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Autism Mothering in the Wild with the Moms of "Moms Talk Autism Podcast" · Inchstones with Sarah | Autism Advocacy & Caregiver Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 0:01
  Speaker B: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to season two, episode one of the Inch Zones podcast. I am thrilled, as always, to have any other mother on a parallel journey, but to have three of the four hosts of Moms Talk Autism podcast here with me today is a gift. It's a treat. And as any listener knows, the connection that we have with other moms alongside us in this journey is life luxury that we can't pay, pay for, you cannot purchase in any capacity. You seek it out and it gives you back in spades what you put into it. Brittany, Shannon and Jean, thank you so much for being here today on the Inch Zones podcast. We've touched base before. We are literally from all over the country. And I've always said that as much, you know, negativity, negative press that's given to the social capacity in social media these days. The silver lining to all of this is I think these niche communities that you and I and all of us sit in as special needs, neurodiversity, parents and mothers, caregivers, we can do this. We're all across the country. And I think it's something that is not talked about enough as a point of gratitude because I can only imagine what generations ago mothers that sat in similar situations like us, how isolated they would feel. So I would love to hear what your take is, as you guys, you know, do, are on your own mission and your own journey with the Moms Talk autism podcast and how this all came together for you and to form these groups like this.
• 1:26
  Speaker C: Yeah, I think we can speak on that very directly because we met on social media. That's how we all started. And social media has many pitfalls and negatives to it. I think we can all have our own personal stories about how it is impacted us, not in the best ways and our families, but there are a lot of really, really good things on there and ways to be grateful for such an amazing tool to add to our arsenal of caregiving. And one of those is connecting with other moms out there. Uh, we met during the pandemic. It was a larger group of us through a social media app. And one by one, you know, it was just direct messaging, texting, if you will. It was a little. It wasn't very personal. We. We were trying to get to know each other, but it's hard. It's hard when you don't have the context of seeing someone's face or their level of sarcasm or their particular brand of humor. It's difficult to convey all that through just texting. Eventually, we moved to a Different app where we could video message each other on Marco Polo, if you're not familiar. Yeah, no free ads, but we love it, so go check it out. And. Yeah, and we. We really, really connected on there, and we just immediately felt validation and like we're being really seen and heard. And we were able to share a lot more, not only of our own personal stories, but even our kids to some degree. Like, we could show and talk about our kids and. And really kind of like visually show what we were going through in our own homes through video and seeing each other face to face. And that just made a huge difference in our level of connection, connectivity, and the depth of what our conversations could go. And then we felt like, you know what? We need to share this with other people. And that's why we started the podcast. So here we are four years later, or five. I don't even know how many years it's been. So many years. Almost very fluid. Yes.
• 3:17
  Speaker B: When you really boil it down to the salt about the online connectivity and, and whether it's support group, whether it's like a true, you know, classified support group for mothers or caregivers of autistic children and neurodiverse children, or simply just what you organically formed like, like y' all did, reminds us that our central nervous systems as women and mothers need this. I. I'm. I don't know if you guys, if your algorithms are picking this up now, but I think there's. I'm glad to see there's more talk about what this actually does to the body. So, you know, there's all that talk about the body keeping score. This does that. This. This is a balm for our fight and flight parasympathetic nervous system. And I think that we all live in various degrees, such lives of hypervigilant stress that we forget that doing this is the. Is the one of the greatest reducers of that. Even though, Gene, I don't live where you live or know anything specifically about your child. It doesn't matter. It's still. It's still the showing up and saying, can I can trust you in a way that I couldn't trust the mom of all of three typical children, full stop. And I think that there's, like, the bodily awareness to. That is almost one of the reasons why I beg of other moms to join a support group to find a friend that's going through the same thing to make the awkward post on the Facebook group in your town because it will be so calming to your central nervous system. That's. That's ripe with chaos. You know, do you guys feel like as your children grow, your bond as. As a four son has changed and evolved over the past four years?
• 4:51
  Speaker D: Yeah.
• 4:51
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 4:51
  Speaker D: We all kind of smile. Yeah. You know what, there's something. There's something about, like, because we've talked about this before, like, I've got a great family. I have wonderful friends here, you know, in my life, but nobody knows everything that is going on in my house better than those three girls. I can show them anything that goes on in my house. I don't have to worry about it. I don't have to worry about judgment. I don't have to worry about embarrassment. I don't have to worry about. You know, we generally will either find humor in whatever we can or we will cry like it's one. It's fine.
• 5:25
  Speaker C: Sometimes.
• 5:26
  Speaker D: Yeah, Sometimes both in the same conversation.
• 5:28
  Speaker A: A lot of times both. Yeah.
• 5:30
  Speaker D: Uh huh huh. And I think, you know, Brittany has the oldest, right. So she's kind of like the. The leader when it comes. Like, okay, we're navigating 16, we're navigating 18.
• 5:42
  Speaker C: Like, I don't know if leader's the right word.
• 5:44
  Speaker D: Maybe you're leading the way. You're leading the way.
• 5:48
  Speaker C: Lab rat. I don't know.
• 5:50
  Speaker B: You have no choice but to go through it first. No, it's a sibling.
• 5:53
  Speaker D: Yeah, it's true. And then like Gracie, out of all of our girls, like, Gracie had her period first. So it's like, okay, well, I'm trying to figure that out and talking to them about all of that stuff. And so it's like we're all navigating these just challenges.
• 6:08
  Speaker C: Happy to let you have that one first, Shannon. Thanks so much.
• 6:11
  Speaker D: And I was the least prepared as the problem. I was the most scared of all four of us. And it, of course, you know, you.
• 6:17
  Speaker A: Were the least prepared.
• 6:18
  Speaker D: I was the most terrified of all of us. Of period.
• 6:23
  Speaker A: Terrified maybe, but not prepared. She's.
• 6:25
  Speaker C: You were. I handled it beautifully. Yeah.
• 6:27
  Speaker D: I didn't even want to say the word, Sarah. I was like, it's never going to happen if I don't say it out loud.
• 6:31
  Speaker B: Yeah, forget and just push that down under the never.
• 6:34
  Speaker D: Never.
• 6:36
  Speaker B: Yeah. I think that that again, there's the niche of this allows for the specificity to become full of the. Yes. And the humor, the hard, the scary. And what just happened right there as an observer was that you told your narrative and your support people went, no, no, no. That might be the story you tell yourself, but what we Saw is X. And again, that's. That's probably not unique to special needs mothers going through life changes, but that. It's why I love to share the positive of what can become when other special needs moms get together. Because Shannon probably didn't even realize that she needed a reinforcement even in that small moment. But it's like the virtual hug. The virtual. Like, you got this virtual. No, no, no. You actually killed that. And I know that you didn't feel that, but you actually killed it. Is why I think that. That support groups and. And mothers and really just challenging people that feel so alone right now, even if you've gone in and out of support groups. I mean, I'm someone that's probably kind of tried different things. You know, right now I've got a text chain of like 16.
• 7:41
  Speaker C: I think we all have.
• 7:42
  Speaker B: I think we have a. I think our emoji is the poop sign, because we all are just going through a lot of fecal matter stuff right now.
• 7:48
  Speaker C: Yep.
• 7:49
  Speaker B: And it's like, it's like, you know, special spectacular superhero moms or something. And to be honest, I don't even know half of them. I know that they've all sort of been in and around my school district or whatever, but it. Right now, gosh, what that serves me is such a calming balm. And I think that.
• 8:05
  Speaker D: No, well, yeah. And you were talking about nervous system. Right. And it's like I got on this morning and I was like, I've got to be glued to my phone. We had a really rough drop off this morning, like 30 minutes, which does not ever happen for us. So it's very out of the ordinary. But like Brittany, Jean, Sarah, like Britney knows in her nervous system the way I feel in this moment right now, like, we did a whole podcast episode about that. Like, there is something about telling your people who really get it. Like, I can tell my best friend who has typical children what I went through, but she has no idea what that feels like in her body in any way, shape or form. Right.
• 8:41
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 8:41
  Speaker C: The sympathy and empathy levels when you find somebody who maybe doesn't necessarily have the same neurodivergent profile of you. Maybe your kids are different ages, different circumstances, different challenges, but there is enough crossover. There's enough of that kind of overlap of that Venn diagram where the feelings, the caregiving stress, the caregiving weight, the cognitive load that we all experience is the same, regardless of the nuances or the specificity of the challenges. The caregiving aspect is the same. And so you can Go dive deeper so much faster and much more meaningfully when you meet with other moms who are in a similar situation as yours as the caregiver, and it really just makes such a difference because you don't have to. I think what happens for a lot of us when we meet maybe a new friend, I put that in quotes, especially someone who has neurotypical kids or very little experience with neurodivergence, is you feel like you have to. I feel at least I have to give a. I give a little taste, a little test to see how they react. And then maybe I go a little bit more and I give them a little bit more waiting. I'm waiting for the eyes to become hugest saucers, the jaw to drop, and for them to be like, okay, that.
• 9:58
  Speaker D: That's where we stop.
• 10:00
  Speaker C: That's okay. I've found your limit. I have found it. Yeah. I have found where you can't take in any more of my life.
• 10:08
  Speaker B: Not to interrupt you. That's so interesting skill. As a mother of neurodiverse children, wherever everyone is on the spectrum, the hypersensitivity and hypervigilance to others capacity is, I think, one of the greatest skills that I never wanted to learn. Like, I never wanted to learn that we are.
• 10:28
  Speaker C: We are proficient at it.
• 10:29
  Speaker B: And I think that.
• 10:30
  Speaker A: That.
• 10:30
  Speaker B: I love that you just talk about that, Brittany, because it's so true. It's like we have this skill of going, you know what? I want to share. I want to talk about my child with you. But I have learned through life and real experiences that the capacity for others to absorb my truth is actually a lot less than what I would hope for it to be. So you learn this, like, very, very, like. Yeah, almost like, like precisely calculated way of going, okay, I went a little too farther.
• 10:57
  Speaker A: Right.
• 10:58
  Speaker B: How are you? How are the holidays?
• 11:03
  Speaker C: And so then. Then you revert back to not any all surface level. Right. It's like Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise. I want the truth. You can't handle the truth. You can't handle my truth.
• 11:16
  Speaker B: I would love that, man. Blockbuster.
• 11:19
  Speaker C: Blockbuster.
• 11:23
  Speaker A: Well, I. It's also making it sound like it's perfected, but it's also not because we also have our agency limits. And there's moments where I do not have the agency or the bandwidth to satisfy whether you can handle it or not.
• 11:36
  Speaker C: And so you shut it down.
• 11:38
  Speaker A: And you not even just shut it down, you just go. You just blurt it out. And being like, that's what it is. Well, that's.
• 11:45
  Speaker C: Yeah, that's Shutting it down. You're like, well, here it is. Bye.
• 11:48
  Speaker A: You just ending. You have to live with that. And they're like, what do I. How do I even navigate this? Any I. And but you. It is a disservice sometimes it can be sometimes a happy accident or unhappy accident, but happy accident because you can. There are beautiful things that can come out of it because it kind of opens the eyes to other people going, I had no idea. You know, but you don't always have the capacity to manage everybody's expectations.
• 12:13
  Speaker B: Yes.
• 12:14
  Speaker A: Even in what they can handle. Like you're managing your nervous system. The reason why our nervous systems are so overloaded too is because we're managing all of our kids, every environmental, including our spouses or partners or coworkers or community members, whoever it is, we have to manage everybody else's environmental conditions and mitigate those things. And it's like you're never off, you're always on. And one of the reasons why we're always ready to feel like the ground is constantly moving beneath us or it's about to. And when that shift happens, we feel even more isolated. And in general, human beings are meant to be in community. But somewhere along the lines in our society, we decided, and this has, independent of disability or not, we decided that we are going to force the concept of independence. And independence is superior. Well, that really falls off a deep cliff when you're people like us who then really have. You're just shut down from accessibility to things because it's not a part of the world. It's not an integrated woven fact. And so everything seems alien. So then we are deprived of the very oxygen we need. So these types of connections provide the oxygen that we need that give that relief. And why this isn't very much still in a lot of ways, very two dimensional. It's. I would say it's like two and a half. Because when you can see people's faces and you can engage in that way, it's like you're halfway to that third dimensional part. But that's why a lot of the things that two dimensional rate kind of fall off for a while because they can only they're not as sustainable because you don't have that full holistic experience. Why we try to be very intentional about at least being all together every other year, you know, like, you know, in person and beyond. Just like what we're able to do over Marco Polo and when we record on podcasts where we feel like we're all sitting in the same place, you.
• 14:27
  Speaker B: Hit on something that I read about in a totally different form of, of theoretical, my book Nerdy Self did, which is about like identity versus Persona and personality and how we become such an identity based culture. And when I think all of us probably experience through the diagnosis process or just literally our children becoming who they are and their souls that are meant to be, it rocked our own identity. And I think when we come into, when, when the situation like as you were saying, sometimes we just, we blur out the truth and it's like, you know, your, your response, your, another person's reaction to the truth of mine and my children's life is actually not my responsibility. That's, that's on them. And it also reveals I think so much about how identity centric the majority of, I don't want to say typical mothers, but, but, but typical humans in today's day and age society we are. So who am I as an identity? You know, and I, I, I talk about that, that a lot in my own like keynotes and, and, and workshops and such about identity that was stripped from me that I didn't even realize I held onto so tightly. Right. And I think that that's like this beautiful byproduct of raising children that we never in a million years thought were going to be on our Bingo. And I think junior, you're, you just hit on it because it's like at some point you're like, honestly, my energy capacity is already below zero. This is my truth. And if you accept it's a, it's.
• 15:53
  Speaker C: It'S a beautiful place to finally come to that place. Right. And, and it takes some time and it takes some practice and it's a muscle that we've all learned to use and grow. And it's bigger, it's, you know, it's more defined now because we've done it multiple times. The experience really does come into play with that. But yeah, you eventually get to the point where you don't have necessarily a reaction to, if they, if they can't handle your truth, if they can't handle your, your life, your reaction to it maybe isn't as strong or you're able to move on faster as you try to create those connections. And it's something that we talk about a lot on our podcast too. And it's something we try to really emphasize that you need to have multiple areas of your life in different ways to connect. It's really not, this is, this is good advice or a good, you know, way to live your life for anybody neurotypical or not. But you need to have friends in multiple places. It's great to have an online community. It's great to have multiple online communities. It's really, really good to know your neighbors around you, or to have friends in your kids, school, district, or, you know, wherever, whatever social ways you. You meet people in your local community, churches, or, you know, whatever social groups. It's great to have connections with your family, people who understand your family or your childhood friends or whatever it is. But to have multiple areas where you can connect and feel validated and feel seen and heard, and, like, you can use them as a support system, even if it's for just part of your life. That's the secret sauce. That's when things really come together. And it's not perfect. Like Jean said, it's not like we have it all figured out now. I'm good. I don't need anything else. No, it's constantly evolving and changing. But the key is, if something falls out with one of those groups, if something changes or it doesn't fit your lifestyle or there's an argument or whatever it is, there's dissonance there. You have something else to fall back on. In fact, you have multiple things to fall back on, and everybody needs that in their life. And we call it diversifying your friendship portfolio. And that's what we need to do.
• 17:56
  Speaker B: Like, if I can do it, it's like a girl's.
• 17:58
  Speaker C: We will make you. We will make you a sticker. Yes.
• 18:00
  Speaker A: Yes. Are we gonna have a stash and like a girl or a pin?
• 18:06
  Speaker D: Like a pin something.
• 18:09
  Speaker C: Tiara. Yeah. Okay. All right. But flair.
• 18:13
  Speaker B: I would flare TGI Fridays all the different.
• 18:16
  Speaker A: Yeah, flair. Are you wearing enough flair? Do you have enough?
• 18:19
  Speaker B: You know what just made me think of is that Simon Sinek. I'm sure this is, like, over a year old now, but I think about it all the time is he says, if you're ever in such a situation where your body and you're. You're feel like you're dysregulated and spiraling, if you have, like, one person that you can text and go, do you have eight minutes? It was like this scientifically proven, like, research base about eight minutes. And I remember, like, texting it to my best friends and my high school girlfriends and being like, guys, I just. I want you to know I will always have eight minutes. Like, eight minutes. And it's just. That's another, I think, almost like, component piece of the pie for what you're talking about. Brittany is like, we are so we have to, we move at such a fast speed because of our hyper vigilance and our hyper attunement to our children that, that necessitate that from us in so many different ways. But eight minutes from a, from a friend, from a fellow neurodiverse mother, autism mom, caregiver parent at your child's school, it's such a gift to provide support and to, and to be able to have flex the, the ask of being supported. And I, I just think it needs to be one of those themes that is talked about across the board more often. Because if that's true, that eight minutes, we need to like start a, you know, a campaign for that. They can get pins too. They can get pins.
• 19:34
  Speaker C: Yeah. And I think it's amazing. Like, that's such a good way to put it. But how wonderful would it be if you had more than one person that you could ask eight minutes of? What if you had 20 different people that you felt comfortable enough being like, hey, I really need to talk to you right now. Can I chat with you? Not that you have to talk to all 20 people, but just knowing that you have that available, I mean, how amazing would that be? I know I could call any of these girls because we've done the work, we've connected and we've, we've shared it all, it's all out there and we've accepted each other and we're here that I can do that with them and I have even other people I can do that with locally, literally, face to face or virtually face to face. Right. In many, many different ways. It's just, it's such a comfort, isn't it doesn't fix everything. It doesn't solve all my problems.
• 20:18
  Speaker B: I always, like, you know, the analogy that, you know, when I think when an elephant gives birth, all of the sister elephants all come around and sort of huddle around her. And I think that like, we can do like. That's always my visual. Can you tell Neurodiverse too, guys, I'm very visual. Think things through. But it's, but it's true. It's like that can happen if you, if you allow for a. Your shame of going into it and asking for it to be removed and to, like you said, Brittany, find out different ways and not have something that's just like only my best friend or like only my mom or only my online, you know, scrolling through social media of other special needs parents.
• 20:53
  Speaker A: So.
• 20:54
  Speaker C: And it takes time. It takes time to do all that. It's not some switch that automatically You've got it all figured out. We have to have to try, and you have to build it up. Right. We interviewed a mom who's further along the journey than any of us a few years ago. This always sticks with me. She's developed this amazing community around her son. She's a single mom. Her husband passed away when her child was very young. He has a lot of needs, and people would come to her and be like, how did.
• 21:20
  Speaker D: I don't.
• 21:20
  Speaker C: I don't have a community. I don't have all the support like you do. And she's all like, well, then go make your community. Do it. She goes, this wasn't handed to me. I built this from the ground up. And that's a lot of work. And it's not fair. Sorry if you didn't know. Life isn't fair, but you know, is.
• 21:38
  Speaker B: That it's not unsafe to try to build something that you don't have. It's uncomfortable.
• 21:44
  Speaker C: It's.
• 21:44
  Speaker B: It's really uncomfortable, but it's.
• 21:48
  Speaker C: And you're gonna make mistakes. Things are gonna crumble sometimes. Yeah.
• 21:52
  Speaker B: Again, this is. These kind of conversations are, I think, all. I always, always, always hope to just what can we give back? In talking so openly about this, is that encouraging that mom who maybe, you know, has the younger child that's diagnosed or someone who didn't realize that they themselves were maybe delaying a diagnosis for their child or whatever it is to just like the shame is. Is in innate with all of us. It's. It's a. It's a primal part of being a human and a woman. And I think if we can all felt it so to go in. We've all felt it and, and say, I'm going to make. This is going to be uncomfortable. But uncomfortable is not unsafe. And beyond that point, when you get over that hurdle, it is a. There. There's such a. Such a plethora of. Of positivity and goodness that that shame actually really dissolves through the process. I mean, I was scared. I was scared off my. I'm about to swear here, but I was so scared in even, you know, beginning podcasting and then realizing there are more stories out there than I even wish to have on to hear. I want to give everyone a voice for that because we're so worthy. It's so worthy of that. You know, I. I'm so thankful for the work that you guys do. I'm so thankful that the universe, you know, in. In all of the COVID ridiculousness brought you guys together and that you took that leap to make that up this platform. Because, you know, I. We all find each other and however the crazy algorithm works to do that, and when I hear the voice of each one of you, as I've listened to past episodes of yours, it's so apparent to me that the four of you were meant to do what you were meant to do. So I hope that, you know, as listeners come to me to Inchtones today and listen here and we talk about support groups and we talk about one on one connection, that it's again, not. There's no one right way to do it. There's no way so that each of us and each platform can provide something different. Just like you were sharing.
• 23:45
  Speaker A: Brittany, I think that it's, I think even something I heard last night while I was sitting in a meeting. And especially at this part, like our stage of our connection, our relationship, where, where we are with our children, how long we've been on this journey, and as I always phrase or coin that, how well seasoned we may be, it can be intimidating to parents just starting out and are in that space. And someone had made a comment about another mom or parent, a colleague that had spoken up and said, oh, that's great that you said all that, but I think you're intimidating the rest of the room. And I felt like saying, first off, we're going to take up all the space over here. So that's not okay. But what's fair to say is that a lot of people, sometimes when they're entering spaces like that or even trying, and they're so uncomfortable. I remember, I remember having so much anxiety. I had so much social anxiety before even Covid happened, because I was in this isolated world. This was what I did. I slept, ate and breathed everything. Autism and what my kid needed, or kids needed, plural. And that was my whole life, nothing else. And I couldn't even leave the house. So there was so much social anxiety. And so, and I, and I remember those mom groups that I had before my kid, we knew he was autistic, you know, and starting out as a mom. And now it's all over social media right now is everything that Ashley Tisdale has been saying, there's a mom that came out with another counter to that. And I really resonated with the counter to that because I actually think it's pertinent to what we're even kind of touching on here, which is you're not.
• 25:26
  Speaker B: It's.
• 25:27
  Speaker A: You're going to try a million things. It's not going to be the right fit and you're going to get to the point where. And I'm. I am the queen of inclusion. Right? There's. Inclusion is everything. There's also. There's also merit in thoughtful exclusion because you have to find what is appropriate for you and your needs and your nerves system is not appropriate for you to be anything and everything to everyone. We cannot. It literally is not. We are not physically able to do that.
• 25:56
  Speaker B: I know.
• 25:56
  Speaker A: Everyone's like, you guys are so amazing. And I'm like, yeah, okay. No, no, we're winging it.
• 26:01
  Speaker D: What are you talking about?
• 26:02
  Speaker A: Totally winging it. And. Yeah, right. And we're beyond our thresholds. And I just, you know. You know when my daughter even comes home and she is like, can you message this parent? I want to have this. This play date. And I'm thinking, I can't have. I can't enter another. Like, I can't create another relationship like that. Like, it's like, you know what I mean? It's like, how do you keep things within certain bounds? It's like creating boundaries for everything else so you can handle the capacities of what you can have. You enter. But. So it's not gonna. I think it's. What I'm saying is, is that there are many things that I failed at before we got to this. I even think during this process, I think it's perfect to. It's appropriate to say that this has come with lots of ebbs and flows, too, and ups and downs. And that's because of the nature of our lives. We're. We're individuals. We live in different places. Our kids have different needs. We have different, you know, marital situations and status. So there's socioeconomics. There's all kinds of things that come into play that impact that. And so it's not perfect. Like, we're not sitting here selling this, like, perfectly wrapped package. Like, and you too, could have this, too. It's. It's not that. It's. There's. It does come with work. It's going to come with failures and setbacks. Just don't be discouraged by the setbacks. Know that you need to keep going. And I had a kid who was completely only attached to me, and that also created further isolation. So when my kids started to realize by building community around him that he realized I wasn't the only anchor. We always are. The biggest fear is what's going to happen when we're not around, what happens to us. It's a. It's very refreshing. Even if you don't have a Firm plan to know that your kid trusts other human beings besides you in any capacity. And so even if you're not doing it for yourself, do it for your kid.
• 27:58
  Speaker B: Modeling. So modeling.
• 28:01
  Speaker A: That is what I learned that.
• 28:02
  Speaker B: Living that. And I guess the word that keeps emerging for me is like, acceptance. Expanding your orientation to knowing that failure is a part of that. But I never in a million years think I would have been as open to all the possibilities for myself, let alone for my children, had they not been exactly who they are and allowed me to, as you say, broaden my spectrum of what. What is, what is possible. And. And to then, like, go forth and be a mirror for others. Not to say this is what is going to work for you, but just to say you have the power within you to keep doing that into a broaden years as well. And again, it's one of the most beautiful byproducts of being a special needs parent, without a doubt. Now, I will. I will end on a funny note, though, having a little boy and a girl. Like, sometimes, though, right now, my son is getting so strong, and I have a torn meniscus. And I am. Right now, like, we're gonna sign off here. I'm like, okay, when am I gonna do surgery? Like, how does this work? But I was. I had to tell you guys this because I was like, you know what? Who would get it? Like, there's nothing like a special needs mom going, I can't go down. I'm not dying. But my son getting stronger. I got to fix this miniscule tear. There's no alternative. I have to fix this. I'm so annoyed by it, but I have to do it. So anyways.
• 29:17
  Speaker C: Yeah. We all have our own version of that. Yes. In our lives for sure. Yeah. I have three boys who are now all officially adults. My youngest. I have three boys. Right. And my youngest is now 18. And. Yeah. It's a whole nother world when they get bigger, taller, stronger, larger than you and. Yeah. Another level, let's just say so.
• 29:42
  Speaker B: Yeah. Because.
• 29:43
  Speaker C: Yeah, we need to get that all cleaned up. Let's do that.
• 29:46
  Speaker B: Like, who would understand? Yep.
• 29:47
  Speaker A: It's.
• 29:48
  Speaker B: It's really autism, parents. Because everyone else.
• 29:51
  Speaker C: That's all you have to say. And we get it.
• 29:52
  Speaker B: Yeah. We got it. Like, I need a house call. I'm calling it in. I need a house call.
• 29:57
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 29:57
  Speaker C: And you. You do that. You are allowed to do that. And don't let anyone tell you that you shouldn't, because that's 100%. Okay.
• 30:05
  Speaker B: Thank you so much for this mini group session that we got to have right now. And for all that you do on the mom stock autism, I think, again, the organic and just naturally, the evolution of what y' all created and started from a place of, I mean, to use the word gene, like it was isolating. And this is one medium with which you can defy that and to engage and interact in a way that is so, so good for just the humans that we are and mothers. So thank you. Thank you, each, each of you. And we will continue this conversation. I'm so thrilled to be a part of your world and cannot see what comes next for all three of you on Mom's autism. All right. Likewise, of course.
• 30:46
  Speaker C: Well, until next time, thank you for having us.