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Today’s guest is Rachel Butler. She is an executive and professional coach, an organizational health expert, a wife and mother of 2 boys she is one of those unique women who is both powerhouse and presence. She's a master in organizational systems and she's worked with over 325 organizations. Rachel embodies what it means to be an empowered woman and a conscious mom. Rachel and her mama business partner Gillian Rowinski are the voices behind Unlearning SuperMom a feminist website that supports equal rights and opportunities for women and empowering all of us. We will be discussing Unlearning SuperMom. Join us!
"Our culture has clearly defined what being a good mom should look like and it is oppressive. The martyrdom of being busy, being agreeable, putting everyone else first, running yourself ragged. If super mom is who we become when we are in this world with our eyes closed then unlearning her is a deeply courageous feminist act.”
“Are we doing it because it's a “should” or are we doing it because it’s something that brings us joy?”
“It’s really hard not to get into comparison-itis.”
“I sort of reject that idea that the major measure of success in parenting is enjoying it”
What you’ll hear in this episode:
-The impact of childcare costs on returning to work for moms
-The emotional conflict about returning to work
-Keeping it real as a mom
-Who is super mom and where does she come from?
-Re-learning our inherent self-worth that is not based in accomplishment
-Motherhood and martyrdom: when we put ourselves last
-Motherhood messaging and where it comes from
-History of motherhood and women’s work
-The perceived value of women based on their relationship with their children
-Child centred social media messages and guilt
-The value of the messy middle
-Being aware of social media messaging and how it impacts us
-Where do you start unlearning super mom?
-Ways to dip your toe in to shifting towards unlearning super mom
-Stages of learning from awareness
-The mental load we carry
-Checking in with your body
What does Joyful Courage mean to you?
I think one of the phrases that most triggering, I already even brought it up in this conversation, the triggering for me as a parent is like "Oh, just like enjoy every moment. It goes by so fast" that statement brings so much anxiety to me and I really understand the intention of it. I do. But for me and I feel like I'm, you know, I'm someone who's like maybe even obsessively working towards like enjoying, you know, trying to be with my kids and you know, so I find it really and I'm sort of a nostalgic person anyway. So anyway, I get a lot of anxiety from that statement and so I sort of reject that idea that the major measure of success in parenting is enjoying it, you know.
So I think from, you know, the most impactful things, you know, profound things that I've learned as a parent has really come from, like, the more painful moments of the parent, like some of the suffering that's come, you know, and what I've been able to learn from that and being able to sort of meet it, you know, meet and face all of the really messy stuff and and I think that really is courage, right, like coming up to that really scary, whether it's personal work or complex relationships or whatever and showing up for them.
So I think the, you know, joyful courage to me in that context is really about looking for the meaning and just showing up in your life and allowing that to not, you know, that what's there to not be good or bad, you know and not treating happiness like it's the pinnacle of life experience.
Resources:
Where to find Sara:
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Today is a solo show all about being the calm inside the storm. That is the dream, isn’t it?? Listen in as I tease apart what this means and offer ideas and strategies around hwo to get there more often.
· Parenting class
· Summit
· Podcast conversations
· E+R=O
· Events and experiences…. 3 Bs
· What if nothing changes?
· What if all we have is how we feel inside of the experience?
· What do we want to BE/FEEL/CREATE??
· Feedback matters – internal vs external validation
· Parenting is a PART of our life that can feel like our WHOLE life
· Energy of emotion
· Personal work, small steps with Sid, ACES with Sarah – unlearning supermom
· Stuck in what it should look like
· What about acceptance of what is? What about surrender to not knowing the outcome?
· Influence yes. Hard work and practice, yes.
· AND you decide how to respond from life --- worry fear, that is the present moment experience you create. Openness, love, that is the present moment experience you create.
· Think about, bring about – energetically we are always influencing our life, our experience
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Audio summit for parents of teens
- One week of real conversations
- PD trainers who have already been through it
- The launch starts January 1st
- Summit will run January 28th – February 1st
REGISTER NOW – www.joyfulcourage.com/teensummit
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Be a Subscriber
Make sure to SUBSCRIBE to the Joyful Courage Podcast on Apple Podcast to get the latest shows STRAIGHT to your device!! AND PLEASE rate and review the Joyful Courage Parenting Podcast to help me spread the show to an ever-larger audience!!
CLICK HERE to watch a video that shows up how to subscribe with your iPhone!
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Sign up to be a part of the Patreon community today!! You will enjoy monthly webinars, online coaching and support from a caring community of like minded parents.
Click here for more information.
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Today’s guest is Sara Harvey Yao. Sara is a leadership consultant who has developed more than 4,000 leaders across the globe. She specializes in helping leaders navigate pressure and stress by staying present in the moment. Sara is the author of two books, Get Present and Drop In. She’s the mother of two teen boys and can speak firsthand to how the power of presence can transform the parenting experience. We will be discussing. Join us!
"Naming feelings opens the doorways for the energy of emotion to metabolize.”
“When we’re in emotion, we’re in a different part of our brain than the language center so it’s often hard to articulate what we’re feeling.”
“Anger...is a signal fire. Something is going on here. It’s a sign your boundaries have been crossed.”
What you’ll hear in this episode:
-How naming emotions helps us process them
-Facilitating our movement through emotions in the parenting journey
-The power of acknowledging, even to ourselves, when we are struggling
-Feeling vs thinking
-Attitudes and beliefs about feelings that contribute to feeling “stuck”
-Helping our kids name and process feelings and the role of modeling
-Normalizing emotions for our kids
-Anger as a secondary emotion
-What’s really under anger
-Exploring our triggers and where our feelings are coming from
-Establishing a common language with your kids to discuss feelings
-How to support ourselves and our kids to regulate emotions
The courage to try something new and if that’s new to, I’m going to try a new parenting technique, if that means I’m going to sit with a feeling instead of stuffing it, I’m actually going to say something instead of not saying something, any new behavior to me takes deep, deep, deep courage and when we take those leaps into courage, for me it always ends up being really joyful. There’s such an empowered, a sense of empowerment and it leads to new opportunities or new directions that I might not have known about if I hadn’t been courageous. So those two words fit so beautifully together, it’s just joyful courageousness when we try something new.
Resources:
Listen to past show with Sara: Episode 68
Listen to Mindfulness Min Summit
Where to find Sara:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Instagram | LinkedIn
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One week of real conversations
PD trainers who have already been through it
The launch starts January 1st
Summit will run January 28th – February 1st
REGISTER NOW – www.joyfulcourage.com/teensummit
:::::
Make sure to SUBSCRIBE to the Joyful Courage Podcast on Apple Podcast to get the latest shows STRAIGHT to your device!! AND PLEASE rate and review the Joyful Courage Parenting Podcast to help me spread the show to an ever-larger audience!!
CLICK HERE to watch a video that shows up how to subscribe with your iPhone!
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Eps 169
Happy New Year!!
Hope everyone had an easy breezy holiday. Grateful to friends and family and all the ways we were supported to enjoy the season.
So much to be excited about.
I want to share a couple of reviews that came through Apple Podcast last month– I am always so grateful when you all are willing to show up there and provide feedback.
This is the podcast I recommend most to friends. Casey has such a great way of breaking down parenthood challenges and offering tips and commiseration with humility. She doesn’t come across as preachy and she is in it with us! Her guests are phenomenal, her interviewing skills are wonderful and her solo show insights always resonate! She’s experiences the humility of parenthood at all stages and it’s evident she truly wants to help. Thank you, Casey! - Cassthurston
I’m a new listener and found you through your excellent Tina Payne Bryson interview. Just listened to your 2018 recap epsiode, as well. Great work! I’ve subscribed and will be a regular listener. I also look forward to reading your book! Thank you for your excellent, realistic parenting insights! – GAC Sunshine
Thank you so much, you two!! And listeners, if you’d like to rate and review the show, I am going to be sharing reviews here – you may hear your name!!! I am really going to be encouraging you all to be sharing the show. I know that the content of this podcast Is useful – you tell me so!!! And I want as many parents as possible to be listening in. This is how we raise a generation that can lead with compassion and integrity - by parenting this way. So in this context, parenting IS social justice. Lets all be a part of changing the course by not only doing our own work to be more attuned and empathetic parents, but to support others in the work as well!
This is something I will be talking a lot about in 2019. Compassion and integrity. And our DUTY to be engaging in conversations that support and forward others this way too! It can feel vulnerable and scary – but too bad. It has to happen.
Speaking of compassion and integrity – and for the sake of the conversation, I define compassion as sympathetic consciousness of another persons suffering and integrity as being honest, decent, and walking our talk – these are two big themes that I want to highlight this year – both in my personal practice of being a parent and a human on the planey, as well as with the people I work with and all of you.
Compassion and integrity.
Today, I am going to share a bit about a book I am reading that is really blowing my mind, it is called The Path is Everywhere; uncovering the jewels hidden within you, by Matt Lacata. If you’ve listened to the show for very long, you know that I love my energy worker/reiki master friend (shout out to Jessica) and she has turned me on to the work of Matt. I am using this book as part of my soul care time, reading a few pages in the morning to gather inspiration.
I am not very far into the book, and what I read this morning gave me pause and I decided that now would be the perfect time to bring it here to discuss with all of you.
The first part of the book is about what the author calls our “shadow” – this is the part of ourselves that lays dormant until it is jostled into wakefulness. Another way to make sense of it is the way that we feel when we are triggered. Our shadow is who takes over when we are riding the emotional freight train. The parts of ourselves that we may cloak in shame or guilt – the parts that we keep hidden.
Most of us have a tendency to want to hide our shadow, keep it deep inside of ourselves, not let it see the light of day. Many of us may think we are pretty successful with this – until we aren’t. A lot of the clients I see come to me because their shadow is making appearances in the parenting journey and they want to fix it, they want to make it go away.
I have a shadow as well – she wants control and order, she wants to know the outcome, and she wants everyone to be on her agenda. My shadow takes the behavior of others deeply personally, quickly manifesting fear, rejection and disrespect whenever I experience criticism and ridicule.
My shadow, your shadow – our shadows are a part of who we are. And if, like me, you subscribe to life being purposeful, then perhaps our shadow isn’t something that we should turn away from, or get rid of. Perhaps our shadow is something we can turn towards and get curious about.
You all know that I love the personal growth and development conversation. You know that I see parenting as one long personal growth and development workshop. And if you have been listening for any length of time, you know that I am deeply invested in supporting others in doing this work along with me.
This is why I am talking about shadow work today.
Matt Lacata writes:
It is important that we cultivate the intention to become more interested in the truth of our experience than in the demand to find relief from our symptoms.
Putting this in the context of parenting, especially as we look ahead to a brand new year and choosing in to growth and possibility, we can consider the truth of our experiences as taking a magnifying lens to our current struggles – bring in curiosity, ownership, honesty – and ask ourselves questions like: What am I meant to learn here? What is going on for me? What is the emotion that I can connect to right here right now? What is the story I am telling myself about my child? Myself? My safety?
Our response might begin with sounding like: “well, I am pissed!” but what is underneath that? If we get into the blame game, I invite us all to bring it back to a focus on self – because regardless of what triggers our reaction, how we react is wholely ours.
This takes practice friends, and a deep belief that there IS something to be learning from these interactions – faith that we CAN learn. Once we step into that truth – that we are all continuing to learn and evolve, then we can really trust that we can be the parent we want to be.
And what about the “demanding to find relief” part of what Matt wrote? Well we are already pretty skilled at this, aren’t we? Let’s consider some ways we find relief – we yell, we blame, we shame, we withdraw either physically or emotionally, some of us use substances – food, alcohol, drugs – to feel that relief.
And what do we know about all of these ways of relieving the pain and discomfort of our experience – they are short term and harmful to ourselves and others. BUT, they seem/feel easier than facing our shadow, and doing the inner work to grow and learn.
And clearly this is BIG. And it is HARD. And it requires us to decide to choose in time and time again…. AND YOU CAN. And isn’t this the ultimate act of compassion and integrity?? SELF compassion and PERSONAL integrity???
IF this is landing for you – bring it up to your therapist, or hire me to coach you and support you in this work, it is what I do! You don’t have to do this alone – the journey is meant to be traveled with others, IMO.
2019 is a year to walk together – to link arms and be in community. I will share a few ways to do that at the end of this podcast….
On a personal note – I want to share solidarity to all of you that deal with partners overseas and single parents. Ben has left us to do some big work in California on the electrical grid. We don’t know how long the work down there will take – could be months. I know it isn’t the SAME as being a single parent, I know that I have the luxury of knowing my partner will be coming home eventually, but I am looking at an extended period of time holding space for the kids without their dad here….
Clearly I will have ample opportunity to lean into the TRUTH of my experiences vs finding short term relief from what triggers me…
Self care will be crucial. Inviting my kids into more contribution will be crucial – this is a place we have gotten sloppy sloppy. Not that the kids aren’t contributing, just that there is very little structure, which makes me feel crazy and get naggy – no fun for anyone.
So yes, I am sure you will hear me mentioning missing my man over the next little bit….
As far as joyful courage is concerned – WOWZER! So much excitement. I have spent the last few weeks writing, recording and editing the interviews for the FIRST EVER parenting TEENS with Positive Discipline Audio Summit. OMG – it is SO GOOD!! 14 interviews with Positive Discipline Educators, Trainers and Lead Trainers who KNOW the trenches of raising teens. Register now – www.joyfulcourage.com/teensummit.
You will want to register, as I am going to be offering some sweet deals to those that register early in the month. I am so totally excited – again, the link is www.joyfulcourage.com/teensummit . If you are a parent of a teenager, I also encourage you to hop into the Joyful Courage parents of teens FB group – this is a space of support and encouragement from other parents of teens. It is a small but growing group – full of insight and community, check it out.
I am also thrilled to invite you into the Joyful Courage Super Fam through Patreon. This is a group of people who value the podcast so much that they are contributing $10/month and enjoy the benefit of monthly webinars and online support from me. If $10 is to big of a stretch, you are welcome to get in there and contribute what you can. Find out more at www.patreon.com/joyfulcourage.
Ahhhh – it is good to be back!! I missed you in December!!
Stay tuned, next week I will be sharing a powerful interview with return guest, Sarah Harvey Yoa talking about moving through the energy of emotions – the perfect follow up to todays topic!!! Big love!
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Audio summit for parents of teens
REGISTER NOW – www.joyfulcourage.com/teensummit
:::::
Be a Subscriber
Make sure to SUBSCRIBE to the Joyful Courage Podcast on Apple Podcast to get the latest shows STRAIGHT to your device!! AND PLEASE rate and review the Joyful Courage Parenting Podcast to help me spread the show to an ever-larger audience!!
CLICK HERE to watch a video that shows up how to subscribe with your iPhone!