The Relational Parenting Podcast

Jennie (00:00.106)
in any official way.

Papa Rick (00:02.09)
And then we don't have to go back and retell stories. It's like, oh, we ought to say that in the podcast. Well, just capture it. Oh, not sure.

Cat (00:06.186)
That's right. Just all fresh.

Jennie (00:07.054)
Right?

Yeah. Well, wonderful. It's so nice.

Papa Rick (00:13.078)
So you're an artist by trade, day job.

Cat (00:18.546)
Is that not where you want to start? I can start there and I can weave it in. Yeah. So the three things that I spend creative energy on are my own parenting of my two sons and my sculpture work. And then the work that I do is sleep awake camp, which is a 30 day immersive camp for 18 to 27 year olds. And we'll get more into that, but it is interesting.

Jennie (00:20.482)
Hehehe

Papa Rick (00:23.712)
Okay, okay.

Papa Rick (00:44.286)
Oh boy, that sounds interesting.

Cat (00:48.382)
But the sculpture that I'm working on right now that's just like taking over my garage is I've got 127 small bronze bodies laying in my garage anywhere from like this tall to this tall. And I'm doing a sculpture that's to me like super profound. It's called Seven Generations. And it has one woman held by the two parents, held by the four grandparents, held by the eight great grandparents, the 16, the 32, and the 64.

Papa Rick (01:00.57)
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha

Papa Rick (01:14.414)
Uh-huh.

Jennie (01:17.474)
Wow.

Cat (01:18.198)
and the 64. And so you like visually see like it took 127 beings meeting, yeah, meeting the challenge of their time to make one, you know, to make, you know, and I think it's a, it's going in the city that I live in two blocks from where my kids go to school. So that is very meaningful to me. I will see it every day.

Papa Rick (01:19.63)
Very cool.

Papa Rick (01:25.742)
the crowd it takes to do that. Yeah.

Jennie (01:31.848)
Ow.

Papa Rick (01:32.015)
Thanks.

Papa Rick (01:40.73)
very cool.

Cat (01:43.474)
And I'm really excited because once it's installed, we get to have a community discussion about it. And the heart of it is, you know, it's both recognizing everything that we're given, you know, from all the previous generations. But it's also a reflection of like, okay, there have been, you know, indigenous populations that have planned seven generations in advance, like how making decisions today for that.

you know, thinking 200 years ahead, like how will their lives be affected? And yeah, so it's looking in both those directions and yeah, it's meaningful to me to be connecting my artwork and kind of my heart with my community. Yeah.

Papa Rick (02:13.763)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (02:14.05)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (02:16.322)
and to future generations. Neat.

Papa Rick (02:33.134)
Very nice. Putting a vibe out in the world that gets people thinking in a more healthy way. That's cool. I like that a lot.

Jennie (02:33.463)
I love that.

Cat (02:41.11)
Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and it's, yeah, go ahead.

Jennie (02:42.518)
Well, in thinking ahead, thinking, yeah, I was just gonna say, in thinking forward, like the two, you know, thinking ahead is, that's such a parental thing. You know, how are my grandchildren's grandchildren going to get along? And what am I doing today to make their lives better?

Cat (03:02.854)
Yeah, and even just the like, those daily moments where it's like, okay, I could give in on this boundary. Like, what does that actually mean for my child's life? Like, what is he actually learning in this moment if I'm role modeling, you know, whatever I'm role modeling. And so yeah, I forget there was a beautiful, oh yeah, there's this beautiful quote from

Jennie (03:15.66)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (03:23.176)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (03:23.48)
Yeah.

Cat (03:30.114)
one of my teachers named Patrick and he said, discipline is trading what you want right now for what you want most.

Jennie (03:42.606)
I just heard that quote this morning. I'm watching the show, this is so random. I'm watching the show, Call the Midwife on Netflix right now. And one of the girls who is, she's young and she gave birth to her baby who's going up for adoption. After she gives birth,

Papa Rick (03:46.927)
Get out.

Cat (03:46.976)
Wow.

Cat (03:56.552)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (03:57.958)
Oh yeah, that's a good show. The British nurses. Yeah.

Cat (04:00.826)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (04:11.538)
you know, the moment comes for her to change her mind. And she says, if I change my mind now, I would be choosing what I want now versus what's best for him and me for the future. And it's just, it was, I mean, just, I literally watched like 15 minutes of an episode this morning, and it's just absolutely serendipitous that I heard that quote and you brought that up.

Papa Rick (04:20.789)
Yeah.

Cat (04:27.743)
Mm.

Cat (04:32.198)
Ehhhhhh...

Cat (04:36.286)
Hmm

Papa Rick (04:36.33)
And that's hard, those kinds of decisions, taking a long view. Sometimes those are tough decisions in the moment.

Cat (04:41.538)
Yeah.

Yeah, and I, you know, I feel like that's part of what underpins the camp, which is, you know, a good friend of mine who I went to MIT with, like, 23 years ago. He and I in the last, like, 15 years been like, where are the rites of passage? Like, what are the things that are preparing our adults of today to take their place of power in the community? Like, these are the gifts I have. This is my place.

Jennie (05:02.973)
Mmm.

Papa Rick (05:07.482)
Hmm.

Jennie (05:13.459)
Mmm.

Cat (05:14.646)
in relation to my parents, in relation to my community and my purpose. And, you know, so after talking for a bunch of years about that doesn't exist so much in our modern kind of arc of things, especially we see the opposite, right? More and more like 33 year olds living at home with their parents. We...

Papa Rick (05:17.935)
Hmm.

Jennie (05:32.174)
Wow.

Jennie (05:35.766)
Yeah.

Cat (05:39.69)
He three years ago said, look, I'm going to do something. Because he was a super genius 19-year-old and was suicidal. And he says, I was taught quantum mechanics before I learned how to navigate my emotions. Like, what's wrong with this picture? Oops. And so the idea of where are young people going to get?

Jennie (05:48.893)
home.

Jennie (05:57.939)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (05:58.014)
Mm-hmm. Oops, yeah.

Cat (06:09.11)
all these interstitial pieces of knowledge of how you become a steady centered purposeful being that knows their own power, that knows their own capacity. And so that's the heart of this camp, this 20, 30 days is really holding the whole of a human and saying, look like.

Jennie (06:24.797)
Mm.

Cat (06:36.71)
we're not gonna just do any one element because you are this multifaceted being. And so we look at embodiment, we look at sexuality, healthy sexuality, we look at nutrition and cooking, and the backbone is emotional relational content. It's, you know, starts with, you know, actually like, what is it like to be in my body, be in relation to this emotional landscape that's here?

Jennie (06:42.69)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (06:54.334)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (06:54.411)
Mm.

Cat (07:04.234)
and start to have some skills around, oh, when I have this feeling, this is what it means for me, and using it all as, oh, it's all wise. There's an intelligence behind everything. It doesn't mean the impulse is what you wanna do, but there's an intelligence for why it's there. So that's just a first blush introduction to why we started that camp.

Jennie (07:16.074)
Yes.

Papa Rick (07:21.178)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (07:23.346)
Yes.

Papa Rick (07:29.754)
Very cool.

Jennie (07:33.025)
I love the...

Papa Rick (07:36.084)
The bit about rites of passage, that makes real sense. So much of that has gone by the wayside. I mean, we still do some baptisms and marriages and there are certain ceremonies or rituals we mark with, but maybe I'm thinking from a guy perspective, the tests where you have to do something hard now.

Jennie (07:38.519)
Yeah.

Cat (07:40.862)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (08:01.378)
get through something hard, prepare for something hard, to take a seat in the community, you know, to be prepared for that. That's, I don't see us doing much of that anymore. It's all easy TV kind of stuff. We don't challenge, you know, the Boy Scouts are going away and there's not a lot of places to go get that challenge now. I have to seek that out as parents.

Cat (08:08.702)
Yeah.

Cat (08:24.787)
Yeah.

Jennie (08:28.386)
Well, in a natural, useful ways, not in pedantic, irrational ways. I feel like the use of punishment and dismissal and like the tools that, specifically in parenting and even societally that we use now in order to toughen our kids up are

Papa Rick (08:42.53)
Hmm.

Jennie (08:59.81)
not emotionally intelligent and they actually just cause harm. They don't actually teach the child anything. And so a lot of the ways that we try to toughen up our kids, they're not rites of passage. They're not these sacred trials for a child to go through. And just last week we recorded an episode called Stop Punishing or Rescuing Your Kids from Everything.

Papa Rick (09:08.322)
Right.

Papa Rick (09:27.095)
Yep. Yeah.

Cat (09:27.953)
Hmm.

Jennie (09:28.934)
And because the two most common things that I see parents doing that ruins a child's emotional intelligence is you're either punishing emotions or you're rescuing them from them. And there's a centered, balanced way where you can allow your child to experience pain without stealing it from them, but helping them navigate it instead so that they come out the other side.

Cat (09:42.236)
Yeah.

Cat (09:53.148)
Yeah.

Jennie (09:58.642)
more whole and in tune with themselves. And you do that in the safety of childhood for 18 years. And lo and behold, you have an adult who emerges into society who, like you said, knows their power and capacity. I love that, I wrote that down.

Cat (10:12.25)
Absolutely.

Cat (10:16.329)
Yeah.

No, it's, it's so true. And you know, I think that's what we need somehow is to end up with parents who have that capacity to reinstill that because it's not the norm right now. And so many of the young people that show up at camp usually have some emotional channels that they don't allow themselves to really feel right, you know, so anger or grief.

Jennie (10:25.239)
Yeah.

Jennie (10:44.308)
Mm-hmm.

Cat (10:48.178)
Like there's so many of them that are just like shut down because the parent is like, don't cry, like you're fine. Or, you know, like, you know, like they got the hammer if they got angry when they were a child. So they're like afraid of their own anger. And so one of the things that we do in a very intentional way is like, what is it like to see these as like,

Papa Rick (10:55.182)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (11:02.766)
Prescribed, yeah.

Jennie (11:03.349)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (11:07.428)
Yeah.

Cat (11:18.226)
the wisdom and the information that it carries for you. If you let that out in a healthy way, then the other side of movement of anger is clarity, is determination, right? And I think what you're saying so beautifully is a parent who can sit with a child through the arc of their discomfort will then witness the child coming into their own strength, like there's an empowerment.

Jennie (11:20.674)
Hmm. Yes.

Jennie (11:30.86)
Yeah.

Jennie (11:40.778)
Yes.

Papa Rick (11:45.283)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (11:46.111)
Yes.

Cat (11:46.522)
of going through that challenge and the parent witnessing it.

Papa Rick (11:50.398)
I went through that and survived it and maybe even stronger. And now I know what it looks like the next time I see it. Right. You know, you become, how do you get to Carnegie hall practice, practice? You know, you have to go through it. You get better at it as you go. Sure.

Jennie (11:50.422)
Yes.

Cat (11:53.105)
Yeah.

Jennie (11:53.473)
Yes.

Cat (11:56.966)
Yeah.

Cat (12:02.827)
Yeah, totally.

Jennie (12:07.947)
when it's like a million little rites of passage over an 18 year period instead of like this one big, like when they turn 12, they have to go through this. Ha ha ha.

Cat (12:11.243)
Yeah.

Cat (12:17.87)
Yeah, totally. And I, you know, I certainly don't prescribe to any, there's no right of passage where you can just do a ceremony and you're an adult. Like, you know, it's, it's always I mean, traditionally in a, you know, in a community, a tribal culture where these originated, you're preparing for the 18 years, and then you're just marking a milestone marking a transition. But in this, you know, for many people, we're finding is

Jennie (12:26.081)
Yeah.

Jennie (12:37.189)
Hmm.

Yes.

Papa Rick (12:39.734)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cat (12:48.69)
they don't have access to elders, they don't have access to a lot of different models of what it looks like to be a healthy, regulated human being. And so often it's not until they leave home, if the parents aren't able to provide that, it's not until they leave home that they're, you know, can have an opportunity to, oh wait, there's a different way? Like I don't have to just collapse or I don't have to hide or I don't have to like.

Jennie (13:10.365)
Mm-hmm.

Cat (13:15.506)
pretend that I don't have these feelings, there's a different way.

Papa Rick (13:19.402)
It's okay. It's okay to have these thoughts, have these feelings. The kids and I, when they were younger, we got to, I'm sorry, we got to do some karate training for a few years together, which was a lot like that. You know, we would, it was kind of drudgery. Everybody kind of like, oh boy, we got to, you know, it was a hard workout. And then we'd be glad we got through it when we were done with it.

Jennie (13:19.437)
Yeah.

Cat (13:24.217)
Yeah.

Jennie (13:25.602)
So we.

Papa Rick (13:44.798)
And then every so often, you know, you, you prepared for it. And then every so often there was a review where there was some tension and they, they would bring, uh, senseis from other, other schools in and, you know, it was very stern and, you know, make sure you could do it under pressure, you know, make sure, you know, just give you a little bit of pressure and have a little ceremony and then here's your belt, you know, but it was a little, uh, need to perform. Okay. We've, you've been learning this stuff for a while now.

Well, now let's make sure you can do it while the elephant is charging or whatever, you know, is whatever the challenge is. It was I think it was a good experience for us.

Probably all of us. I hadn't done that when I was a kid, you know? But yeah, bit of a rite of passage.

Jennie (14:24.482)
there was.

Jennie (14:28.256)
Yeah.

Jennie (14:33.193)
We dove right in and I love it, but I wanna back up for just a minute and Catherine, I wanna give you, do you prefer cat or Catherine?

Papa Rick (14:38.263)
Hehehe

Cat (14:43.914)
Cat, please.

Jennie (14:44.926)
Okay, Kat. I would love to back up and formally introduce the sleep away camp that you have created. How many years have you been doing this?

Cat (15:02.026)
So it's still new. It's two years. We've done two cycles. And we are also pretty research heavy. So we do a research study before, right after, and then four months after. Because we're not interested in doing anything that doesn't have long term, actually is changing people's lives for the better.

Jennie (15:06.989)
Okay.

Jennie (15:24.31)
Yeah, and this camp, this camp is for young adults who remind me, is it 18 to 27?

Papa Rick (15:24.506)
Okay.

Cat (15:33.418)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Jennie (15:37.19)
ages 18 to 27 to come and commune with other young adults and like you said, do the emotional inner work to really get to know themselves and ground in and emotional release. And, you know, I'm summarizing all the bullet points, but I would love for you to just share as in depth as you're willing to go what this, how this camp came to be and what it does to serve.

Cat (15:56.281)
Yeah.

Jennie (16:06.766)
to serve the young adult population, which I think is amazing. I told you on the phone, I was like, man, I wish I knew about this, or that it existed when I was 18, 19, 20 years old. Ha ha ha.

Cat (16:11.242)
Yeah. Thank you.

Papa Rick (16:13.683)
Mm-hmm.

Cat (16:18.202)
Yeah, well, one way of talking about how this particular format came together is my co-founder and I, Jeff Lieberman, we were looking at stats of suicidality, anxiety, depression in our country and it's like unbelievable, like 9% of high schoolers attempted suicide last year. And that being, that's from the CDC and that's

Papa Rick (16:43.591)
Oh my. Wow.

Cat (16:47.566)
Obviously just the tip of the iceberg in terms of mental distress and just not feeling connected, not feeling supported, not feeling, yeah, isolation. And so we wanted something, we also, you know, we'd been experimenting with group-based, kind of group-based healing approaches for a while because, you know,

Papa Rick (16:57.735)
Isolation.

Cat (17:15.07)
One-on-one therapy is wonderful and it's needed, but the million, you know, the staggering number of people who need support, like outpace the number of one-on-one therapists by so much that we need models that aren't work, like that aren't hard. And so, you know, being curious about, well, what are the models that are going to be fun that people do in groups that are like,

Jennie (17:27.627)
Yeah.

Cat (17:40.586)
people are drawn to me because it's like they're laughing and they're crying together and they're like, oh, this is the aliveness I've been missing. Like finally, like I feel community. I don't feel alone. I like, oh, all this shame, all this anger, all this like, oh, you have that too? Like in your own flavors? Oh, wow. Like, and so, but we also knew that there's a lot of one week programs out there that can be very cathartic.

Jennie (17:40.843)
Yes.

Jennie (17:47.198)
Yes, the connection.

Yes.

Papa Rick (17:52.154)
Yeah.

Jennie (17:58.956)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (17:59.192)
Yeah.

Cat (18:08.69)
You know, like you can move big energy in a week. But what we were curious about is if we have a month of community, how does that change somebody's nervous system and body regulation, right? Because over a month, you can't sprint for a month, you know? And so it really gives a chance for people to be in doubt and to test things and then be like, oh, it's actually safe. I can actually bring that. And then like go through multiple cycles of that.

Jennie (18:12.365)
Yeah.

Jennie (18:25.439)
Yeah.

Jennie (18:32.049)
Mm-hmm.

Cat (18:38.87)
Um, and, you know, cause we'll see first waves of that in the first four days and like see people releasing things they never thought, you know, they were going to tell anybody and then that were four days in it's like 26 more days, you know? So the, um, and I think there's just a community permissioning, right? We see this time and time again around any dimension. If somebody stands up and it's like, you know what?

Jennie (18:53.634)
Yeah.

Cat (19:06.306)
I realize I've been repressing myself because of my history with the Catholic Church around my sexuality and my freedom and like, actually I want something different for my life. And you know, just people sharing their specific unique truth, then you know, other people are like, wait, I could claim my freedom to like, I could claim the thing that I want that I've thought that everybody just had to hold in and not

Jennie (19:28.737)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (19:29.007)
Hmm?

Cat (19:35.182)
not give themselves. So that is, that's part of how it came to be. And we just knew that the work was so in depth that we needed a lot of holding, especially because of the length. So there's about one facilitator, almost for every two participants. And each facilitator has their own specialty. And so that makes it very fun to be on a team like that.

Papa Rick (19:35.451)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (19:58.222)
Wow.

Jennie (20:05.474)
Yeah.

Cat (20:05.998)
Because there's somebody who just, they do nothing but attachment work. And there's somebody who does nothing but cooking and nutrition. There's somebody who does nothing but yoga. And there's somebody who does meditation. There's somebody who does embodiment and movement and creative expression. And so it's a very rich, rich community. And we don't, we're just being very human together. In one hand, people are like...

Jennie (20:09.911)
Yeah.

Cat (20:33.23)
I feel like a superhuman, but I feel really human, like more human than I did before. Yeah.

Jennie (20:36.94)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (20:37.462)
Yeah, yeah, everybody gets connected. That's, and you get a group of people that come in from various backgrounds with various issues. And so then you've got people, you kind of got specialists there or, you know, who can connect with people in various ways. That reminds me of a, uh, of a ministry, a great banquet ministry, the three day and the religious in the Christian world, there are a number of three day, uh, retreat kind of things that try to do something.

Cat (20:49.874)
Yeah.

Yeah, totally.

Papa Rick (21:07.082)
similar in a weekend, in a long weekend, right? Curcio for the Catholic Church and walk to Emmaus for the Methodists. But it's not, you know, it's grounded with a little bit of preparation in spiritual, you know, trying to connect people to the spiritual side of things. It'd be interesting to do that with a bunch of highly trained people, you know, like you're talking about.

Cat (21:09.425)
Yeah.

Jennie (21:09.966)
I'm gonna go.

Cat (21:24.806)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (21:36.898)
to address various aspects. Sometimes people run from it. You know, we ask people to come and be dropped off. You know, you have sponsors and we drop people off because there is a percentage of people when they start to encounter that kind of thing, they bolt, you know, and if they have their car handy, more would bolt, you know, and it's like, so still, you know, sit in it for a couple of days, it'll get, you know, get used to it and it's hard to get through the discomfort. And then...

Cat (21:41.93)
Hmm.

Jennie (21:59.787)
I'm going to go.

Cat (22:05.764)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (22:06.334)
Boy, the addition, well, then the out, upshot of that is then we form small groups. And, you know, for the continuing, having a group of people to trust and, and share with and support other people to be in service to other people with. It would be nice to do that as a 30 day camp. That's a real, that's a real interesting idea. And then study how it works. Can't wait to read your, can't wait to read your research papers. That's going to be very enlightening.

Cat (22:14.886)
Yeah.

Cat (22:33.054)
Yeah, well, there's some of the data is on the vision page. Yeah. But yeah, what you said is very beautiful. And one of the biggest things that we test for in the interview process is how comfortable is the person being curious about what they're afraid of? Like how curious can they be about their own resistance?

Jennie (22:34.056)
Uh.

Papa Rick (22:39.165)
Okay, okay.

Jennie (22:56.468)
Mmm.

Papa Rick (23:00.206)
How bad do you want to get this out and look at it? Yeah.

Cat (23:02.522)
Yeah, pretty much. I mean, because if you have that, that's, that's everything, right? Because it doesn't, you know, somebody can come in and they've done 10 years of therapy already, and, you know, they know their internal terrain, that's great. And somebody can come in, they maybe really haven't looked under the hood that much. But if they're, if they're curious, if they're like, Oh, oh, you mean, I could look at this, and I could be in

Jennie (23:08.843)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (23:09.067)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (23:25.038)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (23:30.518)
Yeah, I didn't know I could look at that. Yeah.

Cat (23:32.174)
Yeah. So it's really that, it's that curiosity. And I agree. I mean, probably the hardest step is showing up. Yeah.

Papa Rick (23:42.346)
Yeah, yeah, and sitting still for a while, innit? What have I gotten myself into?

Jennie (23:42.838)
Yes.

Cat (23:46.065)
Yeah.

Jennie (23:47.486)
Well, and that's something, because we're not learning that in childhood, like the, you just, you said curiosity, and I'm of course back to parenting, because curiosity is one of the tools that I teach parents. And I'm like, could you approach this discomfort or this sibling fight or the tantrum? Can you approach it with curiosity instead of rejection? Can you?

Cat (23:49.139)
the end.

Jennie (24:16.63)
be with the discomfort and be curious what's happening for my child right now, instead of blaming or projecting or judging it. Let's not judge it. Let's not call it anything. Let's ask questions and see how that completely changes. And then for these young adults that you're talking to, they're re-parenting themselves. Like they're literally having to like have curiosity and grace.

Papa Rick (24:29.466)
Mm-hmm. It just is.

Cat (24:31.528)
Yeah.

Jennie (24:42.926)
to look at these parts of themselves that have previously been rejected or dismissed and look at it and bring it to the light and allow it to be seen and then learn to love it or change it or whatever they decide to do with it.

Cat (24:50.607)
Yeah.

Cat (25:00.174)
Yeah, no, that re parenting is, you know, definitely a strong thread through the month. And one of the therapists there is she specializes in parts work. And so they would even do like the three chairs exercise where they've got like the parent and the inner child and the critic as one version and we had a couple people this year who were like, I don't I don't know the parents voice. You know, like they like

Jennie (25:11.19)
Mm.

Jennie (25:19.488)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (25:29.23)
They just don't have anything there when you ask them to recall that.

Cat (25:31.198)
Yeah, like it would just like, yeah, or I mean, there's so, I mean, it's so interesting. I mean, and also, you know, there's some people who had such hard childhoods, they get into the child seat and it's just frozen. Yeah, yeah, so it's...

Jennie (25:32.526)
Ugh.

Papa Rick (25:42.39)
Yeah, it's just walled on.

Cat (25:50.03)
Yeah, I feel like part of the heartbreak and the beauty of getting exploring this world is seeing the reality behind the statistics, right? There's all these statistics of how common sexual abuses, how common, you know, verbal and emotional abuses and to, you know, to see, you know, to see that in more detail, and just statistically reflected in the group that we have.

Papa Rick (26:07.915)
Oh.

Cat (26:20.366)
uh...

I think where it hits me is...

you know, that there's still not like a full acknowledgement, right? Like that we're all walking around like, oh, you know, just getting our work done.

Jennie (26:30.711)
Yeah.

Jennie (26:34.026)
Mhm. Masking, yeah.

Papa Rick (26:36.027)
It's so common and so prevalent. Yeah, there's the ministry I was talking about before. Usually it's guys and girls, you know, so they open up a little more single sex and listening to some of the talks that people give especially on the female side, but also the men's side about abuse, sexual abuse and things that...

Cat (26:39.498)
Yeah.

Cat (26:43.562)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (27:02.974)
all kinds of people go through that, you know, give you challenges later in life, you know, make you want to wall part of your life off. It gives you a real understanding. It's amazing how many of us are walking around wounded. I think probably everybody to some extent or a lot of people. And I think it helps to get it out in the open too so that you learn to look at other people as potentially, you know, the...

The Facebook and stuff now I think is so toxic. Everybody's advertising the top 10 seconds of their day, or week or month, and to be keeping your awareness that that's not really what's going on. There's people who have been seriously abused, the younger the worse probably, that happens, and give people grace, give that.

Have that understanding going into dealing with other people. We don't, I don't see that much out in the world anymore. Parenting, reparenting. Very necessary. Yeah.

Cat (28:05.162)
Yeah, but I think what you're saying is so important, right? That it's in sharing our hurts, that our connectedness comes back.

Jennie (28:14.892)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (28:16.232)
Yes, it is. That's what our commonality is.

Cat (28:16.458)
Yeah.

Jennie (28:19.614)
I always say that in...

Jennie (28:24.486)
real lifelong bonds come through the worst moments of your life. The people who traverse and navigate and stick around through the worst times, not through the best, but through the worst times of your life. Or you go through a hard time together, whether it's a friend or a romantic

Papa Rick (28:46.669)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (28:54.258)
parent. The people who stick by you or go through terrible times with you are the ones that you form the deepest bonds with. And

That's not to say like go seeking awful experiences together. Like you wanna seek fun and excitement and make your life beautiful. But I say that to encourage whoever is listening to just.

release any release, even an inch of resistance that we have to the harder, darker parts of life. I'm not talking about abuse either because that's a whole other level.

Cat (29:46.666)
Well, yeah, one example of that is like a tool that we give. You know, there's a nine month integration program after the 30 days. And so that's part of it, because yeah. But one of the tools that we offer is just this, what we call a mini. And that's when you have one of those moments where you're just like, oh, you know, it's so hard and you feel alone and you feel yourself starting to pull in.

Jennie (29:48.418)
Go ahead.

Jennie (29:57.463)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (29:58.099)
Okay

cycle.

Jennie (30:16.064)
Yeah.

Cat (30:16.202)
that you text somebody like, hey, can I have five minutes? Can I have a mini? And it's just five minutes where you get on the phone and you just like kind of just let it all out for five minutes. And then, you know, the person will ask you a funny question and then they might share for five minutes, just like releasing. And for me, I mean, because it's been part of my own practice too, it's really been amazing to repattern.

Jennie (30:20.492)
Yeah.

Jennie (30:26.625)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (30:26.961)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (30:33.876)
Mm-hmm.

Cat (30:44.618)
Oh, when I start feeling shitty about myself, if my inner critic starts coming in or doubt starts coming in or I'm surprised like with the art falling off the wall, as I mentioned earlier, right? Like I have anger and disappointment and sadness and surprise coming up and, you know, to know that, oh, there's connection there too. Like, and just call a friend. Yeah.

Papa Rick (30:56.179)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (31:02.057)
Yeah.

Jennie (31:10.742)
Yes. Yeah.

Papa Rick (31:10.906)
That's the aspect of it, the interactiveness of it. It harkens me back to the way we split kids up in a divorce. And so then the parents are having to interact in a timeframe, all the things. It's like, hey, I need a mini, I could use a mini now, or very soon, and do it while it's there and present, and go both ways. That would be so valuable.

Cat (31:27.338)
Yeah.

Cat (31:32.138)
Yeah.

Cat (31:39.658)
But I can relate to that as a parent too, because I feel like there's so many moments, like what you're saying is, especially mothers or the primary caregiver can feel alone, right? Like there's that difficult moment and you're not, yeah, exactly.

Papa Rick (31:52.098)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (31:56.834)
Yeah, no backup doing it. Yeah. And then the dads who only get it, you know, a couple of days, I reached in a period or something, you know, there's, that's not the natural way to, that's not a great way to parent. I don't know how we came up with that system, but.

Cat (32:03.178)
Yeah.

Cat (32:07.818)
Yeah.

Jennie (32:10.178)
Well, and two people alone was never the original, right? We lived in communities. We lived in smaller, more connected communities where maybe grandma and cousins or whoever was around, maybe, you know, there was a tribe, there were women taking care of mom, so mom could take care of baby, so dad could go hunt, you know, in a very simple.

Cat (32:11.178)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (32:15.53)
Yeah, that's true too. Yeah.

Cat (32:16.362)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (32:21.827)
Yeah.

Cat (32:25.994)
Yeah.

Jennie (32:35.858)
simplified version of what we think we know about past tribes and human beings. But the nine-month integration afterwards, when you and I talked, that was something that I wrote down because I think that piece is so important because it's so easy to get so excited.

Papa Rick (32:43.063)
interesting.

Jennie (33:02.238)
and I'm going into this program and I'm going away for 30 days and, and I'm going to go do all this work and you connect. And I mean, I remember even like a week at summer camp, I was bawling my eyes out leaving because you felt so connected to these people so quickly. I can only imagine if it had been a month long, I wouldn't have left. I would have been like, no, I live here now. Because going back, going back to the life that you needed to get away from, that you needed to go and rebuild.

Papa Rick (33:05.251)
Mm-hmm.

Cat (33:17.066)
No.

Jennie (33:32.666)
and going back to potentially family members who aren't gonna understand. Maybe some of your friends are not gonna understand. They didn't share that experience with you. It reminds me of kind of like rehab for drugs and alcohol. Like they help you rebuild your life and rebuild new associations and friendships. Because if you go back to the way, to all of the same people and places that you were in before.

Papa Rick (33:39.482)
Thank you.

Jennie (34:00.546)
you're gonna fall back into the same patterns. And so I imagine that for the adults that you're serving, this nine month where they're still in contact with you or with each other, and they're getting that support. And I think you even mentioned, like you guys have done like meetups in a, like in a city where there's like, maybe there were a lot of people that came to a camp one year.

Cat (34:00.554)
Yeah.

Cat (34:11.978)
Yeah.

Cat (34:24.393)
Yeah, well, this is so this was an experiment we did between the first year and the second year. The first year we had really people coming from all over the US. And the second year, we were curious about how would integration change for people who had a tight knit local community of friends that had gone through the program with them and then were integrating and basically rewiring their lives and friendships together.

Jennie (34:33.516)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (34:35.074)
Wow.

Papa Rick (34:43.45)
Mm-hmm.

Cat (34:53.706)
And so that we had that for this year, about half the camp was from the San Francisco Bay area. And so there is this cohort, this group now that they, they have this momentum, like they had this incredible experience. A lot of their relationships change, right? Cause that's also very vulnerable to go into a program like this with preexisting relationships, because you know, like, you know, as, as, as people unfold into themselves more clearly.

Jennie (34:53.741)
Yeah.

Jennie (35:00.173)
Okay.

Jennie (35:03.605)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (35:10.51)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (35:16.435)
Mm-hmm.

Cat (35:23.53)
things have to get renegotiated.

Papa Rick (35:25.558)
Yep. You have to do something different for things to change. That's the hard part, right? After the fact.

Jennie (35:25.569)
Yep.

Cat (35:31.338)
Yeah, yeah, so absolutely. It's, it's extraordinary. And I've been so not to say that it's all it's, it's, it's really challenging, but I've been so inspired by some of the stories of people coming back and having conversations with their parents, like a young man was having a conversation with a stepfather. And he said, I went and I had no agenda. I was just like, I'm just curious about us and our relationship.

And he was like, he had never had his stepdad respond so openly, like shared more than he'd ever shared before. And then he was like, and I've decided to call him dad because that's how I feel about him now.

Jennie (36:01.524)
Hmm.

Papa Rick (36:15.182)
Now they're connected a little better, yeah.

Jennie (36:16.026)
us.

Cat (36:17.258)
And so I think just the, what we're seeing is, okay, like having that steadiness to not be in a defensive place, but be like, I can just be curious about this human, this parent adult who's in front of me. What's true for you? What are you wanting in this relationship?

Jennie (36:27.01)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (36:27.136)
Yes, sir.

Jennie (36:36.351)
Yes.

Papa Rick (36:38.69)
Yeah, it's amazing the things, the obvious simple things we're not taught as children, you know, where you come up and that's a new approach to us as we get to an adult. We don't think of it on our own for some reason and how much value that can have to so many people.

Cat (36:58.218)
Yeah, I'm amazed. I feel like, I mean, it's on par for me with childbirth, right, it's the kind of thing of like, it is such a big deal, it is such, it's life changing. And then similarly, what does it mean to renegotiate the relationship with your parent where you become peers? You're no longer in the same patterns of your childhood with your parents.

Papa Rick (37:10.476)
It is kinda.

Jennie (37:12.576)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (37:13.299)
I knew, yeah.

Papa Rick (37:22.379)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jennie (37:28.158)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (37:28.546)
Hopefully on both sides, but sometimes you just have to renegotiate your end of it. Okay. Well, I'm, you know, I've gone in neutral, curious if that's, if that's not getting anywhere, it's like, well, okay, what do I have to do to be healthy or, you know, whatever your goal is going forward here, you know?

Cat (37:30.314)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Cat (37:36.938)
Absolutely. Yeah. Right.

Cat (37:46.058)
Yeah, beautifully said, right? Because we can't control the other person ever. And so that's, you know, to come with your best alignment. That's, that's all you can do.

Papa Rick (37:51.159)
Yeah.

Jennie (37:51.853)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (37:59.002)
A lot of times we don't have the tools until you go somewhere and get some tools and that can be life-changing. This is very cool. So you've, so this goes in a year. You do, you do a month of camp, you pre, you pre-screen and then nine months of support and integration. And is, is it just the minis? What else do you do during? I mean, it's nice to have a group that have physical access to one another. Yeah.

Cat (38:05.098)
Yeah.

Cat (38:10.346)
Yeah. Mm hmm. And then nine months. Yep.

Yeah.

Cat (38:22.73)
Oh yeah, no, that's just, right, right. So there's, first we have weekly integration calls with the group and then they go to every other week and then monthly eventually, but they also are set up to have paired calls with each other, just to reach out to each other, you know, hard moment, like, yeah, of course, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean, they're close, but some of them that are co-located have like,

Papa Rick (38:31.066)
Okay, okay.

Papa Rick (38:42.394)
They're allowed to interact. Yeah, yeah, okay.

Cat (38:50.474)
whole Sundays that they spend together and right they do. Yeah, right. But they do the yoga and they do the meditations together. And yeah, so it's it's unfolding for sure.

Papa Rick (38:52.562)
Absolutely. It's a coffee or whatever. Sure. Yeah, that's great.

Papa Rick (39:06.058)
I can't wait to see that. I had a friend in law enforcement that a lot of the low-level crime, probation for juveniles and stuff, what they need is some counseling, somebody healthier to talk to and pass that information on. But there's just not the funding or the will to.

Cat (39:31.754)
them.

Papa Rick (39:34.694)
have individual counselors. I wonder if a program like that might be a way for to intervene to get to kids younger who are having particular problems with them. Get them in a program like that. Set up a program like that.

Cat (39:52.01)
Yeah, I mean, I think that ours currently is designed for somebody who has a will of their own to look at challenging things, right? So it's interesting, but first, we thought we thought would be interacting with parents, like we thought parents would be footing the bill and But actually what we're finding is because it's an end, like the intent is for individuation.

Jennie (40:00.606)
Mm-hmm.

Papa Rick (40:03.214)
Yeah.

Cat (40:19.914)
we're often attracting people who are either they're moving in the world separately from their parents now and if their parents suggest that they're not likely to go. So it's it's yeah and it's interesting you know it's really only somebody who has hit a hard spot in their life or have had significant challenge already that would choose to do it somebody who's still like just hasn't hit a real bump yet they're like I'm going to college.

Jennie (40:27.778)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (40:30.41)
Yeah, yeah, yeah people.

Jennie (40:30.415)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (40:40.618)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Cat (40:49.61)
Now I'm getting a job and I'm going to have a family, you know, like, right. This is all. Yeah, I got this.

Papa Rick (40:52.59)
What's so hard about life? Life isn't hard, you know? Yeah. What's wrong with you? Yeah.

Jennie (40:52.691)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (41:00.794)
It's the way it is, you know, a lot of people, you know, you meet people in these, in the programs I've seen and everybody's all beat up and alcoholic and, you know, struggling with stuff. And then you run into and people look at that as like, you know, that's, that's horrible. What's wrong with you? And then you get to talking to them a little bit and it's like, well, they've never really

Cat (41:11.914)
Hmm.

Papa Rick (41:25.374)
experienced more than a mild breeze in their life, you know. Sometimes it's just you haven't been challenged yet. I don't know what the word for that is. I'd be curious to know what that is. But you get beat up a little bit and then all of a sudden you start looking for looking for a better way or looking for help, you know. You don't know how to get out. You don't have the tools to get out.

Cat (41:32.81)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Cat (41:40.17)
Two.

Cat (41:43.786)
Yeah.

Jennie (41:47.53)
Well, I think we find, I always say that the universe is gonna knock once or twice. And then the universe is gonna hit you over the head with a two by four. And then the universe is gonna hit you with a train until you get the message. The universe is, if you believe what I believe, you believe that the universe is always working in your favor and so that the little hardships come along to nudge you in the right direction for...

Papa Rick (41:57.178)
Hehehehehehehehe

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Jennie (42:17.014)
for your best self. And if you're missing those signs, or if you're not tuned in, or you're not tuned into yourself, or you're not, you know, you're not taking the feedback from your environment. I hate my job, but you stay there for 20 years. Well, universe is gonna start pummeling you with depression and, you know, terrible raises, and like, leave this job, like you are so unhappy.

and things like that. And if I think that people like that sometimes, just don't get the message early enough, or they experienced trauma that put layers and layers over their ability to tune into themselves and hear the messages or see the reflection to their environment, because no one ever appropriately acted as a mirror for them. Our first mirrors are our parents.

right, who reflect back to us who we are and what we're doing in the world. And if we're constantly told that we're bad, that we deserve to be punished and yelled at and spanked and put to bed early or without dinner or locked in our bedrooms or whatever for having big feelings when we're three, what are you gonna think of yourself when you're 25 or 40 or 70?

Cat (43:17.738)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (43:40.766)
Yeah. Or when you're 30. No, you don't quit whining. Go to work. Shut up and go to work.

Cat (43:41.066)
And it can be, yeah. No, and it can be more benign than that too, right? Sometimes the hurt is just that the parent didn't see the nuance or the like, you know, see like the depth of what was happening inside you. And so you started not tracking it either, right? And so in that same way, it's like, well.

Jennie (43:50.207)
Yeah.

Jennie (43:56.183)
Yeah.

Jennie (43:59.69)
Yes.

Papa Rick (44:03.288)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (44:03.404)
Yes.

Cat (44:06.986)
You may just decide, oh, life is meant to be hard and you're just supposed to do what you're supposed to do, as opposed to like... Ha ha ha.

Jennie (44:12.738)
That was me.

Papa Rick (44:17.482)
and therefore probably me to some degree, teaching her that...

Cat (44:19.53)
Hehehehe

Jennie (44:21.497)
So when I think of my childhood and my life, and if you look at it all on paper, you'd be like, you don't have any trauma. What are you talking about? But if you look at, I like the word benign,

Cat (44:38.154)
Hmm.

Jennie (44:46.278)
I wasn't abused. I wasn't abused in any facet of the word, physically, sexually, et cetera. I had young parents who were not fully in tune with themselves and their emotions yet until they were older parents and got better at it. But when I was very, very young, my parents were very, very young. And big emotions were often…

dismissed, ignored, or punished. They also often hugged us and kissed us and snuggled us and told us how much we were loved and all of these things. But I remember as I was growing up, I remember feeling unseen.

Jennie (45:37.002)
Shit.

Cat (45:39.37)
I'm so, I mean I'm so.

Jennie (45:40.278)
Ha ha!

Papa Rick (45:41.664)
That's good if it's getting in touch with something there. That's good.

Cat (45:44.266)
Yeah, I'm so touched by you too. Yeah, it's a big deal. It's such a big deal.

Jennie (45:47.574)
I remember I knew my parents loved me, but I didn't think that they ever loved me for the me I knew I was, but for the me I was out here.

Papa Rick (46:05.154)
Yeah. Your mom and dad, I'm not supposed to speak too much about the pair, but it likens me to being raised in a war zone. You know, your mom and I were not at peace with one another and therefore you were basically children of a very polite, quiet, sometimes war. I mean, you know, and that's exactly why the self-regulation and the parents...

Jennie (46:22.079)
Yeah.

Jennie (46:30.497)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (46:34.806)
look at yourself first is so prevalent in my thinking because you can't teach what you don't know or only do it accidentally and starts at home. Look at yourself. That's why I like the idea of your program so much, Kat, is getting people. It'd be nice if you could just drag everybody off the street and make them look at their problems.

Cat (46:43.722)
Yeah.

Cat (46:54.186)
Yeah.

Cat (47:00.394)
Oh, I totally agree. Like, trust me, you wanna be here.

Jennie (47:01.488)
Right?

Papa Rick (47:02.755)
I get the pretty scree thing. Yeah, yeah, I'll bet. I'll bet. And...

Jennie (47:07.679)
That's what I say in parent coaching too. I just want to like grab parents off the street. I'm like, you need this.

Cat (47:08.01)
Um...

Cat (47:15.114)
Thanks for watching!

Papa Rick (47:15.232)
Yeah, that's right. The parents that are screaming at their kids in Walmart, that kind of thing, it's like, come here, you're going to disappear for a month. We're not quite there yet in society.

Jennie (47:21.87)
I'm sorry.

Cat (47:25.802)
No, but I just want to acknowledge also just how rare and beautiful it is that you guys can actively hold, you know, this was my truth, you know, this was my experience as a child and that there's a steadiness between you two, like there's space for that. And I'm just like, whoo, it's gorgeous. Yeah.

Papa Rick (47:49.359)
It's taken a lot of time and I don't know how much therapy on either both of our parts. And, you know, that was 45 years ago. Yeah. Been 45 years since we started having kids and never give up on yourself. But just to emphasize to the parents listening, you know, get inside your own head. If something's not working, if your kids are invisible to you, that's not good.

Cat (47:54.282)
Yeah.

Jennie (47:54.37)
We've both been to lots of therapy.

Cat (48:03.306)
Hmm.

Cat (48:08.586)
Totally.

Cat (48:17.13)
Well, and I love that about parenting too, right? It's not about getting it all perfect, but it's about showing up for the repair.

Papa Rick (48:17.203)
You know, that's not ideal.

Jennie (48:24.344)
Yes.

Papa Rick (48:26.946)
Better, bake it, what's the thing? Not perfect, but progress. Try to do better tomorrow. That's the one I'm looking for. Yeah, thank you.

Jennie (48:27.019)
Yes.

Jennie (48:32.846)
Progress over perfection, yeah.

Cat (48:36.33)
Yeah.

Jennie (48:37.206)
Veronique kept saying that to us in her episode. She kept telling you, cause you kept saying, you know, I'm not perfect at it or I'm not good at this or whatever. And she kept being like, it's okay, progress over perfection. Like you're learning. Yeah.

Papa Rick (48:41.799)
Oh, okay. Must be.

Papa Rick (48:51.205)
That's right.

Outstanding. So you've done two cycles of this. I mean, do you do the study, you're gathering data, taking notes, then do you publish or are you working on publishing or building a business? Where's this headed for you?

Cat (48:58.474)
Yeah.

Cat (49:02.474)
Mm-hmm.

Um...

Yeah, this is a great question. I mean, one version that we originally held was like, hey, the reason we're gathering data is that we can talk to universities and create a joint program with university. And what would be super fascinating would be if 5% of an incoming class did it for four years so that you could actually, like have it be the seed and the culture and the whole culture like watch

Papa Rick (49:12.328)
Hehehe

Jennie (49:13.538)
Right?

Papa Rick (49:25.546)
Okay. Yeah.

Jennie (49:26.355)
Mmm.

Cat (49:37.93)
the whole culture shift if like 5% all had like, I have the steadiness to be with my emotions and I have the steadiness to be with you and yours. And like that kind of watch a whole shift because I think just the scale of what we're looking at with loneliness is so mind boggling and it's getting worse. And so it's like, you know, so the question in my mind is like, well, you know, what are the,

Papa Rick (49:39.522)
Yeah!

Jennie (50:01.827)
is it's still getting worse.

Papa Rick (50:02.414)
Yeah.

Cat (50:09.418)
what does it look like to have a force that's on par with social media, that's pointing in the other direction? Right? Like, and so, you know, in my dreams, you know, we figure this out enough and get enough partners and then also have other people just start doing the program too, like other groups of facilitators like doing their version.

Jennie (50:17.099)
Yes.

Papa Rick (50:18.495)
Uh, ooh, challenge, yeah.

Jennie (50:37.45)
Yes.

Cat (50:38.602)
But it's just, it's gonna be one intervention of many that are needed to like all come back to ourselves, to come back. And yeah, I think for us, right.

Jennie (50:42.272)
Yes.

Jennie (50:51.818)
And what amazing parents these people will be. Yeah. Cause you're not just changing it for them. You're changing it for the next generation after them.

Cat (50:56.554)
Yeah, yeah, like, you know, not perfect, but curious. Yeah, absolutely. And it was interesting, you know, we, purposefully we have elders at camp and I bring my boys and my partner is there. And, you know, in the afternoons when they're helping cook dinner or they're doing core exercise, there's some that are assigned to childcare. And so through the month, there's always, you know,

Jennie (51:24.128)
Nice.

Cat (51:26.058)
to students and it's funny, I'd come down and I'll see like somebody sword fighting with my six year old or they're like building forts. And so I think it's really, it's just a taste but it's so important for people to have experiences around children and experiences around parents and children. And I did like a dinner.

Jennie (51:34.018)
Uhhh... Yes...

Papa Rick (51:36.519)
Absolutely.

Cat (51:55.37)
Q&A with my partner on parenting and like Almost all the students came, you know, it's just like an opt-in like come to the table but there were just like rings of people around the table and You know like people they really want to know they want to know like what is conscious parenting Look like and there were people who said you know what? I I wasn't interested in having kids and now like I actually see how it would be part of my growth and development

Jennie (52:03.278)
No.

Papa Rick (52:07.642)
Curiosity. How about it? Yeah.

Jennie (52:12.493)
Yeah.

Jennie (52:25.366)
Yes.

Cat (52:25.418)
like held in that way, like I, it would help me become a more healed, beautiful human.

Papa Rick (52:25.539)
Yeah.

Jennie (52:31.26)
Hmm.

Papa Rick (52:31.382)
Yeah. That gives me hope for the human race, that they're around the people around the discussion. Were they, was it all generations? Was it mostly little kids? Or who's curious about parent, about learning more about parenting?

Cat (52:41.546)
Yeah, yeah we-

Oh, I mean, yeah, it was the students, I mean, our 18 to 27 year olds. Yeah.

Papa Rick (52:49.45)
Yeah, okay, okay. So that's some of my grown-up days. Some of them could be parents.

Jennie (52:50.923)
Yeah.

Cat (52:54.762)
Yeah, yeah. There's a lot of them are San Francisco. They're on the later train.

Jennie (53:01.504)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (53:04.127)
That's that reminds me yesterday, I went to a park near here, Allerton Park. It's run by the University of Illinois. And so they have some very learned people running the gift shops, you know, and stuff. And so she was giving a talk, a history talk of the area. And apparently there were initiatives starting back in the 20s to build dams. And they were going to they were going to end up flooding this 1500 acre

Park, Army Corps of Engineers, Illinois, Government of Waterways, whatever, they were looking for federal funding. And it just went on decades and decades and decades. Like you were talking about garnering support, you know, I need votes in politics, we need funding. And the way they ended up shutting it all down was...

group of people got together to defend this Allerton Park area. And they started, they got themselves a name and they did a little promotional campaign. And then they started getting together with groups from all the other areas. And then they, somebody had enough money. They had an engineering firm commission a study. They got some data, some scientific data about the downside of how many grave sites they were going to flood and farmers.

acreage out of business. It was really a grassroots thing and they eventually grew it to the point where they killed it. It took a decade, you know, but you know, it was an interesting parallel story to how do you get a movement going like that. It's just like what you're saying what you're doing, you know, well, get the college involved, get other groups

Cat (54:37.45)
Hmm.

Cat (54:42.538)
Mmm. Yeah.

Cat (54:52.202)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (54:58.382)
the things, whatever it is we're missing in society where we're not teaching kids to go, we're teaching kids not to go to the school and shoot all the little ones anymore or as much. This is evolution to, yeah, yeah.

Cat (55:10.89)
Right, but it's from pain. Yeah, like, I mean, anybody who's causing harm like that, they're in so much pain. Right, yeah, yeah.

Jennie (55:18.498)
So much pain.

Papa Rick (55:18.506)
Yeah, hurt people, hurt people kind of thing. And so getting something like that going, that's kudos. Good job at giving the future world some hope. You know, we're adapting. We're losing some kind of, we're losing some social stuff, but people are working on new ways to do it. The idea of a bunch of young people standing around listening to parenting stories and ideas, that's very hopeful.

Cat (55:28.074)
Cheers.

Jennie (55:31.778)
Yeah.

Cat (55:45.098)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (55:48.799)
We'll have to start a chapter around where we're at.

Jennie (55:53.11)
Right? Well, and you, cause you host, or at least the last one was hosted in Colorado. Is that right?

Cat (55:53.578)
Yeah.

Cat (56:01.674)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, the first one was on the Big Island, Hawaii, and then we did one up in up in the mountains in Colorado. So yeah, we're still.

Papa Rick (56:06.933)
Oh, nice.

Jennie (56:09.514)
Yeah. Awesome.

Papa Rick (56:12.046)
So you had people from, you talked about having a group of people from the Bay area. Did they go to Colorado?

Cat (56:18.314)
Yeah, so it's still from kind of all over the country, that we're drawing people, yeah. Yeah, it's very cool. Yeah.

Papa Rick (56:21.858)
Okay, okay, cool. That's amazing. People travel for a month.

I can't wait. I got you on my little one-note list of things to keep an eye on here. I'll be checking in as the years go by. I can't wait to see what happens.

Jennie (56:38.953)
Great.

Cat (56:42.314)
And it's, I think it's, what's notable for me is that it does feel experimental and wild for me too, right? Like it's, it's kind of a dream, right? And in a sense, and we're just stepping in and walking it and seeing what we learn. Um, you know, and there's plenty of learning to go around. You know, I, we choose all our facility. If a facilitator says like, I have it all figured out, that's not the right person for team, you know, because like we're all human.

Jennie (57:06.414)
Uh huh. Yeah.

Papa Rick (57:07.894)
Yeah, that's right.

Cat (57:11.882)
Like if you're saying you have it all figured out, then you're not being straight. You know, so I think we're all like really listening, like what wants to happen here, you know? And does it wanna continue in the same format or does it wanna evolve into different formats? Does it, do we wanna move to like really attending to local communities of young people and having it

Jennie (57:12.203)
Yeah.

Jennie (57:16.94)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (57:17.378)
Need that beginner's mind, new mind thing going on.

Cat (57:41.386)
just like culturally spread. You know, my co-founder Jeff Lieberman, who's super into just like, how do we make this fun? How do we make games out of evolving our consciousness? And, you know, so he's got like card decks and things. He used to do events that were like birthday parties, but like a series of social games. Yeah.

Papa Rick (57:53.55)
Hahaha!

Jennie (58:04.458)
Oh my gosh.

Papa Rick (58:06.88)
That's great. Turn everything into an experiment. I can see it next to monopoly and a Pictionary, you know, right? Evolve your consciousness section. That's great. Is he still doing that or is it? Ooh, parenting stuff. Yeah.

Cat (58:12.49)
That's right.

Jennie (58:15.53)
Right? Oh my gosh. A conscious parenting game.

Cat (58:16.138)
I'm sorry.

Cat (58:24.234)
Yeah, conscious parenting game, right? You can laugh, you cry, and like, there's questions, maybe, I don't know, maybe the kids, there's a kids deck and a parents' deck or something, and like parents draw and the kids draw. It'd be very interesting. Yeah.

Jennie (58:25.569)
I... I re-

Jennie (58:29.934)
Right?

Jennie (58:34.39)
Yeah, and a parent deck.

Yeah, the kid has to like read a scenario and the parent has to like, has to like give their answer of how they would handle that scenario. And then they like if they if the kid doesn't approve the way that the parent deals with it, they have to draw like some kind of card or they lose points. That'd be fun. Let me.

Papa Rick (58:40.59)
It's all kinds of stuff, stuff that the parents play by themselves.

Cat (58:45.034)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (58:45.87)
Stuff the kids play, yeah.

Papa Rick (58:52.193)
Uh-huh, boy.

Cat (58:59.882)
Oh yeah, or like, or they discuss it, yeah.

Papa Rick (59:03.274)
I can see that, that even if it just started in like churches and other social groups where you could kind of encourage youth groups of various kinds, that would be great or, well, all kinds of gatherings.

Cat (59:09.546)
Mm-hmm.

Cat (59:17.29)
Yeah, well, I, you know, one of the things that I do here in Oregon is I have a women's, a mother's group. So we meet monthly and have been doing that for four years. But I started it during COVID because I was just like, I need, you know, everybody was isolated. I was just like, I need women together, like our bodies together and like on the earth. And it's been, it's been amazing to

Jennie (59:25.09)
Bye!

Papa Rick (59:25.24)
Okay.

Papa Rick (59:35.146)
Yeah. This is killing us. Yeah.

Jennie (59:39.69)
Yeah.

Cat (59:45.93)
I didn't realize what a gift it would be to me because these moms are the mothers of the kids in my classes. And so like now when I'm at play dates, there's all these mothers that I've had profound explorations with, you know? And so I'm not stuck at the playground like, well, I'm cooking pizza tonight, you know? Like I can actually, you know, and that can be part of it, but yeah, but like I feel permissioned in.

Jennie (01:00:01.697)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:00:07.602)
right? The weather is... yeah.

Cat (01:00:15.242)
Like the range of what's going on for me. Yeah, yeah.

Papa Rick (01:00:17.674)
A little vulnerability goes a long way towards changing the conversation from weather and small what's for dinner tonight.

Jennie (01:00:17.846)
Yes.

Jennie (01:00:25.39)
Well, I'm feeling truly connected so that when you do, everyone's taking their kid to the park, you're not, it's real connected time when you get to have those conversations with other adults. Because as primary caregivers, I'm not a mom yet, but I'm a nanny and been stuck at home with an infant for all hours of the day, many days a week, and getting out of the house is precious and having an adult conversation.

Cat (01:00:26.666)
Yeah, no.

Cat (01:00:34.794)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:00:54.434)
is precious and to take those adult conversations from surface to depth and feeling truly renewed or rejuvenated when you leave the park and go back home, it can really feed your soul.

Papa Rick (01:00:55.288)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:01:11.534)
get to explore. You have to have to walk around to when you go to the park with the kids, you have to walk around pass out little cards or a flyer, you know, and say, Hey, I've been looking at you across the park for six weeks now, you know, or we've been taught, you know, let's get together next Saturday afternoon, you know, pick a time childcare provided the first couple of times, right?

Cat (01:01:31.21)
Well, I usually...

Jennie (01:01:31.79)
right?

Cat (01:01:35.338)
No, it's, but I have met people in funny ways. So for the first camp, I was at an airport just like four weeks before camp. And I heard this young man just going on and on about intentional living communities and just like, you're just really fiery and I, for him, I was like, check out this website, tell me, let me know, email me if you're interested. And he came to camp and he's amazing.

Papa Rick (01:01:39.598)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:01:50.182)
Oh.

Wow.

Jennie (01:01:55.543)
Yeah.

Jennie (01:01:59.618)
Wow. That's awesome. I love it.

Papa Rick (01:02:03.95)
I've never heard of an intentional living community before. That sounds like a great idea. There's so much going on, I don't know. I'm so out of it. Eh. Ha ha ha.

Cat (01:02:10.25)
That'll be... You've got a lot of hours of Googling ahead of it.

Jennie (01:02:14.942)
right? He always has things to research after these episodes. He's like, wait, what? What is that?

Papa Rick (01:02:24.89)
Well, and that brings up a thing you touched on before about the importance of changing your environment a little bit, changing your community. If you're, you know, going back to your family, you can't, you can't do so much. You go, you go through this and you can't necessarily change your family, change others, um, but you could certainly add another group to it, you know, so that you've got a healthy, like-minded group to a support group or what, you know, just, just people.

Cat (01:02:54.73)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:02:55.155)
to talk to and have minis with and that would go a long way towards helping if you were in a crummy situation with your family.

Cat (01:03:04.874)
Yeah, I mean, I think part of this transition from loneliness and isolation to, you know, what it means to create more layers of connectedness, you know, is, you know, also with like, when I'm at home, if my spouse is the only person that I bring my issues with, like, that's gonna get heavy, right? So just having a women's group or other friends, you know, adds layers of support. Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:03:24.996)
Yeah.

Papa Rick (01:03:28.674)
Yeah.

Yeah. More perspectives.

Jennie (01:03:31.562)
Yeah, that's something my husband and I have definitely navigated as, I guess, we're still newlyweds. It'll be a year in October. So we've, and we, you know, we've, we lived together for two years before we got married. So we've lived together for three years now. And so we've been navigating that, you know, that we can't bring everything to each other.

Papa Rick (01:03:43.542)
definitely still nearly wet.

Jennie (01:04:01.434)
there's a balance of relying. You can't, I saw a statistic once and that it's like you and your partner should be able to get about 80% of your emotional needs met through one another. And the other 20%, you should have your community. You should have friends and family and other people who...

Papa Rick (01:04:18.414)
Mm-hmm.

Jennie (01:04:28.818)
and other perspectives, right? Cause if you and your partner just live in this bubble of each other's perspective, that can get very codependent very fast too. And so that's definitely something that's like up for me right now and is constantly being like navigated through is, you know, is this, not only is this something I should or could bring to him, but is he the right person to bring this to? And is this the right time?

bring it to him. There's like so many little, yeah, a little relational.

Papa Rick (01:04:59.318)
timing is so important with everything. Yeah. Yeah, imagine the pioneer days where it was you and a spouse and maybe a couple of kids and a couple of horses, you know, and nothing else for five or 10 miles. You know, that was, they talk about the pioneer spirit, that may not have been the optimal parenting situation.

Jennie (01:05:15.244)
Okay.

Cat (01:05:16.202)
Yeah.

Cat (01:05:24.746)
start writing some pretty wild fiction, I think. Ha ha ha.

Jennie (01:05:28.034)
Right? It's all there. All right. Kat, is there anything, is there anything, Kat, that we have not touched on that you want to share?

Papa Rick (01:05:28.637)
That's right.

Papa Rick (01:05:36.358)
Circumstances play a role.

Cat (01:05:46.282)
I feel pretty complete. We are gearing up for this winter. We'll do a series of weekend events called Intermediate Friendship. Yeah, so that, yeah, yeah. So it's just a way for us to go where our alumni are and where they want to create depth in their community. So then we do weekend events that way around the country.

Jennie (01:05:56.947)
Awesome.

Papa Rick (01:05:57.21)
Cool. All right, we're working on the format. That's nice, twisting and turning. I like that.

Jennie (01:06:12.802)
Yeah.

Cat (01:06:16.426)
So we're planning those.

Jennie (01:06:17.53)
Oh, I love it. And where can people, if people want to learn more about those events or next year's big month long event, where can they find you?

Cat (01:06:29.066)
The place to go is sleepawake.camp.

Jennie (01:06:33.97)
Awesome, sleepawake.camp. And we'll have all those things linked in the show notes as well as your bio and everything where people can find you all over the place. Thank you so much for spending time with us today.

Cat (01:06:35.626)
Yeah.

Cat (01:06:43.882)
awesome.

Cat (01:06:49.706)
It was a pleasure to meet both of you.

Papa Rick (01:06:50.298)
Amazing. Yeah, you too. You too. Best of luck. Hope you get them. Hope you get this out there. The world could really use it. Positive note.

Cat (01:06:55.242)
Thank you.

Jennie (01:07:00.225)
Yeah.

Cat (01:07:00.65)
Thank you.

Jennie (01:07:03.118)
I love it. I appreciate the work that you're doing. I think it's amazing.

Cat (01:07:03.818)
All right.

Cat (01:07:07.978)
Well, it's all intertwined. May the parents continue to generate more and more healed and confident children, and then may we meet them fully as they transition to adults. All right, take care of you both.

Jennie (01:07:21.738)
Yes, beautiful. All right, take care.

Papa Rick (01:07:28.09)
Thanks. Bye bye.

Cat (01:07:28.906)
All right, bye.

Jennie (01:07:29.89)
Bye.