The Unplanned Podcast with Matt & Abby - Going blind, losing our surrogate, & retiring my service dog

Episode Date: June 3, 2026

This episode is sponsored by: Unreal Snacks, Square, Good Wipes, and Cash App Unreal Snacks: Visit https://unrealsnacks.com/unplanned o get $4 off a bag of Unreal—terms and conditions apply. Square: Get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at https://square.com/go/unplanned ! #squarepod Good Wipes: Head to https://goodwipes.com/UNPLANNED to learn how to snag a free pack of goodwipes! Cash App: Download Cash App at https://capl.onelink.me/vFut/kssum24w and use code FAMILY10 at signup to earn $10 when you send $5 to a friend within 14 days. Terms apply. Today on Unplanned, we sit down with Matthew and Paul — an interabled married couple loved by millions for their honest conversations around disability, identity, and life online. Paul opens up about being diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease that will eventually leave him completely blind, while Matthew shares his experience growing up in a strict religious cult and the journey that led him to finally leave. We also talk about internet trolls, misconceptions about blindness, their dream of becoming parents, retiring a guide dog, and how they’ve built a life centered around creativity, advocacy, and finding joy in the face of adversity. Matthew & Paul's IG: @matthewandpaul Paul's Children's Books IG: @paulcastlestudio Find Paul's books here: https://paulcastlestudio.com/ Find Matthew's music here: https://open.spotify.com/artist/31WEJvJ77B3sv45clvu889/discography/all Guide dog resource mentioned in this episode: https://www.guidedogs.com/ Follow The Unplanned Podcast: https://www.instagram.com/unplanned__podcast/ https://www.tiktok.com/@unplanned_podcast Listen to the pod on Spotify/ Apple Podcasts: https://open.spotify.com/show/1ToDA4ufQuWuEgMq07zN6t https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-unplanned-podcast/id1669604504 Follow Matt & Abby: Abby's Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/abbyelizabethoward/ Matt's Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/_matt_howard_/ TikTok | https://www.tiktok.com/@matt_and_abby Facebook | https://www.facebook.com/mattandabb YouTube | https://www.youtube.com/@MattandAbby Chapters: 01:02 - Traveling with a guide dog 07:15 - Retinitis Pigmentosa 11:15 - How we met 15:09 - Breaking up 17:35 - Growing up in the IBLP 30:00 - Escaping the IBLP 33:30 - Dealing with the internet trolls 42:40 - Family planning 46:00 - Coping with grief 53:00 - Getting married 01:00:00 - Retiring our service dog 01:11:30 - Running a marathon as a blind person 01:13:00 - Applying for a new guide dog 01:20:00 - When my guide dog saved my life 01:30:00 - Authoring children's books Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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kindred bravely.com slash unplanned for 20% off your first order. Make sure you use our links so they know we sent you. Exclusions apply. A friend of his said, you're throwing your life away. This guy's going to lose all his vision. You're going to be his caretaker. Is that what you really want? You could marry a fully able-bodied person, and then they get hit by a bus, and then they're in a wheelchair.

Does that mean you'd leave them? Matthew and Paul are an inter-abled couple that went mega-viral on TikTok after Matthew started breaking his blind husband, Paul. Growing up gay, there's just a lot of people that don't understand, and it's not something that we take personally. We shifted to really focusing on talking about my journey with sight loss. That is when this whole new crop of trolls emerged. Really?

We call him the blind deniers. At 16, Paul was diagnosed with a degenerative eye disease that will eventually leave him completely blind. But that hasn't stopped him from pursuing his dream of becoming a children's author, illustrating six books in the last two years. When there's a blind character, they always have some superpower, and they have like Kung Fu Ninja skills, and they're so cool. I say you run with that. We talk with them about escaping a cult, their journey to fatherhood,

and retiring their beloved guide dog, Maple, all on today's episode. episode. Please welcome Matthew and Paul and Mr. Maple. Oh, Mr. Maple. Does live and lift his head. He didn't even lift his head. He's so over it already. Oh, it's a big travel day for him. Yeah, but he loves to travel. He does. He does.

Yeah, it gives him a purpose. It's true, it does. He loves, like, it's a new place to nap. He loves new places to nap. All the way from Seattle, how do you, when Maple's travel, How do you, you know, take Maple to the bathroom at the airport? Is there like a certain area? Oh, he refuses.

No pet areas. Oh, the pet areas, those, they smell awful. No. And he's like, I'm too good for this. Do you know who I am? He's like, have you seen my Instagram account? And, no, but we there is. We have to go outside the airport.

You have to do it outside the airport. They are trained to just go on pavement. Really? So they prefer it over grass. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

But, okay. So, but like the airport bathroom area for a dog. Is that, what is that exactly? Like, describe that area for somebody that's never been there before. I've never been to that area. Some of them have like a astroturf and a fake fire hydrant. Some of them are just a hard floor. Right, with a drain in the middle.

But there's usually, and they pump it, like they pour perfume over it. So it's like you have this really potent, awful perfume smell, but you can smell all the urine and other stuff underneath. And it's often right next to a bathroom somewhere in a terminal. It makes sense. But, I mean, it smells awful. It's pretty bad. But it's like around a corner.

Sometimes it's in a room. So we travel a lot with our kids. And there's often service dogs of all kinds that we see. And when we were traveling recently, we met a service dog. And I was going to ask you this too. We always tell our kids, this might be wrong. Like, they're just drawn to any dog. And they're like, can I go say hi?

We always say, like, you have to, if they're, you have to ask the owner. But usually if I see like a vest of some sort, we're like, that's dogs working so he can't. Like how do you, yeah, what do you do about kids that just come up and are attracted to Mr. Maple? Well, I want to say first of all, Griffin did a very good job. Did he? He was in here before.

He stood back. He waited. We offered to take the harness off and then he understood the assignment. And I would actually, I would say that kids are often more aware and educated. I've often heard kids telling their parents, we can't touch that dog because it's working. But the reverse is true too. I hear a lot of parents educating their kids and using it as an educational opportunity. So that's a way to do it? The only times people have literally breached that and just gone and started petting my dog, it's been full grown adults. No. Is it usually

elderly people that? No. No? No. Well, I am blind. So they could be. No. They might be. All ages. All ages. Yeah. They just can't help themselves. They reach down. They don't sound elderly. Can you tell us a story about a time that somebody went ahead and started petting Maple without your permission? Well, I was walking through downtown Seattle where we live. And I was walking home from my barber. And it just happened very suddenly because they were walking toward me. I couldn't really see them. But I heard them approaching and I heard their reaction, their excitement.

You know, and the next thing I know, I can hear the hands on Maple and petting him. And of course, Maple doesn't know that he's not. I mean, he doesn't know the rules. He seems to know the rules. He does and he doesn't. It's not like he knows he needs to be focused, but if somebody breaks the rules, like they do it TSA when they give him a pat down with his harness on.

He's like, okay, I guess this is okay. And so he's loving it. I can feel the tail wagging. And I'm like, oh, oh, no, no, no, no. He's working. You can't pet him. And she shot back and she goes, rude. Rude.

And they walked off. What did you say to that person? I didn't say anything. I'm just like, Maple, let's keep going. I don't think this is safe. I don't think this is safe. But I actually created a little webcomic about it. I have a webcomic called The Blind Robot.

And in it, the Blind Robot has a guide bot named Mr. Motor. And I wanted to create like a four-panel visual representation of like what that situation would be like. So I have the exact scenario in which somebody is asking to pat the guidebot. And he says, sorry, he's working. The person says, rude. and he's a pilot. It was this robot pilot. And then the next scene is he's now landing a plane.

And my character, the blind robot, says, can I give you a hug? And he says, sorry, I'm landing a plane right now. He says, rude. It's sort of like, petting a working dog is like asking a pilot for a hug while they're trying to land a plane. Yeah, so better not to approach a working dog.

Yeah. I mean, if you see them stopped if the dog's laying down, then I like that. Then I like it if someone comes up and says, could I say hi? Could I pet your dog? Paul's super happy to take the harness is on or off. I mean, yeah, I actually isn't, listen, I don't mind it. And I love introducing Maple to people because it's such a treat for him.

He loves meeting people. So like it's a nice break for him, right? But I, as people with a platform that we get to talk about these things, I reiterate, if you do see a working guide dog and they have a vest on, never, ever, ever ask to pet it. Because you're putting the blind person or the disabled person in a situation where they have to make a decision and maybe they're having a stressful day and maybe that's not convenient for them. And even asking them becomes a distraction. They maybe even try to do an important task in that moment. And while it's true, I don't mind it.

We don't mind it. But I feel like Matthews, when Matthews around, I feel a lot safer. for situations like that, but I would encourage your viewers just not to ask. Okay. Unless they're out of their harness and you're like, okay, maybe, maybe it's appropriate. Yeah. And for anybody that's new here, how would you describe your type of blindness? I, correct me if I'm wrong.

I'm going to try the pronunciation of it. It's retinitis pigmentosa. Yep. Did I nail it? You nailed it. Let's go. Let's go. Okay.

What exactly is retinitis pigmentosa for? somebody that doesn't understand. You know what? I'm going to actually let Matthew tell you because when Matthew and I first started chatting online when he found my Instagram account 10 years ago, he just admitted this to me recently. He found out about my eye disease because I was posting about it. And he started chatting with me and I was like, gosh, this guy, he knows so much about it. Well, it turns out he had a Google browser open at the same time and he knew how to ask all the right questions. Yeah. So yeah, so Paul has retinitis pigmentosa. It's a degenerative inherited eye disease usually inherited. He's getting this really well. But Paul is de novo, which means he

created the mutation himself. Woo! First in my line. Wow. It was not passed on. There's what 800 variance, 800 variance? No, no, no. Right now, yeah, about 200. 200 variants. Wait, what was that where you used? De novo. De novo means that you are the, you are the, you are the, you. I think it just means like... I'm like the first to have it. So I've never heard that word before. But since it is genetic, I can pass it on. But it wasn't passed on to me.

Because every mutation has to start somewhere. Okay, that's true. And I'm the first to do it. Your parents had like been tested. They'd been tested. Okay. Yeah. And they didn't have it.

No way. And then I was, that's when I found out I was adopted. No, I'm just kidding. I did wonder. But I'm like, no. I look way too much like that. I feel like every kid grows up wondering that at some point. Hoping at some point.

You're like, maybe. Maybe. Maybe. I have a secret rich family out there. But you were diagnosed a little older, huh? Yeah. Was 16? I was 16. Wow.

And the symptoms started much earlier. And the first symptom is typically the loss of low light vision. So I like, on a camping trip, I couldn't see the stars in the sky. And I didn't understand why. And I have an older brother who was like, there's the big dipper. And I was like, I don't see it. Like, I'm just looking up and it's inky black, dark sky. Yeah.

And my parents thought I didn't understand what a constellation was. So they're like, no, no, no, no. you have to connect the dots. And they were getting frustrated with me. And they thought I was probably like, you know, a little slow. Sometimes I can't find the way. And I was feeling a little slow. I was feeling slow.

Because I'm like, why are they? What can they see that I can't? And because I'm a little brother and I had a big brother. And I was like, well, he can see it. So I'm going to pretend I can see it. Because enough of this. He's having too much fun. So I faked being able to see things like that for years out of shame,

embarrassment. and not wanting to feel different. But as that progressed into being really clumsy in like low-lit restaurants or getting into accidents when it was dusk. So I was just labeled as accident-prone. They didn't think anything was wrong with my eyes. By the way, I was already wearing glasses. The disease I have affects the retina of the eye.

It's the back of the eye. And we're tested in school for like, is your acuity good? That's a different part of the eye. That's the lens of your eye. So they don't test for retinitis pigmentosa, is what I'm saying. It's kind of a rare thing. And so they thought, well, we have glasses for Paul. And I'm thinking, this is supposed to correct my vision.

So it's not a vision problem. What's going on? I guess I'm just clumsy. And then at 16, I was learning to drive a car. And then, like, my second time behind the wheel of a car, I nearly merged into some oncoming traffic. Everybody's like panicking. I pulled over.

I got an appointment with an ophthalmologist and then specialists after that. And it took like six months of testing. but I was finally diagnosed with this rare disease. So after that incident, you know, learning to drive a car and almost getting in a crash, did you have to like stop that that whole process altogether? Did you never get a chance to get your license? Not until I met this man. I never got my license, but this guy was like, what if there's a zombie apocalypse?

I have a heart attack and you have to like get in a car and drive us to adjust. Like what if? So he took me to a big empty parking lot. Yeah, yeah. I took you to a big empty parking lot and you drove a. around, you know. Do you feel like freedom? It was crazy because I was like, my foot wasn't on the pedal and we were going.

I was like, we're going. He's like, yeah, it just goes on its own. I was like, it does. He's like, yeah, you have to put your foot on the break. And like, I was like, okay. This is fast enough. Okay, with just letting it move. I never use the accelerator.

Just coasting. Okay, wait. I feel like we're getting a little head of ourselves. Okay, okay, okay. Let's rewind a bit back to back to how you guys met. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You met on a, on a dating app. Back was this in 2016?

16. Wait, that's what we started dating. No. We started dating in 2016. And you guys got married in 2019 like we did. Yes. Parallels. That's amazing.

Yeah. Okay, who was it that like, like, he slid into my DM? He slid into your ideas. I was on the app, which I connected, had linked to my Instagram. Yeah. Okay. And he then was sleuthing on my Instagram. So I went to his Instagram and I was like, whoa, this guy is all these incredible, large paintings, like beautiful, surreal, color.

surreal, colorful. So he's an artist and he was talking about doing commissions and shows and galleries. And then he'd recently ran a marathon. And I was like, well, that's super cool. A half marathon. It's not as impressive. That's very impressive. And he's blind.

And I was like, whoa, how? How's he doing this? So I just reached out and started asking him. And that's when he started telling me about retinitis pigmentosa. And we were messaging back and forth for about two months. at that time I lived in northern Washington state and Paul lived in southern British Columbia So we were just

I was in the Vancouver area Just across the border And so finally after two months I was like I should go up and visit So I said I want to come up and visit And you need to give me a painting lesson I said well wow I mean I was like absolutely not

This guy lives in America And I'm Canadian I'm like, I don't have a driver's license. I'm not going to do this back and forth. I just looking for somebody local, you know? But like somebody with low vision like me, like finding people through apps and dating apps actually way easier than like,

I don't go out to bars, clubs. Like, where am I going to meet somebody? And I was painting in my own home studio and that's how I had worked. So I was not like I was going to meet somebody at work. But I was like, this guy's really interesting. He's really articulate. He knows a lot about my disease.

He's good at apparently Google. And he sent me a clip of him playing his violin on stage with Andrea Boccelli. And if you're familiar, are you, you know? Yeah, I feel like everyone knows that name. Okay, yeah. I feel like an idiot. I don't even know who that is. He's an Italian opera singer, but like crossover into like popular.

Oh, okay. Yeah, and he's like duetted with Celine Dion. Off to check out of stuff. He's kind of a big deal, but he goes back like 30 years, you know. He's been a big thing for a while. And you've heard of him. You've heard of him. I've heard of it.

I'm just being, yeah, all right. He wasn't alive during the Roman Empire, so you may not know him. That's right. And he sent me this clip, and I was like, you should have just led with that. I mean, he was like in this tuxedo, and the lighting was really like, it was just like beautiful, but it was the playing. Obviously, he's so talented. And I was like, okay, you can come up, but you have to bring your violin and give me a lesson and play for me. And yes, I'll give you a painting lesson in return.

And so that was our first date. That's amazing. Matthew was the was the DM can you paint me like one of your French girls is that what you said Oh Titanic reference I wanted to say that for so long Okay you definitely know Celine Dion that was being bottled up for a little bit Oh my gosh

That's a that's a cool first date you guys They're artistic yeah yeah Two artists meeting that's awesome Two starving artists Like we were just like I have to have two penises needs to rub together. And we were like, let's, yeah. I mean, it was like I wrote in my journal that night.

I think I just met my husband. I've never thought that in my life meeting anybody for the first time. And he did not tell me that. Pro tip, if you feel that way about somebody, don't tell them after the first date. Wait. I actually, I told them in our wedding vows. I read the journal entry for the first time three and a half years later. So I waited to let you know.

Well, I have to ask it, though, because I did see this when I was scrolling through your YouTube thumbnails. It was like a thumbnail about the time that you almost broke up. What happened? How did you go from this like incredible first date and being like, I met my husband to like an almost ending? How did that? How did that happened? I don't remember this YouTube video. It was like a bit of a clickbait title.

We were doing long form YouTube videos like three years ago. And it's like the reason we almost broke up. Yeah. And Matthew doesn't remember why. He's like, I don't remember why. The truth is, there's a couple things actually that we discussed in that video, and one of them was the whole blindness thing. Like entering her to a serious relationship with a person with disabilities.

We fell fast and hard for each other. Like fast and hard, romantic comedy style, like just like, like, get us to the courthouse kind of love. And I think it was scary for both of us to feel so in sync. And Matthew had a moment where a friend of his said, like you're throwing your life away. This guy is going to lose all his vision. You're going to be his caretaker. And like is that you really want?

And I think there was a moment of crisis. And I around that same time. Well, that's when I called my dad. Yeah. Yeah. So I called it my dad. And I was like, okay, so this guy, I've been telling you about him. And I really like him.

But like, what do you think? Like, do you think this is, his disability should matter? And my dad was like, no. He said, you could marry a fully able. body person and then they get hit by a bus and then they're in a wheelchair. Does that mean you'd leave them? And so he's like, at least you know already what you're getting. You know, it's not going to, it's not a surprise. And so he said if things work out, if you feel like you can work with this and things go well and then, then yeah, it shouldn't, it shouldn't matter. So that was and I've always used

my dad for advice. He's great. Anytime I want, I just call him up and he's got good advice. So yeah, that was, that was the reassurance that I needed to just like go through with it. So you've always been close with your dad, like all growing up? No. No, due to the cult, my cult upbringing, I went through a number of years of like actually having no contact with them. Really? And then as an adult, I reestablish that.

And, you know, now we talk and text like, oh, multiple time. You guys are past friends. Okay, that's so sweet because I knew about your upbringing. So then saying that you had such a close relationship with your dad. I was like, that's amazing. Is he still a member of the, it's IBOP? No, no, he's out. Yeah.

He did a 180. How would you describe, someone that's never heard of the IVLP, how would you describe that cult? It's a kind of non-denominational evangelical base, but there's this guy named Bill Gothard who is a charismatic personality. He's very engaging, excellent public speaker. And he started, I think back in the 60s and 70s going around doing these basic life principles seminars for just Christians.

He just had good advice on how to, you know, live and be in relationships. And so he would go around to major cities and fill stadiums. He was very, very popular. And then through time, after some time, he decided to have an advanced seminar. And so, and a much smaller group of people went to that. And then he then decided to create his own homeschool program, his own homeschool curriculum. And that was kind of like the third step. If you went through the basic and then the advanced seminar,

and you liked it, then you signed up for his homeschool curriculum, which my parents did. And that was called ATI. The Advanced Training Institute, right. Sounds great. Who doesn't want advanced training? And that became really a cult. It was all about whatever he said to do, and people really followed him in this very cult-like mentality.

And a lot of the teachings started to get really strange. And, you know, he was hearing from God every year and then presenting. what God told him, had told him at that year's conference and everyone just followed him with this just blind, zealous enthusiasm. Thank you to Unreal for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. Something about me, I always need a sweet treat after a meal. And Unreal has created snacks that you will be craving. I promise you, you guys.

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As a special offer for our listeners, visit Unreal snacks.com slash Unplanned to get 4.5,000 dollars off a bag of Unreal. That's unreal snacks.com slash unplanned. Terms and conditions of life. They're really, really good. How old were you when you started to connect the dots and realize that what you were being taught and what you were growing up in was a cult, wasn't the norm and was very different than the rest of the world? Definitely mid-teens. I was like, oh, we're weird because, you know, when I would talk to people not in the cult, I would have to like downplay it and really kind of like fudge a lot and not really explain it very much because I was like if I explain this this is weird like were you homeschooled yeah I was that that was like the curriculum

that was the curriculum yeah okay there was no no television no television no movies yeah no even okay okay I'm surprised because you being a such a talented violinist was the violin what you got really good at because you weren't allowed to listen to music so you just had to make your own partly I mean Partly it was like we had all this time. We were homeschooled so violin could just become a big part of the curriculum. In fact, it was like so important that my mom would say it's one of the subjects you have to have done before lunch. Okay. So.

I feel like a lot of the kids I knew that were homeschooled growing up played the harp or the violin. Oh, wow. Yeah. Or piano. Bill Gothen was a huge fan of music. He really encouraged it. And he'd have all these families come up during the summer conference that like all played violin. Yeah, he liked violin.

like that. All played violin or played a mix of instruments. And so my brother and sister and I, we all played violin. And so there was a couple of summer conferences where we were up on stage performing for you 60,000 people. Wow. And the doggers sitting there front row. Okay, I was going to ask, were there a lot of siblings? Because we've actually had the pleasure of talking to a few of the duggers on our show. And so we kind of have learned a lot about IVLP as adults, but from an outside perspective, obviously. But obviously I was going to ask if you have a lot of siblings, but it seems like it too. Yeah, yeah.

And we felt shame around that because you were going to these conferences with these big families. And you could tell that people were looking at you like, where are the rest of them? What's wrong? Where's the rest of it? What's wrong with you? You know, because Bill Gothard took this verse out of somewhere in the Old Testament about a quiverful of arrows.

And he decided that that meant that families were supposed to have as many children as possible because a quiver full of arrows. was as many children as you could possibly have. And then you were supposed to, I guess, shoot them out into the world to do good and promote gods, you know. Build your own army. Yeah, he was creating his own army.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Can you speak to keeping a journal entry of your childhood? I know, like, learning about your story, I found it super interesting that you had to hide your journal underneath your dresser and tape it underneath your dresser. and from my understanding, your mom ended up discovering the journal, reading all of it. Can you like speak to that and what exactly transpired? Yeah, so I went on a retreat and it was during that time that it really came to grips with everything.

And I was like, this is not good. Also, you know, the cult being gay was an abomination. So I was also in a lot of denial because I was like, well, this is who I is. this is who I is. This is who I is. This is who I is. The title of his new memoir. That's actually good.

This is who I is. I'm buying. Homestchooled. Yeah. Yeah, this is who I am, but also it can't be because I'm not an abomination. I'm in a good person. I do what I'm told. I obey my parents.

I'm like doing everything right. So how could I be both things? So I just used that week. It was a, it was a, it was a, retreat where you did a lot of journaling. You encouraged to journal and get your thoughts out. And so I did. And that's when I kind of realized like, oh, this isn't going to work.

I'm going to have to leave at some point. I don't know when. I don't know how to go about that. But at some point, I will. At what age about was that? This is random. This is so interesting because I've helped him rebuild and understand the timeline because so much of it is just like.

Due to PTSD, I have a lot of, Like, I don't like remember dates at all. I have vague memories of these events, but I can't really place them. This is my other question. Were you raised near Arkansas then? No. Okay, so, IBLP. Oh, Kansas.

Okay. It was still in Midwest. I was worldwide. Anybody could subscribe, pay the annual fee, and get the program and just start following it. So were other families around you when you weren't like going to big conferences? A part of it? It was very common for people in the, in IBLP ATI to kind of end up going to the same churches.

So the church we went to in Kansas City was like probably 90%. Wait, did you say Kansas City? Yeah, he said Kansas. Oh my gosh. Wait, my brother, my brother lived in Kansas. I'm from St. Louis originally. Oh, really? Yeah.

My brother lived in Kansas City for a while. We went to school in Springfield, Missouri. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, we lived in like south of Overland Park. Okay. Yeah.

I don't know like Kansas City super well, but like my brother briefly lived. lived near the plaza. Okay, yeah, it's a beautiful area. Yeah, right there. Yeah, it's really nice. Yeah. Okay, small world, crazy. And the other thing that was part of your cult were the institutes,

the music institutes that you would go to. Oh, yeah, there was lots of institutes or summer camps, whatever you would want to call them that you would go to. And like months? Yeah, they ranged anywhere from a week up to you could go for several months. And I was a big part of a lot of the music program. that were called sound encounters. And that was where all the kids who, you know,

were really passionate about music would show up and we'd have like two weeks in one of his training centers. And, yeah, it was a lot of fun. And Matthew recently told me, like, you either did these sound encounters, these music things, but if you weren't into music, you went to these, like, military camps. There were, like, these boot camps for kids

where they were, like, it was far more, like, militant, right? Yeah, there were a couple of options. You kind of had to find where you... Yeah, were there, like, work camps? Yeah, there were work camps. He got a lot of free labor out of families. And Paul, like, growing up near Vancouver, Canada, were you, like, in Vancouver or just outside of it? Well, I was born there, but I actually was growing up in Seattle due to my dad's work. Okay.

But just in the Pacific Northwest, yeah. But in your neck of the woods, was it, like, was your upbringing similar to Matthews where it wasn't acceptable to be gay? Was that part of your story? Mine's a bit different because I, my parents were like, Easter and Christmas churchgoers. I had a family member, an aunt who was a born-again Christian, and her influence, because she was the eldest kid, my mom's older sister, she kind of influenced all of her sisters to also sort of enter the church a little more seriously. And then at the age of 14, I actually was adopted by that aunt due to my mom, has continued struggles with alcohol,

and it's still not sober. But I was adopted by that aunt, and I moved to a tiny rural Canadian town and was baptized and was thrown into the evangelical church. And this was the type of church where it's like rock bands on stage, the half pipe out back. It's like the cool, like born again, cool church. Yeah. We'd go to these like Jesus freak like three day concert events and with mosh pits and stuff. Yeah. But it's all very like, like it's a different brand.

It's a totally different brand. Very different brands of Christian. That's for sure. But at the same time, yes, being gay was a sin and I knew I was. And that was not okay, especially in the small town. I was going to high school. And so I didn't feel comfortable coming out. But I had come out to myself.

And I, my dad, interestingly, had moved to San Francisco. His work had taken him down there. And I remember, I called him when I was 16 years old. I was like, dad, when I graduate, can I move in with you? Can I come down to San Francisco? Because I was like, there's the gay mecca. And he's like, absolutely, you can. So I'd like marked that date.

I just counted down the days. In the meantime, I just carried my Bible everywhere I went. And then when I graduated, I flew to San Francisco, made a bunch of cool friends in college, marched to my first pride parade when I was 18 years old. And so that was sort of my coming to terms with it. But it was difficult because, of course, growing up in that religious environment, I was dealing again with a lot of shame. Wow.

Not to the intensity that Matthew has had to deal with. but it's been interesting sharing our stories that way. I have a family member that is openly gay and I'm so happy for him. And that's just been like, I've learned a lot just getting to talk to him and be there for him. And so, I'm so happy that you guys were able to find each other and just have this happy life that you probably at one point never thought would be a possibility for you. So I think that's really cool. Absolutely. What I found so interesting about your story, Matthew, is just that, yeah, your relationship with your relationship with your

dad really wasn't going so well. And you ended up, you know, now you have a great relationship. But in that timeline, you ran away from home, right? Yeah. Yeah. So when I came back from that retreat and I knew that my time was limited and I hid my journal, I duct taped it to the underside of a dresser thinking no one would like reach under a dresser and reach up and check the bottom of, you know, but my mom did. And so that was kind of the countdown timer. I knew I was going to be out quickly. And so I had my bags packed. I was prepped. And then one day things kind of went south really quickly. And so I went to the bedroom and grabbed my bag and climbed out my bedroom window, got my car and your violin. And your violin. And my violin. He had to have his violin. And never returned.

And my parents were divorced at that time. And so it kind of took me a number of years, at least five years to kind of find myself, figure out who I was, just even operating. myself in the world was a challenge without all the structure that I had grown up with. But once I felt like comfortable and I'd kind of like been through the hard work of rediscovering who I was, then I really felt prompted to reach out to my dad. And I did and that just began, you know, a really incredible friendship that, a relationship that we just never had before. Support for today's episode comes from Square, and they've got big news.

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So cute. Notice how crazy the comment sections can be. Oh, yeah. Such a cute book. I guess the question I would have asked with this being a new book that you just came out with, do you think, do you see more trolls coming for you when it comes to being gay or being blind? Like, you know, where do you see more negatively? Blind.

I mean, I think it's shifted. I would say 10, like maybe when we started. And we were sharing our photos. You know, we started off. like we were like okay we want us you know in 2020 pandemic we're like let we had we started a podcast we're like we got to promote the podcast and we were like posting pictures and things of our relationship and the and the podcast was just us having a conversation it was called his and his and it was just like about two husbands having a conversation talking about their growing up gay

etc and so we were making that the focal point of our content creation and I think that's why we got a lot of homophobia and it pretty nasty you know and we would um try to create a safe space because we were trying to attract and build a community where people felt safe to be themselves. And so we were, you know, trying to stay on top of that. And it's interesting because I feel like neither of us took any of that to heart. Because we just growing up gay and growing up the way we did, we understand that that's just, there's just a lot of people that don't, that are ignorant and don't understand around the world. And it's not something that we take personally. but then when we shifted, I would say about four years ago, three years ago actually,

to really focusing on being an inter-abled couple and talking about my journey with sight loss. And that is when this whole new crop of trolls emerged to accuse me of faking my blindness. Yeah, there's a lot of blind deniers. Yeah, really? We call them the blind deniers. Why do people, yeah, why would people say that you're faking being blind? I think it's because Paul can look at you so well. Like if he like right now he could probably only find one of your eyes right and that's it

He probably can't even see your eyebrow but just one of your eyes so if he locks on it really looks like he's like can see you And so often like when he walks around our our apartment or he's we're looking at the camera He looks so able sure and I think people have an expectation that blindness means like maybe your eyes are just white or they're clothes I mean I don't really blame them because all I look at it as is this. We all grew up seeing blindness represented one way in TV and movies in books, right? It's like they have no vision, they have the dark glasses on, they can't see anything, right? They have a dog or a cane. There's nothing there, right? Totally. And the truth is, like, all disabilities, blindness exists on a spectrum. There is a legal threshold. But then in that

zone, there's like a huge variance of what blind people can and can't see. In fact, 93% of the blind community can see something. They have something called functional vision, whether that's just light and shadows, whether it's just the peripheral vision. They can just see out of the corner and there's nothing in front of them. Or like me, it's like looking through a pinhole or just like looking through a straw. I had no idea. So seven percent of blind people have the type of blindness where they don't see anything.

Right. Okay. And they call themselves totals. Totals. Like I'm a total. Really? Yeah. Which we've just learned.

I haven't. Online communities of totals are like totals are like totals. what's up. Yes. And so I think coming online and talking about blindness that way and it not looking the way people expect it to look, just upset them. You know, I just like, they're like, you're faking it. You're faking it for clout.

You're faking it for views. You're making all this up. I'm just not buying it. And we approach that with gentleness and education. Yeah. That's a kind way of describing it. Yeah. Like, you're like, this is a reality of my everyday.

But I did elect to come on. online and represent something that I felt was underrepresented and I knew that there would be confusion and so I see it as an opportunity to educate and change and initially we had saved phrases to like explain the levels of blindness like help people go deeper we did visual we even did like simulations on-screen simulations to show what different levels of blindness could look like etc etc and that was a lot of work in the beginning and now we're to the point where if one of those people pop up in our comments we see about ten

And dedicated followers explaining it to them for us at this point. That's awesome. And so that's like seeing it in action that people really are getting it and spreading that. But even in the early days, we could get some really nasty comment, send a safe phrase. You know, blindness is a spectrum, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then oftentimes they would reply like, oh, I'm so sorry. Thank you so much I didn't realize. And they were so rude at the beginning.

And it felt so good. It felt so good to get this like super rude comment. Explain to them just briefly. And then and then get such kindness back. You know, it just was a little bit of education. I just say we have this rule, no clapbacks. And if it makes your heart rate, if it increases your heart rate, just delete it. That's a really great rule.

I feel like we've got it actually. If it gets the blood boiling, just delete it. Just evaluate your body in that moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yep, it's got to go. sometimes that depends that changes day to day for me though I told me I was like one of these one day some girl I got on my Instagram was like she's like girl those sunglasses are not it I was like she's got to get blocked it was just that day for me I was like that was dramatic we've been on the block train to a few times it feels good like I'm just but then I noticed like in other

on other platforms I'll see people I've encountered comments of like oh they're blocked me and that's like a badge for them. They're like they are so happy that they got under your skin to the point of being blocked. So I'm like, forget it. I'm not doing that anymore. That's good to know. That's good to know. We're not giving them what they want. But that's why I wrote the book. Appreciate your education so much. I think that's very, that's very kind and generous of you like because that's not your, that's not necessarily like you, your job. Exactly. You've taken that on. I have a kind of curious question. It's okay if I ask that. Of course. Okay, you have beautiful blue eyes.

Thank you. Is there any correlation between eye color and this condition or like eye issues in general? Because I was actually just talking to one of my friends whose son has like very light blue eyes. And she was like talking about the issues he has because of the color of his eyes. I'd never even heard of that before. Right. Okay. That's such an interesting question.

And officially the answer is likely no. I'm not a doctor, but almost everybody I've met with the condition or seen with the condition has these like really light eyes. Like there's a lot of overlap there. But then I know that these, maybe we need to publish a paper, Abby. I have no observations. Zero. But they're just like saying like the bright sun like squinting easier.

And then I was thinking about me and you like my eyes are lighter than yours. They're not super light. People really dark eyes. But in pictures, I'll be like. and your eyes are perfectly open. Why do I feel like I'm squinty though in photos? That's just because your browbone. Someone listening to this right now.

Please comment down below if there's any basis, like any scientific evidence to this. Because I actually want to really, I want to know. Yeah. Let's create conversation in the comments, people. I want to know. And people love to do that. There's a lot of experts out there.

Your parents have blue eyes. Oh, yeah. Keyboard experts. And my parents have blue eyes. Yeah. Okay. Well, then there's that. There's that.

Well, interesting. I was just thinking about that. Actually, no, I was born with dark brown eyes. You're saying they're blue now? No, it's good. I was like, stop it. I'm too cute. I'm too gullible.

You are too cute. Oh, no, I didn't say cute. I said global. I would not say that, but that's funny. Thank you to Good Wipes for sponsoring this portion of today's episode. We're big fans of Good Wipes in this household. We are. And I don't think you need the details, but you kind of understand.

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your parents and then potentially you both becoming parents one day have you thought about that have you thought about like okay like if if we have a kid you know via surrogate or adoption or whatever if it is a surrogate you know from what from what you're saying there is the potential that your kid could inherit what you have talk like describe what that's like from from your perspective because I feel like probably somebody out there that has some sort of disability and probably is faced with the same sort of question of like what what do you do? I would first of all recommend doing genetic testing because that's how you know if you're going to pass it on or what gene it's present in because you have to understand that component the biological part. So like I have it mine's X linked so I could

only pass it if I had my own biological kid I could only pass it to a girl. Yeah. Yeah. Okay thank you. You're all. on it. You know that X, Y, yeah. I know what I'm talking about. You do. It is what I is. And then she could only, your daughter could only, she wouldn't have it.

She wouldn't have it. She would be recessive because it's the X's. So it would be recessive, no symptoms. But she could pass it onto a boy, 50, 50% chance. Okay, that's a lot to think about. So we're talking my grand, my grandson might have it, would have a 50% chance. And that's because. If she had a boy.

If she has a boy. That's another very important. So is that a reason not. not to have a child is something you have to really wrestle with. And we've been down that road with. Yeah, we actually thought we would have our first by now. By now. We were all lined up.

We had an egg donor. A surrogate. Paul side of the family, a surrogate who volunteered. And Matthew was going to be the father, of course. And then we were, because the egg donor was going to be my cousin. So that was going to allow us to have like this genetically, you know, as close as we can get as a gay couple. Oh, that is really cool.

Right? And we had the fertility clinic picked out and we were just like ready for it. And it kind of fell apart. It fell apart all at the same time. Some people backed out and changed their mind. And yeah. And it was just like, yeah. It just changed everything suddenly for us and made us really reevaluate and sort of

pause and see like, okay, you know, we're just going to wait for the next sign or signal and just see how it feels in our bodies because it was kind of devastating for that to all fall apart. We need to take a minute. That probably, I mean, I don't want to like speak for Abby, but I'm sure, you know, us, we, I don't know if you know our story, but we went through a miscarriage last year. Yeah. And I can only imagine that, you know, that kind of something similar there might be that level of excitement that you had.

Just this, this sheer joy of like having a kid and getting to become a dad and, you know, especially too with with your situation. with it being your cousin and and and you being the the donor like that seems I'm like probably messing up terminology here but I feel like that was just such a cool thing to experience and for that all to go away it must have been yeah devastating yeah yeah really changed things yeah it was it was a real moment of just like to stop and pause and and and reevaluate it's interesting you know we haven't we've talked about it publicly like once and um you know when you think think you kind of know what your life plan is going to be and you're kind of setting everything up.

But what, you know, as I'm saying that, I'm like, how often does that really happen? Yeah. What is life without these little curve balls? But it did make us both really sad. I think we had to really sit with the sadness for a while and think like, oh, the future we thought we were building might not be the one. And would we be okay if that isn't the way it went? What did you guys do to cope with that grief?

Matthew? What do you do to cope? Because I know me, I mean, like for me, it's all creative. Well, I'm in therapy, so, you know. We both are big into therapy. So we both see therapists. We've seen like couples therapists or individual therapists. So that's important.

But I've often processed all my feelings through art, through my art. So, you know, just through my illustrations and my painting and that sort of thing is a way for me process and feel, writing stories. Matthew, do you do that with your music at all? I don't. I'm too, I can't think about something else while I'm playing the violin. But like does it transmute any of the emotion for you? It can it can process emotions even without me like thinking or verbalizing it. Yeah. Were you like a career violinist like I mean probably if you were at that level like yeah. Yeah. Yeah, no I was. That's so cool. Yeah, it was the, my one single focus, finding the best teachers was my mom's, like, sole focus, wherever we

lived. And I got accepted into the pre-collegiate division of Juilliard at a young age. That's right. And then Eastman, but Boeather was very anti-college university because he said, that's where your kids would be secularized and won over by the world and, you know, you'd lose them. So I think he installed that. Secularized. That's a tough one. Yeah. Secularized. Okay.

So he instilled a lot of fear, I think, in the parents, like that that was a dangerous thing. And so I didn't get to enter any of those programs. I still continued to study music and then, you know, got my first job. I got jobs anyway because you don't really need a degree. It just matters how you sound. So if you play well, you get the job. So, I mean, I am sad that I miss those opportunities. But it didn't really seem to hurt that much. So it seems like your mom was the one that like kind of like

She was very musical. Yeah, she played like banjo flute violin and piano going up and my father was so unmusical that he got kicked out of choir. Oh my gosh. Something I think is really cool is how you incorporate your own life into the children's books that you write. Have you ever thought about you know the surrogacy story that didn't work out for you guys? That one doesn't have a happy ending at least right now. It doesn't. and I'm hoping that you guys get that happy ending. But has there ever been the idea of putting that story into a book? I am working on a book about grief for children. And it's meant to be processing any type of grief, really, any type of loss like that. But specifically, it was inspired by losing my brother. My older brother passed away four years ago suddenly from an overdose.

He was struggling with addiction after a foot injury, which led to opioids. and it was just a fast ascent to fentanyl and then that was it. Yeah, that's been so interesting for me to go through losing him. And I say interesting because it's just like I don't know how to describe it to anybody. And obviously you guys have understanding around that with your recent loss. The grief journey is like a lily pad of jumping back and forth. Like it's nonlinear, right? And it you you jump through all those phases all the time.

You can be angry. And I just remember the bargaining from early, even when. early on, like after he passed, I was like trying to make a deal with like the universe. Like can we turn back time? Like how can we find him? How could this can't be real? And then getting to the point of acceptance, but this is like randomly feeling angry at him. Like how could you do this to us? And so I've been working on this book about grief and loss for like, how could that how can I make that digestible for a child that loses anything from a pet to like their grandparent or an adult who loses a child or somebody who loses a sibling or

somebody who's grieving the loss of the future they thought they were building. And so I got this vision. My brother was a fisherman and he was a Pisces. And I got this vision one day while I was clean. I always had the conversations with my brother now. And I was like talking to him. And I was like, you know, I want to do a book about this. And this vision came to me of this image of a school of fish, like a from from the side. You know, you just see like the classic like triangular shape of a school of fish underwater. But like one is missing. So there's just this hole. There's this empty space. and I was thinking about all the things we do to fill that space before we can accept that the space is just always there. And like a school of fish, we continue to move forward in time, but that doesn't mean the space ever disappears.

And some days it feels smaller, sometimes it feels bigger. And I wanted to represent that. So I literally sat down that night and drew the image of the School of Fish. And I was like, this needs to be a book. So it's something I'm currently working on to process all those feelings. I want to read that book. I'm sold. That just seems so powerful.

I can just feel, I can just like, I see it visually, like as you describe the triangle with the missing fish. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's so sad. Like, when you said the miss, like, just that, like, that hole, I just, I can see it. And it just like, my heart just, like, sunk, you know? Yeah. That came from my brother. I cannot take credit for that.

That image came from my brother for sure. But I'm just the conduit. So I'm working on. So sorry to hear about your loss. That's. Thank you. Yeah. Really hard to hear.

How did that affect your family? Oh, God. Yeah. That was, I mean, very devastating, obviously. Yeah, both of your parents. It's been so hard on. It was such an interesting thing because my brother is my only sibling, and then I became an only child.

And for like the first year after his passing, I remember, because it shattered my parents. Like, I've just never seen them so broken ever. And they weren't together. My parents have been divorced since I was like 10 years old. But individually, you know, just watching them go through the grieving process and it nearly killed my mom. Um, she's just finally actually finding some light for herself after these four years and

trying to move forward. I'm really proud of her. Um, you know, but I was terrified. Something was going to happen to me. All I could think about anytime I voted a plane or crossed the street and it wasn't for, I was like, like, my parents can't lose me too. Oh, yeah. They can't go do this.

All I was thinking about, I was like, I have to protect myself because they can't lose another kid. Yeah. Yeah. It was the strange. I never thought that that would be in a, it gripped me with fear for like a year. And I shared it with both of them individual. And they both said the same thing. They're like, Paul, you've got to live your life. Don't ever live that way with fear. Don't let fear rule you. That would be more upsetting to us. That's, wow. We thank you for opening up that. Thank you for sharing that. We like out, we got really deep there. And I want to like maybe maybe light it up for a second. Children's books. Tell us about your wedding. I want to know, I want to know I want to know all the details about your wedding because we all got married in 2019, right?

Yeah. Right before weddings weren't really happy. I know. What month were you guys? July. Oh, okay. We were December. December.

Oh, so you were really right before. Right now. Right before COVID. Yeah. When did you meet in 2016? Because I have a theory about the summer of 2016. Oh, really? June 10th.

So. Yes. We're about to hit 10 years. That was when we started, we were like flirting. What was your, what's your official like meeting each? Well, what's your like, what do you consider your anniversary? June 18th. was our first date.

First date on my birthday. June anniversary. Really? Yep. We became boyfriend and girlfriend. On my golden birthday, I turned 18. Oh yeah. And the whole idea, my whole idea was like, all right, I'm becoming a man.

Yeah. I'm turning 18. It's my golden birthday. Yeah, and I've never asked a girl out and I've never kissed the girl and it's happening right now. And I'm like, this girl is so beautiful and she's funny. I just happened to be there. And she's so sweet. No, I kind of got hit with this like, you know, I don't know.

know, early life crisis of like, what am I doing? And then I'm like, here's this, like, this. Maybe this is my future wife. And hey, look at what happened. Wow. And it was on your birthday and you had the date and you had the kiss? Yes. Oh, my God.

That's amazing. But this is about you guys. I want to know your story. No, I love it. So we had been to Mexico, a town way south on the Pacific coast called Zwan Taneo near X-Tapa with Paul's aunt and uncle. And it was beautiful. It was a little fishing village, not super touristy, at least compared to some of the other areas.

And we both looked at each other and we were like, if we ever get married, it's going to be here. This is really incredible. And we were staring at this beautiful bed and breakfast that had a rooftop pool that overlooked the entire little horseshoe bay. And we're like... When was that? When was that the big... Like that was like at the big... At the end of 2018.

And I was like, well, if we're going to get married, let's just plan it now. And he's like, well, no, I want to propose. And I was like, well, get down. your knee then. And he's like, well, no, I want it to be a surprise. Yeah. Yeah. So I gave him like a little bit of an ultimatum. Okay, super, super ignorant question. How do you know who's going to propose to who? Well, it was, it was just that conversation. Really, that was it. I was because I was like, I don't know. I don't need. No one needs to propose here. We're just going to get married. We both want to get married. We both want to get married. Okay. And I was like, no, no, no. I want to

propose and I want to surprise you. And I had never had the desire to do that. So I was like, okay, if this has like been in your heart, if this is the goal of yours, then you need to do it, but you need to do it within the next six months or we're just going to start planning the wedding. Because this place is going to get, this venue is going to go. Yes. Yeah. So I had six months and I picked a good spot, surprised him. And yeah, you really did surprise me. But it was like at the top at this snowy peak in in Canada and it was like I was looking at the view because like again my vision's just like at this little pinhole and I look at my phone a lot to try to take in more my surrounding yeah he's kneeling in the snow oh he doesn't say anything he just drops out of my view

I don't even know where he is and he's holding out the ring and my aunt's an uncle are there filming the whole thing or ready to take the photos and I don't know how long were you there was your knee getting cold yeah he was getting cold it was a minute or two and then your aunt finally said, where's Matthew? And that, I was like, where is he? And then he saw me in front of me. He's like, what are you doing?

Are we still in Mexico? No, this is Canada. This is the proposal was in Canada, right? Okay, but the wedding ended up being in Mexico. Very cool. So as soon as I propose, then we were like, okay, now we can book the wedding in Mexico. Yep. Very cool.

Yeah. Okay. And we had this tiny, tiny wedding. We only want, it was the rooftop could only fit 12 people. Oh, really? So they're like, you can invite 10. people. Yeah. Yeah. So. So who did you invite? Well, our closest family members, which wasn't many and a few friends. It was very intimate. It was very intimate. And it was funny because it was

like seven years ago now. I feel like we were doing it now. Oh my gosh. It would be huge. We would have to like. Yeah. Because that early in our relationship, like we hadn't made a ton of mutual friends and like the interesting part about our lives when we met was we were both really starting fresh i mean matthew wasn't out of the cult for even that long yeah it's not like he had these lifelong friends he's not going to be you know inviting bill gothawd in his cohorts to the wedding like you know he's still alive but he's been ousted outsted he's not the leader anymore oh that's a whole thing but it's still a thing was that pre shiny happy people or post shiny happy people that he got ousted as the leader it was pre pre pre oh it's actually

In the documentary, they do talk about the allegations against him. Oh, the final episode, they do talk about him being kicked out. Didn't one of the Duggers take over the role? No. Oh, okay. I thought they had a prominent role. Anyway, that's a whole thing. Shiny happy people was dramatic.

Okay. But happy thoughts. Happy thoughts. The wedding. So we were up there on the, um, now I told you our first date. I made Matthew serenade me with his violin, right? He was the violin thing. And so when it came time to do our vows,

and I told you I read my journal entry to him, but Matthew wanted to play a song for his vows. So he brought his violin down to Mexico, and he played one of my favorite songs, which is the, like the Jeff Buckley, Hallelujah. You know, it's a very overcovered song that everybody's heard a bazillion times, but it's like, it's so beautiful.

It's so heartbreaking. I know, right? Just do whatever you want. And it was this really, really beautiful moment, and we had timed the whole ceremony to the sunset. over the bay and that was a mistake because rate as we said i do and we're just like oh we look over and our entire wedding party is staring over at the sunset oh it was just like it beautiful nobody really witnessed it so yeah it was fun but it was a beautiful wedding we had an amazing little uh dinner

afterwards and they made this cutest little cake with these little figurines of us oh yeah the penguins And then everyone who came down kind of booked a whole week. So we ended up just all hanging out every day and meeting up at different places to do lunch or go on an outing. So it was like a wedding week. It was really, really cool. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Did you play, it's rating men at the reception? Do you want to know something?

We had no music. No music. And that was Matthew's request. I had been, I had grown up as a wedding musician. I was like, I hate weddings. I hate playing at weddings. I don't want any wedding musicians. And then I think it was the day before the owners of the bed and breakfast who were hosting.

And they'd actually volunteered to organize the whole thing for us. They were very, very kind. They'd be like, do you want flowers? We're like, yes. They're like, what kinds do you want? We're like, whatever is in season. And by the way, it's very cheap to get married there. It was very easy financially to have a beautiful wedding.

We love Mexico. We love taking our baby moons to Mexico. Oh, yeah. we'll do a vowel. Yes. Vowal. I want to do that. Let's do it.

That'd be fun. Yeah. Because we're this, well, in my 10 years. Maybe we'll do a like a decade of marriage. But this summer, similar to you guys,

we're celebrating a decade together. Yes. Same. Got to do something special. Yeah. We're like, oh, this is our 10th, this together. Yeah.

And it's our golden. It's our golden because it was June 10th. Oh. I don't know. It's June 10th. It's 10 years together. And then we just got a call. We're going somewhere special.

But it's, right? Can we talk about it? We can't talk about it. Oh, it's a secret. It's a secret. It's not official, but it's going to be cool. Okay. You have to tell us about it off.

Yeah, yeah, we'll tell you after. I have to ask, is it true that Mr. Maple is going into retirement? Yeah. No. He is. Yeah, it's kind of young for a guide dog, but he's started to slow down a lot. And it's kind of indicating, he's very, he's perfect in harness. Like he knows exactly what to do.

He makes no mistakes. but he's kind of indicating that he prefers to sleep in the sun. Does he have any big plans for a tyrant? Well, he'll become my dog. He's excited about that. You know, so we'll keep him. We'll have the younger, fresh guy dog. It'll be fun.

Little sibling. So it'll be really cute to have, I think, two dogs because I think a lot of the time he wants someone to play with, you know, someone to play tug with. I have heard before that like dogs are totally different with their harness on. Oh, totally. Harness off. Yes. Which has blown my mind until our dog got trained because I was like,

how could a dog know when they're working? Which by the way, we named our dog pretzel after the show in the dark, which is about a blind person. Oh, I know. Yes, Murphy. Yes. I've watched episodes of it. Such a good show. Yeah.

It probably doesn't depict. And her dog is pretzel. Actually, yeah, I was going to ask, how does that show? I don't know that. How does it depict blindness? Is it pretty not accurate? Is it accurate? I love how they depicted because she's not totally blind.

She has some vision, right? Okay. Do you guys, is this true? She's not a total. I'm trying to remember if she is or not. I don't think so. It's been, we watched that during the pandemic. I don't know that phrase when we watched it.

Yes. Paul's least favorite is like daredevil where the blind person has superhuman abilities. Well, this is a rope. This is a trope of in combating my whole life. What is the show? Yeah, wait. The trope is typically when there's a blind character. They're like, it's, they always have some superpower.

They're always sort of like, because they, it's like going in the opposite direction, rather than showing a person with a disability who's struggling. It's like show them with a disability and they have like Kung Fu Ninja skills and they're so cool and they're like one step ahead of everybody else. I say he run with that. But like, it's inspiring. And it's certainly not a bad thing. But after a while, as the blind community is like, I.

I feel so like I could never reach this level of what's being represented for me. Or just like fictionalized, you know, like. As someone actually come up to you. I want the most realistic version. I want to see them make mistakes like I do. Has anybody for real come up to you'd be like, so you have super hearing? Oh, all the time. That's not.

You asked, ironically, and it's like a very common question. Actually. But the truth. Like, can you echo locate? People ask if you can echolate. True. Can you do the little clicking? I click sometimes just to freak people out.

But there is some truth to it. It's not super hearing, but when you do lose one of your senses, your brain just puts the attention and energy on some of the other ones to compensate. And it's not like I have more. I'm just maybe more focused on it than you are. You know, more tuned into it. Yeah. Yeah.

So there is some truth to it. Okay. I'm curious if there's any other show or book or anything. you're like, that is just totally not realistic. What's interesting, too, is about in the dark, is when I was made aware of it because there was this article, the New York Times did an article about how this person isn't blind and probably shouldn't be representing the character.

They should get somebody who has at least some visual limitations because that was like the conversation at the time, like actors, you know. Wait, what's your take? I'm actually so curious what your take is on that. Oh my God. Am I going to get in trouble for this? I'm going to get in trouble. I'm going to get in trouble so I shouldn't say anything.

No, because like my take, it's nuanced. Okay. I think we can go too far with the only somebody with this disability can play those parts. But I do want to illuminate the conversation at least a little bit. And here's why that conversation happens to begin with. So they'll say there are working actors out there like me. Say I wanted to be a working actor. Well, I have a tiny bit of vision.

It's going to be very difficult for me to land. roles of sighted people probably won't get those right because I'm going to need a guy dog or a cane or something so I might then be limited only to the roles like in the dark right where it's actually a blind character and I can play that because you know um so if the cited able-bodied able-bodied actors are coming in and taking the only roles that I could even have a chance of getting it does seem a little unfair to the community of actors with disabilities right totally yet at the same time, I am a big movie buff film cinephile, whatever you want to call me. I love movies.

And I like to critique movies and critique performances. I'm like, at the end of the day, you should really go to the person who gives the best performance because that's what great storytelling is really about. That's good. Right? And I would hope that those blind people get a really fair chance in they're showing up and the casting directors are seeking out the people with this ability. and saying, hey, this is what we want.

Yeah. So that's where the nuance is. We actually met. I'm not mad about it. I'm not going to boycott the show. Totally. We met her. She was actually super nice.

Yeah. We just randomly ran into her at Disneyland. Yeah. And this was like five years ago. Yeah. This was 2021. I remember that. We have a picture with her.

We should put the picture up. She's like way tall than me. Like everyone is, but I'm about a foot taller. But I agree with your answer. I think that's, I mean, not that I really, I'm glad that you answered it because you're actually someone with the disability talking about that actual issue. Right.

But I think I like your take. I really like your take a lot. Also, you wouldn't want like that niche or that like that to be the expectation and casting to the point where they're not represented. Right. You know, where it's like, okay, we can't find someone to fill this role or that's like auditioning for this. So then it comes at the cost of like not representing those disability.

Yeah. That was my other. I wanted to say that because it's like at the end of the day, what's more important? We have this pool of actors that are struggling to find. Okay, yeah, I understand. I have sympathy for that. But the person in that role, playing Murphy, is now representing something and educating all the audience members

and all the people watching are getting to learn about it. And that's incredibly valuable. She did a really good job in my mind. And I know she had people with blindness helping her and coaching her. For anybody super confused about In the Dark, Murphy, Prezzel, In The Dark is a show on Netflix that came out in 2020 about a blind person, that is solving a crime. It's like a crime show. It's really good. I like I think season one was epic. My personal take is season two is not very good. Off in the case. We've been having this conversation like

happening to shows every great show just. I feel bad for the actress. I was like this script for this was just. Oh I don't think it was the actors at all. I think there's and again what do I know they turned it into a soap opera. Yeah it kind of went into soap opera territory and the actors were so good in season one. So I feel like there was something behind the scenes and it lost the motivation because it was her friend. This is so niche. We're going on. Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes if they solve the problem in season one, this is good motivation. You lost the motivation. And I think motivation, it drives any good story. You have to have, you have to believe that the characters are actually willing to do what they're doing. That's the problem with, you know, Hollywood these days is they see, they see money and they're like,

oh, let's keep making more seasons. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Too many. It happens. That's the singular problem. What? We're going to solve Hollywood right now. With this conversation. I I feel like we should start our own studio. Yes. We work at Mr. Maple. Yeah. Call it Mr. Maple and pretzel. Oh.

Oh, we're getting a stretch. He's like, I'm CEO. How old is Mr. Maple? He's just turned seven. And so, oh. Oh, you just shedding all over the place for us? Oh, we don't care. You probably know all about that.

Yes. No, actually, just recently, I've started noticing hair all over my clothes. I think she's getting to that age. I would think I'm covered. Yeah, she's getting older. And so. That puppy coat stayed better than this adult. There wasn't as much shedding at first.

Yeah. Yeah. Oh my gosh. They call it blowing out. Like it's the blowout season. But I mean, he does it like every month. He blows out that undercoat.

It's just like all over places. But I can't see it. But I have a husband who reminds me it's there constantly. No. It's our car that shows pretzels here. Oh, yeah. I saw it on the seat. I just picked her up.

It doesn't come out. It doesn't come out. Yeah. It's on. We do not let maple on the seats for that reason. Oh. Oh, we have a dog bed that he goes in. Yeah, he's got his own bed in the back.

Okay. Yeah. In the dog bed in the car. Yeah. So there's a little, but still, it spills over. Did you, have you met your new dog? No. Oh.

So they kind of, well, because the, well, first of all, I want to say that guide dogs typically retire between eight and nine. And labs, a little younger, so eight is to the typical time. So he's a bit of a little bit of an early retire. But I was just accepted for my successor dog, the second dog to call it, the successor or not the replacement, because Maple can't be replaced. I love that. But I was approved for that, and the wait list is like a year to a year and a half.

And so this was at the beginning of the year. So we're probably looking at the end of this year, even into the beginning of 2027. So he'll be pretty close to eight years old. But the reason we chose to share the journey, because we were almost like, let's not even talk about it until I know I'm going to go down and get my second dog. But I wanted people to see also that a person with a disability and a service animal has to think about these things well ahead. of time.

Yeah, that's a long time. And really has to recognize the signs. And he and I are so jelled. You know, I just like sense his enthusiasm and interest around guide work starting to dwindle in wane. And it's just like his energy level decreasing enough that I was like, I don't want to push him harder than he wants to go. But I also want to be able to go faster and be able to do all the things that I can

do while I'm still young. And so it's like if he's telling me like, yeah, I'm not into that. I kind of want to chill. do I still run? Yeah. Only on a treadmill. Well, and even that's a little tricky for me, but I do, I do run on a treadmill, but not, I had to give up, you. When I ran the marathon, I ran with a guide, tethered to me.

Yeah, shoe lace between them. Yeah, we had a shoe lace on our wrists. It was very like, do it yourself. Wait, a person? It was a person. A actual person. So not a dog. Not a dog.

And it went really well to the stand where they were handing out bananas to the runners. Yeah, that was a big, that was tricky. Because people are eating the bananas and throwing the chills on the ground. And I was at the back of the, okay. The reason I was at the back is because the only person I could convince to run the marathon with me is like five foot one. Okay. Is that not terrifying though running a marathon where you can, all you see is like a little tiny speck of vision? And you're just like, all right, hopefully I don't hit anything.

Well, but she was letting me know. Like she was like calling everything out. She's a good friend of mine. And she was like, you know, we were like really in sync and we practiced doing this a lot beforehand. But like Matthew said, they gave, they handed out bananas. to all the marathon runners. Like the volunteers were like handing out the big. Literally.

So by the time I reached the banana zone. That feels like a cartoon. It was a cartoon, Abby. It was a cartoon. There was thousands of banana pills on the street. It was Mario Kart. We are slipping and falling. She's calling out.

She's pulling me this way. She's slipping. I'm holding her up. No. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we got through this mind field of bananas. That's a really great friend you have.

She's one of. Yeah. We did not come in last place. I will say that and I feel good about it. My pinky toenail fell off. That's all I lost. Do you do people run with their guide dogs? Do you know of any?

I have never heard of that. I wouldn't be surprised if it. I wouldn't think a marathon. Like that's an incredible amount. I mean, we know people who hike with their guide dogs. Oh, yeah. Oh, but like you, I did a rod. All those huskies pulling sleds.

They're like parts of all, I believe. Yeah. I know nothing. Well, okay. Here's my other question. I had no idea actually about this. process of getting a guide dog. Can you kind of walk people that don't know that? Yeah. Like you apply for a dog and they've like trained this dog up for. Yep. Yep. Yep. How long does it

take to train them? Well, the dogs at eight weeks are given, they're raised at guide ducks for the blind. They're born there. They're part of a colony of specific dogs. They are breeding for very exact characteristics. So their best dogs actually. They're, they're best dogs actually. They're just enter in that, enter that program so that they can have the best, best puppies. And it's multiple different breeds. It's not just labs.

It's lab. It's lab. It's lab. Some golden retrievers, but like maybe 80% labs. It's a lot of labs. A lot of labs. Labs are really trainable because they love food.

So from zero to eight weeks, they're like held every day. They have puppy cuddlers who come in every day. So they're very accustomed to people, very custom being held. They practice already having them like walk over different surfaces because that's very important. and the dog that doesn't go around grates

or won't refuse to walk over different surfaces. Yeah. You can't be afraid of that. At eight weeks, they're given to volunteer puppy raise their families. So Maple was handed off to a 15-year-old boy in Salt Lake City who was going to high school but wanted to raise a puppy guide dog and he and his family raised Mr. Maple. And they had him for, it's usually about a year.

And they have a big puppy manual. They're the ones that are teaching the dogs not to bark and to do all the basic commands, like sit, stay, heal, lay down. They have them interact and with the public socialize. That's awesome. They'll arrange for them to like take them into, you know, to concerts and all kinds of things. Lots of activities. And then.

And they only wear like a little Velcro vest. It's a green Velcro vest for a guide dogs for the blind. And that's actually how it starts because you were making that point. point about how do they know they're working and not. So it starts as puppies. They put on these little Velcro vests and then that's when they get trained all the things and then they take the vest off and it's just be a little puppy. Yeah. Yeah. And then after that year, they go back to guides dogs for the blind and then there's six months of professional training. Well, with a guide dog handler. Three to six. Three to six. Yeah. It can be short. And that's when they learn all the guiding skills.

That's when they get the harness put on. They learn to do traffic and crosswalk. and curbs and... But only 30-ish percent of the dogs make it to graduation because it's so rigorous and not every dog is cut out for it. And they can kind of like flunk out. They call them flunkies or they, well, technically they say career changed.

Career change. So Maple's one of eight brothers. He and only one other actually made it all the way to guide dogs. Yeah, all boys. Great job Maple. Because it's very serious. It's like their owner or handlers. their lives are on the line.

Yeah. And now this makes me wonder, as someone that's financially conscious, what does that cost? No, nothing covers it. What is a guide dog cost? It costs nothing for me

because most of the organizations, I know, it's shocking, right? Because so much time, money goes into them. But if you were to go through guide dogs for the blind, like I did,

it's the largest guide dog organization in North America. They've been doing it for 80 plus years. They have like 2,500 working. teams out there at any given time, but there's always new ones starting and retiring. And they cover the cost of the dog completely. So it costs you nothing, including every vet bill for the life of the dog even after they retire. That's incredible.

The only thing you have to cover is the food. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Yeah. They do want you to do that. So that's a very small amount, really. But they say the dogs are worth between $60,000 and $100,000. That's how much is going to put in to them. Wow. Yeah, right around there. So it's like having a luxury car. All that training. Yeah.

So they themselves cover the cost of this organization does. It's a nonprofit organization and relies on donations. That's incredible. Oh, donations. Okay. Yeah, donations. We do fundraisers for them several times a year just because we're so grateful. Yeah.

Podcast. They're an incredible organization. They do so many great things. So we talk about them a lot and we do fundraisers. That would be so great if you link them. Yeah. We should link them. So the official.

Guidedogs.com. Guide dogs.com. That's all it is. That's all it is. A nonprofit based in America. Yeah. It's based in Northern California. Okay.

Yeah. The headquarters is in San Rafael, but they have a second campus in Portland, Oregon, where I trained with Maple because it's a two-week training. Once they called me, and this is what I'm waiting for, to answer your question, have I met the new one? I won't know until it's like two weeks, like pack your bags, come down to one of the campuses. We have a dog for you. They can't tell you anything about it until you get there, and it's a total surprise.

That's exciting. Like a professional panel of people that like look at all of the things going on in your life, your age, your activity level, your pace, all the demands, etc., where you live. And then they match the perfect dog to that lifestyle. And so you have a two-week training program with your dog to learn everything. That way you can just be in sync. Yeah. And I live on campus.

Yeah. And family can't come. They want no family interference because families tend to get too involved. We'll want to help. We can't. It's you and the dog. That's when you got to take Maple on a spa vacation. Yeah.

Yeah. And I will go to fly. You guys don't know. Without me? Mexico. No, we took them there. Really? Because one of his brothers, we said his eight, his seven brothers, major, marathon,

Mikey, mascot, Matrix, Murdoch, and Madrid. And one of them, Mikey is a service dog at the oncology ward. he's a therapy dog on the oncology ward at the Honolulu Hospital and we reunited them last year. That's really sweet. And they recognized each other. They hadn't seen since they were eight weeks old. I'm going to cry. Did you vlog that?

Of course. That's beautiful. Yes, it was incredible. It was really hard. I mean, it was difficult to get Maple in. There's a lot of paperwork. There's a lot of things to go through. He's probably got a lot of certifications though that make it.

I think what helps was when we walked into the quarantine area. Everybody there recognized them. They wanted pictures with Maple. They knew who he was. That's cool. And they were like, yeah. I mean, we did everything correctly. He had all the shots.

He had the. After that. We didn't have to do any of it. That's sweet. So yeah, that was really cool. And yeah, so he and one other are guide dogs. There's two facility dogs, the one at the oncology ward. Major is a working therapy dog at a high school.

So he goes to school with the. comforts the students. Psychologist and comforts the students. And there are two others were canine buddies, which is for children. It's like a pre-guide dog. They don't really guide you, but they can kind of be there with the child to help. It's like training wheels for guide dogs for your kids that aren't ready for the full guide dog. And I think the last two are pets.

And the last two are pets. Sometimes they choose just to be pets. Has Maple ever saved your life? Twice. Twice. Yeah. What are the two? What are the stories?

Yeah, well, both of them were downtown Seattle, and there's this crazy intersection. They both happen pretty nearby to each other. And there's this thing that they teach the guide dogs, which really differentiates them from any other service animal. And this one is one that will flunk another dog. Like, they'll career change if they can't do this one thing. It's called intelligent disobedience. So they're obviously trained to listen to every command, right? Immediately, forward, left, right, et cetera.

and that is like that's where they get the reward this is what they do they follow your command but if they know there's danger that you can't see they will disobey you they you know because they know what's best in that situation so he's like overrides my command and there's been two times we're crossing the street and a car came whizzing through i think it was like an electric car both times because i didn't hear it um a red light and maple then And I was like just stepping into the street and he turns his whole body and pushes his body up against my legs with all his force to push you backwards. And the card was like, you could feel the wind. And I was like stunned for a second. It happened so close to home. I came home and I was like, Matthew, I was still like, I almost died. Maple just saved our lives. And if I had had my cane, the cane isn't going to do that for me.

Just like that. So you probably take Maple with. you everywhere. You probably don't ever just rely on the cane. Oh, never. If that's not in downtown Seattle. Didn't save your life. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredible. 100%. What was the other instance? What's the second story? It was the same thing. Basically the same thing. Another car. Three blocks. Three blocks down, you know, but not the same day. Not the same day. No. Not the same day. But like, um, just the same situation, him pushing me back

from a, from a car that was not paying attention or not following traffic laws. Yeah. That's Did Mr. Maple come with his name? He did. He came as a maple. Maple. And we call him Mr. Maple. Because the whole family has M's. Yeah.

They were an M litter. So every litter is assigned a letter. And they're all boys? Yeah. I don't know what it was up with that. I don't know what the odds are of that. This is totally random. Can't.

Yeah. But we've been reuniting him with his brothers. 50 times seven. Yeah. Okay. Is that what the odds are? Don't ask. I don't ask.

I was like, Wow, Abby, you're good. No idea. You're all geneticist over here. No, this is what I said before. Don't have me do trivia. No. My brain.

Is there a misconception people have about guide dogs? Something that's commonly. Oh, yeah. So many. The biggest one is they're not a GPS. Okay. Okay. A lot of people think like, how do they get you places?

I mean, people doesn't know where I'm heading. I can't be like, take me to Starbucks. Oh. And he'll just take me to a Starbucks. Alex, how is he going to know? Now, if we go to that location all the time and we're heading in that direction, and of course, he picks up on it and he can figure it out. And there's a few places that we go where, like, I barely have to give him any commands.

He knows. Yeah. Yeah. If he's been somewhere once, he has an amazing memory. If you're kind of headed in a direction and he figures out, oh, we've been here before, then he will take Paul there. He will even, like, we'll pass a door that Paul went into once. some store or restaurant.

He's out in me. He's out in me. He'll like pull right up to it. And Paul's like, well, thank you very much. But today we're not going there. We're going. We're going to keep going. So yeah. He's like, when were you at that bakery?

When did you get done? Never mind. And the misconception being that I have nothing to do with the guiding. Because as a blind person, you really are a team. You and your dog become a team. So you're working to each other's strength. So I really do have to know where I'm going.

So that means counting blocks and understanding where I am and orienting myself and having that basic mobility and orientation of my own. And then the dog and I can work together to each other's strengths. There was a story I heard from your platform about you being denied an Uber. Yeah. Oh yeah. It's happened many times. That's happened more than once. Yes.

How many times? Five, six, seven. Yeah, we're getting up there. Does Uber have a function where you can say, I have a guide dog? I have a service animal. Oh, yeah. And the driver, I'm guessing is notified that. but then they show up and they just

They're not notified till they show up Oh, okay To stop drivers from turning them down Because I don't, this is, I mean Oh, that's a good thing to have But then it can backfires a lot Because that, okay, not that, you know, We're very, yeah

Like none of us are blind, we don't have a guide dog But one time, one time because of our kids Oh my God, no The Uber pulls up We ordered an Uber like XXL Like the biggest one you could get And he's like, no, no, no, no Drives off

drives off because he saw us with two kids and car seats yes so I guess some of these Uber drivers are just like no nonsense they're not this isn't for me yeah that is crazy I mean it did you report it Abby did well no I just said I wanted a refund because he was I was said well can you show me in the app how I can get assigned a different driver I don't to cancel this because I'm gonna lose whatever yeah like and he said no no I just won't we won't cancel the ride they can drive off, but I won't, I'll wait until they cancel it. Because I'm like, I'm not going to cancel it.

And you just have to wait in. And I know that they can't take another ride until they cancel it. So it's just a waiting game. I just asked for a refund from Uber. How long do you have to wait for them to cancel? Everyone's canceled within like, I don't know, maybe the longest was three minutes. It's not long because they want their next job. They have a feature where you can't like be discriminated upon basically because of your disability with the dog.

They try to cut down. So then they don't tell them until they show up. But then they decide on their own. Then they're also surprised. Yeah. It seems like there's got to be a better system. Do they have any, any, like, robotaxies or Waymos in Seattle right now? Yeah, we're supposed to get them.

Coming soon? Okay. Because we've got it here and it's crazy. Kids take Waymos to high school. I'm getting used to. Yeah, but you see cars just in Phoenix everywhere. There's nobody in the driver's room. Wow.

Yeah. I think that's so interesting. Right. I'm waiting for that because it's like, you know, self-driving. I'm all about it because I can't drive a car. I want to just jump. In a car and it let it take me somewhere. Seriously. I mean, I think about for women and children, like if my kid was getting, I'd much rather my kid get in a driverless.

Yeah. Actually, that sounds crazy to say when you really think about it. But like, with no adult- Feels a little safer, doesn't it? Yeah. It does. That's crazy. That's why people let their kids take them to high school.

Yeah. Totally. Wait, what are we doing? Okay, we're in the presence of an author right now. Tell us, we need to hear more about these books. So we've talked a little bit about the internet troll. Which of your books? You've written a lot of children's books.

Which one is your face? Well, my favorite would be the first one. It's Pringle and Finn. Okay. Pringle and Finn. Because it was inspired by our wedding. So that's how it all started. Because I've always dreamed of illustrating children's books. But Pringle and Finn are Matthew and Paul. That's their, they are our surrogate. And just like they are on that wedding cake on the cover of the book, we had little figurines like that on our wedding cake in Mexico. Paul illustrated them because when it was time to send out our wedding invitations, he's like, we need to take a photo. I'm like, I don't want to take another photo of myself ever again.

You signed it for our kids. That's so long. Yeah, I signed them all. But instead of telling him that I didn't want to take a photo because I knew I'd get a little pushback, I was like, well, what if you illustrated us? Yeah. Because I was like, I'll get out of the photo. He didn't want to do another photo shoot.

Paul will bite at that. He hates photo shoots, by the way. Remember Instagram used to be all photos. Yes. I'm so glad that day is. He's so happy. And if you watch our content, it's 99% him holding the camera. Yeah, he's like, I would have to be odd.

I love this. And so Paul did. He sent me the Pringlin Finn. And he's like, how about these on our, on our invitations? And he's like, which one is me? I was like, the taller one. He's like, he looks kind of fat. I'm like, Matthew, it's a penguin.

So Paul quickly shot me back a text message where he drew abs on the, yeah, I gave him an A-Pack. But not, we didn't put that on the invitations. And then when the pandemic hit and there was like very little for us to do, I said to Paul, I was like, why don't you write a book? He's like, what book should I write? And I was like, well, Pringle and Finn are really popular with her followers. Why don't you write that story?

So that's the first. It's about teammates. They are imperfect. They make lots of mistakes. The repeated line is, but they made a great team. Yeah. Which really feels what makes a good relationship. I love that.

And obviously, it's inclusive because you've got two brides. They deliver wedding cakes. So there's two brides. There's two groom weddings. There's bridegroom weddings. and then they get married at the end. Spoiler alert. That's what it happens. And that's sort of how the whole journey began.

And so obviously it's a very special book for me because I couldn't have done it without Matthew. He is my number one teammate, encourager, believer in me and helping me with the technology and like how am I going to like, because I was at the point where I stopped painting because I couldn't see the canvas anymore. I stopped working.

My art, I was like, what am I going to do? Because the vision was getting so bad. And he was like, you know, a lot of artists are using tablets now. So let's look into that.

Let's get you an iPad. Yeah. And like, you know, set me up with that. And that's how I've been able to create these books with the follow up was the secret ingredient where they deliver birthday cakes. And at the end, they deliver it to their own daughter's birthday cake. So it's kind of an adoption story. That's sweet. Oh, so this is an adoption story.

So maybe a kid who's like understanding adoption could read this. Totally. Ah, that's how adoption works. Yeah. And you're using, and it's through penguins and like these cute little animals. And lots of animals. And there's different families in there. There's two mom families, two dad families as well.

That's sweet. As mom, dad families. And I just wanted to make sure that everybody was represented because for me, that was the impetus for all of my creations is like, how am I bringing something different to this, the world of children's literature? Because it's like, you know, I have a lot of ideas and it's fun to write a cute book. But I want to write a book that feels meaningful to me. and as a kid who grew up with a disability

and knowing that I was gay and wasn't comfortable coming out and all of that confusion, I felt like it was important to me to create books that felt inclusive and represented different types of families because we know two moms and two dads who have kids and are raising kids

and they're like, we want books that show that. Totally. So our kids can see themselves in the books. Totally. I was like, I need to do that. That makes me think of when the Disney movie Princess and the Frog came out. Yeah. Because that was the first time that, you know, little girls of color were able to see a princess

that look like them. Yeah, it's just like, I don't know. It's powerful. Yeah, especially if you're a part of a minority group, you know, you want to be able to see yourself represented. So that's cool. That's really cool. And I think the artwork, I mean, even seeing, I forget the, the, the, maybe it was

like on your TikTok, I can't remember if it was YouTube, but just like the, your, your artistic ability. these are so good. Oh my gosh, thanks. And you can clearly see that in the book. So I just think it's really cool that you've been able to keep, you know, using that ability, even with your vision, you know, with the vision problems you've had. Like, that's just so cool that you continue to create and do what you love and adapt.

I never thought I would. I never thought I would at this point. But it's only because of technology that's really allowed me to do it. Like just having the screen and being able to manipulate things like with the brightness and the zooming. But I have never seen an entire picture. with my own eyes. One of your own illustrations.

I can't see any of those illustrations in total. I only can see a little piece at a time. No way. So like when you're looking at like like hold something up. Yeah. Let me hold up. Okay. Let's hold up the book.

Okay. The cover of the secret ingredient. So I'm looking at the cover and I look up and I can see the little girl, the little girl penguin with the bow and her hair and I can see nothing else on the cover and I can look down. Oh, and I see another penguin and then I look down and he's got a bow tie. and then I look down at the bottom and I'm like, oh, there's a little,

there's like the alligator character. So I'm scanning. It's like looking, it's like a computer scanner that's taking in all of it. And then I've always been able to like picture things fully in my mind's eye. Yeah, I once asked Paul on the iPad

because he can shrink and expand the images to fit into his site. And I was like, shrink down one of your pages so that you can see the whole thing. And it got so tiny that it's like, Well, okay. So you can see the whole page now, but you can't make out what's there. Yeah. It's like very fuzzy, obviously. So that's the tradeoff. But I can see the composition. From an artist's perspective, I can create the composition of the page, but it's very blurry, obviously.

I don't know. I don't have crispness or clarity, and then I can blow it up and see it up really close. So that's how I do it. But I trust Matthew is my art director. He's art directed everything I have done. And so I trust his valuable opinion. He sits down with the red pen going through every stage. No way. So you work as a team. You're the editor. You're like, you're like,

this isn't good enough. Go back to the drawing board. He is blunt. There is no gentleness. You've come a long way. Because you actually will lead with something nice occasionally. I try to remember that. I am a sensitive.

I feel convicted right now. I give blunt feedback. I'm working on it. We work together too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's that like, guys?

We're in therapy. Yeah. We're in therapy. Same. Same. You live and work with your spouse and this dynamic. It's beautiful in so many ways, but it is so hard. Yeah.

I feel like I've actually just kind of learned actually how to separate tasks. Yeah. We're like, it's better this way. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You do. You learn to like find each other's strengths and then.

And now it's not a conflict really. Yeah. But for a while that was like a back and forth. Yeah. Yeah. You can't trash talk your business partner when it's your spouse, you know? Take it somewhere else. Oh, but I find it.

And I'm sure you relate to this, but at a certain point, it's like, when do you turn off the colleague work mind? Like when you go out for dinner, can we not talk about work? Yes. No, we can't. We have a really hard time. It's hard. We make rules.

We can't talk about the kids or work if we're on a date. What do you even talk about? Especially when like your work is your hot. The Roman Empire. When you do what you love. And so like the hobby of it and your, and your art all gets mixed up into one. Yeah. And I don't know, like I'm ADHD, so I'll get hyper focused on something.

and it's all I want to talk about. And usually it's work. So it's like, got to shut that off, right? That's, yeah. The other day we were on a walk. We'd do an evening walk.

And Paul was like, okay, so we can't talk about work. And I was just like, silent. Oh, no. News, news. What's in the news?

Okay. And we struggled. We do struggle. Because it's, because like you said, it's a passion too. So it's, it takes over every,

corner of your life and we love what we do and like we're you know we're the we're entrepreneurs we created this whole business together if we stop the whole thing can stop right there's not somebody else making it go and you're self-publishing which is really impressive it's not like you have somebody that's helping with the distribution necessarily you're doing that all on your own yes and so it's people that are seeing your content going to your website and then pressing the purchase button right yeah that's kind of how you make your money and then we have a dedicated wonderful employee and she goes to into the warehouse and she gets the orders and she's fulfilling them and you know if we're running out of books we have to place the reorders and Matthew's brilliant

at all about he is like Mr. Spreadsheets Mr. Back End like I am just the creative imagination person like don't ask me to like make any sense of how it's going to become something I've always said I'm a dreamer he's a doer so like if that's one piece of advice I give for anybody looking for a relationship. I'm like, if you're a dreamer, find your doer. If you're a doer, find your dreamer because you both need each other. Are you, so are you like the Steve Wozniak, Steve Wozniak and you're the Steve Jobs? Yeah. Okay. That's cool. Okay, that's cool. Okay, that's like what's been the biggest challenge you've faced self-publishing doing this by yourself you're not kind of just like figuring it out you know yeah um staying restocked like placing orders and because it

comes from overseas like being able to project and order enough and you know we're we don't have like huge warehouses like a lot of these publishers have so forecasting like sales like there was a time when we were like just completely out because the secret ingredient just caught on and and thousands of people were buying it and all of a sudden we're like whoops okay we're out we don't have anything yeah we've been building the plane while flying it in this regard like we didn't set out to create our own little mini boutique publishing company but that's essentially what Matthew has done with me

I'm like the sole author illustrator yeah you know he's like okay we're going to start a little publishing company you're the old one producing the books. Hurry up, Paul. Hurry up. We need more books. And, you know, there's a lot of challenges, inherent challenges with that, just figuring out, like you have to said, like, the stock and like, oh, where to warehouse things and just like the timing and the volatility of social media in general because, like, you can't predict when things are going to go up or down. And then just trying to get into the broader markets, like we can't get into the national distribution system, which would allow us to get into traditional bookstores. We can do bookstores on a case-by-case basis,

but we can't get into the distribution system. It's complicated because this is like we're too small. You have to be a bigger publisher. You have to be putting out like 10 titles a year or something. It's a lot. Paul can't do 10 books a year. I can't do that. I cannot do that.

But we are traditionally published overseas and they take care of all those things for us. So we do have that experience. For translations. For translations. Yeah. Yeah. But it's been exciting. I have to say like it's so exciting to learn as you go and figure it out on your own,

especially if you have a good teammate, especially if you're not alone. I think it can be so rewarding the most rewarding way to do it I'm so happy for you guys I'm excited to get to read these books to our kids and thank you for the perfect age I know right they're all for like three to seven and they love animals

Oh perfect I Griffin I know he wanted it When he was in here earlier he really wanted to grab this like stuffed animal but I'm you know thankful that he was able to let us Well, Griffin said he gets the lion name. I know. He took August because that's the little Leo for August. But Griffin already said it's his. I don't know what to tell you.

You'll have to hash that out. You don't have to figure that out. As I tell them sometimes, I'm like, solve your own problem. Anything else that we haven't touched on that we shouldn't touch on before we wrap up. Wanted to make sure. I think we're good. So much. It was so awesome.

I know. I felt like we laughed and we cry. Like we had like every range of emotions. Yeah, I mean, that was a journey. That was a great conversation. You guys are so good at this. You guys are so good. You're so, like, you're so, like, on top of it just with the storytelling and there were times, I'm like, I want to ask a question.

Then you covered it. Like you got into the details. Yeah. Well, we've all been doing this for a while. You know, we gotta know. But it's really fun to sit down with people that we have so much in common with it. Another couple that does what we do is rare. So rare to meet.

And thank you for making this so comfortable. Like you guys are so natural and easy and fun to talk to. That's so nice. I had a really good time. Thank you. No, likewise. Yeah. Seriously.

Thanks for making the journey out here. Oh, yeah. Our pleasure. Yeah. Safe travels back to Seattle. Yeah, we got to go right to the airport. I know. Yeah.

What time is your flight? It's in like two hours. Oh my gosh. No, we're good. We got time. Okay, good. Yeah. Well, where's the best place for people to connect with you?

Online were Matthew and Paul. Yeah. Matthew and Paul, TikTok, Instagram, YouTube. Facebook even. Snapchat. We're on Snapchat. I didn't even know that. But apparently we are.

Yeah, we're everywhere. Matthew and Paul. And then I also have Paul Castle Studio. But like the... Paulcastle Studio.com. Hallcastle Studio.com is where all my books and plushies are available. As well as, you know, Walmart.com, Amazon, all that. They're on there too.

Oh, okay. The books are on Walmart. Well, they're on Walmart.com. Okay. And we're getting into Target as well. I've heard about like their publishing thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Very neat. Yeah. That's big. Congrats you guys. Thank you. Thank you so much. Yeah. Well, thank you so much and we will have to stay in touch because this was this was great. It was great talking about. I hope so. Thank you.