As Caitlin prepares to to welcome their new little human into the world, we are sending you a little signing off episode with a found poem that emerged from all of the conversations we've gathered since we kicked this thing off last year.

Thank you for being along for the ride!

A Scratch That Poem

*Note: Every line from this poem is linked to the Scratch That episode from which it originally sprouted.

Hello, little butterbean, Sweet silly goose. little anxious heart. Dear listener, the freaks, other weirdos my sister Laura

Come sit with me. 

we can't believe you're here 

your presence feels like a miraculous little sparkle lighting up the dark sky.

What I hear us talking about is

becoming was a pretty disorienting, lonely experience.

Like we were gonna be lawyers and doctors and like be wearing suits or something. 

I have literally gashed the control panel of the passenger side door out with my wheelchair as I transferred in and out of this car for the last 15 years. And if anybody sits in the passenger seat, it does look like I'm trying to kidnap them

oh, this is, this is very different than I thought what almost 40 was gonna look like. 

I doubt myself all the time

I shrunk from the eye of the storm 

I don't know what the hell I'm doing.

oh, dear Lord. 

I am so quick to feel like, oh, you are ruining this. And if you could just get it right 

We were at the pool. I didn't bring a towel. I didn't bring a towel to the pool. Can we use your towels? Oh, my God. Like, what. What is that? 

the moment when you show up and you feel like the child in a room full of adults.

this little duck that looks really peaceful on top of the water, but underneath, I'm just paddling, like, furiously. 

and I couldn't let anyone know it

This is the dirty secret. And nobody can know that, actually, I'm like, I shouldn't be doing this, and I need to keep pretending like I can.

the failure of not matching 

when we immediately think like, oh, I should know

what the fuck is that?

It was like grief. It was shame.

it is feeling like a lot of doing and grasping and, like, white knuckling. 

I can never stop working relentlessly and fearfully to get it right, get it right, get it right.

nose to the grindstone

I don't think I'm capable of feeling easy breezy 

It feels all tangled and kind of ugly.

Tell me if I'm wrong. Did others feel this way? 

As I'm understanding it right now in the very middle of it

Yep.

I'm raising my hand here, 

Was everyone just pretending to be okay, or was I broken?

oh, no. No. No. No.

I just don't buy it. 

There was also this

There was a way that you were trying to help yourself survive even in that fumbling

I'm holding myself together with harshness and rigidity and why I oughta.

oh, the speed and rush and flurry and chaos and check, check, check. Because so many times it felt like my body was not mine. 

oh, like I'm actually in much more pain than I'm letting myself admit. 

and and how do we, like, not keep our bodies rigid 

What if your most important job was to notice, to witness breath, tears, goosebumps, heartbeats? Look! 

just, like, stop to look at a trail of ants in a sidewalk crack. 

Listen to the gasp from the back seat at the sight of a sunrise. Mama, take a picture. 

oh, there's my breath. Oh, there I am in there. 

You feel it, right?

Yes, dear Lord I have goosebumps up to my cheeks

Mhmm. I mean, you know it in your body probably.

One breath at a time. 

watch me Breathe in and out.

a lot of us out here don't match the pictures we've been given

I don't see through your eyes, you don't see through my eyes. We're all seeing things differently. 

We are learning 

we are recalibrating

in flux 

reorienting, and it is dizzying. 

The hints come in little bread crumbs, and I think you can trust it.

horses don't have an ability to lie to humans

grab the reins and trust that gut feeling

That is the thing we have control over, trying to show up, trying to show up again. We don't have control over the outcome.

It is all going to happen. 

One day at a time, baby.

it will be glorious and unbearable

And yes, it was funny because we made it so.

Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. 

we can use goals as playgrounds. 

The timelines that are presented to us are so narrow. And that is not what life is like. It's just not. 

Julia Child didn't start cooking until she was 45 or whatever.

Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh. Now I'm going yes. 

like, paying attention to what is alive in you. 

You can just shift the question.

What are the things you're moving towards versus just what you're going against?

how can you rearrange what's in the box? 

what is it that you're resisting in yourself? 

what are we to do but imagine better futures?

this off script, kind of like, scrappy, build it yourself way, I'm like, oh, yeah, 

Like, we can just start asking different questions

That's freaking sick, bro.

That's freaking metal.

I think a new answer is emerging in me and I don't know what it is yet. 

but I do know that my body responded 

I'm paying attention to how my body feels right now.

my heart has not stopped pounding

so many tears coming up 

I feel like this tingling of excitement

my face is already hurting from all the smiling

And, also 

right now, I'm just like a hot jellyfish mess. You know? 

It's, like, so uncomfortable and hard to let things be messy

And I think it has been messier than I expected, but

But that messy middle was so important. 

grappling with the real limitations of my body. 

Wouldn't it be lovely, if you could grow wings and fly? 

Of course there's grief. There's loss. 

but two things can be true at the same time. 

The pain and the beauty, they're usually, like, intertwined and pushed right up next to each other.

Notice the strength and the toll. There is so much pain and fear and loss bleeding across this planet. Notice the question, how are we still breathing? 

Notice the blooms of survival.

It is what happens in between you and the person across from you and in that space, the divine comes in. However you think of the divine

Like, this is beautiful and complicated. This is the juicy part. This is the rough part.

you are a speck of spectacular dust here for one quick gasp of holy shit, I'm here.

oh, yeah. It's probably supposed to be strange because it's inherently a weird thing

to change and evolve and grow

you will always be you, you will never stop changing. 

It is so strange to put a part of yourself into the world 

This little pocket of conversation that we're having

this time capsule.

this one peak into one moment of time. 

Holy shit we just circled so many different things.

And did we land at exactly the place that we started? Maybe.

So thank you for being here.

and thank you. Thank you for this.

thank you for giving me this space

thank you for staying in the exploration

Thank you for digging in and winding through this path with us. 

I have so many more questions

Mentioned In This Episode:

Our collaborative Scratch That Spotify playlist "Songs That Have Held Us"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Are there moments from the last year of episodes that you would add to a Scratch That poem?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Check out Tatum's forthcoming book, Blessed Is the Body, a reflection on disability justice, the holiness of inclusion and acceptance, disabled leadership, the finitude of our bodies, and allowing space for lament and acceptance. Whether you grew up hearing your body is sinful or haven't read a page of the Bible, this episode offers us a tender reframe on how we could think about our bodies and what needs (or doesn't need) fixing.

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

⛪️ Tatum's early experiences with disability, queerness, and religion.

🧳 What it feels like to Tatum to embody a (disabled, queer, religious) role full of tension and contradiction.

🐧 Finding God in the "in between" spaces, like penguins.

🍃 Why Tatum had to let go of who she thought God was.

🏳️‍🌈 What Tatum thinks religious communities are missing out on when they exclude people.

👩‍🦯‍➡️ The yuck history of churches fighting to be excluded from the Americans with Disabilities Act.

💌 Tatum's decision to stay in the church, even as she continues to think creatively about God.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Find Tatum on Instagram @blind_person_in_area

Pre-Order her book from Herald Press or Amazon

Tatum's addition to the Scratch That Spotify playlist of songs that have held us – "Sight" by Sleeping At Last

Nancy Eiesland's book The Disabled God: Toward a Liberatory Theology of Disability

Amy Kenny 's book My Body is Not a Prayer Request: Disability Justice in the Church

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Do you relate to any of the experience Rebekah and Tatum shared in this episode? Have you revised any scripts around what is holy or divine?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🫀 How Tyler ended up writing the picture book that all of us needed.

💀 The weird similarities in the ways people respond to disability and death.

🎭 How Tyler became the kind of person who can hold onto grief and laughter at the same time.

😬 The weird things people said around Tyler after her mom died and a peek at alternate scripts.

⏳ A cultural script Tyler would like to revise.

🎀 The 3 questions Rebekah's kid really wanted to ask Tyler, and her answers.

🕺 A dash of Myers Briggs/Enneagram chitter-chatter.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Tyler's books Bodies Are Cool, Are You Mad At Me?, and Dancing At the Pity Party: A Dead Mom Graphic Memoir

Tyler's addition to the Scratch That Spotify playlist of songs that have held us – "Kind of Girl" by MUNA

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! 

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🩺 How Barry learned early that their disabled body didn't belong to them.

📓 The artifact from the past Barry's mom gave them that prompted a turn toward embodiment.

😷 The near-death experience that taught Barry to trust their body.

🗓️ Why Barry likes the word practice to describe learning to be in their body.

💌 The entirely unique and expansive way that Barry defines accessibility.

✨ Invitations from disability and gender to dismantle.

🌱 Exploring what we are FOR (as opposed to simply against).

📦 Thinking outside of the box versus rearranging what's inside the box.

⚡️ Getting comfortable with being unpalatable.

🧳 Removing the shame that so often rests on top of suffering.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Gentle Reminders Journal: A Deep, Loving Guide to Help You Show Up for Yourself & Others

Barry's Instagram, Substack Portal Hopping, and website!

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Do you share this history of disembodiment? How did/are you finding your way back?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune In to Hear Up Talk About:

🌶️ Caitlin's spicy hot-take soap box.

🕯️ How Caitlin layered & modified their pre-parenting practices after Charlie arrived.

🚚 How to decipher what to salvage and what to let go of.

🌱 When it's not just your circumstances, but YOU are the one changing.

⏰ How the restrictions of time and money complicate things.

🌎 All the big-picture, cultural forces that keep us from creating.

📝 Letting go of what any of this is supposed to look like, and writing scripts for ourselves that make us feel alive.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

The New One by Mike Birbiglia and J. Hope Stein

Our Scratch That episode "Getting Of the Conveyer Belt of Production with Maria Bowler"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Have you gone through a big life change that has left you feeling disconnected from yourself? Like your lost or something is missing?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune In to Hear Up Talk About:

👀 Perceiving ourselves versus perceiving ourselves being perceived.

⁉️ The workshop moment Rebekah realized some people move through world wholly unaware of how others perceive them. (What?!)

🚫 Reasons people resist or feel hesitant to "self-gaze."

🪩 A broad set of mediums we can use to create space for "self gaze."

⏳ The value of "being with yourself in it" versus the final product.

😭 Caitlin's reflection on the moment when they took their first self-portrait ™️.

📷 What Rebekah told a recently disabled college student about self-acceptance.

✨ The counter-intuitive collective result of our "navel gazing."

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

John Berger's Ways of Seeing

Our episode with Kate Bingaman Burt when she talks about her daily drawing practice (including the time she illustrated her credit card bills every month).

Our episode with Cody Cook-Parrott where they talk about their year of daily dance videos.

Rebekah's Instagram live chat with Kelle and Lainey Hampton

Andrea Gibson's poem "Tincture" that ends with the line "Tell us again about goosebumps./Tell us again about pain."

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Have you practiced any kind of self-portraiture? Tell us about it!

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Mentioned In This Episode:

"Getting Off the Conveyer Belt of Production with Maria Bowler"

Maria Bowler's book Making Time: A New Vision for Crafting a Life Beyond Productivity

Rebekah's Substack This Too

"Flipping the Script on Disability with Lucy & James Catchpole"

"The Hilarious & Heartbreaking with Hannah & Shane Burcaw"

"What Paradigms Are We Building? Part 2 with Abbie VanMeter"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! 

🍎 Apple
🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🧶 The legacy of creativity Kate grew up in.

💐 The moment in a small-town Missouri flower shop when Kate realized she could earn money making things with her hands.

📊 When our kids don't seem interested in the things we value so highly.

🚦 How Kate uses rules, limitations, and restrictions to generate creative momentum.

🫟 Diving into the process without the pressure for an amazing product.

❌ What to do with that helpless feeling that we're damaging our kids with our own stuff.

〰️ Making space for looking back and connecting the dots.

👻 Tuning in to the voice that compels us to make things without worrying if it's important enough.

🔍 Kate's advice for avoiding burnout.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Kate's TEDTalk "Rules of Engagement"

The Ten Rules from Corita Kent. The Rules mentioned into today's episode include #8 – "Don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes, and #9 – "Be happy whenever you can manage it. Enjoy yourself. It's lighter than you think."

Kate's addition to the Scratch That Spotify playlist of songs that have held us – Paul Simon's "Rene and Georgette Magritte with Their Dog After the War."

For more of Kate in your life, head to her website!

Babies Caitlin and Kate at a workshop Kate hosted in Portland.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What stood out to you about our conversation with Kate? Anything you're tucking away or still chewing on?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🙃 The moments of comparison that make Rebekah like a child among the grownups.

🫟 When the thing you're good at doesn't always look shiny or tidy.

🌤️ Learning to notice where we have abundance in addition to noticing the strain.

🌓 Rebekah grieving not having another kid while Caitlin prepares to welcome theirs.

♿️ How disability can make it taboo to express jealousy/grief for what you don't have.

❓ The guiding question to sort the comparison feelings – What is this actually about?

🤝 What makes it tricky and useful to share when we feel the pang of comparison.

🎨 Letting the both/and of our lives, co-exist side-by-side as a creative script building project.

📬 Less matching for the sake of it and more living our values out loud as a flag to find our people.

Mentioned In This Episode:

The episode we had with Emma Parker about infertility and miscarriage.

The episode when each of us wonders if we will have a second kid.

Our conversation with Amelia Hruby about social media.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Does your brain get stuck in comparison mode? How do you navigate feeling inferior to or envious of the people in your orbit? What are your tools? What are your angsts?

🍎 Apple
🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🧭 What drives Caitlin's intentionality in guiding Charlie through the transition of becoming a sibling.

🌈 How Caitlin's experience being the "rainbow baby" shaped siblings dynamics in their family.

📖 Learning to be conscious of the stories we put onto our kids.

🤝 One skill we think is mandatory to maintain sibling relationships over the long haul.

🍄 Disrupting our assigned roles within a family ecosystem.

🌱 Practicing seeing each other anew, over and over again.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Nine Months: Before a Baby Is Born written by Miranda Paul and illustrated by Jason Chin

When Aidan Became a Brother written by Kyle Lukoff and illustrated by Kaylani Juanita

What Makes a Baby written by Cory Silverberg and illustrated by Fiona Smyth

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! How have your sibling relationships evolved over your life? What role did you play in your family of origin? How are you thinking about the relationships between your kids? And do you have anyone in your life you'd like to try to see anew?

🍎 Apple
🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune In to Hear Up Talk About:

🍋 The inexpensive and spectacular ways Caitlin's mom marked a moment, large or small.

🕯️ Elevating a mundane moment through attention to sensory detail.

🧶 Why Rebekah still remembers the first day of kindergarten.

🎊 The many many ways paper chains have marked moments in Caitlin's life.

✨ Shifting from the big & expensive to the tiny, doable, and affordable.

🛒 The celebratory groceries practice Caitlin & Andrew share.

🤡 What makes planning kids' birthday parties so freaking stressful.

📝 Breaking the script on rehearsed moment to create novelty .

🏔️ Putting more energy into creating peak moments and less on fixing everyday grumbles.

🗓️ Marking moments as a way of making sure you remember your own life.

🍼 The REAL reason Caitlin is having a baby shower.

The sensory birthday party Caitlin talked about.

Breakfast in bed on Rebekah's 4th birthday, a smiley face made out of powdered donuts and sausage links.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

If you would like to support Kate Weiners in the aftermath of the fire that damaged her bookstore, Monstera's Plants, you can purchase a gift cared here. They are working very hard to re-open and could use some help in the meantime!

And if you missed our episode with Kate, listen to our conversation here.

The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

The Art of Gathering by Priya Parker

Thunder Cake by Patricia Polacco

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! How do you think about Caitlin's ideas of "romanticizing" your life or "memorializing" a life before it ends? What ways have you found to make a moment, large or small, more meaningful? What do you think makes this work hard?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

For more of Cody in your life, check out their website – this is where you can find their books, learn more about their podcast, sign up for their newsletter, or enroll in one of their classes.

And don't forget to pre-order their upcoming book! The Practice of Attention Cultivating Presence in a Distracted World

We're excited to share this one with you☀️

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🗒️ Cody's very first ritual practice.

🤸‍♀️ One way that Cody makes personal practice playful instead of punitive.

🫁 The 3 things Cody has been doing consistently for the longest.

💰 How reparenting is becoming a useful tool when little 9 year old Cody is sabotaging adult Cody's financial goals.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 Linking reparenting with Internal Family Systems.

🏳️‍⚧️ The trans love and weirdo community that buoys Cody.

✌️ The words Cody's mentor said to them that helped them delete Instagram years later.

🎲 Taking the leap that aligns with our values before we know the outcome.

📖 Writing the book we needed.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Cody's very first podcast Have Company

The book that invited Cody into their first personal practice – The Artist's Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity

Cody's money coach Hadassah Damien and their program "Ride Free Fearless Money"

Cody's book How to Not Always Be Working

Caitlin's book Feel Something Make Something

Our episode with Amelia Hruby about leaving social media

Pre-Order Cody's new book, The Practice of Attention Cultivating Presence in a Distracted World

Cody's addition to the Scratch That Spotify playlist of songs that have held us – Joan Armatrading "Down To Zero"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What question do you think prospective parents should be asking? What questions do you have about parenting? Or what questions do you wish you'd asked before you became one?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune In to Hear Us Talk About:

🩺 The overwhelming lack of medical curiosity or understanding about PPD and menopause.

🕯️ When Caitlin realized they had capital P – Postpartum depression.

🚫 The horrible experience Caitlin had when they tried to reach out for medical support.

♿️ The roles disability and ableism played in Rebekah's postpartum experience.

❌ A few reasons it can be difficult to tell anyone about your PPD symptoms.

🤝 What is Caitlin doing differently with this pregnancy to prepare for Postpartum?

🛒 The very practical, tangible, helpful thing Caitlin's sister is doing to build in supports for this postpartum stretch.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒‍🧒 The broad number of people who can experience PPD beyond a birthing parent.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What were your experiences around postpartum? And what help have you received or offered during postpartum that felt especially helpful?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Want more of Kaplan? You can find their writing and some yoga practices (recorded as love notes to Caitlin 🥹) on Patreon or follow their Instagram.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🔍 What becoming parents showed us about our partners and how it shifted our relationships.

✅ The one thing Rebekah wishes she'd thought more about before becoming a parent.

🕸️ Parenting as a big group project.

🧑‍🧒‍🧒 Caitlin's epiphany about their relationship with their partner as the third client in the therapy room.

🏆 A reframe for the parent who really, really wants to "get it right."

👴 Staying connected to our children/parents as we all get older.

🎮 What happens when our values don't align with our co-parents?

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Our conversation with Shane and Hannah Burcaw where they describe their thoughts on intergenerational living.

Our conversation with Kate Wieners where she talks about using percentage ratings for how important something is to each partner.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What question do you think prospective parents should be asking? What questions do you have about parenting? Or what questions do you wish you'd asked before you became one?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune In to Hear Up Talk About:

🌟 The stakes of manifesto writing that tripped us up from the start.

🔍 What the process of this project revealed to us about ourselves and our families.

🎵 The part of the creation process when Rebekah's family really got on board.

📜 Manifestos as a living breathing document.

🧠 A juicy brainstorm of different manifesto mediums to try.

📋 Caitlin's mini workshop on the purpose of a manifesto and how to approach making one.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Listen to Rebekah's family's manifesto here.

Our conversation with S. Bear Bergman

And his book – Special Topics in Being a Parent: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way

Caitlin always recommends using Lisa Congdon's Values Deck to kick off a manifesto draft.

The manifesto workbook Caitlin uses in their workshops (attached below!)

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What questions do you have about manifesto writing? What sounds daunting or exciting about them? If you end up trying this, let us know how it goes! Ragged, spectacular, or anything in between – all parts are welcome.

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Sarah Knight's TED Talk "The Magic of Not Giving a F***"

Our conversation with S. Bear Bergman where he talks about choosing 2-3 things to teach our kids.

Our conversation with James and Lucy Catchpole where they talk about limitations as the parameters for a particular, beautiful life.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What are the parenting goals you're ditching, dropping, toasting, gently releasing?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🍳 The two-ingredient recipe that makes the tone of Bear's parenting book different from so many others.

🔬 The part about trial and error that Bear thinks we don't talk about enough.

🤝 Collaborative vs controlling parenting.

🔨 The part of parenting differently than you were parented that no one talks about.

🔎 A clarifying strategy for the chaotic parenting moments when so many things are going wrong.

🚮 Figuring out what parenting priorities to simply let go of.

🫜 Trading a family tree for a family garden.

🚫 The 2 kids' shows Caitlin and Bear CANNOT abide by.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Special Topics in Being a Parent: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned About Parenting, Mostly the Hard Way

Special Topics in Being a Human: A Queer and Tender Guide to Things I've Learned the Hard Way about Caring For People, Including Myself

The song Bear added to our collective Scratch That Spotify playlist – "Might as Well Dance" by Patty Larkin

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! 

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🫟 The sticky conversations Caitlin loves diving into with their kid and why some topics feel so much harder.

🇺🇸 How our parents' talked with us about politics in the 90s.

🪦 The very different responses we had to our kids seeing dead animals and the one thread we share.

📚 How Caitlin is using books and stories as invitations and bridges into hard conversations.

🪧 The conversations Rebekah had with a fellow protester that illuminated how she wants to move through today's politic landscape with her son.

⚙️ A potentially measured and responsible new strategy to equip our kids for the scary realities of today's world.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What helps you navigate conversations (with your kids or anyone else!) about the scary things happening in the world right now? And what book recommendations do you have? For any age! What are the book that are helping you understand our history and humanity?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

☎️ The story of the old 70s phone they use in the store and all the ways it sets the tone for the shop.

💫 What Kate's husband Justin said when he heard her name her bookstore dream out loud at a party.

％ The strategies Kate and Justin have developed to navigate living, parenting, and working together.

🔧 The big and unexpected monkey wrench in their plans and how that became the scary ideal way to actually launch their plans.

🔔 The epiphany Kate had while waiting for someone else to tell her she had a brilliant plan.

🌿 Why Kate thinks Monstera's Books is a worthy competitor to Amazon.

🫟 Just making the next decision and getting comfortable with chaos.

📚 The conversation Kate overheard in the bookstore that highlighted the unique power of third spaces (especially ones that center storytelling).

💓 The tremendous value/power of little risks. (Or how something as simple as a romance bookclub could save someone's life.)

✨ How paying attention to the sparkle dream in ourselves can meet a much larger need in our communities.

⚡️ What Kate hopes her daughters take away from growing up in this bookstore.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Two books recommended by Monstera's Books patrons – The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese and A Court of Thorns and Roses by Sarah J. Maas

Two of Kate's top book recommendations – I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death by Maggie O'Farrell and Wild Dark Shore by Charlotte McConaghy

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Shout out your favorite local bookstore! Tell us about your favorite third space! Share a little or big dream that's been tugging at your chest! We're here for all of it💛

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

✨ Curiosity as sacred.

⏱ The cost of separating places and times of learning.

🌱 Shame vs safety in a learning environment.

❓ The power of asking "silly" questions and admitting you don't know.

☁️ Valuing "idleness" in a world that rewards gold stars.

🧶 Why it's good and important to make so many crappy things.

🥁 Continually seeking out experiences where we're not very skilled.

⚡️ The scrappy trickster energy required to view constraints as possibility.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

"Dispatches from the Ruins" is an essay in Ross Gay's book Inciting Joy.

Here's the clip of Ira Glass talking about the gap between your good taste and what you are able to make when you start out.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What were your experiences in school? What worked well and what do you wish had been different? How do you think about education and learning as an adult? And does that show up in how you parent/re-parent now?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🫢 A super big announcement!

❓ Asking questions to understand the ways we experience pregnancy and parenthood differently.

⚖️ Caitlin processing the need they felt to choose between being visibly queer and keeping their kids safe in public.

🏳️‍🌈 Why being pregnant with Charlie propelled Caitlin to come out as nonbinary.

🔔 The moment Caitlin rung the bell that could not be unrung and showed up as their nonbinary self to people that mattered.

👥 Modeling for our kids an alignment in how we show to the world and how we show up inside our homes.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

If you'd like to swaddle Caitlin in a little care for this new being that's coming to be, check out their registry here 💛

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Drop your thoughts on this conversation below💛

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🤡 Little Shane and Little Hannah as two rule-following class clowns.

🧑‍🦼The shame Shane had about his disability when he was younger and the coping mechanisms he developed to be seen as fully human.

💞 Why we think so many people struggle to understand how disability, care giving, and romantic relationships can co-exist.

📣 Why Shane and Hannah continue to share their stories publicly, even when their comment sections fill up with ignorance and hate.

🛠 The tools Hannah & Shane have found to protect themselves from ignorance.

⚡ Disability as a disruption to narrow expectations around traditional gender norms and inter-generational living.

🗺The perspective they've gained from their IVF experience.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Shane and Hannah's book, Interabled: True Stories of Love and Disability

And their YouTube channel, Squirmy and Grubs

Sara Hendren's book What Can a Body Do?

And here is an interview Sara Hendren did with Krista Tippett on the On Being podcast about an obligation to others as valuable within human society.

The 3 songs Hannah and Shane added to our collective Scratch That Spotify playlist – Fortune Teller by Sea Lemon, Get Better by alt-J, and look up by Joy Oladokum.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! 

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Here is Elizabeth Gilbert's how-to guide on Letters from Love on her Substack by the same name.

Caitlin made a print of the phrase that came to Rebekah in her Letter from Love! You can purchase it for $5 here💌

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What would Love have you know today?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Starting May 13th, you can stream Good Bad Things on Hulu! Here's a link with all the places you can listen, watch, purchase, and support💛 Let's show the powers that be with our plays, hearts, and downloads that this is the kind of storytelling we crave!

Tune in to hear:

🖤 Steve tell us what it was like to grow up thinking he wouldn't live to be an adult.

🫧 Danny describe the gifts and curses of the bubble he grew up in.

👤 The gnarly ways internalized ableism has shown up in both their stories, and the revising/rewiring/rewriting they continue to do.

👊 The potent power of friendship in rewriting our own scripts.

❓ Steve tell us the simplest, most effective question his friends asked him when he was in a dark place.

⚡️ Danny's hot take on "inspiration porn."

📺 All the deets on their new film, Good Bad Things, and how this movie wouldn't exist without Danny seeing Steve on TV first.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Steve's hilarious standup.

The coach we all love and adore, Carson Tueller.

The 5-minute film, We'll Meet Again, Danny and Steve made for the 2025 Easterseals Disability Film Challenge. (Content warning – true to its prompt, this film is a genuine horror. As it looks at some of the darkest layers of ableism, it includes suggestions of suicide.)

NOT Mentioned In Today's Episode:

After we stopped recording, Danny reminded me that we try to ask all our guests to contribute a song to our collaborative Scratch That playlist, Songs That Have Held Us. Danny and Steve are both big fans of Mac Miller and our playlist now includes the song they chose – "Good News."

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Did you see yourself reflected in the stories you saw growing up? Have you seen disability representation changing meaningfully in recent years? What is your favorite (or least favorite!) example of disability representation in recent storytelling?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Check out all these details on Caitlin's online class – Start Where You Are⭐️

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What do you have? What do you need? And how would it feel to start that thread in the group chat?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🐣 The Easter-weekend moment Caitlin had with Charlie that sparked this whole episode.

🔎 Shifting the focus from good versus bad to belonging versus abandonment.

🤼‍♀️ Shame versus responsibility, unmet needs versus bad behavior.

⚡️ How the capital S-self might help us get out of binary thinking.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

For anyone feeling lost every time we reference Dr Becky, here's a link to her corner of the internet.

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Are we the only ones thinking about these questions? What did this episode bring up for you? And do you have any good book recommendations??

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🤸 The way Elsie's childhood fostered her creative trickster energy.

⚠️ Where she gets her boldness, willingness to take risks, and try something new.

🏆 Jealousy as a manifesting tool.

🧭 How Elsie pivoted when she lost her sense of self in early parenthood.

📅 Making choices for yourself 10 years from now & feeling excited to get old.

📝 The common scripts about adoption that strangers repeat to Elsie & how she's narrating a different story in front of her daughters.

💞Ridding ourselves of the assumption that we understand our kids' experiences of the world & generating more curiosity within a family ecosystem.

🐣 Rebekah and Elsie's shared stories of getting married and divorced really young.

🙏 How our particular evangelical upbringings influence how we show up as adults/parents & what Caitlin misses most about church.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

We talk about "trickster energy" a lot on Scratch That! The idea comes from Elizabeth Gilbert's book Big Magic💫

Martha Beck's book The Way of Integrity

Elsie's podcast is called A Beautiful Mess, and the episode Rebekah mentioned on goal setting is #246 "Setting Goals for 2025"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! How are you coping (or not!) with all the demands the domestic world? Are there ways you are forced out of the traditional scripts around care work? Or do you long to break out of them, but find it difficult to actually do?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🌥Why taking pictures of the sky calms Caitlin's nervous system.

🏘 Caitlin's most annoying anxiety hack.

📰 The new way Rebekah is consuming news.

🧥 What Rebekah is doing instead of impulsively buying that cardigan from Target.

✨ Caitlin rushing toward JOY with the same kind of energy as they rush toward a crisis.

🎤 Rebekah saying the absolutely-for-certain true things out loud.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Recording of Ross Gay with Bon Iver, "Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude"

Mary Oliver

Andrew Gibson

Joy Sullivan

Found on the We Can Do Hard Things podcast feed, "Calm News with Jessica Yellin"

And here's a link to Jessica Yellin's Substack, News Not Noise

Here's how you too can mend the armpit holes in your shirts!

Rebekah's new picture book, We Are the Scrappy Ones (This link takes you to Rebekah's favorite local bookshop where she is signing copies. It is also available wherever books are sold.)

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days? Let fill up the comments with a big ol' show and tell!

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🧑‍🎨 Being an artsy emo punk feminist who also has a crush on Freddie Prinze Jr.

🔎 Learning to decipher our own desires from society's expectations.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 Co-parenting as a useful framework for all the parenting.

😳 The embarrassing realization that you're living inside a cliché sitcom, and you're playing the part of the naggy sitcom mom.

✨ Looking to queer, multigenerational, and divorced families for tools to build a framework of care without any assumptions.

♿️ The complicated ways disability disrupts traditional scripts around gender and care work.

📝 How difficult it can be to actually embody an alternate script.

꩜ The shame that can spiral when a neurodivergent person sees their sink full of dirty dishes.

💎 Laura Danger's interesting bit of hope built on a tiny bit of data.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Laura Danger's upcoming book with Dutton publishing is called No More Mediocre: A Call to Reimagine Our Relationships and Demand More — make sure you're following @thatdarnchat for the cover reveal and pre-order link on April 21!

And check out Laura Danger's podcast, Time to Lean!

Laura also mentioned Eve Rodsky's book, Fair Play: A Game-Changing Solution for When You Have Too Much to Do (and More Life to Live).

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! How are you coping (or not!) with all the demands the domestic world? Are there ways you are forced out of the traditional scripts around care work? Or do you long to break out of them, but find it difficult to actually do?

🍎 Apple

🟢 Spotify

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

📜 Disrupting old narratives through adaptation.

⚖️ The tricky balance of acknowledging pain and also pushing past discomfort.

👥 Modeling behavior versus exercising power.

⛓️‍💥 Understanding our past to break patterns.

☀️ Bring our parenting fails into the sunlight to move forward and evolve.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

If you're looking for a parenting podcast full of bite size practical tools, the CosmoParenting podcast is for you!

And if you missed our earlier episode interviewing the host of CosmoParenting, Abbie VanMeter, you can listen to it here - "What paradigms are we building? (Part 2) with Abbie VanMeter"

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! What parenting scripts are you revising in real time? What moments are you coming back to again and again as parents and people?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

❤️ Restriction as a liberating starting point.

🪶 James's early memory of swapping the goal of normalcy for the joy of moving his body freely.

👑 Lucy's rare experience as a non-disabled child seeing disability represented as dignified and regal.

🌀 Lucy's origin story of learning to parent without guilt.

❓Common non-disabled narratives of disability that laud asking and kindness.

🤝 Belonging to a disability legacy and culture that we can pass on to younger generations.

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Pre-Order the forthcoming YA collection of first-person essays, Owning It: Tales From Our Disabled Childhoods, edited by Jen Campbell, Lucy and James Catchpole, and illustrated by Sophie Kamlish. (You can read an essay by Rebekah in this collection, too!) (All orders from Blackwell include free shipping to the US!)

Check out all three of James and Lucy's picture books – 

• What Happened to You?
• You're So Amazing!
• Mama Car!

Watch Lucy and James sing their own pandemic lockdown version of "Oh my darling, Clementine" with their daughter. (Highly recommend. Easily the sweetest thing you'll watch/listen to this week.)

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days? Let fill up the comments with a big ol' show and tell!

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🛝 Being a disabled kid on the playground.

📝 Subversive representation that flips the script of disability storytelling.

🧰 Children's books that give our kids agency

🎨 ADHD + art + parenting

Mentioned In Today's Episode:

Pre-Order the forthcoming collection Owning It: Tales From Our Disabled Childhoods, edited by Jen Campbell, Lucy and James Catchpole, and illustrated by Sophie Kamlish. (You can read an essay by Rebekah in this collection, too!) (All orders from Blackwell include free shipping to the US!)

As Always:

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

We would love to hear from you! Who are the creators lighting up your world these days? Let fill up the comments with a big ol' show and tell!

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

In today's episode, we also share about the hard decision to pause our work with Amelia as we try to figure out sustainability and finances for keeping Scratch That afloat. (Thanks upon thank you for every person who has and continues to support us on Patreon! We are so grateful for you!!)

Tune in to hear us talk about:

📲 The sneaky ways social media creates the problems it claims to solve.

🧮 Naming the problems we are really trying to solve and how an app can (and can't) meet that need.

👯‍♂️ Ways to make friends without social media.

📈 The difference between casually using social media and building a business on social media.

🛼 Fashion as another (older) way to signal to others what you value.

🏘️ Getting back to the small and local.

🎨 The differences between being an artist versus being a content creator.

We would love to hear from you! How are you navigating social media these days? How does it feel to be there? Or have you already left? Have you found ways to use the tool in a way that feels good and helpful? Have you found alternate paths to solving problems where you used to only use an app?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Use this link to get a 25% discount on a PokPok subcription! And if you haven't listened yet, check out our interview with PokPok creators, Esther and Melissa.

If you are also obsessed after listening to Esther and Melissa talk about Pok Pok, use this link to get a 25% discount for a subscription: https://my.playpokpok.com/checkout?promocode=25SCRATCHTHAT

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🌀 Esther's and Melissa's early experiences with play and creativity.

🛝 The origins of Pok Pok - making the thing you want to see in the world.

❤️ Creativity as a tool for surviving post-partum depression.

🔎 Naming the concerns and stigmas around screen time.

🐣👵 The importance of play from infancy to adulthood.

🥱 The value of boredom.

🪄 Striving for access and inclusion in design.

🪀 The difference between a toy and a game.

📱 Escaping the dopamine cycle we get from screens.

We would love to hear from you! What are your screen time woes and triumphs? How has play evolved for you over the course of your life?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Check out Caitlin and Rebekah's Book Shop! Here you can find every book mentioned in our episodes, as well as a few additional faves.

Tune in to hear us:

⛈️ Name our particular parenting triggers.

🧳 Unpack the actual legacy of some of our early childhood struggles.

💪 Uncover the deep, troubling belief that struggling makes you real and valid.

🧶 Describe the difficulty in watching our kids struggle without intervening.

⚙️ Imagine building resilience in ordinary moments of friction and frustration.

🪡 Recognizing the moments we feel triggered as places that need tending within us.

We would love to hear from you! What are the stories you tell yourself about your own difficult childhoods? How does that story shape the way you show up to the world/your own children now? What ways do you find the most effective for building resilience/scrappiness now?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

Tune in to hear us talk about:

👤How Maria Bowler became Maria Bowler (hint: it involves "failing" a lot).

🛝 Looking at schedules as supports and goals as playgrounds (not structures we need to fit our beings into).

🍼 Early parenting emotions (and the shame that comes when we judge them).

✨ The fruitful relationship between reality and imagined futures.

🌱 Valuing the tiny when the world's suffering is enormous.

📱Our shifting relationships with social media.

🔥 Trusting what is alive in us and expanding our creative edges.

⛪ Maria's time with the Benedictine nuns and how that shaped her understanding of creativity.

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

And we'll go first! On this episode, we each share about a song that has meant something big to us over the course of our lives.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

💭 What it looks like to embody a communications perspective (hint: communication is more than what is being said).

🧰 Instead of a script or map, building a toolbox we/our kids can carry into the unknown future.

🛠️ Good tools for the box, like resilience, curiosity, improvisation, and repair.

🌱 Taking good care of ourselves as good parenting (and the scripts that make us feel selfish for doing it).

❓ Questioning the common phrase "My parents did their best."

🌀 Leaning in, not pulling away from, complexity.

📚 Building paradigms that leave room for multiple stories.

📝 Empowering ourselves/our kids to be meaning makers in our worlds.

We would love to hear from you! What tools do you have in your toolbox? What tools are you trying to pass along?

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🧳 The "cargo bay of baggage" we're bringing into this conversation.

☃️ The great allure & potential harms of creating cozy-snow-globe paradigms.

🌿 The desire to build flexible/stretchy paradigms that grow & evolve with us.

🎢 The uncomfy lack of control we have over the paradigms our kids are forming.

📆 The unspoken values we are teaching our kids through our deeply engrained daily actions.

🎞️ Trusting the process of long-arc relationships & human development.

🤸 Playing with new frameworks for paradigm building (e.g. Relationship over rules, or curiosity & openness over mandates & prescriptions. ) 

🌱 The importance of tending to our own deep beliefs and lasting paradigms.

We would love to hear from you! How are paradigms manifesting for you in your parenting and/or re-parenting experiences? What kind of paradigms are you wanting to build? What ones were built for you? How are you reshaping them?

Find Rebekah on Substack & Caitlin on Instagram ✨

✨ Point to something that makes us feel hopeful — tell a story?

🌱 Hope as a verb — name a seed we are going to plant?

✏️ Caitlin leaves us with three practices they're using to imagine a hopeful future

This feels like an ongoing collaborative project, and we want you to be a part of it! Would you take a couple of minutes to fill out our Patreon poll? What SCRATCH THAT values are becoming the most important to you?? We wanna know.

A heads-up for caution and care – around 36 minutes into this episode, Sacha references her mother being sexually assaulted at the age of 13.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

📝 How to adult through therapy – e.g. How do you know how long to go? When to go back? When to switch therapists? How do you process/document what you’re learning? How do you act as a self-advocate in therapy?

💓 Naming the parts of ourselves trying to hold us together with harshness and rigidity, and the importance and challenge of self-compassion.

🌈 Creativity as a bridge to connecting with and understanding Self.

📓 Sacha’s mini lesson on Internal Family Systems.

🧑‍🧒 How therapy shapes the way Sacha shows up as a parent (and how that’s changed now that she has a teenager). 

🔓 Closed family communication systems versus open family communication systems. 

🔄 Legacy burdens and repeated family traumas.

🔨 Grappling with the reality that we can’t fix ourselves enough to be perfect parents and learning to model owning our mistakes and repairing relationships.

⏰ Having the tools but feeling like we don’t have the time, energy, or wherewithal to implement them. 

To learn more about Sasha Mardou, you can find her on Instagram and through her website. Also, check out her books, Past Tense and Sky and Stereo.

We would love to hear from you! What has your experience been with (or without) therapy? What has been the best and hardest, most and least meaningful, frustrating, fulfilling, disappointing, healing part of it?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

At the end of the episode, Rebekah shares a little bit about how deeply difficult this year has been for her niece and sister. Since recording, the GoFundMe she started for them has exceeded the initial goal! It's been stunning to see folks rally around them. Because of that support, they are heading into the new year with one piece of this impossibly hard situation made a little bit lighter. If you would like to participate in supporting this family, the GoFundMe page will be up until January 3rd. A wholehearted, full-body THANK YOU to every single person who has donated/shared/tucked this family into your heart.

We would love to hear from you! What are you keeping with you from 2024? What are you letting go of in 2025?

Tune in to hear us talk about:

🎊 The ways we moved through this holiday when we were young.

📓 Caitlin's annual, seasonal, and monthly reflection practices (including picking a yearly word, Lisa Congdon's Live Your Values deck, and reflection guides).

🕯️ Caitlin's new practices, including admin adulting days, fun seasonal bucket lists, and a new advent tradition.

❌ A new kind of resolution that asks – what are you NOT prioritizing this year?

🗓️ Rebekah's daily documentation practices – why she does them and how she holds them lightly.

⏰ Our angst about the rapid passage of time and how we want to be present for the moments as they're passing.

💌 And invitation to write a letter to 2024 or 2025 – we'll read ours next week!

Mentioned in this episode:

Four Thousand Weeks: Time Management for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman

Lisa Congdon's Live Your Values deck

We would love to hear from you! How to you mark the turning of another year? Do you have any documentation practices that feel good to you?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

We would love to hear from you! How are you orienting yourself this week? What feels hard? What feels easy? What feels different than previous years? What are your disco balls on the tree or flashes of lighting over an open field?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

Tune in to hear us talk about:

💫 Reframes for imposter syndrome, self-criticism, and the parts of our stories that have only ever felt hard/sad/painful.

📖 The strange experience of writing a book that makes its way into the world right after you've sustained a complete disintegration of self through new parenthood.

🦋 Giving ourselves, our kids, our partners permission to change, evolve, and grow.

🎭 The many different ways to think about the stories we hold – storytelling as an evolving practice, the limitations of storytelling, holding our stories loosely.

🪂 Letting go of the idea that we can control other people's stories, even our kids' (and letting ourselves feel the grief of that).

💕 The counter-intuitive strength of staying soft.

If you want more of Lisa's voice in your world, check out her stunning Substack, Human Stuff, her book Already Enough, and stay tuned for the release of her next one!

We would love to hear from you! How do you see storytelling showing up in your own life? Is it a tool? Or a hinderance? Where do you feel yourself becoming rigid? Where would you like to soften?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

Caitlin, Our Favorite Bougie Bitch, prefers gifts that align with the way their brain functions. They prioritize fewer things of higher quality that will last over time and not make their home feel loud and cluttered. They recommend:

🎨 Consumable Gifts (art projects, activities, experiences)

🎟️ Memberships 

🥝 Kiwi Co monthly subscriptions or individual boxes (like this play-dough pasta-making kit)

🎭 Gathre vegan leather products for kids (like this doorway theater, seated spinner, car truck mat, and tunnel)

📻 YOTO for screen free entertainment

🖼️ Artifact Uprising beautiful books (you can make board books! Which I did for Charlie his first Christmas that we treasure), calendars, and more! It's so good!

📦 MakeDo I forgot to mention this! But it's one of our favorite toys ever! It's a set of screws, knife, screwdriver for cardboard that little ones can use! We make all kinds of things with it!

Rebekah, The Idealist Without Enough Time, wants everything gift to be handmade and soaking with meaning. She prioritizes items that feel one-of-a-kind thoughtful that don't take quite as much time as a hand-sewn quilt. She recommends:

🧶 ETSY for handmade, customized, feels-like-a-perfect-thrift-store-find items.

📷 Shutterfly or Artifact Uprising (or any company that lets you make things with your own photos) for photo books and inside joke mugs.

✨ Gift cards to local bookstores & small businesses! (Like this cozy spot in KC)

👻 Prints, stickers, buttons, pins from artists! (Like Tender Ghost)

🌱 Small scale handmade gifts that don't actually take a ton of time (like simple collaged photos and little decorated plant pots).

💌 A heartfelt, thoughtful card!!!!

And one of their all time favorite gifts to give – BOOKS! Together, their top recommendations include:

🌵 Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan

🙏 Gay Girl Prayers by Emily Austin

🐟 Why Fish Don't Exist by Lulu Miller

⏰ The Power of Moments by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

🍂 The Book of Delights by Ross Gay

💫 Catalog of Unabashed Gratitude by Ross Gay

🥩 Night Bitch by Rachel Yoder

⛰️ All Fours by Miranda July

⚡️ You Better Be Lightning by Andrea Gibson

🦋 Lord of the Butterflies by Andrea Gibson

We would love to hear the ways you approach gift giving! What are your favorite gifts to give or receive? How do you prioritize your time/money around this time of year? What are your biggest gift-giving values?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

Tune in to hear:

🌱 The origin story of the book and who Rebekah wrote it for.

👽 A bit about what it felt like for Rebekah to grow up with a disability.

🌗 The ways writing about the experience of disability for a younger audience felt very different from other writing projects Rebekah has done.

📖 Rebekah read some of the book.

PRE-ORDER THE PICTURE BOOK HERE

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

In SCRATCH THAT fashion, this episode is more in-real-time-processing and back-and-forth questions than a 1-2-3 step plan for raising our babies to have immediate and "perfect" understanding of disability from a very young age. How do we teach our kids how to respond when they notice difference in public? How do we teach our kids about all kinds of difference when they don't experience all of it in real life? Are there any blanket rules about what we say/don't say? How do we avoid accidentally reinforcing the stigmas we're trying to push against? And as we ask and listen, we realize this is actually a conversation about how we do the hard work of being community with all kinds of different people.

Together, we generate a hearty set of ideas for how we strive to navigate these tricky conversations that we fully expect to be just as messy as human relationships themselves.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

📚 Our favorite disability-forward picture books.

📜 Rebekah's current script for answering questions about her wheelchair.

🎯 Evaluating our goals in teaching our kids about disability and difference more broadly. What are we really trying to do here?

🎨 The pieces that make these conversations sticky and complicated and learning to embrace the messiness of it all.

♿️ How Otto's new school has responded to Rebekah's disability and need for access.

🤝 A sprawling brainstorm on how we teach our kids (and ourselves) to build communities of care. 

Mentioned in this episode:

Come Over to My House by Eliza Hull

Bodies Are Cool by Tyler Feder

This Is How We Play by Jessica Slice

Mama Car by Lucy Catchpole

The Circus Ship by Chris Van Dusen

Cake Girl by David Lucas

We would love to hear from you! How are you navigating these kinds of conversations? Have you discovered any scripts that have helped you? What makes these moments feels especially tricky to you in any direction?

🖨️ You can download this little zine, print on 8.5x11 paper and fold it down for your pocket to reference when you need it. Here are directions for folding.

Tune in to hear us talk about:

💔 Making space for the sadness and releasing the guilt.

✨ Grasping onto joy when we can.

🎊 Caitlin's tips on how to create new holiday traditions.

🍄 Learning to take off the pressure of a single day.

🙌 Our own experiences accidentally discovering new holiday rituals.

🌱 The pains of families evolving holiday traditions as they age, grow, and change.

⚙️ Moving away from default and toward intentional celebrations.

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

Tune in to hear:

🎂 A tiny update on how Caitlin has been processing their neurodivergence, especially as they cross the threshold of a birthday that feels big.

✨ A poignant insight from a dear friend.

🌱 Caitlin learning to recognize some of the tangible beauty that comes from their specific needs.

💓 Several ways that people use the calendar Caitlin made, including: a visual guide, a way to help kids understand long passages of time, tracking big dates.

☀️ Rebekah's use of the calendar as a daily practice for tuning into embodied memories.

Order/Download the Calendar Here 

Tune in to hear about:

📜 The early inheritance of a script that disability is bad.

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 A gentle/honest reflection on what it was like to be parented as a disabled kid.

⚡️ Nina's hard-earned insights on the best practices for parenting a disabled kid.

💓 The lifelong work of teaching our younger parts that they're not a piece of shit.

👯‍♂️ The transformative shift of disability as a medical experience to a social experience.

🌱 The multitude of ways that disability enhances a family ecosystem.

Mentioned in this episode:

📖 Nina and Rebekah both have essays coming out in the forthcoming YA collection, Owning It: Stories From Our Disabled Childhoods. (While the target audience is around 9-13, we think it's also for anyone who's ever been 9-13.) Pre-ordering from Blackwells (linked above) includes free shipping to the U.S.

Where to find everyone:

Follow Nina on Instagram @nina_tame

Follow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_pretty

Follow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeels

And in the meantime, here are some poems & essays that are speaking to us right now.

What do you turn toward? by Lisa Olivera

MAGA Hat In the Chemo Room, by Andrea Gibson

For My Sister, by Kate Baer

I don't want another black president: a love letter, by Kaplan Villacorte Trudo

How Dark the Beginning, by Maggie Smith

The two of us experience internalized ableism differently for a host of reasons — Caitlin feels wobbly even claiming the title of disability and would embody a combination of old and new, non-apparent versions of the word, while Rebekah moves through the world in a very visible wheelchair, and has for most of her life — but as we talked, we bumped into a host of thought-provoking overlaps and deviations in our experiences.

Tune in to hear us explore:

🌪️ The wide range of layered emotions that can come up with a new diagnosis.

🦆 The definition of ableism through the metaphor of a duck on water.

🌊 The messy intersections of postpartum depression, internalized ableism, and ADHD/autistic burnout.

👍 The feeling of needing to prove we can be trusted to care for our kids, especially in public.

❗️ The ways pregnancy and postpartum can become disabling experiences, especially in a country that does not support new parents.

💵 How money changes the experience of disability.

♟️ Strategies for navigating mental health struggles as a parent.

🌱 A hope that adjusting to a new diagnosis can be a beautiful process, too.

Mentioned int this episode:

📖 Easy Beauty by Chloe Cooper Jones

🌀 Andy J Pizza shares a lot about his experience of ADHD as a creative — find him on Instagram or his podcast, The Creative Pep Talk Podcast.

🫧 KC Davis creates conversation around neurodivergence & parenting — find her on TikTok, her podcast, Struggle Care, or read her book, How To Keep House While Drowning: A Gentle Approach to Cleaning and Organizing.

⚡️Katherine May's book The Electricity of Every Living Thing

🌿 The Neurodivergence Skills Workbook for Autism and ADHD: Cultivate Self-Compassion, Live Authentically, and Be Your Own Advocate by Jennifer Kemp and Monique Mitchelson

We would love to keep the conversation going in the comments. How do your experiences with internalized ableism overlap/deviate from the experiences we talk about in today's episode? How are you coping? What feels hard? What do you understand now that you didn't at first?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

👀 What if we don't see things the same way that our kids/parents do?

📚 What happens when family members have conflicting true stories of shared experiences?

📷 How do we document our kids' childhoods without bringing an audience into their experiences.

👯‍♂️ How do I untangle where my story ends and yours begins?

🧑‍🧑‍🧒 How do we learn to tell our own stories when we've deeply absorbed a family narrative?

🪢 How do I hold onto a sense of myself when parenting/caregiving consumes so much of me?

🐣 And why even share about our kids at all?

In the episode, we mention...

Rebekah's recent Substack essay, " Dear Son of a Disabled Mother,"

Caitlin's collaborative artwork with Charlie, including the "Am I a Real Mom?" piece.

We would love to keep the conversation going on our Patreon. Have you found a way of representing your young people (online or anywhere else) that honors both your experience and theirs? Do you have tensions within family systems that hold multiple, differing true stories? What do you find especially sticky about the questions being asked in this episode?

Find us on instagram @sitting_pretty ✨ @caitlinhasfeels

Emma is a photographer who longs for deep connections, feels inspired by the ways we are all different and also the same, and, for the last two years, has experienced infertility and miscarriage. Emma generously agreed to share some of her story, experience, and insight with Caitlin and Rebekah – two people who do not share this experience – with the hope that it could help give all of us in the Scratch That community new scripts for processing our own unique experiences and showing up for the ones we love. We are so grateful she was willing to have this vulnerable conversation with us – and y'all, she showed up with such honesty and heart💛

Tune in to hear about:

🌟 Fumbling through uncomfortable conversations.

🚫 The scripts we want to avoid when someone is going through infertility or miscarriage.

🌗 Growing our capacities for feeling more than one thing at a time.

🌱 Showing up for our hurting people by learning to sit with our own pain & discomfort.

❤️ Practicing new scripts for how to engage our kids when they are struggling.

📦 Miscarriage care-packages!

🌊 Better scripts for when our loved ones are experiencing unresolved/ongoing suffering.

Where to find everyone:

Follow Emma on Instagram @emmybeephotog + visit her website

Follow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_pretty

Follow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeels

So we’re very excited to kick off our book report series — mini-ish episodes where we’ll talk about our favorite books that guide us as parents and people.

Our first pick is the amazing What Makes a Baby by Cory Silverberg and Fiona Smyth.

Tune in to hear us gush about this book that will help you explain reproduction to your two year old. Then join us on Patreon to request future book reports and share your fave reads!

More from us:

• Follow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_pretty
• Follow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeels
• Mentioned in the episode: Ericka Hart, What Makes a Baby, Sex is a Funny Word, You Know, Sex

✷ And if you loved this episode, please join us on Patreon for show notes, transcripts + more!

Caitlin opens us with a beautiful poem from Joy Sullivan, and then we each share the joys, fears, and swirls of question marks coming up as we consider having a second kid.

Listen in as we unpack our feelings about fertility, age, baby fever, finances, mental health, desire, and more — including how an oracle card is helping Rebekah figure out her answer.

Then join us on Patreon to continue the conversation! We’d love to hear how you’re approaching this question with your families. ♡

More from us:

• Follow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_pretty
• Follow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeels
• Mentioned in the episode: Instructions for Traveling West by Joy Sullivan, Haley Brown’s Tearwater Oracle Deck, Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller

✷ And if you loved this episode, please join us on Patreon for show notes, transcripts + more!

She’s a writer, storyteller, homeschooling mom of two, and a lifelong wheelchair user who tells stories about life at the intersection of disability, parenting, friendship, and generally existing in public.

Everything she shares has deeply impacted how we approach parenting. So we’re thrilled to have her as our first guest on Scratch That!

Tune in to hear about:

• Cultivating independence for parents & kids
• Disability representation in Alex’s childhood
• Confronting ableist attitudes toward pregnancy & birth
• Deconstructing the nuclear family
• New scripts for intimacy & home-building
• Learning to love the act of asking for help
• Indulging in our joy

More from us & our guests:

• Follow Alex on Instagram @alexwegman + visit her website
• Follow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_pretty
• Follow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeels

✷ And if you loved this episode, please join us on Patreon for show notes, transcripts + more!

We (Caitlin & Rebekah) are so thrilled that you — yes you listening to this right now — are here tuning in to this episode.

So we wrote you a letter! And had a quick chat about who we are, why we started this show, and how becoming parents ushered us into a new era of reparenting ourselves and rewriting our scripts for family, motherhood, childhood, and so much more.

We hope you’ll press play, subscribe wherever you listen, and join us on Patreon to continue these conversations.

xo, Rebekah & Caitlin

Mentioned in the episode:

• Basil Kincaid
• Scratch That Patreon

When we decided to start a podcast, this was the first thing we wanted to talk about — why our brains keep sending us messages that we aren’t “real” mothers.

So today we’re sharing the images of motherhood we’ve seen throughout our lives, and digging into how those images are complicated by disability, queerness, and a desire to parent differently.

Listen in as we unpack our vision of what a Real Mom™️ should be. Then join us on Patreon to continue the conversation! If you have your own green shoes moment, we’d love to hear about it. ♡

More from us:

• Follow Rebekah on Instagram @sitting_pretty
• Follow Caitlin on Instagram @caitlinhasfeels
• Mentioned in the episode: Alex Wegman

✷ And if you loved this episode, please join us on Patreon for show notes, transcripts + more!

Two scrappy midwestern authors, who birthed babies in the early days of the pandemic, walk into a bar. Well, one walks in their chunky doc martins and backward cap, the other rolls in on her Ti-lite chair, rocking teeny tiny bangs.

Both challenge the norms of parenthood in their own ways — one with their gender, the other with her body — and carry deep curiosity about what it means to be human. Naturally, these wayward misfits hit record and turned their angst and good cheer at being alive — in these bodies, at this time — into a whole ass podcast.

You are cordially invited to join us on this winding exploration. Along the way we’ll be chewing on impossible questions, interviewing people who are also going off script, and sharing the books, poems, and objects that support our quest to parent and re-parent ourselves at the same time.

You will always be able to listen on Apple & Spotify, but join us on Patreon (for free) to be part of the conversation (and see our intro videos!)!!