Monica Olano shares her incredible and traumatic journey of giving birth to twins, which ultimately led her to found Cali Sober Mom. She opens up about her struggles with postpartum trauma and how she turned to cannabis as a healthier coping mechanism, moving away from alcohol. Monica highlights the challenges of modern parenting and the societal stigmas surrounding cannabis use, particularly among mothers. Through her advocacy, she aims to empower women to speak out about their experiences and to challenge the norms that often leave them feeling unsupported. This honest conversation delves into vulnerability, healing, and the importance of creating a supportive community for mothers navigating similar paths.

Monica Olano's heartfelt narrative brings to light the complexities of motherhood, particularly in the wake of her traumatic experience giving birth to twins. The conversation kicks off with Monica detailing her rapid journey through pregnancy, having welcomed three children within just 18 months. The emotional weight of this experience is palpable as she describes the unexpected onset of labor just days before her scheduled induction. This segment not only showcases the unpredictable nature of childbirth but also emphasizes the mental and emotional toll placed on mothers, often overlooked in discussions surrounding pregnancy and childbirth.

As the dialogue progresses, Monica candidly discusses her struggles with postpartum trauma and how she turned to alcohol as a coping mechanism. This revelation serves as a critical turning point in her story, leading her to explore healthier alternatives, including cannabis. Through her journey to recovery, she founded Cali Sober Mom, a platform aimed at empowering other mothers to discuss their mental health openly and consider alternative coping strategies without the societal stigma attached to cannabis use. Monica's advocacy work centers on creating a supportive community where women can share their experiences and feel validated in their choices, challenging the pervasive 'mommy wine culture' that often glorifies alcohol consumption as a coping strategy.

The episode also delves deep into the historical context of cannabis stigma, examining how societal perceptions have evolved and the ongoing challenges mothers face in discussing their choices. Monica illuminates the tension between traditional parenting norms and the need for modern mothers to seek support and understanding in their unique journeys. She underscores the importance of community solidarity among women, encouraging open conversations about mental health, parenting struggles, and the need to destigmatize cannabis use. By the episode's conclusion, audiences are left with a powerful message about the necessity of vulnerability, the importance of sharing personal stories, and the collective strength found in community support as mothers navigate the complexities of parenting and mental health together.

Takeaways:

• Monica Olano's journey into motherhood was marked by the trauma of giving birth to twins, which transformed her perspective on self-care.
• The societal pressure on mothers to conform to alcohol culture often overlooks healthier coping alternatives like cannabis.
• Cali Sober Mom aims to empower women by destigmatizing cannabis use as a legitimate coping mechanism for postpartum trauma.
• Monica emphasizes the importance of sharing personal stories to create a supportive community for mothers experiencing similar challenges.
• The historical stigma surrounding cannabis use has roots in racism and misinformation, affecting perceptions even today.
• Advocating for cannabis legalization is crucial, as it aligns with the fight for women's rights and health autonomy.

Links referenced in this episode:

• medium.com/authority-magazine/caring-for-myself-and-my-twins-monica-olano-of-cali-sober-mom-on-emotional-and-physical-recovery-c49b55e4f6b2

Companies mentioned in this episode:

• Cali Sober Mom

Hi. How are you?

I'm great. I would love for you to go ahead and just introduce yourself and give us a little bit of your backstory, if you don't mind.

Sure. So my name is Monica Olano. I recently founded Callie Sobermandae accidentally, but how I not hear. It's a long, convoluted story.

And then when she was nine months, we got pregnant with our twin, and she was all at 18 months old when they were born. Uncomplicated pregnancy, which I know a lot of people in the twin world have a lot more complications with the pregnancy itself.

But I was 38 weeks on the dot. I was considered geriatric, so I was 36. Oh, my gosh. Yeah. My babies were both almost seven pounds at birth. It was ridiculous.

But then you have some that, like, you start having trouble at 32 or you just have trouble early. And so I don't want to discount what those women went through.

When I complain about, here I am complaining about making it to 30 weeks, but that's a whole nother story. But I was supposed to be induced on Monday, and my water broke because they couldn't take them any earlier than 38 weeks.

I wouldn't beg my doctor, but. So Monday would be my induction date. My water broke on Saturday night, so two days before, and my daughter was like a day and a half for birth.

And so when my water broke, I was like, oh, they say you have a little bit of time. And I'd been swimming or attempting to swim. I was a meth. I was dirty, and I was a meth.

And so I thought I had time to do a full woman shower, wash thick hair, blow dryer. Oh, my God. It was the worst. That was dumb.

So I got to the hospital an hour after my water broke, and I was already at a five or a six when they checked me. I was just screaming in pain. So they got me into delivery room right away, resting in a seizure there to give me an epidural, blah, blah, blah.

and they were like, if you feel like you have to push, but if you can, just wait, because not everybody was there, that's the worst part, I see your face and I'm like, this is the easy part.

Full disappointment. I gave birth to twins in a different, but maybe equally as totally complex and layered way that you did, but very different.

So I am, like, with you just on every. I'm hanging on your everywhere.

Yeah. I didn't think literally my daughter, I just sat at a one forever. So I didn't even know, like, this could happen so quickly.

And so right about eleven ish, I think they got us. I don't know. We go to the operating room, which is where all twin are. Birth, operating room.

But they didn't move me to the operating bed because they thought it was just going to be, like, easy. And my son came out in one push. It was literally like the easiest thing ever.

And what I then learned later is the head anesthesiologist left because he thought everything was going so fine. And the plan was, my daughter was breached. They're like, yeah, we just grab her arm, we pull her down, fine. It didn't go fine.

Everything was a hot mess. The nurses that were there were new to that hospital, so they didn't know how to monitor the machines.

They were having a hard time keeping my daughter on the hot heart monitor. She was unmonitored for five minutes. They finally got her on the heart rate. She was like, in the forties. My doctors, we have to get this baby now.

So they're trying to list me to move me onto the operating bed. They're kicking my husband out. I'm throwing up everywhere, and she starts cutting. I scream, and you feel that?

And all of a sudden, because you're laying on the bed, he starts talking to. Now I know the resident anesthesiologist, they're talking over me. They gave me the wrong medicine.

The other doctor's yelling, put her under now. And I just see the anesthesia mask coming over my face. And then I woke up. I don't know when. Yeah, it was. Don't remember waking up.

The first pictures of me. They have pictures of me with my kids back in the recovery room. Apparently they put both my twins on me. No memory of it.

The only memory I have of after is telling my husband that I needed the crazy eyebrow nurse away from me. And I laugh now because I'm healing. But it was just such a tragic.

And then we had issues with our daughter, the one that had the complicated birth, and so we had to start pulling our own medical records, which is how we found out so many things. And then how I got to Cali sober mom and somehow involved in cannabis out of all of this is my only way I knew how to cope, was to drink alcohol.

I didn't realize how long I'd been using that as a coping mechanism.

It's not a good recipe for success. And I had to make some choices.

And getting off alcohol, I found some of the medicinal benefits of cannabis using, like having a two and a half milligram drink or a very small gummy at four or five. And I just grown so much from doing that and including therapy and so many different things.

And I started Cali sober mom because I wanted their women to feel empowered to ask questions, to say, hey, this isn't right. To say, hey, alcohol doesn't actually help mommy wine culture. And there's just so much.

And I think we feel not empowered sometimes to say things out loud, but I feel like the more we all start sharing our stories and sharing what happened and sharing the lack of acknowledgement we got, the lack of education, the lack of support.

Because every time I share, somebody reaches out and says, oh, my gosh, I had a similar story, but they all feel like you can't talk about it or that the world doesn't want to hear it.

So I'm just using my voice and my platform to be like, I'll share how ridiculous my life is, all the mistakes I made, so other women can feel more comfortable to start sharing.

Incredible. That's so brave. Because you're sharing this. It's like a sort of twofold thing.

Like you said, you're sharing, like, mistakes you made or ways in which you weren't healthy, but you're now you're also sharing, like, ways that have helped you feel better and that. So you're spreading. This is not. I shouldn't use this phrase, but I'm going to. You're spreading the gospel in that way.

So it requires vulnerability as well as a lot of knowledge, I bet.

Yeah, it does. It does take knowledge. But I will be the first one to tell everybody. There is no way any of us can all be experts on something, right?

And I'm never going to be the expert on anything. But one thing I am really good at is like, I almost feel like a conduit.

Like, I can find that expert over here and I can bring them in where you might not have thought they would come talk to a group of women like a cannabis expert. Why are they talking to a group of moms? Maybe. But I'm really good at finding those pieces that can all come together, and that's what I want to do.

I will never retain knowledge if that makes sense. If I'm not, I can learn anything, but if I'm not using it right at that moment, my brain's like, boom, see ya. Probably not a shocker.

I got diagnosed with ADHD and all this healing, but yeah, that's what it does. Take knowledge, but I don't want anyone to ever think I'm gonna have all the knowledge because I'm not.

But I want to help women feel strong enough to know where to find it. Or gosh forbid, when you Google, I hate the Internet is the worst because who has enough money to pay SEO or payrol? So even Google you can't trust.

And then you find out some of these studies that have come out, like, saying, so much wine is good for you. When you find out that they've been paid for by the alcohol company. For these people to say this, I'm like, I don't even know what to trust anymore.

So sorry, I took that. Totally left I squirreled. Yes, I want to help acquire that knowledge.

And part of being so vulnerable in having to admit these things and maybe make an embarrassment of myself is if I'm not real, then I'm just as bad as whatever you google, right? I could just be a paid off pawn. So I'm trying to be as authentic and as vulnerable as I can to help get that information out there.

Yes. And so that makes sense. You're actually a representative of your sort of client, of who?

Your sort of client would be a woman seeking those answers and seeking that information. And so that's who you're empowering. You're not saying I know everything. Listen to me. You're saying, you guys, this is awful.

Like, we've probably, most of us all had an awful time with this, and these are people and these are resources. And these are questions we should be asking.

Exactly that. That is the. Let's just put the awful out there.

Let's own it so we can find real fic, authentic and not just what is spending the most amount of money to get us to buy into something super powerful for the place I am all over. Gee.

And you should feel totally empowered to be all over the place, right?

Yes. For the very first person we told the sex of our daughter to. And I probably, okay, it was a girl. We said it was a girl.

And I probably made a face just because in full transparency, I always thought I wanted boys. But that's because I was never a super girly girl. And I was afraid.

God, what if she wants to know how to do makeup and do hair and manage her emotions and this and that? I just don't know how to do it. Which is a whole other story. But the first person, we saw my face and he said, it's okay, monica.

Women can do almost anything now. And I think back on that, I'm like, yeah, we can. Why do we keep ourselves small? And I think a lot of.

I realized I was using alcohol to stay small, to stay in my lane, to stay numbed. Because my personality is, once you start seeing it, I want to call it out and I want to point it out, and I want to fix it, and I want to do that.

Yeah, we're just running with it. We're just going for it.

But, yeah.

Having twins would lead to all that.

Yeah. I mean, it totally explodes your lives, I've heard. Oh, my gosh. There's 17 months. So.

Are they your okay?

My only kid.

Your only kids? Yeah. So when they hit, everything's new times two now for you too. Yeah, all at once. But then double whammy.

Yes, exactly. Yeah. I did. I don't have a 18 month old or no nine month old.

She was 18 months when they were born. She's 18 months older than them. So, yeah, we at least have a benchmark to reference it to know, like, when it's an awful time. Oh, this is this stage.

It's gonna be awful until this next stage where y'all might be pulling your hair out going, oh, my God, I have the worst kid ever. This kid's never gonna stop doing this. Blah, blah, blah.

Yeah. If every time, and the changes happen so quickly, like, every time I feel like I have some kind of, like, grasp.

Every time I feel like I have some kind of grasp on what's going on. We've, like, morphed into another state. And the thing I'm dealing with right now is, like, boundary discipline in any kind of way.

Like, making boundaries and rules, especially with my son. I have a son and daughter. Veterinarian, twin. Yeah. And my son came out first. Make it. Yeah.

So I have no idea how to, like, it's hard for me to be like, no, this isn't the rule. Listen to me.

I have no idea how to do that in, like, an effective way, but I have to, otherwise it's going to be chaos, and that won't help him at all.

It's so hard. I will say, I don't even know. Everyone's kid's going to be different. Right. My husband's more of a, like, far no. And I'm like, let's explain.

It drives my husband crazy, but I'm like, we can still set a boundary and explain. But, yeah, it's, they're at that age where they're just hesting what they can do and what they can't do and learning, and it's hard. It really.

And each kid's going to be a little bit different. That's the most crazy and weird part of it. Everyone says that, and I'm always like, yeah, whatever. But it's true. It really is.

And just roll with what you get each day. Tomorrow's another day. Cause that's what I do. I have a new motto, actually, that.

It'S.

We'Re all gonna f our kids in some way. Not intentionally, but there's gonna be something that we did that they're like, it's gonna get to them. So I'm just like, I do my best, and I want.

I'm going with, I'm like, I'm gonna mess him up somehow. What can you do?

Yeah. And that takes a certain amount of being at peace with yourself, like, with your own demons or past trauma or how you were raised or whatever. It.

Because if, if you're still, like, in contention with what happened to me, then it's. I think it's harder to be confident as a parent, if that makes sense.

That's very insightful. I had never thought of it that way, because here I am, like, oh, I gave up alcohol, I did cannabis, I did therapy.

Like, I'm becoming a better mother, thinking I'm more patient, which I am, and I don't get agitated as easily, but I never thought to think that's because I'm so content in me that I know what I'm doing for my kids is the best I can do and not just because I'm surviving, it's because I've learned this and I've healed from this, and I've read about this, and I'm not worried, like, what my mother in law or my aunt or someone comes over and I know they have some judgment on things we do with our kids, but that doesn't bother me anymore. Cause I'm confident in me, like you said, I'm confident in what I'm doing. So thank you. I had never. That was a very insightful take on it.

Yeah. Yeah.

If you're parenting to have your kid behave so you don't feel judgment from others, or you're like, I don't know. I feel like so much of it, I want my kid to behave this way at this time in front of this person. You never wanna be that one they're talking about.

But if you are content with you and your family and your parenting, that anxiety eases away.

I say, yeah, yeah, totally.

Coming up with new parenting techniques today.

And now they're.

So.

It's interesting what you said about women and asking questions and being more like, what about this? Hey, just outspoken. Do you feel like. I guess I have felt like, when I think of cannabis, I don't think of women.

And have you experienced that, like, bias?

Yes and no. I will say the same thing. I think that there was always this, like, counter culture cannabis use image, right.

If you think of a woman using cannabis, there's probably a very certain demeanor, image, social class, all of that comes to mind.

So even though these beverages and edibles are legal, they're still held against you, against, like, medical license and insurance and all those type of things. And that's when I was like, that's really a thing. And I read more.

It can be used against you in court cases with your kids, even though it's federally legal or employment. And I'm like, wow. There are stigmas in the sense of control that are still out there. The amount of control that can be used with this is insane.

Even though it's federally legal, right. And we're projected to have this dictmob, what it looks like. And I live in a very conservative neighborhood. I don't know the right way.

Steve Scalise goes to my church, where he's one of the Republican Congress leaders, one of the Supreme Court justices, Amy Conant Barretta. She graduated from this church that we go to, where my kids go to school. Her dad's still a deacon. They are.

So just to give you an idea of the circumstance that I surround myself in. And here I am starting a business, basically destigmatizing we, right? And so I was really nervous the moms were gonna be. Cause I'm not from here.

My husband was born and raised in this, but I'm not. So I'm already an outsider. And I was like, man, they're really gonna shun me now. And a few people started asking me, and finally I just said it.

I was like, this is what I do. And the first one I said it to was at the pre k three playdate. She's holding her Harvard coffee mug, and I'm just like, I'm normalizing weed.

And she leans in, she goes, I take a gummy before I take my kids to the park.

And every mom that has had the conversation with me or now moms will come up and ask me very slyly, so this neat neighborhood that you think would be the most judgmental, all these women are doing it, just nobody wants to talk about it out loud. So I'm like, where is the actual stigma?

Because here I thought people were going to stigmatize me because they think I'm a bad mother or I'm just out smoking joints all day, and I'm like, oh, my gosh, no. People are doing this. There's just this unsaid, entrenched system that doesn't let us talk about it out loud.

And that's really what I'm like, oh, this is what we need to keep pushing. It's not even so much this stigma now that I want to break.

I'm wondering if this stigma was something that got preached to us to avoid us from talking about it. So that's what I'm trying to figure out right now.

So, yes, a little bit of stigma, but it's more from the older generation that grew up during the reefer madness phase than it is from mainly anybody else.

Will you explain? Just in case anyone doesn't know what the reefer madness reference is, the reefer madness.

This was a common drug for medicinal value. And then in, like, Texas, when the mexican immigrants started coming over, they brought flour and paper and would smoke it. And that was a way for.

I hate to say the word, but racist, you can say no word. It was founded in racism, the kind of negative connotation around it.

They went town to town. This is before Internet and before that.

And preachers are some of our best sales people, and they sold the thing that cannabis was going to make our young kid go Madden and go to jazz clubs, and our white women would sleep with black men. That's what was gonna happen if our kids used cannabis, and that's what was sold to that age group and how it became so much of counterculture.

So when you really look back through the history, it's really fad to see how all these negative. And there's more. Those are just the few to get you back to the reefer madness.

I use the word indoctrinated, and my grandfather lost his mind that I called him indoctrinated, and I did not mean it in a mean way. But you just don't know what you don't know.

Oh, yeah.

They were exposed to, and that's what they were taught. They know any different. But I think we're. Some generations are just so locked into that.

But the younger ones from, like, Gen X, millennials, Gen Z, I think we're all like, yeah, we know that bullsh. There's still this stigma or there's still power over our jobs or power over our kids.

And that's really where I think that there's still just some work to be done.

Yeah, it almost makes me think of. It makes me think of, I don't know, like, homosexuality in, like, the eighties, nineties. I don't know the correct exact timeframe I'm thinking about.

But when it was like, if they found out you were gay at work.

That that was don't ask, don't tell. The military control it. They couldn't ban it, or they wouldn't have enough people.

So they went, don't, don't tell. Shoot. The. That was literally saying just going south.

Yeah. Right now, a don't ask, don't tell situation. They just, let's all be quiet about it. Like, we're gonna do it, but we're gonna be quiet about it.

And the only way we're gonna drug test is if you get hurt on the job, and then we can ban paying you because now you've broken our insurance policies. It's.

So meanwhile, all the lobbying is happening behind the scenes right now to legalize and deschedule or reschedule the amount of money that's happening behind the scenes now. Why we're all focused on the election. This is what all the meetings are about.

You're going to see a ton of change in hemp and cannabis policy coming out, and it's to keep the folks that have a lot of money and have a lot of power over the entrenched system are going to start buying out these companies, but they're getting all their ducks in a row first. But how can we, if we're still afraid to even say we use it, how can we go fight for it?

How can we go fight for another industry being taken over by consumerism, hurting your health for profit?

So it seems so weird, like, when I say I go deep on things, like, I really go deep on it, and that's like, ultimately what I want to get to and focus on and do before it's all taken over. But we have to start with the baby step of even having people feel comfortable to say I take a gummy before I take my kid to the park.

If we can't say that, there's no way anyone's going to be able to go to Congress and battle for this, but it really should be a huge political topic right now.

Yes and yes.

Sorry I pulled out this.

Wait, do you know how? Are you kidding? This is what I live for. This is what I live for is going deep.

It is a huge topic, are a huge issue, and I have heard about it, but I'm just now putting it together. I've definitely heard of it being a huge area for people of color, for making businesses and creating jobs, and just. That's great.

That's a thing to be celebrated. And, yeah, that would certainly be destroyed if corporations took over.

They are seeing that in some states, there's so many social equity licenses that are awarded, but then it's a financially impossible to operate with a social equity license. So they take on partners, and then the partners eventually take it out or buy them out, or they win the license and then they sell them.

Like, these licenses that you can win are worth so much money, and it's a whole we could do a whole, like, deep dive for 3 hours on the corruption that's happening in this industry right now. It's really sad. Really sadhesthe. I know.

This is the knowledge, though.

This.

The knowledge that is good, that we need. That we all need.

Yeah. And then it's finding a way to get it out there.

I always thought I was so naive that if someone had something intelligent that would change the world or make a huge impact as soon as they said it, we would listen. I just thought people weren't talking. Maybe. I don't know. It is so hard to be heard. It's so hard to be heard.

We're being trained to have attention spans like this to get your message out there. And we're so taught in consumerism that we buy into things that we physically, like we. That we buy into.

So if you're not selling something, people don't stay attached to it. They don't feel like if they'd given. I don't know. It's just really difficult to be heard, and it's just.

It's made it really interesting, just more interesting.

This is so interesting. Like, in so many ways. In so many ways. Our conversation was not surprising, but in our first episode, I spoke with Bianca Sprague.

She owned a Doula training company, and she. We talked so much about being heard and, like, about all of this data and all this knowledge that she had about, like, equity within the home and.

But somehow we're not talking about it or we're not able to band together quite completely because I don't.

It's so true, though, because we've all been disenfranchised and hurt in different ways. Right?

Like, mine just happened to be that this was the impetus that finally made me start peeling the onion back of all, what was I drinking for before this incident? So then I did uncover the ADHD, and now that I look back, I'm like, oh, my God, every sign was there. Right? But that's a whole nother story.

But so, like, for me, I'm like, this needs to be heard. This needs to be. And so with her, she might have had an experience. So we're all, you know, in these, like, areas that we really want to see help for.

How do you get hurt? Niche down. Talk to the algorithm. You suck. And be little echo chambers, which you're doing so good in. Anyone that's also passionate about that?

So we get these, like, great echo chambers everywhere, but we're not connect y.

And that, again, is the entrenched systems that have been passed down to us is we don't feel comfortable necessarily talking our small family units yet for fear of judgment or in our communities. But then we find our own communities online, which builds us into echo chambers. So how do we start connecting those echo chambers?

How do we realize that we're all part of this small, not this small. We're all part of the big Ben diagram, where, when you look at it, she's fighting for this part of humans. I'm fighting for this part of humans.

There's all the work being done behind the processed foods. Right. There's so many strong leaders in this, but we're all fighting different fights, and that's like playing chess versus checkers.

Yeah.

In my theory right now, I say trillions of dollars are about to be passed hands.

So let's all join behind the hemp and cannabis fight, get that cleared up before all this money changes hands, and then systematically move through the problems. But how do you start combining everybody? You have to be heard.

And if you leave your algorithm, if you leave your niche, if you leave your echo chamber, they don't know how to categorize you anymore, and your views stop. And it's just. It's so hard to be heard, and it's designed that way.

First, we were designed with guilt in our own communities, and then we finally get the encouragement to go speak about it vocally online, which is the most public place of all. And they have us in little categories, and there's so much out there to fight for. Where do you start?

This is why I, like, I fell in love with the Internet. I don't know, whenever there was not quite ten years ago, but at some point, like, when I felt like it was still. I still love the Internet. Come on.

Yeah, absolutely.

It's like everything. It's capable of everything. It's just.

Which is good and bad.

Cs. Exactly.

I remember. So I'm early Internet. I'm 38, for reference.

So I am like, I have had my facebook for almost 20 years. It will be 20 years this fall. I get chills because I didn't realize at the time what an early adapter.

But anyway, I come home from college, I'm from Iowa, I went to Florida State, I come home, and I'm constantly on our computer showing my. I went, dad, this is Facebook. I'm talking to this person. I'm friends with this person.

My dad for ten years seriously thought I was sitting in my dorm room talking to fake Internet fresh. It's like, early Internet. I am. So I'm seeing, like, the connection, the bad, the good. It's everything.

So my dad later bought stock in the original, like, IPO. I was laughing so hard. I was like, yeah, yeah. Talking Internet street.

Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

But, yeah, there's so much that can be done. How do we get there? That's the problem, is I'm so proud of all the women that are standing up now and speaking out.

I think there's a lot of strong women that laid that foundation for us, and I think we're getting the ability, and a lot of us are now being. So it's just a matter of. Okay, now, how do we band together? We've learned that we can be this vocal.

Our next step is how do we show our daughters how we band together and fight things collectively instead of individually. I think that'll be the next step for us to get some things accomplished.

That sounds amazing to me.

I think you're right, because I just read and I don't, we've gone over time, but I just read yesterday that Michelle Obama said that she went through IVF or some fertility treatments to have her daughters. And it was the first time I ever.

Yeah. I never knew that until right this moment.

Yeah.

And so those are huge things because her saying that gives, like, all of us permission in a way, and takes some of the, like, embarrassment or shame or whatever, that shouldn't be there away. But we do have to take action upon that, because isn't it crazy that.

We'Re still talking about having to have shame for infertility? Because my babies are all for infertility. Babies. That's a whole nother day in story.

We're still talking about, how do we openly say that and talk about it when the real discussion should be like, why are we all infertile now? Why is now having a baby so profitable for institutions? Let's go back in the layers.

It just sad to me that we still feel guilty saying these things out loud, that we can't even get to the real discussions.

Merhaddel wow. Because if we're not saying it, that.

It'S not a problem.

Yeah. We're help. We're helping the bad guys.

Yeah. Our foods, environment, the plastics, the things we're exposed to.

Lotion.

And I don't mean I'll say things sometimes when I've been. Someone close to my family called me a communist when I said all this. They're like, oh, you just go enjoy your comrade life.

And I'm like, and that's the problem, is you get attacked. Right? And I didn't say it was anti capitalism, but if we're actively harming humanity for profit, for who?

That should be the discussion more than me having to say out loud that I have fertility babies. Like, why do I need to make. That's just the whole thing. It's, let's get to the entrenched systems and processes that are making this happen.

Not still trying to break down the barriers to even talk about it.

Let's take the focus maybe off of us a little bit. Yeah.

We're all just trying to survive. That's all we're doing. We didn't do anything wrong. We were just trying to survive in the system we were given.

We don't have a master plan. Thank you so much for telling your story and for everything you do. I think that we should keep talking in the eyes. I love the way. Yeah.

Because this is obviously something very current and happening in real time.

Yeah. I appreciate you having me. Any opportunity I get to share and really bring up the bigger points is so appreciated. So thank you for letting.

I didn't mean for it to go there, but I love that where conversation went because I think these are the things that will help gain more traction and people feeling comfortable discussing things.

Absolutely. Thank you. Yes. Talk soon. Bye.