It’s my delight to be able to bring you a remarkable and important story today. I’m joined by author Stephanie Land, who has become known for her unflinching writing on poverty and motherhood. Stephanie writes about her years seeking out an existence for herself and her daughter through her work as a housekeeper. She writes about her struggle to make ends meet, her reluctance use of food stamps and the bigotry she encountered for needing to access social services. But she also chronicles her efforts to keep alive her dream of going to university and becoming a writer something she nurtured in blog posts about her life with her daughter and getting by in those years. Since then her work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Vox, Salon and elsewhere. Her book Maid: Hard Work, Low Pay and a Mother’s Will to Survive is already a New York Times bestsller that’s been met with all kinds of critical acclaim. Although her circumstances have now changed, Stephanie remains active in fighting to change the stigma surrounding people in poverty, especially single mothers. Stephanie lives in Montana but while in Toronto to give in a talk she visited me in my small home studio.
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For this episode, we welcome Leisse Wilcox back on the show. Leisse is a writer, coach, speaker and mom of three. She writes a very inspiring blog about personal growth, self-love and more at leissewilcox.ca and uplifts so many others through her community on Instagram. Leisse last joined us to talk about how divorce can be a springboard for personal growth. Since then she’s had some pretty major stuff going on, which she seems to have handled with a whole lot of grace and strength, but also with a lot of support from her community. Today Leisse and I talk about just how critical it is to gather community around you in times of need, as well as how she talked to her three daughters about the health challenge she faced.
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Cooking for a group, sending lunch to school, is a different business these days. Something like 40 per cent of children are affected by life-threatening food allergens, and as my guest for today’s episode has found, many people don’t grow out of them. However, Amanda Orlando hasn’t let her food allergens stop her from making food a treasured part of her life. She’s just released her second cookbook, Everyone’s Welcome: The Art of Living and Eating Allergen-Free. While preparing lunch together at her condo in Toronto, Amanda and I chat about her experiences with anaphylactic reactions and how they’ve affected her. We also talk about Amanda’s quest to make it easier for people with serious food allergies have safe and delicious times around the table with family and friends.
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There are times when the dynamics between our kids and their friends are sort of baffling. When things are going smoothly, everything is great. But when there’s friendship drama and hurt feelings, when friendships break down or there’s routine exclusion, it’s so hard to try to navigate these things. It’s also hard to know when we should intervene and when we should just leave things alone. To discuss these tricky issues I’m joined this episode by child development and parenting expert Caron Irwin, a mom of three and the founder of Roo Parenting, where she provides parents of kids zero to 12 with support to navigate the adventures and challenges of parenting. Caron shares some really great wisdom on where our roles lie in this arena and how we can support our kids to find their way to healthy friendships.
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