Drama Queens - Work in Progress: Caterina Scorsone

Episode Date: December 10, 2025

"Grey's Anatomy" star Caterina Scorsone reflects on what led a curious kid from Toronto to embody Dr. Amelia Shepherd, one of the most complex, electric characters on television today. Caterina addresses Amelia’s uncertain future on the series while standing fiercely clear-eyed in her real-life role, advocating for her daughter with Down syndrome and anyone denied accommodation for their uniqueness.Learn more about Caterina's passions - Global Down Syndrome Foundation and Modo Yoga LA.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Hi, everyone. It's Sophia. Welcome to Work in Progress. Welcome back to Work in Progress. Friends, fans, listeners, and Internet pals. This is an episode you all have been waiting for. and telling me you've been waiting for.

We are finally joined on Work and Progress this week by none other than Katerina Scorsone. She is one of those rare performers who brings a stunningly present emotional intelligence to every role. She's best known for her more than a decade-spanning turn is Dr. Amelia Shepard on Grey's Anatomy. She has built a gorgeous career playing complicated, honest, fiercely human women, characters who fall apart and rebuild and somehow emerge even more whole than before, but her story off screen is just as compelling. Katerina was born and raised in Toronto in a very creative household, one of five siblings. She's been acting professionally as a child, but took a little left turn thinking she might

actually be a doctor, only to boomerang all the way back and become one on TV. Her parents were academics who also ran homeless. shelters. So from a really early age, she's had a keen sense of life's complexities and how important it is for us to show up in service of each other. She has managed to merge all of her passions in such a meaningful way on and off screen. And perhaps off screen, she's taken on her most meaningful role of all as a mother of three and now an incredible advocate for disability inclusion, drawing from her experience raising one of her three daughters with Down syndrome. She chooses to use her platform to promote greater understanding, to end stigmas, and to create a community for people who value both voice and heart.

Let's dive in and talk about all of these beautiful, beautiful things with Katerina. Hi, I'm so happy that you're finally here, and I know the whole internet, like the whole internet, the gray's internet, the gay internet, like the whole internet, just want it, has been shouting for you to be with us on this show, and I'm so happy we made it happen. Well, and we've finally gotten together in like some capacity, whether Cass and Amelia ever make it there. We're together in some capacity. Exactly. Well, I think, too, like everyone's Internet's kind of broke a few years ago when we hosted our big, like, post-Soccer game party at my house. And everyone was like, wait, all these people know each other. Like, oh, my God, oh, my God. That was awesome. Yeah, that was a great party, by the way. It was so fun. Yeah, it was wonderful. I love that we tend to find each other in so many spaces, whether it's like in our day jobs, literally on the same show at the moment. Yeah. in advocacy, in supporting women's sports. Like, we always are like, you're here, of course, you're here. Well, and I feel like also through time, like, the fact that we've kind of like woven past each other, I mean, we've been, how long have you been doing this?

How long have you been an actor? And all of the other things, but, you know, that being, you know, the first professional. I mean, I didn't start going on auditions until college, so not until I was 18. I was working and, you know, doing recurrings and like a little movie here, a little thing there, you know, starting in college. And then I was, I don't know, I think I'd been 21 for like a week or something when I booked One Tree Hill. Okay. And so like it's 20 years. And I'm literally, I can't even do the math. Was that in like the early aughts? Yeah, it was 2003. Okay. And that was One Tree Hill.

2003 like a crazy time when you think back to like the early sort of tabloid internet and the way we treated women and the fact that anyone dared to call Britney Spears fat like it was such a toxic soup of things yeah well and I think a lot of the kind of younger people are coming up now like truly can't understand the context that a lot of the specifically actresses were living through like in the pre-me-to era and in the kind of like when Weinstein was like running the town versus you know this era now of like HR like you know like it's not perfect but at least you have someone to go ask for help I will say it's so weird I feel like there's so much I've learned in in kind of hindsight because booking that show you know it took me to small town North

Carolina for a decade so there was was a lot that we experienced in our little bubble and certainly the pressures of the time and the commentary and all the craziness. But like the industry stuff, I didn't know any, I didn't know any of it. I didn't know any of those people. I was like, I was very rarely around. And so it's crazy too, you know, some of the things I've heard since and learned since I'm just like, holy shit, how did, how does this exist? How did anyone survive it? yeah yeah well and i think one of the things that we have now i don't again i don't think it's perfect like you said um and i think that there's still a lot of like egregious things that happen but i think

what we got was a vocabulary for even understanding uh what was egregious and and how the kind of power structures work and you know where we're entitled to more safety than we've been given. And so I think what we really gained, you know, is this vocabulary for moving forward slowly and then like two steps forward, one step back. But we can keep going with kind of a deeper understanding of what's happening. That's a really beautiful way to put it. I'm curious, you know, not just about career and present day and so many other things people know about you, but if we went back, you know, if we got to walk out onto the playground right now, now and see our eight-year-old selves? Who would eight-year-old

Katarina be? I don't feel far away from her. You know what I mean? And I think I think, and I've heard you asked this question before and it kind of has given me pause because I, because I'm like, well, what did I think I would do or who would I be? And I think I actually just wasn't oriented that way in that I think I wasn't kind of looking at myself and wondering what kind of, you know, noun person I would be as an adult. I think I was very located in an observer position inside of myself. And so I think, and my mom's even talked about it, I'm like one of five kids. And she's kind of said that very distinctly and specifically when I was born and when I was a little kid, I was kind of always looking. And I was like looking,

looking, looking, and trying to, like, gather information to understand how things were. Yeah. Right? And I think that that kind of, whatever I became, I think that remains. And I think as an actor, as an artist, as an activist and a social advocate who's trying to, like, understand the structures of why things are the way they are and, you know, how you create a person on screen and why they function the way they. they do, I think it is this kind of orientation of like curious observation. And that feels

familiar throughout my life. And you started on a children's series at 8, right? Yeah, I did. Which is also so crazy. Yeah. And I think I understand, I didn't not understand until listening to your podcast. You're Canadian somehow. Yeah, so my dad's Canadian. Okay. My dad is from Montreal and moved to L.A. in the 70s to go to art school and stayed. started his business and did his whole thing. And my mom is from the East Coast. And her mom immigrated to the U.S. as a young kid. And so it's like big American dream, anything is possible here, energy on both sides of my family. My parents had the reverse journey. My mom was born in New York. And my dad actually, yeah, my dad was born in Italy. And then he was in Argentina for a

long time, and then he was in California and New York, and eventually they both met in grad school in Canada. Wow. And then they stayed. And so I was born in Canada, but, um, wow. Yeah. So how, how does little eight-year-old Katarina tell her parents, I want to go be on a TV show? How did that happen? It was not that. I mean, I think I had kind of one of those unusual journeys. My older sister, I would be in a choir. We were in like a church. children's choir. And my older sister wanted to be an actor. And I wanted to be a doctor. I wanted to be a doctor. What kind of doctor? I wanted to be a heart surgeon. I wanted to go into Cardiff, classics. Yes. Oh, wow. I wanted to be OBGYN. Oh, my God. Look at us and we play

doctors on TV. Yeah. So I wanted to be a doctor. But my parents who, you know, both were academics. They both had PhDs, but they had opted to, my dad had a PhD in social work. And my mom was a social anthropologist and so they had this like whack of five children but not a lot of cash and so you know a family value of ours was like get educated but I knew that you have to pay tuition to do that and so my sister wanted to be an actor and I was kind of with her when she was meeting her first agent that my parents were like okay you can but it's not like I don't know just if you want and and then the agent was like why don't you come along too and I just knew that I I could, like, save up money for tuition if it worked out and I could be a doctor.

Incredible. And so, kind of, in a weird kind of meta way, I saved up tuition and life was long, but somehow I'm now like an actor, doctor. Yeah. There's really something about it. I think it does something on a sort of spiritual level when you get to, achieve your grown-up and childhood dream at the same time, which is how I feel. Like being on set and doing a scene in an open heart surgery, I'm like, I did it.

I weirdly manifested like my two favorite things to do. This is so crazy. Well, and I'll say, recently I had kind of an interesting experience because I do get really hyper, like I love acting and I love storytelling and I get really interested in the storylines and in the medicine of the storylines. Yeah. Yeah. And so I'm like super interested in neural, which is, which is Amelia's specialty. And so I'll often like steal the props from set when they, when they've like printed out things about the newest studies on Alzheimer's and Parkinson's. And I'll like,

take them and read them. Yes. And then I'll like go down rabbit holes. And so I have learned a lot in, in that time. And, and then recently, One of my kids did have a big surgery, and it was a heart surgery. And the information really kind of served in that setting, you know, in terms of my ability to advocate for her and my ability to kind of read all of the charts and understand exactly what was going on and kind of be the, you know, the eye on everything as like different doctors and nurses are like changing shifts and you kind of get to be this through line for your kid and you have to be. But I think real life and this kind of like fantasy life have really kind of

worked together in a beautiful way. That's so cool. It just, it feels like a little nod from the universe. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We'll be back in just a minute, but here's a word from our sponsors. When did it hit you? Because, you know, I get that as a kid on Mr. Dressup, you're going, oh, I can work the way my sister works. I can save up money for college. This feels fun. It's a little summer campy. But when does acting as a professional goal sort of crystallize in your mind? The first answer is when I was like 15, I was doing a show for Disney and a bunch of the kids there were just like really focused on their like professional careers. And I think that was actually the first moment that I realized that this was not an extracurricular activity

that I happened to be doing like in school hours. Like I really thought we were all kind of like, you know, some kids play soccer and some kids are in choir, and then some kids do acting, and then you go and have your adult life. And it was really like a light bulb when I realized that these kids, this is going to be their grown-up life. Wait, what? And that was when I realized you could like be a storyteller professionally. Wow.

And I still was kind of on the fence. I wasn't sure if I wanted to do that. I got a little serious about it. And then at about 19, I was like in LA and there's a whole journey, but I decided I wanted to go and do college and study other things. But then in that process, I was studying like literary studies and philosophy and comparative religions. And I came to understand how important narrative storytelling was for like the human journey. You know, I hit my parents again, like they were in social work and they were, you know, running soup kitchens and helping people. with these very like tangible real world problems and I kind of thought like oh that's what's

important being a doctor is important running a homeless shelter is important acting is frivolous you know what I mean and and actually when I left acting and went back to college and actually started studying philosophy and again comparative religions and literary studies it kind of crystallized for me that the reason we feed people and that that reason we house people is because we're all engaged in this miracle, which is life, and that for us to fully participate in that miracle, this kind of conscious attention that allows us to read the story of self and its relationality with other is like, that's why we're, that's why we eat, you know, and so they're both important. You feed the people so that they can have this

experience of consciousness through narrative. The root of that is empathy and the quickest way to get in touch with or create empathy is to learn someone's story. And I had a very similar experience to you in college. You know, I wanted to be a doctor. Then I decided I was going to go get a BFA in theater. And I was in the honors program at my university. And one of the things I was really heavily focused on was theology and philosophy. Cool. And studying these things. You know, it's like, I know it can be just like, oh my God, roll your eyes, the actor talking about how before there was written language, we were passing stories. But we were. We were. And like, the value of the story, the generational song.

the humans around the campfire at night passing down what we believe. It's like it's so foundational to who we are. And it made me realize why shows like yours, which I'm lucky enough to come play on sometimes, are so important because they actually teach us about science through the lens of human experience. Yeah. And they do also teach us.

to advocate for ourselves. One of the things that Grace Anatomy has done really well, I think, is that it is in dialogue with the culture through the decades. I mean, we've been here for 22 years. Many things have happened. Many cultural conversations have happened. And I think Shonda Rhimes and, you know, the showrunners who have come after are sensitive to, okay, what are we talking about? Let's have that conversation. And so one of the kind of scary, things was during COVID, we decided to do a COVID season, which in some ways was very claustrophobic and very dark. I mean, you guys in those like the arrivals, those like space suits. Yeah. That was a lot. But we had to see your face. It was a hard season. It was a hard season to shoot and I think it was a

hard season to watch. But I think one of the things that it did was it provided medical communication to a lot of people who did not have access. And I think it provided witness to a lot of the health care workers and frontline workers who were dealing with this, like, yeah, unbelievably unspeakable day-to-day trauma. Yes. And then also being accused of, like, being secret agents to some big conspiracy. And you're like, these people are literally on the front lines of death. Right. Trying to keep people alive.

But I think you're right. I think that medical communication and scientific communication is so important because I think the reason we're so polarized, I mean, as a country, in many ways is because there is this lack of transparency, you know, or there's kind of this assumption that everyone's on the same page. And I think what we've realized in the last kind of election cycle is we're so far from the page that we thought, that we assumed people were on. And it's like this big wake up of like, oh, we were all assuming that we were having the same conversation. We were not. And by projecting our assumptions onto people, we are wholly unprepared for actually the experience that other people are having and therefore

what is going to affect our country. But yeah, informed consent is important and unless you have the information, you don't feel like you can consent. So even if the scientific community is trying to do something benevolent and for your best interest, people are going to be suspect if they don't have the information to make their own decisions and so we really have to like address that what was it like when you like discovered gray's in the first place were you a watcher before you joined the cast like what was that all the way back in the beginning like i had like the box set DVDs of the first season of grace anatomy and so i was

like doing finals and the way i would decompress from like studying was i would watch this new show Grace Anatomy in this like on DVD. Oh my God, I love it. And I was, I instantly fell in love with it. And I thought it was just like such an exciting dynamic show and, you know, the payos and the drama. And it was so sexy. And I was like, I think I, I think I want to be a doctor. I think I wanted to be a doctor as a kid. But then I was like, no, I'm going to be, you know, all of these other kind of social justice things. And then I got to end of undergrad. And I was like, I think I do want to be a doctor after seeing this. And so I ended up going to the medical faculty at the University of Toronto and signing up for this like six week lecture series where surgeons would come in and lecture to like humanities students

about like what being a doctor was in case you wanted to like take your humanities degree and like now become a doctor. And so I listened to six weeks of surgeons talking about actually what their day is like and what surgery is like. And I got to the end of that series and I was like, I think I just, I think I just want to be on Grey's Anatomy. You're like, it turns out. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I might want to tell the stories for the doctors. Yeah, more pathos.

More on-call rooms. I love it. What you have been able to do as an actor through the character of Amelia, you know, trauma, addiction, grief, such a complex specialty, as you mentioned earlier. I mean, the field of neuroscience is, it's like almost sci-fi. It's so cool. Mysterious and evolving. Like, what you do has been so deeply personal and human and also so incredibly technical. I mean, after 15 years of this is, I was about to say, is there a, like there could be one silly me.

What would you say are the kind of top handful biggest takeaways or like, lessons or kind of magical learnings you've had from doing this job. Well, I do love learning scrubs and the running shoes because as you probably know, like I've done so many shows where you're like in a dark factory running in like four inch heels with a gun. And that hurts. But like it's actually physically like you're like, who made this decision? Yeah. This is not what would happen. And so the wardrobe on Grangeries Anatomy is the best one I've ever had. I love that. I love about Grays that because it's this massive cast and our fan base is so broad

and it's all over the world and it's every age group and I feel like in this kind of like I don't know like a fractured postmodern echo chambery world I feel like Grays is such a unifier but also that all of the different characters seem to serve this like Yomian function for people where like almost like the kind of like

avatars that you would find on like Olympus or like these kind of Yomian like archetypes people identify certain characters with different aspects of self and they can kind of negotiate their own kind of inner journeys and relationships through the characters on Grays and so there's this like opportunity for catharsis and I think also I think like the audience I think all of the people who have been involved in Grey's Anatomy

have been on this journey that Shonda Rhymes put us on of like a mission-based show, which is entertaining and sexy and hot and something everybody wants to watch. But we're also like, again, breaking down these social conversations and having new ones and starting to understand intersectionality and marginalized communities

that in the first few seasons weren't even talked about. And by the end, we're like, talking about identities that had never, never even approached being on mainstream television. We're kind of breaking down binaries and finding a new way to approach an understanding of visibility. And so that's been, that's been exciting. Yeah. I mean, it's so special. And then in the sort of backdrop of all this storytelling and boundary breaking, to your point, you've had this incredible evolution as a person. I mean, you know, becoming a mom and your life growing in that way. I mean, you've got three kids and like, yeah. What's the experience being part of such a big on-screen world and then building such a big off-screen world? I feel like because of the way that you were raised and what you saw modeled in terms of service and showing up and also a big family,

like maybe maybe did it feel more natural to you to be invested so deeply in multiple worlds at once? Hmm. Yeah. I mean, I think it is interesting. You know, I moved to L.A. and I was pretty much cast into Shondaland, like within a year of arriving here. And so actually, most of my, like, heart and soul friends that I met immediately are on the show.

And so we would have these, like, you know, incredibly intense interactions on screen. And then behind the scenes, somebody would be having a baby or getting divorced or getting a cancer diagnosis or, like, working through some sort of, we just went through so much. And the private, I'm going to include the private practice cast in this conversation. Because Amelia was like on grace and private practice at the same time for three years. And then private practice ended and she ended up on grace. But we're all, like all the private practice people are. still on a text thread together. Yeah, like marriages, babies, divorces, like understanding, I don't know, it kind of all

weaves together. Yeah. Yeah. And I think even just like one of the most exciting things for me being kind of a woman in this industry is like going from a place of playing enjeunue to like understanding her kind of going from like male gaze enjeune to like coming into her own power. and becoming professionally not just adept but masterful and exiting the male gaze as like an object of desire and projection and like coming into kind of her own lived internal experience

as like kind of you know I just think it's like it's a journey that we haven't had the opportunity to see from women until something this long standing. Yeah. So, yeah, 20 years of watching women become is pretty exciting. It's so cool. Yeah. And Amelia, too. Like, Amelia went from being kind of like a wayward, you know, sometimes drug addicted, you know, wild child.

And, you know, and she kind of moved through wild, like, dating and marriage and children and queer spaces. And, like, she's just had this very dynamic full life. and yeah yeah we'll be back in just a minute after a few words from our favorite sponsors is there something interesting to you about that you know both in her journey and as a woman who like set out on the path that I think so many of us believe we're going to walk right like it gets laid out for you and you're like that's how it works and you build the life and you do the things and you check it off. And then you're like, uh-oh.

Like there's something missing to go through that in this character and also in the background to, you know, go through the birth of your three children and then to go through your own divorce. Yeah, yeah. Like, I don't know. I mean, we've both been through it, you know, recently enough. And it's like...

I mean, I feel like I graduated. Yeah. I mean, you know, I feel like I kind of like, again what you're saying is like we kind of had this like prescribed assumption about how life is supposed to go but when you start to kind of like um investigate where that prescription came from and who the doctor was and you start to understand that that doctor was a society that does not have the best interests of most of us in mind yes then you start to kind of like deconstruct um the protocol i had this experience i was explaining it to someone the other day

I had this great conversation with a friend I hadn't seen in a while over dinner. And I said, you know, I don't think until I knew that my, what I thought was my happy ending was wrong for me. I don't think it had ever dawned on me that all the choices I was making perhaps weren't choices at all. Right. Like, I don't think women are reared to choose. We are reared to be chosen. And for me, in midlife, looking around and going like, wait, did I did I choose any of this or did I tell myself I was choosing like it was sort of like going

through my own internal earthquake but it felt really good when the shaking stopped to your point like this this I graduated I'm like I know exactly what you mean and on the one hand I'm kind of heartbroken for myself and other people and on the other hand I'm like that's just so you well and again i think people like you know they they want to again binary everything where they're like we are you saying that marriage is bad no like i think not understanding your choices is bad i think that if you are defaulting into you know heteronormative marriage and kids because you didn't realize there were any other options that might be a tragedy for you and if you are if you can see outside the fish tank how society is structured and how we were socialized

from the beginning of the gender reveal into absolutely different grammatical roles in our in our again our social language and and when you understand that you can go well first of all is that is that authentic femininity and masculinity or is that imposed imposed yeah what is actual authentic femininity what is actual authentic masculinity how much of each of those do I feel inside of myself and how much of the assigned definitions do I want to participate in in my life being taught to be a good girl you know often a people please are often a fixer, a very early parentified child, I was like, oh, I didn't think, it didn't dawn on me until I was so claustrophobic in my own life that I wasn't making, to your point, full

choices. I wasn't seeing outside the fish tank. Someone, the world around me, would say, here's five pens, which one do you want to write with? And I'd go, I choose the blue one. But there's a thousand pens. Right. I never asked.

You're a paintbrush. Yeah. But it's like I never asked for more because I thought, well, who am I to ask for more? But guess what? Walk out there and look at all the other colors. Look at all the other things. Look at all the other tools. And I think you don't even realize how much conditioning can stop you from seeing until you,

you know there's more and you rip the blinders off. and then you're like, holy shit. Right. Look at this world. Like, I didn't know. I didn't know until I knew. Well, and I think that that is a conversation for, again, we're kind of like talking from a place of like a lot of privilege, right?

Yes. Like being white women who are in non-disabled bodies, you know what I mean? Like the wake up call. Being able to leave in the first place. Yeah. And that for a long time, you know, the limitations of patriarchy within the understanding of the story

of achievement in patriarchy and in like one supremacist's patriarchy. Like unconsciously, if you haven't consciously unpacked it, like it's working for a long time. You're able to get a lot of things that feel good. And it isn't until you have, you know, a bunch of like, you know, firecracker wake-up calls in your life

where you're like, wait, not everybody has access to all these nice things. And wait. Yeah. This is not the experience everyone's having. And those, I think, are the moments where when you encounter, you know, the first person that you know with disability or when you truly are kind of like, when you're introduced to kind of intersectional, you know, different communities. And you realize that actually our society is created to exclude certain people and to include other people. And that actually we're all participating in a structure that is violence to every single individual in it. Yes, even the people with the perception of power. Yeah.

It might take longer for it to be violent with them, but it is. Well, but it is. Because because it actually just is all the time in just a different way, I guess. Yeah. Because even taking away your informed consent about how you're going to live your life, even when you're like, you know, you get the pink cake and you think you're supposed to choose sparkles. Like that's a violence against your individuality, right? And against your.

Yeah, it's so reductive. Yeah, you're uniquely unfolding DNA and awe, right? And so we're all living in the violence of like an imposed. value system that doesn't serve any of us. The things I've witnessed in communities of women over the years of my adulthood have been so incredibly beautiful, including the willingness to say, hey, I know I have me individually. I have these following types of privilege. What am I missing? Like one of the coolest things I just won't an insane sentence. I'm about to say I just got to moderate a stop on Kamala Harris's book tour. And

she has this thing this moment in her book where she says i always ask when people are being gathered or when i'm going to meet people i always ask who's not in the room i always ask who i'm not hearing from and that to me i'm like god more of that and i'm i'm really curious for you because you are such a brilliant woman friend, mother, performer, advocate, I see so much of your wisdom every time I'm with you, every time I get to listen to you speak. And when I think about your three daughters and the fact that your second daughter has Down syndrome, I've read all the things, you know, about how scary it was, the diagnosis, and you were so terrified of what you didn't know. And and you've gone on to be this incredible advocate for her

and you work with the Global Bound Syndrome Foundation. I mean, even the way you're able to talk about ableism and privilege, when you know how poorly designed the world in its current iteration is for us as able-bodied, privileged women. And then you look at one of your kids who has an added layer of struggle in a world like ours. how do you focus on what she deserves becoming a motivation and a force that activates you rather than either making you so mad you go crazy or being so scared that you can't sleep at night. Like how have you learned to fuel her future in yourself?

The beginning of the journey was full of a lot of like fear. but really the journey was realizing that the fear was because there was no visibility in my life. I didn't know what the assignment was, right? I was like, this is a kid. I didn't expect, you know, what I understand of parenting is that I as a parent am tasked with taking this little baby and helping them to achieve all of the metrics of, ableist, straight, cis, white, patriarchy. Right? All of this is unconscious.

This is not what I understand. I think the task is, but that is unconsciously, you're like, I gotta make this kid, I gotta find a good school, I gotta make sure they're in sports, I gotta make sure that they can achieve all of the markers that will allow them to be included, right? And so how am I gonna do that?

This kid is gonna have more challenges at that task. And so you feel really powerless and you're like, I don't know how, I don't know how to. And then you realize that the task is the wrong task. And actually like, you're not, even like the beginning of the advocacy as a parent, you're like, I need to make sure that my kid is included in this ablest white patriarchy. You know what I mean? And it's like, actually, no. And then you're like, wait a second. Am I?

am I, you're like pointing your finger at yourself, am I part of the problem? Am I part of the problem? No, there's nothing wrong with this child's iteration. Yeah. She is born perfectly individual, just like the rest of us. Yeah. And the moment you stop being afraid of the word disability is when you realize that disability has nothing to do with the particular body of someone who can or can't do certain

things. Disability has to do with how much society has decided to include people who have different abilities, different bodies, different, you know, cognitive capacities and whatever. And I think when you realize that disability is not about your kid or yourself if you're disabled, like it's about how much does society want to include you in a conversation, how much do they want to give you the ability to participate, then you can talk about disability with no problem because you're actually talking about society. Right. And what you're actually talking about is stretching the margins of society wider than they

have typically been to make more space for more people. And that society is disabling you. Yes. And society, if they decide to build a staircase for an able-bodied man to get to the meeting on the second floor, they have given him an accommodation. He can't jump 16 feet. So they have accommodated his disability to get to the second floor meeting, right? Yes.

We've decided that he is worthy of being accommodated, right? You can build a ramp. You just need to decide that someone in a wheelchair is worthy of being accommodated so that they can get to that second floor meeting, right? And so it really is about are we creating a society with all types of bodies in mind? And the same kind of can be extended to all sorts of kind of intersectional exclusion, exclusion for marginalized groups. It's like they have been disabled from participation in certain kinds of activities

and meaning for parts of our functioning society. And so, you know, yeah. Well, and what you're talking about is so obvious and also not, because we don't have conversations like this unless we seek them out. You know, we don't know these things. It doesn't dawn on you that, like, hello, the staircase to the second and third floor is an accommodation until someone says it to you in that way. Right.

Well, I do want to shout out Amani Barbaran, who is an incredible disabled activist. And actually, it was listening to her where I had kind of the light bulb go on about this, that disability, I think she said something like, talking about the politics of disability and like what's going on with like politics right now and and um and she said something along the line and i'm misquote it but something along the lines of understand if the people in power want you excluded they will disable you And whether that's deciding that your identity is not normative and therefore not to be accommodated, you know, or not providing you with the medical access you need or, you know,

that basically the people in power are the people who decide who is disabled. And when we're talking about disability justice and advocacy, we have to understand that we're all included because the second they decide that you are an enemy of. of the state, essentially, you get recategorized. Yes. Well, by the way, think about our grandmother's generation. Quote, hysterical women would get institutionalized. They would force you to have a lobotomy.

They would literally medically disable you if you didn't fall in line. And queerness, you know what I mean? Like there are all of these categories that if you look at history, they were just classified in ways that made them outside of what was open. a society, right? And so we, and women, I mean, are you kidding me? Like, women couldn't vote because we were like not considered like mentally competent. You know what I mean? Like that we were disabled from participating in democracy by these structures. Like, they decide. Yeah. Absolutely insane. And now for our sponsors.

You speak on this so beautifully. You do so much work. You've educated yourself in such incredible ways. You teach when you talk. In your advocacy with the Global Down Syndrome Foundation, I'm curious if there have been takeaways or learnings, things that you know are most helpful for new parents of newly diagnosed children who don't know what you know yet.

who are frightened, who are overwhelmed, who don't know where to start. Like, what's the first North Star you can point people to so they can know how joyful their kids' life is going to be the way you know that about your middle daughter? Yeah, I mean, oh gosh, there's so much to say. And first of all, I want to say the Global Down syndrome Foundation is amazing. And they do a lot of fundraising to do lots of research that is now no longer being prioritized by the government.

And so lots of research that helps, again, enable people with Down syndrome and their families to participate. And then also that helps with kind of medical research that gets to kind of the root of some of the comorbidities that go along with Down syndrome. There's too much to say. So I would just give them my peace and calm. Like as a parent with a nine-year-old, like there's, I would never, ever, ever, ever want to go back to the person that I was before. PIPA was born in terms of my understanding of the world. PIPA is by far my easiest kid. Pippa is an absolutely authentic rock star of a person who I learn from every day.

My community has expanded so exponentially. It shattered kind of a paradigm that allowed me to start learning about all different kinds of intersectionality. I understand myself. It's just like, I guess the takeaway. it would be like, I know you're scared because you don't know what you're doing. Take some breaths. You're going to find community and you're going to know how to parent this kid just like you learn how to parent typical kids and like, it's all going to be okay.

You're going to love it. And there are hard parts, of course. There's hard parts of parenting all kinds of kids. But find your people. But that's so beautiful. Do you think that your lessons in. possibility expansive thought you know what you've learned from being her mom helped you cope back in 2023 when you went through your your house fire you know do you because I know I mean

we've talked about it a bit but yeah it's such a traumatizing thing to go through that it's it's an incredibly traumatizing thing to lose your home you went through it too easy years before our whole city went through it, you know, from the east side all the way to the west. Like, I thought so much about your wisdom in those first weeks of January this year, watching so many people I knew go through it. I was like, holy shit. You know, how do you reflect on that experience in terms of your perspective on, you know, community, safety, home, family? Because people will say it's just a house. It's just stuff. But it's all. also it's the record of your life. It's both and, I imagine. Yeah. And again, I think, I mean,

to be, to be frank, I was able to navigate our fire in part because I had a lot of resources. You know what I mean? I had insurance and I had a place to go. I had friends. And then I was able to move us into a new situation. And I think actually when the Altadina fires happened, and the Palisades virus happened, I think because I had been through all of the complexity of the kind of bureaucracy of getting my children safe again and comfortable again, and how my financial world was kind of rocked and affected, just realizing in such a profoundly personal way, the extent to which there are so many families that did not have the infrastructure that I had.

And so as much as there was all of the kind of trauma, and devastation psychologically emotionally for my kids and my family we didn't have that extra layer of like actual houselessness you know and and that again is like it just shines a light on like our society is not structured to take care of us in a crisis and oh I'll say this I think one of the things we've been learning over the last few years there's been this like incredible demoralization about the ability of the government, whether right or left or whoever, to take care of us all. I think people are more and more demoralized. And I think that yes, it's sad and yes, it's scary. And I do think that it has woken us up to our need to

take care of each other in local community. Yes. I think that's what happened during the fires for a lot Yes. Well, and it's been really interesting to see people, much like yourself, the advocate that your life and the identity within your family built in you on top of the advocate you were raised to be. I wonder too, like, I think about two very big communities for you. I mean, obviously you mentioned Gray's. We're all, well, myself included. I was about to say we're all over here in my Instagram feed. It's very upset that Cassie. and Amelia haven't hung out. I know.

That's a problem. It is a problem. I'm also just like as a friend upset that, you know, in the two episodes I was on this year, you've been on hiatus. I'm like, girl, what is going on? Where are you? People want to know. Do you know where Amelia is?

Well, Amelia's apparently in Boston. Doing like a fellowship at Harvard or something? I actually don't know what she's doing in Boston. Okay, great. She found her people. But she'll be back. She'll be back in January. Okay.

Thank God, we miss you. Yeah. Has it been kind of nice to have a moment to yourself? How has, like, a beat from the intensity of a TV schedule. How's that shaping your day to day? I'm founding co-owner of some yoga studios in L.A., which also did a lot of... Yeah, I wanted to ask you about that next. I love Modo.

I was only involved, Emily Morwin started the studios here in L.A. And so we were childhood friends. And so I started it with her in. L.A. here. And it's such a beautiful studio. Well, and I think one of the things that's cool about that, speaking of Altadena Fires, like the Echo Park studio basically became a community hub. So it was kind of those studios became kind of spaces where people could come after like, you know, disasters in the city. And there was a pantry at one point and, you know, just a lot of community events to kind organize and and bring people together after like suffering this collective trauma and so yes yeah

wow so you've been able to lean into that time with friends and family what feels like your work in progress right now okay you know I was just talking to somebody about this and I've been doing a lot of actually meditating on it but I think I think I've been doing like a contemplation on outsourcing, like how much we outsource, and that, you know, again, we can kind of talk about our society or, you know, our interpersonal relationships, but like outsourcing your sense of validity, fulfillment, okayness, accomplishment, just identity to like an observer outside the self or a community outside the self and that actually there is a community inside the self and that that community happens over time, right?

And so, like, I think you did it actually brilliantly. You talked about, like, if you were eight years old and you saw yourself, would you kind of recognize yourself as kind of the thematic question? And I think that what you're doing kind of when you ask that question is you're inviting the community of one iteration of yourself to be with the community of the other iteration of yourself. And I think that over the years of your life and over the minutes of your life and the seconds of your life, all of the choices that you've made create this cumulative identity. And those are the voices, all of the seconds of your life where you were you,

those are the voices that should be informing how you feel about who you are and each decision that you're making those are the voices all of those versions of self are the voices and you can trust those voices because they've shown you how to survive all this time right and so really just kind of like understanding that once you once you've made that community of self the ultimate arbiter of your sense of safety and joy, then you're more free to engage in all of your interpersonal relationships and all of your social relationships in a non-transactional way because everything is already provided.

So your choices, you actually have the ability to consent to every interaction. You're engaged in. I love that. you you my friend are a poet you are I'm ready when are you writing a book oh gosh you know I've had three kids you're like when they're in college or

I you know it is one of those I would say that's my little guilty thing I'm like when I'm I supposed to the when do I say yes to those types of things. I don't know. You got time. Yeah. Thank you for creating a space. You create a space to kind of like for all of the people who don't have time to write the book. You like are like, tell me about the book.

Yeah. Tell me about the stories that will go in the eventual book. Yeah. I love it. Oh, it makes me so happy to get to be with you for a bit. Thank you for coming today. Thank you for having me. This is an I-Heart podcast, guaranteed human.