Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Christian Couples: Secrets of Happily Ever After
Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between those couples who absolutely LOVE to be together and the ones who merely tolorate each other in their old age? I always want to run up to the cute old couples who still hold hands while walking down the street and ask them all their secrets to relationship success. This podcast gives me the opportunity to do just that!
I'm Monica Tanner, wife to a super hunky man, mom to 4 kids, weekly podcaster and relationship and intimacy expert/enthusiast. I help couples ditch the resentment and roommate syndrome and increase communication, connection and commitment, so they can write and live out their happily ever after love story. If that sounds like something you want, this podcast is absolutely for YOU!
Each week, I'm teasing out the principles that keep couples hopelessly devoted and intoxicatingly in love with each other for a lifetime and beyond. I'm searching high and low for the secrets of happily ever after and sharing those secrets with you right here. Sound marriage advice for couples who want to live happily ever after and achieve a truly intimate friendship, because an awesome marriage makes life so much sweeter. Let's get to it!
Marriage and Intimacy Tips for Christian Couples: Secrets of Happily Ever After
Innovation, Creativity and Marital Bliss with Caley Rose and Karl Walker
Have you ever wondered what it's like to trade in the hustle and bustle of city life for the compact serenity of an Airstream?
Join me as I sit down with Caley Rose and Karl Walker, a Billboard charting singer-songwriter and a user experience designer, who did just that. Embarking on a life less ordinary, they've navigated the highs and lows of transforming a trailer into a home, all while keeping their relationship thriving. Their story isn't just about shared space; it's about shared dreams, from music to design, and the delicate dance of supporting each other's creative ambitions without losing sight of family values.
Caley and Karl open up about the intricacies of a partnership where career paths diverge—Kaylee's melodies filling venues and Carl's tech expertise shaping user interactions. How do they do it? By crafting their unique blend of support, understanding, and adaptability, they reveal the secret sauce to pursuing individual passions while maintaining a fulfilling relationship.
As we wrap up, they share exciting news about the future as they prepare to add another member to their family and entertain the idea of installing solar panels. Their journey of growth and empowerment is a testament to the importance of finding a partner who champions your aspirations. Caley and Karl's love story is one for the modern age, proving that with the right person by your side, the adventure never truly ends—it just evolves.
Have you ever wondered what makes the difference between those couples who absolutely love to be together and the ones who merely tolerate each other in their old age? Hi, I'm Monica Tanner, wife to a super hunky man, mom to four kids, relationship coach and intimacy expert. My goal with this podcast is to help you and your partner swap resentment for romance, escape the roommate rut and nurture a bond built on trust, communication and unconditional love. Each week, I'm sharing the secret strategies that keep couples madly in love, dedicated and downright giddy about each other, from the honeymoon phase to the golden years. I'm on a mission to crack the code of happily ever after, and I'm sharing those juicy secrets right here, because an awesome marriage makes life so much sweeter. Let's get to it.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to the secrets of happily ever after podcast. I'm so excited for our guests today. They are my friends, kaylee Rose and her husband, carl Walker. I'm so excited to have them on the podcast today. This interview is going to be a little bit different, I think you will find, because they have a really, really exciting mission and they're going to tell us all about it and all of the things that they have learned, both fulfilling this mission and doing it in a really fun way. So I'm just going to let you take it away, kaylee, and just introduce yourself and who you guys are and what you guys do.
Speaker 2:Hello, thank you for having us. My name is Kaylee Rose. I'm a Billboard charting singer and songwriter, and I'm also the proud creator of music with a message empowering music events that bring confidence to your audience. Bring empowering music into schools, women's shelters, all over the country in order to teach people how to build their self confidence. And Carl.
Speaker 3:I am a user experience or product designer, if you'd like to think of it that way, and I've been doing it for about 10 years, and I make websites and digital products easier to use, so people stop screaming at their phones or computers.
Speaker 1:Oh, I need you in my life. A lot of websites do. I just need tech support at all times. Like, can I just have my own tech support? It's a good business idea, seriously. All right, I'll just take a small commission if you make yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm like I should stop talking about it. Live on a broken, Not live.
Speaker 1:Well, that's awesome and you have a cute little daughter that I always see we do?
Speaker 2:She just turned four, sienna, and breaking news she's going to be a big sister. Stop, oh my God.
Speaker 1:I'm about to mark two days from 10 weeks pregnant.
Speaker 2:Yeah, congrats.
Speaker 1:Congrats. I'm so excited for you guys, okay, and you have this really fun and specific way that you live, yes, so is the new edition going to change anything about it?
Speaker 2:Yes, we live currently in an air stream that two years ago we were on the Oregon coast and we were so enamored by the beauty of nature there and we had to leave. We had an Airbnb booked for the next night in the Russian River Valley and that just kind of sparked an idea of like wouldn't it be nice if we could just be here for as long as we like? And then the Russian River Valley really captured us and we were like, wouldn't it be nice if we could be here as long as we like? And I'm a musician, as I mentioned, so mobile living plus my music being able to be on tour.
Speaker 2:The idea kept snowballing and snowballing and unfortunately, a dear friend of mine passed away from COVID and the witch taught us that you never know how long you have, and that really spurred the idea into faster action. So we packed up our comfortable, happy little lives in Los Angeles, we moved to Kansas City, where his family is from, and they're all makers and renovators and designers and we renovated. We thought it was going to be three to six months, it was two years, but now we're finally living in the air stream, living the life. Of course, it's not perfect, nothing is. It presented a lot of new challenges, but they're challenges that we knew we were signing up for.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm excited to dig into that because, like I, want to know how living in such close quarters and your lifestyle require you to communicate with each other. Actually like here. We're talking about you. You signed up for this three to six month renovation and it took two years. I imagine that might have sparked some frustrations or some emotions that you probably had to talk through.
Speaker 2:Like tell me about that. What did you learn? It was our hardest, hardest, hardest time and we were living. His parents were gracious enough to give us their driveway to renovate in the bottom level of their house, but we were still living with his parents, not in our own space, and it kept the deadline went as well as it could possibly go.
Speaker 3:I mean just to clarify.
Speaker 2:I mean, yeah, we got along, we had got along, we had dinners each night, like it would very well, it's very laid back, very communicative, like you couldn't have gone better, but still it was challenging to not be in your own space and so, and then the deadline kept getting. You know, we kept thinking, okay, once we get this done, then we'll be home free, then once we get this done, it'll be home free. And it was unexpected challenge after unexpected challenge. It took away a lot of our family together time, because I was pretty much raising our not raising our daughter, but watching our daughter work while Carl was doing the nuts and bolts you know all the renovating stuff, cause I don't have the background of skills in that area that he does and so every single free moment it was oh, carl's got to work in the Airstream. He can't come to this Halloween party, birthday party. Every single time it was hard.
Speaker 3:That was. It was tough to remain disciplined to it, it was tough to remain invigorated by it when it took so long to get through and so many unexpected things continue to crop up. But I think what you know, we would have checked this and we would say okay, do you? Is there any party that wants to quit?
Speaker 2:We would be like yes, definitely, definitely.
Speaker 3:But we still continue to say, okay, well, we don't want to quit where we're. You know one, we're this far in, but it's not just sunk costs. We really are excited about what it means we can do afterwards, and so we would. We would put our best effort into making sure we were being honest and open about where we were and what we were feeling. As far as should we keep soul joining through this. I mean it was really tough. We learned a lot about. You know, when you're working with people and trying to have people help you do something, it's important how much you need to communicate and understand about what you yourself need to do and what needs to happen. So it was. It was a challenging time, and I mean the challenges also. We thought we kind of like subside once we got on the road, yeah, and some of the challenges I think that we thought we're going to crop up weren't actually so much of the challenges as far as other ones, yeah.
Speaker 2:Space has not felt like an issue, which is so surprising. It's 31 feet long and you know, and we have a dog. We're sharing the space with all these people. But when we first started dating, he lived in a 200 square foot apartment and I pseudo moved in because I have my family living nearby and him, and so I was just going back and forth and I kept a lot of shoes in my car and we had a big backyard and we made it work, and then we moved into a bigger place and a bigger place and now we're small.
Speaker 3:And then we downsize to go into my parents house and then we got to it and this is 210 square feet. So we are actually 10 feet more yeah.
Speaker 2:But it's never like I'm cramming my clothes into things a little bit, but it's not bad. I mean we're happy we scaled back and then we're not really on top of each other. You know, sienna's in her room right now, happily playing, and we're here. So it's like you realize how much you need, which is not that much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I think that's actually an interesting perspective shift for people like how much do I really need to be happy?
Speaker 2:Yeah, because we get in this more, more, more, more, more mentality, and it's dangerous. And now, of course, I'm still dreaming about my California beach house, which I'll get, and, you know, someday we'll have this in the backyard the park is on the beach, yeah. But I've already said I don't want a huge house because I'm going to be anxious about swiffering the floors, so I just Uh-oh, you guys.
Speaker 1:Bros, uh-oh. I would say oh we're saying oh, the last thing I heard was I don't want to be anxious about swiffering the floor.
Speaker 2:That's pretty much it. Yeah, sorry, it's also like console. We are in a parking lot right now, on the way from Joshua tree up to San Francisco, and we have a Starlink internet connection that we so it's just every day is working it out and figuring it out and communicating, communicating.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so interesting. So take me back when you're building the air stream and it was really frustrating and it was taking much longer than you thought and it sounds like your shared vision of what it was going to look like to travel around and live in the air stream kind of kept you guys going through those challenges.
Speaker 3:I definitely think that's true, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Hope for the future.
Speaker 3:That moment on the war, that time on the Oregon coast and the Russian River Valley, really showed us like that's our North Star of life. We not necessarily want to be on the Oregon coast, but this idea that we can be out in nature, that we can have discover both that and our home and the same thing and be able to go around and discover these places and do that. I think because we saw that together and honestly. After we left the Russian River Valley, we were driving from the Bay Area back down to Los Angeles on the five and we were looking up blogs on like what is this, like what does it like to live in a trailer? Or at the time we were even considering like a van life kind of thing.
Speaker 2:School bus was an idea at one point, but then if you renovated a school bus and your vehicle has to go to the shop, you have to take your whole home into the shop. If our truck needs to go into the shop, it's detaches from our trailer airstream, and so that's the benefit of that. In case anybody out there is considered yeah, we could.
Speaker 3:But that's a whole different podcast.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but it was constantly checking in with each other and sometimes it was just the frustration mounted so high and we hit a breaking point. One of us and we have this thing that we kind of agree on that one of us can be freaking out, but both of us cannot be freaking out. Everybody needs to steer the ship, or rather the airstream in this case, and one of us can freak out at a time.
Speaker 1:Which is really interesting, I have the same saying. I say everybody's allowed to go crazy, but not at the same time. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:Somebody needs to remain calm and even keeled. And you know, really, we had to be completely honest with are we continuing this project because of sunk costs, sunk energy, because of other people's expectations? No, we still want this. Okay, let's go forward so lovingly, give me out and say like, hey, you tried, it's been a year, come back to LA, we miss you and that helped to have that position. But we seriously consider it and they're like no, we still want to try this out.
Speaker 1:That's really good. I love that Re-considering like revisiting and reconsidering your reasons and your motivation and things like that, and checking in with each other. I like that a lot.
Speaker 2:Because it's like I feel like a lot of times as humans, we don't give other people permission for their goals to change.
Speaker 1:You know we're like, but you always said you want to be a doctor.
Speaker 2:Oh, that must not have worked out for them. They must have given up. Well, no dreams can change. It's okay that once they saw the reality of the situation, their dreams changed, you know. So we get a little kind of inflexible about it sometimes I think.
Speaker 1:Interesting. Yeah, I feel like Kaliak because I know you so much better. I know you have these big dreams right. You like want to make this huge impact on kids and women and teach them confidence, which I respect so much. I want you to talk more about that in a second, but I imagine Carl's not like Gung Ho like stage manager all the time, so I want to talk about, like Carl, your feelings about it, like how you support each other in kind of your individual dreams, even though you don't share the same passions. It seems like this is really working out, that you're making it work for both of you.
Speaker 3:I think it is. It's working out, it's challenging and we're having to kind of work through the challenges of.
Speaker 3:you know, we're both working and we have a four-year-old who is no longer in preschool and loves to learn, and you know, so it's, I think, trying to support each other in giving each other time to do the things that we have to do to, you know, keep chasing our dreams. I think that is definitely been challenging, but we've kind of, just as we've been going through this, we've been saying, well, this is a learning curve, like there's a lot of things that you know have happened along the way, that things have gone wrong with the Airstream.
Speaker 2:As we've driven down the road, we're certainly in this parking lot, because two solar panels came off. Luckily not on the highway, luckily at the right point the right time.
Speaker 3:Slowly come off one of them.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a flip over into the other one and they both broke. So we have to get new solar panels, learning curve, check your bolts before you want to drive At some point you just have to laugh. You know, like I chew. I don't want to be in a bad mood all day. I do not want to be in a bad mood for a minute so I can choose to laugh it off. And you know, yes, feel your feelings, let him out, right, yeah.
Speaker 3:I mean, did that answer your question? I feel like. I just like it's getting her in a tough. You know it's like yeah.
Speaker 1:Oh for sure, Absolutely. I just, I just um for couples who are listening, who are like one of you has a big public dream, like I think maybe that's the difference, like, like, like. For me, I put my dream out there every single day. My husband's like totally chill in the background, it's fine if nobody even knows his name, like you know. He's like I kind of owe him for using his likeness online because he could care less. He'd rather not have his face plastered all over social media.
Speaker 1:And so I just, Kaylee, what are some things that your husband really does to support this public dream that you have?
Speaker 2:Everything. Uh, I mean, truly, he's the muse of every song I write that's happy or in love, all the good songs that are happy and in love. Um, but really, I mean we constantly just try to juggle together, you know, and my career is, you know, the yesterday I found out, the day before that I was recording voiceover for Carabas. Am I going to say no to a voiceover job for Carabas? No, I'm not. Does he want me to say no? No, so we got to make it work, you know, and it's communicating the schedule and it's okay, you're going to take Sienna away from the air stream to be very quiet somewhere else.
Speaker 3:I think we also have complimentary um, uh, professions, careers, Um, cause mine is, uh, you know, artistic, so understand the creative capacity, Um, but my artistic job also falls into a, you know, regular routine and uh, and all that kind of thing. So, um, I'm able to be like more in my regular routine, while she is more kind of having a flowing throughout the day, and luckily, I've been able to also, you know, move things around or we communicate when, like, an audition comes up or anything else. That's kind of like, hey, like you know, we're traveling to San Francisco right now and so we're all going. Um, you know, so it's. We've just kind of worked on figuring out how do our, our professions compliment each other and making sure they overlap in the way that uh makes us both go in the direction we want to go in, Um, and I think that, um, there are some really nice ways that it overlaps too. Like, um, she's done uh, voice over things for me when I was a student in school and she's and I've done graphic work.
Speaker 3:Constantly doing my graphics so you know you find those areas where things overlap. Um, it's, it's all choosing to make make things work in the right way. Um, I hope I can keep this to a nice little anecdote. Um, but when I say choosing, it brings up a story that I think might be fun to share. Um, we were on vacation, uh, in Barcelona, and we Kaylee was asking me our marriage was coming, we were going to get married, we were engaged and we were talking about our vows and she said she wanted me to um, talk about like two puzzle pieces coming together, and then it's fate, and then like, to.
Speaker 2:I didn't want you to talk about that. I was going to talk about that.
Speaker 3:I wasn't saying what your mom should be about that.
Speaker 2:Okay, I was going to mention this Socrates quote about soulmates separating once they came to Earth and then needing to find their way back to each other like puzzle pieces back on Earth. And then Carl was like, well, I don't believe in soulmates and I got very worried.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I was like, well, you just think if you met someone else it could be as good kind of thing. And he was like, yeah, like I think someone else. Yeah, it was like I think you know, maybe there are like four or five people on this earth that you could have met and it would be a nice union. And I was just sad I was just thinking.
Speaker 3:I was like very logical at that moment and I was like, well, like okay, let's say, you know, 50% of marriages work out Well, 50% of the time. You can't have a person landing, like a soul landing in California and another soul landing in Russia, and then the two find each other. That just doesn't make sense. And so, yeah, but like anyway, my whole thing was like I was just thinking about it and from that statistical, like logical perspective and I was like this doesn't make sense to me. That like, but that's not the romantic way to view it, but anyway, this is getting a little bit away from the egg. So we had we're starting in this like back and forth and at one point I just wanted to be like fine, I believe in soulmates.
Speaker 2:She's near tears and we're in Barcelona, and we're in Barcelona, and we're like three in the morning, like we just talked and talked and talked and tried to figure it out.
Speaker 3:She's crying and she's in like a separate part of the Airbnb and I'm in the bedroom and then I like I found the way to express it, which was I said I. I believe that you know, I, we found each other and I'm choosing you, and I don't like the idea of fate because it feels like it's not my choice. It's just how the world ended up being, so I'm choosing to come back to this and I'm choosing to make it work. And then from the sobs in the bathroom, I heard I like here's better.
Speaker 2:He's all this in. It just occurred to me. He is a person of his word, he is honest, he follows through, and for him to say no, no, no, I'm making a choice and I'm going to choose you every single day, it was actually the most beautiful thing to say, and so I was like who cares better? And then I ended up using that in my vows we're choosing each other every single day because it is right. It's a choice that you just constantly keep making. And when someone is annoyed about you know I use this analogy earlier like when you're annoyed not even annoyed, but just like hey, the way you put the toilet seat down might end up being problematic. It might break the toilet seat. I wasn't like the way I put the toilet seat down is who I am. It was like oh, you have an issue with this. That actually benefits both of us to change this. Okay, I'm going to work on changing this, and that's choosing each other, you know, and you have to just keep on choosing.
Speaker 1:How you taking the intimacy level quiz yet If not, you absolutely should. All you have to do is go to Monica Tannercom backslash quiz and take a three minute quiz. At the end, I'll tell you what level of intimacy you and your spouse are at and I'll give you next steps to be able to increase your intimacy. Regardless of what level you're at, you can always make improvements. So do yourself a favor and go to Monica Tannercom backslash quiz and learn about your level of intimacy and how to improve it.
Speaker 1:I love that, well, I love that principle, but I also love in the story how you illustrated something very important in that we all have different perspectives and different life experiences, right, and we come together. And what's so cool about marriage is now you get to pull from two. You have two really rich, resourceful ways of learning and thinking about things, and so when you learn to communicate really well which is awesome then you can draw from two perspectives, two experiences, two views of the world, like all of those things, right. So that's such a benefit of marriage that a lot of people they're like my partner is nothing like me, like we're just not compatible anymore, and I'm like no, no, no, you're not seeing the rich blessing of having two of it right Like there's so much more wisdom you can draw from when there's two of you. So so, yeah, I love that. That example of that so beautiful.
Speaker 2:That was a hard night.
Speaker 1:It was a fun night afterwards.
Speaker 3:But like that was, that was a tough moment and I remember being, I remember being there and like it's not in our relationship nature to say like okay, we're having a fight, I'm going to leave. But it did suddenly occur to me, like I'm in a foreign country where I barely speak the language I can't just be like I'll be back, Like that's the way that we do it Like we really don't, and we've talked about a lot that we love the way we fight because it's like.
Speaker 3:It's like okay, I don't agree, I don't agree. Let's figure out why we don't agree, and we don't really put it down until we figure it out.
Speaker 2:Yeah, of course, with kiddos is difficult, you know, but we'll stay up as late or we'll get up early to talk about this, and it's a challenge, but it's a choice you make. I'm also like, oh man, I left in the frame of this video our unfinished cabinets near.
Speaker 3:That was a choice. We didn't finish.
Speaker 2:We just left.
Speaker 3:We decided we had to leave, and so there were. There's a couple of spots that are like it's not as refined as I would like it.
Speaker 2:And you guys are seeing the reel behind the scenes. But also you said it's very helpful just to go back to that, to also have someone who is creative because his like ability to support however long things need to take from you know, I'm co-writing with someone on a song and I'm in a guy's you know studio apartment until midnight and he's like texting me like I know you guys will find that verse Keep going. I totally understand, I'm going to go to sleep and then you know he'll leave a light on for me and it's just that support from someone else who's creative, who understands sometimes there is no deadline and you just need to keep going until you finish, is extremely helpful.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love that so much. And one thing I did notice when Carl was talking is when he was talking about how different he said both of our careers are different and so you can just see in that and the way he described it, the respect he has for you, even though it's way more creative and has less, you know, defined. This is the way you do this right, like.
Speaker 1:I feel like for those of us who are, you know, kind of chasing these more public dreams, that's a beautiful way to see it is. It is our career. It doesn't have rules like corporate life or you know, other jobs and dreams and things like that, but it's just as important.
Speaker 3:I kind of feel like my background. It's funny when you mentioned that. I think about the fact that, like, I went to an art school and she went to Columbia and so like I feel like our colleges feel like they're in bursts of where we ended up.
Speaker 2:True, because now he's in corporate he works for Sony and I'm an entrepreneur whose hours are all over the place yeah.
Speaker 3:And my family is very artistic background.
Speaker 1:So you grew up around that a little bit.
Speaker 3:Yeah, my dad, our teacher, my mom's a graphic artist, so it's very I understand, like that capacity and that processing, how it is very undefined a lot of the time.
Speaker 2:But I was thinking that earlier, like is there a world where you can only go after one dream at a time? And I don't think that's true. I mean, I guess some people might argue like monetarily, you can know, because you know like we make it work. You just constantly make it.
Speaker 3:I think, if you're choosing a way to make it work, you can make it work. Yeah, I think I mean you're just chasing your dreams in a different way.
Speaker 3:It could be, and not that I wanted to be this way, but you could like, if I was a different person and we were a different relationship, I could be making a choice to be like hey, I need you to do whatever while I focus on this, but that's not what our choices are. Choices Like how do we satisfy the goals of our desires to have our careers? Because if one of us wanted to not have a career, that would be fine. That would be another choice in our relationship. That's not the one we're making right now.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I will tell you a secret. Yeah, I, I love to interview these couples who have been married for years and years like 50 years is usually. When I see a couple that's been married more than 50 years, I like go after. I want to learn all the secrets of being married for over five decades.
Speaker 1:It's really cool, and one of the most prominent lessons that I've learned from these couples is even because, typically, if you've been married for 50 years, you grew up in a different generation than us, right, one where not necessarily all the dreams were supported, but in some way, somehow the most successful couples I have learned always supported each other so that there was room in the marriage for both of them.
Speaker 1:Like they both got to do the things that were most fulfilling, not even necessarily following traditional gender or societal rules. Like they make their own rules in the marriage and it's so beautiful. Like those are the couples that are most articulate and helpful and like have to me, just the best advice is because they made their own rules in the relationship right and they made space for each of them to flourish. And so I will tell you as you add more responsibilities to your marriage, like another baby you're going to have to make lots and lots and lots of choices, but if you continue to just create what works for both of you and make room for both of you, you're going to make it Like that's the beauty of it. It's just, it's so cool.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it's. I mean, there have definitely like, let's be completely honest here, I'm going to plug our computer in. There have been moments where I'm like I need time to work today. You know just like how do I do this with our child, and then we have a conversation about it and then changes are made. You know it's not like well, you're making less money than me, because that's not always the case, and so you can't base it off of that. Things have been flow and change and we're just he's just so supportive, like the other day I said I posted this on Instagram because it was just astonishing to me where I said you know, I'm so sorry Sometimes I'm.
Speaker 2:I made a commitment to go live on TikTok every single day for at least 10 minutes, and sometimes that eats away from our time. Like it's eight o'clock and we just put sand in the bed and I haven't done it yet today. Okay, instead of cuddling with you, I'm going to do this, and I'm so happy. Once I got on there and his just not even hesitating response was never apologized to me for going after your dreams and I was just like, oh, you're an exceptional human being. Nobody else is saying, well, I'm selfish and I want time for my wife. You know other people could be saying that, but the support has been there from the get go. I'll never forget that. I don't know if we had a date Like it was maybe our third date and I was like I got invited to this Hollywood party, do you mind if I go with a friend of mine? And he was like go make contacts network, do it.
Speaker 3:It wasn't a third date, but yeah.
Speaker 2:No, oh, yeah, no, we know our thing.
Speaker 1:The beauty here is we don't have to agree on all the details.
Speaker 2:It's fine, we know our third date.
Speaker 3:I get pretty like I'm working on improving my storytelling capacity.
Speaker 1:So good, okay. So, kaylee, you teach kids about confidence and the confidence that you have found from living your dream. Tell me, talk to me about how you teach kids about confidence and kind of the confidence that you've gained from the support, really, that you have found at your marriage as well.
Speaker 2:Yes, so many. I mean Carl has made me more confident in so many ways. Why is my computer dying? We're worried.
Speaker 3:Sorry, I'm also so we have our internet is powered through our batteries right now, which are low on batteries. So if you see me like looking off, it's because I'm looking at our like battery monitor. I'm like, ah, because it's supporting our internet connection right now and I don't want to drop off.
Speaker 2:But I don't know what's happening. It's the insanity situation and we don't want to lose you because that would be terrible Building confidence. So I was bullied when I was a kid. I was 10 years old and that, plus a lot of other factors, led to me not being a confident person and I kind of woke up in my twenties and was like I would like to have a happier, more confident life. And I'm this young I'm apparently, as you know, young and good looking and all those things as I can be. So I want to study confidence and make a decision to love myself, because I hated myself. I wanted to be anyone other than myself and I thought everyone was better than me and making better decisions and it was a terrible existence. So I went on a personal journey oh good, it's charging. I went on a personal journey to find self confidence and build and learn self confidence which is the good news because it's learnable and buildable and all those things Because I thought it was an intrinsic quality that you couldn't choose and that I just didn't have it and other people were lucky. But I went on that journey, did lots of therapy, read lots of books about confidence and all those things, and then. Then it became a musician. I mean, it's such a long story, but then I finally took a risk and put all my eggs into the music basket and that paid off and it felt like the path became illuminated and clear in front of me. And serendipity. So scholarships happened. It was beautiful.
Speaker 2:And then, two years ago, I was thinking about how I was bullied and I already had all this empowering music that I had already written and put out there in the world and I was like you know, I'd like to help people through that period of getting bullied. Maybe I should be speaking in schools. And so I just started doing it imperfectly and just started acting before I could let the fear voices come in and say you've never spoken in front of a crowd. And I started uniting the empowering music with the message.
Speaker 2:And I didn't exactly have methods to build in confidence. I just had a lot of mistakes that I wanted to share and no, I didn't want the children to hurt ever. So I was just like, basically, I went into the school saying some songs and was like here's every mistake I've ever made, here's every lesson I can give you, and it was probably way too much, but now I have like these are my three methods to building confidence. These are my wow methods. This is my acronym, so it's easy to remember, and I have a much more curated approach to building confidence in that way. But it's funny.
Speaker 1:Yeah, start before you're ready, which is, you know, very helpful trick and tool, and saying I love so much that you do that because I mean I have, I have four children.
Speaker 1:Three of them are teenagers right now and my baby is in middle school right, and it's like I've watched all these kids go through middle school and you can see it's like obviously their brains are not fully developed and they're learning so much at such a rapid pace. But it's like really difficult for kids that age to see into the future. So when they make a mistake they think it's permanent or like they can't ever recover from it. And so messages like yours, I just you have my full support because it's devastating to me when I see these kids in so much pain because they've made a mistake or they're not doing something well, or they're getting bullied or and they just can't see that that's a small moment, that that will pass. It's like it takes someone to kind of show them that so that they don't do something, though you know just horrendous, and I've seen that as well it's really difficult.
Speaker 2:Yes, and I did not even think when I was going starting this path, that I would be talking about you suicide. But that is, of course, what I'm talking about and trying to prevent in so many ways, and I think it helps kids. They don't believe you when you get up there because you're obviously a confident human being and now you're like, hey, my music has been on the radio but I used to be in that dark hole and I used to be in that dark tunnel and I thought about maybe not continuing through the tunnel, which would have been terrible. I wouldn't have met this stud, so and so many other things. So to see someone that's been through that dark tunnel and got out to the other side, I think is really helpful, and so that's why I really try to be open and honest about how dark it was, because it was bleak and even when I met him, I wasn't confident at all. I didn't believe I deserved him. I well, I thought I constantly was like All right, when's the other shoe going to drop? When is he going to realize that I'm not worth it? You know so many things that put a stress on our relationship and then I like remember, maybe I started writing song writing six years ago.
Speaker 2:I wrote that check with Jeff. Jeff, maybe four years ago, so maybe four years ago I sat down with a songwriter, a co writer of mine, and he had thought that I was super confident. So I was always asking questions and raising my hand and volunteering in class. And then when he sat down to talk to me he was like, oh, you are not a confident person in the most loving way, just like, why not, you know? And so then we wrote this song that I have that check. That's all about being a work in progress, because I was like Jeff, I can't write a confident song, I'm not a confident person. And somewhere from then to now I finally I truly become a confident person because I made a decision to start liking the choices that I was making, to start liking myself, the message that you literally just shared in that story.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think it's an invaluable message for adults and children alike. So I love that you travel around and do this for children. So if there's anyone listening who has a connection or anything like that where you think that like especially middle school kids that could use music with a message, reach out. I will give you Kaylee's contact information. And actually, why don't we do that right now? Where can listeners find you if they're interested in setting something up or learning from you or your music with a message, tell us quickly and then I'll ask my closing question.
Speaker 2:Okay, music with a message is going all over the country, clearly because we are in this air stream, but I know it's been on a fly. I'd love to bring it internationally. But we empower kids, teens, women. I'm going to do that in San Francisco to a group of female entrepreneurs this weekend and you can find me C-A-L-E-Y roses in the flower, c-a-l-e-y rosesintheflowercom and all the social medias, except for TikTok, where it's at Kaylee Rose Music.
Speaker 1:I love it. Okay, here's my final question for the two of you, because I ask everyone this question. But if you had the undivided attention of all the married couples in all the world for just a few minutes, what's the most important thing you could teach them about supporting each other's dreams? You want to go first. You want to?
Speaker 3:go first. I mean, my first thought is just like learning how to constantly improve your communication. I think that it almost always comes back down to are you effectively communicating with each other about what you need, what you want, what you you know? Yeah, what you need and what you want where like-.
Speaker 2:And communicating with yourself.
Speaker 3:Yeah and yourself, and so I think, navigating those and putting the effort in there to be, and I think, along with like maybe it's like too much to try to get into one, but like communication and honesty. So you know you could communicate what you think you need, but if you're not being honest with yourself or you're not being, you're not hearing the honest version from your partner, then you can't actually get to where you both want to go. So honesty and communication is what I would say. I mean, as you mentioned, you typically talk to people who are so much further down the path of marriage than we are, so I can't, you know, speaks to that kind of longevity, but for us, we have been through quite a bit- We've been together for 11 years.
Speaker 3:And we lived in a 200-street-of-foot apartment and we moved around a few different times. We lived with her family during COVID, with my family. She was very stressful renovation and you know and now we're in it too you can travel Now to move, travel around the country, but it always comes back to like if we're having a problem being able to communicate. I actually remember when we first started thinking about this, I talked to a pro worker of mine who had done a similar thing and this also came up in blogs and it said you know, if you are trying to take your spouse and you into an RV, you need to understand how do you resolve fights.
Speaker 3:Because if you weigh, resolve fights is I'm going to go to the other room and I need my alone time for like the next hour, or I'm going to go down into my, you know, watch TV for the rest of the night, but yeah, then you know that's not going to work in this situation. So you don't have that luxury of I'm just going to and you could. You could maybe lie to yourself and be like, oh, I'm just going to go outside for a hike, yeah, okay, but not when it's like super cold and raining out. That whole thought of, like I have outside, I have the whole world in my backyard, yeah, like, if it's cold and raining, you can't really like count on that as much. So anyway, I'll take a little bit longer than I was. Again, I'm working on this story.
Speaker 1:No you're doing great and don't discount your experience, because you have a lot of wisdom to share, and so I'm really grateful that you were here and that you're willing to share it and you guys have what it takes.
Speaker 2:Like, seriously, I'm so excited to follow your dream Me. I mean, my first answer would be pick a car. I picked the right person and I for a long time I didn't think a love like this existed. So yeah, that is what I want to say. If there are any women out there who are thinking of settling, who are thinking it doesn't exist, I almost made a lot. Oh, there's a huge bug crawling on our fake flowers, you see that? Oh, it's okay. No, you don't have to get it, it's fine. It's fine. It was like those are fake, those are fake Bug. You're the wrong place.
Speaker 2:I really thought a love like this didn't exist and I almost made a very different life decision with someone that I cared about but I wasn't in love with. So keep going, believe that it exists, because I'm living proof. I really I wasn't engaged, but I was with someone who thought that that was the next step and he was lovely, but he wasn't the right person. So I found the right person, who I care about, supporting his dreams and he cares just as much about supporting mine. So, yeah, it's that choice that you make to find a wonderful person, and those people do exist and those men do exist. But you get to start and right, and I dated every man in New York before I found Carl and I had to move to Los.
Speaker 2:Angeles. Oh yeah, I was surprised that it didn't do women.
Speaker 3:Hang on, I've heard of you.
Speaker 1:It's like wait.
Speaker 2:No, no, but yeah, just keep going because that person exists, and getting really specific about who you're looking for. I did this exercise called the perfect day and I wrote down that I had found someone that I was so connected to and in love with and attracted to, but I was so worried it didn't you know, because you're like what if it doesn't exist? I have a bird in my hand.
Speaker 3:I think it's also a good idea. I mean, she's the most fabulous person to me and it sounds like a very nice yeah, no, disparaging it just wasn't the right fit, not a bad guy. It's just kind of comical how kind of like misaligned they were on things that were kind of simple, like I mean, like her happy place to go eat is like Mexican food, outside with lights. That's pretty basic, like as far as like the happy meal, and it actually doesn't increase if you go to like a really, really fancy restaurant. That's like inside and like you know, dark, low lit, like you know what would be an error of like a luxury dinner, which I'm not, you know, knocking or putting any shame to. It's just not ideal. And so I think you know they both had misalignments and that seems like a pretty like I don't know like innocent is the word.
Speaker 3:I was like like an innocent, like misalignment of, like I'm happy, my happy dinner place is this, my happy dinner place is this. But there were quite a few of those and like, again, not a bad guy, she's not bad, it's just.
Speaker 2:They just you know the right person. But, I mean, I'm not even a read. How many people do you think opposites attract? Because I do not. I think opposites is like a constant compromise and someone's always a little bit unhappy. Well, I think the right opposite to try. What is your experience? Why do you say that?
Speaker 1:What do you think? I don't think we have time in this episode to talk about, I believe, about the mysticism of marriage, but I do feel like we find the people who are perfectly qualified to help us grow.
Speaker 2:That's every time I'm in a challenge, so that's what I believe and I'm thinking grown all the way so.
Speaker 1:You guys are perfectly, perfectly qualified to help each other become the very best versions of yourself.
Speaker 2:So you just choose you said choose that.
Speaker 1:My husband and I say I choose you all the time, I choose you I hate you right now, but I just choose you yeah. Yeah, thanks for that. Well, you guys are awesome. I am so excited for you guys. I hope that you get your solar panels fixed and on your way to San Francisco, and I hope that the people listening who feel like there might be a need in there, especially schools will reach out.
Speaker 2:So thank you, guys again so much for your time.
Speaker 1:If you had as much fun as we did just now, I hope that you'll head over to your favorite podcast player and leave a rating and review for the show or share it on social media. That's how other people can find this awesome content. We can spread the message that happily ever after is possible. Feel free to check out my website monnecatannercom to find out more ways you can work with me and, as always, thank you so much for spending this time with me. We'll see you next week.