Eps 283: Parenting Through Chronic Illness with Liza Blas

What does joyful courage mean to you?

I love that term. For me it’s how do you want to live your life? In love or fear? I love the two words together because it gives you the permission to be joyful and loving and add some fun into the fearful moments of life. Joyful courage to me is how I want to live. That’s what I want to model for my kids.

 

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Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Hello, friends.

Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place where we tease apart what it means to be a conscious parent and a conscious human on the wild ride of parenting teenagers. I am your host. Casey oberty, I am a positive discipline lead trainer, yes, that's new and exciting. I'm a positive discipline lead trainer, parent, coach and Mama walk in the path right next to you as I am perfectly raise my own two teens. Joyful courage is all about grit, growth on the parenting journey, relationships that provide a sense of connection and meaning, as well as influential tools that support everyone in being their best selves. As you listen in on today's show, pay attention to how grit shows up in the conversation. Also, if you're not already on my email list, now is the perfect time to join. I pop into my subscribers inbox with stories, podcast, news and offers. Every week, my hope is to make you laugh a little, or at least relate to what I have to share and keep you updated on all the joyful courage goodness. If you're into it, go to joyful courage.com/email and sign up. Signing up right now will get you the seven tips for connecting with your teens. I'll share with you seven tips over seven days that if you put them into practice, will make a difference in your relationship with your kids. Each day you'll get an action step and a bonus step. If you're feeling like an overachiever again, that's joyful courage.com/email. Sign up and stay more connected. Thank you so much for listening. I am deeply honored to lead you. So grateful to hear that what I put out matters to you, and so excited to keep it coming. If you love this show, please take a screenshot and share it on your social media. Let your friends know you're listening and find value in the podcast. Tag me and I will reshare it in my media channels as well. All right, enjoy the show.

Hi listeners. I am so excited to introduce my guest for today. Her name is Liza Blass. Liza is the host of the very happy stories podcast. She brings hope, empowerment and inspiration to her audience by shining light on complex topics impacting many families today. Liza's Stories are inspired by her own experiences raising two kids, both suffering from conditions like depression, anxiety, ADHD, OCD and even Lyme disease. Liza shares her best practices through her very happy stories, podcast speaking engagements and personal coaching, where she serves as a Thrive guide. I love that thrive guide to parents who are struggling. Before launching her podcast, Liza was a successful commercial real estate broker specializing in the development of medical facilities, surgical centers and built to suite, built to suite, built to suit, built to suit. I'm so corporate, like I know all the language. Anyway, hi, hi, Liza, welcome to the podcast. So glad you're here. Casey, I

Liza Blas 3:28
am so glad to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah, fill

Casey O'Roarty 3:31
in the gaps. Tell us a little bit about how you went from the built to suit properties to your podcast and the coaching and the work that you're doing.

Liza Blas 3:40
Sure. Yeah. So I was really in this corporate world of build to suit property,

Casey O'Roarty 3:46
build, not build to suite something different. You know, I

Liza Blas 3:51
was very successful, but behind the scenes at home, I was kind of living this secret life of suffering both of my kids, just as you had mentioned, have been impacted by so many struggles mental illness and chronic illness, and it's something that I didn't talk about, and I was really in, in the in, on the sidelines, going through this separate journey of healing. And just when I thought it couldn't get any harder, the universe dropped a big old lemon on us in the form of Lyme disease. And that really was the moment where I decided to shift gears and really embark on this Lyme journey and really focus on getting my kids healed and healing our family at the same time and helping others. And so shortly after I just I was like, I gotta share my stories. I don't know how to share them. I gotta share them. I had so much written down in my journal, and I decided to share. My stories through a podcast, and that's really how it all started. So

Casey O'Roarty 5:04
let's go back in time a little bit. So you're doing your career, you're doing your thing. First of all, I don't even know what, like, what is Lyme disease? What is I don't know what the nuances of Lyme disease. I mean, I know it's a disease, but I don't really know what it entails. Like, what does that mean when you find out that that's when your family and was it both your kids? Everybody, yes,

Liza Blas 5:25
it was both my kids. It was both my kids. And, you know what? I can answer the question of, what, what it how it presents itself by just maybe even going down a timeline for you, yeah, and you knowing up front that the root cause of a lot of our problems was Lyme disease, and it just went undiagnosed. And so is the story for so many people and children and families in America. And when you ask somebody, well, what does it mean when you have Lyme disease? Well, it's different for everybody. Some people have joint pain, some people have migraines, some people are debilitated with chronic fatigue. For my kids, the biggest impact was brain inflammation, and so I could tell you, early on for my son, he's now 12, in the seventh grade, he started having issues as early as the second grade. Were kind of like one day he just had crazy anxiety, and he kind of had never been right since started with school refusal and some panic in second grade, he was also complaining about his leg during basketball, we thought maybe he was just trying to get out of sports, right? I'm like, you're like, fine. You're like, it's fine. Third grade, he was in full fledged school refusal by the time we got to fourth grade, Casey, it was the year he entered his first of two partial hospitalization programs for anxiety, depression, school refusal and suicidal ideation. He was nine, yeah, yeah. And then, and so he's kind of been, you know, working this whole time with his mental health. He also has ADHD, so it's just been very difficult because there's a lot of shaming that goes on with children that have ADHD and learning differences in the school system. And it we he really just couldn't catch a break. He also had a lot of physical problems with sleep apnea, restless legs, terrible sleep and and my daughter started she she's always been anxious, and so that's that's nothing new for her, but by the time she was in sixth grade, things were getting really bad. Seventh grade, she had a full fledged eating disorder, and so I did a program with her as well. Her eating disorder was tied to OCD and panic attacks. Now that OCD component was very much tied to Lyme disease, but we didn't know it at the time, and she's now a freshman in high school, and so here we are working with psychiatrists utilizing the best interventions, medically, with medication, therapy, all different kinds of therapy. And my kids were never getting better, and they would get a little bit better, like the first two to three months, and then they would slide back and get worse, until my daughter started having severe hallucinations, oh my gosh.

Casey O'Roarty 8:47
Like, can we just pause for a minute? I just want to be like, Mama. I mean, it's one thing to have one child who's really struggling, but both of your kids, I mean, I'm thinking about the ages that you're talking about and remembering you how you told me they're age different. Like, this is all. Both of these things are happening simultaneously. Yeah, they are. They

Liza Blas 9:12
were kind of ping ponging. You know, I feel like sometimes children get a sense of, like, when you have too much on your plate. They'll really try, because they they

Casey O'Roarty 9:22
really rein it in you. They

Liza Blas 9:24
will reign their shit in. And was soon as I will get one in a program and work, and then out of the program, then the other one. It really what I was doing was creating space for the other one to now fall apart, right? Because they couldn't hold it together anymore. So there was a ping pong balance for a good four years and forth. And like, you know what? You're not using that psychiatrist anymore because he's got a better one. We're going over here, right? And I just built this network of practitioners over the years. Was like you minded it?

Casey O'Roarty 10:02
Yeah, did you find Well, I love DBT. I talk about DBT. I bet, I bet you guys did that.

Liza Blas 10:08
We did ERP, EMDR, we did ERP, the exposure response stuff for OCD. Now we've got every acronym under the sun. I feel these days. How

Casey O'Roarty 10:20
did you keep it together?

Liza Blas 10:23
Honestly? Casey, it was the work that gave me a place of my own to focus on, to focus on, too. So I would tap in and tap out and balance myself out so that I didn't just work mental health. 24/7, I would go really hard, especially if I needed to find something for them. Like every time we had to go back into program, I'd work really hard and qualify places for my kids. And once we got situated, then I would tap out a little bit and then go right back into work. And so I think that that balance helped sustain my mental endurance.

Casey O'Roarty 11:11
Okay, because that sounds like, I mean, I've had, I have my own journey with that and with one kid. And, you know it's, it's an we were laughing before we hit record about, like, Okay, well, look at what the universe thinks we're capable of. Like, does what I preach really work right? And it's that choosing in and being willing to recognize when it's time to tap out, recognize. And I'm also curious, because I know I work with a lot of parents and and my own experience as well, of finding providers is a full time job. Where are you? Where are you located?

Liza Blas 11:53
I'm located in the Chicago suburbs, so we're a lot of amenities.

Casey O'Roarty 11:58
Yeah, because that was really hard for me, was finding it took a long time and wait lists were like, I mean, what's the point? What's the point in telling people that there's a year long wait list? Like, just take yourself off the internet for a while, please. I mean, right?

Liza Blas 12:14
Or provide other referrals every mean time. You know. Yeah.

Casey O'Roarty 12:20
Okay. So, okay, I interrupted you. You were talking about your daughter and now and then. So here they're having all these things, all these unbelievable things happening.

Liza Blas 12:31
Yes,

Casey O'Roarty 12:32
what was the, what was the moment of like, of Lyme disease being the,

Liza Blas 12:37
I'll tell you how, how I got there. Tell me the hallucinations were happening so frequently and like, what

Casey O'Roarty 12:44
does that mean? Like, what kind of hallucinations was she having

Liza Blas 12:47
to worry physical and visual? So at its worst, she would literally be attacked by an entity that did not exist, that we don't see, and she'd be sweating and crying and screaming. It was bad. I mean, it's so these types of things, like even created PTSD for my son, and so there's this ping pong right of each of their hardships and struggles the other one feels. I mean, they're both very sensitive creatures, and so am I, and so there's been a lot of healing that's needed to take place, but how I got to Lyme disease is by sharing my story. I'm one of those people that learned to really get help. I can't live in isolation, and I can't hide my reality. And I started being very open to people and to anyone that would listen. And I also started kind of like opening my network of reaching out to other moms, and that is what got me to Lyme disease, because I shared my story with a woman who is she was like an acquaintance, but now she's a really good friend of mine. At the time she was an acquaintance, and she said, um, Liza, I don't mean to make you jump down a rabbit hole, but you really should look into Lyme disease. I have a friend whose daughter presents in a really similar way, and she has Lyme, and when she said that to me, it resonated. I was like, oh, oh, I do need to look into that. And I did, and I learned that even when we talk about hallucinations. I learned on the internet that one of the first lines of defense that they treat somebody with schizophrenia is antibiotics. Oh, really, yes. Why is that? It's the craziest thing. But there is this connection between and. Maybe people are just being misdiagnosed, even with schizophrenia, with schizophre schizoaffective because, because of the hallucination component, right? Well,

Casey O'Roarty 15:08
that's what I was thinking when you were talking about it. I was like, well, wish is she? Was she? Yes,

Liza Blas 15:13
I actually speaking of that, I took my daughter to one of the top university hospitals in the nation, here in Chicago, had my daughter do a full evaluation. And I said, I am bringing her here because I want to know if she has Schizophrenia or Schizoaffective. I want her to have the best protocol possible,

Casey O'Roarty 15:35
sure and information, yeah. And

Liza Blas 15:38
she came to the conclusion that my daughter had just really, really high anxiety. And at baseline, my daughter was, like, at a 10, she's like, she does not fit the profile. So, you know, I actually worked with a Chinese medicine doctor already, just because we had all these other sure issues of, like, chronic fatigue, constipation, a lot of physical ailments that, like the doctors couldn't help us with, yeah, and my Chinese medicine doctor said, Oh, yes, you must do a Lyme test. You're right. We need to do that. She had the kit in her office. It's a special test called iGenex. It's not your standard Western Blot. The Western Blot is so it's just not accurate. So we did iGenex, and she had Lyme disease and CO infections, and so once she came back positive, I tested my son, and he came back to my gosh, yeah. So you know, there is that moment of relief where you start realizing I'm not crazy, you know, that I'm and I'm a good parent. Wasn't the parenting? Yeah, and we, we just went to treatment and, and that's kind of, and then that's kind of started its own journey, right there. But that's kind of, you know, being open and sharing my story is kind of what got us where we needed to be,

Casey O'Roarty 17:04
yeah, well, and probably is also getting others. I mean, obviously you continuing to share on a higher level with a bigger platform is supporting others too. I

Liza Blas 17:15
think, yes, I

Casey O'Roarty 17:24
uh, yeah. And I, you know, I kind of want to say, God bless people like you and me who aren't ashamed or afraid of being vulnerable and open and transparent. Because, you know, and I'm just saying this for those of you that are listening, who feel alone and, you know, feel like you're like, I like to say you're not in your own private freak show, okay, you're not. And find your people, find Liza, find me. So okay, so you find out, yes, Lyme disease, whoa, okay, and you start treatment. Well, first of all is Lyme disease just one of those random things. Like, you know, my husband last year was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, which is blood cancer, and they're basically like, there's no reason why. There's no like correlation to lifestyle or anything. Is Lyme disease like that? Or is it? Is it catchy, you know, what do they know?

Liza Blas 18:22
It's a big mystery. They know, but they don't really talk about it. You can be transmitted by a tick, but, you know, it's so much more rampant than that it you can get it from a spider bite. You can actually even get it from, I mean, mosquitoes. I mean, it's like a whole other rabbit hole. But the biggest, biggest defense for Lyme, besides just like a bug spray and like wearing long clothing and covering yourself, is having a healthy immune system. And so many people with Lyme disease don't have healthy immune systems, and that's where I believe having anxiety and depression kind of sets you up to being a little bit more vulnerable, yeah, because it stresses your immune system. Now, I have an autoimmune I have Hashimoto, so, you know, I'm working with a stressed immune system that's not up. You know, it's not like the strongest. And I've talked to so many moms that have kids with Lyme disease, and it's so interesting to see that so many moms have autoimmune and so you do wonder, are we passing some type of immune deficiency to our kids?

Casey O'Roarty 19:38
Who knows who are playing with ticks? And you

Liza Blas 19:41
know, my kids were the kind that were like running in the grass and rolling down hills, and like playing in creeks and like, I don't know, we don't know. My son went camping with my husband. My daughter went to summer camp. You know, it's just, but I think a lot of kids have those same experiences. But their immune systems are just strong, sure,

Casey O'Roarty 20:03
sure. So moving forward, you guys go into treatment and what is and when? What are you seeing with the symptoms of their kids? Like, what was was it dramatic? What was it like?

Liza Blas 20:15
Well, it's terrible. Actually. It's a chronic Lyme is very sad, because you have this whole other institution invalidating that it even exists. You know, if you get a tick bite in a rash, they'll put you on antibiotics, and they'll treat you, and you'll be done. But if it kind of manifests like it did for my kids, where you never had a bullseye rash, and it just kind of was like a slow and steady thing. You can't be treated in the western medicine world, so you have to find special doctors like LLMD, so they're Lyme literate, MDS, Chinese medicine, functional medicine. Anyway, the regimen is really either herbs, an herbal protocol when you're chronic, or antibiotics. I did both for my kids, and it's kind of like when you have cancer, the chemotherapy makes you sick and it makes you feel worse. That's like what it's like for treating Lyme. You're killing off borrelia bacteria, and now you have this thing called die off, and it really makes you feel worse. So long story short, the journey did get worse, but we are kind of restarting. My daughter, actually, I just got back from an international trip with my daughter. She did a whole body hyperthermia, which is amazing, is that, like the cold

Casey O'Roarty 21:37
bath, it's

Liza Blas 21:38
actually the hot zap. It's hyperthermia. Oh, god, you're sedated, and they heat you up to between 107 and 109 and it kills Lyme disease.

Casey O'Roarty 21:50
Oh, my goodness, yeah, yeah. And where did she have to go to get that done?

Liza Blas 21:54
We went to Mexico. Out of all places you could go to Mexico or Germany and it, which is a journey all in itself. So she is on the upswing. She is doing amazing. My son, I would love to take him there. He's ready, so we're taking a break from his treatment and starting back up again in like two weeks. He's kind of pulsing and taking a break. But we're still in it. We're still in it. We're on the upswing, but he's still in treatment.

Casey O'Roarty 22:27
Yeah, yeah, oh my god, Mama,

Liza Blas 22:32
I know, I know, but you know you you'd be surprised how the struggles of your children get you where you need to be. Oh yeah, no, I've had to show up. I've had to so much of helping them is me, working on myself, healing myself, dealing with my own demons, getting over all the things that hurt me in the past, because I need to be the most empowered version of myself. Yeah, I need to to feel and believe that they're going to be okay, that you guys, we're going to go through this. I have to believe that and walk that walk to raise their vibration. Yeah, because I can't jump down the rabbit hole with them, right, like misery and sorrow, right, right? And there's

Casey O'Roarty 23:26
a choice there, but there is a choice, and that's that's so fascinating to me, you know, hearing your story, knowing my own story, knowing the stories of so many people that I work with, you know, and and friends and family, and just watching from the outside, looking in the way that people decide how they're gonna move through life challenges, like there's, I really, there's always a choice and there's an opportunity. You know, it's not so much like your story. I mean, it's still a struggle. You know, my husband still is in cancer treatment, and my goal is like, okay, so what does peace feel like inside of this, right? How can I be in peace? At peace, whatever that means to me. I mean to me that just means not in you know dysregulation, peace means being an acceptance. Peace means like allowing life to unfold and trusting that everything is temporary. And I mean, and I'm hearing that in what you're saying as well, mean you have every right and reason to be like to have chosen, you just fall apart, right? And you didn't.

Liza Blas 24:45
Well, I had moments where I did fall apart. I had moments like onto my knees in the kitchen being like, make this stop. Why are you doing this? You know, and everybody. Should give themselves the permission to fall apart. But you know what, you just got to get back up, right? It's all about getting back up. And I do want to give my kids the space to fall apart, because when you see your friends, you know going to parties, well, not now in this covid world, but have being kids and having that robbed from you, and not playing sports and and having that typical life, it is sad and and you, you do have to grieve those moments, but that being said, we still have great cards, like we still have so many good things. We just need to uncover those and lean into those. And I know for my daughter, especially Casey, she is so empowered for being so young. She's not going to put up with anyone's shit. She's not going to be ever pressured to do anything she doesn't want to do. She's just lived such a struggle and survived, and I know that when she goes off to college or grows up, that she's going to be okay, that she can handle it, because she's been through, and that's a gift. Yeah, when that is such a gift to be like, I trust my daughter, she's going to be fine. No, I really, really trust her. I really, really mean it. She's gonna make good decisions. What a gift.

Casey O'Roarty 26:26
Yeah, that has to have huge Well, I feel the same way, like about this last year, and, you know, the mental health struggles that have shown up and the, you know, my husband's stuff, like, we didn't know how rock solid we all were right, you know, until confronted with all of this. So I love that, and I and I do really appreciate you saying, you know that it's when I say, there's a choice to fall apart or not fall apart. I want everyone to hear me when I say that doesn't mean that not falling apart. You don't have days, or even, you know, multiple days of that whole like, I don't want this, and this is too much, you know, and but again, there's that choice point of, okay, great. I see that I feel that I'm allowing that, and this is what's in front of me. So what is being asked of me, you know, I love thinking about it that way too. Like, you know, I say it kind of flippant. Like, oh, the universe really has a high level of trust in me. But like, wow, you know, I'm here for and I'm here for it. And like, yeah, if, if this is what is being presented, then there must be some level of, you know, I must be, I must be made for this, because otherwise why would it be, and why would it be presented to me exactly,

Liza Blas 27:50
exactly, and that is speaking to acceptance.

Casey O'Roarty 27:54
Yeah. Talk to me about how, yeah, because you talk about acceptance and gratitude and so talk to me about how those tools have come in for you. Oh,

Liza Blas 28:02
they're so important. I mean, you just hit the nail on the head. I mean, acceptance, really, I believe, is 90% of the work, oh yeah, in getting there. And I think it's, it presents itself as such work, because we're in resistance, and resistance is so much energy. I mean, resistance is exhausting. And I think once we get to acceptance, that's like your pivot point, it's like, it's like being stuck in the mud, and then when you accept, all of a sudden, you're like sliding down a hill. I mean, just the wheels are in motion. And I think people really need to realize when you hit acceptance, that's when everything will start to flow and get actually easier. You're going to get to your answers faster. You're going to find the people you need to find. You know, everything is going to start clicking and connecting, but you can't get to that path until you accept and acceptance too is just about like the here and the now, yeah, at this moment in time, I like this is happening, except that's that it's happening right at this moment. It's like, it's nothing more than that. It's just accepting the current state of affairs.

Casey O'Roarty 29:24
Yeah, people have such an interesting relationship with acceptance, you know. I mean, I and I get it like, why like it, you know, it can it can be really challenging. It can be, well, I think people can get confused about what acceptance means. You know, acceptance is not the same as, like, being excited about it

Liza Blas 29:49
exactly. You don't, yeah, I mean, you don't have to be shaking your pom poms with you know, and right, like, yay. I'm so excited that's happening. Yeah, I agree it's. Really a neutral thing.

Casey O'Roarty 30:01
I mean, love that I

Liza Blas 30:02
accept this as a neutral statement, yeah. And I also feel like, I think you're right. People have funny, not funny, but different perspectives on it. I don't see acceptance as surrendering. I think people work so hard and resistance that they just, they're like, ugh, screw it. And then you, like, lay down your sword, and then, like, the fight is over and you've surrendered. That's not acceptance. Acceptance is just acknowledging this moment in time, this is happening. There's nothing I can do about it. I accept this so that change can come. But when we surrender to something, you know, you're kind of not letting yourself be open, then to the future. Is the future still unwritten? There's so much more that can happen after the acceptance point. So you don't want to surrender. Like, for instance, I accept that my kids have Lyme disease. I do not surrender to the notion that they are going to be sick all the days of their life. Like that's not a reality for me. I don't surrender to that, you know, I accept that my kids need to be on medication. I don't believe they're going to be on medication forever, you know, like they change people, change hormones, change people grow. And just because we're on some type of med now doesn't mean we are going to be on it three years from now, or maybe we are. I mean, you just, you got to keep yourself open, and that's part of acceptance, too. It's just a moment in time well,

Casey O'Roarty 31:33
and I think it's interesting, like the semantics of it, because I love the word surrender, and I hear what you're, how you're, you know, what, how you're talking about it, as far as, like, it feels a little bit more like, Okay, I surrender. I'm done. But when I think about surrender, yeah, I actually think a lot along how you're talking about acceptance, like, I'm gonna surrender to my, you know, my, my kids, you you listen to my show with my daughter. So a lot of acceptance and surrendering to the fact that, you know, her journey, her path, was not one that I can predict. It was not one that I saw coming, you know, and it even was not necessarily one that was easy for me to come to acceptance around. And so like for me, when I think about surrender, it's really surrendering, you know, surrendering my conditioning, surrendering my ideas around control. But again, I think we're talking about the same thing completely. Because, yes, that's what it is. It's just like, here we are in this moment. And as much as you know, the Buddhists say resistance is the resistance is the root of all suffering, something like that. Yeah. And it's so true, and it's so painful when the people that we love, and you can see them just in that resistance, and it's like, oh, like, it's a piling on, right? It's a piling on. So acceptance and gratitude too. Talk to me about gratitude, because I know I have my own relationship with gratitude, just with everything that we've been through. And man, is it powerful.

Liza Blas 33:09
I think gratitude is so powerful for me. I use it as a tool, as kind of as a reset button too. I mean, it's something that I practice every day. But I find it especially useful when I'm in a funk, when I need to get myself out of my funk, when I need to shake it off. I had a situation last month where I had come into close contact with someone that tested positive for covid, and so it kind of put me in a place where, like, well, I needed to quarantine and I was trying to get a test. To get a test, and I was getting so stressed out, and it just messed with my head, and I was really projecting a lot of fear and anger towards everyone else that lived in my house and walking, you know, in my house with a mask because I couldn't get a test. And finally, Monday rolled around like that happened on a Friday, Monday rolled around, and I was like, I need to do a three minute meditation this morning and just focus on some gratitude journaling. And the gratitude helped me get my mindset straight. That's how I use gratitude, too, in the reset button. And I do, I mean, I know during my hardest times with my kids, I am a big journal person, and I really wrote it all down. I wrote down all the suffering. And I was amazed at looking back at my journal that even then, there were parts of gratitude that I put in there. I think I'm just one of those people that like can find it a little bit easier, but I think it's important for everybody to practice, right?

Casey O'Roarty 34:49
That's it, too. I think it's such an important practice. And I'm, I'm the same way, you know, it's interesting and it's interesting to talk to other people. I'm sure you've had this experience. As well. When you share your story, there's a variety of ways that people will respond, right? And God bless God bless the people. But I find myself especially when people are, you know, I think they go into their own, like, Oh my God. Like, like, they go into their own like, what would I do? How would I handle that? And then they're in their spin out around them, responding to us. I notice that for me, I've spoken a lot into just I mean it like if there has to be purpose, I feel like gratitude supports the idea that some of the really hard, challenging things that there is some, I mean, I can't define the rhyme or reason. I can't name it, but when I can recognize, like, how strong my family is because of it, or the depth of our connection because of it, it allows me to release that. Like, but why? Why? You know, it allows me to just sit with like, oh my gosh, so many gifts,

Liza Blas 36:08
yes, kind of let go of some of the grief too, somehow, of of all that stuff, which, actually, yeah, I do see that with gratitude. And one other tool I just wanted to mention Casey is because we've talked about acceptance, we've talked about gratitude as empowerment tools, and for me, also tools for happiness. But the one that I think we've actually talked about through acceptance and gratitude is my third one, and that's forgiveness. That's where the whole letting go and grieving some of our, you know, letting go of some of our grievances, if you will, that piece of the empowerment toolkit is so important, I try to practice forgiveness so that I can heal myself. I feel like when we withhold forgiveness, we are actually harming ourselves. And I've just with my kids, I've just really been on that quest for happiness and finding joy despite everything that we're going through, and I have had to fold in forgiveness, and that's a daily practice, too. They don't call it practice for nothing, right?

Casey O'Roarty 37:33
Well, tell me more about forgiveness. So like, what does that look like to you and your experience

Liza Blas 37:42
for me, it's well, it shows up in that so much of how I interact with my kids that has been harmful to them in their journey of mental illness. A lot of the things that I have said or done, or maybe have participated in shame tactics. I know I contributed a lot to my daughter's perfectionism. So so much of that comes from my own wounds as a child. Yeah, you know, and and some of the things that my parents did to me, I mean, it's like all this cycle. And so for me to correct that behavior, my behavior, the behavior I'm talking about, from where for me to correct that and correct that parenting style, I needed to have an awareness of why I was doing it. And then once you have the awareness, well then you just have to add the forgiveness, because I think there's parts of me that are that were still angry at my mom, and we're still holding grudges, and it, you know, how those show up are in triggers? Yeah, when you're getting triggered by moments that are so harmless, you know, like a harmless little comment that your mom said, or your daughter said, or your husband said, and you just have like, this emotional reaction when you keep having those emotional reactions your kids are responding to that, yeah, maybe not verbally, but there's a response in them too. So see, there's like this whole chain of events that needs to take place, and I'll do anything to heal my kids, and if that requires me to do my own work in healing and forgive my parents or a friend or someone that's really done me wrong by golly, I'll do it because I'm really wanting so badly to support them. So it's like we all have to do our work, and that is where forgiveness has folded its way into my empowerment life. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 39:50
I love it. I love it, and I love I love the focus on forgiving ourselves. Yes.

I also, you know, as I was listening to you talk, I work with a lot of parents who, you know, especially right now with covid and just the way of on everything in the world. Right now, there is so much stress on our teens, and they are responding the way that they know how. And I know that there's a lot of people in some pretty tumultuous relationships with their teens, and when you were talking about forgiveness, what came to mind for me was also, you know, forgiving our kids. I think that it's so easy, you know, even when it's not their fault, I mean, even when it's like something like a mental health issue or Lyme disease or whatever, yeah, and it's, it is a little bit like, come on, I was in this too. I this was not the picture that I had. I know of parenting. And so I think if we're all willing to be super honest with ourselves and kind of do some exploring there, you know, part of because a lot, you know, I'll talk to parents about, well, you know, I hear you on all of these behaviors that you want to change, but what I'm also seeing and hearing is a relationship that is, that is, you know, damaged and coming back. And sometimes that first step in can simply being, you know, forgiving our kids for being for having only the skills that they have,

Liza Blas 41:31
right? Absolutely, yes, I think that's important. And one of, I mean, I've, I, you know, I know my son is only 12, but we've definitely had moments in our relationship where we should go to marriage counseling. We're fighting like crazy, and we have done a lot of family therapy. And one of the biggest things that was the game changer for me, in order for me to be happy and come again from a place of neutrality, is don't take everything so personal girl, I mean, right, yeah? Like, forgive them. But at the same time, when you know when his 12 year old mouth is running, this has nothing to do with me, yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 42:13
right. Nor does it have to do with like, it's not a respect conversation. That's when I hear a lot is like, yeah, they're so disrespectful. It's like, yes, and let's reframe here, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's tough. And I love that you are bringing it back to like, that inner work and the the work that we have, and I think that it's all relative, right, the collective experience we all have, the collective experience of raising kids. And there's similarities on the path, and then there's the special little nuances and flavors that you know, people get. You have yours, I have mine. And I think it's so easy as moms, especially. And it's interesting that we're having this conversation, because I just interviewed someone this morning who wrote fed up the emotional labor book. Yes, it's very, very good. Gemma hartway. Hartley, I've

Liza Blas 43:13
seen her speak actually. Oh, cool. Well,

Casey O'Roarty 43:17
she's I interviewed her earlier today, and we talked about, you know, the emotional load falling on women and, you know, and when our kids are having and going through stuff, you know, you didn't share very much. I'm sure that your husband was a great supporter, but you didn't share very much about him. You know, you were the warrior mom, finding what needed to be done finding the people, right? So, and I asked you at the beginning, like, how did you and you talked a little bit about tapping out. And I think it's so easy for parents, especially parents with kids that have any kind of unique needs, to really put themselves to the side. And I think even if you're just a just a parent with a teenager who's typical. You all listening too. You too. You know this self care is non negotiable. Yeah, yeah, talk to me about how you coach people around that,

Liza Blas 44:18
this whole self care, self sacrifice thing. I mean, that's huge right now, right? And I have had to realize the hard way that self sacrificing practices are not they're not only harmful to us because they're exhausting. They lead to nowhere, good, no good comes out of it for us, yeah, but worse than that, it is harmful to our kids, because what like? We start doing it because we want to help them, and we love them, and we tend to their needs. And we then start putting them first, but what we actually start telling them is, baby, you can't handle this. You can't handle life. Mommy's gonna do it for you. And I really did fall into that, and I think that's one of the reasons why I really did embrace my other my work and my job as a commercial real estate broker is because it gave me the opportunity to kind of balance some of that out. Had I not had that, I think it would my whole self sacrifice for meal would have looked a lot worse. Yeah, but we start giving them the permission to keep doing it and to not be capable. And at the end of the day, we just want our kids to be capable, and we need to believe that they're going to be okay, and we need to start treating them that they can handle it and start believing it. Because when we do that, then they start believing that they are capable. Yeah, so it's a terrible message to send to our kids when we participate in self sacrifice and not caring for ourselves and and also, just to add to that, we start modeling not to take care of ourselves. We start and that's why self care is like even a phrase, because we all forgot how to take care of ourselves, right? Because we keep having these cycles of watching our parents not take care of themselves and and making this world of self sacrifice, and then we end up teaching it. So, yeah, I mean, that's why it's a thing now, and so we don't want to teach our kids that everybody else comes first, and then you tend to yourself. We can't, we can't go on like that. So it really starts with us, right? Yeah, in breaking that cycle, taking care of ourselves and kind of modeling that for our kids.

Casey O'Roarty 46:57
I love that. I'm, I'm, all I'm I'm on board.

Liza Blas 47:02
Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 47:03
I'm on board. Girl, me too. I don't see how I could have navigated the last four years of my life without a certain level of practicing, you know. And I'm a journaler too. I journal and I meditate, and I've got some cards that I love and books that are inspiring to me, and long walks, and I mean, I just would have been a wreck. I don't know how I could have, or I would be like life continues to life, right? Like life continues to unfold. And so I really am hoping that the listeners are are really hearing and again, another place to just take stock and be reflective and ask yourself, if you're really struggling right now in relationship or just in the unfolding of life, what does it look like for you to take care of you, and are you making that a priority and and if It feels like, well, I can't or there's no time, I would challenge you, and I would encourage you to look ask for help,

Liza Blas 48:10
yeah, yeah, yeah. I just want to mention one thing too, because you had and I really want to share this with the listeners, because I really want to share my truth. Right, when all this was happening, I you know, of course, I'm tending to my kids, and I am trying to practice as much self care and self love as possible. And the one thing I did put on the back burner was actually my relationship with my husband, and it was just because our relationship didn't make the top two slots in the list. And, I mean, I love him dearly. We're super committed, but it's interesting now, where we are in the process of, like, you know, we're in the Lyme journey. My daughter's, you know, pretty much, like 90% healed, which is fantastic, and we're at this place now where we've had to revisit our relationship. And we just even a couple weeks ago, we had this really truthful conversation of, like, missing the connection because we hadn't been tending to the relationship. And I remember my husband struggling and saying, like, I just don't know, like, if you're connected to me, I just don't know if you love me or you're not in love me. It's like, I'm just not feeling it. And I I was like, I can't believe he's saying that. And I had realized that I had put so much love in myself, which is not a bad thing at all, but that I was really on this quest of empowerment, and he really felt like I didn't need him, you know, because I just had been going, and the train had left the station, and he probably was left back at the train station, and so we've had to. Connect, and that's just the reality when you have these issues with your kids, and you know you're trying to work and you're trying to help them and help yourself and manage these things happen, and it's just now I think the universe has made space for us to, like, get this relationship back into, like, clear, connective mode, but it's not easy, and I don't want people to think that, like I went through all of this without that being a struggle, because the relationship with my husband has been a struggle. But that's the reality. And, you know, you just keep working on it,

Casey O'Roarty 50:35
yeah, and same, you know? I mean, that's I remember a few years ago when high school started and things started, feeling like, Whoa, we're on a ride here. And we went and saw a marriage counselor, and that was the first thing she said. She said, you your job when you have teenagers is to work on your relationship with each other, otherwise, you know, and that was before we knew there was any mental health stuff going on. But, you know, that was, she was like, It's crucial. It's crucial because one, your teenagers do not need you all up in their business all the time. And two, right? And two is because this is the relationship that will be there when the nest is empty, right? Yeah. And so I really appreciate you talking about that, because I think you're right. And I it's eat, and I think it's a dance, you know. And I was picturing, when you were talking about it, I was like, picturing the, like, holding a bunch of balloons, like inflated balloons, and you have, you know, each member of the family is a different balloon, and sometimes there's different times when different balloons are closer to your hand. I don't know that was my visual, but kind of out there for a little while, as you really tended to the ones and but you still are holding that thread right. We're still holding that thread, and it's just a matter of tending to the thread and pulling it back in and doing the work, not easy, messy, vulnerable, and like you said, especially when you know, like we are in a solid, committed relationship, and that is intact, so much so that we can say, Wow, I'm feeling disconnected, Right? Like I'm feeling like, what can we do to tend to this? So thank you for sharing that.

Liza Blas 52:25
Yeah, absolutely, absolutely.

Casey O'Roarty 52:27
So I'm gonna ask you my last question that I asked to all my guests, and considering all that you've shared in the context of your story and your work, what does joyful courage mean to you.

Liza Blas 52:41
I love that term. I love the title. I mean, for me, it's like, how do you want to live your life? No in love or fear. And I love the two words together, because it gives you the permission to be joyful and loving and add some fun into the fearful moments of life where you need courage. So I mean joyful courage to me is like, that's how I want to live. That's what I want to model to my kids. Love it. Love it. So much

Casey O'Roarty 53:16
too. Awesome. Talk a little bit about where people can find your show and follow your work and so. And I want to, I want you to be explicit about what your offerings are, too, because you have the podcast. Yes,

Liza Blas 53:30
I have the podcast. Very happy stories. I am launching Season Two next month. But what's very happy stories is on Spotify, Apple podcasts, Google Play, pretty much wherever you get your podcast. And I'm also on social media. It's very happy stories on Instagram, very happy stories with wise a blast on Facebook. And what I am offering on my website, which is very happystories.com is a free download. It's my Thrive guide. I basically put all my best practices into this free downloadable guide to kind of like, kick off your journey, you know, out of survival mode and into Thrive mode. And then also, I am working with clients already in helping them thrive. I call myself a Thrive guide, and there's different variations of what I do, but most of the time it's when people just got a diagnosis of ADHD or, you know, something that's really rocking their world, chronic illness. And I kind of assess the situation and and, and bring in the Calm in the Chaos and say, Look, I know you got a lot going on. Here are your three top priorities, 123, and kind of give them that map when you're drowning. Yeah. And then I work with some other clients. That are now, like, kind of in good survival mode, and they're like, you know, I really want to get back to work. I really want to be doing something else, and then I kind of help them navigate them with a map on how to get to thrive mode. Awesome. Yeah, so that's what I do, and I would love to work with your listeners, and it's just been so fun to chat with you. Thank you so much for having me.

Casey O'Roarty 55:22
Oh, thank you so much for coming on and spending time with me and listeners, all those links will be in the show notes so you'll be able to find Liza. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Stay in touch.

Liza Blas 55:34
Absolutely I will you.

Casey O'Roarty 55:43
All right, thank you again for listening, and don't forget, you can get the seven tips for connecting with your teens, as well as podcast updates and offers from joyful courage, plus some humorous stories straight from the trenches of my life by joining my email list. Joyful courage.com/email. That's joyful courage.com/email. Do it now so you can be even more connected to all things joyful courage. And be sure to follow me in all the places. I love connecting with you. On social media, I try to post things that add value to your life. So find me on Instagram. Find me on Facebook. Don't forget to check out the membership. Right? The membership for moms of teens and tweens at joyful courage.com/ljc enrollment closes the end of July. If there were any links that I threw at you about parent education or the membership or the email, just know all of them are in the show notes. So check the show notes. If you didn't catch the links and friends, take a deep breath, ride it into your body. Release. Find ease, find your balcony seat, lifting up and out for perspective and trust that everyone and everything is going to be okay. Big Love to all of you. I'll see you next week.

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