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Lucky Enough To Have Two · The Voice: Breaking, Believing, Becoming

0:10
Welcome to The Voice. We're breaking, believing, and becoming finally have somewhere to be heard.
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I'm Kim Munoz, and I'm so happy that you're here.
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This is a space where we talk about healing, heartbreak, family,
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faith, becoming, and all the messy, beautiful parts of being human.
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Today, it feels really personal to me.
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With Father's Day coming up, I wanted to talk about the men who shaped my life,
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my bio dad and my bonus dad, and the kind of love that leaves fingerprints on who you become forever.
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So, whether you had an amazing father, a complicated relationship with one,
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a step-parent who chose you, or you're grieving someone you love deeply,
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I hope this episode makes you feel seen.
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Because sometimes the people who raise us continue shaping us long after they're gone.
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With Father's Day coming up this weekend, I thought it felt appropriate to talk
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about the real men in my life.
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You know, the ones God carefully places into your story.
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And apparently, in my case, he looked down and thought, yeah,
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one man alone probably isn't surviving this assignment.
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So he gave me two.
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Either that, or I was just exceptionally special.
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Growing up, my dad always referred to himself as my bio dad.
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Like we were in some sort of emotional custody sitcom nobody fully explained to me.
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And honestly, that should have told me everything I needed to know about his
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personality right there.
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But looking back now, I actually think it was his way of trying to make everything
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feel easy for me, comfortable, safe.
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He never wanted me to feel like I had to choose between loving him and loving my bonus dad.
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So instead, he found a way to honor both roles. And the older I get,
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the more I realize how beautiful that really was.
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Because I didn't just get one father figure who loved me. Somehow, I got two.
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And now, as an adult, especially after losing one of them, I realize just how rare that really is.
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Gavman. His name was Gavin, but we called him Gavman, and so did everybody else. What a character.
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He was one of those people who could walk into a room and somehow leave it louder,
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warmer, and more alive than when he entered it.
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And if you knew him, you know exactly what I mean.
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He loved big, like really big, but not in performative ways,
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not in flashy ways, in thoughtful ways.
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He made people feel seen, important, and remembered.
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And honestly, watching him love people like that shaped me more than I probably
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even realized at the time.
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He grew up poor, completely self-made, and even though the latter part of his
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life became much simpler, he never stopped living.
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And when I say living, I mean really living.
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I've said this before, but he truly lived his dash out loud.
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That man left pieces of himself imprinted on the souls of people everywhere he went.
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And honestly, I don't think I fully understood the depth of that until after he passed away.
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The people I encountered afterwards, the stories they would tell me,
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the emotion they carried over losing him.
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It was honestly astonishing.
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If you stopped long enough to really know him, you were hooked for life.
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And even now, it still happens. I can't tell you how many times I've met someone,
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a security guard, a maintenance man, a random person somewhere,
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and somehow my father comes up and immediately their face will change.
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Oh my gosh, I knew your dad.
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Or he helped me so much.
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He always had wisdom, and we miss him terribly.
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And every single time, I'm reminded that his life reached so much farther than even I realized.
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God was using him exactly as he intended.
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He lived in a tourist beach town, and even now I still hear from people who
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met him during one random vacation week years ago.
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People reaching out through social media saying things like,
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your dad changed my life, or I never forgot him.
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And think about that for a second. How special someone must be to leave a lifelong
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imprint on people who only knew them for days.
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That was Gaffman. He had this way of making people feel important, seen, included.
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He could make you laugh one minute and make you feel deeply cared for the next.
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And somehow, he did both naturally.
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I definitely got my humor from him. We're both pretty sarcastic,
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and probably a little inappropriate at times, and both fully committed to making people laugh.
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Honestly, I could still picture him perfectly sitting there with a cigar and
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those dreaded Birkenstocks, cutting up, making everybody laugh one minute,
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and then sitting with someone crying the next,
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helping them through whatever heartbreak or hard season they were carrying.
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He never really met a stranger. If you were willing to sit for a moment, he was willing to care.
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But underneath all that humor, we also shared this deep need to take care of
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people, to help guide people, love them, show up for people who needed someone.
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And now that he's gone, I catch pieces of him in myself constantly.
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The way I love people and want to believe the best in them. The way I overthink gifts.
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This man would meticulously play in gifts with so much thought and care behind
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them. And the cards, my gosh, the writing and the cards.
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He made people feel deeply loved.
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And now I catch myself doing the same thing. The way I want everyone around
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me to feel included, cared for, important.
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That's him. And God, thank you for allowing parts of him to stay alive inside
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of me. I miss him terribly.
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And then there's my bonus dad. Bless this man, honestly, because he entered
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my life right as I was becoming a teenager.
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And if you've ever raised a teenage girl with hormones flying in every direction,
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you already know this man deserves some kind of award.
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He walked straight into the rollercoaster version of me and somehow loved me
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like I was fully his own anyway.
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And looking back now. I think God knew exactly what he was doing,
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because the two men in my life were so different in certain ways,
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but together they gave me exactly what I needed.
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One taught me things through personality, warmth, humor, and heart,
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and the other strengthened me through wisdom, stability, discipline,
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and guidance, and somehow God used both.
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There's something so sacred about that to me now as an adult.
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Step-parents, or bonus parents as I like to think of them, honestly deserve
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so much recognition, because they weren't there from the beginning.
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They didn't necessarily plan for this role in their life, and then suddenly
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they step into a family that already exists and choose to love anyway,
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and not halfway either, with patience, commitment, sacrifice, and grace.
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The people who didn't have to love you, but chose you anyway.
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There's something incredibly healing about being chosen, not tolerated, not obligated, chosen.
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And my bonus dad never once made me feel like I was extra, other than extra special and loved.
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I never felt like someone else's child around him. He just loved me.
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And honestly, God knew exactly what strengths I was going to need in my life
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because the areas where my bonus
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dad was strongest were the exact areas I would later lean on the most.
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He also grew up poor, and to this day is one of the most intellectually brilliant people I know.
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He had an incredible career, and then later, I got the absolute gift of having
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him become the CFO of my business.
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And I truly cannot explain how transformative that was for me as an entrepreneur,
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because he didn't just believe in me emotionally, he helped teach me how to
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believe in myself practically too.
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Now granted, he didn't always immediately support my ideas.
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I had this grand idea when I was younger to open a drive-thru coffee and dessert
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shop, and he absolutely thought I had lost my mind.
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One of his biggest regrets now, by the way, because shortly after that, in walks Starbucks.
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So after that, he started listening to all my crazy ideas a little more closely.
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And over the years, he supported me through every version of my becoming.
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And honestly, he still does. This man listens to every single episode of my
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podcast every week, every one.
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And there's something so full circle about that to me.
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Because one of the men who helped shape my voice still faithfully shows up to listen to it.
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He helped guide me through seasons where I didn't even realize I was being shaped.
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And now, looking back, I can see how both of these men loved me differently, but beautifully.
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One gave me certain pieces of
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myself, and the other strengthened pieces I would later need to survive.
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And somehow both helped build who I became.
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And nobody really prepares you for losing a parent, not the real version of
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it, because it's not just grief.
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It's the strange loneliness that sneaks up on you in random moments.
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You'll be completely fine one minute and then suddenly crying in the grocery
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store because you walk past their favorite scotch.
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Grief is weird like that. And I think what people don't talk about enough is this.
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No matter how old you are, some part of you still feels like somebody's child.
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And when that parent is gone, there's a shift that happens inside you.
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Not because you're incapable of living without them, but because the people
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who knew you from the very beginning, the people who carried the earliest versions
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of you, are no longer physically here.
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And that changes something.
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And honestly, after walking through that kind of loss, life changes you.
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I remember standing beside my father as he took his last breath,
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and as painful and heartbreaking as that moment was,
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what an unbelievably sacred gift from God it was to, to be there with him as
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he left this world and went on to the place he had dreamed about for so long.
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I kissed his face, and I held his hand, and I sat with him, and I stayed until his body turned cold.
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And then I had to walk out of that room knowing that was the last time I would
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ever physically see him until the day we are reunited again.
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And once you've lived through something like that, it changes your understanding of pain.
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It changes your understanding of love, too. because anyone who's walked through
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losing someone that they deeply loved knows this truth.
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Grief only exists where love lived first.
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But the older I get, the more I realize the greatest thing a father leaves behind isn't perfection.
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It's presence, showing up, loving well, being steady and making your children feel safe.
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It's the ordinary moments they probably never even realized mattered so much.
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The rides in the car, random advice, dumb jokes, checking in,
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the way they made you feel protected just by being there.
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And I think one of the strangest parts of becoming an adult is finally realizing
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your father was just a person too.
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Not just dad, But a man carrying pressure, responsibility, fears,
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dreams, failures, stress, and yet somehow still trying to love the people around
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him the best way he knew how.
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And honestly, that realization has given me even more gratitude for both of
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the men who helped raise me.
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Because now I can look back and understand the sacrifices differently.
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The pressure and the effort differently. And maybe that's part of growing up too.
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Finally seeing your parents not just through the eyes of a child,
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but through the eyes of another adult.
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And what I know for sure is this. The right men leave fingerprints on your life forever.
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The way you love, the way you trust, the way you show up for people,
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the way you survive hard things, pieces of them remain in you.
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So before we go, I want to leave you with a few things to think about.
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Who were the people that made you feel safe when you were growing up?
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Who taught you what love looked like, not just through words but through presence.
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And if you're lucky enough to still have those people here, have you told them
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lately what they mean to you?
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Because the more I realize life is really just a collection of ordinary moments
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that eventually become sacred memories.
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And sometimes the people who shaped us most don't fully realize the impact they
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hold while they're here.
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So love your people well, and if you're grieving someone today,
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I hope you remember this.
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Love does not end when someone leaves this earth.
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It changes form, but it stays, and maybe that's why certain people never really leave us at all.
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If you're lucky enough to still have your father or the man who stepped in and
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loved you like one, love him well.
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Call him back. Ask the questions. Listen to the stories one more time,
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because one day you'd give anything to hear them again.
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And if you've lost him, I hope you know grief is not proof that you're weak.
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It's proof that you were deeply loved.
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And maybe becoming who we are has a lot to do with the men who loved us first.
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I'll see you next time, and until then, take care of yourself and keep becoming.