Jodie Sweetin says no topic is off-limits with her teens

Now that Jodie Sweetin is a mom to two teenagers, she is well-aware how tricky the balancing act between self-care and making sure daughters Zoie, 15, and Bea, 13, are taken care of. The Full House alum wants to normalize all kinds of discussions — from grief to gut health — something she admits isn’t always easy with teens.

Motherly chatted with the 41-year-old as part of her partnership with Align Probiotic. She swears by the supplement, especially around the busy holiday season when juggling work along with, well, everything else. And she’s passionate about spreading the word to anyone who will listen… even if gut health isn’t necessarily the sexiest topic of conversation.

“As I have gone through my 30s and now entering my early 40s, I just started to realize, my body doesn’t quite function the same as it used to,” Sweetin says. “The foods that I used to love and enjoy with impunity, it’s just no longer the case. I realized I was just feeling bloated, I just didn’t feel great, I didn’t feel like my body was functioning or digesting food the way it should be.”

“I was looking for ways to help alleviate that daily occasional bloated feeling. I noticed such a difference when I started taking Align.” Now, she says discussing digestive issues is “fair game” with lifelong friends and staffers on set alike. “I found that so many of us, particularly us women and with our best friends, [we’ll say] ‘girl, I am so bloated right now, I could be in the Thanksgiving Day parade.’ So now I’m recommending it to all of my ‘bloat buddies.’” (Seriously, more of this please!)

One such pal is her close friend and Full House co-star Andrea Barber, who’s also partnering with the probiotic brand. “When you’ve grown up with somebody that long, you talk about everything,” Sweetin says. Yep, even your digestive woes. Relatable, indeed!

With her daughters, she says, “I think it’s just important to make it normalized,” a sentiment that carries through to particularly tough topics. Last summer, Sweetin wedded her longtime boyfriend Mescal Wasilewski, but her celebratory moment was sandwiched between two major losses: her TV dad, Bob Saget, in January, and her college friend, Stephen ‘tWitch’ Boss, in December.

“I think the thing that I always try to remind myself and my kids about grief is that it’s not a linear experience,” she says. “There’s no right way for it to look. You can be laughing in the moment because you’re remembering something absolutely ridiculous and then you find yourself crying. Then you just find yourself living your life and realizing you haven’t thought about it for a couple of days, and it’s all over the place. Kids kind of have an ‘in the moment’ experience of the world, and so grief for them might be a little different. It might be more of a passing, fleeting thing, and that’s okay.”

Sweetin tries to remember those she’s lost by sharing stories and laughing, which isn’t always easy. “My older daughter was very close with tWitch and Allison [Holker Boss]’s daughter; he and I went to college together. It was a hard year last year to lose some really wonderful people who shined so incredibly brightly. But teaching my kids about the impermanence of life is also really important. It comes and it goes — this is one short, quick little trip around the world so you better enjoy it and make the best of it as you can. Around the holidays, I try to have those traditions and memories with the kids because I know that those are the things that we all connect with. It’s grounding, it makes us feel familiar.”

As someone who uses her platform to speak out about issues she feels passionately about, Sweetin also tries to find opportunities to talk with her girls without forcing it. “My kids know that there is nothing that they can say that is off-limits,” she says. “Any conversation is fair game as long as we come with open minds and ask questions.”

But for her, more important than talking is listening. “I find the older they get, the more important it is to just listen, and it’s really hard. Sometimes they’re like, ‘Mom, I don’t need a mom talk right now,’ and I’m like, ‘I’m sorry, I just want to give you advice.’ They also might feel differently than you do. And that’s also something that, as a parent, you have to listen to them, let them have their experiences and figure that stuff out.”

In those moments, Sweetin relies on her “mom face,” the “non-reactive mom face that’s like, ‘oh, you’re telling me information that’s really deeply horrifying and I’m going to pretend that this is totally normal and we’re just talking about things and I’m not freaking out inside,’” she says. “The ‘mom face’ is key to any parental conversation.” Of course, a Danny Tanner hug never hurts either, even if it earns you an eye roll or two.