BONUS: Why Fun Matters, the Difference Between Escape & Relief, and a Journey Through Loss with Annie F. Downs
Episode Notes
In this special bonus episode of The Best of You podcast, Dr. Alison welcomes Annie F. Downs, New York Times bestselling author and founder of the That Sounds Fun network. Together, they explore the balance between joy and hardship, and the crucial differences between escapism and genuine relief. Annie also shares the story behind her new children’s book, Where Did TJ Go? as well as insights into how fun and play can be integral to healing.
Here’s what we cover:
* The negative internal messages Annie had to overcome
* The difference between real relief and escapism
* Annie's personal journey through grief and how it has deepened her understanding of joy
* Practical advice on integrating play into everyday life
* An exclusive look into Annie’s new children's book, Where Did TJ Go?, a heartfelt tool for families navigating grief
Purchase Annie's new children's book Where did TJ Go?
Resources:
- That Sounds Fun networkThat Sounds Fun podcast
- Books by Annie F. Downs
- Single Purpose League Patreon
- singlepurposeleague.com
- Romans 5:3-4
- AnnieFDowns.com/pastoringsingles
- wheredidTJgo.com
- anniefdowns.com
If you liked this, you’ll love:
- Episode 142: Digital Detox—Surprising Insights from 7 Screen-Free Weeks with Monks & Amish Farmers Featuring Carlos Whittaker
Thanks to our sponsors:
- Go to Quince.com/bestofyou for 365-day returns, plus free shipping on your order!
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Music by Andy Luiten/Sound editing by Kelly Kramarik
© 2024 Alison Cook. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. Please do not copy or share the contents of this webpage without permission from the author. While Dr. Cook is a counselor, the content of this podcast and any of the products provided by Dr. Cook are not specific counseling advice nor are they a substitute for individual counseling. The content and products provided on this podcast are for informational purposes only.
Transcript:
Alison Cook: Hey everyone, and welcome back to another very special bonus episode of The Best of You Podcast. I am so thrilled to bring you today's conversation. I first met our guest today when I joined her podcast network. When you look at The Best of You Podcast, you'll see that I am part of the That Sounds Fun network.
It's a group of podcasts where they really support us and they also help us work with advertising partners, which allows us to bring you this content for free. Annie's “That Sounds Fun” network is really the people behind that whole part of this podcast. I don't even have to think about it. I would not do it if I had to be the one trying to figure out those ad placements. They do all of that work for us and I'm really grateful for that.
I will say, in today's episode, we touch on this. Initially I thought to myself, is it strange for a podcast all about healing from trauma, healing childhood wounds, taking charge of our mental and emotional health, does it make sense for this podcast to be on a network called That Sounds Fun?
The truth is, it is my deepest joy to dive into this content, both for my own work and with other mental health experts out there to bring this content to you. So to me, this is the absolute definition of joy and vitality that underlies this idea of fun, as Annie and I talk about in today's episode.
I also am so grateful that as I've gotten to know Annie, she really embodies the both-and. That's why I'm so thrilled to bring you this conversation today, because it speaks to something we all need, especially in the midst of life's challenges.
We need to be able to hold both joy and hardship to cultivate lightness even in heavy, hard seasons, and to reclaim, as we've talked about in past episodes, the parts of us that have been buried under the weight of responsibility, fear, or pain. That's part of the work that we are doing here.
That's why I'm thrilled to have Annie on the podcast today. Now, Annie is all about fun. That's the name of her podcast, That Sounds Fun. That's the name of our podcast network. She brings this infectious energy wherever she goes, whether she's talking about faith, friendships, or the struggles in her own life.
But what I have learned to really respect and love about Annie is that her joy is not shallow or naive. It has been shaped by grief, by loss, by her own pain, and by the hard and deeply formative work she's had to do to hold on to hope.
That makes me want to listen even more when she talks about the importance of fun and of joy and play. So in our conversation today, that's exactly what we do. We explore the both-and, how to navigate heartache and struggles without losing sight of joy, and how playfulness can actually be a sign of wholeness, integration, and healing.
Fun is not a luxury or a side note, but a really important component in healthy relationships and a flourishing life. Annie shares how for much of her early life, she actually wondered if her love for fun was a weakness, if it was keeping her from being taken seriously, or even from growing up in the ways she thought she should.
She shares more about how she learned to integrate that part of her into her internal family. As a result of all that work, she has some really profound insights about the difference between getting real relief through play and through fun versus escapism, when we're trying to run away from things or avoid things.
She's had to learn how to work through that the hard way. Then in the last part of our conversation, we go deeper into how Annie created meaning through a profound heartbreak. A couple of years ago, her family experienced the devastating loss of her baby nephew, TJ, and Annie shares with us how she processed that in her own unique way, through writing a children's book.
She initially wrote it for her family, but actually discovered that there's a real need for books such as this. The book is called, Where Did TJ Go?. Today, she shares that story with us. So if you're in a season that's really hard and you're hanging on by your fingernails, I hope this episode will give you a bit of relief or a bit of a vision of what's possible.
Or if you're someone who needs permission or simply a reminder to recover your sense of play or your desire for fun, you're going to find so much encouragement and insight in this conversation.
Annie F. Downs is a New York Times bestselling author, sought after speaker, and host of the popular That Sounds Fun podcast. Her books include That Sounds Fun and Chase the Fun. Annie is also the founder of the That Sounds Fun network, which supports and uplifts other voices in the podcasting world, including yours truly.
She's also the founder of the Single Purpose League, which is a community for Christian singles seeking connection and purpose. She shares a little bit about that on today's episode as well. Most recently, Annie channeled her personal experience of loss into a children's book called Where Did TJ Go?. It's written for families who are navigating the grief of losing a child.
I'm so thrilled to bring you my conversation with Annie F Downs.
***
Alison Cook: Annie, I'm so thrilled to have you here today. I got to know you actually through your books. I had read most of your books before I even really knew you as a podcast host. One of the things I really love about you, you have what I'm going to call a spiritual gift of playfulness.
Annie: Yeah.
Alison Cook: You call it fun. The Bible calls it joy. Sometimes that can feel heavy-handed. But in the work that I do for my listeners, we talk a lot about IFS, internal family systems. That's my background. That's the core of my work. One of the qualities that Dick Schwartz, the founder of the model, attributes to what he calls the self, what I call the spirit-led self, when we're walking in our true self, is playfulness.
I love this quality because it gets at this side of life sometimes, especially for those of us who can get into what's hard, who in some ways have had some of that robbed through painful childhood experiences, where we're supposed to hone that playfulness, that sense of wonder.
I see that in your work. There are times of looking for love and remembering God and chasing the fun, where I needed your voice to help take me back to what I believe is a quality of the spirit-led self.
Tell us a little bit, Annie, I'm curious, was that always a part of you? What were you like in your early twenties? What was that like for you when you were younger? Were you always someone who wanted to find joy, wanted to find fun? How did that show up in you as a younger woman?
Annie: That has always been me. The transformation has been probably in my twenties. I asked more questions like, how did everybody else stop having fun? I don't want to stop having fun. I deeply dislike this phrase because I don't think it's true or real, but I felt more like a “late bloomer".
I thought, everyone else is growing up and I'm not. I didn't have a theology around fun, and I didn't have a theology around or a psychology around, what does it mean if this is how God made me? It was not that it became part of me–it was always part of me.
The more work I've done, the more counseling I've done, the more growth I've done, the more I've embraced that as part of me and let it be part of the mature me, versus trying to get it out of me, and thinking I wasn't mature.
Alison Cook: Oh, wow. I think about Jesus' words, “become like little children”. I think about the work that I'm doing and some of my colleagues are doing with folks who've lost that sense of play and that sense of wonder as a result of childhood wounding and childhood trauma. We're trying to restore that.
It almost sounds like your experience was the opposite. I feel like there's something wrong with me. Why am I wanting to keep this part of me?
Annie: My childhood wounding feelings were more around, I'm an Enneagram seven. Our main question is, who's going to take care of me? So a lot of my entertaining myself, a lot of it was, if there's chaos going on around you and it doesn't directly affect you, can you go have fun? Can you eject out of that and go have fun?
I was able to entertain myself a lot and have the fun that I needed. As I grew up in that, one of my counselors from onsite is Jim Kress, who I know and love. One of the things Jim taught us at onsite that he has repeated to me multiple times is, the tools you needed to survive as a child are not tools you necessarily need anymore.
What does that mean? Every kid has to survive something: being picked on, all sorts of levels of something. For me, being an entertainer and entertaining myself was a tool that I didn't have to let go. I've been in therapy since 2013 regularly, like monthly or weekly for 11 years, going on 12 years.
A lot of the work has been, you don't have to let go of that tool. Let's figure out how to actually use it in a way that reflects who you are. That's been different. I didn't get there until my thirties, probably.
Alison Cook: I get it. I love that. There's a way in which there was a part of you that helped you, and it also probably helped others, but you had to learn how to exercise agency. There's a time for it, but there's also a time for other things. I love that you didn't lose it.
Annie: Yeah. So I'm 44, and I've never been married, and don't have any kids. In my twenties, when people were partnering off and getting married, the other narrative that was in my head was, you must not be mature enough, because you still love fun and nobody's marrying you.
So you must not be as grown up as everyone else is. I felt I was stunted in a lot of ways in my 20s. Can you imagine if I'd have killed the fun? My entire career is based on that word. Everything God is doing in my life, publicly, is through the concept of what you said. It is what I am known for.
I'm known for my friendships, and I'm known for having fun. I would tell you what the enemy tried to steal, kill, and destroy in my 20s was, hey, this part of you is actually keeping you from being who you want to be. Meanwhile, what God was saying is, no, this is exactly how I made you. Can you mature in it versus trying and believing it needs to be removed from you?
Alison Cook: 100%. Yeah I relate to that. I relate to that with the “achiever” part of me. There are these really beautiful and good parts, and they map onto the Enneagram for sure. For me, being single into my late thirties had me feeling like that part of me that loved being in school was maybe wrong, because maybe it was a little bit different.
As opposed to knowing that part of me is a beautiful part of how God made me. But we have to learn how to hold that part in tension with the rest of us. So Annie, one of the things I love about you and about your writing is you do go to what's hard. I've wanted you on the podcast because in the process of talking about hard things, we need this art.
It's an art. It's a spiritual discipline. I love how you use the word “theology” of play, of fun. It's so important when we're hurting, not to lose that. I have seen that quality be so essential in marriage, in being a good friend to someone, that there's an art. You don't want to be that person that shuts down someone when they need to grieve, but you also can strategically use play when there's annoyance or when someone's done something.
There's a way when we are spirit-led, that it becomes such a tool for harmony and laughter. It is such an art that I don't want to lose. One of the things I noticed about you is I have friends, for example, who I know will make me laugh and I'm like, oh man, I need to do something fun. But I might not call them when I'm hurting, and there's that dissonance there.
Putting you on the spot here as my case study, how have you cultivated the both-and?
Annie: I'm not sure my friends call me when things are really hard. I'm not sure that's the phone call I get, when they're in a deep, emotional, sad place. Now, there are some of my up close best friends, where we talk about everything. That's true, but that second tier and beyond?
When they think, man, when I'm going through something, this is who I'm going to call. I don't think I'm that for a lot of friends, and I'm totally okay with that. Because, genuinely, I don't enjoy it either. I'm not helpful. I didn't sign up to be a counselor for a reason.
My college best friend is a therapist, and at the end of our work days, when we're Marco Poloing back and forth, I'm like, you listened to people all day? What a nightmare! I cannot fathom that. I'm not built like that at all. I am really built for emergencies.
I am very good in traumatic situations and in emergencies when you need someone to come in and get things right and get people fed, because my emotions are not my first stop in my life train. My train's going to different stations. My emotions are not the first stop. I am very good when everyone else is very emotional.
I get that call far more than I get the, “will you sit in my pain with me” call. I got it today. Hey, we're going through a really traumatic thing with our family. I said, okay, I've got dinner. Tell me the restaurant and I'll send you too much food. I can do that.
I can do the, hey, thanks for coming over to dinner tonight. Our kids have had a tough week at school, and it is so good that you're the one coming to dinner because our kids laugh so much when you're here.
So those are what I get, more than the “hey, I'm processing this really hard, painful thing, and you're a second or third tier friend that I want to process that with”. I don't get that call unless it's someone I'm discipling. There are a handful of women I disciple, and that makes sense because I'm a leader to them, but that is not who I am for my peers.
But I'll tell you one thing I do pretty regularly, Alison. There's a game called Tenzi. Do you know Tenzi? It's so easy. You buy a four set of 10 dice. So 10 dice that are orange, green, blue, purple. It is the easiest game where everyone has a dice of their color, and you roll them until they all match.
It's like a version of Yahtzee, but you can play it in two minutes. It's a really easy game to bring with me anywhere, because then you sit down and when you're playing a game or when you're out on a walk or if you're doing anything like that, there's a space for conversation that may not happen if you're sitting around the table drinking coffee.
Now, some of our friends listening and some of my real life friends love going to coffee with someone and talking for two and a half hours. I do not. I do not think a long amount of time equals a quality amount of time. I'd much rather go on a walk with you for 45 minutes and talk. I'm also like, hey, if we went and saw a movie together, that's quality time too.
Alison Cook: Yeah.
Annie: I'm built a little bit different from the people who you go to when you are in your saddest moments.
Alison Cook: I love that. I love the self-awareness and I love that we need all different kinds of people. I love that you're the one that's prepared to show up to bless your friends with the game. I also think I heard you say somewhere, Annie, that sometimes you will act as a fun coach.
Annie: Yes. Yeah. Now, no one pays me to do it. I don't have time to do it. But yes, when we did the That Sounds Fun Tour a couple of years ago, one of the segments every night was fun coaching, where we brought someone on stage who had presented a fun problem. Because here's the reality, Alison, that anybody who's looking for fun is looking for something deeper.
Alison Cook: Yes!
Annie: You really need peace. You really need joy. You really need relief. Because fun can go a couple of different ways. If you're pursuing fun, you can either do it in a way that is redeeming, or you can do it in a way that is escapism. There's redemption and relief, and then there's escape. Those are the two paths.
I got questions on tour. Maybe in Indy, a young woman was like, my dad died and he was the fun person. How do we do holidays? I can pretty quickly think up fun things you can try. Or, I want to be a fun mom, but we don't have the budget to go to Disney World once a year. What do we do?
I'm always like, go to four Mexican restaurants in your town and taste the guacamole at all of them. It's a three to five dollar investment every time. Give your kids scorecards. Y'all score the guacamole, and you've spent $20 that night. But you've given your kids this ridiculous experience that they can't believe they're going to four Mexican restaurants in a night.
My brain thinks that up pretty quickly. So that's what the fun coaching looks like, though it is not for hire currently.
Alison Cook: I do think it's a gift, because there's an art to it too. Like you're saying, I had a friend, I remember, I was so down. I was so bummed out, telling this friend of mine who has this gift, that all of my friends were getting married. I was consistently finding myself demoted.
I'm so glad we can talk about this on the podcast for my listeners, because we've had a few episodes recently on marriage. There are some fantastic books coming out on marriage this quarter. I always think about my listeners who are single or divorced, and what that feels like. I remember being in those shoes.
I visited my seventh friend, it's 27 dresses, my seventh wedding, and I was feeling woe is me. This friend, I'll never forget it, just turned it and by the end of it, we were laughing hysterically. Every single thing that had been hurting me or causing pain or making me feel bad, she would turn it into a joke and we would start laughing and it was therapeutic.
It was cathartic. It released all of that. It's a gift. I don't have it. To your point, I wish I had that gift because it has meant so much to me when others have offered that gift to me. It's healing when we can go right in there. Because to your point, it's coming out of pain, when we need to find that release and when it's done well, not as escapism, but as I see you, I get it, I know what's going on and I can bring into this some levity and some lightness–it's really a gift.
Annie: It is. What I would encourage our friends listening is, if it feels easy, it's probably a gift. If it feels easy to you, it's probably a gift. Because there are some people who are like, the easiest thing for me is to sit and listen to people talk about their problems. That is so easy for me. That isn't a heavy lift nine out of 10 days.
Honestly, if someone would have told Annie at 21 that this is a gift, in my 20s and my 30s I'd have been easier on myself. If I would have thought, this could be a gift. But I'll tell you the other thing, Dr. Alison, that the image I use a lot to separate relief from escapism is, especially when we're helping other people, is that you don't want to take the whale out of the ocean.
You want to bring the whale to the top of the ocean and let them blow out their blowhole. It's not ours to remove people from their pain. It's not ours to take them out. It is ours to figure out a way to help them come up from the depths and get to the surface, and then go back down. So it's an hour. It's two hours. It's an evening.
You may have read this in Looking for Lovely, but there was a time when I got on a plane and flew away from everybody and didn't tell. And that is taking the whale out of the ocean. That was not a relief. That was an escape. When we do that for ourselves or for other people, we aren't actually helping them heal.
We're a whale that can't survive outside of the ocean. But real whales have to come up to the surface. We have to. We need to do that for our friends too. How can I help them get to the surface, and not try to take them out of the ocean? That is how we can help shape relief versus escapism for each other.
Alison Cook: That's so good, Annie. That's the art of it. I can't pluck you out of this and rescue you, but man, I can give you the gift of a few moments to come up for air. I love that.
Annie: We don't actually want to rescue them. I was talking to Tyler Staten about this. He has a book coming out about the Holy Spirit and he has been through a pretty serious cancer battle. He said, I don't ever want to do that again. But would I go back and choose this again for what I have gained from God? Yes.
Scripture says suffering produces perseverance; perseverance, character; and character, hope. This is hard when there are kids involved. This is hard when there are people we love involved. We actually don't want them not to suffer. We actually want people to walk through this, through what God has for them, so that they get the gifts God has for them.
So we can't take them out of the ocean, because the ocean is full of the gifts from God, but we can help them. Okay. I know this is the hardest season. I know you've never been through anything like this. Let's go get pedicures and put our headphones in our earbuds in and listen to an audio book. We don't even have to talk.
Can I help you get to the surface for two hours? Then you can go back to what you need to go back to. A cooking class, a pedicure, going to a movie, going on a drive, going on a walk–there are lots of things we can do for ourselves and for each other that help us come to the surface.
Alison Cook: There's an authority with which you talk about this. I can tell when someone is doing that with that intention. They're not afraid of my pain. They're not like, oh, let's go do this because I don't want to see your pain. This is the gift I have to bring; that's what I hear you saying.
There's a self-awareness which has to have come out of your own ability to learn, maybe it's not my favorite thing to do. I don't want to be the one to sit and process all your emotions with you for two hours. But I can see your pain. I can see it. I get it. I've been there myself. I've been to those places in myself, which gives me an authority. That's what I hear.
Annie: The self-awareness of, the deeper you go in a conversation does not the best friend make. I had to come to terms with this. I'm thinking of my friend, also named Annie, which is complicated. Annie can get in this with you and she can talk it through with you. Annie Downs can help you have fun.
Experiencing both Annies, one is not necessarily a better friend. That's the work I had to do. To go, I want to be a good friend. I want someone to call me their best friend. Do I have to be serious to be someone's best friend?
For some people you do. For my closest friends, the closer you get in with somebody, the more they experience a 360 of you. My coworkers and my best friends get all the sides of me that can sit in pain with you. That's the work I had to do, Alison, of saying to myself, hey, you aren't a lower tier friend because of the gifts you offer. You're a different kind of friend because of the gifts you offer.
Alison Cook: I love that. How much do you think that in the Christian world, there was another overlay of second-guessing? That's why I keep wanting to call it a spiritual gift, because it's lacking. There can be a heaviness sometimes, but I'm curious if that's your experience.
Annie: The teaching, whether it was caught or taught, especially as a teenager, was more about how not to be rebellious and escape. Here's what you don't do. I don't know if there was good teaching that I recall that said, here's what redemptive fun can look like, and fun can be mature.
But I also don't remember there being teaching against it. I didn't grow up in a church culture that said you shouldn't laugh or you shouldn't have fun. Or if you're laughing, you're doing this wrong. We grew up and had a ton of fun. Our youth group had a ton of fun.
I remember thinking, especially in college, because I was really involved with my college ministry at the University of Georgia, the Wesley Foundation. I remember thinking, I feel like I'm spiritually maturing. Why do I feel like I'm behind in every other way?
Alison Cook: That's so interesting.
Annie: That's probably what I thought the most, versus the church telling me not to have fun. I thought, is everyone else growing up without me? It feels like they might be growing up without me. Because I had different gifts.
I've probably bought my counselor a boat. It has taken work to get here. To some degree, that work did mature me. I wasn't right, but I was right in some ways, because I was slower to accept my gifts than some other people.
Alison Cook: That's the irony.
Annie: That's the irony. Again, the term late bloomer is so unkind because who scheduled anything? Who decided? I don't use that term as much as I say, I probably matured a little slower because there were other people who accepted their gifts quicker.
Alison Cook: Interesting. Yeah, “integration” is the word. This takes time. We are all complex, but when there's a complexity of parts, where there's that fun side of you, there's that business savvy, culture-building side of you, that spiritual side of you, that deeply feeling side of you that I see come out in your writing, I relate to a lot of that, when you use that word late bloomer.
I resonate with you, because I feel like it took me a while. I have a lot of different sides. There's a therapist part of me, but there's a really lighthearted, playful part of me. How do those go together? There's a driven part of me. How does that work with these other pieces?
Listening to you, Annie, and I love that you embody this and having this chance to talk to you when you're able to own being good at fun and good at helping people. Like, I know what I'm doing and I know what I'm bringing and I know what I don't bring. There's an inner peace that spills out and frees other people.
That kind of healing that flows out of you may not look like being the therapist in the therapy chair, but it's impacting so many people and I love hearing that from you and seeing your eyes light up as you describe that. It took a while to get there.
Annie: Yes. Yeah. Once you learn what you're really good at and what you're not good at, I'll tell you, it can be polarizing for people. They know whether they like you or not. It's polarizing in dating, it's polarizing in friendship, it's polarizing in coworking, where you're like, the reason I'm in therapy is I need someone else keeping me between the lines at all times.
So I'm not saying this is me, deal with it. What I'm saying is, I know my strengths and my weaknesses as I continue to grow as a person. If these don't match your strengths, if this isn't attractive to you in friendship or dating or coworking, go with God. I wish you well, because my gifts aren't going to change. My maturity will hopefully keep changing. My gifts don't change.
Alison Cook: I love that. There's an inner acceptance, recognizing that the more I become who I am and the more I embrace it and own it and put it into the world, some people may not go for me.
Annie: If I thought I was perfect and everyone should come in alignment with me, that's a whole other problem. I say a lot, I have perfect attendance to my wins, and I have perfect attendance to my sins. I know exactly who I am. I know my weaknesses. I know that I laid in my bed and scrolled on my phone this morning instead of reading my Bible.
I know me. Because of that, when I'm like, man, I can still get disappointed and still get my feelings hurt. I'm like, I brought myself and you did not choose me. I can't change myself, but I can grow. I brought to you the basics of me, and the basics weren't interesting to you. Go with God.
You know what else? This is true about you, Dr. Alison, and I'm thinking of some other friends too. Sometimes, people walk away because they haven't done the work to know their strengths and weaknesses. It causes an internal turmoil that has nothing to do with you.
Sometimes they walk away because they don't like you. You may never know why. But there are people that I could go, oh, I don't think I like you, and a lot of times, it's because they're living a truth that I'm unwilling to live. I wish them well.
Alison Cook: Before we shift to the book, I've noticed you're doing more to gather community for single folks, especially single folks in the church. I know that for me, being single in my thirties in the church in particular were some of my loneliest years, and I hate to say that. I don't want that to be true, and I spent a lot of time trying to explain to people what was helpful and what wasn't.
I see you doing it a lot more publicly. I hate that you have to do it, Annie, because there's so much more to you, and I almost don't want to ask you about it, but for those listening, are there places where they can find your work and the good work that you're doing there?
Annie: I'll tell you briefly why this became a yes for me. I have been unmarried the entire time I've been a public figure, the entire time I've been a person, but the entire time I've had a public job, I have not been married. I made a pretty strong decision early on that I did not want to talk about being single because I didn't want to be the poster child.
I’m very uninterested in being the poster child of this. A couple of summers ago, we did a dating series on That Sounds Fun called Summer Lovin’. I got on Instagram and I said, hey, if you're single, I want to tell you something. Can I have your email address? I'm not selling anything, I want to tell you something.
We were hoping for a thousand email addresses. By the end of the week, we had 20,000 email addresses, Alison. What that said to me was not that other people weren't doing work for singles in the church. There's a lot of good work being done. What it said to me is, there is an audience waiting for you to talk about it.
I was like, yeah, I'm still not very interested in that. Then the Lord had this conversation with me, Alison. I'm pausing to be like, do I want to tell the world that? I said to the Lord how much I didn't want to do this. The Lord said, it's only a season. Now, does that mean I get married? No, it does not.
What it means is I could get married. Or I could die or Jesus could come back. If any of those three things happen, Alison, I lose the influence I have right now over unmarried people. I lose some of it. People will be happy for me. Then they will say, she doesn't understand us anymore.
When the Lord said that, I was like, he knows me. He knows the only thing he's got to do is go, hey, if there's a timeline on this, will you let me squeeze everything out of the window when I've got it? He knows that's like catnip to me. I'm like, then let's go.
And it could be 30 more years, Alison. But what the Lord said to me is, this is only a season. Can I have it? When he did that, a lot of things changed for me, where I went, let's talk about it then. Most of the information is at singlepurposeleague.com, which is the group people can be a part of that is 2,000 plus singles, mostly females, mostly Christian, who are trying to figure out, not necessarily how to be married, because a handful of them don't care. They want community.
Then there are a bunch of us who do want to get married, and hope. I'll say to people, listen, I know you don't want to be in here. I know this isn't what you wanted to be in. Me neither. But we're here. So what do we do? How do we actually make this time count?
We did a survey about a year ago, a little less than a year ago, in the Single Purpose League. We said, do you feel supported by your church? 65 percent of people said no, or not really. Then we said, where do you want to meet somebody? And the top four out of the top ten were church or church-adjacent.
Then it was like, we got to tell the pastors, because pastors are wishing they could figure out how to help singles. Singles are saying, I don't feel supported, but I'm not going anywhere. So we gotta get everybody on the same team. If you have any pastor friends listening or leaders, we have this resource for pastoring singles.
It's free. You take it. It's at AnnieFDowns.com/pastoringsingles. We're like, start some conversations in churches. We've had over a thousand people download it and have it. We don't care. So that's where all that stuff is.
My promise to God is that as long as I'm not married and as long as he'll give me influence over this audience, as long as I have a voice to these people, I'll use it. But I know my voice is more profoundly helpful when I'm one of them. I get to do that right now.
Alison Cook: Wow. I am so grateful. I wish you'd been around.
Annie: But I wasn't talking about it.
Alison Cook: Yeah, but Annie, I get it. I get it. I don't know why it's so fraught. I wish it wasn't, especially for women. I don't know why it's so hard. It adds this whole extra layer of self-doubt. It did to me too. I wish it didn't.
I've seen so many clients come through my door, and I remember saying this to my therapist, they're there for the structure and the support and the company. I'm like, I will be that for you. I want to be that person for you because I get it. I get it. I get that marriage does not solve all of life's problems. It does not.
Also, there's this layer of alienation that you can feel in our culture. I'm grateful that you're doing it. I hope the listener will check it out. Thank you for talking about it.
You've also been through this incredible tragedy in the last couple of years. I know it happened a few years ago. I don't think the grief ever fully goes away. Let’s pivot here to this children's book that you've written out of a personal tragedy that you've gone through with your family. You wrote the book with your sister. Can you tell us a little bit about this?
Annie: Only the Lord would be like, you know what you're gonna talk about in 2025, Annie? Being single and your nephew who passed away. Have fun.
Alison Cook: Grief and singleness.
Annie: Come up for air when you want to. Don't escape, but relief. I have had so many conversations, as you can imagine, I've had so many conversations with the Lord in the last six months. I'm really good at folding a fitted sheet. Where's the ministry around that? Because we'd love for that to be it.
But I am also really thankful that the life God hands us, he does not waste. TJ is a part of my family and a part of my life. I'm glad God has kept finding ways to use his little life. But my sister and her husband were pregnant with TJ in 2022.
They knew very early. They have another son named Sam, who's two years older. They knew pretty early in their pregnancy that TJ was sick and that he had a life-limiting diagnosis. The grief and joy we held in the middle of that was, we know what the doctors are saying, and we know what God could do.
We spent Tatum's pregnancy hopeful that God would change the story from what we were told. Meanwhile, there's a two year old in the story as well. There's a two year old who thinks his little brother's coming. There's a two year old who calls his brother TJ. There's a two year old that we all care about.
I jokingly say he's a little bit of an idol in my life. I love him so much. But as we got closer to the birth of TJ, and as the doctors kept saying, his lungs have not developed, his heart has not developed, you need to be prepared that he will not live. If he lives days, we'll be surprised, probably more like hours.
I may have emailed you, Alison. I started calling therapists, counselors, and other friends I have that have lost children while raising other children. I said, what's the book we read? And there was no answer. There was a recommendation of one that's pretty popular, but it doesn't have a gospel story. It's a mainstream story, which it's still helpful.
Then there were ones where one family liked it, but another family didn't. David Thomas and Sissy Goff, when they didn't have a resource and they are the experts to me for raising kids, I thought, there's a problem here. How do I help Sam, my nephew?
So I wrote a book for Sam. I was like, if we can't find it, I'll write it. Again, knowing my skill set, I knew what I couldn't do was I couldn't rescue my family from the pain. I'm not a doctor. I couldn't do anything about that, but I could help Sam understand what was gonna happen to TJ. I wrote it the week before TJ was born, thinking he would never come home from the hospital.
That's what plays out in the book. The mom is pregnant. When I tell you, it looks like my sister and my brother in law, my nephews, I'm like, y'all are very kind to let us draw pictures that look like you. So as TJ is being born the week before, we don't think he'll live. In the book, the baby dies in the hospital. We were very clear in the book that TJ died.
We need to use facts, is what David Thomas says. In fact, he wrote a letter in the back of the book for parents to help them as they're reading the book with kids. I thought, we need some expert stuff in here. I need you to tell them what to do after they read this, which was very generous of him to do that.
I write it out in Word and steal clip art from the internet, go to FedEx and print it out, laminate it, and make a copy for my parents and a copy for my sister. I thought, that's what we were going to do with it. I thought it was going to be for Sam. Then, as we started reading it to Sam, TJ ended up living 56 days, 3 weeks, in the NICU, and then 5 weeks at Tatum and Jacob's house in hospice, 24/7 care.
Unbelievable. The trauma was unbelievable for our family, particularly for Tatum and Jacob and Sam, but they didn't leave their house for five weeks. People were with them constantly, doctors and nurses and family and friends. A while after he died, Tatum started reading it to Sam, and then I sent it to my agent and I said, hey, this has helped us.
I want to write the book that when people call David and Sissy and say, how do I help my family? They go, here it is. Where did TJ go? Especially in the loss of another kid. I said to my agent, will you ask the publisher? This is such a niche book. I wasn't sure they'd say yes.
Because they don't have to. They don't have to pick a book that is so niche in who it'll serve. But they were like, you're right, this doesn't exist, and we need it. The through line, Alison, is there is good news even in sad stories. That's the gospel. There's good news even in sad stories.
Parents need that, and kids need that. What we've seen as we've announced it and made it public is, sadly, it is massively needed more than we think. One in four women have a miscarriage. Because TJ doesn't go home from the hospital in the book, it is a book that can be read to families who had miscarriages or stillbirths or had to make tough medical decisions or that the baby never came home. We're thankful for who it's serving.
Alison Cook: I love that you're putting your finger on that need. It is so common. It is so hard to know what to say. So many times people say something well-intended that isn't helpful. The book is there to help reframe some of that and give language. I know so many of my listeners have that need. How do you talk about it with kids?
Annie: While you're grieving, as the mom or dad, you're barely surviving the grief of losing one of your children. And you've got three others who need breakfast. I don't know how they do it. I don't know how they do it, but our hope is that Where Did TJ Go? will be a tool that helps maybe a grandparent or an aunt or a friend or a partner.
And the parents read it when they can. But you're right, it is this go between that hopefully helps.
Alison Cook: It's naming something for kids, because we know that kids suffer more when things go unspoken.
Annie: That's right, they know. You and I know, the trauma that happened in our house when we were kids that's never been talked about? You feel it in your guts. Kids know.
Alison Cook: It's a beautiful offering. Thanks for coming on and sharing about it with us. Tell everybody before I ask you my last two questions that I ask everybody, where can people find the book? Where can they find all things Annie Downs?
Annie: Yeah, wheredidTJgo.com will help you. The book is everywhere you love to buy books. It comes out February 18th, anywhere you love to buy books. There's something we're doing until people don't want me to do it anymore, where if you have lost a child in your family, we have these “in loving memory of” book plates, where I'll sign your child's name.
That's one of the most important things to families, is that you say the name of the baby or the child that is with the Lord now. In the first week, there were over 300 book plates I signed, Alison. Unbelievable. So that's available at wheredidTJgo.com as well.
Embarrassingly, I'm everywhere. Anywhere you're looking for me, it's Annie F Downs. You can get to everything from anniefdowns.com. Single Purpose League is there, the That Sounds Fun Podcast, all that you can find at anniefdowns.com.
Alison Cook: We'll link to everything in the show notes. Annie, before we wind down, a couple of questions I ask all my guests. What would you want 25 year old Annie to know with what you know now?
Annie: I get to answer this a lot because it's a question that goes into Q and As. What would you go back and say to yourself? Number one, I always say, wear your retainers. Your parents already paid for your braces.
Alison Cook: I knew you'd deliver something we hadn't heard.
Annie: Nighttime for a lifetime, because spoiler alert, what happens is, 40 year old Annie had to pay for Invisalign because 25 year old Annie quit wearing her retainers. So wear your retainers!
The other thing that I would go back and tell myself that we have talked about today without using this language is, fall in love with your life. Whatever life God's given you today, fall in love with it. Because when you fall in love with the life that you have, then everything is a bonus.
Everything's a bonus. Every gift, every person, every relationship is a bonus. I already loved what God had given. Now, the week after TJ died, was I in love with my life? Of course not. I understand there are nuances to that sentence.
But, in general, can I figure out how to fall in love with the life God has given me right now so that I can see gifts when they show up? That's the goal.
Alison Cook: I love that. Your energy is infectious. Annie, what's bringing out the best of you right now?
Annie: Oh, what is bringing out the best in me right now? Self-tanner is bringing out the best in me right now. I feel different when I'm tanned in the middle of winter. That is a gift.
Alison Cook: I get it.
Annie: I've had a really interesting couple of years with surgeries. I've not had surgery in my whole life until the last three years. I've had one a year, the last three years, and two of the three were repairing my knees. The other thing that's given me life right now is how much I'm enjoying getting my legs stronger so that my knees are stronger. It is really fun to get stronger.
Alison Cook: Oh, cool. Yeah. I love it.
Annie: I cannot have surgery in ‘25. That's my motto. No surgery in ‘25. August of ‘22, August of ‘23, August of ‘24. Brutal. Brutal.
Alison Cook: Alright, thank you so much for coming on. Thanks, Annie.
Annie: That was great. Thank you so much.