Ep100: Celebrating 100 with a personal episode and Q&A

I hit 100 episodes (even though it took longer than I expected!). I started this podcast with the goal of making it to seven, then fifty, so I'm calling it a win. This one's just me, catching you up on what's taken place since episode one in January of 2023, plus a handful of questions from a Q&A I ran on social media.What's changed:I finished my BS in Psychology with a minor in Neuroscience from Portland State, graduating summa cum laude — and got to give the commencement speech, which centered on why person-to-person connection matters more, not less, in the age of AI.My senior thesis became a novel survey of 58 respondents on the mental health gaps facing parents of medically complex or terminally ill kids — work that grew directly out of my own experience with Annie's diagnosis. I'm still at OHSU, working alongside the psychologist who mentored me through that thesis, and we're pursuing publication in a peer-reviewed journal. I'm also about to start as a research assistant in a lab studying psychedelics for veterans — treatment-resistant depression, methamphetamine use disorder, and PTSD.I've become a blogger in residence for Courageous Parents Network, publishing monthly on my experience parenting a child with a rare disease. And I co-led a grief retreat in California with my friend Stefanie — not just grief from death, but the grief of life not turning out the way you thought it would.The big one: Nembry.I started a company. Nembry has two arms — a for-profit side building training and curriculum for clinicians who want to actually understand what it's like to parent a medically complex or terminally ill child, and a nonprofit side that will hire therapists trained through that curriculum to provide free mental health care to those families. It's the most aligned I've ever felt with something I've built, and it feels like a direct continuation of Annie's life and my life as her mom.What's next for the podcast: no fixed schedule, same format — I like the flexibility too much to niche down, even knowing that's not great marketing advice.Q&A:What are you reading?Mind Fixers by Anne HarringtonThe Wrong Order of Things by Michelle HillsEight Million Ways to Happy by Hiroko YodaWriting Down the Bones by Natalie GoldbergThe Grieving Body by Dr. Mary-Frances O'ConnorWhat do you really love to do? Napping in sunlight. Riding my motorcycle on slow back roads, fully geared up, only when it's not raining.How have your priorities shifted in the last 5–10 years? Prioritizing relationships, my own mental health, and self-exploration — including leaving organized religion, which changed less about who I am than it changed how the people close to me relate to that.Where does your confidence come from? Honestly — I think it's more stubbornness than confidence. A lot of it was forged by parenting Annie in public, learning I could tolerate the discomfort of things going sideways. And the belief that embarrassment is considerably less expensive than regret.You can find me in all the usual places:https://www.morganmotsinger.com/https://substack.com/@morganmotsingerhttps://www.instagram.com/morgan_motsinger/[email protected]