#86 WTF  "Full Circle Moments and Finding Your Purpose"

#ParentingTeens #FindingPurpose #FullCircleMoments #JoyInLife #TeenParentingAdvice #WTFPodcast #WelcomeToFriday #CherylPankhurst #LifeJourney #ServeAndConnect 

Welcome to another episode of Parenting Teens Advice, Redefine the WTF Series. In this special solo episode, host Cheryl Pankhurst takes you on a personal journey through her life, sharing the unexpected twists and turns that have shaped her purpose. From her early days in hairdressing to her impactful career in teaching, Cheryl reflects on the common thread of service that has guided her path. Discover how these experiences have led her to serve parents and teens through her podcast, coaching, and consulting. Cheryl encourages listeners to find their own moments of joy and purpose, offering insights on how to identify what truly lights you up. Join Cheryl as she shares her story and invites you to explore your own purpose.

Cheryl
00:05 - 00:45
Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of Parenting Teens Advice, Redefine the WTF Series. It's not what you think. It's Welcome to Friday. And I'm your host, Cheryl Pankhurst. And if you've been hanging around the podcast long enough, you know I love diving deep into parenting teens and the struggles, our struggles, their struggles, and everything in between. but sometimes I just wanted a space to share my own thoughts, react to the latest conversations on the podcast with expert guests, or talk about what's going on in my world, maybe even overshare just a little. So here we are.

Cheryl
00:45 - 01:17
This is going to be uncut, unedited, so you can just count on me upping things up just like I do in real life. Welcome to Friday is a new mini solo series where I just keep it real and you get to know me on a whole new level. And it's also a space for you to ask questions, to share your perspectives and engage with me directly. Once a month, I will even dedicate one episode to answering your questions on air. We can do it anonymously or put your name down, whatever you like. Let's do it.

Cheryl
01:17 - 02:03
Let's really get into this, you know, asking questions so that people just don't feel like they're alone. You're probably asking the question that someone else has on their mind as well. And hopefully I can answer it. And if not, the community can help us answer it together. So let's kick this off. I want to talk about the power of a full circle moment for me. And just a little backstory, my life has just done a little 180, a little unexpected movement going on. It's all good and it all will be good. But what it did was it brought me into a situation where I am not in my regular city.

Cheryl
02:04 - 02:39
I am in the city I love and the city I grew up in. And I have been able to do this really cool experience where I am house sitting and pet sitting in these amazing houses in my favorite city, downtown Toronto. and so at the same time I get to look around the city, I get to see if there's somewhere that I really plan to move to, and I get my animal fix, which if you know me, you know I'm an animal fanatic, and so it has been a really neat experience. And part of this has been just exploring the city.

Cheryl
02:39 - 03:20
I love to walk, I love to take the subway and the transit. When I go into Toronto, I never drive my car. I park it and it stays there because I just love to explore and I love to people watch on the subway. So on one of my daily walks, I just kind of looked up and realized I was at the Christie Bloor subway station. And what does that mean for me? In 1982, when I was 17 and I graduated high school, that was the stop I got off at every day for 10 months for hairdressing school.

Cheryl
03:21 - 04:11
I went to Bruno's private hairdressing school and that all started at the time I was dating my high school sweetheart who was a hairdresser, his dad was a barber, and they had a salon, and I thought, oh, maybe this is something I'd like to do. So every day for 10 months, it was such an amazing experience, and it was not the Hollywood glamour that I really thought about hairdressing, for one thing, but it was like all the older ladies with the blue hair and the blue perm rods and the blue rollers and they would come in for you know three dollar roller sets and your hands would be full of this cheap goop and you're and they'd be cracked and bleeding but But I still loved it.

Cheryl
04:11 - 04:50
I still thought it was such a cool job to get into. And once I got licensed and got in the salon, it was just so much fun. Just having people sharing their stories with you. When they sit in the chair, they're just so, I don't know, vulnerable. It was just so funny. So I started thinking about the hairdressing. And what hairdressing did for me was If I connected it to teaching, so I've spent 25 years in the teaching field, and I think what it did for me there is a lot of teachers go straight from high school to university and start teaching.

Cheryl
04:51 - 05:31
And I think a lot of what is missed there is that real public relation, human resources connection, where you really get to hear people and feel people and see them in a whole different aspect. And so I think that really was a big part of me much later down the road, really loving the whole teaching and having my relationships with the teens, but also my relationships with the parents, is always having that connection of being able to help, even sitting in the chair. How would you like your hair? How would it make you feel? Like really getting into that personal connection that way.

Cheryl
05:32 - 06:18
And I started to think, so then I got into hairdressing, and after hairdressing, I I'd like to do something different. I don't sit still very well in any capacity. So once I got into hairdressing, what came next is the opportunity to teach hairdressing. So that went into going into just a public school system and teaching hairdressing to students, which led to co-op. So I got them jobs as a hairdresser. And it was all about, again, it just kind of stayed with this serving people. I want to help these kids. And what I really started to notice is the kids who had difficulty learning, a challenge learning.

Cheryl
06:18 - 07:01
Man, I was just so drawn to be able to work with them and help them find a way, but thinking outside the box, not your regular system, like just thinking outside the box to solve those problems. And it really became something for me. So once that started, at that time you had to go back to university in order to be able to teach. So off I went, I had two young kids, and off I went to Queens to get what I needed for teaching. And that was an experience on its own, leaving two little kids at home and going to do this.

Cheryl
07:03 - 07:50
You know, even when I got back, it was all about not even being able to serve people in the school or serve students and serve parents. It was to be able to have my kids at home with me in the summer, to be able to work with them through their school years, because I had some experience. It was all kind of connected together, which was really cool. So then comes along an opportunity, after teaching hairdressing in public school, It wasn't a secure position when you were teaching on like a contract. And I always just thought, oh, it'd be really nice to just have a permanent position, to not worry about going back and forth, to not worry about not having a job every summer.

Cheryl
07:52 - 08:38
And all of a sudden, I get a call. And I got a call from my cousin's ex-wife, who I haven't talked to in years, who said, listen, I have a teacher here who's going on leave. there's a small class of kids with mild intellectual disability, so just slower learners, that's all, just need a little extra time, a little extra help. Would I be interested in supplying for her while she was off? And it was just one of those things where you know, it just landed. I wasn't seeking it out. I wasn't applying for jobs. It just felt like this is way too much of a synchronicity to say no, somebody is saying this is for you.

Cheryl
08:38 - 09:25
So I jump, I'm never afraid of change or move. So I jump. I spent the next 25 years at that school. So I started off teaching the smaller class kids for about 10 years. And that's when I took on the headship and I became the head of department at a huge high school in Durham. And as the population of special education grew, by the time I left there, There was 400 kids out of 1600 who had IEPs, some type of learning disability, maybe a diagnosis, mental health struggles. So it was growing and growing and growing.

Cheryl
09:26 - 10:19
And I just noticed that as I was walking down the Christie Bluer, I was like, wow, you know, there's like this thread that kind of went through everything I've done when I worked as a hairdresser. It wasn't just about cutting hair. It was having the relationship with those people and how, how can I help you feel better? How can I help you, you know, have a self-image that just radiates from the inside out? which then led to working with special needs kids, and how can I serve, and how can I help? And every time I knew somebody said, oh, that was really helpful, or Cheryl made an impact, or that idea was really great, or thank you for talking to my mom, or talking to my dad, or working through this problem with me, those were things that just lit me up.

Cheryl
10:20 - 11:03
And when you look at that common thread, I thought, there's my purpose. My purpose is to serve, to serve in a capacity that gives someone a voice that they may not have, or they may not feel like they have, and to walk with them until they know they have that voice. They know that they can stand up for themselves. They know they can ask for help. you know, it was just that whole common thread of service that I just think that is my purpose, that is where I belong. And so it's now it's turned into the podcast, where I'm hoping I serve you.

Cheryl
11:04 - 11:40
It's turned into coaching and consulting, again, where I'm hoping I serve you. And all through it, you know, you just, when you look back, you kind of go this whole bird's eye view, if you're sitting here at any point in time in your life going, I have no idea what my purpose is, I have no idea what really lights me up. I'm just like day to day, nine to five, go home, same, you know, 50 first dates every day. Can you take a few minutes to take a bird's eye view of your life from when you started?

Cheryl
11:40 - 12:31
Can you find those little moments of joy that may be sprinkled through everything that you do. And there's your purpose. There's what lights you up. And if you can do just a few minutes of that every day, it will offer you a shift that allows you to keep looking for moments of joy more and more and more because you get addicted to that feeling. If you, you know, If you just have a few minutes every day of joy, it is just allowing you to expand your mind and allowing you to feel more joy and hunt down more joy, look for more joy.

Cheryl
12:31 - 13:11
And if it's serving people, great. If it's something else, great. If it's helping, if it's repairing, if it's planting, it doesn't matter what it is. If it's your joy, it's your joy, that's your purpose. So I want to thank you for joining me again on WTF. And yes, it's Welcome to Friday. And as you can kind of tell, sometimes it's just WTF. I hope this space feels like a little bit of home for you. I hope it resonates with you. Please share, please DM me, you can connect with me and ask questions about anything that I do, whether it's on the Parenting Teens podcast or the WTF podcast.

Cheryl
13:12 - 13:29
But until next time, this is Cheryl signing off. If you want to find me, CherylPankhurst.com, everything is on my website. Until next time, just take a deep breath, be kind, love your humans, and I will catch you next Friday.