Over the past three seasons of Overloaded we have explored the forces that overload families, from poverty to social isolation, systemic racism to mistrust of our systems. But this season, we're looking at something more invisible, the stories behind these forces and how stories shape what we believe, how we act and who we hold responsible. When those stories get stuck in the past, in fear or in harm, they strengthen those forces and shape the systems and conditions that overload families instead of supporting them. If we want to change outcomes for children and families, we first have to understand the narratives that define how we see them. Those narratives inform our policies and priorities and inspire or shutter what's possible. Changing those narratives takes intention, courage and collective effort. Together, we can tell a story that uplifts instead of blames, that prevents harm before it happens. In season four, we're taking apart the stories that define our families, our communities and our future and building better ones together. You will hear from the inspiring changemakers that I had the honor of interviewing this past summer at the 2025 Prevent Child Abuse America national conference for their podcast The Shift: Voices of Prevention. In this episode and throughout the season, you will hear Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, Dr. Bruce Perry, Desmond Meade, Oregon State Representative Annessa Hartman, Samantha Mellerson, and Tshaka Barrows of the Haywood Burns Institute, and Jessica Moyer from the FrameWorks Institute.
Overloaded: Understanding Neglect Season 4
Show Notes: Episode 1: Tilling the Soil for Social Change
Today’s episode included the following speakers (in the order they appear):
Host: Luke Waldo
Experts:
00:00-01:59 – Luke Waldo - Over the past three seasons of Overloaded we have explored the forces that overload families, from poverty to social isolation, systemic racism to mistrust of our systems. But this season, we're looking at something more invisible, the stories behind these forces…
[Media clips about narratives behind overloaded families and child welfare]
2:00-3:16 – Luke Waldo - Changing those narratives takes intention, courage and collective effort. Together, we can tell a story that uplifts instead of blames, that prevents harm before it happens. In season four, we're taking apart the stories that define our families, our communities and our future and building better ones together.
You will hear from the inspiring changemakers that I had the honor of interviewing this past summer at the 2025 Prevent Child Abuse America national conference for their podcast The Shift: Voices of Prevention.
3:17-3:53 – Jessica Moyer – “What we're seeking to change are things that are really entrenched, really embedded. I mean, culture doesn't move quickly.”
3:53-3:58 – Luke Waldo – What is a narrative?
3:58-6:23 – Jessica Moyer – “Narratives are made up of lots of different stories. So narratives are kind of patterns in stories.”
Defining narrative, stories, mental models, and framing.
“Which ones do we want to kind of cultivate and activate and queue up and utilize, and which are the ones that are holding us back? Which are the ones that are maybe being activated by default but not really helping us? Which ones are unproductive? And how do we steer clear of those? And we do think of it in terms of kind of like we love a good explanatory metaphor at FrameWorks, but we think of it as kind of like tilling the soil for social change. So it's about laying the groundwork that will enable all kinds of decisions and collective actions that will have an impact. But the change that we're seeking is slow, and it happens over a long period of time.”
6:23-7:04 – Luke Waldo – “…narrative is such a powerful force that it impacts how we aspire, where we put our empathy, and even how we react to how trauma affects us and those we love.”
7:04-7:21 – Dr. Nadine Burke Harris – “Let me tell you one of these stories that we've been telling ourselves, one of the stories that we've been telling ourselves as a society is that talking about trauma and adversity does harm.”
7:21-7:58 – Luke Waldo – Even when evidence changes or even our realities, old stories linger, shaping what we see, the way we act and what we ignore. But why? Or maybe how is a better question. How do our mindsets and the narratives that may shape or change them work? How does it all function?
7:58-9:34– Jessica Moyer – “Mindsets are those deeply held, kind of latent, sort of default patterns and thinking they're different from public opinions, because we're not always even aware that we're holding them. They're sort of kind of lenses on the world that we share, that influence how we see the world, how we process new information, and they are durable.”
“Framing has to do with that, the way that we tell stories, the way that we present information. Framing involves lots of different choices in how we communicate. And anytime we're communicating, we're framing. So framing involves things like, what do we put into a particular message? What are the things that we don't say? What tone do we adopt? What values do we appeal to? How do we explain particular concepts? What examples do we draw on to make a particular point or to explain a particular concept?”
9:34-9:58 – Luke Waldo – “Let’s imagine this all as a tree. If mindsets are the roots, narratives are the trunk. And were we to step back … way back… far enough to see it all … framing is how we describe the forest.”
9:58-10:24 – Jessica Moyer – “Choices, but a lot of times, we're making those choices without realizing that we're making them or making them without realizing what impact they'll have.”
10:24-10:38 – Luke Waldo – “And yet, over and over again, we are often making the same choices, choosing the same narratives and treading the same path. Why is that?”
10:38-10:49 – Samantha Mellerson – “Somehow we've become so conflict averse that we dare not present an idea that's different or that may be perceived as against the norm of what's happening, right?”
10:49-11:03 - Dr. Bruce Perry – “I think part of the issue is that people tend to view the world and problems from their frame of reference, from where they're standing.”
11:03-11:42 - Luke Waldo – But what I love about Frameworks’ approach, and what I’ve learned through Overloaded, is that framing isn’t manipulation, or coercion or even persuasion. It’s stewardship.
It’s about creating the conditions, the mental space where truth and empathy can coexist. Or even better: where it can thrive. How might we do that in the face of harmful, dominant narratives?
11:42-16:13 - Jessica Moyer – Exploration of the individualism and “care matters most” mindsets.
16:13-16:44 - Luke Waldo – “Those mental models are then reinforced by narratives, which can lead to how we behave, pass laws, on-board practices and procedures; it reinforces how we see our overloaded parents, caregivers, and families.”
16:44-17:32 - Dr. Bruce Perry – “And so by and large, really, you know, 40, 50, 60 years ago, uh, the majority of people that were solving problems around education, child welfare, mental health were looking at it through the lenses of an adult.”
17:32-19:00 - Luke Waldo – Story about fatherhood and the “empty vessel” myth.
19:00-19:28 - Annessa Hartman – “I think one common story I often hear from people is that we keep people poor so that they can stay on these services.”
19:28-20:23 – Luke Waldo – “Time and time again, history tells us that when we accept dominant narratives uncritically, we make decisions, often motivated or informed by fear or suspicion, not understanding or empathy.”
[Media clips about overloaded families and child welfare]
20:23-23:32 - Jessica Moyer – “What we found to be most effective in the end was to sort of redefine care itself, to define care much more broadly, to define care as something that is a collective endeavor.”
23:32-24:09 - Luke Waldo – “And what Jess is saying is that by broadening our definition of, in this case, care, we turn empathy into infrastructure for better, more constructive narratives. This is where narrative becomes strategy.”
24:09-24:16 - Annessa Hartman – “We need people who understand what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck.”
24:16-24:32 - Dr. Bruce Perry – “Form real relationships.”
24:32-25:05 - Desmond Meade – “…if we can get people to love who, what they despise the most, or who they hate the most, then they're capable of loving everyone, right?”
25:05-26:47 - Dr. Nadine Burke Harris – “The more you just kind of scrape under the surface and start to look at how these odds are set, right, the more, the easier it is you to recognize the embedding of some of these structural inequities in our society.”
26:47-27:17 – Luke Waldo - When we tell stories that reflect our interdependence, we make it possible for systems to act on that truth.
A final, if not nagging, question Season 4 seeks to answer: How do we do that?
27:17-29:01 – Jessica Moyer – “So expanding that concept of care to something that's collective, inclusive and expansive, I think, is something that everybody can do.”
29:01-30:40 - Luke Waldo - Narrative change is patient, strategic work. It’s about returning, again and again, to the same truth: that families thrive when communities do.
Every conversation, every story, every small policy that affirms that truth, it all tills the soil. And over time, that soil grows something new: belonging, stability, and shared possibility.
I would like to again thank Prevent Child Abuse America for their partnership and the opportunity to co-host their podcast, The Shift: Voices of Prevention, at their 2025 national conference. If you’d like to hear the full episodes where the many voices and clips that you heard today came from, find The Shift: Voices of Prevention wherever you listen to this podcast or you can find the links below.
In our next episode, Jess Moyer joins me in the studio to go deeper. We'll explore the mechanics of how narratives work, how mindsets get activated, how stories reinforce or challenge those patterns, and most importantly, how we can make strategic choices in our framing to shift culture and policy. If you've been wondering how to actually apply these ideas in your work, your conversations, or your community, episode two is where we dig into the how.
30:40 - Luke – Closing Credits
Join the conversation and connect with us!
Luke Waldo00:14
Welcome to season 4 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.
Over the past three seasons of Overloaded we have explored the forces that overload families, from poverty to social isolation, systemic racism to mistrust of our systems. But this season, we're looking at something more invisible, the stories behind these forces…
Speaker 101:09
This program will discuss physical and sexual abuse and may be disturbing for some audiences. Viewer discretion is advised.
Speaker 201:16
Police say while the children didn't show any signs of malnourishment or physical abuse, they were frightened.
Speaker 301:24
Ashley Cross says 76% of those cases last year, over 5000 families were unfounded with no evidence of abuse or neglect.
Speaker 401:32
The total cost 13.7 billion tax paying dollars.
Speaker 501:36
Kentucky is a mandatory reporting state. That means if you suspect abuse or neglect of a child, you are required by law to make a report.
Speaker 601:46
CPS investigations run 60 days at least, with investigators pulling children out of school and keeping families apart, families already living on the edge,
Speaker 701:53
We are actually doing the opposite of what we want when it comes to keeping children and families safe…
Luke Waldo01:59
… and how stories shape what we believe, how we act and who we hold responsible.
When those stories get stuck in the past, in fear or in harm, they strengthen those forces and shape the systems and conditions that overload families instead of supporting them. If we want to change outcomes for children and families, we first have to understand the narratives that define how we see them. Those narratives inform our policies and priorities and inspire or shutter what's possible.
Changing those narratives takes intention, courage and collective effort. Together, we can tell a story that uplifts instead of blames, that prevents harm before it happens. In season four, we're taking apart the stories that define our families, our communities and our future and building better ones together.
You will hear from the inspiring changemakers that I had the honor of interviewing this past summer at the 2025 Prevent Child Abuse America national conference for their podcast The Shift.
In this episode and throughout the season, you will hear Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, Dr. Bruce Perry, Desmond Meade, Oregon State Representative Annessa Hartman, Samantha Mellerson, and Tshaka Barrows of the Haywood Burns Institute, and Jessica Moyer from the FrameWorks Institute.
Jessica Moyer03:17
I love that setup, actually, because you're right. What we're talking about is kind of an ambitious endeavor.
Luke Waldo03:24
That was Jess Moyer, Senior Principal Strategist at FrameWorks, whose work is to well, she can explain it.
Jessica Moyer03:31
And what we're seeking to change are things that are really entrenched, really embedded. I mean, culture doesn't move quickly. Maybe opinions do attitudes do, but culture changes much more slowly. Takes a lot of effort, a lot of of time, a lot of a lot of different factors kind of working together.
Luke Waldo03:53
But what exactly is a narrative?
Jessica Moyer03:58
We can think of narratives as patterns as well, but patterns in discourse, patterns in talking. Narratives and mindsets often kind of reflect one another, like how we're thinking. The patterns in in thought and patterns and discourse. Mindsets reflect how we think rather than what we think. They're not topical. They kind of are models of reasoning that we draw on to make sense of particular topics. You can see a lot of similarities in those two things, but it's helpful to distinguish them too, particularly when we're talking about which ones are levers for social change.
Luke Waldo04:30
Narratives then are the water we swim in, because throughout the course of our lives, they've saturated how we think, what we believe and what we think is possible. They are mental shortcuts that help us make sense of the world, and sometimes the barriers that keep us from seeing it clearly. And they are made up of, well, again, we have an expert for that.
Jessica Moyer04:50
Narratives are made up of lots of different stories. So narratives are kind of patterns in stories. And when we tell stories, we are sometimes intentionally but often unintentionally, kind of reinforcing particular narratives, or in other cases, contesting particular narratives, by the kinds of stories that we tell and the ways that we tell those stories. And then framing has to do with that, the way that we tell stories, the way that we present information. Framing involves lots of different choices in how we communicate and anytime we're communicating, we're framing. So there's, there are a lot of options to work, to work with there.
And I think part of the work of shifting culture, kind of creating social change, is about understanding that cultural landscape, understanding what, what are the different mindsets that we share, and which ones are productive in a particular moment. Which ones do we want to kind of cultivate and activate and queue up and utilize, and which are the ones that are holding us back? Which are the ones that are maybe being activated by default but not really helping us? Which ones are unproductive? And how do we steer clear of those? And we do think of it in terms of kind of like we love a good explanatory metaphor at FrameWorks, but we think of it as kind of like tilling the soil for social change. So it's about laying the groundwork that will enable all kinds of decisions and collective actions that will have an impact. But the change that we're seeking is slow, and it happens over a long period of time.
Luke Waldo06:23
So for me, this is where things get really interesting. When Jessica talked about tilling the soil, I started to see narrative change differently. When I started on this journey, I thought that narrative change was about persuading and convincing people to see things differently, but tilling the soil paints a different path, one of creating the conditions for new ways of thinking to grow. And in some ways, it lessens the pressure I felt to change the course of someone else's journey, because narrative is such a powerful force that it impacts how we aspire, where we put our empathy, and even how we react to how trauma affects us and those we love.
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris 07:04
Let me tell you one of these stories that we've been telling ourselves, one of the stories that we've been telling ourselves as a society is that talking about trauma and adversity does harm.
Luke Waldo07:21
That was Dr. Nadine Burke Harris, an award-winning physician researcher and former California Surgeon General who has taught us so much about the effects of adverse childhood experiences and toxic stress. And Dr. Burke Harris's point shows how pervasive and powerful a narrative can be. Even when evidence changes or even our realities, old stories linger, shaping what we see, the way we act and what we ignore. But why? Or maybe how is a better question. How do our mindsets and the narratives that may shape or change them work? How does it all function? Once again, Jess Moyer.
Jessica Moyer07:58
So, mindsets are those deeply held, kind of latent, sort of default patterns and thinking they're different from public opinions, because we're not always even aware that we're holding them. They're sort of kind of lenses on the world that we share, that influence how we see the world, how we process new information, and they are durable, like the same ones have been around for a really long time. They're kind of ingrained in our culture. We have, we hold a lot of different ones. We hold a lot of different mindsets at the same time, sometimes even conflicting mindsets. And you know, we can be thinking through one, activating one in a particular moment, and then in the next moment, activating a different one.
So, framing has to do with that, the way that we tell stories, the way that we present information. Framing involves lots of different choices in how we communicate. And anytime we're communicating, we're framing. So framing involves things like, what do we put into a particular message? What are the things that we don't say? What tone do we adopt? What values do we appeal to? How do we explain particular concepts? What examples do we draw on to make a particular point or to explain a particular concept?
So framing is sort of lots of those little decisions, millions of them that we're making all the time that have to do with the kind of packaging and presentation of information. And framing affects how we tell our stories, which affects which narratives we reinforce or which ones we challenge, and that has a relationship with how we think, collectively, with our with our shared cultural mindsets.
Luke Waldo09:34
Let’s imagine this all as a tree. If mindsets are the roots, narratives are the trunk. And were we to step back … way back… far enough to see it all … framing is how we describe the forest.
It’s how we take what we see and shape it into understanding and, if we choose, policy, practice, and empathy.
That is something that can get lost in all of this - choice.
Jessica Moyer09:58
…talk about framing as a choice. Choices, but a lot of times, we're making those choices without realizing that we're making them, or making them without realizing what impact they'll have. And a big part of being strategic as a communicator, being intentional in how we frame is understanding both what the landscape is that we're navigating, but also what the what the frame effects will be, what the implications of those different choices will be.
Luke Waldo10:24
And yet, over and over again, we are often making the same choices, choosing the same narratives and treading the same path. Why is that? This is Samantha Mellerson, Co-Executive Director of the Haywood Burns Institute.
Samantha Mellerson 10:38
Somehow we've become so conflict averse that we dare not present an idea that's different or that may be perceived as against the norm of what's happening, right?
Dr. Bruce Perry10:49
That's a good question. I think part of the issue is that people tend to view the world and problems from their frame of reference, from where they're standing.
Luke Waldo11:03
And that was Dr. Bruce Perry, renowned psychiatrist, senior fellow of the Child Trauma Academy in Houston, Texas, and author of many books, including What Happened to You? which he co-authored with Oprah Winfrey. We will hear more from him a bit later.
But what I love about Frameworks’ approach, and what I’ve learned through Overloaded, is that framing isn’t manipulation, or coercion or even persuasion.
It’s stewardship.
It’s about creating the conditions, the mental space where truth and empathy can coexist. Or even better: where it can thrive.
So … How might we do that in the face of harmful, dominant narratives?
[Jess Moyer saying “I like how you frame that…”]
Thank you, Jess…
Jessica Moyer11:42
Jess, um, I mean, probably a good one to mention, because it is so easily activated, it's dominant. It kind of comes into play in terms of shaping our thinking no matter what issue or topic we're talking about. But it's the mindset of individualism. It's a mindset that just sort of assumes that whatever outcomes we're experiencing can be traced back to the decisions and the behaviors and the actions or inactions of individual people. So it's a mindset that kind of obscures the role of context and structural those structural factors that actually shape outcomes and also shape the decisions that individuals make, because even the behaviors of individual people are an interaction between those folks and the surround, their surroundings, and the sort of the incentive structure that they're exposed to, the things that make it easier to make one decision over another decision.
But when we're thinking through this mindset of individualism, it's really hard to see the importance of that context and those contextual factors, and it means, I mean, we're here because we're talking about children and well-being and how to ensure that children and families can thrive. That mindset comes into play when we're talking about children, because it's so easy for us to, as a culture, to sort of by default, assume that the outcomes of a particular child are directly attributable to what the particular individuals in that child's life did or didn't do, most notably, the parents, right? What did the parents do that they shouldn't have done, or what didn't they do that they should have done to lead to better outcomes. And it perpetuates cycles of blame, and also that mindset is hazardous, because it kind of pushes out of the discussion that it's off our radar, how we can make better decisions collectively, what kind of policies we need to have in place to create supports for families and for parents and direct caregivers. That individualism mindset makes all of that, those important contextual factors and policy decisions harder to see.
I can mention some of the other ones too that are at play and kind of in the mix. But the big one, the one that is sort of at the forefront of our thinking as a culture is the idea that care matters most. We sometimes talk about this as the centrality of care mindset, but it's the idea that that's what kids need. You know, above and beyond all else, children need to be loved and cared for by the adults who are responsible for them. So, it's really closely related to that individualism mindset that I talked about that's kind of more general and can be applied to lots of different things, but it comes into play here and in terms of the focus on care, but also this sort of the particular conception of care.
So, so this mindset involves care in us in the specific sense of referring to interpersonal relationships, the care that an individual adult provides to an individual child, and obviously that is super important. I don't want to diminish that at all. I don't think anyone would argue that that's essential, and that probably is the most important thing in any child's life. The sort of challenge here, in terms of how we think about kind of our as a culture, and in terms of public discourse around caring for children, and what children need to thrive is if we're so focused on that interpersonal relationship between a child and the adult who's responsible for them. I mean, parents are the ones that come to mind most sort of immediately, but the direct caregivers in that child's life.
So also, you know, other family members, or a childcare provider, a teacher, if we're only thinking about what children need through the lens of those individual adults, we're missing all that kind of context that I talked about earlier. We're missing, we're sort of unable to see how children also need things like access to healthy, affordable food, to stable, healthy housing, to, you know, clean water, clean environments, to green parks, places to run around and be active. All kinds of things, right? All kinds of decisions that we make as a society impact the lives of children in in significant ways, but that sort of care matters most mindset obscures all of those other factors. Kind of pushes them out of you.
Luke Waldo16:13
Those two mindsets, individualism and “care matters most”, are the roots of so many policies that overload families instead of supporting them.
They shrink the problem down to a parent’s willpower instead of expanding it to our collective responsibility.
Those mental models are then reinforced by narratives, which can lead to how we behave, pass laws, on-board practices and procedures; it reinforces how we see our overloaded parents, caregivers, and families.
Once again, Dr. Bruce Perry
Dr. Bruce Perry16:44
And so by and large, really, you know, 40, 50, 60 years ago, uh, the majority of people that were solving problems around education, child welfare, mental health were looking at it through the lenses of an adult. And you know, there was some lip service given to children, but children were kind of viewed as these uh relatively passive little creatures. Uh they were viewed as resilient, so you can say things around them, and when they're babies, they can't talk, so they don't understand, which is not really true. So we had a fundamental misunderstanding about um these things that we now know about the incredible malleability and power of early childhood.
Luke Waldo17:32
The truth is, I’m guilty of it myself. When my son was born, I was overwhelmed with joy and fascination and hope, and consequently, stress as I felt that hope, that hope that his life would be full of happiness, awe, adventure, and lived with the values that I held in the highest. I, of course, felt stress because I would have to teach him, show him, fill him up with the stories and lessons that would bring those values to life in him.
Spoiler: Kids aren’t empty vessels. And fathers aren’t the only people, much less experiences, cultures to fill kids up. So my dreams for my child will, at times, come into direct conflict with the lessons he is learning from his peers, teachers, books, or travel. So as Dr. Perry shared, we should reflect on these narratives that shape how we behave because if we buy into the empty vessel narrative, I promise you, as a father, you’ll be disappointed when your child doesn’t accept your every last narrative as truth.
On the other side of this reality, as we will hear from Oregon State Representative Annessa Hartman, when we create and reinforce narratives so that they become dominant, often unchecked and therefore accepted as truth, we build systems and services that are designed to benefit those that are seen as the protagonists of the story and often leave behind those that are unseen or othered.
Representative Annessa Hartman.
Annessa Hartman19:00
I think one common story I often hear from people is that we keep people poor so that they can stay on these services. As I continued on, I probably, like, you know, a couple months in, I realized that when we talk about, particularly when we talk about the family unit, when we talk about human services as like DHS or CPS or, you know, or child welfare, they often are just looking at the child and child has to get worse.
Luke Waldo19:28
Time and time again, history tells us that when we accept dominant narratives uncritically, we make decisions, often motivated or informed by fear or suspicion, not understanding or empathy.
Speaker 119:40
Our state was ranked number one for child maltreatment by the US Department of Health and Human Services
Speaker 2
A bold new law in a New Jersey suburb, igniting debate among parents. This is the Gloucester township now says parents can be held accountable for their kid’s unruly public behavior, and under the new law. All could face up to 90 days in prison.
Speaker 3
Those stresses are the focus of a recent warning from the US Surgeon General.
Speaker 4
Parents and caregivers in America are under pressure.
Luke Waldo20:10
But there's good news, we can change those narratives. It's a choice, [Jess Moyer saying “lots of different choices …”] in how we communicate, but to do it, narrative change begins with acknowledging and naming those defaults, and daring to imagine another way.
Jessica Moyer20:23
What we found to be most effective in the end was to sort of redefine care itself, to define care much more broadly, to define care as something that is a collective endeavor. And actually the good news is that that really is effective, that has a lot of potential, and it's something that has positive frame effects across the political spectrum, across lots of different demographic groups, across regions. There's it kind of makes sense to folks that we we can easily kind of take up a caregiver disposition. We can kind of think about, yeah, I want what's best for kids, for all kids.
So as as communicators, as folks who want to, who are working to productively shift culture and shift the policy landscape and move things forward, we can be intentional about our framing and really kind of lean into the those collective aspects of care. So we can, for example, we can talk about particular policies or particular programs as forms of caregiving and kind of pull on that lexicon of care. We can talk about, you know, raise up, provide for, nourish, you know, use the different types of words that kind of get at the that idea of care and how we care for kids. We can use all of those different kinds of words and phrases to talk about those collective actions, the policy level, structure level, decisions that we know are needed and would be helpful, and then, and kind of vice versa, talk about, when we're talking about caring for kids, being sure to pull in some of those policy examples and kind of there's this tendency to want to give people something that kind of brings the issue home for them, puts it in their living room, so to speak.
The more effective strategy here is actually to prompt folks to get outside of their living room to see themselves as part of the broader community, including parents and direct caregivers. We can that's another strategy. We can tell stories that put parents in context, because parents are are responsible for their kids, but parents are lots of other things too. Parents have jobs. Parents walk down the street. Parents have hobbies. Parents want to live in a society that is healthy and thriving for their kids and for the themselves and for you know, it's easy to kind of divide up society between and think about discrete groups, parents and non parents, or children versus adults, but the more we can kind of draw connections between all those different folks and help us see our shared interests, our shared kind of fates, that's a really effective strategy for building a collective sense of responsibility to care for kids, and also collective efficacy, like a sense that we can make a difference here. We can all be caregivers. We can all be effective caregiver caregivers and and make a positive difference in the lives of all children. We all kind of want to feel like we have that potential.
Luke Waldo23:32
Jess’ words here give me so much hope. We want to feel like we have potential. It's why those first days as a father felt so limitless. The potential for this new life was endless, and when I accepted that so many would be caring for my child alongside my wife and me, I first mourned the loss of my initial vision, then realized the gift that I had in the family and community of caregivers that would help us raise him.
And what Jess is saying is that by broadening our definition of, in this case, care, we turn empathy into infrastructure for better, more constructive narratives. This is where narrative becomes strategy.
Annessa Hartman24:09
We need people who understand what it's like to live paycheck to paycheck. We need people who know what it's like to have a substance use issue or that in your family.
Dr. Bruce Perry24:16
Form real relationships, and then you have to do work together. You have to be in the work with them. And so once people see the credibility of, you know, form a relationship, see that there's some credibility to what you're saying, then it can really take off.
Desmond Meade24:32
I push it up. I think is, is slowly just moving people along and having people see, you know, a reason to love someone, for lack of a better word. I think that, you know, and I said it before that, you know, I think the key is, if we can get people to love who, what they despise the most, or who they hate the most, then they're capable of loving everyone, right? And so how do we slowly get people to love what they're scared of?
Dr. Nadine Burke Harris 25:05
The more you just kind of scrape under the surface and start to look at how these odds are set, right, the more, the easier it is you you to recognize the embedding of some of these structural inequities in our society. I mean, I think that one of the things that's really challenging is a recognition that those structures are not accidental. They didn't, they didn't just turn out that way, right? And so I don't totally, I don't have great answers as to how we transform these structural inequities, other than number one, to raise our voices. Number two to you know, science is my love language and to be able to show to the powers that be the tremendous cost to our society in ways that folks might not immediately recognize, but that needs to be paired with a desire for all of our communities to be doing well and thriving.
Luke Waldo26:47
Representative Annessa Hartman, Dr. Bruce Perry, Desmond Meade, and Dr. Nadine Burke Harris.
Building better narratives isn’t about slogans or spin. It’s about reorienting toward shared humanity.
When we tell stories that reflect our interdependence, we make it possible for systems to act on that truth.
A final, if not nagging, question Season 4 seeks to answer: How do we do that?
Where’s Jess? Here she is…
Jessica Moyer27:17
I guess I would say there are three things to keep in mind and to sort of to bring into communications, which there are lots of different ways to do it, but three sort of guiding principles that anyone can use and that are broadly applicable.
So the first one is just to think about and talk about care as something that is collective. It's shared. It's a shared endeavor.
The second one is to think and talk about care as something that is inclusive, meaning we need to talk about all children, children in every community, from every demographic group, which is really different from appealing to folks to think about what's in the best interest of the children that they are responsible for. So taking an inclusive approach to all of our children, all of society's children.
And then the third one is that care is is expansive, because, and you you kind of touched on this a little bit earlier, but it's so easy to think about sort of children's issues and kind of marginalize what what matters for children, or what decisions we think about impacting children. But if we think about caring for children in a way that's expansive, it means everything's on the table. We need to kind of take that lens to every decision that we make together, how will this impact children? And kind of think through that question. Because all the decisions we make about society have some impact on children in some way, in the same way they impact all of us, their social issues and that they touch all of our lives.
So expanding that concept of care to something that's collective, inclusive and expansive, I think, is something that everybody can do.
Luke Waldo29:01
Narrative change is patient, strategic work.
It’s about returning, again and again, to the same truth: that families thrive when communities do.
Every conversation, every story, every small policy that affirms that truth, it all tills the soil.
And over time, that soil grows something new: belonging, stability, and shared possibility.
I would like to again thank Prevent Child Abuse America for their partnership and the opportunity to co-host their podcast, The Shift, at their 2025 national conference. If you’d like to hear the full episodes where the many voices and clips that you heard today came from, find The Shift wherever you listen to this podcast or you can find the links in the show notes.
Today, through the many voices from The Shift, we explored what narratives are, those invisible patterns in thinking that shape how we see families, children and our individual and collective responsibility. But understanding these concepts is just the beginning.
In our next episode, Jess Moyer joins me in the studio to go deeper. We'll explore the mechanics of how narratives work, how mindsets get activated, how stories reinforce or challenge those patterns, and most importantly, how we can make strategic choices in our framing to shift culture and policy. If you've been wondering how to actually apply these ideas in your work, your conversations, or your community, episode two is where we dig into the how.
You've been listening to Overloaded: Understanding Neglect.
Until next time, keep asking, What stories shape how we see the world, and how can we tell them differently?
Closing Credits 30:40
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.