112: How to Get Through Emotions After Speeches Like Harrison Butker's

Harrison Butker's commencement speech at Benedictine College ruffled a LOT of feathers, especially within the childfree community.  There were a lot of insults thrown at him, arguments started on social media comment sections, even calls to cancel his NFL contract.  Were they justified?  In my opinion, it doesn't really matter. 

What matters is this: how do YOU feel when you hear words like Harrison's and if it's outrage, do you know how to dissipate that?  You might think you don't want to dissipate that anger, because, well, it's justified right?  But what good is it, if everyone just walks away from the comment section feeling angry and nothing has changed?

In this solo episode, I'm breaking it all down:

• why you feel so outraged when you hear words like this and why they make you feel so slighted
• the mistakes that you might be making that are causing you to feel worse
• the first few steps you can take to feel relief
• how to actually close the gap between childless/childfree people and parents

If you want to find your own true purpose and worthy "vocation" as Harrison calls it, download my free PDF,  Finding Purpose Beyond Parenthood: Getting Through Grief and Triggers to a Life of Meaning and Joy!

References from this episode:
Harrison Butker's Commencement Speech

Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca

If you are a childless woman looking to up-level her life in a major way, join the Love Your Beautiful, Unconventional Life Retreat, coming up at the end of February 2025.  Book a Retreat Call with Sheri here if you have questions or want to know more!

Where to find Sheri:
Instagram: @sherijohnsoncoaching
Website: sherijohnson.ca

Transcript

I might be a bit late to the party here, but I’ve been thinking a lot about the HB speech. Most of the child free, childless community, the LGBTQ community, and a lot of others were pretty outraged by it.

I mean, lots of others weren't. It seemed to be a pretty divisive sort of speech, but I was too. I was outraged, but probably for a very different reason than most.

My first reaction, though, was just disbelief. This is mentality still exists among young people today. I got to expect it from older generations, but from someone in, I think Harrison Butker is in his 20s, late 20s, but of course it does.

We're still living in a very patriarchal and pronatalist society and one that is amplified by the many religions out there.

And before you hit the stop button on me, this is not going to be a rant against religion. It's not even going to be a rant against Harrison Butker.

What I really want you to know is how to deal with the feelings of outrage, because you can be like everyone else and go and spam his Instagram comments or vent about it in an online Facebook group, but that actually is going to do nothing to change Harrison Butker's opinion or anyone else's.

And it's not going to dismantle the patriarchal and pronatalist views that instilled the belief. that prompted the speech in the first place, it's only going to create more divisiveness between women without kids and mothers, between parents and non-parents, and heck between the left and right.

What I want to tell you about today is what actually has the potential to change things. I'm going to tell you about it in this episode.

Let's dive in. Welcome. Welcome back if you've been here before. Welcome if you're new. So in this episode, first of all, I'm going to tell you about how you can deal with the feelings, the emotions, the outrage, the anger, the things that come up when you hear a speech like Harrison Buckerts, Harrison Buckert.

And really, this is probably just something that has been a big deal on TikTok and Instagram. and maybe those among the childless community, maybe LGBTQ, maybe, I don't know, maybe a few others.

So if you haven't actually heard about this speech, I wouldn't be surprised. And if you really want to watch the whole thing, it's not, I don't know, it's maybe half an hour or something.

I'll link it up in the show notes, but it's not actually really necessary in order to follow what I'm talking about.

I'm going to give you the Coles notes version here and what really outraged the childless and child free community was a couple of key remarks in my mind.

Here's the first one. Here's what he said. And oh, by the way, so this is a commencement speech that he gave.

Harrison Becker is a pro football player and I forget who he plays for Kansas City, maybe. And he gave the commencement speech at Benedict, Benedictine College, which is a Catholic college in the States.

And so, in that speech, he said at one point, and I'm paraphrasing, I really want to speak to the ladies in the audience in this moment.

And then he spoke directly to them with some words of quote, unquote, wisdom, words of experience, actually, is what he said.

And so, here is some of the key comments from that section, that segment, actually, and later, that were really...

Here are some of the comments that really sort of outraged the community that really sort of stuck out in my mind from that section.

segment. So here's one. My beautiful wife Isabelle would be the first to say her life truly started when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.

I'll let that sink in. And here's another one. And she would embrace one of the most important other things that sort of caught my attention.

He goes on to talk about playing God and said nothing. There's nothing natural about Catholic birth control. There's nothing good about playing God with having children.

So that to me speaks to the community that might be going through infertility might be considering things like donor eggs.

um, might be considering an abortion, might be considering any of those things that are now available to us that allow choice.

And then the last thing that really caught my attention was this line. As men, we set the tone of the culture, and when that is absent, disorder, dysfunction, and chaos ensues.

So these are all remarks that would catch the attention of not just the childless or child-free community, people without kids, people who are not able to have kids, people who chose not to have kids, but also the feminists.

The, you know, as men, we set the tone of the culture. That really, that really, gosh, what I felt about that was

was disbelief. Do we have people in young people in our world who still think this way? Are we really telling, this is a commencement speech, are we really telling young women who just graduated with a degree that they should really just go start families?

Do we really still live in a world that stands for this? And what about the people who never get to start a family?

Did their lives never really start? Because apparently, at least for Harrison Butker's wife, her life truly began when she began living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.

What about people who don't find a wife or a spouse or a partner? Those who don't get to be parents at all.

So Those were really that instigated a feeling of disbelief in me. Do we really live in a society that still advocates for these kinds of beliefs?

But once the initial shock of these words wore off, I became outraged at something else. A few things actually.

First of all, the fact that no one is talking about what's actually beneath the surface here. What actually makes people make speeches like this?

And how is it that the feminists in our world aren't even picking up on the pronatalism here? Because that is part of the patriarchy.

I would gather like I didn't even know what the word pronatalism meant until a couple of years ago. And it seems that most people also don't even know what that means.

are we not talking about this? And I'm going to say this out loud. If you are a feminist and you're not talking about pernatalism or you're not thinking about pernatalism, I really think you're missing something.

It's a critical piece of our society that keeps us from equity, from the equity that I think many women are looking for.

I don't want to say most because I think there are a lot of women who were at that commencement speech, who stood up during the standing ovation after Harrison talked about his wife and her most important vocation.

So I really think that there's a critical piece that's missing in the feminist talk in that community. The second thing that outraged me is

The fact that all anyone seems to know how to do in our world is right nasty comments or create memes about the things that bother us.

We just lash out. And all that does is get all the people all riled up, all the people on both sides.

The fact that there even is sides to this is kind of mind boggling. And none of that resolves anything.

doesn't resolve anything when you read and ask you comment on someone's Instagram post. It doesn't resolve anything. It doesn't open up conversations about the topic.

Everyone just goes away feeling more angry than when they started. My question is, what if we were actually able to come at this from a place of love?

So, I actually do. Now, or I try to, I'm not perfect. I created a process that I used many times on myself to get through remarks like these.

They come often, you'll see them on Instagram, they show up in the media, they show up in commencement speeches, show up on YouTube, they show up on on on right-wing YouTube channels, they're kind of everywhere.

And what we really need to do is learn how to process them, learn how to see what is there to learn from this.

So today I'm going to give you the first couple of steps of the process that I use to get through all these remarks and it's the same process that I now teach my clients.

So let's start breaking this down. First of all, let's talk about why we're even feeling so if you're feeling outraged about the speech itself and the comments that were made, let's talk about why you feel that way.

The Catholic Church, in this case, many religions actually preach that women are here to serve. Even if they don't preach it, the language is there.

It's in the Bible. It's in the Quran. Our primary purpose is to have children. is only for reproductive purposes, at least for women.

There are many references in the Bible to be fruitful and multiply, and that leads people to believe that this is what we are supposed to do as women.

We are supposed to multiply. We are supposed to be fruitful. We are not supposed to go off and get careers.

And if we do, we're supposed to suck it up and also manage a full, you know, full-time household and being a mother.

This is pronatalism. It's patriarchal, and it is still everywhere. It's in the church. It's in government policy. It's deeply ingrained in society.

We are programmed to follow this. We're programmed. We're hardwired, not hardwired, but we've been wired to accept this. I'm not going to go into all of the markers of prenatalism.

I've done that in another podcast episode. look for the ones where I talk about prenatalism, particularly in the title.

But this is really why people see things like childless women are selfish. It's why people like a kerosene book or see things like they do.

It's been programmed into us. So this is why you're feeling when you don't fit into that mold, it's going to be triggering, especially if you grew up in this kind of pronatalist society, which most of us did.

I grew up in a religious home as well. But even if you didn't, a gen, at least for you if you're in your 40s or 50s or older, you know,

We still said the Lord's prayer at the beginning of every day in school. Education, government, they were built on in the Western world on Christianity.

You know, other countries, obviously other, other religions have influences on government. So these, these, this way of thinking is programmed into us from a very young age.

So knowing that, that this is, this is societal, this is not Harrison Buckhurst's fault even, he grew up in a society or in a religion that has programmed these beliefs into him, and many of us.

The mistakes that we're making, that are not resolving this, that are not helping the issue, or doing things like venting, venting in the online support groups.

That just gets everybody else rolled up. Commenting on the Instagram pages or the YouTube video or wherever, starting those comments, those conversations in the comment section, it doesn't actually change anyone's view.

In fact, it strengthens other people's views. So when we're attacked, when we're insulted, it only grounds in what we believe.

It reminds me of a dog and the leash is always getting into knots. And whenever you pull on a knot, the more you tug, the tighter it gets.

So if you tug on that, that's what you're doing when you insult or attack. or put an ask you comment in on an Instagram post or under a YouTube video, it just gets the other person who doesn't believe what you believe grounded in to their belief.

They'll just continue to rebel against whatever it is you're saying. So today I could get into what it takes to actually change someone's perspective, but that could actually take hours.

Instead, what I want to do is focus on shifting our own selves, shifting yourself so that these remarks don't, they don't hit the nerves so hard.

I want to show you what will actually help us as childless women or childless people to hold our heads up high in a world that still thinks like Harrison Buckker.

So let's talk about triggering The big trigger, I think one of the big triggers, my wife's life began when she started living her vocation as a wife and as a mother.

This is triggering because, okay, let me actually take a step back. This might be a tough concept to grasp.

And you might not even believe what I'm about to say. And that's okay, but what I want you to do for today is just bear with me, listen to what I'm about to describe.

going to start with an analogy that will hopefully help this make sense. Because most of us believe that when someone triggers us, it's their fault, they are doing something that hurts us.

That's actually not the case. There will always be, our world is full of people who are triggered. And trigger warnings, and gosh, we're all...

We all see things that bother people. We say things that bother our partners. say things that bother our family.

And they say things to us that bother us. They hit nerves, they hit hot buttons. So they're all what people call triggers, these reactions.

So we think it's the other person that is causing this. But what if, just bear with me for today, what if you could actually heal that trigger yourself.

So that when people say things, it's almost like a shield. It's like you have shield around you and all those comments just bounce right off of the shield.

So let me explain this. I'm gonna use an analogy that actually involves kids because I'm sure you have witnessed this.

The little kid who is wearing something so outrageous out in public. So it's the Halloween costume when it's April.

I can't remember if this was a friend of mine who shared this or whether it was something I saw on Instagram, but it was a little boy, it was, I don't know, five or six or something, and he was playing hockey in a pink tutu on the bottom.

On the top, he had a hockey jersey on, and it looked hilarious and so cute. But when you think of kids who do these things, I also like the bathing suit over top of the clothes.

There's so many examples of kids who just wear exactly what they feel like, and they could not give a .

Somebody could say, that's gonna look silly, it's not Halloween, and yet they insist, they just don't care. And the comments just bounce right off of them, like, you know, a fly bouncing off a window, something bounce, those comments bouncing off that .

field because they don't believe there isn't an iota in them that believes it looks silly. They just don't care.

Fast forward though, ten years, age that same child ten years. She or he walks out of the house wearing something that I'm going to use a she in this case.

She walks out of the house and something that she's not sure about. Does this look good? I don't know if this looks great.

I don't know if this looks good. I think it looks good. I'm going to wear it. And then someone makes a comment.

Sarcastic something about what she's wearing says something about the way she looks. And kids do this. I've had kids say things to me.

So I'm sure it's not just me. As soon as someone makes that sarcastic comment she shrinks. She gets annoyed.

She lashes back. Or maybe she doesn't lash back but she gets really angry tells all her friends what so-and-so said.

It's because she don't edit it. A part of her believed that what she was wearing didn't look good. Part of her believed maybe that she didn't look good.

This happens all the time when someone makes a remark that implies something thing about whatever we identify with. So if we translate what kids are wearing these days to the comments about motherhood being the most important vocation, there's a part of you that probably believes it's true.

And when you don't, I don't believe that wholeheartedly. With absolute conviction, I do not believe that motherhood is the most important vocation in the world.

But a few years ago, I absolutely did. I was fully in patriarchy and pronatalism. There was a part of me that did believe that.

And so those comments did bother me because I thought it meant something about me. If I couldn't do that, then I wasn't important.

Once I identified that that's what I believe, that there was a part of me that believed that, then I could start to dismantle it.

I would love to know if this made sense to you. I would love to know how this landed, this idea about triggers and how we can actually dismantle them.

How you can even identify that it's within you, that there's a belief that can be changed. Sometimes I wonder whether, you know, anytime that we feel this kind of negative emotion, this trigger, this reaction, whether it always leads back to a belief we have about ourselves that is not true.

Ponder that and tell me what think. me a DM on Instagram. My handles are all linked up in the show notes or send me an email.

I also have a whole workshop on this and how to get at the root cause of any trigger, any remark that bugs you.

And it's part of the welcoming pillar within the Women of Worth program and it's a whole to our workshop.

I can't go through it all today, but this is something that is so, it's one of the most impactful parts of my program because it is so useful.

Use whatever you want, but just saying that little prayer, that little mantra, it automatically gets your brain looking for a solution, looking for something that will allow you to see it with love, and it's shocking to me how often the answer comes so fast.

So that's the first thing that you can try. The second step, I look for compassion. So this whole thing, the whole speech, it's a patriarchal and pro-natalist view that so much of the world still believes, even women, a lot of women.

So during this commencement speech, Harrison Becker got a standing ovation when he talked about some of those remarks that I specifically called out.

He was speaking to a primarily Catholic, athletic audience who believed what he was saying and of course there were some women in the audience who just stared and just believed who were also outraged and you can find their comments on social media but you've probably even come across these women amongst your friends who are moms who believe that being a mother is the most important vocation they are they're probably the majority and I did too as I said there was a part of me that still bought into this as recently as I don't know three or four years ago even being a mother is the most important job in the world and so I was bothered when people told me that because I was never going to be a mom and so I doubted my own importance in the world as a result so finding that compassion

And Harrison grew up, or maybe I don't know, he grew up in the same medium as we all did.

He was conditioned by this. I think he came back to Catholicism bit later. And so he's, he's privy to all of that conditioning.

It's not, I don't even think it's his fault. He's been, he's grown up in this society, this patriarchal and pernatalist society that instills these kinds of beliefs.

And so of course he's going to spew them back to an audience. Finding that compassion really, it's not his fault.

It's, it's societal. It's the 5,000 years of patriarchy that have led us to this. If we're going to be angry, we need to be angry at that.

And that's where we can actually take action against that, not an individual who just repeated back what he learned.

So finding that compassion, If you can, actually putting yourself in his shoes and growing up in a society that conditioned him to believe the things that he believes can sometimes help you to see that other side and take a stance of, okay, how can I actually change this instead of just throwing insults at someone who just spews back what society has taught us all?

So the third step is to get rid of this trigger for yourself. And again, this is what we do inside my program.

It's part of what we do. This is, I think, a big mistake that people make is thinking that triggers like this are part of grief.

They're part of the grief of being, of not being able to get to be a mom. But then again, there's women who made a choice not to be a child who are triggered by this.

So what's going on there? It's not actually grief. It's something else. And that's what you need to get to the root of in order to, in order to allow these types of comments and remarks and things that you see in the media, people say, if you want to, if you want to actually feel okay about it and let them bounce off of you, you need to actually heal yourself.

You need to create that shield. And can you imagine what a relief it is to encounter people who have this kind of conditioning and feel nothing, like feel as though you are behind that shield and those comments don't even register or bother you.

It is entirely possible and the relief of that is priceless. So a couple of last things that I want to share before I wrap up this episode, how can we actually close the gap?

Instead of creating more, more divisiveness. When you heal, here's number one, when you heal or change your own beliefs, you will be able to stand in your power like the five-year-old wearing the Batman costume in April.

The comments just bounce off of you. And when you come from that place, anger isn't a part of the conversation.

You can have a much more rational conversation about it instead of just putting us in the comments section. When you come from a place of that relief that I just mentioned, a place of the healed you, you come at the conversation from an entirely different place.

So that's the first thing is healing, changing your own beliefs. That is the first thing. And what that means is that you can look at someone else and say, I can understand why you feel this way.

So it allows you to have that compassion. That's the second thing. It's compassion that can access. It's compassion that closes gaps in any conversation.

Brittany Brown talks about this all the time, maybe not all the time, but it's a big part of what she does.

talk about it in a few of her books, is compassion, empathy, understanding where someone's coming from. This closes gaps.

This is what reduces divisiveness. So those are a couple of things to ponder, reflect on. When you come across this again, how will you react?

And what can you do about it? And now you have a choice. And it's a tough one because venting about this kind of thing and an online support group or dropping an angry comment on Instagram, that is very seductive.

And if you're someone who is, say, don't know, has a following in this kind of space, it's seductive as well because this sort of, I don't know, this is this is someone who gathers a lot of comments when they create the meme or when they create the real that really kind of talks about the anger within this and rants against the person like Harrison Buckher.

So are you going to be that person, are you going to give into that, that seductive pole to do that, or will you be the one who heals herself so that the world can heal with you so that you can.

. close the gap so that you can remove some of that divisiveness between mothers and children and mothers and child-free people, mothers and child-less people, child-free and child-less people, because there's a division there too.

So if you're the latter, you want to be someone who heals, heals the world, take the first step and download my free PDF, How to Find Purpose Beyond Parenthood.

Because I assure you, there are many equally important vocations or reasons for you being in the world and I can help you start to align to yours.

So you'll find that linked up in the show notes. It's SherryJohnson.ca slash purpose and so go download that and that is it for today's episode.

It might be a bit of a controversial one. I would love to know what you think. So send me a DM and tell me what you think and also

Oh, if you did find some value here, follow me, subscribe, maybe even leave me a review on this episode, and I would absolutely love that.

I'd be so grateful. Come back next week for another episode, and I'll talk to you then.