Serenity, Boundaries, and Community with Whitney Doherty | Ep 9

You'll love Whitney's ideas around tribalism versus community, too, and her sage advice around how fences can actually help build community. Lean in, sisters! This one is powerful. Hello! Welcome, Whitney, to Solidarity Sister. We're so excited to have you here today. How are you doing? Like, for real.

That's not my area of challenge, if you will. But what I have had to learn over time is that I am not a great person that knows how to ask for help. And I've learned in business and in life that you should always have a list of asks. And so I have tried to practice that. And it's really challenging to have a list of asks at the ready that, that when someone says, you know, how can I help? We should be ready with that list of asks. And it's a tough one.

I come from, you know, people who just inherently do all the time. We're human doers. And so you just figure out how to do. And there's a big difference in that. So being able to say, how are you really is like

We're not even in tune sometimes with what we really need because we're just so busy doing that we're not being like you mentioned. I've been on a similar journey and I love what you said about having a list of asks. And that is a challenge because I think a lot of us Are really women in particular, although there are always exceptions, but women in particular are more attuned to seeing the needs of others. And we can identify, we can walk into a room and see someone and overwhelm.

And innately many of us can kind of say, okay, well, this would help. I could go do the dishes that would help this young mom, or I could do this. I could, you know, but. It's harder for us to have that list running for ourselves in a way that we could delegate it or share that burden.

You know, there's a start time. And we were running around, and just along the lines of what you just said, I found myself, and it just happens very naturally. I grew up in retail, so I'm used to being in that space. I find myself doing things so in tune with another person. Somebody's missing something, I find it, I put it in their hand, without them asking. That's the nature of that kind of coding, like you're saying, from that pioneer time or just the female coding or the women coding.

We just know how to make things happen and do it without language to a certain extent. So then when you say something like, how are you? It's like, I have no idea because I'm not stopping to think how I am. I'm just moving ahead.

And I just said so much better when people don't ask me that question because when I was in doing mode. I didn't have to feel that and then I could do more easily and I think that we do ourselves a disservice. Sometimes we have to be in that survival mode for a time. Like sometimes there is a family member that needs a lot of caregiving or we're in like a specific financial crunch that's really difficult or whatever the thing is. We're in a period of illness and we have, you know.

Very few spoons, if you're familiar with spoon theory, like we really are just surviving, but it becomes accepted that that's like survival mode should be how we live. And that's not sustainable and it doesn't work and it causes more illness and more upset and both mental and physical health and we actually have to learn to take that time to feel the difficult emotions.

I think we probably could, but it's takes such a practice, right? It's like Working out at the gym, you know, you work out, you work out, you work out, and you just think, I'm never going to be able to do that 25th pull up or whatever it is you're trying to, you know, reach. And then one day it becomes so easy. It's so, it just. Happens. And so I think that's where it's, I think that's where for me, that's the been the work that I've been doing the past few years. I mean, I

I felt that way when I heard Brene Brown talk about until we can receive being served and loved without judging ourselves. We could never truly serve others without judgment. And I was like, No, that is not true because I'm really good at service and I serve and love lots of people and I am not judging them. And then I had to sit with that for a while. And then I was like, or maybe I am not intentionally, not in a harsh way.

But that that is a possibility for all of us, we could all lean into that we could all practice that we could all be better at the surrendering and about being able to not take a difficult situation and make it worse for ourselves, which is what a lot of us do. I mean, I have absolutely done that. I have taken a difficult situation that was handed to me through no fault of my own and through my own choices. And poor coping skills at the time made it worse. And maybe it didn't have to be.

It's like I could have had a V8 hit, hit your hand on your forehead. That's a bad seventies commercial reference, but it's that sense of. It's so easy. Why didn't I think of that? Why did I overcomplicate this? Why did I make this so much harder than I have to? And I think about it, again, I like metaphors just because they give you a visual that you need to, you know understand something or, or make a quote unquote complex idea simple.

But I think about it like if you are dressed up and you're going somewhere and it's winter and there may be black ice on the sidewalk, You are going to walk with your feet wide in your body in the way that you stand. You're going to walk carefully. You're going to engage your core. You're going to be mindful and present to every step so that you are safe and do not fall down.

And so these are some things that you think like, oh, of course, but so much of us Runs through life, jumping through the sidewalk and moving quickly and not thinking. And then when we fall down, we're like, can you believe it? Yeah, yeah, I can. So it's, it's that, right? But the truth of the matter is, is how hard is it to slow down and be present? to walking on the sidewalk. It's not that hard. It doesn't take that much longer. It's not really going to slow you down.

You're not going to get there at any different time. And if you're two minutes late, does it matter? No. You got there safely. You didn't fall down. You didn't rip your pantyhose. You didn't smear your makeup. So that's to me like a stupid truth. It's like, huh, yeah, I can do this simpler. I can do this more mindfully, and it's going to give me a better result. So, I have an easy goal in mind about life, which is that you should strive for serenity. You should, you should strive for peace.

There's no reason to live life with chaos and drama. We should strive for that sense of serenity, because it's so much more enjoyable. Nobody really enjoys all the, I mean, I guess, in all honesty, I have been in many places in my life where people are addicted to that drama. And they do love that sense of busy. Somehow they think that gives them purpose. I do not enjoy that. That's not fun for me. But that's just something that I came to at some point very early in my life.

And so that's what I work towards. That

And from the earliest of ages, I can truly remember. I wanted peace. I wanted laughter, joy, and I wanted community, and I was one of those kids, three, four years old, who used to read a room and kind of try to crack up the room and be the clown to try to get everyone lightened, the mood, etc. So, yes, I think that innately that's part of my mission.

It was not an easy road to get through school with that sense, to learn who I am in the world with that, you know, that wasn't, it's not an easy road. It's been a long and winding road, but I have been on this desired path for most of my life. And I've known that it was a journey. So yes, both. Yes and.

I think I've craved just so much stimulation that like, as a kid, I did so many extracurriculars and in high school, I was doing so many extracurriculars and an AP classes and then my senior year, I kind of burned out because I'd been sleeping like four hours a night in order to keep up that schedule, which is totally not healthy for a teenager, but it wasn't my parents expectations. I was just driven and all the things looked.

Interesting to me, and I wanted to be a cheerleader, and I wanted to get really good grades, and I wanted to take the challenging classes, and I wanted to sing, and I wanted to work on just all different activities. They're just like, we're not enough hours in the day for all the things I wanted to do. And I can look through my life and see it as a series of crash and burn, like do all the things, do too many things.

Even as a young mom, when I had five little kids, I started a little nonprofit that I was working on getting All the way through like a charity that was like our Wilson family and I ran a marathon and I was volunteering at the school and I had five kids that were like under the age of eight and so this was like when my oldest was like eight nine ten I was doing like All kinds of stuff taking my five little kids everywhere. We go to the pool. We go downtown Chicago. We do all these things.

And then I kind of would like burn out for a little time. And then we like, really wouldn't do that much as a family for like, I can look back and just see how I. I do love to thrive in that, like, chaos of all these different fun, exciting things going on, but it isn't sustainable. Whereas my mom is literally the most consistent person I have ever met in my life, where if she decided I'm going to do this daily habit every day, like she would do it every day.

For like 60 years, 80, like whatever, or I'm going to do this thing once a month. In our faith, we like to visit the temple and she'd made a goal to go to the temple every month and she would go to the temple every month, even if she was having a baby, even if she was whatever, like she would never miss a month, like ever. And like most humans would choose to miss a month here and there or have like, you know, and she's just like so consistent and I am not wired like that.

I had my head in a book from the time I was a small kid because it was a safe place. I could Go in there. I mean, I can live inside a book. I can live inside the characters. I can live inside the story. And it's a world that I can inhabit and be so happy and free and joyous and taking ideas and it's wonderful. So for me, that's where a lot of the early Serenity came in. And fortunately, I can do that in a million places.

I can read a book on a, you know, moving car, train, bus, etc. There could be fighting in a car and I could be reading a book. So that was a gift. So that's what I meant by that in terms of school, terrible students did not want to engage the way they wanted me to engage, wanted to engage the way I wanted to learn, I always want to be learning. But I want to learn what I want to learn. And I don't want to take your information and spit it back out the way you want to spit it back out.

I want to have an engagement conversation and all that, you know, so consistency is a little different for me. I can show up for myself and others hard, but I don't want to show up in the same place like. I taught in the public school in New York City at a certain point because the mayor announced a teacher shortage. It was the year of 9 11, ironically, which was tough. I lived in New York for 30 years. And in 2001, there was a teacher shortage. He announced it a while.

I had a big belief in Education being the great equalizer, but I mean it in the like dead poet society, romantic kind of Robin Williams sort of way, right? I learned the hard way. That's not actually what goes on in a system with over a million kids and over a hundred thousand teachers.

In many cases in that scenario, unfortunately, because of what we've done to public education in this country, which is to say, stripped it of funding and made it maybe one of the best jobs that some people could get, not a job that comes from the greater sense of the romantic nature of education and filling our brains in a beautiful, way. No. But what I did was I became a teacher for a minute, and I realized the hard way that I had different ideas of what I thought education was.

But I was telling you this for a reason, which is to say that I learned the hard way that being in the same place every day at the same time is so counterintuitive for who I am as a human being.

I don't really want to get up at the same time every day, I don't want to go to, well, I pretty much do kind of have the same schedule every day, but it's, I modulate it with so many different things and activities jobs I really didn't do well in were ones where you really had to show up every day at the same time and be in the same place and do that FaceTime. So that's where consistency is a little bit different from what your mom you're saying is. Absolutely.

Now setting a challenge or a goal I can do right like I've been doing a 21 day Deepak Chopra Meditation challenge and he has a bunch of them and I've done this one like I think this is the third or fourth time I've done this one and I love those things because you know that every morning you're gonna listen to this meditation every night You're gonna listen to this meditation and then I'm gonna do my Julia Cameron Morning Pages, The Artist's Way.

I've done that Morning Page practice for a lot of years. And so when I'm doing this challenge, I'll use that writing time to address the theme that's being talked about in that meditation. I bought The Artist's Way

And then in about 2014, I started an accountability circle with a group of women, and The Artist's Way must have come up half a dozen times, and I thought, oh, that's funny, I used to have that book, looked for it, couldn't find it, bought myself a new copy. Sat on that for another year or so, started doing it probably consistently in 2017, 2018. And have done it pretty regularly since then, and I find it incredibly helpful.

there are other systems of automatic writing or, you know, journaling from a spiritual place or practice or whatever it is. I just like that. It's very simple. I like Julia Cameron. I've done a workshop with her. I just enjoy it. And there's something about waking up and writing, and even if you miss the morning. You can reset it by doing it later in the day doing it before bed. It's just something about sitting there and doing three pages of longhand writing is really great.

You know, so anyway, yes, I love that. I've

And I know there are people who would like to form communities around them and maybe don't know how, how did this come up?

And so, at the end of the two years of starting that school, it's now my third year, at the end of third year of teaching, there were seven of us teachers and six of us left because of the chaos of the school and the following year unfortunately that administrator got removed. So we had a good hunch. I got placed in another school that was so chaotic and unfortunate. I still can't believe that.

There, we all know there are people in this world that get away with things that just, we don't understand how this goes on and nothing changes. That led me out of teaching. I just could not survive in these systems. I couldn't keep changing myself and it just wasn't a good fit. So I left. Started a business the following year, and worked on that until 2014, and I left and, you know, I'm giving you the shorthand, it doesn't matter.

Let's just say I left and I had no idea what I wanted to do next, except I knew I wanted to tease out a project for myself. And, I've always been a believer in accountability, I've I'm not a joiner per se, I'm one of those people who's like a reluctant joiner, even though I'm a community builder. I love people. I have always loved people, I'm comfortable with people, and yet I like, bristle by the fact that I need and want to be around people, you know, that kind of reluctant joiner type.

A friend of mine, we, we call it terminal uniqueness, and you know, it's like, we're all not unique, but we think we are. And so. I knew I wanted accountability, and I had joined a lot of women's networking groups in New York City. It was very, very big in the 2000s, especially at this time. It's like 2014. There were a ton of different groups, and it was about networking and collaborating and support, and it was wonderful. And in one of them, they started talking about accountability circles.

And I just didn't really see why I would be paying this person to facilitate something that I could facilitate myself. So I had a really good pal in the program in that group. And I said, Hey, why don't we start one? And she mentioned somebody else. And so that became our third person. And she mentioned somebody else that became our fourth, fourth person. And we were together for a good four years. And we met every single Monday via zoom, where we would declare our goals for the week.

And then on Friday, we would send an email check in of what we had done achieved fallen down on the report. Oh, yeah. Exactly. It's fantastic. It was really great. And then we used to try to get together at least once a quarter. In person as a group and have dinner or go to a networking breakfast or, you know, meet up somewhere. And then we would always invite each other to whatever events 1 or the other was going to.

So it was quite an active time and a very supportive time for women in the entrepreneurial space in New York City. And. I miss that. I am a COVID transplant during COVID in the May of 2020. I moved upstate and I haven't quite found my live women's entrepreneurial space niche up here. So I found a lot of it virtually. But that experience and accountability also led me to start my own mastermind, which I did and I led.

For 13 months, beginning in December of 2017, and that was a, at least once a month meetup with a group of, I would say, 12 to 18 women. It varied and we had declared an annual B-B-H-A-G, big hairy, audacious goal and then would, you know, work towards that. And it's kind of amazing. I'm still in touch with most of those women as well. And. My BFF for the past 33 years or something. She completed her BAG from that declared goal in 2018.

She completed it last year it was a, it was a pretty big one, and it took longer than she had hoped, but Covid really slowed some things down and all of that. And there's other people in the group too that I've checked in with, and it's just amazing to see that kind of movement and. You know, it's kind of incredible. So I love any kind of accountability and women's community and people supporting each other. And it's just a very, very central part of my story and experience.

But I never really read like Florence Schovel Shin or anyone until like 2014. But when I now look around at the most average business person out there, right? The, the Lewis Howe or even Tony Robbins or Mel Robbins, any of these people. They're all talking about spiritual realms inside personal development and how that adds to business development and growth. So, that was always a part of this world and this community that I both found and co created and, you know, all of that.

So, absolutely, not just business. Business really just being the outward tool for How can you be of service in the world? You know, how are you spending your time? What are you working on? Who are you helping? How are you generating money? Et cetera. So, in some ways, business is the secondary part of it. You know, the personal kind of comes first, I think.

I have eight children and right now I have six that are still not graduated from high school and I have two the full time homeschool and I have two that just take a couple classes at the high school. And then mostly are home. And then I have two that are full time in the public school, because we kind of look at each child and each year and say, okay, well, what's going to be the best match.

And my high schooler that's full time high school, taking extra classes online wants to graduate and go to college, will say, I just want to grow up to have a nine to five job. Like she wants to be a criminal, a forensic criminal psychologist, kind of a person, whatever that means entirely. And she wants to be like in a nine to five job and have that level of predictability. And I have other kids that do not want to be.

Pigeonholed into that, like you have to show up at this exact same time and have this kind of face time. And I think it's so good to figure out who we are and what wiring is more comfortable for us and to then step into that space. But either way, even if you're showing up at a nine to five job, you can still do personal growth and you can still show up with a different energy than you would if you're just There physically but not really mentally.

However, what I have witnessed in the past, you know, 15, 20 years of absolutely No responsibility from a company to an employee and so an employee also having little responsibility to an employer, meaning they'll leave at any time, et cetera. But I do unfortunately believe the corporations created it first. So in that sense to me, a nine to five job is not a safe job.

And so at the same time, I really feel like this whole idea of safety, I'm not someone who craves safety, because I think that's a false narrative, and I don't think that really exists, the truth of the matter is your safety is dictated between you and whatever you believe in a higher power universal kind of realm. You can't account for the idea that you could walk outside and an air conditioning unit could fall on your head and boom, it'd be over. So there's no safety, right?

You know, I lived in New York City through 9 11 blackouts, you name it. I never had an, I never wanted New York to keep me safe. I didn't have any expectations about safety. So that concept to me is a little outdated. And while I appreciate some people who want to get a job, I think it's important that at all times you're consciously aware of what makes you tick.

What you're good at, what's your unique features, and what else you could be doing at all times, because we have all experienced waking up, companies being sold, companies going out of business, being laid off, etc. And so, that, to me, is not, or somebody getting sick, unexpected, or whatever, you know, so, I just think that Those would be things that I wish they taught more of in school, right, is not just what you're saying, which is what kind of a path do you want to have, what kind of

direction do you want to have, but also how do you pivot that? Because it's all great to have ideas. You're 18 years old and you think this is the path you want to go down, but None of us could have expected AI to come as fast as it's coming, and none of us know how fast it's going to accelerate and where it's going to lead. So therefore, things that we may think we're headed towards when we get there might not be there any longer or be there in that way.

So I think at all times, it's about how creative can we be, and how much can we pivot, and how nimble can we be. to adjust accordingly.

Cause that's how it always worked. Except it didn't because there wasn't enough work. And we know other attorneys who graduated the same time that he did, who were. their positions were eliminated before they started. We did not have that. So we at least had like his base salary. And about that time, base salaries did jump, which was helpful because we left law school with four kids. So, you know, we were happy to have a salary and that was all well and good, but it was a different situation.

And then we moved to Utah. And at that point, he'd worked. In house for a company who then was purchased by another company and we moved because we felt like we should be closer to our families and that it was just kind of time. I'm from California. He's from Utah and we'd been in Illinois for 13 years. So we were coming back and they said, Oh yeah, you can work from home and. The thought this will be great. We're getting Chicago pay, but in Salt Lake City, like this is perfect.

The day before we closed on our house here, they called and said, yeah, so we're going to streamline everything now because the company's kind of merged and we're not doing that anymore. So your options are will give you a severance package and you can stay in Utah, or you can fly to Chicago every week and be here and fly home on the weekends. But we're not giving you money for that. So it'll be on your dime. Or you can just move your family back.

And we were like, well, we're not going to tell anyone we know this is happening or our loan won't go through. So we closed on the house in faith that it would all work out.

And we didn't know what we were going to do next, but we felt so strongly that we needed to move here that we just went forward, but he's really skilled at what he does and he had 10 years of experience and he ended up going to work for a firm that he had worked in the mailroom at that firm before he went to law school and it worked out like it did work out, but.

You know, we didn't see that coming and it does happen no matter what, like there are the cases where we have to pivot and there's a little bit of worry, but at the same time, we're like, okay, but I'm good at what I do. And if you can be good at what you do, whatever that is, whatever your skill set is, and you take pride in your work, it is always going to be easier to pivot and find something new if you're a conscientious employee and continually building your skill set.

And I think that is something that we need to be reminding our younger people that even if you're on this path, like, The mat could be pulled out from under you. It does happen. And the more skills that you have, both in your field and in your ability to emotionally regulate, that will help you tremendously. As you learn to communicate with others, that will help you to be someone who can pivot and do the next thing. Because you're right, there isn't anything that's like, quote unquote, safe.

It's not like my grandparents, who you could go to work for a company and work there for 40 years and retire.

I mean, I remember years ago, I think it was in the early 90s, that Tracy Pollan's father, I cannot think of his name, Pollan was the last name. Tracy Pollan is married to Michael J. Fox and he wrote a book called The Third Act, and it was all about how there is this ability to have another evolution, and I think many of us will even get to a fourth, I mean, I think most of us at this point We have very different career options and pivots, and this, you know, kind of goes back to community.

I think the biggest key for me about why life should be a community and a network is because that helps you when things are hard. So that helps you find a new job, it helps you strengthen your understanding of your skills, it helps you to find your skills in relationship to others, it helps you to Have people who are good, you know, who know you well, who can brainstorm with you about new ideas and opportunities.

I just think that the key to everything is that network and it's something that I witnessed very early on. I grew up in this retail environment. It was a men's haberdashery and it had quite a. A club feel to it, a very social, you know, kind of component. And I always remember that the men would stand around on the sales floor, either waiting for their customers to come in or their customers would come around and then join this, you know, coffee clatch, if you will. And a lot of it was.

Oh, hey, Bob, you know, my kid needs a summer job. Oh, I'll ask Mike at the ice cream shop and he'll get it, you know. Oh, my kid's trying to get into Brown. What do I do? Oh, I know a guy up in admissions.

I'll get him an interview and so it was a lot of that problem solving and networking of shared resources that helped people open up ideas and open up doors and move the needle faster on moving forward that I think is harder to do when you're doing it alone or when you're pretending to do it alone when you're trying to do it alone. So that's how I say it's related. Yeah.

So you would not necessarily want me at the grocery store because while I could contribute to the kibitzing and laughter and ideas, I would not be necessarily contributing well to the functioning of the refrigerator or the meals or any of that.

Who are growing up with this expectation that you're not a good mom if the first birthday party doesn't look like you spent five, you know, 100 hours and 10, 000 on it, which if that brings you joy, because I know some women who love to throw a party, then you know what you throw that party, but I would hate that. I don't want to do that. Like, we've never been that way. I don't want to throw a party for my one year old's birthday. They're not going to remember it. That's just not

And I think it is a sad state of affairs when women are competing against other women to be a better mom, a better housewife, against one another, when they have more access to do other things. I don't think we should be competing that way either. I think we should be collaborating. I think we should be moving forward and in an each one teach one way, in a rising tides lift all boats kind of a way. But unfortunately, I feel that that realm of. I'm a better mother. I'm a better housewife.

I'm a better wife. I find that very unbecoming, so that's not what I look to social media for. And I think we have to be very mindful of that game and not participate in it and not play it. And that we should be accelerating the voices of women rising up in their own power and strength and claiming their own Self worth, and that's what we should be amplifying and expanding, rather than the other stuff.

Like, you are a woman, so that is not your place. I love that my dad said that to me. I would never want to be the president. I think that's like one of the worst jobs ever. Like, I'm not running for president. I don't even want to be running for anything. But that, that confidence was there that I could do that. And I think there's a segment of women who are looking at that and saying, that's not what I want to do.

I actually want to be like a homesteader and I want to be with my kids and I want to homeschool and I want to love them because this is what I want to do. And it's coming from me and it's not competitive. It's a, my power is to make this choice. That I am going to if I need to bring him in an income to help supplement my family. I'm going to do it in a way that gives me more time at home. I'm going to be creative about that. Or maybe I don't have to have be bringing an income.

So I'm just going to do that versus. An energy that comes out as like, well, if you go to work and you have a job and you leave your kid in daycare, it's because you're not a good mom, which is also not true

Keep the focus on yourself and decide what's right for you. And if in your lens is your family or whatever it is, that's your business, your decisions. The rest of it is not. Mine is mine, and yours is yours. And if we had more respect within that realm of our world, we'd be so much better off. How could I possibly know what is right for you? I couldn't. I could not. I don't know your lived experience. I don't know your point of view. I don't know your needs.

I don't know, as you said with your child, You have one child who wants that steady 9 to 5 job, you have others that would absolutely just bristle at that idea. You could only know that through time, and you can only do the best you can as a parent to observe that. But you can't actually know what's right for them, they're still gonna know what's best for them. You can give them ideas, you can give them guidance, you can support, lead them on this path, but it's really up to them.

And until we get to a space where everybody minds their own business, and gets off of having opinions and judgments about other people, I just really don't know what we have. So, to me, yes, accountability has always been about support and community and collaboration. But one of the best things you can ever have is very healthy boundaries. And there is a reason that good fences make good neighbors. And I think that we need to remember that.

Stop looking across at other people and comparing and despairing and judging and critiquing and deciding. Stop. Like, here's the focus. This is what you need to look at. This is the work you need to do. And in some ways, when it goes back to our original part of this conversation, which is around serenity, there's not a lot of serenity and peace when I'm looking outward at you and deciding how you should be living your life.

And so there is so much more available serenity and peace when I am focused right here in the only thing that I can control, my life. And even that, I don't have full control over. So all I can do is the best that I can do, and keep showing up for me.

So if you don't think your friend should be going to work, but she is anyway, how can you help support her family while she's going to work? Maybe bring her dinner. She doesn't need a lecture on why she shouldn't be there. She just needs you to love her where she's made the decision. That's the best one that she could at that time for herself and for those, you know, in her stewardship.

And I think that you've brought up a lot of really good points there about how to come back to ourselves and you mentioned that like in a higher power and some people it's more of the universe or it's more, you know, I'm a Christian. I'm coming from that standpoint, but I have dear friends who are Jewish and Muslim and, you know, people are not sure what's out there.

They just think there's something more, but That surrender and it's really helped me to still try and continue a sense of community with my own family as I have children that are becoming young adults, not always making decisions that are maybe what I think they should have chosen and the thing is I raised them and they know they already know what I think I don't have to voice it. I don't voice it unless they specifically come and say, I don't know what to do in this situation. Will, you.

Let me know. I don't give unsolicited advice to them. They're adults. They can figure it out if they want my advice. I'll give it,

And I think that's the hardest things that people it's really why I resist the idea of I love community. I hate tribes.

And the distinction for me, and I'm careful and mindful about the language of that, because truly the word tribe does come from a more Native Indigenous person, but I'm just saying the idea of something that is, like, very chosen in terms of, that tribal sense, I think that unfortunately in many Ways our world as we've gone more global with the doors that have been opened by social media, which I'm not sure has brought us more than it's taken from us.

But I think that sense of tribal somehow has become very dogmatic, I should say. And I don't love that. I believe in community, but I don't believe in tribalism. In other words, there's no one that I really identify with as a, like, I have to stand in this corner and everything else is bad and wrong. To me, that's never going to move forward the conversation on humanity.

So when I say that I'm for community, I'm for supporting humans, being better humans, to be better society etc. And so I think that that's the tough one about family structure is this sense of. Two people raising other people who say that my way is the right way, and you should keep doing my way. You know, I got to be honest, my dad made an incredible living doing what his father did and growing up in that business and taking it over and he really did incredible things with it.

But I had many conversations with my dad growing up in my childhood about other things that he wished that he had done and been able to explore. And, to an extent he did try to pursue that in some ways in his personality, but this anchor of this business always kind of had him to a certain extent like a ball and chain.

It gave him more than it took in many ways, but I think there's something about that ability that we have in these generations further from the past, right, where there was very few options for women. And men often went into what their fathers did and, you know, those kind of things. So as we get further away from that and we have more flexibility in our choices, and as we can expand and, you know, pivot I think it's interesting to see.

The flip side of that, of course, is sometimes many of us feel adrift. There's too many choices. There's too many options. And how do we choose? And we do a little bit of this. And then we do a little bit of this. And then we get into our 50s and we're like, well, maybe I should have done this. And I think the reality is you have to really just.

Choose and commit, and trust that you're doing the right thing at the right time, and that more will be revealed, and then you'll keep going down that path, until more will be revealed, and you go down that path.

But it's hard to live like that in this world, because, like you said, we look at so and so throwing her first child's birthday party, and it looks like this, and then we think, oh, I'm not this, that, and the other, and, so, you know, it's hard to live your best life for your best self, but I really think it's the only goal that we should all be working

Like, so they're all coming from the same church and they all have a bunch of kids. So that's already like, we're kind of pigeonholed. Sure. Sure. However, what I love about this group is that for the most part people can express whatever they're expressing and space is held for them to be that way. And for the most part, if someone is trying to make a decision and whatever the thing is, people are saying, well, you know, this is what I might do. However, you can pray about it.

You can spend time in it. You will know the right thing for you. Even if someone's asking some kind of advice that. Ultimately, people are saying, well, this is what I would consider. However, you're not me. There's just a lot of that, space for the person to be the decision maker and to feel like empowered in their own way to trust in themselves.

And so I didn't think that when I joined this group that I'd actually like it as much as I do, but maybe it's having a bunch of kids has stretched all of us in ways that like, for me, I would be a different person if I didn't have these eight children. I think I was so close minded and I knew everything when I was like 18, 19, 20. I mean, I was so brilliant. Let me tell you. And,

I want our family to feel more community the way that you have, you know, express that where you are welcome here and you are loved here,

And we're going to support you because we'll really want to see you

Now, I wouldn't recommend skinning a cat, but it's You know, just true that we can all live life in so many different ways. One of the things I remember you had said was what is one of the worst pieces of advice or what is one of the worst things that people say when they're trying to be helpful. And I would say when a sentence starts with a, you know what you should do.

Yes. And when I hear someone say, you know what I should, or when I hear myself say, you know what you should do, I think, oh, danger Will Robbins. We are in a bad path. This is a, this is an area that we should not be in. Because how could I possibly know for you? And like you said with your group, you know, it's more of a, well here's how I went about that scenario, or here's what I did in that. So you know, you speak from the I. And if this helps you, great.

And this might not work for you because you might have different needs or different, you know. So I think that's one to remember. But that goes along with boundaries, right? You know what you should do is, oh, step back from having an opinion about what I should do.

And you just realize you don't know when your gifts, your skill, your talents are going to be used. You don't know when your magic purpose is going to be. Revealed, you know, and I don't mean magic purpose like some, you know, woo woo too heavy.

I just mean like, I think so many of us have so many different chapters in our lives, but that there are so many different parts of it that are getting closer to who we truly are, and why we may be here, and what we should be doing, or how we should be helping this cosmic conversation of life, right? So, never give up is a big one for me. I love that. And

In the meantime, I do hang out and write and post on Instagram very often at WD underscore Doherty, D O H E R T Y. And I do write on Substack. It was a initiative I started last year. I've always been a writer, but never consistently. And a friend of mine said, if you're waiting to write, you're not a writer but a waiter, and it kind of got me at my core and so spontaneously I started this Substack newsletter.

I really like the community of Substack and what it's doing, so I write there at W. D. Daugherty as well, and I pretty much just engage with those two type of things. I write there at least once a week. What I was doing was teething out a book idea, and it has started to come to me, and it's kind of led to this whole direction, so I'm moving through that.

So if you have no other ability, because you don't have your list of asks prepared, like we talked about at the top of this you might just need a hug to be comforted. You might just need to be heard. You just might need to just babble and talk. And hopefully, you will want to be helped in some way, because it is so much easier to do things together than it is alone.

Because people have shared experiences, and they might offer a way to look at something that will move you through this moment faster. So. That's what I would suggest.