Podcast Episode 398: Breaking Generational Baggage: Why Feeling Everything Might Be the Healing Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

JoAnn Crohn (00:00)

Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I’m your host JoAnn Crohn joined here by the brilliant Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker (00:06)

Why hello hello everybody how are you?

JoAnn Crohn (00:09)

We are talking about something that actually, Brie, you and I talk about really often, looking back at our childhood and seeing how we were raised and how that affects the way we parent today and the choices we make and the reactions that we have as well.

Brie Tucker (00:24)

Yeah, I feel like in general, I am a person that if I had a bad experience with something or something didn’t sit right with me, I’m not always a small swinger. I’m like, Hey, let’s go to the other end of the spectrum and just see how this works out. Which isn’t always the best!

JoAnn Crohn (00:41)

And you think that resulted in your childhood like that started?

Brie Tucker (00:45)

I have very strong feelings about the things that my parents did when I was younger that I did not want to do with my kids. Now remember though, too, that the things my parents did, it is in the view of a child’s eyes. So I don’t even actually know if my parents ever meant for it to be the way it was, but I’ll throw out one thing and then we’ll move on. They were always tired and I was the youngest. So I always threw that into, well, they were too old when they had me.

So I have to have all my kids before 30.

JoAnn Crohn (01:18)

That’s a big, big thing that you took from childhood and put towards your adult parenting life. yeah. I mean, going back to mine, and we’ll talk about this more in the episode with our guest.

Jennie Monness is the co-founder of Charm Spring, a children’s brand bringing more connection and fun to family life and Union Square Play, a play space for kids zero to five focused on early development and community. She also hosts the new podcast, We Didn’t Turn Out Okay, helping parents grow from the roadblocks and narratives of their own upbringing. With a master’s in psychology and education from Columbia University, Jennie has over 15 years of experience in early childhood education and lives in New York City with her husband and two daughters. And with that, let’s get on with the show.

Welcome Jennie to the podcast. We are so excited to dig into how our childhoods may be affecting our parenting and of course your podcast. didn’t turn out okay. So welcome to the show.

Jennie Monness (02:24)

Thank you so much. I’m so happy to be here and so excited about this topic. Even as Brie was talking, I wanted to just like take it all in and respond and like, it really fuels me because I think there’s so much to unlock there.

Brie Tucker (02:39)

There is!

JoAnn Crohn (02:40)

There is because so much of like what we experienced during childhood we take with us unknowingly or knowingly into adulthood. And I was binging on your podcast this morning and I was listening to the episode of you. It was your first solo episode talking about your experience with anxiety and depression and as a kid. And you mentioned a point where you were watching Double Dare and that’s where you knew that like. I love Double Dare! Yeah.

Brie Tucker (03:10)

Wait, the cream pie pool. I have always wanted to get a kiddie pool, fill it with cream pie, put something in there and make people wrestle to fight it. Just gotta say.

JoAnn Crohn (03:18)

I had a tiny crush on Mark Summers. ⁓ yeah!

Brie Tucker (03:21)

He was cool. Like who didn’t want to be on that show and get to slime their parents. I mean, come on

Jennie Monness (03:28)

So good. So good. Also, you’re gonna say you’re gonna die because like just this morning, because I work with children, I’m running little mini camps out here in the Hamptons. We actually do fill mini pools with foam soap. And it just reminds me I’m like, I wonder after Brie just said that if that’s where the smoke came from. When I made that comment about Double Dare, I’m like, this is gonna really put me in a category of people who know what the hell I’m talking about and people who do not.

Brie Tucker (03:54)

Right? We got you, girl. We got you.

JoAnn Crohn (03:58)

Because like in that mention of it, you mentioned how starting in your childhood, you experienced these symptoms of anxiety and depression. And I bring that up because what you said in that episode is so much like my own experience where you can look back to your childhood and see like these little snippets of like clues leading up to your adulthood and also like how your parents dealt with the situation, especially when it comes to anxiety and depression. And just as a note to all of our listeners, Jennie’s episode was also about how you took yourself off of antidepressants. And I just recently did the same thing. And so I was like, my gosh, I cannot wait to talk with her about this.

Jennie Monness (04:48)

wow, it’s meant to be!

JoAnn Crohn (04:50)

It was meant to be, it was meant to be. So my first question starts with like, when you were growing up, in terms of anxiety and depression, because I know so many of our listeners have those same feelings as well and struggle with it as well. What did you see in your childhood that led you to feel like you might’ve had it all along? And what did your parents, how did they deal with it?

Jennie Monness (05:17)

Yeah, it’s interesting. that solo episode, very new for me. And it was like only 10 minutes in comparison to like the 16 minutes with guests. So it was very like focused on the specific thing of coming off of Zoloft and a little bit about how I got there. But the two examples that I gave were, you know, rooting for the opposite team in Double Dare, basically. And then another one of me like kicking a rock from A to B, like sign of these like little anxiety coping rituals that I use those examples because they were examples that I recognized as a child as something that was like, this makes me a little bit different or I recognize not necessarily cognitively now I recognize that that was a coping mechanism, but I recognize at the time that it was like some sort of like silly maybe in my young mind way to handle. So it was like maybe a unique way of thinking. You know, I wasn’t like, this means I have anxiety.

but I recognize that it was like a little bit of my own routine mentally to kind of get through things. The other thing that I feel like is noteworthy as you were just talking, Jan, is like, when you talk about parents, I look back and my parents were very much involved, engaged. Like, you know, I look at my mom as like this smarter mom. And yet the times that I recognize now as a mom myself where I really feel so much love for her are the times where I feel like, either she put her hands up because she couldn’t like save me from something or she had the wherewithal to be like, she has to work through this. And there were times, you know, where she really tried to like rescue me from my anxiety. And I love her for those. But there were other times where I’ve been asked her like, didn’t you like help me with that? And she said now like, I couldn’t I knew you had to yourself. And of course, the age is dependent on that. ⁓

So I will say, like, I recognized kind of early on that there was something there, you know, maybe along the way, but really came to a head at 17. And then when you asked about like my parents, like they were very much doing all that they could in every situation they could. And I think being really thoughtful about the times when either they were like, we can’t do anything or like Jennie has to work through this, which I find so interesting, right? Like that I really struggled with anxiety and yet have these parents that like, you know, on paper were really amazing, you know, but we all have traumas, know, no, no parents perfect. And of course we could go there too, but just to like kind of preface everything.

JoAnn Crohn (07:53)

Yeah, I know that like with my own anxiety, I remember seeing it modeled, anxiety being modeled for me as a child. My mom struggles with anxiety and depression. I mean, it’s definitely a hereditary thing going on in our house. And I can look back now and I like, have such compassion for her because I know how it feels like trying to juggle a kid, trying to juggle work and everything. I could see why she had the responses she did.

Do you remember any modeling for you of anxiety behaviors?

Jennie Monness (08:26)

Yeah, and I’m so glad that you brought that up because, right, like you can talk the talk. Yeah. But you have to walk the walk. And yes, my mom also struggled with that. So while she like probably responded to me in these certain ways, like, it’s such a testament to like what we’re modeling and what example we’re setting with ourselves and why healing ourselves as a parent is so important, you know, figuring out where we’re not okay. But yes, short answer is my mom also struggled more with depression than anxiety. So we’re like, lots of role modeling in that way too. whether I don’t have like the most, you know, when I look back, it’s not like those are like the ones jumping out at me, the memory jumping out at me. It’s energetic, right? It’s like there.

JoAnn Crohn (09:07)

It’s like in your body that you can’t help reacting that way. You just go to it automatically.

Jennie Monness (09:13)

Yes, so there is definitely that around me for sure.

JoAnn Crohn (09:18)

And it’s interesting how you bring up too that you mentioned maybe our parents weren’t okay either. They didn’t grow up okay. And so they like pass it down to us and then we pass it down to our kids and so on and so on. And it just keeps going.

Brie Tucker (09:32)

I do think we have to give the Boomers a bit of a hall pass. I mean, our parents, for the most part, were in the Boomer generation of like, we don’t talk about feelings unless it’s, mean, moms could say, love you, but you know, frowned upon. It wasn’t macho for the dad too. And therapy? That wasn’t a thing. And I think I remember too, like ADD, ADHD being really big when we were little. And that was like the first time that you were allowed to have your kid caught. It feels like as a society to kind of have you to acknowledge that your child might have some struggles or challenges. And then I feel like that door was cracked open like in the late seventies, early eighties. And then we have just shoved it open because of all of the trauma we had from our parents and all the trauma they had from their parents. And I do use trauma as a light word there. I overgeneralizing. I am aware of that one.

Cause I do feel like trauma gets kind of like sometimes thrown around a little bit too much. And that’s an armchair thing. Cause I’m not a psychologist, but yeah, I feel like they all had a lot of stuff to work with. And it was kind of the blind leading the blind to some extent.

JoAnn Crohn (10:42)

Yeah, they did. And there was a survey just published, take this with a grain of salt. It was in the New York Post. But it was like they were citing another survey that was done by an institution that today’s parents actually are more attuned now to like throwing out, I think it was like three out of five millennial parents throw out their parents playbook and are more in tune to communicating with the kids more, making sure their emotional needs are met. And all of this kind of turn we see from not talking about it to it being a really big issue and us addressing it finally. And so right after this, Jennie, I wanna dig into how you started addressing it in your own life. And I also wanna talk about how you weaned yourself from antidepressants because I think that’s an important conversation. So we’ll do that right after this.

Jennie, I am really fascinated about the reasons that you decided to go off antidepressants because I to share mine as well. Like, I think we’re pretty similar. We can all share all. Yeah.

Brie Tucker (11:44)

I can join this boat too.

JoAnn Crohn (11:47)

Yeah, so why did you decide to go off of them?

Jennie Monness (11:50)

So I decided to go off. It actually, I felt like was the universe pointing me in that direction where at the time, and this was now, I’d say like five months ago, me saying like the universe pointing me in that direction would not be something I would say, but in hindsight, that’s what I believe. So I really felt like Zola, which I had been on the most recently for the last, you know, 17 years was something that I would be on forever. That I have a chemical imbalance, you know, maybe genetically. ⁓

And this is what I need to be my best self, my best version of me as a mom and show up for everybody, all the things. I had gone off a little bit during pregnancies and had months in to both recognize when I would be like less able to cope with things like anger and frustration, but that was my sign to go on. was more like less about like, I want to always be happy. was more like, I don’t like how I sounded to that person or I don’t like how frustrated I’m getting in this situation. And those were my signs of I need to be on this. And then really it all came about because someone had reached out who I really admire in business and childhood, motherhood space about a study recommending psychedelics, a specific one for women who have postpartum depression. And I have heard and believed in psychedelics when used appropriately for this and have been very interested in it, although I had never gone there.

And I was like, I would love to share about this. Can I have you on the podcast? She wanted me to help recruit women who might benefit from this because of, what I do. And she’s like, you shouldn’t have me even though I believe in this study and I’m behind it. I want to introduce you to the woman who is really like at the, you know, foundational, like birth of this as even like becoming a study government funded things like that. Her name is Melissa Lavastani and she created the Psychedelic Medicine Coalition.

She came on the podcast maybe a week or two later, flew in from DC and that was the first time I met her. And it was really just supposed to highlight psychedelics when used potentially in this way and the promise that they have for people who are struggling specifically in postpartum. And so she shared her story as she went from suicidal to her example was, and then suddenly.

you know, it’s like the record scratched in our home. got down and played with my son. And of course I was like crying, like imagining someone who was amazing. And at the time she was like growing her own mushrooms to do this. And then long story short, she realized the potential of this. And she’s like, you know, I never wanted to go on SSRIs. And because of her own reasons for people in her life, she’s like, but I have studied this now and natural medications like this, like plant medicine, specifically mushrooms in this scenario, have the ability to rewire neural connections. And there’s no chemical synthetic or natural that can do that. And she was like, so SSRIs are really like dulling or taking the edge off and things like that. And that’s correct. It’s not like we take a medicate. And that’s not knocking it. When she told me I didn’t feel insulted, it’s not rewiring anything in our brain. It’s giving us a boost of certain chemicals as we know and potentially helping to dull the ones that are hard to, know, emotions that are hard to cope with. Therapy can help rewire. So when she said that, I was like, ⁓ you know, the first time someone had put it that way. And so was very interested in it. Long story short, my mom has struggled a lot in the last year with her own stuff. And so I called a friend who had believed in this and was like, I need my mom to go on this like plant journey that everyone talks about, you know, for seven hours, everyone says it’s 15 years of therapy. Like I need her to go.

my friends, like, feel like you should go before you send your mom. I haven’t even actually shared this yet. And so anyway, that’s the story of how I went off. I spoke to these psychotherapists to prepare myself and they were like, you really can get the most benefit from an experience like this if you’re not on medication. And if you feel comfortable, let’s schedule it for a few weeks from now so you can wean off. And then of course, you can go back on after this one day. I haven’t gone back on.

JoAnn Crohn (16:04)

So did you do the one day? What was that like?

Jennie Monness (16:06)

Yeah. I mean, how much time do we have?

Brie Tucker (16:12)

Okay, wait, I have to ask. Did you have your own record scratched? Was it like a mic drop?

Jennie Monness (16:17)

No, not like behaviorally after like, you know, it’s not like I came out, you know, some close friends that I shared it with, have are like, are you transformed? And I’m like, No, but I feel like I’m on my way. I mean, really what I unlocked was like things and helped make sense of as we’re not trying to go around of traumas, you know, things that were embedded in my body, you know, like my mom is a martyr. And so that when I’m not, I feel like I’m failing.

As an example. And it helped me unlock memories of like when she was in the murder and that there were mornings I went to school and she didn’t wake up in the morning. And so like, of course I have no memory of her like freaking out, yelling and rushing us. Anyway, that’s an example of how it helps to like rewire certain things when you are able to access. But I guess the record scratch was that like, yeah, I’ve never been able to be off Zola for the last 20 some odd years and I haven’t been back on and now I feel like my reasons for not going on is that I potentially am like gonna not be as connected to the world because I won’t feel what I’m supposed to feel to help direct me in the world. Do know what I mean? Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (17:27)

That feeling thing is so hard right now. Okay. I know.

⁓ I just say it from my own personal experience of what I’m going through right now because I am feeling all the things and I don’t know if I like it. It is a different sense of like being numb was kind of nice and I didn’t realize how numb I was until now I’m like, my gosh, everything is like. So the reason I went off of it, I was on venlafaxine and every time I was maybe 30 minutes late on taking my med every day, I would get really big head rushes and burns which is a side effect of enlafaxine because it has a very like 90 % of the drug leaves your system in 24 hours. And so you need that additional boost every time. And I was just like, you know what, I’m done with this. I’ve been on it for like three or four years. I don’t want to remember to take this pill every day. Let’s just be done with it. And so my provider helped me wean off of it. And I weaned off about like early July and it’s mid August right now, almost mid August.

And about two or three weeks ago, I just, I felt like I wanted to cry all the time. Like this unending sense of like depression and like all hope is lost. And the thing with you where you said like, I want to stay connected with my kids. I felt like this was disconnecting me from my kids. I was so in my emotions that I couldn’t show up the right way for my kids.

why this I think is so important to talk about is because maybe until like a few days ago, I was giving myself a lot of shame for going off. I was like, ⁓ typical mistake. You see you’re doing fine and then you go off your medication and everything goes downhill. So hearing your journey with it, Jennie, is really hopeful to me.

Brie Tucker (19:23)

That makes me curious and I would love to chat more about this after the break, but how has your all’s experiences with anxiety and medication and all of this, I want to have us like talk about how that has impacted how we choose to parent our kids and how we either have dealt with our children having anxiety or other issues like that and or what we plan to do when they do start to show those things as a result of how our experiences were with our parents and then what we’ve had growing up. So let’s talk about that right after the break.

JoAnn Crohn (19:59)

So right before the break, Jennie, we left with the question, like, how does this influence how we raise our kids now, especially when we see our kids struggling? And you have pretty young kids, right, Jennie? How old are yours?

Jennie Monness (20:13)

Five and seven, Yes

JoAnn Crohn (20:15)

Do you see them struggling with any of these things right now?

Jennie Monness (20:19)

Yeah, and it’s interesting because one of the reasons that I was saying that like I want to stay off of it, even though it’s hard sometimes, because I think it helps inform where I need to like heal. I really believe in what we were saying before when we were thinking back to our own parents, that there was like the energy there, right? Like I can say to them, blue in the face to my girls, like beautiful oops, mistakes are amazing. Like we learn from them and like all the things.

my energy is perfectionism, which it really is at my core. They’re at the age now where I see that come to fruition in a negative way. You know, I see perfectionism in my girls. I see them call me out. like, you know, why are you doing your hair? Whatever all the things both, you know, external and internal. And I just really they’re mirrors. mean, one more than my other. I maybe not all kids are like the magnifying extreme ones. I have one of those right? Like she knows all the things.

And so I feel like that’s why it’s so important, right? Like your modeling, your energy, like your nervous system is around your kids. And so if I can’t grow from like the areas in which like my nervous system was kind of like staying the same from these meds and things like that, like I just feel like I’m not unlocking the full like cycle breaking for them and myself, of course, for ourselves more than anything. And yet, when I do struggle maybe with getting more easily frustrated, like I was saying before, one of the things that comes up for me is my patience level when I have more anxiety. I’m like, in my head, this is why I should go back on. Me getting more frustrated with them is not fair. And here I am trying to heal for them, and then yet I’m having a shorter temper. Yet, that’s how we rewire and grow, right? Every uncomfortable situation we go through, I recently posted this helps to rewire our brains. If I’m just like avoiding the frustration that’s really there, you know, it’s not overcoming it. And so yes, obviously, we need to like, weigh that out. We don’t want to just be like frustrated all the time in front of our kids. But I felt like I was on after the experience was in a place where I could work through those times, say to them, you know, mommy was frustrated earlier, I’m working on that. And like the best potential for all of us.

JoAnn Crohn (22:39)

Yeah, you bring up a really interesting thing that I’ve been thinking about too, in terms of like dealing with all of these symptoms is like, maybe these symptoms are telling me that I need to change something in my life versus saying that something is wrong with me and how I am coping. that by numbing all of these things, either through SSRIs or through alcohol, which honestly ever, I mean, just to be very, very brutally honest, ever since I went off, the meds, I’m like, a drink sounds real nice. Just to like numb everything and make all the feelings.

Brie Tucker (23:16)

It’s a thing our society is pretty chill with. So I mean, and there’s no judgment at all. I wish my body still let me drink alcohol. Menopause has made that impossible. Or perimenopause, but yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (23:31)

Like when I was on it, for instance, I didn’t feel this sadness, but like when we were talking about how we raise our kids now, a story like pops in my mind this past weekend. My daughter’s a high school senior and we’ve been going on college tours. And so we went to this one college and they’re talking about all the opportunities and everything. And I just look back and I think of like how much anxiety and depression has taken from me in terms of that, because I wasn’t medicated when I was in college and I feel like I secluded myself, I made assumptions against people that kind of protect myself from uncomfortable social situations, and I didn’t fully put myself out there. And so there was a bit of grieving and like right now I’m still crying. Look, I’m crying again.

Jennie Monness (24:16)

I was just gonna say you’re gonna make me emotional. This is like a real emotional trigger for me too. And just the empathy that I feel for you in looking back and feeling those things. I totally, and I feel it too. I will say that I have those times where I look back and I’m like, I wish I showed up for myself differently. Look what I sacrificed when I didn’t have to because they’re so in my head. But I had those even on my 40th birthday, which was two years ago. And when I was on medication, and I feel like maybe the purpose for us with medication was to help us get to the place we’re at now to see like, what it was like to take from ourselves when we were in such throws of like, you’re not even being able to like, you know, get out of our heads to being in a place when we weren’t in the throws to now be like, okay, like maybe I could do this.

You know what I’m saying? I know that that’s like a mouthful, but to me, that’s what it feels that like there was no growth to happen when you’re like in the trenches, you know?

JoAnn Crohn (25:25)

you need it taken away a little bit. I totally identify with that because this podcast in particular, I had such social anxiety, I would never be able to talk to people like I do on this podcast. I would like have panic attacks almost getting on with somebody that I didn’t know at the beginning of recording this. And we’ve been doing this for five years now. And when I went on the medication, that went away, that went down so much so that I could come on, I could be calm, I could have that logical part of my mind engaged. So it’s almost like I was able to use it to actually rewire my neural circuitry by taking actions that I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t been on the medication.

Jennie Monness (26:10)

And then now you can access when you’re maybe like gonna come on and you’re feeling that you’re like, wait, but I’ve been doing this. Like I can do this. Yeah.

Brie Tucker (26:19)

I definitely think that like the impact that all of this has had on me as well, similar to you guys, like I’ve struggled with depression mostly in my life and then anxiety as well, but more so the depression. And I remember when I was younger going to the library, was, I was in high school and during lunch one day I went in the library and I was like, I wonder if I have depression. And I looked it up and I’m like, go get the encyclopedia.

and a couple of books on it, right? Read it and you’re more like, okay, so this is what I have, okay, and it says that if it’s reoccurring, it’ll come back in a few years. And I guess my point of the story is, like you guys, I can reflect back on all the times that were so much harder than they needed to be because I was doing it on my own, because I didn’t want to tell my parents I was having these thoughts or feelings because first of all, they never expressed it themselves. They never asked anything really about how I was feeling on a normal basis, you know what I mean?

JoAnn Crohn (27:14)

So you didn’t want to be the burden. I feel that, yes.

Brie Tucker (27:17)

And I don’t want that for my kids so much. And I know that there are so many things that could have gone better, right? I could have showed up as a better version of myself had I been able to get the help that I needed, but I was too scared to ask for it. Had somebody put their hand out when I was younger and had said, you look like you might be struggling with something, can I help support you? I don’t know if I could have said the word yes, but I certainly would have nodded yes enthusiastically. And so I want that for my kids.

My kids are little older than yours, Jennie. have one who’s going off to college on Sunday and another who’s a senior in high school. So a little bit older, but yeah, like I’ve always been very big on talking about their feelings and how are they, and are you struggling? Like mom’s here, I’ll help. I tell them about therapy. I tell them about my meds. My husband’s really great when I’m having a struggle day and I’m snippy of asking me if I’m having a rough day and I’ll be like, yes. And then he’ll help me communicate it if I have a difficult time with my kids.

I love what we’re showing them, is that it’s okay to not be perfect 24-7.

JoAnn Crohn (28:21)

It’s okay to not be okay. Yeah.

Brie Tucker (28:25)

Okay, admit that we did not turn out okay, right Jennie?

Jennie Monness (28:28)

Yeah, you know that I just changed that to add a dot dot dot at the end should have been from the beginning. But yes, these are the ways when we like acknowledge or look back on what you were both saying that we weren’t okay at those times, but like there’s so much growth that can happen from that. You know what I mean? And again, like we can reach, I feel like our highest potential and I don’t mean like successes and things like that. I mean, like for ourselves, know, ⁓ at the core of who we are. Yeah.

Similarly, like, you know, I was just saying that even at my 40th birthday, I look back and I was like, I was so in my head, all these things. For me, what has really enabled me to get to the place of not giving into like those times has been this journey that I went on that like, I’m able to access, like it is true that there was like a rewiring there, you know? However, JoAnn, it sounds like from your examples that you’re able to like give an example of how you rewired without a journey, is really incredible that you were able to like, have these experiences, go on medication now go off and like, not just go back to that place. Maybe sometimes but like it sounds like you’re

JoAnn Crohn (29:38)

There’s a lot of things I’m exploring right now on how to deal with it. You mentioned the rewiring of the brain using psychedelics. And I don’t know if you’ve heard of TMS, the transcranial magnetic stimulation. That is something. It rewires your brain in the same way, but it’s a machine that’s used by a therapist or practitioner. It uses magnetic pulses to encourage neuroplasticity in the brain. And so I am saying.

I am trying that. just had two sessions. feel a little calmer and it’s supposed to be six sessions total. And it’s just supposed to get better and better and better. But yeah, that’s what I’m pursuing now.

Jennie Monness (30:18)

Have you shared that yet? Like on here?

JoAnn Crohn (30:20)

shared it?

No, this is the first time I’m talking about it because I just had my first two sessions yesterday and the day before. So I will once the journey’s a little more, I can see some results from it. So Jennie, thank you for joining us today and like sharing all of this and being vulnerable with us because I really do believe like sharing more stories of anxiety and depression really helps people feel less alone.

JoAnn Crohn (30:48)

To shift to the other side. We always like to end the episode with looking forward to the future. So what’s coming up for you right now that you’re excited about?

Jennie Monness (30:58)

Well, I’m so excited to be on this journey, like truly for anyone listening, like I’m not just saying that, like if it gives anyone hope or motivation to kind of like do work that they don’t want to do or that they’re avoiding. I’m in a place where like even the struggles that are ahead of me feel not exciting, but feel like real growth opportunities. And then aside from that, I’m really excited for back to school. I know that sounds kind of like crazy, but for what I do with work,

whether it be Charmspring and giving parents tools to help with those transitions and some new collaborations and partnerships that we’re going to announce. And then with Union Square Play, we have new programming. So I’m excited to get back into the swing of all of that.

JoAnn Crohn (31:41)

That’s exciting. Back to school used to be such an exciting time for me as a teacher. Just trying all the new things and doing the new stuff.

Jennie Monness (31:49)

It’s like a fresh start.

Brie Tucker (31:50)

I’m just happy for back to school because that means my pumpkin spice lattes aren’t far behind.

JoAnn Crohn (31:55)

And peppermint bocas aren’t too far behind that. I mean, we’re just toning down the flavors.

Jennie Monness (32:02)

Right, you gotta love fall and winter and you know, yeah.

JoAnn Crohn (32:07)

Yeah, definitely. Well, to all of you out there in podcast land, we hope that we brought you just a little feeling of not aloneness in this whole journey of motherhood to know that the feelings that you’re feeling like you’re not the only one. And until next time, remember the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you. We’ll talk to you later. Thanks.

Brie Tucker (32:26)

Thanks for stopping by!