Teens, Mental Health and Post-Traumatic GROWTH

and so many teens that are struggling. I actually, um, picked up a newspaper today and saw that, you know, one of these six degrees of friends daughter killed herself and I can't help but wondered was she suffering from from depression anyway? And did she feel during this pandemic

just not hopeful at all? So um, it's it's good timing that Gene Blake is here or to kind of tell us a difference between mental health and mental illness and how we look for signs and how do we chart this very uncharted territory of a pandemic and teens that are dealing with a monstrous amount of things emotionally. So, my guest today, I'm going to give your credits right

off the top. Jean Blake leadership, communication coach, author, award winning science and medical TV journalist, news anchor, and founder of Blake Works. And I have to tell you, Jean, I found you because I was doing some reading about teens and I came upon this article and you had so many great quotes in it. I circled your name and then I did what my teens do all the time, which is trying to Instagram you try to figure out who you were, Google you, and so I found you.

And I'm so happy you're here because there's so many things that you can speak to. But today I do want to talk to you about, first of all, the difference between mental health and mental illness. So let's just start with the basics, okay. So mental health, good solid mental health is what we all need to thrive and to be resilient and deal now, particularly in a world that is so incredibly uncertain. Mental illness is when something goes awry and we need to go to professionals for

help and get back on track. And we're fortunate in this country that we have brilliant people. I also served on on the board at McClain Hospital, which is Harvard's largest mental health facility, so we are blessed in this country to have access to that when something goes awry and the parents or the other adults and kids lives identify it and no whend to reach out for that. And I'm wondering in a pandemic it has to be

more difficult. I mean, certainly you can find the people, but it's more difficult to get treatment and if certainly in hardcore cases to actually be committed to a place like McLean or Silver Hill or or wherever. Um are you finding that to be true? Well, we knew that there was a veritable tsunami of mental health challenges coming down the road early on in the pandemic, and of course there will be a billion studies done on every

population and how they're navigating through this. So we don't have the real data yet, but there have been some early studies that point to how challenging this is, and in particular for teens. One out of China and a gallop Pole in May conducted with parents of children who are school aged. It was a percentage that was like thirty five or in that range. It's it's easy enough to google of parents who said that they were seen declining mental health in their own children as a result

of the pandemic. So we knew that there was this, as I said, this tsunami of challenges that were coming down the line. It was hard already to access mental health. There's just a dearth of providers, and there are many reasons for that, but we do know. The president McClain Hospital told me that they have just seen a very big increase in the demand and the request for mental health.

But the good news is telehealth has been put on fast forward and McClain and other wonderful places are now providing that as our hospitals for general care, so it can be accessed that way. One one thing that worries me is that school is where a lot of kids get their mental health support, and they're not in school right now, and when they return in some kind of a hybrid situation, they will likely not have as much

time in school. Therefore, they not only won't have the time to access it, but eyeballs on these kids who might be showing problems will be us. Coaches are often the people who see kids that are in trouble, or the teachers, or Another thing that I see is that parents think it's just typical teenage angst. I mean, what's normal in a pandemic? I mean, what what is normal?

So it's all just it's just a big kind of messy soup right now that we're all figuring out together, right, if if somebody had a child that needed real medical assistance, how are these hospitals dealing with the safety roles in COVID And well what what McClain did early on, They did an absolutely remarkable job of just changing the way care was delivered and it was all hands on deck seven. Just one of the many things that Clay Hospital does

remarkably well, it's amazing. I mean, in the eighties, I was a teenager. I was at boarding school and um, you know, I remember I had a friend taken away in a straight jacket. I had friends had a hawk of eating disorders. You know, this was sort of before antidepressants were so commonly given. But I think then when I was a teenager, how fraught everything was. Um, And now you know now that I have teens, and now

that we're in a pandemic. As a parent, I just go, I don't know what to do do I just put them all on zo oft and hope for the best. No well, I mean some children might need that, but yeah, so we do know that anxiety and depression we're already increasing in the team population before the pandemic, and suicide among I believe it's twelve to nineteen year olds is the second meeting cause of death in the country after homicide.

We're already worried, and then you drop a pandemic on top of all of that, where everybody is scrambling and we've got plenty of reason for concern. Now I do want to talk about kids and resiliency, But for I've got a neighbor, a thirteen year old that I'm crazy about. Her name is Megan, and she and I had a really wonderful chat recently. She really canned its super articulate, and she just described how really difficult this is for her,

and I had chills talking to her. There are children in my life, but I really really sat and talked with her about it and what she was feeling, and she said, you know, one day. So she's a self described nerd and last year she found her her little group.

We would have lunch together every day and she said, I just I never realized how much my friends made every day better and she said, we would share our food at lunch, and we kind of tease each other and kind of push each other playfully, and we'd fight over each other's tater tots. And she said, then, you know, and then we're in school one day singing Disney songs

and the next day we're in quarantine. There was this visceral feeling of loss that I that as she described this, is it lost because of the isolation or because yeah, and not having that kind of tacticle relationship with her. She said, it's just so different over them. She said, first, you know, you can't I thought this was cute. She said, you can't see what they're wearing or whether they have new shoes, and we have our priorities straight. I'm glad,

but she was. She was just very thoughtful about how how it's just not as free and if she's on with her group of friends, you know, the muted mics, there are the cameras on, and she said, and then we're not that good about planning that far ahead. So then we were just kind of seeing each other every two weeks because they live a little bit of farther

apart from each other. That's a girl, Ali that's got a mom and a dad and two younger siblings, and she's really close to them, and she describes her mom as her best friends. And so she's struggling. And she cried when she talked with me, which I really was quite privileged that she shared that emotion with me, and talking about out, you know, not just the pandemic, but she said they had just lost a family friends. Then she talked about George Floyd, and then she talked about,

you know, the world. She's thirteen, and she said, you know what, what about my kids? What kind of world are they going to get? She said, it seems like every month is worse and it's not going in the right direction. So I thought, if a thirteen year old, she just her in thirteen, can articulate that, and she she called it overwhelming, and I asked her, I said, what's the emotion under that? And you know, I thought, I wonder she even knows what that means. And she said,

it's just overwhelming. I said, well, some kids are anxious, some kids are depressed, some kids are sad, and she said, I'm sad. But then I cry and my mom gives me a hug and we talk and then I'm okay. So she's got all of that support, I believe that she'll be okay. So no, not every kid should just automatically have you know, Zoloft in their breakfast cereal every morning. And I think there are things that parents can do in their exhaustion and strain that will really help make

the difference in how kids respond. We don't know what the lunch term effects will be. As I said, there will be you know, billions of studies, but one factor definitely is family dynamics, for good or bad. By the way, we're going to take a short break and we'll be

right back. Welcome back with more. Go ask Alley. Before we get into family dynamics, aren't you concerned about the millions of kids who whether they had an ongoing, you know, problem with depression, or they were anxious, or they were fine, and suddenly their parents have lost their jobs and so not only are they dealing with the pandemic and fear of get sick, but now they have parents that are probably in some kind of a depression based on whatever

has happened to them. Um economically, I wonder, is there going to be a whole generation of depressed people because of the tidal wave of what's happened right now in this moment. Well, I don't think that we want to automatically diagnose, you know, every child who's going through a really hard time. I did read recently that during the recession in the nineties, the number of kids who experienced mental health challenges really went up, and it was directly

correlated with economic insecurity. And when I read that, I thought about my childhood. I grew up in a tiny town in Minnesota. My dad owned a little corner grocery store. A bigger market came to town and my dad lost his business. My mother wasn't working at the time. She took her first job outside of the house at the age of fifty, or we would have lost our home. And and to this day, I can tell you that experience is very much with me, very very much with me.

And I remember conversations that my mother and I had about it, and it was terrified. There are times in my life when I've gone through, you know, different shifts in my life where all of those emotions came back. But you know, I've worked hard on that and and I'm resilient. We can't just automatically say that every kid, um that's going to really suffer through this will pay for a lifetime, they'll remember it. Yeah, I mean I

think that's true. You say that about your upbringing. I had a horrible depression in my twenties where I couldn't even get out of bed, and you know, my whole family was terrified because I was this close to going to a McClean or a hospital. I couldn't eat, I couldn't do anything. And now when I look back at that time, I do feel resilient. There is something about going through an incredibly difficult period, whether it's personally historically, it does make you stronger. Um, so maybe I'm I'm

looking at it the glass half empty instead of half full. Well, what you just described going through an adverse situation, there's actually a name for that. And Dr Amy Gagliardi at McClean taught me post traumatic growth. When we experience adversity, it's the actual struggle, and resilience is what helps us get through that struggle. And Amy talked about three ways that we can build and foster that resilience, and we can talk about those now if you want to. I'd

love to. I love post traumatic growth instead of post traumatic stress. Have you ever heard of that? No? But I really like it, isn't it great? Yeah? Thing, It's a real thing. I mean, there's she sent me papers on it. I mean I read about it and I was I too, is just so thrilled. And she even said that she's doing some of the things that we talked about that day, and I definitely am. So. The

first one is building connection. And so for example, when I think about Megan, you know, she one of the things that she really misses is not being able to see her friends. But she has had opportunity to safely be around other kids, and parents have to work hard to find that. It might be a bike ride with the kid, a socially distance trip to the park where you sit on a blanket and have a picnic, but

those are more structured sort of senses of connection. And you know, as much as we didn't like social media before and zoom and face time and all of that, that's really helping right now. Of course, there are all kinds of boundaries that have to be put around that, but that is helping. Just for your listeners, I really want to share this because this was eye opening to me. It doesn't have to be an intimate exchange. You don't even have to know the person. You don't even have

to like the person. So I lived by a beach, so I had been to the beach that morning, I believe, before this conversation with Amy, and it was high tied, so there wasn't a lot of room to walk, and so this woman that I didn't know was coming in my direction. So I stopped. She stopped, and we negotiated, Okay, who's going to go where? And and it took a second because we kind of went back and forth, and then I just paused and I said, you know, how

are you doing? And we just had this exchange that was about twenty seconds long, and she said, that counts. That counts. So now when I go to the grocery store, which I don't go that often still, but I will now stop with the cashier and I will intentionally engage. I'm really mindful of connection because I know that it's I know that it's helping us. The second is practicing gratitude. And Amy gave a really great example of this a study that was done. She talked about a study in

which people were over a week. It might have lasted longer. But in the first week, one group was asked to write down something they were grateful for. The second group was just to write down something they were really hassled about, the third just neutral, right, whatever you want. And after one week, the people who wrote down things that they

were grateful for showed a more positive mood. They were more likely to exercise, which hello, and that was that they were more willing to do things for other people, and importantly, they slept better regardless of the time of the day that they did it. She gave this as a very convincing piece of evidence around this practice of gratitude.

And then the third one is doing for others. And I know that you and your family does a lot for others, so you may already know this, but this doing for others, even in teeny tiny doses, generates positive emotions, and more so than receiving. And there study is done on functional MRI machines where they actually show that the reward center lights up more when you're giving than when you're receiving. And so we can practice just doing small

things for people and it makes us feel good. There's this thing called um you know, because it boosts endorphins as well. It's called the Helpers high, and it's kind of like the runners high. It will benefit a real physiological benefit of doing these things. And I think we can help our kids by encouraging them to do something for somebody else. I mean it's a distraction, but it

also gives them a sense of purpose and meaning. One friend, Tanya, told me that she and her girls and possibly some other people in their neighborhood built or created lunch boxes for their the food pantry through their church. One of the girls built a rainbow of balloons, uh and put up a sign thank you frontline workers that might see it by going by their house. I mean, just these little tiny things teach kids. There are things that we

can do and it's not just about us. It's interesting you say that because I mean it is something that we try to implement with our kids. And in terms of the grateful um, one of the things we try to instill with with our two daughters is we try to have family dinner every night, and we certainly did during the pandemic, and we would go around the table and say what are you grateful for? Particularly in a world where you know people are dying and suffering and

losing their homes and their jobs. And I could see a tiny little change in them because instead of being, oh my god, this is so horrible the pandemic, they had a moment where they go, well, I'm so grateful that I'm with my parents or whatever it was. So it took them, you know, certainly took them off themselves, which they were on their phones all about themselves for

hours before that. But it got them out of their um sort of self involvement, I guess, and and did make them look at the world in a much bigger way instead of you know this, this sucks for me um, which I think is is you know, they teach it in religion, they teach it in so many sort of

spiritual practices about being grateful, and it works exactly. There's just evidence that all of this, and you saw those tiny little bits and your girls, and when when that's cumulative in a practice that continues, those are the kinds of things that I believe will get so many of our teams to the other side of this, who can then reflect back and be changed in a positive way.

I mean, the uncertainty right now, we can't make promises to what it's going to look like Megan, the thirteen year old said, you know, what is this world going to look like? And you know that's not something we can answer. But what we can do right now is help give them purpose. In meeting, another friend of mine talks about the importance of helping kids build competencies and that at a time when, of course, the teenage years

are when you are building your social skills. There, when you are figuring out who the heck you are, you're developing empathy and importantly and you know this for sure, they want that autonomy from their parents. But oh they when they need you, they really really really really need you, and so right, yeah, that that is very difficult for

a parent. I mean I barely remember it as a teenager, but I'm getting a lot of wanted to be close, like cuddling with me and telling me everything, and then the next minute like I don't want to talk about it. Door slams. You know, I know, good, congratulations, they're right on track. Oh my god, celebrate, But how do they how do they create autonomy and a pandemic? How do

I tell them? Yeah intentionally, so you know they are going to spend more time in their room, and you know, we have to continually check in and just make sure that that kids are okay. It's really all hands on deck. But I want to talk a little bit about building competency because I think that as kids are struggling with that wanting autonomy, and you know, some kids were able to get on you know, public transportation for the first time. There they were out in the world in a way

that they're not now. Obviously, friends have told me really interesting stories about things that that their kids are doing that are giving them that sense of um not adult nous. Well okay, let's use that. I don't even think that's a word, but like caring for their siblings, you know, in a way that they didn't before because mom and dad are on zoom and they're working fourteen hours a day,

and so the kids have to step up. Another friend, her son was supposed to be in a school play and found out, I think three days before they were going to perform that it had been canceled because of the pandemic, I mean suddenly boom quarantine and he went to bed for four or five days, and his mom was obviously and correctly the very concerned and would check in and he said, Mom, I just need time. I

just need some downtime. And then she she really did have to prod him after I think about the fifth day, and so he went out and he started to run and then Vola, he discovered cooking and he just loves to cook. I'm jealous, right, I mean, I want him on to my house and having what she described as restaurant quality meals every night. She said, this came out of nowhere, so that's building competency and the family's loving the food. And she said, oh my god, I'm driving.

You can't believe where I'm going for these ingredients. Because she wants to foster this and her kids. So there are ways we have to stay really tuned into our kids. My clients are to a person depleted. And a friend of mine is a therapist and she said that there are parents that are just saying, whatever, just go do it. What I'm done, do it, what do what you gotta do? And you can't do that because kids, kids don't know.

They're not delicious. They don't want to do something bad, but they're like, well, me seems fine, he doesn't seem sick. I think I'll go hang out with him and suddenly there are fifteen kids there. I mean, this happened and you might have read about it. In Greenwich, Connecticut, they had parties. At one of the parties, the parents were serving alcohol and guess what boom. As of my last reading, people had become infected by this. So, you know, unfortunately,

we can't let our guard down. I mean, yeah, we we can't let our guard down for a number of reasons. But um, I will say too that I've noticed, certainly with my friends, UM, I didn't realize how many things are children just need to learn in general. I have a friend and she and her husband both worked there on zoom calls all day, and you know, to their youngest twelve year old, said, you know, you're got to

clean the toilets. I'm gonna buy you a brush. You're going to clean the toilets like you gotta do the laundry, like you got to pitch in. And we started implementing that a little bit in our house, and I realized, this is a good thing. They shouldn't do all this stuff. I can't believe I've been doing all this stuff for them, you know. And then there became kind of a sense of community of like, these are the chores, these are we all live together, we all need to kind of

help out, and and that was certainly helpful. It also kept them busy for a little while. But I think what's happening now is things are opening up a little bit, certainly for us in New York, and so the parents are kind of going, well, that was that was an exhausting few months. Yeah, now go do whatever you want. And that makes me very very nervous, certainly for you know,

my eldest team who wants to go out and socialize. Um, I think there's a majority of parents that are tired and are allowing the teens to kind of, you know, go out. And this is not on any from any statistic, but I would assume these teens, some of them are just raring to get out there. They've been cooped up with their parents for months, you know, So it's a little bit like letting the grayhounds out of the gate.

So how do you speak to parents when they say, I'm I'm exhausted, Well, you can't put the baby back. It's your job. That's how I say it, you know. And did we come through all of this two then just say, okay, let the greyhounds out. Now. Kids want to do the right thing. I think we need to recognize that they want to do the right thing. It's

our job to help them understand what that is. And and if you create concrete examples for them, they're much more likely to take it into their still developing brain. So they should so. For example, should a parents say, you know, I just read about what happened in Greenwich, Connecticut. Let me tell you you know this would happen and consequently grandparents were sick? I mean, should people actually pull

real stories as learning to us. I mean, before the pandemic, I always said that about whether it's sex, or alcohol or other drugs. The media is full of real life stories, and so absolutely because the more concrete and real that we make it, the more likely they are to stand up to their civic duty and try to do their part. I mean, some kids are going to be really good

about that. Some are going to be very laws a fair and get by with it, and others will be laws a fair and they will regret it because someone that they love will get sick because of their behaviors. I mean, it's happening. It's as easy to predict as the sun coming up tomorrow. Yeah. Now a quick word from our sponsors, welcome back to go ask Gali, let's get back to the discussion. So you talked earlier about

growth from adversity. So I want to talk about positive things because again this is coming off of parents being exhausted. How do I instill that sense to my kids and other parents and still to theirs, that sense of you can grow from this, that we go forward as opposed to locking ourselves in our rooms and then pulling down the shades. Right. Well, first of all, just being present. Kids need someone that they can bump off of that

they really trust. You know, it's easy for me to say, but I know how hard this is because all of the people that I know and my clients are working, you know, around the clock. I mean, they get up at the crack of dawn to work before all hell breaks loose in the household. I'm not saying that every house is dealing with stuff, but you know, you combine quarantine with raging hormones and really long work schedules and you've got something going on there. And so listen, listen.

John Reid, the former CEO of City Bank, I talked with him about I don't know how many years ago, but I've never forgotten what he said. I was talking with him about because I work with leaders primarily now, and I said, you know, what do you think is the key quality of an effective leader? And he said listening? And he said when I say listen, I mean listen with both ears and with your eyes and not think about the next thing you're going to say. Because we

know kids are intuitive. They can tell when we are really really listening, and so to listen and put down the phone, really engage. That's what empathy is, is really understanding where somebody's coming from. A friend's kid was, you know, in tears over something and she said, this isn't worth crying about. And the daughter said, I don't need you to fix it. I just need you to listen. And I mean it was worth crying about because the kid

was crying. I hear that from my kids too. Now I've given myself permission when I'm with my girls to say, yeah, I'm scared too. I I don't know, I don't know, but the parent in me wants to fix it. And the parent of me was like, oh, I'm sure you're going to have problem this spring. Oh no doubt school open soon, you know, because that's instinctual for me to try to fix it for them. I think it's scary to say to the kids, I don't know what's gonna happen.

I have no idea, I'm terrified, Like, oh my god, am I giving them a solid? But it's yes, you are, because that's honest. And we all have emotions. Emotions are good. It's how we talk about them. I mean, if you say I'm not scared, well, I mean, first of all, your girls have access to the news. They know what's going on, and they're not going to believe you, and so you're gonna lose trust. And then just subconsciously, they're gonna think moms just trying to make me feel better.

I think it's how we talk about them. I mean, if we if we are angry and we get really angry and throw a pot across the room, you know, that's not modeling how we deal with these very real, very real emotions. We can say I am so angry about this. I mean, we we can modulate our own emotions and then model to them how to handle these. But in talking about our fear and our frustrations and even how exhausted we find. Everything is just really honest and they absorb much more by watching us then the

advice we give them. And you know that, yes, it's not what we say, it's what we do. Actually, Um, we talked about what Amy said helpful positive things, so I want to just quickly go over them again. It's connection. So uh, go on a bike ride with somebody, UM in my case, find a friend who will go clamming with me. UM safe in a pandemic one on one things. So I can say to my daughters, why don't you ask a friend if you want to go to the beach and social distance at the beach, or like you said,

have a picnic. But Ali, I just want to say, it doesn't have to be like a two hour thing. You know, if the mailman comes or the ups guy drops something now at the end of my walk, you know, I'll yell out and I'll say, hey, thanks so much, and you know we we can have a twenty thing. I don't even know his name. Amy says that counts as connection, okay, right, right, right, So that's that's acts of kindness basically, especially right now, and people are are

needing it? Um. And the gratefulness what are you grateful for? And the third is is doing doing for others? Doing for when those little, many tiny things. It can be just the smallest thing and it counts great. I mean, yeah, uh so you don't have to bake banana bread for everybody in the in the state, but you can us. Yes, I know. UM, And are there any you know these

are such simple but helpful positive things. Are there any things that we should be looking at, um are looking for with our teens in terms of mental health that should be warning signs? Yeah, what we want to look for is when they have more bad days than good, when they're sleeping, patterns shift and they're not curious or interested in doing the things that they were interested in doing before. It's time to check in ask your pediatrician.

Just staying on top of it super important because we know that there are going to be young people who really need professional help at the end of this that's just a given. I've written a series of booklets. Words can work when talking about depression, words can work when talking about alcohol where it's gonna work, and talking about drugs and parents in every one of those situations, really what, regardless of what the public your mental health challenge was

that their kid was experiencing. I had parents tell me I just thought it was typical teenage angst. So now when we are so distracted and we're tired and we're stressed, we have to dig much deeper, I think, to make sure that we're on top of what normally is for our kid and when they vary from that. A friend of mine, Laura, has three teens, and she said that she has to remind herself every single day that she has to be the parent, because she said, sometimes I

want to be ten. I'm just you know, she just wants to sucker thumb and pull the blanket up. But she has to remind herself every day that she has to do this now because in the long run it's going to really help her kids come through this much stronger and um more productive, happier, healthier, And we can do it. You know, it will make a difference. I

know I'm trying. And then I do want to say, are there things particularly going on now that that would trigger a depression or trigger um real height and anxiety? What is a safe dialogue to have with your teen about any sort of mental health issues, because doesn't. Brian Johnson, who's a friend of mine is an addiction specialist, told me recently that interestingly, many young people, teens can are

buying drugs in the hallways at school. You know, essentially you can swing a cat in a hallway school and hit someone who's got drugs in their pocket for sale, and all kinds of drugs, whether they're at at all for a d H D or oxycont in marijuana. I mean,

you can buy this stuff in the schools. Parents, definitely, now that kids are going to be going back to some kind of school schedule hybrid in school thing, need to be talking with their kids because we are in its heightened time of anxiety and uncertainty, and we know that adults and kids both self medicaid, and so it's important that parents have these conversations and help role play. How you know, what would you do? Do you know any of your friends that are using drugs? You know,

what what are your dreams and aspirations? What do you want to accomplish? And let me help you understand that that's much more likely to happen if you don't get engaged in drugs. So, gee, you have UM. I actually I read about this before we spoke. Words Can Work, which are books about how parents can speak to the teenagers their kids about many different subjects. So tell me about these because I think these will be so helpful

for parents. So prior to being an executive coach, I produced multimedia about kids in the public and mental health challenges that they faced growing up. And I did that for a long time. So we have a library of multimedia. And I was when I was producing a video called Alcohol True Stories that Matt Damon hosted that parents would say they would I'd say, do you talk to your kids about alcohol? And they came up with these They so many parents said I don't know what to say,

and literally some people said, give me the words. So I was really fortunate to work with a number of experts from McClean Hospital, from Mass General, from my friend Brian Johnson who's now at Sunny in Syracuse, UM on this set of booklets, so they're available on the booklets. UM. Words can work when talking about alcohol, words can work when talking about drugs, words can work when talking about depression and UM and our our website Blake works dot com.

You can find this under a blog that I wrote recently about kids and meant their mental health. That's fantastic. One of the biggest hurdles for parents is finding the words and how to talk to kids about any of these things. Yeah, and so many parents are afraid that well, if I talk about it, they'll do it. Well, guess what,

They're already doing it. They're already thinking about it. And so I just I think giving them context and and helping them role play how they can negotiate out of situations because we know that kids are under peer pressure to do all of this stuff, and it's it's a big gift that we can give our kids to meet them where they are and help them find their way

out of it. I mean, I've found that by talking about it, I've even given them a few hints, like if you if you feel like you're going to be judged at a party because you don't drink, have a cup of ginger ale. They don't know what it is, you know what I mean. There's there's ways of kind of going around peer pressure and stuff. And you know, these are conversations I never would have had with them had I not sat down and said, look, I'm not this is not a lecture. You know, I'm not saying

just say no to drugs. I want to have a real conversation with you about them, what you're thinking, what you're feeling, how scary they are. Um. And that's helped, But I do know that there have been times I've been tongue tied about how to approach a subject. Thank you so much, Jane Blake. Thank you for helping me and so many parents through this. And I may pull you back on my podcast again in a few months to see how we're doing, I hope. So it's just

a pleasure. Thank you for what you're doing making a difference in people's lives. Thank you. Thank you. Three positive things we can implement in our lives. Connection, gratitude, acts of kindness. Thank you for listening to Go Ask Ali. Remember to subscribe to Go Ask Ali and follow me on my social media Twitter at Ali e Wentworth in Instagram. The Real Ali Wentworth. Go Ask Ali is a production of Shonda land Audio and partnership with I Heart Radio.

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