Eps 209: Mindful Mama Mentor, Hunter Clarke Fields, supporting us in raising good humans

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Casey O'Roarty 0:02
Friends, I'm so excited, I'm finally jumping in here and saying that the audiobook is ready. Yes, joyful, courage, calming the drama and taking control of your parenting journey is now available through audible and and through the month of November, there is a celebration promo. When you buy the audiobook, go to www dot joyful courage.com/proof, and fill out the form. And after you fill out the form, you will be sent the companion guide to download and support you in deepening the lessons shared in the book. All right, so buy the book over on Audible. You can search for it on Amazon. Both of those pathways will get you the audiobook, and then head over to joyful courage.com/proof. P, R, O, O, F, fill out the form and you'll get the companion guide for free that will be yours to download. So excited. I'm so happy to finally let you know that it is here. Yes, super exciting. Hey, podcast listeners, welcome to joyful courage. I'm so glad that you're here and listening. Joyful courage is a conscious parenting podcast, a place where I like to bring information and inspiration to the parenting journey. I'm your host, Casey Casey o'rourdy, I am a positive discipline trainer. I'm a parent coach, but most importantly, I am a fellow traveler on the journey of parenting. I am thrilled, thrilled, thrilled that you're listening in this show is all about stepping into the personal growth and development that is always waiting for us here in this era of being mothers, of being fathers, of loving the kids that we have while staying lovingly detached from what's showing up in their lives. I know that sounds weird, right? Being detached. Tanya, it'll change your life if you can do it. The show is designed to offer you guidance. You can take it, you can leave it. It's a buffet of information. Just listen, right? Just listen. Create your own value. Listen for nuggets that land for you. And if something doesn't just leave it behind, it's all good. I would love to know what you think. I have many communities that you can join. You can follow me on Instagram or Facebook. You can join in the conversation at live and love with joyful courage on Facebook, or joyful courage for parents of teenagers on Facebook. So I love to be in conversation with my listeners, knowing what's going on in your life, and bringing some of what you desire most challenges that you are currently facing, bringing them onto the podcast, bringing them into these conversations, so that I can be in service to you. I really hope that you enjoy this show, and I'm confident that you will. Hi listeners. I am so excited to introduce my guest today. It is Hunter. Clark fields. Hunter is a yoga and mindfulness coach and mentor. She's the host of the mindful mama podcast and supporter of moms and dads near and far. She is also a mama herself, and walks her talk with her two daughters. I had the great pleasure of being a guest on Hunter's podcast, and I'm thrilled to host her here on the joyful courage podcast. Hunter has a new book coming out, raising good humans, a mindful guide to breaking the cycle of reactive parenting and raising kind, confident kids. I believe it's available for presale now, and I'm super honored to share her wisdom with you all today. Hi Hunter, welcome to the podcast.

Hunter Clarke-Fields 4:18
Thank you so much for having me, Casey,

Casey O'Roarty 4:20
so I would love for you to fill in the gaps on your journey of doing what you do. I shared a little bit there, but I would just love to know what has inspired you to become the mindful mama mentor.

Hunter Clarke-Fields 4:33
That's a That's a good question. Inspiring. You know, there's so many different factors. I think that this for me, like when I'm doing something that, like, makes me come alive and has made such a huge impact on my life, like just needing and wanting to share that, like, Oh my gosh. Like, there's these tools out here. You need to know about them. Like, just that, the enthusiasm. Ism, that's like, the word my brother uses to describe me as, like, enthusiastic. I talked about it endlessly at my wedding. But

Casey O'Roarty 5:09
brothers, brothers are so good for that. It

Hunter Clarke-Fields 5:11
was great, but, but, yeah, I get this, like, enthusiasm and excitement for, like, the there's solutions, there's things that are working, there things that are help. And like, if this works for me. And I was just like, in the pit and failing, and just like, Ah, so, so stuck. Then it's, it's gonna, it's gonna help you too. And, like, I just believing in those tools. I think that's kind of where, where that comes from, sort of in the big picture. For me, the mindfulness began when learning about that began when I was a teenager. I was really struggling. I'm a highly sensitive person, and figure I have a highly sensitive daughter and a highly sensitive father, but anyway, I would really fall into these pits of depression every week or two weeks, like, really on a regular basis. I just feel like I couldn't handle life, and I would just get super overwhelmed by everything, and I'd be crying. It was really emotional, and this was just kind of the way my life was, and in my family that was pretty accepted, that my biggest memory of this, which I share, is that I really do remember being, like, 11 years old, and like, I remember being on my bed, what my room looked like, all that stuff. My dad had been crying tears, and my dad rubbing my back and trying to comfort me, saying, Oh Hunter, like this is your artistic nature, and life will always be like this. And I was like, Oh, thanks Dad. Like, so depressing. Wasn't that comforting. But he was kind of right. He was pretty right. I know that's how he struggles in a lot of ways, and he deals with it in his own ways, but, um, but yeah. So as a teenager, I started reading about mindfulness. I discovered the writings of Thich Nhat Hanh, who is a Zen Buddhist master, Zen master, and is a great Peacemaker nominated by Martin Luther King for Nobel Peace Prize ones. But anyway, discovered his books and his writings and started diving in. And then it really took me, like, a decade of reading about it before I actually practiced. And, you know, kind of Lo and behold, doing the thing does make a huge, much more of a difference than reading about it, just like practicing tennis, I think, yeah, better difference than reading about it. And then as I practiced, and mindfulness and meditation are two different things, but I practiced on mindfulness meditation regularly, and I started to see this incredible change in my life, which was that those dips, you know, I kind of thought the whole thing wasn't working. I thought, you know, I was just sitting there thinking the whole time, and I wasn't really doing this right. But then I looked back over my life, and those dips that I'd gone into for 27 years of my life hadn't been there for three months. I was just like, blown away. Like, Oh my gosh. Like, it was such a huge difference for me to be able to have more equanimity. And it became such a foundation for me to be able to do so much more with my life. Like, so then that became this, you know, just impacted me so greatly that I I just wanted to share even more from there. So

Casey O'Roarty 8:46
just considering where my one of my children is at right now in her relationship with anxiety and depression, it's really inspiring to hear you talk about being a teenager and finding this tool, and, you know, time, right? Like it's so hard to be in it with our kids and and you talked about, like, I read a bunch of your blog posts, and I really just appreciated your story so you you have this history of using mindfulness to support yourself, you know. And then you have your oldest daughter. Can you tell talk a little bit about how that kind of shook things up for you, too.

Hunter Clarke-Fields 9:29
Oh, man, did it shake things up? Things have never been the same.

Casey O'Roarty 9:34
Oldest daughters? Man,

Hunter Clarke-Fields 9:38
yeah, so she, you know, I kind of thought, like, I got this down, like, this is gonna be great. You know, I'd been meditating for two years by then, regularly, I was sitting with the meditation group, and I remember, like, being in that group with like, my big pregnant belly, and thinking, like, Oh, I got this I'm gonna be such a good mom. Like, look, I'm here. This peaceful setting, she's gonna be such a peaceful kid. Yeah, right. Just was like, so not that way. Her just from birth, like her birth was super intense, fast and furious, and she was a really intense kid, baby. I mean, you know, she's a highly sensitive baby and person, and you know it was, you know, it makes a lot of sense now, but I, at that time, I, you know, I'd given birth to her at this birth center, and so I had a group of friends around, like, a lot of crunchy moms who were just like, blissfully, like, wearing their babies and sleeping with their babies, and they were so, like, blissed out and happy. And I was like, What's wrong with me? My baby is so hard. Like, this is challenging. This is so hard. And they seem so happy. What's wrong with me? And then as Maggie, my oldest daughter, started to sort of walk and talk and resist everything that I said. Then, then I really was my anger came out, and, like this incredible temper came out. It was my father's anger, you know. And I could really see it like I could feel it, and I could, as I started to step back and look at it, I could see, you know, whenever she had these big upset feelings, it felt completely unacceptable to me, like it just felt so, so wrong. Because, you know, the message shown to me was that your your big upset feelings are unacceptable, because my father's anger would go out, would, you know, explode. And so that's why it felt so unacceptable to me, like deep in my core. And so then I was perpetuating the same pattern because of that, you know, and I could just see this, like suffering passed down. And I really became my life's mission to, sort of like not be yelling and not be losing my temper, temper, and just, you know, it felt so uncontrollable at the time, like I remember really just like crying on the floor in the hallway, just feeling so terrible and Feeling very helpless, but really turning back to diving deeper into my mindfulness, diving deeper into understanding myself and what these triggers were really practicing to bring that non reactive practice of meditation, bring that non reactivity into my life in those moments. And really it's interesting to think about of all the things that helped me to take care of my anger better and more skillfully. The one of the biggest ones was, instead of practicing self judgment and and self shaming, was to practice like, oh, like, this is hard.

This is not your fault. This is a tough thing. So practicing that self compassion really was what gave me the grounding to be able to then say, Okay, this is figureoutable. I can do this. This is, you know, we can, I can figure this out. So, so a lot, most of my a lot of that work comes from that, like looking at, how do I figure this out? What are the different factors in there?

Casey O'Roarty 13:36
Yeah, yeah. That story really resonates with me, for sure. And just like the you know, what we saw, what we experienced, and you know, even as I remember, like, I will never do this. And then here's my little person in front of me, and all of the whole physical experience of the tightness and the heat and the rigidity, and then it just flying out of the mouth, and then recognizing, like I remember having this out of body experience, like I am doing exactly what I said I wouldn't do, and then similarly, just being so passionate and learning how to show up differently. And it is a lifelong practice, like I love that you so I recently listened to you, talked to a couple that went through one of your programs. And you, I love just how honest. And I think it's so important for all of us that work with parents to be really honest about this isn't like a six week fix. Wouldn't it be nice? We'd be making a lot more money. You know, I think that. So that's such a dynamic experience being a parent, because they're not little robots, nor are we. And, you know, I feel like, for me and my journey right now with the teen years, it's like I get. Like, I have these like, lucid moments where it's like, okay, all is chill right now and then every single time, I'm always surprised by the blind side. And it's not like a, like a like a violent or a really explosive Blindside. It's often really subtle that puts me back in this place of, like, what, like, I thought we were good here, like, what is happening right now? And so when I hear you talk about self compassion practice, right? Can we tease that apart a little bit? Because I think I know, because of the feedback that I get on my own, sharing on this show that you know, and you know this, right? Like there's so much more suffering in parenting than is really talked about, right? Because we don't necessarily want to say to the world, this is really hard, and I have no idea what I'm doing, and I'm scared. You know? I think for me, that's been a big one lately, is just I'm scared, and their the mom guilt is right up against that fear, right? So when you talk about a self compassion practice, what does that look like to you?

Hunter Clarke-Fields 16:12
Yeah, it's really one of the most important and vital things that I teach and talk about in in self compassion is, you know, we we know what it's like to be compassionate to another person, right? We know like, Oh, you're hurting, you know, and oh, you know. We want to offer nurturing, we want to offer comfort and reassurance and all of those things and but we live in this culture that's very based in judgment and blame. And, you know, it's just kind of in the puritanical roots, right? Like there's this harsh judgment. And I think, you know, we, we kind of have this in our heads that this, that judgment will help us grow stronger. But it actually couldn't be that couldn't be more the opposite of the truth, in fact. Like, yeah, I mean, well, just going into the little bit of, like, the science behind it, the some of the science of that Kristin Neffe University Austin has has done with this, like, when we are trying to, sort of, like, as we are always trying to do, if we're not dying, kind of like, grow and change and things like that. If we make a mistake, which we will, because we're human, we're not going to do it perfectly if we make some mistakes or do something we didn't want to do, and then we we respond to ourselves with harshness and meanness inside. You know, are you likely to then take those brave steps forward again? No, because there's this mean as beatitiation side, who's gonna, who's gonna, like, berate you for it. So you're not gonna want to step out of the comfort zone. And that comfort zone gets smaller and smaller and smaller as you kind of create that zone around yourself. But if you take steps and you grow and you change, and you make the inevitable mistakes. And then the voice inside is kind is nurturing, is helps you kind of get down, back on your feet, then you're able to, then again, take those steps, those brave steps forward, because it's not quite so scary and and it's not leaving you left helpless. Feeling helpless, right? It makes you feel like, No, I have resources. I can go on. So what this looks like in practice is there's sort of three parts, right? And that mindfulness piece is a really important part. So you have to understand the mindfulness is awareness of what is happening in the present moment with a sense of curiosity. So what am I telling myself? I'm a terrible mother? Wow, that's kind of mean, like we don't even see it. So we have to, kind of the mindfulness is to step outside and say, step, step. Kind of outside the waterfall of the thoughts and say, Oh, look, it's a waterfall. Oh, look, here are these really harmful mean thoughts, so we have to be able to see them. And then, instead of self judgment, we can practice to respond with kindness, like touch a hand to the heart. Oh, you're trying. This sucks. This is hard, you know, and just really offering ourselves like what? What would you say to your best friend if you knew she was feeling this way? What might you say and saying those words to yourself? And it will feel awkward and weird and strange at first, if this is new to you, but it's okay. You can fake it till you make it you. This is something that you can nurture and grow and practice in yourself, and it will get stronger and more natural and more comfortable. And then the third part is this piece about, rather than isolating yourself, looking at your common humanity. So sometimes I like to think about it this way, like I don't. Like, we're in a planet of, like, what, 7 billion people. So, like, at any given time, like, there's at least a million people who feel exactly the same way you do about whatever it is, you know. So, like, you're definitely not alone. And really, it's the practice of, if we're telling myself, like, oh, Casey, Casey would never yell at their kids the way I yelled at my child. Hunter would never do that. If we're telling ourselves that we're putting ourselves in isolation. And frankly, it's just not true, like you have no idea, but if we tell ourselves, Casey has yelled at her child, Hunter has yelled at her child, and all everyone does, this is hard. We get triggered. This is really hard. And we start to imagine, even visualize, all those people who are feeling the same way, who are in a similar situation. We can, we can know that we're not alone, and that that really is empowering for us to make those brave, positive steps forward.

Casey O'Roarty 21:02
Yeah, thank you for that. I appreciate that, and I love that outside observer practice like recognizing what's happening when it's happening and and then with that space, we have a choice, right? And that's really exciting to me. And I told you before I hit record that I wanted to weave this in, because I know that for me and for a lot of parents, it can sometimes feel like okay, so if I do the things and I show up mindfully, and I'm doing a quote, good job, the result is that I have really easy Going kids that you know don't trigger me, and the reality is we're in charge of us, and they're in charge of them, and we are on parallel paths, and they sometimes, for whatever reason, for whatever reason, things can go sideways. And I think that's kind of this place of really questioning, right? We start to question, well, I must be doing something wrong if my child is behaving a certain way. And I just love to hear you tease that apart, because I feel like that's the soil, this, this environment that can really again, breed that idea where we put ourselves in the center of everything, right, which I think is kind of a human thing to do. It's definitely an ego thing to do, but it's really not useful because we're more like we're more like planets, kind of orbiting each other, versus like I am the sun, and depending on how brightly or warmly or whatever, my light and my glow is shining, you know, that will result in X, Y or Z. And really, like, we can be doing all the things, and sometimes we have intense people in our

Hunter Clarke-Fields 22:57
lives, and it really, it's almost like it's like that blame showing up again, yeah? Like I'm putting every fact you know. I'm making myself all powerful in my mind. And that's simply not true. Like you are not to blame for everything you know. We like to in our culture, sort of like pinpoint a thing for everything. But there are so many factors, you know, we can barely control us. We're not even a lot of ways we're not even to blame. Like, you know, for instance, like, like the anger we were talking about, or the triggers. Like, you don't wake up in the morning and decide, oh, I think I'm going to lose it up my child today, you know, like no one decides that, you know, so you're this is like a physical, biological nervous system reaction that happens right to the conditions that are present. It's not like you chose to do that, you know what I mean. And likewise, like, so if we can't even control in a lot of ways, like, you know, our own nervous system responses, like, we don't have, like the master all powerful hand in ourselves. So how could we possibly ever be able to do that for our children and in this, like Len letting go of them. I mean, this is, like, the hardest part of the whole thing in so many ways. Like I know as you and I are, like, my daughter's going on 13, and that, that whole piece of what you used to be fit in my forearm, and now you're almost as tall as me and and you, you can't force things, yeah, you know you, you can't just make happen what you want to happen, but you can use your influence, and you can take steps, and you can do the best you can with what you've got, but that's all we can do. Yeah, we can't shape their future in every way that we'd like to. It's so heartbreaking.

Casey O'Roarty 24:53
It really is. It really is so raising good humans what we can do? You. Yes, I love that in your title or the subtitle, a mindful guide to breaking the cycle of reactive parenting. So that's basically what we're talking about, right? Is that reactive impulsive, whether it's in our own self talk about ourselves or in how our outward reaction is to our kids. And I think, yeah, that nervous system, those mirror neurons, right? Of it's, you know, those of you that still have little ones, I mean, those of you that have little ones go the grocery store, they fall apart. It's really hard to stay calm, or you're in the middle of a podcast interview and you get a text from your teenage daughter that totally throws you for a loop. Hunter, I don't know if you know that. I just experienced this about 10 minutes ago, and I'm like, my whole body, you know, like the tight chest and the so it's like, yeah, this nervous system piece, and I'm the dots that I connect around mindfulness and the nervous system. And breaking this cycle is comes back to that awareness piece and being willing to be in that space of recognizing what's happening as it's happening, right? And

Hunter Clarke-Fields 26:12
it's so uncomfortable, right? So to be able to have some freedom of response and not just be reactive and saying whatever our parents said, because our buttons are pushed, we have to be able to sit with the discomfort of not reacting instantaneously to the thing. So you may be experiencing that right now, like, wow, in my body, I've got this energy. I've got this this energy in my body is saying to move and go and do something right now. And most of the time when we're in that space, there's pretty rare that we kind of have to, like, run and save our kids from a car. That happens. But most of the time, the best response is to

breathe and start to use those tools to slow down the nervous system. We're very you know, we're creatures driven by our biology to a large extent, and our brain kind of starts to explain away what's happening, but we can start to use the tools to calm down that nervous system, use the opposite response, that rest and relaxed response, and then make a more thoughtful decision from there. Because when that so in the book, I talk about when the stress response is triggered, the amygdala, the in the lower part of the brain, alarm bell of the brain. It it literally like bypasses your prefrontal cortex, which is the upper part of the brain, which is where your logical, creative thinking is, your empathy, your verbal ability, all your executive functions, right, like how to solve problems, all that stuff. It bypasses all of that so you can react quickly, you know, and we that's not so helpful. We want to be able to to access all of those things. So what I discovered is that okay, I really, really need to calm down and then be able to respond better, right? So then, then I needed some tools to respond better when my daughter was little, because then I would say, I would say something that was like, kind of something my parents might have said to me, and it was like, boom, you know, all this resistance all over again. And so now I had to learn all of these tools of like, how to respond to cause less resistance, and all of those things, right? So in our I kind of saw these as these are the two wings we need to fly, like, how do we become less reactive? And then, then what do we say? Because you can't do one without the other. You can't have what do we say without that inner work? And then you can't just do that inner work, and then you're left with

some unskillful stuff to say you need to, you need to be able to do both. So that's where what, what raising good humans basically does in two parts, is bring those together. Yeah. Will

Casey O'Roarty 29:21
you share with us? Can you give the listeners maybe one takeaway from the what to do? Category,

Hunter Clarke-Fields 29:28
yeah, the what to say. Category, yeah. So for example, Casey, put your phone down right now. Me. So if I say that to you, it's like an order, right, right? And how do you feel when I just say, Casey, put your phone down right now? Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 29:53
I feel exasperated and annoyed,

Hunter Clarke-Fields 29:55
yes, at you, yes, and

Casey O'Roarty 29:59
I. But just if I want to be like, Hold on doing something.

Hunter Clarke-Fields 30:02
Yeah, yeah. Like, I got things to do, right? So I apologize. I'm not really ordering me around. You. You're free to do what you need to do. But the So, the so when kids are given orders all day long, they're told what to do, little kids, especially all day long, put on your shoes, go to bed, eat this, do this. And we talk to little kids in this way that we would never talk to like you would never tell your husband, put on your shoes, right? Oh, you might say, put your phone down, but, or your partner, yeah, so we don't, wouldn't talk to other adults this way, right? So this is, this is one of the principles of like, nobody likes to be ordered around. Nobody likes it. So what I talk about in the book are communication barriers. And we talk about six of them, but the top two big ones are ordering and threatening. And yes, the whole 123, is included in threatening. 123, stop

Casey O'Roarty 31:10
doing that. It's not useful. I know you feel like you're all big and powerful, but oh my gosh. 123, magic is a sham. Say that out loud,

Hunter Clarke-Fields 31:19
I'm with you. I'm with you. We take a stand right now. Yeah, but yeah, like, threatening also causes resentment. And basically, like, the parents sort of using this, this power, you know, trying to just power trip, manipulate and use this power over the child. And what we're doing is, and I still find myself expecting this. I expect, like, immediate obedience, like you're gonna jump up right now and do the thing, you know, and it's crazy. Like, if somebody, if my daughter, said to me, Hey, can you put the clean dishes away, Mom, this is what I asked them to do all the time, I would probably say, um, yeah, when I'm done with my chapter, right? I wouldn't just jump up and do it. I wouldn't expect any adult to just be like, okay, boom, I'm right, doing it right away as soon as you say the word. But that's what we expect of our kids, yeah. And so I want to push back against that way of communicating. It just happens to be in the culture, because it from a kid's perspective, like, if you order me, or if you use threats against me, I feel resentment, right? It makes me less likely to want to cooperate with you. So it's actually completely counterproductive. It makes me less likely to intrinsically want to cooperate with you,

Casey O'Roarty 32:41
right, which is not a character flaw, no, right? I think that there's this idea that, you know, the kids that will take the order or follow the threat like, somehow, those are the well behaved kids, and the other ones are just defiant or difficult or high, you know, high needs or but ultimately, you know, when I look at the title of your book, right, mindful guide to not being reactive and then connecting the dots to how that raises kind and confident kids like because the model of the mindful parent is a kind and confident human. And so, you know, it's not even so much what we're doing or saying as much as how we're being when we are showing up inside of this mindful, aware model, compassionate model, yeah,

Hunter Clarke-Fields 33:32
we can't, like, be disrespectful to our kids and then expect them to be like, respectful and coming to us back like that just doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, if we yell at them, they're gonna yell at us. Like, like we have to show we are constantly coaching them for them, and modeling for them, as you know, and teaching them how to be in this world. And yeah, like, you're gonna have to repeat yourself a lot, like, it's gonna be a Beebe annoying, that's all heck. Like, it's totally gonna be annoying, but if you're gonna be repeating yourself so much anyway, you might as well be repeating something that's kind something that's more skillful. Because what we really want, and what I talk about in raising good humans, is we want our kids to cooperate with us intrinsically, because they want to you know, and to do that, it means we create a connection with them, and we use more of our influence than our power. And there really is an inverse relationship between power and influence. The more you use power, the less influence you will have. And the more you know, the less you use power and vice versa. So, so I really do believe that there are so many things that can happen in adolescents that have, we have so little control over in so many ways, but we do, I do believe that kids, you know, we think of this traditional. Teen rebellion. And man, did I have that I like ran away from home when I was 14 overnight, a few times so much yelling with my father and all this stuff. It wasn't about it's not about rebelling against the parents. It's about rebelling against that modes of authoritarian discipline that people are using and to be able to be there in adolescence for those times are so, so difficult, so many factors that we can't even fathom now that are going on for our kids. We have to be able to have influence, right like we want to be able to be there to influence them in their life, to be someone that they can talk to, be that ex that welcoming Ground Zero, that home base, so that, so that as they're going through and a really, really challenging time with so much going on, we can be grounded. We can hold that peace. As we hold that peace within ourselves, then we can offer that peace to our children when they need it. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 36:06
soft landing. That's how I kind of think about it. Yeah. Well, tell listeners. Where can they find this book? Where do we what do they need to do? Where can they find you? Tell us about your your podcaster as well. Tell us all about all your things.

Hunter Clarke-Fields 36:21
Thanks. So the mindful mama podcast, we've got one, a great episode with Casey aurorte for this year. And so you can find the mindful mama podcast everywhere you find podcasts. But yeah, so raising good humans is you can go to raising good humansbook.com, and that's where you can order, pre order it, depending on when this comes out, or order it. And you can get book bonuses and things like that. And, yeah, sign up for the book bonuses. You'll get my first chapter one in audio. So, yeah, go to go to raising good humans book.com

Casey O'Roarty 36:56
Awesome. And do you have groups? Are you on social media?

Hunter Clarke-Fields 37:00
Yeah? Yeah. I share the behind the scenes of my life on Instagram, at mindful mamamentor.com you can see our our Renaissance Festival costumes, cool and such. Yeah, that's kind of mostly where I'm I'm active because it's easiest and less frustrating. Yeah,

Casey O'Roarty 37:25
totally. And finally, in the context of mindful parenting, what does joyful courage mean to you? Yeah,

Hunter Clarke-Fields 37:33
I think joyful courage means in the courage is really important word. It's the courage to be able to sit and be look at honestly, the uncomfortable parts of ourselves and embrace those with compassion.

Casey O'Roarty 37:50
Well, thank you. Thank you for being a part of the show. It's so good to talk to you. Hey, yay. Thanks for listening. Thanks for listening. I so appreciate every single one of you and the ways that you show up for joyful courage. Thank you. And did you know there are ways that you can give back? I have a Patreon page, which is a place where you basically can donate one five or $10 towards the sustainability of the program, and just as a way to say thank you, and you can check that out at patreon.com/joyful. Courage. That's www dot P, A, T, R, E, O n.com/joyful, courage. I have some benefits and bonuses for people that are in my Patreon community, you can also let me know what you think by heading on over to Apple podcasts, leaving me a five star rating and a review. I love to read the reviews on air, so whenever I get a new review, I share it, and it really just helps me know what you love about this podcast, what is landing for you? What is useful? Like I mentioned at the top, I am active on Instagram and Facebook, both places you can find me at joyful courage. And please know that you're always welcome to join into my Facebook groups. Live in love with joyful courage, as well as joyful courage for parents of teens, yes, yes, yes, yes. We're back in the weekly mode, so I'll be back next week. Can't wait to have you listen again until then, take a deep breath. Follow it into your body. Take a moment to notice what's currently alive for you. Imagine that you can take the balcony seat for a higher perspective of whatever is currently going on in your life and trust that everyone's gonna be okay.

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