The Special Needs Mom Podcast

Think of this podcast as your very own special needs mom support group--except it's helpful and fun! You will leave with the hope that you can have a super happy life even when your life includes parenting a medically complex child or a child with something like autism and ADHD.

You likely didn't ask to be the parent of a disabled child or to live portions of your life in the hospital NICU or PICU. Your story is unique; it’s hard to find a place where you belong or where you don't feel so isolated and alone. Your child might have a rare disease, be undiagnosed or experience something that almost everybody has heard of like Downs syndrome yet the weird thing is that whether your child has an intellectual disability or physical disability, the experience as a mother is so similar. So regardless of your child’s disability, we can all find a home in this community.

You find yourself managing everybody else's needs; your child, their siblings, and all the guilt that you have about that. All this has you feeling overwhelmed, anxious, and dizzy---not knowing who to turn to or what to do next for help. This podcast is your lifeline, you’ll find encouragement and inspiration as we connect to other moms’ journeys. We’ll get practical and look at what it takes to stop feeling so stuck in your life.

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The Special Needs Mom Podcast

The Story of Two Wolves

May 14, 2025 • Kara Ryska • Episode 250

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In today’s episode, I’m sharing some personal reflections about acceptance and the emotions that come with it, especially with my son’s 16th birthday bringing up past challenges. I also share the excitement of an upcoming getaway, thanks to my friend Laura's help—talk about a surprise upgrade!

The highlight of the episode is a powerful Native American story about two wolves fighting inside us—one good, one bad. Which wolf will win? I dive into how this story helped me reflect on where I put my energy and how we often judge ourselves for our emotions. It’s a message you won’t want to miss.

Resources Mentioned:

Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff

Connect with Kara, host of The Special Needs Mom Podcast:
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thespecialneedsmompodcast/
Website: https://www.kararyska.com/

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Kara: 0:05

Hi, I am Kara, life coach, wife and mom to four incredible and unique children. It wasn't all that long ago that my son received a diagnosis that had my world come crashing down. I lacked the ability to see past the circumstances, which felt impossible and the dreams I once had for my life and family felt destroyed. Fast forward, past many years of surviving and not at all thriving, and you'll see a mom who trusts that she can handle anything that comes her way and has access to the power and confidence that once felt so lacking. I created the Special Needs Mom podcast to create connection and community with moms who find themselves feeling trapped and with no one who really understands. My intention is to spark the flare of possibility in your own life and rekindle your ability to dream. This isn't a podcast about your special needs child. This is a podcast about you. If you are a mom who feels anxious, alone or stuck, then you are in the right place. Welcome. Hello and welcome to the Special Needs Mom podcast. I'm gonna start this episode with a quick personal update. Nothing too exciting, just kind of what's going on the behind the scenes, I guess we could call it. It's not that exciting. essentially I have been struggling with acceptance, particularly accepting what I have to give and when I don't. Ultimately, I want to have more to give than I do. I love producing this podcast and it gives me so much life, but sometimes I find that I'm not in a place to do it, I don't have that generative energy that it takes to do it. And that's where I'm struggling with acceptance.'cause I'm trying, My intention is to honor my needs. That's kind of what I'm all about, right? So I'd love to say I'm in this place of blissful surrender, but I'm not. I'm not quite there. This past week I've had to make a lot of space for emotions to process my own emotions as it relates to the current and past health journey of my son. His birthday's coming up and. I think we know, we've talked about on the podcast before that birthdays can hold a lot of energy for us, special needs moms. This one is I think particularly, so it's his 16th birthday, so it's definitely bringing up a lot for me to feel, a lot for me to grieve. He's so sweetly. I love that, that he did this. he's very tech savvy. I should say too tech savvy because it's very difficult to keep him safe because he's so good at working his way past any protections we put in place. So it's complicated. So he sweetly adjusted the phone settings on my phone, which I. Very rarely give him access to my phone. But he had it and he made it so that the wallpaper was a bunch of pictures that him, that would kind of randomly pop up. So every time I picked up my phone, it would be a different picture of him. So I loved it. I was like, oh, this is so fun. This is like for your birthday month. This is just gonna be great. But. What it's ended up being is a bunch of moments where I see a picture that reminds me of where we were at during that time, and it's like an instant ping of like shock, kind of like, oh my gosh, that moment's right before me now. Then sadness and essentially a connection to how deeply terrible that time was. There's a lot of pictures I have of him during his last cancer treatment and so. I can look at those pictures instantly and remember exactly what we were doing during those times. So maybe I just need to go edit the pictures. I just thought of that now that maybe I need to edit to actually like genuinely happy images and not just random pictures of him on my phone. So, as I mentioned, I'm in the phase where I'm just processing a lot of emotions that are coming up now. So do I love it. No, I do not. Do I think it's good. I do, I do think it's good. And on a another personal note, we're going to Desert Hot Springs this weekend. It's a part of Palm Springs, which is a desert in Southern California. I haven't been like this, excited about a trip in a really long time. And I wanted to talk about it because, do you remember our guest, Laura Ishmael from episode 2 42? Well, during the episode we talked about Levi's birthday and kind of I started the brainstorming process of what it would look like to do. A birthday celebration, trip for him to celebrate his birthday and we did that. She got us all situated. She's just been incredible the whole way through and I've been like really enjoying how much I've been looking forward to the trip. Does that make sense? Like I'm just so excited about it. I even got a new pair of pants and I call'em my party pants. They are very bright and colorful. The waist could be a little, little looser, if I'm honest. I think I was, maybe I was bloated when I tried'em on. I don't know, but that's only a negative, but they're very bright. I actually dress very boring and I don't wear a lot of bright colors, but I felt like, you know, I'm going to resort man. I need to like. Maybe up my, my clothing game. So I'm pretty excited about my party pants. but this trip, it's like, it's been a gift every day. So like this week Laura emailed me and said, guess what? The sales manager, the director of sales, upgraded your room from the cheapest one that we had to a villa. We won't be all like on top of each other, which is a very welcome gift. I'm so thrilled about that. And then today, like literally like a moment ago, she's like, and guess what? She wants to give you a cabana too. And I'm like, you've gotta be kidding me. This is getting like outta control. Good. that's especially great because Levi had been telling me, mom, I really want a cabana and he doesn't understand the financial implications. And I'm like, that's okay babe. Dad's gonna get up early and get you seats by the pool.'cause he wants to be close to the pool. He's worried about the mobility and being able to be close to the lazy river, which he plans on being in the whole weekend. yeah, so I'm super excited about that and I think his dad will be too'cause he doesn't have to get up early. Okay. Now to the topic of the day. I've mentioned this book before. I mentioned it before in a couple episodes, but I'm currently reading. A book titled Self-Compassion by Kristin Neff. I love that. It's not a creative title, it's just literally self-compassion. This is what this whole book's about. I think that's great. And it's the kind of book that has been on my shelf a a while. I've been wanting to read it for a long while, and with the state at which I've been kind of, Recognizing my own need. I was like, it's time. It's time for me to read it. This is what I know that I want more of, and so I wanted to bring the conversation to you. And I wanted to mention, I'm gonna be paraphrasing parts of the book and mentioning when I do direct quotes, and this is, you know, important to me to give credit where credit is due. So the link to her book will be in the show notes if you're interested in checking it out. And I'm pulling out different excerpts from chapter five, so wanna make sure that that is clear. And I wanna tell you a story that's in the book, but before we do, I wanna do a little bit of setup. This stood out to me when I was reading the book, not just for myself, but because this is what I see day in and day out when I'm working with moms. or actually I don't just work with moms, but, when I'm working with people inside the coaching community or individual clients, is this experience where we judge ourselves for our mental experience. And the implications, just nothing good happens when we do that. That's what I can say definitively, nothing good happens when we judge ourselves for our mental experience. Sometimes we feel like, well, if I don't judge myself, then I'm gonna keep doing it, and so I'm gonna like do this thing that is really kind of mean and not like kind, but maybe it'll help me be better. And so I don't wanna spoil it. But that's not usually. It's never how it goes. It never actually makes you better. It might have you do something that you wanted to do, but it's not sustainable and it just feels terrible. So that's why we're talking about it. So something will happen. There will be something that happens, something that somebody said, something that you saw, and then we'll have a thought that this thing triggers. These are just a variety of thoughts that I pulled for you to hopefully push on something that resonates for you and feel free to modify them to be more accurate to you. So here's some thoughts that you might resonate with. She doesn't have it that bad. She should be grateful for what she has. Or maybe something like, I can't stand seeing other families post milestones and happy pictures. My child won't ever have those experiences. Or maybe something like, I'm angry that my other kids don't get the parent, the mom they deserve because of all this, or. Maybe if you're honest, I don't enjoy being with my child most of the time. Or maybe something like I fantasize about running away from it all and starting over. So those are just a compilation of thoughts that you may relate to and may not. My guess is that at least one of them was something that you can acknowledge that, yeah, that's something that I might think, or I do currently think. So here's where it gets, I don't know if we'll call it juicy, but here's the next step then. So we'll have that initial thought. Then we'll have a thought like. What a horrible person I am for having a thought like that. Or maybe something like a nicer person would have sympathy rather than annoyance. So what if jumping in with the second thought, the one where we start judging ourselves? So that's the distinction. The first thought is just the thing that pops up in your head. The second one pops up in your head too, but it is a judgment or an assessment of the thought that came first. So what if instead of jumping in with a, the second thought, the one where we judge ourselves, we acknowledge that this first thought is just our consciousness. It's just what our consciousness brought us. And it can go, or we can let it go as easily as we can let it in. Really kind of simplify that, like almost like stating a fact that this thought came in my mind and I'm letting it go without blame. That's the key here with no blame or meaning attached. And this is a sentence I wanna read verbatim from the book, and it's not just a sentence, it's essentially a practice. It's saying, okay. These are the thoughts and emotions that are arising in my conscious awareness in this present moment. So that's always like a replacement thought, right? So instead of going to the judgment, this is where you're going to the acknowledgement. These are the thoughts and emotions that are rising in my conscious awareness in this present moment. It's almost like you're watching them go by like, oh look, a blue car drove by and then now it's leaving. Like that concept. And so here's the story I wanna tell you because it just, I don't know, it's got a mic drop at the end that I just loved. I was like, oh man, that's so good. So here's the story and I'm gonna read it. A Native American wisdom story tells of an old Cherokee who's teaching his grandson about life. A fight is going on inside me. He said to the boy, it is a terrible fight, and it is between two wolves. One is evil. He is anger. Envy, sorrow, regret, greed, arrogance, self-pity, guilt, resentment, inferiority, lies, false, pride, superiority, and ego. The other is good. He is joy. Peace, love, hope, serenity, humility, kindness, benevolence. Empathy, generosity, truth, compassion, and faith. The same fight is going on inside of you and inside every other person too. The grandson thought about it for a minute and then asked his grandfather. Which Wolf will win. The old Cherokee simply replied the one you feed. Oh, such a mic drop moment. I was like, oh man, this old Cherokee man. Like he was like, boom, the one you feed. So I just think the story I'm just really geeking out on.'cause I just love that it's acknowledging that we all have. These parts of us and which one we water and nourish will grow. And so it doesn't mean anything that it's part of you, but it's like, which one do you want to be more present, my guess is you want the good one. I'm gonna leave you there. Picture this story, and I hope that this week that you feed the second wolf. We'll see you in the next episode.