Ep. 56 – The Love Story of a Lifetime with Bethany Saltman

Eran Katz: You're listening to The Apparently Parent Podcast. My name is Eran Katz. And today one of my favorite guests is coming back to the show. So stick around, this is going to be good.

All right, my friends, Welcome again to The Apparently Parent Podcast. And today we have something fun. We have a returning guest for the first time here on this show. You heard her before and we're going to talk again. So she's an author. She's an editor and researcher. She's a writing coach. She's a Zen student. She's a mom, she's a dog lover. And last but not least, the first returning guess on the show, which means she's inaugurating the two timers club. And she is Bethany Saltman. Hi, Bethany.

Bethany Saltman: Hello. Thanks for having me.

Eran Katz: Yeah. Thanks for coming back.

Bethany Saltman: My pleasure.

Eran Katz: So we were just catching up a little bit before we hit the record button. And I would just want to say to our listeners that we're recording this on April 22. So when you guys listen to this episode, it's gonna be a little later in the year. We are gathered here because we are celebrating your book, which just came out two days ago in paperback. So first, congratulations. We talked a little bit about your book in our previous chat. And let me tell you a bit about it, it's called Strange Situation. And I forgot what the tagline is... “a mother's journey…”

Bethany Saltman: “into the science of attachment”.

Eran Katz: Yeah, yeah. And, and I, I, I can't recommend this book enough. It's one of my favorites. I read it on Kindle. And now I like to read on paperbacks as well. So I'm waiting for it to be shipped here to Israel. And so first, congratulations for this paper. As someone who has never published a book yet. I wonder what it feels like to have it. It's the book you already published but it's like another. It's a new cover. It's another edition. What does it feel like?

Bethany Saltman: Oh my gosh, honestly, it feels a little like, not that big of a deal. I'm so delighted that Random House wanted to bring it out again. So I'm really proud, but it is nothing compared to the first time, which was a huge deal. I've been working on this book for 10 years, I have been working on getting a book published my whole adult life, basically. And then COVID hit and you know, right when that happened, and so the biggest party of my life got canceled, and it was just a lot of feelings. So it's been a big year of sort of, you know, sorting all of that out. And so now the paperback is here, it feels very, like, nice, but it's not... I mean, it doesn't compare to the, you know, tumultuous agony and the ecstasy of the first round.

Eran Katz: So it's not like having a child and then

Bethany Saltman: new child, and then, you know, the child has like, their two and a half birthday or something.

Eran Katz: Okay, We sometimes do those.

Bethany Saltman: Yes, exactly.

Eran Katz: All right. Okay, cool.

Bethany Saltman: But I'm, but I'm so proud, I'm still really proud.

Eran Katz: And just for the sake of those who didn't listen to our previous chat, I'll tell you a little bit about this book. So this book is actually a mixture, the way I see it, the mixture of a memoir and parenting, not like other parenting guiding books, but a book about being a parent. And I remember in our previous episode, I think I’ve said it's the story of Mary Ainsworth, and maybe you want to talk a little bit about who she was, and the story of the mother that you grew up to be. And also the story, the story of your own mom, as I remember correctly, because you share a lot about your own childhood and your own history of growing up and how it affected you, and your own journey into motherhood. And all of that under the umbrella of you discovering attachment and attachment theory and the work of Mary Ainsworth. So it's, that's why I think it's so fascinating, because it's such a personal touching story. And also, you learn a lot about attachment. And you learn a lot about Mary Ainsworth, which is really, really nice.

Bethany Saltman: Yeah, well, thank you. I remember our last conversation was one of my favorites. I was doing a lot of podcasts at that time. And I loved the way you talked about these three mothers and interestingly, Mary Ainsworth was not actually another, she gave birth, of course, to the field of attachment, which is one of the most robust, if not the most robust in the history of psychology. She and John Bowlby together. She's often called Bowlby's student, which she never was, she was his colleague. And so yeah, Mary Ainsworth, you know, she was not a believer in Bowlby's attachment theory, until she saw it for herself, in Uganda, in 1954-55. And then she came to Baltimore and replicated that study. And that's where she developed the strange situation as a way to test the secure base behavior that she saw more strongly exhibited in Uganda than she did in Baltimore. And she figured, well, why would that be? And she thought, well, maybe it's because I'm the first white person these kids have ever seen. And so they're more naturally afraid. So let me take them into the lab and goose them into a little bit of fear. And so she developed this thing, and what she says in about 20 minutes, where she, you know, it's a series of comings and goings, and reunions and separations, to understand who a child is, and what the nature of the attachment pattern is to their parents. So what happens when the parent is gone? What kind of reaction does the child have? And more importantly, how does the child return to their original state when the parent returns in the strange situation, and then she used that work to deepen her data from her Baltimore Home studies. So it's, you know, one of the most full on studies of developmental psych on Earth.

Eran Katz: Yeah.

Bethany Saltman: Just you know, so, so rich, so, so personal, so intimate.

Eran Katz: Yeah. And it's such a genius move, to move it into creating this what is known as the strange situation because beforehand in Baltimore, she and her assistants, I think they spent like 72 hours with each family just observing and cataloging them. And then she could come to similar conclusions from a 20-30 minutes, lab observation, which is quite, quite amazing. And she did create such a plethora of other studies. And it's a very robust research paradigm, which is amazing.

Bethany Saltman: It is. It's such an incredibly elegant experiment, this strange situation, so I fell in love with it as a poet. That's my original vocation. I've been, you know, I have my Master's in fine arts as a poet. And that's my point of view. I am not a psychologist, I am not a nonfiction writer to the degree that I became when writing this book. So yeah, I really see it that the original subtitle [for the book] was going to be “The Love Story of a Lifetime”, instead of “a mother's journey into the science of attachment”. Random House wanted that second one so that people could know what they were buying. But I really hold fast to the first one. It's the love story of life. For me.

Eran Katz: Yeah. Yeah. And it really resonates, you know, both from the book and if people follow you, like online, it really resonates in the work that you publish in, you know, in your blog. You see it's one of your passions.

Bethany Saltman: Yes. Thank you. Yeah, it certainly is.

Eran Katz: Yeah, so I know that you have this group, and it's called “The Secret Teachings of Mary Ainsworth”. Maybe you want to share a bit about that?

Bethany Saltman: Sure. Yeah, I would be delighted to. Mary Ainsworth, as we alluded to in our conversation, is often called John Bowlby’s student. And she was not his student. She was an incredibly brilliant scientist in her own right, who changed the world through this work in Uganda, then Baltimore, then the strange situation. And specifically in her Baltimore study, she came up with this document called the maternal caregiving and interaction scales. And it's four different scales. I have it right here. I always forget, it's incredibly complex. I have it right here. It's like 20, single spaced pages. Yeah. And this is what she used in order and there were only 26 families. Okay, this is a small sample. Yeah. So 26 families, they, as you said, you know, they catalogued their observations and had a little stopwatch with them writing down what they saw every five minutes. And so they have incredibly rich data, I have an on my computer on my desktop, it's a 7,000 page PDF.

They put it out, like Jane Goodall, you know, good old fashioned pencil on paper. Yeah. And then they had someone who typed it and then cataloged it. And, and they were looking at so called critical situations, feeding, changing crying, comings and goings, but really whatever was happening at five minute increments. And then so then they had this incredible data. And then Mary came up with these scales and then took the data and viewed the mothers in the study through each of these scales and gave them a rating of one to nine.

So the scales are sensitivity versus insensitivity to baby signals. I'm looking through the thing right now. Cooperation versus interference with babies ongoing behavior. Really interesting one. physical and psychological availability versus ignoring and neglecting. She's so harsh. It's hard to read this stuff. And then the last one is acceptance versus rejection of the baby's needs.

So there we have, in my opinion, the most comprehensive exploration of what it means to love a person that I have ever read, and I have been a practicing Buddhist for many years. And to me, this is a dharmic kind of document. Because she is talking in such incredible detail about the quality of, you know, all of these different scales, sensitivity versus insensitivity. It seems like such a simple thing, like you're sensitive or you're insensitive. She understood these things with such depth, and beauty, it's exquisite, and painful. And she rated these mothers on a scale of one to nine, each one for each of these scales. And that's how she began to understand secure versus insecure patterns of attachment.

Eran Katz: In the strange situation, we mainly observe the behavior of the child. But here she's focusing on the behaviors of the mom. Just coming from the parent place.

Bethany Saltman: Yeah. And it sounds really harsh and judgy. And that way, she was a professional judge. I mean, that's what she did. And she was observing and trying to understand who’s going to have a secure attachment. So what we do so... this has been studied very, very infrequently. There are a couple of articles about it. And Brotherton writes about it. But and, you know, sensitivity is considered a, you know, a prerequisite to attachment security, for the most part in most of the literature. There's some, you know, complication around it, but generally, that's accepted.

So what I have done is I've started this free study group monthly, where we get together with me and a bunch of other attachment nerds, and just geek out over these maternal sensitivity scales. And the incredible thing that I have discovered, is that it's one thing to read the scales about how we treat the child. But the really miraculous thing comes when we think about how we treat ourselves. So for instance, I'll just read the first paragraph, the first little bit of scale, one sensitivity versus insensitivity to the baby signals.

“This variable deals with the mother's ability to perceive and to interpret accurately the signals and communications implicit in her behavior in her infant's behavior, and given this understanding to respond to them appropriately and promptly. Thus, the mother's sensitivity has four essential components”, this is classic Ainsworth, like, just break it down, “(A) her awareness of the signals, (B) an accurate interpretation of them, (C) an appropriate response to them, and (D) a prompt response to them, let us consider each of these in turn”.

So what we do in the secret teachings workshop, study group, rather, is we read this aloud together. And then we change the pronouns so that it's about us. For instance, “this variable deals with my ability to perceive and interpret accurately the signals and communications implicit in my own behavior. And given this understanding, to respond to them appropriately and promptly. Thus, my sensitivity has four essential components, my awareness of my signals, an accurate interpretation of my signals, an appropriate response to my signals and a prompt response to my signals. Let us consider each of these in turn”.

So we go through every paragraph and switch it to talk about, because you know, the headline of all of this attachment research is that it moves, the transmission of attachment moves generation to generation through the parent. And the way that we are parented by, you know, our caregiver, is how we, for the most part, parent our child. And so what I really love looking at is how we have internalized and interpreted the patterns of attachment that we've inherited. And so I just loved this work of taking it and applying it to ourselves to see like, okay, am I sensitive to myself, because it's a guarantee that if I am not sensitive to myself, I will not be able to be sensitive to another. Our sensitivity is our instrument, you know, we can't delight in someone else unless we are connected to delight, we can't connect to our sensitivity toward another if we don't have sensitivity on a very basic level. And one of the hallmarks of a securely attached adult is that they value attachment. And so one way to become more secure is to think about it, and to cultivate it, and to become mindful of it and to, you know, to turn our attention in that direction. So that's what we do once a month and it is so fun.

Eran Katz: Yeah, it sounds like something that starts from an intellectual, “let's dive into these texts” thing, but it can really quickly go to a very deep personal exploration, which sounds quite amazing. And I totally agree with this notion that if you want to really understand your child, to show how you care for your child, and, you know, provide what we call secure attachment or a strong bond, or whatever you want to call it, it has to start with yourself. And it's something that I see myself repeating time and time again, with my clients and in here on the podcast and other areas where I talk about it because we are the source for our children. And if we are not, you know, I forgot who was the Greek philosopher who said, Know thyself, which one of them is Aristotle, or Plato, but if you're not aware of yourself, how could you be aware? How could you have a real awareness of what is happening for your child, and they need us to, to have that viewpoint.

Bethany Saltman: Exactly. You know, this is what I've learned in my many years of Zen practice is that awareness is simply a light within. And it's not like we can become aware of this jar, without awareness in our minds, and the jar that I'm holding up in our Zoom, for the listeners out there, I have no emotional content about this. So I'm not scrambling to, you know, address it or not address it or hate it or love it, it's not threatening to me. Put me in a position where I'm supposed to be aware of a screaming child who I feel guilty because I'm not giving them what they need. And they, you know, they've smeared ketchup all over and I'm enraged, and then I feel guilty for being enraged. And oh, my God, like to be able to have awareness in a moment that is filled with emotional content is Herculean. And so our work is really to develop awareness. And so that's why the secret teachings workshop is so fun, because we're talking about attachment. We're talking about this incredible text, which I call secret teachings because nobody ever knows about it. And we are, you know, we're creating awareness. We're creating new pathways of awareness about the intricacies, exquisite intricacies of love as per Mary's work.

Eran Katz: I wonder what she would have to say about that.

Bethany Saltman: Yeah, I know, I want to ask Bob Marvin to come and be a special guest one day because he was her protege, I think he would just get such a kick.

Eran Katz: And, you know, when you talk about cultivating and developing this awareness to ourselves, for the sake of the child and to offer ourselves as, as parents and human beings, reminded me of a post that I saw on your Instagram, and I saved it for this talk. So it aligns quite nicely. And I'll just quote it for a second. So maybe we can go talk a little bit about that. So it says: Instead of healing your attachment wounds, be compassionate towards them, become an excellent informant on your own inner life thoughts and experiences”. And so maybe, maybe we can talk a little bit about what it means to become an informant in your own personal life? And how do we do that?

Bethany Saltman: Yeah, the excellent informant is Mary Ainsworth's term, it's what she discovered. One of the few variables of what was in place for the secure attachments in Uganda. So when she gathered all of her data, and she went back to Baltimore, and she was looking at all of her notes, she realized that some of these mothers had a lot, she had more rich data about some mothers than others. And when she began to look at the data with this in mind, she realized she saw very clearly that the mothers who had the most juicy, coherent, detailed, you know, beginning, middle and end kinds of stories about their children happened to have secure attachments. So, you know, that's not something that anybody has ever talked about before. But when I read that I was like, Oh my gosh, this is a precursor to the adult attachment interview.

Eran Katz: That was what I was going to say, just for the sake of the listeners, the adult attachment interview is the kind of interview that was developed later, I think, by Mary Main, who was her student. And one of the ways it works is by... it's an interview when you ask someone to talk and tell about their parents. And the way you talk about them and what you say, what you remember or not. So it's really like being an informant of your own, you know, parenting.

Bethany Saltman: Yeah. Is that, you know, you can be a lawyer and be incredibly coherent when talking about the defense of some guilty or not guilty person. And then someone asks about your mother and you're like, past-present intrusions. And like you, you know, the tenses are changing. And yeah, like, why don't you remember or you like to separate, you know, there's so many ways that we can be incoherent. So it's really important to remember that it's not about just looking at how coherent people are in general. But when you're talking about attachment relationships, so yeah, I saw that, and I would just say, Oh, my God, that is incredible. And so I've been using that as a way of inviting parents to become, you know, storytellers, about their children, which is another way of telling a story about yourself, not that we aren't not that we don't exist outside of our children, obviously. But that, you know, there's so much invisible forcefield around parents and children, that is very difficult to you know, this is what you do in therapy, you know, it's like, parsing apart all of that chaos.

Eran Katz: Shed light into the darkness.

Bethany Saltman: Exactly, exactly. And it's such a beautiful, difficult, painstaking process. And so I just use the term become an excellent informant, as a way of inviting that. So that idea of instead of trying to heal your wounds, which is, you know, trying to wrap it up, I say, let's become compassionate, and get to know our wounds and become excellent informants, and what is it that triggers me? What is it? What does it feel like to be so called triggered? You know, what are all the different aspects of myself, which is very difficult for mothers specifically to feel they have permission to explore, you know, it's one thing to go and get a manicure and a pedicure, as self care, it's quite another to think, okay, I actually have the right to consider who I am, what I want, how I feel, what I like, what I hate, the life that I want to live. You know how I want to spend my time. It's radical.

Eran Katz: Yeah.

Bethany Saltman: The truth is, it is good for your children.

Eran Katz: But it does bring me to think about a topic that we did want to talk about, which is shame. Because when you engage in that, and when you think about your needs, your wounds and everything in between, and when you're, you know, putting your awareness in what is happening to you in front of your child, maybe when I can think of myself when I get so angry that I scream at them. And then I might be feeling guilty or ashamed. So how, maybe the question is, how do you see shame? Or how does Mary? I don't know if she talked about it. How does it affect our ability to be this excellent informat on ourselves or children?

Bethany Saltman: Such a great question. She doesn't talk about shame. She doesn't use the word shame, but boy does she lay it out. She talks about mothers who have all of these barriers, around paying attention to their children. I think a lot of it is because they feel so much shame about the fact that they can't pay attention. And so it's you know, it's the shame spiral. The minute you introduce, you know, what you just said was so beautiful, sometimes I get so angry, I scream at them. And I'm not saying that's a beautiful action, but to be able to say that a lot of people can't say that, for a woman to say that is like a big deal. You know, I can't tell you the amount of people who tell me that my book was so brave, because I just like saying some things. I mean, I did not even say that much honestly, there's a lot more for that all of that came from and but you know, we live in a culture that is really, you know, a patriarchal white supremacist, you know, all the ways that we squish people into these boxes is not human when we don't value human experience and the depth of what it means to have all the feelings. So shame is the obstacle for becoming an excellent informant. When we're insecure, we feel a lot of shame. And so it just continues on and on and on. One of the reasons we are insecure in our attachment and in every other way is because we have been shamed, because we feel like we're not a lovable person, we don't feel so. So in order to get through that we have to start seeing shame as a thing, and not as our nature. And that is a challenge of a lifetime, you know, I'm a Buddhist. So I have the good fortune of believing very deeply, that we have many, many, many lifetimes, to work our stuff out, like, I don't feel a huge rush that I have to get it right now. Not that I'm not trying really hard, because I know that I'm gonna be happy, people will be happier, you know, we all are liberated once. That's what the Buddha taught. But I understand that, you know, our karma is so big and so complex that it has to just keep going and going and going, and we're not going to work it out. And that's another and that's really, I find a very supportive way of sort of de shaming, like, if I don't get it all right this time, or now or today, or however we understand time. It's, you know, it's okay. It's okay. It's human.

Eran Katz: Yeah, exactly. Because it's a work in progress. And I think it's something I again, I find myself sharing with parents all the time that, you know, you may have screwed up today but that doesn't mean you will screw up tomorrow, it doesn't mean you're a screw up. It only means that you screwed up today. And if you have the ability to maybe be an excellent informat into your own experience. And I just had a conversation like that today with a client of mine, about how he was angry with his daughter for something that she spilled like a glass of water accidentally or something like that. And he was triggered by something else. And he saw her reaction she was preparing herself already to, to be, you know, to be a little bit scolded or something and in, in her, the look in her eyes, made him stop and gather himself, which was beautiful in which was something he was never able to do a couple of months ago.

Bethany Saltman: Kudos to you, as his therapist.

Eran Katz: And, and then I talked with him about, you know, what I call a kind of debriefing. Like being able to sit down with her, after everything calms down and, and share his own emotions and take responsibility. And that is a very important hallmark of a secure attachment, the attachment figure, the parent, the caregiver, being able to take responsibility, even though it might trigger shame in them. Absolutely. By the way, what a wonderful model. It is for the child.

Bethany Saltman: I know, I know. Well, you know, just at the very beginning of what you're saying, we talked about this in the study group a lot. People, therapists talk sometimes about how their clients come in and say, “Oh, I'm a screw up. I'm this and that”, and that so much of the work is about “No, you're not”. And I always want to interrupt that, of course, I'm not a clinician, so it's easy for me to do. I've been in lots of therapy and to say, you know what, maybe I am, maybe I'm not like a total but like, I spent so much time when my daughter was young with people telling me “Oh, it's okay. It's okay. We all make mistakes”. And I said, “No, it's not okay. It is not okay, how I am treating her. Other people make mistakes, but I don't want to do this, and I feel out of control. And I need help”. Everybody makes mistakes. It's true. We all make mistakes. And it's true. It's going to be okay, I guess, but maybe it's not going to be okay. Maybe even some people really do need to, they are really damaging other people. And, you know, we live in such a fearful culture of emotional pain that I am, you know, I'm a big proponent of shoulds. I think we should not yell at our kids, period, I think we should treat our children with respect, period. These are my goals. This is how I want to live. This is the world I want my daughter to live in. And when I screw up, I want to feel I feel like I will never get better. I will never become a better parent if I don't allow myself to feel her pain, my pain, my disappointment in myself. My healthy shame.

Eran Katz: Yeah, no. Healthy shame is a really, it's a good thing that you put the word healthy there because, you know, in psychology we learn and we talk about how shame can be very toxic. Like it rots the soul from within. But healthy shame. Sometimes it's important because it allows you to really look into yourself. And again, take responsibility. And this is how you move forward. Not shying away from your, you know, your blemishes.

Bethany Saltman: Exactly. Well, that's why I love the study group. Because we can't do it alone. We live in a patriarchal culture where women are absolutely not invited to have a full experience of their personhood. So I don't expect mothers who are listening to be able to just, you know, move into that healthy shame because we are so conditioned to beat ourselves to a pulp. That's how women are trained. And so the thought that we could accept, like, “Oh, I screwed up today”, and actually feel the pain of that. That's terrifying, because we associate that with total toxicity, like you're saying, you know, rotting from within, and that is not what I am talking about. I'm talking about having enough self composure and support. And, you know, a life that feels resourced. Yeah. Where I can say, you know, that's in a way that's such an ultimate privilege to be able to say, wow, you know, I need to really work on myself.

Eran Katz: Yeah.

Bethany Saltman: That's a start up journey.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And it's difficult to do and most, most women are too busy, you know, just taking care of business. To be able to do that, at least in the United States. I know, in Israel, things are different.

Eran Katz: In some respects, yeah. But, you know, I'm kind of an optimistic kind of guy and psychologist. So I believe that, you know, people can change all the time, even in their eighties if they want to, if they really want to, and really will do the work. So, yeah, you know, maybe someone who's listening right now, maybe they have older children, maybe their children are already, you know, left home, and living on their own. And they're, they feel like how, like, they think about all the mistakes they've done, it doesn't mean that you can't, you know, take this maybe newfound awareness, and the new thing that you learn about, about parenting, and use them and take responsibility and use them because it's funny, because when we talk about parenting, most of us, you know, in the parenting field, we talk about how you raise children, we talk about toddlers and teenagers, but as my mom likes to repeat time and time again, you stay a parent all the time. She's still my mom, and I'm still her little little boy. Yeah, even though I'm 40. We keep on doing that, we keep on being parents and, and it's, maybe it's, I think it's not just me, but I think it's never never too late.

Bethany Saltman: I mean, well, in my book, I talk about my relationship with my father who died many years ago. And Azalea has never met him. My daughter has never met him. And I had a very dark relationship with him. I did a lot of healing, which I talked about in the book with my relationship with him after he was already gone. Now, I am convinced that that relationship that you know, because these things move through generationally and so mysteriously, that my healing my relationship with my dead father is going to be supportive for her moving forward with her children. Yeah, and so not only is it never too late, but we never know how things are transmuting and affecting people and you know, if we just continue to bring Love into the world through our own sincere heart. We will just continue to bring love into the world. And there's no downside.

Eran Katz: Yeah. There's no downside for bringing more love to the world. I totally agree with that.

Bethany Saltman: Yeah, however we can do it. However we understand that it's never too late. And there's never a reason not to.

Eran Katz: All right. All right.

So I think this is a good place to wrap things up. I want to be respectful of everyone's time. And, again, thank you so much, I always have fun chatting with you. And just before we finish, maybe let our listeners know where they can find you if they want to learn more about your work. And your book and other things that you do.

Bethany Saltman: Yep, yep. So I have a website, https://www.bethanysaltman.com/ and I'm on Instagram. And that's been really fun. And so follow me on Instagram. And, you know, I love hearing from people, I get a lot of really fun DMs from parents specifically, which I really enjoy. And then the secret teachings workshop, our study group, is on the second Tuesday of every month from two to three thirty, Eastern time. If you go to my website to the secret teachings page, you can sign up and get the zoom link and get on the mailing list and get to download Mary’s scales, you can come or not come in, there's absolutely no commitment. I have hundreds of people on the list and not that many people come every month. So it's just a really nice way to, you know, be gathering virtually around some important ideas. Yeah. Awesome.

Eran Katz: And I'll put the links in the show notes as usual. You'll be able to find them on apparentlyparent.com. And yeah, and if you still haven't read Strange Situation, do it. Do it today. I love this book. So thanks.

Bethany Saltman: Thank you for doing this podcast, which is a labor of love. I know.

Eran Katz: Yeah. Thank you. Bye bye.

All right. So that was my conversationת my second conversation with Bethany Salאman. I really enjoy talking with her, she has so much to share. And I do enjoy bringing people who are not what you tend to call, “parenting experts”, so to speak, or, you know, psychologists such as myself, or other parenting coaches, or anything of the sort, to talk about their own experiences and their own journeys into becoming parents and what they discover about themselves in the process. And I think Bethany embodies that in a very beautiful way. And I know I can't say it enough, I guess, if you haven't read her book, Strange Situation yet. Go do that. It's a really wonderful read. It's easy to read. And it's, it's moving, it's touching, and you learn some stuff along the way. I really enjoyed that. If you want to learn more about the book, go to apparentlyparent.com/strange. And with that, let's close this episode for today. The Show Notes for this episode are available on apparentlyparent.com/56. You will find all the relevant things over there. And as always, I will see you again next week. Now, if you are here, still listening, please do me a little bit of a favor, I would really appreciate it if you go to Apple podcasts or Spotify, and just rank this podcast with how many stars you believe it should get and leave a review. Those reviews really helped me get in front of more people and get this message out. So please, if you would be so kind, I would really appreciate that. And with that, let's close this episode for today. And I will see you again next week. Bye bye.