Eps 214: Solo show – Celebrating and reflecting on 2019

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:02
Hey, everybody, super excited that the holiday season is upon us, and I just wanted to remind you that I have a super special something that you can give to a super special someone, and that is my book, joy for courage, calming the drama and taking control of your parenting journey was written for all parents. It was written for parents of young kids, for parents of teenagers, for moms, for dads, for any kind of caregiver. And I really want you to think about if there's someone in your life that you think could really benefit from reading it, from getting into the joyful courage mindset. You can find the print version of the book on Amazon by just searching joyful courage there. Or you can get the audiobook through audible. I'm so excited to have an audiobook that's my book, super crazy and awesome. So I just wanted to remind you that if you're kind of stumped on what to get friends or family for Christmas or Hanukkah or any other holiday that you're celebrating in the coming weeks and months, consider the joyful courage Book. All right, yay, hey, hey, welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the parenting journey. I'm so happy that you're here. I'm so happy that you're catching the very last episode of 2019 I am your host. I am Casey o'rourdy, positive discipline trainer, parent, coach, but most importantly, a real, live parent in the trenches of parenting a 13 year old and a 16 year old. I know you. I see you, I get you. Life is a wild ride on this parenting journey, and I create these podcasts so that you have a place to come and feel felt right. I also love to bring you interviews every other week with people that inspire me, people that I feel like have something really important to say that I want to share with you. If you would like to join the community, post show after the show, head on over to live and love with joyful courage on Facebook, or and, or and, or the joyful courage parents of teens Facebook group. Both of those groups are admin by me, and they are a place for conversation and community with like minded people, something I have to say about both of those groups, you will not find a kinder, more supportive group of parents anywhere on the internet. So join us, join us in the live and love group. And if you have teenagers, head on over to joyful courage. For parents of teens, you can also follow me on Instagram at joyful underscore courage, or over on Facebook, I have a business page joyful courage. All right, this week is a solo show. Hope you enjoy it. Hey everybody, it's your friend. Casey, here for my last show of 2019, should I say my last show of the decade? I'm cracking up at how I mean it is a big deal, right? This is the end of a decade. That's a big deal. We're heading into the 20s, which is weird. And I keep seeing this thing on social media that says, Is it isn't it weird that the 80s were 40 years ago? And I'm here to say, yes, it is weird that the 80s were 40 years ago, because, in my mind, the 80s were like 20 years ago. But of course, that is inaccurate. The 80s were 40 years ago. We are actually at the end of a decade. We're also, we're also at the end of 2019 and so I just wanted to come in and share a little bit about 2019 and just kind of take a little look back, a little look see back at the year. It was a pretty profound year for many of us. I think that, well, I know that a lot of us had some pretty big highs and some pretty big lows and different kinds of transitions and oops. And by the way, I am recording this at almost eight o'clock at night on a Wednesday, and I can hear my family doing the dishes upstairs. My husband's trying to cajole my daughter to come help. She doesn't want to help. My son is totally talking smack to my husband about being better at snowboarding at him than him, and I'm. I'm totally hiding out right now because I can't deal with any of it. So real life, real life for me, probably looks a lot like real life for you, friend, struggle is real, right? The struggle is real. So 2019 man, I would just like to invite us all to take a minute and think about, if you can, what was the best thing that happened in 2019 for you? Like, what's the first high of 2019 that shows up when I ask you that question, what was something that blissed you out, that supported you in feeling accomplished, that filled you with love and joy? Did you have something like that? I bet you did. I bet there was at least one moment of joy and love in 2019 I invite you to bring that to mind. Bring that to mind. Think about that. I know for me, there was a lot. I mean, I published a book, Whoa, my husband surprised me on the day of my book launch party and showed up. He had been working out of town for five months. That was a pretty special moment, the moment that my son told me that he was really glad that we moved and felt like our new community was a great fit for him. Like, Oh my gosh, that was one of the best things that happened. Gosh, sitting in a conference full of a diverse audience, a diverse speakers panel being done in California at the diversity and parenting conference was super amazing. Loved that.

Yeah, and finding a house that we loved and putting an offer on it and having everything work out. I mean, that was pretty friggin phenomenal. Exciting thing as well, too, for sure, great trip with my family, with my extended family for my dad's birthday, 75 Whoa, it's crazy to think about being 75 shout out to my dad. I love you, dad. And actually, that trip in particular, you know, it's interesting, right? When we're with and this is, I think, relevant, because we're heading into the holidays, probably moving towards some evenings or days of spending time with a lot of family members, maybe people that we don't typically spend time with. And I don't know if this happens to you, but sometimes, like family dynamic, it runs pretty deep, right? We're pretty connected to that child that we were. And I think sometimes what can happen is, when we're with our extended family, that child that we were can can peek out, right? And I know for me, sometimes when I'm with certain family members, I tend I can slide into defensive 16 year old, and everything rubs me the wrong way. And I can get kind of pouty and just like bugged and and defensive and like, ill, you know? And I'll, like, pouty and, yeah, you know, I'm talking about, well, I was in Mexico with my whole family, and I knew that, you know, this was the place, this that there would be opportunities for me to slide into my little 16 year old self. And I decided the first day, I totally journaled about it. I decided that I was going to show up to my family and my vacation as my fully evolved up until now, 46 at the time, I was 45 year old woman self. You know, I am a complete whole person, and I've done a lot of work, and I'm really proud of who I am, and I'm proud of what I've accomplished, and I'm okay with having a different opinion than my family. I'm confident in my choices, and so I decided that very first morning that that's how I was going to show up. And it was so interesting the rest of the week, noticing all the times, all the moments where it would have been really easy for me to be 16 year old Casey and I just watched those opportunities just kind of move aside. They would show up and I would let them go and they had no pull. No effect on me. So I really invite you to think about, you know, if you have family that, you know, a family dynamic that tends to, you know, send you to that place of like, Oh, God, I wish I didn't have to spend time with them. Or sometimes it's so hard, you know, I mean, there's some pretty hot button stuff happening in politics right now, and if you just want to avoid all of that, I invite you to show up as who you are today, like be proud, be confident, right own who you are, own the choices that you've made, own, the life that you've created for yourself, and be unapologetic about it. Yeah, that's a good one. Be unapologetic about it. Hey, Ian, yeah, come here. I know so listeners. I'm sitting with this piece of foam over my head, so the sound is good, and now my son is here. Yay. Hi, Ian, hi. I was just talking about 2019 and I'm wondering if you'll share, what was the best thing that happened for you in 2019

Speaker 1 11:12
the best thing that happened for me in 2019 was probably moving to Bellingham, because moving to Bellingham has created a lot of new opportunities for me to make friends, and it's just really great change of environment.

Casey O'Roarty 11:27
Yeah, so people know, because I talked about it, that you were not I was nervous about moving you and you were not stoked about changing it up. Yeah,

Speaker 1 11:41
I wasn't, but I think it's really been a great fit for me here. Yay. I met a lot of friends, and I like it. I like it better than Monroe.

Casey O'Roarty 11:49
Yeah, did you did anything? Did you learn anything about yourself in the process of, like, being the new guy?

Speaker 1 11:55
And I learned that I'm really good at making friends and, yeah, kind of take after you and that I'm a total friend stalker. Yeah, I just learned that no matter like how the environment changes, I'll probably be able to adapt.

Casey O'Roarty 12:10
Awesome. Can I ask you one more question? Sure, what are you looking forward to in 2020?

Speaker 1 12:18
Probably starting high school and just starting that chapter in my life. Oh

Casey O'Roarty 12:22
my gosh. It's so crazy that you're gonna start high school, but not yet, not anytime soon, you're gonna be in eighth grade for a while longer. All right, thanks, dude.

Unknown Speaker 12:31
I love you. Love you too.

Casey O'Roarty 12:34
Oh, I got one of my people to chat with me. That was exciting. My husband totally scooted by without making eye contact. Yeah, yeah. So being with family, being with family as our fully evolved self, and noticing too, right, noticing when we aren't being that, noticing when the trigger shows up, and typically when we're triggered, that's when that little young person inside of us rears their head and just says, Hey, knock it off. Or, I know, you know, I know how to respond to this, right? And so, yeah, I invite you to enjoy this holiday with your people as you're fully realized evolved self, because you were awesome, all right, hardest thing, hardest thing that happened in 2019, well, I think that for many of you that have been following me this fall, you know that it's been a really challenging fall, but I think, you know, even as we lived through, you know, moving and changing communities, we had, I had five months this year where my husband was working out of town, like out of like, out of state. I didn't I saw him, like, three times over five months. And, you know, my the kids and I found our rhythm inside of that. But it was, it was really hard, and I feel like we're still kind of adjusting to being together again and and, you know, I think one of the hardest things and one of the best things, and the biggest lesson for me has really been and continues to be finding acceptance in uncertainty. Like, I think that's been a lesson that you know how you know how they say, like you're gonna opportunities are gonna present themselves, over and over and over until you learn the lesson. Well, clearly, clearly, this is the lesson I'm meant to learn, because I keep finding myself in these situations that are requiring me to be with uncertainty and be with the unknown. I. And be, you know, finding trust inside of that, and finding acceptance inside of that, and and, you know, for someone like me, who tends to be a wee bit controlling, who really wants to, I want to know, I want to know the outcome. I want to know what's going to happen. I feel safe when I know what's going to happen, I feel safe when people respond the way I think that they're going to respond, and when things go sideways, or not even sideways, when things are changed up, when there's unexpected twists and turns and uncertainty, it feels like it just brings up a lot of fear, because I don't feel like I'm in control. And so I think this year, especially, especially the last few months, have really been this coming back to acceptance, radical acceptance, and an acceptance of uncertainty and acceptance of the unknown and trusting right, trusting that, trusting that what is is meant to be, right now,

Unknown Speaker 16:13
that's big.

Casey O'Roarty 16:14
That's big, right? I think that for those of us with parents that are parents of teenagers. It's a dance that we do or that we're invited to do, right? Being with that while also holding like, Hmm, I say this, holding the fact that, you know, we are the parent and we have responsibility. And, you know, sometimes those two things coexisting feels really like, how can both of these things exist? How can I be an acceptance of the unknown and uncertainty and be a responsible parent? Like, that's my question. That's, that's, that's, that's like the guiding question right now, I don't know the answer to that, I think. And I think the answer to that is different for everyone, right? Like, I think it it's different for everyone. It's different for every family, every child you know. I think that it's short sighted to believe that there is a formula and an absolute way of being with teenagers, because who they are, what they're dealing with, what your values are, I don't know. I think that it just, it's so personal, like I keep peeling back that layer, right? I know that it's personal, and then it gets more personal, like, like, it started off with choosing. I nursed my kids for a long time. Ian was two and a half. Rowan was three. I actually had a couple months of tandem nursing my kids, which was crazy. And it wasn't something necessarily that I broadcasted in all my circles. It was just something that we quietly did, and that's what worked for our family. Same with you know, we co slept for a long time. We've been making choices for our family that work for our family, that we feel confident about, even as There's levels of uncertainty. For a long time, yeah, and we're still doing it well into the teen years, yeah. So I think that something for me, and I'm curious about you, what have you learned about yourself this year? What have you endured, and what has that taught you about you, right? What have you endured and what has that taught you about you? I have to find this, this little graphic that I saw recently. I actually posted it in the live in love with joyful No, I didn't one of my friends that's in the live in love group. Hey, Audrey, I'm calling you out. Girl, shout out to my friend Audrey and her cute girl, Serena. She just shared about having a hard time, having a hard day. And I saw this thing. I think I saw it on Instagram, and I love it. And it says, On particularly rough days. I like to remind myself that my track record for getting through bad days so far is 100% and that's pretty good. I love that, right? I love that like the hardest days. And I have this really great interview that's going to come out in January with Alyssa Campbell, Her website is seed and sow.org and we talked about emotional regulation, and she talks about, you know, the importance of just being with how we're feeling. And this is totally something that's coming up in therapy for me. But. Being with how we're feeling, letting our feelings, our experiences, exist, right, and naming them,

and then moving into a coping strategy, whether it's breathing it out or movement. I'm super excited to share that podcast with you, because it's a really good interview, but so often we want to push it aside or push it down or fix it. And you know, I think this year, I keep learning over and over again, I keep being invited into being with right here, right now, being with the present moment, and sometimes there's a lot of pain, ooh, which reminds me, so I have posted on Instagram. I'm reading this book called, what is it called? It's upstairs, darn it, something about hard times. It's Pema children's book, and it is totally looking at my Instagram account right now. It's Buddhist principles, and I know you're going to hear me talk a lot about Buddh principles, because I'm really digging it. It's there the when things fall apart. That's what it's called. And it's, you know, Buddhist principles for hard times. And one of the things that I was I've been reading about the last couple days, is called Tang Tanglin meditation, and it is a practice where we breathe in our pain, right? So for me, what shows up is worry and stress and worry and uncertainty. So the practice is to breathe it in, really allow it to exist in my body, not only that, but expand into thinking about all the people on the planet who are also suffering from worry and uncertainty and self doubt, and breathing in everybody's worry and suffering and self doubt, and then exhaling and offering myself and all those other people the gift of peace and confidence and okayness, right and love and joy, so breathing in that pain and suffering that we're all feeling as we parent our teenagers in this time of uncertainty and fear and then releasing, releasing and allowing for an experience of connection around peace and love and confidence in what we're doing, tonglen and and I've been practicing that, and it's been really lovely. And we can also do it for other people, right? So if there's someone that you love, someone in your life that you love, and you are wanting to breathe in to your body, breathing into your body, their fear, their anxiety, their worry, right? Their pain, their grief, let yourself hold it for them, and then exhale and you offer back peace and love and joy or whatever it is that you think that they need. I really am appreciating that practice, and it's something that I'm going to make a commitment to doing in the next few, in the next in the coming year, in 2020, yeah, it's something that I'm learning about myself, is that I can continuously shift into a better version of me, right? And that's something also that I'm looking forward to. I'll tell you what else I'm looking forward to. I am super excited because a couple weeks ago, my project manager flew up to Bellingham, and we had a weekend together, and we mapped out 2020 and one of the things that I'm going to bring you in 2020 every quarter, is a mini audio Summit. I did the big audio summit last year. That was great. Loved it. It was so fun. You enjoyed it. This year, I'm going to do quarterly mini summits with just five interviews, and they're going to be topic specific, so the first one is going to come up the beginning of February. I even have a landing page that you can go to to sign up for the summit, so that you can you know, it's not going to go through the podcast. It's going to go it's going to be delivered directly to your to your inbox, and it's going to be all about mental health and teens. We're going to talk about anxiety, depression, self harm, eating disorders. We're going to talk about DBT therapy, which is this amazing therapy, and that I just don't think is very well known. And so my therapist is going to come on and I'm going to interview him about this type of therapy, and I'm also going to have a specialist come on and talk about ADD and ADHD and how to support our teens, and how to support ourselves being in relationship with our teens that are struggling with any of these, any or all, or a couple, you know, or some of these things. I'm super excited. If you are ready to sign up for that. It's totally free go to joyful courage.com/m h, mini Summit. All one word, M, H, M, I n, i s, u, M, M, I T. Super stoked. So I'm going to do the mini Summit. Then about a month later, I'm going to run the joyful courage Academy again for parents of teenagers. Super stoked about that. And then second quarter, it'll be the same thing. I'll do another mini Summit, another round of the academy, and carry on through 2020, like clockwork. It's going to be fantastic. Super excited. I'm also really excited because starting in January, I have a bunch of openings in my coaching calendar. So if you are someone who has been toying with the idea of one on one coaching. This is a great time to get on my schedule, because I have some room. I'm finishing up with a few people, and it's opening up time and space. So yeah, get on that. You can just email me if that's something you're interested in at Casey, at joyful courage.com. Yeah, so anyway, I this is the last up, this last episode of 2019 you guys super stoked. It comes out on Christmas Eve day, Christmas Eve morning, which is also my husband's birthday. So happy birthday. Ben. I love you. Happy Holidays. For those of you that have already been celebrating your holidays, if you've already you know, if my Jewish friends and Hanukkah is over, happy, happy Hanukkah, I hope that you had a glorious time with your family and everybody that celebrates Christmas or anything else that you might celebrate, just loving you, just loving the season of being together and and cheer and and quality time. Yeah, and don't forget, if you're expecting it to be a certain way, remember my podcast a couple weeks ago. Be explicit. Be explicit about what you want. That way you don't end up disappointed and resentful that everyone couldn't read your mind. Oh, I love you people. Thank you so much for listening. I am here for you. I'm here for you. And just really looking forward to what happens, what's what's lying ahead, what's what's in the future for all of us, for our families, for our kids. You know, the only thing that's certain is uncertainty. So, yeah, we could do it. We've got this big love to all of you. Bye. Thank you again for tuning in and listening to me. I so appreciate it. I love that you want to listen. I love it when you let me know that what I share lands for you. Please, please, please, if you haven't already, head on over to iTunes and leave me a rating and a review. It is so helpful to the podcast. It makes it so that when new people show up looking for a parenting podcast, my show comes up for them because it has such great reviews from people like you, and if you leave me a review, there's a very good chance that I will read it on the air, which just, you know, makes you feel special. So head on over to iTunes and look for joyful courage and leave a rating and review. Big thanks to my friend and my editor, Chris Mann from pod shaper, if you're a podcaster listening to the show right now and you're looking for someone to support you in the editing and production of your show, I would definitely head over to podshaper.com and check out Chris's work. He's been with me for a really long time, and I really appreciate him. He's amazing. Yeah, and just happiest of holidays, bring in the new year strong. My friends, you've got this and when it feels like things are spinning out of control, don't forget. Find your breath. Find your breath and ride it into your body. Once you've relaxed your body, take that balcony seat and trust that everything is going to be