Once Upon a Feeling

Cristina Barvo spent a decade in Hispanic marketing before she asked herself a question most of us postpone until midlife: is this how I want to spend my days?

What followed was early childhood education at UCLA, six years teaching preschool, and eventually two things she built herself — Empower Kids for Life and Leadership at Home, a program that brings early childhood expertise to working parents who can never make the 10am meeting at school.

Her insight is simple and it reframes everything: the foundations of early education and the foundations of leadership are the same foundations.

In this conversation she and Rita get into why we confuse what we do with who we are, why every transition is an integration rather than a choice, and the three principles Cristina uses as a compass — trust, competence, and motivation. Trust means your words, thoughts and actions line up, which sometimes looks like telling your child “I don’t know, but we’ve figured out hard things before.” Competence means reminding a child of what they’ve already overcome instead of telling them they can do anything. Motivation means looking for what moves them from the inside.

They also talk about the work they do together: Big Orange Sky, the story written for children after the Palisades and Eaton fires, and the new book born from the earthquake — a story about a girl who paints a stone the color of her lost bedroom wall, and learns that home is the people, not the walls.

In this episode:

• Why your job isn’t your identity, and what happens at parties when you change careers
• The YMCA method: you, me, wait, alternatives — and why seven seconds of silence changes everything
• Trust, competence, motivation: the three principles underneath the how-tos
• Why you can be strong and flexible at the same time, like a wire
• What children actually need after a disaster: presence, play, and a story that looks like theirs
• Comparison, competition, and the scarcity that creeps into loving parents
• Reparenting yourself while parenting someone else

Resources: Empower Kids for Life → empowerkidsforlife.com (Strong Ground / Tierra Firme). Spanish: Liderazgo en Casa. The story is also in the Gooshi app.

🎧 gooshi.world

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world

"Kids never have to be uncomfortable. And grown-ups don't either. That's a huge problem."

Jillian Harris has spent fifteen years working with children and families — first in a residential center, now as a clinical social worker at a school in New York City where every student has a language-based learning disability, and in her own private practice. Her days are spent doing something most of us never think about as a job: helping kids repair connection after it breaks.

This week Rita asks her the question at the center of Season 2. What happens to connection when the friction disappears?

Because that's what technology has been quietly doing for a hundred years: removing friction. And friction, it turns out, is where resilience gets built. Where kids learn they can fall, get hurt, and try again. Where they discover that a misunderstanding can be repaired.

Jillian is candid about how hard this is in practice — including in her own home. She has a screen-free household and a toddler who doesn't know the Disney princesses. She also names, honestly, the support that makes that possible, and what she'd do without it.

In this episode:

• Why getting a teenager to talk is one of the hardest things there is, and what actually works
• What happens when tone and social cues get lost even between kids speaking the same language
• Phones at school: what a real ban looks like, burner phones included
• Why quitting the scroll works like going back to the gym — the hardest part is starting
• The Meta fine, Australia's ban, and whether regulation can do what parents haven't
• Social media used to mean using media to be social. When did that stop?
• Why screens make learning worse, for every kind of brain
• Unsupervised play, and the sentence every kid needs to be able to say: I fell, I got hurt, I'm not dying
• The village we lost, and Jillian's fantasy of an apartment building full of parents
• What app she'd build if she had a magic wand
• Rita on the new Gooshi feature that lets a grandparent record a story from across the country

Mentioned: The Anxious Generation and The Amazing Generation by Jonathan Haidt; Project Reboot.

Gooshi stories and app → gooshi.world
 Everything in one place → linktr.ee/gooshi_world

If you want to connect with Jillian
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/jillian-kuhn-harris-new-york-ny/1243362

If this episode gave you something, a five-star review helps other families find us.

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world

Season 2 of Once Upon a Feeling is about connection — and it opens with the place where connection shows its truest shape: loss.

Rita sits down with Mindy Brodsky, a licensed clinical social worker who works in grief, death and non-death loss, and legacy writing. The conversation starts at a memorial for a friend's husband, gone at 52, and the realization that we spend our lives planning a future we forget to inhabit. From there it opens into the questions most of us were raised to avoid: How do you tell a child the truth about death without sending them into overdrive? Why do kids grieve, play, and grieve again — and why is that healthier than the way adults do it? What does it mean for grief to be witnessed, and why can strangers sometimes hold it better than family?

Mindy introduces ring theory, the practice of the compassionate witness, and the tradition of ethical wills — letters that pass down what matters most, written while you're well. Rita brings the Milan cathedral, six hundred years in the making, and the idea that a legacy is something you build knowing you won't see it finished.

Somewhere in the middle, Mindy mentions a line from a Gooshi story she read with her six-year-old — "What do you think would help your heart?" — and reveals she now uses it with grieving adults.

In this episode:

• Why "tell the truth" is the first rule for talking to kids about death
• The small losses we never name: a friend moves, summer ends, your baby turns 12
• Kids as puddle jumpers, and the "should" that keeps adults from doing the same
• Ring theory and how to show up without making it about you
• Legacy letters, ethical wills, and living fully now — not when the finish line appears

Mindy's six-week grief book club begins October 19; details at mindybrodsky.com. Gooshi stories and the app at gooshi.world. Everything else at linktr.ee/gooshi_world.

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world

Season 2 of Once Upon a Feeling is here.

After three months away — with family, with friends, with strangers who didn't stay strangers — Rita comes back with the question that shaped her summer and now shapes the season: what does it actually mean to connect?

With ourselves. With each other. With our parents. With our children.

It's a question that feels especially loud right now, in the middle of every conversation about technology and what it's taking from us. But connection isn't new and it isn't a trend. It's how humans have always worked: through community, through each other, with each other.

This short intro sets up the season ahead. New conversations start now.

Have a topic you want explored? Leave a comment, or write to [email protected].

🎧 Subscribe so you don't miss an episode
 💛 Gooshi stories & app → gooshi.world

#onceuponafeeling #season2 #connection #consciousparenting #community

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world

To our friends in Spokane, Washington: this one is for you. 💛

We're still on our season break, but we couldn't stay quiet. As families across Spokane take inventory of what was lost and begin the long road of healing, we're re-releasing the episode we created during the Eden Fire here in Southern California — because we've walked this road too, and we want you to know: it is hard, but we can do hard things.

In this episode:

🧡 "Big Orange Sky" — read by Dylan, 11, who lost her own home in the Eden Fire. The story follows Sienna, Mateo, and Lily through evacuation, return, and rebuilding — and shows children that every feeling after something scary (sad, mad, silent) is allowed. Created with illustrator Desiree in both English and Spanish to help families find the right language together.

💬 Dylan's own story — what she remembers from the night of the evacuation, the one stuffed animal she chose, planting seeds where her house used to be, and her message to every kid going through a fire: everything will be okay, and your friends will be there for you.

🌱 Beyond the Stories with Kira Bender — Pasadena-based occupational therapist Kira Bender joins Rita to help parents navigate the aftermath:

• Why "regression" isn't real — and what's actually happening when behavior changes
• The trap of "we're luckier than others" — how downplaying loss can invalidate a child's experience
• How trauma changes a child's nervous system (the fourth-grader's guide to the amygdala)
• Modeling out loud: the single most effective way to give kids permission to feel
• Windows and mirrors: why stories help children see themselves — and understand others
• The takeaway: it takes time. Support the child in front of you, not the next milestone.

Resources:

Find Kira Bender → herewegrow.co
More stories on the gooshi app → gooshi.world

If this episode helps your family, please share it with someone in Spokane who needs it — and a five-star review helps more families find us. ⭐

We see you. We're with you. 

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world

The mental load was never meant for one person — so why are we all parenting like it was?

This week Rita sits down with Dr. Anne Josephson, Psy.D., MS.Ed., licensed psychologist and founder of Uptown Psychology, an evidence-based CBT practice serving families across New York, Connecticut, New Jersey, and Florida.

Together they name the thing so many of us feel but can't quite say: we were raised to never "trouble people," we built a world where every app removes another human interaction, and now we're exhausted, isolated, and wondering where the village went. Dr. Josephson's answer is refreshingly unprecious — the village comes back through small, awkward, repeated acts: borrowing the egg, making the specific ask, setting the kind boundary, and letting our kids watch all of it.

Then: what convenience culture is doing to our kids' tolerance for discomfort, why boredom is a skill worth protecting, the social skills quietly disappearing (wait until you hear about the tin can phone), and the one tech habit she recommends to every family.

In this episode:

• The generational script against asking for help — and how to rewrite it
• Community care in practice: small asks, clear boundaries, zero guilt
• Receiving help from grandparents without the control spiral
• What a frictionless world costs developing nervous systems
• Boredom, patience, and phones that sleep in another room
• Supporting kids with ADHD and anxiety in an instant-gratification world

🔗 Learn more about Dr. Josephson: uptownpsychologyny.com
 🎧 Listen wherever you get your podcasts
 📩 Join the gooshi newsletter at gooshi.world

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world

What if the fights aren't the problem — and it's the silence afterward that teaches your kids the most?

This week, Rita sits down with Dr. Sheena Glover, a clinical psychologist based in Fort Worth, TX and founder of Intimacy and Progress, where she supports couples and families across a wide range of relationship structures, including polyamory and consensual non-monogamy.

Rita and Dr. Sheena get into what actually marks a healthy relationship (hint: it's not how much you fight), why "coming back home" to your own body is the first step out of conflict, and the word — misattunement — that explains why disagreeing with someone we love can feel so threatening. They also talk honestly about non-traditional relationship structures, what kids really need when a family looks different than expected, and why one person was never meant to be your entire village.

In this episode:

• Why conflict isn't the opposite of intimacy — repair is what matters
• A simple body-based practice for de-escalating a fight, for you and for your kids
• What "misattunement" is, and why being disagreed with can feel so lonely
• How to show up for friends and family in non-traditional relationships, with curiosity instead of judgment
• Rebuilding the village: why parents (and kids) need more than one person to lean on

You can book an appointment with Dr Sheena here:

https://intimacyinprogress.com/

 📱 More at gooshi.world and linktr.ee/gooshi_world

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world

What happens when the darkest chapter of your life becomes the doorway to your purpose?

In this episode, Rita sits down with Deanna Blasi DeAndino

, founder of The Mindset Tapestry — the first neuroscience-backed brand for kids and families — and creator of the Magic Mirror Affirmation Chart. A former special education teacher, Deanna opens up with rare honesty about the postpartum depression she experienced after her second son was born: the crushing months, driving herself to the ER, and the slow, deliberate work of rebuilding herself from the inside out.

Together they explore matrescence and maternal mental health, how postpartum depression can begin during pregnancy, the neuroscience of rewiring our thoughts, and the daily rituals — affirmations, mirror talk, meditation, movement — that helped Deanna come back to herself. The conversation widens into something every parent will recognize: how our own inner work becomes the foundation we hand our children, why "tolerating discomfort" is a skill we can teach, and how healing a parent and raising a child are really the same work.

This one is tender, practical, and deeply human. It's for any parent who has ever felt like a shell of themselves — and wondered if the way back is also the way forward.

In this conversation:
 – How postpartum depression can start in pregnancy, and why it's so often missed
 – What it actually looks like to "look inward" when you're at your lowest
 – The phases of learning to believe your own affirmations
 – Why our kids need an inner toolbox for a world we can't yet picture
 – Building rituals that ground a whole family, not just the child
 – The idea that "this piece stops with me" — healing across generations

Deanna's work: 
The Mindset Tapestry · the Magic Mirror Affirmation Chart

https://themindsettapestry.co/?srsltid=AfmBOooPOH54xqtYjiIk02rFIR4-zcJJhAFsGw7jijHSkObFv4yw9etv

https://www.instagram.com/themindsettapestry/

https://www.tiktok.com/@themindsetmama

🎧 Once Upon a Feeling is the gooshi podcast — 

Honest conversations about the feelings underneath parenting, ours included. Follow the show so you never miss an episode. Learn more at gooshi.world

A note: this episode touches on postpartum depression and mental health struggles. If you're finding things hard, you're not alone and support is available — Postpartum Support International (call or text 1-800-944-4773) and the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline (call or text 988 in the US). Reaching out for professional help, including therapy and medication, is a valid and important path.

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world

Hi Friends, we're so glad you're here !

For months, Once Upon a Feeling has been about helping children name and navigate their feelings. This episode is where that changes — and Rita shares exactly why.

When a friendship conflict she thought she'd "solved" two years ago came roaring back weeks before the end of the school year, it sent her back to a memory of her own: a piano rival from 36 years ago, someone she's now reconnecting with. Sitting with both, she landed on a quiet, uncomfortable truth — that not every problem is meant to be solved. Some are there to grow our capacity to sit with the discomfort. And a child's capacity to do that begins with ours.

So the show is pivoting. 

From here, Once Upon a Feeling explores the threshold moment — what happens when a child brings a feeling to a parent, and how what we're willing to face in ourselves shapes what they're allowed to feel.

In this episode:
- The friendship conflict Rita thought she'd solved — and why it came back
- A piano rival from 36 years ago, and what rivalry turned into
- Why "every problem has a solution" quietly fails our kids
- The pivot: children's feelings are never formed in isolation
- What's coming next — conversations with parents, authors, and founders

This is the path now, and Rita hopes you'll walk it together. If this resonated, follow the show and share it with a parent who needs it.

Reach Rita at [email protected] or on Instagram @gooshi.world.
More at gooshi.world.

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world

Most parents think potty training is about timing, sticker charts, and patience. But what if the real story is happening inside your child's nervous system?

In this episode of Beyond the Story, Rita sits down with Dr. Quiara Smith, a Pediatric Pelvic Health Specialist based in Santa Rosa, California, who has dedicated her practice to helping children and families navigate one of the most overlooked areas of child development — pelvic floor health.

From sensory processing and interoception to bedwetting in teenagers and the cultural pressures around potty training, Dr. Quiara brings compassion, science, and a whole lot of clarity to a topic most people are too embarrassed to talk about.

What You'll Discover:
🧠 Why conventional potty training methods often fall short
🚽 The real signs of readiness — beyond what the books tell you
💧 Why bedwetting in older kids and teens is a medical issue, not a behavior
🧬 The connection between pelvic floor dysfunction, sensory processing, and neurodivergence
🌍 How cultural background shapes our approach to potty learning
❤️ What to say to a parent who has been quietly carrying this struggle

Dr. Quiara's message to every parent: "If they could, they would." Your child is not doing this to spite you — there's a root cause, and there is help.

🎧 Paired with this episode: Listen to "Too Loud, Too Cold, Just Right" — a sensory-focused potty training story read by Anattina, available one episode back and FREE on the Gooshi App (download on the App Store).

👉 We Want to Hear From You & Collaborate With You!

Are you an Author? DM us — we'd love to feature your book inside the Gooshi App and put it in front of thousands of parents.

Are you a Teacher, Child Life Specialist, or Pediatric Therapist? We want you on the show. Reach out — let's create content that supports families together.

Are you a Mom or Dad? Did this episode resonate? Share it with a parent who needs to hear this, drop a comment with your experience, or write to us — we read every message.

🌱 Explore Gooshi's Ecosystem
Gooshi is more than a podcast. It's a curated ecosystem of expert-backed stories, tools, and resources built for parents raising emotionally healthy, body-aware children.

📲 Download the Gooshi App — Free stories on the App Store

📩 Subscribe to our Newsletter — Expert insights and new episodes straight to your inbox

🎙️ Follow the Show so you never miss a Beyond the Story episode

Once Upon a Feeling + Beyond the Story is produced by Gooshi — where stories meet science to support your family.

Dr Quiara Smith Links:
https://alohaintegrativetherapy.com/about-us/

https://linktr.ee/Alohaintegrativetherapy

Send us Fan Mail

You can explore Gooshi's ecosystem here:

https://linktr.ee/gooshi_world