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Give Yourself Grace
26 Plays1 year ago
Join us on Episode 1 with our inaugural guest, The Reverend Doctor Lisa Thompson, will be gracing us with her presence to inaugurate this transformative journey! She guides individuals along the path towards wholeness, focusing on the relationships one has with oneself, with others, and with the Creator. A profound understanding of these relationships is essential for achieving a sense of completeness, provided one actively seeks it. We are eagerly anticipating the wisdom she will impart.
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Transcript
Introduction & Intentions
00:00:00
Speaker
Hey moms, it's Laura Olinger.
00:00:02
Speaker
Welcome to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast.
00:00:05
Speaker
you know, state our intention for today.
00:00:08
Speaker
So, you know, what I would like is for any mom who's listening, who's coming in and they have no idea what they're going to hear today, but I would hope that by the end of our show today, that they just come away with one thing that might be helpful to them as a mom, as a woman that might be helpful in her life.
00:00:27
Speaker
Um, and I'm so confident that you
Reconnection & Sermons
00:00:30
Speaker
will be able to provide that one little nugget of wisdom for moms today.
00:00:34
Speaker
So I'm
00:00:34
Speaker
Let me backtrack just a little bit.
00:00:36
Speaker
So 30 years ago, Lisa and I met in college as sorority sisters, and here we are today, you know, as adult women with children, and we hooked up a few years ago just starting to talk about what we're doing, and I was so interested when I heard what you were doing, and you sent me one of your sermons that you gave at your church about, you know,
00:01:00
Speaker
your body and the love of your body and how that relates in your faith.
00:01:06
Speaker
And so I thought, wow, that's such a great topic.
00:01:08
Speaker
And I was dying to bring you on.
00:01:10
Speaker
And then ever since then, you've kind of blown up with this Facebook group that you have.
00:01:15
Speaker
So I can't wait to hear you explain more about kind of what you're doing and why you're doing it.
Book Influence on Body & Spirituality
00:01:22
Speaker
So I, while I was in seminary, I was a chaplain in a hospital and I ran across this book in the bookstore called Honoring the Body.
00:01:36
Speaker
And I was just drawn to it immediately.
00:01:38
Speaker
And that's really what kind of started everything.
00:01:42
Speaker
So like back in...
00:01:45
Speaker
2002, whatever, I was introduced to this beautiful theological way of thinking about our bodies because everything up until then had intentionally or unintentionally been really dualistic.
00:01:59
Speaker
Like the spirit is good and the body is bad and sinful and the body is not good unless it's perfect.
00:02:07
Speaker
And so I had this really,
00:02:09
Speaker
kind of for me personally, damaging concept of my own being.
00:02:15
Speaker
And this, just this phrase honoring the body was like, what?
00:02:21
Speaker
I need, I need to check this out.
00:02:23
Speaker
And it really just started a whole life giving trajectory for me.
00:02:29
Speaker
And not only in chaplaincy, but in ministry, but in my whole personal life.
Body, Mind & Spirit Connection
00:02:35
Speaker
And so,
00:02:37
Speaker
through the last 20 years, I guess, I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about that theologically, that the body is good.
00:02:45
Speaker
It's not disconnected from the spirit.
00:02:48
Speaker
It's not disconnected from the mind.
00:02:50
Speaker
And just in like small observance, just anywhere kind of headlines or simple conversation, we so easily disconnect those things.
00:03:04
Speaker
And we want to
00:03:05
Speaker
lift one part of ourselves and shame or critique other parts of ourselves.
00:03:12
Speaker
And so what would it look like not only as women, but as human beings and as well as parents, but what would it look like if we allowed ourselves to see blessing in the body, in the mind and in the spirit
00:03:32
Speaker
and that we could actually work toward the connectedness that they inherently have with one another.
00:03:40
Speaker
And it is very much resisted in society.
00:03:44
Speaker
It's not something that people feel comfortable with or what to do.
00:03:47
Speaker
So that's kind of been a driving force for how I've
00:03:54
Speaker
gone into doctoral work or ministry or preaching or teaching kids Sunday school or Girl Scouts or raising a family.
00:04:04
Speaker
It's a concept I go back to and I try to hold myself to it.
00:04:09
Speaker
But it's a challenge.
Teaching Children Health over Appearance
00:04:10
Speaker
It's hard.
00:04:10
Speaker
It's hard to do.
00:04:12
Speaker
It does sound hard.
00:04:12
Speaker
So that's what I was going to ask is like, how do you teach that just first of all to yourself and
00:04:19
Speaker
And then second of all, to your kids, I know you have two girls and a boy, some teenagers, some tweens.
00:04:26
Speaker
And, you know, that's if it's a hard concept for you as an adult to grasp, then how do you teach that to kids?
00:04:31
Speaker
So I think that's a two part question.
00:04:33
Speaker
You know, how did you kind of align these two things?
00:04:36
Speaker
Because like I completely agree, they feel very separate.
00:04:39
Speaker
That's how we're kind of raised in our society to think of these things as separate.
00:04:43
Speaker
But you've merged them together beautifully.
00:04:46
Speaker
So how did you do that?
00:04:48
Speaker
I'm still figuring it out every day.
00:04:52
Speaker
I would say, so I made an intentional decision.
00:04:56
Speaker
My husband and I both made an intentional decision.
00:04:58
Speaker
I mean, I guess I kind of informed him what our intentional decision was going to be when we had kids that, you know, people have babies and they're so, oh, what a chunky baby.
00:05:10
Speaker
What a, I was like, let's like not really,
00:05:15
Speaker
wrap our minds around talking about the physical body of our baby and encouraging like let's let's talk about the health of our baby and just starting at the beginning like not talking about the body in a way that is critical or um
00:05:37
Speaker
Sometimes I lose words.
00:05:38
Speaker
No, but I think I would love to jump in because I feel like one of the things that just immediately popped into my head is we always see little girls and we say, oh, they're so cute.
00:05:47
Speaker
They're so pretty.
00:05:48
Speaker
That's the first thing that people say.
00:05:51
Speaker
Even I do it.
00:05:52
Speaker
I catch myself when one of my daughters looks really cute.
00:05:56
Speaker
I'm like, oh, you look so pretty, right?
00:05:57
Speaker
It's always like our instinct is to go to how we look.
00:06:00
Speaker
Right.
00:06:00
Speaker
Instead of, you know, wow, you're looking strong today or wow, you seem super prepared today or you seem really on top of things today or you're, you know, very alert today.
00:06:11
Speaker
Like, right.
00:06:12
Speaker
All the other little nuances of our kind of physical being.
00:06:15
Speaker
of our whole being, right?
00:06:17
Speaker
Like, right.
00:06:18
Speaker
Makes up who we are.
00:06:20
Speaker
Right, right.
00:06:21
Speaker
Like we're a whole, complete person.
00:06:22
Speaker
So that's why I love how you and I intersect together.
00:06:25
Speaker
Because as a teen and parent well being coach, I'm looking at everything physical, mental, emotional, social and spiritual, how these things all intersect to make a whole person.
Holistic Wellness Approach
00:06:35
Speaker
And, you know, we, we
00:06:36
Speaker
You know, when I do coach an individual, speak to a group, a workshop or a large group, a big audience like this, you know, that's the perspective I'm always taking.
00:06:46
Speaker
And so you're taking a very similar perspective, but we're really focusing on the physical part and the very spiritual part.
00:06:54
Speaker
And so it's like, it's amazing how we are just programmed as a society to, you know, like you're saying, from the time they're born,
00:07:03
Speaker
We're looking at their features.
00:07:04
Speaker
We're looking at how cute they are, right?
00:07:06
Speaker
Because that's what we're so excited about as a mom.
00:07:09
Speaker
You know, you can't wait to see your baby, see what it looks like.
00:07:12
Speaker
It, I always think it's funny when I call a baby it, but you know what I mean?
00:07:15
Speaker
Exactly.
00:07:17
Speaker
So, right.
00:07:17
Speaker
I think that's such a great challenge that you gave to your husband and the two of you as parents together to kind of notice the other qualities and the other features of your kids.
00:07:27
Speaker
And so that's kind of how you've programmed yourself to think of them in a different way and probably also yourself in a different way.
00:07:35
Speaker
It's a, it, it is, it's, it's been a challenge all along, whether or not you're talking to close family or friends.
00:07:42
Speaker
It's just a very typical, it's a societal norm, right?
Societal Impact on Body Talk
00:07:47
Speaker
But I noticed even the day I was talking with a dear friend with her,
00:07:52
Speaker
baby boy and her toddler little girl and they were just kind of doing their thing and i was trying to be very intentional as i interact with the two-year-old like you are so curious like you what a creative little girl you are to want to play hide and seek you know not just what a pretty smile you have like those are great things but the world is going to give you plenty of that and so how
00:08:20
Speaker
how do we change the conversation to add the other piece that seems to be so missing?
00:08:28
Speaker
Um, you know, and within the church, I would say, and, and I don't think that this is just for the church or just for the Christian tradition.
00:08:38
Speaker
I think that this is kind of a global thing, like within any community.
00:08:41
Speaker
I think there is a, um,
00:08:44
Speaker
a tendency to be very uncomfortable talking about the body in a positive way, you know, because that may just suddenly lead to uncomfortable conversations that people don't think you should have with children or people in other families.
00:09:04
Speaker
And so there's a hesitancy
00:09:08
Speaker
around that and, and people have such different concepts of what is okay and not okay.
00:09:15
Speaker
So going into it, thinking about honoring the body, thinking about that with my kids, most of the hard work is the conversations you have just in every day about your own self.
00:09:32
Speaker
That is really the, that's where you have to start.
00:09:35
Speaker
That's where I had to start.
00:09:37
Speaker
Um,
00:09:39
Speaker
And I,
00:09:42
Speaker
I have been very intentional when I've changed eating habits or different things like that.
00:09:47
Speaker
Like I have multiple sclerosis.
00:09:49
Speaker
And so sometimes I'm really, really intentional on what I'm going to eat, whether it's going to be inflammatory or not inflammatory.
00:09:56
Speaker
Anti-inflammatory foods really help out how my body feels.
00:10:00
Speaker
But I don't ever say I'm going on a diet and I'm going to do this.
00:10:04
Speaker
And my kids, I said, well, you know, mom's got this going on.
00:10:08
Speaker
She's not feeling as well.
00:10:10
Speaker
I'm not feeling as well and I really need to cut down on the inflammatory food that is probably going to affect you and the stops we're going to make at Starbucks and what I want to have in the house and and sometimes perception even though these aren't language
00:10:30
Speaker
traditional language that we would have in our house, it's in the world.
00:10:34
Speaker
Well, mom's going on a diet.
00:10:35
Speaker
I'm like, well, mom, I mean, everything we have is a diet, right?
00:10:39
Speaker
What we eat is a diet.
00:10:40
Speaker
Exactly.
00:10:42
Speaker
But
00:10:43
Speaker
mom is just paying more attention to her nutrition.
00:10:46
Speaker
So rather than shaming my body because it's not a certain size and I can only eat this because of this and you need to look like this because every other sixth grader looks like this or this is the size that the doctor says, like, I just don't have those conversations with my kid.
Perfection & Body Image in Kids
00:11:05
Speaker
And we work really hard to focus on the fact that
00:11:14
Speaker
I work really hard, I think Zach does too, that they're bright kids.
00:11:18
Speaker
They have a lot going on in their minds.
00:11:21
Speaker
They have hearts full of different feelings.
00:11:26
Speaker
And so along with honoring the body is also not being perfect.
00:11:30
Speaker
So I say that all the time to my kids, especially in the competitive realm of things that like perfection is not expected.
00:11:40
Speaker
on the field, on the court, in the classroom, in our bodies.
00:11:47
Speaker
Perfect isn't expected.
00:11:50
Speaker
That's not normal.
00:11:52
Speaker
That's not real.
00:11:54
Speaker
And so introducing that theological concept of grace along with the idea of honoring who we are in our body, mind, and spirit, but it has to be modeled.
00:12:07
Speaker
And that's the,
00:12:10
Speaker
when you've grown up thinking I am supposed to critique my body and not say positive things about myself, which is, I feel like how the seventies and eighties really like was my, my really, that was my trajectory.
00:12:25
Speaker
You know, there was Weight Watchers and Jane Fonda and all the things.
00:12:29
Speaker
And like, this is what you do.
00:12:33
Speaker
Um, like,
00:12:34
Speaker
I grew up thinking I'm not enough.
00:12:36
Speaker
And so to suddenly shift as a young adult to like, wait, enough?
00:12:42
Speaker
Like I'm enough?
00:12:45
Speaker
That's very different.
00:12:48
Speaker
And it's hard.
00:12:48
Speaker
It's hard to do.
00:12:50
Speaker
It's really hard to do.
00:12:52
Speaker
But it takes that intentionality and it takes the vocabulary and the willingness to tell yourself and your friends, and that's part of it too.
00:13:03
Speaker
that you have that worth, that you are worthy, that you are enough, that you don't have to be XYZ to be a strong individual, to be a person who contributes positivity and beauty to the world, that it's not about what clothes you wear or the car you drive or the size that you wear.
Grace & Self-Acceptance
00:13:31
Speaker
It really is
00:13:33
Speaker
the choices we make in the world with our minds and our hearts and we enact them in our bodies, right?
00:13:40
Speaker
So, I don't know, I tend to ramble a little bit.
00:13:43
Speaker
Well, I'm with you.
00:13:45
Speaker
I'm 100% following your train of thought and what stuck out to me was I was wondering, well, how would you communicate that to friends in a positive way?
00:13:58
Speaker
And what I wanna backtrack just for a second is,
00:14:01
Speaker
Um, you know, the way I work when I'm coaching a client, people always say what they don't want.
00:14:08
Speaker
You know, as a coach, we're always looking at goals and they say, I don't want to be stressed.
00:14:12
Speaker
I don't want to have fights with my mom.
00:14:14
Speaker
I don't want to have fights with my teenager.
00:14:16
Speaker
I don't want to be overwhelmed.
00:14:18
Speaker
I don't want to make bad grades.
00:14:19
Speaker
I don't want, right.
00:14:20
Speaker
All the things they don't want.
00:14:22
Speaker
And it's very challenging.
00:14:24
Speaker
I mean, this is the fun part of my job.
00:14:26
Speaker
I say, okay, well, what's the opposite of that?
00:14:28
Speaker
Literally.
00:14:29
Speaker
And it's like, they've never even thought of that.
00:14:30
Speaker
And so what I'm steering them towards is the positive version, the flip side.
00:14:35
Speaker
And so they'll always say, I want to feel calm.
00:14:37
Speaker
I want to feel confident.
00:14:38
Speaker
I want to feel, um, able.
00:14:40
Speaker
I want to feel, you know, good, whatever it is that I'm doing.
00:14:44
Speaker
And so, um, um,
00:14:46
Speaker
As you're talking here, I'm thinking, okay, well, I hear the things like, okay, we don't, you know, growing up like, oh, yes, I remember the Richard Simmons.
00:14:54
Speaker
And I remember that, you know, all that.
00:14:57
Speaker
And it's funny, because that's how our minds were programmed, right?
00:15:00
Speaker
And so it's like, well, how do we unwrite a program that's already been written into our subconscious, but not only is it just in ours, but it's in all of society.
00:15:10
Speaker
And then you take it a step higher, right?
00:15:12
Speaker
which is your area of the spiritual part.
00:15:15
Speaker
And we, you know, for those who are of a Christian faith or any faith background, right?
00:15:20
Speaker
You said they're probably somewhat similar where we think of the body as something bad or sinful.
00:15:26
Speaker
So as you said that I'm thinking, well, what is the good version of the body?
00:15:30
Speaker
Like, how is the body good?
00:15:31
Speaker
How can you, you know, I guess the word would be glorify the body.
00:15:35
Speaker
Like, how can it be a positive thing that's not shameful from the Christian perspective,
00:15:39
Speaker
but also like, what is, this is a kind of complicated question.
00:15:42
Speaker
Sorry, two things at one time.
Positive Body Image Shift
00:15:44
Speaker
What is the goal, right?
00:15:45
Speaker
And for you, it's to feel good, to have energy, to be healthy,
00:15:51
Speaker
Um, to probably to be strong.
00:15:53
Speaker
You didn't say that one, but I'm kind of jumping ahead with that one.
00:15:55
Speaker
Um, for me, I know like mental clarity is really big for me.
00:15:59
Speaker
I've got with four babies that I've had.
00:16:01
Speaker
Um, I went through a lot of brain fog when my kids were born and I've worked really hard to make sure everything is, you know, working really well with my body so that I can think in a really clear way and have a good memory, have energy, be able to learn new things.
00:16:13
Speaker
Um,
00:16:14
Speaker
Um, so in your words, like I loved the word you said, grace, you know, and I'm wondering like, how can we translate that to people who might not normally have that word grace in their vocabulary?
00:16:25
Speaker
That might not be a go-to word.
00:16:27
Speaker
So, um, again, I kind of stacked a bunch on, I apologize, but I'm just trying to like shift people towards what is the positive of all this?
00:16:36
Speaker
So, um,
00:16:38
Speaker
That's a lot.
00:16:40
Speaker
And with my ADHD, I want to go down like 20 different little squirrel treasures, trails there.
00:16:47
Speaker
So just rein me back in if you need to.
00:16:49
Speaker
Just pick one.
00:16:49
Speaker
Pick one.
00:16:50
Speaker
Yeah, you like.
00:16:50
Speaker
Go with it.
00:16:51
Speaker
So Grace, I think that's a great question.
00:16:54
Speaker
And that's one that I struggled with for a really long time.
00:16:57
Speaker
I felt like even though I had been to seminary and...
00:17:01
Speaker
learned about grace and seminary is, you know, the school for people who want to learn more about God and maybe be in ministry.
00:17:08
Speaker
So if that's not in your vocabulary, that that's what seminary is, just more school.
00:17:15
Speaker
And so when I had gone through seminary, we don't like I had grown up in a certain faith tradition.
00:17:21
Speaker
And I think that grace is
00:17:23
Speaker
was in the preaching and in the teaching.
00:17:28
Speaker
But I, as a perfectionist, even though I did not do things perfectly, I still had a perfectionist mindset.
00:17:38
Speaker
As a perfectionist, I thought I was not supposed to have grace.
00:17:43
Speaker
And so this is an interesting, and this is back in the theological spiritual realm of things, but I
00:17:53
Speaker
I was challenged once with the concept of forgiveness.
00:17:57
Speaker
So forgiveness and grace are not exactly the same, but the idea that, well, if you understand God as a creator, a being full of grace and the ability to forgive you as God's creation,
00:18:22
Speaker
this is very humbling and kind of a put you in your place sort of situation.
00:18:26
Speaker
Okay.
00:18:29
Speaker
Why would you then not be able to offer grace to yourself?
00:18:33
Speaker
Are you in a higher judgment than God?
00:18:38
Speaker
Why can you not offer forgiveness to yourself?
00:18:41
Speaker
That is,
00:18:42
Speaker
like that's not only a level playing field, like that's, well, maybe God can forgive, but I can't forgive.
00:18:48
Speaker
Maybe God can offer me some grace, but I'm not going to allow grace.
00:18:52
Speaker
And grace is that concept of like, you don't have to be perfect.
00:18:56
Speaker
You don't have to earn everything.
00:18:58
Speaker
You don't have to win everything.
00:19:00
Speaker
You don't have to, um, excel and, um,
00:19:07
Speaker
be the top of everything.
00:19:09
Speaker
Like being who you are is good enough.
00:19:14
Speaker
Striving to be in the world in a kind and positive way is a really good thing.
00:19:22
Speaker
And when you're not kind and positive, it's okay to recognize I'm not always kind and positive.
00:19:30
Speaker
I messed up.
00:19:33
Speaker
I can make a different choice next time.
00:19:35
Speaker
So it's not taking the opportunity to then berate yourself and shame yourself because of what you did in parenting or what you did in a relationship or how you did or did not set an example at a school event.
00:19:54
Speaker
It's having grace is saying it's an awareness of, hmm, not my best moment.
00:20:02
Speaker
I would like to do things differently next time.
00:20:06
Speaker
You know what's crazy?
00:20:07
Speaker
Go ahead.
00:20:10
Speaker
What's crazy as what you're describing to me sounds like growth mindset.
00:20:19
Speaker
Yeah.
00:20:20
Speaker
That's what we would call it, right?
00:20:21
Speaker
That's what I would call it.
00:20:22
Speaker
So, you know, one thing we really want to get away from is black and white thinking that all or nothing.
00:20:28
Speaker
Those are, you know, that's an automatic negative thought.
00:20:32
Speaker
And so that's what causes people to live in judgment of themselves.
00:20:37
Speaker
That is what causes people to have low self-worth because they're always beating themselves up.
00:20:43
Speaker
That's what causes people to become perfectionists.
00:20:45
Speaker
You mentioned you have this perfectionist tendency, right?
00:20:48
Speaker
Because you were trying to be enough.
00:20:50
Speaker
You were trying to be the all or nothing, right?
00:20:53
Speaker
You were trying to have the all.
00:20:54
Speaker
And if you didn't have the all, then you weren't good enough, right?
00:20:58
Speaker
There was no gray zone, right?
00:20:59
Speaker
And so the gray zone, I think, is the grace is what
Conclusion & Next Episodes
00:21:02
Speaker
you're saying.
00:21:02
Speaker
And it's saying no matter where you fall on this spectrum,
00:21:07
Speaker
It's okay.
00:21:08
Speaker
You're good enough.
00:21:09
Speaker
You're good enough as you are.
00:21:10
Speaker
Why?
00:21:11
Speaker
Because from your perspective, God made you, A, that should be reason enough.
00:21:15
Speaker
And B, you're just here.
00:21:17
Speaker
You're human, right?
00:21:18
Speaker
Like the minute you're born or, you know, I don't want to get into anything too deep, but you know, you're enough.
00:21:23
Speaker
You're enough as you are.
00:21:24
Speaker
And so kind of the next thing I want to do is just like keep on this fantastic topic, but like shift it into a little bit of a different lens.
00:21:36
Speaker
I'm going to pause this conversation with Lisa.
00:21:38
Speaker
If you'd like to hear more, listen to my next episode of the Positively Healthy Mom.
00:21:44
Speaker
Thank you for listening to the Positively Healthy Mom podcast because there's no manual for the hardest job in the world.
00:21:51
Speaker
Don't forget to subscribe and share with your friends.