcast here, I do my work here. Yeah, it's my girly shed.

It's so cute.

Thank you. Thank you. Yeah, maybe you need to build one.

Listen, I make so many projects for my husband that he is like, you need to pick— can you pick one out of the 9 that you have? You know, I'm just an ADHD explosion. That's literally his poor life.

Yeah, I can totally relate. So I have to say, and we are recording actually now, but we haven't technically started the podcast. I have read this front to back, and I've been podcasting for about, I don't know, 4 or 5 years. Maybe I've done that 3 times. So it— this is really, really good. Really good.

Thank you. That means so much. I am on a lot of podcasts, and you know when they haven't read your book, and that's fine. It's a media circuit and it's whatever. I don't even blame them. Like, I could not read the amount of books that they get sent.

Right.

But you know, like, when someone hasn't read it, and I feel like I answer the same questions over and over again, as opposed to when people read it, it's like, oh, they always pick out something weird or that I forgot I wrote. I'm like, that's a surprise.

Yeah, I know. And I will tell people, I didn't read your book, but I read an excerpt or something, and sometimes I'll skim through. But anyway, thank you. I so appreciate it. I am in the middle of writing my second book. My first book for a big publishing house. And I'm— you know what that's like? It's like the suck. So I'm in the suck. You just appreciate this book.

But what's your second one about?

My second book, it's a book about complex shame, which is kind of a concept I've come up with. But it's memoir. It's like your book. It's memoir-driven. So it's a narrative nonfiction. And I tell my story. And I talk about— introduce this concept of complex shame and how a woman can work on overcoming it, which is That's probably why I love your book so much, because there's so many parallels, right? Yeah, it is.

I mean, that's the theme in my story, is shame. And I am a tenacious person when it comes to if something is there, I know it's there, so I'm going to deal with it. But unraveling that shame ball, man, it's like, where did this come from? And then you think you get it. And then you're like, oh, there's still— I still have to pull the thread. And then it's just— it's amazing, though. I mean, I'm, I'm so glad I get to read that book that you make. So now you can't quit.

Thank you. I will not quit. I have to, because, you know, I'm spending the money. So I know you gotta do it. Okay, let's do this. So we're already recording, so I'm sure some of this is gonna make it in. Is there anything you want to make sure that I address during the podcast? Do you want to make sure people know? I'll ask you at the end, how can people get a hold of you? Stuff like that. Okay.

Yeah, no, whatever.

Okay, let's dive in. Ready? Jamie, thank you so much for coming on today. I told you already before that I love your book. I have read this cover to cover, which is very rare in podcasting. For 4 to 5 years that I have, I've probably only done that a couple of times, and that means as a voracious reader, this is good stuff. So guys, you have to— you need to check out this book. It is really— it just offers so much value. And we already know that Jamie is so vulnerable and authentic. So yay, thanks for coming on.

Gosh, you're nice to me. If you could follow me around and just say positive things to me, it's like you put something out there and you think Is this stupid? Did I just write something really dumb? And, you know, you second guess yourself. But when you are your— you bring your full person to the table and you say, this is the real story, I'm telling the truth. And if I can help someone get through their hard stuff or see something magical about their lives that they didn't see before, it is totally worth it. I think it's cliché, but it is totally worth it.

It is. And when you get just that one person who just says, you changed my life, it's like, okay, I'm good. That's why I did this, right?

I'm good. We don't have to burn it down. I don't have to move to Brazil with a new identity. Okay.

It's good. So I talk a lot about shame, and I kind of feel like it's a parallel to what you call breadcrumbs. Can you tell, um, can you tell our listeners A little bit about your story and how you came up with this idea or kind of started to see these breadcrumbs through your life.

I was doing something for work. I found myself in a bit of a thing that I hadn't planned, which was I found myself in business. I was making money and having this team, and I was providing for my family, and I felt bad about it. Like, I prayed to God. Lord, obviously I'm a woman and I shouldn't be so excited to be in the marketplace, to be selling, to be ambitious. And especially in my very fundamental religious space, I felt otherly. Like, I felt like I was just trying to fit into this ecosystem, but I couldn't. And I kept making these little side hustles because that was okay in this space. Like, Just don't go all the way. You can just sort of be ambitious, but make it cute, you know? And so I kept having these loopholes, and I would start these businesses— photography, or I painted these heinous name signs. They were disgusting. People bought them. It's shameful. But I loved having something for myself. I loved having something outside of my marriage and my kids, and I felt bad about it. And so when I prayed this prayer, like, God, Take this away from me. I should be so ashamed that I like selling, and I'm a bad person because I'm taking people's money for a really good product and something I'm proud of. And I think God was like, LOL. And he made me remember a time when I was like 8 years old, maybe 8 to 10. And, you know, everyone's playing school or playing house or doing art or digging in the dirt or whatever it was. And I was pulling a rusty red wagon around my neighborhood, and I was selling rocks to my neighbors. And the thing about being 8 to 10 is you don't, you don't do anything you don't want to do at 8 to 10. If you have free time, you're not spending that time doing stuff you don't want to do. It's just a pure kind of age, barring like trauma and things like that. But even so, if you're doing something you enjoy, it's, it's very pure. And so I, I thought about that memory, and it just— this light bulb hit me that I, I think I was made to do this. I think, I think I'm doing what I love to do, and I think I'm providing like a service with my gifting and my unique empathies. And I think it's actually working for me because I'm doing what God made me to be. So I call them breadcrumbs because I was working on teaching the girls in my, um, on my team how to sell with integrity. And I said, hey, if you don't know who you are, And you don't know where you came from, and you're not able to look back and reframe some of this stuff to use it for your good, then we can't be out here authentically in the marketplace or anywhere. A teacher, a doctor. It's like if you're not fully embodied you, you're going to be looking at other people and probably mimicking what they do because they look successful or I should be like that because this is the ecosystem I'm in, and I should look like this. My personality should be this way, and I should only do these things. And you just get lost along the way. And I know I did. I know all my friends did at the time. And, and so these breadcrumbs were things that helped me find my way back to me. And once I saw them and looked at them for what they were, I really came alive. I was like thriving. And so I thought, I can't keep this to myself. I need to tell people how I did this.

I love it, Jamie. You know, when I was reading your book and you started talking about, um, really growing up in a fundamental Christian church and the concept not just of the purity culture, which is a whole other thing, but this idea, which we all know and understand where it comes from, of the woman being at home and submissive. and shouldn't put herself out there, and her only ministry should be to her children.

Yeah.

I, I was like, finally another Christian woman that can talk about that. Because let me tell you what I used to do. If I go back and look at my breadcrumbs, I, I grew up also in a fundamental Christian home, and my mom very much believed that women should not work out of the home. Like, women who work out of the home are selfish, and they're, they're, you know, not following what God is supposed to— what they're supposed to do in a godly— all the things. I grew up that way, but I also had the same type of drive, the same type entrepreneurial spirit, um, and just passion for doing things in addition to taking care of my amazing kids, right? Yeah. I used to literally count the hours that I worked to prove to myself that I wasn't working full-time. So I'd say, okay, I only did 32 hours this week, so it's okay. I'm, I'm not, you know, I, I'm not really a, a full-time— I would pretend like I was a stay-at-home mom. And as long as I was working under 40 hours a week, I rationalized it to myself that I was still okay. That's how strong those negative messages, right, are. And now I look back and I think literally every week I count like, oh, I only worked 24 hours this week, so I'm doing great. That's just so strong, that teaching and the shame that comes from these ideas that aren't ours. And God didn't put them on us. He didn't.

No.

And people did.

Other people did. And also, what a privileged perspective. I mean, that you don't have to work outside the home. I think when I first kind of got a hold of this idea, To where, you know, I'm still in that fundamental space, but I'm traveling quite a bit. So I am going to Haiti, I'm going to Rwanda, I'm going to places that look nothing like America.

Right.

And I'm like, these women are— they love God with their whole heart. They are passionate. I mean, just watching their love for God was incredible. And they are working because they don't— there is not a husband in sight. Or it, we need 2 of these incomes. We all gotta hustle. And sometimes the kids did too. And I was just like, I think this is just very Western evangelical, um, kind of not, I don't wanna say idolatry, but it was just very, it's very privileged to, to be honest. And that might be offensive.

I think idolatry, no, I think idolatry is a great word for it. And it is absolutely privileged. My dad was, you know, a successful medical doctor, and my mom didn't have to work. So it's very easy to judge women who, you know, do. So I just want to say I appreciate that, and I appreciate you addressing that shame that some women do feel and really just releasing them from it. Yeah. So I want to talk a little bit. I really want to talk to that woman who has been through some hard things and doesn't find— can't find purpose or can't seem to find anything positive From the hard thing. And there's this whole concept of toxic positivity, right? Which I have some beef with because I think when we— certainly to some extent, we can placate people and that's not okay. We can ignore their pain and that's not okay. But to swing it back to now we can't find anything positive out of negative things, I think is very unhealthy because Then we get into a place of purposelessness, right? And so can you talk to that woman from your perspective who's struggling and has maybe some shame or difficult things in her life and can't find that purpose?

I am pretty passionate about this. And I will say, in the Christian spaces right now, that is such a big moment of let me just have my suffering and don't make it better for me and don't tell me it's going to be okay. I get to sit in this and, and stop using your toxic positivity to tell me it's going to be okay. I have major beef with that because, you know, I'm sorry, this is the podcast called We Offend You at Every Turn. Because God tells— we tell stories over and over again in the Bible. In fact, we memorize them. We put them— we're told to put them like on our hearts, on our foreheads, on the doorframes of our hearts and homes. And The stuff in the Bible is crazy, crazy. Um, it's negative stuff. It's suffering. It's, uh, just traumatic,

right?

Abusive. Uh, there are divorces, remarriages. There's infidelity going on.

Murder. All of that.

Murder. I mean, it's just like, whoa. And we are told to read this over and over again. But the thing that God does every time is that each of those stories are about him and his story. All right, so we have a role in it, but it's all about redemption.

Mm-hmm.

And God is the great reframer. So he takes a rebellious people, or he takes someone who is being abused, or he takes death, and then he makes life. So we don't sit. We, we— yes, you get to have that. You get to be sad. I, and I think you should sit and feel sad about it and take a moment to express, you know, what's going on. You don't need to rush out of that. But at some point, we do have to say God is the God who says we are a people who are marked by hope. And if you sit in despair and you think on despair and you say, let me sit in this and let me have this, and I'm not moving forward, then you will live a life of despair. And that is not the kind of people we are called to be. So I think going back and reframing, I say, go back and we dig up those things that you say, I have called that suffering in my life. It just happened to me. It's just something that happened to me, and I'm not going to deal with that. I buried that, and I've moved forward now. And I say, what if we dig around and really look at that thing and you might find some treasure? And so it sounds very 8-year-oldish, but That's who I think I'm getting back to. I'm in my 40s now, and I think—

Good for you.

I'm just going all the way back and saying, like, is there treasure here? And can I give that to myself to say some of this deepest suffering, like infidelity, is in my story? And talk about being in a fundamental space that says your value is being a wife and a mother. And I Was not a good mother because I was so devastated.

Of course.

And I was obviously not a good wife because I can't keep a husband at home. Who am I? And I can't even go to church because I'm not these things that I'm supposed to be. And talk about your identity getting just stripped away. So if you're not any of that, then what are you? And that's when I found, oh, my identity is not based on My circumstances, my behavior, my reputation, you know, that all got taken away. And when I finally looked back on that time, and I don't think people believe me when I say, when I look back on it, I say thank you. Mm-hmm. I say I am so thankful that happened to me because I got the nearness of God. Like, that was a reward. I got peace as a person. And that's what I got, and no one can take that away from me. My marriage did get redeemed through like I'm not kidding a miracle because I'm a sassy lady and oof! I was gonna, I was gonna take him and take all the money. Yeah, I was gonna go clean him out.

Yeah.

But you know, God did a miracle in my heart and in his, and we got it back. But I will say that's not the end goal, and that happened for me, but that might not happen for you. But that doesn't mean God's not gonna. to redeem your story in some way. So I guess that's what I would tell a woman who's sitting and suffering and saying, like, I don't know, this just doesn't make sense. And I don't know, I would say, God, this is our God that we serve, is the God who takes not the broken and like fixes it. He takes the dead and he makes it alive. Wow. And it can be like that for you too. We don't get to know how, but He will do it. He says he will do it. And so, you know, you kind of ride on that. It's called faith, right? I don't know if it's going to happen, but I'm going to believe that he is who he says he is.

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. And your story does have so much. You talk about how you come from really this kind of poor home and where you guys were scrappy and had to figure out, which I'm sure— I mean, if we go back to breadcrumbs, right, all of those difficulties that you experienced, are what create who you are now. You know, I talk to parents, especially when they're starting to feel like they suck as parents and they're doing a bad job. And I talk about the fact that kids are children. What they don't need is a perfect parent, right? Yeah. What we are trying to do is create somebody who is productive, who is capable, right? Who has the skills that they need to exist in the world. And when I think about parenting, I think about a net, like a fishing net. And a fishing net is full of holes, right? If we have a fishing net that has no holes in it, it's actually not productive. It won't work, right? And so what we're not trying to put holes in our children, the holes are going to be put there by life.

Surprise.

Right. Our job, I think, is to keep our children— is to not create gaping holes in our children. And our job is to patch up Any that do get too big, right? Our job is to walk them along this life as they have the holes put in them, some of which we will do and some of which life will do. And so if we can look at that and recognize that those holes that our children have are exactly what they need to become who they are supposed to be. And the same goes for us when we look at our holes. That's what we needed to be who we are today. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think even to show kids that we are thankful for those things, like, I am not here to be perfect for you. And I call it more like I'm here to be an arrow that says, don't look at me, look at this guy, you know, look up. I am just someone who's going to be an arrow towards, hey, repentance. Hey, I'm going to model it first. You know, we wonder why our kids aren't sorry or they have— they can't— they're always right. You know, I'm like, oh, where would they get that from? If you're not apologizing all the time, if you're not saying, you know, I was wrong about that, I thought about that and I was wrong about that, and just showing your holes, you know, which sounds terrible. Let's make merch. That's— no. But just showing that, like, you're holy too. Like, you, you have the holes too. That doesn't make you a bad human. And I think to that point, shame— isn't that what shame is? I think I should be this perfect, or it should have gone this way, and then it doesn't. And now I have to hide, or I tell myself a different story, a bad story. And I look at parenting so different now than when I started with my first. God bless my firstborn. It's just

that we practice. I tell my son that you're the first one and you get all the practice. And I practiced on you, and now I'm doing a little bit better with the other ones. And I promise to pay for your therapy for as long as you need it.

That's true.

But thank you for letting me practice. Speaking of, tell us how your daughter is. I should say tell me, because I read your book and nobody else has. You had a daughter with special needs. I have a daughter with special needs as well. So me reading your section of going through that and understanding and the slow realization that happens as you have a child that, as they're developing. How's she doing?

How old is she now? Well, she's 14. And I was just thinking about— I was watching her dance. She puts headphones on and she's very tone deaf, and she yell sings.

My daughter does too.

Yeah. And I'm just watching her like the most joyful. I mean, she's full on jazzercising, singing like an Irish jig. I don't even know how she got into that Because she didn't get it from me. And just watching her have joy and you think about that, I just, I'm like, that's who I want to be. Like, this is who I want to be. I don't want to care what I look like. I don't want to care that I'm the best at anything. I don't want that weight. I want to be joyfully living. And you, I think before, when you have, when you have like a differently abled child or you look at a differently abled child, you would say, They're broken. In your head, you kind of say that, oh, how can we fix them?

Right.

Um, that poor— all those poor parents, or, oh, you know, she has to go through life like this. And I am learning about how broken my daughter is not and what she's reflecting in God's personhood. He knitted her like this.

Okay.

And what is he trying to say to us through her presence? I'm I'm experiencing God in a totally new season right now just by watching her. She wants because she is special needs. She wants purpose for her purpose looks different than your purpose. She's copying a book today. She's listening to me. She has pages and pages, and she's copying a book word for word. And or she is. We had our nephew over a couple days ago, and she was the Filipina auntie you never knew that she was. She was just aggressively. Caring for this. The way in which she washed this child's face. I don't know if you know any Filipinos, but, I mean, she washed this boy's face from forehead to neck.

Aggressive water. Yes.

Which I've seen Lola do. I've seen my mother-in-law do. But the way in which she just loved having purpose, she followed that kiddo around joyfully. So she loves working. She loves working joyfully. She loves having a purpose. And I'm just relearning, like, okay, purpose. What is purpose and what does it look like for anyone? And how can I have such a purpose with so much joy? And so I don't know. How old is your special needs daughter?

My daughter Sullivan, she's 17. Yeah.

So you're ahead of me. You're ahead of the game.

Couple of years. Yeah, a couple of years. And same thing. In the beginning, I had so much shame. I blamed myself. for having a special needs child because of my history. And I placed my first child for adoption and I was like, this is my punishment and we're punished together. So many, so many ridiculous stories that we tell ourselves because we see sometimes God as maybe how we see our earthly father and we see God as this judging person and instead of the guy that loves us so deeply. Right. And so for me, I had that same kind of shame journey and finally had to come to this place Of what, you know, why is Sullivan here? Not even just to teach me, because I don't feel that Sullivan's purpose is only here just to teach us. Like, Sully has a purpose, right? She does. She shines this light and she teaches people so many things, and she puts a mirror up in front of people's face. But she has her very own purpose here on this Earth, and she's going to find it. But thank you. I love that. Yeah,

you're ahead of the game for me. You know, I'm looking at her just like, oh, how do I, how, how do I live like that? And what is God? What must God be like? And I love that you said that because I haven't thought about that. Like, yeah, but what is her unique— she has a unique purpose. Like, what is her unique purpose? It's just, it's— you think we're all so different. Oh, they have special needs. I don't have special needs. They have this experience. I don't. I didn't grow up poor. I didn't. I'm like, I think we're all a lot more alike than different.

We are. You know, I've been doing therapy for over 20 years, and I tell almost all of my clients, there's no— we already know there's nothing new under the sun. And so I also hope that that helps them to reduce some of their shame because I've already heard this story. I've heard the story 20 times in different ways. And yeah, I'm going to hear yours and it's going to be the same, but it's going to be a little different because you're unique. But we all struggle. Every single one of us has a thing, and every single one of us has multiple, you know, little things. And when we can really just own that and know that that doesn't lessen our worth— in fact, I think that it increases our, our— I don't want to say value, but it just kind of increases our uniqueness.

Yeah.

If we can own our shameful things instead of trying to hide them and push them down.

Yeah, that is just— it's a string that goes through all of our lives. I mean, I think that shame piece of just saying, where did that come from? You know, me, I think mine presented in just self-hatred. I mean, I hate to use such a strong word, but it was like I would walk past the mirror and just trash talk myself.

Yeah.

I wasn't having, like, an eating disorder, or mine didn't manifest like— and it could have. But I mean, that's the things that I was saying inside of my head were just mean and, and just being so thoroughly unhappy with myself. I got— I just got so sick of it that I was— I begged God, like, can you— I've done the affirmations, I've done the self-help, I have— you're going to have to dig me out of this. Or like, can you just point me in the right direction? And that weirdest thing was I pulled on that string of purity culture because I said, where did I first learn that? In my head, you know, I'm like, okay, where did you first sense like something about your body is wrong or dangerous or anything like that? And, you know, we can all blame our parents for a lot of things, but my parents weren't like that. I didn't feel any body shame in my home. I learned that inside the church.

Right.

And that whole movement, it was just Devastating for me to— I just grew up thinking my body's dangerous, my body's bad. Cover up, shrink, actually get really small, be as small as you can. And that manifested in, like, shouldn't I be very skinny? Shouldn't I be very— even, like, with my personality, shouldn't I be, like, small and gentle and quiet? When I pulled that strand, goodness. I mean, now we undo that purity culture. And I thought, I got it. That's it. And then God was like, oh, we just got started. Right. And then I say, well, why do I still have it? And why do I still feel this? And then I had to examine the systems I was still in and still a part of in the faith space that had so many restrictions on me that I just could hardly move inside that building. And then once I left that space, I mean, the freedom. I'm not saying everybody has to do it the way I did it, but the freedom I felt, the weight that lifted off me because I had to go say, God, what do you think about me? And just to let him say, didn't I make you this way? Didn't I give you this gift? Didn't I make you this in this certain, like with this certain talent, with this certain unique empathy? Didn't I do that? And just, I had to go back to my father and say, maybe the systems I was in were not beneficial to me, or they were for a little bit, and then you outgrow them. So I would say that's my most recent shame thread where I notice I literally don't even look in the mirror, which is good and bad. You have a big piece of cilantro in your teeth, but I'm not even looking. I don't even care. I'm not even looking in the mirror. There's nothing to trash talk. And sometimes I'll walk by and be like, You look lovely. And that is just new. That's a new thing for me. But it's like you write a book and you're like, I did it. I'm finished with that lesson. Never. It's like God is still working on me and doing a thing, and he doesn't stop.

He doesn't. But you're upleveling every time. And what you're doing is you're finding the next level of things to heal and work through. And I love that concept of shame thread. I might, I might use that one. I love that. Because the reality is, is that God does not shame us. Humans shame us, not God. And we forget, and we think that because the humans are in church, that it's God that's shaming us.

You know,

it's not. It's still the human.

It's always shrouded in that little, that religious piece in it. And especially as a child and someone, or if you're new in the faith, you equate, just like you equate your dad with God. You equate religious people with, you know, God. And that's the beautiful thing about age is the older that you get, the more and more I hope— I would hope, or it feels like the more and more I am— I'm not afraid to examine things and just lift up the rock and say, is this really beneficial? You know, and God's not afraid of that.

He's not. He can take all of our anger, our pain, our questions. Right. Our confusion. He's totally not afraid of it. Jamie, this has been wonderful. Thank you for sharing both here and in your book, Your Breadcrumbs. And you talk about how the way to kind of go back to that— and I know you shared it here and you said it so succinctly in your book— is to go back to 8-year-old little self, whoever you are, and pay attention to those things that lit you up, to those things that you enjoyed, like you said. And those are kind of the light. That's like the light bulb. That's What's the place, that special place that God put in you that you are actually meant to do and be on this earth, even though maybe it's quirky and weird and doesn't feel important? That's the place to start.

Yeah. And I would say take it further too. It's great to notice that about yourself. It gives you a huge permission slip to say like, oh, I've always been doing this. But look at the 8 to 10-year-olds in front of you and you Speak life over them and affirm them. If you see them doing something small or big, say, you just taught your sister that, and I can't even teach her that fast. You made it so simple for her. Or, I love the way that you're so interested in these animals and you're speaking life over them because they are going to get lost along the way too. And just like we do, you hear those adult voices for the rest of your life.

You do.

Negative and positive. And they're gonna get lost along the way, and you want them to hear your voice saying, hey, God made you to do this. You are so gifted in this area. Like, I love this about you. I mean, I go short of like, you know, shaking my neighbor kids and being like, you're the best at, you know, and maybe don't do it to strangers, maybe, but just affirming those little ones among Us, they are. You know, it's like think about how Jesus was with children. Let them come to me. They're not a bother. They are delightful. I mean, I am so delighted in that age because it's just such a pure and tender age. So I would say like go around and notice that. Write it down so that they have something to look back on. You know, write it on the back of the picture or in your Instagram captions. I know that's how I. keep my memories. But for every birthday of my kids, I try to, like, say, this is who you were. This is what you were doing at the time. And I'm telling you, it seems insignificant. You will say, well, they, they've always written stories. They've always— I have a little kid who pulls a wagon just like me and sells stuff or wants to do a lemonade stand every day. And I'm like, sister, we need a new product. But, you know, writing that down so that they they can look back and say, oh, I've always been doing this.

That's beautiful. Thank you. So how can people find you? How can they find your book? I have to say, it's just so cute. I got it in the mail. It's so cute. It just draws me to it. I want to read it.

I know. You know, the part about having a really cute cover is— and it's very like, it would be feminine or whatever. But then you open it and you read the stories and they're not. I spill the tea. Like, I don't— it's like, oh, sorry, I didn't mean to spank you at the end with this question. But, but I just, I feel like that's who it reflects my personality as far as like, I love color and I love being cutesy and let's get in there and dig around. Yeah. And but so I do a lot of that on Instagram. I do a bunch of videos on like ADHD. I do, I use humor, I use comedy, I think, to draw people People in, and then eventually I want them to say, "What is her God like?" I want them to be drawn to God inside, you know, living inside of me. But I mostly on Instagram. I'm not good at TikTok. I am not good at Facebook. I love it. Really honed in, guys, on this one avenue. So well, you're telling me.

Oh, say that again.

Oh, I Jamie Nato, no e at Jamie Nato and Nato. Yeah,

J-A-M-I-N-A-T-O. We will put that in the show notes, and you are killing it on Instagram, and you are so very funny. I love going to your page and just cracking up and scrolling on the reels, and you just you you speak truth. You speak sometimes hard truth with humor, and what you know that's just such a gift. It's such a gift.

I hope so.

Yeah, it is. With your— I don't know how many followings you have. 100,000, 200,000. I don't know what you have. It's a lot. Can you just give one last word of encouragement to a woman out there who's thinking, I see myself there, but I can't find the positive yet, or I don't know how to get there. I'm still struggling in my shame and trying to find my purpose.

Yeah, I would say every last bit of energy and effort and the one-word prayer of help is so valuable and so worth it to have just a little bit of tenacity to say, maybe God will make something good of this. Even that is, is faith. That is hope. That's a mustard seed. And you don't need to have This big showy blast of faith. The one-word prayer help is exactly perfectly good enough, and God hears you and he sees you, and he goes before you and he makes a way. So you don't need to be afraid that I'm going to be stuck here forever. No, he's already made a way for you, and he will show up for you. In fact, he is right beside you. So I think that was always more hopeful for me to hear that God's presence was with me, um, and it didn't depend on big faith or big moves or big success. Or, I mean, there were days I hardly could take a shower and God was with me. He didn't care. So I think that's the most important thing. God is with you.

Thank you, Jamie. Well, best, best wishes on this book. I'm excited to see it soar. And thank you so much for coming on today.

You bless me. Thank you for having me.