Speaker 1: Welcome back to the Doctor Wendywall Show on KFI AM
Speaker 1: six forty live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app. We spent
Speaker 1: a lot of time on the show talking about motherhood,
Speaker 1: all the various complication, complic complicated emotions, the feelings that
Speaker 1: people have around something that you know, I've said it.
Speaker 1: It's kind of a hallmark holiday, but it's a time
Speaker 1: for us to really talk about motherhood and everything it
Speaker 1: has entails. And I always say, you know, mothers can't win.
Speaker 1: You know, whether you do the right thing or don't
Speaker 1: do the right thing, you get blamed for everything. My
Speaker 1: next guest is not only a psychiatrist, but a mother
Speaker 1: of two and one of her daughters was born with disabilities.
Speaker 1: I'd like to welcome doctor Eva Ritfo to the show. Hi,
Speaker 1: doctor Eva, how are you Hi?
Speaker 2: It's wonderful to hear your voice, especially on Mother's Day
Speaker 2: exactly now.
Speaker 1: I know when one is about to become a mother
Speaker 1: and they're full of expectations and then something happens and
Speaker 1: their baby may not be this perfect child or I
Speaker 1: know you'd argue with me about what is perfection, but
Speaker 1: a child that might have physical or mental disabilities. Can
Speaker 1: you share us a little bit about what happened to you.
Speaker 2: It was your firstborn, right, yes, it was my first born,
Speaker 2: my daughter. I was finishing my psychiatry residency and she
Speaker 2: was born and we thought everything was great. And then
Speaker 2: we moved down to Florida where I was starting a
Speaker 2: job on the faculty at University of Miami, and in
Speaker 2: the couple weeks of transitioning, my sister, who was training
Speaker 2: as a pediatrician, came down to visit and she's I
Speaker 2: said to my sister, oh, well, we can already tell
Speaker 2: she's going to be right handed because she hasn't used
Speaker 2: her left hand as much. And my sister was smart
Speaker 2: enough to be like, what, that doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 2: This goes back a long way. So you weren't just
Speaker 2: looking everything up on the internet, right, So we called her.
Speaker 1: And this baby was only two weeks old at.
Speaker 3: This point, your daughter, No, she was six months.
Speaker 1: Six months.
Speaker 2: She was six months. Yeah, she was six months. So
Speaker 2: we had a beautiful, uneventful six months minus the colic,
Speaker 2: which you know lots of people have that. That wasn't
Speaker 2: much fun, but we got through the colic. Turned out
Speaker 2: she was allergic to breast milk. Go figure so well, yeah,
Speaker 2: we took it took a while to sort that through,
Speaker 2: so you know, it was definitely not a very easy start,
Speaker 2: but we got through that.
Speaker 3: We moved down to Miami.
Speaker 2: My sister made the comment, I didn't even have a
Speaker 2: doctor down here, so found a pediatrician.
Speaker 3: Went in and I got to tell you, Wendy. Even
Speaker 3: though it was thirty plus years ago, I remembered.
Speaker 2: The phone call like it was yestvay and I stick
Speaker 2: to my stomach thinking about it.
Speaker 3: He was terribly rude, told us you know.
Speaker 2: His name, and said, you know, well, your daughter has
Speaker 2: a hole in her brain and he's.
Speaker 3: Never going to be normal.
Speaker 2: And we ran what because we just thought she wasn't
Speaker 2: moving her left hand as much.
Speaker 3: So it was over the phone.
Speaker 2: It was really, honestly a horrible moment. I didn't know
Speaker 2: a soul in Miami. I was about to start the
Speaker 2: first job in my life, twenty nine years old. Horrible,
Speaker 2: and then things went downhill from there. We found out
Speaker 2: she had a form of cerebral policy called Hanny paris Is,
Speaker 2: where she couldn't use her left side.
Speaker 3: But that was okay.
Speaker 2: You know, she was still a bright, beautiful, easy going,
Speaker 2: fun child, so we got her into therapies and everything
Speaker 2: was sort of you know, coming back together, started my.
Speaker 3: Job, etc. And then at two and a half she
Speaker 3: had a seizure.
Speaker 2: We were all at home and we saw it and
Speaker 2: I knew what it was immediately.
Speaker 3: We raced to the hospital. They kept her overnight, and
Speaker 3: then we had a.
Speaker 2: Really bad two and a half years, really really bad.
Speaker 2: When she would have seizures, they wouldn't stop, so we
Speaker 2: would have to call the paramedics. They would come, they
Speaker 2: would give her ivy rectally to get the seizure to stop,
Speaker 2: and then they'd have.
Speaker 3: To transport her to the hospital.
Speaker 2: So we weren't allowed to go, you know, too far
Speaker 2: away from a hospital. So no traveling back to see
Speaker 2: my family, which was in Los Angeles, no traveling back
Speaker 2: to see my friends that were in.
Speaker 3: New York, no going really very far at all.
Speaker 2: I would go to work, but that was about five
Speaker 2: minutes away from the house, and sure enough, I remember
Speaker 2: sitting with a patient once and getting that phone call
Speaker 2: and just saying, in the middle of the session with
Speaker 2: a patient.
Speaker 3: I'm sorry, I have to go. He was like dumbfounded,
Speaker 3: and I'm like I always plain later, I've got to
Speaker 3: get out of here fast, so as I worked at
Speaker 3: the hospital.
Speaker 1: You know, there is a wonderful ending to the story.
Speaker 1: I want to save it for a few minutes from now,
Speaker 1: but I want to talk about the feelings and emotions.
Speaker 1: You didn't plan to have a child with disabilities. I'm
Speaker 1: sure mothers blame themselves for everything. Did you have to
Speaker 1: handle guilt? And what happened was her stress on your
Speaker 1: marriage because of this talk about what happens to a
Speaker 1: family when this happens.
Speaker 2: Well, we went downhill from the seizures and at five,
Speaker 2: she had to have surgery brain surgery to move the
Speaker 2: portion of her brain that was starting the seizures.
Speaker 3: And that's when things really got bad.
Speaker 2: And then she had a complication following the surgery, had
Speaker 2: a second emergency surgery, near death episode. I mean, as
Speaker 2: bad as it gets, Wendy, as bad as it gets.
Speaker 2: So that's when the guilt started. I think the marriage
Speaker 2: was strained. You know, I don't know if we want
Speaker 2: to say at a breaking point then, but certainly we
Speaker 2: did go on to divorce.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it was pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Well, there was a silver lining. First of all, you
Speaker 1: went on to have another daughter, and yeah, how many
Speaker 1: years between your daughters.
Speaker 3: Four and a half, so it was right before the
Speaker 3: really really bad part that the other daughter was born.
Speaker 3: Was a miracle. She was born. Let's just say we
Speaker 3: weren't exactly.
Speaker 2: Trying, and she came to the world that was also
Speaker 2: very pregnancy because she was very small, so they thought,
Speaker 2: oh gosh, you know, another set of complications. But miracle,
Speaker 2: she was fine and has been fine, and it's thriving
Speaker 2: and has really been a pillar of strength for our family.
Speaker 2: When she was born, we jokingly called her Paxel because
Speaker 2: she lifted everybody's mood up.
Speaker 3: And the poor kid is now becoming a psychotherapists because
Speaker 3: she's got to lift the whole world's mood up.
Speaker 1: But I do want to say before we go to
Speaker 1: a break, that your oldest daughter, Joy lives independently now
Speaker 1: and yes recently, what did she experience.
Speaker 2: Well, the funny thing is, right, the last time she
Speaker 2: was on your show, you proposed to Julio. Right, she
Speaker 2: was on and then she hung up and the next
Speaker 2: thing you know, you're proposing to Julio.
Speaker 3: We were all completely shocked. Well, Joy has gone on
Speaker 3: to be a miracle.
Speaker 2: She's done so much therapy you name a therapy we've
Speaker 2: done it. I can give you feed back if any
Speaker 2: mother's out there want to know what works and what
Speaker 2: doesn't work, because.
Speaker 3: A lot of people will sell you things that don't work,
Speaker 3: but a lot of things you do.
Speaker 1: So she's a very smart young woman and went on
Speaker 1: a dating app and found herself a husband and that's it.
Speaker 2: And Wendy, you danced at her wedding literally, Julio, and
Speaker 2: you were not a married woman. Then we have a
Speaker 2: very very happy ending. So to your mother's out there,
Speaker 2: I say, take a deep breath. Patience and time is
Speaker 2: a wonderful healer. And today I just spent a glorious
Speaker 2: day just my daughter Joy. By the way, her birth
Speaker 2: name was Marissa, but she chose to go by her
Speaker 2: middle name, which is Joy, which is very appropriate, and
Speaker 2: she leads.
Speaker 3: A very joyful life.
Speaker 2: I got to spend the whole day with her because
Speaker 2: her very sweet, nurturing husband is actually up with his grandmother,
Speaker 2: which was very dear because he had lost his mother
Speaker 2: during his childhood.
Speaker 3: So are you ready to bring are we go back?
Speaker 1: I want to talk about this silver lining that through
Speaker 1: your relationship with a daughter with discipline, you founded the
Speaker 1: most amazing I hate to call it charity because it's
Speaker 1: really about an educational expose and art, and we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about that when we come back. My guest
Speaker 1: is doctor Eva Ritfo, a psychiatrist from Miami, and Happy
Speaker 1: Mother's Day to you, doctor Ritfo. We've been talking about
Speaker 1: the shock and when an unexpected baby is born with
Speaker 1: disabilities and you've done an amazing job raising your beautiful
Speaker 1: daughter Joy. But out of this came some beauty. Can
Speaker 1: you talk about the Old Beauty Project and what is it?
Speaker 2: First of all, thank you, Wendy, and I love to
Speaker 2: talk about the Bold Duty Project.
Speaker 3: So as we just shared, we had.
Speaker 2: Some very dark years, but we emerged out of that
Speaker 2: and one of the ways that we emerged out of
Speaker 2: them was through this nonprofit.
Speaker 3: We're called the Bold Beauty Project.
Speaker 2: We were formed in two thousand and fifteen where the
Speaker 2: brainchild of a social worker named Shelley Beaher and her
Speaker 2: idea was to take women with disabilities pair of the
Speaker 2: wind photographers. We use all volunteer photographers, have them get together,
Speaker 2: have a very special photo shoot experience, and then we
Speaker 2: take one image from each pair and then.
Speaker 3: We exhibit them together along.
Speaker 2: With a brief narrative of the woman with the disability
Speaker 2: and the narrative of our volunteer photographer. So my daughter
Speaker 2: Joy got to be a model very early on. And
Speaker 2: the fortuitous part was if anybody listening knows Robert Zuckerman,
Speaker 2: Robert was a very famous photographer shooting all the behind
Speaker 2: the scenes movies in Hollywood, the stills for the movie posters.
Speaker 2: He became disabled, he did not fign the Hollywood community welcoming.
Speaker 2: He left, came back to Miami, which is where we
Speaker 2: met him, and he was used to shooting all the celebrities.
Speaker 3: And I was a tiger mom before that was a word.
Speaker 2: And I asked him if he would photograph my daughter
Speaker 2: and he said yes, and he came over to our house.
Speaker 3: We called a love fest day, and he.
Speaker 2: Took the most beautiful picture of her, which has now
Speaker 2: been shown in countless art fairs and is on all
Speaker 2: of our branding. And she started calling him Pops, and
Speaker 2: he just really inspires everybody. Sadly, he did pass away
Speaker 2: during COVID in twenty twenty two, so we miss him dearly.
Speaker 2: But the project goes on. So, like I said, we
Speaker 2: started in twenty fifteen in Washington, d C. We did
Speaker 2: our next show twenty sixteen in Miami. We've exhibited in
Speaker 2: multiple cities now throughout the country, Texas, New York, we
Speaker 2: did Los Angeles, last year, Philadelphia, and due to the pandemic,
Speaker 2: we made a pivot and we're now on college campuses
Speaker 2: because we didn't want expose any women during COVID too,
Speaker 2: you know the risk. So we went to college campuses
Speaker 2: because they were already you know, out and about and
Speaker 2: getting exposed.
Speaker 1: So the big news is the Bold Beauty Project will
Speaker 1: be exhibiting for the very first time at UCLA next Sunday,
Speaker 1: May eighteenth, from three to five pm. Now, for those
Speaker 1: who love art, who love beauty, who love fashion, this
Speaker 1: is a photography exhibition you do not want to miss.
Speaker 1: And the whole goal of the Bold Beauty Project, as
Speaker 1: I understand it is to change the image of disability.
Speaker 1: Is that correct, doctor Eva?
Speaker 3: Absolutely.
Speaker 2: We have so many beautiful women who have disabilities. Joy
Speaker 2: likes to call them women with different abilities, because if
Speaker 2: one thing is taken away from you, you know how
Speaker 2: it goes you strengthen in other areas. So our models
Speaker 2: are really inspiring, resilient, beautiful women, and they get to
Speaker 2: depict how they like to be seen, and so it's
Speaker 2: an opportunity to see all sorts of different images and
Speaker 2: who come and meet the models themselves, talk to them
Speaker 2: and meet the photographers who, like I said, have volunteered
Speaker 2: their time, which is so heartwarming and beautiful.
Speaker 3: So we have a very interesting show coming up on campus.
Speaker 3: It's free. The more that's the more we're celebrating.
Speaker 2: For now.
Speaker 1: I do want to say people do need to get tickets,
Speaker 1: and you can go to the KFI AM six forty website.
Speaker 1: We will put a link to where you can get tickets,
Speaker 1: but you can also just go to Bold Beauty Project
Speaker 1: dot com to get more information. So it's next Sunday,
Speaker 1: May eighteenth, at three pm at UCLA. I will be there,
Speaker 1: Doctor Eva will be there, the models will be there.
Speaker 1: If you are interested in photography in glamour and makeup
Speaker 1: and fashion, or just because you want to support this
Speaker 1: amazing charity, this nonprofit, the Bold Beauty Project, we'd love
Speaker 1: to see you out there, Doctor Eva. Any parting words
Speaker 1: for parents who may be dealing with a child with disabilities.
Speaker 3: Self care, You know it is very challenging.
Speaker 2: Parenting is very challenging, particularly in this age that we
Speaker 2: live in and if you add on top of that
Speaker 2: disabilities and special needs and therapy sessions and the fear
Speaker 2: of the unknown, it's a difficult road. And so I
Speaker 2: think it's really important not to neglect yourself and remember,
Speaker 2: you know, you've got to put that oxygen mask.
Speaker 3: On yourself first.
Speaker 2: So any mothers that are listening today, please take care
Speaker 2: of yourself. Make sure that you're sleeping, make sure you're eating,
Speaker 2: make sure you're exercising. Motherhood is a marathon, not a sprint,
Speaker 2: so we have to be in our top shape. And
Speaker 2: Joy is a wonderful example of how when we work
Speaker 2: hard and we're patient and we persevere, amazing things can happen.
Speaker 2: And as you mentioned, she has a beautiful, doting, loving husband.
Speaker 2: She lives independently, and she's been really proud of everything
Speaker 2: she's done with the Bold Beauty Project. And we hope
Speaker 2: that everyone will check us out and if they can't
Speaker 2: come on campus, we get it. There's a lot of traffic,
Speaker 2: so you could go on our website. You could look
Speaker 2: at the past shows and you could see inspiring women there.
Speaker 2: I can tell you one last thing, Wendy, which is
Speaker 2: for myself, I know that I have had a more
Speaker 2: fulfilling life because I have a child with extra needs.
Speaker 2: It has helped me to develop into a more patient, kind,
Speaker 2: loving person. And believe me, I don't sweat the small stuff,
Speaker 2: and after we've been through life and debt experiences with
Speaker 2: your five year old, it's all small stuff exactly.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for being with us, and hopefully
Speaker 1: to those listeners, we'll see you next week at the
Speaker 1: Bold Beauty Project at UCLA. Doctor Eva Ritvo, psychiatrist from Miami,
Speaker 1: and that brings the Doctor Wendy Walls Show to a close.
Speaker 1: You know, I'm always here for you every Sunday from
Speaker 1: seven to nine pm. You can also follow me on
Speaker 1: my social media and the handle everywhere is at doctor
Speaker 1: Wendy Walsh. But I'm always here for you on KFI.
Speaker 1: You've been listening to the Doctor Wendy Walls Show on
Speaker 1: KFI Am six forty Live everywhere on the iHeartRadio app