Welcome to another mini sode of Solidarity Sister with Kristin Wilson. I'm so glad you're here. Today I wanted to share with you a little story from my own life, from parenting. If you don't know, I have eight kids. Seven of them are still at home. And within the last couple of weeks, I was listening to one of my girls. I have six girls and two boys, and she was complaining about a situation. She was telling me the things that were wrong.
And I started to respond by giving her, you know, motherly helpful feedback. And she stopped me and said, Mom, I don't need you to help me. I just needed to complain. And I'm so proud of her and I'm glad that she could stand up for herself in that moment. That she could respond from a place of, I mean, she was loving about it. She was not rude, but she was able to just articulate what she needed. And to let me know that I didn't need to do anything else.
And I think sometimes as moms, as friends, as spouses, as co workers, it can be really natural for us to want to go into fix it mode when someone comes to us with some kind of an issue. And so I was thinking about this and how could I be better at showing up for the people in my life?
When they come to me with some kind of an issue and I kind of broke it down into a three step process that I think is super helpful for me to remember and I'm probably not the only one, so I want to share that with you. Number one, Focus on being a witness. So if you're a witness to an event, you're actually not part of the event. You are an observer. You're not there to be having a starring role, or even really, like, a main character in the story in any way.
You're there to observe, and I think whenever someone comes to us with whatever their hardship is, our first thought could be, how can I be a witness to this situation? As a witness? What are you going to do? Well, step two. is you're going to stay curious. You're an observer, you're curious. You're going to ask questions about things that you don't maybe fully understand.
Instead of thinking that you know what the situation really is before the person has finished speaking, which is super easy to do when you're a mom. Like, I do know my kids pretty well, but I don't always get it right. And being able to stay curious helps us to come at them with an open mind and actually not really come at them at all, but let them come to us and encourage them to keep talking because we're interested and we're showing that interest and we're not judging.
As a witness, we're also not asked to judge. The witnesses who come in to testify in court, they're not the judge, they're not the jury. They're the witnesses and their job is to observe and then to report on what they've observed. And then step three, which is the one that I like to put as step one sometimes, but really ought not to be, is to act accordingly.
Because after you have come at the situation from the point of view of being a witness, after you have been able to stay curious while the person is expressing to you their thoughts and feelings and experiences, only then are we ready for step 3 to act accordingly, which in this case with my daughter was really for me to do nothing else. To just be an observer, to just be a witness for her where she said, I don't need you to help me.
I just needed to complain, and this is a great place to use a clarifying question. So maybe we're not sure. Maybe you know, this person in our life has told us all these things and we don't know if they want advice or if they want feedback, or if they want us to step in and do something. That is totally a great. Place to ask questions.
One idea that I heard from another parent which I think was kind of phenomenal was to have a penny nearby when you're talking with your kids and if they come and share a Situation with you you put the penny down and essentially it's like hey penny for your thoughts kind of a thing or penny for a response but what the symbol ended up meaning was that if the child took the penny and They were asking the parent to give feedback and advice, and if they didn't take the penny, They weren't looking for
the feedback and advice at that time. I think that's a beautiful, symbolic way to do it in your family. But really to just question and ask. Thank you for sharing that with me. What would you like me to do to best support you? Would you like some feedback or advice? Or did you just want a listening ear? And then whatever the response is, go with that. I know that I am going to really be making an effort to put this process into practice this week.
The three steps of one, being a witness, two, staying curious and three, acting accordingly only after I worked through the first two steps. I would love to hear feedback from any of you who try to do this in your own life. You can find me on Facebook at the Solidarity Center.
sister podcast or on Instagram at solidarity sister dot Kristin Wilson and it's K R I S T I N. In case you were wondering, I would love to just hear how this is working for you and if you're finding that it's helping you to have deeper, more meaningful connections and also creating a more open space for others to, to be able to want to come to you. to create that safe haven for the people in your life that I know you love and I know that you want to connect with.
So have a fantastic weekend and look forward to Monday where I'm going to be starting some Monday Minisodes that are going to be focused on different books that I'm reading. I have been listening to 350 audiobooks per year over the last couple of years. I am going to decrease that a little bit this year as I'm Moving into the podcast world somewhat, and also just re engaging with the world at large a little bit more and not numbing out quite so much with all those audiobooks.
But I am going to be sharing more about the books that I'm reading, and also we're going to be reading Gifts of Imperfection by Brené Brown. And the Facebook group that I run, and I'm inviting anyone there to join me on weekly Zooms as we kind of go through it chapter by chapter. So if you're not in that group and you'd like to be, it's a really fantastic space for women. You can find it publicly on Facebook, although it then is a private group once you join.
And that is a. Solidarity Sister with Kristin Wilson, and I'd love to have you there. And if it's a book that you haven't read, please read it. I have read it before, but I am absolutely due for a reread and would love to have you join me. So start looking for that on these upcoming Mondays where we'll have these just mini sodes about what I'm reading. And it won't just be about Gifts of Imperfection, but about, you know, the various books I'm reading during the week as well.
So, have a fantastic weekend, and thank you for being part of the Solidarity Sister community.