Your Kid Feels Everything You're Carrying
Your kid feels everything you're carrying. The stress. The exhaustion. The guilt. Even when you think you're hiding it.
In this episode of The emPOWERed Half Hour, Becca talks with Michelle Choairy, special education advocate and mom of a complex kid. Michelle's son was born premature, didn't speak his first word until three and a half, and has a genetic disorder so rare he's the only one in the world with his specific variant.
Michelle spent years navigating therapies, IEP meetings, and systems while running on empty. Somewhere along the way, she disappeared. This conversation is about what it takes to come back.
We get into why burnout isn't failure, it's a signal. Why awareness matters more than getting it right. Why presence beats perfection every time. And why the best thing you can do for your child is take care of yourself first.
In this episode:
Why so many moms don't even know what they need anymore
How advocacy starts with understanding yourself, not just navigating systems
Why exhaustion is a call for care, not a sign of failure
The power of catching yourself and trying again
Why your wellbeing directly impacts your child's wellbeing
What it looks like to build a village when you've been doing it all alone
Michelle's THRIVE framework for parenting complex kids
Quotes from this episode:
"Take care of yourself, mama. If you're not well, your child won't be well. Nobody else will do it for you." – Michelle Choairy
"When you're lost, remember. It's not your fault, you don't have to carry it alone, and you are worthy." – Michelle Choairy
"You'll never be perfect. All you can do is try your best. That's how you survive." – Michelle Choairy
"When moms are healthy, kids are healthy, regardless of complexity." – Becca Powers
"You can't stay in the pity party. Do your best, catch it, and laugh about it." – Becca Powers
About Michelle Choairy
Michelle Choairy is a special education advocate and founder of Collective Wisdom for Complex Kids. After years of advocating for her own son, she now helps other families navigate the systems, find their village, and remember that they matter too.
Connect with Michelle: Facebook Group:
https://m.facebook.com/groups/wisdom4complexkids/
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Becca Powers: Welcome to another episode of The EmPOWERed Half Hour, and I am so excited to bring you today’s guest because I have a feeling we’re going to get raw and real, and I love episodes where that happens. Today’s guest is Michelle Choairy, and she’s a mom of a special needs kid and now does advocacy for special needs. I think this is such an important conversation because so many of us, whether it’s that story or another story, try to mask the difficulty of situations. There is such empowerment that comes from owning our situations. In the little bit of time I got to talk to Michelle, I was already getting excited to get you guys to listen in on her.
So Michelle, welcome to the show.
Michelle Choairy: Oh, thank you. Thanks everyone. Thanks, Becca, for having me. I appreciate this.
Becca Powers: I have a feeling this is going to be fun. Let’s get into it. I opened up saying let’s get real and raw, so let’s go there. There’s a reason advocacy is important to you now. Let’s talk about that backstory. How did you rise into saying this is something that really matters to me and I want to have a voice?
Michelle Choairy: I have two kids. I have an 11-year-old and an 8-year-old going on 16. She thinks she’s 16. My son is 11, and he was born very premature. Through the years, we started noticing developmental delays and things that weren’t quite going the right way. He didn’t speak his first word until he was three and a half years old, and it was the word “more.” It wasn’t mom or dad. It was “more, I want more.”
That became how we created our lives. He was always petite, he couldn’t speak, and you start going through all of the emotions that come with wondering if you did something wrong. Did I eat too much Taco Bell or drink too much Dr. Pepper while I was pregnant? You go through guilt, and then you go into action. He needs speech therapy, so we do speech therapy. He needs occupational therapy, so we do occupational therapy.
Now he’s 11, and about three years ago we finally figured out what was causing this. He has a very rare genetic disorder called TBR1. There are about 200 kids in the world with this disorder, and he’s the only one with his specific variant so far. When you say one in the world, he really is one in the world.
For the past 20 years, I’ve been in medical sales in a very high-level role.
Becca Powers: So have I.
Michelle Choairy: Yes, and I worked for a large orthopedic company and was very successful. About two or three years ago, I started questioning what this career was going to look like long term. Then people started asking me questions about special education. How did you get speech therapy three times a week at school? How did you do this or that? And I realized this is my calling.
Becca Powers: I just got goosebumps when you said that.
Michelle Choairy: It started with people asking questions, and then I realized there are so many families who have no idea how to advocate for their special needs kids. I like to call them complex kids. Kids are just complex. Parents don’t know how to advocate, and that’s when I knew this is what I need to do. I opened Wisdom for Complex Kids, which has become a special education concierge service, and now I advocate for parents and their kids.
Becca Powers: That’s incredible. I want to ask something that’s probably very relevant to the audience. A lot of listeners are in high-performance roles while also caretaking kids or parents. How did you navigate that?
Michelle Choairy: I’m not going to lie. It’s hard. There’s a lot of guilt involved and a lot of delegating that needs to happen.
Becca Powers: Women especially struggle with delegating, particularly at home.
Michelle Choairy: Delegating while still holding the power. It’s not about fully letting go. High-performing women struggle with this, and you’re right. In my career, I had to build a team to grow and scale. When I think about this as a mom, you need a village. If you don’t do it, you will break and burn out.
One of the most important things to remember is that if you’re not well, your child is not going to be well. Especially with complex kids, they feel more than we think they do. I’m not perfect. There are great days and really awful days.
We created a family calendar. Pickups, appointments, everything is shared. You delegate, but you keep your eyes on it. It’s not about letting go of the power, it’s about knowing how to manage it. If you’re not well, your child is not well, and I truly believe that.
I advocate not just for the kids, but for the parents too.
Becca Powers: I applaud you for that. You really do have to work with the whole family system.
Michelle Choairy: Mm-hmm.
Permission, Support, and Choosing Presence Over Perfection
Michelle Choairy: Yeah, you have to. You have to have that. You’ve got to bring people in. My husband has to come into this, and we have been lucky enough to have someone always helping us in the house. I think that becomes part of being in these positions, right? You have powerful jobs, and you can get that help. It’s owning that and saying, okay, you have to.
Becca Powers: I think there are two things I’m hearing. One is you’ve got to give yourself permission to not handle it all. You can be the overseer. We’re powerful women. We do that. But you can’t take it all on, because you’ll break.
The other thing I’m hearing is that you need to own the situation. These are the cards you were dealt, but it doesn’t mean you were dealt a bad hand. It just means you have to look at it differently. You have to give yourself permission to build a team around you and permission to look at this from different lenses than a neurotypical family might.
Michelle Choairy: Yes. One of the things is that you have your family, your relationships, and the people around you. I created something because I was trying to figure out how I did all of this over the years. I came up with something called THRIVE.
Becca Powers: Please tell me. This is the stuff I love.
Michelle Choairy: Okay. THRIVE starts with Teamwork. I wanted the best medical team around my child. A good developmental pediatrician, a good speech therapist who could help me advocate, a good occupational therapist. I love speech therapists. We’ve always had speech therapists in our family.
You need a good pediatrician and a strong medical team because that’s a place where parents can really get lost.
The H is Help Systems. This is huge. Insurance companies, school systems, state-funded programs. You have to learn their language, the acronyms, and how things work. This is where help comes from outside of yourself.
The R is Relationships. This is the village. Without a village, you are not going to be able to do this.
The I is Integration. You have to make sure you’re well, because if you’re not well, your child is not going to be well.
The V is Validation. The wins are small and they don’t come often, so you have to celebrate them. Saying “more” for the first time matters.
The E is Expectation. If you do all of this, you can expect the miracle, which is that you’re going to be okay and so is your child.
That’s THRIVE.
Becca Powers: When someone comes into your world, is that where you start with them?
Michelle Choairy: It depends on how they find me. Lately it’s been special education. I attend IEPs. I help with state-funded programs. I always offer a free call, and we start with where they think their needs are. Sometimes we don’t even know what our needs are. People come to me when they’re broken and need help. This work has helped so many moms.
Becca Powers: That’s beautiful. Why are you passionate about this work? What do you see on the other side of helping people?
Michelle Choairy: I see a mom actually become a mom again.
Becca Powers: That makes me want to cry.
Michelle Choairy: Because when you’re lost, and I do this with moms all the time, when they finally see that it’s not your fault and you don’t have to carry this alone, that’s when you see a woman come back. That’s where I live. That’s my validation. It’s going to be okay.
Becca Powers: That gave me goosebumps. When moms are healthy, kids are healthy. When moms are present, kids thrive.
The Pause That Changed Everything
Michelle Choairy: It’s not about perfection. There’s no way. Last night my daughter asked me to paint with her. I was painting, my phone rang, and I started doing something on my phone. She said, “You’re ignoring me.” My husband said, “Yes, you are.”
So I put my phone in the kitchen and stopped touching it. You’ll never be perfect. All you can do is try your best.
Becca Powers: If you don’t laugh about it, you’ll cry. Staying in the pity party weakens your nervous system. You caught it. You cared enough to notice.
Michelle Choairy: Exactly. I’ll do better next time. And I’ll fail again, and that’s okay.
Becca Powers: Now that you’ve been doing this work, what’s an aha or learning you want to share?
Michelle Choairy: I think the aha moment is when I look at my son. I like to tell stories. Can I tell a story?
Becca Powers: Yes. I love stories.
Michelle Choairy: Okay. So my son was in the school district, and we felt like the school district close to our house was not doing enough for him. We asked for him to be placed in an outside school, which is called a nonpublic school here in California.
These schools are where all of the kids have IEPs and individualized educational plans. What they call this is a more restrictive environment. The reason they say that is because you don’t have neurotypical kids running around with you, and you don’t have PE with 40 kids and things like that.
Becca Powers: Right?
Michelle Choairy: They’re usually smaller schools. We decided that was good for him because he could not concentrate. He had ADHD off the charts, and we felt that a smaller classroom with fewer kids was probably one of the best things for him.
So we pulled him out, and it’s been about three years, three and a half years that he’s been there. Today, incredibly enough, today is his last day at the school where he’s been in a smaller setting. I don’t want to say isolated, but more contained.
Next week is Thanksgiving, so they don’t have school. But when December 1st comes around, he’s going to be in a school with 700 kids.
Becca Powers: Holy—
Michelle Choairy: Cow. He’s going to the middle school right by our house. I’m excited for him. I’m excited that he’s going to be able to do woodshop. He’s excited about that. I’m excited that he’s going to be able to do PE with all the other sixth graders.
At the same time, I’m still a little scared for him. But this is happening. He’s 11. This is happening. We’re going to bring him back, and this is going to be so good for him because he’ll be able to have friends who live close to us. And I’m going to be able to give him that next step in his life.
I know that’s probably not where you thought I was going with that.
Becca Powers: That’s great. I’m sure other people are listening thinking, “Oh my God.” That’s progression. And that’s what I’m hearing behind the story, too. There’s a process of surrendering. There’s a process of allowing growth without fear taking over.
There’s a lot in the story you shared that is courageous and brave. I’m applauding you. All the good vibes for December. I hope he does so well.
Michelle Choairy: Thank you.
Becca Powers: Let me ask another question. Now that you’re doing this work, what is your hope for the future? You’re going to retire soon and go into this body of work full time. What impact are you hoping to make?
Michelle Choairy: Honestly, the feeling I get after I leave an IEP meeting and I know that I just made that school better for that child—that’s it.
That feeling when I walk out and say, “Yes, I just did this.” That’s what I’m looking for. That’s what I want to do for a lot of families.
I’m still doing my sales job, but I’m stepping back and scaling back a little bit.
Becca Powers: Same.
Michelle Choairy: I’m letting the kids take over a bit more and teaching more so that when it’s the right time, I can fully step away. It’s been my baby for 20 years. Same territory, same surgeons.
I’m slowly leaving that baby and really stepping into this full time. The biggest thing for me is looking at that mom after we leave an IEP meeting, and she says, “Thank you for saying the things I haven’t been able to say for the past eight years.”
That’s what I want to do.
Becca Powers: That’s awesome. I always like to end with this: what’s an empowering message you can share with the listeners?
Michelle Choairy: I’m going to go back to something I said in the beginning. Remember to take care of yourself. Because if you’re not well, your child—whatever age or stage they’re in—is not going to be well.
Take care of yourself, mama, because you have to. Nobody else will do it for you unless you do it for yourself.
Becca Powers: That is beautiful. Full body goosebumps.
Let’s share how people can stay in touch with you.
Michelle Choairy: You can find me at Michelle Choairy, or at specialeducationconcierge.com, or wisdom4rcomplexkids.com. I’m on social media, and I also have a podcast called Complex Kids, Simple Solutions. If you’re looking to learn more about special education advocacy and how to take care of yourself as a special needs mom, you can find me there.
Delegation, Power, and the THRIVE Framework: How Parents Sustain Themselves
Becca Powers: It gave me goosebumps as you shared that. Yeah. What happened?
Michelle Choairy: Thank you. But honestly, it started with people asking me questions. Then it became, “I need to do something about this.”
There are so many families out there who have no idea how to advocate for their special needs kids—and I like to call them complex kids.
Becca Powers: Yeah, I saw that in your bio.
Michelle Choairy: Yes. The differentiation when it comes to special needs—autistic, neurodivergent, all of that—to me, kids are just complex. It’s just a little more than a neurotypical child.
But the parents of these children often don’t know what they’re doing. They don’t know how to advocate a lot of the time. That’s when I realized, this is what I need to do.
So here I am. I opened Wisdom for Complex Kids, and now it’s become Special Education Concierge. I’ve been advocating for parents and for the little kiddos.
Becca Powers: That is awesome. I have so many questions I want to ask, but the next one feels really relevant for the audience.
I appreciate that you shared you’ve been in high-performance sales for 20 years. I’ve been in tech sales for 20 years too and am getting ready to retire and do my other work full time.
A lot of listeners are in high-performance roles while managing complex kids or caregiving parents. How did you navigate that?
What can you say to someone who’s listening and thinking, “I’m not well—help me”?
Michelle Choairy: I’m not going to lie—it’s hard. There’s a lot of guilt involved. There’s a lot of delegating that needs to happen.
Becca Powers: I’ll jump in here because I think women, in particular, have a hard time delegating—especially with family. They carry everything: the household, the kids, their care. Can you talk about delegating a bit?
Michelle Choairy: Yes. It’s delegating while still holding the power.
It’s hard to just let it go and say, “Here you go.” Delegating is one of the hardest things for high-performing women to do, and you’re absolutely right.
In my job—medical sales, orthopedic sales—over the 20 years I’ve been doing this, what helped me was building a team. I couldn’t scale, grow, or sell more without building that team.
Sometimes I jokingly call them my “minions,” but really, they’re like my kids. You raise them, you support them, and you grow together.
As a mom—especially a mom of a complex kid—you need a village. You need people to help you. And that’s hard to accept. But if you don’t, you will break. Burnout is real.
One thing you have to remember is if you’re not well, your child isn’t going to be well. And with complex kids, I truly believe they feel more than we realize.
I’m not perfect by any means. This is up and down. There are great days and really awful days.
Becca Powers: I’m sure.
Michelle Choairy: For us, my son has some kind of therapy or appointment after school every day. As my daughter got older, things increased too.
So now we have a shared family calendar on my phone. It says who’s picking up who, where, and when. That’s how you delegate while still keeping your eyes on everything.
Becca Powers: Exactly.
Michelle Choairy: It’s not letting go of power—it’s learning how to manage it.
Becca Powers: I love that.
Michelle Choairy: And again, if you’re not well, your child isn’t well. That’s something I talk about with every mom I help. I’m not just advocating for the kids—I’m advocating for the parents too.
Becca Powers: Absolutely. If parents aren’t healthy, kids aren’t healthy. You have to work the whole family system.
Michelle Choairy: You do. Everyone has to be involved. My husband is part of this. We’ve been lucky enough to have help in the house—an au pair or someone supporting us.
That comes with these positions. You have powerful jobs, and you can get help. It’s owning that and saying, “Okay, this is what we need.”
Becca Powers: I’m hearing two things. One is giving yourself permission not to handle it all.
You can be the overseer. We’re powerful women—we do that. But you can’t take it all on or you’ll break.
The other thing is owning the situation. These are the cards you were dealt, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad hand. You just have to look at it differently. Permission to build a team. Permission to see this through different lenses.
Michelle Choairy: Yes, exactly.
That’s why I created something called THRIVE. I was trying to figure out how I did all of this for so many years.
Becca Powers: Please tell. This is my favorite kind of stuff.
The Quiet Relief of Being Seen
Michelle Choairy: So THRIVE starts with Teamwork. I wanted the best medical team around my child—a developmental pediatrician, a speech therapist who could advocate, an OT, a pediatrician.
That medical team is critical because it’s one place where families often get lost.
The H is Help Systems—insurance companies, school systems. You have to learn their language. You become a special education advocate for your child. State-funded programs can help too.
The R is Relationships—your village. Without it, you can’t do this.
The I is Integration. You have to be well, because if you’re not, your child won’t be.
The V is Validation. The wins are small and infrequent, so you have to celebrate them—first words, small progress.
And the E is Expectation. If you do all of this, the miracle is that you’re going to be okay—and so is your child.
That’s THRIVE.
Becca Powers: When someone comes into your world, is that where you start?
Michelle Choairy: It depends on how they find me. Lately, it’s a lot of special education work. I attend IEPs and help families navigate those systems.
With the state-funded programs, how do we get those things for you?
But that is usually where—when I’m doing my call with them—I always offer a free call with everybody. And so my free call is usually, okay, where do you think your needs are right now? And we talk about those things, and then sometimes we don’t even know what our needs are, right?
We don’t know what that is. But I bring all of that together along with the special education advocacy that I do, along with teaching them how to do all these things, because it takes time. You are going to come to me because you’re broken. Something is going on, and you need help with something. And so that’s kind of how it is.
This is what I decided that I was going to do, and it has worked so well for so many moms out there.
Becca Powers: That’s beautiful. So I understand why you’re passionate about it just from the texture of our conversation, but I want to ask you directly—why are you passionate about it? What are you seeing on the other side of helping people?
Michelle Choairy: I see a mom actually become a mom.
Becca Powers: That makes me want to cry.
Michelle Choairy: Because when you are lost—and you’re going to make me cry too—I do this with moms all the time. When they finally see that one, it’s not your fault; two, you don’t have to carry this alone; and three, I’m worthy—that’s when you see a woman again. A mom again.
Where have I been for the past eight years since I’ve had my son? Or 11 years? Where have I been? Seeing that is where I live. That’s my validation. That’s my why. This is going to be okay.
Becca Powers: That made me tear up, and I got goosebumps because I felt it. It’s so important. It goes back to what we were saying in the beginning of this conversation too. When the mom is whole, the kid has such a better chance, regardless of complexity or not. When moms are healthy, kids are healthy. And when moms are healthy, they’re present. Kids need present parents.
Michelle Choairy: Yes.
Becca Powers: So much.
Michelle Choairy: For sure. And I’ll be honest—it’s not about perfection, right? There’s no way. Last night, we were sitting on the couch, and my eight-year-old daughter was next to me. She said, “Hey, draw with me or paint with me.” She brought me a little thing. We sat down, and I’m painting.
Then, of course, my phone rings, and I remember I have to order something on Amazon. She’s painting next to me, and I’m on my phone. My husband’s on the other side, and I’m trying. Then I hear, “Why are you ignoring me?” And my husband says, “Yes, you’re ignoring her.”
And I was like, okay. So I picked up my phone, took it to the kitchen, and said, I’m not going to touch it, because this is time. I can’t continue to do this.
You will never be perfect. All you can do is try to do your best. That’s how you survive. Laugh about it if you can. I’m laughing about it today. I couldn’t put that phone down.
Becca Powers: I’ve been through a lot in my life too. If you don’t laugh about it, you’re going to cry about it—and sometimes you need both. But staying in the pity party weakens your nervous system. It breaks you. So you do your best. You caught it. Laugh about it.
Michelle Choairy: Yes.
Becca Powers: I caught it.
Michelle Choairy: Yes.
Becca Powers: You care. You care enough to be aware.
Michelle Choairy: Exactly. I’ll do better next time. I’ll leave the phone in the room. I’ll do better next time—but then I’ll fail again, and that’s okay.
Becca Powers: It’s inevitable.
We’re coming down to the last ten minutes or so, and I want to ask you another question. Now that you’ve been doing this work, what is an aha or learning lesson that’s up for you that you could share with the audience that we haven’t talked about yet?
Michelle Choairy: I think the aha moment is when I look at my son. I like to tell stories—can I tell a story?
Becca Powers: Yes, I love stories.
Michelle Choairy: My son was in the school district, and we felt like the school close to our house was not doing enough for him. We went through the process and asked for him to be placed in an outside school, which is called a non-public school here in California.
These are schools where all of the kids have IEPs. It’s considered a more restrictive environment because you don’t have neurotypical kids running around, and the classrooms are smaller.
We decided that was good for him because he could not concentrate. His ADHD was off the charts. A smaller classroom with fewer kids was probably one of the best things for him.
He’s been there for about three and a half years, and today is his last day at that school. Next week is Thanksgiving, but when December 1st comes around, he’s going to be in a school with 700 kids.
Becca Powers: Holy cow.
Michelle Choairy: He’s going to middle school right by our house. I’m excited for him. He’s excited about woodshop and PE with all the other sixth graders. At the same time, I’m still a little scared—but this is happening. He’s 11. We’re bringing him back, and this is going to be good for him.
Becca Powers: That’s progression. Behind the story, I hear surrender and allowing growth without fear taking over. It’s courageous and brave. I’m applauding you and sending all the good vibes for December.
Michelle Choairy: Thank you.
Becca Powers: Now that you’re doing this work, what is your hope for the future?
Michelle Choairy: The feeling I get after leaving an IEP meeting, knowing I made that school better for that child—that’s what I’m looking for. That’s what I want to do for a lot of families.
I’m still doing my sales job, but I’m scaling back and teaching more so that when the time is right, I can step fully into this. What matters most is hearing a mom say, “Thank you for saying the things I haven’t been able to say for the past eight years.” That’s what I want to do.
Becca Powers: What is an empowering message you can leave with the listeners?
Michelle Choairy: Take care of yourself. If you’re not well, your child isn’t going to be well. Take care of yourself, mama. Nobody else will do it for you.
Becca Powers: That was beautiful. How can listeners stay in touch with you?
Michelle Choairy: You can find me at specialeducationconcierge.com or wisdom4complexkids.com. I also have a podcast called Complex Kids, Simple Solutions.
Becca Powers: This was a delightful interview. Thank you so much for being here.
Michelle Choairy: Thank you, Becca.
