Embracing Resilience & Mindful Presence as a Special Needs Mom with Jenn Fredericks

Episode Summary:

Jenn Fredericks, a Pro-sillience Coach and Personal Resilience Practitioner shares her deeply personal journey as a special needs mom. Jenn talks about navigating the challenges of raising a child with a brain tumor diagnosis, how it impacted her mental, emotional, and physical health, and how she found her way to life coaching. She offers insights on how special needs moms can cultivate resilience, manage their energy, and practice the pause to be more present in their lives and for their families.

Key Takeaways:

• Jenn’s journey from struggling with physical and emotional exhaustion to becoming a life coach and resilience practitioner.
• The importance of "practicing the pause" and being mindful in both personal and caregiving roles.
• Strategies for managing personal energy to build resilience as a special needs mom or caregiver.
• How the simple, small acts of self-care can be more impactful than we realize, helping replenish our physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual energy.
• Jenn's personal story about learning to grieve the life she envisioned for her children, creating space for acceptance, and using proactive resilience strategies to adapt to ongoing challenges.
• A reminder that caregivers are not alone, and there are tools and resources available to help navigate the marathon of caregiving.

Memorable Quotes:

• "Be where your feet are." — Jenn’s daughter, sharing her wisdom from a hospital stay.
• "Resilience is maintaining high levels of effectiveness and well-being while dealing with high levels of challenge and disruption."
• "We often think of self-care as manicures and massages, but it's really about managing our personal energy so we can preserve our well-being."
• "Who do you want to be for your child? That question has guided me through this journey since my daughter’s diagnosis."

Jenn Fredericks has overcome immense adversity and emerged as a beacon of resilience and hope for others. Her experience as a patient with a life-threatening, chronic illness spanning three decades and caregiver for her daughter with a life-threatening diagnosis speaks volumes about her strength, determination, and compassion. Jenn became an adoptive mom 15 years ago to a daughter.

 
Connect with Jenn Fredericks:

www.prosiliencecoach.com.

FB:https://www.facebook.com/JennFredericksProsilienceCoach 
IG: https://www.instagram.com/jfredwi/ 
LI: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jennfredericks/

Resources Mentioned:

• Linda Hoops’ Proresilience Framework

Live with Intention - Embrace the Journey.

Connect with me:

Valerie's Links: https://bit.ly/3RL0da2

Music Acknowledgement: Audio Coffee - Denys Kyshchuk


Editor: Scott Arbeau


Link for book: The S.H.I.N.E. Principle: The special needs mom's path to strength, hope and happiness by Valerie Arbeau

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0CW18ZXGX   (Canada)

https://a.co/d/03hFdZI4 (United States)

Learn more about your host at:
https://coachingwithvalerieanne.com/

Transcript

It was very difficult, I didn’t know how to sustain, how to navigate about a year after her diagnosis. When the tumour portion was stable and we helping her navigate the medical trauma that she experienced at 7 years old after having never been in the hospital for a long period of time. And some of the mental wellness and emotional and behavioural things started to really affect her and I didn’t know how to manage that piece.

Hello and welcome to Special Needs Mom's Circle of Strength. I am here with Jenn Fredericks. I'm so excited. We're going to be talking about all kinds of things. Stay tuned.

Jenn has overcome immense adversity and emerged as a beacon of resilience and hope for others. Her experience as a patient with a life-threatening chronic illness spanning three decades and a caregiver for her daughter with a life-threatening diagnosis speaks volumes about her strength, determination, and compassion. And as a Prosilience coach and personal resilience practitioner, Jenn brings a wealth of experience to her practice.

Jenn became an adoptive mom 15 years ago to a daughter. 

And so, I just want to welcome Jenn and I'm looking forward to our conversation!

Thank you so much for having me.

You're very welcome. You're very welcome. 

Jenn, I start off the podcast with the same question. What is one unique thing about you?

Well, I kind of was like, I don't know, what do I share? I mean, the obvious thing is to share that I'm a two-time kidney transplant recipient. I mean, that's kind of the one that I usually throw out there most often, but I'll also include that I love to tap dance. 

Get out! 

Yeah, for personal, I don't perform, but yeah. I used to also belly dance.

Wow. Okay, I think you are my first guest that's been a belly dancer. If anybody else has been, they have not shared that. Oh, that's amazing. And what a way to keep fit, my goodness.

And it just kind of speaks to my soul.

Tap dancing was something I always wanted to do as a child and never really had the opportunity to do it. And now in this stage of life that I'm in, I probably should try it. But there's so many different types of dance that I'd love to get into. A colleague of mine is doing swing dancing. It's like, it looks like so much fun.

Well, what's, who's saying that you can't try all of them? 

Right?

Yeah, 

exactly. So yeah, try a little tap a little. I did do jazz and modern when I was younger. And so yes, I think it's time to revisit that. Thank you for that.

You're welcome.

Let's get some movement going. 

Yeah.

So Jenn, tell us a little about your special needs mom journey.

Sure. Well, my special needs mom journey started, I think, a little later than what some might consider a special needs mom journey. So I just shared that I'm a two-time kidney transplant recipient. Along with that came my decision to become an adoptive mother and so that, you know, I could have a healthy child. I could also keep my healthy kidney and all of those things. So I was matched with a beautiful, beautiful girl. And she was seven, she was diagnosed with a low-grade brain tumor. And we've been managing it for the past eight years, you know, she's wrapping up her freshman year of high school. And that's really what started my special needs mom's journey. Because, a lot of the protocols and treatments for brain tumor patients are pretty invasive and have several different side effects that can affect you know, physical ability, mental ability, and can affect also emotional and behavioral wellness. And so, we did start to experience some of that. And right now, I would say some of those things are the more difficult things to navigate and manage, rather than the brain tumor, of course, you know, it's there. And we keep a great eye on it with a wonderful team. And day by day, we work with, you know, the cognition, cognitive processing that has been reduced some or slowed, as well as some memory issues and for brain tumors also very near the emotional regulation center. And so, there are a lot of things that we do around mental wellness.

Wow, that sounds like a lot to be dealing with, low-grade tumour, that you have to, and I'm assuming that at least yearly checks to make sure things are not….

Every three months. Every three months, she has blood work an MRI. She's on twice a day, oral, it's not really chemotherapy, it's a MEK inhibitor. So it's a more of a targeted therapy. But yeah, it's something that, you know, is always there and you manage it every day. And then every three months, we have those MRIs and then thrown in there, we have all of the different specialty clinics that she needs to check in with. One time last year, I counted that she had 16 different specialists.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. 

How does one keep track?

Well, thank goodness for some technology and for calendar apps and the wonderful, systems that the medical complex has that we can log into and see, oh, we have these three appointments this week. And, oh, hey, look, now here in the same place, we have all of the test results that we need. So, you know, I'm very grateful that we have a lot of this advanced technology. And then every day, new discoveries are being made that can help people who are on tons of different health journeys. And, you know, every time I see the Pediatric Brain Tumor Foundation or Children's Brain Tumor Foundation publishing some of these studies that are coming out of the academic world and research world, I just get more and more hope that what we're doing right now sustains her. And there's more available as we move through this marathon.

Interesting that you use the term marathon because I believe this is truly going to be a marathon because as you say, there's not any active treatment to shrink this tumour. It's something that we're learning to live with and navigate. So, I love that you call it a marathon because that kind of puts you in a different perspective to how to deal with it. When you're dealing with a sprint, you know it's going to be over soon and you give it all you've got. But when it's a marathon, you want to give it all you've got as a mom, but you know you have to pace yourself, right?

Exactly. You have to sustain, you know, and there was a time when I didn't know that even after my, at that point, almost two-decade journey with my own chronic illness, which seemed easier to manage to me because it's mine. It's not my heart walking outside of my body who is experiencing these difficulties.

So, it was very difficult. I didn't know how to sustain, how to navigate, how to manage about a year after her diagnosis when, the tumor portion was stable, and we were helping her navigate the medical trauma that she experienced at seven years old after having never been in the hospital for a long period of time. And, some of the mental wellness and emotional and behavioral things started to really affect her and I didn't know how manage that piece. 

Put me in the hospital, I'm good. Like I could fall asleep to all the beeping machines, but this was something different and this brought me to my knees.

So, tell us a little bit about that journey.

Sure. Well, I just didn't know how to manage my own emotions when she had such big emotions and behaviors coming toward me. And of course she felt safe with me and my husband. And so that's where they materialized the most.

I actually started to have a physical manifestation of anxiety. So, it was almost like we were playing off of each other. So, she had anxiety that she was trying to process and then brought it to me. And then I didn't know what to do with that.

Funny enough, at the same time this was going on 

I didn't have the ability really to eat without feeling sick or pain. And, you know, I dropped to 90 pounds at the time. I also knew I was going to be laid off from my 16 year marketing career. And at first it was just, okay, well, what else can we do at the same time? But allowed me a pause and it allowed me to realize that I didn't want to do life that way anymore. And I couldn't because of the marathon. And with my own compromised health, you know, how can I sustain and support myself as well as support her? And I have wonderful partner. He's amazing. And he also needed some direction

and support. So anyway, long story short, I got laid off. Somehow, I got this cockamamie idea in my head that I was going to be a life coach. And so I reached out to a past coworker who was a life coach and said, Hey, what is this? How does it work? I had never been coached before. Like, what is this? And she told me, and lo and behold, three months later, I was already in coach certification training and I was doing it for my career.

It was for me. It was for me. So I could find my footing and reenergize and replenish and start to give of myself from there. And the whole dynamic of how our family interacted changed. I had coping tools that I was able to then share with her along with her professional support and the rest is history.

Wow.

Amazing. Amazing. I love the fact that you were able to pause. I'm the type of person that just keeps going. Energizer the bunny. That's me. Don't let the batteries run out. Just keep changing them. And so I love the fact that you brought up the fact that we need to pause because it's only in the pause that we can step back and reflect on and see the bigger picture of what's going on. 

Right. 

So pausing, a very important thing that we all need to do. And we pause in all aspects of our lives. It's not just like for you, you just mentioned the example of your work, you were getting laid off. So it's like, okay, now I need to step back and see what else I can do. But I think practicing the pause in every aspect of our life, I think is imperative. I think it's something we all need to be doing regularly.

I agree. You know the saying that if you don't take

the time to pause and rest, your body will ensure that you do.

That is the truth.

I love also the fact that you chose to be a life coach. That would be me too. And that you have been able to utilize the tools that you've learned and also experienced yourself and pass them onto your child, your daughter. I am unfortunately not in the same position. My child will tell me, “Don't coach me, don't coach me. I don't want to hear it.” I don't know if you experienced the same, but I've had to really back off and really, really analyze whether this is a good time or not to bring up a coaching tool.

Right. And I'll of course always be like, “Are you sharing this because you want me to be here for you? Are you sharing this because you'd like some coaching? Would you like some help regulating?” You know, making sure that we ask, but sometimes, oh my gosh, yes, especially when she was younger, she would look at people and be like, “I'm sorry about her, she's a lot!”

But then there's those times when like she was in the hospital, when she was eight, for a couple of days at our wonderful children's hospital. The nurses ask you every day, what's important to you today? And they'd ask the kids. And you know, usually it would be like, I want to eat all that chocolate ice cream on the floor. Or I want to play with child life or let me go to the toy room. This one day, and this was about, you know, a couple of months into my life coach training, she said “It is important for me to be where my feet are.”

Oh! Tell me more about that.

Well, so when I was in coach certification training, there was a woman with me in that certification. And she that term, be where your feet are. And it reminds me of that mindful living, that mindfulness, that practicing the pause and actually being where you are, regardless of if it feels good or not, right? Like be there, accept what it is and just be where your feet are. And so what I think she meant by that was I am

not going to think about the past and the fear of whatever happened yesterday or whatnot. And I'm not going to look too far into the future about, “Hey, when am I getting out of here?” When am I, you know, dah, dah, dah, dah, dah, is this going to happen again? Like, I think she really just needed that time and space to be exactly where she was.

And her saying that allowed my husband and I to be there with her and her care team. So we're like, okay, we don't need to think about anything else except what's in front of us right now. Oh, you want to watch Victoria's on Nickelodeon? Okay. Oh, you want to color right now? All right. You're hungry. Great. We are here right now.

Wow. What an amazing life lesson and what insight

this child had because they were seven, eight?

She, I think by that time she was probably eight because she, yeah, she had already been diagnosed and had about a year or so of dealing with some of this and you know, me parroting some coach wisdom her way. But yeah. And she would say like, Oh, now I'm sad that mom,

know, said that. And then I said it to the hospital because now mom thinks she's right all the time.

Well, I appreciate her child wisdom. And isn't it amazing? Because children don't have filters the same as us adults and they just tell it like it is. So I love that. And if your daughter doesn't mind, I'm probably going to deal that and utilize that phrase and be where your feet are.

Well, exactly. And again, I stole that from someone. I was in certification with, you know, she said it once. And I think her mom had said it to her. And it's just one of those tidbits of wisdom that stays with you. And as soon as you hear it, it stays with you.

Jenn resilience as a mom of children with disabilities is something that we all develop on this journey. So what's your take on this?

Well, so as I was going through my personal resilience practitioner training, well, let's back up a little bit before that. People always used to ask me, "How are you so resilient?" Two-time kidney transplant recipient, mom and caregiver to an adoptive child who has a brain tumor diagnosis,

"How are you so resilient?" And I really wasn't sure.

As I started Life Coach Certification, I started digging more into it, and I started looking up compassion fatigue, compassion resilience, what is resilience? And I ran across the work of Linda Hoops, who's an industrial and organizational psychologist, and she developed the framework of proresilience. She's been studying resilience for 30 years. And she defines it as maintaining high levels of effectiveness and well-being while dealing with high levels of challenge and disruption. Now, if that doesn't sound like the life of a special needs mom, I don't know what does. And she had developed this for organizations. But as soon as I read it, I was like, she put words and framework and language to what I've been doing. And now I can take it and I can share it with others to help them build their resilience through whatever marathon they're going through or even short-term challenge. 

What I love about, and as I was going through personal resilience practitioner training, I learned more and more about the importance of learning to manage our personal energy. And the more work I do with caregivers, the more I realize that's really the fundamental building block of resilience.

And Linda discusses four building blocks of resilience. And that's one of them. But I usually bring that one to the forefront first, because human energy fuels our resilience. 

If our bucket is full, we have enough to fuel our resilience. If our bucket is empty, we don't. So when I was talking about before I became a life coach, my bucket was empty. It was done for, my physical, mental, emotional and spiritual energy we're close to zero, if not zero.

And so there are ways that we can build upon, store up, refuel and replenish our different energies so we can access our resilience as challenges and disruptions come our way.

Wow this is beautiful. This is beautiful.

And as a coach myself, I talk a lot about energy, but I love how the connection between resilience and energy that you've just brought to the table. So thank you so much for creating more awareness for myself and for our audience as well, have to have that energy. And that's what will help fuel resilience so that we can cope with, and for us special needs mums, it is the day to day. It is that high level of stress, that high level of involvement. And just the, here I go back to my energizer bunny. Go, go, go. Go, go, go. Don't have time to rest. I'll get to it eventually. So yeah, thank you so much for sharing that.

You're welcome. And one thing that I really appreciate about looking at managing personal energy is, okay, let me ask you this question. When people say to you, Oh, you really need to take time for self-care. Like you really need, well, I know as a caregiver and a special needs mom and a chronic illness patient, people would say that and I would like want to throw something at them. Like, what do you mean? Like, I don't, where am I going to get time for a manicure or a massage? You know, those are the things that we usually connect with self-care. But I present self-care more as this managing and being aware of your personal energy.

Because as you do that, you're actually giving yourself more time and more energy to do the things to preserve your wellbeing through these marathons.

And I, I appreciate you bringing up the self-care. And I love that you brought up, yes, you want to throw things at people because we do. And as a coach, I've done it, you know, self-care, what's your self-care activity going to be this…. But I think bringing awareness to self-care is huge, but I think tying it to personal energy just kind of offsets it. So to me, that might sound a little more palatable as opposed to what’s the self care you're doing for yourself. So I really appreciate that. And self care, as you mentioned, I used to think, Oh, manicure, pedicure, I mean, I don't sit still long enough for those kinds of things. And, you know, massage, I enjoy having a massage, but do I make time to do it? Not really. But it doesn't have to be those bigger things that cost money. Self-care can be small little things, and that's one of the things that I do talk to my coaching clients about. How can we make it tangible? How can we make it manageable? How can we break it down so that it's bite sizes that you can fit into your day. And if it's several little points during the day, beautiful.

Yeah, I love that. 

If it's just one time a day, great. But even if it's like one of the things that I started doing was staying in the shower a little bit longer. Just even three to four more minutes longer just to let that water just flow. There's something about water. I've always been a water type of person. Yes, I'm from England. So I say water differently.

But I just love that feeling of water just basking onto my body. And I just, I don't know, I get those thoughts while I'm in the shower. Like I get those brainwave things going like…. 

Oh, yeah. Yeah, it's like there's another connection that's coming through once you have that. Yeah, I love that. And I also invite people to think about

those bite size things in and practicing them regularly because soon it just becomes a part of your DNA. It just becomes part of how you be in

the world.

And I often suggest tying it to something. So we brush our teeth. So for me, I have an electric toothbrush that takes two minutes. And so I might be doing squats while I'm brushing my teeth. 

You're better than I.

That would be a wonderful part of the physical because you're putting movement into your day. So I'm going to take that tip and I'm going to start doing it. I'm going to do that.

You're more than welcome. You're more than welcome.

All right.

So I really appreciate what you've been sharing so far, Jenn. Do you have anything that you'd like to share with our audience?

Knowing that you're not alone on this journey as a special needs mom and that there are resources and tools and skills that you can learn and practice that aren't going to take up too much time. And the reward is going to be greater than the time that you take to learn them.

I think that's really it. Just remembering to practice the pause, definitely. Give yourself some time and space.

Yes.

And I'm sure you help your clients as well learn to expand their emotional vocabulary and the sensations so that you can deal with those things as they come up so that they don't weigh you down.

Thank you for that reminder because it is true, it is very much an emotional journey.

I have been a stuffer. And I'll get to that eventually. And my children need me right now. I can't tell you how many times I've felt the need to cry over something and fought back the tears because there's a child around or my husband's coming home or something or I, the phone call. And I’ve just not dealt with it and then I never get back to it. And so with that, and this is just a real quick dive into….

My oldest is now 22. My youngest is 19. My oldest, we had a prolapse cord, so we knew right away that we were having issues with this child and that she would have challenges. We were told she was going to live a year. She's now 22. Praise God.

My goodness.

Our youngest was born typical. We didn't notice anything. I kind of realized now looking back, you know, when they were younger, maybe grade three, maybe grade two. It's like, no, they're not getting invited to birthday parties. So they have ADHD. And then when they were 17, we got a diagnosis of high functioning autism. So, I never really had time, quote unquote, to deal with those diagnoses and what life was throwing at us. I just plowed in and got on with it. And it wasn't until probably about a year or two ago that I started to recognize I needed to deal with my emotions around all of this. And so part of that for my husband and I was to grieve. And we actually had a ceremony where we actually went away for the night. We were able to stay at a place that a friend of ours had. And we stayed there. And we actually, it was almost like we had, it sounds kind of morbid, but almost like a funeral for what we thought we were going to have. 

Yes. Yes. 

It was beautiful. We had pictures. I had the elements. We had fire. I had a, on my laptop, I had a fire scene. We had water. We had earth, like soil in a container and flowers. And we just mourned. We just took the time to mourn.

That's such an important piece to bring up. The grieving of what you thought was going to happen and what is. And I love that you bring that up. And even the fact that between the time that your children were born and now, you kind of had to plow through, and that's actually another one of the building blocks of resilience leading into prosilience or proactive resilience. And it's that building block of strategy, choosing the strategy with which you're going to meet the challenge. And you can use any of these strategies. None of them are right or wrong. It's what works for you. And it's like, you can reframe the challenge. Maybe you can change the challenge. Or I think in our case, and in most cases of your listeners and clients as well, would be that accepting what is and adapting. And then that is the strategy. And as long as you need to use that strategy and be in that strategy, do it. So it's beautiful that then you recognize now is the time where I have a little bit more space and energy to work through some of those other energies that I may not have been able to play with as much.

Yeah.

So with that, I'm going to ask you, where can our audience find out more about you, Jenn?

Oh, thank you. Well, I have a website.

It's prosiliencecoach.com. And I'll spell that because I did not pick the easiest word.

P-R-O-S-I-L-I-E-N-C-E coach.com. I'm also on LinkedIn at Jenn Frederick's, and then on Facebook at Jenn Fredericks prosilience coach.

Okay. Thank you so much. And all of that will be in the show notes. And do know that Jen is spelled J-E-N-N. So two N's.

Thank you. Very important. Yes. The two N's.

And I say that because my middle name is Anne. And I have to say with an E.

With an E. Yep.

All right, Jenn. I don't know if you have any further messages of inspiration or support for our listeners before we close.

Sure. Well, I have a quick story if that's okay. 

Absolutely. Go for it.

Okay. Great. So when my daughter was diagnosed, she was seven back in 2015, again, I'm comfortable with hospitals, right?

But we were a couple of days into the stay, and all of a sudden the feelings started to come up. They were bubbling and coursing through me. And I knew I was safe and fine to release them. I just, you know, family was around and the care team was around and my daughter was there. So, I was getting ready to like blow, like have an eruption of emotions. And all of a sudden this calm came over me and the swirling stopped and the chaos quieted and a voice outside of myself asked, “Who do you want to be for her?” And that question has guided me through this journey since that day, because I knew that I wanted to be loved and connection and the warmth of home. I didn't want to be sterility and fear and the smell of the hospital room. 

And so every time I might get worked up for myself, that helps redirect and ground me. Okay. Who do I want to be for her? Who do I want to be for me? How do I want to be in this moment? Because we do have the choice of responding the way that we want to. And I'm not saying to push down your emotions if you want to feel them, but that prioritization has really helped me keep hope and keep love and keep the future in mind.

Beautiful.

Thank you for sharing that, Jenn. Who do I want to be for my child?

Powerful. Powerful. 

All right, Jenn, thank you so much for being a guest on the show. We've loved listening to you. I've enjoyed the conversation. Thank you so much. 

Oh, thank you. 

All right. So audience, I want to remind you, 

Live with Intention - Embrace the Journey.