Natalie
Ok, I’m just backing into this parking spot, Rebecca, in my fancy new car.

Rebecca
So nice, your car, Nat.

Natalie
If I was ever going to take you on a drive to reframe a location, I’m happy to be doing so in a car that you feel safe in. Here we go, Bec. I’m pressing the Engine Stop button, because I have one.

Rebecca
I hated your old car, Nat. It’s a big word, and Violet would chastise me if she heard me say it. Hate! She’d say, “You’re really going there? To hate?”

Natalie
Well, and Frankie used to sit in the back seat and say, “I love this car, this is a good car,” so he was reframing for everybody. A place-based reframe, that’s what we’re doing today, right?

Rebecca
You place-based bitch. Can I say that?

Natalie
Yeah.

Rebecca
Cause you do love place-based stuff, don’t you Nat?

Natalie
I do. Obviously, because I did my research on a specific location — I researched all of that work about memory in the incarcerated space for young people. When that place closed down and I couldn’t return to it to finish my research, I was left with this experience of not getting to really unpack my memories inside its rooms. That was something I had planned on doing, initially.

Rebecca
So was it actually troubling? Or was it more troubling for the research? Or it was all-around troubling for you?

Natalie
It was troubling for me, yeah. I remember sitting there getting all excited about how I was going to return. I was so naïve, I really just thought even though York Detention Center had officially been closed, and they had moved central booking for Ontario out to a larger facility in Brampton that was being celebrated as if it was this wonderful superjail (as if jail can be super). I was like, “No, I’m going to go back into this space, and I’m going to wander around. I wonder if my stuff’s still there.” I was really just assuming that because there had been a connection to my school board and that building that I’d just be able to get in. That was so naïve, because of course I start calling around and it was just ‘no’ after ‘no’ after ‘no.’ I think every ‘no’ made me realize that a space that you can no longer return to takes on more meaning.

Rebecca
If you can’t get in?

Natalie
I think so. And interesting — we have had different people on this podcast actually refer to various spaces that they can’t return to. I think that’s interesting. So I don’t think I’m alone in that one. I remember that we had a conversation, that one with Carley Fortune, and she talked about not being able to return to a specific house. And then when we had that talk with our Smile Songs colleague, she was talking about moving locations and how there was so much memory loaded into each of those spaces when you can’t go back. So I think that there’s something very human, just commonly human, about this experience. So here’s me wanting to take forward something about situated memories — literally memories that happened in certain locations. We can hear people walking past our car as they head into this coffee shop. That we’re going to call what?

Rebecca
G.N.

Natalie
G.N., and I want to reframe this place — maybe because I don’t normally feel terribly tempted to go in, even though there’s only maybe four or five options within a walking radius between our two homes.

Rebecca
So you want this one to be available to you again.

Natalie
I do, because I know actually that they make a really good chai. Also, I don’t like feeling excluded from spaces that I would like to be in. I would like the option. I’m all about options, and I feel like right now I need to reclaim this option.

Rebecca
Is that because you’re such a flexible thinker?

Natalie
Are you being facetious?

Rebecca
Maybe, I’m not sure. I didn’t know you’re all about options. Are you?

Natalie
Oh, isn’t that funny? Clifford would say that that’s one of my lines — “I like options.”

Rebecca
You do say that line.

Natalie
But you don’t feel like I actually mean it?

Rebecca
I don’t know.

Natalie
Oh, I don’t know now. That’s a very interesting question that I’m going to have to probe in my own being and come back to.

Rebecca
I don’t even know if it’s an important question, but the flexible thinking one I want to do a whole episode on.

Natalie
Shelving that. We’ll put a pin in that.

Rebecca
We’ll put a pin in that one. So G.N., you have feelings about it, and you need to process them.

Natalie
Yes. Do you?

Rebecca
Well, there are only three comfortable chairs in that place. So only three people can be ok in there. The rest of us, if you don’t get the comfortable chair, then you’re basically sitting in the middle. It feels like you’re in the aisle, that type of feeling. Then if you’re by the window, then you have a stool with no back. I am old now and I have to have a back.

Natalie
But as a writer, I did hear you say that Ocean Vuong celebrates his discomfort. Didn’t he say it was like his superpower? Is that a word he used?

Rebecca
He could write anywhere, right?

Natalie
Did he ever refer to the chair? Maybe the chair part?

Rebecca
He didn’t talk about the chair, that’s true. I don’t know if he has back issues. He said he was writing in a closet, and I wonder how. But I am just accepting for myself that I do not have that superpower of being able to write anywhere. I’m very distracted. I could be just as interested in the people beside. Everything Katie was saying last episode about how she can really zone in and just go inward and be all Zen about her writing.

Natalie
Right, super-focused.

Rebecca
No. It could be in the current mindset I’m in, where it’s just really outward-looking. I don’t know. But coffee shops are feeling hard for me. I want to want them, so maybe this will make me want it again. But I feel distracted, and I feel worried about my distraction levels in a coffee shop.

Natalie
Well, and then there’s COVID. So maybe that’s ok.

Rebecca
So whatever, maybe we’ll just delete all that and let’s just focus on you, Nat.

Natalie
No, I liked that whole section. I think that’s great.

Rebecca
One thing I remember is I dropped a pen in G.N. It was a nice fountain pen. You gave me this beautiful purple pen.

Natalie
That came from another business — local business, because I like to spend my money locally.

Rebecca
And I dropped it, somebody dropped it. Maybe my child pushed it off the table.

Natalie
I think actually, if I remember your story correctly, it just got pushed off. There’s a very specific gap in this.

Rebecca
But who pushed it? That doesn’t matter. I’d like to blame somebody, and I’d like it not to be me.

Natalie
But there’s a gap next to a table.

Rebecca
Is the gap still there?

Natalie
I haven’t been in to really see, but all I know is that gap swallowed your expensive pen that I bought you. I think I bought it in celebration of your writing, so that was a bit of a sad point — and to up the ante in terms of sad, my iPhone fell down this gap in the floor.

Rebecca
That’s so sad, Nat.

Natalie
And that iPhone had all of my baby pictures of Frankie on them.

Rebecca
Which you didn’t have backed up at that point?

Natalie
Not all of them. So there are definitely baby pictures sitting under the floor of G.N. that I would love back. Maybe I am ok and not having a complete hissy fit about it even all these years later, because I know they’re there.

Rebecca
You still think it’s possible to get underground.

Natalie
Well, I do know that they are safe, in that no one’s getting them. So your pen and Frankie’s baby pictures, they’re not stolen.

Rebecca
Imagine all the other things that have fallen down the crack.

Natalie
Well, that’s it, they’ve been buried. It’s like a, what do you call it when you put things…?

Rebecca
G.N. is taking our things.

Natalie
Or, G.N. is acting as a time capsule for really important physical memory holders.

Rebecca
And if that’s true, then kudos to them, because they’re making a monument.

Natalie
To our lives.

Rebecca
That’s an excellent reframe, and all of a sudden I’m more excited to work there. Big thinkers.

Natalie
Because if you manage to snag that table, you’re literally absorbing Frankie’s babyhood from underneath the floor, and that is something unto itself.

Rebecca
And beaming it up.

Natalie
Beaming it up to you. I say that all, I can laugh about it now because there’s been some distance from it, but it does not make me that inspired to go in there. And yet — so here’s my helpful moment of reframe with this space (and I don’t know that I’ve shared this one with you) — but halfway through COVID, Frankie and I were on a walk. At this point, you could go into this space as a single family, to go get your thing, but you couldn’t use the bathrooms. These young employees in there, who were just doing their time trying to get through their shift, and I said, “My seven-year-old really needs to go to the bathroom,” and they were super-generous and let it happen. I was struck by that moment, because I think that throughout COVID, I have witnessed people (including myself) either really rise to the occasion in terms of generosity of spirit, or not. That was a real moment where it happened.

Rebecca
And so happened in that coffee shop.

Natalie
And it happened in that coffee shop, and so that did help. I have since actually purchased at least one, if not two, coffees there.

Rebecca
Actually, I have thought that about that place. The staff are always really nice.

Natalie
Ok, and that’s a big deal, right?

Rebecca
And that makes me think that the owners must be nice.

Natalie
Yeah, they have to be treated well, if they can…

Rebecca
They must be, yeah. So points for them. That helps.

Natalie
Definite points, absolutely.

Rebecca
Ok, so we’re considering it reframed?

Natalie
Maybe on the way to being reframed. Isn’t that something I said over the last couple of episodes? That for myself, reframing is a way through — so I am working my way through towards a complete ‘ok-ness’ or general sense of satisfaction with the space.

Rebecca
That was long-winded, Nat.

Natalie
Yeah, but I have to. I think it needs all the words to really be able to speak to the nuance of what I’m feeling.

Rebecca
It’s like working through mud.

Natalie
Yeah, or tall grass.

Rebecca
To say, “I’m searching for you, and I will likely enter your doors again.”

Natalie
Yeah, because I really, really am balking at any application of positivity, toxic positivity stuff ever being applied to my notion of reframing.

Rebecca
As in, like, “Okey dokey!”?

Natalie
Yeah, because that is not it.

Rebecca
We accomplished it, that kind of feeling.

Natalie
Yeah, I think we’ve said it before, but I feel like it needs to keep being said for myself.

Rebecca
That this is about flexible thinking. Ok, I could consider this spot again. But my feelings towards it aren’t 100% one way or the other, because I’m such a flexible thinker.

Natalie
Ok, am I turning on the car and driving to the other one?

Rebecca
Yeah, take me somewhere else.

Natalie
Ok.

And here we are, right outside of what used to be C. — and is now also C., but a new name. So two words that start with the letter ‘c.’ I’ll be very curious if any of these places figure out that we’re talking about them.

Rebecca
We always call it the old name in my house.

Natalie
Yup, same. The original C. Not the new C.

Rebecca
Yeah, just can’t say the new C, for some reason.

Natalie
So, I don’t know — the space is filled with a lot of memories for me, because it was one of the spaces I used to, when I was living down by the lake and you were up here in The Junction, we would meet there a lot. Somehow the drive from The Lakeshore to The Junction felt exciting to me because I knew the coffee shop I was going to land in. That was a place that we would meet, and then there would be walking. You know how I love my steps. But it was also that it was a space that was new for me. It was like I was leaving something that was perhaps a little bit tainted by pain, and then coming into a new area that was now very open.

Rebecca
Fresh.

Natalie
Yeah, it was really fresh. This place had really high ceilings, everything about it felt new and open and possible. So it’s interesting to go into that space because I was just there for a coffee with a colleague from a former institution that I’m no longer a part of. It was interesting that she and I were both sitting in there, and so the the place-basedness of our coffee was very forward in my mind, because we were talking about an institution that has hurt both of us, and then we’re in this place that is kind of weird now because it doesn’t really feel like what it was, but maybe I can reframe it as new, because it was new with her. It was certainly very open and clean. She was new to it.

Rebecca
For me, the place is wonky now. I would just call it ‘wonky,’ because it’s almost dead to me. It’s almost a dead place. I did so much of my work there for my previous company, so that was filled with life and thinking, and I brought the girls there. I’ve eaten so many muffins there, or I’ve watched the girls eat so many muffins.

Natalie
That’s so cute.

Rebecca
Yeah. I’ve considered muffins, and tried to hold out not eating the carbs. That’s not as hard for you.

Natalie
No, but I respect that that was something you had to navigate in that space.

Rebecca
Well, every day as a mom, it was like, “Let’s go to C.,” and then it’s like, “Oh, should I eat another muffin?”

Natalie
Right. Well, and money, right? I mean, at a certain point, it’s expensive. So have you found yourself needing to reframe it? Since I live down at that end of our long Junction strip, you do have to walk past it. Do you ever consider it?

Rebecca
Yeah. I’ve worked in there a couple times. I did meet someone there, my accountant, and that was nice, because I felt like I was claiming it in a fresh way, I guess. I don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t have the same urgency to reframe it. You know when you just get lazy about thinking about something? Like you know maybe that space needs some work, and you need to arrive at something with it, but you just feel lazy?

Natalie
No, I don’t know that at all, so that’s very interesting to me. I’m trying to understand what you mean.

Rebecca
I don’t know what it is. I don’t know about that space. It might be fine, it might not be fine. But just — I don’t know.

Natalie
Well ok, there’s something in that. You get to perhaps feel a bit lazy about that one, because you don’t walk past it in the same way that I do every day.

Rebecca
Right, I don’t have to. Yeah, I can stop. Actually, often when Simon and I do a walk, we stop just before it. So it seems a luxury, I can have a laziness in my thinking, which is just something to consider. If we don’t have to think about something, then there’s a privilege in that.

Natalie
Well, and that’s it, right? So there’s maybe not that for me with that space. I definitely had some uncomfortable conversations with various people in that space, so it did feel really positive and pleasant to be sitting in there with my friend and just talk about new ideas. That was kind of cool for me.

Rebecca
Because you’re saying you can either reframe it, or you can continue to feel uncomfortable for ten seconds every time you walk past it.

Natalie
Yeah, and I really don’t want that feeling about most spaces in my life. I think I am very sensitive to location because I spent those years researching and writing about those words. So those words are just very top of mind for me, the idea of place as being filled with meaning, versus space as just a location. When these spaces have become places for me — meaning-filled, whether it’s a building or a road or a home. So in this moment, these coffee shops are definitely meaning-filled for me. I really quite urgently want to reframe them so that I am not…

Rebecca
So you can be at home in your own neighbourhood.

Natalie
That’s it, absolutely. And there’s a beautiful term, I think I’ve shared with you before. Have you ever heard the term ‘flaneur’? So a flaneur would be a person who basically…

Rebecca
I know it from French.

Natalie
Ok, so I’ve heard it used in philosophical talk, where it’s about somebody who is analyzing basically as they walk, so writing all the details. As they walk, they observe, and it makes its way into their writing.

Rebecca
That’s a flaneur?

Natalie
Mm-hmm. Someone who’s basically a traveler, but is noting everything as they travel. It’s a specific style of writing and reading the world. I do find that for the last decade of my life, that that has become very much a habit of mine. I write, in my mind anyways, the details of where I walk. I wonder if lots of people do that — if they use a lot of words, use up a lot of space in their brains to describe what it is that they are seeing or feeling as they move about in the world. I want the freedom, I want the option to go back to that word. I want the option to be able to use positive words about these various spaces that I walk through. I don’t want to be encumbered by, you know, hurt or negativity, because it weighs me down. I don’t want that. Clifford would say, “You only have so much RAM in your mental headspace,” and I don’t want any of my RAM being really used up by negativity solely. I don’t want to pretend that my reframing of any of these locations negates any of what happened in those spaces before, but I do want to be able to see them anew.

Rebecca
Let’s just open our doors for a second. We’ve done this before, where we record in the car, but let’s just let some air in, Nat, because it’s really stuffy.

Natalie
Ok, plus then we can get some sound.

Rebecca
Here’s some air.

Natalie
I think that this is what we needed to do. I think I’m feeling better. You’re fainting, but I’m feeling better.

Rebecca
Maybe you just needed to talk?

Natalie
Talk out these locations in a car, I think. Was good. In a really hot car.

Rebecca
Do you want to take me to one more place?

Natalie
No, I think this was good. I think I can only do two locations in one go. My RAM’s been used up.

Rebecca
Ok.

Natalie
I love you, Bec.

Rebecca
I love you too. I think I smell now from being so hot in the car. You’re wearing so many layers, Nat. It’s upsetting.

Natalie
I have a crop top under this, but I can’t show it to you because I didn’t want to use my zipper and have that sound.

Rebecca
You’re wearing a parka.

Natalie
I am a little hot, but that’s ok.

Rebecca
So today, we wanted to return to our women entrepreneur series, and I’m here with Mary Elizabeth Picher, who goes by Emmy, and she is going to introduce us to her business. So Mary Elizabeth, Emmy, what is your business and where is it located?

Emmy
Well, I actually have two businesses. First business I have is called Wholeplay. I started in 2010. It’s for parents with young babies and toddlers, and we run essentially parenting classes. It’s half music, half child development conversations about different topics for new parents who are wanting to learn more about how to support healthy child development. I was running in person these classes for a number of years — ten years — and then the pandemic hit. Those types of classes went away. We did do some classes online, but the business at that point really became more of a consulting business, so I do lots of consultation with early childhood startups. For instance, there’s a company that I consult with called Huckleberry, and they have an app that’s for sleep training infants. I’ve worked with a number of other organizations to support their early childhood programming. So I should say my academic background is in counseling psychology, but also early childhood education. I have a Master’s in counseling psychology and a doctorate in developmental psych, with a focus on early childhood. I did a lot of work in the early childhood field for a number of years, and then during the pandemic, when the classes stopped and the world stopped, I was really forced to reconsider what I wanted to do, and how I wanted to do it.

I felt really called to come back to mental health, noticing the huge demand for mental health services — for everyone, really, but also our kids have been in crisis, huge proportion of mental health issues in our kids and our youth. And so I started to reach out to see if maybe I would join a psychotherapy practice, and I ended up encountering two business partners who saw my entrepreneurial background (starting my first business, Wholeplay) and my mental health expertise and recruited me to co-found the current business that I’m operating, which is called The Giving Tree Centre. It’s for children and families with mental health issues. With Wholeplay, I was working with parents, but more in a psycho-educational capacity. I was actually playing the ukulele. I was teaching them songs, we were having these rich discussions on child development, talking about sleep and talking about play and bonding and separation anxiety. I really enjoyed these conversations that I would have with parents, and this discussion around how can we support the health and development of our children. My views on that really changed after the pandemic. I started thinking more about mental health and the mental health needs of families. I myself went through a whole bunch of mental health issues, and my son really struggled with anxiety, and I really wanted to shift into that direction. Opportunity fell in my lap with these other entrepreneurs who have backgrounds in starting businesses, but not a background in mental health.

Rebecca
Would you say that the business you were operating before, you weren’t able to use that new thinking? You needed to shift to be able to use this new thinking?

Emmy
Yeah, I think the focus with Wholeplay was really about fun and healthy development and a more superficial level of interaction with parents. The work that I’m doing right now is really looking at a deeper layer. We talk about parenting strategies, but we go deeper than that. We hit the substance below the strategies. Whereas Wholeplay would be more focused on, “Ok, here are some tips, here are some strategies,” The Giving Tree is more like, “Ok, let’s talk about how your childhood may be impacting how you’re raising your child.” We touch on some much deeper layers, which allows for really deeper levels of change to happen within the family system. At The Giving Tree we see kids of all ages, and many of them have diagnoses.

Rebecca
Just this kind of an aside question, but if you really want to look at healing, you have to look at your childhood — is that just a given? That’s a big one.

Emmy
I’m afraid so. It really does.

Rebecca
You can’t not go there if you want to really heal?

Emmy
Yes, I think so. Everyone has within them something that’s called their inner child. Have you ever heard the term ‘inner child’?

Rebecca
Yeah.

Emmy
That starts when we’re zero to seven. It gets created in early childhood. If we want to heal, we need to heal our inner child. That means we need to return back to that place.

Rebecca
What’s the biggest obstacle you face in your business, and how do you reframe it? You know how we love this word ‘reframe.’

Emmy
Yes, I love how. ‘Reframe,’ that’s from psychology, is it not?

Rebecca
Natalie is the one that brought that word in, so that’s actually a great question. Where did she actually start using the word, and where does it come from? You know, I can’t even answer that.

Emmy
Therapists will reframe for their clients. They will reframe situations, and it’s a very good skill to have. I’m not so good at it, actually, when it comes to myself.

Rebecca
You’re good at it for your clients?

Emmy
Yeah, better at it for my clients. So the biggest challenge I have in life in general, I think, is knowing my own worth, knowing my own value. Just before I got on this podcast, I was talking to my husband who was like, “Remember, you’ve done some awesome stuff.” Like, “Remember, your businesses are great.” He was having to give me a pep talk. I’m not very good at giving myself a pep talk. I’m not good at waxing on about myself. Knowing my value, knowing my worth. Anytime you’re starting a new business it’s great having these business partners because they bring skills to the table that I’m not as strong at — marketing and things like that. So how would I reframe that? I guess the reframe for me would be that this gives me another opportunity to practice knowing my value, knowing my worth. Putting myself out there again, to show myself what I have to offer, as scary as it is.

Rebecca
So with each business, you’re practicing that.

Emmy
Yeah, exactly.

Rebecca
That’s exciting. I like that.

Emmy
Is that a good reframe?

Rebecca
I think that is, yeah. That’s an excellent reframe. Different experiences are just opportunities to practice. That’s a really nice way of looking at challenges.

Emmy
And you have to go through the fear in order to get the reward. I’m sure there’s an expression around that. It’s uncomfortable starting something new, always.

Rebecca
Entrepreneurship is very vulnerable, because you need people. You need someone to need your business, which is scary. Ok, in a different life, what would you have done?

Emmy
I think I would be a Buddhist monk. I think I would be in the mountains meditating, maybe writing poetry. I find this world to be quite hard. I find this city life, this busy life, to be really challenging. Actually, when the pandemic happened, we had the opportunity to go north to my husband’s family’s cottage, and we lived there for a year and a half, and our life just slowed down and I felt so much calmer and so much more at peace. I realized, “Oh, this is the life I should be living.” But it’s complicated, right, with families and businesses and making a living and all that stuff. So I’m here for now.

Rebecca
Ok, last question. How can people support you?

Emmy
Well, they can go to www.thegivingtreecentre.ca — and yeah, email me, I’d love to hear from you. We do free consults. I’ll just chat with you. If you’re struggling with your child, we’ll have a chat about it. I’ll let you know if I think we would be able to support you with your needs. The great thing about us is we’re new, so we don’t have any waiting list right now. A lot of the places that have been around for a while have huge waitlists, we don’t. We will work with you right away, we’ll work with your child right away.

Rebecca
And I can say, just before we started recording, I was telling you about something in my own life. Right away, I felt the questions you were asking me were already prompting me to think about something differently in a way that I feel inspired to try. So if you want to get inspired, everyone, to look at your parenting to look at yourself a little bit in a gentle way, I feel like there’s a gentleness to how you approach this work.

Emmy
Absolutely, yeah. Because the parents that come in, they’re my heroes. You will not be judged, you will not be shamed. You will be held and honoured for being brave enough to reach out for help, which is a very vulnerable thing to do.

Rebecca
To heal our inner child in the process.

Emmy
Exactly. We also won’t force you to heal your inner child if you’re not ready to heal your inner child. You won’t be forced into anything that you’re uncomfortable with. But you might be pushed a little bit, because we do want people to see change, and change doesn’t happen by staying comfortable in the status quo. You do have to look at some things.

Rebecca
So simple, but well said — “You do have to look at some things.” Thank you so much for chatting.

Emmy
Thank you.

Rebecca
So thoughtful, and I would love to chat again.

Emmy
I’d love to chat again as well. This was really fun.

Rebecca
All right, let’s do it. Let’s meet up.

Emmy
Sounds good.

Rebecca
In this non-virtual world. We can do it. It feels really hard to move away from the screens now, doesn’t it? It’s like we got into this place.

Emmy
I know. We need to. I need to. Feeling really like I really never leave my house, and it’s not healthy.

Rebecca
Yeah. Ok, let’s do it. Thanks again. Bye.

Emmy
Bye.

Rebecca
Oh yes, some house business. Don’t forget to rate, review, and subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. This is actually really important. Consider a donation on Patreon if these reframing conversations have supported you or someone you know. And please sign up for our Sister On! newsletter which we send out every Friday. It comes with an original recipe from Nat which, I tell you, her recipes are really good. All the links are in our show notes. Love, Sister On!