Erica: Hey, girl. By now, you know I have Her Collective, my online community for ambitious women who are done doing it alone. Her Collective is for the women who are smart, capable, and driven, but they find themselves stuck on the sticky floors like self doubt, burnout, and waiting for permission that quite honestly never comes. Inside HER, you get more than motivation. You get real support, real strategies, and real momentum. We work on things like clarifying what you want now and what's coming next, building confidence without burning yourself out, navigating hard conversations, career moves, and leadership moments with clarity, and surrounding yourself with women who actually get it. This isn't about hustling harder. It's about moving intentionally with the right tools and the right people in your corner. If you're ready to stop spinning, start choosing yourself, and build a career in life that actually feels aligned, I'd love to welcome you inside her collective. You can learn more and join us at www.joinhercollective.com. Because honestly, girl, you were never meant to do this alone.

Amy: I think nothing in life, at least for me, had prepared me to recalibrate. I use that word sometimes, my heart and my soul, my mind into developing inner strength to move forward when you feel a bit paralyzed by fear. And after Jake was born, there were so many things that were so fear inducing for a new mom.

Erica: I'm Erica Rooney, and today, you are in for a treat. I have Amy O'Dell with me, and Amy is the founder and executive director of Jacob's Ladder, a neurodevelopmental school and therapy center, and the founder of Ahava, a digital platform for human flourishing. She is certainly one of the most genuine and wholehearted people that I have ever had hosted on this podcast to date. So I am so excited to have you. Amy, welcome. Thank you for being here.

Amy: Erica, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to be here, and I love your platform, and I love the conversations that you have. And it's just a delight to be here. Thank you.

Erica: Oh, thank you so much. So you have an incredible journey, and I would love to start with Jacob's Ladder. You created Jacob's Ladder back in 1998, I believe, and it's named after your son. So tell me about it.

Amy: Alright. I'd love to. Jacob was born in 1993, so our story actually started in '93. He's 29 years old this year. And I was in the field, Erica. I was in the field of child adolescent psychiatric care up in a hospital up in the Blue Ridge Mountains when he came along, and I have a daughter that's three years older than Jacob. Her name is Aubrey, and we were toiling through life as we knew it. My pregnancy with Jake was high risk and a little complicated, and I was a naive young mother and don't really think at that point in time that the conversation around high risk pregnancy and complication had really sunk into my consciousness about what that might mean after delivery. And I say that because I think there's a lot of people out there who might find themselves in a similar situation at some point or know someone who is in a similar situation. And I think nothing in life, at least for me, had prepared me to really recalibrate. I use that word sometimes my heart and my soul, my mind into developing I guess I would use the word inner strength, maybe. Do move forward when you feel a bit paralyzed by fear. And after Jake was born, there were so many things that were so fear inducing for a new mom, and he had so many struggles with his both physically with his heart and his vision and kidney function. Lot lot of things physically, but also his diagnosis was ultimately the basic development of the leg. And I was doing what we all do, going to various appointments, getting all sorts of evaluations and opinions, but I found myself leaving those appointments not feeling empowered, not feeling clear, and having no sense of peace about a direction to move forward. And I'm not wired for that. Like, I don't like that. And, and one day I went and dropped Jacob off. He was probably about eighteen nineteen months old. Per my recollection dropped him off at a little preschool where we were living in was heading off to work to I was director of child analysis psychiatric unit. And I looked through the window of that preschool as I was leaving, and he I saw him topple over. So he had been sitting on the floor. And think about this. He's almost two years old. He topples over on the floor, and he didn't have the motor planning to get himself back up to a seated position. And so it just so happened when I looked through the window as I'm leaving, I see that he's toppled over and all the other kids are up running around, playing, excited to get the day started, and he was in a little heap on the floor. I thought to myself, there was just something that so deeply struck my heart that day, and there wasn't even a moment of pause. It was today, we're gonna be starting a new pack. Today, we're doing something different. There was no other option, and it took me a split second, turned around, went back in, picked him up, put him on my hip, told them we love them, and I love the school. But I'm gonna need to do something different. Put him in the car seat, drove to work and drove into my to the hospital, walked into the CEO's office and resigned that day. And I didn't even have a plan. I didn't have a plan other than we're just not doing this anymore. And from that point forward, there was just this absolute driving passion in my heart and mind to understand. Meaning, how do you take this little beautiful child, this beautiful boy child, Jacob, and understand all of the strengths that he has because there was such a he was such a connector. Like, he even though his language was delayed and there were so many things that weren't as they should be, he was so present and so connected. And so I looked at those strengths, then I felt. But with all these other little pieces, and I call them brokenness, not in a negative sense, but just how we help put together your puzzle pieces. And so I started reading and researching, and I came across a lot of studies on neuroplasticity. And I read about the work of some pioneers in the field, and that was a long time ago. That was, like, thirty years ago. Right? And there weren't very many people talking about neuroplasticity thirty years ago. And in fact, the people who were a bit frowned upon. And so I studied the work, visited a few people, asked some questions and then started really applying what I had learned in my earlier career through the hospital and evaluation process and those kind of things. And then what I was seeing that seemed innovative and powerful to me just in a couple of spots, people working with people with brain injuries or stroke rehabilitation. And then I applied those principles to him as I study the central nervous system in the brain and how the brain operates and how you receive and process information. Those kind of things. Long story short, you can work with him one on one for fourteen years, seventy eight hours a day. And it was such a labor of love because I instead of feeling like a powerless victim, I felt, wow. I was worried and anxious and depleted of energy above four. So I'd rather work hard and still be a little tired, but be tired because I actually did something meaningful and helpful and moved the situation forward. And so it was a good tired and not a bad tired, not a depleted tired, but just wow. Okay. We did what we need to do today. And he just started coming together in the most beautiful ways. Beautiful, tangible, measurable. I was like, wow. And then he was my teacher in terms of the power of the human psyche, soul, body, mind to transform towards wholeness. I believe that with all my heart that each of us, no matter what our situations are, have this innate ability, raw material, whatever you wanna call it, Thio to move forward toward use the word wholeness, use the word health, use the word well-being, use the word whatever you wanna use, but transform towards something that is promising. And because I saw that happen for he was five, six, seven years old, I started to redo these little seminars. I would call them and speak to other parents, and and sometimes two people showed up. Sometimes 50 people showed up. Sometimes one person showed up. But what I recall from that time is even if one person showed up, there was a conversation about possibility, and then I would have an opportunity to work with that child and that family in some way and then see the same thing happen for them. And so, really, the school Jacob's Ladder now, Roswell, Georgia, we serve over a 100 kids a day here on campus, but we also have kids all over the world that we serve through caseload management, and we call that program the community of care. And do the same thing, and we've refined the work through the years, of course, and added so many things as the field of neuroscience has expanded and matured, and and we try to keep up with all that so that we are always doing the thing that could be the most powerful. And so that's how the Jacob's Ladder Institution was formed. That's our story.

Erica: Yeah. That is it's a powerful story. Right? And it's a story of so many different things of resilience, of a mother's love, of just changing the world. And you said brokenness, but in a good way, and it made me think there is a Japanese art called Kintsugi, and I could be pronouncing that wrong. But the Japanese prepare or they repair their broken dishes or pottery with actually with gold because they think it makes it more beautiful. And so it just

Amy: that.

Erica: Yeah. It just it made me think of that because it's saying that it's not truly broken, and now it's even more beautiful. That's right.

Amy: And when you say that about repaired with gold, I'll tell you that as we speak, I'm sitting at a place on campus where I'm sitting in front of a big glass picture window, and I'm watching my 29 year old, Jacob, teaching a group of five students. They're out on the basketball court. So the goal that you just spoke of is the goal that I see every day as he works to dive in and give to other people what he has to get. And that's his goal. And I think what a beautiful metaphor that you just gave because that is exactly what I see. And people that have gone through something tough and have come through it in some way, shape or form. And then in all the little cracks or crevices, there is absolute gold to then be given to impact the world in a better way. And that's one of the cornerstones of really the work here. Our core values of our hope, truth, and love, and it really is about holding hope for transformation, dealing with people in truth, even if the truth is a very difficult truth. It's not just a field with places. So, wow, let's dive into the difficulty of the reality that we're now finding ourselves in, whether that's one little child, conversation with a family, conversation between staff members, where it might be. But also, most importantly, is the love aspect, which is, I believe we're here to love and give compassion to other people. And so if you take, I usually say, I mean, it's part of the work is it's the union of science and love. So you bring your love, patience, compassion and make a commitment to walk alongside another person in whatever need they have. But you combine that with the latest in neuroscience and those two things together for me, I think, are just unstoppable in terms of what the possibility is on the other side.

Erica: Absolutely. Absolutely. Now I can imagine that and you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I can imagine that twenty nine, thirty years ago, you probably did not envision this as your life's purpose.

Amy: My honest answer to that would be that I think that I had a moment where I saw this possibility, and it was pretty brief. But I honestly feel like there was a moment, and I could tell you exactly where I was standing and exactly what I was doing in the moment where I felt like, wow. This is a real there's something here. But then I would tell you that beyond that one sort of moment, it came down to the moments of the day. Right? And sometimes trying to survive the moments of the day and the grittiness of it. And I was preparing something for training a couple of days ago, and I was thinking about it, which sort of relates to your question, which is the process of preparedness to be sitting where I am looking out at this campus and looking at the people doing the work and the kids doing the work. I didn't know when I was sitting on my den floor with Jacob on a map made out of a blanket. Right? That and doing the physical work. Like, all that I knew then is to just stay focused and committed to that process. And and I added up. I did the math on twenty nine years of that kind of just stay true to the moment in the process, and it's over 15,000,500 moments. So it really became Mawr about it wasn't for me that I had to reach this ultimate goal of building x, y, or z or having x, y, or z. It was that I had to stay committed to the process of preparedness, whatever that meant. And it is not usually very glamorous, at least in my circumstance. It has not been. It doesn't always look glamorous. It looks like what it looks like. But, I would also say if your heart has a calling or a longing towards a purpose, towards a giving of your life in something or your work or your whatever, is that if that nudge is in your heart, that I hope our culture never convinces people that if it's not easy or it doesn't feel good or that you're not elevated in some way, that it's wrong. It's the wrong path. Because I would argue that it's all those things, all that process of preparedness, no matter how grimy or dirty it might look on some days, is what actually refines you and prepares you to step into your ultimate promotion, your ultimate form of leadership, your ultimate whatever.

Erica: You have such a story, like I said, of resilience and all the children that you work with as well. When you were in those moments and in those gritty days, did you ever feel like giving up?

Amy: Oh, shoot. Yeah. I'd be embarrassed if people actually saw how many days I was a public tears or just that in a bit of despair or confusion, like not being clear what the next step was or how much longer I could hold out because there were financial struggles. There were relational struggles. There were health struggles, and you name it. We all got them, and they certainly piled up on me from time to time. And I I read somewhere, and it was said so much more eloquently than I'll say it. But, truly, if, let's say, I really have a goal Like, I could be sitting in my despair twenty years ago and say, gosh. I'm going to read a book on resiliency. I'm going to develop resiliency. And the truth is, it's you can't develop resiliency by understanding how to define resiliency. You develop resiliency because you're in the moment and you build it one difficult situation after the next difficult situation after the next one. And, I feel very internally strong and resilient at this point in my life. But I will also tell you that it's come out of over 15,000,543 moments of tough situations and then come into the other side. And they weren't all tough situations, so that's not a fair statement. Right? Tough situation, moment of extreme joy. Tough situation, tough situation, moment of extreme joy. So there's a lot of those in there too.

Erica: Oh, I love it. I love it. So now you also have Ahava, right, which is the digital platform that you helped to create. Tell me about Ahava.

Amy: Yes. It's a love and a passion. I have learned that I don't speak Hebrew, but I did I was curious one day what my name in Hebrew would be. And so I looked it up, and I've been saying, but I have now learned that the correct way to say it in Hebrew is, and it actually also means love. And so I took that word, and I thought, oh my goodness. I love that so much that, number one, I think it's a beautiful word. Number two, it's my name in Hebrew. And number three, it means love. So I thought that's what we're calling it. And it is a customized software solution that takes thirty years of work, Erica. So it's from client intake, all the family information, all past medical records. So this goes in for kids who have we work with kids with brain injuries, stroke rehabilitation, rare genetic syndromes, autism spectrum emotional, relational behavioral challenges. But the beauty of the work is that within the platform, all past records from schools and evaluations and such are downloaded into this platform. All of our own internal evaluation tools that have been developed over thirty years. There's hundreds and hundreds of neurodevelopmental metrics, social emotional metrics, physiological metrics. So it's really a whole person, which is what I W. B. M. C. Is its interpersonal whole brain model of care. So all the aspects, thousands and thousands of incremental metrics are all housed in one place so that we can go through and do a customized evaluation off individual. And we do the evaluation process, and then we have a customized program that's developed as an intervention program that completely mirrors all the work that we've done through this thirty years of interfacing with thousands of individuals. And the beautiful thing is if I were to meet another individual that was just like Jacob, then their programs their intervention programs would probably be fairly similar. But if I met someone who reminded me not at all of Jacob, it's gonna be a completely different process and program for them because it's so uniquely based on what makes them socially, emotionally, physiologically, or developmentally, cognitively, where they are academically. All those things are put into one cohesive platform. And then Uhava also contains a training library. So our hope and goal is not only serve individual families no matter where they may live across the globe, but also to make the technology available to clinicians. Yeah.

Erica: That's awesome. And I love that it's just it's all flowing together, which then I've gotta ask about free to flourish because that kinda brings it all together. So tell me about free to flourish.

Amy: Free to flourish is, for me, just a broader conversation, really, about you asked me questions about my own life. Right? My my how I handle the process. And so where the focus of is really helping the one who who is in need of that kind of intervention. The truth is for every child, adolescent, infant that we serve, there's a whole system, a whole social structure of families, siblings, aunts, uncles, grandparents, friends that are affected by the difficulty of one. Right? One person in the circle. And and for me, the conversation around free to flourish is actually a lot of things that we touched on today. When life brings you difficulties, which everyone's like, well, it's my attempt to share things that I hold dear and true and the things that I've learned over the last several decades and share it with people that could potentially benefit because of the position they find themselves in. And so that's a bit of a broader conversation just about health and wellness and barriers, which I know for myself. It wasn't so much in my life that I felt a lot of imposition from outside barriers. Most of the time, I formed my own barrier, and I needed to understand that so that I could step into a fullness of life. And that's what free to flourish is really about, a fullness of life and what that means for individual people.

Erica: Hey there, listeners. If you have ever felt like you're stuck in a place, held back by self doubt, perfectionism, or that pesky inner critic, you're not alone. We all face those sticky floors that keep us from reaching the heights we dream of. But guess what? It's time to shatter those limiting beliefs and toxic behaviors to uncover infinite possibilities. My book, Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors, is your ultimate guide to smashing through barriers, overcoming limiting beliefs, and stepping into your full potential. This book has been endorsed by none other than the great Mel Robbins, best selling author and motivational powerhouse. It's also been featured in Success Magazine, so you know it's packed with insights that work. Inside, you'll find real life sticky floor stories, practical strategies to help you navigate your own sticky floor moments, and a whole lot of inspiration to keep you climbing. This isn't just a book. It's your road map to success, confidence, and freedom. Grab your copy of Glass Ceilings and Sticky Floors today at www.ericaandersonrooney.com. Whether you're in the boardroom, the classroom, or just starting out, this book is for you because no one, and I mean no one, deserves to stay stuck, no one deserves to feel small, and you have glass ceilings to shatter. Let's do this. I feel like that just so perfectly ties into sticky floors when you talked about the barriers and creating your own barriers because part of what I believe is that we get stuck in our own sticky floors, which prevents us from really living to the fullness of life that you're talking about. Throughout your whole journey, the resilience, the grit, having to push through every day, were there any sticky floors that you really, now looking back, can say, wow. Like, that was a struggle for me?

Amy: Oh, shoot. The question was really which one do I choose, but I think today Yep. Today the one that I would choose is is a thread of perfectionism that I think popped up in my life over and over. And I always I struggle for a long time to understand that in the root of it. And I'm gonna give Brene Brown total credit for something I read that she said that when I read it, it's like a light bulb illuminated my mind in a way that I had never had happened before. And she said perfectionism is actually a hustle, is the word she used. Perfectionism is a hustle. And then she goes on to say, we might walk around saying, maybe I'm a bit of a perfectionist, but it's because I have such a high standard or I just want things to be which, okay, that is true to a degree, but here's what she said, and it made sense to me. She said there's a great difference between a threat of perfectionism and a desire for excellence. And perfectionism is actually, I'm so afraid of other people looking at me and not valuing me, accepting me, think I'm worthy or criticizing me, whatever the case might be, that the core of that drive to make things be a certain way, look a certain way, whatever that might be, is actually a function of trying to avoid feeling shame because of how other people see you. Whereas, a true desire for excellence in your life is because you want that for yourself. And that if nobody else ever saw you, nobody else ever read about you, nobody else ever was looking, that you would wake up every day and just so strive for that because it's at your core. And that's what you want for yourself, not because somebody else's opinion. And I thought, what a beautiful and brilliant way to parse out those two things. And I know for sure I caused myself a great deal of trouble and discomfort from going on this side of, boy, I wanna do x, y, or z a certain way so that I avoid feeling embarrassed or ashamed or less than versus, boy, I wanna wake up today and I've got this internal drive for myself. Big difference. The term mindfulness is spoken a lot, and we talk about mindfulness a lot at the school. For me, I will use the term extreme mindfulness from time to time because once you know you're sticky for pattern, then you're the only one from the inside out that can identify it. Be aware of it. Be conscious of it. See it when it starts to flutter past your mind and heart. Stop yourself in a moment. Ask yourself the tough question. And usually, the tough question is, what am I actually feeling right now? And what do I need, if anything, in order to shift this one moment so that I can be a choice in what I say or do or how I behave next. And that's quite a beautiful process. If you can and that's what I work for every day. That's what I work at every day. If I see that little thread of myself coming up and want it, then, I do my absolute best to notice when it's starting to surface and then pause and ask myself that question. Literally stop and ask myself that question. What is it that you're feeling right now? And just make sure that the next words or behavior are coming from a place of strength in you and not that old path.

Erica: Yeah. I'm a huge fan of Brene Brown as well and her work on perfectionism and shame. And when she wrote about this need for women, especially too, to have this perfectionist look was really tied to our shame and our concern about how other people perceived us.

Amy: Yep.

Erica: I flipped that switch for me. You can't unring the bell.

Amy: That's right. That's right. But you boy, she, I give her gosh. I just adore her work and hold it in such high regard. The I think it was dare to lead the book. Dare to lead. We read as a staff because I thought, wow. One of the things I love about the school and the platform and those pieces is that the people that it attracts to do the work, to give the work, to lead the school, to do those pieces, like, for us as a core team and organization to have that shared belief system or awareness or e or just a willingness to work on that within ourselves so that we can then work on it as a team has been has been an interesting process and a great

Erica: It's a never ending process. That's what people have to realize too.

Amy: That's right.

Erica: I've been asked so many times, when are we free from these sticky floors? And I'm like, I don't think we ever are. No. We just we end up having this critical self awareness, this mindfulness, extreme mindfulness, you called it

Amy: Yep.

Erica: Allows us to kinda pause for a minute and reflect and ask the real questions.

Amy: And that's the work of life. The I think it is a lifetime. And about a year ago, I got a phone call from an old friend, and she had been here and lived nearby a long time and worked at school for a little bit. But she 88 years old, and she called me and we were having a conversation and she got into it. And I said, how are you doing? What's going on? She had started dating someone at 88. And but it fell apart. And I listened to her tell me the story of her thoughts and feelings and experience of having a romantic relationship fall apart at age 88. And I thought, dad done it. It's really no different for you at 88 than it was for me when I was 19, 30, 45, whatever. And so then I thought to myself, Amy, it's okay. Day by day, moment by moment, we're all just gonna do the best we can in our sticky floor and not fool ourselves into thinking it's not a lifelong process. It's a lifelong process for sure.

Erica: Absolutely. The one question I ask everyone on my podcast is looking back twenty nine, thirty years ago, what is the one piece of advice that you would give the Amy who was watching her son from her car and having this really a life changing moment. What is the one piece of advice you would give her?

Amy: There's two competing thoughts. I think what I would say to her, knowing what I know now, is that oh my goodness. There because there's so many things. Right? But, but I think I would say to her to not believe it's about an ultimate goal and achieving an ultimate goal, whatever that is. It's about the moment that you're in, the person that's in front of you, the learning in the moment. It's really just process. And so to be awake and alive in the moment that you have, you can in this moment, release the rest. Just know you're gonna take one more step, not focus on a million steps. Just focus on the one step and do that one. That is the value of being here. It's not that you reach the ultimate x. Right? It's that you're just in this moment, do in life the best you know how to do, giving yourself grace along the way, and knowing that the process that you're in is exactly the process that you need to be in to get to the next step.

Erica: No. I love that. That's wonderful. And for anybody listening, I'm going to link free to flourish, Jacob's Ladder, where you can find Amy all in the show notes in case you're interested. She's got a beautiful trailer for free to flourish that you just you've gotta watch it, so it's in the show notes. But, Amy, anywhere else that they could find you?

Amy: Jacobsladdercenter.com. There's a lot there about the work, and there's a LinkedIn.

Erica: Perfect. I will link all of those, but, Amy, thank you so much for your time today. It is such a beautiful story, and I'm so glad we got to share it.

Amy: Thank you. But thanks for the opportunity.