Podcast Episode 246: How to be Momwell with Erica Djossa Transcripts

Please note: Transcripts for the No Guilt Mom Podcast were created using AI. As a result, there may be some minor errors.

Erica Djossa: We hold to these rules of how we want to do things sort of in accordance with how our parents did them, or the opposite in a lot of cases, that we don’t want to make the same mistakes. And so we, We hold on to what we think are values, but they’re really more like rules, to not do it a certain way.

And there is probably a valid value underneath there. But when we get really rigid and fixated in how we display that value, then we sometimes can be creating more work or tension or, discord sometimes we’re making it harder for ourselves.

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the No Guilt Mom podcast. I’m your host, JoAnn Crohn, joined here by the delightful Brie Tucker.

Brie Tucker: Why, hello, hello everybody, how are you?

JoAnn Crohn: We had a lot of fun on today’s episode. Um, I specifically liked it because our guests turned around and started asking us reflective questions to like do that little exercise. And was so enlightening about how much we relate. our food, the food we serve our kids to other values that have nothing to do with what they eat.

Brie Tucker: Right? Like, it was definitely a therapy thing. it’s the, it’s the whole, like, you’re walking in and you think you got stuff figured out and then someone says, oh, why do you think that way? And then they ask a few questions and you’re like, holy crap, this is from my childhood. 

JoAnn Crohn: It is. It’s so interesting, too, how it works 

Brie Tucker: Yeah. it was just so interesting to hear her say how, because of the fact that they, you know, you eat dinner or you ate dinner a certain way growing up, how, that deeply impacts how you interact with your family as a whole. On time going forward and how you made that into a value without even realizing that it is a value necessarily or where It came

JoAnn Crohn: It is all so good. We know this episode is going to take a lot of guilt off your plate when it comes to dinnertime. It’s like, I took a lot of guilt off my plate. Like, oh, haha, off my plate.

Brie Tucker: was gonna say, did you get that? You had a little thing off your plate with dinner. 

JoAnn Crohn: they’re always unintentional for me. Like I never try and I’m like, Oh, but a bump did it. That’s when my kids roll their eyes at me. And they’re like, mom, come on. Like you’re such a millennial. That’s not an insult. You’re such a millennial mom. 

Brie Tucker: Whatever. All your adult friends get it. We get it. And we think 

JoAnn Crohn: It’s true. Hey, before we started this episode, if you’re not getting the no guilt mom weekly, go on over, make sure you sign up and get it. It is motivation in your inbox every Monday morning. So you can start your week off really, really great. Go to newsletter.noguiltmom.com and sign up there. Go do it right now. 

And with that, um, I want to introduce our guest. Our guest is Erica Jossa. She’s the founder and CEO of MomWell, host of the MomWell podcast, and author of Releasing the Motherload. She helps bring maternal mental health to the forefront and supports mothers in their transition to parenthood And her new book will be releasing on April 9th. And make sure, like, we know this is airing a month before April 9th. Erika has so many great things for pre ordering her book. That’s releasing the motherload, so go look it up on Amazon. And now, on with the show. 

JoAnn Crohn: Welcome to the podcast, Erica. I’m so excited to dig into this topic of the motherlode, especially like feeding kids, because I’m ready to pull my hair out daily with this issue. So welcome, and I can’t wait to chat. You have a book coming out April 9th about the motherlode, and I want to know, what led you to write this book?

Erica Djossa: It’s interesting, the feeding you’re talking about, because we think like. formula feeding, breastfeeding that’s going to end and then they become like on solids and picky eaters and toddlers all the way through. So I’m sure so many people can relate. 

JoAnn Crohn: It never ends. 

Erica Djossa: yeah,

Brie Tucker: It really doesn’t.

Erica Djossa: I’m sure, I’m sure we’ll dig into it. So yeah, this, this book was really kind of like a combination of a lot of the work that I do. I was just. Psychotherapist, plugging my way through child and family practice and, graduated from school, settling into married life and all of that. And then I had three boys in the span of three and a half years and felt like I was just utterly thrown into the deep end of motherhood and I found myself struggling with postpartum depression and anxiety, which rocked me for a few reasons.

Like one, I’m a clinician, I literally teach these coping skills for a living. how come I can’t just white knuckle it or pull my way out of this. And two, because I’d never heard of maternal mental health as a specialty in all my years of education and all my clinical experience, didn’t even know that this was a high risk time to be on the lookout for.

So I niched down in this area and found it happy as a mother, a social media page at the time, just to help support moms in this transition, knowing that. such a high risk time for so many people, um, that community really flourished and grew into a podcast, a practice, maternal mental health practice that serves Canada and the U S, uh, book deal and all the things, which has been so amazing.

Uh, but One of the things we’ve become really known for is our Invisible Loads series. Because at the time I was one of the first creators to start putting visualizations to these invisible tasks that we carry around with us that we can feel the weight of. They’re like an invisible backpack on our back.

We know they’re there. We feel the weight of them. But we can’t quite see them or articulate them or put language to them. So we can’t really divide out and share what we can’t share. Really articulate ourselves. So when, I was approached by my agent and she’s like, if you could put one book out in the world, you know, what would it be?

And I was like, we can do motherhood differently. Like, I don’t need to carry around three invisible backpacks from each of my children and be drowning and resenting my role every day. I can choose something different for myself based on my values. And maybe we’ll get into that. and it doesn’t have to be this. Autopilot defaulted into perfectionist role that I’m trying to carry. And that’s where the passion stemmed from, and I’m just so excited to finally have it out in the world. Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: it’s so aligned with what we do here at No Guilt Mom too, because it’s all from going from being reactive to being able to make choices in your life and decide what you want to do and what you don’t want to do. And I love that description of you can’t really change anything without having the vocabulary to express yourself because the communication, especially with your partner and spouse in this whole, Time period is so important.

I mean, when I became a mom, that’s when I had to dig deep into my mental health because I had the postpartum depression with my daughter. That’s when I started seeing a therapist for the first time. And it’s also when everything just, it changed going through therapy and getting that language and realizing you’re not alone in it. I totally identify with everything you just said, and I know Brie’s been through it as well.

Brie Tucker: Yeah. Yeah. My first pregnancy was, a, um, What’s the word I’m looking for? Oh my gosh, I’m forgetting. But just, I, I, I, I was hospitalized for most of it, so that was rough. And then, so then your pregnancy doesn’t go the way you expect it, and then all that stuff after. I also have had a lot of moms that I’ve talked to that had kids during the pandemic. 

And I feel like that’s a whole nother ballgame of frustration because like you talk about how when we had our kids, I’m sorry, in my minor, like in their teens now, right? So I had mine in the early 2000s. There was plenty of connection and community available to me, whether or not I could get to it, dealing with my mental health issues.

That was a whole nother story, but people that had their kids during the pandemic, that community wasn’t even available it just, it was not there. Their, their pregnancy, they were barely getting any support. Post baby, not much there. So, I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s been rough.

JoAnn Crohn: It’s hard.

Erica Djossa: Mmhmm. 

JoAnn Crohn: And I thought for today’s, like, topic, we should definitely dig into this feeding of the family and whose job it is to feed the family. Because that, as you put it, I feel, I feel like it’s one of the invisible backpacks that moms put on.

Erica Djossa: Yeah.

JoAnn Crohn: In my house, like it’s, I mean, I could start this with the story where we were just sitting around. We went to Froyo last night as a family and, my daughter was like, yeah, I can’t believe how much, like, my son’s name is Eric. I can’t believe how much Eric gets compared to what I got. you let Eric eat all this junk food and like, I didn’t get to eat this junk food. I was like whole wheat tortilla wraps and like whole grain goldfish and

Brie Tucker: This is the girl that got gummies! That, that got little,

JoAnn Crohn: She doesn’t remember that. She doesn’t

Brie Tucker: Oh, I remember that! I I was there! 

JoAnn Crohn: And then she, and then she, she proceeded to tell me how, like, I, I interrupted her and I’m like, wait a minute, I didn’t make you any of those things. She’s like, well, I made those lunches myself because, but that’s all that were there was, mom. And she’s 15. And it seems like you just can’t win as a mom, Erika. Even things 

Erica Djossa: she 

JoAnn Crohn: you don’t do. Yeah, she is the 

Erica Djossa: See, it’s always the first one. I’m a first born. You always get gypped. Like this is the same that happens with my kids. Like I hold out until they’re this age and then they all get it at the same time. And so I understand the first born struggle, but it’s true. These.

These loads carry through all the ages and stages in different ways, and we don’t even realize that these patterns have been set up by default so early on. And I referenced feeding and nighttime wakings because like it really goes back this far in who assumes sort of the nutritional. feeding, monitoring of baby’s hunger cues, understanding their hunger cues, all the way through to, toddlers and what they will eat and knowing their preferences. And one of the things that this book is really trying to get at the crux of is how did I become the auto default assumed person to own this entire.

Brie Tucker: Yeah. when was that conversation? Cause I don’t remember that memo coming across my desk that I was responsible for feeding the entire family for the rest of my life.

Erica Djossa: Right. Someone signed my name on this, like it was assigned to me and it wasn’t freaking, I didn’t co sign this. Like there was no, I didn’t opt in. I didn’t subscribe. So yeah, and, and once we realize that we can question it a little bit, right? We can say like, how did this get here? And we become a little bit more curious and unpack what’s actually going on there.

JoAnn Crohn: Well, it’s really interesting that you bring it up because moms are responsible for the nighttime feedings and stuff. And I’ve heard, this explanation of the whole thing before. It’s how much we allow dads, not like moms, how much moms allow dads, how much like society allows dads to participate in the early days of their children’s lives.

Because moms are here, they’re given the maternity leave. Dads aren’t given the Paternity leave. they have most of the food source if they’re choosing to nurse. whereas dads don’t. And so like those first six weeks, like mom gets into a schedule where she is the sole person doing everything while dad usually goes back to work. And in those six weeks, the patterns for the rest of the kid’s life. Gets in place and because once you have a habit in place It’s so hard to break that habit So that mom is then responsible for all the child things if you’re not consciously aware of what is going on I mean, have you heard that one before?

Erica Djossa: Yeah, and it’s interesting because we also talk a lot about like role expectations and gender norms in the book. And I describe this filing cabinet that we have, okay, and like envision this like long ever scrolling cabinet that is filled with every message that we’ve ever seen or received.

Received or heard about motherhood and what it means to be a good mom. We’ve got images of our mom maybe making home cooked meals, or I used to bake bread with my grandma in the summers and she baked all her bread from scratch all the time. And like all of these things get filed away and we don’t consciously put them there. They’re all our life, they’re there. 

JoAnn Crohn: we have all of these images in our filing cabinet of

Erica Djossa: all of them. And it’s like a junk drawer. Yeah, it’s become so full.

JoAnn Crohn: And I want to hear exactly what we do with these images right after this. Okay, these images in our junk drawer that we don’t even know are there, Erika. What happens with them?

Erica Djossa: Well, I don’t know if you’ve had a mail drawer, or like a drawer you’ve seen, and it’s just like every single thing, every school form, everything gets like crammed in there. And we think about trying to organize now and understand what we want to be, who we want to be. As good moms, you know, like what we’re going to measure our performance by.

And we go rummaging through this drawer, sort of frantically pulling at all these things that we’ve seen, trying to kind of like pinpoint and, and act out or find the thing that makes us a good mom, but there’s conflicting messages in there, there are things that don’t align with our values in there.

There are external expectations that we don’t even agree with that we’ve observed in there. And so until we do a real inventory of these expectations. So we’ve internalized and kind of shred the things that no longer fit with our value system. We are just being pulled in a million different directions, trying to please everyone, society, mother in law, mom, partner, all the gender norms and pressures. We’re going in a million different directions and we just simply can’t win doing that. It’s unrealistic.

JoAnn Crohn: Yeah, it’s totally unrealistic and until you know that that junk drawer exists and that’s what you’re trying to do it’s very very hard I had this explained to me by a friend for the values because and she hit it right there. One of the values out there is thrift. And you get into this mind space that, you know, you should be trying to do things as cheap as possible because you want to be thrifty and you want to use your available resources and everything.

But have you ever stopped to consider if one of your values isn’t thrift? And it’s okay if one of your values isn’t thrift. because And that was like, when she told me that, I’m like, Oh my gosh, like I am here trying to find the best deals everywhere, feeling pressured, feeling like this is what I have to do to be a quote unquote good mom.

It’s not making me happy and it doesn’t have to be this way. So like you said, I think examining your values is so important to realizing like what you need to do. And in terms of feeding kids and feeding the family. You have an exercise in your book about what does food mean to you? can you take us through that and what you recommend moms do?

Erica Djossa: Yeah. I think it’s really important for us to realize that we We have a lot of things that we feel are important to us to be a good mom. And maybe there is a true value underneath there, but the how we represent that value and the how we act it out, there is a wide range of different ways to do that.

So when we really think about what we want to achieve in the load of feeding the household, Understanding what food represents and means to us is so important because It’s really not just nutrition to fuel our bodies, we’ll see, it has so much more to do with what we think food represents. So, I’ll go through just a few questions to, to reflect and ask yourself to really understand, what food means to you. So, what memories come up when you think about meal times as a child?

JoAnn Crohn: Mmm. The, you know what, memories come up. My parents had a TV in the kitchen and we would just put the TV on and we wouldn’t talk around the table and we would be watching the television the entire time. And my sister and I, who’s, my sister’s seven years younger than I am, but we talk about this all the time. And we’ve banned TVs at our tables because. Of that, 

Erica Djossa: See, it’s interesting because the value there that you’ve adopted is almost like presence or being together because you didn’t like the way it was done when you were younger, right? And it’s, it’s interesting because the value of presence. In itself doesn’t have to be associated with dinnertime.

It’s great if it is a couple times a week and whatever, but I know that sometimes my children are just way too wound up and wiggly and we got neurodivergent kids and they’re bouncing off the walls and it actually makes for a ragy mom sometimes. And so other ways to also think about expanding that value and incorporating it that don’t just mean, you know, no TV at dinner. Maybe there’s pizza movie night or whatever. I’m sure there is 

JoAnn Crohn: Oh, I, I see how that goes though. But like, it’s how examining that value might be contributing to like a harder time as a mom cause I do do that, Erica. I’m at the table and I’m, I see everyone watching TV and immediately those feelings of guilt come up and I’m like, Oh, no one’s connecting. I’m not doing my job, but just giving a little, a little grace and a little self compassion for that. I love it.

Erica Djossa: Yeah, that’s exactly it. We hold to these rules or vows that we make of how we want to do things sort of in accordance with how our parents did them, or the opposite in a lot of cases, that we don’t want to make the same mistakes. And so we, We hold on to what we think are values, but they’re really more like rules, uh, vows to not do it a certain way.

And there is probably a valid value underneath there. But when we get really sort of rigid and fixated in how we display that value, then we sometimes can be creating more work or tension or, um, Um, you know, kind of discord sometimes we’re making it harder for ourselves. And one of the skills that we talk about in the book is choosing the path of ease.

It’s like a form of self care, you know, like if we want to prioritize presence and everyone’s overstimulated, nobody’s listening and they’re bouncing off the walls and I just want to give them tablet while they eat so that we can all decompress, then how do I bring presence in after that moment has passed? Right. I’ll do a couple more questions here. So what were the rules around food in your home growing up?

Brie Tucker: we had the, you know, you have to eat everything that’s on your plate for sure. And that was one that I took in with my kids and definitely learned was not worth the fight. 

Erica Djossa: Right, 

Brie Tucker: and then also the, the. I think the message is too of growing up in the eighties of like having to eat everything on your plate. There are kids that are starving in Africa. and also thrift was a big thing in my family. So then it was also, you’re wasting money. We spent money on that food and all of that. So then you learned, or now we know that we learned to ignore our body’s messages of I’m full and food became something that you, it. It just became something different entirely so bringing that in with my kids when they were little, it took me a while to figure out that, oh, I gotta stop doing that. That’s not good.

JoAnn Crohn: I had a lot of guilt around food because my mom was constantly dieting. I mean, it was a whole Weight Watchers thing. And like, my dad was always trying to lose weight and go to the gym. And so there were certain bad foods and there are certain good foods, but they would never eat the good foods. It would always be the bad food. So it’d be eat bad food consumed with guilt must do better tomorrow. Eat bad food again, still consumed with guilt must. I took a lot of that into. My adulthood before I realized what was going on.

Erica Djossa: yeah. And I share in the book about how, it actually represents, uh, represented a time when my parents split and divorced. We went from having like home cooked meals and more of like cohesive family times to a lot of, Pre made freezer meals or TV dinners and things because of the shift in my parents capacity because of the shift in Finances, so to me it represented a time that was like unstable or unsafe And so then you kind of flip to oh, well the opposite of that safety and security Then is home cooked meals around the table, but that is not at all what Actually build safety and security.

So that value is so important to me. Dependability, reliability, safety, security are like priorities for me with the kids, but that has nothing to do with whether they eat their dinner or not, or whether I give them pizza or waffles or whatever,

JoAnn Crohn: we attach so much emotion to food based on other things. and I’m really interested to hear your next question. right after this. Okay. So let’s hear another question that you have, Erica, to ask yourself about what food means to you. Cause I love these, these are like digging into like subconscious level attitudes, kind of things.

Erica Djossa: Yeah, we’ve never really thought about our relationship with food usually. We’re triaging tantrums and poop blowouts and all the things. there’s two questions, maybe they go hand in hand, and we can leave it at this. But, what does it mean when someone cooks you a meal? And, or what are you trying to express when you cook a meal for others?

JoAnn Crohn: Oh, I feel like this is loaded. Yeah.

Brie Tucker: Like, I, like, to me, like, cooking a meal for everybody is an act of service. because first of all, I am not a good cook. The fire alarm goes off a lot in my house. I have had to loan Brie an air purifier multiple times. We have fans located near our doors so that we can open up everything to get the smoke out. But, but I digress. Uh, when I do manage to not burn a meal, it is because I’m like, to me, that is showing my love for my family. So even though we all know that, like you just said, nobody’s going to go through life and be like, I know I was loved because my mom made me food. Like, no.

Erica Djossa: Like there’s an element of like thoughtfulness or there’s an element of, you know, that act of service, as you said, but if that is the value, then there’s so many ways. There are so many, there’s little notes in a lunchbox. There’s little things that are not cooked from scratch, homemade, labor intensive, time intensive.

There is this real myth and we address it in the book. Like I tackle it head on where. We think the more time, the more energy, the more investment, the more we sacrifice ourselves and martyr ourselves, the better off it is for our children. That’s some bullshit. I’m sorry. It’s just not, not true. And then we are depleted.

We’re burning out ourselves. And then we’re not hap like we’re not getting, we’re resenting our role. That doesn’t really make me want to be present if I’m resenting carrying this load by myself every single day. So when we understand that being a good mom does not equal being the one that carries the, the household feeding system all on, on our own, then we can say, wait a minute, what is involved in this load?

Who else is owning some of these pieces? Who owns prep? Who owns making sure the list is up to date? And I have this conversation with my boys all the time where like, Mommy is not the default for any household or child work in our home. you can do it for yourself, your dad can do it. We have equal ownership and responsibility to each other in the home to make sure.

We’re contributing. And obviously as adults, we have to make sure the food is cooked for them, but my partner and I share that and no one person is defaulted into it. It’s not how it started though, 

JoAnn Crohn: No, it has to be a conscious effort. That’s how it goes in my house too. Like my husband is in charge of grocery shopping Um, I sometimes help with the meal planning if I feel like I want to cook that week but I mean lately like we’re in the middle of a big work project here and um, I have not been meal planning and so Sunday he went to Trader Joe’s and he’s like, okay, I picked this up for a meal.

I picked this up for a meal. I picked this up for a meal. And they’re all really easy, mixing together and heat. Cause that’s his preferred method of cooking, like make it hot. And that’s all, that’s all it is. And it’s so nice and simple. but yeah, it didn’t start that way. It started with Rachel Ray magazine and me thinking I had to make those 30 minute meals. It actually took an hour and a half.

Erica Djossa: The level of perfectionism that we carry into that, right, I have to make sure that it’s a balance. meal that it is, I don’t know, low sugar, low whatever, okay, I’m gonna batch, I’m gonna spend my whole weekend batch cooking these freezer meals so that it’s all nutritious and like the perfectionism that gets woven into doing this right, quote unquote, when my husband took over that load and he didn’t carry that same perfectionism into it, I was like, What the frick?

How can he just like put some spaghetti and meatballs on and keep it moving and not be obsessing about why they’re, how, if there’s a veggie or not, you know, but it’s just never been the messaging to him that he has to do that, that it’s expected of him, that it’s such a it’s not so synonymous with his role, it’s very much about function and practicality and making sure that the kids are fed and get what they need.

So I was, uh, had a hard time reining in that perfectionism about what I thought the meal planning should be when he took it over, but also was so freed from not having to be in that constant place of, or couponing and was this, do we save enough or do we do all, all the million things, you know, it’s really freeing, yeah, to step out of it. 

JoAnn Crohn: well, I love everything that is in your new book and I’m so excited for it to get in the hands of people. and when this episode airs, you are in pre launch for it and you have some bonuses along with pre order. Can you tell us about that?

Erica Djossa: Yes, so we have a digital companion guide to pair with the book that is worksheets and additional exercises to help be that added guide going throughout. Um, cause it’s not really like workbook style the book the way that it’s formatted. So there’s an additional guide. They get free access to To my division of labor course, and it’s kind of put in the context of returning back to work, but it’s all like, how do we not lay patterns and get stuck in them?

Or if we are in them already, how do we break out of them? And it’s like a 8 lesson course that they get access to for free for being early adopters and sort of pre sale purchasers. And then everyone gets entered into a giveaway chance to win 250 from Smash Test. I don’t know if you know. Rompers and all the different clothes, very trendy and fun. So enter to win a cash prize to kind of treat themselves as well. So, yeah, that goes up until launch on April 9th.

JoAnn Crohn: That’s exciting. So how can people get the bonuses?

Erica Djossa: so they would Apple upload proof of purchase at Erica Jossa, D-J-O-S-S a.com, and then they would get an email with all the codes and all the things that they need there. Um, so if they’re thinking about purchasing or purchasing for a friend for Mother’s Day or whatever the situation, uh, do it ahead of time. Get, claim those bonuses for yourself because the course alone is a 50 USD bonus thrown in there for free. So.

JoAnn Crohn: That is awesome. And, um, it is like everything that you talk about is so aligned with what we have here at no guilt mom. I am so excited for more moms to hear this message of not carrying, as you say, all the invisible backpacks. So Erica, it’s been wonderful to have you. Thank you so much for being here.

Erica Djossa: Oh, it’s been so great. Thank you so much.

JoAnn Crohn: It’s something you might not have been able to tell from this episode is even though like Brie and I really liked Erica a lot both of us were nursing killer headaches all throughout the day all through like usually we record this after Brie and we couldn’t

Brie Tucker: Yeah, yeah, like it was one of those things where like, even at the very end, I’m just thinking to myself, don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. Don’t throw up. You can make it. Don’t throw up. And,

JoAnn Crohn: was so good. She was So so good it’s one of those we always stay on after we finish recording and we talk to the guest and I wish we could have gotten to talk to Erica a lot longer than we did we did a bit but we’re both kind of like holding our heads together must have been the air the weather or

Brie Tucker: I’m telling you, there is something in the air. Like, there is something in Phoenix whenever it gets warm suddenly, like right now for people that are, we’re recording this at the very end of February, and it was 81 degrees yesterday. And man, when stuff goes into bloom, my head’s like, oh yeah, yeah, I’m gonna leave you in bed so you can’t enjoy any of this for the next couple of days. Like, we’ll just work through it slowly.

JoAnn Crohn: love like spring is my favorite season ever. I feel so energetic in spring. I think it’s just cause I’m not freezing. Like I’m not doing my Arizona freezing thing anymore. I know people on the East coast are like, do I, and you have no idea what freezing is. And it’s true. I don’t, I’ll give you that.

Yes, I’ll give you that. Uh, but like, it’s just so much more energy and like the weather’s great and. Like everything is happening and it’s so wonderful and my daughter was like spring’s not my favorite season mom It’s my least favorite. I like fall and winter.

Brie Tucker: Oh, well, because she’s a Christmas girl. She really likes to celebrate Christmas. She’s like me. She’s a pumpkin spice gal. She likes her pumpkin spice. Like, I would say, as much as I love the spring, and I do, I love the spring. I love the flowers in bloom and all the, all the green. I’m definitely a fall girl too.

And, and you know a big part of it? I am so allergic to orange trees, which there’s a ton here in Phoenix, that, like, if I even go to somebody’s house that has an orange tree, I can’t breathe. So I’m all like, spring’s only so so for me. My sinuses make it kind of a downer.

JoAnn Crohn: Oh, you need some like good allergy meds in there. 

Brie Tucker: I do, oh girl, I double up in the spring and it’s still, like, I’ll be outside talking to somebody, I sound like one of those, like, scenes from a, uh, A movie where somebody ate shellfish when they weren’t supposed to. Ahem, ahem. You got orange trees nearby? Ahem, ahem. Ahem. My throat is swelling shut. I can’t breathe.

JoAnn Crohn: It’s crazy. Oh That reminds me of something that happened at my son’s school So he um, his friends have some allergies like his group of four people He likes to eat lunch with they have a nut allergy and they have a shellfish allergy And one day at lunch, the school, and I don’t know why a school cafeteria would do this with like all the allergies in the world, like peanuts and shellfish being the most common. Um, it was Thai shrimp bowls out of a school cafeteria.

Brie Tucker: Were elementary school kids? Ahem. Ahem.

JoAnn Crohn: This is a public school. I have no idea what they’re doing. I would be honestly very afraid to eat these Thai shrimp bowls. I admire their courage, but they, it was Thai shrimp bowls and like has. friend actually had to go home because she thought her, like, she felt her throat closing up.

Like she had eaten some shrimp or eaten something, even though like she fully knows she has a shellfish allergy and has to stay away. But it’s so intense. The allergies is that if there is something that is for lunch that day, he cannot get lunch that day because he would not be able to eat with his friend. Like, if there’s peanuts in the lunch that day, so he like looks at his school menu, I mean, he’s a 5th grader. He brings it up, he looks at the school menu every morning, and he’s like, can I eat lunch at school today, or do I have to bring one, because, yeah, so I thought it was really interesting, but, I was like, decisions, school, Thai shrimp bowls, like, interesting. Yeah,

Brie Tucker: And I like the creativity and the fact that you’re exposing kids to different flavors and tastes that I love it. I would love for my kids to eat Thai shrimp bowls, but that’s because they’re not allergic. 

JoAnn Crohn: To peanuts or shrimp, yeah.

Brie Tucker: Right, as someone who ran a preschool system, it’s kinda hard, like, the younger the kids are, like, kindergartners understanding that 100%? Mm mm. No,

JoAnn Crohn: That would be hard. That would be really hard. But I,

Brie Tucker: No. We, I remember one time, one time we had a kid that ate, like, uh, we had eggs for breakfast one day. And he ate eggs and then he started to have, an allergic reaction and, he called his parents.

And we’re like, Hey, he’s, he says his throat is itching. That’s as much as it was. We were wondering if you could like, come and pick him up because we’re fearful he might’ve have an allergic reaction. Like, are you aware if he has any reactions to eggs and they’re like, Oh yeah, he’s allergic to eggs.

And we’re like, could you put that on his form? And they’re like, Oh, you guys serve eggs? I just didn’t think you’d ever serve eggs. And the kid, when we’re like, why did you eat the eggs? If you know, you can’t eat eggs. He’s like, cause my mom never lets me. And we’re like, Oh God,

JoAnn Crohn: Oh, yeah. That’s like a friend of my daughter’s. I was like, I doubt her mom is letting her come over to our house anymore because of that. But they were, uh, they have this cookie crawl. I think I’ve told you this before. The cookie crawl that is in our neighborhood. And so it was actually, your daughter was over at the same time when it happened.

And they had the little peanut butter Hershey kisses. And this girl is allergic to peanuts. And she’s like, oh, I’ve never seen this cookie before. I think I’ll try it. Like knowing how she’s allergic to peanuts. And this is a peanut butter chocolate chip cookie. Yeah. She had to go to the emergency room. And I mean, this is not a little kid. This is like a ninth grader. So they do it. They do

Brie Tucker: Yeah. It’s, it’s interesting. But we digress.

JoAnn Crohn: We did.

Brie Tucker: so, we hope that you really loved this episode with Erika and so like right there at the end of our interview, she shared all of her goodies that she has going on with her pre order. Just, go to her website, um, oh my god, I’m going to butcher Erika’s last name.

JoAnn Crohn: Jossa.

Brie Tucker: There you go. EricaJossa. com and you can put in your info, your proof of purchase and she will be sending you out some goodies on that. Got a link in the show notes. Yeah, get the link in the show notes because Djossa is spelled D J O S S A. So, just to be aware so you don’t go someplace and you’re like, oh, they sent us to the wrong place. No,

JoAnn Crohn: unexpected. 

Brie Tucker: yep, which is why I was worried I would butcher it. I’m not great at that.

Hey, if you loved this episode, share a little bit of that love, rate and review us, could you please? Like, we love that, we love getting to hear back from, all of our listeners, what you thought of our episodes, what was awesome about it.

What would you like to see? What would you like to hear? And plus, you know, when you share the love, it shares it with others. It helps like our podcast reach more moms, which our goal is to make sure that every mom out there knows that she’s not alone. We’re all there with you.

JoAnn Crohn: Exactly. So, remember, the best mom is a happy mom. Take care of you, and we’ll talk to you later.

Brie Tucker: Thanks for stopping by.