In her book “Rising Strong,” Brene Brown writes about how important it is for people to tell their story. She says, “We are the authors of our lives.” Instead of “running from struggle, we turn towards truth and look it in the eye.” Nowhere else is this more necessary than in our intimate partnerships. It is imperative that we speak our own truth about what it means to be in a relationship.
Elephant Talk is a podcast, platform, and forthcoming book. For the show, we record couples sitting down face to face and talking about this thing that is their relationship.
Since production started, we have discovered a few common themes among couples. One is that people simply don’t talk with each other, uninterrupted, very often. “This was great, we should do this more,” shared one enthusiastic husband. Another exclaimed, “This has been like a date with microphones!” We continue to seek out and record couples willing and wanting have courageous conversation and share their stories. We have also found that relationships themselves are different, and the uniqueness in how people love one another and make their relationships work.
We have recorded heartbreaking conversations around illness, as well as the healing recovery after infidelity. We’ve witnessed couples come alive while telling their story about how they met, fell in love and became a couple. We’ve heard a couple share how they communicated and worked through stressful situations while the husband was incarcerated. Another moving conversation was between a same-sex male interracial couple and how they’ve come to understand and deal with society and cultural biases.
In Elephant Talk, we also have a segment interviewing guests about their unique perspective on intimate partnership, such as writers, filmmakers, therapists, advertising copywriters, animal behaviorist, bartenders, comedians and more. In a world where talking about the normal everyday aspects of real love, not sugarcoated love, is taboo, we get personal about their view on other people’s relationships, as well as their own.
As you, the listener, we invite you to join the conversation and be part of an emerging movement of talking about real love. In other words, Elephant Talking!