Eps 492: Exploring inspiration and soul care on the journey of parenting teens

Episode 492

Alright… We are going a bit sideways today. Or are we? Maybe we are going in the perfect direction… You’ll have to let me know. I am sharing about our personal practice of dropping in with what is real and relevant for me as I work to drop into the present moment and be who I need to be for myself and others. Having a practice is what keeps me focused in on what matters most to me, it helps me to keep my inner compass pointed in the direction I live towards… We get a bit woo woo this week but I trust you to hear the takeaways you need.

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Takeaways from the show

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  • Self-care practices for parents with a focus on authenticity and vulnerability
  • Sharing my self-care practice, including early morning soul care time and listening to inspirational audio or guided meditation.
  • Meditation and personal growth tools, including Insight Timer and Soul Navigation cards
  • Staying open-minded and exploring different tools for personal growth, such as tarot cards or moon cards.
  • Using meditation and cards for new perspectives.
  • Card Pull:  community, inspiration, water, clarity, and purification, nad connecting them to our current experiences and emotions
  • Remember the support of community during times of transition
  • Seek out inspiration through channels and thought leaders that motivate
  • Find flow by letting go of resistance and going with the changes in life and relationships
  • Bring clarity to relationships through explicit communication of needs, wants and plans
  • Declutter and simplify physical spaces and relationships for purification

 

 

Today Joyful Courage is presence and patience and trust.  It is a practice of noticing when I am out of energetic alignment and working to come back to the ways of being that serve me most.

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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 O'Roarty, I am your fearless host. I'm a positive discipline trainer, spaceholder, coach, and the adolescent lead at Sproutable. 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.

Casey O'Roarty 01:32
Hi, hi, everybody. It's Thursday again, it's you and me again. It's a big day. It's the last Thursday in May 2024. That feels crazy pants. This weekend. My son has prom. Today, as maybe as you're listening to this, depending on what time of day you're listening to this, I've taken my husband in to have a procedure done, I'm doing a training for the next five week days for parent educators about facilitation. There's a lot, there's a lot of prep for the summer so that I can take some time off but still have content that serves you by the way, you will see that beginning in July, July and August, the Thursday shows are going to be revisits of solo shows that I've done in the past, because I'm taking some time off. So I would love to hear from you what have been your favourite solo shows? And I'm going to ask this in the Facebook group and in other places on social media and through my newsletter, I would love to know what are the shows that you go back to and listen to again, you can help me compile the best scenario for revisiting solo shows this summer. I would love your help with that. So please help me out. That'd be amazing. Although I've really enjoyed I feel like the last few months of solo shows have been really fun. I've really enjoyed showing up for you and creating content. And today is no exception I'm excited about today. I'm a little nervous, I'm going to be honest, because normally, I have an outline and kind of a plan. And today I don't I rarely do this, I like to have something written out. It helps me anchor in to, you know, showing up for you. So it feels a little untethered to not have that but I do actually I have a plan. And here's the plan. So I talk a lot with my clients and my members and my membership about having a practice of self care practice. And sometimes I will post on Instagram about my own self care practice. And what it looks like for me is in the mornings in the wee hours in the early mornings, I get up and I make myself some coffee, and I wash my face and I brush my teeth and I get dressed and I come up into my space and I sit on my cosy cushion. And I have I call it just my soul care time. And sometimes I will listen to an inspirational audio. Sometimes I will listen to a guided meditation. Sometimes I love Insight Timer. By the way, I would love for them to be a sponsor of the podcast. But they're not but I do use Insight Timer a lot. And the cool thing about Insight Timer is it's a huge bank of guided meditations and courses. I think a while back I shared that I did this like 30 Day intro to Buddhism course which I loved. I've done 21 Day manifestation courses, there's all sorts of things Inside timer that you can sign up for that are really cool. And there's also a place where you can create your own. They call it a timer. And what that looks like is you decide how long the timer is going to take, you know, so I have a couple of preset timers, I've got a five minute timer 1015 13, I have a bunch of random numbers, and you can choose an ambient sound. If you want an ambient sound during that period of time, you can choose to use bells at intervals, which I really like because sometimes when I'm meditating, now, when I'm working on meditating, when I am meditating, I like you, like everyone have a monkey mind, which means I find myself thinking about things, thinking about groceries, thinking about my kids, my husband, my marriage, what I got going on that day, my clients, you know, all sorts of things. And when I have that timer setup with interval bells, the bells remind me to come back to breath to anchoring in on something a sound or a sensation that takes me out of my head and into my body. And that's to me, that's one of the purposes of meditation is to grow in your awareness. So the interval bells support me in that and coming back to the breath. I also realise and recognise and grow in my awareness between the bells, because, you know, there's not always a bell in our life that's like, Hey, pay attention to what's in your present moment. So it's also an opportunity to just have that high repetition of shifting from, you know, the monkey mind the past, regrets, the future stress, and to be in the present moment, right. So I do that, I take out my journal, and I free write a lot of random stuff. And sometimes it has to do with what is going on with me in a variety of areas of my life. Sometimes I write about work. Sometimes I write about family. Sometimes I write about my spiritual experience in that moment. Another tool that I use that I've posted about on social media, maybe you've seen it, they're called Soul navigation cards. It's a deck of cards that I love. And recently at our in person spreadable retreat, it was every parent that came to the retreat was gifted a deck of these cards, I love these cards. And you know, there's people, I guess I should give a disclaimer, this episode is going to be a little woowoo. So if you're not into it, that's fine. But I encourage you to stay and listen and be open minded because there's a lot of different avenues to personal growth and development and tools that we can access that support us in broadening our perspective. And that's really what it's all about. So, yeah, we're gonna get a little woowoo maybe. So I use soul navigation cards, you might have decks of tarot cards, or moon cards or other decks, there's a million different decks of cards that you can get that can support you in what I use them for, which is simply taking a new perspective on an ongoing challenge. And the thing that I love about the deck that I have is that it doesn't come with a book. So it's not like I pull a card, and then I have to read about somebody else's interpretation of that card, I pull the card and I get to interpret it, as it makes sense to me. And there's a lot of freedom in that for some people, it's almost easier to have the book because then it is a perspective and you don't have to, you know, explore what the card means to you. But for me, I really like the freedom of making my own interpretation. And the other cool thing about this deck, it's really straightforward. So each card has a different word on it. And their words like structure and courage, freedom, universe, obstacles, harmony, Completion, gratitude, there's, I don't know how many cards there are. I'm guessing there's 50 do. I've never actually counted I have no idea how many cards are in this deck, but they shuffle nicely. So it's just the right amount. And the way that I use these cards and I'm actually going to do it with you. The way that I do these cards I have my own spread So that has been developed with support of others who have enjoyed my deck with me. But it's not about like, what's my future, right? It's more about how can I look at this in a new way? How can I hold this challenge or this time of life or this relationship or this thing that I'm working through, in a new way. And it's really just an invitation, right? It's really just an invitation to consider what we're going through from different perspectives, right, from different spots in the energetic room, right from different angles.

Casey O'Roarty 10:46
So today, what I was thinking is that we would do this together, that we would do this together, and what its gonna look like so well, I was thinking, maybe I would guide you in some meditation, but I'm not going to do that. I'm just going to play with the cards. And I don't know what cards are going to come up, I'm going to do my process and like speak into it. And you get to make sense of it as you make sense of it and find the nuggets that are useful to you. And I'm going to trust that what comes out of this time that we share together here on this particular podcast episode will be useful to you. All right. So I've got my deck in my hand, I have my deck in my hand, and I'm holding it, I'm going to hold it right at my heart centre, and I'm closing my eyes. And I'm not really thinking I'm inviting in whatever it is, that would be useful for me in considering my present, right and considering this time, and for me, this time is a time of change and transition. As we approach the end of the school year. It's a time of change and transition as I approach empty nest with my son, and all of his, you know, lasts his last prom, last things. I mean, he's moving out, you guys, he's moving out and moving on, and he's my baby, he's my baby. So I'm just thinking about that transition, I'm thinking about moving into a spaciousness in the summertime, I'm thinking about, you know, the things that are building up that are piling up building up to be with everything that's coming, the celebrations, the family visits, the trips, the work that I'm doing the trainings that I'm doing, so you can take your own time and think about, what do you got going on right now? What's building for you? What are your transitions, and just, you know, take a few moments and sit with that. And open up, we're going to do this collectively open up to inviting in exactly what you need to be in this time in a more expansive way. Right, like, that's what I'm calling it, I want some support around being inside of all of the amazing transition, all of the abundance of things to do in the most expansive way as I can. So that's what I'm thinking about as I hold these cards to my chest to My Heart Centre, inviting in whatever Whoo, oh, universal, higher power that's out there to support in bringing me that expansion. And so now what I'm going to do is I'm going to shuffle my deck. I'm going to shuffle my deck of cards. And when I shuffle my deck, I just do it for a while. I do it for as long as feels good to me. And some days there's more shuffling than others. I get to practice being with my intuition and trusting my intuition and trusting that I'll know when is the right time to pause and pull the cards that are going to inspire and inform me so I'm gonna do this one more time. There we go. Okay, did you hear me shuffling Can you hear I'm gonna put it by the mic. Does that called mdsr or whatever when you hear the fun sounds. Okay, so now I've got my deck and how I do it is I cut the deck wherever I cut the deck, and I start from the top and I pull three cards to begin. So 123 Okay, so the three cards I polled were community, inspiration and water. Love that and I put those three cards in a row and then I'm going to pull another card, put it on top of the community and inspiration card, and then I'm going to pull a fifth card now, and put it down below the three that I pulled. So the fourth card I pulled was clarity. And the fifth card that I pulled was purification. And so when I think about these cards when I make sense of these cards, I'm going to start with that those first three, because to me, that's kind of like the journey that I'm on right, it kind of represents past present, future ish, right ish holding that lately. So community inspiration water. When I think about everything that is right here, right now, transition, something, I think we're all moving through as transition, as well as, like I said, the piling up, or the abundance of the things that we need to do. So yeah, the transition, the pull in multiple directions, that's really what I'm gonna hold as what I want to kind of read into with these cards. So when I think about transition, and stress, and things to do, you know, and that community card, I get to remember that I'm not alone in this. And I was having a conversation just today with Yolanda Williams, who you will hear in July shall be a guest on the podcast. And we are talking about how grateful we are, how powerful it is how important it is to remember that while we are both space holders while I hold space for community, I also am a member of the community. And so this card coming up for me reminds me that I also get to be supported and held by community. As I move through this transition, I know that I'm not the only mama heading into, you know, watching our kids, our sons specifically move into the fall into something different. I'm thinking about some of my favourite members in my community. So shout out to Robin and Kimber and Edie. And I know there's others who have kiddos that are off to college in the fall. So yeah, so just remembering that I get to lean on community, that community exists, right. And I want you to think about what you're moving through right now. And how is community, something that exists to support you, right, and you get to recognise the power of this reminder, that community exists, right. And it might be that you are searching for community, maybe that's something that you are seeking out, in which case you should join the living joyful courage membership programme, because we have an amazing community, there are the parents of teens, the joyful courage Facebook group, there are communities that exist for you in whatever you're moving through, right. And then the second card that I pulled was inspiration, I've been pulling this card a lot, actually. And I'm cracking up because at our retreat, I pulled this card and it was right smack in the middle just like it is today. And at that time on that day, inspiration really showed up as you know what, Gosh, darn it, I'm inspiring myself. And you know, I get to hold that right. And I get to invite you, what are the ways that you are inspiring yourself? You listen to this podcast? Are you putting the practices, you know, and the tools? are you integrating it into your relationship with your teams? And what are you noticing? And who are you out in the world? And how are you living in a way that not only inspires others, but inspires yourself? Like? I mean, that's a win. Right? You can say, You know what, I'm inspiring myself today. I think that's a pretty powerful way of being in place to come from, and where are you seeking out inspiration? I know, for me, I've got a couple channels that I really lean into a couple of thought leaders and books, and even you know, people on social media that really inspire me with their words with what they're putting out in the world with how they're showing up in the world. And I think it's important for us to remember to make a point of seeking out inspiration, right, because we're in such a beautifully creative space and open and expansive space. When we are feeling inspired. Right when we are feeling inspired and noticing to what gets in the way of inspiration. I know. There are definitely people in places where I've had to unfollow because while I appreciate what they're bringing to the world, what it triggers in me is comparison and my own negative self talk so we get to be choosy to around how we lean into inspiration. Right and sometimes, sometimes that means you You know that we get to curate a feed? Right? Or a library that really speaks to us and we don't have to, you know, explain that to anybody, because it's for us. Right. So, inspiration, what are the things the people, the books, the music that are inspiring you right now, as you are with whatever is alive with this transition, the newness, maybe you're, you know, just kind of recognising that you're landing in midlife. And I love midlife. I'm gonna say that now for the next however many years, yeah, how

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