Prince Harry's ＂SPARE＂ Is A DISASTER ⧸⧸ Ep. 4 ＊book review＊
Episode Stats
Words per Minute
168.38242
Summary
I read Prince Harry's Spare and I have so many thoughts about why the Israelites needed to put blood on their doorposts in Egypt. And do I believe that IVF is wrong? All this and more on today's episode of the Classically Abbey Podcast.
Transcript
00:00:00.000
I read Spare and I have so many thoughts why the Israelites needed to put blood on their
00:00:05.940
doorposts in Egypt. And do I believe that IVF is wrong? All this and more on today's episode of
00:00:30.000
Hello and welcome to today's episode of the Classically Abbey podcast. I'm so glad you are
00:00:36.640
here. If you are new to the podcast, make sure to subscribe so that you can see all of our new
00:00:42.080
episodes, all of my new episodes. And if you would prefer to watch the podcast rather than listen to
00:00:49.540
it, then you can head over to my YouTube and subscribe there as well. I hope you guys are
00:00:55.180
doing great. And in today's episode, our main portion is going to be about Prince Harry's
00:01:01.900
Spare, the book that he just came out with. I'm a little bit late to the game on this,
00:01:07.420
just a little bit, because I wanted to make sure I actually had read the whole thing before giving
00:01:11.900
my review. I kind of gave a mini review and I had listened to just the first bit, a little bit of
00:01:18.440
the first portion. And now I can actually talk about it. And I want to explain why I feel that
00:01:26.440
it's important to talk about in the first place, why this isn't just gossip, but why I think it's
00:01:30.720
relevant to what we talk about here at Classically Abbey. So we'll also be doing our weekly catch-up,
00:01:37.240
our faith talk, and stay tuned till the end where I'll be answering my premium subscriber questions.
00:01:43.280
Now, if you want to submit questions for future episodes, make sure to become a premium subscriber
00:01:48.280
on my Substack. It's at classicallyabbey.substack.com. It's just $7 a month and you'll get access to my
00:01:55.020
book club, as well as exclusive weekly articles and a bunch of other great things. We have an
00:02:00.100
amazing community over there and it's only $7 a month. Or if you pay for the whole year,
00:02:05.540
you'll get two months for free. So if you like the podcast, make sure to share it with your friends,
00:02:11.640
with your family. And I would love if you would leave a review on Apple Podcasts. It's always good
00:02:16.880
for my podcast if you do so. But now let's get into our weekly catch-up. So I have a few things
00:02:25.260
to share. It's been a busy couple of weeks, starting with the fact that my son caught hand,
00:02:31.400
foot, and mouth. So I don't know if you have kids. I'm sure you know what hand, foot, and mouth is.
00:02:36.040
If you don't, it's like sores that show up on the hands, the feet, and in the mouth. My son has now
00:02:42.140
had it twice, which is crazy because he's not even in daycare. He's just at home with me. But
00:02:46.900
it's probably because we go to synagogue. So he's still spending time with other kiddos. And he has
00:02:54.100
had it twice. It is no fun. The first time he had it was at six months and he ran 104 fever,
00:03:01.240
which was really scary. He actually went to the emergency room that time. And this time,
00:03:05.580
I think maybe because he's a little older, he only ran 102.5. And then again, he woke up in the
00:03:10.140
middle of the night. He had spiked his fever again. But he's doing pretty well. He's recovering
00:03:15.740
well. But basically what that meant is that my week has been taking care of my son and not doing
00:03:24.260
a lot of work and trying to cram work into the pockets of time in which he's sleeping or whatever
00:03:30.580
else. Someone else is watching him or something. But it's always crazy. And I'm sure moms can relate
00:03:35.400
that when your kid is not feeling well or is sick, then you are twice as busy because you are trying
00:03:44.900
to figure out how to get things done that you need to get done while also being a lot more engaged with
00:03:52.340
your children because you have to take care of them a lot in a much more intense way. So that's been
00:03:57.460
that's been hard, but he's doing a lot better. And that's the important thing. We're actually going
00:04:03.180
to get his first haircut today. I know I can't believe it. He's almost a year old. And we're
00:04:10.300
going to talk about that in a future episode. But I'm planning his birthday party. And I'm really
00:04:14.620
excited about it. But he's getting his first haircut today. And it's really interesting because Mr.
00:04:20.900
Baby Nubber actually lost his hair. He was born with like a full head of hair. And he never lost it.
00:04:25.320
He's always had a very nice head of hair. And so now the end is starting to get really long
00:04:31.040
and curling out. And it's time for his first haircut. And we're we're both excited to see
00:04:37.120
what he's going to look like because it really does make a baby look like a little boy. So
00:04:41.200
that's amazing. But also it's just like he's getting big so fast. How is this happening? I
00:04:46.760
don't I don't even know. We've been going to the library. So I don't know if you guys have
00:04:52.440
been to your local library, but you should go going to the library is the best number one
00:04:58.240
free entertainment. It's awesome. Number two, reading is great. I'm a big proponent
00:05:03.040
of reading. Number three, it's a new environment for Mr. Baby to explore. And it's a place for us
00:05:09.500
to go just even a couple times a week for him to just crawl around and enjoy a new space. I put him
00:05:17.620
down in the little kids room while we look for books to bring home. And he has such a good time.
00:05:23.460
I am such a big fan of the library. I didn't go for a long time, but I'm trying to remember when
00:05:29.740
I started going in Omaha when we lived in Omaha for a year. That was, I think, the first place I
00:05:34.660
had gotten my library card since childhood. And I loved going to the library when I started going
00:05:44.040
even more in Virginia and now here. So if you have a local library, even if you don't have kids yet,
00:05:50.860
check it out because free books, awesome. Also free magazines and free movies. Why not? But if you
00:05:58.460
have kids, it's even more fun. Like you have a place to spend time with your kids that's free,
00:06:03.880
that they enjoy. And a lot of the time they have like readings and things like that. And now that
00:06:08.520
we just shifted over my son's nap schedule, we should be able to go to some of the readings for
00:06:16.080
little babies that they do because originally it was during his nap, but we are shifting around his
00:06:21.560
nap schedule right now, which is stressful, but exciting. I shouldn't, I'm like getting derailed.
00:06:28.160
I have a whole list of things to talk about in our weekly catch up, but I have so many things
00:06:32.260
I want to, I keep like bringing up that I want to mention. I don't know why I feel like I haven't
00:06:38.420
talked to you guys in a while, which is ridiculous because I talk to you every week, but still,
00:06:42.180
I feel like I haven't talked to you guys in a while. So hi, I missed you. Um, but it's really
00:06:47.080
funny because Mr. Baby the other night, so while he was dealing with hand, foot and mouth,
00:06:52.780
generally my policy is if he is sick, I don't wake him up from naps. I just let him sleep as much as
00:06:59.620
he needs so he can recover. Well, that was a mistake because on Friday, uh, he took a nap and he fell
00:07:08.660
asleep around four and I let him sleep till six, but his bedtime is usually seven 30 to eight.
00:07:15.240
Well, he did not go to sleep until 10 and then he woke up at 12 45 and was ready to party.
00:07:22.400
So the two of us hung out while he played with his toys between 12 45 and 3 AM. And then he slept from
00:07:29.680
three till eight o'clock. So basically he treated his first part of the night between 10 and 12 45
00:07:37.840
as like a nap. And then he woke up and was awake. Uh, it was not the best. And that was when I talked
00:07:45.100
to my dad and he is a big fan of talking about baby sleep. And he said, you know, let's just do one
00:07:51.140
nap today, even though he normally does two and then we'll see how he sleeps. And last night he slept
00:07:57.780
from seven 30 PM till six 40 AM just straight through no wake ups. It was awesome. So now I'm
00:08:07.580
kind of going off my dad's new recommendation for his nap schedule, which is a half hour in the morning,
00:08:12.140
just to get him through to his real nap in the day between 12, uh, between when is his second nap
00:08:19.880
between like 12 30 and two, uh, sorry, 12 30 and three. This is a lot of detail if you're not
00:08:26.520
interested in baby naps, but it's kind of interesting to me. So I'm sharing it. Feel free
00:08:31.880
to skip it. If you are not interested, fair enough, but we've been spending a lot of time with my
00:08:37.800
parents and Jacob's parents, and it's just been so lovely. And one of the things that we've recognized
00:08:43.320
because we spent a weekend with Jacob's parents, and then we actually spent this past weekend with my
00:08:46.940
parents is just how much we actually enjoy having our parents around. I think a lot of people feel
00:08:53.320
that stress or they have anxiety between kind of attention between in-laws and depending on the
00:09:01.280
relationship, I don't think it has to be that way. We're very, very blessed that that is not our
00:09:06.300
situation at all. And we really enjoy being with the other's parents. And it's something that I think
00:09:13.260
more people should try to develop if that is possible. Cause I know that some in-law relationships
00:09:19.960
are really fraught with tension, but if it's just kind of like meh, maybe develop it, maybe see if
00:09:27.620
there's a way for you to develop that relationship with each other's sets of parents so that you can
00:09:31.780
enjoy the time that you spend with them as much as we enjoy the time we spend with our, with our
00:09:37.940
parents. The, uh, the next thing I want to mention is something about what Jacob said about our house,
00:09:45.140
which made me so happy. Uh, so we live in an 1800 square foot home, which is not tiny at all,
00:09:54.100
like not at all, but it isn't huge. Uh, it's three bedrooms and the middle portion of the house is
00:09:59.000
one big open space. And I love our house. I really, really do. But when Jacob said,
00:10:06.220
our house is like a cottage, it made me go from liking our house and really enjoying it to being
00:10:13.560
like, Oh my gosh, this is bliss. I am obsessed with our house. Now I love the idea of living in a
00:10:22.480
cottage. A cottage is cozy. A cottage is warm. A cottage is, is more petite, but there's something
00:10:30.040
beautiful about how small and cozy and warm it is, right? You can't have a ginormous house that is
00:10:37.220
a cottage because part of something being a cottage is that it is more contained. And so loving, I loved
00:10:45.500
when he said that because a, I'm hoping he said it because of the way I've decorated it and I've made it
00:10:50.900
feel warm and welcoming and cozy. But I also feel like when you, it just really taught me how much
00:10:58.120
a shift in perspective can make you enjoy something more. So just shifting my perspective from, Oh, this
00:11:04.660
is a, a smaller home, not one that I think is small, but could be a smaller home to some people.
00:11:12.800
Instead of thinking that thinking of it as a cottage that is warm and inviting that makes it so
00:11:19.480
lovely. And so if you live in a smaller home, a smaller space, try thinking about it. Like it's
00:11:25.320
a cottage. I think it'll change the way you view it and it'll make you enjoy the space even more.
00:11:32.060
Last but not least, sort of last but not least. We'll do, this is a second to last but not least.
00:11:38.120
Can you believe it's already February? How is the year going by so quickly? 2023 feels like it's
00:11:44.700
flying. January went by so fast and we're going to be in February so soon. We can talk about
00:11:50.620
Valentine's day. Leave your thoughts in the comments on, on YouTube. If you have thoughts
00:11:57.060
about Valentine's day, because I'm curious, but if you want to leave comments on just the podcast,
00:12:02.620
then you can become a premium subscriber at sub stack and on my sub stack. And that's how you will
00:12:07.120
be able to leave a comment on the podcast itself. But I just can't believe that we've already gotten
00:12:11.860
to February because January feel like it just, we just entered 2023. How did that happen?
00:12:18.020
Okay. Here's the real last thing for our weekly catch up, which is a fun new board game I wanted
00:12:22.940
to mention. So if you didn't know, my husband, Jacob is a board game aficionado. He loves board
00:12:29.140
games. He collects them. He, we play so many board games. I have so many reviews I'm sure I could share,
00:12:35.660
but I wanted to share a game that we played yesterday for the first time and it's called
00:12:40.860
Irish gauge. It's kind of like a mixture, uh, between ticket to ride. And what's the second,
00:12:50.640
what's the second game? Maybe something with stocks, let's say acquire, which most people don't
00:12:54.180
know. But if you do know the name of the game acquire, there's a very small element of stocks
00:12:59.540
that acquire is all about stocks. But in any case, this game is a lot of fun. It's really easy. It's
00:13:07.240
really quick. And it's one of the things that we talk a lot about a lot about is the aesthetic of a
00:13:14.600
game. If you buy a game, that's really fun, but it's just ugly to look at. It's not as fun to play.
00:13:20.140
And this is a really beautiful game. I love the Irish aesthetic. It's something I really enjoy
00:13:25.680
looking at. So playing this game was very enjoyable for me for that reason. It's easy to learn and it's
00:13:32.100
a lot of fun. So if you're looking for a new game to check out, I highly recommend Irish gauge. So now
00:13:37.860
let's get into the main portion of today's episode, which is Prince Harry's new memoir spare. Now I
00:13:45.580
listened to the book and it was a slog to listen to. It was, I think, 14 hours if you couldn't speed it
00:13:51.740
up and I sped it up to 1.15, 1.25. And that, that helped. But my husband and I were listening to it
00:14:01.020
in the car and we had to take turns driving because it kept putting us to sleep. So my husband drove
00:14:10.020
first and I fell asleep in the back and then he started to fall asleep. And then we switched because
00:14:14.420
I woke up, I took over to drive and then he fell asleep in the back. It was very, very funny.
00:14:20.600
Uh, and I think that shows you a little bit about, about how a he narrates, but also be the content
00:14:27.940
of this book. Of course it is, you know, gossip and people are excited because it's a look into
00:14:34.720
the Royal family that they've never seen before. But the truth is, is that it is, uh, not super
00:14:42.340
interesting to listen to, especially the first section. The first section is, is really, really long
00:14:48.180
and boring mostly. So here's the thing. The only reason I listened to this was because I wanted
00:14:55.700
to be able to share my thoughts on it with you all. I don't believe that sharing your thoughts
00:14:59.480
on something you haven't listened to, read, watched, whatever is fair to the thing you're
00:15:04.940
criticizing, discussing, you know, any of that. So I thought that this was important. And the reason
00:15:12.060
I thought it was important was because this is an example of how not to be classic. Everything we
00:15:18.640
talk about here at classically Abbey is traditional values, classic living and modern femininity. And
00:15:24.260
spare does not, it's a guidebook on how to not be classic. And that's relevant to us, right? We can
00:15:33.580
take lessons, not only from positive places, but from negative things. We can watch something and say,
00:15:38.820
that's how I don't want to act. That's what I don't want from my life. And this book is, I think,
00:15:43.780
a very good example of that. So let's talk about turning the world against your family. I mean,
00:15:51.040
Harry turned the world again, is trying to change the narrative, right? The narrative right now is
00:15:57.660
you left your family, you betrayed your family, you married this woman who took you away from your
00:16:02.340
duties. And he wants it to change to, well, I'm the victim. I ran away because my family is so
00:16:09.600
terrible. The people who love me, the people who are closest to me, I am going to throw under the
00:16:14.600
bus to change the narrative. Now, this is ironic given the fact that in the book, he criticizes his
00:16:21.420
own father multiple times and Camilla, his mother-in-law, rather his stepmother, for trying to put things in
00:16:31.240
the press to make them look better when he is doing literally the exact same thing, but even worse.
00:16:39.200
He shares secrets. He lies about wanting privacy when all he really wants is positive fame. There's
00:16:49.100
a very big difference between wanting privacy, wanting no one to talk about you at all, and wanting
00:16:54.280
people to talk about you, wanting to be famous, but wanting it on your own terms, wanting it to be
00:17:00.000
a positive fame because people love you. They have put themselves in the public eye so many times,
00:17:07.440
so often in the last however many years, that it can't be that they just want privacy. Because if
00:17:15.260
they just wanted privacy, they could sequester themselves, go somewhere very private, buy a very
00:17:21.680
large plot of land, and do their best to avoid being in the papers. Now, I will get to the paparazzi
00:17:31.020
because I know that the paparazzi is a very important part of this book, and I think should
00:17:36.680
have been the main portion, main thing about this book. And there was a missed opportunity here.
00:17:42.520
But if they didn't want to be in the news and they didn't want to have fame at all, they could
00:17:47.680
in some ways do that by just not being out there. But they have put themselves out there because they
00:17:53.140
want fame. They just want it to be positive. Complaining about your life and being the second
00:17:59.340
oldest when you had money and time and opportunities to travel and do good works, that's just not
00:18:05.420
classic. And that's what Prince Harry did. That's what Prince Harry is doing. The book is all about how
00:18:11.120
depressing his life is when he's a very privileged individual. And I'm not saying that a person who
00:18:19.080
comes from a place of privilege can't have bad things happen to them. But the truth is that
00:18:24.540
outside of, and I'm not saying this isn't important, right, but outside of his mother's death, which is
00:18:31.360
a huge tragedy, the things that happen in his life, it's really hard to pity him for everything else
00:18:38.500
because he'll be like, you know, somebody was a little mean to me. And then I went and jet set
00:18:43.160
with my friends to go do some crazy thing that literally no one else in the world could afford
00:18:47.240
to do, but he gets to do just because he has the time and the money, right? So that's like a really
00:18:52.220
hard thing to parse. The truth is, Harry wasn't classic to begin with. In the same breath, he'll complain
00:19:00.320
about his life and then talk about how he went to party with his friends. He had the opportunity to do
00:19:07.060
good and be paid to do good and live a lavish lifestyle. But because he wasn't next in line
00:19:13.060
to be king, he let everything fall apart. The reason the book is called Spare is because he says that
00:19:20.600
William was the heir and he was the spare. And not just that he was the spare, but that he was born to
00:19:26.660
like donate his organs to his brother. Come on. That is such a lie. And something to keep in mind
00:19:34.720
about this book is that this is not a reliable narrator. He is telling everything from his point
00:19:44.640
of view. So how much of it is true? We don't know. And at the same time that he's doing that,
00:19:50.500
he's constantly saying that he has a very bad memory. He can't remember things. He can't. He's very
00:19:55.580
bad at remembering his past and then sharing really specific details about a lot of different
00:20:04.120
memories. I mean, these aren't blurred for me when I look back on my past and I'm sure it's similar
00:20:08.760
for you. You'll remember kind of like a swath of what a little memory was, like of how you felt and
00:20:15.860
who was there. But you're not going to remember the color of the couch. You're not going to remember
00:20:20.960
how many doilies were on your grandmother's table. Like, and he does. He remembers that stuff.
00:20:29.820
So why would he say that he doesn't have a good memory? So that he's not accountable for
00:20:34.500
misremembering something in his favor. He will say things that you have to imagine or he's being,
00:20:43.880
he's saying to make himself look better. But if he didn't remember it right and he doesn't have a
00:20:49.720
good memory, then he can't really be accountable. He's constantly blaming others for his bad
00:20:57.260
behavior, but calling others malicious for their behavior. They don't get any excuses, but he is
00:21:02.860
full of excuses. The paparazzi wanted to call him naughty. So that was really about like, but he wasn't
00:21:11.060
naughty. And yet everything he describes that he did in his youth and teenage years was very naughty. I
00:21:16.600
mean the way he lost his virginity was very sad for him and inappropriate when you read it. He made a lot
00:21:24.160
of really poor choices, but always blamed somebody else for those choices. But if anybody else is mean
00:21:30.000
to him, if anybody else is, is cruel or says something that he doesn't agree with, then that's
00:21:37.060
because they are cruel and they are malicious, but he doesn't have the same understanding of himself.
00:21:41.500
He's upset that the paparazzi is printing negative things about him and for the times that they lied,
00:21:48.280
which fair enough. I mean, I wouldn't want lies printed about me in the, in the papers, but the
00:21:53.620
truth is he also did a lot of bad, stupid things. He did cocaine. He was basically a drug addict. I mean,
00:22:00.120
there's a lot of history there. He naked partied with his friends without his girlfriend there, but then
00:22:07.020
there was pictures taken and he's trying throughout the book, he's trying to like justify, oh, like it's
00:22:12.020
just a thing that people do. Not everyone does that. People don't just do that. Uh, and that's just the tip
00:22:19.600
of the iceberg for him. And he overshares. And that is something that is definitely not classic. He talks
00:22:27.540
about like, he talks about his genital region a lot in the book in many different iterations. He's,
00:22:36.880
he talks about how he wants, uh, had loose bowels from magnesium at a friend's wedding. He's, he shares
00:22:44.640
too much. Talks about the crushes that he had on like the women at his school when like the, the teachers,
00:22:52.280
the women at his school, it was just, it's very odd. It's just too much. Something we can learn from
00:22:57.420
that. Don't overshare. It's not worth it. The truth is nobody wants to hear it. Everybody thinks it's
00:23:02.660
kind of crazy. One of the things that he does in the book is he calls William and Charles Willie and
00:23:09.580
Pa, which are terms of endearment. And that really upset me because it's like, he's using terms of
00:23:18.180
endearment so that he can defend himself when people accuse him of selling out his family.
00:23:22.980
No, no, no. He's Willie to me. That's Pa. I can sell out my father by telling the world that he
00:23:29.440
carries around a teddy bear as a comfort, as a security blanket, a grown man that you are now
00:23:35.440
telling the world he does something that I'm sure he would be embarrassed about. But I called him Pa.
00:23:42.140
So it really must mean that I love him. Oh, he's my brother, Willie. I love him so much. He's,
00:23:47.380
he's somebody I really care about, but also I'm going to tell everyone in the world about how
00:23:52.080
mean and awful he is to me and was to me. At the same time, he characterizes William as always
00:23:59.860
calling him Harold, something incredibly formal sounding, because then it justifies him hating
00:24:05.680
his brother. Of course, it's a tragedy that his mother died when he was so young, and that's where
00:24:13.540
when the book starts. And he had to go through that in the public eye. I'm not denying that. That is
00:24:18.140
awful. But you can't justify all of your bad choices from that point forward. He's almost 40.
00:24:26.060
It's just, it's not, you can't do that because everybody goes through something, some people more
00:24:33.740
than others. But William is his brother and went through the exact same thing. And look at how he
00:24:39.400
hates. He's married to Kate. They do wonderful works. They're very, you know, publicly very good
00:24:45.860
people. The truth is, I feel bad for him in some ways, because to me, it's clear that he's just not
00:24:55.280
very smart. Meghan clearly took advantage of that because she wanted to be famous. But when she became
00:25:02.420
famous for all the wrong reasons, she got mad and decided to keep herself in the press constantly
00:25:08.420
trying to change the narrative to make her the good one. Now, it's not working for her, but that's
00:25:13.500
been her goal since day one. And I don't think she ever wanted to stay in the royal family. I think she
00:25:19.360
wanted to raise her level of notoriety and then use that to her advantage. But it's really awkward
00:25:28.280
because when you get to the third section and I'll break down the sections in a minute, you can tell
00:25:34.120
that she was standing over his shoulder telling him what to write. Like, honey, honey, did you get
00:25:39.800
to the part where, where they said that about me in the news? Did you tell them that they were wrong?
00:25:44.300
Did you tell them that I didn't say that, that I'm actually a really nice person? It's, it's very
00:25:50.680
obvious as the reader that, that she was like, hey, honey, come on, come on, make sure they know. Like,
00:25:59.240
it's not, it's really uncomfortable. Meghan is, is not a classic woman. And I've said this before. She
00:26:05.700
didn't support her husband in his duties. She chose to marry someone whose life came with caveats and
00:26:12.280
then tore him away from the life that he was born into, tore him away from his family and tore him away
00:26:18.680
from what he should be doing, what he should have been doing. She did not support him in the way that
00:26:24.220
a spouse should support their partner. She, she ran away. And I mean, it's very clear to me in the
00:26:35.240
section where she says that she's going to commit suicide. It's, I'm not downplaying the seriousness of
00:26:44.140
that statement because I think that there are people who suffer with feelings like that and
00:26:49.700
we need to take it very seriously. But when you read what she told Harry, it's, it's very manipulative,
00:26:56.760
to be honest. It's very manipulative because she's saying things like, if I were gone, first of all,
00:27:04.540
she was pregnant at the time, which unforgivable in many ways, homicide to your child. But she's like,
00:27:11.480
I should die because if I die, then the paparazzi would stop chasing you. To me, that's very obvious.
00:27:19.460
Not like that is something that is so far beyond irrational that I don't think that that is real.
00:27:25.840
Like that's not something she would have really felt because she knew that Harry suffered.
00:27:29.620
Harry talks about how much the paparazzi used to follow him anyways. So she knew that wasn't the case.
00:27:35.020
And then on top of that, she's talking about how, you know, her child would never have to suffer with that.
00:27:44.160
Yeah, because your child would be dead. So I take issue with that, with that section and with the idea that
00:27:54.080
they needed to leave the royal family. I mean, she basically gave Harry an ultimatum that she knew would work
00:27:58.940
because she knew that he takes seriously how much the paparazzi can destroy someone's life, a.k.a.
00:28:06.100
his mother. So when she says something like that, of course, Harry is going to respond and he's not
00:28:11.660
very smart. So he's going to respond even more so and be like, this is how things have to be.
00:28:17.140
We have to get out of here. The book now breaking down the book a little bit, the book is
00:28:24.060
written stream of consciousness. So there's not really like a through line. It's just memory,
00:28:29.760
memory, memory, memory. And each memory is like each chapter is two pages, two or three pages.
00:28:35.560
So there's no narrative, no through line, just little memories I'm supposed to care about.
00:28:41.400
And then here is something that I took issue with, which is that the point of the book,
00:28:46.400
in my opinion, should have been that the paparazzi are dangerous and need to be dealt with because
00:28:56.580
I that was the one part of the book that I was like, yeah, that sounds horrible is being chased
00:29:01.520
around constantly, never having any privacy, even within your own home. That sounds awful.
00:29:07.260
Now, what the press prints about you, whatever, stop reading the press. And Charles told Harry that
00:29:13.180
a number of times and he ignored it. But the paparazzi legitimately shooting you in your own
00:29:20.060
home, that's just awful. But instead of making that the point by focusing on constantly defending
00:29:27.920
himself and defending Megan, it's distracting from the point from what the point of the book
00:29:33.160
should have been, which is we need to deal with this problem. But that's not really what the point
00:29:38.780
of the book was. And that's not really what he was trying to do, because he's not trying to get
00:29:43.320
privacy. He's not trying to hide himself from the news. He just wants to be famous on his terms.
00:29:53.420
Megan made Harry woke. And it's very clear when you listen to the Oprah interview, he said,
00:29:59.440
I was trapped, but I didn't know I was trapped. And anytime anyone says I was I didn't know I was this,
00:30:05.780
it's very clear that they've been they're being reintroduced to their memories in a new framework.
00:30:14.240
So a lot of this book you can tell you can tell was a retelling that was done through his new woke
00:30:21.520
worldview, something that would have he would have glossed over in the past, some interaction he would
00:30:28.000
have had with his brother that as a child that didn't matter and that he probably would have glossed
00:30:33.940
over. Now it's part of his woke worldview of the royal family is horrible. They're trying to constrain
00:30:39.900
me. And there's no idea. There's no picture of duty. It's all just I've been trapped and I need to be
00:30:48.580
free. The duties that Harry had were amazing. They were ones to his his people to do charity work. And in
00:31:01.960
return, he would have gotten a lavish lifestyle and dealing with the paparazzi. Now the paparazzi
00:31:08.440
part? Awful. But the lifestyle otherwise has been dealt with before for many years by many people.
00:31:16.600
And William and Kate handle it fine. So for him to act as though this is just undoable, unreasonable,
00:31:26.300
is directly opposed to the fact that his brother and sister-in-law are doing it.
00:31:31.260
The only part of the book that I thought was interesting and honestly, I felt that it was sad
00:31:39.600
was that this middle section, the first section of the book is his childhood. The middle section is
00:31:44.680
his time in the military. And the third section is meeting Megan. And you can tell that the section
00:31:51.360
that he's most passionate about was the time that he was in the military. And in that section,
00:31:56.280
he's really not as influenced by other people. It's just him talking about his time. And I feel
00:32:02.780
sorry for him that he didn't stay in the military because I think if he had spent his life doing
00:32:08.980
military service, he would have been very happy. He seemed to really enjoy it and he seemed to really
00:32:14.640
find purpose in it. Now, I also think that doing royal family duties could have been really great,
00:32:21.520
but his time in the military spoke to him in a way that I found meaningful. So unfortunately,
00:32:30.980
he did quit the military or leave the military rather, and he did meet Megan. And now this is his life.
00:32:39.140
And that's really sad, is that he now has to spend his life fighting to be in the limelight in a way
00:32:47.560
that he prefers. That's exhausting. It's not classic. And I think we can take a lot away from what I'm
00:32:58.060
talking about here because these are not classic qualities. And these aren't people who are pursuing
00:33:05.020
a life of meaning, purpose, and fulfillment in a godly way. These are people who are pursuing the,
00:33:13.540
they're worshiping at the altar of fame without, without recognizing that that is a double-edged
00:33:20.840
sword in a sense, that they, they, they should recognize it. They live it, but they don't want
00:33:26.600
to recognize it. They're fighting the reality of it. They want it to be on their terms when fame is not
00:33:32.380
on your terms. There's going to be a lot of people that hate you and a lot of people that love you.
00:33:36.100
And you are going to constantly be living in that instead of living your life for God,
00:33:43.620
living your life for your family and finding meaning and purpose and fulfillment in that way.
00:33:51.540
So that is my review of spare. I hope you guys enjoyed all of my thoughts on it. I had many,
00:33:58.980
I had more, but that was all I could fit in today's episode. So now let's get into today's
00:34:04.680
faith talk. So if you haven't listened to the podcast before, quick explanation of what this
00:34:09.940
section is of my podcast. Every week we do a Torah portion and I talk about what is going on in this
00:34:18.400
week's Parsha. Parsha means Torah portion in Hebrew. And it's, it's, I love doing this section of the
00:34:25.360
podcast because I love talking about the Torah. I think it's so fascinating. I did realize that
00:34:30.340
because I record a week in advance, you all are hearing last week's Torah portion each week. So
00:34:38.300
I'll say this week's Torah portion, but truly you're, you're hearing last week's Torah portion.
00:34:42.320
But in any case, uh, in today's Torah portion, we're talking about bow, which means come as in come
00:34:51.140
to Pharaoh. So in this week's Parsha, God brings the last three plagues upon the Egyptians, locusts,
00:35:01.580
which eat all the crops, a darkness so thick and palpable, the Egyptians can't even move within it
00:35:08.120
and the death of all the firstborn in Egypt at midnight. Before God brings the last plague,
00:35:15.100
he tells Moses that after this, after this plague, Pharaoh will drive them out of the land of Egypt.
00:35:20.560
He'll shoo them out. He'll say, get out of here. He won't just let them go. He will legitimately tell
00:35:26.260
them to, you must leave. Before they leave, the Jews are told that they should ask the Egyptians for
00:35:32.880
their gold, silver, and anything of value. The Israelites are also told that they should bring
00:35:38.140
a Passover offering to God, a kid goat to be slaughtered. And it's a lamb or a kid goat to be
00:35:46.020
slaughtered. And the blood should be sprinkled on the doorposts of Israelite homes so that God should
00:35:51.280
pass over them when he comes to bring the plague of killing the Egyptian firstborns.
00:35:58.280
And the roasted meat of that, of that offering is to be eaten together with matzah that night
00:36:04.480
and bitter herbs. Are you getting, are you getting where we are? We're getting Passover. This is the
00:36:10.300
story of Passover. And these are the laws. And it's very interesting because in the Torah,
00:36:13.720
we're getting actual laws that we use during the Seder, uh, on Passover. When the death of the
00:36:21.760
firstborn occurs, Pharaoh can't resist any longer. And he tells the Israelites to get out of his land.
00:36:26.440
They leave so quickly that there is no time for their dough to rise and all they can bring is matzah.
00:36:32.140
There's also a few different commandments, mitzvot that are shared in this Torah portion.
00:36:37.760
Um, but I have a question. So my question this week is, why did the Jews need to put blood on
00:36:48.880
their doorposts? Wouldn't God know who the Israelites were? Why did they need to delineate
00:36:57.340
themselves as, as Israelites separate from the Egyptians? God knows who we are. He knows
00:37:03.520
I live here. And you know, Sarah lives next door. He knows where we all, who we all are,
00:37:09.920
where we all are. So why are we doing something to like clarify it to God? God knows. I always found
00:37:15.640
that funny, right? Is we're going to put blood on the doorpost. So I'll know to Passover. Come on,
00:37:21.820
God knows. Like, why did we have to do that? Why did we have to do that extra step?
00:37:25.500
So there's a good reason. God was asking the Israelites to show who believed and trusted in
00:37:35.540
him. And not only that, he was doing it so that they could show each other who believed and trusted
00:37:42.480
in him. So why is this true? So number one, the animals that the Jews were supposed, the Israelites
00:37:50.400
were supposed to kill and put the blood on their door. Those were actually gods to the Egyptians.
00:37:55.800
So that was frightening. We're going to kill your gods and we're going to put, take their blood and
00:38:03.000
put them on our doorposts so that God, our God, the God, the God, the God who's been bringing all
00:38:08.400
these plagues upon you will know to pass over us and not put, and not bring this plague of the death of
00:38:15.220
the firstborns on our children. Like, that's a little terrifying is we're going to take your God
00:38:22.220
and sacrifice it to the God. So that's number one. I mean, that's dangerous. The Egyptians are much more
00:38:30.220
powerful than the Israelites, right? That's why they could enslave them. So that's a scary thing to do.
00:38:36.280
But number two, this seems weird, right? You're not only killing an animal and you're taking its blood
00:38:44.800
and then putting it on your doorframe. It's a weird thing that God is asking them to do. And
00:38:50.340
you have to trust in God and do it, even though it seemed odd. Like, would you,
00:38:55.000
would you trust in God enough to do that? So God wanted to see that the Israelites,
00:39:03.160
the Israelites who did this were the ones who got to leave Egypt. They were the ones who trusted in
00:39:11.000
God and believed in God. They were the ones who, even though this was an odd thing to do and scary
00:39:16.960
thing to do, they did it. And it showed their faith. Now, why did God need to know that they're,
00:39:22.920
that they're, that they had faith in him? The truth is he didn't. They needed to know.
00:39:30.920
They needed to know themselves. They needed to prove to themselves that they had that faith in God.
00:39:38.300
And I always think that's an interesting thing because we always say things like God needed us
00:39:42.040
to prove or show our faith in him, but really God doesn't need to know anything. He wants us to do
00:39:49.360
it for our own sake. I want you to do this thing because it is scary. And if you do it, you'll know
00:39:55.660
that you can, you can trust in me. You know that you do trust in me. You are proving it to yourself.
00:40:01.300
And then there's the second part of this, which is showing each other.
00:40:07.960
If you were the only person in Egypt who was putting blood on your doorframe,
00:40:13.680
that'd be a lot scarier than looking across the street and seeing your neighbor doing it too.
00:40:21.240
And seeing the guy down the block and seeing two people, two houses down.
00:40:26.420
Now, that communal strength that they drew from each other allowed them to do something so hard
00:40:37.000
and so scary and so kind of weird without as much fear.
00:40:46.140
We have to be brave and show what we believe in for the world to learn from, right?
00:40:55.060
We need to be brave in what we know is good and right.
00:40:59.120
Even when it's hard, even when everyone else is fighting against it or telling us that we're bad or wrong.
00:41:07.500
And by taking the steps to do that, by doing it ourselves, we are proving to ourselves that we can do this,
00:41:15.020
that we are brave enough to do it, but it's not enough to do it on your own.
00:41:19.840
We need one another to lean on when we do the scary thing of standing up against what's wrong in the world.
00:41:28.240
When you know that somebody else is on your side and is doing the same thing with you,
00:41:34.440
you are so much stronger in the stance that you take.
00:41:38.000
So that means that A, build up and shore up your own support systems,
00:41:44.420
but B, if you can, speak out because somebody may feel more brave about speaking out themselves because you did.
00:41:55.080
And that multiplies, that grows the movement, both for God and for conservative values, traditional values.
00:42:10.140
Being brave publicly about our faith strengthens our faith, our own faith and then others' faith.
00:42:20.420
So I think that's a really great lesson that we can learn this week is sometimes being brave,
00:42:28.940
showing what we believe, even when it's a little scary, is really important for ourselves,
00:42:42.300
Strengthening our communities, strengthening our movements.
00:42:53.060
But now let's get into our premium subscriber questions.
00:42:57.300
So once again, if you'd like to become a premium subscriber and submit questions for podcast episodes just like this,
00:43:04.200
make sure to head over to classicallyabby.substack.com and become a premium subscriber today.
00:43:14.180
How do you deal with and process negative comments on your posts, videos, etc.?
00:43:20.040
Unfortunately, by virtue of being in the public eye and on the right,
00:43:23.940
I see comments on your posts that are full of hate and ignorance all the time.
00:43:29.840
Do they slide off like water off a duck's back?
00:43:32.300
Is there anything specific that you do that helps that you find helps you ignore or move past these types of comments?
00:43:40.060
So I do get this question often because I do get a lot of negative comments on Instagram, on Twitter, on YouTube, really anywhere.
00:43:50.600
And the truth is, I'm very blessed in that the comments don't bother me very often.
00:43:59.360
I find that if you know what you're saying is the truth, not your truth, there is no such thing as your truth, is the truth.
00:44:08.880
Then it doesn't matter what anyone says because you are, they're just wrong.
00:44:15.320
And I think that that is the, the big thing is that when someone is just wrong, it can't bother you.
00:44:22.920
It would be like if somebody said to you, your hair is ugly because it's blue.
00:44:28.100
When you have brown hair, you'd just be like, well, that's okay, but my hair isn't blue.
00:44:37.220
That's how I feel about a lot of the comments is that they're wrong.
00:44:40.760
So how can I be offended by something that's just incorrect?
00:44:44.160
Now, if somebody gets something, I don't know, closer to my, uh, to the correct, to, to really being true about me, I don't know if that's happened, but let's say, or rather,
00:44:59.400
I guess the real point is if somebody says something that is incorrect and that people pick up as truth, that really, that can kind of bother me.
00:45:11.220
Um, so for a while, for example, there were photos going around the internet of another woman who had been mistaken for me.
00:45:22.080
And they were inappropriate photos, very inappropriate photos.
00:45:25.460
And people were saying that I had inappropriate photos on the internet that initially, it doesn't anymore, but it initially bothered me because a lot of people thought that was true.
00:45:38.900
That I had inappropriate photos on the internet.
00:45:41.080
And they were not of me, they were never of me.
00:45:44.260
They were of another woman who I've actually, uh, messaged before who she felt very sad that this had happened to her and then felt bad that it had transferred onto me.
00:45:56.640
That was upsetting because it's like falsehoods are being propagated against my, against me as a person.
00:46:05.000
But when people are arguing against my, what I talk about or saying mean things about me because of what I believe, then I don't care because it's like, you know what, it's just not true.
00:46:18.400
I'm trying to think if there's anything else that I do that helps me ignore these comments.
00:46:22.460
But I think really it just comes down to informing yourself.
00:46:27.380
If you know more than the people who are commenting, if you know more than the people who disagree with you about the things you're talking about, then you won't feel upset when they argue with you because, or, or not even argue if they say just a mean thing in the comments because they just don't know and that's okay.
00:46:51.480
But here's the question that I kind of teased in the intro.
00:46:54.180
So what's your opinion on IVF in vitro fertilization?
00:46:57.760
For those of you who don't know, I know as a pro-life woman, I think it's immoral to implant knowing that many embryos and babies will die.
00:47:06.060
Also, as a Catholic woman, I believe that the creation of life shouldn't be outside the marital act of sex, but I'm just so curious what your personal view is.
00:47:13.960
So this is an interesting conversation because I know that there are some people who are very against IVF in the pro-life movement.
00:47:20.460
I am not one of those people, but I have caveats.
00:47:24.880
So my feeling about IVF is that I think it's an amazing thing that we've developed the technology to help women who are struggling with fertility to conceive their own children.
00:47:38.580
Now, I think that we are in an age where everything can be taken too far.
00:47:46.560
So, first of all, people think that they can do IVF and that, you know, I don't think most people think this way.
00:47:52.940
But we live in an age where people delay and delay and delay as far as their, as far as getting married and having children.
00:47:59.940
And then they just think, oh, well, I'll just do IVF later on.
00:48:03.860
I don't think that we should encourage women to put off the issue of their fertility until they're older and then depend on something like IVF to conceive.
00:48:12.980
I don't think that, and I know this is in a different realm, but I don't think something like, I still have to develop my thoughts on this, but I think for the most part, I'm against surrogacy.
00:48:24.980
I think that it's, again, we're getting into dangerous territory.
00:48:29.120
But a woman who, you know, is married young or tried to get married young and then is struggling with, you know, having her own children, I think IVF is an amazing modern medical miracle.
00:48:46.700
So the caveats I have as far as IVF are the wasting of the embryos.
00:48:56.320
Like, people will, they will fertilize just as many eggs as possible, and then they'll freeze them, and then if they don't want them, they'll throw them out.
00:49:06.180
I think that the way that IVF should work and would be more moral is if you fertilized one egg at a time and then implanted one egg at a time so that you aren't trying to, you know, stick in as many eggs as possible to see how many will stick,
00:49:29.100
and then you're assuming that a certain amount are going to die in the process, or making so many that you then throw out a bunch of potential lives.
00:49:45.060
I recognize that what I'm saying would be very expensive, but I also think that who cares?
00:49:49.960
The expense doesn't matter in comparison to the amount of potential lives you aren't throwing away.
00:49:59.400
So my feeling is if we could create a system in which the eggs were fertilized one by one and implanted one by one, I could get on board with IVF, and I think it's really amazing that people can do it.
00:50:15.380
Um, that is what I think of as now, as I think is a good idea as of now, I would be open to learning more about it and understanding more so that I could be even more informed.
00:50:29.820
But after the research that I have done on this topic, that's where I'm comfortable.
00:50:34.900
Like, if somebody were to tell me that they wanted to do IVF, and that they were going to do it the way that I just described, I would say, more power to you.
00:50:47.400
So that may not be the most popular answer, because I know that a lot of people are against IVF generally, but that is, I am not against IVF generally.
00:50:55.480
I think it can be really, a really special thing.
00:50:59.100
Um, it just has to be done the right way, because as of now, we are throwing out embryos all the time that, that to me is not okay, because life starts from conception.
00:51:16.900
The next question is, what happens when a bunch of influencers influence each other?
00:51:27.660
So the way, what happens when influencers influence each other is that everyone ends up trying the same thing, seeing if it's actually as good as you, as their influencer that influenced them said, and then sharing it with their followers.
00:51:42.840
But the truth is that influencers are always influencing each other, because most of the time, and I generally use the term content creator, because I don't like the idea of saying I'm an influencer.
00:51:55.040
I don't think that I am, I would say I'm more of a content creator, but I follow a lot of other content creators, so I'm constantly getting ideas from them for things to try.
00:52:05.420
And I'm super grateful about that, because I have learned about so many things, especially now that I have a son.
00:52:10.940
I've learned about so many little toys and different things that he can use that I never would have known about had I not followed other people.
00:52:19.780
So what happens when, you know, you follow influencers is that influencers follow each other.
00:52:25.800
So something gets picked up by one of them, and then another person who follows them picks it up, and they have a bunch of followers, and then everybody is trying the same things all at once all the time.
00:52:36.020
And it's a really funny thing, but that's kind of how it works, and I'm really grateful for it, because I've gotten to try so many different products that were so helpful, especially as a new mom, but also just outside of that.
00:52:50.500
I mean, like, I've learned about different mops and different Bissell products to clean my house, and all of these different things that I never would have learned about had it not been for the other people that I follow who are also influencers.
00:53:10.420
I wrote an article, and I mentioned that I got a water play table for my son for his birthday.
00:53:19.880
And someone said, can you tell us more about this water table?
00:53:24.080
There are a lot of water play tables, devices, things like that, that you can buy, and they're great for summertime, but they're also great if you live in a warm state like Florida.
00:53:35.520
And they are just a lot of fun because they're clean, right?
00:53:41.040
So you're not trying to deal with washing out paint or dealing with any other messy thing.
00:53:46.300
It's just water that they're getting to play with in a cool way.
00:53:49.020
And so I got one from Bye Bye Baby, but you can buy a bunch on Amazon.
00:53:53.740
I'm actually buying a second one that's a little different.
00:53:56.300
So there are ones that have all of the fun pieces built in that are kind of like waterfalls.
00:54:03.200
And they have toys that kind of catch the water and pour it down, and it's a lot of fun for kiddos.
00:54:10.400
But then there's also actual water tables, which are tables that then have kind of bins in them, and you fill those bins with water and toys and bubbles and other things, and kids can play with those in the water, and it's a sensory experience for them.
00:54:25.460
And sensory stuff, I've learned seeing my son play with his food is very important for them to kind of get used to different textures and get used to how things feel on their fingers and all of that.
00:54:36.880
But I will quickly say, I think I recently read something about water beads that are very dangerous.
00:54:46.220
So when I recommend a water table, a water play table, I'm usually talking about using just toys, like plastic toys that go in the water or something else, bubbles or something like that.
00:54:58.480
But I've heard dangerous things about water beads, so please don't do your own research, but please don't use those because I don't know enough about it.
00:55:06.480
But that is it for today's episode of the Classically Abbey podcast.
00:55:13.000
Let me know your thoughts in the comments on YouTube or become a Premium Substack subscriber today to leave your comments over there.
00:55:19.300
If you would like to become a subscriber to the podcast, you can find us on, you can find me on Apple Podcasts, on Spotify, really anywhere you listen to podcasts.
00:55:30.540
You can find the Classically Abbey podcast to listen to, and I'll see you guys in my next episode.