Permission for Pleasure
A podcast to educate and equip women with the information and confidence they need to express, experience and enjoy their sexuality. Cindy Scharkey RN, BSN, brings her 35+ years of experience as a healthcare professional to open the doors to healthy conversations about sex. This is a community where you can listen and learn to give yourself permission for pleasure. Visit www.cindyscharkey.com for educational blogs and newsletter.
Permission for Pleasure
Sex Ed For All Abilities
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All people, regardless of abilities, are sexual beings, and deserve access to sexual health education. Mad Hatter Wellness creates comprehensive sex ed and health curriculum primarily for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Educator Anna Hayek, their heart of operations, joins me to discuss tools, language and strategies for parents and caregivers.
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Free resources from Mad Hatter Wellness
People in My Life and Relationship Circle
Heart of Relationships with Healthy & Unhealthy chart
Anna’s Recommended Disability Educators and Activists
Eva Sweeney
Andrew Gurza
Judy Heumann
ORDER my Book: Permission for Pleasure: Tending Your Sexual Garden
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Everyone has the right to access about education about their bodies, about pleasure, about changes in their bodies. All people should have access to that information.
SPEAKER_01Hello everyone and welcome to Permission for Pleasure. I'm Cindy Sharkey, your host, and wherever you're tuning in today. Thanks for joining me. Delighted to have you here. And I wanted to remind you that I offer an educational newsletter. It's sexual health education right to your inbox once a month. It's the first place I post, new blogs I write, or new episodes dropping on the podcast, and anything else exciting that might be coming your way. You'd be the first to know. The link to sign up for that is in the show notes. Today I'm talking with Anna Hayek from Mad Hatter Wellness. Mad Hatter Wellness, they create a comprehensive sex ed and health curriculum that educates and empowers people with intellectual disabilities and their support systems. I really was excited to introduce them to you all as a wonderful resource. Maybe for you or for someone you know. Do share this episode with friends in your circle that might need these resources and support. As Anna and I talked though, in the back of my mind, I was thinking, you know, these strategies and tips are good for all of us, no matter what age, and especially all our young people. So caregivers and parents, you know, stick with me. This is a good episode. With some practical ideas. So let's jump in. Anna, welcome to Permission for Pleasure.
SPEAKER_00Thank you for having me. I'm glad to be here, Cindy.
SPEAKER_01I'm delighted to have you on. I'd love for you to take a few minutes just to introduce yourself and your work in the world.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah, so I work for Madhatter Wellness. We do health and sex education, primarily for people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. That is sometimes shortened to IDD. So if I refer to people with IDD, I'm talking about people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. I've been an educator for years. I have taught all sorts of things in all sorts of places. And a lot of my work was working with English language learners for a while as well. And I've taught a lot of yoga over the years. And so all of that sort of informs how I come to teaching health and sex ed as well. Beautiful.
SPEAKER_01Tell us just a little bit more about Madhatter Wellness.
SPEAKER_00Yes, absolutely. So Madhatter Wellness was founded by Katie Thune, and Katie has a background in special education and health, and had worked in public schools for quite a while and had the opportunity to teach health in the special education population, and found that really there was a great need for more education in health and especially in sex ed. So when she decided to leave the public school realm, went into more wellness and yoga work, and then also into the sex ed work that we do a lot right now to really kind of meet the need that we see to support parents and caregivers, to support educators in special education, and then to direct support with self-advocates as well.
SPEAKER_01I really appreciate the work you all are doing. I just think there's such an incorrect assumption that people with disabilities of any kind are somehow not sexual.
SPEAKER_00Right. We find that a lot. And you know, we kind of operate under the assumption that all people are sexual beings, regardless of ability, and that looks different for everyone, of course. But there's sort of an assumption that people with disabilities might be asexual. And some people with disabilities, of course, are asexual, but we can't make that assumption. And there's sort of some infantilizing that goes on. There's sort of like desexualization of people. And a lot of our work is just really trying to educate all people that everyone has the right to access about education about their bodies, about pleasure, about changes in their bodies. All people should have access to that information.
SPEAKER_01A hundred percent. You know, one of the reasons I really wanted to speak with you is to just let people know about Madhat or wellness, what they provide, what resources are available. And I recently had several consults in a row over time with a young woman who had a brain injury. And the mom actually was referred to me, and she really wanted to help provide her adult daughter with the education she didn't have and to be able to explore the idea of pleasure and what that might look like for her. It was a beautiful experience, you know, working with this young woman. And also, I reached out to some of your resources because there's just such a need for this kind of education, but also it can be a little challenging sometimes and a little tricky in how we communicate and what can be heard and you know, not heard. Also, the other thing that came up, and I wonder if you come across this, is privacy for adults in the home. This was something we explored together as well and with her family. So let's talk about some of these things. I mean, you work with these situations day in and day out, and I did use some of your resources and found them so helpful.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I mean, privacy is a huge thing that we encounter in our work, especially, you know, when people were more at home during the pandemic. It was like, do you have a private space to go? Because that's really important, or people living in more of like a group home situation as well. Like, do they have a roommate? But then are there also times when they can be in their room privately because we all need that private time, right? So we definitely work with people to navigate some of those situations, as well as, you know, you kind of talked about how our tools might be adapted more to use with the population of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. Our curriculum is called sexuality for all abilities. You know, we've kind of approached it from that lens that it could be used with anyone really, but it was designed with people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in mind. And we've also modified that curriculum to be more adapted to people with really high and complex needs. We know that people may need more visual supports, for example, or they may need repetition and sort of having things talked about multiple times before it really starts to make sense. We like to use videos too, that can be really helpful for certain people. And I think just within all of this education, it's just so important to remember that we're all different. What really works for one person and really brings the message home for one person might be different for someone else. I feel really fortunate to be able to kind of explore what works for different people and try different things. Incorporating movement, for example. We always incorporate some sort of grounding activity at the beginning of our lessons because talking about sexual health can bring up a lot of feelings. I mean, there can be a lot of trauma, there can be a lot of just nervous feelings for people, you know, working with younger ones who are maybe talking more about puberty, like that could bring up all sorts of feelings for kids who might not be super comfortable with that topic, right? So just providing space to do some grounding and breathing at the beginning of our lessons, we've found to be very beneficial. And then we move into the content and always close with some sort of relaxing, grounding, breathing activity as well, because we know that, you know, you experience this thing, you learn something new, and your emotions might be all over the place, you know. So just kind of bringing it back down to a calming time at the end also really helps us.
SPEAKER_01Well, that helps everybody. I went to one of your seminars and Leah did that, and I've since incorporated that because I found it really helpful. And I thought, huh, this is for all of us. You know, I think this is a good tip too for anyone listening when you want to approach a conversation with your partner or with your child, right? And it feels uncomfortable and you feel like, oh, I don't know if I can do this, but to take a moment, like Anna's saying here, and ground yourself and take a couple deep breaths and remind yourself that it might feel uncomfortable, but I can handle uncomfortable. I want to dive into this. That's good for all of us.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and you know, just knowing that we're not perfect and we might make mistakes in these conversations, but they're still really worth having. And yeah, that grounding can really be helpful in all of that.
SPEAKER_01And you also have the Power of Me program. Tell us a little bit about that.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so the Power of Me started primarily for middle school, junior, high age people. It incorporates health and social emotional learning. So a lot of our topics include puberty, healthy relationships, conflict resolution, different things that could be helpful for young people in their health education. And we have adapted it so that we have a workbook for adults as well because we found that these things are maybe not so much the puberty aspect, but the other things of like conflict resolution and healthy relationships and boundaries, adults are still learning and practicing as well. So that's our power of me. And it can be taught many different ways, but it involves a solid amount of time devoted to some sort of mindful movement, which in the case of myself, when I'm teaching, I usually teach uh some yoga movement, but depending on who the instructor is, it could look differently, maybe some dance or something, because we really find it's so beneficial to incorporate some of that mindfulness and movement in what we teach.
SPEAKER_01Mm-hmm. I think it's really interesting that you brought up the relationship education piece because I think so many families forget this piece of the sexual health education puzzle. You all have some wonderful resources about relationships with your posters and graphics. Tell us a little bit about how that kind of helps with learning.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I mean, I'm really glad you brought up more of that relationship stuff because the healthy relationships lesson is usually what we start with. I mean, that is like the foundational thing for everything that we're talking about. And yeah, when I grew up, I don't remember anyone talking to me about what a healthy relationship looked like and what to do if I found myself in an unhealthy relationship. So we really spend a lot of time talking about healthy relationships, and I will be sharing with you to share with your listeners some tools, the people in our lives tool and the relationship circle. So a lot of times, you know, as we're getting to know participants in our program and as we're introducing things, we do this activity where we're just categorizing the different people in our lives, thinking about, you know, who are my friends, who is my family, who are people in my life in a professional way, and we call that a professional relationship because oftentimes that can be confusing. Sometimes people have professional people in their lives like a PCA or a therapist or, you know, an assistant in the classroom, and people get very close to those people, but we want to remember that that's still a professional relationship, and we have to have good boundaries with people like that in our lives. So we categorize the different people first, and then we sort of think about what kinds of touch we would use with those people and think about our boundaries. And so we have a circle activity that I've included for you to share with your listeners that can help people think through like who are the people that I hug, who are the people that I just do not touch, that that might be a boundary with someone. And we found it really useful, and we always say to fill it in with pencil, because of course our boundaries change from day to day, from year to year. We remind people that just because you've hugged someone once doesn't mean you're obligated to hug them every time you see them, or that they are necessarily going to be up for a hug every time you see them. You know, it's really good to be thinking about our boundaries and that they can change over time.
SPEAKER_01And these resources that Anna's referring to, I'll link to those in the show notes. Mad Hatter Wellness has graciously offered to share a couple of things with y'all. And these are great for all of us, and especially any parents listening. Doesn't matter where your child's at, it might really help you prompt some good conversations. But especially for people with disabilities, this is such an important topic to talk about their vulnerability to sexual assault and to assault in general. I'd love for you to speak to that because it's so sad and scary. But the reality that we want to be really clear with how to teach boundaries and consent, because what is it? It's probably seven times likely.
SPEAKER_00People with intellectual disabilities are sexually assaulted at a rate that's seven times higher than the general population without disabilities. That's a statistic from 2017. So it may have changed a bit, but that's still fairly recent. But yeah, they are at a greater uh risk for sexual assault. The vulnerability is high. That's a big part of why we started doing this work. That's a big part of why Katie Thune, who founded Madhat or Wellness, was like, this isn't okay. We can't let this be in the world. It's not just. So, yes, having that education is so critical for people. Like another tool that we're sharing with you all is the heart of relationships. And it's just five pieces of what we would consider would be a part of a healthy relationship. And it's a heart with a puzzle, the different pieces. And I remember when I first started teaching it thinking, wow, I've never really thought about this. Like, oh, yeah, there are some key pieces to a healthy relationship. And we always say if one of the pieces is missing, that doesn't mean you have to necessarily break up or like not be friends with that person anymore, because you know, this isn't just romantic relationships, right? This could be, we always say you can have a healthy relationship with anyone in your life, you can have an unhealthy relationship with anyone in your life, family, friends, romantic partner. And so we look at those different pieces of a healthy relationship. For example, in my relationship, I get to be myself, you know, like the other person isn't controlling me and telling me what to do. And if a piece is missing, we may need to talk to the person, we may need to connect with an adult we trust to help us navigate the situation, maybe a therapist could help us. You know, we just we talk through. Here are the pieces of a healthy relationship. What are things that feel healthy for me? What are things that feel unhealthy for me? And to really have the space to think that through, I think is such a powerful thing. And I know you focus a lot on pleasure, and I feel like that's a foundation for being able to feel safe to experience pleasure with someone. If you're feeling healthy and safe in your relationship, pleasure is much more accessible in that situation.
SPEAKER_01Yes, and some of these prevention tools going back to what you guys focus on about our bodies. My body belongs to me, right? Yeah. How to say no, how to ask for consent, like even to hug, right? You you brought that up several times. And also real words for body parts, how important that is.
SPEAKER_00Right. We've definitely seen that to be critical because we do a lot of training of teachers who teach in the special education field. And we've heard so many stories from teachers who have said, yeah, a student reported assault to me, but I didn't know what they were reporting because they didn't have the words, like a young kid said something about someone touching their flower, and you know, she just thought it was a literal flower when this child had been told to refer to their genitals as flower. We've seen time and time again how important for parents and caregivers to really teach the actual body parts. You know, we say we say an elbow is an elbow, a penis is a penis. Like we can, if we just get used to saying those words, it can be really helpful, not only if something happens, not only in cases of sexual assault, but just to feel that empowerment of knowing your body and knowing what your body does. It's it's a pretty amazing thing, an empowering thing to know your body.
SPEAKER_01Yes. And I would think also there's a lot of discussion around public and private.
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. Yeah. That I would say is maybe a little bit more unique to the population of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities. However, like most things, I think anybody can, you know, benefit. But yes, we do have lessons about private and public. We think about like what are activities that we do in private, what are activities that we do in public, and then what are the actual private places where you do the private activities? We end up talking about masturbation a lot. Um, that is like one of the most frequent topics that people, parents, teachers come to us saying, you know, I have a young person in my life who's masturbating in public, and I need to figure out like it's unsafe, it's making people uncomfortable. And as people grow older, if that's something that they're doing, they could get arrested. So, you know, it's really important that we don't just make assumptions that people know that, you know, we need to teach that in certain situations.
SPEAKER_01How would that sound as you were coaching a parent or a caregiver around that?
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so I haven't done as much coaching of the parent or caregiver, but directly with the individual, you know, just saying, you know, private activities are for private places. And we say, you know, a private place is somewhere where you can be alone. It belongs to you, no one can see you. Because somebody has said, you know, like, well, what about a bathroom at the store or the bathroom at my workplace? And that doesn't belong to you. So, you know, for most people, we say a the private place for you is typically your bedroom or your bathroom in your own home. You know, those are the places where we do private things, such as go to the bathroom, such as masturbate, such as change our clothes, you know, these sorts of activities. And so earlier we talked about that privacy aspect. And I think it's important for parents and caregivers to consider are they providing a private space for the person in their life, the young person, or the it's sometimes it's an adult as well, right? And again, thinking about people who live in more of a group home situation. If someone listening is a caregiver in that sort of situation, it's really important to consider are you providing private spaces? Because that should be a human right that we can all have that space to be by ourselves and to engage in private activities of our choice.
SPEAKER_01Yes. The language around that sounds so simple when we say it out loud, and yet people struggle. Oh, they struggle with this piece around masturbation. And I get every time I do a parent workshop, this comes up like, how do I talk about this? You know, they're touching themselves at the grocery store, or they're we're at Thanksgiving table, and you know, I I know it's uncomfortable, and yet these conversations are so important to talk about and just uh normalize what's normal and normalize the public and private piece. So it's so good.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, and I think too, you know, trying to do it in a way that's non-shaming. Because, you know, sometimes like I think of a story of a group of transition age folks in a special education situation, and they were, you know, so 17 to 21, 18 to 21 year olds out in the community, and someone started touching themselves in public, and someone just kind of freaked out and was yelling at them, right? And that's the kind of situation we want to avoid. First of all, be pre-teaching this information so that when we're out in public and when it happens, it could be a very discreet conversation with the individual. Because yeah, of course, sometimes things need to be reinforced, they need to be taught and retaught, but how can we prepare ourselves to have that conversation in a non-shaming way? Because it's understandable that someone would want to touch their private parts. It feels good. So they're just doing something that feels good. And so if if you can, but it does, it takes a minute to get there. I have a lot of understanding and compassion that in our culture, it's not something we necessarily feel comfortable talking about or equipped to talk about. It's like, whoa, I didn't think I'd have to have this conversation, right? But yeah, just thinking about it in terms of it's a very normal human thing to want to do. We just need to make sure that we do it in practice.
SPEAKER_01Yes, good conversations to have. And I'm thinking of another topic would be consent, which I'm sure you have in your program. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, yeah. We talk a lot about consent and that it has to work both ways, that you can ask for consent, ask for a hug, ask to touch someone, and then also they should be asking you, like you said, that my body belongs to me message of even a doctor should ask and explain what they're doing. And if they're not, we should say, hey, wait a minute, I need you to kind of talk to me about what you're doing to my body because it's my body, it belongs to me. Yeah, and with that consent piece, the three steps that we really focus on are just the first step of ask, the second step of listen, and the third step of respect that answer. And so we might ask, can I have a hug? And I'm sure many of us have been in a situation, somebody might say, Can I give you a hug? And they're already hugging you.
SPEAKER_01She's leaning into the camera right now. You can't see her, but right, they're already coming in for the hug, right?
SPEAKER_00Yep, they're already coming in, right? And that's it's such a human thing, right? Like some of us are just big huggers, but some of us aren't. And I think, I mean, that's a beautiful thing. I feel like that's happened. A shift in our culture is that we're recognizing, like, oh, some people don't want to hug, and that's okay too. So we really practice, we ask, but before we do anything, before we touch anyone, we need to wait and listen to what they're saying. And then we need to respect that answer, which can be a really tricky part. I mean, you can feel very rejected when someone says no. So we talk a lot about rejection as well, that rejection is a part of life, and we have to listen to other people's boundaries and respect them, even if it doesn't really feel that good for us to hear that no. It's a practice, right? And I think it's a lifelong practice to check in on that and see how we're doing with those steps.
SPEAKER_01That's great language around that. I'm really feeling like since COVID and the pandemic, you know, that we got a lot more practice with consent in a way that people hadn't before, you know, in the sense of asking if someone would like to shake hands, or perhaps around masks, you know, would you like me to wear a mask when I'm here? Or I'd like you to please wear a mask. These kinds of situations, people had a lot of people have no, no practice with that. And yet with the pandemics, a lot of people had to learn how to do that.
SPEAKER_00Right. Absolutely. I think for those of us who had already been having some of that education, it was probably a little bit easier when it came in to play more with the pandemic. But yeah, for many people, it was a new discussion to be having. I mean, it definitely presents some challenges in terms of maybe people being a little more hesitant for touch when touch can be a very good and human thing that people of all abilities want in their lives. But we want that to be consensual touch. And so that's where a lot of that education is so important.
SPEAKER_01Another piece, I'm also thinking about self-advocacy and how that plays into your programs and teaching.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I would say that we really want people to feel empowered that they get to use their voice. And when I say their voice, lots of people we work with use communication devices to communicate, or they may use um sign language, like, you know, voice might not be the correct term for certain folks, but use their way of communication, right? To be able to share. And, you know, we always focus on a phrase that nothing about us without us is a phrase that comes up a lot in the disability community. And I really wanted to share people who are amazing self-advocates who might be in of interest for people to look into, and I can share links for these folks. But one um amazing sex educator that we've gotten to work with is Ava Sweeney. She has a website and social media that's crippling up sex, and so she's a person with a disability herself, and then she's educating as a sex educator and coming from a perspective of someone who has physical disabilities and who can speak to things that you know I may not experience as an able-bodied person. Another person in that realm is Andrew Gerza, who does great work and has a lot to say. I don't know if you know Judy Heumann, who just passed away recently, but she was a huge disability rights activist and someone that, you know, I feel like it's really important that if we are working in this field and we are interacting with people with disabilities, that we are hearing what people have to say from the community and uplifting their voices, their education, and their tools as well.
SPEAKER_01Appreciate you sharing that. And I'll link to those people and the resources in the show notes so you can find those. That's great. I do want you to talk a little bit about your affection cards. I think this is important. We've been talking about hugs, we've been talking about consent. But tell me a little bit about those. I just love for people to hear some of these resources that you have available.
SPEAKER_00Sure. Yeah, so some of that comes out of just providing more visuals to be able to define something, right? So the affection cards that we have can be used in different ways, but they just include different ways that we show affection and different kinds of touch. And so it might be something like cuddling or kissing. Some of the cards that we have are a little bit more explicit in terms of like showing um different kinds of ways to have sex because we've found that, you know, some people will say, like, I just don't know what this is. And Googling something can be a little bit risky, right? Or just not yield the results you necessarily want. So it just was really important to us to have the resource of being able to show a simple line drawing of what oral sex might be, or you know, because people want to know that what this is. And you know, not everybody is going to use that in their lessons, right? Or in their, you know, we have parents, we have educators, whoever you are. Yeah, those affection cards came out of a need to be able to put a visual to a term because I think sometimes we can get very wordy with if somebody asks us what is oral sex, I mean, we can explain with our words, but just a simple drawing can also help explain what that is as well.
SPEAKER_01I'm thinking back to this beautiful human that I was working with. And when so many of us don't have any sex education, and she was injured before she had any sex ed. So I remember her flat out saying, I don't understand what that is exactly. I mean, she couldn't speak to me in just this way, but we understood, I understood that she needed an explicit, she wanted an explicit description and use my hands or something or a visual. I had some tools with me to use, of course. And then the light went on. You know, we think everybody just knows everything, and they don't, you know. I could see her face, oh, that is not what I thought. I it's kind of what her face said. Right. So I just want to encourage people listening that sometimes, you know, we feel like someone just knows, or they just somehow inherently got the education, or it just, you know, they absorbed it somehow. And to be clear, to be specific, to offer the education that's needed one step at a time, right? The right information at the right time. But it's so important to remember that most people don't have even the basics, frankly.
SPEAKER_00Right, right. And we can't make assumptions about what people know. And I think, too, there's a lot of like hidden curriculum that we talk about, you know, that like the kind of thing that maybe, you know, depending on how you grew up, you maybe learned on the back of the bus or, you know, talking to your friends. Of course, the world is very different now than when I was growing up and I did have to learn a lot on the back of the bus and there wasn't, you know, the internet to look things up, right? But even with the internet, you know, if you're looking something up without any sort of guidance or someone to help explain something to you, it's gonna be really confusing. And a lot of times we talk about how certain disabled individuals may not have access to a peer to talk to about some of these things. They might not be getting that information in the school bathroom or whatever, wherever that may be. And so it's really important to fill in those gaps and be deliberate and intentional about making sure people know, you know, what different sex acts might be. Like I think we just assume there's all these terms, all these things flying around in our culture that we just kind of think, oh yeah, people know that. And they don't necessarily.
SPEAKER_01No, they don't. That's across the board for sure. Yeah, yeah. Oh, well, Anna, before we wrap up, what's one thing that you wish we'd brought up or talked about, or that you feel is super important for the listeners to hear?
SPEAKER_00You know, I think one thing that we really come back to a lot in our classes is having someone you trust to ask questions, an adult you trust that you can talk to about these things, about relationships, about consent, about sexual activity, you know, whatever that might be. And so a lot of times we'll focus on, you know, trying to give have people come up with five people in their life who they can talk to. And for some people that's really easy, right? For other people, it might just be three and that's okay, or it might just be one. But we encourage people and we brainstorm together who are the people you can talk to if you have a question, if you are experiencing some sort of assault or some sort of unhealthy relationship, who can you talk to? And we encourage people to have one of those um names or one of those people be not in our family. Because sometimes people have a great support network within their family, and sometimes assault happens within a family. And then what do you do? And who do you talk to? So, you know, being able to say, I have a therapist, I can talk to you, I have this teacher, I know this nurse, I have this really good friend, and then I also have my mom, right? Like naming some different people from different areas of our lives, because you know, a certain topic I might love to go talk to my mom about, but another topic that might be mortifying, and I might need to speak with somebody else, the school nurse, for example. And so really thinking through who those people are that we can talk to, and then also practicing like how would we do that? You know, like if we need to tell someone, what words do we need? Do we maybe need someone to come with us if we're feeling uncertain? And then if we're not believed, that you might have to tell another person and tell another person because that does happen. We have lots of cases of people coming to us and saying, Yeah, this happened to me, but nobody listened to me and nobody believed me. I feel like that's a key piece to the education that we do is making sure people think through who they can talk to. Because, you know, as an educator, I can do what I can, but I'm not always there, you know. So it's like, how is this sustainable? How do we support people for the long term? And I think part of that is just having a good support network.
SPEAKER_01Well, I appreciate that piece of helping people identify specifically and encouraging them to do that, and then to role play how that would look. And this is such a great tool for us to use in our homes and with people is role-playing to get the education to sort of be sticky, right? That's what I call it. I say, well, if you role-play that and give language, like you're talking about on a, you know, it makes it sticky when a situation arises, we're more apt to come back to it and go, Oh, that's right, I can say this, or that doesn't work, then I know I can do this, right?
SPEAKER_00Mm-hmm. I know, like sometimes I've heard with parents in certain circles, like really pushing back, like, I'm the parent, I want to be the only person to talk with my kid about this. And while I can totally understand that as a parent, you're protective of your child, I think it's really important that as much as we want to have open and loving conversations with our kids, there might be a time where they need somebody else to talk to about something. And so I think it's really beautiful to think of like a community or a support network that we have so that we can, you know, reach out to more than one person. And I love that make it sticky, right? Like teach it, practice it, you know, have those conversations. And I know for if you have like young people, I I've often heard like have that conversation in the car. You're both looking straight ahead. You don't have to look at each other. You don't, you know, you've got that time where you might be driving from one thing to another and just like, who would you talk to if something happened? Let's just think about it. You know, like again, the private and public, like it seems so simple, but it's really effective if we just take the time to do it.
SPEAKER_01Yes, love it. Tell people how they can find Mad Hatter and your resources.
SPEAKER_00Absolutely. Yeah, so our website is madhatterwellness.com, and you can find us on Facebook as madhatterwellness.com. Um, we're on Instagram, Twitter, a little bit. Those are the best ways to find us if you want to email directly to us if you have specific questions. You can email us at info at madhatterwellness.com.
SPEAKER_01And the link for Madhatter Wellness will be in the show notes. On this podcast, we like to share a delight or something that brings us pleasure day to day. I wonder if you might share something, Anna.
SPEAKER_00Sure. I think, you know, in the context of what we've been talking about, just a delight for me is just having the absolute honor and joy of being able to be with people, hold space with people as they learn about their own bodies and about themselves and about what they're empowered to be and do in this world. So yeah, just the education I do is a delight to me.
SPEAKER_01That's beautiful. And we appreciate you coming on, sharing about Mad Hatter and all these really practical tips and ideas. Thanks for being with us. Thank you. And community, before we sign off, if you are part of this community, I encourage you to follow the podcast and share an episode with a friend that helps others to join us here to find us. And that's really important as we grow and keep opening these healthy conversations about sex. And cheers always to sex education for all and giving ourselves permission for pleasure.
