The problem with talking about family culture is that everybody knows about family culture and…nobody knows about family culture!

What’s family culture?

Allow me to take a quick departure from the road trip analogy I use on my home page to sum up culture with a little story:

“There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says ‘Morning, boys. How’s the water?’ And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes ‘What the hell is water?’” (David Foster Wallace, This Is Water).

Culture is the water. 

(Well, it’s actually a lot more than that, but for the scope of this page, it’s the water). 

It’s the invisible beliefs and identities you take for granted because you’re so accustomed to them. Everyone has a culture but you often don’t even notice it’s there — until you are forced to notice it when the water in your tank gets cloudy and you blame your eyesight or your asthma or your zip code and you say, “that’s just the way it is”…but then you go into a new tank that’s clean (or a different kind of murky), or you change the filter and things become clear! 

You get the analogy, right? 

Maybe you went to a friend’s house when you were a kid and noticed things felt different there. Or maybe you traveled to a different country and experienced that thing called “culture shock.”

My new filter experience happened in my twenties

when I went to live in Hawaii for a little over a year and discovered that people there are different. Beautifully different. 

I wish I could say that I loved every minute of being in paradise but most of the time I felt like an outsider. It has taken me a long time to grasp what that actually means.

It’s way more nuanced than I could even imagine. 

I grew up in a small, rural American town where almost everybody looked like me, had the same future as me, and were generally the same socioeconomic status as me! I had no idea there could be anything wrong with that scenario (other than being SUPER boring for teenage Jodi).

My time in Hawaii felt like I’d been scooped out of my fish bowl and dropped into the ocean.

This was only the first of MANY plunges into reality I would be forced to take throughout my adult life, but I truly believe these kinds of experiences – though painful sometimes – are a necessary and inevitable part of growth, and maybe even growing up. 

I’m JODI CHAFFEE

JUST AN AVERAGE MOM ON A Not-So-Average MISSION

I am family-culture-obsessed!

Living in Hawaii showed me how to widen my cultural lens and see that my little fish tank was only a teeny-tiny portion of the ideas and experiences available in this world! 

I learned how beautiful diversity is, and started to gain a new world view. I actually met people from all over the world! I even learned how to say “hello” in fifty different languages as I greeted travelers. 

Aloha

Talofa 

Kon’nichiwa

Annyeonghaseyo

Xin chào

Kamusta

Sain uu

Bonjour

FUN, right?! So much variety! 

But, I digress…

I also learned how people from other cultures live and deal with their struggles.

I met multigenerational families living under the same roof to support each other. I met multicultural families learning to navigate their differences to make a family work. 

On one occasion, I met a couple who were really butting heads about their differences. I wanted to help but I had no idea what to do! My heart broke for them ‘cause I could tell they were not surviving, and losing hope. 

I sought the advice of a more experienced cultural advisor. After telling him about what happened, he told me some advice that I will never forget. 

He was an older gentleman from Tonga and his wife was American. I can still hear his gravelly voice and thick Tongan accent as he got excited to tell me what he has done to make his marriage and family work. He slashed his hand through the air like he was cutting off his past and said, “you forget about where you come from and you make the church culture your new family culture!” 

Whoa! What?! 

I understood what he meant ‘cause he and I grew up in a church with strict family values and, well, lots of rules. But, this idea of family culture was new to me. I knew that a family takes a lot of work, and I also knew that being a successful family doesn’t always just happen naturally — even with the church’s frameworks (and sometimes because of them). 

Just to be clear, I’m not talking about cultural assimilation and losing your national heritage. I’m just talking about coming together to agree on the kind of culture you want to create, but even that is super challenging!

I mean, you’re never really prepared enough for becoming a family. 

Even if you grow up in a “perfect”family, you likely don’t have the maturity to understand what’s going on, and it’s still likely you don’t truly understand the mechanics of it without raw, real-world experience. 

But you don’t get that experience until you’re in the weeds of the roughest, toughest parts of your own family life! 

And even then, the logistics of it all are garbled in the day-to-day mess of putting food on the table, wiping butts (not just your kids’), bandaging knees, school drop-off lines and commutes, social damage control, and breaking up fights! 

You don’t even have to marry someone from the other side of the world! Your spouse could be from the house next door and you’re still bringing your own cultural baggage into your relationship and trying to combine your differences to manage a home. 

Then, just when you think you’re getting this whole “adulting” stuff down, you start having kids!

“Wait! I still feel like a kid and now I’ve gotta raise somebody else?!”

Try four somebodies! Maybe you have more or less but every time you have a child really is like how Jim Gaffigan describes having his fifth kid:

“You’re drowning and somebody hands you a baby!”

Yikes! 

Navigating the differences between you and your spouse while raising a family and managing a home can be straight-up stressful.

But add to that all the real-life chaos going on in and out of your homes, the stress can become unbearable! You’re barely surviving, and then your child breaks an arm, and your mortgage or rent payment goes up while your salary is going down (or so it seems). And then the school calls, or locks down completely, and your parents get sick, and, and, and…

And, maybe you’re navigating a divorce or job loss or relocation or bankruptcy or medical crisis or a faith crisis (🙋‍♀️been there).

Maybe both parents are working outside of the home just to earn a livable wage and still only surviving paycheck to paycheck. Maybe you’re sandwiched between taking care of your parents and your kids. Maybe…

You’re a single parent; or…

You’re a grandparent raising your grandkids; or…

You’re a blended family; or…

You’re an LGBTQIA+ parent; or…

You, your spouse, or your child/ren have a disability or illness; or…

You’re trying to homeschool and run a business and…

The list goes on.

Real life is so messy!

Times are different. Raising a family is getting harder and harder to do, and most of us didn’t get the kind of family culture we want to create modeled for us. We didn’t grow up in ideal homes either. There are individuals who are barely getting by and rejecting the idea of a family altogether even when they want one because it just feels impossible.

As much as we claim to support the family as a society, there are fewer and fewer resources available to actually make family life easier.

There is no village to raise your children. (If you have one, it’s a rare privilege–celebrities, Facebook groups, and social media influencer don’t count). People rarely talk about cutting off the village you have because they were actually making life more difficult.

The advice so many parenting “experts” and influencers share don’t seem to take into account just how difficult it really is! Their well-intended advice feels like a foreign language.

The advice they talk about or you read about in parenting books just makes you feel guilty for messing up or not fitting in, and everyone seems to have a different opinion and idea about the “right” way to raise your family and navigate all the craziness! 

When I experienced the height of my crazy stress and exhaustion I found myself in a state of crippling anxiety, crushing depression, and total confusion.

There was all kinds garbage mucking up my water.

Yet, from the outside of my struggles, I found myself wanting to bury my shame and keep everyone around me unaware of my pain. I put on an external filter to make it seem like the water was clear.

“All good here! Nothing to see, folks. Move along.” 

The invisible contracts I had subconsciously agreed to and maintained throughout my life to keep up appearances had me acting like I was managing things but I was secretly feeling isolated and ignorant, and I was barely surviving. 

The thing about survival is that you can maintain living for a long time and never actually thrive.

Thankfully, my exploration of family culture had begun well before my deepest crises (yes, multiple crises). I truly believe that is the only reason my family and I have survived, both figuratively and literally.  

All the implicit beliefs I though I understood became painfully explicit in the messiest parts of life, and when I started to see the patterns that were shaping my family culture I could see them everywhere — a lot like being unplugged from the Matrix! 

Even though I’ve developed a frequency bias toward these patterns, I have learned it’s not enough to be aware of your invisible beliefs. It isn’t enough to be able to see the Matrix. You have to know how to bend the code and anticipate when there are bugs in the system!

Over the last six+ years, I’ve made it my life’s mission to confront the assumptions lying beneath the surface, wreaking havoc on my life, creating bugs, and mucking up my water. I’d long accepted these assumptions I didn’t even know existed because that’s “just the way it is.” 

It’s like we’re just products being assembled on a conveyor belt generation after generation !

Frustrating. Redundant. Confusing.  

Except, life doesn’t fit into a mold or a box that a robot or factory can piece together. You can’t just pick up some old programming and expect to cram all your messy, beautifully different pieces into an old formula!

What if I told you there is a better way?

What if I told you I’ve cracked the code to break the cycle, break out of the factory, and write a whole new program:  one of recovery, peace, confidence, and real solutions?! 

The best part is, you get to write the script, and I can show you how.

I’ve discovered the patterns and frameworks of a resilient family culture that removes the guesswork, the doubts, and the confusion to design a new program that is as unique to you as your own family!

I’m not just talking about parenting, either.

Difficult parenting is really just another symptom of the fractured, insecure, and overwhelmed cultural patterns programmed into us on the conveyor belt of life…

…but it gets a bad rap because it’s the loudest and most painful, joyful, guilt-ridden part. We want our kids to grow up well-adjusted and successful, not become narcissistic sociopaths, amiright?! 

When I started this journey, I simply wanted to find a better way for my kids to create success. Whatever broken code my husband and I were stuck repeating was not what we wanted for them! That’s why I went searching for answers.

I started my podcast back in 2016, interviewing more than a hundred guests to explore what it takes to have a successful family, raise resilient kids, live a fulfilling life, break the cycle of fear and dysfunction, and have peace of mind. 

I’ve read dozens of books about parenting, education, business, communication, culture, psychology, and personal development. I put into practice my degree in Health Promotion which included lifespan development and psychology. 

My family and I have personally navigated crazy ups and downs while traversing our own family culture journey, and proving that this stuff really works during the deepest and messiest, most challenging road bocks and detours life could throw at us!

I’m organizing everything I’ve learned, and calling it The Meta Family Method, to give you the ability to see what’s really going on beneath the surface of your family culture. It isn’t ready yet! There’s so much I want to share with you!

If you’re interested in learning more, stick around. There’s so much here to see! 

Following the White Rabbit,

Jodi