There is No Normal: Lessons from Neurodivergent Parenting and Life with Debbie Reber
Parenting activist, best-selling author, and founder of Tilt Parenting Debbie Reber shares her story of raising a differently wired child and riding out life’s many unexpected detours. From becoming an outspoken voice in neurodivergent parenting to discovering her own neurodivergence, Debbie shares her wisdom for letting go of control, being gentle with and accepting of yourself and others, and advocating for what you—and your family—need in your life.
Show Notes:
Learn more about Debbie Reber
Listen to the Tilt Parenting podcast
About Tilt Parenting
Buy a copy of Differently Wired A Parent's Guide to Raising an Atypical Child With Confidence and Hope
David Hochman and Upod Academy
Learn more about being a Highly Sensitive Person (HSP), also known as Sensory Processing Sensitivity (SPS)
The Out-of-Sync Child by Carol Kranowitz
An explainer on PDD-NOS
Information on twice-exceptionality
Learn about the work of Jonathan Fields
The Differently Wired Club, a membership community for parents ready for true transformation
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Nicole: [00:00:03] Welcome to Here For Me, a podcast about the power of choosing yourself. I'm Nicole Christie, and I'm honored to be here with you to share life-altering stories, lessons learned, and advice from leading experts that will help you show up for yourself with the love, honor, compassion and encouragement you give to others. Because just as we say, “I'm here for you” to show we care for someone saying “I'm here for me” to ourselves is the best form of self-care.
Today, I'm talking with Debbie Reber. Debbie is a parenting activist, bestselling author, keynote speaker, and the founder and CEO of Tilt Parenting, a podcast, community and educational resource for parents like her who are raising differently wired children. The Tilt Parenting podcast is the top performing podcast for people raising and supporting Neurodivergent children with more than 6 million downloads. And Debbie's most recent book is Differently Wired: A Parent's Guide to Raising an Atypical Child With Confidence and Hope. Debbie has navigated numerous detours in her career and life, including living abroad in Amsterdam, a city that still speaks to her heart and soul, and founding Tilt to both process her parenting experience, and be of service to others on this journey. I invited Debbie to talk with us about these detours and what she learned about choosing herself along the way.
Nicole: [00:01:32] Debbie, Welcome to Here For Me.
Debbie: Thank you, Nicole. I'm so happy to be here.
Nicole: You and I met in 2009 through a writing community, and I'm going to give a little shout out to David Hochman and the Upod Academy. David is probably one of the most prolific writers, journalists I think either of us have ever known. But since then, I have been blown away by the turns your life has taken and the way that you navigate an unconventional life with great success, I might add. You had a successful career in TV and video production. You're a bestselling author and contributor to multiple media outlets. A certified life coach, a former expat, a wife, the mother of a twice exceptional child, and now the founder of Tilt Parenting, which you started as a podcast in 2016. And I'd love to focus primarily on that for this conversation, and particularly this question. As a writer telling the story of parenting your child, Asher, was something that you wanted to do for a long time, but you weren't sure how to approach it in a way that was respectful of them while still being candid and of service to your audience. So what have you learned from parenting a differently wired child and how did that experience lead to you founding Tilt?
Debbie: [00:02:45] I want to start by just saying that when I had a child, it was a very intentional thing. It was something that Derin and I talked about for years. We weren't even sure we wanted to have a child. And I'm a bit of a control freak, as is my husband. And we felt over time that there was this child who wanted to come into the world, into our family, essentially. That sounds really woo woo, but that's how we kind of talked about it. And we were so ready. We had all these plans. I thought, we are going to rock the heck out of this parenting life. And my husband had his own successful career, and I had spent years trying to build my own business as a teen girl advocate and a speaker and coach for young women. So I was like, I'm going to do my thing over here. Derin's got his job, and then we've got this kid and we've got a plan, and we have this new house in Seattle and everything's going to be great. And that was not really how things unfolded. It was great in so many ways.
But we had this child who came into the world with an agenda of their own, and one of the people who supported us early on said Asher's an old, old soul and has some big work to do. And I'm like, okay, I can get behind that. But at every turn, things kind of got upended and we were confronted with, okay, this isn't the regular plan. This isn't what I thought it was going to look like. I'm reading the same books my friends are reading and I'm not having the same results. And it just became this feeling that Derin and I are failing somehow. And we've got this kid who was really moving through the world in a different way, which we just kept discovering more and more over time. And it was very challenging, and it took me a long time to kind of wrap my head around embracing the human that Asher is. Because I was such a control freak. I had such a strong vision of what this was going to be like. And Asher had other plans for us.
Nicole: [00:04:51] Can you talk about how you learned about their neurodivergence and twice exceptionality and what that means?
Debbie: [00:05:01] Yeah, I mean I think we kind of always knew that Asher was a little bit more intense. Asher was one of those kids who, before they turned three, had started reading independently and had this incredible vocabulary. And it's just fascinating, interesting kid, big ideas, big energy, a very present human being. And we would get feedback from preschool teachers. There were a lot of notes. There were a lot of phone calls, a lot of, at pick-up: “Do you have a minute? I just want to let you know about something that happened today.” And so that kind of started happening more and more. And a friend who is an educator, was the first one to say, “Debbie, I think there might be something else going on here.” And at the time she mentioned something called sensory integration disorder. I had never heard of it before, and I read a book called The Out-of-Sync Child, and I recognized a lot of Asher in that book. And I was like, “Oh, okay, now we know what's going on. So now we'll just go to the OT down the street, we'll be good to go.” And that ended up just being the first of many things that we would find out over the years about who Asher is. So in Asher's case and is the case with a lot of neurodivergent or differently wired kids, they're very complicated.
Debbie: [00:06:23] I mean, we're all complicated, but these kids often have multiple things going on. Their brains are wired in in unique ways that there can be these co-occurrences of conditions like ADHD, which we found out Asher has. Asher had a diagnosis of something called PDD-NOS for a while, which stands for Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified. It's like, “Well, there's stuff going on, but we don't know exactly what.” We found out that Asher was profoundly gifted from a standard IQ test, and so we were getting all of this information. But information doesn't really solve any problems. Information doesn't make school any easier. It doesn't make parenting any easier. It just gave some context. And just to explain this idea of twice exceptionality, because it might be a new term for some listeners that explains when someone is gifted and has one or more other neuro differences. And so gifted and autistic, gifted ADHD, gifted dyslexia, or all of the above. So that's a small subset of gifted kids, but they're really, really complicated because they're all over the place and they have incredible strengths. And then they have these relative weaknesses that in relation to their strengths can cause a lot of disruption for how they show up in the world.
Nicole: [00:07:47] So I think it's interesting how you go into parenting, very planful, very intentional, and I don't think it's woo woo at all. When you said you felt like there was this child that wanted to come into your life and into your family. Right? Because I think children teach their parents as much, if not more than parents teach their children. So it's almost like you were sensing this and needing them to come into your world. What is that like for you as a parent that you had this plan and then you had to learn to just be with Asher where they are and move forward?
Debbie: [00:08:19] It was years and years and years and years and it's still going on. But I really held on to this idea that I could kind of force fit my kid into our life the way that I envisioned it. If I could just find the right school, if I could get the right therapist, if we could learn the right tools, if I could read the right book, work with the right coach, whatever. And so I hung on to that for a couple of years. And this same friend who first mentioned sensory processing disorder to me said to me maybe two years later... I was just in the lowest moment. And she invited me over for tea on a rainy Seattle Sunday afternoon, and I thought she was going to help me strategize the next school. And she's like, Debbie, Asher's a kid who needs to be homeschooled. And I was like, “That is not happening.” So I was like, I hear what you're saying. I'm not equipped to do that and I'm not homeschooling my kid. So she's like, “okay, you're not ready to have this conversation right now.” So she did help me strategize some other things that we figured out that didn't really work. But they bought me more time because in the back of my mind, then I started thinking, maybe she planted.
Nicole: [00:09:33] A seed, right? I've got a seed planted, but you're like, I'm not ready to germinate this.
Debbie: [00:09:38] Not even close. Yeah. So it was maybe a year and a half later. We were in our third elementary school in three years at the time, and an opportunity came up through my husband's work where we could move to the Netherlands for an undetermined amount of time. And by this point we're like, okay, how many more schools are there to try in Seattle? And we don't have family here. This sucks. This is a really hard. And we were like, you know what? If this is going to be hard, why not have it be hard in Europe? That sounds a lot better. So I invited this same friend out for sushi. I'm like, I really need to talk to you. I've been researching schools in the Netherlands, and she was like, “Debbie, Debbie, Debbie, if you could not find a fit in Seattle for your child, you are not finding a fit in Netherlands.” She's like, Asher needs to be homeschooled. Asher deserves to feel good about a learning environment, and this is what they need. So I was like, okay, I guess you're right. And I told Derin, I think we should homeschool. So that was kind of like the first step of me saying, okay, I can go off my path a little bit. But it wasn't like we started homeschooling and everything was great. I really tried to compartmentalize. I have my career and my stuff. I will show up for this time to do this stuff with you, and then I'm going back to my work. I really thought I could make this look the way I wanted it to look, and that process of letting go and really surrendering took a couple of years.
Nicole: [00:11:23] And what did that look like? Did you really just fully commit to the homeschooling or was there still some sort of I can keep something for me, even if it doesn't look like what I thought it would.
Debbie: [00:11:34] It was more of the latter because I'm not someone who can not be doing 20 projects at any given time. But I kind of realized that I don't know if it was like one particular day, but I was being a fake, really great homeschooling parent. If anything went different than my plan for the day. Asher was having an off day or was more interested in staying focused on this deep dive marine science project. I couldn't go with the flow because I was like, I'm making a lot of sacrifices here and you're not appreciating everything that I'm doing and I have things to do. So let's stick with the program. And it wasn't working. I just realized that the whole point of homeschooling is that this kid can feel great about learning and learn in a way that leverages these incredible strengths of hyper focusing and deep diving into things and being so curious about everything. And I just had to kind of call myself on it and be like, “You are not doing this right by your child.” From that day forward, I committed to this idea that when I'm with Asher, I'm fully there for whatever is happening. I'm going to work to co-regulate with this kid. I'm going to be present. And when our time is done, then I can work on my own projects. But I can't try to do it all at the same time.
Nicole: [00:13:10] What did you see in Asher? What was the shift and how did that move things forward?
Debbie: [00:13:15] I think it was when everything just changed because Asher was used to getting in trouble all the time. Asher was that kid who was always being asked, “Can you step outside the classroom?” And not being seen or embraced. So all of these ways of being were seen as deficits. It's almost like a demand avoidance. And I knew this about Asher that when there's a demand placed on them that is really triggers a nervous system response. It's like a fight or flight moment. When I stopped doing that, their whole nervous system started to calm down. And then I realized, oh, when they're calmer and they're more regulated, they're just more available for everything. Not just book learning, but they're available to really do that deeper social emotional growth that we had been working for so many years.
Nicole: [00:14:05] It was like your move to Amsterdam was the trigger for almost necessitating homeschool. I used to divide my time between Montreal and Seattle, and I'm not a parent. It was very jarring and granted, I was going back and forth and not planting my feet in one place. But how do you think that living abroad really served Asher and your family, especially as you went through this transition to home schooling?
Debbie: [00:14:30] I think the biggest thing was I didn't have relationships with people in my neighborhood, in my community, that made me feel like our family were outliers. So I knew who was having playdates in the neighborhood. I knew that we were often hosting a lot of kids at our house and that my child was not being invited back. And I have amazing friends in Seattle, so this isn't about that. It was the fact that our family was harder to hang out with because of the realities of having a kid who could be really intense and explosive in certain situations. And so not caring about what anybody thinks was the biggest gift. It was like a clean slate. And also, we could decide to do life on our own terms. So we are a family of introverts, but we could just do our own thing. We're going to do our little bike excursions, go have brunch and read books and come home and play video games or whatever it looked like. And we didn't feel this pressure to participate in these activities that all our friends were doing. I just think it helped us create the family culture that we wanted so badly and that we knew served everyone's needs in the family. And I think that was probably the biggest thing. I don't think you need to move to another country to experience that, but it sure made it easier to have a clean slate and start over.
Nicole: [00:16:00] It's sort of like any time you move to a new place, you're an island for a while. You don't know anybody. You're not integrated anywhere in a foreign country. There's all kinds of culture differences and things you have to acclimate to. So I can see how it gave you the almost permission to be insular. And then that presence, like you said, for Asher, was such a gift to them that allowed them to drop that feeling of pressure or needing to conform in a way that wasn't natural to them.
Debbie: [00:16:29] Yeah, absolutely. And I think being a parent is uncomfortable because our kids are going to push our buttons and no matter how your child is wired, they're going to confront your belief system, your way of being in some way. And the fact that we were all so uncomfortable all the time. I think that uncomfortableness also brought us together because it's like we're all in this, and there was a real freedom in that. And I think that freedom really served our family.
Nicole: [00:16:59] And I want to commend you, too, for just giving yourselves over to that experience and letting it be. We don't really have a choice, but then it ends up serving the family. I'm curious about you founded Tilt. How long had you been in Amsterdam when you founded Tilt Parenting?
Debbie: [00:17:15] I think the seeds of Tilt, when we'd been there about two years, and because I'm a writer, I started writing a book because that's what I've always done. I am good at taking my life experiences or things that I've learned and sharing them in a way that can be really accessible and digestible for other people. So I kind of knew that I wanted to eventually write about this experience for other parents because it's just not okay that we feel like we're big screw ups and that our kids are the most unusual outliers that don't really fit in anywhere into society. I have an agent and she really wanted me to write a prescriptive memoir, so I worked on that. I didn't write the full book, but I wrote a proposal for it and we could not sell that book. But I always knew that I was going to create a podcast. And so I spent about a year, maybe all of 2015, researching and figuring out what Tilt would be. And then I launched in April of 2016.
Nicole: [00:18:25] And I love the community that you've built. 6 million downloads. That's a lot. You know, that tells you how much there is a need for these kinds of conversations for not only parents of neurodivergent children differently wired kids, but also educators, anyone supporting these kids as they navigate their way through the world. I'm curious, when you started out, what were your expectations and what has that journey been like and also Asher's participation in it? Asher was part of this originally, and I would love to hear about that.
Debbie: [00:18:57] It's interesting, as you're asking me my expectations, I don't know that I had very concrete expectation goals at the time. It wasn't that that podcasts were new. I was an avid consumer of podcasts, so I knew the power of that medium. So I definitely got excited about the possibility of having important conversations and making them accessible as a way to not only give people tools that they may not have access to, but to show that there's a lot of us out here. I talked about launching a revolution, so I studied with Jonathan Fields, who is the creator of the Good Life Project and Sparketype, and he did this six-month program that I participated in called Revolution U. And he worked with people who had kind of mission-driven ideas to create them in a way that leveraged the successful tenets of social change revolutions throughout history. My hope was that it was going to rally the troops and show parents that there's a lot of us. Our kids are not broken. We can have power in this and we can be an agent of change and shifting this whole paradigm because our kids, they're just not being respected or seen or understood. And that is not okay. It's hurting our families. It's hurting society. So I just kind of had this big mission, I would say, not that it was an expectation, but it was a hope that it would resonate in that way. And that is what happened. And I think having Asher involved was a big part of that.
Debbie: [00:20:38] Asher kind of knew everything I was doing. We would brainstorm things. Coming up with a name for something is really hard. I had so many names. I just remember going on these walks around Vondelpark and I'd be like, okay, what do you think about off-road parenting? Or what do you think about…and Asher would be like, nope, nope, that sounds like it has negative connotations. Don't like that one. Like Asher had a lot of opinions as always. And Tilt Parenting, Asher approved of. But Asher agreed to help me launch Tilt with a Facebook Live. It was my first Facebook Live for the first two years. We recorded 20, I think, podcast episodes together because Asher is so articulate and could explain this is what it feels like in my brain when I'm distracted or this is what it feels like when I'm deep diving into an area of interest, or this is my opinion on whether or not screen time limits are a good idea, you know? So I felt like it was giving a window into the mind of a differently-wired kid for parents. And I'll just share. One of the biggest surprises was that I would get emails from parents saying, I listened to this with my kid and they were so excited to hear. They're like, “Oh my God, that kid sounds just like me.” And I didn't realize it was going to be that kind of a thing where it parents would co-listen. And that was really exciting. When I found that out.
Nicole: [00:22:06] I would also be surprised that they were listening with their child, but I'm glad that they were. It gives so much validity to the conversation. I think it's incredible. So it's evolved from a podcast. You did end up publishing the book and it's led to a community. Can you talk a little bit about the other aspects of Tilt Parenting that are out there?
Debbie: [00:22:24] So this is the challenge with being a creator type or a maker, I guess is my archetype and really loving to do all the things and being somewhat tech savvy and a content creator is I just have kept creating different aspects of Tilt. I'm like, “Oh, we'll have community groups, Oh, let's do courses, let's do webinars, let's do a lot of stuff.” I'm getting a little more homed in now, but ultimately what I wanted to do was make sure there were always ways to get this access to experts. I love my podcast and channeling what parents would want to hear from these incredible people that I get to interview. So that is still a really big piece. But I started these Tilt Together groups because people wanted to meet in person. At one point we had 35 groups around the world of people who had met through Tilt that were meeting in person. And then like three and a half years ago, I started this thing called the Differently Wired Club, which is my favorite thing. First of all, everything I create, I'm really creating for myself. Let's just be honest. I need a community.
Nicole: [00:23:35] We teach what we need to learn, right? Sometimes that's how it goes.
Debbie: [00:23:39] So true. Yeah. So my Differently Wired Club, it's a membership community, but it's really focused around working on a theme every month. So this month the theme we're looking at is a path to acceptance. Like what is acceptance really look like and how can we create an acceptance practice to help us show up for our kids? All my stuff is about the parents. It's not about the kids. It's about ourselves. That's what I love about it. And we meet pretty regularly. And I swear I get off those calls. And I'm just so filled with energy because there's so many parents who just love these humans so much and recognize how incredible they are and are so committed to helping their kids be seen for who they are. And that just gets me so excited.
Nicole: [00:24:34] And that's the revolution. Can I just tell you that? That's the revolution that you set out to do. You mentioned the groups are really for the parents. I'd love to hear because this podcast is about the power of choosing yourself and that the best self-care comes from the inside. What have you learned about choosing yourself, taking care of yourself, maybe some ways that you didn't do such a good job, but you do it now, what are some areas where you still struggle?
Debbie: [00:25:02] The interesting thing is that I have always been pretty good on paper at choosing myself. So I love self-care. I'm pretty unapologetic about taking the time I need to do all the things I need to do, like going for walks or runs and listening to podcasts and telling my husband I need to do this one alone. But maybe tomorrow you can come with me. Like I just do what I need to do. I eat well, I exercise, I read. But what I keep learning over and over again in this journey is that it's not a destination. I'm not going to reach a point where this is easy. I mean, Asher's 18 now. We're in such a completely different place and things are hard in a whole completely new way. In working with my therapist over the past year, she kind of called me on it. She's like, You really have no tolerance for things that don't feel good. Like if something is uncomfortable for you, that's intolerable. I'm like, “You are correct.” Because I feel like I should be able to meditate, yoga, whatever my way out of this. So my work has been and continues to just be like, “You know what? This is how it feels right now, and that's okay.” Learning how to get through those four in the morning anxiety, panic attacks and just be like, this is what's happening right now. Not like I can't do this, which is where my brain used to go. So that's what I'm working on.
Nicole: [00:26:46] We talked a little bit in the first episode of this season about that, and it's a challenge for me as well, because I think that human nature, and especially if you're someone who wants to control things and you're good at hacking life. I'm good at hacking life, too, right? You're great at hacking life. But when you feel something bad, you immediately want to fix it. This is a sign that something is wrong. I want to change it. And one of my therapists said, “Ride the wave.” Just get on your surfboard and hold on and ride it. That sounds like that's what you are learning to do. Of just…this doesn't feel good. I'm going to sit in it. And that is so, so hard. So I want to commend you for doing that. And I know those moments when you have a differently wired child and like you said, you feel like an outcast or other people don't understand what you're experiencing, that must feel more isolating than probably most people would feel in those moments.
Debbie: [00:27:37] Well, you know, it's interesting, as you say, that this is another thing that I recognize. I realized that when I'm catastrophizing, things in my mind like, “This is always going to be hard or I can't take this anymore” or those thoughts. And one of those thoughts being to what you just said, this is harder than anybody else has to deal with. None of my friends are dealing with this same stuff. What my therapist has gently pointed out is those are the exact things that you say your child is saying to you about how they're feeling. She's like, “Yeah, that actually sounds really familiar because I think that that's what Asher said to you, isn't it?” Like, damn, you did it again. And so it's helping me show up with a different level of compassion and empathy than I think I could have if I wasn't going through this myself.
Nicole: [00:28:27] Can you talk a little bit about coming to terms with your own neurodivergence and where you're at in that journey?
Debbie: [00:28:34] Yeah, it's been really interesting because first of all, the past five plus years have been a really interesting time in the neurodivergent space. There's a whole generation of adults, especially women, who are self-identifying or being formally diagnosed as being autistic or having ADHD and just this kind of like, holy shit. So there's just this whole generation of women who are kind of being like, “Oh my God, my whole life makes sense.” So here's me pretty decent executive functioning skills, or so I thought. Accomplished a lot of things good at multitasking, all of these strengths and watching one best friend realize she has a learning disability. And something I was reading, I was like, “Oh my God, Debbie, you totally have ADHD.” And I started going back into my childhood. I was in the gifted program, and I always wondered, “Why am I here?” I don't understand why I'm here, but I was the kid who got solid C student kicked out of classes. Nickname was Motormouth. My dad used to joke at me like we are all in the same county. Can you lower your voice? Was always doing gymnastics or running, like moving constantly. It all started to make sense to me. Even now I'm realizing it's not that I have these incredible executive function skills. Like I recognize that it could take me three months to return a phone call to a doctor, because that's too much for me. I have these things, but I used to think they were just failures. And what I realized and you said this word hack. Yeah. Like, I just know how to hack myself. I have systems out the wazoo because I had to figure out how do I get shit done. So it's not like I've publicly declared, but it is helped me be so much more gentle and authentic in the way I show up gentle with myself and just authentic in the way I engage with anybody. It's like I'm really bad at brainstorming. I used to work with coaching clients, right? Or writing clients, and they'd want to get on a call and brainstorm with me. And I used to feel like, “Oh, I must not be good at this. I can't do that.” And now I can just say I'm a terrible brainstormer, it's not the way my brain works, but if you kind of do this and this for me and give me some time, I'll get back to you with a bunch of ideas. So just.
Nicole: [00:31:08] You need the framework for it.
Debbie: [00:31:10] And time. I need time. I'm a slow processor. So yeah, it's been really interesting. And I think again that this idea that I was observing everyone else and I neglected to look in the mirror was kind of interesting.
Nicole: [00:31:28] It's interesting what you were saying about women, too. I've been reading more about this. Also, Catherine Andrews, who was on the episode before you, has a newsletter called Sunday Soother, and she was talking about this, how more and more women are realizing they're neurodivergent and that things don't present in women or females the way that they do in males. And it kind of reminds me of the research on heart disease and how so many more women were dying of heart disease because nobody was researching how it showed up in women. And I also have sensory processing disorder. No one knew this, right? Like I came out of the womb and my mom was like, “We put you in a crib and you just banged the side of the crib all night. Like, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. Like, what is going on?” They thought something was wrong, right? In quotes. But it was like this neurodivergence of being highly sensitive but screaming and going crazy when there was an itchy tag in my clothes. Or even now I need to leave the room sometimes because I can't continue engaging. I'm too overwhelmed by the senses. So I love that you're being open to it and yourself and then not judging yourself. Although we were like, “Oh, I would say I'm bad at brainstorming.”
Nicole: [00:32:34] That first instinct was to judge. But then you're like, Wait a second, it's just I need to do it in a different way. One of my personal hells is when I'm in a client meeting and they're like, “Let's write this together.” And I'm like, “You have got to be kidding.” And the client gets up at the whiteboard. I cannot do that in the moment. I'm like, I am a writer that has to go away and hide in a hole for hours, maybe an entire day. And I will draft this and I will rewrite it for probably six hours straight and then I will take feedback. So I think the beautiful thing of all of this and the work that you're doing is how do we all be not only more gentle with our children, but more gentle with ourselves, which I think extrapolates onto how we show up in the world being more compassionate people. Thank you for leading that charge. As we wrap up this conversation and think about the power of choosing yourself. Any final thoughts that you have about what you've learned about that through the incredible like I said, it's you've led this unconventional life, but you navigate it in such a beautiful way, all the twists and turns. What have you learned about that?
Debbie: [00:33:37] I think just the power of curiosity and an openness. And I think so many people feel really stuck, especially if they're raising a kid who doesn't fit inside any sort of box. And I really don't believe there's any one way this should look. I just want to kind of push back on the narrative that normal is something that even exists. I think that is one of the gifts of COVID. But we saw that everything can get disrupted, and we'll figure out different ways to do things. We also recognize, I think, because of COVID, that a lot of people have really unique needs and sensitivities and ways of experiencing their lives. We've seen mental health challenges rise. I think that is an opportunity for us to kind of throw out the rule book and just get curious about what could a life look like for me that doesn't feel like I'm trying to just do things because it's the way they've always been done.
Nicole: [00:34:40] I think you've done a really beautiful job in your own life and in Tilt of encouraging others to be present and be agile and not feel like if you don't follow the script, which I'm with you, can we blow that shit up? Like there's no script for anything. There's not a script for raising a child. There's not a script for falling in love. There's not a script for building a career. Please. And you're right. COVID was a gift in showing that, like, we kind of have to show up every day and be present and just be willing to sway the way we need to.
Debbie: [00:35:13] Well, I love the word nimble, too. That is something I say a lot. And I just want to...
Nicole: [00:35:18] Yeah. Oh, that's a good one.
Debbie: [00:35:19] What a great quality, right? Because none of us can control anything. And in my experience, especially with the parents I work with, the biggest pain points come from that divide between what is happening right now and what we think should be happening. And I hope that that's the work I'm doing with parents is to just help them find peace in what is in their lives, to show up for who their kids are, to find ways to. Kind of turn down the noise, the din of, you know. You'll have to do this and you have to go to college after this. And if you do a gap year, you know, there's just all these ideas about what a normal life should look like, and that doesn't serve anybody. So I love this idea of just being nimble. We have to kind of show up for whatever is happening on any given day. Choosing ourselves to do the work so that we can be present and calm even when there's a plot twist, which there are going to be many and then start over the next day. So I really just love that concept of riding the wave, as you said.
Nicole: [00:36:27] Riding the wave, being nimble, and being open to the detours and not thinking that if you are on one, which we're saying, you know, detour is it's just twist and turns, it's just hills and valleys. It's the same path. But I think society, our culture, is like if you're not on the script, if you are on a detour, there's something wrong and there's all this shame and anxiety around. Get yourself back on the path. And it's like there is no path that we're all supposed to take. And I think you are a bit of a Sherpa is what I'm going to say on that journey for this community, for neurodivergence. But the lesson is truly broadly applicable and we can all learn from it, embrace it, sit down where you are, be in it, be nimble, and just move forward day by day.
Debbie: [00:37:12] Thank you so much, Sherpa. I like that. I'm like, I'm going to change my LinkedIn profile to…
Nicole: Neurodivergent Sherpa.
Nicole: [00:37:21] This is what this is. You are just gently guiding us up Mount Everest. You are amazing, Debbie. Every time you and I talk, or I see you on social media, the things that you're doing, you've had so many chapters in your life and navigated it so gracefully. I see you embracing vulnerability and encouraging other people to do so, and that is what the world needs.
Debbie: [00:37:49] Thank you so much. And you know, I just have to say, since we've been chatting, I'm just remembering we used to have these lunches. And I just remember whenever we'd get together, we're definitely kindred spirits and share a lot of the same philosophy about life and creativity and all the things. So I used to come home from those lunches just feeling so seen and inspired and excited. And so I really just appreciate your energy and what you're sharing, and I love what you're doing with this podcast, too. I'm so honored to be here.
Nicole: [00:38:26] Thank you so very much. And likewise. I mean, I could not be beaming that back to you more.
Debbie: [00:38:33] Thank you.
Nicole: [00:38:40] Debbie Reber isn't just a leader in the parenting space connecting and serving those who raise and support differently wired children. The lessons she's learned in raising her child, Asher, are broadly applicable to all of us seeking to be less resistant and more compassionate, less rigid and more nimble, less controlled and more accepting of what is and what will be. Raising a Neurodivergent child taught Debbie and her husband Derin, about the power of letting go, of surrendering, of giving up control, and the master plan to be present in their case, with how Asher shows up in the world and what they need to thrive. Whether we're parents or not, it's a lesson we can all stand to learn because, as Debbie said, the biggest pain points come from the divide between what is happening right now and what we think should be happening. Because there is no normal. There's no script. There's no right way to be or to live. There's no right way to feel. And as Debbie shared, it helps to lean into our feelings instead of judging them. Even the crippling 4 a.m. anxiety and panic attacks that plague Debbie, and I'd venture to guess, all of us. Somehow, we think resisting what is will force us onto the path we think we should be on when in fact it just keeps us stuck and spinning.
Nicole: [00:40:04] If we instead choose compassion and grace with our children, ourselves, and the world around us, we'll not only relax, but what we want. What we need will likely find its way to us much sooner.
When we think about detours. I can't help but think about what John Lennon said: Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.
As Debbie learned, sometimes setting aside the plan is often what sets you free to be your best as a parent. Your best as a human. Your best as yourself.
Here For Me is produced by Lens Group Media in association with Tulla Productions. As is often said, it takes a village to make this podcast, and my deepest gratitude goes out to every person in that village. Our producers, Dave Nelson and Stacy Harris; our audio editor, J.D. Delgado; designer and illustrator Amy Senftleben; and our production assistant, Amanda McGonigal. If you enjoyed this episode, I'd love it if you'd follow the show, rate, review, and share it with people you love. You can also follow me on Instagram and Facebook at nicolejchristie. Until next time, thank you so much for listening. Here's to you being here for you…and to the power of choosing yourself.