The Confetti Project With Jelena: Recent Episodes

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In this finale episode, Jelena wraps up season 1 by looking back on every chapter of its story as she explored a range of key themes central to the human experience. She dives into what the personal impact this 1st season had: giving her the much needed transition she needed to process her pandemic, hone in on her storytelling style, and get vulnerable while reintroducing the heart of The Confetti Project’s mission. She goes into TCP's 2022 recap and how a workshop in a fitness studio in Flatiron changed everything and made her realize that it's all always been about: JOY. She gets real about 2023 goals and ethos’ she hopes to embody more of while on the quest for finding space to host monthly confetti workshop experiences for the people. Wrapped in gratitude, Jelena thanks every single one of you from the bottom of her heart for joining her on this inaugural ride and shares the season 2 premiere date in Spring 2023:) Please follow and leave a comment about how you felt about season 1 wherever you listen to podcasts. ❤️

Chapters

• Looking Back
• What It Takes to Create a Podcast
• What Season 1 of This Podcast Did for Me
• 2022 Year Recap
• The Workshop That Changed Everything
• Joy: the Most Commonly Used Word to Describe What I Do
• The Confetti Project in 2023
• Gratitude and a S2 Premiere Date

Self-Reflection Questions

• What does joy mean to you?
• How do you integrate joy as a daily practice?
• What is your relationship to joy?
• What role does it play in your life?
• What does it mean to you?
• What are your favorite play active cities from childhood and adulthood?
• What are your barriers to joy?

Resource Links

• Year Compass
• Joy In Motion Workshop Pinterest Gallery
• Books on Joy

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(TW/S) In one of her favorite subjects, Jelena - an HSP - whose big feelings have always been weaponized against her, brings an extensive take on how we can begin to cultivate a relationship to our feelings so we don’t have to carry our repressed pain. In the wake of the death of Stephen “tWitch” Boss, someone who personified an outward exterior of joy, it’s unavoidable to see how many people mask their deeper struggles because society has not created a safe space for any feelings aside from happiness to be processed. In a culture that's anti-feeling that offers no mental health education or resources in childhood, it’s not surprising that the rates of destructive behaviors are rising and rooted in an emotional void. Jelena shares the work of emerging leaders in the field of mental health and transformation, like: Whitney Goodman, New Happy Co., Byron Katie, and Dr. Caroline Leaf - to expand your scope on what emotional hygiene looks like and why all emotions have value. She shares her personal experiences of how her grief became a portal into feeling while proving that we can feel many things at once. She also explores the characteristics of HSP’s, why it's vital to challenge our feelings, and how vulnerability is our superpower.

Chapters

• Why I’m Talking About This
• Me & My Feelings: A Case Study
• Society & Feelings
• A War on Negative Emotional States
• Emotions vs. Feelings
• Emotion Theory & Classification
• All Emotions Have Value
• Grief as a Feeling Portal
• Being a Highly Sensitive Person
• How to Process an Emotion

Self-Reflection Questions

• How did you feel and express yourself as a child?
• What was your family relationship to emotions?
• What emotion are you most:
  • Afraid of?
  • Confused by?
  • Repressed?
  • Most comfortable?
• How do you cope with your feelings?
• How do you know what you’re feeling?
• Does anxiety and/or depression affect your feelings?

Resource Links

• YUMI SAKUGAWA
• Whitney Goodman “Toxic Positivity: Keeping it Real in a World Obsessed with being Happy”
• Mark Manson
• Emotion Classification Wheels
• AEDP
• Emotion Dynamics Reference Guide
• Angela Emma Morris
• New Happy Co.
• Highly Sensitive Person
• Byron Katie and The Work
• Dr. Caroline Leaf

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What is stigma? How does it influence how we live ? And, why is it so pervasive in society? In this episode, Jelena explores stigma - something she has been studying for the past two years - and how she believes it is at the root of all problems. She shares about her own experiences with stigma, where her vulnerability, big feelings, curvy body and immigrant household were a few of her most stigmatizing characteristics. She shares from some of the most trailblazing artists and activists that are actively challenging stigma and societal norms through a variety of ways to ultimately conclude: stigma has devastating, deadly consequences. Published days after the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs - where another act of violence to the Queer Community occurred - Jelena is here to prove that it’s all connected. And that stigma - and the stereotypes, prejudice, hatred, fear, and ignorance it cultivates - is a blueprint for how we, as a society, can begin to foster community care and collective well-being. This is a token of gratitude to The Confetti Project community - a group of trailblazers challenging societal norms. You have so much value in the world just by being who you are.❤️

Chapter Markers

• 4:57 - How the TCP Community Challenges Societal Norms
• 6:98 - Stigma is at the Root of All Problems
• 6:59 - What is Stigma?
• 8:51 - Stigma in My Life
• 14:37 - What Happens When We Deny Ourselves
• 18:33 - What Happens When Being You is Stigmatized in Society?
• 23:52 - What Happens if Being Human Wasn’t Stigmatized?
• 25:16 - Unshaming
• 30:31- You Have Value in This World + I’m Glad You’re Here

Self-Reflection Questions

• What things come up when you think of social stigma?
• How have you been stigmatized? Have you internalized it?
• How do you view the most stigmatized communities in our society?
• How can you unshame yourself?
• Leaning into your weirdness, make a list of all the things you appreciate about yourself.

Resource Links

• Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting: Stigma and the Undoing of Global Health
• Alyssa Boyer
• My Gold Standard
• ALOK
• Jessica DeFino
• Janet Lo
• Yumi Sakugawa
• Richie Reseda
• Imansss
• People I’ve Loved

Call to Action

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This is a special addendum to the last episode - Love at 32 - where Jelena explores how her friendships saved her life, taught her how to love and be loved, and how telling people what they mean to you - as much as you can - is important. She shares about the time she ceremoniously asked her closest friends if they would be her sisters, why conflict in relationships is necessary, and how she’s had many chapters of friendship with her favorite people - some that went in different directions but ultimately come back to each other. This is a love note to them and the friends & family of The Confetti Project - that are building celebration culture and a world that de-stigmatizes being human together. Tune into this short and sweet love letter to you and the TCP community with a special, heartfelt note of gratitude. 🖤

Call to Action

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(TW/S @ 24:37) What is love? How many different types of love are there? How does life change when it’s rooted in love? In this episode, Jelena explores the nuances and dimensions of love through her own lived experiences. She takes us on a journey from when she was a child to now - an adult at 32 - and how love - and a time of lovelessness - has shaped her. As always, she gets candid about the otherness and isolation that comes with being the oldest daughter of immigrants. Why she wasn’t ready to love or be loved in her 20s. How she lost herself when she lost her father. She shares the story of how she met her life partner, Richard, and how being in a relationship committed to growth requires mutual, daily commitment. Sparkling her stories with the pioneering beliefs of Bell Hooks from her novel “All About Love: New Visions,” Jelena eventually realizes how the core of her trauma has always been questioning her loveability, where love always meant seeking approval and validation. At 32, she’s accepted the fact that being who she is - without dimming herself - will make some people uncomfortable because, as Bell Hooks states, “the most precious gift true love offers is the experience of knowing we always belong.”

Chapters

• 8:35 - What is Love?
• 13:06 - Love for Humanity
• 14:32 - My First Love
• 15:41 - Immigrant Love
• 19:07 - Love in my 20’s: The Confetti Project
• 24:25 - The Breakdown
• 34:06 - Meeting My Life Partner
• 43:29 - Self Love
• 50:26 - End of Day Recalibration Prayer

Self-Reflection Questions

• How did love feel in your family/childhood?
• How did/does love feel in your 20’s?
• What do you love about yourself?

Resource Links

• All About Love: New Visions by Bell Hooks
• Brown Girl Therapy (a mental health community for children of immigrants)
• Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self & Live with Confidence
• Biance Sparacino Quotes

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Jelena gets candid about on of her favorite topics: loss, grief, and mortality. It all started with her father - and best friend - being diagnosed with lung cancer when she was 25 to ultimately die a year later. She calls it her year of “cancer and confetti” where she was either dousing strangers with confetti exploring what they celebrate or watching her father fight for his life. This time radically altered her life as she realized that grief and love are two sides of the same coin and how society has radically misunderstood the vital importance of having a relationship with our mortality. It’s been six years since her father died and Jelena brings you into her world - where grief is love and there are many different nuances to it - as she shares excerpts from her yet-to-be-seen, unpublished book - “Cancer & Confetti” - that she wrote during her first fatherless winter. Like always, she uses the written word as a conduit for how to processes her experience of loss and the nuances of being human while sharing her rituals of remembrance that can keep those we have loved and lost alive.

Chapter Markers

• 9:00 - My Story
• 19:32 - When My Dad Died
• 27:45 - Cancer & Confetti
• 29:37 - What is Grief?
• 32:12 - What Grief Gifted Me
• 37:08 - How Grief Shows Up in My Everyday Life
• 43:37 - What Makes Life Beautiful & Meaningful

Self-Reflection Questions

• What is your relationship to grief, loss, death?
• What does it bring up?
• How do you mourn?
• How does it feel?
• How can you honor those and what you’ve lost?

Resource Links

• Anam Cara: A Book of Celtic Wisdom
• When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times
• Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief
• Smoke Gets In Your Eyes & and Other Lessons from the Crematory
• The Top Five Regrets of the Dying
• When You’re Grieving the Living
• Refuge in Grief

Call to Action

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Summary

(TW: brief mention of SA @ 27:36)What is play? What role does it have in your everyday, adult life? And why is it lost in adulthood? This podcast is about exploring and deconstructing things we all experience but don’t talk about - giving you the full picture behind complex, stigmatized topics through a lens of curiosity and celebration. In this episode, Jelena breaks down PLAY. At first, from an intellectual, evolutionary and biological perspective that proves its impact on our brain development and survival. She brings her own unique perspective from witnessing thousands of adults express themselves with play through The Confetti Project and how that’s shaped her discovery that adults are massively play-deprived…which has detrimental impact as we try to keep up with the sheer demand of daily living. Please join us on a multi-sensory experience where you get to hear about the poignant stories behind the confetti while scrolling through the biggest TCP archive on the web as you are introduced to how play can change your life.

Chapter Markers

• 7:00 - What is Play?
• 9:07 - Play Across a Lifetime
• 11:35 - Play in Adulthood
• 14:30 - Depriving Ourselves of Pleasure
• 16:33 - Celebratory Play
• 17:36 - What if We Played and Celebrated All the Time?

18:10- MULTI-SENSORY ACTIVITY (TCP Confetti Photo Archives)

• 33:29 - Confetti
• 34:44 - Why Making Play Part Of Our Daily Lives is Life-Enhancing
• 35:58 - How to Bring More Play Back Into Your Life
• 37:49 - Play Can Heal Us as a Society

Self-Reflection Questions

• How would you define play?
• What was play like for you as a child? How has it changed over time?
• What’s your earliest play memory?
• What is your play history?
• What is your definition of being “an adult?”
• What is your relationship with play as an adult?
• What does it feel like when someone compliments you?
• What is your relationship to receiving?
• How can you integrate more play in your life?
• Invitation: think about some of your favorite ways of activating your senses.

Resource Links

• The Confetti Project Pinterest Photo Archives (Multi-Sensory Activity)
• Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul
• Play is More Than Just Fun
• Why Playing Games is Good For You

Call to Action

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Jelena dives into a part of her life she’s had the most shame around: her relationship with her mother. She deep dives into her mother-daughter story, the mother wound, and why it’s important to explore the relationship between early childhood experiences and adult decision patterns. Jelena guides you into her world - filled with insights and information - as she’s dedicated the past two years to studying this. This episodes serves as an introduction to intergenerational trauma and how the impact of having an insecure relationship with a caregiver has deep, long-lasting effects into adulthood. Jelena’s here to show you there’s hope in getting curious and how the pursuit of excavating wounds is the path to healing.

Chapter Markers:

• 6:38 - My Mother-Daughter Story
• 15:16 - My Mother’s Life Story
• 21:18 - The Mother Wound
• 22:00 - Insecure Attachment
• 24:20 - Why It’s Important
• 30:08 - My Personality as a Trauma Response
• 37:04 - A New Understanding
• 39:56 - Narcissism
• 46:32 - Deconstructing a Cycle of Sabotage
• 52:05 - Why I’m Not Crazy
• 54:37 - Hope in a PTSD Trigger
• 56:44 - Coming Back to the Myself
• 58:52 - Why I’m Doing This

Self-Reflection Questions:

• What kind of relationship do you have with your family? How has it influenced your life?
• If you had created a timeline of your mother-daughter story, what would it look like?
• Who is your Mom? What do you know about her life before you?
• What’s your attachment style with your Mom? Parents? Caregiver(s)?
• What gifts has your mother passed on to you?
• What is your relationship with expressing your needs?
• What is your relationship to shame and what are ways you sabotage yourself?

Resource Links:

• The Emotionally Absent Mother
• It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are and How to End the Cycle
• Will I Ever Be Good Enough? Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers
• What Happened to You? Conversations on Trauma, Resilience, and Healing
• Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: How to Heal from Distant, Rejecting, or Self-Involved Parents
• Self-Care for Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents: Honor Your Emotions, Nurture Your Self & Live With Confidence
• Are You the Daughter of a Narcissist? With Stephanie Kriesberg
• Healing the Mother Wound Guided Meditation with Lisa Romano

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The Confetti Project with Jelena kicks off season 1 with an inaugural episode that goes back 7 years ago to the beginning of how The Confetti Project started in order to best explain why it’s been OOO for the past 2 years. This first chapter sets the foundation of an 8-part storytelling series that explores key themes of the human experience that are overly simplified and stigmatized through the lens of play & celebration - in an attempt to humanize being human. Filled with raw, unfiltered storytelling, Jelena takes you on a heartfelt journey filled with self-reflection questions as she dives deep into the profound impact her father had on her, what his death taught her about life, and how his ethos for living directly influences the evolution of The Confetti Project - in its most authentic form - now. In this episode, you will discover the new definition of celebration, how pain and pleasure are inextricably linked, and why you have to feel in order to feel alive.

Chapter Markers:

• 1:30 - It’s a High Anxiety Day
• 4:30 - Talking About Mental Health without Saying It
• 5:33 - Season 1 Format & Themes
• 7:24 - How Did You Start The Confetti Project?
• 8:12 - Three Signs
• 11:14 - What Does Confetti Even Mean?
• 13:06 - A Crossroads
• 15:57 - Something Bigger Than Me
• 17:59 - Rejection but Keep Going
• 19:58 - Dad’s Diagnosis
• 20:24 - Who is my Dad?
• 23:00 - Cancer & Confetti
• 25:12 - Our Pain & Pleasure Are Inextricably Linked
• 27:16 - I Can Die 5 Minutes from Now
• 29:41 - 4 Life Truths Watching my Father Die
• 32:56 - Burnout at 50 Open Studios
• 34:58 - The Pandemic
• 36:09 - A Deep Depression
• 37:47 - Sabbatical Studying my Shame
• 38:38 - The Privilege of Healing Childhood Trauma
• 40:32 - Complex PTSD & Trauma Responses
• 42:00 - The Mother Wound
• 44:00 - TCP in it’s Most Authentic Form
• 45:19 - Being Alive in the 21st Century
• 46:43 - Mental Health Crisis
• 47:23 - Emotional Suppression
• 48: 05 - Why I’m Back & Redefining Celebration
• 48:48 - Challenging Stigmas
• 49:08 - Reconnecting to Feeling Alive

Resource Links:

• TCP Archive
• My Shame Library
• Unresolved Trauma
• The Mother Wound
• Culture of Loneliness & Disconnection
• The State of Mental Health in America
• Play Deprivation in Adulthood
• Emotional Suppression

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Hi! Welcome to The Confetti Project Podcast with your host, Jelena. After being OOO for two years, this trailer welcomes you back to the world of The Confetti Project while sharing a behind-the-scenes look into the heart of its mission and evolution in 2022.  You'll be introduced to exploring life in its fullest expression through a newly defined lens of celebration that plays with the question: what does it mean to be alive in the 21st century? Jelena will be weaving her own intimate storytelling with thought-provoking questions as she slows down to discover the beauty and meaning in her own human experiences. By tuning in, you'll get a behind the scenes look into how she processes her life, expresses herself through The Confetti Project and how we can all embody a celebration ethos to make sense of our precious, limited time here.