From Diagnosis to Daily Practices That Changed Everything with Jen Zagon

Sometimes the greatest transformations begin with the hardest moments.

When Jen Zagon's son was diagnosed with autism, she set out to help him feel better. What she didn't expect was that the journey would transform the health, mindset, and daily habits of her entire family.

In this heartfelt conversation, Holistic Health Coach Jen Zagon shares how one life-changing diagnosis led her to explore nutrition, reducing toxins, gratitude, mindfulness, and simple daily practices that helped her family move from overwhelm toward resilience. Along the way, she discovered that healing doesn't have to happen all at once—it often begins with one small, intentional choice.

Together, we explore:
• How small, consistent habits can support long-term well-being
• Why nervous system regulation matters for both caregivers and families
• Practical ways to reduce everyday toxic exposure without becoming overwhelmed
• The power of gratitude, nature, and mindfulness during life's hardest seasons
• A perspective shift every parent can benefit from: "They're not giving you a hard time—they're having a hard time."

Whether you're navigating a difficult season, caring for someone you love, or simply looking for sustainable ways to feel more grounded, this conversation offers hope, encouragement, and practical reminders that meaningful change often begins with the smallest steps.

Connect with Jen  🌿  

Website: https://holisticevolutionwithjen.com/
IG: https://www.instagram.com/jen_zagon?utm_source=qr 

Fullscript shop: https://us.fullscript.com/welcome/jzagon
Face Book: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100070583725805

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Transcript

Introduction to From Diagnosis to Daily Practices

SPEAKER_00 0:07

So it's been a little while since we sat behind these microphones, and we're very grateful to be back having conversations that first inspired our podcast and conversations that are about real life, personal growth, well-being, and small shifts that can help us feel more grounded and connected to ourselves. And this conversation today feels like the perfect one to return to. Today, we're exploring how simple daily practices can support our well-being, strengthen our resilience, and help us navigate life challenges with greater intention, gratitude, and care. And we're joined by Holistic Health Coach Jen. I call you Holistic Jen. Empowering her family and now other parents to create lasting change through small and meaningful habits.

SPEAKER_02 1:05

Jen is a wife, mom of three sons, Anana, and owner of Holistic Evolution with Jen. Jen's journey took a pivotal turn when her middle son was diagnosed with autism. He became the driving force behind her passion for restoring his health and helping him live his best life. She began learning about nutrition, reducing toxins in their home, and adopting healthier lifestyle habits. The results were life-changing for the whole family. Jen offers holistic health coaching, toxin-free products, and a full script shop. She created the Autism Parent Wellness Community Facebook group to support other parents navigate their wellness journey. So welcome, Jen.

SPEAKER_01 1:50

Thank you so much.

SPEAKER_02 1:52

Do you want to just start by giving us an overview of some important things you'd like to discuss with us today?

SPEAKER_01 1:58

Sure, yeah. My son, you know, he was diagnosed with autism uh shortly after his third birthday. And uh I knew that he had been in very good health, like as a baby. Um, and with the autism diagnosis came all sorts of issues with like getting frequent colds, being, you know, diagnosed with uh what would be like asthma. There was definitely something going on with his immune system. And I knew that there had to be something that I something that could be done. So there's a saying that um a worried autism mom does better research than the FBI, and um it's absolutely true. And you have to remember he's 22 now, and so that was like, oh my gosh, that was before I had a smartphone. You know, we had the internet, but Facebook was I don't I don't even know when Facebook came up, but I wasn't on Facebook yet. So there weren't Facebook groups to like connect with parents and things like that. So you were just kind of going out on your own and attending meetings and connecting with other parents. And we started making changes to his diet. We did work with a practitioner when he was three. We worked with a doctor, uh, and we started doing things like taking gluten out of his diet and taking dairy out of his diet and you know, doing labs and doing supplements and things like that. And we started seeing these changes in him. And so nutrition was like so pivotal for him, and actually for all of us in my family. I mean, it's just been really awesome to watch, you know, issues that a lot of families struggle with, like asthma, um, allergies, acne. I had eczema on my hands from like frequent hand washing at work. And it was just amazing that when we started making these changes, that these things started not being an issue anymore. So the quality of our lives were greatly improving by the things that I was learning because of the What were some of the changes, like in the way that he was acting or the way that he was eating?

SPEAKER_02 4:11

You said that really impacted him and it started to help him. In what ways did these change?

SPEAKER_01 4:16

Yeah, so actually it was it was interesting. We were told by a doctor to take gluten and dairy and soy out of the diet. He was also giving him some things like fish oil and some zinc and a few other things that he had found through labs that were low with him. And we started seeing changes in his language. He was basically nonverbal with some word approximations, but he when he regressed, he lost any language that he had. Um, and he kind of just went into almost we call it sailing off to autism island, where they just kind of disconnect from the world around them and they live in their, you know, self-contained world. And we started seeing when we made these changes to his diet, almost like a veil lifting off of him and his speech began improving as well.

SPEAKER_02 5:13

I was wondering if he was non-verbal. Today is is he speaking now?

SPEAKER_01 5:18

Yeah, oh yeah, he is verbal, but he also has some of the typical things that sometimes you see where maybe someone affected by autism will repeat things, things that maybe they hear in a movie or you know, things that they hear like in a YouTube video, sometimes he'll he'll repeat those things to us. He still does have struggles with language and communication, and sometimes, especially when it involves feelings, but there are some new things coming up with like spell to communicate, some S2C stuff, where it's very promising if parents wanted to look into something like that for their children to be able to communicate via like a letterboard and then eventually it's on like a tablet or computer.

SPEAKER_02 6:06

Well, I mean the advancements now these days, yeah, right. So, like it in the beginning, what really made you raise an eyebrow? Because I feel that a lot of children they mature at their own rate. You have a lot of people like, oh my gosh, my son's two, and he's still not talking yet. And I say, Well, you know, maybe it's just because that's where he is in his growth right now. But when did you realize that it was different?

SPEAKER_01 6:32

Yeah, it was after he had had a um, so his last like infant wellness check, he regressed um over time after that visit. And I knew that something was way off because he would wake up and he would be screaming and he would scream for very long periods of time where you knew that something was wrong. I I can't even tell you how many times my husband and I almost got in the car at like three in the morning with him because he was just inconsolable, which now we understand is it's pain, basically, that there's there's pain that's involved. But at the time we just we had no idea what to do. So you're just trying to soothe, you know, soothe this toddler. And uh unfortunately it took me quite a long time back then. Now they do like basic autism screenings at the one-year checkup. But back then there wasn't really a sense of, you know, it wasn't really on the radar. He wasn't checked even at two years old. In fact, I I had a doctor tell his pediatrician said that she didn't think that he had it. And um, but she wasn't with him in the middle of the night when he was screaming or when he woke up from a nap and he was screaming. That was that was one of the big, big things. And then also going from a child who like really loved to engage with his environment and being very like smiling and laughing and like enjoying time with people, he would hide like during family parties or whatever, he would just go hide underneath like a table or something, or like want to be outside. He didn't want to have anything to do with what was going on, and previously he had been very engaged into that. I remember my mother-in-law saying, like, oh, he's such a smiley baby, and then it all changed.

Food as Medicine

SPEAKER_02 8:25

So, Jen, how did your experience with Dan shift your perspective on health and wellness for your family? You're dealing with having him have a healthy diet. So, where did you start to incorporate this in your own family and realize, oh, hey, if we're gonna do this for Dan, it's very important for us to get in touch with the healthy side for us too.

SPEAKER_01 8:47

Yeah. The food was a realization for me because I dealt with my my own health issues, but everything that uh that was affecting me was manageable, right? I had asthma and allergies and eczema on my hands and things like that, which I just kind of chopped up to being the way that it was. Um, but when I saw what food did for him and I started incorporating some of those food changes in for the rest of my family, it was like, oh my gosh, wait a minute. Like, I'm onto something here with this. And then it just kind of snowballs from there. At the time, I was a physical therapist assistant, um, which I spent over 19 years doing that in like outpatient orthopedic. So I always understood the exercise aspect of things with like how, but it this was really eye-opening to see what food could actually do. And so, even like in our own experience, you know, just removing dairy from one of my son's diets, his skin cleared um wonderfully. And so that was like another layer of realizing that what you eat matters, the things that you're doing every day matters, and really getting back to the basics, like I realized that when um like with Dan, I realized that I was gonna have to go back to cooking the way that like my grandmother and my great-grandmother had. You know, I am kind of that generation, I'm gonna be 50 this year, and I'm that generation where moms were like, oh my gosh, there's these packaged foods now. And, you know, so there was there was homemade meals, of course, but there was also like the hamburger helper and things like that. And I really had to just take a step back and look at how do you cook things from scratch? What does that look like exactly? So eating real food, fruits, vegetables, which that's like not really an easy thing if you have a child on the spectrum who has like a lot of food sensory issues, but it's just kind of persevering. We worked with an occupational therapist, and so there's always just kind of guidance there, and just having my own know-how in the therapy world was helpful from that aspect. So, and it was just a lot of patience and really a lot of love.

SPEAKER_00 11:06

So there's a lot of interventions that and programs that are created around food and food therapy, really, from my understanding of working with this population, is there's a lot of food sensitivities, and um, so that's a huge part of their daily life is incorporating because from what I've seen in clients that I worked with, it's um they they are set on like maybe three or four foods,

Navigating Feeding Challenges

SPEAKER_00 11:34

and anything outside of of that it they have an aversion to it. It's so I can't even imagine what that's like as a parent. Especially when you're putting these pieces together of how important nutrition is, and now you know you need to make this shift, and it's like then on top of that, now here's this other layer that makes it even more complicated.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah, so it was like maybe the food just started being on the table. He didn't have to maybe eat the food, like if we were working on introducing a food, like say apple, maybe the apple just sat on the table with him while he was eating his other foods that he liked. That was another issue, Maureen, that we had was that when he was an infant, he was this amazing eater that ate every vegetable, everything he gave him. And all of a sudden, here's this child over a period of time that starts deselecting and stopping eating all these nutritious foods. And um, he got to where he was basically only eating foods that were like gluten and dairy. So it was it was kind of an uphill um experience to get him eating more and more. But it's also interesting that when other people around him, like at school, because he went to a school for autism, the teachers would put the kids together because it was small classes, and they would introduce foods. And they said that it was really amazing to see how if one of the kids ate it and they there was a really good eater in the group, all of a sudden the other kids were like interested. They were like willing to try it. And and I would get these reports home that would say, like, Daniel ate a casserole or something. And I'm like, what Daniel doesn't eat foodsy combination ever, you know. And this was in elementary school, so that was just like really an interesting piece of it too. The feeding journey with him was actually that sort of the peer pressure angle kind of worked with him. So it did open his horizons up a bit.

SPEAKER_00 13:36

What is very hopeful and inspiring, I'm sure, to people listening is that I'm hearing you instead of going into a place of of fear and shrinking, you you immediately go into this place where you're empowering yourself by doing your research, which by the way is also intriguing because you could have a whole nother conversation about research at that time.

Early Research & Emotional Turning Points

SPEAKER_00 14:01

You touched lightly on this, but think back to when AOL and dial up information wasn't as accessible. That was an interesting point to me that we were living in different times. So things weren't readily available. They still had libraries.

SPEAKER_01 14:15

Oh, right, it was so different. Even when people say, Well, how didn't you know um on some of the different health issues now? And it's like, well, you didn't know because you didn't have a computer. You weren't walking around with a little computer all day. You weren't texting people necessarily even at that point. I don't even think I was using my phone to text anybody like 19 years ago. Um so it's just it's really hard. It's really hard to imagine that that is the way that it was back then. But yeah, like you said, you would go to the library. I remember the library would host in a room like the Autism Society meetings of Michigan, they would host them and I would go to them. And uh sometimes, to be perfectly honest, sometimes I left more fearful than feeling good because the parents were just they're overwhelmed and they're exhausted and they're worried about what's gonna happen when they're they can't care for their children anymore. And these are some of these people I was sitting with were people who had adult children with autism. So like here I was with a child that was newly diagnosed, and I do remember those were tough meetings to to go to and see that, but to know that I could do something for him and that what we were doing was helping him.

SPEAKER_02 15:37

What were your emotions? You would leave these meetings, and did you want to make a change because you loved your son so much? And it's like I can either be defeated or I can rise above it. It sounded like what was going on there empowered you to be better, to do better.

SPEAKER_01 15:54

I remember having a moment where I walked out of the meeting and I cried in on the car because it was just like, oh my goodness, you could just feel the the sadness and the fear in that room. And especially they were they were talking about a really difficult subject, physical restraints in school. I had never thought of that before. Here I had a three, four, five-year-old, right? He's just a little preschooler that really did kind of take hold of me at that one meeting, and I remember being very upset. But then I came across an article, and gosh, I probably have it somewhere still, but it was somebody writing an article about their sister-in-law who had two twins who were nonverbal adults, and she said, and and the person asked her, How do you do this every day? Because they were at home and they were caring for them. And she said, I never think past dinner. I still think about that. Don't think past dinner. You just you stay in the present moment. He has taught me how to stay just grounded and in that precious present moment. That was just sort of a turning point of me reading that and realizing that here was this mom who has these young men in their 20s, and that is basically the way that she operated. I never think past dinner. So I always just remember like, stay in the present moment. We're handling what we need to handle here in the here and now. We're in young adulthood now, so there's all these new things that are happening. Um, but we just take them step by step, and you just take one, you put one foot in front of the other.

SPEAKER_00 17:41

Was this really where you started to tap into mindfulness? Yeah, I would say you talked about the diet, but you're also navigating a diagnosis,

Tackling Change One Step at a Time

SPEAKER_00 17:51

okay? What does this look like in real time for you, your family? How do you manage to do that and start making these small changes? How all of this is going on, and maybe talk about the impact on your family dynamics.

unknown 18:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 18:06

Well, I remember we we traveled because we had heard about a doctor that a friend was using for her son. And so we opted to travel across the US to see this doctor, and we go to see him, and of course, he's going to present so much information because you're not just gonna go see him every week, right? He's across the country. So, and this is before Zoom calls, you had to travel to see these doctors. So he tells me so many things to do, and these are things like I had not heard of before, and these were big things to do, like overhauling your cookware, getting rid of all your Teflon pans. I mean, monetary-wise, when you have three little kids and you're you're trying to work, your husband's working, you're doing all the things. And I remember getting home and and just feeling really overwhelmed by the list of what I had. Um, and I realized that I needed to just look at that list, and I just needed to look at one or two things at a time. And what was the most important things that needed to happen? So that's how I did it. And even replacing, say, cookware, I just bought like one or two pots that I knew that I really needed. And then I built on that collection. You know, my pots today still are like just a mashup of stainless steel and cast iron, basically, because that's the way the budget worked back then. He even had us take out like stuffed animals out of the room because of dust, curtains, all of that stuff. We still to this day dust on a regular basis because of the toxins that are settled on the dust, settle on your furniture. That was a really good lesson for me in like just do one or two things at a time and then just keep building and building and building on that.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

Everything you're talking about, Jen, the step-by-step instead of taking all these things that the doctor said, I love that you're just saying, we're gonna do one thing at a time. And Dan is your biggest teacher with teaching you how to be patient and being more simplistic and cutting things out one at a time and just really living in the moments of where you are on your journey with him is really beautiful. And all your gratefulness through this now, I mean, through the hardships and all the doubt and the emotions and all the work that you've had to put into this, but it's brought you to a really, really great place in your life as far as your mindset and protecting your nervous system with all the tools that you have used to help you get through through the years.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Yeah. And, you know, some of that is you kind of learn from a couple of crash and burns. You're doing a lot and you're trying to, you're trying to do everything for everybody else. And, you know, somebody comes along and says, Well, are you doing anything for yourself? And I just remember getting really triggered by somebody saying that. And it was a family member, but it was very triggering because I just thought, well, how am I supposed to do anything for myself if I'm taking care of like my three children, including Dan, plus my husband, plus like the work and all of those other things that you're trying to juggle all at the same time, right?

SPEAKER_00 21:25

So I really want to dive into some of this, these tools that you incorporate into your everyday

Reducing Toxins at Home

SPEAKER_00 21:32

life. So you talked a lot about the nutrition, and Maureen and I are huge on nervous system regulation, and you touched on reducing toxins, but maybe elaborate more on that. What are some things that people should be looking for, whether or not they have a child with a ASD diagnosis? Because I'm assuming that what you realize is that even though this may have been the catalyst, the health impacts trickled and infiltrated into each one of you.

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Yes. And and it's really important. For people to understand where the United States stands on these to on this issue of toxins and products. For example, the European Union has banned over 1,300 toxic ingredients. I think it's around like 1328 or something like that. And the United States has banned 11. 11. So everyone in the United States really should be reading their ingredient labels and becoming their own sort of ingredient advocate. I always tell people like first thing you want to start looking at is fragrance. For fragrance. Or it can also be called parfum, like P-A-R-F-U-M. I have seen where it said an asterisk that said it's essential oil derived, but fragrance is it's like a legal loophole where companies can put, they can sneak all their ingredients inside of it because it's like a protected trade secret. It's their formulation so they don't have to disclose it. And a lot of times uh the toxins end up in there, like the phthalates, um, the endocrine disruptors that can cause health issues and disrupture, endocrine disruptors, it's hormone disruptors, basically.

SPEAKER_00 23:21

So I don't know about anybody else hearing this, but you have this awareness and you think, okay, I need to start looking at what's in everything I'm putting in and on my body. But as an everyday person, it could be easy to become overwhelmed and go thinking, like, well, there's stuff in everything. So, you know, either I'm not gonna do it or I'm it's gonna stress me out because I'm overanalyzing what's in this and that. But the great thing that Maureen and I relate to and love about you is that you're not saying it has to be all or nothing. You take this approach of incorporating little things here and there on a consistent basis over time where people will see healthy and uh sustaining impacts.

SPEAKER_01 24:06

Yeah, for sure. I'm a big fan of like using castile soap to make dish soap, make your hand soap. If you're in a pinch, I'll use it for laundry if I need to. It's just one of those really versatile things. You can make different cleaners. There's a lot of recipes out there for ways to use castile soap, but I just use like an unscented one. Uh, I buy the jug. I think it's like a half a gallon jug. It lasts me like four months or so. It's one of those nice things where you can pick up, you can have it in your pantry or wherever you store your stuff. You can just make your refills of your dish soap, you can make refills of all your bathroom soaps and things like that. There's a recipe for body wash. Like there's all these different things that you can do with it. And it's pretty cost effective, too, to be honest with you. You know, you get like a bottle of this stuff, and then you get uh your favorite essential oil, or you get like, you know, some jojoba, or if you want to make hand soap or you want to make body wash, you know, my dish soap, I just literally put some in, you know, in a bottle, um, and then I fill the rest of it up with water. So it's just super simple. I buy those foaming hand dispensers. You can buy them at, I don't know, like I think TJ Maxx sells them, Marshall's, Amazon sells them, and they're perfect. It's just, it's just like one easy way to like eliminate toxic dish soap, you know, the hand soaps.

SPEAKER_02 25:34

And it doesn't sound overwhelming. You buy this castile soap and then you add some essential oils. It's not like you're sitting there making your own soap bar. Yeah. Thank you for sharing this because it's so important. So many people are uninformed on these things. People don't realize the the simplest things can help you. We always go to the things that are easy, the processed stuff, the already made stuff that are really causing harm to our bodies.

SPEAKER_00 26:03

And to add to that, we could go down another rabbit hole of why that occurs. Instead, we have to move as people in a society away from blaming ourselves and looking at the ingredients that actually interact with chemicals inside of us that cause that to happen, that spike dopamine and other chemical reactions that cause us to continue to stay hooked on that stuff.

SPEAKER_01 26:26

Right, right. Yeah, that whole industry with just engineering food ingredients and things like that just to make you want more of them. And so I can even say just for myself, I literally I used to be somebody that would that would eat foods like that back before our journey, you know, with Dan. But now that we haven't eaten those things, we don't want those things either. We don't crave those things because we're not eating those ingredients. Right. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 26:55

You get them out of your body and then you don't want them anymore. We crave the thing like fast food. I don't have it much, but when I have it, I love it and I want more of it. But I don't because it's not good. I don't put potato chips in the house because I want it, but I don't crave it that much. But when it's here, I can't stop eating eating them. Right, exactly.

SPEAKER_01 27:17

And for a lot of people, like I just posted a reminder on my on my um social media about like if you keep healthy food in your fridge, you will eat healthy food. It's

Building a Gratitude Practice

SPEAKER_01 27:29

that simple. Just keep the healthy food around and keep the other stuff away. And it was amazing the comments that I had of people saying, like, oh yeah, that's totally the key.

SPEAKER_02 27:40

So, what does gratitude practice realistically look like like for you? How can this help people going through similar struggles and external factors?

SPEAKER_01 27:52

So it really just has helped highlight, it helps shine a light on what's going right in your in your world. And I mean, it could be, I woke up today. I am grateful I woke up today. It's a habit, so like anything, you know, it has to be practiced. And there's many different ways to do it. Some people like keeping a note, like in their notes app, you could start a gratitude list in your uh notes app, and you can write, you know, three things that you're grateful for every day. And some people really love that because they love the tech and the phone. And um, there's people like me that I have a journal on my nightstand. So a lot of days that journal ends up being uh me writing down three, five, sometimes ten things that I'm grateful for, but it doesn't have to be that many things, it could just be three. I've been doing it a long time. So for me, it just kind of pops like those things just kind of come easily. But when I did first start, it was not second nature. It was something that I really had to like work on. And now in the morning, before I even open my eyes, I'm saying, I am grateful for, and I am naming off as many things as I can think of. And some days it's like I'm grateful for this bed I'm laying in. But when you really think about where other people are in the world or things that are happening, the fact that you woke up this morning and the fact that you're in a bed in a house with, you know, running water and a hot shower, it's pretty incredible. So I'm I am grateful for those things. And I it just compounds. You start your day with gratitude, and it's like it just sets the stage for the way the rest of my day is gonna go.

SPEAKER_02 29:33

I completely agree with you. I'm barely getting up and I'm like, it's morning already. And I'm like, I'm grateful I woke up today. I'm grateful for the free air that I breathe. I'm grateful that I'm getting out of my bed and that I can run up the street. I'm grateful that I have movement that I'm ambulatory because I think about the things that I do that I could take for granted that a lot of people can't do. Um, I don't journal as much as I want to, but I constantly filling these things in my head. And it's so important it sets the tone for the day.

SPEAKER_00 30:06

And now we're talking about a lot of reflection, right? Your story, what happened, but not just you, all of us having this conversation. I feel like there's a lot of times when you have circumstances and external factors and shit's happening to you, okay? And it's not good shit, and it's easy to for people to get into a mindset of maybe not even necessarily like a victim complex, but it's like you have all this stuff happening, and it's it could be hard for people to find the good, and you get so stuck

Nervous System Regulation

SPEAKER_00 30:38

in a mindset. But I hear you saying that you know, just just trying even like a few things, even the worst thing you're going through, just try it. But can you talk about how can that impact your emotional state and your well-being? What does that do for you over time? How does that change you and develop you internally and emotionally?

SPEAKER_01 30:57

I mean, it's really like a muscle, it's like something that you have to exercise. And like you said, yes, I completely understand that feeling of like people are going through hard things, but if you can find a glimmer somewhere, if you can find something that's going good, if you can even start building, even with those things in your life that are happening, if you can start doing some real basic self-care, even. And I mean, it could be like I drank a glass of water this morning. It could be I showered. It could be these like very simple self-care practices that you do, just to sort of give yourself a little bit of time and and working on that, you know, that gratitude piece. It could be like you walked out of your house and you saw a flower, or you know, it could be something like so simple. So it's finding those little tiny like glimmers of gratitude somewhere in your life to like crack that open so you can start building on that and these these issues that are going on in your life. One day you may see those things as challenges. I see the when I look back on those things that have happened to me, I look back and I see challenges. And you can either let it make you bitter or you can let it make you better. And it's really the decision of which way you want to go with it. Actually, I'm I am divorced. So my first son is from my first marriage. So um I've been in some, I've had some rough times, but looking back on some of those things in my life and seeing that they were opportunities and they and the reasons why they I think that things like that happen and things that I could see in hindsight versus like when you're in it, it's been really valuable. And really, I I'm a real believer in um these hardships and these things that we go through are opportunities.

SPEAKER_00 33:04

I think what we're talking about here is all these small practices, including the gratitude and all the things that we didn't tap into, and probably the things that you go through in your coaching program and stuff that you work on with your clients, what this ultimately does is it goes back to your nervous system. If somebody says, why would this be good for me? I'm going through the worst stuff right now. Why would I want to do this? I feel like what happens is you're operating on autopilot because it's fight or flight, because you have no choice because you're in the thickest stuff, you're trying to get through it. But doing these little things, having these moments, like you said, walking outside looking at a flower, opening your eyes in the morning, and having just the one, two, three statements of gratitude, it's forcing you to slow down. If you continue to do it enough, it's gonna shift you from fight or flight and uh into your parasympathetic nervous system to your rest and digest and to your calmness. And these things support that.

SPEAKER_01 34:00

Um yeah, absolutely. I know that we all have our phone, but putting our phone down and walking away from tech, putting our feet in the grass, like looking up at the sky, you know, it's there's so many things we're we've become sort of disconnected from nature, and to really reconnect to that, it is so calming for your nervous system. Humming, humming is another great practice to do for your nervous system to regulate, um, it stimulates the vagus nerve. Animals are like a great way to, you know, petting your dog or your cat or just spending time with them, making yourself a cup of tea and doing it like very intentionally and kind of looking at the steps of what you're doing versus just kind of going through like a rote practice and you're looking at your phone at the same time. I know even personally, like stepping away from I'll put my phone down a lot of times on the weekend, and I just like flip it over, put it on the charger, and I just like leave it. I just leave it for an extended period of time. And it and it is nice because when you come back, you're like, oh wow, like I you feel refreshed, you feel different.

SPEAKER_02 35:09

We talk about the awareness and intention, being aware and the intention behind it to help calm your nervous system. I think it's so important, us as women in in midlife, to be aware because we all we always run on, you know, empty. And and I love that although every day is a healing journey and it's a lesson to learn, we are doing the things that are helping us and we know what they are.

Autism Parent Wellness Community

SPEAKER_00 35:37

Jen, if you want to talk about your autism parent wellness community and ways that you help parents advocate for their children, for themselves.

SPEAKER_01 35:46

So last April I created the autism parent wellness community on Facebook to have a place in a space that parents can go to to look at their own wellness and their own health and well-being. Because so often, like we've talked about, right, your focus, and rightfully so, is on your child and what they're going through and at that time. But it really helps to empower yourself when you're doing things for your health and wellness that are going to be beneficial. And it helps kind of quell that fear of what's going to happen to my child when I'm gone. I would like to empower parents instead to work on their own basic wellness habits and things that they can do within their control so that they can live their best most well lives and help their children and advocate for their children for years and years to come. I share a lot of like whole food recipes. We're talking about nervous system regulation and just those reminders of like stop and just take a breath, you know, just breathe. That's one of the things that it's that's another just a great nervous system regulator is just to like pause and take a few breaths in and just give yourself that moment, especially if if you've been dealing with a lot of hard moments. And and I guess I'll say about that too. One thing that was like really pivotal for me with my son Dan, because he had really terrible tantrums, was that once I realized that he was having a hard time, he wasn't giving me a hard time, he was having a hard time. And once I like really understood that, that changed my perspective on all of those types of behaviors because I realized that I needed to be there to support him and I needed to be in a regulated state to help him, because so often it can look like bad behavior, even if you're out and you see a child having a hard time. I just I feel like that was such a strong like perspective shift for me. So for any parent out there that's going through maybe it's a new diagnosis with your child and they're having, you know, tantrums and just realizing that they're having a hard time and they're not giving you a hard time. I remember hearing someone at an autism society meeting talk about behavior is communication. I'm not sure if she was a psychologist or not, but she was talking about how all behavior, like every behavior you see, like with autism, it's all it's all communication. So that was another really important piece for me to understand as well. But yeah, when I really had that perspective shift, that made it so much easier. But it's just grew a whole new level of patience as a parent in love and understanding. I needed to just be there to support him. Beautiful.

SPEAKER_00 38:53

I'm so glad you were able to say that today. And that I hope this, what you just said, reaches a lot of people.

SPEAKER_02 39:00

Absolutely. Thank you so much, Jen. Wow.

SPEAKER_01 39:03

Thank you. He's uh um, he's older now, he's 22. So we've been away from those moments for a long time. That is such an important thing for parents to understand that it just gives you a whole new perspective and an empathy that, like you were saying, just be him being my greatest teacher, and that is true in so many ways on so many layers. And it's just helped me be like a better parent to my other children as well.

SPEAKER_02 39:33

I mean, this was your journey to have Dan because maybe your life would be differently right now. Maybe you wouldn't have had all these spiritual awakenings and go through life incorporating your health and wellness and your spirituality and look at you. Dan has really brought out the best in you. And now you can say that he's affected you in an amazing way. I use this notes app like crazy um on my phone.

SPEAKER_01 40:00

But one thing that I found in it was that sharing about his journey, you know, when I share it's my it's my job to share his soul's journey and honor that journey by telling other people and sharing this information with them. When when he was little, I I just wish that I would have had somebody that could have helped me or calmed the fear a little bit, you know, when they're first diagnosed. We weren't connected by social media yet, you know. So, like if you didn't know somebody through your community somehow, like at these autism society meetings, I would find people, but I realized kind of quickly that people just kind of go to the meetings and then they they just kind of leave. But yeah, just having somebody to be able to say that like I this is what we did, this was how we went through it. I really love the doctor that we've been using for years. Um, he is through medmaps.org. So that's another place that practitioners are actually being trained on how to help special needs children. It's not just autism. So his doctors actually has been affiliated with them for a long time, but he's been so helpful working with a doctor that knows how to uncover those underlying issues that are happening to these children and then to see the improvements. It's just about living his best, you know, highest potential, most well life. That's what it is for all of us. But this is an organization that they specialize in special needs. So not only can you find a practitioner through their website, but like they offer education for practitioners. They're trying to grow this community because the more doctors and nurses and you know health professionals that we have to help and that they're aware of these underlying issues that these children can have, the better.

SPEAKER_02 42:03

Thank you so much for being on the show. And where could people find you online?

Connect with Jen

SPEAKER_02 42:08

Where can they find your amazingness?

SPEAKER_01 42:10

Oh, thank you. Well, I do have a website, holistic evolutionwithgen.com. And then I'm pretty active on Facebook, on my holistic evolution with Jen LLC page, and I am on Instagram as well. So go find Jen.

SPEAKER_00 42:26

We did, we found her. I think looking at this conversation, sometimes caring for everyone else for so long makes us forget that our own bodies and nervous systems need support too. And so we appreciate this conversation and all of you the resources that you mentioned. Maybe healing doesn't have to begin with having everything figured out. It doesn't have to look like that. Maybe it just begins with one small moment, like we talked about, of slowing down, breathing, resting, choosing to take care of yourself. But it helps to have the support in a place like you talked about, your community on online on Facebook, Jen.

SPEAKER_01 43:07

Yeah, actually I mentioned it earlier, but it's the Autism Parent Wellness Community. And it's a Facebook group. Um, it's pretty small right now and growing. So I'd love to build it and have it be something that becomes a very interactive community. So parents are really sharing and helping one another.

SPEAKER_00 43:26

That's so awesome. So if you're in the thick of parenting, caregiving, stress, simply trying to hold everything together. We hope that today's conversation reminded you that your well-being, your wellness, your health matters too. Not perfectly, not all at once, but just small, intentional ways that help you feel a little more supported, grounded, and connected to yourself again. Don't forget to like, subscribe, share this podcast with someone that you think will appreciate and benefit from this conversation. I'm sure there's plenty of them out there. And until next time, bye. Thanks for listening to Next Chapter Women, She Blooms in Salitude. We'd love to hear from you. So come say hi on Facebook and share your biggest takeaway from today's episode. And if you're ready to rediscover who you are in this new season, you can learn more about How to Health or book a free empowerment call through the link in the show notes. And don't forget to hit subscribe and never hit what