Lindsay FINAL
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Mary Coughlin: [00:00:00] Okay. I am so excited about our guest today, Lindsay Hardy, all the way from the UK. And we're going to just dive right in, Linds, okay?
If you wouldn't mind just sharing a little bit about how you arrived at your current role, and I know it's a rich
Lindsay Hardy: story. Well, thank you for having me on board. Honestly, I feel very, very honored to be asked to have this chat with you. So yeah, I'm an occupational therapist, and I've been working for many, many years in the field of child health.
So in many different settings as well around the UK, but also abroad. And so, yeah, I think that I've, you know, over the years, what you do as an occupational therapist is you're really supporting children's behavior. brains development to help their brains make connections in such a way that they can fulfil their goals, their parents goals, society's goals.
[00:01:00] And so I think that I've spent a lot of time looking at childhood occupations, childhood activity, and how to support children to build up the skills that they, that they in society and their parents want. I've been incredibly interested in sensory processing and sensory integration information for us as occupational therapies that came primarily out of the work of Jean Ayres, who was an occupational therapist from the States, and understanding, for me, the role of sensation in development of our brains, development of our how we grow, how we interact with the world, has been such an important area for me to develop and understand.
It's like putting on a pair of glasses for me. I just think the world looks different because of that knowledge. So I hope that that's enabled me to provide more targeted support over the years. [00:02:00] And so I've done quite a lot of training in sensory integration, sensory processing, child development, the role of occupational therapists.
And so where I am now is I've been I'm actually between roles. So I've been working more recently for a charity that provides therapy and special education for children with cerebral palsy and other developmental challenges. So we had an early intervention service there that was my passion.
So picking up the families once They'd left the neonatal unit and supporting those families in that big transition and then life going forwards. Together with Emily we've developed sensory beginnings. Which is a training company to go out there and sensory inform the world, because certainly from my perspective, I'm from Emily's perspective, as I say, sensory understanding, the sensory processing, understanding how we use sensation to promote our development, but how we use it to [00:03:00] interact with each other, how it underpins absolutely everything seems so.
obvious and so important that everybody else should know about.
Mary Coughlin: Right. Well, you know, I love how you put your work in the context of society and that really, that stood out to me because we talk about brain development, we talk about child development, and, and go about your bits.
But I think when you actually say it out loud, you know, within the context of society, it kind of brings that reality of the world we live in into focus. And, and some of the bits around our societal context are super cool and awesome, and some of them are inherently challenging. And so can you speak a little bit about how supporting optimal sensory development and integration helps support young children who then transition [00:04:00] into adulthood engage and, and deal with some of those societal realities, both positive and negative.
Lindsay Hardy: We looked at it from society coming in towards the individual. So, you know, as humans, we work in groups. That's how we're designed. We have to be in groups. We have to be. parents, we have to be with extended families whatever those might look like. That's our niche.
That's how we develop as a species. On our own, we won't survive. How do we learn to be a human in the family and the society we live in is through our parents, isn't it? So, we all have the capacity to hear every single language on the planet when we're born. But if we're surrounded by parents and a family that speak English, that's what our brain will build.
It will build connections that enable us to, to understand and hopefully speak English rather than Italian or whatever else it might be. So, We are [00:05:00] molded by the families, the environments we live within, but the parents really are almost like the conduit, I suppose, of society, the bigger societal requirements.
So if we think society in order for us to work together in groups, we obviously have to have some rules and regulations, if you like. And we have shared stories as, as groups as well. And the parents having grown up within that story will then be able to support the developing child, young human into this is the story that you belong to.
This is how, how we function in, in this tribe, in this family, in this, in this society. The challenge comes, I think, when society's demands are too great with this particular individual or. But this particular family and there's a mismatch then isn't there about [00:06:00] actually, yeah, to fit in. Maybe I have to do these activities, but actually I just can't do them.
I don't feel safe doing them. I don't have the skills for them and then that creates that challenge, doesn't it? And we all at the end of the day, we want to belong. I believe that as humans, we want to feel like we're part of something for the most part. And if we feel disconnected from society, that creates a stressor and then that creates behaviors that maybe exacerbate that disconnect, if you like, and make it even harder for us to be part of it.
So I think that, you know, it's a two way thing, isn't it? We want to educate society to be. open as possible but still function recognize that actually we work Better together if we have all sorts of brains in the mix and that we, those brains see things differently and we can all benefit from [00:07:00] that.
You know, the brains that have moved societies on are not typical brains, the Einsteins of this world and the classics of this world, and then their brains probably don't look terribly typical. So yeah, I think that, it's a challenge to fit in sometimes with society's demands and people want to fit in.
So I think what we can do as much as possible is to support them but also for society to be open to as far as possible. Yeah,
Mary Coughlin: I just thought that was so fascinating. What you just shared with us, it made me think of, I think it was a sociologist, who kind of talked about the social ecological systems model because I think, this may seem like super abstract, but if you really come back and think about babies and families and young children, who require health care services for a variety of different reasons that is part of their ecology and understanding how to navigate that and [00:08:00] being informed by how that system is making you feel right.
I mean, so there's, it is important, right? And it's important for us, for the system to understand the vulnerability, this, the sensory vulnerabilities of individuals from different, ecosystems, if you will to be able to respond and be maximally supportive and nurturing and facilitating for these individuals, babies, children, and the, and the parents, right?
Because they're freaking out too, right? They're having sensory experiences as a result of whatever is Yeah,
Lindsay Hardy: absolutely. And I think the big issue is empathy, isn't it? I try as much as you can to understand what this situation might be feeling like. For that person in that moment.
And that, and [00:09:00] also, as you mentioned about the parents stress. So, you know, the child grows up within the environment of the parent, the parent is the person that is showing them the way, how to be a developing human. You know, we come with a genetic code to make us human, but it's a requirement of our genetic code that we are fed information for us to be able to, be molded to the environments we found ourselves in.
If the parents are in a state of stress. Then the cues that they're giving the child, is that the world is stressful. This is very stressful. And so what the child's brain is then doing is building connections, expecting that the world is going to be stressful.
I need to be at the ready. I need to be expecting that life, things are going to come at me and be stressful because our brains work on prediction for the most part, we predict, we [00:10:00] come to a situation, we predict this is how I need to respond.
So the, information that you've been fed is that the world is a scary place or it's a stressful place, then that's how we go into the, to the new situation in the first instance. So I think that absolutely parents come with their children to us as practitioners full of anxiety and stress.
Why wouldn't you? It's your child. It's the most precious thing that you have and you're there for them. sort of asking or realizing that something's not quite typical, that something's a bit different here. That innately brings a stressor for you as the parent, which then of course, is something that the child's going to pick up on potentially.
And so yeah, I, I ask as practitioners, being able to as much as possible empathize and understand what that family might be going through, [00:11:00] enable us to create a sense of safety. We're not going to, we can't necessarily change what's been, but what we can do is help everyone feel actually we're in a safe place here.
And although things are going to be difficult, I have someone That's going to be alongside me. One of the challenges in healthcare, certainly in the UK, is that parents don't believe that that's going to be there for them for the long term. It feels like you've got to fight for it.
And these are words that they say, it's a battle. It's a fight. All of those words are stress words, aren't they? They tell you how much stress there is in the system. And so they don't feel that sense of, I'm going to be. There's going to be somebody alongside me when I need them. I'm going to have to be at the ready to go and grab what I can when I can.
Mary Coughlin: Yeah, and I don't think it's just the UK, Lindsay. I mean, it's for sure the US. I've talked to a couple of our grads, one nurse who's from actually from [00:12:00] Japan.
And she's also shared some similar perspectives from parents that she's tried to navigate and support through the experience of the NICU in particular. So I feel like it is a universal phenomenon associated with a health care system and maybe those kinds of large systems in general, but you know, that's just my take on it.
So in understanding, it's almost like the parent then is the turnkey for the baby or the child's sense of safety, security, belonging all the time, but particularly during a crisis. And so in the work that you guys do, you know, you and Emily with sensory beginnings and really trying to create a sensory informed world, how do you Facilitate that it sounds like you use empathy as a tool to make that connection.
But how do you help health care [00:13:00] professionals? And I imagine it's multidisciplinary. You know, use that sense of connection and that awareness of the belonging to Help these folks in crisis feel safe, feel secure, and, and for the parents, feel empowered because that was another piece that I kind of felt was emerging from what you were sharing
Lindsay Hardy:
I think the thing that we try to promote is observing behavioral responses to the situation that the person is in.
And what were the sensory cues, if you like, before that? So sense, how we see it is that sensory information comes in to our brain and it's constant, it's coming at us all of the time and it's going to build our brain. You know, our brain, comes in partially created when you even arrive in the world, but even in the womb, [00:14:00] you're processing sensory information.
So we're wanting sensory information is going to build this brain, this processor, and how, what it's going to do is it's going to create behavioral responses to those, sensations. And that's what we see. That's what we, see more obviously, if you like, is the behavioral responses. Now, some of those responses are physical movements.
Some of them are verbalization. Some of them are more our autonomic responses, our skin color, you know, breathing rates, all of those things, but they're all behavioral outcomes of the sensory experiences I'm having in this moment. So what we want to do is we want to observe those behaviors because that's going to then and then observe what's gone on before, or what's going on in the environment at this time, what is, how is the parent, basically the parents and humans are our first sensory environment.
So what's going on for [00:15:00] that person and then what's going on in terms of the noises and the lights and all the things. Are those too much for that baby or that child and we're creating a stress behavioral response and those stress behavioral responses can be those fight and flight type responses, which in babies are really subtle, as you know, or those freeze or flop type of responses, which again, can be really subtle.
So I suppose what we're trying to do is help practitioners to put those sensory glasses on and see what was the feed. into that baby, that child that then created this response. Now, obviously, further down the line, some of those feeds, if you like, the things that create those behavioral responses are something that we might be able to imagine because we have that creativity as a human.
So we can, we can create responses in ourselves that actually are [00:16:00] somewhat imagined. But also when we've had trauma or a huge amount of stress, it may be that what we're doing is we're responding in excess of a sensory experience. And then the behaviors are out of kilter, if you like, for what the sensory feed has been.
So then we need to think, it's about the history, you know, what's gone on, what's happened in order to understand why might that response be as dramatic as it is in relation to the environmental feed that's going on at this time.
Mary Coughlin: Are there, are there certain so I mean, there's lots of really cool physiologic theories and models to help us really understand that the one model that or theory rather that comes to mind is polyvagal theory, really understanding how First of all, how our brain prioritizes input and how it responds to the [00:17:00] different experiences that life presents to itself.
Can you just, can you speak a little bit about that, and particularly with regard to how that physiologic hierarchy
impacts sensory systems or impacts sensory processing or integration?
Lindsay Hardy: Yes. So Stephen Porges and his polyvagal theory, which has been so useful. ~And~ the way that I think of it is that stress is normal. We've got a neurobiology to deal with stress. And actually, if we didn't have any stress, we wouldn't survive.
So stresses are a normal part of development of life on this planet. And what stress does is it promotes in us a response that hopefully will be a growth response that will enable us to [00:18:00] think, Oh, next time I'm going to do this a different way, because then I'll be safer.
And it actually, if you like, underpins how societies work, you know, so we think we need water to keep us safe. So we build wells or we build plumbing systems or whatever it is. So, our desire to feel safe in response to stressors is to actually find solutions at work together as groups and find group solutions to things.
But in terms of us individually, so in the polyvagal theory, as I understand it, it's the ways that we respond to stress. So we have In the old days, we used to think of as having a parasympathetic response and a sympathetic response to stress and resolution of stress. And we used to think that parasympathetic was when we got into our rest and digest and we calmed [00:19:00] everything down and that's when we grow and that's when we can play and that's when we can create these solutions to the stresses that we might have had.
And in that parasympathetic response state, we work together with the others. That's how we work as a species. So we're together with people. Then if things are stressful, then we have a sympathetic. nervous system response. And that's creates our fight and flight type responses.
So the sympathetic response is that I can do something about it. I'm mobilizing. I'm active. I'm going to do something about it. But what happened was, Borges came along and he said, actually, this is too simple, if you like, and that we, the parasympathetic nervous system responses that come primarily through our vagal nerve system actually have more branches than just one.
They, it's multiple branched and what we also have is a parasympathetic response system. through past the vagal nerve, an old part that [00:20:00] would enable us to, in response to stress, when it's too, too much and I can't actively do something about it and I can't get I can't work with others to solve the problem, I'm going to shut down.
I'm going to go into a flop or freeze. Some people talk about both of those. To my mind, we have almost like a stress response sandwich, if you like, with our sympathetic response in the middle I feel unsafe, I can go and do something about it if I can't get a response, then I ultimately, if it doesn't get resolved for me, I'm going to flop or freeze and just feign death effectively.
That's my last place to go to. But what if I, what I can better do if I can, and it's available to me is to work with others who can then feed my parasympathetic responses where I can feel safe and secure, I can attach to people, I can work together with people. I can play, I can have [00:21:00] ideas. So in terms of how.
does those three states change our sensory processing? When we're in a sympathetic state, that middle of the sandwich state, then we're naturally going to be more hypersensitive to things because We feel we're in danger. So our brain is going to be more interested in picking up environmental sensory feeds, things like the sound down the road, unexpected touch, the, the you know, a flashing light whatever it might be, it's going to be more It's going to have more salience to us rather than someone chatting to me, which is a higher level cortical thing.
And it's more when we're available in our, in our parasympathetic. Social engagement, what we call in our, our language, the green zone, but I
Mary Coughlin: like that green zone. Yes.
Lindsay Hardy: So when we're in the green zone we would be [00:22:00] available to, to do that sort of interacting, and learning and playing and those sort of things, but when we're in the sympathetic state, we're going to not be able to do that.
We're not actually going to be able to learn new things. We're just about saving ourselves. So we've become more hypersensitive to sensory experiences. If we're in the shutdown blue zone, then we're going to We might appear like we're not going to respond to sensory information, but we will be, but we we're feeling it, but we can't respond to it.
We haven't got the energy, the effort to actually do something in that situation. And that's quite, that's really difficult because then people just plow on. And think, Oh, they don't mind this. It's going in and it's being remembered in your neurobiology, but you're actually not able to do anything about it.
And this is really where trauma really comes in, isn't it? Because what's happening is I'm, I'm experiencing this, but I can't [00:23:00] actually do very much with it. And therefore I can't reconcile it in my brain and make helpful memories out of it that I can then know how to deal with it next time it's actually, I can't do anything with it.
Yeah. And so in the green zone, where we're in a good place, is where we're going to feel safe, I feel secure. My body's in a good place. I can go out there and I can explore, and I can grab all these different sensory experiences, and I can put them together, and I can make lovely memories, and I make libraries of memories about how I work, how the world works, how I learn new things.
And that's how we then create those libraries of sensory based memories. Information that I can then go to in the future when I want to learn a new skill or when I'm in a tricky position, I can maybe go to those first and think, okay, this is how I tackled this last time. I don't need [00:24:00] to go into fight and flight or freeze and flop.
I can actually tackle this. Yeah, it
Mary Coughlin: makes perfect sense. And I, and I like that you called out that, that flop zone, that free zone really is where trauma takes place because someone is feeling maximally unsafe. They are feeling terror. It, you know, is a word that's often used to describe that place of feeling all of the feels, but unable to respond, escape, find safety and that sort of thing.
So it feels like there is really a lot of synergy between the work that you guys do around creating a sensory informed world and this idea of trauma informed care, particularly, you know, understanding that our experiences are mediated by our sensations, right, by our sensory input and our sensory experiences.
And so you know, can you, and I know you're also a trauma informed [00:25:00] professional, which is wicked awesome. But I would love to hear from you, like, how has your journey impacted now your understanding then of the importance of a sensory informed, a trauma informed perspective in health and human services.
Because I, I, I also feel like, you know, yeah, we're clinicians and, and that's kind of our sweet spot, but there are so many other helpers out in the world that I think also need this insight, this awareness, you know, whether you're a police Officer, a fireman or fire person, you know, social work, all these other services too, because we find vulnerable people that are struggling sensorily and, you know, from their lived experience in a variety of different settings.
So can you speak a little bit about how your own journey has impacted this awareness or this understanding of the importance of this service?
Lindsay Hardy: Yeah, I think, I think at the end of the day, it's [00:26:00] all just about humans, isn't it? And how, it amazes me. I mean, I know it's taken me a long time to get to this point, which I feel sad about in a way, because I feel if I'd known this all years ago. But it amazes me that as a species, we, for some reason, don't get this.
Or that we somehow have moved ourselves away from seeing some of the real basics of how humans function. And that if we could understand that more, all of us, you know then actually we would all probably be a bit more empathetic towards each other and we would all be a little bit more aware of how what's going on for that person or how I'm impacting that person.
Is, is so important for all of us, no matter what we're doing or what job we do or anything, really. So I think it's, for me, it's been the [00:27:00] appreciation of this piece that I was saying before was we have sensory experiences coming in that literally build our brains and the primary place that sensory information comes in, in our early lives.
Is via our parents and that how those sensory feeds are going to build this brain and this brain is going to process things in the moment, but also it's going to be the foundations of how we process things in the future as well, because we're predictive. So we go on what we've experienced to then tackle what's coming up.
So if I've been. If my experiences, as I said earlier, have been to build a brain that's expecting stress, then that's what I'm going to expect of the world because that's what my process has been built for. If it's been more likely that I'm going to [00:28:00] have more stressful experiences that can tip over into those trauma situations.
And I think for babies, the possibility of it becoming trauma is so easy because you have no bigger understanding of the world, to measure this against. So, If you have all this stress coming at you, stressful experiences coming at you, you don't have a memory system to think, oh, there's some sense to this, right?
It's raw. And so I feel like the possibilities for it, becoming a trauma. It's so much greater.
Mary Coughlin: Well, can I have to jump in because I'm getting all excited about what you're saying because you also mentioned about the role of the parent, and at least you know in in an intensive care setting. And I don't know about PD ICU, but I'm definitely near newborn ICU, and maybe cardiac ICU when it's all babies.[00:29:00]
We, we remove the parent. So we remove the one. agent that can make all the difference for this little person. And so we are creating a toxic situation for them just by that simple singular move and then compound that with all of the other stuff. So I, I love how you're, you're building this story that particularly for the, the people that we take care of babies and young children, you just need to put the parent back.
Lindsay Hardy: Oh, for sure. Because if we, if we think about it, the role of the parent. What we're innately driven to do is observe the behaviors of our babies that come as a result of that sensory experience. And our job is to, is to co regulate is our job is to read those signs and then do something about it so that our baby feels regulated and calm.
And that is [00:30:00] innate in, in almost every parent. I want my baby to feel regulated and calm because that is where they will grow. That is where they will sleep. That is where they will feed. That is where they will feel safe. And in a while go out and start exploring the world.
So our early parenting. It's about observing interoceptive sensory interoceptive behaviors mediated behaviors. So, okay, what do I need to do here to get back into that green zone, if you like, get back into that calm place, because that's what I need as a parent for you, the baby, in order to do your best growing.
Now, then, so what we're doing then is we're putting in the sensory feeds that we know innately will help. So we, our skin to skin, our cuddles, our feeding, all of those things are the very things that will regulate down the nervous system in [00:31:00] terms of giving the baby the sense of safety. Now, if I, If I have those experiences and then you come along with something that's a bit painful or uncomfortable, do you know it's been counteracted?
Yes, it's still uncomfortable, but I can manage it because somebody is here managing it with me. And that's how we work as humans. And when we instead give those painful or other experiences, And there is nobody there and there is nothing regulating counteracting. If you like intuitively putting the input in, you've, you've just got a nervous system that is just like laid open just to anything, just bombarding it and they have no means at that stage really of, of dealing with that or regulating themselves because they haven't got the capacity.
~ ~ This is how we work. This is how our species functions. We [00:32:00] function together. We survive together. We regulate together. We learn together.
We do all of those things together. We don't do it on our own and we certainly don't do it on our own when we're babies and young children. And so. I don't know why that's hard to understand, but it seems like it is a tricky one.
Mary Coughlin: It is. It's a wicked hat. And you used the word belonging before, and that to me, it really is the cornerstone for how we can buffer these traumatic situations, toxic situations, sensory overwhelming experiences through a sense of belonging that baby Feels, you know, that sense of belonging, particularly when they're being cuddled by their parent and that parent, even though they may also be feeling pretty freaked out and stuff, they can feel some sense of comfort as they're cuddling their baby because they feel like a belonging is happening in that moment, too.
So it's There's a reciprocation [00:33:00] of that co regulation, right? I mean, I may be freaking out because I'm worried about you, but if you put me in my arms, I'm still worrying about you, but I have you in my arms. I'm feeling consoled. You know, and maybe even feeling a little bit more in control of what's happening because I am contained, you know, I'm enveloping my baby.
My baby, I believe will feel that same sense of love and stuff like that. So, I mean, you're right. It's such a. Simple, quintessential aspect of our biology, our sociology, our everything. But I mean, and we could talk about this on a completely different, you know episode. It, I mean, just how all of this corruption occurred in Our evolution as a species, we've just kind of thrown the baby out with the bathwater, you know, in our pursuit of modernity and advancement and we've left behind our humanity. ~ ~
~With such articulation.~ [00:34:00] I'm going to pivot you now that the podcast is called care out loud. And I don't know if you've given any thought to that, but I would love to have your take on what does it mean for you? Maybe what does it mean for sensory beginnings? No pressure. You can answer either way to care out loud.
Lindsay Hardy: So I have thoughts about this actually. And I love it because it holds intention. You know, it makes us intentional to do the caring. I think the out loud word makes you think, makes you really think about it. It's like a beacon, like, okay, we've got to care here.
But actually the act of caring. I feel like that's often quite a quiet thing it's the listening. It's the subtle way that we might go at things it's the time, intention, attention which don't sound like loud things, but I love the term because it makes you think.
We've got to do [00:35:00] this. And I think that we can. I think going back to one of your earlier points about how did we get lost at understanding just human behavior? And I think it's because we've become, very task orientated. We're about tasks and numbers of tasks and how long tasks take.
And, and it's like a factory you know, producing things that have all got to be the same and done the same way irrespective of anything else. And I think that Caring out loud means that we actually, the tasks do of course need to be done, but they can be done in such a way where actually it's the task isn't the main focus.
It's the outcome of taking time for the relationship, taking time to connect taking time to observe what's going on here and can I do it differently so that it's actually less intrusive? How can I come along with [00:36:00] you? How can I be alongside you rather than doing to you?
Yes. For me it's that. And I think you've been amazing, Mary, at really highlighting this. Oh my goodness, you are such a powerful voice for this, which is brilliant.
Mary Coughlin: Thank you. I really appreciate those kind words. Well, I know we're kind of coming up to the end of our time but before we close out is there one nugget of wisdom or insight that you've gained over your career and all of the experiences that have formed the you that is sitting here right now in this moment?
Is there a nugget of wisdom that you can share with the listeners and, and share with the world? Oh, I
Lindsay Hardy: can struggle with one, Mary, I'm going
Mary Coughlin: to say. Oh, give them all to me, give them all!
Lindsay Hardy: I think the big things for me have been that I would love it if we could move away in the Western medical world, away from this artificial boundary that we've [00:37:00] created between mind and body, physical and mental.
Yes. We don't work like that as humans. And if we could, really take that and do something with it, because it's just, we just waste time. We waste energy and we waste possibility by trying to separate these things out. So my. Great prayer would be that we could move on from this.
I think the other thing for me is that the key to our work in child health in particular, is the parents. I strongly believe that society needs to appreciate more the role of parents I don't think we appreciate how important they are in developing that next child. And therefore the family in the future and society starts there.
And I really feel like parents need to be supported so much more than they are. And I think my final thing [00:38:00] really, in terms of all of this is that I think what I've learned in over the years is that having, in order to be a leader and support others to do their work, you have to be prepared to do exactly that.
Support those people in their work. It has to be less about you and more about the team. Be it, the other clinicians that you work with, be it the parents that you're working with, that actually it's about being prepared to get your, fill your cup by other people doing their, doing their best and moving on rather than it being about you.
That's for me has been quite Yeah. And,
Mary Coughlin: and so spot on. I mean, it's so profound. You're absolutely right. And I do have to just circle back because you said this phrase and it literally gave me goose flesh wasting possibilities. We need to stop wasting [00:39:00] possibilities. Absolutely. The possibilities of this new family and how they're going to grow and evolve and thrive beyond the struggles and challenges that they've had.
And all of that hinges on us as clinicians and the leaders that are supporting us to do good, difficult, sometimes hot crushing work, but, but beyond rewarding. Right. I mean, when you do this work. It has the possibilities of filling your cup up and helping you really feel and know that you made a difference.
Lindsay Hardy: But I think, So you, you need you as, as clinicians, practitioners, you also need to be seen and to be heard and to be cared about and looked after, because as you say, this is hard work. This is exhausting emotionally and physically, and you can't keep [00:40:00] giving without somebody also regulating you and providing you with what you need.
And I. I sometimes feel that often the practitioners are thought of as cogs in a wheel in a factory. You've just got to get this stuff done rather than realize that their true worth, their true worth is the ability to have relationship to connect in with those people. If we can support the practitioners to have the space and the time to do what you were talking about, the caring out loud and my interpretation of it, to have the time to connect in, to, to be able to listen to support, those are going to be the key.
The, the very experiences that will support that parent to be in a better place, they in turn will support that baby to be in the best possible place. And that will be the biggest medicine. And actually, do you know, in some ways that's, that's really cost effective medicine. Yeah. And it's [00:41:00] preventative.
Yeah. And if we see relationships as medicine. Then maybe we would really pursue it. We would pursue the requirements of having humans available to do their job as being humans.
Mary Coughlin: Amazing? Oh my gosh, Lindsay. Thank you so very much for sharing your wisdom, your knowledge, your time, and of course, your gracious presence.
Lindsay Hardy: Thank you, Mary. It's been a privilege,
