We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Destiny Chapron a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Destiny, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?
My resilience was built on a change in mindset. Starting in high school , I experienced grief/loss when my father passed away. I began experiencing extreme levels of stress, depression , and anxiety which soon impacted my health. In those moments, I felt a sense of defeat as I watched my dream teenage life change right before my eyes. Unfortunately, I didn’t know my thoughts , feelings and behaviors are connected meaning I had control over a lot of what I dealt with; which most youth don’t.
With the support of my mentors and community organizations I joined , I began my journey to rebuild my own mental health. In 2018, I was accepted to college at California State University, Northridge where I earned my Masters degree in Marriage and Family Therapy. During my time in college, I learned the most important lesson of my life thus far. The hardships we endure don’t make us victims, they make us survivors.
Once I changed my mindset, I became proud of myself and all I endured. I chose to grow my confidence and support those who are still discovering the power of mindset.
Thanks, so before we move on maybe you can share a bit more about yourself?
I graduated from CSUN with my Masters in Marriage and Family Therapy in May 2023. After what felt like eternity in school, I have even more motivation to begin my post grad journey to begin the real work. However, I did challenge myself to give myself time to mentally relax and recharge after such a long road of focus and discipline in college.
My time to mentally recharge gave me time to tend to my personal health and do things to reward myself. I dedicated time to attend community events and find more spaces and people I see myself collaborating with. I collaborated with my first mentor from high school Myra Hollis to create a mental health resource dedicated to mothers and daughters who are looking to improve their communication skills between one another. We created our ABC Conversations , a deck on conversation cards that have a plethora of open-ended conversation starters that allow mothers and daughters to have vulnerable conversations that build into more healthy connections. We were inspired to create this resource because of hardships that both Myra and I have had with our own mothers which helped build our relationship as close friends and business partners.
Our small business has allowed us to host events in our own community of Inglewood,CA. Our cards have allowed us to connect with other small businesses such as bookstores, local dance studios, non-profits , and other community leaders. We have hosted workshops giving mothers safe space to vulnerably discuss motherhood, and teach healthy techniques for better conversations with their children. We will be releasing our new ABC Conversations deck dedicated to ages 10 & under this year . We are very excited to support mothers with younger children just beginning to learn the power in healthy communication
If you had to pick three qualities that are most important to develop, which three would you say matter most?
Reflect. Release. Rewrite.
I was always comparing my wins to someone else’s , and guilting myself for what I hadn’t achieved yet.
It helped to look back at all that I have achieved instead of all of the things that were still in progress. Reflection gave me a sense of motivation. I reflected on the resilience I had in other hardships to remind myself if I could get through those bumps in the road, I can also get through my current hurdle. Reflection does take practice, it can on trigger pain and hurt for many people to reimagine the things they went through. I would advise you to turn your perspective to being a survivor of your hardships instead of a victim to them.
Releasing was a very important skill I am continuously mastering. I learned our minds carry a lot of the power in how our bodies react day to day. For those of us , like myself who have endured many things in our journey , we must learn to release the things that no longer have a place in our life. On my personal journey to achieving success , there have been things, people and memories I had to release. There were tangible things that held memories that were no longer empowering I had to throw away such as pictures, gifts, letters etc. There were people that no longer aligned with the new person I was becoming. In our time of reflection we should look at the things we may need to release for our own well being.
The skill of recognizing the control I have in my own life has been most impactful. I have learned I can rewrite my narrative at any point. We each have the power to choose how we see our lives to be. Similar to authors, we can also edit , add in, take out, and/or start all over at any moment. We hold the tools to rewrite how we would like our journey to be. Things may not go as planned always but we can use those parts as inspiration for our next narrative.
Any advice for folks feeling overwhelmed?
As an empath , I am always serving , supporting , and providing for others. Empathetic Burnout is absolutely real in the mental health field. Seeing a lot of the hurt in those I work to support daily sometimes triggers my own peace and ability to work. I learned to listen to my body a lot more when Im working. I listen to my body by taking note of the hints I get when Im becoming overwhelmed. Personally, I know Im getting to a place of overwhelm when I start to have less empathy , when I am less present and my mind begins to float to other things , or when I become anxious or irritable.
If I have had an overwhelming work day/week , I give myself the permission to put my phone on do not disturb, I listen to my favorite music, and I eat a good meal to recharge. I also take the time to really reflect on the day/week Ive have to pinpoint what exactly caused that exhaust. This is important because we don’t just want to drown out the overwhelm but we also want to take note of what causes it so we can prevent it from being a pattern in our daily routines.
Contact Info:
- Instagram: @abc.conversations
