Helping Families Be Happy Familius

On today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, host Adina Oberman, talks to Shaun Thompson. He is a former world surfing champion and has been described as one of the greatest and most influential surfers of all time. Shaun is also a world-renowned leadership, mentor, entrepreneur, environmentalist and best-selling author. He's the co-author of the current best seller - The Surfer and the Sage: A Guide to Survive and Ride Life's Waves. Today they are going to talk about their Jewish identities and give listeners a greater appreciation and understanding for Jewish history and life.

Episode Highlights:
02:11: Shaun explains why May is Jewish Heritage Month and what his role is and how does he identify faith.
02:28 Shaun shares how Judaism plays a big part in his life.
04:47: Shaun explains what Shema Yisrael is. It is about oneness and about identifying and shouting out your faith.  
05:31: While talking about the oneness of a relationship Shaun says even though we might worship differently, we will have the humanity to believe and to understand that there is an entity that is all powerful. 
09:05: There are many ways to find hope again, but your faith in your religion is a helpful path. 
09:45: Every single somewhere in the world, you have the arch, which is the repository for the sacred scroll for the Torah.
11:03: Shaun shares about his life's ordeal and how he has given up surfing.
13:54: Adina talks about the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, which means to repair the world.
15:33: Break out a sheet of paper and put a timer on for 15 minutes and mark 12 lines every line, beginning with our will. This is a way to find your purpose.
16:53: When you put our will in front of something, it's not like "I will" is about the future. It's about creating change.
17:50: People have this realization that we are not on this single-minded pursuit for success and wealth, we want to help other people too.
20:32: Finding a way back to faith in God and faith in themselves is something that you are doing through the work that you do.
21:13: As per Adina, in your work and in your life. Mensch is definitely a great compliment.
22:56: Shaun shares how they reconnect as a family and this notion of connecting means it's unbelievably important.
23:55: Every line begins with our well-open-source code. Anyone can use it. It's 15 minutes, then you stand up, and you read your code to the assembled group, whether it's your family, friends, or colleagues.

3 Key Highlights
Known also as the Five Books of Moses, the Torah is one of the three main divisions of the Hebrew Bible and also the most sacred, for according to tradition, it was written down by Moses at divine dictation.
Shaun shares how he had given up surfing and what motivated him to restart it again.
As per Shaun, there is a lot of common sense in many religions, and we are much more connected than we think.

Tweetable Quotes
"No matter what religion you are, prayers are dialogue that you have with your God, and it's really, you know, when things go sideways, things get bad, know that that pray can help you." - Shaun Thompson
"Your identity and your faith really impact your outlook on life and how you live your life in the world." - Shaun Thompson
"People are really beautiful words of commitment. They find the best vision of themselves, and they express that and commit to that." - Shaun Thompson
"We are looking forward. So that's 1/2 of the meaning and purpose of life is we are even better at the other half that." - Shaun Thompson
"Mensch is someone who's good. When someone calls you a Mensch, that's about the greatest compliment that you can receive." - Adina

Resources Mentioned
Helping Families Be Happy Podcast Apple
Podcast Editing
Familius.com

On today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, Christopher Robbins, co-founder of Familius Publishing, husband, father of nine, author, fisherman, backpacker, and aspirational musician based in the Central Valley of California is going to talk to Karen Kleiman. She is a well-known international maternal mental health expert with over 35 years of experience. As an advocate and author of several groundbreaking books on postpartum depression and anxiety, her work has been featured on the internet and within the mental health community.

Episode Highlights:
00:49: For decades in 1980, Karen founded the Postpartum Stress Center. A treatment and training facility for prenatal and postpartum depression and anxiety in 2022, she founded the Care and Climate Training Center LLC, which is dedicated to the advancement of clinical expertise and therapeutic strategies for the treatment of perinatal mood and anxiety disorders.
02:23: Christopher shares his story and how he learned from his wife that after the birth of one of his children, she went in a deep depression.
04:59: Karen met two women who told stories of not feeling good after they had had their baby some 50 years prior and not telling anybody and sitting alone in the darkness with their shame, pain, sadness, and grief.
06:17: Karen highlights how people are now talking about postpartum depression, postpartum anxiety, and postpartum psychosis.
07:06: Karen shares how can we help our closest family members.
08:04: There are normal hormonal changes and sleep deprivation and all few other things that contribute to a mom's moodiness.
09:26: Karen talks about the speech bubble of new moms where she communicates, that she hasn't slept for two days. She hasn't had a shower.
11:10: Karen talks about the hashtag that they had started. It's hard to be vulnerable when you are a new mom. It's hard to say out loud when you are taking care of an infant.
13:00: What's guiding a new mom's responses are not just the relationship or the cultural expectations. What's guiding this is your own expectations and that often gets in the way no matter what you say she wants to be a good mom.
16:18: Karen talks about the disconnect when super wonderful, attentive husbands are not able to quite get there with their wives.
17:28: For a new mom. don't try to fix anything, just be there and by doing that it helps.
19:23: All new moms cry, but what we want to pay attention to, for example, is how much are you crying? How many times during the day are you crying?
20:11: If postpartum depression symptoms are interfering with your ability to get through the day, then you need more support, says Karen.  
22:49: It's ok to not feel good and be a great mom and good moms do have scary thoughts, and we aren't worried about the scary thoughts.

3 Key Highlights
Karen explains how it is that women are suffering, not discussing about it and pretending to be, ok?
Karen explains how the word postpartum depression means different things to different people, but it's a real thing.
Karen explains how the hardest thing about the feelings associated with postpartum depression is that they don't feel like symptoms.

Tweetable Quotes
"I felt very sad to know that my wife had been struggling with depression after one of our children because I never knew." – Christopher
"I hope we are creating safe places for women who learn to go to places where they will be heard and safe." - Karen
"We don't want moms to have to diagnose themselves, but we do want to call attention to the fact that there are people who could help her figure out if what she's feeling is ok or not." - Karen
"What postpartum women will tell you is it's just not that simple to say I need help." - Karen
"I heard someone say to me once they say whenever you meet someone, imagine that it when meet people imagine that at least 50% of them have something really difficult going on their life is that and that estimate is probably really low." - Kar

On today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, host Dr. Carla Marie Manley, a practicing clinical psychologist, wellness advocate, and author based in Sonoma County, California talks to Justin Black who will talk about his book Redefining Normal: How to Foster Kids Beat the Odds and Discovered Healing Happiness, and Love. Among other things. Justin is an author, serial entrepreneur, and husband.

Episode Highlights
01.40: As authors of Redefining Normal we talked about how generational trauma has impacted so much of our lives for our grandparents and for our parents and had a large impact on our life, says Justin.
03:27: It takes intentionality to combat something that is not beneficial for us mentally, spiritually, or physically when are sad and habits that were passed down to us by parents or who are around us that influence over us.
06:31: If you walk into a room and there is like a terrible smell, when you first hit you like, these smells terrible. But if you sit in that room for days or for weeks and you sit for months, you don't even smell anything anymore, says Justin.
06:45: As per Justin people have exercised a lot of unhealthy practices and habits from the generation of domestic violence and drug abuse and really relied on unhealthy habits and substances to really heal us or kind of put a band-aid on the things that they dealt with that were hard in our life.
08.38: Justin had so many amazing mentors and people who were successful around him. In a group home Justin was able to see other successful black men around him and it really changed his perspective.
10:19 Justin talks about his book Redefining Normal: How to Foster Kids Beat the Odds and Discovered Healing Happiness, and Love. 
11:05: If a person only sees and experiences so much in their life then a lot of times, they are subjected to living that out, says Justin.
12:48: We continue to tell our family stories and our lives as testimonies on how we can be intentional about breaking generational trauma and barriers, says Justin.
14:23: One of the things that Justin wanted to build on with his young family is trying to make sure our environment is always fun and engaging, no matter the circumstances or situation. We're always engaging.
14:50: Create an environment where we can be open, honest, and loving to each other and have fun. Work on being there for each other as much as we can because you want to be intentional about just nurturing the relationships, creating the atmosphere of playfulness and engagement, says Justin.
19:49: As per Justin when it comes to mental and emotional stress, he and his partner try to do less pushing and less approaches of empathy, because these things are so serious. 
21:30: Justin wants to just encourage leaders to love and how love and leadership are interconnected, and can't be separated. You can't love without leadership, and you can't be a leader without love.

3 Key Points
Justin's foster experiences weren't necessarily always positive and in fact highly destructive in some ways but his support group, including his church, really gave him guideposts to help him change his life.
In his book, Justin says that if you are going for foster care or in circumstances in life that you seemingly are out of control, even if it's just the 1% that you can't control, it can make an impact on how can you do the best with that and how that makes a drastic difference in your life and your future outcomes.
Love is about service and not just only receiving. Love is about action and not only feeling and being super intentional around the ideas of love and how we can be super intentional about giving and receiving love.

Tweetable Quotes
"We are super intentional on how we can build a healthy foundation so we can produce healthy food for our children and those around us." - Justin
"We always have choices in life as we can go down a path of least resistance and being our worst selves or something had happened to us tha

On today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, host, Ashley Marie Mireles, Director of Sales and Marketing for Families Publishing, author, and DEI leader. Today Ashley is going to talk to Heidi Poelman, author of Women in Science Who Changed the World and other Courageous People books.

Episode Highlights:
01:02: Today Ashley and Heidi are going to discuss the creation of women in science teaching the world.
01:46: Science is so interesting and so fun, and we have kind of an issue in our country where a lot of the times we give girls the message that science and mathematics and technology are more masculine subjects, more subjects for boys, says Heidi.
03:01: Heidi talks about a few amazing women that she came across while doing research for her book. 
03:50: Heidi mentions Janaki Amal, who is an Indian scientist who did a lot to create a plant that could grow sugar in India because, before that time, they couldn't.
04:00: Wang Zhenyi learned more about lunar eclipses and what a cool girl at the time, people thought that lunar eclipses were the cause of angry gods, but she thought otherwise. She learned that the moon, the earth, and the sun all interacted to create something.
05:06: As per Heidi it is really upsetting to see some of the very strong and knowledgeable women getting noticed.
07:01: Heidi talks about her inspiration and from where she gets it.
07:33: Heidi talks about the first female president of the New York Cancer Society, and she was also the 1st woman and only African American on the board.
08:30: One of the big takeaways that we are getting from here is that children and just people, in general, need good examples to look up as long as you have someone inspiring you or you have something inspiring you, you can keep moving forward.
09:12: As part of the series, the first book that Heidi wrote was just a book about a few people that she loved and looked up to who did courageous things, and who wanted to make a difference in the world.
11:04: Heidi shares how she loves quotes and she also shares a quote that she wrote before the podcast. 
12:25: Heidi explains why she mentioned Marie Curie in her book. 
13:43: Heidi's goal is to teach young girls about perseverance and curiosity and just wonder and discovery and problem-solving, and just remind them that the things that they do make a difference and that even one person can be part of making the world a better place.

3 Key Points:
Heidi shares why in her book she has featured women that aren't normally featured in kids' books, women from around the world, and women who maybe people haven't heard of before.
Heidi shares how she wanted to inspire young girls from a very early age. 
Heidi talks about her series of books and the idea behind writing those.

Tweetable Quotes:
"It's not necessarily the names and the facts, but this idea that curiosity and questions and problem-solving are all these really great values that we want to show to these young girls. How many times we talk to our little girls about, hey, let's go outside and just study bugs, or have you ever asked hey, do you know that there was a woman behind sending the first man to orbit the earth in space?" – Heidi
"Jane Wright was fairly young she saw that cancer was a problem, and so she set her mind on doing something. So she just started researching. She decided that she wanted to be a doctor." - Heidi
"I worked on a book about animals, famous animals who have made a difference and just had fun stories." – Heid
"It's an important and fun time to work with young kids and to tell them stories of real heroes and not just knowing their names and what they did, but knowing what we can learn from them." - Heidi

Resources Mentioned
Helping Families Be Happy Podcast Apple
Familius.com
Heidi Poelman 
Ashley Marie Mireles: LinkedIn 
Podcast Editing

In today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, host Dr. Carla Marie Manly is going to talk to Terry Whalin. He will be talking with us about many things, including his new book proposals that sell.

Episode Highlights:
01:01: Terry loves books and loves publishing and that's something he started at a very young age. 
02:58: Terry shares how the book "Jesus Be A revolutionary" changed his whole view in life.
04:10: Terry shares how he joined Wycliffe Bible Translators out of college, and he spent 17 years with them.
04:33: Terry explains how he had a genuine love and relationship with God that he didn't have, and so that's why he needed to get a Bible and begin to sing those songs and go that direction in his life as well.
05:08: In Terry's publishing life. He has written biographies on people like Billy Graham and Chuck Colson and John Perkins and Luis Palau, and people like that.
05:24: Terry has co-authored books with more than a dozen people over the years, so books have really driven a lot of his life.
06:14: Terry had written about 50 books for traditional publishers, but he had never worked inside a publishing company before.
06:23: About 15-16 years ago, Terry was hired as the acquisition's editor at David C Cook in Colorado Springs and it gave him a look inside publishing that he had never seen before. 
07:31: Terry wrote book proposals that sold originally in 2004, just as a frustrated editor because he wasn't getting the kind of submissions from authors that he really needed then.
09:12: As far as who the audience is, what they are going to do to sell the book, all those kinds of things, you can't just write a book.
10:05: There are over 4500 new books that are published every day. A publishing plan will help you not to get lost in 4500 books per day. It will help you float to the top rather than sink to.
11:23: If you have a plan, execute your plan, then that's where you are going to find your readers out there and really help people with the stuff you are putting in your books.
12:12: Terry has published more than a dozen children's books, and he knows that that's a very important area to people as parents read those books.
14:04: Terry shares how he benefitted from reading books to his children.
15:48: Terry wants to encourage authors to envision where their book is in the bookstore.

3 Key Points:
Terry explains how to get a book launched or why their favorite book was launched.
Terry shares how publishing has changed a lot since 2004.
Terry's mission is to store enjoyment by helping authors be successful, and he is one of the reasons every book needs a book proposal out there.
 
Tweetable Quotes:
"One of the things that really drives me day in, and day out is the fact that books can change people's lives." – Terry 
"I can think of many times in my life when the right book came across my path and gave me sometimes, I wanted, sometimes I not so much wanted, i.e.; a wakeup call." - Terry
"We go to the library or the bookstore and come back with a whole bunch of books and read them over and over to our kids." - Terry

Resources Mentioned
Helping Families Be Happy Podcast Apple
Familius.com
Terry Whalin 
Podcast Editing

On today's episode of the "Helping Families Be Happy" podcast, host Dr. Carla Marie Manley, a practicing clinical psychologist, Wellness advocate, and author based in Sonoma County, California talks to Megan Alms. She will be talking with us about her upcoming book Creature From the Woods.
 
Episode Highlights
01:44: Megan talks about her freelance journey and what motivated her to write a picture book.
03:00: Megan shares how her sister inspired her to write the book Creature From the Woods.
03:30: Megan shares how she gravitated toward being a big sister and being part of her imaginary world.
06:50: Megan's big message through her book is a focus on unconditional love. It's a fun little book to read and go through all the rhymes and act out all the motions.
07:58: The deer fawn taking timid steps was really this adult figure in Megan's life watching her take chances and take and learn these new things, and the owl was curious and wanted to learn new things.
09:06: The book talks about emotional intelligence and relationship building. Just reading through it can help bring back childhood memories.
10:57: Carla recalls her reading experience with her parents. She has memories of laughing; her parents used to read, and they tripped over their words a little bit and they would just laugh and laugh.
11:48: Megan talks about tenderness and wanting to cling to childhood moments.
13:29: Sometimes quietness gives you a chance to sit and think and commit to memories.
14:21: When we read to a child, we are giving that gift of tenderness to the child and to ourselves, says Meghan.
17:10: Meghan shares how knowing the characters of the kid's show brings them together as a family.
19:07: Reading together shows love in several different ways, all at the same time.

3 Key Points
As per Megan, her book is something that kids can look back on once they have grown up and seen various messages and fully understand.
Meghan explains how she focuses on unconditional love and helps readers to relive memories. 
For kids and for families, it is important to find those love languages, the things that make them feel loved, and know what things make them come alive because you don't have to have all the same hobbies. But there is something about genuinely caring about a passion or a way of loving each other.

Tweetable Quotes
"I started getting all of these ideas for all of the different fun things that I enjoyed reading when I was that age and things that I wanted to share with my sister because at the time she was a toddler, and she loved pretending she loved to pretend to be different animals." - Megan Alms
"Your parents created that piece of reading together from very early on in your life." - Carla Marie

Resources Mentioned
Helping Families be Happy Podcast Apple
Megan Alms: Instagram Website
Familius: Instagram Facebook Shop
Podcast Editing