Jillian Turecki’s programs and podcast, “Jillian On Love,” teach her audience to take ownership of their lives and advocate for themselves.
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Jillian's podcast has over 1 million downloads
Content note: This column contains a reference to pregnancy loss.
During a recent TV interview, the host asked me, “If you could add any classes to the current school curriculum, what would you add?” My typical answer, based on the ten years I’ve spent helping young people become entrepreneurs, is “financial literacy.” Now, though, I have an additional response: relationship literacy.
Yes, it’s still important to help young people navigate the world of business and become self-reliant. But they also need to build their emotional intelligence, in order to collaborate with others and develop healthy, lasting relationships in all areas of their lives. According to the organization “Love is Respect,” one in three adolescents reports experiencing some form of dating abuse. It’s urgent to give young people the skills they need to be safe and thriving.
Until relationship literacy is taught in schools, there’s a powerful resource available in the work of Jillian Turecki, a teacher and coach whose podcast, “Jillian On Love,” has more than 1 million downloads. She guides people to identify emotional patterns, create healthy boundaries and increase their self-worth. Turecki’s advice can help people of all ages raise their relationship literacy. I discovered her while scrolling on instagram and started following her because of the clear, direct and honest approach to educating people on relationships.
Born in New York City to immigrant parents—her father a Polish Holocaust survivor and her mother a South African model—Turecki was put on a path to achieve the “American Dream” from childhood. Her parents expected her to attend a top college, work a corporate job, get married and have children.
Turecki tried. She got into that top college but was miserable. By the time she graduated, she says, she was “experiencing a mini-crisis, because no one told me that it was OK to not know what I was going to do with my life at 21 years old.”
The uncertainty and pressure led her to accept unfulfilling jobs. At 29, she quit the corporate path and became a yoga instructor. Her clients told her that not only was she a great yoga teacher, she was also great at showing them how to heal their emotional pain.
On June 2, 2014, Turecki experienced her own pain. After two years of marital struggles and two miscarriages, her husband ended their marriage over the phone. At the time, she was pregnant again, but she later miscarried. She also was helping her mother, who had stage 4 lung cancer. The healing support Turecki had been providing her clients was something she would now need to give herself.
While navigating these setbacks, Turecki began sharing her lessons in a newsletter for her yoga clients. “I decided to teach them not just about their bodies and nervous systems, but also how to take all the mindfulness and mental strength they were developing through their yoga practices into their relationships,” she says.
The newsletter audience grew from 50 to almost 20,000 in a matter of months. Turecki started holding free workshops about how to love and communicate better. Soon, she was creating paid, live workshops, with hundreds of people attending.
Hoping to reach even more people, Turecki started an Instagram account, which today has more than 350,000 followers. She also hosts the podcast “Jillian On Love,” an opportunity presented to her by Steve Wilson of QCode Media. As it turns out, Wilson wanted to produce the show because Turecki’s Instagram lessons had such a positive impact on him and his wife.
Here are three lessons on relationship literacy that Turecki wishes she had known when she was a young person figuring out her own path in life:
- Learn to meet your own core needs
People need security, adventure, connection and contribution — and they have to learn how to fulfill those needs themselves, rather than expecting a partner to do it for them. Committing to creating meaning in one’s own life builds a sense of personal responsibility.
“No one is coming to save you,” Turecki says. It’s easy to daydream about a partner sweeping in and making transformational change, especially when the road ahead seems uncertain. But holding on to these fantasies prevents a person from taking charge of their own growth. “A relationship must make life easier,” Turecki says, “but no one can do life for us.”
- Have the tough conversations
“The truth elevates relationships,” Turecki says. “You have to ask the questions that scare you and listen to the answers that are hard for you to hear.” That could mean speaking up for yourself if you feel a boundary has been repeatedly crossed, or examining whether you and the person you’re dating have a shared vision for your future. A tough conversation when dating someone could be gathering the courage to be vulnerable and ask for a bigger commitment from someone, knowing they may reject you. In a relationship, it means voicing your concerns with your partner with the primary purpose that you won’t allow resentment to destroy the relationship. Tough conversions are the ones when two people sit down and discuss anything they would rather avoid.
- Love yourself
Self-acceptance is foundational to healthy relationships, Turecki says. “You won’t love every aspect of you,” she explains. “You won’t like parts of you. But can you learn to hold yourself in high esteem in spite of it all?”
To build self-worth, Turecki recommends spending time alone, reflecting on the person you currently are and who you want to be. Become aware of negative self-talk, and replace habitual negative thoughts with positive ones. Take regular breaks from social media, which “can often take the energy we need to give ourselves and redirect it toward other people,” Turecki says. Don’t forget to practice basic self-care, such as exercising or preparing yourself a healthy meal.
For success in business and entrepreneurship, we recognize that people need coaching and feedback to fulfill their innate potential. The same is true for success in relationships. Improving relationship literacy with guidance from experts like Turecki could pay enormous dividends to help people make the most of their lives.
You can find Jillian - Instagram: @jillianturecki Jillian On Love: @jillianonlove www.jillianturecki.com Tik Tok: @jillian-turecki Twitter: @JillianTurecki
