WRITING A NEW STORY OF WHO YOU WANT TO BE
Welcome to the Small Jar podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional roller coaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode number 41.
Hello, friends. There's a trend I've been noticing among so many of us approaching the empty nest, that we can tend to have this feeling of holding our breath. It's almost like we watch the events of the last two years of our child's journey through high school, as if through a time warp.
It's like we're here trying to soak it all in, but our minds are also jumping ahead constantly to the then, the time when they leave. It's almost unimaginable. We can't get our heads around what it will look like.
For 18 years, we've taken for granted our child's beautiful daily presence in our lives. Through highs and lows, we've enjoyed the rewards of raising our child, the joy, the pride, contentment, happiness, relief, even the pain. It's all been part of the journey, and we wouldn't trade a second of it.
It's interesting to think of that concept, that this journey has included pain, and that we would do it all again without question. Okay, maybe I would have done a few things differently on my end, but even if I knew that by repeating the journey, I would make all of the same mistakes and experience all of the same pain again, I would do it. I wouldn't trade a minute of it.
The pain, it's been a teacher. It's hard to think of it this way when we're in the middle of it, but it's true. Think of the hardest experiences you've had with your child as they've grown up.
Think of just one, in fact. Think of the one that you made it through, even though it was incredibly hard. Can you think of what you might have learned through this experience? It might've been a lesson about how to parent more effectively as your child has gone through stage after stage of growth, and the old strategy stopped working.
Or it might've been a lesson about living in the moment, appreciating the relief of a dangerous, scary situation that turned out okay, the understanding that life is precious. I've learned all of these lessons and then some, but some of the most jaw-dropping lessons that I've learned throughout this journey of motherhood have been about who I am. And I don't even think I developed a real awareness of this until I discovered thought work and the connection between my perspective on the world and frankly, my perception of who I am and my emotional life and the results I create in my life.
By and large, I think all of us approach life and certainly motherhood with the intention of doing the best we can every day. None of us start the day thinking, I'm just going to muck this up, muck up the relationship with my child today. So we do our best and the actions we take, the words we say, the way we interact with our kids, the way we try to help, the way we might encourage or remind them, and let's face it, the way we sometimes blow up at them even.
All of these actions come from a feeling that we're having in that moment as we interact with our kids. So if we're feeling love, we're going to show our love by hugging them or telling them we love them on their way out the door, or even just by showing up to their events, by being there when they need us. But when we're feeling worried or anxious about something our kids are doing or not doing, that's when we start to get into that nagging, yelling type of action, which we can then beat ourselves up for afterwards.
But the problem is we're not sure how else to get them to listen to us in that moment. We want the anxiety of whatever we're worried about to go away. So we're always doing the best we can, but because we're often reacting to our own emotions in each moment, we're not entirely intentional with the way we show up with our kids or really with ourselves or anything else in our lives.
Things happen. Our kids do something and we get triggered in a certain way and that causes us to react. But think about this.
In our lives right now as mothers in our 40s, 50s or 60s, we face so many circumstances out of our control. It's always true that in life generally there are circumstances out of our control, but during this time it feels like there are so many circumstances that are out of our control and triggering our emotions. Our kids no longer respond to our guidance and influence the way they used to.
They have their own view of the world and how they want to tackle the opportunities and challenges of their lives. We don't always agree with how they're approaching their lives, and so we still try to influence them. But we're faced on a daily basis with our lack of control more and more as our children become young adults.
We have no control over the fact that our kids are growing up and will eventually leave the nest. And when our last child does leave the nest, we're forced to say goodbye to the purpose of being a mother with children living at home. And there are other areas of our life that may be triggering a wide variety of difficult emotions for us, in addition to letting go of our kids.
We may lose parents or others in our lives. We may be coming to terms with the relationship we have with our partner, and this often involves saying goodbye to the vision we had of what that relationship could have been or was supposed to be. We may be in a career transition, thinking about what comes next in our career, or if we haven't worked since having children, we may feel we already said goodbye to the professional version of ourselves too long ago to be able to start a new career.
Our bodies are changing. We're dealing with hormones, weight gain, exhaustion, anxiety. We're not sure whether that's coming from hormones or the circumstances of our lives.
With so many things feeling out of control, it feels like a cruel joke that we're also out of control of our own physical bodies and well-being. So through all of this, we can find that we're holding our breath and just wanting to get through it. But here we are in these precious moments, days, months, years, left with our children at home, and we're gritting our teeth.
I saw a post yesterday where someone said, I punished my teen by sending him to his room and telling him he couldn't go out. And I realized that's exactly what I wanted. We don't want them to leave, but we're miserable, holding our breath, trying to get through these last moments.
When exactly is it going to get better? So I mentioned that the most transformative lessons that I've learned throughout this journey of motherhood have been about who I am. And the key to understanding this really comes from understanding the lens that you use to interpret the circumstances of your life. We're so used to reacting.
Something happens and we immediately react with an emotion and then potentially a series of actions or lack of action. Someone cuts us off in traffic. We get angry.
We honk the horn. Our child hugs us. We feel gratitude.
We hug them back. We see our kids' messy room. We get frustrated and we yell at them to pick it up.
We wake up with intentions to work out. We feel unmotivated. We don't work out.
You can think of thousands of examples of how things happen throughout your regular day. You feel an emotion and you react. These feelings and actions also feel out of our control for the most part.
They happen so quickly it seems like a biological response, our emotions. But what's really happening, whether you realize it or not, and we don't realize it typically because no one's ever taught us to even look for it, but what's really happening is that things happen and you have a thought about it and then you have a feeling. Someone cuts us off in traffic.
We think, what a jerk. He shouldn't have done that. We get angry.
We honk the horn. Our child hugs us and we think, I love it when he hugs me. He doesn't do that as much as he used to.
We feel gratitude and we hug back. We see our kids' messy room and we think, I've told her so many times to clean up her room. She never listens.
And then we're frustrated and we yell at her daughter to pick up her room. We wake up with intentions to work out but we think, I don't feel like it. I don't have what it takes to do that today.
And then we feel unmotivated. We don't work out. So these sentences, these thoughts we might have in these situations seem obvious when you point them out in this way, but when you dig deeper, you can start to really see how the thought is a choice.
It's unintentional. It's a subconscious choice, but it is a choice. When someone cuts you off, you could think, he shouldn't have done that, and then feel anger.
Or since he did cut you off, and that's the reality of the situation, you could also choose to think, he must really be in a hurry. And then you might feel amusement or nothing really at all. When our child hugs us, we could think, I love when he hugs me because he doesn't do that as much as he used to.
Or we could think, he wants something from me. And then we might feel wary. We might ask, what do you want? Instead of hugging him back.
When we see our daughter's messy room, we could think she never listens and get frustrated and yell. Or we could think, it's her room, not my problem. And feel content, go on with our day.
Finally, when we wake up with intentions to work out, we could think, I don't have what it takes to do that today and feel unmotivated and definitely not work out. Or we could think, I don't want to do this right now, but I promised myself I would, so let's go do this. He might not feel motivated, but you might feel willing.
And then you would get to the gym. As I say all this, you might be thinking, yeah, sure, you can always view a situation differently. But this particular way is how I tend to view it or would view these situations.
And that, my friend, is the point. What is your lens? The way you view the circumstances of your life is a choice that you're making. It's your perception of who you are, how you want things to be, how other people should be, how you want things to turn out.
I love the saying, you can't read the label from inside the jar, especially in light of the name of my business, Small Jar. But the saying really means that you can't always see your own perspective because it's what's true for you. We think we know who we are, but who that is, is really only our projection, our own interpretation, our lens.
Now, that's not to say that there's anything wrong with your lens, but up until now, it's very likely that your perspective has been fairly subconscious, that it hasn't been developed in a fully conscious way. We have a lot of beliefs about who we are, what we're capable of, what we're not capable of. But have you ever stopped to think how you develop those beliefs? Did someone tell you you were a certain way? Did you notice patterns of behavior in yourself that you labeled a certain way? Do you have preferences about how you like things that make you think that says something about you? None of this is a judgment, but rather an opportunity to explore something you might not have explored before.
Because most of us don't even know that we have a choice about who we are. We think it's just the truth. But think about it, who determines who you are? Many of us let others' opinions or how we've shown up in the past influence how we think about ourselves, but entertain for just a moment the idea that you are the only one who gets to decide who you are.
I'll say it again, you are the only one who gets to decide who you are. Does this seem like news to you? Do you agree? Who are you anyway? If you're listening to this podcast, you're most likely a mom, a woman in your 40s, 50s, or 60s. What adjectives do you use to describe yourself? Type A or laid back, a planner or someone who's spur of the moment, someone who likes to be busy or someone who prefers to have time to rest, motivated or unmotivated, optimistic, anxious, creative, boring.
This is a list of random adjectives. I imagine if you spend some time thinking about it, that you could come up with a list of five to 10 adjectives about yourself that you think describe who you are. Since you've been focused on raising your child or children over the past 15 or 20 plus years, some of these adjectives may have to do with how you view yourself in relation to your role as a mother.
How do you view your responsibility to your children and what you want for them? I really invite you to take a moment and write all of this down. Really explore this for yourself. Who are you? Who are you as a mom? What does all of this imply about what you're responsible for and what you're capable of? Now, I want to invite you to consider that what you've written, these words in your head, all of these adjectives, it's your story.
It's your narrative about who you are and your interpretation of your life. You might have evidence that suggests that some parts of your story are factually true, but regardless of whether you have proof or not, this entire story is true for you right now. This story is what has created the life you're living in this moment.
What do I mean by that? The way we interpret our lives fuels how we feel and therefore how we show up in our lives. The way we show up, our actions or lack of actions fuel our results. Ultimately, our story, the lens we have about our own life, is what creates the results we have in our lives.
Let me give you a few examples from some of my clients. One of my clients told me in our very first session, I'm too much for most people. She had a series of beliefs about herself and what this trait about her meant for her relationships with her kids and her potential to find love again after a series of abusive relationships.
This belief about herself made her feel guarded. With her kids, it meant she overcompensated to try to make up for her beliefs about who she was. She didn't set boundaries and she gave so much of herself that she ended up resenting the time she spent with her grandkids.
When seeking love, well, she didn't. She felt like she knew because her past husbands had told her that she was too much and that she was going to end up alone anyway. And the result she created? She wasn't enough for herself.
She wasn't giving herself the grace of knowing that she was perfect just the way she was and that she didn't have to be anyone other than herself with her kids or her new potential partner. She came to me initially because she wanted to find a new relationship, but what she found was herself. She discovered that the jar she had put herself in that was labeled too much, someone who could never have a healthy relationship, that the label wasn't even true, and that she could rewrite that narrative.
Now she sets healthy boundaries with her kids and has the best relationship she's ever had with them. She's cut back on work. She's exploring new hobbies and going on international adventures alone.
She's writing a new story for herself with intention, knowing that she's the one in control of the narrative. This is the power of stepping outside of your jar, outside of your lens. Here's another example.
I've worked with a woman who came to me because she felt sad about her children leaving for college. She still had one child at home, but could already look ahead to the future and felt an emptiness. She described many of the things in her life as hard.
She had a view of herself as a mom, and she wasn't sure who she would be when that role was taken away from her. This is a view so many of my clients have, a definition of themselves as a mother that has taken over all aspects of their perspective of who they are. Our instincts, when we're in this place of pain, sadness, and loss, are to try and find some way to keep busy, to fill the void that our kids leave with something else.
Someone commented in one of my recent posts about processing the sadness that comes from the emptiness with a list of suggestions of things you can do to feel better. And look, the world offers us a million ways to distract ourselves from pain. TV, food, alcohol, yoga, meditation, working, taking a walk, cleaning the house.
None of these things are bad things, but doing doesn't change the thought that created the pain. Doing doesn't change the lens you have about the circumstances of your life, and therefore doesn't really help you escape the pain in the long run. So in the case of this particular client who was experiencing a lot of pain around the impending empty nest, she was in a hurry to find something else to do.
But here's the really powerful part of thought work. When you discover who you are and you become very intimate with your lens, you no longer need to change the circumstances of your life to feel better. Now this is huge, and it might take some time for this to sink in.
And this is precisely the work I do with clients in Mom 2.0. You have a lens, thoughts about your life and who you are, and that lens is creating the results you have in your life right now. Some of these results, the reality of your life, some of that I have no doubt is beautiful, wonderful, and perfect. But there may be other parts of your life that are painful, where you feel stuck, overwhelmed, anxious, frustrated.
And right now I would imagine the way you've tried to feel better is either to distract yourself or to try and change the circumstances. So let's say you're frustrated that your son isn't taking school seriously enough. Right now, the only way you can feel better is if your son starts taking school seriously.
So you nag and you yell. How's that working for you? Look, I know from personal experience, it rarely works. No judgment here.
I've been there too. Let's say you're anxious because your daughter's involved in a new relationship and you're worried she's not being careful or not hanging out with the right crowd. Again, the only way for us to make the anxiety go away is to lock our daughter in a room and forbid her from dating.
Not likely to succeed or even be possible. If you're feeling sad and dreading the empty nest, well, we all sadly know where that's headed and there's nothing we can do to change the fact that our children will eventually leave us. So are we left to just be sad? Because we certainly can't change that circumstance.
So we have our lens, our story about who we are, what we want for ourselves, what we're capable of, what we want for others. So I can imagine you might be saying, okay, even if I were to embrace the concept that I have a story about myself and my life, it's not so easy to just change the narrative. This is who I am.
And I get it. This is what we've believed, what we've practiced believing about ourselves. We can't just change our minds in an instant.
But here's the main takeaway I want to invite you to consider. If you go through the process of really understanding the thoughts that are underlying your individual perspective, if you take the time to explore who you are in relation to your life, then just entertain the possibility that this is a story that can be rewritten. You're the only one who can write the story of your life and you can believe whatever you want about yourself.
But before you can write a new story, there may be some parts of your story you have to learn to let go. And you do that by observing which parts of your story are holding you back from what you really want. It's hard to do that from inside the jar.
This is really the intent of my one-on-one coaching program, Mom 2.0, to bring you outside of your jar so that you can understand who you are and rewrite that narrative so that you can create exactly what you want on purpose. And you don't have to be at the mercy of circumstances out of your control. You can decide on purpose who you want to be in relation to those circumstances and this gives you back all of your power.
You can manage your emotional life during this time of transition. You can decide ahead of time how you want to show up for your child, your family, and maybe most importantly for yourself. And you can create new purpose as you approach the empty nest.
This can be you. I invite you to join me in Mom 2.0 and together we can rewrite the narrative so that you don't have to hold your breath but you can live in the moment, this beautiful moment that includes joy and pain, and you can create the results you want in your life and the relationship you want with your children in these precious moments that you still have them in home and all of the rest of the moments of your life. It's an honor to be on this journey with you.
I'll meet you inside your jar so we can step outside and create something beautiful during your chapter two.
See you soon, my friends.
If you enjoyed this podcast, please leave a review and check out our coaching program, Mom 2.0 at www.thesmalljar.com. You have more power than you think, my friend.
