Send Wilk a text with your feedback!
Fear, Wonder, and the Courage to Be Seen
What if fear isn’t a flaw—but a story that can be rewritten?
In this episode of Derate The Hate, Wilk Wilkinson sits down with Julie Lavender Le Doux—artist, speaker, mentor, and author of The Amazings series—for a deeply human conversation about fear, performance anxiety, shame, courage, and healing through story.
Julie opens up about growing up with a powerful dream to perform—only to have early childhood experiences wire fear and shame into her nervous system. What began as stage fright quietly spread into relationships, boundaries, creativity, and her willingness to be fully seen.
Together, Wilk and Julie explore:
✅ How fear rarely stays confined to one area of life
✅ Why avoidance feels good short-term but fuels long-term anxiety
✅ The difference between healthy boundaries and avoidant boundaries
✅ How courage is not a personality trait—but a learned skill
✅ Why forgiveness is about freeing your soul, not excusing harm
The conversation also dives into Julie’s imaginative Amazings book series—a richly illustrated, metaphor-driven world designed to help children (and adults) understand fear, conformity, propaganda, and control without preaching or partisanship.
Through story, color, humor, and adventure, Julie equips families to:
👉🏻Recognize narrative manipulation
👉🏻Think critically without fear
👉🏻Heal trauma through imagination
👉🏻Cultivate courage, wonder, and truth
This is a conversation about bridging divides without flattening differences, about raising kids who aren’t afraid to ask questions, and about reclaiming wonder in a culture saturated with fear.
📘 Get the books (exclusive source): https://thequestforwonder.com
🌐 Learn more about Julie: https://julielavender.com
The world is a better place if we are better people. That begins with each of us as individuals. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for all you’ve got. Make every day the day that you want it to be!
Please follow The Derate The Hate podcast on:
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter(X) , YouTube
Subscribe to us wherever you enjoy your audio or from our site. Please leave us a rating and feedback on Apple podcasts or other platforms. You can share your thoughts or request Wilk for a speaking engagement on our contact page: DerateTheHate.com/Contact
The Derate The Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels — America’s largest grassroots, cross-partisan organization working toward civic renewal and bridging partisan divides. Learn more: BraverAngels.org
Welcome to the Derate The Hate Podcast!
*The views expressed by Wilk, his guest hosts &/or guests on the Derate The Hate podcast are their own and should not be attributed to any organization they may otherwise be affiliated with.
Transcript is AI generated and may contain errors
[00:00:00:01] Wilk Wilkinson: What if the fear holding you back isn't weakness? But a story written into you long ago? Today's conversation is about performance anxiety, shame, courage, and the power of imagination to heal what we don't always know is broken. Artist and author Julie Lavender Ledoux joins me to explore how fear spreads, how courage is learned, and why stories, especially for kids, may be one of our strongest tools for healing and bridging divides. Welcome back, my friends, for the Derate the Hate podcast. I'm your host, Wilk Wilkinson, your blue collar sage calming outrage and helping to navigate a world divided by fog and those who would spread that fear, outrage and grievance. The D Rate the Hate podcast is proudly produced in collaboration with Braver Angels, America's largest grassroots cross. partisan organization working towards civic renewal. This podcast amplifies the mission that we share to foster a more respectful and united America where civic friendship thrives even when we disagree. Each week, through the power of story, conversation, and connection with incredible guests, we work to build bridges instead of barriers, not to change minds on the issues, but to change how we see one another when we differ. Because friends, it really is about bettering the world one attitude at a time. We did not create the hate, but together we can Derate the Hate. So be sure to subscribe wherever you get your podcast. Share it with a friend and visit BraverAngels.org to learn how you can get involved in the movement to bridge the partisan divide. Friends, I am so incredibly grateful that you have joined me for another powerful Derate the Hate episode. So let's get to it. My guest today is Julie Lavender Ledoux, an artist, speaker, mentor, and author of the amazing book series. Her journey doesn't begin with confidence, but with paralyzing performance anxiety rooted in childhood experiences that wired fear, shame, and avoidance deep into her life. In this conversation, Julie and I unpack how fear rarely stays contained, how it spreads into relationships, boundaries, creativity, and our willingness to even be seen. We talk about courage as a learned skill, why avoidance feels safe but ultimately feeds anxiety, and how real growth often lives just beyond our comfort zone. We also explore Julie's amazing series imaginative, metaphor driven stories that help kids and families process trauma, conformity, propaganda and fear through wonder rather than ideology. This is an honest, thoughtful, and deeply human conversation that you don't want to miss. Let's get into it with my friend Julie Lavender Ledoux. Here we go. Julie Lavender Le Doux. Welcome to the Derate the Hate podcast. It is good to see you again.
[00:03:38:10] Julie Lavender Le Doux: It's good to see you. I'm so glad we met. And we could do this.
[00:03:42:00] Wilk Wilkinson: You asked me to. I met you in Florida, a while back at a moms for Liberty, summit, and that was very exciting. And we can talk a little bit about that, I was there, of course, talking about braver angels and what we do at Braver Angels. You were at a table very close to mine, talking about your, series of book, The Amazing series, and which is, which I thought was was quite fascinating, just amazing books. pun intended. Right. But, but. So I thought we would get together and talk a little bit about that and talk a little bit about your backstory. Julie. And so, yeah. Welcome to the Derate the Hate podcast.
[00:04:21:07] Julie Lavender Le Doux: Awesome. I'm happy to be here.
[00:04:24:06] Wilk Wilkinson: let's start our conversation, Julie, with, just just introducing the listeners, to a little bit more about you and, and your backstory, because one of the things that I often do on this podcast is have conversations with people who who have kind of kind of gone from, you know, adversity to awesomeness. And, and one of the things that I, I saw when, when kind of looking into your story was that, you had gone from somebody who who dealt with some very serious issues. And one of those is, is, you know, just the ability to get up in front of people and, and kind of talk to people. But now you've you've become a musician, a speaker, an author, of these great books. So, so let's start a little bit with your backstory, Julie. And then, we'll work our way into what you're doing now with the amazing series of books and and things like that. So give me your backstory.
[00:05:21:23] Julie Lavender Le Doux: I just tell people I'm little Julie Lavender from Bakersfield, California, and I married a man named Ledoux, so I'm Julie Lavender. Ledoux sounds very fancy, but really, I'm just a girl who had a big, big, big, huge dream as a child. And I dreamed of, being a performing and playing at the piano at from, like, 4 or 5 years old. I was singing and performing for thousands of audiences. I mean, literally, I could see it, thousands of people. But what is not unsurprising about having a destiny or a dream is that it very often gets crushed early on. So I had some experiences performing as a very young child that absolutely terrified me and and made the experience of performing feel like death, shame, death. And it doesn't necessarily take a life, a truly life threatening or abusive situation to wire that into your brain. It has to do with what you believe about what happened to you and why. And so I lived with the the Grim Reaper hanging over my head for most of my life. Any time I wanted to actually perform for anyone, because the impression I literally felt and I didn't understand this until many years later, but just I was just nervousness or whatever. But I had paralyzing stage fright in the area where I wanted to do more than anything else was right and perform. I had all the gifts, all the talents. I was given extraordinary composition and musical and, expressive gifts and, and and I actually went on to get a degree in classical guitar performance as a terrified person and have five jazz albums out, and I've written a ton of stuff, and, and it's really it's it's weighty material. It's, it's it's got there's something to it. It's not just, you know, a bunch of nice cover tunes, you know, I mean, there's something there. But the irony of that is like being a beekeeper who's deathly allergic to bees, you know, and you just want to be with your bees. But every time you go out there, they could kill you. You know, that's kind of how it felt. And so, but I was living with this as subtext. All I knew was what I was. I was paralyzed and terrified. But fear doesn't wall itself off to just one area of your life. It's like the encroachment of communism. It will. It will go from one area to the next until you become more and more dominated. Because you more you avoid what terrifies you. You. Why are your brain for more? Acquiescence to how fear works? So I've gotten to the point as an adult where I was avoiding everything that really was essential to me fully becoming a woman, a wife, a mom and and an artist. And I was doing a lot of make work and administrative work in my life in general, because I'm good at and I'm good at making things happen. And then one day the Lord said to me, it's your time. And I knew what he meant. He knew that I had to go deal with this paralyzing fear, primarily stage fright. But it was that was a metaphor essentially, for me, stepping fully on to the stage of my life, you know? And so he used me dealing with stage fright to, to really get me ready to be the hero in my own story that he was writing for me. Come on out, come from behind the wings and take the stage. And you know, by the time it happened, fear was the word written over my life. Fear, fear I could, I could everything and and it it has a, a mind of its own. It's a, it's a personal force. It wants to destroy each of us, you know. And so my story begins, really, as a woman in her 40s getting over stage fright.
[00:09:10:14] Wilk Wilkinson: It's a wild. It's a wild path. And there's a point there in in what you were saying there, Julie, that I really want to get into a little bit deeper and unpack, because I think that just as just as the, the stage fright was a metaphor for, for many things in your life, one of the things that that you said there was, was something that was pretty important that I want to key on, and I want to unpack a little bit more because because you said that, that that fear turned into, something bigger. it started as something that you thought was fairly confined, but then it began to to spread to different areas of your life and, and inhibit your ability to, to do things because it just it kept on growing in your imagination. And how and how that started to interfere with other parts of your life. So, so let's unpack that a little bit more, because I think it this is this is not just confined to the act of doing something. we see it playing out in, a lot in this in the space in which I work. And that's the, depolarization space, the bridge building space. Because when we when we fear other people and we, and that fear is often stemmed in ignorance and misconceptions, misperceptions of the other people, we start to allow our imaginations to, to turn those people into something that they are quite often the those people are not, they may have one bad attribute that we don't like, but but the rest of who they are becomes lost in what we imagine they are. So unpack for me what you're talking about in the sense that that this thing began to manifest itself in other parts of your life, not just the performance side, not just the stage fright part of it, but began to manifest itself in so many other parts of who you were in your personal being.
[00:11:18:06] Julie Lavender Le Doux: I think. Well, actually, it dug in from very little in that in those early experiences and other things in my family of origin that taught me to fear being seen and known as I was, and that created really bad boundaries in relationships. Because you're always looking for the end of yourself. Is it safe to come out? Is it not? And a lot of messiness in relationships, it made it very difficult for me to understand true love with a healthy husband who was incredibly healthy, terrified me, was so healthy and and and learning. So intimacy is affected. And I love what you are doing with braver angels, because I think today one of the most courageous things anyone can do, probably top of the list, is to actually have a conversation with someone, even to say, put the phone down and call you up and say, what did you mean when you texted that Am? I may not even really be a big deal, but I just want to make sure I understand. Can I hear your voice? Can I see your face? Can we have coffee? That is one of that is the stage fright of today's generation. And your work, I think, is one of the most important things. Because when you are afraid, you don't know where to set your boundaries up. So you'll create avoidant boundaries. This is where you'll make rules for yourself. I won't be okay if somebody screams at me, so therefore I hide. I won't be okay if they don't like me. I won't be okay. If they disagree with me. I could get hurt if I say what I really think I could get attacked. Which of course is actually a reality online. Oh yeah, or is that it? Or if I see the words online, it could hurt me. I mean, it could really. It's not just somebody out, you know. It's not a set of words. It gets in. And so one of the things that fear will just do is destroy your healthy boundaries and destroy your sense of, because if you avoid conflict and like the conflict of having to prepare for a show and play in front of people without blanking out and feeling completely ashamed or, you know, you you have if you avoid anxious behaviors, create avoidance. And avoidance will give when you avoid a conflict or a conversation, you will get an instant hit of of of a chemical that makes you feel good. Yes, I'm so glad I don't have to talk to that person after all, I'm so I just blocked that guy because I'll never hear from him again. I'm so glad I don't have to try that performance. So you get an endorphin. Makes you feel great for a minute. But what it does cycles back and creates greater anxiety so that the anxiety builds. And then the next time you have to face it, it's even scarier. So I love the idea. I one time we had a horrendous conflict in my family, which I mentioned. Now when I speak places about trauma invading even our homeschool family, when when we had to deal with it, I sought out, a group called Peacekeepers Peacemakers and was trying to set up a and, Christian mediation with this other group, with this other family whose child had actually harmed our child very traumatically. And I, I was terrified who wanted to. I mean, it was so hyped. I mean, when we had to confront the situation of what their child had done, which we had all the evidence for, they freaked out and accused us. And it was so ugly. Closest friends type thing. Right. And and so but left so many things unresolved. And I felt like this Christian duty to to work through the forgiveness process. Did we hurt you somewhere along the way that you would say these things about us? Did did would your would your son like to apologize and take response? You know what I mean? All these things. And so there was a ministry at the time called peacemakers and they they offered people the opportunity for them to be in the middle as the, you know, arbiter, you know, the mediators, so that you could find a safe thing. Unfortunately, the other family declined the opportunity, but I knew I had to press into that, and I'm glad I did, for the sake of my own soul to say I'd be just as scared to talk to you as you are to me, but I gotta I just gotta face the fear. I gotta take the risk. Yeah. And that for me has always paid off. With a healthier soul and the ability to fully become what I think God has created me to become.
[00:16:09:02] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. And that's a hugely important point, Julie, because a lot of times people don't, they think of forgiveness is as being this thing that, you know, well, if I forgive this person, it just kind of lets them off the hook or whatever. And that's that's really it misses the point of forgiveness. Forgiveness is, is for it's something we've talked about on this podcast with several incredible people. Doctor Fred Luskin being one of them, who, who runs a forgiveness project at Stanford University. But but forgiveness is is for us in our soul and how we work through, different things and different traumas and, I mean, even if that other person and that other person doesn't even have to be present, but we see a lot of ugly in this world. There's a lot of bad things that happen in this world. There's a lot of, you know, I mean, one of the age old questions in Christianity, right, is why do bad things happen to good people? And we have to work through that. And and when we think about forgiving those who have done us wrong, and it's not about letting them off the hook or saying what they did is okay. But it's about relieving our soul of that traumatic thing so we can move forward in a stronger, and a stronger and better way, with, with a cleaner soul on our side. I want to step back real quick into something that you had talked about. Avoidant boundaries. And, and this is where a lot of people, I think, get the whole idea of boundaries and conflict and, and, and things muddled up is because there are definitely healthy boundaries. And then there are these avoidant boundaries that you were talking about. And, and when we think about conflict, I mean, there's definitely there's definitely good conflict and there's bad conflict. There's there's polarization and then there's toxic polarization. And when we think about all these different things, like the work I do at Braver Angels, people often mistake that for, oh, you guys are just looking for some squishy middle where everybody just comes together in some kumbaya, thing, but I but I, I need to correct them and say it's not about always finding common ground or some compromise where we all lose something. This is often about coming together, keeping hold of our strongly held convictions, but talking through it with people who very much disagree with what we are saying. And I think this is hugely important, because that avoidant boundaries thing that you were talking about, Julie, the things that we miss in other people because we avoid the situation rather than holding on to our healthy boundaries and working through things together, there's something there that a lot of people miss. So talk a little bit about that. For me.
[00:19:05:11] Julie Lavender Le Doux: Well, we typically have the one thing we just refuse, like I'll do everything else, but that I'll do, I'll do all that or I'll, I'll show up for these kinds of things, but never that, never that. And and if you think about what you're that is that's where the meat is. That's where the need is. That's where the pain is, and that's where your destiny is bound up. And the one thing you say you'll never do, you'll never deal with. You're running from. And it very often comes up in, in the face to face. I'll never I will never confront the person who abused me. Or if I do, I will never confront in a helpful way. I will only attack so as to protect myself. You know, or I will never seek help from anyone who will hold me accountable, because you kind of know when you have mushy boundaries. The kinds of people that are going to follow up, and the kinds of people who are just going to let you get away with things. And, I'm certainly not perfect at it, just locally where I live, there's some people that would be very difficult for me to have conversations with, but I, I have positioned myself, prayed about it and set my mind that if the opportunity arises, I will not shrink from speaking in some cases, maybe a bit confront of Lee to say, do you have any idea what that did or or I forgive you? I think that was out of line. But you need to know that there was another person on the on the other side of that post, you know, so I'd like you to I'd like you to see me as a human, you know? So I don't go looking for them, but I position myself with a mindset that says when I have unfinished business, it will get finished. We're not leaving it on the table. And I think that's key. And what I love is, is when I first began to learn about anxious attachment, anxious boundaries and anxious, you know, avoiding boundaries. I was very young, married woman in the I was had a little counseling session and this woman wanted to always have lunch with me and stuff, and I didn't really like her. I thought she was just a little I don't want to be friends with her, you know, she kept, you know, and she could feel it. So she had this kind of unhealthy thing. You know, people get like that, you know, where they once they know you, they just want affirming, you know, affirmation from you when it's not healthy. And I wasn't healthy either. And so she would call and I would just pretend I wasn't home and make a message on the machine. I'm sorry, I'm blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was talking to this counselor about it and he said, you know, I wonder Julie, why it's not okay for you just to pick up the phone and tell her you're busy because she was with these people who get on and talked up, up, up, up, up. Sure, sure. Julie. Why? That was so my boundaries started as a 30 year old woman with learning to tell someone, I can't talk to you right now. I'm busy or. Yeah, and I know. And that to me was so scary. And but you know what that I love about it is that God is wired our brains so things will get easier. That's brain. When that if you do something, it becomes so easy your brain goes oh 5 pounds. That's no problem. Let's let's bump up to sevens, you know, to work well, no problem. Like what you're sweating over today, which is the small step to confront something you've been avoiding, maybe very anxiety producing, but you do it immediately. Your brain rewires for your next step forward. So when I was doing, live streams for several years, every single day, especially during Covid, I had this little show called Fear Free Living with Julie Lavender. And I said, you know, being afraid is learned. You learn to be afraid. I think these three it's not just I'm afraid that's how it is. No, you learned that. So you're learning to be to feel safe is actually a skill. Lie. Fear free living is a life skill that can be taught, mentored and learned. So I say with conflict. Conflict can be taught, mentored and learned, and it can be shepherded. If it's intense, it can be shepherded by a third party and all those things. You don't have to do it alone. You got God, you got others. And I ended every show with these words, now go do something that scares you.
[00:23:45:12] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, yeah.
[00:23:46:08] Julie Lavender Le Doux: And every day I made a point. I will take a risk. I will do something that makes me nervous. I'd rather avoid. I don't want to do. And I. And because my life I have, that's a life skill. It's not just that there's brave people and not brave people. You learn to be brave. And when you do what you do, you're teaching the skill of bravery to the people you're drawing together, right?
[00:24:08:18] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah. No, that's absolutely right. That's how so. Right. And it's it's why I speak. Why I say so often, Julie, that, you know, a lot of growth, a lot of our personal growth, our a lot of our life lessons come outside of our comfort zone. You know, we we cannot be afraid to, to be a little scared and, and work through the fears that we have in life because that's how we grow. We learn from our mistakes. We learn from the things that we do that make us uncomfortable. I say it so often. Growth comes outside of our comfort zone.
[00:24:38:23] Julie Lavender Le Doux: Totally.
[00:24:39:12] Wilk Wilkinson: And and that is that is one of the big things. And this is, this is one of the things that that you and I talked a little bit about when we, when we met in Florida, but the, the Covid pandemic and things that happened, you talked about this, this fear free living, show that you had during the pandemic. I started this podcast during the pandemic, speaking out about the government's response to the pandemic. It was it was a it was a bothersome thing for me, you know, before the pandemic even started, I had kind of, been on this personal journey to, to fix myself and fix a lot of things that I was seeing in society, and, and fear, outrage and grievance is something that I also talk about. It's a thing that that our media and our politicians use to, to keep us divided in many ways. I mean, it's it's it's it sells. Right. The fear, outrage and grievance sells soap. It's it's the way that they generate clicks and things like that. But the pandemic was was certainly a place where, that fear and outrage was, was taken to a new level and a level on like, I think a level unlike most most Americans had had never seen. Because now we're in the age of the internet. Everybody's on, you know, Facebook and Twitter and, and, you know, things like that 24 hour news cycles and fear, in my opinion, was weaponized. In many ways. And, so and this is, this is how I want to segue into talking about your book, the The Amazing Series. Because there's obviously a metaphor there in your amazing series, and how you've, you've used those books to, to try and help youngsters overcome a lot of the fears that they see in the world today. So, so let's, let's, let's take the last little bit of our time, Julian, and talk about the amazing series and this fantastical world, that, that you talk about in the amazing series and, and the metaphor that there is there for, for that fear and how we step outside of our comfort zone and how we confront those, those ugly forces that, that wish to keep us divided.
[00:27:03:10] Julie Lavender Le Doux: Yeah. Kind of hold them up.
[00:27:05:07] Wilk Wilkinson: Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Please do.
[00:27:07:03] Julie Lavender Le Doux: So the first three books in the amazing series, Constance in the Battle for wonder, Constance and her brother Chance and the Big Bang backlash. This one really hits home. Constance in Charleston in the bombastic baffle cap. That's a dictionary. This kid understands the power of words. This is a book about propaganda and control. This is a book about the abuse of science. And this is a book about systems that are set up to bring control and education, as opposed to true empowerment and and systems that are set to close in on a child, to create a certain, to create conformity. And so I've always been fascinated by the idea of conformity and nonconformity, because I had to bust out of so much conformity, even with my own fear structure, right, to not be conformed to the image of fear, but to be conformed to the image of him and everything he's created me to be. So I had started this book series in 2019, and somebody really said, you got this is something you've got to work with this. So I started with this girl. It's about one family in an entirely colorblind town. They can see color because they interact with the supernatural realm called wonder. And because of wonder they will not conform to something called the prescribed order. And these are the elders of the order.
[00:28:34:12] Wilk Wilkinson: Okay?
[00:28:35:12] Julie Lavender Le Doux: These things now, this family is sort of a normie family. They're sort of just they know they're different. They know they see color when everyone else doesn't. They like that. They don't really want to be like, this is their house as opposed to where everyone else lives. Yeah, yeah. They really want to be like everybody else. But Constance, their oldest daughter, just says, hey, mom, because she's used to her being with her family for school. And they take these field trips kind of into wonder to learn because it's a realm. It's a real realm. And, and, she but she sees all the kids going up to the grown up factory on the hill every day, and it's so mysterious, and it's the gray rights difference between the realm of color and inquiry and revelation in this gray realm where everybody's just happy with their gray ways and their colors because everybody conforms. But she just wants to make a friend. Well, what could possibly go wrong with the one remaining, color cited family and the conforming town when they send their daughter to the grown up factory, what could possibly go wrong? Well, the elders of the order, they're thinking, oh, now we got a chance to get to that girl. We'll get to our family. Well, we'll consolidate our power. We'll have complete control over Greystone Heights. And now we're off to the races with relationships. She has to deal with forgiveness. She makes a friend. There's a betrayal. There's puppet strings being pulled behind the scenes. She's having spiritual and emotional experiences that challenge her deeply. And she begins to deal with subjectivity. So much subjectivity in book one. It's so deeply packed with what does this girl do with her first friend who betrays her? What does she do with these dissents? And her parents are just trying to what is weird? What is happening? What forces are at work, what is changing around us, you see? And then she asks. It asks the question just because something's real, is it true? And this is at the heart of what kids are feeling. My body might be the wrong one. I feel it so deeply. I might be a victim. I feel it so deeply. You might be horrible. You might be evil because you disagree with me. You. We might need to race you off the planet. That's how I feel about you, you know? But is it true? So this book lays a foundation. And because color in my books is a metaphor for revelation, I simply could not give children black and white books. So this beautiful magazine quality paper, with full color illustrations for kids 10 to 14. You don't see this, but there's a reason why we have to give kids VIP book experiences. So they're holding in their hands and they're cherishing the relationship they have with the page and the story. So we set the foundation in book one, battle for wonder. And in book two, when the elders of the order can't quite get their mitts on Constance, they decide to use the school science fair. And they say, well, science is tricky. You don't control the everything unless you control it. You got to control the questions.
[00:31:35:16] Wilk Wilkinson: Yeah, yeah.
[00:31:37:02] Julie Lavender Le Doux: And they decide to throw a science fair to teach Constance that her myth and belief in wonder is so silly and ridiculous that really, we just all need the order, right? Well, our brother can't stand that he's been to wonder. He sees how it all works. And there's a big, big. It's a big crisis and catastrophe at the science fair. And I unpack origins, I unpack. This is where she's dealing with the forgiveness issue, the bitterness between her and her friend that the the forces that want to keep them apart, the people who benefit from her being at odds with her friend. Right. And at the end of this book, something unexpected happens that shakes the whole town just a little bit. Awake. Yeah. And other people start to see color. Well, the elders of the order cannot have that. And they say, well, we can't tell them they haven't seen color. Think, for example, of the yellow vest thing that happened right before Covid, where people worldwide are of all stripes, left, right, whatever. They're just in the streets asking for liberty and freedom and accountability for their governments. Not red. This not blue vests, yellow vests all over the world seeing things for the first time and calling out for accountability just a little bit out of control. Right. And then we have, of course, well, let's just loose a global something. They put you all back in your boxes. Right. Well, what happens when the elders of the order, they people are seeing color now, which means they're not far from wonder, which means they can't control them. And so they say, you know what color could kill you? A plague has been loosed, a plague has been loosed. And the symptom you get if you've exposed to the plague, you see color. So we are to we have a mandate that everyone needs to wear gray glasses at all times to protect them, to see from seeing even a speck of color, case. They might get the disease and die. And so this kid in her family, Charleston, is reading about words, and he says, I got to start a newspaper. That's dumb. First of all, there's nothing you could put on your face or protect you from a microscopic biohazard. And besides, which color can't kill you? And and he's just doing it using common sense. Meanwhile, this family's getting screamed at everywhere they go. They don't wear their gray glasses. So he starts a newspaper to tell the truth. Well, Wilk, what could possibly go wrong when you're the only family in a truly non-conforming family in a town that has a paper that is contradicting what every other media sources say, what could possibly go wrong? Well, now we're away to the races. These books are history books and buy books for what happens when they roll out their safety drops for everybody's eyes. Oh, and they your children. Your children can't leave the house unless they have safety drops. Because those glasses just aren't good enough to keep you really safe. So. But if you take your safety, safety drops. We'll let you out again. But what? Wilk, what would happen if some children are blinded by those drops? Is this is this not what we're living through? Yeah. And then we take on even weather, weaponry and the manipulation of of of the whole narratives about our earth not being safe on a climate basis. And it all through metaphor. So I'm not pointing my finger at this party or that party. I'm saying look at the story, look at the narrative, look at the concepts. And in that way, it is my hope that anyone with an open heart could read these books and begin to unpack what large scale ideologies used to manipulate look like, because, right, people can do it, and left people can do it up. People can do it down, people can do it right. And this way, it is my hope that that people will awaken to what what we've been through, but also if they read it in a non-threatening way, like I'm not calling out specific people. Sure, I'm telling you how narrative warfare works, that people can maybe step back from the brink of being mad at me because what I did or didn't do, or what I believe or don't believe, and think about and find a safe place within the story to process. And it's important for kids because we cannot let this be memory hold. Somebody telling our children what happened to us in 2020, and it better be somebody like me who helps them unpack authoritarianism, tyranny, mind control in a way that excites them. Because these books are hilarious and funny and empowering. We want our kids happy to be on the earth right now and not terrified.
[00:36:51:06] Wilk Wilkinson: Well, fear is, fear is definitely, been weaponized, for, for for far too long. And any way that we can open people's minds to the idea that, everything isn't always as it appears, I think, I think there's a lot to be said there. The power of storytelling is is huge. Here on the Derate the Hate podcast, Julie and yeah, anybody who wants to find the amazing series can obviously go to Julie lavender.com to.
[00:37:22:23] Julie Lavender Le Doux: There's an easier way.
[00:37:24:06] Wilk Wilkinson: There's an easier way. Tell me the easier way Julie.
[00:37:26:22] Julie Lavender Le Doux: If you go to the quest for wonder because this is all about the realm of wonder, right? The quest for wonder.com. It's all there. And I've got packages. So when you buy one book, it's one thing, but you buy that if you buy the three prints in books and I've got study guides, I've got audiobooks, and I have these cool packages that make these like super, like a cool gift bonus list, lots of cool things. And, if you go to the quest for wonder.com, you can get them and there's a video and there's testimonies, but you can only get them there. They're no, they're not they're not located anywhere else.
[00:38:07:15] Wilk Wilkinson: All right. Well the quest for wonder.com. And then to learn more about you Julie obviously they can go to Julie lavender.com.
[00:38:17:22] Julie Lavender Le Doux: Yeah. Pleasure that links to my books. But then you have to read about me first. Yeah. Well, if you all right then, if you want to go straight to the books, you can go to the quest for wonder. If you want to learn about me, you can go to Julie lavender.com and find your way around.
[00:38:31:19] Wilk Wilkinson: All right. Well, I, I hope people that are listening to this, check out, The Quest for WonderCon. If you want to know more about Julie Lavender Ledoux, Julie Lavender, dot com. And it's been a pleasure. Julie, thank you so much.
[00:38:45:00] Julie Lavender Le Doux: Thank you so much.
[00:38:47:20] Wilk Wilkinson: Friends, I want to thank you so much for tuning in. And if there's anything in this episode that provided exceptional value to you, please make sure to hit that share button. If you haven't done so already, please be sure to subscribe to get the Derate the Hate podcast sent to your email inbox every week. We really are better together, so please take a moment to visit BraverAngels.org and consider joining the movement towards civic renewal and bridging our political divides. This is Wilk wrapping up for the week saying get out there. Be kind to one another. Be grateful for everything you've got. And remember, it's up to you to make every day the day that you want it to be. With that, my friends, I'm going to back on out of here and we will catch you next week. Take care.
Comments & Upvotes