Natalie
And Nat — two very different sisters who come together each week to reframe problems big and small with you, our dear Reframables.

Rebecca
And why do we call you such a term of endearment?

Natalie
Because, Becca, we are all in the process of reframing and being reframed.

Rebecca
This week we are reframing neurodiversity with Supernova Momma.

Natalie
Otherwise known as Natasha Nelson. She’s an autistic mom blogger with two autistic children. She’s got a lot to teach us about reframing some of life’s challenges, and has some hilarious stories to share in the process about her life as a veteran, building a business as a neurodivergent parent, and being real at all times.

Rebecca
But first off, we’ve got some love to show. So we’ve made a friend in this podcasting world of ours, and her name is Pam Uzzell. Her podcast is called Art Heals All Wounds, and we’ll be playing her trailer at the end of this episode to give you a taste of what she’s all about. Each week she interviews an artist and talks about their work. She believes that as creative thinkers, artists present us with some of the most compelling visions of ways that our world could work better for everyone, and that is a vision Reframables can get behind. So check her out.

Natalie
Today we are interviewing Natasha Nelson, who is helping us to reframe neurodiversity through a parenting lens. Tash is an autistic mom and a certified positive discipline educator, supporting parents of neurodiverse kids. Both of her girls are autistic, and their autism manifests completely differently from her own. Tash creates and delivers courses and products for families and educators around neurodiversity, emphasizing and elevating support for black families. Her many thousands of followers on both Twitter and Instagram point to her filling a real need in the parenting world. Her website is linked in the show notes.

Tash, how did you start down this path as a positive discipline educator? Because I read in one interview that you worked in education at one time as an administrator. So did your journey start there?

Natasha
No. It’s so funny because when I get asked that, I always kind of twitch my… I laugh a little bit. What’s the best way to look at this? I’m a veteran as well, and when you’re in the military, of course you start off as one of the lowly troops, but if you are disciplined and you really soak up that rah-rah mess, you can go high in the ranks. And there was a time when I soaked up that rah-rah mess and I was very disciplined, and so I went from what they classified as an E-1, which is a regular soldier, to a E-5, which is a non-commissioned officer and leader, in about two years — which is very fast. Even before I did that, to test me, they gave me soldiers to discipline, to supervise, to look over and to manage — and I just didn’t like the way the military was disciplining, leading, and managing people.

Rebecca
Is that why you say ‘rah-rah mess’? You’re calling it the ‘rah-rah mess.’

Natasha
Yes — the rah-rah mess.

Rebecca
I like that.

Natasha
One of the things that the military did when I was coming there (because it could be very different now, I’ve been out for a very long time): what they would call smoke soldiers, which was corporal punishment where you did specific different types of exercises until you were exhausted and physically could not go on anymore. It could be anywhere from 30 minutes to hours of doing exercises as punishment for something. And to give you an idea of how it doesn’t even correlate, you could be doing this, this smoking session, because you are late to a formation. So we have formations to get us ready for the day, to get information, to make sure we have accountability of all the soldiers — and a soldier’s late, and then you’re getting smoke, so you’re doing exercises for anywhere from 30 minutes to hours to teach you a lesson about being late. How does that correlate? How did you learn the lesson there? And we don’t even know why you were late, and we’re giving you this smoking session. And that just didn’t make any sense to me, and I didn’t want to do it, and I didn’t want to be a part of it.

Rebecca
So they weren’t open to different approaches to discipline, were they?

Natasha
So yes and no. I’m very good at packaging things, and my response was that if I give you the results you want, will you let me lead the way I want? And my leader said yes. I was very blessed. Some people like to say they did everything on their own — I did not. I have been blessed in every aspect of my life to have people who encourage me or saw something in me and really kind of reached me up. There’s really no bootstraps. It’s like a bootstrap story when you hear where I came from, but it’s literally just having the right people at the right time in my life who saw something in me and continued to lift me up. And so my first leader, when he gave me those soldiers, they gave me the problem soldiers, because they were, “Oh, you want to try this new thing? Fine. You’re going to get the ones who are always late, who never have their finances together, and who never listen. Let’s see what you can do.”

And I did not know it was positive discipline. I think at the time I don’t even know if that phrase was available or widely known. I was looking more about authoritative leadership, and so I started adapting things like, “Ok, why were you late?” And they would tell me why. I was like, “Ok, well, what we’re going to do is we’re going to set specific timers in your phone to make sure that you’re on time for things, and you have to write a paper on timeliness.” You know, those type of things. Or, “Ok, why weren’t you able to pay your bills?” “Well, you know, I thought we had this money…” “Ok, so we’re going to go to a financial readiness class and then you have to sit down and map out a budget and we’re going to make sure you’re on your budget.” And so the disciplines had to match what the soldier’s problem was, and we were focusing on solutions and making sure it didn’t happen again, not punishing my soldiers. And my soldiers started prospering and getting training and going up in the ranks themselves. And so I got to do what I wanted to do, up until I decided to leave that unit — mostly because they were deploying a lot. And I wanted to travel the world, and so I went to Germany.

And when I got to Germany, my record kind of followed me, because you have what they call NCOERs — and so all of that information of me doing programs and implementing programs for helping soldiers get on the track they wanted to be came with me. And then I have a big mouth, and when I got into my new unit and they weren’t very together, organized very well, and I was like, “Well, you’re supposed to be asking me this, and who’s my leader? I’m supposed to have a mentor to show me around Europe and why isn’t it…?” And the first sergeant who was the leader of the organization came out and said, “You sound like you want a job as my S-1 CO, so you can be over all of that.” And that’s what happened. And so I was able to implement those things in Europe, because I was in a leadership position, immediately over a whole organization — and so I could continue to do that. And that unit prospered. The reason why I got out was because of racism and sexism, and we wanted to start having children. And my husband and I were in the military. And so then this was prior to knowing anything about me having autism. I just knew that I’m not very good at multitasking things I feel very strongly about. And at the time I felt very strongly about the military. I was the rah-rah soldier, right? I did it my way, but I was still very rah-rah, and ‘do everything the best you can,’ and find a solution. And I didn’t feel like I would be able to do that and be rah-rah mom — and I’m the one who has to be pregnant. So we decided my husband’s going to stay in, and I was going to get out. And so then I went to administration at the superintendent district’s office and I brought all that stuff with me. But it started in the military.

Natalie
Oh my goodness, what an amazing story. And what a loss for them that they lost you in that journey, because that district gained so much when you arrived for them.

Rebecca
I can just picture while you’re trying to have these, you know, intelligent, thoughtful conversations with your soldiers, there’s soldiers on the other side of the field doing their… they’re getting smoked out.

Natasha
All the time! And there was this big thing about wanting to be one of our soldiers, and platoons being against each other because other soldiers wanted to be my soldiers. It was a whole hullabaloo. Yes.

Rebecca
Wow, that’s cool. We should make a movie about you.

Natalie
Seriously. Supernova momma, I’m your soldier.

Rebecca
Ok. What has been one of the most eye-opening moments for you in your own learning about autism? I mean, even in Natalie’s intro, your autism and your girls’s autism manifest differently.

Natasha
So the biggest for me has been acquired neurodiversity. And what I mean by that is that a lot of times trauma can manifest in the same symptoms that we see with autism. And so you could have a person who’s just dealt with a lot of trauma in their lives. And they could stim — they could have sensory issues because their brain has been rewired through that trauma, because trauma actually rewires our DNA. And so they could have issues self-regulating. They could have issues with hypo- or hyper-arousal. They could have issues paying attention. They could have issues very similar to ADHD and autism, but that person has dealt with trauma. And why that’s important for me personally and what I do is that I concentrate on black and neurodivergent families. And sometimes there’s a black family that’s dealt with a lot of trauma from being black, from being in poverty, from being in America. And it’s really important for me to get them help to kind of narrow: is this autism, or is this a response to the trauma that you’ve faced in your life and you’re still facing right now? And maybe we need to get you to a psychologist and really make sure that you’re diagnosed, because I’m not that person.

That’s always important to me, because for me, the way I help you is going to be the same. Whether it’s trauma or whether it’s autism, you still have those symptoms — so understanding your sensory and giving you the tools to understand your sensory and how to support that. Understanding alternate terms of communication, and how you can still communicate with your child if they’re responding to trauma by not being speaking, or minimal speaking. Understanding how to do coping strategies and learn emotions and identifying emotions and alternate coping strategies. All that’s going to be the same for me in helping that parent in dealing with that and in supporting their child. But when we start talking about school, when we start talking about places outside of their home and how to support their child that way, they’re going to need a diagnosis to be sure — is this trauma, or is this autism, or ADHD?

Natalie
From a social kind of perspective then, I mean I’m hearing you say that what you see is missing from the conversation obviously around labels and what needs to be applied and who should be doing the applying — what do you think then is missing from conversations in education specifically? I have been an educator, public educator, for 20 years, so I have a perspective from, you know, what’s been happening here in Toronto. So it’s a large city, but there is no sort of pan-Canadian educational story, necessarily. It’s very different from province to province, and I would imagine it’s the same thing across the States. We’ve had family teaching in Seattle, it’s very different than teaching in Georgia. I mean, it’s just different parts of the world, obviously. What would you say is missing in the conversation around neurodiversity in education from where you stand?

Natasha
Sensory — it’s such a big part of neurodiversity, because it’s a neurological disorder. Our brains are what’s affected, and our brains are what process our senses. That’s how we experience the world in all ways, externally and internally, because we have those three internal senses. And that influences how a child is able to learn, where a child is able to learn, and how they’re able to connect and communicate with their fellow students and their teacher. And so if you do not understand that, if you do not understand that some children will need to move to learn — literally in their seats, may need a moving chair to learn. If you do not understand that a child may need to not have others moving around them and may actually need space and may need to be alone to learn — or headphones, and at least have that feeling of being alone, to learn.

If you don’t understand those type of things, and why, and that it’s not a preference, it’s a need because of how they experience the world — because that’s the big thing. A lot of times that is preference. Where my infant child refused formula to the point of starvation and malnutrition, because she didn’t like that, she couldn’t deal with the taste of it. And when she got older, she refused fibrous foods despite painful constipation and not being able to defecate because of textures, because of colours, because it is an aversion, it is not a preference, and they will do it. My mom would be like, “You know, when she’s hungry, she’ll eat.” No, it’s not that way. And so understanding how much sensory affects everyday life, from movement, from taste, from sound, from sight, and how that affects a child learning in a classroom, is so important.

Rebecca
Wow. So how did you figure that out about your child, about the texture? I mean, I could imagine me just freaking out as a parent. I don’t think I would handle that calmly. I mean, how did you handle it?

Natasha
So I breastfed, of course. Most communities call it ‘crunchy,’ I think. The black community, we call it ‘woo woo.’ I am a crunchy, woo woo mom. So I breastfed, I baby wore, I soft diapered, all of that stuff. And I had to have emergency surgery. I had to have my gallbladder removed. I passed out in a convenience store with my children. I had to be taken by ambulance to the hospital because a gallstone had gotten stuck between my gallbladder and intestines, and so my gallbladder had to be removed. And of course I’m out, so they gave me a lot of drugs and I’m breastfeeding on demand. And so we didn’t have a lot of milk packed up because I’m just breastfeeding on command. I’m with my daughter, I’m doing attachment parenting and all the crunchy woo woo stuff. And so my husband immediately, he did research, and he was looking for the formula that closely matches breast milk as he could. And he tried that, and then he tried many others — she just wasn’t eating to the point that she had to go to the hospital. And thankfully, I wasn’t, I don’t think, Supernova Momma, as in parenting expert (I hate that term)… parenting advocate at that time, but I was Supernova Momma mom blogger at that time, and so I did have a small following, and they got together online and got breast milk to my husband.

Natalie
Oh, that’s so beautiful.

Rebecca
Wow.

Natasha
Yes. Up until I was able to not only get out of the hospital, but for a while for me to get my milk back, because my milk was completely gone from all of those drugs and everything, and so I had to work really hard to bring my milk back. And the breast milk lasted us up until then.

Rebecca
So they had breast milk sent to you?

Natasha
To the hospital. To the hospital.

Rebecca
Oh my gosh, that’s amazing.

Natalie
That makes me want to cry. What a community.

Natasha
Yes. And so that’s how we learned — we still didn’t know at the time, but that’s how we learned that she is not a ‘will eat’ child. And so then, of course, crunchy woo woo, I made all her food. When she turned six months, I would mix my breast milk with avocados. We did one food at a time, so whether it’s a fruit or vegetable — mix with my breast milk and let her test it out and things like that. And she was doing great from that time until I want to say exactly twelve months — then all the food aversions came. And it was like anything green, she wasn’t touching. Anything slimy, she was not touching with her hands or her throat. And it was just throwing it on the ground, it was not eating. And that’s when the defecation issues started happening, and we were freaking out, and we didn’t know what was going on. And then around about 18 months is when she still hadn’t started walking. And that’s when we started realizing — because of course we had my older daughter who had just been diagnosed. We were like, “Ok, it shows up a different way,” because she was verbal, she was doing what we thought was looking at us, she was engaging with us. And so we were like, “Ok, we thought that she might not have autism, but it looks like she has it a different way.” And that’s where we got that process started.

Rebecca
So you obviously have a super charismatic presence that can get conversation started on places. I mean, it’s so amazing to see the conversations you get going on Twitter. So, I mean, it sounds like even from your experience in the military that you start things. You get people going. It’s so cool. Can you talk about that?

Natasha
I think it’s my autism. That sounds so funny, right? But I think it’s my autism. I have always looked at things from a different perspective than everybody else. And when I was a child, I was just quiet about it, because when I would speak up sometimes, it would not be met very well. And I think I tweeted recently about not liking pizza and asking for a pork chop and mashed potato party in elementary school because I didn’t want pizza. And all the other kids being like, “How could you not like pizza?” You know, there was this big thing. So I didn’t really speak up as much. And then when I was in college, I went to Spelman College for a year before joining the military, and it was the first place where I met other black women (because it’s an all women college) who had ideas like me that were not in the same frame of what we were seeing on TV, or what everyone else was talking about. There were black women who were into robotics and breaking down robots. And so you could be different. I mean, I wasn’t into robots, but you could think differently and you could say things confidently, and people wouldn’t look at you like, “Why did you think that?” They’d say, “Oh, tell me more.” Right?

And so it gave me more confidence to say the things that I was thinking that nobody else would — either were thinking and were too afraid to say, or just hadn’t thought about. And so when I joined the military, it sounds crazy because I only had one year at Spelman before I realized I could not afford $36,000 a year. But that one year held a class called ADW, which is African Diaspora of the World. It also held one black feminist class, and it held… what was the other class that really got me to speaking? Oh, a fairy tale class, believe it or not — English lit fairy tale class that made us look at fairy tales from their original form and then bring them to modern light. And those three classes really, really got me to be comfortable in the fact that my perspective and thoughts were different, but they were worth being heard.

Natalie
And then actually watching — I mean, it sounds very voyeuristic of us participating, but like, my little Twitter account, I’ve got like, 300 people, but I’m watching. I’m always so tempted to join in on one of your conversations, because I’m like, “I’m a mom,” but the neurodiversity piece is not part of my story, and I just feel like I’m a learner in a space like that. But when I watch the energy that happens in the threads where people just jump in with you, it’s just an amazing thing to watch — like that’s community-building in real time.

Natasha
So I have a cheat code. I have a cheat code. I’ve been on Twitter since 2008. That account, the Supernova Momma, the handle has changed. But unlike other people, a lot of people, they create a business account and they keep their other account and that’s their account. I didn’t. I just changed my account to Supernova Momma. There was a reason for that. Mom bloggers, parenting experts, for some reason, they get put on this pedestal and they’re this persona and it’s a business. But being a mom isn’t really a business, and being a parent isn’t really a business. And being an educator, to me, isn’t really a business — in the aspect that I want to do it. And so if I want to help people, if I want to make connection with them, I have to be personable. And so for me, I didn’t want to make a separate account. I am Supernova Momma at all times — the good, bad and the ugly. When I have my horrible negative thoughts, when I’m dealing with body dysmorphia, when I am having a hard time not yelling at someone who is talking to me disrespectfully, all of that is still Supernova Momma, supernova parenting, supernova human. And so that account has been there since 2008. And a lot of people that engage with me have been following me since that time frame so they’ve seen all the Tashas we’ve talked about. They’ve seen military Tasha, they’ve seen admin DoDEA Europe Tasha, they’ve seen Spelman College Tasha. They’ve been there for all of those instances.

Rebecca
So do you think what they’re really connecting with is just this authenticity of you being you and always you? This is you. There’s no pretense here. “This is me and all of my,” as you say, “good, bad, ugly…”

Natasha
Ugly — all of it. I think that’s a big part of it. I think I also don’t do some things that cost me a lot of money, but that I felt like would compromise what I’m trying to build. So I only advertise what I actually use. If I don’t use it, I’m not advertising it. And so you don’t see 50,000 advertisements every day, or every couple of weeks, or anything. If you see it, it’s because I did my face today, and so it’s on today. If you don’t, it’s because I didn’t have time to do my face because I’m a parent. If you see it on my children, it’s because we’re using it for sensory, we’re using it for learning, we’re using it as a part of our day. If you don’t, I’m not going to include it and make it happen. I can’t. I have autistic kids and they have routines. And so that part, I think, has also been a big part, but it has cost me a lot of money.

Natalie
So actually thinking about that, because what we see, we also see it through your camera work. And I was going to ask, I just think this is so interesting because you use cameras in your day to day and it obviously informs then the way that your Instagram plays out. It’s like you sharing parenting wins and then also real moments of frustration, right? I mean, that’s just part of the process. So that feels so brave. I had a really big zit on my face the other day, and I was changing the filter as many times as I could to try and somehow find a way to put myself on there. And I’m like, “I am not, at 44, able to somehow just be ok with this, and yet all these teenagers are so confident and cool.” And then here’s you having been doing this in 2008, and you’re just sort of putting it all out there. How? How do you do it?

Natasha
So there was a time where I would, you know, try to put on makeup as much as possible when I film. But honestly, it was causing me to take away from the values that are important to me. So it’s really important for me to have my children have that routine and structure, be consistent, be honest with my limits and boundaries and have time for me, but also stick to the schedule that I’ve made with them. And if I’m taking 50 minutes — you know, all of this makeup and trying to make sure everything is perfect and going through all of these slides and editing, “Oh, I didn’t look right there, let me edit that out,” that takes up so much more time from my children. And then when they come because they want to spend time with me, because I was doing it before for a while and I’m frustrated and I’m like, “No, let me just finish this video and then I’ll get to you,” I’m not doing what I’m telling other parents to do. I’m not living in the things that I’m saying that I’m doing, because I’m so focused on this image, this look.

And then it also comes from (and I’m going to speak very, very honestly, I hope you all don’t take offense), but the white gaze that is on gentle parenting and positive discipline and positive parenting, it’s very ‘perfection.’ And I was getting frustrated with that because my life is not perfection. And so I was like, “Maybe people need to see how to do this horribly, but still say, ‘Hey, I’m doing it, and I love my kids, and I’m figuring it out.’” And so instead of just showing all wins, I wanted to show when I yell and my child gets me together. I wanted to show when I’m having a meltdown because my child has done something that’s triggered me, because I also have trauma. And I’m telling my child, “Hey, I need space.” And I’m going to get gentle parents who are like, “Well, you can’t talk to your child like that.” Ok, well when you have been homeless, your mother’s been in a women’s shelter and you’ve had to go and visit her, and you have been autistic and not knowing it, and been force-fed food, and all of these other things, and never been allowed to tell an adult, and don’t know, and it triggers you so much, and then your child tells you ‘no,’ and you go to that space but you don’t want to do those things to your child — you tell me what you do instead, and I would love to hear it.

But for me, establishing the boundary and saying, “Hey, I’m in a really upset place and I need space and I’ll come back when I feel better, but right now, please don’t touch me and talk to me because I’m not in a good space and I don’t want to yell at you,” that is the best thing for me. And I thought that other parents needed to see that because there are other parents who want to gentle parent who may not have had the best life, who may be dealing with neurodiversity, who may be dealing with poverty, and still want to gentle parent. And honestly, it’s not even just the white ‘atmosphere of positivity’ thing. A lot of black and Latino, we seem to want to knock down everyone who’s trying it without realizing that it takes a lot of practice and a lot of implementation and a lot of time to get this not even perfect, it’s never going to be perfect, but to get progress and to get comfortable in this and to get comfortable in not having your triggers overcoming you. And so I wanted to show how to say, “Yes, I am positive parenting, and it’s going the best it can.”

Rebecca
Yeah, I really appreciate that, actually a lot, because I feel that it’s such a journey. We were just recording something else just before this and I was like, “Well, I’m never going to be calm. I’m not calm. This is never going to be my life.” And Nat was like, “Really?” Basically, Nat, you said, “You’re on a journey. This is something you want to claim for yourself, so why not just claim it?”

Natasha
And work towards it, right?

Rebecca
And work towards it, as opposed to saying, “I will never be that, so I can’t even claim it.”

Natasha
And if you believe you’ll never be that, you’ll never be that. And I tell my husband that all the time. He says, you know, “I can’t communicate.” And I say, “No,” and he gets frustrated, and I say, “But the language you’re having, you will never be communicating.” I am working to learn how to communicate my feelings. I’m working to be an amazing, positive, disciplined parent every day, and it’s getting there. But I’m also who I am, and so I have to have limits and boundaries that maybe the average parent does not have, because I’ve had the life that the average parent has not had.

Rebecca
Hey Reframables: a little housekeeping. Don’t forget to rate, review, or subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts if you like what we’re doing here on Reframables. Your feedback really supports this reframing project of ours. Also, please sign up for our weekly newsletter, which comes with a free delicious recipe from Nat. Check us out over on Patreon too, where we do mini-episodes which we call Life Hacks and Enhancers — our five best things in a week. On Patreon, you can become a monthly donor for as little as $2 a month, or you could even tip us on our new Ko-fi account. Lastly, tell us what you like and what you want to hear more of. We love feedback and getting to know you, our listeners. All the links are in our show notes. Love, Reframeables.

You know, when you were talking about the white mothers on farms with their…

Natalie
The curated…

Rebecca
We have a farm that I like to go to, so I include myself in that image.

Natasha
I have it too. I have a farm.

Rebecca
You have a farm, too?

Natasha
We have a farm close to us that we love and we go and visit.

Rebecca
Ok, so you also can create these beautiful images. We all can be, what’s the word? Complicit.

Natasha
Complicit, yeah.

Rebecca
Ok, yes. But when you see the perfect mom shots where they’re taking their five kids, do you have a reaction to that? Do you roll your eyes? Do you just say, “You know what, I’m just not going to watch these.” How do you process those images in the world, that is so not parenting-in-process, it’s very much end result?

Natasha
I don’t. And this is going to get so bad… well, it’ll be alright. I don’t look at any of that.

Natalie
Good for you.

Natasha
There’s multiple reasons, though. The first is after both children, I had PPD. I had postpartum depression for both. I need to do something — that’s part of my trauma, poverty trauma. I cannot let my husband support us. Even though he’s fine with that, I’m not fine with that. It’s just security blanket thing — I have to have some of my own money. And so when I was looking at how to build my mom blogging, prior to becoming a positive discipline educator, the best I could be, I used to study a lot of these moms. And I just didn’t see myself, and I started beating myself down — like, “I’m not going to be able to afford the camera to take those pictures, and so the pictures are never going to look like that. I’m never going to be able to afford the beautiful recyclable clothes, because when you go to those stores and you look at how much that stuff costs, I’m like, ‘Ok, right back to Old Navy.’”

Natalie
Totally.

Natasha
And so when I was working with my therapist to get out of PPD, one of the things was to stop researching them and just do what I’m doing. That was one of the action steps. And so I stopped looking at all that stuff. But then there’s other things that have to do with that too. I am autistic, and I have a very photographic memory with reading and writing. And I always fear of taking someone else’s information, their idea, their concepts, unconsciously and using it — just because of how my brain works. I literally remember everything I read and see, and so it could just naturally happen unconsciously, and then I would never want to do that to someone. And so a lot of times, even with people that I love and admire, I don’t consume their stuff because I don’t want to steal from them.

Natalie
Oh, isn’t that interesting?

Natasha
So that’s the autistic side — we’ve dealt with the depression and coming out of depression side. And then it’s just overwhelming. I’m a mom, I’m a small business owner trying to turn nonprofit, I am technically an influencer. Social media is a lot. I don’t think people realize how much being a content creator in social media, how much time that takes out. And then I actually kind of like my husband. Like, it’s been ten years, but we actually like each other and spending time with each other. I’m still a geek, a millennial, so I like anime, I like reading. I don’t have time to go on social media and look at people’s perfect lives, or even not perfect lives. I have carefully created lists of people where I’ll go look, and it’s usually either my friends or people that I care about or that are mentors. And I’ll personally go look at their stuff, like it or interact, because I know they need that engagement, especially people of colour and black people creators. Outside of that, I do not look at any of that. I don’t have time to.

Natalie
I love that.

Rebecca
That’s really inspiring.

Natalie
Serious boundary setting.

Rebecca
And intentionality.

Natasha
Yes. It had to happen. When I had postpartum, it wasn’t anything about my children. It was about me. I did not like me. I didn’t think that I was doing enough because I kept saying I’d have to find a balance — at that time, not realizing you never are. Something has to drop. I kept thinking, “No, before I had these kids, I was able to do everything.” I was able to be a world traveller, I was able to be amazing in the military, I was able to have my boyfriend or my husband (you know, once he became my husband). I was able to have friends and be there for my friends, dedicated. I was a community leader. I was doing community service projects — multiple. All of these things were amazing, and I was great, and I was top notch Natasha Nelson. And then I had kids, and it was like, “Oh, can’t go to this meeting. I can’t do this. Oh, I’m so sorry I’m late. Oh, I won’t be…” And I was like, “What is going on with me? I need to find a balance. There isn’t one.” If you want to be an amazing parent, something has to drop. Because guess what? You have a life —now you have multiple lives depending on how many children you have. And you are curating and teaching and educating that life, and then still doing your life. So something’s going to drop. And once you become comfortable with that, once you become comfortable with prioritizing and saying no to things (because I had a real big problem with that) and setting boundaries, you will prosper in the new way. You’re not going to ever prosper in the old way. Let it go.

Natalie
Ok, I’m channelling that right there. That’s the line I’m claiming. Oh, my goodness.

Rebecca
Prosper in a new way.

Natalie
Yeah. Prosper in a new way and let that one go. I didn’t know this was going to be a counselling session for us, Bec.

Rebecca
Yeah, I know. Thank you. I have so many new sticky notes to add. I’m curating two lives, I’m prospering… I really wish you could have been around 13 years ago. No one said that. I would just like to blame everyone else for the things that weren’t said to me. Nat, why did you do me wrong, Nat?

Natalie
Hey listen, I didn’t know.

Rebecca
We talk so much about support on Reframables. We always love to hear about who other people’s supports are. So where do you draw support? It sounds like you have a good husband.

Natasha
Yes — so I do have an amazing husband. Crisean Nelson (everybody on Twitter knows him as ‘V’) is the love of my life. Our ten-year anniversary is October 15 this year and he has been my rock. We have been through so many different changes and different dynamics. We got married at 23 with the understanding that we are really young and so our marriage doesn’t have to look like everybody else’s. And we don’t have to become these people who think, “Oh, we’re married, so we have to do this, and we have to do that, and we have to be boring people who, you know, read books and don’t go anywhere.” And so I was travelling Europe by myself, if he didn’t want to go, or he couldn’t go, or he wanted to watch video games or whatever. And he was, you know, playing video games, and I’d be out doing community service and doing whatever I wanted to do, and he did basketball. And as we got older and we decided to have children, our lives changed and we struggled like everybody struggles, but we struggled together. We’ve always came back together. Even when we had moments where we reacted in different ways, it’s always about, “Do we want to do this together, or are we done doing this together?” And it’s always, “We want to do it together.”

Rebecca
Your main support.

Natasha
Is Crisean my main support?

Rebecca
Or is there anyone else worth mentioning that you’re like, “Oh, that’s another place.” Or you have your community, your online community too.

Natasha
So my husband isn’t very good with words of affirmation. He is good with actions and acts of service and time being together. But he’s not good with words of affirmation. He’s a Jamaican and Panamanian man from an immigrant family, and sale is just not something that is really taught and implemented there before. But he’s working hard to change that. He’s amazing. But I get a lot of my words of affirmation and words of encouragement and engagement from my online community. I always have. Even when I was a little mom blogger with only 300 followers — because, you know, y’all talk about your small followings, but this following has grown like this in two years. When I had my first viral video, I had 1000 followers. And now we’re where we are. And that was in 2020 — June 2020. So it’s been a ride with my online support. Sometimes they scare me with how fierce they are for me.

Natalie
They are fierce, oh my goodness. The loyalty is intense.

Natasha
I could never be like Beyoncé or some of these larger famous people. I don’t know how they do it because they are fierce.

Natalie
Seriously.

Natasha
But they are so supportive. Especially because, and you know, I always reiterate this because I think it’s important: a lot of people of colour and black content creators do not have a lot of financial capital. They don’t have a lot of financial backing and they don’t have a lot of financial capital. So we are a neurodivergent family. My husband has ADHD and he is a veteran, disabled. I have autism and I am a veteran, disabled. And we have two autistic toddlers. We don’t have a lot of money. So everything that I do with Supernova Momma comes from either my profits from Supernova Momma or it comes from my online community raising money for me. Because I mean, this business, as I said, it’s only two years old, and a lot of businesses don’t make a lot of money like that in those first three years. And so everything is rotated back into Supernova Momma. And my husband usually, you know, holds the crutch of our household (and we’re homeowners, and of course, we didn’t buy our house spanking new) on his shoulders. And so it is always always important for me to shout both of those people out — my husband and my online community.

Natalie
So what is actually the backstory of Supernova? Why that name in terms of your business name?

Natasha
So I’m a millennial, but my family didn’t have that much money. We didn’t have cable, but I had this favourite aunt. Her name is Virginia, but she’s my Aunt Nookie . And she had married a veteran and so she had a home and she had cable and everything. We tried to go there every weekend, but of course that’s not possible. But we went there as much as possible — every school break, anything, to watch cable. Disney Channel.

Natalie
That’s so great, I love that.

Natasha
So she had the Disney Channel, and one of my favourite Disney Channel movies was Zenon, the Galaxy Explorer. And on there was this fake made-for-TV song called “Supernova Girls.” So it goes “Zoom zoom zoom, make my heart go boom boom, my supernova girl.” Loved it as a kid. And so when I made my account in 2008, I was Supernova Tash. And as I told you all, I made the business decision when I decided to become a business to change Supernova Tash to Supernova Momma, instead of making a Supernova Momma account. And so that’s where it comes from, a millennial watching Disney Channel movies.

Natalie
Oh, that’s so fun.

Rebecca
That’s good. And actually, could you sing that again?

Natasha
Absolutely. I’ll give the whole first verse: “Stargazing mega fast, you hit me like atomic blast, storming in your interplanetary world…” That’s what it is. “Speed of light, I’m so alive.” You can’t remember that song? Anyway. “Interplanetary megastellar hydrostatic, there’s no gravity between us, our love is automatic. Zoom zoom zoom, make my heart go boom boom, my supernova girl.”

Natalie
Oh, Tash!

Rebecca
That was so good! Oh, that was so good. Ok, what’s next for you? What’s coming up for you?

Natasha
So I am working to become a nonprofit so that I can only go by grants, and I can give all of my classes for free. That’s important to me. So if someone contracts me out, of course they would pay for a contract. But if I’m offering a class, I would like to offer it for free, and I want to do that through nonprofit work. So that’s coming up next. I also want to start producing my own Calming Corners, because I have the Cool Calming Corner, but it’s a PDF downloadable. I want to actually start producing them as poster sets and shipping them to people.

Natalie
Oh, good. Yeah yeah yeah.

Natasha
And then I am also… I don’t think I can talk about that. But let’s look forward to talking about whether or not positive discipline should be on your TV screen. And then I am working on writing a book. So supernova in itself is an exploding of a star, right? And so the idea is to be supernova parenting. Supernova momma, you know, you’re exploding. Parenthood is just an exploding star. It’s everything is floating around, and you’re trying to figure out how to put the pieces back together. And I just want to remind you that when you’re putting the pieces back together to remember that you’re human.

Natalie
Oh, that’s such a beautiful image.

Rebecca
Put the pieces back together. I love it. And that we’re human, so we’re going to do it imperfectly.

Natasha
Exactly. And to give yourself grace when you’re doing that.