Hi SweetSmarties! I was so excited to interview Oona Hanson this month! I have been aware of her work for many years, so getting to talk to her directly was a dream come true! We both have a lot of theoretical knowledge about Body Image and developing a healthy relationship to food, eating, digestion, etc., and while I really appreciate that, I wanted to focus on practical applications during this conversation. We discuss concrete steps we can actually take in our daily lives to improve this, as well as warning signs to help identify more severe issues, such as a variety of disordered behavior. I also asked her for some confidence advice, and she shared the gems of validating our feelings and expressing compassion towards ourselves. If you're interested in athletics, there's some special content in this episode for you that's pretty rare for this show, because it's not a topic I often choose to feature. :) I hope you find our talk helpful, and enjoy listening to us. Until next time my lovelies! <3

P.S. This was a remote interview with some tech challenges, so I recorded a brief addendum explaining all that, and did my best to edit out all our misalignments to improve your listening experience. 🪻

Hi everyone, I got to interview Jennifer Maslar Teer from Beach Cities Literacy, and I’m so excited for you to learn about all her helpful services! She’s a reading interventionist, special education teacher, an executive functioning coach, accountability partner, IEP (Individualized Education Program) advocate, and so much more! We spoke about her background, her path to this beautiful, important, fulfilling work, and then dove a little deeper into the details of how she helps people in a variety of ways. We also discussed how overextended people tend to be these days, and some of the consequences of that, as well as psychological struggles of people under immense pressure to excel, such as the connection among perfectionism, procrastination, self-sabotage, shame, ego, and other complexly inter-related factors. There are so many gems here, so I hope you enjoy listening to this episode, and our conversation benefits you on multiple levels. If you’d like to collaborate with Jennifer, you can visit her website https://beachcitiesliteracy.com. Thanks for sharing our compassionate curiosity, openness to growth, and supporting this project I pour my soul into; talk to you next time, SweetSmarties! 📖💖🐚

Hi everybody, I had the best time talking to Natalie Croswell, Fit4Mom Torrance franchise owner, the second person to approach me for an interview! Can you believe it?! Two now! We're leveling up! :D

We spoke about the value of developing genuine bonds from a place of empathy and understanding, building a beautifully supportive community of connected caregivers, as I mentioned in my title. :)

We also discussed healthy, practical ways to nurture ourselves, and increase our capacity to care for others, while specifying that we don't always have to frame our existence through a caregiving lens.

We're multifaceted people who play many roles in our lives, and we need resources to fulfill all of them, so it's most important that we find ways to replenish what we spend, no matter how we choose to use them. <3

From our conversation, it seems like Fit4Mom helps tend to many of those aspects, from physical fitness to mental and social heath, and beyond!

We touched on so much more, learned and grew from each other, and shared some fun giggles, which I particularly enjoyed. 😄

I’m excited for the positive impact this episode will have, which Fit4Mom calls the ripple! That concept of our interconnectedness really exemplifies how this company cares for so many dimensions of our wellbeing! 💖

Although I haven’t experienced it directly, from Natalie’s account, the focus on relationships, vulnerable authenticity, realistic skill development, and general holistic approach all sounds very commendable! 🪽

I look forward to discovering how far our ripple will expand! 💓

Fit4Mom calls May the “Month of Mama,” and is doing many things to celebrate that!

You can attend a whole week of classes for free that month, using the link to this trial: https://torrance.fit4mom.com/month-of-mama

If you’re a local independent business (in the South Bay of Los Angeles County), you can also apply to participate in their event on Monday, May 12th, 10am-12pm at Charles H. Wilson Park in Torrance, California with this link: https://mom-torrance.paperform.co/

Lastly, you can visit the Torrance location’s website torrance.fit4mom.com or their Instagram page @fit4momtorrance.

Woo, what great timing for this episode publication! I hope you love listening to it, and that it helps you in some way! 🥰

Talk to you next time! 😇

Love,

T.J. 🪻

I interviewed Tiffany Spadola of South Bay Parent Coaching, and we discussed so many amazingly fascinating, helpful topics! We talked about being highly sensitive people, as well as spirited and strong-willed. We spoke about Neurodivergence, Theory of Mind, the Excitability of Giftedness, non-stop active minds that struggle to sleep, the immense benefits of pretend play, and so much more! She’s also a certified potty trainer, so she mentioned that a little, especially emphasizing how different every child is, and intending to remove the shame and blame she’s noticed parents and children often receive during that sometimes challenging process. I loved our conversation, learned a ton, and found it hugely beneficial to connect with someone who understands and empathizes with a lot of my experiences. I hope it helps you too, and at the very least, that you enjoy listening! :)

Here’s her website:

https://southbayparentcoaching.com

You can also join her Instagram & Facebook communities:

@southbayparentcoaching

https://www.facebook.com/southbayparentcoaching

I interviewed Leanne Sargeant from the Wonder Workshops earlier this month, and we had such a fabulous adventure together! We both marvel at the beauty around us, and we experienced a fantastic example of that perspective while searching for a place to record! We first went to a library near and dear to our hearts, planning to use one of the study rooms, but when they were unexpectedly occupied, we roamed around looking for an alternative location. Early on in the process, we noticed this gorgeous bird called a Scarlet Flycatcher! We paused our quest, to admire and appreciate this stunning creature for a moment, which was a fantastic shared experience that exemplified how we prefer to live, and what we intended to discuss in this episode! After traveling all the way to a different city, we eventually settled on an outdoor spot, so this recording has more background noise than usual. I tried to edit it out as well as I could, and I hope it doesn’t distract you too much. Anyway, we loved talking about our aligned perspectives, and had a blast bonding as people throughout this whole endeavor, so I hope you learn tons, connect with us, and find our conversation as enriching as we did. Thank you so much SweetSmarties, and I’ll talk to you next time! 🦋🪻☀️🌈🐚🍄❄️🪼🐞🐌

You can visit Leanne’s website https://thewonderworkshops.com or follow her on Instagram @thewonderworkshops

Hello kind curious cuties! I’m thrilled to begin a new season with you! Welcome to the first episode of season 2! I got to interview Bryana Kappadakunnel this month, the first person to ever come to me, which was a huge deal for this project! She has an organization called Conscious Mommy in which she helps people parent themselves, which in turn helps them parent their children. 😇 She’s a licensed therapist, and wrote a book that comes out on January 28th called Parent Yourself First!

We both have acting backgrounds, went to college in New York (she to NYU and I to Sarah Lawrence), worked in preschools, and have directly experienced the therapeutic power of performing arts. I was fascinated to speak with someone I connect with in so many ways, who is incredibly knowledgeable, capable, compassionate, and accomplished! I loved learning together and bonding as always, which I’m elated to include you in now too! 💞✨

One funny behind the scenes tidbit is that we were both coughing throughout the interview, which I edited out, but at one point, my voice sounds a little wonky, almost as if I’m going to cry as I talk about perfectionism and gifted child syndrome. As emotional as these topics can be, I wasn’t in that state during our conversation. lol What I wish I could’ve left in was us supporting each other through the experience, because that was honestly so sweet: such beautiful empathy and solidarity between us in those moments. 🥹

I was bummed we didn’t have time to discuss all my questions, so just to let you know, the ones we had to skip were about how her performing artist self manifests in her parenting and her work, and the relationship between Acting and Therapy. I was going to share my perspective on all that too, so hopefully I’ll have another opportunity in the future. 🎭🎬🎤

You can explore more of her work at consciousmommy.com and you can pre-order her book here: https://www.consciousmommy.com/book. She’s even going on tour! On January 29th, 6:30pm, she’ll be at “{pages} a bookstore” in Los Angeles and on January 30th, 7pm, she’ll be at “A Great Good Place for Books” in Oakland! I hope you’ll be able to meet her if you’re in California like us, and that you enjoy listening to our talk! 🥰💫🫧🪻🦋

Until next time SweetSmarties!

Love your founder, T.J. 🦄❄️🐚💎🍓👑

Hi SweetSmarties! Here's the second part of the finale, featuring my subsequent three interviews with Joslyn, Charlotte, & Skyler! Joslyn is my neighbor whose children I take care of, Charlotte is a Psychology professor at Rutgers and published author of research I studied before I launched this project, and Skyler works at the Crohn's & Colitis Foundation, which we're both connected to, because she has Ulcerative Colitis and I have Crohn's Disease (both of us since childhood). This reflection and review episode discusses episodes 8 through 10 of this first season. I hope you enjoy listening to what I chose to mention, and that you loved our whole season! I'm so grateful you're here, and look forward to growing and learning together even more next season! :D 💓✨

Hello Lovelies, in this episode, I speak about my solo introduction, and first three interviews with my cousin Genevieve, her husband Mark, my neighbor Lauren, and the founder of Children's Place Montessori School, Jennifer, and her son Craig. These are the first seven episodes, because I divided the second interview into two parts and the third into three. I hope you enjoy listening to my commentary, and going down memory lane with me.

I'm releasing the second part later this month, covering my following three interviews, spanning across episodes eight through ten. I hope you loved the whole season, and I'm so looking forward to continuing with a second one in the new year! :D