Hey SweetSmarties, I had a lovely conversation with Morgan Abraham on Wednesday, March 25th, three days before my final Pretend & Play performances I mention in this episode. I’m publishing our discussion on Monday, March 30th, and our shows went really well this past Saturday; I’m so proud of my little performers! Anyway, Morgan is my fourth and most likely last Social Worker interview on this podcast. We first connected when I was looking for one to interview in December 2025, and we decided to save her for March 2026, which happens to be National Social Worker month, as well as her birthday on St. Patrick’s Day, 3/17. :)

In this episode, we talk about her background, her journey to where she is now, including some major health events, big career shifts, her approach, specialities, offerings, and we even bond over our shared experience of her hometown at the end. <3

We also cover my philosophies on how to nurture children, entrepreneurial struggles, the tragedy of our society undervaluing what we do, and I gush about how much I love the kids I work with, and how severely I’ll miss them when our time together ends. As I write this, it ended two days ago, and I’m still processing my reaction, but I hope they’ll enroll in the courses I developed for this spring and summer, and that our relationship will continue in other ways. I may be fortunate enough to care for them in their own environments soon, so I’m looking forward to the possibility of that as well.

Morgan is so wonderful: friendly, open, understanding, caring, kind, empathetic, knowledgeable, passionate, and very enjoyable to interact with - a dream guest for me! Our dialogue flowed so easily and naturally, and anyone who gets to work with her is super lucky! I’m excited to discover how her career develops in the future, and I hope you’ll seek her out, if you think you’d be a good fit, because there are many ways she can help improve your life! :D

As you can hear, my voice still isn’t back to normal yet, even though it’s been compromised for over 3 weeks now. :/ It’s definitely improved from the first week, but I really want to fully recover soon. I think I just push myself way too hard, but I don’t have the chance to slow down, so I don’t know how I’ll heal. Very slowly, like I’m experiencing now I guess. Anyway, I love you, and I want to help as well as I can, so stay tuned for everything I’m developing, I hope you benefit from this episode, and I’ll talk to you next time! 💖

P.S. Here are a few links to learn more about Morgan and her work!

https://www.morganabrahamtherapy.com/

https://parenthoodonpurpose.com/

https://kidsunfiltered.com/

P.P.S. We both studied Latin, and we teach you two new phrases! One more thing: Alyssa's first book is actually called "Tiny Humans, Big Emotions." I often say "Little People" instead, because that's more engrained in my brain I guess. lol

SweetSmarties, I published my 22nd interview on 2/22 with an Olympian on the last day of the Olympics!!

I really care about all those synchronicities, so it was important to me to release the episode on this date, and I hope you enjoy how everything aligns so well together too. :)

Sarah Straton played beach volleyball for Australia in the Sydney 2000 Olympics, and then went on to have a career in Parenting, which is how we connected. <3

She founded a company called Evergrowing, which provides so many resources, like workshops, classes, and support groups, just to name a few! She also speaks at schools, corporations, and coaches volleyball at our local high school! :D

I loved our discussion so much, and I really hope it resonates with you as well. ✨

You can learn more about her work here: https://sarahstraton.com/.

Bye until next time, my loves! 🫧

Hey SweetSmarties, I'm excited for you to listen to my interview with Rebekah, who founded and directs the nonprofit I work for, Haven Academy of the Arts! I'm currently teaching my second season of Pretend & Play there, which is Social Emotional Learning through Performing Arts! We learn kindness, empathy, theory of mind, emotional intelligence, and many other important aspects of being a wonderful human being, while Acting, Singing, Dancing, and playing in myriad creative, fun, enriching ways!

During our conversation, we discuss the value of Arts Education, how beneficial it is to everyone, and how versatile those skills are, as well as the developmental and therapeutic dimensions that I've experienced as an actor and that I'm facilitating with my students now! We also talk about some assets I didn't even realize like how it helps us build resilience, persevere through challenges, and delay gratification, all of which strengthen us as people, and bolster our ability to accomplish a variety of goals!

She introduced me to Collaborative and Proactive Solutions, which she learned from Dr. Ross Greene's book The Explosive Child. We also speak about Angela Duckworth's work on Grit and of course Carol Dweck's work on Growth Mindset, which I discuss often, because of how profoundly it impacted me!

There's tons of gems in here, and I can't wait for you to hear all the beautiful moments we shared in this episode!

A couple things I'd like to explain to you: She asked me to remove one little part where I distinguish between my two classes, without naming anyone, but just stating which day I teach them and how many students are in each one, so I took out a few words between 1 hour and 3 minutes and 1 hour and 4 minutes. I tried to edit out those words as smoothly as possible, but if at one point you feel like there's something missing, that's why. lol The second thing is that a gentle alarm went off for one very brief moment to signify that she needed to leave in 5 minutes, and I couldn't remove it without taking out some words I wanted to leave in, so I just kept it. I don't mind at all, and I hope you don't either. That's also why we had to end so quickly afterwards, because she had to go. 😄

Alrighty, that's all I wanted to share with you, and I hope you love hearing our interaction! I enjoyed having it so much, and I'm super grateful to Rebekah for collaborating with me, and for my whole Haven family I get to work with every week! 🥰

Talk to you next time, my Loves! Oh my goodness, also, happy 3rd season! I can't believe I almost forgot to mention this is our season 3 premiere! Woohoo! I'm so proud and elated we made it this far, and I'm ecstatic for where we'll go the rest of this season, and beyond!! ✨

P.S. You can visit their website at havenartsacademy.org or explore them on Instagram @havenartsacademy. You can also check out their Facebook page or email info@havenartsacademy.org for more information! I hope you choose to enroll in a program or support them however you can, if they seem like a good fit for your family. If your child is 3-5 years old, they may be in one of my classes, so that would be amazing if we got to work together! 🌟

Okie dokie, bye until next episode! 💖