Latest / The Parent Tap / The Generational Reset: Stop Surviving Chaos

Transcript

The Generational Reset: Stop Surviving Chaos · The Parent Tap

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_02: Today's episode features Jessica Stendel.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_02: Redneck girl, mompreneur, survivor.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: I was a young 17-year-old girl from California, got lost, ended up in Idaho, and I ended up with no gas, me and my friend, no food in the middle of nowhere, like desert.
• 0:20
  SPEAKER_01: And I landed exactly where God needed me to be, wanted me to be, and I made it home because where I stopped my vehicle.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not kidding.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: This is the God's honest truth, 100%.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna tell you, but I won't give you the full story.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_01: But I ended up at the street where my grandma and grandpa live, and I didn't even know it.
• 0:38
  SPEAKER_01: It's just I how do you how do you not say that God did not have a hand in placing me right where I needed to be?
• 0:43
  SPEAKER_01: I was I got chills right here.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_01: I was a little lamb in the middle of nowhere, in the it's desert, like no mountains, no trees, nothing for miles behind me, and nothing for miles ahead of me.
• 0:54
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure of that.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_01: And I I did get home safely.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 0:59
  SPEAKER_01: I had literally like a dollar twenty in my pocket.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_01: There was no way I was making it at home.
• 1:03
  SPEAKER_02: Parents are exhausted trying to find their own dreams with unexpected family curveballs.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_02: You've built a million-dollar preschool business and then walked away from it to care for your special needs daughter.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_02: Jessica, what is the biggest lie parents believe about having to choose between their kids and their ambition?
• 1:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, sometimes, you know, it's a lot of it's financial.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_01: They're like, oh, I can't take that risk because, you know, Joey needs new shoes or whatever.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_01: Or they just think that a lot of women that are mamapreneurs, it's hard for them because they're trying to if they're trying to build a business or they're looking into it, they've got a toddler at their ankles, yanking on their pant leg, asking for another sippy cup of juice.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_01: And you're like, you already had your half a cup of sippy juice.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_01: You don't need you don't need another juice.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: Have some milk, but I don't want milk.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: I want juice.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_01: And it's an argument and a fight, and then five minutes later you're like, what was I doing?
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_01: And so, you know, your your mind gets pulled in you know all these different directions, and it's hard to stay focused sometimes.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and a lot of times too, a lot of women out there, and men too, but women generally, you know, it's possible that their spouse isn't all the time like their champion or their cheerleader.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: My husband was like, all right, just make it work.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I'll behind you.
• 2:21
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, he's always spectacled, he didn't know if I could do it or not, and he wasn't sure.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a big risk financially to put your house on the line if you're so what I did was I started a family daycare out of the house.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: I built it up and was able was approached to do a commercial building.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_01: I would be leasing the property, but then I'd have to put money into the inside of the shell.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_01: And it was a 10,000 square foot building, a 30,000 square foot play yard, and I never knew how to do a business plan.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_01: I went online and I Googled it and it said to do this, and so I put it all together and I got an SBA loan for$700,000 at the time.
• 2:57
  SPEAKER_01: That was a lot.
• 2:59
  SPEAKER_01: And I I went in and I got I paid for the inside of the building of the school, put the 30,000 square foot play yard together with trees and jump equipment and everything that you needed.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_01: And my school did look like a magazine.
• 3:11
  SPEAKER_01: You open up the doors, it just looked like a magazine online.
• 3:14
  SPEAKER_01: And I built up the business before we even opened our doors.
• 3:17
  SPEAKER_01: I would show parents around a dirt lot and say, This is where the daycare room is gonna, or the preschool room is, and this is the school age room and the dramatic play and our computer lab and all the things that we were gonna do in the school.
• 3:28
  SPEAKER_01: And I pre-sold and 140 students started on day one.
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_01: So I opened the door with 140 students.
• 3:35
  SPEAKER_01: And how did I do all this?
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: I while running two business, because I had two daycares at the time, I had a family daycare, and then I owned one at a church.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_01: So I was doing them both at the same time.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to say how I got through it, but and I was trying to build the contracts and policies.
• 3:52
  SPEAKER_01: And you know, when you have a school, you have to, you know, you have to map out every second of the day for each teacher about like how your how it's gonna run, you know, how how are they gonna get their lunch breaks or their 10-minute breaks, and how are they gonna do there's just a lot to it.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_01: And you have to in California, you have to abide by all the state laws as well, and then look out for the children and their best needs.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_01: So, and then all the while making sure your kids don't feel left out.
• 4:15
  SPEAKER_01: It's really hard, but if you want one of the things in my book that I write about is called domination by determination.
• 4:22
  SPEAKER_01: And if you really want it, you will make it happen.
• 4:25
  SPEAKER_01: And you take baby steps.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't know how to do a business plan, so I took it step by step, little steps at a time, break, taking a bite out of it each time, getting closer and closer until I made it happen.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_01: And when I did make it happen, don't get me wrong, don't get it twisted.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: I sat back and I thought, holy crap, look what I did.
• 4:44
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I can't, I did what every daycare person dreams of doing, and I I did it, I made it come true.
• 4:50
  SPEAKER_01: And one once you do one thing, you're thinking, like, I can do anything.
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: What do I want to do next?
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, transcends across like all facets of your life, doesn't it?
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_02: Once you Yeah.
• 5:00
  SPEAKER_01: What happened was the economy went to in the crapper.
• 5:04
  SPEAKER_01: Like everybody was losing their jobs, families don't need daycare when daddy's out of work.
• 5:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went from at the highest 88 or 188 students to like 88 students.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_01: And then my daughter was born and needed open heart surgery, and I was told, you know, she's gonna have it at five months.
• 5:21
  SPEAKER_01: So you guys, you need to not leave her side because she could die, literally.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: By and also, you know, these babies when they are feeding, they fall asleep and then they don't wake back up, or they fall asleep and they stop feeding, and then they don't get the amount of food that they need to keep growing.
• 5:36
  SPEAKER_01: And they are small and petite and pale.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: And and when my daughter went to surgery, the nurses are like, I need a bigger, I need a bigger gown.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_01: This girl's huge, this baby's tall, and my husband's 6'6, so my baby was tall, and she looked like she looked like she almost was one, you know, like like one or two, like she's just a big kid.
• 5:57
  SPEAKER_01: And they're like, Oh my goodness, this she's healthy, like because I made sure that she fed good and she was well cared for.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, but during that time, the I my landlord kept bugging me.
• 6:10
  SPEAKER_01: He he knew where he could seep in because I was postpartum, you know, I was sad about my daughter.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_01: I found out my son also had Asperger's around that same time.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: And, you know, dealing with his school and he the school's calling me every day and just all kinds of stuff.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: And when he my landlord asked me to buy the school, I said, okay, let's do it.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: Had I known what I know now in business, and also that, you know, I have a master's degree now, and back then I didn't have any education on business at all.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_01: But he he seeped in right when he just the perfect timing like a vulture, and he didn't pay me what he owed me, and we were in mediation for a very long time, and you know, the mediators like they're gonna bleed you dry because his brother was an attorney, and so I didn't get what I was promised for my school.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: So my million dollar school, it was producing a million dollars, left me, you know, high and dry, so to speak.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: I got some, but not what I needed for the school.
• 7:06
  SPEAKER_01: It's still running.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: The school is a success, it's just not in my name.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's still running as the biggest school in town, and they're still using my contracts and policies and my procedures and everything.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_02: So that is that's incredible to build that from the ground up and to still have it being the success and you know, sustained legacy that you've built.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 7:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's hard to drive by the school though, because I drive by and I'm like, because it's my it was my baby.
• 7:31
  SPEAKER_01: I made it in my living room, you know.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I, you know, and I nurtured it and I grew it and I worked very hard for many years to get it to that point.
• 7:40
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, he took advantage of me at a time that was like at my most difficult in my life.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: And then Pi Piper, the surgery went by fine, but then after that, she was two, we found out she had cerebral palsy, and later, and then we found she has an intellectual disability and she's aut she has autism and she doesn't chew food, so there's lots, there's just a lot of things my daughter has going through through life.
• 8:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm glad that I had time to focus on those and those needs of hers instead of focusing on what teacher wants to take Thursday off or whatever, you know what I mean?
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, absolutely.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_02: It kind of puts it into perspective, I guess, what's most important, right?
• 8:22
  SPEAKER_02: When your daughter's going through all those challenges, and you know, it's think thankfully you were able to be there for her and and you know, kind of help her through those those hurdles.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_02: I mean, that would be still jumping.
• 8:35
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, and that's I had young kids, and when you talked about the juice and you know, the special needs, I have a special needs daughter as well.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_02: So it's I get it in a sense, but there's definitely an additional hurdle that you know you you all are going through.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_02: And and so, like you said, oh, something always comes up.
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_02: Life is life, and so, anyways, you literally wrote the book on resilience though, the bucket list from a redneck girl, which I love that title, by the way.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Um I know, it's a little bit different.
• 9:02
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I love it.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_02: I love it.
• 9:04
  SPEAKER_02: Let's give parents a framework to survive the chaos.
• 9:06
  SPEAKER_02: So, like you just talked about, everyone's experience is different, you know.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_02: Not everyone's gonna have a decure, not everyone's gonna have the challenges you do at home.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_02: But what I mean, how do you survive life, like the chaos that we all go through as parents?
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, you know, like, you know, a lot of stuff that you deal with as parents stems from how you were raised as a child.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_01: My parents were very hard on me, I would say.
• 9:31
  SPEAKER_01: There's a chapter in my book called The Belt, the hand, or the hanger.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_01: And that is how my dad would ask me how I wanted it when I was being punished.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm the only one in the family that got punished that way.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_01: They put me in a drug rehab when I've never done drugs, even to this day.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_01: Never.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_01: And put me in a drug rehab, and then when the tested results came back that I didn't do drugs, they're like, okay, we can take her out now.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was there for four days.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_01: Crazy.
• 9:59
  SPEAKER_01: It was a crazy thing that I went through.
• 10:01
  SPEAKER_01: And I talk about that in the book, it's just nuts.
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: But uh, so I felt unloved a lot.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_01: I ran away when I was like in the third grade.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_01: I actually got far, like 10 miles, which is pretty far when you're like an eight-year-old.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_01: And I ran away.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't feel loved.
• 10:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my brothers and sisters were not nice to me.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_01: Even my babysitter at the time, we had a babysitter, like, threw me in my room, and like my mom fired her for it, but she came back and robbed us.
• 10:26
  SPEAKER_01: But I I mean, I was just not being treated very well by the by the adults in my life, and so I wanted to make sure that I did not do that for my kids.
• 10:36
  SPEAKER_01: I wanted to be the opposite of all that.
• 10:38
  SPEAKER_01: So I told my kid I still to this day tell my kids I love them like all every day.
• 10:43
  SPEAKER_01: And I think to their detriment, and I talk about this in one of my episodes, I was a helicopter parent.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I parented in a way that was detrimental to their upbringing because I hovered over the top of them too much, making sure that yeah, they had their sippy cup, that they had what they needed, that they didn't fall down or you know, like everything was padded, you know.
• 11:07
  SPEAKER_01: Like, I don't know.
• 11:08
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't let them fall down enough and scrape their knee and and sit in the hurt for a little while for them.
• 11:14
  SPEAKER_01: But they just were pampered and spoiled.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_01: And now my son's like, You think I can't cook?
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_01: I can't even boil water, it's not like you told me.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like he blames me now.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_02: So I mean, yeah, yeah, I I'm sorry, I was gonna say, like, I gave being a helicopter parent because I never thought I would be you, and now it's like it shows you love, like you love, you care, you want your child to grow up with a better upbringing than you had, right?
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_02: And that's how I felt too about my child.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_02: And so I do have to pull myself back at times for sure, but it's also like I do care, I do love, and I do want them to be better off than I was, and I I ever will be, you know.
• 11:53
  SPEAKER_02: So I think it's all coming from a good place, and it sounds like, you know, again, your your upbringing, you don't want them to go through that same experience at all.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_01: And my mom and I are besties now, don't get me wrong, and let me just say this right now right off the bat, parents that are listening.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: You do the best you can, okay?
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_01: You continue to keep doing the best you can.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: I was a helicopter parent, okay.
• 12:17
  SPEAKER_01: Sorry, I did the best that I could.
• 12:19
  SPEAKER_01: And what's gonna happen is my mom and dad treated me like crap, okay, growing up.
• 12:24
  SPEAKER_01: But I have forgiven my mother.
• 12:26
  SPEAKER_01: My dad is passed away, but my mother, I probably never would have forgiven my dad.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: But I forgive my mom and I'm friends with her.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_01: I may not forget, and I wrote it down in a book, let me just say, but I still love my mother, so it's almost like you cannot do anything that will make your children not love you, okay?
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: No matter what you do.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_01: You're you think you're failing all the time.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's what I say.
• 12:48
  SPEAKER_01: I'm walking in failure like constantly.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_01: But, you know, you think your your kids are gonna grow up and hate you, and it's not true.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: They're gonna love you regardless, and they're gonna see that you did your very, very best.
• 13:00
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my mom and dad didn't have internet or, you know, support groups or any of that kind of stuff to guide them.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_01: Although they did look at a stupid pamphlet, and that's how they decided to send me to a drug rehab, but they didn't have anybody to guide them through some of the things, and they were just doing what their parents did to them, and it was a vicious cycle.
• 13:18
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I'm I don't discipline my kids like that.
• 13:21
  SPEAKER_01: I do a lot of when they were younger, I did a lot of counting, and that helped me.
• 13:25
  SPEAKER_01: There's a book out there called One, Two, Three Magic, and I read it, and I course I I drank the Kool-Aid on it.
• 13:30
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would tell I was, you know, I would say Parker, that's one, that's two.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: By three, he was doing what he was supposed to be doing.
• 13:38
  SPEAKER_01: He knew that if I got to three, there was a consequence.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 13:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I followed through with the same consequence every time.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And he didn't like the consequence, so he would stop at one or two.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: And that works for kids.
• 13:47
  SPEAKER_01: Trust me, try it at home.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_01: I swear it works.
• 13:49
  SPEAKER_02: Buy the black one.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_02: Totally, totally.
• 13:51
  SPEAKER_02: I I love that.
• 13:52
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I'll link that in the description for other parents to use too, because I know that techniques and tactics like that, like little small things you can implement, can really be the difference between like, you know, and again, I'm gonna need to back my kick around.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_02: I just need to I just need a exactly, and we're all trying to, I think, be better parents.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_02: Like you said, sometimes we're not the best parent, and that that's part of the self-reflection and in all of it.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_02: But I think at the at the meat of you know, at the heart of it, we're all again trying to do better for our kids, and and again, we love them.
• 14:21
  SPEAKER_02: And I think it's it's sweet that even though your childhood wasn't the best, you can still be friends with your mom now and love her now, and and vice versa.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_02: And I I just think that there's something sweet about that, like how we can always have this redemption story, and because just because you must in the past doesn't mean you can't make amends.
• 14:42
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Jessica, I don't know why we disciplined you differently than the others.
• 14:45
  SPEAKER_01: I don't she goes, I don't know.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_01: She goes, maybe they just didn't rub us the wrong way.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Like I was probably, as you could probably see, I'm hyper, I was always hyper.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: I probably was ADHD and had some ism behind my name.
• 14:58
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: And so there was probably things that they could have diagnosed back in the day that they that they do now, but they didn't do then.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, I was talkative, quick-witted, smart.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: I was a go-getter.
• 15:09
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: You know, my parents put me in a drug rehab, but I was on the cross-country basketball and track team.
• 15:15
  SPEAKER_01: I was school photographer, I was on the yearbook, and I was I was uh a journalist in for the paper, and I wrote for the the town paper, and I did a lot of things, and I had a good grades.
• 15:27
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know what I could have done better as a daughter.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's just that I wasn't doing very good at home.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_01: We were fighting for over little silly things.
• 15:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so when I retreated to my room, they're like, Oh, something's wrong.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_01: She's not talking to us, something she must be doing something, you know.
• 15:42
  SPEAKER_01: So then they just put me in a drug rehab.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm like, I couldn't, I couldn't have been a better kid.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: You know what I mean?
• 15:48
  SPEAKER_01: I wasn't drinking, I wasn't smoking, I still don't smoke.
• 15:51
  SPEAKER_01: I don't care to drink.
• 15:52
  SPEAKER_01: I I think I went to two house parties and I drank twice.
• 15:55
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, who doesn't?
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_01: Peer pressure, you gotta do, you gotta do it when you're younger.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, no, for sure.
• 16:00
  SPEAKER_02: You gotta get out of your system.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_02: And I I can relate to that in a sense where my parents were super strict on me and really I felt like I was very straight edge, and you know, I was I didn't go to parties, I you know, I got good decent grades, I I didn't do anything that was bad, but I always felt like I was disappointing them in light of my brother who was just like you know the straight A student and the like you know, and I just I felt like I could never like live up to that.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_02: Um so, anyways, yeah, like I can get that and how that can really mess with your head because like yeah, I think it even follows me a little bit to this day where I always just feel like I can't do enough, you know.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_02: Like I'm never gonna be like able to do that.
• 16:40
  SPEAKER_02: I'm the same way.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_01: My sister, my sister has kids that are high achievers, going to get they're gonna be doctors and they're getting all these awards for sports, and they're gonna get full right scholarships to these big colleges.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: And here's my kids, you know, I can't get them out.
• 16:56
  SPEAKER_01: He's like failure to launch, you know.
• 16:58
  SPEAKER_01: But they've got they're neurodivergent, you know.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: They my kids will probably be living with me for the rest of their life.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm trying to think about like what my future is gonna look like and theirs.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_01: And are we gonna move to where I can build them a house each on the property, or how are we gonna do this so they can have some independence away from us, but still be close enough for me if they need me, you know?
• 17:17
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, and that's the helicopter pyramid.
• 17:19
  SPEAKER_01: Again, what am I gonna?
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I mean, they otherwise I'd be driving across town to help them every time, and I can't do that either.
• 17:25
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_02: I I can relate to that in a sense.
• 17:28
  SPEAKER_02: We we think that our four-year-old daughter might may be always living with us, and we'll always we'll always have to have that simple similar dynamic because of the the challenges and just how quirky and we love her to death.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_02: We never want her to leave us anyways.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: So you know, the best though, they have the they're the best hearts and they're the sweetest kids.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'm just saying.
• 17:46
  SPEAKER_02: Oh, yeah, just I I hope she never loses her enthusiasm for life and her love and her childlike wonder, like it it carries over to us and how you know how we're how jaded adults can be, and how cynical, and how you know what I mean.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_02: I think kids just keep us keep us light and and speaking of it's on just saying, so your podcast, you leave heavily into Gen X pop culture.
• 18:08
  SPEAKER_02: And so, how does keeping that nostalgic fun part of your identity alive actually prevent parental burnout, like we just talked about?
• 18:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, I'm just saying, okay, you wouldn't you are you a millennial?
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_01: You're such a young little little weapon.
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so let me just say, Gen Xers, we've got some grit, okay?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: That's what Chat GPT would call it, because that's the word that they like to use a lot is grit.
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_01: But I I swear, whenever they give me something with grit in it, I'm like, I'm just taking that out.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: That's just so stupid.
• 19:15
  SPEAKER_01: But yeah, we do have what they would call grit.
• 19:17
  SPEAKER_01: We're like, who was it that comedian?
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: He you'd skin your knee when you're younger, and my dad would say, just rub some tussen on it, you know, some robotussin, like on your skin knee, like just go on back outside.
• 19:27
  SPEAKER_01: Like we would get a skin knee.
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_01: I would break skin my knee when I was younger, and then I'd come in at the end of the day when the lights came off, and my mom's like, Where why'd you get that hole in your knee?
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm like, Oh, I fell off my bike or whatever, and I have a big gaping hole in my pants.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, Well, let me put a patch on it.
• 19:41
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've got some red pants, and she puts like a uh a blue patch on my red pants, you know.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: I'm like, Thanks, mom, like that really matched.
• 19:49
  SPEAKER_01: But we have grit, you know, we have like, I don't know, it's we had to do things a lot harder.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: So things don't seem as difficult as they are for us.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it just seems like we mustered through it.
• 19:59
  SPEAKER_01: So Gen X is because there's a lot of people out there that are my age, hopefully listening, that are parents or grandparents, but we have a lot of insight, okay, because we've been through it, and some of us have like I my kids are older, but you know, I've had a four-year-old just like you, and they all three were four at one time.
• 20:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I've got a 33-year-old, a 25-year-old, and a 16-year-old.
• 20:22
  SPEAKER_01: So I've got some advice that I think that I can help people, and that is what we do on my podcasts.
• 20:27
  SPEAKER_01: I have guests come on and then I tell them my part of the story that kind of relates to theirs and what I did, and we go back and forth about how, you know, I try to share my story as much as they're telling me theirs, and so that parent people out there get a sense of who I am and where I'm coming from.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why Bucket List from a Redneck Girl has so many different things, parts, and stories in there.
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: And that's why I started the podcast because I wanted one to promote my book, but everything in my book is like relatable to everybody, you know.
• 20:55
  SPEAKER_01: One of my episodes was spanking across the different generations.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: So we talk about how does you know, how was spanking back then and how is disciplining now?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: What's the difference?
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: You know, well, one CPS would be called today.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 21:07
  SPEAKER_01: But it's just different.
• 21:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so I try to pull things from my book and my experiences, and I'll do episodes regarding that.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I had a Jerry Springer wedding.
• 21:16
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you know, we want to talk.
• 21:17
  SPEAKER_01: I had a school shooting, one of the first in America, 1992, and I talk about it in the book.
• 21:23
  SPEAKER_01: And so I've done an episode on Lyndhurst High School school school shooting from 1992, and we we discussed that, and it's what was one of the first ones in America, which is crazy.
• 21:33
  SPEAKER_01: But so I try to pull things from my book and make it relatable, and I I give my experiences and I do it with a Gen X twist because I'm I've got grit, so to speak.
• 21:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, yeah, totally.
• 21:44
  SPEAKER_02: No, I love that.
• 21:45
  SPEAKER_02: And you talk about faith in God showing up in the mess.
• 21:48
  SPEAKER_02: And so when a parent hits a wall this week, when they're listening to this out there, wherever it is, what is the exact mental shift they need to make uh in that moment?
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, take a deep breath and then take another one.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, get a cup of coffee, whatever it is you need to do, center yourself and just remember everything is happening for a reason, okay?
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_01: And even though you might have like I went through eye surgeries when I was younger and they were traumatic.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_01: But I think God put me through all of that so that when my daughter, because she will have another heart surgery coming up, so that I'm there for her during her all of her bouts and surgeries that she's gonna have throughout the years, he did it for so that I could take my experience and help my daughter get through it.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_01: And there's everything happens for a reason.
• 22:34
  SPEAKER_01: So whatever you're going through, it's because it's by God's God's design and just.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_01: Sit back in it, and sometimes you just need to open your eyes and see the breadcrumbs he's throwing in front of you, you know.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I write about the breadcrumbs in my book too.
• 22:47
  SPEAKER_01: And I have a God story that is in the middle of my book because I'll just briefly say it.
• 22:52
  SPEAKER_01: But I was a young 17-year-old girl from California, got lost, ended up in Idaho.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_01: Just saying.
• 23:00
  SPEAKER_01: And I ended up with no gas, me and my friend, no gas, no food in the middle of nowhere, like desert.
• 23:06
  SPEAKER_01: And I landed exactly where God needed me to be, wanted me to be, and I made it home because where I stopped my vehicle.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not kidding.
• 23:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm it's the God's honest truth 100%.
• 23:17
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just gonna tell you, but I won't give you the full story.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_01: But I ended up at the street, the s my grandman-grandpa, my great grandma and grandfather, they have a farm, 300 acres, and it's a historical national landmark, okay?
• 23:31
  SPEAKER_01: And because their house is made out of lava rocks, it's over 120 years old.
• 23:36
  SPEAKER_01: On the corner of their house is a filling station, a very old-time filling station.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: Like the whole the pumps are old-timey, like the ones you'd pay to put in your living room, like the really cool ones.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And I ended up on the corner of my great grandma and grandpa's house in the middle of Idaho, and I was totally I was trying to go to California from Utah, and I ended up in Idaho, and I I ended up my first stop because we were totally out of gas, right at the filling station where my grandma and grandpa live, and I didn't even know it.
• 24:04
  SPEAKER_01: The lady at the counter, I said, I was crying.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: She's like, Well, what's wrong?
• 24:08
  SPEAKER_01: I told her that I I I'm lost, and she goes, Well, you're in Eden, Idaho.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And I thought, I think my great grandma and grandpa live in Eden, is what I told her.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_01: And she said, Well, what's their name, honey?
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I said, Vineyard.
• 24:20
  SPEAKER_01: And she goes, Oh my God.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_01: She, I mean, her and I both got chills.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 24:24
  SPEAKER_01: She walks me over to the door and she opens the door and she says, You see that road right there?
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_01: That's your grandma's street.
• 24:30
  SPEAKER_01: It's called Vineyard Road because it's a historical landmark.
• 24:33
  SPEAKER_01: Vineyard Road, that's her street.
• 24:34
  SPEAKER_01: You go down there and you're gonna find their name or find their house.
• 24:37
  SPEAKER_01: And they have like three or four houses on the farm.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_01: And I knew which one it was because I'd just been there the summer before with my mom and dad.
• 24:43
  SPEAKER_01: And so I don't know, it's just how do you how do you not say that God did not have a hand in placing me right where I needed to be?
• 24:50
  SPEAKER_01: I was like, I got chills right here.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I was a little lamb in the middle of nowhere, in the it's desert, like no mountains, no trees, nothing for miles behind me, and nothing for miles ahead of me.
• 25:01
  SPEAKER_01: I'm sure of that.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: And I I did get home safely.
• 25:05
  SPEAKER_01: It's funny.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: I had literally like a dollar twenty in my pocket.
• 25:08
  SPEAKER_01: There's no way I was making it home.
• 25:10
  SPEAKER_02: That's that's the setup to one of those, like I watch a lot of crime shows, and so like that situation of driving and not knowing where you are and having a dollar twenty in your pocket, they usually end bad.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_02: So that's that's a great ending to your story of like how you ended up where you should were supposed to be.
• 25:27
  SPEAKER_02: And yeah, uh not put you through everything, people.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was meant to do that.
• 25:30
  SPEAKER_01: I was meant to tell this that story to you right now.
• 25:33
  SPEAKER_01: I was meant to put it in my book.
• 25:34
  SPEAKER_01: God wants me to tell my story over and over so people out there will listen and know that God is real, God is good.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm just saying, just saying, I try to weave faith into my podcast, but I'm not dripping in it.
• 25:47
  SPEAKER_01: I just believe in God and I tell people what I feel when the time that is right for me to say it.
• 25:52
  SPEAKER_01: So come come to my podcast.
• 25:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's not any one thing, it's a lot of things, and it's me failing all the time, and I'll tell people like I suck at that, or I'm like, I try really hard, but this is how how I struggle, and I tell people my struggles, and I walk in that and I try to share my story as often as I can.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I love that authenticity and and just really owning up to you know, and not and not being fake.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_02: So I think a lot of what we see now is like people just pretending to like know everything or to like to be a certain way and then they put on putting on a facade.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, and I love that the just the true like genuineness of your personality.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_02: It's appreciated.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I'm definitely not one of those people because you know, coaches are just really big right now.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody wants to be a coach or something, and uh and I so when I when I pitch myself to a podcast, I say I'm not a guru or a coach, I'm just a mom, you know, trying to do a load of laundry in between my podcast and writing a book.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_02: So yeah, yeah, right?
• 26:46
  SPEAKER_02: Real life stuff.
• 26:47
  SPEAKER_02: So, where can my audience get a copy of your book and listen to your podcast?
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so very easily, just you can buy my book anywhere, and my podcast is where podcasts are free.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's everywhere.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_01: But I have a hub, okay?
• 27:00
  SPEAKER_01: So I have a website.
• 27:01
  SPEAKER_01: Just go to my website, jesssaying.net, and that's J-E-S-S-S-A-Y-I-N-G.net.
• 27:09
  SPEAKER_01: And you can go on there and find my podcast information, my all my social media.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm on all the things, okay.
• 27:15
  SPEAKER_01: I've got like an everything.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_01: There's just saying everywhere.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_01: And my book is on there.
• 27:20
  SPEAKER_01: You can buy it Amazon, anywhere books are sold, and my it gives you little little like uh spots to listen to my podcast a little bit here and there, so you get an idea of the kind of things that we're talking about.
• 27:31
  SPEAKER_01: And also a list of my people on my podcast.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_01: If you go to podcasts, go to their name, click it, it'll take you directly to their website so you can get more in-depth information about my my the people that are on my show.
• 27:43
  SPEAKER_01: And if you're like, oh man, I really want that guy's book, well, you can go there, find it very easily.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: It's it's kind of like an easy peasy website.
• 27:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, I know I love that.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_02: And you have a wealth, you know, wealth of knowledge, but again, you're not one of those people that are just like pitching that you know everything, right?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_02: You have it all from your experience, you can draw from it.
• 28:04
  SPEAKER_02: You've already in 25 minutes have explained like some very I don't know, wild is the right word, but wild stories, you know what I mean?
• 28:11
  SPEAKER_02: Like from your book that people need to go check out.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_01: I have not even told you.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_01: Like I haven't even told you.
• 28:15
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, right.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: Like I'm a stepparent too, by the way.
• 28:17
  SPEAKER_01: Hello, people out there that are stepmoms.
• 28:19
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm a stepmom and I lived in it.
• 28:21
  SPEAKER_01: I've been, I was actually in court give in like in labor for my when I was at court for my stepdaughter, I was in labor for my son.
• 28:29
  SPEAKER_01: And there's a whole story there too.
• 28:31
  SPEAKER_01: I have a ton of stories that I didn't even touch on.
• 28:33
  SPEAKER_01: And this and the book is very funny.
• 28:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's one of those books you can read while your kids are playing soccer, or you read it on a plane or on a long car ride.
• 28:41
  SPEAKER_01: It's very funny and it's easy to read.
• 28:43
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah, go check out the book, go check out the podcast.
• 28:45
  SPEAKER_02: I'll put all that stuff in the show notes, the description, on the website, but it's all on my website too.
• 28:50
  SPEAKER_02: So people will have a place to find you and to get more of your show, more of your book, follow your next projects.
• 28:57
  SPEAKER_02: It sounds like you always got a bunch of irons in the fire, right?
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_02: You don't have enough going on.
• 29:01
  SPEAKER_02: I'm writing a novel.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_01: I'm okay.
• 29:03
  SPEAKER_01: I wrote three novels.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if I told you, but I wrote three novels.
• 29:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're kind of they're kind of uh romance thriller, and I'm on my last one.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_01: I got a couple chapters left.
• 29:11
  SPEAKER_01: I just they're in draft form and they're they're all three connected, so it's like a series.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's a little 49 shades of gray.
• 29:18
  SPEAKER_01: It's kind of like when you're reading it, you're like, is anyone watching me?
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_01: Because it's easy, you know.
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a little bit different than I'm used to.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: So, but I I've got the writing bug is the thing, and so that's and I also have a lot of authors on my show because I think it's interesting get hearing their expertise, but then seeing what they wrote, the children's books, the fantasy out there.
• 29:36
  SPEAKER_01: There's a lot of good authors that just don't get their their due day.
• 29:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I like to have them on my show so people can find out a little more information.
• 29:45
  SPEAKER_02: Jessica proved that you can't predict the curveballs, but you can build a system to survive them.
• 29:51
  SPEAKER_02: All of her links are in the description.
• 29:53
  SPEAKER_02: If you are done winging it, hit subscribe and click the video on your screen for the next operational blueprint.