Episode summary: Trust. 5 letters that carry a tremendous amount of weight. Trust falls, trusting your scene partner/kids, and why potty training is the worst – trust me! We’ll kick off our show with The Raise a Glass Series, get on to our questions to explore, and end with A Short Story Before We Go. MFA is the sometimes-musical, dramedy, in 3 acts, 1 intermission, the length of a sitcom designed to give mama’s (and any caregiver) a break in the day to breathe and reset along with a much-needed audio hug.
Quote: “it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be.” Isabella from her song What Else Can I Do in the movie Encanto
Act I: The Raise a Glass Series
The Raise a Glass Series is a space for reflection and gratitude centered around the topic of the day and inspired by lyrics from Hamilton the Musical.
Today’s lyrics – “Burr, how do I know you won’t use this against me the next time we go toe to toe? Alexander, rumors only grow, and we both know what we know”
Act II: Main Questions
Intermission: Angelica Interlude
Act III: A Short Story Before We Go
Episode transcript: available at www.mfaparentingedition.com/047
Sources that helped inspire this episode:
Building a Relationship of Trust Between You and Your Children - WeHaveKids
Trust Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Lessons on trust from child development research | Queen's University Gazette (queensu.ca)
5 Improv-Inspired Games to Build Trust in Your Teams - Honestly
17 Proven Drama Exercises for Building Confidence - DramaTips
Connect with Me:
Best way - [email protected]
IG - @mfaparentingedition
Support the Show: buy me a drink to say “hey, keep up the good work”, just go to www.buymeacoffee.com/mfaparenting
_____________________________________________________________________________________
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Mom: Angelica, can you say hello?
Angelica: Hello! Hello?
Mom: How are you today?
Angelica: I doing well…how are you?
Mom: Well, I’m doing well also. (she laughs)
Welcome to MFA the parenting edition. I am Taisha Cameron. I'm a mom to a feisty, fiery, fierce, flailing, finicky little kid, and a trained actor. These lessons from the theater for raising ourselves and our kids came about after the life altering revelation I made, that my MFA in acting trained me for life as a mommy, better than life as a full-time actor.
We'll explore some challenging questions, I'll share some stories, and we'll kick things off with the Raise a Glass series. From the method to mommy meltdowns and all the moments in between, welcome to MFA.
"It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be" Isabella in her song, What Else Can I Do from the movie, Encanto.
Episode 47.
Hello. Hello, lovelies. And welcome back to MFA. All right, today's topic is about trust, and I can't even lie this episode has taken a lot of my brain power to formulate. Why you ask? Good question. Let me tell you. I am going through this journey right now and unpacking, as is the word these days, a lot of beliefs, thinking patterns, and clutter of the emotional, mental, and spiritual kind. And since we're moving, the physical space kind as well, did I mention we were moving? Yeah. So, talking about unpacking right now we're trying to pack. So my family is in the process of this huge transition in our life. And with all the soul healing growing work that I'm doing, I'm coming to terms with a lot of trust issues. Yeah. Things I didn't even know I had issues with I'm like, whoa, where did you come from? But you've been there.
I've been wracking my brain, trying to fit everything that I want to say on this topic into a 20-to-30-minute episode. And I'm finding this topic lends itself to a much longer and in-depth episode for another day and time. But for today, we'll just scratch the surface of the theme trust. So, let's dive in and see what the theater can teach us today about trust and raising ourselves and our kids. But as always, before we jump into that, let's kick things off with the Raise a Glass series. You don't need to raise an actual glass unless you've got one in hand already. And if you do I say holla, let's do this.
The Raise a Glass series is a space for reflection and gratitude centered around the topic of the day and inspired by lyrics from Hamilton the Musical.
Burr, how do I know you won't use this against me the next time we go toe to toe? Alexander rumors only grow, and we both know what we know.
Trust. It's not in the lyrics, but Alexander is asking Burr if he can trust him not to say a word. Trust and betrayal are so tangled. When we are not living our lives in alignment with our values, or just human decency towards others, we start fearing people will do the same to us. We fear they will break our trust as we may be breaking or have broken theirs or the trust of others.
What does it mean to be a trustworthy person?
Trust is based in hope. We don't know for a fact, the person we're placing trust in will betray us or not. We don't know for a fact that they will always be honest or reliable. Alexander's fear that Burr may use this against him led him to write the Reynolds Pamphlet...which may have done more damage. In openly admitting his transgressions he ruptured the trust with Eliza and she hoped he would burn for it. Trusting in ourselves and others is scary business and also highly necessary for all our relationships with other humans.
Let's raise a glass to learning to trust in ourselves and others.
Question:
What does trust mean? What can the theater teach us about trust? If we want our kids to show us, we can trust them, how do we show our children we are trustworthy? How do we model trust? If we had full trust in our children and they had full trust in us, what would our relationship with our kids look like?
And we're back with dictionary definitions on WFA, public radio, where you tune in for your daily dose of definitions on the words you think you know, until you have to define them. Today's word is trust. The Merriam Webster's dictionary defines trust as a verb:
to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of, to place confidence in, to hope or expect confidently, to commit or place in one's care or keeping, to permit to stay or go or to do something without fear or misgiving, to extend credit to.
And you can always trust us here to have the right definition for the right word you think, you know, until you have to define it. See you next time.
In researching this topic, I stumbled on a drama teacher who had written this blog on building trust in theater and an ensemble. The three key points she mentioned in how to encourage authentic organic ensemble building comes with supporting each person in their journey to build confidence, trust and collaboration.
Supporting another person to build confidence helps them build trust in themselves and their ability to master the task they're working on and trust in the person giving them the space to work on mastery of that skill. As a teacher, the job is not to give information and make sure they memorize it. The job is to introduce the problem to be solved and offer skills, tools, and assistance along the way as the child needs it to master the skills on their own. Building confidence takes time as does building trust.
When I think of trust in the theater, I think of trust falls. Have you ever done this exercise? I know businesses and corporations love to bring in theater practitioners to incorporate ensemble building exercises and activities with their team to boost morale and create a culture of trust within the company. I don't know if it works. I mean, I guess it does, as far as the participants are willing to openly play the game, but in theater, we rely on that.
The game of theater is based on an agreement. And this agreement says that we are choosing to be open and respectful of each other and trust everyone will show up to the best of their ability to collaborate on a story we all feel is necessary to tell. And the audience is included in this agreement. The audience is the other main part of theatrical performance; without them you just kind of stay in rehearsal...forever.
So going back to trust falls, have you seen the movie Frozen? It's probably a very dumb question to ask in a parenting and theater podcast, but I know not everyone listening is a parent or into the arts, so maybe you haven't seen it, or you haven't seen it like 900 times like we have in our home. But there is a scene when Ana is searching for Elsa, and she tries to climb a mountain to get to where Elsa is. And Kristof is like, I wouldn't put your foot there, or there, you're going to kill yourself. And at that moment, Olaf calls out, I just found a staircase that leads exactly where we want to go.
And Anna's so super excited to hear this she just throws herself backwards into Kristoff's arms, mind you he was not prepared for this, and then she says, whoa, that was like a crazy trust exercise. That my friends is a trust fall. Of course, when you do them in a theater game trust building setting, your partner is 100% anticipating your fall and ready to catch you. Your only responsibility is to let it go, let it go. I couldn't resist that. I'm so sorry, but just let go.
Letting go. Ha. So difficult. So we'll talk more about that after this.
Angelica Interlude
Angelica: Hi. Hi. Hi.
Taisha: Well, hello, Angelica. Welcome back for another episode of the Angelica mommy podcast.
Angelica: Um,
Taisha: what would you like to talk about today?
Angelica: I don't know why I'm gonna talk about today but we'll figure it out tomorrow.
Taisha: Sure. We can figure out tomorrow what we're going to talk about today. No worries.
Angelica: Good morning.
Taisha: Would you like to start by sharing your favorite thing from today?
Angelica: Yes.
Taisha: Okay. Let's start there and then see what we can, see where it takes us. So what's your favorite thing from today?
Angelica: Wait a minute.
Taisha: Nothing is wrong with it. What is wrong is that you keep on pressing the red button, so it starts and stops and starts and stops. What would you like to talk about today?
Angelica: To talk about my dad.
Taisha: You want to talk about your dad?
Angelica: Dad, what have you been up to?
Taisha: Well, what do you want to say about your dad?
Angelica: My daddy is...he likes to do podcasts with us.
Taisha: Your dad likes to do podcasts with us? You know, we haven't recorded an episode of the three of us together. Should we do that one day?
Angelica: Do it today?
Taisha: Well, we can't do it today, but is that something you think would be fun for the three of us to do together? Okay. Would you like to say, remember we said we were going to talk about our favorite things.
Angelica: Yeah, but I not ready yet.
As an actor, my job is to confidently trust in my imagination and my choices that booked me the gig in the first place. Trust the director knows what they're doing and trust in the vision they're working to create. And bring all of me to the collaborative process. And I've said this before on the show, but it's worth repeating- that's hard shit to do.
From the moment we are born there are factors working for and against our ability to trust ourselves. If we're fortunate enough to be born into a family that loves us and wants the best for us, we're up against their own personal level of trust in themselves, their own lack of or overconfidence in themselves. The work, the world and their own environment has done to bolster or dampen their trust in others and the world at large. All of those beliefs that these individuals hold get placed on us and impact the trust we have in ourselves. There are many people who feel they can't trust anyone in the world because of the circumstances they've grown up in; the world is a cutthroat dangerous place and you can only trust yourself. For others, they have been conditioned to trust the people around them, and who and what they believe, no matter what, even if it goes against what the child themselves feels comfortable with. How we engage with our children and children around us makes a significant difference in their ability to trust.
In the theater, the homework an actor does to get into character is going to be evaluated by the director. They can't do their job if the actor doesn't do their own work. So in order to make these choices and bring them into rehearsal with all their richness, an actor has to confidently make bold decisions and trust they work for the scene. If every opportunity to make bold decisions is taken from us as a child, we become adults scared to make bold choices. We're being told through the halting of our confidence building experiences we are not capable or trustworthy of thinking for ourselves and making strong decisions.
I'll give you one solid and quick example of what I mean before wrapping this up today. Potty learning with our little ones.
I really messed up potty learning with Angelica. Before the pandemic hit, I wanted her to attend the Children's House near us, the Montessori school. Yes, back then I was in a school mindset. So, in order for her to attend, she needed to be potty trained. It was a two and a half to six-year-old age group and that was one of the requirements. Now, some kids might learn to use the potty that early, but most don't.
Now Montessori's entire thinking about potty learning is child led. Don't push it. Don't make it a thing. Don't do rewards. This is something that they will do multiple times a day for the rest of their lives, so just don't make it an issue. Well, I went against all that and made it an issue. My darling daughter who had been through so much in her two years on the earth at that time was in no way developmentally ready for this, but I desperately wanted her to go to Montessori as soon as possible so I got her a potty and had every battle to make her go. Even when she was telling me she didn't want to, she didn't have to, I was pleading, screaming, and even resorting to the stupid sticker chart to try to make her potty train so I could enroll her in school.
I wanted her to experience all the activities I was reading about and researching. I wanted her to learn all the life skills they were promoting. I wanted her to play with the other kids and learn from them and mixed age groups. I wanted everything she learned to reflect positively on me because of how she interacted with the world based on her schooling. And boom, there it was, the real reason I wanted her to go to school. So she could be admired by others and I could be praised for how I was as a mother. Fuck.
Do you see how messed up and twisted that is? It had nothing to do with her. It had everything to do with me and my ego when I really broke it down, once I got under all the layers of, well, she'll get to do this and she'll get to do that. And she needs to learn this and she needs to learn that it was about me and pushing things on her so that people can be like, oh my God, I can't believe she does that. You must be an amazing mom.
So fast forward to today. I know I said I was going to make this a short story, but y'all know I can't. So fast forward to today, Angelica is four and a half and can do all her needs in the potty but will adamantly refuse to and insists on wearing a pull-up during the day.
What I have to do is to do less. I have to put a huge pause in how much I push. We've been encouraging her to listen to her body. What a concept, right? Revolutionary. I have to trust that if she tells me she doesn't have to go, then her body is telling her she doesn't have to go and she can start trusting her body. I could continue to approach the situation from a place of, well, you have shown me in the past that you don't know when you need to pee and you end up peeing on the floor so we need to go to make sure or let her get better at watching for the signs instead of making her bathroom habits, my issue. Because that's what I'm doing, micro-managing her bladder and making it my issue when it's her body and her responsibility to get to a bathroom and handle her shit, literally.
The same way I trust my scene partners going to be prepared and do the best of their ability from table read to the final curtain I can trust my daughter will use the bathroom when she needs to. You know, going back to a point that I've made in earlier episodes, our children are our scene partners.
If my scene partner in a play or film was unprepared and was making me very nervous with their choices, I'd see how I could help. I'm not going to shame them and micromanage their work because that will negatively affect the ability of us to collaborate together. So, at home, if my daughter is adamant about not doing something that I can't even make her do any way, if she doesn't want to release anything, I can't make her let it go, let it go. I told you we'd circle around to it. So why am I going to continue fighting about it?
Trusting she'll get there in the end will help her build her confidence in whatever skill she's learning to master. And once she's seen, I trust her, then that'll build her confidence on its own. We are now in a scene of acceptance and compassion for each other instead of control and disrespect.
So Lovely's, I'll ask you again. What does trust mean? What can the theater teach us about trust? How do we model trust for our children? If we want our kids to show us, we can trust them, how do we show our children we are trustworthy? If we had full trust in our children and they had full trust in us, what would our relationship with our kids look like?
How I look at parenting and my ideas of trust and school and discipline, all the other things I've talked about on this show, have drastically changed. Who I would have been an how I would have been as a mother, even two years ago have changed. My beliefs have changed, my ideas, my thoughts have changed. I've allowed it to change. I've allowed my daughter to impact me and our relationship and to challenge me and question me.
Which means I'm questioning myself and the things that I've trusted to hold onto for so long. And if they serve our family anymore. I hope and expect that all the things I'm teaching my daughter about self-care, kindness, empathy, embracing her authenticity and more will positively impact my daughter and how she navigates the world. That is the trust I am placing and how she develops and grows as a person in this world.
I cannot force it, bribe it, manipulate it to happen without changing the core of who she is and I trust the core of who she is, is a beautiful human being on this planet to teach us how to live our lives fully and unapologetically. In order for her to build her confidence I must challenge myself to confidently allow her the space to try, fail, struggle, ask for help when she needs it, lie, tell the truth, practice being a human, without fear of imposing my fears on her. That is what it means to trust another person.
A Short Story Before We Go.
I started thinking about the book that I'm reading now, Professional Troublemaker, The Fear-Fighter’s Manuel by Luvvie Ajayi Jones. And she talks about the thing or the things that people have labeled us as too much.
Where too much of this and too much of that in my life, I've been labeled too dramatic, too sensitive, too angry, too quiet, too loud, too aggressive, too judgy, too strict, too rigid, too severe, too moody, too much.
Funny thing is when you're labeled too much of one thing it means you're not enough of something else. And for me, I've looked at what I supposedly lacked, more than I looked at what I was already in surplus of.
It's made me not trust who I am and what gifts I've been given in this world. And there are people who make a living out of their authentic gifts that other people have labeled as too much. And when I think of it all the wide variety of things I am, too angry, too aggressive, too shy, too dramatic, too loud, too quiet, it's a fully formed human being who's able to express their emotions. And guess what? It definitely helps me in the work that I do as an actor.
And so I look at my daughter and I try to remember these words that this little girl said to me, my mom doesn't trust. And I wonder how many opportunities I can give Angelica to just be so she feels trusted in order to build her confidence. I want her to trust herself and to know that I trust her. It's a tall order to ask, but I am working towards it.
That's all for today, guys. And dolls. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode about trust. So I'm taking a little break, like the entire month of March off. And I'll be back in April because like I said earlier, we're moving now and I just can't have this in the mix of everything else that I'm doing and changing state lines and getting settled into a new home. Some people can do it I can't, it's fine. So this is going to be on pause until April after this episode. And then we'll come back for the second half of season three.
Now, one last thing before you go here is my audio hug to you so you can breathe, reset, and kick some ass today, but as always, don't literally kick everyone's ass because that is called assault.
Here's my special hug to you to paint your spirit a brighter hue. So catch this hug and hold it tight. Go walk in grace and shine your light.
Thanks again. And I'll see you on the other side.
Mom: Angelica, can you say good-bye?
Angelica: Good-bye, good-bye.
Mom: Thank you.
Angelica: Thank you.
Quote: “it doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be.” Isabella from her song What Else Can I Do in the movie Encanto
Act I: The Raise a Glass Series
The Raise a Glass Series is a space for reflection and gratitude centered around the topic of the day and inspired by lyrics from Hamilton the Musical.
Today’s lyrics – “Burr, how do I know you won’t use this against me the next time we go toe to toe? Alexander, rumors only grow, and we both know what we know”
Act II: Main Questions
- What does trust mean?
- What can the theatre teach us about trust?
- We want our kids to show us we can trust them, how do we show our children we are trustworthy? How do we model trust?
- If we had full trust in our children and they had full trust in us, what would our relationship with our kids look like?
Intermission: Angelica Interlude
Act III: A Short Story Before We Go
Episode transcript: available at www.mfaparentingedition.com/047
Sources that helped inspire this episode:
Building a Relationship of Trust Between You and Your Children - WeHaveKids
Trust Definition & Meaning - Merriam-Webster
Lessons on trust from child development research | Queen's University Gazette (queensu.ca)
5 Improv-Inspired Games to Build Trust in Your Teams - Honestly
17 Proven Drama Exercises for Building Confidence - DramaTips
Connect with Me:
Best way - [email protected]
IG - @mfaparentingedition
Support the Show: buy me a drink to say “hey, keep up the good work”, just go to www.buymeacoffee.com/mfaparenting
_____________________________________________________________________________________
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
Mom: Angelica, can you say hello?
Angelica: Hello! Hello?
Mom: How are you today?
Angelica: I doing well…how are you?
Mom: Well, I’m doing well also. (she laughs)
Welcome to MFA the parenting edition. I am Taisha Cameron. I'm a mom to a feisty, fiery, fierce, flailing, finicky little kid, and a trained actor. These lessons from the theater for raising ourselves and our kids came about after the life altering revelation I made, that my MFA in acting trained me for life as a mommy, better than life as a full-time actor.
We'll explore some challenging questions, I'll share some stories, and we'll kick things off with the Raise a Glass series. From the method to mommy meltdowns and all the moments in between, welcome to MFA.
"It doesn't need to be perfect. It just needs to be" Isabella in her song, What Else Can I Do from the movie, Encanto.
Episode 47.
Hello. Hello, lovelies. And welcome back to MFA. All right, today's topic is about trust, and I can't even lie this episode has taken a lot of my brain power to formulate. Why you ask? Good question. Let me tell you. I am going through this journey right now and unpacking, as is the word these days, a lot of beliefs, thinking patterns, and clutter of the emotional, mental, and spiritual kind. And since we're moving, the physical space kind as well, did I mention we were moving? Yeah. So, talking about unpacking right now we're trying to pack. So my family is in the process of this huge transition in our life. And with all the soul healing growing work that I'm doing, I'm coming to terms with a lot of trust issues. Yeah. Things I didn't even know I had issues with I'm like, whoa, where did you come from? But you've been there.
I've been wracking my brain, trying to fit everything that I want to say on this topic into a 20-to-30-minute episode. And I'm finding this topic lends itself to a much longer and in-depth episode for another day and time. But for today, we'll just scratch the surface of the theme trust. So, let's dive in and see what the theater can teach us today about trust and raising ourselves and our kids. But as always, before we jump into that, let's kick things off with the Raise a Glass series. You don't need to raise an actual glass unless you've got one in hand already. And if you do I say holla, let's do this.
The Raise a Glass series is a space for reflection and gratitude centered around the topic of the day and inspired by lyrics from Hamilton the Musical.
Burr, how do I know you won't use this against me the next time we go toe to toe? Alexander rumors only grow, and we both know what we know.
Trust. It's not in the lyrics, but Alexander is asking Burr if he can trust him not to say a word. Trust and betrayal are so tangled. When we are not living our lives in alignment with our values, or just human decency towards others, we start fearing people will do the same to us. We fear they will break our trust as we may be breaking or have broken theirs or the trust of others.
What does it mean to be a trustworthy person?
Trust is based in hope. We don't know for a fact, the person we're placing trust in will betray us or not. We don't know for a fact that they will always be honest or reliable. Alexander's fear that Burr may use this against him led him to write the Reynolds Pamphlet...which may have done more damage. In openly admitting his transgressions he ruptured the trust with Eliza and she hoped he would burn for it. Trusting in ourselves and others is scary business and also highly necessary for all our relationships with other humans.
Let's raise a glass to learning to trust in ourselves and others.
Question:
What does trust mean? What can the theater teach us about trust? If we want our kids to show us, we can trust them, how do we show our children we are trustworthy? How do we model trust? If we had full trust in our children and they had full trust in us, what would our relationship with our kids look like?
And we're back with dictionary definitions on WFA, public radio, where you tune in for your daily dose of definitions on the words you think you know, until you have to define them. Today's word is trust. The Merriam Webster's dictionary defines trust as a verb:
to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of, to place confidence in, to hope or expect confidently, to commit or place in one's care or keeping, to permit to stay or go or to do something without fear or misgiving, to extend credit to.
And you can always trust us here to have the right definition for the right word you think, you know, until you have to define it. See you next time.
In researching this topic, I stumbled on a drama teacher who had written this blog on building trust in theater and an ensemble. The three key points she mentioned in how to encourage authentic organic ensemble building comes with supporting each person in their journey to build confidence, trust and collaboration.
Supporting another person to build confidence helps them build trust in themselves and their ability to master the task they're working on and trust in the person giving them the space to work on mastery of that skill. As a teacher, the job is not to give information and make sure they memorize it. The job is to introduce the problem to be solved and offer skills, tools, and assistance along the way as the child needs it to master the skills on their own. Building confidence takes time as does building trust.
When I think of trust in the theater, I think of trust falls. Have you ever done this exercise? I know businesses and corporations love to bring in theater practitioners to incorporate ensemble building exercises and activities with their team to boost morale and create a culture of trust within the company. I don't know if it works. I mean, I guess it does, as far as the participants are willing to openly play the game, but in theater, we rely on that.
The game of theater is based on an agreement. And this agreement says that we are choosing to be open and respectful of each other and trust everyone will show up to the best of their ability to collaborate on a story we all feel is necessary to tell. And the audience is included in this agreement. The audience is the other main part of theatrical performance; without them you just kind of stay in rehearsal...forever.
So going back to trust falls, have you seen the movie Frozen? It's probably a very dumb question to ask in a parenting and theater podcast, but I know not everyone listening is a parent or into the arts, so maybe you haven't seen it, or you haven't seen it like 900 times like we have in our home. But there is a scene when Ana is searching for Elsa, and she tries to climb a mountain to get to where Elsa is. And Kristof is like, I wouldn't put your foot there, or there, you're going to kill yourself. And at that moment, Olaf calls out, I just found a staircase that leads exactly where we want to go.
And Anna's so super excited to hear this she just throws herself backwards into Kristoff's arms, mind you he was not prepared for this, and then she says, whoa, that was like a crazy trust exercise. That my friends is a trust fall. Of course, when you do them in a theater game trust building setting, your partner is 100% anticipating your fall and ready to catch you. Your only responsibility is to let it go, let it go. I couldn't resist that. I'm so sorry, but just let go.
Letting go. Ha. So difficult. So we'll talk more about that after this.
Angelica Interlude
Angelica: Hi. Hi. Hi.
Taisha: Well, hello, Angelica. Welcome back for another episode of the Angelica mommy podcast.
Angelica: Um,
Taisha: what would you like to talk about today?
Angelica: I don't know why I'm gonna talk about today but we'll figure it out tomorrow.
Taisha: Sure. We can figure out tomorrow what we're going to talk about today. No worries.
Angelica: Good morning.
Taisha: Would you like to start by sharing your favorite thing from today?
Angelica: Yes.
Taisha: Okay. Let's start there and then see what we can, see where it takes us. So what's your favorite thing from today?
Angelica: Wait a minute.
Taisha: Nothing is wrong with it. What is wrong is that you keep on pressing the red button, so it starts and stops and starts and stops. What would you like to talk about today?
Angelica: To talk about my dad.
Taisha: You want to talk about your dad?
Angelica: Dad, what have you been up to?
Taisha: Well, what do you want to say about your dad?
Angelica: My daddy is...he likes to do podcasts with us.
Taisha: Your dad likes to do podcasts with us? You know, we haven't recorded an episode of the three of us together. Should we do that one day?
Angelica: Do it today?
Taisha: Well, we can't do it today, but is that something you think would be fun for the three of us to do together? Okay. Would you like to say, remember we said we were going to talk about our favorite things.
Angelica: Yeah, but I not ready yet.
As an actor, my job is to confidently trust in my imagination and my choices that booked me the gig in the first place. Trust the director knows what they're doing and trust in the vision they're working to create. And bring all of me to the collaborative process. And I've said this before on the show, but it's worth repeating- that's hard shit to do.
From the moment we are born there are factors working for and against our ability to trust ourselves. If we're fortunate enough to be born into a family that loves us and wants the best for us, we're up against their own personal level of trust in themselves, their own lack of or overconfidence in themselves. The work, the world and their own environment has done to bolster or dampen their trust in others and the world at large. All of those beliefs that these individuals hold get placed on us and impact the trust we have in ourselves. There are many people who feel they can't trust anyone in the world because of the circumstances they've grown up in; the world is a cutthroat dangerous place and you can only trust yourself. For others, they have been conditioned to trust the people around them, and who and what they believe, no matter what, even if it goes against what the child themselves feels comfortable with. How we engage with our children and children around us makes a significant difference in their ability to trust.
In the theater, the homework an actor does to get into character is going to be evaluated by the director. They can't do their job if the actor doesn't do their own work. So in order to make these choices and bring them into rehearsal with all their richness, an actor has to confidently make bold decisions and trust they work for the scene. If every opportunity to make bold decisions is taken from us as a child, we become adults scared to make bold choices. We're being told through the halting of our confidence building experiences we are not capable or trustworthy of thinking for ourselves and making strong decisions.
I'll give you one solid and quick example of what I mean before wrapping this up today. Potty learning with our little ones.
I really messed up potty learning with Angelica. Before the pandemic hit, I wanted her to attend the Children's House near us, the Montessori school. Yes, back then I was in a school mindset. So, in order for her to attend, she needed to be potty trained. It was a two and a half to six-year-old age group and that was one of the requirements. Now, some kids might learn to use the potty that early, but most don't.
Now Montessori's entire thinking about potty learning is child led. Don't push it. Don't make it a thing. Don't do rewards. This is something that they will do multiple times a day for the rest of their lives, so just don't make it an issue. Well, I went against all that and made it an issue. My darling daughter who had been through so much in her two years on the earth at that time was in no way developmentally ready for this, but I desperately wanted her to go to Montessori as soon as possible so I got her a potty and had every battle to make her go. Even when she was telling me she didn't want to, she didn't have to, I was pleading, screaming, and even resorting to the stupid sticker chart to try to make her potty train so I could enroll her in school.
I wanted her to experience all the activities I was reading about and researching. I wanted her to learn all the life skills they were promoting. I wanted her to play with the other kids and learn from them and mixed age groups. I wanted everything she learned to reflect positively on me because of how she interacted with the world based on her schooling. And boom, there it was, the real reason I wanted her to go to school. So she could be admired by others and I could be praised for how I was as a mother. Fuck.
Do you see how messed up and twisted that is? It had nothing to do with her. It had everything to do with me and my ego when I really broke it down, once I got under all the layers of, well, she'll get to do this and she'll get to do that. And she needs to learn this and she needs to learn that it was about me and pushing things on her so that people can be like, oh my God, I can't believe she does that. You must be an amazing mom.
So fast forward to today. I know I said I was going to make this a short story, but y'all know I can't. So fast forward to today, Angelica is four and a half and can do all her needs in the potty but will adamantly refuse to and insists on wearing a pull-up during the day.
What I have to do is to do less. I have to put a huge pause in how much I push. We've been encouraging her to listen to her body. What a concept, right? Revolutionary. I have to trust that if she tells me she doesn't have to go, then her body is telling her she doesn't have to go and she can start trusting her body. I could continue to approach the situation from a place of, well, you have shown me in the past that you don't know when you need to pee and you end up peeing on the floor so we need to go to make sure or let her get better at watching for the signs instead of making her bathroom habits, my issue. Because that's what I'm doing, micro-managing her bladder and making it my issue when it's her body and her responsibility to get to a bathroom and handle her shit, literally.
The same way I trust my scene partners going to be prepared and do the best of their ability from table read to the final curtain I can trust my daughter will use the bathroom when she needs to. You know, going back to a point that I've made in earlier episodes, our children are our scene partners.
If my scene partner in a play or film was unprepared and was making me very nervous with their choices, I'd see how I could help. I'm not going to shame them and micromanage their work because that will negatively affect the ability of us to collaborate together. So, at home, if my daughter is adamant about not doing something that I can't even make her do any way, if she doesn't want to release anything, I can't make her let it go, let it go. I told you we'd circle around to it. So why am I going to continue fighting about it?
Trusting she'll get there in the end will help her build her confidence in whatever skill she's learning to master. And once she's seen, I trust her, then that'll build her confidence on its own. We are now in a scene of acceptance and compassion for each other instead of control and disrespect.
So Lovely's, I'll ask you again. What does trust mean? What can the theater teach us about trust? How do we model trust for our children? If we want our kids to show us, we can trust them, how do we show our children we are trustworthy? If we had full trust in our children and they had full trust in us, what would our relationship with our kids look like?
How I look at parenting and my ideas of trust and school and discipline, all the other things I've talked about on this show, have drastically changed. Who I would have been an how I would have been as a mother, even two years ago have changed. My beliefs have changed, my ideas, my thoughts have changed. I've allowed it to change. I've allowed my daughter to impact me and our relationship and to challenge me and question me.
Which means I'm questioning myself and the things that I've trusted to hold onto for so long. And if they serve our family anymore. I hope and expect that all the things I'm teaching my daughter about self-care, kindness, empathy, embracing her authenticity and more will positively impact my daughter and how she navigates the world. That is the trust I am placing and how she develops and grows as a person in this world.
I cannot force it, bribe it, manipulate it to happen without changing the core of who she is and I trust the core of who she is, is a beautiful human being on this planet to teach us how to live our lives fully and unapologetically. In order for her to build her confidence I must challenge myself to confidently allow her the space to try, fail, struggle, ask for help when she needs it, lie, tell the truth, practice being a human, without fear of imposing my fears on her. That is what it means to trust another person.
A Short Story Before We Go.
I started thinking about the book that I'm reading now, Professional Troublemaker, The Fear-Fighter’s Manuel by Luvvie Ajayi Jones. And she talks about the thing or the things that people have labeled us as too much.
Where too much of this and too much of that in my life, I've been labeled too dramatic, too sensitive, too angry, too quiet, too loud, too aggressive, too judgy, too strict, too rigid, too severe, too moody, too much.
Funny thing is when you're labeled too much of one thing it means you're not enough of something else. And for me, I've looked at what I supposedly lacked, more than I looked at what I was already in surplus of.
It's made me not trust who I am and what gifts I've been given in this world. And there are people who make a living out of their authentic gifts that other people have labeled as too much. And when I think of it all the wide variety of things I am, too angry, too aggressive, too shy, too dramatic, too loud, too quiet, it's a fully formed human being who's able to express their emotions. And guess what? It definitely helps me in the work that I do as an actor.
And so I look at my daughter and I try to remember these words that this little girl said to me, my mom doesn't trust. And I wonder how many opportunities I can give Angelica to just be so she feels trusted in order to build her confidence. I want her to trust herself and to know that I trust her. It's a tall order to ask, but I am working towards it.
That's all for today, guys. And dolls. Thank you so much for joining me on this episode about trust. So I'm taking a little break, like the entire month of March off. And I'll be back in April because like I said earlier, we're moving now and I just can't have this in the mix of everything else that I'm doing and changing state lines and getting settled into a new home. Some people can do it I can't, it's fine. So this is going to be on pause until April after this episode. And then we'll come back for the second half of season three.
Now, one last thing before you go here is my audio hug to you so you can breathe, reset, and kick some ass today, but as always, don't literally kick everyone's ass because that is called assault.
Here's my special hug to you to paint your spirit a brighter hue. So catch this hug and hold it tight. Go walk in grace and shine your light.
Thanks again. And I'll see you on the other side.
Mom: Angelica, can you say good-bye?
Angelica: Good-bye, good-bye.
Mom: Thank you.
Angelica: Thank you.