Letting Your Child Struggle and Choosing Love Over Fear, with Dr. Wes Robins

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Dr. Wes Robins sent me a text a few weeks ago, and I stopped what I was doing and read it twice. It was a piece he had written at his kitchen table while his daughters worked on an art project beside him, and it was one of the most honest and beautiful things I have read in all the years I have been doing this work. It started with four words: you are not broken. And it kept going from there.

Wes has been a guest on this show before, and I have always admired how he shows up. No pretense, no pedestal. Just a real human being who has done his own hard work and now walks alongside young people and families who are doing theirs. Since we last spoke, he made the gut-wrenching decision to close the treatment center he poured five and a half years into, and what he learned on the other side of that loss is something I think every parent who has ever watched someone they love struggle needs to hear.

He is back in private practice now, seeing clients out of a cool 60’s ranch house in Alpharetta, GA. He works with young people, with parents, and with families who are trying to figure out how to stay present through things that feel impossible to witness. He’s a Ph.D, but has officially taken on the designation of Soul Nurse, and once he explains it, you’ll understand exactly what that means.

This conversation goes places I did not expect. We talk about the piece Wes wrote for parents, and he reads it aloud, and I am not going to pretend I held it together. We get into the difference between empathy and presence, why watching your child suffer might be asking something of you that has nothing to do with them, and what it actually means to be the flight attendant when your kid is in turbulence.

If you have ever felt like you were failing simply by not being able to fix this, this one is for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• The wise words Dr. Wes wrote at his kitchen table that stopped me cold
• How to think about psychedelics and plant medicines when your child is asking (or using them)
• The difference between empathy and presence, and why it matters
• Why your child's struggle may be your greatest spiritual teacher
• What being the flight attendant actually looks like when you are terrified yourself

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Website
• Dr. Wes Robins Youtube Channel
• Dr. Wes LinkedIn Profile
• Email address: drwes@eternalstrength.com
• Psychology Today
• "When The Map Burns" 

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Transcript

Dr. Weston Robins

[00:00:00] Brenda, Brenda, it's awesome to see you, to talk to you, to connect, and I'm always grateful for this platform. Al-Alpharetta, Retta. You gotta do the country. Yes. 

[00:01:00] Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. Cool.

[00:02:00]  Beautiful. Well, Brenda, you, you-- I'm always so grateful for you, what you have built, everything that you guys do with Hope Stream, I think has been this continual, just consistent and persistent parent and family support for anybody on the journey. So I'm blessed to be here. But you me-- last time we met in person, you probably got me at peak stress level. Like, and I was, I was saving face as best I could. But the center that I ran, Eternal Strength, we opened in twenty twenty, and then we ran for five and a half years, and I made the very difficult decision to close the doors of it Last September, so September 2025, we're coming up on, I think, about 

[00:03:00] six months. But I can never even put into words how grateful I am for all of the families, community, what we were able to do, um, and how we served families. But yeah, the last two years of it for me really became incredibly stressful, not only to my nervous system, but just spiritually, psychologically, financially. Um, and so I had to, you know, learn this lesson of letting go, and there was a part of me that had never entertained not having the center. And especially when people are telling you, "This is changing my life. This is incredible," you know, you're getting that every other day, then it's like, "I can't. This is the mission. This has to keep going." But I hit this-- Oh, man, and, and I hit, you know, a real place of breakdown. 

[00:04:00] But if I see it as breakdown to breakthrough, and, um, for anybody that's listening, the gentleman that helped me the most was Eckhart Tolle. Eck-Eckhart Tolle's work, I remember being in my basement, and I was... You know, I have my PhD at an awesome university. I did a PhD in consciousness and society. I've, uh, you know, published a book with Routledge Psychology, which is a prominent critical psych, you know, um, amazing organization. And I was-- I had made some music, which was a long dream of mine. I put out this little EP, and I have a beautiful wife of sixteen years and two little daughters, and they're upstairs and sound happy, and I'm miserable. And in my mind is just tormenting me, and I'm so stressed with the center, 

[00:05:00] financial, team dynamics, growth, scaling. And so I hit this place where I was like, "Man, something's so deeply misaligned." And I remember I put on a video from Eckhart Tolle. It was, um, Dark Night of the Soul, and he starts to talk... It, it was beautiful, but he started to just talk about ego and identity, and not the ego that you typically think of in pop psychology like Donald Trump, Kanye West, narcissism, but the ego that we all have, which is anything that we tell ourselves about who we are, our identity structure. And he talked about over-identifying, and I, I just started to recognize, oh my gosh, for the last five and a half years, I've over-identified with myself as the founder and president of this center And doing this radical youth work, and I got to let go and come back into a deeper identity, my spirit, my essence self.

[00:06:00] And so he kind of sparked a lot for me to do some real intense work around ego and identity. And so we closed the center September twenty twenty-five. I was heartbroken, cried a lot. Um, but prior to that, Brenda, I had gone-- That last summer of twenty twenty-five was really rough for me. Um, and, you know, I was doing all this breathwork, yoga, meditation. Um, I was taking a ridiculous amount of Epsom salt baths. I don't know, but for some reason it would, it would bring my sympathetic nervous system, which was just on fire, to this calm place. So there was days where I was like, you know, two hours in the bathtub, man, just cruising there. Like, "Is Dad taking another bath?" And I was like, "Yep." Um, but I, you know, I hit this 

[00:07:00] place, and for a while I was very sacred and didn't share this with, um, that many people. But back in twenty sixteen, which was several years ago, I was probably two years into the PhD program I was doing, I had gone to Peru and worked with ayahuasca, which is a plant medicine, and never thought I'd go on that journey, but it, it had profound healing for me. And so, you know, it had been nine years since I'd worked with any plant medicines, and I was like, "I don't think I want to go back to Peru. I'm not feeling called to work with ayahuasca again." But I had had a friend of mine, dear friend, and he had gone and gone out to Arizona and worked with a plant medicine called peyote or mescalito and done, uh, a spirit walk out there. And so last summer I went out to the Church of the Peyote Way and did a three-day spirit 

[00:08:00] walk. And Brenda, words can't describe. I mean, it just... Everything that I already knew, but everything immediately telling me, this grandfather medicine, like, "You have to take care of yourself. You can no longer sacrifice the ways that you've been. You're-- The best and greatest gift you can give to others is to take care of your own soul. You have to close the center, and it has to happen now." And it was just z, z, z. And I was like, oh, you know, tears and just... And you sit alone. So I was alone at a campsite on a hundred and sixty acres in the middle of Arizona. I can hear the coyotes like they're right beside me, and it was just me and the medicine and spirit kind of reinforcing a lot of what I already knew So then I came home, and I just integrated a tremendous amount and continued breathwork, meditation, yoga, um, let go of the center, journaled quite a bit about 

[00:09:00] it, um, a lot of prayer. And, uh, I study a book called A Course in Miracles, which I've studied for probably six years now, and so integrated a lot of that work. And then I've since then gone back into private practice, which I never stopped. While I was doing the center, I was always had a private practice. But now I found a cool little nineteen sixties ranch house less than a mile from where the center was. My wife and I both have an office up here, and the days flow, and I'm present. I don't feel like I am dragged to the past or anticipating the future near as much. I can be grounded, and I'm, I'm so grateful for my clients and the families I serve. And who the hell wants a neurotic therapist? You know what I mean? Like, so so there was a part of me that was like, now I can, I can practice what I preach in a way where I can 

[00:10:00] be humble and grounded and take care of my nervous system and invite others in a space to do that. And so right now I'm seeing clients three, four days a week, sometimes fifteen to twenty clients a week. Youngest client is fourteen, oldest is in their thirties. I have a ton of young people that I work with, eighteen to twenty-five. Some are all over the country in different states, and we do virtual work. Um, others are here in person, but it's a lot of ego identity development work, um, soul and spirit work. I'm deeply Rogerian humanistic, um, and so yeah, that's kind of been the calling. Still tons of parent work, tons of family work, um, just helping people ground on the journey and figure out what they need to do to care for themselves, and especially if they're on that parent journey and 

[00:11:00] figuring out how to care for themselves as a mirror for their children who are on their own journey in different ways. Yeah.

[00:12:00]  Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. 

[00:13:00] And... No, I can hear you the whole time. Yep. Yeah, yeah. No, it was seamless on my end.

[00:14:00]  Yes. A hundred percent. Did you see the message about disabled audio? Cool.

[00:15:00] So here's what I'll say, and Brenda, I could, I could talk about this extensively. Um, it's a, it's an area that I feel pretty passionate about. But everything you said, the best way to frame this is... So I have a chart that I created, um, and I can send it to you, and it's got different drugs as different ecological terrains is the analogy. And I put, you know, um, alcohol in the city. I put cannabis, um, in the desert. I call sober consciousness the rainforest. I put psychedelics in the ocean. And then I have a whole other category that I call quicksand, which is where I would put heroin, cocaine, fentanyl, methamphetamine, PCP, benzodiazepines, Percocet, opiates. It would literally be 

[00:16:00] like walking by a pile of quicksand and being like, "Hey, should we jump in real quick?" We might jump in and wiggle out, kind of like I did when I was younger, and go, "Oh my God, that was close." Or you might jump into the quicksand and never get out like hundreds of thousands of people who get lost in that. Now, the reason I put psychedelics in the ocean is because never would you go into the ocean unprepared. You wouldn't take a small little raft or floaties out, way, way out into the ocean and just be like, "I'm gonna be..." You'd probably prep, and you'd have a territory, and you'd map. And so preparation, these things that you speak about, preparation, set, setting, intention, and then deep amounts of integration. Um, plant medicines, I think, have a lot of healing and can offer a lot of healing, but they can also be abused. And us in the West, we love to abuse stuff. If you go on... 

[00:17:00] There's a great, uh, YouTube chan- Yeah, yeah. We're like, "Oh, a little bit's good. Let me do, you know, supersize it." Um, but there's... Yes. There's a, there's a really good channel, uh, it's Psych Ed Substance or Psyched Substance And, you know, this guy's been doing it for a long time, but he offers a lot of risk reduction, harm reduction, and psychoeducation around substances. But it's also interesting, he'll go to these music festivals and interview people, and they're just out there partying. They're like, "I'm on psilocybin, I'm on MDMA, I'm on LSD, I'm on ketamine, I'm on 2C-B." And you can tell the intention is not therapeutic healing. It is not internal depth work. It is much more party and experience. And Brenda, for years I've worked with young people that have come into my practice and talked to me about their work with psychedelics. So whether they've had LSD 

[00:18:00] use or, uh, mushroom trips, psilocybin. And what I would always try and do was a lot of harm reduction, risk reduction, and intensive psychoeducation. Now what you're seeing in our culture is, um, especially with the recent executive order that got passed around, um, plant medicines, the way to help parents frame it is to look at it like this. So ketamine, which is a dissociative, which has been approved by the FDA, is legal, and you are seeing a lot of people go to ketamine treatment for PTSD, anxiety, depression, suicidality. I myself have gone and sat with 12 clients now, ranging in age from 18 to in their mid-50s as they've done ketamine infusions. Um, ketamine is a dissociative, so the way I kind of look at it is it can 

[00:19:00] help you separate some and take a step back from your trauma and almost view it in a meta-level way where it's not as intensive. Um, and you're also... So that's happening with ketamine. And then you have MDMA, which is, um, another synthesized substance that can be very heart-opening. And I've had a couple couples that I've talked to that have done MDMA-assisted psychotherapy and said it was very healing and beautiful for them, and they prepped and integrated well. And then you have LSD, which has been around for years. And those are, on that side, the ketamine, MDMA, and LSD are more of the synthesized versions. Then you get over into a field that's called entheogens, which is a term that basically translates to releasing the divine from within or plant medicines. And in that category you have iboga, which is 

[00:20:00] a West African tree bark that was used by, uh, I think it's the Bwiti tribe, is how you say it. I could be pronouncing it wrong. Um, B-W-T-I-I maybe. Anyways It's been used for, for centuries and, um, it synthesizes into ibogaine. And Brenda, what you're seeing is a tremendous amount of peer-reviewed empirical research showing it's helped with getting people off of opiates, fentanyl, heroin. Um, and I have some practitioners that I know that work extensively with that. It's, um, typically done in what's called a five-day flooding. And so-- But it's got a historical and a cultural lineage, and again, it's preparation, integration. And so in the entheogens, you have iboga, then you have ayahuasca, which has 

[00:21:00] been around for centuries as well. It's a brew that has DMT within it, and Peruvian and Brazilian cultures have used for hundreds of years in ceremony to do depth work. Um, I just had a doctor client of mine get back and went to a retreat and did some work with ayahuasca in Costa Rica and said it was one of the most profound therapeutic things he's ever done, childhood trauma and the healing of that. But we're doing a lot of therapy. That's the whole point is like he's come back and we're doing session after session, processing what came up for him and helping him integrate everything that was revealed so that he can weave that into the tapestry of his life and make real changes. And then you have, um, three others, peyote or mescalito, which is a cactus that's been around for, you know, it's ancient. Wachuma or San Pedro, which is another cactus, and then psilocybin. And, um, psilocybin or 

[00:22:00] magic mushrooms I think can be deeply healing as well. It's all about if you abuse it, it will abuse you. If you approach it with respect and reverence, preparation and integration, I think it can be deeply healing. But I also don't proselytize it. I don't think it's for everyone. And I think practitioners and therapists need to know who their clients are and whether or not this would be a, a healing journey for them. And a lot of times with the plant medicines, I feel like people are called to it. You don't have to, to tell people. They're just like, "Look, I just keep researching this, and I feel called to work with this." Um, but with young people, to answer your question about the developing brain, I, I think it's hard because so much ego work is happening with the plant medicines, and it's like young people are on the journey of ego identity development. So it's almost like, you 

[00:23:00] know, it would be the same thing like, uh, ego dissolution work. I've, I've had young clients come into my office sixteen and say, "Dude, I went to go eat shrooms with my friend-" And next thing I knew, I had the most profound spiritual moment in my life. I don't know what to do now. What does this mean? And I think that's where the therapy comes in. Sitting with a practitioner who understands those journeys and can help them integrate, because without integration, it's just another experience that your ego takes and forms a narrative around and, and, and then I've seen a lot of damage. I've seen a lot of young people abuse tremendous amounts of LSD and psilocybin without sacred reverence and respect, and due to that, um, have a lot of struggles and challenges.

[00:24:00]  Yeah.

[00:25:00] No. Yeah. And I have a, I have a great, uh, practitioner. Her name is Sean Johnston, and she's out in Colorado, and I can give her information, but she, she works with iboga and psilocybin and some other plant medicines, but she's, uh, done some... Her daughter struggled with heroin and fentanyl use for years, and she went on that journey, but she's incredibly knowledgeable. Yeah

[00:26:00]  Yeah, you... Sorry, you broke up for just a second. Yes, it just, you froze. Oh, yeah. Awesome. That'd be-- And, and like I said, Brenda, I'm just-- This-- I, I feel like this is spirit and, and what I'm called to kinda do. So I was sitting at home, and my daughters, I have two little daughters, River and Story. Uh, River's turning ten, and Story's turning 13, and we have kind of like an art table in the dining room. I know. I know.

[00:27:00] I'm saying it's crazy. Yeah. River turns ten this Saturday, and then Story turns 13 May 5th. So... But I, I, I love being a girl dad for all the chaos and everything that comes with it. It's so beautiful. Um, but yeah, we were sitting there, and we were drawing and doing art, and so they were working on stuff, and then I pulled out some of their construction paper and just started to write. And so I'll read it. I wrote, uh, it's called When the Mat Burns: Notes for Parents Walking Through the Fire. And then you flip in, first page it says, "You are not here to fix your child. You are here to walk beside them, to meet them in their chaos, not control it, to love without needing to rescue. Your child is not broken. They're an unfolding soul. Their 

[00:28:00] pain is not a problem, it is a portal. They don't need diagnoses as much as they need dignity. Beyond the behavior is a need. Beyond the need is a story. Beyond the story is someone worthy of love. You, as a parent, are on the journey too. This isn't just about them. Their struggle is sacred, but so is yours. They are the mirror. They stir your old wounds. They awaken what you've buried, and that's not failure. That's invitation. You are not here to guide them from the mountaintop." You are here to walk with them through the valley, barefoot, honest, and alive. Slow down. Stay soft. Trust repair. You don't need the right words. You need your presence. Love lives in your tone, your breath, your return. The quieter you become, the more you 

[00:29:00] hear. That was a Ram Dass quote, "The quieter you become, the more you hear." Um, and then the last couple pages I said, "You can't control the outcome, but you can control your presence. Let go of the illusion that loves means peace or perfection. Love is wild. Love is messy. Love is showing up again after the slam of a door, the silence, the sharp words, the relapse, the shutdown. You are not responsible for your child's choices, but you are responsible for the space you create. Create one full of breath, compassion, boundaries, and return. You are not here to save them. You are here to walk beside them, no matter how dark it gets. When you forget, return here. When it all feels too heavy, when you wanna scream or disappear, when you're questioning everything, read this slowly. Feel your own heart beating. 

[00:30:00] You are not failing." Affirmations for the fire. Repeat to yourself, "I am not alone in this. My child is not broken. I can hold space without controlling. I can rest and still be enough. I am allowed to feel everything. Love is louder than fear. We are both still becoming. This is sacred work." And then on the back it says, "Keep going. You're doing sacred work. You're allowed to fall apart. You're allowed to not know. You're allowed to love wildly and perfectly and still be enough. Your child is not a project. This isn't about perfection. It's about presence. The fire doesn't mean you've failed. Love, not certainty, is what lights the way. Keep loving. Keep going. Keep the faith."

[00:31:00] Oh, yeah Yeah. The guilt, the guilt and the shame, and you... And, and that guilt and shame that parents carry, you know? So many times they'll come in my office and be like, "I did this." I'm like, "You didn't do this." You, you know, we... Our children are so influenced by so many different variables 

[00:32:00] throughout their growth and development, and I've told you, Brenda, my journey. You know, 17 to 23, cocaine, methamphetamine, three arrests, all this stuff. My parents were awesome. My parents, like, they laid the groundwork for everything. For whatever reason, I, my soul, my spirit had to go on that journey, and I was brushing up against things that I needed and, and it's just parents kind of recognizing you didn't cause this. Um, yes, there's elements that you can look back and take accountability for, of ways that you could have been more present or conscious, but really becoming a conscious parent, as Dr. Shefali talks about, that the only time to do it is in the now. You know? Like it's... And, and you don't become one, and then you're like, "I'm a conscious parent." It's like maybe today. Yeah, you do it, you do it day by day, hour by hour, just like Eckhart Tolle talks about being a teacher of presence. He's like, "You don't become a teacher of presence." He's like, "You're only a teacher of 

[00:33:00] presence as long as you're freaking present." And as soon as you're not present, then you're not teaching it. As soon as you're... So it's just remaining awake to what's most important, and then, you know, you really wanna help your kid, take care of your vessel, take care of your mind, your body, your soul, and that is the hardest thing to do when you've got a kid that is drowning

[00:34:00]  Yeah. Oh, yeah. And, and, and like you said, the way-- how I like to work with parents is I like to almost view it... Because it is, it's, it's inherent and it's instinct, instinctual in every way that your child is a reflection of you. Uh, but what you've got to recognize is all that's projection. All of that is you wanting your child to have certain experiences and, you know, when you look at the deeper kind of, um, 

[00:35:00] ways that it triggers or touches upon your unmet needs and your childhood and what you want better for them. And none of it's bad. It's not like blaming parents, like you shouldn't have that. It's just about becoming conscious of it. But I think about it, it's like if your kid won the gold medal for, I don't know, something in the Olympics, like pommel horse or something, would you-- You know, if a mom ran up on stage and was like, "I'm the one who did this for my chi-," we'd all look at her like, "Yo, you need to cool out. Your kid did that. They put in the time and the effort and energy." So another one of my favorite speakers, Josh Shipp, he says, "Sometimes the best thing you can do for a kid is to let them sit in their own success or their own failure." And, and, you know, that's so hard for parents because we do, we think if we can lay the groundwork, then they will go on to do this or that. But we, we don't recognize, like that beautiful Kahlil Gibran poem 

[00:36:00] says, "Your children are not your children. They are the sons and daughters of tomorrow." Like you-- They, they may be an arrow shot from your bow, but they are on their own journey through the skies and through the wind, and they need to figure out their ego, their identity, their worldview. And you really are a shepherd You're not an engineer parent, you are a shepherd parent. Your kid is not a fax machine that you can-- if you engineer it perfectly, it'll do this. It's this organic mosaic of genetic complexity, biopsychosocial, spiritual, and really your goal is to just be there, be yourself, take care of yourself, be as grounded as you can, and then buckle up and be there for them on the ride. And, and know that, you know, every high and every low, if you view it as a roller coaster, and if you think you need to get on the seat beside them 

[00:37:00] on the roller coaster, even though I just said buckle up, kind of like that's what you do, it's what you wanna do. But man, if you do it, you start to recognize this isn't serving them. You need to be a stable grounding force that is standing right beside their roller coaster and can say, "I'm here for even when you're on the super high highs, even when you hit the lows, and I'm not going anywhere, and I'm a stable force in your life that's always going to speak truth and give you love and presence." Um, but then we kind of get into, you know, boundaries and enabling and what those things look like and, and all of the ways where it tests us as parents because your heart feels so much and you go, "Forget these boundaries and forget whether I'm enabling or not. I'm just gonna save my kid." And then you get-- it becomes so blurry in, in what you're doing, but it's really coming back to always doing what's in the best interest and the greatest good of your child.

[00:38:00]  Um, and that's hard and difficult

[00:39:00]  Yes. So 100%, 100%. Well, and I bring it back to it's, it's a practice. It's, it's just like any other practice where, you know, um, let's say diet for instance. You know, let's say you're doing really good and you're rocking your stuff and you're staying consistent, and then somebody brings a ton of donuts to 

[00:40:00] the office or a bunch... You know. And, and here's the thing, and you break your diet. You can either go the guilt, shame, spiral, judgment, and, and blame yourself, which will perpetuate the behavior even more, or you can get right back on your practice of health and consciousness. So the kid that punches the hole in the wall, you know, if you lose it, who won it? Or who... You know, if your... Or if your kid OD's in front of you or goes through something horrific, you know, it's forgiveness and it's grace for yourself as a parent first and foremost, and then it's being there as loving presence alongside the journey, and that looks incredibly challenging, whatever it might be. Riding in the back of an ambulance, going to the doctor's appointments. But it really is the recognition of truth, which is your child at some point has to want to heal and take accountability for their behaviors, and you could do everything in the world as a parent to try 

[00:41:00] and control their behaviors, their thoughts, their actions, but you can't And so it's, it's, it's taking that absolute truth and going, "Okay, wait a minute. What do I have control over?" And, and really looking at that in the face. And in my other little pamphlet that I made, I, I make this one little section. It says, "You can't control other people, the economy, the past, every thought, every trigger. What you can control, whether you stay, whether you breathe, whether you soften, whether you repair. Love is not certainty. Love is participation. Love is showing up again, again, again after the silence, the re..." And it's so, it's just... I think it's hard because we can't fit it into any book that tries to write, "Do these seven simple steps. Do this thing." It's we're talking about deep spiritual practice that your kid is, is 

[00:42:00] pushing you to look at, and it's really, I think in every moment, it's choosing love over fear. And that when fear comes in, it swallows you whole. It takes everything from you. It, you know... I look at these parents, Brenda, as the most elite... The analogy would be these are the most elite Navy SEALs in the world. But when you, when you go but when you go to the training of the Navy SEALs, you know what they say? "Stay calm. No... Whether... They say, "Stay calm no matter what. Do not panic. Do not lose your cool." Because as soon as you panic in that high-stress situation, whether somebody's getting bombed or you're fighting or you're going, as soon as you lose control of your nervous system, you compromise everything. And so I think it, it really, it's counterintuitive, but so much of that training is mom, dad, 

[00:43:00] you gotta take care of you and your nervous system and ground and stay as present as possible, no matter the circumstances of what are happening. Because it's the unconscious spiral of fear that will plague even more. You'll bring unnecessary suffering to the situation that you're already walking through

[00:44:00] 

[00:45:00]  Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, you, you speak to it so honestly and raw, and I, I... A few things come up for me. One, I was listening to Eckhart Tolle, and he was talking about empathy, and he was speaking about, um, how empathy is not what helps in healing. And he, and he talks about it can connect you, it can make you feel with another, but presence is what helps with healing. And, and the ways that we have been trained and taught by society and culture and even some of our counseling and 

[00:46:00] psychotherapy is, like, more empathy, more deep feeling, more joining with, more under, like, really going to. And it's, it, it may seem counterproductive, but I really think it's, it's, um, a deep, deep grounding that your child needs They don't need somebody to suffer alongside them. They need somebody to witness their suffering. And Dr. Shefali says it beautifully well. She says, um, "A child's greatest-- a parent's greatest pain, or a parent's greatest fear is a child in pain. But a child's greatest disservice, a child's greatest disservice is a parent who's unable to witness their pain." And so I think it's being the witness without becoming consumed by the suffering yourself. And it is, it's such a hard... Um, I had a parent give me this years ago, Brendan, it was such a good one. 

[00:47:00] It was a mom, and she called me, and she was like, "Wes, I just read the best thing. I gotta share it with you." And it was, um... I may have given it to you before, but it was, all right, pretend you're on a plane, and you and I are both passengers on a plane, and we hit a giant patch of turbulence. The first thing we do is we'll look up at the flight attendant, and if the flight attendant is just kinda calm and smiles and is still, you know, doing their thing, then immediately we'll relax, and we're like, "Okay, that turbulence was scary as hell, but we're, we're gonna be fine." But if we hit that huge patch of turbulence and we look to the flight attendant, and they go ghost white and run over to that little chair and strap themselves, we're like, "Oh, good God, the plane's going down. Everybody's gonna die." And like it or not, you are the flight attendant on your child's journey of life, and everything they go through, they're gonna hit with turbulence and come screaming to you. And you know there's some times that that flight attendant wants to lose 

[00:48:00] it and is scared themselves. But, you know, but they hold it together, and they do it in a way that isn't fake or inauthentic, but they do it in a way where they recognize, yes, this is scary. Yes, this is the turbulence of your life. This is the growth, but I am here. And I think, you know, if we fast-forward it all the way out, you know, play your whole life all the way out and say you, you know, any of us are grateful enough to make it on this, you know, journey eighty, ninety years, you're gonna have to sit with your child, and they're gonna have to sit with you through that. And so the more you can kind of wrestle with we're on this journey together, and we're learning, and we're growing, and we are having to face our fears and anxieties and all the things that come, but we're gonna do it with grace, we're gonna do it with dignity, we're gonna do it with love, and we're gonna do it with strength. And, and those practices of just repeating 

[00:49:00] that and finding a way to ground yourself. Um, but I like the flight attendant one. You know, it always makes me Yes.Yes. Yep. 100%. Yeah. Yes. Yep. And then the biggest remembrance, the 

[00:50:00] biggest remembrance is, you know who the pilot is? God, divine spirit, energy, univ-- you know, whatever you wanna define it as, but it... We all wanna be the pilot, and we all get angry at the pilot, and we all want... You know what I mean? Ain't nobody gonna... The flight attendants wanna go, "You know what? Who's driving this, man? Let me in that... I'll fly this plane where it's supposed to go." And then it's kind of recognizing, like, look, the only person that's doing that isn't a person, and it's spirit, and it's energy, and it's eternal, and it's much larger than any of us little ants.

[00:51:00] Yes. Yes.Yep. Yep. Yeah.

[00:52:00]  Yep And, and it makes sense, you know? It's like it's... Yeah, it all makes sense, and it's give yourself grace as a parent because you want what's best for your kid, and you want them to avoid pain and suffering. But also, when you really look deeply at it, pain and suffering is what teaches us all. It's the great portal of transformation. If somebody took away my pain and my suffering from me, I would be half of the person that I am today because so much of my transmutation and growth came from that. But it's so hard when you got this little being that you care about so deeply, especially when you're watching them curate their own suffering more and more, and, and it's hard.

[00:53:00] Yeah. A hundred percent. And Brenda, it all... You know, it's, again, for me, it's grace and forgiveness because this is how we've been 

[00:54:00] culturally conditioned. At what point did any of us get Suffering 101 growing up? No. We got raised in a culture... Yeah, we got raised in a culture that basically said, "Look, you need to avoid pain, avoid adversity, and we're gonna, we're gonna offer a quick fix to everything. You need to seek pleasure and avoid pain." And we got indoctrinated and conditioned and told that it was gonna come from material gain, fame, ego, adulation, um, persona, all of these things that, that we have to kind of slowly deconstruct and recognize, "Wait a minute, I don't think that's where joy and happiness and peace comes from." It comes from taking a journey and working on going to your shadow and doing shadow work and looking at what your pain and your... All of those emotions that you try to avoid, what they're really trying to teach you. And that's where Carl 

[00:55:00] Jung was the best You know, you, you did such profound work around whatever neuroses you have, that's a check engine light. And, and the real thing is to go look at it, pay attention to your anxiety, your pain, your suffering, your fear, and, and look at it with a curiosity to kind of go deeper into it. But we, we live in a culture that basically goes, "Oh, you're feeling something you don't wanna feel? Great. Symptom management, let's get rid of it." You never gotta-- You'll never have to learn. Yeah. Right. We'll just get rid of it.

[00:56:00] Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.Oh, and I love it. I, I eat it 

[00:57:00] up. I was just gonna say really quickly, like, um, Ram Dass talks, talks a lot about that. And, and it's, you know, I, I have such an affinity for it, but it is, it's a, it's a, it's a paradigm and a perceptual shift to view the things that show up in your life as difficulties and adversities, and to see them as your greatest spiritual teacher. And, but once you do that, you will start to encounter life in a very different way than you ever have before. And so I encourage every parent to see your child and whatever they're going through as your deepest spiritual teacher. Cool. Brenda, you're awesome. You and Cathy and Hopestream are amazing. And yeah, if anybody ever wants to, um- reach out for any 

[00:58:00] reason they can just uh email me it's drwes at eternalstrength.com and then you'll have up my website and they I just want to be here and support in whatever way I can for people on the journey yeah and so I'm a little bit different because I yes I'm a licensed professional counselor in the state of Georgia so that allows me to practice counseling psychotherapy but then Brenda I call myself a soul nurse so when you go to you know that's that's not um a credential exactly but I've I've worked with just some beautiful mentors and practitioners so when I do work across state lines if it's virtual um work with parents I do a 

[00:59:00] ton of parent coaching and then a ton of what I like to call comprehensive holistic soul nursing with any young people that feel called to work with me or families that feel called to work with me so yeah yes I can't wait thank you Brenda for everything