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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
You Are Not Bound By Your Past: Choosing a Different Path
Ever wonder why we repeat behaviors we swore we'd never adopt from our parents? The answer lies in generational trauma – a powerful psychological phenomenon that shapes our responses even when we're consciously trying to break free.
Through the lens of a fascinating flea jar experiment, I explore how limitations learned in one generation mysteriously transfer to the next without any direct experience. Just as fleas stop jumping higher after hitting a lid (even when the lid is removed), humans unconsciously inherit boundaries from our parents' experiences. For many of us born in the 1980s with Baby Boomer parents, we're actively working to recognize and dismantle these inherited limitations.
I get vulnerable about my own journey breaking cycles of physical and emotional abuse, sharing personal stories about my imperfect parenting moments and how I handle them differently than previous generations did. When I slip into old patterns like yelling, I make a conscious choice to apologize to my children and recommit to change. It's beautiful witnessing how they're developing emotional intelligence in response – offering breathing exercises when they see me getting frustrated.
The transformative power of choice stands at the center of this episode. At some point, we must acknowledge that while our childhood experiences weren't fair, continuing harmful patterns is now our responsibility to address. Through practices like meditation, journaling, or mindful walking, we create the space needed to recognize triggers and choose different responses. There will be setbacks, but persistent small steps forward eventually create meaningful change.
Join me in this thoughtful exploration of breaking free from inherited limitations. Text me directly using the function in the description – I'd love to hear your thoughts and experiences as we continue building this safe space for women's voices and stories.
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This is still Rosie's podcast. This podcast is created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I hope that everyone is having a great week. I have a couple of thought starters here today I wanted to go over with all of you. So first things first, let me see here where will I begin. So I've got a message here that I saw on Pinterest. You guys know that's my go to for all of my thought starter episodes. There's an example here that I want to talk about. Now. This is something that's interesting because it's a physical. It's a real, legitimate, physical thing that you can measure. It's measurable, and I've talked about this on a past episode, but I can't remember which one. It was a while back.
Speaker 1:This thing that I saw on Pinterest explains generational trauma and essentially for generational trauma, they did this study where they took a bunch of fleas and they put them inside of a jar. Now, when the fleas are first put inside of the jar, they're going crazy, they're trying to hop out. So the researcher puts a lid on the top of the jar, encloses them all in, leaves them in there like that for a little while. So the fleas are starting to understand that if they jump up, they're just hitting this ceiling. They're not getting anywhere. There's no point in continuing to bang into the top of the ceiling, so they just stopped doing it. When that happens and the researcher takes the lid off the jar, the logical expectation would be okay, well, they're all going to come out of that jar. Now you know the lid is off, so that's it. But the interesting thing that happened was that the fleas learned not to jump any higher than where the lid is. You could take the jar away. They will not jump higher than where the lid was, because this is a trauma. Quote unquote. Let's say that they've learned. They were. There's a trauma there. The more interesting thing that happened was that when they reproduced, the next line of offspring also did not jump any higher than that lid.
Speaker 1:Because this is what generational trauma is. When you have a generation that goes through something really horrible, it does pass on to the kids through learned behavior and observation. Now, like there's always this whole debate nature versus nurture and there are arguments for both sides. But when you really look at this and you look at trauma passed down from generation to generation, there is a legitimate thing here that if you learn a behavior, you learn certain something from your parents, you potentially will pass that along to the next generation if you have kids. A very common example of this would be abuse. If your father or mother was an abuser, if they abused each other verbally, if they abused each other physically, that's a trauma that you are picking up and no matter how much you hated growing up with it and no matter how much it affected you poorly when you were growing up, you most likely are going to turn into this person unless you really make a significant choice and the choice is going to be you are basically going to rewire your brain. That's literally what you have to do. You have to break it Now.
Speaker 1:Speaking from my age group, right, those of us born in the 80s and early 90s Nah, not early 90s, that's a little too young, but from the 80s In any case. Those of us born in the 80s, you know we had our boomer parents, right, we had the baby boomer parents or baby boomer parents, right? Baby boomer parents did not grow up. Majority of them I don't want anyone coming at me, but majority of these parents that were born in the 50s and 60s mostly 50s they were born in the 50s.
Speaker 1:Mental health was not a concern at all. The reason why I'm bringing this up in relation to, like, our age group. You'll notice that a lot of young folks now in their fifties and late thirties and mid thirties we're really focused on mental health and there's a reason for that because many of us are trying to break some generational trauma. We don't want to carry this into the next generation, and I'll use my husband and I as an example, like a very vivid example for us. You know, we wanted to break physical abuse. We wanted to break physical abuse. We wanted to break mental abuse. We wanted to make sure that our children felt loved and that they felt seen. We wanted to make sure that our children had everything that we didn't have, and majority of it was like this emotional support that we felt lacking in our lives.
Speaker 1:When we were growing up, I always very much and this is very like, oh, poor, poor little girl, girl, but I always had very much felt like my brothers were seen. They were, you know, attended to and that I was. I was tough enough to do it on my own. It came to. I remember initially feeling proud of that that, oh, my parents just they'll leave me to it, I'll just take care of myself. But it got to a point also where it was hurtful, like I guess no one's going to help me, I have to do it by myself, you know, like, and it kind of turned and snowballed into something else. Now, no parent is perfect. I'm sure I'm certain my children will have something to tell their therapist when they grow up. But I'm doing the best that I can, and then they can break any trauma that I cause. So it's really a matter of like recognizing I didn't like this, I did not like how this turned out.
Speaker 1:My parents, my kids, might come out saying I don't like that. My mom screamed so much. I am a yeller. I will admit it openly. I admit it to people all the time. Admit it to people all the time I snap, I scream, I 110% will always address it with my kids post. I always, always, always go back to my children and say to them I apologize to you. Mommy should not be behaving this way. I'm trying my best not to do this. There's been there. I mean, I used to snap much harder before and I've gotten much, much better at like controlling that and walking away. And I think I see the kids like coming to me and saying like hey, mommy, if you're having a hard time, take some deep breaths. My one little girl, she comes over and she does a little like spider thing on my arm. She's trying to distract me. It's, it's comes together, it's. It's a beautiful thing to see because it just showing how much they're picking up and how much they're learning to not cope but to have the skill to deal with things when they're angry or things when they're upset. So it's a beautiful thing to say. Now, this is kind of a good segue over to my next quote that I saw.
Speaker 1:After a certain age, you are no longer the product of your environment or how you were raised. It's a personal choice to live the way that you do. Let that sink in for a second Because, as I noted, my husband and I both made very clear choices when we got together and when we started having kids. Not when we got together, we got together, it was like ridiculous. But when we started having children, we made some very, very, very clear choices about what we were going to do, how we were going to handle things, how we were facing things together, and you have to get to a certain point where you are taking ownership for your life.
Speaker 1:Like, kind of like, I made fun of myself a few minutes ago. Yes, poor me. I didn't feel like my parents paid enough attention to me. Poor Jenny, yeah, honestly poor Jenny. Poor little Jenny. Like little Jenny didn't deserve that. She deserved, you know, somebody to really like really be paying attention to her, really, really engaged with her, but she didn't get it. Okay, well, now that sucked and it hurt. You know it hurts, and I think about stuff now that I'm like damn like, why did my parents do this, or why didn't they do that? It is what it is. The only thing I can do now is be the best person I can be. Now I can make changes for myself. Now I can make the choice, I can make the determination how I want to live my life and what kind of person I want to be. You have the same choice.
Speaker 1:You know, if you're hearing this, this might have been a message that you needed to hear today, and so I really want you to take a minute and really think through this. We all have a story. We all have trauma, every single one of us. I was just talking with my grandmother. I went to go visit her this week, 97. My favorite thing to do is take a day off once a month and go and visit her. I wish I could do more, but for now it's just once a month. You know, her and I were talking through something similar and I said I'm like, you know, making the choice for yourself to just to live how you want to live. That's a privilege right there. You know, that was not something that was available before. We have that choice.
Speaker 1:Today you can take a step back from your situation and look at it Really, really look at it and determine, like am I happy with this? Is this a runoff? Is this only happening because I am continuing a pattern that I learned, that I hated anyway, and now I'm stuck like this. You are not stuck. You don't have to be. You can make a conscious decision today and every day moving forward, not to continue down this path and to make a difference.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna sound like a broken record, but if you start meditating and you start really going down that path, the amount of things that will shift and the amount of avenues this will open up if you acknowledge the trauma, acknowledge what you did not like, you don't have to meditate, you can journal. You could walk. That is a form like anything that you can do, where you're just focused right in the moment. That is considered meditation. It's not just sitting quietly in a room. Most people can't do that, that's okay. You're not really supposed to do that. It's more of a not that you're not supposed to do that, but the point is is that you can do it in any way that will fit you, and making the decision at any point in your life, no matter how old you are, how young you are, will impact the rest of your days. We have a very limited amount of time here on this earth, and do you really want to live it by living a life that you're not happy with? Let's go Small steps and there will be setbacks and there will be times you'll slide back into poor habits. But okay, who cares, keep going forward. You're going to see shifts. You will see things go differently for you.
Speaker 1:I hope you liked the Thoughts Artists today. I have another set for you coming this week. Thank you for everyone. All the new subscribers I'm like super excited and just like super pumped that everyone that I've been seeing, like the new listeners and everything Cute, shout out to all of my base that's been listening since the beginning. I just, I greatly, greatly appreciate all of you.
Speaker 1:I really do want to hear from you guys. Please use the text function in the description. You can get to me directly. You can make recommendations. I got feedback, really, really love hearing from you guys and I, you know, I just want to encourage you, and this is a safe space. The whole point of this podcast is for women to come together and share their stories. I am also starting to work on the guests, for I don't know if the fall series is going to happen exactly how it's been happening. I'm going to do that little different twist that I had mentioned on one of the other episodes. So we'll see. We'll see how everything rolls out, but I appreciate all of you being with me. I greatly appreciate all of you spending time with me here. I will see you on the next one, take care.
