Latest / Motherhood Uncut / Secure Attachment and Trauma with Tracey Yokas | Motherhood Uncut Podcast | Season 6 Episode 2

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Secure Attachment and Trauma with Tracey Yokas | Motherhood Uncut Podcast | Season 6 Episode 2 · Motherhood Uncut

0:00
SPEAKER_01: Hi, I'm Kate Kripke and welcome to the Motherhood Uncut Podcast.
0:05
SPEAKER_01: This podcast brings the reality of motherhood to the table for real, honest conversations.
0:11
SPEAKER_01: Here we laugh, we cry, we learn, we grow, we are awestruck, amazed, humbled, and validated.
0:19
SPEAKER_01: But most importantly, together we begin to live in a new way that allows us to recognize the immense role that our own health and well-being plays in the health and well-being of our kids.
0:31
SPEAKER_01: Together, we recognize that everything we do to take care of our physical, psychological, social, and spiritual health is in service of our children.
0:41
SPEAKER_01: This season we are diving deep into the role that the shoulds and the shouldn'ts and rules and expectations play in our motherhood journey.
0:49
SPEAKER_01: Together, this season, we will learn to break those boundaries that hold us back from our greatest potential.
0:55
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna hear from moms who have taken this risk, from experts who help in this journey, and from family members who, Lord help me, have important insight to share.
1:05
SPEAKER_01: So pull up a chair, my friend, make a cup of tea, pour a glass of wine, put on your walking shoes, turn up the volume in your car.
1:13
SPEAKER_01: Let's do this together because nobody should mother alone.
1:26
SPEAKER_01: All right, listeners, today is part one of a two-part series with the incredible, honest, and inspiring Tracy Yokost.
1:35
SPEAKER_01: Tracy Yokos creates stuff.
1:37
SPEAKER_01: When she isn't writing about mental health and wellness, she can be found playing with paint, glitter, and glue.
1:43
SPEAKER_01: A former entertainment industry professional, Tracy is now the author of the book Bloodlines, a memoir of harm and healing.
1:51
SPEAKER_01: Throughout this book, Tracy shares about her family's journey with mental illness and healing so that others will know that they are not alone.
1:59
SPEAKER_01: She wants you to know that hope is real.
2:03
SPEAKER_01: In part one of this moving conversation, I talked with Tracy about her journey mothering a daughter with significant mental health challenges.
2:11
SPEAKER_01: Tracy opens up about the incredible frustration and pain she felt when nothing she was doing to help her daughter seemed to be working.
2:19
SPEAKER_01: And the ultimate opportunity that offered itself when Tracy realized that to support her daughter well, she needed to address her own mental health challenges first.
2:35
SPEAKER_01: Self-care, secure attachment, and creativity, and it's the perfect example of what it looks like to ignore our own needs in motherhood, maybe simply because we haven't even identified what they are yet, and what becomes available to us when we go inside and do that inner work first.
2:53
SPEAKER_01: Tracy reminds us that our own self-care will always be in service of our children.
2:59
SPEAKER_01: I know that you're going to be inspired by this conversation.
3:02
SPEAKER_01: I cannot wait for you to meet Tracy.
3:06
SPEAKER_01: Stay with me.
3:09
SPEAKER_01: Hey listeners, there is literally nothing that I feel more inspired by than working with women who are ready and motivated to take control of their mental health and well-being in service of their kids.
3:20
SPEAKER_01: Because here's the thing: in my work, I get the opportunity to both watch the women who I work with feel better, and I also get to watch how their kids thrive along with them.
3:31
SPEAKER_01: If these conversations motivate you and if you're ready to shift out of the anxiety, guilt, and overwhelm that you feel and move back into confidence, calm, and connection, my 12-week program might be for you.
3:44
SPEAKER_01: If you want to learn more and talk with me about if it's a fit, go ahead and book a free clarity call with me.
3:50
SPEAKER_01: The link is in the show notes.
3:53
SPEAKER_01: Motherhood Uncut Podcast is sponsored by the One Clock.
3:57
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4:04
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4:07
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4:10
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4:23
SPEAKER_01: You can learn more at oneclock.co.
4:26
SPEAKER_01: Tracy, welcome to the Motherhood Uncut Podcast.
4:29
SPEAKER_01: I am so happy to have you here.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much.
4:31
SPEAKER_01: I'm very excited to be here.
4:33
SPEAKER_01: I am going to start by just reading your bio for our listeners off your website.
4:39
SPEAKER_01: And of course, we will make sure that by the time we end this conversation, all our folks know exactly where to find you, where to find your book.
4:46
SPEAKER_01: But I, you know, it's funny bios, right?
4:48
SPEAKER_01: Bios are funny.
4:49
SPEAKER_01: It's sort of like how do we actually condense a full life into a paragraph or two in a way that gives a feel for somebody.
5:00
SPEAKER_01: And I have never seen you face to face until today, until a few moments before we hit record.
5:05
SPEAKER_01: And I could feel something about you in this bio.
5:09
SPEAKER_01: So, you know, it's nothing extravagant, but I wanted to just go ahead and start by reading this.
5:13
SPEAKER_01: So for our listeners, Tracy Yokas, am I saying that right, Tracy?
5:18
SPEAKER_01: Yokas.
5:19
SPEAKER_01: Yokas creates stuff.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: Okay.
5:21
SPEAKER_01: By the way, I was gonna pause there.
5:24
SPEAKER_01: Freaking love that because it encompasses so much of what we're gonna be talking about today.
5:28
SPEAKER_01: I love it.
5:29
SPEAKER_01: Tracy Yokas creates stuff.
5:31
SPEAKER_01: When she isn't writing about mental health and wellness, she can be found playing with paint, glitter, and glue.
5:36
SPEAKER_01: Art fuels her passion for connection in community.
5:40
SPEAKER_01: She is dedicated to supporting women in their journey towards authenticity and fulfills her mission by creating safe spaces where art, words, and vulnerability meet.
5:50
SPEAKER_01: I literally have chills as I read that.
5:52
SPEAKER_01: So much beautiful stuff there.
5:54
SPEAKER_01: A former entertainment industry professional, Tracy has an affinity for color-coded art supplies.
6:00
SPEAKER_01: She is the author of the book Bloodlines, a memoir of harm and healing.
6:04
SPEAKER_01: And we are going to be talking about that book and what brought you to read that book and your life today.
6:09
SPEAKER_01: Tracy shares about her family's journey with mental illness and healing so that others will know they are not alone.
6:16
SPEAKER_01: Hope is real.
6:18
SPEAKER_01: And then, Tracy, you earned your master's degree in counseling psychology from California Lutheran Lutheran University and lives in Newbury Park, California with her family, cats, and fish.
6:30
SPEAKER_01: And we can find you on all kinds of socials, and we will um link to all of those uh uh in the show notes, and we'll give you a chance to tell people where you are at the end of our conversation.
6:41
SPEAKER_01: So, again, welcome.
6:42
SPEAKER_01: I'm really thank you.
6:44
SPEAKER_01: You bring so much to the table for us.
6:46
SPEAKER_01: You bring a real authentic history around trauma and healing, and we're gonna talk about that.
6:56
SPEAKER_01: You bring it experience as a mother, you bring your div just deep connection and compassion or passion, I should say, and commitment to creativity.
7:09
SPEAKER_01: All of it is so beautiful to community.
7:11
SPEAKER_01: But maybe we can start by, you know, I really want to get into the substance of your book today.
7:18
SPEAKER_01: So maybe we could start by you just telling us why did you write this book?
7:23
SPEAKER_01: That's a huge question.
7:24
SPEAKER_01: Wherever you go, we're gonna go with it.
7:27
SPEAKER_00: Awesome.
7:28
SPEAKER_00: Thank you so much.
7:29
SPEAKER_00: Wow, that was that was just a wonderful introduction.
7:32
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, back in 2012, my mother uh very unexpectedly passed away, and she and my daughter were very close.
7:41
SPEAKER_00: So we did not know it at the time, but it would turn out that, excuse me, her death was a trigger for my daughter's mental health crisis.
7:50
SPEAKER_00: So the frontline story of the book chronicles what happened and the steps we took in story form.
7:58
SPEAKER_00: So, not sort of, I'm not against dry clinical books.
8:02
SPEAKER_00: I love that kind of stuff.
8:03
SPEAKER_00: I've learned a lot and they've helped me a lot, but this is a memoir.
8:07
SPEAKER_00: So, this is our story told in a story way.
8:11
SPEAKER_00: I wanted people going through now what we went through then to see themselves in the pages of this book, particularly mothers and their daughters.
8:20
SPEAKER_00: Um, so really worked very hard.
8:23
SPEAKER_00: It took me over 10 years to get the book into the world.
8:26
SPEAKER_00: Worked very hard to be honest and fully rendering of myself, my family members.
8:33
SPEAKER_00: I have their permission to share, of course.
8:34
SPEAKER_00: I always like to say that.
8:36
SPEAKER_00: Um, and ever all the steps we took and what happened and the fact that we acted very quickly.
8:42
SPEAKER_00: Um, my daughter's symptoms were very obvious, really, at the very beginning.
8:47
SPEAKER_00: So we acted quickly, we did all the things that we were told, and every stook, every step we took, it seems she became more ill rather than getting better.
8:56
SPEAKER_00: So we chronicle all of that in the story, and then I intercut scenes from my childhood to illuminate how things that happened to us in the past, generational trauma patterns, whatever verbiage you like to put around this sort of thing, can inhibit our ability to be there for the people we love most in the way that they need us.
9:20
SPEAKER_00: So I always try to clarify, because I think it can be easy to misconstrue when I talk about this, that maybe some people think I caused my daughter's mental illness.
9:30
SPEAKER_00: I do not think that at all.
9:32
SPEAKER_00: What I do think is that my history, as I said, inhibited me from being able to be the type of mother fully present, fully conscious of all the forces at play, calm, connected, securely attached, if you like that language, to my daughter in a way that would be most beneficial to her.
9:54
SPEAKER_00: So um, so again, the front storyline is our journey with my daughter and her illness, intercut with scenes from my childhood that sort of culminate about two-thirds or so through the book with my awakening to the fact that as painful as it was to accept, I actually had no control over the trajectory of my daughter's illness.
10:17
SPEAKER_00: The only thing I could actually control was myself.
10:21
SPEAKER_00: And that healing my low self-esteem, healing these unhealthy patterns from my past, like codependency and um enmeshment and these things that have kind of big words, um, but that play out in a very unhealthy way in our real lives, was the way that I could help her best by taking care of myself.
10:42
SPEAKER_01: I mean you are speaking my language.
10:48
SPEAKER_01: I am grateful uh that you are here to talk with us because I think really this podcast is devoted to inspiring and empowering women who are mothers to take care of themselves in service of their children.
11:06
SPEAKER_01: It's a it's a it's sort of a quote unquote backwards way of thinking of good mothering.
11:10
SPEAKER_01: It's not what we're taught.
11:12
SPEAKER_01: And I think it is brave and vulnerable and imperative if we want to raise healthy kids and have those secure attachments.
11:19
SPEAKER_01: I use that language a lot on this podcast, that we understand what we need to be healthy and well.
11:24
SPEAKER_01: So as you were talking, I wrote down some like big themes that I think we're gonna dabble in today.
11:30
SPEAKER_01: And that I really hope everyone shares this with everyone that they know who are mothers and and and mothers of daughters, perhaps or just mothers in general, um, because it's so important.
11:40
SPEAKER_01: We're we're talking about generational trauma here, right?
11:43
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about how if we aren't paying attention, the trauma, big T or little T, these are all language people know on this podcast, and we can talk more about that.
11:54
SPEAKER_01: But trauma that we experience as children, if we're not paying attention, we will carry that into our relationships with our own children.
12:01
SPEAKER_01: And our children will experience through us the generational trauma that we experience, that maybe our own parents experienced, that maybe they experienced.
12:09
SPEAKER_01: And so we're talking about that.
12:11
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about relationships and the complication of relationships.
12:16
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about grief and loss.
12:17
SPEAKER_01: We're talking about mothering and attachment, we're talking about mental illness and mental health, and we're talking about the interplay between maternal and child mental health, and we're talking about agency and control.
12:32
SPEAKER_01: I mean, bam, that's like one, two, three, four, five, six big ones on the list of like all the important things that we want mothers to be paying attention to.
12:44
SPEAKER_01: Would you, I don't know if this is too big of a question.
12:47
SPEAKER_01: So again, take it where you want, but can you, is there any way to summarize the story?
12:53
SPEAKER_01: You're talking about your daughter's illness, you're talking, and I think our listeners are probably like, well, what?
12:57
SPEAKER_01: What are we talking about here?
12:59
SPEAKER_01: So can you just explain to us, you know, in some, we don't have to make it really short, but in some relatively contained space what we're talking about here.
13:09
SPEAKER_01: And I'm also really curious, how old is your daughter?
13:12
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
13:13
SPEAKER_00: And I hope we can circle back around because I don't want to forget to say, I think it can be very easy for those of us who live through the kind of trauma that I did to not see ourselves in trauma language.
13:24
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
13:25
SPEAKER_00: So we think about trauma in very specific ways in our culture.
13:30
SPEAKER_00: The big things that are, of course, extremely traumatic, like sexual and physical abuse, all those adverse childhood experiences.
13:37
SPEAKER_00: So growing up in poverty, there's uh, you know, a list.
13:41
SPEAKER_00: But if your experience doesn't tick any of those things and you don't see yourself in that language, you don't uh equate yourself to being someone who's living with that experience.
13:51
SPEAKER_00: So, what does that mean?
13:52
SPEAKER_00: When we talk about paying attention, we have to actually even step back further than that.
13:59
SPEAKER_00: Because if you don't see yourself represented anywhere in any of this dialogue, you don't pay attention to it.
14:05
SPEAKER_00: Why would you?
14:06
SPEAKER_00: Because that's not your experience.
14:07
SPEAKER_00: You just think there's something wrong with you.
14:09
SPEAKER_00: So I want to be very, very clear for foundationally related to generational trauma in particular, that I did not see myself that way or understand that about my experience until literally about a year ago.
14:23
SPEAKER_00: So I was writing the book before I even understood that that was really part of the equation.
14:29
SPEAKER_01: So we're just gonna meander.
14:31
SPEAKER_01: We're gonna meander here and then we'll go back to the question.
14:33
SPEAKER_01: So curious, you said until about a year ago, what tipped you off?
14:37
SPEAKER_01: What was the what was the shift for you?
14:40
SPEAKER_01: And what would you want?
14:42
SPEAKER_01: How could you explain to our listeners what signifies quote unquote generational trauma that they may not be paying attention to?
14:53
SPEAKER_01: Because I think you're right.
14:54
SPEAKER_01: We want this conversation to feel real and connecting for people.
15:00
SPEAKER_01: And I think you're such a great point.
15:03
SPEAKER_01: There are people out there that hear this language and zone out because it doesn't match their definition.
15:08
SPEAKER_01: So, what what was your shift and what are we talking about here?
15:12
SPEAKER_00: Yes, so my shift was working with a great therapist.
15:15
SPEAKER_00: I cannot stress enough how important therapy is.
15:19
SPEAKER_00: I got in therapy the first time when I was 30.
15:22
SPEAKER_00: So my daughter was six months old back then.
15:24
SPEAKER_00: That was 25 years ago.
15:26
SPEAKER_00: She's gonna be 26 this December.
15:28
SPEAKER_00: She was 13 when she was diagnosed, so that's the span of time we're talking about.
15:34
SPEAKER_00: Um, and I'm back in therapy, so in and out of therapy many, many times, and a lot of therapy when she got her diagnosis, um, but back in again a couple years ago.
15:45
SPEAKER_00: And and I just want to say I believe that every single human being on the planet can benefit from working with a good therapist.
15:53
SPEAKER_00: So um I don't know why this particular part of my history didn't become more clear to me.
15:59
SPEAKER_00: I think it's hard, right?
16:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, insight just happens as it as it happens, and we just learn what we learn when we learn it.
16:07
SPEAKER_00: We can't, I'm not sure we can force ourselves to learn.
16:10
SPEAKER_00: It's experiential.
16:12
SPEAKER_00: So all of these things, my history, the journey with my daughter, her illness, all the healing work that I was doing, finding a new therapist who's very skilled, all led me to be able to understand that I was dealing with generational trauma in the form of um big words, living with a narcissistic mother and the uh rejection and the neglect and that aspect of things, living with a father who had the codependency and the enmeshment and all that kind of stuff.
16:44
SPEAKER_00: Um, but they had their own traumas prior to that.
16:48
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, things that were passed down to them and then them living their lives.
16:53
SPEAKER_00: A lot of loss, big losses on my mother's side, a lot of loss on my father's side.
16:58
SPEAKER_00: He was also the survivor of a world war.
17:01
SPEAKER_00: He was older than my mom, so he was a World War II veteran.
17:03
SPEAKER_00: So everything he saw and that happened to him, and then that he did there, they came together.
17:09
SPEAKER_00: They had me, and then two years later, I was supposed to have a baby sister who was stillborn.
17:15
SPEAKER_00: So this was never ever discussed.
17:19
SPEAKER_00: 99% of the time, I didn't even remember I was supposed to have a sister.
17:22
SPEAKER_00: Well, my parents certainly didn't forget they were supposed to have another child.
17:26
SPEAKER_00: So all of these dynamics going into it.
17:29
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, fast forward 54 years or whatever it is, I'm sitting with my therapist.
17:34
SPEAKER_00: And for me, my own suffering in all the years.
17:39
SPEAKER_00: So I knew I had low self-esteem.
17:41
SPEAKER_00: I knew I did things that I didn't, you know, understand really why I did them and they didn't make me feel good.
17:47
SPEAKER_00: I knew that I had a really hard time uh hanging on to friendships, like my rearview mirror looking in my past was littered with failed friendships.
17:57
SPEAKER_00: All of this was extremely painful, but that internal suffering wasn't enough to break down the barriers to get me to fully understand what it all meant.
18:07
SPEAKER_00: It wasn't until the person I love most in the world, seeing my daughter suffer, seeing her starting, her life starting to repeat patterns that I could identify from my early childhood, that it became the suffering enabled me to finally, and then many more things happened, which I know we're going to get back to, but many more things happened for me to hit my own personal emotional rock bottom and to be sitting in front of my most current therapist saying, I I still don't like it's not all connecting.
18:44
SPEAKER_00: I so many things are like still hurting me and relationally and this and that and the other.
18:50
SPEAKER_00: And and she helped me unravel that onion to be able to identify.
18:55
SPEAKER_00: And um, I'm a very um, not surprisingly, with my childhood.
19:00
SPEAKER_00: I need the facts, I need to know why.
19:03
SPEAKER_00: I need to be armed because I have to overthink everything, I have to ruminate, I have to understand.
19:08
SPEAKER_00: So she actually gave me a clinician's guide to treating adult survivors of childhood like mine.
19:14
SPEAKER_00: And I mean, my head exploded.
19:17
SPEAKER_00: I could not believe that I, my experience was on every single page of this guide for clinicians to treat people like me.
19:27
SPEAKER_00: I thought it was just me.
19:29
SPEAKER_00: I thought I was just, you know, a messed up person.
19:32
SPEAKER_00: And I just want to say the compassion, this is uh has been one of the biggest surprises of this whole journey.
19:41
SPEAKER_00: The compassion that came out of that for my parents, that it's just not about blaming people.
19:47
SPEAKER_00: This is about how do we exactly what you said, how do we take agency for our own life experience?
19:52
SPEAKER_00: How do we heal?
19:53
SPEAKER_00: How do we take responsibility for ourselves?
19:56
SPEAKER_00: Seeing my parents no longer as my parents, but as two human beings who lived through all the things that they lived through to get to me, and then the things they continued to live through.
20:08
SPEAKER_00: And that understanding for my own self of the things that were hindering me and my ability to have the relationships that I wanted has been such a gift of this process.
20:20
SPEAKER_00: So I'm never gonna be the person who says healing work is easy.
20:24
SPEAKER_00: I don't know anyone who says that, and it's definitely not fast, as my story illuminates, um, but it is so worth it.
20:30
SPEAKER_00: I hope I answered your question because I actually forgot what it even was.
20:34
SPEAKER_01: No, I don't remember what it was either.
20:35
SPEAKER_01: It doesn't matter because you're saying such juicy stuff.
20:38
SPEAKER_01: So, so Tracy, you know, it's it's really interesting.
20:41
SPEAKER_01: Um the question I pose to my clients and myself on a regular basis is what part might I be playing in the things that aren't working for me?
20:54
SPEAKER_01: It's not where am I to blame, where is this my fault?
20:56
SPEAKER_01: It's what part might I be playing?
20:58
SPEAKER_01: And I think it's a question that very few of us ask because it requires a willingness to be really vulnerable.
21:05
SPEAKER_01: Now, you said something so spot on, and I'm gonna say it back because I just in case anyone missed it, which is that um you found compassion for your parents through this.
21:20
SPEAKER_01: But correct me if I'm wrong, my guess is that what helped you find compassion for your parents was learning to have compassion for yourself first, because you thought something was wrong with you and you were like, What we're really talking about, what we're talking about, just to press pause, is relational trauma.
21:37
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're talking about, right?
21:39
SPEAKER_01: That was generational trauma, is relational trauma.
21:41
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
21:42
SPEAKER_01: Then suddenly, because much of your parents' mental health challenges were projected onto you and you were breathing in the air where they were breathing out, they they were breathing out the emotional psychological air you were breathing in.
21:54
SPEAKER_01: So it became yours.
21:55
SPEAKER_01: And you started to criticize and doubt and shame.
22:00
SPEAKER_01: And blame yourself.
22:01
SPEAKER_01: And then that manual that your therapist gave you and that cross with her helped you step back and say, Of course, I'm feeling the way I'm feeling.
22:11
SPEAKER_01: Of course, this is happening for me.
22:13
SPEAKER_01: And that's self-conviction.
22:16
SPEAKER_01: And once you could do that, you could see your parents in that light as well.
22:20
SPEAKER_01: Am I you're nodding, our listeners can't see, but is that does that resonate for you?
22:25
SPEAKER_00: Well, yes.
22:26
SPEAKER_00: And I want to add in that actually where it began, even so backing up in the storyline, as my daughter, we were going through this journey, we had taken a lot of steps.
22:36
SPEAKER_00: So there was a lot of treatment, more treatment, residential treatment, hospitalizations, all of these things.
22:42
SPEAKER_00: She came back home.
22:44
SPEAKER_00: And, you know, all of these things don't cure someone's illness.
22:49
SPEAKER_00: So we had been, you know, forewarned that life wasn't going to be perfect, of course, even though we had done all the things and she had gone through this much treatment that in all likelihood she would come home and she would struggle again and she would self-harm again in these things.
23:05
SPEAKER_00: And that's exactly what happened.
23:08
SPEAKER_00: But I was still early, very early in this whole process.
23:12
SPEAKER_00: And so I was angry and tired and scared and frustrated and all the emotions that go through a normal human being when these things are happening.
23:24
SPEAKER_00: And I was complaining to my therapist.
23:27
SPEAKER_00: This is not the same therapist I'm working with now.
23:29
SPEAKER_00: I was complaining to my therapist at that time, who I'd been working with for quite a while at that point.
23:36
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, I don't know what else to do.
23:38
SPEAKER_00: I've done everything.
23:39
SPEAKER_00: I've taken her to every appointment.
23:40
SPEAKER_00: I've done everything I've been told.
23:42
SPEAKER_00: I'm working on all the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
23:44
SPEAKER_00: And she looked at me and said, Well, you could try some compassion.
23:48
SPEAKER_00: And I was stunned silent, first of all, because I thought, if I'm not the compassionate one in this equation, who is?
23:56
SPEAKER_00: And I stormed out of there and did what I already said I do.
24:00
SPEAKER_00: I started grabbing books off my shelf because I was gonna prove her wrong, but I needed more language to be able to defend myself with.
24:11
SPEAKER_00: And of course, long story short, is she was absolutely right.
24:15
SPEAKER_00: I didn't understand what compassion was.
24:18
SPEAKER_00: It had never been modeled for me.
24:20
SPEAKER_00: I didn't have any for myself.
24:22
SPEAKER_00: So I couldn't have any for anyone else.
24:24
SPEAKER_00: So when I asked her, I don't even know where to start, her answer was with yourself.
24:31
SPEAKER_00: So yes, learning how to have it for myself enabled me to have it for my daughter, have it for my parents, everything.
24:40
SPEAKER_00: Parents who are living through, and I get this, who are living now through what we did then, want an answer what to do.
24:49
SPEAKER_00: I wanted an answer what to do too.
24:53
SPEAKER_00: There are steps we have to take, but as frustrating as the thing is that I'm about to say, it is also true.
25:01
SPEAKER_00: What you do is your own work.
25:04
SPEAKER_00: That is the only thing you have control over.
25:07
SPEAKER_00: That's going to look different for every single person because every single person is different.
25:12
SPEAKER_00: And yes, we have many things we have to do for our children with appointments and with taking them places and learning about their diagnosis and all the steps that one requires, especially our system, the way it's set up right now.
25:26
SPEAKER_00: But ultimately, the thing we can do is our own work.
25:31
SPEAKER_01: Tracy, um, yeah, so much.
25:35
SPEAKER_01: I just want to we just so that our listeners are in with us.
25:39
SPEAKER_01: Your daughter struggled from an eating disorder, right?
25:42
SPEAKER_01: Any other diagnoses that she received that are helpful for folks in listening to know?
25:47
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
25:48
SPEAKER_00: So, yes, it started with an eating disorder, which ended up being NOS.
25:52
SPEAKER_00: So there were a few variations in there, but that's where we landed.
25:55
SPEAKER_00: And she also go ahead.
25:58
SPEAKER_00: That otherwise specified.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Yep.
26:01
SPEAKER_00: Um, and she also then received a diagnosis of severe depression.
26:06
SPEAKER_00: She has had and had and still has uh anxiety, although that was not an actual um diagnosis that we got at the time.
26:15
SPEAKER_00: And then symptoms included all the things with eating disorders and depression, and then she also started to self-harm, which is a symptom, not a diagnosis.
26:25
SPEAKER_00: But um it's a behavior out of all the behaviors that's extremely terrifying.
26:31
SPEAKER_00: So I like to bring it up and name what it is because it's very common and we have to talk about it.
26:37
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
26:38
SPEAKER_01: So, right, so so here's this little girl, age 13, who is suddenly uh unwinding, so to speak, right?
26:46
SPEAKER_01: She she is before your eyes, shifting.
26:50
SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, as a mother, I'm imagining I might use words like falling apart, right?
26:56
SPEAKER_01: Like really unraveling.
26:58
SPEAKER_01: And here you are as a woman who just lost your own mom.
27:02
SPEAKER_01: This was after your mom died, am I right?
27:05
SPEAKER_01: Who lost your own mom.
27:06
SPEAKER_01: So you're already dealing with your own process of loss and grief.
27:09
SPEAKER_01: And meanwhile, you're watching yourself quote unquote lose your daughter at the same time, right?
27:15
SPEAKER_01: So you're in between, you're in this squished, you know, middle generation that we talk about often.
27:21
SPEAKER_01: And you are going into your own set of fight, flight, or freeze responses because what do we do as moms?
27:26
SPEAKER_01: We want to fix the problem.
27:29
SPEAKER_01: Watching our children in pain is torturous.
27:34
SPEAKER_01: Another little side note uh that I think is one of the, for me with two teenage daughters, one of the hardest parts of mothering for me is recognizing that it is not my job to prevent my children from feeling their own pain.
27:49
SPEAKER_01: And when we see our children struggling or suffering, we go into fix-it mode, we go into doing mode, which is what you did.
27:55
SPEAKER_01: Understandably, we don't think about ourselves in those moments.
27:59
SPEAKER_01: We don't even consider that we might be doing something to co-contribute to this blossoming chaos that's in front of us.
28:06
SPEAKER_01: We just want to fix it.
28:09
SPEAKER_01: In retrospect, what are some of the mistakes you made?
28:14
SPEAKER_00: Well, I will say um, first and foremost, and this isn't a mother thing, although, yes, for sure, for us, it is a big problem.
28:27
SPEAKER_00: Um, we hyperfocused on the behavior.
28:30
SPEAKER_00: And by we, I mean treatment too.
28:33
SPEAKER_00: So um, this is something that I hope, you know, over 12 years everyone has gotten better at.
28:40
SPEAKER_00: But when your child stops eating and, you know, is not uh consuming enough calories in the long run to probably stay alive, everybody becomes instantly terrified and yes, immediately goes into fix it mode.
28:53
SPEAKER_00: But we became so hyper-focused on the behavior, trying to get the behaviors to stop.
29:00
SPEAKER_00: The house was in chaos, and we don't have other kids her age.
29:04
SPEAKER_00: So there was no one else in the home.
29:06
SPEAKER_00: So we weren't getting pulled in, you know, three, four, or five other directions with that added stress on top of everything.
29:12
SPEAKER_00: Um, but we really did, because again, every time it's like she had symptom, we get into treatment, her symptoms get worse, we up the treatment, her symptoms get worse.
29:24
SPEAKER_00: Now we're at an eating disorder clinic, her symptoms get worse, now we're pulling it out of school.
29:28
SPEAKER_00: Her self-harming gets worse, now we're talking about residential treatment, go to residential treatment, now she's being hospitalized.
29:35
SPEAKER_00: So every step of that way, it makes sense, of course, because the behaviors are what are so dangerous.
29:41
SPEAKER_00: So rationally, that makes a lot of sense.
29:44
SPEAKER_00: But what I wish we had been doing, if we could have all calmed down a little more, which again is a tall order, but is to look past the behavior to the suffering of this human being and focus less on how that was manifesting and trying to learn more about how we could support that suffering, that pain, that mourning.
30:12
SPEAKER_00: That's why it's like that got kind of lost in the mix of everything that was happening, which again rationally makes sense because her life was in danger.
30:23
SPEAKER_00: Let me be clear about that, especially as her self-harming escalated and I was finding her blood all over the house.
30:30
SPEAKER_00: It's very dramatic, you know, these things.
30:32
SPEAKER_00: Her life could very easily now, self-harm is normally a coping mechanism.
30:37
SPEAKER_00: It's not an attempt to die by suicide.
30:40
SPEAKER_00: However, accidents happen, all kinds of very terrible, scary things.
30:45
SPEAKER_00: So everybody's, you know, reacting to these things and something has to be done.
30:50
SPEAKER_00: And that's all true.
30:52
SPEAKER_00: Um, but I've said before, and I'll say again, when we took, when it got to the point where now we were talking about residential treatment, which we did because we felt like we had to, and it was what we were being told to do, and we were afraid our daughter was gonna die.
31:08
SPEAKER_00: This was devastating for her and for us.
31:13
SPEAKER_00: And at her most vulnerable, literally her most vulnerable moment, the message.
31:17
SPEAKER_00: This is not what our intention was, of course, but the message we are giving our daughter who is grieving and mourning and depressed and all these things is you're so bad you cannot even stay at home.
31:30
SPEAKER_00: So, this is something that we've also had to talk about and work through over these many years.
31:37
SPEAKER_00: So, I'm sharing that to say, to answer your question, that I wish we all could have calmed down.
31:45
SPEAKER_00: That doesn't mean not act, it means how what is the quality of our presence in the face of all of these things?
31:56
SPEAKER_00: Now, a normal person is already upset enough.
31:59
SPEAKER_00: But when you add on my history with the codependency and the enmeshment and no ability to regulate my own emotions and all of those things, now as soon as she's upset, I'm upset.
32:14
SPEAKER_00: And the same with my husband.
32:16
SPEAKER_00: So we're all unraveling simultaneously.
32:19
SPEAKER_00: So one of the very first things I had to learn how to do, which again took a very long time, was how was I contributing to it?
32:28
SPEAKER_00: Exactly what I just said.
32:30
SPEAKER_00: I was contributing to the chaos because I did not have a mechanism to control my own emotions.
32:36
SPEAKER_00: It makes perfect sense for me to be afraid, it makes perfect sense for me to be angry, it makes perfect sense for me to be scared.
32:42
SPEAKER_00: All the things, scared, terror, all of them.
32:47
SPEAKER_00: What I do with those things is my responsibility.
32:51
SPEAKER_00: And learning how to stay calm, as simple as it may sound, for someone like me, it is not simple at all.
33:00
SPEAKER_00: And it required a lot of practice and a lot of conversation with my therapist.
33:06
SPEAKER_00: But I believe that that was the first step, which again was long into the process, but being able to remain present for my daughter as she was dysregulating and not getting pulled along on that energetic journey, reminding myself, as weird as it sounds, that I'm a separate person.
33:28
SPEAKER_00: I am my own person, I am okay right now.
33:31
SPEAKER_00: Even if she is not okay right now, we are gonna be okay.
33:35
SPEAKER_00: We still love each other, all the things.
33:37
SPEAKER_00: Like I would sit there and literally say those things to myself like a mantra over and over and over and over again as she was dysregulating.
33:49
SPEAKER_00: And then, you know, I took my cues from her in terms of if she would be receptive to me like putting my hand on her leg, you know, or not, or whatever it was.
34:01
SPEAKER_00: I mean, we you know, we want to take our cues from our child in those circumstances, but that is very hard work.
34:08
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, I want to pause you who never did it because we're taught you're talking about you're talking about what happens when if we aren't taught at a young age that emotions aren't dangerous.
34:24
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're talking about, right?
34:26
SPEAKER_01: Because we know that for every human that walks the planet, we're gonna hopefully have our fair share of those emotions on the spectrum of joy and connection and hopefulness and blah, all that amazing stuff.
34:38
SPEAKER_01: We're also gonna have our fair share of disappointment and sadness and anger and worry and whatever, right?
34:45
SPEAKER_01: And for many of us, we're raised in families where those emotions that are more tender and vulnerable and quote unquote bad are dangerous because we're not, you know, our parents aren't modeling the capacity to feel those and be okay at the same time.
35:03
SPEAKER_01: When we feel them as children, we're being shamed or blamed or pushed out of where.
35:07
SPEAKER_01: Okay, so this is what you're describing.
35:08
SPEAKER_01: And of course, what we know is that feelings are never dangerous.
35:13
SPEAKER_01: What we do with them can be very dangerous to ourselves and other people.
35:18
SPEAKER_01: But feelings in general are not dangerous and they always make sense.
35:24
SPEAKER_01: So if we're, if you're not someone who's been raised in a family where you can intuitively make room for these painful feelings and not go into fight, flight or freeze, you're going to jump into doing mode.
35:39
SPEAKER_01: You're going to elevate.
35:41
SPEAKER_01: Your nervous system is going to elevate with your child to elevate and get stuck up there.
35:45
SPEAKER_01: And it sounds like that's a big part of what happened for you and your daughter, because of course you're watching her suffer and struggle and she doesn't know what to do with those emotions.
35:53
SPEAKER_01: She's only 13 or 14 or 15.
35:55
SPEAKER_01: You don't know what to do with them because you've never learned.
35:59
SPEAKER_01: And so you're spiraling together.
36:01
SPEAKER_01: And what I hear you saying that you learn through this, which is so beautiful.
36:05
SPEAKER_01: And I hope everyone can pause and rewind and hear this again.
36:09
SPEAKER_01: Is as you learned to stay present with the discomfort of her pain, she began to heal.
36:20
SPEAKER_00: Yes, I yes, I allowed that allows the space for someone to do the necessary work.
36:25
SPEAKER_00: We were healing together in what we're saying, yes.
36:28
SPEAKER_01: Which is secure attachment, right?
36:31
SPEAKER_01: Because as you may, and that I say she began to heal, meaning you weren't firing up each other, right?
36:36
SPEAKER_01: You did your own work, you found a therapist, you figured out, ah, how do I learn to regulate my emotions and make sense of them and take care of myself when I feel my heart racing and my my brain shut up?
36:47
SPEAKER_01: Like, how do I do that?
36:49
SPEAKER_01: Because you're going to feel pain when your child feels pain.
36:53
SPEAKER_01: So if you can't stay steady with your pain, you can't stay steady with hers.
36:58
SPEAKER_01: And what that beautiful little girl now woman needed from you was to stay steady and accept and make room for her pain.
37:08
SPEAKER_01: And dang, that's impossible to do if you've never been taught how, right?
37:12
SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
37:14
SPEAKER_00: And when you can understand that that comes from that deficit, there is so much less blame.
37:22
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
37:23
SPEAKER_00: I mean, that's what I know part of what we're going to talk about or are talking about right now is the fact that my therapist asked me for almost two years what I could do to take care of myself.
37:33
SPEAKER_01: But let's talk about that.
37:34
SPEAKER_01: When when she first asked you that before you started doing it differently, what did you hear when she was enraged?
37:41
SPEAKER_00: I thought she was insane.
37:43
SPEAKER_00: I mean, what are you even talking about?
37:45
SPEAKER_00: How I coped was eating too much and drinking.
37:49
SPEAKER_00: I gained 40 pounds in the first year or so of this process.
37:52
SPEAKER_00: I almost, you know, became an alcoholic.
37:56
SPEAKER_00: I don't, you know, whatever.
37:57
SPEAKER_00: So that's how I coped, which, as we all know, is not actually coping.
38:01
SPEAKER_00: That's numbing.
38:02
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, it is what it is.
38:04
SPEAKER_00: But um, she just kept, God bless her.
38:06
SPEAKER_00: I mean, she just kept asking me that with no judgment, infinite amount of patience, um, and all the things that wonderful therapists have.
38:16
SPEAKER_00: And so, yeah, almost two years into the process, when I the left hooks and right hooks had kept coming and treatment wasn't working, and everything was what it was, and all the things, uh it finally dawned on me like, oh, okay, the equation is backwards.
38:36
SPEAKER_00: Everything we've been taught about self-care is backwards.
38:40
SPEAKER_00: And this self-sacrificing, people-pleasing thing, which so many of us inherited, another devastatingly unhealthy pattern, is the antithesis of what we actually need to do to take care of ourselves exactly so that we can be able to take care of the people we love most in the world.
39:02
SPEAKER_00: And if there's a diagnosis of some kind involved, this is years of living we're talking about.
39:08
SPEAKER_00: How, where does the stamina come from?
39:11
SPEAKER_00: You don't have it all the time.
39:13
SPEAKER_00: But if you don't have a way, and to me, self-care is a very complicated, much bigger thing than most people imagine when they talk about it.
39:21
SPEAKER_00: Um, I I love a good Manny Petty as much as the next guy, but that's not the whole story.
39:26
SPEAKER_01: Well, wait, pause, and then I want to ask you what you now know about self-care because it's an important question.
39:32
SPEAKER_01: But finish your thought.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: Yes.
39:34
SPEAKER_00: So I forgot my thought.
39:36
SPEAKER_00: But I mean, the point is I had to then I had to get quiet.
39:39
SPEAKER_00: I had no mechanism to tune into my intuition.
39:43
SPEAKER_00: That was not something I trusted.
39:45
SPEAKER_00: I didn't trust myself after childhood like mine.
39:47
SPEAKER_00: I didn't even know how to do that or what any of that stuff meant.
39:50
SPEAKER_00: So that is where then getting quiet enabled me to realize, oh, I want to get back to being creative again.
39:57
SPEAKER_00: That has that was something that was a very big part of my childhood.
40:01
SPEAKER_00: And I felt a draw back to it.
40:04
SPEAKER_00: So I know we're going to come back to that.
40:06
SPEAKER_00: But I think you asked me, what do I think self-care is now?
40:10
SPEAKER_00: So there's so many great ways to think about it.
40:14
SPEAKER_00: I love your way.
40:15
SPEAKER_00: I listened, you know, very intently to your episode recently on self-care, which everyone needs to listen to.
40:21
SPEAKER_00: Because, yes, describing it as the act of being able to take care of ourselves in service of other people is a wonderful way to uh think about it and a very helpful way to think about it.
40:34
SPEAKER_00: I like to talk about it, think about it in terms of like a two-way street.
40:38
SPEAKER_00: So there's all the stuff that comes to us from the outside.
40:42
SPEAKER_00: So, you know, we're doing those fun things.
40:45
SPEAKER_00: We're getting Manny's petties, we're spending time with friends, we're reading a good book, we're taking a bath, we're doing all that, finding five minutes, if that's all we have, to I don't know, go in the bathroom and close the door, whatever.
40:56
SPEAKER_00: But from my perspective, the part we're missing is exactly the entire thing we've been talking about so far, which is the stuff that comes from inside of us outside.
41:07
SPEAKER_00: And the healing work, the understanding work, the insight work, the compassion work, the empathy work that most of us, many of us, did not get and have to learn how to do for ourselves so that these things can flow out of us and benefit our relationships across the board, but most particularly with the people we love most in the world.
41:28
SPEAKER_01: Yeah, it's a real shift.
41:30
SPEAKER_01: There's so much stereotype and cliche around that term self-care.
41:35
SPEAKER_01: And I think, you know, in a nutshell, what I hear you saying, you devoted yourself to care to was learning how to have a more sound, compassionate relationship with yourself, caring for yourself.
41:47
SPEAKER_01: I care about myself.
41:48
SPEAKER_01: That's what we're talking about.
41:50
SPEAKER_01: And when you, you know, again, I mean, a big population of my listeners are high achieving, doing, you know, doers, right?
42:00
SPEAKER_01: They're moving, moving, moving, and trying to get all these things done and have all these goals.
42:04
SPEAKER_01: And the idea of pausing and taking some time to fit, it feels like a waste of time for a lot of these folks, right?
42:13
SPEAKER_01: And really, yeah, great, get your manny petty.
42:16
SPEAKER_01: But what does it mean to really slow down in listening to how you're talking to yourself?
42:21
SPEAKER_01: What does it mean to really define with some intentionality what your values are and recognize are these my values or someone else's values?
42:28
SPEAKER_01: Because I've been living on someone else's values, right?
42:30
SPEAKER_01: And give yourself permission to have your own ideas and values.
42:35
SPEAKER_01: To me, that's self-care when we can land with ourselves and be able to spend time alone with ourselves.
42:43
SPEAKER_01: Many of us don't do that because it's so uncomfortable, right?
42:47
SPEAKER_00: I can't say 100% more.
42:49
SPEAKER_00: I mean just 100%, 100%.
42:52
SPEAKER_00: I was in my 40s before I realized, first of all, before I even heard the word values, and before I realized I could pick my own.
43:00
SPEAKER_00: It was like, what?
43:03
SPEAKER_00: I can like I can decide what I want my values to be.
43:07
SPEAKER_00: And same with like a boundary.
43:09
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I think boundaries are so hard for people, and myself included, to really understand.
43:14
SPEAKER_00: But like, you know, uh all of these things, yes, at 40 plus years old, 50 years old, I'm still, you know, working on these things, understanding them and implementing them in my life.
43:25
SPEAKER_00: But yes, I love being with myself now.
43:30
SPEAKER_01: So let me ask you a hard question.
43:33
SPEAKER_01: Um so so um I think it's a very valuable thing to remind ourselves that we don't take care of people we don't like.
43:45
SPEAKER_01: So if we don't like ourselves, we are not going to take care of ourselves, right?
43:49
SPEAKER_01: I have so many people that I've worked with across the years that I've done this work who know intellectually what they need to be doing to be healthy.
43:58
SPEAKER_01: And they're and there's they're they're really Brilliant, smart, motivated women.
44:03
SPEAKER_01: And yet they're not doing those relatively simple things.
44:07
SPEAKER_01: And then they're like, why am I just not?
44:09
SPEAKER_01: Why aren't I the water's right in front of me?
44:10
SPEAKER_01: Why aren't I drinking it?
44:11
SPEAKER_01: Why, why am I self-sabotaging?
44:13
SPEAKER_01: And of course, if we peel apart the layers like a stacking doll, we can say, Oh, well, there might be a little part in there of yourself that you really don't like.
44:21
SPEAKER_01: And we don't take care of the people we don't like.
44:24
SPEAKER_01: Now you're talking about having this daughter who's self-harming, right?
44:30
SPEAKER_01: So without knowing her whole story, but of course I'm a clinician myself, we can open that up and say, okay, you know, there was a part of your daughter that did not like herself, right?
44:40
SPEAKER_01: And there's pretty lots of other things that contribute to that.
44:43
SPEAKER_01: Do you believe or feel that she learned not to like herself by watching you not like yourself?
44:51
SPEAKER_00: Absolutely.
44:52
SPEAKER_00: I mean, I feel like to be clear, I also do believe there's a genetic component of that.
44:58
SPEAKER_00: Yes, of course.
44:59
SPEAKER_00: Many, many different play things at play.
45:01
SPEAKER_00: So many, 100%.
45:03
SPEAKER_00: But absolutely.
45:04
SPEAKER_00: And I think we can easily fool ourselves into thinking and saying, well, I'm not saying these mean things to myself out loud.
45:10
SPEAKER_00: That's right.
45:11
SPEAKER_00: You know, I'm only giving myself dirty looks in the mirror or whatever.
45:16
SPEAKER_00: Uh, but we we cannot escape the fact that energetically or whatever you know the mechanism is, 100%.
45:27
SPEAKER_00: And there's a key scene that illuminates this in my book.
45:31
SPEAKER_00: And again, it's about two-thirds of the way through the book.
45:34
SPEAKER_00: We're in um at the second residential treatment center.
45:37
SPEAKER_00: We had this exercise to do, just trying to make it short.
45:40
SPEAKER_00: It's called a whole person wheel.
45:42
SPEAKER_00: And it has like six, it's shaped like a pie.
45:44
SPEAKER_00: It has like these six slices, which are like part like your emotional life, your spiritual life, your, you know, social life.
45:50
SPEAKER_00: And we're supposed to color them in with these um broken grayons to how complete, you know, we feel or how good we feel about each of these slices.
45:59
SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, you know, my daughter, uh the myself, the disaster, you know, I was at the lowest point emotionally in my own life, and I already had low self-esteem.
46:11
SPEAKER_00: So my pie chart was very little colored in, like it was mostly white space.
46:17
SPEAKER_00: So then we find out we have to say our answers.
46:20
SPEAKER_00: This is family group therapy.
46:22
SPEAKER_00: So it's all the kids, all the families, everybody in the same room.
46:26
SPEAKER_00: We have to say our answers out loud.
46:28
SPEAKER_00: So they didn't tell us that ahead, or I would have lied.
46:31
SPEAKER_00: I'm just being honest, I would have lied.
46:32
SPEAKER_00: So we start going around the room, and everybody's percentages are 80, 90, 100% fulfilled in all these things.
46:41
SPEAKER_00: And I'm first of all, feeling more I've gone into a shame spiral already completing the exercise.
46:47
SPEAKER_00: So forget about now hearing everybody's high numbers.
46:50
SPEAKER_00: So, long story short, is the only person in the room whose chart looked the most like mine was my daughter's.
46:57
SPEAKER_00: So all of these things are at play and 100% my terrible relationship with my own self and kind of ignoring that, hiding from it.
47:08
SPEAKER_00: And I'd been in therapy, you know, when she was young before we got to this point, and it was very helpful.
47:13
SPEAKER_00: But again, these things are not a one and done.
47:17
SPEAKER_00: So when I saw the reality, that was the turning point for me to focus on myself.
47:23
SPEAKER_00: Um, but absolutely, I mean, we cannot avoid our kids.
47:29
SPEAKER_00: Again, it might not be like a conscious knowing, but we cannot avoid them knowing the truth about how we feel about ourselves.
47:38
SPEAKER_01: I am so grateful that you are speaking so honestly and authentically about this, because this is something.
47:49
SPEAKER_01: I mean, I don't obviously, I'm not gonna like throw any numbers out there, but I think the majority of our listeners have some similar experience to what you're talking about.
47:59
SPEAKER_01: And of course, there's a spectrum of really feeling uncomfortable with who they are at their core, being really self-critical in their head, being shame spiral up and down and all around, who are working real hard to love their daughter's children well, to help their children feel good about themselves, and are missing the point of the interconnection in that.
48:28
SPEAKER_01: And it's dangerous to not pay attention.
48:32
SPEAKER_01: Now, to your point, mental illness is a complicated, multidimensional issue.
48:38
SPEAKER_01: So this is not again about a blame game.
48:41
SPEAKER_01: We're not blaming any mothers out there, but of course, what part might I be playing, right?
48:46
SPEAKER_01: We all play a part is just to slow down and to recognize that nothing between a parent and a child can, I mean, that's not, I'm not gonna say nothing, but very little between a parent and a child is gonna be kept secret from a child.
49:00
SPEAKER_01: They may not know the details and the specifics, but the feeling of it, it's just there.
49:06
SPEAKER_01: I am gonna pause us because it's four minutes to one and I have a coaching call.
49:11
SPEAKER_01: And I'm wondering, Tracy, if we can come back for a part two for this.
49:16
SPEAKER_01: Love that.
49:17
SPEAKER_01: Yes, absolutely.
49:18
SPEAKER_01: What I want to talk with you about when we come back, and I'll just prep this for our listeners is um I really want to hear more about your daughter because I think it's important for us to see her full circle.
49:30
SPEAKER_01: And you know, you see you did all this hard work.
49:34
SPEAKER_01: You you kind of had this painful and yet of course, like like uh, you know, universally divine, whatever word you want, realization that oh, I oh, I gotta figure some stuff out if I want to be that securely attached mother to my daughter and help support her in an effective way.
49:51
SPEAKER_01: So we know that that was happening over here.
49:54
SPEAKER_01: We also know your daughter was really struggling.
49:56
SPEAKER_01: And now, on, you know, it's now July, end of July 2024, you're you're both healthy.
50:04
SPEAKER_01: Er, I mean, I say that because we're always working on our health.
50:08
SPEAKER_01: There's no finish line, right?
50:10
SPEAKER_01: But you're not there anymore.
50:12
SPEAKER_01: And I want to hear, I want our listeners to hear what went into that a little bit because it's so much.
50:20
SPEAKER_01: The story is really big.
50:23
SPEAKER_01: And it can actually, I think we can talk about in a way that makes it fairly simple.
50:30
SPEAKER_01: We're not saying it's easy, we're not saying it's fast, but my guess is that you have a lot of insight to share about what was important for her and her journey and what was important for you and the two of you as a mother-daughter team.
50:45
SPEAKER_01: I want to hear about that from you.
50:47
SPEAKER_01: And we just don't have time right now.
50:49
SPEAKER_01: So will you come back to talk to us about this?
50:51
SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
50:51
SPEAKER_00: Uh, it'd be a delight to come back.
50:54
SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
50:54
SPEAKER_00: Okay.
50:55
SPEAKER_00: That talking about my relationship with my daughter now is my favorite thing to talk about.
50:59
SPEAKER_01: So and I want, and I I want people to hear that because I think really what we're going to be weaving in and out of together here is this, it can all be true.
51:10
SPEAKER_01: You can have deep struggle and deep pain and deep connection and deep love.
51:15
SPEAKER_01: You can have mistake and fumbling and regret and appreciation and gratitude and hope.
51:23
SPEAKER_01: Like it can all be true.
51:25
SPEAKER_01: And I think our brains go to one or the other.
51:28
SPEAKER_01: And your story is a beautiful example of what happens when we all allow it to be important and true and find meaning in that.
51:41
SPEAKER_01: And sometimes it's easier to understand how that's possible by hearing someone talk about their own to your point story.
51:48
SPEAKER_01: So really valuable stuff.
51:51
SPEAKER_01: Um, I mean, I'm just gonna have to end it because I have to jump on another call.
51:56
SPEAKER_01: But um, Tracy, we are gonna circle back to you uh hopefully soon to just schedule another hour and let's just do this.
52:04
SPEAKER_01: Let's break this into two episodes and we'll just come back.
52:06
SPEAKER_01: Is that okay with you?
52:07
SPEAKER_01: Perfect.
52:08
SPEAKER_01: Amazing.
52:11
SPEAKER_01: Hey, if you loved this episode and enjoy this podcast, please just take a moment to subscribe, rate, and review and send it to one mom out there who you think might benefit.
52:23
SPEAKER_01: When you do that, you help to make sure that no woman out there ever feels like they have to mother alone.
52:31
SPEAKER_01: Thank you.