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Or guest on today’s podcast is Stephanie Bacon, who is an educator, a mother and an authenticity coach. She shares her personal journey of realizing the importance of slowing down and prioritizing her own well-being, which involved hitting a breaking point and making significant changes in her life.
During this podcast, we talk about:
- How we often raise our children in similar ways to how we were brought up. Slowing down and how it can be difficult to prioritise in a society that values constant productivity.
- The fear of slowing down and the importance of recognising our own self-worth.
- Self-compassion and how it helps in the matrescence journey.
Stephanie shares a breathing technique called the Halo Active Breath that can be done on the go, to release tension and judgment and allow you more relaxation.
Stephanie is a passionate and fun-loving human who wants to share the freedom of a life authentically lived with all who are yearning for peace and connection. Her path includes 20+ years as an educator, 18 years of mothering, a Master’s degree in curriculum and instruction, academic coaching certification, a stint as the teacher’s union president, a divorce (there should be a certification for this), and several drafts of a rewrite on her life. She is currently finishing her PhD by researching the impact of teacher emotional and relational health and authenticity on teacher and student relationships.
As a teacher, she is dedicated to reducing friction (work loads, to-do lists, external demands) for educators, so they allow their unique gifts to be the driver of dynamic and deep learning. Stephanie knows that kids need social and emotional learning in addition to academic growth to take advantage of what this world has to offer them, but that learning starts with adults who are emotionally healthy and relationally skillful. She believes in the power of humans, young and old, to use their creativity to solve our most challenging problems when they are free from the efforts of shape-shifting to meet the expectations of others.
Stephanie works with Karen Caton-Brunnings, professional life and fitness coach, to bring authenticity workshops, content, and coaching to groups and individuals seeking the peace, creativity and satisfaction of authenticity.
You can find her at https://www.authenticallyyours.net and @authenticallysteph2023 on Instagram.
Claire Yee (00:00:02) - Stephanie, welcome to our podcast. It's such a delight to have you here. I'm so excited for our conversation today.
Stephanie (00:00:09) - Thank you so much for having me. After listening to your podcast and your other guests, I'm so excited to join the conversation.
Claire Yee (00:00:16) - Yes, we are so excited to have you join the conversation as well. So, to get started, I'd love to hear any snippet of your journey that you feel is on your heart right now to share with the audience. I know that you've, um, you've just had such a vast journey of experience and, and rich, um, education that's, that's grown this wisdom inside of you that you're so passionate about sharing with parents and educators. So whatever piece of that story you'd love to start with sharing here. I love,
Stephanie (00:00:48) - I love to tell stories. . Um, I think an important part of the story is that unlike I think some mothers, I didn't know if I was gonna be one. So I had some health issues that I didn't think I could have children. So it wasn't part something I'd given a lot of thought to. And then when I got pregnant and had a baby, I was like, I didn't really do so very consciously, it was like, I'm gonna do what my parents did. I seem to have turned out okay. And of course, , it was way more challenging than I thought. It's so much easier to parent when it's not your own child. And then, because I had, at that point, I had been teaching for seven, eight years and working with children. So I thought, you know, I already have these skills, but what I didn't realize is that kind of maternal connection or that that family history of, you know, what is our family about and what are our values?
Stephanie (00:01:50) - I didn't realize the heaviness and how that would hit me, um, in my parenting. And so when I kind of look back at my initial parenting, and I would say from the time my kids were, you know, toddlers to early adolescents, maybe 10 or 12 years old, I was pretty much just reenacting what my parents had done. I was, um, you know, authoritative, not authoritarian, but definitely felt like it was my job to mold them into productive citizens. That was the goal. Didn't matter if they were happy, it was just more like, are you gonna contribute to society? Because contributing to society was such a huge goal for my family that I had grown up with and part of our history. And then I started just noticing in myself as my children became more independent, that I kind of felt like a gap. Like I saw themselves shifting away from me.
Stephanie (00:02:54) - And in that space it was messy. And there were times where I, I felt depressed and lonely and, and like then I would be reaching towards my children, like, come back, come back to me. And I, I was reaching towards my spouse, you know, trying to fill the space that their independence had opened up. And fortunately in that time I also decided, well, you know, let me invest a little bit in myself. And I started to work with a life coach, Karen Caton Bruns, who does amazing work. And she helped me kind of separate from being a mother to also just being a human
Stephanie (00:03:36) - And allowing myself to be human. And when I shifted, you know, just being into my own humanity, I noticed the results in my own children. Like they showed up in new ways. And so right away I noticed, um, a shift in, I felt better about my parenting. My two boys were coming to me with problems instead of hiding problems from me. And then we could kind of problem solve. So what's interesting is, at the same time that I was parenting in this authoritative way, I was also coaching parents as a teacher. You know, the teacher conferences or maybe the child's acting out at home, and they, they reach out to the teacher and say, oh, can you help us? You know, Johnny doesn't wanna do their homework, or Johnny's, you know, acting out. And I found this just huge difference between the mom that I could be and the kind of parent coach supporter I could be. And it was hard for me to reconcile. And I really, thanks to my work with Karen and the coaching, she just said, you need to slow down. You know, slow down and allow yourself to have some space to really think about what you're feeling, where your actions are coming from, and anchor from there instead of just trying to do all the things.
Claire Yee (00:05:13) - Yes. I just, I love that piece of wisdom there is to slow down.
Stephanie (00:05:21) - Mm-hmm. ,
Claire Yee (00:05:21) - It just seems like such a simple thing that we could easily dismiss it and say, oh, I don't have time to slow down. You know, I'm busy. I've got all these things to do. I'm, I'm working. I've got kids to look after. I've got da, da da da da. Especially when we've been raised to prioritize the industrial revolution kind of mindset as you've, you know, always been busy, always be working, always be contributing to society. That is such, can be such a hard thing to do to slow down. And I'm speaking from personal experience as well, , I've learned that being busy is a, is a good thing. And, and it's hard for me sometimes still to slow down, even though I know that it's such an important piece and such an important thing to do. And it's in that slowing down that then we can start to hear our intuition and start to take a step back and see, oh, this is where these, this I can start to, you know, bridge this gap instead of it just being this feeling, this vast sort of feeling that we don't even know what to do with.
Claire Yee (00:06:26) - We can start to find ourselves within that. So in your experience then, off slowing down, so first of all, how did you slow down? How did you put those breaks on and what did you do to actually implement that in your life? And then what were the, what did you start to notice as you did start to slow down and shift?
Stephanie (00:06:51) - That's such a great, it's such a great question, but I have to tell you, just like you said, it was so hard. Yes. It was so hard. And it still is hard. It's still something that I'm challenged with every single day. And, you know, it started first with just the recognition of why it was so hard for me to slow down. I just kept asking myself, why do I feel like I have to keep doing? Why do I have to, you know, run the fundraiser, be on the secretary, on the board, um, coach the team, host the award ceremony. Why did I feel like that was more important than slowing down? Because let me tell you, when, when my coach said slow down, I didn't, yeah. I just couldn't. Yes. And I had just, I slowly realized that I had put all my sense of self worth into achievement. I had no sense of internal worth other than what I could provide for others. And it was hard to let go of that because you do get that feedback. So, you know, when I would coach, so I, I taught full-time. I'd work, I'd go to work at 7:00 AM I'd get off at four, I'd pick up my kids, I'd go to the baseball practice, I coached all their little league teams, all through their adolescents. And, and it was like, I'd get feedback. Great job. We love being on your team.
Claire Yee (00:08:31) - Mm.
Stephanie (00:08:32) - I wasn't willing to give myself that feedback, so I had to get it from everywhere else.
Claire Yee (00:08:39) - Mm.
Stephanie (00:08:40) - And unfortunately, I wasn't empowered enough to honestly slow down until I literally just ran into the wall.
Claire Yee (00:08:51) - Yes.
Stephanie (00:08:52) - I really did. I would love to say that I was a person who came to this great awareness out of my own desire to be more conscious and to kind of noticing when things weren't serving me. But instead I kind of went down the disastrous yet beautiful. And I'm so glad I'm here path of really exhausting myself by doing all the things, becoming resentful, wanting people to meet me at the high achieving level where I was being disappointed for everyone not meeting me there, alienating my family and friends and my husband getting divorced, going down that, oh my God, what have I done with my life? I guess I need to slow down.
Claire Yee (00:09:41) - Yeah.
Stephanie (00:09:43) - And I, I really hope that everyone doesn't have to do that because it was a painful, brutal, scary path. But I'll never go back. I've slowed down and it feels so good and I still manage to accomplish things.
Claire Yee (00:10:05) - That's right. Yes.
Stephanie (00:10:07) - Right.
Claire Yee (00:10:08) - Yes. And I think that's part of the fear, is that if I do give myself that time to slow down, then I won't accomplish anything. Then I won't be, you know, giving to society. Then everything, all these balls that I'm holding in the air will just drop. And then there's this element of failure. But I love that you shared that awareness of it really coming down to the core of our self-worth. Because that is the heart of it, isn't it? When we're always looking for that validation from external sources through that very masculine do, do, do do, do get that external validation. Um, it, it often does come from that space, as you said, of not being able to and, and really, you know, we can come to it with compassion if we do find ourselves in this situation because we haven't learned how to give ourselves that internal validation and recognition and recognize our own worth.
Claire Yee (00:11:09) - So it is such a journey, isn't it? I think, you know, it's, its, you know, slow down such simple advice, but oh my goodness, what a, what a journey to sometimes get there. And I've still noticed sometimes the conversation in my head, like, I love doing like a morning practice and you know, just really dropping into myself and, and connecting with my intuition. And whether that's through meditation or journaling or just being out in nature, I, you know, I mix it up, but sometimes in my head I will ha still have that conversation, oh, I don't have time for that. These other things that I need to do a more priority than this way that I want to be. And mm-hmm. , do you have that, those same thoughts still in your mind that that pop up those same conversations?
Stephanie (00:11:59) - Oh my goodness. Yesterday I literally just had a day where I didn't feel well and I was just moving slowly and wasn't getting to the list I had created in my mind for that day. And I wound up going back to that feeling of loneliness that fe those really dark feelings. I noticed that as soon as I wasn't getting a ton done, I took me back to this old story that I had to do in order to be worthy. And so actually during that time, I'm pursuing my breath work facilitation, um, certificate. I was like, well, let me just try what I'm learning. I'm just gonna take a few breaths.
Claire Yee (00:12:44) - Yes.
Stephanie (00:12:45) - That's gonna take a few breaths. 10, because lord knows I don't have time, I still have the list. Right. , I took the 10,
Claire Yee (00:12:54) - Keep breathing .
Stephanie (00:12:56) - Exactly. I took the 10 breaths. And in those 10 breaths I remembered one of the first things that I kind of embraced when I was starting to go down the, the dark spiral of oh my gosh, I'm on this rollercoaster of rewriting my life, the down part. And it was self-compassion. And it was, I remember reading, um, in a magazine or a journal article that we can't really give a ton of compassion to others authentically until we know how to give it to ourselves. Yes. And so I just started there and just thought, you know, what would I tell a friend who wasn't feeling well, who had, you know, the issues that I was having with my inner ear? And I was like, I tell them to slow down. I tell them it's okay. Like, tomorrow's another day, take a breath, relax. And I had to start there and had to do a little self-talk with like what compassion I would give to others I need to give to myself so that when they really need my compassion, it's authentic. Cuz I know how to start here.
Claire Yee (00:14:07) - Yes.
Stephanie (00:14:08) - So self-compassion has been a huge learning for me. Yes. Um, and has really paved the way for me to see my own children and, and how they behave and differently because I look at them and I'm just like, oh, it is such a hard thing to be going through, you know, the teens or early adolescence or to be having that argument with your friend. It's like compassion, self-compassion and com other compassion. It's like a reciprocal process, right. You give it to yourself, you can give it to others, they then give it back to you and it's pretty beautiful. But I think it's a really important thing for moms to pause and give themselves. Like recognize that when you are a mother, you are doing one of the most difficult jobs a human ever undertakes. Yes. And it's hard. It involves not only you and your dynamic personality, but your child and their own being in their own humanness and their own desires in their own phase. Just like you said, mothers were going through our phase and the kids are going through their phase and your partner's going through their own phase. And then there's the real world changes. It all requires that we show up with like, this is a lot, this is normal, this is human, let's meet it with some grace. Forgive yourself and you know, do do what you can.
Claire Yee (00:15:46) - Yes. So true. Oh my gosh, there's so many pieces in what you've just shared that I feel like I'd love to highlight and continue to talk about. I think that the way that you share that awareness piece, because I'm just thinking if somebody's listening to this and thinking, oh my goodness, I really myself, I know I need to slow down. I know that that is a, a something that is a stretch for me to do, but I know that that is what is needed to really start to shift the gears in my own life. And just, I just wanna highlight the way that you shared that just having that awareness of even just that sub the desire to slow down is the first piece. Absolutely. Because once we that awareness and some, and, and taking out that judgment of it needs to, I need to be able to slow down right this minute, or it needs to happen today or this week, or giving ourselves that self-compassion for it to take as long as it needs to take for us, you know, on our journey of this trence as our brains are remolding themselves without young children through their developing brains, our adolescents, whatever sort of phase or stage where we're at with our mothering journey, this is such an important piece to give ourselves the self-compassion.
Claire Yee (00:17:14) - And I also loved there, I had this sudden awareness when you said, how would I talk to a friend? What advice would I give to a friend right now? And I realized that because often it's, it's like, well, you know, mother yourself be a give your, be a mother to yourself. But if we have been raised with, and it's no judgment to our parents, they were just doing the best that they could based on how they were brought up as well as this, you know, generational cycle. But if we were raised to always be prioritizing that doing, sometimes that mothering voice to ourselves doesn't come naturally in a way of what we need. So it can be, I think a beautiful explor exploration for us to think, would I speak more compassionately to a friend in this situation than I would to a child in this situation, even though we love our children so much, but what are those, you know, sometimes it can just be easier to give that slow down advice to a friend than it can to a child.
Stephanie (00:18:23) - Yeah. I think you bring up something really important here and, and that is context, right? So we have to start recognizing that different contexts influence us differently. Just like I said earlier, so I could be really gentle when, when guiding parents of my students to approaching a problem. But when I was guiding my own children through the same problem, there was a reactivity attached to my ego. Right. So that, that reactivity and our ego self, it is responding to the context, right? And just having compassion and just that awareness so you can show up prepared. You know, I know that I get a little bit triggered when I encounter situations where I feel like my child's being treated unfairly and I can go to this place where I completely forget to pause and I become just mama bear where there's no compassion for anyone. Not the person who's triggering me, not my children. Right. And, and so just that recognition that part of that is evolutionary, that was, you know, the role of the mom was to protect, you know, her young, but then also just being prepared and knowing ahead of time, okay, I'm going to this meeting, I'm going to this child event or mild child's coming home today from with the report card or from a birthday party. Being aware that there are certain contexts that make it challenging for you to pause will actually let you pause. Right. So
Claire Yee (00:20:15) - Peace again. Yes. Yes. And then
Stephanie (00:20:19) - Again, when we're pausing, we can show up and model that for our children.
Claire Yee (00:20:27) - Yes. .
Stephanie (00:20:29) - Yes. And I just wanna share one little story and this is a hard story to share with respect to pausing and having it really help. Uh, my parenting and just the whole situation when I was super triggered, but my boys are 18 and 15 and they're definitely of that age where they wanna try adult things and their friends are, uh, trying adult things. And, and of course I'm thinking all along, you know, you know, trying drugs or alcohol is something that can get in the way of the goals that I thought you had for yourself boys. Right. So it's like, and we know that today, you know, modern society has drugs that are more potent. It's just a different world than when I was going through this as a teenager. The drugs were less potent and less available. So, and, and so, you know, there's been a couple times when I've caught my boys with marijuana and I was just first like so triggered and so disappointed, like, you know, because I had thought I'd done all the things, you know, read the articles, listened to podcasts with them, what do you guys think about this?
Stephanie (00:21:46) - How do you say no? You know, I had prepared for this event and the last time that I, you know, found something at the house and it was in my kid's backpack and I was just like so triggered, so worried, so angry, so disappointed. And I was like, okay, I need to pause. I need to pause. And then my son actually woke up earlier than he normally does and I thought I had this time to like pull it together. And I was like, at first I just, I came and was like, you know, I said, oh my God, I found this in your backpack. And my voice just sounded like awful. And I heard it and I said, okay, I need to pause. Mm-hmm , we're gonna have to talk about this when I don't feel what I feel inside. I know you're a good kid, I love you and I need some time to get in a better place where we can talk about this.
Stephanie (00:22:57) - Thank goodness. Because from that point my son didn't have to go into defensiveness and how am I gonna get my mom out of this angry place because anger is scary. Yes. And he went to a place of wanting to corroborate with me, like wanting to, he was, he's like, you know, he could be open because I was so real. I was like, I'm feeling all these things and I don't think I can talk about it in a productive way right now. And so when we did have time to talk about it, he, he wasn't hiding anything cuz I just showed, I just showed him I'm feeling all this yuckiness and I can't do it. So he's like, well I don't need to hide from her cuz she didn't hide her mess. She told me she was having a mess. And so I think just that time, just giving yourself time to pause, I gave myself how am I feeling? Disappointed, angry, scared. The big one, I don't know what to do about this.
Claire Yee (00:24:02) - Hmm.
Stephanie (00:24:03) - When we allow ourselves to not know it is the freedom to allow all the other knowing, all the intuition, all the cooperation in. And so that was really the big one. I was like, I don't know because I thought I knew, I thought if we, you know, read the articles about marijuana and watched the YouTube about how it rots your brain or you know, the impact on the teen brain. And I thought that would work and it didn't. And so now I don't know what to do.
Claire Yee (00:24:38) - Yeah.
Stephanie (00:24:39) - And when I talk with my kids and tell them my boys that I don't know, they just open up and we connect and we have great conversations that where they decide to hold themselves accountable and they decide what feels right and you know, instead of I'm not holding them accountable, it's like I don't know what to do. I did, I did what I thought would work.
Claire Yee (00:25:05) - Yeah. There's just hearing your story, I just feel like it's so healing to hear the way that you're sharing that you were able to have that self-awareness in the moment of, oh, okay, I just heard those words that came out of my mouth. I don't want to be having this conversation from the space and then giving yourself that, that time and then giving your son that time as well to reflect on his feelings and what's coming up for him and, and what this has meant for him. But also I think there's just so much we don't always have to put on the, I've got it all together face for our children. And in fact I think it's, there's so much value in us not always doing that. I think that, I mean sometimes there can be a fine line between like letting out in a toddler our own, in a toddler just come out and have a full on tantrum and .
Stephanie (00:26:14) - Sure.
Claire Yee (00:26:15) - It's different and, and you know, there's absolutely no judgment as to any of our actions along this journey. It's, it's expansive and it stretches us and it's, we just do what we do and that's okay. But I just love the way you shared about having that self-awareness, hearing the words coming out of your mouth and just pausing and taking that breath and taking that, that that moment and then being able to come back and have a conversation about, I don't have all the answers. This is how I'm feeling. And then that open space was created and I feel like that would navigating the adolescent journey from that space of openness, of vulnerability, of self-awareness, of taking that pause, taking that breath, it doesn't have to be as turbulent as what we might have experienced our adolescence. Cuz that's the thing, isn't it? It triggers our own experiences of our adolescent time.
Claire Yee (00:27:17) - And if that was rocky and you know, again, kind of speaking from experience here, um, you know, it brings up a lot of that, those same sorts of feelings. I think again, when we can see our own children then going through that. And, um, so I'm aware of time and I would love to, if you were open to it, I I would love it if you could share a, a breathing technique that, that mum's parents listening to this could, could use. Because a, another piece of the story that you were sharing earlier that I love was that, and I'm such a big advocate for this, it's like you don't actually need to sit down on a meditation pillow for 15 minutes to come back into yourself. We can do these techniques on the go in amongst life as we are moving through our day, even doing all the things we can still shift our awareness into slowing down, doing it from a different pace, doing it from a different space of self-awareness and breath is just such a powerful way to do that. So do you have a, a kind of bre go-to breathing technique that you just sort of love to do in those moments where you can feel that you need to come back to yourself?
Stephanie (00:28:31) - Absolutely. And I'm gonna offer this one. Um, I've played around a lot with different styles of breath work, but what's resonating with me right now is a breath that actually when you do it, you'll find that other people around you will do it. Ah. So for example, um, we just lost my friend group. We lost a dear friend and we were supporting the family and I noticed when I did what's called the halo active breath that, you know, I, I was hugging the family members and I would engage this breath and you're hugging, right? So they can feel and hear you and then all of a sudden they're doing it. And what we know about the breath is in general, when we're going in and out of the nose, it's relaxing and we're, we're going in and out only of the mouth. It can be activating, right? We need some energy. The beautiful thing about the halo active breath is it's in through the nose and it's out through the mouth. And so that inward has that relaxation response and then that outward has that kind of release, that active release. So it just really sounds like this I'll do too. And you're just kind of bringing in
Stephanie (00:29:56) - And what you'll notice is sometimes when you do this, just let's say you're cooking dinner and in the meantime you're thinking of that to-do list and you just, you're thinking the do-do list after dinner, you have to help with the homework and get the project made, you're gonna show up with some cleaner energy. Yes. So that kind of muddy energy of all the things to do, you've just cleaned it out and if anyone's standing that close to you, there's a good chance they're gonna do it too.
Claire Yee (00:30:32) - Yeah. So good. It's like the flash on the toilet, isn't it?
Stephanie (00:30:36) - Exactly. Onto the next
Claire Yee (00:30:40) - Very non way of describing it. ,
Stephanie (00:30:43) - I think metaphors are fantastic. They're important
Claire Yee (00:30:47) - , they're, um, and so if we were to, so I can just sort of just to describe the step process with that, cuz I saw the way you do it, so just, so if someone's listening rather than seeing the video, so it's an inhale through the nose, I imagine expanding the belly, nice deep breath and through the nose they're, and then just that sigh, exhale, just letting your body go, letting everything, all that tension go as much as possible in that, in that breath.
Stephanie (00:31:14) - Exactly. And then just kind of visualizing taking it in and how the air is passing through your nose and out is that release of the tension in the shoulders, in the face, in the throat, in the to-do list.
Claire Yee (00:31:29) - Yes. and the judgment and all of those things that we are carrying Yeah. Throughout the day. That's so beautiful, Stephanie. I think that's just such a, an important tool and valuable practice that we can all do in the moment on the go, just to come back to feel our center again. To come back into our own innate harm, switching on a parasympathetic calm state so that we can move through the world with more of the sense of the way we truly desire to show up and the conversations that we really want to be having with ourselves, with our children. It just flows into everything we do, doesn't it?
Stephanie (00:32:09) - Absolutely.
Claire Yee (00:32:11) - Thank you so much for this conversation today. I've just loved every minute of it and I know that our audience will love as well. Where can people connect with you and find you online?
Stephanie (00:32:23) - Yeah, so the easiest way to track me down is just to go to authentically yours.net where Karen and I now work together and offer authenticity, coaching content and workshops. Um, and my email address is authentically, it's actually Stephanie authentically yours.net and on Instagram at authentically Steph 23.
Claire Yee (00:32:48) - And I will be sure to put all those links below as well from the bottom of my heart. Stephanie, thank you so much for your vulnerability, for you showing up in this space of self-awareness, of self-compassion, of slow living in a way that just nourishes our own inner being and, and then you know, heals. So , so much generational staff, present day stuff, complexities of life stuff. It's just been such a rich conversation. Thank you.
Stephanie (00:33:22) - Yeah, thank you so much. It's been a pleasure.
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