Embracing the messiness of a passionate life with Joy Currey

Tiffany Sauder: Hey, it's Tiffany. If you've been listening to the show for a while, you know I'm feeling this pull away from social media and towards real connection, and that's exactly why I started my newsletter. It's a place for us to connect authentically without having to jump through algorithms. I usually share a little bit about what's going on in my life.

My family has practical tips for two career homes and just generally things that are inspiring me. I'd love for you to join me so we can create this little online space and we can lean into all of the ands in our lives together. You could sign up at the link in our show notes. Enjoy this episode.

I am a small town kid, born with a big city spirit. I choose to play a lot of awesome roles in life. Mom, wife, entrepreneur, CEO, board member, investor, and mentor. 17 years ago I founded a marketing consultancy, and ever since my husband, JR and I have been building our careers and our family on the exact same timeline.

Yep. That means four kids, three businesses, two careers. All building towards one life we love. When I discovered that I could purposefully embrace all of these and in my life, it unlocked my world, and I want that for you too. I'm Tiffany Souder and this is Scared, confident.

Joy Curry is the CEO and founder of the Not-for-Profit Corral Writing Academy, and they take adolescent girls in really high-risk situations. Put them through this holistic program of both equine therapy and education. I mean, it is intense, the work that Joy and her team are doing. And I wanted to have her on because Joy and her husband, Rob, my husband, went to Princeton with Rob.

Joy is like an absolute dynamo in her own right in the world, and I know that they're living in this tension of a two career home. Um, they have two young kids, I would say young. They're. Nine and 11, nine and 12, something like that. Like not elementary but not high school. And so they're in this space where their kids are busy.

They have this really complex organization that they have built. And while Rob has been a partner to Joy, he also has a job that he does. Like his full-time job is not the Writing Academy. And so Joy and I had just a really raw conversation about what it's like to build that. My takeaway is that if you're gonna try to do something really hard with your life, you need to accept that it is not gonna be a neat and tidy journey.

And you're gonna hear in our conversation, there's places where joy is like stuck kind of at a y in the road. Maybe not stuck, but at a y in the road where she's saying, What is the right decision for the future? I have these goals that I'm trying to hold perfectly. I balance the goal of, you know, building corral, of saying yes to every opportunity that comes with that, of expanding the impact of that organization and also wanting to say yes to her family in a way that really is aligned with her values.

And how do you say yes to those things? At the exact same rate, at the exact same time, in the exact same level of. And it's impossible to do that without there being moments of conflict and friction and tension and joy is kind of in one of those. And so this is not a conversation that necessarily ends with all this beautiful resolution, but I hope it's encouraging as you are on your own pursuit of a life of, and

Those moments, if you're there and you're like, I don't know perfectly what to do, I'm not filled with all of the confidence that I want to have, that doesn't mean that you're on the wrong journey. That's an, that's a perfect ingredient in my experience, to what it means to pursue passionately a life of and, and joy is definitely on a journey of her, the impact of her life and her talents is seemingly limitless.

It's incredible. But the truth is we're all human and we get tired and we find our limits, and we need to figure out this balance between work and rest. So listen in to my conversation with Joy Curry.

Let's start with talking about. Who is Joy Curry and what is Corral? What do you do? Okay, let's, let's start with that.

Joy Currey: Corral is a nonprofit organization that exists to provide a bright future for young women in our community. Young women who've experienced trauma, abuse, neglect, um, and have the odds stacked against them in a number of ways.

And so we do this through this very cool niche of services where we provide equine assisted psychotherapy. So they're getting, uh, a highly therapeutic environment and we're combining that with a rigorous college preparatory. . And so, uh, young women come to our farm and they're with us year over year, all through their middle and high school years.

Uh, and, and they, they're with us every week, you know, through the entire school year, like 17 hours a week. So it's a very intensive, very holistic program. And the concept is that we walk with young people all through their middle and high school years. And so I founded Corral and created this very sort of unique program, 14 years.

and I did so because of my professional background and the experiences that I had. But, more than that, it was really a calling. Uh, so I grew up in this community. I grew up around horses. Horses were very important to me as a teenager. My horse was what was my best friend during some, you know, lonely times.

And so I understood the connection of a young woman on her horse. A horse continued to be a part of my life as I. And taught after my undergrad. I went to teach in Philadelphia through Teach for America. And uh, I actually as a first year teacher, you know, bought a horse, um, which financially is very unwise, but it was such a part of who I was and I felt like it was such an important emotional outlet for me when I was teaching in inner city schools.

And when I had the pressures of that environment and I was trying to create change, it was my therapy. and, and I often thought when I was going to school in the morning and then I was driving out to this beautiful farm in the afternoon, what if my kids could have this, you know, how different would their lives be if it was this instead of, you know, walking the streets of Kensington after school, which is the opioid capital of our country.

But my experience teaching and, and teacher for America, like most teachers in an inner city and low income schools, was really challenging and really disheartening. I realized that it wasn't just that we had a broken education system and that was what was stacked against my kids systemic problems that were facing this community, um, that had been redlined and was built right under I 95 and the school was carved out of a specific neighborhood.

So that all of my kids were kids of color. And then when you walked into the school with bars and metal detectors and, and you, you realize that you were literally walking into the school to prison pipeline. Like no one expected anything of these kids and the system was built for them to go nowhere. I had this experience, it was two years and I kind of left the classroom at that time going with this thing that I thought was the great equalizer that our democracy was built on.

It's not that simple. And, and so. I went to then teach in New York, and it was a very similar neighborhood, Bedford Stuyvesant, very similar population, but this was a college preparatory school. It was a charter school. And the only real difference was the philosophy that we are gonna hold these kids to incredibly high expectations and we're gonna provide them a tremendous amount of support at the same time.

And every single one of us in this teaching community is going to give 150% to ensure their. I, I started with my kids in Philadelphia in fifth grade, and I started with my kids in New York in fifth grade. And, um, both sets of kids were four or five grade levels behind as fifth graders. as seventh graders, you know, at both schools, very different outcomes.

My seventh graders continued to be multiple grade levels behind Philadelphia, but at this charter school, they were some of the highest performing kids in New York City by the time they were in seventh grade. And so I got to see what an environmental shift really means when a school or a, a holding space, um, becomes this place that holds kids to very high expectations and sees what's possible for them.

And then, It provides the sports to get there. And so I have that background. And then life happened. I met my husband, he got a job in North Carolina, which was my hometown. I sent, I swear I've never gotten back there, but, but life happened and when we moved back here, there was kept on charter school. So this whole dream I had and this whole vision of where I was going in my late twenties kind of blew.

Um, but we did look around and say, all right, so we can't start a charter school, but what resources, what giftings has God given us? And how can we use that to still serve the people that God has called us to serve and to be in service too? And so Corral was kind of born out of that, of like, okay, we have this family farm, I've got this background, we have this community.

How can we put all of these together? To provide the needs that the community is telling us they have. And so originally the idea was we're gonna take the kids that are the highest risk kids in our community and we're gonna provide them a horseback riding kind of experience. And we're gonna say, Hey, you get to ride horses if you keep your rates up and stay of trouble.

And that was incredibly naive because our kids, you know, they'd had this tremendous, traumatic background. Mm-hmm. , and they needed so much more than just an incentive. They really needed, you know, someone to walk with them and they needed therapy and they needed healing, combined with the belief that you can be what God designed you to be.

Mm-hmm. . Um, so that's the special sauce that that corral is today is, you know, we're both a therapeutic environment as well as an achievement oriented community that believes in these kids, but wants to repair the. That's been done.

Tiffany Sauder: And across your locations right now, how many kids do you serve, Joy?

Joy Currey: So we have, um, a core program, a writing academy, and we serve 20 kids at both farms.

So it's kind of a small cohort model. And then we'll serve another a hundred kids a year through our feeder program called Join the Herd, which is outpatient, the group therapy program, equine therapy.

Tiffany Sauder: Okay. So I wanna kind of zero back into the stages that you were talking about, which is kind of like Joy Fresh outta college.

Filled with lots of ideas about the impact that you wanted to have on the world when you were growing up. Would people have said that you were like a very cause-oriented individual that that was like kind of in your D n a or was that something you discovered in that season of your like just opportunities that came because Teach for America's kind of this like sparkly thing that smart kids do, like I feel like there's.

Shiny front cover to it. Is that fair? Yeah. Oh, that's definitely fair. Yeah. And the achiever in, you may have wanted to do that maybe more than, and I'm not judging it, I'm just saying like, did you discover that in that journey?

Joy Currey: when I was younger I thought, oh, I'm gonna be a pediatric oncologist.

Cause I had a friend die of cancer and so I really, you know, kind of thought that's where I was going for a little while. That lasted a minute when I went to college. Yeah, I got my undergraduate degree in business, but towards the tail end of it, I was like, I don't wanna just, you know, go into investment banking or, you know, go work for a consulting firm as an analyst.

Like that's, that's not my thing. And one of my friends said she was doing Teach for America and all of a sudden that like really resonated with me. And I think it had to do with the way my dad had raised me. My dad was very civic-minded, he was very involved in civil affairs. So conversations around our dinner table always revolved around equity and justice.

You know, ensuring that we have a community built on the values of, of making sure everybody has an opportunity, you know? And I didn't quite understand it all, but I could clearly look back and see that that was part of my dna. Mm-hmm. . Um, and when I wrote my application for Teach for America, it was all about, you know, the idea that we do not actually have an equal playing field and how education might meet that now that was kind of blown up, but, so I think it's kind of that moment when I kind of got to that senior year in college and I thought I was going into the business world and went, wait a second, this is not a.

Where I see myself, I do see myself as having a greater impact. And then, yeah, the shininess of Teacher America, that I could still be this, like I was a college athlete and so that whole thing, of course was attractive to me.

Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, and I think the like, I mean, just the need to stand out, like I need to know that I can still compete.

Get that. That totally speaks to me. So where were you when you and Rob got married? Had you started CORRAL or not?

Joy Currey: We started a year after we were married. Okay. Which is, now I look back like the stupidest thing in the world, get married and start a nonprofit.

Tiffany Sauder: But in a lot of ways I was, it was a very, um, I started Element three, like six months after JR

and I were married, but it's also a very low risk stage in your life. Like you don't have a lot of overhead. Like, you don't have that much to lose, you know?

Joy Currey: That’s how we saw it. I definitely think that's how we saw it too. I mean, we got married, um, we started a nonprofit, then the downturn happened. We had just bought a house.

And so we were like, okay, all right. Mobile seller house. And you know, Rob lost his job during the downturn. He's like, okay, I'm gonna go to grad school. So I was starting the nonprofit. He was going to grad school and we were living on student loans. Um, yeah,

Tiffany Sauder: few. So did you actually sell your. We did. Yeah,

Joy Currey: we did downturn and we didn't, we didn't lose our shirt, fortunately.

Yeah. Hey, you know, it was, it was low risk and, and so like following your passion was, seemed like the right idea to me. Um, and that's really all that mattered to me at the time. Like my career, my passion is calling. And I had wiser older women in my life that said, oh, you should think this through. You're gonna wanna start a family one day and you may not wanna.

Be a, you know, a c e O, but I wasn't interested in listening into that at the moment.

Tiffany Sauder: So, uh, let's explore that. Would you give that same advice today to a young, ambitious 28 year old?

Joy Currey: I, to some degree, yes. You know, when people ask me, should I start a nonprofit, I kind of go, oh, wow. That's a journey when you.

A non-profit, you're accountable to a whole community. If it's unsuccessful, no big deal . Mm-hmm. Um, but if it is successful, there's not an exit strategy with a non-profit, with a for-profit. Yeah. You know, you think, okay, maybe I'll one day sell. Um, you know, with a non-profit, it's kind of a dead career .

Tiffany Sauder: Um, it is a really interesting reality to it though.

Joy Currey: Yeah. I knew that I was, in some way, choosing a dead end career. Mm-hmm. and becoming a nonprofit, c e o. But I felt so strongly that that was where I wanted to be emotionally. There's a lot mm-hmm. , and, and I'm sure that's true also in the for-profit world, but there's a lot of secondhand trauma that you end up carrying in this work.

And I don't know if I would've realized the impact that had on my soul and that you. When I'm here and I have a nine year old with an 11 year old, and I'm trying to also hold space for them emotionally to grow up and would I have the emotional capacity for both. Mm-hmm. , um, I think it is one of the key questions I'm asking myself daily right now.

So I, you know, I wouldn't necessarily say what the women said to me, which is, that's the dumbest idea. Don't do it. because there's a lot of benefits. I also get out of it, you know, my kids do get to see that I have a passion and it's not them, and they get to see the good and the bad of working with the community that I work with and running a nonprofit.

So I think there's a lot of benefit from me and my family for where I am, but I just wish I understood the price that I would.

Tiffany Sauder: 15 years later, we never know what it really is when we're saying yes to it or we wouldn't, nothing would be started. I mean, everything is so much more complex than your mind can even comprehend as true.

You know? And it's part of how we experience and find our own resiliency and creativity I think is when it's like this feels completely, IM. Which probably in a lot of ways continues to, I don't know, inspire those people around you. But it's hard to be patient in the experience that you're building because you're at the tip of the spear on everything and it starts to hurt sometimes.

Joy Currey: There's a lot of emotional baggage that goes along with it.

Tiffany Sauder: Let's talk a little bit about, I mean, your husband also has a career that's taken different turns and twists. So where is he at right now? And let's talk a little bit about, and do you guys homeschool too? Did I make that up? We do . Yeah. I thought you were homeschooled too, casually.

So I wanna ask, how do you physically fit the homeschooling into time?

Joy Currey: Um, in the morning. . So I wake up first thing in the morning over my coffee and I plan my kids' day for their academic day, check work, look at the assignments that they need to redo, redo, or revise, and create kind of like, okay, here's the next step in the curriculum or whatever.

And then set up kind of a checklist for them of these academic things I need you to accomplish today. They wake up, they make their breakfast, and then what lessons I do need to teach. I teach kind of first thing in the morning. and then they work more or less independently the rest of the day.

Checking in with Rob or I, the farm is literally behind our house and so I am no more than a hundred yards away. Even when I do go into the office, my mom is another a hundred yards away because she lives on the other side of the farm and then Rob is here in, in the house, and so they have a lot of, you know, people that they can go to to get their needs and questions.

basically from nine to 11. I like checking email and I'm responsive to my team, but I'm not sitting down at my computer and producing any work which works for us because we're an afterschool program. Mm-hmm. . So, you know, our operations go all the way to seven o'clock every night and we have Saturday.

So, um, yeah, that's kind of how it happens. Um, it really does require my kids to develop a lot of, I. And that's a, that's a skill we're constantly learning. So

Tiffany Sauder: What moved you and Rob to make that decision for your family?

Joy Currey: I mean, it's multifaceted because we are both career people. You know, I think a, a piece of it was how do we make our kids' lives fit into our lives instead of us changing our life to fit our kids' lives?

Mm-hmm. so, You know, they were in school all day and we worked a lot. When would we be parents? Mm-hmm. . Um, so this allows us to kind of flex to the kids to meet our schedule. I'm an educator. I started out that way. I love teaching. I laugh cuz I of course do a lot, but I, I say I'm really only good at one thing and that's.

teaching horseback riding and teaching math . So maybe I'm good at two things, but, uh, you know, I like sharing that gift of learning with my kids. I, um, I just get on fire about seeing them learn math and history in particular, because I'm an educator, I have some pretty high expectations of what an educational environment should look like, and it's a combination of who they would learn with and from as well as what they're learning.

And I struggle to. What that would be in our community. Cause we kind of have like a private school community that's very exclusive and then a public school community that, you know, doesn't necessarily have an emotionally safe environment. Um, or, you know, kind of curriculum. I, we won't like kids learning in and there's not a whole lot in between.

Mm-hmm. and that's what meets our family's values and all. I mean, I think my kids were in kindergarten when the school shooting happened, and that really impacted me greatly about creating safe environments for children. Mm-hmm. , and that's impacts corral too, about how do we create a safe space where kids

can thrive.

Tiffany Sauder: It's so hard to know what to do. We've got two in middle school and figuring out the mechanisms that I put in place to, to understand what it is that they're learning and getting exposed to and all that is very d. It's also very difficult to teach them at home. I have to imagine it's difficult for it to like weave together a social environment for them too.

That isn't just your family. Like that would be really hard. It is very hard. You have to pick your path. So let's talk about you and Rob a little bit. These two, two high achievers. I mean, Rob went to Princeton, you did Teach For America. You were special from your whole life. You know what I mean? Like there was I, that's my sense like yeah, yeah.

Joy's gonna do big things. She's. Lots of talents and things she's gonna do. And so now you've gotta go chase his dream. So how, you know, what have been kind of the stages for you and Rob in figuring out how do you fit this together into a family that is somewhat sustainable? Because there's a 20 year period of time that we have to do it, you know?

Joy Currey: Yeah.

You know, Rob and I talk a lot about how we loved every minute of our marriage. Um, and of course we had all day fighting last week. So like every minute is more global.

Tiffany Sauder: every season of our marriage.

Joy Currey: Yeah. I, I think understanding that my career was important, was part of what attracted us to one another.

I think he liked that he was marrying an ambitious woman who had goals and. And of course I liked somebody that had bigger goals and dreams than I did. I didn't meet many men that could compete with me on that sort of go-getter front. And he did. But we have had a co-creation of what that looks like kind of the whole time.

In the first year we were married, we took a week long retreat and did like a 10 year strategic plan for our marriage . And it sounds silly, it's something my pastor recommended and, uh, it's that they called it the time reverse engineering. But you know, we really went into every detail of like, where would we be in 10 years?

Where would we be in three years? Who were we gonna be hanging out with? You know, what was your career gonna look like? What was my career gonna look like? How are we gonna both have a career? What. Setting core values for our family, you know, and all of that. And that actually has been, I think one of the reasons why we've been able to both have a career is cuz we both had a sheer vision of what that would look like.

And so he makes choices to be able to stay in Raleigh. He's had opportunities to go work other places and he actually works for a company in Arkansas, right. Uh, but he's able to work remotely and not travel very much because that's one of his values. He wants to be a part of raising his children. Mm-hmm.

So his career steps are informed by the fact that we're grounded in North Carolina because I run a nonprofit in North Carolina. He was looking at a career opportunity last week, went in for an interview and they said, you know, you will, will have to eventually relocate to Chicago. And he said, oh, well this is out then.

Mm-hmm. and even it, but, . It wasn't as if, oh, well this was the job I've always wanted. Mm-hmm. , it was like, I have other opportunities, but there have been times where his work has been really intense and I've been trying to run a non-profit and raise children and I'm like, hello, I'm here. Because typically the man's career gets the priority.

Mm-hmm. , and you know, we've had just, it's sometimes there's simple things like if there's background. When he's on a call, he says, it's unprofessional. And I'm like, we have children. And you know, as a mother, that's what people expect. So why is it different for you as a father? And he made a big shift, like mm-hmm.

Okay. The kids can come into my workspace and I will press pause on the call. So, uh, there's, there has been a give and take. I do worry. At times about how my groundedness and, and Raleigh has impacted him. But, you know, he doesn't worry about that.

Tiffany Sauder: I, I get that. It's similar for us. I mean, my agency's here and some of it's family too, but it's like, this is where I have to be.

I get that for sure. I also sense you as. Just fiercely independent as a natural state. Is that fair?

Joy Currey: That's very fair. And Rob would absolutely agree with you.

Tiffany Sauder: So how has that played out in your marriage? Because I have my own story around that, but I'd be curious cuz it can be hard. You've got your own thing, you've got hard projects, this thing that's like all consuming in your brain, plus you just generally are fine making decisions, being alone, moving fast, you know what I mean?

Like running the house, doing the. and then you've got this marriage with this person that needs to be needed and needs to know that you need them. And that can be difficult words to say.

Joy Currey: So I'm an Enneagram three, which means I'm an achiever and he's an Enneagram two. Um, which means he's kind of a servant.

And so that can be a convenient duo, but for me, right? That that works out, I get to go achieve and he gets to take. . Mm-hmm. . But, you know, he is also very achievement oriented. I think at one time, early in our marriage, um, you know, his mom was around when I was working and he was traveling and she was, she came to him.

She was like, she can love you . Aww. Because she also is like a two. And, you know, I'm, I'm moving so, so fast. It's really important for me to kind of slow down and realize mm-hmm. , like in particular, his love language. Um, because I could just plow forward mm-hmm. , and then my need is to be listened to. There's a lot that he's the only personal process with, and that's a lot for him to carry, you know, and it's always an unfair amount for him to carry.

So I have to figure out who else can carry that.

Tiffany Sauder: Well, I, one of the questions I wrote down, cuz I didn't know he was a two, but I, you see even from a distance, this servant, I feel like he's like, whatever you need joy. Like, I'm there for you. And like, yeah, I'll totally mend this fence from midnight to three in the morning.

I'll like, you know, like just, there seems to be no end to his like willingness to just like whatever, one of my. Kind of mental takeaways from 2022 as I've reflected on my journey is that when one person says yes to something hard, everybody pays a price in your circle. Everybody, you cannot pretend it's not true.

Jr's paid huge prices for what we've built. My kids have paid a huge price for me having a career. My mom has done a ton because my friends have to give me grace, like literally everybody. , you kind of wanna be like, no, that's not true. Or, I'm sorry, or, but it's just, it's just a fact. And so there's this ripple effect that for me, has been helpful to acknowledge and like even just like thank, and I don't know, just like be more aware of mm-hmm.

Joy Currey: He's resented CORRAL so much. Because, you know, we kind of went into this so it's always been his ministry as well. Where that does show up though, is more kind of in our home where I, like I said, I have a need to be listened to or I wanna, you know, blow out that wall and paint it.

Golden. You know, I, I sort of run as a visionary, I run around thinking how things could be at their best. Mm-hmm. and I verbalize. And then as a two, he thinks, well, I have to make that happen. And so we now have a, like a pattern or we now have a communication understanding where if I'm saying things need to be different or aren't at their best or in my vision, they would be a certain way.

That doesn't mean you do it. So I will be very clear about what I need. Like I will say, Rob, I need this. That's when you need to respond, but you don't need to assume my needs or interpret my needs. And that has really changed it for us. Mm. But he even has to say it like last night I was having a really hard night at work and I was telling him, you know, all the crappy things that happened and he's like, I don't think I can hold this space for you right now when you tell me about this level of mess I can't handle

Tiffany Sauder: because he just wants to fix it all.

Joy Currey: He wants to fix it. Yeah. Yeah. And he's like, I have my own problems at work that I need to fix my own dysfunction. I don't need your work dysfunction. Mm-hmm. as well. Mm-hmm. . So I, you know, I guess I'm describing that there's been a maturity of both of us in really communicating what are our needs and what are boundaries.

Tiffany Sauder: Do you guys get away together routinely? Is that a habit in your relationship?

Joy Currey: Yes. I, I wouldn't say on any particular cadence, uh, but probably once a month for a date and, uh, probably twice a year for like a weekend or something. Mm-hmm. . And then Sundays are really special to us. Sundays are a day. Our full family literally doesn't say yes to anything except.

and that allows us to recharge. The kids pretty much go and play, and then we get to kind of see one another and say, what is your life? What happened to you last week? And what happened? Mm-hmm. this week and what's actually brewing way back in your brain that you're not talking to anyone about.

Mm-hmm.

Tiffany Sauder: So you talked before we started here, a little bit about some of the expansion that you're working on and the tension that that kind of has with like your oldest is 11 you said. . Yeah. So my oldest will be 14 and she'll be in high school next year. And you do, your time starts to feel different when it's like she's gonna be in here for four more school years.

Like that's crazy. And then they'll probably leave and go to college and it's like, it's different then. So I know you're kind of in this tension right now of, you know what do I keep running as hard? Do I take a season and. Not stop, but does it look a little bit different? What's kind of in the triangle of complexity for you right now?

Joy Currey: I would say this is the biggest thing that's in the back of my mind right now, personally and professionally. Like I say, it's a com. It's a complex equation because it's not just in my needs or Rob's needs, but it's a chin needs. And then also our organization's needs. And I, I'm in the middle of kind of noodling it.

My ideas are not at. Fully baked, but you know, part of the equation is, is what the nonprofit needs. Certainly I'm the founder, so I can't just walk away, but the organization does grow up and doesn't always need the founder to have the same role, and I need to let other people leave for my kids. As you mention.

there's only a few years left of them being in the home and, and like even when they get to high school, it's not that they don't need to as much, it's just they're starting to develop their own lives. But because I'm, you know, a creator, a visionary, and entrepreneur, I worry about if I kind of focus entirely in my family.

Let's say I stepped out for a season, that's a lot of creative energy for one family. In some ways it's healthy for me to have CORRAL as a place for my, my creativity and my vision. And so even if I didn't, if that's not, it's not a right season for that now, like what will it be like when they're older and, and I, and they have their own lives?

You know? I don't wanna stop everything in my life so that I don't have something, you know, for me and for my career later. . I think the biggest dream I'm really struggling with is I, long before I had kids, long before I met Ron, I imagine living abroad with my kids when they were in middle school, I, I had this idea that I would live abroad and I would homeschool my kids for a year.

And I'm struggling to see how that dream is gonna happen. Um, and I'm struggling with like, okay, am I gonna let that dream die or is there a way to us to. S Is that just my dream? Is that maybe not what's best for everyone else in my world? Rob somewhat shares that dream with me. He has kind of a strategy, strategy with his own work that he's imagining how something like that could work.

It's a complexity of making sure they don't, that the kids in their ballet and their soccer and their whatever. Then just because that's my dream doesn't mean that's their dream.

Tiffany Sauder: Does CORRAL, could CORRAL afford to have that work with the kids? Do they know that this is something you have thought about?

Joy Currey: Yes, because we travel a lot. I went on sabbatical seven years ago and, uh, we, we were gone for nine weeks and I found that's one of the ways that I couldn't be a working mom is if I went really hard for 11 months, a year and one month I cared out for it to just be me and my family. and we could really focus on our relationships.

And we like to do that by going abroad, because there's no one we know, no one we have to visit. We don't only know. Yeah. We don't only know the language that well, you know, kind of thing. So that's become a pattern for us that we go abroad every year for about a month. So yeah, they know that that's something that we've, we talk about a lot.

Tiffany Sauder: Does your team know that that's a dream that you have?

Joy Currey: Um, I mean, yes, no, but, but more importantly, I don't know that my board knows here's

Tiffany Sauder: what I found. So I made, I wish I would've had that dream. That one's cooler, but mine was when my kids were in middle school, I worked my face off when they were little and I had a nanny at home, and when they were sick, I just left and somebody else took 'em to the doctor.

And when there was a day off school, they like, I wasn't home. They still came, you know, I was there on the weekends. I left in the morning. I came home at the end of the day and everything that had to happen in between somebody else did for a lot of years. And I told myself, my young self with my young mom, with my young kids, I was like, I'm gonna do this now when they're in middle school, which felt like a long ways away.

I wanna be more available because I know it's more complex with friends and just like navigating the world and being discerning. And I think I. Uh, good mom to little kids, but I feel like I'm a great mom to big kids. It's just the season that I really wanted to be there for. I feel like I'm, I'm just good at that and I wanted to be there for it.

And then two years ago, I realized my oldest is in eighth grade now, she was going into sixth, and I'm like, she's in middle school and I'm not even close. I'm not even close to this being real. Like, did I think it was gonna magically happen? I did. I thought it was gonna magically. and I started to realize, and I'm sure this for you too, it has been a very long journey for me to feel like I deserve to say I want anything out of the things I've built or the experiences that I've created.

Like I never had an expectation of how much Element three is gonna pay me. I never had an expectation of, it was like, show up, work hard, serve till you bleed, and that is the mission. I started to realize I wasn't bold enough to want it for myself, but I was bold enough to want me for them. Does that make sense?

Like, no, that makes sense. And so I started to say it out loud to my team and ask them to help me solve, to make this true. And now I'm home every day at three o'clock when Ivy gets off the bus. It was incredibly uncommon. For like three or four months. It feels like you leave at noon. I mean, I leave the office at two 30, like what?

You know, that was like so many hours left in my old life, and I'm doing nothing really. Once I get home, I'm driving people to practice. I'm packing things. I'm refilling water bottles. I'm not doing anything productive, which is also very uncomfortable for a while. Like, can somebody give me a task that's meaningful because this is.

Bananas. Like we're, this is not good, but I, at this stage, my girls are going to practice or going to a friend or staying after school or have to run to a thing from four 30 until like eight 30 every night. And that is their life right now. And if I'm not doing it, I'm not with them in. So my encouragement in some ways is, the worst case is, is we can't figure it out.

But what if we can? And what if you start telling yourself, I switched it from like a question to a state. Think about all the crap. You've solved things way harder than this. It's just for you. And so it's very uncomfortable to solve for it. It feels selfish, it feels, but here's what I found is that the space that I made by moving aside created this amazing opportunity for people who were dreaming

in their own ways to fill that vacuum. And they weren't like, I wish Tiffany would step aside so that I could do part of her job. That wasn't what they were thinking, but they were wanting, you know, I would love to make $30,000 more. I would love a promotion. I would love an opportunity to lead a bigger team.

I would love the opportunity to have full p and l responsibility, like their own career ambitions, led them towards what it was that I needed because I needed 30% of my. Back to do nothing but fill water bottles. Like it's all silly in the context of what I feel like I've been solving, but it's my new meaningful and it's a little bit of a project, like it's been a project for me to learn how to like find peace in the space, but I'll really encourage you to be like, no, how do I make it true and how do I get comfortable saying that this is something I want out of my life.

Joy Currey: So, well, I feel like this is a big step because I sent it out loud to someone other than my hu so that's my first step. Yeah. So you're now, now I'm gonna send this podcast to my board and say, um, so there's something I should tell

Tiffany Sauder: you. I think what you'll find, I, I bet, let me guess, let me hypothesize. I bet on your board there's two camps.

There's those that also had dreams of things that they wanted out of. and they made hard decisions to get it and they're so glad they did. And there are those that had dreams and didn't make the hard decisions to do it and they're, they regret not, I remember so vividly this is like, I don't know, I had like two kids I think, and I was talking to this very successful, powerful attorney and I was so enamored with all of her professional drippings, you know?

I was like, oh my, if only I can be so success. And she told me, if you allow your career to decide how many kids you have, I promise you'll regret it. Like out of nowhere she says this to me, she's like, it is my one regret. I wanted more children and I let my career tell me I couldn't figure it out. I promise you'll figure it out.

And she's right. I've so many kids and we've, I know you, you have like, you know, nearly a basketball team, so many. And you solve for it. And her point was, if they're in your home, you'll figure it out. If you're thinking about how you're gonna solve it, you won't solve it cuz you don't have to yet. I think also if you decide you move all the time away and your kids don't wanna do it, you have your time.

There's no bad ending. You know what I mean?

Joy Currey: I think one of my guiding principles along the way that you've also shared is it's about. and there's, you know, a calling to our work. But then there's a calling to our family and the most important thing that I continue to learn is how to listen to that calling.

And when we're talking about eating this dream, one of the things that God's been saying to me is this is when I keep talking about these dreams that are not your career. That's also part of my, what I'm calling you in. and so that listening to where God is calling you, uh, I think has worked for me up to this point and now I'm just trying to continue to honor that.

Tiffany Sauder: Well, you will get it right Joy. Just know that God loves you so much and you will get it right. It's been amazing to watch you and Rob's journey over the last 15 years and you're very special. I hope you know that. Thanks, joy. Thank you for joining me on another episode of Scared Confident. Until next time, keep telling fear you will not decide what happens in my life.

I will. If you wanna get the inside scoop, sign up for my newsletter. We decided to make content for you instead of social media algorithms. The link is waiting for you in show notes or you can head over to tiffany souder.com. Thanks for listening.

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