Transforming Devastation with Dr. Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon

Dr. Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon is a special needs parenting speaker and coach who works to prevent special needs parents from feeling isolated and overwhelmed to the point where they lose touch with joy and fulfillment in their lives. She and her husband of 15 years have an older teen boy and preteen, bedridden girl whom Marcia considers her best teacher.

Transforming Past Narratives:
- Marcia delves into childhood memories and the perceptions that shaped her drive for approval and perfectionism.
- Marcia now redefines these experiences with compassion, recognizing the need for validation and the freedom from it.
- The journey of healing childhood wounds by becoming her own source of love and support.
Overcoming the Inner Critic:
- Confronting and redefining the role of the inner critic, turning harsh judgment into a source of protection and motivation.
- Developing an inner dialogue of self-compassion and recognizing the transformative power of self-kindness.
Discovering Self-Compassion:
- The process of being gentle with oneself, breaking cycles of self-criticism, and learning to extend the same compassion inward that we offer to others.
- How changing self-talk is a daily practice and a powerful tool for self-empowerment.
Living with Authenticity and Empowerment:
- The importance of being vulnerable in one’s journey to connect with others and find support.
- Unburdening oneself of expectations and societal pressures to find inner peace and growth.
Prioritizing Self-Care as a Caregiver:
- The necessity of self-care for parents of special needs children.
- Strategies for finding small moments of peace and self-replenishment in the midst of life’s chaos.

“Adult me loves you, little Marsh. So you have a safe person always.” – Marcia

Connect with Dr. Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon:

- Special Needs Parent Podcast here: https://open.spotify.com/show/0wvHlIgcZc5T5sZRp3iFLK?si=dPckr6BuRUeVxGPLU3WRQw
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/share/g/3dgabxN8vTEYAM9u/?mibextid=K35XfP
- FB profile: https://www.facebook.com/MarciaNB8
- IG profile: https://www.instagram.com/specialneedsparentjourney?igsh=MjM4ZHlzNjNwcThx&utm_source=qr

Gift: A free Level Up and Thrive coaching call with Marcia, tailored to support special needs parents. Interested persons should message Marcia.

Marcia’s book, 'Lighting the Path'

Get your copy here: https://books2read.com/lightingthepath

Live with Intention and 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

And Emma's laugh weaves through the house. And it's the loudest, most joyful laugh. For the first time, I'm open to learning. I'm open to the lesson that she's been teaching for seven years patiently with me to receive the lesson.

Welcome everyone. I'm so glad that you're here for another episode of special needs mom's circle of strength podcast. I am excited to introduce you to Dr. Marcia Nathai-Balkissoon. She is a special needs parent speaker and coach who works to prevent special needs parents from feeling isolated and overwhelmed to the point where they lose touch with joy and fulfillment in their lives. She and her husband of 15 years have an older teen boy and a pre-teen bedridden girl who Marcia considers her best teacher. So Marcia welcome!

Hi Valerie, so much life and spirit in you and it makes me really happy.

Well, I'm so glad that you're here to share with us today. And I always start my podcast with the same question. What is one unique thing about you?

That's the hardest thing, right? We take ourselves for granted and we don't see anything too special in us. I think what makes me special is my heart.

When you sometimes hit rock bottom, you start to learn how to feel the pain of other people, because it's easier to empathize. I haven't forgotten that since the ups and downs of my life this past decade.

Mm hmm. Well, thank you for sharing that. I love that. I think that's the first time I've heard that your heart. So thank you for sharing. All right. So I love, and I'm sure my, our audience is curious to know too, about your special needs mom journey. So tell us a little bit about that.

Oh, it's a big story, but I'm going to try to condense it. The journey started with me getting a new job finally becoming a lecturer at a university 10 years into applying. Life was looking like it was going to head up. Yeah. And I got pregnant and I had a child within three months of getting that job offer. By the October of that year, my daughter who had been born with an unforeseen heart condition had to have open heart surgery. And following that surgery, a doctor unfortunately dislodged a tube from her heart while she was recovering.

And Emmy, Emma is her name, Emmy bled out. So she flatlined at age eight months, and unfortunately became severely brain injured. The prognosis was that she would be vegetative for life and she was seizing and so on from the very first moment. So she lost the ability to suck and swallow and she lost all of her senses. The doctors basically said there's no hope for her without food. Let her go. Sean and I have luckily always been on the same page. Yes, that really helped. And we both felt that that wasn't even something we needed to discuss. So it was not a choice for us. And so we just sort of ignored it and we moved on. They then came to us and said, well, put her in a home if you all don't want to listen and move on with your life. Because your daughter will be according to one extremely prestigious doctor, your child will be a log in a bed, put her in a home and move on. I laugh now, because it's so unbelievable that somebody would say those things. I said, you learn empathy because I was so shell shocked for those months, while Em was comatose and all the ups and downs, that really it was about putting one foot in front of another. It was about, I had a five year old son at that point, he was with us at her bedside.

One day, Emmy was standing for the first time the next day she had surgery and she was flat lined and now vegetative. So we went from a real high to the bottom falling out of our world and the five year old next to me required me to still play and sing and pretend that life was really joyful. So I didn't quite get to own the despair that a parent might feel. My husband was crying, he would go and stand behind the equipment and he'd cry. And we both couldn't disappear at the same time.

So I just, as we say, man up, I just manned up. Basically, square your shoulder and get on with it because the priority at that point was keeping Em alive. The priority was making sure Brian didn't lose his innocence and his joy.

And so I don't know why, I think God prepares you. I had walked with CDs of classical music. Yeah. Not something that I used to listen to all the time but I walked with these CDs to the States from Trinidad. And when Em lost her ability to hear, see everything, that was always on at her bedside. And then slowly she started turning to the sound. And we knew that her hearing was coming back.

And then one day somebody walked by. By the time we asked to get into rehab because I didn't know when we came back to Trinidad, what facilities would be present, what competencies would be present, even therapies. If you are only exposed to people who are this on the scale who are this badly off. And my child is one who doesn't usually survive the kind of condition. I don't know if you know what to do. So I asked them, could we get her in rehab for a little while so that Sean and I could learn? Because when we went back, we knew a lot of it might be on us. And we had the most wonderful occupational therapist. Her name was Vanessa and she advocated so hard for us. She wasn't even our occupational therapist. She walked by and saw what had happened to Em. And she arranged for them to send her to our bedside.

And she began to touch Em and to talk to Em and to show us without teaching, right? Because she wasn't allowed to teach, I would assume, but she was doing things in a way that we could understand why it was happening and understand what to do. And this lady just brought my child back in so many ways because the approach was that if they had to put a tube down Em's mouth, nobody said, Em, we are going to put something in your mouth, then pull her jaw open and stick this thing down her throat. And so Em became hypersensitive to touch and she hated touch, she feared touch.

And intuition, which to me is the same as God said that I needed to show her that touch can be loving and gentle. And so I decided there was a little plastic toothbrush thing you could put on your finger and brush teeth. And I decided after doing it a while that even that was forcing more, you know, invasive things on my child. So, I would really wash my hands clean. And then I would take my finger and say, baby, mommy is going to clean your mouth. Right. And I'm touching your teeth and I'm touching your cheeks and I'm touching your tongue. And the curve of Emma's palate was my curve of my finger. It was just so amazing. It fit like two puzzle pieces. And Emma started to learn the parts of her mouth. Because I'd say I'm going to touch your tongue now and her tongue would move. I'm going to touch your upper palate now and she'd open her mouth. 

Oh, neat.

And she started to look forward to gentleness and the love and you know, and we'd stroke her and she was hypersensitive to the point where if I touched her lightly she'd have been screaming but she couldn't say anything. She was soundless. So we'd see tears coming down because she's in pain after aftermath. You'd see tears coming down and her mouth would be wide open screaming. And not a sound would come out. It was horror movie you could live. Oh, and I remember hearing children next door crying after their surgeries, you know, in other ICU rooms. And the parents would say, I wish, I wish my child wouldn't scream like that. And I'd be like, I wish mine would. Because at least she'd be able to express to say to us, mom, dad, I'm in pain. I think that is the hardest, hardest memory I have of seeing my little child locked in a box. Yes. And not being able to even find a way out. So touch became the way that we connected. 

Nice. 

And music and sound, us talking to her, us saying, you know, we want you we love you, because you're surrounded by people who come up and say loudly in her hearing that we should, put her somewhere else, let her go. And those things if a child in a coma hears, those things say you're not worthy. So we made sure to have conversations, hard conversations happen not in her room. And only she's doing so much better. Look how wonderful she looks. And, you know, and we're so happy to have her, etc, etc. And of course, Brian, which is a little five-year-old self would come and we'd say touch Em and kiss Em, you know, so I think, luckily, we both found ourselves on the same page. It was a family affair. Yes. I’m so grateful for that. Before Em got sick. Sean and I talked about divorce a lot. 

I'm sorry.

Maybe not the year that Em was born, but many times over the years coming up to them. We were having so much difficulty in work that the pressure would, you know, affect us. Em flatlined came back and she was so hurt that suddenly we had one aim that was shared. And the one aim was to be there for our children. And it wasn't just Em because it was so easy to forget Brian, he'd fall off, right? So we just tried so hard. And suddenly when you have shared goals, there's no speaking about I can't stand you, I need to get away from you, right? We're a team together. We're going to survive. So at least for me, and I think it's the same for Sean, I haven't asked him to commit by saying this sentence, but my life is more happier now than it ever was. Even though it's darker, than it ever was. Right? There's so much pain, but also so much joy. 

Yes.

I'm so grateful not that she got hurt, but I still have her. Yes. And I know that the four of us were really the right fit.

Marcia, thank you so much. And I applaud you for being so vulnerable. Thank you for sharing, because it's not easy and not many people talk about the pressures within a relationship, within a marriage prior to having a special needs child or a child with disabilities. Often, that's when it starts to break down for a lot of people. But I love in your case that you were able to put your differences aside, have that singular focus of your children, and being there for your children. And so I just want to applaud you for being able to work through that. And 15 years in. And again, we can just praise God for that. Thank you so much for sharing that and being so vulnerable. And I appreciate when you'd mention that little thing that you put on your finger to do all the desensitization with your daughter. I remember we had one of those for our oldest as well, because she is G tube fed, so she's not able to take anything via mouth. So we were doing a lot of that desensitization with her different little things and tools that we would put in her mouth. Fortunately for us, she didn't mind it too much. And we did try different foods. She loved peanut butter, but she wasn't able to coordinate her swallowing muscles to be able to swallow, but she did enjoy the taste of little things on her mouth. But it took, I remember it taking 30 minutes to get one tablespoon of food in. And then you run the risk of aspiration, right? 

Yes, exactly. 

So we'd made the decision that she was going to be tube fed. She’s thriving. I mean, she does not look like a G tube fed child. My oldest is now 22. Okay, we were given a year of prognosis. I was not given the opportunity to bond with my child in the ICU. I saw other moms doing skin on skin with their child. Melody-Anne was initially on a ventilator. And I remember looking at all these moms and I'm thinking, why are they not giving me the chance to cuddle with my child's skin on skin. And it's because they didn't think she would live.

Oh my God. 

We were given a year of prognosis.

Yeah. Well, when in fact, it makes it less likely that she'll live because she doesn't get that human contact.

Right. Now we were able to touch her through the incubator and stuff, but to have that not the same, not the same as having her on my body.

And it took and I have to say probably took about three weeks when we brought her home, because they were sending a home to die basically. When we brought her home, I remember it taking about three weeks for me to feel that, trying not to get too emotional, but to feel that rush of love for her. It took about three weeks for me to actually get to that place.

And yeah, I'm glad I understand that. I understand that because you didn't get that first oxytocin hit. Right. When baby came. And add all the trauma, right? 

Exactly. Exactly.

Yes.

And I just want to give a shout out to Allied Health. Your Vanessa, your occupational therapist. I am a physical therapist by trade. And so I just want to say yay.

But I just remembered her last name. So if anybody has her know that you have a gem, she's in Florida as far as I know still, Vanessa Berezowski was her name.

Yay. 

And I think she runs her own business now. So that's wonderful.

Okay, so Marcia, I love your philosophy of stepping past overwhelm and creating your best life anyway. And most of us, I'm sure our audience that are listening, have had some kind of, and I'm gonna say it, traumatic experience as their child has come into the world, or soon after their child has come into the world. So tell us how you have gone about creating your best life anyway.

It all started with my best teacher Em. It's that after the whole mess happened, I came home. I think it was two months after because we had stayed in hospital and gone to rehab and stayed there for as long as we could. Until we came back because my job was restarting. I'm a lecturer. And so I had the Christmas holiday and I stayed for the Christmas holiday there just to pack in as much as we could and give Em the best chance possible. She also was put on a G tube because she had lost the suck and swallow reflex. And I won't even go in the direction of telling you those stories. But your question was how have I actually happened upon getting out of overwhelm? And it was that I would wake up every morning, and as soon as my eyes cracked open, I would be flooded with thoughts about how much I didn't have in control. And cares about what else was going to deteriorate because Em was deteriorating. And this overwhelm and despair lasted for about five or seven years. Because Sean was already dealing with all I was dealing with, and I didn't feel like I had the right to offload on him. He didn't need to have a wife who was depressed to deal with right? So I didn't let him see all of what I was going through. Certainly he knew of some of the things because we had to talk about realities and how to deal. But I didn't let him know how broken I was. And so he would sleep with Em most nights. And I would be alone on our bed and at two, three in the morning, I wouldn't be sleeping because we didn't, we haven't gotten to sleep in 12 years through the night because she doesn't sleep through the night. And I'd sit there in the dark. And I would cry out everything, you know in silent sobs, but really, really heartbroken. And pure despair. And I'd say to God, you know there, God don't wake me up in the morning. Like I didn't have the guts to do it myself. But I sure wished He would have done it for me. I didn't feel like I was making a difference. Not because I didn't love my child. I did. But I felt like I was adding no value. I felt so overwhelmed that I was drowning. And the only thing that felt like I could find relief was to not be present. I even, because the first thing we had done when we came back was we took out insurance on ourselves. We, all our money had been used to keep Em alive and to pay for other things to do. So we came out not having finances sorted. And we took out life insurance to save, which every one of us has thought, what happens when I'm no longer here. So we took this life insurance that we couldn't necessarily afford out, but that was for Em's future. And all I could think is I add so little value to this child, the financial value would be considerable for her. At least Sean would be able to afford what he needs to afford if I'm not here. So that's where I lived from.

 Wow.

And so I woke up in morning and would pull on this cloak of despair. And I'd trudge into the day expecting, because I have extreme back pain at this point, both because of psychological load and because lifting all the time twisting all the time, etc. Yeah. And I’m lifting Em and I'm crying. And I'm in pain and I'm alone and I'm trying to figure it out. And I've changed my hours so that when Sean drives in at the end of the day, I jump in the car and I race up the road to do my work in the evenings and nights.

Mm hmm.

That's how we arranged it so that I could still earn an income in order to pay bills. That was the overwhelm for me. Yeah, plus feeling that I was dropping the ball on my son feeling a lot of guilt about not being enough.

My house was in a mess. I had people who would rarely come to my home. There was one person who would come to my home and do a white glove test. A very close person too and instead of saying, “How are you?” I'd get no hello. I just get “Look at this place. Can't you put some flowers in your yard? Can't you clean up this place? What kind of home is this?” And that’s another load, right? So, so many loads financial worries, everything deteriorating with Em, me not knowing how to support her. You know, my husband and I described us as two ships passing in the night. Right. I go to take over, you go to sleep. I go to take over, you go to the grocery. I cook you…. So we never get to feed our relationship. And all of this makes up that overwhelm. And then one day I woke up. It was sunrise, dawn had just come, my eyes open. And I prepared to take on this dark coat. And Emma's laugh weaves through the house. And it's the loudest, most joyful laugh. For the first time, I'm open to learning. I'm open to the lesson that she's been teaching for seven years patiently with me to receive the lesson. And I think, hey, that's the person who lost everything. You are the person you think you've lost everything much but what have you lost, nothing. And the little one who lost everything she lost all her senses. She lost her ability to even cross the one-year developmental milestones. She will not go to school she will not not not not not. And yet this child can open her eyes and listen to a bird outside her window. And say what a wonderful day God. I'm ready to live it. I know I'm enough. It was such a beautiful, beautiful lesson for me. 

Powerful. 

And I've never forgotten it. And that day I decided, okay, Marcia, time to kick yourself in the butt. And get out of this attitude that you have. Yes, you have a reason for it. Yes, you felt broken. Yes, this is something you never dreamt could have. Right, because everything we programmed with says, if you go to school, and you work hard, and you build a career, and if you're a good person, then life will also return it. Yes. Well, I can't see that I ever didn't follow those things. And yet somebody took a baseball bat to my life, right? And all of my dreams died.  And I think that broke me. Yeah, because I could find no hope, no reason for living, except be a robot who took care of my child. Right? I didn't show her a robot. She got lots of laughter and lots of kisses and lots of all those things. But so much of it was almost a pretense.

Mm hmm.

Was me feeling so flat and broken, but having to always put out something more for my kids. And for the world, because nobody wanted to hear my reality.

Mm hmm.

I went to work and the professor in charge of my department at work came one day and said, I know you're going through a lot. But my advice to you is to pretend that nothing is happening that's different from anybody else's life. Don't speak about it. Don't acknowledge that you have anything going on in a life that's hard. Just show up here as 100% chipper and present. It was the absolute wrong advice.

Oh, my goodness.

But see, I needed to hear these nonsensical things to come to know that this is not what my purpose is.

Mm hmm.

My purpose is to speak truth and to make a safe place for other people who are walking this road and to say listen, this is hard. And you get to own that. This is hard. And the way that you move forward is that you have to see it own it, feel it. Yeah. And then you can process it. And you can choose to move forward from it because we don't deserve to stay stuck there. Like I stayed stuck for five to seven years.

Wow. Thank you again for your vulnerability. And I'm sure many of our listeners can identify with that. Putting on that cloak and it took seven years mine took a long time as well. And what I'm hearing is that we need to grieve. But most of us don't take the time to do it. Because we have to be on for the family. So that's the children. And if you have other children, so you've got your child with disabilities, you've got other children, potentially, your spouse, your partner. And then like you said, job. 

Yeah.

And I was your community and your service and all of those things come before you. Yes. And the way that I describe it, Valerie is we put everything on this to do list that's never ending. Right. And you know, you know what falls off the bottom because it is only so long.

What falls off the bottom is first your relationship. And, and also yourself, your priorities. Oh, they fall off, they fall off for years if you don't start getting away from saying my dreams have died and I don't deserve another dream. Oh, yes, you do. And it takes a while to see that even in this situation of darkness, you can and you should have an audacious vision for your life. 

Audacious.

I love that audacious. We're talking big, grand, out of this world. So, Marcia, not many of us want to acknowledge the inner critic. And I know, personally, I want to hush its voice, even though we can learn from it. So what have you learned about your inner critic as a special needs parent?

My inner critic always had sharp teeth. I got to know my inner critic when I was maybe two or three. It has been with me since I was a little, little one. But I just thought that was the way life was. Until around 35, when I started to realize I'm very type A. I plan for everything and I have contingency plans on top of that. I always perform far past what anybody sets as the goal for me, because my goals are higher than that, because I'm trying to earn approval and earn love. And that came from some brokenness as a child, which I didn't know. Around 35 was my wake-up call. My dad died. And that caused me to realize, hey, what would he want for you? He wanted me to be happy. And I realized, yeah, I was ticking all the boxes for success. But I wasn't ticking the box for happiness, for fulfillment and joy. Those lines, joy and fulfillment are my tag line things that I look for. I wasn't feeling joy in my life. Everybody thought I was successful driving the company car and getting the big pay. But I was empty. I was seeking more. I was working harder. I was giving up myself in order to tick all the boxes. And then when I lost dad, who was my very favorite person in the world, asked myself, I had two days before he died, I had been laid off. So I had no job and I had no dad. And I had a one-year-old son. And I asked myself, you know, you could get another job, just like this one, do you want it? And the answer is no, I want to start a new career in education, not an engineer, which is what I was. So forget the engineering management kind of field. Time to start education, which is where your heart always was. And I had to start at the very beginning. And this inner critic kept, you know, always speaking up to tell me I wasn't good enough, you're going to mess up unless you, unless you…. And then came Emma's damage. And the inner critic got worse because it would guilt me all the time.

Why are you sitting with Emma, you should be working, why are you working, you should be helping your children, you should be doing therapy with your child. There's always a judgment. And I decided, you know what, let me get to understand why I do this to myself.

There’s a lot of it, is just self-work. So I just took a journal, a copybook, and I started to write. And in writing, I discovered things that I didn't know I thought and felt. And I discovered that I was carrying so much that I wasn't enough. So much saying to me that I was a failure, I was a loser, etc, etc, etc. And to make up for that, or I wasn't, glowy and pretty and, and funny enough for people to like me. So I had to work my fingers to the bone to earn approval from people and acceptance from people. And it got worse because with Em, my family, majority of my family and one friend remain, just disappear. Oh, the moment even my neighbors never came after we came home with Em. And these were people who used to be in my house. Right? I'm talking about people who were really close. But when the bottom fell out of my world, so did they?

I'm sorry.

And, I felt that I was unlovable, not unloved, unlovable. And that had to reside with me, with who I was.

Yes.

And in listening to this inner critic, I was like, why is my inner critic asking these things? Why is my inner critic always seeing that I'm this failure or I'm, or failure lies ahead if I don't overperform. If I don't give up sleep, I have three hours sleep after I see about Em and I still want to give up some of that? So then I started to realize my inner critic has a voice. I actually hear the sound of a voice. And it's my mom's voice.  I, the first person I wanted to impress has remained the most, the biggest need to impress somebody. It has remained with me and it's my mom. And I had to say to myself, but, you know, Marcia, if you have to perform to earn the love of your mom, something is wrong. And that was a kicking off point. And it could be my perception, right?

Yes.

Some of it is real stuff, but it was as perceived by a two-year-old or seven-year-old. Yes. I'm a grown woman now. And I get to look back on those events and say, I understand why you felt like that as a child, but you don't have to feel that way anymore, Marcia, because guess what? You don't need mom's approval for everything in your life. And you don't need to not mistakes because everybody makes mistakes and it's fine, you know, because you're good at learning and you're good at growing. And, I started to say, you know what, Marsh, you were trying to buy love and acceptance. And you don't need to because see, adult me, adult me loves you little Marsh. So you have a safe person always.

 Yes.

Right. I am your safe person. And you don't need to always try to protect, over performing and by beating yourself up and by calling yourself a loser. That's how the inner critic work saved me, I would say. Because after we face the harsh truth, then we say, okay, so how do I want life to be instead? Yes. How do I want to talk to myself?  And finally, the lesson that came from that was the power of self-compassion. Yes, something I had never really thought about. I am always kind to somebody else when they make mistakes. Why am I not that kind to me? 

Yeah. 

So I've been working on that for the past six, seven years.

All right. Well, thank you so much. Because it is choice. We choose how we speak to ourselves, how we view ourselves, our perception of ourselves. So thank you for for delving in and again, being so vulnerable Marcia, I really appreciate that because I'm sure many can identify with that need for approval. We're always seeking, it's a human thing. We're always seeking it, whether it be a parent, whether it be a teacher, our spouse even. So we just need to acknowledge that it's a thing. And it's a real thing, but it can be addressed. And I'm so glad that you've been able to work through that and become the beautiful person that you are. And thank you so much.

Still working on it, Valerie. So work in progress.

We are all a work in progress!

So Marcia, do you have anything that you'd like to share with our audience?

I do a lot of coaching for people, obviously from the things I've talked about. It is about how do we unburden ourselves? How do we give ourselves the kind of support that we really long for? Because a lot of the time we are the source of it, and we can help. How do we grow that relationship to where we want to be? So I'd love to offer the audience a free consult with me. And that means that we'll actually do a first coaching call with them to help them to uncover something that they really want and where we can go from there.

That's very generous of you. Thank you so much. So don't miss this. Make sure you check the show notes. Instructions on how to claim that free call with Marcia will be in the show notes. So where can our audience go to? Sorry, go ahead.

Sorry. And just two last things. I run a podcast called “The special needs parent podcast”. And I've talked about these and more themes. So that's there to help people at no cost. And then I have this book, which is “Lighting the Path”. I call it Emma's book. But this book was meant to hold the hand of other parents like us and say, listen, you're not alone. You may feel like you're in the dark, but one step ahead of you and one step behind you is another one of us. And here are some of the lessons to lean into the negativity to really own it, the anger and the blame and the shame and the everything else. Right? Not just the grief, but grief as well. And then more than that, there's half of the book is dedicated toward, let's build that vision on and I actually walk you through in the book how to do that. And so it's a course in a book, basically. Yeah. You get to help yourself for a very, very low fee, because it's so important for me that we don't leave people, you know, struggling on their own. 

Exactly. 

So how do you take care of your health? How do you take care of your relationship? How do you take care of your vision and start making it real?

Yes, love that. All right. Thank you so much. And I will have those resources in the show notes as well. So where can our audience go to find out more about you, Marcia?

I'm reworking my website right now. So I'll get that up and I'll put the link. But for now, it's not available. So you can find me on Facebook under my name. It's not the doctor part, just the Macia Nathai-Balkissoon. And there you'll find lots of posts that support special needs parents. I also have a free community. It's called the Lighting the Path community, same as the book. In the Lighting the Path community, you'll find a host of other special needs parents, especially moms, but also some dads. And going to find some allies because, you know, getting support from other therapists and other counselors and other social workers and so on is so important. So we also have allies who have come in to join us.

Awesome. So before we conclude, Marcia, do you have any pearls of wisdom for our audience?

The one that comes to me as the one I need to say is we often, as special needs parents, see the needs of our special needs child first and foremost. There's a reason for that because they are the most needy, they're the most hurt, they have the most demands in terms of supporting them to make progress. But that's not the person I'm telling you to focus on first. You all know who I'm going to tell you. The person I'm going to tell you is you. If you don't focus on your well-being first, then you are only giving dregs to your child, to your relationship, to your job. You're running on fumes my dear. And you need to make sure to fill yourself up. I know that sounds ridiculously crazy, because where are we finding time to put self-care time in? I've learned how to do self-care in just five-minute increments when necessary. But it means taking a mental break. It means not being crushed by everything in this life and being able to say, listen, I may have to sit at the bedside of my child. And while I hold my child's hand, I can look out the window and literally I will watch a tree swing in the breeze and reconnect with nature. And that fills me up. I mean, it depends on everybody, what your thing is. Or, I look at a cloud in the sky and I see, like a child, because who's more joyful than a child? I see the shapes in the clouds that I never used to see before. And for a moment, I get to press pause on the craziness of the world and just fill up again. And the last one is I visualize a lot. Wherever I am, I can visualize. I can have a two-minute vacation on the beach. I've taught this to my kids in university. And we do it sometimes when they're not settling and when they're not focusing. Two minutes later, they say “Miss, that felt like I was on a boat on the beach.” And I'm like, yes, you will, right? This is the power of our mind. 

Yes. 

You can give yourself just a micro break. And of course, take a longer one when you have the ability to, if you have the ability to.

Right. Well, Dr. Marcia, thank you so much for our time together. It has been a pleasure getting to know you. Again, thank you for sharing so much and your vulnerability, because it really reaches our hearts because this is what we're all dealing with. So thank you so much for being with us today.

Thanks so much for having me, Valerie. It was a joy to speak to you. And I know we'll be talking more. So I'm looking forward to chatting with you and hearing your story as well.

You're very welcome. All right. So audience, I want to remind you to Live with Intention and Embrace the Journey.