In this episode, MaK Wangsness interviews Kelly Tronstad, executive director of Bellis, about supporting parents, understanding temperament, and navigating the systemic challenges in child welfare. Kelly shares her journey from parenting educator to advocate for disenfranchised parents and discusses how compassion and connection can transform parent-child relationships.

Resources:

• Bellis Website - Supporting Parents and Families
• Raising Your Spirited Child by Mary Sheedy Kurcinka
• The Concept of Ambiguous Loss - Pauline Boss
• The Concept of Disenfranchised Grief - Psychology Today

Guest links:

• Bellis Website
• Support Bellis
• Kelly Tronstad on LinkedIn
• MaK Wangsness on LinkedIn

You are not failing at family life—the system is failing you. MaK Wangsness, a marketer and mom who has lived through food insecurity, financial aid, and parenthood with zero paid leave, launches Carrying Care with a clear mission: expose what caregiving in America really costs and why so many families are left holding everything together alone.Drawing on six years leading a workplace community for parents and caregivers, MaK has heard hundreds of stories from new parents, school-age parents, people caring for aging relatives, and families supporting kids with special needs. That experience shapes a podcast and community built to examine the policies, workplace norms, and benefit structures that affect daily life—and to center the real families living inside those decisions.You’ll hear why the mental math of PTO, daycare pickup, doctor appointments, and deadlines is not a personal failure, but a design problem. MaK makes the case that caregiving stress is not about doing it wrong—it’s about operating inside systems that were never built for the people doing the caring.You’ll discover:

• Why paid leave, childcare, and workplace culture are inseparable from family well-being
• How support systems can either stabilize working families or quietly break them
• What MaK learned from years of listening to caregivers across every stage of family life
• Why the conversation has to move from individual guilt to structural change

This podcast is for parents, caregivers -- anyone who has ever felt like they’re barely keeping up without a village -- and the people who are building and creating those villages. It’s also for listeners who want to understand the bigger picture behind family policy and what it actually takes to build a world that supports caregiving instead of punishing it. Carrying Care launches September 15th. If you care about families, workplace reality, and the systems shaping both, this is the episode to start with.

You are not falling behind. You are not doing it wrong. You are just trying to hold it all together in a system that wasn’t designed for you.

If you’ve ever found yourself lying awake at night doing impossible math—balancing PTO, daycare pickups, camp registrations, doctor appointments, work deadlines, and taking meetings from the school pickup line —you know the feeling of the "care gap" that exists in the United States. But here is the truth nobody tells you: this isn’t a "you" problem. It’s a systems problem.

⁠Carrying Care⁠ is a podcast for anyone holding it together without a village, and for anyone ready to help build one. Hosted by ⁠MaK Wangsness⁠, who has navigated these gaps from childhood to parenthood, this show digs into the policies shaping caregiving in America—leave, childcare, and workplace culture—and shares real stories of families living inside their impact.
Whether you’re a parent, a caregiver for aging family members, or simply trying to navigate life in a system that often fails us, this spa