The people that listen to the show, you know that I'm a proud father of 2 beautiful daughters. And their beauty radiates from the inside out. They're loving, they're caring, they're creative. They live too far away. I mean, one's in San Francisco and they're marketing from one of the leading technology brands in the world. Bless me with a grandson and one on the way. And the youngest lives in England. She works in the well-being and inclusion space for one of the UK's leading financial services
groups. I mean, listen, being a parent is never easy, but compared to many, mine was a skip in the park. I got to celebrate their journey unless something happened that was outside of their control that they really had a sense of the path they wanted to follow. They have empathy, they have intelligence, they have capacity, and
capability. But they're both mentally and physically healthy, and life is very different for parents with children who need care, not just during their early informative years, but even for their entire life. My guest today is a parent. Her name is Jan Stewart. She's also highly regarded as a mental health neurodiversity governance expert and advocate. We'll hear a story, how she grew up in New York, moved to Toronto after marrying a Canadian.
Her life was was a skip in the park, untouched by major adversity, and she imagined that's the path she'd follow as a parent. We all, of course, had challenges growing up, but I was a straight a student. I had summers in France. I went to camps. I mean, it was an idyllic, childhood and teenagehood in many years. But she wrote this raw and emotional book, Hold on Tight, A Parent's Journey Raising Children with
Mental Illness. He would start crying instead of screaming in so much in pain and so distressed, he would say, mom, I don't know what's happening. It's not me. And you would just die. And on the covers, there's this really interesting graphic, and I love pictures, and it's a roller coaster. And she candidly describes the shock she and her husband face when each of their 2 young children start exhibiting troubling behavior. This is Chatter That Matters with Tony Chapman presented by RBC.
Jan Stewart, welcome to Chatter That Matters. Thank you, Tony. It's wonderful to be here. And, Jan, before we begin and talk about your journey, I know that you wanted to be very upfront in sort of declaring who you are and what your status is. So why don't we start there? I know how fortunate I am independent of my kids. I'm white, heterosexual. I'm a woman of privilege, and I've been able to afford with our family the sometimes very steep costs that come
with raising neurodivergent children. But what I want to really stress is that what we're gonna talk about today and the life lessons and the insights are universal. They apply whether you're married or single, whether you're struggling financially or not, and they cross all races, religions, cultures, ethnicities, gender orientation, sexual identity, the list goes on. You know, you talk about white and growing up with privilege, but we also you also grew up in New York, and your early
ambitions were to become a dancer. Now a lot of children wanna pursue theater and the arts, but yours was to dance in the footsteps of your mom, who's a model and Broadway actor. Tell me a little bit about the early Jan and why ballerina slippers or tap dance shoes were were really what you thought were gonna be the fashion of choice for you? I had rose colored glasses on as I did when I got married later that we'll talk about, but my life was fairly
idyllic. And as you said, I didn't ever really face true adversity. My parents instilled some very hardcore values of hard work, curiosity, ambition. I think my mother in particular, Toni, made sure that I knew it was important to grow up and be able to take care of myself and be self sufficient so I would never have to depend on anyone else in a in a bad situation. So those values drove me, But I think my mother did influence me a lot because she had been on a show on Broadway called kiss
and tell. She was a well known model, and, I wanted to follow a lot in those footsteps. And so I went to summer camp at National Music Camp in Michigan, which a lot of people know is a wonderful place. In New York City, I attended the American Academy of Dramatic Arts on Saturdays, and this continued. And when I got to university, and I went to Northwestern University, which is right outside Chicago. It's a beautiful university, but I changed tact.
I knew that I was assertive, but not aggressive. And I didn't have that killer instinct, frankly, to go into the performing arts. I love dancing, but I also knew I was very, very good, but not great. So what do you choose to do next? Because when you're dreaming of the stage, that's a fairly narrow lane to dream about. How did you open your mind to other possibilities? And when you did, what did you choose to do? Well, first, I think I opened my mind, Tony, to money to
help others. That had been a core part of the values that my parents had instilled in me. And throughout my youth and adolescence, I had always volunteered with different groups. So as I thought about it, I became enamored a little bit of Helen Keller and Anne Bancroft. It it still has a performance aspect to it. And so I learned American sign language ASL and then started working with, the deaf community as well as with the broader physically disabled lobby in
Washington DC for several years. I can. This is an interesting part that I find because the performing arts, for sure, there's an ensemble, and then you're going into speech pathology, which is 1 on 1, but very soon that you're into it, you start becoming this advocate. What do you think brought you into this journey in life where you felt that you're not on your on your shoulders? You're not just gonna
help 1, but you could potentially help many. I think I'm probably just wired that way as my entire family was growing up, and I have several friends who have children who are disabled, both physically and mentally. And I think we've all found the same thing. When your child is in pain, in distress, when you see what's going on, when you're so frightened that you don't know if you'll ever climb out and see the light, You stay
motivated. You keep going. And then when you're out of crisis, because it's an endless roller coaster, as you said with the book, you learn that, at least for me, it's so beneficial and personally uplifting to help the broader community in whatever community it is. So, again, there's another move on the chessboard, and you get your MBA. Put that as as sort of we're building this knapsack that's gonna ultimately serve not only the business world, but you
as a parent to your vantage, but why an MBA? Well, I think it was for two reasons. 1, in working with the physically disabled and deaf communities, I came to the realization that I'd be a far more effective advocate if I was disabled myself. And those are the voices that I always follow in every community, whether it's physically disabled,
autism, Tourette syndrome, whatever. But secondly, I think my initial thought was to get my MBA and you round out my skills, get those business skills, and then apply it to nonprofit organizations. But while I was getting my MBA, I fell in love with finance. And and so I made a huge pivot into corporate and investment banking at JPMorgan. And this is, again, it's so interesting. It's it's
almost like your kaleidoscope. And every time you turn the handle, I see a completely interesting individual emerge because you do very well in finance. I mean, so almost everything you've touched, you've been successful at. Were there any transferable skills? Because one of the things I'm trying to do is as I talk to youth is to realize that every situation you're in is an opportunity to learn, to grow, to bank
skills. Looking at your life, the MBA, speech pathology, advocacy, performing arts, the values instilled, into your sister and your family, your parents, Is there a way to say at this stage in my life, I really feel I have these superpowers? I think in every job, particularly, you know, I was still in my twenties at the time. You learn new skills and you learn
everything. But what threaded it all together was I have and I know I'm, again, fortunate I have a strength in terms of my team skills, communication skills, connection with others. And that really has tied it all together, which, by the way, led to yet one more career change and the most important one. So after 10 years in corporate and investment banking, and in the middle of that, by the way, I met and then a year later married my husband, David, who, as you mentioned, is up here in
Canada. So I moved from New York to Canada, a huge change on top of everything else, spent another 5 years in banking, and then pivoted to executive and board search with the global executive search from Egon Zehnder, where I spent 25 years and really
thrived. As you look at, like, 25 years you spent there, and if I said the rewards were intellectual, I I was stimulated, emotionally, I was grounded, hands, I got to put some people in some very important positions or financial rewards, what mattered the most to you during the time you were building your career and now as you reflect on it? I've always loved everything I've done from a career point of view, or I
wouldn't have done it. I would have made a change. But at Aegon Sender, I had a chance to place some of the most important exciting CEOs, c suite executives, and board members, and really make a difference in the lives of Canadians, and many of these searchers were international. But on the other hand, I also got it was a win win for the candidates because they their careers were bolstered, and it was great to see the difference that they could make in the companies and organizations that they
joined. I I was so fortunate. I used to always say it was like going to a cocktail party every day. It was huge work. It was long hours and high pressure. So now we're gonna move the story to the the heart of the matter. You meet David. He's a Canadian. I'm glad he's a Canadian because we get to bring you here versus, you know, the brain drain that I'm always worried
about. And I imagine you get married and you think that this life is, you know, I'm going to instill the same values and work ethic in my kids that my parents did in me. And you have 2 children, Andrew and Ainsley. Today, they're grown adults. But take us back to the time when you and your husband started sensing that something wasn't right. Who was your oldest child? Andrew's the eldest. Okay. So talk to me first about what
you experienced with Andrew. From almost the time he was born, Tony, David and I felt that something wasn't right. His hands and feet in constant circular motions. And unlike all of our friends' babies that I knew, he never gurgled or talked to himself or played in his crib. You know, we had intercoms in the room, and we kept listening. Nothing. But the minute he woke up, he would start crying and say, come get me, feed me. And he had no self control when it came to feeding. It was pretty scary.
He would have downed as many bottles as we gave him without stopping and without getting sick, which was surprising, if we didn't control that intake. He also was very, very difficult to soothe in those early days. And we read every book we could, talked to anyone we could about normal developmental behavior, but we never could read about or hear about what we were seeing and observing. You go to the doctor with this, and instead of the doctor having empathy, they basically
label you an over concerned AAA mother from New York. I mean, how did that make you feel? Because your intuition's wired, your observation's wired, you're clearly that's who you've been since day 1, wired in terms of how other people are feeling. It must have been just, I don't know, confusing, chaotic, conflicting, maybe. How did you deal with doctors that just said, you might be the problem? Well, it shook me. I think it would shake anyone, but I was a first time parent.
I didn't know any better, and I had been brought up to trust our doctor. He was the medical expert. He knew everything. I remember one afternoon leaving his office and feeling totally helpless, even questioning whether I really was indeed the problem because every time he would discount what I said, it would perplex me. It would make me despondent, and it did take some toll on my confidence, which is
usually very, very strong. Of course, as I've since learned, this discounting of caregiver concerns is far too common. And I do empathize, by the way, with doctors. They see a number of parents who excessively worry, but there's a balance. Talk to me about Ainsley now. How how many years after Andrew did Ainsley come along? Ainsley is 22 months younger than Andrew. And what about Ainsley?
How did she sort of react in terms of what you thought might be normal compared to what you were dealing with with Andrew? Let me back up just one second if you permit me. Sure. Of course. Because that affects her a great deal. Over the next several years, David and I had increasing concerns about Andrew. There was impulsivity, distractibility. There were vocal and motor tics, anxiety, learning disabilities. Yet all his teachers said, oh, he's keen and
enthusiastic. He learned to read and write with his peers. He was eager to please, but he was also very active, very chatty. He needed a lot of reminders to focus and follow instructions. And just like that doctor, who, by the way, kept discounting my concerns and telling me, stop worrying. He's just a sensitive child. He'll grow out of this. Again, very common. None of his teachers thought he needed help. But by grade 3,
we had really heightened concerns about him. There was inability to understand abstract concepts. He couldn't maintain eye contact, and he had terrible difficulty with change and transitions between activities. I remember a group of neighborhood kids playing, I think it was hide and seek one afternoon, and then making the change to capture the flag. And Andrew just couldn't handle the sudden change, and he just had a meltdown. And there
were some other issues too. But then Ainsley came along 22 months later and she was far easier as a baby and a toddler. And she was very different. She was fun and mischievous. And unlike Andrew, who was very rule bound, she was a risk taker. She loved adrenaline generating activities and she'd fly off stairs, climb on furniture, but she also had some of the same similarities. She couldn't sustain attention, but of course, we didn't realize that this
wasn't the norm. These were both our kids. And overall, we were delighted with this captivating little girl who we thought probably had none of the challenges Andrew did. What happens in a relationship when you realize that the path that we thought we were going to travel together as a couple and as parents is going to veer very differently now because your children are going to require a very different set of needs than you might have expected? It's very difficult. Let's be honest.
There's no marriage or partnership. Whether you have children with challenges or not, that is perfect. But for parents and caregivers like David and me, the stresses and strains can be absolutely debilitating. You know, I've heard parents disagree about everything from discipline to diagnoses, therapy to medications. I think medications in particular cause huge schisms. You know, one parent doesn't believe
in meds, doesn't believe their child needs it. And what we have to remember is that these issues not only divide partners, but the children know they have that inbuilt antenna. And David and I have not been immune from this. There's no question about it. We have wanted to throttle each other from time to time, and, you know, he rightfully sees me as overly decisive, rigid, direct. And I see him as not firm enough, too accommodating, slower to
make decisions. Of course, I have a pretty unrelenting pace. But at the core, we trust each other. We lean on one another, and we know that we're trying our best even if it's not what we would ideally wanna do. So what advice can you give to other parents? I mean, trust was a key component that I just heard because I've heard some statistics about how situations like this or losing a child early,
often end to marital breakup. That this is, you know, that because you're not marching in step, because there's just too wide of a gap in terms of what you might want and what David might want. A lot of children are struggling with their mental well-being and aren't embracing or haven't got the same appetite for life that we might used to have because they're just living in all this negative headwinds. That give each other the benefit of the doubt is the
core of what I say. And if you're going to disagree about something, you need to talk about it. I think that's natural and you've got to talk about it, but away from the kids. And you what you really wanna do is act together as harmoniously as you can in the children's best interest. Even try to find some humor. You know, David and I joke about the genesis of the kids' disorders. He has a restless leg, and so
I point at him and go, ADHD. And he points right back at me with my perfectionist tendencies and says, back OCD. So you really do wanna lean on each other. It's open, transparent communication just as it is with your children. So now you're donning a new cape, still being an advocate, but you've now gotta become warrior mom. You've gotta now navigate the healthcare system. You've also got to have conversations with your children. I have to imagine at times they've been bullied, laughed at
by other kids because they might be different. They can't change from one game to another. So talk about when you decided that this isn't just gonna be about my children, but I also wanted to make it about helping other parents dealing with similar situations. When Andrew reached 9 years old, we were at my husband's family's cottage in the Laurentians, north of Montreal, and the kids were having a great time with their cousins, aunts, and uncles, and
playing. But on the 4th morning, out of nowhere, Andrew ran out of the living room, streamed upstairs, and started screaming for hours. He was ranting and raving and kicking and even punching holes in walls. And he didn't know what was happening, but this happened almost every day for up to 2 hours. And within 1 month, he started engaging in nonstop compulsive rituals, touching walls repeatedly for hours, couldn't walk through doors for 20 or
30 minutes, and they escalated. He placed his head against shrubs and car tires, put knives in his mouth to feel them, and even got down on the filthy floor and gnawed it repeatedly. You can imagine how I felt. And when he said to me one day, mom, I think I'm going crazy and I wanna die, you can imagine how I felt. Now park that for a minute. Ainsley, great, as I said, as a baby and toddler, and then she got to school, and all hell broke loose.
She was disruptive, unruly, morose, jumped on desks rude, constantly sent to the principal's office. Those daily calls almost every day just killed me. And she also had paralyzing anxiety and couldn't read her friends' social cues so that she gradually lost all her friends. And after she was sent to the principal's office for the umpteenth time, she wrote me a note that said, mom, I know I'm a bad
child, but I can't help my behavior. These are shocking things for any parent or caregiver, but I was determined to find them the right help, and I promised them I would. And after I said, we've gotta help others too, there was just there there was nothing written from a parental perspective at the time and no one really to help us. We had to be out there and find our own path. You know, reading those notes, I mean, I I have tears in my eyes in each one of the ones you described, and
I can't imagine as a parent getting those like that. But did that suddenly fire you up in the sense that you knew that inside each of those children, they knew what was going on and they wanted to get better, they wanted help? Without a doubt, Tony, not only my kids, but every child I know going through these complex challenges are naturally frightened. They don't understand what's going on and why there's such pain and havoc
around them. And even if they don't say it, and, by the way, this includes teenagers, they want help. So it's important to give them the help, but then to go broader if you have the energy and time. I am so empathetic with parents and caregivers who are wrung out. I've been there, and you don't have to do it. Let others do it who can, but hopefully benefit from it.
But you've got to sit down with your kids. It was so important for us to explain to them that they weren't bad children, that it wasn't their fault, that and to separate them from their issues so that their identities weren't only about what was going on in their mental health and neurodevelopmental behavior. It was just critical and not to hide or avoid information. All that is so critical, but when you see your child in such pain and in such distress and when you're so frightened with
what's going on, how can you not help them? I think there's an interesting part of your book, Hold on Tight, A Parent's Journey to Raising Children with Mental Illness, where you also talk about the isolation that the parents can feel raising kids with exceptional needs. Because it must be hard to be the parent who has the child pounding the wall or jumping on desks or always in the
parents' or always in the principal's office. How do you advise parents to deal with isolation and to also reach out and find support so that they have the strength to keep moving forward to not only help their children, but also to help themselves? I would say well over 50% of the calls and emails I get from struggling parents deal with isolation that what they're facing. So first, there are 2 different buckets.
There's family and there's friends. So with family, you're stuck with your family members, and many of them can be great, but many of them can be critical, judgmental, or many offer solutions that they think they know about and they really don't understand. So you do have to learn how to limit your engagement with those folks, navigate around them. I have strategies that I use, like I smile a lot. I try to change the topic. Sometimes I go in another room, and I
silently scream. And, by the way, these strategies have worked not only for me, but Andrew and Ainsley, as they've grown up, are now using the same strategies. I modeled it for them without realizing I had, and it's great to see. So you that's the family side, and neither David nor I has any family in Toronto. So, by the way, we had to depend on ourselves largely. But with friends, it's much clearer to me. I'm much more black and white. A number
of friends undoubtedly distanced themselves. I've had it happen. It's extremely upsetting. I write in Hold Untied about a friend whose daughter, when they my kids were very little, had become seriously ill and had to spend several months in hospital. And David and I volunteered to take her other 2 kids every weekend, treated them as part of our family. We did their grocery shopping, a lot of other things. Well, fast forward
2 years to my kids, and I'm in crisis. I reach out to her, and she's very empathetic on the phone, and I never heard from her again. I don't think that's atypical. There's a lot of fear, misunderstandings, and stigma that come from a lack of awareness and a lack of education, and it's compounded for many of us parents like me because we're so consumed with our children's care that we have no time to invest in our own
friendships, but there's a silver lining. And that silver lining for me has been other parents of similar kids. It's a wonderful community, so reaffirming, and to this day, propel me forward. It's a community that for all of us exist, whether virtually or, most importantly, in your own community, physically. When we come back, I wrap up my interview with Jan Stewart, my 3 takeaways, and then I talk a little bit about these extraordinary parents, like Jan and Dave Stewart, that truly matter.
Hi. This is Tony Chapman, host of the radio show and podcast, Chatter That Matters. Did you know that only 1 in 5 youth with a mental health illness can get access to the care they need? Well, a big shout out to the RBC Foundation and RBC Future Launch for supporting over 150 youth mental health organizations. And in doing so, they help youth and their families get the care they need and deserve. But you must reset the expectations for your lives. This is another key
insight in the book. Many family and friends who want to do the right thing but are scared, don't know how. There's still, unfortunately, a lot of stigma. Discrimination, it comes from a lack of awareness, lack of education, misunderstandings. You're listening to Chatter That Matters with Tony Chapman presented by RBC. Joining me today is Jan Stewart, extraordinary parent and an advocate for all parents who need the kind of help their children deserve.
Early on in the interview, you made a a life decision to move away from performing arts, to get involved in what would turn out to be a lifetime of helping others, and you framed it, I did so because I was assertive, not aggressive. Has that lesson ever come back and served you well in other times
in your life? That early lesson of being assertive versus aggressive has served me extremely well as an advocate for my kids and for the broader community because you have to put yourself in the other person's shoes and realize that they're trying their best too in different ways. They may be having a bad day. They may be having a good day, whatever. But once you can be empathetic and do that, it really serves
you well, and you go a lot further. Talk to me about Andrew and Ainsley, how they are today and what you and David have done over this time to hopefully that they'll never write a note like that again. I hope they won't. That that would be absolutely terrible, but, both my kids are really, really amazing. I I say that they're my hero and the the heroes, and they really are. So in Andrew's case, he grapples still with impulsivity, anxiety, and his
obsessive compulsive disorder. He reformats his computer repeatedly. He picks his lips and his scabs till they bleed, and that's always a concern. He asked for reassurance constantly and over apologizes. But he has a wonderful full time job at one of Canada's leading telecommunications companies, Rogers Communications. He's been there over five and a half years, and they've been true partners with us in terms of creating an environment of belonging.
He spent 10 years living in a lovely group residence, but after 10 years, he thought and we thought he could handle supportive semi independent living. And so I found just a 5 minute walk from our house, a sunny one bedroom, and he's been there for the past 5 or 6 years. David and I take turns going down every morning to wake him up, prepare his meals, make sure he takes his medications, is tidying up, and off he goes to work. And he
has immense charm. I was just thinking the other day. He went down to one of the first Toronto Blue Jays games of the season. He's a huge Blue Jays fan. And we were on the subway together at the TTC, and he spotted across the aisle a young man with a Toronto Blue Jays cap on. So we started engaging with him. And the next thing I knew, all 5, 10 people all around us on the subway are are all chanting, go, jays. Go. Go, Jays. Go. He just has that effect on people. It it's absolutely
amazing what he does. And Ainsley Ainsley has severe, severe executive function deficits that come with her ADHD along with still overwhelming anxiety. Now for those people that don't know what executive function is, think of it, and I posted this today on Instagram, as the symphony conductor in the brain. It helps you organize time management, get things done, and it also helps you avoid saying and doing the wrong
thing. Ainsley has a lot of trouble getting things done, and it upsets me when she forgets to pick up her medications or make an important appointment. But, also, she has these severe learning disabilities, extreme, and yet she was always determined to graduate from university. And with a lot of support, she did. It was absolutely breathtaking, and she's become the most gifted child and youth counselor today working in the school system with
young neurodivergent children. And I'm convinced, Toni, it's her own lived experiences as well as her deep intrinsic knowledge of her brother that have made her so gifted. They are amazing. Speaking of success and gifted, you write this book, Hold Untight, A Parent's Journey to Raising Children's Mental Illness, honored with a mom's choice award, wrote to be Amazon's top seller in the autism genre last spring. Why did you write it, and
what are you most proud of? Because I asked you earlier, what was you most proud about in your career? I'm gonna ask you the same question in terms of publishing this book. In reflection, time well spent, and are you happy with how it all turned out? I'm ecstatic with how it all turned out, and you're gonna hear the same theme about my pride in helping others. But I originally wrote the book as a
catharsis for myself a number of years ago. I started writing it, But as I was doing so, it ruminated in my brain and my mind, help others, because that's a core part of who I am. And I also wanted to educate the other constituencies, you know, family members, friends, educators, health care providers, employers, who don't often understand the sometimes very complex and overwhelming overwhelming issues that
we parents face. As I look back, I know David and I would have benefited so much from being able to read about what other families experience, what worked, what didn't, and learn from that. So I did my research as I started shifting and decided to be brutally honest. I do tell the toll that these disorders bring on families' lives in detail, but I also celebrate success, many successes,
and I give readers with the insights. But during the research, I was surprised to learn that relatively little has been written from the parental perspective, and I'm proud to fill the void. I think that's so important. This is a book I wish I had as a young parent, and that's probably what I'm proudest of. I always end my shows with my three takeaways. And one that came out that is really universal lesson is I
was assertive, nonaggressive. This observation on who you are and what matters most to you is one, I think, one of the most important lessons that anyone can follow to help you identify the past in life that you wanna go on and the fact that you knew this about you, yourself versus
denying or embracing. The second thing is this concept of strength in numbers, that parents do feel such great isolation, but if you find yourself in a community of other people on similar journeys, and each one of those people in that community are there to help each other versus lecture or rule eyes or dismiss or abandon, which has happened to you and with people that don't have children with these challenges, I think it's so important that anywhere you are in life is to find like
minded people that you can build trust with that have your back and they have their back. And then the last thing that is just this advocacy that you take it upon yourself to say, when I read those two notes, I knew I had to do more. I knew I had to do whatever it takes. That alone is exhausting, but the fact that you chose to have that not only as your mission but a mission for others, to me, it's just really what I find so wonderful and extraordinary about you.
I think Andrew and Ainsley were very fortunate that they had you and David as parents, and I think the world is very fortunate that you've taken it upon yourself to say, as I blaze my trail, I wanna make sure I mark it so that other people might be able to find even a little bit easier path than I've gone through. And I think that's just a life well spent, so I appreciate you joining my chat of the matters. I have to tell you, I have to compliment you, Tony. I've never I've done tons
of podcasts. I've never had someone do as much research as you, and it really shows in the questions you ask and in, you know, and how you approach things. Thank you, Tony. On my journey through life, I've had the privilege of meeting parents like Jan Stewart and her husband David. Breck and Rachel have become dear friends of ours in Costa Rica. Parents have once envisioned a life filled with milestones and celebrations, the everyday joys of watching their
children thrive. But those dreams took an unexpected turn. Could be because of their child's mental or physical health, maybe later in life, their struggles with addiction, a life altering accident, or the unimaginable pain of loss. These parents face challenges that could easily have unraveled their lives and their love for each other,
but it didn't, did it? And late nights then became a familiar companion, not just from the exhaustion of parenting, but from the worry that comes with navigating uncharted territories, finding yourselves making tough decisions, prioritizing spending, not on luxuries, but on therapies and treatments, and the tools their children needed to simply get through the day. And the focus shifted to what truly matters, love resilience, and the hope that
tomorrow could bring even the smallest of improvements. And in the smallest of wins, they found a joy that few can understand. A child that finally sleeps through the night, a word spoken after years, a a day without pain. These moments, though small to others, are monumental to these parents. They're like winning the lottery, not in dollars, but in the currency of hope and progress. Parents who have these children, your lives change and often permanently, and dreams now have to factor in both
possibility and impossibility. But the ones I have the highest respect for, it didn't matter. You accepted your calling, profound commitment to stand for and stand by each other and your family. And through every challenge, you became advocates, fighters, offering the unwavering support your children needed and in turn, what other parents in similar circumstances
needed. We managed to find strength and resilience, this renewed sense of purpose, proving that even when life takes unexpected turns, love and dedication can light the path forward. As we close today's episode, I wanna give a standing ovation to Jan, David, and all the parents out there whose life has changed, not necessarily for their better, but for the better of others. You are the pillars that hold up the world for your children. And for that,
you deserve our deepest respect and admiration. Thank you for being part of the human race. Chatter that matters has been a presentation of RBC. It's Tony Chapman. Thanks for listening, and let's chat soon.