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Good Awkward & Special Needs Parenting: Henna Pryor on Embracing Discomfort · Inchstones with Sarah | Autism Advocacy & Caregiver Stories

• 0:01
  Speaker A: Hi.
• 0:01
  Speaker B: Hi.
• 0:01
  Speaker A: Hi. Hi.
• 0:02
  Speaker B: Hi. Today I have Hannah Pryor, who is not only a dear friend of mine and kick ass human, but an author, a global speaker, and author of Good Awkward. Covered in Coffee. I mean, this is literally. It's covered in coffee. Good Awkward. How to embrace the embarrassing and celebrate the cringe to become the bravest you. Where do we even begin? I don't even know where to begin with you because I think that the way in which you approach this book has so many applicable things for autism parents and how we can choose to live larger even when we fear interactions with the outside world.
• 0:36
  Speaker A: Yeah. Okay, so. So two things. First of all, there is no Amazon review or comment that anyone could make that makes me happier than this book is covered in coffee. That is. That is the best compliment ever. So thank you. And you know, I'm just so excited to have this conversation with you because I think this is a lens that, that, you know, some of the stuff that I research and study really applies to your particular audience in a way that I never really considered until you asked me to talk about it in this way. And so maybe a helpful starting point might be some very high level working definitions of when we think about the book title, Good Awkward. What do I mean by awkward? And how might that apply to the world that folks are navigating right now? So awkwardness is a social emotion of discomfort. So it is an emotion that does not feel good. I'm not pretending that it does, but it exists in and only in social situations. So if something happens at home and no one is there to see it, you might have a range of emotions running through you. But awkwardness, embarrassments, those aren't typically the emotions you're feeling. They could be frustration, they could be anything else. But those are emotions we feel when something happens socially in front of others. And often that emotion comes up when the person we believe ourselves to be, our internal identity is at odds momentarily with what we believe is the external reality. So what we believe ourselves to be is at odds with what we think other people see. So just very pointed example. I believe I'm someone who is a really hands on mom who knows how to do what's best for her kid. All of a sudden, my kid is losing their mind in public. Even though I know my internal reality, I feel a bit awkward because the external reality of what other people see in that moment, unless we've done a lot of that mindset work, feels really incongruent. And because of that, we may feel awkward, we may feel embarrassed and so that's where that emotion really starts to take hold and come into play.
• 2:34
  Speaker B: Absolutely. I think when I think about you saying the typical nature of a child having, you know, what is to be expected, like things and behaviors and such, that that is not only what I experienced as a mom of a typical child, but then having two children that don't speak and can't communicate so that their behaviors are actually communication, in a sense, that becomes even more of a chance to be feeling that awkwardness. Right. Because not only is it, is it, is it coming from a source of a child who can't speak, but it's now it's a behavior that, that is exacerbated, indifferent, and that's really awkward.
• 3:12
  Speaker A: Right. And it's, you know, the truth of the matter is for special needs parents or anyone, you know, who, who loves a neurodiverse person, no matter how used to it you may be, there is still this very, you know, large looming awareness that as social creatures, the person you know, a few feet away may not be used to it, they may, may not interpret it correctly, they may not understand it. So oftentimes, even if we've reckoned with our own feelings around it, we're still finding ourselves holding the feelings of others and not quite sure how they feel, how they're going to respond, which again, just perpetuates some of those big feelings.
• 3:46
  Speaker B: Right. Do you feel embracing awkwardness only helps to build, you know, inch by inch, zone a block by block, your emotional intelligence and awareness?
• 3:57
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, here's, here's the truth about this particular brand of emotion. It's unavoidable. We are social creatures who, who are wired for social acceptance. That part of our caveman brain has not, and as far as I can tell, will not be leaving anytime soon. And that's not a bad thing. It's wired that way so that we can fit in, we can cooperate, we can be interdependent on one another. Like these are human traits that we don't want to engineer ourselves out of. The challenge becomes where I need to tell no one at all that is listening, that as a neurodiverse parent, as a parent who's navigating differently abled children, you are going to have moments where the unexpected is going to happen. And even if it is typical for you some days, the unexpected will either happen to you or again, it'll happen in a person or a world around you. And so ultimately getting really, really good at managing those emotions is the only quote, unquote, escape hatch. Because the uncertainty is not going away. The chance for unexpected situations is not going away. And the fact that we're social creatures is not going away. So rather than trying to eliminate that emotion, it is really embracing it and learning to get good at it that leads to that kind of next leap of emotional growth for us.
• 5:12
  Speaker B: Right. And the choosing to interact. Isolating.
• 5:15
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 5:16
  Speaker B: Choosing to do the awkward or potentially feeling awkward or saying, nope, don't even want to go there. I'm not going to do it. That, that dichotomy for me speaks volumes to the special needs parents world. A lot of my, my followers and a lot of people that come to me saying, like, well, how do you do that? Why do you, why do you choose to engage and get out there, like, and travel? It just seems exhausting.
• 5:37
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 5:37
  Speaker B: And I'm like, yeah, yeah, it is.
• 5:39
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 5:40
  Speaker B: And, and, and the moment of feeling awkward is so fleeting that it's really only six seconds. So awkwardly boarding a flight with my kids somewhere and having to talk to a flight attendant or whatever, that, that dissipates really quickly. Just keep doing it.
• 5:55
  Speaker A: Yeah, so, so the six second statistic, just for clarity, those types of statistics typically speak to the initial strength of the emotion as it washes over you as it relates to awkwardness and embarrassment. Unfortunately, there's this sort of byproduct, which is this lingering story we continue to tell ourselves for the minutes, hours, days that follow. So the, the quintessential example of this is replaying situations in the shower. Right. Or in the car going, oh, I feel like this, I could have done this differently. I could have done that. Right. So, yes, the height of the emotion has passed through, but there's still some lingering hooks in us. We're resonating a bit.
• 6:31
  Speaker B: Is that shame?
• 6:32
  Speaker A: It could be. It could be. You know, I should have handled that differently. That's probably a version of shame. Sometimes it's a regret. Like I, my mental toolkit was that I, you know, I know that I'm supposed to do this and I, and I didn't because this felt more important or this, you know, person scared me and I couldn't find the words or whatever it is. I think there's a number of reasons that that can happen, but ultimately what most people find related to this is that what, what scares me as a speaker on this is that that awkward or embarrassed feeling in the present, even if you manage it in that moment, might affect the way you behave in that same situation in the future. So you told yourself whether you realize it or not, you tell yourself one of two stories after any of those interactions. So again, something happens in you manage it, it's managed, but maybe you didn't manage it as well as you could have. So subconsciously in lightning speed, in the moments that follow, you're likely telling yourself one of two types of stories. You're telling yourself a contamination story, which is here's all the things that went wrong, here's why that felt so bad and I'm never taking them to this type of coffee shop ever again. Right? I'm never doing this ever again. Whether you realize it or not, in lightning speed, that particular situation and the feelings that accompanied it have now made it so that you will avoid it's contaminated the future versus the harder one, which is slowing down your thinking long enough. You know, feeling the feeling for six seconds going, that was brutal. And what are the gifts in the garbage? What did I learn from this situation? Maybe this was the wrong time of day. Maybe we were on an empty stomach and I didn't think of that. Maybe, you know, xyz, here's what I would do differently next time. And then now I'm more empowered with that knowledge. That's called a redemption story, which is actively slowing yourself down and looking for the feelings that came up with this. They're valid, we're not here to ignore them. Where can I find the opportunity? Those stories are happening whether we realize it or not. It's just now choosing are we telling ourselves to blame ourselves, shame ourselves in the car story, or are we actively choosing to reframe? And these things take time. They take intention, they take time.
• 8:42
  Speaker B: Attention being the biggest word and staying curious regardless of the outcome. As a special needs mom and as someone who talks to so many parents are so exhausted from having to rise above that that those feelings awkward because it's really almost every time we leave the home. Could you talk a little bit more about, you know, the calibration of that and how the muscle memory will, will only serve to allow for more positive interactions if you continue to work through that. Because you know, when I even leave my house to take my kids dog for a walk with one of the kids, Us walking around the neighborhood does not look like my neighbors with their two 8th graders walking their dog around neighborhood. It looks differently. Everything that we exude is different. Everything.
• 9:24
  Speaker A: Yeah. Yeah.
• 9:25
  Speaker B: And so how do you, how do you, how can you talk to that and speak to that a little bit?
• 9:29
  Speaker A: Yeah, no, you're exactly right on this. So. So there's a term that well, by the time this, this podcast airs, the, the findings will be on my website, so you can google me and find it. But my team and I are doing the first ever research study led research study on social fitness and social muscle atrophy. So what do we mean when we say that and how is it related to your question? Social muscle is a muscle in the same way that we think about physical muscle or we think about mental muscle. So let's just make this analogous. If you never pick up a weight and then you go to the gym to try to pick up a weight for the first time in a long time, I think anyone who's ever tried that, know how that feels. It's awful.
• 10:09
  Speaker B: It's awful.
• 10:10
  Speaker A: And you're sore for days that follow, and in those days that follow, you're like, okay, never again. That was brutal. Right? Rather than starting small, picking up the lightweights first, doing a little bit every day, slowly working your way up, same thing happens with mental muscle. In the last decade, we've heard a lot about mindset mental fitness, right? These are all things that have become very analogous to physical. Now I really want to think about this, taking it to the next layer to how do we build social muscle strength? So what you're describing, Sarah, is not just managing your kids at home and having the resilience to be able to manage those tough moments, those moments where communication is frustrating and they're not quite, you know, able to get there. They're even their nonverbal cues aren't quite tracking, you know, all these things that are tough enough. But now we're adding the layer of I'm taking a walk around the neighborhood and the neighbors are out and they're wondering what's going on over here, right? So we're adding this social layer to it. And I just want people to consider that like anything else, like all of the other ones, it is a muscle that requires strengthening. And so little by little, maybe again, if you're trying to start to find the courage to do more outside of the house, it is starting in your neighborhood, it is starting on your, you know, kind of block. That's it. That's it. Nobody's saying go to the mall, right? Start, start on your block, start on your, you know, smaller stakes situations, build the muscle slowly, but the absence of doing that becomes Walt Disney World is way too daunting. Of course it is. Right?
• 11:37
  Speaker B: Of course it is. Yeah.
• 11:38
  Speaker A: That is, that is me trying to lift a 300 pound barbell. I don't, I'm capable of that your.
• 11:44
  Speaker B: Tiny ankles can't support that?
• 11:46
  Speaker A: No.
• 11:46
  Speaker B: God, no.
• 11:47
  Speaker A: I would break every bone in my body.
• 11:48
  Speaker B: So everybody.
• 11:48
  Speaker A: So I think, you know, the same, the same analogy needs to apply here is people need to give themselves the grace of, you know, you're at the 2lb weight stage in this journey and that's okay because guess what? You're still lapping everyone who's not doing the.
• 12:03
  Speaker B: Who's not doing. Renee Brown talked recently on a podcast about giving the most generous thought to a person that you would encounter. Like, what is the most generous thought I can put on that person? And I think as a special needs parent, whenever I'm out in the community, literally whenever I'm out anywhere, people are looking, people look. Right. What if they're just curious? What if my neighbors are just wondering, oh, I see a transport, a special needs transportation service, pick them up every morning. Maybe the stairs are just them piecing together because they're curious.
• 12:35
  Speaker A: Let's nerd out for a second. This is not something I actually brought up in the book, but there's an interesting piece of behavioral science research that I've become very obsessed with. It's called the Von Restorff effect, which essentially is human beings very innate programming to notice differences in the surroundings.
• 12:54
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 12:54
  Speaker A: So if your brain is just wired. So a lot of marketers use this to their advantage. When there's certain things we're expecting and all of a sudden we see something else, our brains very naturally, without thinking, subconsciously notice the fact that something is different. So to your point, I think giving people the curiosity thing is throwing a lot of credit their way. That may or may not be there. To be honest. Forget about, forget about curiosity at this point. They are just mentally doing the very natural thing of something in this moment is different than its surroundings, which has caught my eye. Right. Hopefully from that place, maybe curiosity is their next move. But even before that happens, there's the von Restorff effect, which is something is different than what I expected. That's it. And our brains cannot help but want to notice that. Right. And that's, that's very innate in every human being that is neurotypical to be able to do something like that.
• 13:47
  Speaker B: I love to hear your, your take on this in, in speaking to groups. I never expected Gen Z to have such a high emotional intelligence capacity. Could you, could you speak to that maybe on a generational thing? Because I, I find it very different because there's parents of older special needs adults that are shocked that I live so out loud and I Think, well, maybe that's just the progression of the emotional capacities of the generations and the desire to learn about the research that you're doing.
• 14:17
  Speaker A: Yeah, okay. I'm going to answer this in a way that's going to sound like I'm going rogue, but I promise it's going to come back. So my friend Jason Dorsey is a speaker, author himself, and he speaks a lot on generations. And one of the quotes that I love of his, he says, technology is only new if you knew life before it.
• 14:38
  Speaker B: Correct.
• 14:38
  Speaker A: Okay, so he's talking about technology, but technology is only new if you knew life before it. Similarly, some of these differences in humans feel more acute if you only knew life before it. So, growing up, I may have not seen a lot of kids on the spectrum. I may have not seen a lot of kids with down syndrome. I may have not seen a lot of kids with adhd. Or we didn't have names for it, or we didn't correct. You know, those things were, frankly, von Restorf effect. They were much more unfamiliar to me because the only time I got a chance to experience that is if someone literally was in a. Within a few feet of me at a store.
• 15:14
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 15:15
  Speaker A: Now, Gen Z has grown up in the information. There's. We live in an era of information parody, meaning there are very few disadvantages. People have access to seeing these people on social media, to seeing them in campaigns, in Target. Yeah, this is not the different thing that a lot of us grew up with. So for them, it is their lived experience. It is normal. And so it does not surprise me. And it delights me that there is this more normalized acceptance, compassion, because. Because of how they grew up, because of the day they were born, they saw this stuff at a rate that we didn't. And so I'm just grateful that technology, while it has its downsides, this has been the significant upside.
• 15:53
  Speaker B: I know social media gets such a bad rap.
• 15:55
  Speaker A: Sure.
• 15:56
  Speaker B: The exposure to differences and to lives and to realities of others, I cannot help but see as a win. I cannot.
• 16:06
  Speaker A: Yeah, sure, I think a lot of times, you know, I hear, again, it can be generational. But this, you know, there wasn't as much of this when we were younger. Okay. If you have the evidence of that, go ahead and pull the receipts. You're welcome to fight me on this. But also remember that you just didn't see as much of that.
• 16:21
  Speaker B: Right.
• 16:22
  Speaker A: It didn't mean that it didn't exist. It just meant that there was no way to see outside of your immediate sphere of influence. And so I agree with you in that way. Social media, absolutely. You know, any. Anything on this earth has its shadow side, its light side. We've got. We can talk about that about anything. But I do think the one great thing is what. What I would consider is the sort of level setting and normalization of things that were once in a while occurrences in a lot of people's lives, which just by default creates a little bit more awareness and acceptance and hopefully curiosity. Still working on that, but hopefully, yeah.
• 16:55
  Speaker B: Do you ever think, though, too, the older, probably like our parents age, if not older, the ones that have continued to stay curious about the younger generations or to invest in knowledge of wanting to learn about the technology, wanting to learn about the social media positives, end up being the ones that I think can say, you're, you know, you're right, I didn't grow up with this, but I can see how it was always there.
• 17:17
  Speaker A: Yeah. So there's something interesting that I read that will forever stick with me, and I talk about this in my keynotes a lot. So I work with workplaces mostly, but I read a book, it's called 14 Talks by Age 14. It's by a child psychologist, and one of the chapters is about technology. So my daughter is now 14, but I read it last year, the year before she got a phone. And I would say things over and over to her, like, you know, layla, I wish you would just, you know, put your phone down. It's always in your hand. It's like an extension of your arm. When I was your age, I didn't even have that thing. And you can't even put it down. Right. A lot of us do that, right. Generationally, I didn't even have that. It's crazy to me how they can't even let go of these things. And then I read this book and there was a section that talks about conversation crashers, and it said to me, essentially, anytime you say something like that, I didn't have this at your age. All they can hear in that moment is, I can't help when I was born.
• 18:14
  Speaker B: Right, Right.
• 18:16
  Speaker A: Like, sorry, I can't help when I was born. So. So to answer your question, I think when it comes to generational acceptance of some of the differences in anything right now, it's less about, you know, don't I. I didn't blame myself in that moment. I didn't shame myself in that moment. But that moment opened my eyes to these people living a different experience right now can't help when they were born. So if my priority is to create a real relationship with this child. Be them special needs, a different generation, whatever. Then the onus is on me to at least spend a little more time getting curious about my own assumptions, my own biases, and how am I actually creating armor in the way of that? When I read that, I couldn't unread that. I think about it all the time and I'm like, oof. She stopped listening to me the minute I said that.
• 19:04
  Speaker B: That's on us, you know, and being curious not only about the others or accepting someone's curiosity, but doing it intrinsically internally to. To a sense that it's fulfilling. Stay curious about why our biases are what they are about how our lived experience where we grew up, like questioning even our own lived experience.
• 19:23
  Speaker A: Yeah, can we. And I think this feels like a great opportunity to bring back this sort of interacting versus isolating. Now I don't love this. In fact this the heart of my work. But people struggle to talk to each other. Right now we are in a social muscle atrophy crisis. This is the heart of my work. People date by swiping. They would rather run to the self checkout line than go see a cashier. I recently read something that 31% of adults, not children, adults, will hammer an elevator door button shut just to avoid riding with someone. This is not introverts. This is introverts, extroverts. This is everyone. We are in a crisis of social muscle atrophy. Why do I bring this up? Because we as adults caregivers. If we are struggling again, not by any fault of our own, because of this society that we now live in that makes everything two clicks away or optimizes for smoothness. If we are struggling to have the most mundane social interaction, then imagine how difficult it's going to be to interact with your good friend, special needs child who is not going to give you the expected response if you do not condition in the small moments. If you are not courageous enough to strike up a conversation with somebody in the grocery store line, then this is going to be very challenging for you when it comes to someone that you care about. That requires a little more from you. So where are you starting? Where are you practicing?
• 20:49
  Speaker B: It lands anywhere where humans are present, right? And I think it just, it speaks to that. If you have the ability and you have the personhood and the circuitry to be able to interact and do something, you should choose and you should say yes to it. You should say yes to that. And I think you know the world's response to my Children and myself being who we are is actually none of my business. It allows me to. To choose that, maybe the awkward conversation that allows me to stay awkward, that allows me to get outside the house, because the world's reaction is actually not my problem. There's so much work that has to be done. But this, at the end of the day, the world's reaction to me choosing to walk around the block and have to correct Millie over and over again, that we can't let go of the leash and that he's going to stop sometimes. And I'm saying that out loud. Yeah, that's okay. And people, look, if they stay curious to me and ask and engage, then I get that I can engage too.
• 21:48
  Speaker A: Right? Yeah. Their. Their reactions have more to do with a lack of practice than they do the wild judgment that we are assuming or assigning to them. You know, there's a. There's a construct in social psychology that I love, that I talk about in the book called vicarious embarrassment. So just imagine. Let's take, you know, neurodiversity out of the equation for a minute. Let's just say you are a caregiver of a toddler, and that toddler is throwing a wild tantrum in the grocery store. And let's just say it's me.
• 22:18
  Speaker B: I'm a mom.
• 22:19
  Speaker A: My toddler's throwing a wild tantrum. I feel super embarrassed. I wish it would stop. But there are some people in that grocery store who would see that and go, oh, that sucks. And then they move on with their day. They're like, I feel bad for them. They move on with their day. There are other people who experience something called vicarious embarrassment, which is actually a function of empathy, where in their entire body, they are losing it. They are losing it as though that is their own child crumpled on the floor, bright red, snotty. Right. And again, it is a function of empathy. Now, I'm not here to engineer empathy out of anyone, but what becomes sneaky is if you're very high on vicarious embarrassment, meaning not only are you embarrassed with other people, but in some cases, that parent might be just fine. They're just like, oh, my kid, it's anthem.
• 23:05
  Speaker B: Right, exactly right.
• 23:06
  Speaker A: And you're taking that on for them. And that's actually, in a way, a sneaky form of judgment. So I always just encourage people.
• 23:12
  Speaker B: Dark empathy. Is that what it's called? Dark empathy?
• 23:15
  Speaker A: Yeah. So vicarious embarrassment. It could be. I don't. I don't know. I don't love the word dark. Right. But I think, yeah, other people have referred to it that way. Essentially, it's when your empathy actually sort of morphs into a form of judgment because you're the only one feeling it. The person who's actually experiencing it is just fine. Right. And so the reason I like people to start to get in tune with their vicarious embarrassment is because when we tend to be high on that particular form of empathy, it's called empathetic embarrassment. Right. If we become high on that, what happens is when our own issues feel front and center, we tend to think that everyone also reacts that way. Everyone is watching us and having this whole warm feeling up and down their body. Okay. It's possible. But also probably not. They've probably already moved on. It's the spotlight effect. Tom Gilovich out of Cornell calls it the spotlight effect. I think people are paying much closer attention to us than they actually are. Maybe they did feel that for a moment, but guess what? Good shot. They're already onto the next, right?
• 24:15
  Speaker B: They're already on to the next.
• 24:17
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 24:17
  Speaker B: Okay, before we end, I'm going to take us back to something that I'm going to totally pivot, and I'm going to put you in the spot.
• 24:22
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 24:23
  Speaker B: Do you think that your ability to grow as henna began with your own parents owning who they are and allowing you to become the best henna as a child? Talk to me about your family of origin and where you are now. Because I'm realizing more and more, my own work, that I have grounded feelings in how beautifully my own parents allowed me to grow.
• 24:48
  Speaker A: So I'm going to probably surprise you when I say, oh, and actually. And. And. And here's. Here's why. So I actually learned, and I wish. I'm actually quite mad at myself, that I don't have the psychology terms at my fingertips. But I read something that essentially is the way that you are raised. If there's a strong conditioning or framing or priming in a certain direction, that typically, when you grow into an adult, you either, you know, kind of embody that, you move towards it, or if there's something that you experience, you move very much away from it. So you sort of, like, your pendulum goes either, you know, closer to it or like, nope, I'm not. I'm not going to be like that. This. Mine is actually the latter. So I grew up. My parents are amazing. We're very close. But culturally, I grew up in a South Asian culture where there was an expression I heard often growing up, which is. Which translates to, but what will Other people think? What will other people think? All of my life decisions as a child were not what makes you happy or what makes you embodied, but what will the community say? What will other people think? And that was my very deep seated lens through which I looked at the world for a very, very long time. And it was only once I came into adulthood and realized how much that wasn't serving me that I had to make a very intentional, in some ways, painful, concerted decision that my life's work was going to become living in a way that actually did not subscribe to what will other people think to drive my every behavior. So mine was the opposite, I wouldn't say. As much as I love my parents and they gave me so many great qualities that not caring what others think and embracing my awkwardness was not one of them. That was something that actually, as a result of having that so drilled into me, I pendulum swung the other way to decide that I was going to live my adult life in a very different way.
• 26:38
  Speaker B: That's so. That's fascinating. I did not expect for you to say that. I was really expecting you to say the opposite. How do you feel like in your life's work now, in leaning so deeply into that? How's the conversation changed with your own parents?
• 26:50
  Speaker A: Oh, I think, you know, my. My parents now I feel very kind of proud to say that they've learned from me to care.
• 26:56
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 26:57
  Speaker A: A little less. Like, what do their peers think? I think they're more interested in this living life out loud than in the way that they grew up and what they also are appreciative of. And they compliment my husband and I on this is the way that we're trying to create this in our kids. You know, we have dinner table conversations that we. We have three dinner table questions. One is, what was the best part of your day? What's something new you learned? But the third one is really the key one, and that is what's something that gave you butterflies today? So we always ask the butterflies question, but butterflies isn't just what's a natural scary moment, but what we're actually asking is, did you seek something out that made you a little okay, I had to confront a friend or I had to raise my hand or I had to speak in front of the group. They know that if they don't have one, it's fine, but when they do, we're celebrating. Not did it go well? Not did you nail it, but did you do it? Did you put yourself out there? And so I think what my parents are grateful to see is that we're sort of able to actualize this with our own children, which is for them. They're very proud of that.
• 27:56
  Speaker B: That's awesome. I think. And again, that's the beauty of the evolution of families and family systems and how they can change. And like you saying, the pendulum can swing so far and yet the lessons don't have to be labeled as or the changes aren't good or bad. They just are. They just are and they're. And I think that that's one of the coolest things I love about your work, and especially the book, is that you took, you took something that was innately you.
• 28:22
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 28:23
  Speaker B: Like you, you did. You did not ascribe to that feeling of like, what did the people think innately and that. And how cool is that that that's innately henna? I feel the same way, but I'm doing what really resonates within me and I think that in, in supporting any of our children to do that going forward, whether it's for me and Mac and Millie, it's going to look so different than another nine year old is, but it's still part of her curiosity and her growth and it doesn't make it any different than a typical child. It really doesn't.
• 28:50
  Speaker A: It doesn't. And just, you know, again, I love this idea of generous assumption from other people when your child is doing something different. Just please, if there's one takeaway from today, remind yourself that it is the human condition for us to notice difference. But anything else that you want to assign to that, just please pause and tell yourself for a moment. Unless there's evidence, unless they said something to you, anything else you're assigning to that is a story. It's a story. Your imagination is really awesome. Yes, it's a story.
• 29:20
  Speaker B: Right.
• 29:20
  Speaker A: So, you know, force yourself to acknowledge the fact unless there's evidence differently. It is a story. And that story just, it's up to you to decide is it serving you or is it not? And from there you can make an empowered choice as the, as the ports say.
• 29:33
  Speaker B: Take a beat.
• 29:34
  Speaker A: Yes, take a beat. Take 10.
• 29:36
  Speaker B: Take a beat. Take 10. I'd love to take a whole day of a beat.
• 29:39
  Speaker A: Sometimes I don't.
• 29:40
  Speaker B: Right. Not in my cards, not in my hand. Thank you so much as always. Your. Your ability to be so authentic, so curious to life and what you speak to and how you're impacting, I know is so authentically you and that's what I love and that's the conversations I love having here is that you are you. And because you are you, you get to inspire others.
• 30:04
  Speaker A: So thank you. I appreciate you so much. Thank you for living out loud, Sarah.
• 30:07
  Speaker B: You're so welcome. All right, we'll talk to you next time here on the inch stems.