Two Weeks!!!!
Thoughts on vulnerability, being 'too much', and Lisa Marie's book promo pep talk
Five years ago, I came up with an idea for a book: A simple, skim-able book to help parents of teenagers start some of the hardest (but most important) conversations. While I waited to find the perfect co-author, I started reading everything I could find about adolescent development, male mental health and raising boys.
Fast-forward to today, and not only do I have a great co-author in Christopher Pepper — Talk to Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men is just two weeks away from hitting stores!
This is one of the only dreams I’ve had throughout my life and it’s wild to imagine that it’s about to come true.
The wildest part? I’ve had to learn how to ask for favors in order to launch this book.
Why I’m bad at asking for help
Researching and writing this book were hard, but they’re also two of my favorite things to do. What challenges me most is asking people for help.
There’s a vulnerability in asking for help. You open yourself up to rejection, judgement and even mockery when you reach out. You risk people saying you’re asking for too much, or asking for it too often.
I know a lot of you reading this can relate to a terror of being seen as “too much”. Some of us burn brightly, we take up a lot of space, and we don’t naturally conform to what people expect from us. As we grow up, we learn to balance who we are inside with what is more palatable to the general public.
Promoting this book has been an exercise in learning how to let myself burn brightly again. Even harder, I had to risk rejection by asking for favors. As my friend Lisa Marie told me in a “come to Jesus” conversation when I was freaking out, promoting this book is now my job and lots of people want to help.
The good news is, I love having a job and working hard. And this is one job I’ll be doing for years to come — because I believe in Talk To Your Boys. I believe it will help parents because all of the research and interviews taught me more than I could have imagined.
So here I go.
Please help us make our book a success! Here’s what you can do:
Buy our book!
You can buy at your favorite local bookstore, from Barnes & Noble, Amazon, and even Walmart! You can buy it from my Bookshop, too, and find a list of books that I recommend alongside ours, too!
Follow us on social media and share our posts!
Follow Talk To Your Boys on Instagram and share our promos when they come up so your own followers know our book exists!
Follow Joanna on TikTok and Christopher on Instagram and Teen Health Today on Substack. Share our posts whenever you feel moved to do so.
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Tell your friends!
If you have friends raising boys, please tell them about our book. Share that it is easy to read and designed so you can pick it up and start any chapter when you need it. No need to read it cover-to-cover. Tell them that it’s full of scripts, questions and prompts to help you have even the hardest conversations.
If you have friends or family who work in the media, a bookstore or have any other meaningful connections, please share the news of our book. We believe that the insights from the experts in our book can help boys and young men live healthier lives, which could, in turn, help the world.
Attend one of our events!
Mark your calendar for September 10th in San Francisco, when we will be launching our book at the iconic store, Book Passage (in the Ferry Building)!
And for September 18th in Santa Monica, where we will make our SoCal debut at the gorgeous Zibby’s Book Shop on Montana (promo image above!)
Get tickets to the Zibby’s event here! Tickets are FREE but they need to have a headcount. My amazing friend Jordan Reid (author of the bestselling “Big Activity Books” series) will be in conversation with me about the book. As a mom of a teen boy and author focused on emotional honesty and well-being, it will be a super fun conversation.
Above all, thank you so much for supporting us and being so encouraging. We are so excited for all of you to finally hold this book in your hands!
Joanna Schroeder is co-author of the book Talk To Your Boys: 16 Conversations to Help Tweens and Teens Grow into Confident, Caring Young Men, available to order now. ˆThe New York Times, The Boston Globe, Esquire, Redbook and more. She serves as Managing Editor of YourTango’s Experts program and has three children of her own.
Joanna is my cousin. She was the talkative one in a sea of introverts. I love her energy and passion. So while you may have felt like too much with us, you were not. I also love that as a feminist she has researched and thoughtfully brought to our attention that we need to raise our boys with more purpose. Our boys deserve to grow up confident, strong and great parents and partners. I am a psychologist and plan to have this book in my waiting room.