The crossword puzzles were supposed to be Jennifer Celeste Briggs’ biggest challenge of the day. Printed out at home, tackled in pencil with the kind of focus that pulls your attention away from everything else swirling around you. But by the time her daughter Sarah was six months old, Briggs found herself facing puzzles far more complex than anything the New York Times could offer.
While her mom friends celebrated their babies reaching for toys and rolling over, Sarah remained still. The milestones that other parents took for granted became question marks that kept Briggs awake at night. Was her daughter going to live? Would she learn to walk? To talk? The simple act of feeding became a calorie-counting marathon when Sarah was diagnosed with failure to thrive, turning grocery store trips into desperate searches for the highest-calorie foods money could buy.
This wasn’t the motherhood blueprint Briggs had imagined. But her journey from panic to acceptance would ultimately reveal how our most challenging detours can lead to the most profound transformations.
The Weight of Unmet Expectations
Before Sarah’s birth, Briggs had closed her massage therapy practice with clear intentions. “I always had known that I wanted to be a stay at home mom,” she said. Her own relationship with her mother was close and loving, and she dreamed of replicating that easy connection with her future children.
Reality arrived with seizures at six weeks, missed developmental milestones, and a parade of specialists. “I kept fighting this idea that I had a child with special needs,” Briggs explained. “Like, this happens to other people. This does not happen to me. I will just work my tail off and we will fix this situation.”
The gap between expectation and reality created its own kind of grief. When Sarah received a genetic diagnosis at age one, Briggs felt like she was “falling into a black hole.” But perhaps more devastating was her guilt about having those feelings at all. She was trapped in a cycle of grief and self-blame, thinking she shouldn’t feel disappointed about her daughter’s diagnosis.
This internal conflict reveals a universal truth about navigating life’s unexpected turns: we often compound our original pain by judging ourselves for having natural human reactions to difficult circumstances.
When the Blueprint Becomes a Prison
The early years brought what Briggs calls “survival mode.” Tracking calories, attending endless appointments, and watching other children hit milestones that seemed impossibly distant for Sarah created a constant state of hypervigilance. “I would be desperately looking at my watch of like, when is my husband getting home? I can’t stand another minute, I need a break,” she recalled.
The pressure to maintain normalcy while managing exceptional circumstances created its own trauma. Briggs found herself becoming what she called “this monster of a mother who was yelling, screaming at her beloved child.” The gentle parenting she’d witnessed in her own childhood seemed impossible to replicate when every interaction felt like a battle for Sarah’s development and survival.
This experience highlights how rigidly holding onto our original plans can become a source of suffering when life demands flexibility. Briggs’ attachment to her vision of “normal” motherhood prevented her from seeing the unique beauty in her actual experience with Sarah.
The Pivot Point: Meeting Your Child Where They Are
The transformation began when Briggs remembered something from her past. Years earlier, as a college student struggling with her own happiness, she’d read “Sunrise” by Barry Neal Kaufman. The book told the story of parents who refused to institutionalize their severely autistic son and instead created an intensive home program based on acceptance and joy.
“What do we do when our kids are struggling and pulling away from us?” Amy Stone asked during their conversation.
The answer, Briggs discovered, lay in the Sunrise program’s core philosophy: meet your child exactly where they are, without judgment or agenda to change them. When Sarah was four and still not talking, Briggs made the decision to train in this approach, creating what she called “Sarah’s” program.
The shift was immediate. “I was different with her,” Briggs said. Instead of trying to stop Sarah’s repetitive behaviors, she joined them as a way to connect. Instead of seeing Sarah’s differences as problems to solve, she began celebrating them as part of who Sarah was.
The Multiplication Effect of Acceptance
This decision to embrace rather than fight Sarah’s autism created ripple effects throughout their entire family system. The program required volunteers, which meant opening their home and their story to a community of supporters. Briggs’ sister-in-law flew across the country to help. Her mother became an integral part of the support team. Friends became volunteers who developed lasting relationships with both daughters.
“Our house was filled with volunteers coming and going,” Briggs explained. “It was like our house was this busy, loving, creative hub of activity.” What had started as isolation and desperation transformed into connection and community.
The support network also meant that Sarah’s younger sister Amy received individual attention instead of being overlooked in favor of Sarah’s more intensive needs. “If I had to volunteer with Sarah, then I was with Amy. And if I was with Sarah, then I had a volunteer with Amy,” Briggs said.
This reveals a crucial insight about managing family challenges: the willingness to be vulnerable and ask for help can actually strengthen relationships rather than strain them.
Redefining Success and Transformation
The traditional success story would end with Sarah being “cured” of her autism. But Briggs’ book, “Watching Sarah Rise,” tells a different story. Sarah still needs significant support. The family still faces medical mysteries and behavioral challenges. But the entire experience of being Sarah’s family has been transformed.
“Sarah actually still needs a ton of help,” Briggs acknowledged. “But it transformed our whole experience as a family coming together. It transformed my experience as a mom to not feel so guilty and to feel more empowered.”
Today, Sarah can swim, ride a bike, and cross the street independently. More importantly, she and her mother have learned to navigate their conflicts with grace. “We are both stubborn and determined and we want to have things our way,” Briggs laughed. “And sometimes we don’t agree with each other and then fireworks. And, you know, after that we come back, we make up, we apologize, we hug.”
The relationship isn’t the effortless connection Briggs once dreamed of with her own mother, but it’s authentic and full of love.
The Universal Application
While Briggs’ story centers on autism and special needs parenting, her insights apply far beyond those circumstances. The challenge of accepting people as they are rather than who we want them to be shows up in every relationship. Parents struggle with teenagers who reject their values. Spouses clash when partners don’t meet their expectations. Friends drift apart when life takes them in different directions.
The Sunrise program’s approach—celebrating who someone is rather than trying to change them—offers a framework for navigating any relationship where our blueprints don’t match reality.
“You can be a totally imperfect parent and you can still make a huge difference for your child,” Briggs concluded. “It’s the mental model and framework of how to meet your kid where they are and to not judge anything as wrong with them or amiss, but just really to celebrate who they are and celebrate who you are as a parent.”
This perspective transforms struggle from something to endure into something that can deepen connection and create unexpected joy.
The crossword puzzles still offer Briggs a refuge of focused attention, but they’re no longer her biggest challenge. She’s learned that life’s most difficult puzzles don’t always have neat solutions—but they can lead to discoveries more beautiful than anything we originally planned.
This article was inspired by an interview with Jennifer Celeste Briggs and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. https://imperfect-adulting.captivate.fm/listen https://www.youtube.com/@imperfectadulting To hear more compelling conversations like this one and receive special offers from our guests directly to your inbox, join our email community today.
Interview Transcript Text
Amy Stone [00:00:08]:
Celeste Briggs, welcome to the art of imperfect adulting. I’m happy you’re here. Are you ready for a fun chat?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:00:14]:
I am. Thank you for having me.
Amy Stone [00:00:16]:
I’m happy you’re here. I start all of my conversations asking my guests what part of the world they call home. So where are you?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:00:23]:
I’m in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Amy Stone [00:00:26]:
Love it. What is next question. Warm up. Question number two. What is one of your favorite ways or something that you like to do that is a transition from being busy, being occupied, to relaxing or downtime?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:00:41]:
This might actually count as my downtime, but I love doing crossword puzzles, especially ones that are a little bit challenging, like right at my edge. I find that actually is very relaxing because it takes all of my focus away from whatever else I was thinking about.
Amy Stone [00:00:57]:
I love that answer. So do you do the New York Times crossword puzzle?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:01:01]:
Yes, but I’m, like, a couple months behind. I print them out at home, and.
Amy Stone [00:01:05]:
I print them out at home. And then the big crossword puzzle question is, do you do this in pencil or pen?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:01:12]:
Oh, pencil. Absolute.
Amy Stone [00:01:16]:
There you go. All right, There we go. Topic of the day, not how people do crossword puzzles. I actually don’t do crossword puzzles. It’s a. But I have crossword puzzle fans in my friend group and my family. But that’s how I knew that question. But that’s not actually what we’re here to talk about. We’re going to talk about your relationship within your family with your daughter and her unique genetics and diagnosis and how that changed your life. So I have a question to start with because I don’t like to leave things hanging for the audience, but is your daughter an only child, or are there more children in your family?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:01:51]:
I have two daughters, and the oldest is Sarah, who has special needs and is on the autism spectrum. And then Amy is her younger sister.
Amy Stone [00:01:59]:
All right, very good. So you answered the next question right away before I could even ask it. But so what we’re talking about today is an autism diagnosis. And that’s the experience that you had.
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:02:11]:
That blipped out just for a second.
Amy Stone [00:02:14]:
Okay, so what we’re talking about today is the autism diagnosis and how finding out about that and living with that is changed, really, life.
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:02:23]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:02:24]:
Fantastic. All right, so I think this is my opinion. I’m not experienced. I don’t have the expertise to be called an expert on this. But it’s my opinion that in 2025 today, probably most people have heard about autism. This is something that I would think, and I would actually think that a lot of the people in the audience have heard, have contact and relations with somebody who has been diagnosed in some way within their, within their networks. But I personally think that this story is important because knowing that something exists and having distant connection to it is very different from when we experience something by ourselves. Right. So to know that autism is a thing is very different than raising a child in your family is my opinion. So before your daughter was diagnosed, thinking back, what did you know about autism?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:03:22]:
Not very much in terms of direct contact with people. But when I was in college, so many, many years before I had Sarah, I read the book called Sunrise by Barry Neal Kaufman and I thought it was amazing. And that’s about Barry Neal Kaufman and his wife Samaria Light Kaufman, creating the Sunrise program for their son Ron, who was diagnosed as severely autistic in the 1970s. They, many specialists thought that he was deaf because he was so unresponsive. They did not believe as his parents that he was, but they knew that he needed some sort of support and help. He was very much in his own world and they were told to put him in an institution. And they looked at those institutions and said, no, that’s not what we’re doing. So they converted a room in their house that was a bathroom to be a playroom for him. And they spent hours individually and training volunteers to spend one on one time with him. And he transformed from being non verbal and non responsive to being extremely responsive and able to interact easily with them and with his world over the course of three years. And so I read that book and was like, wow, holy cow. That was so transformative for Ron as the kid. It was amazing for the parents. I almost think that would be an incredible thing for me to do. And then I continued in my college life. I did do a training program at the Option Institute, which is sort of like a sister organization to the Autism Treatment center of America where they teach people to run Sunrise programs. So I had been up there studying with bears. That’s what Barry Neal Kaufman is called by those who know him, Bears and Samaria. I had studied with them all about how as anyone moving through their world, how I could take more responsibility for my experience and my happiness or unhappiness rather than blaming my circumstances. And how could I look at my own beliefs, you know, as I was going through college of beliefs about who I was supposed to be in the world or was I a bad person? Because blah, blah, blah, because I was really struggling with how to be happy in my life, which is why My mom and stepdad gave me the book Sunrise and gave me Barry Neal Kaufman’s book Happiness is a Choice. And both of those really, really opened my eyes to just a different way of being in the world of be not blaming my circumstances. So that was all kind of in my. In my cells, in my back pocket, whatever, however you describe it, when Sarah was born. And yet that wasn’t what I turned to first. It was like, oh, yeah, I know that’s out there, but we’re just in survival mode over here. And I didn’t have an autism diagnosis right away. We didn’t even know anything was amiss right away. It was kind of like this slow build of, something’s a little different here. How do we support her? What does she need? How are we surviving?
Amy Stone [00:06:21]:
There was a lot in there to unpack. Okay, so that is really. So you were. Your parents gave you a pair of books. Maybe not at the same time, but Happiness Is a Choice and Sunrise, because you were searching for yourself. You were searching. You were searching for yourself. And so that I was wondering, why would you read the book Sunrise if you weren’t. If. Whether that was assignment, whether or not it leaned into your interest professionally, so on and so forth. But so you had that in your back pocket. And so I would say. I’m going to say you had a little more exposure to this than maybe other people who had not gone through that. I had never actually heard of that book Sunrise, so that is really interesting. Okay, so you shared a second ago, and you shared with me on the intake form for the show that the first few years with your daughter were challenging. With Sarah were challenging. So talk to us a little bit more about when was it that you got the diagnosis? Because. And I don’t. I don’t. The. The few things that I’ve learned about through friends of mine who’ve lived a similar story and people have known through my community is that it’s not uncommon that in the beginning, you don’t know. There’s a delay in finding out these things. So share with us a little bit about how. How you. The awareness of this and what the challenges were those first few years.
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:07:43]:
I would say it was within the first couple months that we had our first little tiny bit of worry when Sarah had some seizures, and we went in for the overnight eeg, and of course, it never happened in the hospital. And then it didn’t really happen after that. We were like, okay, we’re good. And then that was when she was six and eight weeks old. Then by the time she was six months old. And I was going, you know, getting together once a week with my little group of mom friends who had babies about the same age. And I was noticing that they were starting to do things like reach for toys, roll over, pick up their heads, all these things. I was like, sarah’s not doing that. And so that began a process of seeing so many specialists, so many doctors, getting early intervention, coming to the house with occupational therapy and. And physical therapy, eventually speech therapy. I would take her to places for speech therapy, also to help with her eating, because my milk supply just decided to have a little hiccup at about the same time that all the parenting books say it’s time to move your baby onto solids. And I was like, okay. And she was like, not happening. So then I was supplementing with formula, and I started trying to do anything I could to get her to eat because she was diagnosed as failure to thrive, which means she’s not gaining weight as fast as the doctors want. And they. They were worried and kept saying, well, we can give you another month, and if her weight doesn’t go up by this much, then we’ll need to consider a feeding tube. And in hindsight, I can say, oh, well, feeding tubes. Lots of people have feeding tubes. That might have been a good idea and helped me be less stressed, but I really, really, really didn’t want it because I. I think I kept fighting this idea that I had a child with special needs. Like, this happens to other people. This does not happen to me. I will just work my tail off and we will fix this situation. And no one will ever know that we went through this. That was in the back of my mind. And so I would go to the grocery store and I would pick up every bit of food and look for what was the highest calorie, regardless of nutrition. And I would track her calories. I would only give her healthy food, like pureed carrots. If she had had enough butter pats in the day to surpass her calorie need. So. So that was stressful. And she didn’t do tummy time the way other babies do tummy time. She would shove her face into the carpet. Like, the idea is, even if your child doesn’t like it, they’re still going to pick their head up and strengthen their muscles. Not her. She was like, I’m not doing that. So everything was really stressful. I mean, we also, I want to say, like, of course I also took walks with her, and it was great. And it was snuggly. And I would look at her and be like, you’re the cutest baby I’ve ever seen. I could just get lost staring at you forever. So. So there were lots of wonderful parts, and we adored her from the very first moment. And there was this panic of, is my child going to live? Is she going to make it? Is she going to learn to roll over? Is she going to reach for toys? Is she going to walk? Is she going to talk? And seeing all the specialists and going for appointments and MRIs and trying to figure out what’s going on, why is this child different? So at about a year, they did diagnose her as having a genetic difference from other babies. So that was basically our answer. That was like, okay. And that’s a part of our story that I keep private until she’s ready to share. And I also don’t want anyone who’s inspired by our story to think, oh, well, we don’t have that, so this doesn’t apply. I think the Sunrise program has been and can be used to help so many people in so many different situations, especially just for the parents. Like, it really changed my outlook on everything.
Amy Stone [00:11:29]:
And so that’s about a year. So at about a year, you get information. You get about a genetic. A genetic difference.
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:11:37]:
Yeah.
Amy Stone [00:11:38]:
I’m going to pause here for a second and just reflect on some of the things, because you’ve lived this and so you recounted some things I think I want to validate. I heard you say that there were highlights and wonderful, touching moments and connection between you and your new baby, which is really good to hear. Febrile seizures at six weeks. That must have been terrifying. Absolutely terrifying. And the pressure on parents, the comparative pressure of the milestones that other babies are going through, that’s tough. That’s really, really tough. And when you. Because babies do. So listen, we all know babies, they grow at all different times, right? Fine. But when your baby is off on the calendar and it’s stressful, it’s really, really stressful. And then failure to thrive, that’s terrifying. Like when you’ve got a baby, like, the baby’s job, like, that first year of life. Right. Is to grow. It’s the only time in the human experience where we celebrate gaining weight with, like, fireworks and, you know, you know, yay, look how big you’re getting. Right. That’s like, the only time in the American experience. And when the doctor comes in, it’s like, your baby’s not gaining weight. You must absolutely have just been stressed out to, like, I just A really, really. Those things sound very challenging to me. I just want to honor that. I think that was very hard. And you really went through a lot, so. And then you were doing the tour of specialists, which is what I call the. The run around town. Anytime there’s anything going on with anybody medically these days, it’s not like a one stop shop. It’s like you have to see every doctor that’s ever had a medical license in their whole life. You get genetic testing at a year. That to me says that you were really. You were in a lot of offices and trying a lot of things that they did. That. That’s like a. That’s like a flag in this story that you had really progressed. People were paying attention. You were running the tests. You were not poo pooed by, like, the doctor saying, this is not a big deal. One time I took one of my kids to the dermatologist for eczema, just regular eczema. And it was very serious for me. I thought. I was very alarmed by it. And then she showed me pictures of serious eczema and. Which were so much worse than what we were going through. And I was like, thank you very much. I understand that I am not actually having a problem at this moment. I have. My perspective has been realigned, and I appreciate it. Yours was the opposite. You were getting tests and you were getting results. Okay, so you have the genetic results. Are people saying to you at that time, autism at a year, or was it later?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:14:08]:
No, that was later. So when they first got that genetic diagnosis, I kind of felt like I was falling into a black hole. And it was really, really emotionally hard. And I was not only feeling grief about that. This was our situation. But then I was blaming myself for having these feelings of grief, thinking, why, you know, I shouldn’t be feeling this way. So that was a long process to realize that the way through and to love Sarah more clearly and cleanly and fully was to let myself have all of those messy feelings that I thought were horrible to have, and then I could be on the other side. And over those first few years, then things did start getting easier. By age 3, she was walking, she learned some sign language. We made a board with pictures of food so she could point to what she wanted. So that started making the whole eating process a little bit better, and she just started liking to eat a little bit more. Although we were still giving her ice cream anytime she would ask, because ice cream has great calories. And then when she was four and a half, she still Was not talking, but we were sort of out of that desperate mode of, is she going to live? It was like, okay, yeah, things are challenging. She needs help. But, like, we’re okay. But we started wondering if she was kind of pulling away from us a little bit with her attention, and she still was not talking. And that is when I thought, hmm, maybe it’s time for me to learn how to run a sunrise program, which we called sarahs because of Sarah. And it was after I did my first week of training that I got the autism diagnosis for her. And at that point I was like, well, great. I’m already doing the thing that I know is best to do or that I believe is best to do to help someone with autism. So I’m like, ahead of the game here.
Amy Stone [00:15:58]:
That is really interesting. All right, so this is quite an adjustment. The adjustment from not being a parent to being a parent is a big adjustment. Even if everything, you know, if the baby spend the entire time they’re growing, reading the books on how they’re supposed to develop and everything goes on schedule, it’s a big change. To really understand how much your life changed, I’d like to rewind a little bit and talk about what your life was like before you became a parent. So, like, before, when you were. Like before you were having a parent, what were you. What were you doing? Were you working? Did you have hobbies? Like, what was life like for you?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:16:30]:
Yeah, I had my own massage therapy practice and. And that was as full time as I felt like I could do, sort of to keep going. And I was also an Alexander Technique teacher. That’s about how people sort of interface with their world in a way where they’re still staying aware of themselves. Because a lot of times we have habits, like around the computer where you kind of sink down or you’re in your phone and. Or I was working really hard, giving massages. I would like. I was bending my legs because they had said, use your body weight, but my legs weren’t actually supporting me. And then I was working really hard with my thumbs. And so I. I thought I’d have to give up because I was having such pain. And then started my training in the Alexander technique, and it saved my career. So then I did the training to be a teacher there. So I was. I was teaching at a massage school a little bit, and I guess that was actually, no, I had not started teaching at the massage school because I finished my Alexander training when I had Sarah.
Amy Stone [00:17:31]:
All right.
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:17:32]:
But I was a massage therapist and I was loving that and it was great. But I always had known that I wanted to be a stay at home mom. List of who came out when I gave birth. So I closed my practice before she was born and then I was home full time for two years before deciding to start working a tiny bit again in a very part time way.
Amy Stone [00:17:58]:
All right, so you really. So it was always your intention to go all in with a new baby, so that part of it you were committed to before you ever had to make the change. Okay, so the next question I have for you is maybe not great. In every interview, I find that I ask a question that may not be a fabulous question, but I ask them anyway. Okay. So I would love for you to think back to before you became a mom and before your daughter was born and think about what your dreams were about, what motherhood would be like, if you remember. And this, that’s the reason I think that this is like a weird question because you’ve lived it and you have the experience. And so to remember what the dreams were may or may not make sense, but I think that in this conversation it’s helpful to see what the difference is like and what you were, what you were giving up as you went through this. So what were your dreams before you had kids of what mother for you would be like?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:18:56]:
From the earliest moment, I remember learning that I could be a mom. I wanted to be a mom. So I was thrilled to then get that opportunity. And my mom and I have a very wonderful, close, loving relationship. And so that’s what I wanted. I wanted to have kids that I would connect with as easily as my mom and I do. And I would say that Sarah and I adore each other. We love each other so much. And we also clash with each other in a way that my mom and I never did that. We are both stubborn and determined and we want to have things our way. And sometimes we don’t agree with each other and then fireworks. And, you know, after that we come back, we make up, we apologize, we hug, we snuggle, we talk about what, how we got off, we say getting on the wrong ball or the wrong litter box or the wrong bicycle, whatever is the metaphor of the day. And then it was a big decision to have a second child that was like, well, are we going to do this? Can we do this? We wanted to wait until Sarah was, we said walking, talking and feeding herself. And we got the walking and feeding herself. She wasn’t quite talking when we decided to go ahead and have another child. And I think it’s with Amy, Sarah’s younger sister, where I have that connection that is similar to what I have with my mom, where it’s just easy to be together and we don’t have to work at it. And we just align so much in our sense of humor and how we move through the world. And certainly we have some personality differences, but that Jose, thank goodness that’s easy because. Because it’s definitely been harder with Sarah and I. Also, my parents didn’t yell at me. I was a very good kid. I was a very easy kid, as they remind me. And so. So then when I was struggling with Sarah and I was sometimes becoming in my mind, this monster of a mother who was yelling, screaming at her beloved child, like we’d be screaming at each other. And then I was like, how is this me? Who is this? This was not what was modeled to me. I don’t know what is going on, but it felt like I was sort of desperately grasping for straws of how to survive in these situations, of I’m supposed to parent this person and get her to do XYZ and she doesn’t want to do it, and I am drowning with how I’m supposed to manage, and I’m not managing very well, and my temper is coming out and, oh, my gosh, this is a much harder path than I thought it was going to be.
Amy Stone [00:21:42]:
There’s a lot in there to unpack. You mentioned that you didn’t have this modeled for you, so you weren’t going into this situation with an example. And then it sounds like, and these are my words, not yours, that when it wasn’t working, sometimes the way you had seen it modeled or you wanted to create, you were having this experience. You were like, who have I become? How can I be this person? And it’s very easy at that point to internalize it and say, this is my fault. I’m doing something wrong. And I think that’s a painful. And it’s not the only place that we do that. I think it’s very human. I think it’s very natural. I think most of us do it. All right, so we’ve talked about some of the pressures and some of the challenges that you were going through. And so you’ve got. You’ve got a routine. You’re going through these challenges. You add another child. I love all the children in my family, but adding more people to the family is not a simplification tool. It doesn’t make anything simpler. I want to talk a little bit about the pressure and strain that having a special needs child and autism with autism in your family put on you and your family and the relationships that you were going and your support network. Right. So how did you guys rise to the challenge? How did you, or did you have some low points along the way where it really strained the support network of your family?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:23:03]:
I feel very lucky that although things have been hard, I don’t feel like it strained the relationship like with my husband or my parents or anything. If anything, it brought us closer together. And I think it was really helpful that I decided to run the Sunrise program for Sarah when Amy was like half a year old, no less than she was less than half a year when I was like, I’m going to go do this training now. So. So that meant we reached out to family and needed help in a way that we wouldn’t have if Sarah was just on her own. And I think that that actually made everything better. So my mom came up with me to Massachusetts to do the. While I was taking the classes for training of how to run the Sunrise program, my mom was hanging out with Amy and I would go feed her on my breaks or then the next year I went for two additional weeks of training and at that point I didn’t need to be feeding Amy because she was eating solid foods. But my mom still came up to take care of Amy because she couldn’t be apart from me for a week. I was apart from Sarah for those weeks of training. Each one was a standalone week and then my husband had to reduce his work hours and his sister flew across the country from Seattle to help and take care of Sarah while my husband was working. And I think that helped strengthen the connection with my sister in law, Sonia. And eventually she actually became my full time helper. And I think it was, it was kind of like laying a groundwork. We didn’t know we were laying for her to come to help. Just while I did the training and reaching out, then I reached out to get volunteers because I wanted to do a program that was full time enough that it couldn’t just be me doing the one on one time with Sarah. I was going to have to have volunteers. Now some families decide, oh, we’re just going to do, we’re going to change our lifestyle a little or we’ll just do a couple hours a day and then it’s just one or two parents doing it and they still can see differences. Like I saw differences as soon as I started interacting with Sarah as soon as I got back from my training and was, I was different with her. But I knew I wanted to spend a lot of time and so that meant asking for volunteers. And that supported Amy in a way. Like it gave her this one on one attention because she was so little, she needed that while I was with Sarah and I think if we hadn’t done the program, if we hadn’t had the volunteers, my attention would have been so much on Sarah and Amy would have gotten the short end of the stick, like nobody’s business. Whereas this way if I had to volunteer with Sarah, then I was with Amy. And if I was with Sarah, then I had a volunteer with Amy. And her volunteers became some of her best buds. And Sarah’s volunteers, many of them are still a very important part of our life. And in those very early years before I started the program, I would be desperately looking at my watch of like, when is my husband getting home? I can’t stand another minute, I need a break. And then when our house was filled with volunteers coming and going, and especially when I had my sister in law helping and helping with the food prep and the cleanup and everything, it was like our house was this busy, loving, creative hub of activity. And so if my husband had a work meeting come up and had to work a little later, it was like, okay, well maybe I’m a little annoyed, but a lot of times I just wasn’t as stressed so I could handle it better. It wasn’t all on him to come be my help.
Amy Stone [00:26:37]:
Okay, that is so powerful. So what I heard you say, and I’ll recap it so you can let me know if I’m taking the right thing out of this, is that you asked for support, you went to your network and you were open and in various ways and at different times you leaned into the people around you. And that is why you were able to be, to not have extreme stress on the relationships. I think that’s a really important designation because it’s very easy to sort of close the circle the wagons and get real quiet when we’re facing challenges and try and do it all ourselves. So I think that’s really, I think that’s a great, great reflection. Okay, so there are, I’m going to estimate with my zero knowledge that there are probably thousands of tough choices that you made in the first few years of Sarah’s life. And you have been talking about the Sunrise program that you started when she was 4. So this is based on a book and I’d love for you to talk a little bit more about what it is you talked about that you Went through some training then. So we know a little bit about how you discovered it. What was. Did you just wake up and say, because you started doing this before you got the diagnosis of autism, so walk us through a little tiny bit about how you were making that decision. Like, I’m going to do this.
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:28:03]:
Yeah, Well, I knew. I heard. I think separate from the Sunrise book, I had heard about a family that had been dealing with extreme feeding issues and challenges and who took their child up for an intensive. That I knew that the Autism Treatment center of America offered intensives where you show up with your kid and family members, and they work with your kid and they work with you, and they are really helping you work through your own issues and feelings around your child and meet your child where they are and not need them to be any different. And that is the premise of the Sunrise program, really. But so I. I knew about that, and. And I think it. I was just thinking, as she was four and not talking, it was like, well, what if I just take her up there for an intensive and they fix her and then she starts eating more easily and gets the nutrition that she needs, and then she starts talking and it’ll be great. And I. I called them and talked to a family specialist who was like, well, you could do that, but we really recommend that you come first for the training and start your own program so that you know you can make a difference on your own. It’s not us making the difference. So I said, fine, and I went up. But I think it was really feeling like, we’ve tried everything. She’s still not talking. We’re getting her speech therapy. Like, we need to do something. And so it was sort of like a desperation to do something more, but also the lack of the desperation that had gripped me for those early, earliest years of, like, I actually felt like I had space to breathe and think about it, because I wasn’t worried about her just surviving.
Amy Stone [00:29:46]:
Okay, so it sounds a little bit like it’s like, all right, so you needed the. You were searching for resources, and the answer was like, you have to become the resource in order to have what you were looking for. So you start this, and you name it. Sarah Rise after your daughter and you’ve written a book. Those are two very intentional things to do. It’s something that strikes me about this conversation as we go through, is that there’s many times where you very intentionally did the work to create what you wanted. Starting the program, writing the book, monitoring the food. Like, monitoring the food. Very detailed. Like this Is, this is how we’re going to. You were very aware that you wanted to be a mom that was home full time. These all feel like very intentional choices. So you make this choice, and you didn’t have to do this. You didn’t have to write the books. Why did you feel that this was a significant or important thing that you wanted to do?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:30:44]:
I wanted to share our story because when I very first started the program for Sarah, I started writing emails to my parents and best friends saying, this is what we’re doing. And, wow, Sarah just said something new. And then as I got volunteers, I added them to the list. And. And as friends would ask, oh, how is Sarah doing? I started adding. And Sarah’s speech therapist, who then became a paid volunteer with our program, he kept saying, why don’t you turn this into a blog? I think this could help other parents. So eventually I did. And then I kept writing, and the blog list kept growing, and people kept saying, when are you going to turn this into a book? I think this could help other parents. And it was. You know, I had many false attempts because I would sit down and I would start and I would feel completely overwhelmed about how to tell our story. And then during the COVID shutdown, I was like, oh, I think it’s time. And I think I actually understand how to begin now of the process of going through all my past updates and just copy and paste all the parts that I think are good and put them into one big document and then work from there. And it was a long slogan with an editor. And then when I thought it was all ready, then I gave it to my husband. I thought, you know, I just want him to sign off and say, this is amazing. And instead, he got really serious down with his eraser and his pencil. And that. That brought some fraught moments, but we needed to make it shorter anyway. And his feedback was really, really good. And I think it did shape it up. And I think for Ron Kaufman, the original Sunrise kid, he transformed so much that I think people could meet him and never know. It was like my dream vision of, like, oh, I’ll work hard enough and people will never know. Sarah had an issue. And then I came to realize that the important part that I really felt strongly about sharing was that Sarah actually still needs a ton of help. But it transformed our whole experience as a family coming together. It transformed my experience as a mom to not feel so guilty and to feel more empowered and to trust what I knew about her and how to work with her and how to Celebrate her and not stop her repetitive behaviors, but join her in them as the way to connect. And I wanted to share, to be like, look, you can be a totally imperfect parent and you can still make a huge difference for your child, and your child could still need a ton of help. But I can’t imagine if I hadn’t done this, because now, yeah, we still have our issues. We definitely do, and our medical mysteries and our challenges and our temper clashes. But also, we can just go to the pool and she can swim and she can go for a bike ride, or I can walk to the mailbox with her and trust her. Now, she is pretty good at crossing the street by herself. And it’s like, wow, I feel like I can relax and enjoy her and she can enjoy her life and her connections with people and talk about streak. We have to work to actually remind her when to be quiet. And that is so amazing. And I’m so glad that I worked my butt off to help her. And not that everybody who goes through a sunrise program learns to speak. That’s not in the cards for everybody. There’s no guarantee of what is going to happen, but it’s just. I think it’s the mental model and framework of how to meet your kid where they are and to not judge anything as wrong with them or amiss, but just really to celebrate who they are and celebrate who you are as a parent, and that that’s how you can be clean and clear and help them the most.
Amy Stone [00:34:33]:
That’s a beautiful sentiment. I think it goes way past having a child with a health diagnosis and kind of to the core of, like, relations with people in our. And people we interact with and that we love. I think that most people have a really innate desire to be valued and seen and heard just for who they actually are and how they see themselves. And yet within families, it can be a really, really big ask to say, hey, just accept people for who they are without trying to change them. It’s not always easy for people to do. And one of the places that we see that struggle very famously that shows up in, like, stereotypes and comedy and movies is the. Is the shift from being a child to being an adolescent. And you see the parents trying to shape it and why are you. Why are you acting out when, you know, they just want to. They just want to grow up. They want to grow up and be their own independent selves. All right, so in a second, we’re going to do the final questions. I want to give you a chance to talk directly to the audience and tell them how they can find you online if they want to connect with you after the show.
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:35:45]:
Yeah, My website is watchingsarahrise.com and that has links to my Facebook and Instagram where I show up as Jennifer celestebriggs, author. You can also find me on Goodreads. Just searching for Jennifer Celeste Briggs.
Amy Stone [00:35:58]:
That is fantastic. So the book is called Watching Sarah Rise. I’m going to put the links to the popular bookstores. In the show notes, you have a special offer for the audience which I think is really fantastic, which is that if people purchase the book and then reach out to you and let people, you know, that they got it by they found out about it from the show, you will send them a free signed book plate. I think that’s very cool. And I want to say thank you very much for making that offer to the audience. For everybody who’s watching and listening, the easiest way to get some of these links, especially like the specialized links to, like, bookstores, is to be a subscriber to the imperfect adulting email community, because then I zap it to you right into your email box. So I always throw that in at every single episode to encourage people to sign up. All right, are you ready, Jennifer, for the final three questions? Very good. I write these before I talk to people and so I never know. But this first one, I think I’m going to answer for myself without even. But I’m going to ask it anyway. Do you consider yourself more of an introvert or an extrovert?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:36:59]:
Oh, you know, I learned from my daughter Amy that there is such a thing as an ambivert. And I think that’s me. I actually love connecting with people and I know many introverts can. If I had to pick introvert or extrovert, I would say introvert because that’s how I recharge, is I need quiet time by myself. And I often have to remind myself that I need that time because as a parent, that really went out the window.
Amy Stone [00:37:26]:
I would have absolutely put you in the extrovert category based on the fact that you reached out to people on your own initiative. But, you know, that’s the way. And I think I am just gonna say this. I think that everybody would be. So if you. If it’s a multiple choice question and you have to choose introvert, extrovert or ambivert, probably all of us fall into the ambivert because we’ve got qualities of both in, in. In all of us. But. So that was a delightful answer. Okay, now, when you were in high school, what was your favorite musical artist or band? Do you remember? And are you willing to share with the public?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:38:01]:
Oh, yeah. I was hardcore into the monkeys and the hooters.
Amy Stone [00:38:06]:
Very nice. I love it. I love that question. All right, very good. If you won a free all expenses paid vacation and it’s multiple choice, you have to choose one of the selection, which would you choose? An all inclusive beach resort, a mountain retreat, camping or glamping in the wilderness, or a luxury hotel in a city with museums and culture? Which is the one that tickles your fancy?
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:38:30]:
That is tough. But, Rob, is this just me by myself or with the whole family?
Amy Stone [00:38:35]:
You get to choose. So that’s an open ended. That’s an open ended question part. But it’s your fantasy, so you get to choose.
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:38:41]:
All right, then I would do the beach with my family because we all love it. And that’s a place where my kids can play happily for hours with no technology and my husband and I can just kind of sit back and read a book. And it is marvelous.
Amy Stone [00:38:55]:
Fantastic answer. That’s it. Jennifer Celeste Briggs, thank you so much for being a wonderful guest today on the show.
Jennifer Celeste Briggs [00:39:02]:
Thank you for having me.