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You’re Not Broken—You’re Becoming: Motherhood, Triggers & the Power of Self-Acceptance with The Grateful Life Coach, Trish DiGaetano · Inchstones with Sarah | Autism Advocacy & Caregiver Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: I know.
• 0:01
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 0:02
  Speaker A: Yeah, exactly. That's how we like to start things on inch stones. Today, I have with me Trish, AKA the grateful life coach, who I have known for over two decades now, which is the scary and beautiful and brutal part of life, is that time is the only commodity that we can calibrate but we cannot get more of. Trish and I have known each other since our undergrad years at Penn State and have shared a lot of similar parallel paths, a lot of very different ones at the. At the same time. But what we both have leaned into is an entrepreneurial spirit of finding and giving back to women in the populations that we serve to inspire the power in our own journeys. Yeah, very much so. And it's just true. I mean, our stories could not be more different, and then they can also not be more similar.
• 0:58
  Speaker B: Right?
• 0:58
  Speaker A: So you so much for being here today. Are you. Are you. Are. We live from New Jersey, both of us.
• 1:05
  Speaker B: Girl, I jumped the river. We in Bucks county now, baby. Yeah.
• 1:09
  Speaker A: It's so similar.
• 1:12
  Speaker B: I know, but Jersey girl for life. Jersey girl for life.
• 1:16
  Speaker A: You are little. This is so not even how we were going to start this. But you are literally the reason that I jumped and fully accepted this for myself with Jersey. Yeah. You are the person that since the get go, since. Since I jumped the river from New York to Jersey, you were the one. And I remember I was cringe about it. I was cringe about it.
• 1:35
  Speaker B: I know. And I just was relentless in my.
• 1:37
  Speaker A: Comments, but it wasn't even like you, and you weren't even over the top about it. You were a little girl. I loved it. And I. And I think the alignment is that I love growing up in Pittsburgh so much, and I am. I'm unapologetic. I absolutely love growing up there. That seeing you share so similar. You're like, girl, I love Griffin Jersey. I feel that. So I'm gonna go with it. You really are the reason. Like, you were the reason why I just assistant. I got. I got Jersey girl.
• 1:59
  Speaker B: Yes. Oh, my God, this is such a compliment.
• 2:02
  Speaker A: You. Honestly, if you all my Jersey friends.
• 2:04
  Speaker B: Are gonna be so proud of me.
• 2:05
  Speaker A: No, no, seriously. I mean, and. And the. And the acceptance and the love that my kids, but specifically my oldest, Morgan has for being from Jersey. I mean, she just thinks that you just go. You just go to surf. You just surf on the weekend.
• 2:19
  Speaker B: Loyalty, baby. The loyalty.
• 2:21
  Speaker A: Do you know what it's like to grow up landlocked? No, you don't. You have no idea what it's like.
• 2:25
  Speaker B: To grow up I know.
• 2:26
  Speaker A: Anyways.
• 2:28
  Speaker B: I'm so happy to hear this.
• 2:31
  Speaker A: Jumping into this right away because I like to do this on these episodes. Inch zones for me is about the daily wins, about being conscious to all the growth and regression, grief and acceptance on anyone's path. And I know that you do personal one on one coaching to, as you said, 98% women love our, we love our, we love our male.
• 2:54
  Speaker B: No shade to the men. Have had super, super interesting sessions with, with male clients over the years. But yeah, I didn't set out to work primarily with women. And yet the heart of my practice is referrals and definitely unfolded to be mostly women. And I'm very grateful for that. I'm very grateful for that.
• 3:13
  Speaker A: Talk to me about what has evolved in those 10 years and what you've learned most that has bubbled to the surface about women.
• 3:22
  Speaker B: The funny thing is that if I, if I could go back and honestly, like talk to the first few women that I worked with fresh out of my coaching program, I almost want to be like, let me give you a free session. It's way better now. All the practice, all the learning, like, oh, we could make moves. I mean, let me just offer you a free session. You know, it's. I love that you said when we first started that our stories are different. They are. We're. Yes. We're both mothers. Yes. We're both lovers of New Jersey, we're both Penn Staters. You know, all these things. Sure. And our stories are so different. And so the things that I have learned the most over the past decade of coaching, two main common thread lines that I think equalize core desires, at least in terms, in sort of the divine feminine space here. The second thing that, and I've said this to you before, we jumped on the record here, but the women I've worked with, so, so different. Some of them are mothers, some of them are not. Some of them are working, some of them are not family of origin stories, personal traumas, where they live. I've worked with people internationally, you know, so, so, so, so different the details. But there are really two things that I have found that continue to come up time and time again that almost demand us to pay attention to before we can really make steps forward that are in deep alignment with who we are and what we want. The second thing is wanting to live a life of purpose.
• 4:53
  Speaker A: Purpose.
• 4:54
  Speaker B: Right. So doing the thing that our truest nature, that our soul requires of us, regardless of cultural messaging, regardless of what has been defined for us by the school systems, by our Parents by our communities that we grew up in as what success looks like, what true purpose, what meaning looks like. And that's tough. That's really tough to unpack.
• 5:23
  Speaker A: Really, really, really tough. The absolute best part of being a mother to children with non speaking autism. I think you're going to hear the resounding head nod from the podcast land audience. Autistic children who become autistic adults do not succumb to exactly what you just said. Conditioning of schools, conditioning of thoughts from culture conditioning to what is their growth and development. They literally to be crass, do not give up flying. It is my greatest teacher, my greatest compass is Millie coming home from school on a Friday, knowing there's pizza on the stove, dropping her backpack, going into the kitchen, opening the box, slice of pizza, handing me the remote and on her talker saying, you know, I want this episode. But I, in my mind, she's like, turn on Peppa Pig. Like I. And this is what, this is just what I want, Mom. Like, I didn't force Peppa Pig on her. I didn't force anything on her. She. She figured out what she likes and I'm to believe her.
• 6:27
  Speaker B: Right. Right. That's it. Yeah.
• 6:30
  Speaker A: And it was like it has given me so much an alignment with what you said.
• 6:35
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 6:35
  Speaker A: Is that Millie only knows Millie and Mac and the audience and the children that I serve. They only know what your fact you just said about your. What their nature is. That's all I know.
• 6:46
  Speaker B: What their nature is. Yeah. So Martha Beck, she's sort of like the OG life coach. Like she used the term life coach, I think for anyone else. Did.
• 6:53
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 6:53
  Speaker B: She has a great podcast, you know, beautiful writer, speaker, and she talks a lot about this concept which I use in my coaching all the time is the culture versus the nature. And her tagline, I hope I get this right. Sorry, Martha, I might have to fact check this, but her tagline for her podcast is that culture asks us to come to consensus, whereas our nature asks us to come to our senses. And from that place. Right. Coming to our truest nature, our senses, what our souls require us, no matter what it looks like to everyone else, is going and following that and having the courage to practice. Practice following that. Practice being a word I use constantly in coaching. To practice following. That is what will ultimately lead you, me, everyone, to the most fulfilling, wholehearted space of life. Absolutely. So that's the second thing. I'll jump to the first because I think it's connected. The number one thing, Sarah, that every person that I have worked with including the smattering of males in the past decade, the number one thing that needs to be examined and nurtured is wanting to be loved and accepted for who we are, including by our own being. Right. Possibly most importantly, by our own being. Because people will come and go, jobs will come and go, family will come and go, houses will come and go, communities will come and go. But the one person that we are stuck with until that final breath, you don't know when that's going to be. I tell clients all the time, I'm like, oh, spoiler alert. Nobody gets out alive. Spoiler alert. Sorry. You know? And you don't know what the fuck that is. We are stuck with ourselves.
• 8:46
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 8:47
  Speaker B: Stuck. And so nurturing our relationship to self with love and acceptance of that true nature will have profound, profound effect on our lives.
• 9:04
  Speaker A: Matthew McConaughey said that, too, in his. That green light book that he. That he wrote and he shared on podcasts. He said he looked at himself in the mirror. Go, McConaughey. You ain't getting away from yourself.
• 9:13
  Speaker B: I mean.
• 9:14
  Speaker A: I mean, it's just like, that's the. Yeah, it's the. It's the absolute. Our prefrontal cortex as humans doesn't close until we're 26. So, like, it's hard to even understand. It's hard to tell someone before they're 26. You know, getting away from yourself, you actually think before you're 26 that you might be able to, like, you actually think before you're 26.
• 9:32
  Speaker B: It's not your fault. Right. It's not your fault they think that way.
• 9:35
  Speaker A: It's not your fault.
• 9:35
  Speaker B: And yet. And yet. And this is a. So Laura McCowan wrote a beautiful book called We Are the Luckiest, and it's about her journey.
• 9:42
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 9:42
  Speaker B: Friday. And she has this list that she keeps. And the first two things. Number one, it's not your fault. Right. Number two, it is your responsibility.
• 9:50
  Speaker A: Yes, I know. I saw a guy on the Internet, and he's walking on, like, a ship or something. I don't even know where he is.
• 9:58
  Speaker B: Who.
• 9:58
  Speaker A: It doesn't even matter who he is. And he's going. Trauma, abuse as a child. You know, on your. On your fourth marriage. Husband died. Like, passed away. No. No. Parents left orphaned. Go heal it. I'm so sorry to tell you nothing in the world. You cannot run from it. You have to. You have got to take ownership of your healing. And, God, it hurts to. Because we. Then we bargain, and we bargain and say, oh, her hurt isn't as bad as mine. And why did my. I don't know what to tell you, sis.
• 10:32
  Speaker B: That's your fault. But it is your responsibility. And that's where I think with coaching, too, which I love so much about doing the work with other people and being reminded. I mean, Sarah, I, like, kind of selfishly do this job for me.
• 10:43
  Speaker A: Well, we all do. Right?
• 10:44
  Speaker B: Right. And so when I hang up the phone, I'm like, oh, my God, I totally needed to be reminded of that. I totally. Right. And so it's the practice piece. It's the practice piece. You don't. We don't necessarily ever arrive at the checkbox of. And now I am healed. I'm wholehearted.
• 11:03
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 11:04
  Speaker B: Nothing. I mean, you know, maybe you're a sociopathic narcissist then at that point, and. And that's a psychiatrist now. Not. Not so much in the right. No. It's a practice. It's a forever practice. But what we hope to do by saying yes to the things that resonate with us by saying yes to our truest nature and practicing, that is strengthen our muscles of resiliency of course correction, of introspective reflection, and from that place again, the possibilities of what lies ahead and become almost so clear to us that it's. It's impossible to say no. Does that make sense? Like. Yes. But it takes practice. And it's. This is such a cliche analogy, but I do use it. So you walk into the gym one time, you don't walk out looking like Gisele Bundichen. I mean, genetics also.
• 12:00
  Speaker A: Yeah, right, right. Yeah.
• 12:01
  Speaker B: But you don't walk out looking like Gisele Boon. It's a forever practice. You look at elite athletes, you know, we're Penn Staters, they gotta go to practice every day. They have to hone in on their craft. They have to rewatch game day footage. They have to work with specialists. And if they want to continue to level up. Level up, level up. They don't just get into the program that is Penn State football.
• 12:23
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:23
  Speaker B: Check the box and win championships.
• 12:26
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 12:26
  Speaker B: No, no, no.
• 12:27
  Speaker A: Right. Well, I mean, that's. I think that's what it is. Hard. And I think that, you know, as mothers, too, any mother, it doesn't matter what your children beautifully are and how they manifest as these little humans that you create and what souls are in them. Millie, I always say, Millie and Mac are my greatest teachers. The reps that it takes, like the inch stone reps, the small little things that remind us that nothing happens overnight. We should. Whatever we were sold in the 90s in Diet Coke from McDonald's. Like, I don't know what it was. I drank, I drank it, though. Oh, I drank it. I guzzled that shit. Like I was giving me all the answers.
• 13:07
  Speaker B: Oh my God.
• 13:08
  Speaker A: Like they wiped that clean and took me back to your point about what? It's our responsibility. I do believe that every person, if they're really being honest with themselves and can get to the point of honesty with themselves, we are all leveled in life by something like. And it doesn't. It's all relative.
• 13:26
  Speaker B: My leveling two trauma. Yeah.
• 13:30
  Speaker A: I still have moments, which I did yesterday in a swim lesson, you know, in the basement of the YMCA in my town, where the swim class after me is one and a half to two year olds after the special needs rainbow fish class of severely autistic children. And there's, you know, five kids in Millie and Max session group. And the children that are after them are toddlers who are cracking up their moms and saying the funny things and they're corralling three, four, five kids. And they have a different experience than I do because. And I had these, these visions of myself where I want to turn around and go, do you know how fucking lucky you are? I cannot believe that you just told him to go get their shoes. And they did. They actually did. And, and at the same time, I, I can acknowledge and go very quickly now after the work I've done, to go. I have no idea.
• 14:28
  Speaker B: I love that example. I love that example. You are allowed to be human. You are allowed to be triggered. You are allowed to have the full spectrum of your human experience. And this is so Bernay Brown.
• 14:39
  Speaker A: Right.
• 14:39
  Speaker B: And I'm sure your sister Brene tells us that we cannot selectively numb our. Our feelings. Right. So, Sarah, if you want to feel huge love, huge joy, huge. Aha. Miracles, you know, playfulness, curiosity, I can't do that.
• 14:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 14:56
  Speaker B: You have to open the gates fully. And so with that comes the moments of envy.
• 15:03
  Speaker A: Yeah. You have to.
• 15:04
  Speaker B: Yeah. Fear of anger. Of those culturally less desirable. Yes.
• 15:10
  Speaker A: Less desirable. Absolutely. They are less desirable. And again, why do we.
• 15:13
  Speaker B: Culturally. Yeah, yeah, you're allowed to have that. But what I hear you saying is that because of the work that you do, because of the responsibility that you take, you're strengthening those muscles of resiliency. You're strengthening those muscles of, I would say acceptance. And acceptance can be a pathway to peace like nothing else. And I'll tell you this. So I have been a member of Al Anon for, For three Something years. So Al Anon, if people don't know, is the sort of the sister program to aa. So it's for people who have loved ones struggling with addiction. And so my qualifier was my ex husband. And you know, I walked into these Al Anon rooms completely broken, completely at my lowest of low, you know, rock bottom has a basement, baby. And there I was. And I remember this concept of acceptance being brought up quite a bit, quite frequently. No matter what meeting I was going to, the people that were there. And it got to the point where people would go from acceptance to talking about their gratitude that stemmed from their acceptance for their qualifier. And the first few months I sat there thinking, are you. I. You want me to be grateful? You want me to have real gratitude? Meanwhile, my business.
• 16:32
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, right, that. Yeah, I know.
• 16:35
  Speaker B: Gratitude. And this is not a space. Right, right. And I just couldn't believe that that was possible. That accepting what was happening, not, you know, healthy boundaries and all that included, but accepting what was happening, accepting him and accepting responsibility for the caretaking of my spirit through all of this could actually yield gratitude for what? I was like, you guys are. What are you smoking? Yeah. I said, I think I'm in the wrong room. Beginners meetings. And I was like, oh, like I should really go back to beginners. Yeah, Step one. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Step one. Accept that I'm powerless. Accept that I'm powerless over alcohol.
• 17:27
  Speaker A: Right. So this is a great. This is a great parallel. So I'm actually interviewing a woman named Heidi Rome. Give me a woman in their 60s or older, and I want to be around them. Woman. Heidi. She's a special needs mom. She had a severely autistic son who is, I guess now in his. In his 20s, but she shared about having to send him to a private boarding school for her severely autistic boys. And it was run under the Japanese educational system for autistic individuals, which was a lot more. Which was a lot more nature based, a lot more holistic, child based, not about the routine and sort of Americanized way of educational systems for children on the spectrum. That being said, before she sent her son, who barely was able to communicate, she said, ethan, how do I do this? Am I. All I want to do is to always make the right choice to show you that I'm here. I'm doing as best I can. I love you so much. I hope that I am the mom that can continue to do that for you. And I. I have such guilt over sending you away. But I. I have a beer. Yeah, but I know that this is right for you. How do I continue to help you from being afar? And he uses. He does spell to communicate, so it's like a letter board.
• 18:48
  Speaker B: Okay.
• 18:48
  Speaker A: And the title of her book. And what he said is not the.
• 18:51
  Speaker B: Title of her book.
• 18:52
  Speaker A: You just have to love me. And she said, she kept saying, but, Ethan, no, tell me, tell me. What does that mean, though? It's like, mom, I'm on my own journey, but you, all you have to do is love me. It's that. Are you doing it with the full intention of loving that person into their full being and best form of themselves? We know that it's not black and white, but there's a large gray. And even within that gray, you have to just be okay with whatever you feel is out of love.
• 19:21
  Speaker B: God, it's so true. Yeah.
• 19:23
  Speaker A: So your point about the acceptance of. Of alcoholism into your acknowledgment of gratitude. I mean, no woman wakes up in their 30s in Manhattan. I always say, going, you know what I want 2 kids with non speaking autism. That is exactly what I want.
• 19:40
  Speaker B: That's right.
• 19:41
  Speaker A: I don't. This is gonna. My way to gratitude is two kids that can't ever talk.
• 19:46
  Speaker B: No, no. And you can't know it. And so, you know, you and I, we talk about Glennon and she. All the work that she does, but she talks about how when she writes, like when she's written her best work, she's not writing from the gaping open wound. She's not writing and sharing from the gaping open wound. She's writing more from the scar. She's done the work, process through. And that, to me, is an example of Al Anon.
• 20:08
  Speaker A: Right.
• 20:08
  Speaker B: So the first few times that I went to meetings, it was in the gaping open wound. I could only receive so much. I could only process so much. But with practice, with practice, I did get to the point. And I still can't believe I'm even saying this. I did get to a place, not all the time, but I think in general, where I have true gratitude for that experience, the specifics of that experience, what it brought to my life, it made me a better mom. It made me a better coach. God, even like logistics, personnel wise, some of my closest friends now who understand and see me in a way I've never been seen and loved before, come from those. Those rooms, those basement, underground rooms. I spend a lot of time underground, Sarah.
• 20:59
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 21:01
  Speaker B: And I don't regret that. I don't. I have. No, I wouldn't. I wouldn't change it. I wouldn't change. It doesn't mean that it's always easy co parenting with someone you know who is on that roller coaster. Again, I could be triggered. I can look at other families with their high functioning, you know, little force them out and about and say, you have no idea. Sure. Because I'm human. Because I'm human. And I accept that too. Right.
• 21:29
  Speaker A: I recently had someone else share with me that. Cause I talk a lot about the triggers of public in that space. You're owning that there are triggers in any lived experience and you know, the specific to special needs and being out and about and being. Choosing to interact over isolate, choosing to say I'm going to be triggered. But as I practice that, that becomes less and less. Someone shared with me recently that there's a science behind the what you believe to be a trigger and what is actually human nature to discover. I try to reframe it as curiosity. But I say all that because I had recently in my chapter right now, my most generous response is they're curious. Sometimes we all don't know what our faces and bodies and do in the nonverbal communication. We are primally wired to find the mismatch.
• 22:24
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 22:24
  Speaker A: We are primally wired to notice what does not fit the norm and our brains are not. And we as a society or as an individual get to say that's not wrong for your neighbor to go like this. He's trying to figure out what the mismatch is here.
• 22:47
  Speaker B: Right. He's trying to make the unfamiliar familiar. And I'll tell you some of the science behind that too. And this really, you're talking about primal DNA. Yes.
• 22:55
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 22:56
  Speaker B: We want to be safe. Yes. We want to just feel safe. The only reason why you and I are here, Sarah, is because our ancestors survived.
• 23:04
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 23:04
  Speaker B: They survived, you know, generation, generation, generation back. They survived because don't eat that berry. Cousin died eating that thing.
• 23:11
  Speaker A: Yeah. Right.
• 23:12
  Speaker B: Don't go into cave bear eat cousin. That's okay all the time.
• 23:17
  Speaker A: Yes, yes, yes.
• 23:19
  Speaker B: I have a lot of cousins, so it's fine. You know, so it's in our DNA to want to stay safe. And the unfamiliar on a biological level triggers not safe unsafety in some way. And obviously, obviously, Sarah, your children going on the bus, there's. There's no unsafety to anyone else in that scenario.
• 23:39
  Speaker A: No, no.
• 23:40
  Speaker B: But it's unsafe to unfamiliar. Right? That's right. Until it is familiar. There's also. This is also the Brene Brown thing she talks about, like the neurobiology behind the stories we make.
• 23:51
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 23:51
  Speaker B: So Our brains give us a hit of dopamine when we complete a story, when we complete a riddle, a puzzle, right? When we have the answer, when we reach that endpoint, great, we get a little good job. Dopamine. Oh, my God.
• 24:07
  Speaker A: Well, I'll tell you why you and I are a part of the evolutionary change in that I hope that we are. I believe that you and I are. I mean, but.
• 24:15
  Speaker B: But.
• 24:15
  Speaker A: But that really pisses me off, that we do that, that our brains are wired for that, that we already had a dopamine hit. When we get an answer. I don't want.
• 24:21
  Speaker B: That's right. I don' the more fucked up part. Jersey Girl dropping the F bombs here. The more fucked up part is that we will get a hit of dopamine even when we make up the answer. Because we're so desperate to feel safe and familiar, right? So when we say, what's this right in coaching, well, what's the story you're telling up here? What is the story you're making up here? And we get so far into. Into figuring out why this person looked at us funny, why this, the boy didn't call us back, why we didn't get that job. We want the answer so badly, so fucking badly that we make it up. And even if it is the most incorrect answer, yeah, dopamine hit. You did it.
• 25:03
  Speaker A: You figured it out.
• 25:04
  Speaker B: Are you fucking kidding me?
• 25:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, that's why. That's why. Again, just in the audience that I serve, why did this happen? Well, how did this happen to me? I mean, I will share with you when talking about generations and, like, you say, like our ancestors and their cousins, my grandfather and, you know, God rest his soul, like, I love my Grandpa Red. I'm just the oldest. I am the oldest cousin on that side of the family. He would look at me every time I visited and go, how did that happen? And he wasn't saying it unlovingly. He goes, sarah, oh, honey, how did this happen? And I would go, grandpa Rhett, I don't. I. Yeah, you're right. I mean, I think earlier generations are why you and I are doing the work that we do, because we're trying to rid ourselves of the freedom from not having the answer.
• 25:49
  Speaker B: That's right.
• 25:50
  Speaker A: And that's right.
• 25:51
  Speaker B: Oh, God. Sitting in the discomfort.
• 25:54
  Speaker A: What's, like, it's. It's. What is it? You know, Sit in that hot loneliness. I mean, that. That phrase of Glennon's has been. One of the emblazoned phrases that I love is like, what is Your hot loneliness. I know what my hot loneliness is through being a special needs parent. And the ownership of that, like owning it has given me such power to live the purpose that I know that I fully know that I was meant to live. And it is because of the do not fuck every of my children. They literally are just like, mom, you love us.
• 26:31
  Speaker B: Just sounds so liberating, Sarah. It sounds so freeing. It sounds so freeing.
• 26:38
  Speaker A: The irony sometimes that they are the easiest, like a tween and middle school.
• 26:42
  Speaker B: How many of those struggles, learning points, transitions of. Of teenhood. Tweenhood are about the things of culture.
• 26:51
  Speaker A: Trying to say, we're like you and I are trying to say, just please don't listen to it. I know it sounds. And then you spend. I say, you know, spend time with Millie and Mac and you'll. You'll forget very quickly about why you need to have those addicted genes or those that set from Lululemon very quickly. I'm gonna jump here. How has mother. How has motherhood informed your practice, being a grateful life coach? I mean, I know that's a loaded question, but if you could share that, because I think I know a lot of my audience. We all obviously are our mothers. But the tethering of ourselves to the souls of these little offspring, whomever they are, and however they show us who they are every day, both molded by and modeling of what we are, but also innately who they are, how has that changed how you serve?
• 27:37
  Speaker B: So they really are mirrors. They are absolutely mirrors. I tell the story. So, like, we have a dog. Love her. She's my first baby. And she barks out the window at everything. A rabbit, a neighbor, a leaf, it doesn't matter. And I had this. This moment where my daughter was two, two and a half. And the dog.
• 27:53
  Speaker A: I know this story. Cause it's one of my favorite stories that you posted on this, right?
• 27:56
  Speaker B: So she bark, bark, bark, bark, bark. And she runs over and she wraps her arms around the dog and she starts, you know, gently stroking, saying, you're safe, you're safe. Right? And it was a moment where I was like, oh, my. I've modeled that for her. Like, I have. I get the.
• 28:12
  Speaker A: I have wired. I have wired.
• 28:13
  Speaker B: I have wired this. Now here, this is true motherhood for you. 24 hours later, 24 hours later, the dog's barking out the window again. Same little precious junior associate of mine comes flying around the corner. God damn it. So, yeah, you know, motherhood in that way has informed quite a bit. Being a mirror. I think it's also, and we talked about this a little bit prior to the cult about the act of receiving. So in my circumstances, becoming a single mother was my sort of unexpected curveball. And having to receive support in a new way and a new level that I've never had to in the past has been life changing, you know, from childcare, financial times, the emotional support required. And it's changed me. It's changed how I look at my clients, too. It's changed how I hear them in their stories. You know, again, a lot of them are mothers and it's something we almost always touch on is the act of receiving and how that feels to even say it. And I. So all my phone, my calls, my sessions are done over the phone.
• 29:30
  Speaker A: Right.
• 29:30
  Speaker B: So I don't. I don't do video. I don't. And I think there's something that has been freeing and liberating for people, being able to just have to listen differently and also not look for my reaction to things. Right. Again, that cultural need for us to say, I'm going to tell you this thing. I'm going to tell you this thing. Are you going to raise an eyebrow? Are you not? Yes. Are you affirming what I'm saying? You know, they don't. They can't see that.
• 29:52
  Speaker A: They can't see that.
• 29:53
  Speaker B: And so in these calls, you know, I feel like I pick up differently about the act of receiving. And I can feel the cringe. I don't see it. I can feel the energy shift of.
• 30:02
  Speaker A: Yes, you can.
• 30:03
  Speaker B: Well, I don't want to burden. I don't want to bother. I don't want to. And so we worked through that. Yes, quite a bit.
• 30:10
  Speaker A: I love that. I absolutely love that. My. My first therapist ever. Yeah, my first therapist was blind. And it's not until like years later that I realized what a gift that was that she was blind.
• 30:26
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 30:27
  Speaker A: I wish I had her as a therapist when Mac and Millie are around because she would take in their energy differently than when she was just taking in this chubby Cabbage patch baby of Morgan. Right. To your point, that's. She didn't have a choice to do that. I love that you're choosing to do that because it's leaning on a different set of core senses. And you're removing one. You're removing one.
• 30:46
  Speaker B: Yep. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. It's like, it's like coaching program. I went through the coaches training institute. It's like one on one is levels of listening, levels of listening. And most of us. And I do too, like, let me Preface all of this by saying, always a student, always learning, always course correcting. And I tell, I try to tell that to my clients too. Like listen, if you're looking for a coach that you're going to come to the table and we're going to check the box and you're going to be wholehearted and that's it. It's not me. It ain't me, sis. If you can find that person, hire them, pay them all the money, refer them to me, because I'd love to, absolutely. But that's not what it's about. You know, even people, ie like myself, who have done the work now for a decade, who arguably have really healthy tools, still have moments of real humanness, you know, real struggle, real trigger and.
• 31:36
  Speaker A: Give me some maybe nuggets from your practice and being a mother in the community that you serve that can, you know, like bridge the gap or help the special needs mom population in that self, self love, self acceptance and the act of, I think the act of receiving and not, and not accepting the scruples or to flip that knowing that what you are able to give yourself, the love that you can give yourself can be scruples. But it's going to grow.
• 32:15
  Speaker B: So you do you speak so generously about it. I would say what I make up and tell me how this lands with you is that just by the nature of what your children require in terms of practice, like, you see that you don't have a choice, right? You have, you don't have a choice. You have to practice with them all the time, all the practice, you know, and you would never, and knowing what you know now, you would never look at that as like you or them are doing it wrong because you haven't achieved some what made up status of success or change or. So why do we do that to ourselves? Right? Why do we do that to ourselves? And I think as mothers across the board, you know, I have said this many times in my writing and in my practice that if you look at children, they really have pretty innate ways of learning. Like, right, they're God given, universe given ways of learning. And it boils down to this, for me, my perspective, it is that is curiosity, play and mistakes. Yeah, curiosity play and mistakes are how they naturally navigate their worlds, how they learn. And yet now at 40, am I allowed to be curious? Am I allowed? Did I deserve this play? Have I earned it? Is it safe for me to make this mistake? There's so much questioning of these ways that are natural to us, you know, and so I would hope that the wonderful, strong, brilliant, beautiful mothers in your community will let themselves do that as well. You know, there is a.
• 33:56
  Speaker A: The. The yin and yang to this. I consider myself neurodivergent with an ADHD diagnosis. I know that I do process life differently. To that end, what you just shared about play and being. Giving myself permission to play and to seek to stay curious.
• 34:15
  Speaker B: I mean, we don't like the words pleasure.
• 34:18
  Speaker A: Yes. Oh, absolutely.
• 34:19
  Speaker B: But it's pleasure.
• 34:20
  Speaker A: It's pleasure. When you have children specifically to use the P word of play, that don't play, that they're miring is not. They don't innately play. That's one of the biggest signs early on that their curiosity stems differently. Their curiosity is in stacking, lining up, lettering, number numerology, flipping, stemming. I have. I have. But I know a lot of women that are. Have similar children as mine struggle so deeply with accepting. What you're saying is to stay curious to. That play looks so different. And it's going to. It's going to delay what they feel their child should be doing, but it doesn't make it wrong at all. It makes you challenge your assumption of what development is. I know though, that when those first things bubble up for parents when their children are smaller and the play looks different, it almost confirms to a typical adult like ourselves that we shouldn't play, we shouldn't stay curious because it looks wrong. It looks. It's not how and how. Well, why does my. I want to do this. My pleasure might look different. Like really different than someone else's.
• 35:38
  Speaker B: That's right. Right. And so that again, going back to sort of the Martha Beck language around it is the play as defined by culture asking us to come to consensus versus Millie coming to her own consent.
• 35:53
  Speaker A: I really think you're a new junior associate. Might be, Millie. I mean, I love my son Mac. I love Mac so much. But he's such a feral boy. Like, he's so freaking feral. As you know, having a boy.
• 36:03
  Speaker B: My son having a daughter first was very strong on a gender stereotype. I don't love to gender stereotypes.
• 36:08
  Speaker A: No.
• 36:09
  Speaker B: Holy shit. The testosterone, the. The hulk that comes. My daughter would never laugh.
• 36:16
  Speaker A: I mean, I probably likely will never. Never say never. I probably won't get a PhD in anything. I don't have a desire to right now. Maybe. Maybe later on. I tell you, if I do, though, it is like, what is autism and what is gender? Actual gender primal wiring. That has nothing to do with. With autism. Because let me tell you something, that little boy to Be very stereotypical. He's all boy. He doesn't give up.
• 36:41
  Speaker B: I mean, listen, you can say hair.
• 36:44
  Speaker A: He does not. I'm telling you right now, they have the exact same diagnoses. Their differences are actually very. Boy girl, typical boy girl. Like they're not, they have a. Yeah.
• 36:55
  Speaker B: Uh huh.
• 36:55
  Speaker A: My gosh. Like, yeah. And offline. I'll share with you something that is also very primal and of the pleasure realm because like I see it from a, from a young age of how they just are so, so different. My curiosity, like even to another woman that's, that's in a similar life situation is not going to look the same.
• 37:14
  Speaker B: That's right. That's right. And again, what I make up is that in this space of, of really being in charge, your junior associates have a very specific set of needs that is. And you're constantly learning. Again just by the nature of it, you're just constantly learning. And so the balance of that, of allowing yourself to learn in ways that, that are just truly based in pleasure.
• 37:40
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 37:41
  Speaker B: Imagine what that, Imagine the possibilities. You know, and I. And, and there is sort of this space too where, you know, capitalism tells us, defines for us what pleasure is. The bubble baths and the massages. Okay, listen. Yeah. Do you. If that feels good, that feels good.
• 37:56
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 37:56
  Speaker B: Do it. But we forget that actually, you know, true self care. True, true self care is sometimes uncomfortable too. Its own degree of uncomfortable. It's making the doctor's appointment that we've been cutting off. It's having the hard conversation with a friend that has been misunderstanding us or. Right. That is also a form of self care.
• 38:18
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:19
  Speaker B: But you get to define.
• 38:20
  Speaker A: And I, and I think I'd be remiss if I didn't say this. It is, it is such a luxury. It's like one of my like new favorite words. Aside from curiosity. Cause I think curiosity is my favorite word of the year. The luxury, the like, the inability to purchase. Like no one can say, well, I want that. I'm gonna buy that. No, you're not. Actually, you're gonna, you're gonna find it through curiosity and discovery and being true and hard and. Yeah. And instinct and mistakes.
• 38:49
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah.
• 38:49
  Speaker A: So many damn mistakes. Just think of it as data collection. I always say it's not a mistake.
• 38:54
  Speaker B: I say it's research and development. Yeah. In the R D phase. Research.
• 38:57
  Speaker A: Yes, yes.
• 38:58
  Speaker B: Yeah. And again, you look at our children and they are making mistakes constantly. Constantly. Because they are supposed to.
• 39:04
  Speaker A: They're supposed to as. And we all are. Trish, you are such a gift. Your clients, I want to, like, I hope that your clients, if any of them listen, oh, that's my life coach. That's my life coach. Like, that's what I really do. You are such a gift. Because, you know, you and I, the truth is, is that we are not going to be able to hit on every person that we would hope to change. And that's, and that's, that's, that's the path that we're on. But who you. Who is in your life and who are your clients are so damn lucky.
• 39:35
  Speaker B: Thank you, Sarah. I feel the same way about you.
• 39:38
  Speaker A: Thank you.
• 39:39
  Speaker B: I just can't even imagine the. Just the exhale that you give to people who are in similar situations with their children, especially.
• 39:48
  Speaker A: Again, it's not exhale.
• 39:50
  Speaker B: Yeah, It's. I can't accept it.
• 39:54
  Speaker A: That's it.
• 39:54
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 39:55
  Speaker A: Well, Trish, thank you. From Jersey to Bucks county. And until. Until next time on the insurance podcast.