Hi friends, Rita here. This is Where We Pivot. So, welcome to Once Upon the Healing. And as you can see, the title of this episode is Pivot, Pivot, Pivot. Um, God has been so much fun recording with kids, listening to the reading the story, getting their perspective on how the stories made them feel or how certain circumstances in their lives made them feel, and really getting to know and getting to hear that from their perspective. Now, why are we pivoting? If you remember the very first episode that we recorded a few months ago, it was about friendship, playground problems, and I had my own child, my oldest, Madelina, read the story and reminisce what has happened to her back in fourth grade. She had a social challenge with two other friends, and it's it got pretty bad to a point where we had to seek out therapists and counseling and really actively engaged in that dynamic to make sure that all the children were coming out of it um unscathed, um, so to speak. Well, that was then, and two years later, we thought we have solved the problem, quote unquote. And little do we know this uh right like literally about three to four months right before the end of school, the same triad um blew up again. And I remember just a few weeks ago, me sitting there wondering what had just happened. I thought we have taken care of it. Um Madelina has new tools, she understands what is going on in the dynamic, how to walk away. Why are we still here? Um funny enough, that whole episode for some odd reason reminded me of my own very challenging social circumstances back when I was her age in fifth grade, when I was 11. This is 35, 36 years ago. And the instant as I remember it, now again, memory gets foggy, but how I remembered it was as I was very competitive in my piano performance with another fellow student, um, we were always neck to neck in competitions, in ranking and examinations and all the things. We were never particularly close. Um, our parents didn't really talk to each other, but I remember always watching what she was doing, what she was playing, how she was playing, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm sure she was doing the same to me. Um that memory came flooding in. And 36 years later, here I am wondering what happened to her. Um, where is she now? What is she doing? Is she still playing piano? Um, and um I decided to seek her out. And you know, how it's all gonna pan out, I don't know yet. I have found her. Um she wildly lives in Santa Monica. I'm in Pasadena, we're about half an hour away. I went to elementary school all the way on the other side of the Pacific in Taiwan. So how we landed in the same state, pretty much the same city, is Beyond Me. Um, we have mate contact, and I just can't wait to catch up with her. Um, to find out what happened, how things are. Now, one thing my takeaway from that was 36 years later, me reconnecting with this friend who we were we were really on each other's throat. We didn't like each other, and now all I have for her is love and hope, and just wanting to genuinely find out how she is. Reflecting that back to what Madelina has been going through in the past two years is this realization that how a lot of us are approaching life or the journey of parenting is probably uh eskewed, um, probably has been skewed for a long time in the sense that how we have been conditioned and our upbringing is every problem needs to be solved, every problem has a solution. And so if you look at how we have approached technology, health, um, both physical and mental, is that this is a problem we're gonna figure out how to solve it. And what I realized is sometimes a problem isn't a problem to be solved, a problem or hardship is there to help us grow our capacity to sit with it, to sit with the discomfort. And how do we grow that capacity in children? The best way, and I think the only way to be able to teach them that is actually to look inward to all of us inside as adults, in terms of how are we sitting with our own discomfort, how are we growing our own capacity, which leads to the pivot. Once upon the feeling, cannot only be talking about children's feelings in isolation. Because what we're willing to see, and what we're willing to feel, and what we're acknowledging and validating on the other end, highly, if not solely, dependent on how we are seeing ourselves, how we're will, what we're willing to sit with, and um what we have a capacity for. That determines our filter. That depends on the filter, how we look at the world, how we look at our children, and how we raise them. So as we move on, I uh will be putting up much more, many more episodes, talking to authors and parents and founders, um, and trying to explore this interwovenness, um, if that's a word, of how we show up as adults and what we're working through, and how that is reflected in our parenting, and how that is reflected in how our children cope and deal and grow um in their life. So I am super excited about this. Um exploring this rich, colorful tapestry, if you will, of life in general, um going through the lens of being a parent. And I hope that you will join me on this journey and explore that within you. Um, I am walking a path, and I feel like it's one of those visions where I am stepping on a lily pad and then the next one show up. And some of you have been with me on this journey for many years. Some of you may have just found me. I am so happy you're here. I am so happy that I get to do this, and I am so happy that we get to walk this life, this path of parenting, this path of raising the next generation and asking all of these fun, unhinged, if you will, questions and trying to answer them together, or just sit with it because some of us sometimes they don't have any answers, or maybe the answer is not gonna come until 30, 40, 50 years later. Who knows? It's a lot of fun. So welcome. Uh, here it is to all of us, constantly pivoting as founders, as parents, as human beings, and as I'll pivot together. And um stay tuned for the next few episodes. Um, and I hope you enjoy it. You can always reach me at Rita at Gushi.world or DM me on social media, on Instagram, or just um yeah, drop me a message. I'm so excited you're here. Thank you. I wish you all the best. Take care of yourself, and we'll talk soon.