When the Flames Go Up

Whether she’s evaluating her emotional state or her career path, Christine Koh thrives on data. And soon after her 31st birthday, the data told her something needed to change. She had just had her first child, her dad was dying, and her work as a music and brain scientist was exhausting and lacked fulfillment. So she decided to upend three decades as “a good Asian who didn’t make noise” and pursued her many talents as a writer, podcaster, and digital consultant.

As the daughter of Korean immigrants in a very non-Asian Boston suburb, Christine spent much of her childhood coping with racism and falling into line within the family’s rigorous, patriarchal culture. Which fueled her Big Pivot into an online life of activism, advice, and encouragement to share our stories.

And now, as she nears her 50th birthday, she wants to build some breathing room in her life and inspire her daughters to find their own paths, independent of outside expectations. We also talk about revelations during her dad’s last days, her family’s ability to rally after her mom’s accident, her philosophy as “the least Tiger Mom tiger mom,” and how she Alexander Hamilton-ed her way into college.

Other links:

* Read (and subscribe!) to Christine’s excellent Substack,There's Always A Story.

* Learn about her simple holistic wellness tracker.

* Listen to her podcast episode with her mom.

* Buy some Wicked sharp cheddar cheese.

* Put this turmeric mixture in your coffee.

* Slather snail mucin on your skin.

Last Labor Day Weekend, the car Jodie Ousley was riding in was rear-ended by another doing 120mph. Her car flipped eight or nine times across the highway, and Jodie, riding in “the death seat,” sustained catastrophic injuries from noggin to kneecap. (Note to the squeamish: Don’t do a web search for “degloving.”)

She scoffed a bit when doctors told her it would be at least a year before she felt even close to normal, but she’s not scoffing now. Recovery from a brain bleed requires just about every kind of therapy there is, as well as a huge reservoir of patience when your progress inevitably plateaus.

And since she’s basically “not allowed to fall ever again,” she serves up some great advice about being told you can’t do something anymore: It’s easier to take when you’ve already done it.

Tune in to learn more about why she still feels enthusiastic about her future, the counsel she received from a Guatemalan shaman, and where those nightmares about Queen Elizabeth came from.

This week, Episode 8 drops a little later in the day. But it’s worth it, because this is our first Extended-Cut episode, featuring over 45 minutes of bonus dialogue! We laughed so much with Tiffany and “R.B.” that there were too many great moments to choose from. So we said, “the hell with it!” and left them all in.

We also needed the extra length to cover the extraordinary scope of their story. Tiffany’s dad was a vital, doting 73-year-old when a sudden illness left him unable to do much of anything on his own. Now, he sees 12 specialists in four hospital systems, and it takes about 45 minutes to list the timing and dosage of his 27 medications.

In 26 months, Tiffany and R.B. have learned volumes about hospitals, insurance, and powers of attorney; worked hard to find balance to keep living as spouses and parents; and figured out how to share caring duties with her brother and his sister—who also happen to be married to each other.

The key to surviving all this, they say, is keeping their sense of humor. Which is probably why the conversation veered into the wacky Loofa System at The Villages, Blanche Devereaux’s Olympian libido, and what it means to “draw four” in Dirty Uno.

Other links:

* Check out Tiffany’s work as owner of TNT Divalution (not to be confused with Diva Lotion, trademark pending).

* Betty White shows off her muffin on The Delicious Dish.

As director of the University Center for Child and Family, Dr. Erin Hunter provides and oversees clinical mental health services for many teens and young adults who are poised on the launch pad but can’t seem to lift off. The phenomenon had been accelerating for the last 15-20 years, spurred by stagnant wages, dwindling prospects, moving targets, academic pressures, and wobbly social contracts.

Then the pandemic came along and knocked everyone off balance.

At a time when a young adult’s opportunities to grow normally trigger developmental phases of individuation and separation, the uncertainty and isolation of lockdown has had the exact opposite effect. And since the modern world renders a parent’s experience less relevant, counseling your kid can feel like playing your favorite old-school video game on an entirely updated gaming platform.

We talk about how to release a child’s pressure valve by re-building confidence in exploration and failure, encouraging agency in their decisions, resisting social comparisons, and understanding why 64% is an excellent grade.

Other links:

* Find Erin at the Mary A. Rackham Institute (MARI)

* The multi-layered caregiving existence of “club sandwich caregiving”

* A black swan is an unpredictable, high-impact event that is often deemed in hindsight as having been inevitable.

* Self Compassion, by Kristen Neff

* Just because a movie is completely stupid doesn’t mean it can’t make a pile of dough at the box office

Asha Dornfest is one of those special OG blogger friends who went on to provide real-life support in both of our real-life lives. You can tell from her writing that she has one of those minds you can trust your troubles to.

That community-building mind created Parent Hacks and co-created the Edit Your Life podcast withChristine Koh, and her third act is Parent of Adults, a Substack newsletter about missing her adult children, fulfilling bucket-list plans with her husband, and making the most of the time she and her mom have left together.

Asha says she really “hadn’t been operating properly” since her father died right before the pandemic hit, in part because of the kid fears that had manifested so abruptly. When she talks about writing her dad’s obituary, selling her childhood home, and moving her mom from the Bay Area to a retirement community in Portland, she still marvels at how this self-described “fake grownup” was able to pull it all off.

Asha planned the mother/daughter road-trips to ease her mom’s transition through monumental life changes and jumpstart their new normal as new neighbors. But the trips’ other vital benefits were far less expected.

Other links:

* Follow Asha on Instagram

* Start reading Being Mortal by Atul Gawande TODAY

* Dick Van Dyke remembers when Mary Tyler Moore was cast as Laura Petrie

* “Save your favorite dildo—but throw away the other 15!”

* How many Christmas cards will you get with gay cardinals on them?

John Amuso, Esq. has never appeared on a podcast before. He has zero interest in social media, and his website sits in a remote corner of the Internet like an old Ford with possums living in it.

Basically, he’s not much of a promoter. Because he doesn’t need to be.

John is an in-demand family lawyer in New York State’s Attorneys For Children program, representing kids in matters of post-divorce custody and visitation, neglect and abuse, truancy, and all-around incorrigibility. He also helps provide a little structure and guidance within the state’s Persons In Need of Supervision program.

John treats every case with the care it deserves because a family is a system, and every decision will affect that family for generations. We talk about the importance of investigating the underlying causes of trauma, how social media often makes his clients more reactive and stubborn, and why he’s thankful not to be raising his three teenagers in Florida.

Other links:

* Top 10 reasons why kids enter foster care

* Why “Find Your Passion” is such terrible advice

* Oneida County, New York really is heart-shaped

* The Rodents of Unusual Size!

Akil Bello us the Senior Director of Advocacy at The National Center for Fair & Open Testing (Fairtest), which advances quality education and equal opportunity by promoting fair, open, valid and educationally beneficial evaluations of students, teachers and schools. It’s the perfect job for a man who has been calling out myths, socioeconomic bias, and overall shenanigans in college prep for 30 years.

One pervasive myth is the inflated value of a “dream school,” whose popularity results largely from the vicious circle of skillful branding and a culture that buys into it. He urges families to treat the process as unpredictable and driven by colleges’ business interests. And to recognize that choosing a school is a lot like shopping for a new car: don’t believe the MSRP.

Other links:

* Paying to have your teen classified as a “peer-reviewed” author (whatever that is)

* The highest-paid public employees in each state are almost all athletic coaches

* Get to know Kimberlé Crenshaw

* Explore Winona State University!

You can learn more about Akil’s work and writing on his website, his contributions to Fortune magazine, and his Twitter feed.

Our guest Jessica, who was elected to her local school board in 2020, has strong feelings about gender-affirming care for kids—and not just because she had to travel over 300 miles to find the care her trans-masculine child needed.

Her research, which dates back to the mid-90s, shows that gender-affirming care improves the mental health of the estimated 300,000 transgender and nonbinary teenagers, who otherwise would have greater risk for depression, substance abuse, and suicide.

She offers some emotional and political reasons why her ideological opposites argue against this care, how she finds compassion for those with (mostly) good intentions, and the optimistic patterns that help her believe this debate won’t be “a miasma of discomfort and anger and fear" forever.

Suggested reading:

* Supporting Transgender Autistic Youth and Adults: A Guide for Professionals and Families by Finn V. Gratton, LMFT, LPCC

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Anxiety sucks. You can’t tell why it affects some brains and not others. Talking about it—often in the context of a “mental health crisis”—often makes it worse. It makes you wonder if you’re a bad parent.

And it’s not even a new phenomenon. The CDC reports that persistent feelings of anxiety, depression, and hopelessness among young people increased by about 40% in the 10 years before the pandemic.

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Whether your anxious child is five or 25, however, Dawn Friedman, MSEd treats anxiety as a family issue, because parents need to assess their own needs in order for the family to function as a unit. And just because your child is struggling doesn’t mean you’re bad parents. Some kids are just harder.

Other links:

* “If a good mother is one who loves her child more than anyone else in the world, I am not a good mother. I am in fact a bad mother. I love my husband more than I love my children.” — Ayelet Waldman.

* Books by Frances L. Ilg and Louise Bates Ames, while conducting research at The Gesell Institute.

* You can learn more about Dawn at Child Anxiety Support and follow her on Instagram and Facebook.