Latest / The FEEL Podcast: Women’s Empowerment, Emotional Wellness and Self-Leadership with Melissa Crook / Reclaiming Yourself After Trauma: Kristin Duncombe on Boundaries, Healing, and Empowered Living

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Reclaiming Yourself After Trauma: Kristin Duncombe on Boundaries, Healing, and Empowered Living · The FEEL Podcast: Women’s Empowerment, Emotional Wellness and Self-Leadership with Melissa Crook

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  By focusing always on how we appear.
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  So not just trying to be, you know, beautiful and sexy and
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  attractive, but also do I appear nice, do I appear agreeable?
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  All of that stuff. By focusing on appearances, we
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  become objects. But when we stay focused on our
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  feelings about our lives and what we're doing and how our
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  relationships are going, etcetera, that's when we stay in
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  the position of being a subject in our.
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  Yeah. And I mean that that book
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  influenced me hugely. It took many years before I was
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  able to actually apply the lessons fully because I find I
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  found that for myself, the first step was realizing, Oh yeah,
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  that's the problem here. I identify as an object.
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  Hello and welcome back to The Field Podcast.
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  Today I'm your host, Melissa Crook.
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  I've got a new friend here with me I met through our good
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  friends at Podmatch. I'm always thankful for those
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  connections. They're always such a powerful,
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  impactful group of women that I get connected with there.
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  So I'm always thankful for that. Kristen Duncombe is here with me
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  today, and she describes herself as impulsive, determined,
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  disorganized and extroverted, friendly, introvert, and
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  thoughtful. I love those.
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  I love all the combinations and the nuance of those.
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  Kristen, welcome to the Field podcast.
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  Thank you. So much for having me.
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  I so appreciate being here. It's great to see you again,
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  Melissa. Absolutely.
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  You too. All right, when you introduced
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  yourself to me on Pod Match, the first thing that jumped out to
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  me that I loved. And we'll go and we're going to
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  go into our first talking point here in a minute, but how you
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  really help and support women and advocate for women to be the
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  subjects of their own lives instead of the objects that the
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  patriarchy historically for thousands of years has tried to
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  put us in those boxes. And I love that so much because
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  I think it speaks to your passion, your values, what you
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  care about. Talk to me about yourself care
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  journey in realizing that this was true for you and you were
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  going to be the definer of this because it's been a journey.
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  For you. Oh, yeah, absolutely.
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  So I always like to give credit where credit is due.
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  So I want to shout out to the author who introduced this
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  concept to me about being the subject of your own life versus
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  the object of someone else's life.
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  And that's Polly Young Heisendrath.
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  There's a terrific book now it's maybe 25 years old, but it's
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  it's timeless. It's called Women and desire
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  beyond wanting to be wanted. And that book literally jumped
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  off the shelf at me when my marriage had fallen apart.
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  I was on my own with my little toddler.
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  She was 2 at the time. She's about to turn 26.
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  So that was about 24 years ago. And I had left my husband
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  because I found out that he was having an affair and I was
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  completely lost. And this book jumped out at me
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  and it introduced me to this concept that women, because of
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  the way we're conditioned and because of the way the
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  patriarchal society works, we invest an inordinate amount of
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  time in pleasing, in trying to be pleasing to other people,
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  trying to be wanted, trying to be desirable, as opposed to
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  staying connected to what what our own true feelings and
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  desires are. Yeah.
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  So by by focusing always on how we appear, so not just trying to
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  be, you know, beautiful and sexy and attractive, but also do I
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  appear nice? Do I appear agreeable?
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  All of that stuff. By focusing on appearances, we
• 4:23
  become objects. But when we stay focused on our
• 4:26
  feelings about our lives and what we're doing and how our
• 4:31
  relationships are going, etcetera, that's when we stay in
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  the position of being a subject in our.
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  And I mean that that book influenced me hugely.
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  It took many years before I was able to actually apply the
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  lessons fully because I find I found that for myself.
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  The first step was realizing, oh, yeah, that's the problem
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  here. I identify as an object.
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  I didn't have that language before then.
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  So I was 32 years old when I read that book.
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  I, like so many women, have a history of sexual abuse.
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  I grew up seeing myself, you know, again without having the
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  language, but seeing myself as an object there to please guys
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  and, you know, to make sure that guys wanted me, etcetera.
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  And, and that, I mean, it almost sounds glib presented in those
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  terms, but I, I, I don't mean it in a glib way.
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  I mean that I think that my desire to be chosen by men and
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  to be wanted by men, it set my life on a course that was not in
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  my best interests. Absolutely.
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  Absolutely. I mean, you set that up so well
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  and this is a very common theme for women across the world.
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  Like absolutely, we get scripts very early on in life about what
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  is and isn't acceptable. Your popularity as you're
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  growing up in high school is based on so many of those
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  themes. Junior high college society
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  you're yes all of these things are these underlying where every
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  and then the reason I will tell you you see so many women
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  competing and pitting themselves against each other, especially
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  if they feed somebody's after my man or none of us.
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  We're living out of actually who we are and just trusting if I
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  show up as my true self because we were never invited to, that's
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  never encouraged. And so we never had the moment
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  at that point in life to entertain the thought.
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  If I just show up as my truest, most authentic self, the people
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  that I meant to be in in in association with, in
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  relationship with will be drawn to me and I'll be drawn to them.
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  And I'm going to trust that the right and, and not all these
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  other scripts of how I need to show up, how I need to present
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  what I need to look like, what I should be wearing, how I should
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  smell. If am I agreeable?
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  Am I too disagreeable? Am I too, am I accommodating?
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  Exactly. And it it comes in all different
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  forms and, and but it's that underlying kind of rhythm that's
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  there. It's very disruptive.
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  And I feel like most of the time women have a wake up moment
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  during their lives of like, this script is not serving me.
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  And it too many times it is a moment of abruptness, tragedy,
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  despair, upset, a meltdown. I mean all kinds of different
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  ways because we can only go so long living out of touch with
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  ourselves before all of the stuffed emotions, stuffed
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  frustration, stuffed irritabilities, shame, all those
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  things. We carry the donor, the script,
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  come bubbling over and then come bubbling over in really harmful
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  ways. If we're not able to get in
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  connection with them, allow them to the room to breathe and be
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  processed, healed from, and then allow ourselves to actually
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  accept and invite in who we were always supposed.
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  To be, it's a whole process and so.
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  As you did this, as you uncovered this, at what point
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  did you realize, wait a minute, it is time for you read the
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  book. It was a wake up moment.
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  You know, we have these different moments.
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  You have that wake up moment. It is time for me to to be the
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  definer of what my life looks like.
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  It's time for me to prioritize me.
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  That's not selfish. That's self-care.
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  That's healthcare. That is filling my cup so I can
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  actually. Show up the way I was designed
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  to in the world. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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  I mean, like I said that the book was It was a pivotal moment
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  for me. And I read the book and I reread
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  the book and I took notes and I thought about it and I was not
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  ready yet to fully identify as the subject of my own life.
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  So, for example, I got back together with the husband that
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  cheated on me, which by the way, I, I don't think that that was
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  the mistake of my life. I think that was a decision that
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  I took. And I think that people can
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  recover from infidelities. I went on to have my second
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  child, which I wanted, and I would say that the first chapter
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  of becoming the subject of my own life then was having a
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  child, a second child. Even though I still had doubts
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  about my marriage, I kept those doubts to myself.
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  But I knew that I wanted to have another child and I wanted to my
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  children to have the same dad. I just thought it would make
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  everything easier because maybe I should mention for the
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  listenership because I have a complicated international life.
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  So I'm American, but I've been an expat my entire life.
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  Even as a child. I still I live in France.
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  My husband, my ex-husband is Argentinian.
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  So I didn't want, I wanted another child, but I didn't want
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  to add another complicated country situation.
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  So I just knew that if I've got 2 with the same dad, like they
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  will go to Argentina together, sure, etcetera.
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  So that I would say was one decision I made, realizing that
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  even though I still have doubts about my marital situation, I
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  can still go for the thing that I know is true for me, which is
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  I do want to be mom to a second child.
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  I do want my daughter to have a sibling.
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  And then the other thing that quickly followed that is that I
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  was in a situation of being what they call a trailing spouse.
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  You know, I, I was raised in IA trailing mother.
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  My dad had a career with the foreign service and my mom
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  followed him around the world. I was in Graduate School when I
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  met my husband who had a career in international humanitarian in
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  medic medicine. And he asked me right away, will
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  you come with me? He worked for Doctors Without
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  Borders. He wanted to know, will you
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  suspend your plans and come with me?
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  Here's the impulsive part. Without even thinking about it,
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  I was like, sure, to me, that felt like the normal thing to
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  do. So I, I abandoned my plans,
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  became a trailing spouse. And so after I read that book,
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  which again, I'll remind you, I found that book at a moment when
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  my marriage had fallen apart. But the next big act towards
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  becoming the subject of my own life was that when my husband,
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  who, as I said, I got back together with when he wanted me
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  to uproot my life and move again to follow him on his career, I
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  said no because I then, you know, yours had ticked by.
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  But by then I had set up my life in Paris.
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  I had a successful career. My children had that, you know,
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  were in school. We had a good community of
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  friends. And I didn't want to move again,
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  especially after what had happened the first time.
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  You know, sure, he was hitting on me and, you know, the
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  financial dependence when you give up your career.
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  And so I said no. And I will never, ever forget
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  how radical an act this seemed at the time to to say, no, I am
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  planning on you. And for 18 months we had a
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  commuter marriage where, you know, he he had, he moved to a
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  city in southern France that was a 2 hour train ride from Paris.
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  And he would come back on the weekend.
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  Sometimes we would go down and see him.
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  And then the third moment of being the subject of my own life
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  was when, after 18 months of this, he said to me, he's like,
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  OK, listen, if you're not going to move, I am going to quit my
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  job and come back to Paris, and I will go back to working with
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  Doctors Without Borders. And when he told me that, it
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  wasn't an ultimatum. He was just telling me, right?
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  But I was like, oh, wait a minute.
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  Because I knew what that meant for our family was back having a
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  super bare bones salary with his new job down South, he was
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  having a much better income that of course, had a benefit to the
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  entire family. And so that was another moment
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  where I just thought, you know what, I can, I can do this, I
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  can make a change. And so I, I did pack up and I
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  moved down South with the kids and then I started commuting
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  back to Paris because I didn't want to give up my private
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  practice. I'm a therapist and and after
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  doing that for a year, I realized this is exhausting and
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  I don't want to do it but but I'm just mentioning those things
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  because there was another moment in time where I would never have
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  dreamed of saying this is what I'm going to.
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  Do yeah, yeah. You really started laying the
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  groundwork for defining yourself and your expectations.
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  You also started laying the groundwork with some healthy
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  boundaries. Yes, you didn't call them those,
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  but you had some healthy boundaries of what some yeses
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  and Nos would be some non negotiables would be.
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  You started, you know, these this, these things that you had
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  learned slowly started percolating and infiltrating
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  into your life. And all of a sudden that would
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  have seemed impossibly audacious years earlier, but now felt like
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  no. You had that sense.
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  You knew what was was. Right for you when you were
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  trusting that yes indeed and daring to say it because and I'm
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  not I don't want to paint my ex-husband out as some sort of
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  ogre. It wasn't like that.
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  But I can just tell you that, you know, he comes from a quite
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  macho culture where? Yeah.
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  He quiet quietly patriarchal. I mean, he would probably
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  disagree with that, but I'm sorry, he's an Argentinean man.
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  And I was raised in a family that was also quite patriarchal.
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  I mean, my dad was in charge. My mom, like she accepted that
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  there was no debate if she was of that generation where she
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  wanted, you know, the guy, the man to be in charge.
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  Plus, my father worked for the Foreign Service, which is a
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  totally patriarchal institution and and I had no model for.
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  I did not have the model that I hope that I provided for my
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  children, where my children see that I am a human being with
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  skills and capacities and sometimes I make mistakes, but
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  that I am in charge of my own life.
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  Yeah. No one's defining you for you.
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  You're defining you for you. Absolutely.
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  Yeah. And that's such a beautiful
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  example to set. And and because it's what they
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  see, it's what's modeled to you. But it's it takes, you know, you
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  at some point in in these generations, as we make these
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  transitions as women, we have to at some point take like, Nope,
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  that's not a road we're going down anymore.
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  Yeah, we're just, we're going to shift the narrative here.
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  We're going to model and live something differently because we
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  know this is actually what's healthiest for us and that is
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  not serving us. And we don't want us to want it
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  to be the one that's sold to the generations moving forward.
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  So you are able to make that shift, which is very courageous
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  and very different. And and it takes a little bit of
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  moxie to like, no, no, it really.
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  Does and you want to know something funny?
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  This, this is, this is, I can't believe I'm actually going to
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  say this on air, but I do think it's interesting and I think
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  that a lot of women might relate to this.
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  So I should also clarify, I'm actually still married.
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  We just haven't bothered getting divorced.
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  We have an amiable separation, and we live in different
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  countries, and we have an administrative marriage and a
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  decent enough friendship. And because of that, And now
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  it's been like 10 years, yeah, almost 10 years.
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  Every now and again, you know, if we have sort of a fun
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  conversation about something or, you know, a little bonding
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  moment for whatever reason, I'll think to myself, oh, yeah, I
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  kind of miss him. And then as quickly as I think
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  that, I think, Oh my God, you both things can be true.
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  You miss him for the good stuff about him, but you had to live
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  with that man again and start getting his permission and
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  running things by him and having to function on his times table.
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  And and then as quickly as I think, ah, I miss him, I think,
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  oh, thank God, I don't have to be married any longer because,
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  because I, I actually, because something about that equation.
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  I mean, I'd like to think that I would do it differently now that
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  I'm older and wiser. I just feel like it's so deeply
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  ingrained. I feel that if I was back in
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  America relationship there I would be again cooking dinner,
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  waiting for someone to eat when they were ready and feeling like
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  I shouldn't like the way it was in my marriage.
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  Like if there was a TV program I wanted to watch, I would never
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  turn the TV on until he was ready to watch it.
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  I know this sounds crazy and I know that other.
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  But I think a lot of women. Live the first way, even though
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  yeah, I mean, and I was going to say I think that in in this age
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  group, like I see young people now everyone like watches
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  television on their computer. And so already the computer is a
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  more individual experience. But I just thought when I was
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  still married, if I wanted to sit down and watch Breaking Bad,
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  I felt like I cannot do it until he is home and has had his
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  dinner and has told me that he is also ready to sit down and
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  watch television. And I know this sounds like a
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  silly example, but you know what?
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  It's a great example of being. Not the subject of your own life
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  and your own. Designers and when you're
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  looking like this day in and day out and you know, it's not
• 20:26
  authentic and honoring to you, it wears on you.
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  It's the oh, it's exhausting those day-to-day things that
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  wear on you. And I think, I mean, I'm 55.
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  So I think our generation is finally like looking around,
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  going, you know, the way that we've seen our mothers and
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  grandmothers and women before them operate does not feel
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  healthy or authentic, but it doesn't feel like it's actually
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  serving us. And the reality is that we don't
• 20:56
  have to. Those scripts are just scripts.
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  And it just because that's what we were told doesn't mean it's
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  true. And it's the time for us to
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  become curious and invested in who we are and align ourselves
• 21:10
  with people who want to be like that too and honor that as well.
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  So I mean, I think that, you know, that part of it is so
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  true. And so talk to me about, because
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  this leads nicely into when you have to live with those things
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  day-to-day, those little impacts, it starts impacting
• 21:27
  your mental emotional health, which then impacts your physical
• 21:31
  health if you're not, if you're still wearing stuff up all the
• 21:35
  time. So talk to me about your
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  experience with that. You mean like when I was still
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  married? Yeah.
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  Yeah. Just before you really started
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  breaking into really starting to find your own journey, the in.
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  Yeah. Had day in and day out, mentally
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  and emotionally. Yeah, yeah.
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  So it's interesting because, and I do always want to be careful
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  because at least in in my marriage, nothing was all bad.
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  There was many good, happy elements to it, sure.
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  But I'm going to focus on the part that that made me unhappy.
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  Yeah. I just felt that I was always
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  on, I was always waiting, always waiting on him because he had a
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  very high, has a very high pressure career in humanitarian
• 22:28
  medicine. He travelled a lot with his
• 22:31
  work. He was doing research and there
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  was an expectation that I would wait for him to make decisions
• 22:44
  about things to, to do certain things to.
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  And then so that would be when he was travelling and off in the
• 22:53
  field. But when he was at home, working
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  at the office, yeah, like he would often work till 8:30 at
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  night and there would be an expectation that, of course, we
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  were going to have dinner together, which meant that I had
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  to wait even though, you know, the kids couldn't wait that
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  long. So I would have so to speak of
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  impacts. One of them was weight gain
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  because I would eat dinner twice.
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  I'd eat with the kids and then I'd eat again with him.
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  And I did that to please him. Well, I drank a lot more wine at
• 23:26
  that time because that also kind of, although that had more to do
• 23:31
  with. Yeah, just loneliness.
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  I mean, one of the things I just, I just, I had what I would
• 23:41
  call kind of a lonely marriage. I felt very on my own with my
• 23:46
  kids. And truthfully, I want to
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  clarify, I loved being on my own with my kids.
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  So the loneliness part wasn't being alone with my kids.
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  The loneliness part was having a partner that would come and go
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  and, and wouldn't keep in touch while he was away.
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  So, so we would go back and forth in between.
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  I mean, and in fairness to him, we had many fights about this.
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  But what he would always say to me is he'd be like, I'm off in
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  like the jungle in Congo. Like, I think it's hard for me
• 24:25
  to call you. And this was before, you know,
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  everyone had an iPhone and all of this, but sure.
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  And it was just a difficult way to live.
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  And then and then what would happen for me is then he would
• 24:36
  come home and just expect to walk right back in to a
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  household that sort of had him as the teacher.
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  But The thing is I was, I was the patriarch and the matriarch,
• 24:51
  and that's where that subject object thing would come.
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  Because, you know, one of the things that we have a lot of
• 24:57
  fights about in our marriage, because he was a, he is a
• 25:00
  doctor. He, he would question my
• 25:04
  decision making about things. He'd be like what you you took
• 25:09
  the one of, you know, this child or that child to the doctor to
• 25:14
  and you started that antibiotic treatment and you didn't even
• 25:17
  run it by me. And I'd be like, OK, you might
• 25:20
  be the doctor, but I'm not an uneducated income group.
• 25:24
  Like I'm the mother. I'm doctor Mama and I am the one
• 25:28
  that has been here with a sick child.
• 25:31
  And I don't want to have to ask your permission to follow
• 25:36
  doctor's orders. So it was things like that
• 25:39
  where, you know, you'd get into these.
• 25:43
  Yeah. Anyways, you know, it's so
• 25:44
  funny. I cannot believe I'm speaking so
• 25:46
  much about my marriage. I did not think that that's what
• 25:48
  I was going to land on. But.
• 25:49
  But since we're talking about, you know, subject versus object,
• 25:53
  it is really true that when I finally left my marriage, I felt
• 25:57
  like suddenly I got to be the subject of my own life for the
• 26:02
  first time. And there was a lot of scary
• 26:04
  things that came along with that as well.
• 26:06
  Like, for example, and these are some of the moments when I
• 26:09
  really missed my husband. But like, being the subject
• 26:12
  meant that when the sink broke, it was my sink and I had to
• 26:18
  figure out how to fix it and I had to pay my bills.
• 26:25
  And I, I, I broke out of this dependency model and had to
• 26:29
  learn how to do things that I traditionally.
• 26:33
  And, and so one of the things Speaking of being a subject
• 26:36
  versus an object is I got to do something that I had always
• 26:40
  wanted to do when I was still married, but he refused.
• 26:44
  And that was pay someone to do the damn taxes, you know,
• 26:49
  because, but that, but that it would just, I mean, and bless
• 26:53
  his heart because he's very, you know, parsimonious and saved and
• 26:57
  say he'd be like, Oh, I'm not going to spend money on
• 26:59
  something that's that I can do myself.
• 27:01
  But then like entire weekends would disappear into him doing
• 27:06
  the paperwork. And I'd be like, can't we just
• 27:10
  like hire that dude for 400 bucks?
• 27:13
  No, no. And, and so I found it very
• 27:17
  daunting when I was first on my own because I still was in that
• 27:21
  idea like, oh, now I have to do I have to be him.
• 27:27
  But then it was like, no, now I get to be me.
• 27:30
  Yeah, called, you know, SOS taxes, SOS plumber.
• 27:34
  It's like I am going to pay to get things done because I get to
• 27:39
  decide because, because according to me that is a good
• 27:42
  use of money, not a bad use of money.
• 27:45
  In time, you know, in time, absolutely, absolutely.
• 27:50
  Thank you so much for that. And this really goes into where
• 27:53
  you really started showing up unapologetically for you, which
• 27:58
  then now enables you to also show up and support other women
• 28:03
  in their quest to live unapologetically as themselves.
• 28:07
  So talk to me about that transition of understanding.
• 28:10
  Not only am I doing this, but I can also support other women in
• 28:14
  doing this. Yes.
• 28:16
  Well, you know, what is so interesting, and I think about
• 28:19
  this a lot even today, is that if the how to say it, the cart
• 28:26
  was before the horse. Because truthfully, in my life
• 28:30
  as a therapist, I have already been cheerleading and
• 28:34
  championing women who were trying to be the subjects of
• 28:38
  their own lives. Because I was living with that
• 28:40
  double standard. It was OK for other people, it
• 28:43
  just wasn't OK for me. And because I was very good at
• 28:48
  playing a role of someone who seemingly had it all together, I
• 28:55
  was able to convince myself that I was also living in service of
• 29:05
  my own values. Because, you know, some reason I
• 29:07
  was but but, but so it wasn't in me learning to be the subject of
• 29:13
  my own life that I started being able to support other women and
• 29:16
  being the subjects of their own lives.
• 29:18
  I was already doing that. I just wasn't doing it for me.
• 29:21
  Like I said, double standard. And that's been one of the
• 29:25
  biggest mysteries of my adult life was, you know, practicing
• 29:31
  as a therapist for 20 years without actually I realizing and
• 29:42
  identifying in myself that that what I have is complex trauma.
• 29:49
  So, you know, I, I and I, I was explaining this to someone else.
• 29:54
  I think it's it's the best way to frame it.
• 29:56
  Like I was very much psychologically stuck at age
• 30:03
  10/10, 11:00 and 12:00. I was sexually abused for three
• 30:08
  years by one of my father's colleagues, a senior diplomat at
• 30:12
  USAID, which was then covered up by the State Department.
• 30:18
  And that abuse defined not not me, the whole person, but part
• 30:28
  of me, the part of me that we how I related to men was stuck
• 30:37
  in a child's mind. But it took me many, many years
• 30:43
  and finally leaving my marriage to realize that the problem I
• 30:48
  have and the reason I cannot be the subject of my own life is
• 30:52
  because every time I interact with men, not, you know, my
• 30:58
  child's teacher or not, you know, a client.
• 31:01
  But in the in the romantic sphere, instantly what should
• 31:05
  be. This turns into this because I I
• 31:09
  see myself as a child and I see them as the adult.
• 31:13
  Yeah. And and so even if they are
• 31:17
  trying to be equitable, it's me doing that.
• 31:20
  I'm lamented that to myself, sure.
• 31:23
  And it took me a long time to realize that I was stuck in that
• 31:31
  child's mode. But when I realized that, then
• 31:35
  things changed super quickly. Yeah, it's so interesting how
• 31:40
  you can be working in a certain area but still be so
• 31:44
  disassociated from your own reality.
• 31:46
  And I think this happens more than than we realize sometimes.
• 31:50
  It's like you can be handing out all the right information to
• 31:54
  everyone else, but yet when, when you're confronted with this
• 31:58
  in your own life, you're like, no, this is how I operate or no,
• 32:02
  yeah, I'm just I'm, you know, this is what works best for us
• 32:06
  and this is how we make things work.
• 32:08
  I mean, you find all kinds of ways around it.
• 32:11
  Talk to me about, you know, this really became the point where
• 32:15
  you really not only were living out of your values, but you were
• 32:20
  able to, I would imagine, tap into what your why was not the
• 32:24
  why that had been set out in front of you of how you showed
• 32:27
  up. And, and it's because your your
• 32:29
  why wasn't and values weren't just about showing up for other
• 32:31
  women. It started being about showing
• 32:33
  up for you. Yes, well, you know what, for me
• 32:37
  and actually more specifically, it had a lot to do with my
• 32:40
  daughter because what what happened is so my my children
• 32:45
  have almost a six year gap. So when my son was born, he's my
• 32:50
  second, my daughter was almost six years old.
• 32:54
  OK. And we so so when my kids were
• 33:02
  little, that was when we had our first bout with commuter
• 33:07
  marriage, where my husband was in one city and I was in another
• 33:10
  city with the kids managing everything on my own.
• 33:13
  And then often facing recrimination, like for not
• 33:16
  asking Hannibal. And I used to say to him, I'd be
• 33:20
  like, aren't you happy that I'm like, smart and independent and
• 33:26
  able to manage things? Yeah.
• 33:30
  And in theory, he would say yes, but I was still constantly like,
• 33:34
  sort of in trouble for not, you know.
• 33:36
  Yeah. I mean, if he fortunately, I'm
• 33:39
  sure he will not listen to this podcast because I'm sure he
• 33:41
  would object to what I'm saying. And again, I want to reiterate,
• 33:45
  he's not like an over. It's just, you know, and you get
• 33:47
  into relationships with people and it becomes very, very
• 33:50
  complicated. Well, what I was going to say
• 33:52
  about my daughter and my why is that?
• 33:55
  As my daughter moved into adolescence, she started having
• 34:04
  a lot of questions. She and I have always been
• 34:08
  extremely close and she started having a lot of questions, very
• 34:13
  good questions, not asked in anger, not asked
• 34:17
  confrontationally, but just things like why such and such
• 34:23
  thing was so difficult for me. Like one really good example is
• 34:29
  that so we were because again, because of my husband's career.
• 34:34
  So I said that we had moved down to a city in southern France and
• 34:38
  then after that we moved to Geneva, Switzerland, his work.
• 34:43
  And while we were living in Geneva and I was again busy
• 34:47
  recreating my life, recreating my private practice, my
• 34:52
  daughter, who was 16 at that time, was thinking about
• 34:58
  university. And she wanted to go look at
• 35:03
  university programs in the UK because she was pretty certain
• 35:07
  that she wanted to go to university in English.
• 35:10
  I mean, English is her mother tongue and I mean, it's just so
• 35:16
  crazy now when I think about this because see, the me of
• 35:20
  today would never this would never even be a thing, but at.
• 35:24
  That. Time.
• 35:25
  And so this was, you know, again, this was 10 years ago
• 35:28
  because like I said, my daughter's about to turn 26 and
• 35:31
  this is when she was 16. I wanted to take her to the UK.
• 35:38
  It's a one hour flight from Geneva to get to London.
• 35:41
  And I wanted to go to the UK and see universities and take the
• 35:45
  train here, there, everywhere, take, you know, four or five
• 35:49
  nights, stay in hotels or or bed and breakfast and do a little
• 35:55
  university tour. Because I wanted to support her
• 35:59
  in realizing her desire to go to university in the UK.
• 36:04
  But my husband was categorically opposed to her going to the UK
• 36:10
  because he you know, if if you know anything about Argentinian
• 36:15
  history, many people don't know about this, but there is a
• 36:18
  battle between the UK and Argentina or Berlin.
• 36:23
  The folks in the UK call it the Falkland Islands.
• 36:26
  The Argentinians call it Las Malvinas, Las Malvinas.
• 36:30
  And my husband is a feudor. He feuds and he has never
• 36:37
  forgiven the UK for the battle over the East, Les Malvinas and
• 36:42
  all the people that died. And so he was like, that's no
• 36:46
  way is my child going to go to university in the UK.
• 36:50
  And this was when I really had to Start learning to stand up
• 36:55
  because what I had to say to him was I'm sorry.
• 37:01
  Our daughter identifies as Anglophone.
• 37:07
  Yes, she is. Also, she's trilingual.
• 37:10
  You know, she grew up in France. Her dad is Spanish speaking, but
• 37:14
  her mother tongue is English. And she wants to go to
• 37:18
  university in the UK. And I don't agree with you.
• 37:24
  Like, you want to put your foot down about this, but just
• 37:27
  because you don't agree with it, that means that that's the final
• 37:32
  ruling. Like, I disagree.
• 37:35
  I think that she should get to explore that option of going to
• 37:39
  university in the UK. And so so my daughter, you know,
• 37:45
  she was like, wait, this is a problem.
• 37:50
  And I was like, yeah, this is a huge problem.
• 37:53
  And I'm going to have to take a decision to go against his
• 37:59
  wishes and go off to the UK with you and go on a university tour
• 38:07
  and OK, let's do it. But that was it was like a
• 38:12
  breaking point. It was brought the.
• 38:16
  Things have been building up, sure.
• 38:19
  It was a breaking point. And then it was like that as she
• 38:23
  was becoming a young woman with her own desires.
• 38:27
  And I, I saw him standing in the way of some of her dreams and
• 38:32
  desires because of his own prejudices.
• 38:34
  And I was just like, with the way, whose side am I going to be
• 38:38
  on here? Am I going to be the unified
• 38:40
  parental unit when I totally disagree with him?
• 38:45
  Or am I going to take my daughter's side and advocate for
• 38:49
  her and tell him to buzz off? And that is what ended up
• 38:52
  happening. Yeah.
• 38:54
  And, and it was a series of things like that which led to
• 38:57
  the end of our marriage. Yeah.
• 38:59
  Well, I think it's one of those things you were able to
• 39:02
  identify. This isn't what's healthiest for
• 39:04
  her. It also is an example of how
• 39:06
  deeply entrenched cultural narratives are, cultural
• 39:10
  narratives of how men and women are supposed to show up in the
• 39:13
  world. And when you're deeply
• 39:15
  entrenched in a cultural narrative and someone addresses
• 39:18
  like, you know, this is, it's really like you operate this way
• 39:23
  and you don't trust me to operate this way and you can't
• 39:26
  see it because it's just seen as normal because that's the way
• 39:30
  you've already seen it and you've been told it's the only
• 39:32
  way to be. And the cultural narratives are
• 39:34
  very difficult to to navigate and breakthrough when when
• 39:38
  you're on the other side of it and you're like, this does not,
• 39:41
  this is not what's best and healthiest for everyone.
• 39:45
  You know, because there's, you know, this is not the time and
• 39:47
  place for us to come together as a unit unified, because this
• 39:51
  isn't actually what's healthy for her.
• 39:53
  Right? Exactly.
• 39:56
  And and this, this, this system that he's been a part of is
• 40:00
  clouding his ability to, instead of just thinking, he always
• 40:05
  knows what's best, which is what's been modeled to him
• 40:07
  throughout his life and history. And family being able to see.
• 40:11
  That no, this other thing, even though I've got some personal
• 40:14
  connections to it, she doesn't. Yeah, this might actually be,
• 40:19
  you know, but that's tricky. So that became a real defining
• 40:22
  point, not only for and and really a moment for her too,
• 40:26
  Where? That's a.
• 40:26
  That's a. Pivotal change.
• 40:28
  And I think sometimes those things when you're seeing like,
• 40:31
  Oh, no, he's trying to play this patriarchal role in her life
• 40:35
  now, not just lying. And no, no, we have to stop
• 40:39
  this. This this cannot keep going.
• 40:42
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's so interesting because
• 40:46
  just going back to that moment, I mean, I remember them when we,
• 40:50
  you know, went off to the UK and I felt it was like being on fire
• 40:58
  in terms of excitement, like I had broken free, but also fear,
• 41:05
  like, Oh my God, I broke free. I'm in trouble.
• 41:09
  And, and, and I remember, I, I remember vividly how it felt
• 41:15
  walking down. You know, we, one of the places
• 41:19
  we went was Edinburgh. So walking in Edinburgh and
• 41:22
  walking in Bath and, you know, these beautiful and walking arm
• 41:26
  in arm and she was, you know, so young and, and wide eyed and
• 41:31
  thinking about her future. And I was there thinking like,
• 41:35
  Oh my God, what have I done? I I I sort of knew we're we're
• 41:42
  not going to, I'm not coming back from this.
• 41:44
  Yeah, yeah. This is a turning point.
• 41:47
  Yes. Yeah.
• 41:48
  But it still wasn't the turning point, but it was one of like
• 41:52
  the stepping stones to the major turning point.
• 41:55
  The stepping stones kept getting bigger.
• 41:58
  Yeah, Yeah, absolutely. So, so, so going into living out
• 42:02
  of your own expectations versus others, this was, you know,
• 42:07
  you've had steps in that we've heard your journey, you've we've
• 42:10
  seen you take these steps as you've started to define this
• 42:13
  for yourself throughout time. What was that final point that
• 42:18
  was like, Nope, this is a non negotiable.
• 42:21
  I will now. I will not allow anyone else to
• 42:25
  tell me. What they expected me and live
• 42:29
  out of that. I'm not going to do that
• 42:31
  anymore. Not going to abandon myself that
• 42:33
  way anymore. Yes, well, and and I love the
• 42:36
  way you phrase the question. It's actually the perfect
• 42:39
  phrasing of the question because and Oh my gosh, I'm going to
• 42:42
  answer that question and it is going to sound so nuts.
• 42:46
  Even to this day I go, wow, I can't believe that was me, but
• 42:50
  it was me. And it is a just the perfect
• 42:54
  example of identifying as the object versus the subject.
• 42:58
  So I have mentioned in the story that I just told that my
• 43:02
  husband, you know, hates the UK and holds a grudge against them.
• 43:07
  Well, there's a story that's even bigger than that one in his
• 43:11
  life and that is, is that he is rapidly anti American.
• 43:17
  Now, yes, I, I am American and he did an American woman.
• 43:23
  But the condition I agreed to when I was busy being the object
• 43:29
  and not the subject. I agreed that because he
• 43:34
  absolutely has no tolerance for the United States of America, I
• 43:38
  agreed that we would leave the United States and never go back.
• 43:44
  I was allowed to go and, you know, visit on my own, but I
• 43:48
  agreed to a marriage that would not include my culture or
• 43:55
  country. And so, you know, as I was
• 44:00
  mentioning, I spent a lot of time alone with my kids, and I'm
• 44:04
  super close to both of my kids. And I spoke English to my kids.
• 44:08
  I shared, you know, American culture with my kids.
• 44:10
  Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers Neighborhood, you know, Bear in
• 44:14
  the Big Blue House. Like all of those references.
• 44:17
  Yeah. Michael Jackson.
• 44:19
  I mean, just all the, you know, Yeah.
• 44:22
  Mac and cheese, you know, just just I I I transmitted my
• 44:28
  culture to my children because that's what we do.
• 44:31
  It wasn't something I had to think about.
• 44:32
  It's just what what you do. Yeah.
• 44:35
  And I did take my kids to the States every year to see their
• 44:40
  grandparents. We usually would go because in
• 44:43
  France the kids have two weeks off around Halloween time.
• 44:47
  So we would always go for the the two same holidays.
• 44:51
  And that became my my parents at the time lived in Washington, DC
• 44:56
  And you know, that became my kids American experience going
• 45:00
  to Washington, DC. But then my daughter, this was
• 45:04
  before she was 16. This was when she was Oh, well,
• 45:08
  actually, yeah, it was the precursor.
• 45:10
  It was when she was in when she was 15.
• 45:13
  It was our last year living in France.
• 45:14
  She in her history class or in her French school, they had to
• 45:20
  study the Rev American, the American Dream, and she had to
• 45:25
  do a book report on the Rev American.
• 45:28
  And that led her into learning some things about Jack Kerouac
• 45:33
  on the road. And then we started talking
• 45:36
  about this concept of the Great American Road Trip.
• 45:42
  And like both of my kids, they, oh, mom, can we do it in the
• 45:47
  Grand Canyon in California? And 'cause they're, they knew
• 45:51
  Washington and they've been to. Yeah.
• 45:54
  But but it was like, wow, imagine that.
• 45:57
  And so I proposed to my husband that we take the kids on the
• 46:04
  Great American Road Trip and he refused.
• 46:11
  He said that he would not spend a dime on that diabolical place.
• 46:19
  And, you know, he said how awful it was that like, what kind of
• 46:24
  person plans a family vacation that doesn't include every
• 46:28
  member of the family that, that this is this is how my bulk
• 46:33
  object starts. That was, that was the, the
• 46:36
  pivot point because he, he, I said, but I'm begging you to
• 46:41
  come. It's not that I've planned a
• 46:43
  vacation. Right.
• 46:45
  I'm begging you to come with me, accompany me.
• 46:50
  And he said no. And, and I cracked in that
• 46:53
  moment and I wasn't planning it. I never thought I would do it.
• 46:57
  But I just said to him, you know what?
• 47:00
  I can't do this any longer. I want to separate and and we
• 47:05
  and I that was the moment that I told him that I was leaving him.
• 47:10
  It was 20 years in and I took my kids on the Great American Road
• 47:15
  trip and to this day my at the time.
• 47:19
  So my daughter had her 17th birthday in Seattle, WA.
• 47:23
  My son was 11 and to this day they both talk about the Great
• 47:30
  American Road Trip. We drove almost 8000 miles in a
• 47:33
  zigzag and it was such a beautiful, informative moment.
• 47:38
  It was such an amazing summer. I so we spent the whole summer
• 47:43
  inside. I was terrified.
• 47:46
  I couldn't believe that I had left my marriage.
• 47:50
  I just couldn't believe I had done it, but I did it and that
• 47:59
  was that was the moment. Yeah, yeah.
• 48:04
  And I, and I think too, I mean, I think it's important to point
• 48:07
  out that fear is a very common emotion in these situations
• 48:14
  because you can both know something is the best and
• 48:17
  healthiest thing for you and be terrified because you haven't
• 48:20
  navigated it on your own before. Like there is that the both can
• 48:25
  be true and it's that it. And so I mean, I think that it's
• 48:31
  really important that we can hold both of those truths in
• 48:34
  that, you know, I think that, you know, so powerful.
• 48:37
  So I have to believe that that learning to accept and embrace
• 48:42
  all of your layers as you went through this journey and made
• 48:46
  these decisions has been a big part of your journey as well.
• 48:49
  Can you talk about that more? Yeah.
• 48:54
  So, OK. When you say the layers, which
• 48:57
  layers are you thinking of? Because I'm thinking all of the
• 49:01
  pieces and parts that make up. Who you are, the decisions you
• 49:03
  love, the decisions you don't, the things that happened that
• 49:06
  were terrible. But we are at some point we have
• 49:09
  to come to, and we don't have to love our layers, all of them,
• 49:12
  but we have to do an acknowledgement of them and, and
• 49:15
  give ourselves grace and approach them with curiosity
• 49:19
  rather than judgement and shame for the things that we would
• 49:22
  wish hadn't happened or, you know, And so getting to that
• 49:25
  point, because I really, you know, for me, that was a pivotal
• 49:29
  point in knowing my value, that regardless of all these layers,
• 49:34
  the ones that I love, don't love all these things.
• 49:37
  I am inherently valuable. I have learned in the areas of
• 49:40
  my life that things happened or decisions were made, but I
• 49:44
  didn't love. I can see how I, how that
• 49:47
  happened in that season. I was in life who, how, what I,
• 49:51
  who taught me what. I was surrounded with the
• 49:53
  narratives that were in place. And so, yeah, being able to kind
• 49:56
  of put on almost like somebody gave me a really great analogy
• 50:00
  yesterday, almost like putting your life up on a movie screen
• 50:03
  and taking yourself out of it for a moment.
• 50:05
  But looking at it and being like, oh, yeah, I mean, that was
• 50:08
  tough, but I can see why that happened.
• 50:10
  Or, oh, you know, that makes sense.
• 50:13
  Yeah, Yeah, it does. Well, I was going to say that I
• 50:15
  think that one of the things that I, I think a lot about this
• 50:20
  and, and it's interesting going back to sort of connecting back
• 50:25
  to that question about how what I learned, how I've been able to
• 50:29
  use that with the people that I work with in therapy.
• 50:32
  And I, and I started out by saying, yeah, but I could see it
• 50:35
  in other people's lives when I couldn't see it in my own.
• 50:38
  Something I learned about myself that now I bring it into every
• 50:43
  therapy session with other people.
• 50:46
  Is that question of how did you contribute to this problem?
• 50:52
  Because I know that Speaking of layers and, and I think This is
• 50:55
  why I, I keep saying things like, you know, in spite of what
• 50:59
  I'm telling you about my husband, he is not an Ober and I
• 51:02
  don't hold him single handedly responsible for what happened
• 51:05
  between us. I hold myself 50% responsible
• 51:09
  because even if you know, I was stuck at age 10 because of the
• 51:15
  traumatic events of my childhood, the reality is I
• 51:20
  wasn't age 10. I was a young woman who LED this
• 51:25
  man to believe that I was on board with what he was demanding
• 51:30
  of me. And so you can't blame him for
• 51:35
  thinking that what he, you know, he he was who I have tried to
• 51:42
  be. He was someone who just said
• 51:44
  what he wanted. I want you and these are my
• 51:47
  conditions. And do you accept?
• 51:51
  And I'm the one that was like, yes, I accept.
• 51:55
  And it would have been a different story if I had been
• 51:58
  able to say, no, I do not accept.
• 52:00
  But, but so Speaking of layers, I think a lot when I think about
• 52:07
  my marriage, but also when I think about any situation I get
• 52:10
  into any longer. Because of course, you know,
• 52:13
  whether in business, whether in dating, whether if I have a
• 52:17
  fight with one of my kids, I try to think about what did I do to
• 52:23
  contribute to this problem. Because I don't believe, you
• 52:27
  know, there's always some exceptions.
• 52:29
  But I think in most situations, if you're dealing with otherwise
• 52:33
  reasonable people, it takes 2 to tango.
• 52:36
  And the only thing that you can really do is examine your own
• 52:41
  contribution to the problem. So that's one of the layers.
• 52:45
  Like, how am I screwing things up for myself along the way?
• 52:49
  And then the other one is being self compassionate.
• 52:55
  I have learned to, to, to, yeah, to stop beating myself up.
• 53:01
  You know, I can. I am so self critical and awful.
• 53:05
  And actually it's my little sister who says something that
• 53:11
  I, I really appreciate. Sometimes if I'm like texting
• 53:14
  her and I'll be like, oh, I hate myself.
• 53:16
  I did blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
• 53:17
  And she'll say stop being mean to little Kristen.
• 53:21
  And it's true. I can be really mean to little
• 53:25
  me. And.
• 53:26
  And so I think about that a lot. And I try to be kind to myself.
• 53:33
  Yeah, I love that. Yeah.
• 53:36
  Yeah. And it's, it's, it's interesting
• 53:38
  because it's, it's actually not that hard to do once you get
• 53:42
  your head around. It right, yeah.
• 53:45
  It's just one of those things that we do start doing so young
• 53:48
  that I mean, if somebody is like challenging us in that you don't
• 53:52
  think about it until you're like, Oh yeah, I did do.
• 53:54
  That Oh yeah. I wouldn't say that to you, you
• 53:57
  know, And then when you're to what you're aware of it, you're.
• 53:59
  Like, Oh yeah, OK that. Doesn't have an impact.
• 54:01
  Yeah, such a big part of it. So in this, you decided to write
• 54:07
  a book. Talk to me about that moment it
• 54:09
  when you were decided, OK, it's time for me to do this.
• 54:13
  Well, so just to clarify, it wasn't so.
• 54:17
  So this is my third book. So OK, going back to being an
• 54:21
  object versus the subject, my first book that I wrote sprang
• 54:26
  also from an object subject moment.
• 54:31
  OK, I won't. I won't fill your ears with all
• 54:34
  the details because otherwise this podcast is going to be
• 54:36
  about me. Every marital drama that ever
• 54:39
  happened between us. Well, we had another marital
• 54:42
  drama. It was a very painful and
• 54:45
  upsetting 1 and I was also having a health crisis.
• 54:48
  You you probably can't see, but I had a Melanoma on my face.
• 54:53
  That's three doctors refused to remove.
• 54:56
  They said it would mar my beauty.
• 54:59
  And then it was my mother, who has had Melanoma, who took one
• 55:02
  look at my She hadn't seen me for a year.
• 55:05
  She's like, Oh my God, we are going straight to the
• 55:07
  dermatologist. Her dermatologist biopsied it.
• 55:10
  It was a Melanoma. I ended up with 14 stitches and
• 55:13
  it was whole drama. But I was terrified, terrified,
• 55:18
  terrified that it had metastasized because I had been
• 55:22
  living with it growing on my face for a year.
• 55:25
  At the time, my little son was 1 1/2 years old and my daughter
• 55:30
  was 7. And I was terrified that I was
• 55:33
  not going to live to see them come of age.
• 55:37
  And the other thing I was terrified of was that I'm going
• 55:42
  to die. And I have still not written the
• 55:44
  damn book that I always wanted to write.
• 55:48
  And so that was the thing that got me organized to write my
• 55:53
  first book, which is called Trailing.
• 55:56
  And it's about becoming an object.
• 55:59
  It's so interesting now when I look at my own body of work,
• 56:02
  because every book I have written is actually about the
• 56:07
  incremental steps of of leaving behind being an object and
• 56:11
  becoming a subject. Yeah, but but so Fast forward
• 56:16
  then that was in that book came out in 2012 and Object, which is
• 56:25
  my most recent book, which literally as the title, because
• 56:28
  this is the book about becoming the subject of your own life.
• 56:32
  It it yeah, is an unpacking of the sexual abuse story that I
• 56:38
  lived and the cover up by the United States State Department
• 56:42
  who protected a serial pedophile who went on to rape and abuse
• 56:47
  many children. It's a whole horrible, awful
• 56:51
  story. It makes me so mad.
• 56:54
  And the thing that mobilized me to finally write the damn Wolf
• 56:58
  was it was during the Brett Kavanaugh Christina that Donald
• 57:08
  Trump grabbed him by the pussy. And mostly that story about
• 57:14
  Larry Nasser, the couch for USA Gymnastics.
• 57:19
  Because when I heard that story that he had been reported.
• 57:27
  So. Many times.
• 57:29
  He had been reported so many times and he had been allowed to
• 57:34
  carry on with impunity, molesting and raping so many
• 57:40
  young women. And when I learned that, and by
• 57:44
  then I was out of my marriage, something just like blew off my
• 57:49
  like the seal was broken. And I was curious and I was
• 57:53
  like, I am not holding this story quiet any longer.
• 57:56
  You know, the State Department paid me $20,000.
• 58:02
  They, they would say it wasn't hush money, but I did have to
• 58:06
  sign on the dotted line that I would use that money to get
• 58:09
  therapy and then not bother them again.
• 58:12
  And that was so, so the, the sexual abuse that the State
• 58:16
  Department covered up it, it came to an end in my life when I
• 58:20
  was 12. When I was 22, I had a
• 58:24
  breakdown. That's when the State Department
• 58:26
  cut me a check for $20,000 and told me to buzz off.
• 58:30
  And when I was 32, that is when an old friend who was also one
• 58:35
  of the victims from that original cohort of girls found
• 58:40
  me over the Internet and sent me a link to an article that was in
• 58:44
  the Boston Herald that our abuser, William Francis Mulcahy
• 58:49
  had been arrested on Cape Cod for raping an 8 year old girl.
• 58:53
  And that has been like any denial that I had still been in
• 58:58
  over the years, that, I mean, I, I wasn't in denial.
• 59:03
  It's just that I felt so disempowered.
• 59:05
  It had after the way the State Department covered it up and
• 59:09
  told our parents to shut up and move on.
• 59:12
  Case closed. I just never felt like I was
• 59:18
  allowed to talk about it. I was in object mode.
• 59:23
  Yeah, yeah. I don't I don't get to be the
• 59:25
  subject that blast this story out of the water.
• 59:29
  And so and so that is what mobilized all of those things,
• 59:33
  but especially that Larry Nassar story and then and and and the
• 59:40
  Christine Blasey for Brett Kavanaugh.
• 59:43
  I'm just all of it. I'm just so sick of it.
• 59:45
  I was in Geneva at that time, but of course Geneva is very
• 59:49
  close to France. And so I don't know if the story
• 59:51
  made as big headlines in the States, but in France it was a
• 59:55
  huge deal. Dominique Strauss Yeah, yes.
• 59:59
  Attacked the the the housekeeper in the Sophie tell.
• 1:00:04
  Yeah. I mean, just all of the stories.
• 1:00:06
  I'm so sick of it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:00:10
  So that's that's what got me writing that book.
• 1:00:15
  Well, and it's important because it we have to give voice to
• 1:00:18
  these things so that other women feel safe talking about their
• 1:00:22
  stories and their trauma and take the stigma off of that and
• 1:00:26
  bring voice to it and call out what is wrong and what is
• 1:00:29
  harming us. We can't create safe spaces for
• 1:00:32
  us without doing that. So, so thank you for your
• 1:00:34
  willingness to talk about that, to share the courage it comes
• 1:00:38
  comes with doing that. Work.
• 1:00:41
  Because that is it is it had takes a toll, but it's also I
• 1:00:46
  would imagine when you finally were able to give voice to it
• 1:00:50
  and have make your own choices on how you're going to handle
• 1:00:53
  it. There's an empowerment in it.
• 1:00:55
  Too, I would Oh, very much so. Very much so.
• 1:00:57
  Writing that book is the best thing that I've done in my adult
• 1:01:01
  life in terms of my own healing and and liberation.
• 1:01:07
  Sure, absolutely. So on that note, in living out
• 1:01:11
  feel, finding empowerment, embracing layers, that's our
• 1:01:14
  acronym, Talk to me about how coming to this point in your
• 1:01:18
  life, how that has impacted your relationship with yourself as
• 1:01:22
  well as your relationship with others.
• 1:01:25
  Oh wow, so interesting the way I would say it has, because of
• 1:01:33
  course those two things are very much connected.
• 1:01:36
  I think the way it's relation affected my relationship with
• 1:01:40
  myself is that I just don't really have room anymore for
• 1:01:46
  any. What's the way to say it?
• 1:01:51
  I I don't have space in my life for boundary list relationships.
• 1:01:56
  And the reason I say boundary list, what I mean is I don't
• 1:02:00
  really have anyone in my life anymore where I feel like my
• 1:02:03
  boundaries are not being respected.
• 1:02:06
  And if if I do come up against something uncomfortable again,
• 1:02:12
  whether in personal life or even you know, because as a
• 1:02:15
  therapist, those things can come up with working with clients,
• 1:02:18
  you know, people that chronically don't pay their
• 1:02:21
  bills or I am very skillful now at addressing those things
• 1:02:27
  directly or retiring relationships that dream me.
• 1:02:33
  I just am not interested any longer in accommodating people
• 1:02:41
  that I feel are not making a positive contribution to my
• 1:02:47
  lived experience. And you know, fortunate.
• 1:02:50
  That doesn't mean that like people are dropping like flies
• 1:02:53
  around me because most people are wonderful and boundary full
• 1:02:56
  and all of that stuff. But you know, you do have to.
• 1:03:00
  And, you know, we started out by with the characteristics.
• 1:03:05
  You know, all of my life, people told me I'm an extrovert because
• 1:03:10
  I am friendly and commutative and all of that.
• 1:03:14
  But it's only been since I released the book and really got
• 1:03:21
  in touch or I shouldn't say when I released the book, when I
• 1:03:23
  started writing the book and really started getting in touch
• 1:03:26
  with, as I was saying, my stuck points and just how I am and how
• 1:03:30
  I want my life to be. But I realized it's not true.
• 1:03:33
  I'm not an extrovert. I am an introvert.
• 1:03:35
  And what I mean by introvert, I always thought, oh, if you're an
• 1:03:38
  introvert, you're like all quiet.
• 1:03:40
  And but no, it's not that. It's just that I need a lot of
• 1:03:43
  space. I need time by myself.
• 1:03:46
  I need quiet. I need, I love to read and I, I
• 1:03:51
  love to just be on my own, reading, thinking, writing.
• 1:03:57
  And I'm very protective of my time.
• 1:04:02
  You know, I, I know lots of, and I have friends that are very
• 1:04:05
  much extroverts and they get resourced by constantly being
• 1:04:09
  around other people. So then of course, invitations
• 1:04:11
  are constantly coming in. Hey, let's meet, let's go for
• 1:04:14
  coffee. Laura and I just say no, Yeah.
• 1:04:17
  I mean, sometimes I go, but a lot of the time I'm like, no, I
• 1:04:23
  can't make it. I've learned to say I'm not
• 1:04:25
  available instead of feeling like I have to give an excuse
• 1:04:28
  and explain. I can't.
• 1:04:31
  But have fun. Yeah, Absolutely.
• 1:04:34
  Yeah, yeah. Did I answer the question I
• 1:04:36
  feel? Absolutely no, no, that was
• 1:04:39
  perfect. Absolutely no.
• 1:04:40
  That was so great. Thank you so much.
• 1:04:42
  That was great. OK, we are down to the rapid
• 1:04:46
  fire. Name 5 activities that nourish.
• 1:04:50
  You 5 activities that nourish me are long, long walks, listening
• 1:04:57
  to audio books, podcasts or music reading.
• 1:05:04
  I read voraciously. I should also say long walks in
• 1:05:10
  which I don't listen to anything except the birds.
• 1:05:13
  I love being. I'm a city slicker to to my
• 1:05:18
  core. I'm a city girl.
• 1:05:21
  But I do love being in parks, nature.
• 1:05:26
  Another activity that nourishes me is I have lots and lots of
• 1:05:30
  plant babies. My house is filled with plants
• 1:05:32
  and I have my balcony or boxes and I love taking care of my
• 1:05:38
  plants. And then I think that's for and
• 1:05:41
  the last one I would just say is I am so fortunate.
• 1:05:46
  And yeah, of course I'm biased, but hey, it's a great bias to
• 1:05:49
  have. I've got two young adult
• 1:05:51
  children that I just love so much.
• 1:05:54
  You know, you're not supposed to be your kids best friend, but at
• 1:05:57
  this age, my kids are definitely my best friends.
• 1:06:00
  I'm still Mama. Yeah, You know, we have good
• 1:06:04
  boundaries and they respect me as their mom, but I'm so close
• 1:06:09
  to them and. And spending time with them is
• 1:06:12
  one of my great joys. I live with my son.
• 1:06:14
  He's 20 and he's got his own interesting life going on.
• 1:06:18
  And my daughter has an interesting life in London and I
• 1:06:21
  go see her as often as I can so. Yeah, yeah, I love that.
• 1:06:25
  Thank you for that. All right, 5 words on how you
• 1:06:28
  want to feel the next six months.
• 1:06:31
  I want to feel energized because I've been tired lately.
• 1:06:37
  I want to feel motivated because I'm working on a new book and I
• 1:06:44
  also found out that I have osteopenia so I need to do some
• 1:06:47
  weight lifting. I want to feel committed to
• 1:06:54
  forcing the medication down my geriatric cat's throat, even
• 1:06:59
  though she makes it very difficult every time.
• 1:07:01
  But I love her so much. I don't.
• 1:07:02
  I want her to die from her hyperthyroidism.
• 1:07:05
  I want to feel organized because I'm so disorganized and I'm
• 1:07:10
  doing late stage ADD testing because I do think that I am one
• 1:07:16
  of those adults who has found the ways to manage.
• 1:07:20
  But I think that I actually have undiagnosed ADD.
• 1:07:22
  So I do want to work on my organization and I want to feel
• 1:07:26
  healthy because yeah, I'm 55 going on 56 now I find out that
• 1:07:31
  my bones are crumbling. It's so etcetera and you know, I
• 1:07:34
  want to be healthy. Yeah, I can relate to that.
• 1:07:37
  I started lifting weights last summer.
• 1:07:39
  I added that back into my regime because of that very thing.
• 1:07:43
  There's history in my family and I did.
• 1:07:46
  I got a bone density scan and they're like, you're on a good
• 1:07:49
  track. And I'm like, yes, yes, it might
• 1:07:51
  help. Do you know a certain?
• 1:07:54
  Program or do you just I do I whatever I.
• 1:07:57
  I do follow a program called The Faster Way.
• 1:08:00
  It helps me with my macros and making sure I'm getting enough
• 1:08:04
  protein and fiber and it helps and it plans up the workout so
• 1:08:08
  I'm getting the kind of movement I need and it mixes up the
• 1:08:11
  movement. It's got.
• 1:08:12
  I'm the cardio. Yeah, it's called The Faster
• 1:08:15
  Way. I've got a ambassador number, so
• 1:08:17
  if you want, I'll send that information to you.
• 1:08:19
  OK. Yeah, send it to me.
• 1:08:20
  That would be. I will.
• 1:08:22
  I would. Love to love more thank.
• 1:08:23
  You all righty, but yeah, I know it's part a part of you know,
• 1:08:26
  but what I I loved about the conversation today, Kristen, is
• 1:08:30
  you unfolded so beautifully organically, how life is a
• 1:08:34
  journey and these things that we learn about ourselves don't
• 1:08:38
  always comment one big time. They come in increments over
• 1:08:42
  time as we get to know ourselves more, as we start trusting
• 1:08:45
  ourselves more, as we you know, so many of these things lead
• 1:08:50
  along the way on this path, on this journey that we go on.
• 1:08:53
  So I appreciate you so much sharing so authentically and
• 1:08:56
  organically and honestly and vulnerable interest.
• 1:09:01
  Yes, thank you. I mean, it's, I really, really
• 1:09:03
  appreciate the opportunity to to speak vulnerably about these
• 1:09:07
  things. Absolutely tell people where
• 1:09:10
  they can find and follow you. And this will also be on our
• 1:09:13
  website at embracinglayers.com on the resources page.
• 1:09:17
  So the easiest way to find me is to go to my website,
• 1:09:21
  itskristenduncombe.com. Or you can I post a lot on my
• 1:09:27
  Instagram about my books and about the yeah, just all the
• 1:09:31
  things that we were talking about.
• 1:09:32
  And so my, my Instagram handle is Kristen Louise Duncombe with
• 1:09:37
  underscores in between. Sir Kristen under score Louise
• 1:09:40
  under score Duncombe. And yeah, that's probably the
• 1:09:43
  easiest way. It's all connected ultimately,
• 1:09:47
  yeah. Yes, absolutely.
• 1:09:48
  All right. Any last thoughts you'd like to
• 1:09:51
  leave with our listeners today? Well, I do believe that global
• 1:09:57
  warming is a thing that's hot as hell in Paris tonight and I just
• 1:10:01
  wish, I hope that we are not headed into World War Three.
• 1:10:05
  That's what I hope. Oh, no kidding.
• 1:10:07
  Yeah, me too. It's June when we're recording
• 1:10:09
  this, folks. Yeah, that will make sense.
• 1:10:11
  It's no point. With this drops in October,
• 1:10:13
  we're all OK. Yeah, I hear you want that.
• 1:10:16
  Yeah. Thank you so much.
• 1:10:19
  Thank you today. I really appreciate it.
• 1:10:22
  Absolutely, yes, listeners, take good care out there.
• 1:10:28
  Listen to what Kristen said. Trust that the journey is
• 1:10:32
  ongoing and that you can, you can be the subject in your own
• 1:10:36
  life, but be patient with yourself.
• 1:10:38
  If, if as that unfolds as you grow to know yourself more.
• 1:10:42
  And thanks so much for your time today, listeners, and have a
• 1:10:46
  great day. We'll see you next time I'm here
• 1:10:48
  on The Field Podcast. Hello, and thank you so much for
• 1:10:52
  being with us today on this episode of the Field Podcast.
• 1:10:56
  If you would like more information on how you can apply
• 1:11:01
  these talking points that I share with our guests in each
• 1:11:04
  episode to your own life, really utilize this field framework, go
• 1:11:10
  to embracinglayers.com, fill out our contact form and let's set
• 1:11:15
  up a free 30 minute consultation to talk about how you can start
• 1:11:20
  living your most authentic, organic, healthy, feel fueled
• 1:11:25
  life. Thanks again for being with us
• 1:11:28
  today. We'll be back to you soon with
• 1:11:29
  another episode here on the Feel Podcast.