Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Scratch That: Parenting & ReParenting Off Script

Hi, friends! Happy Monday💛

As Caitlin prepares to to welcome their new little human into the world, we are sending you a little signing off episode with a found poem that emerged from all of the conversations we've gathered since we kicked this thing off last year.

Thank you for being along for the ride!

A Scratch That Poem

*Note: Every line from this poem is linked to the Scratch That episode from which it originally sprouted.

Hello, little butterbean, Sweet silly goose. little anxious heart. Dear listener, the freaks, other weirdos my sister Laura

Come sit with me. 

we can't believe you're here 

your presence feels like a miraculous little sparkle lighting up the dark sky.

What I hear us talking about is

becoming was a pretty disorienting, lonely experience.

Like we were gonna be lawyers and doctors and like be wearing suits or something. 

I have literally gashed the control panel of the passenger side door out with my wheelchair as I transferred in and out of this car for the last 15 years. And if anybody sits in the passenger seat, it does look like I'm trying to kidnap them

oh, this is, this is very different than I thought what almost 40 was gonna look like. 

I doubt myself all the time

I shrunk from the eye of the storm 

I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

oh, dear Lord. 

I am so quick to feel like, oh, you are ruining this. And if you could just get it right 

We were at the pool. I didn't bring a towel. I didn't bring a towel to the pool. Can we use your towels? Oh, my God. Like, what. What is that? 

the moment when you show up and you feel like the child in a room full of adults.

this little duck that looks really peaceful on top of the water, but underneath, I'm just paddling, like, furiously. 

and I couldn't let anyone know it

This is the dirty secret. And nobody can know that, actually, I'm like, I shouldn't be doing this, and I need to keep pretending like I can.

the failure of not matching 

when we immediately think like, oh, I should know

what the fuck is that?

It was like grief. It was shame.

it is feeling like a lot of doing and grasping and, like, white knuckling. 

I can never stop working relentlessly and fearfully to get it right, get it right, get it right.

nose to the grindstone

I don't think I'm capable of feeling easy breezy 

It feels all tangled and kind of ugly.

Tell me if I'm wrong. Did others feel this way? 

As I'm understanding it right now in the very middle of it

Yep.

I'm raising my hand here, 

Was everyone just pretending to be okay, or was I broken?

oh, no. No. No. No.

I just don't buy it. 

There was also this

There was a way that you were trying to help yourself survive even in that fumbling

I'm holding myself together with harshness and rigidity and why I oughta.

oh, the speed and rush and flurry and chaos and check, check, check. Because so many times it felt like my body was not mine. 

oh, like I'm actually in much more pain than I'm letting myself admit. 

and and how do we, like, not keep our bodies rigid 

What if your most important job was to notice, to witness breath, tears, goosebumps, heartbeats? Look! 

just, like, stop to look at a trail of ants in a sidewalk crack. 

Listen to the gasp from the back seat at the sight of a sunrise. Mama, take a picture. 

oh, there's my breath. Oh, there I am in there. 

You feel it, right?

Yes, dear Lord I have goosebumps up to my cheeks

Mhmm. I mean, you know it in your body probably.

One breath at a time. 

watch me Breathe in and out.

a lot of us out here don't match the pictures we've been given

I don't see through your eyes, you don't see through my eyes. We're all seeing things differently. 

We are learning 

we are recalibrating

in flux 

reorienting, and it is dizzying. 

The hints come in little bread crumbs, and I think you can trust it.

horses don't have an ability to lie to humans

grab the reins and trust that gut feeling

That is the thing we have control over, trying to show up, trying to show up again. We don't have control over the outcome.

It is all going to happen. 

One day at a time, baby.

it will be glorious and unbearable

And yes, it was funny because we made it so.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. 

we can use goals as playgrounds. 

The timelines that are presented to us are so narrow. And that is not what life is like. It's just not. 

Julia Child didn't start cooking until she was 45 or whatever.

Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Now I'm going yes. 

like, paying attention to what is alive in you. 

You can just shift the question.

What are the things you're moving towards versus just what you're going against?

how can you rearrange what's in the box? 

what is it that you're resisting in yourself? 

what are we to do but imagine better futures?

this off script, kind of like, scrappy, build it yourself way, I'm like, oh, yeah, 

Like, we can just start asking different questions

That's freaking sick, bro.

That's freaking metal.

I think a new answer is emerging in me and I don't know what it is yet. 

but I do know that my body responded 

I'm paying attention to how my body feels right now.

my heart has not stopped pounding

so many tears coming up 

I feel like this tingling of excitement

my face is already hurting from all the smiling

And, also 

right now, I'm just like a hot jellyfish mess. You know? 

It's, like, so uncomfortable and hard to let things be messy

And I think it has been messier than I expected, but

But that messy middle was so important. 

grappling with the real limitations of my body. 

Wouldn't it be lovely, if you could grow wings and fly? 

Of course there's grief. There's loss. 

but two things can be true at the same time. 

The pain and the beauty, they're usually, like, intertwined and pushed right up next to each other.

Notice the strength and the toll. There is so much pain and fear and loss bleeding across this planet. Notice the question, how are we still breathing? 

Notice the blooms of survival.

It is what happens in between you and the person across from you and in that space, the divine comes in. However you think of the divine

Like, this is beautiful and complicated. This is the juicy part. This is the rough part.

you are a speck of spectacular dust here for one quick gasp of holy shit, I'm here.

oh, yeah. It's probably supposed to be strange because it's inherently a weird thing

to change and evolve and grow

you will always be you, you will never stop changing. 

It is so strange to put a part of yourself into the world 

This little pocket of conversation that we're having

this time capsule.

this one peak into one moment of time. 

Holy shit we just circled so many different things.

And did we land at exactly the place that we started? Maybe.

So thank you for being here.

and thank you. Thank you for this.

thank you for giving me this space

thank you for staying in the exploration

Thank you for digging in and winding through this path with us. 

I have so many more questions

Mentioned In This Episode:

Our collaborative Scratch That Spotify playlist "Songs That Have Held Us"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Are there moments from the last year of episodes that you would add to a Scratch That poem?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tatum Tricarico embodies a set of identities we don't always see together – she is a proud Disabled person, a Queer woman of faith, and a recent graduate from divinity school on her way to becoming a pastor. Tatum knows, first-hand, a lot of the wounds disabled and queer people have felt inside religious communities, and she's here to offer all of us – the ones on the outside and inside – new scripts for understanding the divine.

Check out Tatum's forthcoming book, Blessed Is the Body, a reflection on disability justice, the holiness of inclusion and acceptance, disabled leadership, the finitude of our bodies, and allowing space for lament and acceptance. Whether you grew up hearing your body is sinful or haven't read a page of the Bible, this episode offers us a tender reframe on how we could think about our bodies and what needs (or doesn't need) fixing.

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

⛪️ Tatum's early experiences with disability, queerness, and religion.

🧳 What it feels like to Tatum to embody a (disabled, queer, religious) role full of tension and contradiction.

🐧 Finding God in the "in between" spaces, like penguins.

🍃 Why Tatum had to let go of who she thought God was.

🏳️‍🌈 What Tatum thinks religious communities are missing out on when they exclude people.

👩‍🦯‍➡️ The yuck history of churches fighting to be excluded from the Americans with Disabilities Act.

💌 Tatum's decision to stay in the church, even as she continues to think creatively about God.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Find Tatum on Instagram @blind_person_in_area

Pre-Order her book from Herald Press or Amazon

Tatum's addition to the Scratch That Spotify playlist of songs that have held us – "Sight" by Sleeping At Last

Nancy Eiesland's book The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability

Amy Kenny 's book My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Do you relate to any of the experience Rebekah and Tatum shared in this episode? Have you revised any scripts around what is holy or divine?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

If you've listened to this podcast for three minutes, you know that we are big-time, long-time fans of author/illustrator Tyler Feder (Bodies Are Cool, Are You Mad At Me?, and Dancing At the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir). Tyler has a unique ability of finding the simplest, sturdiest revision to break open the one-dimensional world in which we often live. Today, we talk with her about how she came to rewrite scripts around bodies and grief. (And! We get a sneak peek at a future script she might like to dismantle and rewrite.) We are still basking in the glow of this conversation✨

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🫀 How Tyler ended up writing the picture book that all of us needed.

💀 The weird similarities in the ways people respond to disability and death.

🎭 How Tyler became the kind of person who can hold onto grief and laughter at the same time.

😬 The weird things people said around Tyler after her mom died and a peek at alternate scripts.

⏳ A cultural script Tyler would like to revise.

🎀 The 3 questions Rebekah's kid really wanted to ask Tyler, and her answers.

🕺 A dash of Myers Briggs/Enneagram chitter-chatter.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Tyler's books Bodies Are Cool, Are You Mad At Me?, and Dancing At the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir

Tyler's addition to the Scratch That Spotify playlist of songs that have held us – "Kind of Girl" by MUNA

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! 

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Barry Lee's art is beautiful without being precious, whimsical but sturdy, absurd and deeply relatable, disrupts traditional beauty standards and is absolutely stunning. As a disabled and non-binary artist, they offer us a bright and playful world with a warmest, gentlest gut-punch. There was SO MUCH we wanted to talk with them about. Like when did Barry learn to separate from their body? How are they finding their way back? And what does art have to do with any of it? The conversation that unspooled spanned from early medical trauma to the curious things our grad school professors said that shaped our life arcs to an exploration of what we're moving toward today. They gave us so much to think about💛

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🩺 How Barry learned early that their disabled body didn't belong to them.

📓 The artifact from the past Barry's mom gave them that prompted a turn toward embodiment.

😷 The near-death experience that taught Barry to trust their body.

🗓️ Why Barry likes the word practice to describe learning to be in their body.

💌 The entirely unique and expansive way that Barry defines accessibility.

✨ Invitations from disability and gender to dismantle.

🌱 Exploring what we are FOR (as opposed to simply against).

📦 Thinking outside of the box versus rearranging what's inside the box.

⚡️ Getting comfortable with being unpalatable.

🧳 Removing the shame that so often rests on top of suffering.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Gentle Reminders Journal: A Deep, Loving Guide to Help You Show Up for Yourself & Others

Barry's Instagram, Substack Portal Hopping, and website!

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Do you share this history of disembodiment? How did/are you finding your way back?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Have you gone through a big life change that has left you feeling disconnected from yourself? Maybe it's becoming a parent? Or a new illness/diagnosis? Maybe it's a new job or moving to a new city? It's so easy for us to lose ourselves when we confront these kinds of personal shifts, let alone all the great wide forces in the world. It's easy to get lost with new restrictions on time, easy to be flattened by survival mode, easy to go limp when we feel powerless. In this episode we ask – How can we get underneath what was serving us before to reimagine a new shape for now? What was fulfilling us before, and what accommodations do we need meet those needs in a new landscape?

Tune In to Hear Up Talk About:

🌶️ Caitlin's spicy hot-take soap box.

🕯️ How Caitlin layered & modified their pre-parenting practices after Charlie arrived.

🚚 How to decipher what to salvage and what to let go of.

🌱 When it's not just your circumstances, but YOU are the one changing.

⏰ How the restrictions of time and money complicate things.

🌎 All the big-picture, cultural forces that keep us from creating.

📝 Letting go of what any of this is supposed to look like, and writing scripts for ourselves that make us feel alive.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

The New One by Mike Birbiglia and J. Hope Stein

Our Scratch That episode "Getting Of the Conveyer Belt of Production with Maria Bowler"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Have you gone through a big life change that has left you feeling disconnected from yourself? Like your lost or something is missing?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Is seeing yourself through the eyes of others your default setting? Are you highly attuned to the ways you're perceived? Same, baby. Same! In this episode, Caitlin tells us about the practice of self-portraiture as a tool for generating self-reflection/care/awareness/compassion for ourselves. There are plenty of reasons people resist this kind of witnessing, but, as we talk about here, it might also be a powerful way to take care of our micro and macro communities.

Tune In to Hear Up Talk About:

👀 Perceiving ourselves versus perceiving ourselves being perceived.

⁉️ The workshop moment Rebekah realized some people move through world wholly unaware of how others perceive them. (What?!)

🚫 Reasons people resist or feel hesitant to "self-gaze."

🪩 A broad set of mediums we can use to create space for "self gaze."

⏳ The value of "being with yourself in it" versus the final product.

😭 Caitlin's reflection on the moment when they took their first self-portrait ™️.

📷 What Rebekah told a recently disabled college student about self-acceptance.

✨ The counter-intuitive collective result of our "navel gazing."

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

John Berger's Ways of Seeing

Our episode with Kate Bingaman Burt when she talks about her daily drawing practice (including the time she illustrated her credit card bills every month).

Our episode with Cody Cook-Parrott where they talk about their year of daily dance videos.

Rebekah's Instagram live chat with Kelle and Lainey Hampton

Andrea Gibson's poem "Tincture" that ends with the line "Tell us again about goosebumps./Tell us again about pain."

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Have you practiced any kind of self-portraiture? Tell us about it!

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

It's true! Can you believe it? We've been sending these conversations out into the world and through your speakers for a year now! Today we take a beat to reflect on the experience, pulling out steady threads and big-takeaways. We play a few clips that we're still thinking about and lift the lid on the noise, pressures, and messy insecurities we've bumped into while making this project. There are many big and genuine thank yous, as well as a little peek at some Scratch That changes ahead. Thank you for being here with us!!💛

Mentioned In This Episode:

"Getting Off the Conveyer Belt of Production with Maria Bowler"

Maria Bowler's book Making Time: A New Vision for Crafting a Life Beyond Productivity

Rebekah's Substack This Too

"Flipping the Script on Disability with Lucy & James Catchpole"

"The Hilarious & Heartbreaking with Hannah & Shane Burcaw"

"What Paradigms Are We Building? Part 2 with Abbie VanMeter"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! 

🍎 Apple
🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Kate Bingaman Burt is so many things – illustrator, educator, parent, head of the Graphic Design program at Portland State University, and founder of the coolest risograph printing press and studio, Outlet PDX. She's also been drawing every day since 2006. Today we ask her how she melds these worlds together. How did becoming a parent affect her identity as an artist? How does her art practice shape her parenting? And how does she balance alllll the roles and tasks? Whether you're a parent, an artist, or none of the above, this conversation has some wisdom for you. Caitlin is listening on a loop.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🧶 The legacy of creativity Kate grew up in.

💐 The moment in a small-town Missouri flower shop when Kate realized she could earn money making things with her hands.

📊 When our kids don't seem interested in the things we value so highly.

🚦 How Kate uses rules, limitations, and restrictions to generate creative momentum.

🫟 Diving into the process without the pressure for an amazing product.

❌ What to do with that helpless feeling that we're damaging our kids with our own stuff.

〰️ Making space for looking back and connecting the dots.

👻 Tuning in to the voice that compels us to make things without worrying if it's important enough.

🔍 Kate's advice for avoiding burnout.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Kate's TEDTalk "Rules of Engagement"

The Ten Rules from Corita Kent. The Rules mentioned into today's episode include #8 – "Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes, and #9 – "Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think."

Kate's addition to the Scratch That Spotify playlist of songs that have held us – Paul Simon's "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War."

For more of Kate in your life, head to her website!

Babies Caitlin and Kate at a workshop Kate hosted in Portland.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What stood out to you about our conversation with Kate? Anything you're tucking away or still chewing on?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Do you ever feel like you're doing it wrong? Like everyone else has it figured out, and you're the only one flailing? Today we open the can of worms that wriggle around when we compare ourselves to the ones around us. Why are we so good at noticing our own lack, but not our abundance? What do we miss out on when we strive to match instead of living our unique values out loud? What do we do when we are grieving the very thing our friend has? Today we dive into the complexity and offer a few breadcrumbs for navigating this gnarly terrain.

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🙃 The moments of comparison that make Rebekah like a child among the grownups.

🫟 When the thing you're good at doesn't always look shiny or tidy.

🌤️ Learning to notice where we have abundance in addition to noticing the strain.

🌓 Rebekah grieving not having another kid while Caitlin prepares to welcome theirs.

♿️ How disability can make it taboo to express jealousy/grief for what you don't have.

❓ The guiding question to sort the comparison feelings – What is this actually about?

🤝 What makes it tricky and useful to share when we feel the pang of comparison.

🎨 Letting the both/and of our lives, co-exist side-by-side as a creative script building project.

📬 Less matching for the sake of it and more living our values out loud as a flag to find our people.

Mentioned In This Episode:

The episode we had with Emma Parker about infertility and miscarriage.

The episode when each of us wonders if we will have a second kid.

Our conversation with Amelia Hruby about social media.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Does your brain get stuck in comparison mode? How do you navigate feeling inferior to or envious of the people in your orbit? What are your tools? What are your angsts?

🍎 Apple
🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

As Caitlin prepares Charlie to welcome a sibling into the family, we delve into a swirly conversation about these complicated relationships. How much, if any, control do parents have over siblings relationships? What can parents do (or not do) to foster positive, long lasting relationship between their kids? How did our sibling relationships shape us? And how does that history inform the way we think about siblings relationships now?

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🧭 What drives Caitlin's intentionality in guiding Charlie through the transition of becoming a sibling.

🌈 How Caitlin's experience being the "rainbow baby" shaped siblings dynamics in their family.

📖 Learning to be conscious of the stories we put onto our kids.

🤝 One skill we think is mandatory to maintain sibling relationships over the long haul.

🍄 Disrupting our assigned roles within a family ecosystem.

🌱 Practicing seeing each other anew, over and over again.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Nine Months: Before a Baby Is Born written by Miranda Paul and illustrated by Jason Chin

When Aidan Became a Brother written by Kyle Lukoff and illustrated by Kaylani Juanita

What Makes a Baby written by Cory Silverberg and illustrated by Fiona Smyth

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! How have your sibling relationships evolved over your life? What role did you play in your family of origin? How are you thinking about the relationships between your kids? And do you have anyone in your life you'd like to try to see anew?

🍎 Apple
🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Do you get heart palpitations just thinking about planning a kids' birthday party? Or wish all your days didn't just blur into a big bowl of mush? Today we take a careful and curious look at how we mark moments, big and small. How can we do this with a little more intention and a little less stress??

Tune In to Hear Up Talk About:

🍋 The inexpensive and spectacular ways Caitlin's mom marked a moment, large or small.

🕯️ Elevating a mundane moment through attention to sensory detail.

🧶 Why Rebekah still remembers the first day of kindergarten.

🎊 The many many ways paper chains have marked moments in Caitlin's life.

✨ Shifting from the big & expensive to the tiny, doable, and affordable.

🛒 The celebratory groceries practice Caitlin & Andrew share.

🤡 What makes planning kids' birthday parties so freaking stressful.

📝 Breaking the script on rehearsed moment to create novelty .

🏔️ Putting more energy into creating peak moments and less on fixing everyday grumbles.

🗓️ Marking moments as a way of making sure you remember your own life.

🍼 The REAL reason Caitlin is having a baby shower.

The sensory birthday party Caitlin talked about.

Breakfast in bed on Rebekah's 4th birthday, a smiley face made out of powdered donuts and sausage links.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

If you would like to support Kate Weiners in the aftermath of the fire that damaged her bookstore, Monstera's Plants, you can purchase a gift cared here. They are working very hard to re-open and could use some help in the meantime!

And if you missed our episode with Kate, listen to our conversation here.

The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! How do you think about Caitlin's ideas of "romanticizing" your life or "memorializing" a life before it ends? What ways have you found to make a moment, large or small, more meaningful? What do you think makes this work hard?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Y'ALL. Today is the day! We bring you our chat with writer, artist, dancer, quilter, human, our favorite buddy, and the one-and-only – Cody Cook Parrot!! From the ways they're learning to reparent themselves around money and the discomfort they feel in class jumping to the buoy they feel in trans love and weirdo community, Cody meets us with open-hearted transparency and LOL warmth.

For more of Cody in your life, check out their website – this is where you can find their books, learn more about their podcast, sign up for their newsletter, or enroll in one of their classes.

And don't forget to pre-order their upcoming book! The Practice of Attention Cultivating Presence in a Distracted World

We're excited to share this one with you☀️

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🗒️ Cody's very first ritual practice.

🤸‍♀️ One way that Cody makes personal practice playful instead of punitive.

🫁 The 3 things Cody has been doing consistently for the longest.

💰 How reparenting is becoming a useful tool when little 9 year old Cody is sabotaging adult Cody's financial goals.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 Linking reparenting with Internal Family Systems.

🏳️‍⚧️ The trans love and weirdo community that buoys Cody.

✌️ The words Cody's mentor said to them that helped them delete Instagram years later.

🎲 Taking the leap that aligns with our values before we know the outcome.

📖 Writing the book we needed.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Cody's very first podcast Have Company

The book that invited Cody into their first personal practice – The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Cody's money coach Hadassah Damien and their program "Ride Free Fearless Money"

Cody's book How to Not Always Be Working

Caitlin's book Feel Something Make Something

Our episode with Amelia Hruby about leaving social media

Pre-Order Cody's new book, The Practice of Attention Cultivating Presence in a Distracted World

Cody's addition to the Scratch That Spotify playlist of songs that have held us – Joan Armatrading "Down To Zero"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What question do you think prospective parents should be asking? What questions do you have about parenting? Or what questions do you wish you'd asked before you became one?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

On today's episode, we dive into our postpartum experiences, piecing together in hindsight what happened and why. Caitlin offers the plans they're building to set themselves up for sturdy support this time around. The stories we share are tender, the reflections wobbly, and the plans hopeful.

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🩺 The overwhelming lack of medical curiosity or understanding about PPD and menopause.

🕯️ When Caitlin realized they had capital P – Postpartum depression.

🚫 The horrible experience Caitlin had when they tried to reach out for medical support.

♿️ The roles disability and ableism played in Rebekah's postpartum experience.

❌ A few reasons it can be difficult to tell anyone about your PPD symptoms.

🤝 What is Caitlin doing differently with this pregnancy to prepare for Postpartum?

🛒 The very practical, tangible, helpful thing Caitlin's sister is doing to build in supports for this postpartum stretch.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 The broad number of people who can experience PPD beyond a birthing parent.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What were your experiences around postpartum? And what help have you received or offered during postpartum that felt especially helpful?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Today on Scratch That we are the ones being interviewed! Caitlin's wise and warm BFF, Kaplan Trudo is wading into the process of deciding whether or not to pursue becoming a parent and wants to hear from us. How did we decide we wanted to become parents? What does it feel like to co-parent with another person? They dig in with questions we never thought to ask before becoming parents ourselves.

Want more of Kaplan? You can find their writing and some yoga practices (recorded as love notes to Caitlin 🥹) on Patreon or follow their Instagram.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🔍 What becoming parents showed us about our partners and how it shifted our relationships.

✅ The one thing Rebekah wishes she'd thought more about before becoming a parent.

🕸️ Parenting as a big group project.

🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Caitlin's epiphany about their relationship with their partner as the third client in the therapy room.

🏆 A reframe for the parent who really, really wants to "get it right."

👴 Staying connected to our children/parents as we all get older.

🎮 What happens when our values don't align with our co-parents?

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Our conversation with Shane and Hannah Burcaw where they describe their thoughts on intergenerational living.

Our conversation with Kate Wieners where she talks about using percentage ratings for how important something is to each partner.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What question do you think prospective parents should be asking? What questions do you have about parenting? Or what questions do you wish you'd asked before you became one?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

We gave ourselves a homework assignment – huddle up with our partners and our kids and write a little family manifesto. How simple! How fun! How sweet! LOL. Turns out it might be a bit trickier than our rosy idealism pictured. Today, we share the ragged and the spectacular parts of the experience, offer up the manifestos we made, and brainstorm what we want to try next time.

Tune In to Hear Up Talk About:

🌟 The stakes of manifesto writing that tripped us up from the start.

🔍 What the process of this project revealed to us about ourselves and our families.

🎵 The part of the creation process when Rebekah's family really got on board.

📜 Manifestos as a living breathing document.

🧠 A juicy brainstorm of different manifesto mediums to try.

📋 Caitlin's mini workshop on the purpose of a manifesto and how to approach making one.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Listen to Rebekah's family's manifesto here.

Our conversation with S. Bear Bergman

And his book – Special Topics in Being a Parent: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way

Caitlin always recommends using Lisa Congdon's Values Deck to kick off a manifesto draft.

The manifesto workbook Caitlin uses in their workshops (attached below!)

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What questions do you have about manifesto writing? What sounds daunting or exciting about them? If you end up trying this, let us know how it goes! Ragged, spectacular, or anything in between – all parts are welcome.

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

This episode is a happy goodbye to all the good parenting goals we are sending off to sea. There is only so much we can prioritize, so much energy, so many battles to fight and hills to die on. Today, we each share three parenting goals we really do value, but can't value enough to keep beating our heads against the wall for.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Sarah Knight's TED Talk "The Magic of Not Giving a F***"

Our conversation with S. Bear Bergman where he talks about choosing 2-3 things to teach our kids.

Our conversation with James and Lucy Catchpole where they talk about limitations as the parameters for a particular, beautiful life.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What are the parenting goals you're ditching, dropping, toasting, gently releasing?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Today on Scratch That we chat with the tender and wise trailblazer S. Bear Bergman. We found Bear when we fell head-over-heels in love with his parenting book, Special Topics In Being a Parent. Unlike so many parenting advice we've read, Bear's approach felt adaptable and possible. It was only after we booked our interview that we realized Bear is a BFD. A founding member of the very first Gay/Straight Alliance, Bear has spent the last several decades telling stories, writing books, and inviting humans into greater justice, equity, and inclusion. He is brimming with deep insight, flexible scripts, and the most non-judgmental advice. We're excited to share our conversation with you💛

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🍳 The two-ingredient recipe that makes the tone of Bear's parenting book different from so many others.

🔬 The part about trial and error that Bear thinks we don't talk about enough.

🤝 Collaborative vs controlling parenting.

🔨 The part of parenting differently than you were parented that no one talks about.

🔎 A clarifying strategy for the chaotic parenting moments when so many things are going wrong.

🚮 Figuring out what parenting priorities to simply let go of.

🫜 Trading a family tree for a family garden.

🚫 The 2 kids' shows Caitlin and Bear CANNOT abide by.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Special Topics in Being a Parent: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way

Special Topics in Being a Human: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned the Hard Way about Caring For People, Including Myself

The song Bear added to our collective Scratch That Spotify playlist – "Might as Well Dance" by Patty Larkin

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! 

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

How do we talk to our kids about war, death, families being separated, floods, guns, violence, any of it? Should we shield them as much and as long as possible? Should we hold their hand as we tell them what we know to be real? How do we balance protecting our kids with equipping them? These questions feel important, the stakes feel high, we're doing our best, and making it up as we go. Today we dive into it as we try to figure out how we want to navigate the conversations that scare us.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🫟 The sticky conversations Caitlin loves diving into with their kid and why some topics feel so much harder.

🇺🇸 How our parents' talked with us about politics in the 90s.

🪦 The very different responses we had to our kids seeing dead animals and the one thread we share.

📚 How Caitlin is using books and stories as invitations and bridges into hard conversations.

🪧 The conversations Rebekah had with a fellow protester that illuminated how she wants to move through today's politic landscape with her son.

⚙️ A potentially measured and responsible new strategy to equip our kids for the scary realities of today's world.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What helps you navigate conversations (with your kids or anyone else!) about the scary things happening in the world right now? And what book recommendations do you have? For any age! What are the book that are helping you understand our history and humanity?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

A year ago, Kate Wieners quit her corporate job to open a cozy, plant-filled bookstore, Monstera's Books. And while it sounds like the pitch for a movie we'd all love, today Kate talks with us about the real-life, fleshed-out story. What stars had to align for her to leave the "good enough" setup she already had for the risk of a dream? What has it been like to be a partner and a parent as she makes this great leap? What is it like to create a third-space community around books and storytelling right now? And does the nervous-scary of a big risky dream ever go away?

Tune in to hear us talk about:

☎️ The story of the old 70s phone they use in the store and all the ways it sets the tone for the shop.

💫 What Kate's husband Justin said when he heard her name her bookstore dream out loud at a party.

％ The strategies Kate and Justin have developed to navigate living, parenting, and working together.

🔧 The big and unexpected monkey wrench in their plans and how that became the scary ideal way to actually launch their plans.

🔔 The epiphany Kate had while waiting for someone else to tell her she had a brilliant plan.

🌿 Why Kate thinks Monstera's Books is a worthy competitor to Amazon.

🫟 Just making the next decision and getting comfortable with chaos.

📚 The conversation Kate overheard in the bookstore that highlighted the unique power of third spaces (especially ones that center storytelling).

💓 The tremendous value/power of little risks. (Or how something as simple as a romance bookclub could save someone's life.)

✨ How paying attention to the sparkle dream in ourselves can meet a much larger need in our communities.

⚡️ What Kate hopes her daughters take away from growing up in this bookstore.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Two books recommended by Monstera's Books patrons – The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Two of Kate's top book recommendations – I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell and Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Shout out your favorite local bookstore! Tell us about your favorite third space! Share a little or big dream that's been tugging at your chest! We're here for all of it💛

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

What does living alongside a toddler reveal to us about our high school and college students? How does time in the classroom inform the way we approach learning with our pre-schoolers? On today's episode, we reflect on our experiences teaching and learning and cobble together a list of guiding principles.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

✨ Curiosity as sacred.

⏱ The cost of separating places and times of learning.

🌱 Shame vs safety in a learning environment.

❓ The power of asking "silly" questions and admitting you don't know.

☁️ Valuing "idleness" in a world that rewards gold stars.

🧶 Why it's good and important to make so many crappy things.

🥁 Continually seeking out experiences where we're not very skilled.

⚡️ The scrappy trickster energy required to view constraints as possibility.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

"Dispatches from the Ruins" is an essay in Ross Gay's book Inciting Joy.

Here's the clip of Ira Glass talking about the gap between your good taste and what you are able to make when you start out.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What were your experiences in school? What worked well and what do you wish had been different? How do you think about education and learning as an adult? And does that show up in how you parent/re-parent now?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

As we kick off Pride month, we turn over what it means to bring a new person into a scary world, especially as a queer parent, and the ways pregnancy has helped Caitlin understand and live out their gender.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🫢 A super big announcement!

❓ Asking questions to understand the ways we experience pregnancy and parenthood differently.

⚖️ Caitlin processing the need they felt to choose between being visibly queer and keeping their kids safe in public.

🏳️‍🌈 Why being pregnant with Charlie propelled Caitlin to come out as nonbinary.

🔔 The moment Caitlin rung the bell that could not be unrung and showed up as their nonbinary self to people that mattered.

👥 Modeling for our kids an alignment in how we show to the world and how we show up inside our homes.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

If you'd like to swaddle Caitlin in a little care for this new being that's coming to be, check out their registry here 💛

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Drop your thoughts on this conversation below💛

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Today on Scratch That we chat with one of the most beloved couples on the internet – Squirmy and Grubs! (Also known as Shane and Hannah Burcaw🤗) They talk with us about what it's like to share their personal lives with an enormous following, how they cope with internet hate and real life ignorance about disability/relationships, why they wrote their new book Interabled: True Stories of Love and Disability, the perspective they've gained through their experience with IVF, and loads more! There was much giggling. There were sobering truths. There was a story about the time Hannah ate edibles and then thought a real life witch approached them on the street. We're so excited to share this one with you💛

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🤡 Little Shane and Little Hannah as two rule-following class clowns.

🧑‍🦼The shame Shane had about his disability when he was younger and the coping mechanisms he developed to be seen as fully human.

💞 Why we think so many people struggle to understand how disability, care giving, and romantic relationships can co-exist.

📣 Why Shane and Hannah continue to share their stories publicly, even when their comment sections fill up with ignorance and hate.

🛠 The tools Hannah & Shane have found to protect themselves from ignorance.

⚡ Disability as a disruption to narrow expectations around traditional gender norms and inter-generational living.

🗺The perspective they've gained from their IVF experience.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Shane and Hannah's book, Interabled: True Stories of Love and Disability

And their YouTube channel, Squirmy and Grubs

Sara Hendren's book What Can a Body Do?

And here is an interview Sara Hendren did with Krista Tippett on the On Being podcast about an obligation to others as valuable within human society.

The 3 songs Hannah and Shane added to our collective Scratch That Spotify playlist – Fortune Teller by Sea Lemon, Get Better by alt-J, and look up by Joy Oladokum.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! 

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

If love incarnate was sitting beside you today, what would they say to you? Today we offer you a little practice that we learned from the one-and-only Elizabeth Gilbert – Letters from Love. We share a tiny how-to and then dive into reading some of our own letters, Caitlin as a seasoned veteran and Rebekah as a fresh newbie. You're invited to write your own letter, too, but even if you don't, we hope this especially tender episode brings you some kind of love today.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Here is Elizabeth Gilbert's how-to guide on Letters from Love on her Substack by the same name.

Caitlin made a print of the phrase that came to Rebekah in her Letter from Love! You can purchase it for $5 here💌

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What would Love have you know today?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Today on Scratch That we bring you the disabled bromance of your dreams – Danny Kurtzman and Steve Way. You might know Steve from his role on the Hulu series Ramy, and maybe you recognize Danny from his modeling days, but most recently, these two have been in creative collaboration as the leading man (Danny) and executive producer (Steve) of the recent (gorgeous) film Good Bad Things. These two live out the themes of this podcast, literally rewriting the scripts of disability storytelling as actors, screenwriters, producers, and directors. And as they share about their own creative journeys, it's very clear they have a powerful friendship.

Starting May 13th, you can stream Good Bad Things on Hulu! Here's a link with all the places you can listen, watch, purchase, and support💛 Let's show the powers that be with our plays, hearts, and downloads that this is the kind of storytelling we crave!

Tune in to hear:

🖤 Steve tell us what it was like to grow up thinking he wouldn't live to be an adult.

🫧 Danny describe the gifts and curses of the bubble he grew up in.

👤 The gnarly ways internalized ableism has shown up in both their stories, and the revising/rewiring/rewriting they continue to do.

👊 The potent power of friendship in rewriting our own scripts.

❓ Steve tell us the simplest, most effective question his friends asked him when he was in a dark place.

⚡️ Danny's hot take on "inspiration porn."

📺 All the deets on their new film, Good Bad Things, and how this movie wouldn't exist without Danny seeing Steve on TV first.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Steve's hilarious standup.

The coach we all love and adore, Carson Tueller.

The 5-minute film, We'll Meet Again, Danny and Steve made for the 2025 Easterseals Disability Film Challenge. (Content warning – true to its prompt, this film is a genuine horror. As it looks at some of the darkest layers of ableism, it includes suggestions of suicide.)

NOT Mentioned In Today's Episode:

After we stopped recording, Danny reminded me that we try to ask all our guests to contribute a song to our collaborative Scratch That playlist, Songs That Have Held Us. Danny and Steve are both big fans of Mac Miller and our playlist now includes the song they chose – "Good News."

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Did you see yourself reflected in the stories you saw growing up? Have you seen disability representation changing meaningfully in recent years? What is your favorite (or least favorite!) example of disability representation in recent storytelling?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Do you ever feel frozen by the chaos, the mess, the to-do list? There's a big project you really want to dive into, but every time you try to start, you end up scrolling on your phone instead? Or you look out at the suffering in the great wide world and don't know what steps you could possibly take to help? This week, Caitlin introduces us to a sturdy framework their brilliant little brain created to help them in just such moments. And if you dig it, you're in luck, because they're offering a whole juicy online class based on these ideas this spring!

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Check out all these details on Caitlin's online class – Start Where You Are⭐️

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What do you have? What do you need? And how would it feel to start that thread in the group chat?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

On today's episode, it's Dr Becky versus Original Sin! What happens when Good Inside takes on the fall of man? Are our jobs as parents to get out of the way and nurture our kids' inherent goodness? Or are we here to guide them away from their bad instincts? In Scratch That fashion, today's tornado conversation swirls through the gray as we try to piece together a both/and philosophy that can support us through the unwieldy work of learning/teaching how to be a human.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🐣 The Easter-weekend moment Caitlin had with Charlie that sparked this whole episode.

🔎 Shifting the focus from good versus bad to belonging versus abandonment.

🤼‍♀️ Shame versus responsibility, unmet needs versus bad behavior.

⚡️ How the capital S-self might help us get out of binary thinking.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

For anyone feeling lost every time we reference Dr Becky, here's a link to her corner of the internet.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Are we the only ones thinking about these questions? What did this episode bring up for you? And do you have any good book recommendations??

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Do you ever long to explore a totally new creative outlet or try something brand new? Like, I don't know, write a novel? Open a cute little boutique? Or try your hand at jumpstarting an art career? Our guest today has the trickster energy to try it all, throwing off scripts about being too inexperienced or too old to explore, try, and play. Elsie Larson is a mother of two and co-founder of A Beautiful Mess empire she's built with her sister Emma. The two are creative makers to their core, from their vintage clothing boutique Red Velvet (RIP) where they sold their originally designed dresses to their outrageously successful blog where they share original recipes, DIY projects, and home renovation ideas. They've written books, co-host a podcast, and showcase their ideas on their Instagram account. Today we truly talk about it all with Elsie, from her journey as a creative to her role as an adoptive parent, from her earliest years to her plans for her 50s.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🤸 The way Elsie's childhood fostered her creative trickster energy.

⚠️ Where she gets her boldness, willingness to take risks, and try something new.

🏆 Jealousy as a manifesting tool.

🧭 How Elsie pivoted when she lost her sense of self in early parenthood.

📅 Making choices for yourself 10 years from now & feeling excited to get old.

📝 The common scripts about adoption that strangers repeat to Elsie & how she's narrating a different story in front of her daughters.

💞Ridding ourselves of the assumption that we understand our kids' experiences of the world & generating more curiosity within a family ecosystem.

🐣 Rebekah and Elsie's shared stories of getting married and divorced really young.

🙏 How our particular evangelical upbringings influence how we show up as adults/parents & what Caitlin misses most about church.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

We talk about "trickster energy" a lot on Scratch That! The idea comes from Elizabeth Gilbert's book Big Magic💫

Martha Beck's book The Way of Integrity

Elsie's podcast is called A Beautiful Mess, and the episode Rebekah mentioned on goal setting is #246 "Setting Goals for 2025"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! How are you coping (or not!) with all the demands the domestic world? Are there ways you are forced out of the traditional scripts around care work? Or do you long to break out of them, but find it difficult to actually do?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Anyone else feeling a little extra anxious these days? SAME. On today's episode, we share some of the strategies and tools we're using to stay grounded and keep belly-crawling forward.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🌥Why taking pictures of the sky calms Caitlin's nervous system.

🏘 Caitlin's most annoying anxiety hack.

📰 The new way Rebekah is consuming news.

🧥 What Rebekah is doing instead of impulsively buying that cardigan from Target.

✨ Caitlin rushing toward JOY with the same kind of energy as they rush toward a crisis.

🎤 Rebekah saying the absolutely-for-certain true things out loud.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Recording of Ross Gay with Bon Iver, "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude"

Mary Oliver

Andrew Gibson

Joy Sullivan

Found on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast feed, "Calm News with Jessica Yellin"

And here's a link to Jessica Yellin's Substack, News Not Noise

Here's how you too can mend the armpit holes in your shirts!

Rebekah's new picture book, We Are the Scrappy Ones (This link takes you to Rebekah's favorite local bookshop where she is signing copies. It is also available wherever books are sold.)

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days? Let fill up the comments with a big ol' show and tell!

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

In today's episode, Laura Danger (aka @thatdarnchat) dives into a candid conversation with us about care work, domestic labor, and the powerful/often invisible scripts that shape our life choices, relationship dynamics, and home lives. Offering a unique perspective as a parent with ADHD and bipolar 2, Laura invites us to go off script, tune out default societal expectations, and set the terms for our homes, relationships, and stories.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🧑‍🎨 Being an artsy emo punk feminist who also has a crush on Freddie Prinze Jr.

🔎 Learning to decipher our own desires from society's expectations.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 Co-parenting as a useful framework for all the parenting.

😳 The embarrassing realization that you're living inside a cliché sitcom, and you're playing the part of the naggy sitcom mom.

✨ Looking to queer, multigenerational, and divorced families for tools to build a framework of care without any assumptions.

♿️ The complicated ways disability disrupts traditional scripts around gender and care work.

📝 How difficult it can be to actually embody an alternate script.

꩜ The shame that can spiral when a neurodivergent person sees their sink full of dirty dishes.

💎 Laura Danger's interesting bit of hope built on a tiny bit of data.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Laura Danger's upcoming book with Dutton publishing is called No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More — make sure you're following @thatdarnchat for the cover reveal and pre-order link on April 21!

And check out Laura Danger's podcast, Time to Lean!

Laura also mentioned Eve Rodsky's book, Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live).

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! How are you coping (or not!) with all the demands the domestic world? Are there ways you are forced out of the traditional scripts around care work? Or do you long to break out of them, but find it difficult to actually do?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

What do we do when our parenting strategies aren't working out the way we expected? Or we stumble into a hard parenting fail? On today's episode, we share parenting stories we recorded several months ago on the CosmoParenting podcast. Then we reflect on those stories, honestly naming the ways our strategies are evolving (or not) with time. This is an episode all about the messy, unresolved, ever-shifting work of parenting and peopling.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

📜 Disrupting old narratives through adaptation.

⚖️ The tricky balance of acknowledging pain and also pushing past discomfort.

👥 Modeling behavior versus exercising power.

⛓️‍💥 Understanding our past to break patterns.

☀️ Bring our parenting fails into the sunlight to move forward and evolve.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

If you're looking for a parenting podcast full of bite size practical tools, the CosmoParenting podcast is for you!

And if you missed our earlier episode interviewing the host of CosmoParenting, Abbie VanMeter, you can listen to it here - "What paradigms are we building? (Part 2) with Abbie VanMeter"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What parenting scripts are you revising in real time? What moments are you coming back to again and again as parents and people?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Will these charming Brits be able to withstand Rebekah's gushing?? If you don't yet know who Lucy and James Catchpole are, tune into our episode from last week, "Catchpoles + Andy J Pizza Love Fest." Two disabled parents who run a children's literary agency and write picture books, Lucy and James talk to us about their early experiences with disability, the ways disability shapes their parenting, and how their creative work reframes disability as ordinary, in sharp contrast to the cultural narratives of awe and pity.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

❤️ Restriction as a liberating starting point.

🪶 James's early memory of swapping the goal of normalcy for the joy of moving his body freely.

👑 Lucy's rare experience as a non-disabled child seeing disability represented as dignified and regal.

🌀 Lucy's origin story of learning to parent without guilt.

❓Common non-disabled narratives of disability that laud asking and kindness.

🤝 Belonging to a disability legacy and culture that we can pass on to younger generations.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Pre-Order the forthcoming YA collection of first-person essays, Owning It: Tales From Our Disabled Childhoods, edited by Jen Campbell, Lucy and James Catchpole, and illustrated by Sophie Kamlish. (You can read an essay by Rebekah in this collection, too!) (All orders from Blackwell include free shipping to the US!)

Check out all three of James and Lucy's picture books – 

• What Happened to You?
• You're So Amazing!
• Mama Car!

Watch Lucy and James sing their own pandemic lockdown version of "Oh my darling, Clementine" with their daughter. (Highly recommend. Easily the sweetest thing you'll watch/listen to this week.)

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days? Let fill up the comments with a big ol' show and tell!

On today's Show-and-Tell episode, we gush about some of our favorite creators: Lucy and James Catchpole (disabled parents and children's book authors, with "more children than working legs") and Andy J Pizza (New York Times bestselling author / illustrator / podcaster). And we want to hear from you, too! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days?

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🛝 Being a disabled kid on the playground.

📝 Subversive representation that flips the script of disability storytelling.

🧰 Children's books that give our kids agency

🎨 ADHD + art + parenting

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Pre-Order the forthcoming collection Owning It: Tales From Our Disabled Childhoods, edited by Jen Campbell, Lucy and James Catchpole, and illustrated by Sophie Kamlish. (You can read an essay by Rebekah in this collection, too!) (All orders from Blackwell include free shipping to the US!)

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days? Let fill up the comments with a big ol' show and tell!

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

On today's episode, we talk with the one-and-only, our beloved editor, Amelia Hruby! You've heard her name at the end of every episode and today we bring you her voice. Founder of the feminist podcast studio, Softer Sounds, and host of her own podcast, Off the Grid, Amelia is a prominent and grounding voice in the increasingly anxious world of social media (especially for those of us with our careers tied to that space).

In today's episode, we also share about the hard decision to pause our work with Amelia as we try to figure out sustainability and finances for keeping Scratch That afloat. (Thanks upon thank you for every person who has and continues to support us on Patreon! We are so grateful for you!!)

Tune in to hear us talk about:

📲 The sneaky ways social media creates the problems it claims to solve.

🧮 Naming the problems we are really trying to solve and how an app can (and can't) meet that need.

👯‍♂️ Ways to make friends without social media.

📈 The difference between casually using social media and building a business on social media.

🛼 Fashion as another (older) way to signal to others what you value.

🏘️ Getting back to the small and local.

🎨 The differences between being an artist versus being a content creator.

We would love to hear from you! How are you navigating social media these days? How does it feel to be there? Or have you already left? Have you found ways to use the tool in a way that feels good and helpful? Have you found alternate paths to solving problems where you used to only use an app?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

On today's episode, we get to chat with the creative powerhouses, Esther Huybreghts and Melissa Cash. Driven by the need for good alternatives to overwhelming, addictive children's apps saturating the market, they set out to create an experience that parents could feel good about handing to their kids. They made the thing they needed, and Pok Pok was born — the Apple Design Award-winning preschool app. We are obsessed.

If you are also obsessed after listening to Esther and Melissa talk about Pok Pok, use this link to get a 25% discount for a subscription: https://my.playpokpok.com/checkout?promocode=25SCRATCHTHAT

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🌀 Esther's and Melissa's early experiences with play and creativity.

🛝 The origins of Pok Pok - making the thing you want to see in the world.

❤️ Creativity as a tool for surviving post-partum depression.

🔎 Naming the concerns and stigmas around screen time.

🐣👵 The importance of play from infancy to adulthood.

🥱 The value of boredom.

🪄 Striving for access and inclusion in design.

🪀 The difference between a toy and a game.

📱 Escaping the dopamine cycle we get from screens.

We would love to hear from you! What are your screen time woes and triumphs? How has play evolved for you over the course of your life?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

This week on SCRATCH THAT, we grapple with some of our inner Boomer-parenting instincts. What if our kids don't "have it as hard as we did"? How do we make sure we raise them to have scrappy, resilient, creative, trickster energy for the inevitable struggles ahead?

Tune in to hear us:

⛈️ Name our particular parenting triggers.

🧳 Unpack the actual legacy of some of our early childhood struggles.

💪 Uncover the deep, troubling belief that struggling makes you real and valid.

🧶 Describe the difficulty in watching our kids struggle without intervening.

⚙️ Imagine building resilience in ordinary moments of friction and frustration.

🪡 Recognizing the moments we feel triggered as places that need tending within us.

We would love to hear from you! What are the stories you tell yourself about your own difficult childhoods? How does that story shape the way you show up to the world/your own children now? What ways do you find the most effective for building resilience/scrappiness now?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

We cannot wait for you to hear our conversation with Maria Bowler. Maria's life has followed a delightfully winding path from magazine editor to an MA in religious studies, from years studying with nuns to creative coach. She is also who Caitlin wants to be when they grow up and, most recently, an author of the recently released book, Making Time: A New Vision for Crafting a Life Beyond Productivity. At the heart of it, Maria generously offers us tools for getting off the conveyor belt of production and into a life of being/making – a creative life that keeps us connected to reality. Our conversation came at exactly the right time.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

👤How Maria Bowler became Maria Bowler (hint: it involves "failing" a lot).

🛝 Looking at schedules as supports and goals as playgrounds (not structures we need to fit our beings into).

🍼 Early parenting emotions (and the shame that comes when we judge them).

✨ The fruitful relationship between reality and imagined futures.

🌱 Valuing the tiny when the world's suffering is enormous.

📱Our shifting relationships with social media.

🔥 Trusting what is alive in us and expanding our creative edges.

⛪ Maria's time with the Benedictine nuns and how that shaped her understanding of creativity.

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

A growing goal for SCRATCH THAT is to find ways for this community to know and connect with each other, so this week, we have a special invitation for our listeners. What is a song that has held you — as a parent and/or a person? A song that has brought you back to the ground/yourself/your values. A song that gave you the thing you needed when you needed it? Would you drop it in the comments below? We'll turn all our songs into a group playlist — a way to feel each other's presence as we go about this windy journey of peopling and parenting.

And we'll go first! On this episode, we each share about a song that has meant something big to us over the course of our lives.

Last week, we swirled around the impossible questions of paradigms – What stories did we inherit? What stories are we passing on (intentionally & unintentionally)? Enter – Abbie VanMeter. Abbie is the executive director of the CMM Institute for Personal and Social Evolution, the host of the Stories Lived. Stories Told. podcast, the host of the CosmoParenting Podcast, and an incredibly insightful and curious communicator. On this episode, Abbie meets us in the chaotic center of our swirls and offers us new frameworks and tools for the messy work of re/building paradigms as parents and people. We hope you enjoy our sprawling, juicy conversation!

Tune in to hear us talk about:

💭 What it looks like to embody a communications perspective (hint: communication is more than what is being said).

🧰 Instead of a script or map, building a toolbox we/our kids can carry into the unknown future.

🛠️ Good tools for the box, like resilience, curiosity, improvisation, and repair.

🌱 Taking good care of ourselves as good parenting (and the scripts that make us feel selfish for doing it).

❓ Questioning the common phrase "My parents did their best."

🌀 Leaning in, not pulling away from, complexity.

📚 Building paradigms that leave room for multiple stories.

📝 Empowering ourselves/our kids to be meaning makers in our worlds.

We would love to hear from you! What tools do you have in your toolbox? What tools are you trying to pass along?

This week on SCRATCH THAT, we process the great and ambiguous responsibility of creating paradigms for our kids — the context for what they will understand as "normal" — the scripts/stories they have about themselves, the world, and their relationship to it. Holding our curiosity in the forefront and never tying any tidy bows, we swirl around our own inheritances and the ones we're passing along. And if you would like some actual tools for navigating this wobbly territory, we can't wait to share next week's very special interview with you!

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🧳 The "cargo bay of baggage" we're bringing into this conversation.

☃️ The great allure & potential harms of creating cozy-snow-globe paradigms.

🌿 The desire to build flexible/stretchy paradigms that grow & evolve with us.

🎢 The uncomfy lack of control we have over the paradigms our kids are forming.

📆 The unspoken values we are teaching our kids through our deeply engrained daily actions.

🎞️ Trusting the process of long-arc relationships & human development.

🤸 Playing with new frameworks for paradigm building (e.g. Relationship over rules, or curiosity & openness over mandates & prescriptions. ) 

🌱 The importance of tending to our own deep beliefs and lasting paradigms.

We would love to hear from you! How are paradigms manifesting for you in your parenting and/or re-parenting experiences? What kind of paradigms are you wanting to build? What ones were built for you? How are you reshaping them?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

💔 Why is it hard to feel hopeful right now?

✨ Point to something that makes us feel hopeful — tell a story?

🌱 Hope as a verb — name a seed we are going to plant?

✏️ Caitlin leaves us with three practices they're using to imagine a hopeful future

Now that we're a few months into making SCRATCH THAT, we take this episode to reflect on the podcast values that are revealing themselves as the most important to us. In this episode, we pull cards from Lisa Congdon's Live Your Values deck and compare notes. What do we want to prioritize? What is the target? What do we want to guide/ground each conversation?

This feels like an ongoing collaborative project, and we want you to be a part of it! Would you take a couple of minutes to fill out our Patreon poll? What SCRATCH THAT values are becoming the most important to you?? We wanna know.

We wish every single one of you could sit in the presence of Sacha Mardou. Until that day, we offer you this hearts-out, into-the-depths-of-it-together conversation. Author of the graphic memoir, Past Tense, Sacha shares her story of developing anxiety when she turned 40, going to therapy for the first time, and learning that her childhood story was still with her, waiting for her self-compassion. Rich with insight and never trite, she honors the mess, the nonlinear, the unfixable alongside the hope for meaningful change. Not only did Sacha share her own stories and wisdom, but she embodied a sharp clarity and generosity in her presence with us, showcasing, in real time, her hard earned therapy tool belt.

A heads-up for caution and care – around 36 minutes into this episode, Sacha references her mother being sexually assaulted at the age of 13.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

📝 How to adult through therapy – e.g. How do you know how long to go? When to go back? When to switch therapists? How do you process/document what you’re learning? How do you act as a self-advocate in therapy?

💓 Naming the parts of ourselves trying to hold us together with harshness and rigidity, and the importance and challenge of self-compassion.

🌈 Creativity as a bridge to connecting with and understanding Self.

📓 Sacha’s mini lesson on Internal Family Systems.

🧑‍🧒 How therapy shapes the way Sacha shows up as a parent (and how that’s changed now that she has a teenager). 

🔓 Closed family communication systems versus open family communication systems. 

🔄 Legacy burdens and repeated family traumas.

🔨 Grappling with the reality that we can’t fix ourselves enough to be perfect parents and learning to model owning our mistakes and repairing relationships.

⏰ Having the tools but feeling like we don’t have the time, energy, or wherewithal to implement them. 

To learn more about Sasha Mardou, you can find her on Instagram and through her website. Also, check out her books, Past Tense and Sky and Stereo.

We would love to hear from you! What has your experience been with (or without) therapy? What has been the best and hardest, most and least meaningful, frustrating, fulfilling, disappointing, healing part of it?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

Last week, Caitlin invited us to mark the turn of the year by writing letters to 2024/2025. Today, we bring you the words that came from that prompt. You will hear tears, a whole lot of heartfelt, both/and reflection, and an invitation to write your own letter/create your own artifact to mark this shift in the calendar.

At the end of the episode, Rebekah shares a little bit about how deeply difficult this year has been for her niece and sister. Since recording, the GoFundMe she started for them has exceeded the initial goal! It's been stunning to see folks rally around them. Because of that support, they are heading into the new year with one piece of this impossibly hard situation made a little bit lighter. If you would like to participate in supporting this family, the GoFundMe page will be up until January 3rd. A wholehearted, full-body THANK YOU to every single person who has donated/shared/tucked this family into your heart.

We would love to hear from you! What are you keeping with you from 2024? What are you letting go of in 2025?

In today's episode, we reflect on our memories/associations with New Years, and the practices that do/don't feel good around this time of year. We are moving away from new year's resolutions and toward reflective practices that allow us to bear witness to the previous year.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🎊 The ways we moved through this holiday when we were young.

📓 Caitlin's annual, seasonal, and monthly reflection practices (including picking a yearly word, Lisa Congdon's Live Your Values deck, and reflection guides).

🕯️ Caitlin's new practices, including admin adulting days, fun seasonal bucket lists, and a new advent tradition.

❌ A new kind of resolution that asks – what are you NOT prioritizing this year?

🗓️ Rebekah's daily documentation practices – why she does them and how she holds them lightly.

⏰ Our angst about the rapid passage of time and how we want to be present for the moments as they're passing.

💌 And invitation to write a letter to 2024 or 2025 – we'll read ours next week!

Mentioned in this episode:

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

Lisa Congdon's Live Your Values deck

We would love to hear from you! How to you mark the turning of another year? Do you have any documentation practices that feel good to you?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

As we gear up for the week of Christmas and all of the layered feelings this stretch of days can bring, we wanted to offer you something good and grounding. To prepare, we gave ourselves a prompt: write a little blessing, love note, prayer for the holiday week. Today, we read them allowed – an offering to ourselves, each other, and you.

We would love to hear from you! How are you orienting yourself this week? What feels hard? What feels easy? What feels different than previous years? What are your disco balls on the tree or flashes of lighting over an open field?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

Lisa Olivera's words are a uniquely grounding force in a world fueled by algorithms that thrive on speedy-hot-takes, over-simplicity, and one-note narratives. Every time the internet feels like it’s literally going to combust under the strain of loud noises, her steady voice calls us back to our bodies and our inner knowing. We had so many questions for her! And in Lisa-fashion, she met our wonderings with a generous, present, and soft openness, offering reframes and revelations we didn't even know we needed. We're so excited to share this episode with you. 💛

Tune in to hear us talk about:

💫 Reframes for imposter syndrome, self-criticism, and the parts of our stories that have only ever felt hard/sad/painful.

📖 The strange experience of writing a book that makes its way into the world right after you've sustained a complete disintegration of self through new parenthood.

🦋 Giving ourselves, our kids, our partners permission to change, evolve, and grow.

🎭 The many different ways to think about the stories we hold – storytelling as an evolving practice, the limitations of storytelling, holding our stories loosely.

🪂 Letting go of the idea that we can control other people's stories, even our kids' (and letting ourselves feel the grief of that).

💕 The counter-intuitive strength of staying soft.

If you want more of Lisa's voice in your world, check out her stunning Substack, Human Stuff, her book Already Enough, and stay tuned for the release of her next one!

We would love to hear from you! How do you see storytelling showing up in your own life? Is it a tool? Or a hinderance? Where do you feel yourself becoming rigid? Where would you like to soften?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

We are in the season of a million gift-giving choices – What do we want to spend money on? How do we find gifts that make people feel seen/loved/celebrated? How do we buy/make gifts with thought and care when we don't have any time? Today, we dive headfirst into our personal gift giving values and offer a giant pile of recommendations (no one is paying us to make!) with the hope that it sparks something for you that feels good.

Caitlin, Our Favorite Bougie Bitch, prefers gifts that align with the way their brain functions. They prioritize fewer things of higher quality that will last over time and not make their home feel loud and cluttered. They recommend:

🎨 Consumable Gifts (art projects, activities, experiences)

🎟️ Memberships 

🥝 Kiwi Co monthly subscriptions or individual boxes (like this play-dough pasta-making kit)

🎭 Gathre vegan leather products for kids (like this doorway theater, seated spinner, car truck mat, and tunnel)

📻 YOTO for screen free entertainment

🖼️ Artifact Uprising beautiful books (you can make board books! Which I did for Charlie his first Christmas that we treasure), calendars, and more! It's so good!

📦 MakeDo I forgot to mention this! But it's one of our favorite toys ever! It's a set of screws, knife, screwdriver for cardboard that little ones can use! We make all kinds of things with it!

Rebekah, The Idealist Without Enough Time, wants everything gift to be handmade and soaking with meaning. She prioritizes items that feel one-of-a-kind thoughtful that don't take quite as much time as a hand-sewn quilt. She recommends:

🧶 ETSY for handmade, customized, feels-like-a-perfect-thrift-store-find items.

📷 Shutterfly or Artifact Uprising (or any company that lets you make things with your own photos) for photo books and inside joke mugs.

✨ Gift cards to local bookstores & small businesses! (Like this cozy spot in KC)

👻 Prints, stickers, buttons, pins from artists! (Like Tender Ghost)

🌱 Small scale handmade gifts that don't actually take a ton of time (like simple collaged photos and little decorated plant pots).

💌 A heartfelt, thoughtful card!!!!

And one of their all time favorite gifts to give – BOOKS! Together, their top recommendations include:

🌵 Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan

🙏 Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin

🐟 Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller

⏰ The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

🍂 The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

💫 Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

🥩 Night Bitch by Rachel Yoder

⛰️ All Fours by Miranda July

⚡️ You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson

🦋 Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson

We would love to hear the ways you approach gift giving! What are your favorite gifts to give or receive? How do you prioritize your time/money around this time of year? What are your biggest gift-giving values?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

Today we bring you a mini mid-week episode to tell you all about Rebekah's forthcoming picture book, We Are the Scrappy Ones.

Tune in to hear:

🌱 The origin story of the book and who Rebekah wrote it for.

👽 A bit about what it felt like for Rebekah to grow up with a disability.

🌗 The ways writing about the experience of disability for a younger audience felt very different from other writing projects Rebekah has done.

📖 Rebekah read some of the book.

PRE-ORDER THE PICTURE BOOK HERE

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

This conversation was inspired by a visit Rebekah took to her son's classroom. As he has adjusted to a new school, Rebekah has tried to think more critically about how she wants to lead the conversation (and onslaught of inevitable questions these kids have) about her wheelchair.

In SCRATCH THAT fashion, this episode is more in-real-time-processing and back-and-forth questions than a 1-2-3 step plan for raising our babies to have immediate and "perfect" understanding of disability from a very young age. How do we teach our kids how to respond when they notice difference in public? How do we teach our kids about all kinds of difference when they don't experience all of it in real life? Are there any blanket rules about what we say/don't say? How do we avoid accidentally reinforcing the stigmas we're trying to push against? And as we ask and listen, we realize this is actually a conversation about how we do the hard work of being community with all kinds of different people.

Together, we generate a hearty set of ideas for how we strive to navigate these tricky conversations that we fully expect to be just as messy as human relationships themselves.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

📚 Our favorite disability-forward picture books.

📜 Rebekah's current script for answering questions about her wheelchair.

🎯 Evaluating our goals in teaching our kids about disability and difference more broadly. What are we really trying to do here?

🎨 The pieces that make these conversations sticky and complicated and learning to embrace the messiness of it all.

♿️ How Otto's new school has responded to Rebekah's disability and need for access.

🤝 A sprawling brainstorm on how we teach our kids (and ourselves) to build communities of care. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Come Over to My House by Eliza Hull

Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder

This Is How We Play by Jessica Slice

Mama Car by Lucy Catchpole

The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen

Cake Girl by David Lucas

We would love to hear from you! How are you navigating these kinds of conversations? Have you discovered any scripts that have helped you? What makes these moments feels especially tricky to you in any direction?

Today we tackle what Caitlin refers to as the "cheerful nostalgia and heart-wrenching sorrow" the holidays can bring. For so many of us, this particular time of year comes with a lot of guilt and pressure, hard memories or sadness that the present doesn't look quite like we think it should. Together we process what makes these days hard for the both of us and generate a host of ideas for navigating these both/and days with full hearts and a lot of creative curiosity.

🖨️ You can download this little zine, print on 8.5x11 paper and fold it down for your pocket to reference when you need it. Here are directions for folding.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

💔 Making space for the sadness and releasing the guilt.

✨ Grasping onto joy when we can.

🎊 Caitlin's tips on how to create new holiday traditions.

🍄 Learning to take off the pressure of a single day.

🙌 Our own experiences accidentally discovering new holiday rituals.

🌱 The pains of families evolving holiday traditions as they age, grow, and change.

⚙️ Moving away from default and toward intentional celebrations.

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels