Cosmic Baby Training and Fetal DNA Facts – Ep. 368

Laura

Welcome to Big Fat Positive with Shanna and Laura. This week we have our weekly check-ins. We have our special segment, Today I Learned, where we find out why your baby's DNA may save your life, and how one mom built a multi-million dollar industry out of her living room, and we close with our BFBs and BFNs for the week. Let's get started. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 368. I'm here with Shanna. Shanna, are you on the line? Heyo. Heyo, give us your update. What happened this week?

Shanna

Well, I am a year older than I was last week.

Laura

Oh my goodness, a whole year just flew by in a week.

Shanna

No, what's your birthday? Happy birthday. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it was my birthday week. And on my birthday, I woke up with a throbbing migraine. I mean, the kind where it's just like you can feel every like blood vessel pulse, right? It's like boom, boom. Like no, not on my birthday. I had the day off from work, and Steve had taken the day off from work, and we didn't know exactly what to do or anything. We didn't have any plans or anything. But it's my birthday. We can always find something to do. But this migraine really set me back a bit.

Laura

Well, yeah. You didn't have plans, but you definitely did not plan to have a migraine.

Shanna

Yeah, no, I didn't put that on my to-do list, that is for sure. So it just left me feeling kind of down and indecisive because I took my medication, my abortive, and the pain went away, but it left me with that kind of groggy migraine hangover ring where I'm like, I don't know what to do. So I just sat out on the back patio for a few hours and I was like, Just listening to an audiobook, and I'm like, I want to do something, but I don't have any energy. What do I do? And then I was like, ah, that is what day spas are made for, Shanna. Ooh, yes. Yes. So I found an appointment for a massage at Burke Williams, and I went early. And I just hung out in the hot tub in the steam room in the You know, all that stuff and then got my massage. I spent hours there. And it was the perfect thing to do on a day like this when I felt like this. And so yeah, it was wonderful.

Laura

That sounds like a happy accident. Like maybe if you hadn't had the migraine, you would have forced yourself to do something really active and tired yourself out. But your body was like, no, slow your roll, Shanna.

Shanna

Totally. And I realized that it was also good for me because I was just coming off the heels of that whole mammogram biopsy, anxiety scare thing. That had only happened a few days before. I think in general, my body was like, Shanna, you need to slow down, chill out, be in a quiet place, and relax. Well, good for you. Thank you. Of course, I immediately countered that with a very hoppin' dinner in Sherman Oaks at a crab restaurant called the Krabby Crab.

Laura

Wait, is it really called the Krabby Crab?

Shanna

And the girls drove down to meet me because I was at the Burke Williams and Sherman Oaks because I love crab legs. That's just like one of my favorite things. I never eat them. And so I was like, oh, maybe there's a crab restaurant near Burke Williams. And I found this place and it was fine. It was good, you know, but like a crab feast on my birthday. I had a beer. The girls came down. They gave me presents. And it just like, I was in a much better mood because of all the relaxing I had just done. And yeah, we took some cute pictures and videos. It was like just ended up being a really fun, perfect day of what I needed that day.

Laura

I love that. I also am very impressed that you can take your girls to a crab restaurant.

Shanna

They did not eat crab. They were really interesting. Although Elle was like, can we get calamari? And I'm like, yeah, sure, because we had some in San Francisco. So she got that. And I don't know, I think they got chicken fingers or maybe fish and chips or something like that.

Laura

You know what, calamari's a good idea. I mean, they're essentially fries, right? They're just a step above fries. It's that food bridging thing, right?

Shanna

Yeah.

Laura

Breaded stuff, yeah. So I might have to try that next time we go somewhere that has fried calamari.

Shanna

Yeah, the girls love it. And I was very blessed with gifts. Cece got me a hot pink cowgirl hat, which she called a new gardening hat. Nice. So cute. Elle got me a pack of ultimate stuffed Oreos, so like not double stuffed like beyond, like probably like a full centimeter of stuff in the Oreos.

Laura

Nice.

Shanna

And a pack of Skittles. You got to taste the rainbow on your birthday. Uh, yeah, absolutely. So yeah, that's, I mean, that was like the big event of my week and I'm just another year older.

Laura

Well, I'm so glad you're here with us another year. Thank you. And I'm sorry we didn't get to see you. You last minute invited us to join you for Crab, but we actually had plans because it turns out everyone I know has the same birthday as you.

Shanna

Yeah.

Laura

Yeah, what? Didn't you guys go to a baseball game? We did. So Corey's friend, Mark, he was the best man at our wedding. You met him, obviously, at our wedding. It was his birthday too, and he and his wife left their two-year-old twins back home in Fresno with their grandma. which is amazing and came down to spend two nights down in LA and hang out with us and go to a Dodger's game. And it was super fun. And my mom just happened to be in town this week, so we didn't have to get a babysitter or anything. So that was very fun.

Shanna

Awesome. Well, I'm glad you had a good time celebrating my birthday without me and with another person with another birthday.

Laura

To be fair, Mark does predate our relationship, right? Corey and Mark go back to high school. So every once in a while, you know, and it's not like he lives here. So you get most other years. Yes. But yeah, it was super nice. Liz and I just basically spent the whole time talking about what it was like to be moms to two young kids. And I got the lowdown of what it was like to have twins, which definitely it sounds hard. I'm not going to lie. It sounds hard, but super fun. But speaking of hard parenting lives, this week was a particularly tricky week for me because I had a very busy work week. I actually had two site builds that were due this week. They were launching this week, and I had so much to do. I was the only web developer working on it, and it was a culmination of these months-long projects. It was a very cool site. It was an education site for my job-y job.

Shanna

Oh, yeah.

Laura

So, yeah. It was just kind of a frazzled week. And I just have to say, like hats off to all the other working parents out there because no matter whether it's like a nine to five and you have set hours or if it's like freelance hustle like I do, it's just it's hard all around.

Shanna

Was your mom in town? Didn't you say she watched him when you went to the game?

Laura

Yeah, my mom actually arrived midweek. So she was here for the second half of the week and it was actually quite helpful. But she also had to work. So she's still working. She's still seeing patients remotely. So, you know, I'd be like, well, can you take Augie? I've got a meeting. She's like, oh, I've got a patient at two. And I'm like, okay, I'll you can have him like 12 to two. And then I'll take him two to four. Just like, uh. And Cory obviously was in the mix too. Cory was doing honestly probably the most of it, but he also has stuff to do. So yeah, parenting while working is tricky, tricky, tricky.

Shanna

It is, it is. And then the schools are just like, eh, we're just gonna like not have these kids at school for a couple of months in the summer and like three weeks in the winter. It's like, why?

Laura

Yeah. And then camps are like, we'll run nine to one. Does that work for you?

Shanna

Yeah, exactly. And we'll charge you, I don't know, $900 a week. So how's that?

Laura

How's that work out for you? I am lucky. His camp that he's starting next week is 730 to 430. So I think that's really good.

Shanna

That's very good.

Laura

Yeah. But this week, yeah, it was just the challenge of juggling everything. And I did get the sites launched. I'm nice, happy to say. And so I'm very proud of them. And yeah, got something done while parenting. Yay. Good job, Laura. Thank you. But that's it for my check in this week. Do you want to move on to our special segment? Oh, yeah.

Shanna

We're back and this week's special segment is Today I Learned, where we tell each other about the interesting, fascinating, funny, unusual things that we have learned recently. And Laura, you're up first. I love this segment. I love learning things from you. What you got for me?

Laura

So my today I learned is a little bit sciency. So I knew a little bit about this before, but I didn't know the full extent. And I'm going to kind of parse it out in pieces. So the first step is, do you remember the Nip test that we both did when we were pregnant?

Shanna

Yes, and I'm having memories of having an argument with you about whether it was nipped or nifty, like maybe on our second episode, maybe our first episode.

Laura

True. I'm sticking with nipped because that's how my mom says it and she orders a bunch of them. Fair enough. But nifty, I mean it is an acronym, so you can call it knipety if you want, it's probably fine.

Shanna

But do you remember what they do in that test? They take your blood and then they find your child's DNA in your own blood, right?

Laura

Correct. So we have some basic background that we know that when we are pregnant, with a baby, parts of the fetal DNA ends up in our bloodstream, right? That's how they do the nip test or nifty test. They are able to look in your blood, isolate the fetal DNA from your DNA and like figure things out from it, right? Like figuring out if there's extra chromosomes or now they can do a bunch of extra tests. I think it's not just chromosomes. So it's really cool, right? Very cool. I've always thought it was very cool that you have this DNA in you. And I've learned since that I'm sure we've talked about it that this fetal DNA actually like stays in your body even after you've given birth.

Shanna

Yeah.

Laura

So you have like a little bit of your child in you. So if you've carried a baby, you have some of their DNA in you for the rest of your life, no matter what, right?

Shanna

Like for the rest of your life, huh? Doesn't dissipate? Wow.

Laura

Apparently it doesn't dissipate. You have it for the rest of your life. And what's really interesting, an extension of this is that when you have subsequent children, they end up getting some of their siblings, not DNA. Like their DNA isn't incorporated, but some of their siblings cells like circulate in their bloodstream too. So So there's a relationship like the younger siblings actually have some of their older siblings DNA inside of them, right? Not actually encoding their cells, but like in their bloodstream and their in their cells somewhere, right? Super cool, right? And I love the way that this ties us all together. It makes me feel really it's actually something I was talking to Liz about at the baseball game. It's like we're sitting there watching baseball drinking beer and we're talking about how like we will always carry bits of our children with us like wherever we go.

Shanna

Yeah, yeah, honestly, I sometimes feel that way about Steve. Sometimes it's even the same person. I don't know. So yeah, I definitely have that with my kids.

Laura

Yeah, it's it's more than just an emotional fondness. Right. And it really is like you are carrying some of their cells in your body still and they obviously have some of yours. So or a lot of yours. So it's this next level relationship. We're getting all sappy about it and all this stuff. Right. But then this week I learned something even more interesting about these cells. OK. So we already know that the cells sort of interact that siblings can get the cells and you have your children's cells in your body for the rest of your life. But what I learned is that scientists have discovered that fetal stem cells that enter their mother's bloodstream can actually help repair damaged tissues. in the mother. So it's not just that these cells are like floating around just hanging out. It's actually that these stem cells can get activated to repair tissues in the mom.

Shanna

That is so wild. How do they differentiate the stem cells from other cells? Were other cells just chilling down in her feet and the stem cells were the go-getters of the group?

Laura

Listen, I don't know the exact details of it because it sounds very complicated, but... It does say this, it points to the presence of precise signals sensed by cells of fetal origin that enable them to target diseased myocardium specifically and to differentiate into diverse cardiac lineages. So they probably kill the mouse, sorry everyone, but then they analyze all the different tissues. And I'm sure they're able to tell under a microscope what kind of cells they are and all that stuff. So someone who is a scientist listening, please write in and tell us how we can explain this better. But they obviously were able to trace this. And apparently there's multiple studies that show similar things.

Shanna

Well, that is so cool. And I think that's really nice. that those cells help us out. They could just be swimming around enjoying the pool that is my blood, but they're like, no, my mom takes care of me. I'm going to zip on over to her boo-boos and help her out. I think that's cool.

Laura

I'm just imagining the fetal stem cells in a lazy river just floating around. And then they hear the mom's heart being like, help, help. And they're like, I'm on the way, ma. Like a lifeguard at the pool. Yeah.

Shanna

Yes, they deserve it. So that was my Today I Learned. Shanna, do you have one for us? I do. Today I learned about the Cosmic Laboratory for Baby Training. Say what now?

Laura

That's the INJF. TFQ1 type.

Shanna

Yes, that is one of the 16 types. Yeah, so it's that self-report questionnaire that categorizes individuals into 16 personality types based on these different qualities like extroversion, introversion, perceiving and judging, et cetera, et cetera, and a lot of companies use them to like categorize employees and put them in different positions and stuff and I was very into it in college, which I was the height of my personality testing phase in life. I took anyone I could and I happen to know I'm an ENFP.

Laura

Extravert. I don't know what N stands for.

Shanna

The N is intuition. F, feeling, P, perceiving. I know now that there are complications with this personality assessment as there are with many personality assessments. And I am not here to say that I put any Stock in these kinds of things I occasionally find them interesting for myself personally I liked doing them when I was in my 20s but what I'm here to tell you about today is how the cosmic laboratory of a baby training was the beginnings of this. Very popular personality test.

Laura

I never knew the clorped. I had to think about that really hard, but the clorped is a great acronym. Where's the R come from? Good question. It's a regionalism.

Shanna

Yes, yes, yes, yes. I think you're right there. What is it?

Laura

You can't say it without the arc.

Shanna

The clobbed. It's too hard. The clobbed or, as I would say, the clobbed tea.

Laura

Oh, yes, of course. For you, it's a clobbed tea.

Shanna

Yeah, good, good question. So a lot of this information came out a few years ago when an author named Merv Emery wrote a book called The Personality Brokers, The Strange History of Myers-Briggs and the Birth of Personality Testing. Emery really goes into the history of the test and the two people that created the test. And of course, if you're going to throw cosmic laboratory of baby testing at my ears, that's what I'm going to hook onto first. So I had to know what this was all about.

Laura

Yeah, it's interesting because you bring up Myers-Briggs, and I'm like, oh, I listened to an entire probably like 90 minute episode of maintenance phase about it. But I do not have a single memory of a cosmic laboratory of pee-pee training.

Shanna

Well, you must have been looking at something out the window when you were driving when they mentioned it because that is where I heard this. Like that perked my ears because I listened to the same episode and I was like, oh, making note immediately need to look into that because I need to know more.

Laura

Well, the good news is that my memory is that of a goldfish these days. So I'm looking forward to relearning all the stuff that I once knew.

Shanna

I don't remember how much the episode went into this particular thing, because I also have goldfish memory issues at the moment. But let's dive into it now. Why don't we? So the Myers-Briggs type indicator was created by a mother-daughter duo. Their names are Catherine Briggs, that's the mom, and Isabelle Briggs Myers, that's the daughter. Catherine Briggs was a mother and homemaker living in Michigan, way back at the end of the 19th century. And she had gone to college at age 14 and graduated first in her class. So she was very intelligent, very curious, very motivated type of person. And being a mother and a homemaker was not quite enough for her. She wanted to figure out something to do in her home that would be important and relevant as the others she was seeing around her at the time, probably AKA the men. You know what I mean? She wanted to do something significant.

Laura

But did she have a podcast?

Shanna

You know what? We've got that on her. We do. We do. Take that, Catherine. Second Catherine.

Laura

All right, so she's looking for a hustle. She wants to make a contribution to the world. Not that staying home with your kids isn't making a contribution, but she's yearning for more.

Shanna

She is, and her husband worked in a laboratory. He was second in their college class, you know? So she saw him doing the kinds of things that maybe she wanted to do too, but she was at home.

Laura

But was it a cosmic laboratory?

Shanna

Good question, Laura. I don't think it was.

Laura

Yeah, men can't handle those cosmic laboratories.

Shanna

So when Catherine's daughter, Isabelle, was born in 1897, this kind of put into place Catherine's calling. Like it kind of solidified a sense of purpose, a sense of wanting to do something important and something she could do at home. So in a way, she kind of took on her own child as an experiment. What she wanted to do was figure out how to build a child's character based on what their quote specialization was. That's what she called it. But really what it meant was what their personality was. And she figured that the home living room was the perfect place to do that. A laboratory of sorts to figure out the perfect way to raise a child so that it would flourish. Okay. At the time, she called this obedience curiosity training because she believed that having obedience and having curiosity were like two of the like most important mainstays of a child.

Laura

Okay. We've moved on. I feel like half moved on. I feel like we all still think curiosity is important, but don't think Dr. Becky would agree with obedience.

Shanna

Oh, I don't think Dr. Becky would agree with some of these drills that Catherine was running with her young child Isabel either. Okay, so from a very young age, she had Isabel running all kinds of drills to teach obedience and curiosity, I guess, with her child and recorded the results in her diary. one of the drills that she ran was called the no-no drill. And she would bring Isabelle's hand close to something like an open flame and place it above the fire. And if the baby tried to grab the flame, she would say no-no. And if the baby cooperated, the baby would get rewarded with stories about the furniture in the house.

Laura

You know what really motivates my boys when they're like, mama, I want iPad. I'm like, but first, let me tell you about how we got this couch.

Shanna

Let me tell you, they just, they sit there quietly. Oh, I mean, this is like the one thing I haven't tried as a parent. So maybe this will be my, the ace in my pocket. I'll bust this out today. Stories about the furniture. So I guess the idea was that like the obedience would lead to the reward of curiosity. I'm not 100% sure because I also am not a scientist. You haven't been practicing this with your girls.

Laura

You're not, you're not forcing them to hover over an open flame. Oh my gosh. Okay. People live different lives. All right. Indeed. Okay, wait. So how does this even turn into a personality test? Like how do you go from, I guess she's testing to see if her kid is intuitive or not? Or I don't know what have, how do you get from point A to point B?

Shanna

Great question. As Isabel grew up to about age five, she started excelling at things. She was reading novels out loud to the neighborhood kids. She apparently thrived at playing piano and doing metal working. A metallurgy, every five-year-old's favorite.

Laura

I love this idea that like we still have this idea I think that when we have a kid who's like a prodigy or just really good at specific things that the parents had anything the fuck to do with other than like just the environment and genes that they gave them. Like I love how people look at her and like, wow, this little girl is so smart. She plays piano and does metal smithing. And it's must be because her mother held her hand over a flame. And not the fact that she's the child of the number one and number two students, like at the university, right? Or whatever it is.

Shanna

Exactly.

Laura

Yeah. Yeah.

Shanna

The mother who went to college at 14 years old.

Laura

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, no, no. But it's the obedience training. We still fall for this. OK, so she brought all these other kids in to turn them into metal smithing geniuses, piano playing, metalworking geniuses.

Shanna

The typical well-rounded child. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But she didn't just train them. She started studying them. So she wanted to help design programs of education that would help each child individually self-actualize and flourish. That's her whole purpose. That's why she started doing any of this with Isabel. It's like, okay, in order to help each child flourish, I've got to know what they are, what makes them them, basically. She started giving questionnaires to the parents of the neighborhood kids. Each question was one of these binary type questions. You had to choose one or the other. Is your child extroverted or introverted? Is your child calm or impulsive? Does your child get upset very often or rarely? So she gave these questionnaires to the parents and started gathering and analyzing the results.

Laura

I do appreciate the curiosity about kids' temperament and stuff. That is something that is useful in approach to kids, right? No one-size-fits-all approach to teaching, okay?

Shanna

Yeah. So I think more than anything, This was laying the groundwork for her interest in this kind of personality typing. And she started writing articles for magazines like Ladies Home Journal and all kinds of other stuff. She became a bit of a mommy blogger, if you will, you know, 100 years ago, writing articles and offering parenting advice. So things were going well for her. She had a column in a major magazine. She had this child star. Isabelle that she had created and things were going well for her.

Laura

I still don't understand why the laboratory is cosmic. Is there any explanation for why it's cosmic? Like, what is cosmic about it?

Shanna

I don't know. I think maybe, I don't know for sure, but in some of her writing, she mentioned she wanted to ensure that her training of babies ensured their happiness and also their quote, salvation. And she's talked about helping children self-realize. So I think there was some religious or spiritual goal that she had or that's where she was coming from with some of this. So maybe the cosmic in terms of just the cosmic, spiritual, religious aspect of what she was trying to do. I don't think it's because they were studying the stars or anything like that.

Laura

Okay. And also I just feel like they were throwing that word around a lot in the 19th century, right? Like, oh, were they? I don't know. I don't know. It just seems like it was like a word they could use to make it sound important. It's cosmic.

Shanna

Right. Well, look, she was trying to look legitimate, right? She was trying to maybe one up her husband who worked in a laboratory doing important things. So she needed to make her lab cosmic. So as I mentioned before, all of this cosmic baby training was really kind of fueling her curiosity and really just developing an interest and a passion in all of this stuff. Isabel grew up, went off to college, and one day Catherine met Isabel's boyfriend and was like, he has an interesting personality. I wonder what's going on with him because she had come to a point where she was seeing people in the world through these lenses of personality types and stuff. So she went to the library to learn a little bit more about personality science. And Carl Jung at the time was doing some research and publishing on the topic. And she discovered Carl Jung and his work and became fascinated.

Laura

And she named it after her and her daughter. Is that to honor the way she was studying her daughter in order to develop it?

Shanna

Her daughter, Isabelle, joined her in the endeavor to create a personality assessment, and they worked together on it. So that is why it's the Myers-Briggs.

Laura

I love that. Well, I mean, look, whether you like the test or not, you've got to admire something that's a mother-daughter collab.

Shanna

Yeah. Hey, I mean, not bad for two people who did not study psychology, got no degrees in psychology, and just came up with this thing that like massive corporations and 20 year old college students around the world are very, very invested in.

Laura

Yeah. I mean, people truly live by this. What I do remember from the maintenance phase episode, which I think everyone should go listen to because it was really great, is just how influential it was and how people really took it as gospel for a long time and how they're still to this day like jobs will like hire you or not hire you based on your personality type sometimes, right? Like they will sort you according to them, which is very problematic. But I do love the framing of the story as it being like a mom who really wanted to do something and like was able to create this huge multi-million dollar industry, essentially. out of her living room when she had a small kid. Like talk about hustle.

Shanna

Yep. Like you said, she was the first boss girl or not. I mean, there was probably other like successful before.

Laura

I don't know what I'm talking about. It's the girl boss. It's not the boss girl. It's like boss baby. She was the first boss.

Shanna

I think it's about 100% what I was thinking. I know for sure. That's why I said it. Yes.

Laura

I've never seen boss baby. I hear it's bad.

Shanna

I don't know. My kids put it on and I zone out and do my own thing.

Laura

Who knows? Who knows? Well, that was very interesting today. I learned, Shanna.

Shanna

Yeah. So I think the main takeaway is if like you want to create anything interesting and important, just add the word cosmic into the title and you'll be fine.

Laura

Yeah. We really miss the boat with that, with this podcast.

Shanna

Yeah, it should be the Big Fat Cosmic Podcast.

Laura

Oh, no, no, no. I know. Big Fat Positive, a cosmic journey through pregnancy and parenting.

Shanna

Yeah. Well, it's not too late, Laura. You know, we can change that metadata on the back end.

Shanna

All right. Well, that is my today I learned. And I think that's the end of this segment. Should we move on to our BFPs and BFNs?

Laura

Yes, we should.

Shanna

I have a BFP. This is a picture book that I randomly checked out from the library that the girls and I love. CECE in particular, I read it for the first time with her as I was putting her to bed one night. And we both loved it. I thought it was so cute and great. So I wanted to share it in case anyone wants to check it out for themselves. It's called Buffalo Fluffalo and it's by author Bess Calb, K-A-L-B, and illustrator Erin Cran, K-R-A-A-N.

Laura

I've never heard of this, but I do recognize the name Best Callb.

Shanna

I wonder why. Well, as I'm looking at the cover, it says written by a nationally best-selling author, Best Callb. So maybe you know her from her national best-selling authoring. Okay, looks like she's written some other books. She wrote for Jimmy Kimmel Live for eight years. She wrote for the Emmy Awards, the Academy Awards. Oh, you know, I've read some of her sub-stack.

Laura

That's where I know her from. Oh, she has a good sub-stack? I just read a few pieces, but I really like them. Yeah, so. Oh, nice. So, yeah, I've not read any of her children's books.

Shanna

Well, you should read this one. I think it's really cute. It's about a very, very fluffy buffalo who is very grumpy.

Laura

It has that Dr. Seussian cadence, I feel like.

Shanna

Yeah. Yeah. It also reminds me of the Hippopotamus where they kind of rhyme every word by adding a few extra syllables that rhyme with the three syllable. It's just like, it's so good. I love it.

Laura

Awesome. Well, I'm going to have to pick that up from the library.

Shanna

All right, that's mine. What about you, Laura? Do you have a BFP or a BFN? I also have a BFP. Yay.

Laura

It's something I read actually on Substack, believe it or not. Oh. So this is a little left field, but I am, let's say, friends might be too much because I've only met her in person, I think once or twice. But I am like acquaintances and like in the same orbit as a woman named Kira Cook.

Shanna

Do you know Kira? Oh, yeah, she's in one of my parenting groups. And I believe we did field day activities together at our mom retreat one year.

Laura

That, yes, that sounds about right. And she's in one of my groups, a different group, Jason group, but We've just been interacting here and there for years in this group. And I'm actually in the closet looking at a dress I bought off of her not that long ago that I love, this blue dress that she was selling on the mom's group. So that's all to say that I know Kira. I don't know her that well, but I follow her on all the socials. And she posted something recently that was a link to her most recent sub-stack newsletter. And in it she said something that I just like wrote down immediately because I was like oh my gosh I have to talk about this and she's actually quoting someone else she's quoting one of her friends Sarah Mingusso who said this ready. I had to come to terms. with the fact that kids are interesting. And that just struck me. I was like, wow, you know what?

Shanna

Oh, poor Kira.

Laura

I know it's so heartbreaking. And so she has all these posts about it. If you want to read about it about what it's been like, they've been displaced for the last six months and trying to figure out where they're going to live permanently. And I had seen, you know, I picked up that blue dress from her house, like not that long before the Eden fire. And so when she posted that she had lost her house, I was just so heartbroken. It was just the cutest, sweetest little house. And it was so far away from when the fire started, you know, she was like, You never would have thought that she would have been in danger, but yeah, it's just really hard. So, you know, I really appreciate Kira's sub-stack because I think it's just very honest and very interesting. So, yeah, that's my BFB.

Shanna

Right on. I love that. And I think that for me, if I were to kind of like keep that phrase, I think for me, I might say something like I i don't know that i need to come to terms with it but i need to remember it like you know every now and again i just kind of forget but i i i feel like i'm at terms with it because i like you i think my kids are very interesting and my experience as a teacher for a long time i think that was one of the most surprising things to me. teaching all different ages because I tutored young kids. I taught high school kids was how interesting they are. I loved their personalities. I loved getting to know them and it really solidified for me that young people are interesting, they're smart, they've got their whole thing, own thing going on, and that is to be respected and valued.

Laura

Yeah, absolutely. It's not just your kids that are interesting. They're all interesting. And nothing will drive that home like chaperoning a field trip. Let me tell you. True, true, true. But yeah, that's my BFP, and I think that's the end of our episode.

Shanna

I think it is. Listeners, if you love our show, could you please do us a favor and head on over to Apple Podcast or Spotify, wherever you listen. Leave us five star reviews. Say a few things you love about this show, and we might read your review on an upcoming episode. And if you have any thoughts, comments, any today I learned that you want to share with us, please do. We love hearing from you. Laura, where can everyone find us?

Laura

We're on all the social medias at BFP Podcast. We have a website, bigfatpositivepodcast.com. And if you want to send us an email, send it to contact at bigfatpositivepodcast.com. And finally, if you want to join the coolest group of people on the internet, just search Facebook for Big Fat Positive Community. It's a private group, so you've got to quest to join and make sure you answer those two membership questions so you know you're not a robot. But once you do that, you'll be set straight through to all the amazing, supportive, wonderful, hilarious conversations we're having in there.

Shanna

Our show is produced by Laura Birek, Shanna Micko, and Steve Yager. Thanks for listening, everyone. Have a big, fat, positive week. Bye. Bye.