The Village: Creating a community of support for ourselves

Kendra: There’s nothing more comforting than finding another person who understands what you’re going through. Sometimes just to spend time not talking about your kids. We all know it’s supposed to take a village to raise a child, but where do you find that village? Sometimes you can find it in a book. 

I’m just so excited you guys are here. AsI said already before to Patty, I kind of feel like a stalker because really this, I was in the thick of it when your book came out. And I was like the perfect target market for it, because I was just like maybe a couple years behind you guys. Yeah. And I just remember reading it, the whole thing. A. laughing all the time, and B. just, thank God for normal people who will just admit…

Shut Up Sister: Normal? What gave that… What in that book indicated we’re normal?! 

Kendra: normal, normal, as in real is what I’m saying.  

Shut Up Sister: I apologize. I’m gonna silence my phone. I can’t silence my family though. Unfortunately. Very good. Unfortunately, no remote control will do that.

Kendra: This is A Little Easier. I’m Kendra Wilde. Along our way. We’ve been checking in with Gina Gallagher and Patty Terass, together, the “Shut Up Sisters.” This time, I wanted you to hear their origin story because it’s really all about finding the right kind of connection and how hard that can be.

Gina Gallagher: We had a big age difference between us growing up, so we didn’t really get along. And, but then as we got older, we got along and, um, we love each other’s kids. We’re very much like one family. Two of our kids, my daughter Katie, Patty’s daughter, Jen, were struggling around the same time. And Patty used to joke that someday:

Patty Terrasi: Someday that we would write a book. And then Gina said, do you wanna, you know, should we write a book together? And I thought, okay. I’m I’m free a week from Thursday. 

Gina Gallagher: And then we just, yeah, and we, we got it. Like we did it, it was like more therapy for ourselves, like, oh my God. Cause we were, you were very selfish. 

Patty Terrasi: We were angry. I was too, like, I was scared, angry. Um, I mean, yes, we had that humor piece, but I was like so angry that like, people didn’t understand my daughter and like even people that were close to you that you love, it was like, you felt like everybody was in this club. Right. And, and that you weren’t invited to it because their kids were all in such different places, playing sports. I was a big sports fanatic and my daughter like just was so uncoordinated and couldn’t do stuff. And they were all like you know, you’d be at these mother gatherings and everybody would be talking about things that I just. and it was just sort of like, well, why can’t I. Why can’t I be a part of it. Like they don’t get us. And I was angry and I was scared. And I was worried about the future. Reading books and reading about all the negative stuff. And, you know, finally I just said, you know, we just started writing and it was therapy. And then we shared it with like little focus groups and people were like, you’ve gotta do this. You’re speaking for all of us.

Gina Gallagher: We were at, I was at one of these neighborhood gatherings with these mothers and there was one mother there whose daughter was such a brat. And the mother was a very much a show off. And the mother started bragging about her daughter on a day when I confess, my daughter was struggling with something. And I went back to my house and Patty and I knew we were gonna write a book. We just didn’t know what it was gonna be called. I put on the cap lock and I’m like, “Shut Up About Your Perfect Kid!” And I call Patty and I’m like, and she’s just started laughing. And I’m like, I really didn’t even think anybody would take it seriously. But it was like, that’s the best. 

Kendra: Over the years, the Shut Up sisters have found that being open about their struggles has let them connect with thousands of people. Many of them are parents who felt alone and sometimes ashamed about what they were facing. 

Dr. Bruce Perry: We ask way too much of our parents in this society.

Kendra: Renowned trauma expert. Dr. Bruce Perry says the way our modern society is organized puts an immense amount of pressure on families. 

Dr. Bruce Perry: Part of the problem is, we’re not meant to do this by ourselves. You know, this is the huge, sort of a trade-off that we’ve made in Western family organization. Yeah. So we have, you know, uh, maybe a couple of parents and some kids. And in reality, I think that the human species is really meant to have what’s referred to as alloparenting. There’s sort of this distribution of caregiving responsibility across multiple adults. So that no one adult is completely burdened with the emotional, physical needs of all kinds of kids, multiple kids at once, which is really impossible. 

Kendra: Just like the Shut Up Sisters, another person who wrote to find community and connection is Canadian author, Ann Douglas. And she couldn’t agree more with Bruce.

Ann Douglas: We were never meant to parent on our own, and yet we’re getting very isolated. 

Kendra: Ann’s always been really candid about her own difficulties and how alone she felt for many years. 

Ann Douglas: So I would say that you don’t have to have a huge village, but if you have a core group of even a handful of people you can turn to, that can make a huge difference. So one of the parents I interviewed for Parenting Through the Storm told me that when she is in an emergency room at 3:00 AM with her daughter who’s in crisis again… sometimes she doesn’t actually call or text the people that come to mind, but she says it makes her feel so supported when she can look at her list of favorites on her phone and realize, here are 10 people who care so much about my family, that if I did reach out to them at 3:00 AM, they’d pick up the phone or they’d text message me back. Like those people are in my court. So I think sometimes just reminding yourself of who your people are. And of course, nurturing those relationships to the extent that you’re able. 

Kendra: Yeah. I love that idea of even just imagining that you’re talking to people and realizing that there’s that net there, visualizing that you have that net right there next to you and under you. So when you think back to your younger mom self, what else do you wish you’d known? 

Ann Douglas: I think just that message of reaching out to other people who truly understand, like, be selective with who you talk to things about. I mean, some people will say the most incredibly judgey and unhelpful thing, and then you learn from that you think, okay, that person is not my go to person on any of this stuff, but then it’s that surprising person that you thought, you know, they had the perfect life and they open up and, and talk about their struggles. You realize there’s that commonality. And it could be totally different issues. Maybe their child is living with a chronic illness and yours has a mental health challenge, but it’s that same feeling of how do I help navigate systems? How do I support my kid? How do I keep the rest of the family on track? There’s so much commonality in those journeys.

Kendra: Be careful who you reach out to. That’s been a common theme with many of the parents I spoke with. Everyone has their own comfort level about how much they share and with whom. But everyone agrees that feeling all alone – sucks. I laugh too hard. Everyone agrees. You have to find a way to find your people.

Erin: When I first started an early intervention parent group with my daughter, I had never felt so alone in my life because, at that parent-child group, I had the child that was the furthest behind. 

Kendra: We first met Erin when we spoke about the “secret feelings” that we have as parents. She has two daughters with a rare genetic condition.

Erin: No one really reached out to welcome me to the group. I left in tears. I was already struggling with my one-year-old baby, who had the ability of a four month old. So I left and I was just sad. 

Kendra: She says that was just the first in a number of false starts in trying to find her village. 

Erin: And as the children get a little bit older, they find their groups and then the parents find their friends in that group. But I didn’t have a child that was able to socialize typically. So my children didn’t start making friends. So even as they got older, it almost got more isolating. And trying to find that group was extremely challenging. But then you get to school and now you’re in a totally different group, but I have the child who, spent the day under a table. And so I have to talk to the teacher at the door about my child spending the day under the table, and how we can handle it. I’m not socializing with the other parents at drop-off and pick-up. You get these invitations to birthday parties, now the rule is you invite the whole class, and you show up to these birthday parties and it’s almost like you feel a sense of pity. Sometimes the kids talk to your child because, oh, well, they’re in my class for 20 minutes a day, so let me just say hi to them. Or, you know, we have to socialize with them. The parents don’t know what to you. So then comes the elementary school isolation. So you know, the easy way out is to not go to these birthday parties.

Kendra: Erin realized that connection wasn’t gonna happen as naturally for her as it did for other parents. So she decided she had to take action. 

Erin: I came out of my little introvert shell and I would say, oh, you’re so-and-so’s mom, I think they’re in my child’s class. My child is the blonde hair, blue eyed girl.

And they’re like, oh yeah, yeah, I know them. And then you’d realize who would wanna talk and who wouldn’t wanna talk. So now as I go, I’ve been collecting. I have a couple of friends from Early Intervention. I have a couple of friends from preschool. And then as we got into elementary school, I signed up to be class parent, for my daughter’s sub-separate classroom. So I made sure to get to know them really well.

Kendra: In the end, it’s not about knowing everyone. It’s about knowing the right people, about finding your people. 

Erin: So collect the ones who I feel most comfortable with on the way. The ones where your child is not necessarily going through the same thing, but you and that person have the same feelings and you can be real with each other. And, and those are the types of people that I have in my world. I love that we can just be real and just say, you know what? Today’s not a good day. And today sucks. We’re able to do that. And that’s kind of how I found my tribe.

Kendra: When I heard Erin’s story of struggling to find her people, I was reminded of something Mantu Joshi had told me. He says, “be careful who you whine with.” Here’s how he explains it.

Mantu Joshi: I think one thing that might be helpful is for us to begin to understand that, that the world doesn’t get it. And that there are some people who will just not give, give us empathy for what we are going through. And to have some acceptance of that. And in the book, I think I wrote about, you know, don’t whine with just anyone.

Kendra: You did.Yeah.

Mantu Joshi: So if you’re gonna whine you know, you’ve gotta find your people, who get, who get it, you know. And your support groups and your online groups, and you know, what you are doing here. You know, finding other people who kind of get it. You know, listen to the podcast, get, listen together if possible mm-hmm and, and begin to kind of understand that there are people who, who “get it.” 

Kendra: Social worker Eileen Devine takes this idea one step further. 

Eileen Devine: Many of us, we’re really good at finding situations, whether they’re close to us or at a distance that are worse than ours, no matter how bad ours are. And so that’s, that’s like gives us permission or an excuse to not then take our feelings for what they are and, and be able to own them and work through them. That is actually the opposite of self-compassion. And so yeah, that idea of like soldiering on, or it takes grit, or I should be able to do this, cuz look at this family and what they have to go through and perspective is everything. And, um, perspective is helpful, but not if it’s gonna come at the cost of more beating yourself up and less, less compassion. 

Kendra: Yeah. And that’s interesting.You’ve always talked about how, when you find other people who get, to be aware of who you choose for your support, because some people just want to kind of stew in the misery with you and complain and not find a way to shift out of that gear and actually have an action plan. 

Eileen Devine: Right. Yep. Yep. So I always say, you know, being seen and heard is important to all of us. That’s, you know, you hear about connection being a biological imperative and, and all of that is true and, and research shows us that, but, um, I think we can mistake the kind of interactions that you’ve described as connection with other people, and I don’t see it as that. We need to be connecting with people who, yes, see us and hear us and understand us, and also are committed to helping us get to a better place. 

Kendra: So when we do find the right people, the people who will understand us, the people who will get it and who will help us move forward. What does that feel like? Jackie, whose son had a difficult time with his mental health – She says that her own friendships went through an evolution after he was diagnosed. 

Jackie: I was in a mom’s group with all kids the same age. Those friendships have definitely, um, gone to this, to the side. Um, I had no desire to go and sit at a dinner and talk to everybody.

It’s, you know, I guess it’s, selfishly it’s hard to sit and listen to, you know, when you’re in a mom’s group at dinner, everyone talks about how well their kids are doing when you know, you know, yours may not graduate high school or you know, even worse, it may end up taking their own life. Um, those friendships have definitely gone away. I have a couple of friends that really, you know, stood by and gave me space. 

Kendra: She says she’s managed to find new connections and it often comes at the one on one level. 

Jackie: I was approached by a friend, that was a pediatrician and she told me that she had a patient who had a daughter a little bit older who had been hospitalized and, asked if I would want somebody to talk to. And she actually put us in, she put me in touch with this woman who had a junior in high school and it was like a life saver. Actually. I did not know this woman. Her daughter was older. Definitely, you know, in a different elementary school in our town. Um, but even just to be able to talk about, um, medications and doctors and, you know, just to be able to talk to another parent, and know how they advocated, and you know, what was okay to=do and not do. Oh my gosh, it was huge.

Amy Brown: I would’ve given anything to know there was one more person that felt this way. I always say you need one friend that you don’t qualify with. One friend that you go, you don’t say this sentence: I know I sound like a bad mom, but…

Kendra: Amy Brown experienced a similar kind of alienation from other parents. But she solved it in a slightly different way. 

Amy Brown: It’s really hard to stand at a soccer sideline and hear kids with typical problems. Like they didn’t get into, on the soccer team. And you’re thinking about, you’ve got locks and alarms and you’re locking up knives. And I mean, I don’t know how you say that to just typical parents. So, um, it’s just weird. But even my close friends, I kind of isolated because I just didn’t think they would understand. And it wasn’t because they weren’t loving and understanding. I just, I wasn’t clear with what I needed. I guess sometimes we assume just because somebody doesn’t have the exact same thing we have, they’re not gonna understand, but that’s so not true. I’ve learned that you can have, not even have a child with special needs, but if you’re, if you’re willing to listen to your friends speak, or if I’m willing to be clear with you and say, here’s, I just need you to hear me, or I don’t want solutions, or I don’t even wanna talk about this right now.  I had to learn how to navigate that. Um, and it took some work, but it was worth it because. I think we can’t do this alone. We’re not supposed to be doing this alone anyway.

Kendra: Joanna also found that having a small network of friends, other parents who got it, provided her the support and inspiration she needed. 

Joanna: Every single day since day one of meeting these three other women in parent group, we have texted each other,  like for five years. Wow. Um, a joke or, you know, this is so hard, you know, or a question, but yeah, it’s so important to not feel alone. And I think, like they all teach me different things. Like I have one friend who’s so honest. Um, and so real. She’s just able to name her feelings. Oh, like right away immediately. She just knows what it is and she just says it and she doesn’t care. And just that strength. 

Kendra: For Amy and Tom, opening up to friends and other people outside their family helped them immensely. Tom says it helps to be prepared with almost a script for how you share your story.

Tom: In everyday conversations, when anybody asks me, you know, um geez, where where’s your son? I tell ’em, I’ve developed kind of a good shorthand way of kind of explaining quickly and not making a big deal out of it. But I think it’s an important thing to do, not to shy away from being honest about that.

Amy: Share as much as you can. Because I’ve been in so many conversations where, I’m pretty open about what’s going on in our family, And, whenever I mentioned that to somebody who might not know, they’re like, oh my God, I’ve been struggling by myself. My child has, you know, whatever the “X” is, and I felt like I’ve been living on an island. And like I, I do think sharing and whatever, whoever that is so helpful. 

Tom: I completely agree. I mean, I would say the issues that we were dealing with, you know, our parents’ generation and our grandparents, this would’ve been something that was hidden, right? No, definitely. Right. No one would’ve known. Maybe it wouldn’t even have been dealt with.

But certainly if it was recognizable, it would’ve been shielded from your friends and so forth. No one would’ve known this. And you know, times have changed, and frankly, I think it’s very helpful.

Kendra: Developmental psychologist, Christina Cipriano is another person who’s chosen to share, this time online, and was surprised by the warmth of the response. 

Christina Cipriano: So I shared, uh, a 22-day journey of our experience with Miles, just small vignettes from his birth to present day.

Kendra: Christina’s son Miles has a genetic condition that shows up as autism, developmental delays, and physical disabilities.

Christina Cipriano: You know, the misdiagnoses and the presentations and the  seizures and the hospitals, and just kind of like – didn’t hit ’em all could, could never hit them all, frankly, they were such a blur, but I, but I talked about the journey, the school systems, and you know, all of those pieces and I, and I posted pictures and I just was completely overwhelmed by folks across my life. But people I’ve known since I was an adolescent, uh, people I’ve known just as an adult recently, had no idea. And they were just like reaching out and thanking me for kind of exposing this whole other side to what that was really like to, you know, move through, and what our day to day is like, and kind of putting it in words, in terms of, of, you know, those experiences.

Jeniece Dortch: Mm-hmm , it feels good when you find out that you’re not alone in something. 

Kendra: Jeniece Dortch, who we met when we talked about siblings, says finding connection online changed everything for her. 

Jeniece Dortch: I mean, social media has gotten such a negative rap, but social media saved my life. Like I was in really dark spots at some points before I got connected online to people and realizing, there are a lot of people that are, really feel really alone, until you log in. You’re like, oh, me too. Okay. This is great. So I think putting yourself out there is difficult and telling people, you know, you’re struggling in something’s always hard. Being vulnerable is hard. But the reward can be so great. Like it’s such a relief to not be doing things alone. And independence is super overrated. Are we really that independent? We’re all really we’re interdependent on each other. So I think that’s such a beautiful thing. 

Devon: Social media is definitely a double-edged sword. You have to be mindful about what it is that you consume, because it can really affect your day. 

Kendra: Devon is also very active online, under the handle ADHDParent.

Devon: So I have that Instagram page, and then on Facebook, I started a group. So the group is up to like a thousand followers, which I’m so happy that all the parents have connected and found each other. Like, especially when I first started that page, I didn’t think I was gonna get any more than 30-40 people  I was like, okay, you know, I’ll just talk with them and we’ll just brainstorm, and I’ll share with them what’s going on in my day, and they’ll share me what’s going on in their day – which is true. 98% of my followers are just like that, but the other 2% are on there to argue. 

Kendra: And that’s the flip side of social media as a way to find community.

Devon: They are on there to dismiss people’s experience. They are on there to be negative. They are on there to put on you what happened in their childhood. They are on there to make you feel bad about the decisions you make, that you feel are best for your family and your kids. And it can be hard sometimes. 

Kendra: DevOn says it’s about knowing who you are when you’re navigating social media. 

Devon: I do not care what it is What you think that I should do because you don’t even know me. You don’t know me. You don’t know my child. You don’t know what we’ve been through. Why would I take your opinion and change my life around to accommodate you? Like, if I drop dead today, you wouldn’t send a rose. Like why I don’t care. Like I’m gonna do what I feel best for my family. So you just have to be mindful of what pages you follow, who you reply to…

Kendra: Whether it’s online or in person, Randi Silverman reminds us that reaching out for connection may make you feel vulnerable, but it can also bring huge rewards.

Randi Silverman: If we don’t get out there as parents and share our stories, nothing’s gonna change. I know it’s hard. I tell parents, maybe you’re just not ready yet. But remember that your story can significantly help other people. And so when you’re ready to share your story, keep in, mind that it’s for the greater good. Because once you open your world, your world opens up.

Kendra: Next time on A Little Easier, we’ll take this idea of connection one step further. What happens when you have to learn to advocate to get the help you need?

Felimon: No one tells you that, oh, all of a sudden you’re gonna have kids with special needs. And then you’re also gonna have to be able to speak up for them and speak up for yourself

Kendra: As always, we end with our micro action moment. Here’s another one from me. 

I remember years ago, I was having a hard time dropping off one of my kids at school, which was pretty much a regular occurrence. And as I finally walked out of the classroom, I saw this other mom kind of lingering outside the door, and she gently tapped me on the shoulder and said in this shy, but really earnest way, “I just wanted to let you know, I have a son a few years older and we had the same kind of troubles. If you ever wanna grab a coffee or talk?” Oh my gosh, I can’t tell you the sense of relief I felt in that moment. Someone understood, someone cared. Someone wasn’t judging me. Someone might have ideas. And that invitation turned into a long and treasured friendship. There’s a famous quote by CS Lewis. It goes like this: “Friendship is born at the moment when one person says to another, what you too, I thought I was the only one.” And I share this with you as a gentle nudge to reach out to another parent who appears to be in the same boat, because connections like that are gold and we all need them.

I’m Kendra Wilde. And this has been A Little Easier. The show that was created to help you find more joy and resilience when parenting is extra challenging. Thank you so much for being here. Make sure you’re subscribed to A Little Easier in your podcast app so you don’t miss an episode. And while you’re there, please take a moment to rate and review the podcast, share it with family and friends. We’re an independent show focused on elevating parents, because you’re the most important force behind your child’s wellbeing. Visit ALittleEasier.org for show notes and discussion questions. Plus resources on parental burnout and resilience building.

A Little Easier is written by Harriet Jones and co-produced by Harriet and Rae Kantrowitz. Sound design and original music by Rae. This podcast is brought to you by Wild Peace for Parents and me, Kendra Wilde.