Welcome to the Gathering Pod, the audio version of my weekly gathering room broadcast.

I'm Martha Beck.

Today on the Gathering Room, we are talking about hanging on by letting go.

Because that is what we've been thinking about in our house.

We are doing something very, very fraught.

I would say fraught.

We are potty training a two-year-old.

And we are using a methodology that is kind of all or nothing.

It's in this wonderful book called, Oh, Crap by, let me get, make sure I, by

Jamie Cloackie. Yes. It's called Oh, crap, uh, potty training. And basically, this woman is so

funny and smart and loving and good and in every way. It's a fantastic book. and I encourage you to use it if you are not yet potty trained.

But it's a very all-in kind of strategy.

Like we literally cleared our calendars, rolled up a rug in a room with a wooden floor,

put a cage around the room, got everything up, filled it with old towels,

then took the baby in, there's plastic potty, strip her down, let it go. Let it go, yes. She has to learn

to let it go at a certain time and place. And the idea is this methodology is once you've started,

you cannot stop. I mean, you can, but you shouldn't. The Jamie Cloacki even quotes Yoda,

saying there is no do or don't do. There is no try. Okay, so there's this method,

there's no try. We do it or we don't do it. Well, of course,

we have this amazing little girl. And so far as we know, she'll tell us when she's older.

But she caught on really quickly, you know, she got it, but she was going to get a lot of praise

for noticing when she needed to go

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