The SALT TALK with Jermine Alberty
The SALT TALK w/ Jermine Alberty is a podcast dedicated to having conversations of healing and recovery surrounding topics of mental health challenges, addictions, spirituality, and guest will talk about how their work serves, affirm, loves, and transform those they encounter. Join us for each episode as we get salty.
The SALT TALK with Jermine Alberty
Thanksgiving, Truth, And The Power Of Impeccable Speech
What if the kindest thing you could say is the clearest thing you’ve been avoiding? We explore how to make your words instruments of healing—especially during a season that calls for gratitude and courage. Drawing on Don Miguel Ruiz’s be impeccable with your word and Brene Brown’s clarity is kindness, we get practical about speaking truth without cruelty, and warmth without pretending. If holiday conversations feel tense, this guide to honest, compassionate communication will help.
We dig into the fawn response—people pleasing as a survival strategy—and how it quietly erodes boundaries, self-worth, and trust. You’ll hear clear markers to notice when you’re saying yes but meaning no, plus coaching on building self-awareness, reclaiming needs, and seeking support through therapy. Then we put language in your pocket: short, humane scripts for the Thanksgiving table that keep peace without sacrificing your voice. I love you and want a peaceful meal. I appreciate your view, and I’d like to focus on gratitude. I hear you, I don’t agree, and I still care about you.
Gratitude becomes sturdier when it’s practiced out loud. We share a daily Glow, Grow, Gratitude reflection, three spoken habits to amplify appreciation, and a simple repair ritual—owning harm with I’m sorry—to restore connection. We also introduce the SALT framework—service, affirmation, love, transformation—to anchor how words can uplift, acknowledge, protect, and clarify. And we hold space for the full story of this holiday by honoring Indigenous histories with empathy and truth, reminding ourselves that impeccable speech includes honest remembrance.
If you’re ready to trade vague niceness for clear kindness, and performative small talk for healing conversation, this is your roadmap to calmer tables and truer ties. Subscribe, share with someone who needs these scripts, and leave a review telling us which line you’ll try first.
The SALT Talk with Jermine Alberty
Service. Affirmation. Love. Transformation.
Thank you for tuning in to The SALT Talk, where we inspire transformation through honest conversations about faith, healing, and purpose.
Be sure to subscribe, rate, and share this episode with someone who needs encouragement today.
To learn more about the SALT Initiative or to book Rev. Alberty for training or speaking engagements, visit www.jerminealberty.com.
Until next time, remember:
Serve with humility, affirm with compassion, love with courage, and live a life of transformation.
Well everybody, welcome to the Salt Talk where we serve, affirm, love, and transform one conversation at a time. I'm your host, Jermaine Alberty, and today's episode is about something that feels right for the season of gratitude. Being impeccable with your word and learning that to be kind is to be clear. So as we gather around tables this Thanksgiving, we'll talk about what it means to use our words not as weapons, but as instruments of healing, hope, and transformation. Because sometimes the most loving thing we can do is tell the truth clearly, compassionately, and with gratitude. This is Durain Alberty, and you're listening to The Saw Talk. Well, I never forget reading the book by Don Miguel Rez. And in his book, The Four Agreements, it begins with the first and perhaps most powerful agreement. Be impeccable with your word. He writes, speak with integrity, say only what you mean. Avoid using the word to speak against yourself or to gossip about others. That word impeccable comes from the Latin peccatus meaning sin and M meaning without. So to be impeccable with your word, literally means without fault in your speech. Now, this is important because so many times we condemn ourselves. So many times we lean into false flattery. So many times we find ourselves gossiping. So to be impeccable with your word means no self-condemnation, no false flattery, and no gossip, just truth, spoken in love and gratitude. Can you imagine if we could gravitate toward that? Which is what we see right now in the media and what we see going on all around us. Just truth, spoken in love and gratitude. Think about that. In a world where so much is loud, reactive, and performative, what would it look like to slow down our speech? To speak in ways that heal instead of harm, and to make our conversations part of our gratitude practice. Sometimes the most meaningful part of Thanksgiving isn't what's on the table, but what's said around it. It's those words that linger long after the plates are cleared, the stories shared, the laughter exchanged, the moments when someone says, I'm proud of you, or I'm thankful for you. I want to take a moment just to reflect on what we just talked about here. Who in your life could benefit from you being impeccable with your word this week? Maybe it's yourself, the way you talk to yourself, or maybe it's someone at your Thanksgiving table. So I really want us to practice being impeccable with our word, because if we can be impeccable with our word and measure our words and be kind to ourselves and be kind to others with the words we speak, we can live a life of gratitude and thankfulness each and every day. And that reminds me about something that I read from Arthur Brene Brown. Brene Brown teaches um something that ties in beautifully with Ruaz First Agreement. And Brene Brown has a quote that to be kind is to be clear. Now, let me tell you something. That jacked me up. Because what I realized many times in my efforts to be kind to people, I was not being truthful and honest with them about how they were making me feel in my life. In an effort to protect their feelings, I wasn't even protecting my feelings. In an effort to make sure they didn't get somehow evoked with some kind of distressing feeling because of what I said. I just held in to myself. And in doing so, I was not even being kind to my own self. To be clear is to be kind. But Renee reminds us that real kindness is rooted in clarity. And I think so many times there's the small screens, and it's all this stuff that we are doing to try to avoid conflict. And one of the uh areas that I have been working so hard is avoiding the fawning to avoid conflict. I'm gonna say that again. I've been trying to avoid the fawning response to avoid conflict. You see, the fawn response is a trauma response where a person tries to avoid conflict by constantly appeasing others and people pleasing, often at the expense of their own needs and feelings. My friend, this is a subconscious survival tactic involved in prioritizing other persons' needs to ensure safety and prevent disapproval, criticism, or danger. And it often stems from childhood trauma or environments where conflict and expressing emotions could lead to rejection or punishment. And because we want to avoid that rejection and that punishment and that conflict, we're not clear with our words, and we become people pleasers, consistently putting the needs of others for our own, conflict avoidance where we are having a strong fear of conflict and difficulty saying no, having issues with boundaries, struggling to set or maintain personal boundaries, suppressing our own emotions, hiding our own opinions, feelings, or needs to avoid making others unhappy, agreeing with things we shouldn't even be agreeing with. That's when we automatically agree with others to avoid disagreement even when we don't fully agree. And then lastly, appeasement, an attempt to keep the peace by being overly agreeable and helpful. Where does this come from? The farm response, let me be really clear, is a survival mechanism, it is not weakness. As I said, I was trying to figure out how I developed this response in my life, and when I did the research, it often developed in childhood as a response to unpredictable or abusive environments. It's in those environments where, as children, we learn to be good or agreeable, to gain the approval of those parents and guardians and adults in our life to avoid punishment, and it can even develop in adult relationships with emotionally abusive or controlling partners. How do we move past this? It begins with an increased self-awareness. We have to pay attention to when we go silent and say yes. We have to pay attention to when we go silent and say yes. When we really mean no or minimize our needs. We need to work on identifying and valuing our own needs and feelings. We need to build that self-worth where we recognize that worth is not dependent on pleasing others. And we need to do what I did almost three years ago. And that was I sought professional help. I got a therapist, went to a mental health professional, and talked through those issues. Because the mental health professional can help you understand the roots of that trauma and develop healthier coping mechanisms. To be impeccable with your word begins with being honest with yourself. To be kind to yourself begins with being clear with yourself. As Renee Brown reminds us once again, real kindness is rooted in clarity. When we're clear, we don't leave others guessing. When we're clear, people feel respected even when the message is hard to hear. Because what clarity does is removes confusion, and confusion often causes more harm than the truth ever could. So many of us don't want to go to Thanksgiving dinner because there's people at these meals and these gatherings that evoke distress in us, and sometimes we only accept the invitation to avoid conflict. So let me give you some tips. Let me give you some tips. This can happen. These these what I'm gonna give you some advice for can happen at the Thanksgiving table, at the water cooler, in the church vestibule. But say things like, you know, I love you and I want this meal to be peaceful. Or, you know, I appreciate your view, but I'd rather focus on gratitude right now. Or I hear you, I don't agree, but I still care about you. That's what it means to live the first agreement, to speak impeccably, and then to practice Brene Brown's kind of courage, kindness with boundaries, clarity with compassion. Because when you're clear, you're not being cruel. You're creating a space where trust can live, where love can breathe, and where gratitude feels safe to grow. So let's talk about that just for a minute. Let's talk about thankfulness as a practice. So when we think about Thanksgiving, gratitude is often framed as a feeling, you know, something that arises when things go right or when life feels full. But what if gratitude is more than a feeling? What if it becomes a discipline, a daily decision about what we speak and what we notice, and what we choose to highlight? I try to uh evaluate my day by three Gs. Where did I glow? Where can I grow? And what am I grateful for? Say that again. Where did I glow? In essence, where did I shine bright? Where was my strength? And then where can I grow? Where can I improve? But then that other G is what am I grateful for? What am I grateful for? And I promise you, if you take gratefulness and gratitude and make it a discipline, a daily decision about what we speak and what we notice and what we choose to highlight, being impeccable with your word can actually be an act of gratitude because every time you speak truth and love, you are from life. And every time you use your words to uplift instead of complain, you shift the atmosphere around you. So here are three practices you can try this week. Remember, I said my three glow, grow, gratitude. All right, glow, grow, gratitude. Here's three more. Speaking gratitude, right? So just don't think thankful thoughts, but speak them aloud. I'm grateful for my health. I'm thankful for my community. I appreciate how someone showed up for me this year. Gratitude spoken becomes gratitude shared. Number two, affirm others. Be specific in your appreciation. I admire how you stay calm under pressure. You have a way of making people feel seen. And when we affirm others clearly, we remind them of their value. And three, repair with words. If your words have caused harm, be impeccable by owning it. Don't be gaslighting people, be impeccable with your word. Own it. I said something I regret. I'm sorry. See, that's honesty. And that honesty is healing, not only for you, but for them also. Because when we use our words this way, we create a ripple of gratitude that stretches beyond the table and beyond the season and into a rhythm of our lives. Well, you know, I cannot end a salt talk episode without talking about salt. You know, salt. We believe transformation starts with the words we choose: service, affirmation, love, and transformation. That's salt. And each one depends on the integrity of our speech. So when we are talking about salt in the form of service, our words serve when they uplift and make space for others to be heard. We're talking about affirmation. Our words affirm when they acknowledge the good, when they say, I see you. Love, our words love when they are honest, yet gentle, when they hold truth and tenderness together. In that transformation, our words transform when they bring light into dark moments and clarity into confusion. And so that is why this season that is called Thanksgiving. I invite you to start a new tradition. Before you eat, go around the table and have each other say, This year I'm thankful for. And when each person shares, responds together, we see you. We thank you. And that exchange, that intentional acknowledgement, is what community looks like in action. It's what transformation sounds like. Be impeccable with your word. Acknowledge that. Acknowledge what you're feeling. Acknowledge that. They can build bridges of burden. They can plant seeds of hope or spread weeds of harm. Being impeccable with your word doesn't mean you'll always get it right. But what it does mean is you're always aware of the impact your words carry. It means speaking from a place of clarity, compassion, and care. And may this Thanksgiving, may your words be filled with warmth, may they carry peace into rooms that need it. And may you find that gratitude grows louder when your speech becomes more intentional. But before we close, I want to pause for a moment of reflection. Thanksgiving is often seen as a time of gratitude, gathering, and abundance. And it can be all those things, and yet also invites us to look honestly at the stories we tell and the history we inherit. Seven years ago, I received dual citizenship as part of the Cherokee Nation. And as a black freeman carrying both ancestry of the enslaved and the Cherokee, I recognize the importance of closing this conversation with truth and reflection. For many Native American and indigenous people, Thanksgiving is not a celebration, but a reminder of loss, displacement, and broken promises. Being pickable with our word means acknowledging that history, telling the truth, even when it's uncomfortable, and speaking it with empathy and respect. As we give thanks, may we also hold space for remembrance, listening, and learning, using our words and actions to honor the full story and seek understanding and help build a more compassionate and truthful future for all. Thank you for joining me today on the Slow Talk. I'm Jermaine Alberty, reminding you that transformation begins with how you speak, how you love, and how you live. This is Jermaine Alberty, and you've been listening to The Slow Talk.
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