OPEN THE DOOR TO 2024
Welcome to the Small Jar Podcast, where we moms of teens find the power to step off the emotional rollercoaster between motherhood and the empty nest. I'm your host, Jennifer Collins. Episode 82.
Hello, my friends. I cannot believe we're here at the end of another year. I'm so honored to be doing this work and grateful to those of you who follow me and who have reached out to say that my words have been helpful to you, and I am infinitely grateful to my clients who trust me with their hearts and innermost fears, and who have joined me on this journey to find a more empowering path in our lives.
As I reflect on the purpose of the work that I do, what I've seen time and again with my clients, and absolutely what I've experienced myself, is that this work is about personal evolution and growth. It's not simply about just being happier in my life, although I sincerely am. It's not just about finding more peace, or even eliminating the negative emotion in our lives, which I don't think is actually ever possible.
We are human, and the human experience is going to include ups and downs, particularly in our life with teens and young adult children. That is just a fact of life. But the process of self-coaching that I teach empowers you to face the circumstances of your life with confidence in your own ability to weather the storm, to trust in your ability to decide in every moment how to move forward, and have your own back every step of the way.
This alone, this power is life-changing. But what I've experienced on an even more profound level is that this work is about continual growth. It's about embracing the possibility that our purpose on this earth can be about constantly striving to become that next best version of ourselves.
And if you think about it, this is exactly what we've been striving to help our own kids do for their entire lives. We've literally dedicated our own purpose to the evolution of another human being, and there is no higher purpose except for, or at least in addition to, the evolution of our own selves as women and mothers and human beings in this world for a finite period of time. All along, our purpose has been evolution.
No matter where we went to college, or what career we pursued out of college, or whether child rearing was our main profession, or whatever else we've done in our lives, the purpose of our life has been evolution. And that's been true even in our darkest moments, in our most desperate times. I believe there's an indefatigable essence of the human spirit that craves meaning and purpose, even more than our brain defaults to comfort and safety.
What we want in our souls more than anything is to feel that full sense of meaning, purpose, and connectedness that we know is possible for us. We've all experienced those moments of perfection during our lives. As a mom, I have no doubt that you felt this during precious moments with your children.
Maybe when you held them in your arms for the first time, or when you cuddled with them at bedtime when they were toddlers. Those moments, even now when they show you an unexpected, spontaneous display of affection. I want you to consider that all along it's been this.
These moments when everything feels right with the world. It's these moments that we've been looking for, that make the more painful moments all worth it. Here's the interesting thing.
When we think that it's our kids that have given us this meaning and purpose, it makes perfect sense that we look at the future, or even now, when our teens already need us less, and they're not physically present in our lives as much anymore. It makes perfect sense that we can view this transition with a sense of dread, fear, and loss, even grief. But this transition was always inevitable.
We always knew it was coming, and just as becoming a mother for the first time involved an incredible evolution of who you were as a human being, so that you could become equipped to not only keep this beautiful human being alive, but to help them thrive, to reach their potential, to be happy, and to find their own version of success. This experience of motherhood has given you an opportunity to evolve, and that was a choice that you made. Once you had a child, you made a choice to commit your love and your effort and your purpose to that human being.
And that dedication was always in your power. It was always a choice that you got to make. Look, not every woman who gives birth decides to make raising that child their purpose, but you did.
If you're listening to this podcast, I have no doubt that you were a mother who made this choice. And now that you're approaching the empty nest, you get to make new choices, not simply about what you're going to do, but honestly, about who you are going to be. I get that the choices ahead can seem daunting, but I want to remind you that this is something that you've done many times in your life before.
Change and growth is not new to you. The creation of purpose is absolutely not new to you. You did it when you brought your child into the world, and when you made the decision to make your child your focus, your purpose, and you have the same ability to create new purpose now.
I was recently doing a workshop for a group of young moms, and I was telling them about when I really opened the door to this work of self-coaching and discovery. My boys were young, only about 10 or 11. I remember the day so well.
It was a Sunday. I was home by myself. My boys and husband were off practicing with their rock bands.
My husband had even joined his own band. So all three of them were gone for about three hours. They'd been doing this for a few years, actually, and for a while, I had enjoyed that blissful feeling of being alone by myself in the house, which is so rare when you have young kids.
But this particular day, what I found myself doing was cleaning up the house, then doing some laundry, and once I was done with that, I literally felt a punch in my gut. I had this empty, lost feeling. This thought popped into my head.
Everyone in my family is pursuing their dreams, except for me. Needless to say, it was a depressing thought. At the time, I had a lot of boxes checked.
I had a full-time job in a fairly elevated position with a good salary. I'd served on non-profit boards, even serving as president. I had this beautiful family, most importantly, a loving and supportive husband, a beautiful home, wonderful friends, these two beautiful boys.
I had so many boxes checked, and yet in my mind, I was unhappy. Even talking about it now, it seems so impossible that you can have literally everything you've ever wanted and still feel like it's not enough. And actually, not enough isn't even what it was.
It wasn't that I wanted anything specific more. The problem was, despite all of this, all of these beautiful gifts in my life, I didn't feel the way I thought I should feel. In moments of presence, I could practice gratitude and find so much love and joy in my life.
It's not to say that I wasn't grateful or happy. It's that I didn't understand why that didn't translate into constant happiness. So many of my clients have expressed something similar, particularly as their kids grow up and become more independent.
It's like we've funneled so much of our time and effort into parenting that we haven't had a lot of extra time to ask ourselves if we're happy. And then all of a sudden, a bit of space opens up in our lives, and we're not sure why happiness and peace feel so elusive. Or in some of my clients' cases, we tie so much of our happiness to our children that as they grow up, it feels as if we're losing something precious to us.
And all of this can happen even in the absence of specific circumstances that seem to trigger our anxiety or frustration. Our teens shutting us out or taking risks. When our kids are struggling in school or with friendships.
Maybe even challenges with our husbands or other friendships. The fluctuating hormones we experience as we're approaching menopause. You can feel like you're playing whack-a-mole with relationships, challenges, symptoms.
All of this adds another level of stress to our lives. I've shared in the past that I often turn to food or alcohol to lighten up and de-stress in my life. To help me capture little moments of joy.
Or so I thought. I constantly felt overwhelmed balancing work and my kids. I also regularly fell into the mindset trap of perfectionism.
Setting the bar so high for myself and never giving myself the grace to decide how much was really enough. This mindset created for me this perpetual sense of overwhelm. And my self-soothing, buffering habits made me think there was something wrong with me that I couldn't get through a night without a reward.
That later left me feeling sluggish and unable to lose extra pounds. For me learning the process of thought work and self-coaching. Eventually getting certified and then master certified as a life coach.
For me this has been a continual process of evolution and self-discovery. I found that every time I unwind one mental hurdle or limiting belief. Unwrap one more layer of the onion.
Find that next limiting belief keeping me stuck. I have a breakthrough and then I discover yet another layer which only creates more learning and more opportunities for growth for me in my life. This has been remarkable to me now looking back over the past 10 years and seeing how far I've come.
Inspires me even more to do this work and share how all of this is possible for you as well. As I look back for me the first domino to fall was really my drinking. I never thought I was an alcoholic but my drinking had become an almost daily habit and I found it surprisingly difficult to not pour that glass of wine.
What I came to understand was that my drinking was not in my mind a problem. It was the solution. Subconsciously I was looking for wine for that little jolt of joy at the end of a long day.
Something to relax me. Something to bring me a little joy over the weekend. Something to take away the anxiety or frustration or boredom of my life.
The problem was I'd created a pattern of using alcohol to either alleviate or create every emotion I wanted or didn't want in my life. And when you think about it rationally alcohol or food or shopping or any external thing or activity can't actually create emotions for us. But in our minds when we connect happiness or relief with these activities they become habits.
And these habits are difficult to break. As I learned about thought work I came to understand that alcohol was actually my mind's way of trying to create comfort and joy for me. And it would be great if that was actually working.
But there were consequences. I felt terrible the next day. I became used to living my life in a state of semi-hungover.
I felt shame and disappointment in myself. And no matter how many times I promised myself I wouldn't drink I found myself pouring myself another drink at the end of the day. But the story isn't actually about my drinking problem.
This is about what I learned about myself when I recognized that I had a deeper problem that I was trying to fix with alcohol. That deeper problem was in fact what I mentioned earlier. That feeling that even though I had everything I had ever wanted I was still somehow not as happy as I thought I should be.
As my boys became teens I noticed the opportunities for stress only compounded themselves. My boys went from being happy-go-lucky compliant children to grumpy closed-off teens. With each passing year the challenges became more complex.
First I was worried about homework, excessive gaming, and erratic friendships. Then came girlfriends, alcohol, sex, drugs, driving. Let me tell you if I was unhappy and anxious in my life before my kids became teens this was a whole new ballgame.
Each of us has our own personal breaking point where we decide enough's enough. I need tools to help me get through this phase of life. For me I had my breaking point because of my own behavior.
Recognizing it was time to understand what was really going on with me. But if I hadn't discovered thought work at that time for sure my boys teen years would have been my next breaking point. And because I focus my messages so much on our lives as moms with teens this tends to be the place when women come to me for coaching.
Our kids grow up, of course that's inevitable, but each of our teens journeys are different. And because I focus my messages so much on our lives as moms with teens this tends to be the breaking point when women come to me for coaching. Some teens stay connected with their moms telling them everything, maybe telling them too much.
And these moms struggle because they have a lot of information and they're not sure how to help. How do you help your daughter navigate toxic friend groups? What do you do when your son doesn't have any close friends and stays home most nights? How can you step in when your daughter's boyfriend dumps her out of the blue and starts to publicly ridicule her for no reason? Other moms come to me because their teens are shutting them out, staying closed off in their rooms, even being defiant or disrespectful. Some of our kids suffer from depression or anxiety or other medical conditions.
We can find evidence that they're experimenting with drugs or alcohol. We might discover they've been lying to us. We see their grades slipping.
These challenges are enough for the most happy, confident, and well-adjusted of us to find ourselves tossing and turning, unable to sleep at night, wrapped with anxiety, or burning with frustration, even anger, or feeling hurt and utterly rejected by one of the most important people in our lives, our own children. Other women come to me and find that after a lifetime of raising and supporting their children, they look ahead to that time when all of the kids will be out of the nest with dread and fear. What now? Maybe every moment of being a parent hasn't been a walk in the park, but it gave me purpose.
It brought meaning to my life. When we look back, we tend to remember all of the beautiful memories, and we think we're losing something precious, that our life won't ever feel as fulfilling and meaningful again. I can relate personally to all of these challenges.
Having my boys tell me too much and feeling this urgent need to step in and help to take away the pain they're feeling, or having my boys at different times reject me with breathtaking severity and feeling hurt and angry. I also faced this question of purpose years before my boys were ready to leave the nest. Here's the common denominator with all of these situations, from my daily drinking habit to our anxiety, frustration, and sadness related to our kids.
Here's what's underlying all of it. We think that something outside of ourselves controls our emotional life. That's really it.
It is truly as simple as that. I thought wine relieved my anxiety and helped me feel better in my life. Many of us think our kids' behavior or friendships or other relationships, the way they interact with us, we think all of that is the reason we feel anxious and stressed and unhappy.
As you're listening to this, you might be thinking, of course my teen is making me crazy. Do you have any idea what he's doing? When women first come to me, some will ask me things like, I need help getting my teenager to listen to me. Or, will you give me advice about how to get my teen to stop rejecting me? They might also be at a place where they know they need to do something differently.
But it's still often coming from an assumption that if I do it right as a mom, that will fix things, make things better, help our daughter navigate that toxic friendship, get her son to stop experimenting with drugs, help our daughter get over that boyfriend, or our son go out and be more social. We want our kids to feel better. We want them to be open to us so that we can feel connected to them and also so that we can know that they're okay.
This all sounds so rational and obvious. Of course we want our kids to be okay. Of course we want to stay connected with them.
How could we want anything different? But this is also just about us. Because what most of us do is that we think that if we can just fix what's wrong with our kids, fix what's wrong with our lives, then we'll be able to feel happier, less anxious, or sad, or stressed. And I'm not going to lie, when circumstances change in our favor and things really do get better, like our daughter suddenly dumps the toxic friends, or our son gets over the girlfriend, or swears off drinking, maybe a medical condition improves, or everyone just seems happy for a change.
When those moments of nirvana happen, yes, I agree, it is so much easier to find the happiness, or more specifically, to find the happy thoughts. But in life, this perfection doesn't last. The vacation or the holidays end.
Our kids experience pain again. People let us down, or come at us, or stress piles up. The weight doesn't come off.
In fact, it creeps up. The circumstances of our lives just don't match our hopes and expectations, at least half of the time. So what most of us do is we try to change those circumstances so we can feel happy.
Or we try to numb our feelings with food, or alcohol, or other mindless activities so that we don't have to feel as bad. The problem is, neither strategy works. If we think it's our kids making us feel stressed and anxious, then we try to change them or make them feel better so that we can stop feeling so bad.
But spoiler alert, let me tell you what you already know from experience. We can't force our kids to change or to feel better just because that's what we want for them. Maybe you want them to study a little harder, or stop dating someone, or take better care of themselves.
Maybe just stop being such a jerk to you. It all makes perfect sense. They shouldn't be acting this way, we tell ourselves.
We feel so justified in our work to try to change them. It's really for their own good. But what I realized in my life was that I was beating my head against a brick wall.
The more I tried to force my kids to change, the harder they fought to make their own choices. I was waging a war with my own kids about who they were supposed to be. And I realized I was not only losing, feeling miserable, but I was pushing them away.
And maybe most importantly, I realized I was wrong about what was right for them. That's not to say I was wrong in the big picture of life, but I was wrong about needing to fix my boys. I was wrong about needing to step in and teach them a lesson they were only going to learn on their own.
The bottom line is, whether we want to accept it or not, our teens are basically adults. And while we can still set boundaries and have some leverage based on the support we give them, none of this gives us control over their lives. Not over their choices, not over their mind, and most definitely not over their emotional life.
We cannot force them to change. And the hard lesson is, most of the time, the reason we need them to change is because we don't think we can feel okay unless they're 100% okay. Unless they live up to what we want for them.
And my friends, if we can't control our kids, we most definitely cannot control any other person in our life. We can't control how they treat us or how they react to us. We cannot control how they feel.
We can't control other people. We can't control our age or the state of our bodies in this moment. We can't control our medical diagnoses in this moment.
Wherever you are right now, you are right here. For the first time in my adult life, I'm going into the new year without thinking I need to change one thing about my life. Is everything perfect? No.
But every single other year, I've embarked on January 1st with a sense of hope, but also disappointment because I wished I had made more progress on my new year's resolution from the previous year. Sometimes, well often, I would measure my progress in weight. Sometimes I'd measure it in the amount I drank regularly or how much I worked out.
Most definitely in my perception of the quality of my relationship with my boys, how well I was doing and supporting them, how happy and successful they were in my mind. I also measure my progress in terms of my professional goals. In recent years, I focused on my progress building this coaching business.
Exactly one year ago, I did a podcast for the new year titled, Who Do You Need to Be in 2023? And I talked about the reasons it's often so hard to pursue our goals. Definitely worth a listen if you're embarking on some goals and need some inspiration. But what I've really lived into this year that's made 2023 so remarkable for me is that I fully embraced this concept that the only thing I have control over is my decision about who I want to be.
Literally, that's it. But that is everything. When it comes to my teenage sons, I have total control over who I want to be as their mother, how I want to think about them, how I want to love them unconditionally, what boundaries I want to set with them, and maybe most importantly, how I want to have my own back when I make a decision about how I want to love and support them.
While I always will want them to be happy, I know that this is not in my control and it's okay. I can love them in the good times and the hard times. When it comes to my professional goals, I have total control over who I want to be as I try new things, as I believe in myself even when I feel afraid or disappointed, when I keep trying even when I fail.
When it comes to my weight or my health goals, I have total control over who I want to be as I keep my commitments to myself, even who I want to be when I don't. In life, there will be obstacles, disappointments, challenges, hurdles, setbacks, even failure. This will be true for our kids.
It will be true for us. Sometimes I think we make the mistake of thinking that we shouldn't feel disappointed or anxious or angry. We were literally designed to feel a whole wide range of human emotions and the only thing that's happening when we feel pain or when our kids feel emotional pain is that we're viewing our life through a lens of pain.
And you know what? Sometimes that makes sense. Sometimes we can't change our mind about the pain, but other times we're creating unnecessary pain and we have the opportunity to make a different choice. What I've learned as I've continued to practice self-coaching to dedicate my life to this work, what I've discovered is that I am the master of all of it.
My happiness, my fears, my disappointments, hopes, motivation, my commitment to myself and to my family, to the things that are important to me. As I go into the new year, I go into it without needing to fix anything, but with an excitement that I get to recommit to being who I want to be in every moment of my life. This isn't a one-shot deal, my friends.
This is a lifetime of recommitment, of learning and growing. And at the end of the day, I think maybe that's the point of all of this. As you open the door to the new year, I want to invite you to drop that same old resolution and instead focus on creating that next version of yourself.
The version of yourself who believes in the value and importance of your role as a mom, no matter what's happening with your kids. That version of yourself who believes that anything is possible for you and all you have to do is make a decision. How many times have you told your kids that they can be and do anything they want in their life? You've been helping them for 20 years and now it's your turn.
Mom 2.0. Let's do this.
Happy new year, 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.
