Eps 432: Self abandonment, embodiment, and being with life unfolding

Mmm, today Joyful Courage is about surrender. Surrender to the fact that life is going to continue to unfold and I can find the flow of it and create the experience I want to have – full of love and connection and possibility – or I can be in resistance and contribute to the pain and suffering in my relationships.

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 00:05
Hello, Welcome back. Welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for inspiration and transformation as we work to keep it together. While parenting our tweens and teens. This is real work people. And when we can focus on our own growth and nurturing the connection with our kids, we can move through the turbulence in a way that allows for relationships to remain intact. My name is Casey already, I am your fearless host. I'm a positive discipline trainer, space holder coach and the adolescent lead. It's browsable. Also mama to a 20 year old daughter and a 17 year old son I am walking right beside you on the path of raising our kids with positive discipline and conscious parenting. This show is meant to be a resource to you and I work really hard to keep it really real, transparent and authentic so that you feel seen and supported. Today is a solo show and I'm confident that what I share will be useful to you. Please don't forget sharing truly is caring. If you love today's show, please please pass the link around snap a screenshot posted on your socials or texted to your friends. Together we can make an even bigger impact on families around the globe. If you're feeling extra special, you can rate and review us over in Apple podcasts. I'm so glad that you're here. Welcome. Welcome, welcome. Enjoy the show. All right. Yes, back together. I really want to bust into reunited and it feels so good. But I'm holding back. All right. So I want to start off by saying that I really enjoyed my conversation with Lisa boat on Monday. Did y'all listen to episode 431? For Monday with Lisa boat, there were some things that came up that I'm going to use the solo show today to dig deeper into and I think you'll enjoy it. And you know, as I really listened to that conversation, which I did this morning, and I took a walk with the dog, so much of what we talked about hit home. And today is Ins 18th birthday. And my son, my youngest is 18 years old today. In fact, as I record, it's 1125 18 years ago exactly at this time, I was about a little over an hour into being a mom of a boy, a mom of two. And I pretty sure he was pooping on me about right now I was in my bed holding him really wanted to be skin to skin. He didn't have a diaper on yet. And he pooped all over me like meconium poop. Anyway, I probably didn't need to share that story. But that's what's alive. You know how I like to share what's alive. So yeah, it's a really special day. I'm recording on Monday, October 30. So that's what's happening. This comes out on Thursday. But today, recording, my son is a teen man, I'm so grateful to be witness to the young man that he continues to grow into. Right, he seems like he really knows himself. And he knows what he wants. I'm just there's so many things that I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for his temperament. I'm grateful for his willingness to be my positive discipline kid. Like all the things that I talked about here. And that I've talked about from the beginning of this podcast 500 Plus episodes ago, when the kids were younger, he was the one like he would roleplay with me, he would suggest, you know, Mom, I think we should make a chart, write a routine chart. He just really embraced the positive discipline tools that I found so useful. And I'm so grateful for that. Rowan, you know, she kind of pushed back a little bit. And that really, I think says more about our relationship that was a place where she knew she could kind of stick it to me because perhaps I was kind of sticking it to her a little bit. So it came out as more resistance to some of those things. So yeah, but and he was always just willing to be my PD kid. I'm grateful for my own self awareness of being helpful, not hurtful. When mistakes and mischiefs have come up with n and meaning like I'm grateful to know myself enough to really pay attention to how I'm responding to him. You know, I feel like in life I've been a lot more responsive than reactive with my son. And part of that is knowing him well enough to know that the OHS shoot from the hip reactions were just, I mean, they're never useful. But with him, there has always kind of been this dynamic where he needs to know that we're connected. So that's really helped me temper, just how I deliver things, I guess, I really appreciate the way that he and I know each other, you know, and even now, so when he was a little guy, and this was way back, when I first got online, I actually wrote a blog called, Can we hug it out? That was the name of the blog, and the blog came from, you know, working with parents in my community, and then being like, Okay, but how does this really look? What's the real story? And is this you know, this idea of, you have to be perfect for it to work, quote, work. And so I started writing down stories of my own experience of parenting with positive discipline. And that was my blog, Can we hug it out? Yeah, The Good, the Bad, and The Ugly, but in our family, and I've talked about this on the podcast before. So the tool of making amends was really powerful for me to learn, because it was just a piece that was kind of missing. For me growing up with any kind of emotional dysregulation coming from my parents, there might have been some acknowledgment, and a apology. But there really wasn't this piece of like, building a bridge back to connection really is the best way that I can say it, and, you know, owning that we're doing the work of being better. And, you know, the way that it kind of manifested with my kids, when we really started making amends as a part of our routine of being in relationship with each other. You know, the language that I use was like, hey, you know, you need to make it right. And that also evolved into Can we hug it out which, hugging it out, was really the request to come back to relationship and in was I just think about little in and like, we'd have these moments, and I get mad. And so she back in the old days. I mean, he was really reactive. And, you know, I did my best, but I got pissed, too, you know, and his little, he wanted to make it right. Like he wanted things to be back to connect it and his little voice, Mom, can we hug it out. He's still now when things come up, and I get a little hot under the collar, he'll come over. And he'll wrap is a big, huge, strong, muscular arms around me and kind of cradle me in his arms. And it's just such a lovely movement towards we're good. Right? The message there is I see you, we're good. It's good. I'm really grateful for that. Because sometimes we need a signal.

Casey O'Roarty 07:51
We need a signal that things are good, we're connected. And we get to move on. Right? And all this to share that. Absolutely, you know, with his birthday, and just, you know, the college application process that's happening right now it is the fall. He's talking about, you know, next year, there are just so many things happening even just yesterday, I was at a basketball game and one of the other moms, her son's also a senior and Ian's been playing ball with him since eighth grade. And she's like, you know, I just was really just really been looking at our boys and what young men they are and how far they've come. And, you know, we just had this little moment we are in the season of transition. And many of you are and aren't we always I mean, sometimes it's really obvious. But transition is always happening. Right? And, you know, there's that movement from preschool into kindergarten and then elementary to middle school, middle school to high school, if we're going to use those markers, right. And even you know, through adolescence, there's moving from like that 1112 tweeny time into 1314 Full teenager time. I remember when Rowan went from 14 to 15. Like, you know, like many of our girls, the whole crop top situation. I was not a fan. I noticed the style and whatever. I just didn't love it. And, you know, my mind would always go to like predators and whatever. crop tops, right? It was so interesting. Literally the day she turned 15 I let it go. And it was something about like, 15 felt like true, real teenager to me. I remember that. Whatever it was just another day, but there was something symbolic about 15 And then they turn 16 You know, and that year of 15 to 16. For a lot of our kids, not all of them but a lot of them are learning to drive. Right and that's the whole thing. Then they are driving and then they're 17 and you know, 17 feet feels old 17 feels old to me, right? And then where I'm at with Ian right? 18. I mean, what he's 18. And I think most of us when of 18 year olds, like, if you can kind of push aside, whatever angst is currently alive in your relationship with your 18 year old, whatever, like, the pain points are pain points, reference to last week solutia, whatever's going on inside of your dynamic, if you can kind of separate yourself from that, and take a look at your 18 year old, like maturity is developing like it's happening. Right? They might still be doing things that you don't love, they might still have some mindsets that are limited, but maturity is happening. And they've got one foot out the door, most of them, many of them, you know, and then there's that transition of leaving the nest, right, leaving the nest, I just got a visual of like, being on a cliff, pushing them off the cliff. Some of us might feel like that. Yeah, so we're always in transition, we're always moving, right? The difference between five and eight is real, are always in transition. But there are times that we can really feel it. I'm feeling it right now, in so many ways.

Casey O'Roarty 11:30
Transitions are exciting, and they can be scary. And they can be exciting. And they can be all the things that exist between those two. You know, those two experiences, I love Lisa's language about not abandoning ourselves, as we move through things in life and the parenting journey. And the use of the word embodiment. Her work is all around working with people who are moving through transitions. And so I really want to take what we talked about, and dig further into it on this show today. Because I think these two words, phrases, they're connected in some meaningful ways and are really useful for us to consider, right as parents as parents of growing adolescence. So this language of abandoning ourselves, man, she really tapped on something there for me. And I'm really it's come up in conversation, you know, heads up that there's a new limited podcast series that I will be releasing on the feed after the first of the year with Julieta Skoog and Alana BB my partners at spreadable. And we talk a little bit about this. So there's a little teaser for you. But abandoning ourselves, you know, I think we abandon ourselves a lot, right? In small and big ways. And I think the more that we can pull ourselves out of our experience and look at it, the more that we can learn, the more educated our choices are, right. And I want to be making choices and decisions from a place of, you know, feeling like I see the big picture. So that's what we're doing. That's what we're gonna do today. So here's some places that came up for me as I kind of thought about ways that we abandoned ourselves

Casey O'Roarty 13:27
the way that we use our phones, right? Scrolling, I have a problem, I'm just going to come clean. I literally have apps on my phone that turn off certain apps during certain times of the day. And it's because I've gotten into the habit of things getting hard or feeling uncomfortable or feeling bored, or whatever, I pick up my phone, and I do a little I think I've talked about this before on the podcast. So FYI, things are the same. I do a little cycle through, you know, my social media, my email, I do a little cycle, and I get sucked in. And the next thing I know, 10 minutes have gone by or maybe 25 minutes have gone by. And at the end of the day, when I look at how much time I've spent on my phone. I'm appalled, right? I mean, we can look at this as a way that we abandon ourselves. I am abandoning the goals that I'm setting for how I'm using my time and what I want to be creating. Yeah, and I'm just totally mindless. Right? I think we do this when we binge watch TV. You know, we say we're gonna have a certain bedtime but we're totally sucked into the cliffhanger and it's one more show. We don't want to get off the couch. Maybe I'm just talking to myself or about myself. We abandon ourselves with distracted eating right When it's four o'clock, and I happen to be walking by the pantry, right, or it's five o'clock, and I'm at the grocery store, and I happen to be walking by the little snacky things that I can buy just one of re distracted eating, or when I sit down to eat, but I'm also, you know, watching something or working on something, I'm not mindful, sitting down having the experience of eating bread, I think we abandon ourselves when we allow fear to take up too much space. Right? When we allow fear to take the reins, and really take us into future possibilities that don't even exist, right. And then all of a sudden, we're having an emotional experience based on something that hasn't happened, right? Or even when we're overly optimistic, or just dismissing or bypassing what's real, and needs to be handled, but we go into the space of like, it's fine, it's fine, it's fine. But ignore that and let it go. I think we abandon ourselves in those moments, when we're overly nostalgic, or regretting, you know, choices of our past when we sit inside of that. And let it dominate the experience that we're having. We are abandoning ourselves, I think overconsumption or regular, you know, use of substances, checking out through, you know, online shopping, any kind of addictive or habitual behaviors that are taking us away from the present moment. Those are times where we're abandoning ourselves. And that's, I think, the big picture and I love survivor, I am loving the morning show, what else am I watching? I've got shows, like, I like to wind down in the evening, with a show or two. I like that. I like social media, I like getting on there and seeing what's on my feed. And I go out, I drink, I dance, I do things, right. I'm not talking about those one offs, or, you know, the intentional choices that we're making. I'm talking about when, you know, you realize like, oh, shoot, it's been 45 minutes, or it's been three hours or my bedtime just blew by me or man, I, you know, consumed enough to where now my day sucks. That's what I'm talking about. Right? That's when we're abandoning ourselves when we're not being mindful or intentional about how we are, you know, where we're letting our mind go and the actions that we're taking. That's what feels like self abandonment, right? When we abandon the present moment. And there's other ways that we abandon ourselves. And I think that it's important to highlight when we're not tapping into what is important to us. Right? So when we have a lack of boundaries, saying yes, instead of no saying no, instead of Yes. Right, not pursuing what it is that we want, because we feel like we can't, or we won't be supported or it's too much, or the family comes first, right? Pushing away our true desires, staying quiet, so as not to rock the boat staying quiet to fit in. Right putting everyone else first. These are ways that we abandon ourselves as well. And man, the emotional labor, if you go back to Episode 258, I did a show called teasing apart emotional labor, with Gemma Hartley, and it is so good. And it just talks about all the things especially for women, okay, and it's not all women, and there are definitely men, particularly single dads, maybe that have full custody of their kids or even part time custody of their kids. You know, but specifically for women, we tend to hold all the things in our heads, we tend to hold the appointments, the deadlines, right, the needs, what's in the fridge, when we need to go to the grocery store, we tend to hold all the things in our head, right? This is called emotional labor. I actually posted a real in the joyful courage for parents of teens Facebook group, it was a conversation that highlights what's happening for moms. Again, we can say most moms, some moms, some dads maybe but typically, this is happening for moms, when they go to bed at night. And what we aren't able to release the thoughts the spin out that are happening, and it's really good. I'll make sure that the link to that post is in the show notes as well as the one to the podcast, but there is the emotional labor when we let the emotional labor run the show. We're abandoning ourselves, right. Life is all the things I'd recently wrote this in a group chat with, I have this really fun good group chat with my best friends from college. And one of them shared about having been in the Midwest and witnessing her mom, you know, our mom's has dementia and deteriorating memory, and then came home and hear about one of her good friends at home who had recently lost her 21 year old son, you know, and in response to this share, I just said, you know, life is all the things, right life is all the things. And when we abandon ourselves, we miss the things, not only the external things that are alive in our relationships, but also our internal life that is so rich with emotion, and experience and joy and possibility. Or maybe it isn't right. And we avoid, we want to avoid the pain and the suffering. And I understand that, you know, I get why it's appealing to check out and sometimes checking out is self preservation, right when the grief is too big, and the pain and suffering is too big. I remember when things I think I've shared about this before, when things were really really hard. In my family, when I would go to bed, I had to put in both my AirPods and I would put on Outlander, the Outlander series to go to bed at night, it was the only way that I could quiet my mind, I had to give it something else to listen to. Right. And that was self preservation that was so I wasn't up for four hours cycling through all the worst case scenarios, right? So sometimes, you know, this isn't like, you know, this isn't not reprimanding you for abandoning yourself. It's just about awareness. Right noticing when we're doing it, and how we're using it, are we using it? Or is using us? Right? Are we using our phones or our, you know, shows? Or, you know, alcohol or online shopping? Or fill in the blank? Are we using it to support us? Or is it using us? Right? When we allow it to use us? That's those moments of abandoning ourselves? Are we making intentional choices? Or not? are we considering ourselves? Are we putting everybody else first. So at the end of the day, listen, we have to have a life, right? We have to have a life or create one a life that doesn't Center, our family and our kids. And that might sound kind of harsh, but this is what my whole interview was. On Monday, we get to create a life that celebrates all that we are and all that we want. Because ladies and gentlemen, we are the stars of our own movie, aren't we we get to choose how we experience the different eras of us. We get to grow and evolve and celebrate and feel the things and shit will go down and grief is real. And pain and suffering are a part of the experience.

Casey O'Roarty 23:09
The human experience is an expansive opportunity, when we can be with ourselves, be with the unfolding be with the twists and the turns and not sever the connection or be too engulfed by it, or something to this. There's something here, I think it has to do with the present moment and self awareness, being aware enough to recognize when the tendency to abandon ourselves is coming up and do something about it. Noticing when we're falling into our habits of checking out literally, I had to do this while I was writing this podcast, my mom was texting me and I chose to notice and check in with the texts that were coming in, came back and totally forgot where I was as far as writing this. So it's an ongoing practice, right? Come back have a place to come back to I think this is how embodiment is related to this conversation, right embodiment the body, the heart, the solar plexus, the nervous system. This is where we're most alive. This is where the present moment is happening. Right? The mind goes into the future in the past the body, the body, it's right here. It's right here in the present moment. So I love the three B's P don't know what that is. Search it on my website, my experience. So like, I have this experience recently on Friday. If you get my emails, you will have gotten an email from me while actually on Saturday, about being at Fred Hutch Cancer Research Center on Friday. Those of you that have followed the pod for a long time know that my husband has multiple myeloma, he went through treatment over COVID and he's in recovery from that but he has to be routinely, you know, checked out making sure Everything's still on the up and up. And he had some big tests on Friday and a bone marrow biopsy and a full body MRI. And I was sitting in the waiting room, looking out the window at that same view that I would look out at three years ago. And I had this like, I mean, I guess it was a trauma response, I just noticed this heaviness on my chest, right. And I just went right back to the initial days of his treatment, and everything that he went through that I, you know, care gave him through. And in my head, you know, for a second, probably longer than a second, I had some scary like, Oh, God, what if we have to go back to that? What if, what if, what if projection thing. And yeah, I also got to say, oh, it makes sense that I feel like this, look where I am right now look at what I'm looking at, all of my senses are remembering this experience that I had. So of course, if left unchecked, my head is going to go to the places. So I got to really bring tenderness to myself and my experience. And remember that this was a check in. And today, we don't know the results. But we're going to find out. And when we do, well, I'm holding that we're going to be in celebration of the results, right. And if we aren't, then we'll meet that. But I don't need to start meeting that until it's actually something to meet. Right. I dropped into my body. In that waiting room, I pulled my shoulders back, I opened my heart, I noticed my breath, I shifted my physical experience, to come out of kind of the loop of fear, right? And concern. When the body leads, the mind learns, that is a quote from my friend, Krista petty. She's a coach and facilitator and mentor and friend. And I love it. I came back to neutral. And I think that if like there's something about neutral, neutral, right, coming back to neutral, coming back to that place that feels like home base, like that reset, we get to create our own soft landing when we can find perspective and be curious with ourselves and be open and remember, oh, yeah, there's a lot of possibilities, right? I get to come back to that place where there are multiple things, multiple possibilities, multiple outcomes, multiple unfoldings. Because I want to be there I want to be in the place of there's lots of different things that could happen versus in the place of the worst case scenario happening, right? embodiment and I love I'm going to talk about Krista a little bit more. And I'm going to drop her website in the show notes because her work is so so so powerful. She teaches about embodiment and she breaks down m body meant em emotional body physical meant mental it's an emotional, physical mental process embodiment is and her work really centers movement. Movement creates movement. Right? And I love this because so often we talk about feeling stuck, right? Like we're stuck in the spin out, we're stuck. We're freaking out. We can't get out of the thought process. We can't let go of the endless doom and gloom right? movement creates movement. And that could look like changing up our surroundings. Right? It could look like actual moving our body or even finding stillness and shifting moving our focus from what's happening in our heads and simply connecting with the sensations of our body. Right the sensations of our body, the sensations of breath, what's alive in you know, from the neck down, what are we noticing what can we name? Right taking a pause. embodiment is where it's at. And it is the reset. That opens us up to something new and different. And friends this is why you listen right? This is why you book explore calls this twice a yes to my workshops and membership because you're wanting something new and different. You trust that there is something new and different out there for you. You just need a little support in finding it. Right? Guess what? It's an inside job. It's an inside job. And it isn't about you know, no longer caring about what's happening in the external with your people or with the world. It's not checking out of their experience. It's about caring about how you are experiencing your people and the world. It's about noticing that you're looking through this really narrow lens and changing it into a wide enough angle and that you are included in the vision, right? Your wants your desires, what you want to create, what's important to you, and creating enough space to remember and consider what it is that you want and desire. It's valid, it's important. If you're sitting inside of like, I don't know what I want desire, that is a place to dig in. Lisa and I talked about this on Monday, dig in, sit with it, sit with it. And, you know, one of the notes that I took when I was listening to that conversation from Monday, was Who am I separate from this role? Who am I beyond parent beyond partner? And thinking about who am I beyond it while also including that it is a part of me, I am a mom, I am a wife. Right? I'm also a lot of other things. I'm a lot of other things. And who am I like this question of okay, so great. I'm a mom and a partner. Yes. And who am I? What's the part of me that isn't attached to someone else? Right, like, when I put the mother and the wife for me role. So to the side it exists, it's there. And I consider all the rest. What's there? Maybe that's the question, when I'm not making choices based on what those people, those people, my family needs. What do I want? Right? Is this a place to explore? What do you find when you explore that? What is for me in this life, beyond the joy and the heart ache? And all the things that exist in relationship with others? What's for me? What's for you? What's for you? What's for you? That's what I'm going to leave you with today, this question, and there's a lot of inquiry in this week's show. A lot of invitation for exploring, and I hope that you do, I hope that you listen, and capture the questions that hooked you, and take some time to consider them go deep. Life is too short not to live it right in this conscious, aware, curious place, do it light a candle, create some quiet time light, some incense, you know, really create a space to, uh, for you create a space for you, right? And go there. Get your journal, because you know what? It benefits everyone when we do our own work. Everyone, all those people that you love all those people that you might be putting first, it will actually do more for them, for you to focus on you than to keep putting them first. So do it. Do it. All right. That's what I've got for you today. My friends. All the love all the love. Have a beautiful day beautiful weekend. I'll see you next week. Bye

Casey O'Roarty 33:06
Thank you so much for listening in today. Thank you so much to my spreadable partners, Julieta and Alana as well as Danielle and Chris Mann and the team at pod shaper for all the support with getting this show out there and helping it to sound so good. Check out our offers for parents with kids of all ages and sign up for our newsletter to stay better connected at B sprout double.com. Tune back in on Monday for a brand new interview and I will be back solo with you next Thursday. Have a great day.