Eps 593: Parenting, Growth and the Power to Choose

Today, Joyful Courage is taking an honest look at what I’m bringing into my relationship again and again and again.

Transcription

[00:00:00] Casey O'Roarty: Welcome, welcome, welcome to the Joyful Courage Podcast. This is a place where parents of tweens and teens come to find inspiration, information, and encouragement in the messy terrain of adolescents this season of parenting. Is no joke. And while the details of what we're all moving through might be slightly different, we are indeed having a very collective experience.
[00:00:30] This is a space where we center building, relationship, nurturing life skills, and leaning into our own personal growth and man. The opportunities abound, right. My name is Casey Ody. I am a parent coach, positive discipline lead trainer, and captain of the adolescent ship over at Sprout Bowl. I'm also a speaker and a published author.
[00:00:53] I've been working with parents and families for over 20 years. And continue to navigate my own experience of being a mom with my two young adult kids. I'm so honored that you're here and listening. Please give back to the podcast by sharing it with friends or on social media rate and review us on Apple or Spotify.
[00:01:13] Word of mouth is how we grow. Thank you so, so much. Enjoy the show.
[00:01:25] Hey. Hi friend. Hi. Here we are again. You and me. I like to imagine as I'm recording podcasts, I like to imagine us sitting in a little coffee shop at a table, warm drinks in hand. Maybe there's a little snack between us and we're just catching up. We're hanging out. We're connecting because that truly is what this show feels like for me, especially coming in and doing these solo shows.
[00:01:58] I imagine us having a conversation, right? I imagine us checking in, having a conversation, and really sharing what is real and alive during this part of our life. I mean, if you go back 10 years and you listen to my show, you hear a very different conversation. Because 10 years ago we were all in a different place, right?
[00:02:21] This is really me sharing what's on my mind and what's alive in my heart right now. That's what I do with my girlfriends. That's what I'm doing with you. Yeah, and there might be probably a more, well, I know there is definitely a more polished or strategic way of sharing content, but this is how I do it.
[00:02:42] And honestly it seems like it resonates really well with you. 'cause you keep showing up and you keep listening and I really appreciate that. So here's what's been up for me lately. And I feel like it's probably what's up with you because I'm talking to my friends and I'm hearing the same kind of thing.
[00:03:03] Life keeps life in, right? You know what I mean by that? I've said that here before, that relentless, unpredictable rhythm of, oh. All right, this is now we have to deal with this, right? And one thing after another pops into the path and it all really asks me, sometimes begs me to pause and ask myself, what kind of experience do I actually wanna have here?
[00:03:37] And every single day I'm reminded sometimes gently and sometimes not so gently of what's actually in my control and what isn't. Right. When I went to Dallas a few weeks ago for the Positive Discipline Think Tank weekend, I have a friend and a colleague who presented my friend Viba Aurora. She gave this really cool presentation around what is in our control.
[00:04:04] And what's not in our control. And she said something that I haven't really been able to stop thinking about since that experience. And it's that we all want life to come with a remote control, right? So that we can stop and start when we want. Skip the hard parts, right? Mute the noise. Fast forward through the pain.
[00:04:27] But life doesn't come with a remote control. Right. And even if it did, it's really a short term. Tool, right? We can avoid what feels hard. We can quiet the noise, we can check out, but life continues to invite us into the lessons and the learning and the opportunity of what it means to be human. What we actually get in life is we get a compass.
[00:04:56] Right encompasses, they don't come with a pause button, right? There's no perfect channel to switch to where nothing hurts. And you know, maybe if you don't wanna change the channel, but you'd love to mute it. Like I get it. We get a compass, we get this tool, this internal tool that invites us or allows us, or exists for us as a way to decide.
[00:05:24] How do I wanna feel and how can I line my compass up so that even though the terrain that I'm navigating is really challenging, I can move towards feeling a certain way about it, right? We all wanna have influence. We wanna have influence over our kids and our partners and our work. And influence is real.
[00:05:49] Influence is there for us to create control is not right. Control is not. And you know, this is what I love about positive discipline. I love the tools. I love the philosophy. I love having that foundation, that ground to stand on. But even positive discipline, it's not a magic recipe that we can put in the love and the firmness and connection and magically pull cooperative, respectful, emotionally regulated young adults out of the process.
[00:06:27] Right? It's more like a filter, right? Positive discipline is like this filter that you can run your response through. Before you lean into how you respond to your kiddos, right? Because at the end of the day, we are messy human beings, having emotional, sometimes deeply painful, sometimes really beautiful experiences with other human beings, right?
[00:07:00] And there's no perfect way to move through that. That avoids pain and heartache, which sucks. 'cause pain and heartache is really hard. I know. I know. I'm in it too. I'm in it too. That's what I love about the work that we talk about here, that we do in the Joyful Courage community is it's deep and it's profound.
[00:07:29] And sometimes I catch myself wondering like, why am I the one sitting behind the mic sharing my thoughts? What makes what I have to say valuable to other people, and then I remember I am being called to do this. It's not just about parenting, and I get to see that through my own life experience and ensure that with all of you, it's not just about what we do, it's about being human, right?
[00:07:59] It's about this human experience, this life experience, this. Broad and deep and meaningful and powerful and painful and exhilarating life experience. And it's such an honor that I can come here and talk about it and how I'm making sense of it. And that you find value in it. Right? And maybe it's just midlife.
[00:08:25] We're in midlife, right? Midlife is awesome. I think it's awesome. And. God so wild. You know, I, my kids are launching, you know this, my husband is navigating cancer. My parents are getting older. I have some friends that are navigating memory care and moving their parents into assisted living and watching their parents forget.
[00:08:59] So much about their life. I have other friends that have lost parents completely. Some friends that are walking through divorce or relationships that are falling apart, others that are navigating new marriage and figuring that out. I mean, it's just all here, right? It's all here in this midlife experience, and it's messy and relentless and breathtaking in such a spectrum of being alive right now.
[00:09:33] And maybe, you know, our parents are like, yeah, welcome to midlife. We've been through it and now we're in this new stage. But I'm here for it. And I feel like every day is another layer of understanding, oh, this is what life is like right now.
[00:09:59] Life has always been unfolding, and here as we meet it in the middle of it, we've got all of this life experience behind us that. Can support us in walking through just the continual unfolding, right? And we still get totally tossed around, don't we? We still get totally tossed around. It makes me think about, I know I've talked about this here.
[00:10:24] So I have my soul navigation cards, my deck of cards that are part of my self care soul care. And I often pull the agitation card, which is to me really funny because immediately I'm like, oh yeah, I get agitated. I'm agitated and remembering agitation as this really useful. Tool for cleaning things up like agitation, cleans it up.
[00:10:55] It, it's like a restart. It's like coming back to okay, peel back the layers, peel back the layers, get to what's real and true and move from that place, right? Which was, requires us to be curious about our agitation. Right. I don't know. It's so cool. And. We're just getting tossed around. Maybe that's the whole point.
[00:11:20] Personal growth. Is so present all the time, and it's so amazing to be in my own experience of it, but also to witness the people that I love inside of it as well. Personal growth keeps showing up at the door like, hi, here's an opportunity to work on yourself. You're welcome. And some of us see that and some of us don't.
[00:11:46] And I'm really interested in like what. Is it that allows for people to come to a place of like, okay, I am gonna see this as an opportunity, versus staying in that mindset of like slogging through and resisting and no, it's gonna be this one particular way and I'll do whatever I need to do to double down and resist change and make it how I wanna make it.
[00:12:13] It feels really tiring. It feels really tiring. And it would be great if there was a formula for life, right? Like, do this, then this, and everything turns out fine. But that's not life because we're not robots. We're humans. We're feeling and we're meaning making, and we're grieving and celebrating. And at the end of the day, if we're open to it, we're also learning.
[00:12:39] We're learning humans. And that's why I like to explore tools like map. You've heard me talk about map mirror, align practice, this tool that I've talked about over the last few weeks and have these other conversations about growth and actually experiencing our experiences instead of numbing or avoiding or rushing past them or resisting them.
[00:13:05] Because again, it's not just parenting work, it's the work of living. It's slowing down long enough to notice what's really going on inside of you, meeting yourself, where you actually are learning to move through your feelings instead of letting them bury you. And it's real work. It's beautiful work, and we get to choose into it.
[00:13:32] We get to choose into it. I'm here for that. I'm here for that. I'm here for that with my clients, with myself, with people that I love. I'm also working on something new that I think is going to be very useful, especially if you're just stepping into the teen years with your kids, right? I wanna tell you about it.
[00:13:54] It's called. What you need to know to parent teens today because Right, we, we know this. It's like buckle up. Here we go. And I know many of you that are listening right now, you're already deep in it. You've got a kid. You know, maybe who's grunting at you in the morning, or maybe a kiddo that's rolling their eyes so hard that you're worried about permanent damage.
[00:14:20] Another who's maybe slamming their door and then texting you an hour later asking for what's for dinner. Like, you know, the pendulum swing. So for you, the parent who's already in the thick of it, this program isn't necessarily here. To tell you what you already know. You've already learned this is a whole different stage of parenting and the rules have changed and your kids have changed.
[00:14:43] You've changed, right? You've expanded who you are and are in the messy river of adolescence. So here, here's what I wanna say to you. First of all, I see you as I, you know, I really do. I know that you're doing your best. I know that some days you feel like you've got it. Some days you're sure that you're screwing it all up, and that's the ride, right?
[00:15:11] That's the ride that we're on. And actually, also, I would really love your wisdom. This new program that I'm writing, it's for parents just jumping into the teen years, or maybe they're being dragged into the teen years. And while I can share my own experience. I always wanna reflect the collective wisdom of this community.
[00:15:36] Right. What do you wish someone had told you at the start of adolescence? What did you need to hear as a parent? What would've helped you to meet your kiddo and yourself with more grace when things got hard? I'd love to know if you have any insights or stories or even, Hey, here's what helped me. I would love for you to send them my way.
[00:16:00] You can shoot me an email, [email protected]. You can reach out to me in any of the social media platforms. You can send me a voice note. I love those, and you can just talk to me and tell me what's going on. You could do that over WhatsApp. Whatever works for you, because at the end of the day.
[00:16:18] Whether you are climbing the hill or deep in the valleys or catching your breath after the most recent peak experience with your teenager, you're not alone. We're all figuring it out. One messy, exhausting, hilarious day at a time. Right? And that's really what this new program that I'm writing is about too, to help parents see the season.
[00:16:44] As not just something to survive, but also the profound invitation that it is to grow
[00:17:01] adolescence is super challenging. Yes, it will stretch you. It will confuse you. Sometimes it'll knock the wind out of you, but it's also an extraordinary opportunity to really see yourself, to notice your patterns, to choose how you wanna show up, which by the way, is such a gift to your teenagers, right?
[00:17:25] I'm really in this time this, this snapshot with my own personal growth and recognizing. Yeah, there were some places in my parenting that did not serve my kiddos well early on, especially where I was just stepping into my own personal growth and, you know, really wasn't aware of the damage that I was doing.
[00:17:48] And it would be easy to say, yeah, you know, I was doing the best I can. I could with the tools I had and dismiss it, but I'm not gonna dismiss it because it made an impact on my kids. As did the continued growth and exploration and work that I did as they got older and older and older, right? Because this is the season of life.
[00:18:12] This season of life. Midlife parenting, all of it. It isn't something to get through so that you can finally feel okay. This is your life. This is where the growth happens. This is where the meaning lives. I, you know, had a friend who sent me a message just this morning, and she was kind of, you know, her son is 11, so she's just dipping her toe into adolescence and.
[00:18:41] You know, having one of those mornings and just realizing, oh my gosh, I am not ready to let go of this. I'm not ready to move on. I'm not ready for the next phase. And we get to be in the right now, the only thing we have is the right now. I mean, we can think about the future. We can plan for the future, sure.
[00:19:01] But what we are experiencing is happening in the present moment. Right. This is where life is happening and I am, you know, again, crash coursing this with my husband's health. Mainly with, I mean, that's the biggest thing that's happening in our life is my partner has cancer, he has blood cancer, and he's, you know, we're, it's very much a layer.
[00:19:31] Of our present moment, but it's not the only layer. And actually it kind of, for me, it's not in my body acknowledging that, but it kind of feels like this side layer. What's really big and profound for us right now is we are not in love with each other and spending time together and creating moments and cr going on dates and.
[00:19:56] Enjoying each other in a new way, honestly, than we have in a long time. We're enjoying our kids, right? There's so much to life right now that feels so good. Which is so weird to say, because also my husband has cancer, but how do I wanna look back on this period of time? And that's what I encourage you to do.
[00:20:22] How do you wanna look back on the teen years? And then even as I say that, I look back and there was definitely some over, you know, there were, there were dark days. You guys know I've been podcasting for a long time. There were some tough, tough. Seasons during adolescence for us and our family. But when I think back, there were also some really sweet and tender moments.
[00:20:46] Tender moments that I had with my daughter and my son. Tender moments for our family as we navigated COVID. And when my husband was first diagnosed, I mean, that's when I look back, that's really what's in my heart. So this is your life. You get to decide how you want it to feel, right? Yes. I know the details right now are, might feel impossible to think that you have any power over how you feel, but I'm here to say that you do, right?
[00:21:22] You have a compass. You can point yourself towards what you want most to feel, and you can bring yourself there. And it's not about dismissing the hard shit. It exists, but you don't need to get in the hole and into the pit of despair to move through it. And actually, you know, and this is something I'm witnessing with my son who is taking calculus online, accelerated, and really wishing he hadn't, there are things that won't go away, right?
[00:21:56] There are things, there are details in life. Midlife, sick parents, sick partners. Challenging teenagers. There are things that won't go away. There are things you can't control, right? But how do you wanna move through it? Do you wanna move through it from a place of hope and possibility? And trusting that eventually things are gonna flatten out and be okay?
[00:22:20] Because that's the, that's the mindset that I wanna have, and that's the mindset that I would encourage you to have, because the opposite of hope is you just despair. Right, and that also influences your life. So the compass, you get to choose what direction you wanna point your compass in. And maybe today your compass points you towards gratitude, right?
[00:22:43] Or maybe it points you towards connection or rest, or like I said, just the tiniest sliver of hope. Just try that on. Everything's gonna be okay, regardless of the outcome. Everything's gonna be okay. That doesn't mean pretending that it's all fine or ignoring the hard parts. It just means noticing what you do have influence over and leaning into that.
[00:23:05] So keep choosing. Keep choosing to hold your compass, keep noticing, keep pointing that arrow towards what matters most to you. And maybe that's an invitation to do a little bit of personal work on that question. Like what does matter to you? Know this, you're not doing this alone. We're all in this together.
[00:23:27] This is the joyful courage community, right? And. This is what we're all about, personal growth and development through the season of raising adolescents. We're in this with you,
[00:23:43] so thank you. Thank you as always for letting me sit with you and share my heart. Thanks for meeting me at the coffee shop today. And again, if you have wisdom you wanna share about your own parenting journey, like I said earlier, or about what you wish you'd known before stepping into the teen years, please send that my way.
[00:24:03] And until next time, take care of yourself. Keep your compass steady, and remember, I believe in you. You've got this. You've got this, and I'll see you soon. Bye.
[00:24:19] Thank you so much for listening. Thank you to my SPR partners, Julietta and Alana. Thank you Danielle, for supporting with the show notes as well as Chris Mann and the team at Pod Shaper for all the support with getting the show out there and making it sound good as I mentioned. Sharing is caring. If you're willing to pass on this episode to others or take a few minutes to rate and review the show on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, it helps other parents find this useful content.
[00:24:47] Be sure to check out what we have going on for parents of kids of all ages and sign up for our newsletter to stay [email protected]. I see you doing all the things. I believe in you. See you next time.