Mommin' Vs. Daddin III - Frank Williams - Episode 11 (Teaser)

Someone accused me today of sounding like I'm figuring out audio editing, and of being a very good interviewer. 

I'd like to publicly dispute that charge. I'm literally learning audio as I go. I'm teaching myself a brand new skill. And that's important for you to know. Because I'll bet you want to learn something yourself, or are interested in something but aren't sure how to start. 

Gather 'round, kids. I'm going to tell you some important shit: you don't have to know what you're doing to start doing it. As one of my life role models once said, "don't dream it; be it." 

I'm not great at this. By any means. But I'm getting decent downloads for a complete novice with no real skills to speak of. And when it comes to interviewing? I am still the world's most awkward host. Most. Awkward. 

Editing is a wonderful thing. And it still doesn't make me sound amazing. But I interview people even though I'm awkward. And it's basically the coolest thing I do in my life on a regular basis. 

You don't have to know how to do something to just start doing it. Go do those things you wanna do, and if you love doing them you're going to GET good at them because you won't wanna stop. 

Dream on, kids. But don't forget to wake up and do, too. 

Alright then. 

Good talk.

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In this episode, Behavior Specialist and School Psychologist Shanell Daman discusses her struggle with infertility and miscarriage, the cognitive dissonance that comes with being a child psychologist whose son has been in therapy for a couple of years now, and the ongoing struggle of managing dual relationships with other moms. 

Shanell is my very best friend in the whole world, and you've heard me talking about her on numerous episodes. We had our first children - my twins and her son - within two months of one another, and I've always looked up to Shanell, both as a woman and now as a mother too. 

Shanell is no-nonsense and completely direct, but she's also incredibly warm, compassionate, and empathetic. She's an amazing mother, though I know she would dispute (or at least qualify) that statement, given the chance. But I've used her as a model for my own parenting on countless occasions, and I don't know that I'd have made it as far as I have as a mom without having her as a yardstick by which I can measure my own degree of success or failure. 

I hope every single mom has a friend even half as good as I do in Shanell. She's responsible for the better part of my parenting sanity. Or, at least, that which I still have left. 

For anyone interested in being aware of language before listening, this episode is pretty clear of bad language, but Shanell is a surface tapper. She tapped the desk where I had the microphone sitting throughout the interview, and I failed to recognize the impact the tapping would have on the final audio, so you may find the tapping troublesome throughout.  I tried to edit it out or at least mitigate it with audio filters, but this represents my best efforts, as the noise itself is embedded within our voices and not something I can just clear off. I'm sad about that, but I'm chalking it up to a learning experience, of which there have been many in this foray into a whole new medium. Sorry about it, though. I'll do better next time. 

End disclaimer. =D

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This is just a little ramble I did tonight about the story of my grandfather's death, and how I came to collect the story formally.

You can hear part two of the audio that made me want to tell the story orally at Gaelfore Audios on YouTube.

You can read the column I wrote, containing the story of my grandfather's death, here. 

The photo for this bonus content's cover art is of my grandfather at work, at Ellwood National Forge. 

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Frank Williams is freaking awesome. Frank moved to Warren, Pa., in 2018 and shortly afterward I met him when I was a reporter for the local newspaper. I had no idea Frank would become one of my good friends, that his wife Ashley would become my soul sister/hetero lifemate, nor that our kids would love each other. 

But all of those things are true. 

Frank and his family experienced two house fires, nearly a year to the day apart. He's also biracial, and raising biracial kids in a very - air quotes - traditional place. In this episode, he talks about all that. He's super cool, this episode was super easy, both to record and to edit, and you should want to be his friend by the end too. 

There's another 45 minutes or so of tape that I'm going to upload as bonus for patrons, so check it out at Patreon!

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Quick things to be aware of:

1. As soon as his interview starts to fade in, after the intro, there are two things going on that might bother you if you've got sensory sensitivities. There was a fire in the fireplace so there's some audible crackling, and I included audio of Aaron opening a can of Guinness, because I liked what it added to the atmosphere, but you may want to just turn it down until about fifty seconds in. It happens again about 1/3 of the way through the interview again. So just be aware if sounds are a thing you need to manage or prepare yourself for.

2. Aaron and I got into politics, literature, music, and party affiliation at the top of this episode, and that conversation lasts until about halfway through. It seems off-topic, perhaps, but it's important to understand who Aaron is. If you love Hunter Thompson, Pete Seger, Bob Dylan, Green Day, or banned books of any kind, you're going to LOVE the first half of this episode so much.

Among hundreds of other things, Aaron is the chair of the Democratic Party in Warren, Pennsylvania, which is a small, incredibly red county within an overall red state. In 2016, Donald Trump took 68% of the votes, making Pennsylvania a turning point in the election that, for many of us, represents a dark day in American history.

From there, we transition (awkwardly, as is becoming my signature method of transition in interviews), to the fact that Aaron and his wife Carissa have made the choice to prioritize her career over his. This makes Aaron a full-time, stay-at-home dad. That alone is a unique perspective for a fella to have. I don't think, before this interview, that I've ever sat down and had a candid conversation about the experience of taking on a full-time caretaking role as a man with someone who has. Mainly because I've never really found anyone who has.

See full show notes here.

If you liked this episode, you may also like the additional 30 minutes of tape, in which Aaron goes into even greater depth about the struggles and rewards of taking on a full-time stay-at-home dad role within his family. You can unlock that content, as well as behind-the-scenes production stills, monthly ramble and shoutout audios, bonus clips, and the opportunity to go from listener to co-creator by workshopping with me as I produce and plan future content. Plus, you get access to the growing community, which includes international and domestic listeners, past guests, future guests, and all kinds of people from all walks of life. You can become a patron for as little as $1 a month, so head on over to the 2MDD Patreon Page and see if there's a tier of membership that works for you!

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So I wanted to go through and do some updates to Mandie's episode and I had planned to have this episode out earlier than this but at least it's here now. 

In part II of Episode 8, Mandie talks about starting a support group for special needs parents in her local area. Her group, Heroes, has also hosted three sensory-sensitive events for kids and families in Warren in the past year. Mandie talks through the process of recognizing a need in her community, developing programs to meet that need, the work involved, the frustration, but also the enormous rewards she gets from seeing kids and families who can't normally participate because of sensory sensitivities be able to do so. 

This girl rocks my world. 

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Right up front: the ending is rough, I was super stuffed up so I was doing a lot of mouth breathing, and the most important part: YOU CAN HEAR MY ROOSTER CROWING AT 2:25. 

Okay, this is a really long episode, and I don't know exactly what, if anything to cut because I had fun listening to it all. That being said, I have some bonus content from as far back as Mary Hetrick that needs to be mixed and uploaded, and I'm going to be doing a ramble here in the next week or so. So we'll see. 

This was a super fun episode to do, both during the interview and even during the most tedious parts of mixing. We go from humor to dark pretty quick toward the last third, but I hope it all came together okay in the end. I just seemed a bit overwroght to record a whole voiceover to splice the two together, and I kind of like the dissonance of the unnatural shift in topic. 

Let me know what you think!

Oh, and two things I learned about myself as I cleaned this episode up:

1. I do, in fact, like whiskey after all.

2. Whiskey makes me laugh. A lot. And it sounds weird. 

Alright kids. 

Night night. Aaron Stearns will be here at noon tomorrow for his interview and for whatever reason it seems like schedules are getting moved around such that dads are going to come a little before June. But we'll figure out a way to make sure dads still get their month. I've got ideas, my pretties. 

Now go to bed. 

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Mandie Englert is raising two sons from her first marriage, and has custody of a third son that she's raised since he was three months old alongside her ex-fiance...until her ex-fiance fell into a cycle of addiction, recovery, and relapse. 

"I was with * through one-and-a-half relapses," said Mandie at the start of her interview. She goes on to describe how she got herself out of an abusive marriage with *'s help, and how their relationship felt bifurcated. 

Read the full show notes here!

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Faye Smith worries about the examples she's setting for her sons - ages 9, 10, and 14. Faye is working on her Master's degree in Psychology and hopes to one day open a 24-hour peer support agency in Warren, Pa.

But she also gets irritated, and has a hard time hiding her frustrations from her sons. She worries, she says, that they're taking in all of her bad habits and not enough of her good ones.

But as she reveals throughout our conversation, Faye is setting some great examples for her sons as well. Getting clean, resolving arguments with her husband of 16 years, finishing one degree and going on for a second one, setting personal goals and not giving up (even if that means digging textbooks out of the trash can she just threw them into with tears in her eyes), and being humble enough to admit when she's wrong and accept feedback from her kids are just a few of the great examples - in my opinion - Faye is setting.

See the full show notes here!

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For those of you with sensitivity to cussing, this is probably not going to be the bonus content for you. Fair warning.

Every interview is a little different, but sometimes I get a subject whose personality is just perfectly matched with mine and Faye was one. In this clip, Faye shares probably the best family story I've gotten so far, about her son pooping on the neighbor's lawn and how she didn't take his reaction laying down but, rather, parlayed the interaction into an opportunity to threaten her neighbor with felony sex charges. 

I really do dig this woman. 

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