Shownotes:
Join the fun as I team up with Shannon Meyer, an inspiring educator and consultant, for a playful dive into brain-friendly teaching techniques in this heartwarming episode! We also reminisce about an unforgettable Airbnb experience that was anything but ordinary! Get ready to be moved by our discussions of personal struggles, triumphs, and those “starfish moments” that remind us of the profound impact of kindness and connection. Whether it's exploring the depths of neuroscience in the classroom or finding gratitude amidst life's challenges, this episode is a testament to the resilience and joy found in learning and growing together. 🌟🧠✨
About Our Guest:
Shannon Meyer is a dynamic trainer, speaker, and teacher, bringing over a decade of experience in coaching educators. She specializes in providing inspiring professional development sessions, filled with meaningful strategies and powerful perspectives, aimed at rekindling educators' passion for their work in the classroom. Shannon leads engaging sessions on a range of crucial topics facing today's educators, including trauma-informed teaching, adapting to COVID-impacted learning environments, mental health awareness, classroom management support, social-emotional learning, student safety and abuse prevention, as well as student engagement and differentiation. Her expertise and enthusiasm make her a sought-after voice in the educational community. She is dedicated to empowering teachers and enhancing student experiences.
Website: learningconsidered.com
About Lainie:
Lainie Rowell is a bestselling author, award-winning educator, and TEDx speaker. She is dedicated to human flourishing, focusing on community building, social-emotional learning, and honoring what makes each of us unique and dynamic through learner-driven design. She earned her degree in psychology and went on to earn both a post-graduate credential and a master's degree in education. An international keynote speaker, Lainie has presented in 41 states as well as in dozens of countries across 4 continents. As a consultant, Lainie’s client list ranges from Fortune 100 companies like Apple and Google to school districts and independent schools. Learn more at linktr.ee/lainierowell.
Website - LainieRowell.com
Twitter - @LainieRowell
Instagram - @LainieRowell
Evolving with Gratitude, the book is available here! And now, Bold Gratitude: The Journal Designed for You and by You is available too!
Both Evolving with Gratitude & Bold Gratitude have generous bulk pricing for purchasing 10+ copies delivered to the same location.🙌
Just fill out the forms linked above, and someone will get back to you ASAP!
Transcript:
Lainie Rowell: [00:00:00] All right, my friends, I have a long time friend with me. I have Shannon Meyer. Hi, Shannon.
Shannon Meyer: Hi, Lainie.
Lainie Rowell: My gosh, I have had so many giggles with you over the years. Like, I just see your face and I get like a warm, fuzzy sensation inside my body.
Shannon Meyer: I mean, given the fact that we met, like, teleported into someone's house who sort of looked like they evaporated in the apocalypse and left their homes was, was really, really weird.
And for, for listeners who need a little backstory, Lainie and I met collaborating on a work project and we rented an Airbnb and most Airbnbs are, kind of scarcely...
Lainie Rowell: They're sterile almost, right?
Shannon Meyer: Yeah, yeah, it's like a hotel room, right? But, I just remember we walked in, and it was like, their dishes were on the drying rack, and, pictures of their children were everywhere, and, the closet doors wouldn't shut because their university blues jacket was falling out of the, you know, it was just like, it was like two people had just evaporated, and then we were in their home, and that was...
That was it.
Lainie Rowell: I'm so glad you gave some context because that would have gone down as like the most random welcome in the history of podcasting but friends. She's not overstating this like Their mail opened on the counter. It was every piece of memorabilia and precious family moment.
It was just like we walked into someone's house and it was just so unlike any Airbnb VRBO experience I've ever had. And it was all just so interesting because also, I'm going to go on record, I think that was the first time that a company who had hired me to work put me in a VRBO with other people.
It's usually we're in a very sterile hotel room. So this was a very different experience.
Shannon Meyer: It was like the real world plus like. the zombie apocalypse and we were the only survivors. Like also their wedding picture, I believe their wedding picture was like over the bed, which made me a little uncomfortable.
And then I remember going into the bathroom and like the bathroom counter was like, there was their toothbrush and I certainly did not open any drawers.
Lainie Rowell: A level of transparency into someone else's life that I have never before or since encountered.
Shannon Meyer: Yes. And she left us food. Remember that? She left food out for us. Like, like cheese and honey and grapes.
Lainie Rowell: And just for the listeners, Shannon and I love these people. We never met them, but we became a part of their life during this stay.
Bob and Pammy, wherever you are, we're sending our love, and thank you for a delightful and homey stay in your much lived in, lovely, I think, was it Palo Alto?
Shannon Meyer: Yes. Yes, and also, for the record, I want to be invited to the Super Bowl party, because I'm in the family.
Lainie Rowell: Shannon, I'm going to tell our listeners a little bit more about you and then I want you to jump in and share some other stuff.
So. Shannon is an educator. She's a consultant speaker. She does a ton of amazing professional development, curriculum development. I am not going to be able to touch on all the amazing things that she speaks about, writes about, and works with other educators on, so I'm going to toss it to her, but I just want you all to know that I have seen this amazing, wonderful, beautiful human in action, and she is easily one of the most engaging, hilarious speakers I've ever come across.
You're in a session with Shannon and then you're like her friend because you just love her so much.
Shannon Meyer: That is so kind. I appreciate that. I would say the heart of my work is really sitting down with grownups. and helping them understand why kids do the things that they do. And in many ways, why our inner child still activates the way that it does.
But I take a lot of neuroscience and understanding of the brain and brain dynamics and apply it to classroom settings. So, simple things like you know, what's a way that you can open a learning experience or a lesson to encourage a brain to want to participate? So our brain likes to do certain things.
So, for example our brain likes to anticipate. Our brain likes to feel successful. Our brain likes to do anything necessary for survival. These are all things that our brain likes to do. So how can I design and structure my discipline models and my learning models so that I am working with the natural desires of the brain versus trying to swim upstream?
So something very simple would be, instead of having a a warm up that's like, write a sentence with three adjectives. You could say up at the front of the classroom is a box, and in this box is one of my favorite objects from home. And it is fuzzy and warm and comfortable. I want you to guess what it is and write three more adjectives describing what you think it is and then I will tell you yes and no on each one of those and as a class we'll see if we can guess what's in the box because I don't know if you're like this, Lainie, but when my children go to Target and they decide to spend ridiculous amounts of money on a small egg with some animal inside of it, I wait with bated breath to see what kind of puppycorn is living inside of this plastic egg because I too want to know what's in there so we like, we, our brains like a little anticipation so it's stuff like that that I kind of help with and most of it centers around discipline so I do a lot of work with teachers on like why kids are crazy and how to not let them make you feel crazy
Lainie Rowell: That's such a great example.
And to me, what you're doing, and this is something that I'm very passionate about, is inquiry based learning. Ask the questions and make something really engaging and empowering. And that's what's activating the learning, right?
Shannon Meyer: Exactly. Like, if I were to take lyrics of Antihero and Shape of You, well, Shape of You probably wouldn't fly in a public school Bad Habits maybe, an Ed Sheeran song, a Taylor Swift song and print both of those lyrics and say, pick which one of these is your favorite, and I want you to find every adverb in that song, right?
You're just gonna have so much more engagement with something like that, versus, you know, like, Benny has $8 and needs to buy a smoothie and a banana, you know, there just has to be some schema for it. And I think something that's interesting, and teachers talk about this a lot with me, is like, well, learning is important and school is important.
And it's like, yeah, you're right. But your brain doesn't care, right? Your brain doesn't wake up in the morning and go, man, retirement is important. I'm going to dedicate a lot of time today to making sure that I save for retirement. Like says no one, right? Your brain wakes up in the morning and the first thing it thinks is how am I going to get food to survive for the day? Or , if you're a parent, your brain wakes up in the morning and is like, how can I get my kids through the day with traumatizing them the least? Right? Like that's kind of where, so I think, you know, what we believe as a society or culture is important is not biologically what our brain caress about.
And that's for reasons that help us survive. So, my brain does not want to be around people that make me feel bad, because my brain is working in my best interest. So if every single time I'm in math class, I feel bad, because I'm not really interested in numbers organically, and I struggle with this, and I feel stupid when I'm in this class, not liking math is my brain doing me a favor.
It's not my brain being lazy or not focused or not caring, and so I think what we have to do is go, the problem isn't our brains, the problem is our lack of understanding about what motivates a brain or what makes a brain want to participate in something, and how can I harness that in order to get kids to enjoy and want to be in school.
And I think when you think about things like, okay, so working out doesn't feel good while I'm doing it. But afterwards I experienced that dopamine rush. The cortisol goes down. Like I see the results with time. I feel stronger. Like all of those things, working hard in school oftentimes doesn't produce those results.
You can work really, really hard and still fail a class. So I think the other thing too is that when we look at, well, you know, some things in life are hard. Yeah, but like hard things usually yield meaningful results. That's not always the case in a classroom setting. And being a child who was dyslexic, undiagnosed, still undiagnosed, I've just diagnosed myself because I flip things all the time.
I can tell you I worked as hard as I possibly could in writing and spelling class and still did not do well and felt real stupid for it. There's just so many, kind of sayings that we have about, hard work or focus or all of that, and this is just simply not the case.
The max our brain is going to focus is three 90 minute cycles a day, and that's in a healthy adult. An eight year old boy, like, last night, and we'll talk more about this when we talk about gratitude, but I decided to, because I'm so intelligent, to coach my son's soccer team knowing nothing about soccer, so that's been real special, and last night was the first practice because I was subbing in for the coach who's out of town.
I manage my other one's team, so I, I still don't really know what I'm doing, and I was watching the boys playing, and I thought, this is utter chaos. This is insanity. It's the day after Halloween and it's 7 p. m. and I have 15 nine year old boys and I was watching them smash into each other and roll on the floor and kick the ball.
And I just thought, gosh, this is exactly what they need to be doing right now. And for me to expect anything else from them, the proprioceptive input, the social aspect of it, the physical aspect of it, like that's what they needed. They weren't misbehaving. They were filling their Sort of, you know, they're occupational, how my body operates in time and space needs, and it's just who they are.
Lainie Rowell: I want to go back to something that you said earlier, where you were talking about the example of finding adverbs in music lyrics, and to me, there's a step that often gets, skipped when it comes to learning, in my opinion, and I'm guilty of this.
This is not me saying I'm nailing this and everyone else isn't, but there's a part of me that has such urgency when I go to teach something that I sometimes skip over the step where I'm like, wait, I have to actually explain why they would even care to learn about this, why this is even relevant in their life.
But your example of Taylor Swift or Ed Sheeran or Beyonce or, you know, Drake, or whoever it would be the clean versions, of course, but when you take the time especially if focus in on the ones who are singer songwriters and they really have to be so careful with their craft, right? It's all about words and
Shannon Meyer: the currency.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, so you're gonna make this connection and actually even allow them to pick an artist that they find a connection with.
So you're working within the constraint. You've got this firm goal of we need to be looking at adverbs and I'm going to give you an opportunity to connect it to something that's important to you, something that you're grateful for, something that you find value in. And to me, that is when the brain gives permission like you're saying to like, okay, I can tune into this because this is this can give me some dopamine, some serotonin.
I am grateful for this thing. And this is how it connects to what we're learning about.
Shannon Meyer: Right. Absolutely. And it gives you an opportunity to be seen. For example, Number 41 by Dave Matthews is a really important song to me. And I would love nothing more than to tell you why, right? I want to tell you why because it's an important part of my story, right?
I think also it gives students an opportunity because at the end of the day, we all just want to be known. We want to be seen. We want to be known. We want to belong, right? These are basic needs. And I think something to your earlier point of like that sense of urgency, I call that sense of urgency coverage.
And you cannot gain retention and engagement without sacrificing coverage. And anybody who tells you otherwise is lying. I really believe that in my heart of hearts because you have to decide, am I going to take the time to build schema and drive up meaning and deepen understanding, which is all linked to retention?
Right? Or am I going to cover, cover, cover, cover, cover? And the difference between the two is that one has the focus being student outcomes versus teacher requirements. And teachers have to be given permission to sacrifice coverage in order to make space for student learning. And that is such a tension because when I sign a contract and I'm required to cover all of my standards, I'm like a bird dog.
I'm going to get after it, right? And I'm going to go, go, go, go, go. But none of those outcomes are centered around student learning. If you really think about it from that lens, that outcome is I have to do my job. So we have to be given space to go, you know what? I'm good at 20 percent of stuff that you don't think is super, super sticky in the vertical articulation.
That's the stuff that I'm giving you permission to put on the back burner so that you can spend 80 percent of that time really driving home the foundational skills of college career readiness, whatever spirals up in the vertical articulation, and doing so in a way that creates schema and meaning because that's where you get the retention.
If you sit down with kids or adults, and you say, what's the most meaningful thing you ever did? 0 percent of people say like, oh yeah, all those worksheets in class. No one remembers that, but we all remember when we wrote our congressman. Right. Or like when we built a raft that floated in the bathtub for the longest or whatever, we all remember those things and there's just no way to, to kind of have it both ways.
And this is something that. I like to say a lot, and this even goes back to my, like, own gratitude story, but, every decision requires loss, and I think educators and schools have to be prepared to take a loss on something in the name of retention and engagement, particularly for All right. Boys, and particularly for students who are impacted in socioeconomic settings, because when you look at those students and you look at the school to prison pipeline and all of that, coverage and the name of coverage is sort of what puts them on the hamster wheel of kind of going nowhere, right?
There's not space for that. And that's why I do what I do professionally because I did work in impacted communities. I was the teacher that was like coverage, coverage, coverage, right? Like I failed them for not doing their homework for no reason. I look back on it and I'm like, man, these kids never had a shot.
Because I wasn't facilitating success for them. And as a single parent, I have three kids. It's just me. I can tell you that homework doesn't get done in my house sometimes. And that's not because I don't care, but it's because it's either dinner, right, and I keep the lights on, or you get your homework done.
And sometimes, I have to sacrifice one for the other, but I mean, I could go on for days about this, but I think the thing is, if you want to come to the table and go, how do we cover everything and still be really engaging? I mean, that's like the cupcake diet.
You know, it's not going to work.
Lainie Rowell: I'm absorbing how you articulated coverage versus retention and engagement. And just makes me think how coverage isn't really worth anything if there is no retention at a minimum, right? If the goal is for that vertical alignment, if the goal is for preparing them for the next step, if there is no retention, then coverage is irrelevant.
Shannon Meyer: 100%. But that's the metric that educators are held accountable for. Does your scope and sequence cover all the standards? Right? And, I mean, I get why it's like that, you know? But it's so hard to turn the knob of risk taking and freedom within districts because there's a cost, right?
And you're not going to make everybody happy and, you know, all of those things. And that's, it's, it's risky. It's really risky.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, I would say that probably my biggest win on this, because there are constraints and there are things that are out of our control 100%, is I would just encourage educators to, this is the lesson that I have to keep learning over and over again, is there's something that kids can be doing instead of me.
Because when you flip that coin, right?
Shannon Meyer: Yes, keep going.
Lainie Rowell: When you flip that script and you say, okay, so I am trying to make all these video tutorials to help kids understand this concept. Well wait, couldn't kids be making the video tutorials? Wouldn't that increase the engagement? Because you're actually going to empower them to create a tool that will be useful for, at a minimum, kids in the class, might be kids across the school, might be kids all over the world, or any learner of any age.
That's probably been my biggest a ha throughout my entire career trying to figure out how do I innovate with so many constraints. And I need to take full advantage of the precious and abundant resource of my learners in my classroom.
Shannon Meyer: Hearing you say that is like drinking a glass of lemonade for my soul and I can't, I can't like preach, preach, preach because here's the thing.
I'm not finding a song with lyrics. that have adverbs in it, you are. You go home and find your favorite song, right? Or I'm not going to identify all the shapes, right? What I'm gonna do is have you sit with a partner and I want you to pull up the set of your favorite TV show online and I want you to find every single shape in there and then share it with your partner, right?
I'm not gonna make connections between characters. I'm gonna give you a novel and then I want you to tell me which person in this novel would be your best friend, which person in this novel would be your frenemy, which person in this novel would you like to be your basketball coach.
I'm having you do it because here's the thing, that's instant retention and engagement. Like when I said the thing about number 41 with Dave, like this whole time, I've been like, man, I really do kind of want to tell her why that song means a lot to me. We all want to tell our stories.
This is why, I have a tattoo that I get comments on all the time on my arm, and I love it, because I get to tell a complete stranger a little bit of my story, and nine times out of ten, the person who spots it and asks me about it gets it, so I will literally have people, it says, just so you guys know, it says, I believe you, but it's written so that it only reads to me in the mirror, so it's like the reflection of that. And I will have people stop me and be like, wait, does that say, I believe you and only in the mirror?
And then like their eyes will fill up with tears. And in just 1 sentence, I've made like an instant connection with somebody because that person at some point or another has experienced gaslighting or has been a part of a community where their voice wasn't heard or whatever the case may be. We all just want to tell our stories.
We all want to be known. We all want to be heard. And we all want to connect. This is why we love music. So, if I happen to pick a Nirvana song and I find out that my teacher, who I think is like old and washed up or whatever, actually went to a Nirvana concert, that's a connection. Right? Or if I love cars, and I find out that my teacher is a Formula One fan, that's a connection, and we love those types of things.
We love those types of things. Like, I have this weird obsession with my mailman. His name is Anthony, and we formed this connection because my dad was once a mailman, and I told him that. And so he knows more about my life. He knows about my divorce.
Every time I see him, he's like, how's it going? I'm like, oh, we're settled. You know, everything's settled. Or like, how's it going? Oh, good. They're finally all in, school now. I mean, he knows my whole life. I see him sometimes, I leave drinks out on the porch for him.
It's so funny, whenever we drive down the street and we see them on other streets, we put the windows down and my kids know, we go 1, 2, 3, Hi Anthony! It's just funny, we just have this connection, it brightens my day, it brightens his, like every day we're seen, you know what I mean?
Lainie Rowell: To me, my definition or my view of gratitude is pretty wide because it's the lens that I see everything through. So in everything that you're sharing, I hear this is the gratitude we have for the experiences, the knowledge, the background that our kiddos bring is that they are these unique and dynamic individuals.
And this is something to be grateful for because this is what's going to make our learning community thrive. It's going to be that we all get to be seen, heard, known and valued in this space.
Shannon Meyer: And it is the only mechanism, in my opinion, for learning that inherently and organically produces engagement and retention. If you aren't doing that, you're swimming upstream, This is that part again, where, if you look at the human brain compared to all other brains.
We have the most sophisticated in terms of development, right? Of all the different parts of our brain and all the different things that it does. But when you start kind of peeling back the layers of the human brain and you go to like a slightly less sophisticated brain you have your dog or a dolphin or whatever, they all still want connection, they all still want to be known, even when you start peeling things back, I kid you not, it's so weird, cause my friends are like, you can't tell strangers this, Shannon, or, they're not going to want to be your friend, but I have this hamster.
I am 100 percent convinced that this hamster and I are soulmates. It's so stupid. Her name is Grace and she walks to school in my pocket. It's so ridiculous. Nobody's going to listen to this, right?
But, even this teeny tiny like rodent wants connection.
Connection is not sophisticated, it's primal, right? It's who we are. The only thing that we really get with the human brain is we get some level of discernment or morality and creativity, and then we also get the ability to use the most sophisticated parts of our brain to heal the more primal parts of our brain.
So, you can take a dog that is afraid of thunder and you can do all kinds of things and that dog is still afraid of thunder, but with a human, you actually have the opportunity to heal some of those parts of us that have been broken or experienced trauma, because you can use the upper part of your brain to sort of speak to the lower part of your brain, which is where gratitude comes in.
Because gratitude is one of those ways that we can go into the pathways of our amygdala, into our limbic regions, and we can go, you know what, this was really hard, but I'm healing. And I'm building these new pathways that look at loss so differently. And it's funny because when you asked me to do this, gratitude for me is hard sometimes.
Cause I'm like, okay, gratitude feels a little bit like those blessed signs that were at home goods for a decade of my life. And I sometimes don't know how to wrap my head around it a little bit. And. I was thinking a lot about this and I personally cannot define gratitude without loss, which is not what I want.
I do not want to have to appreciate loss, but I sat here for hours thinking about the question of what does gratitude mean to me, because that's something that you ask your listeners, and I could not define it without loss. Which goes back into our brains heal in so many different powerful ways when we look at our stories and we look at our lives.
And, you know, you know this, I went through an extremely painful divorce five years ago. And for those of you that don't know my story, I moved out to a state, none of you will probably know my story, but I moved out to a state away from anyone and anything I knew in New Jersey outside the city. I had my third child and then my marriage blew, like, catastrophic blew up.
And we were sort of the all American couple. We were not the couple that you thought this was going to happen to. And as I thought about gratitude, I wrote down like a few times where I really experienced immense amounts of gratitude, and none of them could be defined or experienced without that loss, which like, man, I don't like loss. I don't want it to be important in my life. I enjoy being comfortable. I don't ever want to be uncomfortable, but it is so hard to define one without the other.
Lainie Rowell: It really is. I appreciate you sharing all of that.
And I saw you go through that loss, and your strength is astounding, first of all, and inspirational, but I think that the reality of being a human is that we actually want the full human experience, and unfortunately, that is not enjoyable when you're in it, But those real, real tragic lows, that loss that you're talking about, it's just a part of it, and we can be happy, no, but grateful, yes.
If that makes sense.
Shannon Meyer: Yes, and I wish it wasn't so.
Lainie Rowell: Yeah, I get that. I get that. We've all had things in our life and I don't ever want people to think about is like comparing, you know, getting in a trauma competition. I, I don't know your trauma. I don't know other people's trauma, but I think we all experience something deeply painful at some point in our life.
And maybe it wouldn't be considered as significant to someone else. I hated seeing you go through that, but seeing how you handled it is a testament to the person that you are, and I think that's really profound, that you can step back and say, you know what? I'm actually grateful for that loss.
Shannon Meyer: It's interesting because I was like, am I grateful for that loss? But I mean, definitely yes in many ways. So I was thinking about gratitude and I have these, I call them starfish moments. Lainie, you know you're one of my starfish moments. But when you say, such a strong person, while I appreciate that, and I do consider myself strong in many ways, I'm also a series of starfish moments.
So many of you are probably familiar with the story of the boy walking on the beach and he is picking up starfish who have been washed up and is throwing them back in the water, which will increase their chances of survival.
And he keeps picking them up one by one and throwing them in and, and someone's like, you know, why are you doing that? There's so many here. You're never going to be able to save them all. Does this really matter? And the boy says, well, it matters to this one. And I call them my starfish moments because there are these little moments where somebody tossed me back in the ocean when I needed it.
Kelly Montes De Oca is one of my starfish moments because she brought us together and then when I met you, you introduced me to some amazing organizations that I was able to partner with and I didn't know shortly after meeting you that I I was going to become a single mom and have to pay a mortgage and all of those things.
And so those opportunities that you introduced me to were able to sustain my family, right? So that was like another sort of starfish moment. And then it's interesting, when everything fell apart for me, I picked up my phone and I called my college best friend, Courtney, and I was like, I can't breathe.
And she was like, I'll see you tomorrow. And she has two little kids. She got on a plane from North Carolina and she flew up and without going into too many details you know, some divorces are like a slow burn and others are just like, bam, you know, kind of catastrophic is what I call them.
Mine was the latter. So I was like nearly catatonic in the bed and I had three little kids. My daughter could not walk, I was still nursing her, tiny kids. I, and I had no family out here, nothing. And Courtney came and she printed a calendar and she took my phone and she just called all my best friends and one by one by one, I can hardly talk about this without crying, everybody took a shift and they came and they sat with me and they took care of my kids and they took care of my dogs.
And my best friend here was like, I know you don't have any money right now, so here's an envelope. I don't want it back. I don't want to talk about it. The end. And then my, my college boyfriend, funny enough, who has a beautiful family and is, is wonderful, was like, hey, I heard you're going through a hard time, and essentially, loaned me thousands of dollars, no questions asked, he was like, pay me back when you can, no problem, to, you know, be able to sustain my house and everything.
And I paid him right back. But he did that a couple of times because it takes a while to like get on your feet. And I met this like amazing woman, Amy, that was like, Hey you can sell houses if you want on the side. And I instantly did that and sold like millions of dollars of houses in my first year.
So I just have all these little moments and I have this like iconic moment where my best friend from high school, her name is Kelly, she's just been with me through thick and thin, and she doesn't like to fly that much, and I remember, the doorbell rang, this was like in the midst of it all, and I opened the door, and she's sitting on my doorstep with the suitcase, and she's like, I'm right here, and she came in, and I think we just sat on the floor and like cried for a couple of hours, and then she's like, so, what room do you want to paint?
And I was like, okay, so we got some tequila and we went to Sherman Williams and we picked out Mount St. Anne's Blue. And we turned on Michael Jackson, and we just painted my living room, and my kitchen, and then we went and got a tattoo, and then we cried some more, and then we painted some more, and I just remember it being like, 1 in the morning, and we're singing Smooth Criminal, you know, these sort of iconic moments, and then, And I'll tell you one more, and this is just two stories of gratitude.
So, you know, when you go through Mother's Day, and you're a single mom, you don't, you don't really think about it, but your kids are little, right? Like they can't drive to CVS and, and buy a box of chocolates or whatever, like every man does, you know last minute. So, my best friend in the world would come and she would pick my kids up, her name is Kinsey, she'd come pick, pick my kids up, and she would take them, the day before Mother's Day, because she was like, I want to teach these kids the, the practice of showing gratitude, right?
And then shortly after Mother's Day, I ended up needing to be in the hospital for a procedure, and I have this group of single moms, and if I didn't have my story, right? Like, I would sit there on Mother's Day and get the card and be like, oh, that's so sweet, or whatever. But I have a person who out of no obligation, no requirement, I am not the mother of their children, I am not their mother, I am not their daughter, nothing, decides to get in the car, drive over, get my kids, and create a plan to celebrate me out of no obligation, out of utter choice. How are you not grateful for that? Right? Like, how is that not a different level of gratitude?
And I'm in the hospital, I'm having like, I was like a hernia repair, and I get a spreadsheet from my girlfriends who are like, here's our shifts, we've got to, like, they just took everything.
And so, while I'm not, thrilled that that's what my story looks like, nobody was taking care of me out of obligation. It was people who wanted to step up. And that is a different kind of love. You feel that in such an amazing way. So I think when I wake up every day, I am sort of chipper because there's a bunch of people in my life who participate and love me and show me love because they want to, you know?
Lainie Rowell: To me, speaking as your friend, and how I see you interact with the world, this is reciprocal, this is, you give so much, so you get a lot, and I'm not just saying that to pump your tires you, legitimately, you are one of the warmest, most generous people I know. And I think when you put that kind of love and goodness out into the world, it comes back to you.
I think everything that you do is, is coming back to you in those moments. And it is well deserved, and I am so happy. I hope you consider me among one of those people that's there for you whenever you need it. And those starfish moments are definitely something special for all of us.
Shannon Meyer: You are one of my starfish. Thank you for tossing me back in the ocean and I want to just say this quickly. When I first thought about gratitude, the very first thing that came to me was my kids. because your children, they're not a canvas you get to paint.
They're like this beautiful portrait and your whole goal is to make sure that nobody hurts it because it's already so organically beautiful. And there's no way to talk about gratitude without talking about my children and everything that they, they mean to me and how much I experience them. But we exist in this joyful little community because of the, these starfish moments, these people that have enabled that and you, of course, being one of them.
Lainie Rowell: We are that for each other. There's so many ways that I lean on you and I appreciate you so much, Shannon, and you might go down in history as getting the most shout outs in for any episode, but it is no surprise to me because that is, that is who you are. And I also just love that we got to have this really organic conversation. And I want to make sure, because after hearing you, I know people are going to want to connect with you. So, Shannon, what is the best way for people to reach out to you? Give us the socials, the website. How do you want people to connect with you?
Shannon Meyer: Sure. So, my website is LearningConsidered.Com. Isn't that a cool name? I made that up.
Lainie Rowell: Very thoughtful and clever, and I will make sure to put that in the show notes, but it's very easy to remember.
Shannon Meyer: And then my email is shannon@learningconsidered.com, and that's probably the best way to reach me.
I snooze a little on socials simply because I don't often feel gratitude for seeing everyone's amazing, all expenses paid Aruba vacations, so.
Lainie Rowell: Well, that's interesting you say that, because there's public displays of gratitude, and it's always interesting. I have mixed emotions about how we share our lives, and I'm happy for anyone wanting to express how they want to express. At the same time, I have to take care of myself and sometimes that means I have to monitor my intake and how much I can handle of someone's picture perfect vacation to a glorious place I have not been to. And so, yeah, I get that. I get that.
Shannon Meyer: I am not grateful for your beach body no, there's no gratitude here for me for that. But thank you. Yeah. Great. You know, my kids are eating another frozen meal, but I'm I'm super happy for your herb garden. Thanks.
Lainie Rowell: Oh my gosh, you crack me up, my friend.
Well, I think you have touched all of our hearts and minds with what you have shared, and I'm super excited to get this episode out into the world. I'm going to let you go, but I want to first thank you, thank you, thank you, for all that you do in the world professionally and also personally as my friend. And thank you all for listening.
Shannon Meyer: Thank you, Lainie.