Episode 29: Bees, Skin Color, and Why We Say "I'm Sorry" - Serafina Kelley (my 7-year-old)

I got to have a real guest of honor on my podcast this week - my sweet and sassy 7-year-old daughter Serafina.

I wasn't sure where the conversation would go, but I love how this turned out and I was so blessed to spend this time with my little nugget. I really hope it encourages other moms out there that they can have a beautiful relationship with their daughters.

Fina spills some of her wisdom about the importance of bees and shares why she thinks it's so important to say "I'm sorry" when you mess up. We also have a little chat about skin color and I hope it will show other parents that these conversations can be simple and don't have to be uncomfortable. 

I think you are all going to really enjoy this conversation with this amazing little girl, and you will definitely laugh and smile a LOT. Enjoy!

If you're loving this podcast, can you please leave a rating and review? Thanks a million!!

Connect with Gabi:

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Website - gabiruth.com

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(TRANSCRIPT) Ep. 29: Bees, Skin Color, and Why We Say “I’m Sorry” - Serafina Kelley

Note: Transcript is created by AI. Please excuse errors.

Gabi: Hello, my friends. I have a really, really special guest here with me today. She happens to be my very favorite girl in the whole wide world. Can you tell us who you are please? Sina, Serafina and Sarafina. How do we know each?

Serafina: You are my mom, .

Gabi: I'm your mom. This is Serafina,, my daughter, and she is, how old are you?

Serafina: Seven.

Gabi: and what grade are you in?

Serafina: First grade,

Gabi: this is Sarafina. My daughter, she's seven and she's in first grade, and I wanted to have a little conversation with her today for a special episode of my podcast, pain to Passion Live, which I kind of just told her about. I don't know why I didn't tell you about it sooner.

that's silly. Why didn't I tell you about it sooner?

Serafina: I don't know. I don't know either. Probably. I'm weird. And so you got the weirdness from me. and funniness.

Gabi: I got the weirdness and funniness from you. Yeah. Fina. We call her FINA for short. She's very funny. I feel like something what?

Serafina: Um, I am still very ticklish and whenever you tickle me, um, I don't laugh that much because whenever I tell you, joked, you laugh very hard.

So you must have stolen my jokes, and my laughs.

Gabi: I don't believe it. I think that you laugh a lot when I tickle you.

Serafina: You are very funny. So you could have stolen my jokes.

Gabi: I am funny, but Fe's probably one of the funniest people I know. Um, she actually. The day after she was born. And I know people say things like, oh, she just had gas or something like that.

But she legitimately smiled and she smiled because her big brother Emmanuel came to the hospital and held you and said Hello. And you smiled at him. Yeah. And she was smiling every day since then.

Serafina: I was like, just born. Mm-hmm. and um, I just smiled. Andwhenever, I saw him. Yeah. I already knew that before she even said that because we had like two books or three about whenever me and my brother were little and the first book, um, in the first page it was.

A picture of that they,

Gabi: yeah, we have a picture of it and it's so sweet. Um, and I've just really, really enjoyed being Sarah's mom. She's a really special girl,

Serafina: and I enjoy being your daughter.

Gabi: Aw, you're so sweet, precious girl. If you guys are hearing a lot of swishing, it's because we both have our winter coats on.

It's still cold where we live, and we're sitting in our car. Yeah. What did we just go do together? Shopping. We went shopping. And what did you get?

Serafina: Um, a little Barbie doll and if she's cold, she gets Whiskas and if she's not cold, she, it doesn't get Whiskas. And she has this little cat costume. Mm-hmm. . And then if you wanna take the ca cat costume off.

You can put the golden skirt on and pink shoes on, but you already has a shirt on.

Gabi: Yeah, she's really cute. Barbie cuz Fina was being so kind and sweet when we were going shopping for some boring stuff that mommy needed from the store. So we got her a Barbie Sometimes I like to spoil you a little bit, huh?

Yep. . So I wanted to talk to Fina today because, um, having a good relationship with my kids is really important and it's something that I've learned a lot about how to do that. Right. So I wanted to talk to you kind of like with your experience with me. She's making face. of what it's like to be my daughter and maybe we can help people have good relationships between moms and daughters.

Cuz do you think we have a good relationship? Totally. Totally. Sometimes do we argue with each other? Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes we argue with each other. But what always happens with after we get in a fight or an argument or something goes down that isn't so, What always happens after? Do we ever just stay away from each other and ignore each other all day?

Serafina: No. Well, we mostly say sorry to each other. Mm-hmm. and then we just have a our life.

Gabi: Yeah. Do you think saying sorry is important? Very important. Why is it important?

Serafina: Um, because if you be mean to somebody, and then if you say sorry, it lets them know that you care.

Gabi: Yeah, definitely. When mommy messes up or she gets frustrated sometimes, or she's in a bad mood and snaps at you.

does she usually say sorry to you after? Yeah.

Serafina: Yeah, because she's the best mother in the world.

Gabi: Oh, you're so sweet. How does that make you feel when I say, sorry? Does it make you feel better about what happened? Yeah.

Serafina: Yeah. But doesn't mean it didn't happen. That's true. But sometimes athlete makes you forget that it happened.

Gabi: Really? Mm-hmm.

Serafina: . Yeah. But if instead of saying, sorry. Act like it didn't even happen. That's a terrible idea.

Gabi: Mm-hmm. Yeah, I agree. Acting like something didn't happen is bad and it would make you probably feel kind of yucky if I pretended that something didn't happen. Right.

Serafina: PS I. Love picking up lit and throwing it into the trash can.

Gabi: That's true. Fina loves the earth, so she likes picking up trash and throwing it away

Serafina: because if there was tiny pieces of trash, some trash has chemicals that could make you die. And if animals, and if a bee ate a little tiny piece, it could die. And bees are very important for the earth because, um, I could.

Gabi: Well because bees are important for all of the different plants. They keep the plants alive and trees,

Serafina: they make you breathe. Yeah.

Gabi: Cuz trees make oxygen, right? Yeah.

Serafina: Yeah. Because they can't have out oxygen. Lily.

Gabi: Yeah. So trees, trees make oxygen so that we can breathe well. And if we didn't have bees, that would not be possible.

Yeah. Right.

Serafina: We could all die. Yeah. So God is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Yeah.

Gabi: God is wonderful cuz he put all that together so that everyone can live and breathe and be healthy. Right? Mm-hmm. . Yeah. What do you think is important for being a good friend? ,

Serafina: um, being kind and if you be kind, people know that you care.

Mm-hmm. . And sometimes people don't have any friends because the fans can be mean sometimes. Mm-hmm. and it can make you feel like no one ask. Mm-hmm. . But if you have a friend that thinks you are very kind and they are very kind to you and I never break up with you, um, , um, they let you know that someone care about you?

Gabi: Yeah, definitely. Mm-hmm. . And when you're at school and you see a kid, maybe a girl who doesn't have very many friends, who's lonely, what do you usually do when you see that person?

Serafina: I walk up to them, especially whenever my friends at school. This always happens to me. Run away from me even though I didn't do anything.

Gabi: Oh goodness. So do you go, you walk up to them and you.

Serafina: Um, ask them if they wanna play with me. Yeah. But if they be mean back, I'll leave them alone because I know they need alone time.

Gabi: You need some space. Maybe they're having a bad day. Yeah. Yeah. So, Venus's teacher told us, her kindergarten teacher last year told us that she is so kind and she always includes everybody, and I've seen that be very, very true.

You always try to include everybody because you have a very kind heart wait.

Serafina: Parent conferences.

Yeah. Really? Yeah. What? Yeah, what? Yeah, what she said. Sometimes it's a little bit hard because everybody wanted to be with you because you were kind to everybody, and so you had a lot to juggle. , but that you did it with a lot of grace.

Me and

my family have a lot in common because, um, a lot of people both love us and she told me that whenever she was in gymnastics, she, all of her, uh, all of the other kids said, I wanna be with Noe. I wanna be with her. Really. I mean, and my friend Kate didn't have a lot in common. We had the same birthday and we can't use, um, soap that that's, and when we have loon in it.

Mm. And

Gabi: and you're both funny.

Serafina: Yeah, we're both very funny. And we're both peach and we both have brown hair. Mm-hmm.

Gabi: speaking of peach with brown. Do we talk about skin color a lot at our house? No, we don't. I feel like we do talk about it more than other people. Yeah. Why do you, why do we, why do we talk about it sometimes?

Why do you think about the different colors of people?

Serafina: Um, because a just a little bit ago, Ago, um, Martin Luther came June's day. Mm-hmm. was there. And so it made me think about why do people have to be so rude to, um, African American people back then? Mm-hmm. . And so I wanted to ask you a

few questions.

Gabi: right now? No. Oh, back then. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But, and then when you color, sometimes you, you use different colors for different people, right? Mm-hmm. ,

Serafina: and I think one time I do this picture, I have a American af, American African, and a picture of a white person, and they were both friends. Mm-hmm. . I have some, I feel like I wrote a story about that too.

I do write a,

Gabi: do you have a really good friend who's

black?

Serafina: My brother , but we don't really, whenever my brother's around and we never talk about that, he's a different skin color. Why is that? Because one time in Texas he was thinking. that he was different skin colors and so he started crying. Mm-hmm. . And so we know would make some feel sad whenever he remembers that he's a different skin color.

So we don't wanna make a member of our family sad, do we?

Gabi: No, we don't. Plus, . We also know that it doesn't matter, right? No. It doesn't matter what color skin you have. Yeah. It doesn't matter. Every person's a person. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. And he is our very special Emmanuel.

Serafina: Yeah. He, um, he even has the same name as Jesus.

Mm-hmm. ,

Gabi: Emmanuel and Jesus. Yes. Same. Super cool. Mm-hmm. . But yeah, the truth is, you're right. There was a time in Texas when he came to all of us and he just cried and cried and cried cuz he looked different. Yeah. Because you notice how p different people look, right? Mm-hmm. . It's not like if you see someone who looks different than you, you don't notice.

Right. You notice. And he noticed that he looked different than us.

Serafina: Whenever my friend Elizabeth came, I noticed her skin color, but I didn't talk about. . Yeah. All I did was make friends with her, play a lot with her. Mm-hmm.

Gabi: because she's a person. Yeah. And you love her and she's

Serafina: very nice,

Gabi: but guess what? But it's okay to talk about people's skin color.

Yeah. But did you know that?

Serafina: Yeah. But I knew it would probably make us sad because sh I, I looked at her face and she could have a, a lot of emotional feelings.

Gabi: She could have a lot of emotional feelings. Yeah. Like, . Yeah. But what if you told her she looked very beautiful and you loved the color of her skin?

Do you think that would make her feel sad?

Serafina: No. No. Plus I actually kind of want that skin color.

Gabi: I know you talk about it a lot. Yeah. Fina loved. The different hairstyles that you can do and all of that fun stuff. The Barbie that we just got her has brown, beautiful skin and curly hair, whiskers and whiskers depending on, um, if she's hot or cold because she is a cat mascot.

But I really do believe it's important for us to see color because it's part of who somebody. , right? Mm-hmm. . So if we say we're colorblind, that's not true. You always notice what color somebody is, right? Mm-hmm. . And you can appreciate it.

Serafina: Well, if you were actually blind, like you couldn't see at all, you would also be colorblind.

You wouldn't see colors at all.

Gabi: That's true. If you were actually blind, . Well, I just think you're so special, and I love you so much, and I'm really, really proud of the girl that you are. I'm so proud of you for being so sweet to your friends. I'm proud of you for always doing your best and trying your best, and I'm also proud of you because you always express your emotions.

You always let me know how you're feeling, and that's important, right? Hmm. What? What do you think it would be like if you weren't able to. Like actually express how you were feeling?

Serafina: I would probably explode because that would have a lot of feelings in me.

Gabi: Yeah. Yeah.

Serafina: Like I think you told me yesterday or today, um, like it won't make you feel good if you don't express your feelings because you can have a lot of feelings.

Mm-hmm. and this one feeling that could make you have a headache.

Gabi: You can have a headache, you could feel tired. Right. Yeah. So it's important to express your feeling. Yeah, we try to keep open feelings in our house so that we can all feel good all the time. If there was one important thing about life that you would wanna tell somebody, the most important thing about life, what would you say?

Serafina: Um, taking care of the Earth. Mm-hmm. ? Um, well, there's a. And it'll take too long to say all of it.

Gabi: Well, why don't you tell me your most important things. What's the most important to you?

Serafina: I would say take care of the earth because if you throw trash on the ground, bees will probably eat a little bit of it.

And they have trash, have a little bit of chemicals in it, and um, bees can help plants. It didn't help pants, there wouldn't be any cheese. And cheese helped you, um, breathe. Mm-hmm. . So it's very important to take really good care of the earth.

Gabi: Yeah. And who's the most important relationship in the whole universe?

Do you, I.

Serafina: God.

Gabi: How come?

Serafina: Well, because he created the earth and he created bees, , and he created my, um, wonderful mom. Mm-hmm. and you guys. Yeah. And me. I would not wanna, I would not wanna not be alive. No way. It would just be pitch. Mm-hmm. . I

wouldn't even be, that would be crazy, right? Yeah. What do you always say when you thought something was gonna go wrong?

And then it goes right.

Um, thank you, God , or Thank you Lord, or Thank you Jesus.

Gabi: It's true. She does do that , and it's very sweet and precious, just like you. We're gonna go eat some Chick-fil-A now, right? I love you Fina.

Serafina: I love, love, love, love. Love you too.

Gabi: I'm so grateful that you're my daughter.

Serafina: I'm so grateful that you are my mother, and I'm so grateful that you guys are alive.

Gabi: Thanks Fina, for doing this with me.

Serafina: You're welcome, mother .

Gabi: Bye friends. Bye friends.