Introducing a New Era of Empowered by Hope: Bite-Sized Episodes for Caregivers on the Go

Ever wish you had a quick, powerful resource to tackle your biggest pediatric caregiving challenges? We promise to make every minute count as we unveil our refreshed, streamlined podcast format designed just for you! Join Ashlyn Thompson and Emily Whiting as they return to Empowered by Hope, eager to share how our bite-sized, focused episodes will bring you clear, actionable advice on topics that matter most to caregivers. Whether you're navigating complex medical needs or seeking ways to be heard by healthcare professionals, our concise episodes will provide the support and solutions you need without taking up your precious time.

In this episode, we also reflect on our successful gala and look forward to the exciting future of Charlotte's Hope Foundation. We also discuss how we plan to foster more interaction with our listeners, making it easier for you to share your pressing questions and concerns. Our goal is to create a community where caregivers feel seen, heard, and supported every step of the way. Tune in to learn how our new format will offer you the targeted, efficient, and effective support you've been looking for!

We kindly ask that you share this podcast with other families who might benefit from our insights and support. Additionally, please take a brief moment to leave a review on your preferred podcast platform, which helps us to reach as many families as possible who are navigating this challenging journey, so they can find our support circle and access the assistance they rightfully deserve. No one should walk this journey alone.

To get more personal support, connect with us directly at:
https://parentempowermentnetwork.org

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Join the Parent Empowerment Network Community of Hope
Get your copy of She is Charlotte: A Mother’s Physical, Emotional, and Spiritual Journey with Her Child with Medical Complexities by Emily K Whiting on Amazon

Transcript

Speaker 2: 0:13

Whether you've just been blindsided by your child's diagnosis or you've been in the trenches of their complex medical needs for a while.

Speaker 1: 0:20

Empowered by Hope, is here for you, though we wish you didn't know this heartache.

Speaker 2: 0:26

We're so glad you found us, so together we can walk this journey in hope.

Speaker 3: 0:35

Welcome back to the Empowered by Hope podcast brought to you by Charlotte's Hope Foundation. Today we have co-hosts Ashlyn Thompson and Emily Whiting here. We are very excited to be back. We took a couple almost a minute couple months off of doing the podcast and our social and we stepped offline for a bit to take care of our families and to do a lot of the you know what's the word post-gala work. We had a great gala in May. It was a wild success. We're so grateful for everyone who showed their support in all the various ways for this mission and man Ashlyn, where this mission is going for 2024 and beyond is just so exciting. We cannot wait to take you all with us. So, with that, we're just so grateful to have you here, and the point of this episode is purely to update you on the format that we will be using moving forward for this podcast. We have updated it to really target what is needed for the families we serve and to just get you excited again for upcoming episodes. Yes, that is right.

Speaker 4: 1:47

So, with that, let's jump into it, because our goal, our new goal, our word we'll say for the podcast, moving forward Empowered by Hope 2.0, is efficient. I guess it's two words efficient and effective. We want to be more cognizant of how much time people, specifically caregivers, really have to take a moment for themselves to feed themselves, feed their souls right, do something good for them so that they can be nourished and be ready to be the caregiver, the advocate, the family member that they want to be. And as much fun as Emily and I have had on our previous episodes. We love them. There's so much great content in those. There is so much content in those and what we realized is it's kind of hard sometimes to. You know, not everybody can sit down and digest a 45 minute conversation and, yes, it's great. With a podcast, you can hit pause, you can go back and listen to it anytime. But in order to be really effective and and meet our, our, our, our, our true mission, which is to help parents right off the bat, whether it's sorry parents caregivers know that they are not alone and that they can do this. We want to make sure that we are meeting them with a resource that's really powerful and very conscientious of the time they actually have to spend on themselves, which, admittedly, is usually pretty small, right?

Speaker 4: 3:23

So you and I were talking about what would make episodes. You know, if we were just a listener, if we weren't the ones creating the podcast, what would be more helpful to us as a caregiver? Well, for starters, one of those things would be making our episodes easier to search, as in making it very clear that if I listen to this episode, this is the answer I'm going to get to this question, or this is the problem that is going to be discussed, and give me options and recommendations on how to potentially solve for my own circumstances. So one of the ways we can do that right is greatly shorten up how much time each episode is. All the great content.

Speaker 4: 4:04

The conversations will take place, will continue, but our goal is to start having episodes be more around that I don't know what 15-minute mark yeah, that's kind of our sweet spot and really just answer more specific questions. So that way, if you need a refresher on, for example, I am seeing a symptom that my doctor is dismissing for my child, how do I get my doctor to listen, or am I making it too big of a deal. We would find a way to make that question more specific, a little more clear than what I just tossed out, but you get the idea. So the conversation will literally only talk about that particular question, that episode yeah, where the fun really comes into this new phase of Empowered by Hope and Emily I'll toss it over to you to talk about is we want so much more interaction with you. We are itching to get to know you, our listeners, better, our fellow caregivers. We want to understand what are you facing, what burning questions do you have, what obstacles? So, emily, I'll let you talk about that a little bit more.

Speaker 3: 5:13

Yes, we would love to hear from you what are the questions you have that you would like us to address, and sometimes we're going to bring guests on to help us address those questions. Sometimes it'll just be Ashlyn and I, it depends on the question. I love this new format, though, ashlyn, because if I'm, it always happens to be 10 o'clock at night, or 11,. You get the kids tucked in bed, the replay of the appointments play in your head and you have that burning question, whatever it is, and you type it into Google and you find a whole lot of nothing. That's what we want to get really concise of that question you typed into Google. That's the question.

Speaker 3: 5:52

That is the title of this podcast, and we are going to hit it right on the head, and it's very practical. You know, sometimes it's going to be emotional. You know, emotional it's all the same topics. We've been talking about the same type of content, but it's going to be a lot more targeted. So we want to hear from you what are the questions that are burning for you that we can answer, of their journey with children as soon as they realize their child is unwell. That's who we're targeting, also, knowing that as we serve them.

Speaker 3: 6:27

We are serving the population of families who have children with complex needs. Even if you're five years into it, right, we are all learning from each other, so we want to hear from you. We want you to message us on social. We want you to email us at contact at charlotteshopefoundationorg. Find us and let us know what it is you want to hear. We're going to start coming out weekly with different topics and from there it's probably going to spur ideas for you, spur questions. I know some of my favorite podcasts I follow are question and answer based, because it's from the population that we're speaking to, that we're getting the questions that it makes the most sense to answer, and I can't think of a better way to be efficient and effective than to answer the questions that are burning on our very listeners' minds. Perfect, emily.

Speaker 4: 7:14

And I think, just to wrap it up, the other thing that we are going to be inviting you to do and we're very sincere is, you know, emily and I are going to discuss, from our perspective, our experiences.

Speaker 4: 7:27

You know, things that we've cultivated from our own journeys or conversations we've shared with other caregivers, but we also want to interact with you from a perspective of you know. Let us know how you've handled a similar situation, because then we can all be learning from each other. So use our social media platforms to share, maybe, how you got a breakthrough to happen with a doctor or how you were able to get insurance to cover an out-of-network doctor. Whatever the circumstance may be, it's likely to be different from what Emily and I have faced. So we want to hear from you so we can learn from each other, grow from one another. That's how we continue to lift each other up and support, and Emily and I certainly don't have it all figured out, we can get the conversation started and it's going to be so much more fun if you get involved with us.

Speaker 4: 8:19

So we encourage that. Please, please, please, implore you to join the conversation, and we just cannot wait to see where it leads. Nothing but good things and positive and kind things. So we're very excited to move forward with our new format and we cannot wait to hear what you think about it.

Speaker 3: 8:40

Yes. So, to be more specific, our social channels are Instagram and Facebook, and it's this podcast. All the conversations are happening with Charlotte's Hope Foundation, our pages there, and then, of course, you can do email as well, although I think we really prefer social, because then everybody who's following along can benefit from it. But if you have a personal question that you'd like to just submit to us, that's totally fine too. You can email us, like I said, at contact at charlotteshopefoundationorg. So we cannot wait to have you at the next episode Tune in, and we can't wait to hear from you what you think about the updated format and to hear what questions you want to talk about.

Speaker 4: 9:22

All right. Thanks everybody for coming back and staying with us on this journey. Or, if you're new to it, welcome and buckle up. We're going to have some fun.

Speaker 2: 9:34

You are capable, you are equipped and you are not alone. Together, we can do hard things for our children.

Speaker 1: 9:41

If this episode connected with you and you want to hear more, we can do hard things for our children. If this episode connected with you and you want to hear more, be sure to hit the subscribe button.

Speaker 2: 9:47

We would also love to learn about your personal journey and how we can support you.

Speaker 1: 9:51

Reach out to us at contact at charlotteshopefoundationorg.

Speaker 2: 10:00

And last but not least, if you know of someone who could benefit from this podcast, please share.