Latest / LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships / #16: Parental Estrangement: When Your Adult Child Goes No Contact - An Estranged Parent Shares Her Personal Story

Transcript

#16: Parental Estrangement: When Your Adult Child Goes No Contact - An Estranged Parent Shares Her Personal Story · LAUNCH: Parenting Tips for Raising Adult Children & Building Better Relationships

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: I'm Sherry Jonas, and this is Launch, a podcast for parents with older children.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: We talk about different challenges that parents are facing, what they can do to help their young adult, and how they can improve their relationship.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: On today's episode, I have a guest who has so much to share on a very difficult topic.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: Crystal Allen is a licensed intensive healing coach dedicated to helping parents navigate the painful reality of when their adult children decide to go no contact.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: Recently, Crystal embarked on her own journey of self-discovery and healing, coming to a profound realization that her own unresolved childhood wounds had contributed to the trauma that her children had to deal with.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, rather than remaining stuck in guilt or denial, Crystal chose to face the hard truths and is in the process of healing herself and other parents who are going through the same thing.
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_01: Join us as we dive into the realities of parental estrangement, healing, and how to move forward when your adult child has decided to go no content.
• 1:07
  SPEAKER_01: Hi, Crystal Allen.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_01: I am so happy that you're here again.
• 1:13
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for joining me on this podcast.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_01: I'm going to say that this is not our first time.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_01: We have done this before, but I screwed up.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_01: Rookie move.
• 1:25
  SPEAKER_01: I did not press record.
• 1:27
  SPEAKER_01: So thank you.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you for being here again.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm going to- It's my pleasure.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_01: And I I want to say it again.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_01: I find your story so interesting.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I've caught you on doing your lives on TikTok, and I was captivated the very first time.
• 1:45
  SPEAKER_01: And then we found out we had someone in common.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_01: So that was exciting.
• 1:50
  SPEAKER_01: But I love how open and honest you are.
• 1:53
  SPEAKER_01: And I'm sure that many parents find so much comfort in talking to you, especially being in the same situation.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I really appreciate you being here.
• 2:04
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, thank you.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm glad I'm glad to be here.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for having me.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_01: Let's begin by telling the listeners about you as a young girl.
• 2:15
  SPEAKER_01: You have some really interesting roots.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_01: Um, you've had you have not had an easy life.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: You certainly have had your fair share of trauma.
• 2:25
  SPEAKER_01: So, I mean, let's be honest, you could not have come this far without being so self-reflective.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_01: So please share a little bit about yourself.
• 2:35
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, sounds good.
• 2:37
  SPEAKER_00: Um, well, um, my name is Crystal, and I'm a woman in my 50s, and I've been trying to find myself for a few years.
• 2:43
  SPEAKER_00: And this all started.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh I was born in Regina, Saskatchewan, from uh two Metis parents.
• 2:49
  SPEAKER_00: Metis is an indigenous group in Canada, and um, my mother is actually a residential school survivor.
• 2:55
  SPEAKER_00: So um the trauma goes back to that for sure.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: My parents both relied on alcohol a lot, um, more than is healthy, I would say.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: And they separated when I was about seven.
• 3:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my father, who has passed away now, was a big old teddy bear.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: He was a burly man.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_00: He was just uh he to me, he was a giant.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and he it it was uh I adored my father.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: I adored my father from the time I could remember I adored my father.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: And when my mom and dad separated, that really had a huge impact on me.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Um my father's biggest vice was women.
• 3:42
  SPEAKER_00: He loved women.
• 3:43
  SPEAKER_00: He was, he would, as a self-admitted womanizer.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and unfortunately, that part of his personality has affected me in a negative way.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_00: Um so yeah, my parents divorced when or separated when I was about seven, and I'm a Gen Xer.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_00: So we were feral.
• 4:04
  SPEAKER_00: Nobody was watching us.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: We did whatever we want when we wanted when we were kids, right?
• 4:08
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 4:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 4:11
  SPEAKER_00: And um, I have an older brother and a younger brother, and uh, I was the only girl in the family, and I was raised actually by a by God bless my mother, but my mother is deeply ingrained in the patriarchy.
• 4:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so I was raised very differently from my brothers.
• 4:26
  SPEAKER_00: My brothers were treated like kings, and I was the one that learned how to do all the housework and serve the man and do the dishes and cook and clean and make sure the house is perfect for the man.
• 4:38
  SPEAKER_00: So I would be doing those chores, they'd be outside playing.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_00: So it was a very um strict upbringing, of course, when it comes to that part of my my life.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_00: But I do appreciate that my mom did share that stuff with me.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_00: But the uh the downside of growing up where you are parentified like I was, being the the little adult sometimes, taking care of everything, taking care of my brothers, taking care of my mom's emotional needs, taking care of my dad's emotional needs at times.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't realize how much of a burden that was.
• 5:14
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought it was just every girl's job to do that when you were growing up.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: When I was 14, I got pregnant.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_00: And um obviously we were feral, we weren't being watched, nobody knew what was going on.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: So um I was free to do whatever I wanted to do at that time.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so um I got myself into trouble.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I felt like a very bad girl, like I was one of those bad girls.
• 5:43
  SPEAKER_00: And that's how I labeled myself probably most of my life.
• 5:46
  SPEAKER_00: I've labeled myself as that bad, bad girl.
• 5:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I didn't realize that getting pregnant at 14 was a traumatizing experience for a teenager.
• 5:56
  SPEAKER_00: I just knew it was my experience.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: But as I've gotten older and I've gone to therapy and had some help, I recognize that that's trauma.
• 6:05
  SPEAKER_02: Yeah.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Being pregnant at 14 years old is trauma.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:09
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: So um, and having indigenous parents who abused alcohol, who um had uh their own trauma from being Metis, uh, it just got passed down to us.
• 6:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think my parents did the best they could.
• 6:28
  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
• 6:29
  SPEAKER_00: I think my parents both, I know my parents both love me very, very much.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_00: I know they, I know my mother adores me.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_00: But she didn't have the tools to be able to raise children at that time.
• 6:40
  SPEAKER_00: It was children were to be seen and not heard.
• 6:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and you used a lot of shame and discipline to raise your children.
• 6:47
  SPEAKER_00: Bad child, bad crying, don't do that.
• 6:51
  SPEAKER_00: You're that makes you a bad person.
• 6:53
  SPEAKER_00: And there's just a lot of shame that that went along with that as a child.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I was 14 and got pregnant, I was petrified.
• 7:01
  SPEAKER_00: But um, yeah.
• 7:03
  SPEAKER_01: You didn't want to, you wanted to carry through with the pregnancy.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: You never never thought about anything other than just being a mom.
• 7:10
  SPEAKER_01: No, I mean you were a mom when you were young, when you were before you were a mom, it sounds like for expectation, right?
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: That's right, exactly.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Just for our listener, we want to I want to explain that it means role reversal.
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: That's that's sort of what it sounds like.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_01: Is when the child becomes the parent, the parent becomes the child, and the child has to become the emotional support system.
• 7:32
  SPEAKER_01: So you had practice, so to speak, because you were already being the parent of your mom.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_01: And then so I guess when you became pregnant, it almost felt like natural for you to just carry carry through with it really did.
• 7:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's interesting that you should say that, Sherry, because I never thought about it before, but it felt so natural for me to just, okay, so I'm pregnant now, I'm gonna have a baby, and I'm gonna have a baby to take care of now, not knowing what that meant at that time.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_00: But my mother, my parents were very, very supportive of me keeping my oldest daughter um very supportive.
• 8:06
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so grateful for that because I don't know how it would have turned out had they forced their forced any other decision on me other than what I was wanting to do.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 8:17
  SPEAKER_00: What actually happened was my mom put me on birth control pills um after my first baby, and she would administer them every morning with my breakfast.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, the problem was that back then in the 80s, doctors believed that young girls should be on the very weakest form of birth control pills.
• 8:33
  SPEAKER_00: The less hormones, the better.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: You need a weak, you know, you're just a little girl kind of thing.
• 8:37
  SPEAKER_00: And the birth control pill didn't work.
• 8:39
  SPEAKER_00: So I got pregnant again.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Were you living with your parents?
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_01: Pardon me?
• 8:44
  SPEAKER_01: Were you living with your parents with your daughter?
• 8:46
  SPEAKER_00: I was living with my mom, yes, because I was I got pregnant at the end of grade eight.
• 8:52
  SPEAKER_00: And I was I had her at the end of grade nine and then went back to high school in grade 10.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Because back then you didn't stay in the high school.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: I went to a Catholic high school.
• 9:03
  SPEAKER_00: That's that's the times that they would make you clean out your locker midday and ship you off to some school for pregnant girls.
• 9:09
  SPEAKER_00: They didn't, they wouldn't allow you to stay in the school, right?
• 9:12
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what happened to me.
• 9:13
  SPEAKER_00: It was the middle of class.
• 9:14
  SPEAKER_00: I was in grade nine.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I uh I still remember what I was married wearing.
• 9:18
  SPEAKER_00: I was wearing a purple corduroy jumpsuit.
• 9:20
  SPEAKER_00: And the principal came to my school, my class, and said, come to the the office and said, We understand that you're pregnant.
• 9:26
  SPEAKER_00: We've heard rumors that you're pregnant.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Is that true?
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, Yes.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And they said, clean out your locker, we're sending you to a school for pregnant girls.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they immediately did that in a very shame-based way, right?
• 9:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I finished uh grade nine um at that school and then went back to regular high school in grade 10, and then found out I was pregnant again.
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: Okay.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: And uh that's when my parents, our parents said, both my parents and his parents both said, listen, these guys got to get married.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: This was 1983.
• 9:58
  SPEAKER_00: You guys have to get married.
• 10:00
  SPEAKER_00: So my proposal was my ex-mother-in-law calling me on a Thursday saying, he's coming home this weekend.
• 10:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think you guys should get married on Sunday.
• 10:08
  SPEAKER_00: And that was it.
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: And it was like, oh, oh, oh, okay, I guess we're getting married on Sunday.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_00: And that was that was it.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we got married.
• 10:16
  SPEAKER_00: And he was in the armed forces, and so we were stationed in Calgary.
• 10:21
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I was 16, I'll never forget the U-Haul pulling away from my mom's house and me being in the passenger seat of my then husband's first husband's car with my baby in the back and being seven, seven months pregnant with my second one and waving to my mom and knowing that was it.
• 10:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was on my own.
• 10:40
  SPEAKER_00: I was on my own, and I was eight hours away from her.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: So that was a really scary moment to be by myself for those years that I was married, the first marriage.
• 10:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_01: So tell me what happened with the little girls.
• 10:54
  SPEAKER_01: So I and I'm jumping ahead because of course I know the story, but so now you you're here, you're with, you're living on your own, and your husband, is he with, is he doing his thing?
• 11:05
  SPEAKER_01: Like where was he?
• 11:06
  SPEAKER_01: Was he helping you or was he and so well?
• 11:09
  SPEAKER_00: We were both, yeah, we were both teenagers.
• 11:11
  SPEAKER_00: He was in the armed forces, so he did a lot of um, you know, he was away a lot because armed forces, you're just away a lot, right?
• 11:19
  SPEAKER_00: So he was away a lot.
• 11:20
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and we were too young to know what a marriage was all about.
• 11:23
  SPEAKER_00: It was incredibly toxic and I would say abusive on both ends, to be honest with you.
• 11:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and then one day in April of 1985, uh, my ex-mother-in-law, the same one who proposed to me, called and said, You guys are getting a divorce.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: You're not getting along.
• 11:40
  SPEAKER_00: This isn't working.
• 11:41
  SPEAKER_00: You guys have to get a divorce.
• 11:43
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm gonna come and get the kids.
• 11:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, she didn't tell this to me, she told it to my husband at the time.
• 11:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then my husband conveyed that to me.
• 11:49
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, You're not taking my kids.
• 11:52
  SPEAKER_00: That my girls were about three and a half and almost two.
• 11:56
  SPEAKER_00: And uh they came, they drove eight hours, and when they got here uh to the city, my girls were having a nap, and I was trying to get them to leave the house.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_00: I was like, You're not taking my kids, and big arguments ensued.
• 12:12
  SPEAKER_00: They started, you know, name calling, and I tried to pick up the phone to phone the police, and they pulled the phone off the wall.
• 12:18
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to grab some suitcases in the girl and go outside, and they wouldn't let me leave the house with anything.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so um I put on my running shoes and I ran across the street to to a neighbor's house to phone the RCMP um to get some help.
• 12:34
  SPEAKER_01: Which we should say to our American friends, it's the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 12:41
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, it's the police department, Canadian Police Department, federal police.
• 12:45
  SPEAKER_00: And um, and while I was there, my neighbor was watching out the window and she said, Crystal, they're taking the girls, they're taking the girls.
• 12:51
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, What?
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I looked out the window, and all I could see was them putting my girls in the back seat.
• 12:58
  SPEAKER_00: They were having a nap, so they had to have woken them up from the nap.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: And they were putting them in the backseat um of a truck, Ford Ranger, and they drove off.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the last time that I had custody of my daughters.
• 13:10
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to fight for them.
• 13:12
  SPEAKER_00: I really did.
• 13:13
  SPEAKER_00: But I was 18 years old.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_00: I had no family, no job, no money, no place to live.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: I was homeless.
• 13:20
  SPEAKER_00: I had no car, I had nothing.
• 13:23
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I tried to get help from social services, I tried to get help from legal aid.
• 13:28
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to get help from all kinds of different resources, but they all said, that's not my department, it's not my department.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And there was no such thing as amber alerts back then or charging a parent with abduction of a child or a grandparent with that, just didn't exist.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: That wasn't part of our structure.
• 13:45
  SPEAKER_00: So the everybody was like, Well, they can just go ahead and take them because they're related to them.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_00: And it was a spinning in circles for me.
• 13:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then the day came.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_00: I remember talking to a lawyer one day, and he said, he looked at me and said, You don't have a snowball's chance in hell of winning custody of your children based on your circumstances right now and the circumstances of my ex-in-laws who had who were white and had money, right?
• 14:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 14:14
  SPEAKER_00: So the court case came, uh, the custody hearing came and went, and they got custody of my children in 1985 when I was 18.
• 14:25
  SPEAKER_01: What about visitation?
• 14:26
  SPEAKER_01: Did you have a chance to at least see them?
• 14:28
  SPEAKER_00: I tried to visit them as much as I could.
• 14:31
  SPEAKER_00: Um, unfortunately, my ex-mother-in-law had uh was very, very didn't want me to spend time with the with the girls.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: Every time the girls would say anything positive about me, I miss my mom, I love my mom, I want to talk to my mom, she would discipline them.
• 14:51
  SPEAKER_00: Um and say things like, You want to go and talk to your mom, you want to see your mom, no problem, I'll let you go live with her, and then you'll wind up being like a dirty little welfare Indian like she is.
• 15:02
  SPEAKER_00: And it was just horrific.
• 15:03
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, it was it was horrific.
• 15:05
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm that's about as far as I'm gonna go with that.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: But um, so the girls suffered with having visitation rights with me because they would I was constantly trying, they were defending themselves with her, and I was constantly trying to get her to just leave them alone and stop tormenting them about their relationships with me.
• 15:25
  SPEAKER_00: But I tried to see them maybe three or four times a year, as much as I could.
• 15:28
  SPEAKER_00: I would hop on a Greyhound bus and jerk do the 12-hour bus ride to go and see them.
• 15:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but sometimes she would hide them from me.
• 15:38
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my children remember hiding from me, me knocking on the front door, you know, saying, I'm here, I'm here to pick up the girls, and they would be hiding.
• 15:46
  SPEAKER_00: And she's like, one of my daughters said to me, I remember us hiding under the windowsill and grandma telling us to be very, very quiet because we didn't want she didn't want you to know that we were home.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: So things like that happened.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: It was very painful.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 16:01
  SPEAKER_00: And that lasted for you said how many years did you not have so I did that for probably about seven years.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then when they were just about to hit their teenage years, um I pulled, I pulled, I I let them be.
• 16:17
  SPEAKER_00: I let them be.
• 16:18
  SPEAKER_00: I gave them I wanted them to have some peace.
• 16:22
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I couldn't pull them out of their home anymore.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: I knew I couldn't, I couldn't yank them out of their home again.
• 16:29
  SPEAKER_00: Um, they'd already been through that once.
• 16:31
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't want to do that to them again.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: I just wanted my daughters to be have some happiness and some peace in their life.
• 16:38
  SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't see them for about seven years throughout their teenage years.
• 16:45
  SPEAKER_00: And that was a really difficult time for me, very difficult time for me.
• 16:49
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't have any support.
• 16:50
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand what was happening to me.
• 16:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even see it as trauma.
• 16:55
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was just a bad person, I was a bad mom, I was a bad girl, as usual.
• 17:01
  SPEAKER_00: That's the narrative I had in my head for my whole life.
• 17:04
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_00: And so that just reinforced it for me.
• 17:07
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, there you go.
• 17:09
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I don't deserve to even be a mom.
• 17:11
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 17:12
  SPEAKER_01: But but you have a good relationship with them now.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: So what happened?
• 17:16
  SPEAKER_01: How did you turn that around?
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: So when I when my oldest daughter was about 18 years old, I was diagnosed with um uh malignant melanoma, which is a very uh aggressive form of skin cancer, the most aggressive form of skin cancer.
• 17:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so I didn't I had that battle and I I'm fine.
• 17:33
  SPEAKER_00: I had surgery and I was good.
• 17:35
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't need chemo, I didn't need radiation.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: I was very fortunate I caught it early enough.
• 17:39
  SPEAKER_00: But it got me to thinking, you know, these girls don't even know their medical background.
• 17:45
  SPEAKER_00: They have no idea what kind of medical history they they've got on my side of the family.
• 17:49
  SPEAKER_00: Maybe I'll send them a letter just outlining that, you know, this happened to me, but I'm good now, I'm okay, and I just want you to know um what your medical history is.
• 17:59
  SPEAKER_00: And that reached my oldest daughter, that letter, and she sent me an email, an angry email, very angry email, because she had been told so many things about me.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_00: And then I emailed her back, and then she emailed, and it started out as hello, and that was how she would word her, you know, and then it was like, hi, Crystal, and then it got to hi, mom, and then it got and went to love you, and then it just kept progressing.
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so within four months, we were seeing each other face to face for the first time in seven years.
• 18:34
  SPEAKER_00: I'll never forget that.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: Looking at my daughters as full-grown adults, having seen them before as just preteens.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: It was a magical day, and I I'll never forget it.
• 18:45
  SPEAKER_02: Wow.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: And so we're close now.
• 18:48
  SPEAKER_00: Um, my second daughter is a little bit more distant with me, but we have a we have a good relationship.
• 18:53
  SPEAKER_00: There's nothing wrong with it.
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Um, she just doesn't have the memory of me being her mom.
• 18:59
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas my oldest daughter, she still remembers.
• 19:01
  SPEAKER_00: She's she was three and a half, she has some snippets of memories, and she knows exactly who I am.
• 19:06
  SPEAKER_00: Whereas the youngest, you know, she she knew who I was, but she didn't have any cognitive memories of that whatsoever.
• 19:13
  unknown: Right.
• 19:14
  SPEAKER_00: How old are they currently?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: 42 and 41.
• 19:19
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, 42 and 41.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh my gosh.
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so somewhere in between there, though, you got married again.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: You had another child.
• 19:30
  SPEAKER_00: Actually, what happened was um, and I I hated these are this is where it's difficult for me because I'm admitting stuff that's hard to admit difficult to admit.
• 19:40
  SPEAKER_00: I felt like a mom without a child.
• 19:43
  SPEAKER_00: I felt very lost, and so I made a conscious decision to have a child um with someone that I wasn't in a long-term relationship with at the time.
• 19:56
  SPEAKER_00: Now it wasn't the right reason to have a child.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: I see that now, I understand that, but it was fantastic when he was a baby and it was just him and I.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um and then when he was not quite two years old, um, I met and married my second husband, and we had another child.
• 20:19
  SPEAKER_00: So I wound up having the two daughters from the first marriage, and then my son from another relationship, and then my youngest child from my second marriage.
• 20:32
  SPEAKER_01: Okay, so the marriage is okay.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_01: So we're still on we're on marriage number two.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_01: You've got the two boys, you end up getting divorced from marriage number two.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 20:45
  SPEAKER_01: How did that impact your boys when you went through that?
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_01: Well, how was the marriage, first of all?
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_01: And then how how did the divorce impact them?
• 20:54
  SPEAKER_00: The marriage was it the marriage had its ups and downs, it had its moments.
• 20:59
  SPEAKER_00: Both of us, I think, were not prepared to be as committed as we should have been in that marriage.
• 21:08
  SPEAKER_00: And um, so we both made all kinds of mistakes, but we did try to live a pretty good life as much as we could with the kids.
• 21:18
  SPEAKER_00: You know, we did the holidays and we'd take them camping and they were in sports, and I volunteered at the school, and I mean, we had all the typical stuff going on.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Our marriage, though, because I wasn't healthy, I didn't understand how damaged I was.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I wasn't you you can't have a good relationship when you're not healthy, right?
• 21:39
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't great, and it ended in a in a bad way for me, where he he he left the family to live with somebody else.
• 21:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that triggered some abandonment issues in me that I never knew existed up until that point.
• 22:01
  SPEAKER_00: And I literally crumbled.
• 22:04
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I couldn't take care of myself, let alone take care of my kids.
• 22:09
  SPEAKER_00: Now my oldest son was living on his own at the time.
• 22:11
  SPEAKER_00: It was just the youngest son who was 15 and he was there with me.
• 22:15
  SPEAKER_00: And what wound up happening was I ended up relying and leaning on him during the divorce instead of the other way around.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even think about how it was impacting him.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: All I think about was how it was impacting me.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: Which is interesting because we're talking generational trauma, like what you went through as a child.
• 22:36
  SPEAKER_01: You were you parentified your parents, and now here you are with a young boy who now has to take care and emotionally support you.
• 22:46
  SPEAKER_01: So cycle continues.
• 22:48
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, the cycle continues.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't see it, I couldn't see it at the time, but the cycle continued.
• 22:54
  SPEAKER_00: I that's when I really fell into addictions.
• 22:56
  SPEAKER_00: I all I've always kind of struggled with addictions most of my life, a little bit here and I shouldn't say like a little bit here or there.
• 23:03
  SPEAKER_00: How do you struggle a little bit with addictions?
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: But you know what I mean.
• 23:05
  SPEAKER_00: It wasn't anything I was I was managing my life just fine.
• 23:09
  SPEAKER_00: And then when my second husband and I separated, I relied on alcohol, prescription medication, um, all kinds of gambling, all kinds of things, anything to try to escape that pain.
• 23:22
  SPEAKER_00: And I couldn't escape it.
• 23:23
  SPEAKER_00: I could I couldn't run.
• 23:25
  SPEAKER_00: I ran as hard as and far as I could.
• 23:28
  SPEAKER_00: And I ran so far that I fell into a third husband.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: I just want to ask you something.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_01: So, do you consider yourself a recovering alcoholic right now?
• 23:39
  SPEAKER_00: No, I I actually don't believe in the term alcoholic from my perspective.
• 23:43
  SPEAKER_00: I did attend 12-step programs, I did attend treatment.
• 23:47
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but for me, I don't identify that way.
• 23:50
  SPEAKER_00: Um I I I firmly believe that when it comes to addiction, we shouldn't be looking at the addiction as the problem.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: But the addiction is what we think is the solution to the problem, which is the inability to deal with our our own emotions, the inability to be authentic, the inability to be our true selves.
• 24:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so because we can't do that, we cover it up with all kinds of things.
• 24:17
  SPEAKER_00: People will do it with work or sex or all kinds of things.
• 24:21
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I was doing.
• 24:22
  SPEAKER_00: I was grasping at um at all different kinds of addictions to try to numb my pain.
• 24:28
  SPEAKER_00: As I started to heal, the addictions just I just the desire to do any of those things has just diminished.
• 24:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's just not there anymore.
• 24:41
  SPEAKER_01: So so all right, I think we're I'm I'm getting a sense of everything.
• 24:45
  SPEAKER_01: I'm just now I'm I'm wondering when did your boys and both of them have gone no contact?
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_02: Yes.
• 24:53
  SPEAKER_01: So when so now marriage number two has ended, you're spiraling.
• 24:58
  SPEAKER_01: You have the young the one your younger boys at home.
• 25:02
  SPEAKER_01: The older one is on his own.
• 25:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um so when did they both go no contact?
• 25:09
  SPEAKER_00: Well, so so I'll have to I have to back up and just say that I I I met um my third husband, who I was with for 13 years, who I'm now going through a divorce with.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_00: And what happened was about three years ago, it's pretty much three years ago today, to be honest, uh, my youngest son approached me and said, Mom, you got a bad drinking problem and you need to get help for that.
• 25:35
  SPEAKER_00: And if you don't get help for that, I'm not going to be in your life anymore.
• 25:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that shook me to my core.
• 25:40
  SPEAKER_00: Shook me to my core.
• 25:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was petrified.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I was hurt because I knew it was true.
• 25:49
  SPEAKER_00: Um, so I immediately got my butt into a treatment facility for 30 days.
• 25:55
  SPEAKER_00: And that was the first time I actually had the space to think and the peace and quiet to self-reflect a little bit and realize that I needed to change a bunch of stuff with my life.
• 26:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I had no idea how to start it.
• 26:09
  SPEAKER_00: But I was like, okay, I'm going to start by kicking these addictions.
• 26:14
  SPEAKER_00: That's where I'm going to start.
• 26:15
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I'm going to do.
• 26:16
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to kick these addictions.
• 26:18
  SPEAKER_00: And then I came home from treatment and I drank and gambled again.
• 26:24
  SPEAKER_00: And I was like, what happened?
• 26:26
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't figure out what's going on.
• 26:29
  SPEAKER_00: And then I started seeing a trauma counselor, a trauma therapist.
• 26:33
  SPEAKER_00: And they connected the fact that I had trauma that was unresolved.
• 26:39
  SPEAKER_00: I had unhealed wounds, and that that's what I was trying to numb.
• 26:43
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the first time that I went, oh, so no wonder the if I focus on the addiction, I can't get better.
• 26:52
  SPEAKER_00: I need to focus on why I'm using this stuff to numb.
• 26:56
  SPEAKER_00: And that's where it really started.
• 26:58
  SPEAKER_00: But I was still consuming alcohol and I was still gambling while I was learning through that process for sure.
• 27:05
  SPEAKER_00: I was still relying on them.
• 27:07
  SPEAKER_00: And then in um November uh a couple of years ago, so we're at 2025.
• 27:14
  SPEAKER_00: I guess it would be 2023.
• 27:17
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I, or something like that, I went on TikTok and I said what I said when I started this the podcast here.
• 27:24
  SPEAKER_00: Um, hi, my name is Crystal.
• 27:25
  SPEAKER_00: I'm a woman in my 50s.
• 27:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to find myself.
• 27:28
  SPEAKER_00: Um, all I know is that I'm unhappy and something seems to be wrong in my life, and I don't know what it is, and I'm here to find it out.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: So I started recording just my thoughts, my musings, if you will.
• 27:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember, I remember somebody on TikTok coming in there and saying, that's not normal to one of my one of my videos.
• 27:49
  SPEAKER_00: And my video was about how I was disciplined as a child.
• 27:54
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, What do you mean that's not normal?
• 27:57
  SPEAKER_00: Do you mean it's not okay that these things happened in my childhood?
• 28:01
  SPEAKER_00: What are you talking about?
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_00: It just bowed because I never thought I had like childhood trauma.
• 28:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was trying to work through it, but I I hadn't looked at it.
• 28:12
  SPEAKER_00: I couldn't look at it.
• 28:13
  SPEAKER_00: And it was the first time that I was like, oh my God, maybe something happened, some things happened in my childhood that aren't okay, that have shaped who I am today, and I need to look at it.
• 28:24
  SPEAKER_00: And so I started doing that.
• 28:27
  SPEAKER_00: And in July of 2023, yeah.
• 28:36
  SPEAKER_00: July 29th of 2023, I I woke up one day and I and my soon-to-be ex-husband, the third, my third husband and I had had a blowout and he ran, he walked away.
• 28:47
  SPEAKER_00: He has an anxious attachment system.
• 28:48
  SPEAKER_00: I have had an uh, I had he had an avoidant attachment system.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_00: I had an anxious attachment system.
• 28:54
  SPEAKER_00: So if he ran, I would cling to him.
• 28:56
  SPEAKER_00: The more I cling to him, the more he ran, the more he ran, the more I clinged.
• 29:00
  SPEAKER_00: It just was a vicious cycle.
• 29:02
  SPEAKER_00: And he had walked out of the house that day.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_00: And I remember calling my daughter in tears, but it was the it was like a light switch went.
• 29:10
  SPEAKER_00: And I said to her, I said, I don't have to do this anymore, do I?
• 29:14
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, No, mom, you don't.
• 29:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I can choose differently, can't I?
• 29:19
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, yes.
• 29:20
  SPEAKER_00: And I said, I could be happy if I wanted, couldn't I?
• 29:22
  SPEAKER_00: And she said, Yes, mom, yes, you can, yes.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_00: And she was so excited because she could tell that I got it.
• 29:27
  SPEAKER_00: Something, something had clicked in me.
• 29:29
  SPEAKER_00: And that's the day that I realized my marriage is likely over and I need to work my way out of it.
• 29:34
  SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, my relationship with my boys was tumultuous.
• 29:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, because I wasn't emotionally stable.
• 29:44
  SPEAKER_00: I was so emotionally unstable.
• 29:47
  SPEAKER_00: And so about a year ago, my marriage started to really fall apart and in earnest.
• 29:56
  SPEAKER_00: And um my my my relationship with my sons got even worse.
• 30:01
  SPEAKER_00: And within a six-week period, my marriage ended, and both of my sons went no contact.
• 30:08
  SPEAKER_00: My youngest son went no contact first, and he sent me um a text and told me exactly how he felt.
• 30:15
  SPEAKER_00: And wow, he was honest and brave to be able to send me that text.
• 30:21
  SPEAKER_00: Honest and brave.
• 30:23
  SPEAKER_01: So did a book have different reasons for doing for making those decisions?
• 30:27
  SPEAKER_00: I think that they have different reasons, but they all stem from the same place.
• 30:33
  SPEAKER_00: My inability to be emotionally intelligent and mature and be able to handle my own emotions.
• 30:39
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think that's what you know was a problem for both of them.
• 30:44
  SPEAKER_00: They just had diff, because they were they're very different personalities, they're different children.
• 30:49
  SPEAKER_00: They they were raised differently, they had different experiences.
• 30:52
  SPEAKER_00: So I think their reasons are, you know, may differ and may be very individualistic for each of them, but they all stem from the fact that I couldn't take accountability for myself.
• 31:05
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 31:06
  SPEAKER_01: So you've changed, you've grown.
• 31:09
  SPEAKER_00: I've been working on it, yeah.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, yeah.
• 31:12
  SPEAKER_00: I've been working on myself diligently for three years now, trying to undo the damage that was done when I was a young girl and become a better version of myself.
• 31:24
  SPEAKER_00: So, what I've been able to do, my kids have been no, my boys have been no contact for a year.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_00: And I have this analogy that I often put together for my my clients that are parents whose kids have got no contact.
• 31:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because it'd be it can it can be so heartbreaking, so gut-wrenching to have your child say, I don't want to have anything to do with you anymore.
• 31:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's very painful to have to look at something like that.
• 31:48
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of parents will try to cling to their children, please, please give me another chance, please, just talk to me, please, that kind of thing.
• 31:56
  SPEAKER_00: And it becomes there's this desperation.
• 31:58
  SPEAKER_00: So I say to my parents who I work with, think of a playpen.
• 32:02
  SPEAKER_00: When your kids were small and you needed to get something done around the house, you would often put them in the playpen and they would be fine, they'd be doing their thing so you could get your work done.
• 32:11
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same thing now.
• 32:14
  SPEAKER_00: My kids are no contact with me.
• 32:16
  SPEAKER_00: I imagine them off living their own lives, happy, doing their own thing, and I'm taking advantage of this time so that I can fix the stuff in me that caused me to be a toxic parent to them.
• 32:33
  SPEAKER_01: That's incredible.
• 32:35
  SPEAKER_01: Honestly, it's incredible that you can do that, and you can separate that and not take it so.
• 32:40
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, it is take you are taking it personally, but you're seeing that there's that you have work to do.
• 32:46
  SPEAKER_01: So you have come through it on the other side, you've changed, you've grown, you've done all of this work.
• 32:52
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, you're always going, no contact was the catalyst for you becoming more self-aware and for doing the work.
• 33:00
  SPEAKER_01: And that's incredible.
• 33:02
  SPEAKER_01: But how do you let them know?
• 33:05
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, that would be my number one, you know, question to you would be okay, I've done the work.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_01: I feel so much more, so much better as a parent, and I want them, I want to share this with them.
• 33:17
  SPEAKER_01: But how does it how do you communicate to your no contact children when you're not supposed to contact them?
• 33:23
  SPEAKER_01: And before you answer that question, are there variations of no contact?
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_01: Is it a hundred percent no contact or is there okay, so explain that for for the listeners?
• 33:31
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: So so every every adult child when they're when they're determining their relationship with their parent that they're struggling with, um, can determines for themselves exactly how much contact they want to have with their parents.
• 33:45
  SPEAKER_00: Some, it's completely no contact.
• 33:47
  SPEAKER_00: That means, you know, you block and delete everything and you make sure that they can't contact you on things like social media or by text or that kind of thing.
• 33:58
  SPEAKER_00: And um, my youngest son has done that.
• 34:01
  SPEAKER_00: He blocked me on everything.
• 34:04
  SPEAKER_00: Now, my oldest son hasn't blocked me.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_00: I can still text him if I want, or I can still see his Facebook if I want, but I'm respecting his boundaries by not contacting him whatsoever.
• 34:13
  SPEAKER_00: And then there are some cases where adult children will say, I want to have low contact with my mom, and that just basically or my dad, and that just basically means I'm going to have contact with them when I feel emotionally stable enough to be able to handle that contact.
• 34:30
  SPEAKER_00: And so it's contact with boundaries.
• 34:33
  SPEAKER_00: And everybody's a little different.
• 34:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but the key is to let the adult children to respect their boundary, whatever that boundary is, whether they want no contact or limited contact.
• 34:45
  SPEAKER_00: It's it's all about communication and being able to communicate with your adult children what their needs are.
• 34:51
  SPEAKER_00: Of course, parents have a hard time doing that because we've been used to being the top man on the totem pole, so to speak, but our kids are grown now.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 34:59
  SPEAKER_00: They're adults.
• 35:00
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 35:01
  SPEAKER_01: So what do you what do you see as are the are the most common reasons for kids to go no contact?
• 35:06
  SPEAKER_00: I mean there's there's actually there's actually only one reason.
• 35:12
  SPEAKER_00: It's the same reason for out virtually every single adult child I've spoken to, and that is they want their parents to heal their shit.
• 35:22
  SPEAKER_00: Heal your trauma, heal your wounds, heal yourself so you're not bleeding all of your wounds all over us, so that you can stand up and be and be an independent adult and be a parent to your child.
• 35:36
  SPEAKER_00: I haven't been able to be there emotionally for my children.
• 35:39
  SPEAKER_00: Part of my job as a parent was to be there emotionally for my children, to teach them emotional intelligence, to teach them how to regulate their emotions.
• 35:48
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't doing that.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_00: I was getting them to regulate my emotion.
• 35:53
  SPEAKER_01: So, so you're you speak to children, adult children who have a who have gone no contact.
• 35:59
  SPEAKER_01: You have counseling for them, or what is Yeah.
• 36:03
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm I I'm a life coach and specializing in intergenerational trauma.
• 36:06
  SPEAKER_00: So what I do is I work with both adult children who have uh a difficult relationship with their parents in and things like boundaries and how to communicate better.
• 36:16
  SPEAKER_00: And then I work with parents whose adult children have gone no contact to help them understand the no contact.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_00: What is happening to you?
• 36:24
  SPEAKER_00: Why is it happening?
• 36:25
  SPEAKER_00: Where is this coming from?
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_00: What do you need to heal?
• 36:28
  SPEAKER_00: What is your child trying to tell you?
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_00: What are the healthy steps you can take forward?
• 36:33
  SPEAKER_00: How do you respect your child's boundaries when they're saying they don't want contact?
• 36:37
  SPEAKER_00: How do you do that?
• 36:38
  SPEAKER_00: Because it's very hard for parents to do that.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_00: So I work with both.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's good.
• 36:42
  SPEAKER_01: That's really good.
• 36:43
  SPEAKER_01: Because you're getting both sides of the story, differ both sides of this of a different story, but you're uh at least you have that perspective.
• 36:49
  SPEAKER_01: It's almost like, and it must be very healing for you because you're you're able to speak to the estranged children.
• 36:55
  SPEAKER_01: So you can almost get a perspective of what your boys are going through, which is going to, I think, expedite your healing and your self-awareness and your uh willingness to be open and change because you're getting to hear it on the other side.
• 37:10
  SPEAKER_00: Well, and honestly, that was one of the biggest things that shifted my mindset was my the adult children um on my that are my followers on TikTok, the adult children telling me how they felt.
• 37:23
  SPEAKER_00: One of them said uh one day, when my mom's name pops up on, and my son confirmed this with his no contact final letter.
• 37:32
  SPEAKER_00: He said, When your name pops up on my screen, my stomach drops.
• 37:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I went, wait a minute, wait a minute, when my mom's name pops up on my screen, my stomach drops.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_00: And my feel, yeah.
• 37:49
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, okay.
• 37:50
  SPEAKER_00: Because of the intergenerational trauma.
• 37:52
  SPEAKER_00: I went no contact with my mom a few months uh um in uh about a year and a half ago for just a few months.
• 37:58
  SPEAKER_00: I just needed a little space um because we had brunch on a Sunday, and by uh two o'clock that afternoon, I was in the hospital because I thought I was having a heart attack.
• 38:08
  SPEAKER_00: Turns out I was having a panic attack because I had brunch with my mother.
• 38:11
  SPEAKER_00: So that told me something right there that I needed some space for my mom so I could work on some stuff for myself.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_00: So when my kids took space, as painful as it is, I do understand it because, and that's the way I understand it.
• 38:26
  SPEAKER_00: If we look up at our parents and go, yeah, but I'm not my mom.
• 38:31
  SPEAKER_00: Many of us, especially Gen Xers, have said, My parents raised us one way, I'm gonna do completely the opposite and raise my kids completely differently.
• 38:44
  SPEAKER_00: My mother never said I love you.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_00: I said I loved you all the time to the kids.
• 38:48
  SPEAKER_00: My mother never said, um, you know, never gave us affection.
• 38:51
  SPEAKER_00: I was very affectionate with my children.
• 38:53
  SPEAKER_00: My mother was never at my um basketball games.
• 38:56
  SPEAKER_00: I very rarely missed any of their events.
• 39:00
  SPEAKER_00: I was parenting my children based on what I needed when I was a little girl, rather than parenting my children based on what their own needs were.
• 39:10
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't know that at the time.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 39:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so I went no contact with my mom.
• 39:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so when I started looking upwards, I go, oh my God, my my stomach flips when my mom calls.
• 39:20
  SPEAKER_00: My kids feel the same way.
• 39:22
  SPEAKER_00: Oh my, I'm my mom.
• 39:24
  SPEAKER_00: I may be a different version of her.
• 39:27
  SPEAKER_00: I may be doing things completely different than the way she's done them, but I'm still oozing that generational trauma onto my kids because I didn't heal it.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 39:37
  SPEAKER_00: So by talking to the adult children, parents will understand more.
• 39:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's why a lot of parents who come onto my my TikTok page and they come into my lives, they'll come into the lives, you know, saying, My kids are assholes, my kids are jerks, my kids, and by the end of the hour, they're going, Oh my God, I see it.
• 39:58
  SPEAKER_00: I see it.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what I want to do.
• 40:02
  unknown: Yeah.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: So all parents, oh, clearly, all parents don't react the same way.
• 40:07
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, there must be right.
• 40:08
  SPEAKER_01: So they must go through this whole kind of shift.
• 40:13
  SPEAKER_01: And and I'm sure with your help, like first that anger and the denial and not taking responsibility, blaming it on the child, the the young adult in this case.
• 40:22
  SPEAKER_02: Right.
• 40:23
  SPEAKER_01: But so they have different reactions and you kind of walk them through this process.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: Take us through that process.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm I'm coming to you now.
• 40:33
  SPEAKER_01: This has just happened to me.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm furious, I'm hurt.
• 40:37
  SPEAKER_01: How do you talk me down off this ledge and get me to see the bigger picture?
• 40:41
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the first thing I do is I validate how you're feeling because the way you're feeling is how you're feeling.
• 40:46
  SPEAKER_00: All feelings are valid.
• 40:48
  SPEAKER_00: So I would I would listen to you and let you allow you to express those emotions.
• 40:54
  SPEAKER_00: And then a lot of parents are, what do I do to get my child back?
• 40:57
  SPEAKER_00: That's the very next question.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do to get my child back?
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_00: What do I do to get my child back?
• 41:00
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like whoa, whoa, whoa, they're on a timeout, they're in their playpen doing their thing.
• 41:06
  SPEAKER_00: I do the playpen analogy, and that helps them.
• 41:09
  SPEAKER_00: They're like, oh, because then I say to parents, you can look at it one of two ways.
• 41:15
  SPEAKER_00: You can look at this like a punishment from your child and wallow in pity about it and blame your child, or you can look at it as a gift of time and use that time to become the best version of yourself.
• 41:30
  SPEAKER_00: So when they're ready to come, when and if they're ready to come back into your life, you're ready.
• 41:35
  SPEAKER_00: You've you've got the tools now.
• 41:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now you can communicate in a more effective way.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_00: You've healed some of your stuff.
• 41:41
  SPEAKER_00: So you're not going to ooze it all over your kids.
• 41:43
  SPEAKER_00: You're not going to be, you know, passive, aggressive, or deflective or defensive or any of those things, gaslighting, all those things.
• 41:52
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know I did those things.
• 41:54
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't even recognize I did those things until I started to heal.
• 41:58
  SPEAKER_01: So, what's what what suggestions do you make for parents who are ready to go, ready to open up the communication?
• 42:04
  SPEAKER_01: And again, I think I asked this earlier.
• 42:07
  SPEAKER_01: If it's no contact and no communication, but I'm ready to start telling you that I've changed and I've grown, how do I do that if I'm not allowed to contact you and I'm trying to respect your boundaries?
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: What do you what do you do?
• 42:20
  SPEAKER_00: The whole point of this is for me to heal and and not, I'm not doing this as a manipulation tactic to get my children to talk to me again.
• 42:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I have to have some patience and some because it's on their timeline now.
• 42:37
  SPEAKER_00: They get to choose when they're ready to open up and have a discussion with me.
• 42:41
  SPEAKER_00: That's not for me to choose.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_00: I I always look at it this way.
• 42:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm 58 almost, and I'm just getting this stuff now.
• 42:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just understanding this now.
• 42:53
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just catching on to this stuff now.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: And my kids are 30 and 34.
• 42:59
  SPEAKER_00: I need to give them some space to figure out who they are, some space from me to figure out where they're going and when and if they're ready, they will come back.
• 43:09
  SPEAKER_00: And in the meantime, I'm going to be using every day to try to become a better version of myself so that I can become the parent that they never had and hopefully mend this relationship someday.
• 43:23
  SPEAKER_00: But it's my job now to give the only thing I can give my children now is respecting their boundaries and space.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's it.
• 43:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I can give them right now.
• 43:32
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's all they want from me right now.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_00: Mom, respect my boundaries, give me space.
• 43:37
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 43:38
  SPEAKER_00: And that's so I'm giving them that.
• 43:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I firmly believe that there may come a day that I I don't like to say, okay, so I I hope there's gonna come a day when they they talk to me again.
• 43:52
  SPEAKER_00: I really do.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_00: But I all I always wake up every day and go, Oh, you know what?
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_00: My kids are happy.
• 43:58
  SPEAKER_00: They made a decision that made Them happy.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_00: Here's the other thing too.
• 44:02
  SPEAKER_00: I never want to force my kids to have a relationship with me.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think I forced them.
• 44:06
  SPEAKER_00: I think I they felt obligated to have a relationship with me because I was their mom, not because they liked me or that I added value to their life.
• 44:15
  SPEAKER_00: And if they come back into my life, I want it to be because they like who I am as a person.
• 44:20
  SPEAKER_00: They value what I can add to their life.
• 44:22
  SPEAKER_00: And they're going to offer me the privilege of being a part of their life now.
• 44:26
  SPEAKER_00: Because our children owe us nothing.
• 44:29
  SPEAKER_00: We owe our children everything.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_00: And our children owe us nothing.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_00: And a lot of times parents get confused by that.
• 44:36
  SPEAKER_00: They think their kids owe them for the upbringing.
• 44:39
  SPEAKER_00: It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_00: We brought them into this world.
• 44:43
  SPEAKER_00: We made that decision.
• 44:44
  SPEAKER_00: We owe them their upbringing.
• 44:46
  SPEAKER_00: That's the whole point of it.
• 44:49
  SPEAKER_01: So this this time that the kids need, they need their space, they need their time, they need to figure out who they are, separate themselves from that emotional complexes and traumas and everything.
• 45:02
  SPEAKER_01: And the parent in that during that time also has to spend time healing themselves, figuring out where they went wrong and what they can do to and not just be a better parent, but be a better person.
• 45:14
  SPEAKER_00: Correct.
• 45:15
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_00: I I I really didn't like myself for a lot of years.
• 45:20
  SPEAKER_00: I I can honestly say people used to say, Oh, love yourself.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_00: And I I couldn't understand it.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I had a lot of um self-sabotaging behaviors.
• 45:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, if anything went good in my life, I I messed it up pretty good.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_00: And I made sure I messed it up pretty good.
• 45:37
  SPEAKER_00: But I couldn't understand why.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_00: I kept asking myself, what is wrong with me?
• 45:41
  SPEAKER_00: What is wrong with me?
• 45:43
  SPEAKER_00: Um, and I come to realize it's not what was what is wrong with me, but what happened to me.
• 45:48
  SPEAKER_00: Oprah Winfrey says it really good in a book that said that she does with um Dr.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_00: Bruce Perry called What Happened to Me.
• 45:54
  SPEAKER_00: And it she basically says, we need to stop asking the question, what is wrong with me?
• 45:58
  SPEAKER_00: And start asking the question, what happened to me?
• 46:01
  SPEAKER_00: What happened to me to make me who I am today?
• 46:04
  SPEAKER_00: How did I get to where I am today?
• 46:06
  SPEAKER_00: Question it.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_00: And when you question it, you'll see stuff that you didn't see before.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 46:11
  SPEAKER_00: And some of it isn't very pretty.
• 46:13
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 46:14
  SPEAKER_01: That has a lot to do with generational trauma.
• 46:17
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: Not just about, you know, not just in your story, but your parents and your grandparents.
• 46:24
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 46:25
  SPEAKER_00: Because that's what happened when I started looking back at it.
• 46:28
  SPEAKER_00: I started looking back at it and I went, because I've talked to my mom, my mom's 87.
• 46:31
  SPEAKER_00: So I talked to my mom and I said to her, you know, what kind of childhood did you have?
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_00: Did they ever say they loved you?
• 46:36
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 46:37
  SPEAKER_00: Did they ever hug you?
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 46:38
  SPEAKER_00: Did they ever show affection?
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: No.
• 46:40
  SPEAKER_00: Did they use shame?
• 46:41
  SPEAKER_00: Oh, yeah, shame.
• 46:42
  SPEAKER_00: That was the only way that we knew how.
• 46:44
  SPEAKER_00: And I realized my mom got it when she was a little kid.
• 46:47
  SPEAKER_00: And then when she grew up and she had me, it was the only thing she knew to do.
• 46:51
  SPEAKER_00: And then when I grew up and had kids, I was like, I'm going to do it completely different.
• 46:55
  SPEAKER_00: But I didn't heal anything in me.
• 46:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I was parenting my children the way I wanted to be parent as a child.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to hear I love you.
• 47:06
  SPEAKER_00: So I said I love you lots.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to hug my kids, so I hugged them a lot.
• 47:11
  SPEAKER_00: I wanted to be, I did all those things that I wanted when I was a children, a child, and I didn't recognize that I wasn't parenting my kids as individuals.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: And how what's your what's your take on um you know steps?
• 47:26
  SPEAKER_01: I understand that when their child is ready, they will come to you, but there's a lot of work that has to happen for the parent.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: So how do you feel about letters of apology and taking letters, yeah, taking responsibility and writing letters of apology so that when they are ready, it's something that you can either have that conversation or send that letter.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 47:47
  SPEAKER_00: I absolutely love doing that with my clients.
• 47:50
  SPEAKER_00: And I say to them, listen, when when they're ready, when they get it, because at first the apology letters, and I did it myself too, and I did an apology letter to my youngest son.
• 48:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now I look at it and I'm like, ah, that wasn't the right thing to do.
• 48:04
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing it for selfish reasons.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_00: I wasn't doing it as a sincere apology.
• 48:08
  SPEAKER_00: I was doing it because I wanted him to forgive me, not because I wanted to actually sincerely apologize.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_00: And so oftentimes I say, I'm actually doing um a workshop right now called Understanding Parental Estrangement.
• 48:22
  SPEAKER_00: And in that workshop, it's a five, five series, five-day workshop or five series workshop.
• 48:28
  SPEAKER_00: And and in there, we actually work on an apology letter.
• 48:33
  SPEAKER_00: And I suggest that parents hold on to it.
• 48:36
  SPEAKER_00: You'll know when the time is right.
• 48:38
  SPEAKER_00: You will know when the time is right.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: Do you find that parents have a hard time saying sorry?
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
• 48:44
  SPEAKER_00: To their children, they do.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 48:46
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of times parents think that I'm not supposed to apologize to my kids.
• 48:50
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the parent, they're the child.
• 48:52
  SPEAKER_00: I'm they're supposed to apologize to me.
• 48:55
  SPEAKER_00: And there's very often many parents who don't understand.
• 48:59
  SPEAKER_00: No, no, no, no, no.
• 49:00
  SPEAKER_00: You're both equal.
• 49:02
  SPEAKER_00: There, there's no dominance and power here.
• 49:04
  SPEAKER_00: And if you if you view your relationship with your adult child from a perspective of dominance and power, that's going to be a very dysfunctional relationship and a relationship that your adult child eventually is going to get tired of.
• 49:19
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 49:20
  SPEAKER_00: So it's very important for parents to part uh part of this process is learning how to be humble.
• 49:28
  SPEAKER_00: Learning how to humble yourself enough to admit your own flaws, to admit what you did, you know.
• 49:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um, for me to say, you know what, I I I would gaslight, I was passive aggressive, I was, you know, defensive, and I I wasn't always honest, I wasn't reliable.
• 49:47
  SPEAKER_00: There was so many things about me that I didn't like, and then I'm sure my children didn't like, and they deserve an apology for all of that.
• 49:56
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah.
• 49:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, sidebar for a second, um personal note.
• 50:01
  SPEAKER_01: But my mother was dying.
• 50:04
  SPEAKER_01: Um my brother and I were sitting there, and my brother really needed her to say sorry.
• 50:14
  SPEAKER_01: And so he was trying to get her to kind of remember when this happened and remember when that happened.
• 50:21
  SPEAKER_01: And I you know, I was trying as well, but it was it was his thing.
• 50:26
  SPEAKER_01: So and she just the look on her face just she couldn't do it.
• 50:32
  SPEAKER_01: No, she couldn't see I shouldn't say she couldn't see the errors of her ways, she couldn't even verbalize it, couldn't own up to it, admit it.
• 50:43
  SPEAKER_01: Even if it's something that he really needed to hear, she couldn't do it.
• 50:48
  SPEAKER_01: And yeah, unfortunately, my mother passed away and my brother never got the sorry.
• 50:54
  SPEAKER_01: I know.
• 50:55
  SPEAKER_00: And really, was he able to move on?
• 50:58
  SPEAKER_00: Because uh oftentimes a lot, a lot of adult children think they need that apology.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, we don't.
• 51:05
  SPEAKER_00: We don't need that apology from our parents.
• 51:08
  SPEAKER_00: Um, we we believe that it's going to be helpful to us and and and it can soothe, it can soothe and heal our child.
• 51:15
  SPEAKER_00: Don't get me wrong.
• 51:17
  SPEAKER_00: As the as the parent, we should be willing to do that.
• 51:19
  SPEAKER_00: As the adult child, though, uh from your brother's perspective, the expectation and the hope, the hope that your mother could just apologize, that hope is what can destroy us because we are hoping and expecting for something that our parents are unable to do.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: They're unable to give it to us, they're unable to do that.
• 51:40
  SPEAKER_00: You might as well be asking your mom, can you play me Mozart on the piano right now?
• 51:45
  SPEAKER_00: Because she's going to go, I don't know how to do that anymore than I know how to do this.
• 51:49
  SPEAKER_00: And when you look at it like a skill set that they were never taught and that they never know how to do, then as an adult child, you can come to a place of peace and understanding to know that, oh, they can't get to where I am.
• 52:08
  SPEAKER_00: Their emotional maturity is stunted and can't get to where I am.
• 52:12
  SPEAKER_00: That's what I was.
• 52:13
  SPEAKER_00: I was, I was emotionally stunted.
• 52:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I would say I was about 14, which ironically was when I got pregnant.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_00: I would say, if I had to guess and say, how old were you emotionally before you started maturing?
• 52:26
  SPEAKER_00: I would say uh there was times that I would be seven years old and times when I would be 14 years old.
• 52:32
  SPEAKER_00: I was a child emotionally.
• 52:33
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to regulate myself.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_00: Every time I got hurt, every time my feelings got hurt, I looked to somebody else to fix it.
• 52:41
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to fix it myself.
• 52:43
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to address it.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know how to process emotion.
• 52:46
  SPEAKER_00: I didn't know any of that.
• 52:48
  SPEAKER_00: And how do you feel now about that?
• 52:52
  SPEAKER_00: I feel very proud of myself.
• 52:54
  SPEAKER_00: I feel um hopeful for the future.
• 52:57
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like uh I can do anything.
• 53:00
  SPEAKER_00: I feel like if I can do this, I can do anything.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_00: If I can do this, I can do anything.
• 53:07
  SPEAKER_01: So you're almost like the best version of yourself not being married and and currently, not permanently, having no contact with your children.
• 53:17
  SPEAKER_00: I'm actually, yeah.
• 53:18
  SPEAKER_00: I I I I miss my kids.
• 53:20
  SPEAKER_00: I think about them every multiple times a day, all day long.
• 53:24
  SPEAKER_00: I'm thinking about my kids.
• 53:25
  SPEAKER_00: I whether it's a picture or a sound or uh, you know, a scent.
• 53:30
  SPEAKER_01: I went down to the city.
• 53:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not in any way implying that you're better for it.
• 53:34
  SPEAKER_01: You're better for not being in your marriages or marriage, I would say.
• 53:37
  SPEAKER_01: For sure, for sure.
• 53:38
  SPEAKER_01: But I'm saying you're taking this difficult time and you're making the best version of yourself, you're preparing yourself for the next for the years that are gonna that are coming, which will I think will be the best years of your life.
• 53:51
  SPEAKER_01: And and you are a grandparent, right?
• 53:54
  SPEAKER_00: Yes, I have six grandkids.
• 53:56
  SPEAKER_00: So I have four adult kids and I have six grandkids.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_00: Four of them live in Saskatchewan, and my youngest son, who's no contact with me, has two.
• 54:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd like you to share your opinion with the listener about grandparents because you are a grandmother and you don't see your grandkids.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: And you said to me once, it's not grandparents' rights to see their grandkids, it's their privilege.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_01: And I love that, and I want you to talk about it because we know how many grandparents feel that they have the right, in spite of the fact that they might have a bad relationship or even no contact.
• 54:29
  SPEAKER_01: So let's talk about that for a minute.
• 54:32
  SPEAKER_00: My, my, and, and, and, and this will, you you directly connected this to me, but my my children, um, I get to decide what happens with my children when they're underage.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the one that's responsible for them.
• 54:45
  SPEAKER_00: I'm the one that is, you know, trying to mold them into the people that they want to become, um, into everything that they could ever be.
• 54:53
  SPEAKER_00: That means it's my job to protect them from all kinds of things.
• 54:58
  SPEAKER_00: And my adult son is protecting his children right now from a grandmother that did not have emotional stability.
• 55:08
  SPEAKER_00: And my rights to see my grandchildren don't exist.
• 55:12
  SPEAKER_00: I have a relationship with my son that needs to be fixed prior to any relationship with his children.
• 55:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's the relationship between him and I that needs to be fixed first.
• 55:24
  SPEAKER_00: Do I miss my grandchildren all the time?
• 55:26
  SPEAKER_00: Do I wonder how they're doing?
• 55:28
  SPEAKER_00: Because I my youngest granddaughter just turned one.
• 55:32
  SPEAKER_00: And I've only met her once when she was a newborn.
• 55:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so I wonder, like, who is she?
• 55:38
  SPEAKER_00: What does she, you know, she's probably walking now.
• 55:41
  SPEAKER_00: Um, I think about them all the time, but I don't have the right to skip over a relationship with my son and say, I'm sorry, son, you and I don't get along, but I get to see your kids.
• 55:54
  SPEAKER_00: I get to have a relationship with your kids.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: I love that.
• 55:56
  SPEAKER_02: No, no, no, no.
• 55:57
  SPEAKER_00: That doesn't work that way.
• 55:58
  SPEAKER_00: You got to fix the relationship with your kids in order to have the privilege of having a relationship with your grandchildren.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: I love that.
• 56:05
  SPEAKER_01: And I I remember we talked about it, and I said, I think it's because you're so sensitive to how grandparents just come in without any respect for the parent, scoop your girls away without caring at all about your feelings.
• 56:19
  SPEAKER_01: And so you you're so sensitive to that that you would never go over your son's head and try and have a relationship with their children because you reckon you respect that you you respect the the boundaries, yes, of what you're you know, of the parent.
• 56:35
  SPEAKER_01: And also you recognize the fact that he'll won relationship and prove to him that you have that you're in a better place, and then you get the privilege of having a relationship with your grandchildren.
• 56:47
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 56:48
  SPEAKER_00: And he's and I'm so proud of them because I I can I can um I'm proud of both my my sons because I look back and I see everything that happened with my mom, everything that happened with me, everything that happened with my children in our childhoods.
• 57:04
  SPEAKER_00: And and my son is making sure that his kids never have to go through that.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 57:09
  SPEAKER_00: He is breaking the chain.
• 57:11
  SPEAKER_00: A lot of people say, Oh, you're breaking the generational trauma.
• 57:13
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, No, I'm not, no, I'm not, no, I'm not.
• 57:17
  SPEAKER_00: I thought I was, but my youngest son corrected me, he goes, You're not the one breaking it, mom.
• 57:21
  SPEAKER_00: It's me because you already traumatized me.
• 57:26
  SPEAKER_00: I'm trying to prevent this from happening to the kids.
• 57:29
  SPEAKER_00: So it's my children that are breaking it.
• 57:31
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm so damn proud of them for that.
• 57:35
  SPEAKER_01: So I'd like to leave, I like to leave all my episodes on a positive note.
• 57:40
  SPEAKER_01: So, how can parents see this no contact as a gift?
• 57:49
  SPEAKER_00: So if we go back to the playpen analogy um and and say, okay, the kids are in the playpen, they're doing fine, they're doing their thing, I need to do my work.
• 58:01
  SPEAKER_00: I want to spend as much time as I can doing the work to understand myself and become the best version of myself and heal my own wounds.
• 58:10
  SPEAKER_00: Because at some point, at some point, those kids are gonna come out of that playpen and look over the edge and go, hey, what are you doing over there, mom?
• 58:20
  SPEAKER_00: Are you the same person you were or have you changed?
• 58:24
  SPEAKER_00: And if I'm the same person, they're going back.
• 58:28
  SPEAKER_00: And so I look at it as a gift every because also when my kids come in back into my life, they're gonna have some truths they're gonna have to tell me.
• 58:37
  SPEAKER_00: They're gonna have some truths and they're gonna want to speak them to me.
• 58:40
  SPEAKER_00: And those truths are gonna hurt.
• 58:41
  SPEAKER_00: I often say on my on my on my my uh TikTok channel, first the truth hurts, then it helps, then it heals.
• 58:48
  SPEAKER_00: And so first it hurts.
• 58:50
  SPEAKER_00: And so when when you hear truth, it sometimes stings a lot, you know, it can it can sting.
• 58:55
  SPEAKER_00: And I want to be able to have broad enough shoulders to hold space for my children's pain when they express it to me.
• 59:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I don't want to have to take, I don't want to take it personally.
• 59:05
  SPEAKER_00: And that takes a lot of self-reflection and a lot of work to be able to listen to your adult child tell you where you messed up.
• 59:15
  SPEAKER_01: So the gift is in in that, in them sharing, reflecting that who you are on yourself.
• 59:21
  SPEAKER_01: So that's the learning.
• 59:22
  SPEAKER_01: But as well, and you said it earlier, the cycle can stop with them by you allowing them to do what they need to do, which is to go no contact.
• 59:33
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: That's right.
• 59:34
  SPEAKER_00: And somebody said to me, Are they getting therapy?
• 59:37
  SPEAKER_00: What are they doing?
• 59:38
  SPEAKER_00: How are they healing?
• 59:39
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, I don't know.
• 59:40
  SPEAKER_00: That's their healing journey, not mine.
• 59:42
  SPEAKER_00: I don't get to say.
• 59:44
  SPEAKER_00: I already tried doing that, you know, controlling how my children heal.
• 59:48
  SPEAKER_00: I can't do that.
• 59:50
  SPEAKER_00: You can't heal in the same place that hurt you most times.
• 59:53
  SPEAKER_00: And so if I'm the one that hurt them, I can't I can help them by being the best version of me.
• 59:59
  SPEAKER_00: That's all I can do.
• 1:00:00
  SPEAKER_00: The rest of it is going to be up to them.
• 1:00:02
  SPEAKER_00: And I just want to give them the space and the time to do it in whatever way they want to, because it's their decision, it's their choice, it's their life.
• 1:00:14
  SPEAKER_01: I can't thank you enough for being my guest today.
• 1:00:16
  SPEAKER_01: I I honestly I admire your strength, your courage, your candor.
• 1:00:22
  SPEAKER_01: Like it's it's that that's a gift that you're giving other people now.
• 1:00:26
  SPEAKER_01: This story that you're sharing.
• 1:00:29
  SPEAKER_01: And I know that many parents are in the same situation that are in the same situation, would truly benefit from all the work that you're doing on yourself and helping them.
• 1:00:38
  SPEAKER_01: And of course, I'm going to leave your contact information in the show notes.
• 1:00:42
  SPEAKER_01: Wonderful.
• 1:00:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: That's wonderful.
• 1:00:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if any parents need some help understanding this or coming to a different place with it, I I'm always here to help because I know what you're going through.
• 1:00:54
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for sharing all of this with us today.
• 1:00:57
  SPEAKER_01: Everybody, I hope, I hope that this is not our last conversation.
• 1:01:00
  SPEAKER_01: This was recorded, but I want to I want us to continue to talk and I want to hear more and more about the progress that you're making because I I got a good feeling about you.
• 1:01:10
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 1:01:11
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
• 1:01:12
  SPEAKER_00: I'm just uh I'm I'm I'm grateful to have been here.
• 1:01:15
  SPEAKER_00: It's been a pleasure talking with you.
• 1:01:17
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, I'm glad you reached out to me, and I do hope we can talk again soon.
• 1:01:22
  SPEAKER_01: I know we will.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: I know we will.
• 1:01:23
  SPEAKER_01: I want I want follow-up, I want I want to hear all about it.
• 1:01:26
  SPEAKER_01: But thank you.
• 1:01:27
  SPEAKER_01: You're an absolute delight to speak to.
• 1:01:29
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 1:01:30
  SPEAKER_01: Thanks.
• 1:01:31
  SPEAKER_01: I hope today's episode gave you valuable insights and actionable steps that will help you guide your young adult to launch successfully into adulthood.
• 1:01:40
  SPEAKER_01: If you found this topic helpful, feel free to leave a comment and hit the subscribe button so you never miss an episode.
• 1:01:46
  SPEAKER_01: Leaving a five-star review helps us reach more parents who are dealing with the same issues.
• 1:01:51
  SPEAKER_01: And if there's something you want to ask me, I invite you to join Launch Advice, my weekly publication where I answer one question from parents just like you.
• 1:02:00
  SPEAKER_01: It's free advice that will appear in your inbox probably when you need it the most.
• 1:02:04
  SPEAKER_01: Just click Launch Advice in the show notes and don't forget to email me your confidential question.
• 1:02:10
  SPEAKER_01: And remember, no one ever said parenting is easy, especially when you're raising an adult.
• 1:02:15
  SPEAKER_01: Talk to you soon.