Welcome back to the Doctor Wendywall Show on KFI AM six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. We spent a lot of time on the show talking about motherhood, all the various complication, complic complicated emotions, the feelings that people have around something that you know, I've said it. It's kind of a hallmark holiday, but it's a time for us to really talk about motherhood and everything it has entails. And I always say, you know, mothers can't win.
You know, whether you do the right thing or don't do the right thing, you get blamed for everything. My next guest is not only a psychiatrist, but a mother of two and one of her daughters was born with disabilities. I'd like to welcome doctor Eva Ritfo to the show. Hi, doctor Eva, how are you Hi?
It's wonderful to hear your voice, especially on Mother's Day exactly now.
I know when one is about to become a mother and they're full of expectations and then something happens and their baby may not be this perfect child or I know you'd argue with me about what is perfection, but a child that might have physical or mental disabilities. Can you share us a little bit about what happened to you.
It was your firstborn, right, yes, it was my first born, my daughter. I was finishing my psychiatry residency and she was born and we thought everything was great. And then we moved down to Florida where I was starting a job on the faculty at University of Miami, and in the couple weeks of transitioning, my sister, who was training as a pediatrician, came down to visit and she's I said to my sister, oh, well, we can already tell she's going to be right handed because she hasn't used
her left hand as much. And my sister was smart enough to be like, what, that doesn't make any sense. This goes back a long way. So you weren't just looking everything up on the internet, right, So we called her.
And this baby was only two weeks old at.
This point, your daughter, No, she was six months.
Six months.
She was six months. Yeah, she was six months. So we had a beautiful, uneventful six months minus the colic, which you know lots of people have that. That wasn't much fun, but we got through the colic. Turned out she was allergic to breast milk. Go figure so well, yeah, we took it took a while to sort that through, so you know, it was definitely not a very easy start, but we got through that.
We moved down to Miami.
My sister made the comment, I didn't even have a doctor down here, so found a pediatrician.
Went in and I got to tell you, Wendy. Even though it was thirty plus years ago, I remembered.
The phone call like it was yestvay and I stick to my stomach thinking about it.
He was terribly rude, told us you know.
His name, and said, you know, well, your daughter has a hole in her brain and he's.
Never going to be normal.
And we ran what because we just thought she wasn't moving her left hand as much.
So it was over the phone.
It was really, honestly a horrible moment. I didn't know a soul in Miami. I was about to start the first job in my life, twenty nine years old. Horrible, and then things went downhill from there. We found out she had a form of cerebral policy called Hanny paris Is, where she couldn't use her left side.
But that was okay.
You know, she was still a bright, beautiful, easy going, fun child, so we got her into therapies and everything was sort of you know, coming back together, started my.
Job, etc. And then at two and a half she had a seizure.
We were all at home and we saw it and I knew what it was immediately.
We raced to the hospital. They kept her overnight, and then we had a.
Really bad two and a half years, really really bad. When she would have seizures, they wouldn't stop, so we would have to call the paramedics. They would come, they would give her ivy rectally to get the seizure to stop, and then they'd have.
To transport her to the hospital.
So we weren't allowed to go, you know, too far away from a hospital. So no traveling back to see my family, which was in Los Angeles, no traveling back to see my friends that were in.
New York, no going really very far at all.
I would go to work, but that was about five minutes away from the house, and sure enough, I remember sitting with a patient once and getting that phone call and just saying, in the middle of the session with a patient.
I'm sorry, I have to go. He was like dumbfounded, and I'm like I always plain later, I've got to get out of here fast, so as I worked at the hospital.
You know, there is a wonderful ending to the story. I want to save it for a few minutes from now, but I want to talk about the feelings and emotions. You didn't plan to have a child with disabilities. I'm sure mothers blame themselves for everything. Did you have to handle guilt? And what happened was her stress on your marriage because of this talk about what happens to a family when this happens.
Well, we went downhill from the seizures and at five, she had to have surgery brain surgery to move the portion of her brain that was starting the seizures.
And that's when things really got bad.
And then she had a complication following the surgery, had a second emergency surgery, near death episode. I mean, as bad as it gets, Wendy, as bad as it gets. So that's when the guilt started. I think the marriage was strained. You know, I don't know if we want to say at a breaking point then, but certainly we did go on to divorce.
Yeah, it was pretty bad.
Well, there was a silver lining. First of all, you went on to have another daughter, and yeah, how many years between your daughters.
Four and a half, so it was right before the really really bad part that the other daughter was born. Was a miracle. She was born. Let's just say we weren't exactly.
Trying, and she came to the world that was also very pregnancy because she was very small, so they thought, oh gosh, you know, another set of complications. But miracle, she was fine and has been fine, and it's thriving and has really been a pillar of strength for our family. When she was born, we jokingly called her Paxel because she lifted everybody's mood up.
And the poor kid is now becoming a psychotherapists because she's got to lift the whole world's mood up.
But I do want to say before we go to a break, that your oldest daughter, Joy lives independently now and yes recently, what did she experience.
Well, the funny thing is, right, the last time she was on your show, you proposed to Julio. Right, she was on and then she hung up and the next thing you know, you're proposing to Julio.
We were all completely shocked. Well, Joy has gone on to be a miracle.
She's done so much therapy you name a therapy we've done it. I can give you feed back if any mother's out there want to know what works and what doesn't work, because.
A lot of people will sell you things that don't work, but a lot of things you do.
So she's a very smart young woman and went on a dating app and found herself a husband and that's it.
And Wendy, you danced at her wedding literally, Julio, and you were not a married woman. Then we have a very very happy ending. So to your mother's out there, I say, take a deep breath. Patience and time is a wonderful healer. And today I just spent a glorious day just my daughter Joy. By the way, her birth name was Marissa, but she chose to go by her middle name, which is Joy, which is very appropriate, and she leads.
A very joyful life.
I got to spend the whole day with her because her very sweet, nurturing husband is actually up with his grandmother, which was very dear because he had lost his mother during his childhood.
So are you ready to bring are we go back?
I want to talk about this silver lining that through your relationship with a daughter with discipline, you founded the most amazing I hate to call it charity because it's really about an educational expose and art, and we're going to talk about that when we come back. My guest is doctor Eva Ritfo, a psychiatrist from Miami, and Happy
Mother's Day to you, doctor Ritfo. We've been talking about the shock and when an unexpected baby is born with disabilities and you've done an amazing job raising your beautiful daughter Joy. But out of this came some beauty. Can you talk about the Old Beauty Project and what is it?
First of all, thank you, Wendy, and I love to talk about the Bold Duty Project.
So as we just shared, we had.
Some very dark years, but we emerged out of that and one of the ways that we emerged out of them was through this nonprofit.
We're called the Bold Beauty Project.
We were formed in two thousand and fifteen where the brainchild of a social worker named Shelley Beaher and her idea was to take women with disabilities pair of the wind photographers. We use all volunteer photographers, have them get together, have a very special photo shoot experience, and then we take one image from each pair and then.
We exhibit them together along.
With a brief narrative of the woman with the disability and the narrative of our volunteer photographer. So my daughter Joy got to be a model very early on. And the fortuitous part was if anybody listening knows Robert Zuckerman, Robert was a very famous photographer shooting all the behind the scenes movies in Hollywood, the stills for the movie posters. He became disabled, he did not fign the Hollywood community welcoming.
He left, came back to Miami, which is where we met him, and he was used to shooting all the celebrities.
And I was a tiger mom before that was a word.
And I asked him if he would photograph my daughter and he said yes, and he came over to our house.
We called a love fest day, and he.
Took the most beautiful picture of her, which has now been shown in countless art fairs and is on all of our branding. And she started calling him Pops, and he just really inspires everybody. Sadly, he did pass away during COVID in twenty twenty two, so we miss him dearly. But the project goes on. So, like I said, we started in twenty fifteen in Washington, d C. We did
our next show twenty sixteen in Miami. We've exhibited in multiple cities now throughout the country, Texas, New York, we did Los Angeles, last year, Philadelphia, and due to the pandemic, we made a pivot and we're now on college campuses because we didn't want expose any women during COVID too, you know the risk. So we went to college campuses because they were already you know, out and about and getting exposed.
So the big news is the Bold Beauty Project will be exhibiting for the very first time at UCLA next Sunday, May eighteenth, from three to five pm. Now, for those who love art, who love beauty, who love fashion, this is a photography exhibition you do not want to miss. And the whole goal of the Bold Beauty Project, as I understand it is to change the image of disability. Is that correct, doctor Eva?
Absolutely.
We have so many beautiful women who have disabilities. Joy likes to call them women with different abilities, because if one thing is taken away from you, you know how
it goes you strengthen in other areas. So our models are really inspiring, resilient, beautiful women, and they get to depict how they like to be seen, and so it's an opportunity to see all sorts of different images and who come and meet the models themselves, talk to them and meet the photographers who, like I said, have volunteered their time, which is so heartwarming and beautiful.
So we have a very interesting show coming up on campus. It's free. The more that's the more we're celebrating.
For now.
I do want to say people do need to get tickets, and you can go to the KFI AM six forty website. We will put a link to where you can get tickets, but you can also just go to Bold Beauty Project dot com to get more information. So it's next Sunday, May eighteenth, at three pm at UCLA. I will be there, Doctor Eva will be there, the models will be there.
If you are interested in photography in glamour and makeup and fashion, or just because you want to support this amazing charity, this nonprofit, the Bold Beauty Project, we'd love to see you out there, Doctor Eva. Any parting words for parents who may be dealing with a child with disabilities.
Self care, You know it is very challenging.
Parenting is very challenging, particularly in this age that we live in and if you add on top of that disabilities and special needs and therapy sessions and the fear of the unknown, it's a difficult road. And so I think it's really important not to neglect yourself and remember, you know, you've got to put that oxygen mask.
On yourself first.
So any mothers that are listening today, please take care of yourself. Make sure that you're sleeping, make sure you're eating, make sure you're exercising. Motherhood is a marathon, not a sprint, so we have to be in our top shape. And Joy is a wonderful example of how when we work hard and we're patient and we persevere, amazing things can happen. And as you mentioned, she has a beautiful, doting, loving husband. She lives independently, and she's been really proud of everything
she's done with the Bold Beauty Project. And we hope that everyone will check us out and if they can't come on campus, we get it. There's a lot of traffic, so you could go on our website. You could look at the past shows and you could see inspiring women there. I can tell you one last thing, Wendy, which is for myself, I know that I have had a more fulfilling life because I have a child with extra needs. It has helped me to develop into a more patient, kind,
loving person. And believe me, I don't sweat the small stuff, and after we've been through life and debt experiences with your five year old, it's all small stuff exactly.
Thank you so much for being with us, and hopefully to those listeners, we'll see you next week at the Bold Beauty Project at UCLA. Doctor Eva Ritvo, psychiatrist from Miami, and that brings the Doctor Wendy Walls Show to a close. You know, I'm always here for you every Sunday from seven to nine pm. You can also follow me on my social media and the handle everywhere is at doctor Wendy Walsh. But I'm always here for you on KFI.
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