Anne: [00:00:00] Hi, I am Anne, and I'm Helen. And welcome to Metaphysical Street Smarts. What is Metaphysical Street Smarts? Helen 

Helen: Physical is everything you can see with your human eye. You can see, touch, feel, taste as a human. Metaphysical. Is that what you cannot see? Wifi microwave energy. When you feel somebody staring at you, you can't really feel eyesight.

Helen: So metaphysical is that what you can't perceive with the human eye? Street smarts means let's take the woowoo, the energetic, the airy fairy, and add it to logic so that you can have a better experience of yourself. In this one. 

Anne: As always, we invite you to take what blesses you and leave the rest. We're so glad you're here.

Anne: Let's jump in. Well, hi Helen. Welcome to another episode. Ah, what number are we on [00:01:00] today? We are on episode 42. Wow. I like it. I like it. Mm-hmm. We are cruising. 

Helen: Um, how's your week been going? Very good. It's, um, summer, still nice and toasty warm and life is good. Roasty toasty. Yeah. How was your 4th of July?

Helen: Quiet. And that's nice too. I did work a bit and just kind of chilled. We had just, um, transitioned one of our four leggeds from the family, my son's dog, and so this, this big holiday weekend, we just kinda. Took a minute. We're coming through the shock of the grief, the really hard physical part just kind of hung out, made it a, a very low key time.

Helen: It's very nice to get the break and, um, I don't know why I say that my, my schedule's always so diverse, but it's nice having the family around and just no big schedule or nowhere to go and do, which is kind of [00:02:00] nice. 

Anne: Yeah. 

Helen: How about you guys? Do you have big fun with the family and friends and hot dogs and.

Anne: Oh, it's a bad day to be a hot dog. Um, so yeah, so this year we did something a little bit different. We, I have a three and a 5-year-old boy and we're very into Monster trucks and the Monster Jam World finals is in Salt Lake City this year. So Oh my gosh. Do they have to have, have like air protection? Yes.

Anne: Yes. They have their, their monster gym. Ear protection. Um, so we went to see the Monster Jam World finals on the 4th of July, and I've never felt more American. 

Helen: Oh my gosh. I can't even imagine. You could feel the, the power of the motors and the engines through your entire torso. Right? 

Anne: Totally. Caden took Teague when he was even smaller to go see it, and they were kind of closer to the ground, [00:03:00] so they wanted to be a bit higher up so we weren't getting.

Anne: Smacked with mud this time. Yeah, it's pretty. It's pretty fun and intense, so Wow, 

Helen: boys. I just love having boys. 

Anne: Oh man. I hear it's not all boys, but my boys certainly came into this world loving anything with wheels. I don't understand what it is, but something about it, they are just monster trucks, cars, construction vehicles.

Helen: Right. And I would, I really did want a girl too, and I adore girls and I see many moms and daughters with beautiful relationships, and yet it's the boys that expose me to things I never would've done. Uhhuh, 

Anne: the same boat. I'm in the same boat. I'm like, okay, I guess I really, really, really like, like this now.

Anne: So it's fun to, to get into these with them and. 

Helen: I love that the, you know, the expansion and, and now with adult boys, [00:04:00] men, it's, yeah, it's just different. And it's that knowing I'm never gonna be exactly like them. Think like the brothers, you know, the way they interact with each other. Mm-hmm. And yet I get to see that, I get to see that difference and I enjoy it.

Helen: As much as I enjoy, you know, my time with girlfriends, you know, I like that expansion. Okay. Cosmic nudge for the week. What you got? Love your nudges. 

Anne: Love the nudges. Okay, well you did just let us know you did transition, uh, one of your four-legged pals there. And, uh, we are, we're on a similar trajectory with one of our four legged pals, and I just, it's not the first personality that my, they've seen me go through it, but they haven't had someone that they know pass away yet.

Anne: They're, they're little and 

Helen: well, definitely not anybody they've lived with. 

Anne: Yeah. [00:05:00] Yeah. And so our, our little husky healer, Ralphie boys getting ready to. Leave us. And uh, my nudge was to ask you, how do you talk to your children in an age appropriate way about death and loss in a way that's honest and doesn't sugarcoat anything and allows for.

Anne: I don't know, thinking and, and not making them afraid by telling them everybody dies eventually. Yeah. I mean, we kind of do that to some extent, but it's like I, I don't want them to just spend their whole life avoiding the topic, and I also don't want them to feel like they have to focus on it because it feels so ever present.

Helen: Well, for me it was, you know, teaching my children myself, um, and, you know, people that [00:06:00] reached out to me. It's, it's, there's a time and place for everything. And, you know, holding the sacred space when it's tearful, you know, making the time to say, now's the time we can connect through grief and sadness, you know, so every.

Helen: Emotion. The ones that we don't actually prefer. I call them fear based Lot people, um, call them negative, but the emotions that don't feel great to us, right? They can make us isolate and separate or we can use them to expand, love and connect. So when we put our beautiful kai down, it was at my, at her house, my son's house, and.

Helen: We were all there. Um, we had the at home euthanasia. It was a very beautiful experience. It was a time to love her and encourage her to let go and just all cry together. And it doesn't mean that afterwards, there weren't times of wanting [00:07:00] to not be social or like I said, this July 4th, we just really wanted to take a breath.

Helen: Now that the physical shock has worn off and understanding that there's times for everything, just like there's a time to play, there's a time to do work, there's a time take a bath, there's, you're talking to your age kids, right? There's a time to get dressed, to to be somewhere on time. There's a time to be with grandparents.

Helen: There's a time to eat. If we realize that sometimes emotion does just come when it's coming. My husband was at work and he said he just ended up with two coworkers, two women crying all over about the dog. Like it's so hard, you know, a lot of us have so much repressed emotion, it'll just come wherever, right?

Helen: And yet. You know, we want to learn to hold all the emotional experiences as sacred as an invitation to fully be with them and also choose how we show up with them. And so I think [00:08:00] it's such a good thing with children to be able to say, uh, we don't understand death and you know, we have different opinions and thoughts on it, but nobody can prove anything to you.

Helen: You get to pick what you believe. And yet in our family we cry because we're gonna physically miss them. But we know the love is still here. And then, um. The other piece, you know, studied some on grief. There's a book called A Grief Recovery Handbook. I wish every human alive would own it, read it, and do the work with children and friends.

Helen: It's so important to ask them. What do you think? Are you feeling sad right now? Are you angry? What? What is it you're feeling? And then when it's time for the next segment of whatever, you say, okay, we could come back to this. Here's when it's a good time for us to focus on this again, but now we need to shift into blah, blah, blah, right?

Helen: That's how we learn that grief is a part of being human. And the [00:09:00] bigger you love, the deeper you will grieve. And it's okay because you can still manage life without getting lost in the grief. That would be the goal. And yet we live in a culture country where we aren't taught about grief. It's the weirdest thing.

Helen: Nobody knows what to say, what's helpful, what isn't. And yet, uh, the grief cover handbook's fabulous teacher in this, so, you know, children or adults, it's that reminder of big emotion is human. Is there anything I can do to help you find your way through it safely? And as much as we cry and as weird as our bodies might feel, there will also be eventually less tears and more happy memories.

Helen: We keep all the love and this is what it looks like in human to, to give up the physical presence of something we have loved deeply. 

Anne: Hmm. [00:10:00] It's so beautiful. I think, uh, yeah, it, it's a really good reminder even for me because just looking out, over, over it as something impending, it's like, it feels never ending, but it is part of a process.

Anne: It's part of an important process. Just 

Helen: like, you know, your boys going to school, they're not gonna always have to go, but there is a time for school. In college and learning how to drive may not be fun, but you're, you know, there will come a time where you don't even remember how hard it was. It's, it's the same with our big emotions.

Helen: If we're taught that and guided to experience 'em that way, otherwise, like the two coworkers of my husband, it, it'll just bubble up rage, road rage. That's somebody who hasn't learned how to deal with anger. Appropriately. Um, I used to be a red hot mess and cry inappropriately. [00:11:00] Uh, and when I used the word inappropriately, I mean that it would put responsibility on others to comfort me when it really wasn't about me, right?

Helen: I just couldn't manage my emotions. Took a lot of tapping and a lot of learning, right? I went, one of the kids' friends called and said. My sister's hysterical and can't calm down. Her, their, his mother, their mother had died and I said, do you want me to come? And he's like, yes. And of course I don't wanna go.

Helen: It's very difficult. And yet I love this person. And so I went and all I did was sit next to the crying hysterical sister and told everybody it, her mother died. It's appropriate to cry. She'd wa for a while and then calm down and I'd hand her a tissue and I just touched her and didn't really say anything until she wanted to talk and I'd say, what else?

Helen: And she'd cry again. This went on for a couple hours and. [00:12:00] I said, you know, don't shut it down because if she will eventually stabilize, but if you shut it down now, it's gonna come up in insomnia and migraines. You know, they're not gonna let her on a plane like this. And yet the emotional part, you know, I, I got this beautiful opportunity, um.

Helen: To tell everybody there, no, you just honor this. There's nothing she needs to be doing other than this right now, and it's okay for all of us to cry with her. So that was a beautiful service. I got to contribute forward. And yes, now she's a young mother herself, so that's always a good, good thing. And so many of us have never been taught how to deal with grief.

Helen: And we've had so many losses as children and young adults and midlife. And I mean, by the time you hit, you know, my age, there could be a lot of it if you didn't know how to be with that pain safely and [00:13:00] thoroughly. Consistently when it was appropriate. It just shows up in really bizarre ways. So having a parent when you're a small person, giving you permission and, and asking good questions so they can guide you at what you can receive and not rushing the process.

Helen: Although making time now, we have to go to school, we can cry more later. Um, that's teaching the skill of dealing with Big O, huge emotion. I 

Anne: love that. Okay. I'll be, I'll be listening to this several times I think, just to help with that. So, uh, yeah. You ready for our listener question then? Absolutely. Okay.

Anne: So this question came in from Shelby. Uh, how do I stay connected to my teen when they're pulling away and don't wanna talk? Is there an energetic way to keep the bond strong? Teenage years 

Helen: with her? [00:14:00] Teen? Yeah. 

Anne: TEAM. Oh, teen. Like teenager. 

Helen: Oh, a teenager. Yes. Ooh, that's tough, isn't it? Because a teenager literally, um, is supposed to be exploring their own self-identity, which means they separate from parents.

Helen: So, uh. For me it was, I was studying how to talk to kids so they'd listen and how to listen. So they talk from when my kids were younger and that really served me through the teen years too. So I can give you a couple of tips that are really important. One, be forgiving. Don't take anything personally.

Helen: Know that. This, this teenage stage does not last. And like grief, if you can let them act fully teenager ish, fully age appropriate, they don't have to do it when they're 30. So if you can remember that, and so my husband and I had a running joke, we'd be like so annoyed and frustrated and instead of [00:15:00] expressing that, we'd say, wow.

Helen: If this was the teenage Olympics, we'd give you a 10 for acting your age. And so we would look at each other like, eh, just about an eight. I don't know. They might be going for a 10 there. It was something to, to remind us this is normal, age appropriate behavior. And on the other part of that is get educated.

Helen: What is age appropriate behavior for our children today? It would be even different than my kids because they're growing up in a reality that's very different with technology. Right. Yeah. And my kids lived in a world I couldn't even have imagined at their age. So it's important to understand the stages of teenage development like you would a baby or a toddler.

Helen: And once you know that, it gets a lot easier to not take things personally. And then the biggest thing with teens is they have the biggest BS detectors ever. It does not matter what you are saying. They can energetically read when you're [00:16:00] being inauthentic or lying, and they will not respect somebody who doesn't have a lot of self-respect, whether it's a teacher or an authority or an apparent.

Helen: And so teenage raising a teenager really, really invites you to up your game. How you wanna show up as a parent and what that means to do a good job with it. That means getting new information about age appropriate behavior and strategies and skills to deal with it so you don't end up being. Resentful or hurt or making it about your feelings instead of about safety and logic and, um, guiding them through this really intense time safely.

Anne: Why do they have such good BS detectors? 

Helen: I don't know. And I think your little people come in with it. Um, Sean definitely came in with that, but the teenagers, because they're physiologically and psychologically having to. [00:17:00] S expand a tremendous amount of energy in discovering who they authentically are.

Helen: They are hypersensitive to inauthenticity. That's why so many teens you see are depressed and struggling because their parents aren't clear on who they are. It's very difficult when you're trying to get clarity, and yet it's not modeled around you. Hmm. And you know, your, your little people talking about grief and teenagers, they're the part of their brain, the little, the physical brain has not yet developed where they understand death.

Helen: That's why a lot of teens will take ridiculous risk and get hurt. Or die. A lot of teens die. Right. And, um, you know, children, your children, when the dog dies, they're not gonna understand why he doesn't come back. Yeah. Because that part of the brain isn't fully developed yet. And so if your target as a mother of small children [00:18:00] losing a pet or as a mother of a teenager, it's, how do I be the resource, the guide?

Helen: Through this challenging time? Well, you can't guide or be a good resource if you don't understand the situation. That means age appropriate behavior, what your child's personality, what would help them, what wouldn't, and you can use this as a beautiful time to develop an amazing capacity for good timing.

Helen: I remember with my boys, it's like. When they wanted to talk, I would drop everything because you didn't know when it would happen again. Oh, you know, they would go through these stages where they weren't as chatty and then they went through stages where they never shut up. But you know, when they were, weren't chatty.

Helen: And I found Sean went through a stage where he didn't talk for a while, and then there was this one restaurant. If I took him to this [00:19:00] restaurant, he would like talk the whole time. Guess where we went a lot. It was the ability for me to pivot and just go with it, but always with the target and goal of how am I a good resource for this human being, growing into their own, and how do I help them be safe when that's not even their priority?

Anne: Yeah. Oh, I love, yeah, paying attention to the place even and creating that. Consistency and using that. Yeah, I love that. 

Helen: And even though it annoys them, if you ask too many questions, if you can time a really good question, like what do you think that will give you if you choose that? Or what do you think about your friends doing that?

Helen: If you can ask it from real curiosity, not judgment, you might be shocked what they're believing. I remember, uh, Josh once, I don't know how the conversation came up, but he said, well, I know if I did drugs you'd throw me out. I'm [00:20:00] like, what? I said, honey, I would hunt you down, drag you to rehab, drag you to psychologists.

Helen: I, I said, you are my chosen responsibility until I get get you through college. And so there's nothing that you could do that would have me turn away. From wanting to support you in the best experience and no, I would never throw you out. 

Anne: Oh my goodness. 

Helen: I never thought he would think that way. 

Anne: I love that chosen responsibility phrase too.

Helen: Yeah. And it has a timestamp on it, right? 

Anne: Yeah. And, okay. Do you have any, do you have a question for Shelby then? 

Helen: So Shelby, I would just say what literature, I mean there are people out there who really study this and it's amazing. Um, you know, what do you know about the culture and time and age appropriate behavior for your child with your [00:21:00] child's personality?

Helen: And I would recommend looking up, it's the longest title ever, but if you put it into Amazon, it'll pop up easily how to talk to kids so they listen and how to listen. So they talk. It's by two women. Adele Faser and Elizabeth, oh, I've forgotten the last name right now. But anyway, if you put that title in, you can find it.

Helen: And I bet they have work on teenagers too. And just reading something like that will give you so much of a benefit in learning how to decipher this journey. You know, it's no good having the wrong map. You need the right map for the territory you're in. And I, I'll give you one more piece. I would just tell my kids I don't, that's, I don't think that's a good decision.

Helen: I have to decide if that's okay and, and, but I need to think about it. And they would challenge me. They'd be like, what? You don't know, you don't know? And I'd be like, [00:22:00] Nope. Never had a teenager your age before. I have to think about it. I'll get back to you. And I would, I would take time to think about it.

Helen: And I never told my kids No without a reason, here's why that's not safe. Or it can cause this, or you're learning that, or just, I don't think I'm a good mother if I say yes to that. Mm-hmm. And, um, so my goal as a resource for guiding them through that time and being responsible for how they got through that stage was how do I remind them that it's about having a good experience and being safe?

Helen: And so, yes. Know your target as a mom and then make sure everything else aligns to that and you'll have a better, better time of it. 

Anne: Yeah. Admitting when we don't know something is great for their trust in their own BS detector and in, uh, in us as well. So there's gonna be a lot of that going on here 

Helen: and it's a beautiful teaching to them that it's okay that I [00:23:00] don't know everything I can go learn.

Helen: Um, some new ideas that other people know or I can, we can try something and see how it works out. 

Anne: Yes. Showing them that growth mindset and act in action, so awesome. 

Anne (2): Yes. 

Helen: Good luck with those teen years. You're gonna Brock it and they do outgrow it. There is a shelf life. Yes. Good luck, Shelby. 

Anne: Please feel free to keep us updated, send us any other questions as they come.

Anne (2): All right, Helen, thanks for another week. Thank you so much. I appreciate everybody and Anne for all this. It's fabulous. Till next week. We'll see you next week. Bye. 

Anne: That's all for today. We'll be back next Thursday with our next episode. You can subscribe if you'd like to get new episodes when they drop.

Anne: And reviewing and sharing the pod will help others find our community. We love getting your questions at Hello at Metaphysical Street. Smarts. Dot com and enjoy connecting with you on Instagram or wherever you've found us at Metaphysical [00:24:00] Street Smarts. You can leave comments or questions there, which may be featured on our rapid fire segment.

Anne: For information on upcoming events and consults with Helen, please visit Helen Rays. Dot com. That's H-E-L-E-N-R-A-C z.com. 

Helen: We invite you to re-listen. Join us on our next episode, send us questions because it is our intent to support you at this tumultuous time on Earth into the best experience of you.

Anne: Thanks for being here. Until next time, stay grounded.