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Annemarie Chereso: Discovering Your Truth with Conscious Parenting
545 Plays2 years ago
In this episode, Annmarie Chereso comes on the show to talk about taking out the fear in conscious parenting. For almost two decades Annmarie has taught and spoken at schools and universities, facilitated workshops and trainings for teachers and coached adults and young people. In 2015, she co-hosted Chicago’s first Conscious Parenting Summit featuring international speaker Dr. Shefali Tsabary and Conscious Leadership Group co-founder Jim Dethmer. In 2019, Annmarie published her first children’s book and is currently working on her newest book. You can find her at annmariechereso.me
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Transcript
Introduction: Conscious Parenting and Self-Trust
00:00:25
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of The Art of Authenticity. I'm Laura Coe, your host, and thank you guys once again for tuning in. Today we have Anne-Marie Choreso. Anne-Marie is a friend and she's also somebody who has been working really hard around the idea of conscious parenting.
00:00:42
Speaker
We are going to talk today about conscious parenting, but really what is parenting other than trusting yourself? So discovering your truth, trusting yourself, transforming your life is what Anne-Marie really stands by and has built her career around.
00:00:58
Speaker
She is a podcast host, a meditation teacher, a transformational life coach, and she empowers kids and parents to find an authentic happiness, to be successful and fulfilled in their life. She's got several decades of experience doing this, training educators and students. Today we're going to chat, have a great conversation around what this really means. How does this work in real life? Anne-Marie was really willing to be vulnerable and authentic, and we had such a great conversation.
00:01:29
Speaker
Check her out at Anne-Marie Tureso, C-H-E-R-E-S-O dot M-E, and you can find out more information about her and where to find her.
Anne-Marie's Transformation and Life Plan
00:01:40
Speaker
There'll be notes on my website as well. Check it out at littlesole.school. You can see everything I've been up to, my new book series, The Nature of, and I hope you enjoy today's show. Thank you guys for tuning in.
00:01:57
Speaker
Welcome to this week's episode of The Art of Authenticity. I'm Laura Coe, your host, and thank you guys for tuning in once again. I have Anne-Marie Toreso here. How are you Anne-Marie? I'm really spectacular. How are you?
00:02:11
Speaker
I am good. I'm good. Thank you so much for joining today. Ann Marie is a transformational coach, a meditation coach, and she is interested in taking the fear out of parenting, which we were just talking before the show. I just absolutely love, love, love, love that simple way of putting it for parents out there. I'm a parent.
00:02:35
Speaker
Fear is this underlying current that we all struggle with and don't really talk about. So I love how forward facing that is in your conversation. And I can't wait to get into it. And I appreciate you being here.
00:02:50
Speaker
And Marie and I go back a long, long time, right? Yeah. First of all, thanks for having me. Um, I'm really excited to be here and have this conversation with you. And we do go back a long, long time. We were just talking about it before the show and your last name and pronouncing it. And then I was like, wow, like when was the first time I saw that last name? And my mind started to wander back to, you know, how our paths have crossed.
00:03:14
Speaker
Yeah, we were our kids went to school together. So it's been easily a decade and change, right? Yeah. Yep.
Authenticity vs. Societal Pressure in Parenting
00:03:22
Speaker
Yep. I realized, I don't know about you as a parent, but I realized that my kids have like led me to some of my favorite and best friendships and relationships in life. It's been really fun experience.
00:03:37
Speaker
Absolutely. It's a beautiful life phase because they meet their friends and it's an entire community and you get exposure to this lovely community. Absolutely. Some of my nearest and dearest have come out of my son. Maybe he just has good taste.
00:03:55
Speaker
So true. So part of the art of authenticity is a conversation about living an authentic life and what it means to have success and authenticity on your own terms. And so many different stories have come on.
00:04:12
Speaker
What? I mean, as a parent, I would assume a lot of becoming a transformational meditation coach and helping parents came out of your own experience becoming a parent. But can you take us back to where you were before you were doing all of this and what kind of brought you into this conversation before we talk a little bit more in detail about where you are today? Yeah. My mind immediately went to
00:04:43
Speaker
early earlier in my life when I was my first marriage and I first was becoming a parent and navigating relationship and partnership inside of parenting. Um, and then my mind is also going right now to when I was younger, when I was 16, I had a very clear
00:05:11
Speaker
life plan and a very clear relationship to spirit or intuition. And I didn't know it at the time.
00:05:22
Speaker
So I have this really, really vivid experience of being 16 years old and in the attic of my brother's bedroom and sitting there, they used to have this little like cubby that I would sit in and it was like where we stored like Christmas decorations and stuff. But as a kid, I'm like, ooh, it's my fort and I'm going to hang out in here and have a good time. And, and now looking back, it's like, oh, that's where like I went in and deep.
00:05:46
Speaker
in myself as a kid. That's where I went to get quiet and get still. I didn't even know it. It was just what I was doing. I was journaling, which of course I didn't even know I was journaling at the time. I was just writing my thoughts. I was journaling and dreaming about my future, but I had this graph paper and I had a 15-year life plan for myself.
00:06:10
Speaker
I knew exactly where I was going to be from the time I was 16 to 21, 21 to 20. I had a plan and it was very detailed, like where I was going to live, how many kids I was going to have, where I was going to go to school, all the things. I wrote up this plan on this little tiny piece of graph paper and I took it with
Personal Struggles and Growth
00:06:27
Speaker
me everywhere I go. It all came true. What? It all came true. What's interesting about it is,
00:06:37
Speaker
It stopped at 35. I only went as far as 35. I guess my 16 year old brain couldn't get farther than that.
00:06:43
Speaker
Well, we think 35 is super old when we're 16. That's like the end of life. And I couldn't wait to get to 35 because I thought it automatically meant all these things. I thought it automatically meant I would have long nails because my sister had these beautiful long nails and she was much older than me. And like, and like all the things like you have long nails and you have, you have your, your life is sort of set then, right? And
00:07:09
Speaker
But I couldn't see beyond it. And what's interesting is that when I hit that time in my life, that's when my life started to fall apart. And I make up that my ego wasn't going to let me know that your husband's going to have an affair when you're six weeks pregnant with your third child. You guys are going to go bankrupt. You're going to lose everything. Who would have said yes to any of that?
00:07:39
Speaker
So I was just sort of, you know, you asked this question about success and authenticity. And, you know, for me, I was, I wasn't thinking about my life plan as like, this is what success means. I was just thinking,
00:07:54
Speaker
I was just following spirit or whatever was rising or coming through me and not questioning it. And life then happened. So there was this beautiful marriage for me around listening and trusting and not meddling too much with your soul's calling.
00:08:24
Speaker
It's so interesting though, because as you say these beautiful things, which I believe to be true, you keep...
00:08:35
Speaker
Not equivocating but you keep putting in as a little asterisk, but at the time I didn't know at the time I didn't know so When when you go when you think back to those early years at 16, I just can't believe you had a whole life plan. That's hilarious When you think back to those times and you were following now in hindsight It sounds like you're aware that you were listening and guided and following spirit But you wouldn't have called it that back then. Is that fair?
00:09:02
Speaker
I didn't even know what that was. I didn't have language for it at the time. It was just happening through me and I wasn't questioning it. I wasn't doubting it. I was just like, all right, this sounds like a great plan. Let's do it. There's a real difference. As I became a parent,
00:09:26
Speaker
I started
Generational Differences and Embracing Imperfection
00:09:27
Speaker
to see that life was different and I don't know if it was time, I don't know if it was culture, I don't know what it was. But I do know that when I started applying for preschool for my now 24-year-old son, there was this culture and community like, well, I remember being on the playground and a parent saying to me, well, what college do you want him to go to?
00:09:54
Speaker
I was like, what? Get over there eating the sand? What do you mean by college do I want to go to? It blew my mind open. I thought,
00:10:08
Speaker
Well, my parents didn't ever ask that question. My parents were just like barely getting by. You know, they were just sort of plugging along middle class parents, just trying to get food on the table. And, and they weren't asking these, these, these bigger questions. And that's where doubt and fear started to creep in as a parent for me.
00:10:32
Speaker
Like oh no, is there something I don't know? Am I going to do something wrong? Am I not going to set things up properly and all of a sudden that the window opened or the door opened right and all this fear started to flood in and It started to interrupt my ability to truly be present Because I started getting out there over there looking at others and looking at
00:11:02
Speaker
You know the culture looking in all the wrong places for the answers that were always in me You know, I always trusted them Not because I was like i'm gonna trust this it was just sort of It felt right. I don't know. It just things were happening. I was listening and following and everything always felt Like it was aligned right even without this language Right. So it's so fascinating. It's you're actually
00:11:32
Speaker
putting great language to my own story in a funny sense. I too would have these knowings. I read Plato at 16 as a kid who was a complete fuckup and hated school and I was like, oh my God, what's that? And so I just went to college and studied it nonstop.
00:11:52
Speaker
do a lot of thinking. I just signed up for a ton of classes and then I did really well. So I was like, well, this kid said, you should go to grad school for philosophy. And I was like, okay.
00:12:05
Speaker
went to grad school for philosophy, right? Like it was just like a knowing, um, and a lot of things in my life for that way. Uh, a lot of things and a lot of things that have, that have, um, been good decisions, right? Like when I look back and then there was a flip somewhere where I started to, to think or have fear or start to, um,
00:12:28
Speaker
Maybe get it right. Think it through in a certain sense or question that internal guidance because it's maybe childish or naive to just trust and listen. And then I've come back to trusting and listening. So I guess my question to you as I think about it, because I'm now wondering even within myself,
00:12:48
Speaker
What was that journey? So you're sitting in the playground. You become aware of the fear. You must have spent some time within that fear until you came back to the trust. So what was that process for you? And how did you come back to self? Well, that was a hair. Just that little question. How much time do you have? So gosh, that can take a lot of different. I could pull a lot of different threads there.
00:13:18
Speaker
If we just pulled the thread of that was the time where we were applying to preschool. Let's just say that. The insanity of that sentence is crazy to me. There was this deep knowing in me. My son, we're supposed to be at this particular school. I just knew it. And I didn't have an explanation for why it was just this knowing.
00:13:44
Speaker
he didn't get in. He didn't make the cut. And there was still something in me. I'm like, but I know that's, I know, like I know, you know, I just know. And I stuck with it. And eventually he ended up getting in there.
00:14:03
Speaker
Then I was just trusting. There was this dance between trust and not trust. There'd be this way in which I just know this, and then others, my ex-husband, the culture, people would start to introduce doubt, and I would entertain that doubt, and then I'd lose trust in myself, and then something would happen. There would be a consequence or a result.
00:14:28
Speaker
But I wasn't always paying attention to the consequences or results. I was just sort of stuck in my fear-based patterns. And then there was also this part of me that was really starting to get trapped in the perfection model of trying to do this right. So I think very early on, I started to misidentify my role as a parent.
00:14:58
Speaker
as, well, I am here to support you in not suffering. I think there was a story running me way deep down that I wasn't even aware of. I'm pretty sure anyone who's listening in right now has had the thought, if you've had children, has had the thought, I'm not going to do that thing my parents did.
00:15:26
Speaker
I'm going to make sure when I have kids, I don't do that thing. Yup. At least is there just one thing? Because I think there might be a list. Yeah. There's a whole list. And I'm sure you, like me, read a million books when you were on your parenting journey. And we were all doing it on this quest to do it right so that our kids don't suffer. So we don't make mistakes.
00:15:55
Speaker
And I was so addicted to doing it right. I was so committed to like, I'm going to get this right. And I, I forgot or I didn't understand or I didn't realize the value of suffering, of struggle. Like if you just think about like,
00:16:20
Speaker
when our kids are learning to walk, how hard it is for them to just learn to use those muscles in their legs. It takes nine months for the body to prepare itself to walk. That's an average, right? Excuse me, excuse my cough.
00:16:38
Speaker
And there's a lot of struggle
Rethinking Success and Embracing Life's Challenges
00:16:40
Speaker
along the way. And we as parents, we're just sort of witnessing and guiding our children as they're going through that journey, that struggle. But as they age, we start seeing them struggle and we start interfering, we start interrupting, we start getting in the way because, well, I make up because we're so selfish. We're so selfish as parents.
00:17:05
Speaker
Because we don't want to be judged. We don't want others to think we're doing it wrong. We want our kids to love us. We don't want to navigate or deal with the consequences of not getting it right. Right. Right. Right. That's right. So what's going on in our adult population that
00:17:32
Speaker
has led to so much of a need to perfect our children because I'm really grateful that calling deep within me was very loud with my son. And I was sitting in
00:17:51
Speaker
Soccer he was little and boys in soccer for whatever reason and he wasn't interested He was athletic and uninterested absolutely not competitive. He was more artistic
00:18:05
Speaker
And the ball would roll by and he would watch it and he could care less. And something in me, I'm an athlete. So part of that was like, Oh my God, I'm a same sex couple. So I'm like, Oh God, people are going to judge me that there's not a father and he's not, he's a boy when he's not doing, you know, athletics and there was this narrative starting to kick up. And then several of my friends had three, four, five different activities. Their kids were already enrolled in.
00:18:30
Speaker
And I had nothing other than soccer. And I started to have this conversation with myself that I'm falling short. Yes. And I stopped. And I was like, wow, this is a moment, Laura. Make up your mind. And for some reason, this has been a theme in my life. I have these
00:18:48
Speaker
these moments of absolute clarity and that's how it's worked for me and I just chose in that moment to not do it and like let the consequence be what it was he has successfully been involved in almost zero activities most of his life but he has very little anxiety and I just I just made that decision but it's um it was such an overwhelming
00:19:13
Speaker
fear, perfection, other people, conversation kicking up in me. It was so toxic and it was so about me to your point, right? I wasn't even thinking about him. So we got in the car and I said, do you want to do soccer? And he goes, no.
00:19:31
Speaker
I'm like, okay, well, that's pretty simple. I mean, right? She's not interested. Why does it have to go past that? So what is going on? Because right, anybody who's not a parent too, I think it's so important. This isn't about parenting. There's an internal voice that comes up because we have these children and we like to, I just, Anne Marie, I always feel like the non-parents out there
00:19:54
Speaker
Can get lost in these conversations and I'd love to weave them in because it's it's has zero to do with parenting It's something within us that rears its ugly head because these children are an obvious place to dump it all but what's going on with us as a as a generation as a culture that we are so Filled with this Internal narrative Yeah, well, I love that that
00:20:24
Speaker
threat because
00:20:26
Speaker
Parenting is like a magnifying glass mirror, you know how as we are getting older like the regular mirror doesn't work anymore So we need to magnify glass. Yeah So we're all mirroring each other. So we're all parenting each other period whether we have children that come through us or not I'm parenting you in this moment. You're parenting me We're all guiding one another and bringing each other home and our kids are just a giant magnifying glass
00:20:54
Speaker
Because they're a giant reflection of us, and we get super attached. We see ourselves in them. We feel responsible for them. There's all these ways in which we're tethered. So to me, parenting is just a magnifying glass for personal growth. And we get to see all the ways we don't love ourselves. We get to see all the ways we don't trust. And to me, parenting is just a deep dive to spiritual growth.
00:21:24
Speaker
to awakening, to coming back, to loving myself unconditionally. That's the gift for me. So what's 100%? I actually dedicated my book to Nate. It's my spiritual teacher.
00:21:42
Speaker
Yeah, because no question, but people don't see it that way. We see it the other way. We see it as we're here to teach them. We need to fix them, protect them, save them. What is going on within us?
00:22:01
Speaker
that brings that up, right? Why are we unwilling to allow the mirroring to happen? And I will say again, cause I asked, but I just, you do this all day long. Are we particularly in need of healing as a generation? Because it's really something what's going on with our kids right now.
00:22:31
Speaker
That's a good question. Are we particularly in need of healing? I don't know the answer to that question in relationship to past generations, right? I do think if you look at the evidence of the world around us and the state of the world around us, it seems like it's a collective catalytic moment.
00:22:56
Speaker
There's the world is coming to an end. There's global warming. There's this recent pandemic. There's all sorts of things that are coming to a head collectively in the collective consciousness. So I do wonder, is there something particular going on generationally?
00:23:15
Speaker
But my belief about us as a species is that we're here to evolve and every generation has an opportunity to heal the DNA of the past generation. And if I don't take responsibility for healing,
00:23:35
Speaker
what my parents were unable to heal and their parents and my grandparents and so on. I'm just going to pass that on to my kids, which then goes into the collective, which then impacts the entire world. My job is really like, can I wake up and heal? To what extent am I available to heal?
00:24:01
Speaker
such that I am not passing on to my children more than they're required to heal.
00:24:11
Speaker
That's so do we have more or less? Um, I don't know. I don't know the answer to that But it certainly seems like we have a whole lot work to be doing right now Yeah, yeah the level of um stress and anxiety for how much these kids have available Seems interesting to me so talk to me about fear then you mentioned we mentioned at the beginning That you really like to take the fear out of parenting. Um
00:24:36
Speaker
First of all, I guess, how do you define fear? Is it a global word that you use to kind of be a catchall for for a long list of emotions? Is it kind of the Marianne Williamson path of fear love thing or is it how do you how do you think about fear? I think I would think about it more like Marianne Williamson, like in any given moment as humans being on this planet.
00:24:59
Speaker
We are coming to our experiences from one of two places We're either in a deep place of trust and surrender Or we're in a place of fear when the ego starts to get overly involved You know fear arises. It's when we're not trusting what's occurring and I want to make that distinction because
00:25:25
Speaker
I think there's so much fear in parenting in particular because the ego is so tied to how we're being perceived by others and simultaneously tied to this like deep love and responsibility we feel for this other human being, right? I remember the moment, you know, I was a huge coffee drinker before I got pregnant with my first.
00:25:51
Speaker
Three times a day at Starbucks. I mean, it was like, this is what I'm doing. And then I got pregnant, and you read the books, and the doctor's like, you shouldn't be drinking caffeine, blah, blah, blah. So I stopped. And then I was nursing him for a while. And I was like, I treated my body differently when I became pregnant. I started eating more healthy.
00:26:11
Speaker
And then I remember this moment, certain weeping after I stopped breastfeeding him and I was like, oh, my life can go back to normal, right? And then I thought, why would I treat my body any differently when I'm not caring for him? Like, why is he a bigger priority than me? And it was this way, it was just this lightning bulb moment.
00:26:39
Speaker
I don't know how it just got off on that tangent more, but this fear, I don't know, I'm sort of lost right now how I got on that tangent.
00:26:50
Speaker
We were talking about the idea of like trusting what's occurring and allowing ourselves to be in the moment. Oh, perfection. Yeah. And perfection. It's like, there's a right way to parent so that this human being, you know, is okay over here in my, I'm pointing to my finger because we're on a podcast, this human being, meaning this other person that I am entrusted for caring for. Like I was prioritizing as a mama bear,
00:27:18
Speaker
this role i'm now playing taking care of this other human being and And so so we have so much fear when it comes to parenting and the role we play And being perfect and getting it right and wanting these humans to be okay And we've just stopped trusting the universe we've we've truly stopped trusting the universe and
00:27:47
Speaker
It's really a disservice to us all when we get overly involved. Yeah. Yeah. It's, there's an irony, Amory, like we, um, we put all this perfectionism into our children so that one day they can have a full life.
00:28:08
Speaker
And then the idea that there'll be parents potentially at some point and then they will sacrifice, I guess, their own commitment to themselves based on your story, right? Like prioritizing your child's
00:28:22
Speaker
well-being and quite frankly, right? Like the self-love is missing. There's the love for the child, but the self-love isn't as strong. And so the hope is I'll just take myself, but my son at some point feels amazing about himself and that's why I'm pouring so much into him.
00:28:39
Speaker
But then to think maybe at some point at 30s and 40s, he'll put that into his kid and he won't prioritize himself anymore. How do we hold space for both the idea of loving the people around us fully and loving ourselves fully? And it doesn't have to be a sacrificial lamb to this taking care of somebody else in a perfectionistic way out of fears and doubts.
00:29:03
Speaker
as opposed to like, you know, staying within a loving vibration with ourself, taking care of ourself and caring for others. And I think, I don't know how you feel about it, but I wonder if there's something deep within us that doesn't feel we can simultaneously care give and take care of ourselves without feeling selfish or
Trust, Love, and Self-Care in Parenting
00:29:27
Speaker
Right? All that kind of stuff. It's just the ego. So you started asking this question, like what's the difference between fear and love or how do we define fear? And to me, the fear is all about anytime the ego gets overly involved because the ego believes it knows what's best.
00:29:46
Speaker
Right and we forget the spirit we forget the soul we forget the universe and there's also a context in which we are around parenting that You know, I don't want my kids to be stressed I don't want my kids to be anxious I don't want my kids to have issues I I want my kids to love themselves and all the things that we want for our kids and by the way, it's none of our flippin business
00:30:12
Speaker
It's none of my business if my kid is happy. It's none of my business if my kid is stressed. It's none of my business if my kid is doing drugs or acting out. It's not my business if my kid's happy. It's just not my business. And the- Whoa, that's a big one. I know a lot of people are raising an eyebrow. What do you mean by that? It means like, who am I to say
00:30:41
Speaker
what their journey is. How am I to know what their path to love is? I don't know that one of my kids, between my husband and I, we have nine. I don't know if their path to unconditionally loving themselves
00:31:01
Speaker
Is to really struggle first I don't know. I don't know if they need to be an addict To you know, break down. I don't I don't know like I needed to get into a really highly dysfunctional marriage where my husband Had an affair and left me when I you know gave birth to our third child and we lost everything like that was my curriculum
00:31:27
Speaker
That was what I needed to break it all down by the way. And I needed to get into a second relationship where my now husband also was unfaithful to me. I still didn't get the curriculum. So when we think about our kids just take it struggling in school and they fail a class, we're like, they need a tutor. And we need to figure this out. We need to get to the bottom of it. And we don't just stop and go, huh, why?
00:31:53
Speaker
My kids are stressed. My kids are anxious. My kids are depressed. How beautiful. How beautiful. How is that here for them?
00:32:02
Speaker
Right. Rather than us going, we got to fix them. Okay. This is happening. My kids depressed. We need to get them a medication. We need to get them some, we need to get them therapy. We need to do this. We, we, we lack curiosity as parents and we get into righteousness so quickly. And we think that our generation of kids were stressed and anxious and depressed and suicidal and all the things. We think there's a problem with them, but we have not stopped to look at ourselves.
00:32:32
Speaker
Yes, and the problem with ourselves is that we judge All of those emotional states that you're talking about is wrong within ourselves Right. We are all trying to be perfect and fix and solve ourselves in this one note way it's so important and Marie what you're saying in so many ways because
00:32:55
Speaker
I believe until we stop wanting to say the only way to live life is to live it free of problems within ourselves. Right. And that that's quote unquote the pursuit of happiness and the goal of life is to just be happy and stress free and to your, your map of life. Like I'm going to map out my life and at 35 it's going to be smooth sailing from that point forward. Right.
00:33:22
Speaker
I think there's a belief of people is once I get myself into a position of, I'm going to grind them to work, I'll get my job, I'll get the kids and then I'm just going to sail into the sunset. That is actually a goal. First of all, how boring could it possibly be to sit around and do
00:33:41
Speaker
kind of nothing except to have one emotional state forever of like, right? But that's not why we're here and you quickly walked past curriculum and we're here on different journeys and the journeys are unique to us. What does that mean for you? Because I know with the Akashic Records now that means, you know, specifically Soul Journey for me, but I think it's such an important conversation.
00:34:05
Speaker
to explore for the listeners out there because this is so prevalent in our culture right now, this idea of pursuing happiness, getting everything the way we needed to be, and then we will just be in this place, this new sailing. We put it on our children, we try to fix and solve them, but we're doing it to ourselves. Yeah.
00:34:27
Speaker
The the the two words that just kind of stuck with me that you said is pursue happiness You know, we're always in the pursuit of happiness and I think You know, I I have this Program that is not currently running but it's it's my current title is everything you need to learn about being human that you won't learn in school and it's like we teach our kids and we've learned
00:34:59
Speaker
how to pursue something in the future, but we haven't learned how to really simply just be in the moment where happiness really is, where peace really is, where equanimity really is.
00:35:16
Speaker
And so we think if I plant all these seeds i'm gonna get there one day and this is the lie That we're telling our kids That our kids are reflecting back to us through their stress through their anxiety through their depression. They're saying Like wake the fuck up. I don't know if you need to bleep that out. Sorry. Um
00:35:38
Speaker
wake up people like when I was having a conversation with a friend of mine recently and I'm like, I don't think we make this adulting thing look very good.
00:35:49
Speaker
Our kids are looking at us going, I don't want to touch that. You don't look happy. Your marriage or your relationship doesn't look very satisfying. You're stressed all the time. You work endlessly. If you're telling me that I could do all this now, and by the way, be really miserable because I'm miserable, I have to do all this to get there.
00:36:12
Speaker
What I don't want to do that. So are we asking ourselves? Why are Millennials and Gen Z's like rebelling? That's what they're rebelling against. They're saying look in the mirror folks Whatever formula you had it's not getting you to where you want to be and I'm numbing out on my social media because I'm avoiding
00:36:34
Speaker
Stepping into that no one's teaching me how to be happy in this moment how to how to not pursue happiness But actually be in the experience of it in this now moment because you're telling me I have to suffer through school and academia and like like either way get up at six in the morning and rush to school and have eight hours of school and be in front of a screen and do all these things and join the soccer team and Do all the things so that one day?
00:37:04
Speaker
one day you can be happy. What a racket. Well, and the happiness to your point, right, is the one that
00:37:14
Speaker
you're projecting and they're like, you're not happy. Um, and so why would I want to work that hard for that? Because at least our parents sold happiness better. I mean, they lied better than we do. Well, my parents didn't even have time to sell me happiness because they were simply like the blessing of my parents is they didn't have money.
00:37:37
Speaker
They're just middle class folks trying to put bread on the table, trying to do the best they can. Yeah, but that's what I'm trying to say. They were clear like, look, we're working hard to make sure we have food on the table and things like that. They weren't trying to say,
00:37:52
Speaker
this perfectionistic happiness, right? And they are concerned by the fact that that's what they were up to and that they were sort of unapologetically like, there's nothing wrong with this. This is a nice life. Like be, be okay with that. That I'm proud of the fact that I'm earning a living. I'm proud of the fact that I have food on the table and that, you know, my children are dressed and fed and off to school. And that's enough. You mentioned about happiness and pursuing happiness and that until we're better in the moment,
00:38:22
Speaker
And then you had said being better in the moment is there's beauty in the imperfection. So I just wanted to backtrack for a minute. So if we're not pursuing happiness, right? Which I believe to be true. And we're teaching our kids like, okay, let's just be in the moment where maybe things aren't so comfortable, right? Yes. Can I love my kids suffering?
00:38:52
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. What does that mean to you? What does that mean? That means, can I just be with, oh, like he's really suffering right now. He's really struggling and there's such beauty in this struggle. And what's mine to do is not, you know, going back to that toddling example, like I can't walk for him.
00:39:18
Speaker
I can't do that, but I can stand here, hold my arms open wide and receive him as he's learning and getting up on his feet. That's what I think we're here to do as parents, as partners, as people for one another. It's like, can I just be with you in your struggle?
00:39:44
Speaker
hold you in it. And sure, can I share my wisdom with you, but not in service of making you different or bad or better or wrong? Can I just share it and serve of like, I want to turn the light on a little bit and maybe you can see a little more clearly and maybe not. And by the way, even as I hear myself speak, like who am I to say there's a clearer way to see, right? So it's again, it's like,
00:40:14
Speaker
Can I go back to trusting that benevolent, deep trust? Can I really trust that whatever journey this being is on that's come through me and moved through me on the planet and I'm sharing space with, can I trust that that is the perfect journey for their awakening? Exactly getting them where they need to be. Yeah, right.
00:40:40
Speaker
And I love this image. I can't get out of my head of a child learning to walk because I would never get down on the ground and take his little feet and move them one by one, right? And be like, Oh my God, if he ever falls, that's not okay. So I'm just going to hold him because then his legs will atrophy and he'll never actually walk and he'll never find it in his own body. It's such a perfect metaphor, right? Because
00:41:05
Speaker
You know, if you think about the little babies, I mean, they do nothing but fall as they're learning to walk and you go up. That's okay. That's okay. And you like help them up and it's kind of funny and you like let them do it again and again and again and again and again.
00:41:24
Speaker
And I don't know how to help him move his feet and I don't know how to help him find the equilibrium of balance. Like it's such a beautiful, beautiful metaphor. Um, but I sit with him and I watch him and if it's been too much and he's exhausted, we like stop and get a little like, you know, hot cocoa or something, right? So there's this beautiful interplay in there. And if you think about that in life, right?
00:41:49
Speaker
We're so uncomfortable because you swap out walking with an emotion and it's like, Oh, you're sad. Oh, we got to fix that. We got to change that week. Or I, I'm so uncomfortable because of my own fears. I can't be around it or something. So I'm going to leave or, um, be frustrated by it or think it's wrong. Um, we, we haven't been taught, I would say that
00:42:14
Speaker
most of us, that's not true everyone, but most of us, particularly this generation, our generation, we weren't taught how to be with our emotions.
Modeling Authenticity and Emotional Honesty
00:42:26
Speaker
So you think about our parents and our grandparents, our grandparents coming out of the depression era and it's just about survival and all the things that every generation has passed on.
00:42:35
Speaker
And I was taught as a kid, don't cry, don't be angry, stop that. Be happy. Ignore, avoid, deny anything negative and get to happy.
00:42:49
Speaker
you know, when we watch our kids struggle and walk, you know, you're right. Like if we don't build those muscles of tolerance, um, they atrophy. And so because we're so uncomfortable with our own discomfort, we want to hurry up and fix our kids so that we don't have to A, be in our own discomfort and B witness theirs. And so the beauty of struggle and suffering is,
00:43:14
Speaker
I can, I actually like the love, the capacity of love that I have inside me is so expansive that I can hold my discomfort in your discomfort simultaneously without collapsing. And that is the beauty of parenting because I get into, I get to practice being in that space over and over and over and over again. And when I'm watching my kids walk,
00:43:43
Speaker
I trust that they're going to figure it out. To your point, when they're tired and done and we go have hot cocoa or whatever we're going to do, I don't tell them they're tired. They just know it and they're like, yeah, I'm served on this. I'm going to go eat that Lego. I'm done and we don't go, come on, get back up, give it another try. What's wrong with you, you loser? We need to get you a walking coach. We don't do any of that. We just go, all right.
00:44:12
Speaker
That moment is over. And now we're all going to be in this next moment. So our babies and our toddlers, they're such beautiful presence guides. They're like, well, this is what's here now, and this is what's here now, and this is what's here now. And something's coming up for me that I want to blur that is related, but you didn't necessarily ask. But this idea that I have a 23 year old son,
00:44:43
Speaker
And I think there's a narrative around parenting that we are supposed to show up in a particular way around our kids.
00:44:53
Speaker
like couples shouldn't argue in front of their kids. We should keep things peaceful. I shouldn't break down in front of my kids. I went through a really difficult divorce and all the books and everything I read and all the really great therapists are like, you need to hold it together in front of your kids and
00:45:16
Speaker
Which by the way, they know energetically you're not together, right? Of course they do. Yeah. Of course they do. So now you're telling them a lie. Yes. And you're teaching them to doubt their intuition. Yes. And you're teaching them, it's not okay to have your feelings however they're arising. So we're talking about authenticity here.
00:45:39
Speaker
If I'm authentically feeling sad or scared or upset and I'm withholding that in front of my children, I am now teaching them to ignore themselves and that it's not okay to feel my feelings.
00:45:56
Speaker
So when I woke up to this I start and i'm teaching them not to trust i'm teaching them not to trust myself i'm teaching them not to trust themselves and teaching them not to trust the universe It's a horrible lesson now. I want to say a little caveat Of course, we want to make sure that we're not um
00:46:17
Speaker
out of integrity and getting overly dramatic. And, you know, there's a way to be with our emotions from fear when we get in these cognitive emotive loops and we get really dramatic about our emotions. And there's a way to be with them from true love, like Jill Bolte Taylor's work, you know, an emotion moves through us in about 90 seconds and that's an authentic emotion. We can have disingenuous emotions that are sort of thought-based. So we want to be careful about knowing the difference in ourselves and our bodies.
00:46:47
Speaker
But I practice really modeling that in my home so that my kids can hold that space, have the capacity to hold it, and be in right relationship to their emotions.
00:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, and you're bringing up a really interesting point right like it's not for them then to care give for you Right. It's not like oh i'm going to be authentically in my emotions and now i'm going to throw it up all over my spouse my partner um my children and ask them to care give or put up with you know behaviors that are um
00:47:25
Speaker
dysfunctional dysfunctional. Thank you. But it's to teach this idea of the walking that we can sit in it, um, stay relaxed within it. And it's totally normative to have the experiences and nobody has to lie about it and, um, also not tolerate what is dysfunctional. And you can say, okay, I'm no longer comfortable with it as well. Right. Yes. Yeah. You know, you brought up, um,
00:47:54
Speaker
this idea of not knowing what's somebody's authentic path a couple times. And so I just wanted to loop back around to it because it's such an important point that I don't think we talk about as a culture with our friends. We all have this feeling of knowing, right? Like I just start there. I know what my friend's going through and I know what they need to fix it. And I know what my family members are going through and I know what
00:48:23
Speaker
my children and specifically really need and who they are and what's right for them. And all of it, to your point, is through this ridiculously polyanic lens of perfection. So this place of not knowing, how do you access that and hold that? Because there's so much within our minds that wants to fix or solve or actually believe we understand
00:48:53
Speaker
exactly where somebody is and what they need in a particular time. So what are your thoughts on somebody who's out there who suffers with this, which we all do, a desire to insert a belief at all that you actually know what's best for somebody else when you don't even know what's best for you at most times, right?
00:49:20
Speaker
I think we do know what's best for us most times and that goes into the trust factor. When we get quiet, when we really listen, we know what's of highest and best service to us in that moment.
00:49:42
Speaker
But we aren't that way. We're in a really busy culture. We busy ourselves away from our knowing, in service of control. We're just giant control freaks. And when we get into parenting, we're control freaks on steroids.
00:50:00
Speaker
So we're trying to control our own experience and now we're trying to control other human beings experience. And I would say that the stress, the anxiety, um, all the things that we're seeing right now in our children is one, a giant middle finger to our need to control our kids and our kids. Anxiety is a reflection of what we're not facing in ourselves.
00:50:27
Speaker
They're over there saying, please stop controlling me. Stop it. Stop doing all this to me. Look at the results here. I think what we're not facing is our fear about stepping into the unknown, our fear of uncertainty, because it goes back to we don't trust, we have the capacity to hold it all.
00:50:58
Speaker
And so and I don't want to risk, you know that I don't want to risk that but if we knew how powerful we really were if we knew how powerful that space of unconditional love of acceptance truly was We wouldn't be afraid Hmm. Yeah. Yeah, and how do we step into that? That empowered self a little and that knowing
00:51:27
Speaker
To me, it's a deep journey of acceptance. So when I'm working with parents, 90% of my coaching is just asking parents two questions. And the first question is like, where are you right now? Are you in a state of trust or fear?
00:51:46
Speaker
I learned this model from my friends over at the Conscious Leadership Group. It's really, can I radically identify my being, my state of being in this now moment in a state of deep trust or a state of fear? The more clear I can be with where I'm starting,
00:52:07
Speaker
the more empowered I can be around the choices I make from there. But most of us are asleep. We're below the line. This just happened to me today. We're below this line, this model that I use. The line is an identifier of up here above the line, I'm in a state of trust.
00:52:30
Speaker
I'm surrendered. I'm allowing whatever's occurring, whether I like it or not. I'm not in a state of judgment about what's occurring. I'm just at ease. My child is, is using drugs. My child is, you know, failing in school. My child is drinking, whatever. Like, ah, okay. That's occurring. I may not prefer that, but I'm not going to actively resist it either.
00:53:00
Speaker
I'm going to be in curiosity now. How is this here for both me and them? So that's the state of trust. The state of fear is
00:53:10
Speaker
I got to get the therapist. We got to ground them. We're going to take their phone away. This is not okay. This behavior is bad and wrong. I'm going to tell you all the reasons why. I'm going to get all the statistics. I'm going to collect my friends around and talk to my friends and others. I'm going to affirm my belief that it's not okay and it's dangerous and it's dysfunctional and oh my God, it's going to set that on this horrible path for their future.
00:53:35
Speaker
And I do all that to control that part of me that's just afraid to be in uncertainty. That's just afraid to be in the unknown. So from that place, my body is going to be constricted. I'm going to be defended. I'm going to lack curiosity. I'm going to start trying fixing control. And I'm going to get into all my patterns, my fear-based patterns that were set way back when I was two and three years old.
00:54:03
Speaker
in my family system. And so I just invite people's parents. Can you like identify right now in this moment, whatever's occurring, can you identify if you're in a state of fear or trust? Because from that state of fear, you are absolutely going to create trauma. Your ego's in charge.
00:54:23
Speaker
And can you just accept yourself? Like, can that just be okay that you're a human being on this planet, raising these people in this culture and you're afraid? Like, let that be okay. So second question I always invite parents into asking people, can you just accept yourself for being afraid? There's nothing wrong with that. Right. Right. We hate to admit that, huh?
00:54:50
Speaker
We hate it. We do not give ourselves permission to be human. Right. Right. And being human
00:54:59
Speaker
Is to be afraid is to spend a lot of time in fear-based thinking it's very very very Much how the human brain is organized. It's not a bad thing. The fears are there to sometimes help you, you know I always say you're walking down the street you're deeply in a conversation and you have that little fear that tells you to look up and There's a bus that's like right there, right? So fear is part of our Ecosystem to help us but it's sometimes misguided and yeah
00:55:29
Speaker
Well, it's one of the things that I yeah, can I say one more thing one of the things I really um that I work towards helping people do is identify um fear from a place of ego and fear from a place of love And so the one that the situation needs to describe like fear can come through love where like don't cross the street There's a bus coming boom, you know, that's like a really um
00:55:57
Speaker
organic awareness like that's wake up it has something here of service and then fear from the ego is often Rooted in the future rooted in control. So being able to identify that in and of yourself is really a key to you know human effectively
00:56:18
Speaker
Yeah. That's so cute. Yeah. Yeah. And that's a beautiful way of saying it, right? Because the one fear sort of arises within you as a knowing. And the other one is sort of a ruminating obsessive thing, which is the indication to me that it's ego based, right? Cause I'm, I'm compulsively thinking something versus something is arising within me. That's trying to tell me something to, to listen deeper within myself.
00:56:46
Speaker
Yeah, like you're going to cross the street wisely. You're going to look both ways and go slowly, but you're still going to cross the street. Yeah. But that other fear, the ego based fear is like, maybe crossing the street is not a good idea. Maybe you should just stay over here on this side of the street. Wait, maybe we should do this and that, you know, like, and all of a sudden we get over here. Yeah. Yeah. And it holds us back. So, you know, just like, Oh, there's wise fear and there's unwise fear.
00:57:14
Speaker
Yeah, I love it. Oh my God. Well, we could, um, we could discuss this, I think for the next three, four hours. I really appreciate you coming on, sharing your ideas. Um, I know that there's so many parents out there who, um,
00:57:31
Speaker
you know, struggle with this. And there's a lot of shame in admitting to it as well. So if people are interested in discussing this, working with you, working, I know you work in groups and you work with, you do workshops, you do teachings, you do meditations. How do they find you? How do they participate in your work?
00:57:52
Speaker
No, thanks for asking. So people can find me right now at Anne-MarieCheraso.me. I'm sure you'll put that in my show notes because no one's going to know how to spell any of that. But yeah, people on Instagram, you can find me at Anne-MarieCheraso. That's a fun place to hang out and spend some time. Yeah, and I'd love to be in touch with anyone and everyone who's interested in exploring this lens more deeply as a parent and as a partner and as a person.
00:58:20
Speaker
I really, really enjoyed the conversation. Laura, you and I could go on for hours and maybe we'll grab coffee and do that soon. Oh, I would love it. Thank you so much. I'm really going to take away this idea of the little child and the idea of atrophying little feet and that you can't walk one by one. It's a beautiful thing to think about. And for anybody out there who's listening
00:58:44
Speaker
I'll have it up on that website, and I encourage each and every one of you to maybe surrender in a little bit today and think about what part of yourself or your friends and family that you can accept perhaps as just their little steps towards their path and their future. Thank you, Anne Marie, for coming on. Thanks, Laura.