Rebecca
And Bec — two very different sisters who come together each week to reframe some of life’s big and small problems.

Natalie
Though we see the world differently, we both lean in to vulnerability, together and with our guests — because we like deep dives. So come with us. Let’s reframe something.

Rebecca
Today we’re reframing using our voice. Nat’s done a lot of commuting in her days as a teacher, and certain voices on the radio always grabbed her attention more than others on that long trek up the 400.

Natalie
One of those voices is the smart, understated voice of CHUM 104.5’s Caitlin Green, who is reframing her influencer life right now — offstage, with a new baby.

Rebecca
In this episode, you’ll hear a vulnerable conversation with Caitlin, who was also the co-host of The Jann Arden Podcast. She tells us about the loss of her son and how she had to publicly navigate that grief.

Natalie
She talks about a few big names that she’s gotten to interview over the years, and what Jann Arden’s really like — and some unexpected influencers who have shaped how she tells stories now. So if you’re in flux and want to hear how Caitlin’s navigating using her voice in a different way, this episode is for you.

Caitlin Green is a radio personality. If you’re a Toronto-based listener, you’ll recognize her voice from your morning commute, keeping us up to date on all things news and pop culture. She’s also a podcast co-host on The Jann Arden Podcast.

Rebecca
Hi, Caitlin.

Caitlin
Hi.

Rebecca
We’re sorted. Jumping right in, how did you get into radio, and did you see it as a vehicle for being a changemaker as we’re reframing voice on this episode of Reframeables?

Caitlin
I got into radio entirely by accident, which I always feel bad because radio students will sometimes reach out to on-air personalities and say, “Can I talk to you about how you got your start in radio?” And you want to tell them, “Oh yeah, I went to the exact same college as you and studied the same course, and then I worked in the small market, and worked my way up to a big market,” but that did not happen. I was a mat leave fill-in, and it was only supposed to be for six months — I was actually a fill-in for a fill-in who got another full time job. So it wasn’t even a full year, it was six months, and I had been working in production for commercials and television, and this was sort of one area of media that I had never worked in before, and I was precariously employed, so I thought, “Why not do it?” even though I was in my twenties and it involved getting up at 4:30, which was closer to when I went to bed.

And so I took the job, and then the woman who was on maternity leave wound up moving to BC and she didn’t come back. So they offered me the job full time, and it was very much more behind the scenes when I started. I was writing a lot of entertainment stories, I was writing content, I was booking guests, I was doing associate producer-type stuff, and they sort of ended up talking to me on the mic. And it was, at the time, the Roger Darren and Marilyn Show, and they would ask me questions because I was the youngest one in the room. And when they wanted my perspective, a younger person’s perspective, or fact-checking, or whatever, I would come on with a story. And then the stories turned into a segment, and the segment was once a show, then twice, then every hour, and then you just sort of become a part of the show by accident. So it was really very unintentional, and I don’t know if I really thought about using my voice to be a changemaker when I got started. The idea was just to come in and have fun — that’s the format of at least our radio show. It’s not news, it’s mostly entertainment. So the idea was: come in and have a good time.

And then when I was there for a while… and listeners build a relationship with you and they tell you about themselves, or they tell you about how you improve their day, especially during the pandemic when sometimes people wanted just this much information and then kind of a good time, and you could be that reprieve from the numbers and the data and the doom and gloom. I think I started realizing that you could be a changemaker even in kind of a pop culture-focused role because you can fit in little bits of info and then you can sandwich it between two nicer stories. So it’s info people need, but then they can move on with their day, and it’s a nice way to connect with people. And then when you connect with them and they share with you on social media, you can kind of help them work through some of their stuff. Maybe they’ve gone through similar issues as you, overcome certain things. And that’s when you’re like, “Oh, this is something more,” which is really cool.

Rebecca
So do you mean like you would sandwich an honest bit of information about yourself between things — like you would slip in information?

Caitlin
Kind of, but I more mean, like, I would slip in what I would describe to be a ‘bummer’ story, but that’s important, in between maybe something about the Kardashians or a celebrity breakup or, you know, a TikTok coffee trend. And those things are fun and they’re important to distract yourself from because if you just go full doom and gloom all the time, people sort of tune it out, because they’re like, “This is making me depressed,” which — fair. But yeah, so that was when I found you can give people little important pieces of information, especially during the pandemic that might help keep them safe or might help them inform certain decisions, or they’d be up to date on when we would be getting certain medical advances here in Canada. You could cover little bits and then say, “Oh, and by the way, Pete Davidson’s dating the latest woman who’s way too hot for him.”

Rebecca
Right.

Natalie
You know, it’s funny. I would listen to you on my drive in to work for years, and it was you that I was tuning in for — which was kind of fascinating because, I mean, I had listened to the show for years before you joined, but there was definitely a switch for me when your voice started to add to the quilt that was 104.5. So in terms of my morning commute, you know what I mean — it was a really interesting experience. I mean, I think I’m older than you, but at the same time there was something about there being a connected part of all of a sudden what was being shared on that platform. It was a woman, even though there were already women on the show. But it was a woman who maybe understood a bit more about the world through a lens that I could understand. So, yeah, there was a real relatability which was fascinating. And you did that so well — which I loved, yeah.

Caitlin
That’s very nice to hear. Yeah, thank you so much for that. That’s the kind of thing you hear when you question sometimes, “Should I be doing this?” You know, it’s a very tough industry to work in and to get ahead in, and so you wonder about it. And then you hear nice things from people and you’re like, “Oh, ok, maybe I should try to keep doing this.” I also don’t think I’m a typical radio personality for this type of radio. I think the way that people do it is that they go through radio school and then they go into smaller market radio stations, and then they go work their way to a larger market station. And because I fell backwards into this, and it wasn’t something that I had this notion of going into it, I was just myself right away. And I think sometimes some people didn’t maybe love that, and I think some people really, really connected with it, but I’m definitely a bit of an island sometimes, I think, in terms of my voice in radio.

Rebecca
So do you have that imposter syndrome? Like, you were like, “I don’t have an MFA,” that type of feeling. “I shouldn’t be here.” Or…?

Caitlin
Yeah, I think so. And I think because I see a lot of other people branching out and doing more television or trying to figure out how to get the next 50,000 followers on TikTok, that’s just not how I started or how my brain seems to naturally work. Sometimes I probably should be more focused on that, but I like talking to people, and so I think that’s sort of just where I came from with it. I’ve always loved talking to people. I was a talker my whole life, and that’s just where my skill set lay. So I just fell into it accidentally.

Natalie
So how did you connect with Jann Arden, then? Because, I mean, that link, that must be an interesting story.

Caitlin
I have this really great manager, kind of mentor, that is no longer with the company, but he (when he was there, this was years ago), he asked me to executive produce another project that Jann was going to be doing, and it was a podcast. And he said, “Just executive produce it. I need someone who can kind of help get this together behind the scenes, wrangle things, help us with guests, help us with content, and come at it from a radio perspective to try to keep the conversations tight and just give her a hand.” And he thought that she and I would get along, and he was right. And he certainly knew about pairing personalities. So I was off air in that role — she co-hosted that podcast with Arlene Dickinson.

And so that project went on for I think about a year, and then it ended. And then they decided to move forward with Jann just with her own podcast. So that was when it was going to be The Jann Arden Podcast. And the goal was still going to be lots of cool guests, but you can’t always get guests every time, and sometimes you just want two co-hosts chatting, or they wanted someone to be able to do on-air stuff with her as well. So they asked me if I would executive produce this one and also co-host it with Jann and be able to jump in, sort of put on many hats, which I think I do kind of well. And I said yes, of course. And at this point I’d been working with Jann for a year and I loved her. I mean, I loved her before I even worked with her, and I loved her so much more from working with her that it was just an immediate yes. And now she’s just… everything you think she would be like she is and more. She’s just the greatest person to spend any amount of time with.

Rebecca
So that’s like a really fulfilling relationship for you now.

Caitlin
It’s so fulfilling. She is very, very giving, which isn’t always the case. She’s very giving. She wants everyone around her to succeed. She’s cool, she really knows herself. She’s comfortable with herself. She doesn’t take any BS from anyone. If you follow her on Twitter, you probably know that. And this is because she’s carved out her own lane, I think, and she did it her way. And so she’s not answerable to all these other people and just allows her to be really authentically herself and I think she promotes other people to do the same — which is rare in media, and I love that about her.

Rebecca
So your role on CHUM is, among many different things, to share the news, pop culture updates, all that. But we also saw something online where you were asked who inspires you, and you steered the conversation in a different direction. Dr. Edith Eger — is that how you say her name?

Caitlin
Yeah, I think it’s Eger.

Rebecca
Eger, ok. So a 94-year-old author, psychologist, and Holocaust survivor is someone you said inspires you. That’s a significant person to mention. And just how she used her voice is obviously something that interests you?

Caitlin
So I had a previous loss. I had a full-term pregnancy loss — so really, an infant loss. And after that I was dealing with so much grief that I was looking for resources that would feel hopeful. There are a lot of stories, you know, that people tell, and they’re all super heartbreaking. I was going through so much of my own heartbreak that I was really searching for someone who would be kind of telling you, “It’s going to be ok. You’re going through something really difficult, but you can build resilience, you can get through this.” And that’s kind of where I found her. And there’s another podcast that I started listening to called Terrible, Thanks for Asking. I don’t know if you guys have heard of that one?

Rebecca
Yeah, I’ve listened to it. Yeah.

Caitlin
Yeah. So Nora McInerny interviewed Dr. Eger, and that interview was so change-making for me, because you just hear this woman who’s been through so much in her life and used every experience, including being in Auschwitz, to further her own resilience and her own story, and to just share that then with other people and tell them that they’ll be ok. I think that that really put her in a special place for me in my heart. And then I read her books. I read The Gift, The Choice. I just found that it was her amongst many, many people I turned to during that time that really changed things for me. And of course, too, you kind of have this idea (at least I did) that success should happen for you right away. You know, “I should be a certain place when I’m 30. I should be a certain place when I’m 35.” And she was working in a factory, she’d lost so much in her life, she had young children — and she still found time to go back to school, to get her PhD. And she’s very, “If not now, when?” And, “Why not you? Why can’t you do this?”

And she also shared something in her book that she said her mom shared with her. They’re on the trains. They’re heading to Auschwitz. And she said that her mom said to her, “No one can take away from you what you put in your own mind.” And I just was like, “That’s so true.” Which works both for the negative and the positive. So if you tell yourself a very positive, uplifting truth about yourself, if you tell yourself that you have a lot of self-worth, no one else can take that away from you. And then, conversely, if you’re constantly telling yourself something negative, no amount of positive external validation is going to be able to combat that negative inner voice. So I’m a huge fan of hers, and I think she’s someone you can turn to if you’ve been through any level of grief or loss in your life.

Natalie
So this is interesting because thank you so much for sharing with us about your own grief. I mean, that’s a really big navigation to move through. I mean, I don’t know any other way to say that. And it’s so interesting that you were able to turn to, in many ways, an elder…

Caitlin
Yes.

Natalie
To help through that process. There’s something powerful about the idea of kind of intergenerational care there that’s really beautiful. And I listened to this one episode of you and Jann talking, and it was called Thank You For Being a Friend. And, oh, my goodness, it actually makes me verklempt right now thinking about it because of what you’ve just shared. And then in that episode, Jann talks about a friend of hers, a listener who had become a friend, who actually called Jann in the last moments before she went through her own end-of-life process with her doctor. And oh my goodness, that whole experience of listening to that episode was so powerful. And what I was really struck by was it was a powerful story to share, and Jann is sharing it, but you are there as this really active listener in that moment when she’s sharing it. And I was struck by just the power of the voice. And I’m putting ‘voice’ in quotation marks there a little bit, but of the active listener. And we talk about that in our reframing toolbox as one of the tools to use when one reframes — is looking for an active listener and one’s own experience. So I don’t know, do you see voice and listening as connected?

Caitlin
Oh, yeah. One doesn’t kind of work without the other. And I feel as though being a good active listener is something that you have to learn how to do. Some people have it maybe naturally, but it’s difficult. And we live more in a society now where you wait for your turn to talk and people get very anxious about what they’re going to say, so they live planning the next thing they’re going to say or the next contribution they’re going to make. So it’s hard to sit peacefully and actively listen. But I think for that episode especially, recognizing that I was very much taking on the role of the listener as well, and that it’s a powerful story, and one that her friend wanted us to share — and I think that’s something that a lot of people, when they’re dealing with end-of-life stuff and mortality, they really want to feel that they’ve had some kind of an impact and that they’ll be remembered. And that’s meaningful for their family as well. So I was aware of that when we were recording the show. You know, their family would be listening. You want to be sensitive and just give lots of room for Jann to share how that impacted her, because it deeply, deeply impacted her, as you can imagine. I mean, if you’re emotional listening to it, imagine being in Jann’s position. She just had so much grace around that too, from having dealt with loss in her life, loss of her parents, and I think that’s why she was so, in a strange way, well-suited to that role. And I just found it nice to be able to actively listen to that story and to take it in. But it was sort of like Jann was the proxy almost in that situation, but you want to be able to really listen and give lots of room for that and then meaningfully respond — because you can’t meaningfully respond without actively listening. So, yeah, they’re very connected.

Rebecca
What’s that expression, you guys, about… you know, when you’re just holding space? Is it just that?

Natalie
Well, yeah — it’s been perhaps a bit overused, but it is a good one, isn’t it?

Rebecca
You’re kind of just holding space together. Is that another way of saying ‘active listening’ — holding space?

Caitlin
Yes, you’re right. I think it does get overused, so some things become like a cliché, because you’re, like, therapy chat. Everyone’s in therapy now, understandably so. So there’s a lot of that language that goes around and it can feel overly flowery, but that’s really what it is. You’re just giving someone the space and the time, and I think it’s the respect to sit and listen and take it in, and then know how best to respond yourself. And you don’t even always have to respond right away. I mean, that’s something that I remember Marilyn Denis from the Metro Morning Show saying: you can say, “I have to think about that.” You don’t always need to just jump in and respond, and then maybe say something you regret or something flippant because you feel this urgency now that we all have to have the perfect thing to say right away. You can just take a minute, let it soak in, and say, “I have to think about that,” as well. And to also sometimes say, “I have no idea.” There’s also a ton of power in admitting you don’t know something or you don’t know how to feel about it, because there’s so much pretending that goes around. Everyone feels like they have to know, and you absolutely do not have to know.

Natalie
And sometimes you can’t — like sometimes you just can’t know. And that’s a big part of it, right?

Caitlin
Yeah.

Rebecca
Is your voice changing in this period of your life, Caitlin? Getting bigger, smaller? Are there different things that you care about?

Caitlin
There’s definitely different things I care about now that I have a son. So I have a three-month-old son, and my world feels like it’s expanded greatly, but also become, you know, teeny, teeny tiny — because it’s just about the day-to-day, the hour-to-hour, life between naps with the baby. So it’s definitely changing. I want to say in some ways it’s bigger. It’s a bigger voice because you care about so much more all of a sudden. I mean, your heart is all of a sudden beating on the outside of your body. So that starts to happen — but then it gets smaller for a while. Because I’m on maternity leave and I speak for a living, normally every single day on the radio and then once a week on the podcast. And when that goes away and you’re on mat leave and you step away from that temporarily, you feel, in a way, a bit smaller for someone who talks for a living. So I think once that happened, I did notice that. You miss that connection point. You miss talking, and for me especially, I really miss my career. That’s a huge transition. So that part has changed a lot with motherhood, and then I think I’ve seen this with other women who work in media: when they come back, you have this whole now other piece of your personality that you bring with you to your career and it’s very, very valuable. I don’t know that necessarily every company values it the way that they should, but I do think it’s a really valuable piece for women when they return to the workforce.

Rebecca
You would think it would deepen your thinking or change your thinking, shape it.

Caitlin
Yeah, absolutely. You have a new level of care and consideration and thought, and I do think it in some ways it softens you. I have found that for myself at least.

Rebecca
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Natalie
And so I think in terms of our retrospective, because right now you’re not interviewing people yourself, you’re being interviewed by us. But when you think back on some of these people that you have interviewed, who had the biggest voice to you, for example? Do you think some of that has changed in terms of your perspective, now that you are Caitlin, not just the radio personality or Caitlin the podcast host, but Caitlin the parent?

Caitlin
Yeah. I now think back on interviews that I really remember — and when I was younger, a lot of it was kind of about, you know, clout. The biggest name you’ve interviewed, and what did you get — some great moment with them that was widely shared on social media? How many views did you get? That kind of thing was much more important. And then you would say, “Oh yeah, we interviewed Justin Trudeau,” or we interviewed whoever the other biggest celebrity is. Now I tend to find when I look back, I think about the interviews where you really learned something or again connected with someone or were moved — something a little bit deeper. And I unfortunately forget her name, but it was around Bell Let’s Talk day, and it was a woman who was a spokesperson, and I believe she was directly involved with Bell Let’s Talk in some way. And she had lost a brother to suicide. And her, again, story of resilience, and her honesty in sharing the story on the air, and the way that she was turning it into a drive to connect with people who themselves were experiencing severe depression and mental illness — when I look back, I just think about how powerful that is, because she doesn’t have any media experience, really, and is coming on and sharing this really, really painful personal story on a morning show. That, you know, maybe her story then goes into Shawn Mendes or, you know, an ad for something. And she’s doing it to try to make a connection with people who are suffering, and to tell them that there’s hope for them. So that was a big one.

In terms of, you know, then bigger names who were impactful, Marc Maron came on our show once, and he was great. He was really engaging and super personal and honest. And if you listen to his WTF podcast, you know that that is just what he’s like. But he is exactly as advertised. Yeah, I loved that interview so much. It was really special. Radio is… we get, like, three, four minutes most, even for interviews — even for big names, we’ll frequently pre-record because we don’t want to rush them, but we have very serious time constraints. He ran live for nine minutes. I mean, I think our program director was about to pull the plug on the whole station. She was probably not happy, but he was great. And he’s just shooting from the hip and telling you so many great stories. Yeah, so he was one that stood out. Comedian Bill Burr was another who I find his voice is, again, super authentic and exactly, again, as advertised. And he’s no nonsense. He really digs into, like, the Hollywood crap. And I interviewed him for a movie he was promoting, and he had stopped drinking recently in advance of the movie and was really focusing on fitness, which was a big change for him. And I loved speaking with him. He was another really great interview.

And also, in a weird way, just presence-wise, Shawn Mendes. He had this really sweet vulnerability, which I think tracks for him. And he looks like a Disney prince and hugged everyone and was very gracious with his time, and just had this very, very intelligent, honest way of carrying on in an interview. And he was so young — this was years ago. I can’t even imagine how young he would have been. And he was poised and talked about fame, and talked about being from Pickering and then now making it in Hollywood, and relationships and navigating relationships in the public eye. So those were some standouts for me.

Rebecca
Is it easy for you to tap into your vulnerability?

Caitlin
Yeah.

Rebecca
Ok.

Caitlin
I’d say so. I don’t know if it always was, but I think when I went through the loss, you sort of have no choice. But I have always been a very honest person, so I’ll always tell you kind of how I’m feeling (maybe brutally honest at points), but I don’t have the ability to kind of hold things in. For me personally, it is not healthy. So being vulnerable is not… yeah, I’ve got no problem with it.

Rebecca
We resonate with that, right Nat? We have a lot of people tell us that this podcast is so vulnerable.

Natalie
And we’re always just like, “We’re just being,” but it’s interesting if that’s how it’s received.

Rebecca
Yeah. And is that feedback you get, Caitlin — that one of the things people resonate with is that you’re very real, vulnerable?

Caitlin
I think so. Yeah, I think so, and I think Jann’s the same way, and that’s sort of why the two of us get along really well. I don’t have a lot of time for presenting a specific facade. Now, that doesn’t mean that I’m going to tell every stranger who DMs me everything about my life — at all. But when we’re on the air and when we’re on the show, I will definitely speak honestly, and I’m not afraid to go there when it comes to tougher topics. I never want to make someone feel bad. I don’t think that honesty has to mean hurting people’s feelings, or kind of diminishing their experience, or trying to be like, “I know what’s best for everybody.” But yeah, I’ve heard that. I think people were surprised at how much I shared about the loss of our son, but it felt kind of, in a way, like… not the right thing, but I didn’t know how else to do it. I couldn’t have done it any other way, because it was such a life-changing thing for me that to just brush it aside felt disrespectful to his memory and also to my experience. It just… it would be: it felt like a lie.

Rebecca
You were working and on-air as you were going through that.

Caitlin
Well, I took a significant amount of time off, actually. But my pregnancy was such a huge part of the show. I waited till I was, like, 20 weeks to announce the pregnancy, so I thought I was safe. You know, in the safe zone. And so we talked about it a ton on the air, and listeners were so excited. The week following the loss of our son, I’m being bombarded with DMs of, “Has your son arrived? What’s his name?” Blah blah blah, all these things. So we did have to address it on the air, and we had to say what had happened, which was a unique position to be in as a public-facing personality who’s gone through a very private, personal loss. Thank God I have such great psychiatrists. And our program director handled it beautifully. The co-host on Chom handled it beautifully. So I tried to look at it as: there are other women this has happened to, there are other families this has happened to, people have experienced loss of all kinds in their life, and so this can be a moment to acknowledge that this has happened. And then we pivoted it into a drive to raise money for the women and children’s unit at Mount Sinai Hospital, which is where he was delivered. And they were so great.

So we thought we have a little bit of an opportunity to make this loss turn into something more meaningful, where maybe we can help other mothers and babies through fundraising efforts. And, you know, maybe I can connect with other women who have lost children because it is a very, very unspoken thing, and it is such a traumatic, deep loss that I wanted to be this person (like Dr. Eger was for me) who says, “I’m going through this, I’m going to tell you what this was like for me if you can handle hearing it.” You know, trigger warning, not everyone wants to go listen to that, and I don’t blame them. But if you want to use me as an example of someone who’s going to try my best to come out the other side of it, I’m here for you.

Rebecca
What issues are on your mind right now in this sort of present moment in terms of news? Or do you need to sort of protect your mind and where you’re at right now so you can enjoy this really delicate period where you’re just getting to be with your son? But is there something that’s kind of breaking your bubble or that you’re wanting to comment on?

Caitlin
Yeah, breaking the bubble is the state of our pediatric hospitals. The state of pediatric care in Ontario, and the state of healthcare in Canada is incredibly bothersome to me. I was in the unfortunate position of having to go to the ER (thankfully, I’m ok) three weeks post-C-section. I waited for six hours. What I saw there was very eye-opening. It was exactly what you hear. It is that bad. You feel for the people who are trying to provide healthcare. The nurses, the techs, the doctors. And then for me, I was able to walk out of the hospital and leave, but I’m walking past people who I know are there for much longer, and it was heartbreaking. And it was heartbreaking to see now that after all we’ve been through, many stages of government still have not figured out how to properly care for our citizens who pay so much in taxes. And how parents are being affected (I’m a new parent) by things that they shouldn’t have to suffer through, like a Tylenol shortage. So now you have children winding up in the ER for fevers that could normally be treated at home with over-the-counter medication, which you can’t get.

So I would say, yeah, the state of pediatric hospitals, and the state of, you know, Tylenol shortages, and just how we seem to have deprioritized the safety of children right now is shocking to me. In a country like Canada with the resources we have, yeah, that’s mega top of mind. And then all the usual stuff that falls into place, like, you know, climate change and the recession and interest rates, all that stuff. I have a variable mortgage, so…

Rebecca
So do I.

Caitlin
Yeah. Super boring, but yeah, you do think about it. But yeah, I would say anything to do with kids now, I’m very connected too.

Rebecca
I was thinking that this morning. My daughter had a lot of fevers when she was young — really scary fevers. And I’m like, what do I need to do to wake up, and what do we all need to do to wake up to some of these issues? Because I’m hearing it, and I’m sort of hearing it through a fog, and I’m like, “Why am I foggy about this?” What do I need to do to take action about issues in general? I’m like, “Do we each need a personal crisis to get awake?” And I think that’s something I’m thinking about — just rousing ourselves out of our stupors. Whatever fog is over me that I need to wake up.

Caitlin
I think, too, that you see all levels of government realize that the average person is exhausted from such an extended period of bad news and trauma and you can’t take it in anymore. And in life your circle of control is pretty small, so people have become disenfranchised. So they’re less likely to organize protests. They don’t have the energy for it. They’re less likely to take it to the streets. You know, we have terribly low voter turnout. So I almost think that the apathy has become so pervasive that it has resulted in a lot of government moving like molasses, and then big companies being able to get away with things — you just blame it on supply shortages. I recently found out that the baby formula that my son uses, I can’t find it anywhere because this division of the company was recently purchased and they’re redoing the labels. They’re, like, revamping the labels. So you can’t find baby formula.

There are some things like that where you feel there isn’t enough criticism, harsh criticism of those types of things because they should be solvable. So, yeah, it’s hard. It’s hard to stay engaged all the time, because so much stuff feels like it’s falling off the rails. And I don’t blame people for feeling exhausted. Like, you know, if you are struggling to just keep your head above water, are you really going to organize a protest downtown? But maybe that’s what has to happen so that people know that everyone is paying attention. And parents are exhausted. Parents are so, so exhausted right now after having their kids home during the pandemic, and now this? It’s just... it’s enough.

Natalie
So how are you finding yourself using your voice these days? Those are low moments, right, that we are all navigating, but you have a different sort of moment in time to use your voice in ways that is not what you’ve been used to over the last few years. So what are you doing?

Caitlin
I mean, I’m trying to stay as active as I can on social. I’m trying to stay on Twitter. I’ll slowly go back there, I think, and I want to go back to the podcast probably before I go back to the CHUM morning show, because it’s once a week versus every day. Once that happens, I think I’ll feel a little bit more like I’m getting out there and I’m using my voice again. But for right now, I would say it’s pretty small. You know, talking to friends and family, carving out 45 minutes to talk to you guys today. Doing little things like that feels good, and that’s sort of how you slowly reintroduce yourself. But for me, how I’m slowly doing that after being off on leave — but mostly, for as long as Twitter remains, it will probably be Twitter.

Natalie
Mm-hmm. I know, I’m feeling the same way.

Caitlin
Yeah. I don’t know what’s happening there.

Natalie
Like, I really want to still remain there. I know. Oh my gosh. We’ve developed a resource, and we shared it with you, called the Science of Reframing. And in it we share some tools. And I sent you the list, so you can kind of just tell our listeners: what are some of the tools that you find yourself using, gathering around you, when you need to reframe to kind of get to the other side of a hurdle?

Caitlin
Definitely therapy.

Rebecca
Do you love the word ‘reframe’? Do you use it in therapy?

Caitlin
Yeah, we use it in CBT. I have two — I have a psychologist who focuses on CBT with me, and I have a psychiatrist. And so my CBT psychologist, we will reframe something. So if you have a thinking error where you’re focusing solely on the negative, or you’re catastrophizing something, or you’ve just fallen down a rabbit hole, let’s reframe that. You know, let’s take something that you think could be really, really negative and reframe it to say not that it’s the best, (I hate toxic positivity), but just to say, “It’s manageable. You can get through that. And if we look back historically, you’ve gotten through way more difficult situations, and you’re probably going to do it again.” Most people have more of a history of resilience than they do a failure, and fear is such a terrible predictor of future events. So I do try to reframe. So we say reframe in CBT a lot.

So I go to therapy. I am blessed with so many incredible friends, and I have them for the kind of the lightness that I need when I’m feeling really, really dark, and to say, “We’ve gone through this too.” Especially fellow moms — oh my God, I need my fellow moms now more than ever. And then, of course, I turn to… I mean, my husband, obviously. And I turn to a lot of podcasts, and, like I said, authors. So podcasts are a big one for me. I just find it relaxing to listen to people talk. I love Armchair Expert. It’s funny because they interview a lot of celebrities, but I always love, you know, the psychologists or the behavioural scientists or the philosophers that they have. That will be a resource that I use a lot, for sure.

Natalie
That’s funny, Rebecca, because that makes me think of your appreciation for Hidden Brain.

Rebecca
Oh, yes. I do. Caitlin, do you like Hidden Brain?

Caitlin
I’ve heard of it. I’ve had it recommended to me, and I haven’t had time to get into it yet. I have a note in my iPhone that’s about a mile long of podcasts to listen to, and that one has come up from a lot of people. Yeah.

Rebecca
Yeah. I like listening to psychologists, too. We need to have a few more psychologists on, Nat.

Natalie
I know. I think we’ve only had the one.

Caitlin
They’re the best.

Natalie
And it was a very popular episode — so there you go, that says something.

Rebecca
We’re all looking for help, yeah.