Live from Home Visiting Conference: How To Be YOU

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: [00:00:00] Welcome back to The Parenting Brief. I’m your host, Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez. This week we’re at the Strong Families AZ Home Visiting Conference where experts are discussing how to better support you and your family. Right now we’re speaking with Chris Molina and he’s focused on teaching people how to show up as their true selves.

Chris, can we start by just talking about what it means to show up as your true self? 

Chris Molina: Yeah. And, and, and thank you for having me. I would say that, uh, we have this, um, unfortunate knee jerk reaction to think that the house, the home version of me, that’s the real me. Everything else is fake. I don’t believe that studies show that that’s not real.

And I like to, uh, give people an example. So I was in the Marine Corps for seven years. I’ve also been a dad right now for six years. Um, if you think about Marine Corps, Sergeant Molina. And how he sounds, how he acts, what his true version of his self is. That is so much different than Girl Dad, [00:01:00] Chris. They both sound different.

They act different, and they should. And so whenever we talk about what is your true self. I wanna say that looks different, depend depending on the, uh, situation and the scenario that you’re in. So if you sound different at home than you do at work and in all the other different parts of your life, that makes sense, you should.

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: That is interesting that you say that because especially working. From home a lot of the time, um, and having children at home. My daughters will tell me, you sound weird when I am like in a meeting or I’m doing a virtual presentation and then that’s over and then I go into mom, me, and, um, and even that switch back and forth.

It, I don’t even think I noticed how. That shifted until I had kids in the at home virtual working. Mm-hmm. We were like, mom, that was weird. 

Chris Molina: Mm-hmm. Absolutely. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Although now my child, my [00:02:00] oldest says that she’s heard me do presentations and she says, I just put on my presentation voice, like when she’s now learning how to like public speak and be and be in school.

Sure. But that shift back and forth. Mm-hmm. It does happen just naturally. Yeah. You know, you don’t normally think about it. 

Chris Molina: Absolutely. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: I also wanna think about how a parent shows up to the doctor, the school drop off to work. Um, when you’re working with a home visitor, and as we’re just saying, every single one of those people may be different, uh, people, um, and shifting, depending on those situations, how can we work with families?

And make it possible for parents to show up authentically, um, when we are in the home. 

Chris Molina: That is an amazing question. Two things. Um, I would say number one, um, I wanna highlight the work of Dr. Anthony Jack. Dr. Anthony Jack wrote a book called The Privileged Poor. He talks about a lot of different things. One of the things that I love that he talks about is that, uh, he being a first generation college student, [00:03:00] um, he is a professor now, and he has some colleagues that don’t share the same identity.

He’s a black man. And don’t share that same identity or background with some of the students that he likes to focus on. He loves ensuring that low income first generation students, um, uh, are integrated into the college campus. Well. And so some of these professors will ask, okay, what can I do? And he always talks about something that he calls the hidden curriculum.

He’ll say, let’s start with something that you and I take for granted, like office hours. We talk about where they are and when they are, we don’t talk about what they are. And so those professors will go to their first gen students and low income students and say, oh, hey, do you know what office hours are?

I put ’em in the syllabus and they’ll go, yeah, and okay, explain it to me. And they will go, oh, that’s time for you to work in your office uninterrupted by any student. Because they don’t wanna seem dumb. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Right? Absolutely, 

Chris Molina: Of course. And I used to say, if something so small could be misunderstood, what else are we misunderstanding?

Yeah, but it’s not small because studies show that, um, the more interaction that you have with your professor, the more likely you are to get the internship, [00:04:00] the research position, graduate with better grades, and think about that. In terms of home visitors. There are, I’m sure many parents, many people that need to use those services that don’t understand everything that we just take for granted ’cause we’re professionals in this field.

We understand what all the words mean, but there are some things that I think we take for granted, and I, I would say that we should probably take a moment, pause, reflect, and think about what our hidden curriculums are. Um, and then secondly, um, highlight some work from Dr. Miles Durkey. He’s a social psychologist outta the University of Michigan.

He did this experiment and he found a, um, an unintended discovery. ’cause he had this, um, um, set up where he paid college students $20 to come and then they would set, um, put markers on their body to measure their heart rate and all these other biological things. And he would say, okay, now go pretend that you are at a career fair.

He had it all set up. And change the way you express yourself. Be the professional version of yourself. They did it, they took the markers off, they left. Two weeks [00:05:00] later, same students came, paid ’em $20 again, put markers on ’em to measure their health, fa um, um, things. And then said, okay, you’re at the career fair again.

Don’t change into your professional version of yourself. And they said, okay. And what he found is that they couldn’t not change the way that they express themselves. Oh, 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: interesting. 

Chris Molina: Even though Dr. Miles Durkey is not a professor, he’s not an authority figure. He’s paying them to follow directions and still they couldn’t not change the way that they express themselves based off of norms in society.

So what does that tell me? Tells me that just telling people that we’re trying to serve, you’re safe here. You can be yourself. It might be the starting point and where we need to start saying, but it’s not enough because of all the norms that we’re accustomed to, um, um, dealing with. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: You can’t just turn it off, turn it on.

Chris Molina: So many people can’t. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Yeah. Sometimes we hear parents talk about feeling like they’re [00:06:00] losing their identity in parenthood. I know we’re talking about how that true self-awareness or who you show up authentically almost assumes that you know. Who you are. And in that shift to parenthood, we hear how they feel like they’re losing themselves.

Do you have any advice on how parents can feel more authentic to themselves in, in these life transitions? 

Chris Molina: Absolutely. And that is, and I want to highlight that although I am a parent, I don’t have all of the other things that I need that happen to mothers whenever they. Go through birth and all the different chemical, every, there’s so many things that I don’t understand and I never will, but I do understand how whenever we are transitioning into a new version of ourselves, um, there’s gonna be a, a, a time.

Sometimes it’s a short amount of time, sometimes it’s long. Where we’re, we feel like we’re faking it. Right. Like we don’t, we don’t really know, I don’t know how to do this [00:07:00] parenting thing. I put on a, a face, like I know what I’m doing, but I don’t know because there’s no book that like, just tells you how to be a parent and like, poof, you’re a good parent.

Right. Um, there’s 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: a lot of parenting books and yet none of them that seem to be able to do that. 

Chris Molina: And also the, the amount of stuff that we have to go through just to drive a car and then, then we’re not really prepped to do this parenthood thing. Right. Right. Um, but, uh, it’s, it’s natural. To feel like you are putting on a face and you’ve lost yourself and you’re different and you’re, you don’t recognize yourself physically, mentally, emotionally, spirit.

You don’t recognize this makes sense, like parenthood raising a, a human, especially if you gave birth to that human, that is a life changing thing. It should feel different. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Hmm. 

Chris Molina: This is a thing that should happen. So if, if, if you go through, um, uh, motherhood parenthood and nothing changes, like I’m not an expert on it, but like, I, I guess that’s cool.

But from all of the experiences that I’ve had, that I’ve seen from my daughter’s mother, from my friends that have had [00:08:00] kids. I don’t, 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: we should change. 

Chris Molina: I don’t know anybody that is like, oh yeah, it’s just another thing, you know, have a kid. But like, 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: just another day. 

Chris Molina: Yeah, just another day. Nothing changed. Um, no.

You should feel different. And eventually, I think, um, at some point we are going to find our authentic voice in parenthood. We’re gonna find our authentic voice in everything that we do, as long as we stick with it. And we understand this is a, a natural part of a transition in life. 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: I love that idea of, it’s not that you’re losing yourself, but really you’re just, you’re creating this new version of yourself in this new role as opposed to this idea of not knowing who you are.

Yeah, and I think so often we try, we know parents, even myself are like, ha ha, this isn’t. I wanna get back to that person. And in reality, that’s not really what happens or even should happen, but that growing and changing in these roles and [00:09:00] taking that time to just learn and sit and figure out who we are, who, who our authentic self is in that new role, is that shift?

Chris Molina: Yes. And nothing happens in a vacuum. Like as we go through parenthood, we’re also getting older, we’re progressing through our careers. We’re pro like there’s all of these other changes. So like. You’re going to feel different because everything change, change, change is something that is always going to happen, and so we should just embrace it and understand.

Yeah, the same way that I can’t get back to pre. Girl, dad, Chris, I can’t get back to 21-year-old Chris. I’m gonna be 40 next year. Right. I can’t get back to him like so 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: if only, right. 

Chris Molina: Yeah. And I moisturize as much as I can, but I’m not getting back there, you know? 

Jessica Stewart-Gonzalez: Thank you, Chris. This is our final episode of the week.

Thank you for following along. The rest of the shows from this week are up on our channel. It’s not often we have a room full of experts to pull for conversation, so make sure to check those [00:10:00] out.