Jamie: [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present ‘Relatively Speaking, Between Friends’. I’m Jamie Lewin. 

Shannon: [00:00:07] And I’m Shannon Czincila. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers and shakers that make a positive change in our communities, and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Jamie: Relatively speaking… 

Both: What kind of friend are you?

Jamie: [00:00:29] Welcome to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. Happy 2021. I hope that everyone had a nice holiday and are all refreshed and ready for this new year.

Shannon, it is our first podcast. Can you believe it? Can you believe we have a podcast?

Shannon: [00:00:42] No, I cannot believe that, you know, even with how crazy last year was that we pulled this together and we have a great year ahead of us, but I’m super excited about it.

I’m glad we were finally able to get this up and moving this along with our Friends website and Facebook page. So we weren’t busy even during the slow time of 2020. So, I guess we should probably start off with introducing ourselves. So I’ll go first. So I’m Shannon Czincila. I’m entering my second year as the President of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

I’ve been involved with The Friends for probably seven years now. And prior to this role, I was the Vice-president of The Friends of Einstein Montgomery. Some of you might be thinking, what is Einstein? So Einstein is a healthcare network that provides high quality health care to the greater Philadelphia area, as well as the surrounding region for over 150 years now, we celebrated our hundred and 50th year back in 2016.

And now we provide services to the surrounding area via outpatient centers and primary care physicians and additional hospitals that we’ve built out in the suburbs. So that’s just a little bit about what Einstein is and then what we do. And Jamie, can you tell us a little bit about what made you want to join The Friends?

Jamie: [00:02:00] I’m really excited. My role now is the VP of Next Gen, which is a new role that was created to get the next generations involved in events and volunteerism. I think a lot of people want to do something, but they don’t know what to do or how to get involved. I have a lot of friends who have told me that they want to get involved in specific areas and The Friends truly does have a group for everyone. It made me really excited to get involved and bring more people into the group. I also got involved because my mom was involved for many years. She was the VP of the Breast Cancer Advocacy Group. And before that she was the Executive VP of The Friends. I really wanted to honor her memory and continue in her footsteps. I’d go to events with her when I could and would always do the breast cancer walk on Mother’s Day together.

I lived in New York at the time. But when I moved to Philadelphia a couple of years ago, I was really excited to be able to be more hands-on myself. My dad has also actually been involved with The Friends and started a group called Men’s Health, which he is the VP of.

And I know he would love to get more people involved in that initiative. In my opinion, men love to ignore problems and not go to the doctor. So it’s really important we make sure all of the men in our lives are taking care of themselves. Speaking of men, Shannon. I know your husband and family are really involved with The Friends, too. 

Yeah, absolutely. My husband has been with Einstein for over 21 years, and he is a physician out at the Montgomery Hospital and my children have also been very involved. They volunteer at the walk through the park. They have volunteered with giving plants to patients, too. We’ll talk a little more about that later.

They participate in a Girl Scout event, at the Montgomery hospital. And my mom actually jumped in this year when I took over as President of The Friends. My mom decided that she would Co–VP T Friends of the Montgomery campus– that portion of The Friends itself. And so it’s truly been a family affair.

My father has been cared for, and my family’s all been cared for at Einstein hospital. We truly are a part of the Einstein family. 

Jamie: I was actually born at Einstein Philadelphia. 

Shannon: [00:04:15] Oh really? 

Jamie: [00:04:16] Yeah, and my brother too.

Shannon: [00:04:18] You know, another reason why I joined The Friends was the ability to give back to the community.

I happen to live right in the community of the Montgomery hospital, where my husband works. I now have three teenagers who for the past seven years have been along for this wonderful ride. And, you know, I just felt it’s so important to teach them the value of community and to give back.

So I’m just very grateful that we have the opportunity to have an organization like The Friends and to have such a great healthcare network in our backyard. And I just find it just so important to be part of that, to make sure that our children are well taken care of for the future and that our kids can actually be part of that care for the community and for the hospital itself.

So one of the wonderful things about Einstein is their actual mission and their vision and their goals. I’ll read it off the website, it’s With humanity, humility, and honor to heal by providing exceptionally intelligent and responsive health care and education for as many as we can reach. So just a wonderful mission statement. That’s something that got my heart from the very beginning. 

Jamie: [00:05:27] To tag on to your point earlier, too. I think it’s so important to teach our children about community and taking care of each other. My children are three and five and I already tried to teach them the importance of giving back and taking care of not only our own family, but everyone in the community. And hopefully if they ever need that, they’ll get that back as well. We support a program called Fresh For All where we give out fresh fruits and vegetables to the community and people who need it. 

And again, like I said before, I just think this year it was really abundantly clear that we all need to take care of each other just from wearing masks and staying safe, not only for yourself, but for each other. And lending a hand to your neighbor, whether it’s helping them shop or just going out of your way for somebody else. So I think The Friends did an exceptional job of that this year.

Shannon: [00:06:16] Jamie, I think you will do an exceptional job of teaching your kids that because I’m obviously your parents did the same since you are now part of The Friends. So I’m sure you’ll do an amazing job of that. 

Jamie: [00:06:28] Thanks Shannon. I hope so!

Shannon: [00:06:30] So Jamie, I know we’ve had our first year in our new roles together and I know it hasn’t been exactly the way we probably thought it was going to go.

So how do you think the first year went in your new role? 

Jamie: I mean, it was interesting because it’s obviously not how I thought it was going to be the first year. I thought we were going to do a lot of events in person and, and meet a lot of new members, but for a year, as crazy as 2020 was, we actually did a lot after such a hard year.

The Friends really wanted to support and focus on the wellness of employees. We donated “Einstein Strong” masks as a gift for every Einstein employee, members donated to staff relief funds and provided food. We had artists and special guests come to celebrate, perform, and just lift employee spirits during the virtual Harvest Ball Gala.

We launched our first Basket Raffle for Einstein Philadelphia. We combined forces with the Harvest Ball because the honorees and beneficiaries were also employees. And the employees actually voted for the projects that were funded. And we installed Mamava breastfeeding pods across our Network, as well as water filtration stations, and robotic food stations with healthful food options.

We had our first virtual 5k where you could walk, run or crawl if you wanted to, because it’s virtual anyway, but that helped to raise money for the care of cancer patients. 

So really we did a lot! Shannon, I know you had more that you’re really looking forward to doing this year, too? 

Shannon: [00:07:56] Yeah. So just before I go to some things we didn’t get into, I just to talk a little more about a couple of things that you mentioned, the Harvest Ball.

So for those who don’t know, the Harvest Ball is one of the main fundraising events that The Friends help sponsor. It’s usually a big gala down in Philadelphia with a couple of hundred people. At The Bellevue and it’s just an amazing night where we raise funds for usually a Network-wide project.

And this year we decided to focus completely on our Einstein heroes, all the Health Care Heroes that were really on the front lines this year. It was an amazing event that we did virtually, and I still think it had as much impact as it would have if we were in person.

And then you talked a little bit about the masks that we donated from The Friends– it was over 7,000 masks that we actually were able to give to all of our employees throughout the network which I thought that was an amazing effort by the group. 

And we also, you know, talked about the food services. With my husband being on the front lines every single day, going into the emergency room and seeing the patients, you know, firsthand it, it was really rough. And what I can say is not only that our group and our members of The Friends really lean in and help support the employees, but the communities around Einstein were just fantastic.

I mean, the amount of food, even, you know, people were reaching out, wanting to know, can I send it during the week? Should I send it on a night shift? And it just really was an amazing community support behind both Einstein and The Friends.

So just some amazing things from this year. And then you asked me about the events that we didn’t get to do, just because they just did not lend themselves to being safe in person and really kind of lost the effect during, you know, trying to do it virtually.

And, and one that really comes to mind that I’m excited about, and I talked about earlier, is the Girl Scout event that we do at Montgomery’s hospital. That is where we bring in both Brownies and Girl Scouts to the hospital and they spend a half a day going through different stations, whether it be a tour of the emergency department, and first aid type, hands-on–how to take care of first aid situations.

But during that time, they get to earn their first aid badge, which is fantastic. They also get to spend a little bit of time in a hospital in the emergency room, which sometimes can be a little scary to kids, especially of those ages. So it’s just a really nice event, you know, to bring our community into the hospital, see what services we have and also educate our young women, who may just want to go into healthcare someday.

And then the other one that I really love it’s really a wonderful event is when we go deliver flowers to the patients in the hospital. So twice a year, usually in the spring and in the fall, The Friends go to each campus and we actually take a flower or a plant to every single patient just to brighten their day– just to say hello from The Friends, that were thinking about you and we care about you. 

So, yeah, those are events that I’m really hoping that, at some point this year, we can do those again and be back in the hospital and, you know, brighten the lives of the patients that are there. 

I know we talked a little bit about The Friends, Jamie, and I talked a little bit about Einstein, so maybe you can tell us a little bit more about who The Friends are and a little bit of a background of what we are about?

Jamie: [00:11:36] Sure. I am literally going to read something that has sort of a mission statement. And we have this as the blurb for our podcast as well, but The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network are not your average Auxiliary. They’re all-inclusive grassroots fundraising, volunteers, and an integral source for social connection and volunteerism.

The Friends enhance health and wellness in the community served by Einstein, through events, advocacy, and fundraising. And I just wanted to read that because I think it encompasses really everything that we do really, we’re the people that connect the hospital with the community. And I think this year that was more important than ever. 

I said before that there really is a group for everyone, um, to get involved with. And Shannon, since you’re the President, I know that you can talk to each group way better than I can so I’m going to let you talk about each group. 

Shannon: [00:12:22] All right. I will try to do each one of them justice, but if you want to know a bit more about them, you can always go to Einstein’s website and find out a little bit more about each group.

So I’ll start off with our, our three main campus, of our main campuses. We have Montgomery, which is out in the suburbs, just outside of Blue Bell and then Philadelphia, which is down in Philadelphia itself. And both of those have a core group of The Friends and they’re focused on enhancing care in the community through programs and services.

We also have a branch of The Friends, at MossRehab, which, works on advancing initiatives and physical medicine and rehabilitation. We also have Behavioral Health, which, works on eliminating the stigma of mental illness by strengthening awareness, we in promoting and understanding of behavioral health. 

And then Jamie, you mentioned your dad’s very much involved in The Men’s Health which is a relatively new group, but we, like you said, work on supporting men’s health in education and promoting, being proactive in their healthcare. You also talked about our Breast Cancer Advocacy Group, also known as BCAG, and that group really focuses on empowering and educating women, men, and their families in the fight against breast cancer.

We have a special projects group, which, you know, one of the items that they worked on over last year and the year before was helping the community. There’s a special project called Fresh For All where they distributed over 175,000 pounds of free food to over 9,800 families. And then Jamie, there’s your group, which is all about, community service, networking opportunities, and really bringing in the next generation of The Friends itself.

And finally, our newest group would be the Veterans Group. And obviously by just its name itself, it’s all about supporting the veterans initiatives and the communities that are served by Einstein. So those are our nine groups. And like you mentioned, there’s definitely a group for everyone. We love to have people in multiple groups.

Jamie: [00:14:24] That’s a lot of groups!  

Shannon: [00:14:25] Yes Jamie, that is a lot of groups. And now that we’re done that wonderful list of groups and we got the public service announcement out of the way. I hope everybody’s interested now in at least one of those groups, but why don’t we go back to the podcast itself… Jamie, what can we expect from some future podcasts?

Jamie: [00:14:41] I am so excited that we actually got our podcast off the ground this year. I know we have so many topics we want to cover this year. In our next episode, we’re going to talk to Dixieanne James, who is the President and COO of Einstein Philadelphia. We’ll talk to Beth Duffy, who is the President and COO of Einstein Montgomery. We’ll talk to Tom Smith, who’s the President and CEO of MossRehab.

We’ll speak to doctors and cover topics on everything from Coronavirus updates to maternal health and postpartum depression. We’ll talk to mental health experts on a variety of topics like PTSD and suicide prevention. 

And we’ll hear from survivors of cancer, strokes, transplants. We’d love to talk about nutrition and wellness. I personally hope we can do a guided meditation session for everyone and a session on how to adjust your mindset for a gratefulness and achieving your goals. Are there any topics that you’re really looking forward to Shannon? 

Shannon: [00:15:32] They all sound great to me! I love anything focused on improving, improving yourself, improving the lives of our employees, of our communities.

So, all of those topics sound fantastic. I’m also interested to learn a little bit more about Dixie and Beth has some of our female leaders across the network. So that should be exciting. 

Well, one of the other things I’m really looking forward to with this podcast is kind of focusing on each one of those, those nine groups, um, maybe getting some of the vice presidents on the podcasts themselves, just to talk about some of the fun things they’re doing and share that with everybody.

Jamie: [00:16:13] So Shannon, it is the first week of the new year. Do you have any New Year’s Resolutions? Is it the same as every year? Or do you have different ones this year?  

Shannon: [00:16:21] I’ll try and keep some of this same, um, 2020 was such a different year. I feel like I really should make a different resolution. And you know, one thing that 2020 taught me was to be thankful for all the small things in my life, every single day. You know, Jamie, you touched on this earlier about being mindful and grateful, you know, so I’m hopeful that when we get back to our normal hectic lives, that I can remain mindful and grateful for all the little things that are in my life that I sometimes take for granted.

How about you, Jamie? Did you make any new ones this year? 

Jamie: [00:16:55] Truly this year is to make sure that I’m being present, making decisions with intention. And staying truly grateful, like you said, for all the wonderful things I have in my life. And honestly, after this year, I now know that it’s okay to slow down a little bit, that the pace I was keeping for so long was probably not the healthiest physically or mentally. So, 2020 I think has taught us that we can do a lot of things differently.

I mean, not everything in the year was so bad. I mean, just learning how to do things in a different way and slowing down and focusing on, you know, family and being healthy and taking care of yourself. Hopefully we’ll get a vaccine soon and we’ll keep some of the positive teachings from this year with us, as we start to get back to our new normal routine, whatever that may be. 

Shannon: [00:17:42] I think those are great. I think, I think what’s interesting is that you and I didn’t talk about our new year’s resolutions until just now. And I find it amazing that they are so aligned with what we hope to accomplish with this podcast this year. So I think we’re off to a great start, Jamie.

Jamie: [00:17:58] I think so! I look forward to doing more of these with you.

Shannon: [00:18:01] Me too. 

Jamie: [00:18:03] Well, that’s a wrap! 

Shannon: [00:18:06] Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky!

Jamie: [00:18:13] If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your family and friends, write us a review, and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Shannon: Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincila 

Jamie: And me, Jamie Lewin  

Shannon: And is produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

Jamie: [00:18:31] Want to get the 411 on upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us at advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook Group! It’s linked to our website.

Shannon: [00:18:41] We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are 9 different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits what kind of Friend you are… 

Jamie: [00:18:52] …and what kind of friend you want to be.

Jamie Lewin: [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends, I’m Jamie Lewin 

Shannon Czincila: [00:00:08] and I’m Shannon Czincila. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you?

So welcome to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. Today, Jamie and I are excited to have a special guest Dixie James. She is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Einstein Medical Center Philadelphia. Welcome Dixie. So to get started, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and your background? 

Dixie James: [00:00:46] Thank you. First, I’d like to just say thank you for having me. I’m excited to be with you guys here today. My background, I actually originally grew up in Boston and then moved to Philadelphia, then Einstein for the last 13 years, officially in January. And this is my fifth role in Einstein. I sort of been on the physician company side on operations, I’ve done strategy work.

And then I did hospital operations work. I’ve sort of seen the organization at different places and at different times over the last 13 years, and it’s just been really great here at Einstein. Certainly, when I got here, I didn’t think it’d be 13 years. It goes quick, but it’s been very rewarding. When I’m not here at Einstein, I do a fair bit of volunteering in the community at other nonprofit organizations.

I sit on the Board of Philabundance. I also sit on the board at the American Heart Association and Philadelphia Foundation. Those were all organizations that also are invested in the communities we serve and so for me, it’s really about aligning our mission with organizations that want to do what we aim to do here every day at Einstein.

When I’m not at work or volunteering. I love travel. I love to travel. There’s a big, beautiful world out there. So whenever possible, I’m trying to explore it and see as much of it as possible. Eat the food that I can find. I’m a big foodie. I love exploring different cultures, their customs and certainly their dishes. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:02:15] I love that. We also love to travel, love, food, big foodies, getting out of our comfort zone, and experiencing other cultures. We love that you are a female leader and love that you are one of the first female leaders in this role at Einstein. What do you think is the most significant barrier to female leadership and what are some strategies and programs you think are needed to help women advance in leadership roles?

Dixie James: [00:02:42] Okay, good question. I mean, I think, I think there are a lot of barriers. Quite honestly, but some of the significant ones really start with just having the examples, and knowing that the role is attainable because you know, quite honestly, people see what they can do and they see themselves in the roles, and you have to see yourself there before you can be it.

And I say to people you gotta win and think it in your head before you actually achieve it. And if it’s no, if it’s no in your head, it’s likely to be no on reality. So, I think having the examples and seeing women in those roles and which is why I take the job and the responsibility associated with it so seriously. I don’t take that lightly because I know that there are others that need my example. 

I think that that’s important. I think the certain programs relate to mentoring. Mentorship and certainly sponsorship are important, that that will provide coaching and growth and development opportunities for women. There are many places that have structural programs of that sort, that are intentional about making sure that they’re identifying women that are talented or any minority to do quite honestly, that are talented, certainly women. This is the focus of your question. And then how do you develop them to make sure that they have room to share their voice and to add value and to see themselves advancing into these roles. 

Shannon Czincila: [00:04:04] So Dixie, you, you said something there about mentorship and sponsorship. And I don’t know if a lot of people know the difference between, you know, being a mentor and being somebody’s sponsor. So can you talk a little bit more about those, those two terms?

Dixie James: [00:04:18] Yeah, sure. I will say that mentors are the people that you sort of go to that talk to you about you. You know, they help develop you– that you can talk to them about what you want to do next and get advice. Sponsors are the people that I think talk about you when you’re not around. Those are the people that are talking about you to other people. And they’re also people that are in a position to create opportunities for you, right? And to bring you along. Your mentor can help develop you, but your sponsor can really create a path for you and so I think both roles are important. 

I have a number of mentors that aren’t even in health care, so they wouldn’t necessarily be creating an opportunity or a role for me. But, what they give me from a perspective of growth and insight is very valuable. So I think that they’re distinct, but they’re very two equally important roles. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:05:10] I think it’s such a great distinction, especially for younger women that mentors are everywhere in your everyday life, it doesn’t have to be in your specific industry. It could be a parent, a sibling and aunts and uncle, a friend. I mean, anyone truly that you can speak to who can help guide you on your path. 

Dixie James: [00:05:27] Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jamie Lewin: [00:05:29] So what has it been like to be the president and COO of Einstein Medical Center, Philadelphia? 

Dixie James: [00:05:35] Well, it’s been an interesting year for everyone, 2020, and certainly for me, I think it’s, it’s been a little bit of baptism by fire, you know, coming into the role. And sort of almost immediately being handed a pandemic. And it’s interesting, you discover very quickly that you didn’t even think you did know, that when you reach back for it, you’re like, I didn’t know I could do this, but we’re here now and we’re going to figure this out.

And I think for me, where the true success story lies in the team of people and employees that I got to take this ride with. It’s just incredible, I’ve always had a love for the passion for the people that are at Einstein and tell people all the time Einstein is not an easy place to work. We serve a very challenged market. 

I probably worked harder here than I’ve worked at anywhere in my career, but it’s also more rewarding than anywhere I’ve ever been in my career. It takes a certain type of someone to be here and stay here and thrive here. And I think that showed up in spades during the pandemic.

The level of commitment, self-sacrifice, just support for one another, the innovative thinking about how we get things done and how we put one foot in front of the other and figure out something that no one ever saw before. I just have been humbled and so impressed by the teams across the network. Everyone in their own way, finding a way to contribute and help, help us get through this and to put the focus really on, you know, how do we deliver for our patients? 

We’re always focused, we have a community to serve that needs us. How do we do that? How do we keep each other safe? How do we support each other, both physically, making sure that, you know, there was no one sick, and then emotionally, because, you know, it was months of very stressful and taxing.

And we’re back in it quite honestly right now, but, you know, it was an experience that truly brought out the best, I think, in the people that work here at Einstein and, I couldn’t be more proud to be in this role, given what was, I had the opportunity to witness and to, to work alongside them. 

Shannon Czincila: [00:07:57] Well, I can tell you, The Friends are equally as grateful and appreciative to all of our Einstein health care heroes, and you just see amazing work that the teams have done, you know, during these very trying times. So one thing Dixie that I’d like to know, you came into this role right as the global pandemic was hitting, but I know you just talked a lot about, having looked out for the staff and the staff was really wonderful just throughout the entire network itself.

But, you know, for you personally, what was it like for you to have to lead in such a difficult, critical time? Not only for our communities, but our country and our world. Like what, what maybe leadership style changes did you have to make or adapt in order to lead that wonderful group of people through a very difficult time?

Dixie James: [00:08:45] Yeah, it’s a great question. When I started to touch on a little bit, I think my leadership style is one of servant leadership. I’ve always been the person that is less concerned with the accolades and more concerned with the outcome. And so I want to roll up my sleeves and I need to know what’s happening and, how can I help us get to where we need to go?

And that it doesn’t matter where that happens or what level that happens. And I think coming into this, there was a steep learning curve, but sure. But I think that that was the case for people who had been doing a role like mine for 30 years and that they had never experienced a pandemic. 

And what it taught me about myself is that when, when you’re faced with situations like that, you do things that are in you that you, that you don’t know that you’ve already developed those muscles or those skills and how you, how you can lean on people and how you, you can delegate where needed or take on more where we’re needed.

It’s sort of like throwing someone in the deep end, and it was time to swim. And like, I don’t think I had enough swimming lessons, but you figure out that, I guess I did. And so it was one of those, those times where, you just, you really had to lean on. Particularly as a female, I think leaning on the skills of your natural nurturing your, your natural ability to sort of problem solve.

And I think those are the things that, as I felt, we were dealing with things we’d never solved before that I tapped into the most. It was challenging, but I also felt like it resulted in me moving through a learning curve much quicker, and I was appreciative that. I know it’s not always about the team, but for me it was because I just felt like without the right people in place,  you can’t, you can’t get this done by yourself, no matter how good you are. 

So, you know, for me, it was recognizing, appreciating the team, and then being confident in the skills that you have, like I said, that you maybe didn’t know you had really developed. And trusting your instinct and your gut and letting your, your North star for me, which has always been,   You know, what am I gonna do? Am I doing the right thing? Is this always in the best interest of the patient? Am I being a servant leader? Am I listening?  

Those are the things you lean back on, which, which never has steered me wrong. So I think I leaned into the things that I know and then found some things that I didn’t think I had and I think that’s what got me through.

Jamie Lewin: [00:11:15] During this year of facing all of these challenges,   especially with COVID, were there any programs that Einstein implemented specifically to address these challenges? I know, you know, throughout the year, there’s Fresh For All, which helps,   people who are facing food insecurity and that could not have been at a more all time high this year. was there anything else that Einstein did specifically?

Dixie James: [00:11:37] Well, it’s interesting you mentioned the Fresh For All, because during the pandemic, we were unable to obviously do a free farmer’s market where people lined up and,   you know, sort of waited in line for food. And what we did instead was we augmented that program.

We partnered with  a local nonprofit. First we obviously partnered with Philabundance to get the food, and then we partnered with another local nonprofit to do at home delivery so that we were able to discharge our patients with free food boxes. And a lot of that is, again, thinking about the need is still there. And how do we put a fresh set of eyes on, on meeting, continuing to meet that need and just doing it differently.  

So,   we’ve done a number of things like that. We’ve put in place renewal rooms. We wanted to make sure that our employees had places that they could go and take a break.

We did a great deal around making partnerships with LaSalle, for example, because we knew that there are many employees that felt nervous about putting their families at risk and didn’t want to go home at the height of the pandemic so we needed a place that they can go and feel like they could get the rest they needed and not be worried about their families.

And so those were all things that we had never done before. And we were just,   just thinking about the need and how do we augment, and making sure that we’re doing something different. 

Shannon Czincila: [00:13:03] Speaking of service, so The Friends are always very service oriented and looking to help the community and Martin Luther King day was earlier this week. Can you share how Einstein celebrates and honors the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. And maybe how The Friends could help support your efforts at, at Einstein?  

Dixie James: [00:13:23] Sure. I mean, every year we do an annual MLK day celebration and we have food and we have performances and guest speakers, and this year we’re taking that virtual, but we think it’s going to be a really great celebration, nonetheless.

We also in recent years taken on a service project and what that is, is been our attempt to sort of embody this spirit of a service that is the hallmark of MLK day. And we come together to do something impactful for the community. We’ve done food drives and we’ve done clothing and toiletry drives and deliver that to local shelters. 

So that’s been a big part of what we been shifting towards make sure that we’re, we’re, there’s an action to follow the celebration that we think impacts the community. And to answer your question, I think where the Friends can be very helpful is a little bit in the planning and how we look at the service day. I’m sure that,   together we can expand the scope,   and the scale, and certainly the impact of our service projects. And there’s a big community. There’s a lot of need out there. And so we could put our heads together about how we do more and do better.   I think I know that we’ve welcomed the opportunity to do that together.

Jamie Lewin: [00:14:47] Well, we would love to do that with you as well. Before we go into any wrap-ups, is there anything specific you want to talk about, about your role, about anything that’s coming up at Einstein?  

Dixie James: [00:14:58] Specifics about my role, probably not. I mean, we covered that a little bit, but,   you know, I think in general, I, I probably will just talk about Einstein and how special a place Einstein is, and for what we do. You know, the, community that we serve,   about 50% of that community sits below the federal poverty line, and that’s significant. 

And the programs that we deliver is really focused on as a safety–net hospital, but delivering equitable care to our community. Just because our community sits below the poverty line doesn’t mean that their care should, and we’re proud of and strive to ensure that we have outcomes that are amongst the best that we do in many areas that are better the best in the city state and in some cases across the country.

And whether that’s our transplant survival rates or whether that is our maternal mortality rates, which [00:16:00] particularly for African-Americans is a huge disparity. That’s something that doesn’t happen without an intentional focus by the people that are here that know that, that it’s important and want to strive for that.

So,   it’s a special place, and I’m so proud of who we are and what we do.   And I think moving ahead, I think one of the things that, post pandemic we want to focus on for sure is as going more out, going out more into the community, you know, I always like to say we, we don’t want to just be in the community. We want to be of the community.  

And to continue to be an, even more of a trusted resource and care provider, not just for the acute care needs when they land in our ed, but partnering again with, uh, local organizations,   to make sure that we’re our presence is felt outside of the walls of our campus.

I think that   that creates an opportunity for community engagement as well as employee engagement. I think they actually go hand in hand. I think many of our employees based on how I just described the type of person that ends up at Einstein, want to give back in other ways. And I think if we create the opportunities to bridge those two needs, and whether it’s, you know, in the community volunteering,   for screenings and lectures and education, and what type of programs can be developed that,   help bring people onto the campus, not just when they’re sick, but when they need to be educated, or a community event.

 I think that there is a huge opportunity there that we’re excited about. Like I said, that I think is going to create a lot of community engagement and a lot of employee engagement. So, that that’s something on the horizon I think that we’re looking forward to.

Shannon Czincila: [00:17:51] So Dixie, we talked a little bit about just the challenges of this year. Uh, you talked about the challenges in the community and, I’m sure [00:18:00] everybody listening today have had significant challenges this year that they’ve had to work through. And as your role, you know, I’m sure it’s been a very demanding year on you coming into this new role at Einstein during a difficult time, as we talked about. 

Do you have any tips on, you know, self-care and mental health? I really feel that it’s going to be something that we’re not really having off the top of our heads when I’m looking at this pandemic, but we’ll definitely be, something that we will have to address. So any tips out there for just mental health, self-care, and just getting through some of these tougher times?

Dixie James: [00:18:32] Yeah, that’s, that’s a really important one. And it’s one of the things that I think,   I’ll speak for myself. And I know I experienced it a lot with my team that you sort of put yourself on the back burner and maybe even women in general and sort of, you make sure everyone else is good. And you’re the last.

You’re the last one to give attention to yourself. And, I think for me, I’ve had to be very intentional about taking my own advice during this pandemic and tell [00:19:00] everyone to get some rest. I’m still, you know, firing off the emails at 2:00 AM. So,   you know, I think for me, there have been moments of, you know, trying to,   I do a lot of devotionals.

For me, my faith is really what I lean back on. So a lot of devotionals and,   taking a moment in a moment sometimes.   Whereas you’re used to just plowing through the day. It’s okay to take a moment and take some breaths. And then to talk to someone, I think that,   there are resources available,   both made available Einstein. Our Einstein Cares on the internet page has a list of resources that we continuously direct people to, but I think it’s okay to say maybe, maybe I should talk to someone if I’m feeling stressed or if I’m feeling depressed and I don’t really know because quite honestly, the stress manifests itself in so many different ways. You can’t always diagnose yourself. 

And so I think tapping into those resources, we have a lot of telehealth visits now,   both [00:20:00] for consults related to mental health. And I think leveraging those tools and doing it from the privacy of your own home, if that is comfortable to you, I think it provides another layer of access   to resources   that people can tap into. 

And I think it’s very important, I think. My tip is really just to “use the resources that are available” and “do, as I say, not as I do.” 

Shannon Czincila: [00:20:25] Do you normally make New Year’s Resolutions? Did you make any this year, so where was it different than most years?

Dixie James: [00:20:34] You know, I don’t usually make resolutions other than, you know, lose a few pounds. In that regard, I don’t necessarily put a number on it, but I was joking at the beginning of the pandemic that the COVID 19 actually represented the 19 pounds that I was gaining. So I collectively [00:21:00] gained those 19 pounds for sure. 

But you know, I will say this, I was listening to a sermon that was done on New Year’s Eve coming into 2020. And,   you know, it’s so funny how much the world has changed since then. So that sermon, you know, was about the year of more and to focus your energy on accomplishing more and doing more and giving more.

We got more of a lot of space this year, but nothing like what anyone expected it would be. So, you know,   what it’s also showing me is that,   we don’t really have quite as much control as we like to think, which is hard for a person like me who likes to plan everything. I tell people I’m a planner by profession and just by nature, but then there’s just things you just don’t eat, just can’t plan for it. And [00:22:00] there’s a, quite a bit of it that you just got to let go. And I like to say like, Oh my God.

Jamie Lewin: [00:22:05] I think we, we got a lot more. And hopefully we also gave a lot more this year. 

Dixie James: [00:22:09] I like that. I think you’re right. I think we definitely did a lot of giving. 

Shannon Czincila: [00:22:13] Definitely. Well, thank you so much for speaking with us today. It’s been such a pleasure getting to know you and hearing more about your role about the hospital and everything you’re doing. 

Dixie James: [00:22:25] Well, thank you. It’s been a pleasure being here with you. I hope there’s opportunity, and I’m looking forward to work more closely with The Friends quite honestly and Shannon, both of you, Jamie, thank you for having me. 2021, that’s going to be our year. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:22:40] Yes.

Shannon Czincila: [00:22:41] We’ll definitely have to do some traveling and eating together.  

Dixie James: [00:22:45] I’m all for it. I look forward to it. Thank you. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:22:49] Thank you. 

Shannon Czincila: [00:22:52] Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky.

Jamie Lewin: [00:22:59] If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.  

Shannon Czincila: [00:23:07] Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincilla 

Jamie Lewin: [00:23:11] and me, Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila: [00:23:12] And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

Jamie Lewin: [00:23:17] Want to get the four one, one, and upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us @advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website. 

Shannon Czincila: [00:23:29] We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of friend you are.

Jamie Lewin: [00:23:38] and what kind of Friend you want to be.

Jamie [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends, I’m Jamie Lewin. 

Shannon: [00:00:08] and I’m Shannon Czincilla. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you?

Jamie: Hi, everyone. Welcome to today’s podcast. I’m Jamie Lewin, and I’m here with Regina Longo. Regina is a transformational empowerment coach, motivational speaker and yoga teacher. I asked Regina to join us today because I’ve been wanting to talk about mental health and adjusting our mindsets. I’ve been lucky enough to take her classes. 

And Regina I’ve said this to you, but I love your classes because they are physically challenging, but probably even more so because of what you say while you’re teaching, that makes me feel really empowered and shifts the way I think about life and approach life. So thank you so much for joining us today.

Regina Longo: [00:01:01] Thank you. I’m honored to be here and for you guys to be hosting me and what a gift that it is not only to be on your podcast, but to be in the world to do what I do. Thank you for the beautiful compliments. I absolutely love what I do and exactly what you said. I’m a transformational empowerment coach and I help people awaken to their true self so they can not only be who they are and love who they are, but make a greater impact in the world.

Jamie: [00:01:30] I love that. I think people really need to hear what you have to say right now, especially. There are so many things that you say during class that I really do carry with me every day. There are things you say, like everything you need, you already have. And it’s, and it’s true. I mean, we all have what we need.

We hold on to these attachments of things and things that are important, but we really have what we need. You say things like learn to love the successes and the failures, because every failure you are growing and [00:02:00] becoming stronger and you just help reframe people’s mindsets. You know, people complain every day about running errands and picking up their kids and things they have to do and you’re like, how lucky are you that you get to do these things?  

Regina Longo: [00:02:12] Yes I’m really glad you brought that up and ironically you’re absolutely right. You said now more than ever, like at such a time as this in the world, we need to like really reset or clear or, you know, kind of how we do like an upgrade on our computers and our cell phones.

It’s what’s happening within each and every one of us. And one of the big things, as human beings that we do do is we think that we need to be problem-free when really the problems are a gift. You know, the obstacles that come up in our lives are really a blessing in disguise because it is about the becoming and it is about the detachment, which is in letting go, which is really hard on a human level. 

And of course, you know, if people don’t get it by now, we are spiritual beings having a human experience. There are two versions of ourselves. There is our higher self and our physical human self, our ego mind, which is probably a whole separate podcast.

But, you know, once we learn that and we come into acceptance of that, that’s how we start to nurture, if you will, and start to master that, letting go process, if you will detachment. It’s like, kind of like when you go maybe to like an airport or like into, you know, a facility that might be a high security facility where it’s, you know, you have to go through like glass doors and then, you know, you go through the security system, but there’s glass doors shut behind you and then there’s like another set of glass doors to go through. 

You know, figuratively those glass doors, the first set that you walked into in order to get through the next level of glass doors, the next level of security to get into the appointment you need to get into or into the airport to get through, that first set of glass doors needs to close.

Well, if we could just put that into the area of our life, if we could just close the doors and let go of yesterday, of even earlier this morning and let that go and not hold onto a lot of attachment of it, we are then in the present moment.

We hear so many people say, I am present, I’m living in the present and then add that but. As soon as you add the but, you took yourself back in the past and you’ve resurrected that you’ve reawakened that and you brought it into and we end up recycling and recycling, you know, and the average human being, not your spiritual side, your average human being self, your ego self has statistically proven through science has over 85,000 thoughts a day.

Of those 85,000 thoughts, almost 85% of them, 80% of them are thoughts of yesterday brought into or previous, you know, years before even, and brought into the present moment. And then people wonder why, like, you know, I went through this experience, but I changed jobs and I thought I was doing better at off with more money, but you know, my boss is still, you know, I don’t have this connection still with my colleagues or my boss. 

And it’s because something within you needs to change and change is very uncomfortable back to where we said moments ago. Problems, they’re a beautiful thing. People just don’t want to look into them. 

Jamie: [00:05:36] Yeah, it’s really interesting. I think it’s funny because you can take a few different people into the same scenario and they come with their sort of their baggage and their previous experiences and it’s interesting how they can react to something from yesterday or a year ago or 10 years ago and bringing it into that situation without even recognizing it or realizing it. 

But to your point of being uncomfortable, I think. That is where you grow and that is where you learn. And I think getting comfortable with the idea of being uncomfortable can be a very healthy thing. I love to travel and one reason I love to go to places I’ve never been is just to get out of that comfort zone and, and make sure I don’t get set in my ways as I get older because I think it’s such a learning and growing experience for me. It’s fascinating, but I think it can be very scary too, for people.

Regina Longo: [00:06:25] Yeah, it is very scary for people, but you, you actually just said beautiful words. It’s only through experiences that we evolve and grow, you know, because if we, if we try to avoid certain things, because we think we might fail at it, or it may not work out, we actually keep ourselves held back in the comfort zone and from my classes, you know what happens in the comfort zone. 

Absolutely nothing happens in the comfort zone because why it’s called that, but you’re exactly right, man. And I love that [00:07:00] you travel cause you’re, you’re, you’re expanding how you see things and perception is key. It’s everything. 

And you just said moments ago as well. Like people, we can have one scenario and people have so many different perceptions on it and that’s where suffering comes in. Suffering is about people’s perception. It’s not about the facts of the situation, right? Because the facts may be like it’s sunny today and God, the sun’s glaring in my eyes and Oh my gosh, you know, it’s blinding me and someone else would say, Oh my gosh, it’s so gorgeous.

It’s like a postcard picture. Perfect day. Right? The sun, the fact is the, sun’s just doing what it’s supposed to be doing. It’s shining and shining, vibrantly and brightly. But people’s perception is what caused the suffering. They get stuck on not just the facts, the way they’re seeing it, the way they visualize it, envision it, if you will.

Jamie: [00:07:54] This is actually a very good segue into something we’ve talked about before, which is social media and the dangers of [00:08:00] social media and I think it’s that perception that you were just talking about that can be so dangerous for people’s mental health.  

Regina Longo: [00:08:07] So true. You know, I find, you know, even myself, I mean, again, we’re all human, spiritual beings having a human experience. There are times when you catch yourself, like moving out of balance or out of alignment and we start moving into comparing ourselves or, you know, and then all of a sudden, when we go into comparison, it then gets into a competitive mindset.

Like. Wait. I said that the other day, but they got like 25 likes on it and I only got three likes on it. Oh my gosh. They have like 10,000 followers and I only have 5,000 followers and, you know, a colleague friend of mine, you know, and we start moving into it. And we, we, we, we start to do is disengage from our truth rather than staying engaged in what it is we’re supposed to be doing.

And then social media,  You know, it, it, it can be very dangerous. It’s a beautiful platform. We’re [00:09:00] all having to go into it in this new world, right. This new world, this new version of ourselves but if we could take it and, and, and bring it into balancing out with all the other areas of our lives, right.

Because if we look at our life as like, if we take a circle and look at our lives as like this wheel and within the wheel, you’re in the center of it. And in the center of it, like certain areas, there’s your spiritual life. There’s your career life. There’s your family life. There’s your, you know, your hobbies and your freedom. 

If one of those is out of balance that wheel, as it keeps turning as the days go on, if it’s out of balance a little bit, it’s going to like, just keep turning, like lopsided. If you see it like a, like a wheel on your car. Right. If one of the wheels has a little less air air or like a major leak in it and we start to hit that accelerator and start to go through our day, it’s gonna, you know, wobble.

And the more we pick up momentum of our day and our [00:10:00] children and we get home and there’s dinner to make and the zoom calling and so homework with them and so forth and, and try to spend quality time with them, then that wheels like really going out of balance. But social media is throne it’s so far off and it’s really keeping people in their head rather than in their heart of what they really want to do.

And one thing I was taught by one of, one of my mentors, you know, and, and I’ve been coached by Tony Robbins and so many other great coaches, but also Jim Roanie, he, he made this statement that if you stay in your head, you’re dead. You know, if you keep staying and living through the temples, Back and forth left and right.

And just let the thoughts keep recycling as we mentioned earlier, you’re just going to have to keep having the same thoughts over and over, and you’re never going to feel, and that’s what happened. And that’s what happens when we start to make the connection of our head to our heart and start living in this cycle of head and heart rather, and start to really feel our feelings and honor them. 

Jamie: [00:11:01] So, what would your advice be for people who are seeing social media and comparing themselves or feeling left out or, I mean, we all know people are projecting their best selves and their best day and their best photograph on social media right, knowing the behind the scenes of what’s happening. But when you were looking at it, you think, Oh my God, everyone’s having this perfect day.

They’re all going to the parties and they’re all having fun. And I’m at home. Obviously you want to be connected to your own thoughts and the balance of your own life, but how do you suggest people handle that? 

Regina Longo: [00:11:32] Right. That’s a great question. And a lot of advice, tools that I give my clients and when I’m teaching a class and so forth, or just in conversation is radically shift and change what you’re doing. If you find yourself scrolling and we’ve all done it, right? Like it’s like you get on to make a post or to private message somebody about something before, you know, it you’re like, Oh my God, I forgot to message Stacy. You know, but, and here I am, [00:12:00] 30 minutes later or 20 minutes later, and I’m still scrolling.

Yeah. And we get caught in that loop, but when we’re staying focused, when we’re asking what is the truth that I’m going into this for like getting on social media or whatever platform it is,  And if we could just really focus because it’s all balanced, our state of being is balanced. It’s how we’re moving through the day. 

If you can look at it like a triangle, it’s the body, mind, soul. Our movement, the body, the physiology, and our focus. Right? All determines our mindset and the internal and external dialoguing we use. So when we find ourselves getting caught in that, if we can make a radical shift and that radical shift might be, get off, get off that right now, that platform and meditate for 10 minutes or read, or, [00:13:00] you know, we all have like so much home equipment now, as far as those that are in the fitness and exercising, like jump rope or get on your rebounder or you know, do laundry, or if you could shift it to something different. 

Cause as soon as you make that shift, it needs a massive shift, a radical shift, as soon as you make that shift, you’ve taken yourself out of that moment and you’re giving yourself the opportunity to begin again, to start fresh and that’s really what the cycle of life is. That’s what the inhale and the exhale is. 

Jamie: [00:13:32] I’m so sorry. I need to pause for one second. I have a, three-year-old trying to break down my door. Hold on one sec. 

Regina Longo: [00:13:39] So sweet. So innocent. It’s talking about the present moment. They’re just living in the moment right now. I don’t know if it’s a little boy or a little girl that child needs attention, needs something. They’re feeling something and they need it. So, and they’re not waiting. They’re not like, Oh, mom’s on a call right now or doing a podcast recording. [00:14:00] I need to hold this feeling.  

And we all have that unique goodness in us, but somewhere along the line, we were conditioned, unfortunately like from our parents and their parents and so forth to not now, hold that aside. We’ll talk about it later and then we are stuck. That’s how we start pushing the feelings down. That was a beautiful by no mistake of the universe, little divine interruption, if you will, of the little one, because. We’re taught to push our feelings aside. And when we become older and become into our adult life, we don’t know how to really feel our feelings.

And if a relationship, whether it be a job, you know, or so forth or an intimate relationship or friendship, if it’s really serving us, we still, we, we, we then conditions are stuff to tolerate. Which is not of service for us, which is turns out to be a big disservice and then it just keeps snowballing from there.

[00:15:00] But to validate and honor someone’s feelings because you know, in our adult life, when we’re in relationship and your partner says, well, tell me how you’re feeling? It’s like, I want you to, you’re still not even like sharing what you’re feeling. You’re actually telling them what you want them to be. And they’re asking how are you feeling? 

And that gives you that a window, this doorway to walk into. If we allow ourselves to be unblocked new doorways open, that’s a window to really express ourselves and share our true feelings. It’s scary. We went back to a member of, we talked about how it’s scary. It’s scary to be uncomfortable and to be raw like that because it feels awkward, but it’s always awkward before it’s elegant. 

Comfort zones, it’s easy to just, you know, we walk with our heads down now, masks on looking at our phones and we walk by somebody. They don’t even ask us how we are. We’re like, fine. How are you doing? We answer without even being asked. 

Jamie: [00:16:00] Yeah. Well, you know, I was thinking about that too, with our social media conversation, because it also, it’s not only the people that you’re looking at, it’s also what you’re putting out there. And a lot of times it can be really uncomfortable and really scary, and maybe people play it safe or they make it private and that they keep it small because they’re scared for people to really see their true selves. 

Regina Longo: [00:16:19] And, and that was beautiful too, because when you, this, this real deep work that I do as a transformational empowerment coach is really uh, work within because once we master the inside, right, once we really feel our value in our self-worth and what it is, we do deserve all of our other external relationships we’ve then easily mastered. It’s really not that hard. We make it harder and stay stuck in the suffering more so than we need to.

But once you feel that knowingness within, when we do post something, it’s a true belief of self, regardless because we are going to have people [00:17:00] that negate against us and come back at us with negative comments and so forth. And,  you know, I guess it’s like cyber bullying if you will, but they need this work inside. 

Right. But once you, once you master the inside of you, you don’t allow it so much to be a trigger anymore because, like we said, from the beginning challenge, difficulty, problems, they’re going to be there. They’re a gift. That’s a beautiful blessing to help you grow. When those triggers come at, you notice them, are you going to react or respond?

We all have the responsibility, break that down, the ability to respond. How are we going to respond in that fear-based way? Or are we going to respond in the way of standing in our truth what we believe in? Otherwise, we wouldn’t have posted it, but most people are posting because it’s easy to be behind the camera and post.

Jamie: [00:17:59] And I think people are also looking for,  for the likes, right. And for the validation. And so it is hard when they get the negative comments or negative validation,  when they’re really seeking, you know, sort of attention and positive validation. 

Regina Longo: [00:18:14] Right. That’s beautiful because one, as we were saying, like, once you have the acceptance of self, we then learn with the triggers that show up. Oh, I only got 20 likes on this one, but my post before I got like 57 lights, well, how much has that? You know, maybe people didn’t like the post, how much of that is true. That’s what we have to ask. We have to get out of the illusion and come into the truth of it.  

Did you post it because you were really, you gotta, we have to ask stuff that I posted because I was really looking for likes or because I really wanted to share something of, of impact to people, regardless of the amount of likes, regardless of the, of the amount of traffic that it got interacted with it, or comments and back and forth, went back and forth, [00:19:00] you know with it.

Jamie: [00:19:02] Yeah, I think it’s really important obviously to recognize that in yourself, but also to sort of give that back to other people. I’m a huge fan of Oprah and SuperSoul conversations. And she does say everybody wants to be seen and heard. And she says, the question is always, do you see me? Do you hear me? And does what I say matter? And I think, you know, everybody wants that no matter who you are. So not only do you want it, but you want to give that back to other people. 

Regina Longo: [00:19:29] Also so perfectly timed and true because we all have masculine and feminine energy in us, regardless of our gender. And we’re all more, you know, or all females here on this particular beautiful podcast, but we all have one, a little bit more dominant than the other, but to keep it imbalanced. As a female gender, when we lean into our femininity, If we’re not seeing if we’re unseen, if we’re unheard [00:20:00] and we feel unsafe is where we’re thrown out about ,where we almost go back to the inner child and throw the tantrum as a three-year-old should do when they can’t really speak, or even younger than that, because the three-year-old can, you know, has the verbalization at that point, but they can’t really speak what they need and want in the moment.

That’s when that tantrums should be had, but,  but we all experienced it and we always will and the moment we don’t experience experience it and the moment when we are problem-free is the moment that we are no longer in physical body. When we flat line, when our mission is complete, when you’re done serving out and fulfilling your calling on the planet in this lifetime. 

Jamie: [00:20:44] So you had mentioned, obviously we’re all female here, all women in this podcast. And I was thinking about the word balance, which we had mentioned before. And to me, that’s my, my go-to word for life in general, you know, as my diet balanced my exercise, balanced my time with my kids, my time with myself, work time, alone time, you know, everything needs to be imbalanced.

I think women, especially moms, especially have this guilty feeling,  Being balanced and taking that time for themselves and always feeling that they need to be giving to other people. Can you talk about that a little bit and how really people need to shift their mindset into how, if you are balanced in your life, you’re better able to serve others.

Regina Longo: [00:21:27] That’s so true. We have so many analogies around us and one of the old, old ones now at this point, you know, not many of us were getting up in the air, flying to a destination at this point, but we’ve all heard it so many times like when they’re going over the rules and so forth and on a plane before we take off. You know, if, if we should have an emergency landing and the oxygen mask drops, put the mask on yourself before, you know, you tend to start to reach out and help others.

Well, it’s so true that analogy in every area of our life. [00:22:00] The guilt thing that we carry, I hate to say it was a learned thing that we all have had happened to us. It’s generational. It’s a generational conditioning. It didn’t just happen from our parents and our parents are not bad parents. And we as parents now on the planet, we’re not bad people. 

We were taught that generation after generation, after generation. It became this vocabulary. Uh, I started mentioning the body, mind, soul, right? The languaging we use, we were taught that and we keep it going. We have to have this radical shift and transform of our capillary. Our internal dialogue to self and not feel guilty, I was going to say, for nurturing ourselves.

If we deplete it, you know, if we’re feeling like halfway that day, how can we fulfill what we’re supposed to do? If we have to lead a meeting or teach a class or, you know, give a presentation so forth or run the household, [00:23:00] how could we do it? We have to get back down, take steps back. What do I need right now to fill myself up? 

And it might mean a salt bath. That might mean going to get a facial or massage. It might mean taking yourself to work out. You know, Jim’s working with guidelines through our state right now, but, or, or doing a home workout or taking yourself and just getting quiet, taking yourself into a different part of the house and just having, even if it’s five to 10 minutes of alone time and that’s really all it takes as far as meditation.

Because even like this conversation that we’re having, we’re having to be so focused with one another and present with one another to really enjoy one another’s company. That’s a form of meditation. It’s just a verbalized conversation, a form of meditation. You’re on your yoga mat. It’s a moving meditation. There’s all different levels of yoga. There’s restorative, there’s, you know, Nidra Yoga, where you’re, it’s [00:24:00] really just hardly any movement. 

There’s power of Vinyasa, which I lead, which is a lot of movement, which is really challenging me physically, emotionally, and mentally, as they all do, because physically it’s challenging for a human being to sit still, to give yourself love, to give yourself quiet time.

Jamie: [00:24:17] I do love that about yoga, how there really is a different type for each personality, or even maybe how you feel each day,.You know, today I really just want to be still and meditate and listen to my mind or another day I really need to be active or I really need to stretch I’m feeling, you know, imbalanced. So,  I do love that about the practice.

Regina Longo: [00:24:35] Right and because the true meaning of the word yoga is union, which brings us back to the balance again. You know, the body, mind and soul, you know, we all have experienced it and of course we will. We, Oh, we can’t be in perfect alignment all the time, but you can be consciously aware when you’re out of it, out of balance, out of alignment and make the right [00:25:00] decisions, what we need to do to keep ourselves, or to put ourselves back in and to begin again.

That cycle of life is just that. We can’t just inhale all the time and never exhale, we’ll suffocate and vice versa we can’t just exhale and never pull the breath in. The ebb and flow of, of, of the water and that’s that divine, feminine power. It’s water like energy and if we can see it like the ocean, it’s not sitting still, always, it may look still when we’re sitting on the beach. 

Sometimes when the water’s calm, But sometimes the ocean goes through like this raging chaos. There’s some days when the waves are like just kicking and they’re high, you know, and that’s the time they get out there body surfing get on your surfboard. But,  and then there’s days when it’s peaceful and calm.

Well, that’s the same thing with our emotional wellbeing and the way our life is. And it’s just entirely up to us to get ourselves back into. I’m just trying to find the best we can of that divine, masculine and feminine power [00:26:00] within us or energy within us. Energy is everything. It’s our state of being.

Jamie: [00:26:05] I think it ties back to what you were saying before about,  you know, you can’t control the weather some days it’s sunny and some days it’s raining and some days you have problems that you have to deal with that some days are better, but without one, how do you appreciate the other one or how do you recognize the other one? You know, how do you appreciate those sunny days, but if all you have are sunny days, you have to have that, that day of rain to really appreciate that day of sun.

Regina Longo: [00:26:28] That’s right. It all begins with the mindset and learning to get out of living between the temples and bringing it into your heart space. And when we do that, we’re not stuck in because so many people get stuck in why is this happening to me? What, what did I do wrong? Am I a bad person? Oh my gosh, it’s raining today. You know, I have like so many errands to run. I hate being out in the rain.  

If we could just flip that around. And instead of saying, this is happening to me, Start the [00:27:00] voc, the vocabulary to shift it and say, this is happening for me. When you do that, you just that’s part of the radical shift that I was talking about earlier in this conversation.

If you could start catching yourself, being present enough to catch yourself, okay, this is happening for me, not to me. We then can make better decisions, better choices. Coming back into balance with what I’m putting into my mouth as far as my eating, how I’m taking care of myself, how I’m nurturing self, how I’m responding to my children or my colleagues, or my loved one, or, you know, when I’m ready to lead the presentation.

Like there’s so many people are like, ah, you know, even now that we’re in this midst of the COVID still, but pre COVID, like, I hate my job, you know, like, Oh man, I have to go it’s Monday again. When some people would get up and they’d say, Oh my God, it’s Monday again. Like when you’re really in alignment, you’re in that space of like in your zone of [00:28:00] genius, where you are excited to go to work that day, excited to make an impact on people’s lives.

You don’t have to be a coach or a leader or a mentor. You could be anything. Salespeople in Nordstrom, salespeople selling cars. When they’re in their zone of genius, if it’s something they really enjoy, that’s joyful for them to get up and go to work.  

Jamie: [00:28:24] On that topic. There are two ways of thinking about this sometimes and thinking about your life, one is surrendering and one is having control over your own life. And the difference between those like letting go and trusting that the universe has a plan for you, but then also this idea of having control over your own life and destiny. So how do you sort of reconcile those two things? 

Regina Longo: [00:28:44] One thing that I’ve been working on with myself and trying to help others and what I would love to share now is when we start to surrender and get still, you start to recognize that we [00:29:00] never had control of anything all along, just like the weather. We never had control.

The only thing you have control of is your feelings. And there is this divine plan that is actually playing out for so many people, the underlying bigger vision of it all, God’s plan, the divine plan, the universe’s plan was for everybody stopped because we started living a life of forcing things, when really it’s about being unforced and letting go. That’s the surrendering, that’s the letting go of control. Are we going to want control of things? 

Yes, but we have to remind ourselves, remind, get back in the mind, connecting it to the heart, that we don’t have control, how other people react, other people’s opinions. If the suns going to choose to be up there in the sky with no clouds and it’s going to be shining so brightly that like some days it’s glaring [00:30:00] in your window.  

And it’s like the sun, doesn’t say, Oh, I’m blinding. I’m burning the skin of Virgina today. Cause it’s like 75 degrees out. She doesn’t have her sunblock on, let me lower my temperature. The sun just does what it’s supposed to do. It’s shiny. It’s doing what it’s supposed to do. 

Right. And if we could just remind ourselves of that, we start to recognize, okay, I don’t have control of my outside circumstances. They only have control of how I participate in that. 

Jamie: [00:30:28] It’s so funny because this is something my parents have taught us since we were very young. You don’t have control over anything else. You can only control how you react to situations, right? That is all in your, your power and your control. I tell this to my five-year-old all the time, right? Because she wants to control everything and everything has to be a certain way. And it keeps saying to her, you can’t control people. You can’t control these things.

You can only control yourself. And I know she’s too young to understand that, but I hope if I keep saying it to her, You know, sort of really come into her own that way,  and realize, you know, the [00:31:00] universe is doing what it’s doing and you have to control your own space in it. 

Regina Longo: [00:31:04] Right. And, and as we start to continually grow and evolve, you know, work pretty much evolved at the age of six mentally. So whatever at up until the age of six, whatever we saw, witnessed and or heard or observed, we’re starting to carry that out and let that play out like a movie, if you will.

 If we’re playing it out in the next scene, the next stage of our life, as we start to grow and go into our, you know, teens and in our adulthood and stuff like that and then we start to actually draw to us those experiences that are mirroring how we’re thinking and feeling, and it does take something, it takes work. Fortunately, you are blessed that your parents, and it sounds like probably we all were that are on this call today blessed that we grew up in such a healthy environment.

Some were [00:32:00] less fortunate and they were told that they weren’t good enough and they were told that they weren’t worthy enough and, and they grew up with a lack mentality and or mindset, which that’s where we have to like really make that radical shift and change. And even us, we have to still growing up in a healthy environment, you still have to be consciously aware about what you’re letting in.

I always share this analogy too, like a ship out in the ocean. It’s not going to sink if it’s out there and it’s at its fullest potential. The only way that ship is sinking is if it’s allowing the water to get on the inside. And how much of it is it allowing to get in? Cause obviously you could sustain some water. 

It’s the same thing with us. How much are we allowing the negativity to get in, keep doing that to your child. I mean, that is amazing. That is so beautiful to keep influencing them with positive, a positive mindset with love and joy and abundance, because that’s really what it’s all about. And that’s what we’re all [00:33:00] reaching for.

And it’s, we came in on the planet. Your child came in your womb that way. And when we come out of the mother’s womb, it’s this new beginning and we’re getting bombarded with all the stuff of life and the world. And it’s what we choose to let on the inside, just like I mentioned, that analogy of the ship. The only way that ship is sinking is how much negativity, how much water it’s letting go in, go in, go in and how much we’re believing it.

Jamie: [00:33:30] So Regina, how do people get started? I mean, there’s so much that we talked about and I think sometimes people are in this place where they’re not feeling balanced or they know something is off. How do they get started? How do they begin to sort of pick apart what it is exactly and figure out how to go along this path.

Regina Longo: [00:33:41] That’s a wonderful question. As we were mentioning a little bit earlier, we really do have all the answers we need coded within us believe it or not. Kind of like how our computers are coded. They’re on a certain software. The question we need to ask ourselves is where am I? Where am I at right now? But get ourselves in the present moment. 

Some of us have ourselves stuck in denial, in denial rather than executive and we’re in [00:34:00] denial. We start to go down a slippery slope, if you will, or start to spin off and we start maybe bargaining with ourselves. My life’s not that bad. If I do this, you know, you know what? I’ll just settle. I’ll just settle for this.

When it’s not that at all, we have to be willing to continually like closing those glass doors and walking through to the next and letting go, letting go of control, letting go of fear and doubt and so forth. Move through the denial, move through any frustration or anger and bargaining with ourselves and move into acceptance.

Once we move into the acceptance stage, the next step to take is creating. When you ask yourself where I’m at, like how much of that is true, that I can’t begin again? Well, if such and such can do it, not just all the stars, not just all the successful people, we’re all the people we see on social media that have millions of followers. Anybody. We’re all equal in that way, we all have our worth our value and our unique gift to get out into the world within us. It’s encoded within us. 

We have to ask ourselves in check-in how much of it is true? Where am I at right now? Somebody might be at rock bottom right now. Come into acceptance with that and then start to turn your focus, that willingness to do work, where do I want to go? The human brain, and we were taught generation after generation to push our feelings down, the human brain tends to think, and to start to focus on. What I don’t want. Well, I don’t want more failure. Well, I [00:35:00] don’t want to be rejected. Well, I don’t want to be brought down to my knees again, which brings us back to the secret, the law of attraction. 

What do you want? That’s the next question we ask ourselves, where am I at right now? Step one, question number one and tie that in with how much of it is true? You know, with my thoughts, like overtaking me, how much of that is true? Where do I want to go? Start to focus on your wants and desires, which is easier said than done.

It really is. It’s going to take something. It’s going to take discipline. It’s going to take persistence. It’s going to take consistency. Even myself, there’s this consistency, there’s this persistence to keep evolving because I’m a successful life coach, empowerment coach and motivational speaker and yoga teacher now, I don’t stop here. I’m constantly going into, in and out of training. I’m constantly reading. I’m constantly meditating.

 It’s a ritual. I have a ritual that I have with myself on a daily, and I choose to do it in the morning because it sets the tone for the rest of my day. So when we ask ourself the question, how much, how much of this is true, these thoughts that I’m thinking, where am I at right now and coming to acceptance of that, where do I want to go? That’s starting to bring us into the creative juices of our life and start to really awaken our desires and tap into that. Where do I want to go? What do I want to do? 

That’s when we start to step into our zone of genius, where we make an impact in a world where we start to be, what we’re meant to be. And that’s a question that I’ve asked myself, what do I want? I don’t wanna just leave it like this. I want to live it. [00:36:00] I start birthright, joy, abundance, freedom. I want to live that legacy.  

So yes, I do leave it to family and friends and loved ones and the world. And I want to make that much of an impact. And that’s what each and every one of us want to do. We have to get out of that cycle of denial and that’s what will bring us back into creating again. 

Jamie: [00:36:13] Thank you so much. I think we’ve learned so much. I hope everyone listening to this podcast learns and is able to, you know, take a lot of these lessons with them and really help.

Regina Longo: [00:36:23] I’m so grateful. My pleasure. What an honor, I’m the one that’s been blessed through this whole thing to be, to be on this call and to share with all of you.

Shannon: [00:22:52] Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky. 

Jamie: [00:22:59] If [00:23:00] you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Shannon: [00:23:07] Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincilla 

Jamie: [00:23:11] and me, Jamie Lewin.

Shannon: [00:23:12] And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. 

Jamie: [00:23:17] Want to get the four one, one, and upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us @advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

Shannon: [00:23:29] We invite you to become a member of the Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of friend you are 

Jamie: [00:23:38] and what kind of Friend you want to be.

Jamie: [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends, 

I’m Jamie Lewin 

Shannon: [00:00:08] and I’m Shannon Czincilla. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you? 

Well, welcome everybody to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. Today’s a little different because Jamie is not with me, but I’m very excited to have Beth Duffy here. Welcome Beth. 

Beth Duffy: [00:00:35] Thank you.

Shannon: [00:00:35] Beth is the Chief Operating Officer at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, which is in East Norriton, Pennsylvania, and just a few miles from my house. Just to start us off, can you tell us a little bit about yourself, your background, and how you got to your position at Einstein Montgomery? 

Beth Duffy: [00:00:51] Sure I’d love to. And thanks so much for the opportunity to speak with everyone today. So I started my career, oh, 37 years ago at Einstein. It’s the first and only place that I’ve ever worked. 

And I got into healthcare administration, somewhat circuitously. I went to school to be a physical therapist and then did not do so well with freshmen chemistry, and quickly learned that I was not likely to succeed as a physical therapist. And so had to make a little bit of a course correction and I decided to pursue social work.

So I knew that I’d always wanted to be in the healthcare field very early on, had done volunteer work in the local hospital, continued that work while I was at The University of Pittsburgh, where I did my bachelor’s degree work. And graduated with my degree in social work, I was going to save the world and help humankind and turned out I wasn’t able to get a job at the time because there were a lot of cuts in social programs. 

And with social work, you really do need to go back and get a master’s degree. So I gave it some thought and decided that I would, indeed, go back to school but that I was going to pursue my master’s degree work in something other than social work, leveraging everything that I had learned and kind of fell into this world of healthcare administration.

I actually went to the library, pulled a book off the shelf and looked at what were some careers in healthcare and came across healthcare administration. I applied to Temple University, was accepted and I started that September, graduated, and realized that I really did want to work in hospitals. That was my love. Applied to a number of positions, one of which was at this institution called Albert Einstein Medical Center in Philadelphia. I had never heard of the institution, went down, interviewed with a lovely woman, did all the right things, wrote my thank you notes and called her back.  

And in follow up, I asked her, you know, when she might be able to make a decision and she said she had a number of good candidates and she was really stuck on which one to choose. So her decision was going to come down to throwing the resumes up in the air. And whichever one landed on top was who she was gonna choose, and I guess mine landed on top. Started out in a department called Unit Management and then over the course of the next 25 years, I guess worked my way up, working at Einstein in Philadelphia, became a vice-president.

At some point around 2007-2008, when we had announced we were going to be building a brand new hospital, I spoke to Barry Friedman, who was our CEO at the time and asked if I could potentially be involved in that just from a learning experience, and he very generous and allowed me to sit in on meetings.

And then he asked me if I would be interested in doing the activation planning for the new hospital. I had no idea what that was, but it sounded good. How hard could it be? I had been in healthcare for 25 years. And so I took on that responsibility, never realizing how big that job was. Literally thousands and thousands of decisions related to building, developing and operationalizing our brand new facility, Einstein Medical Center, Montgomery.

And so for the last eight years, I’ve had the privilege of meeting Einstein Montgomery, and seeing it grow and expand. It has truly been a joy and something that I’m really proud of. 

Shannon: [00:04:23] Wow. That’s, that’s quite a journey, Beth and you know, just to, I remember when we started, you know, I drove down Germantown Pike and they were just starting to break ground on that hospital and just all the decisions, I can’t even imagine, you know, everything that, you know, you had to work through from, you know, staffing to, you know, flow and, and, you know, even down to like things like pink colors on the wall, you know. All the things like that, to make such a wonderful hospital. 

So if you were to give other women who would want to be leaders, some advice, you know, maybe something you wish you knew or could tell yourself, you know, say 20 years ago, what would that be?

Beth Duffy: [00:05:03] A couple of things, Shannon. You know, the first is I am truly blessed in that I have a true partner in my husband, Tom, who has always supported me in my career and has allowed me to grow and expand. And as you know, we grow together and then had our children. It was incredibly important in order for me to succeed and do all the things that I wanted to do from a career perspective that he really partners 50 / 50 with me. So we kind of had a nice arrangement early on where he would drop, we have two girls, he would drop the girls off in the morning and then I would pick them up at night and that, you know, that was kind of our routine, but really sharing everything from, you know, doing the laundry and the dishes and home kinds of tasks to fix them.

We really did share that and I feel very lucky and I think that that really helped me to succeed. I have such great recognition for people who are single parents, because I cannot imagine doing that trying to raise a family and have a career. So I’ve been very lucky that way. I also have had good mentors along the way, people that I could tap into. 

And I learned very early on how important that is just to have somebody that you can talk to about careers you can talk to about. Sometimes in the decisions that maybe aren’t the right decisions or mistakes that you’ve made along the way and learn from that. And just somebody that can provide guidance.

So I’ve been very lucky to have good mentors in my life. And I now like to be the reverse of that. And I like to mentor people so serve in that role as well. And then the last thing you can get is, you know, I’ve always taken on anything that anybody has asked me to do. I tell people when I’m mentoring them that one of the valuable lessons I learned was to make yourself as valuable as you can, to the company that you’re working for.

And if that means, if somebody asks you to sweep the floor, go ahead and sweep the floor cause there’s nothing wrong with that. If they ask you to take on another project to take on another project, do everything that you can to grow and learn and just make yourself valuable to the organization that you’re working for.

Shannon: [00:07:15] Now, those are definitely great, great pieces of advice and, I share in all of those as also being a female leader in my company, and I can tell you that having a wonderful partner for over 20 years has really allowed me to also grow. And Bob is very much an equal partner, just like Thom is for you, or doing laundry and picking up the kids and making even dinner sometimes. 

And as far as the mentors, you know, I think that that’s so valuable. A lot of times people think of mentorship as this formal thing that has to happen and scheduled times. And of course there are programs like that, but, you know, a mentor could just be somebody that you’re working with and you need to just bounce an idea off of it or share something, you know, on a bad day or even a good day.

And as far as your last point of just doing everything that is asked of you, I mean, I can attest firsthand, you know, Beth you’ve, you’ve wheeled people out of their rooms. You’ve taken them down when they were discharged. So, you know, you really truly live up to what you’re saying every day at Einstein Montgomery so very much appreciate that.

 So, a little bit about Montgomery campus. Just wondering if you could talk a little bit about some of the services that it provides, maybe how it’s a little bit different than the network just based on its location?

Beth Duffy: [00:08:34] Yeah, sure. So if we go back to kind of the roots or the reason why we came out to Montgomery County was to help diversify the payer mix that was down in Philadelphia. Specifically related to the mission of your organization to serve as many as we can reach. But you know, what that means is we are financially challenged because of having a governmental payer primary, predominantly governmental payer mix from a patient perspective. 

So when we came out to Montgomery County, the reason that Einstein Montgomery was built, where it was built is that in central Montgomery County, about 60% of the patients were leaving this area for their health care services. And we have absolutely, over the course of the last year or last eight years, been able to change that, and so many more patients are getting their services here at Einstein Montgomery, because we’re offering a higher level of care that people were leaving this area for. 

So a couple of examples would be certainly our level three neonatal intensive care unit which we just recently expanded from 7 beds to 13 beds so that was a wonderful addition and we had to expand because the volume grows and that’s a very good sign. Our cardiothoracic surgical program, we’re doing now over 200 cardiothoracic surgical procedures, high level every year. And that too is something that patients were leaving this area for. And now can certainly get those services here. 

Our emergency department and Shannon, as you well know, services over 40,000 patients a year. You just hard for me to imagine where those patients would get in their care now, if we weren’t here and you know, most recently with the pandemic, I think we’ve seen now probably over 5,000 patients with COVID at Einstein Montgomery.

And I can’t imagine how those patients would have ever been served without Einstein, Montgomery being here. So you know, the foresight that the Board and Barry and our leadership team had to build an institution out in this area was really quite remarkable and their vision was spot on.  

Shannon: [00:10:53] Yeah, well, I’m definitely grateful that we have such a high quality of care in our, in our backyard, especially with three kids and, and like you said, you know, during the pandemic and in the height, Montgomery County was one of the very first hotspots, you know, in Pennsylvania so I just can’t even imagine the, you know, From a COVID perspective, how it, it hits you guys early and hard and, you know, I can attest that the staff there just did an absolutely fantastic job of, of ensuring the best care for all those patients. So thank you and your team so much for that.

 So, but you and I have been working together probably over eight years. Is that how long the hospital’s been up and running?

Beth Duffy:  Yep. 

Shannon: So for those who may not know prior to my role, as the president of The Friends, I was the Vice President of The Friends of Montgomery. 

So Beth and I got to work pretty closely together on some projects at the hospital and some of the events and, Beth, I’d just like to know what, what do you think was one of your favorite events that we worked on together as The Friends? 

Beth Duffy: [00:11:51] Oh boy, you know, there’s so many, Shannon, and for so many different reasons. So If I start with, let me mention the Harvest Ball, which of course is held in November. And The Friends are the kind of the lead in doing that, that’s the largest fundraising event that the network has. And for me, I personally love to go to the Harvest Ball because it’s an opportunity to get dressed up. 

This past one excluded obviously, cause we couldn’t do that, but even the virtual event that was held in November was really, really fun and different. And just a nice way to see people that even though it was virtual, see people that you would typically see at that event that you hadn’t seen in awhile. And so, you know, I just, I think that’s a fun event. It’s very rare today that you get dressed up and get to go downtown and have a wonderful evening.

So that’s something that I look forward to every year. I love our Walk and Run in the Park, which is something that was an event that was held at Montgomery hospital that kind of transcended there, moved over with us and is highly successful on benefits, our cancer patients. And it’s just a wonderful way to connect back with the community. 

So we have, you know, hundreds of people that come out for that and support it that have roots going way, way back. Some of which are cancer patients who, you know, are with us today because of the great care and treatment that they got. Others are just members of the community that like to support us. And so that event is one of my favorite ones as well, because of the connection to the community.

And then, you know, The Friends have been so generous in contributing to Einstein, Montgomery in so many ways, but the event that we do with the Variety Club where we allow the young adults to come in and sell their fruits and vegetables in the summertime that they grow on their property to our staff. Another great community project. 

Another great way to connect with the group of individuals who get support from us by doing that and kudos to, I think it was Bobby Wasserman actually that started that event. And it’s a joyful event. It’s a fun event. And, you know, it benefits so many people, our employees included.

 So The Friends do a tremendous amount and it’s a great group to work with. You guys are very flexible and fun to be with and really offer a lot to Einstein Montgomery. So I thank you for all the work that you’re doing.  

Shannon: [00:14:25] We absolutely love it. Those are all great events. You know, one of the ones that I think is one of my favorites is the Girl Scout event where, you know, another partnership with a community and groups, and we have roughly 80 Girls Scouts and Brownies that come in on a Sunday afternoon.

And Beth, you kick it off every year. And I just think it’s fantastic that you come down downstairs with your sash from when you were a brownie and you point out the little first aid patch and how that all started for you and your interest in healthcare, and really motivate and inspire those young girls.

And they come in and they get a tour of the emergency room, they work on their first aid patch and actually walk away that day with it and know, and I think it’s great not only for the girls to just see what it’s like to be in a hospital. Well, I think in the emergency room, it takes away some of the fear if they ever have to go there.

And I think for the parents, I just think that we’ve gotten so much good feedback and grateful that we have these types of programs and we can offer them to the community and make them aware of, you know, everything that Einstein Montgomery can, can provide.  

Beth Duffy: [00:15:29] That’s a high energy event. 

Shannon: [00:15:31] It is a high energy event. I mean, usually the hospital was very quiet and respectful and, and it is quite a change to have, you know, 40 to 80 girls walking through the, you know, the lobby that morning, but it’s, it’s a really fun event. And every year, you know, it’s always been full. So we’re hoping that maybe in the next year or so, when we get past this COVID hump, we can bring the girls back into the hospital.

And then I think my other second favorite that you didn’t mention Beth is the Basket Raffle because, you know, again, that was another one that kind of came over from the original Montgomery that we were able to continue with the employees. And it’s really a very much, you know, while we help facilitate it and promote it with the friends, it’s just the employees at the hospital who really dig in, who come up with these great basket ideas and actually kind of have a little bit of competitiveness to it, or what department can come up with the best basket. 

And it’s just truly amazing. The amount of money that that basket raffle brings in every year and some of the projects anywhere from, you know, iPads for our cancer patients at Montgomery, Mamava stations for breastfeeding. Last year we did phone charging stations for patients, family, and staff. So we are really very much employee-based and focused on the staff and the patients and the families that visit that hospital.  

So really that’s a fun event. It’s just we will be doing that  again. We did it last year, even virtual. So if anybody’s interested in that we can, now we’ll tell you where you can find that information a little bit later at the end of the podcast.

Beth Duffy: [00:17:11] Yeah, And this year, if I could just put an additional plugin this year, that the beneficiaries of that event will be our own employees. I think people can, well, imagine the stress that the staff have been under having to deal with the amount of change that came with the pandemic, but the acuity of the patients and not only helping the patients, but their families through it when they couldn’t visit.

And just so much that they have had to deal with and we recognized early on that they needed some way to relieve that stress. And so under the direction of the AnnMarie Papa, our Chief Nursing Officer, she has started a renewal program for our staff and there’s multiple components to that. But one of those is a renewal room.

So we’ve taken the meditation area and converted that into a renewal room for our employees where they can go while they’re here on ship and they need a break. They can go there and they can relax. There are some kind of mindfulness activities that they can do. And there’s some little treats in there and aromatherapy and various things. 

And this year, The Friends will contribute to recliner chairs to that area, which is going to be a wonderful, wonderful addition than something that kind of bubbled up from the employees themselves. So we’re grateful again for your support of that event.

Shannon: [00:18:33] Absolutely, the staff. I know if you go back a little bit to COVID and just to tie COVID and the community together, we talked a little bit about both of those, but just to tie those two things together, you know, I witnessed firsthand during the thick of it last year and into the summer, just the amount of work that the employees did.

 The amount of time they spent at the hospital caring for patients. And like you said, very difficult situations, not having family members there, acting as family members for some of these individuals who didn’t have them around.

And one thing that really struck me was the way the community around the hospital really rallied around all of those frontline workers. It just was truly amazing, the amount of food and gifts and banners and signs and honking that went on just really in support of the hospital. So I just wanted to get your perspective on that, Beth? 

Beth Duffy: [00:19:28] Yeah, truly, truly remarkable and when we were in the early beginnings of the pandemic, it’s almost been a year now, we were hearing from the community, like you said, you know, messages of support and then the messages became food being dropped off and multiple food services dropping off things during the day for our staff, as well as personal protective equipment that the community had. We had the EMS providers come through and did kind of a parade of fire engines and police cars and the signs and the banners.

We had various community groups standing on the property when the employees were leaving with signs that said, we support you. I mean, it truly was such a boost for the staff, but what it said to me was, we have accomplished what we set out to do 10 years ago. We have become a part of this community and the community greatly appreciates us.

And so not only was it just wonderful to get that support, but it really sent the message that we’ve been, we’ve been working hard and the community appreciates us and it was very, very powerful from the whole host of perspectives. 

Shannon: [00:20:42] Yeah, absolutely. It’s a great place to live, a great pace to work, and we’re very grateful that you guys are in our backyard.  

So just to, to kind of wrap up our discussion today, Beth, you know, as maybe it’s COVID related, maybe it’s just a look to the future, but you know, is there any takeaways from the COVID experience how it changed you or anything that you anticipate moving into 2021 at EMCM that you’d want to share with us?

Beth Duffy: [00:21:11] A couple things. I think that, you know, I have been just so impressed with the way their staff has dealt with this. As I said to you early on, there’s no playbook for this. We were making it up as we went along as was everybody, you know, you, you were learning every day and the staff has just shown such resiliency and such bravery, but such creativity.

I mean, the ideas that the staff would come up with the healthcare for the patients, no, in the ICU, these patients on multiple drugs that require IB pumps and those pumps beep all the time, because they need to be changed or there’s a kink in the line or whatever, the reason. And every time the nurse had to go into the room, she had to gear up gown up and just that protective equipment go in, fix it, come out and take it off and then five minutes later it would go off again and the same thing, what happened. So then they came up with the idea of getting this extension tubing, and now  there’s pumps it out in the hallway.

Then they don’t have to gear up and they can respond much more quickly. That was their idea. I mean, they, they came up with that and it just, I just think that the staff here has done an incredible job and I really can’t say enough about the work that they’ve done, but moving forward, you know, COVID is unfortunately going to be with us for a while and it likely will never go away. Might become more like the flu season, but we’re going to need to accommodate for that.  

And so we are, we were running at maximum passing before COVID and now we’re running at maximum capacity plus. And so we’re going to need to continue to grow and expand. And I’m hopeful that with our pending merger with Jefferson, that will become our reality and we’ll be able to grow and add new programs and services to what we already provide to this community.

You know, getting back to what we just talked about, our support of this community and their support of us is something that we want to continue to grow. So doing things in the community and doing things with the community is incredibly important to me. And so we want to continue to, to focus on that and then, you know, we’re here to serve.

And so my crystal ball unfortunately, is not working. And so I can’t tell you what, you know, what all of the healthcare needs are going to be for this community in the future but what I can assure you of is that we will be here to serve this community. 

Shannon: [00:23:34] Well, thanks Beth. And as you know, The Friends will be here to help you along the way. 

Beth Duffy: [00:23:38] Definitely a partnership, Shannon.

Shannon: [00:23:40] Absolutely. Well, Beth thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate your insights and sharing all about Einstein Medical Center Montgomery. And hopefully we get to talk to you again very soon. 

Beth Duffy: [00:23:52] Ah, thanks. Shannon. You take care, stay safe, everyone. 

Shannon: [00:23:55] Thanks, you too. 

And if anybody’s interested in becoming part of Einstein Montgomery’s branch of The Friends, or want to learn more about the Friends as a whole and all the other groups we have, we are in the middle of an annual membership drive and would love for you to check us out at advance.einstein.edu/friends. You can also join us on our Facebook page and stay up to date on all their friends events.

Shannon: [00:22:52] Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky.

Jamie: [00:22:59] If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Shannon: [00:23:07] Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincilla  

Jamie: [00:23:11] and me, Jamie Lewin.

Shannon: [00:23:12] And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

Jamie: [00:23:17] Want to get the four one, one, and upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us at advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

Shannon: [00:23:29] We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of friend you are.  

Jamie: [00:23:38] And what kind of Friend you want to be.

Jamie Lewin: [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m Jamie Lewin 

Shannon Czincila: [00:00:08] and I’m Shannon Czincila.

Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you? 

Jamie Lewin: [00:00:26] Hi, I’m Jamie Lewin. I’m so happy to bring back by popular demand, Regina Longo, Transformational Empowerment Coach and yoga teacher. We had the pleasure of speaking with Regina a couple of months ago and wanted to bring her back for another discussion and meditation session. Regina, you know, I’m such a huge fan of yours. Thank you so much for being back here with us. 

Regina Longo: [00:00:46] Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. There’s so much shifting and transition happening still. And you know, we’re so focused on all the change since 2020, since all that transpired with the virus and so forth. But reality is, we’ve always been in contrast.

We’ve always been shifting and changing. It’s just that we didn’t bring much attention and or focus on it. So where we are now, as people are waking up to really recognize, well, wait a minute, what is my real next level? What is it that I really want to be doing? Because so many people are, have been living in situations and just experiences and jobs and so forth.

That really hasn’t been fulfilling and the big wake up, so to speak it’s happened on the planet is stepping into our next level. And then we get to ask herself, what is that for me? 

Jamie Lewin: [00:01:43] So I’m like really listening. So, what is it? What is it?

Regina Longo: [00:01:49] Okay, so what it is for everybody really is deep diving into your spiritual essence, spiritual principle. Spiritual principle is nothing that we could use as a simpler layman’s term, It’s just that inner hole, that inner guidance, it’s possibility, but using that possibility when it comes up from within. To take action on it. 

Most of us have been conditioned to ignore it, to ignore the pull. And I don’t mean anything when I say spiritual, I’m not talking religion. I’m not talking race. I’m not talking. If you’re vegan, I’m not talking, If you’re, you know, you’re a fish-eating, I’m talking, we’re all spiritual. Well, we’re all connected. 

And most people really lean into quote unquote spirituality, their spiritual principle when things are falling apart. When really, if we would just create that connection all of the time, and lean into spiritual principle, all of the time, in other words we save prayer for the last minute we beg God, and we end up asking needy questions instead of questions of knowingness, when really we have everything inside of us and everything we need to know is within. If we would just get quiet. 

 What happens is we, we wait until things fall apart. This is where meditation is so good. Like on the daily, even if it’s two, three, five minutes, if not a few minutes more, there’s no time frame on it.

It’s just what feels right to you to quiet down, to ask the questions appropriately. Not out of best despair, desperation, need, but questions of.  For example, whether you call it God or the universe, or divine, what would you have me do next? How would you have me contribute today? What are the signs today that you want me to be income aware of?

And just zip up, quiet down the chatter, the external and internal dialogue, and get quiet enough to listen. And that’s really it because I don’t know if I said it earlier, but we live in a world of contrast. That’s what it means to live and be in our humanness. If we didn’t have contrast, we would never really know what it is We truly, truly desire.

So we need to come into the acceptance that we actually live in a world of contrast, which is actually a gift. And what we think is quote, unquote, the contrast or problem, when we are aware of it, the solution’s always there. It appears. It’s just that, are we going to find that balance? 

And this is where meditation comes in this, or just quieting down the mind or simplicity of journaling or sitting quietly reading, getting into sacred, spiritual space in principle is really what it is. And for a lot of people, they don’t know that to a deep level because we’re so can we were so conditioned, we were so conditioned to get into.

Analysis paralysis of comparing ourself, analyzing to the next person, you know, like maybe getting ourselves to the top of the mountain. And then we like stumble and fall back or slide down the back end of the mountain. And then we throw our hands in the air we give up. Here’s the thing. Once you climb up the mountain, there is going to be another pitfall or valley or whatever you want to call it because there are so many mountains in front of you.

That’s what I’m talking about. When I say like, Ask God or the universe or divine or whatever you want to call it. Angels. What is my next level? Like? It’s the same thing as saying is what is my next step? Or what is my next mountain? The mountains are always going to be there. Otherwise we would get so stagnant in our comfort zone.

And as I said, we’re in a world of contrast. That’s what it means to be human. So there’s much more pain staying in your comfort zone. Rather than the pain of being in transformation or change because it’s going to happen regardless. Right? 

Jamie Lewin: [00:06:04] And we talked about it before, where you’re always, people are always focused on the past and bringing it up over and over and reliving it over and over rather than focusing on the present and the future and moving forward.

I also think what you said about people focusing on their spirituality when they’re in despair. It’s true. Everybody’s, you know, looking up to God when something is wrong and going, help me, what can, what can I do? What’s the answer, right? Instead of focusing on being grateful every day for what you really have and focusing on that in the good times.

And I think when you are in despair or have a challenge focusing on what you’re still grateful for and what is so good in your life can help you overcome that challenge too. 

Regina Longo: [00:06:43] Exactly. And that is beautiful because most people are like, well, gosh, how can I focus on gratitude when I’m in a time of difficulty? What we need to learn, how to do and this new, excuse me, great awakening on the planet is, and this elevation in our higher consciousness is scrambling or mixing up our psychology. 

We’re just so used to the five senses. Now it’s about, instead of, you know, it’s about, seeing with your heart hearing with your eyes, feeling with your ears, we’re used to it the other way around, you know, I can only, what’s that you said? I didn’t hear what you said? Intuitively if you tap into your intuition and going back to what you just said a moment ago about being in a place of gratitude, rewording, reframing how we speak to the divine, how we speak to the omnipresent to God.

When a contrast shows up, when difficulty shows up or a problem shows up, thank you for this coming to the surface level, because now it’s showing me what I don’t want. Now it’s really hitting home with me, so to speak, or tapping me in the gut. It’s not comfortable and I don’t want to live like this any longer.

So then that’s when the solutions start to show up because. Every time we have a difficulty. Every time we have a problem, the solution is there. It’s just which way are we leaning? Go ahead

Jamie Lewin: [00:08:19]. I think when we look back to of how far we we’ve come, all of us as individuals. It’s those moments that have made us who we are today. It’s not the moments that were easy and that work and that things just came to us naturally. It’s the hurdles we had to overcome. And the obstacles we went through that made us as strong as we are and smart as we are. 

Regina Longo: [00:08:40] it’s nice to look back exactly for that reason, but we have to keep in mind and remember that our future is not created from the past. Like God and universe, and the divine does not work in the past. The blessing, the abundance, the next level of your life is in the now, we’re leading you to the next step, which is your future.

It’s not about future tripping and getting two, three, four years out and freaking out because that could send you into overwhelm too. Right? It’s about just like I mentioned a little bit ago. What, what would you have me do next? What’s my next step? What is it that you want to show me for today? 

In my case, like where, who is my next client? How would you have me contribute as you know, a life coach and a yoga teacher? How would you have me contribute more? Who can I help? Right. When I ask and let God and universe know that I’m open to that, to that receiving of that, it’s up to me though, to take the action steps when that possibility comes up from within, or the spiritual guidance comes up from within like, Hey, you know, call such and such, they reached out to you, you know, three weeks ago, just touch base with them, see how they’re doing. And it ends up like, they’re like, oh my God, I needed you so much today. Or. Oh, my God. I’ve been thinking of calling you, you know, I actually do want to like start coaching with you again or start our yoga training again, or, you know, get back into yoga or, you know, something, you know. What we forget to do is act on those nudges that come from within, right.

And the same kind of nudge that come with, come up from within that are going to catapult you forward are also the same nudges and signs that teaches us what’s not good for us. Like I said, when the, every time there’s a problem, there’s always a solution. When it’s not feeling good, the universe taps you, the divine taps, you, God taps you. 

If you’re not paying attention, it just gets louder. Right. And then it gets loud enough to, yeah, well, you’re going to be possibly down to your knees, but that’s, what’s so profound about each and every one of us, our spiritual essence of who we are. You are going to get back up again. You are going to. Go up the next mountain, right?

It’s not so much forcing. It’s not so much, like I said, pushing, it’s not so much future tripping. It’s about trusting and coming into your own spiritual principle, which not one of us is slighted from. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:11:15] Right. And it’s not if, but when, and when is your time? Right? When is the right time?

Regina Longo: [00:11:24] Yes 

Jamie Lewin: [00:11:25] And I know we’re going to do a meditation session, but I think people need the tools to look within themselves and to find those answers. Because I don’t know if they’re aware of the signals and how to pay attention to the signs. And they are happening, but they don’t know. So it would be great if you could help us figure out how to come into that stillness and awareness. 

Regina Longo: [00:11:45] Right. Right. Last time, I’m not certain, but you know, it’s always great to revisit because even for myself, you know what, our main, one, big, grounding asset that we have being spiritual beings, having a human experience is our breath.

Our breath is very grounding. And we don’t recognize that when we get in such sometimes challenging situations, or exciting situations, that our breath shallows down, right. Instead of that deep, long breath in, and, and the significance of quieting down and getting really present would be mastering that breath that self-mastery of at least elongating, the breath, than your everyday daily breathing. So elongating that inhale at least by a count or two and exhale and by a count or two. 

Like, we don’t even realize that we don’t breathe in fully where we actually use. We only use about 10- 15% of our lung capacity. That’s scary, right? But if we take deeper, longer breaths in, from the lower part of our abdomen, like a full belly breath in and pull that up to our chest, which is what we do that focus in meditation, pulling it up through the chest, through into the head and taking session instant, just a slight pause and then exhaling it out through the mouth with the same amount of time out. 

You know, so for beginners, I really suggest to just practice with that. Maybe you set your timer. People can set their timers on their phones or, or literally a timer, on their microwave’s or, or whatever in their homes and set a timer for two to five minutes and begin there. 

And then I suggest challenging yourself and adding another minute or two on before, you know, it ends up being 10 or 15 minutes to the point where you actually create, crave that quiet time.

Jamie Lewin: [00:13:42] And you can just as a tool to alleviate stress throughout your day. Right? Know, you’re coming out of a stressful meeting, and you’re feeling really amped up and you just want to take a minute and just practice that breath. I think when you get out of that you feel so much calmer. 

Regina Longo: [00:13:51] Right. And not only the great word calmer, but it brings a sense of surrender. 

And we as human beings, don’t like to hear that word surrender because we think it’s like we’ve failed or we’re giving up our power when really surrender is a call to. The miraculous surrender is a call to opening. And when you do surrender and you do open that’s when the spiritual guidance comes in, because we could say all the mantras we want, we could speak the intentions we want, but if we don’t have the connection, that’s the great divide, right?

The lack of connection. If you don’t have the connection, that spiritual principle, the omnipresent, divine, or whatever you want to call it with your words or intentions or mantras or affirmations then they mean absolutely nothing. Right? 

Jamie Lewin: [00:14:45] There is always that balance too, right? Of control and controlling your life and the things you can control and the surrender.

Regina Longo: [00:14:52] Yeah. So we were mentioning, you know, not only people are dealing, some people are dealing with anxiety, still being, you know, not so much in lockdown. Like we used to be, but like still dealing with masks and so forth. Some are even afraid to like step out, you know, to their homes, whether it be even to, as you know, health facilities are starting to open wearing masks and so forth. 

You know, people don’t even want to go to that. People still don’t, you know, churches are open, but they don’t feel comfortable and that’s fine, but we want to help alleviate the fear, tension, stress, anxiety, depression, rage, anger. It just keeps snowballing into that stuff, but we don’t tend to it if we don’t tend to our internal garden. Right?

Jamie Lewin: [00:15:41] I think what’s really interesting about this past year is that because of COVID obviously people were very isolated and there’s this balance of how do you take care of your mental health while you’re taking care of your physical health and all of the things that you just mentioned where you’re not going to the health club, or you’re not going to your church or your synagogue and being part of the community.

There are still ways to exercise. There’s still ways to speak to, you know, your God or your spirituality and make sure you’re taking care of yourself mentally at the same time as physically. And they’re both equally important, in my opinion. 

Regina Longo: [00:16:15] And you know, what’s so beautiful is it’s actually the more, and it’s just like any other muscle, right? 

We go to the gym or we do any kind of working out if you’re developing physical muscles it’s it takes practice. We don’t just go and do like one workout and think our body’s going to be fit toned in shape and we’re going to be healthy. Right? 

Jamie Lewin: [00:16:36] It would be nice though, right? 

Regina Longo: [00:16:38] It would be amazing. The super, super miraculous quick workout. But you know, the working in, is the same, you know, it’s. It gets developed. It’s like a foreign language. You, you know, our primary language is English, but we, you know, if you’re bilingual or trilingual, you didn’t just learn French, like just by taking one class or studying at once or trying to read a few sentences over time, you know, being deliberate with it, practicing it, is how we develop that muscle.

It’s the same thing with meditation, the working on working in.  

Jamie Lewin: [00:17:16] Right. And if you don’t keep up with it and practice it, you lose it as well. So yeah. You lose your income as part of your daily practice. 

Regina Longo: [00:17:23] Right. And then, but that’s where most people trip themselves up and they feel like, oh, I took two, three, five steps back.

Now, I got to throw my hands in the yard and they see themselves like climbing that mountain again. Then if you just come into acceptance, life is, you know, peaks and valleys, mountains and valleys, you know, highs and lows. And again, it’s, it’s just full of contrast. And when we start the scene scheme, that is the beauty.

That’s how we start to spin our psychology around that. We were so trained out of fear to live in. We were so controlled and trained in that. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:17:59] And you were talking about going up this mountain and it’s never a straight line up the mountain it’s up and down and up and down constantly until you get to the top.

I mean, in everything in life, right. 

Regina Longo: [00:18:09] That’s right. That’s right. It’s so, it’s so true. It’s like the breath, we can’t keep inhaling and exhaling. Right. So, and just the simplicity of breath work, fresh oxygen into the flow blood going deeper. It’s actually waking up and having the blood pump more deeply into all the internal organs, right?

Having them work more efficiently, internally, right? Because so many of us are like even starting to suffer with like gut issues and, you know, intestinal issues and so forth. And We it’s now it’s now, right? Like I mentioned earlier, it’s not in the past. It’s not the good old days. It’s not like when I was younger, I was more healthy and fit. Now is the present moment. 

And it’s now where we’re creating the very next moment. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:19:02] Yeah. I think some people compare to their, their former selves and it’s, it’s not as good, but it’s just as good. It’s just different and that’s okay…

Regina Longo: [00:19:11] For sure, it’s about changing your psychology, being really excited and enjoy, enjoy, and enjoy the adventure.

The journey of what’s next. Right? The other beautiful thing about prayer is, and meditation is, give it to gov, give it to the universe. Let, let God handle the details because that is what’s really happening. When we create that connection. It’s like pouring accelerant, like on a fire, or if you have  a coal grill, you know what I mean? 

You pour that fire accelerant on there. That’s what meditation is. That’s what prayer is. That’s what your breath work is. It’s accelerating the process. And if we would just get joyful in the adventure of that, it would change everything. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:20:01] I love it. Being still to accelerate. 

Regina Longo: [00:20:03] Yeah. Get Quiet.

Jamie Lewin: [00:20:06] Let’s do it. Let’s get still. Let’s learn how to do this. 

Regina Longo: [00:20:09] Okay. Let’s do it. So I’m going to guide you through, and then hopefully all the listeners that are joining in can get themselves settled in, quiet down. You could certainly sit on a chair, you know, lay yourself down if you’re comfortable that way, even standing up. Right. Eyes can be opened. Eyes can be closed.

Just get comfortable. Right? If you’re lying down on your back, I prefer you to be on your back because we want to get our spine open and long. So if you’re sitting in a chair, maybe ground your feet wet and at least sit up right. Rather than slouching the shoulders forward, you know, literally pick your shoulders up to your ears, roll them back and roll them down.

Right. And then just as you quiet down, and get into your body, right? Maybe you come into your, the front wall of your forehead at first. Maybe you do start noticing thoughts going on. Maybe you do notice, you know, and you think about what already transpired in your day, but yet you think about what’s already on your to-do list to accomplish for the remainder of the day.

And if you could just be willing to settle in, just let that go. Just commit to yourself and maybe just ask yourself the question. Am I willing to let that go for the next five, ten, twelve minutes or so? Just the next five, ten or twelve minutes of my life, 

and then become aware of the rhythm of your breath without altering it just yet. I’ll guide you through that without changing it just become aware of the rhythm. Is it shallow? Is it supportive? Are you breathing in through your nose and your mouth? Is it just your mouth?

and if you’re okay with it, if you could just close and seal your rest of your lips together, closing the mouth and just take a nice, slow, long, deep breath in through the lower part of your abdomen. Like a full belly breath in, long, slow breath in inhale, deeply bringing that breath in and up through your chest in through the top of your head and then exhale all the breath out.

Now when we take that breath and again, take that breath in through your nose. Inhale deeply.

this time, open your mouth and let all the breath out. Let it go. 

And on your own, keep that rhythm going. Take a nice, long, deep breath in, again, filling up the low belly, let it pull up through the front of your chest, up through your throat, into the base, into the head and exhale the breath out. So, you see, as we’re doing this, it’s taking our breath or inhale and exhale at least four to five counts in.

So again, take a nice deep, deep breath in.

And a full breath out.

And then if you don’t mind just come, become aware of a body part, your shoulders, your hands, your leg, feed, your torso, just become aware of a body part of yourself without you using your five senses just yet, but without using your eyes or anything to touch, just notice the sensations that are around that body part. As you continue this breath, take another deep, deep breath in. 

And a full breath out.

Again, a deeper breath in, so there’s really no shortcut exhale. All the breath out in this connection that you created has to happen through mindfulness, through meditation. Now bring all of your attention down to that low belly, as you take a breath in.

And exhale full breath out.

Drop your attention to the soles of the feet, whether you’re seated or standing or lying on your back. Take a full breath in and see if you’re willing to create either a base, a base like a base of the museum and exhale all the breath out like a base that supports a fresh just piece of art. Just like that of you, the precious being that you are and see if you’re willing to. 

As you breathe in deeply let the base that’s beneath you, go down through the surface of your home or your office space, wherever you are into the core of the earth, all the while you’re keeping that breath go. Me your next breath in deep part of the core of the earth, through your pedestal, through your base, pull that breath in, through the pedestal all the way through the base belly, up through the chest.

And then exhale all the breath out.

So notice do that again. Keep your breath flowing, from the core, the center of the earth, view your pedestal, through the sit bones, your sit bones, through the soles of the beat of the breeder, chest and exhale all the breath out. So notice how very supported you are with God, the universe, with pure source.

Again, take a deeper breath in and then, whatever it was that you came in with, stress, despair, sadness, frustration, whatever you came in with today in today’s meditation. I want you to witness and observe above the crown of your head, as you’re nicely supported through your pedestal, above the crown of your head. 

Like as if you were standing in shower, maybe ten, eight, ten, twelve inches above your head. Is the top spout of your shower and you get to turn on the faucet or not. take a full breath in big breath in, supported from the earth. Fill up your body, your body temple, and exhale, all the breath out. You get to decide whether you’re turning on the faucet or not.

And this faucet is just going to purify, clear and, cleanse anything that you’re carrying around with you as a burden. So as you breathe in, I want you to notice whether or not you’re choosing to turn on your faucet. And as you exhale, notice the water coming through the crown of your head. Rinsing out any debris through your brain, through your heart, down through all of your internal organs, through your spine.

Exhaling that breath down through your pelvic floor, down through the soles of the feet, into the drain of the earth, right down through your pedestal. And as you breathe in inhale deeply

and exhale, notice that rinsing through. See, if you could bring a color to your water, coming out of the shower, head the faucet, right? Just, is there a color to it? Is it golden color? Is it green? Is it this bubblegum pink color? That color of love, that rose quartz color, whatever it is for you. Is it golden color? 

Just go ahead and let it rinse all the way through. Purifying the body draining out through the soles of your feet. And as you take the breath in, it’s like taking in nutrients or vitamins that we do on our daily basis. You’re pulling in their frequencies, the nutrients from the divine mother earth, through your body, through all of your vital organs, and you’re exhaling and rinsing it’s through and letting it drain out all that no longer serves you.

Take another full breath in.

Just relax through the shoulders, relax the mind, exhale on the full breath out. And by now you’re nice and clear and centered in, maybe now, as we continually go inward, you’re in your sacred space and you get really internally quiet, with you and your God who you and the divine, and allow yourself to stay close to that spiritual nature that we just created, but still all the while, as you breathe in, envisioning that pedestal and pulling in the nutrients, right from the core of the earth, up through the body and the exhales constantly rinsing out everything and anything that no longer serves you. 

Understanding that this is actually your superpower. This is your superpower, this connection that you’re creating, it’s surrendering. It’s your relationship with source, it’s your relationship with God and universe.  

And then you get to ask for a sign. Again, take a deeper breath in, maybe God or the universe or pure source. How would you have me served and exhale the breath out, where maybe you asked just the general question, taking a nice deep breath in show me what’s next for my life and exhale the breath out.

And start to notice the feeling the sensations, as you ask the proper questions to yourself, take another full breath in. 

And Full breath out. And when you surrender maybe things about your life or your business or your relationship start to show up and the next step for you to do. Is to lean in deeply to whatever it is you’re feeling and take those inspired action steps with your humanness. This right here is your spiritual principle.

This is your spiritual self, connecting, creating that connection. So when you come out of your meditation, as we take one more deep breath in, open the mouth fully, let it all go empty out. Maybe you keep your eyes closed. Maybe you open them up, but as you open your eyes, as you come back into your physical body, into your human essence of who you are, you know what to do. 

It’s just stepping beyond the fear and taking that very next step

So that was just a short, short little meditation for each and every one of us, about 10 minutes long. Uh, hopefully you all enjoyed it and hopefully it just brought you a little bit of peace. And again, it’s just something you do on your own. If anything, maybe just find your way into breath without asking the questions and the more you keep practicing it, the easier it becomes.

Jamie Lewin: [00:31:12] That was amazing. Thank you so much. I know we talk about that being a morning meditation, but for people with anxiety or have a difficult time falling asleep, it just seems like such an amazing way to end your day relaxed your mind to de-stress and just create rest and peace.

Regina Longo: [00:31:28] So true. You know, I try to do a little bit in the morning and for sure I do that when I’m in my bed at night. I actually go through my body and that exhale I go through and then that it runs through my brain and then the next breath, and I go a little deeper, as we did on this particular guided meditation. 

And I start to move through each organ of the body because our organs take in so much debris, not just debris from the roads and how we go through our day, emotional debris. From what’s coming at us that we’re not even aware of, that we don’t see with our human eye, but our spiritual eye. And we have to be willing to let that go.

If we don’t, we end up recycling it in our very next day. I mean, did you ever notice if you go to bed upset or angry, that you actually wake up with that very same thought that he went to bed with? It might be your second or third thought or the morning, but it’s actually right there again. If you don’t let it go and let it rinse through and hand it off to God or let it drain through your pedestal.

Jamie Lewin: [00:32:36] It seems like something too, if you’re, you’re grasping with something, you go to sleep and maybe you wake up with the answer right?

Regina Longo: [00:32:44] lifted. If we ask the proper questions, if we go to bed, stress and anxiety, Britain, you’re going to wake up like that with still not the answer because you’re holding yourself away from you’re separating yourself only through the connection. 

Right. So if we ask the proper questions again, whatever you want to call it, whatever it is you lean into, or if you want to call it God or divine, call it something, and ask the proper questions. Please do the night through my higher consciousness, you know, provide me with a solution, answer to what I need to take this very next step.

Jamie Lewin: [00:33:22] I’m going to start listening to this every night.

Regina Longo: [00:33:24] Good. Thank you. .

Jamie Lewin: [00:33:27] Thank you so much.  

Regina Longo: [00:33:31] Yes, you’re welcome. Thank you for hosting me again. 

Shannon Czincila: [00:33:35] Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky.

Jamie Lewin: If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Shannon Czincila: Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincilla  

Jamie Lewin: and me, Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila: And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

Jamie Lewin: Want to get the four one, one, and upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us @advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

Shannon Czincila: We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of Friend you are  

Jamie Lewin: and what kind of Friend you want to be.

Jamie Lewin: [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m Jamie Lewin. 

Shannon Czincilla:  [00:00:08] and I’m Shannon Czincilla. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Both: [00:00:19] Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you?

Jamie Lewin: [00:00:27] Hi everyone. Shannon and I are here this morning with some special fathers for our father’s day episode. I’m really excited to introduce my dad, Harris Lewin, and my husband, Kevin McMonagle. 

Shannon Czincilla: [00:00:38] And I’m here today with my husband, Bob Czincila, and we are looking forward to some great conversation about some of the best and maybe some of the most challenging things about being a dad and a grandfather today. So with that, we’re going to leave it up to you, gentlemen, to talk about let’s start off with what you like the most about being a dad or grandad?

Kevin McMonagle: [00:00:58] I guess I really got to watch what I say cause I’m here with my father-in-law, but Bob, how old are your kids? Are you the middle representative of the kids?

Bob Czincilla: [00:01:10] The youngest is 13. We have a 13 year old girl and we have a 15 year old boy and we have a 17 year old boy. So I’m all teenagers at this point. One’s almost an adult, technically, although that’s a far stretch at this point.

Harry Lewin: [00:01:22] I’ve got two children, both in their forties. They’re almost adults as well. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:01:27] And then I’m bringing up the rear with the young ones, so three and a half and five and a half. You know, when they’re that age, it’s important to them that you do the haves and you do the quarters and everything they’ll help, they really make sure that you’re, you’re extremely accurate in the ages. So, I’m still in the sleep deprivation phase, but, having little kids is a lot of fun to kind of see things through their eyes.

You know, kind of the awe and wonder of, of them kind of navigating the world and, you know, having you slow things down a little bit is just kind of nice, but, you know, I know that my, my daughter, Madison is a five going on thirteen, so, you know, it’s going, it’s going fast. 

Harry Lewin: [00:02:09] Well, I have to tell you as a grandparent, that’s also true to see a grandchild or grandchildren and seeing the world through their eyes as they grow up in the wonder. It’s all sort of new again, it’s really, really very sweet.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:02:23] Well you rent. Right? So I get to own the kids, but grandparents rent, which is great because they can just send them back, fill them with sugar and then return them to their owners too, while I take care of all the tough stuff. 

Harry Lewin: [00:02:39] I’ve become known around here as a department of yes. It’s just, you know, whatever it is you want, as long as it’s not going to be harmful to you, a little sugar, a little staying up late, a little, don’t tell your parents, all of the above becomes a department of yes. As a matter of fact, just a quick, funny story with one of the grandkids, my son’s, son. I hesitated once before I said yes, and he looked up at me and said what are you thinking about? The answer’s yes. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:03:13]  They’ve, they’ve conditioned you, I guess. 

Harry Lewin: [00:03:17] Nah, that’s just the way it is. The joy of being a grandparent is not having to say no. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:03:22] That’s great. You know, as I listened to Kevin talk about the ages of your kids. I think back about how fast nearly eighteen years has gone by with our oldest. People will tell you how fast it will go and you don’t really recognize it until you sit down and you think about all the things that you’ve been through and the places that you’ve taken them and the time that you spent with them in the holidays and the birthdays and the experiences that you had.  

You know, yesterday, I had the fortune of watching our oldest play in a lacrosse tournament, both Saturday and Sunday and I came home and I sat by our swimming pool yesterday afternoon and I was going through Father’s Day past on my phone and looking at places that we’ve been and, you know, meals that we’ve had and experiences that we’ve shared together and it’s just crazy to think that, I remember when they were five and a half and three and a half, and it feels like it was yesterday, but it was a long time ago now.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:04:19] Well, I think they say that the days are long with the years are short. Right? 

Bob Czincilla: [00:04:24] Absolutely. Absolutely. 

Harry Lewin: [00:04:26] I could attest to that. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:04:29] We’re in the long days and nights stage with the kids, but you know, we grab some sleep where we can, and I think that, I remember when the kids were born. Jamie likes to remind me of, of the story, where as new parents we were in the hospital and the nurses are checking in kind of every day and making sure that everything’s going well and everyone’s feeling good and then you’re like, all right, time to check out. 

Do you have the car seat in the car? And then you just walk out, and you have three of you and no one checks so on you and there’s no owner’s manual. They just let you leave and you’re like, oh, okay. Got the whole family now. 

Harry Lewin: [00:05:13] It’s interesting. They don’t come with directions, right? 

Bob Czincilla: [00:05:16] Exactly. When Nicholas was born, our oldest, he was born at Bryn Mawr and, I’ll never forget the day that I went to pick them up and take them home and I pulled into the drop off and loading area at the front entrance of the hospital, and I caused a major traffic disruption because I could not, for the life of me, figure out how to get the seat out of the base to I could go upstairs to get him into it, not realizing that the lock was underneath and all you had to do was pull on the handle and I literally struggled until the valet came over and showed me how to do it and I felt like a complete moron. If this is how it’s starting, it’s not going to go so well. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:05:58] The people that make those car seats are the same ones that make the strollers that collapse. They’re basically, it’s totally impossible to figure those out.

Harry Lewin: [00:06:06] I didn’t have that problem because we didn’t have car seats. We just walked. We just walked out and walked out of the hospital. Yeah, exactly. We just walked out of the hospital, got in the car and drove off. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:06:17] No seat belts, no car seats.

Harry Lewin: [00:06:20] Uh, you know, I don’t recall whether they were seat belts, but there certainly were not car seats.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:06:24] It’s crazy. 

Harry Lewin: [00:06:25] Yeah. Somehow or another they’re here. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:06:28] They all survive. Right. You know, we think about the things that we did when we and how protective of we are now in various and different ways and, you know, I think that’s one of the things that they’ve taught me is that there’s things that I worry about that I probably did a whole lot worse when I was a kid and they’re like, yo dad, it’s all right. You know, take a deep breath and stop being so anxious and worried about this. It’s gonna be fine. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:06:51] You know, the safety stuff like wearing helmets and everything is cool now and when we were little, it wasn’t as cool. So now they’re like, dad, you didn’t wear your helmet. I’m like, you’re right. I get it. I’ll put it on. We’ll go ride the scooters. It’s built into the culture now, which is nice.  

Shannon Czincilla: [00:07:10] What about maybe something about your relationship with your kids? You know, Kevin, how it is right now, maybe Bob, a little bit, how you’ve seen that grow and then Harris, maybe a little bit, you know, full circle back to your adult children, and then say the grandchildren again, just maybe the relationships with the kids and maybe some things you learned from them?

Kevin McMonagle: [00:07:31] I think Harris is kind of a great role model and hope that, I can raise the kids like he’s raised his own. You know, I think that one thing that we’ve talked about a little bit is it’s kind of interesting how each kid kind of comes with their own personality, you know? So you have the first one you think, oh, you know, I can really help mold them and set them on the right path and you have the second one and they’re totally different and you realize, oh, okay, I’m just kind of along for the ride and you can guide them as well as you can, uh, you know, and try to nurture as much as you can, but, you know, they have a lot of built-in personality and opinions that, you know, you can only do so much about. I know you felt your kids are a little different as well, Harris.

Harry Lewin: [00:08:18] I never had, I gave up the idea that I had any control whatsoever, but that’s another story. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:08:23] You learn to enjoy things that they enjoy it, that, that younger age. So you spend a lot of time watching cartoons and Disney movies and things that sometimes have a little bit of a underlying adult humor in them to kind of make the parents laugh and as they’ve gotten to the ages that they’re at now, they want to share all the things that Shannon and I do. So they wanna participate in everything that we enjoy in terms of a series we might watch on television or when we’re traveling. So it it’s a fun age. I mean, they’re all fun ages.

You know, full disclosure. I did not like the infant stage. I was a great dad, I think. And I took care of them and Shannon worked, and I was home with them, and I did diapers and everything else, but until they were sitting up and laughing and giggling, I really started to enjoy having children more at that point. But now that they’re in their teens and, you know, we have one it’s closer to 20, it’s fun to do things with them that you typically wouldn’t do with a three-year-old or a five-year-old, you know, going on surfing lessons and going on hikes and taking them to various parts of the country that, you know, they’ll appreciate more at that age now than they would at a younger age. So that’s kind of the stage I think that we’re at and we really enjoy. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:09:38] Yeah. We’re looking forward to that. We’re currently in the, uh, let’s watch Frozen a hundred times in a row, and then we get a new movie and we watched that about a hundred times in a row. So it’d be nice to do things that are a little bit on our level. And, you know, you talked about that, the infant stage being challenging. I think that something that Harris and I talked about it a little bit is, you know, something, we wish someone told us earlier in the game, you know, when you bring these kids home, and you’re kind of like, you know, what do I do with them?

They’re infants, they’re in their cribs. You kind of keep checking on them like every hour and they’re, they’re making these noises and they sound like kind of little dinosaurs or something. You’re like, what are these noises? Are they okay? You know, as long as they’re making noises and, you know, making sounds and moving around like they’re fine. Just let them be. You don’t need to be all over them all the time. They’ll, they’ll, they’ll work it out. So as young fathers, I think the worrying and just not knowing  they’re little is part of the stress, for sure. It’s kind of just trying to figure out what to do there. 

Harry Lewin: [00:10:47] But what’s interesting to me at my age is seeing a transition from father to me, to what I’m hearing from Bob and from Kevin around father involvement with children. I don’t recall that my, my dad or his contemporaries were as involved with child rearing in there and they’re time. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:11:14] Or even the birth. I mean, they wouldn’t let you in the room. Right? 

Harry Lewin: [00:11:17] Well, I was in the room until they kicked me out. You know, as soon as they induced labor, they said, you’re now it’s time for you to be, get out of here. And I was just as happy not to be there, but I know a lot of my friends look forward to being in the delivery room, but, no, my father would not even think of being in the delivery room. I’m not even sure that he was near the hospital at that time, but, um, certainly, it was work and you would come home. He wasn’t coming to lots of ball games or involved in sort of parent teacher conferences, just sort of the same things that I see young fathers being involved with today and I recall in my life, it was sort of a transition I was involved, but I was also not involved.

So there was, there were times when I was watching television, but there were times when I was off at work, trying to figure out how much involvement there is. But as I see Kevin and my son and their involvement with their children, it’s significantly different than my father’s involvement with me and so I’ve just like I watched the transition happen over the last 40 years or so where dads are watching Frozen, changing diapers, uh, having, wait, what are those things called where you carry the child? Like the Baby Bjorn but you know, my father would have shot me if I was wearing a baby bjorn. It just wasn’t, I wasn’t in that, in that time.

Bob Czincilla: [00:12:54] It’s just that the technology wasn’t available. They hadn’t invented the Bjorn yet.

Harry Lewin: [00:12:57] Well, listen.  He could’ve strapped me to his back, but he didn’t do that. It really is, I think, a really positive movement towards child-rearing to have dads much more involved with children than they were in previous generations.

Bob Czincilla: [00:13:13] You know, getting back to your comments, Harris, I agree with you because my day, and I think it was a function of that generation. You know, the men typically went to work and they weren’t home and it was expected that mom was going to raise the kids. Kevin, I’d like to hear what it’s like for you, because it sounds like, you know, between you and Jamie, with Jamie having a career and working and you being around the kids and helping out, that’s sort of how we’ve raised our children.

Shan and I both had careers since the day we met basically or shortly thereafter, where we started with our respective institutions and, she worked often until she had Nicholas and then went back shortly thereafter and has been back really full-time for many years now. So we’ve always been good partners when it comes to, um, splitting the responsibilities or sharing the responsibilities and I wonder how that works for you. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:14:10] I work in web development. So I’ve been working from home for a bunch of years now. So the kids are kind of always around. They’ve been going through a stage. My oldest is five and a half, so for at least five and a half years, and we’re going through a real mommy stage where it doesn’t matter what it is. If I give them the food, they don’t want the food, but if mommy gives them the food, then they want it. So that is a little bit of a challenge, to try and help in some of those things.

They don’t necessarily want daddy all the time, but, you know, I think we split things up. I do a lot of the cooking at the house and try to help where I can, but I do think that a lot of things do fall on the, on the mother as the caregiver to, you know, still, you know, I think there’s some innate pull to do these things for the kids and, you know, I think that Jamie really goes above and beyond for her taking care of the kids and, you know, I kind of feel like I’m helping where I can, but always looking to do a little bit, do a little bit more, I guess, to help lighten things up. 

Harry Lewin: [00:15:22] That’s an interesting comment, because you said you’re helping where you can. It’s still calls to Jamie for a lot of the work in child rearing. In my father’s era, there was no helping where he can. He went to work, he came home. My mother also worked, but she also did all the house chores. She did all the cooking. She did all the cleaning. My dad went to work and came home and expected a meal on the table. In my generation, the phrase, helping out, meant that I wasn’t in charge. I was there to take direction. You do this, and you do that, and I think maybe it’s still, maybe that’s still true that, the burden still falls on mothers. And dads are there as helping out, not sort of being in charge of anything.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:16:15] And some of it’s a little cultural too. I mean, you know, just even setting the kids up for school, et cetera. Jamie gets all the forms to fill out, the shots that they’ve had and, you know, figure out what, what class they’re going to be, et cetera, and she even pays the bills, but they send me the receipts via email. The school, just like by default sends me all the receipts via email. Jamie’s like, why am I not getting these? I go, I don’t know. I don’t send any of the other information in school. I don’t know why they think it should be going to me, but. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:16:47] Shan is our chief financial officer, so she’s responsible for the budget and everything else and she has this like super-secret spreadsheet that God forbid anything ever happened to her, I’d have to figure out how to get to it and figure out what the heck I’m supposed to do in terms of paying bills. It’s locked with the kids’ birthdays.  

Kevin McMonagle: [00:17:04] That’s the test.

Bob Czincilla: [00:17:05] Right. Right. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:17:07] Kind of with the, just the involvement. Things are changing a little bit, but there’s obviously still a decent amount of work to do. 

Harry Lewin: [00:17:14] But it’s still much, it’s still much more of a shared enterprise now than I think it was in my generation and in the generation previous to me, in terms of the burden of making sure that things are done at home, that meals are prepared, that kids are taken care of that there’s involvement at school and play dates.

Bob Czincilla: [00:17:37] I have so many different memories, and I’ll share one and Shannon may say, take it out. You’re not allowed to have that one in the podcast, but I remember we had, we had both Nick and Connor, and we had had a conversation about whether or not we wanted to have a third child and we tossed the idea around and we thought we probably would at one point, but we wanted to have a little reprieve with, you know, two boys that were you know, a couple of years apart. Nicholas was born in 2003 and Connor was born in 2006 so they were like 26 months apart or so and I came home from a shift at Einstein in Philadelphia, an early shift that I’d worked, I was home around noon time and I walked into a house and Shannon was sitting in the playroom with the kids and was not in best form I should say. She looked like she’d had a rough morning. The kids were just kind of crawling all over while she was laying on the floor. It looked like she’d been really beaten down that day and she said to me, go, go take a look at the picture on the wall and I said, alright. 

So I walked out and she had a photo completed from the flower show years ago with the children’s names and the flower that was a representation of their name, and it was framed and she stuck a post-it note on there that said and child number three. And that’s how I found out. Promptly, properly congratulated her and proceeded to, um, get on the John Deere with a couple of Coors Lights and go cut the grass, contemplate what was going to happen.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:19:18] Real man work.

Harry Lewin: [00:19:20] Yeah, but nobody bothers a man behind a lawnmower. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:19:25] It was a good two and a half hours of deep thought, but that was 14 years ago now at this point, it’s crazy. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:19:32] It takes a strong family to decide to move the zone defense for man to man, you know. We have some more discussion and you’re like, I don’t know these two they’re outsmarting us already. You add a third into the mix and we’re really, we’re going to be up a creek. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:19:47] The best, the best part of that story was that, not for Shannon necessarily, but it was that we had a trip planned to Napa, to go wine tasting with friends. So my daughter inadvertently became the help as the designated driver, for all of us while we were away. I keep telling Shannon, we’ll get her back there sometime against all the things that she didn’t really get to participate in. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:20:12] Well, that does remind me of some advice that I got that I tried to follow.

Harry Lewin: [00:20:17] Was it from me?

Kevin McMonagle: [00:20:18] It wasn’t from you. I mean, you have a lot of great advice, but it was, it was a gentleman I worked with and he, he told me that, you know, when the kids are born, everyone’s going to be looking at the kids but you should look at your wife because, you know, it’s a tough time right after the birth of the child, and make sure you don’t forget about the mother after, after going through do the challenges of labor and then, you know, the whole family has kind of descends on the kids and then, you know, mom is still there.

Shannon Czincilla: [00:20:57] Hey bob, why don’t you tell the story about, I think after was it Paige was born or Connor was born?

Bob Czincilla: [00:21:02] Oh, yeah, I was going to bring that one up too. I didn’t know if you wanted to be reminded of that. Yeah, so Paige was born. We, we left the hospital to come home. I went through a drive through at McDonald’s and got a Big Mac. We went home and, um, promptly became violently ill home while home a newborn and my mother-in-law’s here, and I’m laying on the couch, trying not to puke my guts out. 

Got food poisoning, was sitting for a couple hours on the couch and I thought literally that one of them was going to stab me. There was a lot of displeasure that day. It was completely unintentional, and that was the last time I’ve ever eaten McDonald’s.

Shannon Czincilla: [00:21:48] Yes, a newborn, a 22 month old and a three-year-old.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:21:53] Well, that reminds me of when Jamie and I moved from Hoboken down around the Philly area. She was, I don’t know, you were at least eight months pregnant, nine months pregnant. The mover showed up, but since she was still pregnant, we’d only packed generously 75% of our house. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:22:13] We had been packing for two months and we still were only 75% because I could only do like an hour a day after work and then I was done.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:22:20] Yeah. So we packed. The movers came in and they kind of give us the look and they’re like, all right, they start throwing everything into boxes that everything loaded and we jumped into our car, but you know, you still have extra stuff so the trunk is totally full. And we get in there with Maddie who was two, in the back and again, Jamie is nine months pregnant, and we’d go to pull out, moving van is gone. Our house is empty and we go to pull out and I’m like the tire’s flat and it’s like totally flat. So, I go out and there’s like a nail sticking in, I think so I’m like, all right, like I know how to change a tire. I pull everything out of the trunk, pull the donut out, but there was like these like lock nuts on the-

Bob Czincilla: [00:23:01] wheel locks 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:23:03] in there and I couldn’t find the thing. So now we just, I’m calling AAA. It’s like, they’re going to be hours away and blah, blah, blah. So I ended up, I figure out how to like get the wheel lock off and I put a donut on, but I wanted to get like a real tire ‘cause we were going to drive like, you know, hour and a half, two hours. We go over to the autobody shop. They patch it, they put it on, we load all the stuff back into the trunk. We drive all the way down to the city and as we round the corner on the City Ave still like two miles from our house our daughter gets car sick in the back and all over the back of the care. We roll into the place, I don’t know, four or five hours after the movers got there. My dad met us ahead of time, but I was like, you know, if you wrote this into a sit-com, it’d be like this isn’t, this is too unbelievable of a story about the move, just like a total disaster.

Jamie Lewin: [00:24:01] And the entire drive we were on the phone, directing them where to put the furniture as they’re unloading the car because we weren’t there. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:24:09] And then you had the baby, what, three weeks later, or something.

Jamie Lewin: [00:24:11] Yeah, yeah. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:24:12] Try to do all the life events at once. Just move. Have the baby. 

Jamie Lewin: [00:24:16] Change jobs.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:24:18] Yeah

Bob Czincilla: [00:24:18] The house that we’re in, that we’ve been in now, it’ll be 18 years in September. We moved into in September of 2003, a month before Shannon was due and she was up on a ladder painting at nine, nearly nine months pregnant. It was great. I have pictures of it someplace. I should get those out. 

Harry Lewin: [00:24:37] Oh and now you’re worried about your kid wearing a helmet. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:24:41] See. I’m not, I’m not worried about the helmet.  

Harry Lewin: [00:24:47] When Adam was away at college, we had scheduled a trip with Jamie to Paris, and we’re at the airport in Newark and Adam was supposed to fly in from Columbus, Ohio to Newark, and they canceled his plane and so we had, we, it was almost like home alone. We abandoned him in Columbus. We had his passport with us in Newark. He’s in Columbus. He’s got no way to get to us. This was so long ago we actually left the passport with the airlines, and when he finally made it to Newark, he checked in with the airlines and they gave him his passport and he got on another flight, but while we were in the air, we had no idea what was going on on the ground with him. So there are, there are always interesting life events to take place where you’re involved with kids one direction or another. The only thing that could have topped your stories, if she had the baby while driving.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:25:50] Like in the movies where the water breaks and then the baby is born the next scene. That’s the other thing they don’t tell you is just how long labor takes, you know, it’s  like.

Harry Lewin: [00:26:00] What is that something you were? Nevermind.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:26:04] I mean I watched. I was there for the 24 hours yet you know, our second kid, we were sleeping and Jamie kind of nudges me. I don’t know at 3 or 4:00 AM or something. And she says, I’m going into labor. But I’m a little bit of a heavy sleeper, so I kind of just roll back over and I wake up and it’s like, I don’t know, eight o’clock or something and I wake up and I go, did you say you’re in labor? That she’s like, yeah, I’ve been walking around the neighborhood for like three hours, four hours, like just trying to like get the pain to go away and I had just fallen back asleep. But we didn’t go to the hospital for how long, how long after that? A couple more hours. You don’t go right away and wait for the contractions to get closer. So,  Jamie doesn’t like me to forget that I was sleeping for the first portion. I said, one of us needs to be rested and it might as well be me. Shan, We watching the death eyes. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:27:10] Shannon doesn’t want to talk about labor stories because hers were longer and longer and longer and not happy and very unpleasant so we’ll, we’ll leave that alone. That’s a talk for another time.

Harry Lewin: [00:27:21] Which is why my father said early on that if men had to have children, there’d be no children in the world.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:27:28] That’s right. Exactly right. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:27:31] One of the, one of the things I think about, you know, and it’s different from age to age is, you know, the challenges that you face with your kids and, you know, grade school challenges are different than teenage challenges than probably different than, you know, Harris could probably speak about in terms of what it’s like when you have a challenge with an adult child. Um, you know, not that not that Jamie probably caused any challenges ever, I would never suggest that. 

Harry Lewin: [00:27:58] How about more than one.

[00:28:00] Bob Czincilla: [00:28:04] You know, right now with teenagers and kids in high school, it’s just interesting to hear the things that they go through from a social situation and what happens with their friends and what it’s like in terms of their academics and trying to keep them, you know, Shannon, I always talk about, you know, people talk about having their, their kids or their loved ones, kind of keep them in line, have them walk a straight line and we talk more about having sort of like a circle or a bubble around them and trying to give them some leeway to move a little bit from side to side, but keeping them within sort of a circle, safety or however you want to look at it. So it’s a, it’s interesting, just the, some of the things that have gone on, especially over the last few years with all of the things that are going on in the world and the pandemic and politics and so on and so forth.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:28:55] How do you deal with social media and phones and stuff? You know, that’s something I’m not looking forward to and it’s not really what we grew up with.

Bob Czincilla: [00:29:04] Yeah. So, I am like, a big anti social media guy. Like I’m not a fan. I’m not on Facebook. I’m not on Twitter. I’m not on Instagram, and interestingly enough, our oldest really isn’t on very much social media. They all have phones. They’ve all had phones for a number of years and you, we have several reasons why we did it, maybe they’re excuses. I don’t know. But school, when they were the furthest away, it was a good nine or ten miles from home. And with Shannon and I both working, we thought it was probably wise for them to have the ability to get in touch with us if they needed something. So that was our main driver for it.

We just allowed in the last year Paige to have some social media, I think she’s on Snapchat or something along those lines. Connor really doesn’t participate in any kind of social media. He’s a bit of a tech head when it comes to computers and video games and so on and so forth but he’s not really, he doesn’t bother with it, and Nick, when he does for sports, because he’s a pretty good lacrosse player and, uh, posting stuff for colleges and coaches to see those types of things. So I think we’re fortunate in that you know, we actually sat down with them and we have to finish it. I think we still have a little bit left, but we watched the Netflix documentary, The Social Dilemma, and we had them all watch it with us.

It’s a really interesting watch if you haven’t seen it yet. And it kind of puts into perspective the impacts that social media have on your children, both good and bad, and I bring it up to them when, you know, if I feel like we’re in a, having a little bit of an argument or a conversation that revolves around something like that. I’ll say remember The Social Dilemma or what we talked about, what you saw in there. Just keep it perspective. So it’ll be interesting for you Kevin, to see what happens over the next, you know, eight to ten years and how things change with all these platforms and what you’re going to have to manage and deal with. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:31:06] Yeah. You know, I’ve worked in tech and, you know, w we kind of work on some app development and other things, just kind of seeing the there’s the, obviously the good with the bad with it. But you know, I am a little bit afraid of when do you introduce it? What happens when you know, all their friends have it, but you’re saying no. 

We had phones for, you know, for safety, you know, when we were growing up, but it was like a cell phone that had like a hundred minutes on it or something and you left it in the glove box, and you use it once ever right. Now it’s just kind of constant and, you know, I think from that, from that the documentary, you know, the gamification of kind of keeping, keeping folks attention and, you know, what does that do to the brain and everything? You know, we’re kind of, we’re running a live experiment on ourselves you know, the implications are a little scary, so. Yeah, we’ll see. We’re a little bit away. Hopefully it dials back a little bit and some of the craziness of social media lightens up a bit but.  

Bob Czincilla: [00:32:12] If I could offer any piece of advice would be hold off as long as you possibly can. Yeah.

Harry Lewin: [00:32:16] It’s not one of the challenges that I had with children growing, as they were growing up. Technology wasn’t as prevalent when  my children were growing up as it is now and I see with my grandchildren. You asked a very interesting question that I have around relationship with adult children.

So one of the things I’ve learned and it was a piece of advice I got from my father-in-law as a matter of fact, was not to offer unsolicited advice because if you offer unsolicited advice and you start to meddle folks, your grown children are really not going to listen in the first place. And the other piece of advice was when you do get solicited to give advice, don’t expect that your grown children are going to follow it. They’re going to ask for it. If it validates what they already think, they may go with it. If it doesn’t, they may still go with it but if they don’t get upset because you have to allow for adult children to make their own choices and trust in the fact that you have raised them to be good people and think things through, bright, mature, and hopefully you get lucky along the way though.

Bob Czincilla: [00:33:37] That’s, that’s good to hear. That’s something to keep in mind. It’s funny. My relationship with my Dad has changed over the years. And I was closer with my mom as a younger child, and I’m much closer, but not that I’m not close with my mom, but I’m much closer with my father now than I ever was and, you know, we probably talk at least a couple of minutes once a day um, if not at least several times a week.

He lives in Florida now so, it’s funny how you watch your parents change and Harris, I don’t know if your kids ever say things like this to you. And certainly, you get to a point where you’re sort of in the middle as a middle-aged adult and you’re managing your children and then you’re also kind of managing your parents to some point, where you kind of have children on both end in some aspects, depending on what their doing. And my father is married to a woman who is much younger, who could be my sister. My parents had divorced years ago. We all have a very good relationship with, with them and with the kids and with Shannon.

And the running joke is that my dad is now retired. And the only thing he talks to me about on a regular basis is the weather. So that’s all I hear about is the weather in Florida and how, oh, it’s so much nicer here. It’s 90 degrees with a hundred percent humidity. I’m sitting out on the Lanai having a cup of coffee. Here’s where we’re going to dinner tonight at four o’clock I’m like dad, four o’clock. That’s not dinner. That’s too early.

Harry Lewin: [00:35:06] It is when you have breakfast at 4:00 AM. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:35:11] So Harris, now that you’ve kind of gone through the full, you know, the youngest kids and teenagers and adult children, uh, you know, what, what did you really cherish and enjoy with the kids? You know, you talked about traveling a bit with Jamie and not traveling with Adam. Uh… 

Harry Lewin: [00:35:30] He eventually made it. I dunno, I just, I truly enjoyed my children at every age. I enjoyed them as infants. I enjoyed them as when they were school age, and I enjoyed seeing them off to college. I enjoyed when they came home, and I enjoyed even more when they went back. It’s been, it’s been a fun ride all around, you know, feeling lucky and very fortunate, to have children who grew up to be a good, productive adults with good marriages. I have grandchildren now, children of their own and grandchildren for me. It’s been a blessing and a good ride all along. Cherish every moment. 

Shannon Czincilla: [00:36:23] So one question going on the topic that my dad had mentioned before, where Adam missed the flight and had to kind of figure it out on his own, I guess we can start with you dad, since you have adult children, when did you start to see that you raised her kids to a point where they were starting to mature and you were like, they’re going to be okay on their own.

And maybe you can Bob, you have some stories. Your kids are a little bit older. I can already start to see a little bit with Madison where she’s starting to be very independent, and she’ll sleep over my dad’s by herself and do things a little bit and she’s only five, I think, oh good. She’s going to be good. You know, and she’s a teenager. She’ll be good and when she’s older, um, but maybe you guys have a little more insight since her kids are older than ours. 

Harry Lewin: [00:37:05] Oh, I don’t think I was really comfortable knowing that you were you and or Adam were going to be fine on your own until you’re actually on your own. You know, being, being at home, always watchful, always careful but once you went away to school, you were going to have to make choices on your own as to how you spend your time, whether you’re going to focus, I shouldn’t say focus, but how, how are you going to have a life balance, how you were going to enjoy your college years, at the same time, take your studies seriously and get through all of that.

So my sense is when you both left for school, watching your weight, college, being able to balance um, sort of life skills, feeding yourself and making sure that you’re going to be done and at the same time making sure that you got to class on time. But in addition, choosing which parties to go to, making choices about who your friends were and the, all of that, watching that from a distance. Uh, you being away me being at home, is what I really got to be comfortable that you’re in the right place, making good choices, not necessarily the choices I would make, but still good choices.

Kevin McMonagle: [00:38:31] You didn’t want to be a fashion designer?

Harry Lewin: [00:38:32] I did not want to be a fashion designer. I did not know I was not a fashionista. 

Bob Czincilla: [00:38:37] There, there are certainly independent. All three of them they’re independent in their own way. Not that I would not trust one over the other, but certainly the older they are the, obviously the, the more independent and self-reliant they can be. Nicholas has a license. He has a job. He’s been very independent about his schoolwork. We don’t have to keep on top of him to make sure things are done. He gets good grades. Now he wants to go to,, he’s looking to go to college and study either aerospace or mechanical engineer. So he’s got a good head on his shoulders. He’s traveled to Italy and to Costa Rica with the school programs. So he’s been, you know, traveling internationally. So we see glimmers of hope with him. 

Our middle one is very bright and flies, sort of by the seat of his pants and gets by without having to do very much. I think at some point that will catch up with him and you’ll realize I gotta make, maybe put a little bit more effort in, and Paige is very independent, but she’s still 13 and, you know, she still needs guidance and in some ways. I think that from a, a standpoint of  how they’re growing and the, um, The goals that they have for themselves in life, as well as the ethics and morals that we’re trying to teach them are in good place. We have a good foundation for them. 

Shannon and I were fortunate enough a couple of weeks ago to go out to dinner up in Skippack Village and we were at a restaurant and we ran into a very interesting group called Forever Young Veterans and they had a group of eight or ten World War II vets, who came to see the Reading Air Show, and we spent time talking with these folks for hours and the kids, when we sent pictures that we had taken with them said, please tell them, thank you for their service and I said to them, why don’t you hop in Nicholas’s car and come over here, and sit down and have a conversation and they were so excited to do that, that they showed up at nine o’clock at night and spend an hour talking to these gentlemen who had stories from the Battle of the Bulge and from the Pacific, the signing of the Japanese surrender. It was just fascinating and to see that they were so excited and interested to participate in a conversation like that really gives us hope that we, we think that we’re raising them the right way. 

Kevin McMonagle: [00:40:56] Obviously, our kids are still very young. So, you know, as Jamie said, little things here or there just kind of nice when they go to the park and, you know, they’re like, this is my new friend, and they kind of bring over some new person. So just kind of seeing them just socialize and be able to kind of run off on their own and play well and meet people. You know, that they’re kind of taking that little step to go out into the world so.

Shannon Czincilla: [00:41:25] Just, I want to thank everybody for talking about all these wonderful, uh, life stories, you know, Harris, your insights. Hopefully Bob and Kevin learned a little bit of advice, I would say to, as they continue on with their journey of being dads and maybe eventually granddad’s just like you. Bob and Kevin, thank you so much for your candid stories and, sharing even a little bit about Jamie and I, that we may or may not love, but you know, I’m sure other people may appreciate those stories. But thank you guys so much for taking the time to talk with us today. We appreciate it and, Happy Father’s Day, a little belated,  but thanks again. 

Shannon Czincilla: [00:42:03] Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky.

Jamie Lewin: If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Shannon Czincilla: Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincilla 

Jamie Lewin: and me, Jamie Lewin. 

Shannon Czincilla: And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

Jamie Lewin: Want to get the four one, one, and upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us @advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

Shannon Czincilla: We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of friend you are. 

Jamie Lewin: And what kind of Friend you want to be.

[00:00:00] Jamie Lewin: The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m Jamie Lewin. 

[00:00:08] Shannon Czincila: And I’m Shannon Czincila. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

[00:00:19] Both: Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you?

[00:00:25] Shannon Czincila: All right. Hello everybody. Jamie and I are here today with my very good friend, Dr. Claudia Lum. Claudia works in Internal Medicine at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery. She is also a wonderful mother of three young school-aged children. And we’re going to talk a little bit about going back to school, the new COVID guidelines and kids’ health in general. 

[00:00:50] Dr. Claudia Lum: Thank you so much for having me. I’m very honored to appear on the podcast.  I was saying that this has been sort of my gateway podcast. I wasn’t listening to podcasts before, and now I listen to all sorts of podcasts, having a downloaded an app finally. And so, as Shannon said, I am an Internal Medicine physician at Einstein. I work as a hospitalist, which means that I take care of the patients admitted to the hospital at Einstein Medical Center Montgomery, internal medicine. We, the simplest way I explain it is we take care of non-pregnant adults. So, we don’t really take care of anybody under the age of 18.

And when we have pregnant patients, the obstetricians are the ones that manage the pregnancy. It’s a lot of the older patients, so we are pretty heavily focused on our geriatrics. I do have three children ranging from ages five all the way up to nine. So I certainly had a lot of experience with navigating the world in the past year when it comes to schooling.

[00:02:02] Jamie Lewin: Claudia, we are having some of the same types of discussions right now, as we did last year regarding going back to school and COVID. What have you been telling parents about sending their kids back to school this year?

[00:02:13] Dr. Claudia Lum: Well, I’d say that from my standpoint, I have the benefit that we happened to be in Catholic school, so my children were in-person all year, last year. So I at least can say that. Thank goodness that went fine. The schools did an excellent job of keeping people safe. I would say looking forward to this new school year, the single best thing I think that parents can do is to get themselves vaccinated and get all their loved ones vaccinated.  

Now before everyone sort of starts rolling their eyes and say, okay, oh really? The doctor’s recommending vaccination.  There are very good reasons, to say that when we look at the states where currently hospitalizations are increasing, it’s in states where there’s low rates of vaccination, and the more that we protect the adults, then there’s fewer bodies for the virus to be able to set up in, and then you therefore protect your children who are under 12, who aren’t even eligible for the vaccine. I know there’s a lot of people who are scared about the vaccine. And I will say I had the great privilege as a physician working in a hospital that I was able to get vaccinated, back in January.

But I was scared. I was absolutely, you know, not knowing the future. It’s a newer technology and it wasn’t an easy decision to do something that at that point, I think that the Pfizer study had 40,000 participants in that. That’s a lot of people, but there’s still nervousness would say that in the history of vaccines. We tend to see the side effects in the first couple of months that we have never had a vaccine where there’s a sort of delayed response, say, say five years down the road.

Cause I know that’s a concern for a lot of people, is that the unknown will something happened later on, but in all of the vaccines that we give that has never been the case.  I don’t like the vaccine shaming of people. In general, I think as adults, we need to adult and everybody’s doing the best they can.

And certainly, I think kindness is something that we need to be doing to each other. And therefore our children.  

[00:04:27] Shannon Czincila: You know, we had those same conversations at home. I have a 13 year old, a 15 year old, and a 17 year old. And with the older boys there, they’re my fifteen year old and my 17 year old we had the candid conversations and have them be part of the decision making.

And even now my daughter, we’ve decided to get her vaccinated. At first, we held back just because she was right on the border of being of age, she was just 13, you know? And so we had those open conversations.  I’d say if, if you have the older kids and teenagers involved them in the conversation and involve them in the research, because that really helped us work through how to navigate it.

We did wait a little bit longer just to see, like you said, Claudia, some of the side effects. But yeah, I mean, I would just say, I would say as a mom with teenagers, just having those conversations, I think really reduced some of the anxiety that they were feeling about getting this strange new vaccine that, you know, some of their friends were some of their friends weren’t, but I would say for the older kids talking about it is definitely helpful. 

So Claudia, what are some of the concerns that you’re hearing from other parents or, you know, groups that you’re in, with going back to school? And, you know, that can be stressful in itself, just going back to school, especially for younger kids. And, but with the whole Delta, the variant and COVID itself and masks to no masks, what are some of the concerns you’re hearing from other parents? 

[00:05:47] Dr. Claudia Lum: Their concerns run the gamut from, will we even be in person as, as a whole to, is it even safe to send my child? I had read, and I thought that this was sort of phrased well, that part of the issues with schooling in general, was that going back to last year, the focus wasn’t, which it really should have been, children need to be in school, how do we do it safely? It was reversed. Do we even do school? and I think that a lot of people found with their children from the past year that virtual schooling. And I would say this, especially for my younger kids, my, my seven-year-old, the period of Montgomery County, where we all had to be virtual for two weeks, this past academic year, wasn’t good for him.

He cried at least once a day, every day. And it’s not his teacher’s fault. She’s looking at 20 kids on a screen and looking for hands up and, and he was getting a little lost and it certainly was bad for him. But then with the Delta variant, they are concerned about, you know, kids getting the disease.

I would say just like a sort of said earlier, being worried about, are kids going to get sick if they’re in person again, this is why I said, what do I tell parents? 

You should get vaccinated. The lower, the rates of vaccination, the more people will be sick and in the hospital. And then unfortunately the more vaccinated people that will get sick, because if there’s a lot of unvaccinated people around you with really high viral loads, these vaccines are not a hundred percent and nothing’s a hundred percent. So you are more likely to get sick.   

It’s a numbers game. If more people are getting admitted to the hospital in general, then more children are going to be getting admitted to the hospital. So it really all does, unfortunately, come down to vaccination. I do feel that children are better in-person.  And obviously, I can only speak to the younger children, but one thing in our family, we noticed, again, my poor seven-year-old last summer, he was having some pretty significant anxiety issues.

 He’s in general, a more anxious person, but it was, pretty severe to the point that we were talking to his pediatrician about, do we do counseling? We were having to use meditation apps for him to go to sleep at night. And I think part of that certainly was what my husband and I because he’s also a hospice we’re going through and taking care of, COVID patients and the potential danger of that.

But within a week of going back to school in-person and for him, it was a new school.  He had been in kindergarten at a different institution and then was going to first grade and within a week of school, he was back to his lower level of anxiety, but it was sort of shocking to us how much he needed to be around other children, his age, and this was with masks and six feet apart.

And it was just that, social interaction, was more important than we ha we had ever even realized.  

[00:08:52] Jamie Lewin: I think that’s a great point because a lot of people, especially with what’s going on in Florida right now, and, and the arguments about going back to school and people are saying that kids wearing masks, it’s bad for them psychologically.

And,  you know, what’s happening with their mental health. But to your point, the kids have been home and on zoom. That’s not good for them psychologically. So I think as long as they’re able to be outside and take the masks off date lunch and things like that, it seems, to me at least, the better option I have a three-year-old and a five-year-old they’ve been wearing masks for a year and a half now in school.

They’re fine. I mean, it’s just part of their life. They maybe have complained once or twice, but that’s about it. I think they seem more normal in terms of their daily schedule and their life. And that nothing has really changed and kids are more resilient than people give them credit. 

[00:09:40] Dr. Claudia Lum: Yeah, obviously masking is such a touchy issue and there aren’t a ton of studies on masking in children. 

I think as myself as a parent, of course, I have the privilege, I would say, that all of my children are fortunately, neuro-typical meaning they don’t have developmental issues. And certainly, from what I’m hearing people, that is where the masking issue, is a bigger issue. So I’ve said I‘m, I’m not really sure, you know, with, with the kids and masks.

Fortunately, my children were fine, I think because of what my husband and I were going through, they were, very much, you know, we came home with the N95 marks on our face. They knew that masks were keeping us safe. So they were perfectly comfortable to do the same. It’s certainly a tough situation, but, and I would say even in schools, it seems they are saying that masks are not necessary.

If you, as a parent, want to send your kid to school in a mask, then, then you should do that. Like Shannon was saying, this needs to be family conversations and taking everything. And you are the best one as a parent to decide what’s best for your child and your family. 

[00:10:52] Shannon Czincila: So that’s interesting because our school district just recently came out and said masks for everyone before the Delta variant started creeping in and our numbers started to creep up a little bit more. And I know Claudia, you’re seeing it at the hospital. More people being admitted with a Delta variant people who are vaccinated. Our school district has gone from “If you’re vaccinated, it’s optional.” 

 It’s that family discussion to now everybody’s wearing masks. So just Jamie, just wondering what other school districts are doing and Claudia, if you guys have the same thing where you are?

[00:11:22] Dr. Claudia Lum: So for our schools, being under the Philadelphia archdiocese, originally at the end of the school year, they had said no masks, but now with everything changing, we’re still waiting on them to let us know what that the plan will be for the fall. So I imagine I will get that information in the next week or two. 

[00:11:39] Jamie Lewin: We have not heard from the Lower Merion School District what the plan is yet. I have a feeling, it will be requiring masks. My kids also go to a private preschool, and they do require masks. And kindergarten is a half day, so my daughter will be doing half-day at one and a half at the other.

I assume that we will send her with a mask either way. Our goal is just to keep her safe, so for us, it’s a no-brainer, but I understand it’s a personal choice for everyone.  

[00:12:05] Shannon Czincila: So, Claudia, can you tell us a little bit about the Delta variant? 

[00:12:09] Dr. Claudia Lum: I have to be hopeful that we’re going to follow the pattern of some of the other countries that have already gone through their, their Delta variant surge, the caveat being it’s incredibly hard to predict this disease.

I was reading that 26 models the CDC tried to use in January of this past year to predict things, 23 of them by two weeks later or inaccurate. This is not that the CDC is doing a bad job. It’s just that this disease is incredibly hard to predict how it behaves. If we look at England,  their surge is already on the downturn.

It was about a month, you know, if you remember, India within the news, they were suffering terribly inMay of this year. I believe they were having, 400,000 new cases a day. They’re back down to 4,000 new cases a day. They saw the same thing in the Netherlands. So I have to be hopeful. 

Especially if you compare it to say the UK or the Netherlands, we do have similar rates of vaccination that hopefully, our surge will, follow the same pattern and will only take a month or so, fingers crossed. 

[00:13:23] Shannon Czincila: One thing I’ve been hearing is that the Delta variant, I don’t know if they’re true or not true but that it’s more contagious. So if you can debunk some of these things, that it’s not as severe, you don’t get as sick, especially if you’re vaccinated or any of those things. 

[00:13:42] Dr. Claudia Lum: True. Yes.

So those are all true, and there’s sort of a number, an infectious sort of marker, and I believe the Delta variant is a 9, which that means we’re sort of looking at more like chickenpox level of contagiousness. It’s not as bad as measles, which is, I believe, is at 14 or 15. So it definitely is easier to catch. 

 And I saw different numbers for vaccinated persons. If you’re vaccinated, it’s anywhere between a decrease of 4 times to 8 times, in terms of your ability to get it. Part of the reason they are also thinking that vaccinated people are more susceptible to the Delta variant is that it seems to take up residence in your nose first and doesn’t have particularly high viral loads in your bloodstream, which is what you need to treat.

If you’re vaccinated your immune system to start making antibodies to the virus that you have. So that’s why people are getting sick, who are vaccinated.  There are, I believe a couple, intra-nasal vaccines that are being looked at that might be very helpful in this regard. But certainly, being vaccinated is protective.

Unfortunately, vaccinated people are getting hospitalized. again, those rates of hospitalization are higher in popular in states where there are lower rates of vaccination. I did hear, I believe it was either Louisiana, Arkansas though that since they’ve been surging, their rates of vaccination have quadrupled.

So, fortunately, people are getting vaccinated. If you look at daily deaths, obviously no one wants to end up in the hospital, but our daily death tolls are not skyrocketing.  So, it does overall appear to be not as deadly.  

[00:15:31] Jamie Lewin: Can you also speak a little bit to these variants and how they come about? We didn’t have Delta before. I know it showed up, I think in South Africa first and it’s traveled, but the less people who are vaccinated, it seems like it will mutate and we’ll have other variants in the future?

[00:15:45] Dr. Claudia Lum: So with any virus does, it mutates, as time goes around. This is why we need a new flu shot every year.

Because it’s not the same strain, it mutates. We’re not going to stop it from mutating. What we need to do is try to give it fewer hosts, fewer human bodies to be able to take, take up residence in. So is Delta going to be our last mutation? Highly unlikely. We will probably see more, more mutations that will behave slightly differently.

But again, we need fewer, fewer bodies for it to be able to take up residence in.  

[00:16:24] Shannon Czincila: Claudia, are the symptoms the same for, you know, the Delta variant right now? I mean, I’m sure you can’t predict the symptoms for future variants like you just talked about, but for the Delta variant, are we looking at the same type of symptoms we did with the original COVID last year?

[00:16:38] Dr. Claudia Lum: I think because it does take up residence in the nose first, we are sort of seeing more head cold type symptoms, as one of those sorts of frustrating things about COVID is that it seems to do everything.  April of last year when we were first learning this, and we had our symptom list, of loss of taste and smell and, fever that then we were admitting patients to the hospital, as COVID rule outs. And this was when it was taking like more than a week to get, get a test result back. And you’d have someone, I had a patient who it was all just more GI symptoms and we’re like, oh, there’s no way they have COVID and then three days later their test comes back.

So it’s just one of the many challenging things about this disease is that you can never say, well, it’s definitely not COVID, cause it does everything. 

[00:17:31] Jamie Lewin: As we’re talking about sending kids back to school. Can we talk a little bit about extracurricular activities too, like sports and other things kids might do together? And what are your recommendations?  

[00:17:41] Dr. Claudia Lum: It’s been sort of interesting, in the public schools the sports started in person sooner than other schooling. You guys can correct me if I’m wrong on that. I don’t believe we saw huge outbreaks. So, I think again, it’s what makes you comfortable, certainly in terms of mental health activities for children and exercise are very important outside outdoor transmission.

Delta variant doesn’t appear to be a huge concern. My kids this summer have done some activities, and I was comfortable with them doing that. My oldest isn’t particularly athletic, so that’s not an issue, but certainly I would say if he, if he wanted to do a sport, I would be happy for him to do that. You know, especially if we’re outdoors. 

[00:18:32] Shannon Czincila: Well, I just remember, you know, there was even going back last year after the summer, there was just a little confusion. You know, some schools were doing outdoor sports. There was just no consistency to it. But I agree with you. Just getting them out the door, taking walks outside with the kids that was, you know, which is hard to drag three teenagers, kicking and screaming for a family walk.

But you know, at the end of the walk, we all felt better and, you know, and helped our mental health as well as, you know, working parents. I think that’s great advice, Claudia, that to get everybody out, doing something, whatever, whatever that is and what that looks like for your family. 

[00:19:08] Dr. Claudia Lum: In getting prepared for this, I was chatting to a pediatrician friend, and she told me that 80% of high school boys participate in a sport.

So certainly I think with that high percentage, I don’t think that’s something that you want to be taking away from your, specifically teenage boys. 

[00:19:24] Shannon Czincila: Yeah. And there’s some in the, I would say in the middle school and high school piece, there’s that social part, everybody’s going to see the game. Even if you’re not playing at the game, you want to go and see your team.

You want to support them. And just the comradery that it’s all part of that social experience rather than being another day, you know, on screens. It takes time out of their day a, in a productive way. But I just think that’s so important that you know, a good, good point called it to get them out. 

Even if you’re not that athletic kid, you might still want to go to the game and cheer your team on.

[00:19:54] Jamie Lewin: Talking about outdoor activities. There’s so many things we did last year because of COVID that we would never have done in a normal year. We went to a friend’s kid’s birthday party outside in January during the snowstorm, under a tent. The kids were playing outside, we’re outside for at least two hours freezing, but we just wanted to celebrate and be with people.

And it was the only safe way to do it. And so we did, and I was just laughing to myself. Like we would never have done this during the normal year, but the things you will do during COVID. I believe there’s an uptick in like fire pits for the best, for sure. 

[00:20:31] Shannon Czincila: So Claudia, you mentioned your, your kids doing meditation. 

Is there any other activity you would recommend for kids to relieve anxiety, yoga or, or group therapy, or anything else you can recommend? 

[00:20:44] Dr. Claudia Lum: So, I mean, I personally am a big fan of yoga. There is actually on YouTube, there are some kids yoga channels that my youngest two have done in the past. One of the meditation apps that I use is called Headspace.

And actually the reason I even got it last year was that they were providing it for free to healthcare providers, and they do have some, some kids meditation on there. I think really just talking to your children as much as possible. I guess to be the adult, just like when I am struggling with trying to help my son with his math homework, because it’s common core and that’s not how I learned math, and then you throw in the piece that I didn’t grow up in this country either. So I really didn’t learn this math. 

You don’t criticize the common core math, grind my teeth and I, you know, angrily scroll Google to find things, but I don’t tell him that I don’t like doing that this way. So I think we sort of have to do the same whatever your school district is deciding upon, because even right in being in Pennsylvania, the governor just said, it’s going to be up to the individual school districts that as long as you are making the decision to then send them back,  You have to validate that the everybody’s doing the best they can, the this, this changes frequently, the adults are trying to provide the safest environment based upon the current information and that could potentially change. 

So even if you disagree with it, I don’t think you don’t want to plant that seed of fear in your child because they have enough things to be fearful of right now. And certainly, as we already talked, I do think that some of these little kids, meditation apps are helpful. Now for my oldest, he’s sort of, you know, he’s the child that you could set a bomb off beside and he’s like, oh, well, that was interesting.

This does not speak to him, but for my other two, it does. so whatever things you can do to sort of. Get your child grounded and you know, your child best. We also started in COVID, before our bedtime prayers at gratitude practice, because there was so much to be fearful of, but we also had a lot of really wonderful things. The children of two physicians, they do have a lot of privilege in their life and it’s hard sometimes to focus on the good things when the world is so chaotic. So, we do this, and sometimes they fight against it, but we still go, okay, you have to say one thing and it can’t be the same thing every night that you’re grateful for. And it does just make you pause and think about, okay, what is good in my life? 

[00:23:27] Jamie Lewin: The point you made before, too, just about children mirroring your behavior and your attitude and just, yeah. You know, if you’re positive about the way things are going, or if you’re angry and stress, they will be angry and stressed.

So I do think just showing them, like you said, a positive way to be not like common core math and getting angry about it, but if you’re okay with look, we just wear masks. It’s not that hard. We’ll just put them on. We’ll go in. We’ll come back out. It’s okay. And then they kind of mirror your behavior. So it’s a really good point. 

[00:23:55] Shannon Czincila: I’m looking up your app that you’re talking about right now, and actually look the app that we use, I’ll just share with everybody that we use “Calm”. And the reason why I like it is cause it has, stuff for teenagers on here. Sean Mendez has a thing called “breathe into it” on here.

So I think that there’s different, there’s nighttime things on here for children. So just one of the apps just to share with everybody that we use in our family that’s been helpful. 

[00:24:24] Dr. Claudia Lum: The other thing I would also want to think about would say to other parents is this is so hard. I’m a physician, and I have many more resources at my fingertips.

I have social media groups with other physicians and I felt like just preparing to talk about this was incredibly challenging and there’s so much information out there that you don’t really know. And I feel like in the world of fact-checking now it makes me not trust anything. So I would say if, as a parent you’re feeling like you are lost, and struggling , that’s completely natural. 

I was having a tough time hammering down on what the good information is out there. You’re certainly looking at raw data. So going to like, so being a Montgomery County, going to their website, they have the COVID-19 tab and you can look at what the positivity rates are. And so we’re still below 5%. So in Montgomery County that keeps us in a low category. 

One of the actual podcasts I had been listening to more on a regular basis, but I had been following him before this, a physician called Zubin Dimani. He goes by Z dog MD. And where I previously known him was he does all these parodies,  medical parodies of pop songs.

But he has been, over the course of the pandemic I’ve found, been interviewing very, diverse voices, other physicians, and aside from the sometimes explicit language he uses, so don’t listen to it around your kids. It’s not just for medical professionals. It is, it is sort of for everyone.

So, I would actually recommend his podcast ‘cause he does sort of break things down, and looking at that the current evidence and he refers to himself as being the alt-middle. He’s not really on one side or the other politically, but really just wants to do what’s best for everyone. And he has, I think a 13-year-old and a 10-year-old. So he has, you know, kids, like us struggling with some of these same topics.  

[00:26:29] Jamie Lewin: Claudia, thank you so much for being with us today and sharing your expertise and all of these resources. I think this will be really helpful for so many parents sending their kids back to school and just a few short weeks.

[00:26:43] Shannon Czincila: Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky. 

[00:26:51] Jamie Lewin: If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

[00:26:55] Shannon Czincila: Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincila. 

[00:26:58]Jamie Lewin: And me, Jamie Lewin.

[00:26:59] Shannon Czincila And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

[00:27:08] Jamie Lewin: Want to get the 411 on upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us at advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

[00:27:18] Shannon Czincila: We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of friend you are.  

[00:27:30] Jamie Lewin:  And what kind of Friend you want to be.

Jamie Lewin: [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila: [00:00:08] and I’m Shannon Czincila. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Both: [00:00:19] Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you?

Deidre Robinson [00:00:27] Hello, my name is Deidre Robinson. Welcome to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m a member of The Friends of Einstein, and I am honored actually to have been tagged in for Shannon and Jamie, who are your usual hosts. So I will be today’s speaker and host, and I hope that I do them justice by standing in. So welcome to the podcast. As we know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and like most people’s lives.  

Breast cancer affects many, many people and I happen to be one of them. Just to share a little bit of my story, how I started going to have a diagnosis, realizing that I had breast cancer. And then now on the other side of it. I had noticed that I had a lump. This happened in 2017, I noticed a lump started appearing. That was really nice size, maybe three months before I had my mammogram to get it checked out. Now I am a person, then have my mammograms yearly. I am a stickler about that. 

So I said, OK, this cannot be anything because I get a mammogram every year. So, you know, I was not concerned. Plus, on top of that, I had very cystic breasts, as they call it. So in the early 2000s, I had a mass that they checked out did a biopsy on, and it was nothing. And the doctor said, hey, just keep your eye on it, just keep an eye. You know, of course, do your self-examination because you have just cystic breasts may be something or may not. So of course, I thought that it was nothing. 

I don’t have a history, a family history of breast cancer. My father passed away of colon cancer, but nothing else. So of course, I’m thinking in my mind, I’m good, I’m full is nothing to worry about. Lo and behold, I go, It’s time for the mammogram in October 2016. I go in there, of course, thinking everything’s going to be fine. I totally forgot about the lump, not even concerned about it, and I received a mammogram and of course, you know, women that we know that before they get to the doctor and have to read it first before you can get dressed, some sit in the room. They said, OK, just sit here. Dr. Copit, Debbie Copit is going to look at it, and then we’ll let you know if you get dressed. So anyway, they came by the room and they said, we need some more pictures. And they said, how long have you had that lump. And I said, ‘Oh, the lump, yeah, I know that.’ I said, so ‘maybe around a couple of months’, you know, that’s about it. And I said, maybe three, they said, because it has been growing. But you know, the whole story about cystic breast. 

Anyway, after more pictures, I then went into another room and Dr. Debbie Copit was in there and she looked concerned and I said, OK, different facial expression was going on. She said ‘Dee’, you know, she’s very familiar with me. And so she said ‘Dee, this lump?’ and I said, yes, of course I told her the whole story. And so she said, OK, mean, at that point, I think they did a biopsy. And she said, my concern is that it has moved into your lymph nodes now. 

That’s when I became really kind of a little unnerved and a little concerned. So after the biopsy, she says, OK, it’s cancer. And so after that, she said, I said, All right. She looked there. She looked at me. She was had an expression of very concern.  Of course, Kimberly Gross was with me, of course, my partner through all of this and through life period, and she was like looking terrified. And I look at both of them said, OK, OK, let’s get a grip. I will be fine. What is my next step? Let’s just do this. So I had to catch on to like, see right at that moment. I had to say I got to fight this, and I’m going to see myself on the other side. 

So I’m a woman of faith, a very spiritual woman, so that’s where I took it. So after that, so they said, OK, I went to see Dr. Jablon. Dr. Jablon told me that, yes, I was just a little lymphatic, I guess, into that system. But also I was stage one, but they put me into stage two because of the size. It was basically the size of an egg. Then she, of course, went through all that as they do a lumpectomy. I hope I’m pronouncing this stuff right. (Laughs) That how my breast will look and all that. I said, OK, fine. So then I said, OK, once again, just go with this. Let’s look the next step, OK? This was in October and maybe the second week in October, or third? No, maybe the third week in October. 

On October 30th or 31st, actually on Halloween was my first, I went to see Dr. Morginstin, who is my oncologist, and I started chemo treatments for six weeks. And he said, if it looks good, maybe we’ll go for it, but we’ll put down six. But who knows in four? We’ll see, maybe I could stop in four.

So I went through chemo. Now that experience, of course, was a little rough. Me, I’m a person, that’s saying, OK, once again, I had to mentally prepare, but also, you know, I had to physically prepare. So I am a person that works out, exercises. But then I started to believe in a holistic medicine. So I started getting, you know, researching what is going to come back, nausea, blah blah blah. So I got all this herbal stuff and everything.  

And so my first treatment- basically, I was the first treatment I came home. I didn’t do anything until three days later, and that’s when the nausea came and I was really sick to my stomach and they had to give me a shot to boost up my immune system that wasn’t working. So, I had some challenges in the beginning. But by my fourth treatment, I am happy to say it was happy to say and happy to feel that we could barely feel the lump. It had went down to like a pea size. They could barely feel it. So, I said Dr. Morginstin, you said four, and after four, we can stop. He’s like, Yeah, I did, but statistics say that if you continue, you have a better outcome if you stick with six. I’m like, Come on now. 

So anyway, so I always went in with this attitude. We always battled back and forth because of course you can tell me, you know, whatever they tell me, I would go home and research, and I was like, OK, you’re right, you’re right. Let’s go for to six so you can hang in there. So, I said, I can. 

So anyway, but it was all about my attitude and my approach. I was in a war. I was battling, and cancer was not going to win. So, after the sixth, it was non-undetectable. They couldn’t even feel it. They didn’t know whatever we did. I had amazing outcome from the chemo and I am very, very thankful for that. 

So, then it was time for, of course, I do some research about just the removal of the lump. But I had decided to switch over because I lived in the area, to go to Montgomery for my care because that’s where Dr. Morginstin went. So, Dr. Jennifer Simmons had taken over for Dr. Jablon. And then I talked about having a double mastectomy, and then I found out that I can do a bilateral whatever, I forgot the whole name of it. But this is where you get your tummy tuck. And I was like, I’m in- Sign me up! A bilateral flap, is what I think they call it. And what I did was I decided for just, I don’t want to deal with this again. So, I don’t want to have this again, so I tell them I want both of them removed. And we did that. Where they take the stomach fat and of course, replace it with this breast tissue. So that’s what I did, and I went through that and went on Fox Chase and Dr. Patel, Sonny Patel, and everything turned out great. So, I am very happy with my care, and I think it was basically once again the approach that I had very proactive, very positive.  

Once again, I found myself on the other side. Faith played a big part, but a lot of people, let me make it this clear. A lot of people depend on their faith, but they don’t want to do anything else. Where they care. I’m just going to leave it into this and faith, and I am not going to exercise. I am not going to do some other herbal or take my supplements. You know, I’ll just do the chemo. But you also have to really kind of involve yourself and say OK and take charge of your care .So the doctors can suggest this, but also at home. What are you doing to make yourself feel better? What are you doing to combat this? And also in a more natural, holistic way or whatever or physical way, and also mentally? Dr. Morginstin always applauded me and said- he was always he wasn’t happy that I was there and I was dealing with cancer, but it was always a pleasure to see me because of my attitude. And he said,  him and doctor Copit said they both said they believe that this is what get people going on the other side of cancer is because of the outlook and the positive attitude. 

So that’s my story. I’m glad I’m not back in any other side. And life is good. So now this is me. Also post cancer. Post cancer. I’m still, of course, going through. I go and I do what I supposed to do. I have routine checkups every six months. I see the oncologist. Oh yeah, by the way, I’m sorry I missed that. I had radiation as well. I had six weeks of radiation every day, so I go and see my radiation oncologist, and I still go and see. I now switch back to Dr. Jablon, because Dr. Simmons is no longer with Einstein. And what I do at home, Dr. Simmons and Dr. Jablon, I was very big on vitamin D, just taking supplements, so I make sure that it fits in my diet. Magnesium, some other supplements and vitamins that I take. I exercise or try to daily, to just keep up my strength and stamina. And I did recently go back to also my surgeon, reconstructive surgery surgeon, so I still have some tenderness. This has been three years, and I still have some tenderness where the scar is. And I’m like, Will this ever go away? Because it’s actually sometimes sore to the touch? Sometimes it goes to say, cut into nerves and everything. But you know what? That’s a small price to pay because, I just do stretches to help it out and massage it.

Also, post-cancer, I’m very happy that I’m here. I just wish my hair was a little longer. We always laugh about that because that we call it the medicine call it, Adriamycin, call it the Red Devil that takes the hair out. And they let me tell you something when they said that your hair was going to start falling out and they called it to a tee, if like in a week and I’m telling you, I’m just like pulled my hair. Within that time, on a dime, my hair starts falling out, but anyway. So on the other side, you know, my hair’s not growing back and straight as as I thought it would. But it’s all good. I kind of like rocking a short haircut anyway. So but once again, a small price to pay for being here and feeling good and healthy. 

So I do my and also I get my vaccines, I get my vaccines, my immune system is compromised. I do not fool myself and say, Dee you’re exercise Dee you’re taking. You have changed your diet. You eat more of whatever organic or not only dead, but keto and all this good stuff. And we take your supplements. But I don’t fool myself and my immune system is still compromised. So when the grands come over, I try to protect myself. I take my vitamins to say, little kids, they’re germ carriers, so you know, and I will get a cold faster than I used to before, so I get my vaccines. 
 

Of course, I didn’t play around with my COVID 19 vaccine. I received that. I just recently got my flu shot and once again. Diet and exercise, so that’s how I had been maintaining myself and taking care of myself post-cancer. And I just feel great. I feel great. I’m thankful. I feel great mentally. I feel great spiritually, and I feel great physically. So once again, I’m so grateful for the team at Einstein that I had. They showed me amazing care and I’m just happy I was able to go through with them. They really care, the nurses and everyone. 

And also, I just cannot forget once again. Kimberly Groves, OK. My partner through all this. Let me tell you, you got to have a family support. You got to have or any kind of circle around you when you’re any kind of sickness. I mean, she was sometimes picking me up off the bathroom floor when I was in tears, and I can still remember that and know when I was in tears. I was like, I can’t do it. I’m so sick. And she was like, You can. She would do anything to help, you know, wipe my face, bring me cold rags, my hair, cook my meals. She did everything to get me through that. She was very supportive, and I tell my children, I tell everyone, she was amazing, and I don’t know if I would have done so well if it wasn’t for her supporting me and holding me up, literally holding me up, you know? Yes, she was a little bit over the top. 

You know this Kimberly’s personality, but I’m glad for that, you know, kind of you got to eat. And one joke and I always tell my oncologist, I say, Wait a minute, hold it. I said I to through this whole thing, I would have lost like, maybe 50 pounds. You know my hair? Yeah, but 50 pounds. And I said, You know, I thought with cancer and chemo. They said, Listen, they said, we give you medication before we start the chemo treatment that helps so you can tolerate the chemo. I said, can we just kind of x them out? And so he’s like, Trust me, you think you’re sick now? You’re going to be really sick. You got to keep those steroids in you. You know, we have to let it go. Okay, all right. So I thought that would be such a benefit of having cancer. I get to lose 50 pounds, but that not what happens. 

Anyway, that’s just a joke. But no one wants cancer and nobody wants to lose weight that way. But once again, that’s part of my personality, how I get through things, and how have I got through this and how I’m feeling good. So basically, that’s it for me, my story. I hope it has been encouraging and helpful to anyone who is going through breast cancer or any kind of other illness, or any other kind of cancer.  

I just really hope this encourages you to first just really take a positive approach towards it. Get involved in your treatment, research, ask questions. That’s very, very important. Ask questions about your treatment. Just have a really, cling on to that circle, your supportive circles, those positive people around you that’s willing to help and hold you up. And also, for those of you who have not had your mammogram. Please, please, please get your mammogram. 
 

It is very important. I just think all the time is right and not because I was not going to go to that appointment because I’m like, I’m fine and Kimberly urged me, No, you have to go to your appointment because I was so busy doing some work, and I just was going to put it off. She said, no, you get to that appointment, and I’m so glad she did. 

So I’m encouraging someone, anyone who had not had a mammogram. Please get a mammogram. Please do that because that really is self-care. You really have to take care of yourself. I’m just shouting it from a rooftop. 

I have friends that have neglected to get their mammograms, and they are not ending up as well as I am. They caught it too late. I did not want it to be my story, and I don’t want that to be your story. So please get your mammogram, I hope, once again, someone is encouraged. And thank you so much Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. Thank you so much for having me as your host and guest speaker today. Thank you. Be well.

Shannon Czincila: [00:18:22] Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky. 

Jamie Lewin: If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Shannon Czincila:  Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincila… 

Jamie Lewin: and me, Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila:  And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. 

Jamie Lewin: Want to get the 411 and upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us @advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

Shannon Czincila:  We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of friend you are. 

Jamie Lewin: And what kind of Friend you want to be.

Episode 10- 
Guest Host/Speaker: Deidre Robinson

Jamie Lewin: [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila: [00:00:08] and I’m Shannon Czincila. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Both: [00:00:19] Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you? 

Deidre Robinson [00:00:27] Hello, my name is Deidre Robinson. Welcome to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m a member of The Friends of Einstein, and I am honored actually to have been tagged in for Shannon and Jamie, who are your usual hosts. So I will be today’s speaker and host, and I hope that I do them justice by standing in. So welcome to the podcast. As we know, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month and like most people’s lives. 

Breast cancer affects many, many people and I happen to be one of them. Just to share a little bit of my story, how I started going to have a diagnosis, realizing that I had breast cancer. And then now on the other side of it. I had noticed that I had a lump. This happened in 2017, I noticed a lump started appearing. That was really nice size, maybe three months before I had my mammogram to get it checked out. Now I am a person, then have my mammograms yearly. I am a stickler about that. 

So I said, OK, this cannot be anything because I get a mammogram every year. So, you know, I was not concerned. Plus, on top of that, I had very cystic breasts, as they call it. So in the early 2000s, I had a mass that they checked out did a biopsy on, and it was nothing. And the doctor said, hey, just keep your eye on it, just keep an eye. You know, of course, do your self-examination because you have just cystic breasts may be something or may not. So of course, I thought that it was nothing. 

I don’t have a history, a family history of breast cancer. My father passed away of colon cancer, but nothing else. So of course, I’m thinking in my mind, I’m good, I’m full is nothing to worry about. Lo and behold, I go, It’s time for the mammogram in October 2016. I go in there, of course, thinking everything’s going to be fine. I totally forgot about the lump, not even concerned about it, and I received a mammogram and of course, you know, women that we know that before they get to the doctor and have to read it first before you can get dressed, some sit in the room. They said, OK, just sit here. Dr. Copit, Debbie Copit is going to look at it, and then we’ll let you know if you get dressed. So anyway, they came by the room and they said, we need some more pictures. And they said, how long have you had that lump. And I said, ‘Oh, the lump, yeah, I know that.’ I said, so ‘maybe around a couple of months’, you know, that’s about it. And I said, maybe three, they said, because it has been growing. But you know, the whole story about cystic breast.  

Anyway, after more pictures, I then went into another room and Dr. Debbie Copit was in there and she looked concerned and I said, OK, different facial expression was going on. She said ‘Dee’, you know, she’s very familiar with me. And so she said ‘Dee, this lump?’ and I said, yes, of course I told her the whole story. And so she said, OK, mean, at that point, I think they did a biopsy. And she said, my concern is that it has moved into your lymph nodes now.

That’s when I became really kind of a little unnerved and a little concerned. So after the biopsy, she says, OK, it’s cancer. And so after that, she said, I said, All right. She looked there. She looked at me. She was had an expression of very concern.  Of course, Kimberly Gross was with me, of course, my partner through all of this and through life period, and she was like looking terrified. And I look at both of them said, OK, OK, let’s get a grip. I will be fine. What is my next step? Let’s just do this. So I had to catch on to like, see right at that moment. I had to say I got to fight this, and I’m going to see myself on the other side. 

So I’m a woman of faith, a very spiritual woman, so that’s where I took it. So after that, so they said, OK, I went to see Dr. Jablon. Dr. Jablon told me that, yes, I was just a little lymphatic, I guess, into that system. But also I was stage one, but they put me into stage two because of the size. It was basically the size of an egg. Then she, of course, went through all that as they do a lumpectomy. I hope I’m pronouncing this stuff right. (Laughs) That how my breast will look and all that. I said, OK, fine. So then I said, OK, once again, just go with this. Let’s look the next step, OK? This was in October and maybe the second week in October, or third? No, maybe the third week in October. 

On October 30th or 31st, actually on Halloween was my first, I went to see Dr. Morginstin, who is my oncologist, and I started chemo treatments for six weeks. And he said, if it looks good, maybe we’ll go for it, but we’ll put down six. But who knows in four? We’ll see, maybe I could stop in four. 

So I went through chemo. Now that experience, of course, was a little rough. Me, I’m a person, that’s saying, OK, once again, I had to mentally prepare, but also, you know, I had to physically prepare. So I am a person that works out, exercises. But then I started to believe in a holistic medicine. So I started getting, you know, researching what is going to come back, nausea, blah blah blah. So I got all this herbal stuff and everything. 

And so my first treatment- basically, I was the first treatment I came home. I didn’t do anything until three days later, and that’s when the nausea came and I was really sick to my stomach and they had to give me a shot to boost up my immune system that wasn’t working. So, I had some challenges in the beginning. But by my fourth treatment, I am happy to say it was happy to say and happy to feel that we could barely feel the lump. It had went down to like a pea size. They could barely feel it. So, I said Dr. Morginstin, you said four, and after four, we can stop. He’s like, Yeah, I did, but statistics say that if you continue, you have a better outcome if you stick with six. I’m like, Come on now. 

So anyway, so I always went in with this attitude. We always battled back and forth because of course you can tell me, you know, whatever they tell me, I would go home and research, and I was like, OK, you’re right, you’re right. Let’s go for to six so you can hang in there. So, I said, I can. 

So anyway, but it was all about my attitude and my approach. I was in a war. I was battling, and cancer was not going to win. So, after the sixth, it was non-undetectable. They couldn’t even feel it. They didn’t know whatever we did. I had amazing outcome from the chemo and I am very, very thankful for that.  

So, then it was time for, of course, I do some research about just the removal of the lump. But I had decided to switch over because I lived in the area, to go to Montgomery for my care because that’s where Dr. Morginstin went. So, Dr. Jennifer Simmons had taken over for Dr. Jablon. And then I talked about having a double mastectomy, and then I found out that I can do a bilateral whatever, I forgot the whole name of it. But this is where you get your tummy tuck. And I was like, I’m in- Sign me up! A bilateral flap, is what I think they call it. And what I did was I decided for just, I don’t want to deal with this again. So, I don’t want to have this again, so I tell them I want both of them removed. And we did that. Where they take the stomach fat and of course, replace it with this breast tissue. So that’s what I did, and I went through that and went on Fox Chase and Dr. Patel, Sonny Patel, and everything turned out great. So, I am very happy with my care, and I think it was basically once again the approach that I had very proactive, very positive. 

Once again, I found myself on the other side. Faith played a big part, but a lot of people, let me make it this clear. A lot of people depend on their faith, but they don’t want to do anything else. Where they care. I’m just going to leave it into this and faith, and I am not going to exercise. I am not going to do some other herbal or take my supplements. You know, I’ll just do the chemo. But you also have to really kind of involve yourself and say OK and take charge of your care .So the doctors can suggest this, but also at home. What are you doing to make yourself feel better? What are you doing to combat this? And also in a more natural, holistic way or whatever or physical way, and also mentally? Dr. Morginstin always applauded me and said- he was always he wasn’t happy that I was there and I was dealing with cancer, but it was always a pleasure to see me because of my attitude. And he said,  him and doctor Copit said they both said they believe that this is what get people going on the other side of cancer is because of the outlook and the positive attitude. 

So that’s my story. I’m glad I’m not back in any other side. And life is good. So now this is me. Also post cancer. Post cancer. I’m still, of course, going through. I go and I do what I supposed to do. I have routine checkups every six months. I see the oncologist. Oh yeah, by the way, I’m sorry I missed that. I had radiation as well. I had six weeks of radiation every day, so I go and see my radiation oncologist, and I still go and see. I now switch back to Dr. Jablon, because Dr. Simmons is no longer with Einstein. And what I do at home, Dr. Simmons and Dr. Jablon, I was very big on vitamin D, just taking supplements, so I make sure that it fits in my diet. Magnesium, some other supplements and vitamins that I take. I exercise or try to daily, to just keep up my strength and stamina. And I did recently go back to also my surgeon, reconstructive surgery surgeon, so I still have some tenderness. This has been three years,, and I still have some tenderness where the scar is. And I’m like, Will this ever go away? Because it’s actually sometimes sore to the touch? Sometimes it goes to say, cut into nerves and everything. But you know what? That’s a small price to pay because I just do stretches to help it out and massage it. Also, post–cancer, I’m very happy that I’m here. I just wish my hair was a little longer. We always laugh about that because that we call it the medicine call it, Adriamycin, call it the Red Devil that takes the hair out. And they let me tell you something when they said that your hair was going to start falling out and they called it to a tee, if like in a week and I’m telling you, I’m just like pulled my hair. Within that time, on a dime, my hair starts falling out, but anyway. So on the other side, you know, my hair’s not grown back and straight as as I thought it would. But it’s all good. I kind of like rocking a short haircut anyway. So but once again, a small price to pay for being here and feeling good and happy. 

So I do my and also I get my vaccines, I get my vaccines, my immune system is compromised. I do not fool myself and say, Dee you’re exercise Dee you’re taking. You have changed your diet. You eat more of whatever organic or not only dead, but keto and all this good stuff. And we take your supplements. But I don’t fool myself and my immune system is still compromised. So when the grands come over, I try to protect myself. I take my vitamins to say, little kids, they’re germ carriers, so you know, and I will get a cold faster than I used to before, so I get my vaccines.  

Of course, I didn’t play around with my COVID 19 vaccine. I received that. I just recently got my flu shot and once again. Diet and exercise, so that’s how I had been maintaining myself and taking care of myself post cancer. And I just feel great. I feel great. I’m thankful. I feel great mentally. I feel great spiritually and I feel great physically. So once again, I’m so grateful for the team at Einstein that I had. They show me amazing care and I’m just happy I was. I was able to go through with them. They really care the nurses and everyone. 

And also, I just cannot forget once again. Kimberly Groves, OK. My partner through all this. Let me tell you, you got to have a family support. You got to have or any kind of circle around you when you’re any kind of sickness. I mean, she was sometimes picking me up off the bathroom floor when I was in tears, and I can still remember that and know when I was in tears. It’s like, I can’t do it. I’m so sick. And she was like, You can. 

She would do anything to help, you know, wipe my face the crags or that in my hair, my nails. She did everything to get me through that. She was very supportive and I tell my children, I tell everyone she was amazing and I don’t know if I had done where I would have done so well if it wasn’t for her supporting me and holding me up, literally holding me up, you know? Yes, she was a little bit over the top. 

You know this Kimberly’s personality, but I’m glad that, you know, kind of you got to eat and one joke and I always tell my oncologist, I say, Wait a minute, hold it. I said I to through this whole thing, I would have lost like, maybe 50 pounds. You know my hair? Yeah, but 50 pounds. And I said, You know, I got this term cancer kind of, you know, don’t chemo. They said, Listen, they said, we give you medication.  

All the stories, the medication we give you before we start the chemo treatment that helps. And, you know, of course. So you can tolerate the chemo. I said, can we just kind of x them out? And so he’s like, Trust me, you think you’re sick now? You’re going to be really sick. You got to keep those steroids. 

You know, we have to let it go. Okay, all right. So I thought that would be such a benefit of having cancer. I get to lose 50 pounds, but now that it happens anyway, that’s just a joke. But no one wants cancer and nobody wants to lose weight that way. But once again, that’s part of my personality, how I get through things and how have I got through this and how I’m feeling good. So basically, that’s it for me, my story. I hope it has been encouraging and helpful to anyone who is going through breast cancer or any kind of other illness or any other kind of cancer. 

I just really hope this encourage you to first just really take a positive approach towards it. Get involved in your treatment research, ask questions. That’s very, very important. Ask questions about your treatment. Just have a really, cling on to that the circle of supportive circles that positive people around you that’s willing to help and hold you up. And also, for those of you who have not had your mammogram. Please, please, please get your mammogram. 

It is very important if I just think all the time is right and not because I was not going to go to that appointment because I’m like, I’m fine and Kimberly really urged me, No, you have to go to your appointment because I was so busy doing some work and I just was going to put it off. So she said, No, you get to that appointment, and I’m so glad she did. So I’m encouraging someone, anyone who had not had a mammogram. Please get a mammogram. Please do this because you really is self care.  

You really have to take care of yourself. I’m just shouting it from a rooftop. So I have friends that have neglected to get their mammograms and they are not ending up as well as I am. So they caught it too late. And that is, I did not want it to be my story, and I don’t want that to be your story. So please get your mammogram, I hope, once again, someone is encouraged. And thank you so much Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. Thank you so much for having me as your host and guest speaker today. Thank you. Be well.
 

Shannon Czincila: [00:18:22]  Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky.

Jamie Lewin: If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Shannon Czincila:  Relatively speaking between friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincila… 

Jamie Lewin: and me, Jamie Lewin. 

Shannon Czincila:  And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for the Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

Jamie Lewin: Want to get the 411 and upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us at advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

Shannon Czincila:  We invite you to become a member of the Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of friend you are. 

Jamie Lewin: And what kind of Friend you want to be.  

Jamie Lewin: [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila: [00:00:08] and I’m Shannon Czincila. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Both: [00:00:19] Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you?

Shannon Czincila [00:00:27] Welcome to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. Today, we are thrilled to have two amazing individuals who work at The Center of Loss and Bereavement. Shelley Robbins and Emily Vincent, would you mind introducing yourselves and sharing what your organization does and what your role is there? 

Emily Vincent [00:00:44] Sure. Thank you very much. I’ll get started here. I am Emily Vincent. I am currently in a position of Executive Director at The Center for Loss and Bereavement. The center was opened initially in 2000, near 2000, and I came on board in 2005. So, I’ve been with the center for a very long time and for the majority of its work in the community. Starting off there, I was a therapist and really honed in on my therapy skills in particular and a grief model that is used in our facility and did both in-person therapy for individuals, families, but also in our support programs with children and families coming out of that experience. After a few years, I was in the Clinical Director position, and I was the individual who oversees the therapists on staff on-site and continue to offer another close to 10 years until I took the seat of Executive Director. So at this moment, I am carrying case load that I continue to meet with, on a pretty regular basis, but have leaned much more into the administration of the overall organization. Seeing lots of different people carry out the hands-on work of the mission in all different ends of the center. And I can introduce just kind of turn to Shelley here, who is one of the other individuals at The Center for Loss and Bereavement. Just lots of work in our great program and also in education. 

Shelley Robbins [00:02:15] Mm-Hmm. Yes, thank you so much for having us here tonight. It’s our sincere pleasure. And like Emily said, I’m Shelley Robbins and I have worked at The Center for Loss and Bereavement for, I think, just a little over three years. And I kind of hopped around in a few different roles, but mainly a support group facilitator for both our children’s programs, which is entitled Nello’s Corner at our center, as well as many adult support groups, our specialized support groups that covers all sorts of different losses, loss of child, loss of sibling, loss of parents. And then, as Emily mentioned, I also do a lot of education and community outreach and just do a lot of presentations and just kind of like the back-end work of getting our word out there, the services that we provide. And I’ve also served. I worked as a nurse for 25 years, and I’ve worked in many different clinical settings. But my specialty and my love is connecting and working with families and children who have experienced medical and emotional trauma. And so that kind of has breached into many gamuts of the world of the clinical world. But that’s where my heart lies. 

Emily Vincent [00:03:31] I can also piggyback on what Shelley just said in her particular role and expand a little bit more on the organization. I talk about my role within it, I will say that it’s what we’re rounding out of our 20th anniversary year. And in that time, we have really developed a bigger footprint, I should say, in the community on what our specialization is and how we can best meet the needs of the community and where we know where grief itself specifically is touching the entire community. We know that 100 percent of people are going to experience grief and loss in our lives, and yet not 100 percent of individuals will need our type of support. So how do we do what we do? How do we remain high quality program that has enough comprehensive variety in our in our skill set and also in our programming to try to reach as many people as possible who will benefit. So, we do have the counseling as a primary service. 
 

We also, as Shelley mentioned, have adult support group programs, primarily for any adult in the community who would like to receive a peer group support model to help them through the course of grief. The children’s programs that we offer at Nello’s Corner, which does run through the course of the school year as an after-school anything program for children, teens and their caregiving adults, to offer them biweekly support in groups that really bring kids together throughout the community, not necessarily connected to their school district. Sometimes that happens, but other times they meet individuals from all over the area and will be able to talk more about their experience with one another while also being kids and being teens. First and foremost, being in a comfortable, safe space to know that they’re not alone. Noah’s Corner program is I believe in its 18th year, so that was one of our earliest programs to add on to the counseling that we offered and our adult support groups. 
 

We have a camp that is at the end of June. It is a once-a-year event, four days. It is not an overnight camp, but it is a wonderful experience for children, some of whom are also attending our Nello’s Corners program. But some who don’t. About 50 percent of our children who attend our camp are not able to make the groups during the year, or it just isn’t something that they need to do in addition to camp. So that is another big children’s program that we’ve offered, I believe, now in its 16th year. So as the 20 years of service continued to grow, we’ve also built-in different levels of programming. Education is something that we believe very strongly, and to help raise the actual awareness of grief to the broader community, how grief affects people, how grief can play a role in our lives, both as a meaningful experience, but also as one that can be incredibly painful and challenging. So grief, education and professional trainings, public events. We do a lot of those types of services, as well as all these other direct care services through the year. 

Shannon Czincila [00:06:47] Joining us today we also have Dr. Meaghan Reid, an emergency room physician at Einstein Montgomery. Thank you so much for joining us today. Would you mind sharing a little bit about yourself? 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:06:57] Sure. Thank you for having me on today. I am Meaghan, I am an emergency physician at Einstein. I primarily work at the Montgomery campus that you can find me occasionally at the other campuses as well. I am a very local person. I grew up in Bucks County and went to med school in Philadelphia. I graduated medical school in 2014 and did a residency at Aria, which is Jefferson Northeast now. I worked for a few years following residency at a local hospital system adjacent to here, and I have been at Einstein since March. I know that I offer a little bit of a different perspective, especially even just as an emergency physician. My connection with patients is a little bit quicker, a little bit faster. 

I sometimes can’t make the same connections that a lot of primary care physicians are able to do or even, Shelley and Emily, the connections that they’re able to make with patients because I have a very quick and brief stint with patients, I think that also as a physician, believe it or not, this is something that was taught to us. We were never trained bereavement. We were never taught skills for our patients, let alone for ourselves. So it’s something that I think every day I’m working on and trying to better myself, trying to get her just for my own sanity and for the sake of my patients as well. So I’m excited to be here and to learn more from Emily and Shelley today. 

Emily Vincent [00:08:31] Meaghan, thank you so much for sharing your personal story, also your roots in this area. I didn’t mention that, but I’m also a born and raised Philly girl myself and ended up out in Montgomery County in the suburbs and moved back and forth to Philadelphia through school. I also studied in the city. I was a Temple University graduate, both undergrad and graduate school, and I absolutely love this area. And I currently live in Montgomery County still, and our organization is in Skippack. So, the predominant population that we work with our residents of Montgomery County, but it is certainly not limited to, we still see people from all areas of the Greater Philadelphia region. And as far as education goes, I can say that Shelley has been really wonderful as an addition to our team because she has worked in both the medical community in a more firm way than a lot of us have who most of the staff come from backgrounds both in therapy and in education, having worked a lot with children. 

Some of us have come from school backgrounds in addition to our therapy trauma, but Shelley was the first and only, to date, nurse that we’ve had on staff. So, she has helped to do some training with some residents and medical programs, and we’ve been hoping to expand that as an option, as an add on. 

It really is an important topic when you’re working in an environment where your job is to help save people’s lives and make sure that they get the best treatment possible. It’s also really important to accept when that can’t happen, and we all know that we all know that death is a reality for all of us, at some point or another. It’s a very, very tough thing to think about, especially our own mortality, and I can only imagine for doctors and people who work in all of the advanced care treatment to try to help save lives, it’s it feels incredibly difficult to not be able to do that. 

So how do you have those conversations? How are you prepared to do that, especially if you’re not in an area of medical work like a palliative care or a field that that is going to be dealing more with death and dying? How are you trained to manage those feelings for yourself, for your patients and for your coworkers? So those are those are questions that we do wonder about sometimes in the last couple of years. Shelley has done an excellent job reaching out. Shelley, I don’t know if you want to talk a little bit more about that? 

Shelley Robbins [00:11:04] Yeah, yeah. When Meaghan mentioned that you were not trained in how to handle grief within yourself or within your patients, it’s just so interesting to me because when I think about what I want to instill into the world as far as grief education, I want to say how normal of a process this is and how little it’s talked about, and how little how little education people get it, especially the medical world. And it almost seems ridiculous to me that nurses and physicians alike do not get an organized course in grief and death and dying because it’s part of the life cycle. And so, we have to kind of figure this out as we go along in our clinical roles, and it can take a lifetime of trial and error to think about how we deal with our patients. 

And so whenever you mentioned that, Meaghan, it struck me that I did a training in service to the residents at Chestnut Hill Hospital over this past pandemic year, and it almost was like they looked at me wide eyed of like, we never really have even discussed this topic and even thought to discuss it because they’re just kind of moving along in this clinical setting and in mindset and how the pandemic has kind of forced us to take a step back and to say, ‘hey we’re people too’, and we’re navigating along this profound grief just as much as our patients, and we got to figure this out altogether. So, such a need, such a need. I hope that we’re able to give a little bit of insight tonight as to things that I think that we’re kind of lacking as a world. 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:12:46] Yeah, for sure. I mean, I remember in medical school we did one. We dedicated one afternoon to delivering bad news. They had like two hours’ notice. They had us listen to a recording and decide whether or not the delivery was a good approach or not. And we all said, no, it’s a terrible approach. They were fumbling over themselves. The guy did not sound confident and at the end they said, well, actually, this was a really good example of a great delivery of bad news. So, we have never, ever really gotten a good way. And I think it’s hard, especially in the emergency room. 

You have to kind of compartmentalize to you have to like put on a, you know, a sympathetic and not put on a sympathetic face. You have to, you know, think about your patient, go deliver this bad news, and then step outside the room and there’s somebody next door that’s ready for your attention, too. So it’s hard because you don’t want to look like you’re blowing them off. You don’t want to not give them enough time. But then at the same time, you don’t even get to process everything. So, it’s a rough balance between your patient and yourself and how to carry on after that. 

Shelley Robbins [00:13:54] Mm-Hmm. Because you were what kind of shift are you talking about? Working like a twenty-four-hour shifts? 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:14:00] In the E.R. I work anywhere between an eight- and 12-hour shift. 

Shelley Robbins [00:14:04] OK, so at the end of that 12 hours during COVID, you could experience death upon death, grief upon grief. And then at the end of that 12 hours, you step away from you walk into your car in the parking lot and you think to yourself, what just happened and where am I? And then the next day you do that again, and you do that again. You do that again. And before you know it, we’re a year, half year and a half into this and you think, where do I listen to this and how do I keep going? 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:14:31] And I think the hard thing too, is that one, I found as a medical professional. It’s hard to like. It’s great to have your family have a release and be able to talk to them. But when your family’s not in medicine, I think it’s hard for them to completely understand the stories and to really understand the impact that you’re changing someone’s whole life trajectory by giving them this bad news. So, it’s hard sometimes for them to understand it. But then I feel like at this point, as you said, with Covid, all the traumas we’ve been living in at this point, some of us are just like, Oh, that’s old news. Like, OK, yeah, so what’s next? 

Shelley Robbins [00:15:10] Mmhmm. 

Emily Vincent [00:15:10] We’ve talked about that in the last year, early on in the pandemic as a grief center. And we actually have a really wonderful partnership with several other great centers in the Greater Philadelphia area. We somewhat coined our own name, the Greater Philadelphia Grief Collaborative, she sees other organizations are sprinkled throughout Philadelphia in the suburbs, and the Safe Harbor is attached to actually not just attached, they are actually part of the Jefferson Health System, and there is a center in Philadelphia called Uplift, a center in Radnor named Peter’s Place, and one an Exton called Haven. We are all unique in our own ways, but we also all do offer some of the same types of programs, especially related to bereaved children, teens and their families. But we all kind of looked at each other and we talked to each other a lot about how, how do we support that community through this time? 

And even at The Center for Loss and Bereavement, just among our directors and our staff? How do we support? We are anticipating a huge amount of grief coming, not just with the loss of life, but the loss of so many non-death experiences that many people are having the complicated reactions for everyone who was unable to be with them, their loved one. It may not be a COVID-related deaths. We see many people in our work that did not have COVID-related deaths but were affected by how they were able to be around their loved ones, either anticipating a terminal condition, or experiencing a sudden death. Having funerals changed or limited, especially in the early days. 

One of the areas we really looked at was what one of the doctors and nurses going to do and all those frontline people and how can we help support them? There was such a big spotlight put in the hospitals at the at the people on the frontline and how overwhelmed and emotional this experience was for you all. So, we put out there, we’d love to offer some support to you. We assumed that in the hospital there may be some support systems put in place, but we also put out a lot of hospital networks in the area that we could offer support groups virtually for people after hours. And we didn’t really get a lot of interest. 

And it seemed, you know, after a while, we talked with Shelley, and she said, this makes a lot of sense to us because first responders are not necessarily in the mindset or able to really tune in to their own experience with emotions because they have to keep going. And it’s the same with police and firefighters and a lot of other first responders that may feel the impact of grief may deal with trauma, vicarious trauma on a daily basis. But how well do they feel like they can lean into that? And is it better or worse for them to do that, especially when the event is an ongoing event? It’s not a one and done. So respectfully, we’ve realized that this probably isn’t a service that is as needed right now, or if it is, it’s perhaps not being needed for us to provide it. So, we had that was originally how we were reaching out in touch with Montgomery Einstein to find out whether we would be able to do anything in our in our lane to try to support those of you on the front lines in a different way. So, I’m glad I’m really glad that you’re sharing, Meaghan, about how your experiences because that we hear so many stories from people who walk into our offices or right now virtually sometimes are meeting with us that have experienced the death of a loved one that involved someone in the medical community, either delivering news, either of the condition. 

You know, there is nothing else we can do for you. Those conversations, to dealing with the management of when and how to bring in hospice or palliative care, or those people that have had a death in the emergency room from some very tragic sudden accident or illness came on suddenly, that wasn’t anticipated. And we can see how important your role is and delivering that news because of how it affects people on the other side, which you may or may not know. Some people will go back and thank doctors, thank nurses for being so supportive. And we’ve also heard of people who’ve gone back and said very upset letters or correspondence to say you were really horrible in that situation. So, I do agree that this has to be something that becomes a bigger topic of conversation, certainly may not replace all of the other material that you need to learn, but it probably does need to be more integrated into the training programs, for sure. For your sake as well, because it would feel better for you to know that, OK, I knew how to handle myself in that situation. You’re going to leave that experience feeling a little bit better as opposed to helpless.

There are articles I’ve read through the last year that felt the feeling I was left with, you know, the empathy of what those experiences were on the frontlines just sounded like there was an awful lot of helplessness being felt spurned the medical professionals that just don’t know what they could do. There’s nothing I can do in this situation other than. And there would be things that people are doing. They were trying to make contact with family members, sometimes going in with iPads and helping to make connections for their loved ones who weren’t able to be present at bedside. So, I was reading these peripherally and just seeing so many ways that those individuals were being helpful, but the feeling that they were left with was helplessness. And that’s something that, as therapist trained in grief, we have to be very, just frankly, be very comfortable with that feeling because there is nothing that we, as therapist in grief can do to take away the pain of the people that we’re working with. 

There is nothing we can do to take that away, other than bring back their person. And we, of course, wish we had that power, but we don’t. So, finding the perspective as a helping professional, whether you’re in the medical frontlines or you’re in the therapy offices or support groups, finding the perspective to see your presence or the tone in which you respond to somebody, or that the caring, compassionate gestures that you can offer when you have to deliver bad news or you’re able to comfort someone in pain. Seeing that as being tremendously helpful and really an important part of their journey leaves me and all of us at The Center with a with a greater sense of purpose and meaning even in those painful moments. And I would hope that all of you on the frontlines would see lots of ways that you can be purposeful, too. 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:22:07] Yeah, I think that even offer it well. I’m not sure everyone that ends up listening to this, but, you know, offering tips to physicians because I’m just thinking of even my last patient that I had today. I was delivering some bad news to the patient and the family. And, you know, the daughter started tearing up and I awkwardly put my hands on her shoulder because my first reaction is I just want to hug her. And then I just felt awkward. I think that for a lot of us, it’s bumbling along and trying to come up with something, especially as, I mean, I can’t reiterate enough at the E.R. it’s really hard to create a significant bond with somebody ahead of time. So, like even any tips that you provide with that, I think most patients or most physicians don’t want to find out later on that the family was upset that we blew them off or didn’t handle that, almost gave me a pit in my stomach. I hope that was never me. Like, I hope no family ever thought that I was, like, not trying to really give them the due justice that they needed for their family member. But it is something that I think none of us really know. We’re taught to sit down, and make eye contact. But other than that, right, like we’re all told different things some people are told, like, don’t say you’re sorry, it like makes them think that you’re at fault for something. Other people, you know, it’s hard. It’s that we never really know what the right direction is for that. 

Shelley Robbins [00:23:37] I can offer some tips if you’d like. And this is just coming from my own personal perspective, from what I’ve learned along the way, throughout my trajectory as a nurse. And the way that I look at it, as is that people are people. And how would you if you were not the physician telling that news, if you were the patient, how would you want your physician to interact with you and might not be appropriate? It isn’t appropriate to sit and cry with them, necessarily. But I think the easiest way to put it is to be the most real that you can be, the most organic that you can be with your approach, and with your answers and your explanations. And we’re kind of you had mentioned before that we are used to compartmentalizing. And I think what we do sometimes is that we can get wrapped up into our medical jargon and into our clinician role and to put some separation between our patients. 

And that’s all completely necessary for self-protection, for preservation of self so that we can do our jobs adequately. I’m not saying don’t discount that, but sometimes what I think is important for the relationship between you and the patient, and also for you long-term, is to sometimes you have that wall up between you and them to do your job, but also sometimes open the doors and the windows of that wall and to let the real you be seen to that patient. And it’s kind of situational. It can be, you know, if you’re delivering news that someone is terminal and that you can kind of see that, of course, you’re not going to put your own biases on that or put your own experiences, but sometimes it can just be a kind of everything that they’ve taught, even med school. Like he said, that therapeutic touch or looking at them directly in the eyes. But I think the key to that is to not look at it as clinically, and use those approaches as something that you learn, but to be something that’s authentic and that comes from you because people can connect with that. 

And I think at the end of the day, that will serve you, as well, because year after year, through COVID and beyond, you’re going to continue to do your job and patient, after patient, after patient, you’re going to become hardened in somewhat and that you’re going to have this callous wall up to you. And if you don’t open up those doors and windows, you will burn out and you will get become compassion fatigued. And so it’s not just for the patient’s benefit, but it’s for the longevity of your heart and soul as well. That would be my two pieces of, my two cents of advice. 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:26:31] But I mean, I think that that’s great advice actually. And I mean to what Emily was talking about, as well, that we do compartmentalize and that’s how we get hardened and almost listening to what you were saying, acknowledging that physicians have had a really hard year, that health care workers had a really hard year, it starts to make me tear up a little bit. And I think that we don’t even think about what we’ve thought through until, like some setting like this. I can remember back in March, my friend asked me, when do I think that will be, we’ll no longer need masks? 
 

And I started to get anxious when she asked that question because I was like, I can’t even imagine a time. And it’s things like that where it really hits me like, oh, wait, I don’t know that I’m 100 percent OK. And I don’t think that we really stop to evaluate that all the time. And I think that that actually plays into how we do interact with the patients, too, they can realize that.

Shelley Robbins [00:27:33] Yeah, its collective trauma, right? 

Emily Vincent [00:27:35] It has been. I want to add to what you said, Shelley. A lot of a lot of what you’ve said is part of where I was thinking to and that also what you just said can really tie site where my head was going together because we have to be authentic with people. They can sense when we’re not and if we’re uncomfortable with the conversation, if we’re uncomfortable with what they may be experiencing. And of course, these are uncomfortable conversations to have. There’s no way, you know, everyone’s going to sit down and feel really comfortable delivering so awful news to someone you know is going to change their life dramatically. 

But how do you, as a physician, ground yourself in a place where you can feel helpful doing that and also be able to be as present as possible? And so where my head is going is, how are you as a team are individually getting support in your role or in your life so that you can be a little bit more calm and centered in those very critical conversations? Because we, as therapists know, a big part of our ability to be present with others is to be as grounded with ourselves as possible. We have to do a lot of work for our taking care of ourselves, making sure we have healthy boundaries at work so that when we’re sitting in front of an individual and they’re talking about what they’re going through, we’re not going off in our heads about not what do I have to do tomorrow or you’re talking about a situation that’s triggering me and it’s really hard for me to think about. 

I had one individual call me and I don’t remember what hospital system it was from. I know that everyone, every systems has their own little network, but she called me from the hospital and asked about our services because she had just been told that her significant other was going to be taken off of life support. And she was a young parent, and she was asking me about services for her. How can she help tell their children? What should she do? And honestly, my jaw dropped. I was grateful that I answered the phone because typically, I mean, that’s the first and only time I ever had that kind of phone call in 20 years. But my question to her was try to get an idea of where are you calling me from. And has there been anybody else that’s come into the room to try to offer you this consultation in the hospital? And she had not had that happen. 

There was no conversation out there. So we can get you a social worker or a chaplain to help you have these conversations. So, you know, I asked her to hang up with me and find a nurse, find someone who could help her get someone in the hospital to help her with that. And if she couldn’t find that to get back in touch with me and I would make some calls because that seemed highly unusual. So I imagine that you have other people in your network that can do a little bit more of that long-term planning. 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:33:01] Yeah, actually, I mean, just today alone, I was in contact from the emergency room with hospice, several times today for patients, I think it is sometimes difficult to coordinate hospice from the E.R., but a lot of times I’ll initiate that conversation in the emergency room, get them started and get them admitted. But when things happen quicker in the E.R., and you don’t have time to even get them to an inpatient bed to get set up with hospice, we do have other options and resources. Our social worker is very important and very key in trying to organize and orchestrate all of that. I, myself, have gotten the chaplain into the emergency room before when things look imminent and when things when family members need that. I think really relying on your resources is the biggest thing and the biggest way that I at least feel helpful to the patients, sometimes in the emergency room. 

So making sure that our charge nurse is aware of what’s going on, getting our social worker involved and they really provide the resources that I probably can’t initiate myself as a physician. I also think that things like debriefing is really big for the team itself. Debriefing, not for patients, but for everyone involved in that. I feel strongly about it, but  I think it’s something that we can all work on as a team ourselves to because I think that it’s something that we look at almost as a chore, but it’s a way to not have to compartmentalize everything that happens in the event with a patient within a bad outcome. 

So there are things both for patients and for the staff that I think are really important and should always be initiated from the very start. But sometimes, especially for the staff, I don’t think that they’re utilized as much, but we definitely offer social work who will set up avenues for patients through hospice through outpatient facilities to get through the next steps of grieving? 

Shelley Robbins [00:35:13] Can I ask Meaghan, how do you how do you as a staff debrief currently? 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:35:19] So it’s sporadic. It’s not something that’s routine. I think it really needs it’s usually spearheaded by the attending physician, so it’s usually when somebody like wants to, which I think is a shame. I think that it should be something that is done routinely and with every bad outcome. But it’s just not something that was ingrained into our training so much. I do think that that’s a disservice to the providers because it gives you a chance to in a safe environment to talk about what happened, how things went and what you think about it, how you feel about it. So you don’t have to go home and ruminate by yourself and question what you did, then question why it was that this happened. So unfortunately, there’s just no good standard with that. 

Shelley Robbins [00:36:20] Yeah, yeah. And whenever you say that it’s sporadic and you’re not really even sure how to do it, it’s a whole different mindset as to how you’ve been trained and how the typical thinking of MDs are. I was doing a residency training once and I asked them, just a general question Let me just get a pulse of everybody like, how’s everybody feeling? And they all literally took their pulse for me and answered that. And I was like, No, I’m talking mentally, where are you? Where are you with this? So, it’s where your mindset goes. And so the more that you can get into that into that habit, so like you said that you can sleep at night, you will be a happier person and a better physician for it. 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:37:05] Yeah. And I think it’s really important. I mean, you said that you work with some residents. We have a brand-new emergency medicine residency and things happen. And I think even instilling that in them from the get go is important because sometimes you’re just not going to know what went wrong and you’re going to need to talk to somebody to make sure, what could have gone differently? Was this my fault? How could I have helped the outcome? And I think that’s important. Just start them young, start them young. Start it now. 
 

Shelley Robbins [00:37:40] Mmhmm. 
 

Emily Vincent [00:37:41] Many people do with those informal conversations and informal networks alongside colleagues. I’m not sure how it feels for you in the hospital setting, but I know in our work we do, we do regularly schedule. I think we have very parallel type jobs at very different speeds. You’re going at an incredibly high speed and dealing with incredibly critical situations and where we’re less of a crisis, much less of a crisis organization. But so many people who come to us are going through an ongoing crisis in their lives and their family situation. Even if they were friends, it’s still affecting lots of different systemic levels for people. So, our staff, we try, we try every month to have different pre-meetings to do this. 

We have a clinical supervision meeting that brings all the therapists together once a month for a few hours. We have a supervisor on-call contact. A supervisor whose able to be available to someone if they need an individual processing time. But so many times informally, and this has been something that I can speak to missing for a lot of people who may be listening in the mental health world is that our work can be done more easily in a virtual way. I know there’s lots of telehealth being done in medicine, as well, but so much of what you’re dealing with Meaghan is not virtual, but we would sometimes catch someone in between sessions and be able to go in and debrief with one another if we needed to, because we carry a lot of very heavy emotions and stories too. And sometimes we’re going through our own losses and grief experiences, and it’s incredibly difficult to keep that back here so that you can stay here with your mind. You’ve got to do that while you’re in that moment. But then if you do that all day long, it’s like you guys do. It will build up on when you go home at night, your mind is going to be going or your heart’s going to be heavy. So, if you don’t have that little conversation, where do you leave it? And I think in this year of virtual work, for sure, even in our group program, we have group processing for facilitators to talk about it. So, it’s a parallel process we’ve been doing them virtually. 

But that informal conversation that you might be able to have with your coworkers or colleagues to debrief and process has been something a lot of people have missed in the last year. And it’s and it’s caught up to everyone. So rituals, you know, if you’re thinking about yourself or thinking about your team, you know, even if it’s not as official as it is a collective meeting, you know, having some type of a special way of shifting gears. And now I’m going to bring my stuff back up. And give myself maybe five minutes just to feel my own feelings and then put an end to it. Maybe I light a candle, maybe I listen to a quiet song and maybe I sit in the car after a shift and before I go in the house, I’m just going to sit here and breathe for a few minutes. And that’s the ritual that kind of gives you that safe routine where you can bring out your compartmentalized stuff. Whatever emotions and thoughts you’re having given some space, let it out one way or the other, whether with someone or on your own, and then kind of chuckled back away so that you can shift gears and get back to your life or get back to the next patient. 

Whatever you may need to do, because I think that we all do need it, but it’s so hard to prioritize your own needs when you’re caring for other people on a day-to-day basis and such needy people right now. You know, both in the physical and mental health world, we are seeing pandemics within pandemics, within pandemics. So, it’s really piling up in the in the physical impacts that mental health are having for people and the physical. And so the mental health impacts coming from physical health matters, I mean, we are all one body and mind. Sometimes we keep describing it in two separate worlds, even though they really do overlap so much. 

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:41:50] Definitely. And I think it’s interesting that you say that because I have always prided myself on the fact that I, when I go to work, I’m at work and I don’t like fights with my significant other bother me. I don’t worry about that. Like, I’m at work, I’m in that mindset. And last year, sadly, my uncle died from COVID, and I got a call in the middle of my shift from my sister to tell me about it. And I just lost it. I couldn’t even continue my shift. I had to have somebody come in emergently to take over for me so I could go home. It was the first time that I was around my grandmother and my family since COVID had started because we were distancing ourselves. And afterwards, I was actually kind of embarrassed by how I reacted. I was like, Oh my gosh, what’s wrong with me? Why couldn’t I finish my shift? I should have been able to just carry on, take the news and just kept going. 

And I mean, it really hit me that, I’m human. I have my own emotions. I’m allowed to be sad about my uncle passing. I actually do feel very strongly that everyone should talk to a therapist, and I do talk to a therapist. So that’s been something that was a huge help to me and getting through this pandemic and getting to work and life in general. But she always ends our sessions with what are you doing? What self-care things so you’re doing for yourself? And I think that you’ve really emphasized that too. It’s funny because she always says that to me, she always makes me list out the things that I’m doing like, Am I exercising? Am I eating a few healthy meals a week? Am I still seeing my friends and socializing? And I think that that is something that, I mean, not just physicians, but everyone needs to really focus on what self-care things are you doing for yourself. But it’s very important for physicians and for health care providers. Again, I really feel strongly that everyone needs to talk to a therapist because it helps, but that for me has been very crucial and clutch and getting through the past 18 months. 

Emily Vincent [00:44:01] Thank you for sharing that Meaghan. And I want to express my sympathy to you from what you had to go through. And I can also share with you I was I was delivered some awful news about a loved one death while in a therapy session. While I was not at the current job, I was working as a school counselor at that time. And I had the same experience. I completely melted down at work and had to leave in an urgent situation. And I think that’s our humanity and I can relate exactly to having at the moment. In the moment, of course, you know, being overwhelmed with grief in that moment. I don’t know that I reflected on being embarrassed about it, but I think at some point I did feel like, Oh my goodness, I completely lost composure at work and so forth. That was before I started working at The Center. 

Having been in this field for a long time, I don’t I would hope that I wouldn’t feel any sense of shame about that kind of expression now. I certainly wouldn’t judge anyone for having that. But I do think it is really hard in a society where we’re kind of trained to be very reserved about those kinds of things, and depending on your cultural background, your faith backgrounds and how you’ve been taught to grieve or mourn, even in a way many funerals you attend might be very quiet. There may not be a lot of sobbing, people will sniffle very quietly, so there still is in some aspects of our culture, there still is this message that we even if it’s painful, we should be able to keep ourselves together for the most part. But grief is very messy.

And the more resilient you are, the more you’re able to accept that you’re going to be messy sometimes and you’re just going to people are going to see it. And the more you can embrace that part of yourself and know that there’s really no shame or blame in those moments, just kind of accept it, name it, move on to whatever phase you’re in. I think the more comfortable you can be managing those waves when they come up because it’ll come up again and again. 

Shelley Robbins [00:46:14] And if I could just piggyback onto that, Emily, that just kind of what we were talking about before of people are people. And to honor the authentic experiences that you have related to your own grief, that we are all entitled to feel what we need to feel because every single person on this planet will experience death and dying and grief at some point. If you have a relationship with another human being, you’re going to you’re going to have death within your life. And a lot of times people are awestruck. They’re not sure how to grieve. I get that question a lot and my grief, in my groups, they say, Am I doing this right? I don’t know. Am I? Am I doing it OK? Am I grieving adequately enough? And the answer is, you’re doing perfectly. You’re doing whatever you need to do for yourself to grieve. 

There is no rulebook for this. It’s kind of like parenting. You get placed with this baby and you’re thinking, I don’t know what I’m doing, but somehow you figure it out. And the same is true for grief. There’s no rules and regulations. It’s a completely personal experience. And as Emily said, it’s extremely messy. It’s not something that can be wrapped up and tied up with a neat little bow. It doesn’t take place in a linear line type composure. It’s wrapped up in a knotty ball or whenever you take off a necklace and you have that necklace completely jumbled up, it’s just like that. And to try to pull that all apart is how it is to try to get through the grieving process. It’s not easy. And so you take one day at a time, you give yourself grace. You understand that everybody grieves differently and that you and say your significant other could be completely on different wavelengths with this and process it differently. You may process a process that a little bit more emotionally when your spouse may process that a little bit more cerebrally or a little bit more, what we call instrumental grieving, which is whenever you grieve a little bit more factual, and a lot of times there’s this misperception that you should have a timeline to your grief and that people will often say that, 

Oh, I just got this comment to myself today that it’s been a year. Why aren’t you over this? Well, there is. The grief is lifelong. It just ebbs and flows. And you lean in and you lean out. Some days you have good days, bad days, good years, bad years. You’re affected by anniversaries and triggering events. And so the more that you can realize that this is an individual and messy process and the more that you lean into it a little bit easier, it is. Would you say that it’s true, Emily? 

Emily Vincent [00:49:02] Absolutely. And I love how you brought up a couple of other aspects to the grief process and back to what you were saying to Meaghan. That is self-care, and how much you are stressing that in the in the work that you’re doing in the topics, the conversations you’re having with your therapist, and thank you for sharing that you have used a therapist because I think that there’s been a lot of stigma in the past about going to therapy that’s gotten much, much better over the years, for sure. But there is still a lot of hesitation for a lot of people about that idea.

So also, in getting calls at the center. When people are interested in who we are, what we do so many times they’re in, they’re obviously calling us a state of some family or personal crisis that involves grief and trying to figure out. How to get help for themselves and what to do. It is really amazing what differences and people who’ve been in mental health fields, they either work in them or they have family or friends that work on them or they personally have been in therapy for those that haven’t, you know, navigating that phone call and helping people understand there’s different levels of help available. What is it that you need that takes real sensitivity and any level of mental health? And I imagine that you have to assess that when you’re talking to patients, whether in the emergency room or people who may be listening. If you’re working in other general practice or primary care physicians in any area of medical health, you’re assessing your patients across that spectrum of need. And we know that the body will carry a lot of emotional stress and in many ways, that stress hormone, cortisol, that we read and learn all about in mental health because it really creates lots of problems for us physically. You know, people will have aches, pains that are legitimate pains in their body that are all being triggered, sometimes from emotional pain. 

And how do you assess that, and how do you talk about that, and how do you treat it? So, what you and your therapist talk about, Meaghan is a lot of what we do in our own lives to stay healthy. But also what we encourage in our clients is that the crisis of grief and the process that it takes as it unfolds day after day, month after month and year after year, as Shelley said, is ongoing, it will developmentally ebb and flow depending on where you are in your life. 

There are years that you might think, why am I feel like I’m going backwards? What’s coming up this year that I wasn’t this upset last year? Oh, well, maybe there are some milestones coming up or the person that you lost would have been going through some big event this year. I can’t tell you how many times we had parents that have lost a significant other around the milestones that their children go through. They will grieve for that. You know, significant other is not going to be there for the graduation or for the birth of their grandchild. It’s not like, maybe it’s been 20 years, but it’s still there for them in those moments. 

And the same would be true for children that have lost a parent or parents that have lost a child. I know parents that can’t look at social media during the year that their child might have graduated high school. All they see are all their child’s friends graduating, and the pain of that is overwhelming, even if they had been many years. So when that overwhelming moment will come up and making space to deal with that, it can be incredibly helpful to focus on things that are very easy to control, like taking a walk, having five minutes of quietness where you can just breathe. And some people are very good at practicing yoga or mindfulness to bring their level of stress down, trying to get adequate sleep, drinking enough water, staying hydrated. It sounds very simple and obviously a lot easier said than done for many of us. 

But they are basics, you know, their basic activities that all of us have to do and in one way or another to function. And they really do ease into the physical weight of what you’re carrying on an emotional level when the emotions are really not going to be that easy to control.

Dr. Meaghan Reid [00:55:33] And I think as cheesy as it sounds, one of the things that my therapist always tells me is give yourself credit. Have you given yourself credit for doing this, for waking up today, for making it through a shift without crying, for not fighting with a patient? 

And I think for any healthcare provider, something so simple, but like give yourself credit for it for like, you know, getting that patient the medication that they need it in a really timely fashion or for, you know, going for a walk, even though you didn’t want to after work, you felt really tired and you just wanted to sit or give yourself credit for, you know, making it through a whole Netflix series. Celebrating the small things sometimes or like, you know, looking at the small things and at least get you to where you need to be slowly build you up to where you need to be mentally, probably. 

Emily Vincent [00:56:34] We put a lot of pressure on ourselves and a lot of expectations that are really not always fair, really not fair. And so that’s a good reminder. And I think you said that to, Shelley, people are people, let yourself be human and whether people might struggle with high expectations or not. One of the best questions sometimes I know in our work we can ask is what are your expectations of where you should be right now? Because people sometimes really do think that they should be in a much better place at a certain time, and we can offer them that support to know there’s nothing wrong with you because you’re still feeling pain for this or because the changes are ongoing. You know, when we think about grief, I think most people would identify that feeling of sadness as being a primary emotion, and it really, really is. 

But so is fear. Fear and anxiety gets swept up a lot for people, and they don’t necessarily expect that if there is an immense amount of change that goes on when you’ve experienced the loss of someone that’s incredibly close to you or your life has been incredibly connected to. All of the ways that that person’s role in your life was integrated has to be changed and shifted. And the stress of all of those changes brings up lots of other emotions, fear and anxiety in addition to possibly, you know, a lot of anger or frustration and confusion. So giving people permission to be patient with themselves really, truly patient with not only themselves, but with the process of that and this can all come up at once. We need defenses around us, especially in the early days to work so that we can actually get through the day. But over time, for many people, the emotions do not always follow that linear process where it’s going to be like the flu. It’s really hard and heavy in the beginning, and then it gets a lot easier over time. 

Certainly, we do hope that people are making some movement or finding movement in their experience so they don’t feel stuck. But that process is not always linear, and for many people, it could be six months, 12 months, 18 months later that they’re actually feeling worse. And that is not uncommon, and it’s because our defenses become exhausted over that time. And sometimes the changes that we’ve gone through have eased up a bit. And now our minds can handle the emotional weight of what, what other things are coming up. So, it really does require a lot of that self-preservation and patience to get through. 

Shelley Robbins [00:59:24] And if I could just add in a little caveat of my favorite age group, I am purely pediatrics. And kids can grieve very differently than adults do. And I think they’re often misunderstood and somewhat put to the side at times because the adult grief seems to trump the child’s grief because they’re kind of keeping the household going and the kids can sometimes be left to the wayside with things and not really picked up and identified. Kids can grieve with all different timelines, like they had a parent who died when they were five. Their understanding, obviously, as a five-year-old, is going to be extremely different than as a fifth-grader, as an eighth-grader, as a senior in high school, as a young adult. 

They’re going to understand that death weighed differently 25 years out than they did back when they were in kindergarten. And so it’s very important to continue to educate that child throughout their entire life, even though you, as the adults, may feel like, oh, I already reviewed this. So this child, they may not remember their parents, you have to tell them over and over again what happened as they mature, so does their emotion as they physically mature. So is their emotional maturity goes along and they express themselves so incredibly different. So they may present in the schools with bedwetting or complaints about that bed overnight. They may have behavioral and attention issues at school. They might have aggression, they may not eat as well. They may regress and be whiny, have temper tantrums, even though they’re 10 years old. So they present differently than adults who often rely on a lot of talk therapy to get through grief. Kids often will play their grief, and we encourage that and they will understand what they need to do. They’re much more intuitive, I would say, as a general rule, than adults. 

They kind of do what feels what’s going on inside of them and expresses it, express it through play. So I just wanted to kind of put that out there that kids are a very important part of the family process and that what my experience is with working with adults and children at the center is that you cannot separate them into two entities that they work in conjunction with one another. So at the center, while we have a facilitated group downstairs with just children, we also simultaneously have adults up there, their caregivers upstairs at the upper part of our center, and we teach them how to navigate life with a grieving child because they’re figuring this out along. Why is why is my kid not listening to me all of a sudden? And so the groups kind of talk through some things as to tips and tools that they can do to get their child to be successful and to open up through the years as grief with their grieving process.

Emily Vincent [01:02:49] I think it’s a great tip to make while we’re talking about the kind of crossover between medical and mental health, because I have no doubt that pediatricians or people who are seeing children a lot of times it may come up in a physical, you know, complaint. And I see it also from the other side, Shelley, where in the counseling world, oftentimes there’s a parent who has experienced a loss in the family and the parents focus many, many times of their surviving child of the loss of a child or if that was a loss of a spouse. If there is a child in the house many times, the parents focus is really on that other child. 

How are they doing you know, looking to them to see how are they experiencing it and to get parents to want to prioritize taking time for themselves can be really challenging. But we know the importance of both right to give each individual in the family, their separate space to share, to be able to kind of protect one another in ways that families many times feel like they need to do. It can feel incredibly fragile for families who have lost a loved one. Simultaneously, everyone’s lost the same individual. And you know, if you’re the child, you may not want to bring up that to mom or dad because you don’t want to get them upset. 

Shelley Robbins You’re going to make them cry. 

Emily Vincent You might make them cry. And that’s so scary to you in that moment, possibly because things are so fragile and same may be true on the parent. And although they’re kind of looking, is my kid or my kid’s not crying, what’s going on?

Shelley Robbins [01:04:22] ‘Why are they playing?’ 

Emily Vincent [01:04:24] These are very normal reactions for families to have when you’ve got different ages and stages and different perspectives of is it OK or is it not OK to feel and express these emotions with ourselves and with each other? So our work at the center does involve a lot of peer groups really do a great job of bringing together similar situations for people to share with each other. Really share with each other what’s working for you, what’s not working for you to have that safe space, to not always have the answers, but to figure them out and have the encouragement from one another to figure out what works for you and your child as you go on and in the counseling, and it can give that family much more of an individual focus. Talk about it. 

There are lots of great books out there. I feel like at one point someone said there really is no playbook, and that’s true. As well as I can tell you were the one, you know, you have a baby. I was listening to one of the other podcasts they’re talking about, you know, maternal health, and they’re talking about that moment when you as a new parent are leaving the hospital with your baby and you’re healing, they’re letting us take this child home. We don’t know what we’re doing and you figure it out. You do. And yeah, there’s lots of great resources, you know? And I can say in my life, that was a perfect metaphor for, you know, bringing life into the world. What do I do? I turn to family members, I turn to friends. I join a mom’s club, try to figure out how to How are you dealing with this? What are you doing with diapers and what brand of food you use? All those questions. And there are also great books out there. If you’re the kind of person that likes to read, you can go to any bookstore, Amazon and find lots of topics. But what do we do with stuff and dying? You know, oftentimes it’s less of an explicit conversation and more of that implicit learning. 

You know, there’s lots of wonderful websites that have tips and tools, obviously at the Center for loss and Grief that we have done. I think a really great job, especially in this last year, to try to put more resources up on our own website. But we’re by no means the only source of information. We are affiliated with the Association for Death, Education and Counseling, briefly known as ADEC. We’re also affiliated with Hospice Foundation of America, the National Alliance for Children’s Grief. And each of those large organizations does have lots of trainings available if there are professionals that will be interested or even laypeople interested in getting more information.  

Every day children’s books, there’s lots of good ones out there. There is also a website called Compassion Books that will allow you to search folks related to this topic of grief, death and dying based on topic circumstance. The Dougy Center is a renowned organization nationally and internationally that is known for supporting advocacy and support and programs for children’s grief, and they have published a few of their own books that really deal with resource packets that deal with special circumstances for children. There is a specific series after a murder or homicide. I’m not 100 percent sure how they title that and also after suicide, but it’s kind of the workbook education book for very, very difficult, traumatic and stigmatized death topics to work through with kids. So I certainly think there’s lots of people you can talk to, and organizations in our local area are seeing one that you can reach out to. But there are lots of really wonderful resources on the web as well. 

Shelley Robbins [01:08:25] Can I say what? What is probably my number one book that people say that they enjoy? Is that too specific?

Emily Vincent [01:08:33] No please. 

Shelley Robbins [01:08:35] I have heard time and time again, ‘It’s Okay that You’re not Okay’ by Megan Devine is just seems to be one of the adult for adults. Seems to be a big one that everybody enjoys. I actually personally have never read that. Emily, have you? 

Emily Vincent [01:08:49] I have not, but I know that we have a copy that books on our shelf. But that is not one that I’ve read that the one that comes to my mind is permission to one. And I’m blanking on the author right now, but I’m sure we can figure that out. 
 

Shelley Robbins [01:09:04] Let’s all Google. 

Emily Vincent [01:09:06] The gentleman who wrote that book it in a very poetic way. So it’s not packed with a lot of meaty content. It’s very quick and easy to read, and it really does. He experienced experiences and profound losses in his life. I believe he lost supposed. A child and a spouse that he shared about in different times and different stages of his life. And he really talks about, OK, Tom Silva, thank you. That is the author and he is eloquent. I believe he was also featured on Oprah. So OK, that gives him a lot of credibility, too. But he’s very eloquent and really talking about the different layers that come up in everyone’s grief journey and just really giving yourself one that permission that patients to let the process unfold as it does and and not expect to have it all together or have all the answers right up front. And I think that sometimes those resources are. Helpful in a different way than the ones that might give you tips and tools because they really give you that understanding that, OK, this is going to be a personal journey, very personal journey, 

Shelley Robbins [01:10:17] Not to leave out the kids. So one of my favorite ones is ‘The Invisible String’, by Patrice Karst is her name. So that’s a favorite too.
 

Emily Vincent [01:10:27] That and ‘Lifetimes’ is another. ‘Alexander and the Very Horrible Day’. You know, there’s lots of books that talk about it. And one of them, one of the books that I came across in the last couple of years there is a woman who uses photography to capture these chipmunks, and it sounds so funny it should be chipmunk. I’ve seen that one friends and I have found. And in this particular book, lots of kids first experience with loss may actually be of an animal and a pet, a family pet. So and sometimes even if they have experienced the loss of an individual person in their life, talking about it at an animal level can make it a little bit of that detached but very reflective parallel process of grief. And so, you know, this animal goes through the story of losing a friend, and he finds wisdom in other animals that tell him what he can do to try to manage that. So I think there’s lots of good books about that. The Fall of Freddy the Leaf is an old classic that talks about lifespan, too. So any opportunity to really talk about that life cycle, that journey that you know, we talk lots and lots about babies and we talk lots and lots about how children are raised in this life. But we don’t talk as much about end of life issues at a family level, especially with children. So many times people want to protect children from what they feel is a painful process because we do want our children to be happy and live joyful lives. But there is another book on our bookshelf called The Blessing of a Skinned Knee. And you know, it really talks about how we can do a disservice by over-shielding young people from knowing that life is going to come with painful times. And then, you know, this is how we deal with it. So letting them be part of those experiences and letting them be part of the process is very valuable for them through their childhood and into adulthood. 
 

Shannon Czincila [01:12:30] Those all sound like such great books. They seem like a really good tool to start that difficult conversation about loss with a young person. Shelley and Emily, for those interested, how would you sign up for your grief program or peer support groups? Is there a website that folks can go to? 
 

Emily Vincent You know, I appreciate you giving us some air space to talk with you today. I really appreciate your perspective Meaghan, and all that you share just about what it’s like working on those front lines. Because we do think of you often I know lots of people do. But to hear your willingness to be vulnerable and share what that’s actually been like was really important for us. I think for Shelley and I, we hope to hear and hopefully share with you a little bit on the other side of what is available. So we do work in tandem even if we don’t see each other when we kind of pick up where the other one left off. 

And we very much appreciate you and thank you for letting us talk a little bit about just our topic of interest because it is unique, but it is universal. And so what it’s worth, anybody listening. We do hope that you’re able to take something away today that will benefit your great experience or future experience that you’ll have somewhere down the road.

For anyone interested in reaching us at the Center for Loss and Bereavement. For more information about our services, you can go to our website, which is www.bereavementcenter.org. And our phone number is 610-222-4110. And if you press one, you will be directed to our intake coordinator and she will gladly help navigate whatever circumstantial and to guide you to the right person in the right service for your needs.

Shelley Robbins [01:13:55] This is really wonderful. Thank you so much for having us. 

Shannon Czincila [01:15:24] Wow, what an amazing episode. I’d like to thank Shelley, Emily, and Dr. Reid for sharing their time with us today and talking so openly and honestly about a topic that we will all experience at some point in our lives. I’m also very grateful for the resources they shared with us today, and I hope that all our listeners found this helpful and informative. 
 

Shannon Czincila:  [01:15:45] Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky.

Jamie Lewin: If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Shannon Czincila:  Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincila… 

Jamie Lewin: and me, Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila:  And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

Jamie Lewin: Want to get the 411 and upcoming Friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us @advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

Shannon Czincila:  We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of Friend you are. 

Jamie Lewin: And what kind of Friend you want to be.

Jamie Lewin [00:00:01] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m Jamie Lewin

Shannon Czincila [00:00:08] I’m Shannon Czincila. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers and shakers that make a positive change in our communities, and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Jamie Lewin [00:00:19] Relatively speaking, what kind of friend are you?

Jamie Lewin [00:00:26] Hi, Shannon. Happy New Year.

Shannon Czincila [00:00:28] Hi, Jamie. How are you? How was your holiday?

Jamie Lewin [00:00:31] It was good. Thankfully. How about you?

Shannon Czincila [00:00:34] Wonderful. It was quite peaceful. A lot of family time. So everybody’s healthy. So we made it through the holidays and happy to start into 2022.

Jamie Lewin [00:00:46] Same. Same here. Glad everyone is happy and healthy. Can you believe it’s been a year since we started this podcast?

Shannon Czincila [00:00:53] No, I can’t, but I think it’s been a great year. I think as you look back at the episodes that we did, you know, I think our vision changed to kind of meet our viewers. And, you know, some of the mission of Einstein, some of the episodes around breast cancer were fantastic. I always love when we have hosts step in for you and I, and bring a little bit more different perspective to the podcast. So those are some of my favorite episodes was when we had individuals besides you and I just talking to each other, going through some personal histories, some sharing of information. I look back on when we interviewed Dr. Lum, a mom and a physician during COVID, and going back to school and, you know, help me just talking to her, help me think about how I was going to send my kids back to school. And here we are, after holiday break, sending our kids back to school with masks on and the new variant now very prominent in our world right now.

Dr. Claudia Lum audio [00:01:54] It was sort of shocking to us how much he needed to be around other children his age, and this was with masks and six feet apart. But that just that social interaction was more important that we had ever even realized.

Shannon Czincila [00:02:11] What were some of your favorite episodes, Jamie?

Jamie Lewin [00:02:13] Oh, I have so many, I loved speaking with Regina Longo. I think she’s so positive and she offers such a great perspective on life. And every time I talk to her, I come away just feeling, just having a great outlook on life and focusing on the things that are really positive in my life and in the world. So I loved her.

Regina Longo audio [00:02:37] This is where meditation is so good on the daily, even if it’s two or three or five minutes, if not a few minutes more, there’s no time frame on it. It’s just what feels right to you, to quiet down, to like, ask the questions appropriately, not out of despair, desperation, need. But questions of how would you have me contribute today?

Jamie Lewin [00:03:01] I thought Deidre did such an amazing job telling her story. And I loved the Father’s Day episode that featured your husband, Bob, and my husband, Kevin, and my dad Harris. I thought that was really cute listening to the three of them tell their perspectives on fatherhood.

Shannon Czincila [00:03:17] I forgot about that one. I forgot about that one. They still have to get together for a beer, I think.

Jamie Lewin [00:03:21] I hope they do. I think COVID’s gotten in the way of life, but we will make that happen. Maybe this summer.

Shannon Czincila [00:03:27] Yeah, absolutely. We can go outside and have a beer with them.

Jamie Lewin [00:03:30] Yes, I would love that. And I learned a lot from Dr. David Jaspan this year, too. I mean, as a mother, as both of us are mothers, I thought I knew everything about mortality rates and just going through pregnancy and giving birth, and I learned so much from him that I never knew. So I loved that episode also.

Shannon Czincila [00:03:49] So what do you think about 2022 as far as the podcast? I mean, what are you thinking for vision?

Jamie Lewin [00:03:56] For vision? I’m just really excited to get some new hosts to come in. I think it’s really great listening to their stories and their take in their energy on things. So that’s really exciting, obviously, for us to chime in here and there too, and speak to doctors. And, you know, obviously COVID is still just a really prominent part of our lives. So I think we’ll still be talking about that and how that evolves. What are you thinking?

Shannon Czincila [00:04:23] Yeah, I think that. You know, I think focusing on some of The Friends stuff that we’re doing this year, we have a lot of stuff going on and we’ll talk about that a little bit later. I know next month we’re going to have a continued focus on disability etiquette, which is very interesting. You know, constantly striving for education in those areas just to be more inclusive. So I’m looking forward to that and just more topics that are relevant to our everyday lives and relevant to The Friends mission that we’re going to continue on this year. And I am hoping that we’ll be talking about easing out of COVID sometime this year and what that looks like, and what maybe life the new normal looks like coming out of that, so those are some things I’m thinking about.

Jamie Lewin [00:05:08] Yes. And there are some positive signs to that right that the virus is weakening and it’s less hospitalizations and so really hopeful that this year it will peter out a bit.

Shannon Czincila [00:05:18] Yeah, I’m hoping it’s going to become just like the flu, you know, and that we have the right preventative stuff in place to prevent people from getting super sick. And, you know, like you said, that the mortality rates will hopefully stop from that.

Jamie Lewin [00:05:31] So while we had many challenges in 2021, The Friends did have a very busy and very impactful year. We were safely able to meet in person for a few outdoor events and activities, including our annual Walk and Run Through the Park at Einstein Montgomery. We raised money for this really cool piece of technology that advances breast surgery options.

Shannon Czincila [00:05:52] Yeah, I mean, that’s a great community activity at Montgomery. It’s long standing. That was part of the original Montgomery Hospital, and we carried that over into Einstein Montgomery. And it was just wonderful to see everybody out. It was a nice, sunny day. We had a lot of walkers and a lot of 5K runners and just a great feeling to be back around with everybody. And the technology that they’re using that this benefited will just help guide surgeons during breath lumpectomies with very small incisions. It’s best for our patients. It’s best for the surgeons and enhances the patient experience. So it was just so great to have everybody get together and rally around this event. And we got a ton of positive feedback from not only those who participated, but were already receiving some wonderful feedback from the patients that are actually benefiting from this new technology that we’re using across our campuses.

Jamie Lewin [00:06:52] That’s amazing. I’m also really proud of our ability to give back this year. In June, many friends volunteered at Einstein’s weekly produce distribution, Fresh for All, which is also really near and dear to my heart. And in the spirit of the holidays, The Friends collaborated with Einstein Montgomery’s Community Wellness Team and the Montgomery County of Aging and adopted a senior.

Shannon Czincila [00:07:13] The two things you talked about are also near and dear to my heart. You know, being part of the community, having The Friends be the face of Einstein in the community. And I think we did to the best of our ability this year. Fresh for All is an amazing event to be able to give food, fresh food, and recipes. I thought that was an amazing idea that not only do we give them fresh produce and food, and we package it up for them, and we do that very safely, all COVID protocols were followed. We also give them little recipes to go along with what we’re giving them that day, which I think is amazing. And then, of course, the holidays are always a wonderful time to give back, and I love that we picked the senior project this year. You know, I think a lot of the seniors, they don’t get to see their families because of COVID, you know, they are a high risk population. And I think that just letting them know that other people care about them, I think just did wonders for them this year. So I’m very proud of our team for pulling that all together and not only The Friends, but also a shout out to the Einstein Development Department, they do a fantastic job helping The Friends out to be successful in those areas.

Jamie Lewin [00:08:21] We also were able to support Einstein Philadelphia’s Government Relations and Public Affairs Team and Face to Face by adopting three families. The outpouring of gifts was truly heartwarming, so thank you to everyone who participated in that. Another great highlight is that we were able to finally give out over 1000 beautiful flowers to patients and employees this past fall. It was amazing to see the smiles that this token brought throughout the hospitals. So thank you to everyone who participated in that as well.

Shannon Czincila [00:08:49] That was amazing. I’m glad that we were able to do that. That’s something that we normally do. The Friends do network-wide twice a year and we call it Flowers From Friends, and it’s just a wonderful event to take flowers to the patients who are in the hospital just brighten their day again, letting them know that people care about them. They’re thinking of them, and we want them to heal and we want them to leave the hospital. So it was great that we were able to do that. My husband’s an employee of the hospital, and I absolutely love that we were able to include a lot of the employees this year. They really are the heroes of this COVID pandemic. That is, you know, as we talked about, still present with us. But I think as we get farther along in this pandemic, our employees, it’s a really difficult time for them. You know, at first, it was difficult for PPE reasons and the uncertainty that was going on. And now, they’ve been trudging through this for almost two years now. And it wears on them. It wears on their families. So, I think it’s just wonderful that we’re able to include the employees and let them know how much we love them and appreciate them even two years into this pandemic. So that was just great that The Friends can help with that.

Jamie Lewin [00:10:06] I love that. They’re amazing. So, Shannon, as the President of Friends, we’d love to hear your vision for 2022 for Einstein and merging with Jefferson Health.

Shannon Czincila [00:10:17] So Jamie, like you said, most people probably know that Einstein has officially merged with Jefferson Health late last year, a long time in the making some hurdles that we were able to successfully overcome together. So we can’t wait to learn about their auxiliaries, their Friends’ groups that they have, and how we can join forces. So we’ll be working on that at the beginning of the year. I’ll be reaching out to their leads and the presidents of their groups. One of our major objectives as we move into 2022 for The Friends is to build more opportunities for The Friends and the community. This is where I think we really shine the brightest. We talked about that earlier with some of the events that we did in the community, and this is where we can most effectively use our energies. We’re going to start doing this early in the year with some of the things that we already have planned as we are collaborating with the Jewish Family and Children’s Services of Greater Philadelphia and their phenomenal program called Our Closet. At Einstein Philadelphia, we’ll be hosting a pop-up closet where anyone can come to shop for 10 free items, and this includes clothes and accessories and shoes, and The Friends will help staff that shopping event for folks. So looking forward to that and helping the community in Philadelphia. Then also as part of our 2022 Friends Membership Drive, we’ll have opportunities for existing friends to bring potential new members to Face to Face when they will volunteer their time while learning about The Friends.

Jamie Lewin [00:11:45] What a wonderful way to kick off 2022. We mentioned Face to Face earlier in the podcast, but can you share a little bit more about them?

Shannon Czincila [00:11:52] Yeah, absolutely. This is an absolutely incredible organization in Germantown that serves many Einstein patients and community members. They provide hot meals five days a week in addition to legal, health and social services, and their mission is to provide a safe and welcoming environment to anyone in need and treat them with respect and dignity.

Jamie Lewin [00:12:15] I love that. We hope to have lots of friends, new and old, join us for these important initiatives. Please check out our Facebook page for more details.

Shannon Czincila [00:12:23] And keep listening to our podcasts.

Jamie Lewin [00:12:26] Keep listening to our podcast. So, Shannon, we thought it would be fun to revisit some of our goals that we set in the beginning of 2021 and see how they apply now for 2022. And if we have any new goals to set. You really had a few wonderful words I would say.

Shannon Czincila [00:12:43] As far as my goals for 2021, if I reflect back on those I think it was, I’m being thankful for small things, improving myself in the community. And I reflect on those, I think I probably could have done a little bit better on improving self, which is always something that we’re constantly working on. So I’ll continue on that this year, and I think I was thankful for the small things just taking time to be grateful for all the wonderful things that we currently have in our lives and my family’s lives and our friends lives, which is hard to do sometimes in the world today with a lot of negativity out there, but I think we try to stay pretty positive. So what about you, Jamie, if you look back on 2021?

Jamie Lewin [00:13:22] In 2021, I had said to slow down a bit, be more present, and make decisions with intention, which I think I did. I mean, some of that is just part of the way the world is. That kind of forced us to slow down, but I have to say I don’t miss the pace that we were going before. I think all of the important things are still there and we’re still able to do some of the fun things here and there when COVID allows sort of when things were eased up a bit. But I think we got more rest and we got to be with family more and focus on some of the more important things in life. And so not everything has been negative. And I think 2022 will be a little bit more of the same.

Shannon Czincila [00:14:04] So both you and I, Jamie, kind of went back into the workforce. You know, I changed positions, I’m not working remote as much as I was before. Going into the office much more frequently and Jamie, you’re doing the same and traveling again. So I think that the slowing down piece is something that I’m going to continue to focus on and being present. So I might be stealing some of your 2021 items for my 2022 going forward.

Jamie Lewin [00:14:32] Feel free. I think also, you know, COVID has allowed people to work from home more. I mean, for me, I had to be in the office and I had to travel 24/7 and I don’t anymore. And that could not have happened before COVID. I think just everyone had to shift their mindset and shift the way they do things, and it’s kind of allowed me to live in a new city and work from home and travel less. And so it’s kind of been a great balance, I think.

Shannon Czincila [00:14:55] Yeah, I think that’s a good word for 2022. I think balance is going to be a huge thing. I think both in our professional lives, our family lives, our volunteer lives, finding that balance again because we kind of just went from full speed ahead to COVID hitting and everything just being slowed down. So I think now that we’re picking back up. Yeah, I think balance, Jamie, is a great word for 2022.

Jamie Lewin [00:15:19] Shannon, you shared before how you identified your three leading values and how that guides your life. Can you tell us how you did that so that we can all kind of think about what the values are for our own lives?

Shannon Czincila [00:15:31] Yeah, I would love to. It’s a great exercise to do. I was fortunate enough, I’m in a class through my work that is kind of guiding us through development and professional development as well as personal development. And one of the exercises we did was identifying your leading values, your three leading values in your life and and it’s an exercise where they put a bunch of words on a screen, and you pick your top 10, and then you go through and you pick your top five, and you end up with the top three that speak to you. And mine, I’ll share them with everybody, my top three values are family, integrity, and freedom. And what I am focusing on this year is that anything that I’m doing in my life, if it doesn’t fit into one of those three categories, I really have to step back and think, is this something I really want to spend my time and my energy on? And I’ll tell you, I’ve been using this for a couple of months now, and it’s really helped me work through some decision making of making sure that I’m putting my energy, my focus into the right areas that not only fulfill me, but where I’m the strongest, and I’m really going to be able to give my best to whatever I’m working on, whether it be The Friends, whether it be my work, whether it be volunteering, with my kids or just spending time with friends. So that’s just a little thing  that I’ve picked up at the end of last year that I plan to carry on in 2022.

Jamie Lewin [00:17:00] I love that. I mean, it’s an even better way of living with intention, right? Focusing on the three values that you have and making sure that everything fits into those. I love that.

Shannon Czincila [00:17:10] Just to kind of close out some of our discussion, Jamie, today I’m really interested in a couple of things like, what are you watching? What are you reading now? Listening to? You know, what are your new kind of areas that you’re interested in right now?

Jamie Lewin [00:17:30] Well, I think I’ve reached the end of Netflix. I think I have watched absolutely everything that is on Netflix. I’m waiting for all of my shows to come back. I don’t know when it’s happening. I did watch Emily in Paris the second season, probably in two nights. Just binged the whole thing. But it’s fun to just watch comedy specials and just things that make us laugh and lighthearted things. I kind of turn off the news. I don’t watch it all the time. I think that’s helped lift my spirits a lot and be a little more positive. What else? Obviously, it’s January, so I am focused on eating healthy, but I think that’s a whole year round struggle of going back and forth, exercising more, especially in the cold weather, trying to just get out and get more steps and be in the fresh air and not be cooped up. Yeah, I mean, I listen to Spotify, always trying to listen to new music. You know, I love fashion, so I’m always looking for new designers and trends. And how about you? What are you watching and listening to? Maybe you can give me some ideas, actually.

Shannon Czincila [00:18:35] Probably not… you know. Netflix, I think I’ve gone through most of my series as well. All the ones everybody told me, you know, you absolutely have to go watch and I love watching Marvelous Mrs. Maisel. I’m dying for that to come back on as well from Netflix is Frankie and Grace. I’m not sure how that goes, but we do that when I come back as well, eating definitely back on my eating keto type world that I was living in last year. I kind of fell off that world for a little bit there and. Holidays, but that’s OK. It’s the joy of being able to pick up another habit that you have. And you know, listening, I’m just trying to listen to music more. Like you said, I don’t really watch the news. I’ve actually been more controlled about what I’m watching just again. You said, Jamie, it helps your mood a lot, just what you watch, what you put into your head, but you put into your heart what you put into your ears. So I’m just really focusing on things that are positive, uplifting, educational, making myself a better person. So nothing specific. I just kind of keep my eyes and ears open for different stuff and things that make me happy.

Jamie Lewin [00:19:37] One thing I did watch over the holidays was Sing 2. We took our kids to the theater. My son has never been to the movies. He’s four, but because of COVID, we’ve never gone. But the theater was empty. We got them popcorn and just watching his eyes light up watching it was just so much fun. I love seeing everything through his eyes for the first time, so that was really great.

Shannon Czincilla [00:19:59] That’s amazing. Our teenagers wanted to go see that we still haven’t taken them, so I just love that there’s movies like that. I remember taking our son for the first time to the movies. I’ll never forget it. It was Cars way back when. And it is amazing to see that excitement, and it’s super cool to also see it as they continue to grow. Some of that excitement doesn’t fade. Like we see with our teenagers. Our teenagers, though right now they’re super excited about the Spider-Man movie.

Jamie Lewin [00:20:29] Oh yes. I think that movies, Spider-Man, Cars, Sing 2, I mean, they’re so great for adults, too, so I really enjoyed watching them.

Shannon Czincila [00:20:34] They are. I haven’t seen it, Spider-Man. So I’ve been telling my kids, Don’t give me any spoilers about it.

Jamie Lewin [00:20:40] Yeah, you guys will need a date night to go yourselves.

Shannon Czincila [00:20:44] Absolutely. Wow. So Jamie we covered a lot of things. Our very first episode for 2022. We had a reflection back on how we started this podcast, a little bit about our personal lives, what we did last year, and what we’re looking forward to in 2022. And most importantly, I think what our vision is for The Friends in this next year. It’s super exciting. I think I mentioned that some of our next episodes are going to be about disability etiquette, and we have just have a really great lineup of podcasts for this year. So I’m super excited about that. So happy that we had all the participation from The Friends last year and thankful to all of our listeners for all of your support last year. And I’m looking forward to many more great episodes and a wonderful 2022.

Jamie Lewin [00:21:35] I am too! Thank you to all of our listeners, all of our special guests this year. We can’t wait to have more and I just really hope I get to see everyone in person this year and that everyone stays healthy and just happy New Year to everyone.

Shannon Czincila [00:21:50] Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends, you can expect episodes monthly, maybe even to a month if you’re lucky.

Jamie Lewin [00:21:57] If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Shannon Czincila [00:22:04] Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincila

Jamie Lewin [00:22:08] and me, Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila [00:22:10] and is produced by Studio D Podcast Production for The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

Jamie Lewin [00:22:15] Want to get the four one one on upcoming friends events, volunteer opportunities and more? Visit us at Advanced at Einstein, Dot, Edu or Slash Friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

Shannon Czincila [00:22:26] We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of friend you are.

Jamie Lewin [00:22:35] and what kind of friend you want to be.

Jamie Lewin: [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network present Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila: [00:00:08] and I’m Shannon Czincila. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers, and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities.

Both: [00:00:19] Relatively speaking, what kind of friend are you?

Nikki [00:00:29] Hello and welcome to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I am your guest host, Nikki, a proud member of Friends of Einstein and Outreach Coordinator for MossRehab’s Aphasia Center. I’m so excited to be here, and I want to thank Shannon and Jamie for trusting me with their show. I hope to do them and The Friends of Einstein proud today. Today, our topic of discussion is expanding diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, to include ability. I’m so honored to sit here with MossRehab’s Director of Education Quality, who’s been working on ability equity for decades now. Hello and welcome, Julie. 

Julie [00:01:09] Thanks, Nikki. 

Nikki [00:01:10] Please tell us a little bit about yourself. 

Julie [00:01:12] Well, as you note, I’m the Director of Quality and Education for MossRehab, part of Einstein and now part of Jefferson. I’ve served at MossRehab for over 30 years and prior to that worked with Einstein’s Pediatric Department in a variety of clinical and administrative roles. Thanks to grant funding from the Einstein Society, I’ve been able to lead MossRehab’s Disability Etiquette Initiative and I hope to share some of the highlights of that project with you today. 

Nikki [00:01:46] That’s great. Thank you. So as you know, since the spring of 2020, there’s been a massive push to prioritize and increase DEI on all fronts in this nation. When most hear about DEI, we think gender equity, racial equity, religious freedoms, and so on. But we rarely even think, even those of us who are in the industry, about including ability. Fortunately, there are advocates like you, Julie, throughout the Einstein network, who are dedicated to changing that. But before we go too deep, let’s talk about if there’s a difference between disability and differently-abled. Is there one and can you tell us about it? 

Julie [00:02:24] Nikki, your first question really does highlight the importance of language, and this specific use of a term differently-abled is sometimes a hot topic among persons with different types of disabilities. Disability is defined as a physical or mental condition that limits a person’s movements, senses, or activities. You know, think about it. People with disabilities make up the largest minority group in the United States. In fact, one in four adults in America has a disability. This includes people from all genders, races, sexual orientations and other minorities. In addition, due to accidents, aging or illness, disability can impact anyone at any time. 

Nikki [00:03:21] Wow, that is so true if you think about it. In fact, I remember there is this phrase that Dr. Esquenazi and other senior members were using at the All About Moss event, I forget the exact term. Do you remember what that was? 

Julie [00:03:35] I do Nikki, and it’s just something we use kind of internally. But it’s that whole adage that any one of us, because of a condition or aging or any issue, could be just temporarily able-bodied. And the advisory board members and Dr. Esquenazi referred to that T A B (TAB) as just a little acronym as a reminder to all of us that life can change in an instant. 

Nikki [00:04:03] Yes, I love that. I remember being so moved by that thought because life is fragile. No one plans to change, but sometimes we’re abled, and sometimes we suddenly find ourselves disabled. 

Julie [00:04:16] And so to talk more about language, many advocates in the disability community really tell us to use that word disability. Some people with disabilities find the term you asked about differently-abled or things like special needs, some people find those terms patronizing. While the speaker may equate the term as positive, many may not see it that way. So the best rule is to really refer to a person respectfully and how they want to be spoken to or about. You know, this Disability Etiquette program I mentioned, funded by the Einstein Society, to develop the content for that program, I conducted focus groups with persons who have different types of disabilities and caregivers. You know, I wanted to learn from their lived experience. What did they want us to say? What are their pet peeves? And inevitably, I now advocate for the use of person first language. I believe this term, this terminology in this focus really does respect human beings and their strengths. Rather than defining people by their disabilities. Person first language really does put the focus back on the person, not on the disability. And interestingly, we start talking about DEI and it’s wonderful that we’re making such progress in educating persons about DEI throughout the nation. Well, just as you may ask people their gender preference pronouns, you know, I’m advocating that you should ask people with disabilities how they prefer to be identified. 

Nikki [00:06:08] Can you give an example of what that conversation would look like? Like, when is that appropriate? 

Julie [00:06:13] Sure, sure. Interestingly enough, Einstein has many language interpreters, and we have an American Sign Language interpreter. And we also work a lot with people in the deaf community. You know, if you go with my adage that we use the person who is deaf, the person who is hearing impaired and that respects the person and not focusing on their hearing ability, but the deaf community really feel strongly that their culture is being deaf. And so we kind of agree to disagree and work to work it out. They have no problem with me respecting the person who is deaf, but their language, preferred language, is “the deaf.” So that’s just one example. 

Nikki [00:07:00] And is this a conversation or a reference that we would use when we are in the presence of the person who is “fill in the blank”? Or is this a conversation that is a proper reference if they are not in the room? 

Julie [00:07:12] So it’s interesting, you know, respectfully and again, take my point of reference I work in a hospital, but I’m also aware I’ve taken our Disability Etiquette program to places of service restaurants, the Capital Grille, the US Mint, where people want to help people with disabilities visiting them. And so when they ask the question, and they will become more well-versed in using person first language, whether that’s in their marketing materials or whether that’s in how they refer to groups coming through. That’s one thing. Your question really is, you know, in a healthcare environment where you are having a one on one with someone, I may ask them, you know, but there are definitely some rules like we don’t want to lump people together as “the disabled.” We want to say “persons with disability.” You know, some of those other terms really do pull you down as opposed to recognizing the abilities of persons. 

Nikki [00:08:13] That is quite the clarification. I appreciate you, Julie. I’ve learned so much already. Now I know as an ability ally, you’re already checking many of these boxes and you’ve actually already touched on a couple of things. But can you share some of the efforts that Einstein’s already taken and maybe give us a few sneak previews as to what may come and why they’re important? 

Julie [00:08:33] I’d love to Nikki. You know, I’m proud to share that Einstein has incorporated content from the MossRehab Disability Etiquette Education Program that includes vignettes in video format of some of those lived experiences of people with disabilities. And that content goes to every employee throughout Einstein network. This ensures that thousands of employees are getting doses of disability etiquette education on an annual basis, so I’m very proud of that. 

Nikki [00:09:06] I definitely take that one, and I learn something every time. So thank you for that information. 

Julie [00:09:12] You are welcome. And also back to Einstein, you know, twice a year, every department has to conduct the physical inspection of their space. So I’ve jumped on the bandwagon with our safety and environmental care committee, and I’ve included two questions on that particular inspection form where staff are asked to note in their little, you know, department. They’re a little unit, any architectural or environmental barriers to accessibility. By having many, many eyes assessing the spaces, I can be more confident that we can improve our health care environment for all. 

Nikki [00:09:52] Now, that’s a great idea. Many eyes for one clear goal. Can you give some examples of some of the physical or spatial changes that have resulted from these annual inspections? 

Julie [00:10:04] Sure. I will tell you that in some of the physicians’ offices and some of their exam tables were not ones that could be lowered to a wheelchair accessible transfer. And so we’ve been able to do that. Sometimes it’s just, you know, you walk in a space and you want to ensure that a person in a wheelchair could access that same space but turn around as opposed to being stuck going one way. In our own Einstein Elkins Park lobby, I have rearranged the furniture and we have a template so that when at night when they clean, the workers put the chairs back in the position that we’ve identified. So not only could a person be sitting next to a person in a wheelchair in our lobby, but a person in a wheelchair could then pass those two individuals. So it looks very spacious, but that’s very purposeful. 

Nikki [00:10:59] That is so impressive. And actually, as an employee at the Elkins Park location, I get to go through that lobby quite often and I always enjoyed the room. Little did I know it had a purpose. So once again, you’ve made me Einstein proud. So if I take my Einstein hat off, what can we do as community members to make this shift to include ability in DEI? For example, if you had three things that we could do today, what would they be? 

Julie [00:11:24] Well, first I would say use person first language. Start to include that in the way that you speak and in what you write. By doing so, you really emphasized seeing the person first, recognizing humanity and recognizing that it’s really just basic respect. Next, never assume a person needs your assistance. If you believe someone needs help, ask first if they need help, then ask how you can help. And then I guess third, make a conscious decision to seek out and include people with disabilities whenever you are working on any community accessibility issues, be they architectural or environmental updates to any space, or be they plans for any education about disability etiquette. 

Nikki [00:12:22] And that makes a lot of sense. And I’m wondering if maybe I’m speeding, where if we can expand the DEI and the ability etiquette or disability etiquette, I should say, should we think about ways to include them in everything or in more things? Because I think a lot of times we assume that if a person is not able to do the way the general group is able to, that makes that person feel bad. So then they don’t want to ask to put them in a situation to say, “I can’t do this.” Should we find ways to include them anyway or how would we do that? 

Julie [00:12:56] Nikki, always inclusion is, you know, has to rise to the very top, and we have to figure out how we can be as inclusive as possible. You know, people with disabilities report, here we are around the holiday time. People with disabilities, especially people with aphasia or language concerns, really say that even in their immediate family gatherings, sometimes they get left out. Why? Because it’s harder. Takes more effort to wait until they can form their words. And and you know, people, we are in a fast paced world, so it is so important to be more inclusive. The payback will be really worth it when we can include people asking what their preferences are, when we ask them, Does this space work for you? How could we make it more accommodating for you? Be it a family gathering or be it an event. I hope that helps. 

Nikki [00:13:57] Absolutely. It really brings to the front of mind, which I think is the challenge with our culture is that we’re so busy trying to get things done. We don’t stop to really think and consider what it forces us to really just slow down and take the time and, like you said, identify the person. So even this is a person in a wheelchair or a person with a prosthetic or a person who is deaf. It is still a person and just like any other person in the room, they would like to feel included. So I think that is so important, and I’m so glad that you brought that point up. With that said, is there anything else that you would like to share, anything else you would like us to know? 

Julie [00:14:37] No, but I want to thank The Friends of Einstein for putting this really on everybody’s radar. I think it’s so important, and I’ll be excited to hear some chatter about it as we have people listening to it throughout the Network and beyond. 

Nikki [00:14:51] Yes, if there’s chatter, we’ve done our part because the goal is to get people to think about this and put it into action. So please remember to use that person first language and do not assume a person needs your assistance. Always ask first and include the people with disabilities who are around you. They are people just like you. So thank you, Julie, for your time. Thank you Friends of Einstein and we look forward to speaking on this again next time with a disability advocate and founder of OurView, Mr. Arthur Aston. So thank you all. Have a good day. 

Shannon Czincila:  [00:15:29]  Thanks for listening to Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky.

Jamie Lewin: If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family, write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Shannon Czincila:  Relatively speaking between friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincila… 

Jamie Lewin: and me, Jamie Lewin.

Shannon Czincila:  And it’s produced by Studio D Podcast Production for the Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network.

Jamie Lewin: Want to get the 411 and upcoming friends events, volunteer opportunities, and more? Visit us @advance.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website.

Shannon Czincila:  We invite you to become a member of the Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of friend you are. 

Jamie Lewin: And what kind of Friend you want to be.

Jamie Lewin [00:00:00] The Friends of Einstein Health Care Network present, Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. I’m Jamie Lewin. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:00:07] And I’m Shannon Czincilla. Join us as we explore hot topics and trends, interview movers and shakers that make a positive change in our communities and highlight upcoming events and volunteer opportunities. 

Both [00:00:18] Relatively speaking, what kind of Friend are you? 

Jamie Lewin [00:00:25] Hi, everyone. We’re excited to be back with a special Mother’s Day episode. In honor of Mother’s Day, we wanted to have a conversation between moms from different generations of what it’s like to be a mother. We have Samantha Marx, who is a first time mother. Her baby is about to be six months old. We have myself, Jamie Lewin. My children are four and six years old. We have Shannon Rafferty-Czincilla. She has three kids who are all teens now. And her mom, Vicky Rafferty, who has three children and grandchildren. And she is going to be our words of wisdom for today. We can’t wait to hear from her. So welcome, everyone. Thanks for joining us. 

Samantha Marx [00:01:08] Thank you so much. Happy to be here. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:01:10] Thanks, Jamie. 

Vicky Rafferty [00:01:11] Thanks, Jamie. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:01:13]  Jamie, I’m super excited. I’m a little under the weather, so my voice is a little bit off for everybody who’s listening. But this is Shannon. And I know when we were talking earlier, I think it’s kind of amazing that when we added up the years of motherhood on this call right now. We’re over 75 years of motherhood experience. So I’m just so excited to continue to learn from all of you and maybe pick up some tips and tricks along the way today. 

Jamie Lewin [00:01:37] Sammy, we thought we’d start with you today since you’re the newest member of the motherhood team. We wanted to see what you thought motherhood would be like and what you’ve experienced since having your baby. 

Samantha Marx [00:01:51] So motherhood is not anything that I could have planned for — which I’m a planner, as you can tell. And I think I learned exactly what motherhood was going to be the same day that I gave birth, because all I wanted was a cheeseburger and I sent my partner out to get one for me while I’m keeping my fresh baby alive. And it turned out to be about an hour later, and he still wasn’t back. So I gave him a call and he was actually at the restaurant. People were buying him drinks at the restaurant, which was really funny. So that really queued up what motherhood was going to start off as. I think that it’s been amazing and exhausting and everything that people warned me about happened. We’ve been really lucky. My daughter, she was born on Halloween. She is a dream. She’s so happy. She thinks that she can walk right now and she obviously can’t because she’s about to be six months, as Jamie said. She just is such a light. You know, she walks into a room and even if she doesn’t know you, she gives you that little glare. But then she’s got the biggest smile, which is just really nice to see because that was really important for us when we decided to have a baby. We just wanted to make sure that she was happy and she felt safe and she felt just any kind of semblance of security from the get go. So it’s been really nice to watch her in this whole process. Yeah, I think it’s just all of it. It’s been a whirlwind. Luckily for those of you listening, you don’t see my hair right now and you don’t get to see all of the little flyaways happening, which was a postpartum thing that I was not expecting to have with that hair loss. But you take it as you come. And what I’ve learned so far is you can’t get everything done in a day. And it’s just I’m really excited to see where this world is going to take us. But I think what questions I do have would be some words of wisdom from all y’all. So I don’t know which one of you guys want to start with that. Maybe Jamie or Shannon, Vicky.

Jamie Lewin [00:04:09] Well, I will say after six years, the flyaways don’t get better, but I think you care less about them. Too busy to notice. So I have a funny hospital story. Two or three days after I had my daughter, my six year old, we were still at the hospital. We had an extra day. We’d been there for so long. And I could see Starbucks out my window, and all I wanted was to go outside across the street, get a Starbucks and come back. My parents were visiting. They were with the baby. So my husband and I got dressed and we start to walk out and a nurse says to me, “I’m sorry, where are you going?” And I said, “We’re going to go get Starbucks.” And she said, “You can’t leave.” I said, “Oh, right, I’m a patient here. I can’t leave.” She goes, “No, you can’t leave your baby.”. 

[00:04:52] And I was like, oh, but then I realized my husband could leave. He could walk outside to go to Starbucks, but I couldn’t. So, anyway, that was the start of motherhood for me too. But I knew that was pretty funny. But, yeah, everything that you said. I mean, we just wanted to make sure our kids were healthy and happy. Like I said, we have a four year old and a six year old and they’re just — I think every mother feels this way about her own children — but the most beautiful, smartest, funniest group, most creative kids I’ve ever seen. And I can’t imagine life without them. Shannon, how about you? Do you have your birth story or anything after having your kids? 

Shannon Czincilla [00:05:34] Oh, I don’t know if you want to hear my birth stories. I think if you span together all the time it took for me to give birth, it was about a week for three kids. Well, to Samantha’s question, I’ll just advise like, for a new mom,  Sammy, we love you. We were so excited to be pregnant and then have the baby. 

Just enjoy every moment of it. I mean, every stage is so different. I look back at the pictures around our house now of my kids. Like Jamie said, they’re all teenagers. They’re 14, 16 and 18. And my baby boy is ready to leave for college. So it goes by quick and everybody tells you that. And I feel for some reason it gets like exponentially quicker  as you get older. And you’ll always feel that there’s a challenge. Like, this moment is so challenging. Well, at least I can tell you, and maybe my mom can chime in, but every stage there’s a challenge and just embrace it. There’s always going to be a challenge, just going to be a little bit different as you go along. So I don’t know about you, mom, but from the exponential pieces it seem like it’s going quicker for you now that you have grandkids? 

Vicky Rafferty [00:06:48] Oh, absolutely. I remember my mother always saying, yes, all young girls or young boys always say, I wish I was 16. I wish I was this. I wish I was 21. I wish I could drive a car. Oh, I can’t wait till I’m married. And it’s just like you said. Stop doing that. My mom would say, “You’re wishing your life away. Enjoy every single minute you can because there are so many. And they fly by.”  Just thinking this time last week, we were getting ready for Nicholas’s prom. It’s gone. It’s over with. It’s done. There’s another chapter going to open up. And all of you young mothers listening to this. All those chapters come. You open it. You go through it. And they close and another one opens. And for each one of you tells your children you’re going to have maybe more. Or the ones you have. And especially with me, what I’m going through. I have these three wonderful grandchildren that I’m really, really, watching and living through what they’re going through, because I was blessed with three wonderful grandchildren. I have three children and I went with raising them and we had certain standards that they had to abide by, and they did pretty well. But like I said, that chapter, that book, the book for each one of them, and they’re all different. And that’s what you’re supposed to cherish and enjoy. Words of wisdom. 

Samantha Marx [00:08:25] You know, I’m glad that you brought up chapter because what was a really big closing chapter that I struggled — not struggled with, I wouldn’t say, but what really got me at the end of my pregnancy was I was 10 centimeters dilated. And when the doctors came in and said, okay, it’s time, I felt like I wasn’t ready.  I started shaking. I was terrified because that was the inevitable. Like, we wanted this. We knew we chose to have a baby. We wanted this. We’re so excited. It was going to be the most incredible experience. But I was terrified just knowing that that was going to be the end of just my partner and I. And he he acknowledged it too, and he just held my hand through it all. And once my daughter was born, that was it.  And I’m a very emotional person. I know every single person on this call knows that about me. So now the listeners do too. I cry at everything because I feel so deeply. And I was also shocked about that whole process that I didn’t cry at all. 

[00:09:36] When I gave birth, I immediately went into act mode and I needed to make sure that I was going to survive, that I was going to be okay and that my daughter was going to be okay, that she actually came fast. I told my partner, I was like, “You go over to her, you make sure she’s okay because that’s the most important thing.” But the closing of that chapter and the starting of the new, I had anticipated being more emotional about it and that just actually wasn’t the case. And that was very interesting for me. I don’t know if you guys had the same experiences at all or whatnot, but that came as a real shock. It wasn’t until we were in our private postpartum room and after the nurses and the tags had come in and checked on us and we were just sitting there holding her —  actually my partner was holding her for the first time. And just watching that and him kind of rock in her and cradling her, that’s when I lost it and I started crying. But it was interesting. 

Jamie Lewin [00:10:40] I know I said this to you before, but when I hear you talk about that, it just sounds to me like you clicked into mom mode immediately. And you’re like, the only thing that matters is her and her health and her safety. And I’ll worry about my emotions later. And I feel like we do that as moms. We just compartmentalize everything about ourselves, to take care of our children and everyone else around us, maybe even just as women and caregivers and nurturers, you know. But I will say, in terms of the chapters, I think, Sammy, you’re in the hardest one. Again, my kids are only four and six, but the first two years are hard. They’re amazing. It’s amazing to watch your kids grow and to start walking and talking and their personalities. It’s amazing. But as moms, it’s really hard. The sleepless nights and the feeding around the clock and the up at 2 a.m. and especially we’re all working moms on this call or we were working moms, it’s not easy. So just to give you credit for what you’re going through, it does get easier. I mean, I love the stage we’re in now and people ask us like, don’t you just miss the baby stage? And I’m like, I don’t. I mean, like maybe for a minute, to squeeze the baby and hold the baby. But I love now my daughter’s six and she all of a sudden seems like she’s 13. She got off the bus the other day and she would not let me give her a hug and a kiss in front of everyone on the bus. I was like, “Oh, are you 13? What’s happening?” But it’s just really fun to watch them mature and come into their own person. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:12:06] I hate to tell you, though, but teenagers, it’s similar to the younger years. You’re still sleepless nights. You are still feeding them around the clock. You’re still worrying that they’re going to fall or they’re going to get hurt. So it does kind of come back around again, just that it’s a little different. But okay. 

Jamie Lewin [00:12:20] You’re probably feeding them way more, actually. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:12:21] So enjoy this little time you have. Now, I do have to say that when you were saying those things, I’m like, “Yeah, that happens now. Been around the clock up till 2.00 AM. I am worried they’re going to get hurt.” 

Jamie Lewin [00:12:34] Right. Little people, little problems. Big people, big problems. 

Vicky Rafferty [00:12:38] And I’ll just tell you one thing, too. My oldest is 52, so it doesn’t matter. You’re always going to be worried about your children. You’re always your child’s mother no matter what. And your parents, you know, mother and father still feel the same way. You still got to have your sleepless nights. You’re going to worry. They changed jobs, why did they do that? Is everything okay? Are the grandchildren okay? So, ladies, get ready. It’s a roller coaster. 

Samantha Marx [00:13:08] I definitely have a newer sense of compassion for my mother. You know, daughters always fight with their mothers, right? But I remember my mom always saying that you’ll understand when you’re a mother. And when you’re a kid, before you have kids, you’re like, “Okay, sure.” I’m sure that it’s going to be that different. But, man, is it? It really is. It’s a transition. And I think it allows  grace in there, which is neat. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:13:46] Yeah. My mom used to always say to me, “I hope you get a little girl just like you.” And I did. My daughter, I do see glimpses of her and her stubbornness. And I look back, and I have my difficult moments. But I think I first realized that when my daughter was in kindergarten and it was like her first day of kindergarten, and we had planned and went out and got outfits for her and she picked out her outfit and it was hanging on her closet. And the night before came and it was much colder than we had expected. And so I said, “Well, we can’t wear the shorts and t-shirt thing. We have to get something else.” We didn’t have anything. And a quick trip down to Kohl’s down the street found something a little bit more appropriate. She picked it up that night. I thought, okay, we’re good to go. That next morning, my husband was up with the boys, getting them all taken care of downstairs, getting them off to school. Because at one point in time I had three kids under the age of five, so they’re all pretty close together in age. So the boys were downstairs doing their thing, having their cereal and I’m upstairs getting my daughter dressed. And she just would not have it with this outfit she picked up the night before. And I just heard her screaming at me and me screaming at her. And my husband is downstairs going, “Wow.” And at that moment, I was like, “Oh, my God, we’re the same person.” Like, literally. I’m yelling with my five year old, she’s yelling at me, and we’re actually probably in the exact same space as a person. It was really interesting. It was the first time I’d ever seen like, “All right, my mom’s right. I got a little girl just like me.” 

Vicky Rafferty [00:15:25] And you certainly did.  I remember one thing your father always said to Shannon was, all you had to do was say to her, “You can’t do it. You won’t be able to do it.” And the reflection of Shannon looking at her daughter it’s exactly the same thing. And I can attest to it. So all of you mommies with boys and girls, there you go. Get ready. 

Samantha Marx [00:15:57] But I think that’s a good thing that she’s just like you, Shannon. I mean, you’re a powerhouse, right? I’d applaud that. I hope Frankie’s like me because, I mean, I think that I’m a pretty strong, hard working person, and I hope that she does develop those qualities. And they say that kids mirror you. Right. So I think that’s what brings me the most anxiety. For right now is just trying to make sure that she gets everything that she needs. But, yeah, so what my focus on right now is just trying to really hone in on breaking those generational traumas that I feel like get less and less with each generation. Like, finding that way to do it without losing my cool or losing myself. I know I keep swirling around in my head about it, but I think luckily I have a pretty good support system of mothers who have done it and who are continuously doing it. And I think the most important thing you can do or at least that’s what I’m finding, is that at least only own it if you make a mistake or just talk it through with them. Is that that correct? Do you find that that to be true? I don’t know. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:17:11]  I’ve always thought just being honest with them. We’ve always been honest with our kids, even when they were little. I mean, obviously putting it in their terms, on their level, but just being honest and having conversations with them. I mean, some people today still can’t believe that my 18 year old tells me almost everything and we’ve always kept that open and honest dialog. So it’s okay for you to be wrong. And I think you admitting that you’re wrong in front of your kids goes a long way. It shows that you’re human and it shows that they can also say that their wrong in a very open way with you and they’ll keep those lines of communication going. 

Jamie Lewin [00:17:46] I hope to have that with my kids also, so I might ask for some pointers along the way, Shannon. I would love to talk about work life balance because, like I mentioned before, we’re all working moms or we were working moms and it’s a challenge, right? Having enough time in the day for everyone, keeping everyone’s schedules, keeping your own schedule. Vicky, why don’t you tell us how you manage since you had three kids and a business? And what did you find? 

Vicky Rafferty [00:18:16] I had only three kids. My husband decided to go into the business. I was a working mother. I helped up the business almost every day. I worked a full time job. And in those days, the father — I think it was Jamie’s dad said that he really wasn’t that involved in the housework and the planning of the meals and running the kids around. And that’s the same thing. I was still working, running the kids around and working basically two jobs. But you just have to kind of follow the schedule. Three kids and at one point, three different schools. And you just have to have a schedule. That’s what you had to do. Or you had to try to stay by a schedule and also try to have time for yourself and have time with your friends. But most of all, it’s not easy. And it’s more pressure, I think, in this day and age than what we had. We didn’t have as much, I guess, publicity. We had the news and etc. 

[00:19:28] I sometimes feel bad for working mothers and balancing so much, but at least I see now that your partners, they do help. They do go to the store. They help with the children. And God bless you. You guys are lucky for that. But maybe we didn’t have as much going on then too, so I don’t know. It was hard at times. Shannon definitely knows there was times that I really wasn’t crazy about that business. But it took a lot of our time together sometimes as a family, but you’ll get through it, you know.  Just raise your children. That’s still the most important thing to keep your family together. And don’t worry about how you’re doing the right thing or you’re not doing the right thing. Well, no. You’re going to choose the right thing. You’re going to set the example and that’s where it’s going to go from. So that’s a little bit of advice. Now just a tad little time for yourself and you’re going to be the example. And don’t worry, it’s all going to be fine. 

Jamie Lewin [00:20:35] I think it takes a village. Any generation, you know, whether it was yours or ours. I think now maybe there’s a lot more travel involved in terms of our jobs. I think even with kids are on so many sports teams and travel teams and that can be really challenging. But I think you’re right. At least our partners, I think Shannon and Sami’s and mine, are very involved. I don’t know if we make them more involved they don’t have a choice, or if it’s just something that’s a little more normal now. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:21:04] Yeah. Jamie, I could say we’re definitely 50/50 partners. And that’s something we talked about early on in our relationship. But I think that that sort of transitioned, I guess, in my generation. I know we’re all different generations here also as well, but that really, I think, started to come with more moms out there working, more dads maybe staying home, which was not unheard of in my mom’s time. So I think that that transition that I felt happened, I started to see that within our friend group as our kids got older. And I think for Jimmy and Sami, it’s almost what I’m seeing now. Is like that’s just how it is, which I think is kind of cool. And that’s how it’s going to be going forward. That we’re both going to raise this family. We’re both going to fold laundry and go grocery shopping and do the dishwasher. Even though I don’t like doing the dishwasher, everyone in my family knows that. But that 50/50 relationship, I think, is crucial to making it all work. And I think, like my mom said, just set the example. And set such a great example for the families that we’re raising now. 

Samantha Marx [00:22:16] And I think that a lot of that has to do with also the changing landscape of just what families look like in general. Which is huge and necessary because that’s just what needs to be, right? But I think it’s really interesting with the splitting of the he duties. But what was funny is that one time — so I gave birth to Frankie, my daughter, and there was one night I just had it. I couldn’t move. I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I just was crying and crying and crying. But I knew I had to be up every couple of hours feeding her. My partner, he was just like, “Just go to sleep. I’ve got the night feeding.” Like, don’t worry about it. I’ve got you. And I was like, “No, but it has to be me.” Like, I’m the mother. I need to feed her in the middle of the night. That should be my job. And I know better, right? I know that it’s not like that. But it was interesting that I just automatically reverted back into that mindset when that just wasn’t necessarily needing to be the case at all. And he’s wonderful. He does all the ironing. I don’t like to iron. I’ll do all the laundry. But when it comes down to that, he really takes one for the team and does all of that as he should because we’re a unit, right? That’s how we like to classify our family so far. And be a splitting of those duties has been crucial. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:23:48] One thing that I just wanted to ask all of you, maybe we can all just go around and take a turn, is given our different generations here and different ages of our kids, I’d be interested to know what your kids have taught you. Jamie, why don’t we start with you? 

Jamie Lewin [00:24:08] I think my kids have definitely forced me to have more of the work life balance. You know, before having kids, I would get back online all night or I’d stay at work really late, and I get home and they really demand my attention. And it’s actually great. It’s forced me to shut off work and really be present with them. And just seeing their joy and excitement and everything and really just enjoying the moment and enjoying the day, I think, they’ve kept me a little more grounded in what’s happening in that moment. How about you, Shannon? 

Shannon Czincilla [00:24:43] Oh, I didn’t know I got to be next. I started the question. So I think my kids what they’ve taught me is it’s okay to not be okay. It’s just amazing. As my kids are teenagers or when they were, I’d say,  eight or nine, they just know when I was having a bad day. And their empathy and their ability to read us and do the right thing to make us feel better. I mean, as moms, we always want to make sure that they’re okay. And it’s quite interesting as they get older they’re maybe replicating what I did for them and checking in and making sure that they’re okay. And I’m seeing them with the same behaviors of asking us if we’re okay. My middle son is very good at this and he just knows when I need a hug. And he gives the best hugs. Or my daughter would know I had a rough day and she’d surprise me with a bubble bath. And it’s just amazing. And my oldest, he can make me laugh at a moment’s notice when he knows I’m upset. So it’s just so cool to see them pick up on their caring for me now, when I spent so much focus just caring for them as well as my husband did. So that’s what I’ve learned. 

Vicky Rafferty [00:26:07] Well, it’s kind of being repetitive because I get the same thing I feel that Shannon is receiving from her children. So I feel that the way I’ve raised my three children, I’m getting that what I taught them with consideration, love, kindness, letting them grow on their own, and they give back to me as being in my seventies. The phone calls, the love. Are you okay? The extra visits, making sure everything’s okay. I mean, I just feel like I’m very loved and their concerns are they have a kindness about them. Actually, when we had our first child, my husband was a football player and the doctor knew him,  their pediatrician was my pediatrician. That’s how old he was. And the doctor said, “Is he going to be a sportsman like you or Bob?” And my husband answers, “No, I just want him to be a good human being.” And that’s what I got, three darn good human beings. And they’re treating me the same way that I felt. And I think they’re treating their partners the same way. And as I can see, evidently, and all of you can see with Shannon that she’s getting the blessings too. So now we all have to have self esteem. Mistakes happen and hurt your self-esteem, but we all can’t be perfect. And we will make mistakes, but will benefit through them. And it’s going to come back as a positive thing. And I think I’ve reaped a lot of good benefits. A lot of concern. 

Jamie Lewin [00:28:07] I think making those little mistakes here and there where we question ourselves. They’re just little blips. I think, when you overall are raising your kids with really good values and morals and it’s really the big picture that matters. So it seems like you did a great job, Vicky. Two generations. 

Samantha Marx [00:28:25] Yeah. And I think, obviously, being the newest mom, it’s only been six months, but I think what she’s taught me is that the importance of quality time, obviously, in addition to everything that you guys have said, I feel that as well. But quality time and I think the privilege of having resources is huge. I cannot imagine not being in the position that I’m in. I have my mother-in-law down down the road. Even just access to a lot of the health care needs and everything, I think that’s the biggest thing that my daughter has taught me, is that if you don’t have, what do you do? I can’t even fathom that reality. So I just constantly think about all of the mothers and other families who just don’t have those resources readily available to them or who don’t know how to navigate the system. I mean, if I could get sick, how lucky I have my pediatrician on speed dial. But if that’s not the case, I can’t imagine what you do or what kind of heartbreak that can cause. So I think that’s also the biggest eye opener to me, is that one small thing can change everything. So I think that would be my answer. 

Jamie Lewin [00:29:51] To your point, I have such a huge appreciation for single mothers now. I think before you become a mother, you really have no idea what you’re getting yourself into. I mean, people can tell you, but I think until you experience that, you don’t know. And even I have a partner and family and a network of people that I can call, but it’s still really hard. And I can’t imagine being a single mother. So I have so much admiration and appreciation for moms who are doing that. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:30:22] Before we wrap it up, is there anything else that we wanted to talk about? I feel like we haven’t had too many funny stories. Like, I feel like we need to add some giggles in here. What do you guys think? 

Jamie Lewin [00:30:36] I was going to ask about, like, you turn into your own mom. Like, you hear yourself saying things and you’re like, oh, I hear my mom in my head. Like, I sound exactly like her. Or you have these aha moments of like, “Oh, right. That’s why they were saying that to me when I was like, oh, stop it.” But now I’m saying it to my kids. 

Vicky Rafferty [00:30:58] I’m waiting, Shannon. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:31:02] Only good things, Mom. Only good things. I guess that’s just the grace of not having to do all that stuff. And I think one thing I would say is you evolve as a mom. I mean, mom, you did great things. You always decorated perfectly for every holiday and all the meals were home cooked. And just given the lifestyle that I have right now, I don’t know how you did it. I have no idea how you did it with everything going on. But because of friends we have here today on the call, you know that word we said earlier of grace, give ourselves some grace. It’s okay if half the meal came from Wegmans, nobody knows. Put it in a nice pot, it’ll be okay. And if the flowers don’t go in by a certain time, it’s all right. The world’s going to keep spinning. Your kids are going to keep loving you. And so I think as I’ve grown and spoken to either mom, it’s like all of you, I just feel like it’s okay to talk about these things and it’s okay to give each other grace as we go through this. 

Samantha Marx [00:32:00] Yeah, I think that’s something my mother always drove into my head. Is that you need to keep a clean household. You need all of those steps in line. But what I found out is that, as we all know, there’s not enough hours in the day. And quite frankly, in our family, we discuss it. Like, do we want a perfectly clean house? Do we want perfectly home cooked meals every single night? And that just isn’t feasible for us. But what is important is our traditions and sitting together every single night as to the best of our ability to have that dinner and talk it through. We’ve been going on walks every single night and we bring Frankie because we want to create these traditions. And I think that’s what’s really important. So far, I know that’s what I learned from my mom. Obviously, to be organized and have everything in its place. 

[00:33:00] But what I also learned is what I don’t need to do, respectfully. That is her way and that is what worked for her. And that is why she raised two successful children. What I’ve taken from her is  tweaking it in ways that I don’t have to necessarily do it her way in order for it to be right, which was huge. I allowed myself that grace. Going back to that word, you know. And I think that’s probably been the biggest thing so far that I’ve learned from my mom. Is that you don’t have to do it all in order to still be a good mom.  I’m allowed time to rest. I’m allowed time to laugh with my partner. I’m allowed time for all of it. I don’t have to disregard my own needs and desires or health in order to be a good mom because Frankie is going to love me anyway. She doesn’t know.  

Shannon Czincilla [00:34:06] Sammy, I love that you talked about traditions. I think maybe this is a good way to end our podcast today. And and so, Jamie, I’ll ask you first, what’s maybe one of your favorite traditions that you have with your kids and with your family? 

Jamie Lewin [00:34:19] So we also try to have dinner together every night. We have the bedtime routine and things we do. We started playing family games more together. Now that they’re older and they play Monopoly and we have Spot it and card games. So we’ve been doing that every night. We just started traveling together again. Now that they’re getting older and more self-sufficient, we’re able to do more with them. Yeah, looking forward to kind of layering upon that as they grow. But definitely the dinners and the holidays and family occasions and continuing the traditions that we were raised with that I think are so important. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:34:56] That’s awesome. It’s interesting too both Jamie and Sammy said about having dinner every night, and that’s something we try to do here. We always have. Even if it’s a slice of pizza around the kitchen counter while we’re waiting for somebody to go out to a practice or something. So just that quiet time with just the five of us just to talk and catch up throughout the day I think is so important. And then the holidays are always huge. You know, just the traditions that I’ve had in my family and Bob has had with his and just kind of keeping that going. One of the things we melded together was every Christmas Eve, I make homemade gnocchi with the kids. I mean,  when they were smaller, they can get in there with the flour. And I’m just creating those moments. So next year, when he comes back from college, he can still be able to be there to do that with us. So, Mom, what about you? 

Vicky Rafferty [00:35:47] At this point, I can kind of do whatever I want to do. But I do you enjoy being involved with situations with my daughter and my son-in-law. And if my other sons are around, Shannon and Bob include them in the traditions that have evolved in their family. And I’m very blessed to be with them at almost every one of the holidays. And I’d like to travel more. I’ve traveled a lot with Shannon and with the family, and hopefully I can do more of that. And I’m still working a part time job, so that keeps me very busy. I’m blessed. And thank you for having me on the podcast. And, remember, don’t allow life challenges to disturb tranquility. It’s too precious to be wasted on nonessential issues. God bless all you mothers. I love you all. 

Jamie Lewin [00:36:39] Thank you, Vicky. Thank you to all of you for this conversation today. Everyone’s doing the most important job there is, raising their kids, being moms. It’s the hardest job. So just want to send love to everyone and best wishes on Mother’s Day. 

Samantha Marx [00:36:54] Happy Mother’s Day!

Shannon Czincilla [00:36:57] Thanks for listening to, Relatively Speaking, Between Friends. You can expect episodes monthly, maybe even two a month if you’re lucky. 

Jamie Lewin [00:37:04] If you want to support this podcast, please share it with your friends and family. Write us a review and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:37:11] Relatively Speaking, Between Friends is hosted by me, Shannon Czincilla. 

Jamie Lewin [00:37:15] And me, Jamie Lewin. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:37:17] And is produced by Studio D Podcast Production for the Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. 

Jamie Lewin [00:37:22] Want to get the 411 on upcoming friends events, volunteer opportunities and more? Visit us at Advanced.einstein.edu/friends and join our Facebook group. It’s linked to our website. 

Shannon Czincilla [00:37:33] We invite you to become a member of The Friends of Einstein Healthcare Network. There are nine different areas to get involved in. I’m sure you’ll find one that fits the kind of Friend you are. 

Jamie Lewin [00:37:42] And what kind of Friend you want to be.