Motherhood. Celebrate the diverse guests who continue transforming how we live today for a much better tomorrow featuring brief segments from inspiring episodes regarding life, death, hope, autism, premature births, immigration, surrogacy, and more.

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Hello there.

I'm Catherine, your host of this Variety show podcast.

Your positive imprint is transforming how we live today

for a more sustainable tomorrow through education and information.

Your own positive actions inspire, change.

Check out my website, yourpositiveimprint.com, where you

can learn more about the podcast and sign up for email updates.

Music by the legendary and talented, Chris Nole.

ChrisNole.com . Thank you again for listening and for your support of this

podcast, May has been so fabulous celebrating motherhood around the world.

So today I conclude my May series and I wanna share that my parents

have always been an integral inspiration for me growing up.

And I'm thrilled to have my mom, Victoria Sanchez, also on this episode today.

Enjoy this Inspiration Monday and the diverse guests I've had on Your

Positive Imprint over the past years.

At the end I will list the names and episodes of those who are featured today.

Remember, your positive imprint is unique.

The inspirations continue next time here on Your Positive Imprint.

Your Positive Imprint, what's your PI?

I don't like enough.

I don't like that word

You are more than enough.

You are extraordinary.

We are limitless,

you are extraordinary.

You are limitless.

Victoria Sanchez: We had a young daughter then, her first baby.

I was qualified for a GS 7, and I went looking, and I went first to NIH, the

National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, and he offered me a position,

but he offered it to me at a GS 5 level.

And I said, why are you offering me this job at a GS 5?

And he said, because you're a woman.

And I said, what has that got to do with it?

And he said, you're liable to get pregnant.

And I said, thank you, I don't want your job.

Cody Unser was 12 years old, with transverse

myelitis Cody became paralyzed.

Her loving mom, Shelly, guided Cody away from what she calls hot tears into forever

hope.

I wouldn't been able to do this without my mom.

And I hope I don't cry

, Christian: when I was in the hospital my mom would she would come by and

bring a breakfast And then after she would leave, my, my father would come

after work family was the biggest thing that helped me stay positive.

when Christian was little, he was diagnosed with neurofibromatosis.

NF put him at risk for cancer.

Although it is highly unusual to have brain cancer, especially as a young adult,

nellie harden : I work with young women out in the community.

And filling in those gaps and really teaching parents how to

be incredibly intentional because today it is really easy to slip

into and stay in survival mode

Robert DeLaurentis: certainly my mom was with me.

, I took her ashes with me and I had them and a little, , vial, glass

vial, and it was in my backpack.

And the night before I set out for the South Pole on that 18.1

hour flight, I reached into the backpack and , I pulled my hand out

and there were ashes on my hand.

It's like she's reaching out to me, touching me, comforting me in this

time of need like a mother would.

, Kyra King: So you need to surround yourself with positive influences

and really declutter your space.

Start off the day in the right way, you end the day in the right way,

I don't believe that surrogacy , would work for just anyone.

And I don't even believe that I would do it for just any friend.

I knew that Kyla was one who, , would be so respectful.

I was desperate to have another child

My parents certainly couldn't send me more than a few

hundred dollars when Harvard was costing tens of thousands of dollars.

But, they supported me with their values and with their encouragement,

I myself had a 28-week premature infant.

My son was three and a half, and we spent three months in the NICU with my daughter.

And I can attest to the stress of and the dynamics because

we lived through that process.

There's

so many things I like about having kids in this situation teaches

them so much responsibility.

And then I think it teaches them where food comes from , because

we do produce our own food.

the kids, love To bottle feed, the goats are so cute.

And the pygmy goats are like the size of a Chihuahua when they're little.

Premature births.

Focusing on helping the parents and their activity of, , the infant care.

, feeding and dressing, bathing their infants, bonding,

This had to have happened to me for a reason and my mom and I just took

on the challenge of starting a nonprofit

Healthcare access for children with autism

We wanna give her access to counseling so that she can figure

out issues of, "Well, how am I going to go back to work and breastfeed at

the same time? I'm a first-time mom." . One of the things that I'm working

on is maternity leave so that women after they have their babies are able

to have some time to bond with their babies, to take care of their babies.

Reigniting passions, whether they're old passions, whether , you

need to explore and find new passions.

, I think that's so critical for anybody, but especially women who

kind of just give, give, give, and give to their children and,

Bring it back to yourself.

, if you can make yourself whole and happy, do you know what

that does for your children?

Victoria Sanchez: I deliberately chose to stay at a middle school in our city

because those kids needed a good teacher.

And in science, they had an excellent teacher.

I did not use the textbook.

I used hands on experiments.

I have a son who had some fine motor challenges.

He has autism as well, I was trying to work with him on , small

eye-hand coordination for teaching skills of independence.

And so we worked with teeny-tiny beads, which are called

seed beads, and memory wire.

And once he got good with that, , kind of took on a life of its own, and every

bead handmade glass is unique and individual, just like every person.

And so it took on a life of its own,

I think for kids to have an understanding of , oh,

this is where eggs come from.

This is the process it takes to get eggs to my table or, oh, that's milk.

This is cheese, this is butter.

These all come from this and this is how it happened.

It's good for kids to have an appreciation of that and, really valuing where all

that comes from and not wasting it.

Oftentimes our moms have a long course of breastfeeding where

they've been pumping eight times a day.

It's a full-time job for them just to provide the milk for their babies

we know with breastfeeding that a big piece of being able to get

proper latch is that sense of smell.

WHO ha- has really made it- its mandate a- and its

reason for existence to improve the health of people around the world,

we're applying the science.

We're applying the policies.

We're putting in place the programs.

My father and my mother were very much disciplinarians.

They believed in hard work.

But that, that value of hard work, I eventually learned to

translate it into mental work;

Our seniors are our history.

One of the things in working with moms and families in the NICU

and working with extremely premature and sick babies, one of the, the most powerful

things is just the power of touch.

First holdings, the power of being able to wrap your hands around a baby

We went through the in vitro process, my husband and I, and were able

to create biological embryos of ours that were frozen and then, physicians

are able to transfer those embryos to Britney and allow her body and her

uterus to carry that child to term.

The Women Diverse Hall of Fame, my mom nominated me to receive

this honor and to be the first paralyzed woman into this, , hall of fame.

It, it, it brings a whole other level of meaningfulness to it.

Victoria Sánchez: To thine own self be true, you don't follow

the crowd, you do the right thing and you be the best you can be.

I've always been, , Mom's caregiver , 50, 75%

of the time, but always been there.

We have our seniors, , that we can care for.

They, they all just, , have so much to share, , their experiences.

There's so much you can learn from, from talking to our seniors,

, their history, their ancestry.

We need to take care of our elderly population.

Victoria Sánchez: Tomorrow might never come.

So you live for today and you make it the very best day.

We were in a rollover accident, and Carrie, who was ten,

and David, who was eight at the time, , passed away in that accident.

That took me on a journey that I never expected to be on and

introduced me to a greater pain than I had ever experienced before.

The pain recognizing that I was at fault was tremendous.

. I did have this glimmer of hope in the background that there was a possibility

of rebuilding but then it took me a few years to figure out how I could help

other people in those circumstances.

Victoria Sánchez: Don't ever say anything that's not nice.

, you can never take back words..

I wanna help people get to better health than ever.

YoUr health is the only thing you have.

Without that, you don't have anything else to put on top of it.

Animal relationships mirror our relationships with humans.

So if, if we're able to respect an animal and look at their body language

and respect what they're telling us, then that really translates for children

and for all, all adults, into how

how you can

Move that into your human relationships.

When we experience grief, to that level, and we

just don't even know what to do.

And that's, that's where I want to be able to help people.

, I've been trained as a grief recovery specialist, I have

tools that I can offer people.

It's a process where we get to understand better our grief so

we can take the steps of healing.

My mother would say, there is no tired in my house.

You are not allowed to get tired.

I don't really think of myself like what I know as the

single, quote-unquote, "single mom", but I guess that's what it is now.

But because of the situation I came out of, it's the best

thing, but it's also very, , challenging, , to do it on your own

but I wake up every morning with such joy and gratitude, look at these beautiful,

beautiful people that are my children.

I was diagnosed right before my 20 birthday.

It came to a real shock you don't expect something like this when you're young.

It's not difficult to stay positive around Christian or with

Christian because he's already that way.

Even with this diagnosis,

I don't have anything profound.

I really don't.

I'm just going to say, I look at him and if I'm looking for inspiring

words I'm just going to look at him

that's where I kind of get my inspiration from these days.

Really.

Victoria Sánchez: I will pass this way, but once, and if there are some

good that I can do, then let me do it.

To my loving wife, I pray, my dear, that God will be good to us

and bless us with children who will make us proud to reflect our memories

upon them, whose happiness was the fruit of our labor and our love.

And in the end, I want us to look at each other saying together, "We have lived

our lives, raised our children together.

We saved our souls together.

We made the world a better place to live.

Now, as our lives come to an end, we shall together enter into the

supernatural wedlock of eternal paradise.

God so loved us that He brought us to Him, united for all eternity.

My dear, how do I love you?

I love you deep from within, now and forever."

That poem is written by my dad to my mother regarding family,

motherhood, fatherhood, and marriage

victoria Sanchez, AKA Mom, various topics, episodes

23, 77, 124, 135, 171, and 212.

Cody Unser, transverse myelitis and paralysis, 94, 95, 135.

Coach Kyra King, listen to your body 25

Galen Green DeVisser and Christian DeVisser, hopeful and positive with

glioblastoma, 151 Nellie Hardin, developing skills in children, 204.

Julie Cluff, building a life after losing a child, fifty-four

Larry Grummer-Strawn, World Health Organization, maternity leave and

breastfeeding, one thirty-five and 242.

Robert DeLaurentis, peace pilot who circumnavigated between

North and South Poles, 239-240

brittany Calkins and Kyla Maurer, surrogacy, twenty-four.

Sergio Troncoso, Immigration, 180.

181, 198

Podiatrist Dr. Stephanie Parks, Starlight Ranch Animal Rescue, one seventy-two.

Dr. Leanne Sculli, Earth to Autism and Repair Cafe, fifty-eight., Valerie

Legendre, occupational therapists in the NICU, premature babies, two forty-one.

Gloria Robinson, home caregiver, eighty-five.

The inspirations continue next time here on Your Positive Imprint.

Your Positive Imprint, what's your PI?