Take Heart

Struggling With Control: An Interview with Jenna Erlandson

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 3 • Episode 122

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Carrie and Jenna Erlandson of Bridge of the Faithful Podcast sit down to talk about Jenna’s expectations on motherhood and how trying to control her circumstances played out in her life played out. She discusses the hard work of breaking the habit of control, and gives several practical tips on how she has grown in her walk with the Lord and her perspective as a special needs mom. 

Ep. 122; April 4, 2023

Key Moments:
[2:08] Pride and Control
[11:58] Living in the world of “What If”
[15:50] Strategies to combat control and guilt
[21:22] Conceiving again, after the special needs child 
[27:26} Ways to work on forgiving
{32:26} Tension isn’t a bad thing

Resources
Bridge of the Faithful Website
Bridge of the Faithful Podcast
Jenna’s e-mail
Goodreads Giveaway
Join our Book Launch Team

If you enjoyed the show:

Carrie M Holt 
Thank you for listening to Take Heart where our goal is to offer encouragement, give hope and insight, so you are flourishing in your journey as a special needs mom. Today on the podcast, I'm interviewing my guest, Jenna Erlandson. She is a wife to her best friend, and she left her job as an oncology nurse to focus on her new role of being a pastor's wife and now a mom of five children. She has been the host of the podcast, Bridge of The Faithful for four years, though she took a break after her surprise gift of twins who were born into her family. In the rare moments that she has free time she loves to bake, listen to a great audiobook or work on learning new languages. During our conversation, today, you're going to hear topics about living in tension, the struggles with control, life expectations, and forgiveness. This is a great conversation, and I'm glad you're joining us today. 

Hi, there. It's Carrie M. Holt today, and I have a very special guest on our podcast. I'm here today with Jenna Erlandson, and she is the host of the podcast, Bridge of The Faithful, which has been around for four years, even though recently she has taken a break and for a very, very good reason. Jenna, can you tell our listeners a little bit about that and your story?

Jenna Erlandson 
In September of 2021, which feels like forever ago, we had our surprise twins. I try to be as proactive as possible, but we jumped from three to five. It was a giant jump of responsibilities, time, and not much sleep. I did actually go through a pretty rough time with postpartum depression after I had them. I took a break and hopefully that will be starting up again in the next month or so.

Carrie M Holt  
Oh, that's great to hear. Tell us just a little bit more about your family and your journey with having a child with  with different needs.

Jenna Erlandson 
My motherhood journey really started with actually three years of infertility. Well, I can go into all the medical details if anyone wants to hear it, but for me, they couldn't really figure out what was wrong. Something was wrong with my hormones. It mimicked something similar to PCOS but wasn't exactly PCOS. I have my thoughts on what caused it, but will not put those out there. Stress is definitely one of the key things that I think did that. There was a three-year wait, which, for me actually started the beginning of some of the struggles we're going to talk about today with this interview, with my expectations of what motherhood would look like, and maybe a little bit of pride in my own personal life and things that I have accomplished, that were not me actually accomplishing. Three years of God really working in my heart as well. It kind of took me to a high of really not having a good view of myself, a prideful view of myself, a prideful view of what motherhood should look like. God tearing that down in a good way, and finally got me to a place where my heart was ready to accept God. That's when he gave us our first child. It was actually three weeks after my husband lost his job when we found out we were pregnant. All of these things that I had before him and saying in pride: we have a great marriage, we have such financial stability. Why are all these people who aren't married or who aren't as financially stable or aren't making as good wise choices, having babies when we're in such a good spot and have such a great place? God took all of that away and showed us through the whole pregnancy, I'm going to show you that I love your baby more than you do. I'm going to be the one to provide for him, not you. He needed to get us into that spot for me to really learn that before we became parents.

Carrie M Holt 
What I hear you saying too, is that we, I think oftentimes we all do this, we go in with these certain expectations of what motherhood is going to look like. I know our listeners, whether you've adopted or you've had your own children come from your own womb, that we have these expectations of what it's going to look like, and a lot of times. God says, "I have a little bit of a different plan for you." 

There you go. I know today we're gonna talk a little bit about control. Do you feel like that's been your biggest struggle and your mothering journey or has it been something else?

Jenna Erlandson 
I think my biggest struggle ties in with control. That goes back to expectations. I think I put unrealistic expectations on myself of what motherhood would look like. If they were going out of what I thought they needed to be, then I would want to control that and put it back into what my expectations are, what I thought was best. My other part is that I also struggled to control my thoughts in that. I tend to spiral into anxiety or anger and stuff like that, where I need to control my thoughts of what is actually happening. All of that, I think ties into my expectations.

Carrie M Holt   
Yeah, definitely. I know, I personally struggle with that, too. It's as if we can make things normal again, or we can control how it's going to look when we're on this parenting journey. Since we have this idea of what normal looks like, we're just trying to bring everything back into alignment. In some ways, I think that's very normal because we all have this longing for peace and stability. I believe that's in all of us. I think it's God-given because we're wired for communion and intimacy with God, and so when all these things are flailing around, and it's just absolute chaos, we're trying to make sense of that. We do that by trying to control everything. What do you feel is the struggle in that? Why is that so bad for us to be trying to control everything?

Jenna Erlandson  
It goes back to that moment when God was like, I'm gonna be the one to provide for your family, not you. I missed out on so much when I tried to control the situation, when I tried to be setting things up. I missed out on intimacy with God, I missed out on growth, I missed out on healthy boundaries and all of those things that would set me up well for the actual motherhood journey. When I try to control, I don't see the big picture as God does. He knew what was coming, and I didn't. If I had let him show me instead of taking my expectations from other families that I had seen, or things that I wanted to be different from what my childhood was, or even, I would say social media and movies and all of that…

When you get this unrealistic, romanticized vision of what family and parenthood should look like; it really robs you of joy.

Carrie M Holt
I think it's so important for us to ask God, what is that vision he has for our family and stay in our own lane. I think it's okay for others to come alongside us and there being mentors in our lives to give us advice and encouragement and a listening ear, but when we're constantly comparing, like you said, it robs us of our joy for sure. 

Before we continue our podcast today, here's something you should know. Hey, friends, we are so excited to announce our new book that's coming on May 9th. The Other Side of Special: Navigating the Messy Emotional Joy-Filled Life of a Special Needs Mom. We need your help to spread the word. You can join our launch team and get extra bonuses and fun prizes. For information, go to our website, www.takeheartspecialmoms.com. You can sign up for that. We'll have the link in the show notes. Also today through April 24th, Goodreads has partnered with our publisher for a book giveaway. The link to that is also in our show notes. We hope that you enjoy this wonderful resource for special needs moms. Now, let's get back to the podcast.  Walk us a little bit farther into your journey. What did God have for you?

Jenna Erlandson 
Lots of fun. That first year with Eli (he's our oldest, and he is our special needs guy.) My pregnancy was fine. Well, I don't know there was a lot of stress because of all of the things that had happened. My husband was off on a freelance gig. I woke up and was getting ready to go to work, and I looked and there was blood everywhere. I thought I lost him. He was fine, but part of me wonders if that might be part of what happened. I don't know. That's the other thing, a lot of wondering and trying to not delve deep. That's another control my thoughts thing. I've got to get out of that; trying to figure out what happened: mom guilt. Did I do something wrong? Did I miss something that I should have? I do struggle with that too in the control realm. When I look back now, I know things weren't quite normal, but at the time, they seemed normal. I'm just trying to get the ropes of nursing and breastfeeding and all of that. He didn't sleep very well; he would nurse for like an hour each time, he would sleep for 15 minutes, and then wake up in nursing. 

I was exhausted and whatever. As he got to about six months, he was just a little bit behind and doing a couple of movements that were like, okay, this doesn't quite look like a normal thing. It's funny, we thought it was funny. It didn't cause any concern or anything. Then as he got older, we're realizing he was not really making sounds, and he was not crawling when he should. Something's going on. There's just something different, but we couldn't put our finger on it. His head was really small, which was the next concern. I didn't know this but do you know how they measure sizes for instance in the first percentile, the tenth percentile, he was in the 0.3 percentile of head size. He had ultrasounds, and all of that came out normal. Then we went to get the MRI and then a neurology consult. The MRI showed that he had a delay of myelination in the frontal and parietal lobes of his brain. It's hard for electrical impulses to go through. In his frontal and parietal lobes, it's the short-term memory. It's the language, it's the emotion control, all of that stuff did not develop normally. The hard part for me was they said, "Okay, here's what it is, but we don't know what that means."

Carrie M Holt  
Yeah, it's like, Okay, here you go. We really can't help you. That's so hard. 

Jenna Erlandson
I tried to research a little bit about it, but it ranges with delayed myelination so much of what the prognosis could be that it was actually making me more anxious the more information I got. Knowing this stuff is not going to change what's going to happen. I need to just chill out and let it be, and we'll deal with it as it comes. We decided not to do genetic testing or anything like that because we thought all those what-ifs would just be too hard for our family.

Carrie M Holt
I definitely think that as special needs moms and as moms in general, sometimes we live in that world of what if  I'm 16 years into my journey? Right now at the time of this recording, we're remembering many anniversaries. It's all those trauma dates of different things that happened, especially that really long two months stay when he was an infant and went to respiratory failure. There are so many days that I still look back even this long into the journey later and think, oh, we missed a shunt failure; he probably should have had surgery several weeks before. Why do you think it's so dangerous for us to live in the world of "what-if?

Jenna Erlandson 
I think that's a spot where Satan really tries to get in. I'm kind of emotional right now. I don't know why. All this research is coming out about how Tylenol could be associated with Autism. Eli was also diagnosed with Autism; we're unsure if it's connected to the myelin sheath. I had a lot of hip pain, and I took a lot of Tylenol; could that be the cause of it. Guilt and those "what-ifs" do not come from God. It is a trap if we're giving in to that temptation to go down those rabbit trails. I fall for it a lot. This is not a judgment on anyone that does that. It's just a way for Satan to pull you out, isolate you, pull you from what God wants for you and your family, and put all these lies in your head to make you change how you feel about yourself as a parent. That is going to be reflected in how you parent that child. Thoughts in your head about who you are or how you think you dealt with something will defeat you if you let it. That to me, is very dangerous because the deeper you get in there, the harder it is to get out. There are consequences for that. It's not; you better get in your thoughts together, are God's going to discipline you. There really are consequences. If you go down that trail that Satan's trying to get you down, it just gets worse the farther you go.

Carrie M Holt
It's unhealthy for us to parent out of guilt and fear. It is hard to make any decisions about those two emotions. Satan's really good at knowing our weaknesses and then twisting them into these areas of guilt. Do you have any strategies, thoughts, or things that you have used to take those thoughts captive or to combat the feelings of guilt and that rabbit trail of "what-ifs?

Jenna Erlandson  
First, I highly suggest counseling. I learned that I waited way too long to go to counseling, I waited until I was in the deep throes of postpartum depression last year, and I can't recommend it enough. There's no shame. It is not a sign of weakness, it is 100% helpful to go to counseling. Along that same route, find people that you can be safe with to talk about your guilt feelings or those thoughts that you don't want to get out of.God even tells us that when you bring things to light with people and admit those things going on, they can be redeemed. God can redeem anything. Find those people that you can be safe with and talk to. For some people, it's your spouse. 

I have a group of friends that when I'm really struggling, I can be like, I need prayer for this or I need to process through this because I'm really struggling in this area. Finding good friends. Obviously, be in the Word. One of the things I've done when I'm really struggling is to find a passage in the Bible, like a whole chapter. I don't even try to memorize it because I feel like that's too much pressure, but I write the whole chapter, piece by piece, over and over again, until the concept is really drilled into my head. That has always been a time of intimacy with God, where he's really leaning in, showing me. He's there for me and comforting me, and he's provided words for me for that. It helps get my thoughts off of what Satan wants me to believe to the truth of what God wants me to believe. Forcing those thoughts into my head, doing something physical, reminding myself of the truth. That helps me kind of break out of those moments too.

Carrie M Holt
That’s really good. We had a guest on the podcast, Amber Reynolds, who said her first piece of advice to any special needs mom when their child is diagnosed, is to find a therapist, because that should be your first step. I'm in the same boat; I waited about 15 and a half years to find someone. I love how you said you don't have to memorize the whole scripture passage, even though we know that's good, but the practice of writing it out, dwelling in one place, and reminding ourselves and reminding our hearts. I think we often know it in our head, but it takes a while for it to come down to our hearts for us to remember that God is faithful. Even if we made a mistake, a wrong decision. I look back at those years and think I should have pushed harder for those doctors to do surgery. The reality is we're all human. We are all finite beings. Even the doctors don't know; they don't know everything. I didn't know what I didn't know. We must remember that God is in control, and his will and purposes will not be thwarted. We can see that over and over in the Bible. That's really important.

Jenna Erlandson
One of the things I've learned in my podcasting is that I'm always brave to move forward and step out, when I remember what God's done in the past. That would be my last bit of advice is when you're in the throes of it.  My biggest struggle with my son is mostly behavioral. When I've got a raging almost nine-year-old and trying to deal with all my other kids, I'm feeling I'm overwhelmed, and panic attacks sometimes with trying to get everything under control. I can look back and say, "Hey, this time last year things were XYZ, and now this much growth has happened." When I take the moment to look at how things have gotten better, how God has been faithful, how God took care of me when it was harder or in a different time then, I know I can trust him now, and we can get through whatever stage we're at.

Carrie M Holt  
It's so important for us to look back. It's hard because in the middle of all the busyness and chaos, taking the time to do that can be difficult, but it's so important. That's really good. One of the questions that I would love to ask you is because I hear this; we hear this from our listeners. I get asked this question personally a lot because my son with needs is the third out of four. What makes you decide to have another child after having a differently wired child or special needs child? What are your thoughts on that? I know you said you have a story related to that.

Jenna Erlandson  21:22  
We got the results when we were back at the time with the neurologist and the MRI. I'm still mad about how the results were. That's another thing trying to forgive When we got into that appointment, where they were gonna give us the results and basically told us, we don't know what this means. Have a nice day. We were talking about that very question. Should we be cautious about having more kids? We didn't realize it at the time, but we were pregnant with our second. We kind of didn't have a choice. We found out a couple of weeks later. When the neurologist looked at me, she said, "I would never have another kid after having that." Two things happened in my heart at that moment. First, it was crushing. Is it that bad of a life we provided for our kid? You think it's not worth ever risking having another child. I wrestled with that. Then the next was kind of how God worked through my heart. Who is she to say his value? Who is she to put that value on any future kids you may have struggled with this? I have a plan for him, and it's gonna be hard. Who's anyone to put any less value on this person I created in my image? That was helpful when it came to choosing my kids. Now I also understand there are medical things that you need to figure out if there's compatibility to life situations that you must be careful of. All things considered, you go with your convictions from God. Sometimes I would say, "You know what, I think you're making the right choice if you're choosing to go a different route than biological children." For our lives, we said, there's a value to Eli; 

God made him this way on purpose. It's not God's design for the world to have these, but he's still intentional in what he allows and doesn't for His glory. We did. We also are very stubborn people. "How dare you say that to us, so we'll prove you wrong." God proved that we could have children, so we will have another one. So we had one more and more and thought, two was great. Then our third was a little girl. That was a surprise. Then our fourth and fifth were two little girls. They were very much a surprise. I would say we didn't like intentionally choosing our family size, but we let God do what he wanted with our family, and every person fits in it. Their different abilities, their different talents, the way their brains work are all different than unique, and God uses them and they all fit in our family well. I would say if you're feeling like God is saying it's Okay to have another one, then he's going to design them the way he intended, and he's going to have a purpose for them. If they're also special needs, he will build you up and craft you into a way that's meant to be their mom. It may be hard, and life will not necessarily look the way you expect it. But when you go through it, see things from God's perspective as much as you possibly can. When you allow God to give you joy, you will look back and say, I would not change anything, even though it's hard. 

Carrie M Holt  25:17  
I thought of this kind of analogy one time. I think about my other neurotypical kids. So many times, we want assurance that everything will always be okay. I think what would happen (my oldest son is almost 20), if he would get into a car accident and needed a wheelchair. Would I go back and wish we had never chosen to have him? I would would say no. There's no way that we would not have wanted to Have these 20 years with our other children. I think a lot of times, we just want this assurance that everything's just going to be perfect and wonderful. God did not promise us that. He just said he would be faithful, He would be with us, and he would never leave us.  

One of the things that we had not talked about, but you mentioned, was forgiving. Many of our listeners have had those experiences with doctors, where they have given us worst-case scenarios or talked about their quality of life as negative. There's so much in the world that quality of life is based on what you do, and not in their personhood of who they are and created to be, even if they cannot speak with their mouth or whatever that might be. Talk about that struggle with forgiveness with that doctor. 

How have you worked through those feelings of anger that they would say to you? I think it's okay that you felt anger. It's okay for us to feel anger over that because they clearly aren't valuing life the way we do but maybe talk about that tension of forgiveness.

Jenna Erlandson 
Tension is a very good word. It first started with; I didn't go back. I refused to go back. That's okay. It's okay to fire doctors that do not value your child's life. You have to advocate for your child. Sometimes you have to go through a couple of doctors, which I know is hard with insurance and gaslighting now, and people misunderstand what you're trying to do. There's a whole other element of that. For us, we were at a point where we could just not go back. At first, I ran away. That's not always helpful, either. I can't go back and have a conversation with her. I don't remember her name to go back and see if she's still there, which is good. I pushed it away at first, and then it just kept bubbling up, and still struggling with it. Now I can look at that and ask what emotions I am feeling. Why am I feeling that? Then what can I do with that? You have to study yourself and figure out this internal perspective of why did that make me mad? That's an important part of forgiveness because it tells you the triggers. Was it because you were treated poorly? Was it because of how they viewed your child? Was it because of past hurts that made you react a certain way? Try to figure out, see if you can name what those things are, and then that will bring some clarity to it so that you can start the forgiveness process, which I need to say is:  I'm just going to forgive them and forget about it and we'll be good, that's not forgiveness; it's a choice. You don't have to feel like you're going to forgive. It's when you love when you want to love someone; you choose to love them whether they're being lovely or not. It's your choice to forgive those doctors. It's your choice to forgive whoever in your life has hurt you in relation to this. You choose that and sometimes it's a multiple choice. There are different layers, and different triggers that you have to forgive with each thing. Then you can't hold them accountable, and that's hard. No, if now you need to have a conversation with them to get your point across, especially if you will be working with them a lot. "I did not appreciate that. I want you to understand my perspective and why that was unacceptable." That can be a great tension point with healing and restoration. Other times like ours, I'm not going to restore that relationship; it won't happen. But, I can choose to forgive her because she has a different perspective on life than me. 

She has a different perspective on the quality of life than me. I think you should, I think you should, but I'm not gonna force this on anyone. If you can pray for them, then that can help you too. There's something about praying for someone that helps you see that they are life in God's image too. That helps you forgive them and get some peace in that, as well.

Carrie M Holt
Everything you said was amazing and will be very helpful to our listeners. I loved how you said to name, what you're feeling, why you're feeling that, and to dig deep into that. That's so important. Forgiveness is a choice. Sometimes we think that all of a sudden, we're just going to have this complete peace, and we're going to feel like we've forgiven them. When those feelings come up again, of anger and frustration over what happened, I think forgiveness is that process. It's again asking: Why am I feeling like this again? Maybe there was a trigger, another conversation with another doctor or something. I'm giving this back to you, Lord, because they are also created in God's image, and we will move on from this.  It's just so good. Lastly, let's go back to talking about control. Before this podcast, Jenna, you, and I discussed that tension as a special needs mom. This is definitely a struggle as a wife, a mom,and a woman in general, the struggle of controlling the things in our life, but also dealing with sometimes our lack of self-control. For me, personally, in my mind, I justify; I've had all these bad things happen to me, so it is okay for me to go binge-watch, binge on my phone, or eat all the things or go down the rabbit trail of negative thoughts. Will you talk briefly about tension and how you've dealt with it?

Jenna Erlandson  
The first thing I've needed to learn is that tension isn't a bad thing. I have a really good friend that has been teaching me this. I have always been afraid of tension. Tension for me was difficult growing up. In my family, tension meant failure, and we run away from tension. We don't bring up tension, and we don't have a resolution to tension. Tension means there's something happening that needs to be looked at. Tension also means there's strengthening if you let it. One of the things that my friend always talks about is you have an archer who has his bow. You have to have tension to get aim and to get distance with your arrow. You need to figure out where are you wanting this tension moving toward. What trajectory do you want it to have? 

You can take your tension, and you can just like pull back as hard as you can and then let go and release it and get it out of there, but you don't know where it's gonna go. If you have a goal, have a target you are aiming for, work on tension, and strengthen, you know when to release it at that point. For me, a lot of it, with the tension of needing to control and dealing with my own self-control, is figuring out when do I let the tension go. When do I keep pulling back? When do I dig into the tension? When do I release it and let God do something with it? They're tied together very much because I need things to fit in a box. I plan so much of my day. I structure my day so that I know what time I need to wake up to the minute. I know what time we need to leave the house to hit all the lights correctly and get to school. If we finish something at this certain time, I have enough time to do something. I have everything down to the minute, which is unhealthy, but it works most days or not even most days. I'd say that works 60% of the time, and the day goes really smoothly, and then I think I'm awesome. Then there are other days where...we just switched schools with my seven-year-old, my second child, we just switched them to a different school. My whole structure of the day is gone. I've got to figure it all out. My four-year-old and seven-year-old are going to the same school, and their school starts earlier. Suddenly, the morning is different, and they're slowpokes. I'm looking at the clock; we must go in three minutes, and you're still in your pajamas. What is happening? Why aren't you eating your food? Why are your legs on the table? Then I start spinning into, if we don't leave at this time, the day will be screwed, and we're like, all gonna die is basically how it goes. We're not going to survive the day if we don't leave the door at 7:57 every morning. There's just that unrealisticness there. When I'm feeling those moments of needing to control the situation, or I'm starting to spiral down these self-control thoughts, or these dark thoughts of how the world is ending, because we left three minutes later than we were supposed to. I've got to find that tension. I'm feeling these. Okay, this is tension. Am I just gonna let it go and pretend nothing's happening, and then be all happy all through the day and then explode in the night when I've finally had my limit? Do I yell at everybody because I am so overstimulated and stressed because I'm trying to fit everything into these boxes? I've got to take that tension and figure out how do I keep it in line with my target? Part of that is figuring out what my target is. Where am I trying to aim it? I need to know what's my goal for the day.  What can I do? For me, it has to be day by day because that's too much to go farther out for me personally. 

Carrie M Holt
That's good. I love how you said that tension is not a bad thing. Because it is hard for us to live in the middle, sometimes in the gray, and to know what that goal is and what that target is. As you said, if everything isn't done at the end of the day, you have to speak the truth about that. If I don't get everything done, is the world gonna end? Probably not. I am definitely a type A planner, and I still have a paper calendar because I need to see the entire month out. One of the things that I have learned is that I still try to focus on the next day. Because when we look at our day, and that not every box is checked off, I realize it's not the end of the world, and it's going to be Okay to move it to next week. My cohost, Sara, talks about whether this needs to be done in the next 10 seconds, 10 minutes, 10 hours, 10 years? That helps give perspective about the tension of getting everything done, and all of that. As we wrap up, what is one piece of advice that you wish you knew at the beginning of your journey? We tried to end our podcasts with this question.

Jenna Erlandson 
Going back to the expectation thing. At the beginning of this, I wish I had sat down and written out my expectations for motherhood, parenting, and having a special needs child. Whenever I'm at a big milestone in my life, if I could sit down and write down all of the expectations and be able to figure out: What's realistic? What's not? What can I work toward? What can I give to God? What is my responsibility? What is something that has to be? If I had those organized in that way, and was able to process through all those and know that they were hiding there, then I would have gone through it different. Marriage, parenting, special needs, children, new jobs, and anything like that, if you know what your expectations are, you can release some of that control when you know if something is realistic. How can people help me with this? How can I let go of having to do it all myself? I think that, for me personally, would really help me. I need to do that. I need to sit down and do that myself and figure out what my responsibility is in all of that. What can I control healthily? What am I asked to control?

Carrie M Holt  
I think that's so good. On that note, why don't you tell our listeners where they can find you online and your podcast?


Jenna Erlandson  
So my podcast is called Bridge of the Faithful. It started as a personal journal that I didn't expect to become a podcast because I didn't even know what a podcast was when I started. It takes what I see as this chasm that God built a bridge over, and he's faithful to build the bridge, but we also need to be faithful to step on the bridge. When those two come together when we work with faithfulness and see God's faithfulness, the amazing journey that he can take us on. It started off as me talking about all the things that God was teaching me. The past two years have been interviews with people who have been through different hard things, using their talent,  or seeing how God's faithfulness fits in our lives. It was a word we used a lot, but we didn't understand what that meant. I wanted to put that in real life and help understand why we trust it. Is it really a good thing, or is it as cool as people say? It is. It really is. You can find that at www.botfpodcast.com. I have an Instagram that has also been on a break., but you can still message me there and stuff like that. I decided to keep my Facebook personal but open to the public. You can go and see how my life is very honest about motherhood on this: the funny things, the hilarious things, the things I struggle with. My passion is to make moms know that they are not alone in whatever it is that they're facing. They are not the only ones dealing with these thoughts or have children that are doing weird things, whatever embarrassing things, and find joy in all of that. That I leave open for whoever wants to go and see they're not alone in that. You can email me at jenna@botfpodcast.com.

Carrie M Holt 
We'll have all those links in our show notes for this episode. Thank you, Jenna, for being on today. I know there are just so many nuggets of truth. This is going to be an episode that people will have to relisten to over and over again. Thank you. 

Jenna Erlandson
Yeah, thanks for having me. 

Carrie M Holt
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