The Odyssey: Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. copertina

The Odyssey: Parenting. Caregiving. Disability.

The Odyssey: Parenting. Caregiving. Disability.

Di: Erin Croyle
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A proposito di questo titolo

 The Odyssey podcast explores the unique journey we're sent on when a loved one has a disability. We dig deep into the joys and hardships. We celebrate how amazing the odyssey of parenting, caregiving, and disability are. But we don't shy away from the tough stuff either. Each episode will explore topics that hit a little different because of our life experience. Our guests' perspective will sometimes bring comfort and other times challenge the way we see the world. centerforfamilyinvolvementblog.org2023 Genitorialità e famiglie Relazioni Scienze sociali
Episodi
  • New Year, Same $h!t, Fresh Perspective

    New Year, Same $h!t, Fresh Perspective
    Jan 12 2026
    When the clock strikes midnight as we ring in a new year, our problems don't magically resolve. Everything from the previous year carries over and more piles on as we get back up and running. But there's nothing wrong with setting our cynism aside to embrace a new year as a sort of clean slate. January is the perfect time to look at life from a different lens and maybe adopt a fresh perspective. And perhaps that perspective is inside us, and 2026 is the year we start listening to ourselves and trusting our insticts. The Odyssey: Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. The Center for Family Involvement at VCU School of Education's Partnership for People with Disabilities provides informational and emotional support to people with disabilities and their families. All of our services are free. We just want to help. We know how hard this can be because we're in it with you. TRANSCRIPT: 01;00;13;29 - 01;00;15;20 Welcome to the Odyssey. Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. I'm Erin Croyle, the creator and host. The Odyssey podcast explores how our lives change. When a loved one has a disability. I was lucky enough to head down this less traveled road when my first child was born with Down's Syndrome in 2010. This podcast explores the triumphs and hardships we face. We celebrate the joys of the odyssey of parenting, caregiving, and disability bring. But we don't shy away from the tough stuff. Since I'm all about keeping it real, I'm going to jump right in and say 2025 was probably the hardest year of my life to date. And it's not like the clock strikes midnight on New Year's and poof, that all goes away. Y'all, BLEEP is still hard as BLEEP. And that's not going to change any time soon. But the one thing that I love about the New year is it can offer a fresh perspective if you allow it too. And that's where I'll begin. So about that fresh perspective. I am a perfectionist. And it makes it really hard to be the creator, host, producer, editor, all the things of a podcast it's a lot of work. And, in addition to my work at the Center for Family Involvement; in 2025, I was lucky enough to join on, at ACT for Youth at Cornell University, working there as part of the communications unit. And I absolutely love it. And it allows me to also work with families and professionals who are dealing with special health care needs and disabilities. It is a deep, deep passion of mine. I am a journalist by trade and so production volume, production value is really important to me. And so it's very hard to do a podcast and not edit the living daylights out of it for any little errors or mistakes that I make, especially right now when I'm just kind of spit-balling. But like I mentioned in the intro, I've had a really hard year and that came with technical difficulties and life difficulties and just difficulties, y'all. And so that fresh perspective that I'm trying to welcome into my life is just to not try to be so perfect in all aspects of it. And so maybe this podcast will be a little messier and maybe they'll be a little more. I don't know. More pauses. See, even there I am, I have I'm having a hard time because I didn't get the grammar right. But there'll be more pauses, more ums, more whatever. When I start bringing interviews back on, when I have the bandwidth to edit them, maybe I won't edit them so much. I have a few in the can that I need to do, but I'm used to working with a team, and I'm a one man band here, and when you're juggling all of these things in life, you just can't do it all. And you certainly can't do it all perfectly. And I recognize and talk openly about disability and neurodiversity, and my own neurodiversity is got this perfectionism trap. And man, does it really, really, really, really get in the way of getting stuff done. I don't know, I just had a notification and in previous iterations I would have started over and I'm not going to start over. So if that got through on the audio, so be it. If my dog barks on the audio, so be it. I'm going to roll with it. And I got to tell you, you know, speaking about that neurodiversity piece, man, I don't know. I want to be honest, like the ADHD thing where, some tasks are hard and having three kids with neurodiversity and differing support needs, seeing the the avoidance of non-preferred tasks, as we like to call them. I have the technical difficulties on this podcast and trying to figure those out like it's it's this thing where, I don't know, you work around the clock, but your brain cannot focus on what you need to get done. And I, I like to I think of it as like a chainsaw, like where, you know, or to push them out or whatever, where you have to pull the, not the lever, but the string thingamabob. Right. And it's been a long time since I've done it. But like, if you can't pull it hard enough, if your arms not long enough. I mean, talk about not being tall or not being...
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    32 min
  • Spotting the Subtle Signs of Mental Health Struggles

    Spotting the Subtle Signs of Mental Health Struggles
    Jul 2 2025
    Most of us are well aware of America's mental health crisis, but lack to tools to support each others and help ourselves. As mental health specialist and CDC Children's Mental Health Champion Patrice Beard shares, learning to spot the pink flags - those early warning signs that show up before the big red flags - can make a big difference! he Odyssey: Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. The Center for Family Involvement at VCU School of Education's Partnership for People with Disabilities provides informational and emotional support to people with disabilities and their families. All of our services are free. We just want to help. We know how hard this can be because we're in it with you. SHOW NOTES: 988 LIFELINE: 24/7 Support for suicide and crisis prevention. Using the 988 Lifeline is free. When you call, text, or chat the 988 lifeline, your conversation is confidential. The 988 Lifeline provides judgement-free care. Talking with someone can help save your life. Mental illness warning signs and symptoms. Understanding what depression looks like in teens. National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) NAMI Virginia More about Kevin Hines, who attmepted to kill himself by jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and is now a powerful advocate for suicde prevention. Centers for Disease Control statistics on children's mental health REALISTIC Self Care Strategies for Caregivers How dangerous are phones and screens for teens? TRANSCRIPT: 01:00:06:18 - 01:00:35:11 Erin Croyle Welcome to the Odyssey. Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. I'm Erin Croyle, the creator and host of the Odyssey podcast explores how our lives change when someone we love has a disability. It's something I became intimately familiar with when my first child was born with Down syndrome in 2010. Now I work with the center for Family Involvement Advocates partnership for people with disabilities. 01:00:35:13 - 01:01:05:09 Erin Croyle This podcast explores the triumphs and hardships that we face. We celebrate the joys that the odyssey of parenting, caregiving, and disability bring. But there's no sugarcoating of the tough stuff. Sure, we can do hard things. There's a whole podcast dedicated to the idea, but this caregiving life that we're living, it is next level. It's all consuming in a way that no one can understand unless they're living it too. 01:01:05:11 - 01:01:39:07 Erin Croyle We're so busy doing the hard things, thinking this is just how it is, that we don't even realize how tapped out and burnt out we are. This is why I had to have the CFI's mental health specialist and one of the CDC's children's mental health champions, Patrice Beard, on the show to talk about how we can better support everyone from those close to us, to acquaintances, to strangers, to ourselves. 01:01:39:09 - 01:01:56:03 Erin Croyle Patrice, part of what makes what we do at the center for Family Involvement so unique is that all of us have lived experience that informs our work. Can you tell us how you got started down this path to mental health awareness and education? 01:01:56:05 - 01:02:17:02 Patrice Beard Sure. I started off. I had been off work for a few years. I had originally worked for a medical home, plus, and I got familiar with Danny Yarbrough, our Dana, and, I was looking for a job, and she said, hey, the Partnership's got some admin opportunity part time. Do you want to come work for us? I was like, sure. 01:02:17:02 - 01:02:43:05 Patrice Beard So I started working for Admin Center for Family Involvement and got familiar with the center for Family Involvement. What they do, and then reaching out and helping families and that whole lived experience. I realized that there was nobody on the team. What that mental health look experience that I had. And so then we talked and I said, you know, I can help families with this. 01:02:43:05 - 01:03:11:08 Patrice Beard And she said, okay, well, you'll have to go through the navigator program. So I started talking to families and helping families through that. And then at the partnership, I was struggling. One day I came into work and I was having my daughter, who has some mental health conditions. I was just struggling with her in school and somebody said, hey, have you heard of NAMI, which is the National Alliance on Mental Illness? 01:03:11:10 - 01:03:37:15 Patrice Beard And I realized I had all these amazing programs for families. So I started taking these programs. So I took like family, a family, I took children's challenging behavior. And this was so amazing. And I was sitting in a room with other families who knew my exact experience and who I could talk with, and I could learn. It was an amazing to me that there were all these people that had the same kind of experiences that I had. 01:03:37:17 - 01:03:59:03 Patrice Beard It was just awesome. So I just started soaking it up and taking all these classes. I'm like, okay, I like classes so much now I'm going to learn how ...
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    59 min
  • Self-Care is a Joke (That We Need to Take Seriously)

    Self-Care is a Joke (That We Need to Take Seriously)
    May 7 2025
    For so many of us, the idea of self-care is a joke. And for good reason. There are literally not enough hours in the day to do what's "required" of us, let alone take a break to focus on ourselves. Rather than telling you why you need to make time, this episode offers validation. And some tangible takeaways that are actually doable! The Odyssey: Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. The Center for Family Involvement at VCU School of Education's Partnership for People with Disabilities provides informational and emotional support to people with disabilities and their families. All of our services are free. We just want to help. We know how hard this can be because we're in it with you. SHOW NOTES: Carolyn Hax is the syndicated advice columnist with The Washington Post mentioned in this epsidoe. SLIDES: TRANSCRIPT: 01:00:06:24 - 01:00:34:24 Erin Croyle Welcome to the Odyssey. Parenting. Caregiving. Disability. I'm Erin Croyle, the creator and host. The Odyssey podcast explores the turn our lives take when a loved one has a disability. My seismic shift came when my first child was born with Down's Syndrome in 2010. I've been going virtually nonstop ever since I joined the center for Family Involvement at Lucas Partnership for people with disabilities. 01:00:34:24 - 01:01:03:14 Erin Croyle A few years after he was born. Utilizing my journalism and TV producer skills as a communications specialist, a topic that comes up time and time again in my work and my life is self-care. And for good reason. If you ask a parent who's also the primary caregiver in their family their thoughts on self-care, you'll probably get an eyeroll or a laugh or a stare down that feels like daggers shooting right through you. 01:01:03:16 - 01:01:30:08 Erin Croyle The reality is, for so many of us, the idea of self-care is a joke. So rather than me talking about how important it is and why you should prioritize it, I'm going to break down why self-care is practically impossible. Instead of the usual self-care gaslighting, it's time for some validation as to why we either can't seem to make it happen or suffer when we do. 01:01:30:10 - 01:01:41:09 Erin Croyle And maybe offer some practical, attainable ways to take care of you. 01:01:41:11 - 01:02:06:19 Erin Croyle Real talk as usual. I actually have an interview with our mental health specialist, Patrice Behar that's in the can that I can't wait to share with you. And I've got a few other interviews that I can't wait to line up and do, and, I mean, I say this over and over again because it's true. Things are just relentless in my life, and I know that I'm not alone in that. 01:02:06:21 - 01:02:34:23 Erin Croyle In the past month, I did a talk about self-care to, caregivers in Ohio, where I'm from. Shout out. Represent. Love that state. Even though it's the butt of so many jokes, especially with my, Gen Z Gen Alpha kiddos. Anyway, what kept resonating with me is I was like, struggling. Finding time to edit that interview with Patrice is to practice what I preach. 01:02:35:00 - 01:03:06:11 Erin Croyle So I recognize that I have been bombarded with life. And as parents and as humans, that's what happens. But what we don't really take into account is that as caregivers, that happens sometimes times a thousand, right? In this past month, my oldest kiddo, Arlo, who has multiple disabilities, including Down's syndrome, got really, really sick and when he gets sick, it's it's real, right? 01:03:06:12 - 01:03:34:08 Erin Croyle A cold can knock him out and put him in the hospital. And funny enough, while I was giving that, workshop on self-care was when he walked into my office and started coughing and literally interrupted and I heard the cough and I said, for example, I'm probably going to have to manage his stuff. And sure enough, the next day I was on the phone with pulmonology, and since then I've had to rearrange a sleep study, and he was out of school. 01:03:34:08 - 01:03:51:11 Erin Croyle And the steroids and other medicines he's on has has just kind of put him out of whack. And I've had to help with his anxiety getting him back to school. And the other two kiddos were really, really sick. But at different times. So then they were off school. And so of course I was sick. But that doesn't matter. 01:03:51:11 - 01:04:33:03 Erin Croyle You know, we power through as parents when we're sick. It doesn't matter. So I was coughing up a storm and managing and that's what we do. But when it came time again to edit this interview and I was like, how am I going to do it? Instead of staying up and pulling all nighters like, you know what? I'm going to give that the time it deserves, and I'm going to practice what I preach, and I'm just going to go ahead and try to riff through a podcast on my own and do this presentation one, to remind myself why things that seem to be doable are so impossible, and why deadlines that we set for ourselves. 01:04:33:05 - 01:05:05:...
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    45 min
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