May 19, 2023
Self Compassion: What it is, How We Do it and The Reason it's so Important - Colette Evangelista
Video edited on Kapwing
Show Notes
Colette Evangelista is the mother of a son with autism who began the podcast called “Compassion Confetti”. By relating with the audience, Colette provides self-compassion methods for mothers of autistic children to add more kindness, tenderness, warmth, love, support, and a lot of humor.
Our autism worlds can get messy like confetti, but instead of judging and criticizing the mess, let’s learn to celebrate it. Self-compassion is the practice of creating a spot in your heart and soul where YOUR needs are met and you are then nourished and cared for... by YOU!
Colette is a teacher in the training center of mindful self-compassion, a certified life coach, a teacher in elementary education, and a host of a podcast "Compassion Confetti".
Are you still in shock that you are a parent of a special needs child?
This show is for parents who are morning the loss of the life and child they thought they would have. For parents who are tired, lonely, and see no hope in sight?
You will learn how to deal with your non-verbal child with a sensory processing disorder, seizures, meltdowns, haircuts, and family trips. Embark on a journey of consciousness, self-care & meditation.
My name is Chad Ratliffe. I am a single father of 5 kids 6 years of age (8-14) and 2 with special needs. 5 years ago, in a nasty divorce, my depression led me to drug addiction and hopelessness. Today, I share with others a life I never imagined possible.
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WEBSITE: https://www.compassionconfetti.com/
FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100086080147270
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SUMMARY KEYWORDS
self compassion, parent, love, special needs, autism, life, smile, talk, parenting, naked, child, today, experience, struggles, awesome, podcast, suffering, journey, softening, important
SPEAKERS
Colette Evangelista, Chad Ratliffe
Colette 00:00
Well, the first thing I would say about self compassion is that it's a practice, okay, you're not going to get fantastic at it right away. All of us have demands and overwhelms and responsibilities that come into our life. And the last thing any of us need, especially as a special needs parent is one more thing that you have to do one more thing that you have to be like, Oh, I didn't do a great job at that. So if you can find a minute for a day or three minutes for a day, or whatever it is, and just allow yourself to have flexibility and fluidity with your practice. That's great. All of it is going to be helpful. Self Compassion, basically, is that you turn toward again, you're not trying to fix everything because we can't fix it. It's how you react and how you manage the situation you're in. And there's three pillars to self compassion. The first is self kindness, right? So you treat yourself the way you would treat someone who is so precious to yourself.
Chad Ratliffe 00:49
Welcome to the daily naked parent podcast brought to you by rocket blue. The first ever brand focused on supporting parents with special needs children. A good parent nation is a group of parents with special needs children, who are willing to give honorable, stripped it all down and take a look at ourselves, our parenting, our family and our plans create a life beyond our wildest dreams.
On today's show, we'll be discussing self compassion, what it is, how we do it, and the reason it's so important. Hello naked parent nation, and welcome to today's episode of The Naked parent podcast. My name is Chad ratliffe, and I'm your host. And before I introduce you to our awesome guests today, let me start by sharing a message from naked parent nation. First off naked parenting is the process of moving from where you are today to liberation. Naked parenting understands that the mind is responsible for all your problems.
On your journey, you will eliminate suffering so you can be present and joy filled in order to give your kids our kids the best version of ourselves. Naked parent nation is a worldwide community of parents and professionals raising children with all kinds of needs. We come together to share Naked Truth support our fellow parents, and inspire the inner growth that each of us needs to build the life and family of our dreams. For the parents that are struggling, we want you to know that we will love you until you can love yourself, for your children, we pray and send power from our collective group. As we come to understand our divine nature, we realize that there's no need to feel sorry for ourselves be angry or feel lack, we come to understand that our feelings of limitation and separation are only in our minds. Through Self Realization, we expand our consciousness so that the challenges that perplex us today, dissipate one by one until we're able to see and experience gratitude and beauty and everything just as it is. We have the power to create any kind of life we want for ourselves and our families. We do this by living in the naked present moment, one day at a time. This is the process of naked parenting. Whether it's your first step on the path or your tent, I'd like to welcome you to naked parent nation and the naked parent podcast. So let's do a little meditation before we get to our conversation.
It's that time where nobody can take it away from you. It's that time where we go inside to find happiness, wholeness and health, rather than outside to get things to stack up in the right way so that we can be happy. So if you want to get comfortable. If that happens to be sitting up straight with your spine erect, let your eyes close, softly take in the feelings in your body sounds in the room and know that the Buddha taught that a part of arriving and settling entering into any meditation is gladdening the mind. So I'd like to invite you to begin by taking a moment to reflect on whatever you feel most grateful for. Reflect on what you love. Sensing what it is like to have the experience of appreciation really spread through your entire body, your mind and your being. You can deepen that as we practice together in the past by giving a smile an inner smile or an outer smile As you might imagine, in the sky, the clouds forming in the shape of a smile.
You might see in the sand the smile letting the smile spread through your eyes. Lifting the corners of your mouth up slightly. Since a natural softening, awakening that in your eyebrows, relax, letting the jaw be unhinged and just smile just remember that we can get conscious of our breath as we inhale and exhale. And think of smiling. Our hands saw our bodies still feel the openness and your chest, softening down through your body relaxing loosening through your abdomen area. And again, you might visualize an image of a smile. Gently receiving the breath deep in your torso through your belly as it rises and falls. Scanning down to your pelvic region. Just keep thinking of that smile. Remember how when we played we were smiling. Those happy moments we were smiling.
When our kids hit milestones, we can smile. As you feel your body and you've come back to your breathing, and you come back into the room. It's too important for us to get to our conversation. So I'm going to abruptly with a smile, introduce all of you in naked parent nation to Colette, who is a mom of two boys. She has an awesome podcast called compassion confetti for autism moms, although dads can benefit from it as well. But welcome to the show. Thank you for being with us.
Colette 08:00
Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. I'm thrilled. Thanks for the invite.
Chad Ratliffe 08:04
Were you a parent before you were a professional in the special needs space? Is that fair to say?
Colette 08:11
Actually, it's interesting you say that I have a background in teaching and my first job coming out of college, I had no training at all for special needs in any way, shape, or form. And the school where I did my student teaching was like, oh Colette, we're gonna give you our emotionally handicapped classroom. And you know, you're young and have all the energy in the world. So I actually fell into it, I cried every day for four months, I learned a lot and ended up having a really beautiful special child in that classroom that had autism and back in the day. I mean, that was a long time ago. You know, I'm not even sure I even knew what the word autism was. But I find it fascinating because she had such an impact on me. And she was such a special soul. And I think that she was definitely a precursor for the soul that was going to come into my life with autism. And I would have the privilege to learn and love from so.
Chad Ratliffe 09:02
Wow. It's amazing how it's all connected. So when did your parenting journey begin?
Colette 09:09
So my son is 20 years old. And we probably knew that there was something going on very, very, very early. And he was diagnosed at two and a half for autism. So I had about I would have to say that from the time he came out of the womb, I thought there was an issue. I wasn't fully engaged as a special needs parent until he was about two and a half.
Chad Ratliffe 09:31
Was your world rocked becoming a parent as most of us
Colette 09:35
as just a typical parent, like having no idea what to do? 100% Like, what is it you have a baby and then these people send you home? And they're like here be responsible for this human being. And what I find fascinating and it's something we could discuss at length is nowadays they don't allow us to have any type of intuition, right? Like, we go off in the world with these kids and they're like, you need to do it like this and this and you can't do this. You have to do this. And our intuition is stripped from us and then you get a specialty Each child and the stakes get higher and the boundaries and the responsibilities and all the different things like compound and escalate and become even more. So yeah, I was overwhelmed being irregular period and then you throw the other stuff on top of it.
Chad Ratliffe 10:14
Yeah, and you're really awesome energy and it's super positive. Was that this case when you got diagnosis at two and a half?
Colette 10:24
No, I like to say that when my diagnosis came, I handled it with about zero grace, I was one of the ones and that went into total tailspin, you know, I hit the darkness. And one of the reasons why self compassion has been so profound in my journey is because I was that parent that thought I did everything wrong. I caused it I needed to fix it. I never did enough. Every day, I was feeling him constantly, never ending and I would go to bed just lacerating myself for what a failure I was. Whether it be, you know, the genetics, I gave him the amount of time I engaged with him that day. I mean, like it just never ended. I was the most brutal human being to myself, ever. It did not serve any of us.
Chad Ratliffe 11:10
Isn't that amazing? Like the person we listen to most that voice in our head is the one that if we met somebody that talked to us like that, we would never talk to him again. Yet. That's where we go to for advice. I mean, it's amazing.
Colette 11:24
Yeah, it's our guide, right? It's our daily. It's in our ear all day long. And it's affecting our emotions. It's affecting our nervous system. It's affecting our actions and our feelings. And you know, to be tuned into what that voice sounds like is imperative. I think it yesterday.
Chad Ratliffe 11:41
Yeah. So obviously, you didn't give up. Obviously, you didn't throw in the towel, even though you were struggling? Can you tell us kind of a little bit about your journey through the darkness as a new parent and how you've kind of transformed through the years?
Colette 11:58
Yeah, absolutely. So I think what ends up happening, and, you know, I wish all the listeners out here in the naked parent nation, I love that, you know, I hope that whoever is out there finds their peace sooner and finds their ability to forgive and give space for being imperfect. One of the things that I really try to tell the people that listen to my particular podcast is that we're allowed to be messy or allowed to be imperfect. And we it is totally okay for us to be good enough parents, like we can just be getting the parents some days, we're gonna have a lot of resources to be amazing.
And some days that if you lay on the couch, and everyone goes to bed breathing, knowing their loved that that is perfectly acceptable. Like I said, I hope that your nation finds it sooner than I did, I would say it took me a solid 12 years, and I had 12 years of surviving and not thriving. One of the things I didn't understand was, I was in such fight or flight. I know we talk about this a lot. And our kids are very often in fight or flight. For so long. I didn't realize I had like low grade depression and anxiety for a long time. And I just went and went and went and I was the parent that did everything, right.
We tried every treatment, every thing. I mean, I can't even go into everything. If if you've heard of it, we tried it. And eventually I hit a wall and I completely and utterly broke, I became clinically depressed. I had to get on medicine, which was kind of shamed in my community. Like they're like, oh, you can't take medicine. You know, if you just change your diet, if you do more exercise, if you sleep more, well, sometimes you really need that medicine to help get an equilibrium to be able to pull yourself out. So that was my experience. It's not going to be for everyone. But eventually, I just really realized that I couldn't go on, like I didn't have support. I was a single mom at this point in time I in my spouse and I, we didn't do great supporting each other and I'm like, I can't, I'm done. I'm empty, I'm done.
And so I found self compassion and self compassion gave me the space and the grace to start softening toward that pain, right? Like, the big thing about being a special needs parent is we're always going to have hard, anyone in life is going to have heart, we're always going to have hard but with self compassion, you start actively turning toward that heart, but you turn toward it with warmth, and you turn toward it with kindness. You don't try to fix it, you don't try to make it go away. It's how you treat it, and how you treat yourself in that space. So that's really how I found self compassion. And that's how it changed. But it was it's a journey. It took me a really long time. And I wish people were able to do it a little bit faster than I did so. And then there's forgiveness, there's acceptance, right? It's really important to get to the place where you can be like I accept where I'm at. I accept where my child's at except where life's at, and then lots of forgiveness.
Chad Ratliffe 14:45
Yeah. Yeah, I mean, that's one of my messages too, because I went into addiction. I had the nasty divorce. I'm still in court four and a half years later, I mean that the damage that's created because of the darkness that a person can face can just go on for the rest of your life if you're not careful, can you make self compassion more than just a good buzzword? Like? What does it look like? How do we? How do we do it for ourselves? How do we set up self compassion in our life?
Colette 15:17
Well, the first thing I would say about self compassion is that it's a practice, okay, you're not going to get fantastic at it right away. All of us have demands and overwhelmed and responsibilities to come into our life. And the last thing any of us need, especially as a special needs parent is one more thing that you have to do one more thing that you have to be like, Oh, I didn't do a great job at that. So if you can find a minute for a day or three minutes for a day, or whatever it is, and just allow yourself to have flexibility and fluidity with your practice. That's great. All of it is going to be helpful.
Self Compassion, basically, is that you turn toward again, you're not trying to fix everything, because we can't, we can't fix it. It's how you react and how you manage the situation you're in. And there's three pillars to self compassion. The first is self kindness, right? So you treat yourself the way you would treat someone who is so precious to yourself. Like, if somebody that you cared about immensely rang your doorbell, and they're standing on your doorbell, crying their eyes out? Would you slam the door in their face and tell them they're stupid, and they're dumb, and you hate them? And you did everything wrong and slam the door in their face? No, you would never do that. You would take their hands, you'd walk them over to the couch, you'd sit them down, you'd wrap a blanket around them, you get them something soothing, you'd hold their hand and you would with such care and attention, listen to their woes, and listen to their hurt witness or hurt and pain, right? Yeah, so we all want. Yeah, we want to be seen in our hurt, validated.
So it's self kindness. And that self kindness comes into how you talk to yourself, how you treat yourself, allowing yourself to rest I mean, I could like make you have me back on and talk for 45 years about how important it is for us to rest, and how it affects our nervous systems. I'm super into the nervous system right now. And then the second pillar of self compassion. And I see that you're very intuitive mindfulness. Now, mindfulness and being able to stay in the moment is really important, especially will for anybody because what happens is, we're talking about suffering with self compassion a lot of times, right? When you think about what you did in the past, you're basically like drowning up all of the like that you're mucking up, you're stirred up all the muck, and all of the, you know, the negativity is coming up and you're having anxiety about it. If you're thinking about the future, you're doing the exact same thing. You're like worrying about something you have no control over, you have no idea what's gonna happen.
You're literally expending energy on something that you don't know about. And you're suffering. You're thinking, worst case scenario, you're suffering. So when you have mindfulness and you come to it, and you're like, I'm here right now, like, I'm here, I'm breathing, I'm surviving, like, no matter how bad it is, like, your special needs child is like flinging feces while they're bleeding from self injury. Like you're in the worst moment, the whole wide world. But if you can just ground yourself and say, No, I'm okay, right here, like, this is hard. This is hard. And you acknowledge that it's hard right there. But you just stay in the moment, you grab yourself, and you just try to self regulated as best you can.
And that really helps eliminate suffering. And then the third pillar, and this is really important with special needs families is common humanity, right. So we all experience everyone in the world. It's messy. Every single human being is a master, you're allowed to be a mess, everyone give yourself space and grace to be a mess. Nobody expects you to be perfect. Perfectionism is just setting yourself up for suffering again, right? But so many of us feel so alone in our struggles, like, you know, we're isolated, we can't get out our child has limitations. People understanding us have limitations. You know, people judge us we go out into public and we're judged or not seen or at least different things. But when you come into common humanity, you open up that there is a naked nation. And you know, there's a pod of autism moms and you're no longer alone.
And that common humanity is so reassuring and creates a sense of safety because you're like, I'm not by myself. I'm not by myself, I'm not alone. Even if I'm sitting here alone. I'm not alone. There's another mother or father who is out there experiencing this hurt experiencing this heart I'm not the first person to experience this hurt and experience is hard. And so and that's why connecting is so important. Finding podcasts like this and finding people who understand and who can see and validate like I don't know about you but like if I see somebody who has a similar child to mine, I'm like, I literally like a cast them in public eye like I'll walk up and like hug them and be like, Here's my card. Call me. Let's be best friends. Let's do a playdate. Like I need people around me. I need to love and be supported. And I want to love and support.
Chad Ratliffe 19:36
Sounds awesome. Awesome. So when did the inspiration for compassion confetti pop in? How's that journey been? And well, what's going on?
Colette 19:49
That's really interesting. You ask about that because I've been wanting to do a podcast for about seven years and fear will often make somebody have limitations and I kept wanting to do and I kept wanting to protect algae scares the bejesus out of me being vulnerable and honest and jabbering at people about what I want to talk about not a problem, technology and having to launch it out total another problem. And so there was a slave coach, and she was like, Listen, if you have a goal, and there's something that you really want to do, and there's a barrier in the way you have to problem solve the barrier. So I was like, Alright, I'm just gonna hire somebody to do all the technology like I like, I mean, I would rather lay down in traffic, than figure out how to, like upload a podcast and like, get it on.
But I have to learn because frankly, I can't afford it very much anymore. We're gonna have to work through this one. But so yeah, it was like, I just need to take away the fear. So I have never been more proud of myself. Because this has been such a goal, it is so important for me to connect to autism caregivers, and really help them to understand that they don't have to be perfect, and they can be good enough parents and our lives are gonna be hard. That's just what it is. So let me give you some tools to help you self regulate, and help you manage so you can thrive and have a beautiful life. And yeah, you're gonna have totally my lightest were totally shitty days. But you're gonna find the joy and all of it. Even if it's a sliver of joy, you'll see the joy, you'll, because of mindfulness, you'll be able to celebrate it and build on him. So but yeah, I love my podcast, I hate technology, and the story.
Chad Ratliffe 21:18
The journey is the journey outside. And by the way, we maybe we should talk about virtual assistants in a little, little channel I have Intuit might be able to help you out. So let's talk about that another time. But how's the experience of just doing the podcast been the guests that you're having? What's that been like?
Colette 21:36
Well, it goes back to one of the best things, I think that it's been about it that is, you know, I've had these moms on I did have the autism, I did have one autism dad, and I had mom fine, but being able to laugh, like we're sharing our experiences and like, being able to laugh. In fact, it was funny, because one of the stories we were talking about was it was actually a private conversation, but just being able to laugh at somebody. Like we were saying that our kids were playing basketball, and they're so bad. And we laughed so hard, I'm like, but if anybody else laughed at our special needs basketball, we're gonna cut somebody, like, forget it, getting on with these women who have had the same struggles and this gentleman that have had the same struggles and, you know, again, that common humanity were linked together but being able to laugh about and have levity about it.
And again, somebody who understands and sees you and validates you and knows you, it's just been such an utter blessing. And you know, in a personal sense, we all need something every person, whether it be a caregiver, or a special needs or not. We all need something in our life that gives us passion and makes us excited. And I love to connect with people. I love to talk with people. People are annoyed, I'm always calling them on their phone. They're like, Oh, you just text me. And I'm like, No, I'm like, you're totally squelching my personality by making me text. You can't get all this razzle dazzle when you talk to me, so it's just such a good creative outlet for me. And you know, we all deserve a creative outlet. And I you know, it just makes my heart soar in thing and I love it. And I deserve it. And all parents who are out there I hope can find something similar whether it's like, you know, I don't know growing sprouts or graffiti on trains in their town. I don't care what it is. But something.
Chad Ratliffe 23:14
Yeah. All right, well, naked parent nation, it's compassion confetti, you got to check it out. It'll be a link in the show notes. So if you forget the name, just go to the show notes and click on it. So what season of parenting Are you in today? What's family life look like today for you.
Colette 23:32
I am really profoundly grateful for where I'm at with my parenting at this point in time, because I've gotten to a point where I deeply accept my son and where he's at. And I respect him. And I honor him. And I honor his own timeline. I honor his own abilities. I'm grateful that I still do my best to try to challenge them. But I also don't do anything that is beyond my capabilities. I don't, you know, try to push myself past what I'm capable of doing. Self Compassion practice has made me so much more able to forgive myself for the past. I mean, like, one of the mistakes I worry about the most is with an autism diagnosis. We all go into this, fix it, fix it, fix it. And I realized that I conveyed to my son that something was wrong with them. And something was scary, right? I mean, that's like a huge, we're supposed to love and accept our kids like no matter what.
And so I always joke that I have to put love potty on everything and just put the Love Party on and hopefully it'll like heal everything up. I no longer go to bed with just raw, intense hot regret, and self recrimination. I go to bed every night now. So grateful that I get to love this amazing human being. I literally tell him every day I'm so glad God gave you to me. I'm so glad that I get to love you. It is a privilege to be your mom. And it took a long time to get there and again I pray for the naked parent nation that All of your people out there it comes quicker it come because, you know, had I known that there was no reason for me to suffer for how long I did, there was no reason. You know, I just had to kind of put some tool I had to be more gentle with myself and put some tools in the place to be able to regulate and manage how challenging my life was. So, but that's where I'm at. I have a beautiful son who he is a golden Thol
Chad Ratliffe 25:25
Yeah, it's funny, because sometimes when I'm thinking about content, or I'm talking with the virtual assistants about, you know, messages that we want to get out there, you know, it's, we'll say, hey, the message needs to say in a soft enough ways that it doesn't upset people, that the only thing that needs to change is you like, your kid doesn't need to start talking for your life to get better, you don't need. This doesn't need to get fixed for your life to be okay. Like the only thing that needs to get fixed, is you and then everything else in your life exactly as it is will be glorious and wonderful. But you can't always just say it to somebody like that, because sounds rude or something. I love self compassion. I love that you're talking about it with us. We do like a lightning round where you give one word to one sentence answers to more questions so we can hear about your mind and your expertise. Are you up for it?
Colette 26:22
Yeah, you're gonna limit me to one word Ted, I don't know this guy.
Chad Ratliffe 26:26
Rules are there ain't no rules. So your mind? What's the best advice you have received? Love yourself gently. What online course topic? Would you sign up for today? If it was available?
Colette 26:41
Oh, anything about soothing the nervous system in vagal toning and somatic experience.
Chad Ratliffe 26:48
I love it. Admins of the Wim Hof stuff lately.
Colette 26:51
Oh, yeah. The breathing?
Chad Ratliffe 26:53
Do you have a top resource recommendation to share with other parents? Obviously, compassion confetti is at number one. But what's number two for resource recommendation,
Colette 27:05
um, any support group locally that you can become a part of?
Chad Ratliffe 27:10
Awesome. What's the next thing on your list that you want to add for your individual wellbeing? Love? What's one thing you think would improve your life if you did it? Or had it?
Colette 27:21
Oh, I don't know. That's a really tough one. What would improve my life love?
Chad Ratliffe 27:28
Do you have a favorite product that you use for yourself for your child? They just love and couldn't live without water? That's awesome. And then this one you're you're welcome to think about it or you're welcome to just straight up not answer it. But is there something you believe to be true that most parents disagree with?
Colette 27:46
Oh, I disagree with I don't know if it's disagree with but can we say disconnected from and that's our intuition. I just wish that the world gave us more space to trust our intuition and lead from love into intuition. It's just it's just snuffed out of our life.
Chad Ratliffe 28:04
Awesome. Can we get into self compassion techniques can we leave the listeners with something they can try?
Colette 28:12
Absolutely, the easiest thing in the whole wide world is what it's called gentle touch. And it's just when you are having any type of upset if you're feeling overwhelmed for filling, you know, unloved, lonely, sad, disappointed. Whatever it is, all you do is you can kind of experiment with it like when you're not having the feelings, but you just want to find a way to touch yourself in a way that is supportive. So like, I often will put my hand over my heart. And all of my anxiety is in like, just underneath my ribs like in my solar plexus in my stomach. So I'll place my hand on my heart and I'll place my hand on that space. And I just gently will start talking kindly to myself while I'm giving my soft, gentle touch.
Some people like to hold their cheeks in their hand. Sometimes when I go to bed, I'll like stroke my for a stroke. My eyebrow like my mom is sitting on my bed and stroking my eyebrow is any type of really in a lot, especially special needs parents, if you're isolated by yourself and you're not getting touch, we all need to be touched. So to have any way that you gently stroke your arms, like hug yourself, even just like sometimes I'll listen to music and I'll hug myself and I'll just rock. So it's any type of physical touch that you know is supportive and loving and warm.
Chad Ratliffe 29:22
I love that. Colette, I can talk to you all day long, which means I think we're spirit animals, which means we're going to have to do this again because this just isn't going to be enough for me. But my hair
Colette 29:33
the next time Chad, I think it looks awesome. Now I am an actress from
Chad Ratliffe 29:37
what we've talked about, or what's on your heart for that parent that's listening. That saying that's great that you found happiness that you're in a good place, but my depression is so thick, I don't see any light and I just don't think I'm going to be able to make it what do you say to them?
Colette 29:54
Well, the first thing I would say to them is I hear you I see you and I would if it were up to me I would come come to you. And I'd give you the biggest hug in the entire world we'd have for 20 seconds. So oxytocin was released and your depression would be abated to a certain extent. And anyone who is in that super dark place, you have to give yourself grace, do what you can manage. Don't go into that I should be doing more, I'm failing, I'm this or that. Like, just be super gentle with yourself and do what you can manage teeny to, I always say that pebbles, build a mountain. So what's the littlest teeny thing you can do and start making those little pebbles come up into the mountain, but I have been in clinical depression, I've been in depression, and I don't, it's just it's so hard.
And I'm telling you, I am so grateful that I can be an example to somebody because I truly have turned it around, I no longer survive, I completely thrive. And that's not to say that I don't have days where I'm like, seriously, I'm over it. Like, I mean, I have my days I have, you know, the cloud is following me around plenty of times. But the tools that I have, and the the growth and the the healing I've done is profound. I love it. One last thing as parents and as humans, we are allowed to do that. We are separate from our children. We are as human beings as an individual as this is my soul. Our soul is allowed to do all that to heal and have all the things because we're still that label of special needs parent, like that's always be there but never forget that we are our own soul and that own soul is precious and deserves to be cherished and cared for.
Chad Ratliffe 31:30
Well, you made me tear up on that. So now I've been able to laugh with you. I've been able to cry with you. I've really enjoyed this moment. Naked parent nation. It's called compassion confetti, with Colette and Colette. Thanks again for being with us. I will find you online somewhere and make sure we stay connected.
Colette 31:51
Okay, sounds awesome. Thanks so much. I appreciate I loved our conversation. It was such a privilege.
Chad Ratliffe 31:56
Thank you. Alright, take care. Bye.
32:02
This concludes our show for today. And I'd like to personally thank you for spending the time with us on a topic near and dear to our hearts. If you'd like to be part of the naked parent nation, and help us reach those parents that are struggling and overwhelmed, there's no better way to help them by subscribing rating and reviewing the show on iTunes. iTunes highlights the shows based on these metrics. And the more the show gets highlighted, the more opportunities people will have to be introduced to the show where they can hear that message of hope, or that tip that can change everything. So follow the link in our show notes. And we hope to have you back here tomorrow where we'll do it again. From the team here at the naked parent podcast we wish you the life you've always dreamed of and then some so long
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