Altruistic Stuffed Animals for Kids & Teens staying in the hospital; Paying it Forward with Alexa Witte

Welcome to the No Problem Parenting Podcast. Turn behavior problems into no problem with Jackie Fineman. Are you ready to become the confident leader your kids crave you to be? Do you want to learn how to make parenting easier and more fulfilling?

Whether you are at your wits end or you want to have more fun as a parent, you're definitely in the right place. Now here's your host, Jackie Fineman. Hey there, before we get into today's episode, I'd like to thank our sponsors over at GWN Publishing. GWN Publishing helps business owners create content that will take them to the next level. Whether it be a business book, a memoir, web content, blogs, white papers, or eBooks, GWN helps you get your words out into the world. They offer ghostwriting, copywriting, content coaching, and hybrid publishing. Their graphics department can provide full service graphics design and logo creation too. Lil Barkaski and her team are efficient and thorough.

They guided me and my 21 authors through the process of publishing our first book, No Problem Parenting, Raising Your Kiddos with More Confidence and Less Fear. From start to finish, we created that book in three months. And our book hit number one Amazon bestseller in three categories on our launch date. If you've been sitting on your book idea and are ready to make it a reality, contact Lil at ghostwritersnetwork.com. I've got a link in the show notes for you to reach her and also a link to purchase our brand new book. Welcome back, No Problem Parents. I want to introduce you to Alexa Witte, a teen that wants to help change the world one stuffed animal at a time. One day, her heart started racing and it led her to the conclusion that she had a hole in her heart. They also found out that she'd had Crohn's disease on the very same day. It was all very traumatic, but some things that really helped Alexa get through those tough times were stuffed animals. And now she wants to help other hospitalized kids, starting with the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota, by providing as many stuffed animals as she can. So welcome to the show, Alexa.

Hi. I'm so excited to have you here. I'm just thrilled that you have taken your situation and all the generosity that people offered you and you're paying it forward. Yes, I guess I just like changing the world.

And you have had a passion. You've had it in your heart and your mind for many years that you wanted to do something right to change the world. And then this kind of came into play and you were like, you know what? I'm good now.

I'm healthy. And these stuffed animals really got me through some pretty tough and scary times. So tell us a little bit about that. Well, I've always loved stuffed animals, so that was really helpful.

But when I was in the hospital, people gifted me stuffed animals. And then that was something to keep my mind off of everything else that was happening. How old were you when you received your first stuffed animal? In the hospital, I was probably 12.

All right. And you're 16 now. So when you were 12 years old, you received your first gift. I'm sure you had lots of stuffed animals growing up.

This particular stuffed animal, the first one that you received, who did you get it from? Well, there was one stuffed animal in general that I got from a connection in dance because I used to dance a lot. And it was this adorable dog and it was so realistic. And so I basically just popped it on my lap and loved it.

So your fundraiser program is called Alexa's Altruistic Stuffed Animals. And your mission behind that is really to help bring comfort to kids and teens who are going through some sort of medical treatment or medical pain, right? Yes. And if it gets big enough, possibly to an orphanage in Honduras that my grandpa also works in.

I feel like stuffed animals help get kids out of what they're feeling in their physical mindset. And then start thinking in their mental mindset of what they can do with a stuffed animal. And how it will comfort them. Even giving a stuffed animal a hug can help.

honestly, because hugs are pretty healing. Absolutely. And when you're in the hospital, there's a lot of like downtime. You've got all the noise from the machines beeping and nurses coming in and out and all the wonderful help and, and care that you receive from humans.

Right. But there is a lot of downtime where you're sitting in the bed or in the couch. Nothing to do. And yeah, nothing to do. And sometimes it can feel lonely as much as people, your friends and family and people want to be there. I'm guessing people weren't there all the time. No, they can't be there all the time. And so the stuffed animal actually kind of becomes a friend. Yes, pretty much. You have a goal of collecting 100 stuffed animals by October 31st.

Yeah. And how many have you collected so far? I've collected 23 stuffed animals. 23 stuffed animals and these need to be brand new because they're going into hospital. So we need to make sure that they've never been used before. Yes. Cause we don't want to get the hospital kids sick or anything. Right. Right. So there, you have a website set up and a way for people to donate these stuffed animals. For anyone that wants to donate, they can contact me simply through my website and, and then we will send them that address. Your initial goal is to help kiddos and teens that are at the Mayo Clinic undergoing some sort of medical procedure or treatment.

And so that's your first goal of raising these, the first 100 stuffed animals to be able to bring to kids and teens at the Mayo Clinic. But your long-term goal is to help kids in Honduras. Why don't you tell us a little bit about that? Well, my grandpa, he owns an orphanage in Honduras, and she's also helping me create this program.

Therefore, I decided it would be a good idea to help both male kids and orphans. We'll be helping even more kids. It actually provides another way of donation because donations that go to hundreds, they do not have to be completely new. And I love that because sometimes we get, kids get bombarded with stuffed animals and they have lots of them around and they love all of them.

And then their parents say, you have too many stuffed animals. You're going to have to choose. Yeah. And so this is a great way for the gently used stuffed animals.

You can collect those. And then we don't have the same restrictions when we're gifting stuffed animals outside of a hospital. Yeah. Right.

So that would be my second goal. Perfect. I love it. All right.

I have to talk a little bit about your message that you're going to send to the receivers. When you bring these stuffed animals to Mayo, I'm guessing they will disperse them. They will hand them out to patients. Yes.

I can't be there because that's against the Mayo policy. Otherwise, I would love to be there. Right. So instead, you're going to have a note kind of that goes along with the stuffed animals.

Yes. adults and stuffed animal receivers is basically telling the receivers of the stuffed animal that they're not alone they're loved and people care about them because if people didn't care about them then the stuffed animal would not be in their hands I absolutely love that and you talk about on your website you have a little note in there to the receiver of the stuffed animal and I love what you say in there about you get to tell your stuffed animal all of your worries and that the stuffed animal is really there to help cure your worries with a quick hug.

Yeah. Stuffed animals can't always cure what you're going through, but they can cure your emotions. I just love that. And a lot of that has to do with mindset, right?

Yeah. so what kind of a mindset shift did you have to make or did you decide to make when you were being treated I don't really know how to describe it basically I don't know how I really realized that I had Crohn's disease how my heart would tell a while later but stuffed animals helped keep my mind off the things I didn't want to think about and put my mind on of things that I did what I think about like comfort it is an indescribable kind of feeling right yeah you're in pain you're unsure of what's going to happen you don't really know if you understand everything the doctors are saying or what that means for you the bottom line is you just want to know you're going to be okay right exactly and the stuffed animal was there to let you know that each and every day that you don't have control over the diagnosis or the treatment or any of that, but you do have control over your feelings and your emotions around your illness.

Yeah. Sometimes we take for granted the simplest things and we don't, yeah, we don't realize the impact they have. And I love that you're really acknowledging the stuffed animals. They aren't human, but they sure feel like it sometimes, right?

They can definitely. When they receive one of these stuffed animals, they just need to remember that people really do care about them, that they are very, very special and your stuffed animal is there to help ease the burden of all the things you're worried or afraid of. Exactly. Oh, I love that so much.

Okay. Before we finish up then, Alexa, I want to do one more thing. And that is, you know, logos for foundations and, and projects and companies and things. Sometimes, often the logo means more to the person creating the organization or the company and other people don't necessarily know, you know, what the logo means. I mean, like Apple, remember like the Apple computers, right? It's an Apple. It has nothing to do with computers.

Exactly. My logo is a goldfinch in a nest. And it's like, well, what does that have to do with parenting? Well, in my mind, first of all, a goldfinch was the bird that visited my window that kind of planted the seed in my mind about leaving my 20 year career and starting my own company. And I believe that God sent this goldfinch to my window, which thank goodness, my friend Pam, the next day when I talked to her and told her about this goldfinch, Jackie, we have to look that up. And so we looked up the definition or the spiritual meaning of a goldfinch. And it was all about healthy family resolutions and finding your voice in your own song. And so on episode 32 of this podcast, you can hear the whole hello world story,

but the goldfinch is really important to me. And then I thought, well, I'm going to add a nest because as parents, whether we're having our own baby or we're adopting, we are nesting, we get in that nesting phase, you know, a few months before the baby or the child arrives. And then we raise our kiddos all the way up till the time that they leave the nest. I am so curious about the reason for your logo the obvious is that there's a stuffed animal a teddy bear yeah but you have and people listeners make sure you go check out alexa's logo you have a pink heart in the middle of that stuffed animal and you have another lot there's lots of circles i've noticed in your stuffed animal and then there's a symbol so why don't you tell us the meaning behind your logo well first of all the heart represents my heart surgery and the patches around it represents how they basically patch up my heart and the next part and you know how it's dependent on circle yeah well that's because it represents that we are supporting kids and teens because the circles are pretty simple and can definitely look at the simple parts of life.

And the awareness sign, it actually means two different things. It represents my current disease, which is the purple, and it represents my sister's kidney failure that she had when she was really little, when she was a toddler. So the green is for the kidney failure and the purple is for the Crohn's? Yeah.

Awesome. Well, you've just incorporated so much into that. And then how did you come up with the word altruistic? Well, when I figured this out that I wanted to do this with my family, we decided to look online and look for other words that started with A.

and then my mom found this word called altruistic which actually means selfless stuffed animals so altruistic means selfless and the animals the stuffed animals are really being selfless right yeah that is so great giving with goodness you say so i just absolutely love that alexa you've collected 23 stuffed animals so far listeners we need to help alexa get to 100 stuffed animals by October 31st. So we have a month. Make sure that you're reaching out to her. Click on her website.

I'm going to put a link in the show notes for everybody. Alexa, this has been so fun. Thank you so much for being on the show. Yeah, I loved it. Thanks for having me.

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