What happens when a parental university experience collides with the moment they send their own child off to campus?

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(Music)

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Brooke

Lisa, we are diving into such a big important topic today about the parents who are taking their children to university and having to leave a tremendous piece of their heart behind. But before we go into all of that, what is your campus chronicle story?

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Lisa Richer

Gosh,

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Lisa Richer

huge campus. I went to a very large school, West Virginia, and we had two campuses.

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Lisa Richer

My campus chronicle story is, it was just overwhelming from day one. I lived on upper campus,

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Lisa Richer

but most of my classes were on the lower campus.

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Lisa Richer

I was a gymnast, so our gym was on the lower campus.

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Lisa Richer

Even just saying this to you, I just get this anxiety because it was so big and so overwhelming. I have a very hard time navigating the world from a North, South, East, West, where do I go? Constantly getting lost on campus even though I'd been there. It was very overwhelming. That would be how I would describe my experience for all four years, honestly. Moments of happiness and fun times, but more overwhelming than anything.

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Brooke

Thank you for sharing that because I've never shared this on the podcast before, but my university experience was not at all what I thought it would be. I was under this belief that it was going to be fun and happiness and complete support and complete certainty around who I was, and what I was doing, and where to go. Unfortunately, although I went to a smaller university, I felt very unsupported most of the time within my major. I felt very unsupported within my extracurriculars. Even to your point, I felt unsupported around where to go on campus. I don't think we talk about that enough. For so many people, while university can become a great experience, if it isn't at the beginning for you, there's no shame in that. If it isn't the best four years of your life,

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Brooke

or five, or however many you choose to take you guys, that's okay too. There's nothing wrong with it being a chapter of your story, but there's so much pressure for it to be the best and the greatest chapter. It doesn't have to be.

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Lisa Richer

Can I say one more thing about- Yes. right? I love what you just shared because it's so true. As you were talking, I didn't feel supported and that's something that I've had to unpack for years. I didn't feel supported by my family, I didn't feel supported by my coaches, a lot of my friends, my teammates sitting get me, and those that did support me my freshman year, they all left the school, probably for similar reasons that I left, but I was on a full scholarship.

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Lisa Richer

I'm going to honestly say in some ways, "forced to stay." You were trapped. I was trapped. That's exactly the phrase. I was trapped. The one thing that I would say is I spoke up and I shared and I wrote a lot. I write a lot of poetry and I just journaled, that's how I get things out. But I wrote and wrote and I shared and shared until I felt like nobody was listening no matter how hard I was screaming.

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Lisa Richer

As we start to talk, I know we're going to talk about my first son going off to college, but keep speaking until someone listens because I ended up being silenced. I spent the last five years really realizing those that should have been there for me weren't, but I also stopped asking for help at some point because I just felt like no one was going to listen. But today, people are there to listen.

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Lisa Richer

Just because that's not the experience, my best friend had the best experience ever. She still says to me, "Gosh, I wish you would have come to school with me because it would have been such a different experience for you."

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Lisa Richer

You just don't know, but you're told, "Go there and you become your best self." I feel like I ended up leaving there as my worst self, but I'm now my best self. You can learn from that experience, but don't let it own you. I let it own me for a long time.

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Brooke

That is so powerful because I also left in what I felt was my worst self. And to your point about stopping speaking up, I spoke up and spoke up until it didn't make sense for me to keep saying the same thing. And so I left a major that I felt very unsupported with. I left a program that I felt very, very unsupported at because I didn't know how to get them to listen to the things that I were trying to say. And the sorts of, unfortunately, unkindness that were happening, the sorts of power struggles that were happening within that department were things that I was not okay with morally and ethically. And I had to draw the line and say, "I want to do this for a living and I can't be treated like this every day because crying in your car every day is not normal."

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Brooke

Yeah.

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Lisa Richer

Yeah. I'm hopeful everywhere.

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Brooke

And so when you've had these experiences, Lisa, dropping your son off at college, just knowing the way that you felt

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Brooke

must be tremendously difficult as a parent, what is going through your head when you're dropping your student off at college?

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Lisa Richer

You know,

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Lisa Richer

the two weeks leading up to college for me were very emotional for me. More than the day I dropped him off and everyone keeps saying, "How did you feel two days ago when we dropped off?" Because it was very recent.

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Lisa Richer

And I had, like, every day there were moments of tears leading up to it.

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Lisa Richer

And what happened the day that we dropped him off, because he was also struggling with different things. So much unknown, so much fear. My sons are a divergent, both of my boys are, but the one that I dropped off, so much like sensory and dysregulation that was going on. Everything was new. There was no control. So we had spent a lot of time talking about some of those things. And unlike my experience growing up, both of my boys have been my oldest, since he's the one that went off to college just now. We have a really special relationship where he can really talk to me about anything. But in the last couple of weeks, there were certain things that he was going through that I didn't have answers to either. And just giving him the space to just feel how he was feeling.

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Lisa Richer

The day that we dropped him off, he was nervous. But then when we got on campus, everybody at-- he's at College Park, Maryland. And everybody was just so kind and like, "Here's how it's going to work." And everyone was really supportive. So we were going so much that I didn't have a chance to really feel those heavy emotions. But I also think I had let go of a lot of those heavy emotions before we stepped foot on campus.

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Lisa Richer

And then he was able to use his voice to say, "Okay, can you do this, Mom? Can you do this, Dad? I need to focus just on this one thing. Let me just get this one thing set up." So for me, we had so many stepping stones and tools over the years of helping him learn how to regulate, how to deal with change, how to deal with uncertainty,

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Lisa Richer

how to just--

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Lisa Richer

but he also was dealing with some of the perseverating and other things happening before. So by the time we got there, I think we had both shed some of those layers, my layers of concern of, "Oh my gosh, I don't want him to have the experience I had." And people saying to me, "You're not your parents. You're not those people. You have set him up for success." So while it was like, it was sad, but he was ready. And so as I watched him just kind of move in, and he was a toe walker growing up, so I didn't see him going up on his toes at all. When he gets nervous, he still does that. It's a sensory thing. He'll squeeze because he'll squeeze his calves. And he wasn't doing those things. So as I was observing him, I was recognizing that he was ready. But when I had to move my car, we had to drop all our stuff off. He had 10 minutes to drop it off. He had to get the key, then go upstairs with the first bag. My husband waited with the other car. So when I parked, walking back across campus to come back to him, I shed some tears because I wasn't sure, right? Like, how is this going to go? What's going to happen?

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Lisa Richer

So I'll pause there. But it was less heavy than I thought and more enjoyable than I expected.

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Brooke

You said something profound. It's that you didn't have all the answers. And I read once that it's important to remember it's our parents' first time living, too. And I love that quote. What you're talking about, right? All of this different, you know, experiences of you not being supported and then you preparing him in a way that he can be supported. That was a big issue for me. I was incredibly ashamed of the position that I found myself in. It very unhappy. And I didn't know how to approach my mom about it, which is really unlike me because I'm very close with my mom. For students that may be feeling disconnected, they may be feeling unsupported, anxious, unsure. As a parent, what advice do you have for them about how to approach trusted parents, trusted mentors, trusted coaches and adults in their life to communicate how they're feeling? Oh, yeah, I'm writing stuff down because I won't remember if I don't. I know that's a big question. I specialize in them. Who knew?

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Lisa Richer

So, yeah, I learned a long time ago if I'm not writing, I'm not listening. And people go, "You're not listening because you're writing." I'm like, "No, actually, I'm only retaining of a writing."

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Brooke

So, and that is an example of advocating for yourself. And Lisa just showed us that in action.

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Brooke

Yes.

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Lisa Richer

So, and I'm in that space too. As a neurodiversity consultant, this is the work I do helping. So that's also part of it. So how to approach what you just said. So if you're anxious and unsure, one of the big differences between when I went to college and college today, and I'll say something very profound that my 18-year-old said to me,

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Lisa Richer

you didn't go to school early: 1990

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Lisa Richer

But with the trusting, it's a two-way street. So I went into school not having a great relationship with my parents. So that was part of the reason I felt stuck, because they would not listen when I was like, "I don't want to be here." And they said, "You need to tell me why." Well, I couldn't understand the why. So why to this day is still a trigger for me. So what I would say to those students that are going in is, it doesn't have to be your parent. It was not my parent.

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Lisa Richer

And it ended up being people that I didn't expect it to be, that were those that were there for me. But when you find a person that you feel like you can be yourself around, and that you can open up to no matter what, open up to them and see how they can help you. The difference now is, my friends didn't understand me either. I didn't have a lot of neurodivergent friends growing up. And I always felt different, like I was on the outside looking in. But in today's world, different neurotypes are everywhere. Schools embrace it. There are community and belonging. I'm not going to say DEI anymore, because that's been stripped. Although in some ways, community and belonging allows everyone to come together, no matter what the letter is. So I kind of almost like the bigger umbrella. But find that community person.

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Lisa Richer

Every school has a group of people that are there to help you. The one thing that I didn't do that I really wish I had done was go to the psychologist and say, I am struggling. No one is listening to me. But I didn't even know about psychologists. I grew up as an athlete, so sports psychologists. But they were very different. I went to them to figure out how to not fall off the balance beam. To figure out how to be the best gymnast I could be. To get tougher mentally. I didn't go there to unpack my problems. To unpack my anxiety. And to start to feel like I was worthy and that my voice mattered. But today, they're out there. So if you go to college with friends, like my son,

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Lisa Richer

one of the things that made it so much easier is we had a couple of knocks on the door while we were unpacking. And five of his closest friends from college moved in that scene from high school, moved in that same day to different dorms. But they knocked on his door when I got to get a picture of all of them. So I left my heart there, but I also left him with his friends that are his heart. So if you have those, talk to them if there's some that you're really comfortable with. But if not, know that there is somebody on campus somewhere,

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Lisa Richer

whether it's like the Hill House or the Shabbat or the churches or whatever it is that ties you to somebody that can get you, find that person and keep speaking until somebody listens.

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Brooke

I love that. Keep speaking until someone listens. And that's not always going to be the first or the second or even the third person, unfortunately.

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Brooke

How did you prepare your son to deal with the challenges that could arise at university? How did you set him up for success in a way that you wish you would have been?

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Lisa Richer

Oh, gosh. So it takes the village. It takes all of us.

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Lisa Richer

Oh, did I just phrase my frozen?

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Brooke

No, you are perfect. Tell me your beautiful insights.

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Lisa Richer

Okay. All right. I thought I was frozen. I saw my face moving back and forth.

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Lisa Richer

So, I mean, it started really early. I started with early intervention with him when he was 18 months old. Actually, when he was born, he already had some struggles. So I've been helping him find his voice and advocate for himself for years. But the best way that I helped him prepare as a parent was that I always want my kids to be authentically them. And I always tell them, don't change who you are for anybody. Those that are meant to be with you are going to find you. Those that are meant to not be with you either won't show up or they'll show up and leave because they'll see that you haven't changed who you are.

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Lisa Richer

And that is the biggest thing that I wish somebody had told me because I became someone I didn't even recognize throughout school. I didn't know how to have the relationships I hadn't dated. I didn't drink before I went to college. So every first that people found fun was so overwhelming and so anxious, anxiety driving for me. So helping him prepare for those things and having that really solid relationship with him allowed him to open up to me when his friends were doing things that he wasn't comfortable. So he became the driver. He became the one that didn't get invited to parties. And I said to him, "That's okay." And he's like, "Yeah, Mom. At first I was offended and then I realized they don't want me to feel uncomfortable." And at one point, his friends ended up saying to him, "We're not inviting you because we don't want you to feel pressured." Well, those are the friendships that you want to keep. So helping your kids understand that everybody's not for everyone and that is okay and that you don't need to try to be everyone for everything. I wish I had been told those things. I wish I had recognized them before I was 48 years old. I'll be 53 on Monday. So I wish I had learned that before I went into burnout because all my life I was people pleasing. And so that's the biggest guidance that I gave them is that they should always unapologetically be themselves because they're amazing the way they are. Their brains are different. People might not get them and they might not get people. And that's really that's just okay. It's okay to be different. It's actually great to be who you are and who you're meant to be.

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Lisa Richer

And then I asked told him also, "Find those people that you feel comfortable with. Meet as many as you can but don't feel bad saying, "No, not yet, not now," to a circumstance, a situation, or a friendship or not anymore because everyone is a lesson learned. And if you think about it as all these things that you go through, you grow through,

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Lisa Richer

then you're going to be moving towards something instead of staying stuck in a, "What did I do? Why didn't I do it?" And my kids both have a lot of anxiety. And so helping them understand that you grow through what you go through helps them realize that they don't have to stay stuck in a situation.

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Brooke

I love this because I think we talk so much about the anxiety that the student could be feeling. But the anxiety that the parent is feeling is very interesting to me as well and equally valid because the parent and the student, if you have a good relationship of course, can be a support system for one another as you do navigate the first for both of you. Lisa, I have a hard question. Do you think you're up for the challenge? Yes, I think so. The hard question is this. If you are going to give three pieces of advice to university-aged students, what would those three pieces of advice be? Oh gosh.

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Lisa Richer

Oh, to university-aged students.

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Brooke

And such a big question because Lisa has already graced us with so many insights, but we want to pull all of those, you know, wisdom, nuggets, nuggets of wisdom out of Lisa.

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Lisa Richer

Oh my gosh. That's a hard one. This is one I wish you would have let me prep for because you didn't. So now I got to really think about this.

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Lisa Richer

The number one that comes up for me is goes back to, you know, not letting your voice go away. So if for some reason you are feeling, and we both said this, like that the campus is not for you, that the school is not right for you, keep speaking up until somebody listens because you have other choices.

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Lisa Richer

For me it was if I didn't stay with my scholarship, I was told I'd have to come home, I'd lose my car, and I'd have to pay to go through school. Well, those feelings were so overwhelming at that time, again, not supported and all that, that I didn't say, well, I don't care. I'm going to go anyway. But you are 18, most of you, I went to school at 17, but turned 18 while I was there. So, but you have choices. And if you don't feel comfortable, so it kind of is one and two, I guess, if you don't feel comfortable,

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Lisa Richer

speak up, share, talk to people about it. It's okay if you don't understand why you don't feel uncomfortable.

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Lisa Richer

But keep talking until you can unpack it because only then will you know where to go next. Because just because you feel like you want to leave, if you're looking to leave because you're running from something, well, then it's going to follow you. For me, it was the campus was too big. I couldn't figure out how to navigate it. I didn't find my people. So there were those reasons, but my parents didn't understand those reasons, so they didn't want to deal with them. But somebody will. So keep speaking up.

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Lisa Richer

Keep speaking up if you don't feel comfortable. So that's the first. Keep speaking up. You don't feel comfortable no matter what it is.

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Lisa Richer

It's okay to change majors. And I know that's a hard thing, especially in today's world. We all went in as general ed. And then we picked our majors like by our junior year. Wouldn't that be nice?

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Lisa Richer

But now you have to choose your major at a lot of schools. Now, some make you do all your genetic classes first, but a lot of schools, they make you choose your major. But don't feel bad also if you want to change your major because you might dabble in different classes. So this is the second piece. Take as many classes as you can for general electives and areas of interest. Like I wish I would have taken a photography class. There's so many classes I look back and go, gosh, why didn't I think about taking that class?

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Lisa Richer

And there's so talk to your advisor about it. So work with your advisor. Ask them to ask you these tough questions. What's important to you? What do you want to do? What are your interests? What do you want to try? So be flexible. Try as many things. And if at some point that leads you down another path or a minor, maybe you want to do a minor in something, take advantage of it. Because this is your one opportunity to dabble in anything that you want to dabble in.

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Lisa Richer

And then the third thing is,

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Lisa Richer

goes back to that first and that second, enjoy it because these are supposed to be the best years where you may be working and you may be doing some of that, but you're also hopefully building very long lasting friendships. Most of mine are for my younger years. I do have a couple very close friends from college and those that really wanted to reach out to me in college and be there for me, but neither one of us knew how to deal with the things that we were going through. Yes, didn't you? But if you couldn't find the words, it's hard. Yeah, exactly. You couldn't find the words. And that's okay too. But if you're in a school that you feel really good at, you will find some of those people. And I think that's the thing on the most envious of of my friends that have those lasting relationships. Now, I have my best friends coming in town, even friends for 48 years. So I have wonderful friendships, but I don't have that crew of friends from college that I get together with every couple of years or every year. And a lot of my friends do. I might have one or two, but a lot of my friends have that. And so if you're at a place where you're happy and you're trying new things, then you're going to find a group of those people that you will have these long lasting memories and just relationships that last a lifetime that you then talk to your kids about and their kids about and all of that. And so that's my advice. Like if find that place that you feel good, share your voice if you don't, and then be as creative as you can as testing the waters within those boundaries, because you really aren't a safe space on your campus. If you're feeling supported, if you're feeling cared for, and if you're feeling like you have a support system.

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Brooke

Lisa, I love those insights. And you did a beautiful job off the cuff because you shared from your heart. And that's what we want to get to is that no filters, heart sharing place. And to your point about they should be the best four years. I think that's what really prevented me from making some of the longer lasting friendships that I wish I could have made, was I was extremely ashamed that they ended up not being the best four years. And so shame was the real thing that I think prevented me from connecting and prevented me from truly being present. So I love that you brought that up on all of those points. I know you do neurodiversity work. If someone wants to connect with you, what are your social media platforms? Absolutely.

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Lisa Richer

Thank you for that. And so Facebook, LinkedIn, and Insta, so on Facebook and LinkedIn, it's Lisa Lazar, L-A-Z-A-R, my maiden name, Richard, R-I-C-H-E-R. And then same thing on Facebook. I also have Paige's Journey to Bloom, J-O-U-R-N-U-Y, the number two, B-L-O-O-M, it's my business name as well. So in my Insta handle is Journey, the number two, Bloom. I don't post on it that often, but I'm trying to do more. But that's where people can find me.

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Brooke

She's on her journey. Lisa, as we wrap up, is there anything particular on your heart to share that I did not ask you that you want to share?

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Lisa Richer

Gosh.

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Brooke

I'm asking this question because I think there's another nugget of genius in you. I'm getting that feeling.

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Lisa Richer

You know, I, I,

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Lisa Richer

this is what I, okay.

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Lisa Richer

When you're, whether it's the parent or the college student just getting ready to go off to college as rising seniors, as juniors,

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Lisa Richer

give each other the space to figure out what is the right place for you. My oldest who is at a huge college, even bigger than the one I went to, which I, but it feels so much smaller the way that's set up, he thought he wanted to go to a smaller medium-sized school and had initially applied mostly to all of them. But then he walked on this campus and he just fell in love. And then he went down to the campus three more times just to make sure before he applied that this was where he wanted to go. And it was, he thought it was going to be a safety school, but some of his closest friends that are also phenomenal academics didn't even get in. So it's a really difficult school to get into as a, as a, in-state. But let them, let them do the uncovering and the unraveling of what made feel right. The year before we ended up doing applications, he thought he was only going to go to school somewhere in Boston. There were three schools and it was going to be one of those. And then he ended up close to home, but far enough. So give each other this space to figure out, but let him or her or they or them, let them lead the way because you're not the one going to school.

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Lisa Richer

They are the ones going to school. And that's something that I never, I didn't feel. I, I was also blocked into you have these choices because you had full rides at these places. Sometimes it's not about the money. Your child's in that relationship is more important. And this is, I guess my childhood self speaking here. So you're right. It's more important that your child is in a place where they're set up for life, not set up for the next four years.

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Lisa Richer

And that college experience, as you and I both know, can make or break a long time coming into adulthood.

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Lisa Richer

And I don't want people to end up in burnout like I did before they can unpack all those layers and let go of the shame and the guilt and the trauma of your childhood self and let go of the fact that it wasn't my fault. It was, I wasn't being supported by the adults. It should have been there to keep me safe and supported. The best way not to have your child and up there is to give them this space to figure it out and support them no matter what.

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Brooke

That was beautiful. And I'm going to add to that. Love yourself enough to let yourself change things. Change your major, change where you go. Change your schedule. Change something. Love yourself enough to let yourself do that. Lisa, this conversation went in a direction I didn't anticipate, but I have to tell you, I love it. I think this is so juicy. I think it's so good. I think it's so exciting. And I think it's a profound

[: 00:29:25

Brooke

really layer of the onion that we've peeled back to uncover more honesty about what this experience actually looks like for people. So I'm tremendously grateful for your time and your energy and your efforts and your insights today.

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Brooke

Thank you so much. It's been a lot of fun. Well, thank you so much for joining me. And thank you so much everybody for joining me on another episode of the Campus Chronicles Podcast.

[: 00:29:54

Brooke

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