Take Heart

Moms For Mental Health - An Interview With Jennifer Magnano

• Amy J Brown, Carrie Holt and Sara Clime • Season 1 • Episode 48

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Jennifer Magnano is a special needs mom, a doula, and also struggles with her own chronic illness. She speaks life into the hard spaces and encourages us to be gracious to ourselves, find the moments to look for God's goodness, and be open with your struggles. You are loved, seen and known in this wild life as a special needs mom.   

July 13, 2021; Ep. 48

Timestamps & Key Topics:

  • 0:20-    Intro 
  • 1:03-    About Jennifer Magnano
  • 4:10-    Being Seen
  • 5:15-    Finding Good In the Hard
  • 9:53-    Caring For Yourself   
  • 14:08-  Transparency
  • 19:38-  Handling Siblings’ Emotions
  • 26:24-  Compassion For Yourself
  • 28:08-  Moms For Mental Health
  • 31:05-  Outro

Episode Links & Resources:

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Amy J. Brown  0:20  
Welcome to Take Heart where our goal is to give you hope, offer insight and encouragement so you can flourish on your journey as a special needs mom. Each week Sarah, Amy and Carrie will explore a theme, sharing an inspiring story, practical tips and encouragement you can use every day. Thank you for joining us today.

Today's guest is Jennifer Magnano. Now, Jennifer is a writer, doula, an expert chronic illness warrior, and a special needs parent. She is an active advocate for Maternal Child mental health and well being. Jennifer remains committed to interrupting cycles of intergenerational trauma and pain. Her work has often moved her into leading roles in local and global mother centered initiatives and conversations. Jennifer speaks life into the real raw life. That is her superpower. Thanks for being here today, Jennifer, and being a guest on Take Heart. If you could, just give us a little bit of an intro to our listeners about who you are and your special needs journey.

Jennifer Magnano  1:51  
I would love to, Amy. I'm so glad to be here. My name is Jennifer Magnano. I'm known as the Barefoot Preacher on social media. About five or six years ago, in the midst of just all of the chaos, that is real raw motherhood, my husband came home and told me that I was being two different people, basically. I was posting one way, and that I was living another. I'm a special needs parent of a daughter who is almost eight now. She's on the spectrum, has severe OCD and sensory processing disorder. There's an array of kind of mood disorders that we're still trying to figure out. There's this invisible world that we live in, and I wasn't posting about it. So, the Barefoot Preacher kind of came to life when I realized that I needed to speak life into this wild space. So I write. I am a doula. I'm a special needs mom.

Amy J. Brown  2:49  
Great. Thank you. You know, one thing that struck me right away, what you said is that you weren't posting about it. Recently on Take Heart, we talked about guilt, and about how guilt is about expectations. We kind of talked a little bit about how social media plays a part in how we portray ourselves. I think it's interesting that your husband was the one that said, "Wait a minute." Why do you think you held back? You just didn't want to let people in or you didn't think people would understand?

Jennifer Magnano  3:21  
I think I was actually most concerned about the people closest to us. I'm not sure what I was trying to protect them from. I know that it took a long time for our families to really embrace her diagnosis and then to embrace the fact that I talked about living with a chronic disease because I kind of have a bonus situation. They were off put by it when I started to post. I had posted maybe a couple of times before he had brought that to light. It was uncomfortable. They were like why are you sharing all of this really personal stuff? For me, I think I've always had this advocate's heart and I want others to be loved and known and know that they're seen in this wildness. As soon as he said that, I thought I wasn't living up to my own values.

Amy J. Brown  4:10  
I think there's nothing like, you said the word seen. When somebody's walked the same road that you have, or understands something you're going through, there's nothing that makes you feel more seen than that. I think that we are so lonely in our journeys, whether it's a chronic illness journey, or infertility or a special needs child. So I really appreciate that you are honest. You're also hope filled. Your words are very heartfelt. It's not like you're online just complaining because that's not what you're doing. You are truly shedding light and life on the life you're living, so I appreciate that about you. So this is probably a big question. Here we like to talk at Take Heart about hope and joy and connection which goes in line with what you write about. What is one way you think your faith has grown in this journey and especially in the journey as being a specialist parent, but also having chronic illness? Juggling both of those things, how has your faith grown in this season?

Jennifer Magnano  5:15  
You know, I think that 2020 was a really hard year for a lot of really good humans, and it brought out the worst in some really good humans. I think it brought out my worst in my faith journey, which was really fascinating to me. I've recovered from that, and I feel like I'm now able to really breathe life back into my relationship with God, not that he stopped breathing life into that relationship, but I did. I think there were a lot of truths that I uncovered there. We are seen, and that God does love us when bad things happen, and hard times come. It's so important that we find some stillness to reflect on the little things that are going on. My faith journey, I feel like has been, okay, all of these awful things are happening, these big, hard, scary things: the diagnosis, the sickness that my daughter has been screaming and crying for three days because all of her therapies have shut down. Then taking that stillness and that pause and saying, okay, where was the goodness today? Where did I see God? And letting that be the place from which not only I parent, but that I live. A lot of those days, it was okay, she went to bed early tonight, because she was so tired from raging. I had an extra hour to just sit on my mat and pray. You know what, during 2020, my husband realized how hard it can be? A lot of the time in my work as a writer and as a doula a lot of the time I still get to be home with my daughter and be like her one on one. I'm her homeschool teacher and her therapist. Seeing his glimpses. We were able to just find so much good. For me, my faith relies on finding the good because there was always always something good even in the hardest times.

Amy J. Brown  7:13  
Right. I think you're right that you have to take that moment to stop and notice. Especially as special needs moms, we're always thinking about the next step, or the next therapy, or the next thing we have to do. For me, as you know, I'm further down the path and I have grown kids. I've said this before. When I look back at my journal, it's the hardest years, I see that I wrote down when life was happening. It may have been that I went for a hike with one kid or stopped to get ice cream with another one. Life was happening. I think it's important to shed light on that. Especially in this past year, you could easily take the track that just everything's awful, just everything's awful.

Jennifer Magnano  7:59  
You absolutely could. I feel like there's been times that we all go there. We're like, everything's awful. It really is in that stillness and that pause, and for me, it's writing. I write down my gratitude every night, and I don't list my grievances, because I have to leave those at the foot of the cross and say, "Okay, you've already seen this, you've taken care of this. You will continue to take care of this." 

Amy J. Brown  8:24  
Sometimes I will just take a piece of paper and write down everything I'm worried about and upset about. It could be the littlest, dumbest thing to the biggest life thing. I'll just write, write, write, and then I'll just put it aside and go back to it, and then just put an X over it and go, okay, God's covered this. I don't really know how half of this is gonna turn out, but it's not my job in this moment to know. I think you're right, it's the little small moments that we just have to pay attention to, which is hard to do in the midst of busy lives. Slowing down and paying attention, that is important. Now prior to 2020 were you a homeschool mom? 

Jennifer Magnano  9:04  
Yes, I was. This is my third year of homeschooling. Yes. 

Amy J. Brown  9:10  
I wasn't sure if you were one of those moms that like it was hoisted upon you.

Jennifer Magnano  9:15  
Well, it was for my older child. So I got to bring him into this complete chaos. Because of my chronic disease, I have a compromised immune system. We just decided early on that online school made him cry every day, and I couldn't do two children crying every day. We couldn't as a family, and so we pulled him out. He came home and he's homeschooled with us this year too, which has been fun and hard and everything in between.

Amy J. Brown  9:44  
Yeah. So with your chronic illness and with having a busy life and a special needs kid how do you take care of yourself?

Jennifer Magnano  9:53  
I'm very protective of my free time, not that I have a lot of it. Once the kids are in bed, there's probably a good 30 minutes that I will just take, and I'll read my Bible, or I'll just lay flat on my yoga mat and pretend no one else exists. I'm an introvert. All of this busyness is definitely, it's really hard on an introvert, let alone someone with chronic diseases. Then I take my mornings really slow. I'm blessed that because my daughter doesn't sleep well and hasn't slept well, she does sleep in, if that makes any sense at all. So I get a little bit of time most mornings. There are a lot of days where there's not room for me, to be completely honest. So, it's being so intentional with that time and saying, okay, you know what, I'm not a huge fan of technology, but if she's really hooked on some Tetris game, right now, I'm gonna have her to sit on the bathroom floor, and I'm going to take a bath. We're still probably going to be in conversation, because she talks nonstop, she's highly verbal, but that still feels good, because I'm still doing something for myself.

Amy J. Brown  11:04  
Right. I think that's good, too, because it doesn't have to be... It would be great if there were no kids around, a bath by yourself. I think once again, it's those little things you have to take, you have to pay attention to when those moments come. Sometimes for me, I will pull in the driveway, and if I'm coming home from somewhere, and my kids will get out of the car, I won't go in right away. Now I used to know that I didn't have a long window before something happened. I would just take like 10 minutes ago. Okay, here's my five to ten minutes in the car, before I have to go back in again. Even that's like a little sip of air that kind of gets you through the next moment.

Jennifer Magnano  11:47  
I have to say, in 2020, my self care was completely I feel like it was radical and different. It was strange. It was all these things, and everything had shut down. We live in Arizona and the houses are fairly close together. We only have a quarter acre of land, and it wasn't quite pool season yet. What do I do with these kids? The national parks have shut down, I have nowhere I can go, and I literally would find just neighborhood parks where nobody was out. I would pull over, and I would open the doors and be like, run, the both of you just run. That was my self-care. I just need these three minutes. Then there was a day that my son decided to roll in poop, and so that was super fun. It wasn't always great self care. In future visits, I was like, just check the ground before you roll. That was my self care. I think that we do look for the big, the big moments, the big chunks of time, and those three minutes were sacred to me. Nobody was talking. Nobody was screaming. It was good.

Amy J. Brown  12:57  
Right? I think too, we say things like, well, it must be nice when we see other moms being able to do things we can't do. Once again, that little three minutes makes such a difference. If we didn't take those, I just can't imagine what kind of crabby mess I would be at the end of the day if I didn't take those moments. We have this in common that we have children with an invisible disability. I'd like to talk about that a little bit. There's a lot of challenges in that role because people don't always understand. They can't see a disability or a problem. They just see behavior. For me personally, I've had a lot of guilt about that. I've had to toughen up a little bit and realize that the person looking in on my life doesn't know my life. I just want to know how you have handled that with people. However you want to answer that. How you've handled that with people not understanding, how you've advocated for your family or for your daughter, when it comes to those kinds of situations?

Jennifer Magnano  14:08  
I think that when... I mean, I am wholly transparent at this point in my life, there are very few things that I won't talk about. I can probably name one off the top of my head, but there are not many things. I think so much of that for me is I've just given it to God at this point. I was in direct sales for years, and it was a Christian company. One of the speakers that we had one year had said to us, "You really need to, when you wake up every morning and you're making your to-do list, you need to be living your life for an audience of one in order to thrive." I go back to that a lot. If I'm living for an audience of one, I'm living for what God wants me to do here on earth today. It just influences everything. Is it hard living with a child that has an invisible disability? Absolutely. I've tried to explain it to some of our neighbors, and they don't fully grasp it. I'm sure our next door neighbors grasp it because they have heard. They have heard all sorts of things coming from our home and bless them, they have not called CPS yet. I know that that's a possibility. If either of them ever move away, I mean, it sounds quite dramatic and traumatic on a regular basis. Living with someone with an invisible disability, I think I am much more compassionate because I live with invisible disabilities. I have just multiple immune mediated issues. When I'm approaching it, I approach it the same way that I would for myself when I'm sharing. 2020 made that actually really easy because it was no, we can't see you because I'm immunocompromised. She's not in a good space mentally right now. Going back out into the world right now, it's kind of the same thing.  People know who we are. They know our experiences. As someone enters into our life, I'm just transparent about it. Does that answer the question? I think that transparency for me is the only way that we can thrive.

Amy J. Brown  16:20  
Yeah, I agree with you. I think it's easy, though, initially, because of judgmental comments, to back into shame, a little bit, and guilt. But, you're right, the only way you can thrive is to be honest. I mean, obviously, not every single person that comes across your path, you're going to tell everything to. I think too, it helps your child. At first I thought that I don't want to tell people because I don't want people to think poorly of my child, but actually it sheds light on what's going on instead. I think there's this idea that we don't like diagnosis, we don't like labels, so to speak. To be in conversation with another, like somebody who comes upon your family, and you're honest with them, and warm and not defensive, I think that just opens them up to look at your child differently.

Jennifer Magnano  17:14  
I think it does. My husband and I were talking this weekend, because a friend of mine who actually babysat my son, 11 years ago, when I went back to work, sent our daughter a care package. There was a little note in there explaining that she too had gone through many of the issues that our daughter is going through. I found that there's so many adults that are hiding. My daughter's is primarily mental illness. There's so many adults that are not having that open conversation even with close friends. I can't tell you, as a doula, how many women I've been in their home and they'll say, :Well, I'm going through postpartum depression and anxiety, but I don't want my family to know about it." I think that we just do ourselves an injustice, and we do other people because, part of the human experience is learning how to connect with others and to love them and serve them well.

Amy J. Brown  18:10  
Right. There's such a stigma with it, with mental illness. It's something that we easily become ashamed of, which shouldn't be. I always say that if your child had a disease, like when my sister had cancer. Obviously I don't want anyone to have cancer. When my sister had cancer, they gave her, here's where you get your wig. Here's where you go to the nutritionist. This is where you go  to get a support group. Those are wonderful things that should be in place for anybody with an illness. It's not the same with mental illness. For us, I don't know about you, but for us finding the diagnosis is really difficult because there's so many diagnoses within that spectrum of behavioral issues. One doctor would say one thing, and another doctor would say another thing. It took us a while to figure out what was actually going on. That's frustrating, too, and kind of isolating. I love that. We can only thrive if we're vulnerable and honest. I think that's so true. I think we do the exact opposite most of the time, unfortunately. Talk to me a little bit about how you connect with your other child, your other non special needs child? He lives in the house with you and he's not at school. He's kind of in the mix, if at all. Can you talk to me about what you're doing there with that relationship?

Jennifer Magnano  19:38  
I think I've always been very sensitive to him and his needs. I had severe postpartum depression and anxiety after I gave birth and had a super complicated pregnancy because of my complicated disease. I went into labor at 24 weeks. He was born a late term preemie. He was super sick, went into liver failure when he was 11 weeks old. So I shut off all of my emotions. I dissociated, which is pretty typical and normal. Honestly, I feel like it's almost a healthy way of coping with something that is just so big. When I started to feel again, he was about 20 months old, it was the first time that I knew that I definitely loved my son. I just became really in tune with him at that point of figuring out who he was and what he liked and what he didn't like. He's a very sensitive child. When he was little, he would know that he was going to do something wrong, and then put himself in timeout. He was two when he was going to daycare. I was like, we don't even do timeout, we do time in because he's such a sensitive soul. Living with his sister is really, really hard for him sometimes. Allowing him the opportunity to express his feelings. I'm really angry right now, Mom. Why do other people get to have a sibling that doesn't scream every day? How come she punched me in the face again? I mean, this is our real life. I would wake up some mornings when she was smaller, and she wasn't quite verbal yet, and she would have punched him in the face and given a bloody nose before I even opened my eyes because she was frustrated with whatever it just happened. We can laugh about it now. At the time, it wasn't funny, right. I was really intent on allowing the people around us to know what was going on. Starting in his preschool, every year, I've written a note and said, please give my son extra love and attention. I'm not asking you to give him better grades, nothing like that. I'm just asking you to love on him because at home he has a hard situation going on. Every teacher, with the exception of this year, because I'm his teacher, I have written this note that says he lives with a high needs special needs child, he needs you. I think that has been such a gift. One of his biggest fears over the years has been going to school and his teachers not allowing them to have hugs. He is a very high contact kid. We've had great teachers. Every single one would hug him, and they would encourage him, it's a safe space, it's his only safe space other than sports.

Amy J. Brown  22:28  
I think once again that's you being vulnerable with that note. Right? You were honest about what was going on in your home, and that helped him to thrive. A lot of attention and special needs families go to the special needs child. That kind of gave him his extra special love that he needed. I love that idea. My older three are bio, my younger three are adopted. When we started having problems, I would sometimes say to my older kids, guys. I should have stopped saying this, but I used to say, "You didn't grow up in an orphanage, so have patience. You didn't have a mom who exposed you to alcohol and drugs, have patience." Yes, they should, but they already were having patience, and they didn't ask for the situation. I stopped saying that and decided, I'm letting them say what they want to say. They have to be able to feel like they can come to us or me, and say I'm really frustrated. I think initially I didn't know how to handle that. I would just say yeah, but this is what's going on. They already knew what was going on. It wasn't like that was new information to them. I mean, they already knew that these kids came from hard spaces. They were already having grace for them. They needed to be able to be honest with me about what was going on. Once I stopped kind of putting that kind of language around it and just let them say this is how I'm feeling, things got a lot better for us because they felt seen and heard, because a lot of attention does go to the specialist child. It just does. It's the nature of it.

Jennifer Magnano  24:09  
I think one of the things that fascinated me. There was a sibling workshop that he was going to, and he continues to sometimes go to them online. Every month they would gather all of these special needs siblings and be able to say whatever they wanted about their sibling. I was fascinated because at 9, 10 years old, you still don't have a filter. He would still say really nice things about her. They posted a question one week that was: If your special needs sibling could never talk again, would you ask them to never talk again? He said, "No, I want her to be able to say how she's feeling or what she likes or what she wants to do next. Even though she yells at me. I do like this part of our relationship." I feel like the siblings of our special needs kids actually teach us just as much as our special needs children.

Amy J. Brown  25:10  
I think it also makes them more compassionate. Here's just a little side note. I have three adults. All three of them said after living in our house when they go to college and get roommates, they could live with anything, and take anything like college roommate life throws at them, because they've lived through a lot. I do think it makes them more compassionate. In that situation, what you're talking about with your son going to that group, I think that's another important thing that we don't often think about siblings... All my kids went to therapy. We went to some family therapy without our special needs children. They had opportunities to express what they needed to express and talk about it outside of us. That was a really important piece, I think, for us as a family, for that to happen. I love this question because I always want to know what people are going to say. If you could go back to your younger you, or if you are going to give advice to somebody who's just starting on this journey, what would you say? That may be a big question.

Jennifer Magnano  26:24  
I think my advice would be to allow compassion: compassion for yourself, compassion for your child, compassion for your situation. I think we're really, really hard on ourselves. I remember when my daughter was. I mean, she was diagnosed somewhere between 15 and 18 months. I always knew there was something different. This was the child that nursed, every hour on the hour from the moment she was born, and would only sleep on my chest for the first 12 months of her life. I knew something was different. I was so hard on myself. I really thought that I had somehow done this. Looking back, I just wish I had so much more compassion and grace for myself, and that I found more stillness. I think that that's something I would say. If you're just beginning this journey. Yes, it's important to get early intervention and therapies and to do the things that are necessary, but find some stillness for both you and your child or children because it can get so busy. 

Amy J. Brown  27:31  
You can get busy and there's always one more therapy to try and that can make you feel frantic. That stillness centers you before you do the next thing.Sometimes you get frantic, and you just do the next thing because you think that might help. When in reality, probably being still would have been the first best step. So I love that. I love that advice. Before we finish, I want to talk about Moms for Mental Health. I'm actually one of the contributors to Moms for Mental Health. I would love you to tell our listeners about that space.

Jennifer Magnano  28:08  
Absolutely. It's been on my heart since I had postpartum depression and anxiety with my son and realized there were one, no safe spaces to talk about our mental health, and two, especially not in the church. I went through a 12 step several years ago now, just letting go of childhood hurts. not specifically for any addiction, though. I think that most people with any sort of struggle with mental health have some coping tendencies that may or may not be healthy. It was a Christian recovery space, I recognized wholly that there was just this gap. So Moms for Mental Health is meant to help fill that gap between faith and motherhood and mental health. It allows us a safe space to see one another, to speak about the things there might be a stigma attached to it still, or it's just uncomfortable to speak about with others that are not going through a similar life space. We meet once a month. We have a speaker, a teaching or a testimony that goes along with whatever the theme is for that month. Then we have contributors, writers who, Amy included, that are helping us write a newsletter that goes out to viewers and  listeners every month. It comes out about three or four times every month. It just talks about the hard thing. It doesn't tell us necessarily how to go about the healing process, but it allows us to get glimpses into other women's lives about how they are managing the space that they're in, whether it's maternal mental health or child mental health.

Amy J. Brown  29:53  
It's a really beautiful space. I would encourage our listeners if they're interested at all to be a part of that space. So where can listeners find you, and especially Moms for Mental Health? Where can they also find you on Instagram? Why don't you tell us where we can find you?

Jennifer Magnano  30:14  
Yeah. I'm on Instagram. I'm the Barefoot Preacher, pretty easy to find. Then Moms for Mental Health is our handle for Instagram. We post three times a week, so you'll see a little bit there. You can also subscribe to our newsletter on substack. That link is in both of our bios, and both Moms for Mental Health and my personal bio is below the picture.

Amy J. Brown  30:40  
Alright, and we'll share that in our show notes. Jennifer, thank you so much for being with us today. It was just a joy to talk to you. I just want to thank you for being here. 

Jennifer Magnano  30:51  
Thank you so much for having me. Amy.

Amy J. Brown  31:05  
Thank you for joining us this week on Take Heart. If you love our podcast, could you please do us a favor and leave us a review on whatever platform you listen to our podcast on? You can also follow us on Instagram or Facebook @takeheartspecialmoms. If you have any questions or comments or would like to share your story with us, please follow the links in the show notes. We love hearing from our listeners, and we love hearing your stories. Listen in next week as we continue our Take Heart Summer Interview Series. You won't want to miss it.