Latest / Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza / Ep.101 - Allison Gingras: You Were Never Meant to Parent Alone | Catholic Mom | Family Rosary | Faith & Motherhood

Transcript

Ep.101 - Allison Gingras: You Were Never Meant to Parent Alone | Catholic Mom | Family Rosary | Faith & Motherhood · Virtuous Leaders with Dr. Johann D'Souza

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  I'm too busy. How do I find time to pray?
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  He's like, where do you find time to breathe?
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  Because that's important. That's how important prayer is
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  is is important. As your heart is beating in your
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  chest and the breath is necessary to live, so isn't
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  prayer. This is Virtuous Leaders, the
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  podcast for based Catholics who will speak truth, do good or die
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  try. Here's the show.
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  So I am the director of digital evangelization for Family Rosary
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  and Catholic Mom. That Catholic mom is part of
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  Family Rosary. OK, what?
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  What exactly does that entail? I am in charge of all of the the
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  digital realm. I tell people I've figured out
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  how to get paid to play on Facebook.
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  So social media, websites, digital content are downloads.
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  I'm just kind of in charge of overseeing all of that.
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  What is the mission of Catholic Mall?
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  It's to support women in their in every stage of their
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  motherhood and in every place of their spirituality.
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  So wherever you are in your spirituality, we're there to
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  support you. We have lots of online
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  resources. We are a digital resource
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  primarily and we're there to support mothers and families.
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  Really. We're kind of moving towards the
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  towards supporting the entire family.
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  How do you provide that support? We provide that through our
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  digital resources. We have, we have 140
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  contributors who send us articles and we use those
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  articles to cover all of the the gamut of whatever a mom may
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  experience in her life. We also have what's called
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  Sunday gospel activities and family activities that go
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  together with the the gospel each week and those are all
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  provided for free. We have an incredible team.
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  Barb Siskewic is our editor. She is in charge of getting
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  these articles from the 140 contributors, men and women,
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  mostly women, but we have some dads who contribute as well, as
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  well as some religious sisters. Maria Johnson is our Meteor
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  editor, Margaret Dwyer Hogan is our business manager and
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  Victoria Hassan is our social media specialist.
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  So put a lot of thought into what are the biggest challenges
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  facing young Catholic parents in order to help them address it.
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  Because I think they have the most important job in the world.
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  I mean, you almost have some sense of what the biggest
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  challenge is. I think part of the challenge is
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  that the the world is no longer oriented toward a Christian way
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  of thinking, especially a Catholic way of thinking.
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  And many of the young parents were catechized themselves.
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  So they, you know, maybe have been away from the faith.
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  And then suddenly they're in charge of this little person or
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  persons and they realize, Oh my goodness, how do I do this
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  alone? And they go something in them
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  that Holy Spirit that they didn't even know, perhaps lives
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  within them, tugs at their heart.
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  And they start, they start to think, well, I, I'm going to at
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  least try the faith. And so I think a lot of the, the
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  challenges come, obviously the financial and, and worrying
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  about our children, worrying about this world and trying to
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  figure out where to turn. And one of the things I've kind
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  of noticed myself is that we look at prayer as the thing that
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  we'll go to when we have it all figured out.
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  And we worry about feeding our families clothing and housing
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  them. And that seems to be the most
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  important and, and immediate needs.
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  And of course, those are important.
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  But I think that our mindset has kind of shifted from including
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  God and all of that because he promises to provide for us, to
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  support us, to be there. Like he's given us life and he
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  doesn't just abandoned us, he's with us every moment.
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  But I, I, I know I myself as a young mom used to say, I'll pray
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  when I'm old and I have time and realizing that I need God now in
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  the here and now and in that daily challenge.
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  And so I think we, we try to help families moms understand
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  that God wants to walk with you in this journey and you are
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  truly never alone. Not only is God with you, but so
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  isn't Catholic mom. You started with the case of
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  someone who maybe he's not practicing as much and they're
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  getting support with that, but what about the other end of the
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  spectrum? Someone who's really committed
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  to their faith is the most important thing to them and they
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  want to live there. They want to raise their
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  children in the faith. What's the biggest challenge
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  that they face? Maybe finding the resources that
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  they need, maybe finding the time like just everyone is so
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  busy. One of the things I where
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  Catholic mom is also part of family rosary and one of the the
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  beauties of praying the rosary together as a family is you get
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  20 minutes of family time that maybe you wouldn't normally get
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  because you're so busy. You know, you're maybe you're
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  running the child one place and your husband or your spouse is
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  running the child another place and you kind of meet together
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  for dinner. I always encourage people to do
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  grace at meals, grace before bed, like finding that time to
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  bring prayer. And I think the challenge is not
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  knowing what to pray, maybe not knowing, not finding the time to
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  pray and trying to figure out, you know, how can I fit this
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  prayer into our daily life when we're so busy?
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  Father Patrick Peyton, the founder of family rosary, of
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  which now Catholic mom has become a part, when he was asked
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  how, you know, I'm too busy, How do I find time to pray?
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  He's like, where do you find time to breathe?
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  Because that's important. That's how important prayer is,
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  is, is important as your heart is beating in your chest and the
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  breath is necessary to live. So isn't prayer.
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  OK, how much of A how much of a challenge is is the overwhelm of
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  staying staying busy with the with the little kids and feeling
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  socially isolated, feeling like a missionary sit behind an
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  alliance with no support. I think, I think that's A1
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  culturally it just because of people move around so much in
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  the US and then and we know the devil likes to attack through
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  isolation. Yeah, that's what we why on
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  social media, we're called the Catholic mom community because
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  we want to help a moms, young moms who are home or again, that
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  feeling of isolation, as you mentioned, know that they're not
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  alone. And that this is the the beauty
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  of living in a digital age is that we can reach out to people,
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  real people behind those computers, the Catholic mom team
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  are real human beings who are moms, grand moms who love our
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  faith, who are, who experience that that isolation themselves
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  that, you know, one of I remember being a young mom and
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  somebody saying to me, the days are long, but the years are
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  short. And I didn't understand that
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  until I was much older. And now I see that.
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  But in the trenches, in that moment, it feels like this is
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  never going to end and you feel incapable and worried.
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  And that's what Catholic Mom is there for.
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  We have thousands because Lisa Hendy is the is the founder of
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  Catholic Mom and that was over 20 years ago and she wanted
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  families and moms to feel supported.
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  So we have thousands of articles all and every again, every
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  aspect of motherhood you can think about.
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  But we're also still here. We're still behind that
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  computer. And you can e-mail us.
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  You can reach to out to us on social media and if we don't
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  have an article or some way to support you, we go to our 140
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  contributors and say, hey, we have this mom with this this
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  question, how can we support her?
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  And we are always really blessed to find somebody who's able to
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  speak to whatever a mom is dealing with.
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  Days along, but the years are short below that it it occurs to
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  me that y'all have a really big asset here with that treasure
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  trove of articles. Do you have any thoughts of how
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  to really maximize the effectiveness of that using, I
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  don't know, perhaps AI technology or other means?
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  Well, right now we're looking to, we've been putting them on
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  to audio digests. We know that the way that people
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  kind of consume, consume media, consume information now is more
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  through their ears than through their eyes.
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  So we have been actually working with, we started, we're kind of
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  doing a hybrid of looking at using audio AI voices and the
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  technology of putting the article in and getting an audio
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  out. But we also have been doing real
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  life voices, recording these ourselves because there's just
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  something about the, the authenticity of Catholic Mom
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  that we don't want to lose. We want people to know that not
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  only were there real people behind writing these articles,
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  but here we are speaking them to you to bring you comfort,
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  support. So we do have a great resource,
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  a great searchable. We have a great way of searching
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  to find the article, the database.
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  That's the word I'm looking for a great searchable database.
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  And of course, this technology changes.
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  That's part of my job as the director of digital
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  evangelization is to keep up on what's available.
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  How can we support families? How can we make sure they're
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  getting the resources that they need in that daily walk of
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  motherhood? And more importantly, of course,
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  as as a family and family rosaries, we look to help
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  support people in. We kind of encourage people for
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  that family prayer, especially the rosary.
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  So we're kind of bringing these two beautiful assets together to
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  kind of connect with the whole person.
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  Yeah, I was thinking if it would be interesting to have sort of
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  AI jab bot that mom can ask a question to and then it draws on
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  the Catholic mom articles for a response.
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  As much as I am a big fan of AII, still feel like when it
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  comes to talking to a new mom, we want to make sure she has a
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  person to to really connect with.
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  So I don't think that is in our future because I don't think the
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  technology is the place where we can control enough of what it's
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  going to pull from and what it's going to say.
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  So for us, I still think coming to our social media or sending
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  us an e-mail and getting a response from and a human is
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  still the best way to deal with really supporting mothers in
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  their in their vocation. Speaking of the importance of
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  connecting with a real human, totally agree with that.
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  What are your thoughts? What are your thoughts in terms
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  of offering in person support? Right now we have a a smaller
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  team and again, Catholic mom was started as a digital asset and
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  we really feel that's where our strength is as part of family
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  rosary. We do have an outreach
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  department. We have a wonderful director of,
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  of outreach, Craig Dyke and he, he, he, we have spoken at length
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  with the team, the Catholic mom team and the family rosary team
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  about what that will look like. Right now we have that team, the
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  outreach team is able to, to go to schools, to go to churches,
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  to make presentations. Craig and his wife Amy Amy is
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  our director of the Father Peyton Center.
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  They also have a beautiful marriage ministry that is being
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  formulated even deeper to be able to help through family
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  rosary and again shared on to Catholic mom.
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  So there are ways that Catholic mom will be supporting the in
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  person, but as a as a hold, catholicmom.com will remain a
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  digital resource. Perhaps maybe in the future
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  we'll kind of break, break into kind of a networking, maybe
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  using some of the sub using sub stack or, you know, whatever
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  technology comes next. A mighty network so that we can
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  really connect. But right now our team is small
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  and and just really getting formulated about a year ago as
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  the team that we are now it'd. Be great to hear a success
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  story. Is there anything you particular
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  you'd like to highlight? Well, I know that we will.
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  I can say that last year we brought some of the 140
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  contributors together for an in person retreat.
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  We wanted to support they write for for free and we wanted to
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  show our gratitude, but also support them in that in that
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  work that they do. And it was really amazing to
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  have them all there in person. We had about 35 of them come.
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  It's with the middle of the winter in New England.
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  Maybe not our best planning. We're moving it to June next
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  time. I think it's a little bit easier
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  to get to. But to hear them talk about how
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  they became writers, they contributed to this resource
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  because of the of what they found, the support they found
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  when they went there, whether it be miscarriage or a troubled
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  marriage or a child with special needs, just the the general.
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  How do I live this faith in my everyday ordinary life?
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  How do you fit in prayer? What does that look like?
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  How do you take God on vacation with you?
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  Like all of these different ways that we've been sharing our
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  hearts and sharing our stories to see these contributors who
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  have were once consumers and followers to see that that to me
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  is is the greatest success. When you see somebody touched by
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  what you're doing so much that they want to be become a part of
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  a volunteering to to help others in that same way.
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  The other thing that we do is the Sunday Gospel activities.
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  And again, these run mostly for the school year and they are
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  their coloring pages and fill in the blanks and word searches.
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  And they're not just used here in the United States.
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  Holy Cross Family Ministries is 28 ministry centers across 18
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  countries. And it's really neat to see
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  these these resources be used in churches and parishes and homes
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  literally across the globe. So we know that we're helping
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  families kind of get an even richer experience from Mass.
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  Not that not that you can outdo the the Eucharist in any way,
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  shape or form, but to be able to have discussions with their
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  children about what happened in the Gospel and give them
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  activities that deepen their faith.
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  That has also been, I think one of the greatest successes and
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  the reason that Lisa Hendy started Catholic Mom was to
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  start to provide these Sunday gospel activities.
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  So we're talking over 20 years of helping families on Sundays
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  connect with the Lord in a in a deeper way.
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  Thanks for what you do, Allison. Oh my goodness, my I feel like
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  it's every day is a pinch me moment that I I get to do this
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  is truly a gift from God and the whole team feels that way that
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  we realize that for whatever reason, the Lord has put us here
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  and given us this opportunity to support families in their
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  Catholic faith. Take it very seriously.
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  At Holy Cross Family Ministries, our president, Father Fred
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  Jenga, we have we he make sure prayer is entrenched in the work
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  that we do. We have a weekly teen rosary and
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  a weekly teen mass. We have mass every day.
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  In fact, people are able to follow the masses that we have,
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  They're on YouTube, family Rosary, YouTube every day at
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  noon Eastern Time, and the rosary precedes that at 11:30
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  Eastern Time. Live with the priest with
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  beautiful reflection. So we really do consider
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  ourselves some of the most luckiest blessed people.
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  And we take it very serious that we support families in their
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  vocations as parents, as Catholic parents.
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  And we hope that we help them find ways and time to pray
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  together, especially the Rosary. Thank you.
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  Thanks for listening. Please like, subscribe and share
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  with your friends. See you next time.