Ep #49: My Uncommon Story: Growing Up

Written By Support at The Uncommon Way

Episode Summary

Jenna does something different this week and takes a look back, sharing memories and moments from her childhood.

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Show Notes

Our childhood, our formative years, are one of the cornerstones of our life story. This week, I share with you moments from my upbringing and perhaps why I started to view the world in an Uncommon Way in the first place.

I look back on my own experience, the choices female leaders in my family made, strict cultural norms, and rule-breaking. I reflect on my memories, explore how they impacted my choices, and pushed me to rebel against cultural conditioning.

Tune in to learn about my unique childhood, and yes, I admit an extremely privileged one, to glean an understanding of my perspective and ability to aid others in their journey toward an Uncommon Way.

 

What You’ll Learn From This Episode:

  • The importance of experimentation.

  • Why it is powerful to be different.

  • Why champions and challengers are valuable.

 

Listen to the Full Episode:

 

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Full Episode Transcript:

Hey, this is a new series where I'm giving you the context behind what I share in this podcast, i.e., what went on in my life to get me here. Think of this as part entrepreneurial mindset building told through stories, part historical nonfiction, and part audacious, salacious, beach read. I hope you enjoy.

You're listening to The Uncommon Way Business and Life Coaching Podcast, the only podcast that helps you unlock your next level in business and life by prioritizing your clarity and your own Uncommon Way. You will learn to maximize your mindset, mission, messaging, and strategy in order to create a true legacy. Here's your host, top-ranked business coach, and reformed over-analyzer turned queen of clarity, Jenna Harrison.

Welcome back, my friends. Welcome back to The Uncommon Way. We're going to be doing something a little differently in this series. So, in an earlier episode, when I was sharing my tips for women 20 to 34, I said that I'd also, in a later episode, be giving you context and telling you the stories that form the reasons behind that advice. And that's where we are today.

When this idea first came to me, I was celebrating my 50th birthday in New York City. And as I've shared here, I really felt differently about this birthday. So, for the first time, rather than thinking about how I was getting older, I was really thinking about celebrating, “Damn, I have had 49 amazing years in this first half or third, or whatever it is, of my life. And that is worth celebrating.”

I'm really feeling called to step out in a new way as I enter this decade. But also, I want to celebrate all the years that have passed and really share that story. I explain this to my producer, and she advised me that just telling my story probably wouldn't be the best idea. Every episode really needs to provide direct value to your listeners. And so, perhaps what I should be doing would be sharing some bit a bit of ice, and then kind of bringing in a personal story to highlight that advice.

But that's a lot of what I normally do. And this hunch or urge or whatever you want to call it, felt very different. So, I was bouncing the idea off of acquaintances and some clients and around my own brain, of course, and I really kept getting back a unanimous “Yes”.

People were telling me, “When you drop one of your stories, I'm like, where does that fit? Wait, you also said you were here though… Weren’t you living there? You'll say something, and I'll be like, ‘Wait, wait, you did what? Rewind, rewind.’” They all really said they’d just love to hear it kind of start to finish.

When I was reflecting on what my producer said, which is such fantastic advice, and also was reflecting on how maybe the reason she was giving that advice is that she really doesn't know my stories, especially in my 20s. This was just like any other really juicy beach read.

I think the value really is in the fact that this is super entertaining. What better time than summer for me to release some just pure entertainment episodes? Now, if you also gain some nuggets, or some new ways of thinking, or if you just find kind of the history of it all really interesting, great. Take from these what you will.

Now, if you don't choose to listen to these episodes, I'm speaking to friends and clients here, I won't be in the least offended, seriously. This is just an experimental thing I'm doing and I encourage you to follow your hits and to not take things so seriously. To try and experiment and be willing to royally fuck things up. And thus, find your way to the gold that you never would have experienced if you'd stayed doing the same old things all the time.

Fair warning here, my life has been colorful. So, if you have littles listen to these episodes with headphones on. And also, know in advance that the stories I tell or the way I tell them might offend some of you. There's something almost inevitable that happens when you're listening to someone or watching someone from afar, and it's that you project your own ideas onto that person in order to create kind of a feeling of familiarity.

And so, the things I share may feel really unexpected. But I believe it's really our jobs, the people putting ourselves out there really, to minimize that gap to the extent that it makes sense for you in your business. Meaning, you talk about yourself.

For some of you these episodes might feel totally in line with what you've always thought of me. And then, this just helps you know more and maybe learn from more. But for some of you, this is probably going to fuck with your minds a bit. You are going to find yourself traveling to all different worlds.

From perfectly proper drawing rooms with white gloves and calling cards to Studio 54 type clubs and all the excess and impropriety that comes with them. From a rugged sheep farm in New Zealand to the top of the Sears Tower at Goldman Sachs events. And from a cosmopolitan, kind of contemporary art scene in New York City to a little shackaboos in Spain without electricity or running water.

But those places are not where this story starts. This story really starts in Greece, back in the time when Mamma Mia movies were set, with disco, and yes, Abba, coming from every radio. And my mom's yellow crochet bikini, plus her cute little one-year-old playing in the sand, me, which caught the eye of my soon to be stepfather.

So, you know how nowadays, people from the Americas and Europe will go and they'll just take extended time in Thailand because it's so inexpensive; because of the exchange rate and other global factors, of course. Well, when I was born, Europe was that place. Yeah, can you imagine?

When my father, who was in the Navy, would go off on cruise for six to nine months and would be traveling around the Mediterranean, they would stop at different harbors in Spain, Greece, Italy. And then just kind of circle back Spain, Italy, Greece, and then circle back.

And because it was so inexpensive, it made sense for the wives, and I say wives because all of the military spouses back then were women, it made sense for the wives to fly over and to live in the Mediterranean for the summer, for instance, or for extended periods of time. You'd really end up spending less there than you would just on normal day-to-day expenses back here in the States.

And that's how I ended up on my first international flight, right about the time I was learning to walk. And if you've seen the movie, Mamma Mia, that is kind of what it was like, given the stories I've been told. Of course, I don't remember it. But it was these tiny, beautiful, little fishing villages. And even the big ports that my dad was pulling into felt small town compared to what they are today.

My parents have gone back to some of the places and it's just so completely changed. But at the same time, you had this influx of people from Northern Europe, for instance, and kind of globetrotters, that really had a different way of thinking and living and being compared to the sheltered and very proper upbringing that my mom had been exposed to.

And so, for the next couple of years, we would spend extended periods of time over there; months at a time. And I don't know if that's why, but ever since I have been so called to that area of the world. I remember being in Hawaii, where I grew up the majority of my life when I was a preteen. And I remember sitting on the beach and smelling the salt air, and being like, “Yeah, it's not quite it, It's slightly different.”

So, even though I hadn't been back to the Mediterranean in all that time, I believed, I still had some memory, olfactory memory, of what it was like. I was the kid that would hang up pictures of Spain and flamenco dancers in my room, and watch movies set in that area, and all the things.

But, back to my parents. My father was a young pilot just out of Annapolis, and he flew F-4s. Which is a Navy aircraft meant to go in and do kind of the dogfighting, basically what you see in Top Gun. Now, the military had all different types of aircraft carrier.

And when one of those ships would pull out of a port, and maybe they'd be at sea for a while before they moved into their next port, say in Italy, for instance, the spouses would just continue hanging out where they had been. They weren't uprooting themselves until they were ready to fly to the next port where the ship would pull into harbor.

Well, at that time, another ship would pull into harbor, another US ship, and one of those carriers in that point in time, in that area of the world, had a different type of plane called an “attack plane”. And there's a big rivalry in the Navy, at that time, between fighters and attack pilots. My stepdad was an attack pilot.

If you've ever heard of the movie Flight of the Intruder, he flew Intruders, A-6s. And he was much older, 14 years older than my mom to be exact, and therefore, a higher rank. Everyone looked up to him. He was very well liked, very charming. And like I said, my mom was a cute young thing. I think she was 25 at the time. And sparks flew; major sparks flew.

But since they were both married, it was something they actively wanted to resist. And you all know what an aphrodisiac that is, when you really want to resist something. And it was hard for them to resist, because they kept running into each other again and again in different ports.

So, there did finally come a moment where a romance sparked, and they could no longer deny their love for each other. They ended up breaking off their current relationships. That's when I was about two and a half. My mom and I left Virginia, where I'd been born. And she gathered all of her things into garbage bags, and just took off one day and drove back to Southern California, where she’d grown up, to stay with her parents.

And then my dad, I do call him my dad, of course. Because I've known him since I could hardly walk, and he absolutely raised me. So, she and my dad married when I was four, I grew up thinking this was very normal. But of course, when I look back on it, especially in that day and age, as my mom tells me, it felt very, very significant for her to divorce. She didn't know other people that were divorced. And she was just so proper and such a little lady, that it felt very scandalous.

I also now know the military structure like I do, and I just cannot imagine a 39-year-old commander falling in love with the lieutenant's wife. That just would not happen now. In today's military, the officer would probably be kicked out of the military for indiscretion.

So, I'm telling you all of this for a few reasons. One, is that the fact that my dad was so much older than other dads, of people my ages, made a big difference as I was growing up, which I'll tell you about.

The other reason, is because my biological father ended up getting out of the military, as soon as he had served his time as a pilot. Because he went to Annapolis, the Naval Academy; I can't remember if I mentioned that. And so, he needed to fulfill a certain amount, a certain obligation, before he could leave, and then he did leave.

So, if they had stayed together, I wouldn't have grown up in the military. And I wouldn't have grown up moving from place to place and seeing different cultures. And also, being in a culture that was very regimented, with a strong undercurrent of conformity that really allowed me to position myself, even at a very young age, as not that.

And the third reason it's important, is because I actually come from a line of rule breakers. And even though as my mom would describe it, it was probably just a romance story where she had met her soulmate, and was kind of powerless to the circumstances, I still see her as the one who chose to follow her heart, the one who dared to be different.

And before her, I had grandparents who left a very close-knit community of Irish immigrants at a time when there was still a lot of discrimination against Irish people, and moved out to new lands in California to start a different life.

I've told the story of my great-grandmother before, but I'm going to do it again right now. She lied about her age by a full 10 years. And nobody knew this until her 90th birthday. And at that point, she was not opening her mail anymore; her eyesight was failing. And so, one of her daughters was opening the mail and got a letter from the President saying congratulations on your 100th birthday. And the daughter was like, “Mom, what is this?”

Turns out that when she was a working girl, a secretary, she would have been considered too old for marriage material. And so, she lied about her age, and never told a soul. I admire these rule breakers so much, for taking risks and making tough decisions. But I also cry for them. Because they weren't allowed to live out loud. They weren't fully allowed to own their decisions. It was either kept in hiding, like the story of my great-grandmother. Or justified and over explained, as is the case with my mom.

They weren't really able to have that just because energy and that is a different episode. If you haven't listened to that, we'll link to it in the show notes. I fully recognize what a privilege it was for me to be born into the time and place that I was. Where I could come in with such strong opinions about this just because energy.

I remember having conversations with my mom where she would say, I don't know, something silly like, “It's just as easy to marry rich as it is to marry poor.” Even at a very young age, I remember saying to her, “Well, I'm going to make enough money that I can marry the garbage man if I want to.”

And of course, that just shows embedded classism, that I would even say that in that way. But the underlying sentiment was that I didn't want my choices as defined by anyone other than me. I sure as hell didn't want my lifestyle defined by the person with whom I chose to fall in love. And that seems normal nowadays. But back then, it wasn't.

Women weren't thinking they’d just go make money, because they were secretaries like Dolly Parton in 9 to 5. Or teachers, or stay-at-home moms like my mom. And to give you the context of what I was growing up in, it is the white gloves and calling cards at the beginning of the episode. And that is actually something that had just fallen away when my mom married into the military.

So, there was a very strict way of being, even for the wives. And they would go to visit the commander's wife, for instance, and they'd wear their little white gloves, and they'd leave a calling card, and they'd all sit down and they drink tea. And it was a very, very proper. My mom experienced a little bit of that; my dad was stationed in the south.

But even if the gloves were gone, all of this propriety and hierarchy was still there. And a lot of conformity. There were things that you just did or did not do. And so, when my dad, when the officers, would receive their yearly evaluation, the behavior of my mom and even the kids would be noted on there.

Because there was a type of thinking, which was, you wouldn't be able to succeed in command, if you didn't have a wife that was going to be hosting the parties for you and helping out in that way. It used to be like, maybe not a full-time job, but definitely a high-level part-time job, just to be an officer's wife. And I experienced that when my husband was in command in Okinawa, but it was voluntary, and there was a reason I was doing it.

But back then, you just did it. And if you couldn't keep your kids in line, then you probably wouldn't be able to keep your sailors in line. So, you probably weren't cut out to be a commander. And so, I do remember growing up with a lot of pressure, or I remember feeling a lot of pressure, as in people know who you are, you need to act a certain way.

Or isn't it terrible that Captain so-and-so’s son was caught doing this and the other? Oh, and I hated that. I hated people being up in my business. And I didn't like The Stepford environment. Now, we didn't have a name for it, then, but that's kind of what it was. And ironically, it was the military itself that opened my eyes to all of this.

Because we moved around frequently, I was able to notice that all of the things that seemed so normal in one place, and like that's just what everyone did, was not how people behaved or acted or believed in another place. And therefore, all the things about how I was choosing to live were completely arbitrary. They were just made up. And even who I was, to some extent, was made up. Because I could reinvent myself every time we moved.

I could say I didn't like the fact that I got the reputation there of being the brainy, quiet one. I don't think I want to be the brainy, quiet one anymore. And I’d just experiment with being someone completely different. Now, I believe over time, the beauty is that we find out more and more what inherently is us. And what is open to us constructing how we are.

But all I know, back then, is that everything I would see I'd run through the filter of, would I want to do it that way? Does that make sense? Why is it done that way? And why do I have to do it that way? I don't want to do it that way.

I'll tell you another thing that contributed to that. I was visiting my other dad, my biological dad, throughout all the years that I was growing up. And when he left the Navy, he went to Silicon Valley, way back when it was just beginning. And one of the things that was a different about how they did business in Silicon Valley, was that people would leave every couple years or every few years to work at a different company.

Now, this was practically unheard of. That was a completely new way of doing business. Because back then, everyone stayed with the same company for 30 years, and then got their gold Rolex and their pension and retired. And here was my dad, as a young man, switching companies. My military parents were beside themselves.

They were genuinely worried for him. They thought, “He's not going to have any support system in his old age. He's going to die penniless on the streets.” Now, thankfully, that is not what has happened. He did very well for himself.

But you can see that he too, was an uncommon thinker and was realizing that if he could generate more money on his own, and then invest it himself, he could actually outperform what people would get if they gave their pensions over to their companies. And have a lot more fun while he was doing it and live in some really exciting times.

So, a lot of that was rubbing off on me. I remember, once having a conversation where he asked me what I wanted to do, and this is after I had graduated from wanting to be a professional roller skater, and I wasn't thinking about “serious” careers. And I think I was, oh, I don't know, like six or something at the time, or seven. And he asked me what I wanted to do, and I told him I thought I would be a secretary.

He said, “You could be a secretary. But you could also be the president of the company.” And I remember being so surprised, that had never even occurred to me at that age. And for full context, his wife, my stepmom, was a secretary and became an executive assistant. And he knew how key she was and how brilliant at her job and how much it took to hold that role.

So, he wasn't saying it against being a secretary. What he was doing was opening my mind to the fact that I could be anything I wanted, which I clearly hadn't grasped. And he knew that.

I was on a podcast recently, and someone asked who was my first champion. And to be honest, I'm very, very blessed, in that I had a lot of champions. I had loving parents all around, that always believed in me and always saw so much potential. But my dad, really, my biological dad, was my first challenger. He was the first one that really made me question everything.

Not just what I saw around me, but he made me question what I was thinking about myself, and about the way I thought. Early on, I had a very strong bias, believing that I wasn't that good at math. And so, he would put me in coding summer camps. And when I would go visit him, again, this was back in the 80s, we were coding in Basic.

He taught me how to do binary, which is all the ones and zeros, and then he would see how fast he could get me to answer. He'd throw out a number and he'd see how fast I could do it. This is how they all entertained themselves at their cocktail parties when I was visiting him.

He would just bring me along, there'd be a lull in the conversation, and he'd be like, “Hey, Jen, what's 39?” And I'd be like, “100111.” Everyone would laugh, and I'd get all of that approval. And I built the belief that I could be good with numbers.

And that is something that even today, I see women struggling with. Because there's such a huge amount of cultural conditioning on the other side that tells girls and women that they're not good with numbers, and that they don't have a mind for business.

And if right now, you're thinking, “Jenna grew up with a fuck ton of privilege.” I just want to say, yes, I grew up with so much privilege. And doing my best to disseminate that is a duty and an honor and a privilege because I know not everyone does.

And I also know that even if we do, for instance, have the parents that will champion you and have the food stability, and all the other things I've described, we all still grow up in a culture, and with a human brain, that both make it very easy to forget all that and focus on the other.

And with that, we will end the story for the week. I hope it was kind of interesting. And I hope you'll tune in next week, when I'll tell you about the event that had me going from prissy, or let's just say snobby. Let's call it what it is. Snobby, designer clothes wearing teenager to salt of the earth in just a couple of months, and how I got myself back to Greece at age 16. And what that ended up doing for me.

Hey, if you want true clarity about your secret sauce, your people, your best way of doing business, and how you talk about your offer, then I invite you to join us in the Clarity Accelerator. I'll teach you to connect all the dots, the dots that have always been there for you so that you can show up like you were born for exactly this.

Come join us and supercharge every other tool or tactic you'll ever learn, from Facebook ads to manifestation. Just go to TheUncommonWay.com/schedule and set up a time to talk. I can't wait to be your coach.

Thanks for joining us here at The Uncommon Way. If you want more tips and resources for developing clarity in your business and life, including the Clarity First Strategy for growing and scaling your business, visit TheUncommonWay.com. See you next time.

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