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107. Using Our Past To Reshape The Future- with Leila Casey
76 Plays3 years ago
Leila Casey is an entrepreneur and public speaker. She shares her story of being the youngest daughter of first generation immigrants fleeing the Iranian revolution in 1979. She speaks to the grief she continues to overcome due to generational trauma. She lives in Burbank, CA with her husband and two children.
As part of her healing journey she runs a handmade sewing business called Leila Casey Creations which has provided her with a much needed creative outlet. She also speaks on various topics that are rooted in authenticity and self discovery to children from elementary school through high school.
Some other topics she talks about:
- Parenting
-Emotional Intelligence
-Gratitude Practice
-Patterns for survival
-Being seen, heard or valued
- Transactional relationships
-Reparenting ourselves first to then parent our children
-Breaking generational cycles
Connect with Leila Casey:
http://www.instagram.com/ LeilaCaseyCreations.
Connect with Kendra Rinaldi:
http://www.griefgratitudeandthegrayinbetween.com
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Transcript
Can We Change the Past?
00:00:01
Speaker
Look, you can't undo your past, but you can use it as a teaching tool to completely reshape and change not only your future, but for future generations. I'm trying to do work so that my children's children's children never know anything other than self-worth, love, abundance, stability,
Podcast Introduction: 'Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between'
00:00:33
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Grief, Gratitude, and the Gray in Between podcast. This podcast is about exploring the grief that occurs at different times in our lives in which we have had major changes and transitions that literally shake us to the core and make us experience grief.
00:00:57
Speaker
I created this podcast for people to feel a little less hopeless and alone in their own grief process as they hear the stories of others who have had similar journeys.
Meet Leila Casey: Entrepreneur and Immigrant Journey
00:01:08
Speaker
I'm Kendra Rinaldi, your host. Now, let's dive right in to today's episode.
00:01:19
Speaker
I have one of my favorite people on this planet with us tonight, today, this morning, whenever you're listening for us this morning. I have Leila Casey on the podcast today. She is an entrepreneur and public speaker, as well as a mom, and more importantly, one of my long, long, long time friends. More importantly, do you see how I emphasize that, Leila?
00:01:47
Speaker
Does it feel long to you? Has it been that painful? Oh, no, no, no, it's been the best. I'm so excited. Leila and I talk about once or twice a week probably, and so it's going to be interesting to be talking, having our conversation be recorded. It's like what's going to be funny and that it's going to be like an interview rather than just a conversation. So welcome, Leila.
00:02:13
Speaker
Thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here. It's an honor to be with you always, but today especially, I'm honored to be on your podcast. Thank you. I'm so happy you're here. So let's share a little bit about you, where you live, your family, your family and so forth. And we'll dive into your story, which today
Family Dynamics and Immigrant Experiences
00:02:34
Speaker
will be
00:02:34
Speaker
talking a little bit about family dynamics and the idea sometimes that we have of what our families were going to be or even just our own upbringing and how those might not end up being. And how we kind of, what would you say that word would be? How we deal with it with that realization that maybe it's a different word would be the right word.
00:02:59
Speaker
I would cope with it. How we cope with that realization in our lives. Then what do we do about it too? Tell us about you. Well, I currently live in Burbank, California with my husband and my two kids. I have two teenagers. I can't believe it. I'm originally from Tehran, Iran. I was born there. I feel like the
00:03:27
Speaker
The perspective from which I tell my story feels very familiar to me whenever I speak to the children of first generation immigrants. So regardless of where anyone I talk to is from, I feel this kinship with children of first generation immigrants because I feel like there's a lot of similarities.
00:03:52
Speaker
regardless of nationality. And a lot of those ideas of how we're all parented are steeped in beautiful concepts like respect, honor, tradition, and the way that we regard family and
00:04:10
Speaker
what in its purest form, all of these ideas are beautiful. But through generational trauma, the way that it translates and is passed down from generation to generation, I think something gets a little confused along the way. Like the lost in translation. Correct. Correct. Correct. And we all
00:04:32
Speaker
because I have many friends that are children of first-generation immigrants. We all seem to share a similar experience in that it's like you're growing up in two completely different worlds, right?
Balancing Two Worlds: Iranian Roots and American Life
00:04:45
Speaker
So for myself personally, inside the four walls of my house, I was being raised as though we're smack dab in the middle of Tehran, Iran. But the moment my foot passed the threshold of the door of my house,
00:05:00
Speaker
I was in America, and I can't imagine what that was like for the immigrants themselves, for my parents' journey and my parents' struggle. A lot of immigrants that come over here, I think
00:05:16
Speaker
It's not necessarily always by choice, right? So we were fleeing a revolution and they had to come here within 24 hours really. And all the money in the bank were frozen. My parents came here with the money in my dad's pocket that day, which was $500.
00:05:35
Speaker
to start a new life for a family of four. And it's a beautiful story, but that's for another day. But it really is a testament to the American dream, how you can come here with next to nothing and start a whole new life. But there's a mourning for the immigrants themselves, right? And my parents, especially my mom, my dad went to college here and then moved back to Iran and had myself and my brother.
00:06:05
Speaker
they didn't want to leave, per se, and everything that they know about parenting. I think for any parent, everything that you know about parenting is what was passed on to you, what was modeled for you, what you internalized. And in most cultures, that is what I find to be like a cornerstone of immigrant parenting is
Parenting Challenges: Shame and 'Tiger Parenting'
00:06:31
Speaker
honor, but through shame, if that makes any sense. The most significant common thread that I find when speaking to other children of immigrants here in the US is almost like the parenting handbook of the immigrant is to discipline through shame.
00:06:58
Speaker
You don't get good grades. It's not that you've done something wrong. Your parent is as though you are wrong. It is so shameful what you've done. They're not disappointed in
00:07:12
Speaker
the act of you didn't get that right. Correct. They are disappointed in you, you know. There's a lot of comparison, I feel like, through immigrant parents. It's, well, so-and-so's daughter is a classically trained pianist. How come you don't know how to play the piano? Well, because I don't have piano lessons would be the first answer to that. But, you know, and
00:07:40
Speaker
especially for all cultures of people that I know that are from the continent of Asia. Not what people would refer to as traditionally Asian cultures, but the continent of Asia. Iran is on Asia as well. It's tiger parenting. What does that mean? What is tiger parenting? I never read the book, but there's this book called Tiger Mom, and it's this very
00:08:04
Speaker
Hustle sort of culture where it's all about The getting more your accolades being successful in everything, you know pushing pushing pushing and It's not really parenting the human being in front of you. It's creating a
00:08:24
Speaker
an extension of yourself that you can be proud of, if that makes any sense. And it's also an aspect into molding into something, right? Would it be like that too? Like you're molding who you want that person to be as an extension of you.
00:08:39
Speaker
You know, I don't know if our parents' generation and any generation prior to that really put much thought into how they wanted to mold their children. They didn't have access to this age of psychology that we grew up with as well. I think that their goal was more
00:09:01
Speaker
status related. And I'm not sure that they would realize or consider that that's what it was, but you want to be able to say your child is a lawyer, a doctor, is, you know,
00:09:13
Speaker
Mary keeps a beautiful home, lives here, drives this kind of car, goes on this kind of vacation. It's raising your child to be honorable as a descendant of your lineage, if you will. You know what I mean? And as that being a reflection of themselves as well. Of them, correct. Of them. And most parents from immigrant families that I have
00:09:43
Speaker
heard stories of. They're not very emotionally literate.
00:09:49
Speaker
I feel like emotional maturity is a language that not a lot of people have expertise in. Not a lot of people are fluent in. And again, I don't think that these things generationally were taught or considered. In my household, for instance, the only emotion that was really acceptable to display was anger.
00:10:16
Speaker
And when one is not emotionally literate, you're uncomfortable with displays of emotion.
00:10:23
Speaker
because you don't know how to regulate your own emotion. So when somebody else's emotions are dysregulated, it dysregulates you as well. So if someone else is experiencing sadness, but you never learned how to cope with sadness, someone else's sadness makes you super uncomfortable. And it's a whole generation of, if you're crying, I'll give you something to cry about. You know what I mean? Yes, yes, yes,
Generational Differences in Emotional Intelligence
00:10:45
Speaker
yes, yes. And what I think that that stems from is,
00:10:48
Speaker
your tears, your sadness that this person who cares about you so deeply can't fix makes them uncomfortable. And so they want to protect themselves to not be uncomfortable, you know?
00:11:01
Speaker
Yes, no, that makes that makes sense. And I, I think that a lot of that would even I would even extend it even further that it not only is of the immigrant, you know, parents of this particular generation, but just probably just that we're in our 40s in our 40s. So probably just our parents generation in that that way.
00:11:20
Speaker
didn't have the tools of that whole emotional intelligence component per se to then lead on to teach to the children. I don't remember necessarily every single time that I was angry of that being dug deeper of like, are you really angry or is it that you're sad? Or are you feeling nervous and maybe that's coming up. Never digging deeper as to what was the
00:11:49
Speaker
Cause of that result of that, you know of that reaction So as I think most people parent the way they were parented, right? So you can't give somebody tools that you don't have in your toolbox I don't think that anyone in our parents generation regardless of Ethnic or cultural background was asked. Hey, how are you feeling? What's going on? How come you're you know, why are you? Exhibiting this behavior nobody was
00:12:19
Speaker
It was more, a parent's role was more regarded as putting a roof over your head, putting food on the table. You know what I mean? Their main job was keeping you alive. Survival, survival. Correct. Their main job was keeping you alive like a houseplant, right? Oh my gosh. Although as you're saying that, I'm just even thinking of my first few years with my kids. Honestly, I was in that mode too. I was just like, as long as they're alive, they're fed,
00:12:45
Speaker
You know, it was like that survival mode myself.
Survival Skills vs. Thriving in Adulthood
00:12:48
Speaker
So I think that's part of what trips us up as well in our growth journey is we develop a certain set of skills to survive our childhoods. And then we continue to take those patterns of behavior into a life that no longer requires survival.
00:13:11
Speaker
And those patterns of behavior no longer serve you. Those habits no longer serve you. And it's those very survival skills that you try to bring into your life every day that actually keep you from thriving.
00:13:25
Speaker
Wow. Okay. As you're saying this, I am just like, just so many ahas even just in this, that the way you worded that just really clicked with me. Now I'm curious then, at what point did you realize that that was something that was happening then for you? Was it in the moment that you became a parent or was it beforehand that you kind of had a realization of like, wait a minute,
00:13:51
Speaker
The moment I became a parent was the moment that the tidal waves of grief over my childhood started to hit me. But I had a deep and vivid awareness throughout my childhood that, you know what, this isn't right how I'm being spoken to. This isn't right how I'm being treated. I don't deserve to be made to feel shameful about my existence.
00:14:21
Speaker
Was a decent kid, you know, I I lied a lot But that was a product I felt that was one of my survival skills. I lied a lot as a result of being Raised in such a strict environment that I couldn't do even the most simple and basic things that my peers were doing I couldn't go to the mall in mixed company with my friends. I couldn't go to the beach with my friends I couldn't go to the movies with
00:14:51
Speaker
I couldn't do a lot of things, and so in order to be able to do just those regular basic things, I started to lie. And then, unfortunately, when you start to do something over and over again, you're developing a habit, whether or not you realize it.
00:15:11
Speaker
If it worked, you're like, well, I can do this again. And because I didn't feel good, seen, heard, worthy in my own household, I
00:15:26
Speaker
became conditioned to look for external validation. And so what that resulted in for me was I became a chameleon. I was whoever anybody in the room wanted or needed me to be in order to get validation from that person.
00:15:44
Speaker
I was one version of myself. Actually, I shouldn't say one version of myself. I was never myself. I was one version of a person in front of this set of people, one version of a person in front of this set of people, one version of a person in front of this set of people, including in my own household. And so it was constant theatrics.
00:16:04
Speaker
which was exhausting to me, exhausting to me. Putting on masks, they call it like these masks that you put on and they're protective. They're there. Yeah. We use them for protection. We use them as a way of, like you said, feeling accepted in those different environments. I'm curious which version of you I got to meet in our 20s.
00:16:26
Speaker
You know, it's in our 20s. It's interesting, Kendra, because you are my longest relationship outside of my relationship with my husband. And if I start crying, you guys, you'll you'll because you are the only person who has been along my journey and attended the funeral of every death of different versions of me throughout the year and the years and has continued to celebrate and
00:16:56
Speaker
um bear witness to all the new the birth more yeah all the rebirths of more healed and uh grown versions of me but um but it was i remember in my childhood knowing man it doesn't feel good and this doesn't feel right to be criticized every single day uh it doesn't feel good and it doesn't feel right to have this emotional instability to feel like i'm walking on eggshells
00:17:25
Speaker
in a minefield constantly. And the hardest part of being able to trying to survive and adapt to that is it was different every day. So it's not like I had this playbook that I'm like, okay, well, if I behave this way, then I can maintain peace in this household. While I wasn't setting the tone for the emotional stability in the household, I was just trying to survive it, react to it. And every day it was different because
00:17:54
Speaker
My parents had never learned emotional regulation, and so if they had a bad day at work, then it was a bad day at home. If they had a bad conversation with a friend, then it was a bad day at home.
00:18:08
Speaker
The most challenging thing, though, the thing that I feel like undermined my self worth the most was there was a lot of withholding of love. So if I didn't correct, correct. So if I didn't perform the way that they wanted me to perform, then all the love was withheld. There was a time period where I wasn't spoken to by one of my parents for three months.
00:18:37
Speaker
And when I say not spoken to, I mean not acknowledged that I existed in any capacity, not looked at. I would say good morning, no response, you know, that kind of stuff. And they say studies have shown that the silent treatment going cold, they call it. But ultimately what it is is withholding of love is more psychologically and emotionally damaging than physical abuse, because physical abuse, at least that person, that child
00:19:06
Speaker
Getting some kind of attention. Correct. Is acknowledged in some way, whereas the other of the silent treatment and the withholding of love makes a person feel as though they have absolutely no worth and no value. So I remember vividly thinking this isn't right. And, you know, like a lot of kids, I'm sure I'm not going to parent my kids this way. And, you know, I'm going to do things different, etc., etc. But what we don't realize is that these
The Role of Unconditional Love in Healing
00:19:34
Speaker
patterns of behavior are being taught to us and and you're internalizing them to such a Subconscious degree that you don't even know you're perpetuating these patterns unless a mirror is shown to you unless somebody points it out to you and That's what having children did for me for sure but before that the the biggest
00:20:00
Speaker
thing that I'm grateful for in my life actually is having met my husband who, aside from being an incredible human being, was the first person to show me unconditional love. I had never seen unconditional love before. And I want to be clear, there's no question in my mind
00:20:19
Speaker
that my parents love me with every fiber of their being. They love me with the maximum capacity that they are able to love another human being. My parents would give their lives for me this very instant. They would do anything for me. That is 100% true. But simultaneously, just as true, is that my parents' love caused me a lot of harm as well.
00:20:48
Speaker
And I have had to spend the bulk of my adult life trying to recover from that love. And I didn't even know that the type of love that was being exhibited in my household was what I will now refer to as transactional. And that's very common for immigrant parents.
00:21:13
Speaker
I don't even want to say immigrant parents. I want to say- A lot of different types. Yeah, all different. So it's love that steeped in obligation and expectation, right? Yes. So you don't realize it, but when somebody who only speaks in transactional relational skills, when they do something for you, you have entered a contract with them that now you owe them.
00:21:43
Speaker
The expectation is never spoken because they don't have those types of emotional skills and relational skills, but the expectation, once it's set, regardless of you knowing the expectation, that obligation is there and now you owe them.
00:22:02
Speaker
And in transactional relationships, people are keeping a ledger. They are excellent accountants. As the kids would say, they come with their receipts. As the kids would say, they come with their receipts. And I remember when you told me this in one of our conversations, and I'm like, oh, I didn't realize that about you. I didn't know you were keeping score of when I maybe called you or not. And he's like, yeah, Kendra, you might have not known, but I was. Correct.
00:22:29
Speaker
that even as our even the friendships yeah oh for sure i didn't realize that i was bringing that same transactional sensibility into every human interaction i was having um i didn't even know it was a thing i thought
00:22:44
Speaker
I thought all of these things were normal. You know what I mean? I thought this is how people conduct themselves. And I had constant expectations with every human being I came in contact with and then what that would result in would be resentment. And because I wasn't emotionally mature at the time, you didn't have any idea that I was resentful of you because I didn't know how to communicate my needs, my boundaries, my wants, anything.
00:23:10
Speaker
But I was holding you hostage to my emotional lack of regulation as well. And the moment that I set these expectations on anybody, I have now made them a thief of my joy because it is almost impossible for somebody to meet expectations that you didn't even know existed.
00:23:33
Speaker
Nobody's a mind reader. You know what I mean? Absolutely. And so I entered my relationship with my husband, not knowing what unconditional love looked like, certainly not knowing how to show it or express it to another person. But the saddest part is I didn't know how to accept it either. I didn't trust it. So in the first couple of years of our relationship, I constantly had to test him to make sure, you know, to make sure
00:24:03
Speaker
And I was holding my ledger book for him as well and writing down my receipts. And anytime something would go wrong, I'd bring my evidence, you know? And the... You're like, wait, hold on. Let me look through my binders. Let me flip through these pages here. Yeah.
00:24:24
Speaker
Hold on a second. But the interesting thing about accountants like us is that you're only keeping your own ledger. You're only looking for the ways that you were of service and now you're being wrong. You're not keeping the other person's ledger. That other person has, in fact, done an equal number of things.
00:24:50
Speaker
that you didn't value and you didn't show appreciation for. I feel like in transactional relationships, the type of people who engage in that are typically driven by ego. It's a false sense of what you deserve. You don't actually have this deep sense of worth. You don't have this knowing of your deserving
00:25:20
Speaker
good things. And so that creates a sense of insecurity. And then from that insecurity, you overcompensate by being like, you wronged me. I deserve A, B and C, whatever it is. And
00:25:35
Speaker
you are then living in a world of scarcity. So instead of living in a world of abundance where, no, there's love everywhere, there's kindness everywhere, you're living in a world of scarcity where you're looking for ways to be wronged because you've always been wronged and that's what you expect and that's what you ultimately deep down inside think that you deserve.
00:25:58
Speaker
You don't think that you deserve to be treated better. And then you get into this habit of confirmation bias, where you are looking for proof that you don't deserve any more than what you perceive you're receiving from, what you perceive you're getting.
00:26:15
Speaker
Right? Yeah, perceive you're getting and I'm wondering too, do you end up sabotaging a lot of these relationships because then you're like, okay, they haven't given me proof that this is so you end up sabotaging it so that you actually can prove your worth or lack of worth by sabotaging this relationship. Oh, absolutely. Look, part of why you're my longest friendship is because I probably sabotaged every friendship under the age of 20.
00:26:44
Speaker
And I can't imagine anybody in my life under the age of 20 who would want to continue to have anything to do with me. You know what I mean? But one of the first catalysts for change for me was when my husband and I had been dating for like two or three years, something like that. And he said, you know, Layla, it's like you're not comfortable unless there's chaos and drama.
00:27:09
Speaker
you're always looking for something to pick a fight about. And at the time I was very defensive and I could not hear any kind of feedback or criticism at all because my ego was so fragile. And I was like, how dare you? And then thankfully, I have always been the type of person that later on I'll sit with it and let it marinate. And I was like, my gosh, he is absolutely right.
00:27:37
Speaker
That chaos and drama and conflict, that is what I think love looks like. That is what is normal. Yes, that's what's familiar to me. That's what's normal to me. And therefore, I'm more comfortable with that. And that was very eye-opening for me. And he continued, bless his heart, to show me unconditional love until I could accept it.
00:28:07
Speaker
You know, I don't want to make it out to seem like he's the hero of my story. I'm the hero of my own story, but he certainly helped move the story along in that I held him in such high regard. I respect my husband as a human being in a way that I respect very few others. And I remember thinking to myself, man, if this guy who I think is so fantastic, thinks I'm so fantastic, there has to be something there.
00:28:36
Speaker
I have to be all right if this guy thinks that I'm okay. And that's where it began.
00:28:43
Speaker
my journey of starting to do things differently because I was finally being shown a different way. I think a lot of people think, because you hear it a lot too in social media and all this kind of stuff, you have to heal yourself first before you can be with anybody else. You have to love yourself first before, but you learn to love yourself in the context of
00:29:07
Speaker
other relationships. I didn't learn to not love myself until that was shown to me. So conversely, someone had to show me how to love myself. I didn't know how to love myself. So that was the beginning of learning not only how to love myself, but that I was so worth loving, right? Yes.
00:29:31
Speaker
But then the real waves, tidal waves, honestly, of grief over my childhood, that started to hit me the moment I gave birth to my first child. And I called it postpartum depression. I'm not 100 percent sure if it was. It went untreated with my daughter. A couple of years later, I had my son and it became exponentially worse.
00:29:59
Speaker
And I couldn't really put my finger on what it was though. I started therapy and we talked about a lot of stuff and I still couldn't really figure out where the grief was coming from. Again, I knew that my childhood wasn't
00:30:20
Speaker
great in some ways. I mean, look, it was beautiful and wonderful and loving in a lot of ways, but it wasn't that picket fence picture. It wasn't the idea. It didn't match up with my expectations, which is very thematic for me, right? I set these unrealistic expectations. It didn't match up with my expectations, but around the age
00:30:46
Speaker
When my daughter turned five, that's when I really started to take a deeper look at, am I practicing the things that I say I'm going to do, right? I say I'm going to do things, but do I actually do those things? So the childhood ideas of, well, I'm never going to parent my kids like that. Am I actually not parenting my kids like that? Am I doing it different?
00:31:14
Speaker
I found that there were some things that needed immediate attention. And my children have been my greatest teachers. They say that, oh, you're raising your kids. You're not, man. They are raising you. And bless my kids' hearts, I make it hard for them. I don't make it easy for them to raise me either. I'm doing it kicking and screaming. But around the age of five is when
00:31:43
Speaker
I started to notice that I had some habits and some patterns. And you had been a parent for five years. Yes. Yeah. Because the first five years was legitimately for me. And I know this is not a lot of mother's journeys. It was not a good look for me, Kendra.
00:32:00
Speaker
I was surviving. No, I get it. I get it. You know that I get it because we would have these conversations. Same for me. I want you to continue that thought, but in that process too, if you can also share with us if you knew that what the emotion, I know we're talking about it being grief because we know that we can label that now, but did you know that that's the emotion you were feeling was grief? No. Especially because we were talking, okay.
00:32:29
Speaker
And I think a lot of us don't really know that. We're like, why am I so depressed and sad? But we don't realize that it is actually grief. Okay, go ahead, sorry, continue. Not only did I not know that it was grief, I was so not in tune with any of my emotions.
Understanding Emotions and Grief
00:32:47
Speaker
Correct, yeah. I didn't know any of them, honestly. I didn't know any of them. It wasn't until my daughter was five years old and
00:32:57
Speaker
I could see these perfectionist tendencies in her. She would not try anything that she didn't already know that she would be proficient in. And I went to Brian and I'm like, and I can see it a little bit in my son as well. Sorry, Brian is my husband. I went to Brian and I was like, dude, what's wrong with this kid? Why won't she try anything? And he just started to laugh. He was like, yeah, it's a mystery where she gets it from. It's a real mystery.
00:33:26
Speaker
And again, all I need is the awareness. Thank goodness. Once I have that awareness, I'm always willing to do the work. But I feel like at any given time in our lives, a human being can only be aware of what they can handle. And prior to these points in life where I have these aha moments, I obviously was not capable of handling
00:33:52
Speaker
knowing these things about myself. Yes, yes, knowing these things about myself. And so a lot of responsibility and work because my God, you know that it's like that's why I think it's like if it's in like spoonfuls, you know, like bite sized pieces and you're like, okay, okay, I could take this bite now work on this right now. But if you were like dumped a whole bucket of all the issues all at once, it's very overwhelming. You feel like you're drowning. Yeah, you feel like you're drowning.
00:34:22
Speaker
So once I realized that I was, because here's the thing, I am a great lecturer. I say good things. I'm a good storyteller. I give great TED talks. I'm a public speaker for the love of me. As you all can hear right now. Thank you. I'm taking the stage. I love it. But with children, you can talk until you're blue in the face. At the end of the day, they're watching what you do. And that's what they're learning. They're not learning what you say. They hear what you say.
00:34:51
Speaker
But they are learning to do what you do. And what I was modeling for my kids at that point in time were these perfectionist tendencies that if you can't, you know, do it 100% perfectly, then don't even bother.
00:35:07
Speaker
And there is no such thing as perfection. It does not exist. It's a fallacy. There's no one who's perfect at any thing. There's people that are exceptional and have put a lot of work into something, but nobody is perfect at it. Even those exceptional people have bad days, bad moments. And so I decided to model for my kids learning something that I thought was hard.
00:35:31
Speaker
But had always wanted to do but I never did it because I didn't think I could be successful at it So I never tried and so I had always wanted to learn how to sew and my wonderful mother-in-law had I had mentioned that to her years ago and she's so great about Picking up these like things that I say and remembering and she got me a sewing machine and it sat in my closet Gathering dust for years and I said, you know what? I'm gonna drag out this sewing machine in the middle of the family room and
00:35:59
Speaker
I'm gonna let the kids see me try and fail and try and fail and then hopefully hopefully Persevere and succeed at something and my daughter had a themed day at school coming up It was cat in the hat day and I said, okay great I'm gonna find I'm gonna learn how to make a skirt for cat in the hat day and I find these YouTube Tutorials and these 12 year olds are on there being like it's so easy. Well, it was not
00:36:32
Speaker
So they would see me in the family room where everyone was together getting frustrated and I would put words to it. That's when I first started to label my emotions in front of the kids so that they knew that they were allowed to express all kinds of emotions and what each one was called. And so I would say, man, I'm so frustrated. I'm going to take a break from the machine, put the machine in time out for a minute, let it think about what it's done, and hopefully it'll act right when I come back to it.
00:36:48
Speaker
It was not easy. Did they say so? Like S-E-W? Yes, exactly.
00:37:02
Speaker
Oh, it was the machines. Yeah. Of course it was the machines. Of course it was the machines. And then I'd come back and sit at the machine and I'd try again and I'd mess up and I'd have to rip out the seams and I'd try again and so on and so forth. It took multiple attempts. All the four letter words were said inside my head because the kids were sitting right there. Which, by the way, I was just thinking, I was just thinking, I was like, wow, this has been a very clean episode. Oh, no. This is the longest I've gone without cursing, Kendra. I hope your audience appreciates it.
00:37:30
Speaker
I'm shaking, Kendra. I'm shaking. It's so much. It's so much pressure. I mean, if you end up cursing, I just write it on the show notes, just, you know, explicit. But I was like, I'm like, wait, I'm like, I haven't heard her curse. I know. I know. I'm shaking from the, it feels so unnatural. That's restricted. It's too much.
00:37:53
Speaker
So anyway, one day I end up with a skirt just in time for Cat and Hat Day. She goes to school. She comes back and she says, oh, Mommy, you won't believe it. Everybody loved my skirt. And I said, that's so great, Ava. I'm glad people love your skirt. I said, did you
00:38:08
Speaker
feel happy you know that people were commenting on it she said yes it was so funny people kept coming up to me and saying and I said that's great I said sweetheart would you have had the skirt if I had not persevered through the frustration through the multiple failures if I had not kept trying over and over again would you have had the skirt and she said no I would not have and I said we have to try hard things and that was the beginning of
00:38:39
Speaker
them showing me what I needed to work on and then me showing them how I worked on it and hoping that they take the lessons from that. So throughout the years, I'd have multiple moments where I would be hit with, again, not recognizing at the time these tidal waves of grief and then ultimately, again, not connecting the dots at the time, but realizing, okay, there's something to work on here. There's something to work on there.
00:39:06
Speaker
and continuing to work on those things. A couple of years ago, though, is when it really hit me like a ton of bricks. My daughter turned 13. And what I didn't realize was along the way at different milestones of my children, the tidal waves of grief were hitting me because it was unlocking episodes from
Healing Through Parenthood and Gratitude
00:39:32
Speaker
my past. So it was very triggering for me as these things were happening.
00:39:36
Speaker
When my daughter turned 13, I could not explain how I was going into a tailspin again. And as I had been conditioned to do, I was locking it down, just stuffing it down, stuffing it down, stuffing it down. Eventually, though, the closet gets too full.
00:39:55
Speaker
continue to stuff stuff in it. It starts to spill out. The suitcase then like bursts open. I'm shoving the doors, but it just will not close and the stuff starts to spill out. And after I ignored and neglected that for a while, I
00:40:17
Speaker
came into a fairly deep depression and was finding it really hard to function. I was crying every single day. My previous therapist had retired. I had to find a new therapist. This was about a year ago. I was telling her, yeah, I'm really struggling.
00:40:34
Speaker
The really important part of this story is how casually I say these words to her, right? I said, yeah, I'm really struggling. I'm crying every single day in the shower. And just like I did from the ages of 13 to 19, probably 60% of the time, 60% of my life from the ages of 13 to 19, I'm starting to daydream about never waking up again.
00:41:00
Speaker
And I say it not only so casually, but almost like I'm telling a joke. I was like, don't worry. I would never harm myself, though. I'm too selfish for that. But for a couple of weeks prior to talking to my therapist, every single night that I would go to bed, I would daydream about never waking up again. And I honestly didn't even remember until I said these words, or I had never said this to my first therapist that I had seen for years when the kids were younger. But from the ages of 13 to 19,
00:41:28
Speaker
a solid 50 to 60% of the time I daydreamed about never waking up again. It just, that's how hard it was to, that's how hard it felt to live. Painful, very painful. And my therapist said to me, um, that's not okay, Layla. Those are called suicidal ideations and that is not okay. And it was,
00:41:55
Speaker
Shocking to me because when you meet it's not okay. That's how I lived Most of my adolescence like I I just thought again It's not like I actively sat there thinking this is normal. You know what I mean? but I didn't think anything of it it was what my life was and I Had made the habit of just soldiering on I just move on to the next. Let's just keep on trucking. Let's just keep on trucking and I
00:42:21
Speaker
What I realized was that the summer that I turned 13 was when I was not spoken to or acknowledged for.
00:42:31
Speaker
for the entire summer. For the three months. Yeah, for the entire summer. And as was the pattern, mind you, that had happened multiple times, but that was the longest time it had ever happened. That happened once a week in my house. But that was the longest time it had ever happened. And what I realized in that moment was these waves of grief had hit me throughout my children's childhood because
00:42:56
Speaker
As I was growing up a handful of times, I remember my parents saying to me, you'll understand when you're a parent, you'll understand when you're a parent. Well, I'm a parent now. And I look at the faces of my beautiful children and I cannot ever imagine doing or saying the things that were done and said to me ever. I'm looking at and that's what it was for me. And I didn't realize it when she turned 13.
00:43:24
Speaker
I'm looking at this child at probably what is arguably one of the most difficult times of life is being a teenager. I cannot imagine not acknowledging her existence and what harm that would do to her. There were many nights in my childhood that I went to bed in tears, not feeling loved and
00:43:52
Speaker
I can imagine my children, I've been a parent for 15 years now, have not a single night of their lives gone to bed questioning whether or not I love them. Not a single night of their lives. And while the grief hits you in waves, so does the healing. The healing comes in waves as well. And it's a never ending journey and process that
00:44:20
Speaker
you're healing yourself or I am healing myself through not just parenting my children but reparenting myself yourself through parenting my children.
00:44:32
Speaker
When I saw my first therapist when my kids were little, every session for like the first few months, I'd say my stuff and my therapist would say, tell me about your daughter, tell me about your daughter, tell me about your daughter. And at the time my daughter is like three years old, two and a half, three years old, something like that. And one time I said to my therapist, dude,
00:44:53
Speaker
Who cares about her man? She can pay money one day and talk to her own therapist and have her own session. I'm here to talk about me. And she said, Layla, you are a broken little girl. And the way that you're going to heal that broken little girl is saying to your children the things that you needed said to you. It's doing for your children the things that you needed done for you.
00:45:22
Speaker
And nothing has been truer for me. Nothing has been truer for me. You know, Kendra, that I have a gratitude practice that I've been doing for over a year now. And it has been so life changing for me. It's one of the best things I've ever done for my life. So every month I choose a different friend and I text that friend every day two things that I'm grateful for. And hopefully that friend texts me back. And if they don't, it's okay. The practice is about
00:45:50
Speaker
me being held accountable to find gratitude every day. And what that has done for me is really rewire my brain to be looking all day long for the things to be grateful for. And you always find what you're looking for. Whatever you plant in the garden of your mind is what is going to grow there. So now I'm looking for the confirmation bias for how many things I have to be grateful for. Beautiful. Yes, exactly. Now you're looking evidence for that instead of the other things. Exactly.
00:46:19
Speaker
It's been life changing and you are by far the best partner I've had in doing that because whatever I would say, you would then ask follow-up questions and we would continue talking about the growth and the gratitude and all this kind of stuff. But I remember one night I was
00:46:40
Speaker
putting my kids to bed, and my son and I had had, and my son is more like childhood me. My daughter is more like adult me, and my son is more like childhood me. And he and I had had, I hate to use this word, but conflict, let's say, I had
00:47:00
Speaker
disagreement. Yeah, we I had said, you know, sorry, buddy, you know, I'm going to take this thing away after observing that it's not benefiting you, blah, blah, blah. It was around video games anyway. And he was pouty and upset and he went into his room
00:47:19
Speaker
And when it was his bedtime, he came and stood in my doorway and said, are you going to come snuggle me or not? I just want to put it out there that he's going to be humiliated one day, but my son is 13. Okay. And I said, of course, buddy, I'm always going to come snuggle you.
00:47:36
Speaker
So I go in his room, mind you, he's still annoyed, right? So he's not being like super affectionate, but, um, and you know this, but I have sung you are my sunshine to both of my kids almost every night of their lives since their birth. It's only if I'm out of town and my daughter doesn't
00:47:56
Speaker
let me do it as much. But when she does, I still do it. My son demands it like every night. Where are you at? It's time. Let's go. So I snuggle my kids every night and I sing You're My Sunshine to them. And I sing to him and we're snuggling and stuff. And I said, Buddy, are you upset with me? And he says,
00:48:19
Speaker
Yes, I'm upset. Oh, no, no, I'm sorry. I say so I think you are my sunshine and I say, do you know how much I love you? And his response is more than anyone has ever loved anything. So that's what we do every night.
00:48:34
Speaker
And so I say, buddy, do you know how much I love you? And he says, as much as the meanest mommy could love somebody, but he's joking around. There's like a smile on his face and a laughter in his voice when he says it. And I said, look, I love you as much as any mommy who thinks that she's doing the best for their kids can love somebody. And I said, look, I've said this a million times to you and Ava, and it'll never stop being true.
00:49:03
Speaker
On any given day when I make decisions for the two of you, I have no idea if I'm making the right one. Only time will tell. Only the future will tell. But 100% of the time, I can guarantee
00:49:18
Speaker
that when I'm making decisions for the two of you, it is with the best intentions. It is with your best intentions. I'm doing my best and I know that I make mistakes and I'm sorry for that, but I'm doing the best I can. And then he starts to hug me and he says, I know mommy and you're doing a really good job.
00:49:38
Speaker
OK. And so we continue to snuggle and normal stuff and whatever. And I leave his room and I just burst into tears and I run and I grab my phone to write my gratitude to you. And the thing that I was so grateful for is that my children have never gone to sleep a night in their lives, not knowing how much I love them. Never. And that has been very healing for me. It's in making sure that they know that, that I know
00:50:08
Speaker
that I always deserved to be loved.
00:50:12
Speaker
And again, I want to acknowledge I was loved. My parents... Shown love, that you always deserve to understand. Correct, correct. That you can translate into knowing that that expression was of love and not like whatever you interpreted. We always say like in your childlike mind, that's what you took. And therefore sometimes we stay with these beliefs that were created from our childlike mind.
00:50:40
Speaker
of what we experienced. And like you were saying, you just made it to be that you weren't worthy because of that interpretation of how that was shown was not what you needed to show. But without a doubt, my parents are two of the most loving, kind, generous,
00:51:04
Speaker
well-intentioned human beings on the planet. There's not anybody, and you can attest to this, who has met my parents, who doesn't find them delightful. My parents are fantastic people. But we don't speak the same love language. We do not speak the same love language. And someone can come and, man, dump their love language all over you, smother you with their love language. But if that's not the language that you speak,
00:51:33
Speaker
It doesn't feel like love to you. You don't interpret that as love. Someone can love you and you can still not feel loved simultaneously. A few weeks ago, actually, I just had this conversation with my daughter. She's a teenager. She's very good at it. And I said to her, hey, sweetheart,
00:51:59
Speaker
What is, because we've gone over the loveling. We do a lot of TED talks and a lot of, you know, work around ourselves here in this house. I mean, that's like, why do you have to turn everything into a lecture? That's what Mila said the other day to me. It's like, oh, great. Like that's what she's, that's what mine are saying now. Yes.
00:52:16
Speaker
So my kids know all about love languages and we've taken the test and I've I've made sure that they know hey you see that this person is Doing this this is their love language. They're trying to show you kindness love blah blah blah Anyway, so I said sweetheart. Do you do you know what your love languages are and she said yes? It's this and this and I said that's that's right and I said do you feel like I speak your love language to you and
00:52:41
Speaker
And she said, yes, you do a very good job. Thank you. And I said, thank you. I'm glad you think so. And I said, honey, what are my love language languages? And she couldn't name them. She didn't remember. And I said, do you ever put the the thought into trying to speak my love language to me? Mind you, she's a child. She's a teenager. Of course, she doesn't. And not that she never does, but
00:53:10
Speaker
She's worrying about her own language as most kids are. It's a learned skill, though, to make sure that you are speaking to people in the language that they understand. And we can only do what we know how to do.
00:53:30
Speaker
You know, when my parents speak of their parents, who I'm assuming is who they learned everything about life from, they speak of their parents with such reverence, such respect, that that makes me believe that my parents think that the way that they were parented was good and correct and just, and that's how they learned how to parent. And they parent me in the same way. Their parents parented
00:53:59
Speaker
were parented in a similar fashion, their parents, so on and so forth. The generational trauma probably has existed for centuries. It's only when one person says, I don't know if this works.
00:54:16
Speaker
I don't know if this works and starts to do things differently, that things change. Otherwise, the majority of people stay on the hamster wheel of life continuing to perpetuate the same habits and patterns that were shown to them.
00:54:32
Speaker
until you break it. Okay, so let's talk about then, by the way, this has been amazing and we could talk a whole other hour on the topic and go deeper into so many of these different subjects. So let's go into what it is you are doing now. You've talked about your parenting, you talked about sewing. So we're gonna talk about, I want you to talk about sewing because that is one of the things right now that you do as an entrepreneur.
00:55:00
Speaker
And then also, if you can talk about the bucket filler initiative that you started doing at your kids' schools when they were little because you saw that there was a need. Because that's, again, you being so hands out. By the way, this is like one of the people that I know that was like
00:55:18
Speaker
parent of the room parent for both kids within the PTA president this whatever this committee this all the stuff possible that could fit onto onto your plate you would take and that even the ones that didn't fit in your plate you would take in order to be not only present in your kids life
00:55:37
Speaker
at home, but also in their school and to create an impact and change on other children aside from your own, because that's something you also have taken on to yourself. So would you share, let's talk about bucket filler, that initiative. So when my son was in first grade, I remember volunteering in his classroom and hearing how the kids spoke to each other and how they conducted each other.
00:56:05
Speaker
Maybe it was just an off day, but it actually made me really sad. It really made me sad. And it made me think of this book that we have at home. I feel like I need to look it up real quick so I can cite the author. But the book is called How to Fill Your Bucket for Kids. And it is, I'm going to look it up real quick so that I can give the author credit.
00:56:31
Speaker
The book is about how everyone has an emotional bucket. If you want, you speak and I can look it up if you want. Oh, sure, sure, sure. The book is written by Mary Reckmeyer and Tom Rath. How full is your bucket for kids by Mary Reckmeyer and Tom Rath? And it was a favorite book that we had at home. We got it at like one of the book fairs at school.
00:56:58
Speaker
And the idea behind the book is that everybody has an emotional bucket that they carry around with them every single day. And how we relate to others is dependent on how full our bucket is, right? It's the idea of you can't pour from an empty cup. And so you have to take care of yourself and safeguard yourself, your energy and really be aware of
00:57:25
Speaker
what influences you and who has access to you and your energy and that kind of stuff. So I started to create this lesson and I asked the teacher if I could come in and do it around trying to teach the kids accountability and cause and effect also, right? So you have to be aware of the way that you talk to people, the way that you treat people and that the impact that that has.
00:57:54
Speaker
Your words and actions can have a positive impact. Your words and actions can have a negative impact. And the only way to truly be accountable and hold yourself to a standard of wanting to treat people kindly is through awareness.
00:58:17
Speaker
It became a thing at our school where the other teachers heard that I had done it, so they would ask me to come into their classroom. And so that was the beginning of my public speaking. I would just do it at my kids' school to begin with, and I would do it every single year. And then I was asked to go to other schools, and it just sort of grew and grew. And now it has transformed into a very impactful story. I no longer use the book, because I mostly speak in middle schools and high schools.
00:58:46
Speaker
an impactful story from my childhood where I felt like I was at a crossroads and I had to decide who I was and I speak to ownership
00:58:59
Speaker
awareness, accountability, habits, self-confidence, self-esteem, it partly is into a lot of things. But the number one thing that I took from it and have tried to create as a practice into my own life, and it is where 95% of my change has come from, is awareness. And it's so hard to be aware of yourself because you only have a sense of yourself, again, as to what you can handle, right? You need
00:59:28
Speaker
people in your life that give feedback. And you need really deep reflection and honesty. And it's painful. It does not feel good. At least it didn't for me. Uncovering a lot of patterns that I have did not feel good for me. But the thing that I tell my kids all the time and in the speeches that I give, it is not possible at all to create any change for yourself without first owning that change needs to be created.
00:59:57
Speaker
Right. So if you cannot apologize for anything.
01:00:04
Speaker
If you don't think that there's something that needs apologizing for, you cannot correct the thing. You have to first accept and own that something has happened. And this has been really resonating with me in recent weeks, honestly. I have never been apologized to by a family member of mine, and that was never modeled for me, and so I never learned how to do it.
01:00:29
Speaker
Even when throughout the years I would I'm gonna put it in the air quotes apologize to people It was really I was still weaponizing my apology I wasn't actually taking ownership of any of the things that I did so I'd be like well I'm sorry you feel that way Right and because I'm not cursing in this episode I'm not gonna say the things that I'm really thinking but It would be well, I'm sorry
01:00:57
Speaker
and then it would be followed up with, but if you hadn't done da da da da da da da, you know what I mean? Again, coming with my ledger and my receipts and all this kind of stuff. No growth can happen. I'm staying crippled if I don't acknowledge that some wrongdoing has been done and there's absolutely no shame in having made a mistake. Making mistakes is the literal
01:01:21
Speaker
way one learns to do better. Yes, absolutely. If you never make any mistakes, then what do you have to work on? Where's there to go? You know, and so a girlfriend of mine who is an exceptional teacher, such a such a gift to the profession, to her community, to the students, to the families. She invited me to speak to her high school class not that long ago. And
01:01:48
Speaker
She was telling me after the fact that she does these performance reviews with her students at the end of the session and she asks the students to say, you know, there's a whole bunch of questions and she asks the students to say, what was your favorite part of the class and what was your least favorite? What, you know, would you, what changes would you like to see, et cetera, et cetera. And the reason she was telling me this story was because
01:02:11
Speaker
At the end of that session, a lot of her students had said that their favorite part was the day that I spoke to them, which I really appreciated. But what I really took away from the conversation was this concept of performance review. I loved this idea. And so for the past couple of months, I've actually been doing a performance review with my kids.
01:02:31
Speaker
And it has been amazing. It has been really amazing. Take us down through what that looks like, a performance review of your parenting with your children. Yes, of my parenting, correct. What does it look like? I first open up with, do you feel seen? Do you feel heard? Do you feel loved? And they respond with whatever they respond with. And I say, do you feel
01:02:56
Speaker
that you could say to me if you did not. And they have said yes the two times we've done it. And then we go over, you know, what, what do you think I could improve upon? I asked them to give me a grade from, you know, one through 10. And my daughter's never given me higher than an eight. And my son gives me a nine. And I say, okay, great.
01:03:23
Speaker
What do you think I could improve on? And they'll tell me various things. Well, last month, like a couple days later, I realized that I don't add a positive spin to it either. So one night at dinner, a few days after the performance review, I said, you know what? I want to add an addendum.
01:03:45
Speaker
Tell me the things that I'm doing right. Tell me the things that you love that I do. Because what I'm ultimately trying to model for you guys is accountability, right? I want you guys to be the type of people that are reflective, that take inventory, that really try to know and understand yourselves in an honest and sometimes painful way. However, I also want you to temper that with knowing that you're fantastic, knowing that you are
01:04:15
Speaker
great just as you are, but everyone could be better and there's no shame in that. You know what I mean? There's nothing wrong with that.
01:04:25
Speaker
Awesome. Yeah, they spoke, they spoke kindly. You could do a Google, you could do a Google forum and send it to them every month and they could fill it out. Like the one I did from the event. I don't know if you saw it, but it's a little Google form of feedback, you know, to fill out. I was like, children, you have received an email from your boss.
01:04:45
Speaker
Exactly. Please fill out the satisfaction survey. That's awesome. Love it. Okay, now let's talk about the part of your entrepreneurship and you creating Leila Casey creations. Yeah. And how that
01:05:04
Speaker
how that has been also a big learning for you as well. Well, a year ago, I'm going to go ahead and call it like my midlife crisis slash nervous breakdown when I was crying in the shower every day and starting to have those suicidal ideations again.
01:05:22
Speaker
I felt like I was grasping at straws just to survive, just to brush my teeth, just to... That felt like a success, honestly, like a huge success, a win for that day if I got out of bed and brushed my teeth or practiced any kind of hygiene whatsoever. I was really desperate to find solutions because that's what I do. I'm a problem solver. Instead of allowing more space and time
01:05:52
Speaker
to just feel what I need to feel and unpack that. And I was trying to find solutions. I have now- Back again to the uncomfortable, actually. Yes, it's so uncomfortable. Starting to make that parenthesis, like when we were talking about how people are so uncomfortable seeing an expert. We were talking about before at the beginning of this conversation.
01:06:10
Speaker
that showing an emotion that you don't know what to do about people get uncomfortable or parent would get uncomfortable like we were talking about before. So even within ourselves of you even being uncomfortable with that and all these emotions coming up. Okay, so go ahead.
01:06:25
Speaker
I tried to get into solution and I found a therapist. I decided to start a sewing business. I started to do all kinds of things. I started my gratitude practice. Who's to say which singular one of these things was the thing that helped me turn the corner? I think it was all of these things combined.
01:06:49
Speaker
I continued to learn how to sew after that cat in the hat skirt. And one of the things that I would make frequently for my friends is like a birthday gift or a housewarming gift or something like that would be these dish towels for different holidays and occasions and stuff. And every time I gave one to a friend, they'd be like, these are so cute lately, you should sell these and make these.
01:07:11
Speaker
And I had never really considered that because that seemed very scary. And quite frankly, having started this business has put me in vulnerable position after vulnerable position. It really is putting yourself out there, not knowing what outcomes are going to be. But I decided to do it.
01:07:34
Speaker
And I had, it's the, I sew all kinds of stuff, but it is the singular thing that I'm like, no, I sew this well enough to actually take money from people for it. And so it started out very small and my business is primarily run through Instagram, but it is
01:07:52
Speaker
growing all the time, it brings me so much joy, so much purpose. It is such a wonderful creative outlet. I feel like every human being needs to tap into for their mental and emotional health, some sort of creative outlet, whatever that is. I don't care if that's just coloring in a coloring book. I don't care what it is, but I feel like as human beings, we need this to feel alive and it has
01:08:18
Speaker
really been life changing in every possible capacity. And I love what my kids are getting to see me do. My kids are getting to see me be vulnerable, be scared, try new things.
01:08:33
Speaker
fail at it sometimes, recover from it, all kinds of stuff. My business has been one of the most transformative things in my life, and it just keeps growing and growing. Now, not only do I run the business for myself, but I put on these huge craft fairs in my area.
01:08:53
Speaker
and provide business opportunities for other local hard-working women and I really try to create an environment of empowering and supporting other female entrepreneurs and I feel like there is infinite success for all of us. I don't believe that
01:09:16
Speaker
I feel like we need to do everything in our power to help each one of us succeed because there's plenty to go around. It's not you taking a slice of pie. It would be a lacking mentality. It would be a lacking mentality if we thought differently. Absolutely. And that's when that whole thing of not even promoting somebody else's business that maybe also does hand towels like you, it's as if you thought that by promoting that person, somebody wasn't going to buy yours. But that's not the case. Sure.
01:09:43
Speaker
I love that. Two of the words that came up as you were saying, one was that aspect of purpose. You mentioned purpose a lot right now and how that purpose was really what helped you also finding that purpose thrive in this last year that you were
01:10:07
Speaker
having a hard time and the part of using, of course, a creative outlet as well for expression. And then you also created community in that process as well by creating these events. And the beauty in having found the purpose in this is that my identity is no longer this fixed concept. My identity is constantly
01:10:28
Speaker
Evolving and it always has been it's just now I have this acceptance and awareness of it It's not too late at 45 for me to start a whole new life for myself and do all new things that I've never done before and that has given me a tremendous amount of confidence to continue to Shift what my identity is. Hey, let's try this. Let's try this and so far I
01:10:54
Speaker
I have yet to be unhappy about having tried something, about putting myself out there.
01:11:02
Speaker
That's wonderful. Thank you so much. Now, this again, her Instagram handle is at Leila Casey Creations. And I'll tag it at the bottom in the show notes so that you guys know how to spell that. Leila, is there anything I did not ask you, Leila, that you would still want to answer or that you forgot to share? That you're like, you're not going to go to bed and be like,
01:11:29
Speaker
Oh my gosh, I forgot to say this. I don't want to. And was I good about letting you just like, I'm like, I did not want to deviate you from the thing from your topic. So I tried to give you the space and not interrupt you as much because if not, we could have gone in a whole bunch of different tangents, I'm sure. So was there anything that was left unsaid that you would like to share in this episode?
01:11:50
Speaker
I just hope that the takeaway is, look, all I did was share my own personal experience. I'm not an expert on anything in any capacity, but I know that it would have been life changing for me to feel like I could identify with somebody else.
01:12:10
Speaker
as human beings, we need that connection through identification. So I hope that this story resonates with other people and that the takeaway from it is, look, you can't undo your past, but you can use it as a teaching tool to completely reshape and change not only your future, but for future generations.
01:12:37
Speaker
I'm trying to do work so that my children's children's children never know anything other than self-worth, love, abundance, stability.
01:12:53
Speaker
And with the knowledge that everybody is doing the best that they can, everybody's doing the best that they can, because I think what stifled my growth for a long time was being angry and resentful about my childhood. And I have come to a very peaceful awareness that my parents were doing the absolute best that they could do with what they had.
01:13:19
Speaker
I sometimes cry at the dinner table with my kids and apologize for what I didn't know when I didn't know it.
01:13:31
Speaker
But my kids know I couldn't have done any better at the time. That's what I had. I was working with what I had, and that's what I had. And every time I know better, I do better. Every time I know. Let's let that in itself. If we know better, we do better. That in itself is wonderful. Thank you once again, Leila. Thank you so much for having me. Such an honor.
01:13:54
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. Have a beautiful day and thank you to the listeners and just make sure to go and check her out on Instagram and she also has an Etsy shop and that's a great way to connect as well with her in case you want her to speak at any of
01:14:09
Speaker
your events. And if you're in California, in the Burbank LA area, you can go and see one of the events yourself. And if you're an artistic person or creative, you're creating connect with her as well. So she can tell you about the different events, you can probably have your crafts as well. Thank you, my dear, I love you. Love you.
01:14:34
Speaker
Thank you again so much for choosing to listen today. I hope that you can take away a few nuggets from today's episode that can bring you comfort in your times of grief. If so, it would mean so much to me if you would rate and comment on this episode. And if you feel inspired in some way to share it with someone,
01:14:59
Speaker
who may need to hear this, please do so. Also, if you or someone you know has a story of grief and gratitude that should be shared so that others can be inspired as well, please reach out to me. And thanks once again for tuning into Grief Gratitude and the Gray in Between podcast. Have a beautiful day.