Last episode, Pardeep Singh Kaleka showed us how the power of authentic relationships can disrupt narratives that keep us stuck. He showed us what it means to challenge the "monster" narrative—not to excuse harm, but to refuse to let society off the hook with simple stories that prevent accountability, future harm, and healing. He taught us to walk each other home. To choose presence over divisiveness, understanding and being effective over being right. But here's what I keep wondering: How do you get to that place? How do you develop the capacity to see someone different from you not as a threat, but as someone to learn from? How do you create systems where people don't have to shrink themselves to fit in? And how do you change hearts and minds when the dominant narratives - the ones coded into policies, embedded in practices, repeated in headlines - keep telling a different story? I think it requires three things working together: First: Seeing. How might we make the invisible visible as Prudence did in episode 4 with the hidden history of child welfare or as Rinku did in episode 8 with immigrant families who were being separated through deportation? Second: Feeling. How might we build empathy around experiences we haven't had as Desmond showed in episode 3 through his question “Has anyone that you love ever made a mistake?” or as Megan described in episode 7 through the science of connection and neural coupling? And third: Speaking Truth. How might we transform discomfort into learning and change as Dr. Nadine Burke Harris showed us in episode 3 through her personal journey of “speaking up to change outcomes”? Today, we're bringing together three voices from episode 5 who showed us how dominant narratives manifest in their lives. Today, they illuminate these pathways to build better narratives that change hearts, minds, and systems. Shary Tran, who co-founded ElevAsian because she was tired of feeling alone in every room making decisions about her community. Tori Brasher-Weathers, who, with the Institute for Family, created Mission in Common because she knew that data without stories leads to decisions without empathy. And Valerie Frost, who speaks her truth to power because it's the one thing systems can never take away from her. Three different approaches. One shared understanding: You transform systems, you change hearts and minds by being persistent, by being visible, and by refusing to let harmful narratives define who deserves support. This is Episode 13: "Seen, Felt, Heard: The Power of Representation, Empathy, and Truth"
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in order of appearance):
Host: Luke Waldo
Guests:
00:14–04:28 – Luke Waldo: The Pathways to Transformation
Luke reflects on the lessons from previous episodes regarding authentic relationships and disrupting "monster narratives”. He introduces a three-pronged framework for system transformation: Seeing (making the invisible visible), Feeling (building empathy), and Speaking Truth (transforming discomfort into change). He frames the episode’s focus on three voices - Shary Tran, Tori Brasher Weathers, and Valerie Frost - who illuminate these pathways through their unique lived and professional experiences.
04:28–11:37 – Shary Tran: Representation and the Feeling of Belonging
Shary Tran describes the origins of ElevAsian, born from the isolation of being one of only a few Asian Americans in community decision-making spaces. She discusses the "skills" of navigation and adaptation that many people of color develop to fit into spaces not designed for them.
11:37–19:34 – Tori Brasher Weathers: The Formula for Empathy
Tori discusses Mission in Common, an initiative grounded in the belief that "connection leads to empathy, empathy leads to alignment, and alignment leads to lasting change”. She explains how to bridge the gap between decision-makers and families through the power of story.
19:34–32:01 – Valerie Frost: Truth Telling as Legitimate Authority
Luke bridges Valerie’s work to the lessons of Pardeep Singh Kaleka from Episode 12, noting that transformation requires the courage to "lovingly make people uncomfortable". Valerie describes her role as a "truth teller," using her story as an immutable tool for change.
32:01–36:46 – Luke Waldo: Synthesis and Practical Wisdom
Luke synthesizes the practical advice from his guests: Shary’s call for cultural humility, Tori’s commitment to "leaving people with a feeling," and Valerie’s reminder that permission to speak truth comes from within.
Closing Credits
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Luke Waldo 00:14
Welcome to season four of Overloaded: Understanding Neglect, where we explore how stories and narratives shape what we believe and how we act, and how we might tell different stories that change the narrative so that all children and families can thrive. Hey, everyone, this is Luke Waldo, your host for this podcast series, and the director of program design and community engagement for the Institute for Child and Family Well-being, our partnership between Children's Wisconsin and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee's Helen Bader School of Social Welfare.
Last episode, Pardeep Singh Kaleka showed us how the power of authentic relationships can disrupt narratives that keep us stuck. He showed us what it means to challenge the monster narrative, not to excuse harm, but to refuse to let society off the hook with simple stories that prevent accountability, future harm, and healing. He taught us to walk each other home, to choose presence over divisiveness, understanding and being effective over being right. But here's what I keep wondering: How do you get to that place? How do you develop the capacity to see someone different from you, not as a threat, but as someone to learn from? How do you create systems where people don't have to shrink themselves to fit in? And how do you change hearts and minds when the dominant narratives - the ones coded into policies, embedded in practices, repeated in headlines - keep telling a different story? I think it requires three things working together. First: Seeing. How might we make the invisible visible, as Prudence did in episode four with the hidden history of child welfare?
Prudence Beidler Carr 02:00
It's so frustrating sometimes to realize that often it doesn't feel like it's about protecting children.
Luke Waldo 02:06
Or as Rinku did in episode eight with immigrant families who were being separated through deportation.
Rinku Sen 02:12
Keeping families together, keeping parents and children together for all of their lives.
Luke Waldo 02:19
Second: Feeling. How might we build empathy around experiences we haven't had? As Desmond showed in episode three through his question:
Desmond Meade 02:27
Do you know anyone who you love who's ever made a mistake?
Luke Waldo 02:30
Or as Megan described in episode seven through the science of connection and neural coupling.
Megan McGee 02:37
That's not me just being crunchy, that is actual science.
Luke Waldo 02:41
And third: Speaking Truth. How might we transform discomfort into learning and change? As Dr. Nadine Burke Harris showed us in episode three through her personal journey of speaking up to change outcomes.
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris 02:55
You know what? If I speak up, it does make a difference.
Luke Waldo 03:00
Today, we're bringing together three voices from episode five who showed us how dominant narratives manifest in their lives. Today, they illuminate these pathways to build better narratives that change hearts, minds, and systems. Shary Tran, who co-founded ElevAsian because she was tired of feeling alone in every room making decisions about her community. Tori Brasher Weathers, who with the Institute for Family created Mission in Common because she knew that data without stories leads to decisions without empathy. And Valerie Frost, who speaks her truth to power because it's the one thing systems can never take away from her. Three different approaches, one shared understanding: You transform systems, you change hearts and minds by being persistent, by being visible, and by refusing to let harmful narratives define who deserves support. This is episode 13, "Seen, Felt, Heard: The Power of Belonging, Empathy, and Truth".
So let me ask you a question. Have you ever been the only one? The only one in your school, the only one at the community meeting, the only one making decisions about your own community? If you haven't, imagine how you might feel being the only one in a room of the many. That was Shary Tran's reality.
Shary Tran 04:28
You know, as a professional working in the corporate space, attending a lot of functions that are community-based functions, I always would see the same three or four Asian Americans in the room, and we started to notice that we would see each other at these events over and over, and it was always the same four of us that would be in the room. And we all—we would—we started to gravitate towards one another, and started to ask the question, like, "I'm sure there's more than just us in this community that are doing good things and are doing work in these spaces. Where are they, and how do we, you know, bring them together?" So ElevAsian was formed based on just making sure that we had representation. Our voices were being heard at these tables where decisions were being made about the community and what's important to our communities.
Luke Waldo 05:17
Four people representing an entire community, and in Milwaukee alone, there are nearly 30,000 Asian Americans. And here's what struck me about Shary's experience: When you're one of only four, you start to wonder if maybe there really are only four of you qualified to be there. The isolation becomes internalized. So how did we get here? Shary traces it back.
Shary Tran 05:42
You know, my family were refugees after the Vietnam War and relocated to Wisconsin, a very predominantly white community where I grew up. And my family being the only, you know, representation of people of color in the city that I lived in for quite a while, I had to navigate understanding how to, you know, make friends and kind of start to network within my school when I was young. And so it became a skill that I took with me into the corporate workplace as well.
Luke Waldo 06:17
A skill: Navigation, adaptation. These are the words people use when they've learned to make themselves smaller to fit spaces that weren't designed for them. But here's the question I'm sitting with: What gets lost when navigation becomes survival? What parts of ourselves do we leave behind when we're constantly adjusting to make others comfortable, and more importantly, what narratives make this navigation necessary in the first place?
Shary Tran 06:45
So there are three persistent tropes that follow the Asian American community. One of them is the Model Minority Myth that has really been one that's been pervasive and persistent, which kind of frames Asian Americans as like the "good minority," right? So pitting different minority groups against each other, saying, "Well, hey, if the Asian Americans could succeed and thrive, why can't other groups do the same thing?" Another trope that follows our community, which we thought, you know, had passed but kind of resurged during COVID, was the concept of the Yellow Peril—that the Asians are threats to the Western way of life. The third trope was the Perpetual Foreigner trope that follows our community as well. Asians have been in the United States for centuries, yet still being perceived as, you know, new immigrants to the country, or just not necessarily belonging to the United States, not being accepted or even perceived as truly American.
Luke Waldo 07:49
Three different narratives, same function: Othering. Making people who've been here for generations still feel like they don't belong. Notice how these narratives work. They either weaponize success to divide communities, or they create fear to justify exclusion, or they perpetuate the myth that some Americans are more American than others. So how might we dismantle these narratives? How does Shary, how does ElevAsian push back?
Shary Tran 08:17
Education, you know, and awareness have been our drive for a lot of the programming that we've put on as an organization—opportunities to inform people about these myths and breaking down these tropes and helping people understand how damaging they are to communities and how unfair these characterizations are and how wrong and incorrect they are as well.We've done some programming around mental health as well. You know, mental health is a stigma for a lot of communities, but very strongly in the Asian American community where we don't talk about it. So really trying to bring visibility to this truly being an issue in our community, so bringing some awareness to that and providing resources and outreach to folks so to destigmatize asking for help.
Luke Waldo 09:04
Notice the strategy: Make the invisible visible. Mental health struggles that get hidden become things we can talk about openly; stereotypes that operate quietly become things we name and challenge publicly. This is the foundation of representation—not just being present, but being seen fully, truthfully, in all our complexities. But representation isn't just about visibility. It's about what happens after you become visible. What does meaningful belonging actually look like?
Shary Tran 09:35
Inclusion is the physical act of inviting somebody, but belonging is the feeling you get when you're there that that matters and that you truly feel welcome. So I think belonging helps us broaden the accountability and the responsibility to create spaces that are welcoming for all, and I think that it gives us an opportunity to really identify with how it feels to belong. I think everyone has some frame of reference to what it feels like to belong and not belong, so I think it gives people a little bit more of a visceral connection to that outcome.
Luke Waldo 10:18
Inclusion is the invitation. Belonging is the feeling you get when you're there. Let that sit for a moment, because I think most of us know the difference viscerally. We've all been invited somewhere and still felt like we didn't belong. We've all been in rooms where we were watched, evaluated, expected to represent everyone who looks like us. That's inclusion without belonging. So how might we create spaces where people don't just show up but can show up fully, where they don't have to navigate or adapt or shrink? Shary's work suggests it starts with making representation not an act of charity, but an act of justice; not inviting people to our table, but building new tables together. So we've talked about seeing, about representation, about belonging, but here's what I've learned: Seeing someone isn't enough. I can see someone who's different from me and still not understand them, still not care, still make decisions that harm them without ever feeling the weight of that harm. That's where Tori Brasher Weathers' work becomes essential. At the Institute for Family in North Carolina, Tori has figured out something profound: How to make decision makers not just see families, but feel what families are experiencing.
Tori Brasher Weathers 11:37
Our whole idea around Mission in Common is that connection leads to empathy. Empathy leads to alignment, and alignment leads to lasting change. No longer can we just have data and isolation and then people's experience and isolation. We need to have a situation where we are having a weaving and a juxtaposition of the data and experiences in the same space, so people who are making these decisions see the real-time implications of their decisions that influence family well-being.
Luke Waldo 12:13
Connection leads to empathy. Empathy leads to alignment. Alignment leads to lasting change. That's the formula, and it's deceptively simple. But here's what I'm curious about: How do you create that connection when proximity is missing? Because the people making budget decisions about family support services often have never met a family struggling with housing instability. The superintendents setting school policies often don't know what it's like to send kids to school hungry. The caseworkers assessing risk often haven't experienced the exhaustion of navigating systems while overloaded. So how might we bridge that gap? How might we create empathy across difference and distance? Tori's answer involves partnering with StoryCorps, those incredible storytellers you hear on NPR who always manage to make you cry in your car.
Tori Brasher Weathers 13:05
I was thinking about the Shine on North Carolina storytelling initiative. I just kept thinking like, "Hmm, where is a layer of influence that we can use? This hasn't been used before." And at the same time, StoryCorps was doing their 20th anniversary where they were going back and talking to storytellers from 20 years ago. And it was just so deeply moving to hear from the children of former storytellers, or the storytellers themselves, going back and reflecting on the story that they told and how life has been since then. And so I love that fact that future generations could listen to that story. I love the fact that I myself, because I recorded my personal story for my children—my children can go back, even if I'm not here anymore, can go back and they can listen to Mommy's voice, and they can listen to their story. And like even me recording my dad's story, because I recorded my story with my father, and I can go back and listen to his story beyond years. And I truly believe it helps with healing. It helps with resiliency. It helps bring that information of experiences from generation to generation. Like, you get a snippet in time of someone's experience that you could live through, but you can place yourself right there. And so that's my love for StoryCorps. But I think stories create a sense of belonging, because this is how our brains are wired. Our brains crave stories. We dream in story. Our internal dialogue—it is not in the spreadsheets in percentage. It is in story form. And so just think about all the time you heard something and you were transported to a place. That was what I wanted to be—when people listen to the experience, the authentic experience shared by the people I interviewed, I wanted them to be transported to it.
Luke Waldo 15:24
Our brains crave stories. This isn't just philosophy; it's neuroscience. As Megan McGee taught us in episode seven, when we hear statistics, different parts of our brain light up than when we hear stories. Statistics inform. Stories transform. They don't just give us information; they transport us into someone else's experience. They create what Dr. Uri Hassan calls neural coupling.
Dr. Uri Hasson 15:48
And my task as a speaker is to make your brain similar to mine.
Luke Waldo 15:54
But let me be clear about what Tori's not doing. She's not using stories to manipulate people into feeling guilty; she's using stories to create genuine understanding that leads to meaningful action. Listen to what happened when she brought stories and data together.
Tori Brasher Weathers 16:10
After I shared with them the story with the facts and figures aligned to it, the conversations and the problem solving that was happening just blew my mind. I heard people like, "I didn't know this was happening in the school system before. I don't know why I didn't know this." And this is somebody who works in public health. I had people saying, "I have money that I could give to support families like this, but I don't know where to put it." We planted a seed that started to germinate new ideas for how they can support families that were entangled in systems that they didn't even know existed.
Luke Waldo 16:51
"I didn't know this was happening." "I have money, but don't know where to put it." This is the power of empathy created through story—not guilt, not shame, not pity, but understanding that generates action; curiosity that leads to solutions; connection that transforms how we see our shared responsibility. But I want to push on something here, because I think there's deep wisdom in how Tori approaches listening.
Tori Brasher Weathers 17:17
Listen—don't listen to connect, because that's something that we like to do as people. Yeah, our brains get to rolling. We're listening to the story, we are like, "Oh my gosh, I want to explain, I want to tell them my story," and then you completely have missed the boat on what they were trying to share with you. Approach it with curiosity. Approach it with respect. Lean into the discomfort and listen to understand, not listen to respond.
Luke Waldo 17:48
Listen to understand, not listen to respond. How might we practice this? Because our brains desperately want to make connections. They want to say, "Ooh, I've experienced that too." They want to relate, to share, to respond. But when we do that too quickly, we center ourselves instead of the person sharing. We make their story about us, and that's where empathy breaks down. Real empathy requires what Tori's describing: Leaning into discomfort, resisting the urge to respond, just being present with someone else's truth, even when—especially when—it challenges our assumptions. She grounds this in the great Maya Angelou wisdom.
Tori Brasher Weathers 18:31
People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.
Luke Waldo 18:39
Feel the impact of those ripples. This is what empathy accomplishes: It makes invisible consequences visible. It makes distant impacts immediate. It helps us feel the weight of our decisions on actual human lives.But feeling alone doesn't change systems. So how might we move those feelings of connection and empathy to action, to real change, to system transformation? That's where Valerie Frost's truth telling becomes essential. Valerie Frost knows what it's like to be on the receiving end of a system that sees you as a problem instead of a person who needs support. And she's spent years doing something that makes powerful people deeply uncomfortable: Telling her truth repeatedly, persistently, unapologetically, even when—especially when—they don't want to hear it. Here are the narratives she's confronting.
Valerie Frost 19:34
There's three harmful narratives that show up everywhere in child welfare. One is that systems are objective—and they're not. You just said that—they insert suspicion, they insert the need to intervene. They shift power to where there's a hierarchy: "We know best." Another narrative that—again, another prevalent one—is that parents are the risk and that systems are the safety. They are the answer. They are going to fix it. They will solve the problem. Another harmful narrative is that compliance equals good parenting. You know, "If you go to that parenting class on your case plan, you are set for life now; you have been corrected."
Luke Waldo 20:17
Listen to what Valerie just named. These aren't just narratives. They're operating assumptions that drive everything from risk assessments to case plans to court decisions. They shape who gets investigated, who gets supported, who gets their children removed. So how might we challenge these narratives? How might we build better ones that reframe parents as partners and risks as opportunities for support? Valerie's answer is both simple and profound.
Valerie Frost 20:42
So I confront these narratives again—I will say this over and over again—I am a truth teller. That is the one thing the system can never take and that is the one thing that is going to save you: Is your truth. So I confront them by telling the truth repeatedly, consistently, even and especially when it makes people uncomfortable. Discomfort leads to growth. I bring receipts, I bring lived experience, and I refuse to shrink my story into a version that makes professionals feel better. I'm not for the system. I'm not for professionals. I'm for community. I'm for humanity.
Luke Waldo 21:18
Discomfort leads to growth. This connects directly back to what Pardeep taught us last episode about lovingly making people feel uncomfortable—and you need to lovingly make people uncomfortable, and that's kind of how reality changes. And it connects to what Shary and Tori showed us as well. Representation creates discomfort for people who've never had to share space or power. Empathy creates discomfort when we have to sit with pain we've never experienced, and truth telling creates discomfort when it challenges a story we've told ourselves about who we are and what we do. But that discomfort—that's not something to avoid. That's where transformation happens. That's where old narratives crack open and new ones become possible. Listen to what happens when Valerie speaks truth in spaces of power.
Valerie Frost 22:07
I will tell you even systems people, professionals—they, you know, they don't want to lose their jobs, so they generally don't speak up during the meetings. But there are professionals who message me after meetings or pull me aside in in-person meetings, and they tell me they agree with me, and they thank me for saying something different and for changing the course of the conversation. Well, when I jump in and I insert a new idea, it now opens up. People can say, "Well, yeah, actually, I didn't say that or say this earlier, but..." And now I open up the space for people, and I have seen that happen in real time in meetings. So I will say—not even just other lived experience—actual people in the systems that are supporting the systems and doing their jobs. I have opened up space for them to share different ideas. I've opened up space for them to have curiosity about their role and how they are playing into the systems.
Luke Waldo 23:05
This fascinates me. Valerie's truth telling doesn't just challenge the system; it gives permission to people inside the system to question it too. Because here's what she understands: Most people in helping professions didn't get into this work to be adversarial. I know I didn't. We got into it to help, to support, to empower families to thrive. But the narratives, the practices, the policies—the "we've always done it this way"—those things can push us into roles we never chose. They can make us complicit in harm we never intended. And when someone like Valerie speaks her truth, it cracks open possibility for all of us. But here's what we need to understand: Truth telling comes at a cost.
Valerie Frost 23:49
I hate the thought of someone watching me and idealizing my experience and thinking that, "Oh, Valerie just rolls off the tongue for her, truth is so easy and everyone loves what she says." It is not like that at all. It is so—it is so hard to get the truth to be heard. It's so hard. It's hard every single day. You know, people are very defensive when I say the truth. They retreat to their corners. They feel like I'm weaponizing, you know, information and truth against them. They want to create new narratives about me—that I'm critical, that I'm difficult. And you know, these systems, they cling to the power and control; I've said that numerous times.
Luke Waldo 24:31
"They want to create new narratives about me: Critical, difficult, angry, not a team player." These are the labels systems use to dismiss truth tellers, to protect the status quo, to avoid the discomfort of change.
Dr. Bruce Perry 24:59
So the status quo of a group is very hard to change, and there are lots of mechanisms that keep—maintain—the status quo.
Valerie Frost 24:59
And the truth is not in textbooks. The truth is not in a fancy report written by experts. I have the truth. I have the truth, and people like me have the truth. And if I keep doing it, I keep showing the evidence—you know, the anecdotal evidence, the qualitative evidence—and I mentor other people to do the same, that we are going to see change.
Luke Waldo 25:27
This is the power of lived experience. Not just one story told once to make professionals feel moved at a conference, but persistent, systematic, evidence-backed truth telling that refuses to go away. That refuses to be polite when politeness means silence. That refuses to shrink when systems demand conformity. So how might we create more spaces for this kind of truth telling? How might we build structures that center lived experience, not as tokenism, but as legitimate authority? Valerie has a vision.
Valerie Frost 25:57
I see this done well in movement spaces where it's by us, for us, where it's not underneath the umbrella. Because all of these traditional structures, traditional institutions—they're going to have their bureaucracies. They're going to have their red tape. They're going to have people who have been conditioned to the way that it is. You can't take something that exists and add lived experience in and think that lived experience is going to change that structure. What's more likely to happen is that the lived experience are going to be nudged to assimilate into that structure that already has more power. So I do think for lived experience engagement to be successful, it needs to be truly independent.
Luke Waldo 26:46
Independent. By us, for us. Not assimilating into existing structures. This is a profound challenge to how we typically think about systems change, because what Valerie's saying is: You can't change a system from the inside if the system's primary job is to preserve itself. Tshaka Barrows from the Haywood Burns Institute likened the history of our institutions to a set of railroad tracks.
Tshaka Barrows 27:15
The width of them—was it based on study? Is it the most advanced width, you know, that we could come up with, or is it based on the horse and buggy that they used to build that first set of tracks? You know, that's what we're trying to think about it in terms of human services and this opportunity to reimagine.
Luke Waldo 27:37
You have to build something new. You have to co-create. You have to reimagine together what it means to support families, and that requires us to ask: How might we share power, not just invite people to tables we've already built? So let me bring this together, because I don't think representation, belonging, empathy, and truth telling are three separate strategies. I think they're three parts of the same transformation, three threads of the same narrative change. Shary makes people visible who have been invisible. Tori makes people feel what they haven't felt. Valerie makes people hear truths that make new stories possible. And all three are doing something that makes systems uncomfortable.They're refusing to shrink. Shary is refusing to navigate quietly, to assimilate, to make herself smaller for others' comfort. Tori's refusing to let data speak without stories, to let families become numbers instead of people. Valerie's refusing to be polished when rawness is what's needed, to be quiet when truth demands voice. And here's the question I'm sitting with: What if that refusal is the work? What if the goal isn't to make ourselves more palatable to systems, but to make systems more responsive to the people they're meant to serve? What if transformation requires us to stop shrinking and start demanding that systems stretch to meet us where we are? Shary reminds us what we're working toward.
Shary Tran 29:03
And belonging is that outcome, right? That's the result we're hoping to get to when we have inclusion. Like I mentioned before, inclusion is the physical act of inviting somebody, but belonging is the feeling you get when you're there—that that matters and that you truly feel welcome. So I think reframing like these outcomes around belonging, I help—I think it opens up more people to feel like they are accountable for it as well.
Luke Waldo 29:32
Belonging as the outcome. Not just inclusion, not just diversity, but genuine belonging where people can show up fully. And Tori shows us how we get there through curiosity that honors complexity.
Tori Brasher Weathers 29:44
That is a big lesson that I've reflected on, and that's what drives me to continue to do this work and to push in into the communities and lean into the discomfort. Because guess what? Sometimes you're going to have to talk to people that do not have the same thoughts as you, perspectives, and even though they may make you feel a certain kind of way—because I have been there—I go in with the idea of, regardless of how they treat me, I will respect them. This is their perspective. This is their opinion, and I lean into this process with curiosity and not judgment. Because what happened in their life experience that made them have this perspective? What happened along their life journey that made them feel this way or be so passionate?
Luke Waldo 30:44
Curiosity, not judgment, even when perspectives clash. This is how we build bridges without abandoning truth, how we create understanding without excusing harm. And Valerie gives us the North Star.
Valerie Frost 30:57
The narratives that I would want to put forth to counter the harmful ones—you know, going off of "engagement is determined by the end user"—is that families are the experts, systems are the students, lived and living experience is legitimate authority. And when that becomes a starting point, everything else will change.
Luke Waldo 31:19
What would it mean to actually operate from that premise? What would our child welfare system look like if it started from the assumption that parents know their children best? What would our schools look like if they treated families as partners, not problems to solve? What would our workplaces look like if they valued the knowledge that comes from lived experience, not just credentials? How might we redesign everything if we truly believed Valerie's truth? So what does this look like in practice? What can we actually do with what we've heard today? Let me offer you the practical wisdom from each of these three incredible women. From Shary, on how we might challenge ourselves before challenging others:
Shary Tran 32:01
Curiosity and being open to learning—it's about being willing to challenge yourself to have a second and third thought before you take action on anything, right? So asking questions and challenging your own perceptions, having that curiosity to ask questions of others and to want to find out the "why"—so cultural humility, cultural curiosity, and that openness to learning.
Luke Waldo 32:30
From Tori, on what transformation requires:
Tori Brasher Weathers 32:33
I've really learned and have grown in this area as a storytelling facilitator and just as a person in general, is to lean into this work with curiosity and to always leave them with a feeling. That's what's made the most impact in my work.
Luke Waldo 32:53
And from Valerie, on what becomes possible when we give ourselves permission:
Valerie Frost 32:58
I get comments, I get people saying, you know, "I wish I could do that. I wish I can." I'm like, "You can." The minute that you give yourself permission to do it is when you can. Again, nobody can take your truth away. They can't take it. That's what you have. So use it.
Luke Waldo 33:14
Because here's what I've learned from Shary, Tori, and Valerie: Permission doesn't come from systems. Permission comes from within, and transformation doesn't happen when we wait for the right moment or the right credentials or the right platform. It happens when we give ourselves permission to be visible, to create connection, to speak truth, even when it's uncomfortable.
We're nearing the end of the season in which we've heard from so many. We've heard history lessons from Prudence Beidler Carr about how narratives get coded into law; from journalist Claudia Rowe about the responsibility to show complexity, not just crisis; from advocates like Kim Dvorchak and Jared Robinson about organizing for narrative change; from storytellers like Megan McGee about how the art and science of stories make empathy possible; and today, from these three incredible women about representation, belonging, empathy, and truth.
Next episode, we're coming full circle with Jess Moyer from the FrameWorks Institute, who opened the season teaching us about mental models and how narratives shape what we believe is possible. She's going to help us synthesize what we've learned, what patterns emerged across all these conversations, what actually works in narrative change, and how do we move from understanding narratives to transforming them in our own communities, our own work, our own lives.
Because here's what I believe after all these conversations: Representation, belonging, empathy, and truth telling aren't soft skills. They're the foundation of systems change. You can't transform child welfare without seeing overloaded families differently—not as risks to manage, but as experts to learn from. You can't transform our workplaces without feeling what the "only ones" experience—not just intellectually understanding it, but viscerally feeling the weight of that isolation. You can't transform any system without speaking uncomfortable truths about how it's failing the people it's meant to serve. Visible, feeling, speaking truth. That's how we change hearts and minds. That's how we change systems, and that's how we create a world where families don't have to shrink themselves to survive, where they can show up fully, be seen completely, and belong authentically. You've been listening to Overloaded: Understanding Neglect. Until the next time, keep asking: What stories shape how we see the world, and how can we tell them differently?
If you enjoyed today's episode, please share with friends, family, and colleagues. Also, leave us a rating or comment so that we can see your reaction and reach more people. This podcast would not have been possible without the support and talents of Nathan Fink, who is responsible for our technical production. I can't express my gratitude enough to Nathan. I'm also grateful to my team at the Institute for Child and Family Well-being at Children's Wisconsin, who drive the Strong Families, Thriving Children, Connected Communities initiative and contributed to the ideas behind this podcast. Finally, I would like to thank all of our speakers that you have heard today and throughout the podcast for their partnership, their willingness to share their stories and expertise with me and all of you, and their commitment to improving the lives of children and families. I'm Luke Waldo, your host and executive editor. Thanks again for listening and see you next time.