He is a Gift and Every Day is Enough: Cerebral Palsy

09/28/20 • 60 min

- Peter Kline

I'm never doing enough, never doing enough of working enough with them and never doing enough therapy outside of therapy hours with them and knowing the importance of that, but also trying to manage the responsibility and guilt that comes along with that while also, also being clear on. But every day with him is a gift and every day is enough. That's it. It's it's holding those two things together that often feels very difficult, but that's kind of what we're given to manage.

INTRO

My guests today are Janice McRandal and Peter Kline. They are here to talk about their son, Leo, what it is like to raise him and love him as he lives with cerebral palsy. Cerebral palsy is the most common motor disability in childhood, it affects the ability to move and maintain balance and we will hear about how CP impacts their lives.

We also talk about baseball, rugby, sharks, and you will have the joy of listening to the particular lilt of Janice’s accent.

As always, I want you to know Peter and Janice as more than just their role as Leo’s parents. Peter and Janice live in Queensland, Australia and, when I spoke to them, they had just returned from a trip to the Barrier Reef.

- Janice McRandal

Oh, yes, just you know, it's one of the world's beautiful spots, so it was really quite a stunningly different experience to the pandemic apathy that set in to go our beautiful rhythm and just have these days in a day or two in paradise.

- Liesel Mertes

Are you snorkelers? Are you divers? Do you do some of both?

- Peter Kline

No, that was the first time I have ever snorkel.

- Janice McRandal

Oh, really? I didn't know that.

- Peter Kline

Yeah, I know. Never snorkel before.

- Janice McRandal

Oh, well that's the way to do it. That's the way it is if you're going to be the first time.

Peter Kline

Go. Go big.

You might have gathered that Peter is not a native of Australia. Peter was born in Houston. He traveled to Chicago, where we overlapped at Wheaton College for our undergraduate work. And, after marrying Janice, he moved to Australia where he teaches and works with young ordinands at the Charles Sturt University in Australia, a theological college that helps those seeking ordination in the Anglican Church. When he is not working, Peter enjoys a few hobbies.

- Peter Kline

When I'm not teaching. So I, I love to paint. That's probably the number one thing that I that I do when I find the time, which is difficult these days to sneak in time to paint. Yeah, that's what I, I love to make art and paint. So that's, that's kind of my main thing that I try to do outside of my professional life.

- Peter Kline

And I also I have also taken up or re-entered rather playing baseball. So, you know, moving to Australia, you know, you have to find ways to stay connected to your American roots.

Janice is also a theologian. As you will hear in a little bit, that is acutally one of the sparks that brought Peter and Janice together. Janice works at the University of Divinity and is the director of the Centre for Discourse, which does public theology. She, like Peter, also loves sport.

- Janice McRandal

So I'm a big lover of sport, so I am part of that clichéd Australian sport loving lifestyle. So I play by play sport. I play touch football, which is touch rugby, I guess would be the way to say it.

- Janice McRandal

I played that for twenty eight years, so since I was 12. So I just play weekly in a more and much more social team. Again, not super serious, competitive and I really enjoy that.

- Janice McRandal

I will only give it up when my body says I absolutely have to.

Janice also loves to cook

- Peter Kline

One of Janice's skills is actually to clean as she cooks. Yeah. So so it's often like to get to the end of a cooking session and you have this amazing, delicious, beautiful food and a clean kitchen here. And it's like what, what did you do that.

- Janice McRandal

It is my superpower in the kitchen. I am that rare cook that like is always cleaning as she goes. And there's nothing makes me happier.

- Liesel Mertes

And would you give us an overview of your origins story?

- Liesel Mertes

Did you get together?

- Peter Kline

Oh, the two of us? Yes. Yeah,

- Janice McRandal

Entirely by accident. Certainly not. Certainly not something one would plan for. So we both work in the same field in academia. We're both in backgrounds, in and teaching in theology. And we had connected over a number of things.

- Janice McRandal

I think we first met at a conference in 2012 and we had mutual friends and sort of knew each other in a very friendly way. And then a very good friend of mine was moving to Nashville to start a Ph.D. in the same similar program, same school as where Peter was at Vanderbilt.

- Janice McRandal

And I was I had about a year before going thro...

- Peter Kline

INTRO

We also talk about baseball, rugby, sharks, and you will have the joy of listening to the particular lilt of Janice’s accent.

- Janice McRandal

- Liesel Mertes

Are you snorkelers? Are you divers? Do you do some of both?

- Peter Kline

No, that was the first time I have ever snorkel.

- Janice McRandal

Oh, really? I didn't know that.

- Peter Kline

Yeah, I know. Never snorkel before.

- Janice McRandal

Oh, well that's the way to do it. That's the way it is if you're going to be the first time.

Peter Kline

Go. Go big.

- Peter Kline

And I also I have also taken up or re-entered rather playing baseball. So, you know, moving to Australia, you know, you have to find ways to stay connected to your American roots.

- Janice McRandal

So I'm a big lover of sport, so I am part of that clichéd Australian sport loving lifestyle. So I play by play sport. I play touch football, which is touch rugby, I guess would be the way to say it.

- Janice McRandal

I played that for twenty eight years, so since I was 12. So I just play weekly in a more and much more social team. Again, not super serious, competitive and I really enjoy that.

- Janice McRandal

I will only give it up when my body says I absolutely have to.

Janice also loves to cook

- Peter Kline

- Janice McRandal

It is my superpower in the kitchen. I am that rare cook that like is always cleaning as she goes. And there's nothing makes me happier.

- Liesel Mertes

And would you give us an overview of your origins story?

- Liesel Mertes

Did you get together?

- Peter Kline

Oh, the two of us? Yes. Yeah,

- Janice McRandal

And I was I had about a year before going thro...

Previous Episode

“So, no babies?”: Megan Flinn on survival and goodness

- Megan Flinn

I have, I have faced my own deep, like I have survived the thing, I think a lot of people have the great wounding or the great pain point of their life. And for those of us who have faced and wrestled through it and acknowledge it changes us. We then can turn to others and kind of say, like, I've been to my deepest, darkest parts of myself and come out on the other side like. That's possible for you too, the hope of that is true for everybody,

INTRO

Today’s conversation is about grief and femininity and finding yourself in the midst of a hard loss. When Megan Flinn went in for a straightforward surgery that yielded a devastating outcome, her life changed dramatically. Her uterus was gone as was any dream of giving birth to a child of her own.

But before we jump into her story, a little bit more about Megan. Megan is an old and dear friend. We’ve shared so many conversations of the heart, she has spent the night by Moses (my son)’s side as he recovered from heart surgeries. She has been there for birthday parties and was the one who originally rescued Tozer, a smart and loving mutt of a dog that became a part of my family.

Megan is tough and warm and smart. She is brave and confident and capable of doing her own electric wiring. She has a penchant for stray dogs. Megan is currently pursuing her a Ph.D., working as a school counselor, and is the founder of her own non-profit, Hamza International that combines embodied therapeutic approaches with a consultative framework that honors community workers while bringing forward the best of brain science.

- Liesel Mertes

Observing you over the years, you know, a key part of what you bring to so much of what you do in life is just a push for for justice and being a voice for those who have been marginalized. So I imagine that that is is a narrative thread that goes through your experiences that are leading you to where you are today.

- Megan Flinn

Yeah, absolutely. And I think something. You know, just in recent events in our culture and our world, this idea of being a voice for the voiceless I kind of struggle with. That phrase not not because it's not a good phrase, but the fact that that phrase has to exist. Right. We remember even back when I was teaching, I was like, why is no one listening to these kids? Like, they're coming in every single day with the same story and no one is listening to them, so.

- Megan Flinn

How do I. I how do I redirect people's attention to their voice and sometimes that does require me to use mine and so. I think that has been the thread of, OK, I'll use my voice to redirect, and then sometimes I have to use it longer because people really are willing to listen right to the mark to those who. We would classify as marginalized or not listened to.

Before founding her non-profit, Megan first worked as a teacher.

- Megan Flinn

So I had gotten an education degree. I had been trained. I was a licensed teacher. I had checked all the boxes to get certification to teach in the state of Pennsylvania. And then when I was put at twenty two years old, but into a middle school classroom in North Philly, I was very underprepared for what my day actually looked like.

- Megan Flinn

And so it was a quick lesson. I always say that was the year I grew up because it was I had bills to pay, I had student loans to pay, and I had to figure it out. And my teaching training, my education training did not prepare me for what I needed to do in that classroom.

Megan was seeing the effects of trauma on the youth that she was serving. And she knew she wanted to understand it better. Megan moved from teaching to working with an Indianapolis non-profit called Outreach Inc, which serves homeless youth. My husband, Luke, worked there as well and that is where our paths first crossed.

- Liesel Mertes

So as soon as I was meeting you, you were in this journey of really moving towards paying a lot of attention to your health and getting a lot healthier.

- Liesel Mertes

What did that look like for you as you're also doing this like trauma, informed care and building your health up?

- Megan Flinn

Yeah, so. Right. So the it was interesting because at the place where we worked, it was a hot, you know, outreach was a high stress place. You know, we're dealing with significant trauma with our youth, constant change of schedules, constant kind of like. In our own hyper vigilance, as we were interacting with some pretty extreme behavior from the youth and from the community, and so it was not uncommon, especially for the female staff, to gain significant weight there or to have issues with their health due to the stress that we were undergoing.

- Megan Flinn

And so it was a constant conversation and outreach about, you know, we all did the paleo diet or we did we would work out, we would go do Cross Fit or things like that.

- Megan Flinn

And so the conv...

Next Episode

Dead bunnies, COVID meltdowns, and other empathy failures: personal reflections from Liesel Mertes

Liesel Mertes

It's been a pretty eventful and emotional week and a half in my house now with six people in the house. There's always high emotion throw into the mix that two of my children are preadolescents. And you can guess all of the back and forth that go on. But this last week and a half has had some particular inflection points. We had a beloved family pet die.

We've been quarantined because of a possible COIVD diagnosis. And there's just been a lot of general stress in the ER. So today, I want to take a break from our normal cycle of interviewing a guest and having them talk about a disruptive life event to just give you some real talk about empathy and October 2020 in the thick of the COVID pandemic,

MUSICAL TRANSITION

Liesel Mertes

Now, there are a number of you who might know me just as the voice behind the Handle with Care podcast interviews. But I actually have a broader business outside of this. I'm a workplace empathy consultant. And what that means is I help companies and individuals come alongside people in their workplaces to help them survive, stabilize and thrive as they go through disruptive life events.

One of the ways that I do this is I teach them about these empathy avatars. These are these identities that we can take on. They're shaped by all kinds of things. They're shaped by your culture of upbringing. They're shaped by your personality. And they are the tool kit that you go to to respond out of when people are going through a hard time. So some of the names of these characters are people like Commiserating. Candice, you're always sharing your own hard story or Cheer Up Cheryl.

Liesel Mertes

And I want to share with you in today's episode two things that happened in the stress of the last week and a half.

And I want to we've you know, usually we have three takeaways that are always at the end. I want to weave the three takeaways throughout my comments and tell you how I found myself responding during these times of high stress and anxiety, hopefully connect with you. OK, so first I want to talk about this COVID diagnosis, so my son Magnus, he goes to the nurse's office more than any of my other children.

I think he likes the care that's there. He's very in tune with pain and his body. And I sent him off to school on Monday and he was experiencing some sinus congestion, no fever.

Liesel Mertes

I gave him a Claritin, but he was tired and he headed off to school till around nine 30. I received a call from the nurse. I'm in the middle of a training and I get this call from the nurse who tells me she has Magnus in the nurse's office and she thinks that maybe there's a chance that he has COIVD. Now, I'm really glad that people are taking COVID seriously, that they are all of these procedures in place in schools.

Liesel Mertes

And she told me that he checked off enough boxes that he needed to go to a 10 day quarantine unless he came back with a negative COVID test.

So baseline, this is sad news, my hope Magnus does not have covered, but really my first response was just to be so frustrated that I was being called into the nurse's office.

Liesel Mertes

What was this going to mean for me, for my schedule, for all of the things we had planned for the other children for the rest of the week, if we all had to quarantine? And I find myself just being irritated. And frankly, I was so glad that I was wearing a mask in the nurse's office so she couldn't see all of the aggravation and irritation that I was feeling towards my son manifest on my face. So I have to go.

I have to pick him up. And as we're walking to the car, I find myself going full on Buck-Up Bobby, which is one of these empathy avatars that I introduce people to Buck-Up Bobby wants you to be able to tough it out because that's what he expects of himself and that's what he expects of you.

Liesel Mertes

And as I was walking out to the car, here's what I find myself saying to my son, Magnus “Magnus, I can't believe that you can't deal with any pain or discomfort in your body.”

“All you had was a headache and a stuffy nose. You have it all the time this time of year with your allergies.” And I just read him the riot act. Do you know now that we're going to have to go get you tested and do all kinds of things?

And I'm so frustrated with you and I'm not proud of this, but I mean, he was he was in tears by the time we got home. This poor kid who is not feeling good anyway. And I really had to reflect on this because it was a parenting failure moment. And lots of times I work with companies, I work with H.R. executives or managers, and this little microcosm of an interaction is playing out in workplaces all the time because, frankly, it's inconvenient to the business of business to have someone going through a hard time to have to extend them care, to have to pause in the normal w...