Raised by Community: The Small Moments That Actually Save Kids (and Adults)

Why does connection, caregiving, parenting, friendship, and community feel so hard right now? 

Author Stephanie Malia Krauss is here to talk about the “weather” we’re all living in right now: we’re overtapped, overworked, overstimulated, and overwrought. 

And honestly, when I read that, I felt like she had put language to something so many of us are carrying around without even realizing it.

Stephanie and I both know what it feels like to be raised by a community. We talk about the adults who showed up in small ways when we were kids: the friend’s mom who always had a snack waiting, the counselor with animal crackers in her office, the parents who figured out rides, and the people who kept opening doors even when we weren’t ready to tell the truth.

This episode is all about the tiny ways people can help us feel human again, and why none of us were ever meant to do this alone.

In this episode you’ll hear about:

• How Stephanie’s “dangerous weather” framework explains the exhaustion so many of us feel right now
• What Stephanie and I learned from unlocked doors, team jackets, special snacks, and tiny check-ins
• Askables, anchors, and activators, and why kids need more than one caring adult in their lives
• How being praised for self-sufficiency, responsibility, and caregiving can become its own kind of trap

Resources & Links

Check out Stephanie’s new book, How We Thrive: Caring for Kids and Ourselves In a Changing World.

Stephanie’s other books include Making It: What Today’s Kids Need for Tomorrow’s World and Whole Child, Whole Life.

This episode is sponsored by Are We Friends Yet?, Alex’s book on building the support system you’ve been wanting.

Buy the book and submit your receipt before July 16th to get The Connector’s Toolkit free: a private pep talk podcast for the moments that feel hardest, a full year in The Less Lonely Club, and more. Grab your bonuses at alexalexander.com/are-we-friends-yet

This episode is sponsored by Slowly, a digital pen pal app used by over 10 million people worldwide. If you’ve been looking for a low-pressure way to connect with someone completely outside your normal friendship circle, this is it. Exchange letters at your own pace, no small talk panic required.

Download Slowly free and get 30% off Slowly Plus using my link: https://open.slowly.app/miXL/l8ei5iw6

WANT MORE?

My book, Are We Friends Yet? is here. Order your copy today!

Dive into The Connection Reset. A 10-day private podcast to help you see the abundance of connection that already exists in your day-to-day (Yes. Really. I promise you have more than you realize). Start today. 

Transcript

Alex Alexander: 0:53

All right, gang. Here's to nights that turn into mornings and friends that turn into family. Cheers. Hello, hello, and welcome to the Friendship IRL podcast. I'm your host, Alex Alexander. Each week we talk about what is working(and what is not) in our friendships, community and connections. Have you ever wished you could sit down and have a conversation about what is really going on in your friendships? Well, you found your people. Join us as we dive into real life stories and explore new ways to approach these connections. Together, we're reimagining the rules of friendship

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 1:51

Can I ask you something? Do you ever have this feeling like a low hum in the background of your life, where you're just tired, not tired like you need a nap, tired like something has to change, like you're doing everything you're supposed to be doing, keeping up, showing up, getting through it, and yet something about the way you're living just feels off, like you're playing along with a version of life that isn't quite working for you anymore. If that is you, this episode is for you, because here's what most people don't realize, so much of that feeling, it's not a personal failure. It's not that you're bad at life or bad at friendship or bad at community. There are real structural societal forces at play that are making connection harder than it has ever been, and most of us are moving so fast that we don't even stop to name them, we just feel the weight of them. Today's guest has spent years studying exactly those factors. Stephanie Malia Krauss is an author, speaker, and strategist who works at the intersection of child development, social work, and what she calls rehumaning our lives the active practice of protecting the best parts of being human when modern life keeps pulling us away from them. Her newest book, How We Thrive, is one of those reads that gives you language for things you've been feeling but couldn't quite name, and she has spent her career working with kids and families from the classroom all the way to Congress. In this conversation, Stephanie and I talk about the forces working against us all - parents, non-parents, caregivers, everyone - as we try to care for each other. We also get into something a little bit more personal in the second half of the episode. We talk about what it means to be raised by community. This is an experience that both Stephanie and I shared, and why the small moments that adults show up for kids, even in the tiniest ways, the ones where you tell yourself, oh, that's nothing, they actually can change everything for a kiddo. You don't have to have a hard childhood to feel the pull of this episode. You just have to be someone who's ready to stop playing along with a version of life that isn't working. So, let's dive in.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 4:30

Oh, Alex, so glad to be here.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 4:39

Well, I think we're gonna have a conversation that I couldn't really have with very many people. I'm so excited, because quite frankly, I think I would have ended up recording a solo episode kind of about this at some point, but it'll be so much better with our joint perspectives. So, I guess, thanks for being you, and for being willing to have these conversations.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 5:05

Absolutely, super excited to dig in.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 5:08

Well, you know, I've just finished

your book, How We Thrive: 5:10

Caring for Kids and Ourselves in a Changing World , and it was very eye-opening, in the best way possible. You know, I really think you thought through so many factors. There were so many moments in your book where I was just like, oh, you know, like maybe I hadn't connected the dot that that was a piece of the puzzle here, and just how complex it is to raise a kid in modern society. I mean, I know we say that, but like to have it broken down over the course of your book into all these little pieces. A, it's just a reminder to all the parents out there of how nuanced that work is of being a parent.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 6:00

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think if I come up with like an alternative title to how we thrive, it would have been How to Be a Human and How to Raise Humans in Hard Times, because sometimes I feel like we learn more about, like, our cars and our computers. We get these manuals, or we have to take tests in order to be able to drive, or whatever else we study for it. And in some ways, we get more knowledge about how these systems or products that we buy work than the humans that we are and the humans that we're raising, and so the hope was just to give really clear, compelling information in a super accessible, like kind friend at a coffee shop kind of way, of like, hey, human who's also caring for small humans, here's what we actually need to know about being healthy and happy, and what the natural capacities are that we have that our kids have that are going to make life better and allow them and us to endure really hard things and to enjoy really good things,

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 7:15

well, and something I loved about your book that I haven't seen acknowledged in so many places, but I talk about here on the podcast, just in like a community-focused way, is that you know there's so much personal focus on parents on how they're raising kids, but you're up against a lot in the world, you know. There are so many external factors. You talk about the weather, and how we're like kind of in for a rough storm because of all these societal factors. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I just feel like we need to acknowledge that there's so much going on around us that we can't even control,

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 7:55

yeah, absolutely. So the origin story of How We Thrive was six years ago. I had my first book come

out, it's called Making It: 8:02

What Today's Kids Need for Tomorrow's World. So it was all about the future. I'd run a high school and then closed it because I was really concerned that completing a high school degree was not the same thing as being ready for life, and so I gone and done national work to figure that out, and I couldn't wait to get the answers back to people who were raising and working with kids, but the book came out at the height of the pandemic, and so my household, like everybody else's, was a homeschool, and we were completely hunkered down, and every time that I would talk on this, like, basement book tour about the future, people would say, gosh, that's interesting, but, like, we're not well, and our kids aren't well, and we're afraid that we and our kids are going to burn out or give up before we get to that future, and so I started polling every single group that I talked to and asking, How are your kids, how's your family, and how are you, and everybody, Alex, no matter what community I was in, no matter who I was talking to, parent, teacher, coach, counselor, everyone said the same thing. I'm overwhelmed, I'm overloaded, I'm stressed, and I'm tired. And so, in a way that, like, I think you can appreciate from what you share publicly as well, I started to reflect on my own life and realize that my childhood was very challenging, and there were a lot of conditions that made it difficult, but I tried to imagine myself in my children's shoes. My kids are 13 and 15, and just imagine what would it have been like to grow up with my childhood in these times, and it really frightened me so much, and so How We Thrive was born out of this need to figure out how do we navigate the overwhelm of modern life, and then how do we protect the best parts of being human, like what actually does it take? When I think about thriving, it is about enduring challenges, because life is just hella hard, like it's tough, and enjoying life, like I want my kids to have a good life. And so the first part of that got to that dangerous weather piece that you mentioned, I wanted to understand what are these forces that are making hard lives harder and good lives still tough, and what I saw very clearly in the headlines, in human stories, in research is that there. These four, you know, I think of them as weather forces, and they're often all happening at once. So, I live in the Midwest, and we had this like crazy tornado warning two days ago, not warning, it was like really gonna happen, you know. We were hunkered down, the kids were in storm positions at school, and it was because the confluence of like otherwise manageable weather conditions all came together at the same time and created something that was deeply destructive, so in this case those weather conditions are we're all feeling over tapped, never enough time or resources for what life is demanding, we're really overworked, like chronic constant busyness, pressure to produce, to do more, to keep going. We're really overstimulated. The impacts of addictive tech are real and affecting our attention and anxiety and other things, and also we're overwrought. Like, there is kind of an existential dread that hangs out in the background that can really lead to this fear for our lives that some days is just kind of like a background buzz, but some days gets turned way up, and the intersection of that rain and wind and sleet and hail really has a wear and tear effect on our lives and on our kids' lives.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 12:21

Yeah, I mean, so I think that we are all, for the most part, so in our day-to-day lives, myself included. So I currently don't have any kids, right, but I am very connected to a lot of kids in my life, and so even just thinking, as I was reading your book about my friends who are parents, it's like we are all in the trenches, even me as just an auntie, I like know that there are these other factors out there, but I don't necessarily like, think about them on the day to day, because everybody is just trying to survive, you know, trying to do the next thing, trying to get through the next school packet, the next pickup, the next meal, the next week, it's so hard to zoom out, and that's really what your book did for me, is allowed me to zoom out and realize how many other factors there are at play.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 13:22

Yeah, I think you're right. I sometimes talk about this as like compressed catastrophic living, because any individual that I talk to, whether they have kids or not is experiencing we're all in the weather and it just is having a significant effect on our lives, but it can feel hard to parse out what's happening, and when we actually understand the physiology and the psychology behind what's happening to us that helps us figure out how to navigate, so I use this idea I'm Native Hawaiian of wayfinding in the book, and how do we navigate by learning the signs and the signals of where to go and when to stop and when we're off track, and so we have to teach ourselves what does toxic stress look like. I talk about something in the book, what researchers call allostatic overload, which is this idea of like our bodies kind of.. it's.. I think about it like a water table. I don't know what scientists would say to this, but like we are only designed to absorb so much stress, and once we reach that limit, if we haven't been able to burn it off, it just goes everywhere and starts to really wreak havoc. And so, what does allostatic overload look like, and feel like, or with addictive tech, do we know what it feels like? Do we know what to do when it happens? Same with existential dread of these fears are real, the concerns are real. How do we safeguard? And I think you know, as we move forward in the conversation, the biggest part for me in figuring out what was causing the deep depletion across adults and kids alike was understanding that those weather forces being over tapped, being overworked, being over stimulated, being overwrought, they keep us from the good parts of the human experience, they actually pull us away from the human connections and experiences that we need and the conditions that we crave, and so we even use phrases like I'm working like a dog, or I'm out of gas, or I'm out of steam, and those aren't even human phrases, it's like. Our psyches know it's dehumanizing, so then the goal is, how do I know when the storms are so strong that I have to seek shelter, I need to find a safe harbor, or how do I learn to navigate when it's possible to keep going to find kind of patches of good weather, and then to really nourish and care for myself and my crew, and make sure that we have what we need.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 17:39

I just appreciate your metaphor so much, and I'm definitely going to use it in my day-to-day life and think through it in that way, because we have so much overlap, right? I talk a lot about how every scientist, every politician, every person who has a solution for anything, the solution quite often, like the universal solution, is community and connection, and that's great, but how are we all doing that, and I think in reading your book, one of my takeaways was like one of the paths to how is just even acknowledging what we're up against, so that you can find the little tiny routes, right. It's not going to be like an overnight shift, but the little moments where we do come back together and where we can find those safe harbors and step out of the storm. I've said it before, and I will say it again. So much of what makes friendship and community feel hard? It's not you, it's not a personal failure, it's not that you're bad at this or that something is wrong with you. It is structural, it is societal. There are forces at play in your daily life that are actively working against the connections you crave, and most of us are moving so fast that we don't even stop to name them, let alone give ourselves credit for surviving them. That's actually one of my favorite things about this podcast. I want to be a place where we zoom out together and go, okay, that is what we're up against, but in my work, I do that in one episode here and another episode there. It's kind of sprinkled throughout the Friendship IRL catalog. If you want a one-stop shop to get an aerial view, Stephanie's book, How We Thrive, is an amazing resource. It will open your eyes to what you're navigating every single day, probably without even realizing it, and then when it comes to the practical side of making changes, when you have said this is enough, I do not want to keep following this pattern anymore. Pick up a copy of my book, because that is exactly why I wrote Are We Friends Yet.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 20:11

Yeah, that's right, you nailed it. So, a little bit about my background, I got sober when I was 15, so I've been in recovery for most of my life, and How We Thrive introduces this term that I coined based on what I was hearing from the 10s of 1000s of adults that I talk to about their depletion, so the idea is rehumaning our lives. What is the active practice of protecting the best parts of life when it's increasingly hard to do, and for me rehumaning has the same kind of rhythm as recovery. It requires that we understand first that life in this weather is unmanageable. We're not made to live like this, and so it requires an awareness of, like, this isn't how humans are meant to live and work and connect, and then from awareness it moves into acceptance. I am living in 2026 This is our reality. What actions do I have control over that can provide a different way of living even if I can't transport myself to a different time of living and so for me rehumaning is how do we become aware of how inhumane so many of the conditions of work and school and life have become the grind, the hustle with that awareness. How do we accept whatever our realities are, including the constraints and challenges? And then what is the active rehumaning process that says what is in my power to protect what. It is in my power to prioritize, given the realities of my life, given the context of my conditions.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 22:17

Okay, so I think for anybody who's listening, please pardon this jump, because I promise it'll make sense in a second, but I think that's a great introduction or segue into kind of our shared and overlapped history, because I would say that you and I, you know, a lot of people say that creativity comes from constraint, we have a lot of constraints, both of us, and I think I know my story, and I would assume your story after reading your book, then you have a lot of creativity. You step outside the box, you look at this, and you're like, this is not human. Therefore, I'm not going to do it anymore. I am so over operating this way. I am going to shuck the norms. I am going to try something different. I refuse to keep going down this path. So, with that, can you talk a little bit about, you know, you write in the book about growing up and having caregiving responsibilities early? Can you talk about, like, what community looked like as a kid for you and how it helped, I guess, raise you?

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 23:27

Yeah, absolutely. So, to help make this segue as smooth as possible. I do think I often look at my life now as this extension of grace for something that I never thought I was going to get in the first place. I mean, I thought I was going to work at my town pizzeria and raise my brothers and stay in the hometown that I was raised in, and that was going to be all that there was for me, and so this question of who says that this is how we have to live, or that I have to live like this, I think hits me in the bones, because I'm already living a radically different life than the one that was cast out for me, and I don't want to lose the privilege of that, I don't want to lose the gift of what that is, and I also have this opportunity to protect and create conditions for my own children that are healthy and supportive, while also having them be clear sighted about the risks and realities they have because of the family that they're from, the genes that they have inherited, and the time that they're living in. So, I grew up in a super small town, and I'm one of five kids. I have four brothers, and my parents divorced early because there was addiction and mental health issues, and in that split I really became the other caregiver, whether it was because I was the only girl. I do technically have a brother that is older than me, but I was the one who was getting signals that I needed to work and make money and take care of these boys, and so it's interesting, I have these different versions of that childhood story, and one version of that has been recast through writing How We Thrive, so you know, the one version of my childhood was a desperate clawing out of that town. How did I both care for my brothers and one of my parents, and also get myself out to build a life that I could live and build a life that I could love, but there's a second version of the story, which is I can look back now and understand that the reason why I have the life I have today, the reason why I was able to pursue professions that I love, I can have a healthy marriage, I've got these kids I adore, you know, real gifts of connection, real gifts of creative pursuits is because I actually had these like hidden assets in the community that I didn't even realize what the long term benefit of their investments would be, for example, there were multiple childhood friends, whose parents just left their doors unlocked. It was a small town. It was a pretty safe place. My home didn't necessarily feel safe and stable, but the community did, and so, while I felt, as a teenager, so alone and so adult, I also recognize that there were people who did see me, and for a long time I thought you saw me, but why didn't you help me more, but I, I do see now that, like, in their own way they were. Providing and trying to the degree that they could, even if some of those ways were absurd, like I was offered a job way too early, but I think folks saw that, like, I needed to make money, and that this was going to be a stable environment for me that was also going to meet our family's needs, or small things, like I don't know if you had experiences like this, but I was in lacrosse in middle school, and our family couldn't afford, like, the jacket where you had, like, your name, and it said, you know, the lacrosse team on the back, and, like, two of these childhood moms paid for it, and it was such a big freaking deal, as, like, a social signal of belonging, that like, here's my jacket, I still have that jacket hanging up in my garage, and so what I can see is that in the aloneness of being the caregiver in an alcoholic home, that there was a community that was deeply committed to me helping in whatever way they could, and I think the thing that I get scared about with my own kids is that that community cohesion, like the village that knows you, the village that mobilizes for you, is harder to come by now, and is something that back to rehumaning as protection and sort of recovery requires admitting that we don't have, and then like purposefully planning for it and protecting it, because it's not just there. I don't know what about you.

Alex Alexander: 28:50

Oh my gosh, Stephanie, I have so many. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, like so much overlap. I also, when I was young, didn't know how much everybody was paying attention, right? I was just so in my own little world of trying to survive one day after the next and trying to keep my siblings alive, and trying to also, you know, a big part of the story for me was like going to school and looking like I had it together.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 29:21

That's right,

Alex Alexander: 29:22

but adults definitely knew, and I had a variety of parents, friends, parents who were very active in their own ways, in very small ways, you know, I remember going to one of my childhood friends' homes, and every time I went over there, her mom, no matter what, would kind of be like, "I made you a special snack, and sometimes it was literally just an orange and a string cheese, or whatever the point was, she wanted me to sit at the counter and talk to her, every time it was like a check-in, but I didn't know that, and I remember kind of being annoyed that I couldn't just go play, like I was at my friend's house, I didn't want to hang out with my friend's mom, but now looking back, I know she was really trying to check in, and that was her way of kind of monitoring how I was doing, coaches definitely paying a lot of attention, other parents, you know, kind of talking off to the side about me, and what each set of parents had witnessed. How was I doing? Was I upset? Was there something I had casually mentioned meeting, like I was on the rowing team? So I remember parents almost coming up with a game plan for how to get me to races, and then presenting it to my dad, and that was them trying to make sure I always got to be involved in the activity, just so many little things, and similar to you, there was definitely a lot of feelings of like why can't one person or one set of people like save me,

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 31:00

yeah,

Alex Alexander: 31:01

and now looking back I just have an appreciation for the ways that everybody tried to rally around me in their small ways, right. It really was these people, some of them not even knowing each other, like trying to kind of build this web around me to support me through different things, and now I mean my whole platform is built on this idea that those small actions matter, like in a world that tells us that only big grand gestures count. That is so not true, and so many of us are missing these tiny little things that do count. They add up, and I know personally they add up, because it's truly the only way I survived.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 31:52

Yeah, that's right. So, my dear friend Jonathan Zaff, he's an incredible scholar on positive relationships and development, and he talks about how, like, every kid needs that one caring adult, but what we really need is. A web of support, and that web of support needs to be mobilized, where adults are talking to adults, like the parents of, you know, the folks who were on your rowing team, and I think, like you, as I was writing How We Thrive and thinking about this idea of rehumaning, how do we protect the best parts of life when everything is so hard. I was so struck by how often it's just mini moves and simple shifts, like I don't know, for you, when you look back and you're like, what are the things that saved me? So I already mentioned, like, I have that lacrosse coat hanging in my garage, it probably only cost them like $35 like it couldn't have been that much money, but it was so unbelievably powerful. Or I remember the person who owned the pizza shop, who I'm still so close to. I mean, these were the men that raised me. A guy leered at me, you know. I was just like a teenage kid. I was probably just in like a tank and tight, like 90s jeans, and he defended me. He protected me. He stood up for me. He said something, and this idea of being seen or being known.. I had a counselor who she couldn't fix what was happening at home, but she kept animal crackers and peanut butter crackers in her office, and an extra pair of clothes, and I could go in the back door, and I just saw her, Alex, two weeks ago. I got to give her a copy of How We Thrive, and you know, she always talks about, like, I'm the kid she wanted to take home, she would go home and cry, but I didn't see that. I saw somebody who every time I walked into that office, no matter how I looked, smiled, wanted to see me, believed I could have a future, and also fed me, like very practical, and knew that I liked animal crackers, like the frosted kind in that like bear jar, but like for you, when you, so when I see that now I can actually map it to some of these human essentials that I talk about, and How We Thrive that have this really big impact on our health and well-being, you know, in those gestures there was connection and love and belonging and celebration of who I am or what I had accomplished, and other core pieces of the human experience. Do you have like those standout moments, kind of like the rowing or people where you're like, wow, that probably didn't take that much time or effort on their part, but it had a profoundly outsized impact on me. I

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 34:59

mean, the counter story is a big one. I think, for as much as I lied, as so many of us did, right, we tried to hide what was actually happening. I have so many vivid memories of counselors, teachers, aunts, uncles, neighbors asking me how everything was at home, although I never really told them right, because I was trying to. I had all sorts of scary stories, as kids do, of like I'm going to be taken away, and what happens to my siblings, and it was better to stay in the status quo and be miserable and like surviving than it was to leave, but every time somebody asked me, it did feel like a door was opened that, like, if it got so bad that I couldn't take it anymore, it wasn't even just one adult I could go tell, it was 20 who at one point or another had kind of recognized that something was going on, and it's actually something that I don't know if you ever think about this, I think about this now, it's like if I was an adult who saw me as a kid, what would I do?

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 36:15

That's right,

Alex Alexander: 36:17

because I understand now the position they were in, where it's like you only have so much, so much ability as a community member, an extended family member, there's only so much they can do, especially when I'm not telling them anything, and to me, like, the most impactful thing I could think of now, if I met a kid like this, is just keeping that door open, like continuing to make it so known that whenever they want to talk about anything, I will be there to help them however I can. The door is always open to be honest with me. That's the one I look back on and just like appreciate the most is the people who just asked questions, even if they were kind of uncomfortable, even if I. Told them, you know, oh no, no, no, it's everything's fine, even though it definitely was not, and they knew it.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 37:18

So, in How We Thrive in the chapter on connection, so I talk about these three heart essentials: connect, love, and belong. These are the things that we have

capacities for: 37:28

connecting with each other, loving each other, being in spaces of belonging, but we need the conditions for it. I talk about these three types of relationships that we need and that kids need, so askables, people who we can go to and ask the questions, and also who will ask the questions. Then we need anchors, like they're just going to be there for us, and then we also need activators, like who are going to bring new resources or opportunities to bear, and I think our stories kind of showcase two things: one is you actually never know the role that you're playing in somebody's life fully, and what you'll be asked to step into, and you might think that you have a peripheral role as an auntie, for example, but actually you're playing a central part in that moment, and we also don't have to be everything to everyone, so it can be life changing to be an activator for someone, you use a warm relationship that you have in your own social capital to kind of cash in and get a kid connected to something that, or someone they could never possibly be connected to, or you are that anchor, but you're not responsible for figuring out what's going to happen in the future. I think the other thing for us to reflect on and pay attention to is that when we think about rehumaning being on one end of like protecting the best parts of life, on the other end are those inhuman or dehumanizing experiences of what really makes us feel less than human, and so there are also people I can look back to in childhood who restricted or rejected the really important parts of who I was, these were the people who decided who I was going to be when I grew up, that I was never going to be anything more than the addict in my household, that my brothers and I were all sort of geared toward a particular kind of future, and they restricted the opportunities that I could pursue or stood in the way of them, and so I think that we really have to, like, I'd be curious, what that looks like in your own life, but there were also the teachers and counselors and parents who crushed me, who said, you know, you can't hang out with Stephanie, or no, you can't be a part of our youth group, like you'll kind of dirty it, or whatever else, and if I had not had the abundance of those other adults, this conversation would not be happening, because those restrictive adults would have just crushed the little bit of hope that I was able to retain.

Alex Alexander: 40:35

We have some beautiful complimentary sides to this coin, because my restrictors would actually be people who praised me beyond all else for being just so self-sufficient, self-sacrificing, you know, responsible, the constant caregiver, like the assumption, the number of times in my life where somebody has needed care, and I'm not just talking, like, to my friends that listen to this, I'm not talking about you guys, but like for example, my grandfather lived nearby. I have aunts, uncles, father, people. I became his primary caregiver when I was 22 I was dealing with his groceries and with his, you know, middle of the night, he fell, hospital stays, there was some other, like the generation above me, some some aunts, uncles involvement, but I was really the first one there, and looking back on that now, it's like, wow, I know you watched me be a caregiver my entire childhood, and I'm really good at it, but why exactly did we continue to allow or think that was normal for a 22 year old to be shouldering all of that, and so I think just this like assumption that Alex has got it, and some, you know, I always felt like somebody had to. I loved these people. I wanted to care for these people, so I would just drop everything and sacrifice all, including myself, to take care of everyone else.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 42:20

Yeah, it makes me think about the internal weather that we carry with us from childhood into adulthood, especially as people who were caregivers as kids, you know? When I think about those dangerous weather conditions, I overtap myself. I still take on too much. I feel like, okay, I'm gonna do it, or somebody assumes I'm gonna do it, and suddenly the personal tasks are just tremendous, not only for me, but for family members, the sense of the chronic busyness of like I'm an overdoer. I just constantly feel a need to produce and keep going, and I talk to my husband about it's like my broken bucket of like, and then I still feel like I'm not doing enough, or that, like, I could be doing more, or I take over for siblings and family members, like, just let me do it, you know? I always talk about I'm a social worker by training, but that my case management.. I don't know if you've ever had this happen, but like every medical professional will be like, are you a doctor? You know, like, are you a nurse? And I'm like, no, I just kind of have, like, a lifetime degree in, like, navigating a lot of complexity. And then, on the overwrought side, I'm such a fatalist, I'm always afraid if I don't do this, someone will die, you know? Because I had to step into situations that genuinely were life-threatening. Yeah, exactly. And so, when we think about these human essentials, so there are 14 of them that I cover, and How We Thrive, that internal weather, even when the outside forces in my life are calm, can still keep me from protecting some of the better parts of being human, in particular for me being regulated. I'm just so hyper vigilant, you know. Really takes a lot for me to calm down. I've had to come up with really specific strategies and solutions, and also some of the things that I think are tougher for caregivers are some of the essentials like play or wonder that just require right like a spaciousness and you're like wait play we're playing

Alex Alexander: 44:46

yeah I have this very vivid memory I was probably I don't know 24 I'd gotten out of my car. I was going to get in the elevator of, like, the building we were living in at the time, and I don't remember where I had been before, but I got out of the car, and I had this moment where I was like, wow, you know what, I'm the best in the world at, I am the best in the world at dropping everything when someone needs me and figuring it out, and I really thought that was like a positive. It is not till much later that I realized, like, wow, yeah, you're really good at that, but at the expense of yourself.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 45:24

Yeah, that's great.

Alex Alexander: 45:25

And it actually took me being honest with my friends and my community for my friends to really realize, like, how important it was for me to change that behavior, and I have this joke that I'm like the recovering mom of the friend group, because even when we were younger, I always stepped in to, like, plan the trips and do all the food, and do all, you know, oh, I'll cook dinner at the last minute, like, really in mom mode all the time, and it got to the point where, when I would slowly start to realize I was tapped out, and I'd be like, "Well, you know, guys, everybody can come over to my house, but I just, I'm too tired to cook tonight, we gotta order something, and my friends started applauding, they'd be like, "Yes, yes, like, good job, you know, if you want to cook, do it, but if you are tapped out and you're speaking up, we're so proud of you for doing that. And it was, it was a serious unlearning to unravel that

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 46:26

quick pause for two reasons. First, if you are nodding along to this story, if this is hitting somewhere very deep and very familiar for you, I just want you to take a deep breath, really fast with me, seriously, because if this is your story, even a version of it, even 10% of it, that is a lot to carry, I see you, and I get it. I am out here talking about this on a podcast, and let me tell you, it has taken me 1000s of hours of work to be able to talk about my past like this. Even talking about it with Stephanie always just really hits me in the. But, and so, if you are not used to acknowledging this, thinking about this publicly, sharing this, maybe hearing it so publicly is a lot for you. I just, I wish I could reach through the podcast and give you a hug, because you deserve one. Now, second, I know that some of you are going to hear the part that I was just talking about, about how my friends were cheering me on for making changes, and they're, you're going to think, okay, but you got lucky, I have never had friends like that, and maybe, but I actually think there is a bigger piece of this, and I didn't mention it when I was talking to Stephanie, but I want to point it out here for you. The reason my friends cheered me on is because I shared, like really shared, not a overview, not a casual mention. I gave my friends enough of the very real, very sad story of my life that they have actually have some backstory, right? They understand why this matters, that I stop putting myself in these positions, and that is why they are cheering. It's not magic, it's not luck, it's not that I just found certain people out in the world. It's that when people understand your backstory, they know what they're rooting for. Now, you don't have to hand your friend your deepest, darkest everything. That is not what I'm saying, but there is a version of sharing that goes past the surface, and that version, it changes how people show up for you.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 48:57

Yeah, that's right. I totally understand why. How We Thrive connected with you, because it really is a book for caregivers, you know. It's really, it doesn't have to be kids, it's simply saying, like, adults and kids alike are having this experience, and how do we do this collective work? And I think, for us as consummate caregivers who started so early, you know, I'm I'm an expert in youth development, thinking about how we were wired during these periods of rapid growth, and how what the lingering impacts of that, it makes so much sense that it would have to be an unlearning, and I think it actually makes me think of, so there's this research, my like greatest fear that I had confessed to my husband was that I'm just going to die really early, because I like the stress of life has just right, like worn down my lifespan. And then I learned about this research on telomeres, which is sort of the cap on our DNA that decides it's the determiner of how long we're going to live. Well, the stress, so think about it like a shoelace, and like the plastic cap at the end of the shoelace. If the shoelace is our DNA, the cap can shorten because of stress. It literally gets frayed down, and our lifespan reduces. The unbelievable hope of that is that, unlike a shoelace, telomeres can also lengthen, and one of the most important ways to lengthen your life, to lengthen your telomere, is through positive human connection and the essentials that are freely given these capacities that we're born with, but we have to. This is why I use the language of protecting. Sometimes people think like the word protection is too enabling, but it's not about protecting a person, it's about protecting our like evolutionary endowments. What are the actual superpowers that you have as a human? They are yours. You are entitled to them, and you have to guard them. You have to protect them, because they're the greatest gifts that you have to keep you healthy, and to help you heal, and to also help you experience happiness and wholeness in your life, and this telomere research, you know, when those things are restricted, we suffer in terms of the quality of life and the length of life, but when they're supported through something as simple and profound as really great friends, like what amazing friends, and how powerful to have their support, to be like, yeah, let's get Thai food tonight, you know, like that's gonna be great, that those things can actually lengthen your life and help you build a life that you really love and that you want,

Alex Alexander: 52:10

I... Mean.... in all the therapy I have done, every time my therapist is just like, honestly, I don't know how you're doing as well as you are for everything you've been through, and the answer is the people,

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 52:23

that's right,

Alex Alexander: 52:24

the answer is the people, the answer is like, at a very young age, you know, you were saying you were alone, I talk about this all the time. I was profoundly alone in, you know, like a rock bottom level of survival, and not even just of myself, like survival of me and my siblings, and felt all that pressure. And so, when I was talking earlier about how we had all these constraints, you talk about this in the book, and I think about this all the time. I think those of us that were stuck in this situation, like kids, don't have the same control,

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 52:58

that's right.

Alex Alexander: 52:58

to walk away to find new connections, to build new community. They're kind of at the mercy of their caregivers in a lot of ways, and one of the only creative things I had was really leaning into these small moments with people in my community, and that's how it started. That's what really made me realize, like, okay, this is where I refill, you know, and it really was the adults first, and then my friends, especially as they got older and more, you know, our frontal lobes developed, they were, they were more aware, you know, 12, your friend is great, but they aren't really providing that exact same amount of support as, quite frankly, their parents are.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 53:42

Yeah, I feel that way too. I look back at my siblings and a couple of us, so three of the five I can point to families in town that stepped up and really played that surrogate role, and we're all still connected to those families. And now, as a parent of teen children, I'm kind of - I'm parenting the ages that were most profoundly impactful, because I was caregiving and I was struggling myself, and it was kind of the worst period for my addict parent. Just, I can't underscore enough in this conversation that little mini moments, you just, if you have a push toward a compassionate anything, do it, because you just never know what the impact is going to be, and we have this opportunity to accrue a bunch of positive things that then we can really rely on later, like there's really interesting research on trauma and talking about our childhoods. I remember going to a therapist once and them saying, like, oh, you have PTSD. I was like, well, what was my event? And they were like, your life,

Alex Alexander: 54:58

yeah, yeah, it's a lot of little events, yeah,

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 55:01

yeah. And so I think what's important is that, and you've probably seen this, it's really sort of caught on in the pop culture scene, but when we think about trauma, we talk about triggers, and increasingly people have been talking about post-traumatic strength in this idea of glimmers, like what are the things that like trigger the good stuff, and so you know the glimmers really involve the day to day positive interactions. When I train, so I work with a lot of schools and youth programs, and I train them on the science of well-being and the science of thriving, and one of the things that I tell them is that, like, thriving is actually sometimes we think about it as an aspirational state, like I'm starting in survival, and maybe one day I'll, you know, I'll move from survive to thrive, but they actually, the science shows it looks much more like an EKG. So, if you've ever seen, like, a heart map of your heart rate, you're going up and down all the time, and really we want to just get folks in the thriving zone, and so you know there are some conditions that support thriving. I talk a lot about this in my last book, Whole Child, Whole Life, but this idea of like when young people or adults feel like they're healthy and healing, they're safe and supported, they're rooted and connected, they're able to learn and grow, and they have some sense of joy and purpose. Those are all the conditions of thriving, and I think what's really important to know is that it's kind of a do no harm model of like in your position when you're engaging with somebody who's struggling, so when we think back to, like, if we were engaging with younger versions of ourselves, somebody could support one of those conditions, give me an opportunity to feel like I was a brilliant learner, and I was filled with joy and purpose, and it didn't solve what was happening at home, but in that. Moment of like explosive exciting learning. I was thriving in that moment. It like perforated the hardship and let the light shine in, or a moment where I felt so safe and supported and cocooned, like that counselor's office. I was able to thrive in that moment. And so, what I tell educators and social workers is like, you just want to create in a kid's day the biggest number of those moments, because you can't solve everything, but you could if each adult was focused on that, create an abundance of thriving moments and thriving situations that have a cumulative effect, and that effect really enables us to kind of rapidly re-human and tap into our own strengths that we're storing up.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 58:04

I am so curious, you know, having our backgrounds, having your experience, and now parenting to teens who you want to hopefully see right all those small little glimmers in their community with their people, is there anything you're doing as a parent to still foster that in your kids, like they don't necessarily need that, right, they aren't as desperate as we are, but that doesn't mean it does any harm for them to see this anywhere. It's only a positive to have more adults.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 58:40

So, one thing I should say that I'm really focused on with my kids is, do you remember I a long time ago there was the like social phrase, like bros before hoes, or whatever it was. The phrase that I have in mind related to technology is bodies before bots. So one thing that's critically important to me is how am I protecting and ensuring that my kids go to humans for the connections that they need, and understanding that if they're going to artificial companions, chat bots, tech platforms, it's likely because they can't find what they need in real life, you know. In general, we see that kids go on tech platform, addictive tech, or AI chat bots for all the right developmental reasons, chief among them because they want to connect, and then they get hooked and harmed by really addictive platforms. So one thing that I'm bringing into my parenting is that my kids need to know that they're very susceptible to addiction because of our family history, which puts a kind of premier risk on them for engaging in these by design addictive platforms. You know, these technology platforms, including social media, are designed to hook and harm them, but also knowing that, like, their behavior is communication, so if they are going on to those platforms, how can I provide an abundance of in real life, in person opportunities and connections, and with our over scheduled days that requires some work on my end, so for each of my kids they also have surrogate families, and I talk about it that way. I'm like, oh, that's your other mother, you know, like that's your other, yeah, exactly. And it's so needed.

Alex Alexander: 1:00:48

I tell me, well, no, I just think, you know, sometimes when I think about our backgrounds, right, when I started doing this work, quite frankly, I thought that most people would never really be that interested, because they've never experienced the low that we've experienced, and what I have come to find is that anyone is, no matter whether you have, like, a great family of origin system or not, anyone needs more of this IRL connection. Yeah, so I just think it is so cool for me, it's like healing for me, right, to hear that you are talking about it that way, especially as someone who takes being a bonus adult for a lot of kids very seriously, like I needed bonus adults, and so I work really hard to be available for kids in that way, but man, let me tell you, like not everyone is you, and it's a lot of work to almost try and convince people that, like, hey, I really do have your kids' best interest at heart. I want to be present. That doesn't mean I'm all consuming, like, I have to be there for everything, but, like, you were saying earlier, like, any little moment, any door that's open, any listener or activator, or. There was another one that started with an A,

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 1:02:13

askables, askers, and activators, right? Like,

Alex Alexander: 1:02:16

any of those moments add up in a kid's life. Sometimes, quite frankly, it feels like a fight.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 1:02:23

Yeah, it

Alex Alexander: 1:02:24

feels like a fight, and I believe so firmly in it, like you do, but I'm like on the other, the other side fighting it versus having my own kids at home, where I am talking about a surrogate family, like that's just so cool.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 1:02:41

Yeah, I think that, you know, if anybody's listening to the podcast and realizing, like, wait, maybe I'm a little too overprotective of, like, my kids, I would ask them to examine their own confidence and security in that relationship, because I know that, like, we need people, so for anyone who checks out How We Thrive, I look at the 300,000 years of human history, and that other species had strength and stealth and speed, and we as humans had our ability to be social and connect. It's the very fabric that allowed us to survive and thrive across millennia, and we were never meant to do it alone. We were never meant to parent alone. We were never meant to go through life alone. I mean, we are a tribal people, we clan and band up, but we're in this kind of industrial factory individualistic model that makes it increasingly hard to do, and so I just want to give folks permission, you know, when I hear my kids talk about adults that it sounds like they've connected with in a healthy way. I name that for them. They'll say, like, "Oh, I'm really glad that you connected with so and so. He'd probably be a good person to talk to about this. Yes, because reality is, is that as kids get older, they are developmentally designed to pull further away from their parents and start looking to peers and other folks, it's just a part biologically of how we move into independence. Well, when my boys do that and I'm like crying in the corner because they don't want to hang out with me, I do want to know that they want to go hang out with Auntie Alex, because you know you are a safe place for them, and I know you've got their back. I know that you're committed to rehumaning their lives, like you're committed to protecting the best parts, you know, making sure that they have what they need. Do you think that a part of the trickiness is we have so little time that it feels hard to let go of the time that we have, and we put so much pressure on ourselves to do it perfectly, that the idea of like letting Auntie Alex do it can feel hard, but man, the benefits are incredible.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 1:05:14

Well, and I guess from my perspective, right from the Auntie Alex perspective, to any parents listening, there's two things I would say to add to that, which is that number one, I can do it alongside you, like it doesn't necessarily need to be me and your boys, it could be all of us together, and just let me join in, and maybe there's some moments where they come running to me to show me the thing that is still a moment that we get to connect, you know. I had a very simple example of that is I had a friend who apologized to me because her daughter is very little, a little toddler, kept asking me for water, I was like, why are we apologizing? Like, that's a moment for me to show her that I will help her with her needs, that that she can ask me for something like that matters, and you can still be here for that. That's just, you know, water, like she's still running to you when she fell over. She's like, we're talking about earlier, the littlest of moments can matter.

Alex Alexander: 1:06:13

The other thing I would say is I recently had a conversation with somebody I was kind of talking about, honestly, similar perspective to what we're talking about now. She was a mom, and she told me, she goes, you know, I'm just really sad. I had my boys pretty young, and I feel like I really missed out on that anti opportunity. I was like, what do you mean? It's like your friends, your kids' friends come over, that's a chance to be a bonus adult. There might be kids in your neighborhood as your kids grow up. I know that it'll never quite be the same as your kids needing you, but there are other kids that need you, and you can also provide that support and be that community, and that's that's really how I think about it from my auntie perspective.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 1:07:05

I love that you think about it that way. I mean, when I write, I write specific. Exactly, probably to the detriment of my marketing to any adult who cares for kids, because I believe we are collectively raising them, and also like my work is caring for the grown-ups who care for kids, that we also, we were those children, like we are still caring for ourselves and for each other, and it just requires building back up that village effect, building back up those strong bonds that we all benefit from. They're completely bi-directional, because I know, even at you know, looking at your face as we're recording this, that you get joy and benefit from being able to be in these kids' lives, and it, when tired moms really liberate and let that happen, that brings joy and benefit to their life, and the kids benefit, because, and this again gets back to the power of rehumaning, where we're restoring how we're meant to live. The reason why that's a bi-directional benefit is because we are made to live in community, and so when we let it happen and we get outside of isolation or individual family units, we tap into something super primal that says, oh, yes, this is how it is meant to be,

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 1:08:42

yeah, and one more thing, while you're talking about that, that I was thinking about is like, yes, I do love and focus on the relationship with my nieces and nephews, but there's also something really powerful, right, and like showing up for their parents that also supports the kids, and I think about that often too, that like by doing that, not only are we modeling that community for the kiddo, but giving some more energy to the parent gives them the capacity to nourish the kid. It's all symbiotic, and if I love those people, no matter who it goes to, it serves all of them, and it serves me.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 1:09:23

That's right. That's right. I mean, that's the ecosystem effect of relationships, as we're pushing in toward the kid, they're pushing out toward us, but in that layer of what my friend John Zaff calls that web of support, that adult to adult interaction ends up sort of pushing in in an amplified way to benefit the kid.

Alex Alexander: 1:09:49

Yep, yeah, and imagine, I mean, we have to close up this episode, so we've been talking, but maybe a beautiful way to close it up is like, imagine, I don't know about you, but I did not have that web of support around my family, yeah, and so had that been there, I think about this all the time too, that could have really changed our lives, not even by somebody becoming our caregiver or something like that, but even just somebody supporting these parents who needed support

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 1:10:22

absolutely, and what an opportunity we have to take the knowledge that can only come from experiencing what we did to now move it forward in kind of blending our stories with the science and the strategies to say, like, how do we build lives that we love and how do we connect in in the right ways and the ways that really work for us in that way, like I said, my high schooler, he's 15, and his English class invited me to come talk about what it was like to be a writer, and I actually brought journal entries from growing up and talking about, like, for me writing started from journaling, but the one thing I told them, and I'll say this, like, as a last thought, is I wish I could go back to that little girl journaling in the dark and be like, just you wait, like it's gonna be okay, right? Just you wait.

Alex Alexander: 1:11:21

Well, Stephanie, thank you so much for being here. What a journey we have both been on, and I'm just really grateful to have had this conversation with you.

Stephanie Malia Krauss: 1:11:28

Me too. I have loved being in conversation with you, Alex.

Alex Alexander [Narration]: 1:11:32

This conversation has really stayed with me, and I hope that it will stick with you too. You know, this idea that we were never meant to do this life alone, not parenting, not friendship, not just getting through life, that is not a nice thought, that is biology, that is hundreds of 1000s of years of human history, and if things feel hard right now, that's not 100% a you problem, that's a we problem, and it is one we can actually do something about just by going against the grain every once in a while, pushing yourself outside your comfort. Zone taking a small action that feels so insignificant to you, but to the receiver, might be life-changing. If today's episode resonated with you, please go check out Stephanie's book, How We Thrive. It will genuinely change how you see what you're up against, and more importantly, what you're capable of. You can find all the links to connect with Stephanie and grab her book in the show notes, and if you haven't grabbed my book yet, Are We Friends Yet is out. That's where we get into the how, how you actually start building the connections you want one small action at a time. And with that, I'll see you next week.

Podcast Intro/Outro: 1:12:50

Thank you for listening to this episode of Friendship IRL. I am so honored to have these conversations with you, but don't let the chat die here. Send me a voice message — I created a special website just to chat with you. You can find it at alexalex.chat. You can also find me on Instagram; my handle is @itsalexalexander. Or go ahead and leave a review wherever you prefer to listen to podcasts. Now, if you want to take this conversation a step further, send this episode to a friend. Tell them you found it interesting, and use what we just talked about as a conversation starter the next time you and your friend hang out. No need for a teary goodbye— I'll be back with a new episode next week.