Just so you know that special needs parents in general, when they are diagnosed with something, their mortality rate is way higher. It's like double for any any disease because of the stress and the anxiety that they have in their lives.

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So, yes, it was a a very interesting process for me to learn to let go. Let go of a lot of things that I thought I needed to control and what was most important. And so that that completely up, you know, it it turned my life upside down. My my idea of living healthy was also turned upside down. I was Oh, really?

I was doing all the stuff. You know, I was taking supplements. I was eating mostly organic. Over the process, I had a a dear friend that thankfully we we connected before before COVID, and she lives 4 doors down for me. But special needs homeschool child.

That's kinda how we met. We were actually in an aerial silks class together and then we started talking homeschooling and then we realized we lived 4 doors away from each other. You know? But but she has had an autoimmune issue all of her adult life. And and it was just like this this friend I needed at the right time.

And she had all of this knowledge and wisdom, and she just poured into me just about things that she had done naturally and and sent me to her functional doctor. And so I actually went through, and I had a double mastectomy. It just helped my family feel more at ease about the cancer being gone. Actually, yesterday, I celebrated 4 years of being cancer free. So, yeah.

But then I ended everything else naturally. It was I changed my diet. I've been plant based since then. Intermittent fasting and just a whole bunch of other things that realizing that I have EDS, which is Ehlers Danlos syndrome. My daughter was officially diagnosed with that.

They now say that a lot of kids who have EDS get accidentally diagnosed with autism. And so Really? My very bendy 28 year old son who sits in a chair all day as an engineer, who was diagnosed with autism, probably more than likely has EDS and not autism. And my middle child who has a disc that shift in his back that also it's a it's a connective tissue disorder is what

it has.

And so it affects your just your vagus nerve and your ability to calm yourself. And so learning, it was just a huge learning journey that we started on for our family just through through that. And I'm so thankful because had I not known, had I not already been a little bit on somewhat of a journey, I could see that my cancer would have spread. It didn't. It had actually stayed isolated because I was so healthy, But now I'm just even more healthy.

So but but, yeah, it taught me a lot about just trusting trusting that, you know, the things in front of me and the people that came to show me things about just weird stuff that I never knew I I like I sleep on a Biomat now, which I don't know if anybody's familiar with that. It is what was created for the space station, a technology that helps you ground because I am super sensitive because of my EDS, super sensitive to, like, 5 g and other technologies. And so my my heart gets weird. All of my systems just get really messed up. My liver won't won't detox.

And so I sleep on this bed of rocks. It is not comfortable, but it it lowered my blood pressure in 2 days. I had a high blood pressure and yeah, it was crazy. So I just I kept praying in. I'm like, okay, wherever you're gonna lead me, God, I know I need this answer, but and I'm willing to just be talk to anybody.

So Yeah. Well, and I think that is a little bit of homeschool mom grit.

Like It is definitely. Yeah. Kinda like, fine. I'll do it myself, Jean. Right?

Like right? And we think outside the box a little bit because we look at the system. We're generally not really system believers in the first place. No.

Oh, and, Anne, I had some shouting matches with my breast cancer doctor. She was not in agreement with me. And I'm like, I'm leaving. And she's like, oh, you can't go.

Yes. You know that's funny because I have had my own run ins. So my twins are IVF twins. And navigating, everybody knows I am a Christian. I am faith based.

And so navigating that world and what some things doctors wanted me to do so that I could have my babies I was not willing to do. It crossed what I was comfortable with and my ethical lines. And I remember sitting across the table from one of the doctors and he was literally looking at me like I was a stupid Christian idiot. Like, what a dumb girl. I could see it in his face.

And I I just said I looked at him and I said, look, I'm paying you cash. Are you willing to do it this way? You know, and he was. Otherwise, I would have done what you did. I would have walked out the door.

I love that so much. And congratulations. And you're here. How incredible. And you're on this podcast today, and you're able to continue doing your mission of encouraging homeschool parents whose kids have special needs.

Yeah. I wanted to ask you about self care with homeschooling children with special needs. This is a big struggle because sometimes, especially when there is dysregulation and misbehavior, it is very draining for us mamas. And where I have seen some parents give up and put their kids in the system simply because they needed a break, a legitimate break. I want to ask you how and you also mentioned that you struggled with anxiety and depression, and I think this answer can kind of go together.

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Yeah. Yeah. Well, just just so you know that special needs parents in general, when they are diagnosed with something, they the mortality rate is way higher. It's like double for any any disease because of the stress and the anxiety that they have in their lives. So we need to really be careful when we say that my child needs my attention because your child won't have you if you don't pay attention to yourself.

That that was something that I had, you know, I didn't have a good example of that. My parents adopted 10 after I left home, and they were all special dates. My parents, like, drove themselves just about to the grave. I'm in my fifties. My parents have been parenting for a long time.

And so, you know, looking at their example, I don't want to do that. They have given it all and they've never had time for their marriage, their relationship. When I talk to parents sometimes at homeschool conferences, I'm like, ask your children, are you taking good care of yourself? And see what they have to say because it will be a whole new perspective for you and what do they want you to be doing versus what you are doing. They want you to take care of yourself.

And I think we forget that we aren't always the one who has to be caring. We have to be cared for. When it's okay to put that in your schedule. But there's a lot of things we can do to take care of ourselves in the midst of all of this. One of my favorites is breathing.

Do you ever think about how you breathe?

Do you take deep breaths? Peggy, I gotta tell you. So I am a Pilates junkie. I joke with my friends who are kind of, like, in the OT space because I like Pilates, but I think I like Pilates not for the Pilates.

Uh-huh.

They guide your breathing. You're doing lots of cross body.

Mhmm. And

that you're basically going there and doing OT and breathing. Right? Right. Yeah. Breathing.

Talk a little bit about breathing.

Sure. It's those deep breaths. It's it's cleansing. First of all, you're gonna clean your lymphatic system out, but you're also going to calm your nervous system down. We we don't realize.

And then we have those stress hormones, which stress hormones are known to be related to a lot of different just health issues. So just by taking time out whenever I like, before I wake up in the morning, I'll just take some deep breaths and I'll count and I'll, you know, try to regulate that down. There's other ways to to reset your vagus nerve too, but breathing, like box breathing, for most people, will take that down. For us with EDS, not so much. I gotta do it physically.

But but there's there's just there's so much benefit to that. I found even like when I went up into the mountains where I don't I live at sea level. And I didn't have any issues with with hyperventilating or having trouble breathing, even hiking at that altitude when I did breath work. So it's it just it increases your lung capacity and your ability to just, you know, keep up with what you need to keep up with. So there's there's just so much involved with that.

So that's what water. You gotta you have to drink a lot of water. Yes. And just flush your system out. We don't think about that, but just preloading then just make sure you drink them all by the end of the day.

I mean, it's that's pretty easy to think about. I always add some lemons in there and make it feel like, oh, yeah, I can drink that. It's not just water. But good water too. I mean, yeah, we do reverse osmosis at our house.

I always I love in the morning to just drink a big glass of water with a couple pinches of real salt in it Yeah. With all the minerals. So you just kinda get that boost of all the minerals you

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Not really. Yeah. Respite was hard to come by. And but that's where, you know, when you have those couple friends that have kids with the same issues, we would get together every week. And so we would have potlucks on Fridays.

That was part of our homeschool schedule. Our kids had siblings that understood each other. They're like, oh, yeah, my my my sibling has autism too. Oh, yeah, they do that too. You know, it wasn't like Yeah.

We're judging. It was like, yeah, that happens in our house as well. And

so you

just felt like you could just like let down. You know, we weren't didn't have to always be on your guard. And so so and I did have a babysitter. The first time I hired her that I driving out of the cul de sac. And she was like, are you gonna fire me?

And I'm like, oh, no, I got away. You're coming back. She even started traveling with us because I needed that extra help. She was a homeschool student and her mom's like, If you'll teach her math, and pay her for babysitting, then she's all yours.

That's wonderful.

And so, you know, that was a a really big help for us as well. And my respite for me was going out to speak. I had I had actually been the area coordinator for MOPS International for Minnesota, North Dakota, and South Dakota. So speaking just really fills me being around other people just to be able to to share. And so I found that if I had a speaking date once a month where I could just get out of the house and leave the the homeschool work to Michelle, then I felt like I could jump back in and and keep going.

Yes. And that's so beautiful.

And I think especially I'm thinking of this now in the summer when everyone's going on vacations and just thinking about comparing ourselves to others. This isn't a perfect example, but I do recall when I had twins, I came to this. I had this moment where I was like, oh, I can't parent. Like I parented my first singleton. Like that's not going to happen here.

Right.

And it it was a very freeing moment for me. You know, and one of the things I had to do for me and Scott's sanity, no matter how controversial anyone listening is gonna think this is, I really don't care because we were we were Scott and I were not doing well because our twins were early and it was it was they were someone was crying all night long and it was not good. We sleep trained. As soon as the doctor gave us approval, we sleep trained our twins. I don't there's probably a a fancier word for it now that's more gentle.

I don't know. But what we did, the word for it was sleep training. And we did it as soon as the doctor gave us approval. But I'm just sharing that because maybe your family, the better use of your resources is a mommy's helper or a weekly respite. And maybe you do end up giving up a big long vacation in the summer because of that.

And that is okay. That is okay because we want you happy and we want your life to be sustainable and joy filled. Now we don't want you to white knuckle it till you have 1 week in the summer, which to be honest, summer vacations are stressful anyway, especially when you have small kids. I

I often go Yeah. It's like, why am I still cooking? I I don't get this. We rented VRBO and I'm still cooking. Yay.

Yay. We're camping.

If you're enjoying the show and you don't want to miss out on future episodes, hit that like and subscribe button and show us some love with your comments. Those 5 star reviews really do make a difference. Camping, that's what I'm saying.

Oh, yeah. Well, we've always had an RV, so that hasn't been so bad. But yeah.

So we're not we're not campers. It's funny. We are we're in Colorado. So everyone here seems to be a hunter and a camper. And Scott

and I

are like, let's go to the gay lord for a couple of days. That's kinda like a resort near us here. Yes. Anyway, so, what a blessing to have you on the show today. I wanna ask you, what do you have going on right now and where can my audience find you?

Yeah. So we're launching a brand new website on Saturday, which

is June 1st. It's it'll still be the same address, bed homeschool.com, but the whole platform is shifting. It'll be a peer to peer and admin supported network. So so it'll take us about a year to get all the articles over, but we are helping parents to connect with one another just because we know that that community. What I was talking about earlier, those connections are so vital.

And we have thousands of people in our Facebook groups, and it's like they they can never quite find each other because the the algorithms are just not set up for that. So so I'm super excited that that is launching. It's called our community is called Homeschool Heroes. And so you'll see lots of red capes. It's all about the red capes and just celebrating the hero and the moms, the dads, and the kids that we serve because they are amazing hero.

And so that that's going on. I just added 4 new cohosts to my podcast. So Empowering Homeschool Conversations is now a group of 5 of us. I found with me interviewing guests that we could talk about topics, but we couldn't get into, like, the really deep subjects that needed to be discussed with a group of people and and at we could get really real. And so my 4 co hosts are all special education homeschooling moms.

They've been in the trenches. A lot of us have graduated our kids. 1 is graduating her daughter this month. And then the last one is the younger mom. She she has basically said, we are the new view for homeschoolers.

Because it we we're kind of like all over the place. But we we've tackled some topics like the emotional health, the special needs homeschooling moms. That was our latest one. Talking about how do you navigate a homeschool conference with special needs. You know?

And so just just those things that will really get you beyond just the interview. And then they're gonna be doing some of the interviewing too, not just me, because I'll I'm traveling so much now and I run a second company and I'm just busy. So so that's that's exciting to have some new voices in there. And so I've been doing that podcast for 8 years now. And and so it just needed some new life into it.

So that's going on. And and then we've got our just conferences coming up that I'm speaking at. So all of that is going on.

Is there on your website, is there a a schedule where mamas can see where you're speaking? Do you have a a schedule?

I haven't updated that yet. It should be available, yeah, when that should be up. But but, yeah, right now it's the events basically are the the upcoming live broadcast because our podcast isn't just podcast, it's a live broadcast and you can submit questions ahead of time. So ask the guest if you can't be there or you can just join us live on Facebook, YouTube, whatever, and plop your questions in and get them answered right there by whatever expert we have on. So that's we found that our parents just, they don't have the ability, always time to get out of the house, and they want to be able to interact with people who are authorities in areas.

And so this has been a way to bridge that gap.

I am so excited about these changes. I think it's beautiful. I love this ministry. I love the heart of it. We are going to put all of the resources into the show notes so everyone listening can pop over there, listen to the podcast, check out the website and see all the resources that you have to offer.

Peggy, thank you so much for what you have done and continue to do in the homeschool space. Really appreciate you.

You're welcome. It's an honor and a joy.

Thank you so much for coming on the show. Man, I really, really, really want you to do a talk in Thrive. Would you ever do that? Would you ever come into Thrive and do a a workshop? Sure.

Oh, okay. Yeah. Oh, that would be so wonderful.