Do You Still Talk to Grandma? Workbook: When the Problematic People in Our Lives Are the Ones We Love

by Brit Barron

Renowned motivational speaker, teacher, and diversity trainer Brit Barron offers a path to holding onto our deepest convictions without losing relationships with the people we love.Brit Barron knows that the people who hurt us with bigotry and ignorance are often the very people we friends, parents, grandparents, religious leaders. And we want to see them grow, not unpersoned by an online mob. But how do we strive for justice without giving up on these relationships or causing new harm? According to Barron, the only way forward is to create a gracious and difficult space for people to forming relationships where we can practice difficult truth-telling, boundary setting, forgiveness, and sharing stories of own failings. This way forward begins by examining ourselves.In Do You Still Talk to Grandma?, Barron draws readers into this tension between relationship and painful accountability, sharing experiences from her own life, like her parents’ divorce and a church community that sided with the forces that dehumanize BIPOC and LGBTQ+ folks. Barron illuminates the challenges and hope for these relationships, showing that the best research points towards humility, self-awareness, and an openness to learning and to remembering that others can learn too.Barron envisions a redemptive way of being that allows progressives to love people who say or believe problematic things without sacrificing themselves, their values, or their beliefs. Provocative, charming, and vulnerable, Do You Still Talk to Grandma? is an essential read for anyone struggling to live compassionately without giving up on conviction.

Genres: Nonfiction, Self Help, Psychology, Audiobook, Politics, Relationships, Biography Memoir

128 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 2024

Reviews

[Hannah]

Author lightly touches on topics important to society as of the time it was written, and though it was published this year, it's hard for me to imagine we still care about these matters when the 2024 election results say differently. Maybe this book was written for me, in this sense, because I'm experiencing pain, betrayal, shock, and so much more still and probably will continue to do so for many years to come. Forgiveness is an ongoing process, just like grief - I mean, after my parents died, I didn't only grieve for an acceptable set period, but I grieve every day, even if that grief looks different and feels different every day. It doesn't always hurt, but my longing for them is ever present. In that same vein of preserving relationships and grieving the past while trying to strengthen the future, I am trying hard to forgive the people in my life that I still want to love and respect but who voted MAGA. I'm still trying to find a way to stay connected to them, because their vote isn't all who they are. I'm still trying to remember why were friends in the first place.

What zinged me the most was the quote from Richard Rohr about how if we don't transform our pain, we end up transmitting it. I guess that's a different way of saying how hurt people, hurt people. Now I have to ask myself how I will end up transforming my pain so that I avoid transmitting it. How do I find peace rather than let the chaos in my heart spill out. I'm working it out in therapy, but my goodness, it still sucks major rotten eggs!

[Kimbo Miller]

(arc)

There are some WONDERFUL things about this book. I deeply appreciate the meditation on finding space between consequences & cancellation. I love the humor & personal anecdotes alongside citations of theory and research.

However, in the end it felt unfinished & more akin to a collection of blog posts or speeches rather than a cohesive collection of essays with a thruline.

I look forward to continuing to read works by this author in the future.

One note: if you’re not familiar with Barrons work it’s worth mentioning that Christianity factors into the writing.

[destiny ♡ howling libraries]

DNF. It's not you, Brit Barron, it's me. This wasn't quite the book I was expecting going into it, and that's on me for not researching the author ahead of time.

Thank you to the publisher for the gifted copy! All thoughts are honest and my own.

———
bookstagram | booktok | blog | storygraph

[Becky]

Oof. This book was released a month before the 2024 US presidential election. That... can't have gone well. Or maybe it was all part of the plan to let this book be a guide for dealing with the aftermath of yet another round of knowing people who still insist on supporting Mango Mussolini.

I had never heard of this book at all until I saw it on a friend's feed, and I was like "Oh dang - this is exactly relevant to the 'Do we still WANT to talk to grandma??' discussions going on in my household". So I thought I would knock this book out in a couple hours and see if it was worth referring to my other half to help him in his processing.

Well. It's now 3 days later, and this was a mistake. I think my brain actually tried to give me a migraine to prevent me from reading this.

This book title is not at all what this book is about. If you are looking for a evangelically-centered collection of platitudes around how we're all human, we all make mistakes, we all have the ability to learn and grow and "transform ourselves", then by all means - this is for you. If you are further looking for a book critical of the imperfect way that people try to prove allyship, especially online via social media, look no further.

So much of this book is about the critique of the PERCEPTION of being the person who gets complex issues right all the time, who can't admit mistakes, who always has the "right" take, or feeling, or reaction to a situation - and the unforgiveable nature of such people to "cancel" others for their mistakes. The way that the morally and ideologically pure can cut "allies" to shreds over nuance - or lack thereof - is ruthless.

And sure, I know what she's talking about with this... But that type of social media mob influence is not something I struggle with. I don't have or use social media anymore. I deleted it years ago. No... what I was looking for was her thoughts on when, as the title says, the people in our lives, the people that we love, are the problematic ones.

I am fully aware that my fellow humans are flawed and imperfect. I know that we make mistakes and hold ingrained biases and beliefs. I wanted this book to delve into that. I wanted it to share the author's insights into finding some ways of managing a relationship with the people we love who do not seem to want, or care, to learn, grow or "transform" into the kind of person we can stomach being around anymore... or, failing that, what ending that relationship might look like.

For the record, I'm a longtime pro at cutting people out of my life. I have talked about this many times before that I have no qualms whatsoever about cutting toxicity out of my life. I don't quibble or agonize over it. Once a relationship is no longer MUTUALLY beneficial and cannot be fixed, I simply let it go and move on. I don't waste my time trying to drag people along with me - if they want to dig in their heels, I just let go of the rope.

I can count the number of blood-relation family members I still choose to talk to on one hand, and still have a finger left over. Do I always agree with them? Not by a long shot. One of them is my brother, and we have, on multiple occasions, attempted mutually-assured destruction upon each other. As siblings do. Another is my father, who I have had a contentious and rocky relationship with throughout my life. But this small group remain in my circle because have proven that we can disagree and still love each other. We can apologize and take accountability and mean it. This doesn't always mean changing their position (or mine) but it does mean acknowledging harm and doing better the next time. They have proven that they are people I can trust, and that this trust is MEANINGFUL.

My partner is the one struggling with this currently - with a couple of triple-Trump voting family members. This isn't the only issue, but it is the most damaging to their relationships. Particularly the refusal to acknowledge any harm that their positions and votes have caused, and subsequent attempts to talk about it have all failed. He is now struggling with how it's all just normal, everything is business as usual for them, while he's living in a state of constant anxiety and dread. We're watching prices rise on everything (whether that's due to the tariffs or the war or both), ICE snatching people off the street, police state surveillance and AI on the rise, overt racism on the rise, and Black people being found hanging from trees like old fashioned lynchings on the rise, and I could go on and on and on... And they see and hear none of it from within the bubble, so they say he's just being "dramatic".

This book didn't help with navigating any of that at all. It didn't offer any kind of practical tools either way - whether that is keeping the relationship but forming better boundaries, or methods for distancing, limiting, or ending the relationship. There was no examination of potential emotional fallout, no discussion of grief of the loss, no discussion of the potential for feeling RELIEF or a sense of closure.

It was entirely just... "people are doing their best in whatever season of their life they may be in, meet them where they are and help them along". That's great on paper. Maybe even for social media, and it's people you don't know and might never see again. But what about when it's the titular "people you love"? What about when it is exhausting and draining and soul-sucking to try to stretch yourself thinner and thinner to keep trying to find anything at all worth holding on to on the other side of this chasm of irreconcilable ideological, moral, and ethical differences?

WHAT THEN?

As I watch him continue to debate this internally - what his obligations are, how much he should keep trying, and whether he should, whether there's even any point, and how it is affecting him... I think about all of that and this book just makes me mad for failing to be useful in any way beyond platitudes and acceptance and faith. And even when it says "I'm not saying you just have to accept and forgive" it offers no alternatives.

To be clear, I didn't expect this book to solve this issue for him, or for us. I did expect something in the general vicinity of the topic the book purports to be about. I expected maybe some author insights, wisdom, maybe some talking points, or questions to ask yourself as you process what the future of this relationship with this person should look like, if one remains. But this book offers nothing of value on the topic it purports to be about. So utterly disappointing.

[Brittany Mayes]

Valid points were certainly made but the book was not as interesting and eye opening as I hoped. Also, the author is a pastor and when I started reading it, I should known it’d be too heavy on religion for me.

[Rachel T]

This book should be mandatory reading for everyone. She put words and structure to a lot of feelings and thoughts that have been swirling in me for a long time.

[Josiah Roberts]

Brit Barron is awesome. I loved her thought process, her nuance in navigating really murky issues, the way she’s committed to justice but also doesn’t fall into binary thinking—it’s all awesome and super helpful.

I felt like a lot of what she talks about in this book are truths and stories we all (specifically people who are left-leaning or identify as “progressive”) need to hear. She explores how truths like the fact the internet, well, isn’t real life, but more specifically, that the way we’ve been trained to interact with people around us on the internet has totally invaded the way we interact with REAL FUCKING PEOPLE around us. These are all things we know already, right? But we don’t necessarily have the words, stories, or ideas of how to move forward. Barron offers a lot of that and for that I’m very grateful to have read it. I’m tired of thinking I can’t believe in love justice, progress, and goodness, but also—I can’t talk to my fucking mom. My mom people!!!

And that’s where my biggest critique comes in.

I got this book because the title sort of sold me on something I’m particularly desperate for right now. My grandma’s dead, but my mom’s not. My dad’s not. But these are the people in my life that I don’t even know how to be my authentic self around because some of our deepest values seem to be at odds yet we don’t acknowledge it—or more we don’t know how. We both claim faith in the same God, yet I seem to be the only one aware that—really—these are very different gods. It’s really painful when you love these people that raised you and genuinely are loving people who have taught you so much, yet some of the views or ways of seeing the world they hold are really harmful! Harmful at times to the point of wanting to ask yourself, do I cut off my mom? How deep of a relationship can my dad and I really have? What this book taught and confirmed to me is the answer is no. Thank God! My parents are still my parents. Boundaries and consequences are important ways of moving forward, but these are merely concepts in this book. Or when the are fleshed out, it’s more about dealing with celebrities online… not to be frank but I could care less about celebrities online lol. Point being, I really wanted a practical “how to” in navigating these relationships. How do I *in practice* “talk to grandma” still?

This book offers incredible overarching concepts that I genuinely believe will help me love my parents better while holding my own and standing up for what I believe is right. However, Barron focuses more on these larger concepts and ideological frameworks that keep us from doing so. Don’t get me wrong, that is incredibly important and arguably, I probably needed to see these things before any practical change could happen. But I guess I’m just a little bummed. I realize that’s mainly on me, but hey, the title is quite alluring for people in my situation. I certainly loved learning how we should engage with celebrity cancel culture and real progress, but what about when I’m on the plane ride home and my mom is picking me up from the airport? What do I do when she tells me about how awesome her prayer group has been where all they do is pray for Israel and Donald Trump? Genuinely, what the FUCK do I do with that?

Maybe that’s a very unfair thing to put on any author. This is really for me to figure out. I really do believe the concepts here will help me navigate this odd liminal space, but I guess I didn’t find exactly what I was looking for. Granted, what I was looking for is quite the stretch.

All in all, this book is incredibly helpful and Barron is an honest, funny, humble, and very smart person. I’m thankful I read this, and I feel like she would be so fun to talk to.

Thank you Brit!! Maybe you write a sequel dealing with the nitty gritty of personal relationships??👀

[Allison]

I picked this up in preparation for another upcoming holiday season where I'd be spending an excess amount of time with family and acquaintances who hold views I find harmful and painful. Contrary to the title, that isn't actually what this book is about. Nevertheless, I did enjoy what I found. This was a really quick and easy read. I'd recommend it to anyone, especially those who spend a lot of time online or have a lot of people in their life with social views that differ drastically from their own.

The author has a lot of interesting thoughts on cancel culture and the internet's tendency to apply a binary to people based on "with us or against us", "problematic or not" and how we take this complete disregard of nuance and apply it to people and relationships we have in real life outside of the internet. The book explores how nuance is difficult, but important; that someone can both hold a problematic view and still be someone you care about. You can't just apply if-else logic to human relationships.

I was pleasantly surprised at how much this book actually challenged me (especially since I came into it expecting validation). It made me question my reactions when I learn about someone being "cancelled" for harmful behaviour. Do I care about their growth or do I just want retribution? Do I celebrate punishment over consequence? Do I see the difference?

"I have no problems with actions having consequences, and I love that more people with microphones are feeling more conscious of how they use them, but the game has become 'don't get cancelled,' not 'be a good person,' and it shows."

I also got a reminder that people shift and grow; that no one is born being right. I once made mistakes, and my loved ones will too. In that regard, this book's focus on empathy sort of did lead me to the answers I was seeking when I first picked it up.

[Katie Schroder]

This book had so many powerful quotes. It spoke a lot about holding tension and nuance as one navigates complex relationships. Great book club read! Woohoo

[Aljan]

I expected something different from what this book delivered. I thought it would be about relating to people that you care about, maybe people you work with that you have no choice but to communicate with, who believe things very different than what you do. There was little to none of that. Disappointed.

[Ellie McGregor]

This could have been an email and the email is David Brook’s 2019 devotional “Finding the Road to Character”

[Lauren]

p. 42 ? something about i used to think that way, i've learned that language I used for a long time is no longer appropriate, let me know if you want a reading list that helped me get there?

"one driver of progressive amnesia is our desire to bypass our own feelings. it allows us to outsource our emotional labor to strangers on the internet. it provides us instant, although no lasting, relief from the discomfort that comes with admitting to having supported something that you now realize was harmful or corrupt."

"but the game has become 'dont get cancelled', not 'be a good person' and it shows. we have struck the wrong chord of fear, and it is one that will unfortunately not last"

4 types of mistakes: stretch, a-ha moment, sloppy and high-stakes

[Katie Tyminski]

The title is misleading and I think the content feels a little bit thrown together like different blog posts. But I enjoyed reading this authors point of view and her comparisons of accountability vs annihilation and harm vs offense. While not what I was fully expecting, it was definitely thought provoking.

[Breanna Glover-VanRensselaer]

From the title and synopsis, I thought this would be a very different book than what it was, and not in a good way. I thought it would be focused more on navigating relationships with people who do things you disagree with and practical tips for that, and instead it barely mentioned that.

[Laura Persson]

I heard about this on a podcast this morning and immediately had to download it because it felt like a lifeline being thrown my way in light of recent events. Like many people, I’m struggling with the divide in our country and especially the impact it’s having on my family. I struggled with the strain it put on my family the last time, but this time it’s feeling more like a personal attack than just politics. Brit Barron was able to provide overwhelmingly valuable insight and a new perspective, for which I am incredibly grateful. This is not just about struggling to stay connected to the ones you love who are hurting you with their opinions, but it also has you take a long hard look at your own opinions and where they come from and she asks you to challenge how your own Cognitive Closure limits you. She taught me about Progressive Amnesia and made me realize I, too, can be kind of a jerk in my own attempt to be the least jerk of the bunch. Thank you NPR for introducing me to this book and thank you Brit Barron for the therapy and life coaching.

[Maddie]

3.75 stars rounded up. I listened to the audiobook edition.

I was really hoping this book would be about the title (isn’t this why we initially are drawn to books?), but I’d say less than half of it was truly about the decision to cut off (or not cut off) loved ones who don’t see eye to eye with us.

I ultimately liked the direction the author went in, but it was not completely what I assumed the book would be about. I wasn’t on board with every point she made, but two people can’t agree on everything, right? The author seems like a cool person and I enjoyed hearing what she had to say regarding cancel culture and our fear of being “wrong” getting in the way of true activism.

[Bethany Crisp]

This book provided an interesting perspective on cancel culture and creating genuine positive cultural change rather than fear-based or trend-based change. I appreciated the fact that she didn’t make it longer than it needed to be, something that often happens with these types of books.

[Nicholas]

** Did not read this book for any specific reason / person **just interested to hear what the author had to say - some good insights

[Joshua Glasgow]

This book caught my attention while I was scanning the stacks at my local library and I checked it out without knowing anything about it beyond the title and what I presumed its central thesis was. The subtitle is “When the Problematic People in Our Lives are the Ones We Love”. I’m sure I’m far from the only person in this boat, but my relationship with my parents—my father in particular—fractured after the 2016 election; I begged him/them to help me understand why or how he could support Donald Trump and the Republican party, but instead they withdrew from me, accusing me of “always having to be right”. In fact, because I live in a different state than them, my parents were able to pour poison into my siblings’ ears and they, too, came to view me as a villain for being so vocal about my horror and frustration. In essence, my relationship with my entire immediate family is broken.

In the past few years, I’ve been in therapy and that has helped me gain some ability to focus on attempting to repair the relationship while setting the “content” of our dispute to the side; my parents and I had made some steps toward reconciliation over the past year, owing in part to the fact that I was not bringing up with them the calamity unfolding at the federal level. In the early months of 2026, however, as the abuses of ICE became ever more outrageous, feeling distraught and unable to remain silent any longer, I sent a carefully worded text message offering that if my parents had had any change of heart but had been too nervous to say anything about it, I was still inviting them to join with me. My dad responded with invective to my mild message, his words calculated to be as cutting as possible. Because of my elevated self-awareness, though, instead of being crushed by his words, I instead saw them as a sad commentary on his mindset. It finally confirmed for me that he is unlikely to ever change. So… what do I do with that? I would still like to have a relationship with my parents—don’t we all? How can I, when his go-to response to anything serious is to lash out in cruelty?

Not for nothing, but the title is also meaningful because my parents have long held resentment toward my grandmother (my mom’s mom) for their own personal reasons and also based on a belief that she influenced me into opposing them. As a result, at around the same time my relationship with my immediate family broke, my parents—and my siblings again, of course—cut off communication with my grandparents, even as their health was failing. Granddad died in 2022, estranged from his daughter and grandchildren, aside from me; afterward, my wife and I invited my grandmother to move to our city and we now live together in the same house. Still, though, my parents, brother, and sister refuse to have contact with her. The question of the book’s title, DO YOU STILL TALK TO GRANDMA?, therefore has personal significance for me. I certainly do still talk to Grandma, but the rest of my immediate family does not. I often wonder if they’ll come to regret it, or if, in a bid to preserve their self-identity, they will never allow themselves to. In short: everything’s fucked up.

So—a book which seemingly promises to help readers navigate these kinds of complicated relationships feels like it could well be a godsend. Unfortunately, this book does not make good on the promise of its title and subtitle. I half-wonder if the title/subtitle were not selected by the author but by the publisher instead, given how far off-base it is. The majority of the book is about internet cancel culture, with vague and unhelpful comments about being more forgiving of people for being human… while also holding them accountable, somehow! Don’t ask author Brit Barron how, though. That’s beyond the scope of this book. Here’s the direct quote, which I saved precisely because I thought it was a good representation of the book as a whole: “I don’t want a complete loosey-goosey world where people run around harming each other and there are no boundaries and no consequences, but I am asking if the road we are charting leads to transformation, growth, or to shame and guilt. And before you ask—no, I do not have the exact plans for that road.”

Barron is a Black, lesbian, former megachurch pastor (and… current regular-size church pastor?) and a lot of her writing is about leaving her megachurch because of its homophobic stance. She also early on describes the fallout from a friend making an insensitive remark which exhibited a lack of racial consciousness. The friend is Rachel Hollis, if that names means anything to you? It means nothing to me, but I got the sense that the author believed it should mean something to me by the way she writes, “I met Rachel Hollis around 2014.” I felt like the book was waiting for me to gasp in astonishment or something. Anyway, Barron writes that Hollis “shared a video on social media about not wanting to be relatable” which was “a big miss” and generated controversy. I found the vague way Barron writes about this odd. As a friend of Hollis, Barron became the target of criticism in online spaces as well, and so the book waffles between the author wrestling with how to manage her conflicting feelings toward her former megachurch and Boomer-style complaints about how the Internet is ruining our relationships.

So much of the book is about online “cancel culture”. I get the feeling there’s more to Barron’s story than she’s letting on which would explain why she’s so obsessive about being cancelled online. I wrote in one of my updates while reading: “Grandma isn’t online!” I mean, maybe some grandmas are, but that is not where “The Ones We Love”, referenced by the subtitle, can be found—they are with us in real life. I don’t know, maybe there is some truth to the idea that people are porting that Internet mindset of cutting people off for the slightest infraction to their real lives, but the book doesn’t have anything to say other than the general assertion that that’s bad. Okay? What would you recommend instead? Barron has no answers.

We have to be deeply committed to navigating the nuance that exists when we disagree with the ones we love—our grandparents and parents and partners, our friends and cousins. We must be willing to do the work that allows us to stay in relationships. We must draw and redraw boundaries, share stories and experiences, and ultimately find what I think most of us are looking for: a way to disagree with someone and still hold them close. And for goodness’ sake, if we are going to see the change in this world that we so desperately need, we have got to stop arguing with strangers on the internet.

I’m not sure why Barron has any authority to speak on this subject to begin with. Who chose to publish this book? She’s just some random disaffected Millennial like myself, not a scholar. There is exactly one footnote in this book, which is maybe worse than if there were none, and though this is me being maybe pettier than necessary, the citation was set off by an asterisk but then at the bottom of the page, the actual footnote it was set off by a cross. I checked the end of the chapter and back of the book to find out if the asterisk footnote was somewhere else, but nope—they just did not match. It’s not that this needed to be book laden with citations to studies and science, but to me it feels entirely anecdotal. When Barron does talk about a concept such as “progressive amnesia”, it just seems like something she’s made up out of whole cloth with no real backing behind it.

Frustrated as I was by the book’s failure to live up to expectations and by how slapdash it felt, I wasn’t totally against it. I did appreciate that Barron is navigating feelings that I found relatable. One moment of note is when she speaks about the boss at her megachurch who pretended to be nonpolitical in public but who actually held homophobic and sexist views. Her rage at him is palpable, but she considers whether she would feel any differently were he to renounce all his bad ideas and behavior:

What if he has privately undergone some sort of massive life transformation and now believes queer people are good and worthy people, and he has rejected his previously held patriarchal idea of power and leadership and become an advocate and ally of women? I genuinely believe him doing this or saying and believing these things publicly would get him a lot of praise, and that infuriates me. Why? why would it make me mad that someone changed? Transformed? Became more evolved and inclusive in their ideology? Because that’s what I want, ultimately, but I also want him to have to get it the hard way. I want it to be a painful process for him because it was a painful process for me. The idea that he could go from Mr. Riding the Line to Mr. Hero the Ally bothers me. I want him to be exposed for who he is now, before he changes his mind, and then I want him to go through consequences. I want him to be punished for what he believed, and I want him to feel bad about it and then I want him to change his mind. And that’s how I know I still have my own work to do.

This feeling of not just wanting the positive outcome, but vengeance to go along with it—I feel that. I also know it’s wrong to feel that way, but I feel it nevertheless. I do like feeling that sense of kinship with the author, that we are experiencing similar roiling emotions even if our particular circumstances are different. When she talks about the famous Rachel Hollis, she writes, “Just because there was a deep love and relationship, that didn’t mean the disappointment wasn’t real. So how to hold that tension? What was the magical equation I could use to calculate my relationships? Well, it turns out there isn’t one.” Once again… I get it. I will be forever seeking the exact right words, structured in the exact right order, which will be the key that will resolve all of the problems in my personal relationships. Even though I know that’s not realistic. But that desire, it’s relatable.

All of this is to explain why I did not give this book a 1-star Goodreads rating. I can definitely see an argument for doing so. “I love accountability. I love that there are real-life consequences for being racist. And I also wonder what comes next. Does accountability leave room for growth and change? Can we come back from making a mistake? Even if it was a racist one? What is the difference between consequences and punishment, and who is getting to decide these things?” Barron is great at asking questions, but has absolutely nothing to contribute in answer to them. The implication of the subtitle was that the book would offer advice on how to grapple with one’s inability to stop loving otherwise toxic people. The content of the book, for the most part, treats any toxic behavior as a “mistake” that will eventually be changed, and all its focus seems to be on loosening up on those who upset us. What is accountability, though, and what happens afterward? She has nothing to say about it. That vapidness honestly does kind of make me angry to think about.

Though not so angry that I loathed the book. Close, maybe, but not entirely. I related to some of her feelings and there are a few times where I believe she does hit on legitimate points. I mentioned the term “progressive amnesia” earlier, which is her description of a person’s tendency to forget their own journey to awareness when criticizing others for not being as “woke” as them. This strikes me as a true phenomenon which it would be good to be mindful of when dealing with others. Nevertheless, on the whole the book doesn’t have a lot to offer. I’m glad it was only 130 pages—a fairly quick read. If it had been longer, I may well have lost my patience with it entirely.

[Brian]

Should’ve been titled differently.. but a good memoir and short book regarding “cancel culture” and embracing nuance.

[Kenzie]

Normalize making the title and subtitle of your book related to your book. :/ also the writing was giving Instagram caption or podcast transcript

[Chandler]

about halfway thru this book i encountered a footnote, at which point i realized there is exactly one footnote in this book..! no sources...
this book mainly focused on how we interact with people online. there was very little advice on how to interact with people you regularly come into contact with in real life. like, there's a whole chapter on the merits and flaws of internet cancelling someone, but nothing about figuring out how to interact with the problematic relative you see at every holiday.

[Emily Olafson]

Read with Ben. There are some good ideas here but it mostly felt like it was trying to meet a word count minimum

[Jessica]

This is undoubtedly one of the best books I've read this year. The last chapter includes a lot of overlap with the keynote that first put Brit Barron on my radar, but all of it is great. Barron has captured the challenging nuance of wanting to hold people accountable while still leaving room for growth and learning, and wanting to set boundaries while having clarity on when and where to draw the line. She vulnerably shares real stories of her own missteps throughout her life (I'm still feeling vicarious pain from the wedding video mistake) to illustrate the very human tendencies to either cover up or double down on mistakes. Her section on "progressive amnesia" is spot on; in many ways, this provided the personal conviction I expected and failed to get from We Have Never Been Woke. It's so true that when we learn we've caused harm, we don't want to spend the time sitting in that pain that's needed to offer compassion to the person who's two days or two years behind us on the journey. The sections on consequences vs. punishment and racial identity development were also excellent. I wouldn't necessarily recommend the audiobook because Barron, despite being a pastor, doesn't quite have the engaging audiobook narrator voice you might want, but if you can do text, the book's only around 160 pages so there's no excuse not to pick it up. I'd highly recommend this one.

[Joanne]

The title didn’t quite match the book I expected. Based on it—and the cute cover—I thought this would be more of a practical, how-to guide for navigating painfully awkward conversations with relatives and coworkers steeped in racism, MAGA, seventies-era insensitivity, or general cluelessness. And to a degree, it is that—but it’s also much more social-scientific than I anticipated, with thoughtful discussions of internet brain, cancel culture, and modern social dynamics that, frankly, Grandma would have no idea what you’re talking about.

That said, I found it smart, engaging, and genuinely conversational. Brit Barron is clearly a deeply kind, empathetic, and thoughtful person, and that comes through strongly—especially in the audiobook, which she narrates herself and does beautifully. Her tone feels generous rather than scolding, curious rather than combative.

What really sealed it for me, though, was a passage in the final chapter. Barron shares a Pixar executive principle I’d never heard before: release the project at 80%, because otherwise nothing ever gets done. She marvels that Toy Story 3—a film many of us would call perfect—was someone’s 80% effort. As someone who works in a creative field, that stopped me in my tracks. Brilliant. The point isn’t perfect execution; it’s action. Inaction is the real failure.

Her larger message lands clearly: act from who you are and what you can realistically handle. That’s how change actually happens—incrementally, imperfectly, humanely. As she reminds us, plant trees for shade you may never sit under.

Thoughtful, compassionate, and unexpectedly motivating.

[Elyse Crimmins]

This book forces you to consider another way besides cutting people out of your life for voting for Trump - a task I have accepted very easily. What’s much harder is embracing the nuance of difficult relationships and allowing this gap in beliefs to act as a space to kindly explain why you believe what you do, and what voting for Trump threatens for your life and identity.

I think a lot about my Dad voting for Trump and what feels like a denial of me in my identity as a woman, a priority he seems not to hold above the state of the economy. That pain comes out when we get into any conversation surrounding political issues (that shouldn’t be politicized, might I add) and I get overly emotional trying to advocate for myself and marginalized people around the world. Barron highlights the complexity of transforming your pain so you don’t transmit your pain, a recurring quote in my life as of recent. Transforming this pain is the only way I can get past my emotions in these conversations and lead with kindness and understanding while continuing to advocate for what I believe. THOSE conversations are, to me, 1000x more likely to be conducive to changed understandings and informed perspectives. Highly recommend this book — very very timely!

[Sarah Grace]

I keep recommending this book to friends. I am grateful for Brit Baron’s honest look at online culture and the ways we fuel our own anxieties and polarizations. I ALSO can only recommend this book bc she never lets go of accountability for behavior in favor of “both sideism.” The word that comes to mind about this perspective is “sensible.” I think she can help us keep our feet on the ground and learn to live in the inevitable tensions in our relationships due to different perspectives and life experiences. This book is humble and vulnerable, while having something important to say. Read it, then call me and let’s chat!

[trinity ⋆‧°𓏲ּ𝄢]

This book was not what I was expecting- the title made it seem like it was about estranged family which is what I wanted to read about lol. Nonetheless it was a short read so I powered through anyway and I did agree with a lot of her opinions on cancel culture, racism, internet brain, progressive amnesia. She has a way with words and overall I did enjoy it, however it’s just not my kind of read, also was not what I was thinking it was. The title really doesn’t correlate with the story lol. 3/5 stars ⭐️

[Karen]

This tiny, powerful book is packed with a lot of things to think about, including suggestions on how to process difficult situations with family and friends. This author explains that life is not one side or the other and that we are always changing. I was hoping the book would provide a magic way to get through this crazy world, but it's up to each of us to work through our hurdles and conflicts. But we also have the grace to make mistakes.

[nyloraC]

I had the pleasure of meeting Brit Barron last month, and I really liked what she had to say in her lecture. I wanted to read this book so I could have a better understanding of how to hold a relationship with family members who are problematic.