You can also check out this episode on Spotify!
When Caitlin Murray’s 5-year-old son Callum was diagnosed with leukemia in 2016, her world turned upside down. She started blogging to keep friends and family informed about his treatment, and what began as a medical missive became an outlet for share about life, love, and parenting.
Callum beat cancer, and Caitlin’s star kept rising. As the main character of the wildly popular Big Time Adulting Instagram page and podcast, Caitlin has captured the hearts of parents everywhere with her raw, relatable, and hilarious commentary about raising kids.
On this episode, Caitlin sits down with Dr. McBride to discuss social media for grown-ups; learning to trust your gut; and the heartbreaking hilariousness of being a parent.
So listen, learn, and laugh with Caitlin. She is living proof that humor is healthy.
Join Dr. McBride every Monday for a new episode of Beyond the Prescription.
You can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or on her Substack at https://lucymcbride.substack.com/podcast. You can sign up for her free weekly newsletter at lucymcbride.substack.com/welcome.
Please be sure to like, rate, review — and enjoy — the show!
Transcript of the podcast is here!
[00:00:00] Dr. McBride: Hello, and welcome to my office. I'm Dr. Lucy McBride, and this is "Beyond the Prescription," the show where I talk with my guests like I do my patients, pulling the curtain back on what it means to be healthy, redefining health as more than the absence of disease. As a primary care doctor for over 20 years, I've realized that patients are much more than their cholesterol and their weight, that we are the integrated sum of complex parts. Our stories live in our bodies.
[00:00:35] I'm here to help people tell their story, to find out, are they okay, and for you to imagine and potentially get healthier from the inside out. You can subscribe to my weekly newsletter at https://www.lucymcbride.com/ and to the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. So, let's get into it and go beyond the prescription.
[00:01:03] There are influencer moms on social media with their perfectly curated family life on display, and then there's my guest today, Caitlin Murray. Caitlin created the wildly popular Big Time Adulting Instagram handle and now has a podcast of the same name. It all started as a way of keeping her friends and family abreast of her son's progress as he was treated for childhood leukemia. And it has grown exponentially over time as an outlet for Caitlin to share her thoughts on, as she puts it, life, love, and parenting.
[00:01:37] Caitlin is arguably the funniest and most relatable mom on the internet. Her content is the refreshing antithesis to the Pinterest-perfect family imagery. Her humor makes her audience of stressed-out parents feel seen and heard. It's her authenticity that has made her wildly successful and someone I really admire. Caitlin, thank you so much for joining me today.
[00:01:59] Caitlin: Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much for having me. I'm super flattered to be here with you because we originally met via the Gram and I reached out to you to be on my podcast. And I found you because I was doing a lot of homework on COVID stuff in terms of the risk analysis of masking children in school, which was really something that I was feeling impassioned by at that time. And I was just so pumped to come across such an accredited doctor who spoke really well from both sides about the reality of the situation. And when you said yes that you would come on my podcast, I was like, "Ooh, I gotta tighten my shit up right now."
[00:02:45] Dr. McBride: Oh, my God. That's hilarious because when you asked me, I'm like, "Oh, I gotta tighten my shit up right now."
[00:02:50] Caitlin: So, yeah, but I'm psyched to have developed this online relationship with you and see you a little bit in real life via Zoom.
[00:02:59] Dr. McBride: Well, I feel like I know you. And that's, I think, your gift to your audience, is that you let us into your world, you let us into your interiority. And I think what connects to you and me is the fact that neither of us are willing to put up with a lot of BS, whether or not it's because you are a mom of someone who's had cancer, whether you are just born with perspective and wisdom, or whether or not you're just learning as you go like we all are.
[00:03:28] The appeal in my mind of your content is this relatability, authenticity, and humor that allows people who are watching you to feel like we're okay. And that's the title of my newsletter is, "Are You Okay?" I mean, no one's really okay. Which is not to say we're all mentally ill, we're all broken people.
[00:03:46] It's to say that it's on a continuum how we manage our everyday lives, how we manage stress, how we manage mood, how we manage relationships with food, alcohol, our spouses, our children. My goal as a doctor is to help people be a little more okay tomorrow than they are today. And so, when you see someone like you on Instagram who's real and authentic, it's very appealing and refreshing.
[00:04:09] Caitlin: Well, thank you. I really appreciate that that's how you view it because I'm actually a shallow bitch behind the scenes.
[00:04:17] Dr. McBride: Well, I know that. And I'm trying to just cover it up for my audience, but there you go. Like, that's what you are, you're funny and you're real. And I'm gonna guess that you have insecurities like we all do, and you wonder sometimes like, "Wait, maybe I am a shallow bitch." I mean, Instagram is a weird place, right?
[00:04:36] Caitlin: Totally. Yeah. I think it's a place where people second guess themselves constantly just by scrolling along. And it's this over-inundation of information and ideas and stuff that kind of like what you were saying, am I okay, or are we okay? And, like, no, nobody's okay. But that's also okay. Like, that's fine. So, don't overthink it. Just be yourself, right? Because you only get one shot at this whole thing to just be yourself. And what a gift.
[00:05:06] So, starting my page, becoming really vulnerable in a public way is difficult. It was hard to do that at first. And now I am so much more comfortable with it because my audience size has grown and that's validating in itself. So, I feel compelled to continue oversharing all the time. But it's one of those things where when you let your guard down and you make yourself vulnerable, which I try to do, people really can sense that, the realness of what's happening in life and that you're not preoccupied by the bullshit. Like, let's just get to the point.
[00:05:45] Dr. McBride: Yeah. And I think social media has allowed people like you to do that because maybe you have an intrinsic confidence or just sense of self that's stronger than others perhaps. But I think there's a lot of fear about revealing our true selves, certainly publicly and even to our own friends and family sometimes or to ourselves.
[00:06:06] There's a hesitancy to really look inside and acknowledge uncomfortable truths, realities about our lives, about who we are, and then Instagram highlights how perfect people are able to present themselves and then it can deepen any preexisting insecurities. So, I think what I'm hearing you say is that the vulnerability you are presenting outward to your audience is also reinforcing to you of the magic of vulnerability for your own self.
[00:06:40] I'm guessing that you're a little bit like me in this way. The glue of my friendships with women in my life is shared vulnerability, and honesty, and truth. It's not a hey, one-upmanship, it's not a competition. It's, like, it's being real. Because first of all, who wants to be around other women who are like, "Oh, I'm so great, and look at my kid, they won this award." I mean, at the same time, my friends are people who can celebrate my wins with me too, and cry with me at the same time.
[00:07:11] Caitlin: But all that stuff is also like, it's frankly super boring when you just talk about what's, like, great, right? Like, I'm like, "Can you tell me what's wrong? Tell me all about your shit and I'll tell you about mine, right?" So that's what you were saying. Basically, it has been a super validating experience for me and I think that what I hope the followers who are on my page gain is also their own personal sense of validation through seeing somebody let their guard down on social media because it is a difficult place to do that.
[00:07:41] Dr. McBride: Yeah. And giving people permission to explore their own vulnerabilities and be funny, and be silly, and go get a snack. For anybody who's listening who hasn't seen Caitlin's Instagram handle, she cuts through the BS and then often ends her little monologues that are riveting and relevant with, "So, go get a snack," and you tap the camera. And it's just so refreshing. And then I wanna go get a snack and I do.
[00:08:07] Let me ask you a big question. What is your definition of health?
[00:08:11] Caitlin: Yeah, that's a huge question. I feel like it comes from so many areas, but I guess it starts with, self-awareness, so figuring out what is going on in your body, listening to your body and your mind. Because I'm someone who has health anxiety. And I don't know if that's a PTSD thing from what we went through with my son, but I think I've always had a fairly strong element of that within me.
[00:08:39] I think it's just...it had become much more exaggerated for a period of time, and I'm figuring all of that stuff out now too as I go and learning to take the whole picture instead of focusing on something catastrophic or whatever within my body. So, sometimes I feel like I'm too self-aware, I'm paying too much attention to what's going on in my body with that kind of thing. But, you know, just full picture.
[00:09:04] And this is also something I learned along the way with my son, with the doctors that he would see at Memorial Sloan Kettering, which is a world-renowned cancer center and they have fantastic doctors there. And I really praised the way that they were not alarmists and they kept you sort of grounded with things in terms of...maybe a symptom would arise or something like that but look at the big picture.
[00:09:29] Is this worsening? Are there other things going on? Is this something that I need to really fix or should I relax about this and see if it resolves on its own type thing? So, I'm big into movement. I've got to move my body for not just my body but my mind. Like, I've gotta get...shake my crazies out. And then, balance, balance with food, balance with alcohol, balance with getting enough sleep and doing things you like.
[00:09:58] Dr. McBride: It's a great definition. And I 100% agree with you. It has to start with self-awareness. And sometimes awareness brings discomfort when we realize, "Oh, my god. I'm anxious about every symptom." But if you can recognize, as you have, that some of that stems from a real medical vulnerability with a precious person in your life, then perhaps that allows you to forgive yourself for being anxious and also just try to better frame medical issues as they come up. Can you talk for a second about your son and his diagnosis?
[00:10:34] Caitlin: Yeah. He had just turned three years old, this was December of 2016, and I started to notice he wasn't doing well. He had come down with some kind of a virus, like a cold or a flu. It's that time of year. So, I wasn't particularly worried right away. But then he was not bouncing back the way a child should after say a week of illness. And I noticed he was getting more tired.
[00:10:58] He would want to take a nap. He had dropped his nap. His color looked bad to me, his appetite was bad. So, there were all these… a conglomerate of things going on with him. But little kids are not super self-aware of their bodies necessarily. So, they can kind of distract themselves pretty easily. And you might think for a minute, "Oh, maybe he is okay, you know, maybe everything's fine. He's playing right now or he’s coloring." But deep down it was, like, eating away at me. I knew something was going on.
[00:11:30] So, I had taken him to the doctor after, you know, like, the first illness of a couple of fevers and stuff just to make sure everything was okay. And then we went home and then he seemed to have some other illness or the same, just not recovering from. And then he started getting some fevers that weren't going away. And, of course, I visited Dr. Google.
[00:11:48] Dr. McBride: That's not the wrong thing to do. It just can make people more anxious if they're already anxious.
[00:11:53] Caitlin: Totally. But, like, this time Dr. Google was right. You know your child. Like, you know your child better than anyone. So, I took him back and I actually said to the doctor that day that saw him, "This might sound crazy to you, but he's been sick for kind of a while now and I don't see him improving. And he's had this fever going on. I wasn't a big temperature taker, I wasn't really alarmist like that with my kids when they were getting sick. I knew he had a fever because I could feel him being warm. I didn't know what his temperature was every day or something like that. This is maybe day five or six of him being like this. This is crazy, but could he, like, potentially have cancer? He was up all night coughing, all of this stuff.” And I was very quickly sort of, like, brushed off with that.
[00:12:34] I said, "I'd like to see blood work.”... I'll do an exam and if I see any red flags, and then I'll order blood work. So, whatever. The visit goes on and the doctor is like, "You know, I don't see anything totally out of the norm here. He's probably just got, like, a cold on top of a cold or something like that."
[00:12:56] Honestly, 99% of [00:13:00] the time this doctor would've been right, I don't blame her for that. But I knew that he wasn't all right. So, that's just one of those things where you learn to trust your instinct a little bit. And even if you're wrong, who gives a shit? Just get the blood work done or do what is gonna put your mind at ease because you do know, you know, be the advocate.
[00:13:18] Dr. McBride: I wanna get back to that point after you finish that story because it's such an important moment of the interface between medicine and humans. But go on.
[00:13:28] Caitlin: Yeah. So, then it was Christmas that weekend. This was a Friday, that day that I took him to the doctor. And Monday was, like, sort of Christmas observed, so skeleton-staffed everywhere, that kind of thing. And, like, the last thing you wanna do is go to the doctor on the day after Christmas where it's just, like, exhausted with little kids celebrating the holidays. But I couldn't even get him to, like, take a bite of cake at breakfast that morning.
[00:13:52] I was like, "Do you want some cake?" Because he wasn't eating anything. So, I was kind of desperate for him to eat. And he wouldn't...he didn't want anything. And I picked him up right there and then. I was at my mother-in-law's house, I was like, "We gotta go. Like, I'm going to the doctor right now." And so, we got there and I said, "I just...I don't care. Like, don't bother with testing or whatever, just order the blood work so I can get this. I just need this."
[00:14:16] So, really honestly, two hours later, pretty much we had to drive up to a hospital, get the blood taken and they called back with, like, very alarming results. Some of the markers for leukemia were way high, way low. And we were sent to go to the emergency room at a local children's hospital that day. And that was, you know, the beginning of our cancer diagnosis journey.
[00:14:41] Earth-shattering experience as a parent, just praying so hard that it wasn't what you thought it was and then thinking you might be, like, in a nightmare for a little while. Like, is this really happening to my kid right now? Just putting one foot in front of the other until you got through it because we were really the lucky ones because he's great today he is well.
[00:15:06] Dr. McBride: And how old is he now?
[00:15:08] Caitlin: Now, he's nine.
[00:15:09] Dr. McBride: And he's healthy, cancer-free, in remission?
[00:15:11] Caitlin: Yeah. He had gone through over three years of chemotherapy and other treatments. And that's a standard protocol for this type of pediatric leukemia, acute lymphoblastic leukemia. And he finished it and has been a clean bill of health ever since.
[00:15:31] Dr. McBride: I have lots of, first of all, empathy for what you went through as a parent and as a patient, and as someone who felt dismissed by the medical establishment. I also have an observation that I would imagine that the path you were on for the last six years has helped you with the perspective that you have that you then bring to your audience.
[00:15:54] But first, I just wanna touch on the moment when you're in the doctor's office and you have a maternal instinct about your child and you're not being heard. I think so many people can relate to that moment, whether they're there for themselves or their child, or their elderly parent. There's nothing like a patient's intuition. You know, patients know them more than the doctor knows them.
[00:16:18] At the same time, we see patients who are anxious, patients who go on Dr. Google, patients who come in with a laundry list of diagnoses that they've made on their own. They're like, "I have the flesh-eating bacteria, and I have ALS, and I have Crohn's disease, and just tell me what to do." And we then develop, as any human does, as physicians, we develop biases and we develop confirmation bias so that when we see someone bringing in a laundry list of Dr. Google diagnoses, we think, "Hmm, this person probably is anxious."
[00:16:51] But what's important for any of us, especially in medicine, is to check our biases and to check our egos at the door, and recognize that patients know them better than we know them. And you're right that 99.9% of the time, your son's fatigue and malaise after a viral infection is fatigue and malaise after a viral infection that will then get better with time, but that moment warranted investigation.
[00:17:17] And you weren't the hysterical parent who was checking his temperature 24/7 even when he was going to school every day and healthy. You weren't being hysterical. Even if you were hysterical, sometimes testing is the tincture, sometimes reassurance is the very thing that we can do best for our patients. Sometimes we do tests because we know something's wrong and sometimes we do tests because we know something's not, and we want to honor the patient's natural anxiety and let them dispatch with it.
[00:17:43] So, look, I'm not perfect at that either, but I think it's important for people to recognize that doctors are human too, doctors make mistakes, doctors make assumptions. But this is all the more reason to then be in touch with your intuition and your awareness of your own body and mind and to know what questions to ask, and then also to advocate for yourself because it's very hard to advocate for yourself in the current medical landscape.
[00:18:10] Caitlin: Yeah. That's really the main takeaway that I have gained from my experience with my son, is the self-advocacy or the advocacy of your children. Because as a young mom, you know, my son, that was my oldest. He was three years old and I had a one-year-old at that time too. You don't know that much about kids at that point really. You're still getting to know what it's like to have children, even though that might seem like a long time to a brand new mother of a newborn or something. It's a constant learning experience.
[00:18:46] So, we do put a lot of faith and trust in doctors, which is the right thing to do. Always get a medical professional's opinion. But don't discount your own inner gut feeling. Don't ever not listen to your gut when it feels like you need to ask for more or get an answer for something. Don't be afraid to speak up about that stuff because you'll never regret going the extra mile for yourself or your children to make sure everything's okay.
[00:19:14] Dr. McBride: One hundred percent. And recognize that it's normal to be anxious about yourself not feeling well or your child not feeling well, or noticing something funky. And we need to notice our own reactions to those bodily cues. In other words, there are people who have an outsized level of anxiety to what is a normal physiologic response.
[00:19:36] I had a patient this week come in who her heart rate was 110 when I was measuring her heart rate. And that's an abnormally high heart rate, but it's because she's anxious, it's because she's caring for her elderly mother who's in hospice right now. And so, she was anxious about it being high and I said, "Look, you have a normal heart that's the accelerator that's being pressed and is giving you a fast heart rate because of the fear and anxiety and grief you're experiencing over your mom. So, let's not medicalize your fast heart rate. Let's address the underlying anxiety and grief that you're experiencing." The wrong thing to do would be to treat her fast heart rate with medication. The right thing to do is to acknowledge the reality of her life right now.
[00:20:16] Caitlin: Let me ask you a question about that as a doctor, Lucy, because I always wonder...I do sense that there's sometimes resistance or just lack of interest from medical doctors to look at the mental health aspect of certain...
[00:20:30] Dr. McBride: Oh, man, girlfriend. I mean, why do you think I'm doing this?
[00:20:34] Caitlin: Yeah. But I think it would solve so many problems. I mean...
[00:20:37] Dr. McBride: I mean...
[00:20:38] Caitlin: Stress is the root cause of, like, so many health issues. And I just...I hate that it's never, "Let's try to work on this and see if it helps that," right? Like...
[00:20:50] Dr. McBride: I mean, my job is actually really, really easy. I mean, it requires a medical degree, it requires experience, it requires paying attention and listening. But that's exactly what medicine doesn't have right now, is time to listen to patients. So, if we acknowledge that we all have mental health. You're born with mental health, you can't opt out of the mental health feature of being human like you can a feature on your car.
[00:21:17] So, if you then acknowledge that you have anxiety, that's how we survive in the wild. It's how we get the term paper turned in, it's how we get the Christmas presents wrapped, it's how we get shit done. We have anxiety, we have moods. We have grief and loss and vulnerabilities. We have relationships with food, we have relationships with alcohol, we have relationships with each other. All of those things we have, that's a given.
[00:21:45] The question isn't do you have anxiety, do you have moods, do you have relationships? It's how do you understand them and how do you gather a kit of tools to manage the inevitable roadblocks that come your way, whether it's a child with a cancer or a mental health diagnosis, whether it's your own health issues which inevitably come up, or whether it is an inherent mental health problem when, for example, anxiety goes from being, "I'm worried about my son's chemotherapy," which is, of course, in proportion to the level of stress, to am I anxious where every time he has a paper cut, I'm panicked that he's gonna bleed out and this is a recurrent tumor?
[00:22:27] In other words, where am I on the continuum of anxiety? Where am I on the continuum of a healthy relationship with food, where I eat when I'm hungry and I don't eat when I'm not hungry? So, it's a long way of saying, yes, if we could just acknowledge that patients are more than a bag of organs and they are humans, they're dynamic and that our stories live in our bodies, medicine would actually be serving people.
[00:22:58] Caitlin: Yeah. And like you said, every case is nuanced. One patient is not going to respond the same way to the same treatment as another patient necessarily. It can be trial and error or not one size fits all, basically.
[00:23:17] Dr. McBride: One hundred percent. And then let's take it a step further. When you get dismissed by a doctor like you were, when patients every day are being not heard in the doctor's office and medicine has become a cattle-herd style, cookie-cutter style exercise, and we define health as the sum total of your lab tests, what happens to patients? They don't trust doctors. They don't trust that they're being seen, and they're not.
[00:23:44] So, what do they do? They go on the internet, they go on Dr. Google. They look for wellness memes, they look for quick fixes, they look for cleanses, they look for diets, they look for candles and funky stuff. Look, I love candles. I buy crap that's in a pretty package, but I have my expectations managed of what it's gonna do for me. I bought this, like, body lotion at CVS the other day and it was, like, lavender scented it said calming lotion. And I'm like, "If this lotion… can calm for $2.99, that would be amazing." But here's what the wellness industry does, and it's well intended in many ways, is that it actually mismanages people's expectations and it steers people away from the exercise of looking at the hard truths of their lives in many cases. And it's exactly why your content is popular, is because people are not being heard, they're not being seen, and then they go on Instagram, they're looking for that quick-fix-cure fitness instructor and then they find Caitlin, and then they're like, "Ugh, thank god. I'm gonna go have a snack."
[00:24:47] Caitlin: Well, thank you. I think what you said there too, it's like when you said the word the wellness industry, it is an industry. And that's also part of, like, social media industry and buying and selling, and what you're made to think or believe based on a market, and learning how to discern what's actually happening versus what you might be over-perceiving to be happening, or what is really right versus what somebody said was right, or something like that, just listening to yourself.
[00:25:20] Dr. McBride: So, Caitlin, you and I met on Instagram because I immediately was attracted to your vibe, and also because you were advocating for common sense policies when it came to COVID mitigations in kids. You're a mom of a child with an immune-suppressed condition, yet you also were able to see what I see, which is health is about more than the absence of COVID-19. Can you talk about that just a bit?
[00:25:46] Caitlin: My son, you know, he was an immunocompromised child when this pandemic began. And we had, you know, firsthand information from how children...and particularly children on the oncology floor at Memorial Sloan Kettering at the beginning of all of this, real-time information about how those vulnerable kids were faring against COVID. And our doctors were very much, "Don't be worried about this in that way." They were consoling us, genuinely frightened parents of our immunocompromised children that this isn't something that we're seeing having very serious outcomes with children at all. Thank God.
[00:26:27] Dr. McBride: Absolutely. So, I'm really curious, as a content creator yourself, what is it like sort of internally to be putting yourself out there, talking about yourself, like, giving pieces of yourself to other people? What are the biggest upsides and what are the biggest downsides to that?
[00:26:46] Caitlin: The upside is it's a fantastic creative outlet for me. Like, it really fills my cup. I like doing that stuff. I like delivering it in a humorous way. I get a real [bleep] kick out of myself.
[00:27:01] Dr. McBride: I hope you do because I would imagine that you have fun just hanging out with yourself.
[00:27:04] Caitlin: Oh, no. I mean, you know what? Part of this is, like, the isolation of motherhood being home with little kids because I was really locked up with my kids for so long, my little kids. And they are boring sometimes, you know? Like, they're busy and there's so much action, but not a lot of, like, adult mental stimulation.
[00:27:22] So, it was like I was talking to a bunch of people all day. So, that was really fun for me. And I love that. But then there are, you know, moments where I do feel like, "Oh, man, I just said that today about this and that's my kid's teacher who probably saw it," you know? So, within, like, you're in a real-life community, you can be a little bit like, "Oh, god, that person probably saw me shaking my ass in the kitchen this morning, whatever."
[00:27:54] Not that I really care because I don't. Because you can't if you're trying to, you know, build a real authentic brand, audience, community, you have to just sort of put it all out there. But then I also do think about, as my kids get older and more aware and are maybe on social media at some point in the coming years, what they will think, if they will be mad that I've been making fun of them so much, or what.
[00:28:28] But honestly, again, it comes back to just being authentically who I am and kind of staying true to myself and doing what I really feel, like, compelled to do personally because I don't know, for whatever reason, I really want to do what I'm doing here. And it's about following sort of my own goals and dreams in that sense. And I hope that the way that I explain it to my kids, I'm really honest with them and stuff, that they will also respect that. So, upsides are super personally fulfilling, and downsides is maybe, in real-life, community perception of you. But you have to just sorta roll with that, take it on the chin.
[00:29:06] Dr. McBride: For anybody who's not following Caitlin yet, when you say, Caitlin, that you're making fun of your kids, it's so clear the deep love for your children that you have. Because as we both know, there are a lot of people on Instagram talking about early motherhood is the best time of their lives, and, "Look at my child with this perfect outfit."
[00:29:26] And anyone who's been a mother knows that those early years are particularly hard and, like, not pretty in so many ways. And so, you're giving people permission to acknowledge that. And it's obvious that you love your kids beyond words. It's obvious. So, you can then make fun of them and make... There's no mean-spiritedness about it. I'd love you to give some examples of what diddies have you done lately that gave you the most kicks. Because I'll tell you the ones that I like the most, but go ahead.
[00:29:55] Caitlin: I'm fairly known for just going right out there and calling toddlers a bunch of assholes because they are.
[00:30:01] Dr. McBride: It's perfect. It lands so well. How are toddlers assholes?
[00:30:04] Caitlin: They're so ego-centric, which is by no fault of their own, their little underdeveloped frontal lobes. And they only care about themselves, they don't care about you. They care about what they want when they want it and they make everybody miserable until they get it.
[00:30:19] Dr. McBride: And then tell me about, like, the most fun diddies you've done where... Like, one of my personal favorites is when you're...I mean, you dance a lot but when you're in the...I think it's one of your most popular...it's one of your most viewed where you're in your kitchen and you're dancing with a broomstick and your son kind of, like, pads up to you and, grabs something that you have.
[00:30:49] Caitlin: Dance ones are like... There's a whole portion of the audience that, like, loves the dancing. And then I think there's a whole portion of the audience who is just there for the jokes or the stories. I think, like, the stories are pretty popular because that's really where you get, I think more of the real me if you follow along. Because the grid, my grid is more, it's jokes or dancing or something. It's, like, the hook and then you stay for the real in the stories, I'd say.
[00:31:08] Dr. McBride: And so, what do people respond to the most? What do people write back, and what do people say to you?
[00:31:13] Caitlin: I mean, so many DMs about, like, just conversations that I have in my stories. I mean, I did kind of a botched silly makeup tutorial...not a tutorial, just so many people had just asked me like, "How do you put your makeup on?" And so...
[00:31:31] Dr. McBride: Oh, my god. You know you've hit the big time when people are asking you what your makeup routine is.
[00:31:36] Caitlin: I'm, like, also hardly ever wearing makeup on my Instagram page, so it just made me chuckle. But then, like, people have their suggestions about, like, what you should or shouldn't do with your face or whatever and I'm kind of like, "I'll [bleep] decide what I wanna do with my face." You know, like, I wasn't asking for advice. But I think people respond to the story. I think that's why people...like, where they feel the real connection to me is via my Instagram stories because that's really where I am a real person. Because the page, the profile grid is more theatrical and the joke being delivered or dance or something.
[00:32:15] Dr. McBride: Where are you going with this? What is your...? Do you have a plan or are you just sort of taking it one day at a time, or do you have sort of, like, big aspirations for Big Time Adulting?
[00:32:24] Caitlin: I do have big aspirations if I'm being totally honest.
[00:32:28] Dr. McBride: Be honest.
[00:32:28] Caitlin: I'm playing the long game with all of this. So, it was never, "I want to jump into this and become an influencer." That was never a goal for me. I want to be able to monetize what I'm doing, but in a more meaningful way, I guess, so via real content that I've created or partnerships, and those sorts of things. Because I have sort of waited and waited and waited, and not accepted some sort of opportunities that I didn't feel like were really true to me or authentic for me.
[00:32:59] I'm starting to see some doors opening right now that are really exciting opportunities that I'm hopefully going to be getting involved in. And it's been just kind of being patient and waiting to see what opportunities sort of naturally come into my life via this platform. I will probably, maybe soon, do some sponsorship, something with a brand that is truly a brand that I like and use. And I will always probably have, you know, a give back to pediatric cancer research and stuff, which I feel like is just...it's a motivational thing for me too. I'm like, "Yes, I can make money and I can also give back as I'm making money."
[00:33:43] Dr. McBride: I mean, during your son's treatment, I think you started a Cycle for Survival team.
[00:33:46] Caitlin: Yeah. We've been doing it since 2017 and we've raised, like, over $0.25 million through our team. We've become really invested in the organization because it gives specifically to rare cancers. And all pediatric cancers are rare. So, it's just phenomenal in terms of a research-driven program because 100% of every dollar raised goes to research.
[00:34:11] Dr. McBride: That's incredible. And it's another example of how you're using your content for good. I mean, you're reaching people as individuals in their kitchens and you're also reaching a wide audience. You're also helping childhood cancer with this work. That's amazing.
[00:34:28] Caitlin: Yeah. I feel, you know, it's gonna be something that will be part of my life forever now. So, I'm committed to always giving back.
[00:34:48] Dr. McBride: So, when I asked you the question, what does it mean to be healthy or what's your definition of health, you immediately said self-awareness. So, I would argue that it's that self-awareness for all of us and then it's a laddering up from awareness to acceptance of things we can't control, and then agency. So agency and feeling like you have meaning, purpose, and the ability to affect change in your life or in others' lives is part of being healthy.
[00:35:07] And that's what you're doing because you've taken a vulnerable moment in your life like being a parent of a child with cancer, where you have very little agency, to creating a platform where you are forced to be more self-aware than ever, accept things you can't control like what other people think of you, and then now you have these opportunities and you're making a change in the world for childhood cancers en masse.
[00:35:30] I mean, the world is your oyster. I don't mean to be hyperbolic. I tend to, pedal in hyperbole, my kids accuse me of that. I'm so excited to see where you go with this because you have all those ingredients. You have the self-awareness, you have the acceptance, and you have agency. Obviously, you're a work in progress like the rest of us, but it's gonna be fun to see what you do with this.
[00:35:50] Caitlin: That's so kind of you. I really appreciate that. I mean, I'm really flattered when I hear anyone say something like that. And it's been a really fun journey. And having an opportunity like this just to, like, chat with you and kind of think deeper into those topics of health and things that are really important. So, who wouldn't like to spend, you know, an hour and change of their day doing that?
[00:36:16] Dr. McBride: It's great. And social media has so many warts, but the upside of it is the connection that's real and authentic. And that's what's fun about it for me.
[00:36:25] Caitlin: Yeah. I never would've imagined that would be real. It would be like people that you speak to online, that sounds really creepy, you know? But it's so true. You really do feel like you've come to...I mean, and we've obviously had real conversations before, come to know someone via online.
[00:36:45] Dr. McBride: It's possible and it's a very cool feature. If you can abandon the BS that comes along with it and just lean into the fun part and the connection part, it's a really amazing place.
[00:36:56] Caitlin: It is. I'm grateful for it.
[00:36:58] Dr. McBride: Caitlin, thank you so much for joining me today and for sharing part of your life, and yourself, and for reminding us what it means to be human.
[00:37:06] Caitlin: Oh, my goodness. Thank you, again, so much for having me. Such a pleasure getting to know you and chatting.
[00:37:14] Dr. McBride: Thank you for listening to "Beyond the Prescription." Please don't forget to like, subscribe, share, download, and rate the show wherever you find your podcasts. And if you have a comment or question, please feel free to drop me a line at lucymcbride.substack.com.
[00:37:31] Our theme song is courtesy of my brother, the multi-talented, Walter Martin. Thanks, Walt. You can sign up for my free weekly newsletter about mental and physical health at lucymcbride.substack.com. The views expressed on the show are entirely my own and do not reflect the views of my employer and should not be a substitute for advice from your personal physician. "Beyond the Prescription" is produced at Podville Media in Washington, DC. Until next time, be well.
Caitlin Murray on the Healing Power of Humor