Taking Ownership of Our Feelings (So Our Children Can Have Their Own) with Heather Chauvin
00:00:00 Alyssa
You're listening to Voices of Your Village. Hello, everybody. Today, I got to hang out with Heather Chauvin of the Emotionally Uncomfortable podcast. And we had such a great conversation talking about how to take radical ownership of our own emotions and needs as adults so that we aren't laying that burden on our kids. We touch on codependency and co -parenting relationships and how so much of this work is the self -awareness of what's coming up for us underneath the way we're interacting with our kids and partners. Heather is a TEDx speaker, author of Dying To Be A Good Mother, and host of the highly loved podcast Emotionally Uncomfortable. Heather started her career as a social worker helping adults understand children's behavior, but it wasn't until 2013 when a stage 4 cancer diagnosis pushed her to take a deeper stand for change, uncovering how cultural expectations sabotage our dreams. She's been featured in Forbes, Entrepreneur, Real Simple Magazine, MindBodyGreen, Google, and more. When Heather isn't working, you'll find her living out what she teaches, which may include kayaking Alaska, snowboarding, hiking, or anything else that challenges what she believes is possible for herself and inviting her children along the journey. Alright folks, let's dive in.
00:01:29 Alyssa
Hey there. I'm Alyssa Blask Campbell. I'm a mom with a master's degree in early childhood education and co -creator of the Collaborative Emotion Processing Method. I'm here to walk alongside you through the messy, vulnerable parts of being humans raising other humans with deep thoughts and actionable tips. Let's dive in together.
00:01:47 Alyssa
What brought you into like this space specifically?
00:01:54 Heather
My own children, my three boys. So they're 19. How old are they? 19, 14 and 11, but I was 18 when I became a parent. So I was young. Yeah. And it was instant fear. Fear of failing as a mother, fear of failing as a, I think as like a human, as a parent, but that, that instant trigger, I didn't understand what triggers were or wounds or all of that. And I just thought, I never want my son to feel the way I felt as a child. So that was my first into emotion.
00:02:29 Alyssa
Yeah. What specifically were you afraid he would feel?
00:02:34 Heather
Anxiety, alone, different, like just not knowing how to manage my own emotions as a teenager. And I always say my drug of choice or my coping strategy was sleep. Like I didn't like use substances. It was just like, you know, the body just shutting down and hiding and isolating and adults saying to me, what's wrong with you? Why aren't you motivated? You're lazy, blah, blah, blah. And me, I'm like, I don't know what's going on with me. So it's that projection piece. And as a, as a child, we're supposed to know what's going on in our bodies when adults don't even know what's going on in theirs.
00:03:08 Alyssa
Sure. Yeah. Wanting him to feel seen, it sounds like, and like he had a place to turn to. That resonates. I'm one of five kids and I've really rad parents who slayed in so many ways. And there wasn't a space where I could turn to with my hard stuff. And then when hard things did happen, I was so alone in them. And now I noticed those triggers come up for me when Sage, I have a three -year -old and a five -month -old. And when Sage experiences something hard, my instinct is like, I just really want to make sure he's not alone in it. And sometimes I can be too in his face about it, I think. Where it's like, yeah, also, like, just let him be in the emotion.
00:03:58 Heather
I felt that hardcore in the last three years when my son, my oldest, became a teenager. And I, oh, that first one, it's like, I called First Shitty Pancake. You're like, I am so sorry. I'm learning all these things at the exact same time. It's like personal growth on steroids.
00:04:19 Alyssa
Totally.
00:04:19 Heather
But it's it's fascinating to watch because it's almost the same age. Whenever you felt something, they're triggering you at the exact same age. And it was when he turned 18, when I became a parent. I just I was like, oh, I was so aware. But I'm like, there's so much going on all at the same time. And I got a, I got, I got shit to do. I got bills to pay. I got a business to run. I have to figure this out at the same time.
00:04:49 Alyssa
Yeah. This is the thing. There isn't like a pause button while I figure out my stuff. Like life still has to happen alongside figuring out our stuff and you hit the nail on the head. Like we, these parts of us will surface at those same ages and stages where all of a sudden we're like, oh, right. Okay. This is going to be a triggering thing. I, one of five kids and I'm the only girl, I have four brothers and my parents had my oldest brother when they were 19. And so they were young parents figuring it out as they went. I'm number four of the five, um, so they had a few kids under their belt by the time they got to me. But one of my big triggers is not feeling included, feeling left out. And there were so many times where I would say like, well, the boys get to do it. And my mom would be like, yeah, there are different rules for the boys. And it just felt like total bullshit as a kid, even. And now just yesterday, I was dropping Sage off at childcare and he went over to like, enter into play with some other kids. And he walked in and he started like playing with the stuff they were playing with. And I could see like, he wanted to enter into play. And I think they saw it as he's trying to take my toys. And so they were like, no, and he would just like shut down and he ran over to me and everything inside of me wanted to like fight this other three -year -old and be like, what the hell? Like, let him play. He just wants to come play with you. And I was like, oh, yep. Okay. The like social component that they slowly move into at three and then it's just never ending that social inclusion, belonging piece is something I'm going to have to be so mindful of.
00:06:27 Heather
You know, what's funny is when I got into this like conscious parenting world, you dive deep into it and then you kind of swing to the other side. And because I've been reading all the books, the workshops, like I remember the first book I read, it was like, teach your kid to meditate, or it was about children's meditation mindfulness. And I'm like, my kid needs to meditate, like his behavior, his like projection, right? It's all about him. It's all about them. And then I'm teaching him these skills and I'm like getting angry, like, sit down, do this, don't move. And I'm like, oh, I'm the one that needs to learn mindfulness. But then there's like a period in your life, this is my experience where you're like, okay, I've swung too far now. And now I need to like go back and kind of just learn to be okay in the middle of like, I don't want to overanalyze everything. I don't want it like it's exhausting watching them. And I had to come to this like peace or presence. Part of the human experience is having wounds and triggers. And it's fascinating to me because the parts of me that I like really hurt me as a child and the parts that trigger me about my kids when they're othered, like when they're different than other children, are their actual gifts. And that has what I love about myself as an adult. So it's so interesting to watch and observe how we parent our kids and yet we want them to be their embodied selves. And we're like, but do we really? Or are we just like egotistical self -serving humans?
00:08:13 Alyssa
Okay. Love this through line. We talk about this a lot, this like pendulum swing. In fact, I wrote about it in Tiny Humans, Big Emotions that there has been a pendulum swing from how a lot of us were parented to where like, we're not doing that. And that's why I asked at the beginning, like what specifically were you afraid that he would experience, your son, that you'd experienced? And I think it comes up so much in co -parenting as well. We wanna wrap them. We wanna wrap them in a little bubble so that they don't have to feel any of the pain, right? So that they don't have to experience it because we know how much pain sucks. We know how hard it is to feel left out. We know how hard it is to feel disappointed or sad or anxious. We also know how hard it is to be alone in those feelings, to feel like you don't have a place to turn to, to feel like you as the kid are supposed to know your body and what's happening with you more so than the adults around you. And I think that's the part I'm hoping folks can really dial in on and focus in on is not the, we're going to have them avoid pain. It's the, when they experience pain, they know they have a place to turn and I'm going to be that safe space to turn. And when we can get to that spot, that middle ground, then all of a sudden the way that our partner or our co -parent interacts with them is going to feel a little different for us and we might be able to relinquish some control or the way that our parents might interact with them or how their teachers show up. When we realize that our real goal here is to be the safe space for them to turn to, we don't have to control everybody else.
00:10:00 Heather
I just find this whole world fascinating. So, when I started my podcast, it was called Mom is in Control, because I was interviewing women like just talking, doing target market research, and these women were like, I want to feel in control. I was like, well, control is actually not a feeling. It's something you do when you feel out of control. But you tell me you want to feel alive and energized and connected, all these things. In order to get there, you have to go through, and that is emotionally uncomfortable. So then I changed the podcast name to Emotionally Uncomfortable because I say you want joy and ease and abundance and alive and all this, but you have to sit with the duality, right? You have to sit with the fear of worst case scenario and all of that. And I have so many stories about this, but you bringing this up reminds me of, so my parents are divorced. They divorced when I was little, but one thing that my mother, one thing she never did was project or talk about my father badly, but she held space really well. Like, I'm just talking crap about my dad, or I would talk about my stepmother to her. How triggering would that be?
00:11:10 Alyssa
So hard.
00:11:11 Heather
And she just holds that space and she, like, she'll go and she's like, yeah, yeah, like she never, she just held it. And in hindsight, as an adult looking at those moments with her, I never wanted her to rescue my feelings. I just wanted to be heard. And I really did feel heard. And that allowed me to feel safe with her and to trust her and knowing that I had somebody that I could go to and just land with. I mean, it's different than being a punching bag for your kids. And I talk a lot about that as well and being a punching bag for other people and just holding that. It's the art form of how to hold space for other people, but not like feel like you're being bullied or abused or manipulated. That's a little bit different, but there is that. When I reflect as an adult who I needed as a child, it was those moments where I was like, they weren't fixing, they weren't rescuing, they weren't taking away, they were just holding space and that was it.
00:12:14 Alyssa
Yeah, holding space with boundaries.
00:12:16 Heather
Yes, yes.
00:12:17 Alyssa
And that's where we become not the punching bag is when we have our boundaries in place whilst holding space. I can hold space for my child to express, and vent and he can't kick me, I won't let him hit me, right? Like those are still in place. And I love that you popped that in there, that it's not, there is a difference between holding space and being that punching bag. Okay. So now when we're looking at this from a co -parenting lens, are you comfortable sharing personally what your co -parenting kind of, how this has looked for you?
00:12:58 Heather
Yeah. So I had my son when I was, um, 18 and his father, his biological father was never in the picture. And that was, I wouldn't even say conscious decision, but it was for everyone's health and safety. And then I met my now husband when he was around a year and a half. And then we had two additional children together. So it's been an interesting journey for multiple reasons. One is I entered this relationship with a wall already, but this package of like, it's two for one. It's two for one deal. And my husband will say to this day that I am very different with the oldest than I am with the other two. And I, looking from a bird's eye view, 100%. And he treats his two biological children differently. And we've had to get to a point where he feels safe enough to say that to me. Because as you can imagine, at the beginning, this is not how I show up today, but being like, you need to do this. Why don't you do that? Why'd you treat him like this? Like nitpicky control of all of that. And then today being like, okay, our marriage is healthy -ish. I mean, we're human, so it's pretty healthy. And I have had, as a woman, I've had to, one, accept that one of my colleagues and dear friends, she – her name is Janet Allison and her podcast is called On Boys. And she had to really take that stand and say, Heather, your job as a mother is different than the role of a father. You have to accept that men and women, I'm obviously talking about like a male and female co -parenting relationship. I know that's not the same for everybody. The male brain and the female brain operate differently and so do the gender roles. And so dad is not supposed to be mom and mom is not supposed to be dad in that relationship. So one, accepting that my husband did not need to be me.
00:15:09 Alyssa
Sure. And I think even outside of gender, just accepting that, that like, if you're in a queer relationship, being able to be like, yeah, they don't have to show up the same way I do. We don't have to play the same role in this kid's life.
00:15:23 Heather
Even in intergenerational stuff, like my mother lives with us too. And I think it's just individually accepting humans as like, you are not me. You are actually not supposed to be me. And I am not almighty. Like, I have imperfections and I have strengths and everyone is supposed to show up and lead differently with their own secret sauce.
00:15:50 Alyssa
When we're looking at, like, past you, as you came into this relationship with a one and a half year old, the two for one deal, I'm wondering, what do you think you were afraid of with your now husband and his relationship with your son, if he didn't, if he did treat him differently, if things didn't happen in a specific way, what do you think you were afraid of for your son?
00:16:18 Heather
A hundred percent self -serving. My parents were divorced. I felt othered. I never, I was protecting, I think we're always protecting our little selves and it's just showing up in another person. So I was trying to protect my son from feeling the way that I felt in a blended family, which was othered.
00:16:37 Alyssa
Othered how?
00:16:38 Heather
Feeling different, feeling like an outsider, like I don't belong. You're just here because you're the extra. You're the bonus kid. You're not really a core part of the family.
00:16:49 Alyssa
Ah, like you don't really belong here.
00:16:51 Heather
Yes. Yeah.
00:16:53 Alyssa
So inclusion and belonging as that core need. You were afraid that he wouldn't feel that because you didn't feel that.
00:17:02 Heather
Yes. Yes. And really, to be honest, I have no control over that when you think about it. So I'm huge on connection and empathy and all of that. But I, as a human, a leader, a parent, I only have control of how I connect. And so when I watch and observe my own relationships, whether they're with my kids, my husband, my team, my clients, other people, people are like, you're really good at relationships. And I'm like, yeah, but you have to be ready to create connection and empathy. I value those things because that's what I wanted and craved as a small human. And so when I look at the whole belonging piece, I cannot control my husband's behavior at all. And his definition of connection is going to be very different than how I perceive connection as well. And how my son, even talking to him now, he's 19 years old, I forget what we were talking about the other day, oh, yeah, he was telling me something about the first time he found out his biological father passed, because he did when he was around eight years old. He never had a relationship with him. And I said, the whole time you knew that your dad, because he only knows my husband as his only father, so he calls him dad. He goes, no, I didn't know he wasn't my dad. And I said, yes, you did. I never hid that from you. But in an eight -year -old's brain, that's all he knew. And so he was like, what are you talking about? He couldn't fathom. He just didn't compute. So you have to think, we are the adults. We have life experiences. We have this brain. And we're projecting this onto our child. They know. It's like point A to point B. And I'm like, no. It's going through their filters, too. So it doesn't matter how hard you try to control a situation or co -parent with people. It's fascinating that the kids have a completely different experience through their lens, even if you're trying with the best intent.
00:19:01 Alyssa
That's it, is that they're not us, right? They're their own humans. And so their experience, Sagey's experience of going in and trying to play with those kids and them saying no, his experience is different than mine was my whole life. By nature of just being different humans, growing up in different circumstances in different spaces. And it is so frigging hard in the moment to realize that as true, right? That we are not having the same experience. We're projecting our experience onto them from a place of fear and then parenting from that fear.
00:19:48 Heather
Yeah.
00:19:49 Alyssa
I think one of the biggest challenges in co -parenting, if you have someone who is doing it differently than you, I think a lot of us come to adulthood and we might look back and say, I didn't feel connected to my dad, or I didn't feel like my dad was a safe space, or my dad didn't show up in these certain ways, or my mom, or my grandma, or whomever. And you might yearn for that for your kid because you yearn for that for you. And so then you have this tiny human and you're like, okay, I get to provide that for them, what I didn't have. But inherent in that is that you would then control all these other relationships they have. And we don't get to do that. And so when now you're going down this road and your child is experiencing a relationship with your co -parent, that isn't the one you hoped for. I think there's a grieving process that we have to engage in for ourselves of like, I yearned for this and didn't get it. And now I yearn for it for my kid and they're not getting it. And allowing that grief of the relationship we envisioned or that we wanted, or maybe even that we needed. And I think that that's such a huge part of this that's often left off the table.
00:21:11 Heather
I think the key word here is yearn. So in 2013, I was diagnosed with stage four cancer. I had nine years before that of personal development that was mainly solely focused around conscious parenting. So I'm almost at this for a decade. Towards the end, I started getting into how to start a business and how to do all of that. When I was diagnosed, I felt like I was training, like that nine years was like I was training for a marathon, and my diagnosis was the actual race. I was like, now I need to figure out and embody this. The one thing that I discovered, and I talk about this a lot in my book, Dying To Be A Good Mother, because when you are yearning for something, that is your soul, body, mind saying, feed this to me. Give it to me. When you are trying to get that in a codependency with your child or a partner, you will never be satisfied. And then when that child naturally from a developmental phase tries to separate from you, which is what happens in teens, and this is where like now that I have teenagers, you will see where you need to grieve. You will see what you are actually still trying to control and what you got away with because because they were so close to you. And what I realized going through that whole process of the importance of having your own identity, you're doing your own work, and not trying to do somebody else's work to avoid your own work. We will literally go to the ends of the earth for our children, and we will do anything for them. But the second someone's like, oh, cool, are you willing to do that yourself? No, no, no, no, no, I can't do that. That's selfish. And I'm like, but really is it? Because you're doing somebody else's work. That to me feels more selfish. But if you can learn what grief is and feel the grief and not trying to like avoid that feeling that to me is like the greatest gift you could give a child because they are going to experience grief one day and you are going to be like, I know what that feels like. And I can sit with you instead of trying to rescue that feeling.
00:23:26 Alyssa
Yeah. and it's going to come up over and over and over in so many different stages. I love this, the like, would you give that to your kid? Because I think ultimately, when you give that to yourself, then you're able to be in an interdependent relationship with them rather than codependent relationship with them, which is going to strengthen your relationship for years to come, that is ultimately a gift to them. It's a gift to you, but it's a gift to them as well, that they will know you're okay without them right there. If they are your sole source of happiness and you are the only thing that brings me joy and it is such a heavy weight to carry. It's hard for them to have their wings and fly. You know, this is something I'm really grateful for, I think my parents did a pretty rad job of, was letting us know, like, we always had a place to land. We could always come home. We could always be there. They would always be there. And I studied abroad in high school because they were like, yeah, do it. Like I said, I wanted to do it. They were like, we can't afford it. So if you can figure out and we're happy to help you figure this out, but if you can fundraise for it and can figure this out, go ahead. And I was chatting with my good friend about this recently and she was like, Oh my God, my mom would have been a basket case if I studied abroad. Like we didn't have, you know, especially then, like it was email. If you had access to some internet, sometimes a phone call and it was like so expensive. And so there wasn't even like constant contact. She was like, Oh my God, my mom would have been a basket case. And I just like heard that. And I was like, I'm so glad I never felt that I'm sure it was hard for my mom. I'm sure she was scared when I like went off to another country for six months as a teenager and she let me do it. She encouraged me to do it. She supported me along that way because I didn't feel like I needed to be there to make sure she was okay and she was happy.
00:25:35 Heather
I don't know. I just think kids, if we really look in the mirror, they, they show us where we're leaking our power. They show us where we are giving away the codependencies, the insecurities that we have. And I'm like, let it be like an opportunity for growth. Like my becoming a parent so young brought me back home to myself. I would be who I am today. I'm like, I have more energy, more light, more life inside of me. I get very triggered when I see a lot of memes online about the I call it toxic mothering, but the codependency of like, I couldn't do anything for myself today until my child was like completely out of sight, out of mind. And I'm like, what is this culture that we live in that we are always entertaining? This is not how other cultures live. Let them be free. Let them be creative. Let them figure out who they are. Know that they're going to have relationships with other people.
00:26:32 Alyssa
So key to this is looking at like, what do I need? How do I resource myself? What's available to me? And maybe it is, yeah, you know what, I'm going to be doing the dishes and doing the laundry, et cetera, while the kids are awake and not waiting till nap time so that during nap time, I can stand outside. I can read a book. I can chill. I can do something that takes care of my nervous system because I'm not trying to play catch up then during these times, et cetera.
00:27:00 Heather
Which is also, that's a whole other mountain to climb because I was speaking to a woman yesterday And, you know, she's like, okay, I want to know all the things and I want to do. And I was like, listen, you're like focused on the peak. Like you were focused on the bigger vision of who you want to be and you're buying into like I want freedom and I want time and I want whatever. And it's pulling teeth to get you to go for a 10 minute walk. So if you are incapable of giving yourself permission, like we just got to start there. And that's what you don't want to hear, but that's the truth of what you actually need. And you're willing to invest all this time and energy over here and burn yourself out, but you're not willing to give yourself just a drop of water. And the reality is, if you are unwilling to do that, you will never feel nourished. You will never feel alive. You will never feel aligned. And I always say, is that the role model that you want for your daughter? Is that the role model that you want for your child? Because that's who they see. And so on a daily, I'm like, I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this, I don't want to do this. But I have evidence, I know what it's like to literally be at my rock bottom with my cup empty and cracked. So yes, I can go there. But also, I have to ask myself, if my child was in my exact shoes right now, as an adult, what advice would I give them? And instead of giving them that advice, I have to show them. And so most of the time I'm going on that damn walk, and I'm like, I'm doing this for my kids. I come from such a place of service that it's almost annoying, like my inner dialogue to trick my brain to do things. Yeah, it's wild to me, the crap I have to tell myself to give myself permission to take care of myself.
00:28:46 Alyssa
Before we leave, can you just let us know if you find yourself in this space where you're over -parenting, where you are stepping in, what is the first step that you can take when you realize you are over -parenting?
00:29:02 Heather
I actually really love this question. I have this rule of thumb, like my North star is how do I want to feel? So if I want to feel aligned and I'm over -parenting and I can feel that I'm out of alignment, becoming angry, resentful, whatever that is, immediately I stop what I'm doing. And I ask myself, I need to take radical ownership for it. So I stop what I'm doing, but I also have to sit with the feeling that is coming up for me. So a perfect example of this right now is teenager doing the normal things that he needs to do in order to buy his next vehicle, to make money, to become an adult. I so badly want to solve some of his problems to accelerate this process for him because all of his friends have had everything handed to him, and that triggers me like I'm not enough, I'm not doing enough. And so I want to do all of these things. And I'm like, but what are you teaching him? I so badly want to over-parent in these areas and I have to sit with this not enough-ness. So I don't know. It's an art form to me. It's like, do I need to lean in a little bit more? Do I need to lean back? But usually if you're asking yourself that question, it's because you're doing more than enough. It's an art form. It's awareness. This is like inner discernment. I don't think anyone is going to tell you right or wrong of when you need to lean in, when you need to back off. We're all learning this for the first time together. No one really knows what they're doing.
00:30:36 Alyssa
Sure. Sure. So it sounds like just starting with, which is what we talk 7 million times about in Tiny Humans, Big Emotions is starting with self -awareness and noticing, oh, this is happening. And then allowing that feeling to exist so that that you can dive into, what's it teaching me?
00:30:53 Heather
And why are you over -parenting?
00:30:55 Alyssa
Right.
00:30:56 Heather
Why, what is the why behind it? Cause you feel guilty? Because you're afraid? Or are you like, no, this brings me so much joy. I just, this is my love language. You just, you gotta lean in, you gotta know.
00:31:08 Alyssa
Sure, and even sometimes there where is this my love language can be the surface but maybe beneath that is, I don't wanna let go of them. I don't want them to have their own freedom and their own space outside of me. Who am I there, outside of mom, outside of parent? Thank you so much, Heather. Thanks for this work. Folks, you can snag her book, Dying To Be A Good Mother wherever books are sold. Tune into the podcast, Emotionally Uncomfortable. Heather, where can folks find you?
00:31:41 Heather
Yeah, I'm on the podcast a lot. I'm definitely a little spicy and edgy, and I will challenge you to become your best self. And then just my website, HeatherChauvin.com and Instagram, if you desire. Always tell people the more alive you become, like the more you, you become. That is, that's the secret. That's the parenting secret. Everyone is searching for, and it will make you emotionally uncomfortable because it's not a cultural norm.
00:32:10 Alyssa
Yeah, it's so true. Cheers to being uncomfortable together.
[Music]
00:32:13 Alyssa
Due to travel schedules, there is no breakdown with Rach at the end of this episode. We'll see you back next week.
00:32:25 Alyssa
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