Hi, everyone, it's Sophia.

Welcome to Work in Progress.

Welcome back to Work in Progress, friends, fans, listeners, and internet pals.

This is an episode you all have been waiting for and telling me you've been waiting for.

We are finally joined on Work in Progress this week by none other than Katerina Scorsone.

She is one of those rare performers who brings a stunningly present emotional intelligence to every role.

She's best known for her more than a decade spanning turn as doctor Amelia Sheppard on Gray's Anatomy.

She has built a gorgeous career playing complicated, honest, fiercely human women characters who fall apart and rebuild and somehow emerge in more whole than before.

But her story off screen is just as compelling.

Katerina was born and raised in Toronto in a very creative household, one of five siblings.

She's been acting professionally as a child, but took a little left turn thinking she might actually be a doctor, only to boomerang all the way back and become one on TV.

Her parents were academics who also ran homeless shelters, so from a really early age she's had a keen sense of life's complexities and how important it is for us to show up in service of each other.

She has managed to merge all of her passions in such a meaningful way on an off screen and perhaps off screen, she's taken on her most meaningful role of all as a mother of three and now an incredible advocate for disability inclusion.

Drawing from her experience raising one of her three daughters with Down syndrome, she chooses to use her platform to promote greater understanding, to end stigmas, and to create community for people who value both voice and heart.

Let's dive in and talk about all of these beautiful, beautiful things with Katerina.

Hi, Hi, I'm happy that you're finally here.

And I know the whole Internet, like the whole Internet, the Gray's Internet, the gay Internet, like the whole just want it has been shouting for you to be with us on this show.

And I'm so happy we made.

Well and we finally gotten together in like some capacity, whether Cass and Amelia ever make it there, I go together.

And together exactly well, I think too.

Like everyone's.

Internet's kind of broke a few years ago when we hosted our big like post soccer game party my house, and everyone was like, wait, all these people know each other, Like, oh my god, Oh my god.

That was awesome.

Yeah, that was a great party, by.

The way, it was so fun.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I love that we tend to find each other in so many spaces, whether it's like in our day jobs, literally on the same show at the moment, yeah, in advocacy, in supporting women's sports, like yeah, we always say like you're here, of course.

Yeah.

Well, and I feel like also through time, like the fact that we've kind of like woven past each other.

I mean we've been how long have you been doing this?

How long have you been an actor?

And all of the other things.

But you know that being the first professional.

I mean I didn't start going on auditions until college, So not until I was eighteen.

I was working and you know, doing recurrings and like a little movie here, a little thing there, you know, starting in college, and then I was I don't know, I think i'd been twenty one for like a week or something when I bumped one tree hilp okay, and so like it's twenty years.

And I'm I'm literally I can't even do the math was that in like the early odts.

Yeah it was two thousand and three.

Okay, and that was on trial two thousand and three.

Two thousand and three, Like a great what a crazy time when you think back to like the early sort of tabloid Internet and the way we treated women and the fact that anyone dared to call Britney Spears fat, like it was such a toxic soup of things.

Yeah.

Well, and I think a lot of the kind of younger people are coming up now, like truly can't understand the context that a lot of the specifically actresses we're living through, like in the pre me Too era and then like he's like when Weinstein was like running the town versus you know this era now of like hr yeah, like you know.

Like it's not perfect, but at least you have someone to go ask for help.

I will say, it's so weird.

I feel like there's so much I've learned in kind of hindsight because booking that show, you know, it took me to small town North Carolina for a decade, So there was a lot that we experienced in our little bubble, and certainly the pressures of the time and the commentary and all the craziness.

But like the industry stuff, I didn't know any I didn't know any of it.

I didn't know any of those people.

I was like, I was very rarely around.

And so it's crazy too.

You know, some of the things I've heard since and learned since, I'm just like, holy shit, out did how.

Does this existan?

Yeah?

Yeah?

Well, And I think one of the things that we have now, I don't again, I don't think it's perfect, like you said, and I think that there's still a lot of like egregious things that happen.

But I think what we got was a vocabulary for even understanding what was egregious and how the kind of power structures work, and you know, where we're entitled to more safety than we've been given.

And so I think what we really gained, you know, is this vocabulary for moving forward slowly and then like two steps forward, one step back, but we can keep going with kind of a deeper understanding of what's happening.

That's a really beautiful way to put it.

I'm curious, you know, not just about career and present day and so many other things people know about you, But if we went back, you know, if we got to walk out onto the playground right now and see our eight year old selves.

Who would eight year old Katerina be?

I don't feel far away from her, you know what I mean?

And I think, I think and I've heard you ask this question before, and it kind of has given me pause because I because I'm like, well, what did I.

Think I would do?

Or who would I be?

And I think I actually just wasn't oriented that way in that I think I wasn't kind of looking at myself and wondering what kind of you know, noun person I would be as an adult.

I think I was.

Very located in an observer position inside of myself.

And so I think my mom's even talked about it.

I'm like one of five kids, and she's kind of said that very distinctly and specifically.

When I was born and when I was a little kid, I was kind of always looking and I was like looking, looking, looking and trying to like gather information to understand how things were, yeah, right, And I think that that kind of whatever I became, I think that remains.

And I think as an.

Actor, as an artist, as a an activist and a social advocate who's trying to like understand the structures of why things are the way they are, and you know, how you create a person on screen and why they function the way they do.

I think it is this kind of orientation of like curious observation, and that feels familiar throughout my life.

And you started on a children's series at eight, right, Yeah, I did, which is also so crazy.

Yeah.

Correct, And I think I understood.

I did not understand until listening to your podcast.

You're Canadian somehow.

Yeah.

So my dad's Canadian.

Okay.

My dad is from Montreal and moved to la in the seventies to go to art school and stayed right, started his business and did his whole thing.

And my mom is from the East Coast and her mom immigrated to the US as a young kid, and so it's like big American dream, anything is possible here energy on both sides of my family.

My parents had the reverse journey.

My mom was born in New York and my dad actually, yeah, my dad was born in Italy and then he was in Argentina for a long time, and then he was in California and New York and eventually they both met in grad school in Canada, and then they stayed and so I was born in Canada.

But wow, yeah, so how how does little year old Katerina tell her parents I want to go be on a TV show?

How did that happen?

It was not that, I mean, I think I had kind of one of those unusual journeys.

My older sister we were in a choir.

We were in like a children's choir.

And my older sister wanted to be an actor.

And I wanted to be a doctor.

What kind of doctor?

I wanted to be a heart surgeon.

I wanted to toasts.

Yeah, wow, I wanted to be obg I n oh, my god, look at us.

And we played doctors on TV.

Yeah.

So I wanted to be a doctor.

But my parents, who you know, both were academics.

They both had PhDs, but they had opted to My dad had a PhD in social work and my mom was a social anthropologist, and so they had this like whack of five children, but not a lot of cash.

And so, you know, a family value of ours was like get educated.

But I knew that you'd have to pay.

Tuition to do that.

And so my sister wanted to be an actor, and I was kind of with her when she was meeting her first agent that my parents were like, okay, you can, but it's not like I don't know, just if you want.

And then the agent was like, why don't you come along too?

And I just knew that I could like save up money for tuition if it worked out, and be a doctor.

And so it kind of in a weird kind of metaway.

Yeah, I saved up tuition and life was long.

But somehow I'm now like an actor doctor, a doctor on TV.

I think there's really something about it.

I think it does something on a sort of spiritual level when you get to achieve your grown up and childhood dream at the same time, which is how I feel like being on set and doing a scene in an open heart surgery, I'm like, I did it.

I weirdly manifested, like my two favorite things to do.

This is so crazy.

Well, and I'll say I recently I had kind of an interesting experience because I do get really hyper like I love acting and I love storytelling, and I get really interested in the storylines and in the medicine of the storylines.

Yeah, and so I'm like super interested in neural which is which is Amelia's specialty.

And so I'll often like steal the props from set when they when they've like printed out things about the newest studies on Alzheimer's.

And oeass and I'm like, think you can read them?

Yes, And then I'll like go down rabbit holes.

And so I have learned a lot in that time.

I'm and and then recently, my one of my kids did have a big surgery and it was a it was a heart surgery, and and and the information really kind of served in that setting, you know, in terms of my ability to advocate for her and my ability to kind of read all of the charts and understand exactly what was going on and kind of be the you know, the I on everything as like different doctors and nurses are like changing shifts, and you kind of get to be this through line for your kid and you have to be.

But I think real life and this kind of like fantasy life have have really kind of worked together in a beautiful way.

That's so cool.

It just it feels like a little nod from the universe.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, we'll be back in just a minute.

But here's a word from our sponsors.

When did it hit you?

Because you know, I get that as a kid on mister dress up, You're going, Oh, I can work the way my sister works.

I can save up money for college.

This feels fun.

It's a little summer campy.

But when does acting as a professional goal sort of crystallize in your mind.

The first answer is when I was like fifteen, I was doing a show for Disney, and a bunch of the kids there were just like really focused on their like professional careers.

And I think that was actually the first moment that I realized that this was not an extracurricular activity yeah, that I happened to be doing like in school hours.

Like I really thought we were all kind of like, you know, some kids play soaper and some kids are inquirer, and then some kids do acting and then you go and have your adult life.

And it was really like a light bulb when I realized that these kids this is going to be their grown up life.

Wait what yeh?

And that was when I realized you could like be a storyteller professionally.

Wow.

And I still was kind of.

On the fence.

I wasn't sure or if I wanted to do that.

I got a little serious about it, and then at about nineteen, I was like in la and there's a whole journey.

But I decided I wanted to go and do college and study other things.

But then in that process I was studying like literary studies and philosophy and compared to religions, and I came to understand how important narrative storytelling was for like the human journey.

You know, I hit my parents again, like they were in social work and they were you know, running soup kitchens and helping people with these very like tangible, real world problems, and I kind of thought like, oh, that's what's important.

Being a doctor is important, Running a homeless shelter is important.

Acting is frivolous, you know what I mean.

And actually, when I left acting and went back to college and actually started studying philosophy and again compared to religions and literary studies, it kind of crystallized for me that the reason we feed people and the reason we house people is because we're all engaged in this miracle which is life, and that for us to fully participate in that miracle, this kind of conscious attention that allows us to read the story of self and its relationality with other is like, that's why we're that's why we eat, you know, and so they're both important.

You feed the people so that they can have this experience of consciousness through narrative.

The root of that is empathy, and the quickest way to get in touch with or create empathy is to learn someone's story.

And I had a very similar experience to you in college.

You know, I wanted to be a doctor.

Then I decided I was going to go get a bfan theater, and I was in the honors program at my university, and one of the things I was really heavily focused on was theology and philosophy.

Cool and studying these things.

You know, It's like, I know, it can be just like, oh my god, roll your eyes.

The actor talking about how before there was written language, we were passing stories, but.

We were we were the value.

Of the story, the generational song, the humans around the campfire at night passing down what we believe.

It's like, it's so foundational to who we are.

And it made me realize why shows like yours, which I'm lucky enough to come play on sometimes, are so important because they actually teach us about science through the lens of human experience.

They and they do also teach us to advocate for ourselves.

One of the things that Gray's Anatomy has done really well, I think is that it is in dialogue with the culture through the debt shades.

I mean, we've been over twenty two years, many things have happened, many cultural conversations have happened, and I think Shanda Rhymes and you know, the showrunners who have come after are sensitive to Okay, what are we talking about.

Let's let's have that conversation.

And so one of the kind of scary things was during COVID, we decided to do a COVID season, which in some ways was very claustrophobic and very like I mean.

You guys in those like the arrivals, those like space suits, which, yeah.

That was a lot, but we had it was a hard season.

It was the hard season to shoot, and I think it was a hard season to watch.

But I think one of the things that it did was it provided medical communication to a lot of people who did.

Not have access.

And I think it provided witness to a lot of the healthcare workers and frontline workers who were dealing with this like yeah, unbelievably on speed ekable day to day trauma.

Yes, And then also being accused of like being secret agents to some big conspiracy, and you're like, these people are literally on the front lines of death trying to keep people alive.

But I think you're right.

I think that medical communication and scientific communication is so important because I think the reason we're so polarized, I mean as a country and in many ways is because there is this lack of transparency, you know, or there's kind of this assumption that everyone's on the same page.

And I think what we've realized in the last kind of election cycle is we're so far from the page that we thought that we assumed people were on.

And it's like this big wake up of like, oh, we were all assuming that we were having the same conversation.

We were not.

We were not.

By projecting our assumptions onto people, we are wholly unprepared for actually the experience that other people are having and therefore what is going to affect our country.

But but yeah, informed consent is important, and unless you have the information, you don't feel like you can consent.

So even if it's even if the scientific community is trying to do something benevolent and for your best interest, people are going to be suspect if they don't have the information to make their own decisions, and so we really like address that.

What was it like when you like discovered Grays in the first place.

Were you a watcher before you joined the cast?

Like what was that all the way back in the beginning?

Like I had like the box set DVDs of the first season of Gray's Anatomy, and so I was like doing finals, and the way I would decompress from like studying was I would watch this new show, Gray's Anatomy in this like on BBD.

Oh my god, I love it.

And I was I instantly fell in love with it, and I thought it was just like such an exciting, dynamic show and you know, the patos and the drama, and it was so sexy and and I was like, I think, I I think I want to be a doctor.

I think I you know, I wanted to be a doctor as a kid, but then I was like, no, I'm going to be you know, all of these other kind of social justice things.

And then I got to end U undergrad and I was like, I think I do want to be a doctor after seeing this, And so I ended up going to the medical faculty at the University of Toronto and signing up for this like six week lecture series where surgeons would come in and lecture to like humanities students about like what being a doctor was in case you wanted to like take your Humanity's degree and like now become a doctor.

And so I listened to six weeks of surgeons talking about actually what their day is like and what surgery is like.

And I got to the end of that series and I was like, I think, I just I think I just want to be on grais an enemy.

It turns out, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, And I.

Want to tell the stories for the doctor.

Yeah, more pathos, it was more on call rooms.

I love it what you been able to do as an actor through the character of Amelia.

You know, trauma, addiction, grief such a complex specialty, as you mentioned earlier.

I mean, the field of neuroscience is it's like almost sci fi.

It's so cool, mysterious and evolving.

Like what you do has been so deeply personal and human and also so incredibly technical.

I mean, after fifteen years of this is I was about to say, is there a like there could be one silly me?

What would you say?

Or the kind of top handful biggest takeaways or like lessons or kind of magical learnings you've had from doing this job.

Well, I do love learning scrubs and the running because as you probably know, like I've done so many shows where you're like in a dark factory running in like four inchields with a gun and.

That hurts, but physically like you're like, oh, may make this decision.

Yeah, this is not what would happen.

And so the wardrobe gras Anatomy is the best one I've ever had.

I love that.

I love about Grays that because it's this massive cast and our fan base is so broad, and it's all of the world, and it's every age group, and I feel like in this kind of like I don't know, like uh, fractured postmodern echo chambering world, I feel like Grays.

Is such a unifier.

But also that all of the different characters seem to serve this like Yomian function for people, where like almost like the kind of like avatars that you would find on like Olympus or like these kind of Yumian like archetypes.

People identify certain characters with different aspects of self and they can kind of negotiate their own kind of inner journey in relationships through the characters on Grace, And so there's this like opportunity for Catharsis.

And I think also I think like the audience.

I think all of the people who have been involved in Gray's Anatomy have like been on this journey that Shonda Rhimes put us on of like a mission based show, which is entertaining and sexy and hot and something everybody wants to watch.

But we're also like again breaking down these social conversations and having new ones and starting to understand intersectionality and marginalized communities that in the first few seasons weren't even talked about.

And by the end we're like talking about identities that had never never even approached being on mainstream television.

We're kind of breaking down binaries and finding a new way to approach an understanding of visibility, you know.

And so that's that's been exciting.

Yeah, I mean it's so special.

And then in the sort of backdrop of all this storytelling and boundary breaking, to your point, you've had this incredible evolution as a person, I mean, you know, becoming a mom and your life growing in that way.

I mean, you've got three kids, and like, Yeah, what's the experience being part of such a big on screen world and then building such a big off screen world.

I feel like because of the way that you were raised and what you saw modeled in terms of service and showing up and also a big family, Like, maybe maybe did it feel more natural to you to be invested so deeply in multiple worlds at once.

Yeah, I mean I think it is interesting.

We're you know, I moved to la and I was pretty much cast into Shondaland like within a year of arriving here.

And so actually most of my like art and soul friends that I met immediately are on the show.

And so we would have these like, you know, incredibly intense interactions on screen, and then behind the scenes somebody would be having a baby or getting divorced or getting a cancer diagnosis, or like working through some sort of We.

Just went through so much.

And the private I'm going to include the private practice cast in this conversation.

Amelia was like on Grays and Private Practice at the same time for three years and then private Practice ended and she ended.

Up on Grace.

But we're all like, all the private practice people are still on a text thread together yeah, like marriages, babies, divorces, like understanding.

I don't know, it kind of all weaves together.

Yeah.

Yeah, and I.

Think even just like one of the most exciting things for me being kind of a woman in this industry is like going from a place of playing au to like understanding her kind of going from like male gaze angenoux to like coming into her own power and becoming professionally not just adept but masterful and exiting the male gaze as like an object of desire and projection and like coming into kind of her own, uh lived internal experience as like kind of you know, I just think it's like it's a journey that we haven't had the opportunity to see from women until.

Something this long standing.

Yeah.

So yeah, twenty years of watching women become is pretty exciting.

It's so cool.

Yeah.

And Amelia too, Like Amelia went from being kind of like a wayward you know, sometimes drug addicted, you know, wild child, and you know, and she kind of moved through wild like and marriage and children and queer spaces and like she's just had this very dynamic, full life and yeah, yeah.

We'll be back in just a minute.

After a few words from our favorite sponsors.

Is there something interesting to you about that, you know, both in her journey and as a woman who like set out on the path.

But I think so many of us believe we're gonna walk right.

Like it gets laid out for you and you're like, that's how it works, and you build the life and you do the things and you check it off, and then you're like, uh oh, like there's something missing to in this character and also in the background to you know, go through the birth of your three children and then to go through your own divorce.

Yeah, Like I don't know.

I mean, we've both been through it, you know, recently enough, and it's like.

I mean I feel like I've read sud Yeah, you know, I feel like I kind of like again, what you're saying is like we kind of had this like prescribed assumption about how life is supposed to go.

But when you start to kind of like investigate where that prescription came from and who the doctor was, and you start to understand that that doctor was a society that does not have the best interests of most of us in mind.

Yes, then you.

Start to kind of like deconstruct the protocol.

I had this experience.

I was explaining it to someone the other day.

I had this great conversation with a friend I hadn't seen in a while over dinner, and I said, you know, I don't think until I knew that my what I thought was my happy ending was wrong for me, I don't think it had ever dawned on me that all the choices I was making perhaps weren't choices at all.

Right, Like, I don't think women are reared to choose.

We are reared to be chosen.

And for me in midlife, looking around and going like, wait, did I did I choose any of this?

Or did I tell myself I was choosing?

Like it was sort of like going through my own internal earthquake, but it felt really good when the shaking stopped.

To your point like this this I graduated, I'm like, exactly what.

And on the one hand, I'm kind of heartbroken for myself and other people, And on the other hand, I'm like.

That's just so.

Yeah.

Well, And again I think people like you know, they want to again binary rate everything where they're like, wait, are you saying that marriage is bad?

No, Like, I think not understanding your choices is bad.

I think that if you are defaulting into, you know, heteronormative marriage and kids because you didn't realize there were any other options that might be a tragedy for you.

And if you are, if you can see outside the fish tank, how society is structured and how we were socialized from the beginning of the gender reveal into absolutely different grammatical roles in our in our again our social language, and when you understand that, you can go well.

First of all, is that is that authentic femininity and masculinity or is that imposed imposed?

What is actual authentic feminity?

What is actual authentic masculinity?

How much of each of those do I feel inside of myself?

And how much of the assigned definitions do I want to participate in in my life?

Being taught to be a good girl, you know often people please are often a fixer.

A very early parentified child, I was like, oh, I didn't think it didn't dawn on me until I was so claustrophobic in my own life that I wasn't making to your point full choices.

I wasn't seeing outside the fish tank.

Someone the world around me would say, here's five pence, which one do you want to write with?

And I'd go, I choose the blue one, but there's a thousand pens.

I never asked paper rush.

Yeah, but it's like I never asked for more because I thought, well, who am I to ask for more?

But guess what, walk out there and look at all the other colors, look at all the other things, look at all the other tools, and you don't I think you don't even realize how much conditioning can stop you from seeing until you you know there's more and you rip the blinders off, and then you're like, holy shit, look at this world like I didn't know.

I didn't know.

Well, And I think that that that is a conversation for again, we're kind of like talking from a place of like a lot of privilege, right, yes, like being white women who are in non disabled bodies, you know what I mean, Like the wake up.

Call being able to leave in the first place.

Yeah, and and and that that for a long time, you know, the limitations of patriarchy, uh with it within the understanding of the story of achievement in patriarchy, and then like one to purmiss patriarchy like unconsciously if you haven't consciously unpacked it, like it's working for a long time, you're able to get a lot of a lot of things that feel good.

And it isn't until you have you know, a bunch of like you know, firecracker wake up calls in your life where you're like, wait, not everybody, yeah, has access to all these nice things, and wait, this is I'm this is not the experience everyone's having.

And and those, I think are the moments where when you encounter, you know, the first person that you know with disability, or when you truly are kind of like when you're introduced to kind of intersectional you know, different communities, and you realize that that actually our society is created to exclude certain people and to include other people, and and that actually we're all we're all participating in a in a structure that is violence to every single individual in it.

The people with the perception of power.

Yeah, it might take longer for it to be violent with them, but it is.

Well, but it is because because it actually just all the time, and.

Just because even even taking away your your informed consent about how you're going to live your life, even when you're like, you know, you get the pink cake and you think you're supposed to choose sparkles like, that's a violence against your individuality, right and against.

Yours so reductive.

Yeah, you're uniquely unfolding DNA and all right, and so we're all living in the violence of like an imposed value system that doesn't serve any of us.

The things I've witnessed in communities of women over the years of my adulthood have been so incredibly beautiful, including the willingness to say, hey, I know I have me individually, I have these following types of privilege.

What am I missing?

Like one of the coolest things.

I just went an insane sence I'm about to say.

I just got to moderate a stop on Kamala Harris's book tour.

And.

She has this thing, this moment in her book where she says, I always ask when people are being gathered or when I'm going to meet people, I always ask who's not in the room.

I always ask who I'm not hearing from.

And that, to me, I'm like, God, more of that.

And I'm really curious for you because you are such a brilliant woman, friend, mother, performer, advocate.

I see so much of your wisdom every time I'm with you, every time I get to listen to you speak, and when I think about your three daughters and the fact that your second daughter has Down syndrome, I've read all the things you know about how scary it was the diagnosis and you were so terrified of what you didn't know, and you've gone on to be this incredible advocate for her, and you work with the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, And I mean even the way you're able to talk about ableism and privilege when you know how poorly designed the world and its current iteration is for us as able bodied, privileged women.

And then you look at one of your kids who has an added layer of struggle in a world like hours, how do you focus on what she deserves becoming a motivation and a force that activates you rather than either making you so mad you go crazy or being so scared that you can't sleep at night, Like, how have you learned to fuel her future in yourself?

The beginning of the journey was full of a lot of like fear, but really the journey was realizing that the fear was because there was no visibility in my life.

I didn't know, I didn't know what the assignment.

Was, right.

I was like, this is a kid.

I didn't expect.

You know, what I understand of parenting is that I, as a parent, am tasked with taking this little baby and helping them to achieve all of the metrics of ablest straight SiZ white patriarchy.

Right.

All of this is unconscious.

This is not what I understand.

I think the task is, but that is unconsciously.

You're like, I got to make this kid.

I got to find a good school.

I got to make sure they're in sports.

I got to make sure that they can achieve all of the markers that will allow them to be included.

Right, And so how am I going to do that?

This kid is going to have more challenges at that task, and so you feel really powerless and you're like, I don't know how, I don't know how to And then you realize that the task is the wrong task, and actually, like you're not even like the beginning of the advocacy as a parent.

You're like, I need to make sure that my kid is.

Included in this ablest weight white patriarchy.

You know what I mean.

It's like, actually, no, wait a second, am I am I You're like pointing your finger at yourself.

Am I part of the problem.

Am I heard of the problem?

No, there's nothing wrong with this child's iteration.

She is born perfectly individual, just like the rest of us.

And the moment you stop being afraid of the word disability is when you realize that disability has nothing to do with the particular body of someone who can or can't do certain things.

Disability has to do with how much society has decided to include people who have different abilities, different bodies, different you know, cognitive capacities and whatever.

And I think when you realize that disability is not about your kid or or or yourself if you're disabled, like, it's about how much does society want to include you in a conversation?

How much do they want to give you the ability to participate, then you can talk about disability with no problem because you're actually talking about society.

Right, And what you're actually talking about is stretching the margins of society wider than they have typically been, yeah, to make more space for more people.

And that society is disabling you, right.

And society, if they decide to build a staircase for an able bodied man to get to the meeting on the second floor, they have given him an accommodation.

He can't jump.

Sixteen feet, so they have accommodated his disability to get to the second floor meeting.

Right, Yes, we decided that he is worthy of being accommodated.

Right, You can build a ramp.

You just need to decide that someone in a wheelchair is worthy of being accommodated so that they can get to that second floor meeting.

Right.

And so it really is.

A out are we creating a society with all types of bodies in mind?

And you and the same kind of can be extended to all sorts of kind of intersectional exclusion, exclusion for marginalized groups.

It's like they have been disabled from participation in certain kinds of activities and meaningful parts of our of our functioning society.

And so you know, yeah, well.

And what you're talking about is so obvious and also not because we don't we don't have conversations like this unless we seek them out.

You know, we don't know these things.

It doesn't dawn on you that, like hello, the staircase to the second and third floor is an accommodation until someone says it to you in that way.

Right, Well, I do want to shout out Amani and Barbara, who is an incredible disabled activists, And actually it was it was listening to her where I had kind of the light bulb go on this that disability.

I think she said something like talking about the politics of disability and like what's going on with like politics right now?

And she said something along the line and I'll misquote it, but something along the lines of understand, if the people in power want you excluded, they will disable you.

And whether that's deciding that your identity is not normative and therefore not to be accommodated I you know, or not providing you with the medical access you need, or you know that basically the people in power are the people who decide who is disabled.

And when we're talking about disability justice and advocacy, we have to understand that we're all included, because the second they decide that you are an enemy of the state, essentially you get we categorized.

I yess well, by the way, think about our grandmother's generation.

Quote hysterical women would get institutionalized.

They would force you to have a lobotomy, they would literally medically disable you.

Yeah, if you didn't fall in line.

And queerness, you know what I mean like there were all of these categories that if you look at history, they were just classified in ways that made them outside of what was okay society, right, And so we and women, I mean, are you kidding me?

Like women couldn't vote because we were like you're not considered like mentally competent, you know what I mean?

Like that we were disabled from participating in democracy by these structures like they decide absolutely insane.

And now for our sponsors, you speak on this so beautifully, you do so much work.

You've educated yourself in such incredible ways you teach when you talk in your advocacy with the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, I'm curious if there have been takeaways or learnings things that you know are most hopeful for new parents of newly diagnosed children who don't know what you know yet, who are frightened, who are overwhelmed, who don't know where to start, Like what's the first north star you can point people to so they can know how joyful their kid's life is going to be the way you know that about your middle daughter.

Yeah, I mean, oh gosh, there's so much to say.

And first of all, I want to say, the Global Down Center Foundation is amazing and they do a lot of fundraising to do lots of research that is now no longer being prioritized by the government, and so lots of research that helps again enable people with Down syndrome and their families to participate.

And then also that helps with kind of medical research that gets to kind of the root of some of the comorbidities that.

Go along with Down syndrome.

There's too much to say, so I would just give them my piece and came like as a parent with a nine year old, like there's I would never, ever, ever, ever want to go back to the person that I was before Pippa was born.

In terms of my understanding of the world.

Pippa is by far my easiest kid.

It was absolutely authentic rock star of a person who I learned from every day.

My community has expanded so exponentially.

It shattered kind of a paradigm that allowed me to start learning about all different kinds of intersectionality.

I understand myself.

It's just like I guess the takeaway would be like, I know you're scared because you don't know what you're doing.

Take some breaths.

You're gonna find community and you're gonna know how to parent this kid, just like you learn how to parent typical kids.

And like it's all going to be okay, You're gonna lie.

And there are hard parts, of course, there's hard parts of parenting all kinds of kids.

But that's so beautiful.

Do you think that your lessons in possibility expansive thought?

You know, what you've learned from being her mom helped you cope Back in twenty twenty three when you went through your your house fire, Oh you know, do you because I know, I mean, we've talked about it a bit, but it's such a traumatizing thing to go through that.

It's an incredibly traumatizing thing to lose your home.

You went through it two years before our whole city went through it, you know, from me side all the way to the west.

Like, I thought so much about your wisdom in those first weeks of January this year, watching so many people I knew go through it, I was like, holy, you know, how do you reflect on that experience in terms of your perspective on you know, community safety, home family?

Because people will say it's just a house, it's just stuff, but it's also it's it's the record of your life.

It's both and I imagine.

Yeah, and again I think I mean to be to be Frank, I was able to navigate our fire in part because I had a lot of resources, you.

Know what I mean.

I had insurance, and I had a place to go, I had friends, and then I was able to move us into a new situation.

And I think actually when the altaed Dina fires happened and the Palises fires happened, I think because I had been through all of the complexity of the kind of bureaucracy of getting my children safe again and comfortable again, and how my financial world was kind of rocked and affected, just realizing in such a profoundly personal way the extent to which there are so many families that did not have the infrastructure that I had.

And so as much as there was all of the kind of trauma and devastation psychologically emotionally for my kids and my family, we didn't have that extra layer of like actual houselessness, you know.

And that again is like it just shines a light on, like our society is not structured to take care of us in a crisis.

And oh, I'll say this, I think one of the things we've been learning.

Over the last few years, there's been this like incredible demoralization about the ability of the government, whether right or left.

Or whoever, to take care of us.

All.

Yeah, I think people are more and more demoralized, and I think that, yes, it's sad, and yes it's scary, and I do think that it has woken us up to our need to take care of each other in local community.

Yes, I think that's what happened during the fires for a lot of time.

Yes, well, And it's been really interesting to see people much like yourself, the advocate that your life and the identity within your family built in you, on top of the advocate you were raised to be.

I wonder too, like, I think about two very big communities for you.

I mean, obviously you mentioned Grace, we're all well, myself included.

I was about to say, we're all over here in my Instagram feed.

It's very upset that Casts and Amelia haven't hung out, and that's a problem.

I'm also just like, as a friend, upset that you know, in the two episodes I was on this year, you've been on hiatus.

I'm like, girl, what is going on where you?

People want to know.

Do you know where Amelia is.

Well, Amelia's apparently in Boston.

Doing like a fellowship at Harvard.

I actually don't know what she's doing in Boston.

Okay, great, she.

Found her people.

But she'll be back.

She'll be back in January.

Okay, thank god, we miss so has it been kind of nice to have a moment to yourself?

How is how is like a beat from the intensity of a TV schedule?

How's that shaping your day to day?

I'm founding co owner of some yoga studios in La which also.

I wanted to ask you about that.

I love Moto.

I was only involved Emily Moore when started the studios here in la and so we were childhood friends and so I started it with her in La here.

And it's such a beautiful studio.

Well, and I think one of the things that's cool about that speaking involved in Dina fiers like the Echo Park studioasically became a community hub.

So it was kind of those studios became kind of spaces where people could come after like you know, disasters in the city and there was a pantry at one point, and you know, just a lot of community events to kind of organize and and and bring people together after like suffering this collective trauma.

And so yes, yeah, wow, so you've been able to lean into that time with friends and family.

What feels like your work in progress right now?

Okay, you know, I was just talking to somebody about this, and I've been doing a lot of actually meditating on it.

But I think I think I've been doing like a contemplation on outsourcing, like how much we outsource and and that you know, again we can kind of talk about our society or you know, our interpersonal relationships, but like outsourcing your sense of validity, fulfillment, okayness, accomplishment, just identity to like an observer outside the self or a community outside the self, and that actually there is a community inside the self, and that that community happens over time, right, And so like I think you did it actually brilliantly.

You talked about like if you were eight years old and you saw yourself, would you kind of recognize yourself?

As kind of the thematic question, And I.

Think that what you're doing kind of when you ask that question, is you're inviting the community of one iteration of yourself to be with the community of the other iteration of yourself.

And I think that over the years of your life and over the minutes of your life and the seconds of your life, all of the choices that you've made create this cumulative identity, and those are the voices all of the seconds of your life where you were you, Those are the voices that should be informing how you feel about who you are and each decision that you're making.

Those are the voices.

All of those versions of self are the voices.

And you can trust those voices because they've shown you how to survive all this time, right, And so really just kind of like understanding that once you once you've made that community of self the ultimate arbiter of your sense of safety and joy, then you're more free to engage in all of your interpersonal relationships and all of your social relationships in a non transactional way because everything is already provided.

So your choice is you actually have the ability to consent to every interaction, your engagement.

I love that you, You, my friend, are a poet.

You are I'm ready?

Are when are you writing a book?

Oh?

Gosh?

You know, I had three kids and you're like, oh, when they're at college.

You know, it is one of those that I would say, that's my little guilty thing of like why am I supposed to the When do I say yes to those.

Types of things?

I don't know.

You got time, Yeah, thank you for creating a space like you create a space to kind of like for all of the people who don't have time to write the book.

You like are like, tell me about the book, tell me about.

The stories that will go in the eventual book.

Yeah, I love it.

It makes me so happy to get to you with you for a bit.

Thank you for coming today, Thank you for having me

H