Ivana Gadient is a poet, activist, and mother of three grown daughters: Makena, Raven, and Jewel. She is an Anat Baniel NeuroMovement®(ABM) practitioner who lives in Hawaii. In this episode, Dr. Carole Blueweiss is joined by Ivana and her eldest daughter Makena. Together, they share about life in Maui with Julianna, now 20 years old, who was born 3 months early, diagnosed with cerebral palsy, and lives a full life with her mother despite her challenges. Jewel's ABM Practitioner, Verena Kurz, is also a guest. She lives in Brooklyn, NY and was originally from Austria. She is also trained as an occupational therapist. The Gadient Girls, as they call themselves, are dreamers, writers, fighters, and lovers. Ivana homeschooled her daughters in Maui, HI. They spend summers together in the sun, talking about books with dragons, playing dolls, and baking good food. All of them are involved in the disability community in some way, all are artists, and all believe in inclusion and community support. Jewel would like to remind listeners of the furry Gadient Girl, Luna Psyche, who is a Maine Coon cat adored by all.
FOLLOW IVANA
Facebook: @mauimovementlessons
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivana-gadient-8b21a536/
CONTACT VERENA
email: vera9nyc@yahoo.com
RESOURCES recommended by Ivana
"Wheelchairs are a HUGE conversation. It is best to create a trusted, knowledgable and openminded team that you hand pick to help you successfully seat your loved one"
https://aci.health.nsw.gov.au/networks/spinal-cord-injury/spinal-seating/module-6/wheelchair-seating-a-complex-puzzle
TALK TOOLS: for finding a therapist, and continuing education.
https://talktools.com
FEEDING MATTERS: Parent Support Network
"Feeding Matters is a great organization, started by two moms. They pursued chasing the CDC for a stand alone diagnosis and code called PFD pediatric feeding disorder. They dedicated five years to this and it came to pass this year. They have a lot of free resources and supports for parents."
https://www.feedingmatters.org
JABBERMOUTHS: Speech, Oral-Motor, and Feeding Therapy
"This is Jewel's latest SLP who is amazing! I highly recommend Jenn, she is licensed in HI and AZ and does Zoom lessons. Highly skilled, highly educated, great instinct, grew up around disability and very comfortable around our families. She can teach premature babies to latch on to both breast and bottle!"
https://jabbermouths.com/
THERAPISTS AND THERAPIES in episode
ARLENE WARD is the owner of Genesis Rehabilitation Ltd., a vocational rehabilitation and disability management company based in Nanaimo, BC. Their goal is to keep workers at work. She is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Northern BC Canada.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/arleneatgenesis/
JUDITH HEUMANN is an internationally recognized disability advocate who served in the Clinton and Obama Administration and was a Senior Fellow at the Ford Foundation.
https://judithheumann.com
KAREN ERICKSON, PH.D. is the Director of the Center for Literacy and Disability Studies, a Professor in the Division of Speech and Hearing Sciences, and the Yoder Distinguished Professor in the Department of Allied Health Sciences, School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
https://www.med.unc.edu/ahs/clds/directory/karen-erickson/
JENNIFER BUCK, MA, CCC-SLP, owner of Jabbermouths Therapy, is a licensed and certified Speech-Language Pathologist with over a decade of experience in working with individuals with disabilities.
https://jabbermouths.com
NEUROMOVEMENT THERAPY: Anat Baniel and NeuroMovement® (ABMN®)
Anat Baniel, a student of Moshe Feldenkrais, developed and evolved NeuroMovement® from 30+ years of experience with thousands of clients using practical applications of brain plasticity principles. The Anat Baniel Method® approach is founded in neuroscience and the biodynamics of the human body, and utilizes movement and the 9 Essentials to create conditions for the brain to wake up and upgrade its own functioning.
Read more about the Nine Essentials:
https://www.anatbanielmethod.com/about/neuromovement/neuromovement-and-9-essentials
HIPPOTHERAPY: an approach to physical therapy where the patient rides horses in order to address physical health.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5175116/
AYSO VIP: provides a quality soccer experience for individuals whose physical or mental disabilities.
https://ayso.org/play/vip/
PRODUCTS
KINDERPACK produces baby carriers that are small-batch made, exclusively in the USA in sizes to fit infants, toddlers, and even preschool sized children.
https://mykinderpack.com
[00:00:00] Carole Blueweiss: Welcome to Wisdom Shared, where parents are the experts and connection inspires change. I am your host, Carole Blueweiss. And today on this 12th episode, we explore the question why not? One of my guests today is Ivana Gadient. She lives in Maui, Hawaii and is a mother, advocate, artist, and poet. Sitting beside her is her daughter Makena, and they both talk about life with Jewel, the youngest daughter and sister who was born prematurely and diagnosed with cerebral palsy 20 years ago.
[00:00:45] Also in this episode, we hear from Verena Kurz from Brooklyn, New York. She is an occupational therapist and Anat Baniel method practitioner who worked with Jewel and her family in Hawaii. Both Makena and Raven, Jewel's two sisters, are special education teachers. The four of them, Ivana, Makena, Raven, and Jewel, are a fierce team, and they bring to light the challenges of being in this ableist society as a person with a disability.
[00:01:20] We learn what it is to navigate a complex world where accessibility is not a priority, but should be considering, as Ivana and Makena point out, that most of us, at some point in our lives, will most likely experience some kind of disability.
[00:01:38] Ivana asks the question, why not? Why can't Jewel be included? And how? How can they make it happen? And how can we who are able be part of the solution? Let's listen.
[00:01:56] Welcome to Wisdom Shared.
[00:01:58] Ivana Gadient: Aloha. Thanks for having us.
[00:02:00] Aloha.
[00:02:01] Makena Gadient: Hello.
[00:02:03] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me how you're related. What are your names and anything else you want to say for the very beginning here?
[00:02:09] Ivana Gadient: My name is Ivana Gadient, and I am Makena and Raven and Juliana's mother. This is Makena, my oldest daughter, my first born, sitting next to me as she's still on Maui with us and she hasn't gone back to work yet.
[00:02:27] Makena Gadient: My name is Makena. I'm a visual artist, currently living in Seattle, and I also work in special education at the public school there in high school. And I'm excited to be here.
[00:02:39] Carole Blueweiss: Ivana, I've not met you in person, but we've talked a little bit and Verena told me how special you were and I could tell from the first time I spoke with you how amazing a person you are doing this, you know, podcast about sharing people's wisdom. And I just thought, wow, I would love to hear some of your story. Can't hear it all, but all our children, I think, are special. I'm sure you have a lot to say about that.
[00:03:07] Ivana Gadient: I didn't know I was carrying twins until I miscarried one of them and ended up in the emergency room multiple times and they just assumed I would miscarry naturally the other one. That never happened. And Maui Memorial was not equipped to handle a complex situation such as myself. So they medevaced me to Oahu Kapiʻolani Hospital over there where Jewel was born approximately three months early, and all of our lives changed drastically. I wasn't able to have Makena and Raven by my side. Truly, Juliana, she's our miracle baby. She was intubated for 53 days at 10 days old.
[00:04:02] Carole Blueweiss: Whoa.
[00:04:03] Makena Gadient: And, yeah, she was very little. My mom used to, she could take her ring from her hand and put it over Jewel's foot and it would be an anklet.
[00:04:14] Carole Blueweiss: Wow. Well, that says it all.
[00:04:16] Makena Gadient: Yeah.
[00:04:17] Ivana Gadient: Yeah. Yeah, it's amazing to see them. Their skin is almost translucent. They're so little and they have everything but they're meant to be in the womb. So when Jewel was born, my whole mission was to nurse her, and the hospital wouldn't let me nurse her, so I pumped around the clock. I had my breast milk stashed on every floor in the hospital. Anybody that I could talk into allowing me to stash my breast milk in their freezer, I did. I had garbage bags full.
[00:04:56] Carole Blueweiss: When you came home, did you have support, like how to take care of this very little baby?
[00:05:02] Ivana Gadient: Well, just before we left Kapiʻolani Hospital, a beautiful nurse who's an angel in disguise as a nurse, she sat down next to me and she said, you do realize that taking the NG tube out of her nose is very stressful, putting it in again and taking it out. And I said yes. And she said, but you want to try to nurse her? I said, yes. She said, okay, let's do it. So she removed the tube and she said, I'll watch the monitor. You don't watch the monitor. You watch your baby, watch her breathing. Any changes, you notice. And that's what we did. And we never looked back.
[00:05:47] I was very determined to nurse her. I would've loved it if I had had a feeding specialist. That would've helped a lot. Tremendously, actually. But it is what it is and I'm just grateful that that nurse gave me and Jewel the chance to nurse. And Jewel nursed for four years after that.
[00:06:07] Carole Blueweiss: Wow. That's a great story.
[00:06:11] Ivana Gadient: It's possible. It's just not the go-to. This was 20 years ago.
[00:06:15] Makena Gadient: Things have changed.
[00:06:16] Ivana Gadient: Hopefully, things have changed.
[00:06:19] Carole Blueweiss: How old were your other children when Jewel was born?
[00:06:22] Makena Gadient: I was seven-and-a-half and my sister Raven was six-and-a-half.
[00:06:26] Carole Blueweiss: Oh, okay. Wow. And so you guys are close in age.
[00:06:28] Ivana Gadient: They're Irish twins, 13 months apart.
[00:06:31] Carole Blueweiss: Irish twins, there you go. Do you remember what it was like for you when this was all going on with your mom?
[00:06:37] Makena Gadient: Oh yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's hard sitting here listening and not adding in the details that I remember. You know, I'm like, oh, tell them about how she was on medication that wasn't FDA-approved for kids under 12 when Jewel wasn't even supposed to be born yet.
[00:06:49] And I'm like, thinking of all these things that I remember and all the details. I'm like, why isn't she saying this and why isn't she saying they put her in a double blind steroid study, even though mom said no? Like, I remember very, very vividly. I mean, Raven and I were the ones who pleaded our parents for a baby sister the year before.
[00:07:08] So we were very involved with, and I still have very vivid memories of before Juliana and the hospital and obviously our life once she got to go home with us.
[00:07:20] Ivana Gadient: Yeah, Makena wanted to be a midwife before Jewel arrived early, and I remember talking to her on the phone.
[00:07:31] Oh, I never said I wasn't going to get choked up. I remember talking to Makena on the phone saying that I was in labor and her going into distress saying, you can't, you can't. She'd read all the books. You know, as homeschoolers, I allowed them to pick up nursing manuals and other books for their reading and their topics of interest.
[00:07:54] And she knew from reading that this was not a good thing to go into labor this early. So, both Makena and Raven, their lives were changed by this whole process that we went through, through Jewel's birth and we're still forever changed for the better by Jewel.
[00:08:14] Makena Gadient: Yes.
[00:08:15] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me about Jewel. What is she like?
[00:08:19] Makena Gadient: I would say she's definitely one of the kindest persons I've ever met. Growing up, I was very dramatic and everything that my parents did annoyed me. And Jewel was always, you know, Raven was like, you know, maybe you should see their point of view or like, yeah, what you did was annoying.
[00:08:34] Like, that's so sad. Like, come over here and like, cry next to me and I still love you and it's gonna be okay. So she's, she has such a comforting spirit. She's very creative. She loves Greek mythology, she loves dragons. She's recently getting into like romantic fantasy books, which is kind of exciting to see her grow up, and have us like the same books.
[00:08:57] Ivana Gadient: She has a long love affair with Greek mythology and dragons. And she's written two books.
[00:09:06] Makena Gadient: And she loves cats.
[00:09:08] Ivana Gadient: She does love cats.
[00:09:10] Makena Gadient: And she's very, very stubborn. I was joking to mom that she's got all of our, all of our strongest attributes. You know, she's very sensitive, just like me. She's very stubborn, just like mom. She's very loyal and fierce, like our sister Raven. Yeah, she's a character. She can be shy as well, which is frustrating because when she meets my friends, she's very shy and they're like, oh, where's, you know, where's this person you were telling me about? And I'm like, well, she doesn't know you yet.
[00:09:39] Ivana Gadient: When Jewel has the support and we're all patient with her and we take as much time as needed, something wonderful and creative comes out of it. She has, using glue guns and different kinds of glue, to dazzle outfits and shoes from her dolls. And she's very specific. It's not random and it's not overkill. And she has us adding eyelashes to her dolls and it, she's a lot of fun. You just have to be willing to enter her world.
[00:10:19] Carole Blueweiss: How old is Jewel now?
[00:10:20] Ivana Gadient: She's 20 years old, and I did invite her to be a part of this, but she wasn't interested. Without spilling any secrets, she has been on two Zoom interviews with a show runner.
[00:10:33] Makena Gadient: For a TV series. On input about having a character with a physical disability on screen.
[00:10:40] Ivana Gadient: Yeah.
[00:10:41] Carole Blueweiss: Oh, wow.
[00:10:41] Ivana Gadient: So he was asking her questions and listening for her input. I just didn't want the listener to think, well, why isn't Jewel there? Why doesn't she speak for herself? And that's a good question, and that's what I want. I want her to participate and advocate for herself, for sure. And not be her interpreter, not be her voice, because I'm not. She has a very unique voice.
[00:11:06] Carole Blueweiss: How do you deal with the idea that there are so many labels, like disabled, disability, special needs?
[00:11:16] Ivana Gadient: In the beginning, I rejected all labels. I wouldn't have a label. You cannot access the medical community if you do not have a label. So I did cling to special needs because it was so much more comforting as a parent. And you can only be where you're at when you're at that. You can't force yourself to say words that can't come out of your mouth, whether it's embracing the word cerebral palsy or embracing the word disability or what. Wherever you are, that's where you are at.
[00:11:50] The disability community taught me to get over my own fears of the word disabled and just embrace the word, because there's a whole history behind the word. There are laws that have advocated and advocate for my daughter and other people with disabilities, and it's just my discomfort of the word that I needed to get over.
[00:12:16] I'm an ableist person. I didn't grow up with disability. I really didn't. I grew up on a farm. Farm living was harsh. It taught you a lot of life skills that are very valuable.
[00:12:29] Carole Blueweiss: But you're saying it's like a double-edged swords of sorts. Like you have to go with what works.
[00:12:36] Ivana Gadient: It's a growing process. The learning curve is steep and it's quite a lonely road.
[00:12:44] Carole Blueweiss: And what has helped you the most with this road?
[00:12:49] Ivana Gadient: Well, my daughters. My family model has been a farming model where everybody's on board. It doesn't matter what age you are, when you're on a farm, you have a job and a place and a place of importance and people rely on you. And as you age, that curve changes. More is expected of you. And Makena and Raven learned CPR and First Aid when they were young. When Jewel came home, they learned to read her signs of distress, which is skin color, her breathing, the shape of her eyes. It's just a very humbling experience because the world is not set up to include the disabled. Sometimes, that's a hard swallow.
[00:13:37] Carole Blueweiss: Makena, have you had in the past instances where you had to defend your sister?
[00:13:44] Makena Gadient: Growing up, there's always that rude kid that's kind of staring, or, you know, we don't wanna play with...I lost a friend when I was in middle school because I was invited to her birthday party and her and her mom said, but you can't bring Jewel.
[00:13:57] I don't think we literally spoke to her ever again. Even now, when I operate within the school system, I am first Juliana's older sister. So even though I am very involved in my union at which a union is supposed to be for the staff and for the teacher's rights, my first instinct is to respond as an older sister to someone with profound disabilities. I see that as a really defining character quality and shaped my moral compass. And that defines my answer to any question.
[00:14:30] Carole Blueweiss: Hmm. What have you learned?
[00:14:32] Makena Gadient: We all have so much to learn from each other. More than not. I think a lot about Judith Heumann. She says, you're more likely to be disabled at some point in your life than just always able-bodied.
[00:14:43] And when I heard that quote a while ago, it was before my cancer diagnosis. And through not having a voice for almost a year because of vocal cancer, it really put into perspective the frustration that Jewel had when she was younger and she wasn't verbal. And even now, sometimes when her body tenses up and it's hard for her to articulate verbally.
[00:15:06] Ivana Gadient: I've learned that belonging is so important. To belong into your community, to have a community that knows your name when you go to the store. Who sees you, who thinks about you when there's a tsunami warning, who knows your needs when you write letters to the library asking for an adult-size changing table in your bathroom, which I'm still working on.
[00:15:36] And interdependence, you know, I am because you are. We live that. I have a very small, intimate circle of amazing humans, and I'm so grateful. I can't even put into words how grateful I am for each one of them because I cannot exist without them. Some states have more services. I'm still trying to access and navigate that for Jewel, so I don't have to be fundraising all the time.
[00:16:10] It's very exhausting, but I shamelessly do it because to access anything, I have the worst insurance out there. Jewel deserves access. So that's my job. I just have to woman it up and get back in the arena and fight for her.
[00:16:28] What I have learned is that there are many methods of thinking, whether it's faith based or science based. You have to find your way and it's very normal to want to quote unquote fix your child. It's very normal to want to connect even closer with your child and to really help them, to undergird them, to give them what they need and deserve. And it is very difficult for me when my child hasn't done what other children in her predicament have done.
[00:17:11] It's very important that I always step back and see the bigger picture and realize she had such a hard start from the very beginning, and she's a medical miracle that she is here. She's a miracle that she can eat orally. She eats all her food orally. She's a miracle that she can go poop every day. She's a miracle that she can speak, even though it's with a speech impediment.
[00:17:38] She's a miracle that she's happy and she has a lovely quality of life. So as a human being, as her mother, I'm always learning and always having to adjust. I keep learning from others, so I have mentors to help guide me.
[00:17:55] Carole Blueweiss: Who are your mentors?
[00:17:58] Ivana Gadient: Arlene Ward, she is in Canada. Arlene is, oh, she is a badass Renaissance woman. She did have a accident that left her paraplegic. She chose to have a baby.
[00:18:12] Makena Gadient: After.
[00:18:12] Ivana Gadient: After, yeah. And she raised her daughter and she had the first surf shop in Vancouver Island. And she's just a go-getter. Now, she's a professor. She throws little bones my way. Like, she threw the word interdependence at me quite a few years ago and I was like, well, what is this word?
[00:18:32] And she's like, look it up. Or she'll throw little articles my way, you know, just on the gentle sly. And when I was having problem with VIP Soccer not including Jewel, which is kind of life.
[00:18:46] Carole Blueweiss: So you said VIP. Say that again, what that is.
[00:18:48] Ivana Gadient: So, soccer league for special needs children, children with disabilities. And Jewel was the only, at that time, person in a wheelchair. But they weren't including her. So I was not going to participate. I was gonna pull Jewel out and Arlene said, ask why not? And how? Like, why are they not including her in the circle? And how can we include her in the circle? How can we include her in the exercises? How can we do this? And why not? So by changing my attitude, I was able to write up a letter and print it out and bring it to the soccer practice and hand it to everybody.
[00:19:37] And it started with, hi, my name is Jewel. I have cerebral palsy. It is not contagious. And then it would give short little bullet points on how to include her. Then they included her.
[00:19:50] Carole Blueweiss: Wow.
[00:19:51] Ivana Gadient: And my friend, Buck Joiner, is an incredible person in our community, is always helping me. When I can't fix her wheelchair, he will come and help. One of the things he did was he created a soccer guard for her wheelchair, lightweight, made out of plastic rain gutter and pool noodles, so she could cap the ball. And Buck Joiner with all his brilliance, he's a retired nuclear scientist, said, I'll make something. And he designed it and brought it, and we tested it and it worked and it was fantastic. A soccer guard for a wheelchair starts at $2,000.
[00:20:33] Carole Blueweiss: Wow. That's a great story. Now, how did you meet Arlene Ward?
[00:20:38] Ivana Gadient: I've never met her in person.
[00:20:40] Carole Blueweiss: Really?
[00:20:40] Ivana Gadient: Yeah. I met her through her daughter. Years later, I met her mom on Facebook and we started to talk and she'll drop little seeds and plant them and takes a while, you know, for them to grow. And then I'll come back and ask more questions. Or, for example, so you've seen all the challenges that have gone on social media, right?
[00:21:03] Makena Gadient: Like the ice bucket challenge. Yeah.
[00:21:06] Ivana Gadient: Yes, yes, yes.
[00:21:07] Carole Blueweiss: For ALS, the ice bucket challenge. Yeah.
[00:21:11] Ivana Gadient: So here, someone had challenged Jewel to the 22-day pushup challenge to bring awareness to soldiers that take their own lives because of the trauma that they've experienced serving. I'm like, don't they know Jewel can't do any of that stuff? And then I had to sit with it and I was like, okay, who's challenging us? It's Arlene! So Arlene must know something that I just don't get. So I was like calling Arlene going, you do realize you're challenging Jewel, right? And she's like, yes. I was like, I had hit a brick wall. I just couldn't believe it.
[00:22:02] And it was one of the most beautiful experiences and one of the most beautiful opportunities. Because in the beginning I was doing the pushup challenge with Jewel on my back, and it was the strengthening and a growing experience and a humbling experience trying to do the different variations and modifications with someone else on your back when you're not a pushup kind of girl.
[00:22:26] And then it naturally evolved to seeing how Jewel could participate in her own way from being in her wheelchair and me putting my hand on her hand and us just very lightly and gently, just a tiny little movement is a real movement, and it's valid. It just looks different. And from her pushing her foot off the pool wall, that was the movement. That was part of the pushup challenge.
[00:22:58] It just looked different. It was adapted and modified for Jewel, and she was so proud that she was chosen and she participated and we recorded it and we finished it. And we asked other people with cerebral palsy to join the challenge, and all of them accepted because none of them are included.
[00:23:19] Carole Blueweiss: Huh.
[00:23:20] Ivana Gadient: Ever. Typically, you don't ask someone with profound disabilities, but why not? And that's what, that is one of the things that Arlene taught me. Ask why not? And then how? Then you've gotta figure it out and do the work and put your thinking cap on and do a headstand and try to see the world from a different view, because my view is limited.
[00:23:48] I don't have that experience prior Jewel of having anybody close in my community with a disability. And on the farm, I learned that the animals that couldn't eat were slaughtered. I was just a farm girl trying to save my baby and doing it the only way I knew how. So I used to chew Jewel's food and then put it in her mouth.
[00:24:13] Carole Blueweiss: Right.
[00:24:14] Ivana Gadient: And that's what Makena and Raven have grown up with.
[00:24:19] Makena Gadient: Mom says our family was kind of like a farm, but I always just told my friends, you know, yeah, it's like a family business. You know? Because then, you know, when I would go off to college now that I live and work in Seattle, they're always like, you're gonna be gone for the whole summer? Summer in Hawaii, you're so lucky. And I'm like, yeah, but also it's like going home to the family business. And they're like, oh, so you'll be busy.
[00:24:41] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah, a little.
[00:24:43] Makena Gadient: And it's, I would not have it any other way.
[00:24:45] Carole Blueweiss: Yeah. Different Maui experience.
[00:24:47] Makena Gadient: Yes.
[00:24:49] Ivana Gadient: How old were you when we got our first wheelchair through Lee Johnson? You were a teenager.
[00:24:56] Makena Gadient: I think we had just gotten it before camp, so I must have been 15.
[00:25:00] Ivana Gadient: Okay, so for an example, insurance was not giving us a wheelchair for Jewel. She outgrew the little-
[00:25:10] Makena Gadient: Little Rifton, kind of like a stroller.
[00:25:12] Ivana Gadient: Yeah.
[00:25:13] Makena Gadient: And didn't have any hip support.
[00:25:15] Ivana Gadient: Didn't have much of anything, actually. And she had a growth spurt. And Makena at 15 got on the internet. She found her a wheelchair chair that was specifically designed for people with cerebral palsy. And she reached out to the company and said, hi, my name is Makena. I'm 15. My sister has cerebral palsy. And whatever else she wrote in the letter. The person who received the letter, the email, on the other end was so moved, they called or emailed right away and they moved mountains.
[00:25:54] In two weeks, we were approved. And they knew how to fill the forms, which forms, what, where, dot this, cross this t and dot this i, and they figured it out. And it was just months later, we got the chair, the wheelchair that was needed.
[00:26:12] Carole Blueweiss: Wow.
[00:26:13] Ivana Gadient: A wheelchair that is poorly designed just to check it off with this child. Let's just check off this wheelchair. That wheelchair will continue possibly, depending on the child, promoting hip dysplasia, promoting scoliosis, and a whole bunch of other things that are not in the benefit of that child. And once again, Makena did this again recently, where we were given A or B option because they've always done it this way.
[00:26:49] At Shriner's, you have A or B options, no other. But we want D. No, we don't work with D. That wasn't acceptable for us because Jewel has three movement disorders. She deserves and needs the very best seating possible. So Makena rallied a team in Seattle. So many woman hours were put into meeting and emailing and phone calls and checking things out.
[00:27:18] And then we went and we went twice and we paid out of pocket for the first leg. She figured out how with another mother, how to get insurance to come on board and we got Jewel's wheelchair once again.
[00:27:33] Carole Blueweiss: Wow. What are the three movement disorders that Jewel has that she needed that special wheelchair?
[00:27:39] Ivana Gadient: She has very high tone, very high spasticity. She has dystonia and athetoid movements, so she's constantly in motion. She's never not in motion.
[00:27:52] Makena Gadient: She's a complex seating case, which is what the therapist that I was working with in Seattle specializes in, people that need complex seating. And so people like Jewel who on Monday, Wednesday and Friday, her neck does one movement and then Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday, every second Monday, her neck does something completely different.
[00:28:15] And so we really pushed for two different headrests. Because I needed something reliable, an option so that she wasn't injuring herself and she wasn't getting sores or skin breakdown or headaches. And in Hawaii, we, we're just, our options are so limited.
[00:28:32] Carole Blueweiss: Wow.
[00:28:33] Ivana Gadient: Well, I just wanted to add one thing.
[00:28:35] Carole Blueweiss: Sure.
[00:28:37] Ivana Gadient: For Jewel's seating, it took 10 hours. I want that to percolate in your mind how many hours you spend picking out an outfit, which shoes, you know, to some fancy event. Or your car. And this is an extension of her, to access her world, her life. And most insurance companies will give you an hour. So it took a team to collaborate.
[00:29:16] Carole Blueweiss: With Jewel, with her care in terms of, well, physical therapy, for example, and occupational therapy. Did she receive those services as a younger child? And then when did that end and what are your thoughts about how that went?
[00:29:29] Ivana Gadient: As far as therapy, we got early intervention and we've done hippotherapy, we've done physical therapy, occupational therapy, speech and language therapy. That's what I've done most, I've paid most out of pocket for. And then one day I found on one of the many forums that I've joined, something called the Anat Baniel Method. My client came home, she's a doctor. I had just finished cleaning her house.
[00:30:01] Carole Blueweiss: You were cleaning this woman's house?
[00:30:02] Ivana Gadient: Yes. And she said, oh, I heard this interview on public radio. I don't know how to spell the lady's name, but I think you'll find it interesting. It sounds something like Anat Baniel. So I wrote it down and I went home.
[00:30:16] I started to research and then I just wanted to know the skinny. I wanted to know the good, the bad, and the ugly. Just tell me what you think. So I was asking all these moms out there and they said, it's good and it's hella expensive. Like, I'm used to that. That's, you know? And then I found out that there was this traveling practitioner coming from New York, going to Oahu. Got a hold of Verena and I emptied my bank accounts, got three tickets for me, Makena, and Jewel. Jewel was almost 12.
[00:30:52] Carole Blueweiss: I invited Verena onto Wisdom Shared so we could hear from her perspective what it was like to work with Jewel and her family, and also to learn a little bit about Verena.
[00:31:03] Verena Kurz: I am from Austria originally and I trained to be an occupational therapist there and moved to New York in '99. My husband is from Hawaii. He's from Oahu, and we usually go there in the summer. Out of the blue, I got an email from Ivana. She heard about me and she's wondering if I would be willing to meet with her and her daughter and work with her in an intensive. I said, all right, let's do it. Let's try it out.
[00:31:34] Carole Blueweiss: You know that I'm an ABM practitioner, too.
[00:31:37] Verena Kurz: Mm-hmm.
[00:31:37] Carole Blueweiss: And a physical, therapist. We have that in common. And Ivana brings up ABM. You're an ABM practitioner. She had you work with Jewel and the family. And I would just love for my audience to understand somehow because it's really kind of hard to understand unless you experience it, right? It's very kinesthetic approach to movement and to learning. So I just thought you and I try to unravel it a little bit for our audience and see what we come up with. So I'm trying to think, you know, what's the best way to explain what is ABM? I say, oh, I'm gonna ask Verena. She'll help me. I'm looking for the short version. And then if people are interested in learning more, they can of course go to the show notes and find out more.
[00:32:27] Verena Kurz: I think the big difference for me about ABM is, and being an occupational therapist, if there's one slogan from it, it's from fixing to connecting. I almost feel like this is the most important aspect to this work because coming from the OT world and PT world, I think we are more trained in supposedly fixing something, something that's quote unquote broken. As opposed to with the ABM approach, we don't think about fixing because we don't think anything is broken.
[00:33:04] We think in terms of connecting. That means, for me, that means first and foremost is the connecting aspect. I need to connect to the child that is with me in that moment. I also need to connect with the parent that is with me and the child in that moment. Because there's so much richness in that connecting, that that is a huge, huge, huge difference from any other method, I would say.
[00:33:32] It elicits trust. It elicits feeling accepted. It elicits feeling being joyful in your own body versus like being charged that something is wrong with you. If parents see that and experience that and feel that, it's part of the healing for them, too.
[00:33:51] Carole Blueweiss: Now, let's listen to how Ivana managed to find a place to stay and travel from Maui to Oahu with Jewel.
[00:34:02] Ivana Gadient: We had no place to stay on Oahu because I couldn't afford a hotel. I couldn't afford a rental car. But I was going. I had our tickets and I had some money for food. And my sister-in-law's buddy from her childhood saw a post on Facebook. And said, well, if you're willing to stay in this little room, add-on to my house. It's not finished. It doesn't even have a drywall or a floor. But you're willing to use it. So we did. And then he-
[00:34:35] Makena Gadient: And there was like nine puppies.
[00:34:37] Ivana Gadient: Yeah. Which Jewel loves.
[00:34:39] Makena Gadient: She loved them. That was her highlight. One of the highlights of the trip.
[00:34:42] Ivana Gadient: Yeah, yeah. His girlfriend lent me her car and we got there and it was fantastic. I met Verena and this is how it went.
[00:34:51] Verena Kurz: When they first came, it was so wonderful from the first minute to meet them, because I could just feel right away something special about them right from the beginning. The way they cared for their daughter and the way they were with each other. And I just felt an instant connection to them.
[00:35:12] Ivana Gadient: She pulls out her table and she's so lovely and warm and present and enthusiastic. And I can tell Jewel's not digging the table, even though it's a beautiful blue color. And I said, we might have a problem here. She's doesn't, you know, Jewel's thrown up in the past when she sees a table because it has history, right?
[00:35:35] Medical history, trauma for her. So Verena said, not a problem. And I'm thinking, what do you mean not a problem? She puts away her table and gets everything ready for the floor.
[00:35:48] Carole Blueweiss: Wow.
[00:35:48] Ivana Gadient: And I was speechless. Here this lady from New York was like this beautiful fairy connecting to my daughter in a way I'd never seen anybody work with her, never seen anybody connect with her. On the floor!
[00:36:03] But obviously there was a beautiful woven rug and there were towels rolled up as makeshift bolsters. And that was it. I was sold. I was like, you're my people. You're my person. You're my tribe. And then I started a fundraiser to go to California to see Anat and to get lessons at the center, the Anat Baniel Method of NeuroMovement in California.
[00:36:32] And amid my fundraiser, I get an email from the center saying, someone's canceled and we have a spot for you. Do you want to take it? And I said, okay. And I borrowed the rest of the money and we went to California. And that was the beginning of a very new and exciting journey. And it was just the beginning of another beautiful, life-altering path.
[00:37:02] Carole Blueweiss: Did you go there with the idea that you would learn so that you could work with Jewel or were you going there to become a professional?
[00:37:12] Ivana Gadient: No, I went there so that Jewel could get lessons, therapeutic lessons, and I went as her mother. And from the beginning, Verena was encouraging me to become a practitioner. And then of course, Anat as well was encouraging me when she was working with Jewel.
[00:37:34] All I could see was the impossibility of it all. It was just seemed like an impossible mountain because it's so expensive. And then I realized there's no way, at that time, could I generate that amount of money in funding to go back and forth to California. It's not approved by insurance. We had no practitioners in Hawaii with that qualification.
[00:38:04] I decided to step out because of the encouragement of one of my beautiful clients. I call them my Jewish love birds, and she said, we want to help you. And so another client said, we'll match what they are giving you. And that's how I paid for my first segment. And literally walking in complete faith and the floor just coming to meet my foot each step of the way.
[00:38:34] I didn't know how I was gonna do it, but I had completely believed that it was gonna happen. Verena, she's such a person of integrity that she went behind my back and she raised funds for me, which I can't ever repay or express enough gratitude. And I made jewelry with Raven. And I fundraised shamelessly, you know, have lost Facebook friends because of it.
[00:39:04] And my colleagues, who were, who are all beautiful humans, in each segment, I would sell my awareness jewelry and they bought the rings and then they said, we want earrings to match. And I made earrings and then they said, we want bracelets to match. And then I made bracelets and they said, we want pendants to match
[00:39:25] Carole Blueweiss: What about it has captured your attention?
[00:39:30] Ivana Gadient: Well, just talking as a mother, when someone connects with your child and it's authentic, that's just priceless. And if you can see that she is a healthy, well-adjusted person, then that's awesome. But underneath that takes a lion's commitment of Olympic caliber. So I see her as an Olympian. No different than those who qualify for the Olympics. It's just the different side of the coin because it's that rigor and that commitment of keeping her healthy. That commitment of nursing her. It's not for everybody. That was my path with her, my bond and commitment to her.
[00:40:23] And it takes that kind of rigor and commitment to keep our children safe and healthy and out of the hospital. But even with that rigor of commitment, it doesn't guarantee that they're gonna stay safe and healthy and out of the hospital and alive.
[00:40:40] Carole Blueweiss: And who is the Olympian, Jewel or you?
[00:40:45] Ivana Gadient: Jewel. Jewel is the Olympian.
[00:40:49] Carole Blueweiss: Can I challenge you to say that maybe it's the two of you together as a team?
[00:40:56] Ivana Gadient: Yes, yes, for sure. Yes, we're definitely a team. And Makena's part of that team. And Raven's part of that team and those who come alongside me for different seasons are part of that team, because that's what it takes. It does take a team.
[00:41:17] Carole Blueweiss: Can you describe how ABM has helped Jewel? How is that different from what the goals of physical therapy are, in your experience?
[00:41:27] Makena Gadient: I think for me it feels the clearest because, you know, Raven and I were at every single speech therapy, occupational therapy, physical therapy, until she switched to ABM. Until we went to college. Until three weeks into me being in college, Jewel got served a letter from her physical therapy center saying they would no longer see her because she wasn't making significant enough changes. That was a really fun day. I would say the biggest thing is, I saw all that Western therapy teach her how to fail.
[00:41:57] They kept on asking her to do things she couldn't do. The repetition involved. The stamina involved. That she just wasn't there yet. And it was forcing her to have touch aversion, to learn to fail, and to be frustrated, to be angry. And then ABM managed to move with her and to teach her how to succeed and to teach her how to be joyful within her own body.
[00:42:22] Ivana Gadient: I do not want to step on any practitioner. I don't wanna step on a PT, an OT, or a speech and language pathologist. They came in into my home and into my heart. They came to help my daughter. My daughter was profoundly impacted by her brain bleeds, by her hospital experience. Just saying, here's the facts. Jewel has been profoundly impacted. She's considered level five. Which is like saying F for failure from an ableistic perspective.
[00:43:00] Those therapists came in with a golden heart, a good heart. They just didn't have enough tools to reach her. So the system is built to say, if you can't reach her, she has failed. She's unreachable. And that's why I've been on fire recently, by the book created two years ago by Karen Erickson, who believes all children can learn to read and write.
[00:43:31] And Karen Erickson is a researcher and an advocate and a teacher for the profoundly disabled. And she's used that as a term because it's a legal term, because it's recognized by the law and insurance. It's an umbrella term that covers angel man syndrome, cerebral palsy, cortical vision impairment.
[00:43:55] Makena Gadient: Deaf-blind.
[00:43:56] Ivana Gadient: All the children with different syndromes because of genetic disorders and deletions. And she, through her research team has said, all children can learn literacy. Her research has shown what works and why, what doesn't work and why. And if you have a child who doesn't speak, who's non-verbal, pre-verbal, who uses any assistive technology device, they're still in there. They're intelligent. They just need intelligent teachers with skills and tools that can reach them.
[00:44:35] And so that's the difference between a teacher who says, I don't think this person can learn to read versus Karen Erickson who says yes they can. And I'll find a way. And here's what I know, and here's some of my tools. And I need teachers like her because I need to be taught.
[00:44:59] Just because I'm Jewel's mother doesn't mean I know everything. Physical therapy is rehabilitation. It's not habilitation. Jewel didn't know how to do anything. She needs to be taught in a way that respects and sees her brain injury, not as a limit, but as we're gonna look at possibilities and we're gonna look at a way to help her.
[00:45:24] I want children who are non-verbal or pre-verbal, who use devices to read and communicate, I want people not to look at them and judge them like they're less than or they're an novelty, but to go, hey buddy, how are you doing? And not get stuck at the device. But just to see them as a person and say, hi, my name is Peter. What's your name? Like, wouldn't that be wonderful?
[00:45:52] Carole Blueweiss: Now, how do you lift her and things like that without hurting yourself?
[00:45:56] Makena Gadient: My sister joined a gym. She got back home from college her sophomore year and she's like, I can't lift her anymore. And so then she went back for Christmas break. After Christmas break, she joined a gym and by this next summer, she was able to go back to doing what needed to be done.
[00:46:13] I usually work still full time with kids that need physical intervention and help. I always, when I train people to lift kids at work, I always say, before you even put hands on, you have to think what are you gonna do with your body? Because that's the way to stay safe with your body and with the other person's body. And so I think that way with Jewel. And I do a lot of playing with her on the floor.
[00:46:36] Carole Blueweiss: Tell me just a little bit about yourself. I know more about your daughter than you.
[00:46:42] Ivana Gadient: I just see myself as a mom, and I'm okay with that. I have many interests and I, as I get older, see how our privilege is not meant to be selfish. Dessert is so much more sweeter when you can share it with others. And I see that I have been helped and blessed and fortunate enough for others who are privileged in different areas when they share it with me.
[00:47:26] When they share their patience, their love, their kindness, their knowledge, their skill, their money, whatever it is, when they can share it with me, my life is enhanced and I want my life to be part of the solution.
[00:47:44] Makena Gadient: I think us girls would say that our mother is a teacher, she's a poet, she's a disability rights activist, and she's a community organizer. She's very humble, but it's true. She's always been organizing like-minded people together and knocking down walls and building bridges and, you know, sometimes she does it with words. Sometimes she does it with events, sometimes she does it online.
[00:48:12] Carole Blueweiss: Like I said, you're a team of four.
[00:48:15] Makena Gadient: I'm gonna go check in on Jewel.
[00:48:17] Carole Blueweiss: Tell Jewel I say hi.
[00:48:20] Makena Gadient: I will. She's very excited to hear it, even though she didn't want to be in it.
[00:48:25] Carole Blueweiss: I hope she approves.
[00:48:28] Makena Gadient: Yeah, it's been a pleasure talking to you.
[00:48:30] Carole Blueweiss: We are going to take a very short break here as Makena checks on Jewel. My name is Carole Blueweiss. We are listening to Wisdom Shared, and today I have as my special guests Makena and her mother, Ivana Gadient. Ivana will now explain how Jewel continues to inspire and surprise those who come in contact with her.
[00:48:56] Ivana Gadient: When a practitioner comes up to dinner with us, the teacher will go, oh my goodness, she's macking down on a hamburger. How is she doing that? Because even our speech and language pathologist said, when you look at her, she's not meant to be able to do what she's doing.
[00:49:14] When you look at her and you see her diagnosis and the impact of her brain trauma and the level of complexity that she has to deal with, she's not meant to be able to drink her liquids out of a straw with no thickener.
[00:49:29] Carole Blueweiss: But she does.
[00:49:29] Ivana Gadient: But she does.
[00:49:33] Carole Blueweiss: What have you learned from living in Hawaii?
[00:49:36] Ivana Gadient: What I've learned from living in Hawaii is typically the Hawaiians are very culturally caring for their elders. I was just thinking about this the other day, and wherever I have gone with Jewel, the Hawaiians see me. They really see her, and they always offer to help. Did we leave you enough room? And they watch us. I can see them checking in on us to see do they need help.
[00:50:06] We have had people ask, how does she go to the bathroom? Will she have sex? Like, things that is not okay to ask anybody. That's not your business. We even had a little girl kept asking, Jewel, what's wrong with your tooth? What's wrong with your tooth? And Jewel's response was priceless. She said, that's my dragon tooth. And I thought, wow, way to go, Jewel. You just super heroed it and neutralized it.
[00:50:35] A lot of people think just because we're out in a public space and they're not used to seeing people with disabilities, they're not used to seeing a beautiful young girl like Jewel in a wheelchair. Disability is natural. We're all different. I don't go up to people and say, whoa, what's up with you? Your belly looks bigger. You know? Have you been eating and raiding the midnight fridge? I mean, it's just, it's not our place, and for some reason we think it's okay to lean on people's wheelchairs and to pat their head and to touch their equipments. It's not okay. So when you're going to, and you want to help someone, introduce yourself and say, how may I help you?
[00:51:24] Don't always assume they need help, but they may and they may very appreciate it, but you need to ask how, and you have to be okay with that person saying, no, thank you. I don't need your help.
[00:51:40] Carole Blueweiss: You always do need help, no, to bring up the wheelchair?
[00:51:44] Ivana Gadient: This was part of our planning when we got the new chair. So the metal had to be light enough for me to be able to transport up and down the stairs. We live in an old apartment complex that has no elevators, so I transport everything up 32 stairs.
[00:52:00] Carole Blueweiss: How many stairs do you have to get to your apartment?
[00:52:04] Ivana Gadient: 32. Yeah.
[00:52:07] Carole Blueweiss: You have 32 steps.
[00:52:10] Ivana Gadient: Yeah. Yeah, concrete steps.
[00:52:13] Carole Blueweiss: Wow. I don't understand how you both get upstairs.
[00:52:18] Ivana Gadient: Oh, okay. So, typically I go out of the apartment with Jewel. It's a planned, it's very, we do a lot of planning. You can't just spontaneously do anything, and I need to have one of my daughters home or a close friend who understands how to do things or an aide so that I can leave Jewel by herself and take the wheelchair down the stairs. Once I'm at the parking lot at the bottom, I will dismantle the wheelchair and shove it in the back of my car.
[00:52:51] I come back upstairs and it used to be that I could just put her on my back. Because of her tone, I can't. Getting her into the pack takes a skill set and I don't have anybody to help me with that at this time, and I can't do it alone. And I will pin Jewel to my pelvis and we will walk down the stairs as one, and I'll go slow and I'll have my friend go in front of us to just spot us.
[00:53:19] There's something wrong in our thinking if we think, well, why is this lady living in a third floor apartment without an elevator? It should be, what is wrong with the laws and the rules that would accommodate this building to continue being protected? So they do have to put an elevator in. Society should have rules and laws in place that mandate accessible for all its citizens.
[00:53:49] In case people were curious, we moved in here way before Jewel was born, but we would still have a legal right to move in here after Jewel was born. So you can't have an electric wheelchair on the third floor if there are no elevators. There's a lot of thought. It's not just a wheelchair. There's a lot of technology that is available.
[00:54:16] It's called smart technology that is available in cars to heat up the seat, to cool it off, to move it this way and the back can do this and that. Why is that technology not in a wheelchair?
[00:54:30] Carole Blueweiss: Mm-hmm. Good question.
[00:54:32] Ivana Gadient: It's always money. They're always saying, oh, it's supply and demand. Do you know how many Americans have disabilities? There are a lot. There are so many that there should be no reason why that smart technology is not in a wheelchair. So it's like our society has to understand that you can become a disabled member at any time due to a car accident, due to an unfortunate event or circumstance, a near drowning, a stroke, whatever.
[00:55:08] Someone did a report and studied how many wheelchairs are injured every day through travel. And not understanding that this is an extension of the person's body. This is how they get around in society and without it, they're stuck and their lives and their livelihoods are at jeopardy. I wanted to say something about the pandemic.
[00:55:34] Carole Blueweiss: Yes.
[00:55:36] Ivana Gadient: I started to hear about the medical, the hospital triage practice, and I'm like, what does that mean and why is it relevant to me? And I'm reading other people with disabilities post and disabled activists post, and I realized that this was very serious. That they could say, we don't think your child will live because they're disabled. So we're not gonna treat them. We're not gonna give them life saving treatments. We're going to save this for the people we think will make it.
[00:56:13] Because it comes from in combat, right? This is what the combat doctors had to do. They had to pick and choose when they were running out of supplies, and they had to bet on the person that they thought would make it and recover. And it took me a while to get through the emotions of that.
[00:56:33] And then I started to read posts by mothers begging us not to take our children to the hospital because you would not be allowed to go in. And mothers who had lost sons and daughters. The pandemic, once you have a child with a disability, you live isolated. It's just part of keeping your family alive.
[00:57:00] And it's very interesting times to live in as a parent with the child that is vulnerable because Jewel is vulnerable. She's the healthiest that she's ever been, and she keeps getting healthier and stronger in her own way, but she's still very vulnerable. Someone who is not ambulatory, that means someone who does not sit up by themselves.
[00:57:31] And I don't have her sitting in her wheelchair for hours and hours. She spends hours and hours on the floor, on wrestling mats that I've designed my living room around. So she's comfortable and she can move naturally. And you have to be on like a light switch at all times because you have to, because life is beautiful and it's precious and it's hard.
[00:57:55] And if we're gonna make it through this, you need to be aware and you need to be awake as best as you can. I'm learning. I'm constantly learning. I can't say I know it all. I don't, but I'm constantly learning. And the learning curve is steep and the price is high, and it's our one beautiful life that we've been given.
[00:58:17] And it's learning how to navigate within the constraints that we have and how to advocate within that and how to still enjoy and see each other with love, because it can get daunting. And mom can get crabby but it's still a life worth living. And each child with a disability is a whole and beautiful person, and their story's worth telling. And lives are always richer when we can intersect with their lives and become a part of their world.
[00:58:58] Verena Kurz: I actually learned so much from her. The way she was with Jewel and the way she was with Makena, and, I mean, to this day, I just cannot believe where she gets all this strength from and this energy. And recently when she started to post all her poetry, it's just incredible. I mean, this woman has really inspired me and taught me how to be strong in the midst of challenges.
[00:59:24] Carole Blueweiss: I asked Ivana to read one of her poems.
[00:59:28] Ivana Gadient: I am from Anna, granddaughter of Amanda, mother of Makena, Raven, and Jewel. I am from early risers, shoe polish, and earth under short fingernails. I am from immigrants, travelers, and dreamers. I am from trilinguals, and polygoths, longing, observing, innocence, ignorance, outsider. I am from cloth diapers, safety pins, piggybacks, and Bantu beer. I am from sit at the back of the class, detention, and flawless skin. I am from revolvers in purses, bullets in underwear drawers, and homegrown food.
[01:00:25] I am from Schnapps, Grappa, vodka, Ruby Red, homemade wine in wooden barrels. I am from Crash Nursery School, Nanny's Catholic Convent, government boarding, and public schools. Turkish coffee, embroidery, for the birds, goulash, paprika, tea leaf fortune. I am from electric blue satin skirts, mini crocheted skirts, and bell bottom jeans.
[01:00:58] I am from red floral platform heels, blue tractors, and ant hills. I am from bush fires, pigs on the spit, Braai Flace, rugby, soccer, and wheelbarrows. I am from milk tarts, Pronutro that I really didn't like until I left, jelly tots and guava rolls. Mother, lamplighter, protector, firestarter, advocate. I am from cream of wheat, warm milk, long nights on the African felt.
[01:01:39] I am from Mayfield's school uniforms, corporal punishment, and sunny skies. I am from party lines, black and white TVs, and no bookshelves. I am from banned books, loud school bells and windows that open. I am from the work of the Red Cross, those with a calling, and abuse. Black sheep, friend, neighbor, community builder, volunteer.
[01:02:12] I am from function and scoliosis. I am from dark European bread, garlic and fried green bell peppers and olive oil. Hopscotch, Chinese jump rope, double Dutch, and shooting marbles in the dirt. I am from impossible, possible. Why not? And how? I am from pigtails and voted first by my classmates. I am from risk takers, abused wives, and many tears.
[01:02:46] Dreamer, creator, builder, sacrificer, student, flexible. I am from rigid and flexible beliefs. I am from all that is possible, wells, and strong teeth. I am settled in age. Happy to be called Mother and Mia. I am because you are.
[01:03:12] Carole Blueweiss: Thank you, Ivana. Thank you so much.
[01:03:15] Ivana Gadient: Thank you so much for having me, for reaching out and seeing something I don't see but yet you see something valid in a story. You value my story and I appreciate that.
[01:03:26] Carole Blueweiss: Thank you for sharing.
[01:03:28] Ivana Gadient: It was fun talking story with you. Take care. Aloha. Bye.
[01:03:32] Carole Blueweiss: Aloha.
[01:03:37] Thank you so much for listening to Wisdom Shared. If you enjoyed this episode, please be sure to check out all our other episodes. Visit caroleblueweiss.com. If you like what you are hearing on Wisdom Shared, please spread the word and share this podcast with your friends. Leave a review and subscribe so you can receive wisdom every month.