Dr. Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco, MOM BRAIN: Proven Strategies to Fight the Anxiety, Guilt, and Overwhelming Emotions of Motherhood―and Relax into Your New Self

[1:25]Zibby Owens: Hi. This is Zippy Owens, and you're listening to the award winning podcast, Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. I'm also the host of Moms Don't Have Time to Lose Weight, and I'm the editor of the anthology, which you should run out and buy, called Moms Don't Have Time Quarantine Anthology. All proceeds of that book go to COVID nineteen Vaccine Research. And I'm the editor in chief of Moms Don't Have Time To Write, a new publication on Medium, and we're accepting submissions, so please send your personal essays there. And if all that isn't enough, you can follow me on Instagram at Zibby Owens, and my website is zibbyowens.com. Okay. Now back to this amazing podcast. Listeners, if you enjoy this podcast, I promise you will love my new audiobook, For Moms Don't Have Time to: A Quarantine Anthology. It's not about the quarantine, but a lot of the essays were written during that time about other things that moms don't have time to do or other busy people, things like reading, eating, working out, breathing, having sex. And 60 bestselling and notable authors wrote essays. All those authors have been on this very podcast. So if you like to listen to my conversations, if you want to get to know these authors better, I read the audiobook myself. Check it out on Audible, Moms Don't Have Time to A Quarantine Anthology. Again, Audible audiobook. Go listen to it. It's like sixty minute podcasts. I hope you enjoy. Elise Dobro DiMarco, PhD, is the author of Proven Strategies to Fight the Anxiety, Guilt, and Overwhelming Emotions of Motherhood and Relax into Your New Self. She is a clinical psychologist and writer specializing in cognitive behavioral therapy for anxiety and stress with a subspecialty in working with mothers. She is the founder slash director of the New Jersey Center for Anxiety and Stress Management in Summit, New Jersey, and a diplomat of the Academy of Cognitive Therapy. Her writing has been featured in Motherwell, motherlyparents.com, PopSugarMom, Psychology Today, Scary Mommy, The Washington Post, The Week, and Today Parenting, as well as on her own blog, drcbtmom.com. She is the author of Mom Brain, as I mentioned. Welcome, Elise. Thank you so much for coming on Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books to discuss Proven

[3:32]Dr. Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco: Strategies to Fight the Anxiety, Guilt, and Overwhelming Emotions of Motherhood and Relax into your new self. Thank you. I'm so excited to be here. This, I really wish, I'm glad I have this book now. I just wish I had had it when my kids were even younger. Like this is the book I wish that it would have been like my manual for how to like get through the day because you talk about all sorts of stuff and there are a million parenting books out there. But this has like every single thing that you could worry about for someone out there like me who is sort of full of anxiety and perfectionism and all this stuff. This is like the book. So I'm so glad you wrote it. Yeah. I mean, my goal was basically because I went through the same thing myself and I found that the parenting books weren't really hitting kind of the emotional piece of things, right? Because, you know, becoming a mother entails so much emotional upheaval and I felt like all the books were really geared towards the kids, frankly, right? They all they were about parenting and how do you get your kid to sleep and how do you get your kid to eat? And so few of them, like, talked about what was going on with us moms and how difficult it was to, you know, transition into this new phase of life. And so that was my goal. You know, my hope is that this will be kind of a guidepost for moms to deal with everything that's changing for them because so much is changing. It's so true. And it's everything from like the mom body to, you know, even our brain. So this is like, I love this chart, which people listening cannot hear, but cannot see rather. But you have, which I always think about, sort of how we're using our brain, like what percentage is for what? And before where work was like half the pie chart. Now work is just like maybe a sixteenth of the pie chart. And it's like, did I put sunscreen on Sam today? Crap, is that pasta sauce on my shirt? If I don't register for soccer now, I'm going see early bird discount. Need to do laundry when I get home. Why is there a Lego piece in my bag? And it's just like all the things like the 8,000,000 things that just go circling around that we have to sort of synthesize and act on every single day. And I just love seeing it out here like, oh, okay. So this is not just my brain. Oh, that's me. I mean, that's 100%. I mean, because I talk a lot about myself and it's all true. That's my brain now to this day. Like, my kids are at seven and 10 and my brain still looks like that. It's still filled with way too much stuff all the time. I know. I'm like, finally, we got we were just joking about like the end of the school year and all this stuff. I'm like, okay, you know, I think I did everything I had to do with you guys except the allergists, but I feel like that's pretty good. You know? Listen, as far as I'm concerned with COVID, like, truly, if you kept your kids alive, like great. That was all I think we could expect of ourselves. So if all you missed has been the allergist, I'd say you've done a pretty great job. Yeah. We got the dentist, we got the orthodontist, the checkups, and all the other stuff. I'm like, oh my gosh, I can't even like, I can't even deal with it. You have a lot of stuff in here, not just for new moms. And I know you said it's, you know, it's more for moms in the trenches sort of five and under. But I really think a lot of this is for any moms. And you have a whole section in here on how we compare ourselves to other people and how social media kind of plays into that. And I know that people often talk about this, like, you know, beware of the myth of the mom, perfect mom on Instagram and all this stuff. But you really like go into it of like, how can we analyze the behind the scenes of the moms who are posting and what does it mean? And let's like break it down. And I know you wrote about this, I think, Parents Magazine too and everything. But as someone who is a mom and who does post a lot, I was also reading this from the other side, which is like, am I in any way, like trying to show things like looking easier than they are or anything like that? So tell me your, tell me like the whole, from both perspectives, sort of how social media posting can be like the the worst part for moms, but also maybe an empowering part. Oh, yeah, for sure. And by the way, I follow you on social media, and you're great. You're not one you're not one of those problematic moms. And I should say, by the way, Zvi, to your point before, these strategies work for moms and by the way, parents of kids of all ages. Yes. You know, the reason that I targeted it at zero to five was only because my hope is that if you can learn these things early and start putting these things into practice earlier, it'll make it way easier for you as your kids get older. But yes, these strategies, like kids of any ages, like my sister is into it and her kids are like in college and high school. I think you can well, of course she's into it. She's my sister, but whatever. I it works for right? It works for kids of all ages. Yeah. So the social media thing is really tricky. And I've always talked to moms historically about comparison making, during COVID especially, like the social media issue became much more heightened because of course social media was like all we had where we couldn't compare ourselves to people in real life because we weren't seeing people in real life. So I feel like it was like ratcheted up, you know, during COVID and became really difficult. So, you know, what I usually say to the moms that I work with, because inevitably like they'll come in at some point in our work together and will say, you know, I saw this post on Instagram and this mom seemed perfect. Or, you know, this mom posted about her kid and her kids seemed perfect and my kid can't compare, right? It's comparing yourself to other moms, it's comparing your kids to other kids too. And they'll come in and be filled with anxiety and guilt and shame and all of this kind of stuff. And what I try to do with the moms that I work with and what I write about a lot in the book is to encourage them to be critical of their comparison making. So what I mean by that is to really think about who it is they are comparing themselves to. Because oftentimes the comparisons that you make, particularly on social media, are actually unfair comparisons, right? So I have a lot of examples of this. So there's, first of all, there's the celebrity. I mean, forget about that, right? Like celebrities, you don't know anything about them. You don't know what it took for them to get the picture, the video, whatever that they posted. You don't know how much money they have and how much help they have. You just don't know enough to make in any way, shape, form a fair comparison. And what I say about celebrities and also just kind of other people in general is like, if you're comparing yourselves to yourself to people with whom you don't share values or whose opinions you don't value, it doesn't make sense to make that comparison. So celebrities are one thing, right? Where like my patients will come in and say, Oh yeah, so and so hosted so and so. And I'll say, Oh, well, what do you think of this celebrity? And they'll be like, Oh, I think she's terrible. Right? So, like, well, then why are you why are you comparing yourself against her? First of all, have no info about her. Second of all, you don't respect her. Right? This is true also of of people we we even know in our real lives. People we, you know, are connected to on Facebook, on Instagram. I'll have moms come in and say, Oh my gosh, you should see what this woman from my son's school just posted and I feel so jealous and blah, blah, blah. And then I'll ask again, I'm like, you know, Can you tell me about this woman? And inevitably she'll say, oh gosh, I can't stand her. Or like, my kid can't stand her kid. And I'm like, okay, well, if that's true, if you don't like her, if you don't value her opinions, if you don't share her values, why are you using her as a point of comparison? Like I always say, it's like you go to a medical doctor whose training you don't value and who you think is a quack and then you take their medical advice. Like to me, that's the analogy and I use that with moms all the time. So again, I really encourage moms to be very critical to ask, do I have even enough information about this person to make a fair comparison? And if I do have information about this person, is this someone whose opinions I value? Is this someone who who I think is a good sort of model for parenting? And then that gets to, Zibby, what you said about how you can use this for good, which is I think in real life and on social media, I'd say particularly in real life, you can strategically choose who to compare yourself to. And these should be moms whose opinions you value, whose kids you admire. I think the best thing you can do is get like a mom or two, whether it's on social media or in real life, whose kids are like a little older than your kids because they've like been through it. If you really think that they're doing a great job, like they're a great source of inspiration, they're a great source of advice, right, just to reach out to them and say, Hey, you know, I've got this question about whatever. So I don't think it's about ending comparison making altogether. I think it's about being critical of the comparing you're doing and choosing the right people and being willing to abandon, you know, the other people. Think, you know, too, with like the rise of like momfluencer culture on Instagram, like there's plenty of momfluencers who are great. And I think you just have to, again, pick the ones and you can even tell from their posts, right? Like who are the ones who seem to be more in sync with you? And then you continue to follow those and then don't follow the ones that are, you know, filling you with like, you know, shame and guilt, you know, after looking at their posts. So true. I would also cautious against sort of like taking someone's kid, you know, at face or like what the kid looks like on social media. I mean, frankly, I feel like sometimes with my kids and maybe because I've had four or something and I just see how they've grown up, like I just try to stay out of the way of like messing them up sometimes. Like the kids are going to be who they're going to be. They all are born with all these unique personalities and skills and traits and all this stuff. Like, yes, I can mess it up. But I don't know, they're like, they're gonna, one of them is really neat. One of them is really messy. And I did the same thing. So, you know, it's not, it's not always the parent anyway. And that kind of goes to all of you, the values that you talk about, which is also great. And I love how you use cognitive behavioral therapy and all these other therapies. I was also, I know we went to Yale together, and I was a psychology major at Yale. And I'm also a huge fan of cognitive behavioral therapy. And I didn't know as much about some of the other ones. But even how we use our thoughts to help our worries. And it's one thing to know this, but it's another thing to put it into practice. And you give all these specific examples, whether you're worrying about your mom body or your kid's development, or am I a bad mom? Or, you know, I had such a bad mom day or you know, all these things that we beat ourselves up about. And you outline how to find the values and then the goals from those values and actually put it into practice, with your relationships, even into your sex life. So tell me a little bit more about that and how other parents out there can use your strategies for making their lives better. Sure. So, I draw a lot from Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, which is basically an offshoot of CBT. And one of the sort of major principles of ACT is this idea that we really can gear our lives towards our values, right? And an important thing is to articulate what our values are and then set goals, like you said, to be consistent with those values. And I use it a lot with moms because I think what happens to a lot of us, myself included, is like we become mothers and then all of a sudden our identity is just mom, right? And we, particularly in those early days when really all we're doing is being with a baby all day long, it's very easy to lose sight of who we are and what's important to us. And so as I started doing work with moms years ago, it occurred to me like, wow, you know, the value stuff we do in ACT is actually great for new moms, right? Or moms, by the way, of kids of any age because what it allows you to do is go sort of area by area and there's a big worksheet I have in the book that does this. So you think through parenting, you think through work, you think through friendships, think through extended family. I have stuff in there and like how you want vacations and holidays to go. So you go through different areas and you take a little time to ask yourself, okay, like what do I value? Like as a parent, who do I want to be? As a worker, like who do I want to be? Right? As a partner, as a child of parents, you know, whatever else. So you go through and you think really carefully about what's important to you and what you value. And then once you've done that, you say, okay, how can I start to make decisions that fit with my values? So I'll just bring up of the many things like one of the things that I use values for a lot with the moms I work with is sort of like, how do you define yourself when you're not a mom and you're not working if you work, right? Like, there things about you that have always defined you that you feel like you've lost? Like maybe you were an athlete, maybe like me and Zippy and my mutual friend, Rebecca, you're like a musical theater nerd. Know, maybe you're, you know, maybe you're a world traveler. Like, think about how you define yourself and what your passions are and note these down and then spend some time really thinking about how you can enact these values in your day to day life, right? Because as moms, we don't have a ton of time per, you know, the title of your podcast. We don't have a ton of time for anything. And so we have to be really like strategic and planful about how we fit in things that are important to us. Like if we're an athlete, making sure we're still playing sports in some capacity. If we're a big time reader, making sure we have the time to read. So what the values can do is help us see what's important and then help us to make a plan for every day, right? To say, okay, you know, reading is really important to me. How can I carve out time during this crazy day with kids to make sure that I'm just doing a little bit of fiction reading, right? Or again, exercising is a huge part of who I am. Like, how can I make sure I exercise? And of course, like as a new mom, you really have to plan ahead for these things, right? For reading, for exercising, for anything else, like maybe you have to organize some childcare, maybe you have to ask your partner in advance to watch the kid. Maybe you have to be very planful so that the second the kid goes down for a nap, you get on that app and do some exercise. Whatever it is, it really requires advanced thought and advanced planning. So I think, again, and this is just one example of thinking through values, right? As I said, like we talk about values in the book, like around everything, relationships and so on. But I think the goal is to figure out what's important to you first and then figure out, all right, if I'm going to keep this in my life, how am I going to do this? And let me plan for how to do this. So I really, you know, I talk about that worksheet in chapter three, but I really encourage people to use it throughout the book, like as they're reading about relationships to look at their relationship values and think about that, right? As they're reading about, obviously, parenting, you look at the parenting value section and so on and so forth. So I'm hoping it kinda, like, guides, you know, people as they're reading through all the different chapters. Today's episode is sponsored by Quince.

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[20:24]Dr. Ilyse Dobrow DiMarco: So true. When you even cover, you know, toxic you know, which friends to spend time on and is there a relationship helping with your girlfriends, boundaries you should put into place with extended family, like how like all these things. It like it's basically like all the things that crop up that you're not expecting, And they're all kind of here with how to cope with them. And I wonder sometimes are people open to hearing this stuff until they live it? Like, could you, can you read this and like soak it up and then know what to do? Like, do people function that way? I wish they would. You know, I wish You I do. I hope so. I mean, I've because people have been asking me like, Oh, should I give this to like, you know, moms who are expecting or, you know, And I'm like, yeah. Like, please do. I mean, I think you you have to like, I feel like if I'd read this when I was, like, 25. Forget about it. Well, no. That's good. No. Forget it. Right. It'd be gone. But, you know, like, who who are imminently going to become parents, my hope is that they'll they'll read it or they'll read it sort of soon after. Structured the book purposely in, like, very discreet sections. So my hope was, although moms do not have time to read, like, they'll be able to dip, you know, dip in and out of it pretty easily, like, and just sort of target the one thing they're going through. So I think you can like weed it kind of all in one clip and maybe if you're like expecting and you still have time, you can. But I think for like the new moms or even more seasoned moms, like you can kind of dip in and out if you're like, oh, well, anxiety is my issue. Let me dip into the anxiety section for a bit. Or, Oh, I'm having conflict with my partner. Let me take a look at this section. So that's my hope. But yeah, I mean, I think it is hard to prepare and I think you're right, Zvi, that there's so many changes in so many areas and so few of those changes are discussed, which was part of the reason that I wrote this too. Because I felt like I was saying before, felt like just everything that was available to me when I had my first son ten years ago was really parenting stuff. And some of the parenting stuff was sort of punitive too. Like I'll never forget reading one of, at the time, this very popular sleep book that like, I'm paraphrasing here, but it basically was a section on like, what happens if you don't time your kid's nap right? And basically boiled down to like, well, you screwed up, Try again tomorrow. And I remember reading that and being like, Wow, like, this is harsh. Like, I don't need to hear this. So, again, my hope too with this book was to sort of let empathy kind of ooze out of it, right? Let moms know that, like, we recognize how hard this is and how much is going on and how much is changing. And again, I mean, to me, that was sort of like my hope with the book in general is that moms come away knowing how great this is and how hard this is and how in the middle sometimes this is, and just kind of allowing themselves to feel all of those things. Talk for like a minute or two about the whole section on perfectionism because I found that to be very helpful. And I, it's so funny yesterday, I was like trying to finish writing this article for moms don't have time to write for Father's Day. And I wanted to find like a perfect picture of my dad and me from when I was younger. I was like, I must have it like saved on Shutterfly, I must have it like in here or there. Should I go try to find these albums? And I realized like, I was like, I'm spending too much time on this. Like, the time and perfectionism are enemies here. Like you have to sacrifice one, Right? So I finally, I was like, you know what? It's good enough. Some things just have to be good enough. And I feel like that way with my kids, like with, you know, back to this, four out of five doctor visits, good enough. But it's taken me, you know, my kids, my older kids are 14 now. It's taken a lot of time to relax. And this is not just a parent thing. It's like a person thing. So tell me, tell me how I could have maybe spared myself earlier, what the secret is to not making things. And maybe this doesn't afflict most people, you know, needing everything to be just right. But what can we do? Oh, it afflicts so many people to me. That's why I did like a whole chapter on it, because I hear about it all the time and me too, like I am fully guilty of this for sure. So there's a couple of things that I I'll give you kind of a highlights of sort of some of the strategies we use for perfectionism because it's a huge problem. And because, you know, I think too, what happens is that like, you know, the media and again, these mom influencers and whatever sort of like conspire to make us perfectionists because they, our messages are sent to us that, you know, we can have the best X, Y, and Z. We can, you know, do it all. So I think as a result of that, like perfectionism just runs rampant. So a few things kind of as a general summary of the perfectionism stuff. One thing that I tell moms to do and I try to hammer home in the book is delegate. So here's the thing about delegating, right? When you're a perfectionist, you do not want anyone else doing anything else for your child because you'll do it best, right? You will match their clothes the best. You will plan their parties the best. You will make the best meals. You will make the whatever. That may all be true, right? But what happens when you close out everybody else helping you, there's a term for that, maternal gatekeeping, if you've ever heard that, Zibby. It's like basically you're closing the gate on other people helping you because you think you're the only one who can do it, right? And then what happens? Well, then you're the only one who ever knows how to do anything and then no one ever helps you and you become resentful and the resentment builds and builds and builds. So I really force moms to delegate and I say, you know, this is going to be hard for you, right? So I'll give an example of somebody that I've been working with of this example of delegating. Right? So she had her daughter's birthday party coming up and decided that she was gonna do all this stuff for it, like, really over the top, really elaborate. And she was really stressed out. Right? She was really stressed out. She was, like, working on the birthday party while she was trying to work and and do remote school. It was driving her crazy. And I said to her, I was like, alright. We have you have got to offload this. Who can you offload this to? And she said, well, you know, I'm sure my mom, who's retired, would be happy to help. And I'm like, give the party to your mom. Now for her, this felt awful. Right? Because the last thing she wanted, she you know, was her mom because she's like, well, my mom is not gonna get on Pinterest and, you know, personalize every party favor and whatever. And I said, no. You know, this is like this is an exercise an exposure exercise for you to hand the reins over to someone else and see what happens. Right? So she delegated to her mom. Party went fine. Was it done exactly as she would have done it? No, right? But it saved her so much heartache. And I think the more you practice delegating, the easier it becomes to manage the kind of icky feeling that you get when things don't go, you know, exactly as you'd want them to go. That's a big deal. Feel like if you had just told her to have the mom do, like, the invitations, that would be a thing. The whole party, that's like She did she did well. Let let me let me backtrack and say that, like, much of it had already been done. Okay. So it was basically what had to be done towards the end. So that was, like, the stuff. Like, I think she hadn't ordered the food. It was a party favor situation too, I think, was what really drove the bus here because the mom was Pinterest deep diving and, you know, we tried to put a stop to that. So a lot of what I talk about is that, about challenge yourself to delegate, like challenge yourself to offset some of this stuff to other people. There's certain stuff you're gonna wanna do exclusively and that's fine, but don't gatekeep everything, right? Because then you end up overwhelmed and all of that. So that's one thing. Another thing I actually have people do, and there's a cognitive behavioral therapy treatment for perfectionism actually specifically. So I take a lot of I feel like you need to be my Do you have like new clients? Do you actually like take clients? I feel like I should call you. You should like whip me into shape. I listen, I think we the truth is like, I think we all, especially with COVID, like cognitive behavioral therapy for all, like I think we all need this. So another thing that I have moms do that I borrowed from the CBT for perfectionism stuff is actually purposely mess up. And this I really like doing because it's fun and my patients hate it, but they are happy at the end. So when I say purposely messed up, don't mean, like, you know, with anything that's super important, like don't send your kid to school in the winter without a code or whatever. But, like, you can do things like quote, unquote forget to RSVP to a birthday party. Right? Or, you know, make a spelling error in a work email. Right? Things like that. And I actually task them with practicing this and we come up with specific things they're going to do imperfectly to see what happens, right? Because what you need to learn is like, you can do things imperfectly and by and large things turn out okay, right? But I think a lot of moms are so afraid of ever doing things not 100% that they do everything in their power to make everything go 100%. So I love that. I love basically screwing up on purpose, practicing that. Another thing that I talk to moms about a lot with the perfectionism stuff is just reminding them that there's a limit to what they can control, right? So you may say, plan an amazing party for your kid and then it snows that day, right? Or like, actually that's happened to me. I planned a Lego party for my older son, I think maybe when he was turning seven, and like the pizza just didn't show up. So think about like, you know, at 15, like hangry seven year olds and like no pizza, right? So I remind moms all the time to think about all of the aspects of a situation that are outside of their control. So even if they've planned things to the hilts, weather can conspire to screw things up. The kid can conspire to screw things up. Right? Because we don't have control over our kids. Again, we could plan an amazing birthday party, and then our kid is tantruming the whole party. Like, we don't have control over our kids necessarily. And there's so many other, like, environmental factors that we don't have control over. And so that's something I talk to moms about a lot too regarding perfectionism, is just try to recognize, and I even have, like, a strategy in the book where you think about an event as if it's like a circular pie, and then think about what percentage of that pie you have control over, right? And inevitably moms will come up with like so many other aspects of a situation that they recognize they have no control over. And all you can really do is do, you know, what you can with the parts you can control, knowing that there's so much that you just can't possibly do anything about. So those are some quick ones. I just did a birthday party for my 14 year old daughter because we're all kind of obsessed with Nailed It, you know, the show. Do you ever watch? Oh, yep. Mhmm. Where, of course, nothing ever goes right. So we decided that we were gonna do like four teams of two girls and each like try to make like this impossible cake. And it was so much fun. But like as we were setting up, were like, it's all gonna go wrong. Like, that's the point of this party. Like, nothing is And going to go that's what the fun is. And that's like, you know, so I feel like it was almost like a whole like therapy exercise for I love that. I love that. No, I think it's great. Anyway, I could show you the ridiculous polar bears that came in. Great. Okay. So thank you for all the stuff. Last question. Do you have any advice for aspiring authors? For aspiring authors? Yeah. I mean, you know, I think it's interesting because it sort of depends on like the way you come to it. So like for me, I always loved to write but I was not, you know, I wasn't, I was a psychology major also and I for a while, like the only writing that was required of me in graduate school was like academic writing and I hated it and then I just like stopped writing entirely as a result. And then I was realizing per values discussion earlier that like I really valued writing and it was something that I missed and so I started working it in. I guess I guess this is my advice which is is tailored I suppose more to people like me who really want to write kind of as a side hustle, right? That it's not necessarily like they were, you know, English majors and have been in writing classes their whole lives, but rather kind of want to do it as a side hustle or maybe like me or are in some sort of like healthcare space and want to write for the, you know, popular audiences. I think the best thing you can do is just like start writing and start small. So like what I did was I just kind of started my own blog and then at the same time I was looking around at some of the other kind of popular mom sites of the day like Scary Mommy for example and I was noticing that a lot of those sites actually offered for anyone to submit stuff. Cold submissions. Right? You didn't have to have an agent. You didn't have to have a journalism pedigree. Like, you could just send stuff to them. So I just started sending stuff in. Now, of course, I had the benefit of it being my my side hustle, right? So like I didn't have to write to live. I think if that's the case, it's a different trajectory that you have to take. But again, for someone like me, I just started throwing stuff in, different sites and then I started doing kind of videos to accompany my writing and that was all what led up to me getting a contract to write a book. So I guess my advice would be that if you're like me and you're writing as a side hustle, just start writing and you can start with shorter pieces and see if you can write for your own blog and just get stuff out there on social media. That's another good thing about social media. There's a lot of things I hate about it, some of which we've discussed, but it's a really great way of sharing your writing and connecting with other people who are doing similar writing and similar work. So like getting on social media and putting your stuff out there and submitting shorter pieces, for me, that was a really good way, again, to, like, dip my toes in the water a little bit. Awesome. And the more I did, you know, the more I was able to do until it led up to the book. So I think that that would be my advice. Great. Elise, thank you so much. I really loved your book. I'm totally giving this as a gift. This is like the book for new moms and old moms and anyone who just like has to deal with the stuff in their head of being a mom. So anyway, it was great to reconnect after school and thank you so much for coming on. Thank you so much for having me, Zibby. This was great. Okay. Bye.

[34:04]Zibby Owens: Thanks for listening to this episode of Moms Don't Have Time to Read Books. Don't forget to follow me on Instagram Zibby Owens and at moms don't have time to read books. Also sign up for my newsletter at zibbyowens.com and sign up for my virtual book club and meet lots of authors on Zoom every other week. Thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at Texture Sound for the sound editing, and thank you to Morning Moon Productions for providing this fantastic intro and outro music. If you walk into a room and can't remember why, it could be nothing or something more. If you confuse a familiar recipe, it could be a slip up, or it could be associated with amyloid plaque buildup in the brain. Amyloid is a protein that your body produces naturally, but a buildup in the brain could lead to memory and thinking issues. To see what may be behind your memory and thinking issues, talk to your doctor about getting a full assessment. It's never too early to start the conversation. Visit amyloid.com