Jan. 22, 2026
Turning Big Feelings Into Superpowers With Miles And The Colorful Capes Of Feelings
What if a color could say everything your child can’t yet put into words? We sit down with women’s health practitioner turned author Constance Lewis to explore how her family’s journey through epilepsy inspired a simple, memorable system that helps kids name big feelings and feel brave enough to face them. From NICU shifts and IVF to early-morning seizures and brain surgery, Constance maps the moments that shaped Miles and the Colorful Capes of Feelings—and the practical tools any parent or teacher can borrow tonight.
We get specific about what works under stress: asking for a color instead of a label, using capes or favorite dress-up items to signal state, and returning to the moment later with curiosity rather than critique. You’ll hear how calm modeling, low voices, and eye-level posture change the tone, why decatastrophizing protects the whole family’s nervous system, and how short, repeatable rituals—like meditation music during the dinner rush—turn regulation into a daily habit. We also talk about empathy as a skill kids learn by watching us: holding doors, checking on a friend, and noticing when a sibling needs space.
Schools matter here too. Constance shares ideas for discreet classroom signals so teachers can spot dysregulation before it derails learning. We discuss why social-emotional skills aren’t extra—they’re the foundation for attention, memory, and behavior—and how a quick “What color are you today?” can prevent bigger disruptions. Plus, a peek at what’s next: Mariah and the Colorful Tutus of Feelings, a toddler tools board book, and upcoming titles that normalize the emotional lives of moms and dads.
Ready to try it? Ask your child for their color, borrow the script, and watch how quickly the room softens. If this conversation gave you a useful tool, follow the links to the book and free resources, share with a friend who needs more calm, and leave a review to help others find the show.
Lindsay Miller is a distinguished kids mindfulness coach, mindfulness educator and host of The Stress Nanny Podcast. She is known for her suitcase tricks and playful laugh. When she's not cheering on her daughter or rollerblading on local trails with her husband, you can find her using her 20+ years of child development study and mindfulness certification to dream up new ways to get kids excited about deep breathing. Having been featured on numerous podcasts, platforms and publications, Lindsay’s words of wisdom are high impact and leave a lasting impression wherever she goes.
To sign up for Lindsay's "Calm & Collected" Newsletter click here.
To review the podcast click here.
00:20 - Meet Constance And Her Story
03:40 - The Peacock As A Symbol Of Strength
06:10 - Miles’s Epilepsy And Finding Courage
09:40 - The Birth Of Colorful Capes
13:20 - From Emotions To Empowerment
18:40 - Building Words When Words Are Hard
22:40 - Calm Parenting And Decatastrophizing
28:30 - Curiosity Over Anxiety
32:40 - Modeling Empathy For Kids
37:10 - Home Routines That Regulate
WEBVTT
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Welcome to the Stress Nanny, the podcast where we take the overwhelm out of parenting and help kids and parents build calm, confidence, and connection.
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I'm your host, Lindsay Miller, Kids Mindfulness Coach and Cheerleader for Busy Families Everywhere.
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Each week we'll explore simple tools, uplifting stories, and practical strategies to help your child learn emotional regulation, resilience, and self-confidence, while giving you a little more peace of mind too.
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I'm so glad you're here.
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My guest today is Constance Lewis.
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She's a women's health practitioner and began her career in neonatal intensive care before transitioning into roles as a discharge nurse, breastfeeding counselor, and childbirth educator.
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Inspired by her personal experiences with infertility and pregnancy, Constance pursued a WHNP degree, which allowed her to provide compassionate care to women for eight years in a private OBGYN office.
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After their son Miles was diagnosed with epilepsy, Constance decided to step back from her career to focus on her family.
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Together, Andre and Constance have faced the challenges of infertility and parenthood head on, welcoming their three children, Miles, Mariah, and Micah, through Donor Egg IVF.
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Their personal experiences navigating their son's health issues led to the creation of Miles and his Capes of Feelings, a heartwarming and practical tool to help children express their emotions.
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Their home, filled with love, laughter, and a red labradoodle named Ginger, reflects their deep commitment to family and helping others.
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Constance, thank you so much for joining me today.
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Thank you for having me.
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I'm very excited to be here.
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Yes.
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I'm looking forward to our conversation.
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When you reached out to me, your story was so resonant to me on both a personal and professional level.
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A lot of our audience knows that I did IVF for our daughter also.
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And so I really can appreciate the depth of feeling that you bring to your work professionally and then as an author and as a mom.
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So thank you for being vulnerable and sharing your story because it's not always easy.
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But I am grateful for the wisdom that has emerged from your story in this book, and I'm sure in your work with others.
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Thank you.
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Yes, I know it's interesting because it's something that most people don't want to talk about.
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And I've always kind of been open about it, and I feel it's very healing.
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And any experience that I've had, the more that I write it down and the more I talk about it, the more healing I get from it.
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It's how I feel, anyways.
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Yeah, no, I couldn't agree more.
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I think there's so much depth that comes from those types of experiences, and it can be scary to kind of access it at first.
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But then once we get practice going to depth with those like big experiences and big feelings, we recognize what a treasure trove of resilience it can be.
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And then as we share, like you said, the gift of the experience manifests itself in the ways it can help others.
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Yes, exactly.
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I was just gonna say when people hear my story and they say, Oh, I don't feel so alone.
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Thank you.
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It makes me feel, as you said, just kind of heals my own journey and my process as well.
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I've always been a helper, anyways, being a nurse.
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It's just I'm a healer.
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I'm where it's just my purpose and finding purpose in every journey that I've had through parenthood and infertility and miles diseizure disorder is just really been so special.
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And now that's what I do for a job at home with the three kids.
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Yeah, it's so powerful.
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I love it.
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And I'm noticing behind you, you have a peacock feather and you have a peacock print, and I have one right over here in my office.
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Do you want to talk a little bit about what that means to you?
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Yeah.
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So I love peacocks, obviously, the color.
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But what it represents to me is my husband initially came up with the idea of calling me peacock because he said that when my feathers are down and I'm just humble and in my nature, it's just a regular looking bird.
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But he sees when I spread my wings, these most beautiful colors of wings, and I'm expressing myself and being purposeful and helping others.
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He sees me as this big, beautiful, colorful bird.
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And so it really just represents that.
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And it helps remind me that I am brave enough to do anything, that I have these beautiful colors to share with others.
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And, you know, the blues and the teals are just another my favorite color anyway.
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So it's really what it represents is just a strength as a mom, as a woman, to keep showing those colors, keep showing up, even when it feels tough.
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Oh, that's such a beautiful way to conceptualize it.
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I did a podcast episode at the very beginning of my podcasting journey, and I had a guest on, and she was talking a little bit about peacocks, and she was talking about how they can neutralize poison.
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Do you know that?
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I didn't know that.
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So peacocks can digest poison and neutralize it.
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That's exactly what I do.
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Exactly.
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Yeah.
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In an energy sense, I think, in a feeling sense.
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Yeah, a hundred percent.
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No, so I love the added layer that you just gave with the feathers and just the conceptualization of someone who can have a really down-to-earth persona, but then also really shine and be an incredible display of love and you know, care when the moment calls for it.
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Yes, exactly.
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I love that.
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I love that little fact you told me.
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So thanks for sharing.
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Yeah.
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No, when she told me my jaw drop, because we've had this peacock print in our house for ages, and I've always held drawn to peacocks.
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And when she told me that, I just had a new appreciation for them.
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Absolutely.
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I can't wait to share it with everybody.
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I thought too.
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Did you know?
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No.
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Well, let's get into the book.
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You sent me a copy, which I was so grateful for.
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And when you first reached out, immediately when we started talking about capes and emotions, I was here for it.
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I thought, okay, I definitely want to talk to her about this book because I am constantly encouraging kids to be emotional superheroes.
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And so the idea of a cape displaying and helping to communicate emotion resonated with me in so many ways.
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But I want you to introduce the book through your son Miles and kind of how it came about.
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Thanks for asking.
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My son is now almost eight.
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Oh my gosh, it's crazy saying that.
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He was a healthy, seemingly healthy boy, you know, very emotionally intelligent, just very intellectual, and just such a kind-hearted little boy, still is.
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But around the age of four, he developed a seizure condition that just came out of nowhere.
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And it was very life-turning and shocking.
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And my husband and I lived in a Seder fighter flight for two years because we just didn't know when the next seizure was going to come and we didn't know why and what was happening and all the doctor's visits and all those things.
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And it was a tough journey for the whole family, not just him and ourselves, but our child Mariah.
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She's the younger sister, and then Micah as well.
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He's two.
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He was a baby, but he doesn't really remember it.
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But he was still part of the family and ginger as well.
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That's why we got ginger, is to help with Miles and to train her to be possibly a seizure dog to smell out seizures and to identify that and let us know.
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And because his would typically happen in the early mornings or at night, and it was scary and being, you know, we wouldn't know when he would be having a seizure in the nighttime.
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So the story evolved from an understanding that sometimes when he was having big emotions or being scared of going to the doctor or a procedure, or if he had just had a seizure and I had to give him medications, or after his brain surgery, you know, if he was feeling a certain way, the words weren't coming as easy.
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And even after his brain surgery, he had word memory recall issues, which we had a feeling that might be an issue.
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And so, you know, he would look up in the sky after surgery and he'd say, Oh, I see a white fluffy thing, but he couldn't name a cloud.
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So, and it was that was short-lived with a lots, lots of training and speech therapy.
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But that came about, and I thought, you know, kids have to go through really scary things sometimes.
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And how do we make them feel more empowered, feel better, have a way to communicate with us without words?
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And he loved to dress up as a superhero.
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He was all we had every super care hero costume you can imagine.
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We still have them, and now my two-year-old wears them.
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And so I thought in my head, when kids put on capes, I feel like they feel better.
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They feel empowered, they feel strong, they feel resilient, you know, they can change into anybody they want.
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And if we use that idea with a color and a feeling and combine them and we let Miles pick the color that he wanted for each emotion, then that's going to be really helpful for everybody.
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And so the concept of actually writing a book came to me in a dream, actually, which is wild to say.
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But it came to me in a dream, and I was supposed to write a book about Miles, and I woke up and I had no idea.
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That was a weird dream.
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What should I write about?
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And then one night it just came to me and I wrote the whole book in one night, which is wild.
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And then I had my husband really just rhyme it for me because he's really good at that kind of stuff.
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And hence the book Miles and the Colorful Capes, as you could see behind me, uh feelings was burned, as a woman's health nurse practitioner would say.
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Yeah.
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I I love this story on so many levels, and especially the idea of empowerment.
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I think, like you touched on the idea of putting on a cape and having the emotional awareness be empowerment.
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There's something so deeply real about that, right?
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Because so often, like you're describing with him and with other kids, they feel this sense of victimization around emotion, or they just don't have the words, right?
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And like you said, sometimes there's a physical reason for that, something getting in the way of the communication, blocking it.
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Yeah.
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And other times it's because they haven't learned them yet.
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And other times it's because I think we don't necessarily prioritize giving them the words.
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And so you creating a scenario where it's easy for families to build that bridge and to make emotional awareness empowerment at the same time.
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I just I can't say enough how much I love it.
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Thank you.
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It is interesting that I've always been able to express and talk about my feelings.
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I just kind of was raised that way.
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My mom and my father weren't raised that way.
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You know, you shouldn't cry, you shouldn't say how you're feeling, you should just sit there quietly and be a kid.
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And there's a lot of families out there that are still like that or that just don't know how to have that conversation with their child, or they just feel super uncomfortable.
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And I'm lucky that I don't feel that way.
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I'm always asking my kid, how are you feeling?
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Tell me about it, color me something.
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They're like, mom, okay, okay.
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Like we've asked us about our feelings and I'm like, okay, you sure you don't want to talk?
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You know, it's so funny that they're like, they're over it sometimes.
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But you know, but there are families that don't talk about it or they don't know how to approach it.
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And so I think using a story opens that conversation without feeling so scary and awkward, just since the book has come out in August.
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I've had so many parents and teachers and others reach out and say, Oh my gosh, like my kid put on this cape and told me how they felt today, and we never really talk about emotions, or my kid came to class and they were wearing this color and they said this is why they wore this color, and it and it helped me get them through their day so they can actually focus and learn.
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So just see the outpouring of information and support that's come back from it is more than I even imagined, which is amazing.
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Yeah.
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I mean, and you're less than three months in, right?
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I mean, that's just barely hit the world.
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So it's safe to say you're gonna get quite a few more comments like that down the road.
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Exactly.
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I love it.
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I'm like, keep on going.
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I love hearing about everybody's experiences.
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It just is so fulfilling that people are having that conversation because of the book and they're normalizing, expressing feelings because it is something normal.
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And it's not just the good ones, it's the ones that don't feel always right, you know, or great, like frustration and anger and whatever else there is.
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Yeah, definitely.
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Well, and can appreciate too that in the moments when you're faced with a dysregulated child, you know, whatever that big emotion is that's coming at you, it can be really tricky to get creative in those moments.
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You know, kudos to you for facilitating that in your home, right?
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But I think one of the powerful things about story is that someone else already did the thinking for you.
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So in that moment, all you have to do is take the idea and implement, you know, and so if you've read Miles and the Colorful Cape The Colorful Feelings with your kids, and then they're having a rough moment, all you have to say is, what color cape would that be?
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Right.
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And and it's they don't have to go into it right then.
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Later on, maybe you parse it out, but it's such a powerful thing you can use when you're not sure what's going on, they're not sure what's going on, and you're just looking for some way through.
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Yes.
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And I have a shirt that Miles wears that says, What color are you today?
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is the front of it.
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And so, you know, people always look at a shirt and ask, and the back explains, but it's just giving a color to how a feeling, and you don't even have to know the name of the feeling, like you said.
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You know, it's just if you say to your child, if they're and and obviously if they're completely dysregulated, they may not be able to answer answer you in the right.
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But you know, go back to it and say, What color do you think you were?
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And then they'll give you a color, and even if it doesn't explain exactly their feeling, because we're very analytical sometimes as parents, and we need the word.
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Sometimes I'm like that too.
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And I say to myself, okay, you don't need the word.
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Have them color you a picture, and then from that you can pull things and ask them more questions, or oh, why do you think you were that color?
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What does that color look like to you in a different way?
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Or you can even say, What color does that remind you of on something, a toy or you know what I mean?
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Just kind of relating that color to something so we as a parent can rationalize it more and then just talking about it, you know?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, definitely.
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Well, I'm sure you know this, but how the analytical and the emotive part of the brain are in distinct hemispheres, right?
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And so when we can cross over and create the connection, there's so much soothing that can happen in the brain just by having some sort of description, right?
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To the feeling.
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So, like you're saying, even if it's not an exact understanding with history of what this emotion is, where it came from, and how you can work with it in the future, it is building that bridge between the part of you that's just feeling everything so deep and the part of you that has some sort of descriptive way to connect with that feeling.
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Correct.
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Yes.
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And then the more you build on that, the easier it gets for that child in that moment, I think.
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And then as parents as well, too, to understand what they're trying to tell us.
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Yeah, a hundred percent.
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One of the things we talk about with my mindfulness coaching is there's a part of the brain that's in charge of kind of monitoring all those responses, right?
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Like your emotional state, your physical state, just how everything's doing.
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And when we talk about how we widen that neural trail, right?
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So when we're building those neural trails in our brain, whatever it is, we want them to go from that tiny little single person hiking path into this really great two-way, you know, two-way path that we can send messages back and forth between the brain and the body, between the brain, the parts of the brain that can monitor and soothe versus the parts of the brain that are freaking out and warning us.
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And so, like you're saying, the everyday practice or those questions, they create those neural networks.
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And when we build those when kids are small, I mean, it's just fantastic to have that foundation in place for the whole rest of your life.
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Yes, exactly.
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I agree.
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I couldn't agree more.
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Talk to me about your own parenting journey.
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I know that there's so much of you guys woven into this book, which is part of what makes it so beautiful.
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You have different family member references and different friend references, but also just the intentional way that you parent really comes through in the story.
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So talk to me about how your personal experience shaped the way you convey it, I guess.
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Yes, that's a good question and kind of a tough one that I'll have to, you know, maybe explain my way through a little bit.
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But Andre and I try our best to present ourselves calmly in most instances when our children's have big emotions.
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And I think that comes along with our background in a way, because Andre's a pediatric dentist and say extremely calm when his patients are freaking out.
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He's so good at it and he's such a great dentist.
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So he kind of trickles that into our parenting.
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And not, I mean, obviously, we're human and we do sometimes get flustered and stressed and ah, you know what I mean?
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That always is so normal.
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And then also with me, just I've I've been through a lot of catastrophic experiences through seeing death and children, you know, just lots of things that are overwhelming.
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And then when Miles went through his situation, the things that seemed so big before seem so little now.
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I mean, he went through brain surgery and he lived, you know?
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So I think that we just try to come at our parenting way as whatever happened in this situation, let's try to remain calm and not catastrophize it, which is very hard, especially when you're triggered, right?
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Your brain jumps right into fight or flight or freeze, right?
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And so we we try really hard to acknowledge when and if we are heading in that direction.
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And that's been something I've really worked hard on, just with my past with infertility and always thinking the worst thing is gonna happen, right?
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And being a nurse, the worst thing is gonna happen.
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So as a parent, I've really had to calm myself down and decatastrophize every situation.
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And so I think we kind of come at it from like the more calm, the better, the lower and down on their level that we can get.
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We never want to feel like we're overpowering or being aggressive.
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And we just kind of get down on their level.
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And even if they're having a hard moment, we try to bring grace and love to that moment.
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Again, not always, but that's how we do it.
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My daughter had a harder time with this.
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She will have big outbursts and big emotions, and there's no talking your way through it.
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You can't talk to her, you can't even touch her.
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Sometimes there's hitting and fighting.
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We'd have to move her to her room, and we would sit in there quietly and calm with her, and we're here for you.
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Let it all out.
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It's okay to be mad, cry, you know, so on safety boundaries, but all the rest.
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And so I think that, you know, just trying to come of it that way has really shaped our parenting journey and not realizing that they're not doing it to be manipulative and they're not doing it because they're bad kids.
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And, you know, I think adding that layer onto it helps as well.
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Yeah, I totally agree.
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And that's really beautiful the way that you described it, because what I took from it as a reader was this sense of acceptance and neutrality.
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So I love that that's your MO.
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Because I think a lot of times when we're triggered or when we're in a situation where other people are watching and there's potential for judgment, you know, sometimes we can be really worried about what someone might say, whether they're a family member, a perfect stranger at the grocery store, at the park, whatever.
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And how if we can be mindful of that tendency to social reference in those moments and really just be present, like you're saying, with the kid in front of us, and with the big emotion that's coming up, that's emerging, there's so much we can do in the way of teaching when we have that attitude of acceptance and neutrality in those moments.
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Yes, exactly.
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Exactly.
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You explained it well.
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And in the book, it's kind of Miles approaches his sisters and his brothers and his friends and his cousin as, okay, this is a feeling that you have and it's okay.
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And that's that neutrality.
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Like it's just an it's not going to overwhelm me.
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It's not going to overwhelm you.
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It's just, it is what it is.
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