Tanya Hale 00:00 

Hey there, welcome to Intentional Living with Tanya Hale. This is episode number 398, "Adam and Eve and the Partnership of Marriage." Welcome to your place for finding greater happiness through intentional growth, because we don't just fall into the life of our dreams...we choose to create it. This is Tanya Hale, and I'm your host for Intentional Living. 

Tanya Hale 00:22 

Alright. Hello there, my friends. Welcome to the podcast today. I'm going to jump in because I've got some great stuff, and I'm so excited for you to hear this interview that I had with a friend of mine. So, first of all, Talk with Tanya is, if you're listening to this on the day it comes out, it is tomorrow. If you want to come to that, go to my website, tanyahill.com, go to the group coaching tab, and you will be able to sign up for Talk with Tanya. You will receive an email with the Zoom link in it. Again, Talk with Tanya is just an open forum. Anybody can come. It's free of charge. We do coaching. We talk about concepts. We dig deeper into stuff. It's just, we always have such a great discussion. And I so appreciate those people who make an effort to come because I know it is an effort. And yet I think that it is, there's so much value in these calls. So those are usually the second Tuesday of every month. Oh, except, sorry, it's not tomorrow. It is Wednesday because I'm going to be traveling on Tuesday. So I moved it to Wednesday, February 11th. So you have until Wednesday to get signed up for that. 

Tanya Hale 01:26 

Second, already on my website, I have sense of self classes starting the first week of March. Now, if you have not taken a sense of self class, this is some of the most foundational work you will do. It is powerful. It is so important that we have a strong sense of self because a strong sense of self impacts every relationship in your life for the better. A weak sense of self or what is often referred to as a reflective sense of self weakens every relationship. It has the power to destroy relationships. And so we really want to have a strong sense of self. I know that as I've taught this class several times before, every time the class ends and people are like, wow, this is different. I see the world different. I see myself different. It's just powerful. And even if you have taken the class before, I would even suggest possibly taking again. There's always more you can understand. 

Tanya Hale 02:23 

And every class I have taught has been very different, even though the content has been the same with different people, different comments, different perspectives, and the conversation just takes different directions. 

Tanya Hale 02:34 

So I think it would be great if you want to do that. I also have a special two-for pricing on there for this class. So if you want to take each class, you can sign up for both classes and get a special pricing on that. Or if you and a friend or a spouse want to take the class together, there is a special two-for price. So classes are going to be Monday nights and Wednesday afternoons. So check those out. 

Tanya Hale 02:59 

I also want to remind you that in the show notes, if what you hear, you go, wow, I love this. I want to learn more. Go to the show notes. I will always have, starting about a year and a half ago, I started putting tons of podcasts down in the show notes where you can listen to last week's, gosh darn it. I'm sorry. I think I probably put 25. I just could not help myself. There are so many good, powerful podcasts that help to build up this content and help you to understand it better. So do some binge listening while you're driving, while you're cleaning, while you're getting ready in the morning, and get this content in your head. Get the concepts and the ideas and the wording in your head so that you can start to make sense of all of it as a big whole. Every new piece of information you get is a puzzle piece to help this all make more sense. 

Tanya Hale 03:53 

So listen, listen, listen. Okay, so let me tell you what we're doing today. Sione and I are in American Samoa right now, and he has been coming down here for, oh gosh, 13, 15 years or something like that. I don't know what it is, but to do humanitarian work. And so when we got married, I was like, yes, please, I want to go. And he used to come for just a week.  Now he comes for a month. Anyway, our first Sunday here, we went to church, which get this, my mainland American mainland friends. Church is at 7.30 a.m. Now, in the continental United States, people would be freaking out and people would be whining and moaning and complaining. And I just love the Samoans here. They're just like, okay, 7.30 church. It's early, but let's go. And they're all there at church and it's fabulous. 

Tanya Hale 04:42 

And we had a Sunday where I got to listen to a couple speak. Now, their names are, I hope I'm going to do my darndest with your last name. It is a Samoan name, so I'm still working on my Samoan pronunciation. But Luisa and Ken Kuaea, I believe is how you say their name. They spoke. And Luisa talked about Eve and partnership in marriage. And Ken talked about Adam and partnership in marriage. And Sione and I just sat there with rapt attention and were so in love with what they were talking about. And afterwards, we just looked at each other and I actually started crying. And I don't cry a lot, but they finished and I was so overcome with emotion of what they shared. And I was just like, I, the whole time in my brain, the, I believe it was God just kept saying, get them on your podcast. Get them on your podcast. The people need to hear this. 

Tanya Hale 05:45 

So here's the deal. They were talking about all the same stuff that I talk about with partnership and marriage, but they approached it from the space of Eve and the space of Adam. Now, for those of you who are members of the church that I go to, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, you will understand a lot of this. So those of you who are not, let me just give you a preface. I think you're going to love this. Our doctrine in our church concerning Mother Eve is very different than most of Christianity, if not all of Christianity. I mean, I'm never going to claim to know what everybody else believes. But I think most of Christianity sees Eve as a problem. They see Eve as someone who did something very wrong. And our doctrine in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is actually the opposite of that. We have a belief that while Adam and Eve were in the Garden of Eden, that they could not create life, that what we have going on here could not have happened as long as they were in the Garden of Eden. So Eve partaking of the fruit and setting in motion this process of having to leave the Garden of Eden actually set mortality in process. It created the opportunity for them to start to procreate, to create life, to start to become the parents of all humankind. 

Tanya Hale 07:22 

So that's a little bit of a difference. And I don't think it's going to freak you out, and I hope it doesn't. It's just a doctrine, after all. But it gives us such a different idea of who Eve is. And so when we talk about Eve in our religious context, it is always with this idea that, wow, she figured it out. She understood that she could not stay in the Garden of Eden and multiply and replenish the earth. She couldn't do both. And there was a place where she needed to partake of the tree of knowledge of good and evil so that she could then start the whole plan, God's whole plan in motion. 

Tanya Hale 08:07 

And so we look at Mother Eve as being a brilliant, strong, courageous, intelligent woman who knew what needed to happen. And so that is different than what some of you who are not members of my church have learned or who believe about Eve. But I think it's a beautiful way to look at what happened in the Garden of Eden. And the way that Louisa talked about Eve was just so beautiful, this place of equality, this place that we get to step into being who we were created to be, daughters of God, not less than men. And the more we step into who we were created to be, the more we can really start to create the kinds of relationships, this oneness that we have the capacity to have in our marriages. And I just was so touched that as sacrament meeting got over and I approached Louisa and I was like, okay, I loved what you talked about. I do this podcast. Would you share your talk with me? And she was like, yeah. And I'm like, okay. And I want to talk to your husband too. And so they both agreed to. And I was just honored that they would, that they would both be willing to share their thoughts because I was so touched by them. 

Tanya Hale 09:33 

So that's the preface. I'm probably going to give the same kind of preface next week when Ken shares his thoughts. But this week we get to hear Louisa and just want to thank her so much and Ken for what they did. So just a little bit about them. I asked them, you know, how they would like me to introduce them and both of them were just like, well, we don't really have any titles that we feel are important. But to share with you, they have been married for 32 years. They have a great marriage and they look at it as an equal marriage. And they were both born in the United States, in California, and they lived there for a lot of years until about 10 years ago when they felt called to come back to American Samoa. Well, not to come back to, to come to American Samoa. I don't know if they had visited, but they had never lived here before. And so they moved to American Samoa. And you're going to hear Luisa talk a little bit about some of the challenges and that that wasn't entirely smooth, but that sometimes when we do the things that God wants us to do, it's not always smooth. But such a great conversation. Louisa says, "who am I? She says, I'm a daughter of God. I'm a woman of faith." And I thought it was really beautiful. Anyway, so, so excited to share with you today my conversation. Mostly a talk by Louisa, but we did stop and have some conversations along the way. And I think you're just going to be delighted with what you hear. So that being said, here is my conversation with Louisa. 

Tanya Hale 11:10 

Alright, Louisa, thank you so, so much for your time today and being willing to spend some time and energy with me and with my listeners to help expound on this idea of equality in marriage and doing it through the context of our great mother Eve. 

Tanya Hale 11:29 

Thank you, Tanya. 

Tanya Hale 11:32 

So I'm just going to let you kind of go ahead and jump in with the things that you've prepared. And I'll probably just annoyingly interrupt you as we go along. 

Louisa 11:43 

No, please do. Please, you know. And thank you for this opportunity. I really appreciate you taking the time to allow me this chance to speak to your listeners. You know, I'm not familiar with podcasts very much, but I do know that there is an audience out there that is listening and I'm grateful for this time. You know, last week when you approached me regarding our talks in church, you know, and giving me the opportunity to then talk a little bit more about it, I thought this would be great. And so I reviewed it a little bit, but this is pretty much what I said to the congregation. It was regarding the Come Follow Me studies for that week, which focused on the fall of Adam and Eve, and it's found in the Holy Bible, book of Genesis, chapters 3 to 4 and Moses 4 to 5, for any of you scriptorians out there. 

Louisa 12:44 

But, you know, as I studied these chapters, I was struck by how much clarity the Restoration gives us about the purpose of the fall and the role of Eve. In 2 Nephi 2, verse 25, Lehi teaches that "Adam fell that men might be and men are that they might have joy." And that verse alone changes how we understand the story of Eden. It shows us that The Fall was a necessary step in God's Plan of Happiness. It made mortal life possible. It made growth through experience possible. And it made redemption possible. The book of Moses also gives us a much clearer picture of Eve herself. In Moses chapter 4, verse 12, we read, "And the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise." That verse shows us something important about Eve. She was thinking. She was reasoning. She desired wisdom. She was making a deliberate moral choice. And then Moses chapter 5, 11, after they leave the Garden of Eden, Eve says, "were it not for our transgression, we never should have had seed and never should have known good and evil and the joy of our redemption." 

Louisa 14:09 

That's not a voice of someone who acted without understanding. That is the voice of someone who understood God's plan. And Elder Jeffrey R. Holland, one of my favorite apostles, he had taught that "Eve's choice was an informed and courageous one. It was a choice made with faith in God's purposes." So we've got informed, courageous, faith-filled. That is not always how Eve was remembered, right? 

Tanya Hale 14:40 

Yeah. Well, I think mostly outside of the LDS doctrinal tradition, Eve is seen as a disruptor, right? Somebody who really wreaked havoc. And I've heard a lot of people say, oh, if it wasn't for Eve, we'd be having this amazing, great life. And yet, from our doctrinal perspective, if it wasn't for Eve, there would be no other life. You know, that is what allowed the humankind to start showing up in the world was her deliberately and intentionally making an informed choice that she knew needed to happen in order for her and Adam to fulfill their measure of creation. 

Louisa 15:28 

Right. Informed and courageous. A lot of courage, right? She didn't know how that would impact you and I at this point. And know how the world would be. But she did know that what she was doing was going to provide an opportunity for her posterity to grow. To fulfill the plan. And so, you know, when I studied The Fall that week in preparation for the talk, I found myself choosing to look at Eve through that lens, you know, because if The Fall was part of God's plan, then Eve's role in it must have been part of God's plan too. 

Louisa 16:12 

And that raises an important question for all of us. How should we be seeing Eve? You know, I recently read a book, I showed it to you in church today, titled Seeing Women in the Old Testament. And the first chapter written by a religious scholar named Rebecca Call focused on Eve, and her opening line stayed with me. She wrote, "nestled in the very first account of all creation is the story that has generated the worldview of women in Christianity, in Islam, in Judaism." So how Eve is interpreted has quietly shaped how women are seen, treated, and valued for thousands of years. And that's why how we see Eve matters. 

Tanya Hale 17:02 

Yeah. That's just a powerful thought, right? That one, I don't know, however that was interpreted, right? And I just see that it's so, so important that we see Eve for who she was. As I look at it from our theology point of view, I look at how amazing it is that she was not only intelligent enough to see what needed to happen beyond what was happening in the Garden of Eden, but that she also felt empowered enough as an equal partner to make this decision without, I don't know, running across the garden and asking Adam first, right? She felt, and not that we don't want to be, you know, communicating with our spouses and discussing things, but she felt empowered by what she knew was right and what was good and what was necessary to make that decision. 

Louisa 18:00 

Well, it was even implied when she was given her name, right? When the Lord asked Adam, what will you call her? He said Eve. And why will you call her Eve? Because, and then he says who she is. She is the mother of all living. That is huge empowerment, you know? And for her, I'm not quite sure what her understanding of that was at that time, but she was empowered and she was a powerful part of The Plan. I'll just continue, but because for much of history, Eve has been remembered primarily as the one who deceived or who was deceived, right? The one who acted impulsively, the one who led Adam into sin. And when that becomes the dominant story people tell about Eve, it eventually becomes the story people tell about women. Women seen as morally weak or more easily deceived, more dangerous when given too much voice or authority, or more in need of control, protection, and correction. And across centuries and cultures, that way of seeing women has had real consequences. You know, women have been denied education, denied property, denied legal protection, denied spiritual authority, blamed for men's sins, shame for their bodies, silenced when they spoke truth, taught to endure abuse quietly, and then taught that suffering was their divine role. 

Louisa 19:35 

And even today, even today, in ways both subtle and obvious, women are still talked over, paid less, dismissed, objectified, controlled, and blamed for violence done to them, all while being told that this is simply the way things are supposed to be, because that's how it was written. 

Tanya Hale 19:55 

Yeah. Yeah. Which is, which is ridiculous when we stand back and look at it from the viewpoint that we are all children of God. We are all equal in God's eyes. God does not see men as more important than women or vice versa, right? Like we are all equal. And the fact that we don't see each other as equals very often or that the narrative from Adam and Eve on has been that men are more powerful and thereby more important and they get to dominate and be cruel and, you know, submit, is that the right word? Women, right? That they need, they get to do that, has has taken a very powerful element, half of our population, and silenced half of our population when women are smart and capable and intelligent and powerful. And yet we've subdued women into such a small, small part of the history of mankind. Personkind, I'm going to say. 

Louisa 21:11 

Well, that made me think about the men who do have a glimpse of how God sees women, right? The men who choose to see women the way God see them and how it affects their relationships with women, right? Because as a Latter-day Saint woman and daughter of Eve, you and I, you know, I'm grateful that modern-day revelation gives us that glimpse of how God sees women because it teaches us how God sees Eve and therefore how we should see women. The book of Moses shows us Eve as thoughtful, as morally reasoning, as desiring wisdom, as understanding God's plan, and modern prophets have affirmed that vision. 

Louisa 22:00 

I had mentioned earlier that Elder Jeffrey R. Holland called Eve's choice informed and courageous. President Joseph Fielding Smith taught that Eve was among the noble and great ones. And President Russell M. Nelson has spoken powerfully about  the kind of women the Lord needs in the latter days. He said, "the Lord needs women who have the courage and vision of our Mother Eve." He also said, "we need women who know how to make important things happen by their faith and who are fearless in defending truth and righteousness." Now that language matters. Wouldn't you agree? 

Tanya Hale 22:39 

Yeah. Oh, I love all of that. Yeah. 

Louisa 22:42 

Courage, vision, fearless, faith-filled. That is not a description of spiritually secondary beings. That is not a description of moral weakness. That is not a description of women who are meant to be silent or small. And that is a description of strong covenant-keeping women and daughters of Eve. So our modern-day revelation doesn't just change how we read the story of Eve, it restores how God intended us to see women. It restores women to their divine identity as moral agents, as bearers of wisdom, as covenant partners, as builders of Zion. And once I began to see Eve this way, I could see her story repeated throughout church history in other women, in women who stepped into harder roles, into harder worlds, in women who chose covenant life over comfortable life, in women who chose or who trusted God's purpose over their own. 

Louisa 23:43 

As I was thinking about Eve, one woman in particular came to mind. Mary Fielding Smith was the widow of Hiram Smith. And he was, for your listeners, he was the brother of the late Joseph Smith. And after he was murdered, she was left alone with young children and very little money. And when the saints were preparing to cross the plains, some Church leaders questioned her decisions to make the trek alone. And she replied, you know, and I'm probably paraphrasing, but she was basically saying, I'm going to do this. I'm determined to do the best I can, and I'm not going to be dictated by any of you, which were probably Priesthood holders telling her you should probably wait, you know. So she crossed the plains alone. And, you know, I'm sure, you know, her children and many others that went along with them struggled. You know, she lived in poverty. She raised her family in faith. And then her son later became the prophet of the church, President Joseph F. Smith. So that is Eve, right? 

Louisa 24:55 

You want me to pause or keep going? No, I just keep going. Like I'm just loving all of it. So and years later, the settlement of Yosepa in Utah, Yosepa is the Hawaiian word for Joseph, was established under the leadership of President Joseph F. Smith, the same Joseph F. Smith, who was raised by Mary Fielding Smith we just spoke of, in other words, a prophet shaped by Eve-like courage, right, grew up to create a refuge for Eve's daughters, the Hawaiians. In the late 1800s, Native Hawaiian saints were asked to gather to a small desert settlement in Utah called Yosepa. And I can relate to this, they left island life, right? They left ocean breezes, they left fruit trees, fishing, family, and they moved to a dry, dusty, unfamiliar land. Many of them were poor, many of them were sick, many of them buried children there, and yet they stayed. They built homes, they built a school, they built a chapel, and Hawaiian women were at the center of that community. They cooked, they taught children, they nursed the sick, they held families together. They chose covenant life, covenant life over comfortable life. And when the Church later announced the building of the Laie Temple in Hawaii, they were finally told they could go home. They wept, they packed up again, they crossed the ocean again, and they carried the gospel back to their islands. That is Eve. 

Tanya Hale 26:32 

You know what amazes me about all these stories is the strength, the conviction, the intelligence, the foresight that women have that is so intuitive to us, the courage. Like, behind every society is a group of women who are just powerful and oftentimes unseen, right? And we have the capacity. 

Louisa 27:03 

Mm-hmm 

Tanya Hale 27:04 

You know, as I work with clients and many of my women who struggle to step up into equal partnership, it's that we have been trained through various sources to believe that we are not that, to believe that we are not as strong, not as capable, not as courageous, not as intelligent. And so we don't step up into what we are capable of being. And thereby, we are not impacting our families and our communities and the world in the way that we have the capacity to. 

Louisa 27:37 

Yeah, well, how can we if we don't know, you know? If we're not taught that, if we're not, it takes conditioning, right? It takes practice. 

Tanya Hale 27:48 

Yeah. 

Louisa 27:49 

You know, my final story though, is almost 10 years ago, Ken and I made the decision to leave a very comfortable life in the States and moved to American Samoa. We weren't kicked out of a garden and no angel with a flaming sword escorted us not to claim. It was a decision we made thoughtfully and prayerfully and for a lot of good reasons. But even when you choose something for the right reasons, that doesn't mean it's easy once you get there. You know, we left stability, we left convenience, we left systems that worked the way we were used to. We left family close by and we stepped into quiet. 

Tanya Hale 28:28 

Both of you were born and raised in the United States, correct? In the continental United States. 

Louisa 28:33 

Yes, we are Californians. I'm from the Bay Area, born and raised, and my husband's from Southern California. And we stepped into a life that it required a lot more patience, a lot more humility, and a lot more faith than we expected. And we stepped into uncertainty, into financial strain. I mean, we poured so much of ourselves financially, emotionally into this place. We stepped into emotional stress, into moments where we honestly wondered, what are we doing?And if we were doing the right thing, or just making our lives harder than it needed to be, and into a life that often felt like, and I quote it, "by the sweat of our brow," because that's what happened when Adam and Eve were cast out of Eden to go into the world. And in Genesis 3.19, the Lord had said, "by the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread. "And that verse has taken on a very personal meaning for me, not because I believe God wanted our life to be hard, and not because I think struggle is some kind of proof of righteousness, but because mortality itself is hard work. It takes effort, discipleship takes sacrifice, and building a life of faith takes endurance. And there were seasons when I wish things were easier. And there were seasons when I wished we had stayed somewhere, or stayed back in the States, where things were more predictable. And there were seasons when I quietly asked God if choosing the harder path really had been worth it. 

Louisa 30:15 

But over time, something changed. You know, not our circumstances, us, we changed, you know, our faith deepened, our marriage deepened, our compassion deepened, our reliance on God deepened, and our understanding of what really matters deepened. So when I read the story of Eve now, or reflect on it, I don't hear a tragedy. I hear a woman who chose growth over comfort, who chose knowledge over innocence, who chose a harder world, because she believed God's purposes were bigger than the safety of the Garden. And sometimes, this is what was revealed to me, that sometimes the hardest road is the covenant path. And that's why the story of The Fall doesn't just belong in ancient scripture, it belongs in our lives today. Because all of us in one way or another are choosing between comfort and calling, between ease and growth, between staying where it's safe and stepping into what God is asking of us next. 

Louisa 31:20 

So instead of seeing Eve and The Fall as tragic mistakes, the restored gospel invites us to see them as part of God's plan to bring us closer to Jesus Christ. It teaches us that growth requires experience, that discipleship requires sacrifice, and that  redemption requires a redeemer. And this is what I want to testify of today. I did it last time I spoke, but I will testify that Jesus Christ is the Son of God, that He was chosen from the foundation of the world to be our Savior and Redeemer, that because of Him, The Fall is not a tragedy, it is the doorway into mortal life that can be redeemed. I testify that Jesus Christ understands our sufferings, He understands our mistakes, He understands the cost of the covenant path, and He does not waste any of it. Through His Atonement, our sins can be forgiven, our hearts can be healed, our losses can be restored, and our hardest seasons can be consecrated for our good. 

Louisa 32:28 

So if your life feels harder than you expected, if the road you are on feels steeper than the one you thought you were choosing, that is not evidence that you are off God's path. Sometimes it is evidence that you are walking it. And I testify that because of Jesus Christ, nothing we lose immortality is ever truly lost. He redeems our mistakes, He sanctifies our suffering, and He consecrates our hardest choices for our good. I am grateful for the Gospel of Jesus Christ, I am grateful for His infinite and perfect Atonement, and I am grateful for the hope and healing He offers each of us. In the name of Jesus Christ. Amen. 

Tanya Hale 33:10 

Oh gosh, Louisa, so beautiful. I just loved everything that you shared in that talk. The whole time I was watching it, I was listening to you. I was just like, could not take my eyes off of you. I was just so entranced with this deeper understanding of how you fits into this. And I love the inherent message in what you shared is that, first of all, I have to see myself as a daughter of Eve. I have to see myself as this strong, intelligent, empowered, courageous woman. I have to see myself as an equal. That's where it all starts. And when I can start showing up in a marriage, let's say I'm married to a man who's very much grandiose, like "I am better than," "I'm stronger than," like, you got to listen to me. He can show up like that all he wants. We can't control that if that's who we're married to. But what I can control is, am I showing up as an equal? Am I treating him as an equal? Am I seeing myself as an equal and stepping into the courage and the decision-making and all of that? Am I showing up as an equal? Because that's what I can control. What we would ultimately want is for both people in a marriage to say, oh, wait a minute, wait, we're equals. We would really want that. And yet that's not how it's going to be. 

Tanya Hale 34:42 

I mean, there are sometimes there are going to be women who are going to move into that grandiose space, like "I'm better than" and "smarter than". And because sometimes as society is starting to shift this idea of women are less than, we're moving the pendulum clear to the other end that says, no, women are more important than and women are stronger than. And being able to say, no, that that's not where we need to be either. We need to step into this place of equality. So, I mean, ultimately the ideal would be that men and women both in a relationship see the equality. But even if the man in a relationship doesn't, the woman still can. Right. That will make all the difference in a relationship. I've seen it as I've, coached clients who are in that exact position, you know, when they start stepping up into equality, eventually something bends. 

Louisa 35:37 

Yeah. I think that's the struggle though, right? Seeing yourself as Eve, seeing yourself as that equal partner. And when you don't have the modeling, it's sometimes hard to identify it and not allow him to define you, right? But that happens when you have a dominant partner like that. It's very difficult, you know, but that's where you have to turn to the source of the scriptures and the source of the gospel. For me, you know, I have to see that my husband sees it already. And I'm blessed with that. You know, we built our marriage together and he sees my strengths. I see his strengths. We play off of each other and that didn't automatically just appear. You know, it took work and then over the years, you know, it changed. The phases kind of changed to where, okay, our bodies are changing. Our thoughts are changing and we have to adjust, reset and adjust. 

Louisa 36:50 

But for those, like I have so many examples of where I do see men taking on that dominating role and women, just, you know, their wives, just cowering, you know. And that's when we as sisters, through ministering, through whatever, we have to speak life into them, right? We have to explain to them, you know, it's not that he is intentionally wanting to be that he's probably just conditioned. 

Tanya Hale 37:26 

Right. 100% from most of them. Right. You know, so we have to unlearn and relearn things, but to show up as an equal partner doesn't mean to be more domineering than him. Right. It just means to show him a better way of love. 

Louisa 37:43 

Right. Yeah. That takes a lot of courage and practice and support from, you know, a loving Heavenly Father who knows how each of us should be assuming these roles, right. 

Tanya Hale 37:58 

Yeah, and this is a reason why I'm just so grateful to have another woman like you on my show who sees who you really are and who is able to step into that equal space. Because we don't have a lot of role models in our lives. Many of us did not see our mothers step into this space. Many of us did not see any of our friends parents step into this space. Many of us don't see our peers stepping into this space. And we absolutely don't see it on TV or in movies, right? We don't see this equal partnership. And so to have someone like you, Louisa, who can come on and and share your experience "but listen, we are equal" and we the more we really at our core let God teach us that and let, like I'm gonna say even both of our Heavenly Parents teach us our value and who we are. And the more we begin to believe that and to breathe it and to live it. The more space for love we create in our marriage. And so I appreciate you coming on to be one more model of of this work. And those of us who are willing to stand up and say listen, "we have to show up as equals," I think we just can't have enough of these voices. So, thank you. 

Louisa 39:21 

And stop and we need to change that narrative of stepping into our roles and presence when where you don't need the man. Do you know what I'm saying? Like in a marriage, I'm speaking. For those who are single that's different, but I feel like those who are learning to step into their place in their role a lot of the narrative goes to "yeah you don't need him. You got to do what you got to do," you know. But this is still a journey and a union that you need to build on together with with your partner. And you do need him and they need to know that and he needs you, you know. You guys can do this together and you can step into your role and he can be there to support you and you have to support him in his role as well, and not think that yes stepping into your role equal partnership means, you know, separating yourself completely from your partner that's... 

Tanya Hale 40:30 

Because that's individualism and not partnership. And if we're seeking for partnership, we have to see ourselves as equals. 

Louisa 40:41 

Yeah. 

Tanya Hale 40:42 

That's just inherent in it, so gosh, thank you. Such a great discussion. I loved hearing your viewpoint, and I loved the things that you shared so much. Thank you for being here today. 

Louisa 40:54 

No, thank you, Tanya. I appreciate the platform and this opportunity to share my thoughts and to your listeners out there, thank you for taking the time to hear us all the way out in American Samoa. 

Tanya Hale 41:10 

I think they're going to absolutely love it. I think it was just a great discussion. So thanks again, Louisa. 

Louisa 41:16 

Thank you, Tanya, take care. 

Tanya Hale 41:17 

Thanks, you too. Bye. 

Tanya Hale 41:22 

Thank you so much for joining me today. If you would love to receive some weekend motivation, be sure to sign up for my free "Weekend Win" Friday email: a short and quick message to help you have a better weekend and position yourself for a more productive week. Go to tanyahale.com to sign up and learn more about life coaching and how it can help you get to your best self ever. See ya.