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Jodi ChaffeeParticipant
The job I’m being hired to do would be to supply parents with the tools for navigating a resilient family culture when they are in need of recalibrating their purpose without the stress of guesswork or screwing up their kids, nor getting trapped in the traffic jams, roadblocks, and detours of destructive cultural patterns.
I have often thought my job was to help parents deconstruct their generational traumas, confront their assumptions about systemic patterns, and break the cycle of their wounded child tendencies and become more conscious parents. Those are part of the package, but are also a very tall order. These are the ways that I think about the problem, but I don’t believe they’re part of my job. As parents learn the tools of a resilient family culture, they will likely come to these conclusions on their own and be part of the discussion, but that isn’t my ultimate job. I kind of hope that gaining the tools I share with them will lead them to seek treatment to heal from the excess baggage we all carry around as parents.
I have been obsessed with family culture because I wanted to know how to break the cycle of dysfunction in my family and figure out how to prepare my children for a future of unknowns so they might be successful despite what happens tomorrow. I originally thought that a successful family culture hinged on my ability to model success for my kids and always be capable of showing up for them to model every behavior and characteristic I wanted to instill in them. Exhausting, amiright?? I accidentally stumbled upon the truth as my exploration into family culture unearthed the dysfunctional patterns of more than just my family. I began to see how society at large has been repeating patterns of dysfunction that are deteriorating individuals and families and breaking down our resiliency.
I want to give parents the tools they need to have confidence in their ability to be resilient in spite of the challenges we face, in spite of what the future holds, and be able to navigate those ups and downs with compassion.
Jodi ChaffeeParticipantI keep coming back to the hope that I am doing this because I hope that I can somehow catch a break and I’ll be able to allow my family to be financially secure, allow my husband to quit his job, be location independent, and model success for my kids.
As I deconstruct my beliefs further, I realize that a lot of my motivation stems from a lifetime of internalizing the mobility myth as I watched my dad jump from MLM to MLM all my life hoping for his big break, while exerting minimal effort in his day job, and having zero intention toward cultivating mastering in his little side hustles. This pervasive narrative was perpetuated in my adulthood as I listened to guru after guru peddle their lies about having the answer to make a million dollars and finally get free of the rat race. Their narrow definition of success was reinforced by telling the stories of the one or two people who actually (maybe) benefited from their offer.
Yet, because I was gullible and desperate, I listened. They reinforced the narrative I’d heard all my life that with enough effort anyone could succeed, no matter their background. I wanted to believe this desperately because so far, the rat race wasn’t doing much for me financially.
I’ve had to learn to broaden my definition of success, let go of my perfectionism, and learn to embrace the ups and downs of failure. I persist in the hope that I will be able to overcome my insecurities and learn the art of mastery of a skill, of a knowledge that I can deeply and truly share that will benefit myself and others.
My true ‘why’ is really that I have to see this thing through. I’ve come so far, and I need to know how my story ends. It can’t end here. I’m not finished figuring out what success looks like for me or for my family. I still want to figure out how to raise healthy, successful kids. I have learned to reexamine what that success looks like, and my hope is that I can simply begin to unravel the possibility that success is in the means, not the ends.
Jodi ChaffeeParticipantConfidence is an elusive characteristic for me. I have been conditioned all my life to believe that being invisible and low-maintenance was a virtue. My subconscious has observed my surroundings with hyper-vigilance to know when I’d be better served by playing small rather than being myself. The few times in my life that I have felt confident is when I have felt safe to come out of my shell and be the bubbly, outgoing girl I am in those moments. Any other time that I have appeared confident, I was likely faking it.
The first five years of my exploration into my business was a facade. I was hiding behind a face so I could show up and pretend that I had my act together, but I was forcing myself so I could appear confident. This has gotten me nowhere. I spent those five years in deep anxiety and deficiency. I tried to force my creativity, force my personality, and force myself to appear how I believed I was expected to appear.
After a two-year hiatus, my whole world view has taken a 180. I’m beginning to deconstruct my experiences and expose my vulnerabilities to accept myself as I am, embrace myself for who I am, and explore the existing potential within myself as I allow my true self to bubble up to the service. I create my own sense of safety to truly show up for myself and the possibility that I have value for who I am and what I have to offer.
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