Super Self Care With Renee Brown

Hello everybody, welcome to another episode of the Thriving Adoptees Podcast. Today I'm delighted to be joined by Renee, Renee Brown from DePaul Community Resources in Virginia. Looking forward to our conversation today, Renee.

Yes, me too.

Yeah, so Renee leads DePaul in Virginia, you—

it's—

and before that you were in charge of the adoption program and some other parts of DePaul programming. And kind of before that, Renee was also a foster parent through DePaul. So there's that, there's the personal experience as well as the professional experience. And the other thing is that your younger brother is adopted too.

Yes.

So we're an interesting mix of different perspectives that we're looking to dive into today, to explore your wisdom. Yeah, I'm always so modest about the word wisdom, right? Learnings is far more palatable, isn't it? Yeah, learnings.

Yes, that's great. Yes, what I've learned.

Yeah, what I've learned. Yeah, wisdom, I don't know, that would be bragging to say that. Yeah, I think we We we all feel like that. So the big the big question to start with, and Renee, what what does thriving mean to you? What does thriving mean to you?

Yeah, so I've I've given that some thought, and you know, for me, it's not the absence of hardships. I was actually thinking that when I thought about it, going through difficult times, I think actually builds your thriving muscle, like like teaches you. What you are capable of. And so when I think about thriving, I definitely don't think about a life that doesn't have challenges or hardships. I think it's learning the ability to get through those, to manage those challenging moments where we really grow. But when I, when I think about thriving, I also think about connections, you know, feeling like there are people That you are connected to, where you, where you belong, where you have a support group. I think you also need opportunity. So sometimes there are barriers in place where, you know, either people need to feel where they have the ability to overcome those barriers, or they have the supports or policies or people in place who can help them remove barriers for their ability to do well. And then last but certainly not least, I think people need to feel value, like internally feel value about themselves, that they deserve to thrive, that they can thrive, that they have it within themselves to do that. So I think if you have— if you are connected to people who care about you, you have opportunities to chase your dreams or to go after what you want, and you feel like you deserve those things, I really think those are— when I think about thriving, those are the things I really think about. And as a leader, I think it's really important for leaders to have some balance. So for me, I work hard. My leadership team works really hard. And we need to be all in for our passions and all of that. But the other thing we need to have is balancing self-care and taking care of ourselves because you You cannot help, you know, your staff or the people you serve. You cannot do your best job if you are chronically exhausted, right? So it is important to also pour into yourself, just like you pour into those you serve, with rest, you know, with, with time off, with doing fun things that are outside of work, spending time with people that you care about. I think those are all really important to to thriving.

Yeah, yeah, I love breadth. It makes my job so, so much easier when people have a broad expanse, um, expansive answer to that, to that question. And it is broad, right? That's, that is the, that is the truth. Um, the bit that, that jumped out for me was the, uh, the removal of barriers, because when I think about barriers, I think about kind of going around them or overcoming them. I, I don't tend to think of removing barriers. Yeah, were you talking— I think you said, were you talking about removing barriers for other people? Is that— was that the context?

Yeah, like advocacy, like legislation. Sometimes there is legislation, sometimes there are laws or policies in place that are unnecessary barriers for someone to thrive. I'll give you an example. So there's a, there's a, um, There's barrier crimes in the United States, right, which prevents certain people from being able to adopt or take care of family members if they have a barrier crime. Some of them, though, are really not relevant. For instance, we had a young man who had a crime, a substance abuse crime, when he was very young. He is older now. He went to jail. He came out. He got off parole. He is clean. He is married. He is raising 2 children of his own, but he could not adopt his niece and nephew. And I'm like, okay, but he can— we're allowing him to raise his own children, but this law wouldn't allow him. So what we did is we needed to change the law where there's a process where you can ask for an exception to a barrier crime that's just a Virginia crime and not a federal crime. That's one way where we remove a barrier, right, for this family to be able to thrive and stay together. We just need to remove that barrier because you can't get— you can't just— you can't get around it, right? We needed to remove that very restricted law and make sure there's a way for this family to move forward.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Uh, interesting, because I, you know, as, as I think about barriers to thriving and I think about organizations like your own, I would normally kind of associate them with the more kind of the, the emotional or the mental health barriers, right? Not the actual law, the legal, the law that's preventing this kinship adoption from taking place and these kids finding permanency with their aunt and uncle, right?

Yeah.

That was the relationship. Yeah. So that's an interesting angle. Do you guys do much of that? Is that the kind of advocacy and legal bit? Is that a big part of what you do?

It is certainly a big part, and we do it with a lot of other organizations and agencies. So we're part of, you know, associations that bring organizations like ours together because obviously multiple voices have more power.

Yeah.

We also, though, do very small things, you know, barriers. For instance, if a person doesn't have the appropriate wheelchair, right, to be able to self, you know, move himself into his own van, right? That was a very small thing. His, his, the ramp in the wheelchair just didn't— he had to be pushed. And he couldn't do that independently. So we got, you know, we got a better ramp, we got a better wheelchair, and now this small piece of independence that this man can have, he can, you know, self-propel himself into the van.

Yeah.

So when they go on trips or whatever. So sometimes it's really small things like that, you know, where Medicaid or there might not be a funding source for it. So if we can come up with money, we can remove a barrier, or it's big global things, right, that impact communities and stay on the books for a long time.

Yeah, yeah. So what do you see as the obstacles, the barriers to thriving?

Yeah, I think many times it is having a safe place to heal, right? I think we don't always— we don't always see adoption as also a loss. And I think that is a conception, an idea that we need to make sure that people understand. That although this child has now hopefully found permanency with this family, they have lost, right, an entire portion of their identity. And we need to recognize that, and we need to honor that in giving them a safe place to heal and not expect them to— I don't know, just be grateful, right, that they have this amazing family now and they're removed from what could have been a potentially not great situation, but that That, you know, that's not the full picture, right? The full picture is they lost some of their culture, their identity, maybe their school, their grandparents, or whoever. So I think one barrier to thriving is the society's perception on how the adoptee, right, should feel about being adopted. So I think we need to embrace their full story.

Yeah.

And encourage them to embrace their full story. Yeah.

So, um, yeah, so, so clear. And, and, you know, we've, we've had that, we've had that emergence of— we've been, we've been trauma blind within the adoption space until Nancy Verrier came along with that book in 1993, uh, and, and that started to raise awareness of the, the, the loss for— of in relinquishment. Um, and then we've become, we've become kind of more and more trauma, trauma aware, uh, over those last— what that is, I mean, it's only 33, it's only 33 years, right? Um, that, that it's— that trauma's been a thing. Um, I, I know you, you grew up in a, a military family, so trauma wasn't a thing really societally until post-Vietnam, was it? Right, post-Vietnam, the American government put a lot of money into exploring what was happening to these, uh, people that had served their— served the country in Vietnam and started digging into what was going on. So trauma wasn't a thing kind of societally until the '70s, and then within the adoption space, not until, not until starting in 1993. Um, so what, what are you— what, what's your, what's your focus in terms of— we've talked about adoptees thriving and that societal expectation of how they should feel as being a, a barrier. How, how do you see the— how do you see the barriers to adoptive families thriving, thriving, if we, if we kind of broaden the Broaden who we're talking about beyond just the adoptee.

Yeah, I think sometimes we feel like the end of their story or the end of their support is at the day of the adoption, right? So we have the big ceremony, they're in court, everybody comes, we have a celebration. And sometimes I think people feel like from that point forward, you know, they're just now they're a family and they're just, they're like every other family and they're not like every other family. And I think we need to acknowledge that we have At DePaul, we have a post-adoption program that's really extensive because we understand that there's going to be moments along the way where the adoption part of their story will become more salient. There may be times where it's a non-issue for long periods of time, and that's fine, but it may not be. And of course, it depends on obviously if there's some obvious, you know, showings of them being adopted. For instance, like we don't match, right? A Black family adopts a white child or a white family adopts a Black child. And then so whenever time they go into public, it's kind of obvious that their family, you know, is a little bit different than everybody else. That makes it hard, I think, for the adoptive part of their story to kind of go into the background and not be, you know, a key focus. So I think what we need to remember for our families is they're gonna need support all along the way. What we have found, especially when the children who have been adopted reached teenagehood and they're working on developing their own identity, that's, that's a really crucial point where we sometimes see behaviors increase, an increased need for counseling. Just, it just can be really difficult for everybody involved as the child is, and if they don't have a lot of information about their biological family, that might be when they're really interested in seeking that. And And so then does the adoptive family— how do they, how do they respond to that, right? Are they open to that, or do they see that as sort of an affront to what they've done? I've been, you know, I've, I've been your mom for, you know, 14 years, and now you're really interested in your biological family. And, you know, I've been here for, you know, so, so preparing them for that is really important, and normalizing that is really important so the families are ready for it. and they can be open again to their child's full story because part of it doesn't include them. And that's okay, right? It's— we need to embrace the whole family. So I think that's really with our families thriving is preparing them for the bumps along the way and then also giving them community. We have an annual adoption camp every summer where we bring in, you know, all the adoptive families that are working with DePaul. And, you know, we're talking about like over 100 150 people come and they're all different families. Some of them bring their biological kids and their foster kids and their adoptive kids, and some of the families match and some of them don't. And, and the adoption in that— on that day, the adoption piece actually goes to the back of the room, right? Because everybody's touched by it. It's a non-issue.

Yeah.

It's just fun and connecting. And, you know, if some— if a child calls somebody mom that doesn't look like them, nobody's like, That's your mom? It's, it's just a non-issue. So I think also providing them with community of other people who are experiencing the same thing, and they get it, right? Because nobody gets it like somebody who's experienced it.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Yeah.

Um, one of the things as you're talking about post-adoption, I, I think about as part, you know, it's being part of human nature that we kind of, we deal with the, the, the matter in hand, the, you know, the, the tricky stuff that we're going, and that, that could be in any part of life, right? So that could be a job or health or whatever, as well as, you know, what's going on for our kids. But does that— you talked about it, you talked about adoption being a non-issue and then often becoming an issue in teen years, and I've heard that expressed by many people. Have you, have you looked at anything in terms of like prevention stuff, you know, just prior to teens? Because what I, what I think is that, you know, an adoptive parent— if you mention this to an adoptive parent, um, when the kid's, you know, 10, 11, whatever, and then they're gonna say, well, we don't need to do the kind of the prevention stuff because—

Yeah.

Because we, we've got enough going on in, in our lives. And, you know, I think it's a human thing that we kind of deal with the fact— we deal with the, the, the situations that we've got, uh, at hand rather than anticipating what might happen in the future. And I'm wondering what you, you have to say about— does that make sense? You're nodding.

Yeah, yeah, I think it does. And obviously every child and every family is an individual, right? So we don't want to categorize them all the same. But I do think you're right about the preparing people. This is, this is what might happen. And, and, and we try to make sure there's open dialogue the whole way, right? So we have something that's called a life book. And we, we create those, you know, where it has all of their history and just different things, especially if there are things from their biological family that continue that they can keep. and follow along pictures. So if we can normalize the discussion of adoption the whole way, right, then hopefully the child will be coming to the parents or, you know, a trusted adult or their counselor or whoever's in their life when these things are starting to bubble up. But yeah, I do agree, like normalizing conversation, saying it's okay to talk about, you know, what's going on. And also, I think when you have— when we have these groups of adoptive families together, The teens and the preteens, they all get together and talk, and that's really strong when the teenagers can tell the preteens themselves, right, from them, like say, you know, this is what I'm experiencing, you might experience it too. Or when the preteens talk to the teenagers and they're like, yep, that's normal to feel, I felt that way too when I was your age. So there are some— we don't have like a prescribed, like, you know, at 10 we're going to tell them this. But I do think normalizing those conversations all along is incredibly important.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, because there's a gap, right? There's the, you know, the, the gap between the adoption, whenever it, whenever the adoption, it happens, whether it's an infant adoption or an adoption at 2, 3, 4, and then this, uh, this, this teen, teen part. Yeah, one of the things that, uh, I know adopted parents have talked to, to me about is that question of, is it— is, is this in a— especially in the teen years, right? Is this a teen issue or is this an adoption issue? And I, I— my kind of take on that is don't worry about the source, right?

Right, right.

Because it can become a It can become a rabbit hole, right? Yes, trying to identify the source of the challenge rather than just getting on with it and addressing the challenge head-on, trying to, yeah, figure out—

Yeah, I think it can be layered, right? Most teens are going to go through some sort of identity something, right? Thinking about who they are, who they want to be, what kind of person they want to be. You could layer that on if they're having you know, gender identity or, you know, who they're going to love. Like, you can layer those, but then you can also layer that with, and I don't know who my grandparents are, or, and I don't know if I look like my mom or my dad, you know. So then you sort of— it just— I think it's just layers. And sometimes adoptive teens will have more layers. And you're right, it doesn't matter which layer is what. Just knowing though that if you have an adopted child, there might be an extra layer. 2 there to figure out.

Yeah. Yeah. So, uh, the identity piece clearly is, uh, we talked about, you talked about identity, um, you've talked about, uh, uh, feelings, uh, what, what are the, and, um, I guess feelings of separation, if they, if, if you're working, if you're working so strong on that community, putting this community programming together, that's about trying to address the feelings of— the feeling of separation. What other challenges do you see in this space during these teen years?

Yeah, I think, I mean, I really think the identity is the biggest piece. I'm trying to think of like what would be some of the other You know, purpose, I think a lot of it is regular teen stuff. One thing we have found, I will mention this recently, in looking at some statewide data, there is an increase in adoptions dissolving in teenhood in Virginia, and that is alarming. There has been an increase in parental— well, not even parental— in relinquishing custody across the board for teens, so not just in adoptive families. When— what is more— what happens in a lot of families is the teens are really difficult, and then maybe they go to live with somebody else like a grandparent, an aunt, uncle, or somebody, and then that person is the person who relinquishes custody after trying to help out the parent. So it's not always directly from the parent. Sometimes there's a— the parents have a step in between where they try to have another trusted family member or adult take custody of the child. So that, that's a trend that's alarming, and I think it has a lot to do with increase in substance use, social media. There's, there's a lot of— there's families who are making decisions that are incredibly difficult. So they may say, I no longer feel like I can keep the other children in my home safe. with this child in my home, whether they're bringing in strangers, you know, through social media, because unfortunately some of, some of our teenagers do that. They connect with a stranger and give them their home address, and now you have strangers showing up at your house in the middle of the night. Or whether their behaviors are getting really aggressive or, you know, abusive towards their family members or even their siblings. That's, that's alarming. That's not happening. I mean, it's not obviously the norm. But that is a trend that we have seen recently, and it's something that we're really, really struggling with across the board. Like, how do we— once the families get to where they no longer want to have parent— want their parental rights terminated, we have— we are so far behind, right, in the game. We, the prevention, and we have missed so many opportunities to intervene, or our interventions have not been successful. It's hard to turn the ship around at that point. So we really need to be looking at, you know, what interventions or where are we missing the boat and where can we do better to prevent those and really educating our judges and our guardian ad litem and all of those people that are now in play to see how we can, you know, how we can do better.

Yeah, you talked, you talked a little bit, a little bit back about parental responses to adoptees wanting to search for biological, um, family and adopt— adopted parents taking that tough, right?

Mm-hmm.

Taking, taking, taking that tough. Um, how much do you think that this thriving through the, the, uh, through the teen years is about the capacity of parents, their ability to ride their emotional roller coaster, right? How do you see that?

Yeah, 100%. I think that's— and, but it's hard, right? And sometimes it's really hard. So we need to make sure we're giving them the supports that they need. They have access to the supports. They have knowledge of the supports that are available to them. So yes, one, yeah, the parents, you know, when we, we place children and they're young, you know, we don't know. We don't know what their teenagehood is going to look like. We don't know, you know, how challenging that will be. So there's no predictor there, right? They could, you know, my brother we adopted, he was placed with us at 6 weeks old, right?

Yeah.

So, but he still had some struggles when he was a teenager. So I don't think there's even like a, you know, if you place them really young, then you're going to skip all of this, right? It's just not the truth. So I think, right, as much as we can, we need to make sure that our families are aware of the resources and have access to the resources. Um, because yeah, it could get really tough. Yeah.

And, and I mean, you're talking about self-care earlier on. I was thinking, uh, I was thinking about the— how you're— how you're— oh, well, first off, let me say, I was— I talked to quite a few adoption agencies, right? And many of them don't do a lot in post-adoption. for this reason. I think that often issues don't arrive straight away, right? So I wasn't— I was like your brother. I was 5 weeks old, right, when I came to live with my mum and dad. Your brother was 6 weeks when he came over. He came to live with you, and you were 7, I think, did you say?

Yes.

So, you know, he had a big sister. And, uh, so adoption agencies, traditional adoption agencies, don't do a lot in post-adoption because the issues don't rise. I, I wasn't, I wasn't aware of any— I wasn't conscious of any adoption trauma. Or let's say I wasn't aware of how trauma influenced my anger or, or, or, or insecurity or anything until I hit 40, right? So this stuff is like the iceberg, right? It's, it's the, it's the part of the iceberg that we, that we can't see. Um, so, uh, what was the question I was going to ask you? Yeah. Um, so you're talking about— so sorry. Yeah. So I'm, I'm saying good on you for doing the post-adoption support. That, that was basically what I was getting around to. What— how does that impact your staff? Because you talked about self-care, you know, when we think about self-care, you know, some people talk about it, about bubble bath, which seems a little bit, right? Your view of self-care was somewhat more profound than bubble bath.

Yeah.

But, you know, people talk about hydration and sleep and doing fun things outside and vacation time off as well. Well, uh, how does the— how does— when these, uh, when these families that you're supporting are going through tough stuff, how does that impact your staff?

Yeah, it's, it's tough. I mean, we have staff that work in foster care as well, so they are, you know, they are experiencing children who are being removed from very difficult situations. And no matter how difficult the situation they're being removed from, it's traumatic. So we are there from day 1 when children are placed with strangers, you know, so, so we have staff doing a number of things that are, that are difficult on a daily basis. So self-care is really important, and it's something that the executive team and the leadership at DePaul has embraced. We do a number of things. One of the things we do is we invite staff to spend 30 minutes of every week on the clock doing some sort of self-care. Watch a 30-minute sitcom, go for a walk. Clean out your refrigerator, whatever. One thing that was really popular was people cleaning out their cars. Okay, whatever, right? So whatever that 30 minutes means to you, let's do that. The other thing we do is we do a summer self-care initiative. So every summer we do something. Well, the last 2 summers we have. This summer we did, we offered staff either some additional money, some additional PTO, or 2 sessions with a professional coach so they could choose what thing. would be most helpful for them. You know, when the economy's tough, sometimes the best thing we can do is just give them some extra cash and relieve a little bit of stress. Other people, it's the PTO. They want the time off. Maybe they used a bunch of it because they had a sick child or a situation, and their time off is low. And so offering them some more is most important. And others are in a position where they want to figure something out professionally or personally, and having a couple sessions with a professional coach to make a plan is most important, you know, for them. But we, we talk about self-care all the time at DePaul. It's so very important. We encourage people to use their time off. We encourage people to use their sick time for mental health days. If you need a mental health day, use a sick day because sick doesn't need— have to mean medical, right? It can just mean you're not feeling well in some sort of way and you need to use some time off. So use it however makes sense to you.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, how— I mean, when I mentioned earlier on, you know, I'm talking about adoptive parents and dealing with the tough stuff that their kids are going through during these teen years, I use the word capacity, right? So I think about adoptive parents' ability, their capacity to not take their kids' trauma personally.

Right, sure.

So, um, and their capacity to handle what's going on within the household. Uh, do you— I mean, what sort of languaging do you use around that? Is capacity kind of— does that kind of ring true to you?

Do you—

how do you see that? How do you see the wording— sorry, I'm not sure. Do you know what I'm getting at? I'm saying, do you think this capacity work is a good word? Have you got another word in terms of their ability to cope, their ability to rise with the punches? What do you call that sort of ability?

Yeah, I don't know that we have like a set word that we always use. I think capacity certainly, you know, Makes sense to me. You know, when you think about, you know, the parents and they're managing these teens and, you know, sometimes what we found is especially parents who have like, they've parented children and their biological children are grown or older. They don't, they are surprised when they have to parent differently.

Yeah.

Right? They're like, but this works perfectly fine for my children. Right. And then, and I'm, and sometimes it's like, we're not questioning your parenting skills, but this, this child needs something different because of their trauma history, because of X, Y, and Z. And so we're going to ask you to change up, you know, your parenting style, you know, with this child and the way you're approaching them, you know, seeing behaviors, you know, as communication, right? Not, not necessarily as just defiance that we have to manage.

Gotcha.

You know what I'm saying? So sometimes it's like, yeah, but what are they trying to communicate to you? What is the need? You know, we talk a lot about the need behind— beneath the behavior. What is the need? Right? And sometimes it's like, oh, they didn't have to think in those ways necessarily to be successful parents with their biological children. And we're stretching them, right? We're stretching—

Yeah.

Yeah, how they think about things. And they have to conceptualize things a little bit differently. And sometimes that can be That can be a challenge.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, I, I'm thinking back to that, that the reason that I was asking about the capacity word is because I was thinking about your— I was thinking about your staff and their capacity to handle what's going on for their, uh, what's going on for their— for the families that you're— families that you're supporting. And I can see how that would link for me back into the coaching. So you said that one of the things that you offer is this coaching, right? So coaching is gonna be, uh, they might have an issue. That's why they picked the coaching option, because being able to, uh, have some external input, uh, questions from a, a coach that will grow their capacity to handle to deal with the issue at hand differently. And they'll, at least they will get, uh, often coaching is about helping people to see things differently, questions and things like that, rather than telling. They're not going to tell you what to do, right?

Right.

I had a business coach for years and she wouldn't tell me what to do. Um, she would just, and it takes a certain amount of patience to do that because people are just saying, just tell me what to do. I situation, just tell me what to do. So yeah, the coaching would be one strategy for growing your people's capacity. And I just want to take it kind of right back to the start, Renée, because you were talking about, you think of thriving as dealing with hardship. And I'm wondering what you've learned about increasing your capacity. What have been the learning moments when things have changed for you, when you've had a perspective shift? What allows you— what grows your capacity, and any particular moments around that?

So, as you were talking about capacity, you know, it brought back to me the, the saying, like, you can't pour from an empty cup, right? And, you know, so that, that's that whole capacity. Like, you have to pour into yourself and have others pouring into yourself, into you, for you to be able to have the capacity to pour into others. And so I think that goes, goes nicely with what you were saying. Um, so I, I've done several— I surround myself with really smart, great people. Like, I have an amazing executive team. And when you are, when you have a team that is really skilled and thoughtful and different and diverse, I think that's, that's huge in setting yourself up to being able to thrive because you don't— I can't— no one person can carry this themselves, right? So one thing you have to realize is when the problems are really big, You need a team. And the problems in child welfare, you know, the challenges, they're big and they're heavy. And so you have to approach it from, from a team perspective and surround yourself with really talented people. I think, you know, one of the things that, that helps me is being a military brat. Change— I learned that change is just change. So I think that's really adaptive. for me. Change doesn't necessarily scare me. I'm not resistant to change. I mean, I don't like change for the sake of change, but if it's purposeful change, I'm good with it, right? So when COVID hit and we had to quickly make some big decisions and change to working from home and get people, you know, it was like, okay, we can do that, right? We can do, we can adapt. We can make this happen, right? Everything is figureoutable. So You know, like, let's figure this out and let's figure out how we're going to continue to serve the people we're going to serve. They still need us. We're just gonna have to do it a different way. So just, I think having sort of a mind that's like, my dad was an engineer. So I have sort of that engineer, like, there's multiple ways to solve a problem. Let's just figure out which way works best for us. I think is key to my ability to continue to thrive because I'm always open to new ideas. And I'm also okay with ideas that don't work, right? It's okay. You know, we don't— every idea doesn't have to be successful. Let's fail fast if we can. But let's try some different things and let's not be scared, so scared of failure that we're not, you know, we're not willing to be creative or think outside the box, for sure.

Yeah.

Yeah.

The thing— something popped into my head around secondary trauma. And I was thinking about the secondary trauma, the impact of the kids' trauma on their adoptive parents. And then I was thinking also about the impact of that trauma, like tertiary trauma, for your staff and that kind of clearing out and the triggering.

Yeah.

Uh, what— and, uh, what did somebody say? I heard somebody talking to somebody the other day. He talked about, yeah, the wounded, the wounded healer or the wounded helper, you know.

Okay.

Uh, people— some people go into welfare because they've had a tough time themselves and they're still kind of processing their own stuff. Um, what have you learned around That, I mean, that's a big enough area to, to explore, maybe. I don't know. Does that, does that ring true to you, what I'm talking about?

Oh, yes. So certainly there is the trauma of experience, like hearing things and seeing things. We, my staff get really attached to the children and young adults, um, you know, that we serve. And, um, you know, sometimes they experience tragedy. We've had a couple, you know, losses of life in the last few months that were really, really difficult, um, on staff. And And so in those moments, right, first of all, we want to make sure staff are okay and we give them a lot of grace and give them time to take time off, time to be together for those that have—

Yeah.

Knew the child or the young adult. We also use our mental health services that we provide in the community if we need to do something for our own staff, right? We will bring them in and just say, look, let us just have, you know, let us just talk about, let us have a debrief is what we call it. of the situation and give everybody an opportunity to express those things. Then we make sure the supervisors check on them on a regular basis and see if they need anything else. We have access to employee-assisted benefits, so, you know, so we can, we can connect them with, with health counselors and mental health counselors and supports that they need. But we need to make sure we're monitoring how each other is doing and checking in. And it's hard in a hybrid situation sometimes, right? If we have people working from home. From the office, we don't see each other as much. The water cooler talk doesn't happen as much. So we have to be especially mindful of when people are changing, or when people are looking different, or feeling different, or acting different, and making sure we're checking in on them and saying, are you okay? The other thing we have to do is model. The leadership has to say, like, I will let people know I'm taking a break, I'm taking a vacation, you know, I'm taking a break. Because if we don't model that, then The staff won't think that it's okay to do the same. So I make sure that, you know, people know, yeah, I'm, I'm going to go on vacation. I'm going to do this. I'm going to take the day off. I'm going to hang out with my grandson. I'm just not coming in today. So people know that taking care of yourself is really important. We need to model that and monitor for, for that. We do have people in our field that go into our field because they have experienced really difficult things. And that can be tricky, right? Because some, we have to watch that if we If something is triggering them too much, then we need to be willing to step in and say, we're going to make a change here because I think this situation is just too difficult for you, um, right now. And that's okay. We're just going to shift this. Yeah.

Yeah. The, the, when I get near, near this topic of, of self-awareness, I think of something that I heard, uh, from, uh, Bessel van der Kolk last year, I think it was. Have you, have you heard this guy, Bessel van der Kolk?

I haven't.

He's, um, he's a— he's in the States now, I think. Um, but he was originally Dutch. Uh, he's probably in his 70s or 80s, and he wrote this book called— uh, I think it's about— they've been out about 10, 11 years— called The Body Keeps the Score. So it's about— The Body Keeps the Score. So it's about essentially, it's about somatic trauma.

Okay.

That's what it's about in, in, in 2 words. And so he's been in this field of trauma for a long time, right? He's in his 70s or 80s, and only recently has he become aware of the secondary trauma he's been taking on in this space. And, and it only happened because he did some, uh, psychedelic, uh, assisted— some drug-assisted therapy. And that, that, that brought it up from, from the, uh, from the subconscious, right? Um, I just think it, it's, uh, it's amazing in terms of self, self-awareness, you know.

Yes.

You, you know, you mentioned community quite a lot. It's been a thread all the way through. And, you know, as you're saying about being aware of what's going on for your staff Because, yes, you know, uh, I, I said this on an interview— did I say an interview the other day? Uh, just, just in a conversation— it's hard to see the— it's hard to see the picture when we're in the frame. It's kind of the self-awareness, the self-awareness pieces, it's quite big. And then I think that must— that is also the, the same in terms of, you know, I a couple, right, or within a family, and helping people see stuff that they can't help themselves. And as soon as I think of that being a good idea, right, I think of when we have a conversation with friends or with family about angry, about anger, right?

Yeah.

Something's gone on. They've seen I'm angry, right? I fall for this as well. So I've seen their anger, we've seen their anger, and somebody points out the anger. I'm not angry, I'm not angry. You know, it's this kind of defensive reaction. But it is hard to see the picture when we're in there.

Yes.

When we're in the frame. Um, and that's why we need others to point it out to us in a gentle way that gets through.

Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. You have to have people that, you know, you trust and that you've made it safe for them to come to you and say, you know, Renee, you know, the other day in the meeting, you seemed off. Is something, you know, something going on? Or— yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

So, uh, do you see a really— I, I, I just— an interesting question. It's not one I've never really thought about before, but, um, it sounds like an interesting question to ask. Do you see any— because you talked about self-care, we're talking here about self-awareness. Do you see those 2 things together? Do they overlap, or, um, how do they get to one another?

Right. If you are just like on the— Beautiful.

Yeah.

The wheel, right? Going, going, going, going, going. And you never pause. You, you will never take inventory of how you are doing, right? But if you take self-care and like, if your 30 minutes is just walking outside quietly, that is the space, right? Where the thoughts of something else or just recognizing how you're feeling in that moment, right? Listening to your body for a second, that's when you allow space for the self-awareness to come in of how you're actually doing. Because you have to pause. Because if you never pause, you will never know, right?

Yeah. So I've been, I've been a bit snooty about bubble baths. But taking, taking your view on, on the connection between the two, maybe I should be a little less critical of self-bubble baths because maybe the bubble bath is the time to think and for the self-awareness to kind of— yeah, space. Yeah, maybe the bubble bath is the space for self-awareness to come in.

Yeah, it most certainly could be for someone.

Yeah. One final question, which is just a a little, probably a 90-degree jump or something. But, um, I mean, I mentioned I started, I started off by saying that, you know, you were a foster parent back in the day for, for, for DePaul. How does what you did then inform how you, how you are now, your perspective?

Yeah, I think it obviously gave me insight on what it's like to be a foster parent, what it's like to complete the paperwork, what it's like to go through the process. You know, and things have changed, and so it helps me think about, like, how things were then, how things are now, right? And, and where the improvements that we made, or where the— some of the pivots are. Like, if we could do over, if we could have a do-over, you know, what would make that experience more efficient or better? You know, what was really good about that? What should we keep? So it does give me some insight. It also, I think, helps when I talk to foster parents or I talk to staff and say, you know, I've done foster— I've been a foster parent. I've also done the case management piece, you know, the case management that you're doing. I've walked in your shoes. I've walked in their shoes, not to the extent that some of them have, you know, but at least a little bit. And so I think it gives me a little bit of, you know, face value in what I'm saying and my perspective. I'm not just coming from the outside and saying, you know, here's— here I am, you know, walking in and I'm gonna tell you, you know, how to do things. Lived experience is important, and I think we try to include that in any of our decisions. So if we're making a change, we're like, okay, who's living this? Like, we're redesigning some of our foster care work right now. We're gonna have focus groups with foster parents, 'cause why would we redesign our foster care work without talking to the foster parents, right? So it just reminds us, and it reminds me of the importance of the voices of those that we are serving, um, to include those when we're making decisions, um, or making changes as we evaluate things. Yeah.

Is there anything that you'd like to share that I've not, um, that I've not asked you about, Renee?

I can't think of anything. This has been delightful. I love talking about all of these things. You, you've, you've actually triggered a few, like, thoughts of mine, so I think after this I'll I'll think about some of the things that we, we discussed. And yeah, I'm definitely going to look at, you know, Body Keeps the Score.

Yeah. Yeah. It's a very interesting one that the Body Keeps the Score. One of the challenges is that to put it really boldly and people will take a— sometimes take a potshot at this, but I'm putting it really, really boldly, right?

Okay.

Talk therapy can't heal pre-verbal trauma.

Oh wow.

How, how can you— how can something that you have no words for— pre-verbal trauma— how come something that, that happened to you before you had words How can talk— how can you talk about that in talk therapy? Now, when I say something, people have a— well, it helps me, but yeah, it, you know, that, that kind of, that whole, um, somatic piece for me is, is, is, is fundamental. Um, and, uh, and we don't know what we don't know, right? Sure, we don't.

And that's why play therapy, right, is so important. You know, play therapists, we do that. Um, the EMDR stuff, which might be more in line with what you're thinking about.

Yeah, yeah, it's somatic and EMDR. That's in the right, um, that's right in the right, uh, in the right ballpark. Yeah, for sure.

Yeah, so we offer that. We offer the talk, we offer the play therapy, we offer the EMDR, we offer the whole gamut. Because I mean, in thinking about things, like, one size fits all is not the way people heal, right? So I think having a broad array of offerings I think is obviously the, you know, a more effective approach to, to impacting individuals. Yeah.

Yeah. I, I did some somatic experience for about 18 months. Um, just did it once a, once a month. And it, I, I seemed to be, I, I seemed to be lighter. I had more capacity, to use the word that I worked out that you used before. But I can't explain it, right? Because it's somatic, you know. The guy says, right, another guy says, uh, the issue's in the tissue. So, wow. Yeah.

I mean, it makes sense, right? We're talking about brains forming, right, during those times. Bodies form. I mean, it makes sense that it— we're all— you can't just like take one piece of a person and pull it out, right? We're all— all of the parts of us are interconnected. Our brains, our hearts, our feelings, our— yeah, our physicality. All of that stuff is interconnected.

Yeah. And, and, and so you know, somatic experiencing, uh, somatic, you know, working on somatic stuff can be— I mean, you talked about what, you know, take— taking a walk, right? So, yes, taking a walk, dancing, um, any, any form of exercise, anything that lets us release stuff that's in the body, you know. Um, it, it doesn't have to be somatic experiencing, you know.

Yeah.

Um, fantastic. Uh, great, great conversation. And, um, yes, I— you've triggered some thoughts for me. I'm not gonna— I'm, I'm not gonna diss bubble bath anymore.

Thank you. All right, well, there we go.

There we go. Big win.

Maybe next time we'll talk, you'll be like, I took one and it was lovely.

Yeah, so I'm tempted to talk about that. Um, thanks, Renee. Thanks, listeners. We'll speak to you again very soon. Take care. Bye-bye.