While transitioning into adulthood can feel exciting, many people experience new challenges due to physical and mental growth. Learning how to find your balance during that time is often made more complex because of new environments, experiences, outside pressures, and feeling a loss of support, or a safety net. There can sometimes be this overwhelming sense of, “You better get it right.” In part one of this three-part episode, Kirk and Tiffani share some of their past experiences transitioning from adolescence to adulthood to help guide listeners through their journey.

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Thank you for joining us today for part two of our three-part series on the

transition from adolescence to adulthood for me it was so many options, you know and

going out there and Doing the socials and and visiting While you you may think it's

corny or it's that's kind of weird and no it's it's important It's just to see

what options are there. Maybe it isn't your cup of tea, which is fine, but at

least try it once.

My daughter, that was the one thing I instilled in her, or I like to think I

instilled in her, was try something at least once. If you don't find it pleasurable

or to your liking, don't do it again. That's your options. But look at your

options, because there are options. Some are harder to see than others,

I get that.

And for those breaking into new territory, like yourself and myself going to college

or advanced degrees, you know, it's our frame of reference for what my experience,

that's what college life is like." Oh. And it's not. And it's nothing like that at

all.

And again, with the stories and the social media that's out there,

which are good things that get an eyeball or a glimpse of what it might be like,

those are often pictures of a perfect moment in time, sometimes not so perfect,

but, you know, those are little snippets. There's a whole bunch of other pictures in

between the next picture, you know, that there's a lot of mechanisms and decision

-making and stuff that day -to -day stuff that you don't necessarily DC, but having

those choices and having somebody to bounce an idea off of is,

the sounding board I think is what you said, Tiffani, is fantastic and whether it's

somebody who relates to what you're doing or is kind of going through a similar

experience and just making those connections, connections, connections. Big thing,

making connections.

Yeah, this line of work that I'm in now was not my first choice.

I started off as a computer science major and had done that through the latter part

of my high school career. Really? Yes, and went into college for the first couple

of years. I had an extra year of undergrad because of my changes in major.

I started off as a computer science major. I would have never guessed computer

science major.

Now I know I have another IT person. There you go, right? I did a lot of systems

work and was going to be a program analyst. Really? Mm -hmm. At that time,

I'm going to age myself a little bit here, at that time computer programs, a lot

of them were on punch cards. There are long little pieces of paper kids with little

dots you filled in to write your program. I feel like you're making this up. I've

never seen a project. Nope. I am not. I'm going to Google this later.

And you would have boxes and boxes and boxes of these cards for a little program.

And I remember from me, For me, I was excited about that. It was new technology.

I was a bit of a science geek, and so still am. And so this was exciting.

And I remember this one time not feeling very fulfilled in my choice,

because I put in a couple of years already and doing the science classes and the

computer science stuff. and I remember sitting in the lab,

the computer lab. Now, these labs were huge. One computer took up a large room.

They did not – what we have in front of us today is – wow. Or even on our cell

phones. It's much more powerful than what I was dealing with. But I remember just

sitting there handing in my stuff, waiting for it to all be processed because they

had to go through a whole processing thing to turn it into a computer language. I

mean, the language was there, but it was in punch card, so it had to translate it

again, and then it became your program. Well, it took time. So I just remember

sitting there going, "Oh my God, do I want to do this the rest of my life?" Wow.

So what made you make the jump? Well, I think some of it was, At that moment,

there was a sense of isolation, you know, because it is some computer program can

be a very isolative kind of work, and you know, through my adolescence,

there was a lot of isolation. I read a lot. I did a lot of different things. It

wasn't heavily into sports or anything like that. And so I think there was that

sort of epiphany for me to, you know, I want to be around other people a lot more

than I am and be much more of a social creature because that was the part of my

undergrad experience that I actually enjoyed far more than anything else was the

social interactions, meeting different people from different parts of the world and,

you know, really learning a little bit about them and what was going on. So for

me, that became the step into psychology.

It's like, "Oh, how does that brain work? I mean, it's the ultimate computer. How

does that work? And what happens to the brain when it's not working so well?" And

so psychology really spoke to me, and I actually had a good mentor in college She

really helped me through some stuff, one of my college professors, and really

encouraged me to do some stuff. And I ended up doing some research with her and

everything, and it just leaps and bounds after that. Well, I know for me,

so community mental health, mental health in general, it's not a big thing where I'm

from. I'm from a very small, you know area and it's just not prevalent there and

so the thought of like counsel like no you have to drive an hour to get answers

that wasn't something that like was a career idea and so I've always been very

drawn to you know communication to to reading to writing I love to write whenever I

would have to you know write a report it would always be like twice as long as it

was supposed to be 'cause I love crafting words. Whenever I was little, this is

real, don't make fun. When I was bored, my family had the Encyclopedia Britannica.

You know it? - Yes, I do. - And hardbound. - And hardbound. - And for fun,

this was my idea for fun. I would just pick one, and I would start from the

beginning and we'd just read it. So I started at A, went all the way through to

Z, which - Sounds really nerdy that I'm saying it out loud, but like, I loved it.

I loved learning. And so I promise I had friends. But I went to college and I

majored in journalism and public relations because I love debating and I loved

getting you over on my side and finding ways to use words to like relay my points.

And I have perfect timing because When I graduated with my journalism degree,

most of the newspapers were shutting down, and so that didn't work out well.

And so I tried and tried to find some good placements, and it just, it didn't

work. That wasn't a booming field at the time. And so I just got any kind of job

that I could get for a couple of years, and then I actually was able to get a

job at a tutoring center on campus, actually at this campus. And it turned out to

be the person leading the tutoring center had been one of my favorite professors. He

was my literature professor, of course. And I was able to be the administrative

assistant for a tutoring center. And it was so great because I got to engage with

people and talk to them and to help them navigate problems. And at the school at

the time, if you had worked there for a year, then you were eligible to attend at

no cost. - Oh, nice. - And so I still wasn't sure, like, what do I wanna do? Like,

this is a great job, like, this is a great community. Like, I come to work

excited, you know, the people I'm gonna be with, and you know, this is fine. But

then when I became eligible to take classes, I really thought to What do I want to

do? And in my family, in my immediate family, there was never a thought of career.

It was always you got to have a job, you got to pay the bills, what's the best

job you can get, especially if you're in a small town, you know, the options are

limited, right? And so the thought that I can take a minute and I can think about

where do my skills and my heart, my passions align, like, what can I do where that

aligns? I I know Einstein has this theory of happiness, and his theory of happiness,

I'm sure maybe you can say it better than me, but my version of it is that find

out what makes you happy and find a way to spend more time doing that, right?

And so I looked at, I printed off the course list, like, okay, what can I do? And

the counseling program was an option. And when I read that on like the the course

catalog, I remembered years ago, and I'm talking seven,

eight, nine, ten years ago, I had had like a dream of, man, I would love to do

this. I would love to be in a role where I advocate specifically for kids who are

marginalized in families, the fatherless, right? People who are like marginalized.

I want to be the person that helps people walk through their trauma, but then life

happened and I had forgotten that dream, right? Because like not everybody shared

that dream. And when I was reading that course catalog, it was almost like,

I remembered like, oh yeah, that dream had gotten buried. And I signed up.

I took the classes. I was able to, you know, get my degree for free, which is

such an opportunity that not everyone has the chance to do. And it was incredible.

I got an internship at Peace River Center whenever I was a graduate student. And I

fell in love with the mission behind this agency and I never left. And what's so

interesting to me is I see the kind of like the direction that my life has taken

and those dreams that I had as a small child.

executive

He said time spent in preparation is never wasted. And so looking back,

you know, hindsight is 2020, right? - Right, right. - Looking back, I realized, okay,

every job, every season, every situation prepared me for what was to come next.

And when I'm in the moment, things seem very chaotic. Like, how is this gonna

benefit me? But looking back, I'm like, oh my goodness. My my life experience was

perfectly crafted to put me in a position now to where I'm uniquely Qualified to do

what I do today, and it's like I couldn't have even done that on my own You know

what I mean? Yeah, and so that's kind of how I came here And I'm in the position

that I'm in now And if I had not I've had that in college experience if I've not

had those professors if I hadn't, I've taken that leave and gotten involved. I don't

know. And I know we've talked before about fear and how fear can hold you back and

it can be depilitating. - Absolutely. - Right? - Right, I think it's taking,

taking some courage. And that one, it doesn't have to be a huge step.

It's just a little step. 'Cause I remember having that epiphany of changing my

major. And here I was, I had gotten scholarships around it and even had some

advanced coursework at the time through high school. And I'm thinking, man, I'm going

to let a lot of people down making this change. And am I letting myself down

making this change? So you did it.

We did it. I You know and people do it all the time. I mean you can do it.

I mean it's it's don't feel And it's hard to hear this in the moment

It'll come back to you later in life, but don't feel you have to stay in that one

area You can try different things Doesn't have to be huge changes can be just a

little changes and that's that In the transition from going away from your parents

and going into college life and becoming your own person, I think that's something

that you need to hear from people or get permission to do. It was like, "You can

make the change. Does this seem horrible at the time?" Yes. For me, it was like,

"This is going to be devastating." Again, For that moment,

it may be, but keep in mind, your brain is still developing and it's catastrophizing

everything you do, so that might be feeding into that fear a little bit,

but you do those baby steps and now there are some choices that, yeah,

maybe it's the big step that's going to make the big difference,

And even if you do make that change, big or small, you make that change and you

find you don't like it.

I always knew as dysfunctional as some families are,

including mine, I always still had them to go back to. And that was always the

message, despite some of the other stuff going on in my personal life. the message

was, "We're always here," and that was comforting, and many people have that.

There's some that don't. I understand that, and you may not have that in your life.

You create your own family once you start pulling away. You create that

protective a group, your peer group, your friends, your extended family,

whoever it may be, to build you up and kind of guide you as you take those risks.

Well, and I think it's realizing that you can decide if someone is not healthy for

you. You can decide because when we're younger, you're gonna stuck with your family.

You're stuck with who you're stuck with. And I think there's the gift of autonomy

where you would aside your boundaries, you would aside, like, no, this is not

healthy. And I think sometimes there's the gift of breaking away, to a degree,

and developing a broader perspective of what is healthy. Because so many times we

just kind of perpetuate this sense of normal, and normal doesn't equate to healthy.

And when you go to college, or when you move away, or when there's a little bit

of distance between you and what you know to be true, you get this sense of like,

oh, this isn't how everybody communicates. Oh, this isn't how everybody solves

problems. Oh my goodness, we can disagree and have a conversation and still care

about each other, - And it doesn't have to be all or nothing. And one of the

things that I had to learn was disagreement, which you don't know this,

and I'm about to tell you in real time, one time when I first came to Peace River

Center, I had just became, not when I first came, years later, but I was a

supervisor, and I remember I was in a meeting, it was a clinical meeting and you

were there, and you had some strong opinions about something and someone else had

different opinions and you and this person were talking and I had never really

experienced comfortable conflict because if there's conflict oh we gotta squash it

right let's work on eggshells until like that person leaves because we monitor and

maintain our mood in relation to how it makes them feel right. And so then I

remember vividly Kirk Which I think I've never told you this The meeting ended and

you know everyone disperse and my boss at the time I pulled her aside and I said

whoa And she's like whoa what and I said is Kirk okay,

and like you didn't even do anything outrageous You know you just like I don't know

about that and she's like why wouldn't he be and I said well Isn't he in a fight

with so -and -so and she says, "What are you talking about?" And I relayed like,

"Oh my gosh," like he said this and that person didn't agree. And then he said,

"Well, I don't know." And she said, "Tiffani, we all care about each other and

we're comfortable enough with each other that if we don't agree or we have a

different idea, this is a safe space and we can hear out each other without feeling

the need to like tiptoe, but we're like, we're fine. And I remember walking away

and Kirk, you like totally shifted my brain because in my family culture,

right? There's one person who dictates the room, right? And you don't disagree.

And if you have a different thought, you keep it to yourself because we maintain

the status quo. And It was such freedom and feeling like, oh,

well, this wasn't healthy. And so I realized, oh my gosh, like conflict is not a

bad word. Conflict is not unhealthy. In fact, it can be incredibly healing. And

remember, I'm Southern, right? So the Southern way is to sprinkle sugar on

everything, right? And if there is a conflict, oh, bless your heart, like, ah, and

then you change the subject, you know, in a graceful pivot, is that you never

really talk anything through. And this is my experience about being so that I know

everyone has their own experience, but I remember feeling like, oh my goodness,

like my needs and my feelings matter. And if I disagree, I can say it out loud in

a way that's respectful, but also I deserve to be heard. So you gave me that.

Thank you so much without even realize. You're welcome. You can keep sharing that.

As always, thank you for joining our show today. If you enjoyed it, please hit that

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