Storms To Strength: Kendall's Resilience Revealed

✨ Hello, I'm Fran your NLP coach, and in this episode, I'm interviewing Kendall Concini about her story of resilience and strength.

Meet Kendall, a woman who has faced ADHD and other challenges with resilience. She poured her experiences into a book about a cloudy day, demonstrating that sadness doesn’t diminish love or strength. An inspirational creator, she invites you to hear her story.

You can connect to Kendall in the following ways ⬇️
https://cloudydaychronicles.wordpress.com/
https://www.instagram.com/cloudydaychronicles/

Find me @ www.melancholymentor.com

* As a coach, I listen without judgment, understanding that others’ views may differ from my own.

#nlpcoach #nlpcoaching #creativity #inspiration #transformation

Chapters

• 0:00 Welcome to Melancholy Coaching
• 5:24 Kendall's Journey to Motherhood
• 9:00 The Cloudy Day Story
• 13:30 Depression Has No Look
• 20:24 Parenting with Mental Health Challenges
• 26:46 Building a Community Around Mental Health
• 36:10 Self-Acceptance and Moving Forward
• 41:35 Closing Thoughts and Resources

Transcript

Fran Barley: 0:00

Hello everyone, welcome to the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'm Fran, your host and NLP coach. Join me as I interview inspiring business owners and self-improvement seekers about their experiences, while delving into personal development, motivation and strategies for overcoming challenges. Let's ignite our creative potential together overcoming challenges.

Fran Barley: 0:29

Let's ignite our creative potential together. Hello and welcome to the Melancholy Coaching Podcast. I'm Fran, your NLP coach, and it's my pleasure to introduce a remarkable woman who's faced her own challenges with depression and ADHD. Kendall never expected to be a parent, but her journey took a beautiful turn when she married her husband, who promised a life of adventure. Together they fostered children for a while and through that experience, kendall found the courage to have her own daughter.

Fran Barley: 0:59

Kendall gently shared about her depression with her daughter through a bedtime story about a cloudy day. She wanted her daughter to know sadness does not diminish love, strength or magic, so she wrote the story herself, since it didn't exist in books. Kendall started a mission to open up conversations about mental health, aiming to be a voice saying it's OK to not be okay, especially in the parenting world. She believes in talking openly with children about these feelings, using creativity to nurture understanding and connection. So, kendall, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. You're very welcome. Your cloudy day story can we start by? You know, I'm going to ask you to share more about it please, because it's just so interesting.

Kendall Concini: 1:53

So I took my words in the in the intro. But basically I have struggled with depression a lot in my life. You know, I started kind of in high school and you go through bullying and kind of self-doubt and self-acceptance or not accepting who you are, and throughout the years I haven't really embraced that mental health aspect. You know, I was going to therapy and I was trying to approach it but it was always with this mentality of how do I fix myself? But it was always with this mentality of how do I fix myself? What would a normal person think? And so later in life, when I really started to find my core friendships and within that my husband as my best friend, I started to see a lot of my self-doubt kind of dissipate and see strengths in me. And as we did activities like fostering kids or coaching Special Olympics, I really saw value from the people who were embracing the positive aspects of me that I don't often kind of cheerlead myself for. And so I had never really thought about having kids, because when you have such a cloudy mind you wonder if I can't take care of myself every day, how am I supposed to be responsible for someone else? And so I always kind of put it aside and that's how we got involved in a lot of volunteering things. But I just we had an assignment with a small six month old and when she left I had realized like our house felt emptier and I thought, okay, even though there were some struggle moments when she was with us, we got through everything.

Kendall Concini: 3:33

And so I decided to sort of surprise my husband and say let's start trying. And he, you know he was making sure he's like I know, you know, I know why you didn't want to and I'm okay with that. And I was like no, let's try it. And let's just know that I have a different team with me, I have a different mentality here, I have different therapeutic outlets, and so we took a shot and I actually had a really hard first pregnancy. We had a miscarriage, so it was like all of my, all of my doubts came to like life. I'm sorry, thank you. I, you know I was talking to someone else about it and I was like I don't know when people ask how did you get through it? I really don't know. It's kind of it is very foggy there.

Kendall Concini: 4:21

But we were able to pull ourselves back and have our daughter, but I knew postpartum depression was going to come. I was like man, I'm already like signed up for that in life. So postpartum depression, it's just going to fill in. And so I did a lot to strategically look at what postpartum depression kind of presents as and start working on that with my husband and my family and my therapist at the time, and really start to try and prepare myself and find the strength in myself to just keep talking about mental health. So I knew that I had to tell people when I was struggling and I had to ask for help and it's all of those you know cheesy mantra like there's no I in team or there's no reward for doing something alone.

Kendall Concini: 5:17

And I really had to try and step back and say, you know, I'm not having a good day, I need to just go sit over there and cry, I need to feel all the feelings. And so through that came this analogy of describing how it was feeling. So, yes, we're out somewhere. My daughter was here. She's an adorable little baby, but she had some medical needs and she cried a lot, and so the was.

Kendall Concini: 5:45

I wasn't bonding the way. I had kind of expected her to come out and just bond instantly, because I didn't know how to help her. And so I would cry a lot and I would just cry in not complete sadness, just like overwhelming emotions. I don't. I don't know what's going on, I don't know how to handle it. I just need to get all this stress out.

Kendall Concini: 6:08

And so I started talking to my husband about like how, how am I going to get through this when she's older? And he would ask, like what it feels like? And I continue to say the cloud, like we're here, she's here, it's sunny out, but I just feel it. And as she got older and her language, it just took off. She was like two, and you wouldn't know she was two because she was talking like a five-year-old, and so I was like, oh no, I have to start talking about it even sooner. And so the cloud helped, because it's very easy you know, it's sunny out and suddenly the cloud blocks it. We got a cloud pillow and it was something I can kind of show her and say it's not you, it's the cloudy day, and through that it just felt like this acceptance to just say, yes, I'm struggling yeah, this to me, your story, actually shows a lot of emotional awareness of yourself, because to ask for help you need to know that you need it and you need to accept and give permission to receive it.

Kendall Concini: 7:16

But the fact that you were signaling that you didn't quite feel right shows to me that you had a lot of emotional awareness even throughout your depression sometimes, yeah, I would joke with my therapist and like sometimes I think I'm too aware because I can constantly look at each side of what the battle is in my head and I would tell my therapist, like you know, I know I should be thinking this, but I'm also thinking this and I know what you're going to tell me, and she would would say stop being aware, just like, let it, let me tell you things and and kind of back up, but I it for her. She also told me that that was the strength. So if you look at a lot of what's going on today, you know, with people finally kind of accepting mental health out there more commonly and looking at, you know, supports that are in place in workplaces and breaking that generational cycle. It's the awareness is maybe I'm not doing everything right, but just knowing that this doesn't feel good is kind of the win of the week. So maybe I had a really hard week and I let the depression win and I kind of showed up in places differently than I wanted to.

Kendall Concini: 8:31

But being aware of that is, at the end of the week, what I guess need to take as my strength to tell myself okay, at least you knew it was different and you didn't have to fix yourself. You didn't have to go home. And that's sort of the point of the book. Is that just because a cloud shows up at the beach with the mom, she doesn't have to go home. It doesn't mean she doesn't want to be there. It just means she's aware something's different and she needs to be there differently to be there differently?

Fran Barley: 9:08

yeah, I was, I think as well, because I've had a depression journey myself. And it's hence why I use the word melancholy, because in my mind years ago, if I lived, I would have been diagnosed with melancholia, you know, and I've kind of. I was born in 1970 and it wasn't overly a word used then, except for in classic literature. But I know that women were diagnosed with melancholia even if they felt a little bit sad, and to me it isn't a bad word. In in my vocabulary it's something that evokes a longing and you know that kind of what, what could be.

Fran Barley: 9:43

So it's a word that I use and throughout my own depression I disassociated quite heavily, but without realizing what I was doing. So it wasn't deliberate, because our conscious minds get we can disassociate and come back again. You know that kind of thing. It's used a lot within coaching and within timeline coaching and things like that. You can, you can kind of disassociate and then associate with yourself again, and I didn't realize that I was just doing it kind of a lot. So it took me a lot longer to have those signals in place that I needed help and that I was struggling, and once I did, it was a game changer.

Kendall Concini: 10:20

I joked with my husband when I saw the therapist around the time of when we were getting ready for postpartum depression and I was like I just kind of want there to be something wrong with me, because that's not how you're supposed to think. And I said no, because once you can identify something, you can then find the better tools to help that something. So spending my life in high school and college not saying I have depression but just kind of making excuses for why I didn't want to do things, didn't help me become the stronger version of myself. I am now where I just walk around and go. Yeah, I have depression. It is interesting too. When I had opened up about it during the journey of this book, I got a lot of like you because it was having people understand what it looks like to different people.

Kendall Concini: 11:08

My depression is not that I'm staying in my room with the lights off under the blankets. Mine is that I can't be alone with myself. So I am an extreme planner. I have something every single day. I am extroverted, I talk, I surround myself with things to do and I keep busy, and so kind of being able to see that signs of what is going on is like this kind of cloud rolling in has helped, and in therapy too.

Kendall Concini: 11:38

You know, I always said depression. The first time my therapist sat down and she goes I don't think you're just really well organized, I think you have ADHD with like the hyper focus, and she started unpacking like all of my little, what I thought I was like yeah, I'm a mom, I like plan really well, I'm busy, I'm going, I'm like focused on this. She's like no, that could be ADHD. And to back up and kind of get all that laid out was very helpful, because she gave me a very powerful book on ADHD and the marriage effect and I was like this is all me. And then it has the tools and strategies that you're able to do, and so that's why I have been a champion of like it's okay if there's something wrong with you, because then you can work on performing in the space that you need and understanding yourself with what's going on.

Fran Barley: 12:33

Interesting as well that earlier you referenced feeling normal and what is normal, and I suppose sometimes it's what we perceive to be normal. So it's what you see in movies or what's depicted in media and you think that's normal and you're not, because that's not how you're, you're not feeling how that looks or you know things don't kind of align together. Depression has no look.

Kendall Concini: 13:00

Exactly.

Fran Barley: 13:01

Yeah, it has no look at all, and all of this comes with absolutely no judgment. No-transcript. Mindfulness worked for me. Once I actually realised, and consciously realised, what mindfulness was. I realised I was doing it but without conscious intent, and once I did, it made a lot of difference to me to be present in the moment, because my big thing was disassociation, without knowing how to come back. So it kind of gave me that lifeline to be present in the moment. And all of these tools, just they're going to be different for different people, aren't they? So it sounds as though your one was planning was being around, keeping, keeping yourself busy, being around people possibly as well, or, you know, does that make a difference to you not being alone?

Kendall Concini: 14:11

yeah, and I. That's why I loved using the cloud. I had done a fun kind of blog post on researching the different types of clouds and looking at how they show up. So some clouds are here when it's sunny and it's hot and it's cold and when there's literally a storm, and the shapes they take and the colors they take, and so a cloud doesn't have to look the same, and that's how I feel about anything in the mental health ring, like you can get your version of what this means to you, and it's about being able to talk through that and say, yes, I have this. It looks very different than yours, but it is something I experienced and and kind of grow with, and I one of my kind of wherever the book goes. You know I'm not aiming for bestseller. I'm aiming for being the right seller because, as you said, I was looking for it and I needed it.

Kendall Concini: 15:05

And so my goal is just someone's looking for it and has it.

Kendall Concini: 15:09

But in reading it to my daughter, she has been able to come up with her own.

Kendall Concini: 15:15

She calls it her tornado and she talks about it and she says I just have a tornado and it's flying all around and I can't get anything together. Tornado and it's flying all around and I can't get anything together. And so she's been able to identify what it looked like for her, and so I will be able to text my husband and be like, when you get home, there's a tornado in the house, just give her space and she'll tell us when it settles. And so that's been kind of my. No matter what happens next, it's worked for her to identify like what is going on with her, and that is so far ahead of when I was able to do it in my life, and so all of the fears of being a parent with mental health and what happens if I'm raising this child was just like, okay, I did, did. I felt my feelings and I've taught her to feel hers and I have all of that like just washing over me well, emotional intelligence is something that we learn.

Fran Barley: 16:14

It isn't necessarily a given that we're born with. I think that from what from what I've read so I'm a neurolinguistic programming coach, so I'm not saying I'm a specialist in in this other stuff, but from what I've read, so I'm a neurolinguistic programming coach, so I'm not saying I'm a specialist in this other stuff, but from what I've read, we're generally born with two fears, and if you're a hearing person, there's two fears. So it's the fear of loud noises and the fear of falling. Everything else is either done to us or by us through. You know no fault and no judgment, but these are the things that happen. And emotional intelligence is something that helps keep us grounded. But we learn it from our caregivers. So you've been on the journey that you're on. You're able to quite early on, provide an age relative kind of talk, as it is for your own daughter, so she will advance a lot quicker, like make sure to tell people, like by by doing the book and having you know my social media outlet.

Kendall Concini: 17:16

I get I'm no expert, like you're not going to see the little tags of of the schooling behind my name, but it is just an open honesty to say, yes, this is, this is what I'm teaching her, so I'm teaching her. It's okay to have those emotions I'm also. I have really bad parenting days. A couple of days ago she was on my last nerve and I told her she had to go in the other room if she didn't want, like cloudy mommy and storm cloud mom to come out. And it was then an opportunity for her to go in her spot, me, to have my five minutes. And then we came back and I was like, wow, we're not having a good day today and she's like we're not, and it's that sort of kind of trying to talk parents through.

Kendall Concini: 17:59

It is impossible to be a perfect parent who's on all the time and think you're doing everything right and you have to transform your mindset to know that it is okay to have cloudy, bad days. But what do you do next and how do you make the sunshine come back? Do you just say, hey, mom had a hard day and a lot of emotions, or do you just kind of go hard in that one parenting direction, which is what you know my parents' generation did? You know parents were always right, parents knew what was best for you. But opening this conversation is it's a hard journey to take on and it it evolves and I'm learning every day. Now I have, you know, my daughter and my son and I'm like with him, around her, and I have really evolved together and like trying to teach him words and things that are going on, but he doesn't have quite the language she does yet, so it's about trying to connect with him too through what we're doing and mimicking in front of him.

Fran Barley: 19:05

I think that we don't have to kind of've kind of I've got a lot of thoughts going on right now, so I'm trying to find my own words for it.

Fran Barley: 19:13

So the whole thing about identifying the emotion and identifying the state that you're feeling is a really important thing. That's something that, as a coach, I help people with, because we don't always have those answers. We just know there's something and we can't necessarily get help if we can't verbalize it or at least write it down how, how we're feeling. And I also believe that we don't have to be sunny all the time. If we have, if we feel that we're in a safe place, whether that be physically or with our mind we can sit with those feelings of disappointment or unhappiness, to take any lessons and learnings from that and then kind of move into. You know, now it's sunny, because otherwise I feel that that attainment of feeling sunny all the time could lend itself potentially to perfectionism and it could be unachievable. So this lends into another question that I've got for you actually. So what advice would you give to other parents who are navigating their own mental health challenges while they're raising children?

Kendall Concini: 20:22

trying to be authentic. It's easier said than done and you ask me, it depends on the day where I will kind of be the most authentic version. I work in the field with neurodivergent individuals and there was one groundbreaking moment for me and you know I've been in the field long enough that I've been through the changes of terminology, enough that I've been through the changes of terminology and the big change was when they shifted from saying you know he's autistic to he has autism. And the power behind that was you are not this definition, you experience this. And so when we started using that at work and it clicked and it made so much sense and we were so happy that we were changing the narrative on that, it made me really step back and think like I'm not depression, I experienced depression and it doesn't define all of who I am.

Kendall Concini: 21:19

And you know, in the book, people who have beta read they asked me you know the dad's really supportive and I was like, well, my husband works in the field too, and that was those are lines he would tell me, and so he would remind me like you are not the cloud, you experience the cloud, it comes with you. It's not all of you. And so my advice is whatever someone is struggling with, try to frame it that way where it's hard, because when the cloud's there, it's going to tell it that way. Where it's hard, because when the clouds there, it's going to tell you that that is all you are. But on the day where there is sunshine, just stepping back and identifying that that is not all of you, that it is just a part or a thing you experience, and try to find that grounding, what is all of you, to remind yourself on days where whatever is hitting you hard is hitting you.

Fran Barley: 22:12

Yeah, so it doesn't necessarily need to be your whole identity. You don't need to take it on as an identity. It's interesting how you've just said things, actually because my son has autism. He's uh, he's 22 now, so I've he was diagnosed with severe autism when he was preschool, so I've kind of been on quite a journey with him over that. So I understand some of what you're saying there and, just for clarity for anybody listening, I'm based in the UK, so I think our terminology is more or less the same, though over here we generally say postnatal depression and I think you're saying postpartum. Yeah, we say postnatal depression.

Kendall Concini: 22:55

It's the same thing, because whereabouts are you based, united States? In Maryland.

Fran Barley: 23:02

Yeah, maryland, I've got no idea where that is, but I've heard of it. I know where the United States is. Obviously I've heard of that as well, but I've never been there, so is that just out of interest? So obviously the UK is a lot smaller. Like where I am. I'm based in England, so part of the UK, and we've got lots of different dialects and different kind of local things that are said, but generally it's like a standard thing. You know the whole mental health language and post-natal language and stuff like that. Is it fairly universal within the whole of America like the same sort of wording?

Kendall Concini: 23:36

Yes, I am lucky in Maryland. We are really progressive and I think things take off a lot faster and kind of statewide is. You know, you can find a lot of support, and so I've been lucky in that respect and even the services and communities I've been able to build. But it is generally statewide that the terminology is kind of catching on.

Fran Barley: 24:02

So what I'd like to ask you now is what is a vision or goal you have that you would like to, that you hope to achieve in the next five years, and that could be both personal or just professionally?

Kendall Concini: 24:18

I think, in some personal respect, that I have achieved it by just telling people like I'm writing a book and here is an Instagram where I've been posting about my cloudy days. It's something where you know, as a mom, you kind of you put on that smile and you go out in the day and moms don't get sick and moms can't have days off, and so you that's kind of how I've always felt about mental health is like I still have to go out there and kind of be me. But it's been great through this journey to open up to people and and kind of say, and I've been able to text friends and instead of an excuse, I've just been like, hey, I'm having a cloudy day, I can't come and just have them understand it and then hold space for me. And so my goal is to just continue with that momentum and be the authentic version of myself. I am writing, I've kind of signed.

Kendall Concini: 25:13

I have an illustrator that I absolutely love, and so when we talked about the books, I signed on for three because I was like I want to work with her so much and so I want to write three books featuring the cloud, to just show that it doesn't matter where you are, it can show up and kind of talk about that, and then just continue to do things like this. Where I'm connecting not for like please go buy my book, but really because I want to talk mental health, and that is the whole kind of mission of what I'm doing is saying we need to embrace these areas of our life that need that coaching step or need to feel our feelings, and so my goal through it is to kind of use this to develop the Instagram and have other people connect and talk about their cloudy days or what their cloud looks like. And you know, I want to be able to have the networks where we do just start to be open with each other without making excuses for what we need, but really just saying this is what I need.

Fran Barley: 26:19

I think that your book in itself will then act as a lead magnet to draw people to the community that you're building. Where would you like that to go? So you're building up your Instagram. You're building up a community. What do you see the future of that?

Kendall Concini: 26:37

So I'm going self-publishing and in that it's because, when I've talked with some traditional publishers, there is what the mass market right now needs and it's it's honestly happy animals doing nothing just to bring everyone's spirits back up. And so when I have looked at editing the book, some of the aspects were you know, should it be from mom's perspective? And I said no, because children have so much out there where they get to see themselves in books. My daughter loves horses and we have so many cowgirl books and so parents don't always have a tool to start a conversation. So there are parents, there are loved ones, there are family members who know kids out there struggling with something, and it's a heavier topic and we don't always know how or when to bring that up.

Kendall Concini: 27:27

I don't say in the book, hey, I'm depressed. To my kids ever. I say kind of, I'm having a cloud, I need a moment to rest. And so my daughter has been able to gather that If you ask her right now what's mom struggling with, I still don't think she'd say depression. She would just say mom has a cloud. So as she grows with me, I can explain that's depression and here's what it is.

Kendall Concini: 27:50

And so my goal is to. I am marketing not to the kids who are going to walk into the library and say, oh, a beach day, pick up a book. Great if they do. But I'm connecting with the schools and the community centers and connecting with the therapist to say you can have this conversation with kids If you have people in the area who need this support.

Kendall Concini: 28:15

This is how you can start the conversation, and where you go from it is just your groundwork. From it is is just your groundwork. And so in the back of the book, one of the great things that I'm excited about is I've been able to partner with some local. I have a therapist, we have a merriment maker, so her whole career shift was she has this amazing website, the Pulse and Uncustomary, and she puts up 30 day challenges for happiness. She challenges you to go, experience joy, and so we're putting a challenge in the back of the book. We're asking questions about what does your cloud look like or what do you need, because my goal from this is the conversation and it's not necessarily the core of the story.

Kendall Concini: 29:01

Yes, I worked really hard on it and we're editing and I and it looks so different through the versions but it's really just a tool to the bigger creative kind of outlet that I want to come from it, because again, it didn't exist and having those collaborations as well with others, offering something that's complementary to what you're doing.

Fran Barley: 29:24

Yeah, yeah, I love that, thank you. Right, there's. There's a lot of things there that I'm thinking about and hopefully this has evoked a lot of thought in anybody listening as well. So thank you, kendall, for sharing your story and your heart also your heart with us today. Your honesty and your courage inspire us all to be gentler with ourselves and those around us. If you would like to stay inspired and connected with kendall's journey, you can follow her. Now. You've mentioned instagram, so you're on instagram as cloudy day chronicles, yes, and what should anybody visiting your instagram? What kind of things should they expect or could they expect?

Kendall Concini: 30:09

so I am really bad at the formulaic like monday is this post tuesday, because I have two kids, so it doesn't work out like that. I am dropping some books, sneak peeks, I'm dropping illustrations right now, but the main things I always try to put out is I have some therapeutic kind of quotes to remind yourself that it's okay to feel your feelings.

Kendall Concini: 30:32

I have the cloud on there giving some advice and I also have open shares about cloudy and sunny days. So I show a little bit of what is going on in my life with my family's permission, and how we kind of process through the emotions and I want you know, by throwing up polls or kind of questions, just having people allow themselves the opportunity to also share anything that's heavy for them, anonymous as they want. I haven't actually shared someone's story yet, but it's been a lot of just showing kind of my presence through it.

Fran Barley: 31:13

This is just as supportive for adults coming into your community and looking forward to your book as it is for the children, because then they can translate that you know within, because you're using terminology and things that children can understand. It sounds as though it's just as supportive for the adults as well that are going to come come to your community, which I like. I would have loved something like this when I was younger to just help me understand myself a little bit and let me know that I wasn't alone and that I can give myself permission to feel and that it's okay. So I can see this speaking to a lot of people. Actually, it's very important. You've also got a website, so that's cloudydaychronicleswordpresscom, and I think you are you writing blogs on your website, because I had a little look and I'm pretty sure there's. There's blogs on there, isn't there? Can you just tell us a little bit more about those?

Kendall Concini: 32:16

so through the journey I kind of looked at what authors have. I'm really bad at the internet, so creating a website myself is not gonna happen.

Fran Barley: 32:25

Let's reframe that. Let's reframe that.

Kendall Concini: 32:28

I'm not into the internet or you know let's re, let's reframe that the coding aspect of trying to get it to function as a website, and so I also sat back and thought like if I did an author website, what would I really want to put on there? And again, a big part of it is presence and what happens, you know, after the beach day when we go home. And so I've started the WordPress more as a blog to just share the longer stories behind what is going on. So one of the big first post was about why did I start all of this, and it was about being a parent who's hesitant to become a parent and what happens in that first post-natal depression and trying to look at you know how did I get to different places in my journey and sharing like the fuller story for the adults, kind of behind the book, and also just sometimes saying something that other people aren't saying. A big comfort in my journey with my daughter was finding kind of my core mom friends and the ones that stuck around with me were the ones who I was able to say like this is not going well, like I didn't.

Kendall Concini: 33:41

If you ask my daughter what was she like as a baby, she'll say I was a terror because she she was. She had a lot going on. She didn't stop screaming. For about six months it turns out she had like a hernia reflux. People didn't want to like hold and cuddle her. She didn't like it and she didn't smile until she was about seven months. So there was a lot of emotions in there, and so the blog is really just. It's okay to talk about other sides and the smiling, happy stuff of parenting, but also see the happy moments in there, and so I'm trying to be more open about that, so a parent who is struggling doesn't feel alone and lost in it.

Fran Barley: 34:25

There can be a certain amount of stigma involved with not being perfect or not being, you know, having the perfect child or and within mental health itself. There's still a lot of stigma and misunderstanding as well within that. So I think to be a voice speaking out and just putting it in plain, understandable words is is very refreshing. I had well with my, with my son. He's my youngest. I had trying to think how to describe it. Basically, I used to look at him and feel incredibly guilty because I kept wondering what he would be like without autism, like where was my child? And of course, the guilt came from the realization that that that is my child is a wonderful little being and you know I was.

Fran Barley: 35:23

I was trying to separate the two and I remember going through a bit of effect. I call it a phase within my own depression of that, wondering about the possibilities of who I could have been without it. I could have been this, and you know. But it's still all me, you know, it's still all me. You, you know, it's still all me.

Fran Barley: 35:42

You know we're multifaceted human beings and it's OK to have all of these things about us and we can choose our own realities and we can choose the identities that we adopt and present.

Fran Barley: 35:53

You know, more at the forefront, and it's taken me a long time to learn those kind of things, and I think having conversations like that is just so important Hearing people's voices, you know because we can be held back by fear as well fear of judgment, fear of not being right. You know, there was a lot of um. I remember feeling a lot of fear that somebody would think that I was a bad parent or that you could be taken away, or you know, I had all these horrendous kind of thoughts and for somebody just to say, look, it's okay not to be okay, it's okay, and here's some resources. So I see your, your Instagram itself as being a resource. The more you build that up, that's a really good resource for people, for parents, and again, with your blogging, with the WordPress, it's it's going to be a really good resource, isn't it if? If it you know it is already, I'm sure, but if you're going to continue to kind good resource, isn't it if?

Kendall Concini: 36:43

if it you know it is already, I'm sure but if you're going to continue to kind of build that up, that that in itself is a resource for people yeah, and parenting it it's, it's so hard because I, I agree, like I'm emotional about, about your share, because I see that in my daughter Sometimes she gets really overwhelmed and she'll kind of say and my first thought is like, oh no, she has. Or if she's hyper-focused, I'm like, oh no, like I did that, and what would she be like if I had, you know, fixed myself or if I wasn't open about all of this. But then there are these moments where you meet her and and sometimes we'll go somewhere and we're out in public and you know, we know someone's with her, but we can't quite see her and and but you see people lighting up and smiling or laughing. I'm like, okay, she's over there because she's so like outgoing and conversational, and so I've also kind of had to step back and go. I also did that.

Kendall Concini: 37:42

You know, my depression has made me want to like create community and have the safety and kind of plans and things like that. And I don't often champion myself on that. And you know, when my husband watches this he'll kind of pat himself on the back, but sometimes we'll leave somewhere and he'll tell me he's like you did that and it takes me a moment because I know that I planned an event out of anxiety. Or I know I planned an event because if I was stuck home that day I would have been cleaning the whole house, kind of anxious, or really just sitting on the couch depressed, and so I'll make something. And then when it happens and everyone's there and they're loving it, they don't know what that started, as they just are there enjoying it. And so when we leave and my husband says you did that, it's always really hard to go OK, yeah, I did, because I know where it came from. But trying to see that in there and think like where would people be if I didn't have this or I didn't face this?

Fran Barley: 38:46

but then also trying to see that strength in the other side and saying, no, I have been able to create some really great things from the negative yeah, and there's a lot of lessons within your own journey that can pay forward to help other people, which is an amazing thing, because we don't know what we don't know. You know that's that. That is a fact. We don't know what we don't know, and if you're just a little step ahead in your journeys, all you've got to do is hold your hand out to the next person and they can take, you know, the learnings that resonate, resonate with them over it to help them move forward as well, because it's all about our growth, isn't it? You know we're all on different paths, we've got different intentions for things, or you know different kind of goals that we might set, but ultimately, it's about our time on the planet and our growth while we're here, and so I think it's a beautiful thing that you're doing.

Fran Barley: 39:42

I liked a word that you used earlier. Actually, you used the word cheerleader, or you said cheerleading or cheerleader, and I like that as well. So championing your, championing yourself, but also that cheerleading, you know others around you, or for doing that yourself. I think that's we don't often celebrate. You know, it can be more about that that I used to have a very heavy, critical inner monologue. It was almost like this voice that carries with me all the time, and it was always quite, quite damning and quite negative, and it took me a long time to either turn the volume down on that or to flip that and reframe it into something a bit more positive and a bit more healthy for my mind. So I think that when using the words, I think a lot, because this really has got me thinking.

Fran Barley: 40:29

This whole conversation has got me thinking that when people come to your Instagram and they come to your blogs and have a look at it, it it's going to be very inspiring, you know, and they're going to find bits in there that resonate with their own journey, because we're all individuals. But there's going to be very inspiring, you know, and they're going to find bits in there that resonate with their own journey, because we're all individuals. But there's going to be bits in there that still resonate. The same isn't there.

Fran Barley: 40:52

So thank you so much for sharing all of this. Thank you, I love your future plan as well. Thank you, ah, and I'd like to talk to you a bit more about your wordpress website as well, just on the side note, just in in case there's anything that I can offer there in the way of support for you. So if you're interested in more content like this, be sure to check out Melancholy Coaching on YouTube. Until next time, stay curious and keep igniting your creative potential. Creative potential and go find kendall at cloudy day chronicles on instagram and on wordpress cloudydaychronicleswordpresscom.

Fran Barley: 41:34

Thank you, bye, bye, for now anyway thank you for joining me on the melancholy coaching podcast. I'd love you to subscribe For queries or to connect email info at melancholymentorcom. Until next time, keep igniting your creative potential.