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Speaker 4: Welcome to she Pivots. I'm your host to Emily Tish Sussman.
Speaker 4: One of my goals in starting this podcast is to
Speaker 4: highlight voices and stories of women who went through something
Speaker 4: deeply personal, only to come out of it on the
Speaker 4: other side better than they could have imagined. After launching
Speaker 4: she Pivots last year, it's clear it's not a small group.
Speaker 4: This applies to most women, whether it's a big pivot
Speaker 4: or even just a tiny pivot. What's clear is there's
Speaker 4: still a lot of unpacking to do around pivoting. So
Speaker 4: as we're continuing to build this platform and community through
Speaker 4: new episodes, I want to also bring you more stories
Speaker 4: unfiltered and honest. So I'll be sitting down with more women,
Speaker 4: maybe the occasional man, some of whom have mastered their
Speaker 4: own pivot, some are just starting the pivoting journey. Are
Speaker 4: some just have something to teach us about the deeply
Speaker 4: personal moments of life. So stay tuned for more of
Speaker 4: these candid conversations this season. To celebrate Mother's Day, I'm
Speaker 4: excited to share my conversation with Emily Oster. She's one
Speaker 4: of my mom idols and I consume her content religiously. Currently,
Speaker 4: she is a professor of economics at Brown University, an
Speaker 4: author of three books, Expecting Better, Crib Sheet and The
Speaker 4: Family Firm. With her academic background, she uses data to
Speaker 4: analyze and discuss the choices around pregnancy and parenting. Let's
Speaker 4: jump right in Welcome. I'm so excited to be joined
Speaker 4: by probably the biggest mom influencer, maybe kind of anti
Speaker 4: influencer in my life, Emily Oster, economist at Brown. Overall
Speaker 4: smart lady. One of my friends. Send me your Instagram,
Speaker 4: which is how I found you, because she was like,
Speaker 4: here is someone who's actually talking the way that we
Speaker 4: are taught, like parents of young kids, like the way
Speaker 4: that we are talking about how the fact that we
Speaker 4: want our kids in school right now and they're not
Speaker 4: learning anything with mass on and like we're not anti vaxer's,
Speaker 4: like you know COVID exists, but like our kids are
Speaker 4: not learning and like we know that. And the fact
Speaker 4: that you were saying it from a factual place. I
Speaker 4: had never seen anything like it, and I felt like
Speaker 4: validated my feelings after like two plus years of feeling
Speaker 4: oh well, I mean five plus years of having kids,
Speaker 4: I've everyone been like, this is the way you're supposed
Speaker 4: to do something. This is the like, this is like
Speaker 4: the best way. Like seeing you say it that way
Speaker 4: like resonated with me the way that nothing else had.
Speaker 4: Is that why you started it? No, but that's great
Speaker 4: to hear.
Speaker 5: I guarded doing the kinds of stuff that I'm doing,
Speaker 5: sort of speaking to parents from this place of data
Speaker 5: and evidence and facts. When I got pregnant for the
Speaker 5: first time and I have my oldest one is eleven,
Speaker 5: she's almost twelve, and so this was now really quite
Speaker 5: a long time ago, and I got pregnant and I
Speaker 5: had a sort of experience. I think in the end,
Speaker 5: a lot of people turned out to have shared, which
Speaker 5: is the feeling of frustration that I wasn't being empowered
Speaker 5: to make the choices and decisions that I thought that
Speaker 5: I should be part of.
Speaker 4: Wait, what do you mean by that? Like in decisions
Speaker 4: that you should have been a part of.
Speaker 5: So there are many decisions that you face in pregnancy,
Speaker 5: like what kind of prenatal testing should I have? Should
Speaker 5: I have an epidural? Like you know, can I have
Speaker 5: a cup of coffee? And many of the ways that
Speaker 5: the evidence was presented was to sort of like do
Speaker 5: this or don't do this, Like no, you can't have
Speaker 5: a cup of coffee, and you'd be like, well, why,
Speaker 5: I don't know, it's in the rules, or maybe it's
Speaker 5: okay to have a little don't worry about it.
Speaker 4: But I really.
Speaker 5: Wanted to understand those things better, and so a lot
Speaker 5: of the experience of my first pregnancy was sort of
Speaker 5: trying to work through, using my professional training, trying to
Speaker 5: work through many of the questions that were coming up
Speaker 5: while I was pregnant, And then that sort of led
Speaker 5: to my first book, and that kind of led to
Speaker 5: the whole whatever my job is now?
Speaker 4: I guess, yeah, how do you describe your job now?
Speaker 5: So I mean I am I'm a professor, is like,
Speaker 5: so I teach a brown I have a full time
Speaker 5: job doing that. What I do that is more visible
Speaker 5: is I'm I basically I am a writer, so you know,
Speaker 5: I write books and then I write this newsletter and
Speaker 5: translate data for people.
Speaker 4: How do you think about this public PERSONA part of it,
Speaker 4: I mean, a part of what I felt so connected
Speaker 4: to when I found your Instagram is that, like it's
Speaker 4: just you in real life, Like you're often running when
Speaker 4: you're like answering questions. How intentional was it that you
Speaker 4: were like, this is the me that I'm going to
Speaker 4: put out into the world. Like I keep my personal Instagram.
Speaker 4: Actually I still keep it private because maybe because I'm
Speaker 4: too chaotic for the public. But like, but like I'm
Speaker 4: just not ready to think about that, like what is
Speaker 4: my public me? It is an interesting question.
Speaker 5: I've been much more deliberate about my kids, So I
Speaker 5: don't put my kids on Instagram, and we don't have
Speaker 5: pictures of them and that kind of stuff. And my
Speaker 5: husband's a pretty private person and so it really is
Speaker 5: just sort of me. But part of what I have
Speaker 5: found very valuable about social media, although it has many problems,
Speaker 5: is this ability to connect, and I think, when done well,
Speaker 5: letting people see the kind of ways that things are
Speaker 5: messy and see your chaos and understand that. Like I
Speaker 5: wear the same sweatshirt all the time, you know, and
Speaker 5: if you only saw pictures of me at events, you
Speaker 5: would be like, wow, that person has different clothes, but
Speaker 5: actually it's like the same sweat Like for ninety eight
Speaker 5: percent of the time, I'm dressed in the same thing,
Speaker 5: and I'm like, you know, trying to make it work.
Speaker 5: And so I think that kind of authenticity is helpful.
Speaker 5: The other thing is I cannot do the job that
Speaker 5: I do if I have to think and also do
Speaker 5: social media if I have to think too much about
Speaker 5: what I am putting up there.
Speaker 4: I mean, that's anesoutly like a real question for me,
Speaker 4: is I mean, I think about this with the superficial
Speaker 4: mob influence, there's even more like how do you decide
Speaker 4: when you're going on? Like I feel like if I'm
Speaker 4: getting through a day, like there are so many days
Speaker 4: and I feel like, oh my god, we made it
Speaker 4: to the end of the day, like it was the
Speaker 4: bare minimum that I could do, Like we just made
Speaker 4: it through. But like, how do you remember to put
Speaker 4: things up.
Speaker 5: So a good example here is like on Wednesdays, I
Speaker 5: do these qaas and I do like like I asked
Speaker 5: people for questions in the morning and then like a
Speaker 5: few times throughout the day, I like answer a bunch
Speaker 5: of questions and I literally do those like I have
Speaker 5: ten minutes between a meeting, and they are totally uncurious
Speaker 5: and you can see.
Speaker 4: Like I'm not. I mean like different weird locations.
Speaker 5: Sometimes I try to like find like different angles on
Speaker 5: my office just like people are.
Speaker 4: Like, oh the rice cooker again.
Speaker 5: Yeah cool, But you know, I think it is it.
Speaker 5: It is kind of a way to like bring people
Speaker 5: along a little bit. But it's also the case that
Speaker 5: like if I had to curate those, if I had
Speaker 5: to say, like Okay, I'm going to make sure the
Speaker 5: lighting is right and like I'm wearing the right makeup.
Speaker 5: You know, I've organized it so it's like there's music
Speaker 5: or whatever else, like I just would never be able
Speaker 5: to do it.
Speaker 4: And that's it. Yeah, totally I could never do it.
Speaker 4: Not do it. I mean the other day you shared
Speaker 4: I thought was very personal and something I like share
Speaker 4: more and less about. But like having gained weight recently,
Speaker 4: that like for me I had actually I had commented
Speaker 4: right back to yours and you had posted that, like
Speaker 4: you had gotten a ton of comments around it that
Speaker 4: like for me, it was tied to pregnancy, but like
Speaker 4: an abnormal amount of weight, like I gained like one
Speaker 4: hundred pounds with my first pregnancy, and then I just
Speaker 4: had three more, like I had two more pregnancy, So
Speaker 4: I just kept it on for five years. And it
Speaker 4: wasn't actually for me until the lockdown that I was
Speaker 4: able to focus enough because like I was, like I
Speaker 4: wasn't pulled in a lot of other directions. I was
Speaker 4: actually able to focus and like lose it and get
Speaker 4: back to where I had been before. But like, it's
Speaker 4: also made me realize that one I feel like I had,
Speaker 4: like I went through life as like a reasonably attractive
Speaker 4: you know, I'm a knock gal, but like you know,
Speaker 4: like people responded to me as like reasonably attractive person
Speaker 4: and then gaining weight so quickly and ramping up afterwards.
Speaker 4: I felt like I had a very different experience in
Speaker 4: the workplace. I was on TV the whole time, like
Speaker 4: as like a different weight, and it was hard for
Speaker 4: me not to want to go back to that. You know,
Speaker 4: I wasn't as healthy and like I didn't feel as good,
Speaker 4: but also from like a pure vanity perspective that we
Speaker 4: can be as body positivity as we want, and we
Speaker 4: should be and we can be. But like I had
Speaker 4: a different experience moving through the world.
Speaker 5: I think what was interesting about posting that was that
Speaker 5: it came I think, in some ways very much from
Speaker 5: the same kind of place of kind of like recognizing
Speaker 5: that I not that I should be happy, but just
Speaker 5: that it like from a place of body positivity, like
Speaker 5: I would like to be comfortable, and I rationally understand
Speaker 5: that like this is actually not a big deal and
Speaker 5: that it is not something that I should be thinking about.
Speaker 5: And you know, I spend a lot of time and
Speaker 5: like I talked to Virginia Stiul Smith a lot, like
Speaker 5: Jess a friend of mine, and so I sort of
Speaker 5: understand that, and yet it is still the case that
Speaker 5: like I feel bad, and I think that that that
Speaker 5: was I think the piece that resonated, just the feeling
Speaker 5: of like, it's not that this is a problem and
Speaker 5: I and the messages I got were not people saying like, oh,
Speaker 5: you look great, because actually it's completely not any of
Speaker 5: the point. It's this feeling of like, well that isn't
Speaker 5: this is bothering me in a way that I wish
Speaker 5: it was not. And I think that was the thing
Speaker 5: that resonated.
Speaker 4: Totally, was that, like the big the general response you
Speaker 4: got back to being like yes, I wish like I
Speaker 4: wish I didn't care, but I do care, or like
Speaker 4: just yes I feel like this and I know that
Speaker 4: I shouldn't care, but I do and it bothers me. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 4: I felt like I got so I was on TV
Speaker 4: as a political commentator, like when I was gaining weight,
Speaker 4: when I was on the whole time, and I got
Speaker 4: a comment back from a producer when I was like,
Speaker 4: so I had just gone back from eternity by just
Speaker 4: gone back on TV, and a comment from a producer
Speaker 4: to my agent saying, you know, if Emily doesn't look
Speaker 4: a little better, it's gonna be hard for us to
Speaker 4: book her.
Speaker 1: Oof.
Speaker 4: I know it was so brutal and like, to be fair,
Speaker 4: I look.
Speaker 5: Back in the horrible that's like that did kind of well,
Speaker 5: that's hard.
Speaker 4: That I did also look like a mess, but that's
Speaker 4: because like not my clo fin like I was a mess.
Speaker 4: I looked very I don't.
Speaker 5: Know I don't approve of that at all.
Speaker 4: Well, I really appreciate that support, but no, it was
Speaker 4: like the I looked like a mess because I was
Speaker 4: a mess, and like it was the hardest thing for
Speaker 4: me to hear in that moment. It took me multiple
Speaker 4: more years than to have the brain space to be
Speaker 4: able to actually feel like I could focus on it,
Speaker 4: and like, like weight does fluctuate, Like it fluctuates all
Speaker 4: the time, like depending on the weather, and like if
Speaker 4: I'm going to a lot of kids' birthday parties, like
Speaker 4: I will get down with that cold pizza more definitely
Speaker 4: more than any other child in the room.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it means a really complicated space because I think
Speaker 5: there's been so much move towards sort of trying to
Speaker 5: accept that like this is that that kind of comment
Speaker 5: is just totally not okay, and that in fact, like
Speaker 5: we do need to move to a place where like
Speaker 5: we are not fetishizing thinness and the way that we
Speaker 5: have in the past.
Speaker 4: I think that's like really.
Speaker 5: Important, but it is also hard when you have spent
Speaker 5: your whole life getting to there to be like, wow,
Speaker 5: that's that's fine. Actually what's interesting is for me, like
Speaker 5: doing all this running has in some ways, like been
Speaker 5: quite good because it is very clear that like correctly
Speaker 5: nourishing oneself is important for running fast. I run like
Speaker 5: not to be thinner, but to go fast and like
Speaker 5: run fast and so so that has been very helpful.
Speaker 5: And even though it is often associated with like, oh,
Speaker 5: runners have a lot of eating issues, that is that
Speaker 5: is true for me, It's actually almost the opposite. And
Speaker 5: the other response I got to that post was so
Speaker 5: my friends were runners who were like, but you're running PRS,
Speaker 5: Like who cares?
Speaker 4: Which I was like, very it was like very nicely.
Speaker 5: One of my friends, a professional runner, was like, but
Speaker 5: you're running PRS, so who cares?
Speaker 4: Another Okay, well, Molly says it probably I love So.
Speaker 4: I actually also started running in the last couple of years,
Speaker 4: Like it was part of my like get back into
Speaker 4: shape was to start running. And I run for exactly
Speaker 4: the opposite reason. I am the slowest, sloppiest runner, the slowest.
Speaker 4: I'm real slow. I have to tell you, like the
Speaker 4: height of my running. I did my first, my second
Speaker 4: five K that I've ever done. I did one like
Speaker 4: ten years ago. I did it locally, and I still
Speaker 4: needed to do like an entire Broadway Show album to
Speaker 4: make Me Through, like to get through a five K,
Speaker 4: Like I am so slow, But that's not at all
Speaker 4: what it's about. Like it's about me being outside and
Speaker 4: being able to work out. Like my kids are still
Speaker 4: six four and two, so like a lot of touching,
Speaker 4: a lot of mommy if I'm paying adequate attention to
Speaker 4: one and the other two are like, well I better
Speaker 4: get in throw something like I better do something pretty
Speaker 4: extreme to get that dominated attention. So like working out
Speaker 4: outside is actually the only way that I can work
Speaker 4: out and have a clear head. So like that's more
Speaker 4: what it's about for me. But if I gave myself
Speaker 4: the metric of running fast, it would become the most
Speaker 4: depressing thing I did that day. Yeah, it's interesting.
Speaker 5: I mean I think it's like I'm like running has
Speaker 5: been very many things for me, including what you describe,
Speaker 5: and I think now my kids are older, it's like
Speaker 5: a little bit easier to be like, Okay, well maybe
Speaker 5: I can try to like go faster, and then I'm
Speaker 5: gotting I'm old, so it's like hard to go faster.
Speaker 4: But I interviewed Alison Felix. Ah, yes, I'm not as
Speaker 4: fast as Alison Felix. I'm not that's not a goal
Speaker 4: that I'm in corporating. I'm not trying to get towards.
Speaker 4: My dream for that interview was that we would do
Speaker 4: it in person and then we would running. Yeah, like
Speaker 4: I would be the real life version of that meme.
Speaker 4: That's like the Olympics would be a lot better if
Speaker 4: we could see a regular person run alongside them. She
Speaker 4: passed on that I'm amazing, amazing, I'm disappointing. It's gonna
Speaker 4: be a real shock to everyone that she did not
Speaker 4: want to run against me. But I did like everything
Speaker 4: I possibly could when I was in LA to nail
Speaker 4: her down. Like they're like, oh, Alison's really busy this week.
Speaker 4: I was like, but I just I just needed to
Speaker 4: run like a little like just her yard, like just
Speaker 4: the legs of the block. And they were not interested. Shockingly,
Speaker 4: So what do you feel, like, what do you want
Speaker 4: people who are following to take away from like all
Speaker 4: the content that you're putting out.
Speaker 5: So the main thing, ultimately I want people to take
Speaker 5: away is a better understanding of data and how data
Speaker 5: can be helpful in making decisions. And I think that
Speaker 5: that's huge amount of what I do in my newsletter
Speaker 5: writing and my book writing is kind of that piece
Speaker 5: of it is like you saw this scary study. So
Speaker 5: like a good example is like I got a million
Speaker 5: DMS emails whatever. When the Washington Post the other day
Speaker 5: was like ultra processed foods give you a varying cancer,
Speaker 5: and like don't eat breakfast cereal is there's a lot
Speaker 5: of that that comes through. You know, I will of
Speaker 5: course write about that and talk about that in the
Speaker 5: newsletter and explain why that's you know, like hot garbage.
Speaker 5: But what I would like is for when people where
Speaker 5: I want to get to is when people see that
Speaker 5: they don't have to send it to me. They're just like, oh,
Speaker 5: Emily's already told me the like observational studies are bad,
Speaker 5: and I can look at this table and realize that
Speaker 5: this paper is really flawed, and so I'm just going
Speaker 5: to move on with my life.
Speaker 4: That's like where I want to get to.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And so what I'm doing is sort of moving.
Speaker 4: I'm trying to move in that direction.
Speaker 5: I think part of what we're trying to combine, and
Speaker 5: you know, this is still very much a kind of
Speaker 5: work and progress is sort of how do you bring
Speaker 5: people along on that and make it not like a
Speaker 5: class on econometrics. I know how to teach a class
Speaker 5: at economicis I'm a job, you know, I've totally but
Speaker 5: people don't want to take that class.
Speaker 4: That's a requirement actually at my university.
Speaker 5: So we need to like figure out how do you
Speaker 5: how do I bring people in so they can see
Speaker 5: some of that, so that content starts getting into people's
Speaker 5: heads and helps people move forward.
Speaker 4: It helps you make better decisions.
Speaker 5: But also it's like and relatable and they're sort of
Speaker 5: they feel like they're getting it from somebody who they
Speaker 5: trust and are willing to come along a little bit
Speaker 5: with the with the econometrics.
Speaker 4: So that's the balance. I mean, it's such an interesting
Speaker 4: parenting lens on the problem with disinformation now that like
Speaker 4: we don't know which sources to trust, we don't know
Speaker 4: what is a real study. There was a huge I
Speaker 4: don't know, like you're going back to COVID, but like
Speaker 4: there was a huge fight in my school last year
Speaker 4: among the parents because the school put in a vaccine
Speaker 4: mandate once they approved the five to twelve and there
Speaker 4: was a big movement of parents who were pulling out
Speaker 4: studies saying that the vaccine caused problems in kids that
Speaker 4: they were not willing to subject their parents to. We
Speaker 4: had a parent who works as like a biomedical engineer,
Speaker 4: and so she went through study by study and she
Speaker 4: was like, not one of these studies would hold up
Speaker 4: in any way. So we had our own Emily. I
Speaker 4: guess like resident and expert. I'm probably more of an expert, yes,
Speaker 4: in the mechanics. But interestingly, the parents that were reading
Speaker 4: the studies were not interested in what she had to say,
Speaker 4: like they did not respect her as an expert. So
Speaker 4: I think, like, who is the expert is a huge
Speaker 4: part of the problem.
Speaker 5: I agree, And I think one of the things we
Speaker 5: saw very much during COVID was sort of people glomming
Speaker 5: on to their own experts and sort of their own
Speaker 5: I'm going to follow this expert or I'm going to
Speaker 5: sort of be following this person.
Speaker 4: I think part of what we're trying to do.
Speaker 5: A little bit in this space is sort of think
Speaker 5: about people as not that people are their own experts,
Speaker 5: but that there is a component of some of these
Speaker 5: kind of parenting decisions in particular, And I wouldn't put
Speaker 5: vaccines necessarily in this category, but that for many kinds
Speaker 5: of parenting decisions, there's a piece of the data where
Speaker 5: you really want to understand that and sort of use
Speaker 5: it productively. But also that some of these decisions are
Speaker 5: really driven by your own preferences, and so there's a
Speaker 5: sense in which, like the data is sort of empowering
Speaker 5: you to make a choice that works for you. But
Speaker 5: you know, I think that when we come to something
Speaker 5: like vaccines and we're sort of up against people listening
Speaker 5: to disinformation in a way that is not.
Speaker 4: That is not always so helpful. Yeah, well, I so
Speaker 4: appreciate that. I was so freaked out about getting pregnant,
Speaker 4: and so freaked out as in, once I was pregnant,
Speaker 4: I thought, oh my god, I have no understanding of
Speaker 4: what is happening to my body, what is happening inside
Speaker 4: didn't be Like nothing I have done in my life
Speaker 4: has prepared me for this moment that I actually ran
Speaker 4: away from. Like I didn't read a book, I didn't
Speaker 4: go to a class. I'm like the opposite.
Speaker 5: I was like, I have right now.
Speaker 4: I was like I got to write a book about this,
Speaker 4: Like this is I'm like leaning in, We're gonna do
Speaker 4: it all. I leaned out. I was like, I won't ignite.
Speaker 4: I actually went into labor two weeks early with my
Speaker 4: first I didn't have a bag packed. We didn't go
Speaker 4: to the hospital for hours. I walked the dogs while
Speaker 4: I was having contractions. I was like, let's just see
Speaker 4: if we can ignore this and it'll go away. I
Speaker 4: was on CNN the day that I went into labor
Speaker 4: because I was like, I was like, they told me
Speaker 4: it's two weeks. I have to It's how it works, right,
Speaker 4: Like it's a calendar, get totally booked TV totally. I
Speaker 4: was like, not a prop. I think. I was like
Speaker 4: on the way to the hospital, like texting, like canceling
Speaker 4: my hit that day because I was like, oh, I
Speaker 4: have two weeks that they say it's two weeks. It's
Speaker 4: two weeks, right, Like I didn't know anything, but I
Speaker 4: do feel like I feel like the way that you
Speaker 4: present the information, so like I'm not really an overreactor.
Speaker 4: And my husband is even less so than me. And
Speaker 4: it's funny. So when I say that to other moms,
Speaker 4: the response they always give me is like, oh, well,
Speaker 4: it's good to have you know, like that balance, And
Speaker 4: I'm like, no, no, I'm not an overreactor. Like neither
Speaker 4: of us react and like, maybe in not a great way,
Speaker 4: but I do feel like it's made me more confident
Speaker 4: in my parenting because I did trust my gut to
Speaker 4: some degree, although it may be very depressed from any
Speaker 4: For the first couple of years, I didn't know what
Speaker 4: I was doing. But I feel like finding your voice
Speaker 4: as an expert has helped give me confidence in that
Speaker 4: that like I drank coffee the whole time, I had
Speaker 4: wine the whole time, I didn't try to sleep in
Speaker 4: bed and my kids I wanted to sleep, like I
Speaker 4: didn't really think about it. So I feel like being
Speaker 4: able to trust that I had something in there and
Speaker 4: like I wouldn't call it maternal instinct, I still feel
Speaker 4: like I have very little of that, but that I
Speaker 4: could trust my decisions. It wasn't mine, I guess is
Speaker 4: the points you're making.
Speaker 5: Yeah, And I think that phrasing of sort of trusting
Speaker 5: your decisions, I think that is a huge piece of
Speaker 5: confident parenting. A lot of what brings up anxiety for
Speaker 5: those of us who are not very relaxed like you
Speaker 5: is the feeling like we're doing it wrong. And I
Speaker 5: think that often comes from sort of hearing other people
Speaker 5: and maybe not feeling like we've thought through our decisions enough.
Speaker 5: And then somebody says they're doing something different, and rather
Speaker 5: than saying, well, I thought about this decision and I'm
Speaker 5: confident that this is the right choice for me, we
Speaker 5: sort of move into a place of oh my gosh,
Speaker 5: maybe I'm doing it wrong, and I think about how
Speaker 5: to do it differently, and should I change everything that
Speaker 5: I'm doing. And some of what we're trying to deliver
Speaker 5: is is that confidence of you know, yeah, there are
Speaker 5: a lot of good choices, and you made the choice
Speaker 5: that's good for you, and that's great, and now you
Speaker 5: can just move forward. And if somebody else made a
Speaker 5: different choice, it doesn't mean your choice is wrong. Just
Speaker 5: means that they made a different choice. And people make
Speaker 5: different choices. Yeah, I think that's it. Like, it doesn't
Speaker 5: mean that your choice is wrong. It doesn't mean that
Speaker 5: their choice was wrong. It's just like, what is going
Speaker 5: to work?
Speaker 4: And by the way, I feel like I don't want
Speaker 4: to give this perception that I'm like I was like
Speaker 4: such a relaxed especially of younger kids. Nah, I get
Speaker 4: it right. It was more than I was like overwhelmed
Speaker 4: by it and so I just like couldn't let it
Speaker 4: seep in because I felt like I was doing it
Speaker 4: wrong all the time. Especially with little babies, it's hard
Speaker 4: to know if you're doing it wrong, like oh, they're
Speaker 4: just gonna cry a little and it'll be fine, or
Speaker 4: if you're doing it wrong. I mean, this is like
Speaker 4: a real thing that happened last week, is that I
Speaker 4: was like, Oh, my two year old's cut seems like
Speaker 4: it's getting kind of bad, so I should maybe be
Speaker 4: concerned about it. And so I sent a picture to
Speaker 4: the pediatrician and she called me back immediately and she
Speaker 4: was like, you need to go to the hospital. And
Speaker 4: I was like, ah, yes, still knocking out it of
Speaker 4: the park with my gut instinct parenting decisions.
Speaker 5: I once cut my finger really badly and I got stitches,
Speaker 5: and then I sort of woke up.
Speaker 4: This is not the LONGNGO. I like woke up in
Speaker 4: the morning one morning.
Speaker 5: He was like, oh, it looks a little more swollen
Speaker 5: than it did. And I texted like five o' the morning,
Speaker 5: four were running. I like texted a picture of my doctor,
Speaker 5: who fortunately is also my friend, and she called me
Speaker 5: at like five point fifteen and she was like yeah, geat,
Speaker 5: I go to the hospital right now. I was like, okay,
Speaker 5: She's like, I'm calling you because I didn't want to
Speaker 5: freak you out with my text, but like, please get
Speaker 5: in the car right now.
Speaker 4: I'm going off. Yeah, don't you love those You're like, okay,
Speaker 4: You're like my real chill approach to this that's infected
Speaker 4: backfire just a little bit. When I went to go
Speaker 4: meet with our local because I did. I met with
Speaker 4: our local assembly member about our local housing issues. They
Speaker 4: tried to give me directions to where they are and
Speaker 4: I was like, oh, no, no, no, I know exactly
Speaker 4: where you are. You are in the same building as
Speaker 4: the only dermatologists who will see children because my children
Speaker 4: had impetigo passing it between each other for eight weeks
Speaker 4: last year, the never ending poetic So that's bad. That's bad. Yeah.
Speaker 4: I was like, so, I'm extremely familiar with your location.
Speaker 4: I've been there many many times. In that case, I
Speaker 4: was like, but like I only started taking to them
Speaker 4: to the doctor once. I was like, we're going into
Speaker 4: month two. Should we be concerned? Like now we got
Speaker 4: to like go do something, Yeah, we should. I think
Speaker 4: it was after I kept trying to send my kids
Speaker 4: to school, and this school kept sending them home that
Speaker 4: I was like, I guess it's time to see a doctor.
Speaker 4: I guess we've hit that time. So where do you
Speaker 4: want to? You know, we connected through this great friend
Speaker 4: of ours, Marissa Lee, who's written an incredible book, Reef
Speaker 4: Is Love. That was really interesting to me that you
Speaker 4: were guys were talking about doing an event together and
Speaker 4: talking together. Given both of your like individual platforms. Where's
Speaker 4: that a conversation that you're you're looking to take?
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean I think that we'll conversations always go
Speaker 5: in directions, But I think that what she and I
Speaker 5: have talked about is the sort of challenge of parenting
Speaker 5: when you were grieving. And you know, I lost my
Speaker 5: mom last year, which is actually when she and I
Speaker 5: first connected, partly because her book is so amazing and
Speaker 5: she's just like, like lovely, and there were many very
Speaker 5: hard things about losing a parent, and one of them
Speaker 5: is that you have to kind of keep going with
Speaker 5: your kids in a moment in which you kind of
Speaker 5: just want mom but she dead, And that feeling of
Speaker 5: like how do I keep going with my kids? And
Speaker 5: loss of a parent, I think is something many of
Speaker 5: us will experience, but there are other things in that category.
Speaker 5: You know, people have a miscarriage or like a God
Speaker 5: forbid a loss of a partner, Like they just that
Speaker 5: there are many things that happen, many pieces of grief,
Speaker 5: where as a parent you have to keep going, and
Speaker 5: I think that some of sort of talking through what
Speaker 5: can one do there and how can we sort of
Speaker 5: help people think about the right way to come at
Speaker 5: that for themselves.
Speaker 4: And I think that applies to parenting across the board.
Speaker 4: Like obviously they're in a very intense and extreme way
Speaker 4: when it's something very you know, rocking to your core,
Speaker 4: like the loss of a parent or a death that's
Speaker 4: been very human. But I also feel like when people
Speaker 4: say that kids have made them feel another side of
Speaker 4: themselves or like explored another side of themselves and more
Speaker 4: resilient in themselves, that's a piece of it as well,
Speaker 4: Like there are so many moments when all I want
Speaker 4: to do is curl in the ball reflect block out
Speaker 4: the world, and my kids are sensing something and want
Speaker 4: more of me in that moment, Like the strength to
Speaker 4: rise to the occasion for them, I think is not
Speaker 4: something that I had necessarily before I had kids old
Speaker 4: enough to need it. Yeah, no, I totally I resonate
Speaker 4: with that as well. Is there anything else that you
Speaker 4: want to leave our listeners with Just that data is
Speaker 4: great and that you two can use data in your parenting.
Speaker 4: And I think that it's part of confidence.
Speaker 5: But just helping people think about, you know, being confident
Speaker 5: in the choices that they make is a big piece of.
Speaker 4: What I want to be setting out in the world.
Speaker 4: I love that. And we have a lot of people
Speaker 4: who are pivoting careers. Any data based advice for them,
Speaker 4: I don't think it's any database advice. I think that
Speaker 4: the decision making advice is pivoting careers is great and
Speaker 4: just thinking through those hard decisions in a kind of
Speaker 4: structured way and making sure that you're kind of thinking
Speaker 4: about the angles before you make choices. That's my main thought.
Speaker 4: I love it. Thank you so much, Emily, thanks for
Speaker 4: joining us. Thank you so much. This is a treat.
Speaker 4: Thank you. Thanks for listening to this candid convo episode
Speaker 4: of sheep Pivots. Check back in weekly for more conversations
Speaker 4: with inspiring women. To learn more about our guests, follow
Speaker 4: us on Instagram at she pivots. The podcast she Pivots
Speaker 4: is hosted by me Emily Tish Sussman, produced by Emily
Speaker 4: eda Veloshik, with sound editing and mixing from Nina Pollock,
Speaker 4: and research and planning for Christine Dickinson and Hannah Cousins.
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