Sunny Banana
YouTube Channel: https://youtube.com/@sanibonani-y2g?si=09LymOLYjP7sE3cY
I am a school chaplain and the content is intended to encourage curiosity about Faith and it's impact on day to day life
The Sunny Banana, is a play upon the Zulu greeting, Sanibonani, meaning I see you.
As tech wrenches us from real life, we are not seeing each other. The Greek word 'idea' means to see. It is as if we have lost the idea of what it means to be human; social, communal, relational. The same word, to see, in Old English is 'seon' which has connotations of understanding.
Let's start seeing each other again, listening, respecting, and understanding each other and ourselves. After all, we are people through other people.
Sunny Banana
Raising Resilient Girls | Adversity + Community + Faith > Labels And Pills #28
Here is a link to the Conversation from Freya India's Substack - Girls
https://www.freyaindia.co.uk/p/diagnosing-our-daughters?utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
What if the fastest way to strength isn’t fixing feelings but facing them together? We delve into a father’s candid perspective on raising resilient girls and the simple yet demanding equation that anchors the conversation: adversity plus community plus faith beats pills plus labels. Through real moments, hard-won reflections, and generous nods to thinkers like Freya India and clinical voices like Dr Roger McFillin, we chart a path away from reflexive pathologising and toward language, rituals, and relationships that actually heal.
We start with the words we choose. Swapping “I am depressed” for “I feel sad right now” seems small, but it changes everything—identity becomes experience, permanent becomes passing. From there, we move into the power of sitting with emotions instead of rushing to fix them, especially for daughters whose rich inner lives are often treated as disorders. We explore how numbing hard feelings can interrupt healthy brain development, while carefully acknowledging that medication has its place when used with wisdom and support.
Community and meaning do the heavy lifting. Shared meals, trusted mentors, faith gatherings, and team spaces help young people see themselves inside a bigger story. We talk about the lost art of grief rituals—funerals, vigils, prayers—that give shape to heartbreak and build resilience. History and philosophy also earn their place at the table, offering context that guards against ideological capture and reminding us that endurance is a human tradition, not a modern discovery.
By the end, you’ll have a framework to raise girls who do not fear their feelings, who can outlast emotional storms, and who grow into women with a steady core. If this resonated, follow the show, share it with a friend who needs encouragement today, and leave a review to help more parents find these conversations.
Sunny Bunani Welcome to the Sunny Banana. I see you. Welcome my brothers and sisters, and thank you for tuning in today. I want to talk today from the perspective of being a father to two beautiful girls, two beautiful daughters. And this morning I was speaking to a pupil who had just written a philosophy paper on utilitarianism, that theory that looks at utility and usefulness, pleasure and happiness as the measure of doing something right or morality. So the more pleasure, the more happiness, the more useful something is, and outweights its opposite, well then that makes it right. And you know, I asked her opinion, and this young lady said to me she doesn't really believe in it because pain is necessary for happiness. And I come to you today after reading a wonderful article by Freya India. Well, it was a conversation with Freya India and Dr. Roger McFillen, a clinical psychologist. Freya India has a wonderful Substack called Girls. And obviously, having girls as a father, I have been particularly interested in her work. And I would say her work is kind of counter-cultural in terms of the main narrative that's out there, and they ring very similar to my outlook on the mental health industry, and particularly for girls, and pathologizing a lot of what the girls are experiencing and going through. But the one headline, and I want to share with you and take from this wonderful conversation of these two people is a little bit of like a mathematical equation. It goes like this adversity plus community plus faith is larger than remember that little arrow at school is larger than pills plus labels. In Christianity there is the teaching of the fathers and mothers, no crown excuse me, no cross, no crown. No cross, no crown. And it's got it got me thinking a lot about how we deal with our emotions, and particularly dads out there, um the emotions of our lovely little daughters. These emotions are not symptoms of something that is wrong or bad. When we when we look at these emotions and we label them with uh anxiety or depression or ADHD, bipolar and and so on and so forth, we seem to make something permanent in our girls and a permanent identity. One of the great things from the talk was about language as a trap. So instead of saying I am depressed, we could rather say I feel sad right now, okay? Which is more of a temporary thing when you say I feel sad right now instead of I am depressed. And these are, you know, the way we speak creates our world in a way. And it's just, I guess I want to just highlight something for all the dads out there. That when our when our daughters are are emotional, all the women that we love are emotional, sit with them. Sit with them and don't think there's something wrong with them. The article also goes on to say that these emotions is what make women the most powerful and ungovernable things, uh beings. And um, you know, that might be threatening um to power when when women um are powerful like that and ungovernable and the powerful beings that they are. And perhaps to sit with them rather than label them and to outlast them. To outlast there's that wonderful saying, This too shall pass. This too shall pass. And the scary thing about this from the article about the pills and all that, is that they numb the emotions, which interrupt healthy brain development. And I spoke about this two podcasts ago about freeing ourselves from desire. It's almost like we need to kill everything that we want or need, um, as human beings, that is, you know, not the selfish desires, but the human, the deep human needs of friendship and love and community. But we seem to be numbing all of it through medication. Now, I want to say this that I'm not uh a doctor, and there are people that need medication, and that is fine. I'm not standing here saying get rid of everything. What I am saying is that let's help build resilient girls and letting them deal with their emotions and that their emotions are not something to be ashamed of. And so adversity plus community, and you come you come back to that pupil who said to me that pain is necessary for happiness. So it's so true, it's so true. Nothing worthwhile in this world comes easily. Nothing worth worthwhile in this world comes easily. I want to share some quotes with you before I sign off from this wonderful article. A culture with language for heartbreak and rituals for grief produces resilient people. A culture with language for heartbreak and rituals for grief produced resilient people. One of the most concerning things for me around COVID was the funerals that took place or even didn't take place, that were just skipped. These are these are gateways to healing, our rituals for grief. And our language for heartbreak, well, as a Christian, there's the Psalms, there are the prayers of the fathers and the mothers and the saints. That is full of grief and heartbreak. But once that heartbreak is seen through and understood and accepted, light penetrates and joy lifts us up. If you haven't experienced this before, it's hard to explain. It's hard to explain. The second quote is this historical and philosophical vacuum that we're in makes us perfect vessels for ideological capture. So if we don't have a historical, historical base and a view of the world, that's why I love philosophy as a subject, I think it's so important. But if we just disregard our past uh and all our ancestors have been through, I mean they've been through so much. And if we forget about all of that, we don't know, we we we we don't have a belief, we don't care, we don't care what's come before us, well the most powerful ideology now will just capture us. And I think some people don't even know that they are captured by the ideology that is flying around these days. Um and I won't go into that for now. I guess let me just sum up. If I've said too much, I apologize. But for the dads out there and the mothers that have daughters, let us love them into being who they are. And who they are are amazing human beings who will have emotional uh joy rides, and let us sit with their emotions, let us love them through their emotions, and let's not label them too quickly, and allow them to outlast and build resilience and become beautiful women. Amen. God bless you all. Thank you for listening today. Sunny Bonani. Thank you for listening to the sunny banana. I see you.