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.

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?

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

Today we bring you a mini mid-week episode to tell you about a resource Caitlin created, fueled by the specific needs of their neurodivergent brain that has expanded into a tool, a practice, a piece of art in so many other homes.Tune in to hear:🎂 A tiny update on how Caitlin has been processing their neurodivergence, especially as they cross the threshold of a birthday that feels big.✨ A poignant insight from a dear friend.🌱 Caitlin learning to recognize some of the tangible beauty that comes from their specific needs.💓 Several ways that people use the calendar Caitlin made, including: a visual guide, a way to help kids understand long passages of time, tracking big dates.☀️ Rebekah's use of the calendar as a daily practice for tuning into embodied memories.Order/Download the Calendar Here 

Today we're thrilled to bring you our conversation with the aunt you always needed, the one with the funniest memes and all the colors, we can't imagine the internet without her — Nina Tame! Nina is doing powerful, hilarious work to revise the scripts we have around disability that has made its way across the globe (if you don't yet follow her Instagram, go forth and consume), but maybe the most profound evidence of this rewriting shows up in her own little family. Nina grew up disabled and is now the mum to three boys, the third of which shares Nina's disability. Listening to her reflect on parenting as she tends to her younger selves feels like a tangible moment of re-parenting that I imagine many of us need.Tune in to hear about:📜 The early inheritance of a script that disability is bad.🧑‍🧑‍🧒 A gentle/honest reflection on what it was like to be parented as a disabled kid.⚡️ Nina's hard-earned insights on the best practices for parenting a disabled kid.💓 The lifelong work of teaching our younger parts that they're not a piece of shit.👯‍♂️ The transformative shift of disability as a medical experience to a social experience.🌱 The multitude of ways that disability enhances a family ecosystem.Mentioned in this episode:📖 Nina and Rebekah both have essays coming out in the forthcoming YA collection, Owning It: Stories From Our Disabled Childhoods. (While the target audience is around 9-13, we think it's also for anyone who's ever been 9-13.) Pre-ordering from Blackwells (linked above) includes free shipping to the U.S.Where to find everyone:Follow Nina on Instagram @nina_tameFollow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_prettyFollow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeels

When we sat down for this conversation, we fully intended to dive into the tricky choices we have to make when deciding if/how to share about our kids — on social media or a podcast, in writing or conversation. And while we do spend some time trying to parse out that particular challenge, the conversation that unfolded quickly became much deeper. Because a conversation about representing another human is also a conversation about storytelling, perspective, autonomy, and relationship boundaries. And so we ask —👀 What if we don't see things the same way that our kids/parents do?📚 What happens when family members have conflicting true stories of shared experiences?📷 How do we document our kids' childhoods without bringing an audience into their experiences.👯‍♂️ How do I untangle where my story ends and yours begins?🧑‍🧑‍🧒 How do we learn to tell our own stories when we've deeply absorbed a family narrative?🪢 How do I hold onto a sense of myself when parenting/caregiving consumes so much of me?🐣 And why even share about our kids at all?In the episode, we mention...Rebekah's recent Substack essay, " Dear Son of a Disabled Mother,"Caitlin's collaborative artwork with Charlie, including the "Am I a Real Mom?" piece.We would love to keep the conversation going on our Patreon. Have you found a way of representing your young people (online or anywhere else) that honors both your experience and theirs? Do you have tensions within family systems that hold multiple, differing true stories? What do you find especially sticky about the questions being asked in this episode?Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

Emma is a photographer who longs for deep connections, feels inspired by the ways we are all different and also the same, and, for the last two years, has experienced infertility and miscarriage. Emma generously agreed to share some of her story, experience, and insight with Caitlin and Rebekah – two people who do not share this experience – with the hope that it could help give all of us in the Scratch That community new scripts for processing our own unique experiences and showing up for the ones we love. We are so grateful she was willing to have this vulnerable conversation with us – and y'all, she showed up with such honesty and heart💛

We don't have a lot of words right now. No hot takes. No three step plans. We feel heavy, confused, and scared. And while we might have the impulse to shut down, we want to be intentional to bear witness to the untidy snarl of this moment. It didn't feel right to carry along with our regularly programming when so many of us are grieving & afraid right now. So here's a tiny conversation to hold space for a greater pause — for feeling our feelings, for taking deep breaths, for listening to more stories & reflecting on the stories we hold, for making plans to support the ones around us, for whatever we need to feel the ground beneath us.And in the meantime, here are some poems & essays that are speaking to us right now.What do you turn toward? by Lisa OliveraMAGA Hat In the Chemo Room, by Andrea GibsonFor My Sister, by Kate BaerI don't want another black president: a love letter, by Kaplan Villacorte TrudoHow Dark the Beginning, by Maggie Smith

We love books. And the best part of loving books is sharing them with our friends.So we’re very excited to kick off our book report series — mini-ish episodes where we’ll talk about our favorite books that guide us as parents and people.Our first pick is the amazing What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth.Tune in to hear us gush about this book that will help you explain reproduction to your two year old. Then join us on Patreon to request future book reports and share your fave reads!More from us:Follow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_prettyFollow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeelsMentioned in the episode: Ericka Hart, What Makes a Baby, Sex is a Funny Word, You Know, Sex✷ And if you loved this episode, please join us on Patreon for show notes, transcripts + more!

Today we’re taking on the impossible question: do we have another baby? 😵‍💫Caitlin opens us with a beautiful poem from Joy Sullivan, and then we each share the joys, fears, and swirls of question marks coming up as we consider having a second kid.Listen in as we unpack our feelings about fertility, age, baby fever, finances, mental health, desire, and more — including how an oracle card is helping Rebekah figure out her answer.Then join us on Patreon to continue the conversation! We’d love to hear how you’re approaching this question with your families. ♡More from us:Follow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_prettyFollow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeelsMentioned in the episode: Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan, Haley Brown’s Tearwater Oracle Deck, Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller ✷ And if you loved this episode, please join us on Patreon for show notes, transcripts + more!

Alex Wegman is one of our absolute favorite people on (and off) the internet.She’s a writer, storyteller, homeschooling mom of two, and a lifelong wheelchair user who tells stories about life at the intersection of disability, parenting, friendship, and generally existing in public.Everything she shares has deeply impacted how we approach parenting. So we’re thrilled to have her as our first guest on Scratch That!Tune in to hear about:Cultivating independence for parents & kidsDisability representation in Alex’s childhoodConfronting ableist attitudes toward pregnancy & birthDeconstructing the nuclear familyNew scripts for intimacy & home-buildingLearning to love the act of asking for helpIndulging in our joyMore from us & our guests:Follow Alex on Instagram @alexwegman + visit her websiteFollow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_prettyFollow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeels✷ And if you loved this episode, please join us on Patreon for show notes, transcripts + more!

Hello and welcome to Scratch That!We (Caitlin & Rebekah) are so thrilled that you — yes you listening to this right now — are here tuning in to this episode.So we wrote you a letter! And had a quick chat about who we are, why we started this show, and how becoming parents ushered us into a new era of reparenting ourselves and rewriting our scripts for family, motherhood, childhood, and so much more.We hope you’ll press play, subscribe wherever you listen, and join us on Patreon to continue these conversations.xo, Rebekah & CaitlinMentioned in the episode:Basil KincaidScratch That Patreon

Have you ever felt like maybe you weren’t a “real” parent?When we decided to start a podcast, this was the first thing we wanted to talk about — why our brains keep sending us messages that we aren’t “real” mothers.So today we’re sharing the images of motherhood we’ve seen throughout our lives, and digging into how those images are complicated by disability, queerness, and a desire to parent differently.Listen in as we unpack our vision of what a Real Mom™️ should be. Then join us on Patreon to continue the conversation! If you have your own green shoes moment, we’d love to hear about it. ♡More from us:Follow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_prettyFollow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeelsMentioned in the episode: Alex Wegman✷ And if you loved this episode, please join us on Patreon for show notes, transcripts + more!

We’re launching a podcast!!! First episodes of SCRATCH THAT: PARENTING & REPARENTING OFF SCRIPT drop September 30th!Two scrappy midwestern authors, who birthed babies in the early days of the pandemic, walk into a bar. Well, one walks in their chunky doc martins and backward cap, the other rolls in on her Ti-lite chair, rocking teeny tiny bangs.Both challenge the norms of parenthood in their own ways — one with their gender, the other with her body — and carry deep curiosity about what it means to be human. Naturally, these wayward misfits hit record and turned their angst and good cheer at being alive — in these bodies, at this time — into a whole ass podcast.You are cordially invited to join us on this winding exploration. Along the way we’ll be chewing on impossible questions, interviewing people who are also going off script, and sharing the books, poems, and objects that support our quest to parent and re-parent ourselves at the same time.You will always be able to listen on Apple & Spotify, but join us on Patreon (for free) to be part of the conversation (and see our intro videos!)!!