Joe and His Daughter Discuss Fatherhood

Welcome to The Art of Accomplishment, where we explore how deepening connection with ourselves and others leads to creating the life we want with enjoyment and ease. Welcome back everybody. The holiday season is in full swing and it's likely that many of you are gathering with family this week. So, today's episode is a family episode. And joining us is Joe's daughter, Esme. Esmé was given a school assignment to make a podcast about where she came from by interviewing a person from her family about a meaningful experience in their life. Esmé decided to deviate from that task and follow her interest. She wanted to know what it was like for her dad to raise her. When her assignment was complete, Joe asked her if it was alright to make it available to the community and to our listeners. So Esmé agreed, and what follows is the touching interview between Esmé and her dad Joe. I hope you enjoy it.

Thanks for coming onto the podcast, Dad. I really appreciate it.

Of course. I love spending time with you in any way that I can.

Appreciate it.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. I think we should tell everybody what's your day. What's the day today?

It's my birthday.

It's your birthday. Congratulations.

And he took me out to breakfast. It was delicious.

I'm glad. It was a breakfast place that we that you've been going to since you were like 1 year old. When mom needed to sleep, I would carry you there. And we haven't been in years. It was such a great idea that you had to go there. Thank you for that.

It was really nice to be back. I have a question for you.

Yeah, go ahead.

What is it? How would you describe the work that you do? What is it in your words?

The work that— I mean, the world calls it coaching. You know, so that's what, if you need to explain it to somebody, that's the way I would explain it is my dad's a whatever, an executive coach. But the work, the way I would describe the work is on an intellectual level, we're teaching people to be kind to themselves with, you know, have a relationship with the voice in their head that is gentle and kind and eventually just dissipates. On the emotional level, And the work that I do is all about emotional fluidity. It's about allowing people to fall in love with all of their emotions and, and find the genius in all of their emotional experiences and not to avoid them. And then on a nervous system level, it's all about helping people feel safe and loved. So that, I mean, that's a short— yeah, thanks.

I appreciate hearing how you describe it because I never know exactly what to say when people ask.

Yeah, neither do I. I remember one time we were— I was at some, uh, conference, and, um, I was with a friend who does similar work, and somebody— everybody asked, you know, what do you do at these conferences? And his response was, I help people— how did— I help people die in peace. That was his response, which I think—

that's one way of putting it.

That's one way of putting it. Yeah, that's fun.

Um, okay, so I grew up around this work and—

Yeah, you did.

Yeah, yeah. And around a lot of people going through big emotions and stuff like that.

Yeah.

And yeah, I was wondering what, what was it like to raise a kid in that environment? It's a very welcoming, open environment, and raising kids is not, it's not easy. So how was it to have that community surrounding you while you raised me?

It made it easier. I mean, the, the last part of your question about how was it to have a community around you, it was, you know, there's a— when you do this kind of work on yourself, there's just more love and peace and joy and freedom. And so we've been really fortunate because since that's how we are, that's what we attract. And so there's most of the people who spend time in the house that you got to here work, do the work, either doing work with us or vice versa. You know, they're just loving, caring, playful, fun, joyful individuals. So I think on that level, it was just amazing. Um, and I think there's also something that you're asking me, which is I would say I would reverse it, which is I would say raising you was I'm gonna get— I'm gonna have emotions. I can feel myself welling up. Raising you was like the work, meaning like there's a way in which all the work that we'd done up until you were born was, you know, it was like— it was— I don't want to say in the head because it wasn't, but it was— it wasn't practical. It wasn't real world. It wasn't you know, you could fool yourself. You could sit on a meditation pillow and fool yourself. But if you're raising a kid, you can't fool yourself. Like, if you get all frustrated at an infant, you know. So, so the main thing I would say is that for me, you were— you and your sister were one of the greatest teachers that I've ever had. And, and, and I, I— luckily we found things like Hand in Hand Parenting and Simplicity in Parenting, which helped us, you know, help guide us. But for me, that was, you know, the most important work that I ever did was raising you for my own freedom, for my own joy.

For your own joy. Yeah. Yeah, you can't fool yourself when you have two kids as results.

Oh boy. And you can't fool yourself like if you're frustrated with your kid, you know, or if you're You were born with colic and you would just yell for 4 or 5 hours every night. It was brutal, right? You can pretend you're at peace. You can pretend you're awake, but you can feel it.

But when you're getting yelled at, yeah. How long can you be patient? How patient are you really?

Yeah, exactly. But to answer your question directly, what was it like? It was interesting. There was definitely moments like, I remember you were 7 years old, I think maybe 8, and there was somebody on the couch doing the work with mom or I, and you would do things like yell from the other room, "Just let it in!" or "Stop being defensive! Stop resisting!" You would like, because you would, I'm pretty confident you can tell me, you would like listen at the door and you would want to know about these conversations.

I would listen to the whole thing.

Yeah. Yeah. And occasionally you couldn't help yourself. You just like yell at the person, which was always disarming as heck for the person who was like, oh wow, the, the, the 9-year-old in the other room gets it and I'm pretending I don't, you know, that was so, so that part was really cool. That part was really cool. And also it was really cool to see the other thing that's been really interesting is to watch you, like you're 16 now and On one level— 17. It's my birthday. 17. Oh, sorry. You're 17 now. And you're very 17 in many, many ways. And then there's another way where you're very not 17, right? Where there's some ways in which you have an emotional understanding or an understanding of the voice in your head. That is, I know tons and tons of adults that don't have it. And so that's been really interesting too, because it's— it like, on one level, you've— I've watched you mature differently than other, you know, folks in your community, and I've seen both the stress of that and the— on you, and also the joy of that for you. So that's been an interesting thing to to know, to know that we were raising you so different from society that there was going to be challenges for you as you grew up and still choosing to do that.

Yeah, I'm really grateful for them, but it is— there's challenges to it. How have you— how have you seen, you know, being brought up differently than other kids and being brought up with an emotional understanding that isn't common in society? How have you seen that impact the way I navigate the world emotionally, especially as a teenager.

Yeah, yeah. So I mean, I'll tell you a couple early stories and then I'll see the teenage story. So the, the early stories were things like, you know, you were really interested in doing a silent retreat when you were 9, you know, because you knew about my meditation and everything. And as you know, we looked all over to find somebody who would let you do a silent retreat with me, and we Luckily, you know, we had friends in Tennessee who ran a retreat center, so we did a silent retreat there. And one, one cute story that I want to tell is like, at the end of it, I was like, I was like, hey, so what was your favorite part? It was like 3 and a half days, right, of silence. And, and you said, I think it was the silence. No, it was the fact that you couldn't tell me what to do for 3 and a half days.

Oh, I remember that actually. I ate so much banana bread. So much banana.

Oh, you did. Yeah. And the other thing is at the end of it, you said, "Oh, Dad, I know what a metaphor is now," which is interesting because cognitively you weren't supposed to know what a metaphor was at whatever it was, 9 years old. It's not something that your brain is supposed to get yet as far as development. But the reason I tell that story is because when you came home, it was like, I don't know, 2 or 3 weeks later, you said, I don't want to do meditation anymore. It's making me too different from my friends.

And so I remember when that happened.

Yeah, what was that? What was it? Yeah, what was the event that triggered that?

Um, I remember being in school and my teacher who had known that I went because I missed school for it, I believe, she asked me, she said, how was the silent meditation retreat? And I got made fun of. By all of my friends. Yeah. And I wanted— I was interested in having a conversation about how I felt with my teacher after the meditation retreat, but I didn't feel safe enough in that environment to share because I thought I would be bullied for, for having that experience.

Oh, that's fascinating.

I mean, I somehow— right, meditation was woo-woo, right?

Right. I somehow thought it was like that you were seeing that you saw the world too differently. I didn't know it was about being bullied. I probably would have treated it differently.

Well, I think it was about being bullied. And also because, I mean, growing up, whenever there was a conflict between two kids in school, I was always the mediator. The teacher would bring me in and I would mediate because we always got through conflict way quicker.

Yeah.

And I think I, I think I realized like being the mediator, it was fun and it was interesting to watch people, you know, work through conflicts and everything, but it was making me feel like separated from my class because, yeah, I, you know, being around that type of work, it's hard to understand if you weren't raised that way.

Yeah. I, I mean that, I remember that was the second story I was gonna tell from your childhood was that that was the moment that you were like, you really liked doing that work for a very short period of time, and then you were like, no, I don't like it, it creates too much separation between me and the other kids. And, and, and I remember us supporting you, like, yeah, just tell the teacher you don't want to do that, don't, don't do that anymore, like, be a kid. And yeah, and so that was it. So those moments, those were like the tough moments, the The non-tough moments are like right now you and I are doing a podcast. You haven't, you know, I don't think ever done a podcast before, recorded yourself before. You, you know, I gave you a couple pointers, you figured out the technology, here you are doing it, and you're not self-conscious. You, you and I are just sitting here having a conversation. And so that's the positive stuff, right? The positive stuff is that you're very self-possessed, you're incredibly confident. You, um, have a high standard for who your friends are. You have a high standard for any kind of love interest. You are incredibly open and honest with me about everything that you, um, do. I would assume not everything, but I mean, more than most things, honestly. Yeah, right. And, um, and we have like very forthright conversations, and I, I just enjoy your company and I'm not worried about you, um, doing things that are going to get you in trouble or where I'd have to worry about you. I feel just very confident in your capacity overall. And it feels like now that you're a teenager, the only— really, the only pointers I'm giving you are kind of adult skills, right? The only feel like— the only thing I feel like my job left to do is to teach you like Okay, here's how you get a really big project done. Here's how you deal with people dismissing you. Here's how you deal with social politics, et cetera. And we get to talk about adult lessons and that. Besides that, it's just a lot of love and connection. And so now it feels really great. And I still think that finding— you'll find great people, but you're not going to have the capacity. I think the older you get, the the more persnickety you're going to be around the quality of folks that you surround yourself by. I think you'll still respect and love people, but I think it's going to get more picky for you about who you actually want to spend time with. Yeah, that's the thing that's a little hard on my heart is that there's not a community of people who are raised like you who can, you know, be with you in that way.

It is sometimes a little bit lonely to not feel like I'm being met on the same level of connection that I want to meet people with.

Yeah, I bet.

There's some people though who I found, which is really nice, they can meet me on that level. I'm, I'm the most grateful for that aspect too.

I'll, I'll tell you a funny story. I was finishing Groundbreakers last time, you know, sometimes you say something where like it just it just like lays flat in the room. And, uh, right, those are usually my favorite things that I've said. And, uh, but there's a group of people, and somebody, somebody asked, why do you do this? And I said, I do this because through Groundbreakers, there's a— there we're creating an environment where a whole bunch of people can accept all the love that I want to give. And, and, and that there's truth to that. There's also truth to like I have a— I take a great pleasure in helping folks lead the life that they want to lead. Um, but it, it, it was like, to some degree, even I think your mom and I do this work so that we can create an environment where there's that much love and openness, that creates a community around us with that much love and openness.

I mean, it created a community around me. We have Mina Lee and so many others who I don't think we'd ever be in connection with if it wasn't for the work. It really— it's allowed us to find really amazing, beautiful people.

It's true. Yeah, we're really, really blessed that way.

Yeah. Thank you, Dad. I, I do have one more actually that I'm really curious to know the answer to. Yeah, I, I'm wondering that How you see me navigate difficult situations, especially emotional situations, with the knowledge of— well, or just like being raised around people who are okay diving into really uncomfortable emotional situations and talking through them and working through them instead of building up those emotions and getting resentful and stuff like that. How do you see me navigate difficult situations with that prior knowledge?

Yeah, I would say in 90% of all things, I see you navigate it without trying. You know, I see you interact with whatever social politics or gamesmanship that's happening, or with teachers especially, with adults especially. You seem to just be able to meet them where they are and to stay in yourself and allow the emotions to be smooth. I mean, just the other night, I remember you were having a hard time and I was saying something to comfort you, I think, and maybe make you feel better. I was definitely on that edge where we don't particularly like going. And you looked at me and you're like, "Dad, I just need to be sad. You don't need to take care of that." And it was like, wow, you know, like that's your level of understanding. I remember also like the first time you broke up with a boyfriend, you know, when you came to the car where I was picking you up and you held my hand and you were crying and you said, "Dad, you always taught me that heartbreak helps your capacity or helps you love, that allowing heartbreak helps you love, but you never told me it could feel so good." And there's moments like that where it's just like, I mean, I feel so grateful and dumbfounded by your capacity. Where I see you still struggle with kind of with that emotional, that emotional fluidity is where you don't feel capable, where some adult tries to make you small in a project that you care about, or, um, there's a class where you have a teacher who doesn't know how to meet you and, and you start feeling like you're not capable of the class instead of feeling like, oh, the teacher isn't capable of teaching me the way I need to be taught. And, and you start to get hard on yourself, like you don't want to find out that you might fail, or, or like you don't want to have to confront this aspect of you that's like not capable or feels helpless or something. So there's something there, and it's, and it's the only place I see you It's the only place I see you kind of shy away from a difficult emotional experience. And but in all other places I see, and I think it's totally natural, so there's no criticism in that, but in any other way that I see you, um, I just see you lean right into the difficult emotion with friends and, and with family, with friends around the table.

Yeah.

And, and I see that you laugh a tremendous amount. Like, there's so much joy and laughter in you. And to me, that's like the, that biggest sign. You know, I have that quote that joy is the matriarch of a family of emotions, and she won't come into a house where her children aren't welcome. And so when I see the level of joy that you get to, that you bring into life— not fake niceness, not fake happiness, but just like natural easeful joy, that's really the sign. And I see that as long as you're getting some exercise and eating pretty well, I just see that, I just see that as like your, it's like your natural, most, most authentic state. So that's, that's really cool to see that.

I feel so seen by you right now.

Uh, I really like seeing you. It is a biggest—

I'm so beyond grateful to be seen by my dad, you know. Yeah, I'm so grateful for our relationship.

Yeah, I am crying. Yes, I, I can't even begin to tell you. Yeah, yeah, I love you deeply. And I remember when I was, um, I remember when you were young and I was not. So, you know, Mom was amazing with you when you were younger, and I was definitely not capable. And, um, she was teaching me and we were learning, and— but she, she somehow knew where we were supposed to go, and I was— somehow didn't take long for me to let her lead us. And, um, but I remember The older folks, folks my age now would be like, "Oh, you're going to hate it when they leave." And I'd be like, "What are you talking about? I mean, just get me a good night's sleep. What are you saying?" And now I'm just like, "I think it'll be the biggest heartbreak of my life, you and your sister leaving the house. I just so enjoy your company." And obviously it has to happen. It's just, it's just gonna be— there's gonna be a lot of crying in our house when you guys go.

Yeah, I don't know what I'm gonna do. I'm gonna have to call you up and be like, Dad, I have this, I have this thing I need to process.

I hope so. I hope I'm that lucky. Yeah, awesome.

All right, dear, thank you for coming on.

Is that it?

Yeah, I think that covers it. Yeah. Thank you so much for coming on.

Of course.

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