Breaking the Cycle of Guilt and Finding Strength with Natalie Karras

Meet Natalie Karras, who is a passionate advocate for children on the spectrum and their families. With 24 years of experience across industries like travel, recruitment, and marketing, she holds a Master Practitioner of Coaching and is the CEO and founder of You Are Seen. Natalie’s personal journey began when her son was diagnosed with autism at age 2, and she now dedicates herself to guiding mums through the challenges of autism, helping them move from feeling helpless to empowered. Fun fact: She's also an avid baker, creating gluten, dairy, and sugar-free treats! Natalie also introduces her SING method, a powerful tool she created to help moms break free from negative thought patterns. 

This episode offers valuable insights, strategies, and hope for moms walking the challenging, yet beautiful, journey of raising children with special needs.

Key Takeaways:

• The pressure moms feel to "do it all" and appear as though they have everything under control is real, but we don’t have to shoulder it alone.
• It’s important to ask for help and to share with others how they can support us—people want to help but often don’t know how.
• We don’t need to apologize for our children’s behaviors. Let's celebrate who they are instead of conforming to societal expectations.
• The SING Method (Stop, Inhale, Notice your thoughts, and Gain clarity) helps moms break out of negative thought loops and be more present with their children.
• We must distinguish between fear-based thoughts and reality, and not let anxiety drive how we advocate for or view our child’s future.
• Moms of children with special needs are not alone, and reaching out for support can make a world of difference.

Connect with Natalie Karras:

• Website: www.youareseen.com.au
• Facebook: You Are Seen
• Instagram: You_Are_Seen_
• LinkedIn: Natalie Karras

Free Resource from Natalie:

• Download Natalie’s free guide: My Child Was Diagnosed with Autism: Hop over to Natalie’s website to access

Words of Encouragement from Natalie: "I know that you feel like you’re in a dark place right now, and that this isn't what you signed up for. But your child will teach you so many lessons along the way, and you will emerge wiser and stronger. It’s okay to cry, curse, and get angry—but don’t walk this journey alone. There are people and resources ready to help; you just have to reach out."

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 (US)

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

Transcript

The same method is usually used when you find yourself looping through thought. And for the listeners who don't understand what looping is, it's basically having the same thought go round and round in your head, right? It's like, he's never going to talk, you know, he's never going to be able to walk or to crawl or to ride a bike or play sports or, and this like all these negative thoughts ruminating in your brain. So this strategy helps with getting out of that looping system and being able to be more present.

Whether you're a parent, a family member, a caregiver, a friend, or simply someone seeking to learn, join us as we embark on this journey of love and connection. Get ready to be uplifted, enlightened, and inspired. This is Special Needs Moms Circle of Strength. I'm Valerie, and I'm so thrilled you've chosen to be a part of our circle. Welcome everyone and a very special welcome to our guest for today, Natalie Karas. Natalie is passionate. She's a passionate advocate for children on the spectrum and their parents that are living their journey with autism. Natalie has a diverse background spanning 24 years in both the public and private sectors. Natalie holds a master practitioner of coaching and is the CEO and founder of You Are Seen.

Natalie's son was diagnosed at the age of two and was non-speaking until he was four. At the age of eight, he's just beginning to use sentences. Natalie is passionate about navigating moms through feeling helpless and hopeless and emerging through the autism vortex. Fun fact, Natalie is also an avid baker, which includes gluten-free, dairy-free, and sugar-free options. Sign me up.

So, Natalie, I always ask my guests, what's a unique thing about you?

Yes. My unique thing, thank you first of all for having me. I'm so excited to be here.

For me, my unique thing is definitely finding patterns, finding, being able to read people, being able to look at a situation and understand what's going on and how we can better support either mom, child, teacher, whatnot. Yeah, I love it. 

Awesome. Love that. Thank you for sharing. So, Natalie, share a little about your special needs mom journey.

Yeah, thank you. So I'm going to take you back. Obviously, as you can hear, I'm an Aussie. So that's one thing. I will take you back on the journey with me. So I'll paint the picture for you. My son was probably just before his second birthday and I had just had my daughter. She was about six weeks old and we went into the pediatrician's office and she went in. She did all of her respective tests and, you know, but playing with teacups and, you know, asking him to come over and play here, of course, as an autistic child at that point, he just didn't want to play. He was more engaged with what he's own play and wasn't really focused on what she wanted him to do. Anyway, she sat me down and she looked me dead set in the eye and she said, I'm sorry, your son has autism. Good luck getting him out of that world. 

What? Yeah, that's what she said. And it set the tone for how I was going to manage all of the emotions that came up with autism and raising an autistic child. And I'm a firm believer that pediatricians play a significant role in being able to deliver news like this, that it's really important that you take the care, the empathy that, you know, this isn't going to be life, like life shattering. You will get through this. You will obviously you will have a moment of grief and you will go through it as you can. But there is light at the end of the tunnel and this child is beautiful and we need to, you know, support and love this child the best way that we know how. And so unfortunately, obviously hormones coursing through my brain, my and my body, because obviously my six-week-old daughter just, you know, having given birth to her, I grieved for him like he died. I grieved the idea of what he was going to be. Right. And I've heard you speak on other podcasts about this, right? You know, we see our children and they kick a ball up. He's going to be a soccer player, right? Or, you know, he, he, he, you know, writes or colors in really well. Oh, yes, he's definitely going to be an artist. You know, we have these ideas of what our children are going to become when they're quite young. And all of those ideas became just essentially set on fire because now that wasn't what the future held. That wasn't what it was going to look like. And it took me a long time to not only overcome the grief, but also to just to come to terms with the fact that he has autism and that, yes, this wasn't our life plan. However, he has so many beautiful qualities that I, you know, I am so excited to be able to be his mom and sharing that with him, you know, and support him on his journey. So it's been, it's definitely been a journey. Mm-hmm.

I can second that as far as it being a journey, as I'm sure all of our audience can identify with that. I'm still in shock, Natalie, about how your pediatrician responded. I can't, I'm still just trying to process that because I'm a healthcare professional myself, my husband as well. My husband's a nurse. I've been a physiotherapist for many, many years. And I just can't imagine that being okay to address one of our patients in such a manner, so uncaring, so unfeeling. I just am still struggling with that. So I can only imagine what you must have thought. Did you have any inkling that there may be something before she mentioned that? 

I didn't even know what autism was. And I vividly remember my mom coming in to tell me that, you know, a distant cousin, she had had a baby and that baby had been diagnosed with autism, you know, obviously when he was around two or three. And I remember thinking, oh, that's so sad. So what's on for dinner? Like, cause I couldn't relate to what was happening. I couldn't, I didn't understand what autism was. I didn't know that, you know, the rates are pretty high. Like obviously over in the States, it's much higher, but at the moment we've just done a recent study over in Australia and it's one in 40, right? It's these, the numbers are going up and we're going to have to either get better at supporting autistic children who will become autistic adults. Right. Or we're going to be in a lot of trouble, right? You're going to walk into a classroom and there's going to be more neurodivergent children in that classroom than they will be typical. It's literally, it's written, it's clear from the past and what we're seeing. So how do we better support those parents? How do we better support those children? And one thing I will say to you is my goodness, parents, especially moms, and I say moms because they are the primary caregiver. They are generally the ones at home while dad goes to work. They need better support. Cause if there's one thing I have learnt, if mom's not okay, mate the ship's going down. The ship is going down. No one is surviving this. So we need to make sure that moms are getting the support that they need because as I, again, as I've learnt, you go to the appointments of speech therapy, OT, physio, you name the allied health, right? You go in there, you have your 45 minute to an hour session and then they actually give you, obviously they give you homework. Cool. This is the thing that you have to do. The problem is if mom is in fight or flight and she's not coping, I guarantee you that homework isn't being done. Right? We're not better. We're not supporting our children because maybe we're using coping mechanisms in order to stuff down the pain. And I will put my hand up and say, I absolutely, my choice of poison was red wine. You know, I would come home because someone may have looked at my angel boy in a weird way because maybe, you know, cause he used to and still does a lot of vocal stimmy. And so, you know, children, adults would look and just be like, Oh, that's weird. That's like what's going on there. And I would be devastated because I looked at him and saw beauty and kindness and innocence and so much love. And they were judging this child before they even got a chance to know him. And so what I would do, it's five o'clock somewhere. Let's pour that wine. Let's go. And it wouldn't be, it wouldn't, it wouldn't not be uncommon for me to polish up a bottle of wine over two days. Right. Easy. No dramas. Like let's go. Just stuff those feelings down to why I don't have to feel them so that we can continue going on the, on the journey, because we've got things to do. We've got bills to pay. We've got therapy to go to. You can't be a mess. And it was hard. And it was a situation that most moms, I can, I obviously can only talk to the moms over here in Australia, but most moms are using some sort of coping mechanism, whether it's drinking drugs or, you know, shopping, whether they're excess scrolling on the internet or social media, you know, nonstop binging on Netflix, you name it. There is something that they're doing in order to cope. And we need to really look at those coping mechanisms, not saying that they're bad, but just saying that let's look at them as to why we're doing the things that we're doing. 

Yeah. How can we better support the moms? I love that you're thinking about that. As you were talking, I was just thinking about how it was for me when my children were little. And even though I'm an allied health professional, and I understand that yes, you give them homework, your patients, and yes, we want to make sure in the family, these children are getting opportunities to, you know, either stretch for those of them that are wheelchair bound as my oldest is or practicing speech or whatever it may be, occupational therapy type things, and I'm just, as you were talking, I'm thinking, it's all I can do to get through the day. And you want me to do what? And so even though they are doing their job, that's what we're supposed to do as allied health professionals is prescribe and make sure that people are, you know, doing things within the home. But it's very difficult to manage it all. It's very difficult. And especially if you have other siblings, I have two children, turns out both of them are on the spectrum, and each of them have other things as well. So trying to just get a meal, trying to make sure the kids get to the appointments, trying to make sure the house is relatively tidy, because we were fortunate enough to have some aides coming in. And I can't imagine if I didn't have those aides trying to do all the therapy as well. I couldn't have done it. I just couldn't have done it.

Absolutely. You know, at the moment, I'm seeing these women come in and, you know, clients of mine who are juggling so many different balls, spinning plates, whatever, you know, and they're not coping, right? They're not sleeping. They're not eating well. They're catastrophizing. They're so focused on the future around what the future is going to look like rather than being more in the present. And that's really hard to do when you want to change the future. You don't want it to be like this. This is not how you imagined it. And those sort of feelings, they don't instantly go away. They will stay with you and they will haunt you in the middle of the night, right? You will wake up like as I did, waking up in a pool of sweat, crying my eyes out in the middle of the night, not knowing what tomorrow was going to bring. How was he going to be tomorrow? Are we going to get through this? Will he ever talk? And will he be able to say, "I love you." You know, it was heartbreaking when I would walk into, you know, kinder, which is, I think it's preschool. So, you know, ages between three and four years old, he would go to kinder and all the moms would be laughing about how their child was singing a particular song and how it was so funny that they were asking questions. And inside, all I could think was, don't cry, don't cry, pull it together, don't cry, right? Because my child wasn't saying anything. And that was every day I would have to wake up and live that. And it would feel like my heart was literally being pulled out of my chest and stomped on in front of me. And you would just sort of, I've got very good at masking. I'm definitely, I don't think I'm neurodivergent. I actually haven't checked, but I don't think I am, but I wouldn't actually care even if I was. And I think that masking is exhausting. It is, I would come home, you know, trying to pretend that everything was okay. And I would come home and I'd just be like, I just need to just go to sleep. I can't, I don't have the brain capacity left to cook dinner and to deal with meltdowns and to, you know, deal with everything that I, as a mom, raising an autistic child, what they need. And I just didn't have that anymore. And we see that as chronic stress. We see that in, you know, our ability to show up when you're in that chronic stress, it just leads to so many chronic issues, you know, so much illness within the body. And we need to look at that so we can better support moms. 

Absolutely. And as you're saying that I'm thinking, you know, trying to manage everything and then we're supposed to be nurturing our relationship with our significant other. Oh, help me somebody.

It's so true. So true. 

So, Natalie, tell me the grief, the overwhelm and the fear that come with learning that your child has autism. How have you moved through these emotions? 

Yeah, such a good question. For me, I found significant, the amount of time that I spent pouring into myself was through coaching. Right. I went and I saw the psychologist and I loved it. And it was great. However, and there's a big however there, unless you've walked this journey, you can't tell me that you know what it feels like. I know that you can be empathetic and that you can try and put yourself in my shoes. But there's something to be said about having a coach that has lived experience, being able to empathize and say, yes, I do know what it's like to wake up in the middle of the night in massive PTSD. I do know what it feels like when you feel like you can't go on. And I think that coaching, that ability to reframe, that ability to understand and bring awareness to certain behaviors, to certain ways of thinking brings so much light so that we could get better at building that muscle. Because realistically, you know, at the beginning, your muscle isn't going to be strong. It's not going to be well toned, but it's over time, you are going to be the most amazing mom because your muscles are strong and you are aware of what is happening. You're aware of when your mind is out of control and that you're looping and that you're thinking of things that really aren't going to help the situation at hand. And that's where coaching can really help. 

I love that you brought up the coaching piece because it's validating. 

Right. As a coach, you've walked the walk and the fact is you're coming out on the other side. I don't think we ever reach the other side as parents of children with disabilities, but you're moving forward, you're moving through. And I think it just gives hope to your clients when they realize you've worn the t-shirt, you're still wearing the t-shirt, you get it. People don't have to explain because you get it.

Absolutely. Absolutely. You know, and it's funny because I see women who are in the supermarkets and at Kindar and they've got that child who is melting down and you just want to go up and say, give them a hug and be like, it's going to be okay. We will get through this together. And, you know, no, your child isn't a naughty boy or a naughty girl, you know, or that they just need a good smack. How I was told many times, right? That is such a load of baloney. That doesn't work, first of all. And second of all, these children are trying to get their needs met. If us as adults weren't getting our needs met, would we not vocalize and would we not advocate for ourselves and say, Hey, look, I need eight hours sleep in order to be my best version. And, you know, and then someone going, well, that's just ridiculous. You can't be going to sleep at eight, you know, for eight hours, you need to only have five hours. No one's going to, you know, advocate the way that a mom can advocate for their child. But if you are, again, under that stress and that pressure, you won't be able to advocate because you are barely keeping alive yourself. You're barely, you know, just up to here with water, you know, and that's where it impacts every avenue of a mom. Like you said, it impacts your partner, your spouse. It impacts the other children that, you know, typical otherwise in the family, it impacts your friendships. It impacts your work, you know, this is not just a one done and it's all organized. We are really struggling to make sure that we are ticking all the boxes. Some parents pull away, some moms pull away from all friendships because they don't want people to know or to find out. I definitely lived in that fear of blame, shame, uncertainty. It was my fault because honestly, Valerie, I honestly thought that if I would told someone that my Angel Boy was autistic, I think I used to think that they would look at me and go, it's your fault. You're the one who caused this. And so that fear really held me back from sharing his diagnosis because I really did think that they were going to blame them. But lo and behold, when I did share the, when I actually did have the courage to share with people around me, there was nothing but love. There was nothing but support. There was nothing but why didn't you share this earlier? Why, why are you holding on to such a huge amount of information, trying to navigate it by yourself? And I just think it's, it can be overwhelming for parents when they try to keep it all in. Cause you know, this image that you want to, everything to look perfect, but what is perfection though? Really your idea of perfection is going to be very, very different to my idea of perfection. And this is where that word, I have some serious issues with that word cause I'm just saying it's just not, it's not real. It's not, we can, we can never get to that perfect because it's, it's really subjective. You know, it's subjective to you and I. 

Yeah. As you were talking, I'm thinking as moms and especially first time moms, we have that, and I don't know where it comes from, but we have that idea that we have to do it and we have to do it right. And only we can do it. So we have to look like we've got it together and we have to look like we're coping. So I can certainly relate to, I don't want anybody really to know I need to look like I've got it together and I can manage this because I'm a mom. Moms are supposed to take care of their kids. Moms are supposed to be able to handle it all. So that was one of the pressures that I put on myself initially. And I'm a go-getter task-orientated, energize the bunny. Just keep going until I fall into bed type of person. And so for me, it took a long time to recognize that I don't have to do all this by myself. I don't have to shoulder all of this. And as you said, I love that you brought up that, you know, once you did share, people do want to help. They just don't know how. And unless we share with them and unless we ask them and unless we kind of tap into what we know they're good at, so where they can help us, they're not going to know what to do. And they're just going to stand on the sidelines. And some of them, I know some of my colleagues, some of my friends were like, Oh, and she looks like she's got it all together. So I guess she doesn't really need me, but they want to help, but we have to give them permission to help. 

Oh, those words. I hope all of your listeners are really listening to that because we can't help if we don't, if we don't say it, you know, it's the same thing. I, after my angel boy was born, I went into postnatal anxiety and it was horrific and very much like you, you know, warning, we tried a really long time to fall pregnant. And, you know, it's one of those things where in your mind, you know what you're going to, you're great at looking after kids and this is going to be a dream and all this. And then, you know, the sleepless nights catch up and you just not coping and all of the other bits and pieces that come up. And suddenly you're not the mum that you saw in the social media. You're not the mum that you see in the movies, you know, and that can be a really big toll for mums to come to grips with because this isn't how I imagined my mother would to be going. I thought it was all going to be sunshine roses and I was going to be wearing the beautiful dresses and the full face of makeup and my child was going to listen all the time. And yeah, that's, no, that's not how it works, right? Children are their own beings. They're not robots and so they're going to do what they need to do in order to get their needs met. And I just think we just need to take pressure off mums. Oh, we need to take pressure off mums. 

Absolutely. And I love again that you brought that up. It's the fact that they are communicating and they're communicating the only way they know how. And so we don't need to judge. And I know we feel that other people may be judging, but I got to a point where it's like, you know what? You can think what you want to think. And like you, my children are beautiful. They are angels. Not really, but 

Oh, I love that. 

But I had to get to a place where, you know what? It's okay. I remember, wanting just real quick going into a grocery store and a mum was with her, I would say he was probably late teens, autistic son, and she was apologizing for his behavior as he was moving around the groceries, the vegetables and the fruit and all that kind of stuff. And I just said to her, you don't need to apologize. You don't need to apologize. Why do we think we need to apologize? I don't know. But we do because our kids are not conforming how we feel that they should conform. Let's just celebrate who they are and how they are. 

Oh, yes. Can you please preach that? Put it on a social media note, put it on your post-it note, put it everywhere. The fact that we apologize all the time. It's such a woman thing, right? We, I don't hear men coming up and like, Oh, I'm really sorry about this. And I'm sorry about that. No, guys aren't doing this, but women are. And why are we always apologizing? Like who are we apologizing for? I agree with you, Valerie. Look, I'm sick of apologizing for my child being the way that he is, right? If he wants to walk up and down the aisles of the supermarket, touching everything. Well, then you know what, Betty? So be it. Like the Karens of the world and the Susie of the world, mate, you just need to take a chill pill. Okay. No one's dying because he's touching everything. Okay. Just calm down.

We just need to take a real look at what's important and what's really not important. And him touching the flower, right? Not pushing it over. He's not throwing it on the floor. He's literally touching it as he walks down the aisle. No one's dying because of this, right? This is not catastrophic. And yet there will be stairs and there will be looks. And I'm just like, you know what, whatever. It's a reflection more of you than it is of me or my son.

Yeah. Yeah. So Natalie, tell us, you have shared with me a little bit about SING, your SING method. So, can you share with our audience what that entails? 

Yes, absolutely. So I love, love, love this. And I, something I created when I was going through it. So, and it was something to help me at that point in time. So, the SING method is obviously an acronym. And so S stands for stop what you're doing. Okay. And I should preface before I start continuing on to explain. The SING method is usually used when you find yourself looping through thought. And for the listeners who don't understand what looping is, it's basically having the same thought go round and round in your head, right? It's like, he's never going to talk, you know, he's never going to be able to walk or to crawl or to ride a bike or play sports or, and this like, all these negative thoughts ruminating in your brain. So, this strategy helps with getting out of that looping system and being able to be more present. So S means stop what you're doing, right? As moms, we're generally doing 50,000 things at once. Like we're listening to a podcast, we're watching the dishes. We're also watching our children watch the cartoons. We're making sure that, you know, the cakes in the oven not going to burn. Like we're so good at multitasking. But for right now, I just need you to stop. I need you to I inhale when we're in stress or fight or flight. And Valerie, I'd love for you to answer this question. Have you ever noticed that you are sighing all the time? Like doing that? Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So when we sigh, it's a really good indicator that our brain is saying to us, we're not getting enough oxygen. We're not getting enough oxygen in our lungs. So the body then overrides the brain and says, nope, take a breath, take a big breath, take a sigh. So we will, I used to walk around the house because I just was just doing these very shallow breaths, that whole not taking in the deep breath and you're doing it so subconsciously that you don't, you're not paying attention. So hence why we're forced to take this deep breath and taking that big breath of oxygen, it clears the brain. Oh, I can relax. I'm actually getting oxygen. I'm not going to die. We're not in a situation where, you know, where we're trying to run from something or where, you know, we need to make sure that our awareness is around. The next thing, N is for notice your thoughts. So what happens a lot of the time is when we are ruminating, we don't even know that we're doing it. We don't, we're so subconscious to what's happening in our brain and those ruminating thoughts, that it's not until we actually notice our thoughts, that's when we realize, oh my goodness, we're actually thinking these most horrific things. And because you, because we're doing it so often, it becomes a pattern and it becomes that the brain goes, oh, okay, we're doing this pattern again. Cool. Let's run this strategy. Let's do this. So, the next one is G and G is gain clarity around those thoughts. So, I actually encourage my clients to sit down and write out all of the thoughts that are coming up. What, it doesn't matter whether it's the most ridiculous thought that you've ever thought about, or even if it's like something really relevant, write it all down. Once you've written down your list, I would say then, okay, cool. What is true and what is fear-based? Okay. So when we have thoughts that are true, we can absolutely put it to you against that and say, okay, great. I understand that my child's not talking right now. However, when I say this statement, my child will never talk. I don't know about you, Valerie. I'm not a psychic, you know, I'm definitely not God. So I don't know how I can presume that that statement is actually true. 

Right. Right. 

So our fear plays a really big role in having these thoughts and putting, you know, even anxiety, right? I just saw the Inside Out 2 movie and that was, it was really interesting and really fascinating about how anxiety plays such a big role in the way that we think. And so, you know, when we can actually articulate and see what, where is the fear talking and where is the actual fact coming in? Because I don't, like if I, if you said to me, or if I wrote down on this list, he's never going to ride a bike, that would have been, and would have felt very true a few years ago. Right. Hey, there's no way that my angel boy is going to be on a bike. Right. Now, I classify him as a BMX bandit. He is on that bike and he is living life. 

Right. 

But how could I say that that was a true statement I couldn't see into the future? So it's understanding how our thoughts play such a significant role in the way that we're showing up and the way that we're advocating for our child when we're telling ourselves things that may not necessarily be true.

Absolutely. Love that. Thank you so much. So Natalie, where can our audience go to find out more about you? 

Yeah. Thank you. So my website is www.youareseen.com.au. My socials are on Facebook. You can find me under “you are seen” on Instagram. It's a bit of a long one. It's You_Are_Seen_. And then on LinkedIn, just under Natalie Karras. I post a lot on socials. So I try to give as much free content as I can. I put out a blog once a week where I'm trying to be as vulnerable as I can in those blog posts. But I also try to give a lot of tips, tools and strategies to help mums who are going through this journey. And I've also got like a little freebie in case anyone wants to download it. We've got, yeah, basically it just talks about my child was diagnosed with autism. Now what? Now what do I do? And so it just goes through all the things that may come up around that, that process of grief, that process of isolation and what happens in the next steps following the diagnosis. 

Love that. Thank you so much. So audience, just so you know, I will have all of those links in the show notes. So do check out the show notes. All right, Natalie, before we conclude our conversation, I'd love to hear some words of encouragement from you to other mums and parents who are raising kids with special needs. What message would you like to share with them to offer inspiration and support? 

Oh, thank you. Oh, I would say to mums, I know that you feel like you're in a really dark place right now. And I know that you feel like you're alone. And I know that you feel like this isn't what you signed up for. But I want you to know that your child will teach you so many lessons along the way. He or she will be the most amazing, you know, teacher. And you will share so many experiences and you will become an emerge from this, a wiser, stronger person. And you know what, it's okay to cry. It's okay to curse. It's okay to get angry. And I had my fair share of words with God. And I was like, you better come down here. Let's talk, right? I want to understand why. Why is this the case? So know that you're not alone. Know that there are resources out there and we are willing to help and want to do the best by you, but you have to take the first step and reach out. So don't do this. Don't walk this journey alone.

Thank you, Natalie. Thank you so much. Wise words. And I hope our audience is going to be taking them to heart. Natalie, thanks so much for your time. We've loved having you on the show and thank you for sharing your story. We really appreciate it. 

Thank you so much for having me, Valerie. This was such a blast. Thank you. If there's anything I can do, please reach out. I'm deeply passionate about moms with raising children on the autism spectrum. It's what I think about day and night. So please, if there's anything I can do, let me know. 

Absolutely. Thank you. So audience, I want you to live with intention and embrace the journey. 

Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Special Needs Moms, Circle of Strength. We hope today's story has touched your heart, opened your mind and reminded you that even in the face of challenges, there is always light to be found. By opting to follow this podcast, you remain connected to the power of strength and unity, the potential of love to overcome challenges and the beauty of a community that understands.

If you as a special needs mom are looking for connection with other moms and an opportunity to gain some insight and to share your insight, then check the show notes for the link to join the special needs moms, Circle of Strength Facebook community. Love to see you there.

Until we meet again, continue to draw from the Circle of Strength that surrounds you. Find courage in the stories we share and know that you are never alone on this journey.