Aspire for More with Erin
Aspire for More with Erin
A Trauma Awareness Conversation with Jean Hartnett, Radical Sabbatical
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Today, I'm so excited to welcome my friend, Jean Hartnett from Radical Sabbatical. We met at Think Tank, actually, we met at a, on a virtual meeting before Think Tank when we were discussing our group topic, which is trauma informed care. Jean, thank you for being here today.
Jean:Hi, Aaron. It's always so fun to see you. Oh, my gosh. I don't get enough Aaron time.
Erin:I know. I know. you have. Given me such a perspective of I think my life and a lot of my former, colleagues lives when I met you 1st, virtually, it's a funny how passion can just reach through the screen and just affect you in such a positive way when I realized I was in the trauma informed group. I didn't necessarily. I was shocked a little bit. And, but, I'm just like, I'm just going to go and I'm going to do that's what I'm going to do. And then our 1st meeting, you just floored me with your passion, your knowledge, your desire to affect change. And I was like, okay, I am in. I am in. So tell me how your journey started because that's really important.
Jean:which journey I would ask 1st, I'm going to pick the trauma informed journey. If you don't mind, but my goodness, I think, any successful pathway to healing. It all starts with. Some aha moments, and that's what I'm hoping your listeners will take away today is just how many aha moments I have had over the last 5 to 6 years about my own life, my personal life, and how my personal life impacted my professional life. Aaron, I think we click because we're a lot like 1 another. Meaning we're perfectionists, we're typing people, we're up in the morning when everybody else is sleeping, we're on our email, we really are those women who want to make things happen specifically happen in senior care because it's the profession that we love so much. And so I will tell you that I started off in senior living in 1989 as a certified nursing assistant. While I was working on my social work degree, and it was at this skilled rehab, skilled nursing facility where I literally fell in love with caregiving. the bathing, the dressing, the toileting, the feeding, the transferring, like all of those unsavory tasks that we think about when we think about a frontline caregiver. I absolutely loved and so I, I have reflected on recently, in fact, why did I love it so much and I will tell you, I think I loved it so much because each and every time I walked into that room where I would see a senior or an older adult that needed care, the way that they looked at me was like, oh, my gosh, thank goodness. This person is here to help me. And in those moments, I would literally see, I think the face of God in some of these people because they needed you and they wanted your expertise and they wanted your touch and I reflected back to them. My face of God, and I'm not necessarily a religious individual. I throw around the God word very delicately because I'm more spiritual than I am religious. But I will tell you, there was some intimacy in those moments with older adults that I loved.
Erin:Yes, yeah, it's true. It's that and I say this in a positive way, like that hero complex, I love to help people and I think. I know that I am an Enneagram 2, equal parts Enneagram 2, equal parts Enneagram 3. So I'm a people pleaser achiever. Which is probably the majority of our industry is filled at least with Enneagram 2s. I want to help people. I want to fix people. I want to be significant to somebody, there's a, there is a deep rooted. Pain right? That can cause people. To want to be the face of God to somebody
Jean:true. Yeah.
Erin:Yeah. and it's not everybody. It's not everybody, but I feel like there's a lot of people and senior living health care in general that get into it to do just what you did. to be that person for somebody.
Jean:And to have that intimacy to have those really close relationship with individuals. And, of course, so that was 1989. we're now in 2024. I have the perspective and the wisdom now to look back on my career and senior care and really start connecting these dots to how I ended up here. And when I say when I, where I ended up here, where I am is. It's really attempting to be what's known as a trauma informed care advocate. so not long ago, the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services required that skilled nursing facilities become trauma informed. And at the time of that regulation came down, I was managing 1 of Nebraska's largest nursing homes. it was the healthcare and social welfare safety net for the county that I live in. And when that regulation came down. Erin, I was like, what in the heck are you asking me to do now? And I really didn't understand. And you know this from being an administrator. It's like, how in the world am I going to meet compliance on this when I don't even know what trauma informed care is? And so fast forward, if that was around 2015, 2016, fast forward to a couple of years later, when I'm no longer working in senior living because I left the profession, noting that this professional that I love so much wasn't loving me back. And I was really burnt out. I had a number of incidences that occurred under my watch, which were catastrophic to resident safety and employee health. And I could no longer leverage all that I knew about long term care. And all that I knew about management and leadership to make change, and I was literally fried. So I moved to the opposite end of the continuum and started working in pediatrics. I managed the social work department, which again is my background and I managed nurse case management. And my social workers, taught me that we did for all of the Children that, admitted to the hospital, we would do what's known as the ACEs assessment and ACEs stands for adverse childhood experiences and. They taught me that, in 1998, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Kaiser Permanente studied 17, 000 adult individuals and discovered that there are 10 childhood adversities that impact most of us in society. That then lead to poor health outcomes, poor behavioral health outcomes, poor life outcomes, et cetera. And that's where my trauma informed care journey go back to, tell us how your journey started. That's when my trauma informed care journey started.
Erin:Yeah. The parallels that pediatric care have with senior living care is. It's uncanny. It's
Jean:eye opening. It truly is. And it's so unfortunate that we don't take that into consideration. The pediatric individuals that work in pediatrics don't think about geriatrics and geriatrics. Individuals aren't looking at pediatrics. But I will tell you that I know now that I'm trauma informed and ACE is aware, that all of the times that you and I have been at the bedside with one of our residents that is passing away, and we're just seeing these very audible and visual signs of pain that the individual is exhibiting. Our clinical team has done all that they can from a palliative standpoint to ease that pain. But we still see the signs and symptoms of extreme pain. And as I was taking care of my parents towards their end of life, and I was learning more about ACEs, and I was learning more about childhood adversity, and I was learning more about trauma, I began to reflect on, my goodness, were all those people that were passing away Showing signs and symptoms of physical pain, actually manifesting unhealed emotional pain. And I began to really ruminate on that and I really needed to find my own answer. So I kept asking myself, what is it that was happening with them? And I came upon, this notion of why we say rest in peace. And I think we say rest in peace to people all the time, because so few do. Yes. So what can we do in senior living to ensure that people are ACEs aware and trauma informed so that all of us can truly not only rest in peace, but my goodness, let's live in peace.
Erin:Yeah, man, that's true. haven't really thought about that. Rest in peace because you just say it so much. But yes, most people at the end of their life and when you work in senior living, you actually see that end of life happen consistently. And it is a blessing and an honor to do that. But most people want to know that they did their best as a parent, as a friend, as a spouse. It is not about anything else. And yet we make everything work and success and cars and everything and I have seen as I'm sure you have seen. I'm very successful affluent people. At the end of their life, and it has nothing to do with money status anything, and I think that is where we can do better inside senior living and, and understanding that as we build communities, and as we. Pump up our services and offerings and the amenities, none of that matters. If people aren't feeling it here, and then how do we get them to feel it here? If they can't write the score and all of
Jean:that. Absolutely. And I think, you were, when you were saying feeling it here, you were pointing to your heart, because I feel as though the way you likely managed and the way that I likely managed, even though we had our heart in it. It was mostly driven by our brains, we were probably data individuals and compliance individuals and meet the numbers and, all of the things deliver great customer service. Provide a great employee experience, like all the things that administrators are tasked to do. We probably felt like we were really heart centered and leading with our hearts. But I will tell you, as a trauma informed and aces aware leader. Now, I look back at the way that I manage my buildings and I literally want to crawl into a hole and never come out. some of the things that I thought. We're right in the way that I managed and let people, sign up for my mission and vision values of this organization or make sure you're never late for your shift, even though you have a flat tire. And, I think I used to honestly say, put your baggage at the door before you come in and come into the community and love up on these residents. Yes, you're raising your hand. You get it. Yes. Yes.
Erin:And.
Jean:Wow, I didn't realize that what I was doing was not only setting an absolute unrealistic expectation for any employee to meet, I was being very exclusive of the whole person I want the employee to be when I'm running a community. And I will never forget one of the organizations that I joined after I left senior living. A very well intended nurse said to me, we, at this organization, we all want to fit in. That's what we do here, Jean. We want to fit in. And I left that conversation going, and I don't think we all want to fit in. I think we want to belong. And this is part of the evolution as I was becoming trauma informed, is that I moved from this, you must fit in, which is judgment based, to we all want to belong, which is compassion based. and Erin, I'm here to tell you and all your listeners, that's what becoming trauma informed does to you. It opens up the world of the things that you have survived, but also those individuals that you work with, that you live with, that you love, that you pray with, et cetera, all have probably experienced trauma themselves.
Erin:Yeah, we want to belong. Yes, I wanted to belong. I wanted to feel like I belonged. I wanted to feel, Significant, when you give and give and give, there's an element of what do we get in return? Beside, the satisfaction of knowing that you're caring for people and that you're changing their lives or adding value to their lives. But, yes, the feeling of significance, but what I found was I wanted to be significant to myself and I think. That's a root cause here. When you are trauma informed or trauma aware of your own stuff, you realize I'm seeking external validation when really all I want is the internal validation. And when you become the trauma informed leader, you can start planting seeds of that in them. And I think that's 1 of the differentiating factors is now it's not performance based. It's human based. And I think you can give somebody awareness of how valuable they are, and they can choose to accept it 10 years from now, but in the meantime, there's a lot of thinking that's going on.
Jean:Absolutely. Absolutely. I love how you say that, Aaron, because it's so true. we as leaders, we were always attempting to tap into someone's potential. And we use that phrase a lot, I think, and in management and leadership, like, how do you tap into your team's potential and we bypass almost completely. Really trying to understand who that individual is. there's, how many assessments out there from Myers Briggs to StrengthsFinder to, you name it. there's a way to understand how you are wired and what makes you tick. And I think managers use that as a way to successfully manage their teams. But it's not until management and leadership starts to become aware of adverse childhood experiences and or the trauma and complexity that our employees live when they're not in our communities. And I think for so long as managers and leaders again, raising my hand as someone who's guilty of this. I always thought that it wasn't my business to know The complexities that are happening in my employees lives, that was private information that there was this, wall invisible wall between the professional and the personal and what COVID taught us. Is that we absolutely have to blend the personal and the professional when we are going to successfully manage our teams and to create an environment where it's okay to talk about. I'm food insecure. I'm 1 paycheck away from my lights being cut off. My tires always flat. I don't have the money to replace it. We as managers and leaders have to take what I call the case management approach to our employees and really help them with those complexities that they are just like we do our patients and just like we do our residents. we have a care plan meeting every quarter or even more frequently for our residents. What about a care plan meeting for the, your employee? And let's think about those ways to really open up kind of the benefits and the supports that we have for our seniors, our older adults we care for and apply those to our employees.
Erin:Yeah, you said the word complexity, which were reminded me of this acronym, which I thought you were saying a word for the first time when I met you, VUCA, and I'm like, VUCA, what is VUCA? So with you saying complexity. Tell us what VUCA is.
Jean:Oh, yes, that's a great segue. So yes, the VUCA world as we know, it is an acronym that describes our life and our work environments. Not right now. So VUCA is volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous. And when I was taking kind of the management and leadership seminars of the past, what they would teach us is how to prepare ourselves for the VUCA world that, at the time, things were either volatile or complex. They were either. Ambiguous or uncertain now in our world, Aaron, and I won't get into anything political or anything from a geopolitical standpoint. But now we've got all 4 of those factors working in our personal lives and our professional lives. Things are volatile, they're uncertain, they're complex, and they're ambiguous. And so we're no longer preparing for that moment when we are at it right now. And so this whole idea of really understanding the complexities in our profession in senior living is really important. when you think about those categories.
Erin:Yes, they are all of those things. They are complex. They are ambiguous. they are certainly uncertain. And as you referenced towards the end of your senior living journey, they are certainly volatile, I have had volatile experiences inside my senior living. And I think that's 1 of the things that. When the stuff like that happens, you don't really understand how to handle it, what you could have done to prevent it, lots of different things. Because when we're all just surviving, and we're all trying to make it through a day successfully, when something like VUCA. a circumstance can happen that is literally a VUCA circumstance. Not the times that we're in, but like, how did this happen? like that's really the world that we live in right now, where it's not just, we're expecting the volatile. like you can expect the VUCA incident. That could be the thing, this is the VUCA incident. what do I need to do to prepare? Or react to this that you could never have planned for it. it's true. And it's hard as a leader as a parent. I mean, some of these stats when you go back to your pediatric experience, feelings of persistent and sadness and hopelessness as well as suicidal thoughts and behaviors. They're increasing by 40 percent among young people, according to the CDC and prevention. It's crazy.
Jean:yeah. And we hear that all the time, don't we? Around again, you and I see value and really learning from what's happening in pediatrics in order to inform what we're doing and how we're reacting to certain things in geriatrics. And you're right, my team at Children's, we had another assessment called the PHQ 9, which is a suicide ideation assessment. And all of our little kiddos that came through the emergency department were always screened. For suicide ideation and our numbers were just skyrocketing in terms of how many individuals coming to the emergency room had suicide ideation. We're seeing, you reported persistent feelings of hopelessness and loss, and these are at very young ages of individuals. So I always sit back, going back to assessments. One of my strengths from StrengthsFinder is futuristic. So I look at a statistic like that, Aaron, and I say, my goodness. Those individuals that are pediatrics now, that are clients of children's hospitals and clinics eventually will become my customer in geriatrics. what is it that we're doing to really understand the mental health challenges that people have now, in order to prepare for our future customers, essentially.
Erin:Yeah, our future customers. Yes, but I will take it 1 step closer to where we are today, which would be if these are the kids that we're talking about who are feeling hopeless and having suicidal thoughts, the parents of these kids are the parents that are in our workforce, which is me. Right? Which. Could be you, which could be any 1 of our executive directors are nurses are caregivers and this is where that VUCA comes in. when a parent is struggling with a child's illness or cognitive impairment or depression, you feel hopeless. Yes, you feel sad. You feel uncertain. You feel complex. And all of a sudden we have to walk into the hospital, the senior living, the rehab, whatever, and give everything we have to someone else. And like you said, what if you don't have it to give? What if you're triggered to respond in such a way? And then that's just too much for you. And that's why you walk out. this could really be. This trauma informed care awareness is a huge indication of why people do just walk out and don't come back. Oh,
Jean:yeah. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Aaron. it does. There's, I appreciate you sharing so much about your personal story and. you can imagine for yourself. What the outcomes that happen as you are caring for your sons. and then what that process would have was like for you. And then compare it to if you had trauma informed managers and leaders, a trauma informed community around you, a trauma informed husband, and this isn't blaming anyone. This is just saying, imagine a world when, You are going through all of that adversity, life threatening adversity for your sons and then eventually the son that survived and you take care of imagine if you are at an employer who really understood your circumstances. And you were able to walk in every day doing the best job that you could under the circumstances. And that's not the Aaron Thompson that shows up every day, but it's an Aaron Thompson who has a lot of things going on at home. So we can't expect her to be, this above and beyond and, meeting all of the expectations. And my hope for the future, once the word gets out on trauma informed care, because it is a management approach, it's a leadership approach, it really brings the healing aspects of what we expect a caregiver to provide our residents. We are providing that for our employees, and can you imagine a world if you had that? what would have been different for you?
Erin:Oh, what would have been different for me? when my adult trauma. Entered my life in 2012, it came out of nowhere. it's just. Everything was fine and then 1 day, everything in my life changed dramatically. And the only identity that I had was being an administrator. And then when I became a mother, the administrator role completely went away. My community was being sold and therefore they didn't the new company didn't want me and so that inflicted a whole nother set of traumatic incidences had things changed. Had things been different. I think that I would have not been, so calloused and so hardened towards. Upper management, because I would see that I am they would see that I am a person, do I know think whatever as to trauma happened and therefore the new company didn't want me. I don't know. That decision could have been made long before then. Who really knows? But it did happen. And so therefore it felt harsh wounded and it shaped my opinion. For a very long time, and I think that incident alone affected my life just as dramatically as, losing a child and then having a special needs child. The fact is, is that I wouldn't have been able to work anyways, but I would have been able to. Say that, and then been a person, So, when you have somebody who has a trauma how many times have we heard? You don't you're not qualified for FMLA. we're creating a self fulfilling prophecy. Well, you have to be perfect to work and senior living. You can't have things going on. There is no grace. There is no whatever, leave your baggage at the door. That doesn't work when you're an abused woman and a memory care resident is coming after you with a cane. Exactly. It doesn't work,
Jean:Doesn't work. And, here's the little secret that, I'm going to tell your listeners that we spend, I would love to see a figure and I'll have to research it after we finish our podcast, but we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on retention techniques. for our team members. it's the biggest news story we have right now in senior care, quite frankly. and everyone's trying to figure out how to crack the code on keeping their employees. my goodness, becoming ACEs aware and trauma informed to me, Erin, is that key. And it requires that leaders, do what we have done in our own lives, which is really, you talk about pain and going through painful experiences. I use the pain, an acronym for pain called pay attention inside now. And what that is a search inside your body and inside your brain and inside your heart around. What are the things that are happening with my central nervous system with the way that I show up in the world and if managers and leaders just had, A tool kit around trauma information on how to manage from a trauma informed space. I am here to tell you that retention will not be an issue. I truly believe if an organization was to do this right, that we would have not a retention issue, but we have a wait list of individuals that want to
Erin:work for us. Yeah, along those lines, I can assess myself, I cannot use anybody else. I talk about my experiences in a way to help people. Hey, keep me on the straight and narrow where I want to be. And to help people understand, if you're feeling this way, this is this could be a reason why. But along those lines, There are 4 steps to avoid vulnerability, and I was a master at being vulnerable in situations that I felt safe in and then being completely not vulnerable in other situations. And when I heard Renee Brown talk about this, I was like, oh, my God. And I started, dissecting everything and, I got a real awareness. So being a perfectionist, okay, blaming. Certainty and then we pretend it doesn't matter. along the lines of what you just said, and then based on my experience of just my own internal, how I was a manager, how I showed up or, how I was vulnerable to. 1 part of my job, which is inside the community, and then completely on, not given an inch when it came to, the higher ups in the home office towards me, I had to make sure when there was a visit that everything was perfect. I know what they're looking for. We just need to make sure that for the next 30 minutes when I'm touring, this is what it looks like. Blaming. you could look at blaming in many different ways and no, I took a lot of responsibility. I also blamed things, not people, but things, and then certainty it has to be this way. That was the sword that I died on inside the community was certainty. It was certainty, I was just like, no, it has to be this way. I was not adapting and I was holding on to certainty and then pretending it doesn't matter, which I was also very good at, that inner dialogue But, if we can look at those 4 things in ourself, we can look at those 4 things when family members are coming to you and you can, literally say they're blaming that is an indication of not wanting to be vulnerable. Not maybe you did something wrong. Maybe you did. You own it. But if they're I use this example a lot if they're coming and they've toured, they lived in three communities and they're coming to yours and they're blaming all three communities, then they don't want to see the truth. Yeah, right and it will be your fault too. And it's the same way if you're doing an investigation with associates and they're blaming, and they're trying to redirect you to go to many different things. You got to stop there because you're going to go down a bunch of rabbit holes that you don't want to go to. And then the perfectionist tendency of even of our residents who want to keep you 10 feet away. they are wanting to hide and avoid vulnerability and all of these things are because now. I'm uncomfortable. Never mind. It doesn't matter anymore. Yeah,
Jean:never mind. It's a trigger. all the things that you talked about with those 4 aspects of what Renee Brown talks about. Really, those are reactions of the central nervous system. And so when our central nervous system is activated, we have, we move from the mammalian brain or the mammal brain, which is the big parts of our brain, the part on your forehead, the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus, which is in the back, which is also pretty significant. A sized piece. Those are the mammalian parts of the mammal parts of our brain inside of our brain. It's the reptilian parts of our brain. And so when something happens, let's say, if you hear a crack of thunder, and it sounds like a gunshot, or it sounds like a bomb or something really bad. Your central nervous system, the mammalian part goes offline and the reptilian part is what triggers you to run from that noise, to fight that noise, to freeze in that noise or to fawn. And by fawn, I just mean lay down and, pretend like you're dead. And that is what, how we have survived as animals is that. Central nervous system response. That stress response activation has kept us alive. But what happens between reptiles and mammals is that mammals remember what that feeling was like so that when you're triggered similarly, then you're going to have that central nervous system, type of reaction that's what Bye. post traumatic stress disorder is. It's when that Vietnam veteran or that sexual assault survivor is triggered in the way that takes them right back to Vietnam or right back in that environment where that assault happened and you can't convince them no matter how calm, no matter how reassuring, no matter how grounding you are, that it isn't happening to them again right now in this moment. And so I think in a lot of ways, our frontline team members come to our organizations on high alert like this all of the time, it may not be to the level of feeling as though they're, having a reaction to what sounded like a gunshot or, something like that, but there's still have a high activated central nervous system. You described it in your own situation when you're describing when I came to the community every day. I was so concerned about my son and so you were in fight, flight, freeze or bond mode. Yeah, and so when the centers for Medicare and Medicaid services came out with this regulation that we in skilled nursing must be able to identify when residents have had. A past history of trauma, I'm all about that. But what I'm also about is making sure that our frontline team members are trauma informed and they are working through their trauma. And the reason for that, Aaron, is that an unregulated individual, the individual I just described, cannot regulate another individual. So it's impossible if I come to you with an activated central nervous system and in stress response activation, I'm not going to be any good to the older adults. I'm caring for because I'm not regulated and so that's essentially part of the goal and in getting yourself on a healing journey so that you can have the triggers still occur. But the way that you're inside and you're outside that pay attention inside now, isn't driving you to behave in a way that, that is unacceptable. You were, you're really able to take command of your thoughts and command of your body and work through that stressful situation.
Erin:Yeah. yes, there's so much I could say to that, but I think what's more important is you are so passionate about the unregulated person not being able to regulate the other person and wanting our frontline associates to have this awareness in themselves that you are actually doing something about it. Isn't that correct you are partnering with care who is 1 of the most forward thinking, companies in regards to our frontline associates. So tell us all about what you're doing because it's really exciting. Oh,
Jean:gosh, I know it. I'm so excited too. So care is an organization that is an application on your phone for. senior living communities to staff their communities, and it's basically democratizing, if you will, the nurse schedule so that individuals can pick according to their, to their lifestyle to the type of money they need to earn, they can select their, shifts that they want to work. So back in July, when I was speaking on trauma. And trauma healing at a conference, the president and CEO, the founder and a vice president saw my talk on trauma and they came up and they said, we'd like to do some research with you. a couple of weeks ago, we launched a survey that asks all 10 aces questions. a handful of social determinants of health questions, and also questions related to COVID and in trying to understand how COVID has impacted our frontline caregivers, from a mental and physical standpoint. So we feel that survey, right now we're having an overwhelmingly great response rate, but the individuals that care Charles Turner, the CEO and Katie Roan, who's their vice president of hero development. They recognize that just asking the question isn't enough. So I have developed for them a 5 part. Module or five module workbook that takes individuals through a healing journey with understanding a little bit more about the ACEs score and the research around that. And then what is it that we can do in our brains and our body to reconnect them, recognizing that trauma. Disconnects the brain and the body. yeah, so that all launches. Gosh, my workbook goes out to individuals that have opted in for it, February 1st and then later that month, I'm going to be. Holding what I'm calling healing circles for individuals that want to work through their trauma with me going through the workbook and also, more education on what trauma looks like in our personal lives and our communities. and yeah, it's really important and exciting work
Erin:and it really is someone who. we have talked about this extensively with our time at think tank, but someone who me, who was really bogged down by negative thoughts, negative self talk, negative identity, all for avoiding vulnerability. I had that down to a T, and my ability to say that I'm not a perfectionist because my refrigerator isn't organized by color and expiration dates. I'm not a perfectionist because that's what a perfectionist is. Or I allow my kids to mess up the house and my house isn't necessarily the most decorated thing because I don't, that's not a superpower of mine. So I'm not a perfectionist. coming on the other side of that, going down the journey of my fight or flight and my constant civil war in my head, the awareness. The tools, being able to say, look inside now, what are you feeling, which I did have that capabilities, it just wasn't as strong as the way that I lived the thoughts, all the things in my entire life, but when you actually make the new skills stronger, or you make the old stuff weaker, it's a lot easier. And I am so thankful that you get to do this. With that group within care, because you get to prove to everybody. That it's worth it that you are going to make a difference in the retention of this workforce, even if it's just 50 people, yeah, that to me, if you could give the gift of awareness to people, although it doesn't feel like a gift because it's a lot of work. Yeah, if you get to work with somebody to see them through the process. And make them better and stop the cycle for their families. It's impressive. It's powerful.
Jean:thank you, Aaron. I really hope so. I just, it sounds so, funny to say again, going back to the VUCA world, I've really have thought a lot about, I don't want to not impact. The senior living profession and meaning I, I'm In love with with older adults, I guess is the best way to say it again, going back to being able to literally almost see the face of God and the individuals that I took care of. But I also have that passion from frontline team members and because I was 1 and then I was a family caregiver. And But I will tell you between that 30 years between working for a skilled nursing facility on the front line, and then taking care of my parents, things haven't changed in the world of caregiving and still so dang hard. And so, if I can somehow help people get on their path to healing, like I have, I just know that is going to change our profession in a very positive way and I just motivated to help frontline team members because I just have such a passion for the work that they do and eventually, in 20 years or more, they're going to be taking care of me and I, I, I hope for my. From my bed, I can look up at them and see that face of God like I, that residents used to see in me and I in them, I really hope that to take on a different relationship that's more intimate and, really puts the power of healing in a caregiver's hands.
Erin:Oh, that's so good. I want to leave. We had so many notes and some things are really important that I wanted to, to end on. We could probably have 5 different episodes and maybe we will. Who knows? this is Jean Hartnett. I'm going to read them, but they are gene Hartnett's words and we'll end with this. your body has the intelligence and your mind has the thoughts and your heart has the feelings you truly are your own best guru and you are the one that you've been waiting for. It's true. It's true. I can look at you and tell you it's true. As the one who is seeking validation from everyone, I can tell you that it's true. And if we can give that to, you can give that to people. it's amazing. I'm going to do my best. That's right. We live in a VUCA world and we need Jean Hartnett to straighten us out folks.
Jean:Oh, I don't know, Erin, I rely on people like you, you are in my world in such a positive way and you will be now forever. you're part of the VUCA world. My family. and I mean that, I'm going to make sure that you're a trauma informed care advocate just like I am. And cause I know it will improve your business. It'll improve your marriage. It'll improve, the way that your parents, the way that you react if you're cut off in traffic, I'm telling you. yeah, I'm here for all of it and to help anybody who's willing to do the work.
Erin:And I'm telling you, it does improve the way that you're cut off in traffic. I just assume that somebody does that. They're really hurting person. instead of, cussing them out, I pray for them. Thank you, Jean, for your time. Oh, it's been, my life has been better since you entered it in December of last year, 2023. I appreciate it. And I'm so ecstatic to watch your work and what you do, and I will always support you any way that I can. So thank you. Thank you. And always for my listeners, aspire for more for you.