The Special Needs Mom Podcast

Nine Moms, One Book, Infinite Courage

• Kara Ryska • Episode 259

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This week, I’m sharing something exciting: I co-authored a new book called The Courage to Raise! It's a collaborative project with eight other special needs moms, and I’m proud (and a little surprised) to be a published author again—especially since writing has never come easily to me.

In this episode, I talk about how the opportunity came about (perfect timing while I was already traveling), what my chapter is about, and the special tool I included called Tolerating the Intolerable—a game plan for surviving those chaotic, over-the-top moments we know too well. I even share a few “plays” that didn’t make the book but are too good not to mention (Skedaddle, anyone?).

Whether or not you buy the book (but I hope you do!), this episode offers a behind-the-scenes look at how I turned hard stories into something meaningful.


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Get The Special Needs Mom Survival Pack HERE

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

kara:

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 if you're new here. Welcome, extra welcome if you're not new. Thanks for coming back. I love hanging out with you guys and I'm in the glorious part of summer that my husband is off of work, and while it's a little disorienting to have all of my children home, it's also lovely to have my husband home. He's a high school assistant principal. And so he gets like, I don't know, I think it's like three and a half weeks off. It's kind of a bummer'cause it's like a prescribed amount of time. Not with like, not flexible, but it is an oasis for me in the desert of summer. So here we are. I'm doing well. Now, if we were gonna look at a graph of how I'm doing in summer, a couple weeks ago, I would've been, you know, a little lower if you remember the episode there. Now I feel like I might be at my peak and all of this support that I have has allowed me to really focus on some things that gushing it. I've been having so much fun and I have been working hard. I've been getting up early still, even though it's summer and I could technically sleep in. I'm getting up, I am working on things. I'm thinking about you guys all the time and. one of the things I've been working on is the path to peace coaching community that I opened for a very short amount of time. And don't worry. Well worry'cause you did miss it, but don't worry because, I will let you know when there's a future opportunity to join. But I shared with the people that are on my email list as well as very briefly here. So if you didn't come for one of three days right before I opened the program, you'll have not heard about this. So if you're hearing about this, you're like, how did I miss this? Well, it was kind of a low key. way of sharing, because it's a founding members launch, we are having a new iteration of how we're doing things, and so you had to act fast to be able to get in. And so the ladies that did are incredible and we're having so much fun. And you know, like I said, I, I think about you all day long and. So creating this space for us to meet and meeting with people is, I don't know, it's kinda my dream come true. So I know I won't go on and on'cause you're like, again, Kara, you're like telling us about a cool party that like now we can come to, which I think is kind of rude. But, I'm telling you now because, well one, it's been one. One, it's what I've been working on. And two, because I don't want you to miss out in the future. So what I would advise at this point is to make sure you're on my email list. I will eventually, you know, give you guys more information on where and when and how you can join, upcoming. But for now, the best way is to get on my email list, or you can also sign up to receive what I'm calling the Special Needs Mom Survival Pack. And so hopefully there'll be something of interest for you there, but also you'll get on my email list and then I can harass you on email all day long. Just kidding. Only every once in a while. Okay. Moving on. I mentioned I'm working hard and one of the things I've been working on is my newest book. I know who thought. Some of my friends here locally are like, wait, what? You're going to a book lunch? What? So more accurate to say that it's not my newest book, it's our newest book, and I am joining eight fellow authors, eight fellow mom authors, and. The name of our book is The Courage to Raise it's another collaborative book. So again, if you've been around a while, you'll know that about a year and a couple months ago in May with We Are Brave Together, I was part of a collaborative book and that book was called Becoming Brave Together, and that was a fun experience. I loved it. And so this is another collaborative book process. And as you listen to this, I'm gonna be in North Carolina. Well, I mean this is, if you're listening live, if you're listening live or like right when it came out, like I am in North Carolina celebrating the launch as we speak, which I think is kind of fun. And you know, this is kind of a fun story because. I'm recording this, uh, the week before, and so I'm anticipating flying to Atlanta, Georgia to drop off Levi, my son at a brain tumors survivor camp, and I had planned to stick around the area because of his medical profile. And even though the staff is absolutely amazing, I'm just blown away by everybody. You know, Levi's body doesn't always behave, especially when traveling, so. I wanna be close by, should we have any issues that require any more interventions than they'll have at the camp. And so I had planned this and this is kind of, you know, scheduled on our calendar and I have a friend who happens to be, I. Well, he happens to have purchased a publishing company called Hope Books. So I mentioned this specifically because if you're listening and you've always dreamed of writing a book, this would be a great organization to connect with because he is all about supporting new authors in writing and publishing their book. So, Brian Dixon is the CEO. He would be a great person to connect with and, my husband and I have been good friends with them. Gosh, our whole marriage, we met in our young marriage group at church, so that's kind of fun. So he reached out to me and he let me know about this opportunity to contribute to this book. And I wasn't an automatic, yes, I was intrigued. But what you may or may not know about me is that writing is really hard for me. To give you a little bit better picture, I started college by taking remedial writing. And I still, let's be honest, I still can't spell. I really never got that down, which is, you know, fine because we have all the tools that we have now. But, that's just kind of where I'm at. Right. And it's like I have enough to say, so I have to push through, the difficulty of writing. But it is not something that, Is like a love of mine. I don't love to write, but I do love to talk to people, so that didn't draw me and I. Yet I was intrigued. And the reason I was a yes ultimately was the appeal of being among this particular group of women who also said yes to this endeavor and having a reason to dive deeper into community with them. And I just thought, you know what? This is gonna be the best opportunity to meet these. Other eight individuals who have, you know, there's various disabilities, there's various ages, there's various faith backgrounds, and I just thought, how cool to be able to kind of go on this little journey together and get acquainted with them. And so then you see how this is working. How cool was it, the launches in North Carolina, like I said, and how cool was it that. I was already gonna be in Georgia, like the timing worked out. And if, if you don't know, I'm from San Diego, so traveling from San Diego all the way over there is kind of a big deal. And let's just be honest, I have a little bit of travel anxiety. So getting on a plane gets, it's a lot for me, a lot for me to travel, to leave the comfort of my home. I don't, I don't do it all that often. And so I was already gonna be out. And so the fact that this lined up, I just thought, you know what? How cool is that? And. What I will also share is that I'm really proud of the chapter that I wrote, and I really do hope you'll get the chance to read it. And that's ultimately what this episode is about. It's about telling you about the opportunity to buy the book. And if you don't buy the book, that's okay. I'm gonna leave you with a few nuggets here and actually I will be bringing a variety of the authors onto the podcast so that you can get to know them. So. I mean, I do encourage you to act fast and buy the book now, but maybe it'll be one of the other authors that you resonate so deeply with that you think I have to get the full chapter or the full picture and what I wrote about in this chapter. So I signed up for this book Project thinking I have no idea what I'm gonna write about, which is always a little concerning, especially when there's deadlines. But I, I actually do very well with deadlines. So what I. I decided to write on, or what I kind of settled on was essentially taking a tool that I had developed all the way back when I first started working with special needs moms. And I remember the conversation, with the person, that I was working with, where I then got off the call and I developed this. And the document that I developed was called Tolerating the Intolerable. And essentially it's a game plan. And I broke it up to three stages of the game plan. And you know, it's kind of bringing humor to some things that are really hard. And the idea is that, you know, part of our lives, the, the part that we would say is intolerable it. You know, we have these moments or seasons that are just unreal. Like if you step back and you look at them, you're like, holy mackerel. This is unbelievable. Like really, if you step back, you'll be like, wow. And yet we survive. We survive them. And if we're a little bit ballsy, we have the audacity to say, we don't just wanna survive, we actually wanna thrive. Like we're still committed to all that we want, not just surviving. So I used this framework, the game plan, and developed it for the chapter that I wrote and. Also, I wrote about a story that, it's pretty funny. I'm gonna say it's pretty funny. It wasn't funny in the moment. Um, but the beginning of the chapter is a, a story from a day in the life. And, I'm trying to think of something to like tease it out. So you'll be like, oh, I have to read the story. Um, let's just say there were. Multiple officers in my home, let's say that. And so I'm gonna leave it there, so you're like, whoa, I gotta hear more. But back to the chapter, it was actually a really fun experience once I got into writing it. Like, you know, after I got through the messy middle, and it was one of the first times that I thought, you know what? I might have a whole book in me. Particularly because I had to be really selective of what I did and didn't include because really I could expand the framework that I put together to be so much more. But I wanted to give you just like a little taste. And this part actually didn't end up in the chapter, but I looked back at this document and now, I mean, I created this now. Um, like five years ago. So it's, it's been around a while and I've always been meaning to kind of do something more with it, but one of the things I did, right, so if you're gonna think about a game plan and like think about football and like they have these, game plays, and they have names for these plays and so I kind of use that to come up with. The ways that we could support ourselves in these moments that are just what I'm gonna call intolerable. And so I have this example of one, and so if you are a mom of a person who is explosive and or violent, you're gonna really like this one. So the scenario is you got explosive behavior. When people may be harmed. So this could look a lot of different things. So the protocol or the play is focus on moving everybody to safety. So in my personal experience, it's not just my physical body that could get harmed, it's also the bodies of my people, of my other children. And the other part of the protocol in play is decide that people are the only thing that matters. You will leave behind material items. So this is like this premeditation of what you'll do when the explosion happens. And the play name is called High Ground. Isn't that kind of fun? Okay. There's also a play called Tunnel Vision, and there's also a play called Skedaddle. And that one that word just makes me laugh. And like I said, this part did not make it into the book, but I don't know, it was too funny not to share. So I wanted to share it here. And I don't know. I mean, I do not mean to make light of these really hard moments, but I do intend to bring levity to these parts of our life that are no fun at all. I don't see why we can't have fun as we address and work through these issues. So it's kind of how I roll. So I'd love for you to go by the book. It will help support me. And it will help support my fellow authors and hopefully help support you in some way. And to buy the book. It's an easy Amazon order. All you'll need is to go find the link in the handy dandy show notes area of this episode. Or also, I'm just realizing now this as I talking about this, that you could go to Amazon and type in my name and it'll probably pull up.'cause I'll be listed as an author. Or the name, the courage to raise. So that's all we got. That's all we have for this week. See you all next week.