Two ADHD Brains, One Household: Kendall's Tools for Couples and Cloudy Days

If you've ever struggled to explain a hard mental health moment to your child — or wondered how to hold your ADHD brain together as a parent — this episode is for you.

Megs sits down with Kendall, mental health advocate and children's book author, to talk about something most of us never learned how to do: make our inner emotional world visible to the people who love us most. Kendall shares her journey from lifelong anxiety diagnosis to ADHD discovery, how postpartum depression cracked her open, and the "cloud" metaphor she created so her kids could understand mom's hard days without fear or confusion.

🎧 What We Talk About

Understanding your own brain first — Kendall spent years being told she had anxiety before landing on an ADHD diagnosis that finally made sense. If your mental health story has kept shifting, you'll feel seen here.

The cloud metaphor that changed everything — After PPD, Kendall needed a way to say "mom is struggling today" without clinical language or blame. 

ADHD tools for couples — Kendall and her husband have different ADHD patterns. She shares "pause" check-ins, shared lists, and strategies that actually work when two executive-function-challenged brains are building a life together.

Care kits for hard days — What goes in one? Simpler and more intentional than you'd expect.

The book + pay-it-forward program — Kendall self-published Cloudy Day Chronicles to keep the family dialogue supportive rather than clinical, and now donates books through a pay-it-forward program and speaks with community organizations to connect parents to local mental health resources.

About Kendall

Kendall's greatest adventures began at home, as a mother. Her stories are inspired by the curiosity, humor, and boundless imagination of her children, who often help shape the characters and moments that appear on the page. Alongside her husband Matt and their dog Kiaora, she fills her days with laughter, exploration, and just the right amount of playful weirdness. When she's not creating stories, Kendall can usually be found where the wild things are.

⏱️ Jump To

• 01:12 — From mental health struggles to becoming an author
• 02:07 — Postpartum depression and the birth of the cloud metaphor
• 03:26 — Inside the Cloudy Day Chronicles book
• 12:21 — ADHD tools for couples with different patterns
• 18:46 — Building a care kit for cloudy days
• 23:42 — How (and why) to ask for support out loud
• 27:12 — Publishing choices and drawing the family line
• 29:56 — Advocacy work and connecting parents to resources
• 33:36 — Community impact and closing thoughts
• 35:16 — Where to find the book

📚 Resources & Links

• Cloudy Day Chronicles — Author's Website/Buy The Book
• Follow Kendall — Substack/Instagram

Organizing an ADHD Brain is a podcast for humans with ADHD who are done with shame.

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Transcript

Audio Only - All Participants 0:39

Welcome back to the show. I'm so excited to introduce you to my new friend Kendall, who is a mental health advocate, turned author. She's brilliant. I'm so excited to share her story today. Kendall, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Yeah. Thanks for coming on. we met on threats, right? Mm-hmm. I was posting about the messy middle and talking about just getting from point A to point B and all of this yuck that comes in between. You have this beautiful story to share, but first, tell us a little bit about you. Yeah. So I have struggled with mental health a my whole life. And something just clicked like recently, I think I let it hold me back for the longest time. So I wasn't gonna be a parent, I wasn't gonna do a lot of this stuff we're doing now. And kind of just learn to live with it. And I like to say that once I kind of got the diagnosis, I enjoyed it because then you can find the resources specific. So I recently got diagnosed, it shifted from anxiety to A DHD, and that's how I found you because then the, the trigger word comes up. And so. In being able to help myself therapeutically, I became like a mental health advocate and we ended up becoming parents and then I had to explain it to my children. So that's where becoming an author sort of all started. That's really awesome. And you have two kid. Two kiddos. Yep. That's awesome. I had to, we knew we wanted two and that that's sort of where the journey happened is PPD was so hard. I knew it was going to be for the first one that it was like, I have to go right away. If we're gonna have more than one, I can't have life get easy and then mentally tell myself, you have to go back into that. So I was like, if we're already kind of in the throes of it, just go for it. And when we. Did. I was like, oh no, I, our daughter's language took off. So I was like, how do I talk to her about all of this? Like, I'm gonna be pregnant, I'm gonna have a baby. I'm gonna be excited about it, but I'm gonna have depression moments. And so that is where we had to find a way to talk to her about it without being clinical. So the cloud analogy started and it was, mom has a cloud. That's why she sat not you, and it just resonated with her and we turned it into sort of like a platform for talking about mental health. That's beautiful. I know that so many of us, including myself, can benefit from having new ways to speak to our children to help them understand the world better. Without using big adult language. Mm-hmm. Because that's what we're used to. Most of us didn't have the words to say when we were kids or even understand what was going on to be able to express ourselves. So can you tell us a little bit about, well, you have this incredible book, it's a children's book about the cloud. So tell us a little bit about that. Yeah, I, as you said, that it kind of hit me. I never really thought about, it's not only that it's easy for my child to understand, but I think so many of us have this guilt around what our, like labels are that would help us to explain to the world what we're going through. So nobody ha really comes out and says, Hey, I have depression, because we're taught to like, keep that taboo and not talk about mental health and, and so. In the scheme of it, it was like, how do I tell her that something is different for mom, that she's not the cause of it that. And so we love the beach and by we love the beach. I mean, my family loves the beach and I go, um, mom doesn't like getting in the water. And mom likes sitting with her book and saying, go play with dad. And she knew that she will say like, mom doesn't go in the water. So I said, okay, that's it. So when I started talking to her about why mom felt different, it was, you know how we go to the beach and you love it and mom just plays differently. That was what resonated with her. So I said, it's like mom has a cloud at the beach and it's only over me, and you are in the sun and you're playing and you love it. And mom just wants to sit and read her book and she doesn't wanna get in the water and she doesn't wanna do this and that's okay'cause I'm still here with you. And it doesn't mean I wanna stay home. It doesn't mean that I don't love going. Seeing you play, I just need to do something different for me there. And so we sort of started with this bedtime story around that. Each day something was a little different for me. I would talk about, even though I was over here and playing differently, here's what I loved about you being in the sunshine. And so we just kept doing this bedtime story when days were hard. And we called them our cloudy days, and if something was going on, we had a cloud pillow, I'd go get it and I'd show her like, Hey, a cloud's here, mom just needs a couple minutes. And she would know like, okay, it's not my fault. Mom's not snapping at me or doing anything intentionally. There's something going on. And so we made an incident story where we use like shading to show it too that moms dimmer than the family and how it changes in different scenes because they give mom space and the sun peaks through. And it is just this tangible way of saying like, we're okay with whatever the cloud is. We have learned to live with it. We've learned that it doesn't mean I need to fix myself or I need to be different. It's just about recognizing how to love me when a cloud is there. Wow. What's really neat about that last sentence too is like learning how to love yourself when the cloud is there. Because so often I know I have felt like people only are going to love me if I'm on right, if I'm smiling and I am. Presenting my best self. I'm making jokes or I'm sharing the things that I know, and oftentimes I do shrink away or hide when I don't feel that way, and I don't feel like I can put my best self forward. One of the greatest gifts I've gotten being a part of this podcast is being in groups of women who have accepted me at my worst and at my best. So I think that's incredible that you're teaching. Your child, how to recognize that in others because we are lights, we have lights inside of us and it's shining whether there's a cloud over us or not. We still get to be ourselves and love all of ourselves. Can you share a little bit more about your diagnosis journey? Because I know a lot of women tend to get diagnosed with anxiety or depression, and then it leads into A DHD. So what did that look like and how do you feel like it's helping you, understanding the A DHD aspect of it? Oh my God. I asked you eight questions. so my A DH ADHD is like hyper-focused, so I was like, I got them all. I'm ready. I growing up, a lot of it was, you know, we didn't, we didn't talk about mental health, we didn't talk about depression and stuff. So if I was sad, it was cheer up, what do you have to be sad about? So you didn't know that something was really going on like deep and you would just go, what's wrong with me? And so in college I got diagnosed with like generalized anxiety. And the problem with that though was. The solution is medication. And I get like every side effects because at the time we didn't know I had an autoimmune, uh, I illness. And so now we know, and that makes all of the side effects kind of flare up. So I never went on meds and a lot of it was just like, okay, I have anxiety and. The solution is like, calm down. Yeah. De-stress. I'm like, how do you do that? Right? If you don't have proper help and techniques and stuff, you know, they would hit and not hit and so the depression kind of grew bigger than the anxiety. It was okay if I have anxiety and I'm not helping myself and, and these things aren't working and I should feel shame about being anxious over minute stuff. Then the depression grows more. And it was when we knew we were gonna have kids. I for so long, like my husband married me and I told him, I said, I don't want kids because I have all these kind of mental health things going on. I don't wanna pass that on. I don't want the feelings in my brain to end up in someone else's brain because I couldn't figure out helping myself. And so we did a lot of like volunteering and fostering and stuff and, and I wanna say like mental health in a way became more accepted. And, I found really good therapy finally. And I said, I wanna try, but I know it's gonna be hard. If P d's a thing, it's gonna hit me'cause it already hits me normally. And so we had started with a therapist to kind of talk out all of the. Worries of being pregnant, of all the hormone changing. And that therapist kind of sat down with everything I was going through and the sessions about my history and she was like, well, I wouldn't have called this anxiety. I would call this A DHD. And she gave me a book for A DHD and the marriage effect. And it was like. At first I was like, I don't have a DHD. Like I'm so organized, I keep track of everything.'cause you think A DHD is like looking at the squirrel and never coming back and I was like, no. Like I am very different from that. But once I read this like other form of it, I was like, all of this is me and my husband and I read the book and we sat down and found out like all of it was him too. Just on the complete other side. We were able to kind of look through it and say, you know, how does mine manifest? And what do we think is just, I am a really good planner, I'm an event planner and stuff, and it kind of got into high functioning depression and that sort of unlocked everything and we were able to get more targeted resources. So the, the techniques we were doing after therapy and my homework, it was clicking more and it was helping more. And I didn't have to worry about like, oh, I can't take medication to solve all of this because I know people who do take it and it does work wonders. And I wish, like I'm not mixing the medication aspect. I just can't. And so I was like, I wish I had this. This can really help. So it was really, for me, getting a more concrete, this finally sounds like me diagnosis because then I was able to follow the next steps and it just felt like they were my next steps instead of grasping at straws. That's really neat. And something as far as the autoimmune. Goes the more I learn about, especially my clients it's very common amongst women with a DHD to also have an autoimmune disease. Mm-hmm. That is something very common. Part of it is'cause we do hold on to so much of that stress within us and don't have any, I like, where the hell do we put it? Like what do you want me to get rid of it? Okay. How, what do you want me to do? Is there. Something I've noticed on social media lately is just perpetuating what A DHD looks like. What it is your A DHD if you do this, you're not a DHD if you do this right. normal versus not normal. That's hard for me to grasp onto right now because. There's so many ways for us to start to work with our brain that allows life to be easier. Just because you are one way doesn't mean that you have to say that one way because there's so many different ways to start to understand yourself differently. So you were talking about homework and different things that you tried. Can you give us examples of some of the things that have really helped you in your life? Learn how to work with yourself more. my analogy to explain it was. Like the idea of A DHD with the squirrel. So in our life it is, if my husband and I are sitting down for dinner and it's a romantic dinner and a squirrel runs by like my husband's A DHD is like the distraction. So he will follow the squirrel and then have so much fun chasing it with me. He'll like, forget we ever had dinner. And that's fine.'cause now he's living in the new fun activity moment and there's no worries. Mine is. I'll chase the squirrel, but I'm also really aware that we left the table and I'm like, should we go clean up? Should we do that? Like, are we gonna reschedule?, This is fun, I'm enjoying it, but I can't separate the two. And it's a learning curve to do that, to like live in the moment and say, okay, I know that that's still there and that is where. For so long you just think like you're really good at planning and like, oh yeah, I'm great at multitasking. Someone unlocked that I'm not great at multitasking. It's just really intense. A DHD, and I'm like, well, I still like being good at multitasking. I think I can do it pretty well. And so our task is for us to understand. In that moment to pause and be at dinner and see a squirrel run by and say, okay, I, I know you're gonna run and chase it and not come back to dinner. I'm gonna hyperfocus on dinner, so my husband and I have to pause and almost do like a perception check and that's what we've done and say. And so I'd be like, if we chase the squirrel, can we just acknowledge that we're never coming back to dinner? And then I can go have fun in that moment'cause I know you know that I'm gonna focus on it or. Can we go chase the squirrel for 10 minutes and then come back? And so we've had to do that for like. Every activity. And that is, you know, people see us and then when I say like, we've had, conflicts and stuff, they're like, you two. And I was like, yeah, everything goes on behind the scenes. But like we have to pause a lot and address situations even when kids got involved. So it's like. If we're going in the beach and one of our homework tasks was, next time you go to the beach,'cause we go every weekend to this little one, it says, have your husband write the packing list. You write your packing list and trade them and see what is going on in each other's mind. So he only has like a few items, swimsuit, towels, and like swimsuit towels, sunscreen, snacks, like all that stuff. And the more we have done that, then his list. Grows because he starts to see what I'm gonna fixate on and in some let go of the stress mine has shrunk because I'm like, okay, I know that it will be okay if we do what he does and only take one or two items. We always survive if he only one or two items. And so we've been able to like. Balance our, like competing A DH Ds. And sometimes we do just joke, like a situation will happen and I'll go, oh, mine's winning this time. Like, we are gonna do this my way. And so we have to recognize That our mindsets are very different for things and not hold that resentment like especially as like a wife and a mom.'cause you always see like, oh, moms do this and dads do this. And I'm like, okay, but look at it differently. I have to acknowledge that he's not failing by only. Putting two things on the list. That's just how his mind functions and I can't be upset with him for that the same way I hope he's really nice to me when I have US pack 50 items. And so it's sort of that balance of recognizing it's okay and it just looks different for us. I love so much about what you said and I think so many of us need to hear it. Because it's also so easy to complain about the other person, but to continue to live your life the same way without doing anything about it and say I'm doing all the packing and it's very frustrating'cause I have so much on my mind and expecting them to take over in the same exact way. But because we all work so differently, we do have to accept that. There are different ways that our brains work, and that's okay. How do we start to learn how to work together? I used to see the memes. My husband does the shopping some weeks. Some weeks I do it. We've been alternating now that he's back at work, but there would be times that he'd put away the groceries and then I couldn't find something in the fridge. And I felt like this overwhelming shame come over me because. I see all these memes, right? Or like, oh, I put something away and my husband can't find it. Right? It's right here. It's right where you put it, and I'm like. Well, my brain doesn't work. It works like that if I put it away, right? If I know where it is. But I'm just like those husband memes, if my husband is doing the pudding away and now I can't see it. Something I have noticed, you know, with my friends, with myself is the control that we tend to have in certain situations, and it gives us this feeling of, at least we know what's gonna happen, but then we also complain about it. And so I love that you and your husband are demonstrating what it looks like to work to. Together to start to understand each other in a new way. Like that is growth and that's how you make a marriage last. That is a partnership versus, being against one another. Thank you for sharing that. I really appreciate it. You talked about memes and there's this one and you've probably seen it where like the wife's carrying like 50 things and the husband's just like behind and everyone's like, oh yeah, the husband. I'm like. But my husband will send that to me and he goes, someone's gonna record me somewhere because I like holding all this stuff. There's just I need to hold stuff. I even have like my fidget spinner. And so he tells me all the time, he is like, I look like a jerk. And I'm like, I, I know, but I wanna hold it. I wanna hold all the things and I'll have like. Both kids and stuff. And then he's just behind and I feel so bad. I'm like, I guess I do have to give stuff up so you don't end up on the internet. And I was like, but no one gets it. It's not that he is not helpful, I'm just like, sensory. I, I need something to hold. And it doesn't always work because like I am doing the book launch. And I'm doing the party planning, but I am the surprise person. I'm the plan person. I'm the invite, I'm the extrovert. My husband's the introvert. And in all of it, I have had moments where I've like broken down.'cause we do our own like little therapy session check-ins. And I'll tell him like some days I just wish you were like me. Like I wish I had a me because all of the stuff I'm. Doing to take care of everything is just like autopilot for me, so I'm not gonna not do it. And I've tried, like some days I've gotten passive aggressive with him and I was like, I'm gonna be like you and I'm just not gonna do anything because in my head that's how it is. And then like, it'll last like maybe 10 minutes and I'll be like, forget it. I'm gonna get do, get back in another way because it's so autopilot for my brain. And I'll tell him like. I've prepared him. So we have like cute little books that's like, here's things to do. And that was part of the cloud too, is when a cloud rolls in, I can't help myself and I'm so used to helping myself. And so I've worked with him on. Sunny days to sit and say, okay, when a cloud rolls in and you don't think the way I do, here's what I would do for myself. But if you ask me in that moment, I'm not gonna be able to say that. So we've kind of created that care kit to say, I need you to. Go do the dishes, hand me a book and do this because I won't ask. That would feel like a favor, even though it's you loving me. It's gonna feel like guilt and shame, but that's what we need to work through. And so that's been a big part of the excitement of doing the book is like success isn't just. Sales. It's getting to connect and working with organizations to do support groups to say, Hey, when it rolls in, you're not gonna know how to help yourself. So let's try and prepare for that. And when you are just in a middle of a situation, and if you're a DHD kicks in, here's what you're gonna do on autopilot. But let's talk about self care when you're on autopilot and just kind of work through all of it. And sometimes it fails horribly, and sometimes it goes really, really well. Oh, I'm so excited about this because I literally told my husband the other day. I was like, I'm having a really hard time right now. I need you to tell me some of the things that I tell you when you are having a hard time. I need you to be me for just a moment.'cause I need these words. I found that I needed that in the moment, but I had to go through this moment to finally get it to click to say, this is what I need from you. Can you do that? And I could even, you know, when I'm having a really good day, I could give'em a list of things that are helpful to say, but how does one go about finding what they need in those moments? I It's guess in check to a respect because I tell my husband too, like I apologize after sometimes.'cause I was like, I don't even know how to help myself sometimes. And then I'm expecting you to, and I feel that burden and I am very sorry if in the moment I'm mad at you for not fixing it. And that was really where the. A lot of the shift came from is like, I can't rely on you to know how to help me when I'm in the state.'cause I don't know how to help myself and how do we both just pause? And so that was why it was a big message of the book is like, we can't fix mom. We can't chase away the cloud. We just need to sit and pause and then try to figure it out together. And so. I know, like I love reading and I know I love like activities with the kids. And so a lot of it was, well, let's try this. Do you wanna read a book? And I'll be like, no, that's not what I'm feeling. And, and he's learned to also ask me, we kind of pause and, and I'll say like a cloud's coming. And he'll say, do you want a solution or do you want comfort? And sometimes I will be like, I don't know, gimme both and I'll see which one works. And then he'll be like, oh no, like I expected to just comfort. And he is like, I'll have a solution. I was like, all right, then let's go with comfort. But I think it's that, it's the ability to. The ability to still be kind when you know it might be a guess, and check what's gonna hit. And also to reflect on like. Kindness for him that like, oh, it's a big task to cheer me up in that moment. And that's why I love everyone who's been with me through this journey.'cause I'm like, it's hard to also, for him to see me go through that and not know what to do. And so that has been part of the list is like, well let's just try this. Let's get back to what we love about each other. Do we wanna go on an adventure? Do we wanna just go walk outside? You know, let's just focus on what. We do in our everyday lives and try and just move on as if we don't care that the cloud's there and see if it works. Yeah. And does that work? I. Most days like it, it has been easier in this journey to sort of not have to like hide it anymore to a point, because I hadn't talked about depression with a lot of people. You know, it was easy when having kids to make an excuse. To be like, oh, the kids are sick. We can't come out. Or like, oh, hey, you know, kids are tired and stuff. But to finally just be like, oh no, I have a, I have a cloud, I, I can't go. And then have them respond and say like, do you still wanna come? And, you know, if we were supposed to hang out somewhere doing an activity, have them say, do you wanna just cancel or do you wanna shift and just come sit on the couch? And so it's been a language to recognize that I don't need to be on all the time and. Also convinced my brain that it doesn't mean that they don't wanna hang out with me anymore. And that's why I've already been practicing our book launch is coming up this weekend and. There's like over a hundred people, RSVP, that's friends and family. And I have like this little speech that I've been practicing'cause I know I'm not gonna make it through it. But in mental health you convince yourself you're alone so quickly and easily, and. Then when you have this moment where you just tell someone, Hey, I'm having a cloudy day, and they don't care, and you like you worried, it took so much energy to tell them that because you're like, what are they gonna do? They're never gonna be friends with me again. And they're just like, oh, okay. Are you okay? It's like this, the sun breaking through to go, okay, I can keep kind of sharing that I'm struggling with this and find solutions together. Yeah, that's, it's such a gift to be able to do that. I actually had a moment yesterday where. I have this group chat. I'm in a group called Dream Lifters, and so we share what we're working on, the things that we wanna accomplish, and my friend who leads it says, if you are having a hard day, send us a bat signal. So you pick an emoji and then you send it out, and then people will send you love and like remind you who you are and things like that. And I hadn't ever taken advantage of it. And yesterday. I was having just a really off, I knew I was tired. I knew that my brain was not gonna support me in those moments. And I'm just like, I think this is it. This is the time I need it. And when I sent that, I had, eight text messages of people reaching out, just saying, yeah, you're loved, you're supported, like you are, you're not alone in this world. And it felt. Real in that moment, like I felt better, which was amazing and I didn't, I didn't feel like I needed to go and be on or anything. I just felt like I was still loved regardless of what I was going through and that it was a reminder that this is temporary. That these moments are, are temporary. Because sometimes in these moments, I dunno if you can relate to this, it feels like. This is it, right? This is my, my life now and this is what I have to work through. And like it's not about fixing it, it's about feeling it, like allowing yourself to go through it. I actually just recorded a podcast right before. Before we talked about not fixing it, but feeling it, but like addressing it, responding to it in a way that supports you instead of shoving it down to allow it to fester or do something in our body and we don't know what it's doing it. This conversation is fascinating. you had brought up and I wanted to share, I originally tried to go traditionally published and my family had helped me write the book. My daughter, like, I would give her two or three lines and I would say like, pick one. And we really went through it together. And one of the big kind of things that they wanted to change was. Dad and the kids say a lot of support lines in the book, and they were like, well, if this is mom, mom needs to say it. And I fought it so much and I was like, no, because if I am under a cloud, even if I say it all the time to help other people. My mind won't be that kind to myself in that moment. I know I tell people, clouds don't last forever. You're okay. I can't tell myself that. You're right. In that moment, I'm like, this cloud is my new life. I live under it. I'll be here forever. And so it was really important for me to say. My family has learned to take my lines and say them back to me until I hear myself. And that is how depression works. And they didn't have depression, so they don't get that. They think like, yo, you should just tell yourself to cheer up. And I'm like, I'm not gonna tell myself that ever. I'm gonna tell myself you're the worst and you need to sit under this cloud for the rest of your life. It's the people who have heard. What I can say on a cloudy day that needs to echo it. And so when we went, like self-publish, it's been fun to read it to people and have them react to the lines and share with them like, well, yeah, that one. My family wrote, there's one line about a snowman and everyone is giving me grief.'cause they're like, isn't it a sandman? And I was like, you tell a 2-year-old, it's Sandman. When she decided it was snowman. So like that one stays and stuff. But it is a lot of the little. The little powerful quotes, which I had to make sure weren't like copyright and stuff because my family has said them over and over and over. So the first book was super easy to write because I was like, it was already our life. I'm like, now the second book, I'm on writer's block, so I have to actually like come up with my own things. So that's really neat. I just love the powerful words that you've shared about, these are the things I would tell other people, but I can't tell myself in those moments and that resonated so much for me. There are ways that I know in some cases I can turn things around if I'm noticing in the moment, and I know sometimes what helps me is. What would I tell my kids about, like, how I'm doing this right now? Like how would I expect them to do it or like show them or mirror. But it is so difficult to do it for yourself. It really, really is when you're in that space. So as a mental health advocate, tell us a little bit more about the work that you do, not only with the book, but just, you know, talking about your experience. So. The book has been fun because like, yes, a book exists at its core and I. I have been out there connecting with groups more for the cloud language, and that has been my passion to kind of talk about and just say like, Hey, let's talk about mental health with our kids because my kids have even been able to identify their emotions through this. I've shared the story about my daughter. Hers is a tornado, and so like she knows she's not supposed to yell and scream and throw in the house. But if she comes to us and says, I'm overwhelmed, I have a tornado. She'll go in her room and she'll be allowed to do that without getting yelled at. And so I have been reaching out to groups where in their space my life was the hardest. So like breastfeeding and OB, GYN offices and pediatricians. And I've said, when. Parents are filling out those surveys on how you're doing and it's really low. Here's a flyer. Send them to my website. I'm collecting a bunch of resources in the area, therapists and doulas and like breastfeeding experts and everything to say, go here and find help. And I'm also sharing like real stories about depression on my blog and saying like. If you're up at 2:00 AM and you feel alone, I need to put my voice out there because you're not alone. And, and no one is kind of saying the really messy stories.'cause we're all supposed to glow in parenting, but we don't. And it's been amazing to, to do podcasts like this and others and like meet so many people who are willing to share that publicly. I asked my husband, are you okay with us sharing our lives essentially? And he was like, yes. Because it's the person who is not gonna. Share their life and feel so much shame holding it secretly that we need to help. And so we are doing like speaker series with different groups and it's surreal for me to tell like my husband, like, I'm gonna go lead a support group. I'm in a support group. Every, I have it after this. Every Tuesday I'm in it. I like survive on it. And now. I'm gonna shift gears and go teach one in a different capacity. And then the places that I've met where we're sharing the book, because we did a pay it forward program, so essentially buy one, give one. So family and friends who like bought one. Then we're donating them to places that, intimate partner violence and, and children's shelters and, and different places where we can say like, it's okay to have conversations about how hard everything you're going through is, and I'm excited about the fact that I wrote the book, but I'm excited more that it is opening doors for me to reach out and be able to. Have a conversation with these places to bring them something and say, you know, it's one thing to just go out and advocate, but here's a tool and here's donations we can give and here's how we can support on like a higher level. And then we've been doing acts of kindness and everything, and just like an. 2.0 of like authenticity, I guess for myself to be like, okay, I have this foot in the door now with a mental health advocacy where I can contribute to the loud voices in a creative way, and so that's. What has been my journey and excitement with all of this, my husband was like, how do you wanna measure success? We're doing a thermometer for the books, but we have a thousand books, and it's like we're gonna put them out there. We never worried about them being at our house because we've been donating and stuff. And so it's been meaningful. It's really inspiring and you've made such an impact on me already with the words that you're sharing, and I know that. Just the impact you make on me is going to spread so much further. That's what's so cool about you showing up authentically because you're sharing a story that so many people, as your husband was saying, can't put words to, but you're giving people the words to say and you're showing them that it's worth trying, that it. It's worth figuring out. It's worth having the conversations because you can live a life that's a little bit easier because you have people around you to support you and more to that. Something I'm so passionate about right now is creating more community, not just online, but like in real life. And I love that you're doing that in your community too, and I hope that Whomever's listening can get inspired by that because all you have to do is know that. You wanna help people believe in themselves. You wanna help people live knowing that they're worthy of living a life and that they're not alone. You said that a lot today. Nobody is alone. There is so, there are so many people that are struggling with the exact same thing that you are, and not being alone just allows it to be that much easier to talk about those difficult, uncomfortable, really yucky feelings. I thank you. Thank you. Like the imposter syndrome wears off every eventually, right? It, yeah. That was my thing yesterday. I was like, what am I doing? So you are not alone and then you know, we're showing up together and doing this work. I just thank you so much. I can't wait to read the book. I'm gonna put a link in the show notes below. Are there any other ways for our listeners to get in touch with you? I made my life easy. It is all the same Cloudy Day Chronicles. That's my Instagram. That's my Substack. That's the blog. And we have the website, which is cloudy day chronicles.org. So. We prefer people to buy off the website because that's where we can donate copies. We are on Amazon, but that's only'cause that's what libraries need and that is my goal to be in a library. And so I'm trying to push people to the website.'cause we do the Pay it forward program, we do proceeds donated. And my daughter we sign the books. So when we can ship from home, I did a whole post. Yesterday where I was like she negotiated her contract to get paid in cookies. Oh my gosh, I love that so much. Every 10 books is a cookie. So I told people like, some are really well signed and some are like the last book before the cookie. So it's random. And I was like, and if you want a different signature, if someone got a picture and you didn't get a picture, you ask her. It's been a fun like experience to make it a family event. That's so cool. Well, I can't wait to order mine, and thank you so much for being here today. Really appreciate this conversation. Awesome.