We’ve all been there—that moment when you know something is wrong, but everyone around you dismisses your concerns. Now imagine that scenario when it involves your child’s health. The stakes couldn’t be higher, yet self-doubt creeps in as medical professionals tell you that you’re simply an anxious new parent. This struggle to be heard while advocating for a loved one represents one of the most challenging and isolating experiences many parents face, especially those with medically complex children.
For Reesa Morala, a marriage and family therapist who found herself navigating the bewildering world of parenting a high medical needs child, this journey transformed not only her personal life but her entire professional focus. Her experience highlights a critical truth often overlooked in our healthcare system and society at large: parental wellness and support are not luxuries—they’re necessities that directly impact a family’s ability to thrive during a crisis.
“I remember the doctor saying, ‘Oh, well, you’re just doing it wrong. Here, I’ll show you how to feed baby,'” Reesa recounts about her three-month-old son who had stopped eating entirely after weeks of concerning symptoms. “I said, ‘Take my child. Show me how I’m doing it wrong because I want to do it right.’ And all of a sudden she also couldn’t get him to eat and said, ‘There’s a problem here.’ I said, ‘I’ve been telling you this for the last two and a half months.'”
This moment—when Reesa finally found her voice after months of being dismissed—would become the catalyst for profound personal growth and professional redirection. Her story offers valuable insights for anyone feeling stuck, unheard, or struggling to advocate for themselves or their loved ones in a system that often fails to listen until crisis strikes.
When Your Instincts Scream But No One Listens
For many new parents, distinguishing between normal anxieties and genuine cause for concern can be challenging. When Reesa’s first child began experiencing feeding difficulties at just three weeks old, medical professionals repeatedly dismissed her worries as typical new-parent paranoia.
“I went to the doctor, I can’t tell you how many times within that first period just saying, something’s wrong,” Reesa explains. “And they kept saying, ‘Oh, that’s spit up. You have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re a new mom. You’re just paranoid.'”
This pattern continued until her son’s condition deteriorated so severely that he stopped eating altogether, triggering rapid weight loss that finally demanded medical attention. For Reesa, this experience echoed earlier patterns from her childhood in what she describes as an “emotionally immature” home environment where her voice and opinions “didn’t really matter.”
“So then when these medical professionals are telling me ‘It’s just you, you’re just overreacting, you’re paranoid’—all of that former kind of narratives were definitely at play,” she shares. “It was when he stopped eating that it really forced me to challenge that voice inside and to get loud. And that was a big, big learning curve for me.”
Amy Stone, recognizing the universal challenge in this experience, notes how difficult it can be to trust yourself when questioning authority figures: “It is very hard on the entire unit. And I think that that’s something that is an obvious thing to say, but also for people who are lucky enough to not go through it, they don’t really know.”
This disconnect between lived experience and external validation creates a perfect storm for self-doubt, especially when caring for someone vulnerable who cannot advocate for themselves.
The Invisible Weight of Isolation
Perhaps the most surprising aspect of parenting a medically complex child is the profound isolation that accompanies it. While many new parents experience some degree of loneliness, those dealing with serious medical issues face unique barriers to maintaining connections and seeking support.
For Reesa, the practical realities of her son’s condition made even the simplest outings nearly impossible. The only way she could get nutrition into her son was through a modified dream feed technique that required perfect conditions—making grocery store trips and social visits potentially dangerous sacrifices.
“Taking a trip to the grocery store that might be 10 minutes down the road, I’m now risking him vomiting sometime in the car. And if I’m the only one driving, there’s no other adult in there, I don’t want him choking on that. So that’s really scary,” Reesa explains. The constant vomiting also meant carrying “20 outfits with us every single day” to accommodate changes for both her son and herself.
This physical isolation quickly became emotional isolation as well. Without family nearby and hesitant to burden others with the stress of caring for her son, Reesa found herself alone in an extremely challenging situation.
“I think that definitely took a lot of toll just on my own sanity, on my relationship and just overall well being of the whole family,” she reflects.
When Reesa did reach out for emotional support, she encountered responses that deepened her sense of isolation rather than alleviating it. After confiding in someone about her struggles, the person replied, “Well, Reesa, it’s not that hard. You just, you know, I used to breastfeed and I just pull out my boob and just shove it in the mouth… it’s not that hard. Figure it out.”
This dismissive response highlights a critical point about supporting others through difficult times: sometimes the most helpful thing isn’t solving the problem but simply acknowledging the pain.
“I wasn’t asking them to solve it,” Reesa clarifies. “Just to have someone kind of be there and to just say, ‘I can only imagine how lonely that must feel. And, gosh, you don’t deserve that. What can I do to support you?'”
Transforming Personal Pain into Professional Purpose
The most remarkable aspect of Reesa’s story is how she channeled this difficult experience into positive change, both for herself and for others facing similar challenges. Having originally dreamed of becoming a pediatrician before pursuing musical theater and eventually marriage and family therapy, Reesa’s professional journey took yet another turn after her experience as a parent.
“As far as on the professional side, what just to what you spoke to in the fact that there aren’t enough resources, I believe out there for parents to support their wellness, their relationship wellness. And it is really poor planning, I think, on our part as a society,” Reesa observes.
This insight led to a fundamental shift in her approach to helping families. Rather than focusing primarily on children—her original passion—she recognized that supporting parents creates a foundation for the entire family’s wellbeing.
“What I found and where I made the shift is that parental wellness, their own identity, their own mental wellness, their relationship wellness plays such a role in children being able to thrive,” she explains. “I could do a lot of great work with the children. But if they’re going back home to the same kind of high stress environment, parents are overwhelmed and they’re not getting the support and resources that they need, the environment wasn’t going to change.”
Amy highlights how this approach addresses a significant gap in our healthcare system: “One of the things that’s so interesting about how just absolutely backwards the medical system is when it comes to like the American medical system, when it comes to like building a family, is that… as soon as you have the baby, you have one checkup with that person and they’re no longer on your team.”
This observation reinforces how parents—particularly mothers—often find themselves without support precisely when they’re undergoing one of life’s most significant transitions. By refocusing her career on supporting parents, Reesa works to fill this critical gap.
Breaking the Cycle of Sacrifice
Perhaps the most powerful insight from Reesa’s journey is her rejection of the cultural narrative that good parenting requires complete self-sacrifice. She points out how society perpetuates the idea that parents—especially mothers—are “selfish” if they prioritize their own wellbeing or relationship.
“There’s so much of that society perpetuating, ‘Oh, that’s so selfish. You need to be taking care of your kids. You need to be sacrificing everything for your children,'” Reesa notes. “And it’s so wrong. It’s so wrong. And it actually sets our children and our family for thriving when parents are supported and their wellness is taken care of.”
This perspective represents a profound shift from viewing parental self-care as indulgent to recognizing it as essential for family health. Reesa’s personal experience of disassociation during her most overwhelmed moments underscores how parental burnout directly impacts children: “I was so overwhelmed, I was so lonely and so struggling that I went to places of disassociation because my brain was just fried and I had nothing left to give.”
By supporting parents through workshops, retreats, and therapy, Reesa helps families break this cycle and establish healthier patterns. Her work demonstrates how reclaiming your voice after being silenced—whether by medical professionals, society, or your own internal critic—can transform not only your life but create positive ripple effects for everyone connected to you.
Finding Your Voice Again
The journey from silence to self-advocacy isn’t easy. For Reesa, it required hitting a crisis point before she found the courage to challenge authority figures and her own internalized doubts. Yet her story illustrates how developing this capacity creates resilience not just for navigating current challenges but for building a more empowered future.
Breaking free from others’ expectations—whether they’re medical professionals dismissing your concerns or cultural narratives about parental sacrifice—requires recognizing that you deserve support. It means putting yourself first sometimes, not out of selfishness but because your wellbeing matters for everyone who depends on you.
Reesa’s professional transformation embodies this principle. By sharing her experiences and supporting other parents, she converts isolation into connection and transforms pain into purpose. Her journey reminds us that finding your voice isn’t just about speaking up in the moment—it’s about reimagining what’s possible when you trust yourself enough to create change.
For anyone feeling stuck, unheard, or overwhelmed by life’s challenges, Reesa’s story offers both validation and hope. The path to reclaiming your life begins with reclaiming your voice, even when—especially when—others aren’t ready to listen.
This article was inspired by a thought-provoking interview with Reesa Morala and Amy Stone on The Art of Imperfect Adulting podcast. 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 Reesa Morala with Amy Stone | The Art of Imperfect Adulting | June 6, 2025
Amy Stone [00:00:05]:
Risa morale. Welcome to the art of imperfect adulting.
Reesa Morala [00:00:09]:
Thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Amy Stone [00:00:11]:
I’m happy you’re here. You’re ready for a great chat.
Reesa Morala [00:00:14]:
I sure am.
Amy Stone [00:00:16]:
I start every single interview by asking my guests where they are located. What part of the world do you call home?
Reesa Morala [00:00:24]:
Yes. Currently, I am located in Southern California. I’m actually in the Southern California wine country, if you will. So it’s an nice and expansive. Lots of wineries around me.
Amy Stone [00:00:34]:
That’s amazing. So where it is, I think of wine country as being Northern California. What? Like, so is. Is it separate? Are there two. There’s northern and southern wine country. Yes.
Reesa Morala [00:00:44]:
So the Southern country, we’re coming along. We’re not as old as the northern country. Northern California, rather wine country, but we’re right in between. Kind of north of San Diego, south of la.
Amy Stone [00:00:57]:
Oh, really?
Reesa Morala [00:00:59]:
Rolling hills there that are perfect for wine. And so we’re becoming the new hotspot down in Southern California.
Amy Stone [00:01:07]:
That’s spectacular. I love to hear it because I have many positive thoughts about that. But if we could talk about that in another conversation on another day. All right, so I want to ask you one more warmup question before we dive into the topic of the day, resisting all the temptation to talk to you about wine. The question is, can you share with us, with me in the audience, something about you that is not your family, not your job, but about a hobby, a pastime, a passion project, something you’re willing to share with the world or.
Reesa Morala [00:01:39]:
So something about me is I love, love, love to cook, bake all. All of the above. And I even like to do, like, sometimes people see the Pinterest. Like for Halloween, for example, I made those, like meatloaf, but they look like severed limbs, kind of jail. Like, I go all out. That’s. That’s me. And something I really love to do.
Amy Stone [00:02:03]:
That’s spectacular. You’re a great person to have on the. On any committee then, because every group that plans activities needs somebody who’s willing to do those things to balance out those of us that are quick to sign up to bring the napkins and the disposable items. I love to cook, but I long. I don’t. I don’t always want to be elaborate in bringing things, preparing things. So I love to have friends in the group that I can count on to go all out. I appreciate people like you in group settings. All right, now, we’ve talked about wine and we’ve talked about food. Now let’s talk to the topic of the day, you proposed raising a high medical needs child and how that impacted your career. So does that sound like something we can talk about?
Reesa Morala [00:02:48]:
Sounds good. Let’s get started.
Amy Stone [00:02:50]:
There’s a lot of things that I think make this a captivating topic and so I’m excited to hear where this conversation goes. I don’t want to ask you anything overly private, but I would like to start with having you give more detail about what it means to say a high medical needs child. So tell us what we’re talking about today.
Reesa Morala [00:03:10]:
Absolutely. So for me, my journey started really with my first child. So that’s kind of important information because I had no idea what I was doing. And this started when he was three weeks old. So I am brand spanking new, a three week old parent, just as my child is three weeks old and he started having issues where he couldn’t keep food down. And I went to the doctor, I can’t tell you how many times within that first, first period just saying, something’s wrong. This is. And they kept saying, oh, that’s spitt up. You, you have no idea what you’re talking about. You’re a new mom. You’re just paranoid. All, all of the words and assumptions they were handing out to me. And it wasn’t until three months of age that they started listening. And the reason they started listening was because he stopped eating altogether. He would not eat, he would not take the breast. He would take a bottle, formula, breast milk, you name it, he would not take it. And he started declining significantly. Weight loss, just so rapid that all of a sudden they finally started listening. I remember the doctor saying, oh, well, you’re just doing it wrong. Here, I’ll show you how to feed baby. I said, take my child. Show me how I’m doing it wrong because I want to do it right. If it’s a me problem, please help me now. Tell me how to make it better. And all of a sudden she also couldn’t get him to eat and said, there’s a problem here. I said, I’ve been telling you this for the last two and a half months. And that began.
Amy Stone [00:04:56]:
I cannot imagine how stressful that was. Sorry to interrupt you, but I cannot imagine. And the second part of that is I actually can imagine somebody telling you that you were doing it wrong. And also the doubt that would creep in because as a new mom, you’re like, no, I don’t know what I’m doing. Like, that’s the big fake out with first time moms. It’s like you’re standing there with a brand new baby, they’re sending you home with the baby and there’s the thought in your head like, does anybody know that I’m leaving? Does anybody know that I’m taking this child out of this? Like, where’s the manual? Where’s the helper who’s going to show me how to do this? And it’s very hard to tell actually right at the very beginning if they are eating because they take in such small quantities. I had a, my, I did not have a child that was struggling to eat in the beginning. But with my first child, when they were teeny, teeny tiny, I called my dad in a panic because I was positive they weren’t taking enough from the. This is in the first like 48 hours when you’re talking like teeny tiny bits. And I was just in a new mom panic. And my, I was like, I can’t feel the diaper. The diapers are super absorbent. So. So, you know, it’s hard to tell and you don’t know what you’re looking for. And I remember my dad just sitting there and he’s like, he’s like, just keep going, it’s gonna be okay. But the fear is tough at that point. So at three months, do you remember and you may not. I’m trying to remember what a 3 month old baby sort of weighs. They like have, they should have made their body weight back after and gained some weight. They’re 1012 pounds. Is that what a three month old baby should weigh? Do you remember? I don’t remember.
Reesa Morala [00:06:40]:
I don’t know that I remember exactly how much he weighed. But I left because he’s always been small and that my whole pregnancy, that’s a whole nother story in itself. And just how much there was just invalidation from my OB because they thought he was going to be huge. And he came out and he was teeny tiny already. So he just, just in life has always been on the smaller end of the growth chart. So I don’t know that it’s a super fair comparison. That’s fair. Yes, it was. He had gained, he was gaining weight because he was eating, but he was losing a significant amount. Like I said, he was, he was, he was vomiting kind of most of his meals and so he was gaining enough that they weren’t. Oh, okay. He’s just small. He’s just small. And it wasn’t until that point that he drastically declined.
Amy Stone [00:07:37]:
Yeah, so. All right, so that, so this is medical. Is he still considered High medical needs at this point or was this something that was like a full journey at one point that is completed, or is this something that will continue as far as, you know, for his entire life?
Reesa Morala [00:07:55]:
Thankfully, the bulk of it wrapped up when he was about 18 months old. So he spent those 18 months. Well after that three month point in and out of the hospital, we there for those first 18 months.
Amy Stone [00:08:09]:
So in the beginning this was normal pediatric checkups. You were just raising questions. But then at three months it escalated, you got some attention and then this ended up with, now I get it, high medical needs, you were in and out of the hospital. Okay, now I think I fully understand the severity of the situation. Okay, so to you touched on this, but to. If you want to give a little bit bigger of a picture for this. Was your first child that like, what. What does the rest of your family look like today? Did you go on to have more kids?
Reesa Morala [00:08:41]:
I did. I have two children. So I tried it again and we, I was so thankful because it took a lot of fighting, it took a lot of searching till we finally got a medical team that actually listened to us that was validating and wasn’t as dismissive as many of the providers that I encountered, especially at the beginning of our journey.
Amy Stone [00:09:04]:
Yeah.
Reesa Morala [00:09:05]:
And so once I had a pediatrician in place that was really actually listening to me and listening to what was happening, understood the journey and how, how much of heartache and just hardship we had been through as a family that once we had that established, when we got pregnant with my second child, he, I went to that pediatrician and I said, I need a new ob. Because as I mentioned, I also had, you know, negative experiences with my ob. And so the pediatrician said, here’s a name, this is the person, like if I was pregnant today, this is who I would go to. I said, great. And I went to that provider and I was thankfully, again, much different experience. And so my second son also had some feeding issues. His was more. He couldn’t take the breast milk, couldn’t take certain formulas. He had to go all the way down to a broken down amino acid formula. So but again we were able. As soon as I went to the pediatrician and said, I think he’s upset with this milk. Immediate action. We started figuring out okay. And trial and error and got him onto the formula that he needed much quicker. It didn’t lead and turn into something, you know, higher, more intense as my first son. And, and we were able to kind of get him up and thriving a little bit, a little Bit quicker. And then, of course, that helped our family altogether.
Amy Stone [00:10:35]:
No, absolutely. It is. It is disruptive to have a young child at home. I laugh because that’s like the understatement of the century. But when the child is sick or struggling, whether that’s a fever, the first time you have a kid have a fever or something much more severe, it is. It’s very hard on the entire unit. And I think that that’s something that is an obvious thing to say, but also for people who are lucky enough to not go through it, they don’t really know. They don’t really know. And I think about that on both sides of that, like, the experiences I’ve had and also thankful the experiences I haven’t. That’s why that St. Jude commercial is like, so amazingly power. Mario Thomas is like, be thankful for the healthy kids in your family and, you know, give to those who are not. It’s like, yes, both sides of those. Take all of my money. Okay, so you, as a profession, you are a marriage and family therapist. And I think I know the answer to this already from knowing you. But was this your profession before you had kids, or is this something that came along after.
Reesa Morala [00:11:42]:
It was my profession before I had children.
Amy Stone [00:11:45]:
Okay.
Reesa Morala [00:11:46]:
My focus and my specialty shifted after I had children.
Amy Stone [00:11:50]:
All right, so that’s what we’re going to do. So now to back this, before we talk about how this experience in your family changed your career focus, I want to ask you, if I was to go back and talk to Risa at about 9 or 11 years old, what did she want to be when she grew up?
Reesa Morala [00:12:09]:
Funny enough, a pediatrician.
Amy Stone [00:12:11]:
A pediatrician. Really? Okay. All right. Very interesting. All right, so then where were you in your education, education path and your life when you thought, you know, the path for me, the career for me is marriage and family therapist?
Reesa Morala [00:12:24]:
I left only because. So my journey between going pre med and going into the original route that I had chosen was in existence. Even in high school, I was thankful to go to. I had opportunities to go to a vocational high school, and I got into that high school and I also got into performing arts high school because I loved theater, musical theater in particular. And so I got into both of those, and I said, where do I go? I ended up going to the theater school. I went to the performing arts, and I said, well, I’ll keep doing my academics. And I did. I was top of my class. So then when I graduated, I had the option again, do I go pre med? I also got accepted into some performing arts Colleges. And so I had that question again and I. To go into the arts. And so my, my bachelor’s degree is actually in marriage and are in musical theater.
Amy Stone [00:13:26]:
Okay.
Reesa Morala [00:13:27]:
And then my senior year, I was actually about two weeks out from graduating. I myself had a medical diagnosis that the doctor looked at me and said, the amount of stress on your body that it would take to go and do musical theater full time, it can’t take it. And so I sat there and I, I just spent four years, the last four years of my life earning this degree, and you’re telling me, pick a plan B. Yeah. So that really rocked my world. And I, I sat there for a long time going, I don’t know, I, I’m lost right now. I don’t know what to do. And so I started thinking about why, why did I enjoy the theater so much? And one of the things that stood out to me. Well, there was a couple of things. One is that I really enjoyed. I would have people come up to me and say, you know, I was having such a bad day and I was able to come to the theater and just for those couple of hours just like put pause on all the drama in my life. And that was so amazing. So thank you so much for doing that. And so I loved that aspect, that I could give that to people. And then also my freshman year, I met my own therapist. At that point in time, I had grew up in a chaotic home environment, emotionally immature, I think is the, the PC way to say it.
Amy Stone [00:14:47]:
Okay.
Reesa Morala [00:14:50]:
And she really helped change the path of my emotional and mental health in my life. And so I remembered that. And so I said, what if I could help people on a longer term basis instead of just giving them the couple of hours in the theater? And so I decided to. July, I applied to the University of San Diego Marriage and Family Therapy program, which is one of the tougher marriage and therapy program to get into. I had never taken a psychology class in my life, and I said, I’m just going to try it for my master’s. And I did not think I would get in, but sure enough, I got in. They said, you just need to take a couple of those Psych 101 prerequisites and then you can come. That’s. That’s history. I ended up going, and that’s where I am.
Amy Stone [00:15:39]:
That could have been a whole other episode. Because I love that, that you, you did one thing and then you were faced with a chain, a choice. Right. A couple choices. There’s a, there’s a lot of Choices that were in there, but you picked a goal. I’m gonna go to grad school for marriage and family therapy. Don’t have any of the prerequisites gonna apply anyway. And it worked out for you that that is very. That is a fun story. So. And the other unfolded when you told that story is that you had your own health experience when you were a young adult, and would you. And that probably is a layer underneath how you handled the story. The situation of a health challenge with.
Reesa Morala [00:16:23]:
Your kids definitely is. I mean, it’s a chronic health issue. So it’s still something that I deal with today. And so when I was trying to go to all of these doctors appointments, I was going through my own pain. But at that point in time, it was just, I didn’t have an option. This child in front of me needed me to show up, pain or not. And so that was definitely something that I needed to do. I think probably the biggest piece that was at play and that really transformed who I am today is the fact that, again, growing up in the environment that I grew up in, I heard my voice, my opinions didn’t really matter. I, you know, that was just normal. And so that was definitely a dynamic I already had. So then when these medical professionals are telling me it’s just you, you’re just overreacting, you’re paranoid. All of that former kind of narratives were definitely at play of like, okay, well, you just need to go get quiet again. That this is just. This is just a you problem. And it was when he stopped eating that it really forced me to challenge that voice inside and to get loud. And that was a big, big learning curve for me.
Amy Stone [00:17:42]:
I can imagine. And we’ll talk about that. All right. So it’s about 18 months that you’re going through this challenge of managing the medical community and living with that. What are some of the challenges you mentioned a second ago? Getting yourself to all of the appointments, speaking up to the point where the medical professionals took you seriously. What are some of the other challenges that were going on in your life? As you, as a parent of a high medical needs child, what were you facing?
Reesa Morala [00:18:12]:
My journey, I think, was very lonely. It felt very lonely and very isolating. And part of the reason, just I think naturally, many parents that I’ve encountered, at least even on the professional side, there’s this tentative of going out and getting out into the world, like it’s a new transition. You have to figure out what does it look like to take everybody in the car and get the diaper Bag and make sure you have everything that it’s, that it’s a chore in itself. And for me, what I found because of in order, the only way that I found that I was able to eat him or get him to eat, I apologize, not eat my child. I’m not a cannibal.
Amy Stone [00:18:58]:
I have a funny story about that though. I do have a funny story about that one time my kids came home and said, grandma wants to eat me. And we knew, we knew. I mean, we knew this was a very small kid. And so we. I tell this story all the time. We didn’t take it seriously because we knew that this was a loving relationship between this adult and this child. But still the kid came over, grandma wants to eat me. And so it was a while, it was a while before we saw it shake out. But then we were there and all the kids and the grandma says, oh, you’re so cute, I just want to eat you up. And so that’s what was happening. And then the kid came home and reported and there’s like, grandma’s going to eat me. And we were like, really? What? Anyway, not to interrupt you, but where you were in the story was saying how you were having the challenge of getting the child to eat. Yes.
Reesa Morala [00:19:45]:
So the only. They told me it was either I needed to figure out a way to get food into him or they were going to have to put a feeding tube in him. And so I went home and I just again, my goal is to try to get, get him some food anyway, I knew how. And so what ended up kind of coming from that is I would do, I guess, a rough version. I had no idea what I was doing back then or that there was a title for it, but essentially a really very rough version of a dream feed, which is where I would rock him and get him to the point when it was his bedtime, his nap time, and get him to the point where he was about to fall asleep in instincts were kicking in and I would get him to latch and I would then completely get him to sleep and hand express milk into his body where his automatic system to swallow was taking over. And so that whole sleep when baby sleeps, I couldn’t do that. When baby was sleeping, that was the only time I could feed him. And I was the only one who was able to do that because you can’t. It’s really hard to. To hand express a bottle into baby. So when I wasn’t there, he just plain didn’t eat. So because of that, the conditions for him sleeping needed to be ideal in order to optimize the amount of food that I was able to get into his body. So because of that, taking a trip to the grocery store and potentially missing a nap time, which is an opportunity for him to eat, I was going to sacrifice grocery shopping every single time. And not only that, he was still vomiting a good chunk of his food when he was awake. And so again, taking a trip to the grocery store that might be 10 minutes down the road, I’m now risking him vomiting sometime in the car. And if I’m the only one driving, there’s no other adult in there, I don’t want him choking on that. So that’s really scary. And nonetheless, when we go out, okay, let’s say I get us there and there’s no vomiting, the likelihood that it’s going to vomit at some point in time while we’re there is really high. And it’s such large volumes, it would. We would have to carry 20 outfits with us every single day if we were to go out to just accommodate for every single outfit chain, not just for him, but for us as well, because it would usually be all over us. And like I said, in very, very large volumes. So because of that, the amount of isolation, we didn’t go out unless we had to go to the hospital, which was necessary. There was a lot of isolation and a lot of loneliness there. And we don’t have family in town. And so it was just us. It was scary to ask a sitter to come and have to deal with that. It was already super stressful. And the likelihood that when a sitter would come, my son wouldn’t eat, that’s going to be high. And then nobody wants a screaming, crying, hungry baby. That’s just really difficult. And so the guilt to kind of put someone else through that was really, really high because I already knew firsthand how difficult it was. And I think that definitely took a lot of toll just on my own sanity, on my relationship and just overall well being of the whole family.
Amy Stone [00:23:03]:
So that you actually led directly into the next thing I was going to talk about with you, which is support. There’s the phrase, it takes a village to raise a child. And I am not disagreeing with that. I just think that, you know, there’s a joke that goes around. It’s like, when does the village show up? Like, is there a 1, 800 number that I can call? Like, where is it? Many, many new parents report on the loneliness of being a new parent, but it is exponentially higher when you talk to people who are caregivers for special situations. I interviewed someone who’s a parent of a child who had epilepsy, and they talked about the same thing, but it went on for decades. And the fear of bringing in other people and the fear of something happening at any moment. And I think that for people who have not felt it, the lesson here is to be thankful that you, if you don’t have this in your life, do be thankful and be sensitive to the fact that it is happening to other people. What kind of support, looking back, because you’re on the other side of this, you’ve made it through. What kind of support do you wish you would have had? And this could be anything. This could be in terms of the doctors listening to you earlier. This could be in terms of anything. What kind of support do you, looking back, do you think would have been helpful? And when I asked this, I’m sorry, I want to just say this is not to judge your situation, but as a supportive idea for anybody who’s at a different stage in a journey that’s similar.
Reesa Morala [00:24:41]:
Absolutely. I think. Absolutely. The medical piece of it and having providers actually listen and take things seriously, even if you disagree. And maybe at the end of the day, it is a parent who’s feeling a lot of extra anxiety because it is a first child. Give it. Give it some space, validation, and let’s take a look versus just completely dismissing and shutting down. I think that would have been just night and day helpful for me. And then additionally, I think the biggest piece was just someone going in there and hearing and seeing the pain and sitting with me in it.
Amy Stone [00:25:23]:
Yeah. Which is hard when you’re by yourself. I did not live through your experience, but my vision of what step parenting and parenting and family was gonna be like before I did it was really more of this, like, big communal experience where we were all in it together and there were people around and, you know, all of the things. And then realizing how much of it happens just by yourself with nobody else around you. You know, like 3:00 in the morning when you’re up walking asleep, a baby that gets up at night, your friends are not there with you. It’s just you. When the family has the flu and you’re like, dealing with all of that, people are not coming over to say hello when that happens. Like, so much of it is really more lonely than I thought it was going to be. And it’s a challenge.
Reesa Morala [00:26:16]:
Absolutely. And I do want to clarify, too, for anybody who’s listening and could potentially be a Support for someone that is struggling is that it doesn’t even mean you have to physically be there, but even just on the emotional presence side and sitting with them. I remember I had reached out to someone and I think this definitely put kind of a sour taste in my mouth of reaching out. And just. Because when I reached out and I said, gosh, I’m really struggling and I feel so lonely and this feels so hard and overwhelming, and I don’t know if I, you know, I don’t know what to do. The person that I reached out to, their response to me is, well, reset. It’s not that hard. You just, you know, I used to breastfeed and I just pull out my boob and just shove it and shove it in the mouth. And they like, it’s not that hard. Figure it out. And I remember that in itself felt. I feel like it intensified my loneliness tenfold of just like I’m trying to reach out and just even seeing of like, oh, gosh, I’m so sorry. Like, that sounds incredibly overwhelming. Let me see you in that pain and just hear you not, you know, you don’t have to solve it. I wasn’t. I. I knew at that point the only thing that could really solve it is. Is us. All the things that we were already doing. There is nothing else that anyone could necessarily do. Because even to this day, after 18 months, they still. It’s unexplained vomiting and failure to thrive. We never found any answers as to why it was happening. But just. Just to have someone kind of be there and to just say, I. I can only imagine how lonely that must feel.
Amy Stone [00:27:57]:
Yeah.
Reesa Morala [00:27:57]:
And, gosh, you don’t deserve that. What can I do to support you?
Amy Stone [00:28:02]:
So as you were telling that story, two things went through my mind. One is the absolute lunacy. The first time somebody does show you how to breastfeed because it’s like this thing you’ve never done before, and they just manhandle your body and like, it’s like. It’s like, hi, stranger, how you doing? But anyway, so that. That memory popped into my mind. But the other thing that’s so weird is that the. That this does still happen to so many people, even though the research is that I think it’s one out of five women experience overwhelm to the point where it can be considered like a postpartum condition. Isolation, loneliness, sadness. And then you get into the more serious ones. There’s a book called Mom Brain or Mother Brain, and she was researching that. So it’s like that Weird thing where you have like a very common situation that is just still where there’s data and support for the fact that it exists and yet the system doesn’t respond to it. It’s like, oh, well, this shouldn’t be happening to you, okay? And maybe, maybe that’s not right. So I’m sorry that that was your experience. And I wish that we lived in a place where I could say, oh, it’s less likely to happen to other people. But the brutal reality is that we have to, we have to help our sisters and help each other advocate for it when it goes through. And that can be really, really hard. All right, so now let’s talk about how this adjusted your career. So you had this very, very emotionally, physically exhausting, challenging, experiencing mystery medical condition, caring for a small, helpless baby who was not able to advocate for themselves. They don’t have any words at three months old. They can’t tell you what’s wrong. What did you, what did you, what did you change?
Reesa Morala [00:29:50]:
So as far as on the professional side, what just to what you spoke to in the fact that there aren’t enough resources, I believe out there for parents to support their wellness, their relationship wellness. And it is a really good.
Amy Stone [00:30:11]:
Poor.
Reesa Morala [00:30:12]:
Poor planning, I think, on our part as a society. Because when. What I found and where I made the shift is that parental wellness, their own, their own identity, their own mental wellness, their relationship wellness plays such a role in children being able to thrive. And so when I was first starting out in my career, because again, my original go back all the way you mentioned to a nine year old, I wanted to be a pediatrician. So I was working a lot with the children. I thought, oh, I’ll support the children. And it felt like a band aid because I could do a lot of great work with the children. But if they’re going back home to the same kind of high stress environment, parents are overwhelmed and they’re not getting the support and resources that they need. The environment wasn’t going to change.
Amy Stone [00:30:59]:
Yeah.
Reesa Morala [00:31:00]:
And so I shifted at that point after experiencing firsthand how much my wellness was impacting my ability to show up for my child in a really present way. Because there were times that I definitely went to. I was so overwhelmed, I was so lonely and so struggling that I went to places of disassociation because my brain was just fried and I had nothing left to give. And so seeing that firsthand, what that was doing to just my ability to show up for my child, to see the impact it was having on my relationship, which Then also is impacting how we both show up as a team for my child and later on for my children. And so, and the fact that there wasn’t as many, like you said, resources and supports and someone that’s just sitting there going, I see you and I get this is incredibly difficult and you deserve to be seen in that. And so I shifted my career focus and now I work directly with the parents. And I have found that in working with the parents, when parents actually get the support that they need, you know, bashing the idea that the parents are selfish if they take care of themselves or if they spend time on this, their wellness, on their relationship and going out and going up for a date, you know, there’s so much of that society perpetuating, oh, that’s so selfish. You need to be taking care of your kids. You need to be sacrificing everything for, you know, your children.
Amy Stone [00:32:28]:
That is the message.
Reesa Morala [00:32:29]:
Yes. And it’s so wrong. It’s so wrong. And it actually sets our children and our family for thriving when parents are supported and their wellness is taken care of.
Amy Stone [00:32:43]:
I agree. I mean, I’m not the person who gets to vote for this, but I agree with that. One of the things that’s so interesting about how just absolutely backwards the medical system is when it comes to like the American medical system, when it comes to like building a family, is that you, when you are pregnant, you switch doctors to the ob, which we talked about, right? As soon as you have the baby, you have one checkup with that person and they’re no longer on your team. The baby is assigned their brand new doctor and your part time job is getting the baby to their appointments, right? But no one after that is asking how you’re doing. Like the mom is like, oh, we assume that you’re fine. And to say that it is like a major transformation is like the understatement of like most people’s experience, right? Like it’s a major change in your body. And I remember one of my favorite stories is like, I remember like after I’d had my first kid, one of my old friends called and was like, so here are some things you might want to know for the next 36 hours. And I was like, okay, writing it down, you know, like, you know, like the gross parts that we don’t have to talk about here. But so I think that’s really, I think that’s really good. So you shifted to working with the parents, which I think is really probably very helpful. How do I’m going to give you a chance here to before we go to the final questions to talk about how people find you and if they want to work with you and find out more about what you do.
Reesa Morala [00:34:07]:
Yes, the best way to find me is going to be through my website and that’s embracerenewalthherapy.com and that’s just like what we want to do with our parents. We want to embrace that renewal and so on. There you’ll be able to find my services, the biggest ones that I offer especially for parents, I offer in Southern California wine country. You can come here for a weekend retreat and we’ll do some intensive work, get you kind of to a place where you and your, you and your partner are feeling good. It’s really great to kind of do some deep work. If there’s a particular topic that’s just getting stuck on or tripping you up, come on in for a retreat weekend down in Southern California. Otherwise, other things that I do offer are online workshops. I have parenting workshops, I have couples workshops. I even have new baby workshops. So it’s amazing for those that are trying to plan for a baby, are pregnant or have a zero to three year old, it’s really setting up the parents for ways to be successful through that transition because it’s a stressful transition and that’s not including, you know, extra circumstance just like I had. And so being able to kind of be set up for those tools, all of that is offered there. You can also find my own podcast that Amy was gracious enough to to be a guest on as well, called the Real Family Eats. And so you’ll get to hear parenting stories that are real. Not the fluff that you see on social media, but just oh, it’s amazing. And it’s unicorns and rainbows. There’s moments of that, but it’s also really hard. And so we talk about the hard and guests also share yummy recipes as well that I get to try. So all of that, like I said, can be found on my website.
Amy Stone [00:35:53]:
I was a guest on your podcast and that was super fun. I shared one of my favorite mocktails which I since I stocked up on the ingredients for that. So I bought like kind of a lot of pomegranate juice when we were recording that, mostly because my husband bought the wrong kind when he went the first time. So I ended up with a lot of a very large. Anyway, I now it’s not just a mocktail. I like will make this like for breakfast in the morning. I find myself adding pomegranate juice to everything. So that’s. That’s so good. All right. You do have a special offer for the listeners, which is five tips to connect today. It’s a guide. It’s free. We’re going to put the link to that in the show notes. And I want to thank you for making that generous offer. And for everybody who’s listening who didn’t have a pen handy to write down Reese’s link or wants to know where to grab it, the easiest way to get that is to be on the imperfect adulting email list, because then I send it direct to your email box. You click on it, easy peasy, lemon squeezy. You get all the good things right there. All right, so, Risa, now we’re gonna go with the final three questions. Rapid fire, just for fun. Just answer with whatever comes to mind. Right. Are you ready? Okay. What is something that you do every day that you consider self care?
Reesa Morala [00:37:09]:
I listen to jamming music that has a nice beat that I can do a little. A little dance to.
Amy Stone [00:37:15]:
I feel like some music in motion. I love that. That’s very good. Just anywhere. Like in your closet, in the bathroom, in the kitchen. Anywhere, Anywhere. Yes.
Reesa Morala [00:37:25]:
My kids will get into it. We love dance parties at our house.
Amy Stone [00:37:29]:
That is. I do remember that. I do remember the dance parties with my kids. I definitely. Now we are all in the headphone phase of. My kids are much older than yours, but. All right. Do you enjoy books and reading? And if so, can you think of a book that you would say that you really, really love? Like one book that you would call out in all of your life of that you really, really love or is even life changing?
Reesa Morala [00:37:51]:
Oh, my goodness. That’s a hard question. So life changing. We’re going to go with that. And I’ll go on the professional side, but because it helped me personally, too, is I love the whole brainchild by Dr. Dan Siegel. Guilty pleasure. Pleasure would probably be some sort of a Nicholas Sparks book. I used to read this.
Amy Stone [00:38:09]:
Oh, yeah, He’s. Is that. He wrote the Notebook, right?
Reesa Morala [00:38:12]:
Yes.
Amy Stone [00:38:13]:
Yeah, I had to stop reading those. They’re very good, but they’re just swollen eyelids, you know, Just too emotional. Exactly. All right. If you are invited to it. I did not know about you and I did know about the food, but I wrote this without thinking about that. If you are invited to a dinner party to celebrate you and the host says they want to make your favorite meal, so you’re the guest, but they want to make you your favorite meal, what do you ask for?
Reesa Morala [00:38:42]:
My favorite meal would probably be something from my Filipino roots because I can only cook a handful of dishes, but I love Filipino food, so I’d probably request something along those lines.
Amy Stone [00:38:57]:
Anything Filipino. That would be your question. Very good. All right. I love that answer. It’s actually a more complicated question once I read it out to you backwards, because it’s like not only your favorite thing, you have to trust somebody else to make it for you. I didn’t think it all the way through. Maybe. All right. As per the usual, that’s it. Risa Morales, thank you so much for being a wonderful guest today on the show, for having me.