No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women
No Shrinking Violets is all about what it truly means for women to take up their space in the world – mind, body and spirit. Mary Rothwell, licensed therapist and certified integrative mental health practitioner, has seen women “stay small” and fit into the space in life that they have been conditioned to believe they deserve. Drawing on 35 years in the mental health field and from her perspective as a woman who was often told to "stay in your lane," Mary discusses how early experiences, society and sometimes our own limiting beliefs can convince us that living inside guardrails is the best -- or only -- option. She'll explore how to recognize our unique essential nature and how to use that to empower a new narrative.Through topics that span psychology, friendships, nature and even gut-brain health, Mary creates a space that is inspiring and authentic - where she celebrates the intuition and power of women who want to chart their own course and program their own GPS.
Mary's topics will include sleep and supplements and nutrition and how to live like a plant. (Yes, you read that right - the example of plants is often the most insightful path to knowing what we truly need to feel fulfilled). She’ll talk about setting boundaries, communicating, and relationships, and explore mental health and wellness: trauma and resilience, how our food impacts our mood and the power of simple daily habits. And so much more!
As a gardener, Mary knows that violets have been misjudged for centuries and are actually one of the most resilient and ecologically important plants in her native garden. Like violets, women are often underestimated, and they can even mistake their unique gifts for weaknesses. Join Mary to explore all the ways the vibrant and strong violet is an example for finding fulfillment in our own lives.
No Shrinking Violets Podcast for Women
The Family System & How It Shapes Who You Become
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Have you ever wondered why you fall into the same patterns in relationships? Why you might stay quiet in meetings despite having brilliant ideas? Or why you feel responsible for everyone else's emotions? The answer might lie in your family of origin.
Family systems theory reveals that we all play specific roles within our families that help maintain balance—roles we rarely choose consciously, especially as children. These early positions become deeply embedded in our self-concept and often dictate our behaviors decades later. In this illuminating mini-episode, we explore how visualizing your family as a sculpture can provide powerful insights about your perceived importance and function within your original family system.
If you were the "invisible" family member that nobody seemed to notice, you might continue keeping yourself small in professional settings. If you were responsible for managing family emotions, you might exhaust yourself as a perpetual caretaker in adulthood. These unconscious patterns become self-fulfilling prophecies that limit our potential and happiness. The good news? Once recognized, these patterns can be changed.
Be prepared, though—when you begin stepping out of your assigned role, the system will resist. Family members might push back against your new boundaries or behaviors because systems naturally seek stability. This resistance doesn't mean your growth is wrong; it's simply confirmation you're disrupting long-established patterns.
Take time to reflect on your position in your family sculpture. What role did you play? Which aspects still serve you, and which might you need to release? Understanding your family system becomes the foundation for authentic transformation. You don't need to remain the "small one in the corner" or the "responsible one holding everyone up." You can choose differently now.
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Hi, welcome to a mini episode of no Shrinking Violets. Today I want to talk a little bit about systems theory, and that can sound very organizational, it can sound very career related, but I want to talk about systems in a family. So everything in the entire world has a system. We have an ecosystem, so everything works together with the pollinators and the soil and the plants that grow. There are ecosystems that are people ecosystems, so cities or towns or commerce, all of those things. But when we think about a family, that is also a system.
Speaker 1:And if you think about your family of origin, the family you grew up in, everyone in that family had a role to play. And sometimes I would have my clients describe to me if they made a statue of their family. What would that look like? So think about that for a minute Now. In family systems therapy, a lot of times if the whole family is there, the therapist will have them actually create the statue. But I worked mostly and I work mostly with individuals, so I would ask them to think about in their mind if their family was a sculpture. What would that look like. And sometimes they would describe to me one member of the family that was towering over the others, or often someone and many times it was them would be in the background. They wouldn't even really be part of the entire structure or they would be very small, or someone else in the family would be very small. So if you think about that, it can really give you a clue as to what your role was in that family. So if you think about that and you see yourself being very small in that or maybe everyone is looking the other way, no one is looking at you that's a big clue as to where you fit in that system and often we take that role with us into the rest of our lives. So if you felt that in your family you were not important, then you might inadvertently keep yourself very small. Or you may have a deep belief that you're not important and that can really get in the way of what you try to achieve in your life. Because if we have it's kind of like sports psychology if we have a deep belief that we're not good at something or we're not going to be able to navigate something, that holds us back, whether we recognize it or not.
Speaker 1:Maybe in that family structure you did take up a lot of space and that might be because you felt like you had to hold everyone else up, maybe you felt responsible for the climate of the family, and sometimes that happens if there's someone in the family who needs a lot of care, whether it's a physical issue maybe it's a sibling that acts out a lot, or maybe it's a parent that has a mental health issue or has an issue with addiction that early family system where you fit in not only in kind of like that static family statue situation, but as the family sort of moves if you think of a system, everything turns in a direction that it all fits together that doesn't mean that you have to keep taking that role in your life as a whole.
Speaker 1:So if you recognize that the role you played in your family, that the role you played in your family because we all have a role we need to do to survive and when we're young we learn that we assume that role, we don't choose it we recognize later that we're repeating the pattern, maybe in our marriage or maybe in our friendships or with our children, and if it feels like it's not serving you, then that is something where you can work to change it.
Speaker 1:You don't have to continue to fill that same position or be that same kind of sort of cog in the machine. One thing I will say is that, especially in a family system, if you choose to go forward and have different behaviors or different ways of interacting, the system is going to want you to stay the way you were. So you will get pushback, but that doesn't mean it's wrong. So take a little bit of time and think about what did my family look like, what was my position in the makeup, or if it would be a statue of your family, and then think about in the system, what role did you play and what were the blessings of that, and how might that maybe not serve you anymore? And that can be a starting point to think about what change you want to make. Thanks for listening today. Go out into the world and be the amazing, resilient, vibrant Violet that you are.
