Eps 146: Solo Show – Supporting the Village

Transcription

Casey O'Roarty 0:00
Music. Hey everybody, welcome to the joyful courage podcast, a place for information and inspiration on the conscious parenting journey. Conversations you'll hear on this show are all intended to offer you tools for moving forward, expanding your lens and shifting your narrative to one of possibility, connection and empowerment. When we bring deep, listening, acceptance and courage to our relationships, we are doing our part to evoke it in the world. I am thrilled to partner with you on this path. Hey everybody. I'm just popping in here to encourage you to give back to the show that you love so much, the joyful courage podcast is fully funded by its listeners and by the people that say yes to joyful courage offers. There is no other way for me to make a living other than for you all to say thank you through contributing to the podcast or investing in the work of joyful courage. I have a new way for you to be in contribution. It is a Patreon page, a page where you can become a patron of the show for as little as one or five or $10 a month, you can give back to the show that gives you so much head on over to www dot P, a t r e o n.com/joyful, courage. That's w, w, w. Dot P, a t r e o n slash, joyful courage, and decide which level of contribution works for you and your family. Thank you so much for being a part of the impact that joyful courage makes on the world. I love you. Hey everybody, welcome to this week's show. It's a solo show. Thank you for all the feedback around last week's show with Debbie Reber, wasn't that fantastic. I just I'm so grateful for her and the work that she does and the voice that she gives to families who are having a really hard time. And you know, we all have a hard time. We all have our own individual struggles. The flavors are different sometimes. But you know, this is a collective journey, and having somebody who shares your story speak it as eloquently and bring it into the light the way that that Debbie does is just such a gift. If you haven't listened to last week's show, episode 145, I encourage you to do so. Debbie Reaper's book, A differently wired came out last week, and it's for kids, for parents who are raising exceptional kids in a conventional world. So check that out this week. I'm solo, right? And I don't know if you've noticed, but these solo shows have kind of evolved into me speaking whatever is in my heart, in the moment, on top of my mind, and as I record so today is actually may 23 this show will go live may 29 so we're not quite a week out from yet another school shooting. And you know, I did that show, I think it was 133 around parenting and politics and being active, and I'm just finding myself in all of these questions and conversations around really stepping out of my own, my own little family unit, right, and expanding into the community that I live in. The I've shared, I think I've shared on the podcast, I have a new office space, which is really exciting, definitely an elevation in my work and in how I hold the work that I do, and my office overlooks my little town's post office. And when I came into work today, sat down, I noticed a woman standing in front of the post office, and she has three kids with her, and she's holding a sign. And I couldn't read the sign from my office, but I just kept looking at her. And I was watching people, you know, post office, there's a lot of traffic. And I was watching people, you know, do one of two things, people that walked by and and handed her some money or or something, and then people that walked by and completely ignored her, and all I could think about was how hard it must be to for anyone to stand on the street with a sign that says to the world, I need help. Right? I need help, and I commend her for being willing. It's not easy to do that, and to have her three kids sitting there with her, it's just like killing me. And so I started kind of writing an outline for this podcast, and I was like, Oh my gosh. I was writing about it, and I was thinking about, I keep a box of Kirkland, Costco brand trail mix in my car, like the little snack sized bags. And I keep them in my car so that I can give them to people in need, when, you know, that shows up in my life. And I thought, Gosh, I should go get a couple of those and take it to this woman. And then I thought, you know, I'm gonna give her the whole box. And so I stopped what I was doing, and I went down to my car, and I got the box out, and I walked over, and I saw that her sign said that her husband had been deported and that she needed help so that she had three kids, and, you know, I'm just like aching inside for this woman. And I walked over, and I handed her the box, and I said, you know, what else do you need? And she said, we have nowhere to stay tonight. And again, my heart just exploded with empathy and compassion, imagining what that must feel like to be in the position of of being in the care of these three beautiful children and not knowing where they were going to sleep. And so I connected her with an organization in our community called take the next step. If you're local to me, you know they're amazing. They're an amazing neighborhood community that helps people in transition or falling on hard times. It helps them to just connect with the resources that they need. And, yeah, I mean, it's one of those things, right? It's one of those things where you bear witness to it, and she's one gal, and how many other parents are out there right now, feeling this kind of weight, feeling the weight of the world, feeling as though they can't keep their children safe, not knowing what tomorrow's going to bring, not knowing what's going to happen to them next week. And I'm just sitting here and thinking about this platform, this podcast, the way that I get your ear for you know, a period of time each week. And I thought, I have to speak into this. We're all in this together. We are all in this life together, and it takes a village, and we have to look out for each other. I mean, on one of our group coaching calls, one of my clients spoke about going to a assembly at her child's school, and there was accolades for the kids that showed good character. And she was talking about just her discomfort around how it's always the same kids getting those accolades. And you know, kids are not all dealt the same deck of cards when they come into the world. None of us are right, and some of us come into a world with incredible privilege,

and some of us don't. And, you know, there's it due to no fault of our own right. We are born into the families that we're born into. We make sense of the world the way we make sense of the world. But, you know, as we, you know, look again at another school shooting, as we think about the debates and the conversations that are happening, you know, I just keep coming back to what can I do for individuals? What can I do for people in my community, so that people feel connected and they feel they feel felt, they feel understood. They feel supported and and I really encourage every single one of you that are listening to this to ask those same questions. What can you do right? How can you be an advocate for for all kids, not just your kids? How can you, you know, connect in meaningful ways to people that maybe your paths would never have crossed or won't cross. You know, another conversation that I recently had has to do with how egocentric we are right now, and we can see it on the national stage. We can see it in our small towns and everywhere in between. And you know, we all have our beliefs, and we hold our beliefs as truths. And I know I'm completely guilty of this, right? Because I have friends who are like, Oh, I listen to a variety of news sources so that I can get a well rounded picture of what's going on in the world. I don't do that. I listen to people that I agree with, and I know that that stunts my understanding of the world. I don't often hold space for different opinions, which I'm, I'm embarrassed to say, and you know, and it's interesting too, because you know my family, I come from. You know, my parents are, my dad in particular, is a lifelong staunch Republican. And during the 2008 election, I think it was, I was canvassing for Barack Obama. He was sending me emails, you know, that were slamming the Democrats and slamming basically felt like slamming me, and so I stopped opening his emails. I didn't talk to him. And you know, my parents on their side of the fence were like, Oh my gosh, Casey, she's so dramatic. Blah, blah, blah, she can't, you know, she can't hear anything that she doesn't agree with. And on my side, I'm like, Oh my gosh, my parents are so wrong. They can't hear anything that they don't agree with. And what was really cool is when my brother said, You know what Casey, you and dad are the same. You are totally committed to what you believe, without any room for anyone to tell you different. You're just on opposite ends of the spectrum. And that actually was really helpful, because I love my dad, oh my gosh. I totally love my dad, and I long for his approval. And this was really hard, God, I'm gonna cry. This was really hard for me, because it was a place that all of a sudden, we couldn't talk to each other and and when my brother pointed that out, it gave me a place to anchor in and to recognize, like I carry so much of my dad and me. You know, the flavor is different, but the the qualities that he modeled for me are there. And, you know, we could both, he and I both could do better at at understanding the experiences of other people and and considering it right, considering the experiences of other people. And I think on this conscious parenting quest, it's really conscious living. And I think part of conscious living is recognizing that every single human on the planet shows up and through the course of our life and our relationships and our experiences, we form beliefs, and those beliefs get solidified and solidified and solidified through more and more experiences, and nobody's life Story is any more valid or less valid than mine, like, even when I think of really extreme situations, or, you know, hateful, you know, when people are hateful, that's a hard one, right? That's a really hard one. And, you know, it's, it's something that's passed on and through experience and and I can seek to understand and understanding where somebody is coming from is not the same as accepting or valuing what they value, right? And I'm just really feeling drawn to my community right now, and I mean my community, not my community of joy, of courage, but my community of Monroe, Washington. And I want to know who are the people right now that are feeling left out, who are feeling like what they like they don't matter, like they're not connected. I want to know who those people are, and I want to connect with them. I want to give them the opportunity to have a voice. I want to I because when we feel connected and when we feel like we matter, we show up better for each other, and I know you've heard me talk about this in regards to children, right belonging and significance matters, we're hardwired to connect, but it is equally true for adults and. And and you can hear how desperate people are to be understood and heard when they get really heated and really rigid in their you know when they are speaking their you know their truth when they are speaking what is, what their values are. You can hear how desperately they want to be understood. And underneath that, as well as this intense fear, right? That if you know, if we don't agree with each other, then on some level, one of us must be wrong, and and I don't want to be wrong, right? And so there's this fear, there's this fear of, of of and resistance to listening to each other, because we're holding on so desperately to being right. And I think this, this shows up in parenting, right? This definitely shows up in parenting, and I'm noticing it with, you know, with parents of young kids all the way up, in my own experience with teenagers, we hang on to being right. And it's sneaky, like I don't even realize that I'm doing it when I'm doing it all the time, sometimes I realize it, but there's that it's more of a feeling in the body, right? It's this resistance to flexibility in the body. And when we get really curious about that, and we ask ourselves, why am I? Why am I such a hardcore note, right now? Why am I in resistance? You know, that's a place where we can get that's really interesting, because when we peel back the layers, it's this vice grip that we have on being right, because if we're not right, then what? Then we're wrong? Is it an either or, or is it something totally different? I think with kids, it's so important to listen to understand them right, to consider their perspective, to consider their point of view, to speak and be transparent about that work, because the kids that we love, that are in our house, that we interact with every day, our kids, they're the ones that are going to be the adults of tomorrow. They're the ones that are going to be having conversations. Having conversations and leading nations and trying to, you know, find common ground, and if they haven't seen that modeled, if they haven't experienced what that is like, there's no way that they're going to be able to be in those kinds of conversations and make real change, right? We get to look out for each other. We get to assume positive intent. We get to love and support and connect with each other. This is the world that I want to live in, right? This is the world I want to live in, and it requires those of us that have privilege to shake that off a little bit and to recognize when I have privilege, when my privilege

exists because somebody else is underprivileged. Then I get to I get to shake some of that off. I get to release some of that. I get to own it and recognize it and acknowledge it and do something about it, right? I get to go down to the post office and take that entire box of of trail mix snacks that I had in my car and hand it right over to this gal and share with her resources, and I and give her a hug, and I just the whole exchange held in my body. I see you

right. I just wanted her to know I see you in your struggle. And I think if more of us could see each other right to see past what we don't like to see past, you know, values. You know, values and things that kind of deflect from us really seeing the human that lives inside of each of us when we can really see each other, we can make a huge difference, right? We can connect soul to soul, human to human, beyond the things that we don't understand about each other. And I think that that is so important, right? It's so important. So in the spirit of making declarations, oh, did you know I'm the PTO president? Did I tell you all that I am now the PTO president at the middle school, which is hilarious and very exciting. But the other thing after the shooting in San. Texas that I am committed to doing is going to our local high school and finding out about mentorship programs there, and I know that they need community members to come in and mentor. And you know, my my children are covered. They have advocates. You know, they have my husband and I and our extended family, they are good to go. And I would like I will be showing up at the high school as an advocate and a mentor for kids that need it. So that's another thing that I'm planning on doing. And just going back to, if this is your first show, Hi, how are you? But just going back to what I spoke about back in February, you know, it's one thing. We all feel this pain we or, you know, and there's different ways that we choose to respond, right, like this latest school shooting. It really bothered me that the next day was the royal wedding, and I didn't really see anything about the school shooting in the news. Interestingly enough, I had someone point out. Well, you know this at least this time, the shooter didn't get a bunch of notoriety. Everybody kind of moved on, but I wasn't thinking so much about the shooter as much as I was about the families of the victims and the rest of us, you know, I wanted to know how things were unfolding for them. I wanted to hear the stories of these families, and it was just kind of lost in the noise of the royal wedding, and that really bugged me. And I also had people say, you know, I can't really like the whole gun control conversation. It feels so overwhelming. And based, you know, depending on what part of the country you live in, you know, it might be right in your face, the gun conversation is overwhelming, and so we get to this place where it's like, oh my god, we're screwed. Hands in the air, there's nothing I can do. I'm choosing something different. And I really, I speak about it here, because I really want to encourage you to choose something different too, and it'll look different for you than it does for me. But I'm really getting ever more engaged in my community and looking for ways to support the children in my community so that nobody feels so hopeless and so disconnected that it's a viable option to show Up to school with a gun and kill people I and you know, it's easy to vilify the the kids that are doing this, and I just can't even imagine the hurt that must Be alive inside of somebody, and the pain that must be alive in somebody for them to choose to inflict that much pain. So Whoa. Look at that. This is what happens when I don't really have a clear outline for my solo shows, I just kind of go off. So you know, if any of this has landed for you, awesome. My hope is that listening to this one, you feel like I'm giving words to the experience that you're having great. Or two, I'm offering ideas and information that you hadn't considered great. Number three, I'm prompting you to take that step. That's that one thing that you've been thinking, Oh, I really should go to a town council meeting. Or, gosh, you know what? I really should show up and see what's going on with the PTA. Or, you know what, I want to find out how I can be in service to my community. If that's kind of been something that's been kind of flopping around in your mind lately, I really, really encourage you to take that step, to take that step and follow through with action. Right? This is the only way that the state of the world will change is if people like you and me just regular people living life, raising our kids, for us to say, I want to have a voice. I want to listen to different voices. I want to do something. I want to be in support of community and kids. You know, that's it. So that's what I've got for you today. That's what I've got for you today. Thank you for listening. Let me know what your thoughts are. Please. Let me know the ways that you are in action, right in your communities. Because you know some of us. I don't know all the different things there are to do, so I would love to hear from you how you support your local community, how you support all kids, not just your own. So you can join me in the Facebook group. You can shoot me an email, let me know what's happening for you. I also wanted to do a quick shout out to all of you listening from the Baltimore, Washington, DC, East Coast area, because I'm gonna be there. I'm coming to Baltimore, July 28 and I'm doing a mother's journey workshop. And I'm super excited. Mother's journey is just what it's just what the title is about. It's all about all the ways that we are called into personal growth and development on the journey of being a mom. And it's really a self care day on steroids. We will move, we will interact, we will laugh and cry. And it's a powerful day. I've done the workshop in Seattle, Portland, Boise and Orange County, California, and in July, I'll be in Baltimore. So if you are anywhere near Baltimore, check out. Www, dot, joyful courage.com/ mother's journey. Www, dot, joyful courage.com/ mother's journey. And on that page, you can get to the Baltimore workshop, the early bird price is good through June 15. So I want you to get in on that. I want you to get in on that. If you have friends, if you listen and you have friends in that area or close enough to it to make a drive or to stay the night, will you do me a favor and let them know about the event? Because I'm really I'm excited that it's filling up, and I would love to have a full circle of mamas. The energy, the experience is so rich, the more people that are in the room. So I hope you check it out. Tell your friends to check it out. And yeah, I'll be seeing you in Baltimore. So thank you again for listening. Big, huge love to each and every one of you. Come back next week, I have Natalie Savelle on talking about stepmothering. You won't want to miss it, and it's good for all of us, not just the stepmoms. All right. Bye. Joyful, Courage community, you're amazing. Big. Thanks and love to my team, including my producer, Chris Mann at pod shaper. Be sure to join in the discussion over at the live in love with joyful courage group page, as well as the joyful courage business page on Facebook and Instagram. Subscribe to the show through Apple podcasts, or really, anywhere you find your favorite podcasts, you can view the current joyful courage swag over at the web page, intention, cards, bracelets, e course offers the membership program, one on one, coaching. It's all waiting for you to take a look. Simply head to www dot joyful courage.com/yes. That's joyful courage.com/y. E, S to find more support for your conscious parenting journey. Any comments or feedback about this show or any others can be sent to [email protected] I personally read and respond to all the emails that come my way, reach out, take a breath, drop into your body, find the balcony seat and trust that everyone is going to be okay.