What We Learn About Love Before We’re 10 (How We're Raised with Will Guidara)

The data shows that most parents spend nearly every waking hour focused on someone else,

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For a limited time, use the code Good35 to get 35% off a premium membership. Plus, a free subscription to Headspace. Because when you have support, you can show up as your best self, for the people you care for, and for yourself. In spite of the fact that you cannot walk or talk, I have never felt more loved by anyone in my entire life. Do you know when someone is so focused

“on a single person that you know you are the only thing in the world that matters to them?”

We made the choice to be unreasonable, not a pursuit of product, but a pursuit of people,

and relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never ever change, which is our human desire to

feel seen. Here's something I think about a lot. The way we lead at work at home anywhere isn't random, it comes from somewhere. And usually it's shaped early by what got noticed in our house by what didn't. And my guest today is someone who has built a career around care. Will Gadara is a restauranter and a former co-owner of 11 Madison Park. Under his leadership, it became one of the most celebrated restaurants in the world, earning four stars in the New York Times and the title of world's best

restaurant. And Will is so much more than that. He's the author of unreasonable hospitality, a book about going beyond service into something more human, something relational, and he's the author of unreasonable hospitality field guide. If the original book is the what, think about this as the how. What moves me the most about Will isn't just excellence, or care, or hospitality. It's actually his intentionality, the way he thinks about people.

You're going to hear it today. He's also a dad of two, which means he's not just building culture and restaurants. He is building culture at home. And he has a few pointers that I think we might all want to take in terms of the culture in our home. Today we're starting a new series called how we're raised. Conversations about the homes we grew up in and how our early experiences shape the way we live, lead, and love today. So this isn't a conversation about business strategy.

It's a conversation about the child under the leader, about the patterns that help us succeed, and the ones that sometimes get in our way. I'm Dr. Becky, and this is good inside. Well, I'm so glad you're here right now, but before we get to anything reflective or deep, we're going to all that. I just want to locate you, kind of situate you in your life right now. Like, where are you in your life? What is a normal week look like? Just give us the basics,

“and then we're going to jump in. As my life is so much different now,”

than I thought it would be. I remember my wife and I were in Seattle like five years ago, when we were walking past a houseboat, and she said, "Can we live in a houseboat in Seattle one day?"

And I said, "No, we live in New York City. We will always live in New York City." And she said,

"I kind of wish you'd told me that before we got married." And I thought that would be my life, owning restaurants and living in New York City. And now, neither of those is true. My family and I live in Nashville. I spend time with the small team. There's about 10 of us. I write books, and I do speaking to companies across pretty much every industry. We have a creative studio where we get to dream of worlds that we wish existed. And then one day, welcome people into our

imaginations. And I replaced restaurants with children. And I'm really grateful that I don't have restaurants and kids at the same time, because I don't think I'd be able to be nearly as good at either as I'd want to be. So you're catching me in a, in a season that I feel so grateful to be. Yeah. But I feel like with you, there's always this through line. I mean, I don't know if my word's going to be right. But care, it just feels like you've built a career

of that partnership. I'm just curious, because that was out of theme in your life. That was pointing at you from day one. Like when you were a kid, was care a big part of your, your home,

“like how did it become such a such a theme? I think it was, it was a big theme in my home,”

brought about through adversity. So when I was a kid, my mom was diagnosed with brain cancer. And by the time I was seven, eight, nine summer in that range, the radiation treatment, she received during her cancer when they removed the tumor from her brain, had rendered her into becoming a quadruplegic. And so I mean, my dad is my hero. Like watching him work restaurant hours,

legitimately take care of her and still be a good dad to me and never once feel bad for himself.

And in fact, the contrary, like I would watch him, I don't, I don't think I like consciously registered it at the time. But I felt it and it infected me in a good way. He derived pleasure out of caring for her. And then as I got a little bit older, we were a team, right? So I would take care of my mom and I would feed her. And I think because of the example that he said, yeah, listen, if I can go back in time, obviously, and wave a magic wand, she would not have

gotten sick and she still be alive today. But I never was like, gosh, I wish my mom was healthy. Like, that was our situation. Yeah. By dad and I took care of her. And she,

in spite of the fact that she could not walk or talk, I have never felt more loved by anyone in my

entire life. Like that, I think from her, this is not totally in line with your question, but I contact like the little movement around a smile. Do you know what, someone is so focused on a

“single person that you know, you are the only thing in the world that matters to them?”

I want to go back to that to something you just said, how loved you felt by your mom, having her, like, the way she gazed at you, movements, having her full attention, maybe not, but do you remember a moment, like, just to zoom in on or anything like a visual or something like, where were you? I just, I find that so compelling, maybe it's, especially compelling, because our lives today are so chaotic and we're pulled in a million directions. I don't know how your memory works when

you think back to like, those early days or honestly, these days last week, but I remember, like, glimpses, right? There's like these little things that for whatever reason, yep, I can almost watch like an old VHS tape of a five-second clip of my life. I used to ride a bicycle home

“from school. It was like so close. That's how I got home. And at a certain point, probably when I was,”

not known, eighth grade or something by that point, my dad had brought an nurse to help turn the day, because now we just needed it when my dad was at work. And my mom would have the nurse pushed her to the end of the street, like 10 minutes before I was likely to come home and she would

always be waiting there. And I don't know which day or what, but I remember one of those moments,

I remember coming down that little hill and her just, and she would just have the biggest smile on her face. And so that's the moment. I remember like the eye contact on the smile. And maybe that's an amalgamation of a bunch of those days wrapped up on one of them, let's share. But it is so interesting the story we tell ourselves about what kids need to feel confident. I don't know like now, right? Like the starting center and their soccer team, which means they need five private lessons a

week and three teams, and they need to be the math star, and they need to have all the friends, and they need the fancy birthday party. And if their friends all have this water bottle, they need this water bottle. And I'm just thinking about like my mom, my mom waited for me. And she was just watching me. There was nothing more important or interesting or compelling than waiting for you to ride your bike. And my guess is you were a best in average bike rider. I mean, she was not sitting there

marveling. I was so excited. I don't know what's the pedaling was it was a, but just you on your bike for this like very short ride. And it was captivating. It was captivating for her. And her energy was captivating for me in return. Out of necessity, it like she couldn't do anything.

ensure that I am fully present. I don't know that I'll ever be as fully present as she was with me.

“And you can feel it when someone is. Yeah, you know, one of the things I say to myself”

to try to stay really present in the moment with any of my kids when they're talking to me, just say Becky, listen for the next two minutes. Like they are the most interesting person.

It feels like your mom like was just when she was with you, like that's always full attention. Like

you were the most interesting person in the world. Yeah, I mean, like listen to this, I played the drums. Yeah. Like let that sink in. I threatened my friends to buy their kids' drums if they're they're failing in our friendship. And I had a band, a grunge band when I was like 14. We played up here. She was directly below us. There's no chance that it sounded good. And she loved it.

“Like loved it. And I'm not saying like that because I don't love when I hear some parents say,”

oh my kids so good at the everything like that, but it wasn't that wasn't the spirit of it. She just

loved being, like able to be a part of this thing that I was related to. Yeah, she did.

You end up getting to this career all around hospitality, around care, around entertaining, around actually a lot of things that aren't simple, that can be also exceptional, right? So just take me on that journey. So this is how we were early years. And then what brought you into that career, or did it to seem like every step was the obvious next step? No, I mean, so again, my dad worked in restaurants. And I mean, my dad and I are very, very, very close. And so I just wanted

to spend, it like it didn't really matter what he did for a living that would have been the thing that I wanted to do. And I would go to work with him on Saturdays because he'd work Monday through Friday, a long day is in Saturday. He'd go and just like to the office and have a few hours. And sometimes I'd be in the office with them other times he'd drop me off on one of the restaurants here in the city. And I'd help air quotes help. Yep. And I just fell in love with restaurants. I

fell in love with like the choreographed chaos, like the idea that every, every one of life's relationships was happening concurrently within the same four walls. But the fact that you'd go into the kitchen and there would be obsess so unobsessing over food, the Somalye with wine, someone about graphic design, no two days would ever be the same. And it seemed like these people were getting paid to make other people happy. Yeah. And so when I, my dad, he is nothing if not intentional

and was very insistent on imbueing that trait and me. And so when I was like, he would take it too

“far. Right. So when I was 12, I think we're like on our way to the airport from sea world or”

something. And he's like, well, it's time to come up with your goals for life. And I had been at, and I know this because he wrote them down and he gave them to me in my 20s and we're one good, a Cornell and study hospitality to open my own restaurant in New York City and three

Mary Cindy Crawford. And I got like two out of three. And I'm the third. I mean, I don't even know

what's beyond is. And so it's all I ever wanted to do. So I did get into Cornell and I, I did like I, I worked. He, he really pushed me to work for the best restaurants. And so I worked for Junior Print to try back to Gerely worked for Wolfgang Puck at Spago. I did all that stuff. And then I graduated from Cornell went to work for Danny Meyer. And I worked there for a couple years. But at this point, I didn't want to be in fine dining. I'd worked in fine dining and I'd been

turned off by it. I'd been turned off by the fact that at this stage, if you worked in a restaurant, you were there's there to serve the chef. Like it was all about the food and the way that hospitality was manifested who had taken a back seat. And so I wanted to my goal was to work at Shake Shack. And so Danny Meyer came to me as I was at Mom and he goes, hey, we're trying to do big things of a lesson park and live free to go there. I said, no, I want to go to Shake Shack.

was if you work for a company and you want them to be there for you, when you need them,

“you need to be there for them when they need you. So the Daily May but Danny was that I would go to”

11 medicine for one year. And then I'd get to go on Shake Shack. And then in that year, I just realized it didn't have to be the way that it was. And in fact, in fine dining at that level, you could create magic for people at a level beyond what I think anyone had had dreamt of. Yeah. And so a year later, he came and said, you're ready to go to Shake Shack. And I said, no. Now granted, I had gone to Run Shake Shack. I probably would own the building

we're in right now. But that was the best decision of my life because what I got to do from that I forward was just the coolest thing ever. Tell me more about that. Tell everyone more about that. Like, you're a brand of hospitality of taking care of people of the experience at a restaurant. What that means, just jump off wherever. Yeah. I mean, when you look at the best restaurants in the world, they run by chefs more often than not. Yeah. And when you look at the best restaurants in the

world, they at that point were 100% run by chefs. People who, gosh, they were unreasonable in pursuit of the food they served their product. And relentless in pursuit of innovation. What new techniques could they develop? What new ingredients could they start cooking with? And each of them in their own way have influenced how restaurants around the world approach cooking. And at a certain point, I was inspired enough by them, but cognizant of my own superpowers. And through those two things,

it was able to pair them together such that we made the choice to be unreasonable. Not in pursuit

of product, but in pursuit of people. Yep. And relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never

ever change, which is our human desire to feel seen, to feel cared for, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel genuinely welcomed. And it was years ago I wrote unreasonable hospitality on a cocktail napkin, but that articulation became like our call to arms. Yeah, the human desire to feel seen. I've been traveling a lot lately for my book tour, which means airports, rental cars, doing bedtime over face time, and having some of the most meaningful conversations

“with parents. And every time I'm on a trip like this, I think about how much coordination it takes”

to step away from everyday life, even just for a couple of days. I know for so many families when you do travel for work or for fun, it can feel good to know your home isn't sitting empty while you're gone. Because while you're away, you could be hosting your home on Airbnb and earning some extra income to put toward future travel. Okay, Becky, that sounds great, but I cannot take on one more thing. I get it, truly. And that's exactly where Airbnb's co-host network comes in. You can hire

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things that are good for kids don't always feel good to kids. It's why I love finding things that

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h-i-y-a-h-e-a-l-t-h-dot-com. You and I have talked about this, but everyone doesn't think, "Oh, my restaurant, like I'm going there to feel seen," but just say more about that, like what how important that is. My favorite quote about hospitality comes from my angel, and it's one most people have heard. She said, "People will forget what you say, they will forget what you do,

“but they will never forget how you made them feel." Gosh, I believe that to be so very true,”

when I think back on the experiences that linger with me, it's not something that someone did a little technical element of a meal or whatever kind of experience that I remember. It's a little or a big thing that someone did for me. I say a little or a big thing because it could be an

restaurant, something as small as me being on a first date in the server. Notice that we

are just right out of things. I've talked about that. They came in to like lubricate the conversation a little bit or it could be a big thing and I have plenty of stories to those that others have done for me, but I think it's just being seen for me. And obviously, the cadence of this conversation having just talked about my mom, it means like, "Hey, you are an individual, you matter. This is not a one-size-fits-all situation I'm here to deliver an experience that is specific to

and special to you." And if you can take that idea and be as relentless and creative and intentional and pursuit of making people feel that, not only does it make other people feel extraordinary. Not only does it make the deliverer of those things feel extraordinary because I really do believe that hospitality is a selfish pleasure, but I came to understand that it was the greatest competitive advantage that we as a restaurant could have. And I now have come to believe it's the greatest

competitive advantage that any business can have. How did you create a whole culture around that? Like, I'm just thinking about anyone listening and well, eventually, I want to talk about how you do this in your home, but making other people feel seen whether or not you work in restaurants. Just we're saying it's kind of the greatest competitive advantage of an individual. I mean,

“that's what there's no greater feeling we have. I remember, I remember being at a restaurant,”

when I had this cough and the waitress came up, I was like, oh, she's going to be mad or I don't know and I just couldn't stop coughing and she just brought me this tray of like two cough drops. It was like, I just I can I love that restaurant. By the way, I don't remember what I ate, right, but like, the customers and the contracts are much and by the way, they obsessed over every single dish they served you. There was a team of people working on every single place.

She didn't just have these in her pocket. Like, I don't even know where she got that. They came from a bit that one simple gesture meant so much more to you than anything else that they did. That's exactly right. So this culture of hospitality of helping people feel seen and cared for in this unreasonable way. So bring me to your house. This kind of culture of care, how does that show up for you as a dud? One of the things I say often about hospitality,

“and I said this for years in my restaurants, but I believe it applies to anyone.”

I would always say to my team, we have an opportunity. Perhaps even a responsibility

to create our own little magical world in a world that needs more magic. I think about magic a lot as it pertains to hospitality and caring and experiences. One of my favorite quotes is by teller of pen and teller. He said, sometimes magic is just being willing to invest more energy into an idea than anyone else would reasonably expect. I like that because it enforces something I believe and none of the stuff I talk about is hard. It just requires being willing to work a little bit harder.

magic. Try to create little and big moments that feel magical. We had a magic show at the

Nomad back in the day and when I introduced it in the beginning, I talked about I love magic so much and I do love like magical magic and magicians because these days, and it's even more so now with AI, we know how everything is done and there's this child like wonder that comes from not understanding something. So my kids, right now, if their lives don't feel unbelievably magical now, what am I doing? And so my favorite thing to do is a dad, in addition to the things

I just should be doing to care for them and to protect them, is to just find the little and big

ways to create magic. Like what? Okay, Christmas is a good example, although my colleague and I

Brian Canless, we've had all these conversations around how so many families are good at creating magic around the holidays, but it stops there. Like people go all out to my magic in the holidays and then like the rest of the years is kind of boring. Yeah, seriously. But like so last year, we watched the kids open all of their presence and I mean everyone's experience this. You spend so much time trying to buy all these gifts that you think they're going to love and wrapping them and

setting them into the tree and then it is over at like 30 minutes and like it's like, oh,

“it feels so unwilling. And so this year I was like, okay, how do we extend that and make it magical?”

So my kids are tuned for at the time. So I just didn't take me very long. I just created all these scavenger hunts for their gifts. I mean for a two year old to look at a picture and then run to a different part of the house and see another, if felt like a magic trick. We do something that Brian Canless inspired me to do, the tooth fairy is like such an awesome opportunity for magic. And yet it's not that magical. Like you talk about the tooth fairy a little bit. You put the tooth,

there's a coin. So he started this thing with his kids, where when they lose their teeth, a tooth, they have to go open a window and scream as loud as they can. My name is blank.

“I just lost a tooth. I believe in magic. And they need to say it really loud so that the tooth”

fairy wherever she is, here's them. And it just makes it more, I don't know, wonder full. I put a space between wonder and fall with intention. We try to do a little things like that maybe aren't even, I wouldn't go so far as to describe them as magic, but my wife and I both work a lot. We travel a lot but we are home on the weekends. And so Saturday morning is fancy cereal day. It's the only day they get to have sugary cereal. And pretty much every

morning they wake up and they say, is that fancy cereal day? They like the cereal. But but they love is the knowledge that when they're eating that fancy cereal, it means that for the next two days they're going to spend their entire days with mom and dad. Yeah. And so I like ritual rituals, love with the rituals. And can I just name something that you're doing? That maybe it's not magic, but it's definitely joy and ritual. And in some ways, branding like

fancy cereal day, you just branded that for your kids, right? Like one day they will be, I don't know, 25. And someone will say the word fancy and cereal. And they'll hear that together. And they will

“conjure up like all of these Saturdays and kids love that. Because I think it feels like an”

inside joke to them, right? And that feels magical to have. And you know, my youngest was

in a stage a couple of years ago, having a hard time going to bed, right? And it was always like,

oh, one more this one, right? I'm hungry and more watered my water bottle. And there's a night I just went in and I said, do you know about sip and fill? It's like what was like sip and fill? He's like, no, what is that? You know, it's like, oh. Do you know what it is? No, but I'm just into it now. When you sip your water bottle, hand it to your mom and she fills it up and brings it back. Like, literally, that's what it is. Sorry, I'm going to do it again. I'm about to fill you in on the

it became a point of connection, which is what kids need at bedtime and all the time, right? They feel seen and you have a special moment. I think those moments do feel magical. I mean, for us, too. For me, a hundred percent. Like, here's another one, another rebrand that we started. I travel a lot. I'm given gifts when I go to do a talk and one of the things I love,

“what people are doing in how they gift to me is centered around this recognition that the best way to”

love on somebody is to love on the people they love. And so I'm increasingly getting gifts for my

kids when I go to travel. And I love that. Now, the problem is I don't want my kids to expect something

from me every time I travel. And I don't want them to just have too much stuff. And it's less based on my OCD nature. It's more and still one spoiled kids. That'll keep it real. So we were struggling with that. And we came up with this idea of the treasure store. And so every two months, we get to go to the treasure store. But the way the treasure store works is you have to bring a bunch of stuff to the treasure store. And then once you have, you get to go inside and get one

thing from the treasure store. Just between you and I, the treasure store is the goodwill.

But it is so fun. Yes. And when they know they're going, they're going to go to the treasure store.

We go up to the room and they just start running around and they start grabbing stuff. And they fill up a bag and then we go to the treasure store. And every single time, like I can't imagine absent that branding, the arm twisting that would be required to get my kids to give a way. And then I want to give away my stuff. Yeah. So good. Okay, question for you. I feel like all of our strengths that can work for us, can work against us. This extreme talent you have really

noticed people to see people I've gotten a gift from you. And you know, the most thoughtful

“best gift I've ever gone from anyone. Thank you. Does it, does it ever, does it ever work against you?”

Does it, does it deplete you ever? Are there times when, you know, you, you feel like you lose yourself in the process? So just, I don't know, does that resonate at all or not really? I understand the question. It, it doesn't deplete me. I, I, I, I find that some, um, some things I do are energizing and some things are energy depleting. Yeah. Like, to run a great restaurant or I think a great business, somebody kind, I think it's equal parts focusing on excellence in the hospitality.

I really care about details. I derive pleasure out of executing at a very high level, every single

little detail. And yet as much as I do, that is depleting to me. The hospitality side, it always is

energizing. Now, I will say that sometimes I can be so focused on trying to care for everyone in a room that maybe I'm not as good at caring for the few people that I really should be caring for. Like, I can go somewhere with my wife. And I want to make sure everyone else feels comfortable and good. And then all of a sudden, I'm like, I am not paying a great husband right now. And so I'm trying to get better at caring less about some people that I can care more about

“others. Yeah. The reality is that you can't make everyone feel important at the same time.”

In a business sense, like taking care of people that's really, really high expectation, excellence, right? I'm thinking about in your home, so much of what can be good for a kid is being so supported. And having space to struggle to mess up, right, to not be excellent all the time for your parent to actually get it wrong because in that moment, you learned something about yourself. How does that show up in parenting for you? I mean, you know, my kids are so young.

And so being good or not good, it's stuff we haven't gotten there yet. At the age they are right now, I have not yet had the experience of watching them truly struggle. And that's going to be an entirely new game for me to start playing. Yeah. But I think it's, I think it's a part of it,

Me, I didn't have anyone to like, my dad was there. Like, I remember I came home after suffering my first heartbreak. And I was like 15. And my dad is a big, you know, manly intense man. I did his voice earlier. He's will. I mean, he doesn't got it. And he went over and he held me in his arms while I was crying for like two hours. Like, he knew when it was time for me to know that I was held in that relationship.

But he also let me figure a bunch of stuff out. Maybe it's just my feeling in the blanks, but I don't know why I'm thinking about your mom like being there for you with no words and just

“presence. It was out of version of what your dad did in that moment, too. Yeah, I think so.”

I'm never actually made the connection. Yeah, he just literally I walked in and I'm just, I mean,

you know, the first heartbreak. Like, I mean, just devastated. And I walked in. I'm sure it was like not crying. And he just walked up to me. And he just picked me. He didn't ask me why I was crying. Like, so I want to be the dad that shows up in those moments. But with the intention to hold myself back from showing up so consistently in some of the smaller moments. And I think that's I mean, talk about like feeling seen and feeling cared for. It is just, I mean, just I feel like

just isn't the right word because it makes it sound like it's easy. But it's just being there. Like, just being there full attention, full presence. Yeah. Probably not saying much, you know, no solutions,

“no lecture, no brilliant advice. Just and he said holding. I mean, I think that it goes back to”

systems and then being a container. That's kind of what we are for our kids, right? The systems around them and their hard moments where we're all like an egg without a shell. We're like, just be my shell. You know, I mean, even my daughter now, like, sometimes when she'll really

hurt herself and she runs in the house crying. I remember the first time she like jumps in the

marms on them holding her. And I'm like, hey, what happened? And she's like, I hurt my toes. Like, kind of like, I just like, no, I don't know. She just wanted to be held. She didn't want any hell about set of feeling held. And now I've learned when she runs in, I'll just hold her. But I don't need to fix anything for her. I just need her to know that I'll be there to hold her when she needs to be held. Which I get back to the what is depleting and what is energizing? Gosh, that's

the best. I don't want my kid to be hurt or to be sick. But the way they let me hold them when they are hurt or sick is literally what my favorite things in the entire world. It's okay. I have a little

“phrase for that. Like, because I think of it as sick joy. Like, when your kid is not, you know,”

they didn't break their bones. But they had a hard moment, essentially. They experienced a bump in the world. They didn't get included somewhere. They couldn't figure out the puzzle. And you know, just knowing if you have the long term vision of where you want your kid to go, which is just, I want my kid to be someone who can take on challenges and survive them and no one gets so good at exiting from struggle. You just kind of can get good at tolerating it and finding yourself through it.

If you're orienting to that long term, then these moments, you have a little bit of sick joy knowing, like, this is going to have a big impact. Like, this is it. One of the things I found myself doing in restaurants and the beginning. I would say relationships are relationships and the lessons from the ones we have in life can be applied to those in work. More recently, I've started to think the same thing in reverse, that the lessons I learned at work can be brought back into my home,

because almost with that exception, most successful people I know are far more intentional with the choices they make at work than they are with the choices they make at home. I have been

trying to be a studied and intentional and creative in curating the experience in my home as I always

have been at work. But I think that is something that everyone could stand to do a little bit more consistently and a little bit better if you're reserving a majority of your intention for the work place. I think you're selling yourself short and you're not making the most out of what forget about like being other-centered towards your children, but just not making the most out of what life can be. I think hospitality happens at the intersection of creativity and intention

and doing that at home a little bit more. I think it just makes life a lot more worth living

I'm going to have from our conversation, but there are three that feel pretty loud in my head right

“now. I'm going to share them with you. Number one, I don't think I'll ever forget the way Wil talked”

about his mom. Having her full attention, the way she looked at him with interest and wonder, that will really stay with me. Number two, adding more magic, making a moment with our kid

a little more fun, adding a story. Those things I know it can feel like, oh, do I have the energy

for that? But sometimes putting in the energy saves us a lot of energy for the rest of the day.

“And number three, keeping it simple, so often the moments we all remember are the moments someone”

was just there for us. They held us. Set next us, put their hand on our back and said nothing. I'm going to remind myself that that is more than enough during my kids next hard moment. Which will probably be later today. Before we go, I want to zoom out for a moment. This is part

“of a new series that we're calling how we're raised. Every couple of weeks will feature another conversation”

like this about how our upbringing shapes who we become. If this format resonated with you, let us know. I love when our listeners help shape what we do next in the podcast. And if there's something you'd love to hear in the series or someone who's story you're curious about, please tell us.

You can reach us at [email protected]. Now, let's end the way we always do. That won't

change. Place your feet on the ground and the hand on your heart. And let's remind ourselves even as we struggle on the outside. We remain good inside. I'll see you soon. My newest picture book, Leave Me Alone, is Out Now. And if you're parenting a deeply feeling kid or just a kid who has kind of explosive reactions to everyday moments, you will recognize the story immediately. It's about what happens when emotions take over and how connection, not fixing,

and boundaries help kids whether the moment with you beside them. This book isn't just for kids. It's also a tool for parents, something to read together when feelings are big and words are hard. Leave Me Alone is available now wherever books are sold.