Scratch That: Parenting & ReParenting Off Script

The conversation we bring you today is especially tender. We decided to sit down to talk about internalized ableism, because Caitlin is grappling with a potentially new diagnosis that has brought up a lot for them. We hope you'll listen to this one with care — as we process together, we lift the lids on some of the ugliest wounds ableism inflicts. And so much is still fresh. The two of us experience internalized ableism differently for a host of reasons — Caitlin feels wobbly even claiming the title of disability and would embody a combination of old and new, non-apparent versions of the word, while Rebekah moves through the world in a very visible wheelchair, and has for most of her life — but as we talked, we bumped into a host of thought-provoking overlaps and deviations in our experiences.

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🟢 SpotifyFind 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 ✨

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 + parentingMentioned 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=25SCRATCHTHATTune 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 ✨

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 BurkemanLisa Congdon's Live Your Values deckWe 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 GibsonWe 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 HEREFind 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 HullBodies Are Cool by Tyler FederThis Is How We Play by Jessica SliceMama Car by Lucy CatchpoleThe Circus Ship by Chris Van DusenCake Girl by David LucasWe 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?