00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today I have such a special guest for you. I got to hang out with Dr. Stephen Nowicki. He is a professor of psychology at Emory University, and he has served as the director of clinical training, head of the psychological center, and head of the counseling center. Dr. Nowicki remains in active clinical practice as a diplomat in psychology, and let me tell you, he is a gem. His latest book, Raising a Socially Successful Child: Teaching Kids the Nonverbal Language They Need to Communicate, Connect, and Thrive, is so good, and we had such a rich discussion. Honestly, the only thing I wish I had was more...

 00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today I got to hang out with Lisa Myers. She's the inventor and founding mama of Ceres Chill, a breast milk storage company that replaces the 1970s bulky cooler technology that had been holding people back for decades. In just the last few years, she became a mother of two, was promoted to equity partner, and created a company, all while enduring universal breastfeeding challenges. She looked for ways to make work-life pumping more manageable, but came up empty -handed or disappointed with cumbersome, icky, short -lived, tell -tale milk storage options. Being incredibly stubborn and a resourceful...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village. And today I get to dive into punishment -free parenting with Jon Fogel. He's a parenting educator and soon -to -be author who operates under the moniker Whole Parent on social media where he has over 1 million followers across multiple platforms. As Whole Parent, Jon offers a unique perspective on parenting grounded in evidence -based research in areas of child development, adolescent psychology, and basic neuroscience, which synthesizes strategies from the worlds of cognitive behavioral therapy, general counseling, and even contemplative meditation to help parents manage problematic behaviors and grow deeper...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village and I got to hang out and chat about play. Ya'll, play is wildly important and underrated and we get to dive into why it's so important, what it does and also frankly, how it can make your life so much easier as a parent, as a teacher, as a caregiver. It's your classic win -win. I got to hang out with Dr. Jacqueline Harding. She is an international child development and education expert. She's recognized for her work advising government, practitioners, and parents. Dr. Harding is an honorary visiting research fellow at Middlesex University. Her qualifications include a PhD in child development,...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and I got to hang out with Kelley Coleman. She is the author of Everything No One Tells You About Parenting a Disabled Child. Kelley is a feature film development executive turned author and a passionate advocate for parents and caregivers and individuals with disabilities. She is the parent of two amazing boys, one of whom has multiple disabilities, and her book, Everything No One Tells You About Parenting a Disabled Child draws upon over a decade of advocacy with candor, humor, and relatability earned in her prior career of writing and developing talking animal movies. She was recently named best mom...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and in this episode, I got to hang out with our very own Rachel Lounder to chat about transitioning from one to two kids. We chatted about our own personal journeys and different things we hear from the outside world about, oh, what second kids are supposed to be like and all that jazz. We talked about triggers, things that worked for us, things that didn't, and we had very different experiences. My second born has similar sensory systems to her first born, and then vice versa for her second born has similar sensory systems to my first born. And so we got to chat about what that looked like and how it showed...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today I get to share one of the funniest humans on the internet with you, Taylor Wolfe. You might know her as The Daily Tay. I had been listening to her book, Birdie and Harlow, on audiobook and was like, oh my gosh, I have to chat with her. So we got to dive into what it looks like to learn how to be a mom while grieving a huge loss. Taylor shares so vulnerably and openly about losing this dog of hers, who she was so connected to and attuned to and attached to, at the same time that she was entering into motherhood. And we got to look at what does it look like to incorporate grief as a part of our life...

00:00:00    Alyssa 

You're listening to Voices of Your Village and today Monica Packer and I got to dive into how to create habits when you're drained and overwhelmed. For me, when it comes to habits, it can feel like, okay, I'm going to do this thing and then I go all in on something and then it feels really overwhelming and it doesn't continue. Or I look at it and I'm like, oh, that sounds great and I'm so spent or beyond my bandwidth that I cannot add another thing in. Even if my current system isn't working, that sometimes even accessing the bandwidth for change feels overwhelming and hard. I love that Monica has broken down specific steps, ways to form habits...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and today I get to hang out with Victoria Facelli, the author of Feed the Baby. And I want to let you know that we recorded this episode back when I was still pregnant. And so you'll hear some of that in this of like, what does it look like for me in this season? It's a pretty personal episode. Victoria took me on a ride and we got to chat about how to balance infant feeding with parental mental health. This is such a huge topic. I personally have been through this and just feel like every time friends of mine are having kids, those first few weeks and months are so wrapped up in feeding and...

00:00:00    Alyssa

You're listening to Voices of Your Village, and I get to dive in with occupational therapist Kelly Mahler, all about really the key to, I would say, navigating life from a well -being standpoint. We get to chat about interoception. This is one of the sensory systems that I think is so often overlooked, and I think it's the cornerstone for mental wellness. It definitely is the cornerstone for accessing self -control. So often we want kids to control their words, control their actions, like, ask for things kindly, all that jazz, and the reality is they can't do that if they don't first have interoceptive awareness, if they aren't aware of what's happening...