Navigating Mom Guilt and Finding Purpose In Parenthood

Amy Stone [00:00:04]:
Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting.

Alyssa Brade [00:00:07]:
Thank you so much for having me, Amy.

Amy Stone [00:00:10]:
I’m happy you’re here. Are you ready for a fun chat?

Alyssa Brade [00:00:13]:
So excited.

Amy Stone [00:00:14]:
Yay. All right. I begin every interview asking people where on the blue marble they are. Where do you call home these days?

Alyssa Brade [00:00:22]:
Central Washington.

Amy Stone [00:00:23]:
Oh, fun. You’re almost as far from me as you could be. I’m in southern Florida, so that’s. We are diagonally across this country, so I love to learn about my guests. Before we dive into the topic of the day, can you tell me a little bit about yourself outside of work, outside of family, but just maybe a hobby you have or the names of your pets or something fun about you just to get to know you a little bit.

Alyssa Brade [00:00:53]:
Perfect. Yes. I have celiac’s disease, which means I can’t eat gluten. And so I created my own sourdough, gluten free sourdough starter that I feed every day. And I experiment with all kinds of gluten free sourdough creations for my family, which has been a lot of fun and a lot of dry bread.

Amy Stone [00:01:10]:
I believe it. So sourdough all by itself is something that sometimes people who have not celiac, but who have sensitivity can get by with because it is that active culture. But what do you. So what do you use? You’re not using wheat flour?

Alyssa Brade [00:01:25]:
Yes, I use brown rice flour to feed my sourdough, and then I use a mixture of six different flours when I bake. And so it’s an art of like measuring, weighing, making sure that the ratio is correct.

Amy Stone [00:01:36]:
That’s fantastic. I use rice flour so that my inside to keep things from sticking to things. So.

Alyssa Brade [00:01:42]:
Oh, I love it.

Amy Stone [00:01:43]:
Right. So I use sour rice flour inside the little basket, which I’ve based on the name of. So the dough doesn’t stick to it, but I just make standard sources. Sourdough. Standard sourdough. Because. Yeah, that’s the thing. I never had one of those toys when I was little. Tamagotchi things, the little imaginary pets. But that’s what they describe the starter because you have to take care of it every single day.

Alyssa Brade [00:02:04]:
Yes. Yep. It’s kind of like having a third child.

Amy Stone [00:02:08]:
Yeah, no, I. It definitely is. Although I’m lazy and I do shove mine in the refrigerator in between. I’m just like, feed it, put it in a cold place, bring it out a couple days later. So that is the way it is. All right, so today we were off topic already, but I love it. Sourdough. Fellow sourdough. Baker, I’m impressed that you’re working with with Alternative Flowers. Now, to get to the topic of the day, you proposed a really scary moment that you had as a parent of a very young child. And I’m not going to give too many details at the start here, because I’m going to let you share this story for yourself. But are you ready to talk about that today?

Alyssa Brade [00:02:42]:
Yes.

Amy Stone [00:02:43]:
All right, I’m looking forward to it. Let’s begin by talking about the younger you, the person, the version of you before you had a family. Are you a person who knew from a very young age that you wanted to have a family with kids?

Alyssa Brade [00:02:58]:
No. So, actually, I was told I would have a really hard time having children. My then boyfriend and I never wanted children. We had crafted our lives to not include a family.

Amy Stone [00:03:09]:
Interesting. All right. I love that as a start. So this was. This was already a shift, so I would do so with that in mind. Let’s talk a little bit about the timeline and the bigger picture of things going on without going into too much personal detail. From what you told me before the interview, I think that you may have as many as two kids today. I’m not sure about that. Can you share with us how many children you have now and how long ago you had your first child, just to sort of set the overall timeframe for everybody?

Alyssa Brade [00:03:39]:
Yeah. So I was in the middle of a master’s degree program. I got pregnant in March 2020. And right before COVID started, in the middle of my degree, I had my little guy. And then after he was born, my husband had a vasectomy because we were like, we didn’t want kids. We’re good with one. And then five months after that, I got pregnant again with my second.

Amy Stone [00:04:04]:
So I had done the math because you gave the ages at the time of the story, I had done the math, and I was thinking to myself, you and I had never met until today, so I didn’t know anything about you, anything about your concepts of family or anything. My youngest kiddo is 18. So it’s been a long time since I’ve had this discussion with a doctor. But when I had kids, I remember they told us they were like, hey, you may want to hold off before you do this pregnancy thing for a little while. For a lot of reasons, I don’t remember all of them right, but. And I don’t have any opinion on how other people space their kids, but I had done the math, and I was like, that was close together. And I wonder if it was on purpose, like I wonder if it was the plan. And you were saying not only was it not the plan, it was like the opposite.

Alyssa Brade [00:04:52]:
Yeah, a large deviation from the plan.

Amy Stone [00:04:56]:
That’s. That is, that is. That is a good story. You were probably stunned and shocked.

Alyssa Brade [00:05:01]:
I was. I was breastfeeding at the time, still hadn’t had a period. The doctor was like, the chances of this happening are less than 1% given the vasectomy. And then also given the situation of having just had a baby. They were like, you’re like the less than 1%. And I was like, why couldn’t that have been for the lottery? But I. Now that we have our little guy, it does feel like we won the lottery in many, many ways because he’s just such a great addition to our family. I couldn’t imagine our lives without.

Amy Stone [00:05:29]:
No, I mean, and that is, you know, that that’s a wonderful. That’s good that you have that feeling now. But I can imagine in the moment. And it is one of those things that when you listen to the experts, when you’re in the phase of life before you have kids, it seems like they know a lot more about this than maybe they actually do. Because I know a lot of women who were told that they probably we’re not going to be able to get pregnant while nursing or during a certain time. And then surprise, surprise, surprise. Anyway, that’s a whole other topic. So before we move off the whole pre child life, what ideas and like concepts of motherhood do you remember having before you had kids? Did you have any ideas or thoughts about how challenging it might be or what kind of expectations you would have for it or people would have for you before you stepped into it?

Alyssa Brade [00:06:25]:
I love that question. I actually didn’t have any thoughts about motherhood because I never expected it to be a part of my life. So I kind of observed it from a distance other people. And I was like, that looks really hard. I’m too selfish to be a mom. Like, I want my time for me. I don’t want to be giving so much to these other human beings. And so pregnancy really hit me like a freight train. And motherhood just took me right out because I had no idea what social expectations I would feel pressure for and what expectations I had on myself. Expectations of others and the balance it took to be a mother and still an individual outside of motherhood.

Amy Stone [00:07:04]:
I feel like you’ve had a lot of time to think about that topic because you nailed really a lot of the challenges that hit women when they go through matriescence. That shift into somebody who’s a parent, it’s hard. It can be really hard. It is.

Alyssa Brade [00:07:22]:
And the postpartum, the things that even preparing myself for birth, I was like, oh, I didn’t know this was a thing. I didn’t know I was going to feel like this. I’m losing it. And all those things that really were told a lot of things about motherhood, but there’s a lot of things that I feel like there’s still misinformation about and it’s kind of glossed over some of the challenges that can come with postpartum, that identity shift, the struggles of trying to figure out how you fit into this new role while maintaining your sense of self outside of that.

Amy Stone [00:07:54]:
I think that’s fair. I think, I think that’s fair. That matches my lived experience as well. I had a coworker who had a baby right before I did, about a month before. And I will never forget, she called me from home. So she’d gotten home with the baby and we had gone through pregnancy roughly at the same time. And she’s like, all right, get a piece of paper. I am going to tell you all the things that no one told me. Go to Target and buy the following thing. It was really, it was really fun. Just super pragmatic like, you know, and stuff like that is really helpful. Really, really helpful. All right, so now you’ve got your. So now you’ve got an 8. At the time of the story that we’re going to share today, your kids are older now, but at the time this happened, you had an eight month old baby and you were pregnant and you knew you were pregnant? I think.

Alyssa Brade [00:08:45]:
Yes, I was about three months pregnant at the time.

Amy Stone [00:08:48]:
Three months pregnant and you have an accident. Do you want to share with us the story of what happened?

Alyssa Brade [00:08:56]:
Yes. So at the time, like I said, I wasn’t planning on motherhood, so I still wanted my career. I just done my thesis dissertation and I was working a part time, two part time jobs and I was a full time stay at home mom and my partner worked 90 hour weeks so he was gone a lot. Um, and so needless to say, as you know, when you go through pregnancy, it takes a lot of resources and energy from your body doing it back to back. My body was already very depleted and when I had my firstborn I didn’t take maternity leave, so I was teaching English at the university and I was also doing my master’s degree. So all this to say I was already running on empty. So at the time That I was pregnant. My body was pretty run down and I was carrying my 8 month old down the stairs or cement stairs. And as I was walking, I fainted. When I was on the second or third stair and just collapsed forward, I dropped my eight month old and he cracked his head on the cement and I landed flat on my belly on the new baby. And my husband was just walking out the door to work. So luckily he was there. I kind of oriented myself. We got him in the. Our little guy in the car, rushed to the hospital. When we got there, the hospital staff did some imaging and they said, oh, we’re so sorry, he has internal brain bleeding. He’s going to need neurosurgery. We’re going to have to helicopter him to the nearest pediatric hospital. So we live very rurally, our hospital is very small and at the time the focus was really on the 8 month old. So they didn’t check the new baby or me or anything at the time. We got on the helicopter, we’re helicoptered to this other hospital and they started prepping him for brain surgery. And they told us that he chances were very high that he might not live. And if he did live, he would forever be impaired, developmentally impaired, which as a parent is all so much guilt, so traumatizing. And when we got there, we were just, we were just praying and, and I was like, somebody, something help me, please. I don’t know how I can live with this. And we. They did some imaging before the surgery to kind of centralize where the brain bleed is, what it was looking like. And they said miraculously, they were like the brain bleed stopped. They were like it stopped all on its own. It looks like his body’s already trying to heal itself. And we stayed at the hospital for three days where he just bounced right back, was completely fine, went and followed up with a few specialists for several months afterwards. And now he is four years old, completely healthy, happy, mentally, developmentally, hitting all of his milestones, which is huge. And that story was the wake up call. I really needed to start evaluating my life and making some changes and evaluating what is it about motherhood that causes us to try to do it all and be it all to such an extent that it leads to this deep burnout, this deep exhaustion that leads to painting on the stairs while you’re carrying your baby.

Amy Stone [00:12:03]:
Wow. All right. So I did not know the current status of your kiddo and I’m super thankful to hear that he made a full recovery and he’s healthy. I want to celebrate this Tough kiddo in your life a little bit. Share without getting too personal and telling us all the secrets. Share a few of his favorite things that he loves to do these days as a healthy four year old.

Alyssa Brade [00:12:26]:
So he loves his little jiu jitsu class, he loves to go. He loves to pretend to be a ninja. We do a lot of fight moves at our house. And he loves his phonics. We’re just starting to learn how to read. So he loves sitting and recognizing on billboards when we drive past what the word is and what sound the letters make.

Amy Stone [00:12:45]:
That is fantastic. That is. Thank you so much for sharing that. There is a saying that. Well, let me back up. I honestly can’t imagine how nerve wracking those moments were and I’ve never been through something exactly like that. I’m so sorry that you had to go through that as a mom, as one person to another and I’m also very thankful that you shared it with us so. Because there’s nobody who’s out there in the care of other people who doesn’t at some point step into it and, and have something happen. Whether it is, you know, feeding them a food they don’t like, which is a very small FR infraction you would think, before you have kids or you know, not buckling them into the child seat correctly. If you’ve got more than one child seat, putting the wrong kid in the wrong child seat, like there’s a million mistakes and it all comes down to the people who are taking care of them.

Alyssa Brade [00:13:43]:
Right?

Amy Stone [00:13:43]:
We’re all going to do this and. But it is this thing when we’re thinking forward about how we’re going to be as parents. I don’t know. I mean, I just think that we all think we’re going to do it perfectly. We’re going to do, of course we’re going to get right and then you’re in it and you’re like, ah, no, none of this. We don’t get it right. There is this saying though, that when you have a kid, it’s like a piece of your heart is walking around on the planet without you outside of your body. And when kids are sick or hurting, that’s when I personally feel that the most because you can’t do anything about it. So. And you were also hurt in this fall. So you had the shock of the fall on the stairs and then straight into an environment that nobody wants to be in ever, which is a hospital. That cannot have been fun. And then you had to get on a helicopter and go to A specialist with all of the cautionary tales. Talk to us a little bit about how that felt for you in your mind as you were, like, going through it in those first few hours.

Alyssa Brade [00:14:48]:
I think there was a lot of. A lot of guilt. A lot of guilt and a lot of replaying the scenario. And why did I walk down the stairs? What was I thinking? Oh, I was already feeling lightheaded. I should have predicted it. All of the things that often happen. I find when anyone has a traumatic accident or something happens, you often blame yourself and then wonder. Your brain tries to go through the scenario of, how could we have prevented that? We’re never doing that again. And so there was a lot of guilt. And I think the mom. When people say, oh, I feel mom guilt over this, I was like, I can really empathize with mom guilt because I felt it to such an extreme level that I was like, I remember crying to my husband when we were waiting for the doctors, being like, I shouldn’t be a mother. They should take away my baby. That was such. Who can make a mistake like that? Like the. The extreme levels of guilt and the irrational thoughts that follow that as a way almost of trying to make yourself pay penance for a mistake that you made. Because as, you know, as a mom, as a father, parent, any type of parent figure, those stakes are so high. It’s their life. And you’re like, oh, if I mess this up, this has repercussions throughout the rest of their years. And it’s on me.

Amy Stone [00:16:03]:
And it’s on you. It’s on you. I mean, and as a kid, one of my jokes is that being a child who has parents is really not great preparation for the flipping the role and being a parent who takes care of somebody else. I don’t remember as a child being aware of the fact that my parents felt any sort of responsibility or emotional attachment to how. I mean, I just was. It wasn’t the way I saw it. And so that was a big stunner for me. So, yeah, the mom guilt is big. But so what did you. So that was. You were in the hospital for three days within the first. What. What was the timeframe before. The prognosis was very dire, right at the very beginning. Very scary and very dire. How many hours or days was it until you got the news that it maybe wasn’t going to be so dire?

Alyssa Brade [00:16:53]:
It was about 10 hours until we got the news, and then it was about another 12 hours of like, okay, we’re out of the. Out of the woods. Just so to say, and then the last 24 hours, or 18 hours, I guess it would be at the hospital was more just okay. We’re monitoring where we’re keeping an eye. But he’s, he’s going to be okay. And kids are incredibly resilient. It’s incredible. If you want to see the resilience of the human spirit, look at a toddler or look at a small baby. They’re incredibly resilient. Within 12 hours of them saying, he’s going to be okay, he was pulling himself up in the hospital bed. He was irritated that he had an IV and he wanted it gone. He was flirting with all of the nurses, like, and that was very reassuring. I think a lot for me to be like, he’s going to be okay. I see his little personality is back, he’s responding, he’s pulling himself up. He was angry. They wouldn’t let him play with all of the rubber ducks that were in the children’s area.

Amy Stone [00:17:55]:
Normal, you know, active child behavior. That’s fine. So you mentioned at the start that when this happened, all of the attention, yours and the people who were helping you through this was on your eight month old baby. Was there a time where that shifted and you people checked you out and said, are you okay from the fall? And did, I mean, did you, were you hurt in the fall or were you able to just sort of ride it out?

Alyssa Brade [00:18:18]:
I had bleeding, my knees were bleeding, my feet were bleeding. At the time, our particular hospital, we’ve had no. Long story short, I never got, I never got checked out. My baby, the new baby wasn’t checked out until actually I had a follow up appointment and I had one hospital staff, when we were at the larger hospital say like, hey, do you feel like you’re having pain in your stomach? Keep an eye for pain on your stomach, sharp pain, any irregular bleeding, anything along those lines. But there was not a full comprehensive exam done. They were like, you’re walking, you’re moving, we’re assuming you’re fine. Which looking, looking back, I feel like, oh wow. If I had been in a different state of mind or my husband, husband had been in a different state of mind, we would have said or done something differently about all of that. But it also really painted a clear picture for me of the level of care that goes into maternal care. It’s an interesting thing that I’ve studied a little bit is like once the baby’s out and the mom stabilize, it’s kind of like, oh yeah, you’re fine, like postpartum, whatever you’re going through all those things, you’re fine, like your baby’s fine. So you’re fine. And that was kind of a big eye opening experience to that level of you’re an attachment and a piece of your baby and if your baby’s okay, therefore you need to be okay too.

Amy Stone [00:19:47]:
That’s an interesting way to put it. I like that. It is very interesting because the baby gets a doctor, the baby gets a specialist the minute they’re born and the mom like loses a doctor because you’re under the care of like the doctor who’s going to deliver the baby for that whole time. And then they’re like, congratulations, here’s this job you have no idea what to do with and go home and figure it out yourself. And I’m not here to help you anymore. You’re on your own. See you in a year for an exam. It is, it is a, it is a giant transition that everybody goes through and I am not an expert on it, but I do find many pieces of it hilarious. So you mentioned that this was the. I think that many people can see this from the outside and see how an experience like this would really be an opportunity to do some self reflection and some change. At what point did that begin to kick in for you? That you said you felt some guilt, which I can absolutely identify with. Even though things always happen to the kids when the parents are around because we’re the ones that are around. It’s not, it’s not our fault all the time, but we’re just always going to be the people who are there or whoever is there is going to be the person who’s there. That is, it’s a tough thing. But when did you shift that guilt to more of an examination of how you were living your life and an awareness that maybe. Let me see if I can remember all the things you were doing. You were a graduate student, you were teaching and you had two part time jobs and you were a stay at home mom. When did you begin to sort of tie that together and be like maybe, maybe I’m burning the candle at both ends?

Alyssa Brade [00:21:29]:
Within a couple of weeks of the accident happening, I started to do some self reflection. And for me I love looking at things in a broader philosophical picture. So it’s not just the philosophy of it, it’s also the social construct. And why, why do we behave the way we behave and why do we feel the pressure to do the things we feel? So I started to do a really deep dive into the maternal pressures that are put on Women in a Western society rooting back to things like a productivity culture. We’re so focused on being productive, your values linked to your productivity and the more you can produce, the more valuable you are. And that’s kind of the premise of how I started my self reflection was really looking into what is happening in society and what is happening within me. That makes me feel like my worth and my value as a woman and as a mother is linked to how well I perform and how much I do for everybody else.

Amy Stone [00:22:28]:
That is really interesting. So I do have a follow up question to that, which is, had you previously, I don’t know what you were studying and what you were teaching, but had you been interested in things like that, in topics like that before? Like what does that match your academic training?

Alyssa Brade [00:22:45]:
A little bit. I have minors in anthropology, communication, sociology, teaching English as a second language and linguistics. And then I also, as you can see, I’ve always been an overachiever a little bit. And then I was getting my master’s degree in English at the time with an emphasis in technical writing. So technical writing really looks at how a lot of social factors go into technical writing, how demographics perceive the written word, how to present information in a way that is easily accessible to a wide variety of different cultural backgrounds, ethnicities. And so a lot of that study kind of contributed to a more holistic approach of hey, how can we do some introspection to really figure out what’s going on here. And obviously knowledge is one thing, applying it to your life is another. I would love to say that I never, I never struggle with that anymore. I just know I’m intrinsically worthy and that’s wonderful. But I think like any human journey, it’s cyclic. You’re, you’re constantly going in a circle and you’re diving deeper and deeper and there’s deeper layers of the circle. And so you learn one lesson and then you learn it again and you learn it again and you just achieve deeper and deeper layers of it.

Amy Stone [00:24:00]:
So you begin, that’s a very true statement. So you begin the self analysis and applying really your skills as an academic and as a researcher and a deep thinker, which is, I think that anybody who’s going through master’s level academics is hopefully we can call them a deep thinker. And you apply that to your personal situation. But you’re also pregnant and so at some point you have the second baby and then you have a bigger family. Was your, how was your postpartum phase when you went from one to two kids?

Alyssa Brade [00:24:32]:
I think it’s amazing how informed I was at the first time. I was not expecting it. I expected. Experienced extreme postpartum depression, and I didn’t know what was wrong with me or what was going on or who to turn to or what help to get. And the second time around, I felt more prepared. I had done some research. I knew what supplements I should take. I knew which way, what ways I should be supporting my body. And so it was a much different experience as well as the end. Anytime you’re doing something for the second time, it’s like, I can only speak to my lived experience. But it’s easier the second time because I’m like, oh, I have an idea of what to expect. I have an idea of what you need. And I know that you’re not going to break if you cry for 30 seconds while I run to the bathroom, like, we’re going to be okay.

Amy Stone [00:25:16]:
Okay, Very good. Were you still. Was there leftover anxiety and worry after. When you came home after the fall? So you fall. Your oldest is 8 months old. A couple months later, you had a second baby. Did you have residual fear and apprehension because of the accident?

Alyssa Brade [00:25:36]:
Yes, I did. I still struggle with that, actually, a little bit, especially with his head, like, no contact. Like, he can’t do any contact sports, even though the doctors are like, he’d be. He’s fine to do all of the things. And my husband and I have several discussions about that. Or like, when we go on walks, I’m like, don’t. Don’t run too fast. Don’t jump off of that. Don’t touch that. And I have to really be careful that my fears and anxieties don’t manifest into him developing this fearful view of the world, because it’s really easy to be like, I’m just gonna wrap you in bubble wrap, because I saw what happened, what can happen, and this world is a bad place, and I’m just gonna keep you safe.

Amy Stone [00:26:17]:
I don’t think anybody would fault you for that, given what happened in the scary situation, to tell you the truth. I think that’s a very good goal, and I think that’s something we all work for. But what you experienced was truly. I mean, the facts are you just slipped and fell. But what actually happened was really, really scary. And we’re very lucky that you and your kids are very healthy. All right, so you’ve done a lot of things since then. Your family grew, and I know that you’ve got a book and a nonprofit. I’m going to guess that this experience is Part of what led you to creating those two things.

Alyssa Brade [00:26:55]:
Yes. So the book is Room, basically a compilation of the research that I did. It’s broken out into different areas of burnout. So identity burnout, career burnout, body burnout, all of the different areas of burnout that I felt in the early stages of motherhood. And then it’s kind of interlaced with practical tips, my own personal story, and resources and reasons why it’s not your fault you’re feeling that way. There’s a lot of social and intrinsic pressures that go into the shaping of motherhood and womanhood that Western culture sees. So that is broken down into different chapters. It’s a shorter read with key takeaways at the end. Supposed to be accessible and easy for a mom who’s really busy, who has five minutes to just pick up and read.

Amy Stone [00:27:42]:
Okay.

Alyssa Brade [00:27:43]:
And then the nonprofit is co founded with a dear friend of mine. Her name is Leah Milan. She has a platform called My Mom’s Best Advice. And her platform is all about how motherhood and parents really are the foundation for a successful society and how powerful and impactful a present parent and a mom can be in somebody’s life, both for good and for bad. And so we merged these two concepts together to create High five Thrive, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering parents. So it’s really focused not so much on just parenting tips, but treating the whole person. The burnout, the mental exhaustion, the lack of societal support structures that are in place in North America, specifically the United States, not so much Canada. Canada has a pretty good maternal health care system, but that is the focus of it. And then we do different workshops to really empower parents. Right now we’re doing an Empowered Motherhood series, which really talks about how you can parent in a way that also doesn’t let you lose your sense of womanhood and who you are outside of a mother.

Amy Stone [00:28:54]:
I love that. I love that. Share with us the name of the book, because I don’t think you said it.

Alyssa Brade [00:29:00]:
Yes, my book is called Mommy Needs a Minute. From Burnout to Empowerment.

Amy Stone [00:29:04]:
Mommy Needs a Minute. And you have a special offer for the listeners, which I’ll share. So if you order the Mommy Needs a Minute book, you will include a Mommy Needs a Minute workbook, which is normally $4, $399. And so for the listeners, the audience, that’s a very generous offer. I want to say thank you for that. The way people can collect, that is they can send you an email with proof of purchase and you will send that to them. And if you are listening and that offer sounds good to you, but you’re driving or you’re walking or you’re in your car or whatever, don’t worry about remembering all of the names and all of the links because they’re in the show notes. And when you join the imperfect adulting email community, I send it to you as a link, which is absolutely the easiest way to do these things. So make sure you do that. You also get and notifications when new stuff comes out, which is very good. So now it is time for the rapid fire questions. Are you ready?

Alyssa Brade [00:29:58]:
Yes.

Amy Stone [00:29:59]:
Let’s do it. All right. These are just for fun. These are just for fun. The idea is that you try and answer with whatever comes to mind right away. All right. When you go on vacation, this is very funny because we talked about this before the interview and you said that the question you had heard was about vacation. I rewrite them every single time. But anyway, when you go on vacation, would you rather be in the wilderness in a tent or in a luxury hotel?

Alyssa Brade [00:30:25]:
Wilderness, in the tent.

Amy Stone [00:30:27]:
That’s so good. All right. Very fun. All right. Do you have a favorite type or genre of movie that you would call your favorite? Like sort of a kind of movie that you love?

Alyssa Brade [00:30:37]:
Romantic comedies all the way.

Amy Stone [00:30:40]:
Do you have. Do you have like one that comes to mind, is one of your favorite rom coms?

Alyssa Brade [00:30:44]:
Not actually off the top of my head. I can’t think of one. I’m really into Modern family right now. I’ve watched that so many, so many times. But that’s not really a movie.

Amy Stone [00:30:54]:
But it’s a modern family sitcom, though. It’s a well done family sitcom. So that’s good. Yeah. It’s hard to come up with a favorite movie on the spot because there are so many. That’s a tough question. So I have some movie lovers in my family. They actually keep a list on their phone.

Alyssa Brade [00:31:10]:
I love that.

Amy Stone [00:31:13]:
It’s very good. So if you ask them, they open it up and they’re like, here’s my list. So. All right. So do you have a guilty pleasure, like a treat or an indulgence that you’re willing to share with us on the show? Because people are going to hear it.

Alyssa Brade [00:31:25]:
Yes. Dolce de leche ice cream. It’s my favorite. When I’m in a bad mood or my husband and I have had a fight, he will go out and he will buy me one of those things and it’s like, here, I put it in the freezer for you. And we know everything’s going to be okay.

Amy Stone [00:31:39]:
I love that. That’s a fantastic indulgence. All right, that’s it. Alyssa, Braid, thank you so much for being a wonderful guest today.

Alyssa Brade [00:31:46]:
Thank you so much for having me, Amy. I appreciate you.

Amy Stone [00:31:50]:
Same.