The Binti Podcast
The Binti Podcast
Welcome to the Ben T podcast where we discuss the journey of being a daughter. I'm G and I'm known. We are looking forward to going on this journey with you. All right, so what's the journey? What's the Ben T podcast? It's the journey of being a daughter. True. We create the Ben T podcast because we are actively going through the process of puberty and the process of puberty brings up all kinds of things about our growth, physically, spiritually and emotionally. So, Noni, how old are you? I am nine years old, well, nine and a half and eight weeks. Noni's nine and a half and mama here, well, I'm not going to share my age, but what I will share is that I have been through the process of puberty and this kind of growth I am a Ben T and I have a Ben T and I first started learning and thinking about Noni's growth about three months after she turned seven. I started noticing some changes. I think the first one was an emotional change. Do you remember any emotional changes? Noni, what kind of emotional changes do you remember? That like, okay, usually when you tell me to clean my room, I'd be like, yeah, I'll clean my room. But then when you would ask me, I would start crying and be upset about it. That's exactly right. And it was kind of confusing for you and for me, right? We both were like, what is happening? But I knew because I have been doing rites of passage and work with young Ben T's for almost two decades. I had a sense of what was going on because I've been teaching this. I've been studying it. I've been working with communities of girls, including your community of young Ben T's, but I hadn't experienced it myself. I hadn't experienced it going through it with my own Ben T. So this podcast is to help all the mamas and all the Ben T's. And we say mamas. We mean biological mamas. We mean aunties. We mean grandmas. We mean any of the amazing women who are in a Ben T's life. Do you know what Ben T means? Ben T means daughter. Daughter in what language? In Swahili. Ben T means daughter in Swahili. We spent a lot of time doing research, right, Noni? Yes. We went to the library. We read lots of books. You liked some of those books. Oh, there's not really like the one that you like and you tell me that it was so good. There's so many great books. But one of the things we notice about those books is those books are either talking to a Ben T or talking to a mama, but they never really have in a conversation between a Ben T and a mama. Yeah. And I would like to say some of them are helpful, but like sometimes I wish I could like read the book and find everything that I wanted to know or I feel like I needed to know. So and I haven't found luck with that yet. So I didn't like to say that it's your own experience. Even though everybody goes through it, it's your own experience. Like most, well, from what I know, most people, when they go through, um, period, they start with pimples on their face. And I haven't really had any pimples on my face ever. So it's your own experience. So books can be helpful, but they can't tell you everything. They sure can't. And so we decided the best way for us to create a body of knowledge is to talk about it. Yeah. And to share what we're experiencing and share what we're studying and the tools that we're coming up with and the practices we're going through to help and support other people as they go through their Ben T mama process. Is this process an easy one? No. In the last year, Noni and I have gone through many ups and downs, sometimes in a day, right? Sometimes we are moving together. And other times we struggle. Yeah. And I wanted to say something. I know that a lot of podcasts and people on like YouTube, they cover up the truth. And I just want to say that on the podcast, me and my mom are not having an argument and we're not not getting along. We're having a great time. But I will say that it's that that's not how it always is. It isn't. And I just don't want to cover that up like a lot of other things I've seen. Half cover that up. Absolutely. A lot of people will make it seem like it's an easy road or it's a road that's so beautiful because everyone's growing. And I do think that that is a part of it. Some of this is really beautiful and other parts are really hard. We had a hard night last night. Oh, yeah. There were tears. There was a lot of emotion. Emotion is maybe like some raising up the voice. So I think that this is going to be a great asset. And so we're creating the Ben C podcast because we're learning and we're hoping other people will go on this learning journey with us. I just want to say that like I said, I'm only nine and a half. And I sort of feel like such as you guys are also going on this journey, I am as well. And my mother is as well, of course. But so we personally haven't covered everything of this journey. And I know that I want the Ben C podcast to be sort of a community to cover it all together. And that we can learn and you guys can learn. And yeah. I think you're absolutely right. One of the things that I hope the Ben C podcast will do is remind us that a Ben C's journey through growth and puberty is not a solo journey. It takes all of us with it. And for us, it's the two of us, but it's also our friends, it's our community. And so we're here to say we're on the journey together. And that journey might be difficult, but the way you change is the same way I change and we're changing together because we want to stay together. In the end, our goal is that we come out of this unharmed and that we're loving each other even more than we love each other now. So over the course of the podcast, we want to share the research we've done. We're going to bring in some guests. We're also going to share some things we've created, some workbooks, some exercises, what we would call maybe not best practices, but practices that work for us. And then as Noni said, just to stay in the truth. So thanks for joining the Ben C podcast. We hope to see you on the next episode. Yeah, we hope you enjoyed the introduction for a long and fun road of growth and community. I'm Noni. And I'm G. And this is the Ben C podcast.