EPISODE 32: REMOVING SHAME ABOUT SPECIAL NEEDS CHILDREN

May 6

MEET ANNA YEN

Anna Yen, CFA, has nearly 2 decades of experience spanning financial markets, cryptocurrencies, and digital marketing. She has specialized in derivatives, wealth management, and alternative investments, including real estate, crypto, and location independent businesses.

Currently, she is an investor and financial wellness expert at FamilyFI, working to empower families with financial literacy.

Her bilingual podcast Chinese Star Tales features storytelling and songs told with her kindergartener daughter. Anna actively supports the special needs community, and has the pleasure of having a daughter with Down Syndrome. She’s worked in 5 countries and visited 57.

SHOW NOTES

Anna Yen and I dive deep into the topic of guilt and shame — first about money, then more close to home, when she discovered while living in Taiwan that her second daughter would be born with Down Syndrome. While proud to be from Taiwanese heritage, the collectivist culture approach to wellness began with the idea of what would be best for the greater good, which did not include giving birth to a child with differences. Listen to how she overcame these external influences to choose what was best for herself and her family, as well as how to move from a fixed mindset growing up with a ton of debt her immigrant parents experienced to becoming a financial expert.

We also cover:

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Hello, and welcome back to the F*ck Saving Face podcast. Thank you so much for listening. If you're new to this series of episodes every week, I cover a certain theme and on Mondays I share a personal memoir based essay. On Wednesdays, I interview an expert about that theme. And then on Fridays, I offer a mindfulness practice to tie it all together.

So this week's theme is about shame and guilt when it comes to two very interesting topics. So one of them is money and that's something that I plan to cover quite a lot in future episodes. It's a topic that's near and dear to my heart because I grew up in an immigrant family with a lot of debt. And then that debt caused a lot of insecurity.

And this feeling of not ever being able to feel very safe in the home. I don't think a lot of immigrant parents have the luxury of exploring mental health and healthy forms of communication. And so that just continues to create. Potential generational trauma. So those are one of the things that I really hope that the series of podcast episodes helps us to kind of break that cycle.

And that it's always been really fascinating to me that you, where you are right now in your lineage of everyone that's come before you, you have the power to stop and change and shift the direction of that trajectory moving forward as well. If you listen to the episode with Rahi Chun, he also mentions of how, when you heal yourself, there are energetic, spiritual, philosophical beliefs that it can heal past generations of trauma as well, a certain amount of generations back.

So whatever it is that your belief is. I do believe that we have the power to not be the victim of our circumstances and that we have the power to change. It's not the easy thing to do. It's not like it's a one and done kind of thing. You hit it and quit it. And that's it. I think that it's a practice just like on Fridays, the mindfulness practices there as a practice, it's not perfection.

It's a continual thing that you're going to do because we are continually showing up in our lives. And there's so many things that are happening. In every second, every day. Um, so there's always learning opportunities to move forward, but today we will be focusing on the topic of money as one element.

And then the other topic that we'll be covering is about how to raise a child with special needs, or even just to make the decision to have the child. When you come from a very collectivist culture that has different ideas of what would be best for the greater good. Today, we'll be talking to Anna yen.

She's a CFA. She has almost two decades of experience spanning financial markets, cryptocurrencies, and digital marketing. And she's also an investor and a financial wellness expert at family fire that works to empower families with financial literacy. She's also launched a podcast, a bi-lingual podcast called Chinese star tales that my daughter and I love because it has storytelling and songs with her kindergarten, her daughter, Sienna, who is one of my daughter's closest friends.

One of the things that Anna really hosts will come through during this interview is that special needs. Kids are way more than their diagnoses that oftentimes they get reduced to a label, but no matter how different these children are, for example, in her case Liliana, she believes that her child is way more than the down syndrome characteristics that people tend to focus on.

And from my own experience with Liliana, she was just filled with so much joy and light. And was so much fun to be around her. So I am excited for you to listen to today's episode.

Welcome to the fuck saving face podcast. I'm your host, Judy sway, and together we'll explore mental and emotional health for Asian Americans, especially breaking through any taboo topics. Life may not always be pretty, but it is indeed beautiful. Let's make your story beautiful today. Alrighty, welcome back to the flux saving face podcast, where we explore all topics that are taboo and really redefine what it means to be Asian in America today.

So I have Anna yen Kim today with me here, and she's a financial wellness expert, a solopreneur and investor. We're going to talk about shame today, as it appears in two different ways, which is in money and then also in parenting. So it's going to be a jam packed conversation. I'll just share that I met Anna when we were both living in Taiwan.

We happened to be living up in the mountains in Beitou and this really gorgeous, like high rise building and the building was so empty. There were two giant high-rises of like over 20 something floors and it was so empty that at night. You know, when all the lights were on, you could see that like maybe five families lived a total in the whole complex total, total ghost town.

But then one day while I was on the floor, I all of a sudden heard another voice with another child. And I thought, well, that's weird. Like of all the floors that they put us on, put us on the same floor. We took the elevators downstairs. I started making conversation with Anna because she could speak perfect English, which is another reason I was like, wait, what?

Who are you. And then we found out that we both have girls who are the same age. And she was saying that she was taking the bus down to take her daughter to school. And I'm like, wait, I'm taking the bus down to take my daughter to school. And we found out that our girls are in the same school at the same class, they were in a Montessori school.

So needless to say, we became fast friends. And then Anna ended up moving back to California. A couple of months before we moved back to California, which was such a wonderful coincidence. So our girls have continued to be friends with each other, which is awesome. That's a long winded introduction to how I know Hannah, but I'm going to, and over to Anna for you to talk a bit about your expertise when it comes to money and parenting and all that you've created this far.

Yeah, I'm so excited to be here. And obviously it was such, it such an interesting point in our lives when we met. And I love that we've been able to continue to talk and grow together in so many different ways. So I right now specialize in financial wellness and marketing. And I've also been an investor for a couple of decades.

Now, first beginning on trading floors at JP Morgan and UBS. And over the years, I've worn a lot of different hats. I've worked at a hedge fund and wealth management and crypto, but it was really only in the last few years that I started crafting a lifestyle of my own. And it's something that you've gotten to see firsthand also that it means that I do a little bit of money coaching.

I run a finance focus, copywriting business, and if you other web-based businesses. And I started a Chinese English, bilingual podcasts, Chinese Star Tales. So fabulous for anybody who has a little one, our daughters are six and it's such a fantastic way. The introduction that you have, and you can tell that you have a marketing mind about it as well.

Cause you hit upon the pain point, which is that it's really hard to practice Mandarin when you're surrounded by English speakers. And so my daughter is also, you know, half white. So half the time, because of the way that our custody arrangement is, she's spending the rest of the time, completely immersed in an English language environment.

So. I'll definitely link to the podcast as well. Cause it's such an entertaining opportunity to listen to you and your daughter and how you have conversations between the two of you and just hearing the adorable voice. But I wanted to hop in because you know, part of what I got to know Anna about is when we met.

I would say that that was the lowest point of my marriage. And it was when I realized that I needed to get divorced, but because of the way that our dynamic in our marriage played out, when we were living in Austin, I was the primary breadwinner and providing, supporting our family. And the agreement was that we would go to Asia.

The living expenses would be cheaper. It would give us. An opportunity for our daughter to practice Mandarin. And then my husband at a time would be the one who'd be the primary breadwinner. Well, when things went south, you know, he basically did not want to pursue that arrangement anymore. And so I was left in a completely terrifying position where I, you know, had entrusted, I think like so many people believe when they get into a relationship that you're going to.

BNA you're going to support each other. Um, and I had never been taught growing up to provide for myself to even value or honor my own work to know. Um, I pulled out so much money during the course of our marriage, from my retirement savings to pay off the debt that I was not the only one responsible for accruing.

So I turned to Anna to help me rebuild in a lot of ways. And you know, the shame and the stigma that was there was so immense because. I had earned a lot of money in my life. I knew how to do that. And because of the debt that my family was constantly in growing up, I never wanted to be in that place. And then I found myself, you know, because of life circumstances, I recently had a friend say she used to coach nonprofit, like seminars and whatnot.

She would always say like, you're just one life moment, one bad decision away from like everything potentially, you know, being beyond your control. And how can you prepare yourself for that? So I wanted to like start diving into this topic of shame when it comes to money and what you've experienced. And I also grew up in a family that had hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt.

But we can talk about it, right? There's definitely no safe space for us to even talk about it within the family, in a calm and you know, not completely frazzled play. And because of that, I grew up and you also grew up with, I guess, what a lot of coaches would call as scarcity mindset. And I hear this term a bit in the coaching community because it's actually a great marketing term encapsulates the problem or encapsulates the problem.

But at the same time, I think, I think there's a bigger issue, which is that most Asians and a lot of immigrants have this fixed mindset and it's because they don't think that they can change and they can grow out of that. Position, you know, especially financially. Is that what you thought? Scarcity mindset.

Yeah. I mean, I think that there was just so much fear all the time, because similar to you, my parents were also in like hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. And then anytime money was brought up, it was brought up with. Arguments like, like rageful arguments and a lot of like, just fear so that I had promised myself that I would never be in that position.

And I had no debt for, I, you know, I paid off my college tuition fast and I had like three jobs at a time in college and two to three in high school just to pay off everything. But it never, it didn't matter how much money was in the bank. It never felt safe. So like, I know that for part of your story too, that.

Family of origin dynamic propelled you to move into finance so that you could better understand, you know, what was actually happening. And then what happened for you? How were you able to transform your mindset around it? I think I also made a promise to myself just as you did not to let finances ever bother me to work really hard, but also not to stress about it.

And a lot of. I think it took me years to really realize that a lot of what happens to us really happens in our own heads. So how we think about things, the stories we tell ourselves is really what drives our own experience. And it's really hard to get to that. When you're living in a very fixed mindset, when you think, oh, everything is because of, you know, where I'm living right now or the circumstances.

And it's, it's not something that I have a choice in. Um, when I was growing up, my father was actually fighting mental illness and, you know, it was a very scary thing to go through. But he really perpetuated this idea of, of everything being fixed and, you know, his inability to come out of his mental illness, despite, I mean, obviously he didn't have the most support.

Right. And he did not want to go for help, which is very common, especially with Asian men. Um, you know, you can't be vulnerable. There's so much shame if you're not able to provide for your family to be able to be functional. That's just something they can't talk about. Yeah. I mean, even Renee brown actually says in one of her interviews that, you know, she would always encourage vulnerability and encourage that openness and authenticity.

And then one time she was at a book signing and this man walks up to her and he's there with his wife and his daughter and they have Brene Brown sign, their books and then he just kind of stands and pauses for awhile. And then the wife and the daughter like, come on, like, what are you doing? Let's go. And he's like, hold on just a minute.

And Brene says. So she was looking at the guy like, oh, you should go. But then he says to her, you. Advocate for vulnerability all the time. And I believe that that's important, but I'm going to tell you right now that the second that I fall off my horse and that the people who I feel like judge me the most are my wife and my daughter.

So like, you know, you want me to be vulnerable and yet every time I show that vulnerability, it is not accepted, it is not okay. And I remember for me, like seeing my dad one time, just kind of. Melt against the wall, slide down the wall and just start crying. Like he was just so overwhelmed by the debt that he was in by the dysfunctional marriage that he had with my mom by everything.

And I'm looking at him like terrified. Cause I, you know, it's your parent, you want to feel safe. But then like the human part of me still felt a lot of empathy for him as well. And you know, that's not something that we're taught of how to like reconcile and figure out in any way. We're not given like the language and the tools.

That fixed mindset that you said, can you describe it a little bit more of what you mean? Because I did an episode where I talked about like growth mindset and how you encourage that children and that you want to tell them like, well, you just haven't figured out yet. You still have the ability to do that.

So what's up. Did you mention Carol Dweck? No. No. God, Carol Dweck professor is a professor. I thought you said Carl, but yes, Carol Carol Dweck has done amazing research over the years on the type of mentality that people have, especially in schools. So, you know, I think intuitively we all think you should tell your kid that they're doing great because they're so smart.

No, like praise them for being smart. And so she ran some studies where, when kids were given a really tough math problem and they were told they succeeded because they were really smart the very next time that they were given something hard, they probably, they froze. They couldn't do it as well. It just didn't perform as well.

And then. You compare that to another group of kids who were told that they worked really hard when they tried that really hard math problem, and they decided that they could grow and they could change and become smarter just by applying hard work. So the fixed mindset refers to essentially. Being afraid of taking more risks, because you've been told that this is who you are.

This is your identity. You're smart. So don't disappoint. And that applies obviously a lot to our childhood where the high expectations, you know, maybe people start off for the well and get running out of the gates with really high grades in school and, you know, get a pluses and everything. And then they hit maybe high school or even college.

And. Basically hit a wall where it's very difficult to keep performing at a certain level. You know, maybe you can start talking before everyone else are doing a lot of math problems before everyone else, but it doesn't really translate to success, you know, in, in kind of the, the traditional ways of thinking of success of, um, maybe potentially making a lot of money and getting a great job in leadership positions.

So. I think with fixed mindsets, it becomes really hard to start taking those risks that will get you to the next level. Um, so when it comes to like the shame and the stigma around money, how did you transform it? How would you recommend that someone else who might be experiencing the same thing, shift their mindset around it and redefine what money or success or wealth actually means?

And that's kind of the million dollar question for a lot of people. I think when we're growing up in the U S we're told that we can be anything, right. You can be anything that you want to be. And I think that should be switched around a little bit too. You could be anything that you expect to be. So I may want to be a pop star, but I don't expect it because we never got to go to karaoke while we were in Taiwan,

but we set our own glass ceiling and it's. It's not a function necessarily of how hard we work. Right. We can be on the same treadmill, all of our lives and still be trying to achieve that level of monetary success that we've told ourselves that we need to. So for me, I really dealt with our, our family shame.

Bye. First of all, be very upfront about it. I think I'm fairly open with my friends. I guess mostly with my friends, obviously it's a lot easier, but those are the places, right? Those baby steps of being able to talk about your struggles and then really trying to figure out where you want to go from there, because you do have to tell yourself that you have a choice and.

And when you're in the depths of it, it's really hard to see it that way. It's like, what do you mean? I just feel like I have nowhere to go nowhere to look. And that's really when China seek that support becomes so important. And if you don't have a good network, you know, the ability to talk to a therapist, it becomes really, really difficult.

So it takes time. It's not an overnight fix. You're not going to go to wake up and suddenly have this clarity, unless you're really doing the work where, you know, say listening to your podcasts and doing the meditations and actually maybe writing it out in your journal, working through all of that in your head to see where all the pieces come together.

I think that's. Part of the recipe for figuring out how to deal with all of that. Well, so once we kind of eliminate what's happening and remove the shame, because shame thrives when we don't talk about it and when we hide it, then what happens next after that? Is it like. I feel like part of it is kind of just being more informed.

That knowledge is information. I think finance, it's been really interesting to just start learning more about how the money system was created. I know you mentioned like crypto and all of that kind of stuff and all of the news that's around that, but you know, when it comes to really feeling empowered, I think.

Also a lot of the times when it comes to finances, like there's a number we're trying to get to or a goal, but we're not really looking at why we want that and what that money is going to serve us to do. How have you been able to kind of like reflect that for your clients of really having a healthier relationship with money?

I think. A lot of it seems to go back to everybody's childhood. And once we become adults, we tend to burry things that we think we've already dealt with. And, you know, and this is not the case for everybody, but a lot of the issues I see, have to do with an inability to take on more risk and. I think from a young age, we're taught that you have to get straight A's you're you're not going to, you know, there's a very linear path to succeeding and to getting that great job.

But I think human brains in general have a really difficult time understanding exponential growth. That's what we're working on every day. If you do something a few minutes a day, what you try to change your mindset because it compounds if you spend the time. So actually within finance, a very popular concept to talk about is, is compounding, which if you just look at the math, I mean, the basic concept is you put a thousand dollars in the bank.

And say it earns 5% interest every year. And you know, the first year, maybe that's only $50, but over time, especially if you're looking at 10, 20, 30 years, that amount of interest that is earned upon your interest. So it's like your money's having babies and having more and more babies. That's actually what drives.

The the wealth effect. And in that specific account, over 10 years, thousand dollars compounded over 5% becomes, you know, $1,600 roughly. So you're getting a 60% return, which is tough to see at the very beginning when you're starting to put that thousand dollars in the bank. And. This is why people tell you to invest in the stock markets also because the returns continue to compound.

And I think what people don't really think about is this applies to every area of your life, whether it's your money, whether it's knowledge and skills and the habits that we all have. So if we have this habit of telling ourselves, Hey, I'm always going to be poor. I'm always going to be broke. I do not earn enough now.

I'm not going to earn enough later. What are the chances that you're actually going to break out of that? But then if you tell yourself, you know, and, and again, I think a lot of what we make up in our heads in a sense becomes reality, or at least gives us an upper ceiling of what we can achieve. And if we tell ourselves, Hey, maybe I'm not so great about taking risks and you know, maybe I don't want to quit my job today and work on something that's more fulfilling.

But if I do this little thing a few minutes, a day, an hour, a day, those skills and that desire, uh, and that energy just begins to compound. Um, I there's a Netflix series right now. It's all about money. And one of them there's like a professor from UCLA and he talks about how, like, he never thought he was going to get into talking about money or retirement, or like, you know, any of that.

But he's like, let's because our brains can't perceive that, you know, our future self. Is going to meet us like we were living in instant gratification mode and you know, everything about our culture is designed for that. So he's like, how can I help people understand that you want to support that future itself?

And so he started doing, you know, age imaging so that you could see yourself as an older person and once. Once the subject was able to see themselves as an older person, they suddenly felt a connection with that. And then that helped them understand like, oh yeah, that is my future self. It's going to need me to like, make healthy choices now.

And you know, I like what you said about like being able to just. It's a few minutes a day. It's a little bit of learning here and there. And it's understanding that you do have the freedom and the choice that we're not victims. I think it took me a really long time to understand that I'm not a victim to my situations or my circumstances, or even some of my own thoughts.

And that I can choose in this moment to make the choice that's going to help advance me moving forward. And like you said, like, well, it's like anything else, it's an energy exchange. So like, how can we approach it in a way where we start to see it and actually have a healthy relationship with it, where we start to understand, like it's a tool that we can use for the other goals in our lives.

I think one of the things that I'm curious about too, if you've had this experience is. Because of that scarcity mentality, we're never taught to like give forward, like pay it forward or like donate it or show up in that way. Or even to have the luxury of thinking about like leaving a legacy behind or leaving anything.

So I think as. We move forward. Is there anything that you would, you know, encourage about insights, about money that we might not have thought about? Like other than the tactical, like curious of courses you can take to learn more about index funds? Is there something that you've found that has been really helpful, um, in reframing that relationship with them?

Well, the funny thing is that when I first think of the word scarcity, I, I think of it as a positive thing, because as, as an investor and the assumption obviously is that you're looking at something that's valuable. So as an investor or something that scares might actually be something extremely valuable your time.

And I think. Actually quite rationally. A lot of Asian parents want their kids to go into something very stable, like say stereotypically being a doctor or a lawyer. And those are all professions that you, that are great. I definitely don't want to knock that, but you're also trading your time for money.

You know, you have to see a patient in person. You you're literally billing hours when you're a lawyer. And trying to expand beyond that trade between time versus time for money. And, um, you know, the mentality that you don't have to be the bottleneck for, for wealth and wealth can pertain to making the money or just having the time and energy to live your life.

I think. It's something that is not really preached in the immigrant community. And I mentioned that it's very rational for parents because you don't want your kid living with you 20 years after they graduate. So it's actually a fairly risk averse for both you and your child for them to go into something that's a bit more stable.

And so. That's why if you can get away from just thinking about that time versus money trade-off and moving into more of an investing mindset where you can invest money in your skills and in other pursuits that will. Let you live your best life, figure out the things that actually you enjoy where you're not working a day of your life because you're making money from things that you would probably do anyway.

And that's, what's really missing. I think, from, from the messaging, I guess you could say that we received as kids, so. You know, having the ability to be comfortable with a little bit of risk, even if it's just a little bit every day, um,

let you mentioned about not really maybe discussing giving and the legacy. I think that really, really strikes a chord with me also. And when I was in high school, we were struggling with debt and my father actually had had cancer. So he was terminally ill and actually this extended into my college years and after, but we, you know, we didn't ask for help.

And yet the community came together. We had this little Midwestern Chinese community, like even together and. I actually tried to donate a lot of money to us. They just had a collection box and my parents wouldn't accept it. They, they took at the time, you know, there were all these checks inside and they took the checks and said that they would, they would thank everybody in their hearts.

For those checks, but not cash them a lot of shame in, in just receiving. Um, and we obviously needed it at the time, but, you know, I don't even think anybody knew that we didn't cash those. How many people check their bank statements to see if, see if the transactions cleared that kind of. Mindset also makes it very hard for people to think about giving to others, because what if they don't want to accept your help?

You know what you might think, very cynically. What's the point. Yeah. Or that you don't want to invoke that shame for someone else. Right. Dissipate that shame like, oh, they don't want to seem like they need help right now. And so it has to be, you have to wait until things are really bad that you'll lend that support because you don't want to invoke that shame.

And I would have to say that, like when we moved back from Taiwan, the generosity of strangers with people that I had never met was remarkable. And it felt like then my house was filled with love because of all of the care that went into it and I couldn't have done it alone. And so I could have chosen to see it as like guilt and shame of like, where am I in my life that this is like, what is happening, where I could have seen it.

It was like what a blessing to be under to be able to experience that. The universe is very generous in mysterious ways and that you will be taken care of in ways that you don't expect. It makes a better story. For sure. Yeah. But I want, I wanted to ask you about the other element of shame that we wanted to talk about.

So, you know, Anna is a solopreneur who has had diverse expertise in a lot of different businesses and been very successful at them. And so one of the other things that she. Has had experienced that is, you know, you started a parenting website and part of the journey of when I met you in Taiwan as well was when you became pregnant with your second child.

And it was an interesting experience because you discovered that your well I'll just turn it over to you so that you can explain it. Yeah, yeah. That, that was definitely a turning point. And in my life, as, as it was in yours, Um, so I just feel so lucky that we were able to meet and kind of work through different things together.

I, as you, as you mentioned, uh, just gotten pregnant with my second child and in Asia there's a lot of medical care is way better than, than in the U S much more. So, you know, we were getting ultrasounds at 12 weeks, which is not common for a typical pregnancy. And that's when that's, when we found out that.

Liliana had a Cystic Hygroma, which is essentially, I think of it as, as like a fluid filled SAC, or actually there were a few of them, um, on her body and it meant a much higher mortality rate and it was also a very high indicator of some kind of a chromosomal disorder. So. We were in Taiwan at the time.

And I was mentioning earlier that I sometimes have trouble telling people. I tell this story that we were in Taiwan because I want to present Taiwan. Is this great place. And you know, I I've had a lot of pride growing up as a Chinese person from Taiwan, even when I was in the states. Yeah. But the reaction that the doctors had was just shocking.

And this happens in other countries as well. You know, again, I'm trying to seem like an awful place, but it's a wonderful place. It's a wonderful, yeah. And the people are so friendly. It's a wonderful place. Yeah. And I think the Asian mentality is very practical, so. The way I was told the diagnosis was over the phone and the nurse said, hi, is this Anna?

Oh, it is okay. Well, you can't have your baby because he has down syndrome. And so they were wrong on both counts. It wasn't a boy, a boy there was a typo and then genetic report and I. Obviously, we went through a lot of debate, um, discussion within the family. I don't think I personally had a lot of questions in my mind about whether I should have the baby, but the questions came up about whether it would be really hard on the family and hard on my other daughter.

You know, I think that was what hit me in the gut. The most. And this is something family members told us too. They said, well, you know, think about your oldest daughter. What is that going to do to her? Although honestly, you know, every kid has their own special needs and just having a second child yes. Is, is going to be different for the friends.

Yeah. So it's all about how you frame it and. We had to work through some of that pressure, some of that quote unquote medical advice to, to terminate the pregnancy. And they said that it would be a burden on us. It would be a burden on society and they really were trying, I can see where they were coming from.

They were trying to be very practical about it.

I can't say that, you know, having her hasn't been a little bit different from having my oldest child, but it's, what's funny is that I could tell that they didn't really know. Right. Because they were so, so sure that she was going to be a burden and that I shouldn't have a baby. It was almost a little bit easier on me because I mean, that's just ludicrous.

It's impossible to know what somebody's future is going to be. And in a way, their fixed mindset actually helped

come to the conclusion probably faster that I didn't really need to, to worry about what they thought. But you're always going to have self doubt. You're always going to have these questions in your head about the uncertainty. And that is, is something that I had to embrace. And honestly, I mean, you've met Liliana.

She is just such a joy she's. You know, in some ways she is that breath of fresh air that our family needed. And maybe I, you know, in some ways she's exactly what I needed. I wouldn't have been able to have a child who is as joyful from the get-go and just so loving. Yeah. Before we got onto this conversation, you were saying, sorry to interrupt.

Before we got on, you were just saying like you were waking up every two hours and you're like, that's totally fine. She's so cute. It's all good. It's totally fine. Um, and I just love hearing that it's such a wonderful. I mean, I love hearing that for anybody. Just when there's anything that like brings joy.

I was just talking about like rubber duckies before we got onto this all how cute these like rubber duckies were and how much that like brought me joy. But what were you going to say before I interrupted you? Well, and I think you actually mentioned this too, and I'd heard it from another mom. Who's in the special needs community.

And she'd said that we're given our greatest challenge and it's what tests us. It's what pushes us forward and gets us out of that comfort zone so that we can grow and we can become better versions of ourselves. And I see that every day, you know, it's definitely not all rainbows and puppies, but I also see that with my older child.

Right. We, we have our clashes, even though she's, so she's still so young and it's a part of trying to figure out the relationships. Which is actually something that we weren't really taught growing up, trying to go from a, a very authoritarian kind of environment to being able to navigate and negotiate.

You know, whether it's my marriage or my relationship with my, with both my daughters, it's, it's taught me so much, quite honestly. Yeah. I mean, I think that relationships are just challenging as a whole and just to be able to raise children who, you know, It's been a journey learning about the difference between authoritarian and authoritative and like conscious parenting and all of this kind of stuff.

And to raise children who will grow into healthy adults who have healthy boundaries and have self worth means that I have to be able to, you know, encourage my daughter's independence, which involves occasionally her challenging me, which would never have. Then okay. In my family of origin, it would never have been okay to like ask a question.

If you didn't understand something or, you know, or say like, I don't agree with you and what you're doing right now hurts my feelings. And at times I have to really catch myself because I have to remind myself, I'm raising someone to be a healthy adult, which means that I've got to do the harder thing now, and I'm not perfect at it.

And the other day she was having like a meltdown over a milkshake and. Then I do. Yeah. And I was at max capacity cause I had a deadline that I needed to meet. And so, you know, I looked at her and I was like, I hear that you're having a very hard time right now, but I am also having a very hard time right now and I just don't have the capacity to help meet you.

So do you want to take a breath? Like, do you want to go do something else? Cause I can't, I just don't have it in me and which, you know, I. I sometimes feel guilty about it because I'm like, I'm the adult. I should be able to do it. But at the same time, I try to remind myself, I'm not trying to present her with an idea of perfect.

I'm trying to show her like humans have the whole entire spectrum of emotions and you know, we're doing the best that we can in any moment. And I think that the best part about it all is that reconciliation that coming back together, the acknowledging you've made a mistake. And did I feel guilty about it afterwards?

Yeah. And I think. You know, with different family dynamics, like the one that you're creating now, the one that I'm creating, this is not the family dynamic that I thought I was going to have. And I'm pretty sure, like when you want it to have another child, it was not the family dynamic that necessarily you all envisioned either, but you know, it involves learning and growing.

So I have to manage my feelings, knowing that I see my daughter 50% of the time, like the, every other week she's going to come back to me and look a little bit older and that's just the way. Than it is to create like the healthiest dynamic that we could have created and, you know, having to go through, like you had to have the questions in the family of, are you sure you're doing the right thing?

My mother saw my ex-husband. Be disrespectful to like me and to her when he was coming up to pick up my daughter one day. And when we closed the door, she said, let's just stand here. We're just going to put on a good face, close the door, and then looked at me and said, I don't understand why you guys can't just live in the same house together and still be married.

And I was like, you literally just saw exactly what happened. So I think, yeah, you know, we're always going to have to meet those expectations from other people and what they think is right and wrong and that's hard. And, you know, what you were talking about with the doctors and choosing differently than what they were suggesting.

One of the interviews that I've done is with a woman, who's the chair of the board of the breast use.org, who had to really advocate for her care. When she found out she had breast cancer, because there was not the opportunity to like really get the right information that she needed. And so she had to like fight for it.

And so for anybody who's listening, you're not alone. If you feel like. What the hell is happening and I have to advocate. Is there anything else that you want to add about, you know, Liliana and having a special needs child? And just anything that you've learned? It sounds like you've found a great community too, which is remarkable.

Yeah. I think even during COVID when everything was shut down and we couldn't get together as much like the moms and the kids. It was, it was actually better that I had a special needs community to talk with. And at least have that support. The pandemic is probably, is definitely one of the worst case scenarios, but it really all comes down to finding that support network and.

Trying to figure out how to work with all the, the complicated intricacies of say the medical system or maybe your specific situation. Um, you know, Liliana needed heart surgery right before everything shut down. And so it was, it was kind of a, a fragile time for us, but having the. The mindset that, you know, we can work things out.

And even during this time, there's so much, there's so much help out there for you. If, if you look for it is really important. Yeah. I was just thinking when we were talking about parenting, there's this great comic where a mom is talking to her daughter and she says, Honey, when you grow up, I want you to be assertive, independent strong-willed, but while you're a kid, I want you to be passive and obedient.

It is not easy to raise children who will grow into. All of those traits as adults and my really good friend and neighbor would always say, like we weren't raising kids. We were raising humans who are going to grow into being like, you know, healthy adults, which caused a lot of flack from the people around them.

But when it comes to this idea, oh, go ahead. Oh, I was just going to say you do an amazing job of talking to while there and giving her the language. That she needs. I think that's what I was missing when I was a child that I didn't know how to express myself. And I did it. Most kids have tantrums. They don't know how to breathe through it and talk through it because it wasn't modeled for them.

And. Liliana actually does speech therapy now. And what I've learned is that, you know, there's so much more that goes into being able to say those, those first words. She's almost two and she's, she can't really say mama and bye-bye yet mom and dad, but all speech is learned through modeling. It starts with being able to model what somebody is doing physically because gross motor skills come first and then the cognitive understanding of what's going on and then being able to model the speech, the sounds and I, that applies that really any level when you're talking about even just.

Um, as we become, as we grow up as we're adults and learning how to talk to other people in a way we need that modeled, somehow we need to learn from others. If we're not getting that at home or in our immediate environment, that's something, again, we need to seek out. I love that. I think that that's what I'm hoping that this podcast is doing as well, is helping people.

Have the words to be able to express and to share with someone else like this is what I've gone through. This is what I'm going through. I didn't know how to say it before, but now, you know, hopefully through this, you'll either have the words or you'll have a resource that you could share with someone else.

Who's curious about learning more when, and thank you for the compliment, by the way we have that day. When she was melting down about the milkshake, she came back, she said, mom, I'm feeling really overwhelmed. I was like, I really appreciate that. You told me. That's amazing. It's amazing that a six year old can say that my daughter would not be able to do, even though we try.

Yeah. It's, it's been a remarkable, you know, even check and balance for me to be able to give her the words so that she can call me out because I'm imperfect and it's helpful because in that moment, I'll take a breath and be like, ah, that's right. We're in it, like let's, you know, have a moment. So when it comes to the idea of like, fuck saving face, what would you want to share about that?

What would she, what idea would you like to break through? Well, I do want to actually doula reframing freshmen when we're talking about. Uh, this fixed mindset and the idea of scarcity, I think it does serve us and serve anyone who has that ability to be frugal. And, you know, there is a place for it.

Everything we do has a purpose, right. And we should celebrate that as well. I think when it comes to saving face. What's most important is that you're not just worried about what others are thinking and internalizing the shame that other people have. I think we're all going to have our own shame and figuring out what some of those sources are like if it's mostly coming from other people.

Is there a way to break out of that and, and be more comfortable in your own skin so that you're in a way in charge of your own shame. You know, you can choose not to take on somebody else, like the shame of having, uh, a special needs child and kind of trying to choose that life. I had not thought of that as being something that would be.

Really awful for me personally. But if I'm told that from the rest of the medical community and from everybody else, I might start to, you know, it seeps in there and I might start to question myself. And so it's really important to separate where you began and you know, the other people shame where that line is.

No, I really like that. One of the things you and I had talked about, well, before we got onto this was just remembering that we're not a victim, that a lot of shit might've happened in our lives that have been really difficult to unpack at times, or, you know, we really had to work through some extra obstacles or whatnot, but I think that it helps to remember that in every moment we.

Still have power and we still have agency and we can still choose. And like you said, sometimes the hardest things to choose are to break out of the pattern of our thinking and the stories that we've told ourselves. So I think just even remembering to give ourselves permission that like, oh yeah, I can choose myself.

I'm not a victim. It can feel like that. A lot of the times like, oh, this happened to me. This person said that thing. You know, or, oh, I made this mistake in the now and stuck in this situation, but I always try to find the golden nugget in every kind of opportunity that like, if we can find what the wisdom is there, then it helps to mitigate some of the other things that were going.

And I think that's one of the reasons your podcast has been so powerful to that. And I'm just going to gush for a little bit. So whenever I listen to an episode, there's something that strikes a chord inside me that I realized has not had actual airtime before, you know, in a very public way. I may be able to talk about it with my closest friends, but you definitely touch on topics that don't really get the light of day.

Um, thank you so much. I was just telling my partner that sometimes the emotions that well up inside of us, as frustrated as we want to be about them, like, why is it showing up again? Why is it coming up? You know, everything that I learned in yoga was that. In order to feel it in order to heal it, you need to feel it.

And in order to feel it, like you have to let it come up and through you so it can get out of you. And the more we try to like shove it so far down, the more it, most people have probably heard this before that it becomes disease. It becomes like, you know, just that stress and anxiety that we're carrying with us all the time, that then becomes inflammation and disease.

And you know, how can we just let it up and out? Like, All, all of these feelings, their information, they're just wanting to come up and out. And then once we clear it, Not to say, we want to experience it again, but ideally it's an upward moving spiral so that if you come around it again, you'll have more wisdom.

The next time around you'll get out of it faster, you know, like it's all a journey into a mastery of self. And so thank you so much for saying that. I just had a listener telling me recently that they're obsessed with the stories. They feel like their journal entries and that they're like hearing it, like, you know, a little, little secret.

Buck, but I appreciate it. Thank you so much for your time. So if people want to follow up with you, where can they find more information? So I'm on, I'm online in a couple places in that family life, and that's my main personal finance money coaching site. And you can, yeah, I think that would be the main spot.

Yeah. Um, so for anybody who wants to follow up with, please do go visit her. She, one of the things that I loved about talking to her and working with her is that that whole like fear and guilt and shame that I felt about talking about money with someone at one of the lowest points of my life I was able to do with Anna, because she helped me feel so safe about it.

Like there was no judgment that was coming from her and I really appreciate. That, when it comes to bigger topics, that you can talk to somebody who creates that sense of, you know, acceptance and safety, and then just helps you slowly navigate out of it. So wherever you are. I think Anna will be a great resource.

So thank you so much for your time. Oh, and we also have a site for our podcast, Chinesestartales.com. And it's actually a podcast that English speakers can listen to also with their kids, because I'm trying to bring stories with empowering themes and there might be a little bit of Chinese vocab popped in there, but I think that most kids would enjoy the stories.

It's wonderful because he gets to hear Sienna's voice and you get to hear her tell the tale with her mom and Anna's mom was also a Chinese language teacher. So that's all infused there as well. So thank you so much for your time today. Thank you. I hope you enjoy today's episode. I look forward to connecting with you on Friday, and as I've been mentioning lately, if there's a topic that's near and dear to your heart, that you'd really like me to cover.

I would love to hear about it. Perhaps. There's something that I didn't know about is something very interesting to you that you wish that more people would explore under this idea of fuck saving face and breaking through taboos and really exploring conversations that aren't often had. Email me at hello at fuck saving face.

That's fuck. Without the you. And share with me your thoughts. I would love to hear from you, see you on Friday.

Thank you so much for listening to today's episode. If you liked what you heard and know someone in your life who might also benefit from hearing this episode, please feel free to share it with them. Also, if you'd like to support our show, you can make a one-time donation fcksavingface.com. Or, you can make a recurring donation at patreon.com/fcksavingface. That's “fck” without the “u.” Subscribe today to stay tuned for all future episodes.