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Your Child Isn't the Only One Dysregulated: Special Needs Parenting with Stacey Uhrig · Inchstones with Sarah | Autism Advocacy & Caregiver Stories

• 0:00
  Speaker A: Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the Inch Jones Podcast. You know that what I believe here is that understanding and growing our understanding changes everything. And when you have a child with autism, especially ones like Milly and Mac, who have significant support needs, you probably spent a lot of years in and out of therapies, the parking lots of therapies, education, learning about communication and behavior. And we're going to turn that lens around here a bit today. We're going to ask the question, what happens to the parent? I have a guest today, Stacy, a founder. A founder of Flip youp Mindset. And her work focuses on really that nervous system regulation, which, if you are anything like me, my algorithm is pumping me to understand my nervous system as a special needs mother. And I'm so thankful for it because there are so many patterns that shape us. I'm sure we'll dive into this, Stacey, that shape us and how we respond to stress and relationships and, and, and intensive caregiving. So this isn't a conversation about asking you to do more. Right. This is about trying to understand something that every caregiver deserves. So, Stacy, thank you and welcome to Inchdense.
• 1:13
  Speaker B: Thank you for inviting me to be on the podcast.
• 1:16
  Speaker A: I'm so happy to have you here. Yeah. Your work, like, I hope that you are making a bajillion dollars because I think it is so absolutely critical for, for women and mothers like me. You know, you often say that you're not broken, and I wanted to ask, like, why do you believe that parents, especially after years of profound caregiving, feel that way?
• 1:38
  Speaker B: I think it's a multitude of reasons. Why? I think sometimes I don't think. Sometimes I think most of the time parenting in general, whether we're working with a child that has special needs or not, parenting in general breaks people wide open.
• 1:59
  Speaker A: Wide open.
• 2:00
  Speaker B: Wide open. And, you know, it's just now really becoming a theme in mental health. Like when I say just now, I mean like in the last few years, totally. People are really starting to talk about how our lived experiences impact our adulthood, how our lived experiences as children impact our adulthood. And that gets cracked wide open, I think, in parenthood, because every coping strategy we've ever had, every, what I call unspoken rule and unwritten contract of what's supposed to be social norms of being a human being, which I poke a lot of holes in, social norms of being human being get cracked wide open and there becomes this period of time, and I find it often when people are in their 40s and 50s, when they go, wait a minute, what do I actually believe to be true.
• 3:00
  Speaker A: Yep.
• 3:01
  Speaker B: And so then layer on that, perhaps being thrown into a scenario where we're dealing with a child that has a significant special need. And, and we're learning at rapid pace of what that all means. And we're advocating, what I find is that if one of those brilliant coping strategies growing up was to deprioritize myself to meet the needs of others, so my needs will be met. And then we find ourselves in a position where we are deprioritizing ourselves to meet the needs of our children because they don't know how to meet their own needs. It's a recipe for disaster. And that feels like brokenness for a lot of people because they feel like a shell of themselves.
• 3:47
  Speaker A: Yeah, I mean, gosh, I could, yes, yes, yes to all of that. And I think the hardest is that, listen, we're not like in the struggle Olympics, right? You know, mothers and caregivers, like, I never want to say, like, you know, the typical moms, like, they have it easy. I was a typical mom of a toddler once. I had it, I thought it was very hard before I even had special needs children. And what I think, what I'm hearing you say too, is that parenthood, and especially the man, the demands of, of intensive parenthood with children with disabilities, it radically shakes open like your own fear of discomfort. And, and sitting with that is actually really painful, very hard.
• 4:29
  Speaker B: And also many of us grow up very uncomfortable with other people's discomfort.
• 4:36
  Speaker A: Correct.
• 4:36
  Speaker B: And so our children are in discomfort all the time. Even neurotypical or, you know, developing children are in struggle because there are many humans trying to navigate a really big world. And so it becomes very challenging for people to watch their children in struggle and not want to jump into fix it mode. And what really becomes avoidant mode.
• 5:03
  Speaker A: Right. Is it like performance too? I, I, I struggle with that a lot early on, a hundred percent.
• 5:09
  Speaker B: I mean, listen, again, I, I have a philosophy that every single person in the entire world is walking with an invisible backpack. And in that invisible backpack are their lived experiences, the interpretation that they made of those lived experiences. Because you can have many people in the same home that come out with very different interpretations. What you ch about yourself, others in the world around you, based on all of that, what your brilliant coping strategies were, which I call adaptations, like how did we to that environment? And then unless we're shaking that up, we're kind of almost walking in a slumber using everything from the backpack just subconsciously, we're just pulling from it. We're not Thinking it's just like a rat movement. Some of what's inside our backpack for many people is perfectionism, extreme people pleasing, no boundary settings, conflict avoidance. You know, these are things that maybe really worked well as a young child that don't work so well in our adulthood because we, it. We have too many things that we're managing. And so it leads to a tremendous amount of burnout, which is what I think a lot of moms, and I shouldn't just say moms, but a lot of parents and caregivers are walking with.
• 6:31
  Speaker A: Yeah. You know, I think I always say there is a, There is a silver lining and there is a very, very massive gray space in the experience of a caregiver who has a child with a lifelong diagnosis that forever changes the trajectory of their own life. And that gray space can be. Can honestly for me, it like it fast forwarded. It was on warp speed. Like the amount that I was asked to carry. Like, I, When I look back now, I think, gosh, I mean, that was not like my typical toddler. Like, how did I even. How was I even, like complaining like about the weight. Like, how was I even overwhelmed?
• 7:13
  Speaker B: And yet, by the way, it is overwhelming.
• 7:16
  Speaker A: It was. And I, and I talked with my own therapist about this. Like, that was real. My subjective reality. That was very real. And yet the. When you do have a child that demands like even 10 times more of your attention, your. My mindset was for a lot, for at least in the earlier days, I was like, I, I cannot do this. Like, there is no way that I'm going to be able to do this. And then my. I actually do. And I think it's become that pattern that I ask a lot of mothers to say go. It is going to be really. It's going to be 30 times harder than it is for your friends. It doesn't mean that you're not gonna survive it though. And I think if you can name does allow you like, I love that visual pulling that outta the backpack. You go, okay, what do I need right now? What am I carrying? And what do I. What skills do I have?
• 8:03
  Speaker B: Right? And sometimes we unpack that backpack and realize there's a large percentage of what's inside that backpack that is no longer relevant. It's like programming, but yet we're still pulling from it. A lot of times for parents, and again, I don't wanna put the burden on the parent because they're already so bur. And I get it, I understand the exhaustion, but this is not a burden. This is taking Time for yourself, which a lot of parents don't feel they either have the right to do or don't have the time to do. And there are ways we can do it. To look at what's inside that backpack and say, is this serving me in the current environment hindering me? Is it holding me back? Is it weighing me down? Is it adding to the stress? Is it adding to the anxiety or whatever it is that I'm feeling in this new normal, in this life? And I think sometimes, you know, there's a grief, as you know, that comes with reality, of, wait, what, like, forever? You know? And so that also brings up a lot for so many parents. And I think, you know, I always say we can't heal what we don't understand. And yes, having a child with special needs is an extraordinary circumstance, but I often find that people are also bringing in their own extraordinary circumstance from their own unresolved stuff from childhood. That is compounding it.
• 9:34
  Speaker A: Absolutely.
• 9:35
  Speaker B: And it's really stacking.
• 9:37
  Speaker A: It's like stacking it.
• 9:38
  Speaker B: It's stacking it. It's compounding the pressure.
• 9:42
  Speaker A: Yeah.
• 9:42
  Speaker B: And again, I. I want to be really clear when I say I do fully understand that there is a survival that is happening for parents of children with special needs where it doesn't feel like they have the luxury to stop and focus on themselves. But it's also a story. It is also a narrative that needs to be debunked. I am not a parent of a child with special needs, but I was a speech therapist with the autistic population for many years. There's a lot of neurodivergence in my family. And so I see it firsthand of what that extra level of pressure is. And I'm very sensitive and compassionate towards it. And I also believe that there is room and an allowance for. That's the big thing for the parent to stop and say, it's okay for me, to also focus on me and my health, mental, physical health, what have you. Because this is the long haul.
• 10:42
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, there is so much that is revealed about who you are when you enter a parenting journey that is not at all what you had bargained for. And I think that for me, and I've shared this pretty openly, you know, I used. I. I'm sober for almost two and a half years now, I find that my ability to regulate is in direct. In the direct same. In the same direction as my children's ability to. To regulate. And especially when I think of their skill sets and how they grow and how they're so, so small. You know these inch tones of winds. If I do not have that capacity, which I didn't like early on I was running from the, you know, in deep fear of like what this was going to mean for my life. It, it did push me into. Well, there's no alternative if you do not do this, you know that they, they're just mocked even in their disabilities. They're still picking up on the way in which your regulation is. You know how many times I mean I talked to, I'm on text chains of other special needs moms and you know there's venting and they're sharing and there's this, you know how many. You never have to look farther than a morning routine here to go. I'm still changing a pull up of an eight and a half year old boy and if I don't go in there regulated of like that is what's going to happen. That's likely. That's the reality. I will not allow for him to even feel comfortable in the space around me. To, to then, hey buddy, let's go to the bathroom. Let's go brush your teeth. I said brush your teeth. You know all these things that require me to be the best version of myself. I don't have an option. And I always think that that's the silver lining is I don't know if Sarah at 43 would be dysregulated as a woman had I not had children that I do. Do you oftentimes do you see that ever in, in, in your.
• 12:32
  Speaker B: Well, I think it's just yes, because our children are the mirror to our regulation and so you know, it. Look, it's very, very common. Like I do not work with children or adolescents and it's actually very hard for me to find other practitioners who work with children and of an adolescents. It's such a, it's such a nuanced piece of work and I give all the cred to them. But very often I will have people come to me and say my child's exhibiting all these behaviors. And usually those children are not on the autism spectrum personally, but they are in a neurodivergence space.
• 13:14
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 13:16
  Speaker B: And they're getting the Alphabet soup of diagnosis. Adhd, ocd, odd. That's what I see at least in the younger K. And they will say can you fix my kid? Can you help me with my kid? And first of all, again, I'm not trained to work with adolescents for a reason. So I say no, I don't work with children. However, it's really important to understand that if you think the only solution here is to put the burden on your child to meet you where you are, you're going to be in an uptale battle for the rest of your life.
• 13:55
  Speaker A: Because that means what I've learned is that you want something from or for your child because you need it to regulate.
• 14:04
  Speaker B: Well, that's correct. You need it in order to regulate.
• 14:06
  Speaker A: Right. And I see that in typical, you know, relationships as well.
• 14:10
  Speaker B: Right. And so what I will often say to the parent is, I can help you take a look at how you're navigating the world, see if we can make some micro shifts to how you're interacting with the world and see if you see a shift in behavior in the home just by you making a shift.
• 14:29
  Speaker A: Right. So I don't really want to hear
• 14:32
  Speaker B: that, by the way.
• 14:33
  Speaker A: No one does.
• 14:35
  Speaker B: They're coming to me for their kid. And, and so often it's met with a little frustration. But I'm not one to really sugarcoat in that respect. I'm like, I'm telling you, nothing happens unless the entire environment shifts because they are co regulating to you as much as you are co regulating to them.
• 14:56
  Speaker A: I mean, I think your work hits on something that I've experienced in helping prepare mothers to go into IEP rooms. And I'm not, I'm not a, I, I don't have the capacity, given my caregiving load, to actually go in, to be a physical advocate for another family. What I do is prepare. And I always say if you're, you are actually able to own that environment, you have the capacity to shift and to shape what that terrain is going to look like in there. Because it's, it's all emotionally, like driven. It's, it's, it's so charged. It's so charged. And if you, you actually can change that and then it gives such power to the person. And I think that what you're saying is that that exactly translates from kind of work that I offer to other mothers, but what you're doing too for their children, there's no doubt.
• 15:48
  Speaker B: Yeah, yeah. And it just, it takes a nuanced approach for them to shift this idea of I'm coming to for them. I'm not here to talk about me. Like, I appreciate that. However, maybe it'd be worth exploring.
• 16:05
  Speaker A: Yeah. So talk to me about, because this is fascinating to me. Talk to me about like polyvagal theory and parts.
• 16:12
  Speaker B: What, what do you want to know?
• 16:14
  Speaker A: Like, I just want to know how this helps parents like myself better understand, you know, their own exhaustion, like their own. In their own overwhelm.
• 16:24
  Speaker B: So I'm trained in something known as parts work through a polyvagal lens. And I. It was great training. So the idea. We'll start with parts work. The idea of parts work is that when we are born, we are connected to ourselves. Self with a capital S. That self is your core. It is your alignment. What we connect to when we. When we're in something and we go, wow, I really just felt like myself. Or I felt so. Yeah. Felt so grounded or felt so in flow or that I felt really seen, heard, and understood. When we are connected to that core.
• 17:06
  Speaker A: Mm.
• 17:06
  Speaker B: Or born. We're connected to that core. It's everything. And in the realm of parts work, and I'll reference internal family system specifically, there are qualities of being connected to self, and they all start with the C. Right. So we've got. We're compassionate towards ourself. We don't really judge ourselves. We see ourselves as just imperfect beings, and we have compassion for that. We feel very connected to ourselves and also want to be connected to others. We seek safety and connection. Mm. We have a lot of courage, a lot of confidence, a lot of creativity. We're very clear on who we are and what's going on in the world. So all of this is a grounding. The language I use is at some period in time, we shapeshift. So the language I use is we tend to fragment from ourself in order to meet the needs of others. So our needs will be met. I'll say that again. So imagine your childhood in a moment where we feel unseen, unheard, insignificant, not important, not enough. Which leaves our nervous system feeling unsafe. Quick moment. We will shapeshift. Who do I need to become in this environment if we feel seen, heard, understood, so on and so forth. So I will shape shift. I will fragment from myself to meet the need of the other people. So then my need for feeling seen, heard, understood, and valued is met. Okay. And so I've been saying that for. For years and years and years, well before I was even introduced to parts work. The reality is, is in parts work, we have a self. And when we come up to a scenario that leaves us feeling unsafe, we fragment and a part of us engages. Okay, so there are different theories. Some theories are that we're born with all of our parts.
• 19:12
  Speaker A: Okay.
• 19:13
  Speaker B: Activate some other theories that are not ifs. Technically, where it's like, no, that part forms because Interesting quote, unquote trauma. Right. Reality is. Is we Abandon ourselves a little bit in survival. Right. If you think about it long term, most people come to me because they say, I don't know who I am, I don't recognize myself. I just want to get back to me. But I really hear them saying is, I'm so parts led right now. Yeah, I'm such a. Myself is such a shadow dimmed out. They're not saying it, but that's what I'm hearing.
• 19:55
  Speaker A: Right.
• 19:55
  Speaker B: So my line of work, what I'm really trying to do is help them identify what parts activated, engaged, developed in those moments. Survival in a very benevolent way that was very adaptive at a point in time that maybe is no longer really adaptive. Maybe it's a little maladaptive. And I'll use just a handful of global parts that people come to me with. A perfectionist part, a people pleasing part, a rage part, an alcoholic part, any kind of addiction part, extreme people pleasing, caretaking, all of these things. Okay. And when that's the part of us that's leading the charge in our life, we're more parts led. What we're trying to really do is thank that part for the job it's done. We don't want to, we want to acknowledge it was doing something for us, but really try to lean back towards getting reconnected with ourselves so there's a balance. We're looking for harmony. We're not looking to get rid of the part.
• 21:00
  Speaker A: Yeah. I mean, this, this is just so cool. Because again, I, I don't mean this in any toxic, positive, positive way. I truly believe that those of us that got handed a journey that we never would have chosen, this is the thing that, that can be such a cool win for your own life that you, I never. If you'd have told me 10 years ago when I had a newborn who, you know, and my two and a half year old was losing, melting down the floor every time, and I had a typical five year old, I didn't know which way was up. And you would have told me this, I would have been like, okay, well, I have nursing, I got breast milk all over me right now. And I have a two and a half year old who won't be potty trained, by the way, for eight more years, I would never have believed you. But I love knowing that now, this far along when you say all this, I'm like, I'm 43. I get to do this work that some people don't even, they don't even do until they're much, far, many more decades older than I am.
• 21:53
  Speaker B: The biggest challenge is usually our biggest gift, right?
• 21:56
  Speaker A: Yes, Without a doubt.
• 21:58
  Speaker B: I don't say it loosely and sometimes people don't like it when I say it.
• 22:04
  Speaker A: It's really hard.
• 22:05
  Speaker B: I. Well, look, I had a. I had an acquaintance of mine who had. Had cancer many times, and she's like to tell you every single time you say there's a gift and challenge and purpose and the pain, I want to punch you in the face. Because there's no gift in cancer. There's no gift in this. And I said, okay. I'm not saying that the thing that's bringing you right is the gift. What I'm saying is maybe on your journey you met somebody you would have never met before, and that's right.
• 22:35
  Speaker A: Or you learn revealing.
• 22:37
  Speaker B: Yeah. You learn something about yourself or you learn something about others, or you finally allowed yourself to receive versus it could always be very nuanced. It's not the thing that brings you pain. That's always the gift. It's. It's the surrounding scaffolding that if you, if you can see it from an observer role, you can think, my life is rich. Yeah. Because of this thing that brought me so much pain.
• 23:05
  Speaker A: That's right.
• 23:06
  Speaker B: Yeah. So that's. Parts work right. In a very simplified 10,000 foot view description. Polyvagal theory, which I just absolutely love, is more of a connection with the nervous system. So for example, I drowned in and suffered from anxiety for 30 years. Mm. And I was really debilitated. And if someone had asked me what was that like for you? Everything I would've described would've been from my neck to my gut. Could never put on weight. I was always having digestion issues, whether I was throwing up or having. I always felt like I had an elephant on my chest, a train running through my chest, never being able to get a full breath. My heart rate was always high. I'm always describing something from here to here. Now it would go here because now all of this is deeply engaged. It's sending messages to my brain and vice versa. They're going back and forth. My amygdala, which is our threat center, is now very engaged. My prefrontal cortex is off now. I can't remember things. I've got brain fog. I'm over emotional. All these things are happening that I can't describe. And it gets labeled as generalized anxiety disorder. It gets labeled as depression. All of these different things. And. Or this is the kicker, that's still running point. Well, well beyond the root of the problem. So if I had A lived experience at 12, 13, 14, 15. That was on six. Safe. And the body's still reacting as though it's in an unsafe environment in its 30s. Because it's keeping me safe by doing that.
• 24:58
  Speaker A: Exactly.
• 25:00
  Speaker B: That makes you feel crazy because if there's no threat in front of you, you're like, why am I running from a bear in my chest and in my mind when I'm just in the middle of the Costco freezer aisle.
• 25:15
  Speaker A: Right. Like, then.
• 25:17
  Speaker B: Then you're like, wow, I guess I really am disordered to your point earlier. I guess I really am broken. I guess you really need to fix me. Polyvagal theory shows us that we have a window. Some people call it a window of tolerance. Some people call it a window of capacity. That when it's in its optimal state, when it's its widest, we have the capacity and the tolerance to navigate what is going on in and around our life. And it gives us more access to balance and joy and solutions. When our window is narrow, we're popping into what's known as a hyper vigilant or hypo Vigilant state or hyper aroused or hypo around state. Hyper aroused state looks a lot like panic attacks, overwhelm, cutting, anxiety, a frenetic, frantic response. Hypo arouse looks like lethargy, disconnection, lack of motivation, procrastination, wanting to play dead, not wanting to get out of bed. We're going to label this as depression. We're going to label the one in the upper register as anxiety. As anxiety. Yep. So what's nice about polyvagal theories? It gives you a different lens.
• 26:38
  Speaker A: Yes.
• 26:39
  Speaker B: Through which to look at the wide holistic view of how we have learned to navigate the world. I get curious about the things that we start to understand, widen our window, and the things that actually narrow our window so it makes what's happening in our body a little bit more flexible and fluid because we feel we have agency when we are dropped with a. With a. A label like generalized anxiety disorder, which I was given at age 30, you feel like, well, I've got no agency left.
• 27:18
  Speaker A: There's nothing to do. Yeah. Like what am I can do? There's nothing I can do.
• 27:20
  Speaker B: Give me the medication. And I guess that's just my lot in life and I'm stuck with it. For me personally, this concept of polyvagal theory resonates so well with my clients because they literally will say to me, there's nothing wrong with me.
• 27:37
  Speaker A: Right.
• 27:38
  Speaker B: There's nothing wrong with me. My body's just reacting the way it's intended to react because of what's happening here. And I actually have some influence over that.
• 27:52
  Speaker A: It's amazing when. It's amazing when you. That agency.
• 27:55
  Speaker B: Yeah. Once they have agency, we've gone from hopeless and helpless to hopeful.
• 28:01
  Speaker A: Well, I think also too, you know, again, I'm, you know, geriatric millennial. I feel like I was raised in a way of not understanding that there was a holistic way to approach this. That there was that my capacity and my agency to expand through a variety of different ways to understand my responses. Some of those were baked in societally, conditionally that I didn't even realize. I didn't even realize that I. It is so in my unconscious subconscious. I didn't even know that what I didn't know. And I think that when we re. When that kind of. Well, I. I mean, I love polyvagal theory and I hope that those that are listening can feel, you know, like that label that like generalized anxiety or depression or, you know, or, you know, untreatable depression. All these things do have a different way to look at it and to incorporate it on a day to day. And it's going to take time like anything else. It's not like you just. I don't wake up tomorrow and just say, you know, gosh, I'm going to really, you know, focus on my vagus nerve today. Yeah, right. That's not. And that's what we want. I think that's what, you know, we all want in this life that feels so heavy with a lot of burdens that we never thought we'd have to carry. Yet the things that we can change through the different way of seeing this. It actually does work. It really, really does.
• 29:16
  Speaker B: It shifts everything and it shifts everything. You know, I just. Nothing makes me sadder than to see somebody feeling like they're so stuck in this difficult world with no hope and feeling very helpless and then seeing a little glimmer in their eye when they see a new piece of information that maybe has never been, you know, presented to them like nervous system science. And what they often say is it actually makes a lot of sense.
• 29:49
  Speaker A: Yeah, yeah.
• 29:51
  Speaker B: Because when I'm around these people, my window starts to narrow here. I can cope better over there. So now I get curious. Why does my window close over here and why does it widen over here? And how much control do I have over the closing and the widening? And it just, it gives them something to really ponder. And I think that's missing from maybe traditional therapy. If it's not because they, because they
• 30:19
  Speaker A: come to the solution on their own. Because it makes sense.
• 30:22
  Speaker B: It makes sense. And it. You know, I'll say this. There is some clickbait happening in the mental health space where people who are researchers and don't really come out of a lab, they certainly don't work.
• 30:37
  Speaker A: Right.
• 30:38
  Speaker B: One with people who want to debunk this idea that the body doesn't keep the score. And the polyvagal theories, not an evidence based model. And every single person who uses it goes, have you ever worked with a client who feels so seen, heard and understood when they're presented with polyvagal theory and it changes their life? So there's a lot happening out in the mental health space where people are using very specific terms like polyvagal theory. Like the body keeps the score and they're saying, no, the body doesn't keep the score. No polyvagal theories, not a real theory. And you know, it. It's hurtful to the work that I'm doing and other people do because those people are really just trying to get a good clickbait and they're trying to. Right. Get a lot of viral content going, kind of harmful to the work of trauma because it's then making people further question their own reality and their own lived experience.
• 31:39
  Speaker A: Right. And I think that I was having a conversation with someone recently about this and I said, my reality and your reality. Everyone's reality is subjective.
• 31:48
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 31:49
  Speaker A: Like there's like there. It's all subjective reality and it's trying to understand that what, like, as you said before, what might literally make someone else go off the rails and have a panic attack, might for me be like, that's nothing, that's a Tuesday. Like, I just have to do that. Like, I use, I'm using an example that if you would. If you told me, Stacy, right now, Sarah, you and Milly just won a full trip, round trip, all expenses paid to go stay at the Ritz Carlton in Hong Kong. And you gotta be there. And like, by tomorrow I'd be like, oh, we're there, we're there. Like, we're going. This is gonna be so much fun. We're gonna get like, you know, and other moms would look at me and go, what? That sounds horrific. I would break down. But if you asked me to do something else, like completely changing me. Their diet or, you know, their. They're sleeping. Like, I'm on a very routine regimented sleep, you know, diet for them, and that would break me. That would break me.
• 32:46
  Speaker B: Yeah.
• 32:47
  Speaker A: So it's just interesting.
• 32:49
  Speaker B: Well, because nothing's black and white. And it's all personal and unique and nuanced to our own lived experiences, our home life, the things that we bring in on that backpack. And yet people look at everyone's scenario through a very black and white point of view.
• 33:06
  Speaker A: That's right. Well, thank you so much for this conversation. I could talk to you for hours about this. I love it so much. And you know, one of the things that, like, stays with me. Cause we were talking about sharing stories at the beginning is that, like, our nervous systems do tell a story, too.
• 33:21
  Speaker B: Yeah, they do.
• 33:22
  Speaker A: And it's been written through years of. Through the lens of unconditional love and responsibility and, you know, uncertainty and chronic stress. But understanding is not an excuse to not focus on it. And I think it's a real invitation to meet ourselves where we are. And the work that you're doing is so powerful. I'm so glad that to host you here and to have my listeners hear more. And thank you so much for joining us here on Inchstones and noticing that the little things really are the big things and change everything.
• 33:52
  Speaker B: Thank you so much for having me.
• 33:54
  Speaker A: All right, until next time on the Inchstones podcast.