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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
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Steel Roses Podcast
Beth Biss transforms her 35-year diagnostic journey into empowering fiction for women
Beth Biss writes women's fiction that encourages and empowers women living with illness, sharing her personal journey from diagnosis to authorship through compelling characters and storylines.
• Beth became a writer after being a lifelong reader, first attempting to write in high school
• After a 35-year journey to get diagnosed with POTS (Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome), Beth found little representation in fiction
• Beth's first book "Redolent" follows a college fashion student receiving a sight-threatening diagnosis
• Her second book "Radiant" focuses on an artist with ADHD navigating life challenges
• The books are part of a trilogy centered on female friendships and different chronic illnesses
• Writing has been therapeutic for Beth and offers readers three levels of engagement: escape, connection, and bibliotherapy
• Beth includes journaling prompts in her second book to encourage deeper reflection
• The conversation highlights how women are often dismissed in medical settings and face longer diagnostic journeys
• Beth emphasizes there's "no such thing as a normal brain" and everyone exists on a spectrum
• Accessibility features originally designed for disabilities (like closed captioning) now benefit everyone
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Hello everybody. This is Steel Rose's podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I am very excited to introduce you to our guest. Today. We have Beth Biss with us. She lives in a small town in Pennsylvania where she juggles life as a reader, writer and mother. She pours her energy into writing women's fiction that encourages and empowers women living with illness. She is the author of two books, Radiant and Redolent, both available now on Amazon. Beth, welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 2:Thank you, it's so nice to be here.
Speaker 1:So, beth, I would love it if you shared a little bit with the listeners about how well I would love to hear your story as to how you became an author, but I'm also very interested in how you selected the genre that you're writing in.
Speaker 2:Thanks, Well, I became a writer because I first was a reader. As a child, I read lots of books. The little town I live in had a very small library and very little section for children and an even tinier section for teens. When I was a teenager, we had one bookcase, the kind that rotates. You know that you see in the drugstores.
Speaker 1:That was it.
Speaker 2:That was the teen section and even outside of the teen section, and I remember being excited when the teen section went up because before that we didn't have a teen section, so that library now has a whole room dedicated to teens. So I'm feeling a little jealous. So, like many authors, I read a lot and when I was in high school I wrote some things, what seems to be obligatory angsty poetry, which is terrible, which will never see light of day, ever, ever. But I also wrote some short stories and I gave those to my English teacher and she said you ought to be an author. And I'm like huh, well, yes, I read lots of books and somebody has to write them. I don't know. And then I put it out of my mind. I had a goal. I went to college, I wanted to go to psychology, and so that's what I did. I didn't think about it for a while and I did a lot of writing for myself. I hope it improved. It still is personal, it was for me. But I did a lot of journaling and later that the sacred covenant between me and my journal got violated and someone read it and I freaked out and I stopped writing completely. And then after a while, when I was in my 40s, early 40s, I started reading things and being like I'm not in these stories, I'm not in these books and I wanted to see myself in the stories. And then I finally found a book where I thought this person could almost be me. So at that point I already had my diagnosis I have POTS. I have a lot of brain fog, dizziness, confusion, things like that. And I was reading a story about a man who had a traumatic brain injury and the way the author was describing the symptoms I was like this person is a lot like me. It was very exciting. It was very exciting to feel like I finally could relate to someone and to really go yes, you get it. I mean, I know it wasn't real, but to feel like there's a story out there that it felt like my story was very exciting. Fortunately for me, at the end of the book this man recovered from his traumatic brain injury, which in reality may or may not happen. It doesn't always happen. But I was upset and I threw the book across the room Sorry, library, I threw the library book across the room because I no longer connected to this character and after about a year or so stewing over that, trying to find another book that I felt like I related to. I thought I could write a story. So I started writing stories then. They weren't about people with an illness, though, they were just stories I thought would be interesting.
Speaker 2:Tried to write a first book. It did not go well. I couldn't get to the end. I didn't know what I was doing. I got confused. I gave it up. A couple years later I tried again and it was.
Speaker 2:There were different methods for writing a book and this particular method didn't work for me. I thought I'd try it. You gotta try it to know if it's gonna work. This woman was suggesting writing in longhand, filling up a paper spiral notebook. I mean, if four of them filled up, that's enough material for a novel. Well, I enjoyed the process of writing all that out. My handwriting was terrible. Taking all those words I'd scribbled and getting them typed into the computer I found I did not like. So that method didn't work for me.
Speaker 2:But I tried to learn lots about writing and learned about story structure, character development and all kinds of things. Unless you're a writer, you don't really need to know, but I learned about these things when I started again, and this time I had this question in my mind while I was in the shower. I closed my eyes and I thought what would it be like to go through a day without being able to see things? And so this little nugget of a question was something that I thought there's a story in this somehow. And so that's where I got my first ideas for my first book, redland, which I released September 18th 1924. And so in this story, the main character is Sonia. She is a college student with this goal of being a fashion designer. This is her goal. She wants to go into fashion, and she starts having trouble seeing things and goes to an optometrist. It's a diagnosis that is heartbreaking for her, because it means she will be losing her sight, maybe not completely.
Speaker 2:Who knows how long it will take to other things. You just don't know. You don't know Something will happen, but the doctor couldn't tell her how quickly. The doctor couldn't tell her how much she would lose. The doctor couldn't tell her, would she eat? Her color vision For fashionists being able to see color is pretty important.
Speaker 2:So you know she's reeling from this. What am I going to do? How am I going to live with this? And so the rest of the story. It's her figuring out how do I live with this, because it is changing everything in my life. Can I be a fashion designer when I'm losing my sight and I don't know how quickly it's going to happen? I'm still in school. She wasn't a designer yet. She was still training for that. And what does she do about telling people? What did she do about making accommodations in her life? What does she do about fulfilling her goals? Is she going to have the same goal or do her goals have to change? She also learned some things about her mother and some things about her own family that play into how she decides to make decisions about this. I'll give those away, and I thought I want to have something else in the story about her Sort of.
Speaker 2:I didn't want to keep writing that story. I wanted something a little different, and so this is where I got the idea that I will write stories that are around friendships and look at the three different friends. So I'm working on a trilogy, my second book. It's on pre-order now, but it will be released October 1st. It's Radiant, and Radiant's main character is Dani, and Dani is an artist. Dani also has ADHD. Now, when the story starts, dani knows she has ADHD. She's very aware that that's her diagnosis. She's aware. But it really does challenge the way she lives and how she chooses to do things and how she manages to get things done. So I thought I want to write about friends. I want to write about an illness of some kind. I clearly want the illness to be different. You want to read about the same illness over and over and over? It would be super fun.
Speaker 2:So I have a different illness.
Speaker 1:I'm working on my third book already, which will be about Lynn and her illness, so that we read it next year know I, I wanna, I wanna just say here I think it's really important what you're doing here, because most stories will have like a happy ending, like when she survived and she got the love of her life and it's all good, or she yeah, pregnancy was uncomplicated, she's totally fine. And we know that this is unrealistic, like we know that like the reality of it is. Like there are people out here that this is not their story and the day to day they don't know what's going to happen. And I think shining a light on people that have to live with a chronic illness or an illness that's, you know, told to them like this is going to kill you at some point, like this is going to end your life at some point. It might not be directly related, but it will be like a symptom of something that got affected.
Speaker 1:We have a family member living with a chronic illness and we're seeing the end. You know, we're starting to see like the signs and that kind of thing. So I think this is huge, especially for women, who quite often are dismissed for medical and dismissed quite a bit, you know, in, you know in medical settings, and I think that taking that journey with them is going to be incredibly impactful in your books, and even if you don't have a chronic illness, really I mean I feel like this is very impactful. I also really love and I want to say this too that you're focusing for the angle on developing the female relationship.
Speaker 2:Yes, my focus is the friendship. Yeah, the friendship is the important part. So they may or may not have a love interest, they may or may not have that relationship yet. They may or may not. Their family relationships change. Sometimes they get better, sometimes they don't. The point is, the friendships are there for them. The friendships struggle. Friendships go up and down.
Speaker 2:So in the course of my story the women learn something. The main thing is they learn something about themselves that helps them. There's some revelation they have. Oh, I have to do this differently. I absolutely have to, because this illness is forcing that upon me. And what choices do I make? And what, what? What options do I have? And then what choices do I make based on that? And sometimes the options don't look good and they choose the lesser to evil. Sometimes they're like I don't want to do this. There's something I want to do and I can't. So what do I do Now that I've been going after this thing over here? It's absolutely blocked from me. How do I pick the pieces from there? I personally have dysautonomia. That's the umbrella term for a number of illnesses I've been diagnosed with. Dysautonomia means a dysfunction of the autonomic nervous system. So that basically means all the things your body does, that you don't have to think about Blinking digestion, heart rate, blood pressure, breathing, tear production.
Speaker 1:Yeah, just things that happen naturally yeah.
Speaker 2:All those things can go wrong. Now, for some people they all go wrong all the time. I mean, there are varying degrees for this. So I have POTS, which is Postural Orthostatic Cardiac Syndrome, which means I have a hard time when I stand up or I'm exercising. I have a hard time with my heart rate. Pots will make your heart rate go up. And you might think well, heart rate, well you know, not a big deal. However, the heart rate, when your heart rate goes up, your body system is all reacting to that. The rest of your body thinks, oh, I'm either fleeing from something or I'm exercising, and the rest of your body systems react accordingly, which is not fun. I also have orthostatic hypertension, which means when I stand up or exercise, blood pressure drops. So yeah, those two are also related. If your blood pressure drops, your heart rate increases.
Speaker 1:To try, to balance it. Oh my gosh yeah.
Speaker 2:And also I also have a problem with my blood vessels not working correctly so that the blood will sink down to my feet. If it's at your feet, it's not in your brain. If it's not in your brain, you're not thinking very well.
Speaker 1:And that's where brain fog comes in.
Speaker 2:That's what we're talking about yeah, yeah, yeah, and then also have temperature intolerance. Your internal thermometer is part of this autonomic nervous system and for a long time, for years, it was cold all the time, cold, cold, cold, cold. Didn't quite understand why it's part of this constellation of illnesses. Now, these different problems brain fog, poor circulation, having temperature intolerance they show up in a lot of different illnesses. A lot of different chronic illnesses have those.
Speaker 2:So it took me 35 years to get my diagnosis and I've been asked numerous times do you have chronic fatigue syndrome? Do you have fibromyalgia? Do you have to? I'd say no, are you diagnosing me with that strange disease? And they'll say no, no, no, I can't diagnose you with that, but you're going to be diagnosed with. I was never diagnosed with all the various things people told me I was going to be diagnosed with. So chronic illness is tricky for women. Fortunately, until the late 90s most women were not included. Sorry, I'm saying that wrong. In most studies of illnesses women were not included. They did the studies that met and so they didn't really understand illness in women and most women more women than men get a chronic illness. It's just more prevalent among women, and why they didn't see women I don't understand, although the common explanation was well because of the menstrual cycle, we didn't get good data, so we excluded women to get better data.
Speaker 1:But it's like the data is almost like irrelevant.
Speaker 1:You know I've talked about this quite a bit because even you know when products are being developed, medicines are being developed, they're tested on male subjects across the board, like male animals, male mice you know, like it's male subjects across the board, because it's easier to work with versus having to deal with women and all our things, which, I must say, the more I think about that, the more I say to myself I'm like, wouldn't you want to, like, divide into it and really dissect what is happening in women's bodies? I mean, imagine and I'm going to put my marketing hat on Imagine, imagine the followings on women that a product would get if we knew this was tested on women and we know that this was developed purely for us. And you know, even if it's things that are like information that's being released to us, data that's being released to us the amount of following that women would do just to find an answer. I mean, beth, I have to ask you, how long did you have to wait until you had a diagnosis?
Speaker 2:So I started having symptoms in 1985. I got my diagnosis in 2018, 35 years. I spent 35 years going to various doctors saying I've got these strange issues, not knowing to mention all of the issues to any one doctor, but I mentioned different things, and so I saw about four or five different cardiologists concerned about things, and I saw allergists, the GPs. I ended up in the emergency room with stuff. I just didn't know what was going on, and so that's why I got all these different not diagnosis these different suggestions.
Speaker 1:Suggestions of what we think it might be yeah.
Speaker 2:And I'd go to ask I'm not talking about that, and they'd say, no, you actually don't have that. And the way I got my diagnosis, funnily enough, was from Facebook. I was complaining, I was complaining, I am not surprised, keep going.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was complaining.
Speaker 2:I am anemic again. I'm going back for infusions again, really concerned. I'm tired, I'm dizzy, I'm sick of this. I wish I knew what to do. And I had a friend from my graduate school write to me and say you know what? Some of these things you described sound like something I have. Please call me. And so I called her with Jada for a while and she asked about my symptoms and what was going on, and she described what was going on for her. I said that sounds very similar. She said, okay, I have POTS. You need to talk to your doctor about that. So I went to my GP about that and she had never heard of POTS. She'd never heard of it. Now, that was 2017. I live in a small town, but yeah, she'd never heard of that. I had no idea. I had to look it up. It was like, oh well, good, yeah, all these different things, yeah, that could be. Yeah. I by then also, unfortunately, freaked myself out by Googling it.
Speaker 1:Of course. Of course I did Of course, as soon as you mentioned it, I Googled it to see what it was.
Speaker 2:Yeah, Now at the time just what the algorithm was doing. At the time it freaked me out Because the thing that came to the top was the discussion in the article about the form of POTS. That's fatal and I freaked out, I shut the laptop, I went away and I thought about that about a week later. I'm like wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. I've had these problems since 1985. Probably don't have the fatal one, because the fatal one.
Speaker 1:You die within five years of diagnosis. I can't believe you've lived for 35 years without an answer. I'm like I'm still blown away by the length of time. I mean I shouldn't be because I already know the research, because of what I do for a living, like I already know the barriers and I know how the ability to diagnose was for women. But to hear you say it is like mind boggling.
Speaker 2:It's much better now? Not much. And I have to say, as much as I don't like the fact that COVID rocked the world I mean it shook us to our core Definitely it really improved POTS research. A lot of the people who are diagnosed with long COVID actually have POTS. That's what they have. They have POTS, yeah. So it's sort of been quasi-reneved, as you know, long COVID Because the people who have long COVID sometimes recover from it. A slighter greater chance of recovering from that than if you're diagnosed with POTS particularly. No one seems to know why that is, but some people do recover from POTS-like symptoms that were caused by COVID and that is COVID, the virus, not the vaccine.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, no, I knew what you meant. Thank you for clarifying, though I have a question for you, beth, since you went through when did you start writing? When did I start learning no writing? When did you?
Speaker 2:start writing? When did I start learning?
Speaker 1:No writing. When did you start writing your books?
Speaker 2:I started writing in 2022.
Speaker 1:So my question to you here is you know I love that you took something and I'm going to say this every episode that I have a guest, because all of the guests that come here I am incredibly impressed with you took something that happened to you. You recognized that there was a gap and then you did something about it. Now I know my personal feelings on how writing impacts our lives and our mental health and everything about us, but I'm curious to hear your thoughts on if the writing was almost therapeutic in a way.
Speaker 2:Definitely. The writing has definitely been therapeutic for me. I think it also offers an opportunity for readers for it to be therapeutic as well. I know that readers read for a wide variety of reasons, and all the reasons are valid. Any reason you have for reading is a great reason to read. But I sort of think about it in three different levels. Some people read to escape or get away and there are plenty of things to escape from, but reading is a great way to get away from whatever is going on in the world that you want to get away from. You can also use your reading to connect with other women. I think book clubs are fantastic. I think book clubs offer opportunity. Different people suggest a book, and so that opens up your reading experience. It opens up your eyes to other genres and authors, that sort of thing. The group might have a focus on authors from a certain country, or it might have a focus on a certain genre, I mean, so you can really experience a wide variety of books you ordinarily wouldn't do for yourself. That's great. That's an opportunity there. Then there's also a level even deeper than that, and I've been learning about bibliotherapy. I've been studying about it.
Speaker 2:Now, I am not a psychiatrist, I'm not a psychologist, but it interests me a lot that people can use the journey that happens in a book and it is even your own life. You can compare it, you could translate, you could say what did this character learn that maybe I could learn? Or how did this character deal with things that I think really messed them up? You can look at it positively or negatively, but taking that character journey, taking what they've learned, taking how they do things and applying it to your own life, looking at your own life and reflecting, does this person have a similar childhood to what I have? Have they learned from it? Are they growing from it? Do I need to learn something from that? Or can I look at them and go, okay, I felt bad about my family, but now I can see what they have is worse. I mean, that's how I look at them.
Speaker 2:But sometimes you need to look at yourself and go, okay, I'm not that bad. So I didn't include any questions in my first book, but at the back of my second book, at the back of Radiant, I have journaling questions. Now you could use these in a book group. You certainly could use it that way, or you could take each question and spend some time and really dig into it and journal about it. But if you just want to read for entertainment, please read for entertainment few books.
Speaker 1:I was sharing with beth's listeners earlier that I and I think you've all heard me say I like to buy everyone's books that come on the show so I can read it and I want to hear about it Once I get to talk to the authors and I can hear your backstory. It's almost like I read the book and then I can see you. It's a very interesting thing for me. But some of the books that I've read had such a deep impact on me from, I mean, just another level, and I actually did do pretty much exactly what you just described where I. One of the books was pertaining to this woman's menopause journey and I'm in my early days, only 40, well, I'm turning 42, I think, or 43. I'm getting the further I go into my 40s, the more I'm like I don't really know what it is, but you know I'm, you know, getting in there a little bit. So I'm experiencing all the perimenopause bliss, if you will, and I started journaling about it because I read this woman's book and I saw her story and, while I'm not going through it quite as violently as like she did, it was also like what you said, almost like an eye opening experience for me to read it and be like, wow, like that's really awful, and then it's also making me more mindful, and the older I get, the further I go into this journey to be like, well, I'm noticing I'm starting to lean more towards like stuff that I don't want to experience, this Like let me make sure I talk to a doctor, and it's like it's helping me in that sense.
Speaker 1:And then there was another book that I had read from one of the women who came on the show.
Speaker 1:It was historical fiction, but it was around the women's movement, and reading that book really blew my mind as well and I journaled quite a bit about it because it gave such a different perspective and I was able to read, like what it was really like for young women in the 60s, 70s and 80s and like it's it explained to be honest with you explained so much to me that it made me think differently about my mom and things that she said to me, because I was like, oh my god, like this is what you were brought up, thinking this is what, how you were raised, and I'm over here like trying to figure out, like why don't you understand what I'm saying?
Speaker 1:Or why don't you understand my feelings it's because it was a whole different time, a completely different era. So that's like that is huge, and I think it's wonderful that you put journal prompts in the back of your book, especially for folks that are going through chronic illnesses and having to deal with this. And it's the whole, their whole lifetime is going to be affected by this. I know several young people that my children are friends with that have already been diagnosed with lifelong illnesses and you know the parents are doing what they can and they're making sure that the children are talking to people and becoming adjusted. And're making sure that the children are talking to people and becoming adjusted and like making sure that they're helping them through the journey, because this is, this is going to be a big journey.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know that. So I will do different illness for each book. For this one that's coming out Radiant, it's about ADHD, and so I had to do, I had to do research, I had to do some interviews. Think about this, Of course. What's your types of the computer? You get stuff.
Speaker 1:Oh, I've been about it.
Speaker 2:A 4U page. So my 4U feed was all kinds of things, all kinds of dirty, spicy things, which made me stop and go. Huh, oh, this kind of sounds like me.
Speaker 1:I know Huh.
Speaker 2:Oh, that kind of sounds like me. I know, huh. But also I recently wrote in the news that I set up that my aunt taught for the Lincoln Intermediate Unit out in Pennsylvania. I don't know if this is a nationwide thing, the Lincoln Intermediate, I think it's just a Pennsylvania thing. But it's a special designated program for some specific counties that give special educational assistance to all those counties.
Speaker 2:Some aunt didn't work for one school district, she worked for many school districts, so they all came together to put children in the classroom and so the population kind of changed over the years. She did some learning support, she did some learning disabled support, she went into neurological support. She did some learning disabled support. She went into neurological support, she did emotional support. So her classroom varied a little bit over time. But these were all kids with a variety of neuro-spiciness, we'll say, and how much it was varied the program changed. I mean, she did this for 29 years so it varied from year to year what population she was serving in that classroom. But I know that some of these are not so cut and dried and some of them so it's on a spectrum.
Speaker 2:Do you have a little bit, do you have a lot? Yeah, my son is nervous by his self. I took him in multiple no two times. I took him two times to be tested for autism. When I first took him in he was three. At that point they were very concerned about what was his language like. How was his language learning? Can he speak? I'm like, well, yes, I mean, that's not what I was concerned about. He had been looking at three. He'd already learned a hundred sight words.
Speaker 2:I mean he was a bright little boy, so the language component wasn't the problem that I've seen and they were teachers specifically geared toward dealing with children who had language difficulties. And so I'm like, oh no, he's not autistic. No, definitely not. Then later in third grade I have teachers coming and going. We've got some problems. He's doing some self-harming, he gets upset with something and this isn't normal. So I took him back and this psychologist said if only you brought him in six months earlier, because they just changed the DSM. They put out a new edition and they changed the designation. Like autism spectrum grew a little bit, the different classifications he were looking for changed. They took away, was sort of removed as a diagnosis. And the guy said if you brought me a little bit earlier you'd get the diagnosis of Asperger's, but not now. I'm like so what is he? He said let's just call him Spicy. He's Spicy, one thing.
Speaker 1:You just said. Let's just call him spicy. Yeah, he's spicy. One thing you just said. One thing you just said I do want to make clear for the listeners and viewers that are with us the guidelines that doctors follow are updated annually.
Speaker 1:In some instances every few years, new guidelines are released for diagnosis across all disease states. You will hear like and these are these organizations do this, where and they have all the top top doctors with them they come out with new diagnosis and guidelines and that's actually how things will shift, like you'll see. Like, for example, I think there's a stronger push now for doctors to actually speak with patients and sit and take time with them, and there's a lot of organizations that are coming out with inpatient advocacy groups that will come out with. You know, patient support tools that you can bring with you to an appointment, gynecology specifically. I know they have these things. If you look up online like I need a patient support tool for my appointment, I always forget to ask questions they have all these things available. So you know you can use the internet for this and find something that will help guide you.
Speaker 1:Something, beth, I wanted to say to you. You probably saw this in your research. I was actually a little surprised to read this that women majority of women will get diagnosed with ADHD in their adult life, during menopause. Because and I was reading it recently that it's like, because of the shift in hormones and menopause and because of everything that your body goes through, you likely had a VHD and figured coping mechanisms to be able to deal with it your whole life, but when you go through menopause you can no longer use those coping mechanisms because your body, your own brain, are starting to really break down and change and that veil starts to deteriorate and you can't use it anymore as a support.
Speaker 1:And I read that and I was like I've never been diagnosed, never really had like a problem with schoolwork, and you really won't hear me complain about that, but I am heavily reliant on making checklists for myself. I have to write it down, and even when I'm on phone calls, I need to have checklists for myself. I have to write it down and even when I'm on phone calls, I need to have notes generated for me. I need to have everything in writing in order for me to really understand it. And now I see it more and more that I'm like really leaning on these things. I'm like I need them.
Speaker 2:The thing my research has really taught me is there's no such thing as a normal brain. The fact that we talk about normal people is really a disservice to people. It doesn't matter what we're talking about, whether it's about your height or your weight, or your vision or your hearing or the way your brain functions. It's all on that bell curve. Now, I know the bell curve, for some people gives them hives because they think about school being great on the bell curve. Unfortunately, I know the bell curve, for some people gives them hives because they think about school being great on the bell curve, but unfortunately, that's where it is. That's where life is. Life happens on that bell curve that the majority of people happen at bigger parks. That's where there's more people falling. That's average. That's not normal. That's average.
Speaker 1:And you have higher and lower.
Speaker 2:You go out on the corners for the audience many people. So, yeah, we are somewhere on that bell curve, if you think about it that way, trying to teach Ives. But my aunt, the one who taught all these years at the LIU was saying that everybody has a disability of some kind. Everyone does of some kind. Everybody has a disability of some kind. Everyone does of some kind. Does she happen to work with the people who didn't know how to mask it or didn't know how to have some sort of adjustment for it? The people she worked with were the ones who couldn't figure out the coping mechanism. Yeah, Everybody has something they're struggling with, and to have this notion that other people aren't struggling and I'm weird is just not true.
Speaker 1:It's not, you know, the most interesting. One of the things that I found very interesting in this line of thought you know, in school systems now it you know can set up for your kid if they're having trouble, for IEPs, like they get an individualized education plan. And I remember when I was growing up it was like maybe one or two kids would get pulled from the class and they'd have to go to a special you know situation, and I remember it was kind of like I went to a really small school so nobody got made fun of in that way. But I remember there was almost like a you knew oh, they're not smart, they're not smart, like that's. That was the oh they're not smart, not smart, they need help, like they can't do it themselves. And it was like look down on now my children when the testing came around and everything, and I was told you know, oh, they're kind of like right there, they'll be okay, like leave them in mainstream, advocated for like no, like I want them to all get help now.
Speaker 1:Because I reflected back when I was struggling, like deeply struggling, in grammar school and that struggle followed me all the way to college for math and then I ended up like having to retake and take all these simple math courses just because I never got the help. So I advocated I wanted my kids to get extra help. Now, push them into it Like let's go, like, let's get them the proper tools. That way they know how to deal with this and they know how their brain works. And that's actually how I've presented it to them.
Speaker 1:You're all learning differently. Our brains are wired differently. The way that you're processing information is going to be different than your neighbor. Because if you think about it, like even now as an adult, I could be on a conference call with 10 other professionals and they're nine times out of 10, half of us hear one thing and half of us hear another thing. And the part that I think is most fascinating about kids now with IEPs and this when I was growing up I said one or two kids were getting fluxed from the class. Now it's like half the class, half the class is going and getting extra help. There isn't a stigma there anymore.
Speaker 2:That's what happens when we're more aware. It's not that more people have this problem. It's when we're more aware. It's not that more people have this problem, it's that we're more aware. And also, this notion of this is not a stigma. This is just life. There's no stigma in this at all. Saying this is not how my brain works is perfectly fine, like the people who at some point I mean in my parents' age, people who were punished for it with a left hand.
Speaker 1:Yes, why?
Speaker 2:My mom used to tell me stories about that, that the nuns would come around and beat the head, and the fact that when they stopped doing that, all these people not all 10% the number increased. It had been 1%. That when they let people do what is natural for them, it's up to 10. So it's not like left-handed is just taking over the world, it's not. It's just when you let people live what is comfortable for them and use that left hand and help them work with it. I mean, the world is built for readies. Yeah, oh yeah, absolutely. But there are, yeah, Absolutely. But there are ways to do things and there are lots of companies that have developed tools to help things.
Speaker 2:If you think about all the things that at one point were developed for disabilities, like if you use closed captioning, that's, for people who are hard of hearing or deaf, I love closed captioning and I use closed captioning all the time. All of are hard of hearing or deaf. I love closed captioning. I use closed captioning all the time, all of the time I use it all the time.
Speaker 1:I love it.
Speaker 2:The texting features that they've got. Those will be used for people who are hard of hearing as well. All these different features that we like. Having the different kitchen gadgets, I like the OXO tools have big chunky handles. Those were developed for people with arthritis but they're very popular. Ergonomic things were hands down.
Speaker 1:Ergonomic things.
Speaker 2:yep, they were originally designed for people either with pyrosis or losing the grip of arthritis. Who couldn't grip well? They were disability aids and now they're super popular.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and it's interesting too, and actually something that I do like is a step in the right direction is that a lot of things, media is developed and people with disabilities are considered in the development in a lot of it of like, well, we want, we want this, everyone's a view, this, we want everyone to be able to view and enjoy this like media that we're putting out there, like, how can we make it enjoyable for everybody? Like, so we have the closed captions now and you have the audio version and you have because you do want everyone to be able to see these things. You don't want anyone to be excluded.
Speaker 1:Beth, I think your books are so important for I mean, for everyone. Really, this is a bigger. This is bigger than you know. I know we're here and I always say I want the women's voice to be elevated because we need platforms, we need more platforms for that. But this is such a big deal because there's so many people suffering and they feel alone and they feel isolated and this is almost like showing them like there is a community. You're not alone in this, and especially in the more rural areas of New Jersey or, excuse me, in the United States you're not going to have that many people. You're not going to have a lot of people that are the same as you Maybe no one is the same as you and having being able to have a book that you can look at and read and see yourself is so incredibly important. So thank you for doing what you're doing Absolutely, and taking the time to do it. I mean that's.
Speaker 2:Well, I have plans in the future for more books, more ideas, more illnesses I want to touch on. So you know I'm working on book three and that woman, surprisingly enough, lives with POTS.
Speaker 1:I'd like to read that one. I'm very excited about these books. Listeners, I am going to link Beth's website and I'm going to link the books for Amazon they're on Amazon right now into the description so you can check them out as well. Beth, thank you so much for being on with me today and sharing your story.
Speaker 2:I'm so glad to talk to you this was a joy.
Speaker 1:Well, listeners and viewers, thank you so much for hanging out with us today and we will catch you on the next one. Take care.
