378: What Do You Say to a Teen Who Won’t Listen to Warnings?

Cecilia Gonzalez joins Dr. Sandie Morgan to talk about the ten years she spent in an abusive relationship that started at fourteen, and how she now teaches teens to catch the first yellow flag before it happens to them.

Cecilia Gonzalez

Cecilia Gonzalez is the Human Trafficking Prevention Coordinator at Higher Ground Youth and Family Services in Orange County. Her students know her as Ceci. She is part of a team that delivers near peer prevention in local middle and high schools, teaching from lived experience rather than from a textbook, and she builds her presentations around quotes and stories that teens recognize from their own lives. She entered an abusive relationship at fourteen with an older partner and stayed in it for ten years, a decade she now uses to show students how control can arrive disguised as protection. She left at twenty-four, when her oldest daughter was two months old. Today she is raising three daughters, and she talks with students about la tóxica, love bombing, the silent treatment, and the rights every young person has: to feel safe at home, to be a kid, and to be loved in a healthy way.

Key Points

Control often arrives in the language of protection, which is why it survives the first look. Ceci’s partner came to her soccer practices to walk her home safely, and that became the reason she should stop playing.
The silent treatment is the first flag most teens miss. Someone who cares will have the conversation about what went wrong; withholding it is a punishment, and it shows up long before anything physical does.
An apology that arrives as a gift is one more turn of the cycle. He broke her phone whenever he got angry and replaced it within hours with one her parents could not have afforded, which made the next break easier to absorb.
Time in the wrong relationship is the cost that compounds. Ceci tells students, “If you get on the wrong bus, make sure you get off on the first stop,” because she stayed on from fourteen to twenty-four.
Blame does its damage by moving the rules off the record. Once she was reading his face for permission he never had to forbid anything out loud, and she started deciding for herself not to see her friends.
A teen’s playlist is a way in, and calling it bad music closes the door. Ceci wanted her mother to ask why she loved the sad, heartbroken songs she played loud enough to get told to turn them down.
Home sets the first model of love, so prevention starts before any relationship does. Ceci grew up without a picture of what affection looks like and assembled one from television, the same gap she now watches teens fill with Euphoria.
Teens act on rights before they act on warning signs. Ceci says the first two skills would have been lost on her at fourteen, but “Hey, Ceci, you have rights” would have landed: the right to feel safe at home, to be a kid, and to be loved in a healthy way.

Resources

Transcript

[00:00:00] Cecilia Gonzalez: I think one of the hardest things I kinda had to deal with after I left my abusive ex was learning how to unlove all that unhealthy behavior. I had been surrounded for it for so long that I really thought that’s what love was, and it was actually easier to go back than to go forward, but I really had to find the strength to keep going forward for this baby that I now have.

[00:00:31] Jamie: She spent 10 years in an abusive relationship. Now she teaches teens to catch the first yellow flag before it happens to them. “It’s not a red flag,” she says. “It’s a yellow one, and it’s easy to miss.” Hi, I’m Jamie Macintosh, the program director for Safe Communities, Safe Kids at the Global Center for Women and Justice.

[00:00:49] Today, Sandie talks with Cecilia Gonzalez. Her students know her as Ceci, and she’s a human trafficking prevention coordinator at Higher Ground Youth and Family Services. She’s spent years building near peer prevention programs for middle and high schoolers, teaching from experience instead of a textbook.

[00:01:08] And now, here’s their conversation.

[00:01:12] Sandie Morgan: I am so happy to be here in the studio today with Cecilia Gonzalez. She is a human trafficking prevention leader at Higher Ground here in Orange County, and is part of a team that goes out and does near peer prevention in the schools. And there’s such a fabulous energy that happens when there’s more of a peer connection in prevention.

[00:01:50] And we call you Ceci. Can I call you Ceci here?

[00:01:53] Cecilia Gonzalez: Yes, please do so.

[00:01:55] Sandie Morgan: I’m so glad to have you.

[00:01:57] Cecilia Gonzalez: Thank you so much for having me today, Sandie.

[00:02:01] Sandie Morgan: So here’s what we’re gonna do, and for my listeners, it’s gonna be a little different than usual. Ceci is a master storyteller and very connected still to her early teen years, and that lived experience expertise really comes across in her prevention presentations with high schoolers and middle schoolers.

[00:02:31] So I think as a mom, well, really, I’m a grandmother, but as parents and grandparents and aunts and uncles, we are sometimes at a loss for how to communicate with our teens in today’s world, where we see risk on the internet, in emails, in social media, and there’s another app I haven’t heard of. So I wanna have a conversation like I’m a mom or a grandma that wants to talk to my teen, and I need expertise from you, Ceci.

[00:03:15] Does that sound good to you?

[00:03:16] Cecilia Gonzalez: That sounds great. I hope I can be of much help today.

[00:03:20] Sandie Morgan: Oh, I am so sure that you can. So here we go. You shared that growing up for you was not always in a safe space. You were home, you weren’t on the street, but it shaped how you thought normal was in relationships, all kinds of relationships. So looking back, what do you wish someone had taught you about healthy relationships based on your lived experience?

[00:04:03] Cecilia Gonzalez: I think one thing that I wish that I would’ve been taught at home was that love really starts at home, right? That is a foundation of what love can be like, right? I come from a Hispanic household, so therefore love is just not a language that we speak in our home. It’s more of something that we kinda saw on TV, right?

[00:04:29] Growing up, my parents didn’t really hug me or talk to me with kind words and stuff. So I think if they would’ve kinda showed me exactly how love worked and how it looks like, I think I would’ve been able to go out into the world with a different perspective.

[00:04:51] Sandie Morgan: So let’s think about what does it feel like when home is not a safe place? Because some of my listeners are school counselors. They’re trying to convince a 14-year-old, “You shouldn’t run away. You should go home.” How do you hear that?

[00:05:13] Cecilia Gonzalez: Well, I think it’s way more complicated. Don’t run away, right? That’s probably an easy answer from an adult, but we’re not looking at it through the perspective of that kid at that time. There’s only so much we can do, right, as kids. So our easy way out is, “Okay, let’s go somewhere else.

[00:05:36] Here is not safe. Let’s just go somewhere else.” And we end up making friends, right? We end up meeting people, and we think that the grass is greener on the other side, and we end up going.

[00:05:51] Sandie Morgan: Okay, so you’re actually starting to peel back a couple layers, because what I want to affirm in a teenager, I maybe am their trusted adult, is when they say, “I don’t feel safe there,” or, “I need to go someplace else,” that’s what we teach in the Human Trafficking Prevention Program.

[00:06:21] Listen to your gut. Listen to your instinct. So you may not have a place to go, but you’re trying to escape an unsafe space, and we need to understand that about our young people.

[00:06:41] Cecilia Gonzalez: Yes. And honestly, it starts with home. If home isn’t safe and we don’t feel okay at home, it literally is a domino effect of everything in our life after that. Which is how I think I ended up in a very abusive relationship. Because home wasn’t safe, I was looking for safety, I was looking for protection.

[00:07:05] And unfortunately, I thought I had found it with someone, and that turned out to not be the case.

[00:07:15] Sandie Morgan: So here you are, a young person, and you know you’re not in a good place, so you leave it, and you look for a way out. And then, as you said just a few minutes ago, you make new friends. You find new people. And so you don’t jump into a relationship where someone is beating you. It doesn’t start like that.

[00:07:43] Are there some subtle warning signs that we should be talking about with our teens?

[00:07:53] Cecilia Gonzalez: Yes, definitely. I think the easiest sign to be able to tell that you’re in an abusive relationship is physical, right? If someone hits you, we’re kind of taught that since we’re kids. If someone pushes you, that’s probably not a good friend, right? So we know how to tell physical abuse, but we don’t know how to tell when it’s emotional abuse, right?

[00:08:14] That’s a little bit harder, or when they’re manipulating you. So in my case, I think I missed the red flags in my relationship at the very beginning because, like I said, I was looking for protection, and that abuse came as an overprotection. So because the word protection was still there, I still accepted it.

[00:08:42] So if we can talk to our teens and just ask them, “Are you okay?” Right?

[00:08:48] Sandie Morgan: So give me an example of a conversation that sounded like love but was actually some form of control.

[00:09:00] Cecilia Gonzalez: When I was in high school, as you may know, I shared that I was in a very toxic relationship, abusive relationship. So at fourteen, I started dating an older individual, and I used to love to play soccer. That was my thing. Soccer was my escape goat from everything. And at the beginning, my partner was very supportive, right?

[00:09:25] “This is what you love doing. Yes, I’ll go with you.” Him going with me to my soccer games wasn’t to protect me. It was more because he wanted to see what I was doing and who was coming around. But he said it was to protect me. “Your soccer practices are sometimes late. I wanna be able to maybe walk you home and be there for you.”

[00:09:52] Once again, it looked like protection, like he really cared, but it was more that he was trying to control me because from that it led to, “Oh, well, maybe you shouldn’t play anymore,” or, “Maybe you’re overworking yourself,” or, “It’s too dark. You shouldn’t be walking in the nights by yourself.”

[00:10:10] Sandie Morgan: So he wanted to monitor your other communication with other people and started to isolate you really. Those are red flags. And how did you feel… I sometimes talk to people and young people particularly, and they say things to me like, “Well, it’s okay because it’s because he loves me so much that he gets jealous.”

[00:10:42] Talk to me about jealousy.

[00:10:44] Cecilia Gonzalez: Jealousy, especially in the times that we live in, with TV and songs and everything, they normalize that behavior. And kids want something like that because they think that is what love is. But no, that is definitely the wrong perception of what love is. And for example, la tóxica is something that we talk a lot when we go and we talk to the kids.

[00:11:12] Everybody either wants to be dating la tóxica, someone that’s toxic, someone that’s controlling them, someone that’s monitoring them because they care, right? We confuse the jealousy with caring, and in reality, someone that is jealous doesn’t really care. They’re selfish. But our kids are understanding or interpreting that way different because of the times that we live in.

[00:11:39] Sandie Morgan: So how do I talk to my, let’s say my granddaughter, who is very energized by this guy really cares about me. He goes to my games. He shows up when I finish classes. He wants to pick me up. And he’s the last text at night. Where are the red flags there, and how does that show up in the next stage in a toxic, abusive relationship?

[00:12:21] Cecilia Gonzalez: I have three daughters, right? And if my oldest daughter ever came to me and talked to me about someone that would pick her up and take her here and take her that, I think I would talk to her about the stages of love, right? We have the honeymoon phase. How does the honeymoon phase look like?

[00:12:40] How does it feel like? It’s not just about talking about what it is, but it’s also talking about how it should feel. Because a lot of people are in relationships and they have anxiety, but they also love the person at the same time, but they also fear the person at certain times when maybe arguments come up.

[00:13:02] So if we have love with something else followed up with something else, then that’s a red flag that that is not love, because love should not hurt.

[00:13:14] Sandie Morgan: So did you at some point feel like you were resisting being so closed in and maybe even feeling trapped? Or did you just feel like finally somebody really cares where I am all the time?

[00:13:35] Cecilia Gonzalez: I think it was the second one. I felt like I was actually seen. Someone noticed me and someone was seeing me for who I was. We talked about home wasn’t really a safe place, that I kinda hid a lot, I would cover myself up, things like that, that when I met this individual, he would see who I was and he would tell me, “Oh, you’re so pretty.

[00:14:05] You’re…” He would give me so many compliments to just make me feel good. And just the fact that he made me be seen, I think, is what…

[00:14:15] Sandie Morgan: So the 14-year-old you would not listen to me telling you that’s a red flag.

[00:14:22] Cecilia Gonzalez: No, I would not.

[00:14:24] Sandie Morgan: So how am I supposed to get you to see that?

[00:14:29] Cecilia Gonzalez: One thing that I use with the kids when I go and give the presentations on the human trafficking prevention, I love to use a lot of quotes because I think I’ve been able to identify myself and the situations that I’ve kind of lived through, through them. And one of the quotes that I do like to tell the kids is, “If you get on the wrong bus, make sure you get off on the first stop.

[00:14:56] The longer you stay on, the more expensive the return trip is gonna cost you.” We’re obviously not talking about trains, right?

[00:15:07] But we’re talking about relationships and time, right? I was with my abusive ex for 10 years.

[00:15:16] Sandie Morgan: Ah.

[00:15:16] Cecilia Gonzalez: Yes, from 14 to 24.

[00:15:18] Sandie Morgan: That was an expensive return ticket.

[00:15:22] Cecilia Gonzalez: Very expensive, yes. But I tell the kids, I’m like, “Some of the things that I told myself that maybe you guys may think of is I can fix him.

[00:15:35] I can fix him. And do you guys think we really can fix anyone?” Their answer is always no. They know the right answer. I’m like, “So then why do we stay longer than we need to?” Right?

[00:15:49] Sandie Morgan: So, okay, so wait, let’s back up. So you are telling me while you were in this relationship, you started using fix it language. He’s gonna change. So you did feel uncomfortable. You did see things that you wanted changed.

[00:16:12] Cecilia Gonzalez: I did. I did because just like every other relationship, our relationship started off great. But then little by little it turned to unhealthy and then it turned abusive. And when I started to see the difference between how he started to how it was, the turn that it was taking, I kinda knew, “Okay, I think I need to leave.”

[00:16:39] But I saw a lot of love bombing. At 14 I didn’t know what love bombing was.

[00:16:45] Sandie Morgan: Well, tell us

[00:16:46] Cecilia Gonzalez: did.

[00:16:47] Sandie Morgan: bombing?

[00:16:47] Cecilia Gonzalez: Love bombing is when they… He would do something horrible but then he would follow up with it with a gift or with attention. So obviously 10 years ago, no I’m talking about like 2014.

[00:17:03] 2014, 2010. Cellphones weren’t a thing, right? They were just starting to come into play. And I remember I didn’t have a cellphone, but because he was older and he had a job he purchased a phone. And when he would get upset with me he would break the phone. He would just break the phone. But then within two to three hours he would show back up to my house with a new phone, right?

[00:17:31] And apologize. “I’m really sorry I acted that way. I shouldn’t have flipped like that. I’m sorry. But here look, I got you a new phone. So here you go.” So it was a gift, and it was an expensive gift, and it was also a gift that my parents couldn’t afford either. So it was just a cycle. I would accept it but then he would break another phone and then he would show up with another one.

[00:17:56] Sandie Morgan: Wow. So this cycle of damaging property became that cycle of violence that we talk about in domestic violence, and we don’t talk about it as much in early teen relationships. We talk about it with dating violence, but when you’re 14 and you’re going to a soccer game, and he’s coming along and protecting you, making sure you’re not going home after dark and things, I get the impression from my conversations, and I’m thinking about my granddaughter and my niece, they’re not thinking of that as dating.

[00:18:47] So when we have a dating violence conference or seminar, it doesn’t apply to them, ’cause that’s not what they’re doing. How am I going to communicate this idea of an unhealthy relationship? And really, I don’t even like unhealthy relationship, because it makes things really vague, and oh, we don’t wanna actually talk about the fact that one minute he’s saying, “You’re gorgeous,” and the next minute, he’s saying, “I don’t think you should eat those french fries.

[00:19:28] You’re putting on some weight,” and he takes food off of your plate. And those things happen. I hear these stories, and we make excuses and think, well, he’ll understand next time. So this idea that you start to think, “I can fix it,” what can I as your trusted adult, your aunt, your mom, your grandmother, say to you, or is it something I should do to help you be empowered to pay attention to your own instincts, your own discomfort, and break out of that trap?

[00:20:17] Cecilia Gonzalez: I think the best thing is learning by showing. Show us at home how the world is supposed to treat us, right? I think it all starts at home. If at home we’re seeing maybe love and affection the healthy way, then we’re gonna go out into the world and mimic that same love and affection.

[00:20:43] If we’re not even seeing it in the household, then we’re gonna start to create this illusion of what it should look like. And in today’s times, with the show Euphoria, I don’t know if you heard of it, it’s very, very unhealthy, but because it’s such a popular show that teens love, they think that that’s how love is supposed to work.

[00:21:06] But if they see at home that the way love is actually supposed to look like, they’ll know the difference. “Oh, Maddy? Yeah, no, Maddy, you gotta go.” That is not healthy. That is not how love should be.

[00:21:20] Sandie Morgan: So that’s gonna be really difficult for some of the teens in my life who start out just like you did, Ceci, and home wasn’t safe, and they didn’t see that. But now we’re trying to build other experiences, at least in our community, in a classroom, in an after-school program, in a youth group activity.

[00:21:48] And I want to empower these kids so that they begin to recognize the signs and a way to escape that cycle. Get off the bus, as you say, as soon as possible, the next stop. And one of the next stops that I’ve seen is this pattern where we see that someone starts walking on eggshells because the partner says, “Well, it’s your fault.

[00:22:28] You made me angry. If you hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have thrown the phone from the second-story balcony. I didn’t break the phone. You did, because you made me mad.” How did that kind of blaming affect your confidence? And what did you do to start advocating for yourself?

[00:22:54] Cecilia Gonzalez: I think it affected my confidence a lot, and my decision-making in the sense that I was able to tell, okay, when I do what he says, things are fine. But as soon as I do something that he is blaming me for, things just erupt. So I started to walk on eggshells and kinda look at him for permission or to just read his face expressions on how he would react on certain things that I would do.

[00:23:25] And then I started to kinda pick up on those cues. Okay, when I go out with my friends, he has an attitude. He doesn’t like it. We tend to get into a fight really quick. Okay, maybe I shouldn’t do that. So although he wasn’t necessarily telling me, “Hey, you cannot do this,” that was the message that he was sending me, based off what he would do.

[00:23:52] Sandie Morgan: How did you escape that? How did you walk away from that kind of control and start advocating for yourself?

[00:24:01] Cecilia Gonzalez: So this is probably gonna sound a little silly, but I did say that I have three kids. My oldest is gonna be nine this year, and I remember that when she was two months, I was doing her laundry, her little tiny laundry, right? At this point, I’m 24, and back in the days, we used to have the… I had the TV turned on to the MTV channel, right?

[00:24:25] And a bunch of music videos are playing as I’m folding laundry. And the song from Lil Wayne, “How to Love.” I don’t know if you’ve heard of it, probably not, or even seen the video. That music video comes on. And as I’m sitting there doing her laundry, I’m watching the video and I…

[00:24:48] It hit me like a pile of rocks. I was like, “I now have this two-month-old baby, and she depends on me.” And the music video just talks about if a child is raised in a healthy environment, how that child can thrive. But if that child is raised in a toxic, unhealthy, abusive environment, how the future for that child turns out to be.

[00:25:10] And I was like, “Over my dead body will my daughter experience what I have experienced.” So I needed to get her out, not necessarily me, because I wasn’t worth it, or at the time, that’s what I thought. But she was worth it, and I needed her to get out of it. So that day, her dad came home, and I pretty much told him, “Hey, you gotta go.

[00:25:35] We’re done.” And he thought it was another break… She’s mad. “She’s breaking up with me, but I’ll be back in two to three hours when she’s over it,” right? Because it was that cycle of abuse. But this time I was for real, “No, you’re not coming back.” And he left that day, and I left him.

[00:25:54] Sandie Morgan: Wow. Congratulations. You got off the bus.

[00:25:58] Cecilia Gonzalez: I finally did.

[00:26:00] Sandie Morgan: So the other thing I learned from this is my gut reaction when I listen to music that is not helpful is to just turn everything off, but here you are watching MTV, and I was raising kids when MTV was on, and now there are all kinds of other things that have replaced it.

[00:26:28] How am I, as the trusted adult, going to be able to know when music is helpful and I can support that and provide that?

[00:26:40] Cecilia Gonzalez: I think when growing up, when I was at my parents’ house, I used to play music so loud to the point where my mom would be like, “Hey, can you lower your music?” Right? But the type of music that I was playing was super sad, heartbroken. It talked a lot about how the other partner didn’t appreciate you or they would cheat on you.

[00:27:06] They would do a lot of things, right? And I think if she was able to actually listen to what I was listening to or just pay close attention to the lyrics, she could have just asked, “Oh, that’s a really great song. Why do you like it so much?” Right? Don’t tell me it’s a bad song, because then we’re not gonna talk, right?

[00:27:26] But tell me that it’s a good song, and then ask me why I like it, right? And I think that opens up conversation with our kids, right? What are they listening to? Why do they listen to that? Are we really gonna understand why they listen to what they listen? Probably not, right? We have different taste in music.

[00:27:45] But it’s a great starter for a conversation to actually see how they feel.

[00:27:51] Sandie Morgan: What about from the 14-year-old’s perspective? If they actually, maybe driving home from a soccer game, mom puts this podcast on and they’re listening to our conversation, what are maybe two or three skills that you’d want them to have so they could recognize warning signs and learn how to build those healthy relationships, and maybe even identify, “Oh my gosh, I need to get off the bus right now”?

[00:28:27] Cecilia Gonzalez: I think the first one’s gonna be communication. The first skill we need is to be able to communicate and be able to tell when someone doesn’t wanna communicate with us. And also read the silent treatment. The silent treatment is so big, and it’s a yellow flag. It’s not a red flag, it’s a yellow flag.

[00:28:47] So if someone is giving you the silent treatment, whether it’s a friend or a partner, then that’s your first yellow flag. You wanna leave that relationship because someone that cares about you should be able to have a conversation on what the issue is. They don’t wanna punish you, but they wanna fix it because they care about you.

[00:29:08] So I think that’s the first one, communication. A second skill I think that they should leave this podcast with would be with respect and equality, right? It has to be equal. If they’re letting you go hang out with your friends, but when you come back they’re upset or they’re not really talking to you, and you pick up on a weird vibe, there’s no equality there, right?

[00:29:37] Because they let you do something, but then now, once again, they’re punishing you because you did something you wanted to do.

[00:29:44] Sandie Morgan: So it’s that idea of I’m letting you do something. It’s like you don’t have that agency in my life to let me.

[00:29:53] Cecilia Gonzalez: Yes.

[00:29:54] Sandie Morgan: Okay, third thing.

[00:29:56] Cecilia Gonzalez: I think the third and most important thing, because to be honest, as a 14-year-old, I don’t think I would’ve listened to the first one or the second one.

[00:30:05] Sandie Morgan: You’re so…

[00:30:07] Cecilia Gonzalez: I think if someone would’ve told me, “Hey, Ceci, you have rights,” I think I would’ve been like, “Okay. What do you mean I have rights? What are those rights?” Right? The right to feel safe at home, the right to be a kid and live your life, the right to be loved in a healthy way, right? To not feel that anxiety, to not feel afraid.

[00:30:40] So if we cannot just leave with, “Hey, you have rights,” and remember that, I think that’s gonna save us a lot, right? Because if the right of being safe isn’t being met, then let’s reach out to someone, right? How can we feel safe? If we’re in a relationship where love and anxiety hold hands, or love and fear hold hands, or we share the same emotions at the same time, love and fear, then that’s not love.

[00:31:11] Then we need to talk to someone. We need to reach out. Because although, like you said, a lot of teens don’t talk about teen dating abuse, it really does happen. It happens, and we don’t speak up about it. I think this is the first time I’m telling you about it. I obviously talk to the kids about it because I want them to learn from my mistakes.

[00:31:31] But I never told my parents the abuse that I did endure when I was a teen. I recently just told a family member about a month ago, and it’s been years, and they’re like, “We had no clue. He loved you, and he treated you so well in public that we had no clue.” So if we’re dealing with this behind closed doors, we need to open the doors and let other people in to help us because it’s not gonna be an easy process.

[00:32:06] I think one of the hardest things I kinda had to deal with after I left my abusive ex was learning how to unlove all that unhealthy behavior. I had been surrounded for it for so long that I really thought that’s what love was, and it was actually easier to go back than to go forward, but I really had to find the strength to keep going forward for this baby that I now have.

[00:32:34] Yes, it’s going to hurt. Yes, we’re going to be sad, but there’s support out there, and there’s people that we can talk to that have experienced something similar to us. And we’re going to be fine. It’s not worth that abuse. It’s not worth sitting on that train for so long.

[00:32:51] Sandie Morgan: So open the door, number one, and let somebody in, and identify a trusted adult. And when I’m having a conversation and I figure out I’m not that person, I am going to find that person for the young person in my life. And I may be grandma and I want to be the trusted adult, but I don’t even know how to find an MTV video.

[00:33:20] So maybe I’m going to try to pull in an aunt or even an uncle, but somebody else, because somebody that you can be honest with, you can open the door, will help make the transition that you made when you got off the bus and started back to home base and the real you. Ceci, you’re amazing, and I appreciate your honesty and transparency today, and we’ll keep the conversation going.

[00:33:57] Cecilia Gonzalez: Yes, definitely.

[00:33:59] Sandie Morgan: Thank you for being with me today.

[00:34:02] Cecilia Gonzalez: Thank you, Sandie.

[00:34:05] Jamie: Thank you to Cecilia Gonzalez for this conversation. She left us with three things every teen should know: how to communicate, how to expect equality in a relationship, and how to recognize when their rights aren’t being respected.

[00:34:19] Listeners, if you enjoyed this conversation, make sure you check out our website at endinghumantrafficking.org for tons of in-depth show notes and other resources.

[00:34:28] If you’d love to help us grow this podcast, you can start by sharing this episode with someone and connecting with us on Facebook, Instagram, or LinkedIn. And as always, thanks for listening.