Christina and Ryan Hillsberg, LICENSE TO PARENT
Former CIA spies Christina and Ryan Hillsberg realized that parenting was a lot like their agency training: remove yourself from danger as quickly as possible, stay focused on the task at hand, and pay attention to lessons that become more self-sufficient. The Hillsbergs have passed this knowledge on to their children and want to help other parents incorporate it into their lives, too. With personal stories from their lives at home and in the field (all approved by the CIA, of course), License to Parent offers great advice for raising resourceful and self-sufficient kids.
Transcript:
Zibby Owens: Welcome, Christina and Ryan, to "Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books" to discuss License to Parent: How My Career as a Spy Helped Me Raise Resourceful, Self-Sufficient Kids.
Christina Hillsberg: Hi. Thank you so much for having us, Zibby. We're so happy to be here.
Ryan Hillsberg: Thank you.
Zibby: You're welcome. It was so nice, we did an Instagram Live on your pub day. That was so exciting. This is now the follow-up to that where we can go even more in-depth, but at least there's a little bit of us on Instagram if anybody wants to check it out.
Christina: Yeah, that was so fun.
Zibby: I was also just so honored to blurb this book. It makes me really excited to see my name on the back, so I can only imagine how it feels to have it on the front, so there we go, for this particular book.
Christina: It feels great. We were so thankful to receive your blurb.
Zibby: It was so fun. Would you mind telling listeners what License to Parent is about?
Christina: License to Parent is part memoir, part parenting guide. It tells the story of my career at the CIA, how I met Ryan there, he was also a former spy, and also, my journey into parenthood. I had always envisioned that I would be a helicopter parent. Instead, I used what I learned at the CIA to give my kids more freedom than I ever expected. A lot of that is due to my husband Ryan who had three kids from his previous marriage and was already parenting using some of these techniques. We've come together and formed an approach that uses his experience at the CIA on the clandestine side and my experience on the analytic side. We use these techniques with our now five kids. We share practical takeaways along the way.
Zibby: You're kind of like Mr. and Mrs. Smith or something like that. You seem normal, but really, you're the badass parents nearby.
Christina: We love it. When we see that, we're like, oh, my gosh. It's not a bad day when you're compared to Mr. and Mrs. Smith. That's pretty fun.
Zibby: The thing that I loved -- I loved a lot of things. The thing I loved about this book in particular, Christina, is your journey to becoming first a CIA agent, then a stepmom, then a full -- what's the difference? Then a mom who's not a stepmom. I don't know even how to say that. [laughs] Biological mom, there we go. Sorry. And how all the things you learned along the way fed into all of these roles and how it all started with a passion of yours, which I feel like is such a great lesson for just following what you love. You never know where it's going to go. Tell listeners a little bit about how you got started and how you were surprised yourself to end up in this job.
Christina: I totally agree with you about passion because that was my main driving factor. I went to college and studied linguistics and African languages. I knew that I had a knack for learning foreign languages in high school, but I didn't really enjoy the Spanish and Latin classes. I wanted something a little bit more interesting, a non-Indo-European language. Because I was interested in Africa and African politics, I chose Swahili and fell in love with the language, fell in love with the culture. Then I also studied some Zulu as well. I just followed that. I kind of fell into this interview with the CIA on my college campus. I tried to dodge the interview. I went to a Ladysmith Black Mambazo four hours away and lied to the recruiter, said that I had car problems and I just wouldn't be back in time. I actually was staying the night Chicago and just decided to skip it. Then when he called me and said he was staying in town an extra day -- I had forwarded my résumé along to the address on the flyer. He knew my language capabilities. He said, "I'm staying an extra day. I really want to meet with you." I thought, eh, okay, I'll appease my parents who want me to have a safe government job for stability. I'll just go for practice. When I sat across from him, he told me he was from the CIA. I thought it was some important, low-level, boring job. I had no idea. He said, "This is what you would be doing. You would be analyzing African politics. You would be advising US policymakers on what's going on in your region. You would be traveling back and forth to Africa. You can use your foreign language skills." To me, it was all of the things I wanted to do, and so it was a no-brainer. Four months later, I was in the door. I had a really fast clearance process. I started this career that I fell in love with and found that I had more career ambitions than I had once thought. I share a lot about that in the book.
Zibby: Amazing. I know I mentioned to you before we started talking that my kids are in the back. We had set up this tent. My little girl just ran in and said, "Turn the sprinklers off!" [laughter] Oh, my gosh, I don't even know what's going on out there. I also don't know how to turn the sprinklers off, so there you go. Let's see, maybe I can use some of the tactics in this book. Interestingly, this whole notion of self-sufficiency with kids, this morning, my daughter, the same one, was like, "Hey, would you grab me those pancakes off the pan?" I was like, "Why don't you grab them? They're there. The pan's not hot anymore." She was like, "Isn't this your job, that you're supposed to do things for your kids? Isn't that what it means to be a mom?" I was like, "Actually, what it means to be a mom is to teach your kids to go and do those things for themselves." She did not like that at all.
Christina: That's right. I love it.
Zibby: It's books like these that give parents like me the tools to know how to do that. I love how practical your advice got after you get through the narrative of your own life. Not only is that super entertaining, it makes you want to be friends with you, Christina. I feel like this book is like, "let me sit down and have a glass of wine with this author" type of vibe because you're so, not overtly confessional, but just so open and so self-deprecating. Yet you're this super accomplished person. Then you even give the rest of us a goodie bag, if you will, a departing gift of all of this amazing advice. I know that, Ryan, a lot of that involved your training as well and this whole notion of getting off the X. Can you tell us about that and some of your top tips for parents based on all of your experience?
Ryan: The concept of get off the X, it's something that's taught at CIA to all officers before they go overseas because they're going to be in different environments. It's something to really keep personnel safe. The gist of it is, the X equals danger. The X can come in many forms. It can be a person. It can be a place. It can be an environment. It can be an atmosphere. Basically, wherever danger rears its ugly head, danger is an X. You want to get away from that X as fast as possible. The longer that you stay on that X, the more likely it is that you will be harmed. This is really taught to us several times again and again and again. One of the things that they do at the agency that I think is really important, especially when it comes to training, is repetition, and not only repetition, but also learning from failure. A lot of the exercises that they do, it's intended to make at least some of the people fail so that you can use that as a lesson to all of the class to then take back and dissect, learn from it. You'd rather be failing in training than in real life.
I can actually say that with some confidence in terms of, a lot of the training that I did at the farm, they try to make the training so difficult and so stressful and strenuous that anything you do in the real world will be a lot easier. I can honestly say after thirteen years of being in there, nothing I did in real life was as difficult as the training. I think that's a really good way to train people. It gives people confidence. It gives people peace of mind knowing that they’ve got the skills necessary to live and survive and thrive in an espionage setting overseas. Taking that concept as well and teaching it to children in terms of learning from your mistakes and, especially as parents, being able to handhold our kids and walk them through a lot of these processes where we watch them fail -- we allow them to fail. Then we help them to learn from those experiences and to become better. It's through that type of learning that I think we really grow. Especially children can then gain that confidence for themselves to really make good, informed, logical, common-sense decisions when we're not with them.
Zibby: Very smart. Also, Christina, how you even identify danger and how you have this -- perhaps, it was in part because of your training. You noticed the man while you were with your two kids on a walk. I'm picturing some sort of reservoir situation on a path. I don't know, it was probably just a park. Anyway, and how you noticed and felt like you should just get away. Then you debated if you should call the police. You hemmed and hawed. Your mom was the one who had you do it. Then the guy ended up being a drug addict who perhaps was up to other not-good things. You were the one who was like, you know what, I have to stop and look just like my kids have to stop and look. I have to trust my instincts. Tell me a little bit about that and how even as parents -- I think that if the pandemic has taught us anything it's that we have to go with our own guts on what we feel like is the right thing to do because there's not really a clear direction outside of our own homes. Tell me about that.
Christina: I totally agree. I think the important part of all these concepts is that before parents can teach them to their kids, they really have to take them on themselves. They're learning them and then passing them along, so learning, just you said, to listen to your own gut. In that scenario, you also sometimes have a voice saying, maybe I'm overreacting. I think as women, we have a tendency to think, oh, I'm overreacting, this isn't a big deal. Even after I got my kids to the car safely -- I even talked about how normally, I buckle them in their car seats and I'm standing outside of the car. We all got in the car, locked the doors. Then I buckled them in so that my back wasn't towards the parking lot. Then like you said, I thought about it for a while. Oh, I don't need to call. They're safe. I don't want to impose. The police are doing important work. They don't want to be bothered by some hairbrained mom. We have a tendency to do that. It wasn't until, like you said, I talked to my mom. She said, "You don't want this to happen to someone else. Just call." When I talked to the police officer, he said, "I wish you had called sooner."
I just thought, you know what, not only do I need to listen to my gut and get out there, but I need to not question myself and let them know and not feel like I'm an imposition and not make apologies for it. I know how to look for these things, and so having that confidence -- we want to provide that same confidence to our readers as well so that they can approach scenarios. Like Ryan said, we hope that people won't find themselves in scenarios like this. We didn't write this to make parents paranoid or to feel this sense of urgency like they need to prepare their kids for the end of the world or an active-shooter situation or all these horrible worst-case scenarios. The idea is that by preparing them in a fun way that emphasizes adventure we can feel more comfortable about giving them freedom knowing that the chances of them being in one of these really awful scenarios statistically is low. It's not about making parents paranoid. It's really about providing them that comfort to feel like they can parent from a place of strength instead of a place of fear, which is where I was in the throes of postpartum anxiety after my son was born.
Ryan: Also, empowerment not just for the parents, but also for the kids. I think that what Christina did really well in that situation is, when we're talking about getting off the X and avoiding danger, the great thing that she didn't do was freeze. Oftentimes when people are in this type of situation, the adrenaline is running. Your blood is pumping. People tend to not know what to do, and so they freeze up. It's important to keep moving. Get to your car. If you're a quarter-mile away, a half-mile away, you get there as fast as you can. You go to wherever the safety is, as far from the X as you possibly can. That's what's most important. In terms of active-shooter-type scenarios, I'm a director of corporate security, and so this is something that I've talked about for several years within a corporate security environment. There's a reason why within active-shooter programs, they advocate the idea of run, hide, and fight in that order. There's a reason why run is first. It's because running is the only thing that gets you off the X. Getting off the X is almost like the precursor to those types of training for adults in the corporate world. Again, I think it's important. It's also taught in schools all across America from the West Coast to the East Coast; active shooter, run, hide, fight, etc. These are concepts that are taught in schools and taught in other ways. It's important for parents to be involved. We think that that concept of get of the X is important because, again, it's that precursor. It's that first step to get them thinking in their minds and visualizing it, which is something that we also talk about in the book, visualizing, what would I do in this type of situation? What would I do in that type of situation? When you can visualize in advance what you would potentially do in these types of scenarios, that gives you an edge. That gives you an advantage, and the more likely that you'll avoid that X altogether or get away from it as fast as you can.
Christina: With technology too, with cell phones, in that instance, a lot of people will first go to their phone and think they want to film it. I want to text someone. I want to let someone know. I think it's important also for people to learn how to rely on other skills. We talk about that in the book, like security awareness and being able to identify people's age and build so that you can then give a description to the police. Even though part of me felt like I wanted to text Ryan to let him know that I was scared or I didn't know what was going on, but I also knew, one, he's far away. If I get out my cell phone and I'm distracted, then I'm not alert. That's when you start relying on these other skills that we've talked about of getting a good look at the person, making sure you have a description so that you can give it to the police.
Zibby: Perfect. Was the CIA okay with you guys talking about all this stuff? Did you have to run this by them, or what?
Christina: We did. They have a publication review board. You have to put the manuscript through that. They made some redactions. We pushed a little too far in some areas. We were hoping to include some things. By and large, we had a really positive experience working with them. We're really thankful. We know that they are so busy approving different things from former officers, current. Any sort of projects like that that talk about your expertise and your trade craft has to go through them. The main idea is that they want to make sure that we're not inadvertently sharing any classified information that could jeopardize national security or, of course, the safety of their officers or any of the intelligence assets. That's of the utmost importance. We got the green light.
Zibby: Good. I assumed as much, but just double-checking. I saw in your bios that after the CIA, you both worked at Amazon. Is that right? Tell me about that. That must have been completely different from what you were doing before. How did that even happen? How great that you guys got to work together.
Christina: We initially left the agency, and Ryan actually went over to the Pacific Northwest National Lab immediately. I went straight to Amazon. We had a little bit of time where we were working separately, which was different for us. I was at Amazon in information security. I set up their first insider threat program, did threat analysis for them using my CIA analytics skills in the cybersecurity space. That was a really interesting experience to be a woman in tech, specifically a woman in a very male-dominated field. I ultimately ended up switching to corporate communications at Amazon, which is where I found all of the women. [laughs] They were badass women who were just so accomplished and amazing. I loved it and would have stayed had I not decided to become a stay-at-home mom and pursue writing full time. Ryan actually joined Amazon -- I guess I can let you tell it, but we ended up working together on the same business unit, but different. We got to come back. That's why the book has been so great too, because we love working together. We ran a couple cases together at the agency before we were married, which was so fun.
Ryan: Something that's interesting too is, when we were at the agency, we knew that we wanted to stay in this area eventually. We wanted to get out to relocate to Seattle, so we started looking for jobs. We both got job offers on the same day. She got a job offer from Amazon. I got a job offer from the Pacific Northwest National Laboratories. Then we both resigned on the same day.
Christina: It was so funny. You want me to tell the story?
Ryan: Yeah, go ahead.
Christina: When we sat down with our chief of station, I shared that I was leaving first. He was a real chatterbox. He just kept talking and talking and talking. "Oh, my gosh, we're so happy for you. Of course, we'll miss you," the whole bit. We couldn't get a word in edgewise to let him know that Ryan is also leaving. We're in there for probably twenty minutes. He finally is like, "Okay," and he's writing me down. Ryan's like, "Actually, I need to tell you some news too." We both left at the same time. Ryan was the top producer of intelligence reports in that station of all time. I was number two only to him. If you have to be number two to someone, at least it's your husband in that case, someone you can be proud of.
Zibby: That's true. Then you kind of demoted him by giving him the "with" credit on the title. [laughter] Christina with Ryan.
Christina: I love it. It all evens out in the end. It's been so fun to work together again. I was saying when we chatted on our Instagram Live, a lot of this was written together at our kitchen table, hashed out. Having the intelligence analyst background, I'm more of the writer of the two. I like to have control of the keys. It worked out.
Ryan: She's also the faster writer. What would take me six hours to write, she can probably do in thirty minutes and have it look way better than my six-hour endeavor. We've really made a good team, especially on this book, even before this book working together in multiple capacities. This book was fun because it's our story. It's our life. In many respects, it's from Christina's perspective and her optic. It's really, in many senses, a love letter to me and the Bigs and also the Littles, and our family, and what we've gone through, and where we've come from, and where we are now, and where we're going. It's special.
Christina: It's so great to look back at how far we've come. You know, you're a blended family as well. Your husband is a stepdad. Being a stepparent comes with its own unique challenges. Then even Ryan remarrying with kids, that comes with its own challenges too. I think back to when we were dating. We were living several hours apart during the week. We would often see each other for office meetings sometimes mid-week if we were lucky. That would be alone time without kids. Otherwise, we would be going all week without seeing each other and without seeing the kids at that time. When we would get together on a Friday, I would be on one couch on one side of the room. Ryan would be on the other couch with all three of his kids cuddling him. I just remember feeling so lonely, wanting to have a baby of my own, and just trudging through and thinking, this is worth it. I can do this. It is really rewarding to feel like I'm on the other side of that. Our oldest is getting ready to go to college. You just think, where has the time gone? It's really great to have that story. To even narrate it ourselves in the audiobook was really fun.
Zibby: Awesome. I know I mentioned before, and I've tried to be better even in the last couple days, of being sensitive to any sort of criticism of the non-biological parent when it comes to parenting. I feel like it is a very difficult line to toe because you don't know what to say. For me, my main driver is to make sure my kids just really like my husband. They do. They love him. It's been five years or six years or whatever. I always just want to protect that. I'm like, hate me. [laughs]
Ryan: I was just going to say, especially within this stepparent context and environment, you or I could say something to our kids. Then our spouse could say the exact same thing to them with the exact same tone and the exact same feeling or passion, and it's interpreted way differently by the kids. Acknowledging that and knowing how to navigate that type of communication -- what we could potentially say and what they could potentially say, although it's the same, it's different. Christina does a really good job with that. Realizing that and having that sense in your mind, I think it's important. It's just natural. It's not just your family or our family. A lot of blended families go through this. I think it's healthy to discuss it. People should be willing to talk about it and actually share advice and guidance and what works for them, what works for you, what works for us. It's an important discussion.
Zibby: It's true. Sometimes I feel like my husband has better instincts in some things or things that I might let go of. I think he's more safety concerned than I am. Not that I'm -- now this is sounding bad for me. I'm not as worried. If we're standing near an elevator, if they're too close, they're going to be okay. Everybody has their thing.
Christina: That's so funny. It's like you're the Ryan of your marriage because that is really him. I'm the one that would be more -- that's so funny. It's a good balance, though.
Zibby: Yes, it is a good balance. That's for sure. I know, by the way, it was so nice that Ryan had you go to a hotel and write a lot of this book. That's just a thumbs-up move.
Christina: That was nice. It's funny. I do that for Mother's Day every year too even when I'm not writing. I remember before I had my son, I had several mom friends at that point because I had my stepkids. We had connected with a lot of other couples and stuff that had kids the Bigs' age at the time. I had a friend who would do that every year for Mother's Day. I remember just thinking, gosh, that is so odd. Why doesn't she want to spend Mother's Day with her kids? Isn't that the whole point? Now I'm like, oh, yeah, I get it. Every Mother's Day, I leave for the weekend. I spend it at a hotel by myself because that's what I want. [laughs]
Zibby: I have this anthology. My second anthology is coming out in November. One of the essays is by Allison Pataki, the best-selling author of a lot of historical fiction and this beautiful memoir. Her whole essay is about how every year she spends her birthday alone in a hotel and it's the best day of the year despite many of her kids. It's a universal privilege, I guess. I know there's exciting news on the screen front for this project. Tell me more about that.
Christina: We sold the rights to Imagine Entertainment, which is the production company owned by Ron Howard and Brian Grazer. It is for a scripted drama TV series. We have been involved in discussions with them on what that will look like. We can't really give more details beyond that, but we are so excited. We loved the team. We had several meetings with different production companies. A lot of them were over Zoom seeing faces. Actually, the team that we went with at Imagine we had only talked to in an old-fashioned phone call. I like to say that they had us at hello in an old-fashioned phone call. We didn't even need to see their faces because we could feel their vibes of how they really work to be authentic to the stories that they're telling. We knew that they would make us a big part of the process. The first time we did Zoom with them was after we had signed and everything. It was really fun to see each other's faces and continue to build that relationship. We're excited.
Ryan: There was an instant connection with them, which was nice, and then also made us excited for the potential of what's to come.
Christina: They want to join our family. They call themselves the Biggest of the Bigs. It was so great.
Zibby: I love that. That's so great. That's amazing. Congratulations. I can't wait to watch it.
Christina: Thank you.
Zibby: What's coming next in terms of writing? I know you had sort of teased the idea, Christina, maybe you'll do another one more memoir-ish.
Christina: Yeah. We've got a proposal that is in the works. Hopefully, it will include some of those fun dating stories that I include in the early part of License to Parent, somewhat of a prequel, so to speak. We shall see. Can't say any more than that. I hope to have more information on that soon.
Zibby: Did you guys have other title options for this book? Just curious. Was it always License to Parent?
Christina: We did.
Zibby: What were they? I'm curious.
Ryan: I speak Danish. I've lived in Denmark for several years. There's a book called The Danish Way of Parenting that really spoke to me several years ago. As we were discussing this concept early on and really even towards the end of the project, we really thought that the name of this book would be The CIA Way of Parenting. That's really what we've called it. That's how we've adopted a lot of these techniques. They're CIA techniques adopted to parenting.
Christina: We did find a way to sneak that phrase into the book, the CIA way of parenting.
Ryan: We did. We were a little nervous or worried that PRB actually wouldn't support that name.
Christina: The publication review board. It sounds a little bit like the CIA is endorsing it. Of course, they don't endorse styles of parenting. [laughs] We pitched it like that. Then it was really an editorial decision. We went back and forth with lots of titles. Ryan actually thought of this title. We had been brainstorming. This is what we came up with. Then it stuck. It was really fun.
Ryan: I was just thinking of spy phrases and things that people can associate outside the book and link to the book some way, somehow. License to Parent just made a lot of sense.
Christina: It's kind of cheeky.
Zibby: I loved it. It's great. Love it. Awesome. Do you guys have advice for aspiring authors?
Christina: I would say, really, going back to what we talked about in the beginning, passion, following what you're most interested in. As you do, things will come together for you. If you're writing about something you're passionate about, which Ryan and I both did in this book, then you'll find a way. Sticking through that through persistence and, this sounds cliché, but believing in yourself. You need to believe in yourself before anyone else does as a writer. I think that's so important because it's going to be a while before you get someone on board sometimes. You hear no a lot before you hear yes. Following that passion and sticking with it, and you'll get there.
Ryan: Especially that phrase that she just used, sticking with it. Life happens sometimes. We started our initial book proposal and started going through the chapters. What would we include in terms of the principles and how we do it? This was in July or August one summer.
Christina: Gigi was a month or two old.
Ryan: We started a little bit and were getting some momentum, and life happened.
Christina: And we had a newborn. [laughs]
Ryan: We didn't get back to it for a year. A year later, the following summer, we're like, you know what, let's really get on that. It's something that we believe in. It's something that we really want to push forward and see if it's a viable option for a book and to get it out there into the world. Then we got on it again a year later and started brainstorming and putting the pieces together. What's great is that the dynamic that we have as a couple, we both come up with ideas and are idea-makers. What's really great for me is that Christina is the implementer. Without Christina, this book would not exist. She wrote ninety percent of it. Having her implementing and putting forth all the time and all the effort and all the thought behind this book and linking everything together according to our parenting style and what we thought this book had the potential to be, it's been a pleasure working with her. It's been fun. We've really enjoyed this time. Now actually seeing it come to fruition and actually having the book in our hands and seeing our friends and family and strangers holding our book, this is huge. It's a dream come true, for sure.
Zibby: Aw, that's so nice. By the way, I feel like we are the opposite now. I thought I was the you in this relationship.
Christina: Are you the implementer?
Zibby: I'm the implementer.
Christina: Of course, you are. Look at all of your projects. [laughs]
Zibby: Well, I'm just saying.
Christina: What is your Myers-Briggs? Now I'm really curious. Have you done Myers-Briggs?
Zibby: I have. I took it in business school. Only two percent of business school graduates had gotten my combination. [laughs]
Christina: I love it. Were you like, hmm, I think this is telling me something?
Zibby: Hold on, I'm trying to remember what the things are. ENTJ?
Christina: Oh, are you an N? I'm ES. I was FJ, but I think I'm more of a T these days. I used to be more of a feeler. Ryan is a big N, big ideas.
Zibby: I have to look it up.
Christina: Now I'm curious.
Zibby: I have a lot of ideas too. My husband, he has better ones, I think.
Christina: That's how I feel too.
Zibby: I never implement anything until I get his sign-off. I can run a thousand things, and he'll be like, "Hey, how about that?" Even something simple.
Christina: You guys sound like a great team. I love it. That's awesome.
Zibby: It's nice. Maybe there's something with the stepparent thing. It's a secret ingredient to a happy marriage if someone's a stepparent. I don't know. [laughter] Great. Thank you so much. I'm sorry we had to redo this. It was a pleasure chatting with you again. Thank you for this book. I can't wait to see what comes next for you guys. I'll be totally in your corner rooting for you. I still, by the way, Ryan, want you to do some YouTube videos for kids on these lessons. I tried to tell one of my daughters. I'm like, "There's this thing, getting off the X. You need to not freeze." She's like, "But how do I know where the danger even is if I don't figure it out?" I still think you should do just two-minute clips. Do like twenty of them and put it on your website or something. I bet parents will watch and have their kids watch.
Christina: Good idea.
Ryan: It's a great idea.
Zibby: In your spare time, License to Parent Tube or something. I don't know. Have a great weekend and everything. Thank you for chatting.
Christina: Thank you. You too. Bye.
Ryan: Cheers.
