Reducing Family Conflict: Platform for Splitting Caregiving Expenses

Have you ever felt the frustration of juggling caregiving with everyday life hassles? Well, you're not alone. Today, we hear the life-changing story of family caregiver, Sheri Atwood, who turned daily annoyances into an innovative creation. I share my deeply personal experience of caring for my mother with Alzheimer's, shedding light on the urgency of early detection and the complex world of family dynamics. Sheri joins us to offer her heartfelt story about managing caregiving, indifferent siblings, and her business, SupportPay.

Are you curious about how to navigate the financial maze of caregiving? We've got you covered. In our discussion on managing caregiving finances, Sheri introduces SupportPay—a game-changing app initially developed for divorced parents but now catering to the broader caregiving community. By consolidating financial tasks and communications into one seamless platform, SupportPay relieves the administrative burden, allowing caregivers to focus on what truly matters: providing emotional support and care. We dive into the app's features, user experiences, and practical benefits that can make a real difference in your caregiving journey.

Don’t miss out on more updates from the J Smile Studios Patreon!  You can get exclusive access to behind-the-scenes insights and live broadcasts. Join our community and transform your caregiving experience with us.

Visit supportpay.com for more information about the app.

Host: J Smiles
Producer: Mia Hall
Editor: Annelise Udoye

#Caregiving
#FamilyCaregiver
#AlzheimersAwareness
#CaregiverSupport
#SupportPay
#FamilyDynamics
#InnovativeSolutions
#CaregiverStories
#CaregivingCommunity
#CaregivingApp

Chapters

• 0:00 Caregiving Challenges and Family Dynamics
• 7:07 Managing Family Caregiving Finances
• 22:56 Navigating Family Caregiving Dynamics
• 33:05 Supporting Caregivers and Finding Solutions
• 39:54 Exclusive J Smile Studio Patreon Access

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:00

The number of times I am pissed off because my shoes don't quite fit right, or I'm driving down the street and my coffee spills in my lap because the coffee cup doesn't quite fit right in the holder of my car or my laptop bag. The wheel breaks, so now I'm running through the airport holding the bag and the laptop thinking it might drop, and I don't have the AppleCare. Whoever really extends the warranty on a laptop. The number of times that I have an idea yeah, I could invent this product. Or how come somebody doesn't really have a way for me to clean my bathtub and my shower without having to bend over? You got brooms and mops for the floor. Why don't you have a broom and mop for the bathtub? And on and on and on. But what happens? I'll never make it. I haven't invented it, I just talk about it.

Speaker 1: 1:23

But what if somebody got pissed off with something that didn't work as a caregiver, as a family caregiver, and then they went and made a product that can help all of the rest of us and we found them. That's exactly what happened. So come on. What happened? So come on. I found a family caregiver that made a product for a service that we can all use. Hurry up, hurry up, don't go nowhere. Come on, listen and watch, listen and watch. Yeah, yeah, yeah, come on, come on.

Speaker 1: 2:01

Parenting Up. Caregiving Adventures with Com, with comedian Jay Smiles, is the intense journey of unexpectedly being fully responsible for my mama. For over a decade I've been chipping away at the unknown, advocating for her and pushing Alzheimer's awareness on anyone and anything, with a heartbeat Spoiler alert. I started comedy because this shit is so heavy, so be ready for the jokes. Caregiver newbies, ogs and village members just willing to prop up a caregiver. You are in the right place.

Speaker 1: 2:38

Hi, this is Zeddy. I hope you enjoy my daughter's podcast. Is that okay? Today's supporter shout out is Instagram A to the F. She says great advice. Seems too many are in denial when they see the subtle signs something has changed. Seeking out info confirms their fear, but it's best to know in advance, in my opinion. She was referring to the episode where I say hey, if you see your LO maybe showing some decline, try not to be in denial. Decline, try not to be in denial. Don't wait until everything is falling apart to send them to the doctor or an expert. Better be safe than sorry. Go ahead and let them go talk to somebody. So thank you A to the F Reducing Family Conflict Platform for Splitting Caregiving Expenses. Sherry, when you knew it was time to be your mom's caregiver, was time to be your mom's caregiver. How difficult was that process. Did you already have the legal documentation in place, or did mom acquiesce? Or was it like pulling candy from a baby?

Speaker 2: 4:40

It was like pulling candy from a baby. So I was raised by an incredibly strong single mother who was used to doing everything on her own and thought she could handle it. My siblings didn't want to get involved financially Right, and a little bit even there and you know she did suffer from had mental health issues, right, she was an alcoholic and at that time a prescription drug addict because of some injuries she suffered, but she always thought she could handle it. So it unfortunately having to get law enforcement involved Right, get her help, get her in the hospital, get her through rehab. It was not no step of, it was easy.

Speaker 1: 5:22

No step of it was easy. Oh, did you also find yourself battling your siblings? Because it's one thing if your siblings aren't assisting you. It's another thing if they actually say hey, Sherry, stop, leave mom alone, she's going to work this out herself. Which way did they fall?

Speaker 2: 5:45

So one was completely uninvolved. All he was interested in my brother's the only thing he was interested in what electronics or what money he could get, always. So he wasn't involved. My sister agreed that she need help, but she didn't have the financial means or know so, and you know she would take the phone calls and unfortunately, as you know, when you have somebody that is maybe not at their top of their game, right, and whether it's dementia or an alcoholic or that, you have to let a lot of the stuff just slide off your back and not get so impacted by what they say and they certainly don't remember it.

Speaker 2: 6:22

It became more troublesome because I not only had to deal with my mom, but then I had to deal with the emotional impact of my sister, who would get hurt over everything that my mom would say, and so it's like almost like I'm and I had a child that I was dealing with too and I'm like which one can I deal with Right At the same time. So it made it a lot harder, I think, having that and again me having to have both the stress of taking care of her, the finances, being a single mom, and then dealing with my siblings and trying to manage all that plus work, and I had just started this company, so it was a lot at the same time.

Speaker 1: 6:58

What's your company?

Speaker 2: 6:59

So my company's support pay, and the goal was I started this, my company's support pay, and the goal was I started this. Actually I was a. I got divorced with my ex-husband and I never wanted. My parents had a horrific divorce and so I never wanted my daughter to go through what I did. But no one tells you that after your divorce.

Speaker 2: 7:15

Now, all of a sudden, you have to share money, schedules, right, communicate with each other, and I was at work and it was so time consuming all these individual tasks and payments and my money I don't believe it costs that much and did you send the payment?

Speaker 2: 7:29

So I was looking for a solution myself and was shocked that there was nothing out there. So I started SupportPay for parents to help share in the finances, the payments, the expenses, schedules and communication, photos, videos of their kids. But then I went through the situation with my mom and got approached by thousands of people that had heard about support pay and said wait a second, it isn't just parents taking care of kids. It's, for example, siblings taking care of parents right, or grandparents or another family member, and we all know that the fights come when it comes to money, and so is there a way, right to have that transparency in the family and allow an app to do it, automate it, put it all in one place. Then there's never any question and then maybe you can spend more time like I. Should have been able to spend more time like with my sister on the emotional side, but I didn't have time to correct, correct.

Speaker 1: 8:29

So have you found that between parents versus family and siblings, are both groups uh, warming up to support paid the same, or is one group enjoying it more than the other?

Speaker 2: 8:51

Yeah, so we started. You know our background. So we as with for parents right, we started as a co-parenting. We just launched the version, the release version in March, and we have had an enormous sign sign up. We haven't even done a lot of marketing around it for the caregiving platform because we're the only ones out there. Again, it's being able to. So we already have over 100,000 parents on our platform. We're already in all 50 states and territories. We're in 70 countries, but using the same architecture, the same product that's proven and scalable, being able to use it for this completely different use case.

Speaker 2: 9:27

And it addresses again that same problem. Because you can enter an expense with the receipt. You can upload a bill right, it can be split among your siblings, you can send a reimbursement to your sibling. You can send a payment directly to the merchant. You can record payments. You can have all your schedules and whether you're going to visit mom or take dad to the doctor all of those things. You can communicate, share photos, videos, prescriptions all of that in one place, instead of going to Venmo over here and a spreadsheet over here and a box of receipts over here and then arguing and fighting every time you get together. So we have had just an amazing feedback from caregivers and saying, gosh, this is the one piece that no one is talking about when it comes to caregiving, that at the end of the day, once I got it, you know, I may have gotten an assistant, maybe I've gotten all this, but when the burden falls back on the family, how do I make it easier? And that's our goal.

Speaker 1: 10:22

I could cry. I could cry. I could just cry, sherry, because when you go to caregiver support meetings or online virtual groups, this doesn't even get talked about Yet and still it has to be one of the major, shall we say, breaking points for caregivers. But so often you're dealing with the biggest fire, and usually the biggest fire is you're physically and mentally burned out with actually lifting your LO off the floor or getting them to a doctor's appointment or did they take the right medicine. So, because you are trying to tackle that monster, the thing around, my brother has not sent me the $200 that he owed me for the, you know, the co-pay, or he was supposed to come last month and since he didn't come, I had to hire in-home health services. So that costs $350 and he should pay me that back.

Speaker 1: 11:44

And another thing is you maybe you start to feel like, is this shit petty, right? So as a, should I ask them for that Cause it is my mom. What is totally amazing is that you are offering an opportunity to remove a boulder for family caregivers. That many people who are trying to help us don't even get down to that depth of our pain, because so often when we meet in groups or we talk to our therapists, we're hitting the largest parts of the fire, which is dealing with our LO and getting to doctor's appointments and making sure that the lights are on and the bills are paid, and they took their medicine, and they ate something and drank something.

Speaker 1: 12:34

And we start to feel sometimes like hey, am I being petty? Is this small minded of me to say you know, why don't you give me half of the gas that it takes me to drive back and forth to the doctor's office? Well, I mean truthfully. Well, I mean truthfully, we should be splitting all of this. And if the app would allow me to not have to talk about it every month or every week, I can just text hey, go in the app, please go look in the app. I just put all the receipts in there, so now I don't have to call you, I don't have to try to get you on a Zoom call, just go look. Oh my, omg. So what? How do people sign up? Is there a fee to use the app? Are there limits to how many people can join, like per family? How are the payouts done? I don't I'm not saying that you have to do a whole tutorial here, but just trying to give people an idea of the simplicity and or the way they would use it.

Speaker 2: 13:54

Yeah. So first, to your point about the notifications. The best part is we do all the notifications, so, again, you don't even have to notify them. And if you use your example and this is the way that I used it I didn't think my siblings were going to contribute or help, but I wanted to document how much I was spending. I wanted to document how much time I was spending doing these things so that at least in some small way they saw right, maybe if they're not going to, then it's petty yes, it is petty, but gas is expensive. And if they're not going to contribute now there's a record right.

Speaker 2: 14:28

And then where this became most valuable was during probate. So what people don't realize is one if you have a power of attorney for your parent, you have got to by law document where all the money's going. But also, when it came to probate, we not only used it for the day to day, we used it to split up fairly her assets that were in her home, right. So we put it in there and we split up the value of it to make sure what little she had, you know, was split up fairly. The nice thing. So with SupportPay to answer your question it's super easy. It's a web and mobile app Android and iOS they can simply go to supportpaycom. It's a free version, so we have light features for a free version and then an individual can pay for themselves and their family members can be free version, or they can pay for a family and unlimited family members. They can download it, or another option is we are also available as an employee benefit. So if you believe that your employer should offer this as a free benefit, right where they're funding it, simply come back to our website, supportpaycom. Right where they're funding it. Simply come back to our website, supportpaycom and you can tell your employer about it or just send your employer and say this is something that would really help me as a caregiver. We try to make it incredibly affordable, so it starts at $9.99 a month. Also, we do a discount for Medicare and Medicaid, as well as military domestic violence survivors. They get it all free. So we'll work with you.

Speaker 2: 16:02

My goal here of course I need some revenue to keep the lights on and give us ability to do support, but the goal here is how can we work together and really help caregivers and take away that fight, because that moment that you need your brother to be there because you're exhausted, but you had just got into a fight about the money two days ago and now you won't return your calls. Right, then he's not there for you emotionally either. So how can we take stuff? Put that over here.

Speaker 2: 16:27

Let support pay be the communicator and then that way you can rely on your siblings, because we all know it is an incredibly lonely time, right when you're trying to now take care of somebody that you saw was so strong growing up and they need you and you have no one else to lean on. So that's really our goal. So, again, supportpaycom, you can search for support pay in the mobile, in the app store or Google play, and download it. And again, if you can't afford it, just contact us, our support center, say you heard about me on this podcast and we will work with you to make it as affordable for you, to make sure you can use it and get to take advantage of it.

Speaker 1: 17:05

Fantastic. Is that a standard spelling of support pay? Yep.

Speaker 2: 17:11

Yep S-U-P-P-O-R-T-P-A-Y. We help you. Support and pay. Yep S-U-P-P-O-R-T-P-A-Y. We help you support and pay and supportpaycom.

Speaker 1: 17:21

I love it. That keeps it simple. And will the distributions go right to the individual's preferred bank or yeah, so that's a great part.

Speaker 2: 17:36

So we have. We offer multiple options. One, if you're, the family members are all on support pay, if you can, they all want to use it. They just connect their bank account and the money moves as fast as it would move from Venmo into your bank account. So it's the three-day ACH. If, say, one of the family members is not connected, you can still send them a digital check so they get emailed a check, or you can even physically mail them a check.

Speaker 2: 17:57

Or the new feature we just released was bill pay. So say, you're all splitting your mom's nursing home, you upload the bill for nursing home and each family member can send their individual payment directly to the nursing home. We also allow you to record manual payments. So maybe your brother handed you $20 cash for it. You can record that in our app right there. Or maybe you paid through Venmo or PayPal or however. You screenshot that as a proof and you attach the payment proof so it not only has the expense in the item, it has the proof that you've paid, and that is again critical.

Speaker 2: 18:32

It's one of the things people don't think about, but having that history one, it's incredibly difficult to find it again.

Speaker 2: 18:38

I challenge anybody to go find all their payments to one person on Venmo and download it. Like you can't and you're not thinking about it right now, but you will need a record of this at some point and that's the last thing you want to deal with is trying to find where all this information is. So it's all there. So, and we offer all of that manual payments connect to your bank if you want, send checks, and then we're going to be coming out with prepaid cards where you can actually fund cards and give it to your mom, give it to your dad, give it to your brother and spend on those cards. So we're just trying to make it as easy as possible and work in the way that caregivers need. And again I will say, 98% of my employees are not only working for support pay. They are directly impacted by this problem. So we care a lot, from bottom to the top, about who we're serving and really just want to help people and make a difference in their lives.

Speaker 1: 19:30

I 100% dig this. I don't remember which cartoon it was, but when they got excited they would say hot diggity dog. That's. That's how I feel it is no small feat to to have a central location for that many receipts. I have been the executor with the executrix and the administrator and the power of attorney more times than I care to have done so, you know, in one way is you know, it's great that someone trusted me so much to be in charge of their affairs.

Speaker 1: 20:18

And then it sucks that so many people that I love have either left this earth already or have not been able to take care of their own stuff.

Speaker 1: 20:52

And what I'm here to tell you parenting of family is, when you cannot find the international government, they are going to lean into what will benefit them, the government. So if you cannot prove that you spent $50 a week in adult underwear, they're going to say well then, you didn't spend it. So then you're not going to be able to make those deductions toward reducing the amount of the estate and whatever tax benefit you may have received goes out the window. So to Sherry's point yeah, you may not go to jail because you can't find these receipts, but the money that you spent basically just vanishes and you don't get credit for it because your tax returns and your LOs, estate and probate process. It just is a big old goose egg if you don't have proof that it happened and it's like damn. I should at least be able to get some deductions for this so we can maybe not have to pay as much or get some money back, or anyway, it's worth it. The point is it's worth it. It is worth it, man, wow, wow, go ahead.

Speaker 2: 22:19

Sorry, I was going to say, if you do a little bit every day, cause the last time you want to deal with finding those receipts or digging through bank account records or is during probate right, it's the last thing you're worried about. So having it there with a click of a button, cause you've done it like literally on the road you buy something, take a picture of the receipt, we automatically scan it, we'll split it, we do the notification Literally 30 seconds it takes you, then it's there. So at the time when you really you think you're tired, now you really don't want to deal with it, that part is just taken care of, right just taken care of, right?

Speaker 1: 22:55

Yeah, yeah, yeah. How long did it take you to say you know what this thing I made for my ex-husband and my kids? I think it has even maybe a greater use, or at least as good of a use, in the caregiver community. Was it an automatic light bulb? I mean, how long did that take for you to see the synergy?

Speaker 2: 23:17

Yeah. So I really saw the synergy when I went through it. But I'm also a seed stage startup, female founded. We still get less than 2% of the money out there, so I didn't have the resources to expand because it's a whole new target market. But I can't tell you how many people I get inundated was getting inundated. Our support was was like hey, we saw this and I am a single parent using this, but I'd love to be able to use this for right. My parents, so it was me, it was several of my employees Same thing, they're all caregivers. In fact, four employees in the past month. My employees have had to become caregivers right, unexpectedly, and so we didn't have the resources to expand.

Speaker 2: 24:00

The product part was easy. Right now it's just getting the word out there that you know, people know that this is a problem, but they don't know a solution's out there again because there's no one else out doing it. And having the resources to you know, connect with people like you who are part of this community, just to let them know. That's our biggest barrier right now is doing that because the product works, it scales, it's been proven. It's now just saying hey, we're out here to help and a problem you're not really talking about, but we know you're struggling with and hey, we've got a solution for you.

Speaker 1: 24:32

Yeah, absolutely, yeah, absolutely. And every little, every boulder and stone and hurdle and mountain that we can move out of the way for a family caregiver to just focus on the care and the concern of the LO is a win for caregivers. We might not be able to beat the disease just yet, but we can certainly make the daily life of the caregiver easier. And, to your point, when that is easier, then we're going to show up better for our loved ones. We're in a better mental state, a better physical state, in everything. It's just up, up, up from there. Uh, we've got. We wouldn't be the parenting up community with, uh, caregiving adventures, with comedian Jay smiles, if I didn't pitch to you, um, the request to share a few of the comical things that you experienced with your mom or that you've heard from other caregivers along your journey of developing this app, this business. What are some things where you just have to shake your head and say I got to laugh to keep from crying, because how the hell would you even think this would happen.

Speaker 2: 25:56

I think one of the funniest things is, unfortunately, when my mom passed and we were in her very small mobile home splitting up her very not valuable things and my brother literally wanted to put in the value of her scrapbooking paper as part of the pieces of it. We ended up at that time my sister and again she had a very small mobile home. She didn't have a lot. It ended up being 16 pages on an Excel spreadsheet because my brother forced her to write down every single item and the value of it and then split it up to make sure that things were fair, right it up to make sure that things were fair, right, and you're like, are you like? And it came down to like literally like $5,000, $2,000, like in total after all these 16 pages of stuff. And it was like and finally I was like I give up, you can have it all. Like I don't have time for this, right, I'm a single mom, I'm running a company, like take it, but it's like it just shocks you of the amount of pettiness, right, that comes in when it comes to money and family. So those were the things and but at the same time, no recognition for the amount of time that I took off work and you doing all of that. So it's, I find it.

Speaker 2: 27:11

I found it comical after the fact. Right, we had to go through all of that and waste all that time. And then now I say, hey, look, now I'm lucky because the benefit is, if I ever got remarried again I would say, hey, you never have to worry about whether an in-law likes you, we don't have to fight about where you're going to go for Christmas because, like now, I can go there. And unfortunately, this caused relationships to end with my siblings Right and still to this day because of that stress. So learning, saying is there a way to make this better? And then just again laughing it off and making a joke. As I always say, if you don't have a story to tell, at the end you didn't have an adventure 100 percent honey.

Speaker 1: 27:52

One hundred million, trillion percent. One hundred million, trillion percent. Oh yeah, you know that that was the same thing that had with my father. My father's mother passed and he and his sister did not agree at all with the division of her assets. And there was a point where my dad just said I don't want to talk about it anymore, I don't want to fight, so like, whatever my sister wants, but it hurt him so to the core that it changed the trajectory of their relationship forever, like there's nothing to say, you know, because you can't, you can't take that back, right, we shared that parent, we shared that parent, shared that parent, we shared that parent and you can't just all of a sudden decide that the parent was more yours. Oh, but I was the favorite, or I think I did more, or I think I had the last conversation. Listen, sit down, just sit down, just sit down, sit down, just sit down. Well, this has been, I have to tell you, sherry, you have, you have done something fanatically fantastic to me.

Speaker 1: 29:12

My career before caregiving included being a product designer, and a major purpose of being a product designer, which is very different from engineering, is that product designers meet the needs of the market. Engineers create things that may or may not have a current market gap. Engineers might create something that nobody even needs. The same thing. Artists might create something that nobody even needs or wants, but product designers are are born to say no, the market has a gap and people need this thing, this service, this into this, this technology, and that's precisely what you did. People need this thing and, uh, you double down on it.

Speaker 1: 30:13

You were like, hey, I got this thing and I believe it can serve two different groups who are suffering through loss because in divorce and in family caregiving, you're suffering through loss, through very you were, you were, you're. You're talking about really, really close ties that now are strained and worn and tethered and money's in the middle, worn and tattered and money's in the middle, and you have created something that can help us swallow the pill a little, a little easier. So I thank you for that as a as a person who can utilize it, I thank you for it and as a product designer, I'm like, hell, yeah, chicks rule. Another chick champion, another chick champion. So thank you so much. I really enjoyed this conversation.

Speaker 1: 31:34

I end we end each episode with snuggle ups, and snuggle ups are my version of saying hey, these are a few takeaways that I believe, as a family caregiver, if you go ahead and lean into these things, it'll make your journey easier. They are hard and, yes, they do suck. However, the faster you go ahead and snuggle up to fill in the blank, you will find it to be less troublesome and you will have less friction on your road as a family caregiver. So I ask you, ms Sherry Atwood, what would you share with the Parenting Up community as a snuggle up? Now, it could be something that you think from the conversation we've had today or just something that has come to you over your lifetime.

Speaker 2: 32:29

Yeah, of course I'm going to say you take away of going in, at least checking out support, pay, but it's, what can you do to alleviate the things that usually the things that cause the most fight could be the most obvious, and thereby you risk the time that you you need those family members in that support.

Speaker 2: 32:50

So, being able to look at the two and, if nothing else, if you have a sibling or siblings listening to this and you know of a sibling that's a caregiver, put yourself in their shoes for one day, right, so being able to do that and see on the other side. It's not an easy journey. It's like, as I say, it's unfair, where I tell my daughter nothing on your birth certificate said life would be fair, right, but if there are ways that you can help each other or improve or recommend or share those stories, right, at least have a place and a safe place to go and you know, in some ways, if there is any ways to be able to lean onto your family members for support, take out all the financial fights and all of the stuff that doesn't matter and enjoy the time that you do have left with your parents. That's one of the biggest regrets I have is. I didn't have a chance to do that, so that's what I would say you nailed it thank you you nailed it.

Speaker 1: 33:47

Thank you, you nailed it. That's. That's clear, that's concise, and I'm sure it will be very beneficial to the parenting of community. Well, thank you, sherry.

Speaker 2: 33:58

Thank you for having me.

Speaker 1: 34:00

Absolutely. That's it for now. You are welcome back at any time. Make sure that we know as new iterations of support pay come up. Yes, everybody in the parenting up community support pay dot com. It's Android and Apple ready. Yeah, I can't wait yes.

Speaker 1: 34:28

And support pay dot com, yes, yep, I can't wait. The web, yes, and supportpaycom, yes, and I cannot wait, uh, for you all to let us know what you think about it, how you're using it, which parts of uh if bells and whistles you utilize the most, and I'll make sure that I let Sherry know.

Speaker 2: 34:47

Absolutely, and we are open. Right, we're building this for each other, right? It's one thing to build something. It's another thing to experience it yourself. So we are always open to feedback. How can we make it better? What do you need? How can we make your lives easier? That's, again, my mission and it's a mission of all my employees. So please download it, try it right, Come to us, tell us if you need other things, if you like other things, if you like it, if you don't. We love all of that feedback, again, just to help more and more people out there ease this conflict and make their life just a little bit less stressful so they can enjoy the time with their loved ones more.

Speaker 1: 35:25

And that is the button that will end this conversation because to make the caregiver's life easier so that they can enjoy more time with their loved one. That's it. You put a bow on that baby. You put a bow on it. Well, you take care, you have a good one and I'll talk to you soon. Let's snuggle up.

Speaker 1: 35:57

Number one what is causing you consistent, frequent stress? That's a part of your caregiver journey responsibility. That's a part of your caregiver journey responsibility. Maybe it's a bunch of things, but if you can pinpoint at least one thing that is consistently frequently causing you stress, tackle that thing, because if it's happening that much and it's stressing you out, there is likely a way that you can minimize it. Right, you can't cure your LO's disease, but every damn thing doesn't have to stress you out, okay.

Speaker 1: 36:44

Number two money causes all kind of extra feelings. If you are a hip hop head like me, more money, more problems and less money, even more problems. All those extra feelings that you and your family members may be experiencing get you in such a rut, in a dark space, that you think it has to be this way. All we gonna do is fuss and fight about these bills or how we split up the time, hell. No, it doesn't have to be that way. Everything can change. Time can allow you to shift and modify any and everything. There are systems and solutions all over the place, the place. Don't accept the behavior of your family members, siblings, or even the hired help that you have, just because somebody from the church has been volunteering to come over and help your mama owe the clothes. If they're doing it in a way that you don't like it, say something. If the money is coming up short, say something. It's enough stress that your LO has this disease. Listen, trust me, every little bit of mental health that you can snatch back will be worth it.

Speaker 1: 38:30

Okay, yeah, number three, breathe with me. One, two, three, four. Now my eyes are closed because I'm not driving. If you're driving or walking or something, don't close your eyes. Four, five you feel that tingle in your spine. I did Six. Yep, we made it. That's it, yo. What's up y'all? I'm over here just mixing and scratching up stuff and reminding y'all.

Speaker 1: 39:54

Patreon is open, it is open and ready for you. You, you, you and your mama too. We are loading up things. All things eddie, all things podcast. All things Zetty, all things podcast. All things caregiving behind the scenes. Extra stuff J Smile's comedy is dropping with her own little collection within the J Smile Studio Patreon, very, very soon. It'll be less than a month, but you want to go on and get in there because there's exclusives. That's kind of time sensitive to whoever is in there first. We've already had live broadcasts for people who are already in and I'll be honest, because of, you know, branding matters. So there's some stuff that I just can't say and do on the World Wide Web that I can do in the Patreon pantry. So if you want to see and know and hear and experience more of what's happening between my ears, come to the J Smile Studio, my Patreon pantry.