Reframing Me
So many prepare us for the transition to motherhood, but no one prepares us for how hard the transition out is, and once our kids become teens, it also can feel very solitary. The issues we face with teens are often ones we need to talk about, yet feel we can't or shouldn't. Together, we can create a community of women who, faced with growing children and changing families, are relearning how to mom, and relearning who they are as women. Grounded in family communication theory, join Dr. Jennifer Brubaker to have those conversations to help you better understand this new chapter of your life. Episodes focus on both family communication with our teens and reflection and self discovery. Dr. Brubaker has her Ph.D in Communication Studies and is an Associate Professor at the University of North Carolina Wilmington, where she has taught for 17 years. Prior to UNCW, she taught at The Ohio State University, Kent State University and the University of Toledo. Originally from Ohio, Jen lives in Wilmington, NC, with her husband, three children, three dogs, cat and a menagerie of small animals. She loves spending time with her family, traveling and all things fitness, sports and wellness. Reach out with your questions, issues or experiences to begin the conversation. Or reach out to say hi and let me know you’re listening :) Join the Reframing Me: The Podcast Community Facebook group to connect with others who are looking to relearn how to parent, now that their kids are teens, and rediscover who they are as women, beyond the framework of motherhood. Send emails to jen@reframing-me.com; or on socials: Reframing Me on FacebookAND join the Facebook group Reframing Me: The Podcast Community; @reframingme on Instagram; Reframing Me on YouTube @reframingme on TikTok
Reframing Me
Jen is Zen - Episode 200!! Je suis le ciel (I am the sky)
Thank you so much for being here! It's our 200th episode!! And today, for the first time, "Reframing Me" is ranking in France, so I am dusting off my high school French (well... that may be a BIT of a stretch...).
“You are the sky. Everything else—it’s just the weather.”
Or, maybe more simply: You are not your feelings. You are the one who feels them. Emotional complexity is the ability to separate yourself from your feelings. This is what it means to communicate without making everything personal.
But it's not how we, as midlife - GenX or older Millennial women, were taught. So now, here we are: Hormonal messes. Parenting teens who are hormonal messes.
Trying to model emotional intelligence we were never taught.
Trying to teach our kids to express what they feel.
Trying to name our own feelings accurately.
Trying to decode what’s happening in our homes while living in bodies that feel foreign.
Trying to understand our spouses - who were trained in the grand tradition of: anger, or nothing.
And while we're doing all that... we’re also often supporting aging parents who have never processed an emotion out loud in their lives.
So yeah. It’s a lot. Somedays, it feels like we are the emotional managers of our households.
- What emotions have you been carrying that aren’t yours?
- What emotion have you been flattening into something easier to name—when really, it’s more layered than that?
- Where have you been managing emotions for people who haven’t learned to name their own?
- What would change if you trusted yourself to feel it all—but not become it?
This is not about becoming emotionless. - It’s about becoming emotionally fluent.. Because you are the sky, and even on the stormiest days—you are still steady and still you;
Thank you for listening and being part of this community! Let's get social. Follow me on Facebook, on Twitter @reframing_me, on Instagram @reframingme and on TikTok @reframingme
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