#080: My Parents’ Divorce Made Me Question Everything | Paula Chambers, PhD

For so many of us, our parents’ divorce causes us to question everything — especially if it came out of the blue. We ask ourselves: What won’t fall apart? We may even go through life feeling like there’s a disaster around every corner and as a result, so often we play it safe in life. 

We discuss that and more in this episode as my guest shares:

• How she blamed herself for the breakdown of her parents’ marriage

• How nobody was there for her

• How she struggled with low self-esteem, self-harm, and acting out sexually

• How she never had children because she feared she couldn’t be a good mom

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• Paula Chambers

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• Episode 33: Does Divorce Damage Children? 67 Studies Answer

• Books

  • The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma | Bessel van der Kolk M.D.

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

For so many of us who come from broken families, our parents' divorce caused us to question everything, especially if it came out of the blue. We ask ourselves if my family is meant to be in my foundation in life, and that fell apart, well what won't fall apart? And we may even go through life feeling like there's a disaster around every corner.

And as a result, so often we play it safe in. We discussed that and so much more in this episode as my guest shares how she felt powerless and even blamed herself as a five year old girl for the breakdown of her parents' marriage. We talk about how nobody was there for her when she needed it the most.

So sad and so wrong, and that's what we're trying to change. Hair restored, she vulnerably shares how she struggled with low self-esteem, self-harm, and even acting out sexually. We even discussed why she fell into that and what she was seeking in that behavior. She mentions how her parents' broken marriage has even affected her own marriage.

She shares a big reason that she never had children is because she was afraid. That she couldn't be a good mom, largely because of her broken family, and she shares what's helped her heal and how her life is different now. So keep listening.

Welcome to the Restored Podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents'. Divorce, separation, or broken marriage so you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for joining us. This is Episode. Before I introduce my guest, if you would like to share your story with us at Restored, we'd love to hear it.

There's three easy steps to do it, but first, some of the benefits of sharing your story, reflecting on your story is actually healing for you on a neural, biological level. It actually makes your brain healthier writing your story. Is actually healing as well. Studies have shown that people who write about emotionally significant events in their lives are less depressed, they're less anxious, they're healthier, and they're happier.

And sharing your story with someone is healing too on a neuro biological level. Not just keeping it to yourself or writing it for yourself, but actually sharing it with someone else who can receive it, who can listen to it, who can read it with. Also sharing your story can give guidance and hope to people who are struggling, who are in a similar spot that you were.

Now, if you wanna share your story, there's three easy steps. Just go to restored ministry.com/story can restored ministry ministry singular.com/story. On that page, the formal guide you and telling a really quick version of your. And then we'll take it and turn it into an anonymous blog article. So if you want to go ahead and share your story now, I'll also remind you at the end of the episode to do so, you could also just click the link in the show notes if you want to, or go to resort ministry.com/story.

My guest today is Paula Chambers. Paula Woods raised in Los Angeles by an actress, mom and filmmaker dad. Paula grew up steeped in the show business and spent her twenties in that world. She studied film at Cal Arts and worked as an assistant director in movies and television for five years. She changed careers at 29 and spent the next decade in graduate school preparing to be an English professor where she won teaching awards.

She started a business called Versatile PhD, a business that helped thousands of graduate students to pursue careers outside academia. After selling that business, she began teaching a dance fitness class, which she turned into another business. Paula is passionate about healing, about growing and personal responsibility.

She resides in California and is happily married to her husband, Gary. So here's my conversation with Paula Chambers.

Paula, it's great to have you in the show. Thanks so much for being here. Thank you for having me. I am so happy to be in this beautiful space that you've created. Thank you and, uh, I've been looking forward to this conversation. It's great to have you here, like I said, and I'd like to just dive right in, if that's okay.

How old were you when your parents separated and divorced and what happened? Uh, I was five. Um, I was born in New York in the 1960s into a show business family. My mom was an actress and my father was a director and they were both writers. They were both very smart and charismatic people. My dad came across as, uh, really intelligent and competent and funny.

He has a goofball side that earned him a lot of friends . And, uh, my mom is, uh, warm and charming and absolutely gorgeous. So they were both. I think extra compelling people. Every child is fascinated by their parents, but my parents actually were legitimately fascinating people. Um, but they both had, had developmental trauma in their childhood, of course, which I only know now as an adult.

They both had, had really difficult, really terrible parenting from, uh, from both of their parents and, uh, that left them. I now understand. Damaged, deeply damaged and unable to have the kind of close, intimate relationship that they wanted and that they needed. And it also didn't help that my father was away a lot for his work.

He was a, uh, a director of training and educational films. He was hired by government agencies and corporations to make films about things, you know, that were important, films that were instructive. So he was on the road a lot. He worked in Washington DC shooting medical documentaries at Walter Reed Medical Hospital, and all kinds of other interest.

Assignments, but that took him away from our home. So I'm sure that could not have been a positive influence on their marriage. They were married for nine years. They had to work really hard to have me. Uh, my father was especially passionate about having a child and he hoped for a girl and they finally had me in year four of their nine year marriage.

Uh, their problems as a couple got serious in year seven. And they divorced in year eight when I was five, and uh, I was the only child, which is one of the things that made the effects of the divorce extra hard on me that I didn't have a sibling to weather the storm with. I was all alone. Another thing that made it hard on me is that there.

There was no yelling. There were no fights. Nobody was awful. And I learned from your show that that's called a low conflict divorce, which research has shown is the most damaging to the children because it comes outta nowhere. Like what? What? And if you can't trust, What your eyes tell you. Everything looked fine right to me, but if you, But then it wasn't, and so it makes you question just everything.

Mm-hmm. , it makes you question all of your perceptions and have a persistent lack of confidence in your own perceptions of the world. I found a letter recently that my mother wrote to her mother telling her mother about the divorce. She said that, uh, she and my father had been pretending things were okay for years, but in the last year, they realized that they had to either live a pretend life for the rest of their lives or break.

And create new lives separately. They chose the latter, partly because they were starting to see that the tension between them, which was harder and harder to pretend didn't exist, was finally affecting me. My mom said it was showing in my behavior. She wasn't specific. I don't know what I would've been doing as a four year old, noticing my parents.

Something was wrong, but not knowing what and feeling, you know, I don't know what I was doing, but I must have felt puzzled, like, what's going on? I must have felt scared. You know what? Things are unstable. I can't trust my environment. And I'm sure that I felt powerless cuz in fact, I was powerless. I didn't have the ability to fix their marriage.

I was five. And I wasn't them, so I was powerless. So they divorced when I was five, and I actually remember them saying, It's not your fault. But because I was five, I was developmentally unable to hear that. I was unable to take that in. I now know that four and five year olds are just starting to become independent, just starting to discover themselves as people, Hey, I could do this.

Maybe I'd like to do. And yet they're still young enough to, to believe that everything that happens in their world happened because of them. So that time, especially for an only child, Is a very tough time for parents to divorce because I got, I as a five year old got the message that I obviously had been bad.

That's something I had done or some way I was being, as I was trying out being Paula and learning what being Paula is, Apparently Paula is no good because Paula must have caused. This terrible thing to happen. What other reason could there be, Right? Yeah. To a five year old. There can't be another reason.

I was very deeply affected and I feel today also, that not enough space was made for me and my feelings at the time. Now, this was the 1960s, so times are different today I hope. But you know, I was just the five year old and I was very important, but I was not. You know nobody, I don't remember anyone holding me and just inviting me to just cry and keep crying.

I don't remember them asking me what I feel. Maybe they did. I don't remember. I felt unseen. I felt unseen, unheard and subordinate to them. Less important than them, which with charismatic. People is extra easy to feel, you know, they are so fascinating and so powerful. I, you know, so the downstream consequences for, for me as my life went on the.

Was that I had extremely low self-esteem starting in, starting then, and it really didn't get really good, honestly, until about 10 years ago. Um, it slowly crawled forward, but it was terrible throughout my childhood. I developed a stutter right after the divorce, um, and the stutter, of course. Oh, that did wonders for me on the playground.

You know, I mean, I was a magnet. For merciless teasing. So now I was also teased and bullied and pushed around at school. So my self-esteem got even lower and those neural pathways saying I am bad, I am bad, got carved even deeper. I had. More difficulty with my father, even though he was a highly engaged and loyal, divorced father for the era.

He wrote me a letter every day and called me on the phone every night. You could hardly ask for a more engaged father. I should add, my mother moved me to California, so that's why all the letters and the calls instead of the visits. But, um, he really did a champion job of staying in touch with me, and yet the divorce affected him too.

He felt really terrible about himself and his failure, and he compensated unfortunately by becoming kind of a narciss. And so his narcissism then was a downstream effect on him that totally affected me. I had a lot of conflicts with him, and it was even more all about him and not about me. He never asked my opinion.

He declaimed and proclaimed this is how it is, and so I again was, was hampered in my natural human need to develop my own opinions and perspectives. As a young adult, I engaged in self harm. I drank, I took drugs, and I was very promiscuous. Honestly, it's a miracle that nothing terrible happened to me.

It's a miracle that I never got pregnant or raped or killed. Nothing bad happened to me. I was so lucky. I'm so grateful to whatever guardian, angel, if you will, must have been looking out for me cuz I was putting myself in harm's way. Regularly. So I look back at those behaviors now and I just feel like, no, you are so much better than that.

I wish I could re mother myself at that time. And also, I did not develop real emotional independence until well into adulthood. I was incredibly delayed in growing out of needing to please my. My career choices were driven by a combination of healthy reasons, like being genuinely interested in a field and also unhealthy reasons.

I know my mother would be proud of me if I did this. I know my father would respect this, and there was always a need to prove to them that I was a good daughter after all, and I now know I never had to prove that I was always a good daughter. They never thought otherwise. It wasn't my fault that they got divorced.

That was a lie that my, you know, five year old brain had no choice. But tell me. Yeah, and I was a late bloomer also in my romantic relationships, starting with promiscuity in my late teens and early twenties. It took me a long time to get better and better boyfriends, you know, nicer and nicer people, better and better quality Relat.

Until I finally met the man I was to marry when I was 34 and we married at 38. Not ridiculously late, not ridiculous. But you know, on the late side, and I also did not have children, which again is not terrible. Um, but the main reasons were to really be honest with you and your listeners because I didn't wanna put anyone else through what I had gone through, and I didn't believe in my ability to be a good mother.

Wow, because I, I hadn't yet really discovered all of the wonderful things that are Paula. I didn't love myself enough to believe that I could be a good mom. So I didn't have children. I don't actually honestly regret that today. I never felt a giant stirring of maternal need. So, you know, that worked out.

I got to do a lot of great things because I didn't have children. So I'm not, you know, playing the violin here. I'm just saying it affected my life. Uh, it might have gone differently, but for the effects of the divorce. Wow. Thank you for sharing. So vulnerably and. Your story is, uh, incredible, like you've been through so much and there's so much I wanna say to kind of narrow it in one, when it comes to our parents experiencing trauma, we see that all the time that that trauma, that brokenness gets passed on often for generations, which is so sad.

And that's why we exist because we wanna. Putting into that, wanna break that cycle, and I know you get that going to the timeline of your parents' divorce. Uh, I'm sure you know this, but for our listeners, if you don't know this, I've seen data from the US Census that says on average for first marriages, typically the separation happens seven years in, and then the divorce takes one year.

So at the eight year, There's a divorce. So your parents actually were right on that timeline, which is really fascinating. Um, I can't imagine, you know, you going through that alone, no one was there for you. Uh, it's so tragic. It breaks my heart thinking to the younger you and I didn't see that a lot. Now we have a friend who's going through a divorce.

My friend, I have a friend who's going through a divorce and it's just the whole situation breaks my heart. And, uh, she's, the, our friend has been through a lot, but she has a daughter who, um, I think she's maybe three now, maybe. Whenever I see her, I just wanna like, like you said, I just wanna wrap her in my arms.

My heart just breaks for her. I know what she's going through and I just wish I could spare her all that pain and protect her from, you know, everything that's coming at her both now and in the future as we both well know, so, so much there to to comment on. I just wanted to kind of validate you on those few things when it comes to the low self-esteem.

Having spoken with you separately and obviously now in this show. You strike me as a very confident person now. So I wanna hone in on that because this is a common struggle for people like us who come from broken families. How did you become so confident? How did you go from the low self-esteem to where you are now feeling comfortable in your own skin and and confident to the point where you can get up and give talks in front of audiences and do all these amazing public eye sorts of activities.

So I'm curious, how did you become that? Part of it is my, just my native temperament. I am, Now that I know who Paula is, I can tell you that I enjoy communicating. I enjoy speaking. I enjoy speaking live. I enjoy writing. I. It's part of who I am, and I think it would've been part of who I am, no matter whether there had been a divorce or not, no matter whether my parents had been better able to make their marriage work or not.

I think that was just an inborn part of me that I would one day be a teacher speaker or deter some blend of that. Sure. But, uh, that aside, I have to acknowledge the many rich resources that have been. Str upon my forward path as I grew up through my adulthood. My adulthood has been infinitely better than my childhood.

Mm. And it is. I did have a lot of therapy. I was, I've been fortunate to be well resourced, to be able to have therapy. Anytime I wanted, and I've certainly had a lot of it and that was somewhat helpful. I've been fortunate also to have loads of education. Education has been fantastic for me. I loved learning about things that interested me.

And looking back, I can see how. Pursuing education has been a way that I have found of finding out more about who Paula is, you know, observing my interests as they develop, and then spending more time learning, choosing those classes and writing that paper. It has been a nice, delayed, but nonetheless valuable way of discovering Paula.

And, uh, I've been very lucky to find marvelous friends who are very different from me in many ways, but who see me, who make me feel seen and loved as I am accepted. When I started working at the Renaissance Fair in my late teens, that's when I met these fantastic people. Who themselves were the misfit toys of the world, you know?

And they, they welcomed me and they saw me and they said, Yeah, that's great. Be that, be you. And I met some of my closest friends there today, and they have been incredibly helpful. Uh, I've gone through my adult life with them, um, and then a little later finding my husband, who I have to say is uniquely qualified, uniquely well.

Created to make me feel loved. An issue in my childhood in the divorce was that I didn't feel seen and heard. My husband makes me feel incredibly seen and heard. He loves to listen to my voice. He loves to see my face. He's very slow to come to a conclusion about something. He gathers a lot of data really different from me.

He gathers a lot of data before he decides. That something is an observable, verifiable, evidence based thing, and it, he was, you know, it took him six months of dating me before he was able to say that I am honest, and it meant so much more coming from him. I had never met a person like that who was so, Interested in granular data and lots of it before reaching any conclusions about anything.

And so when he says something about me, I know it's true because it is totally evidence based. It's not hype or fantasy. As in stark contrast to how my parents were being artists, they're given to fantasy and imagination to begin with. Not a sin, but having being damaged that made themself in, self-absorbed and not so able to see me.

They would project onto me instead of seeing me. It was the best they could do, but my husband. He doesn't project anything . He's like, If he sees something about me and he says it, I'm sure it's true. That was very helpful. Yeah, and to have his daily devotion, his daily presence, his daily love, it was just, it filled in all the love gaps that the divorce left in my heart.

And, uh, I would also credit having career opportunities, having many, because of my education and my temperament being, um, ready and willing to be a little bolder and make bolder choices. I have had several experiences, work experiences that have shown me that I can make a positive difference in the world.

Is part of it related to my damage from the divorce, but not in a bad way. The fact that I felt I could have no impact on what was happening with them, and in fact I was right, I could not made me yearn to have an impact on something. And so when I was an English composition teacher, while I was getting my PhD, I had an impact.

I had, I helped these young people learn how to. And that was thrilling. And then later as a grant writer, I raised money that was used for the mission of my organization, which I cared about. So, boom, because of my writing, I was able to make a difference in the world. A little more recently, my second to last career, having the opportunity to start a community for humanities, PhD students who are interested in non-academic careers.

Now, this is a little obscure. Most people think that a PhD has all the doors of the world open to them, but it is not. So many, many, uh, PhDs go in because they want an academic career. They wanna be professors, but they discover. When it's too late to stop. When they're almost done, they discover that there aren't the jobs out there.

And so it's like, well, now what? Yeah. And they feel like they're the losers, you know? And, but I created the first ever online community for humanities PhD students interested in non-academic careers. And that community, I later upgraded it into a socially positive business called Versatile PhD, and my message to them, As to myself at the time was you are versatile.

You can do many things, move in many directions. So those work experiences helped me discover the power that I do have to influence the things that I can influence, and that has been very healing for me. So all of those things, those, those career moves, they're all kind of different. You know, I haven't been doing one thing my whole life.

It's been a, a, a series of chapters, but every chapter has unfolded and revealed something wonderful about myself, to myself, and has left the world a little bit better than I found it, and most recently. Now I , believe it or not, I'm still incredulous myself. I sold versatile PhD five years ago in order to become a , a Mindful Movement teacher, I teach a class called Nia Technique, which is a low impact, whole body joy based workout.

And I, this is what I do now. I'm lucky that I was able to sell my business and accept a much, much, much lower income to do this thing that I love. But neo technique has been something that when I discovered as a student, that's when my own healing really accelerated. I have to acknowledge there was a synergistic forward progress, as I've described through all those careers, through my marriage, through my friends.

All of that helped. But after all that help, Finding neo technique really sent me flying and made me heal, helped me heal myself and become, uh, the person that I am today. So good. Thank you for going through that and I can tell why those experiences would make you more confident to going back to relationships and.

Marriage. I'm curious, in addition to what you've already told us, um, how have you seen the breakdown of your family, your parents' divorce, affect your relationships and your marriage? In addition to what you've already told us? I would say that my low self-esteem has affected all of my relationships. The ones, the, the friendships that didn't get to happen because I was too needy.

The friendships that did happen, but that I could not receive all of the love and joy that there was there for me to receive. You know, you can pour a bucket into a thimble, but the thimble is only gonna take away a thi full of the water in the bucket. And I'm sure that there was a lot more love and acceptance out there for.

The whole time, but I kept feeling insecure and uncertain and am I a good person and needing a lot of reassurance, you know? So I missed out on a lot of joy and a lot of love and a lot of fun by constantly being so interrogating myself and being hard on myself and worrying that I'm not good. That has affected all of my relationships, friendships, et cetera, and it, it has, oh yes, it has affected my marriage too.

All marriages have issues and one of ours is that I am still. Even today, very poisoned by my father's hatred of stupidity. This is one of the things I mentioned. He kind of spun out into a degree of narcissism after the divorce. And his intelligence was one of the things that he based his new propped up self-esteem on.

And when I was with him, he would, you know, fairly often whenever he would encounter something stupid, which the world being full of stupidity happened often he would say, Ugh. That was stupid. That person, she's so stupid. What stupid thing to say. And just the way he said stupid, that first syllable stupid was like a blow stupid.

And I thought that the message I got from that is, whatever I am in this life, Ed, I'd better not be stupid. Mm-hmm. . And so I have even today a corrosive little thread. Of hatred, of stupidity, of contempt, of stupidity. Mm-hmm. and my husband and I have very different minds, different temperaments, and we think differently.

And so sometimes we each do things that the other person thinks are stupid. I see different things when I walk into a room than he does, and when I think he has done something stupid. Especially when I'm, when we're under pressure, you know, like, Let's, let's go, let's get out the door. Let's get ready for the party or whatever.

You know, I feel myself starting to feel contemptuous of him and starting to say, just to speak to him in an unkind tone that I'm too embarrassed to imitate myself doing. So that is the, the ghost of my fetishistic need to please my father, even when he was like super screwed up. Still lives on in my consciousness and my relationships today.

No, it makes so much sense. And again, you can see that thread, you can see that theme in your life and how impactful that original event was to you. And it makes so much sense and in so many ways, it just breaks my heart to, to see what you went through, what you struggled with, um, but it's also beautiful how you've been able to transform that into something.

Uh, really good. And that's my next question for you. You already touched on a lot of ways in which you have healed. Is there anything you would add to. Yes. I wanna talk more about the body and its role in my healing. I've always loved to dance and move. Well, always isn't true. When I was a child, I didn't have the confidence, the self esteem, to actually dare to dance at a party.

Later in my twenties, thirties, forties, fifties, et cetera. I have always chosen and it, uh, chosen dance activities, amateur dance activities like dancing at the Renaissance Fair, you know, English country dance, for example. And I've always really enjoyed, I have great sense of rhythm. I love, I love the movement.

I like moving my body. It's fun for me. So maybe there are people out there who just simply don't like to move, don't like to dance, they're not dancers. Okay. This part maybe won't be helpful to them so much. When I discovered Nia technique is, uh, it was a very powerful turning point because I had never been told to sense my body before.

Nia is a mindful dance fitness practice. It is not a performing art. It is a sensory movement practice where the goal is to sense your body while moving to this beautiful music. Doing these beautiful, interesting, fun, not too hard movements and sensing my body while moving was an entirely new concept to me when I discovered Nia in my forties.

And then, and Nia also teaches you that your body has a voice. Your body has things to say to. But it only has the voice of sensation. So if you are, if you are listening to your body, if you're sensing your body, you are listening to your body's voice. And so I began to regard my body as a source of truth, a source of my identity.

I developed a whole new body based sense of self. And the great thing about sensing my body, speaking only for myself, is that I realized, Oh my God, this information, when I am moving my body, nobody but me even has access to that data to refute it or debate it. Right. This is information for me alone. Only I know what my body feels like doing.

This moves to this music on this day, and that was incredibly healing for me. Maybe it had that big effect on me because as I said, I've always loved to dance, so I'm a, you know, dancer type. So maybe it's just in my temperament, but whatever. I found this medium and it helped me. Incredibly much and so much that a few years later I decided to become a teacher.

And now as Ania teacher, I am doing all, all, you can see all the themes of my life braided together. I'm teaching, I'm dancing. I'm being seen, I'm being heard. It's incredible. I love. Thanks for sharing and No, it makes sense and to some people listening, you know, that might not be a tool that you would use for healing, but everyone you know, has different ways of coping and dealing and, and finding healing.

And one of the things that I think, um, might be helpful to people who might be a little bit thrown off by this idea is that our bodies do keep. The trauma, uh, that we've endured on some level, and there's a whole book on this. The body keeps the score and it's the idea that, yeah, our bodies, the basic idea is that our bodies are impacted by the trauma that we endured, the emotional trauma and physical trauma we've endured.

Uh, a typical example of a physical trauma would be. You know, if you're a soldier who gets blown up or you're in a car accident, you might end up forming a hunch as if you're preparing to be hit by the car again. And so your body can carry that trauma with you. And so for me personally, you know, I, I'm not, um, huge into dance, but I, I'm am into fitness.

I love, um, I'm not as active now. I don't wanna give him the impression that I'm like this, uh, athletic fitness expert by any means. In the past, you know, I, uh, was an athlete all my life and I did CrossFit. I did kickboxing, and so you reminded me of that too, which for me, those things were helpful and healing.

They were honestly coping mechanisms for me to get a lot of stress out and to deal with, you know, the things I was juggling in my life at the time, especially going through the, a lot of the dysfunction in my family. And so, uh, yeah, I remember too when things would get really rough at home. I would go downstairs and I would hit a punching back hard, and that was helpful for me to, to use my body and this whole idea.

Mind over matter is interesting, but I've heard people say body over mind in some ways can be really helpful, especially if you get caught in your mind with a lot of anxiety. So I appreciate you going through that and if you guys wanna pick up that book, The Body Keeps the score. I haven't read it yet, I wanna read it, but that's where some of these ideas come from, whether or not you end up going down the route of doing some sort of dance fitness or not.

Uh, we're close to our time here, so I wanted to ask you, you know, Been through a lot. You've found a lot of healing. How is your life different now that you've found that healing and you've grown? My life is very different because on the inside it looks the same on the outside, but on the inside, my experience of my life is much, much, much better now that I have really fully taken charge of defining.

That I know who Paula is and I'm still learning too. I'm still evolving too. So Paula is not a static work of art that's finished, but I am, I'm the driver and I'm, I, I get to decide, I'm a decider of what happens in my life and not, you know, we don't have control over everything in our lives, but I am the decider of how I respond to the things that.

I am much better able to, uh, resist being triggered in difficult situations now, and I must say the pandemic was a blessing to my healing, though I would gladly give it all back if the pandemic could not happen. Fair, but, Slowing way down. I finally took the advice of so many people. People have been telling me all my life, Oh, Paula, you really should try meditation.

So I finally went, Oh, all right. I'll just sit and I'll breathe and sense my breathing. And it helped so much. I discovered that there was. That the, that my perceiving unit that is the Paula inside of Paula, you know, is inside my breath. And by sensing my breath, I was able to feel like I was cradling my young self, cradling my four year old self.

Sometimes tears would come, sometimes they wouldn't. But by focusing on my breath and imagining that baby Paula. Was inside the loop of inhale and exhale. I made myself feel seen and embraced and cared about, and then I added affirmations onto that. I started saying affirmations that counteracted the trauma that I experienced.

I said, for example, I am a good person. I am a good person when I do good things, and also when I make mistakes gain. Forget something or screw up. I am a good person 24 7 365. So in the after meditating, even just for five minutes, you know, just 40 or 50 breaths, and then saying those positive things to myself, I started to hear it and believe it.

Okay. Thank you so much. And it's amazing. One of the transformations that stuck out to me in this conversation is that you went from struggling with the stutter to now being, you know, in order as, as you said, at a PhD in composition and it's, it's quite incredible. So that's for some, uh, I think it's inspiring for a lot of people listening right now.

If your parents were listening right now, what would you want them to know? I would want them to know that I see. The trauma that they went through in their childhood, I understand that it must have been so hard for them to reach out to each other in the ways that each of them needed, and I don't blame them for getting that divorce.

And I thank them for giving me better parenting than they themselves received. You know, I may have my complaints and I do, but my ability to say that to them, to acknowledge that they nonetheless made progress, they did better with me than had been given to them. That's, that's all a person can really hope for, is to do better, and they really did better, and I would thank them for all of the resources and love and encouragement that they were able to give me.

I would assure them that I am going to be. I love that. I love how you're able to be honest, but at the same time, honor your parents in the sense that they did help you, they did love you, but again, still acknowledge the shortcomings without, you know, giving out any sort of hate or spite to them. So thank you for adding that balance.

I think it's a beautiful example for all of us who come from broken families. How has Restored help? Do you mention separately to me that this has been helpful for you? I'm not tooting our own horn, but I'm just curious, anyone listening maybe who hasn't, uh, listened to the podcast or interacted with a nonprofit, uh, how has it helped?

For me restored has helped me feel seen and cared about those themes, that the fact that you have this podcast intended to help children of divorce, even though I'm no longer a child, it really has helped my inner child feel cared about. And seen, and also some of the content of your podcast, A lot of the content.

I love listening to the stories of other children of divorce, and they often make me feel lucky because, God, that didn't happen to me. You know, , but. But they're, but you choose people with compelling voices and I enjoy listening to them. And lastly, uh, one of your episodes, you presented a review of scholarly research on the impact of divorce on children.

And as a former academic, that has a high appeal to me. I'm very interested in readings. Studies and meta analyses that merge all the studies that have been done into a different topic, into one sort of mass conclusion. What do we know about this? It was from that episode in particular that I learned that the low conflict divorce is the most damaging to children.

That was like, Well, no wonder. Thank you because, you know, raised in an affluent professional household where nobody was hitting each other. I have often not only felt terrible, but felt crazy for feeling terrible. So thank you for that and your voice. If I may say, your voice has a soothing quality that my inner child really hears and loves, and I wanna suggest that with your friend's daughter, you might be a safe place where she can just be.

Just watch her, see her, listen to her, pay attention to her. Don't even have to say anything magical or special. Just your attention is healing. Thank you. No, that's incredible advice and thanks for the compliments. I really appreciate that and I appreciate the fact that, um, yeah, you found this helpful. I'm really, I'm so glad you're the reason we do this.

And so I'm, I'm really honored that we've been a part of your story and just there to help guide you in little ways and you've done the rest. You're the hero. So thank you, uh, for mentioning that and I've learned a lot. The research too. It was very eye opening for me to understand that about low conflict divorces as well.

Paula, if people want to, uh, learn more about you and connect with you, how could they do that? My website is www.paulachambers.me. Which now after this interview, I think, Oh, of course it's me, dot com and.net were not available, but.me was available, so that's when I used Paula chambers.me. You can read more about me, you can invite me to be a guest on another podcast.

You can take one of my. Online at NEO classes, I teach exclusively online right now so anyone can access my NEO classes. You don't need any prior experience. Dance talent. Forget it. Don't need it. It's not a performing art. All you need is decent internet and about eight by eight of floor space. And in fact, your listeners can have a free neo class by going to my website and signing up for a single drop in class using discount code restored all caps restored.

That'll get you a free neo class. Thank you so much. If you guys wanna check out that, uh, fitness cardio dance movement class, you can do that as well. And like Paula said, she's the one who will be guiding you through that. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time, Paul. I really appreciate you again, being so vulnerable and sharing the lessons that you've learned through your life and the difficult things you've.

Been through, but it's amazing to see that you've come through the other side. I know you're continuing to heal and grow, but it's amazing to see the progress that you've made. So thank you so much. I'm honored to hear your story and to, uh, walk through this conversation with you. I wanna give you the last word.

What words of encouragement or advice would you give to someone who, who feels broken? Who feels stuck in, in life because of their parents' divorce, because of the broken marriage? I would say sense your body, even if it's only as simple as sensing your breathing when you're driving in the car or touching your pants when you're under the dining table, rubbing your thighs something sensory and just listen.

Sense your body with no judgment, sense with a spirit of inquiry.

In case you're wondering. Episode 33 is the episode that breaks down and simplifies the 67 different studies on children of divorce that Paula mentioned. Again, that's episode 33 in case you wanna listen to. The question I have for you guys to reflect on today is what was, or maybe even, is the desire at the core of the unhealthy behavior you've engaged in like Paula?

Maybe it's just a desire to be seen underneath a lot of my own mistakes was a desire just to feel wanted. What about you? Give that some thought. Once you understand that, it's much easier than to fill that need, fill that desire in a healthy way, and to avoid the unhealthy, vicious behavior. As a reminder, if you wanna share your story with us, we'd love to hear it.

You can just go to restoredministry.com/story or just click on the link in the show. Thank you so much for listening. If you know someone who's struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, shared this podcast with them, always remember, you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#079: Religious Art for Adult Children of Divorce | Dr. Daniel Meola & Michael Corsini

Art is healing. If you’re not an artistic person, that might seem odd. But it’s true. In this episode, we discuss why and how art can be healing and more:

• What type of art has been healing for our guests

• How art can help people from broken families

• A piece of religious art specifically for Catholic/Christian adult children of divorce

Dr. Daniel: Buy the artwork or sign up for the retreat

Mike: View his artwork

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Life Giving Wounds Ministry

  • Sacred Art for Children of Divorce

  • Blog Article: Remaining Secure in the Father’s Love

  • Discount Code for Retreat and Artwork: Restored

  • For God So Loved The World - Gold Framed Art - Catholic to the Max - Online Catholic Store

• Mike Corsini

  • Michael Corsini Art

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• Episode 51: Music: A Powerful Tool to Help You Cope & Heal | Jenny & Tyler

• Join Restored’s Online Community

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

If you're not an artistic person or someone who enjoys art, the idea that art can be healing might seem odd to you, but it's absolutely true. And in this episode, we explore why that is and how art can be healing. And when I say art, I don't just mean paintings, but really any type of art, including music, movies shows, novels, statues, poems, paintings, and so much more.

In this episode, my guests and I discuss what type of art has been healing for each of us. Mine happens to be a movie which I'll tell you about in the episode. And more specifically, we talk about how art can help people like us from broken families. We also discuss a piece of religious art specifically for Catholic or Christian adult children of divorce.

Really interesting conversation. So keep listening.

Welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce. Separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 79. I have two guests today. My first one is Dr. Daniel Meola. He's an adult child of divorce who earned his PhD in theology of marriage and family from the Pontifical John Paul II Institute for studies on marriage and family in Washington.

He's been leading retreats for 15 years in particular, he's led retreats and support groups for adult children of divorce or separation since 2015 in the archdiocese of Washington. And in 2018, he founded life giving wounds to spread the retreat and support groups, to adult children of divorce or separation.

Dan and his wife live in Maryland with their two daughters and a cat. My second guess is Michael Kini. Michael is a husband and father of five. He's also a full-time Catholic painter, illustrator and musician with a bachelor's in fine arts and illustration from Ringling school of art and design and a master's from the John Paul II Institute in DC, Michael and his family currently live in Northeast, Pennsylvania.

Quick. Disclaimer, my guests are both Catholic Christians. So you're gonna hear talk about God and faith in this episode. Now, if that's not your background, no worries at all. I'm glad you're here. Now. I typically say that you can listen and take the God parts out, but this episode is extra religious. So if that's a real turnoff for you, perhaps start with another episode.

But if you do listen, I challenge you to listen with an open mind. I do believe that you. Still benefit from this episode. So here's my conversation with Dr. Daniel and Michael

and Mike. So good to have you on the show. Thank you both for being here. Yeah. Pleasure. Thank you, Joe. This idea that, uh, art can be healing. It it's so intriguing. I'm excited to dive into it deeper. Mike, I wanted to start with you as an artist. Uh, two questions, one. Why is art healing? And maybe if you could define what we were talking about when we say.

Sure art is healing. Um, sort of this might be a controversial statement, but sort of by its nature, you know, there's a lot of, uh, there's a lot of science even behind the healing of that, that properties that art has, you know, um, read many research papers in that regard, you know, in terms of. Beautiful art can, can alter brain chemistry and, and reduce hospital stays and, and, and these kinds of things.

But it, what that does is it really speaks to our, that body's soul connection. You know, that we have that, that art, which is something that speaks to the heart beyond words, you know, in a place where there, where maybe. Words can't reach or maybe words aren't necessary. Um, I think anybody who has walked into a beautiful cathedral, uh, or walked into a, an art museum and has, you know, been in the presence of some great work, the, the art itself, great art like that has, has a not only its own kind of presence, but it also has this ability to penetra.

More deeply our interior than if somebody was able, then if somebody was to, uh, produce a, an argument or, or a, um, or, or a well crafted way of describing the art itself, but be just simply being in, in the presence of the art itself, sort of astonishes us, uh, in, in an interior way. That is impossible. I think in, by other means.

so I, I mean, you know, what is art? It's a hard thing to describe, right? You know, mm-hmm, in a lot of ways, but ultimately, I mean, I wanna say from the outset, I, from my perspective as a sacred artist, as a artist who also creates animation and illustrations and things like that, the art's ability to heal is really.

Uh, it's fundamentally, it's a gift of God, you know? So the, the ability of the work of a man woman's hands and artists hands without an infusion of grace by itself, doesn't necessarily have a, a capacity to heal. It's it's this, this imparting into our interior, into our, uh, heart, soul, whatever you wanna. Of God, something of God's own transcendental beauty.

So he is, it's like he's, he's giving us a glimpse or opening a. Door or shining a, a mirror that we can see just a glimmer of God's own transcendental beauty and that astonishes the human, the human being, the human heart in such a way that, uh, it, it can move us to then want to, uh, either drop things that are harmful in our life like sin, but it can also, so we talk about things like conversion in, in the presence of a piece of.

But, but God sharing, uh, something of his own transcendental beauty through the work of human hands is where healing and art, I think really takes place so many good points. Uh, I wanna comment on that, but first in anything dad, oh, I mean, Mike is the artist will have the deepest sense of this topic, but I would add that.

I think there's an inner artist to us all, you know, I, I, I see this, I see this in our ministry. For healing time and time again, sometimes people think of, um, people in like right brain left brain. Sometimes you hear this, you know, like left brain's the analytical practical side and the right brain is emotional, creative, artistic side, but it, it it's absolutely been debunked that we're whole, the soul unites us.

We, we need to use both sides. Mm-hmm , you know, two brains are better than one. Um, and, and to find healing, we need to integrate. Our whole self. We need to use our whole self, which means our right brain as well. So even if you're more of the analytical argumental type, I would say that there's something of the right brain, the artists that we all need to recapture for our healing in our wholeness.

To not, you know, bifurcate our brains and actually it's impossible to do so, you know, current studies, this idea that there's left brain, right? Brain people goes back to the sixties, but current studies show that there's no such thing. They're always integrated. Mm-hmm, , they're always used. So if there is any trauma, any great suffering like us as children or divorce have experience, it's affected our whole brain.

Mm-hmm our whole selves. So this, you know, this idea that we can just approach healing in just an analytical. Or just a creative way is, is flawed. We need, we need both. We need to use both. So I would just add that, you know, as Mike talks, there are specific people who are called to be artists and they have a unique location to teach us about the importance of art and healing and ways that the normal person couldn't understand or see, although we experience it and before great artists Mike said, but all of us, all of us have this inner artist.

This inner capacity for art that needs to be fulfilled by beauty. So Mike talked about beauty as a transcendental from God. It's, it's also our own need as humans. We need to see and to experience that visible form of God. Beauty is that visible form of God whose ultimate goodness, if you wanna back it up for those in the secular audiences, you know, the medievals would say beauty is the visible form of the good mm-hmm

But then with the revelation of God, for those who are believers, God adds a new dimension by being the ultimate form of the good to, you know, you know, we believe as Christians, beauty is the visible. Of God's ental goodness. But, uh, we have that inner need for that. And I've seen so many times in my ministry, people responding, cuz Mike does ministry with us to his music, to his art or other pieces of art.

And not just Mike's there's these major breakthroughs, there's these major insights because it gets at the place of the heart. I like what you said. Beyond words. So this is just a little bit of a plug to say that we, we need this as humans. We, we tend to think of art and beauty as just sort of like a entertainment pastime mm-hmm , but it it's just human need.

Whether you're experiencing suffering or not, but especially for those who are suffering so good. And it's a good point about, you know, how our brains are integrated. And one of the things, when you were talking about that and my, what you were saying before too, made me think of how, uh, therapists and a lot of healing modalities therapy modalities, um, they use are.

As a part of healing, which is beautiful. And so not only can a piece of art itself, if you experience it on your own, be healing, but even in therapy, you could end up doing some sort of art therapy, which I think it just proves the point again, that art can be incredibly healing. And, um, I love that point you guys made about, yeah, it goes beyond words cuz I think that's why when.

You know, if you're feeling down, you put on a song we've had, we've had artists on the show, musical artists, and, uh, you know, when you're feeling down, you put on a song and for some reason you get comfort from that. And it's, it's kind of intriguing. It's like, why is that? And one of the reasons I think is that yeah, they say things that maybe you can express, um, maybe in a better way than you can.

And then the second reason is probably, uh, Don't feel as alone cuz there's someone else, at least who, you know, is ex has experienced something that, that you have experienced, which I think is so good, man. There's so much more to say on this, but thank you for explaining that. And when we say art, uh, the thing that comes to my mind and Mike correct me if I'm wrong here.

I think of paintings. I think of, like you said, animations, I think of movies, stories. I think of music. It really can encompass more than maybe what people think of as like a painting in the Louv or something like that. Yeah. Anything add to. I think, I mean, in regard to what Dan said too, there's a certain sense in which we can, if we all do have sort of an inner, we have an inner artist in all of us, we're able to also to shape and form and create our own our, our life, you know, uh, and, uh, to begin to kind of order bring order to the sort of chaos that's that's around us, you know?

So there's a, there's a way in which. Even beyond the, the, the material things you just mentioned, you know, uh, you know, a sculpture piece of art or something like that, that art can be something that almost extends into non-material in that way. You know what I mean? Beautiful. So, yeah, just, just to add to that, I mean, we understand art in the broadest terms or beauty.

I mean, I prefer the word word, beauty art is one expression of it. Beauty is the visible form of the. It's the visible form. So it's, it's this beautiful life. It's beautiful creation. I mean, now the creative arts, which is what you're speaking about, which is the more narrow set is the music, the, uh, movies, the storytellings, the paintings.

I would just add here, shout out, uh, for poets. Poetry is my big thing that I use to help heal from my parents' divorce early on in my marriage. Or marriage, ah, in my healing journey, I've also used it in my marriage, but, uh, for different reasons to celebrate love. So yeah, I would just add poetry, but that, that I think is the creative arts, which is a unique subset of, of beauty, which is this larger, visible form of the good, so good shifting gears to a little bit more personal topic.

How has art been healing, uh, for both of you in particular and what art in particular, Dan, if we could start with you. Well, I think there's two sizes of this question. There's the art that I've received and there's the art that I've created that I've helped to heal the art that I've received. Man, there's so much , uh, it's hard.

I, I, Joey was kind enough to share some of these questions in advance. I was thinking about which one to two I wanna share, but I want the audience to know that there's like really like 50. Um, nice. Um, okay. For movies. Because I, I think movies have always played a big role, uh, in my healing kept me if you can, this is great Spielberg film just really captured the pain that you learned.

Divorce. There's this just wonderful scene, tragic scene, really sad scene, but just like nailed it. I remember seeing this, um, with, uh, Lena AR de de capo, he's the child of divorce and his parents are sitting in a room with a lawyer and the lawyers. Okay. I need you to choose which home for you to live with your mother or your father.

Now I'm not gonna leave until you choose. I'm gonna go outta the room, but you gotta choose. There's no wrong answer. This is a lawyer and Caprio's like, I'm outta here and just runs. That's the point where he runs because there is no right answer, right? like, like there is no right answer. Actually the lawyer is wrong, right.

He wanted to live with both of them. He didn't wanna have to choose one or the other. And there was just so much that movie. About being a people pleaser that I could relate to with de capo, that was like my way of coping. So just that whole movie and its portrayal of overcoming a pan divorce Spielberg, by the way, is child of divorce.

And I just, I don't know, his movies will always resonate with me. I just feel like so many of his movies deal with his own childhood wounds, like ETS, his, the famous one that dealt with his childhood wounds. So there's that I would also say, oh man, like artwork. There was a specific piece of our work. It's, it's an unknown artist of the sacred heart of Jesus, just crying.

And, um, I'll have to send a link. You can put in the show notes, it's an unknown artist and doesn't have a title, but just of Christ weeping that really moved me early on in my healing journey that we had a God that wept with me. And I had always. You know, perfect fake Jesus, where he is always calm, cool, and control.

Even on the cross. Like it doesn't even look sometimes like some of the depictions of Jesus on the cross, like he's suffering. It just seems like so beyond, already in the resurrection, which is fine, you know, but, um, there was just this one weeping Christ that has always, really struck me as like getting my pain.

But anyways, those are the two I would say for art movies, sacred art. There's some poems which maybe if I have some. I can share, but I want to let Mike jump in. Yeah. Mike, please. Thanks for sharing that. So I, you might be able to see behind me on the wall, right. There is an image of the blue Madonna by Carlo Dolche.

When I was a student in Sarasota, Florida in art school, I would go to the Ringling museum. Often, and I walked through this hall of Rembrandt and in that hall, there was also, uh, a Carla DCI painting, uh, called the blue Madonna. And it's, it's very simply, it's just a portrait of our lady and it's almost completely in darkness with this really saturated blue that you feel like you can almost put your fingers into.

It's like just thick, uh, like, like an ocean. I don't know how he did. I really don't know how he did it, but the thing that, that grabbed me, uh, initially was that there was this little sliver of light across her face that just illuminated just enough of her face that you saw the, the beauty of her features.

And at that point in my life, I was really in a, in, uh, what you would call it darkness. I had, I had this burden of a really long term, uh, pornography, a. That started before the age sometime it's kind of fuzzy for me, but sometime before the age of 10, where I was able to get ahold of it on a daily basis and just, it just latched into me like talents, you know?

So when I got to college things just kind of gave me an opportunity for things to spiral out of control in a certain sense. And so I was dealing with, uh, friends who had had, who got contracted STDs and had an abortion and all, all these different things in my mind was really just kind of swimming with what is all this, what is all this about, you know, life

And, uh, so I, I was kind of miserable that day and I was walking through the, the museum and I just stopped in front of this painting. And it. It, it like hit me, like, um, almost like an electrical feeling, you know, all through my body. and I stood in front of this painting and, you know, it was a good thing.

There was nobody in the gallery at the time, but I, I just started weeping, like a big ugly cry, like a, you know, snotty, ugly, cry, just like it was like my entire life just gushed out my face , you know? And, uh, when I meant, I meant what I said before about art being able to touch places that were sort of.

Untouchable. There was a place where I didn't even have words. I didn't even know why I was weeping at the time. It was just, it just felt like I was standing in front of beauty and I wanted to cry for it and because of it, and, uh, that moment was the beginning of my conversion. And having not grown up in with Christian faith, you know, to speak of and, and really discovering the church.

And also the beginning, first day of the beginning of my healing from porn. So the artwork has absolutely beautiful artwork, especially with God's. In, it has absolutely the power to bring us, uh, to a place of complete transformation or, or, and it begins the path of transformation. It's the spark, it's the initial kind of flame that gives us the desire to change our life.

I, I think that's probably the most, that's probably the best illustration I can give, but obviously film books, everything that's affected my life continually, deeply. That experience was the first time in my life that I, I realized that that art has a power. Beyond what the artist can manifest. Wow, incredible.

Thanks so much for being so vulnerable and sharing all that. Uh, yeah, so, so profound and I, I looked up the painting to, to see it at a closer, uh, level and it it's beautiful. It's striking. And, um, now I can relate so much, uh, to you. I was 11 years old when I saw pornography and that led to a struggle. And, uh, thankfully I was able like you to get that outta my life.

There, there are a lot of things that contributed to getting outta my life, but, um, I think really just, uh, an encounter of like real beauty and to see the distortion of beauty within pornography, it almost makes it unattractive. Like obviously there's the, you know, biological response to an image like that, but, um, really it, it becomes unattractive when you encounter beauty.

At a more profound level. And I remember one of the things that have been helpful and healing for me over the years when it comes to art. I don't know if it, Dan, I think it fits more of what you were saying is like just beauty, not creative art, but sunsets. Like, I just love sunsets. I always have grown up in the Midwest.

We always had great sunsets and. When I was going through a lot of the stuff with, you know, my family breaking apart and my parents getting divorced, uh, that was honestly a source of consolation for me, just like watching a sense that whether I was like feeling very anxious or down, it would always bring some sort of life either to calm me when I felt anxious or to give me some life when I felt kind of numb or depressed.

And so, uh, that in itself was, was really helpful and healing. And, uh, another thing too. My favorite movie, I have a lot of favorite movies. I love movies. Uh, but probably my favorite one is Batman begin. Excellent movie, you know, Christopher, Nolan's just an incredible director and Christian Bell did a great job playing Bruce Wayne in that movie.

Part of the reason I, I relate with it so much is, uh, Bruce lost his parents. He lost his family. And I think that's what we feel like when we're going through our parents' divorce or the breakdown of our family is like, we really it's a very real loss, something we need to grieve and something that's not supposed to be that way.

Just like the way that Bruce's parents got gunned down, uh, in the movie. And I always thought it was so powerful how he took that pain. Took that brokenness. And though it started to destroy him, his anger, his rage, his desire for revenge, though, it started to destroy him and lead him down a bad path.

Eventually through the help of others, he redirected that to. Serve justice like to, to help people to do good, not to, just to destroy and super revenge as can be tempting, you know, for those of us who've been harmed, which, which I always related to. It's like, okay, that's the type of person. I wanna become someone who, who has been wounded, who has been hurt, who has been through trauma, who then takes that, that energy, that power and redirects it in something that's good and beautiful.

And, uh, and so that movie has been particularly healing, uh, for me. And it's something I, I never get tired watching that movie. Um, there's so much we could say. I do wanna shift Dan over to you and just see, like speaking to people like us who come from, uh, separated families or divorced families. Yeah. How, how might art be helpful for people like us in particular, in addition to everything we've already said?

Yeah. I mean, I think. I'm not gonna do justices story, but I'll, I'll use somebody who's come through our ministry. There's, there's a great blog post that will talk about her. We use art, like on our retreats. There's tons of arts in our books and that anyways, there's a great blog post. You want to hear more about the story called remaining secure in the father's love on our, on our blog, on our website life given wounds.org, but anyways, she talks about.

How she had this major breakthrough. Now she comes from this really bad background with a lot of, uh, domestic abuse as well. And she talks about this major breakthrough through a piece of art that was in our retreat guide. And it is, I always script the name. Jesus carried up to a pinnacle of the temple by James TSAT.

T I S S O T it's just great work. It's really hard at first. If you look at it, it looks really ugly, cuz it depicts Satan curing up Jesus to the pinnacle. But what's interesting is, is Satan looks super evil and ugly. Now she was reflecting on this art. It was like the representation of all these memories that just kept her just in this darkness, especially with the abuse there's particular memories.

It just would suck her down in what she believed about herself, that she was at fault for the abuse. This is what she deserved, all this like ugly stuff. And she'd been, you know, at therapy for just a number of years. But what just struck her was Jesus, just countenance. And this picture, despite all the ugliness around it, it's modern art.

modern. Art's very good depicting suffering. Ugliness. He's just so peaceful. His countenance is so peaceful and that led her to reflect. So it allowed her to explore her own suffering, some deep memories that she just couldn't access and to have a tremendous insight. That what I need to do instead of beat up myself, instead of think that I'm at fault when I know I'm not, and to be trapped in this darkness of these replays of these horrific memories, and they're really horrific, she comes from a very, like I said, domestic abuse, survivor, some really horrific things in her life that I need to remain secure in the father's love.

So it gave her this insight and then a new path to work on her healing. So I think great art allows us to explore suffering in the way that words can. It gives us these breakthroughs and insights. Mike just talked about the breakthrough that he had and then it enthusiasms for work. But then finally it, it helps us to raise above ourselves to, to raise above the junk, the suffering, to go beyond what we think we're capable.

But then the beautiful thing is, as we do the work, we come back to the need, to also contemplate. That's key for our healing is to not just get stuck in the suffering, but to rise above it. And ultimately we want to contemplate beauty more than think about the suffering. Now, again, suffering is gonna be with us till the day we die.

I'm not saying we leave suffering completely behind, but we have this need to come back and contemplate beauty. So I don't want anybody listening to this show. Think of beauty and art as just a means to an end, rather it is also an end. Of our healing. We, we want people to come back. So this woman also particularly found healing to continue to contemplate the beauty of Christ and his expression that artwork remains secure in the father's love.

Again, I'm not doing this story justice, but this is an example of how art can move us and heal us and come back to it. And, and you just sort of like meditate and contemplate that, you know, like you were talking about Joey, like the, the sunsets. Okay. That's beauty. Because again, creative arts, which is the paintings and things like that.

That's a subset of beauty. We need to come back and contemplate that beauty. We need to step back and rest in that from time to time in our life where our life will be empty. So that's just what I would say as an example of like how beauty it doesn't just heal, but it's part of the good life. It's part of the thriving, it's part of, you know, the joy that God.

Desires for us. Yeah. It's not just something you use, like you said, and then it's like a tool that you use to heal and then you're done with it, but it's really something that can give you life and help you thrive, uh, as a person. And no, I think this makes so much sense going to like the more specific application of healing.

Uh, one thing you made me think of is sometimes people get a little confused about experiences maybe they've had before they were. Able to cognitively remember them. And one distinction I've heard psychologists talk about, which I think is helpful in this discussion of art and how art can be healing and helpful.

We kinda have two different types of memory. There's explicit memory, which is more of like a cognitive memory. Like it's a vivid memory. We could recall a vivid scene, for example. And then we also have, um, what neurobiologists call, um, implicit memory, which would be, we can call it like emotional memory. I don't know if that's perfectly accurate, but let's just call it that, that emotional memory really are those things that we maybe can't again, vividly remember, or perhaps not even put into words, at least not yet, but it certainly affected.

And I've heard stories of people who they ha have experiences when they're, you know, babies. And then they go through life, you know, struggling with certain things or having, you know, certain temptations or whatever. And then later they learn, oh, wow. I went through this experience, which I didn't even remember can't recall, but it really impacted me.

And so I think that's part of the reason why these pieces of art or even beauty itself can be so evocative and help us heal is. They're pulling on maybe something in our past and helping us, like you said, access that and then hopefully heal it. And I know that's what happened with me when it comes to, you know, what I was saying about the Batman begins there's, you know, something inside me that was like relating to that, even at a level that I couldn't fully cognitively understand.

And I that's how I heard psychologists talk about that. When you watch a movie. Or you, you find yourself emotionally moved by something it's usually because some sort of memory's being triggered, even if it's not a vivid, uh, cognitive memory might be more of an emotional one. Mike, I was curious if you, uh, had anything to add about, you know, how you've seen art be healing, particularly for children of divorce or separation.

Um, well, you know, I mean, as in regards to the, the painting that we did for life giving wounds, which we'll speak about in a little. For me, that's, it's an example of how surprising it often is that, you know, as an, as an artist, you. You develop a piece of work, you think about the different symbolisms. You try to incorporate as much of it as you can into the, into the artwork itself.

Uh you're as you're accomplishing it, you're thinking of new things. There's little sort of aha moments where you realize, wow, I didn't realize I, I, I did that, but it's there, you know, it's just, you know, little stroke of, of. God, uh, opening it up, you know, even to the artist's mind, but what's astonishing to me so many times that folks, when they see the painting or any, any work that I intend for, for healing purpose, that they'll, they'll come out with things that are, are so integral to their life.

Uh, they'll come up with meanings that I couldn't have perceived, you know, at the time. And, uh, so the. Art has, this has this way of, of really just beyond the artist's intention beyond, uh, the intention of, you know, the person who commissioned the work. There is an all, there is another intention. It's the intention of God's use his, his own intention for the work and how it'll be used in the healing process.

And I, I, I just lo one of the things I love the most about it is just how unique an individual it is to each person. Um, They perceive the thing that their heart is in need of perceiving. No, it's so good. I love that. And I think, uh, one of the ways it's helped me and helped people we've worked with too.

And I know you both know this, but one of the steps in healing is often just putting words to your experiences into the wounds that you've experienced. And, uh, I think art does well in kind of putting on us on that road, which, which I think is, is so good and so beautiful. Dan, I wanna go to. Tell us about the artwork that you commissioned Mike to create?

Uh, why did you commission it? Yeah, so we commissioned an artwork, a sacred artwork for the healing of children divorce. And it came out of, I mean, frankly to my knowledge and research, I could not. Find a painting for us, for a children divorce that had a Christian theme primarily. No. If any of your listeners know of anything, I'm happy to be wrong about this and I would, and I would love, I would love to, to see more sacred art for children divorce.

So any listeners out there, if you know of something, please email me and Joey, I would love. Always loved to collect that. But anyways, I couldn't find anything. I did pretty exhaustive research and I'm like, you know what? I just really want to create sacred art for the healing of children and divorce, sacred art here being specifically Christian.

And so I came to Mike many years ago cuz again, knowing the need for the creative arts and healing and the importance of beauty many years ago with its desire to create something for us, for our healing and around the same time too, I had a really beautiful experience of artwork at the national gallery of art.

I live in Washington, DC of Picasso's painting the tragedy. So again, you speak of artwork that loses us the tragedy of 1923. Really move me and it depicts the tragedy that's happening in the family. He doesn't really say what the tragedy is, but one of the interpretations of the tragedy by Picasso, um, of 1923 is that it was divorced or separation or some brokenness in the family.

That's one interpretation. It could be other things. Uh, and they're on the beach. And what's interesting about, is it captures the sadness. I remember seeing this and like you, Mike, I was, I was weeping in the art gallery, hoping nobody would see. Uh, when I saw this national go virus, this was like 2011, 2012.

And just like really? Yeah. It felt like it captured my sorrow, but the interesting thing, and, and so I loved it. It captured my grief. And again, one of our struggles as adults learn a divorce were children, a divorce is having our grief acknowledged. So I, I felt here Picasso nailed it. He nailed the grief, but it stopped.

And as a Christian, I wanted hope as well. And, uh, Paul talks about Christians are called to grieve with hope to be different than just secular views of grieving as the grieve with hope. So I wanted something as a response to the tragedy. And so I commissioned Mike, our ministry commission, Mike, which was crowdfunded by the way, by children are divorced.

So I'm really grateful. Shout out to all the other children, divorce that crowdfunded this, uh, painting to be a response to Picasso's tragedy and, and not a response. And just like, oh, now we're just gonna, all of a sudden have hope and no more grief. Like there's still grief in the painting. So I don't want to give that view, but to be a dial, maybe a better word is a dialogue with Picasso's tragedy, but something that could be healing as.

For the children divorce. So that, that was a little bit of like the personal circumstances that led to. And then, um, why we commissioned Mike cuz we saw this great need of the creative arts and healing specifically on the retreats. And so we created, it's called an, let Mike talk a little bit more about it.

It's called let the children of divorce come to me. So from the, you know, famous biblical passage, let, let the children come to me here. We put in, let the children in divorce come to me. So we, you know, switched it up there a little bit. Uh, but Mike, I, I don't know if you wanna. Say more or Joey, did you have something to say first?

Yeah. No, that, that's amazing. Thank you for explaining. And we'll put a link in the show notes so you guys can look at it. I, uh, and perhaps while you're listening right now, if you wanna pull it up, um, as Mike gives us maybe a little bit of a further explanation of. The symbolism he used. Um, you can look at it and Mike can talk through it.

So Mike, if you would, yeah. Talk us through the symbolism and the different parts of this piece of art in particular, please. Well, can I just give the link if you pull it up just to follow it? It's life giving wounds.org/sacred art for children and divorce. So that'll be the best to follow along. Sounds great.

And that link will be in the show notes as well. Yeah. So this was kind of a, a unique challenge, uh, for me as an artist, because I knew that what the ministry wanted was. This dialogue with Picasso. And, you know, I knew what I knew of Picasso was at least outwardly, he, you know, rejects the, the, this idea of God, uh, he rejects.

So in, in that he would reject the, the, the, the possibility of the transcendence sort of giving life or informing anything. in the world, you know? Um, so there would be, he'd probably have very little to say about the symbolism that could PO you know, that could happen. And so I I've never done anything like this before as the point that I've never, I never specifically intended to set out creating a piece of art dialoging with an artist of this type.

It's actually not within my style or even in interest, at least in, in his modern art and. The, the challenge for me was, well, I wanted to create a piece of art that that was obviously in dialogue with, with Picasso. So I tried to really kind of step into his way of painting as best I could, his palette as best I could.

And to try to describe what we in the ministry wanted to, to describe what the commissioned. in a way that people viewing the original, the tragedy of Picasso could, could see it, uh, in, in dialogue, if that makes sense. So that's, that's the reason why the, the artworks sort of look like they belong together in a lot of ways, you know, that the, the life giving wounds artwork is, as Dan said, not exactly giving you this idea that, you know, as you step towards Christ, there will be no more suffering, but that.

There is a great deal of hope in this image. So as regards to the image itself, if you have it in front of you, it helps a lot. the, the overall symbolism in, in the image. I think what we wanna share is that, is that the, the, the child's face being lifted into the gaze of Christ is. The primary part of the encounter here, Christ looks into the eyes of the child.

He's extending his hand above the, the hand of the child. And you see sort of this light kind of emanating from the wound of Christ into the child's hand, which also bears a similar wound. And then from the, the wound of the child's hand, the, the same light of Christ is then, uh, Even, uh, the feat of his parents, uh, is a symbol of illumining the world.

So the central focus and idea, I think for this image is that the wounds that we carry can be healed, but can also be a fountain of grace, not only for ourself, but also for the life of the. . Yeah. So there's that the, the one thing we wanted to, to also communicate is that the two parents are, even though that they're sort of more together on the, on the right side of the image, they're not exactly together.

Their backs are turned towards each other. They're both still interested in, in what's what's happening at least to the child, although they, they don't turn their eyes to him completely. Yeah. Just add in. Yeah, go ahead. The second. About the eyes, cuz the eyes are important in the picture. One of the things Mike beautifully displayed is it's awesome that you did this cuz I didn't ask him to do this in Picasso's original piece.

No one is looking at the child and is suffering. The child is utterly alone, even though he's surrounded by his parents. I just thought that captured so beautifully. That's why I wept at it. The, the pain and suffering. And again here, the parents aren't. Exactly focused on the child. Yeah. They kind of see the hands, but they're still missing the child.

So there's still that pain. There's still this suffering. The parents have their back turn. There's still this ongoing suffering that emanates from the divorce, from the separation. So again, the goal of painting is not just say, say, oh, hope over suffering. But hope in the suffering. There's both realities here, but the key here that Mike depicted is, again, this is the holy spirit moment.

Is Christ lifting the gaze of the kids face to him saying you are not alone. I see you. I see your pain and I love you. So unlike Picasso's pain where no one's looking at the child. Christ is looking at the child and he is actually lifting up his head because again, in Picasso's painting, the child is way down.

He's looking down at his feet. What is that? Shame, fear, burden, whatever that is. And he's still struggling with it in his painting, such that Christ gently touches his, his chin and raises his him up saying like, no, no more shame. No more loneliness. No more. or if you have these things I'm with you and that's okay.

So this just, uh, I just love that you depicted this mic and I think this comes from. To working in our ministry. And we often say, too, when we look at this painting, it really is a composition of so many children are divorced that we've accompanied as their experience here and this painting, they they're really, it's their experiences that created this painting.

It's just so beautiful that you depicted. The child's head being raised up. And I, I just think that's a key symbolism of, of the painting. And if you feel alone out there, I hope it comes as a comfort. Beautiful. There's so much air. I feel like you could talk about this for like an hour is there anything else in particular, like I see.

So if I'm seeing this right, um, is that water in the background and then there's a boat, is that right? And then at the bottom. It looks like a toy horse and then a rose. Am I saying that right? Or correct me if I'm wrong, please? Yes. You're saying that right. They're the, they're still standing on the beach, you know, as in the Picasso's tragedy, although Christ is coming towards the child, walking on the water and you see the child, uh, stepping forward the.

One foot on the land and one foot in the water or on top of the water. Again, I, I like the idea of the image of the child con sort of continually stepping forward towards Christ, you know, the need to continually step forward to, to the one who really does acknowledge the wound, you know, uh, so deeply as to carry it in him himself.

Uh, the there's a lot of little, uh, symbolisms, uh, in the articles on the ground. The one that strikes me. Really profoundly as the broken horse is one, one of the, um, typical, uh, wounds of, of children of divorce is you hear often as this lost childhood, you know, a lot of children from of divorce will say things like, you know, I don't remember.

I don't really remember play or really being able to play. So we wanted to, we wanted to acknowledge that wound with this little, little toy broken, you know, and if you see the original tragedy image, the, the, the young boy is sort of wrapped in the, it's kind of hard to describe or see, it's, it's kind of some sort of a heavy shawl or, or blanket of some kind.

And in this. Almost like a poncho joke, something like that, you know? Yeah. And, and in this image, he's dropped it behind him. This heaviness, he leaves it. He leaves it behind on, on the beach as he steps forward on the water. Beautiful. And the rose, I'm just curious about that. And you wanna speak about the rose.

Again, we wanna acknowledge this idea of the struggles and love the struggles of love. Now, the rose represents more than just the struggles of love, but, uh, one of the things they had asked Mike to depict was again, in this painting, all the different, various sufferings and balloons that children divorce could experience.

And there's a lot more here that is being left unsaid, but the, but the rose definitely the fall, it's a fallen rose. It's a fallen rose, uh, representing the difficulties of, of love. Um, also if you see the Picasso painting, you'll see his pocket is bulging. Yeah. And again, we were kind of like imagining what would a kid like have in his pocket?

And if you know anything about kids, it's like this random assortment of films. Yeah. So. and, and literally, like I asked my daughter, like, what do you have in your pockets today? Like sort of they inform this artwork and sure enough, she had like flower pedals, she had random string and a different toy. She didn't have a toy horse.

So like the different items, like there's a string there, there's the broken horse, the, the fallen rose, like you can imagine like a kid just sort of like stuffing them in the pocket. and that's sort of like when he casts aside that heavy, outer. That he's wearing a Picasso's, uh, tragedy, like all the stuff sort of like falls out everywhere.

So that's kind of also where some of that symbolism comes. And, and can I just say one thing, some Mike said that's really important for the artwork that we do sort of give away, so to speak on our website, we, we try not to explain all the symbolism, but we try to explain some of it is, is that, that foot, that Mike talks about how.

We have this continual need to meet, meet Christ for our healing, but it takes an act of faith. And I know there's some listeners out there. Maybe you're not Christian. Maybe you're struggling with your belief in God. Maybe you are Christian, but struggling with your belief in God. A huge part of our healing is the need to make that act of faith.

The step out on those waters, even when it's scary, even when it's difficult. And, and what does that concretely look like to do that? It's very simple. Inviting Jesus into the pain. And so that foot, that step meeting Christ is a symbol of that, that step that we need to take to invite Jesus into the pain.

And if you do, we'll find that he's already met us and he's, he's running towards us. So that'ss part of the symbolism there. There's so much more I'm sure we can say. And if you guys go to the webpage and, uh, take a look at the art itself, there is an explanation of kind of the different components of the symbolism that you can, uh, read through, which is cool.

And then on that page too, you'll see, uh, Picasso's original piece. And, uh, I think that kind of, it's like the key to this piece that you guys commissioned that Mike, you designed it it's yeah. Just makes so much more sense once you understand, uh, Picasso's piece. And I think it's a cool, uh, contrast to. Uh, what you guys are trying to lead people to, which is healing and wholeness, which is amazing.

Um, so much more I'm sure we can say on that. If you guys wanna add any final thoughts, feel free, but I did wanna, uh, ask you Mike, if people wanted to look at more of your artwork in particular, not just this one, how could they, I'm the best place to see it is my website, which is Michael corsini.com. And then on socials, Instagram and Facebook it's, uh, Michael Corsini art you'll find me.

Sounds great. And are you taking commissioned art as well? If someone listening maybe wants to do something every year, I, I have a certain amount of time for commissions. And so I, I have a little opening this fall, even if, if that's a possibility for someone. Yeah. Sounds great. Thanks for that. Um, Dan, before we go over you, I just wanna say two things I love about this piece of art.

One is, um, I love how Jesus is crying if I'm seeing that, right. Maybe I'm not um, I think that's beautiful kind of being with their, with us in the pain, as opposed to kind of being above it or removed from it. And you guys explained that well already. And then the second thing I thought was appropriate was just how, um, the parents, you know, look like they're dealing with their own pain, which is so often the case, right?

Part of the reason that we get ignored so much when we're going through our own pain of a broken family of our parents getting divorced or separated is that, um, our parents are so caught up in their own suffering and their own brokenness in their own emotions that they often just overlook what, what we're going through as well.

So I think that's a very accurate depiction. I love that you guys did that as well. And, uh, and that's not meant to bash parents in any way, but just to kind of speak to the reality and hopefully encourage. Not just the child to look up to Christ, but the parents look to the child and the parents to look to Christ as well.

So a lot, lot of beauty there there's so much more we could say, but Dan, I wanna throw it over to you to add any final thoughts and if people wanna buy the artwork or view it, you mentioned the link already. We'll show throw that in the show notes, but if they wanna buy the artwork, Or maybe attend one of your retreats.

How can they do that? Yeah, I mean, you go to our website, life.org, click on retreats to find out more in person retreats. We'll also be doing an online retreat. You can also purchase the artwork in various sizes, including on a prayer card as well. Uh, on our website, just go to our store and for restored listeners, we're happy to give a 20% discount for both the artwork.

And if you want to attend the online retreat, just use the code restored with the capital R uh, really grateful to. Joey in his ministry. And my last word is just simply seek beauty, seek beauty in your life, not just for healing. That's really important. Define the rest that you're craving for. And don't settle for beauty.

That's not a form of the good. That's not a form of the good, like you mentioned earlier in the show pornography what's lacking. Why is that not beautiful? It's not a form of the good, it's not the visible form of the good. So see beauty. That's the visible form of the good, whether that's in creation or here, we've talked a lot about the creative arts.

Beautiful Mike, any final words, uh, from you, any encouragement or advice to someone who comes from a broken family who feels stuck and broken? I just kind of piggyback on what Dan said is, is just seek out beauty that will, will give you rest, but, uh, allow when, when you do encounter it, just be sure. And, and try as best you can to, to not allow anything within yourself to block.

It's movement really just allow it to wash over you and trust, uh, that, that beauty is, uh, restoring. Just one more thing, cuz you reminded me of it. So I have to piggy back, uh, St. John Paul second, when I feel like we gotta get him in here, at least once he loved the arts, uh, he would always quote his favorite poet, Norwood.

He said beauty infuses us for work and work raises us up. So if, if a beautiful art as Mike. Moves you to work, work on your healing or convert in some aspect of your life, whatever the case may be. To give in to, to move that that therein is, uh, a special grace. So just to dovetail on Mike, to allow beauty to en infuse us for work and to allow that work to raise us up.

I mentioned the episode with the two musicians, Jenny and Tyler that's episode 51, in case you wanted to listen to. If you wanna buy the artwork or attend the fall 2022 retreat, just enter the discount code restored for a discount. Again, restored all capital letters, restored with a D at the end. And you can just click on the link in the show notes to learn more about that and to view Michael Corine's artwork.

If you're not aware, restored has an online community. I'll tell you how to join that. But first, some of the benefits you'll have a safe place to speak openly about the pain and problems you face because of the breakdown of your parents' marriage. And. We'll help you not feel so alone. And you'll also be challenged to grow into a.

Stronger person. So if you wanna join our online community, just go to restored ministry.com/community. Again, restored ministry, ministry, singular.com/community. Just fill out the quick form there, and then we'll add you to the group again. Restored ministry.com/community. Thank you so much for listening.

Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#078: Ashamed of Your Past? It Doesn’t Need to Dictate Your Future | Crystalina Evert

If you’re ashamed of your past because of mistakes or abuse, it’s natural to feel stuck. But you don’t have to stay stuck. Healing and freedom are possible for you.

Author and speaker Crystalina Evert vulnerably shares how her broken family and sexual abuse caused her to cope with drugs, drinking, and sleeping around. We also discuss:

• Tactics that have helped her heal

• A new book to help any woman, especially women who have suffered abuse

• Advice and encouragement to women who’ve suffered abuse or feel broken

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

If you've made a lot of mistakes in your life, those mistakes can haunt you and leave you feeling stuck. I know this personally and worse than that, if you were abused that trauma can also haunt you and leave you feeling stuck, but you don't have to stay there. Healing is possible. Freedom is possible.

And my guess today, Proves that I'm thrilled for you to hear from author and speaker Lina Everett, as a little girl, she suffered abuse in the breakdown of her family. And as a result of that trauma, she acted out in all sorts of ways, using drugs, drinking, partying, and sleeping around just to numb the pain that she was experiencing.

And all those things left her feeling ashamed, stuck, and really broken. And in this episode, she vulnerably shares her story and how the abuse and brokenness in her family has affected her. We also discuss how her brokenness has affected her relationships and even her marriage. She offers some tactics that have helped her heal and can help you too.

We discuss how her life drastically transformed. Once she dedicated herself to healing. She also announces a new book for women, especially women who've suffered abuse. And finally, she gives advice and encouragement. Tell you women out there who've suffered abuse or just feel broken, really incredible show, really inspiring story.

So keep listening.

Welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 78, as I said, my guest today is Chris Salina Everett. She's the founder of women made new and co-founder of the chastity project.

Kina is the best selling author of pure womanhood. How to find your soulmate without losing your soul and their curriculum you life love. And the theology of the body kina has spoken internationally to more than 1 million people about the virtue of chastity healing and God's plan for human sexuality.

She has a weekly syndicated radio show on EWTN and has made television appearances on MSNBC. And the BBC network, Lina has hosted several television series for teens and women on EEW, TN she and her husband, Jason have spoken at world youth, a in Sydney, Madrid and Poland, and most importantly, crystalline and her husband have been blessed with eight children before we dive in.

I just wanted to say that kina is a Catholic Christian. And so she's speaking from that point of view, she talks about God. She talks about faith. If that's not you, if you don't believe in God, I'm so glad you're here. My challenge for you is this, listen with an open mind. Even if you take out the God parts, you're still gonna get a lot out of this episode.

CRI story is just so inspiring. So beautiful. So definitely listen and again, take the God parts out if you need to. Uh, but you're still gonna benefit a lot from this episode. So here's my conversation with kina Everett

kina. It's so good to have you on the show. Thanks so much for making time for. Oh, it's such an honor. Thank you for asking me. I'm really excited about your book launch. We'll get into, uh, the book. Uh, I wanted to start with your story. I've always been inspired by your story because most people that have been through what you've been through really don't end up where you are today.

Like, you've been such an inspiration to me. Often, people like us who go through all the abuse, the dysfunction in our families. We end up repeating that cycle of dysfunction in our own lives. We feel stuck. We feel like we can't heal. We can't change. We can't improve. We can't grow. And now before we get to the healing and how you avoided repeating that cycle of dysfunction, I I'd love to start at the beginning.

Like so many people, uh, listening right now. You also come from a broken family. I'm curious. What was life like for you grow. Well, the only, I don't have many memories of my father, but one memory I do have he left when I was two. And the one memory I do have is actually of him walking away and leaving.

You know, I haven't never really verbalized that before , but I, I have this memory of being a child and just crying as a little girl. And I remember he gave me these gummy bears, but other than that, I don't have a huge memory of him, but I think I learned at a very young age that love doesn't last and love is not a forever thing.

and because I didn't have my father growing up and I came from that broken family and there was a lot of divorce and infidelity that I witnessed growing up as well. It was everywhere around me with my mother's siblings and just in the culture in itself. And even in the high school I went to, it was just like, well, it wasn't a big deal.

You know, it, it was like nothing. And you were supposed to just slough it off as it, while it was nothing right. Hmm. But growing up because I thought, well, love doesn't last. And it's not a forever thing. I was getting that love, obviously that I needed. And, and as a child, there was a lot of abuse. And so getting into high school, I.

I was looking for love, obviously in that acceptance and self-worth more than anything. And I had my first quote unquote, serious relationship, but, um, he said he loved me. I thought he did. And, and my friends were like, well, if, if he loves you, what's the big deal. You know? And, and physically, we just kind of kept pushing it and pushing it and pushing it until it came to the point where I had to make that decision.

And I ended up sleeping with him and, and because of my own brokenness and because of my, the worthlessness and the wounds that I felt that I carried into a lot of my relationships and it kind of just came out and it was really an unknowing wound I was living out of. Right. For so many years, that relationship ended up ending, of course.

And mm-hmm , you know what, and the people out there maybe will get this and maybe not, but a person knows deep down when they're being used. At first, it starts out in love and you want to be loved and you want, um, that person to love you and you wanna keep their attention. But the thing is at what cost and I paid a high price with that one relationship, but again, it just kind of firmed for me that, well, love doesn't last.

It's not a for everything. And that it is what it is, but I always was looking and I kept giving more and more of myself to get that love that I was searching for to get that self worth that I was looking for. And I always ended up hurt and disappointed and deep down. I knew when I was being used. I knew when it wasn't love, but it's kind of that counterfeit and that lie.

You tell yourself, because I went so far and I got into the drugs and the drinking and promiscuity that, um, it's like you, you slowly justify. You're way into that hole. I dug for myself, right? Yeah. All the way. There's like all these little justifications and all these little, like self sacrifices you make to just keep it up and keep the mask on.

And I felt like I constantly, after I was just living in Halloween, I was just had a mask on every single day. But the thing is the people around me in high school did as well. It was like a Halloween show every day because the things I would witness behind the scenes with my friends and then how they'd show up at school, like nothing even happened.

It was kind of shocking, but cause I came from such chaos and disorder in my own family. It's like, you go into that kind of world and you get submerged into it. It kind of seems normal almost right. A hundred percent. I remember talking to a psychologist about this very topic and she was saying even on the level of our brains, when we come from dysfunction, When we see these very dramatic relationships like between mom and dad, if they fought a lot, if things were loud and you know, there's a lot of anger at home.

When we come from that healthy relationships can actually feel boring. They could actually feel uninteresting because we've been so accustomed to like this almost excitement, this trauma. And if a relationship lacks that we think, well, this isn't interesting, this isn't for me. And we actually reject that and go towards those very unhealthy relationships that we know we're not made for, but they seem comfortable.

And also you're always just questioning in the back of your mind, if you don't heal, do they really love me? Are they really gonna be here? Is this rail? Yeah. You know, is this gonna truly last? And you almost kind of set yourself up for failure waiting for it all to fall apart because that's you do, right.

So we're not, we, we get uncomfortable. I feel in, um, stability. So when you are in that stability and you aren't healed. It's almost an uncomfortable situation, cause you're always waiting for the ground to fall beneath. 100%. And that's why your message is so important of, of healing and growth. Because once you go through that process and it is a continual process, but there is a lot of progress you can make in corners, you can turn, but once you go through that process, then you're setting the foundation to build that stable life, those stable relationships on.

And I, I want to get to that in a little bit here, but I, I am curious if there's anything else you would add about how the, the brokenness in your family and how the abuse that you endured, uh, affected you in the years that followed, we kind of got up into, I guess, high school at this point. Was there anything else that you'd like to add.

There was a lot of stuff. It growing up the thing is because I didn't have a father growing up. I really gravitated towards my grandfather. And I spent a lot of time over my grandparents' house. And because my mom was a single mom and she did her best. I mean, she really did. God bless her. And I had a lot of anger growing up towards my mother, but being a mom now and being married and stepping outside of the situation and kind of looking in now, a lot of it makes sense, right?

Yeah. Because when we see our parents acting out or getting angry or yelling, or they're going through their own dysfunction and as a child, you almost feel like it's your own fault. You know, or that you're just this burden on your parents because they're having to deal with you or, or you're having to go back and forth between parents.

Some of you out there are experiencing that. And sometimes you may have felt like a burden. And at times I felt like a burden, right? Yeah. And I never was re like, I felt like I never was affirmed in. You are valued. You are wanted, you are loved. And that was hard. And I did do well as a child in school. I hated school.

I was kind of the problem child out of my sister and I, I only had a sister, so it affected me in a lot of different ways. And again, growing up with that, it really, that wound, you start learning to live out of that. Cause that's kind of the home base of where you're living, going through that trauma day in and day out.

And always wonderful. Why wasn't I enough for my dad to stay? Why didn't he love me enough? What's wrong with me? You know, why did they break up? Was it my fault? Is it, was it my problem and these things going on? And then you slowly silence those voices and you just kind of go through the motions cuz you get used to it.

But it's really just causing that deeper wound that you're just shoving down. Right. Mm-hmm and ignoring coping mechanism. And so I really gravitated towards my grandfather, but he ended up leaving my grandmother. When she was, I think, 50, 50, something years old, and I was devastated. So I felt like I went through it all over again of my grandfather leaving and I felt abandoned again because wow, I wasn't enough for him to stay.

I wasn't enough for him to be there and that broke my heart. And so at that point, I think that's when I really made a personal vow almost of, I will never let a man in and love me because all he's gonna end up doing is destroying me. So I'm gonna be confident, strong, smart, amazing woman, and I'm gonna take care of myself and I'm gonna be prepared that if I do get married at the end of the day, I'm gonna have my own bank account, own money, my own, my own wits about me that I'm not gonna have, I'm not gonna be left behind by someone like a piece of trash at 11 years old.

I remember laying on the stairs, crying, thinking that to myself, Because my grandmother had to witness how devastating it was for her. And I'll, I'll never forget that. And it was so sad watching her cry and sob and, and I didn't fully understand everything cuz I was so young, but at the same time it really had a deep effect on me.

And at that point I, I just cut my grandfather off. I wanted nothing to do with him. So mm-hmm, not just one man left, but two and my grandfather I think was even worse because I had a really good stable relationship with him. And um, even when he did come back to try to have that relationship with me, I just completely rejected him.

I wanted nothing to do, which was hard, but I was so hurt. That's the only thing I knew how to do. And that was the other thing. I trained myself in that woundedness and brokenness just to keep people. Don't let them in because you're just really gonna end up getting hurt. So slowly it's like you're building that wall up around yourself to protect yourself.

Like you, you would keep things out, but you're also keeping so much in too. And you, I couldn't experience that real love for a very long time. It was very hard for me to accept it. Absolutely. And without that vulnerability, like you mentioned, there is no possibility for authentic love, but it is really hard when people like you and me come from broken families.

We've seen this dysfunction we've been let down, we've been abandoned. It's really hard to overcome. That abandonment and begin to love again. And I know in my own story, I was 11 years old when my parents separated. And I remember just being so devastated by the news. I wasn't aware that, I mean, my parents had problems here or there, but it really came out of the blue that they were gonna get divorced.

And so I remember the day my dad left, it was like a warm spring day. My mom sat me and my siblings down. I'm one of six and broke the news. And I remember as an 11 year old boy, I couldn't handle that news. It was truly traumatic for me. And so I just sat in the closet and I cried and sitting in that closet, I felt like you just express.

I felt abandoned. I felt unwanted. And I felt like I just wasn't enough because if I was why weren't mom and dad working this out? And I know there's so many people listening right now who feel that exact same way. And over the years too, I, I blame myself and that's something I'm glad you brought that up.

Cause that's something we hear again and again, there was a dad who reached out to me recently and he shared that, uh, his wife was divorcing him. He didn't want the divorce. She was going through with it. And so really difficult situation. They have one boy, uh, son and, uh, the dad on the day that he was leaving the house, uh, he was in the bathroom, just crying, just devastated by this whole thing.

And his son came in and he looked at his dad and he said, dad, is this my fault? And immediately, you know, the dad wrapped him in his arms and said, no, no, of course it's, it's not your fault that this is, you know, between your mother and I, and so I think so many of us internalize all these things that, that you touched on.

So well, um, feeling abandoned and feeling like it's our fault. And the other thing that I didn't realize what's happening at the time, I shut everything out, but also you're shutting God. You're not, I at least I did. I literally, even at that young age thought whenever I heard of love and, and God is love and, and God is forever.

And this and that, I thought, Izzy really though, like where is he right now? Then? You know? And I didn't really see that a lot in my life. And I feel like at a very young age, God was challenging me in that. And I think a lot of people don't realize how you're being challenged in that as well of your relationship with God.

And a lot of people wanna grow up with that coping mechanism. Oh, well that happened. I was, I was a child. It's not that big of a deal, but that's the thing. And that's the great lie. Isn't it? Because it is a big. It slowly comes out and it bubbles onto all of our different relationships and even to how you parent and how you are a spouse and a lot of different things, it will come out.

If, if you want it to or not knowing or unknowingly, I couldn't agree more in, uh, your new book. You pose a great question related to everything that we're talking about. You say, are you afraid to embrace a specific vocation? Because you fear you will end up like your parents. And that really strikes a nerve for people like us from broken families.

We really fear that. And the young people that we work with through this ministry, we hear that a lot. We are so afraid of making the same mistakes that they did of repeating that cycle of dysfunction and divorce. And even if we don't end up going that way, that the trauma that we've endured so often impacts our vocation, which for most of us looks like our marriage.

And so on that topic to whatever degree you're comfortable with sharing, how has your brokenness affected your marriage? Oh, my goodness. It was a nightmare. I can be very, very honest and candid because I did have my, my kind of come to Jesus moment and I have this conversion. Right. And, and I have to go back in order to tell you how that kind of transpired.

Right. But I, I literally had this moment of this talk where this young man, and it was when I was in high school and it was towards the end, but nobody could Pierce that darkness that I was in. And I don't know if you experienced that, Joey, but I was in such darkness and turmoil and things that I did and how much I gave away.

I felt like nothing. and I hated myself. I hated being in my own skin and I just knew it. Wasn't supposed to be that way. But when you give so much of yourself and what's done is done, you, you kind of, I felt like damaged goods and that nobody could ever really love me because I was so damaged and I caused a lot of it and I allowed a lot of it.

But it was that young man who stood up and had the courage. And I go back to this moment because a lot of people out there don't realize the power of their own testimony to the world and the people around them. And you never know how you can Pierce someone's darkness just by your testimony and how you live and what you've gone through.

And just sharing that with people. Sometimes it helps. And that young man had the courage that day to just get up and talk about all the porn, all of the addiction, everything that he had been into, I felt like he was talking directly to me, but he also talked about how he started over and that he was this new creation.

But the one thing that I just was in awe of, and I couldn't take my eyes off of him, I was in shock almost of how honest he was. He was so honest about where he was at, what he had done. and he wasn't ashamed. And I sat in my seat trying to figure out one day that I hadn't been ashamed of myself and the way I was living and being in my own skin.

And, you know, I couldn't find one, not a single day of carrying that around with me. And I wanted that. I wanted to be done with this shame and this weight and just, I wanted that more than anything. And so just by that testimony and his courage, and they say courage is contagious, I'm sure a lot of you have heard that it really was that day.

And God was able to Pierce that darkness I was in and I was able to come out of it and go to confession for the first time, because I mean, we've all experienced it where we go to confession to go to confession. So either somebody sees us or we feel like we're checking it off, or we're not really giving God everything right.

And all the weight and all the sin and all the yuck. So it held me back a lot for those of you that are Catholic, I think you understand. But that day, I mean, I went to confession for the first time. And it was the most freeing experience that I had had, and it was unbelievable. I can't even describe it, but to go in there with this huge list of all of these things, because I finally really was done with that lifestyle and what that, the grace that came from that young.

Was powerful. And sometimes you don't even realize what you're doing or what you're saying and how the holy spirit is working in you, but that it really can change lives when words have power and what you speak over yourself and what you speak to others has power. And you need to know and learn that power that you have, because it, it is, it's something fierce when you know what you're doing, especially with the grace of God.

Yeah. Does that make sense? Oh, of course. And no, you're, you're hitting the nail on the head. I think back to, you know, after my parents separated. Yeah. I went down a really dark hole. I made a lot of stupid mistakes and got to that numb place that you mentioned, and just so much regret, you know, a lot of sexual mistakes on my part.

And. Just things that I, I wish never happened. And obviously, you know, God's been able to use those and heal me and all that. And I've been able to live a pure life. Thanks to you and Jason like here and Jason, he did for me what that young man had done for you. He really answered all the questions I didn't even realize I had about love and sexuality and, uh, helped set me on that path to living in pure life.

And there was so much peace and so much freedom and so much joy that came from that, that I couldn't have known until I tried it. And, and I think that's one thing important. That's important to say it. you could hear about it all day, how peaceful and good and happy you can be if you live this like good pure life.

Um, but until you actually try it, you're not gonna experience that. And so, uh, once I did, I experienced it, I was like, oh, I never want to go back to another way, but going back to the numbness, then I wanna let you comment on that. Yeah. I totally experienced that. And even in the years that followed after I turned my life around, uh, I still experienced that numbness and what I realized in time, Is that it's actually a trauma response and it's actually a really good thing that our bodies, our brains do when we're in traumatic situations is that we become numb because if we were to feel all of the emotions that we could feel in a traumatic experience or moment, uh, we would just collapse, it would be overwhelming.

And so it's a good thing in those moments to feel numb. But what happens is sometimes we get stuck there and it continues on, and that's where the healing and processing all those traumas, uh, will help you to feel not numb, but alive again. And there's a lot of people that we've worked with. Who've gone to trauma therapy and they've been able to experience that.

I know that was the case for me as well. So I wanna let you comment on yeah, just that anything that I just mentioned. The numbness. There's a numbness that I think is, is good that your body needs to respond to. But there's also a toxic numbness that I dove into of the drugs and the drinking and just shutting it off.

Right. I wanted to just shut it off, shut it down. And I didn't wanna care at all and that, but I will say this. And for those of you out there that maybe don't feel you hear God, or even know if he exists. I don't care how drunk or how high or what I was doing. I still heard that small, still whisper of a voice.

I knew. I knew I didn't need to. I shouldn't be there. I knew what I was doing was wrong. I knew I was damaging myself and I knew no matter what I did, I couldn't shut it up. Like God was hound. God was not gonna leave me there. But I tried my hardest to shut that voice up. And if you listen, no matter what's going on in your life, I don't care where you're at in your life, who you are, where you've been, what you've done, God does not wanna leave you there.

And the lie that kept me there for a very long time was, well, God doesn't really want me because I'm so wounded and I'm broken. And he'll love me when I am perfect. I'm a Saint I'm pristine. That's when God's gonna love me. And I am so far from that, that he's not gonna want me. And so what's the point, right?

And that's, that was the lie that I allowed the evil one to give me because it actually was in. The woundedness, it was in the yuck. It was in the broken and the ugly that Jesus was really wanting to go right there with me. And I didn't want him to go, I didn't want him to see me. I didn't wanna let anyone in because it was so painful and so shameful.

And I didn't want God to see me, even though he saw everything, you know, in and out. Yeah. You still feel like you're hiding somehow in this. Like, you still feel like nobody sees you and that's just, that's another lie. It's ridiculous. He was right there with me, but you have to invite him in and that's the thing.

Your will is everything and it is powerful. And when you willed it for the right things, God can do amazing things in your life. But I shut him out. I didn't want him in there. I didn't want to be seen, I didn't want, I didn't want to expose myself in that state. Right. Hmm. But it was when I let him in there that he was able to break kind of that, that bondage that I had over myself, So good.

And I appreciate you making the distinction between that, you know, regular numbness that we experienced because of trauma and the toxic numbness. I, I know exactly what you're talking about, and that makes a lot of sense. And thanks for sharing all that too. One of the things I realized in my own life is that so many of the mistakes I made, the bad habits I developed, the regretful things that I've done, uh, were just in an attempt to feel wanted.

Yeah. And now I, I realize that and I have that awareness. And so now I can seek out ways of feeling wanted that aren't unhealthy, that aren't bad. And a lot of it, you know, obviously comes from our relationship with God. But I think even that realization that we just wanna be loved, we wanna be wanted, like everything you're telling me in your story.

And I I've heard, you know, you speak and I've heard your story and read a lot of your content. Everything in your story just makes so much sense to me and makes sense. You went down that path and makes sense that you did these things in an attempt to feel loved, to feel, wanted to feel accepted, to, you know, overcome that abandonment that you experienced.

And so it, it just makes sense. And I think God looks at us that way too. He looks at us and he sees the dumb things. We've done the mistakes we've made and he understands. It's not like he's saying, oh, sin is a good thing. He'll never say that. He wants us to, you know, live a good life and get away from those bad habits as sins.

Um, but at the same time, I think he has this incredible understanding of us because he just loves us so much. And he looks at us and says, okay, like I get why you did that. But there's something so much more that I want for you. Yes. And he is constantly pursuing us regardless. And, and we wanna numb, but I'm, I'm have you experienced that Joey, where you are just like outta your mind on something or you, and you still hear that voice, like, you know, you shouldn't be doing this, you know, like this is not right.

Not good for you. A hundred percent. I remember when. Yeah, uh, buddy of mine, I was 11 around the time my parents separated. He introduced me to pornography and like so many people, I, I knew something was wrong with looking at it, but also I was very intrigued. It was, it was beautiful in a way, in a twisted way.

Right. The woman's body was beautiful. And so I felt drawn to it. And so, uh, over time though, I noticed that even though that was a way for me to escape the pain and the problems in my life to numb what I was experiencing, uh, I still felt ETI and even more miserable after going to porn. And I knew just like you're saying that little voice inside me was saying.

You're made for happiness. And I knew even as a boy, even as an 11, 12 year old boy, I knew that I wanted to be happy and this wasn't making me happy and needed to change. Uh, and so I'm sure you can relate with that too, but yeah, absolutely. To answer your question, uh, I certainly relate with that small voice inside of you now, after I had my conversion, God really gave me a grace of not falling back into those sexual sins.

Like something really shifted in me. And I think the power of confession was huge, but a real honest, good confession, right. And a whole hearted confession. And you know, I, some of you will understand this, that I heard an Exorcist tell me that confession is a mini exorcism. Hmm. And you know what, when I look back on my life and I look back on that moment, the shift that took place in me after that, it was so much easier to.

Live out the life I truly did want, and I know God wanted me to leave, but I couldn't do that without his grace. And that was another thing I tried over and over, because we've all had those moments where you do something stupid. I did something really stupid and I'll never do that again. I'll never sleep with them again.

I'll never get that drunk again. I'll never take this drugs again and you promise yourself and you're just really firm in that action, right? yeah, until that weekend or you feel lonely or you have that, that moment of having to be not so numb and actually feel those raw emotions and then you just gravitate back towards it and that's exactly what happened.

And it wasn't until I did it with Jesus. It literally wasn't until I did it with God that I. It did not happen again. And that was the difference that you don't have the strength on your own to overcome these vices. You don't have the strength in your own to come up against these temptations, but with the grace of God, you do.

And that was the only path for me that worked because I tried everything because I hated the way I lived. I didn't like it. I wasn't happy. I knew there was so much more, but I just didn't know how to get out of that rut. And instead living out of the rut, just, I, you it's a humbling experience, but at the same time I needed God to do it.

Yeah. So good can agree more. And I wanna get to your healing story. So what was it that helped you heal? You mentioned hearing that talk in high school. I'm curious in the years that followed, what did your healing process look. So after that, I knew I wanted to help young women like myself, because I never heard that message before that you can start over that you, it doesn't matter who you are, where you've been, what you've done.

And I literally wanted to scream that from the rooftops, especially to my friends and just let them know, look, it doesn't have to be this way. There is a different way. And so I slowly, baby steps had to change my life. And it was really hard because you have kind of both feet in each world, you wanna live this good life and strive towards that purity and that holiness.

And it's a whole new world, but you're still kind of in the world. Right. And that balance, it's like, you become this new person. And it's like, well, what is okay? What's not okay because when you're living out a life of purity and you're really trying to change. it really is a whole mindset. It's a whole lifestyle.

And there, there can not really be a lot of duplicity in that it's kind of one or the other, the light is always gonna be fighting with the darkness. Right. Mm-hmm . And so it was really just slowly getting rid of those friends and the clothes things I listened to. And you know, what was really interesting, Joey is one night I went to a party.

My friends invited me to, I, instead of engaging in everything, I literally sat in a seat and I watched the entire night in front of me, like a movie. I didn't engage in anything. I sat there and my friends were like, come on, come on, have a drink. And I'm like, oh, no later. You know? And I just was like, and I literally kind of prayed, but I watched.

It was like a movie how over time, and as the night went on people and how their standards just dropped and how they acted and what they were doing and how they changed and how I saw two people go behind this door and doing this and doing this and just things they typically wouldn't have done probably, but because they let their guard down and they got into that kind of coping of the drinking and just bad habits.

It's unbelievable how the night transpired. And I thank God, I wasn't engaging in that. And that he opened my eyes to actually see, and it was really eye opening. And if you ever wanna see a situation for it, what it really is, I would encourage people like if you're struggling, like you wanna live a different life, but oh, this one is so much fun and I don't wanna lose all of that, but is it really that much fun because from what I saw that night and what I witnessed, what I thought was so much fun.

It was dangerous and it wasn't good and it was bad. And every morning I remember just waking up, feeling like that. I felt disgusting and not worth it. My friends were like, oh, it's all fun and games. And the thing is you wake up the next day and you don't feel like it's fun and games. Right. You, you it's like you have to like shake off and wash off from the night before almost cause it's not fun and games.

And, and it was just an interesting moment, but I just really wanted to help women from that point on just heal and let them know it was okay. And so I ended up going to, well, my mother sent me of course, to The Bahamas of all places. cause there was a Chasity speaking event and she knew she had to do something extreme to really get me to go rough destination there, Chris.

It was hilarious. And so I was like, sure, mom, I'll go. Why not? You know, who's gonna, who's not gonna do that. So I went to The Bahamas and lo and behold, that's where I met Jason and at, and he was speaking there. And at the time I didn't wanna date anyone. I didn't wanna, I just, I needed my distance. I needed space.

I knew I had a lot going on and I was just fed up with men at that point in my life that I wanted nothing to do with them. So. I talked with Jason and we met, but we ended up just being friends for a good year. And then we slowly started courting and then we ended up getting engaged and we got married and it really wasn't until I think I started having kids that it really started to affect me.

And I started having serious issues. And the lie that I think I fed myself was like, I'm starting this new life, this new chapter, I'm leaving everything behind. And all my baggage is gonna stay outside of the church. And I'm gonna walk down the aisle into this whole new world that I imagine for myself.

Right. And I wanted to be this Martha Stewart mom, this amazing wife and, and all of these things. And I was incredibly ill equipped for any of it. And I really floundered and it was really difficult. And I didn't have that. Martha Stewart mother growing up. Okay. So, and I didn't even have the grandmother growing up to teach me like a lot of young women, because I feel like this there's this whole generation Joey of these women that got left behind these young women that got left behind from the sixties of their mothers, leaving their vocations and going out and becoming these strong business women.

And, and it was like this women power. But in the midst of that, I feel like there were casualties and I was one of them. And I literally didn't get taught how to be a wife, how to be a homemaker, how to have that Catholic essence within your home and, and how to even. A good wife, you know, it was, yeah, it was all kind of this shock for me.

And, and it's something you think that is just gonna like click inside of you because, well, this is what you're doing, so something's just gonna turn on and it never did for me. So I really struggled in just the house and pregnancy, the kids, all of it. I felt like a handicap and I felt so ill-equipped and I felt worthless in my own home.

And I didn't know how to do certain things. And there's a trial and error period, but I think my own brokenness really kicked in and I felt incredibly inadequate in those moments. And so it was really hard. And Jason came from this like, No joke, like leave it to beaver family that it's just like, they didn't understand, you know, there was such this different dynamic because he came from such good seeing such good wholesome relationships.

And here I come from this broken background and then they're colliding together and it clashed. So it was very difficult cuz he's expecting one thing I'm expecting another. And so it's really good to have those conversations, very raw conversations of what does your life day in day out look like after the wedding, after the big honeymoon and you get home.

What does eight to five and five to like 10 look like in your lives? What do they expect of you when you have kids? What is it? Um, they're wanting of you like really get into like nitty gritty of how your spouse or how the person you're dating or engaged to really sees your daily life in and out. Cuz it was very different than what I imagined.

And then also I had the dynamic of being a speaker and going and traveling with Jason constantly around the world with chastity. I mean, there were times where we were home, maybe five days out of a month because we were traveling so much doing this. Wow. And that was a blessing from God. But now we had kids, the whole, my whole world just started to change and it really came to this moment where I had to embrace my vocation as a mom and I had to change, um, my day in and my day out.

And what. God expected of me. And that was really a struggle and that's something I had to pray through because it's very different staying home with children and then also feeling inadequate in staying home and being this homemaker. And you're used to being on stage and helping people and traveling and doing all of these things.

And it was like this huge shift for me. So there were a lot of things at play that happened. And I, I really struggled, but I prayed through that and I knew I needed to be home with my kids. I knew that's what, what God was asking me to do. It was humbling. It was hard, but I knew that that's what needed to happen.

And I thank God every day that I did that, but I still struggle with this anger and just this, oh, I couldn't figure it out. And so I'd go to adoration. I went as far as I possibly could in my own healing process. And then I remember in adoration, God kept telling me, always will bring you back to that same thing.

The next step he wants me to take. And he wanted me to go to counseling. and I, I literally out loud and adoration said, no, I was like, anything but that just, no, I didn't want to go Joey, because in my family growing up, you didn't talk about things and you definitely didn't pay someone to go talk to about your problems, because then that meant you had serious mental and psychological problems.

Hmm. And it was very looked down upon, but now I know why it was looked down upon because they didn't wanna be looked in a bad light yeah. By anyone. Right. You keep up this facade for people. When you're you, you in a broken family and there's just so much going on, they wanna keep the, the pretend game going, right.

The world that you have it all together. And it was just something you didn't do. And God kept telling me to go do that. And it came to the point where I knew it was like, okay, Lord, I, I needed to do this. So it was really intense. And I started going to counseling and. In counseling is when I found out that I had been sexually abused as a child by family members.

And I did not know that I growing up had no I did. And I shoved it down so deep that I, I couldn't even, I couldn't even go there. And it was when again, thank God I went there with God and Jesus though. That's where you have to go to those places with, right, because he's the one that can really deal with those things and give you the strength and the courage to face them.

And that's why my, my women made new ministry even started was because of all of this that you really have to face it. You have to own it, and then you have to heal it. But without facing it and owning what happened to you, there's no way of healing it. And the first two are very scary, but the healing part, it can be done.

And. I will say in that moment that all of that kind of came up. My entire world shattered around me. And I think it was one of the hardest moments of my life, but I feel like I made so much sense to myself for the first time in my life, in that moment, because I understood why I had a hard time giving and receiving love.

Why sexualize my anger growing up, just all this anger and this just frustration, just all that yuck. I was always feeling, I feel like God ripped the bandit off and he showed me the wound and that's where I needed to go. And I'm telling you, I made so much sense to myself for the first time. And then after I went to ground zero, then I really could start building from there, you know, and it was hard, but then the foundation could be put down.

Then the yacht could get cleaned out. Then God could really do what he wanted me to. But if I didn't say yes. To what God was asking me. And so often I was just ignoring it and fighting it and I didn't want it. And I thought I knew better, and I didn't even realize what he wanted to show me. So when we were fighting God, and he is asking us to do something, you really have no idea the trajectory of where your life can go by just giving that yes to God.

Cause he's trying to do great things in you. And he, everything he asks of us, there is a reason for it. And he doesn't just ask us to do anything. There is weight behind it. My goodness, Lina, like, I'm so sorry. There's so much I wanna say I'm so sorry for what you've been through. It's heartbreaking that you were abused and just all the things you went through, but it's so beautiful.

How, you know, you've turned that around with God's grace and it's just amazing. And so inspiring. Like I mentioned, at the top of the show, there's so many people who are in a similar spot as you are, who are listening right now. And, uh, one thing I wanted to say for those of us who come from broken family is we typically struggle more in our relationships and in marriage.

And so if you're feeling like Cina did in your own marriage right now, there's nothing wrong with you. In fact, the research on this topic is very clear. The biggest area of our life that's impacted by the breakdown of our family is our own relationships in marriage. And the basic reason for that, like Chris said, well, is that we don't have a roadmap for.

We've seen a really broken model of love and marriage that gets so deeply ingrained in us almost as if we're programmed to act that same way. And so then when we try to build a relationship, build a marriage, build a family, we feel lost. We're like, I, I don't know how to do this. And that, to me, it sounds like what you went through so much, uh, in your marriage and your family.

And, and it makes so much sense to me. So if anyone out there is feeling that way, if you're going through that, like, there's nothing weird about you. Uh, it makes sense given what you've been through, but there's so much more that lies ahead. If you commit to your healing process, if you face it, you own it.

You heal that. Chris said so well, and that programming can be re you can reprogram yourself too. And that's really what feeling it is all about. And I know for myself, uh, it's just, I've struggled in my own marriage. I've, you know, my wife and I have been open about going to marriage counseling. It's been really helpful and we've made a lot of progress, but especially early on Chris know, for me, it was similar.

It was like, I don't know how to do this. Right? Like the, the model that was set for me with my parents, it was just like horrible, a horrible way of handling conflict. I didn't know how to handle conflict. I was super defensive. I would get really angry, like all this stuff, and I'm still working on some of it, but we've made a lot of progress.

And, uh, so there is hope there's so much hope, but I, I just want people to feel validated in that. Is there anything you would add to that before we move on? I would that if you are experiencing this in your marriage and you are struggling in your marriage, a lot of times you don't want to reveal to your husband or your wife, that weakness or what's going on, and maybe you blame it on other things in the beginning, like what's going on the outside of you.

That's what the devil and that's how the stronghold kind of keeps us, or the wound keeps us and a hold of us is that we don't bring it to the light and we're not expressing and telling people what is actually happening, because we don't want to look like we are struggling or that we don't wanna seem weak, you know, and that we have it together.

But honestly, your spouse, God gave you your spouse to help you to work through this with you. And to be honest about what is happening and tell them, look, I feel inadequate in this, this and this, but just be honest about what's going on and bring it to the light because that leaves no room for the nonsense.

And that's what I found. Just be straight up and honest in all things. And if you can bring up those wounds and things that happen to you and just talk with your spouse, you'll be stronger together. And one thing I will say within your marriages, that outside of marriage, the devil does everything in his power to get you to come together, right?

and, and sleep together and be as close as physically possible. But within marriage, in the sacrament, the devil does everything physically possible to keep you two apart. And wow, you have to guard that because slowly things will get in, in the crack will slowly come in and then it'll get bigger and cause more cracks and more cracks.

And then you don't even realize what happened. So everything that comes in your marriage and in your world, your, your God first marriage is second. And anything that comes. Like crosses that path. You two should be discerning. If it's a job, if it's a new hobby, if it's friends, if it's anything you should be praying about that and your prayer life is going to build your fortress.

And if you're not praying together, you both are, are just it's. You're like free game and you're gonna get picked on constantly and you're gonna struggle and you're gonna have problems. But if you fortify yourselves in prayer and you discern things that come between you, the devil won't have so much wiggle room and control because he operates out of our unhealed wounds.

That's where the devil has power. And for those of you, um, that aren't Catholic, this is what I've experienced in my own life. That that's really where the control lies, but the, the closer you get to God, the more you bring things to the light, the evil one has got to go because he can't stand the light.

He will flee. So the more you put light on something, the, the less harder it will be, and that God's grace will, will abide there for you so much. Good advice there. And one question I heard, um, for any spouses, any spouses listening right now who maybe you suspect that your husband or wife is struggling with something, and you don't know how to go about talking about it.

One great question that I heard from Emily Wilson. She speaks, she's a musician, she's an author. She said, you can ask the question, and this is ideal. They ask obviously before you're engaged, um, or married, but you can do it within marriage two. And she said, you can ask this question. Is there anything that you haven't told me that you're afraid to tell me?

And she says, there's two reasons. That's helpful. One, if the person's gonna divulge something really difficult, they have to kind of overcome two barriers. One, they have to bring up the conversation. And two, they actually have to tell you the thing that can be pretty scary. By asking that question, you're removing the first barrier and then giving them the space to overcome the second barrier.

And so great, uh, little advice from Emily Wilson there. I know we're close to the end of our time together here, Christine, I could talk to you all day for sure, but I wanted to kind of contrast your life. So before the healing process you've laid out what life was like, how broken you were, makes so much sense, but how is life different now that you've gone through this healing?

And I know you would say, you know, you're always a work in progress, but you have experienced, uh, substantial healing. So how is life different now? One as, as you can see, and, and in our conversation, the shame. Is no longer there. And I feel like that really is a gift of God for going through that process, cuz he really does heal you and make you whole and new.

And even when I used to hear those sayings, I used to kind of B him, like, there's just no way, you know, but it really is the truth going through is really the only way, but, but a person that has gone through and made it out on the other side of all of that yuck, um, I can honestly say I'm not ashamed at all.

And I feel like I'm talking about completely different person talking with you today, Joey, it's unbelievable. And that God really wants to do great things. In everybody's life. Like everybody has a purpose. Everybody has a plan and you were created for something incredibly specific. And each one of us is so unique.

And even in the gifts that God has given us, that we need to discover within ourselves, but you can't really discover those things. If you're buried under your, the weight of your own yuck, you know, and the brokenness. But once you get past that, God replaces all of that brokenness. And he fortifies you with beauty and gifts and loves and talents and what it is he truly created you for because he made you for something, but you have to be on that mission.

You have to show up to your own fight. And if you don't show up to your own fight, you're just gonna be where you are standing in front of that Everest mountain of this healing process. And you'll die there and you are made for more than that. And we each are at just a small piece of the massive masterpiece that we're all gonna see in.

Of all of us, we're all just pieces. Right? And a lot of us, it's hard for us to believe that, but it's true. And that's why my women made new. That's why I started the whole women made new ministry is because when I went through my healing process, I needed so much help. I didn't know what the church mother church had to offer, but I know I, I knew it was there and I didn't want women to have to go searching through all these different things in order to get to the good stuff and start a healing process.

So women made knew that if you go to the website, you can find a good counselor. You can find out where to go to Eucharistic adoration, all the different, good Catholic speakers that are out there that can help you all the different, good Catholic resources in one hub, just to start your healing process, right.

Because you're already so wounded and you're going through so much. The last thing you wanna do is research. You know, you just wanna start. It's like, let's just go, it's go time. So you have to get 'em in that moment. And that's what we need to do. And so that's why it started. the women made new ministry and just the face, it own it heal it because that's what we all just need to do.

And it's not easy, but it can be done. And I look back at that moment where I said yes to God. And if I didn't say that, Joey, imagine I wouldn't be sitting here talking with you today. I wouldn't have married. Mason. I wouldn't have my 11 children. I wouldn't have these two unbelievable ministries. God gave me if I just didn't say that.

Yes. And so your decisions right now matter, and as little as you may think it is, it's not, and it holds weight and holds heavenly weight and you have the opportunity to change the course of your entire life. But you have to engage. You have to show up to your own fight. And I know God is calling every single one of you listening.

I don't care your background. I don't care where you've been. I don't care what you've done. None of that because I've been there. And, but God, right now, Is calling you. And I feel like he is inviting you. Whatever's on your heart. Answer it, just do it. Just do whatever that one thing is. Cuz everybody has that one thing.

That's like, oh, I don't wanna do that, but I know I'm supposed to just do it. And you'll see what's on the other side of that. But God is inviting every single one of you. And I tell my kids so they understand on just the small level is that your conscience, that little voice you hear is your compass to heaven.

And as long as you answer and you listen every step of the way, you're gonna be just fine, but just don't ignore it because every time I've ignored it I've regretted it. But every time I've listened, I've never regretted it once in all of my life. And if, if anybody walks. With anything, walk away with that, just listen.

And if I could tell my younger self that that would be the one thing I would say, just listen to that voice. It will guide you. It'll protect you. It'll lead you and you will become who you were created to be just by listening and being obedient period. Excellent advice. Uh, a great resource to help people do everything that you're saying is your brand new book.

It's called women made new reflections on diversity transformation and healing. If you would tell us about it, what's in the book and how will it help the women who read it? What I wanted to do is give women almost. Kind of a spiritual defense plan and to grow in their confidence of who God created them to be.

But we're also, there's so much fear and there's so much woundedness. It's like, you can't just go from a to Z, you know, there's a, B, C, D, and all of these steps. And there's so many new women coming into the church as well and wanting this relationship with God, but they don't know how and. I, I brought 12 powerhouse women together, right?

With that. Each of 'em have a ministry within the church that can help all walks of life of women. And they have each written a chapter in the book. And like for example, uh, Layla Miller, she wrote a chapter on divorce and to help people there. Another one is just like, maybe my chapters and I have three chapters that I actually put in the book and one is like unbroken.

Another one is about spiritual warfare. And another one is really addressing all of the trauma and how I got through that. And I kind of give them like a roadmap of how to heal from that, within that chapter. But one of the most beautiful things out of all of this. Is that mother Angelica is one of the contributors in my book.

And one of the women in my book and E WTN allowed me to use and go through, I spent 300 hours, Joey, no joke, oh my goodness. Listening. We hours of the night doing laundry or cooking dinners or whatever. Always my little earbud, listening to mother Angelica of her earliest shows of these whiteboard shows.

And I was able to pull these old transcripts and go through them. And they allowed me to compile these two unbelievable chapters from mother Angelica that have never been in writing before. And so even her wisdom that is put in here. And even though it was so long ago that she said these things they're so.

In our culture today, right now, with what we're going through. And even one of the chapters about your own personal prison that you actually build for yourself. Mm-hmm and what keeps you there. It's really beautiful. So I just wanted to bring all of these different women, these different ministries. And I wanted to hand women around the world, a book of resources that it doesn't matter what walk of life you come from.

One of these ministries, and one of these women's stories can help you because they're overcomers and we all can be overcomers. And God is calling us to be because we should not be negotiating with our insecurities and we should not be negotiating with our past wounds. We should be going in there and overcoming them, facing them, getting rid of them and marching forward and becoming these strong men and women of God that he's created us to be, to do the things that need to be done in this world right now.

And he's calling all of us, like all hands on deck right now. And I feel like he's got a great plan for everyone. I don't care who you are. So if you feel worthless and unloved, that is a lie from the pit of hell, that that God is calling you. But one thing, people, I think don't realize, and at least with my own personal relationship, Joey, with God, especially God, the father, because I couldn't go to Jesus as a man, I was so wounded by men that I could only handle him in the Eucharist.

So for those of you that have been maybe sexually abused, like I have, and I really struggled with, with God and, and Jesus as a man, I could handle him in the Eucharist and Eucharistic adoration changed my life. It transformed me as a woman and maybe you don't even believe in God, but if you just go sit in a chapel in a church and just say, okay, well, I'm here now, what?

God will show you the now what I promise, you know, mm-hmm, just go and have that courage, but to become incredibly Eucharistic. God has a plan for everyone, but we have to accept that invitation. Amazing. I, I saw that you're giving the first chapter away for free. How can people get that and how can they buy the book?

Uh, if you go to women, made new.org, you can download the first chapter unbroken, and then you can also sign up when the book is coming out, they're taking pre-orders now at EWTN religious catalog and any, any time it could come out and, and get it for sale. But, uh, women made new.org. They can get the first chapter right now.

Beautiful. How can people follow you and get access to your other resources as well? Oh my goodness. Women made new, um, dot com and if you just go to women, made new.org. Everything is there. My Instagram, my radio show, I have, uh, with EWTN every Saturday and, um, all books, resources, website, everything, and women made new really is just women helping women.

I just want people to get the help that they need. And this isn't about competition. This isn't about, um, one upping each other. This really is about helping each other and building each other up and, and healing each other and giving each other what we need to become, who God created us to be and, and men as well.

But my ministry is more geared towards women right now. Amazing. Christina, thank you so much for your time for your story, your vulnerability, your expertise in this area really appreciate you coming on this show, uh, for yeah. Sharing all of that and all the work you've done. I've benefited personally. And I certainly wouldn't be where I am today as a married man with a daughter, if it wasn't for you and Jason.

So thank you so much for, for all that you've done and we'll definitely be here cheering you on and supporting you however we can. I want to give you, uh, the last word and, uh, you kind of gave it already, but just throw it back to you. Any encouragement or advice for any women listening right now who've been abuse or feel broken.

I know you mentioned listening that small voice inside of them, but I wanna give you the last word and just one piece of advice. One piece of encouragement. You're not alone. I felt so alone in what I was going through. And I didn't want anybody to know, because I felt like I was the only one or that carried that kind of shame, or I didn't want anyone to see and just know you are not alone and that you're wanted, you're loved.

And there is a group of women that would love to support you. And then also that God has a great plan and purpose, no matter who you are, where you've been, what you've done, all that matters right now is where you go from here.

So beautiful. I love Christine. I love her story. It's honestly so inspiring to me and really proof that healing and freedom are possible for all of us, even if we don't feel like it is. And on that note, I have a challenge for any of you who find yourself stuck in life, stuck where crystal was in high school.

If you're going to parties and trying to numb your pain with all sorts of things, my challenge for you is this next time you go to a party. Do what she did. Don't drink. Don't do any drugs, just observe, just sit there and observe like Chris Luna did at that party that she went to and ask herself, the question is this the lifestyle I really want?

Is this lifestyle really that attractive? Is it really satisfying me? That's it. That's my challenge for you. If you want Christine's new book, you can go to women, made new.org women made new.org, or just click on the link in the show notes on that page. You could also get the first chapter for free. I read it myself.

It's really good. So I definitely recommend picking that up. And finally, one tactic that you can use to heal is to find a guide, find someone who can guide you in your healing journey. And that's where a counselor, a coach or a spiritual director comes in. And we're building a network of counselors, coaches, and spiritual directors that we trust that we vet that we recommend.

And by using our network, it'll save you a lot of time and effort in searching for a counselor coach or spiritual director. And these people are professionals that we vetted, that we trust that we recommend. And we'll connect you with a trained professional who can give you the help and tools you need.

So you can feel whole again. And if you wanna make use of that, it's really simple. Just three steps. Go to ReSTOR ministry.com/coaching. Again, restored ministry ministry, singular.com/coaching. Just fill out a really quick form and then we'll connect you with a counselor, coach or spiritual director as they become available.

Again, that's restored ministry.com/coaching, or just click on the link in the show notes. Thanks so much for listening. Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#077: The Past Sometimes Lives in the Present | Eddy Cervantes

A myth about children of divorce is that the impact of our parents’ divorce is temporary. That’s simply not true, which research proves. Sadly, the effects last long after the divorce itself. 

Our guest today shares how his parents divorce has impacted him, even 20 years later in his own marriage. We discuss:

• How he felt lost when it came to dating and relationships, how breakups felt like a repeat of his parents’ divorce, and how he irrationally fears that his spouse is going to leave one day

• What it’s like to go through a divorce in a Mexican family

• What to do when you’re unsure how to articulate a feeling or experience you’ve endured, especially related to your broken family

• A story on having a difficult conversation with his mom, which offers good lessons for having a difficult conversation with your parents

Get the Book or Free Chapters: It’s Not Your Fault

Meet with Joey for the Investor’s Pitch

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Eddy Cervantes

  • Email: ecervant89@gmail.com

• Episode 22: A Quick and Simple Healing Exercise

• Books

  • Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones | James Clear

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As a bonus, you’ll receive our free guide, 7 Tips to Build a Thriving and Divorce-Proof Marriage!

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

One really popular myth about children of divorce is that the impact of our parents' divorce is temporary. It's short lived. It doesn't really affect us. The problem with that is it's simply not true. And research proves this, especially the research of Dr. Juth. Wallerstein at the university of California at Berkeley.

She studied children of divorce for 25 years and she summarizes all of her findings in her great book called the unexpected legacy of divorce. I definitely recommend checking it out. And what she found is that sadly, the effects from our parents' divorce last long after the divorce itself, my guest today shares how his parents' divorce has affected him.

Even 20 years later in his own marriage. We also discussed how his mom fell out of love and pursued a divorce. He shares what it's like to go through a divorce in a Mexican family, a unique dynamic there, as you'll hear, he talks about how he felt lost when it came to dating in relationships, how breakups felt like a repeat of his parents' divorce and how he, I rationally fear.

That his spouse is going to leave him one day. We offer some advice on what to do when you're unsure, how to articulate a feeling or an experience that you've endured, especially related to your broken family. We talk about how your own healing and growth can inspire your family and even your parents to heal and grow as well.

And he shares a neat story about that. We touch on why healing is almost never immediate. And finally, he shares a story about having a really difficult conversation with his mom, which offers some really great lessons on having a difficult conversation with your parents. Lots of great tips and tactics on healing.

So keep listening.

Welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 77. My guest today is Eddie Cervantes as the middle of 13 kids in his family.

Big family, Eddie Cervantes loves being around people and will do anything for family. He graduated from the Colorado school of mines as an engineer. He loves pour over coffee and a good pun. Eddie and his wife McKenna live in Denver with their new baby. So here's my conversation with Eddie,

Eddie. Welcome to the show. Thanks for being here, man. Yeah, thanks for having me. Can you do your radio voice for us? oh, Joe ROS podcast. we're we're replicating the Joe Rogan podcast, Joe Rowan podcast. number one downloaded podcast in the world. There you go. we're next. Never. No, I remember, um, I was, uh, doing this mission trip and believes years ago and randomly, I don't even know how ended up on a radio show.

what and Belize, whoa. Speaking English, but okay. Anyway, it was, it was fun. And I remember I was a college kid at the time and I remember like trying to make my voice look that bad. I was like, so if you wanna do that, feel free. Will do from lighter topics on the heavier ones. Um, you know, I, I know a bit about your story.

Yeah. And. I I'm excited to hear more of it and go deeper. But for everyone listening, who doesn't know your story, how old were you when your parents separated and divorced? Yeah, I was, um, in third grade. So that have been, I think I was eight years old when my parents separated. Yeah. Dang. And what happened?

So I just know bits and pieces of it being eight years old. And it was kind of more like, okay. Diff you know, pulling from what people have said around me, you know, Aunt's brother, sister and all that stuff. It, I think ultimately what, what I, what I told my wife and, you know, before I, before I married, asked her to marry me, she, I told her like, you know, my parents divorce because my mom just fell, ultimately fell outta love.

Of my dad and that's something I remember in particular, just like imagining from the way that, you know, my uncle described it. And so that's it. I think from that point, she just fell outta love because of, I, I, in my mind what it, what it seems to me was I seen projecting what, what, how the, how it ended up to backwards now.

But I think what I projected was like, oh yeah, then we're never, never able to resolve differences. They were never able to reconcile. I don't remember forgiveness. So obviously it could be me projecting backwards right. From how it ended up, but I mean, sure. Yeah. That's that's from what I, I can see. Okay.

Yeah. And one thing we talk about from time to time in the show is that I think legally the most quoted reason for divorce is I reconcilable differences. There's just like a, essentially a constant struggle. Mm-hmm for one reason or another couples thinks they can't get beyond, which is sad. Yeah. So, so that makes a lot of sense.

And I'm curious about like hearing that second hand kind of three people, or kind of beginning a better understanding of that through other people, was your memory of that time kind of blacked out or. Was it more that you just weren't in the loop of what was going on between your parents as an eight year old?

Yeah, I, I think it was more so blacked out. Yeah. I remember just the, what I remember is, um, my mom talking about leaving on the phone to, to a friend and I was in the same room with her and it was kind of, it seemed very casual almost. Um, it was kind of weird thing about it, but, um, yeah, at the time I, I didn't know what's going on and I was like, oh yeah, you know, my mom's leaving.

And then that, then that day came, I remember. Some parts vividly, some parts vague, you know, some parts I Don actually don't remember driving off, you know, it, it, it was, it was like, okay, we're just packing up and, and going when no one else was there. So yeah, my mom took, uh, you know, kinda chose who she wanted to take.

Cause we were, we were a big family, um, sure. At the time I was one of one of nine. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Um, so it was, it was almost like a, a perfect divider, I guess, in how she did it. I don't know why, you know, necessarily, so yeah, it's just, here's what I remember. I keep remembering those, those, those events reoccurred my mind from time to time still.

Sure. So it may, you know, it's just, it doesn't go away I guess. Yeah. So did she take you with her? She did. She did. She took me, my sisters and my, my youngest brother at the time. And so, and everyone else, I think I got pulled outta school because no one else was there at the house when we were packing up and leaving.

Wow. I think. again, this from my old mindset. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, that's, that's what I remember. And it was the middle of the day we packed up stuff and I remember the bird cage that my mom picked up. That's one piece that I remember yeah. Is, I don't know. That was weird is like a bird cage, right? Um, yeah. so all the importance stuff.

Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh yeah, don't forget the birds. Like it's like, it's how meaningless almost, you know, maybe interesting. So yeah. That's, that's how it went down. Okay. Yeah. No, that's interesting. When you heard your mom talking on the phone, what was it like for you? Like what were you thinking? What were you feeling in that moment?

Um, if you remember. Yeah, no, I actually it's actually, after, after that I kept asking her like, so when are we moving? Or, you know, and not in like a question, like, like, why are we moving? But more so like, oh, like, yeah, we're moving. When are we going to move it? Was it just, I didn't understand what was, what she was saying.

Like it got it. Yep. It, I knew. The words, I just didn't know what, what it meant for enough. Um, so the feeling was like kind of excited. Like, oh, we're moving somewhere. We're going somewhere new, you know? Yeah. Like your whole family's moving somewhere. Yeah. Kind of. Yeah. No, it makes sense. How did all that affect you?

How did your parents broken marriage and the divorce affect you in the years that followed? Yeah. Yeah. It affected me. I mean it school, you know, typical things that you kind of hear about like, you know, bad grades in school. I mean, first they were good, but then they, they got really bad. Yeah. Um, in fourth grade.

And then, so I, I just kind of was just in this like kind of a haze almost, you know, I just remember, uh, you know, just not, yeah. It kind of going through the motions, not really feeling happy, not understanding why I wasn't happy. just all around. Like everything just seems kinda like, you know, like, okay, way.

Why, why is my dad, you know, not here or why did my mom decide to do this? That was kinda in the back of my mind. So I felt very, just kinda lonely in that sense. I felt like, I mean, I couldn't, I felt like I couldn't bring it up because, you know, if I brought it up, then, then my, you know, my mom might get triggered something or, you know, with my older siblings.

So it was just something like, it happened. Don't talk about it on my mom's side of, of living with her. And then with my dad, it was more like, I don't wanna say berating, but you know, to the point of like, I don't, you know, your mom, she left us type of thing. So it was, it was like, uh, one side, it was just calm loneliness.

The other side, when I went over to my dad's, it was kind of just a little bit more confusion, a little bit more anger. about it. So yeah. You know, and, and again, like you couldn't talk back, you know, the, the Mexican mentality, right. Is like, your family is like, you don't talk back to your, to your elders, to those who are your parents, especially.

Right. Um, yeah. Yeah. Show respect. So it, it question was, was outta the question. Got it. Right. Yeah. And I mean, that makes so much sense. I was curious about just your, um, Mexican background and mm-hmm, your ancestry there and how that might maybe look different than another nationality and other ethnicity, any insights into that, maybe from what you've heard from other people who come from broken families, how it might be different going through that?

I think, yeah. I think what it was, it's a little bit, we're more passionate people, you know, or so it's like, it's the fire. Once you let a fire, it's hard to, to, uh, pour water on it, I guess. You know, and, you know, in the Bible says, you know, if Jesus, I think, remember reading and I'm paraphrasing besides if you, you know, Love your brother.

So as to pour water on his, on hot colds or something like that, thank you. You know, but, but it was, it was more like Mexican Mexicans are passionate. We, when we were set on something, we're set on it. So it was, it was, it was really hard to, um, to try to, I don't know, be in the fire, so to speak and, and like, not get burned because you always got burned.

Um, in some sense, if you know, metaphorically, so how that's different from maybe like more so American culture is that from what my, my, one of my best friends, he, his parents divorced and it, it was, it was really awkward because it's like, well, I saw 'em in school and then they were talking to each other, like normally like cordially.

And it was like, whoa, that's, that's kind of weird. Like, how is that? Why is that so different than why are theirs? Why is their divorce so different than my parents? And so I think the cultural piece plays in speaks to that where it's like, Oh, no, I'm I, I have this passion inside of me. And so I'm not gonna let it go.

Yeah. We, you know, we keep, we hold on. We're fiercely loyal, but also firstly, unloyal in some sense mm-hmm so combative and combative in that way. And like that person is not the enemy. Yeah, exactly. Okay. They're kind of the enemy. Don't, you know, we don't, don't talk to them type of thing, but it's. I have to cause I, I live with my mom, so we, we would switch every weekend to go with my dad's, um, and stay there for the weekend.

For the whole week or the weekend. Oh, the weekend. The weekend weekend. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And then the summer we'd do half and half. So half the summer would be with my mom, half would be with my dad on staying continuously or like, was it a split in the middle or would you go back and forth like week after we, yeah, it was continuous.

So like from the end of school, I, I think I'd stayed with my mom through like middle summer. And then once that middle summer hit, my dad came up and picked us up and we stayed until right before school started at my dad's house. Yeah. Okay. So interesting. Mm-hmm yeah. Okay. No, thanks for speaking to that.

Italians are pretty similar. So coming from an Italian family, like lots of passion. Oh yeah. And so this, this idea of like, yeah, never talking about it. It's definitely. Kind of foreign to me, but I've come to understand that more from people, you know, we've worked with who restored that there's can be that like real silence about it.

And even in passionate families, it's like we might fight about, or have conflict about certain things, but then other things are still off limits. Like, like you said, so it can be an interesting dynamic. It's kind of strange in some ways, but I, I totally get where you're coming from. Yeah, definitely. So anything else you would add about kind of yeah.

How it affected you, how you, you know, dealt with all of the, that trauma over the years? Yeah. Over the years. I I can get into from like then to, I mean, high school, middle school is, I mean, middle school is awkward anyways, I guess. And so , so it's like, okay, you know, we're in middle school, when's high school coming and then high school came.

Right. And so it was, it continued on through middle school. Um, the, the, the same thing over and over again, the fighting the arguing. Um, don't talk back. I can't question this. And then high school came and it was okay. Now I'm old enough. I feel like to talk back and to question things and to get argumentative and.

You know, so it, it, it was like a, a split within a split. So a split between my parents and like, I kind of split off from them. For me, it was, I'd try to defend my mom and my dad's. And I tried to defend my dad and my moms try to keep the peace. You know, I was that, you know, if you're into a family systems, I was that peacekeeper, um, type of thing that bridge between them two.

And because I was, my sisters never really went over to my, my dad's house. Um, it was just the, the boys. I didn't make that clear earlier, but it was just me and my younger brother who would switch. Um, okay. Did your sisters not want to, or was there something else at play? They were older, so that above the age of 18.

So they buy court order. They were, they were not into, you know, they, they could do whatever they want. Um, And so high school, I was more kind of be being the peacekeeper, creating that bridge. And then a lot of things changed in college. I think in college, you know, I, my parents realized that I was becoming an adult and moving on and, and continuing on.

And, and between high school oncology, you start to gain an interest in, in the ladies. Right? Sure. So, you know, and you're like, oh, you know, that's that girl's really cute or, wow. That girl's funny. And so you get gain an interest and it's, for me, it felt like it felt awkward. Like dating was an awkward thing to me because my parents were divorced.

It wasn't, it wasn't normal for me, you know, it's like, okay, how does this work? It, it doesn't make sense. I don't even know what you would do. How would you talk to someone until like, Hey, I, I like you. I wanna date you. Um, mm-hmm so it. Do I just copy the movies you do. I just, you know, I think that's the closest thing, you know, to like somewhat of an intact that, right?

Yeah, exactly. Like Titanic, right? Oh my gosh. So romantic. Wow. You know, and, uh, you know, apart from like, obviously the, this scenes that you're not supposed to look at, but it was like, wow, this is what Love's supposed to, like, you're supposed to have, you know, charming and all that stuff. And sure. So it, it really, it really affected me in how to have a relationship with the opposite sex and also.

It's, it was awkward talking to my friends about it too, because my friends had their parents were together. So I felt like the weird friend who had parents were divorced and, you know, it's kind of a shame, a shame of it, right? Yeah. Um, there's a shame and, uh, that's how I felt. It's I kinda, you know, and then parents got brought up in a conversation.

I kind of just, you know, got a little bit red in the face. Um, and thankfully I'm Mexican, so the red doesn't show that much, you know, so, yeah, so it was like, okay, I'm blushing, but it's like, oh, I'm embarrassed. But you know, um, I don't think anybody can tell. I hope. And so. There's that them, you know, the shame be feeling ashamed and in college.

Yeah. It, it it's changed in the sense that, you know, I felt like my parents orbit of authority was not there anymore. So I felt like this immense sense of freedom of, wow, I'm, I'm free from the dysfunction of my family. I'm free from the dysfunction of having to be that the, I mean, still be the peacekeeper, but not like that's not my responsibility, not my responsibility to get through college and to, you know, move forward.

And I think one thing that my parents had in common that I think they saw eye to eye, but really didn't talk about it was, you know, makes something of yourself. Um, my parents are immigrants from Mexico, so their dream, you know, the American dream, right. Yeah. Is to have your kids grow up, go to college, you know, have a career be successful in that way.

That, that was like a common strain, which was, which was good to see, you know, in, in that I think coming from a divorced family that can, for me, that really pushed me into like, oh, this is the thing I can cling on. I can cling onto being a good student. I could clinging onto getting the good grades and, and feeling on accomplished and feeling the, the feeling of, oh man, people are looking at me.

I think coming from a big family, you're just kind of striving for that attention. Right. Having good grades and being successful was one way of getting that attention from family, from friends. And so I worked, I worked my butt off, you know, and apart from obviously like, yeah, you're paying a lot for college, so you better, you better get the grades.

Yeah. Yeah. So it's so interesting. Yeah, no, it is such a good thing to work hard and to succeed. That's not a bad thing, but I agree. I think that we can maybe place too much of our. in our accomplishments, especially as men, I think we have that tendency, but mm-hmm, coming from a broken family. I've noticed that in people too, it's like, well, I don't find my worth in my value from my parents or from my family, or maybe even from God.

So I'm just gonna find it in sports or how much money I can make or how successful I can be in school or business, or, you know, whatever, like CrossFit or right. Anything like fill in the blank. You kind of look to that as you're defining characteristic as the thing that gives you worth, it gives you value.

Yeah. It's sad because the danger obviously with that is if that were to be taken away or maybe change in some way, then it can be really difficult to come to terms with like, oh, well, I don't really know who I am now, so I totally get that. And I, to this day, I've gotten better at it, but to this. Um, my dad was very much so he was very hard worker mm-hmm I admire that about him a ton.

We all got that characteristic, which I, I definitely appreciate. Yeah. Yeah. It's sad to me kind of seeing how, uh, people in his generation, I don't wanna single him out. My mom's similar in a lot of ways. How they, you know, really clung onto their work as like their meaning in life. And I, yeah, I think there's smarter life than just that.

Yeah, exactly. A struggle. And I think that also plays into the Mexican culture of like your worth is how hard you work. And it's kind of paradoxical because yeah. Mexicans are, you know, we're very much about faith family, you know, and working hard and, or some people play like faith, family, and soccer, but sometimes soccer comes first.

Right. That before family . So nice. Yeah. So it's, it's like, there's that passion again, and working hard was like, again, that's the thing I onto. And that's the thing that I got from my, from my dad, um, as well. And let me, sorry. I'm trying to think where I was going with that actually. Um, working hard is.

That's where I got the attention again. Mexican and culture. Come back to attention. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So mix, you know, Mexican cultures work hard and people appreciate that. They see the value in that and yes, it is valuable to work and to have be good at what you do. It almost became a little bit too much because it's like, Okay.

All we do is work, you know, when is it? So for me it felt growing up like, oh man, I go to my dad's house and I work and I come to my mom's house and I kind of relax, but there's like work in emotional work and trying to like, okay, don't try to argue with my mom. Or, you know, don't try to like trigger her.

Yeah. So it was work. It was work, definitely a lot of work and, and then college was totally free. So. Okay. No, that makes sense. Yeah. It's, it's so interesting how that could be a way of coping. Just, I mean, that's basically all we're saying now. And I remember in college. Yeah. Just those of who listened to the podcast, you know, that my parents separated and they were apart for a while.

And then they actually got back together, which was good. It was, their marriage was still broken. There was definitely dysfunction and struggles at home, but it was better that they were, um, together, but then later they got divorced. And so the time I was in college, It actually was away for my first semester mm-hmm and things were definitely rough before that and, you know, over the summers and stuff.

But, uh, my first semester at college, I got a call that my parents were getting divorced. It was like, I kinda lost touch with home a little bit being my first semester away. Mm-hmm and, um, that was definitely difficult to swallow. And I remember, I think the next day I had like an accounting test and, um, so it was like kind of difficult to study, but at the same time, I just buried myself in it and school became a way to yeah.

Just kind of cope. And, uh, I think I not, I'm not boasting Benny means here. I think I like aced the test, which to me, like after I got the score back, I'm like, that's really weird. Like you just got really heavy news and you just like did really well in this test, like better than maybe I normally would do.

Right. So, um, so anyway, it definitely was kind of insightful for me to see like, okay, this is like one of the ways that I cope. It's just good to know moving forward. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, going to, for those of you, you know, mine, mines is definitely. Get in your books and dig in and you know, it's nonstop.

And I just loved it. I loved it because, you know, homework, didn't talk back to me, guess what homework didn't test. Didn't, you know, didn't obviously it told you your faults, you know, but it wasn't like a verbal, you know, emotional type of thing. So I was like, this is like, perfect. You know, just work hard, keep working, you know, the more hours you put it.

Oh man. I'm working hard. Okay. I get better grades. So the input I get is equal to almost the output in some sense. Yeah, totally. So, yeah. I, I just, I was just engulfed in it and just everything, everything around college was just, I loved, you know, I loved being around people and my age and not have to worry about going home.

Right. Yeah. So, yeah, it was great. Yeah. No, I, I hear you. It's tough. You know, it's yeah. It, it's definitely not easy to deal with like the trauma, the dysfunction. And so if we can find escapes. Then we, we usually take them. Yep. You know, the, some are definitely unhealthy than others, but I think that one certainly can turn into an unhealthy thing and I, I know mine did, but at the same time, there are worse ways of coping

Yeah. So, uh, I think that's important to say, but, um, one of the, one last thing I was gonna say on that is one of the counselors to whom we refer people are restored. I was talking to her once and she said that school was like a vacation from the emotional side of her brain. Mm. So it was almost like she didn't need to, you know, deal with all those heavy feelings.

It was like, oh, I can just use my mind, like the more logical, functional side of my brain that just focus on like solving problems or learning and, and, uh, so it can certainly be yeah, just a way of coping, right? Yeah, definitely. That's a great way to put it was a vacation for, for that part. And you know, another way that I coped was.

Yeah, just getting praised from friends too. Once when, if I didn't get praised for my family, I try to get praised from friends and try to do the best that I can and trying to be a leader. And so it's, it was, um, it was, it was definitely some, uh, a good experience, but another part of it too, with the coping that I had to do besides that was one of 'em was like partying a little bit.

Sure. And so going to there and just hanging out with more friends, you know, this fun. Cool. Yeah, that totally makes sense. So turning to relationships, which definitely are a lot more difficult in my opinion than school . Yep. How, uh, how did you see your parents' divorce? Their broken marriage affect your dating relationships and your now.

My dating dealerships weren't much at all. there were short births, more like fireworks that burnt out after you'd gotten, you know, somewhat in there. It was, it was just very short lived again. I, I, I think carrying it on from high school was like, I, I didn't know what I was doing. Um, obviously didn't have the end in mind.

Right. It was more so I'm just having fun trying to date. And yeah, there were certain times when I was like, okay, I wanna be serious potentially, you know, and find a spouse. But at the end of the day, it was more like my heart wasn't completely in it to take it to the, you know, to see the, the seriousness of dating and going into marriage.

And yeah, I, I remember just every breakup, almost every breakup that I had, it was, it was kinda. , it was very heart wrenching. You know, even though we were dating for a few weeks, you know, or a week or a month, it was like, wow, this really hurts. And, um, that, that, that was a great brokenness that I realized that, wow, like I'm very affected by this and I don't know what to do about it.

And it was weird because it's like, well, wait, we didn't get in that deep. And maybe I just went in too much. And you know, maybe I tried to love this person in a very romantic way, but they weren't reciprocate in the same level. Um, yeah. So it was just, yeah. Kind of hurtful in the end. Yeah. No, that totally makes sense.

I always had a very fair sense of loyalty to the girls. I dated yes. To the point where it was like really difficult for me to break up in fact. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, any relationship that got off the ground for me that ended was not initiated by me. Like it wasn't ended by me, I should say. There were some relationships where from the outset, I was like, no, I, you know, I'm not gonna get into this, but the ones that did get serious.

Yeah. I, I almost felt like it was a divorce. Yeah, exactly. Like it felt like it was almost repeating what I saw in my parents' marriage. And so I felt that heaviness too. And I don't think that's strange for people like us. I think that's pretty common. Mm-hmm um, for different reasons, obviously there's the trauma side in your brain, like recognizes this as like similar to that.

And so you feel those emotions as that memory is triggered, but on the other side, yeah, we do. I think we do take marriage and relationships more seriously. And so when they do fall apart, it's not like this small thing, little deal. It's like, okay, this, this starts this as serious. Right? Exactly. Yeah. It, it was, you know, and, and they would last too.

It that's the thing I realized it would last. And going back to that loyalty, you it's like, oh no, maybe I can get 'em back. You know, maybe I could put 'em back. Right. Sure. And, uh, Laughing about it now. Um, but like Eddie, you were, you were that good of a guy back the man yourself, go back in time and like slap yourself.

Right, exactly. A do. Yeah, there you go. Right now it's a Chevy volt, but yeah. so yeah, it was, yeah. It's nice to get, gets good gas mileage, but yeah, it was, it lasted. And after, after those things would break up, I, I try to like think ways of when I'm back or try to like good my lines and try to like work harder and, and work, you know?

Okay. It's like, okay, I'm gonna use this as motivation to be more successful because I equated in my mind. was okay. The more successful you are, the more likely chance of you being in a relationship, right. Mm-hmm the more likely chance of you keeping a girl, keeping a girl. Yeah. Wow. So, and, and that also stems from, I listen to, I listen to just the, the music that I listen to is just romantic.

And obviously Mexican, the Latin blood is like very romantic, right? Oh. You know, LA mariachi and Goya and all that stuff SAA. And so it was, that's awesome. It just fed into that. , you know, as good as it is, it fed into that too. And, and it develops the brokenness a little bit more. So. Yeah. No, no. I could see that.

And I think that's that way in a lot of places around the world, just the, yeah. You can certainly, um, attract people to more, if you have money or if you have some sort of success, it can be very attractive. So I don't think that's unusual at all. Let's get to marriage. If you would. How, how have you seen all this play out in your marriage?

Like how have you. The trauma from your family and just the ways in which that affected you, then kind of snowball into your own marriage. What sort of, as much as you're comfortable sharing, what sort of struggles, uh, have you dealt with there that you would largely attribute to that? I think how it affect my marriage is that I think the past sometimes lives in the present.

And that's to say that the way that I see my wife is kind of similar to how I see my mom, if that makes sense. A hundred percent. Yeah. And, and my, my wife told me not to embarrass her. So I've smiled yeah, no, no. Cut you soon. Yeah. You have an amazing woman. Like she's awesome. Appreciate that. And, and she, and so I see her and I'm like, oh, you know, it it's, how do I put this when she does things?

It, it, it triggers things in, in my, myself that that brings me back to like, oh, my mom is trying to. My mom did this similarly. So she's trying to like hurt me in some way. And I bring that to the present and I see that, you know, my wife is like, oh, she's trying to hurt me, but that's not her intention. So sure that lives currently now.

And that's how that's affected our marriage in that way. And the another side of it too, is sometimes, you know, we get disconnected and again, like she says something that I think she's trying to hurt me in my mind, but I know, you know, conscious, like I know she's not trying to make me angry and I, sometimes I'm not, not actually present to her needs at certain times.

So I kind of just either forget or, you know, it's, it's, it's a, it's a miscommunication. It's like, oh, I didn't know that this is what you meant. And a misinterpretation, maybe misinterpretation. Yeah. Yeah, totally. And with, yeah, miscommunications is right too, but everything you're saying makes me think of misinterpretation, cuz I do that a lot with my wife too.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I like, you know, it's like, oh she's like, no, no I didn't mean to, I didn't mean it that way. It's like, oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. You know, so it's, it's that wasn't an insult. That was actually right. You just expressing myself or something. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I think too, the ways that it's affected is, is culturally too.

You know, my, my wife is not Mexican, so there's, but she speaks Spanish, but she speaks Spanish better than I can. Yeah. oh really? Wow. Wow. Way better than I can actually. Wow. Wow. That's so interesting. So it it's, it's great. But then sometimes she's like, no, no, Eddie. That's not how you say you say like this and it's like, okay, you're a white girl.

yeah, exactly.

that's awesome. It's so I'm like

what did you say to me? No. Um, so it there's, there's a cultural thing too of, oh, like she doesn't get, like, this is how I speak, you know, it's like, when I'm very passionate, like, you know, passion, the, the passion comes out and it's like, you get louder and louder and louder. And then it's like, it's like, wait, are you, are you, why are you angry?

It's like, oh no, no, that's just, I'm not angry. That's just, just how I talk, you know, it's just how we talk. Right. And to my family, it's normal. But to her, it. Why are you, why are you pissed off? I'm like, oh no, I'm not. Yeah. , just passionate. I'm really passionate about this. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And so there's a little bit of a struggle of like, oh man.

Just like, feel, can you feel the passion when you know that I have, you know? And she's like, no, no, I know what's her nationality. Yeah. What's that? What's her nationality. Um, American, but she's like her, her background is English. Sorry. Ethnicity. Yeah. Ethnicity. Yeah. English. English. Okay. Yep. So yeah. Very different.

very different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And so I, you know, it's, the, the jokes are different. The way we express things are different. The, the brokenness that I, that I have is like the constant, I think the way it say it's like constant fear of, oh man, did I really mess this up? Did I really break this relationship?

Did, did I do something that would, is this the final straw for you? Mm yeah. Is this the final straw is, you know, when are you gonna break? When, when are you gonna be done with me? When are you gonna. is this too much for you? Am I too much to handle at this point? And so that has played into a lot of our, our arguments and also in a, in a very, very real way.

Like I realized, I realized like her, her unbroken ness of how, like she has a good family, her parents are together and it's like, yeah, I, I was like, oh wow. Like, I can kind of see how far away from the cross that I am, you know, like how unperfect that can be, you know? And, and so it's, uh, me too. It's it's like, whoa, crap.

I'm, I'm really outta my game here. I'm at I'm outta my element. Like, I, I don't know if I could level with, I can be, you know, am I even on the same level as you, because you're more compassionate, I'm less compassionate. You're more loving. I'm, I'm kind of less loving, you know, and so sure. I see the virtues that she has and the, the lack of virtues that I have.

Well, yeah, no, I totally see that in my nurse too. And especially when I'm at my worst, it's like, man, yeah. I just don't feel worthy in a lot of ways. Yeah. And yeah, it's, it's really, it's tough because like you said, that fear, which I think all of us feel who come from broken families is like, well, when's my marriage gonna fall apart.

And when's my divorce gonna happen. Almost feels inevitable. Even if we can't put it into words, a lot of people can't, mm-hmm, like, you're very articulate about your story, but a lot of people, you know, maybe haven't put it into words like this yet that they can, but it takes time. And, um, yeah, I think a lot of us feel that it's like, oh, it it's almost like this is inevitable.

Like eventually my spouse will leave me. They'll see that I'm not as good as maybe they thought I was, they'll see the real broken me, like all my struggles that I don't show everyone else. they're gonna see that and they're gonna be gone. Exactly. Yeah. Terrifying. It is very terrifying. It's it's, uh, it's almost like death, you know, it's like the fear of death.

Right. Feel fear of dying if, if I could put it that way. And I, I, one thing I would like to say too, is that yeah. Yeah. It took me. I thank you for, you know, saying that I'm, I, I don't feel like I am articulate, but maybe I just talk a lot, but you know, or repeat myself, the Mexican thing is we repeat ourselves.

There you go. um, and so. I, it took me a while to articulate what was going on, because I didn't know what was going, what these feelings were. It's like, how do I, how do I, how can I put these? How can I put words to these tears that I'm feeling, you know, and these tears that I'm running down my face. I don't know.

I don't know what the words are. I don't know which the right words. And it took me a while to, you know, I'm definitely not perfect, but it's, it's getting better at that. Yeah. And one tip for everyone listening. If you feel yourself in a similar situation, cuz I've been there too. I like the same. Uh, you kind of need to sit with certain struggles or feelings for a bit before you're able to.

Figure them out or articulate them. And I think that's kind of frustrating in our world because we live in a very instant gratification culture where we're like, we see a problem. We wanna buy something on Amazon to solve that problem and be done with it. Um, that's not the way that it works with your emotions and relationships, so it can be difficult, but I I've definitely, that's one of the tactics.

I think that's been really helpful for me, which has even been healing in a lot of ways. It's just, okay. When those uncomfortable emotions, when those things I can't even put into words happen, I just need to sit with it for a while. Mm-hmm and that could be really uncomfortable, but if there's a way to be, get comfortable with the uncomfortableness and that's been really helpful for me and maybe kind of detach yourself a little bit and not act from that place, which can be really hard, especially if emotions are high.

Exactly. But if you're able to do that, um, in time, what I've seen is that you will be able to put it into words and get more of a grasp on it. Even if it doesn't happen right away. Anything to add to that? Yeah. I definitely definitely agree with all that. Um, it takes a while and it takes patience with yourself to not act on those.

I know I've acted on it through pornography, you know? Yeah. As another coping mechanism, I've acted on it through music, you know, just all the music that I can listen to. That that makes me feel better about my situation. And mm-hmm or even just talking back, you know, talking back to my parents, you know, and even though it's UN obviously unwarranted at times, so yeah.

That's um, having that, that patience to know that it, it does come, you, you know, being able to know what you're feeling does come and it's hard. Yeah. It's hard. Yeah, no, it is. For sure. Going back to, um, one thing you said is just how the past, sometimes live in the pre lives in the present. That's just so insightful.

So good. And couldn't agree with that more. And I've struggled with that in my own marriage as well. I wanna shift gears a little bit to healing. So we are a couple things, a few things. That you found helpful in coping and healing with everything that happened in your family? For me, it was in college. I had a reversion back to the Catholic faith.

Faith did not play a big role. And, um, I know some people were listening or not have faith and, or, you know, not Christian, but I think that's something that, that does a mechanism for me. And that really just kind of kickstarted my whole heal healing process and had surrounded myself with good friends. Um, I think that was, uh, my on, uh, definitely necessary for the pathway to create that pathway.

Two healing, surrounded myself as good friends. I had good friends in high school that were, had my back and I'm very grateful and we're still friends til today and I'm very grateful for them. And, uh, in, in, in college it's hard cuz we did not go all, we didn't all go to the same college. Right. So sure. Um, yeah.

So surrounding yourself with good friends that are there was really, really helpful and I'd say so that good friends. For me, faith, faith was a big part of it. And then also just actually trying to, how do I put it, trying to work on myself, you know, and realize, I think realizing was my brokenness was a big part of my healing is realizing that I am broken and that it is possible to be healed.

That was like huge for me to, to realize that it's possible too, to get out of this rut. It takes some convincing. It's not always immediately apparent to a lot of people cuz we, we definitely doubt that you know, our situation in life or the way that we feel or whatever we're struggling with. We're kind of stuck in mm-hmm we can feel that.

So that's like as minor as it might seem to certain people it's like, that's huge. Just even the belief that no, I can change. I can grow. I can heal. I can. Be a better person tomorrow than I am today. I can build a better life than maybe the life that I came from. And, and that's revolutionary for a lot of people, even if they're not totally conscious of that, that's a real struggle of just feeling stuck and feeling like a victim constantly and just never believing that it's even possible to rise up from them.

Yeah. And, and I'd say that part. And also another thing that helped me with my healing is seeing my parents heal and what, and here's what I mean by that is like after college, I, I, I made an effort to really, to recognize that yes, it can be healed and to act on it and. Though it's not guaranteed. Uh, I knew it wasn't guaranteed, but I gotta give it a shot to, to try to heal and to try to try things out, you know?

And one of 'em, I I'll give you a couple examples, two examples that were really huge for me. My mom, I remember my mom called me, you know, just upset and you know, and she had to the point where I, I, I got tired of my mom called me every time my mom called me. It was like, oh man, like, what does she want now?

Crap. What happened to who? I mean, who's doing what? And, um, yeah, so it was, it was hard to, to answer that phone call. Um, it was really hard and, but out of love and out of maybe out of muscle memory, I up, you know, my phone rings, so got okay. Yeah. Who green, you know? And so it was. It was that in my, my mom's, you know, I think I got, I got the end of it and I was like, you know, my mom, I, it's just really hard for me to, to talk to you sometimes because of all the things that happened.

And then she told me something that really hit me hard was like, well, I'll never call you again then. And I was like, oh, and that dropped me to my knees. I thought, I thought I was gonna be okay with her just saying, okay, then I won't call you. But then when I heard it from her words come from her mouth, I dropped my knees and I felt so bad.

I felt, wow. I felt like cry. And I did cry. And I was like, oh shoot. That's I'm actually not okay with that. Yeah. So from that point, I made an effort to, to, to work on that relationship with my mom. And it got to the point where she said, Hey, you know, we're having a big conversation again. And uh, she said, please forgive me for everything that, that I've done.

So that was huge for her, you know, and, uh, to step forward that way I admire that while. Yeah. And, and years passed and I was like, hold on. Okay. I, I got back to, cause it takes me a while to. To, to internalize everything. It takes me long. My wife will tell you, it's like, oh, you take forever to just think about things, move, move on.

You know, another part of the brokenness, you know? And yeah. And so I, I, I made a point and I said, okay, I'm gonna go to my mom's house. I'm gonna drive up. And I need to, I need to know exactly what she's asking for forgiveness for, because it's not very clear to me. So I sat her down and my sister was like, Hey, I need you here as a witness because I can get passionate.

And my Spanish isn't that good as my wife knows. And so I need you to interpret if you need, if you need, uh, if you can please. And sure. Wow. Uh, she said, okay, and this is my older sister. And, and luckily she was home from, um, Mexico, just visiting. And I said, mom, no, you call me on this day. And you said, please forgive me, forgive anything, but I need you to, I need to know exactly what you need for forgiveness for specifically.

So either way I know what I'm forgiven you for because that's too vague for me. And she said, okay, well, I forgive you for this, please forgive me or sorry, please forgive me for this. And I said, okay, mom, I forgive for that. What's next? I said, okay, I please forgive me for this. You know, but forgive me for out times that I've hurt you.

And the times that I've, you know, wasn't a good parent. Okay. I forgive you for that. Please forgive me for, um, not meeting your needs. Okay. I forgive you for that. You know, so that was like huge. And I saw from that she, she was healing from that point. So that was good for me to see her healing, because then I said, I think I'm moving forward on something here.

And then the second story I would say is, um, that's huge is Krishan had this thing called rise and mm-hmm, where, you know, you kind of, it's like a manly thing where you try to do things that are like, you know, manly, like in one of 'em, one of the tasks was okay, write a letter to your dad about why, what you're grateful for.

And I, and I sat on that. I was like, well, I started writing letter. I'm like, well, I could write it like and say, yeah, dad, you're good at this, but you really sucked at this. Mm. You know, and, or, Hey dad, you really, you're great at this. You sucked at this, you know, and continued that on in that letter. But then I was like, you know what?

This is. This has to be a letter of why I'm grateful for. And, and I wrote that letter in Spanish and I forgot to give it to him until the one day that I remembered is actually his birthday. And I was like, oh, Hey dad, I got some for you. Cause he was in my car. Meaning to give it to him. He's in the, he is in the, uh, the console.

So my there grabbed it. He was my dad, my stepmom, my one of my younger brothers and my dad read it out loud in Spanish. And I had, did use Google translate on a couple of words. so he read it out loud and he, and he said, wow, this is,

he said, wow, this is one of the best letter. This one, this is the best P I've ever gotten. And then he said, take your time here. Yeah. After, after he read it, he said, you know, son,

I've never told your grandpa that grandfather, that I loved that I love him. Never. I've never told that. and then he said, and this is like the kick who he said, but today I will call him and tell him that I love him. And I was like, wow, I never knew that my dad and my grandpas, I feel like they're very close, but my dad's also from that generation of stern, but loving, right.

Don't really show much, uh, motion to your, to your kids. And mm-hmm . And so that, that was huge. Ever since that day, I think my dad started, you know, healing. He started going back to church as Mexican, you know, big, big, you know, SOGE Catholics, you know, and yeah. And so he, he went back and started his own healing journey too.

And, you know, and then I, I see that change now and that, that his healing, again, caused kind of further resonated with me and, and held me to heal even more and, and get me to the place where I'm like, okay, it's not perfect, but. But today it's good. And so that was, that was the thing that, that really just propelled me into, into that.

Okay. I feel the love of my parents. Again. I, you know, I tell 'em that I love 'em and I think that's probably one of the best gift I give 'em to my dad is just to, to forgive him. And, and same with my mom too, is to feel 'em like, Hey, you know? Yeah. I, I forgive you. So that, that was huge. Yeah. Wow man. So moving it just like gives me the chills and I get why you're so emotional talking about it.

It's definitely heavy stuff and really beautiful stuff. And the lesson I take away from what you're telling all of us is that your own healing, your own growth can have this effect on your family, where they then pursue their own. Which in turn can help you heal even more. Yeah. Which is really beautiful.

Yeah. And, uh, I think something super encouraging, cuz a lot of times we feel like there's nothing good that we can do with this thing in our life, our broken family, that's just so messed up or so dysfunctional. It's like, what do I even do with this? We often just run from it. Mm-hmm um, so I think it's just so inspiring and beautiful that.

you know, in whatever amount of control you have, you're helping to change that, to heal that, to transform that, which has just meant so much, uh, admiration to you for that. Thanks. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's, you know, it wasn't anything big. It was just something small that I I could do as, as you said, is what's what could I do that, that is from me, from generally from me that I could give yeah.

Give to them. Yeah. So good. Obviously, you know, you're still working on your own growth as we all are. Um, and you're always healing in additional ways, but how is your life different now that you've at least been on this path, uh, of healing and growth compared to how it was before? Yeah. It's, it's different now.

Yeah. Obviously definitely work progress. My, my wife will see that she. Just remember your rookie progress. yeah. no, no, we, we actually only bring people on who are like, perfect. So, oh, shoot. You're you're actually not supposed to be here. Yeah. What's let me pull out this mask. no, it's it's uh, it's definitely.

Yeah, definitely. My wife's helping me grow. Definitely. For sure. She's helping me grow in, in, in, in compassionate, in love and patience. So it's, it's really great to have her to be married to her. I'm very blessed in that way and it's different now because I can see a way forward. I can see like, oh yeah, I can be patient.

I can just be a little bit more patient. Yeah. Not the perfect amount of patients, but I can just be a little bit more patient. Okay. Today I can be a little bit more loving, not big steps, obviously nothing grand, grand spectacular, you know, fireworks, you know, and, but just little things that I'm, I'm growing in.

And, um, and it's, it's allowed me to see like, okay, I can, I can do this. I I've done this before. You know, I've I can, I can be a little more patient. I can love more. I can be more patient with my own family. And it's, it's, it's, uh, it's very hopeful, I guess. Yeah. That's something I lacked a lot of is hope.

Got it. And now you feel now I feel hopeful. Yeah. Wow. Yeah. I could like see it in your face. That's awesome, man. So good. Yeah. And yeah, it's hard to describe like the misery and like the despair beforehand. I've been there too. Yeah, it's horrible. Yes. It's the worst. Yep. So when you contrast hope with that, it's like, oh my.

Like it's just night and day. And it's just so, so much better. I was about to just say that it's night and day. Yeah, yeah. And, uh, da Notcha, you know, and so it it's been, it's been good. And, and also I'd say another thing too, is it's different in the sense that you, I can actually talk, you know, my wife and I can talk, sit down and actually have a, a cordial conversation and just say, okay, here's, here's what annoyed me this week and okay.

How, you know, here's, here's why, here's why that made me feel this way. And I, and she gets to know me a little bit better and love me a little bit more because she sees like, oh, it's not me. It's actually something that happened in the past. That's affecting you now. Okay. I can see that now. It's not, it's not me necessarily.

It's just, this is what, what comes up for you. And she can see the same way too and say like, yeah, you know, when you do this, you reminding me of this, you know, and how I was starting to pass in the same way, um, similar way. So that's been, that's been great, you know, and not, not taking that. Outside into, you know, what I used to do is like gossip, right.

And like, sure. Oh. Especially in big family, it's like, oh, you know, sister. So, and so did this like, oh my gosh, can you imagine that? Whoa. You know, so, or like, you know, oh man, like tell me more about that. And so, yeah, I think keeping being able to keep it within our marriage in between my wife and I has been beautiful as there's a saying in, in, in Spanish that says, goes like this LA Paia se limpian dirty clothes are washed at home.

Hmm. Not anywhere else. They're washed dirty clothes are washed at home and that's where you wash your clothes. Hmm. If your clothes are dirty wash at home, So that's been, that's been very helpful for me. Yeah. Again, not nothing spectacular or big, but just little things every week. Yeah. Every week. Yeah.

Yeah. If you continue. Um, I just finished the book atomic habits by James clear. Have you read that? I have not yet. Okay. No, it's, it's a good one. Um, I'm sure some people listening have some haven't if you haven't. I definitely recommend it. We'll throw it in the show notes, but, um, such a good book. He just makes building like good habits, super, super practical.

And I, I love what he does, cuz we try to do a lot of the same things. We try to make healing very practical and very simple. One of the things he says though is like a 1% improvement, like every day or every week or every month, you know, some short time period over time, if you continue making those 1% improvements, you will change your life.

Yeah. But a lot of people think of, um, growth and healing as like this big monumental thing that has to happen on a dime, like one in this one moment, my life needs to. Transformed. It's not how it works typically. No, maybe in rare cases it might look like that, but usually not usually it's like this everyday kind of boring little tweaks of getting better at this, getting better at that.

And you know, one of the things that I'm working on now is like trying to be humble. Like I'm a prideful person, prideful man. And, uh, trying to be humble. It's really hard. It's hard. Like not to maybe talk about yourself, it's hard not to kind of lash out when you feel like someone's insulting you. It's hard not to be maybe arrogant at times for me.

And so, uh, yeah, but, but if I could just make a 1% improvement just in being a little bit more humble today than I was yesterday, or this week than I was last week, um, over time, I'm actually probably gonna be a humble person. You know what I mean? Yes. And it will just become more second nature that virtual will be integrated into my character.

So, um, so that's a great healing principle too. It's like those little things, those little steps are where it's at, not the big grand things. Exactly. And, and that's where I think that's where I got full too. And I was younger watching. Movies is, you know, it's like, oh, this big radical change. That's what I need in my life is this, this one monumental moment that just changes my whole perspective.

And it wasn't, it was small steps that no one really noticed. No one noticed that I was being a little bit more compassionate. But for me, that was huge. That was, I mean, being one point, 1% more compassionate is huge stuff for me, you know, in some sense. And, uh, it, well, when I say a huge step, it means like, it takes a lot of effort that no one sees, like, you don't see how much it takes for me to not talk back.

right. Yeah. me too. To tell you that that tortilla is overcooked he's not talking to mechanic. No, Nope. You do. You did just perfectly right. Temperature every time. Yeah, there you go. No, no, no, me too. It's like, it's hard not to get defensive when conflict comes up. It's like, yeah, but I want to get defensive.

I really do. And it's just, if I can hold off a little bit. Or even together, it's like, that's great. But if I can't hold off altogether, just like at least maybe not say what I was intending to say that would maybe be nasty or, you know, come across the wrong way, but just a little bit better. And so if you continue to do that, It can make a world of a difference.

And I know, you know that as an engineer. Yeah. Like that continuous improvement all the time is great in the business world and right. But any area of life. So those of you sitting around just speaking right now, if you're listen, you're listening to this right now. If you're the type of person, um, who's kind of sitting around waiting for something monumental to happen, um, stop

And I say that in all the love in the world, like, I love you guys. Like, I, I really do. And we do this for you, but just, yeah, don't wait for that. Instead. Focus on one little thing that you can do today, tomorrow that will help move you toward the person you wanna become toward that healthy whole virtuous happy person that you want to be.

And those little things just keep out those little things. Don't do things that are big, do do the small things. And then in time you'll be able to do the, the bigger things and the progress you make will just be incredible when you kinda look back over time. But don't think too much on that. So don't stop waiting for something huge to happen, work on the little stuff.

yeah, that's, that's perfect. It perfectly said. And definitely, you know, give it a shot, give it a try. You know, you, you might surprise yourself. I didn't expect my dad to call my grandpa up and tell him that, you know, I, I didn't expect my dad or my mom to finally feel at peace. You know, I, I just expected, Hey, this is what I need to do for myself.

And I think it could help, you know, I'm trying to give something to them and I'm not expecting anything big, just trying to do, trying to do a small, I think a small thing. Yeah. And see what, see what happens. That's amazing, man. I really admire that if your parents were listening right now, what would you wanna say to them?

What would you want them to know? I would want to know that I love them. You know, our whole family loves them. We'll always protect you. Um, when you get older and, uh, you know, we, we will try our best, um, to be more patient. And, uh, I think also I want them to know that. That all their labor, all their hard work for all the kids was not in vain.

And that, that there there's, there's always a way for those who I know who, who, you know, were not religious, but there's always a way. And, and, uh, and for, for us, you know, following, you know, Jesus Christ and, and if we be follow Trump, we should act like it. Right. so it it's for us. It's like that, that's, that's the, the main, main thing is that, you know, mom and dad will, you know, there's always a way there's always a way to figure things out.

There's always that discussion to happen, or there's always a conversation we can have. Beautiful. Yeah. No, I love it, man. I did wanna ask you, before we close down the show, how has restored in particular been helpful, uh, for you, you know, you've been clear with me on that you found the podcast helpful on different things, but, um, yeah.

I'm curious how you would put in your own words then. Yeah. Such a supporter of the work that we're doing. I'm just so grateful for that. But yeah. How, how has it helped you? Yeah, no, I'm glad to help. And it's an honor and, you know, for, for McKen and I to help out, cuz we know this is something that's very needed in our world right now.

And, um, it's helped me in, in, in various ways. You know, it helps me in, in sharing the ministry with others and it's helped me to have a good conversation and, and open things up and, and uh, say like, Hey, you know, there's a way, there's a way to, through this, you know, there's, there's something out there for us and this it's restored ministries.

And I know that, you know, with the book that, that has helped, I gave it to my, my younger brother who, who left, you know, with my mom and I, and, and uh, I think I told you, like, you know, I, I hope he's read it. I don't know if he has or not. At least there's something that's out there that says, Hey, there, there is just something for us who, from children of divorce.

That's I think recognizing that, that, that this is a thing it's, that's a fir good first step. I think also too is just, you know, listening to the podcast says help me see different perspectives and pull out different gems as well, you know? And that's helped us, me, me and McKenna and, and let's say, okay, we could probably do that.

Let's try that. You know, or, or I'd say for myself, it's like, oh, okay. I can try to be patient more patient that way. And, uh, just seeing people's different perspectives and know that yeah, it's, didn't just happen to me. It's, it's pretty, unfortunately pretty common and it's not something to be necessarily ashamed.

So, so good. Yeah. No, thank you, man. So thanks so much. Yeah. And I found it helpful too, which is funny, cuz like I host this podcast, but no, literally listening to guests like you, I learned so much and if you guys were watching me right now, I have like a whole page full of notes from this interview, just learning so much and it's it's so, um, helpful for me as well.

So thank you. Um, for, yeah, just being so supportive and then also coming on the show, um, I just came to mind, I put episode 22 that writing exercise. I remember you reached out to me about that. Do you remember that it's like that writing exercise where you're kind of writing to your younger self? I don't know if that as well.

Yeah, I yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you mind, do you wanna talk about that for a second? I'm just curious how that went for you. Yeah. I actually it's been a while. So forgive me for not, not remembering clearly I can jog your memory a little bit. Yeah, yeah. If you can. Yeah. Yeah. I remember you reached out and just, um, I think you texted me and you're like, yeah, that was like.

Crazy helpful and emotional. And that it was the same for me. Like it brought me to tears and you're a man you're really manly, dude. If people don't know you, but yeah. I brought me to tears. I remember you telling me, like brought you to tears to yeah. That, okay, thank yeah. Now that, that does ring up more.

Cause I remember the tears part yeah. Fair enough. Yeah, no, it was, it was, um, it was awesome. It it's, it opened up so many things for, for me and things that I've been holding onto that have been in the back of my mind that I've I went into that dark room, so to speak and, and looked at, finally looked at what was going on.

And that was, that brought me into tears. Cause it's kinda like, well, Hey, you know, this has happened. And when I was riding it, it was like, whoa, man. You know, talk to myself again and just showing that love and compassion that I didn't have before growing up was huge. And just say you're okay. Here's if you know, here's how, here's how mom and dad should have said this, here's how mom and dad should have loved you.

That was huge for me. Um, and that's what brought me to tears. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, man, me too. That was like a tough yeah. Exercise to go through, but you got great healing tactic. Yes. And so willing to that show again, that's episode 22, it's a 10 minute episode, I think maybe a little bit more, and it just walks you through this exercise that I learned from a counselor, from a psychologist.

Um, that's really helpful. And just helping you heal and helping you kind of go back in time and talk to that younger self, which it might sound kind of weird, just hearing it, but give it a listen. And it's actually a really helpful, uh, writing exercise. Thank you so much, man, for coming on the show. If people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that.

Yeah, they can reach out to me through my Gmail at Ervan 89, gmail.com. And then I'll spell that out for you. E C E R V as in Victor, a N T eighty9@gmail.com. Sounds great. We'll throw that in the show notes as well. Again, really appreciate you coming on, being so vulnerable. Uh, you and McKen are amazing. And, uh, and your baby Lola, right?

Yeah. Lola. Yeah. Lola. She's so adorable. so happy for you guys. So it's, it's just beautiful to see you coming from brokenness and then building something better. And, and that's, I think such a, on the note of hope, that's so hopeful and if you can do it, we all can do it. Yeah. It's so good. So thank you so much for coming on.

I want to give you the last word. What would you say to anyone listening right now who feels really broken, um, who feels stuck in life because of all the trauma they've been through in their family because of their parents broken marriage. Yeah, I I'd like to say, um, we, you know, I'm in that same place I was in that same place and still kind of am.

I know that it's hard to see through the directness and through the weeds, so to speak. But if, if you can see around the weeds and see, give it something to try, even if it's small something small, something really small and give it a shot, you might surprise yourself. No expectations obviously. And just, just say, Hey, I'm doing this for myself, doing this for my own healing.

And, and know that. There's people out there like restored ministries. There's definitely counselors. I've seen counselors as well. So there's that. And then also, I, one thing that was huge is just having friends to talk to and, uh, and yeah, just give it a try. You never know what, what might happen.

So many great lessons in that episode. A few questions for you to chew on, to think about one. Do you need to write a letter or have maybe a conversation with one of your parents and what's the smallest step that you can take today on that? Like, what's the smallest thing that you can do to move that forward and then just do it, make a plan and do.

Eddie mentioned my book titled it's not your fault, a practical guide to navigating the pain and problems from your parents' divorce. And the sad truth is that for a lot of teens and young adults, the most traumatic thing that they've endured is their parents' separation or divorce, but nobody shows them how to handle all the pain and the problems that stem from their family's breakdown.

And without that guidance, they continue to feel alone and struggle in serious ways with emotional problems, unhealthy coping relationship struggles and so much more. And I experienced these exact problems firsthand. I felt so alone. I didn't know who to turn to, and it really shouldn't be this way. My book, it's not your fault is an answer to that problem.

It features 33 questions and answers on the most pressing challenges face by teens and young adults who come from broken families, such as after my family broke apart, I felt abandoned, unwanted, inadequate, and even rejected. There's something wrong with me. What's your advice for navigating the holidays and other life events?

How do I avoid repeating my parents' mistakes and build a healthy marriage? And so many more questions. And the content itself is based on research, expert advice and real life stories. And after reading, it's not your fault. Teens and young adults are gonna learn how to handle the trauma of their parents' separation and divorce, how to build healthy relationships, how to overcome emotional pain and problems.

They'll learn healing tactics to help them feel whole again, they'll learn how to navigate their relationship with their parents, how to heal their relationship with God and how to make important decisions about their future. So if you wanna buy the book or even just get the first chapters for free, just go to ReSTOR ministry.com/books.

Again, ReSTOR ministry, ministry, singular.com/books. You can buy it for yourself or you can buy it for someone who, you know, needs the content in there. It needs the advice needs the guidance. Again, that's restored ministry.com/books, or just click on the link in the show notes. In this episode, we discussed how Eddie and his wife, McKenna are supporters of this ministry have restored.

And if you wanna help restored helping more young people from broken families to heal and grow and provide free content like this podcast, I'd love to speak with you. I'd love to have a conversation with you. And in that conversation, I'd share our vision, the amazing results we've seen and the investors pitch.

It's a 20 to 30 minute conversation. Plus, any time we spend chatting and meeting with me is not committing to investing in ReSTOR. It's just hearing the pitch. That's it. You can schedule a time with me at ReSTOR ministry.com/donate. Again, ReSTOR ministry.com/donate. Just click on the meet with Joey button and then schedule a time that's convenient for you.

Or you can simply email me@joeyrestorministry.com. Again, that's Joey ReSTOR ministry dot. The resources mentioned are the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 77. Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful for you, feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who really needs this message, who's really struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them.

Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#076: The #1 Thing Missing in Marriages Today | Matt & Mindy Dalton

Marriage isn’t easy. There are good times and challenging times. According to research, people like us from broken families typically struggle more in relationships and marriage. As a result, we’re more likely to need help.

In this episode, a couple that offers marriage coaching offers advice and shares the one thing missing most in marriages today. We also discuss:

• The most common struggles faced by the couples they coach

• Communication tips to help your relationship survive and thrive

• Tactics for handling conflict well 

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TRANSCRIPT

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Marriage is not easy. There's good times. And there's challenging times. And for people like us who come from broken families, we typically struggle more in relationships and in marriage compared to other areas of our lives and even other people, according to research. And as a result, we're little more likely to need help, but sadly, we don't often ask for it in this episode, a couple that offers marriage coaching, joins the show to offer advice and talk about the one thing missing most in marriages.

We also discuss the most common struggles faced by the couples that they coach. They offer communication tips to help your relationship survive. And. We talk about tactics for handling conflict. Well, they share advice to couples in crisis, perhaps even on the brink of divorce. And then you'll learn about a resource to help your marriage or maybe another marriage, you know, that's struggling.

So if that's you, if your marriage is struggling or maybe, you know, someone whose marriage is struggling, keep listening.

Welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 70. If you want practical tips on how to build a great marriage, we have a free guide for you.

We all desire, love that lasts, but if we're honest, most of us don't know how to go about building it and to make matters worse. We're often discouraged by the prevalence of divorce and we fear that our own marriages. We'll end that way, especially if we saw our parents' marriage end that way in this practical guide for singles and for couples, we offer a roadmap for love, a simple roadmap for love based on research time, tell a couples and Christianity's wisdom.

The guide contains seven practical tips to build a thriving and divorce proof marriage. And in addition to the written guide, you'll receive a free 60 minute talk on the same topic. So if you want the guide, just go to ReSTOR ministry.com/marriage. Again, ReSTOR ministry. Dot com slash marriage ministry.

Singular. Just enter your name and your email, and we'll email you the PDF guide and the talk again, go to ReSTOR ministry.com/marriage. Or just click on the link in the show notes. My guests today are Matt and Mindy Dalton. They're the co-founders of marriage missionaries, which they've ran full time for the past 15 years.

Once Matt and Mindy placed God at the center of their marriage and the primary source of their love. It ignited a burning desire and passion to share God's glorious design with others. They do this through a process called marriage coaching, a mentoring friendship, one couple to another. Their mission is striving to live.

Their ordinary marriage made extraordinary by the companionship of Jesus and inviting others to do the same. They've paired on various TV shows on E WTN, and they currently serve Archbishop Aquila in the archdiocese of Denver, uh, teaching future deacons in their wives, in the diaconate formation program in the archdiocese of.

They've been married 31 years and our parents to seven children ages 28 to 12 and have six grandchildren as you're here in the show, they are Catholic Christians. So they talk from that worldview. If you're not religious, I'm really glad that you're here. My challenge for you is this, just listen with an open mind.

I know you're gonna benefit from this, even if you take out or skip the God parts. So here's my conversation with Matt and Mindy.

Matt, Mindy. Thank you so much for making time to be here with us today. You are welcome, Joey. Thank you for having. Absolutely. I I'd love to hear more of your story. Uh, how did you guys meet, get married and end up here today? Well, there's a long version to that. We're gonna try to shorten it, Joey, but we actually met, uh, 33, 34 years ago, kind of a, a way that a lot of people met back then, uh, in a bar, in a nightclub.

And the first night actually we saw each other from across the room and I'm six one and Matt's six, five. And I was like, oh, Hey, there's somebody taller than me. And so we, we kinda, I, but never, he never approached me at that point because I was with my parents. Friend's friend, son who had just met it.

Wasn't a date, but it maybe to Matt look like a date. So when we were leaving, Matt quickly asked the, uh, waitress, Hey, Hey, can I have a napkin and a pin? And he wrote down. Name and his phone number on this napkin and tried putting it in my hand. Optimum word tried. She didn't take it. I did not take it.

nine months later at a kind of Friday after work, you know, go have some appetizers type environment. I'm with some girlfriends from work. And Matt walks around kind of the corner at another bar. And he says that I had got an aisle and kind of did this dance, blocking him from leaving. And I'm like, Hey. I remember you, you're the guy that tried giving me your phone number.

And I guess he turned to his friend and said, keep walking, just keep walking. I'm glad I didn't Joey, we . So that is how we initially met and got to know one another and started going on dates for two years, we got engaged. Well, we did get married in the Catholic church. Both of us grew up cradle Catholic.

And the wedding for us. I mean, to be completely honest, we were Catholic and we went through our marriage prep that the church required, but we were just kind of going through the motions. It was more about the wedding day, the, you know, the dresses, the music, uh, where were we going on our honeymoon. And, uh, so I'll take it from there just as, how do we get here?

We had three incidences and. Again long, but I'm just gonna make short of them. Number one, my sister and her husband, 10 years into their marriage had a train wreck in their marriage. And they were on your show previously, Julie and Greg Alexander. They taught us everything we know, but Greg, my brother-in-law called me and said, your sister is this, that, and all these other things.

And I said, Hey, that's my sister. You're talking. and second of all, I said, well, I knew it took both of you to get to this place. And then third, sadly, I didn't know what to say to them in this desperate moment. So that was the first incident. And when we stepped back and look at our own marriage, we were on the same track, just a slower train because God wasn't central.

And so that was the first incident. The second incident, I found my boss, who I worked for. Dead in October of 1989. And I, he was married for 22 years, had a no fault divorce of two months. And his ex-wife called me two weeks after I had quit. She didn't know I quit. And she said, Hey, those answering services called and there's 150 phone calls.

Where are you? Long story short, we went over and found him and he had been dead for two a day short of two weeks when I found him. And I looked at that he had everything money to buy and he laid dead for two weeks, without anybody knowing he didn't take his own life. He died of a broken heart as, as I call it.

And I it's an experience. I wouldn't live relive for a million dollars and I wouldn't give it up. It really made me say, what is the meaning of life and love. And then thirdly, we. The writings of PO John Paul II in his theological work of love and responsibility, and then more so his actually his philosophical work and love and responsibility in his theological work in, uh, theology of the body.

And it just helped. Us understand the whys of God's plan for marriage. It, it was as though we'd been driving around, you know, with our dirty windshield and we sprayed it and it was like, oh right. And it was like, okay, the pits and the marks were still there, but we saw more clearly and. Initially we wanted to like, you know, like, oh my gosh, we, we have to share this with others and we couldn't help to share it.

Yeah. We couldn't help it. So how, how can we do this and how can we do it together? So we became certified natural family planning teachers and, and did it that way through the marriage prep. Process. And we did that for five years on a volunteer basis. And in that time, Greg and Julie had started the Alexander House and kept asking us for years, when are you gonna join us?

When are you gonna join us? And six kids for us at the time now seven, you know, were thinking, oh wow, full-time missionary work. You know, God had a, a plan and we ended up joining them. 2007. Yeah. And did marriage coaches. We were always in Colorado, they were in Texas, got trained to become marriage coaches by then, by then we presented workshops, Dave talks and slowly built up what we call our mission partners, people who support us.

And then five years after joining them, we discern and prayed and separated and started our own nonprofit called marriage missionaries. So we've been 15 years full time. Trying to shed some light to married couples. And I, I would say that the catalyst for all of that was our ownership of a relationship with Jesus Christ.

We were just kind of going through the motions and the rituals. It was there in the heart of Julian Greg's train wreck and our own contemplation of our own marriage and where we were coupled. Discovering the glorious beautiful reasons why God has shared his life with us. And we opened our hearts for the first time and really took ownership of our Christian walk.

So. Wow, what a story. So beautiful. And thank you both for, for sharing it. And I'm sure we could talk just about your story for the entire show for anyone listening. If you want to go back and listen to Greg and Julie's episode, that's episode 30 great interview, and I really admire the work that you all are doing both Greg and Julie and you, um, Matt and Mindy.

So thank you guys so much. I want to get into that work a little bit. If, if you don't mind. I know you, like you said, you coach marriages, you coach couples. I assume it's primarily couples who are struggling. Uh, perhaps not please correct me on that, but I'm curious for the couples that you do, coach, what are some of the most common struggles that they face?

First of all, Joey, I don't know about you and Bridget, but we all struggle. Every single marriage struggles. I, I don't know if you know of a perfect marriage. Everybody says. Marrying Joseph, but I think that's one piece of the battle that if we all realize that everybody is struggling, maybe with varying topics into varying degrees, but the human nature is, is that we're gonna struggle.

We're we're gonna have, uh, and that, and it, and that it's normal that we go through these moments of this is kind of hard. This is difficult. And, and I think, you know, one of the. We see in marriage coaching and people, maybe, you know, we go to mass or we go to the children's sporting event. We go, wow. Look at Bob and Mary and Joe and Susie look, oh my gosh.

They're family. They're just perfect. What's wrong with us? When in reality, if we, you know, a family that we don't think has troubles as a family, we don't know very well. And I think it's that comparison that can happen. And we think, well, is this really what we signed up for? And it's kind of a false comparison that leads to isolation.

We're alone. We're the only ones struggling. Why does everybody. Not have this or that. When in reality, we don't know. And if we talk to each other long enough and we're humble enough to admit it, we all have. Our struggles, but let me go back, Joey, even to kind of focus, to hone in on what you asked. Hmm. A lot of couples, when they fill out our intake forms, they'll put communication, communication, communication.

And what we've discovered over our years of marriage and dealing with working with couples is yes, we have communication struggles and breakdowns in our communication. But the root of that for the most part is a hardened heart. Little by little, we end up with in this place where. We haven't addressed the hurt and pain.

We haven't asked for forgiveness, we're building this wall around our hearts. And so I'm guarding my heart and our communication is not going to be as fruitful. And I would say to dovetail with that, you know, based on all of our struggles in every married couple struggles, the perfect marriage. This is the formula for a perfect marriage is two imperfect people who refuse to give up on each other.

But I would also say that when we recognize those struggles and acknowledge, Hey, this is normal. Other couples struggle too. All other couples struggle, too. The problem comes in is when we persist in those struggles, that's what puts our marriages at risk. So we, a lot of that isolation people not, we just stay, we just stay in the yuck.

Yeah. And we think that that's a theological turn by the way. Yuck. Yuck. . Yes.

So, so I think it's that we're, we're afraid to maybe, and I think this is a male female thing. Most of the calls that we get are from females that, that want their marriage to not just survive, but to thrive. Like you mentioned, in your opening and, and us men, you know, we do, we do anything. Halfheartedly, do we have our career and be halfhearted about it?

Or do we strive to do something that really is a desire of ours halfheartedly? No, we don't. We, we are intentional about it and I think that's the message that we'd like to send out there. It's it's okay to struggle, but it's not okay to stay in the struggle. So good. No, I, I appreciate you giving us some insight.

The couples that reach out to you on that note, mind, you mentioned, um, the hard and heart being at the core at the root of a lot of these struggles, Matt, when you and I talked, um, before you mentioned that you, you know, learned so much from Pope John Paul, the second about love and marriage, just like you said, moments ago.

Um, but in that conversation you said something profound about. What he taught was the one thing that's missing in most marriages today. Um, and that dovetails really nicely on what you just said, Mindy. So, Matt, I was wondering if you would, uh, talk about that mind thing. One of the most common things that he felt was missing was tenderness.

And, you know, I think we get married and we say the ideas and we just expect it to take care of itself. What we like to do is say, Hey, picture being on the altar and Matt, I'm gonna give my heart to Mindy and Mindy's gonna give her heart to me. And I'm holding my two hands together and I hold her heart.

And I'm now a steward of her heart. And I want to get to know her heart even more than I think I know her on that wedding day. So that my interior gaze can be one of nurturing and feeling the slightest tremor tremor. Is that the word you? Yeah, that's a good word of her heart and be attuned to it, but that we can communicate and generally we know, but do we ignore it or do we get defensive about it?

or do we really press in and freely share our hearts totally and faithfully. And if we do that on a consistent basis, the good, bad, and the ugly, it, it puts us in a mode of receptivity receiving where the other person is coming from. And little by little, the tenderness begins to develop. That's the fruit of that free total faithful sharing of our hearts on a consistent basis.

and then it it's proof that that God exists because if Mindy's hurting, I'm hurting. If I'm hurting, she hurts. We all are part of the body. If we hurt our children are hurting. And if our family hurts, so does yours. And so that tenderness is really entering into the other person's world in an intimate way.

And that, that, that takes time. You know, we come sometimes. Wounds in our hearts. Well, and I think too, we may have started with a lot of tenderness and love and being generous with our heart. And maybe that was more sentimental. Yeah. And, but then life happens and mortgage and jobs and children, and we slowly, this kind of aren't as intentional with our connections and sharing our hearts with one another.

Yep. And then life gets in the. Absolutely that make sense. Yeah, absolutely. And no, you made me think about, you know, Mindy, what you just said about how it can start that way. And, and that's a good point, Matt, that it may be not necessarily genuine tenderness, but some mentality. Um, but it might look like tenderness, but, but I've noticed that too, you know, I've, at this point I've been married four years and there's certainly that tendency to harden your heart and not to have that tenderness to the point where.

It almost becomes foreign. It becomes uncomfortable. It becomes kind of odd to, you know, sit around with your spouse and share something like intimate or vulnerable. Right. I mean, I, I think when we do practice, we like to, you know, one of the main foundational pieces, it's practicing forgiveness in our marriage.

and that brings about a vulnerability because it's humbling to acknowledge Mindy. What have you done or failed to do? That's caused hurt and pain, maybe just in this one argument or disagreement, maybe it's I stopped sharing my heart and I'm kind of stepping it. So that vulner being vulnerable with one another.

Yeah, it's a, it's a process, but if we've persisted in that place of our hearts being hardened and we haven't addressed. We have found over the years that couples resist the forgiveness exercise, because it does almost force them to be vulnerable. And sometimes the wounds are deep and that we find, we have found that they run from that rather than embrace it because the, the human heart is so stink and delicate.

And we forget that. In the midst of life and responsibility and, and woundedness. That we bring, you know, another thing this just popped into my mind, I think it connects is we like to have couples tell us, you know, not only how they met, but then what attracted you to each other? What was it that brought you two together?

What God has joined going to that positive piece of their love. And, you know, obviously you. You were attracted so much that one, you know, you propose will you marry me and, and, uh, having them go back as a reminder, retracing, you know, our love, their origin. Yeah. Yeah. That's beautiful. And that sounds super helpful.

Getting them back to that, to that route, cuz yeah, you're right. It so often we can just drift so far from, um, that origin from why we found love, why we chose to, to love each other, to get married and, and so on. I wanna quickly touch on a myth that you guys just, um, hit on briefly. Um, but if you would talk about it a little bit more, that would be great.

And it's this idea that. If you marry the right person, marriage should be effortless. Uh, I've certainly seen this. It's maybe more of a subconscious myth or expectation that we have, you know, thinking that well. And, and I think part of the expectation here is formed by movies. Uh, we see. Know, these romances play out on the screen and we almost form this romantic idolized expectation that our, you know, love would be so effortless and so beautiful.

Just like what we see on the screen, which of course isn't real. So, uh, yeah. I wonder if you could talk to that, like why, why is that such a myth? Uh, yeah. Why, why would that you use the word idolize? So marriage is supposed to be an icon of God's love for the church. It's supposed to be a sign, the visible sign in the world of Christ's love for his church.

No greater love than to lay down one's life. And oftentimes when we get that idealistic idea, Hollywood hallmark kind of feeling about marriage and idealize it, the icon that it's supposed to be, that points us. It's supposed to point us back to God. Our marriages, but oftentimes we think, or we get lulled into it.

It's just gonna take care of itself. And it becomes an, an idol rather than the icon it's supposed to be. And I think that's becomes dis illusional. I, I think, you know, just the general spirituality of us, even individually as Ignatius of Loyola would say. In the spiritual realm. We're never, there's only two directions.

We're either gaining or losing. There's no, like, you know, oh, Hey, can we just stay here for a while? Yes. We'd like to, but things happen in our lives. Kids grow up and it's not a matter of if a storm is gonna come, it's a matter of when and how do we handle that as a couple? And so. We can easily turn the icon.

That marriage is supposed to point us to back to God and forward to our, our end with I unity with God forever. And then we all of a sudden, if I think that or better yet, if Mindy thinks that I'm gonna fulfill her deepest, longing and her deepest desire, I think she's setting us up for failure because. I can't ultimately fulfill her deepest, longing and her deepest desire.

And so that's what being a help mate. We're, we're constantly helping each other to grow towards God and keeping our eye on the prize as a couple. When, when you, when we, when we, we were blessed because jointly. That's how John Paul two's writings and stuff came to us. It came to us at the same time and it hit us simultaneously.

And it was so beautiful to grow in that together. It can be difficult when one catches fire and the other one doesn't those who have been given much, much will be expected. You. No, I, I appreciate that. And, um, it, it makes so much sense how, you know, we can be greatly disappointed. I've noticed that in my own marriage and I've read John Paul the second as well, and like have gained so much from him, just like you guys expressed.

And, um, one of the things yeah, I learned is that you're yeah, like you said, Matt, you're setting yourself up for failure. If you expect your spouse to make you perfectly happy, but I do believe. That underneath almost every divorce is this belief that, you know, consciously or not, we expect our spouse to make us perfectly happy.

And when they don't, we tend to think like, oh, maybe I married the wrong person, or maybe I, you know, pick the wrong vocation. And, and then we might be tempted to, to walk away from, you know, a vow that we made, which is so sad. So, um, no, I, I, I think you're spot on starting is that happiness, you know, happy is fleeting.

Joy is everlasting. And so right. We can all go through times where, yeah. I'm not feeling super happy, but in the long run, it's worth the effort to be generous in our love with one another to persevere for that joy. That's what God intended. That's what he intended. Right. When they tried to trip up Jesus Moses, why, why do you, uh, you know, why do you allow for divorce?

Moses, uh, Jesus Moses said it's okay. Well, Moses said it's okay because of the hardening of your hearts, but in the beginning it was not. So they were naked and felt no shame, not just physically naked, but naked with their hearts, with their interior gaze, with their communication. Mm-hmm , you know, Hey, when you were asking Joey about, you know, marriage and we can set ourselves up.

I think it was Benjamin Franklin, who said, when we are courting and dating, we should have our eyes wide open. And in marriage, once we say I do, our eyes are half closed. I like that because we can be more accepting. This is who we did marry. And, and when we put God at the center of our marriages, That becomes our motivation to grow in holiness, to grow in joy.

Now we have something. Wow. Incredible. I, I love that quote and, uh, I, I think it it's so true and I, you know, it's something that I'm sure you guys will talk about is how helpful it is just to give grace in, in marriage. And I know my wife and I have found that helpful. Um, but I wanted to touch on another struggle that, that I've seen in my marriage and other marriages that I know.

And that is, um, I I've heard it said this. A man's temptation is to be passive and a woman's temptation is to control. And so I'm curious, I'm sure you guys see that play out. How can a man and a woman, how can men and women avoid falling into those temptations? I'm count the men a little bit here. I don't wanna beat it over anybody's head because I wouldn't have responded so well if it was shoved down my throat or beat over my head, but when Mindy and I I'll first tell a story, my own.

When Mindy and I were first married, I knew more about my favorite sports team and every player on the team than I did about my faiths in Jesus and the saints and so forth. And it wasn't so much about the father, son and holy spirit for me as it was me, myself and I, Mindy looked really good. She brought a good job.

It was really sadly. Hard to admit sometimes that it was selfish and it wasn't until I, as man began to own my faith and have an authentic mission. So Ephesians five talks about it starts out husbands and wives, be submissive to one another out of reverence for Christ. Wives be submissive to your husbands and husbands love your wives like Christ.

Love the church. Well, I wanna go back to that word. Sub mission sub Missio sub under mission. When my mission was about me, myself and I, it was really difficult from, from a selfish standpoint, from me being so selfish. What was in it for me, it was hard for Mindy to be. With me on that. And it wasn't until I got a godly mission and some of us have to bump our head a little harder.

I did that. I really had a godly mission to love God with my whole heart and my whole strength. And because I couldn't give, if I had a mission about. The Denver bros and John Elway winning the super bowl. That was my mission. And I wore the shirt and the way I put on my shoes affected the way, the outcome of the game.

And if they lost, I was mad the whole week long. And you know, kids don't bother me. I'm I deserve to watch this game. I worked hard all week. That was kind of my mentality, but until I had a godly mission and it , it, we, we, I was challenged to go make a prayer hour. At a sacrificial time. when I heard that in church, I knew exactly what time I was supposed to go two o'clock on Sundays because that's what time the Bronco game started.

And that was my fault. God, that was my escape, sadly. And, and, and to be honest, you know, Matt telling that story, I'm thinking back, I, I don't know if I could. Stated it, in those words at the time, like, you know, oh, I just wish he'd get a godly mission and maybe be easier. But I know looking back, and now all the years of working with other couples, that that is a theme we hear from women a lot that they desire their husbands to kind of take ownership, take lead if you will.

And I think what can happen, maybe, maybe you could call that they become passive. and maybe not so much control, but the woman will just instinctively kind of take over. Okay, well, I'm gonna, uh, read some Saint stories to the children or, or whatever it might be. And so then there's kind of this dynamic of, she seems controlling and he seems passive when really, I think they both desire if we both desire the.

It was just not being able to articulate it. I guess our articulation was more like, Hey, I go to work every day and I provide, and there's food in the pantry and we're educating the kids. What else do you need from me was kind of my, yeah. And as we know, deeper depth to love and married love. And so once I had a shift in my own interior, Life and my interior gaze that Mindy was a gift sent to me to make me a better man.

I, I kind of lived out of fear too. Could I provide, could I. Be a good husband. Couldn't I be a good father of this growing family and that, and that we called to be each other's helpmate. Yes. Right. And were you, were we're a new creation? The two become one. Oh my gosh. Ah, you know, we are our children's marriage pro.

Oh my gosh. When I heard that statement, the first time I thought, oh wow, take that prayer for a while. And it gets a little interesting. Right. But then I realized that Mindy's disappointment. She wasn't against me, but that she was for me. And that helped me get through the fears of being the spiritual head of the house and busting more in God's Providence and being generous with my own heart.

And kind of allowing you to take that leave. Like we would talk about, Hey, on Sunday afternoons, let's start discussing this topic with the children or whatever it might be or. Put in this video series, whatever it was at the theology of the body for teen, I would think of a great idea. And then if he maybe forgot or we'd come up with the plan, I wouldn't be, I can't believe you didn't remember, you know, da, da, da, I'd just say, Hey Matt, remember we were gonna gather the kids and, and he's like, oh yeah.

So it was a gentle reminder, not a kind of fulling theory, not keeping track of, or yeah, she already has one mother. Right? Don't need another.

Oh, beautiful. I, I love the reframing of that too. How it might be more of a perception thing that we see the man being passive or the woman being controlling. And I know it certainly can play out in, in reality that way, but yeah, I think that is usually because of. You know, the things that you guys mentioned, and I love that you said Matt, going back to like, what's your greater purpose for life?

Because if you don't have one, all these mediocre superficial things will take that place and will always leave you. Empty unfulfilled. And, you know, we certainly know that's true when we pour our lives into any sort of, um, vice, but it's true. Also when we go after things like sports, again, nothing wrong with sports are good in their proper place, but of course that can't be that the whole meaning of, of life.

So I love that we've seen on the other end of the spectrum. And I, you know, I think sin has caused this sin is an Archer's term to miss the mark. And so Ephesians five and, and the gospel readings and the commentaries, they give us a new perspective or a new target. So it's worth honing our skills so that we can begin to hit those targets, not beat ourselves up over our failures.

And I think that's what the helpmate piece mm-hmm of it is too, but we've also seen men who are particularly religious. and they really love their faith and who really know their faith kind of be on the controlling side, out of a fear of the world. You know, the sky is falling and I gotta protect my family at all costs and we gotta do it my way.

Or, and so sometimes in that controlling environment out of that's kind of lived out of a fearful place. We say, Hey gentlemen, number one, don't miss heaven by 18. You may know, but are you actually putting what you know, into practice that 18 inches between head and heart? And then secondly, we ask them, are you acting more like Herod or are you acting more like Jesus hero is controlling, dominating?

You will do this impeding that freedom, that pillar of freedom and love it's so important. Or are you looking to be a servant leader looking to serve instead of being served? So that that's a challenge that can happen too from the converse side. Yeah, absolutely. And I know, um, Dr. Gary Chapman in the awesome book, the five love languages, he says too, that when there is that.

Controlled or passivity, or we're just missing each other. We're not investing in our marriages. We're not investing in our relationships. We're not, um, loving the other person in the way that they wanna be loved. That makes 'em feel loved. Then marriage can certainly turn into a battleground. I forget the exact quote, but he says something along those lines that marriage can truly turn into a battleground instead of a, a Haven.

And we can see our spouse, not as our helpmate, but as our enemy. And I think that's where the comparison comes in. I think that's where. You know, just the, the whole misunderstanding, misinterpreting people's actions. Um, marriage can, can get pretty messy at, at that point, for sure. Along those lines. And I'm sure feel free to say anything you'd like to add.

I'm curious about communication. You mentioned it before. It's something people wanna hear about. Um, what are some of the communication principles that you teach to the well, we'd take them back to their wedding vows and, you know, have you come here free? To give yourself away completely. Will you remain faithful and will you be open to life?

So free total faithful, fruitful. We like to have them kind of look at their communication through that lens. Are we sharing our hearts freely or are we kind of withholding some things? Does the platform exist that we can share? Our thoughts and feelings, or is it passive aggressive? That would impede freedom.

Yeah, totally. Do we totally share our hearts? Uh, are there topics we kind of, oh, that didn't go so well last time. So I'm not gonna bring that up ever again. And then faithfully, I mean, as a married couple, our communication should be set apart. We become Cnce in one another. Right. And so we have them look at that lens and we always recommend.

15 minutes a day, you know, and some couples, maybe it's starting a week, you know, maybe their hearts are so hardened that, and some couples come and they're not even sure. Well, what do we talk about? And so we'll do this on different retreats that we do. We'll give little prompts or we call 'em dinner prompts because they we'll have, 'em go out to dinner and just discussion points, like share a story from your childhood that your spouse has never.

Like a memorable, what, what was memorable about that? You know, nothing really in depth or just that sharing, not of the to-do list. Who's taken Joseph to soccer, logistics, logistics, you know? Yes. It's important to have what we call business meetings regarding those things, but this is more the intimacy piece and, um, sharing, sharing our thoughts and our feelings and our desires, and really setting aside that time.

That we be consistent. And even if we stop, get back on the horse the next day or two and, and, and retrench or whatever. Yeah. And make sure we do it. Because again, if we consistently share our hearts, our thoughts, feelings, and desires with each other on a consistent basis, it puts us each in a receptive mode.

We we're ready to receive where the other person is coming from. and we're more likely to find our path and a solution and resolve and joy. When we do that, I, I think one thing that we found that's detrimental to communication is the blame game is blaming, pointing the finger. You did this, and you said that versus kind of that interior look okay.

You might think it's 99% Matt's fault, but you know, was it your tone of voice? Was it your body language and taking ownership for that? Hey Matt, you know, will you forgive me for my tone of voice in the discussion we had earlier? And, and then that just kind of, okay, we're not gonna build up this hard and heart and it allows us to communicate freely and totally and faithfully with each other.

So good. I love that framework that that's really helpful. And I think that's so true when it comes to blame. It could be so easy to fall into that. So in the communication, please, that two couples cannot be any, a man and a woman cannot be any closer to any other human being than in the marital embrace.

And so does our words that we speak to each other during the day, during the week, during the month, coincide with our physical coming together in the marital embrace. Have you come here freely to give yourself away? Totally. And will you remain faithful so that it might bear life giving love? So that's what Jesus comes to restore is.

Spiritual communication with the physical communication. And every time we come together, we learn this and we are just like, oh my gosh, that's glorious. Every time we come together in the marital embrace brace and that ultimate communication as a married couple, it's a renewal of our wedding vows of what we said I do too.

That free total faithful, fruitful lens. Is kind of the new lens that John Paul too has given to married couples. That's that's also mirrored in the way God loves us. God is a perfect gentleman. He would never force himself on us. God love is free. God love is total knowing full well, what we were gonna do to Jesus.

He sent him anyway to be scourged. And stripped crowned with thorns nailed to a cross and killed, and he God's love is free. It's total, it's faithful. He'd sooner pursue the one who has gone as straight. Jesus is the hound from heaven. He pursues us with people and situations so that we turn back to God and the very fruit of that free total faithful love that God has for each.

And every one of us is the desire that all of us have to love and to be loved. I I, can I add, I'm gonna add more of a, kind of a lighter, no, just a lighter. Cause I think in marriage, lightheartedness has kind of been pushed out of the, and being lighthearted, have a sense of humor and being flirtatious.

And, you know, we have our own little way of flirting that our children may not even know we're flirting or little phrases that we say or well, or like , you know, I mean just little, kind of little, little. Because, um, we all had so much fun when we first met and got together, and then we let the Ugh of life kind of weigh us down and, and being lighthearted about some things, because stuff happens and trying to find joy.

And Hey, this is God's will for us in the moment. It's not very fun, but let's, you know, let's try to figure it out the best way we can. Love that. Yeah. And I've, I can certainly see that just the stress of life and responsibilities can take over that fun. So, uh, one thing, uh, my wife and I have gone to marriage counseling and, uh, I think it's a wise tactic.

I'm sure you guys do the same too. Work on the underlying condition of the marriage, the overall health of the marriage. And when you do that, the communication, it probably naturally, um, improves. So I think conflict will be lessened if the marriage is healthier, that's what we've seen in our marriage. Uh, at the same time, conflict is inevitable.

It's gonna happen, but it's worse. I've noticed when the marriage isn't in a good condition. So I am curious, uh, what tools or tactics do you teach to the couples that you coach when it comes to resolving conflict handling conflict ago? I thought, you know, why are we having these disagreements still? Why, why is this happening?

We're fighting. Same thing. And I finally figured it out. It, it was all Matt's fault.

have a splinter in your, or in my eyes. I'm trying to get the splinter outta my email. You got the beam, the introspection, you know, Bishop Fulton sheen said that we all have an interior civil war going on between the higher and the lower self, what we ought to do and what we want to do. and if we don't face that civil war and admit to our own selfishness, then we will selfishly combat other people those around us.

And I think oftentimes, you know, if we come from divorced home or broken home, or maybe a wound. Somebody stole our innocence when we were little or, or what have you, all of the different wounds and brokenness that we can come to if we don't first try to heal those things. And, and sometimes as marriage coaches, both things fall out of our scope.

We're, we're more in the realm of formation. How do we tap into the grace? The super abundant power of God and oftentimes couples, if they have. Extending circumstances, you know, family of origin, deep seated family of origin issues, alcoholism addiction, you know, a lot of times that can be better done with counseling.

And we're not afraid to, to suggest that I think the key with counseling is making sure that you go to a counselor who is pro-marriage and pro family. Your, your exact question was conflict. Yeah. Conflict, but it's owning our own. it's so easy to point the finger and lay the blame, or we can even blame our own heritage.

You know, I'm Irish and I'm short tempered and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, those alibis excuses and rationalizations only thwart God's grace. When I humble myself to say, you know what? My anger did go over the top with the children and Mindy, I saw you and the children melting into the. will you forgive me?

Will you help me become a better husband and a better father, as opposed to, you know, I realized that Mindy's belting in his carpet with the kids, cuz my anger just went over the top and I'm I'm feeling guilty and shameful and, and I say, well, well, those kids wouldn't have told me the amp were crawling into the house.

I wouldn't have to get so mad. I'm sorry. And I go outside and I, I say you handle it. You take care of. I think it's in being humble, admit admitting to our own selfishness and asking and begging God in prayer for selflessness, that we can make a gift of ourselves, even in the heat of the battle that we find our way we've become much easier to live with.

Yeah. no, I love that that posture of humility, I think, is the solution to so many problems. I've certainly see that in, you know, leadership when you're leading people, you know, the really the most important characteristic I believe of a leader is humility. And the same applies, I think, to marriage, to parenting, to, to friendships, really anything it's, it's just the foundation of all the other virtues.

Um, so, so, so that, that makes so much sense. I wish we could talk about this forever. We're coming close to the end of our time together. I wanted to ask you, um, there's a couples, you know, listening right now are people listening right now who are in a crisis marriage. Or maybe someone who knows someone who is curious, what advice would you give to a marriage that's in crisis, perhaps they're considering divorce.

Maybe they're already separated, but things just are really dysfunctional. What advice would you give to them? What's one thing perhaps they can do right now to, to help the situation. And we're talking about marriages that don't have violence or a threat of injury or anything like that. there's statistics that say, and they did a broad study and it was, I can't remember the gal's name, but it's outta of Colorado Springs where they did this large study, that couples a whole bunch of couples that were in crisis mode and on the edge of brink of divorce.

And they did this study and they looked five years into the future. And those that didn't get divorced were far happier, five years after than they were. They were even happier than their counterpart who decided to get divorced. And so oftentimes I think, wow, we have seasons in our marriages that can be the straw that breaks the camels back.

And as individuals are we one light in the midst of their chaos and their confusion in their darkness to say, Hey, did you know, there's a better way? What do you mean? There's a better way it's worth the battle. It's worth the effort. You know, we read a book and it's a great book by Lyla Miller, right?

Mm-hmm, primal loss and it's 40 or 50 stories about people now, adults experience their parents divorce. And I think this analogy is really, really good and I'm paraphrasing it, but it, I think this is one of the best analogies we've ever heard. The family is like an airplane in flight. Obviously an analogy here, the family is like an airplane in flight and we can do lots of things on an airplane.

And in fact, we can even argue and still get to our destination safely divorce. However, is one of the spouses taken in mid-flight the one and only parachute for themselves. Opening up the emergency door and all the while jumping out saying, you'll be fine to leave the plane unable and unsafe to land.

And you think about the damage that our culture has bought into with making it easy for people to get out of their marriages and their covenants and their oath and no fault divorce and all of these other things and kind of a throwaway society. If we can be that beacon, that one light and say, Hey, there's a, there's a, there's a better way.

We were that as, as INEP, as we were at the time, Julian, Greg Alexander had a train wreck. I mean you, their book marriage 9 1 1. Read that book. If they can make it, anybody can make it. And the way they make it is not going all the way to the cross and hugging Jesus. No, it's just simply turning around and saying I'm tired of singing Frank Sinatra.

I did it my way. I'm gonna try God's way. You know, we had a couple recently and, and they put this in our, their, our newsletter, but we kinda asked them to write their little testimony of what, what it was like going through marriage coaching. And, and one fact that she shared that we didn't even know through working with them is that she had an apartment already and she was one foot out the door, pretty much almost out the door.

and one phrase you put in there is co trying counseling or marriage coaching. It's not going, you have everything to lose or nothing to lose, but everything to gain. And so just, I think making that effort, sometimes it's just the phone call, pick up the phone and making that first initial phone call, you know?

Cause here's the, here's the. The fruit or the tragedy and Joey, I'm sure you can understand this, but Joey loves mommy and daddy, but he can't figure out why mommy and daddy don't love each other anymore. And I think it's just our natural tendency when mom and dad decide to divorce. We automatically galvanize our hearts and we say, I'm never gonna live, love that innocently again.

I'm never gonna love that purely again. I'm gonna guard my heart because that hurts so bad. And we don't even realize that we get to that place. And our hearts become impenetrable to God's mercy and his love that he's wanting to abundantly pour out. And so I think walking with other people who have similar circumstances in their own family, and that can encourage and help you navigate the landmines that the world wants to throw at.

In the last book of the old Testament, Malachi, I think it's chapter two, verse 16, God hates divorce. Why does he hate divorce? He doesn't hate the divorce. He just hates divorce because it's a sign of his life and love. And the counter sign is love. Doesn't really exist. And it's the kids who really pay the price down the road with that galvanized heart.

and, and our culture is literally held, bent on the throwaway in saying that the grass is greener when, if we fight and we get people on our side who can empathize and understand and help us to sort things out and find a new way of life it's worth fighting for. It's amazing. It's so inspiring. And I can certainly attest to the fact that divorce is so traumatic for the children, whether they're young or older, it it's such a difficult thing to live through and it makes relationships.

This is what the research says. As I know both of, you know, The biggest area of our life that we struggle with, uh, following our parents, breaking apart is our own relationships because our idea of love and marriage has just been so, so broken and so skewed. And it's, um, we don't know what to do when it becomes our turn and we might even run from it and give up on it all together.

So, so much good stuff. I wish we could talk forever. Um, on that note of people reaching out to a marriage coach, I know a marriage coach is, I know you guys do this. If you would tell us about your ministry, uh, what do you offer. How does it help couples and how could they contact you if they wanna get help?

Yeah. We have a website, uh, marriage, missionaries.org, and the majority of what our work is is marriage coaching. Couple to couple Matt and I do this together. We will, if, if once in a while, uh, Matt actually does meet with a lot of men individually say on the, like, in addition to if they both come, so marriage coaching, we describe it as a mentoring friendship.

What is God's. And then how do we live this out? How, how, you know, God intends it to be joy filled. So how can we live this out between the four walls of our own home? We also not per se that we put together, but other parishes sometimes invite us and, and will do a day or a weekend retreat. Uh, we don't have any kind that I know of.

except we're going to the family camp up there and gonna present to the parents this coming weekend. And what, what phone number do you wanna give? (303) 578-8287 is our phone number. And I, I talk to a lot of people. Oftentimes it's the females, the wives who are calling and I give them some different ideas of how they could not impose or give ultimatums, but rather to propose.

How they could get their husbands to seek this coaching. Sometimes coaching's a little softer approach than counseling as well. Mm-hmm um, and speaking of coaching, right? I mean, I think we'll put so much effort maybe in our own sporting growing up or now our children, you know, we get 'em the extra, you know, private lessons and we got 'em in weight class and we're making sure they eat properly.

And we might do that academically. We got the tutors lined up, but what are we doing for our marriage? Right? What is that continuing nurturing and making better, taking it from good to great or, I mean, or mediocre, we don't do anything mediocre in America. We want everything, you know, or at least we portray on social media that everything's wonderful, but.

I, I don't know. I just think it's, it's worth the, sometimes it's just the initial phone call. Be not afraid. That's what Pope John Paul's Anthem. Yeah, and I love what you said before too. You have nothing to lose. Like if you make a phone call and you don't go through with it, you know, that's okay. I mean, hopefully you will, but, but you could just make the phone call and that's it and focus on that step.

I, I love that advice. I wanna give you guys the last word first. I just wanna say thank you so much for, uh, your time, your expertise. Uh, yeah, you both are just amazing people. Just, I love the work that you're doing. So thank you so much for that. And for I'm sure all the sacrifices you've made to make that a reality and to serve these couples that you coach, I wanna give you the last word.

Um, if there was just one thing, one piece of advice, piece of encouragement that you want people listening right now to take away from this interview. Uh, what, what would that be? We have a really dear friend of ours who his father-in-law taught him this and it just sticks and it's simple. But you can ponder it for a long time because it's difficult to put into practice.

Treat your spouse as though they are a guest in your. Because when a guest is coming, we make sure the sheets are clean. Right. We offer them, what would you like to drink? Help yourself to the refrigerator, make yourself home. Let, let me know what you need. We're just, we bring out the best. So I, I just thought that was beautiful.

That was his father-in-law's marriage advice. Treat your spouse as though they are guests in your home. And Joey, I don't know about you, but if your Mary or Martha and you had the ultimate guest in your home, Jesus, which every human being is made in the image and lightness of how would we treat him something to ponder.

Amen. To that.

I really wanna hone in on one thing that Matt and Mindy said, and that is. if your marriage is struggling, what's the one thing that you can do right now to get help the smallest simplest thing that you can do to take action. Soon after this episode ends like seriously, what's the smallest thing you can do.

Maybe it means getting in touch with Matt and Mindy. Maybe it means signing up for counseling, whatever that is for you. Just do it, get it done, focus on that one thing and then worry about the next thing. But maybe that's not you, but you know, someone whose marriage is struggling. My question for you is what's one thing that you can do to help them get the help that they need.

Again, if you want the free guide seven tips to build a thriving and divorce proof marriage, just go to restored ministry.com/marriage or click on the link in the show notes. The resources mentioned are in the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 70. Thank you so much for listening. And this has been useful for you.

Feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them, always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#075: Dealing with Your Parents’ Divorce, Anger Toward Parents, Helping Your Kids Heal | Ask Restored #1

In this episode, we answer questions from listeners like you. Each question reveals a real life challenge faced by someone from a broken family. We offer answers and practical guidance.

The questions include:

• How do you deal with your parents divorce when it isn’t a clearly justifiable split?

• As divorced parents, how do we make up for all the mistakes we’ve made and help our kids heal?

• How do I openly talk about my parents divorce without hurting them in the way I view it?

• How do I build a better relationship with my dad when he isn’t emotionally there and has never talked to me about my parents separating/divorcing?

• How do I deal with my anger toward my parents?

Get your question answered on the podcast

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• Episode 75: Will I Always Feel Stuck? | Alexandra M

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

In this episode, we answer questions from listeners. Like you, each question reveals a real life challenge faced by someone who comes from a broken family that they're dealing with right now, we offer some practical guidance and answers to those questions. The questions include how do you deal with your parents' divorce when it isn't a clearly justifiable split as divorced parents?

How do we make up for all the mistakes we've made and help our kids heal? How do I openly talk about my parents' divorce without hurting them in the way I view it? How do I build a better relationship with my dad when he isn't emotionally there and has never talked to me about my parents separating and divorcing, how do I deal with my anger towards my parents?

And so many other questions, lots of practical wisdom in this episode. So keep listening.

Welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Elli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 75. I'm joined by two guests today to answer your questions. And by the way, if you wanna submit a question for my guests and I to answer on the show, you can do that by going to ReSTOR ministry.com/ask that's, ask ASSK and I'll remind you about that at the end of the show.

But my guests today are Alexandra and Kendra. Kendra posh was born and raised in Northern Minnesota, and now resides in Denver, Colorado. Her world was turned upside down in high school. When her parents divorced since then, she's been on a journey of hope and recovery one. She sees as a lifelong and worthy.

Kendra has a heart for the work that restore does and for true authentic relationships, Kendra shared her story in episode 57. So if you wanna check that out, feel free. And my other guess is Alexandria. Madrin originally from South Carolina. Alexandra has lived and worked in Denver, Colorado for the past six years after hearing about the ReSTOR podcast from her friend, Alexandra began working through the long term effects that her parents divorce left in her life.

Alexandra is enthusiastic about helping others to discover the freedom that comes through personal development and growth, and is an advocate of strong friendships with others who have experienced divorce and the practice of therapy to heal and grow. She has found that there is hope and goodness after one's parents' divorce and it all comes down to a personal choice to begin again, find healing and trust that your life will be one containing lasting love.

Now Alexandra shared her story in episode 61. So feel free to check that out as well. Again, lots of wisdom in this episode. So let's jump in

Alexandra, Kendra. Welcome to the show. Thank you so much for, for making time to be here. Thanks for having us oh, I'm so excited for today. It'll be great. This is fun. It's great to be with you both. I admire you both as people, and I know you have a lot of wisdom, so I'm excited to give that to our audience.

The first question that we have is from an anonymous person. So. It's related to dealing with your parents' divorce and their apathy toward their marriage. Little bit of background. So the, um, person who submitted this said my parents decided to split last week. My mom has decided to split. She's the one who initiated it.

She can't fight for the marriage anymore. Uh, this person goes on to say, I don't understand how they can give up, especially believing what God says about marriage. I guess I don't fault my mom for trying, even though it's hard not to be angry at her for ending. , but I can't believe my dad can't even try to work on things to make our family work.

He goes on to say, I wish I could hope they will reconcile. But after a year of my mom, hoping for things to get better and they haven't, I don't want to have false hope, but I can't get how people who preach loving your wife, husband in a godly way, uh, can can't live it or even try. So this person obviously comes from a religious background.

So their specific question is kind of broken into two parts, which we can just answer in one, which is how do you deal with your parents' divorce when it isn't a clearly justifiable split. If that's even a thing, he says like an affair or clear right or wrong. And the second question is how can it end when parents don't seem to even try to change things and fight for their marriage and the whole family.

So a lot there, but what do you guys think? Who wants to jump in. I've said this before, but it's okay to not feel okay about it. It's okay to feel angry or hurt or sad, hopeless. All of those things let, let those emotions in don't don't tap tamp 'em down. And if you can find some good coping mechanisms to be able to deal with that, mm-hmm because you're witnessing something that is outside of your control, but it is doing so much to you into your day to day.

And if you, it affects you, it affects you. It, it totally does. It affects your siblings. It affects you wanting to protect your siblings. It affects you responding to a parent that wants you wanna be loving and helpful, but when they ask you to take out the trash, you wanna fight back and just say, but why you're doing this?

It doesn't make sense. Mm-hmm . And so I just would recommend that you allow yourself that freedom to have some compassion for yourself of this horrible time that you're in and this emotional strife. If you can, and you have a good support system and you can feel it. If you can try to have compassion for your parents, you do not know what hand they were dealt.

You don't know what they're dealing with. Right? Imagine a friend that is hurting and you don't know why they're doing what they're doing, but when they lash out and you know that they're hurting for a reason, you tend to be more forgiving. And I'm not saying again, so, so you can find those boundaries that you need so you can be present.

Totally. And so obviously we have a lot more grace to friends than we do to family, especially to something so traumatic as divorced when it's being done unto you. And you have no say in it, but there's so much, you probably don't know. And it's okay that you don't cuz you're the child and they're the parents.

Mm-hmm and that's, that's something that has taken me years to come to. It has. And so if you still don't feel it immediately, cuz this is so fresh and new that's okay. Hmm. Mm-hmm you, uh, what you were saying there made me think of just like grieving in general. So grieving as you guys know, is the process of really coming to accept a loss in your life.

Mm-hmm and it's not an easy thing, obviously, to go through any sort of grieving until let go of a person or this could, it could look like a breakup, it could look like a death, it could look like something even, you know, more minor than that. But your parents' divorce is definitely one of those things or separation, or maybe just a lot of dysfunction at home can all be kind of losses of, uh, some degree that you need to grieve that you need to come to accept.

But it's difficult to do that. It's not an easy thing to do. And so Kendra, like you said, giving yourself grace, giving yourself the ability to just kind of work through that at your own pace. You don't need to force it. You don't need to be on someone else's timeline. Um, I, I think that's, that's great advice.

Alexandra, did you have anything? I think that it's really important. To understand that you might not ever understand mm-hmm and you can search for answers your whole life. I mean, there are people out there who still, I mean, in their last days of their life and their, in like their sixties and they still don't understand at yeah.

At what point their parents made that decision and why. And I think it's really easy for others to say, well, just accept reality. You're never gonna know. And that might be true in some ways, but you don't, you don't need to just accept reality, but you, you might consider accepting that you might never know.

Yeah. Um, and there's a lot of freedom in accepting that you might never know. That's the only thing I might add. And, and also what you're not seeing might be years of their marriage from their point of view. And no matter what it is in life, if you haven't gone through it, not saying it's okay or not, but if you haven't gone through it, it's hard to understand.

Yeah, that's fair. So, so even if it seems quick, potentially of it's been a year, my mom's seeming like she's giving up after a year. It's like, we don't know how long these problems have been there with their marriage. Mm-hmm how much they've been, you know, trying different things. What, what have you, no, that, that's a great point.

And, uh, it's definitely. I, I think one thing too, cuz this person mentioned like the justifiable split thing. I think it's important to talk about that for a second. So if you guys mm-hmm will allow me I'll do that. So the first thing is divorce is not supposed to happen. It's not supposed to be this way.

I think most people would agree with that. Some people are much bigger proponents of divorce than others. Um, but there certainly are situations where some sort of separation is necessary because there's some sort of danger, maybe danger for your life. There's ongoing abuse. There's threats that are, you know, obviously are, are more than just like a spat or some sort of conflict.

Right? It's a serious thing. On the other hand there's situations where. Um, there's just more regular conflict that could potentially be re resolved, but it's not being resolved. So the way that researchers talk about this is there's high conflict marriages and divorces and low conflict marriages and divorces.

So again, high conflict being those situations where there needs to be some sort of separation because there's, uh, abuse, ongoing abuse, there's threat of life, dangers to the kids or to the spouse. Right? So in that situation, obviously we would say, you need to split. There needs to be some sort of distance with the hope that the marriage would come back together, be healed and the family would be whole against long road.

It is possible. It does happen. Sadly, it doesn't happen as often as it should, or as often as I'm sure all of us would like to see. So that's a high conflict situation. The low conflict situation is where, um, again, there's kind of these, what is often quoted in court cases at least is irreconcilable differences.

That's one of the most quoted reasons for getting a divorce. And in those situations, really the reality of it is that the spouses could stay married. They could work through their issues, but for one reason or not, they're just not able to do that. Or they're not willing to do that. This runs a gamut. So I don't wanna like characterize every single divorce that happens.

Like the same, it's the same, cuz it's not. But, um, in these situations, these can actually be the most traumatic and damaging on the children because there wasn't like the overt, constant conflict. There wasn't abuse. There wasn't that danger that was like in your face. And so to the child, it looks like you're going through life.

Things are fine. And then out of the blue. This divorce happened. So, uh, Paul Lamato, who's a sociologist at Penn state university. Uh, he's done some research saying that this type of divorce can actually be the most traumatic, the most damaging as opposed to a high conflict divorce. So with all that, just understand that what you're experiencing, what you're going through is not unusual.

You're not weird for feeling the way that you do. It makes sense, given what you've been through and what I understood from your question in the background that you wrote, this has been really shocking to you. And that makes sense, because this is a very real trauma and it deserves to be treated as such.

Tagging along with that, I just wanna say a couple things about your parents' marriage. It's not your job to fix it. It's their job to fix it. You're not meant to be their moral police. So even if you disagree with the reasons for them splitting, you're not meant to be the one to tell them they have to stay together.

Obviously I think most people know that, but for one reason or another, typically on a subconscious level, we feel like it's our responsibility to do that. So with that in mind, you can speak your mind. If you wanna say something to your mom or your dad saying like, Hey, I really. Wish you guys would work this out.

I hope you would work it out. They might not be aware of that. Cuz a lot of times what parents assume and what research shows is they falsely assume this in the majority of cases is that the kids feel the same way about their marriages that they do. That's just not true. Mm-hmm , that's not what the research says.

So I remember that people can change, but you can't change them. The best thing that you can do for them is to work on your own, uh, wholeness, your own healing, your own brokenness, becoming the best version of yourself. They're gonna see you thriving and they're gonna want what you have. And so, uh, I found that especially helpful when you're trying to influence another person just to focus on yourself and, and love them in the best way you can, of course, with all the appropriate boundaries.

Anything else you guys would add to any of that? Sorry for the long monologue. I wish I would've heard. When it seemed almost out of the blue that my parents started divorce. Um, it was just so quick and just everything turned on its head so quickly. And at 14 mm-hmm I couldn't keep up. I didn't know which it was up.

And I thought it was my problem to fix mm-hmm I thought it wasn't a good enough child. And so that's why there were so much right. There's a lot of lies that you begin to tell yourself, or you hear so much from others for, for whatever reason that you start to believe something. That's not reality.

Mm-hmm . And so I, I wish I had heard that. Yeah, no, I hear you. Me too seriously. Mm-hmm yeah. Ditto. I also just wanna tell you how sorry I am and it's gonna be a tough road ahead, and you probably know that, but just know you're not alone. There's a whole community out there and there's three people right here who are, who are for you.

Right now. So I'm really sorry, but you're not alone. And yeah, just hearing that is, is sometimes helpful. Absolutely. No, it's, it's more than helpful. It's like that could even be healing as weird as it might sound, just to know you that you're not alone. Cause we often feel so alone. One of you brought up empathy for your parents country.

You said that. And then Alexandra, you said something about just going through your life kind of, maybe not to this extent, but you, you touched on something related to wanting your parents to get back together or mm-hmm, kind of this whole thing being undone and never, maybe fully resolved throughout your life.

So on that second point in Alexandra's point, there's people yeah. Who go into their sixties or even to the end of their life who are just like holding onto this hope that your parents would get back together. And I think, I think that's a, a really good and beautiful hope. Um, it can be really difficult though to live with.

I remember, I think it was in primal loss, the book that tells the stories of, uh, 70 adult children of divorce, so, and loss, great book. um, there's a guy who said that, uh, when his, I think it was his dad died, the first thought that he had is like, well, now mom and dad will never get back together. So even on a subconscious level, again, we can go through life kind of holding onto this hope.

Um, so it's good to kind of recognize that. And when it comes to empathy, going back to Kendra's point, uh, you can ask one question which can be really helpful. It's been helpful for me, kind of understanding my parents and helping me love them is what trauma have they endured in their lives. People make so much more sense once you understand what they've been through.

And once you understand what they've been through, you're moved to some form of compassion. It doesn't excuse bad behavior. It should never do that. But it can help you understand them and love them and at least see things through their point of view. Again, not saying that what they did was right or everything's okay.

But at least you'll be able to, to understand 'em on a deeper level. So with that, we can be the second question, unless you guys have anything else that you would like to add? Uh, I still struggle with compassion. So I say that now , you know, like 12 years later. Yeah. Because, um, doing the work it's something I had to write down because I would get triggered.

I would just get mad. I would hear something else, years off the, the divorce about a memory here or this, or I would look at a, a memento and it would bubble back up and I would need to see that in writing of have compassion, have grace. And I just started asking, I didn't ask my mom explicitly. how were you traumatized?

It was more of tell me more about your childhood. What was your perception, perception of your parents? Like your dad died when you were young, you had a step dad. How did that go for you? Just to try to. Tease out some of those things now that I'm in a place to do so. Yeah. And to ask those questions and potentially, you know, pull by that curtain of what I thought was an idyllic childhood, right?

Yeah. And because everyone has skeletons in their closet, no family is perfect, no matter what they seem, but each and our, um, each and every one of us has such a unique and individual childhood that could have potential traumas that might not be there for someone else. Right. Yeah. Um, so asking those questions, if you feel you're in a place to do so, that's really good.

Mm-hmm I remember, um, creating a timeline of like a family, just kind of understanding like the different events that happened. And I remember learning, I never knew about this. I was talking to one of my aunts and I won't say which grandmother, but one of my grandmothers was in a plane that caught on fire.

Like one of the engines caught on fire and that was like very traumatic for her. Which then went on to affect like her everyday life. So even learning those things about your grandparents and just the whole family line can actually shed a lot of light. A lot of people who come on this show, they say things like, you know, their parents were also children of divorce.

So they also came from broken families. And then as we kind of understand more about ourselves and how that experience affects us, we're able to understand them better. So, second question is from Barbara and Joe it's. The topic is related to helping your children heal from your divorce and loving them in spite of the mistakes you've made as a parent.

So little bit of background. This is Barbara writing. She said, my husband and I, um, it's their second marriage. They've been together 20 years. So both of them were divorced, got married. Um, and then they've been together for 20 years. Um, my husband and I have four children who are children of divorce. Your podcast have, uh, has been incredible for us to listen to our children, have a range of issue.

Uh, with a range of intensity. Um, it is so helpful to put words to what we are experiencing in our relationships with them. We know that educating ourselves is a start. We hear what you are saying to be normal and take a little at a time. But sometimes it is so hard and we just don't know what to do so many questions.

So their questions, I broke 'em into three. They said, you know, besides educating ourselves, what can we do? How can we help them? How do we love. Uh, second is how do we make up for the mistakes that we've made? And then third is how do we nurture our relationship with our children? Um, Alexandra, do you have any thoughts on, on those questions?

Yeah, I think there's two that really stood out to me. And, and first and foremost, I mean, kudos to you for even asking these questions, because this is very, um, I mean, humbling and, um, rare too. Yeah. And very rare. And so I just first and foremost, you know, thank you for caring, um, about this because, uh, a lot of, a lot of parents who have children who have experienced this, they're not asking these questions.

So first and foremost, thank you. I wanna first, um, kind of shed some light or, um, kind of feedback on how can we help or how can we make up for our mistakes. Unfortunately, you can't. In my opinion. I think, I think you can't make up for them, but you can definitely help your children through what the repercussions have been.

Sometimes I think it's it's really with anything you really, you wanna make up for it. I think, yeah. I just wanna be very Frank it's. Yeah. It's kind of that, that deed that can't be ended. Um, but I also think that, um, to, to help them forward, how do inertia, our, our relationship with our children. I think you gotta be a 10 star listener.

You gotta really listen to your children and listen to how they're feeling and actually listen to them. And maybe you already are, but what are they telling you? They need ask, what, what do you need from me right now? I know I can't make up for this, but what do you need from me? And how can I best help you through this?

I know this has been really difficult for you, um, but how can I help you through this? And. , you know, what do, what do you need from me now that you didn't get then? And then also just, yeah. Listening, but also being there for them. I think that's the suggestions that I have. Yeah. Um, but thank you so much for, for caring and asking, cuz I, I think your children really will appreciate this.

Those are great points, especially how you can undo your mistakes. It'll be nice. Wouldn't it? Mm-hmm like an undue button for life you wish. Yeah. Mm-hmm but no, I think that's good. Like, and, and within your, um, answer, which so much wisdom in it, there's a couple things I baked into if it's okay. I wanna kind of extrapolate those out one.

Is that, um, Kind of owning up to the fact that you've made mistakes and that there are consequences of those and Barb and Joe. Definitely. I know them personally actually. And they're like incredible. Mm-hmm, , they're such an example to me of what I think all parents who have gone through a divorce or difficult marriage, um, could strive for, should strive for, so just like taking ownership of those and like admitting like, Hey, this is my fault.

Cause so often what I've seen happen is when people make mistakes, they just make excuses or they blame other people for what they're going through. And certainly there could be a point to that other people had a hand in bringing it about, but it's a pretty fruitless, um, struggle to try to just cast blame.

Right. And again, I'm not saying like, if you're in a situation where someone like really hurt you, they should take ownership of really hurting you. Not saying that isn't the case, but in terms of like what you have the power to do, all you can do is like control. What's been done to you and how you react to it.

And so, um, and so I think, I think it's really good to like take ownership of those. And then, you know, like you said, help your kids deal with the repercussions. Um, you said, like being a great listener, that kind of presupposes that there there's an open channel of communication, which is what, what I've found.

And just talking with people who come from broken families is they're so often not good point in this case. There is. So you answered it perfectly, but just to everyone listening, who doesn't have that open channel of communication, that's one thing to start for and you can start in the smallest way. So we'll touch on a little bit later.

Um, but, but I would say, um, that's like really, really important kind of just like. Cracking the ice they're breaking the ice and just starting that conversation can be so hard. But once you, once you do that, it's gonna go so much better. And we can maybe throw in some advice for, for how to do that. And we'll get into that a little bit later, but Kendra, just wondering, or Alexandra, did you have anything to add to that after what I just said, Kendra?

No. Yeah, go ahead, Kendra. So many thoughts besides educating ourselves. What can we do that one really struck me. I think the first thing is, have you dealt with a trauma in your own life? Did you deal with the trauma from your dad's first marriages? Right? The best way is to lead by example. And if you see a lot of things happening, as you said, there's a whole range throughout your kids.

If you were dealing with your own stuff, that will have massive, massive waves, like in the pool of your family. And that in and of itself would also be a way to help them heal and to help love them. Hmm. I love that. You said how do we make up for the mistakes? Because I wish. My dad would admit he was wrong.

I wish he would own up to some of the hurt. And so even acknowledging them is helpful. Yes. There are so many repercussions that you cannot control and it is what it is. I would recommend, uh, similar to the five love languages. You have the five apology languages, and maybe you have done this, or you haven't, but even just coming forthright with each of your kids individually or in a group, whatever, you know, feels better for your family dynamic to just tell them I'm, I'm really sorry.

Like, and not just in a, oh, let me, you better Christmas president, or how can I help you here financially? Or what have you, but in, in a unique way to each of them, because they all have individual trauma from this. And so I also really liked that you acknowledged that there's a range of issues and a range of intensity.

Each person is dealing with this differently. I remember feeling weird that I seemed more impacted than a sister. Right. I have four sisters, whole range of emotions, right? Yeah. Um, and so. each of your children will need something different at different times, whether it's the apology talk that you might have, whether it's, um, help with a certain issue.

And to just recognize that encouraging that open communication of that listening that Alexandra said mm-hmm but also it's okay if they don't talk to you about this mm-hmm you just wanna make sure they're talking to someone mm-hmm so I'd really encourage actually to talk to someone outside of that family system, both peers, as well as potentially another mentor couple, right.

That they could go to. That's not in their same age range, because they need someone to vent to without feeling like they could potentially be hurting you during that process. Mm-hmm um, and so I would encourage them to do that. They may already be doing that, and it is not a replacement to a parent for you.

I wanna say that again. It is not a replacement parent. But they need a safe space to talk about issues that they are still struggling with. Right. It could be a therapist, it could be family, friends, it could be individual friends that you do not even know. And I would just, again, encourage that wholeheartedly.

So good. And, uh, about the five apology languages, is there some way that people can learn more about their, is there a resource on it? I'm not aware of it. You've told me a little bit about before, but I never knew there was like a book or something. It's revolutionized my relationships with my sisters.

We'll just say that. Boom, boom. I think it's actually by the same author. Okay. So let's link it in the show notes. Cool. All right. Sounds good. I'm sure if you guys Google to like five apology languages that come up, I'd imagine. So really good stuff. I like what you said about that. Not being them, not being the one that their children can fight in.

Cuz I, I think for a parent who's so eager to help. That might be a real desire and that makes sense, but I think that's really good. Um, apologizing. So one thing I would just add to that is. Uh, you can do that in person, which is ideal, or if maybe it's too intense and too difficult for you and for your children, you can do that through a letter.

Uh, an email is possible too, but I would say either a letter in person is ideal, a couple other quick pieces of advice that have worked for yeah. Other people is, uh, send them resources, useful resources. So, and when you do that, don't like hit him over the head with a book. That's probably not the bright choice you can, but depending on your relationship.

Um, and when I say that I I'm being a little facetious, I mean, like telling them like, Hey, you should read this book because most people don't read a book when you suggest it like that. But if you instead give 'em like little bite size pieces of that book or content like that, or even our content, um, then they might be more likely to do that.

Cause if you think of it, you know, typically I know the way I work and about you guys, but like, I need to be slowly exposed to, uh, something like whether it's a podcast or an author or book, there's a rare occasion where I'll hear a book and I'll be like, I'm totally reading that, but that's rare. so the slow influencing, I think works well.

A video, a podcast episode, an article, you know, a, a real, something like really short, I think can, can go a long way with kind of opening the door to, uh, someone like that to do anything. Yeah. If you have financial resources to help pay for counseling, sometimes as a young adult, it feels like something you want to do, but you feel financially strapped for whatever reason, that could be a potential way.

And also going Jo of what you said about that apology of having the letter. I actually might have appreciated that better than a conversation because I can digest on my own time or I can keep referring back to it. Mm-hmm it's memorialized. So kudo suit. That was a great suggestion. That's really good. I love that.

Yeah, absolutely. I also think I love that. You said how can we love them or how do we love them? I mean, you know, your children the best, so, you know, good point your children's really, I mean, I hope, you know, your children well enough to be able to, I'm not gonna assume that you're having these conversations with them.

Something that's helpful is to ask them questions. Maybe if they're, if they're ready, ask them questions about their childhood. I know that's something that was really helpful between my mom and I, so that I could be very honest with her and I didn't have to start the conversation randomly after going to therapy, you know, randomly going and be like, Hey, I just wanna talk on my childhood really quick.

If you ask them questions, if they're ready and maybe give them a little precursor, like, Hey, would you like to get coffee and just kind of talk about some stuff, nothing, nothing super deep, but would just love to, to love you in this way. And there's a couple questions I have for you that will really, I think, open up the conversation if they're ready.

and if you, the parent already. Yeah. And if you are the parent already, um, but you know, you're asking these questions, how do we love them better? This is just a suggestion. So, so yeah. Um, so if you're, you know, getting coffee with them, asking specific questions, like, you know, what were some things that we did well, raising you?

What were some things that, that we could have done better that, that I can, you know, help you with now? How do I love if you have grandchildren? I don't know if you do, but you're listening. Maybe, um, you have grandchildren asking, you know, how do we be examples for our grandchildren? With this history, because I think that's something that's really hard for children to.

I don't have any kids, but I know siblings to go to their parents and, and really hope that they're examples of marriage and, and raising kids. But it's hard when you have those wounds. So asking them just frankly, how do, how do I help you in being an example for the grandkids? So good. That could be a real struggle.

And we probably do another show about that altogether. But one thing that came to mind when you were talking to Alexandra is you can share regrets with your children too, without maybe divulging sensitive details, which I think are usually not helpful. You can even share like, you know, in your apology, you can say, I'm sorry for this, for this, for this be specific, that's super helpful.

Then just be like, Hey, I'm really sorry for everything that's happened. Like, you can start with that. That's fine. But then get into the specifics. Like, I'm sorry that, you know, we, weren't a good example about what a marriage is supposed to look like. I'm sorry. I wasn't able to really pay more attention to you as a child, which then I know affect you and affected you in this, this, in this way, the more specific you can be, the more I think recogniz and empathize someone will feel.

And I think that goes a long way in helping to rebuild that relationship. But one thing, when it comes to building a relationship, you, um, don't always, you don't just do it through these like heavy conversations, right? You have great experiences and other good conversations that are hopefully around like common ground.

Um, and we'll touch on that a little bit later. I have a request, please do not bash your ex. That is still their other parent. And I would say that that even if you might feel justified or all of those things, that is mm-hmm , you need your own system to talk about this outside of the family, right? It, it, I promise you, it does not help in building up a relationship between you and your child, because that's the hardest thing for me with my parents.

Um, as soon as it delves into someone else or cuz again, that's not owning up to it. It could be making an excuse for things. Yeah. Again, you need to be able to have compassion for yourself of what you were going through for that, for my own personal experience, it, every conversation has taken a downward turn and I leave even more hurt and mad.

Like everything gets compounded when my dad would bash my mom, it just mm-hmm it is never productive. Never. Yeah, that was so good. Mm-hmm there was one resource I wanted to mention too. That might be helpful for your kids. There's a psychotherapist called Megan, uh, divine and she, um, has a book called it's.

Okay. Not to be okay. And right. What Kendra said before. So, um, that could be really good, but in that. Book, and she has a great video that we can link in the show notes as well. Uh, she says like one of the best, uh, solutions, I guess, to helping someone who's in pain is actually not trying to solve their pain, but just being there with them in the midst of it.

And so it might be your temptation to kind of look at your kids' lives and see all the brokenness in whatever their relationships, their career, their academic pursuits, and try to like fix it as if you were like a, you know, a construction worker, but it it's, that's not how it works when it comes to people, right.

We're not like a, a broken building where we can just like patch something up super easily. Yeah. We really just need people to be with there, with us in the pain. And what research shows according to the psychotherapists is that's actually the most helpful and the most appealing experience we could have.

So just be there with them in the pain. Um, you can offer resources again, you can encourage them to go to counseling like Kendra mentioned, but the, the most powerful thing that you can do is just give them your presence often. Anything to add before we move. Great. The next question. We're gonna jump ahead a little bit here is, um, about from an anonymous person, talking about healing, your relationship with your parents and talking about the divorce.

So this is kind of switching roles from the parent to the child now. And, uh, there's three questions here. One, how do I openly talk about my parents' divorce without hurting them in the way I view it? Two, how do I stop avoiding the word divorce and be able to talk about it in three? How do I build a better relationship with my dad when he isn't emotionally available emotionally there and hasn't been, and, and hasn't talked to me about my parents separating and divorcing great questions.

Really good stuff. Do you wanna jump in Ken? It's scary talking to your parents about divorce. It is because. first. Do you feel safe enough to talk about it? That's that first question, right? If you're potentially avoiding the word divorce, maybe you're not there yet. And that's okay. The best way that I've noticed with my own parents has been using I statements not you did this, but I feel hurt when this happened or I was missed here.

I didn't feel seen those kinds of things. Um, because when you open that conversation, are you okay with them potentially not responding? Well, mm-hmm I thought I was in a position to talk to one of my parents about this and I brought it up and I was not ready for them to say, this is too much for me. I can't deal with this.

That really set me back in my healing experience, even though that wasn't their intention. Because they weren't ready to talk about it. And it's something that I've had to unpack more with my counselor, because that did a number on me across a lot of relationships. So I really wanna highlight, do you feel safe to talk about it and are you okay if it doesn't go well, if you are not, do not feel pressured to have that conversation, right?

Let it, let it have space, let it, let it breathe and do some work on it where you could at that point. So now if I brought up that conversation and my parent responded like that, I'm okay. Now I was not before mm-hmm um, and so there's been, been a drastic difference in that, so good. Mm-hmm yeah. So I'm gonna give you some bad, good news, and then I'm gonna give you some good news.

the bad news is that some parents will never want to talk about it and they'll never wanna acknowledge it. And they will just act like it never happened forever. This might be your reality. so just know that, but the good news is that you don't, maybe you don't know that yet. So one, it could maybe not be your reality and two, even if it is your reality, there's still a way forward.

And there's still a lot that can be done for you personally, even if you're not able to have those conversations. So one, I would say just first know that it might, you might never be able to have a mature conversation because some parents that are divorced who have kids are not mature enough to have a conversation, or they haven't done the work or they haven't, they're just not willing.

Mm-hmm so that is the case. Um, sometimes it's just, it's just not a reality for you, but in that case, if that is the case for you say you reach out or you kind of put a soft launch out there and you're like, is this something that we can maybe talk about when you're ready and I'm ready? I'm ready. Are you ready?

You know, and they say, no, just know that there's so much that you can do on your own. And there's also a lot of, a lot of freedom and forgiveness. There's a lot of freedom for you ahead and, and this podcast will help and the three of us will help and yeah. Um, there's still a positive for you. So I just want you to know that even if you're never able to say the word divorce, and even if you're not able to build a better relationship, which I hope with your father, that you are, there's still hope because you said when he's not, isn't emotionally there.

If he's not there now, I, I hope and, and you can give him resources. I hope he gets there emotionally, but sometimes they don't. Yeah. So just know it might not happen, but I, I really hope it does. And even if it doesn't, there's so much for you and, and so much ahead. Great advice. I love the tough love.

Thanks for saying that. Sorry. No, no. We need to hear that because I think the expectation can maybe be this fairy tale of like, everything will be okay. Mm-hmm . Yeah, the reality and it's not bad to hope. No, it isn't. No, and it's good to know too. I mean, I've been there. I've been there where you are, where you don't know, are they ready?

When will they be ready? Yeah. And after many years, I'm not, I'm not sure we ever gonna get there. Maybe we've got, we've gotten somewhere, but I don't think, I think there is this, this really deep hope and this child in all of us, it's like, I just wanna just want these answers and I just wanna feel better.

And I just want, I just want my dad back. Yeah. And yeah. And, and you are so loved and you are so seen and heard and, and there's positive. And a way forward for you. So please hold on to that really good couple things. Um, couple thoughts for me. So it's ideal. If you can obviously talk to your parents about this, what Kendra said made so much sense.

Rod D just said, makes so much sense if you're in a place where you can do that, um, how do you do it? So here's what I would suggest, you know, maybe you're living with mom or dad. Maybe you're not, if you're not, which probably is the case for most, um, people listening, but maybe not, you can, uh, text them and say, Hey, I'd like to talk with you about the divorce.

Or you can say, Hey, I'd like to talk with you about something serious. So what you're doing there is you're kind of, okay, Alexander, you mentioned this before, you're kind of setting the scene, you're breaking the ice, you're setting the tone of the conversation. So that's really important, cuz it can prepare someone to have that conversation as opposed to maybe just like randomly on a Tuesday night being like, Hey, I wanna talk about the divorce.

It can be a little much maybe for both of you. So give them a little bit of a heads up. That's usually ideal. Um, and then that first conversation that you have make it brief. So I've had these conversations with my parents. They're not fun. They're really uncomfortable, but they're important. And, and they can bring about a lot of healing in the long run.

You have to take a long view to this. It's not gonna be like one conversation and you're done typically you need to have multiple of these and, and they will really help in the long run or they can really help. It doesn't mean they're gonna go super well, but at least you can kind of get things off of your chest.

Say what you need to say aside from making that first conversation brief as a part of that, I guess I should say is hit on one or two main points that. You don't need to hit on like 13 different things that you wanna say, you can deal with those later. Um, but yeah, you can just hit on one or two main points and that's it.

And then just that little quick win, that little success that you experience will then help you build the confidence to have future conversations on that. And then at the end of the conversation, just ask the question like, Hey, do you mind if we talk about this again, at some point in the future, when I'm ready to talk about it and see what they say, if they say yes, then, you know, okay, I can approach them at a future time and ask to talk about it.

And we're all good. If they say no, then that's kind of going back to what Alexandra said, something that, you know, we just at least need to swallow deal with for now. And hopefully in the future, that will change. If it never does, then we have to figure out a way to be okay with that, which it's really tough.

It's really hard. So. Going back to what we said before, too, if that's too much sitting down and having that conversation with your mom or dad, because maybe it would end badly, maybe you're at a, what we say is kind of to do an assessment of like, this sounds super nerdy, but do a little bit of like an assessment of how do I think this will go?

And if the likelihood that is that it will go like really badly, let's say I'm like, there's 80% chance. This is gonna go really badly. I wouldn't advise having that conversation. But if you think there's like a 20% chance, it will go badly, then take that risk. I think that's a good risk. So if that's the case where it might go really badly, again, going back to a letter, writing a letter or emailing your mom and dad, even though it's not ideal, that can be a good alternative as well.

Anything to add to that before I go to the next point that they asked about building a better relationship? Yeah. Just about I have something I, anything, any of those points? Yeah. Yeah. Going off of what you said, Joey, with preparing for that conversation and having one or two things you wanna bring up.

Journal and talk about it to yourself. Right. And it's hard, but maybe you could have that conversation with yourself in a mirror. Right? Try, try to work through those things. If you have a trusted confidant that you can be like, can I just try having this conversation with you between work through some of my fears of, I expect it could go this badly.

Okay. What does badly mean? Can you quantify it and like, see what that could be good point. Yeah. And do it with someone that you trust because the word divorce is scary because of all the trauma you've gone through, it's such an emotional upheaval. Um, and so if you're able to process that with someone that's, um, has that trust with you.

And again, if it's not your parents, it's not a bad thing. Mm-hmm, right. To be able to talk about it and, and it's not to normalize it, but it's you being able to not feel so triggered by it, that you now feel back in control of it instead of terrified and hurt and all those nasty emotions that come up that you are like, this is not me.

I don't know what to do, but mm. It's a product of it. It is reality of it. Mm-hmm but that doesn't mean you can't change it. Mm-hmm that's good. Anything dad? Yeah, one really quick thing I would recommend. Um, I went on a retreat recently and we wrote out our story of divorce and you can use the word divorce as said many times on paper, as you want.

So start with the very beginning day one. Maybe it's the day you were born, maybe it's the day your parents met, whatever you want it to be. Write out the whole story and take your time, take your time and use that word as many times as you want. Cuz sometimes putting it from your head to paper. You don't have to give it to anybody.

I mean, it can be a journal entry. It can be whatever you want it to be, but writing it out in detail and use that word divorce and put it on paper because that's what it is. And if you can't say it out loud to your father or your mother. you can write it down. That's really very helpful. Yeah, no, that's really good.

We, um, Adam Young runs the podcast, the place we find ourselves great podcast. He has an exercise in there about writing your circle. We'll link to that, um, in this gen. So you guys can, it literally guides you step by step. So I found that helpful as too, and we've had people go through that exercise, so really good.

And on that point of like the word divorce, it's like, what are you afraid of? Maybe you're afraid of the way mom or dad will react. So maybe dig into that a little bit. Um, and then finally, when you talk about like building a better relationship with your dad, um, just going back to something I said before, so I.

Again, I wouldn't start by talking about like heavy topics, but start with maybe common interests. So there's really two ways. If you kinda break it down, there's two ways that you grow an intimacy with someone. One is through conversations and two is through experiences. Like if you think about that's the way you bond with another person, same thing applies to your parents, not just like a friendship or a romantic relationship.

So conversations and experiences. So the, you know, middle ground for that is things you both enjoy. So talk about things you both enjoy. Talk about experiences. I would say experiences are the best way to start with someone who's kind of emotionally distant, cuz those conversations can often stay at the surface level.

I know that often with my parents, they just like, don't go very deep, which is unfortunate. And so they need a little bit of prodding to, to go a bit deeper, but start with those experiences, do things you enjoy together. That could be really simple. It could be like mini golfing together. It could be like you.

Uh, camping or kayaking or whatever you guys like to do, uh, do those sorts of things and just go slowly and try to, you know, again, set the stage if possible, when the time comes, where you would open up about bigger things when it comes to a dad dads. Aren't great. I'm a dad now. So could say this, um, dads can often be really, um, not great with talking about emotions.

So you might need to kind of set the stage and open the door for that. Dads have emotion or men in general should just say this. Doesn't just apply to dads. We have emotions, but we're often not as good about expressing them and putting them into words as maybe women are. And so, um, if that's the case, you might need to kind of pull that out of him gently, and it's not your job to like, teach him how to do that, but you can, you know, prompt him so to speak.

Um, it's not really supposed to be that way, but, uh, sadly it is that way for people like us, especially who come from broken families or wonder both parents can often be kind of emotionally distant. So with that, we're gonna move on to the next question. And then, uh, yeah, so this question is dealing with your anger and navigating, uh, your dysfunctional family.

So the background is my parents got a divorce when I was about four and a half years old at the time. It was my mom, my dad, my sister and me. I've had a lot of anger, uh, issues from them, uh, from it. And now my sister who hated my dad now lives with him. Um, my stepmom and my little step sister. So the biggest part is my dad is not my sister's real dad.

uh, her biological dad was with my mom before my, uh, before she met my dad, my sister dismissed all of the childhood trauma that my dad caused. Now. She won't talk to anyone in my mom's family. When it comes to me, my dad's side, won't let me talk to, to them or my sisters, which is really hard for me. I'm lost.

And I don't know where to go from here. I'm looking for your advice. Thank you for letting me ask you for help. So the questions are, how do I deal with my anger towards my parents and how do I navigate the dysfunction in my extended family? So I can talk with my sisters, Alexandra. Yeah, absolutely. Well, I wanna tell you how sorry I am.

That sounds like a very difficult situation you are seen and you are heard. I think it's totally normal in most everyone. I think that is a child of divorce in any capacity, whether it's really messy or new or old can feel very angry. I know I did. And I still do at times. So just know that this is very common and that this may come and go.

I would, I would suggest it's hard with extended family and it's hard when you're, when it's your sister and I don't know how close you are, but, um, me and my sister are very close. And so I can only imagine it's very difficult for you, but I would, I would suggest really leaning into, I, I know part of it is friendships at Kendra and I are like sisters in this.

And so I think if you can find a really validated friend to really confide in, it really does help. And it really does make a difference in, in the situation. Friends become like family. I. I can't guarantee. I can't promise you that your sister or your extended family will ever come around and I'm certainly not suggesting that you replace them, but I am suggesting that you find some support and some friends who have maybe gone through this because our siblings can sometimes be the best of our friends.

They can sometimes be our best friends and so finding good friendships. And I also would suggest, you know, really building community around this. So restored has a great community of listeners. I would suggest yeah. Finding somebody who is maybe able to, to see and hear you in this way. Good stuff. Kendra, do you have anything to add to that?

In addition to having a support system is Alexandra was saying in that community, whether it's through restored or some someplace else that you found that. healthy coping mechanisms. I think there's so many times that we give ourselves excuses for poor behavior because we've been hurt and that's not a healthy way to have compassion for yourself.

Right. I do wanna acknowledge that. It sucks. And I'm so sorry that you are now part of this club that no one wants to be a part of. Yeah. And so I found for me, there's a lot of different ways I could have turned and I have turned cuz I'm by no means perfect. And for me, a lot of times it's emotionally with dries or with drinking and partying different ways where I feel.

loved or have like a lift in the moment. But I know for a fact I feel worse when it's all done. Mm-hmm right. And so that's what I mean about naming them. I'm not saying that a relationship in and of itself is bad. I'm not saying drinking in and of itself is bad. I'm not saying going out with friends in and of itself is bad.

Mm-hmm but can you name like those really healthy ones that when you're done? Okay. I actually feel like a MOCU better. Mm-hmm right. Um, for a moment you're able to forget for me it's weightlifting or hiking. It's finally, when things get quiet and I can push myself and deal with anger and frustration, resentment hurt tears and like a tree doesn't care.

If I cry right. A tree doesn't care. What I'm doing. And so I found that has been so healing for me to do that. Also another one for me is studying, learning something new. Hmm. Challenging myself in a way. And then tracking that progress of like, oh my gosh, I've changed. And then I look back and I've also emotionally changed, right?

When you're pushing yourself in one area, the rest of you is didn't catch up in a way. Yeah, no, really. Yeah, there there's so much in there. I, I would say touching on like the anger piece, you know, like we've said, it's so normal to feel anger. Um, anger is really just an emotion, an emotional response to a real or perceived injustice and divorce, your family breaking apart.

Your relative's not letting you see your siblings. Like that's certainly an injustice. It's not something you're supposed to go through. It's not something that's easy to go through. It's not, it's not a good thing. And so I I'm so sorry again, what you've been through and your anger just makes so much sense.

What I would say I I've dealt with anger. Anger is, uh, one of those things that kind of has been a struggle for me at different times. A couple things I've learned one don't hold it inside. If you hold it inside, it will get bigger and more difficult to deal with. So like Kendra was saying, you can get it out in one of those ways.

Um, she said naming it. That's really good. Another way to say it, you know, is putting it into words. So whether that's writing or speaking to someone or just recording a voice memo, honestly, that sounds silly, but that can be helpful. Just get it out of your chest. And that can kind of dissipate the anger almost like taking the air out of a balloon, right?

Because again, when anger's just inside of us, it festers and it grows and it gets big. And then often what happens is it will just come out of nowhere in a conversation, in a relationship and you might not even recognize yourself in those situations. Um, so. Yeah, go ahead. And as you go through feeling these emotions, what really helped me and I highly recommend for everyone was actually having a therapist because otherwise I get stuck.

It's like, I, I sit in it and then I dunno what to do with it. And I find that it confessor, even though I'm like, oh, look at it. I learned like a new skill today, but I went after it and like had coffee with that friend who gives me so life. And I went for a hike. The counselor is trained to help guide you and navigate these things right.

And to help you come up with emotional coping mechanisms and just new ways of mapping out and naming emotions, um, and to guide you through it, all right, you, you are not alone in this. There's so many resources to help. Um, I have found that the way I can most actively get after it was when I had someone who was trained in this right.

Trained in marriage and family therapy. Um, I can't remember their exact word. I'm trying to think of internal family systems, internal family systems. Oh my goodness. It. Revolutionized my past two years, um, seeing that therapist that knows that in particular, because I feel so seen and understood, and I feel I am no longer powerless.

Hmm. So good. Dr. Gary Chapman, he's the one who wrote the five love languages. He also has another book called anger, taming, a powerful emotion. So in dealing with my own anger, I've looked into I've, you know, read this book. And one of the frameworks he offers and is just this five step process that you can use to deal with your anger.

So it's been helpful for me. I just wanna offer it to you in case it would be helpful as well. And this is Logan, by the way, asked this question. So Logan, the first step is consciously acknowledge. To yourself that you are angry. So it sounds so silly. It sounds so simple, but just even just saying like, okay, I feel angry right now to yourself.

Like that's really powerful. Again, it can kind of take some of the, some of the energy or some of the, um, anger kind of out of the situation, just by acknowledging that you are angry. Next number two is restrain your immediate response. So you might wanna say something nasty or do something that would kind of get back at that person.

Restrain that that's not a very popular word in our world these days. Like that self denial, like not acting on what you wanna do, but it can be so helpful. So that's step number two. And then three is locate the focus of your anger. So often we get angry about something, but that's not the real issue.

There's something deeper. So try to like really recognize what you're angry about. And so it could be like, I don't know, a police officer giving you a ticket for, you know, going a little bit over the speed limit and you just get like, super upset about that obviously, but a little bit disproportionately upset about it and you might be realizing, well, you know, maybe someone in your life just wasn't really fair with you and that reminded you.

That dis you know, that imbalance in your life and it made you extremely angry. Getting a ticket from a cop is definitely upsetting. But, um, but you can see what I'm saying there, there's often something beneath the surface. You need to kind of recognize that, locate that, and then analyze your options.

That's number four, he says, analyze your options. So you see, okay, how can I respond? You always want your response to not be a reaction, but really a thoughtful reply or response to the situation. And that may, by doing that, you. Much less, you'll be much less likely to regret your actions. And you'll normally you you'll just build like this ability to have mastery over yourself by acting, not just by what you feel by why by what is right in that situation.

And then step number five is take constructive action. So it's basically after you analyze your options, choose one of those options and act on it. And, uh, and that can be a really helpful. So again, I'll listen quickly consciously acknowledge to yourself that you are angry, uh, restraint, your immediate response, locate the focus of your anger, analyze your options.

Take constructive action, Kendra, anything bad about making other people upset when it comes to I have stuff about that. Yeah. Yeah. When it comes to like your relatives. So on one end, I, I don't know if this is possible in your situation, you know, it's, we're, we're, um, answering these questions with somewhat limited information, but one question is, do you need to really deal with them?

Can you go directly to your sister, for example, who you wanna build a relationship with? Like, why do you, why do your relatives, it sounds like this is extended family. That's causing all this drama. Why do they need to be involved in the relationship? So maybe ask that question, like, can you just have a relationship with your sister and kind of let them deal with their own issues and you don't really need to get into that.

That that's one option, but maybe they are putting like legitimate barriers up aside from just their opinion that you have to get through. If that's the case one tactic here, which is not an easy tactic. So I know probably most people listening won't do this, but if there's one person who's maybe causing a lot of this tension and a lot of the barriers, if it's good and healthy and safe for you, of course.

Confront them about it a again, it will take time to build up to this, but if you can just be like, Hey, you know, I know you have real issues with me, you know, talking to my sisters, like, why is that? And trying to understand kind of where they're coming from now, again, if they're just gonna abuse you, or there's a situation where it's just like super unhealthy, don't do that.

That's not what I'm recommending, but, but if you can talk to them about it and just try to kind of see what they're, where they're coming from, cuz what it often might be is they're being really unreasonable. And if you show them that, you know, you're just, you just want a relationship with your sister.

Like there's something so good. And again, place, try to place them in your shoes. Just be like, Hey, how would you feel if you know, and don't say this in an antagonizing way, but just say, you know, Hey, how would you feel if you know, you couldn't talk to your sibling? Like, how would that, how would that feel?

How, how would you take that? That can be really helpful thing to, to offer to them because then they put themselves in your shoes and they realize, oh yeah, you know, that would be really difficult. I, I wouldn't like that at all. And so that's just one thing that you can do, but not an easy situation at all.

And I'm really sorry you're going through it. Um, I know when your family breaks apart, there's all sorts of drama and it usually does involve, uh, relatives who often just take the side of one parent. And so if you give the appearance of maybe citing with that opposing parent, that can really make you a target, an enemy, so to speak to those relatives and it can be really, really difficult to deal with.

And there might not be a great resolution, at least in the short term, unfortunately. So I'm sorry to. Can I give that tough love, but that is a reality at times I hate that there are sides. When we had everything happen with my dad's family, they saw my dad is a large extended family. Right. I'm talking like he is eight siblings, like 30 plus first cousins, my grandparents, like it's massive.

And we got together with them all of the time they circled the wagons because they saw that their brother was hurting. Right. Yeah. So that they're protective. They, they get so protective. So they circled the wagons. It just made no sense why I was on the outside or my mom was public enemy number one, or my sisters didn't belong.

It made no sense to me. Yeah. And so during, at that time I could not process. I tried not fathom it whatsoever and I lost all relationships with them because there were so many hoops that had to jump through or this or that after a lot of work on myself where I know I can. Have those difficult conversations without just bursting into tears or feeling so angry.

I just like turn red and I have a problem of when I'm frustrated, I cry and I'm like, oh, that's a weakness. Like it, I, I was not at a point to do that. Right. Yeah. Versus now, I mean, it's been 14 years. They seem a lot less scary one cuz the distance, but two I'm older. Right? Sure. And navigating the dysfunction with them, especially with like your little sister, right.

Both like your step sister and all those. Would we be to even just ask again, go directly to either the sisters or parents, if you can. And just say my desire is to have a relationship with my sister. Hmm. What do you recommend? I do. How can I do that? Mm-hmm right. Maybe they have certain house rules of like, you can't take her out anywhere, but like, great.

Can I grab some Chipotle? And we sit in the backyard and just chat and ask her how school's going. Find some different ways where there, there can be a compromise on location or activity or what have you. But the ultimate goal is like, you both agree. A relationship is good and that's what we want. Mm.

Again, with more healing that happened, I was starting to, able to, I was starting to be able to have conversations with the extended family and some went well, some didn't . I remember very distinctively. I was at church, you know, I don't know, six years ago. And I turned around and my cousin was sitting directly behind me.

Hmm. I was triggered obviously, but it was like almost shocked because I'd been almost 60 years since we had seen each other. Was I with too? No, you weren't. No. Okay. I thought there was a situation where I think you recognized the FA anyway, keep going. Oh man. I probably called you up right afterwards. I was like, oh my gosh.

And. It was so scary cuz I didn't know how he would respond. I didn't know anything. He was 16. I was 14 right after church. He looked at me, um, it was a evening service or, and mass and he's like, do you wanna grab a drink? So we did. I was sweating. I was so nervous guys. And we went and got a drink and we sat and we chatted.

And at first it was, you know, what are you doing? It's been six years. Turns out we lived within minutes of each other. We worked in the same area. Right? Wow. All in the same, um, city area of realizing we had been passing each other, going to the same church without even just for whatever reason, this is when destiny wanted to line everything out.

Wow. And then we got past that. There was an awkward silence and we both knew, we were like, all right, you gotta, you gotta talk about the elephant in the room, but obviously we're a lot more mature now. And he was just like, Hey, what happened? Oh, wow. And I found out he knew nothing of what happened. Right. I had spoken previously about some things and, um, about like my uncles being really hard on me and things like that.

He, he said I was 16. I was a boy. I was focused on the hot, I didn't know any of the stuff was happening. Yeah. Like I'm really sorry. Yeah. And I even told him, I know that our family was taught that blood is thicker than water. I know we were taught and brought up with these values and I know that's how our parents think.

Right. Mm-hmm cause our parents are siblings and I see that they circled the wagons. I just don't get why, like my sisters, my mom and I were all like left to hang out to dry. Right. Mm. It didn't make any sense. How come no one talked to me about it. Yeah. And so we were able to have a conversation, um, and connect on like a natural law level or what do we, what do we wish our parents had kind of done in a, in a very gentle and loving.

We were both skitish obviously, but I found so. Much healing from that conversation of just, I don't feel I'd be so scared to encounter a relative again, mm-hmm and I actually have a desire now versus before it was an absolute pushing away keeping at arms arms length, because it was so messy. I felt so hurt and unseen and seen and painted as an enemy.

It is messy. It is not easy. And I would encourage one on one, if you feel so inclined to speak to the extended family, um, good point do not get into a number situation, cuz you are ready, will feel hurt and stared and you're more likely to lash out then and do things you might regret rather than feeling more in control and safe in a situation.

Yeah. And. People rarely change their mind in groups. I think there's research about that. Like if you try to persuade someone in like a group or other people are watching, it's like not gonna happen. Mm-hmm so yeah, one on one that's really wise. And, uh, what Alexandra said before too, or maybe you said, sorry, if I'm misremembering, um, ask questions, like ask good questions.

That's like really an important tactic to use, as opposed to just like making statements that might come across as like accusatory, like you're accusing them of doing something wrong, even if they maybe did do something wrong, um, that that's like a more tactful, uh, way to go about it. So going back to one of the other questions though, you wanted to add a few things.

Um, oh yeah. So, yeah. Please go ahead. Yeah. Going off of what you said with Joey in terms of building a relationship through conversation and activities, right. Especially with a father, um, there are different levels of a relationship. So the easiest way is chit chat relationships, right? where it's, you can talk about something.

You might talk about something very Inna about what happened at work that day, but you're chatting. Mm-hmm I have not been there for a long time with my dad. I don't wanna chat. I don't want him to know anything. Yeah. Right. And that's okay. A second level, if you will, will be as you chat and you open up more like layers of an onion, right.

Would be to start doing more activities and spending a longer period of time together. Right. Learning those different ways. If you're comfortable with that, right. That's a way that it relationship can deepen. And then like, I would say a third level are those that are, that know, like your heart of hearts and it's hard and it sucks that your parents aren't there and you so desire them to be there.

and there's so many it's it's backwards, right? There's so many ways that you wanted him to fulfill emotional needs or to be there for you as a father. And he hasn't been. And how do you now navigate that when like your deep desire is let's get right to it. I think I might feel safe. I might not mm-hmm um, and instead of think of it as an incremental things who knows what the timeline is, that depends on both of you guys.

It takes two to have a relationship. Maybe he's ready. Maybe he's not, maybe you are, or not might depend on the season or the day mm-hmm . And so sometimes I like to think of different goals. It's what I'm doing right now with my therapist. I want a goal to be where I have a phone call with my dad. Mm-hmm why a phone call.

You can hang up or say you're busy or gotta go. So, sorry. Right. There's an easy way to end it. Yeah. Where it doesn't feel so scary. You won't get cornered either, right. Or you don't feel as if, oh, I have to. You have three hours of my time now. Right? It's it's simple to think of like 15 minute phone call, um, different things like that.

Mm-hmm to work towards that. I am thinking of ways that I feel okay to text him. I have not told him unless he listens to this that my goal is to have a phone conversation with him. That is something that, you know, I've been working on with my therapist and it could happen in a year, could happen in five.

It really depends. Right. There is. We're not setting a timeline to it as much as what are steps we can take to incrementally get there. Mm-hmm we just had father's day. I had no problem this year, sending him a happy father's day text. And I truly meant it. Not just, oh, I know I have to send it, but it brought up so many things and I was like, oh my gosh, this is a step.

This is a huge win. Good for you. Um, of I'm okay with this. Yeah. And I, and I, I recognize him as a father and I desire to have a deep relationship with him and it may or may not happen, but I know that desire is dead. I know that I love him and that I, I can tell him I'm thinking about him today. Nice. And it was a way that I knew I could give with, even if, for whatever reason he might have had a bad reaction to it, that I was going to be okay with whatever the reaction was.

Mm-hmm I didn't prepare myself for the first per se, but he still surprised me. He was very kind about it. That's awesome. And I was like, thanks for reaching out. I was thinking about you today too. You know, love you. And I was like, guess what? We sent two texts. And that was a huge win for like my whole year.

That's awesome. Right. To really set that up there probably relieving, super relieving. And maybe within five years, I'll see him. I don't know, another baby steps, baby steps. Another thing that I do with my dad. Joey's what you said about common interests. I don't talk about everything in my life with him.

What I do talk about is stuff that I know he likes. Right? It's a safer topic then. Sure. We're not bringing in, um, the fact that I haven't seen him forever. We're not bringing in family or this or that. It's, we're not even like my sisters, right. It's very simple. We talk about sports. We talk about hunting and we talk about nature because nice in reflecting on different ways.

My father has impacted me, even if I didn't feel like he was emotionally there. I know dads in a lot of ways give through access service, or sometimes with quality time. Right? There's different ways. Love languages. Sure. You know, we're always referencing Gary Chapman. um, my dad really cultivated in me a love for nature and for quiet.

And I always found that with him every fall, during the hunting season or siding in the rifles or things like that. Mm-hmm . And so those have been the biggest ways of me feeling comfortable talking with him as well as knowing a way that it's like, he probably feels comfortable with it too. Yeah. It's something he knows and he loves it's familiar.

Exactly. So it's easier to connect there. And with that frequency may happen right. At different intervals and you start to progress to a potentially deeper relat. Love that. And I love the phone call tactic, cuz yeah, it's a little bit safer and you don't need to do FaceTime or anything like that. You can just do a phone call and um, one tactic that might help.

I've done this at times, um, in conversations where I need to like. Know that there's a boundary is scheduling it against something where it's like a hard stop where it's like, okay, like literally have to go meet this person. Or I have to go do this thing. Like, I, I don't, I can't extend it at all. That can be a kind of a safe way for you to say, okay, I have 20 minutes, I have 15 minutes.

I have 30 minutes to talk and then that's it. Like, it's not gonna be dragged into a, an hour long or a, you know, hour and a half long conversation. So that could be good when it comes back, going back to relatives. So Logan, you know, going back to your question about, yeah, just having that tension, that drama in your family.

One of the saddest things for me, when my parents separated and later divorced was that my relationship with my cousins was like really damaged. And I love my cousins. Like I really do. We've been able to kind of keep a relationship, but I've noticed that it. It did, it was affected. And even my aunts and uncles, you know, that one was a little bit more directly affected.

So it is just really sad that that happens. And hopefully in time, you know, we can start rebuilding those relationships, but it is just a sad reality that I wanted to bring attention to. Um, two final questions. So Nadia asked, how do I buy your book? So what she's talking about is, um, I wrote a book called it's not your fault, a practical guide to navigating the pain and problems from your parents' divorce.

You might have heard me talk about this in the podcast before, but the book features 33 question and answers on the most pressing challenges faced by teens and young adults who come from broken families. So they're really quick. Um, usually like, Two three page answer, uh, to these really pressing questions that we have.

And so if you wanna learn more about that, learn about the, you know, what questions we, I answer in that book. You just go to restored ministry.com/books. Again, restored ministry, ministry, singular.com/books. You can get the first chapters for free. If you wanna sample the book or you can click on the buy now button to purchase the whole book on Amazon.

So, Nadia, I hope that helps. Thanks so much for asking. Uh, if you guys have enjoyed the advice in this conversation, there's a lot more in that book. The next question is from Gloriana, um, great name by the way. Gloriana um, you said that. Uh, this is about speaking. So you said I'm a college student. She said, hi, Joey, I'm a college student and I'm working on a project discussing children of divorce and the K through 12 is school system.

So front of you, um, you know, not in the us, we're talking about, um, primary school and secondary school. I would love to bring you into speak. I would also love to chat about my project. Thank you so much. So we have talked, we've done a few meetings, um, but I wanted to answer this question for anyone else who's answering.

So how do I book a talk? She asked how much, um, is it to book a talk? So again, thank too much for asking. So book a talk. So we do speaking engagements at schools at churches, at events at universities, you can just go to ReSTOR ministry.com/speaking, ReSTOR ministry.com/speaking. Uh, at this point there's two main talks that I give in the future role of additional personalities and people who give talks.

The first one is what I wish someone told me when my parents divorced. So what I wish someone told me when my parents' divorced is, is really practical advice on how to cope in healthy ways. Instead of unhealthy ways, some really simple tactics that young people can use to heal from that trauma they've been through.

And then advice on how to build healthy relationships, not just stuff that I've made up, but really what research says, what people who've done it have to say, that's the first talk, the second talk. And that's more related to people who just come from broken families. The second talk is more general can apply to people who come from broken families.

Certainly. But also people who don't and that's titled seven tips to build a thriving and divorce proof marriage. So again, it's not me just making this up, I'm trying to live this out, but it's something, um, so the, the, the content in that talk is built on really practical advice from research. So psychological research is referenced a lot time tested couples.

So couples that, you know, I've been witnessed or I've been able to witness and like study so to speak and just learn from, and then finally, wisdom from Christianity. Christianity is so much to say about building like really healthy, beautiful relationship. So again, that's seven tips to build a thriving and divorce proof marriage.

So. If you're a leader at a school university church conference, then these talks are perfect for your audience. I mean, we'd love to partner with you. We've worked with focus. FCAN university of Steubenville Ave, Maria university, the diocese of San Diego, the archdiocese of San Francisco and the archdiocese of Denver.

Just to mention a few, we've been honored to serve them. Um, when it comes to pricing, the pricing will go up. But right now I can say it's a fraction of the cost of what other speakers. Charge. So most speakers charge anywhere from 1500 to $5,000 for a talk. I know that might sound ridiculous if you're not familiar with this world.

Uh, but that's the reality of it. We charge a fraction of that at this recording. It's $500 for a talk plus travel fees, but again, that's gonna go up in the future. Um, so just get in touch as soon as you can. If you'd like to schedule something, uh, for your venue, again, go to restored ministry.com/speaking, and then you can click on the book, a talk button, fill out the form, and that will begin the process.

So with that, thank you guys so much for listening. Thank you guys for being here. Both Kendra and Alexandra. Uh, Alexandra had to head out a little bit early. So if you were wondering, where did Alexandra go? She had to head out, but I'm honored to have you Kendra. And I know Alexandra, you're listening to this.

Thank you so much for coming on the show and sharing your wisdom. You guys are both, uh, such incredible people. Who've. Just grown healed so much. So I'm honored to have you on the show. Thank you so much. Submit more questions. We'll do another round table. Yeah, we're excited. I'll tell you about that in the outro.

Thank you guys.

If you'd like to contact Alexandra, you can find your email and social handles in the show notes. As you saw in this episode, we're accepting questions for the show. You can submit your questions and we'll answer them on the ReSTOR podcast. Again, it will be me or my guests or all of us together. And you can ask anything you want, maybe you feel stuck or you're unsure how to handle the pain or the challenges from your parents' breakup.

Maybe you're unsure of how to begin or continue healing, or maybe you're someone who loves or leads someone who's going through their parents' divorce or separation, or maybe just really dysfunctional marriage. And you need to know how do I help them, whatever your question we wanna help, we will give you really specific and practical answers right here on the show.

How do you do it? Just go to ReSTOR ministry.com/ask again, restored ministry.com/ask you, fill out the form with your question. You can do that anonymously or not. And then as we're able, we'll answer your question on the show. Again, that's restored ministry.com/ask, or you can just click the link in the show notes.

The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 70. Thank you so much for listening. And this has been useful. Feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them, always remember you are not alone.

We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#074: Why Children of Divorce Learn to Act Like Chameleons | Craig Soto II

Often, people from broken families become very attuned to the needs of others, especially our parents and siblings. We become skilled at being what people want us to be. In the end, we often lose ourselves and our ability to articulate what we need and want.

In this episode, we discuss that problem as well as:

• How normal was strange and strange was normal for our guest growing up

• Why he became motivated to break the generational cycle of divorce in his family

• How he felt like burden in his relationships, which made him feel the need to earn love and constantly prevent it from ending any moment

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

So often people like us who come from broken families become very attuned to the needs of others, especially our parents and our siblings who become skilled at being what people want us to be. And in the end we often lose ourselves in our ability to articulate what we need and what we want. In this episode, we discussed that problem as well as how normal was strange and strange was normal for my guests.

Growing up, we talk about how he became motivated to break the cycle of divorce in his family that extends through generation. He shares, uh, the area of his life, where he struggled the most as a child of divorce. He talks about three things that helped him heal the most, including a really beautiful, married couple.

And he explains how he felt like a burden in his relationships, which made him feel the need to earn love and constantly prevent those relationships from ending at any moment. This is such a good and insightful episode. So keep listening,

welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 74. My guest today is Craig Soto. Second Craig is, uh, Colorado native. He grew up in Colorado Springs before moving to golden, Colorado for college at the Colorado school of mines there, he received a degree in computer science and now works in the tech industry as a development manager.

After many years of working through the symptoms stemming from his parents' divorce, it wasn't until the past couple of years that he began focusing specifically on healing, the wounds that came from the divorce after hearing an early episode from this podcast for the last year, he's been volunteering to help other people who come from broken families with life, giving wounds, he's helped with the in person and online retreats, as well as helping to start a support group for people who have attended the retreat in Denver.

Craig also loves to host movie nights at his apartment play whiffle ball and watch hockey. He's a big Colorado avalanche fan, actually. And so without further to do here's my conversation with Craig soda. The second

Craig is great to be with you here. Thanks for coming on the show. Absolutely. No, thanks for having me, Joe. I appreciate it. You've been on the list to come on the show for a long time, so I'm glad we, uh, finally got to make this a reality. Um, I was curious about your name. Are you a junior? Uh, it's, it's funny.

Uh, so people ask me, you know, because I'm Craig, so the second, uh, I'm named after my dad and, uh, a lot of people, they, you know, they say, well, or is this supposed to be junior? And I say, actually on my birth certificate actually says the second. So technically I am named Craig. So the second. But, uh, even with that, like I looked up like rules for it and stuff.

And people always give some really goofy stuff, but when, whenever they kinda gimme too much crap, I always tell 'em we don't have John Paul Jr. We have John Paul second. So yeah. I've, I've always wanted to ask you that. So, no, that, that's interesting about the birth certifi goal. I know we're gonna be talking about a little bit of heavier topic than, uh, your name and, uh, I'd like to go to that now, if that's okay.

I'm curious, you know, what happened in your family when your parents separated and divorced and how old were you? Yeah, so, um, I was around like five or six when my parents divorced. Um, it was something that. Like, I don't remember a whole lot of like going through the divorce. I don't remember ever going to like court or anything.

You know, the, the only thing that I I do remember is just, you know, my parents not being together. Uh, and so, you know, just growing up, you know, my dad never, I never remember my dad like living at our house, but one of the really cool things that I, I really kind of look back on and just kind of realize is that, you know, my dad, you know, was, was, was still there.

You know, even though my parents divorced, you know, he was still involved in our lives, you know, you look back and can be kind of weird, you know, too, cuz sometimes my dad would come over in the morning to get us dress for school, you know? And it's just like, you know, but, but dad doesn't live here. You know, he, he lives somewhere else.

Right. And so it, you know, you kinda look at some of those things and it's strange, but at the same time, I, I really appreciate my dad's, uh, involvement in our lives. Even though my parents still divorce. Okay. No, that makes so much sense. And, uh, that probably was confusing to the younger, you though. I, I totally hear what you're saying.

Like that was a good thing that he made the effort to be present in your life, as opposed to what happens with some dads or moms too. They just kind of are completely, um, out of the picture. So, so no, I totally hear you on that, but what was that pretty confusing? Would you say for a five, six year old or I guess for the years I followed to, yeah.

You know, I, I think, uh, for me, like growing up, I, I don't know if I found it to be. Really confusing because for me that's just how it was. Um, you know, and, and so really, if anything, I, I found, you know, when both the parents were there, I felt like that was more strange than, than, you know, having, you know, one parent, you know?

And so it was kind of the opposite, you know, the normal was strange to me while the, the abnormal was, was normal. So, um, but you know, one of the, like, even some of the things that came from that though was, you know, like being able to like understand and how to, how to do things, right. There's a lot of times, you know, growing up that, you know, with my, with my family, like we really just, we really kind of just lived with a lot of it.

We lived with the, the strange. You know, there's even things where, uh, a lot of times I just kinda had it figured out on my own, you know, my, I have an older sister and so, you know, when, when my parents divorced, uh, my dad was working, my mom ended up taking up two jobs and stuff and, and she, you know, she was working a long time.

So, you know, for me, my sister is just us. And so, you know, um, for, for us, we were just in the home, you know, we weren't really kind of able to go outside a whole lot. And, uh, you know, it was just, it was just us kind of taking care of ourselves, you know, over, over time, you know, I really came to see like, that's, that's not normal, you know?

And so as I got older and I started to look back on those things, that's when I guess it really started to change for me to really see. Oh, other people don't do this and everything became strange as time went on. Okay. No, that makes so much sense. I love what you said. You said, um, normal was strange to you and strange was normal.

I think that's like such a great way to put it for so many of us. I think that's just reality. Right. And, and even to the point cracker, like where I've seen people almost not even recognize like completely miss the fact that something maybe was broken or kind of messed up in their family, because it was just like, well, this is just the way it's always been.

Yeah. It's like, it's like, you know, if you wore a hat all your life and then you took it off one day, it would be like, well, it's kind of strange to not wear a hat. It's like that second nature. And so. Yeah, I think, uh, one of the challenges I know we face in this nonprofit in this ministry is that, um, we're trying to show people that, you know, a lot of the struggles that they deal with today, the pain, the problems are intimately connected to the breakdown of their family, of their parents' marriage and their family.

But a lot of people like think a lot of times that their struggles are random and they certainly don't connect it to their family of origin, which is sad because I think that's a big barrier to healing and growth. And so, like you said, though, we, we kind of need to overcome that thinking that this is normal because in a lot of ways, it wasn't.

Yeah. And, and one of the things that I've. Really come to see is, you know, I I've been to counseling myself since, uh, what, maybe 2014, there's been like what? This is my fifth time around, you know, going to counseling. And every time I've gone, you know, there was something I was trying to focus on working on.

Right. Hey, there's this behavior, that's just that that's not healthy. I wanna work on that. I, I, I kind of grow in those areas, but it wasn't really until I think, you know, about January last year, um, that I had some stuff kind of going on in my life and it really just kind of really shook me up. And, and I really started to see like, Hey, there, there's something deeper here.

And, and it wasn't until then that I, that I actually started to what, what I realized. That there's that, that deeper wound that's there coming from my parents' divorce. Every, every time I went before to counseling was really treating, you know, a symptom then, then it was like, you know, again, this past year when I really started to see like, okay, what's the root cause of all that.

And not that, you know, like, you know, like I'm, I'm broken or, you know, I'm unworthy or, or any of these things, but it's just like, you know, where do, where does all these thoughts come, come from? Where do all these behaviors come from? And that's where I really started to see and, and recognize, Hey, that's probably coming from my parents' divorce.

And for me, that's where I've been really motivated over the past. Like that's a year and a half, you know, to really start to see like, okay, this is something that's big, it's impacting my. And, and I want to start to get, get better. I wanted to heal these things. That's beautiful, man. And no, you're already doing a lot even to help other people, which I admire so much, going back to the question of kind of what went down in your family as much as you're comfortable sharing.

I was just wondering if there was more you wanted to add to kind of that whole dynamic and everything that led up to the brokenness, uh, in your family. Yeah. One, one of the things that, um, I've spent a lot of time kind of trying to retrace, you know, like just like my family history, where did we come from?

What's our life like, and some of the things in, in really doing that, I've come to see that, you know, my parents' divorce was not new for my family. It was not something that was shocking. But in fact it was kind of the opposite. It was, it was normal. And what I mean by that is I kind of started to realize like, wow, my, my parents, and even my grandparents' generation really saw a lot of divorce within the family.

and, um, and so I, I really look at this as something that is, is pretty generational. And I think, you know, just a lot of it has just a just deal with, you know, just brokenness within it, you know, just how divorce became more and more common over times, even when it was unpopular, you know, my grandparents, you know, they had divorce in their life.

And so, you know, for, for my family, this was something that was, you know, again, something that happens over time. And so that was something that was eye opening to me, just to really see like again, you know, even more motivation for me. It's like, Hey, if, if I don't get some of this stuff fixed, like I know I don't want divorce in my life for my future family.

That's not what I want. And so if I'm going to really work to correct a lot of that, um, I have to put in the work now before, you know, I get married. And even when I get married, I know that there's gonna be stuff that's gonna come up there. And so I'm just trying to get prepared for a lot of that. Um, so that was one thing that really just like stood out to me.

Some, the things that really kind of came up was, uh, something. So, you know, I, I help out with a group called life giving wounds. Uh, it's a great ministry. And, uh, we have a chapter here in Denver and we've had a number of retreats and things like that. And one of the things that we've talked about in the retreat that was very helpful for me, uh, really eye-opening was, uh, to really see this, this wound of silence, you know, and, and that, I don't know if you guys talked about that here before, but just that wound of silence being like, not being able to talk about, um, you know, the, the things that came up from, from your parents' divorce.

Um, and so for me, really how that played out in a lot of ways was I tell people it's like, no one in my family ever told me, you can't talk about the divorce. You can't talk about what you're frustrated about or what's hurting you or things like that. No one ever said that I couldn't, but on the flip side, no one ever said that I could, you know, no one ever really said, you know, Hey, it's, it's okay to be upset.

It's okay to be angry. Right. And, and, you know, growing up with my older sister, you know, a lot of times they, you know, she was the one who was, she's a couple years older than me. She struggled with a lot more things. I think she felt a lot more of the frustrations and she expects it a lot more vocally than I did.

But for me, you know, I looked at my sister and I said like, well, everyone's getting upset because of what she's doing. Well, let's just not do that. Right. So for me, I bottle up a lot of, you know, the, the frustrations and the pains and the fears and, you know, and, and I started, you know, I look at kind of like growing up, I, I would say I started taking care of myself really emotionally when I was probably about like seven, eight years old, you know, I, I just kind of realized like, yeah, you know, my dad's, you know, as much as he was there, he's not here on a day to day basis.

I can't really talk to him. My mom, like she was, you know, she's going through divorce. That's very painful. She's working multiple jobs. And, you know, there's parts where she's not present and, you know, she really can't, you know, like, you know, take on more. I don't want to be a burden to my mom. I don't wanna put more on her plate.

So I didn't tell her, you know, anything that I was struggling with and that really, you know, hindered, you know, a growing relationship with my parents. So, you know, when it came to me having problems, I, I really struggle with bringing those problems up, even just in simple ways, like on a test in school, you know, the people I would see other kids or other students go up and talk to the teacher professor and ask 'em questions about the test.

I would look at 'em like, why are you asking questions? Because like, they give you all the information you need. Like, what is, how is this not clear enough for you? Yeah. I started having to think ahead of just like, what do they want? You know, what does the teacher want? What do my parents want. You know, and I had to start thinking, you know, multiple steps ahead, instead of being carefree, you know, I, I had become responsible, you know, I had to take care of myself in a lot of ways, you know, and then it was by the time I was like 16 years old that I, I felt like I became financially independent.

Um, where I was, I had a job, I was working, taking care of myself because in the end, you know, if I needed anything from anyone emotionally, financially, it wasn't gonna be there. And so, you know, no one was gonna be there to help you. I had to do it myself. And you know, that's not to say that my family doesn't love me or care about me.

You know, there's, there's lots of things that they've done, but, you know, coming from my, again, from my parents' divorce, I didn't feel like I could really go to anybody else when I needed help. And, and so like, those were just like some of the. Kind of big wounds that really stuck with me over time. Wow. No, there's so much there.

And you're wise you have so much incentive into this. It's so clear. I, I think what you just articulated is such a common experience. It's just feeling that you're on your own feeling that you, nobody has your back. There's no safety net. Like you just gotta figure life out because no one else is gonna figure it out for you.

Like, I've heard that so often from the people that we work with through restored. And so, um, I don't think you're alone in that, but it is sad that we kind of walk through life like that. And then, you know, in some areas I'm sure that's like a good thing that independence that we have in other areas it's really hard for, you know, for any sort of thriving, such as in relationships like that really reeks havoc in relationship that fierce independence that inability to express like your needs or when you're hurt or.

Try to asking for help. And so, um, that could be pretty devastating to our relationship. And so, so anyway, there's so much there, what you said about the cycle in your family, like the cycle repeating itself, that that's another such common trend that we've seen too. That you're right. It's it is generational on so many levels.

And I think one of the things car that, um, Motivates me is that we can, yeah, like you said, we can break that cycle. Um, it's gonna take a lot of hard work and we're probably gonna struggle more than maybe hopefully our children and their children in relationships and in marriage specifically, it's unfortunate.

I, I hate that reality, but, but I think it's true. Um, but the beauty is that you can grow and heal a lot to where, um, you can have a really good and really beautiful, uh, marriage, really good and really beautiful relationship. So, yeah. Thank you. You're hearing so many good points. I'm sure we could talk forever about this.

Uh, I am, uh, curious if there's anything else you would add about how your parents broken marriage and divorce affected you in addition to what you already shared? One of the big things that, you know, I, I look back on and, and you mentioned relationships. I, I have definitely seen how this has impacted my relationships, whether it's through just regular normal friendships or even dating.

Um, one of the, one of the things that, you know, I, I I've struggled with is just. A natural insecurity with friendships. You know, one of the things that, that I've, I've really struggled with is so, because in a lot of ways I didn't get a different types of affection, you know, from my family. Right. Um, you know, from both my parents being there, they were just so busy, working hard on other things that it just, you know, I, I didn't get a lot of attention, uh, except for when I was achieving.

And, and so, you know, looking at that, it's like, what, what can I do to get that attention? And for me, it was just like, wow, you know, Excel in school. Um, you know, I was in high school, I was in the air force JRTC program. You know, I did a lot of those things where it's like, yes, I can be the one to step up to do those things.

And when I did that and you know, someone told me good job, Hey, this is awesome. You're doing it like that was, you know, special for me. And so, you know, then, you know, even coming from that, when it comes to relationships, That same mentality comes over in a, in a really small way, which is, you know, what do I need to do for my friends in order for them to love me?

Right. It becomes very, almost, I would say contractual. You know, I have to do something in order to get something right. I have to step up and, and provide, you know, some sort of reason for them to like me rather than they just like me for, for me being me. Yeah. And so, uh, you know, there's parts where it becomes exhausting because you know, like I's like every time I, I gotta go and I gotta make sure that I'm a positive person, I am, I, I don't have problems.

You know, everything is totally fine. I have it all in order when, when it's really not. Because if anyone sees the, the bad right, then they're gonna, then I'm gonna become a burden to them. And if I'm a burden to them, they won't wanna talk with me. They want, they won't wanna be my friend. And so I can, I can never be a burden.

And, and that kind of mentality was something that, you know, it's something that I've really struggled with, you know, coming from, again, I think my parents divorce, because that's the last thing that they needed. That's the last thing that I want to do to people. Because in the end, if you're too much of a burden, they leave you.

Hmm. You know, and, and that's where, you know, one of the things I remember, um, I had, uh, I was dating a gal when I was in high school and that was the first time I, I really ever vocalized it, but I was always afraid of, you know, people leaving me. And so, um, you know, in, in that relationship, I just asked her, I said, you know, when is enough gonna be enough?

You know, when, when is it gonna be too much for you? And you're gonna leave me. And, you know, granted there's a high school relationship, but at the same time, like that's been with me for a long time because, you know, in, in all my relationships, that's, that's what I'm afraid of. You know, when am I gonna be too much for somebody?

And then they're gonna say, you know what, it's, it's done. It's over. I don't wanna, I don't wanna talk to you anymore. I don't wanna see you anymore. You know, and I have had some relationships where that has been the case, unfortunately, but I also feel like that's one of those, you know, as we call a self fulfilling prophecy, Right.

I fear it so much. I fear it so much that I make it become true. And, and that's where it's, it's really impacted a lot of the relationships that I've had. Uh, and it's, it's really just been, uh, hard to really overcome that or, or believe that it can change. Um, and, and that's always, I think the struggle there.

Yeah, man, you articulate that so, well, I remember in high school as well, again, it took me a while, just like you said to articulate it, but I felt like a gift that wasn't worth keeping and, and I feared abandonment as well. And I was just, yeah, just terrified of loving relationships altogether, but when it came to yeah.

Dating and all that, I. I could do like the surface level stuff. Like I could kind of like begin a relationship or flirt with a girl or just like do that kind of surface level stuff. But once it started going deeper, I was like, oh, I don't know what I'm doing here. Like, this is so scary. I, I really feel like I'm out of my depth.

Like, I, I can't do this. So I tur certainly experience that as well. What, what, uh, were there any other kind of struggles in your relationships that you saw come out that you would largely relate back to what happened in your family? Yeah, I, I think one of the other, uh, ones that, that really stands out to me is being able to, uh, like receive one of the things that, um, that I I've really seen is that I'm so good at serving mm-hmm , I'm so good at being there for other people.

I'm like, what do you need? What do you need? What do you need? You know? And, and, oh, you need that one thing I already have that cuz I've already been thinking about, right. I'm always prepared. You know, what are those. What are those ways that I can, you know, serve someone that's, that's always my focus, but when it comes for other people and, and really letting them in, you know, there's a lot of reservations to that, you know, kind of similar to, I don't wanna be a burden, but at the same time, even just having the experience of like someone asking you a question, right.

That that was something that was like foreign, like people hearing me out people, you know, really being interested in me, you know, I, I would say it was probably not until I was probably about, you know, 18 or 19 when, when I first really experienced that. Um, I had a really good, uh, you know, friend of mine.

Uh, her name is Sarah and long story, short, beautiful story, you know, but long story short, I ended up living with this family when, uh, Gabriel and Sarah. They were, uh, some focused missionaries on my campus and they had invited me to live with them for the year cuz you know, I, I needed some help, you know, kind of finding a place to live and they offered it to me.

But you know, I, I got, I, I was moving into their house that first day and, and I came in and Sarah just started bombarding with all these questions, you know, what is your favorite? This, what do you like, how do you like this? And, and a lot of it was just like, I don't know, you know, and, and for me it was just hard to really kind of like be able to answer some of those questions because I had never had someone ask me that or, or just, I never felt comfortable answering, like, how do you feel?

You know, how are you doing, you know, what's going on in your life? Right. I gave the answers, I had some stock answers, but when it got past the stock, you know, that's where it really became a struggle. But then even asking, you know, you know, asking for other people to kind of invest into me or, or allowing people to do that.

Um, I had a relationship, uh, I was dating Miguel and, uh, one of the, you know, we're in, in the midst of a relationship and she had just asked me, she's like, you know, how, how can I love you? You know? And, and she said like, you love me incredibly well, but like, how can I do that for you? And when she asked me that question, it was hard.

I couldn't answer it. I actually went to some other friends, Gabriel, her and Sarah and I, I asked him, I said, Hey, how do I respond to her? Like, how do I, you know, how do I tell her that, you know, some, what are things that you've seen that, that I know I'm loved? How do, how can I, you know, convey that to her?

It's a, it's a strange question when someone asks that and you don't know how to answer, you know? And, and, and that's again, where I just, I look at that because I think there's a lot of ways in, in my life that I was neglected and I didn't experience love. So I don't know. Didn't always know how to receive it.

A hundred percent, man, man, I relate so much to this and I. Think part of the reason for this. And I'm curious, what you think is that we become very good at kind of reflecting our environment. Like we become very good at kind of being chameleons, like those little, little reptiles that can change the color of their skin to blend in to their environment.

We just, yeah. We become these people pleasers. We're always kind of on the lookout, like you explained so well, you like, you were kind of looking a certainly trying to see, okay, what do, what does everyone need? Like what can I do to provide that to the point where we kind of just forget ourselves? To an unhealthy extent cause hearing that some people might think, well, that's being selfless well to an extent, but it goes beyond like a healthy realm when we're just kind of almost feel completely lost.

And we don't almost don't even know our own identity or know how to articulate our needs and our wants. And so I think you articulated that so well, but I, I think for me, at least so much at the core of that, inability to, you know, articulate my needs and my wants had to do with yeah, just like always paying attention to the needs and wants of others kind of blending in and being a people pleaser, especially towards my parents, cuz you know, we become very good.

Like I've seen this skill in so many people like us. It's like, we've become very good at just like reading a situation and quickly adapting to like fit into a group of people fit into, you know, or fill the needs of whatever people were around. A lot of times being like our family and our parents. So I'm curious if you have any thoughts on that.

Oh, totally. You know, in, in my family, we, we, you know, there, there's different, sorry. There's different groups of people. Like, you know, when, when I'm with my mom, you know, a lot of the times, and, and this was stuff that was like internalized, right? Uh, a lot of times when I'm around her, it's like I can pick up on her moods and how she's doing, you know?

And I remember, you know, my sister, she was, this was around Easter time. She was, uh, visiting and, and she has a couple of kiddos and, and we were just kind of sitting around talking and stuff like that. And I, I don't remember the context, how it came up, but my sister said something that my mom used to tell us, cuz my mom working two jobs, she, you know, she would get home.

And then, you know, we would try to talk with her or ask questions or we were just playing or something like that. And my mom would just tell us, Hey, it's quiet time. You know? And so it's just like at that point we just had to be. We just had to, you know, sit there and, and not talk or not make noise or things like that.

And that's one of those things, like, I think, you know, it's not always bad to say that, but when that became the norm, right. When mom's home and she's not in a good mood, it's quiet time. Right. And it's just like, you have to be able to start to, you know, I felt like I had to start to read those things, you know, before she said them, I gotta, I gotta beat her to the punch.

If you would, you know, in my dad's household, uh, arguing is a pastime. Right. You know, it's, how can we spin the argument? How can we, you know, we will argue so much about the littlest things. Like, you know, who's the better who's America's football team. The Broncos are the Cowboys, you know, it's the Cowboys.

My, some of my family members say, it's the Broncos they're wrong. But at the same, you know, it just like will argue about anything, but it is just, sometimes it gets in those high, 10 high, you know, tension moments where you're just like, Okay. You know, are we, you know, are we joking now? Are we angry now? You know, we have to, you know, be able to read those emotions a lot more because it can kind of turn south quickly.

It can kind of blow up pretty quickly, you know? And, and, you know, in my family, we, you know, um, we don't do very well with resolutions. And so, you know, for us, it, it's all kind of like jovial. It all has to be kind of like, you know, nice because if things go wrong, then what could really happen is, you know, someone says something, they kind of go too far on a conversation.

And then all of a sudden, you know, someone blows up and they walk away. You know, and then time goes by and then they come back, someone cracks a joke and we're back to normal. It's like, but there's still that tension there because we, we didn't reconcile. We didn't resolve anything. And so, you know, in order to, you know, avoid that, we gotta avoid things three steps ahead and say, like, we don't even want to go to those types of things because we can't, cuz it's upsetting.

Right. We can't talk about the hard topics necessarily unless someone blows up unless it gets, you know, overwhelming or something like that. Mm-hmm so it it's stuff like that where I, you know, I felt like I've had to really kind of read people a lot more. I won't say I'm the best at it, but there's a lot of intuition that comes into it where you, you, you have to be kind of on it all the time.

And uh, and that's something that's just, it's exhausting. It's exhausting. Cuz I just want to go somewhere and just be normal and just like not have to worry about that stuff. Can we just have a normal conversation, you know, it's like, that's, that's what I, I hope for. And I want, and it's, it's hard to get there sometimes.

And it is exhausting. Like that was such a good point. I like almost jumped when you said I like yes, like it, it can be really exhausting. I think that's. Part of the reason why some of us kind of shy away from our families in a lot of ways. It's like, man, like, you know, when you visit mom and you visit dad, it can be exhausting.

And it can just be like, just life sucking. Not because we don't love our parents. We do, but it's just like the patterns that have been established and the way that conversations happen and just like the, the conflict there just can, can really be, yeah, just exhausting, like you said, I don't think there's a better word for it.

Um, I, I know I've felt that at times, and I do make an effort to like stay in touch with my mom and stay in touch with my dad and to, you know, visit them and spend time with them. But, uh, but I have to admit there's sometimes that like hesitance to go that route and going to what you said too, on a related note with resolutions, um, that was rare to see growing up for me as well.

And in a lot of ways it still is, but. At least in the family scenario with my parents. But one thing I wanted to say, just give people hope is that when you build your own marriage, and this is you too, man, like that something so beautiful in your own marriage is that you can learn to resolve conflict while it's a skill and you can learn to.

And I know, you know, you've definitely learned that I know you're, you know, successful businessman. So I know you don't get to where you've gotten without navigating some conflict. And so I, that's one thing that's, I think really good and hopeful that people need to hear, especially who maybe aren't married yet.

Is that. You can actually change that dynamic in your own marriage. Like you're not doomed to repeat the cycle, the patterns of dysfunction that happen in your family. And I think one of the most beautiful things in my marriage that I've experienced is that, um, you know, I guess on a day to day level is just that we can actually resolve things.

You know, we still argue like, like there's disagreements, there's conflict there's times where it's just like, it kind of sucks to be married. It's it's like hard, you know, you're, there's some suffering involved. I won't pull any punches on that. Um, but then you can resolve it and, and that can look like, you know, in an hour or two or maybe the next day, and then the relationship can actually improve after that.

Uh, which is kind of a weird thing to say, as someone who comes from a broken family, cuz it's just like that wasn't modeled for us, but I'm living that right now. And I have to say it's extremely beautiful. So a lot of hope for everyone listening. Any final thoughts on. Relationships in particular before we move on.

Yeah. And, and actually to kind of build on kind of what you were saying there, please. I actually got like two, two stories about that. So again, kind of growing up, a lot of things were not very well resolved in my family. Like even as a kid, when my parents were kind of going through the divorce and, you know, I was living in two separate homes, you know, I just like the way that , that my mom and my dad like, would, would talk with each other was, you know, a lot of arguments on the phone.

And so, you know, it'd be, you know, this is when we started having cell phones and stuff. And so they're on the cell phone, you know, you yelling at each other and I'm sitting in the, you know, passenger seat, just like just taking all the tension in. Right. But then, you know, they would hang up and then, you know, someone would, you know, get back on line.

Oh, don't you hang up on me? You know, it just, it was always that kind of like tumultuous. That was, that was the bad example I saw. But, um, it was when I was actually living with that, that family Gabriel and Sarah one time, uh, you know, I was just getting home. Cause I was in college at the time getting home from school and you know, I was kind of in the house.

You know, Gabriel and Sarah were arguing about something. I don't know what it was. I, I can't even remember the context, but I just remember like, Ooh, okay, Hey, you know, I'm, I'm just gonna not be here. Cause I don't, you know, just, this is private, but also, you know, I just, whatever, I just kind of had those same vibes as like my parents are arguing.

Right. Let's just leave the room and not deal with it. But you know, I, I left, I was downstairs. I was working on my homework and stuff and um, you know, a few minutes later Gabriel came down, uh, and he was talking with me and he said, Hey, I just wanna let you know, like, this is what we're arguing about. This is how we resolved it.

You know, this is what we're gonna, you know, gonna be doing. And, and I just remember like, when he like told me that I was just like, okay, like, uh, weirdo, thank you very much for sharing that, you know, it's like, to me, it was just so like, why are you telling me. Right. And, and for me that's been something that I've actually held onto for, you know, so, so well, because I, I feel like that was probably one of the first times that I actually saw, you know, like a just real resolution.

Wow. You know, really seeing people come together to say like, Hey, we disagree on something. We have an argument, but we're gonna come to a place where, where we both agree on it. Right. We're gonna, you know, there's apologies that may have been had, or someone compromise and saying, Hey, I'm gonna try and do this better next time.

And, and for me, that's been, you know, like a, a really good example for, you know, how I want to be able to have my relationships, you know, even, even in a married sense, um, you know, be, I want us to actually have reconciliation and that's something for me that, you know, I, I really want to model in, in my family life.

Um, you know, in the future, when I have my family. And the other thing, you know, I just wanted to mention another really cool thing that to actually give me practice for a lot of this was, um, you know, going to sacrament of reconciliation and, and for me, confession, you know, I'm a convert to the faith. Um, I converted when I was in high school and I've had some ups and downs in my faith and, you know, there' a point in, you know, in my life where, you know, even my relationship with God, I just felt like, you know, how could God love a sinner like me?

I I'm ju I just do terrible wicked things. Like how could he love a person like me? And, and it was through some great people's help to really help me see, like, you know, through this sacrament reconciliation, we truly are forgiven. You know, I can go in there and say, you know, you know, God, these are the things that I've done.

The ways that I've sin against you. I'm sorry, please. Forgive. And, and through the priest, you know, God says, I forgive you and I absolve you ever sin. You know, and for me like that, you know, I go to, I go to confession often, cuz I'm a sin, but at the same time, it really has been helpful to give me actual practice in, in a lot of ways.

And you know, there's been some times even at work where, you know, I messed up on something or I didn't do something I was supposed to and I've actually told people say, Hey, I'm sorry, I messed that up. And it's so funny. It's so funny that the number of times that I've done that it throws people off. Wow.

That's, that's not common for people to admit that they did something. Yeah. You know, and, and that's the hard part about doing it because it's like, well, if I admit that I'm wrong, then what's gonna happen. Mm-hmm . Mm. And, and thankfully again, through seeing it in a lot of really good ways through friends or family, or even through, you know, the church it's been really helpful and giving me the confidence to.

Yeah, we can actually, you know, heal from this. We can actually recover from a lot of this. Beautiful. Yeah, no, that's um, no, it's so hopeful and it's such a better alternative to kind of the norm, right. Which leads to nowhere, but more frustration, more anger, more just layered on woundedness. If that makes sense.

It's just like deeper and deeper and yeah, it is just so sad. It's one of the saddest things. I think that I see, I mean, there's so many sad things in our world, but one of them is just like seeing people who have been so wounded, so traumatized and they become so bitter and so angry and then they become more wounded and more traumatized.

And it's just like this whole, like these layers upon layers. And it's so sad to me, that, to heal from that it's possible. I really believe. But it's gonna take a lot of work. And so I think like the approach that you're advocating for here, um, allows us to kind of like go into that woundedness and resolve some of it, at least by being, you know, admitting when we're wrong, being humble, taking ownership, offering forgiveness ourselves.

I mean, it's just so freeing and, and even, you know, seeking out people we've heard. And I know, you know, the 12 step programs do this a lot, but just like the whole making amends and I've experienced so much freedom in that. Like whether it's with friends or, you know, maybe people in the past that I've harmed in some way, like going back and saying like, Hey, I'm so sorry.

Like, this was so wrong of me to do this. Like, will you forgive me for people who maybe aren't used to, like that sort. What sounds like flower, flowery language um, that can be kind of a weird thing to do, but man, it is so freeing and it sounds like you've experienced the same. And I think that is such a better path to take.

And it ends up where we're not walking around with like, yeah, all these wounds attached to us in, in the same way that maybe someone who just be allows themselves to become bitter and angry. Uh, does. Yeah. And, and I think too, what's, what's helpful is even in some of my language that I use, you know, again, when, whenever I've done something wrong, you know, I will go to someone and I say, Hey, I did this wrong.

I, I go into it. I say my apology, I'm sorry. And then I do follow it up with, will you forgive me? Beautiful. And I, I think because, because what I've seen is usually if someone just says, Hey, I'm sorry, it leaves it open ended. Right. Did the other person receive it? Did the other person. You know, do, are they gonna forgive you?

And, and you know, a lot of times you hear, oh, it's okay. It's okay. Right. If I bump someone, oh, Hey, I'm sorry. You know, I'm, I'm gonna do that. But if, if I really, you know, do something, you know, terrible, or, or I wound somebody and I ask them, you know, I'm sorry, will you forgive me? Because then it makes it very clear, like I'm asking for forgiveness.

Hmm. Please, will you forgive me? And, and it puts the ball in their court and it's tough because, you know, usually we don't like to live in that attention. So, you know, sometimes we might say, yes, I forgive you. Right. We wanna resolve the, the issue. But, but if the other person, you know, really does take that time and say, yes, I do forgive you again.

That freedom that comes from that. And I, I really do think that that brings reconciliation. Yeah. And, and you can really see, Hey, you know, there we've resolved this thing that's between us and it doesn't have to fester there. It doesn't attention. Doesn't doesn't have to be it's it's not the elephant in the room, right?

Yeah. You know, and so that's, that's where I, I feel like even some of the language for other people, this might be natural, but for us who it's not natural for, we gotta practice and we gotta practice and we gotta get better at it. And I think using our language the way that we say things, I think that's really important part of that practice.

Hundred percent and like, say it in the mirror. if you need to, like, I, yeah, I won't go into this too much, but I just remember growing up, like my family, wasn't very expressive in a lot of ways, you know, my mom was more affectionate for sure than my dad. It's probably typical. But even with our words, like, I remember even language being somewhat limited.

That might sound kind of funny, but you know, we. Say things like, oh, thank you so much. Or there wasn't really a lot of emphasis, a lot of warmth, so to speak, um, at least in the way that I talked. And eventually when I learned like, man, that's like a really good way to treat people and I wanted to be like that.

It felt so awkward. so, uh, so yeah, maybe even for anyone out there who's feeling this or experienced that like practice in the mirror, like, start with someone who, you know, maybe it's not like that big of a deal, uh, situation where you, you maybe hurt someone, but it's something you still wanna apologize for.

That might be a little awkward, might feel weird, but as you do it more, you become better at it. And I wanted to use this opportunity, Craig, if it's okay. Like parents listening. If you recognize how difficult life has been for your children because of your broken marriage and the divorce or separation or whatever situation you're in my challenge to you is to do what Craig said, like, apologize.

I could hear people kind of objecting to this. I clarify one thing you might think, well, my spouse is really the one to blame. I get that. Like, they certainly contributed to it. No doubt, like it takes two for sure. And in some cases, you know, there there's certainly cases where like one spouse has really to blame for the things that went down in the marriage.

But at the same time, we have to admit that, um, like I said, it does take two. And so even if one spouse was like absolutely wrong in what they did or what they said or whatever, we were still a part of it at some level. And so you. Take that ownership of your piece of the pie and apologize to your children.

I have to say like, your kids might not know what to say back to that. And that's okay. But that is powerful. Like, you know, if, if you experience that from a parent, then you know, how, how powerful that could be. And just the final challenge there when you do that. Ask them, you know, Hey, will you forgive me?

And if they're not ready, that's okay. Like give 'em some space, give 'em some time, maybe, you know, follow up with them in a few months or whatever timeframe is appropriate. But, but that's my challenge to parents out there is to, to say that to your kids, to apologize for everything that's come from the brokenness within your marriage.

And by the way, by doing that, you're not like condemning yourself to this being this like horrible person who harmed them. But you're really you're I think redeeming the relationship and you. Becoming an even better parent through that. And I know the thing that parents all want is like, we wanna love our children well, and, you know, be the best parent that we can be.

Like we, most of us would take a bullet for our kids. And so this is in a way taking a bullet for your kid by doing this really hard thing of bringing up a difficult topic, apologizing and asking for forgiveness. So that's my challenge to your parents out there. I wanna change direction in the conversation a little bit, Craig, um, when it comes to healing and growing, uh, what were, what were some of the things like maybe two, three things that really helped you cope and, and heal the most?

Yeah, I, I think one, uh, one thing in particular, uh, one of the obvious things that's really helped me is counseling, uh, having a good counselor, um, to really be able. Talk about the wounds that I have in a safe place. Um, you know, that, that's one of the things with, with the trauma, like a parent's divorce, what, you know, our body response to that.

So uniquely, you know, our, our brain can com compartmentalize something and then, you know, suppress that, or, you know, you know, kind of put layers upon that. So we don't think about those things, right? Because if something becomes overwhelming for us, you know, we might not, our minds not, might not know what to do with it.

So again, it compartmentalizes and suppresses, and it does a lot of goofy things. If we never go back to those things and really, you know, help shed lights into that, you know, really show like, you're, you, you are safe. You know, you are not experiencing these traumas anymore, or things like that. Like this isn't gonna work 100% of the time, but if we're able to address those things and talk about our wounds and our trauma, uh, we're able to recover from those things, uh, a bit better.

And so true. Yeah. First thing here is just counseling. Um, I, I think that's and finding a good counselor too, because, you know, and I, I don't know this for sure, but I've heard stories of, you know, some counselors they do recommend divorce and, or they do recommend other, you know, maybe not so good habits of things to do.

Um, and so, you know, having a trusted counselor, um, that you can, you know, you know, trust that's really important. So that's, that's one thing. Another thing for me, that's really been helpful for, uh, healing was when I went on a retreat last year. Uh, and it was kind of really focused on this again, it was with that group life giving.

You know, for me, I had been looking for ways to like find healing in this particular area. And you know, that first day of retreat, you know, we started off and, you know, for me, I just felt like a, a, a wind up toy or something like that was just like, so just like tense and stuff like that. And when we started the retreat, you know, there was a gal who was playing music for us, and she comes from a household of divorce as well.

And she was playing the song. It was a, it's a really fun, cool story, but, you know, again, long story short, she was playing. And, uh, the first song that she played, she actually broke down crying because of the song, the beauty of the song. And when she started crying, I know at least for myself and many other people in the room, we all just started crying with her.

And, and for me, that was really, you know, it, it was on that retreat that I first, I felt like the first time I got permission. To feel and, and really got that permission to say like, you know, someone just telling me, Hey, you know what you experienced? It's not okay. You know, and, and anyone else who goes through this, that's one of the things that I remind them, because I hear things when I've talked to other people, oh, you know, they did this, but it's okay.

You know, and, and I, I pause and I just say, it's not okay because it's not every child deserves a good home with both a mom and a dad, you know, that's what they deserve. That's what I deserve. And I didn't get that. And that's, that's a tragedy. That's sad. Yeah. We should be upset about that. And so, you know, for, for me, really just being able to acknowledge and feel my emotions, um, was, was also in just getting that permission.

That was something that was really big for me because I, I, I really came to see like, Hey, One it's not okay. And I it's okay with not being okay. You know, for, for me, you know, being in a place where it's like, you know, I got, I got problems because of this. Yeah. You know, it's, it's not like it's gonna be like this forever.

I don't want it to be like this forever. So I, I can do stuff to change this. I can change this. So again, it just, that was one of those big things that really just opened up the flood gates for me, just to like, let it go and to really start to look for healing. And then the last thing, and the last thing I'll say here was, um, having really good examples of like relationships and like even a family life, that family that, um, that I mentioned a number of times, Gabriel and Sarah, they've just been so fantastic for me.

I, I think that I look back on a lot of where I've come and a lot of growth that I've had in my life. I really look back to that year that I got a chance to live with them. because I got to see, you know, a mom and a dad raising two and three kids, you know, they have nine kids now. It's beautiful. Wow. But, but they are in that similar mission of raising their kids.

They are building a home of safety and security. You know, I, I got a year to really stew in that and really see what it's like, you know, to have a functional family. And to me, a lot of those things that happened during that year, uh, it really planted a lot of really good seeds for me to where now, as, as time went on, you know, and, and I'm actually working in this healing, I can go back to those moments.

I can go back to those seeds that were planted and I can see the fruit that it's, it's starting to bear in my life. It TA it took me a long time, but really just being in a good, safe environment was, was so healing for me. To really just to seek that freedom, to experience it and just to work in it, you know, they, they gave me a lot and I'm always thankful for them.

Beautiful, such good points. And within those points are like great advice, like great things that anyone listening right now who feels broken, especially because of the brokenness within your family, you can do all these things and, and that's beautiful. Um, so thank you for going through that. I was curious, the musician was that Emily who sang this song.

Yeah. Yeah. Beautiful. Shout out to Emily care. If you're listening right now, , uh, she, she's a beautiful woman and her and her husband are awesome. Uh, we, we're part of like a marriage group with the two of them. So, uh, yeah, they're both great. And so shout out to you guys. Thanks for mentioning that. Kirk, I'm curious with, you know, you being on this path of healing and growth and just the amount of time and effort you've put into this, um, how is your life look different now?

Like obviously it's still work in progress, of course, but I'm curious, like how, how have you changed. Yeah. Uh, I think one of the big ways that I've really changed is, and I've been, and this is the big point of change for me too in my life is to allow other people in. I, once, uh, I was the last retreat that I was on.

We had one of the speakers who was talking about the difference between transparency and vulnerability. For me, I felt like a lot of my life I've been able to be transparent. You know, I'm able to save the things that were going on, but I, I didn't allow myself to be vulnerable. I didn't allow myself to be open to emotional connection with other people.

You know, people could ask me, Hey, you know, um, you know, tell me about your parents' divorce. And I could just like ripple off all the facts and all the things that happened, but I didn't get to the point of saying like, and when this happened, this hurt me. You know, and, and having to, you know, do those kinds of things.

You know, I didn't like that when I was a kid, it stressed me out or, you know, just kind of allowing myself to, to share in the wounds that I have. You know, I kind of look at it to give an example. Uh, I always, I was related to the movie, the beauty and the beast where like the beast, you know, what does he tell bell?

You know, he says, you can go anywhere in this entire castle, except for you. Can't go to the west wind. Don't go there. And, and for me, that's, that's what I felt like when a lot of ways where it's like, people can have all parts of me, but this is the one part that you can't have. You know, whether it's relationships with friends or family, or even God, you know, you can have all this other parts of my life, but you can't have this.

Oh. And I think the biggest part that's really changed for me is I've been allowing for people to come into my life and to. Thanks essentially coming to the west wing. And, uh, and that's been one of the bigger, bigger changes, uh, for me that I've really seen in my healing, because what that has done for me is it's, it's helped me to see, I can trust other people.

Mm-hmm I can, I can rely on other people. You know, I, uh, uh, I remember one time I was just having a really rough go, I was going through a bad breakup and I called my dad on the phone and I asked him, you know, dad, could you stay the night with me at my apartment? You know, he lives about an hour away. And I was so nerve wracked to ask my dad.

And then he said, yes. And, and that was something that was so healing for me to really, you know, see, like I asked my dad for something that I needed. And he came and we spent the whole night talking, we watched movies, we got wings and all that kind of stuff, you know? Nice. And, and it wasn't, it wasn't like this super huge emotional moment in my life, but at the same time, like it was, yeah.

You know, I needed my dad. He was like, and so, you know, just over my course of my healing, I've just been able to see, I can open up to people and sometimes they'll let me down, but they also might not. And, and I give people the chance giving people the chance to rise to the occasion has been something that's been hard.

And, and I still struggle with, but at the same time, I've been able to kind of start to rewrite that because there's been a lot of cases where they have done it for me. So good, man. You're, you're inspiring to me, man. Uh, you should see all the notes I'm taking. It's great. This is great stuff. This is really good.

Flipping gears a little bit. Uh, do you hate your parents? No, okay. I always ask that and it always got to similar response. It's like, no, no, we don't hate our parents. We, we love our parents, but we can still talk about this stuff that we've been through with the hope of ultimately what I want is a better relationship with my mom and my dad.

Uh, not, not, not a worse one. And so if they were listening right now, uh, what would you want them to know? Yeah, I, I think with my dad, uh, over the past couple years, I've actually grown a lot closer with my dad, uh, and, and really been able to talk a lot about these things that I've experienced and I've felt.

Uh, and so for my dad, I would just say, you know, thank you for, uh, being heroic in, in being there for me being present. Uh, my dad, uh, I remember years ago, I was talking to my dad around right before father's day and I was trying to understand his story and I just, I was learning about him and it hit me.

When his mom and dad, my grandparents, when they divorced his dad abandoned the family. And so my dad has never had an example, you know, of a strong father figure in his life. We have my step grandfather, his name's pops, you know, we love him and he's done so many great things for our family, but my dad didn't always have that, you know, that father figure in his life.

Mm. And, you know, to see my dad do the exact opposite of what his father did, even though my parents divorced, my dad stood around, stayed around. And so for me, I just, I just say, thank you to him. Um, thank you for listening to me and really just helping me, uh, on my journey of healing. Um, so for my dad, thank you, uh, for my mom, uh, it's, it's a little tougher because, uh, I haven't spoke to my mom in over a year.

And that was actually a choice that I had made, you know, coming off of when I went on a retreat, uh, you know, the lifeing ones retreat when I was on it myself, you know, I came back from a retreat and, um, I, you know, I asked for some space for my mom because there's, I, I started to realize that there was a lot of anger that I have towards my mom.

Um, and there's a lot of healing that I need to go through with that relationship. And, and for me, I'm not. So for my mom, I would say like, I'm not taking this time to hurt you to, to punish you, but I'm just trying to take this time right now to heal. So that way I can come back and, and try and have a relationship, uh, with you.

I I'm, I'm trying, I'm working hard on it and, you know, I, I, yeah, so that's one of the things that, um, yeah, it's, it's tough, uh, tough to have. Cause like I've never really had a relationship with my mom. So, you know, if, if I can heal that. Come back and find a relationship that we can have. It's probably not gonna look the same as it used to be sure, but, but if I, if I could make it to something that I, I want it to be, that's what I'm trying for.

That makes so much sense. And, um, there's hope, man. I I've been through that, um, with my dad on occasion where, you know, I think I won a year, year and a half as well without talking to him just cuz yeah, I just didn't like the way that he was acting, didn't agree with the things he was doing and the way he was treating people.

And so, um, I explained it to him like, Hey, not, not gonna be talking to you because these things and I would, I ultimately want a relationship with you. And so I told him, you know, as soon as I see some sort of change or transformation, then uh, I wanna resume this and we did. And so, uh, you know, I wish the same for you and I hope it can improve and get better.

Um, but uh, yeah, there's nothing wrong to anyone listening too. There's nothing wrong with, uh, taking some space for yourself. Um, yeah, that can be, it might seem like a selfish thing, but it can actually be an extremely selfless thing. Um, or it can be something that is necessary to put a boundary in place, um, in order to help another person learn how to treat you well and learn how to love you.

Well, because if we put up with bad behavior, we're somewhat to blame, you know? And so there can be a lot of good. What I've learned is there, there can be a lot of good in setting those boundaries and kind of having that tough love, um, with the long view in mind that you ultimately hopefully can have that good relationship, but it takes work.

And so I, uh, wish you guys the best and count of my prayers view. Of course, if people wanna connect with you, get your advice, what's the best way for them to do. I have an Instagram account. Uh, I've been off it a little bit here, you know, over Len and Easter time. Um, but I do have my Instagram account. Um, it's, it's not a, a clever handle or anything it's, uh, Craiger or Craiger Soto.

So Craig, ER, S OTO, um, you can reach, reach me there. Um, reach out to me, feel free to message or follow and all that kind of. Um, uh, I do also have a, uh, Twitter account. Uh, it mostly is a live tweeting of stranger things season four. So just be ready for that. No spoilers, but, uh, again, you can, uh, reach out to me there, uh, as well.

Awesome. Thanks so much, man. I really appreciate your time. You're wisdom. Um, you've learned so much and you're just a wealth of, uh, knowledge information. Thanks for everything that you're doing to help people like us who come from broken families like it does. It makes a huge difference. I wanna give you the last word and, uh, just wondering, like what words of encouragement, uh, advice would you give to someone who right now is listening?

They feel broken. They feel stuck in life because of everything that's happened within their family, their parents' marriage falling apart. Um, what advice, what encouragement would you give to them? Yeah, I, I think the advice I'd give is, you know, even for the things that really, you know, help me it's, it's okay to not be okay.

Uh it's okay. To feel like everything's overwhelming. Because in a lot of ways, it is. I, I would also say that your life doesn't have to be like this and that you do have the opportunity to change it. It takes a lot of hard work, uh, and it's not gonna happen overnight. Um, you know, for me, I, I know my journey's gonna be something that's gonna probably, you know, go over a lifetime for me.

At the same time, there, there is hope for change. We have our own agency and, and we can, can make our lives the way that we envision it. Um, there's a lot of ways, uh, that I wasn't taught how to do things. Well, I don't know how to go on vacation. So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna take vacations and I'm gonna try and figure it out and be bad at it.

You know, it's, it's okay to be bad at something and, and just try and do better every single time we can make incremental changes and, and we can grow. And then the last thing, uh, I'll say, just for encouragement, I'm sure that there's, there's things that have happened in your life, where, you know, friends or even family, your parents have let you down.

Don't let that be the only control in your life. If, if you open yourself up and it doesn't go the way that you wanted to, and there's a lot of pain in her that comes from it. , that's not how everyone's gonna be. That's not how, you know, every situation's gonna be, it's not final. It's not universal. You are not broken.

You are not dysfunctional. You are not the worst. You are loved. You are deserving of love and, and you deserve the world because you're here. And, you know, I, I speak on this sense from, from the God side of things. God loves you. And he wants to give the world to you. He wants to give all of himself to you.

And, uh, sometimes we just gotta get out of his way and receive the love. He's given us

to any of you parents listening. I wanna reiterate my challenge to apologize to your children and a few tips on how to do this. If you're not ready to do it face to face, then write them a letter or send them an email. A letter is best, but an email works too. Don't expect an immediate response. Give them time to kind of chew on it to process it.

They're probably gonna be pretty shocked that you're even apologizing because this is just not the. Try not to explain a ton what happened or make any excuses or Casy blame. Like if you need to give some important details, that's fine, but you're not here to make an argument. This is not a court case.

You're here to apologize. And so instead focus on your children's experience of everything that's happened, the pain and the problems, it caused them. And that's it and apologize for whatever role you played in causing that. And I promise you in the end, it's gonna help you heal and improve your relationship with your child or with your children.

Now, if you're someone who comes from a broken family and you'd like to share your story with us, we'd love to hear it. There's three easy steps to share your story. But before I share those, some of the benefits of sharing your story are these. Reflecting on your story is actually healing on a neurobiologic level, makes your brain healthier.

Writing your story is also healing. There's been studies that have shown that people who write about emotionally significant events in their lives are less depressed. They're less anxious, they're healthier, and they're happier sharing your story with someone else too. Like us is actually additionally healing on a neurobiological level.

It makes your brain healthier and also it gives guidance. Your story gives guidance and hope to people who are struggling. So if you wanna share your story, here's how you do it. Just go to restored ministry.com/story again, restored ministry ministry, singular.com/story. And the form is gonna guide you in telling a short version of your story.

And then we'll take that and turn it into an anonymous blog article. So go ahead and share your story now@restorministry.com slash story or click on the link in the show notes. The resources mentioned during the show notes@restorministry.com slash 70. Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful for you, feel free to subscribe.

And if you know someone who's struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them, always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#073: Prepare for Your Marriage, Not Just Your Wedding | Fr. Daniel Ciucci & Deacon Colin Coleman

Whether you’re single, dating, or engaged, your wedding day will be a beautiful experience. However, planning it is very consuming. As a result, it’s easy to prepare more for the wedding day than for a lifetime of marriage. 

Marriage preparation is meant to refocus you and prepare you not only for your wedding day, but for your marriage. In this episode, we discuss marriage prep and:

• The main cause of dysfunction and divorce, according to my guests

• What can be done to better help people from broken families to build great marriages

• A sneaky thing that can sabotage anyone’s marriage

• An assessment to help you understand the reality of your relationship heading toward marriage

• Advice and encouragement for leaders of marriage prep

If you hope to be married one day or you lead marriage prep, this episode is for you. 

Get the Marriage Guide and Talk

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Father Daniel Ciucci

  • Email: fatherdaniel@mpbdenver.org

  • Homily Links

    • Homily on Divorce & Annulments

    • Success is Fidelity

    • Fullness of Years

    • Correct Your Spouse

    • Invite Jesus to Your Wedding

• Deacon Coleman

  • Email: deacon.coleman@archden.org

  • Office Number: 303-715-3259

• Booklet: Pure Intimacy by Jason Evert

• Talk: Green Sex by Jason Evert

• The Power of Prayer by Fr. Mike Schmitz

• Tips for Praying by Fr. Mike Schmitz

• Prayer For Beginners by Peter Kreeft

• Time for God by Fr. Jacques Philippe

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you’ll receive our free guide, 7 Tips to Build a Thriving and Divorce-Proof Marriage!

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Whether you're single dating or engaged, your wedding day is such a beautiful and special day. I know mine was, it was such a fun day where we had almost everyone that we love in the same place at the same time. There's probably never a time in my life where that will happen. Again. However, planning that day can be extremely time consuming, really stressful and definitely expensive.

And in many ways it can take over your life. It certainly felt that way for my wife, bridged and me, and because wedding planning is so consuming, we often prepare more for the wedding day than we do for a lifetime of a marriage, which is obviously backwards, but that's where marriage preparation comes in.

Marriage prep or premarital counseling is meant to refocus. You. On the marriage, which is naturally more important than the celebration. And so in this episode, we discuss what marriage prep looks like and why it's important. We share the main cause of dysfunction and divorce. According to my guests, we hit on what can be done to better help people who come from broken families to build great marriages where they're not just surviving and staying together, but actually thriving.

We expose a sneaky thing that can really sabotage anyone's marriage. We talk about an assessment to help you understand the reality of your relationship heading toward marriage. And finally, my guests offer advice and encouragement for leaders of marriage prep programs. So if you hope to be married one day, or maybe you lead marriage prep, this episode is for you.

Keep listening.

Welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 70. Today I have two guests on the show. The first one is father Daniel CCI.

He probably has the shortest bio I've ever seen, which certainly does not sum him up as a person. But here it is, father Daniel has been a Catholic priest for five years and he serves as pastor of most precious blood parish in Denver, Colorado. My other guess is deacon Collin Coleman. He was baptized a Catholic, but he wasn't raised as a Catholic.

And he first encountered the faith in our Lord in a real way at age 21, just before he married his wife, Maria, after getting married, deacon Coleman helped found the St Vin's youth movement in New Zealand. He's a Kiwi in his accent is awesome. I'm excited for you to experience that. And then he was asked by the Bishop to join the diocese and youth team as director a position he held for two years.

Desiring to deepen his faith in his relationship with God deacon Coleman and his wife joined the community of the be attitudes in 1993, joining in a be attitude house in France, that was only a few miles away from Lord's a popular pilgrimage center. They were then asked to help found the be attitude house in Christ church, New Zealand, where they stayed for nine years.

They were then led to the United States to assist in the mission in Denver, Colorado, where he serves the parish as a deacon at St. Catherine of Sienna. On behalf of the archdiocese deacon Coleman teaches and provides formation for engaged couples, preparing for marriage as part of his responsibilities with the B attitude community.

He assists in the formation of new members in ongoing formation of existing members. Deacon Coleman was ordained at deacon in 2011 and has been married to Maria for the past 33 years. And they've been blessed with seven children, four daughters, two sons, and one son waiting for them in heaven. He's currently working at the archdiocese in marriage and family life office as the marriage and NFP specialist.

Now, if it wasn't obvious up to now, uh, I wanna give a little disclaimer, we're talking to a Catholic priest and a Catholic deacon. Now we try hard to make this podcast for anyone, regardless of their religious beliefs. That being said, we let our guests share their beliefs. And so today you're gonna again hear it from a Catholic priest and a Catholic DEA and who naturally share their worldview.

Now, if you're not Catholic or perhaps you're not even Christian or you don't believe in God, I'm so glad you're here. And my challenge to you is this, listen with an open mind. I guarantee that you'll benefit from this episode. Even if you take all the God parts out, and if you disagree with something that we say in this episode, there's nothing wrong with that.

We offer some resources at the end to learn more about what we're discussing, because so often when we disagree with things or with people that we don't really understand, we don't really look into both sides of the argument. I think we owe it to ourselves and to the people on the other side of the table to really look into both sides of an issue.

Now, with that said, I did wanna mention that there's two types of deacons in the Catholic church. I didn't want you to be confused to this episode. There are permanent deacons and transitional deacons, transitional deacons are not married because they're on the way to become priests. And so unless they're a part of a different writer sect that allows married priests, they aren't gonna get married.

Permanent deacons can be married because they're not on the way to become priests. And so the deacon in this interview is a permanent deacon. So he'll be talking about his wife. I just didn't want you to be confused. So with all that taken care of, here's my conversation with father Daniel and deacon Coleman,

father, and deacon. Thank you so much for being here.

I'm

happy. Thanks for the invite.

Yeah. Good to be with you. Well, I guess father,

thank you for letting us come to your house and oh, you're record here. This is great. I wanna jump in, uh, father, if you would. Uh, what do we mean when we say marriage prep for anyone who maybe doesn't really know

what we're talking about.

Beautiful. Um, so there's actually a lot of underlying presuppositions for why do we need to prepare ourselves for the sacrament of holy matrimony, right. With baptism, right? The, uh, parents and godparents get prepped, but the kid doesn't get prepped. Right. Thank goodness. That would be hard. Yeah. Um, so then why does the couple need to be prepped?

They're the ministers of the sacrament of holy Mamo. And so the husband and wife to be the bride and groom, they're the ones who, uh, who contract marriage, legally speaking. Mm-hmm . And so it's their own will their own consent. And so when we say marriage prep, I begin marriage prep by actually asking them, can you tell me what an annulment is?

Mm interesting. And which is, some people think is a really depressing way to start, but , I, I totally redeem it. You know, we say an annulment is a declaration. Well, first of all, they say, they like to say Catholic divorce. Like this is a, a special kind of marriage that like, you know, if you pay enough money, you can get it canceled so you can get remarried.

So, you know, whatever. And it's like, Nope does not work that way. Yeah, right. An annulment is a declaration that one, or both of the parties had a defect in their will. Mm-hmm in terms of their expectations of, into solu ability. The fact that marriage, uh, lasts till death to we part. exclusivity. I give myself to you and to only you, a life of sacrifice, a life of children are you open, uh, to the children that God gives you.

And then within each of those, that will needs to be fostered mm-hmm , that's what marriage prep is, is strengthening the will that they bring to the altar. Anyone can say yes on the day of their wedding. Mm-hmm anyone can even mean yes, on the day of their wedding, but everyone brings both strengths and weaknesses or defects of will to the altar as well.

Mm-hmm . And so marriage prep is trying to strengthen those, define them, strengthen the defects of will to make the couple annulment proof. That's what I also tell them. And they're sometimes they're like, whoa, that's intense. And I was like, but that's great. Cuz you love each other. Yeah. I didn't sign up for this.

Does that make sense? Yeah. No, absolutely. Roundabout way of saying, when we say marriage prep, we're strengthening the will the consent to be able to re more fruitfully, receive the blessing of God through the mediation of the church, but they themselves, the bride and the groom are the SAC. The ministers of the sacrament of holy matrimony makes so

much

sense and we prepare for so many things in life and it makes sense that marriage would need to be one of 'em.

And it's really sad that we don't prepare more. I mean, you were in seminary for years preparing to become a priest and deacon, you went through your own training as well, but it seems like there's just this mad rush to the finish line for a lot of married couple or engaged couples, I should say. Um, and sadly the marriage might suffer because we're so focused on the wedding.

We're just so focused on our future life together, not the actual sacrament. anything you would add about, um, you know, what marriage prep is and why it's important.

Sure. In that, in that way, you know, that idea of strengthening the Willers is allowing the couple also to say yes, freely in that way so that they know that when I say yes, uh, in, in freedom that I am saying yes, until death do we part mm-hmm and so it's preparing them to, as they enter into, um, give themselves to each other, through their vows that they're, um, saying yes to all of these things, good times in bad for better, or for worse sickness and health.

Um, is those moments where, yeah, because of the daily situation, we will be challenged. But my goal is to bring, as we would say through the church, bring my, my spouse to heaven that knowing that we are die, going to die, that, that this idea of being able to live with this person and, um, And be a source of really life in the community and say, say, um, say yes, in a, in a free mm-hmm so that, and our will needs to be strengthened in that.

And it's, it's, it's so important. And so being able to, um, prepare them for that moment, which is also difficult as well, as you were saying, they're caught up with so many organizational details. Yep. Um, and the Instagram culture that they're caught up with is, uh, they often forget that idea of what my yes is actually saying.

And so, and it's a real gift that the church is offering this in, in a way that it does give the, the opportunity for couples to reflect mm-hmm they have the time to actually say, well, what am I saying yes to, and am I doing it freely?

Yeah, no, it's so good. It's, it's so necessary. And going back to that point of like, why it's important.

I, I don't remember the statistics, perhaps you two might, but those couples who do go through any sort of marriage prep, premarital counseling, there are odds of having a successful marriage. Uh, is much higher or at least from what I've heard, do you guys recall the statistics? If, if not that's okay. So

each demographic is depends on the data that you see, right?

Oh, interesting. Yep. Um, but the, the Catholic divorce rate is pretty much the same as the, as the state mm-hmm , but we, so that go also goes back to do I have the will to carry out what I'm trying to live? I have the experience cuz I lead lead some, um, couples through marriage preparation and about three to five years later, they'll give me a call.

Not everyone. Thanks Peter. God. Yeah. But you know, um, one or two out of the hundreds that I deal with and I ask my first question and I ask them, is, were you able to implement some of the stuff that we went through in marriage prep and their answer is always no. Mm they, and so the idea of saying, yes, am I strengthening my will?

Am I in intentional in living out that, um, moment? Cause our will, if it's not, um, strengthened through practice is. Fail. Yeah. And so that idea of when we talk about divorce or marriages being successful, um, is, is encouraging couples to be intentional living out their vows as well.

Mm-hmm okay. No, that makes sense.

I went to Franciscan university and there's kind of this myth going around that we have like a higher divorce rate than maybe with the rest of society. I haven't been able to find any data on that. So it's just a myth when it comes to Francisco university alumni. But, um, it is true that there's still a lot of couples.

I know more than a handful at this point who they both went to this good Catholic university and now they're getting divorced and it's so sad to see that. And I'm sure you guys know people

like that as well. So yeah, I think there's a supposition that if you pray X amount of rosaries or go to at least two daily masses a week, therefore your marriage is guaranteed protected.

Yeah. You're like, uh, that's not, that's not how it works. Well, let's

say there for a second. What's the mismatch. You know, obviously there's a lot of brokenness. I think people bring into marriage and that certainly plays a big role in the issues that they face and whether or not it succeeds or not, they stay together.

They have, you know, hopefully a happy marriage, but yeah. What have you guys seen in marriages that they do maybe have some good formation. They do have this good background, but then somehow they end up in a position that they never thought they would be where they're getting divorced or things are just

really dysfunctional.

I think residually part of the culture, right? Go back to our grandparents. They came from a generation where, you know, he came back from world war II, saw some gal in, in the living room at his party and said, I'm gonna marry her. Yeah. And then they did. And then they got married three months later, they had maybe one to two meetings with the priest.

That was what marriage prep. But that came from a culture where you did what you said you were gonna do. You had a domestic life within the home. You came back, you know, mom and dad dwell together where things perfect. No, humanity's humanity. Mm-hmm but I think residually in the culture. The home life was so important.

There was such a gravitational pull, the ability to, um, you couldn't escape. Mm. You couldn't run to your phone. You couldn't stream media and whatever, and just run elsewhere. And so even just the regular domestic life, the, the, the San sanctifying, the home by vacuuming, sanctifying the home by paintings, the, the walls, right.

The regular daily life of work that even nowadays we hire that out. We have other people do. Yeah. Because we're so stressed. Yeah. We're so burdened. We're so whatever. And then I think couples feel really nowadays feel really difficult, bringing their hurt to each other. So then the home's no longer, even this place of communion that may have happened back then as well.

Right. In those days, you also kind of had the kind of grin and Barrett culture. Mm-hmm . And so that's not to say every. Everyone who was married before 1955 had an automatically sanctified marriage, right? No. Yeah, but again, divorce kind of public. The stigma of divorce is no longer, but I think that frees couples up to say, we need help.

Mm-hmm uh, and to go kind of, yeah. Seek the help that they need. Anyways. I don't what do you

have to do? Yeah. And just to segue onto that, I think that's that divorce is an option. Right. That idea of simply having it on the table is something, um, one of those, what I try and do anyway, is is that when we speak about vulnerability, that it's a very difficult thing for couples to accept.

And, um, you know, we, we dwell a bit, um, you know, and there's that passage in the Bible where, um, they were both naked yet. They had no shame mm-hmm we? Yeah, they were naked, but there was so much more to that, that they were totally exposed to one another. Mm. Right. They were able to be in their humanity before the other person without shame.

Yeah. Oh yeah. And as couples, they it's, it is very, and that's a lifelong process as well, to be able to continue to open, open up your heart to someone and, and leave it exposed. Mm-hmm, , it's scary. Right. It's, it's terrifying for, for some people, especially if they've lived through trauma and this, I, the other idea that, um, we try and reinforce as well is even though these couples yeah.

There, we have a, where we, we live a pious life. Being a gift to the other person, right? Are, are we really allowing ourselves to be that gift? Or are, are we expecting too much from the other person and not really voicing it? Are we actually able to bring, you know, as Christians, as Catholics, the person of Jesus Christ into the midst, rather than having that external faith of, well, I went to mass, but how did we seek communion as a couple mm-hmm and those times where I think there's a lot of neglect and, um, who they are as a couple.

And I think with the culture as it is today, um, there's that trap of becoming very functional as a couple. Mm-hmm like, we'll, we'll get we'll, we'll move in. Denver's expensive. Right. So we gotta live together. Yeah. Right. And, um, who needs a two bedroom when we can have a one bedroom and so, right. So we become sexually active and then, you know, I think we should make more of a commitment.

We should get a dog.

As a sign of undying love for each other. Yes. Right?

Yeah. But this is, you know, but what do you do for a dog? You look after it and it's very functional. Yeah. Yeah. Right. There's no, um, giving of yourself in that sense. Well, the dog loves me. Right. And it loves unconditionally will you feed you?

Don't feed that dog for three days and tell me how much that dog loves you. Yeah. Right. Um, and so these kind of things, um, where, you know, this natural, you know, um, when we're talking about the 1950s, there, there was this expectation of bringing children into the family. And so you, then you see your love yeah.

Manifested through, through, through that child. And so it's, you can't be manifested through a dog and I like dogs by the way. Yeah, me too. Yeah. But, um, you can't see it truly manifested and I think that's where couples, especially faith, we, and I'm doing ear quotes, faithful couples. Yeah. There's not that often, and it's not a reason, but it's one of the factors that I think there's no, there's not a vulnerability, but they, and so there's not that emotional connection.

There's more of a functional relationship. And so I always say people are generally annoying. Right. And so if you're living one, living with one , I was like,

thank you. even celebrates recognize that.

Yeah. but if you're living with someone by goodness, and if it's a function and if it's a functioning, functional relationship, those, uh, annoyances are just gonna become manifested.

And then yeah. Often the, the phrases said, I don't love you anymore.

Right? Yeah. Or you're not the person I fell in love with. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which is more of a statement of my personal preference. Yeah. Than of you changed somehow. You're not

doing your job properly in the relationship.

Yeah. Mm-hmm and it's so funny that you brought up, um, you know, naked, without shame.

So many of these couples come to us already, you know, sexually active, whatever they met on Tinder, you know, um, whatever it. And they'll they'll come already have having tasted the fruits of those intimacies. Yeah. But then you ask them to pray together and it's so awkward. Yeah. Mm they're like, oh, I, I, they're afraid of being judged and you're like, but this is the person with whom you feel, you feel comfortable, you know, being naked literally.

Yeah. But it's not just physical nakedness. It's the, like, what are the other wounds who, you know, who's the embarrassing sixth grade version of me that you don't yet know about or, or my dysfunctional family behind me. Uh, and, and, and so they can kind of share a certain part of their life, but still kind of withhold the vulnerability, emotional, spiritual, whatever it may be.

Uh, and then that's, that's super preventative from whole, from communion with one another mm-hmm . And then to go back to the fifties, uh, round out this thought, I think you, you, in those days, a man and a woman went from a family and then formed a family. Mm. and that's the notion that we still have in the ceremony of the father giving away his daughter, that she's literally handed over as a prized jewel as a, uh, you know, a, a pinnacle of God's creation.

But so often we have either broken families like weddings. I always have to ask, like, what are the, what are the family dynamics when everybody shows up to this wedding, because rarely is it a bride and a groom coming from an intact family. And they seek to form that intact family. But again, in certain marriage prep, we're trying to strengthen the will so that they can will by God's grace to live that out in the daily, boring Tuesday mornings of, of marriage, not just Saturday nights and Friday nights, when, when everything's awesome.

Yeah, so good.

And you know, some, the majority of our audience comes from broken families. So I'm glad you're bringing that up. Thinking what you were saying before about kind of running the home or the family as like a business. Mm. I know it's honestly a tendency in me and I think in American culture, especially like type a people, people like me, um, yeah, that functional can be very tempting, especially cuz I like run, you know, a company.

Yeah. And then I run this nonprofit as well. So it's like, well, marriage is different. And our marriage counselor would like try to remind me of that. Like again and again, we've gone to marriage counseling. It's like this isn't a business. This isn't gonna be efficient. So I think it's an important reminder to, to hear, I did wanna go into, I know each of you have, um, your own form of marriage prep, so I'd love to learn kind of what that looks like.

Like if, if a couple listening right now were to go through it, what would they do? Uh, what, what's the agenda like? And so on

father,

you wanna start. So there's gonna be a lot of common eye cuz we both do ministry within the archdiocese of Denver and there's kind of prerequisite mm-hmm um, Requirements for that.

Um, so one would be the focus inventory, which a lot of couples are like, how did we do on the test? They want to know like X percentage. It is not a team. Yeah. Not a test. It's not, it's not gonna give you red light green light. Are you good to go or not? Yeah. Um, I kind of saw it like that, but I had to fight against that too.

I was like, wait, it's not a test. It's just like an indicator. And it's so funny cuz we even have instructions from that company to not give them the full results for a couple reasons one. Right, right. They don't want, you don't want them to quantify the relationship. Yeah. Like we're only, uh, 86% good on finances, but 62% on uh, extended family issues or whatever it is.

Yeah. It just kind of, it's an inventory that says, Hey, this couple based on their responses has less agreement around the area of finances, friends, hobbies, bonding, activities, whatever it is. and then the relationship comes to life. That's why I, as a celibate priest, I send them, uh, I, I go through their focus inventory once with them.

Mm-hmm and then I send them to another couple. I always say, I'm a really good mechanic. I just don't drive the car. Mm-hmm right. And so I don't have the driving skills, but I can fix a lot of things. I've seen a lot of things in the confessional. I've seen a lot of things in my office. I've heard a lot of things at 1130 at night when crap's going down and they call me, right?

Yeah. So I send them to couples who are living the life of holy matrimony, cuz I can provide a lot of the theology and the theory. But they also need that on the ground. So focus would be one thing. Natural family planning would be another thing. Um, again, I, uh, I send, we send that out elsewhere specialists.

Mm-hmm um, cuz there's a lot of biological needs now. Mm-hmm mm-hmm um, with, with that, would you explain FP for people who don't know? Yeah. Natural family planning. So even if, uh, for those who are non-religious, it's such an empowering tool for women, especially that way they don't have to be kind of the gatekeepers in the relationship or depend on, you know, chemicals or plastic to kind of in regards to contraception in regards to contraception.

Yeah. Yeah. Um, they don't have to depend on that to just kind of control the aspects of their life again, when they, when a couple says, I give myself to you fruit fully faithfully fruitfully forever. Part of that is I give you the gift of my ability to reproduce mm-hmm I give you my, my biological fity.

Mm, right. Mm-hmm . And so the church has, uh, a teaching around contraception that to withhold a portion of yourself. Is actually gonna spiritually sterilize the relationship as well. Plus the other way I like to explain it is, um, you know, if, if little Johnny gets to eat an Oreo, whenever he wants, even if he can metabolize that Oreo mm-hmm, , it's gonna change his character, even if it doesn't change his weight.

Hmm. And so I think so many, especially guys come into marriage thinking, oh boy, I get to be intimate as often as I want. Right. There's actually a question on the focus inventory that says, it's question number 10. I love it. Uh, it's my ex I, I expect that our, our life of intimacy will be affected by changes in mood and da, da, da, and like three other circumstances.

And without fail women always say yes, and men always say, no, , that's nice. And you're like, welcome to male and female I love it. So we have, we have those ingredients and then there's a theological retreat, uh, over the course of the pandemic. I'm not, I don't love online marriage prep. Mm-hmm cause I say your marriage doesn't happen online.

Why should your marriage prep happen online? And there are fair enough. Of course there's circumstances, uh, couples in the military, first responders, things like that, where, where their schedule is super taxing mm-hmm mm-hmm um, but even we have workarounds for that. So every now and again, online, the theological portion of marriage prep is, is fine.

I personally meet with them about five times mm-hmm um, and then we try to send them to an in-person marriage prep retreat mm-hmm which retreat experience that centralizes on prayer that centralizes on theology of the body, but in just in my meetings with them, I always start out with, um, great. Tell me about your last big fight.

Your LBF. And you get the couples that, you know, they don't mind throwing spaghetti against the wall, to the ones that are very cute. And they're like, oh father, we never fight we, we love each other. yeah. And I'm like, great. Uh when's the last time your blood pressure was raised. right. Like we can redefine the terms here.

Yeah. But often it's the ones that quote unquote don't fight, uh, that have kind of a more sinister difficulty, cuz it looks better on paper. And sometimes if you're always walking on eggshells or you come from a place where there's a lack of freedom to be expressive, mm-hmm, , there's a lack of freedom to, um, to bring up hard things conflict, right?

Not only are people are annoying, but, but my future spouse has a darkened intellect. A weakened will. And on top of those things is gonna from time to time be selfish and then I'm going to have to suffer from that. And so do I have the skills? The reason I ask about last big fight is I don't care about the fight.

I care about teasing out. What's important because at the center of a fight is what do I love? Mm what's important to me. Yeah. And does my, does my future spouse recognize that? Am I known by him or her? And then do we have the skills to communicate that if not, then let's go through it. And if we do, do we also have the skills to forgive because there is no fight that can't strengthen the relationship.

If there's the will to do it. Mm-hmm , if there's the will to strengthen that relationship, mm-hmm, just like, how do you build muscles? You break muscle fibers. Mm-hmm by lifting heavy weights and in the breaking and the repairing with good nourishment with good sleep, with good everything else, it actually comes back stronger.

And so fights are absolutely no problem. So I start out with that and then other, uh, modules, it just depends. I have them make a genogram. Yeah, I love this part of your, which is, uh, so they come and, and it's essentially a really complicated family tree that also shows kind of emotional lines and things like that.

Who, who doesn't talk to who or who loves who, or, or whatever, mm-hmm how much. And so I say, how much divorce is going on in this? How much alcoholism, how much, um, what's, what's the economic outlook on each of these families? Because again, you're not just marrying your fiance. You're getting the whole family too marrying the family.

And this whole family was part of their marriage prep long before they showed up in father's office. Mm-hmm . Right. That's what we call the remote marriage, prep, deacon. And, and I are the proximate marriage prep. Mm-hmm, where the, like, kind of the last, the last finishers with that. And so their concept of what marriage is of what marriage looks like of how to live it on a daily basis.

Mm-hmm right. May look very different than what gets preached to the pulpit or even what they hear within our office. Yeah. We talk about the role of sexual pleasure and marriage, which is kind of awkward in my first two or three couples. but it's like, heck if I, uh, I it's no longer awkward for me, but it's one of those, like if I get all like claiming and weird, then I don't, I I'm afraid that I, I would give the impression that, you know, sex is actually like gross, sturdy and disgusting, and God only puts up with it for more babies.

Right. Right. Which is so the opposite of theology of the body. Mm-hmm yeah. It's a botanical point of view. Exactly. And so, especially even couples that have already been engaging with each other sexually. , it's a really beautiful thing for them to experience validation from the church. Not only in their desires, even if they don't have the proper forum for it yet, but also to say, this is where this, this gift from God belongs mm-hmm and this is how, how you can put it to use in a way that's spiritually fruitful.

Mm-hmm go back to NFP, go back to Johnny. Johnny doesn't most parents don't let Johnny eat an Oreo whenever he darn well pleases mm-hmm . And so the beauty of living natural family planning is there are times to come together to be intimate. There are times to not, which then makes the couple yearn for each other and has the positive result of teaching men, especially to express physical non-sexual affirmation towards their, their wives.

Right. Mm-hmm . And so there's just so much genius in the life of the church that we're seeking to, um, add there. So yeah,

no, I agree. This is a whole idea of, um, Especially when they come to us, myself and father they're, they're already been formed in a way of, of how to think. And so this, this idea of the church's desire, when we speak about remote preparation, that's preparing the couple from their family and, and them seeing their family life flourish in marriage, but more than often, that's not the case.

And, and, you know, um, this, the horrible statistics of, of divorce, which is one and two. So even the idea of what love is. Yeah. Right. And then when we speak about love, the church has a beautiful, um, grace of that, especially, you know, if we really wanna even bring in the person of Jesus Christ, that all idea of self-sacrifice for, um, his church.

And so for, for, for myself, it's, it's similar with father, of course we have, you know, a certain criteria that we have to follow. Um, but for me, I really wanna establish a relationship with him as well. Mm-hmm to know. Because they do come in thinking, well, I've got a, and the first, often our first meeting is there is some paperwork involved, so it's a, and um, and then the focus, which literally looks like a test.

Yeah. Um, uh, and even though you say it many, many times, they'll come back and say, you know, did I pass? Or how was the test? Did I, but this is, I love it. This is a beautiful thing because they do want to quantify it. Yeah. But the, the idea is cuz they haven't nine times outta 10. They haven't been married before.

And they're, they're, you know, between, uh, 20 and 30, more or less. Uh, and um, so they're entering into this relationship even though they're um, maybe living with this person mm-hmm um, they're. don't have the, they don't have the knowledge to ask those questions. Mm-hmm or even, you know, the focus again, speaks about pets and, um, how we, how we deal with those and, um, welcome them into a, the family.

So the main thing I wanna try and do is walk with them. Uh, and I want to hear their story as well. Like that the, the, the, the gene, the genealogy in the family, uh, that's encouraging. Why are they here right now? What, what brought them here? What's their story to hear? And it's not where they first met or things like that.

It said, I want a bit larger. What, like, where, what is your story? Mm. Cause that's the story you're bringing into to make your story as a couple. Right. And so we, yeah, we go through and, um, and it is such a joy to share, uh, what the church actually teaches mm-hmm because, you know, I often remind couples, you know, the church has been doing this for almost 2000 years.

Right. So she's kind of worked out a bit of stuff. Yeah. And I always speak that, you know, as we speak, as the church is feminine, it's she, as a mother, she loves us. So she's trying to work out all these kind of things to help us grow. And, um, and even sharing this idea of the church was very prudish before.

And didn't really speak about sex. I have this beautiful document from 1951 where it pop, uh, pop the 12th, I think is saying six is joyful and pleasurable and, and couples should be encouraged to engage in that. Nice boom. Yeah,

really? Yeah. And if you read anything that jump on the second road, you realize

that for sure.

And then, you know, he wrote that beautiful book, love and responsibility, and he, he actually goes into more detail into that hundred percent. And I don't know what the rating is over this podcast, but I won't go into it, but it's very explicit. But how, but also how beautiful it can be. Especially if, if a man is there to seek the good of his spouse, right.

And, and, and to seek her good and all of that. And it's beautiful that father was saying about NFP. Uh, I know even with him and I bring, I bring a lot of my own personal story into it as well. Sure. Cause I'm, I'm a convert to the faith and, um, and in my marriage as a deacon, I'm a permanent deacon. I'm married with.

Um, we, we welcome children into our family. It's been a beautiful thing, but I know, uh, when we were first engaged, my wife had to was finishing college and we didn't, we didn't wanna start a family. And so I said, when are you, when are you going on a pill? And she, and I can't do that. It's, you know, it wasn't good for us.

And so we, uh, and it was so I thought, well, we already decided we weren't gonna have children for two years. What am I gonna do? And I was a bit worried, cause I didn't even have a membership to a gym or anything like that. What am I gonna do with all this energy ? And so here it was this idea of through periodic abstinence, cuz also in a natural family planning teaches.

The actual biology of, of male and female. And it shows women often who don't even know that their fertility is a cycle. And, um, they're only actually fertile for a short period of time during that cycle. And so if they engage in sexual activity during that time, it is not an accident it's actually doing what your bodies are supposed to be doing.

Sure. Uh, if a baby comes. And so here, that idea of abstaining during, during that short period of time, like, and again, it literally changes the brain chemistry. Mm-hmm of a man to, to abstain and, and desire intimacy of often through nonsexual touch it. It enables a man and a to phrase it in the way of it actually changes his gaze towards his wife.

Mm. He sees her. as her, as she's supposed to be seeing mm-hmm, not as, uh, uh, an object of his last, an object of his arousal. And so these beautiful things, we try and, um, speak to them, but often that's a new language. Yeah. As well. I was actually just finishing a class last night and a guy, uh, put up his hand.

He said, everyone keeps talking about sacraments. What are they? So for a Catholic it's like, yeah, we know what sacraments is. I know there's more than three, but, you know, um, um, and so we had to, so I actually had to once again, realize some of the language that we're even using. And so it's walking with them, enables them and hearing their story.

It's um, I'm able to, you know, um, hear what their Lang, what language they're actually speaking. So we can bring, um, this idea of marriage prep into it. Mm-hmm . Um, but it's also speaking the truth as well. I, um, it, hopefully they've walking with them. They've realized that I'm kind of a logical and normal person.

Even though my therapist says otherwise, you, weren't supposed to say that loud. Yeah. Oh yeah. Sorry. But I also, you know, if I, I, I often use the phrase, I say, if you are getting married and the church says that marriage is this, then it can't be something else. And so what you are doing is in itself very, very sacred mm-hmm

And so this is why we are encouraging to work very hard at it, but it's must and people say marriage is hard work. Yeah. It's good work. I mean, it's, it's good work. Yeah. If we are willing to be that gift to the other person. Yeah. So it's really just encouraging 'em to get into that mindset as they move along.

So that, and I also, and so my goal is I, yeah, I'll, I'll get you ready for the day mm-hmm right. We'll do all the stuff that we need to do for the day for the ceremony. That's no problem, but that is not my goal. And I say to them, my goal is old and wrinkly. because that's where it is. Um, and so, and I say, you know, yes, you, you wanna stay married until death, but if you have that goal, at least you'll be close.

Beautiful. Thank you both. And so basically what I'm hearing is marriage prep is in a way training, let's say at least the last part of training to prepare people, to hopefully have a beautiful, loving, successful marriage. And you're going through all the different things that the church teaches, which through its 2000 years around, um, in existence, it's learned that these are the things that help people have like really beautiful marriages that stay true to the nature of the human person.

Any final thoughts on that before we

move on? Well, I think that, um, like you were talking about screens in our culture more and more today is marriage is under threat or marriage is, uh, is at risk. Um, because there are so many distractions and even if a simple thing of having screen free evenings can really bring greater intimacy to a couple.

And so that idea of recognizing that we are entering into a, a relationship that is not actually supported by our culture. And so therefore we have to be more attentive to each other.

And I think the, the beauty of marriage prep is even just on a natural level. So apart from the fact that we're preparing the couple to receive the grace of God, we're inviting them to begin to pray with each other.

If, if they've never done it before, or I love marriage prep with, uh, a Protestant and a Catholic, cause then you say, all right, why don't we close in prayer? And the Protestant can just say, all right, father, God, we just come before you right now. And we, they, they can just dive right in. Yeah. And the Catholic's like,

um, father, son

hail Mary full of grace.

The Lord is with me. Right. And because again, expressive prayer is vulner. it, it puts myself out there and it, and it, but it invites we're. What we're trying to do is invite their, their relationship, uh, with God and with each other to both grow closer, which, you know, that's an image of a triangle as the two points grow up the line to reach the top point.

They also grow closer to one another God being the top, God being the top being the two ends. Yep. Yep. And so, uh, so you have that by way of grace, but even for those who are not religious or those who have left the church, I just, I always say, find a therapist or find someone who's willing to fight for the good of your, of your relationship, because you both are flawed and that's indisputable.

Oh yeah. Right. And so ha to have. We, you know, we call it a transcendent third God, uh, and then mediated by the church and mediated by, you know, priest, deacons, uh, lay faithful. But even if someone doesn't feel that they have access to the church in that regard to find just another person, again, a therapist or someone else who can just poke to find the tender spots of the relationship and mediate, good, helpful, fruitful communication between the two of those.

That's a great step forward. And then later, if they seek the grace of the, that the church desires to offer again in freedom, not because grandmother, you know, will pay for the photographer or because of a Catholic guilt trip that they just need to get it done in the church, but the free choice to say yeah.

So to have to have another walk with the couple, no matter their circumstance, mm-hmm is just gonna be powerful and that's open to everybody.

Yeah, no, beautiful. It, it makes so much sense. And you two have obviously worked with a lot of different couples. I'm curious. I, I kind of asked this question before, but I wanna hear if you have anything to add to it, what do you see as the main cause of dysfunction and divorce?

Uh, so the couples, hopefully listening right now, whether they're married, engaged, dating can work against those things. Those factors. Again, you touched on this before. I'm just curious, like, what are those main causes of dysfunction divorce that we can fight?

Dicken. Yeah. That idea of, you know, if we go back to that piece of description naked, without shame is, is, am, cuz my emotions are gonna come and I'm gonna be angry, frustrated, joyful, happy, sad.

Um, and, but how do I, um, come before the other person, um, still, you know, we use the language still seeking their beauty and their dignity. Right. But, but I'm but being, allowing myself to have those emotions mm-hmm and so that idea of, I, I, I like to use the analogy of having two, two, um, French doors, I suppose, on your, on your, on your heart.

Is that how you said this? um, and just having those open. Right. And so somebody can just look in and, uh, so the, and, and often we don't have the skills for that. I, I say to couple straight away, communication is a skill, um, entering into these kind of moments of reflection is a skill and being used to that.

And so, um, yeah, and, and walking with the church, there are, there are a deacons priest there's lay faithful, but if they're not, there is walking with a counselor, uh, to, to have those moments of vulnerability and growing in that it's not because that their marriage is struggling, that they need a counselor as they need a counselor to keep their marriage strong.

Right. And these ideas of growing in that skill. And I, uh, also that muscle memory of being able to share who I am, or having, even having, even having moments. It comes back that whole functionality of a, of a, um, of a couple, you know, I'm, I'm tired. So I'm gonna sit in front of, um, I don't know, what is it now?

Instagram? What's the latest one. Yeah. Tick TOK, tick TOK, right? Tick. Oh my goodness. Gracious. but sit in front of there for three hours cuz I deserve it. I've had a hard day. Yeah, right. Rather than being intentional than in, um, seeking a relationship with, with my spouse. Um, and so cause when we talk about priorities, um, for a Christian marriage's God, so you can, you know, you can say lovingly to your wife, you're number two and my life' sweetheart.

Right. Um, but this idea of is my spouse, the top priority mm-hmm in, in, in my. in my life. Yeah. Right. And it's, it's that idea of being able to work intentionally and it's not something we can get lazy at as well. Yeah. And I think that's where easy to do it is easy to do cuz it's, it's tough work and um, but it's, I keep reminding if it's a good work, it's worth it, right?

Yeah. If we were, if we had to get up every day and um, I don't know, press a button or do a certain exercise to maintain world peace, we would do it. Right. Mm-hmm sure. Even though it was tough sometimes, and it's the same thing with the relationship and I, and, and once again, going back to the idea of having divorces an option as well right now, I'm not, of course we can immediately go to those extreme examples where you church is never saying, you know, tough it out or learn to, you know, keep your, keep your, keep your hands up.

Yeah. Don't

don't like continue to be abused, like get to safety. That's

of course. should, but it's these, like when we're talking about, uh, people who are reasonable and, and still discovering what love is, it's, it's actually taking the time that maybe, I don't know, and I still wanna discover it, but with you,

yeah, in that sense, one, uh, one myth, I think that's out there to, you touched on it already is this idea that if we really love each other, if we're really good for each other, then marriage should be easy.

Like it's almost as if things should just fall into place. Cuz we love each other. And I think the experience of falling in love can give that illusion, especially cuz it's really easy in the beginning of your relationship. Everything's great. and then, you know, you realize that you're both human, you're broken, you have flaws, you get annoyed, you know, you get angry, you get whatever.

Um, but we even see that with, you know, psychologists and the data that's showing there is a, there's a couple goes through a cycle. Any long term committed relationship. Mm-hmm they say we call it marriage. Right? We'll go through it. Uh, uh, a time where they're just. Don't like the other person. Yeah. Right.

I, I have no feelings of love towards you. And, but that is a natural and healthy thing in, in, in a couple relationship and recognizing that is being able to, okay. We freely go, um, um, desire to enter into this relationship. We, we, um, we know that love is not a feeling, it's a choice. So today I'm gonna choose to love you.

And I'm gonna manifest that through my actions. Yeah. And so this idea is, and, and that the data seems to show once again, the, the data is the data that normally happens about three to five years into a marriage. Mm wow. And if you look at the divorce statistics, it's extremely similar. Yeah. Yeah.

That makes so much sense.

So, so it is, we need to learn these skills. It's not just a matter of like, oh, we feel really good about each other. We love each other. And. The emotional sense, not the action sense of the word. So father, I'm just curious from your point of view, anything to add to that, and what do you see as like at the root of a lot of dysfunction divorce?

Yeah.

In additional, uh, similar, similar to what deacon said. I think it's, um, an unwillingness to ask for help. Mm-hmm right. How many, how many people do their own taxes anymore? Very few. They ask for help from, you know, software companies to people, right? Yeah. Who gives we, we also live in a culture where you can't prescribe yourself medical stuff, even if you are a doctor, right?

Yeah. So we live in a society where you're interdependent on pretty much everything that you have to go to an expert for someone, something else. Right. Mm-hmm go to lawyers, but in order for 'em to be lawyers, they have to pass the bar. There's a certain kind of preparation, right? Why do we not do this with marriage?

Why do we not bring our marriage up for a certain kind of maintenance? Right. Why do couples not take the day off of work for their anniversary? And say, let's spend the day together. Wow. Intimately or hash it out or whatever it is. And it's, you know, we will say busy, busy, busy mm-hmm . I once gave a, a, a marriage homely series up at my former parish.

And I started out with, we live in a culture that does not tolerate broken cars. We live in a culture where you're pretty much guaranteed to have a car mm-hmm right. There are gas stations everywhere. There are, uh, mechanics everywhere. And the way that this country is set up so far apart, and we're not a very ambulatory culture, we pretty much guarantee that you can get access to a car.

Why not? But again, the maintenance, the fueling, why do we not do that with marriage? What's the kind of maintenance required for holy Mamo. If we change the oil every three to six months, what's the equivalent of that in holy Mamo. If we fuel up once or twice a week, what's the equivalent of that in holy matrimony, mm-hmm would that we were a culture that didn't tolerate the failure of marriages.

Amen. Cause we don't tolerate the failure of cars, but cars require upkeep. So to, uh, marriages. And so I think it's the, it's the question of the question on people's mind. And this is the goal of marriage. Prep is to move the, if we'll stay together to how will will we stay together? Mm-hmm because when people, you don't need to actually know how you'll stay together, you don't know what the economy's gonna do 10 years from now.

You don't know what jobs are gonna be like, you don't know what, you know, kid number two is gonna be in relation to kid. Number one, mm-hmm you, but all you need is moral certitude to say, I believe that God is faithful. I believe that I have the will. Uh, there was a point at which we were totally in love with each other.

Mm. feeling is not everything. And so it's not the question of, if we'll stay together, that's gotta be off the table. Mm it's. How will we stay together? And then that how begs a willingness to seek help. Wow. Therapists, family, community. And I think we have to destigmatize just like we've unfortunately destigmatized, uh, well, we don't love stigmas, so, um, but we've, destigmatized, uh, divorce, but we need to destigmatize marital issues, marital problems.

Right. Would that a couple could just go to another couple in church and say, can we come over tonight? Like we're having a really tough time that, and just vulnerably say, you know, I'm, we're hurting. Not just I'm hurting mm-hmm right. Wow. And we don't need to shovel out blame on anyone again, everyone's got a bro.

A weekend will darkened intellect. Mm-hmm uh, everyone's got their own sin. So of course this is gonna come up. So let's create a culture where we don't tolerate the failure of marriages. So good. If

people wanna listen to those homilies, how do they do

that? I can send you the audio recordings. Okay. We'll put it in the show.

Now. There

you go. Sounds good. Is it it's on YouTube or

no? Uh, not from my former parish. That was okay. The pre pandemic reality of the church, the post pandemic reality with the church. What is live streaming? Yes, exactly.

we, we upgraded the tech of the church. Yeah. I wanna shift gears a little bit. There's so much we could talk about that forever, but I'm curious when it comes to

so

pretty.

I just want to just segue back to that go. Yeah. The other thing I think when we talk about pressure on marriage is, um, and I'm gonna talk about Hollywood as a general thing, but the idea of, um, marriage does the dissolution of marriage or divorce has become something more of a. A thing to aspire to almost, or even promote it, like, yeah.

So, you know, of course we'll get back together, but it's, it's some kind of a drama. And I think the, um, as society we've adhered too much to that to think of as, as truth. Hmm. Rather than just entertainment. Um, but even then entertainment, you know, going back to what father was saying to even not tolerate, um, divorce.

Yeah. Um, this idea where Hollywood has really permeated our culture and the more and more we have screens, the more and more it is gonna be harder to challenge that.

No. And when we say not tolerate, I don't wanna set up this, like yeah. Grin and bear it, you must suffer and you have to stay. Right. Yeah. But again, so the support systems, what I'm advocating for is the support systems, right.

There are, the church does have an annulment process because she does envision humanity will contract invalid marriages. Sure. Which will. More than like more than like more likely than not result in divorce result in dysfunction. Sure. And actually the annulment process, although this is a different podcast, is its own salutary healing.

Mm-hmm , uh, process as well in view of if one or both parties wants to get married again for the second time, naturally speaking, but married for the first time. Sacramentally speaking. Sure. Because again, declaration that the marriage never rose to the level of the sacrament, the natural marriage never rose to the level of a sacrament mm-hmm

But when I say we don't want to tolerate divorce, I just wanna make sure people don't hear we're Catholic. You have to be stuck in the relationship. You have to stick it out. God wills, your unhappiness. God wants your misery. Uh, because, because people who are hurting can hear certain things. Yeah. And just, and, and it hits them in a certain way.

And that's not God desires our happiness, the church desires our happiness. Yeah. We pursue that through the pursuit of holiness and the life in Jesus Christ mean, thanks for clarifying

that. And yeah. So anyone listening right now, and maybe you're in an abusive marriage, maybe it's not safe. What we always say in this show and what the church says is get to safety.

And as father was saying, there's a reason, reason for the annulment process, perhaps your marriage ISN invalid. But I think that the default really needs to be, it's like, even if civilly, we need to put up barriers between one spouse and another, because not safe for that spouse and the children. Yep.

There's a difference between the civil marriage and the Sacramento or the natural marriage bond, which is a deeper reality. And so I think it's some of the most heroic people I know are the ones who maybe perhaps do have a valid marriage. One of the spouses just went off the deep. and the other one, they obviously can't be together because it's not safe or some extreme dysfunction.

Maybe one of them is being unfaithful. And just continuing that lifestyle, you obviously should not live together in that case. But the most rogue people, I think I've seen are the ones who are, have been deserted have been abandoned. And even in the case of a valid marriage, they say true to their wedding vows, even though their spouse isn't yeah.

I have so much admiration for those people. I don't know. That's such suffering and that's a really difficult thing, but I think that gets to the core of like, this is how serious we take these wedding vows.

Amen. Yeah. Yeah. I agree. And I have many examples of that and it's, I'm sure I agree. I agree with the word heroic.

Absolutely. Yeah,

absolutely. Lots to say on that one. I hope we covered it. Okay. Um, when it comes to, uh, leading people through marriage prep, um, leading, you know, marriages overall guiding them, where do you think we're failing young couples in particular when it comes to marriage overall and especially marriage

prep.

Where are we failing the couples in their marriage? Prep?

Yeah. Marriage prep. And then marriage overall, like you guys have already touched on a lot of this, I think, but it's like, what can we be doing better? Where are we failing them? The second question is like, what can we be doing better? But the first one is like, where are we?

Especially as a Catholic church, like not doing our part to build up these marriages and even prepare people for marriages. Cuz one, one of the problems that I see is like, you know, we go through marriage prep and then it's kind of like, see you guys like good luck, you know, hopefully you make it. And that's honestly just somewhat of a practical thing.

I think where you guys like there's so few resources and there's so few priests. And so I think that's a practical issue, but, um, but I think that's like one area where it's like, okay, we can have lay people step up. Mm-hmm to, you know, and there's some good initiative going on. I don't wanna say that it's dark everywhere, but um, yeah, I'm just curious, like what, what do you see as like, we really are failing

here and here.

Hmm. Yeah. I would say, um, let me answer it obliquely. I think there's a narrative. I think there's an unhelpful narrative that priests are busy. We have a lot to do, but by the way, a priest chooses to pray and to live his life that determines whether he has a spirit of frantic busyness or not. Hmm. Having an occupied schedule is different than busy.

And so many people come up to the priest father. I know you're so busy, but, or, and, or, or they don't come up to the priest because they fear that he's busy. Mm-hmm, uh, many things priests can't always control what comes their way, but we can almost always control when it comes our way minus the prescheduled things.

Right? Sure. We can, you know, reschedule this funeral or this meeting or this whatever. And so I think one way in which the church sometimes does fail people is the inaccessibility of priests. Interesting. Um, one of the, the things that I've chosen to do in my priesthood is to meet with my couples five times each.

And if, you know, if I've got a couple, if I'm marrying a, a decent amount of couples in a year, that's a, a number of, of meetings. Mm. But at the same time, how often do I, I eat dinner every night. Sure. Right. Why not combine that? And so, so for me, it's to have couples feel like they have access to a priest in their preparatory time, and then they can come back and say, father, we need help.

Mm. Or father, whatever it is. I did marriage prep, um, for a couple who their first child, uh, has, was born with down syndrome. Mm. It was a very kind of difficult time for them in terms of reg gaging their expectations. Yeah. But it was a really beautiful thing to be able to try to reach out to them and to make sure they know the church is there for them.

But only that, that only happens when we're historically walking with people. Mm-hmm, when we're setting it up. And so I, I think one of the things I'd point to is to just make sure that priests. And deacons the, the, the hierarchy, the, the clergy of the church that, that were with the people mm-hmm, , uh, that were with the couples of marriage pet.

Because unfortunately, a lot of times you have, you know, go see this NFP person, go see this couple, and then you go meet with father once before the wedding mm-hmm and then father's like, okay, where did you meet? What's your love song? I'm just trying to craft the homily fear wedding. Yeah. But we have so much, and maybe that's, that's what I'm pointing to.

We have so much riding on the wedding day and the wedding day is like a fairly darn easy day of your marriage, right? Oh yeah. Everything's prescheduled some people have coordinators, right. If something goes wrong, someone else is gonna take care of it. Everyone's there for you, right. Yeah. Two weeks later.

Not everyone's necessarily there for you, right? Yeah. In the same way. Sure. And so, um, I, I want married couples to know that the church is there for them in the brokenness of their marriage. um, because I have, I have other priests, brother priests that are there for the brokenness in my priesthood. Yeah.

Right. And I need that support because we all have our own brokenness. And so for the, I think for people to hear it from the church more it's okay to be hurting. It's okay. To be broken mm-hmm and it's okay to reach out for help. It's okay. To ask a priest, to ask a deacon, to ask a counselor, a Catholic counselor, whatever it is.

Mm-hmm because otherwise, if we just, you know, PR around that, everything's fine. Well, I don't know, pick up a newspaper. And do you tell me? Yeah, no. So true.

DEA Dicken, you know, I agree. And that I think, um, the idea of when we talk about marriage, prayer, but it, it obviously there's a process that you have to follow cause you are working towards a date.

And, um, and often a couple comes to us. They've they're nine times out to him. They they've pretty much got a date booked already. Mm-hmm right. Um, and so they're trying to work in with that. And I think where the church is probably failing, is that, is that process approach or convey? I, I call it a conveyor belt.

We don't want to drop the couple on the beginning of the conveyor belt. And then when they drop off the end it's we are done with them. Yeah. And we try and because, you know, we, when we talk about this term remote preparation, there's often, there's not that. preparation for their life together. That's been really engaged in by their own family that encouraging them to live this life.

Um, and it's beautiful when that it does happen, but not, not very, not very often. So the church often wants to really shove it a whole lot of information into the couples. Yeah. Where did you? Can't it's a very intense year for them anyway, or sure. Or, or, or eight, eight to nine months or whatever it is of preparation and it's, it's too much.

And so this idea of, um, not really journeying with them, but throwing them on a conveyor belt or putting 'em into a process and then out there go. Yeah. And so

at my previous parish, I had a, a couple from another parish approach. Me and their marriage prep was comprised of read COSTI canoe, be this document from 1931 read, uh, familiars consortium.

Beautiful. But, but essentially read, read these three people documents, uh, and if you print them all out there, it's, you know, like hundreds, a hundred and something pages. um, which that's thick and you gotta be a little trained to read, uh, documents. You can't just pick one up. Um, cuz they all connect to each other in, in a web and no one had been talking with them about their communication.

It was, do you go to Sunday mass mm-hmm it was, do you do, do you, you know, it was kind of checkbox Catholicism mm-hmm on the spiritual

end of things primarily, right? Uh, yeah, yeah, no human level, which is uh, where I see marriages falling apart. It's like the human

level stuff. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And so I, they, you know, they had heard that I meet with couples and they're like, father, would you meet with us?

And again, you know, busy, but. , that's not the narrative I wanna live out of. And so, um, it's not just kind of reading theology. It's not just, yeah, there is a process. Uh, we do want them to be informed of their consent and things like that. Sure. Uh, but also to walk, to walk alongside them. Okay.

Yeah. And so that's, that's where it is.

And, um, and failing to have that relationship. Right. Because if, you know, we, the next question is what can we do better? Is that idea of community mm-hmm and generally Catholics. We're not that great at it. Yeah. Our idea of community on Sunday, Mar

unless there's coffee

and donuts, coffee, donuts . But, but even, you know, during the actual, our time of celebration, maybe we'll give a, a slight smile to someone.

Yeah. And it was great drink COVID right. Cuz we didn't even have to do that cuz we had masks on and so the idea of community, right. Um, is, is how can we, uh, I think we're failing on that as well. Generally I know this, some parishes always and a lot of church communities are very intentional about it, but I think overall it's.

Catholic

thing. Yeah, no, I would agree with that. It is sad along those lines. I'm curious. I wanna hone in on people who come from broken families in particular. So you have people in your marriage prep, or maybe one or both of the, uh, fiances that come from a broken family. I'm curious, like what, what can we do to better help them, um, in their marriage prep so that they have these successful marriages?

Cuz one of the things that we see so often is that they end up repeating the cycle of dysfunction and divorce in their own lives and so sad. So obviously we wanna help them, uh, prevent them from going down that path. But we also want them to thrive and have really beautiful marriages. So what can we do for, what do you think we can do for those people in particular, who come from broken families when they're going through marriage?

I'd say, um, one of the processes by which I was formed in, in seminary. Um, we have a great seminary here St. John Biani. Yeah. In my seven years throughout it, uh, we start with a spirituality year and it's a year of no classes. Uh, sorry. We take classes. There's no grades. So the type a, you know, go-geters, they're foiled cuz now they have to learn for the sake of learning.

Yeah. As opposed to kind of performing right. Huh? Uh there's no, um, we don't have phones, radio, anything. Right. So no technology and it, and it, it, it takes us out of our element and then this threefold process that they, that they gave us, which is both for the year and for the duration of our time in seminaries, self-knowledge, self-acceptance self gift in light of the Lord.

Well, right. So it's not just making myself better so that I can do better so that I can be better so that, you know, as if I can get kingdom of heaven points that way. But instead. do I understand, uh, where I came from, the factors in my life, the Ignatian way is be aware, understand, take action. Mm-hmm so they're very similar.

And so just having an awareness of what's my relationship with my dad mm-hmm and then bringing my, my spouse, my future spouse into that. Mm. Um, cuz they're gonna be together in the same room for Thanksgiving at some point. Right. So, so be aware or, or self knowledge, right. That's why we have in the life of the church, the exam in prayer, which is not just for, you know, listing your sins.

So you can go to confession and, uh, and do that. But understanding who I am in light of the Lord, my weaknesses, my difficulties. so that I can invite my fiance in further, uh, into my life. Mm-hmm , uh, and to be a part, a mechanism of my own healing, not just behavior management, but so that I have an interior freedom when I'm around someone who reminds me of my mom or dad when at a very broken time in our family life.

Right. Mm-hmm that, that, uh, the freedom of, um, of just being me with, uh, with deficiencies mm-hmm yeah, that that'd be one thing I would pause it. Okay.

yeah. And that's I, even the language that we use when we speak about love a lot in the church mm-hmm and when we come from broken families, that idea of what love actually is.

Um, and so trying to go even deeper into that and to, and so love is, um, being able to seek the good of the other as the church would say, but how do I do it in my brokenness? How do I, uh, as a fallen person and, and moving away from. the idea of what I think perfection and his love, but, um, working towards that, um, I'm gonna make these steps today.

Mm-hmm , but I know I, I I'm far from it, but, um, and the more, and I think the other thing father was touching on, um, is the more that I'm able to be vulnerable. Um, the more the other person can love me. Mm-hmm right. The more the other person knows about me and my brokenness, the more than they can actually love me.

And often we operate out of fear. Sure. Because we've come from broken families and we've whatever, you know, um, we try to manage our parents and that didn't work out and those kind of things. And, and so I need to try and manage what I'm doing here, but rather than just being vulnerable towards the other person, which does require a lot of human.

skill building in a way. Yeah. So that I can have that muscle memory to say, look, I'm really frustrated today, you know? Yeah. And, um, and in this situation and, um, and not, and, and, and not expect a backlash, but, uh, for the other person to receive what you are saying as well, you know, um, yeah, cuz that's where, you know, the term escalation or arguments is where somebody said, oh, I'm just feeling really annoyed when you, when you win, when you said that and that immediately straightaway gets the heckles up and yeah.

Rather than saying, oh, okay. So what, instead of the skill of maybe paraphrasing what I hear or something like that. And uh, so it, and, but it's actually learning what love is for us as a couple mm-hmm because it coming from a broken culture, a broken family it's is very confusing. And you know, I remember hearing a story and, um, you know, somebody came from extremely abusive, uh, family and, and talking about love was the opposite of what.

You know, even the remote thought, you know, uh, what love was. And so being able to think, well, this is actually how you're called to live in and it's okay. It's okay for you. Uh, and you are worth it. Mm-hmm right. And all this stuff. And just to say, you know, that I can be this with this other person mm-hmm and it, it takes, it's a skill.

Like we grow in that idea of communication. It's not, you know, as a, as a deacon or a priest, it's not the idea of spirit, you know? Um, it's just not a SP spirit thing, but it's a, it's a training ground where we can become more spiritual, so to speak. Mm-hmm sure. Yeah. so to speak. Sure. Yeah. So it's that idea of about knowing who I am growing and who I am so that I can be who I am for, for someone

else.

So good. Thank you. It's funny when you were mentioning, um, you know, you said the word frustrated, that's one of two words that I ban in my office. uh, frustrated and interesting. Cause those are two words that we as Americans tend to hide behind. Yeah. Yeah. Uh, and you know, so a couple will come in and be like, well, I went to his home, uh, met his parents and it was really interesting.

and then they'll move on and almost always that's, there's something negative going on. Yeah. It's like, great. Do you have the vulnerability to voice your frictional points of contact with your future mother or father-in-law mm-hmm with the one whom you love, who is supposed to be one of the safest places for your heart to reside that relationship hundred percent.

And so we jump, I jump on those two words, interesting or, or frustrated and say, awesome. Beautiful. I think I know what you're saying. And then I reach into the drawer and I pull out an emotion chart. Nice. So if you're at home listening, you can just Google emotion chart, PDF, and there'll be a number of good ones that come up and then you.

pick two or three other words that point to cuz again, entering into the vulnerability of this is the reality of your family. And this is how I feel mm-hmm and there's no truth that could come up in a relationship. That's going to just like break it off just because I feel a certain way. Yeah. Yeah. It's an unwillingness for you to receive my feelings or what comes up in me or the reactions or it's an unwillingness for me to share them and then, you know, 20 years of bottling and at some point that thing's gonna explode.

Yeah. Right. So that's the other kind of, that's the, the part of marriage prep where it's, doesn't matter if you're from a broken family or a great family, there's going to be pinch points. There's gonna be pain points. Do you have in confidence and trust the ability to vocalize that, uh, to share that in intimacy because there's a verbal intimacy, which isn't always just poetry and flowers.

Interesting. .

Yeah, no, that's so good. I, yeah, those human skills are so big. That's definitely where I think a lot of people from broken families are lacking and you're right too, that even if you come from an intact family, you can be lacking in a lot of these skills. But I know, um, for me, learning to navigate conflict was just so difficult.

Cause I saw it handled so poorly in my family mm-hmm so I had no idea how to go about it. I maybe picked up some things along the way that I should be doing, but it's so different when you're in the amids of a maybe heated argument. And how do you still be respectful and get your point across, but you know, still love the person that you're engaging with.

So th there's a lot there, but those human skills I think are so needed. And one of the most helpful things, um, for me, was just seeing, spending time with like really beautiful marriages, like really healthy marriages. And that's something that I talk about a lot, something that I'm a huge proponent of is like, if you know a marriage couple that.

Has a really beautiful marriage, like go have dinner with them, like help 'em around, help 'em out around the house. Like just kind of soak in the beauty of their family. And, uh, that's been beyond healing for me. So in the last few minutes that we have together, just wanna get your advice. So what, what advice, what encouragement would you give to, uh, leaders of marriage prep who are listening right now, uh, who want to improve their marriage prep programs?

Deacon, we'll start with

you.

So I, I think the biggest thing at the moment we are living in a world that is very, very different from maybe where the leaders have come from. And I think this idea of relationship is, is really needs to be fostered. Now, if you are gonna engage with a couple, um, who are wanting to be married, is do I have the, um, the team or, or the availability to, to journey and walk with this couple mm-hmm, not to the date of their marriage, but in the, into their marriage as well.

And so this idea of am I gonna journey with them so that we can share, you know, all the things that we need to share with them, whatever protocol there is, um, that is established, but this idea of I can be with you, right. That idea of relationship. And then the other thing of course is, as I mentioned before, was how can we really encourage community mm-hmm right.

This idea of, um, as a young married couple or a newly weird couple regard, regardless of their age, am I able to be in a, um, Context or a supportive community where I can be vulnerable as well, to a certain extent, you know, and, and share the hardships that I'm dealing with and, and also understand that people are, uh, experience probably experiencing them as well.

So that idea of relationship and journey I think is really important rather than the convey about, of, um, analogy of popping them on and seeing them later.

Yeah, no. So good father and say it's over theologizing and over psychologizing amen. um, it's not all God, and it's not all, I don't know. Sigmund Freud, right?

Yeah. Anyone on the Myers Briggs can marry anyone else on the Myers Briggs. There is no test, right? That's why the focus inventory is an inventory. There is no test that can guarantee anything. Mm-hmm . And so I think some marriage prep. Uh, retreats or people involved with marriage prep can say, gosh, well, I, I, they get uncomfortable with the Jesus part.

And so they go all communication or they go all self-help relational, self-help whatever. And they become experts in this isn't and that isn't and codependency and whatever else as if there is a book or a psychological framework or structured, that's just gonna solve humanity or brokenness an algorithm.

An exa. Yeah. Thank you. That'd be nice. And so we don't need to be solved. We need to be saved by Jesus, but at the same time, it's not all, God, God respects our free will. God respects our very poor decisions, but he'll always rush to our aid. And so I think for those involved in marriage prep, Not just making it all about prayer.

Although I don't, I haven't seen it to be too much all about prayer. Mm-hmm um, maybe sometimes all about just theology, theology, you know, here's, I've seen that. Yeah, really intense, um, you know, theological terms and, and, you know, get that memorized it in your head mm-hmm but for what right. What we want is the couple, to be able to say, Jesus, we need you spouse.

I need you, others. I need you mm-hmm . And to ha to just sit there in that, in that vulnerability. And so that may have been to the thing that we started about the, the Steubenville divorce rate. It, there could be a supposition that, that God's just gonna save my marriage as opposed to no, God may work through mediaries that he's put in place to draw me into greater vulnerability.

Right. Mm-hmm why, why does God just not zap sins away on the spot? Right. I, I go confess my sins straight to God. He mediates through a priest. He mediates through the life of the church because priests can draw somebody's will more efficaciously within the sacrament of confession. It's the difference between saying, well, I know I lie.

And so I'm just gonna tell God and whatever, and then vulnerably saying it to a priest and saying, I lie. And then, and then you run the risk of the priest, maybe asking you about it. Right. And then the vulnerable intimacy of that. Right. So, okay. Where am I going with this? Not over psychologizing or theologizing that, that it's, um, we're trying to draw couples to be able to seek God, to seek each other, to seek others mm-hmm and then trust that God will be involved in it.

Mm-hmm but it's not all him. That's a heresy called occasional where God we're, you know, we're all just kind of puppets in his thing and he's just making everything happen. Mm-hmm right. Uh, God allows things to play out, uh, in his Providence, he guides its course, but he allows us to. mess up at least his plan A's mm-hmm and, uh, but then he always comes to the rescue as well, if we, but seek him.

Hmm,

beautiful. I've heard it said that God feeds the birds, but he doesn't, uh, put the worms in the nest. nice. Like we need to go out and put the work in before I ask you as the final question. Uh, if people wanna reach out to you, maybe they do work in an archdiocese or at a parish, and they're doing marriage prep and they'd love to kind of learn from each of you.

How can they contact you?

So I'm actually on the archdiocese website. Uh, you can contact me at, um, deacon.Coleman@archedin.org G or my no, actually my office number as well. Cuz we wanna have a relationship 3 0 3 7 1 5 3 2 5 9.

We'll put those in the show notes as well. Great. And then my email is father Daniel MPV, denver.org.

That's for most precious blood that's I'm the parish of which I'm pastor father Daniel, M P B denver.org. Thank you

both. And it's just been such a pleasure sitting with you. The final question, you guys get the final word on this, uh, father, we'll start with you. What advice would you give to that couple listening right now?

Cause there's a lot of couples listening to this, um, who maybe sees marriage prep as kind of this like necessary thing, this checklist, like how can, what would you encourage them to do in order to like really invest in it?

Mm yeah. Yeah. So just like I talked about, we can have a narrative of priests are busy.

We can also have a narrative that paperwork is inherently bad or checklists are inherently bad. Mm. They can be misunderstood or misused. But behind every paper, uh, within most paperwork is actually a, a really important reality. And the reason it's been turned into a form, or the reason it's been turned into something is there's some important conversation that ought to happen within that.

Right? And so you have this, the MB form for us that, that parents have to testify that their, their kids are marrying freely and that they haven't been married before. And it can be a little bit of a hassle, right? You, especially non-Catholic parents are supposed to go and, um, get this for, bring it to a priest.

And so, you know, I just had this the other day, a non-practicing unbaptized brother of a guy who's gonna marry a Catholic, you know, came to my church and said, Hey, I need this form signed. And it was just a really good five minute conversation to say, okay, is your brother marrying freely? What's the relationship like.

Has, you know, has he been married before? Good. He hasn't. Okay. He's free to marry, but is he doing so freely? Right? Mm-hmm and then I can kind of insert truths into this guy's life that he can be there for his brother, not just looking good and wedding photos, but actually being present to his brother's marriage.

And so there's, there's a couple ways of going about forms. You can just sign it and say, this is a hassle, or you can say, why does the church ask me to do this? Why does the church ask me to take this inventory? Why does the church ask me to, to do NFP? Why does the church, why does the church wanna know all these details for the sake of love?

because love is the reason for which we do anything. And sometimes we forget that. And so there, marriage prep process is not a bunch of hoops to jump through behind every form behind every piece of paper is an important conversation. And just because that important conversation doesn't get tactfully had doesn't mean the church is just like feeding off of paper and trying to force people to do stuff.

Yeah. And, uh, even segueing off that, um, first to leaders, right. Um, who are gonna be welcoming, this is to welcome the couples, right? Cause often when we talk about forms and all this, ah, so to actually welcome and take time to welcome them and then receive them and, and often couples are put off by that by, by, you know, by.

Picking up the phone and they get someone who is okay, what, what do you want? Um, and so for couples, I, I see this as a time, if you are, I don't think anybody has, uh, a plan in themselves today, you know, in three to five years, we're, we'll, we're gonna, re-look at this we'll reassess, you know, do the pros and cons.

And typically when a couple is wanting to get married, they're in it for life. Right. Um, even though all the, all of the stuff that we've talked about, so what I encourage couples to do, and especially if you are a couple of faith is to pray together, but I dunno how to figure it out or Google it. How can I pray with my spouse?

I'm pretty sure there's something on there. Um, and then the other thing, if you are a person of faith, and if you're Catholic, I, I, I say go to church, right. Go and, and, and to, but I say, don't just go, I want you to go meet someone. Right. And that's the person of Jesus Christ. Um, and I also say that I, and try and find out father's middle name.

right. Cuz you have to have a conversation cuz you can't Google that. And so it's, it's, it's those kind of little things, but, and also to be part of the seek now to be part of the community, like try and engage yourself, if you're able to whatever gifts they have. And then the last one is, is, um, are, are you choosing to be faithful to each other?

Of course, of course. Are you able to practice that now? Right. Cuz faithfulness is uh, more unfaithful as we say is I, I just say, quite frankly, it's having sex with someone who's not your husband or your wife and you don't wanna be in the practice of that before you're married, right. It's not a habit to have.

And so I encourage 'em to be faithful. So taking that time to step away, even what culture is saying today, but step away and say, can we as a couple, not engage in sexual activity or I say any genital activity, cuz you have to be pretty specific. This, this idea of can I truly love this other person in this way?

Because in doing those things, three things often helps him to grow into a deeper intimacy, uh, as well.

Yeah, it's not that the church is against a bunch of stuff. We're for a bunch of stuff. Mm love. Especially,

thanks so much for listening to the end. I know that was a long conversation, but if you wanna learn more about some of the things we talked about, like natural family planning, we've linked two resources in the show notes. One is a booklet called pure intimacy in the other is a talk called green sex.

Both are excellent. And I highly recommend that you check them out. And if you're curious about learning how to pray, we've linked a few resources in the show notes as well. Some YouTube videos and books to help you on that topic. Now, if you want practical tips on how to build a great marriage, we have a free guide for you because we all desire loved it last.

But if we're honest, most of us don't know how to build this. Especially if we come from broken families and to make matters worse, we're often discouraged by the prevalence of divorce and we fear that our own marriage will end that way again, especially if we saw our parents' marriage fall apart. In this practical guide for singles and couples, we offer a roadmap for love.

The guide contains seven practical tips to build a thriving and divorce proof marriage based on marriage, research time, tested couples and wisdom from Christianity. And so in addition to the written guide, you're actually gonna receive a free 60 minute talk on the same topic. So if you wanna get the guide and the bonus talk, just go to restored ministry.com/marriage.

Again, restored ministry ministry, singular.com/marriage. Just enter your name and your email, and we'll send you the PDF guide and the talk again. That's restored ministry.com/marriage. Or just click the link in the show notes. The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 70.

Thank you so much for listening. And this has been useful for you. Feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them, always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#072: Eating Disorder: What It Is & How to Heal It | Dr. Julia Sadusky

If you or someone you know has struggled with an eating disorder, you know how painful that experience can be. It’s often an overlooked struggle that really deserves more attention and resources. But thankfully, some resources do exist to heal an eating disorder. 

Today, a psychologist who specializes in treating eating disorders joins us. We discuss:

• The types, symptoms, and root causes of eating disorders

• Surprising statistics on the prevalence of eating disorders and how they can be lethal

• How genetics play a role in developing an eating disorder and why you can’t simply think your way out of it

• What a healthy relationship with food looks like

• Resources and advice you can use today to begin overcoming this struggle

If you struggle with an eating disorder or know someone who does, don’t miss this episode.

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• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Dr. Julia Sadusky

  • Dr. Julia Sadusky Website

  • Facebook

• National Eating Disorders Association

• Eating Disorder Foundation

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

If you or someone, you know, has ever struggled with an eating disorder, you know, how painful and debilitating that experience can be. And sadly, it's an often overlooked, struggling in our culture that really deserves more attention and more resources, but thankfully, some resources do exist to help heal an eating disorder.

Today, I speak with a psychologist who specializes in treating eating disorders. We discuss the symptoms, root causes and types of eating disorders. My guests share some surprising statistics on how so many people struggle with this issue and how an eating disorder can actually be lethal. We talk about how genetics play a role in developing an eating disorder and why you can't simply think your way.

We discussed what a healthy relationship with food looks like, and my guests share some resources and advice that you could use today to begin overcoming this struggle. Finally, sharper some tips to help a friend who's struggling with an eating disorder. And by the way, while I haven't seen any data that suggests that people who come from broken families struggle more with this problem with eating disorders.

We've certainly seen some anecdotal evidence that some of us cope with the trauma of our broken family by turning to food. So if you struggle with an eating disorder, if she knows someone who does. Welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce, separation or broken marriage.

So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pontarelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 72. My guest today is Dr. Julia Sadusky. You might recognize her because she's been on the show before in episode 12, 13 and 14, Dr. Sadosky is an author. She's a speaker and a licensed psychologist.

She owns her own practice. It's called Luxe counseling and consulting in Littleton, Colorado, where she offers individual family and couples therapy. In addition to consultations for individuals and families around sexuality and gender. She also serves as a youth and ministry educator offering trainings and consultations to counseling centers and faith based institutions.

Her other areas of focus include work with complex trauma, eating disorders and teens and emerging adults. Dr. Sadusky has coauthored a bunch of books, which she'll tell you about at the end of the show, but her most recent book is titled gender identity in therapy, which was co-authored with Dr. Mark Yarhouse.

Dr. Julia is currently a research fellow of the sexual and gender identity Institute in Wheaton, Illinois. And she's an advisor to the center for faith, sexuality, and gender. She's also a good friend of mine. So I'm so excited for you to listen in on my conversation with Dr. Julia, which was actually recorded in her office.

Dr. Julia. Thanks for coming on the show. It's good to be with you, Joey. I think you are our most common guests or popular guests. So where you come up, you've come on the show, the mouse. So it's great to have you back. It's good to be here. I'm excited to talk about eating disorders. I know it's a heavy topic.

It's a tough topic, but I think, uh, you have so much experience in this area, so much expertise. So excuse me. I think we'll start with an obvious question, which is like, what exactly do we mean when we say an eating disorder? What is an eating disorder? Yeah, so I think a lot of people, when they hear eating disorders, they most often think of one type of eating disorder, which, you know, we can break that down in a little bit though.

They might be thinking of anorexia where a person simply doesn't eat. And yet there are several types of eating disorders. And what makes them distinct from other types of mental health concerns is that they're pretty serious ways in which a person struggles with their relationship with food. That can include things like being obsessed with food, being obsessed with your weight size shape.

And again, there's, there's different types. So there's binge eating disorder. Bulemia anorexia, which is probably the most serious, but also the least common. So it's interesting that people think of anorexia as the only eating disorder when there's several, and it's actually the least common of the. Super interesting.

Do you mind just explaining what each of those are doing? Bulemia anorexia? Hmm. So maybe I'll start with anorexia because again, that's the one that most people understand. So anorexia is really when a person really tries to reduce their food intake, pretty significantly, that leads to extremely low body weight.

And so there's this pursuit of thinness really at all costs. It doesn't matter if I'm fainting at work. It doesn't matter if I can't think clearly it doesn't matter if I have headaches every day, that pursuit of thinness becomes more important than anything else. Um, it also comes with a distorted body image, fear of gaining.

And extremely disturbed behaviors around that. It's so things like checking myself in the mirror over and over again, um, just to make sure I haven't gained weight. And so that's one type, right? And then we have bulemia, which is probably the second, most understandable that maybe listeners have heard about, which is really where a person's combining things like eating large amounts of food, um, in a short period of time.

And that's called bingeing. So eating a lot in a short time, um, and feeling out of control when you do that and then trying to do something after to compensate. So that could be exercising that could be purging, which is like vomiting using laxatives, using diuretics fasting, anything to really try to compensate for the binge is bulemia nervosa.

And so like people with anorexia, they do fear gaining. And they're unhappy with their body size or shape. So that's what they have in common. And then binge eating is really take that first part of bulemia and take out the second part. So it's really where people are recurrently, binge eating. So eating a lot in a short period of time, feeling out of control while doing it, feeling distressed about that.

Thinking a lot about through food throughout the day. But again, the bulemia follows with exercise or fasting or purging, whereas binge eating doesn't include that compensatory part. Okay. Well, thanks for making that clear and I guess a follow up question, which is related to, so you've probably answered some of it, but what are the signs and symptoms of each?

And I'd imagine I was curious about this in preparing for this interview. I'd imagine that it's possible to have an eating disorder without maybe realizing it, is that true? Absolutely. So one of the challenges with eating disorders, and this is true from, I think mental health concerns broadly is I in a particular way here, one of the symptoms actually of anorexia.

Not having good insight into the severity of the problem. So a person can say, you know, I just skip meals because I'm intermittently fasting. I think about things like, uh, fasting during certain seasons of the years, for people of faith, for instance, and people can kind of rationalize that, or it's popular.

I have today certain diets and people say, oh, I'm just doing this diet. Or I'm doing that diet. I'm restricting that type of food. And it's really easily to enable people in that. And it's also really easy to rationalize it in a culture that is really obsessed with size, shape, and weight where we, we don't know, we have an, maybe a challenge in this area, but when we zoom out and talk about our relationship with food, we may see distortions in that.

So usually when I meet with somebody, instead of saying you have an eating disorder, do you think you have an eating disorder? I'll just ask them, what's your relationship with food? Like, um, You know, what emotions do you have around food? And that's much more helpful cause it's both about the food and it's not about the food when we get down to it.

Yeah. And you said it's about their relationship with food and then not the relationship with food. It sounds to me like it's part yeah. Part that, the relationship with it. And then part of it is the relationship with themselves. That's exactly right. Yeah. When I've worked in, especially in a hospital setting for eating disorders, one of the goals that we set for people is how do you disconnect your sense of self, um, and your sense of value from this idea that I have to be a particular size, a particular shape, a particular weight, and then I'll be sufficient.

Then I'll have value, then I'll have worth in the eyes of others and in the eyes of myself. And so you're right. It's very much. About the food and then about my relationship with myself and other people and how that ultimately gets projected on food at some point. So interesting. Anything else you wanted to add about the signs and symptoms?

No, I think, I think that pretty much covers it. Great. And another question I had was, um, how big is this problem? Cause I think some people are aware of it, others. Aren't so curious. How big is it? Yeah. So when we're talking about worldwide, um, eating disorders affect at least 9% of population. So in the us, about 28.8 million Americans have an eating disorder over the course of their lifetime, you know, less than yeah.

A big number, right. A lot of people. And, and I think. Again, we will talk at probably in a little bit about the myths, but there's so much misunderstanding about eating disorders. And so again, we often think everybody with an eating disorder is underweight and only 6% of people with eating disorders are underweight.

Um, wow. So 94% don't fit into that category of people who struggle with exactly. So, so the ways in which we would typically identify a person with an eating disorder, well, let me look at you, let me look at your size, shape, and weight and let that guide whether I think you have one and even for people themselves, they think, oh, no, I'm not maybe a Macy eight.

And in the way that I've seen on a documentary will I don't have an eating disorder. And here's, what's so challenging about eating disorders is that they are among the most deadly mental illnesses. Second, only to opioid overdose. Wow. And that's getting more intention attention, the opioid crisis, but this isn't necessarily, well, not, not quite in the same way.

I mean, it really has been siloed. I think where people who will work in the eating disorder world take really seriously the challenges we're facing with, with suicide. And then also the direct complications of eating disorders on people's health and, and longevity of their lives. And so, but once you get outside of that context, I, I think a lot of people don't understand eating disorders and, um, don't think often about it being one of the most deadly mental illnesses today.

Well, w uh, in what ways is it lethal? Is it because it leads to suicide or there are other complications as well? So, so a primary way is, is certainly suicide. So about 26% of people with eating disorders attempt suicide. You know, that's at least once in every one in every five, but the other ways, and again, this is the things we don't probably fully appreciate until we start talking about it is, I mean, think about what happens when our body is not being regularly nourished.

Literally by food, but also by a water intake, many people with eating disorders will restrict water. They will also use things like laxatives diuretics that dehydrate the body. And over time, if, if a person is vomiting, for instance, four to five times a day, um, taking in let's say 400, 500 calories a day and purging all of that, taking diuretics, taking laxatives, not drinking water, um, that has such a cumulative effect on the body.

The body can't function. So we see things like failure in the kidneys, uh, you know, bone density, losses that become really making it difficult to be mobile for people. And simply if a person's restricting enough of food intake, their heart can simply stop eating. And so that's probably where. More intensive settings, come in for people where they're in a hospital and they're put on a feeding tube, but those kinds of things to literally keep them alive because that's how challenging it is for that person to get the nourishment that they need.

So sad. Yeah. My goodness. You mentioned myths. I'd like to talk about that. What are some of the most common myths that you've seen as, as a psychologist when it comes to this problem? You know, I think one of the biggest ones, and I remember I was at a dinner party and it's always awkward as a psychologist to tell people what you do and where you work.

And I said to somebody, oh, they said, what do you do for work? I'm a psychologist. Oh, well, where do you work? I said, I work at a hospital for people with eating disorders. And they said, oh gosh, these young people today, they just can't, you know, make the right choice, just eat the food. And then that tells me two myths right there.

One is, it's all about food, you know, it's that simple. And the other myth is it's about choice. And if you talk to anybody with any mental illness, whether it's depression, anxiety, bipolar, schizophrenia, eating disorders, we know that it's not merely about choice. And so to say, it's just a choice. You just have to eat the food.

Um, doesn't doesn't work because we're talking about mental illness here. And so it's not all about the food either. A lot of times it's about our relationship with ourself. Sometimes it's our relationship with our bodies, our relationships. You know what it means to be in a certain body size and the messaging we've received culturally or in our families about that.

Um, I've mentioned another one, you know, BMI, uh, there's a real obsession in our country about BMI and that BMI tells us if we're healthy. And so what we know though is that BMI is actually not a good predictor of overall wellness. Yeah. So our body mass index, um, and so when people, you know, go and stand on the scale at the doctor's office, for instance, many times, if your BMI is in a certain range, the doctor won't even ask about eating disorders and you see that in a particular way in different ethnic groups.

So, um, historically eating disorders are a Western problem, but many people of different ethnic groups. You know, African-Americans, Asian-Americans struggled with eating disorders. And what we know is that doctors will also not ask them because they assume it's a kind of a Caucasian issue. Um, and so a lot of people get undiagnosed, have different ethnic groups.

And then the last myth, I think that really irks me and it's, it's similar to the first, but you know, this is just people who want attention and that is perhaps the boost simplifying and reductive. Then you could say, yeah, the people that I meet with with eating disorders would love to not have an eating disorder.

In many cases, they would do anything including, and their life right out of desperation. I don't want to have this anymore. And so to imply that this is purely about attention seeking is so unhelpful and it only reinforces shame about the challenges that people are facing. Yeah. Wow. You made me think of any addiction really, but I've walked with people who've really struggled with pornography with less in general, and they have these unwanted behaviors.

Right. And I've heard a lot of people speak about this as if it's merely a choice. Like you said, where it's like, oh yeah, you just, just don't choose that. And it's like, oh, it'd be nice if it was that simple. But it's, that's just not the way that our brains work when we're in that situation. And it's sad that a lot of people don't understand it.

I've heard a lot of like very popular people like authors and speakers speak like this. And it it's sad to me because I think it, again, it's such an over simplification of a complex problem and the same thing applies in this case to that's right. It really doesn't give people the benefit of the doubt that they are actually actively working towards wellness.

Hmm. You know, that's certainly not always the case, as you know, with anybody, with anything compulsive going on, some people don't really want to change yet, but a lot of people do. Yeah. And they're really trying to do the best they can with what they have. And we don't do each other any favors when we minimize the severity and seriousness of what the other person's going through, because it's really about me.

Right. If I haven't figured out in my mind, it makes me feel better that it doesn't help people with eating disorders. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. It's no, it's a, it's a sad thing to simplify it like that. And you're right. I think there are people out there who don't care, right. That they're not trying to improve.

And I think that's probably what these people who are talking about this who may be shut up kind of dark light on it. If that's possible to shed a dark line on something, you know what I mean? So it's, yeah, it is sad. I, yeah. I think what I've seen is like a lot of this behavior and these compulsion's are truly unwanted.

And I think all of us can relate to that. Even if we haven't struggled in those ways, we can relate by saying that certainly there's different parts of ourselves that we don't like. Right. There's certainly there's things we do or things we say that we wish we didn't say or think or do. Right. And so I think in that way we can relate because I haven't met like a perfect person yet.

I don't know about you, but, so I think we all can relate at least on that level. There's like these dark sides to us that are certainly a part of our character that we can't just ignore, that we have to face. Admit that that's me. That's me like the good and the bad both. That's right. That's right. Yeah. I think thinking about it as different parts of us can be helpful to a degree.

And, you know, also recognizing, I know, I think last time I was on here, we talked about the function of behavior and being able to honor that everything we do has a function. There's a reason we do it. Um, we're not insane. You know, we have reasons for the things we do, even if they don't make much sense to us on day one.

Yeah. And it's much more helpful to like understand those reasons and even try to go to the root and heal the trauma or whatever is at the root than it is to purely give people tactics to manage it necessarily. Those, those that can be helpful in some scenarios. But I think it just doesn't go far enough.

Um, or to challenge people to become like masters in a way. Uh, I think there's much more that can be done by just truly understanding, uh, the root and then hopefully healing that as well. I want you to, if you would take us into the mind of someone who is struggling with this disorder, what are they thinking?

What are they feeling? I'm sure this varies from person to person, but kind of the typical person, maybe struggling with this what's going on inside them. Yeah. So there is a lot of emotion around nourishment. Um, maybe I'll start there. That's probably the easiest foundation to lay. So imagine you sit down, you know, for dinner, um, with a friend and first thing, when you sit down, you start to feel that anxiety rise in some cases, pure panic.

And what is the panic about? Well, the, the food may be represents, you know, a sign that I'm about to blow up, expand, take up too much space, too much in this relationship. And so I look at that food and I I'm having anxiety and panic and I don't want it, but I have to eat it because I'm with somebody and what's going to happen if I eat.

Hmm, and what's going to happen if I don't and what's, what is the other person going to notice? What are they gonna think of me? And all of that is happening internally. As you sit across the table from your friend talking about your day and the level of intensity of the, the anxiety. I think for many people is what really sticks out.

And, and that's why people avoid food, right? Like we avoid a lot of things that cause anxiety and stress as if I can avoid it long enough, maybe the anxiety will subside. But ultimately of course, when we avoid things, the anxiety increases over time and it reinforces that I have something to be afraid of that food is the threat.

Um, and then after eating, let's say you, you eat your meal or you eat half of your sandwich and then it's the shame and the. Oh, my gosh, I did something bad. I did something wrong. Might my eating disorder tells me never to nourish not to do that. That's bad. So now I've done that bad thing. I've eaten the food and now I feel disgusting and I feel like I'm bad.

And I feel like I'm not worthy of the food and I'm an imposter because I gave it to myself anyway. And that's where you get into to get rid of the disgust, right? People go to other behaviors to kind of purge the body, get rid of those feelings is the hope. And so that's where compensatory activities come in is to kind of release the negative emotion that comes up after nourishing.

Wow. Okay. That's so much going on inside the mind and said the heart of someone struggling with that switch people from the outside, looking. I don't know. And might even judge without knowing that, wow, I was, uh, I'm reading Dr. Meg Meeker's book, strong fathers, strong daughters. And, uh, in that she talks a little bit about eating disorders and she looked at it through the lens of like a middle school girl who, you know, wants to be admired by her peers once boys to be attracted to her once, uh, you know, look at on the sports field, like all this stuff.

And so in that example, I remember her saying. There were rewards that the girls were experiencing and she she's a pediatrician as if you don't know everyone listening. Um, so she works with like these young girls all the time, and she said, these girls experienced yeah. A reward of like, oh, I'm losing weight.

I'm looking thinner. And boys are attracted to me. People are, I'm getting attention and that light. And so I guess that that's kind of a common struggle too, that you're almost reinforcing that behavior. Absolutely. And that's the societal piece that I think we can dive into a little bit more, but just this the way in which we reinforce as a culture, uh, these ideas that young people, especially they get the message that they're.

If they look a certain way and it's reinforcing and it gets right at the core of the eating disorder, um, and perpetuates that in really powerful ways. And the other way we see that if you, if you want to get into the mind of somebody is comparison, the constant, this is where body checking comes in and looking in the mirror, you know, over and over again, and comparing to friends and comparing to people you see on social media, all of that comes in here and has a really powerful influence on, on a person on a daily basis.

And as you can imagine, takes them right out of the present moment, you know, how do you stay present to yourself and other people when you're being consumed with that level of stress, it's a lot to juggle. It's a lot to handle a related question at the root of all this. What are some of the common factors that contribute to the struggle?

Um, yes. So one of the things that people don't fully appreciate with eating disorders is. Many people have genetic predispositions to them. Um, and so that's both in the, in the context of maybe how people process certain neurotransmitters in the brain, but it also has to do with family history of eating disorders, anxiety related disorders, and the way in which our genes impact our personality traits.

So things like perfectionism, for instance, in the case of anorexia for being risk averse. So people who are hesitant to take risks, uh, we see that as a common personality trait that goes along with anorexia in the case of bulemia things and binge eating sensation, seeking. So people who are looking for a rush much in the same way as you see with substance use, how that can be something that predisposes a person to an eating disorder and things like neuroticism.

So high anxiety, about a lot of different facets of life. All of those personality traits can come in and again, predispose a person to an eating disorder. And then we get into experiencial, um, aspects of eating disorders. And certainly a lot of the people that I've worked with have experiences of trauma, um, and neglect.

And I think a lot of times we think only of trauma and we don't often think of neglect. Uh, we think, oh, trauma. Yeah, that's bad, but neglect. Uh, we all have, we all get neglected a little bit and I gotta be honest. I mean, there is just no difference in severity of the impact of traumatic experiences and experiences of neglect on people.

And so those are certainly factors that can come in with eating disorders and peer rejection is another big one. I remember one client who shared with me, you know, I got told over and over again that I was fat. And so I stopped eating and then I stopped getting told I was. And that's where it started societal norms.

Fatphobia this idea that people in larger sized bodies are somehow less responsible, less disciplined, disgusting people to be avoided unattractive. All of that messaging has a really powerful impact on a person growing up in our world. And if we look at people and I use that language intentionally in larger sized bodies, as opposed to saying you're fat, because number one, the standards we have for what it means to be fat today are very unrealistic.

And also it's such a derogatory term to talk about people who, for any number of reasons are in larger sized bodies than other people. Um, and then social media portrayals of course, show us a lot of unrealistic standards specifically for women, but not exclusively for women. And that really. If you look at Western countries and countries that become more westernized, we see increases in rates of eating disorders.

That's really fascinating when you think about it, that even, I remember traveling to Ukraine in 2016 and gave a talk on eating disorders. And they said we didn't see eating disorders in our treatment facilities until we became more rest westernized and had more social media access. So the power of that on young people in a particular way is really, I think, hard to fully appreciate.

Yeah. That's not trivial. My goodness, man. There's so much there and I'm sure we can continue this conversation forever. I remember hearing, yeah, just like, you know, friends growing up saying like, oh, I'm so fat or something. And I remember, but with a snarky boy in me has a teenager at least to be like, well, if you're a fat than other people, like, you know, not like they're really struggling.

Cause yeah. I think there's this like an expectation. Yeah. We have of being like on a magazine cover and it's just so ridiculous. It's like, you don't need to have like a 2% body fat to be healthy. And so it is sad how we put so much pressure on people. And I think women in particular, I'm sure men struggle with this too, but women in particular, I think are just the recipients of this assault on femininity and a lot of ways, but just on the body in general.

That's right. And I think maybe that's another myth I didn't touch on is a lot of you asked, do people often not know they have an eating disorder and I've worked with several men. I can think of who came to see me and said, you know, I'm just tired a lot because I'm not getting enough food and. They had an eating disorder and, um, you know, all these fad diets and intermittent fasting and the Daniel's fast, I think it's called and all of these different options for people.

Yeah. Make credible, restricting our food intake and tell us that if I don't eat for a long period of time, I'm more disciplined and more virtuous in some cases. And that on men and women both, um, really just has a really detrimental effect on them. And I think a lot of times we think, oh, this is a female problem with eating disorders, but certainly, um, we see that with medicine.

Thanks for saying that. Yeah. Is it, is it more prominent in one of the other, I was across the board. Is it like a 50 50 split? I'm just curious because, thanks for saying, yeah, it's a great question. We honestly probably have under representative prevalence estimates. So because men don't often come to treatment.

Um, so even working in an eating disorder facility, I think I worked, I can count on two hands, the men that I worked with. And I think a lot of that is because it's normalized to go and work out seven days a week as a man. Even if you work out for two hours every day, everybody's cheering you on for that.

And it's a little bit different for women. Uh, in that regard, you can identify compulsive exercise a little bit more easily in women than in men. And, um, certainly all of the research we have on eating disorders is more focused on the experience of women. So it's pretty challenging for men to see themselves in the experience and to come forward and say, Hey.

I not only do I need mental health treatment, which is already difficult for men, but I have an eating disorder, which feels like a, a female problem. And that can be a challenge for them in getting help. They need. Yeah, it's kind of similar to lust. I think a lot of women think less as a man problem, a male problem, but that is just so false and it's starting to be proven to be false, like on a large scale, which I think is good so that people can get the help that they need.

So now thanks for clarifying that that's, that's really helpful. Um, I, I was curious, you mentioned genetics and being able to. Identified these predispositions. Right. And we've heard of predispositions to alcohol. I think a lot of people know about that, but I didn't know. You could tell things like perfectionism and I kind of fall into that category.

I'd be curious. Like, is there a way, are there tests out there? To tell like, oh, I have a predisposition to this or that. Yeah. So what I came across this more when I worked in, um, inpatient eating disorder work, but they, uh, they do I'm blanking right now on the name of the measure, but it's, it's a pretty substantial tests that looks at, um, traits that have been mapped on for people with eating disorders.

And you can see the constellation of personality traits that you have and how they might factor in to the types of behaviors. Cognitive rigidity is another one. Um, and how that can map on in pretty understandable ways. When you think about it, if I'm rigid about different aspects of life and my experience, and I may also be rigid about food and calories and, oh my gosh, no, I can only have 1400 calories and that's it.

And if I have more than that, Bad things are gonna happen and you can kind of see that rigidity play out, but it's, yeah, it's pretty fascinating when you start to realize that, you know, certainly without certain experiences that kind of put you on a trajectory, it's not to say everybody who's perfectionistic has these types of things, but to know that it does complicate our process of certain behaviors and how we manage them over time.

Okay. That makes sense. And when we, when we say tests, is this a written test? It's is it a blood draw for everyone? So it's, um, a written test. So it's kind of, you know, you pick maybe statements, how true are these statements for me or, um, those kinds of things. So more of like an academic test than a blood draw or something like that.

Cool. Okay. Good to know. Yeah. I was curious though, for people, anyone listening right now who is maybe struggling with this, or maybe they're realizing that they struggle with us listening to us right now. What resources exist to help someone like that? Who's really stuck in this fight. Yeah. So there are a couple of facets to treating an eating disorder.

Um, I think a lot of times we can obviously think of therapy first and therapy is. Wonderful and helpful and important for people with eating disorders. I will say with therapy, I would recommend you work with somebody who knows about eating disorders. Um, a lot of therapists, sadly, don't get very excellent training on eating disorders.

And so they may be just as uneducated as the average lay person. And so you really, when you're stepping into that work, especially if you're really, really struggling with an eating disorder, you don't really have time to educate your therapist. Um, and so really being able to, you know, look for providers and I can talk about organizations that help you narrow that process down in a second.

But looking for providers who know their stuff about eating disorders is really critical. Um, there's really two other pieces though, that are important with eating disorder work. And one is dietary support. And in the same way, as with a therapist, you want somebody who knows eating disorders, you would want a dietician who knows eating disorders.

So there are nutritionists out there and dieticians who can actually. Cause eating disorders in people. Wow. Um, by teaching people to restrict their food intake, for instance, to get to a certain size, shape, and weight. And so being careful about who you go and see, but I do think the dietary aspect, especially early on is really critical because you want to know, like, what does my body need to function?

And a helpful dietician can map that out, help with meal planning, help with, you know, challenging thoughts that come up around meal time and just help think through and problem solve those things, help modulate exercise and make sure movement is in a healthy way. All of those things are really critical and then psychiatry as another one I mentioned, right?

How there's these genetic predispositions and a lot of times there's anxiety, depression, other things going on. So having a psychiatrist who can help with medication management can also be really helpful. Of course, there's other neat things out there, like art therapy, movement therapy that can help people get connected to their body or externalize emotions in helpful ways.

But ultimately there's a couple of support networks that might be good for people to know. So one is the eating disorder foundation, um, called EDF for short, and they have free groups, both virtually, and sometimes in person that people can go to and meet other people who have eating disorders and get support of all kinds and it's free, which is wonderful.

Um, and then Nita and EDA, the national eating disorder association has a ton of resourcing online. Um, and they can also direct you, both of those organizations. And Nita can help you find a therapist who knows eating disorders as well. And then finally, I'll say that I mentioned hospitalization before, and you know, when a person is really trying their best to nourish and to do the things they need to do on a daily basis, and they just can't make those shifts on their own, which is true for some people and nothing to be ashamed of.

There are hospitals in place that can help you with that and can give more structure and accountability and support around meal times, especially that can help people with reducing behaviors. Yeah. And the man there's so much shame around doing something like that, which is so sad. It's like, you know, we'd never shamed someone who struggling with cancer, go to the hospital and get treatment for their cancer.

But for some reason, in our culture, at least. It's almost unthinkable to go put yourself in a hospital. And my goodness, like you really messed up. Like, that's a sad that we think of it that way that someone has this desire to overcome this struggle or to, to feel whole again, and to be in a healthy place in their life that they're just so afraid and so taboo to pursue that.

Exactly. Yeah. It's a big sacrifice people make when they take those steps in a society that still has so much stigma around mental illness. And what does it mean about you as a person that you're taking that time away to in some cases sustain your life. And I often say to parents, especially who feel mixed feelings about a young person or a young adult going and taking time off work for months at a time to go to a hospital.

And I say like, do you want your child alive? I mean, 'cause the longer you wait, the worse, this gets. And we've seen that in so many ways with mental health concerns, untreated mental health concerns get worse. They don't get better. Yeah, man, and I have so much admiration for people who take those steps, who actually go to a hospital who go to, you know, whatever program is right for them.

And they take time off work to the point where, you know, maybe a lot of people end up finding out about what they're doing, which is so hard. Um, but, but there's so much admiration there because it takes such courage to just listen to that voice inside of you that says, okay, you know, you deserve to be healthy.

You deserve to be whole, and it's okay for you to take steps that maybe other people will judge you for, but it's going to be so much better for you and for the people that you love in the long run. Like what, what a heroic action in my opinion. Yeah. A lot of people focus on what will I lose? What will I miss out on if I take this step and recovery and wellness, and I often ask my clients, what do you, what do you gain and what do you lose by not right.

And we can kind of look back and see the ways eating disorders, Rob us of life and freedom and joy and peace and confidence in our true selves, as opposed to what we look like or what we think we look like on a daily basis, giving people the opportunity to really look back and say, wow, this has taken a lot for me.

And I have the opportunity to take my life back. So again, and I think that's amazing too, for people who maybe have a hard time taking care of themselves or investing in themselves, if you overcome this or at least in a manageable place with this, and, you know, you feel so much better, you feel healthier, feel more.

Not only is it just for you, but the people around you too, you're going to inspire maybe other people who are struggling with this, or even people are struggling with something completely different. You can empathize with them and help them maybe through something that's so difficult. And it's so relatable to talk with someone who's been through pain, who's struggled, who's, you know, taking these big steps to try to be healthier and whole.

And so I think, um, maybe you stop thinking about yourself so much in a way. I know that might sound odd because it is about you and that's okay for it to be about you, but maybe think of the other people in your life who will benefit from what you benefit from that's right. Yeah. It becomes a real gift and resource.

And I don't know that all of my clients, when they come to see me on day one, think of themselves that way is kind of a model, um, a source of wisdom, but I gotta be honest, you know, the people I work with this is true in general, but I certainly see it with eating disorders are some of the people that I admire most.

The courage. It takes to be honest with yourself about where you are and to seek support and be vulnerable and to be authentic, we, we don't have much of that in our society today. And we benefit from more people coming forward and talking about what they're really going through and to your point, being able to be a resource to others as well.

Yeah. What would the world look like if we all did? Ah, Hmm. That'd be a beautiful place. What would be different than it is right now? Yeah. I can hear some people listening right now thinking, okay. What's the line between, you know, wanting to work out a lot, maybe loving food or hating food, just not having a natural, like draw towards food.

Is there a clear line between an eating disorder and someone who just. Maybe they're just really into, um, intermittent fasting. How do you decipher those two? It sounds like it might be difficult. Yeah, it is difficult. I definitely wouldn't recommend people listen to this in self-diagnosis. I mean, I, I think this is part of the role of mental health providers and the key with eating disorders is, you know, we're not going to be as the best gauge of our own illness.

And so you do need people who you can share openly. Here's what happens for me when I see a plate of food or maybe that doesn't happen. But gosh, if I don't exercise on a day that I plan to. I shamed myself and then I skip a meal or I cut corners in my snack because I don't deserve it. And, and it's, it's not a clear line because we do have a society that's has a really unhealthy relationship with our bodies.

And so there's a lot of normalization of eating disorder, talk and conversation in our culture and not everybody meets criteria for an eating disorder. Um, so I'm of the mind that I would love for there not to be anybody who meets criteria over time. And, and yet, if you have a complicated relationship with food or you do feel a lot of shame when you don't exercise, you're skipping meals, you're feeling like you have to earn your next meal.

That to me is something that's worth talking about with somebody and. Doesn't meet full criteria. Well, at least you can work on it before it does. And if it does meet full criteria, then all the more reason to get in and to really get some support. Um, but again, I think as a society, we don't have a very healthy relationship with our bodies and food.

And so that does make the line a little bit blurry between those different pieces. Yeah. And just the inherent complexity of it too. It's like, there's so many layers to this. And so that, that makes sense, but that's really helpful. Thanks for clarifying that. So for someone who wants help, who needs help or know someone who could use help like this, you mentioned the groups, uh, what someone can, what what's something that someone can do maybe today, aside from go into one of those groups or booking a therapy session, what's something that they can do, like right now, as you're listening to this, or once they put down their earphones, you know, honestly, I think the biggest next step for somebody is telling somebody you trust that you resonated with what you heard.

So, Hey, I was listening, listening to this podcast and they were talking about eating disorders and there was a lot I could relate to. I don't know if I have one or maybe I do know that I have one and I just wanted to start with telling somebody, you know, can you hold me accountable and taking the next step, even if I'm not sure what that is yet, but maybe that is going back to my therapist who I'm seeing and bringing it up, or maybe it's reaching out to a therapist or getting on ETF's website and looking for a group.

But yeah, I think that next step is tell somebody who is safe for you about what you resonate with and opening that door to vulnerability can be really relieving and really freeing. Um, and it's a really concrete step that you can take today. I love it. I've been in that situation where I've had to reveal things to people that, you know, things in my past, for example, or I've been in the receiving end of it.

And I think beforehand you're like, this is going to go horribly and I can't promise you that I will go great. I don't know. Kind of depends on who you tell, but I'm careful choose wisely. And I always say with that, like it's wise to pick someone who, you know, who's suffered a bit. Um, I find that those types of people are more empathetic, typically.

Not always, but you know, they're, they're able to kind of receive that. They have the capacity for it. Cause some people who, and this is not to put people like this down at all, but people who maybe really haven't struggled much in life or haven't suffered much in life, which I'm really happy for them in one way.

But, but on the other hand, it's like, they might not be the best person to confide in about something like this, but anything you would add to that? No, I think that's right. I mean, You know, that's why I say, you know, if you're going to share it with somebody lofted off easy, not, you know, Hey, I'm I have an eating disorder, but Hey, I heard this podcast, would you listen to it?

And it resonated with me. And, and then if it's somebody that, you know, has shown up for you in areas of vulnerability, to be as honest as you can with them, and you may be surprised. I mean, a lot of people struggle in this area more than we would realize. And so being courageous in that, and you mentioned it's, it's scary to do it.

And it's also scary, not too many people listening, know what it's like to carry a secret alone for a long time. And it's a pretty dark and scary place there too. So it's good to remember that. Yes, it's, it's scary to take that step in vulnerability. And on the other side of that can be a lot of. Amen. Yeah.

A lot of freedom. Uh that's great advice. Thank you for everything that you've shared. I want to shift gears before we end to people listening right now, who maybe they have a friend who's come to them and told them exactly what you just said, or, or they can recognize that they're struggling in one way or another and they want to help.

They want to help. What should someone not say? I want to start there, which is someone not say or not do to help someone who's struggling with an eating disorder. Yes. So the biggest thing is do not make body comments positive or negative. And this is unpopular because a lot of people say, well, gosh, aren't you just kind of being dramatic.

And we ought to think about what that signals to somebody. Like it tells somebody pretty clearly that your value and worth hinges on what you look like. And are we prepared to say that about. And you can compliment somebody smile or compliment how radiant their eyes look or cute. Gosh, like you always dress so well, that's different than saying, wow, have you lost weight or, well, have you gained weight or while your cheeks look really big, it's like not, okay.

So body comments avoid potty comments, positive or negative because a lot of times what you do when you give a positive comment, a person with an eating disorder says, oh, I shouldn't eat less. That felt good. I imagine how it would feel. If I lost five more pounds, maybe more people would notice. And if you make a negative body comment, it reinforces there's something wrong with me and I've got to change it.

And I've got to manipulate caloric intake to do that. Don't police people with eating disorders and their eating habits. Okay. So if a person struggling with binge eating disorder, don't tell them, oh, you need to eat healthy. Hmm, don't criticize good food, bad food, healthy food, unhealthy food. A lot of times I hear this now and I'm sensitive to it, certainly, but people, oh, well, you know, I eat a big breakfast, so I'm going to have to skip lunch or yeah.

Thanksgivings tonight. So let's not eat anything before we got to earn it. I mean, those kinds of comments, reinforced, disordered, eating, finding things to talk about other than diets and latest fads in that you mentioned, you know, what, if somebody is fine with intermittent fasting, well, that's fine. Don't talk about it because then it becomes this kind of social commodity and it makes it out to be something different and that can have an impact on people.

I think a lot of people are pretty obsessed with this kind of health cut, conscious fitness conscious world. And I think we would do well to spend much more of our time talking about things that matter. And so don't talk about those kinds of things like food, find other. And, and let's see how our relationships improve.

Beautiful. Yeah. My, I know my friendships, my relationships always get better when I go below the surface. And I think a lot of those things you mentioned often are surface level conversations, which is sad. And, um, maybe it's more of American culture culture in the west, but I certainly know that it tends to say that our relationships tend to say that we're just so sad for so many reasons, but this being another one of them, what should someone say or do to help someone who's struggling with an eating disorder?

Yeah. So, so comment on a person's character, their qualities that you appreciate. Listen to them. Talk about the stressors of daily life, including food, like a person, being able to tell you that like Cassia I'm, I'm feeling really stressed because we're going out to dinner with colleagues at work this evening.

And I feel a lot of shame when I eat in front of. And being able to receive that. Thank you for telling me that. Wow. It means a lot that you would trust me with that. I admire your courage and being able to say that out loud, I'm encouraging people to feel their emotion. Meaning if a person's crying, if a friend is opening up and they're crying and they start to apologize, I'm sorry.

I can't believe I'm doing this. Ugh, I'm too emotional to be able to stop them and say, Hey, I'm grateful that you trust me with your tears because a lot of people with eating disorders and people, without them, we struggled to be able to get our feelings out. And so to be able to receive them is really helpful for people with eating disorders and people without them, and find ways to connect outside of exercise and food, sitting on the ground at a park and a picnic.

Instead of, if a person has an eating disorder, always walking with them or always making it about food while also letting a person know if it would ever help to have somebody to eat a meal with, or to call me while you're eating, just to have company I'm here for that honor their ability to have boundaries.

So if a person says, Hey, please, don't talk about that diet in front of me, respecting that, you know, and, and finally I'll say focus on food as nourishment and energy, rather than something that we can earn. So talking about food, that cash. Yeah. My brain is really foggy and tired. I need to eat some food as opposed to, Ugh, I, should I eat this cookie or not because I didn't run yet today.

I mean, that, that doesn't help. And so really changing our own relationship with food and nourishment and talking about it that way, as opposed to it being something that's tied to our. I want to stay there for a second. If you want to elaborate a little bit on that, like, what does it look like to have a healthy relationship with food?

You already mentioned a few things throughout this whole interview, but especially right there, but just give you an opportunity to add anything to that. Yeah. So there's an interesting philosophy right now called intuitive eating. And the idea is that our bodies are made to tell us the truth. So when I wake up in the morning, if I don't eat, my body will send me a cue.

My stomach will grow. Yeah, I'll get a headache. Those are hunger cues. And I think a healthy relationship with food involves listening to our hunger cues. And if we don't listen to our hunger cues, believe it or not, we actually stop having them. And so this is why people will say, oh my gosh, ever since I started fasting for 12 hours, I don't get hungry.

For 12 hours while your body has listened and it's gotten the message that you're not giving it what it needs. So it stops working and the way that plays out as it also then impacts fullness cues, which come next. And so that's where binge eating comes in and it's a person being able to listen to their fullness cues and to stop eating because wow, I feel Sasha.

I feel satisfied and then intuitive eating also involves like maybe, you know, on a random Tuesday night, when a person comes home from a dinner, they're craving something sweet and they can enjoy a cookie and not have guilt about that. Pap a bowl of ice cream and enjoy that. And that's the intuitive piece.

And then maybe other days I want a salad because gosh, that sounds really good to me on the menu, but it not being about good food, bad food, safe food, dangerous food, and really about what is my body one, what does it need today? Um, and being able to spontaneously respond to that and give the body what it needs on a regular basis.

Awesome. Great advice. Thank you. And fullness cues, just to tie this up, what would those look like? I think we all know what hunger cues are. Like, we've all felt those, but I don't know if people are as aware of like what fullness cues look like. Yeah, probably not. I mean, You know, what I often tell with clients about, and, um, is mindfulness in the context of eating.

So pacing myself in such a way that I can check in with myself while I'm eating and say like, how am I feeling about this meal? Like, do I want more, do I want less? And you know, as I finish up a plate of food, checking in with myself, taking a few minutes and just seeing what that feels like, and if I want more getting up and getting more, if I think I'm going to be wanting a snack in 30 minutes, that's probably a good sign.

I should eat more now. Um, and then, you know, if I'm starting to feel bloated or kind of weighed down or kind of like, I'm just eating to put food in my mouth as opposed to mindfully, like I'm hungry, this tastes good to me. Um, that's another good gauge of like, where am I at? Am I mindfully eating? Or am I just putting food in my body?

For more of an emotional reason. Yeah. No, that can be an easy thing to do, especially if you're at a party, everyone else is eating. It's like, oh, I'm just going to do that. And now that makes so much sense. It's like sign a fullness key. I've heard that before that, like when your diaphragm, when your stomach like hit your dye from the new kind of PSI, I dunno if you've heard that and maybe I'm off go, you know what?

I, I could see that I'll say that I could see that. I do think fullness cues are a little bit harder to operationalize, but I've certainly, I can tell you as I'm working with a client and we're having a, maybe a meal in the hospital setting together, and there is a moment where it's like, I feel good. I feel satiated.

And, and that's the question I ask people is like, where, where are you at? How full do you feel? Do you feel satiated right now? And they can check in with themselves and kind of figure that out. Sounds good. I hope everyone doesn't be like, did I just say, yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's the neurotic piece of all of us.

Am I doing it right? Uh, yeah. And, and it takes practice and our bodies, but our bodies want to be satisfied. You know, they need nourishment to function. And so trusting your body's ability, if you don't have hunger and fuel fullness cues right now to get those back over time. That's great. And I think one of the most helpful things that anyone who's struggling with this can do is to find someone to help them.

Someone who's specially trained in this, like you said before, And so I wanted to give that opportunity to tell us about your work, what you do. I know you have an expertise in treating eating disorders. Um, you've done this for years. You obviously, your practice is much bigger than that, but I would love for you to tell us about what you offer your, any books, how you do speaking.

Tell us about all of that. Yeah. So it's funny, a lot of my work and writing and speaking doesn't have a lot to do with eating disorders. So my specialty. Well, in addition to eating disorders is sexuality and gender. So if people were to look me up, a lot of my work is in those areas. So that can be sexual identity, same-sex sexuality.

Um, so LGBT experiences and gender identity, transgender experiences. So, um, that's a lot of the writing and speaking that I do, but yes, you're right. I have a specialty in eating disorders and I work with a lot of survivors of trauma who also have eating disorders. And so I have a counseling practice, uh, here in Littleton, Colorado, and it's called Lux counseling and consulting.

And I offer individual and family therapy, um, for people with a lot of different things, but including eating disorders. Um, and then I work with dieticians and psychiatrists in the area. So if people are looking for support with dietician or psychiatrist, certainly I can give referrals for those. This is a time where everybody seems to be benefiting from mental health support and a lot of people are reaching out.

And so, um, I'm not the only one out there. So if somebody was to reach out to me and I say, I have a wait list or that kind of thing, I'd be happy to connect people to other resources. But yeah, that's a little bit about what I do. Cool. Well, thank you. And is there one best way to reach out to you? Like how can people follow you and get in touch with you if they'd like to?

Yeah. So I have a website which is kind of easy, except I have a very difficult, last name to spell. So, um, it's my first and last name www.juliasadusky.com. And that's probably the best way to, to follow some of the work. I do, the writing and the speaking engagements I have, um, I have a Facebook page for, uh, Julia Sadusky Sidey that people can follow on there.

Um, so they're probably the easiest ways. Yeah. And we'll put on the, of that in the show notes. So you guys, so. Track that down. I did want to clarify one thing, you mentioned the, uh, you know, treating gender struggles. Um, you do it from a very unique perspective. I know some people listening might not understand that.

I know you personally, so I know that, but, um, yeah. What's your perspective on that? I know you work a lot with people of faith who are struggling in that area. Would you clarify that? Yeah, so, um, yeah, my specialty is really at the intersection of exploring sexual identity, exploring gender identity and, um, experiences of people, of faith.

So for a person of faith, how do I reconcile deeply held beliefs and values with experiences, challenges I have related to my experience with gender identity or sexual identity. And so I don't exclusively work with people of faith, but, um, it's kind of a niche area to work with people at that intersection.

So a lot of my writing is, is in that vein. Yeah, no, I think there's a lot of people listening right now. And a lot of people out there who would benefit from this because. You're counter-cultural, you're, you're not, you're helping people on a unique ways, which I think is like so helpful and you're not doing it in a way that a lot of people in the world are doing it.

So I just wanted to give you that plug for that. So thank you for the work that you're doing and, uh, for helping, you know, all those people who need the help. Absolutely. Yeah. If you're interested in reading more, there's, um, a couple of recent resources out there, one emerging gender identities, which probably would be the most accessible to a person listening about just what do we make of where we are at in society and how we approach and think about gender identity and what are the ways.

Specifically people of faith can better respond than we have in the past two people navigating that space. Awesome. And you wrote that. Awesome. And that can get that on Amazon and that's right on Amazon. Yep. And it coauthored it with mark Yarhouse and it's called emerging gender identities, understanding the diverse experiences of today's youth.

Amazing. Well, thank you for all these resources. Thanks for all you do. You're a hard worker. Uh, man, your life has been so busy. I'm so surprised that you're able to do everything that you do. It seems like you're like, oh, I'm writing this book and that fuck. And you have a full client load and it's just amazing.

So I admire you, uh, Dr. Julia, um, what encouragement, just in closing, I don't want to give you the last word. What encouragement would you give to anyone who's struggling with an eating disorder? I really would want somebody listening with an eating disorder to know that you do not have to be bound by the reality that you live right.

A lot of people feel in the midst of an eating disorder. Like there's no way out they're trapped and something that offered you a life of acceptance and value and worth becomes something that you are indebted to and enslave to. And just for somebody listening to know that you don't have to be a slave to it forever, and there is treatment out there and it can help even in the spaces, in places of our lives that feel really hopeless.

Um, and so don't give into despair and trust your ability more importantly than anybody. Else's your ability to work through the things that you, that you're navigating and you don't have to do that alone. So if you struggle with an eating disorder, what's one thing that you can do this week to begin healing, some idea that you maybe heard in this episode, what can you do this week to take action on that?

And if you know someone who struggles with an eating disorder, what's one thing that you can do this week that maybe you heard in this episode to offer support and help them heal. And if you want to find a counselor, we went to help her building a network of counselors that we trust and recommend. And the benefits to using our network are we're going to save you a lot of time and effort in searching for a counselor.

We'll connect you with a trained professional who can give you the help and the tools you need to heal. So you can feel whole again. So if you want a counselor, just go to restored ministry.com/coaching. Again, restored ministry.com/coaching. Just fill out the form it's really quick. And then once we find a counselor for you, we'll connect you with them again.

That's restored ministry.com/. The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 72. Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful for you, feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them, always remember you're not alone.

We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#071: My Parents’ Divorce Made Me a Child-Sized Old Soul | Professor Daniel Drain

Growing up too fast is a common experience for children of divorce. You’re often called upon to take on responsibilities that should never be yours. As a result, you may become a serious, mature person — even if you’re still a kid.

That’s what happened to our guest today, which he explains in this episode. In addition, we discuss:

• A surprising thing that helped him heal and begin to break the cycle of dysfunction and divorce in his own life

• How his parents are also children of divorce, which naturally played a role in how they repeat that cycle in their own marriage

• What marriage is meant to be and why a false idea of freedom greatly hinders your ability to build lasting love

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• Daniel Drain

  • Twitter

  • Facebook

  • Email: daniel.drain@stbernards.edu

• Accredited Online Ministry Degrees | Catholic Master Programs – St. Bernard’s (stbernards.edu)

• Episode 21: How to Build Love That Lasts: The 5 Love Languages

• Torn Asunder: Children, the Myth of the Good Divorce, and the Recovery of Origins

• Love Alone Is Credible

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• Inquire about an event: events@restoredministry.com

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Transcript

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

After my parents separated and later divorce, I feared repeating the same cycle in my own relationship and marriage one day. And so I became obsessed with the questions. How do I avoid that? How do I not repeat my parents' mistakes? Because I wanted authentic love, but had no clue how to build it. I think that's true for some many of us, we all want.

But if we're honest, we're not quite sure how to go about building a healthy relationship and great marriage. I think that's even more true for those of us who come from broken families. Nobody's showed us how to build love and a marriage. And that leaves us feeling discouraged and even hopeless to the point where we give up on love.

We give up a marriage, we give up on commitment and we even settle for the. In this episode, I'm going to share a talk that offers a simple roadmap to build authentic love. And so you're going to hear a snippet of that talk, which touches on a few things. First four signs that your relationship or marriage is headed off a cliff.

According to researchers, the biggest area of conflict in marriage and what to do about it. Practical tips that you can use to make conflict healthy. The one thing that makes conflict less than. And more manageable and finally, a resource that you can use to handle conflict better to make conflict healthier in your relationship.

And so if you want a healthy relationship in great marriage one day, whether or not you come from a broken family, keep listening.

welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents. Separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Poncherelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 70 and that's part two of a small series. And what you're about to hear is a talk I gave to the college students of Ave Maria university in Florida.

The talk is titled seven tips to build a thriving and divorce proof marriage, actionable advice from research, the church and time tested. And so the content of the talk is not just my opinion or my limited experience within marriage, but it's really based on psychological research advice from really beautiful married couples who have built amazing marriages and finally wisdom from Christianity on marriage.

By the way, if that's not what you believe, you're not a Christian, you're still going to get a lot out of this. Talk, my challenge to you is just go into it with an open mind. There's a lot of human wisdom overall in this. I've given the sock primarily to college students and young adults. I think it's perfect for that audience, but older audiences have found it helpful as well.

But some of the feedback we've gotten from the young people, one woman who happened to be a newlywed, she was just married in the last six, seven months when she heard the talk, she listened to it three times in a row because she found it so helpful that the host of one of the events where I gave the talk said this, she said, a girl I just talked to on the phone, said that she was watching over zoom and thought it was so good.

Another young woman said it was probably the best talk that she's. Heard so lots of good feedback. I don't say that to boast, but just to assure you, this is worth your time. And so here's a snippet of that talk.

So tip number four, set healthy expectations for your marriage. Tip number five, learn to handle. This is so important. Um, one book said that conflict is the price you pay for intimacy. Conflict is the price you pay for intimacy that comes from the book, saving your marriage before it starts by doctors, Les and Leslie Parrott.

They're two psychologists. They're a married couple of men and a woman with the same name. It's hilarious. And so it's so true. It's so true. As you got close to someone in your life, conflict is inevitable. And in fact, if you're avoiding conflict in your serious relationship, it's usually not a good sign.

It either means you're a Saint or there's something off. And so the goal is not to avoid conflict, but rather to make conflict healthy, to make conflict healthy. So how do you do that? Dr. John Gottman, you might've heard of him. He and his team of researchers have researched. Marriage and conflict that for the past.

And what they would do is they invite married couples to their lab, which was this fancy apartment in Seattle, and then invite them out there on the west coast. And they would observe them over a weekend, let's say, and especially observed how they handle conflict. And now, supposedly this is kind of insane.

Supposedly they can predict with about 95% accuracy. Whether the couple is going to stay married or eventually get divorced. 95% accuracy. They're looking for four things, four bad signs that say the marriage is in trouble. Dr. Gottman calls those four signs, the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I'm going to list them off quickly and then we'll go through each.

The first one is criticism. Two is contempt. Three is defensiveness for his Stonewall. Criticisms psychologists say that criticism and complaining are different. They're not the same complaining is saying something about someone's actions, right? It's critiquing actions. Let's say, whereas a criticism is attacking a person attacking their character.

They're not the same. Contempt is similar to criticism, but different. Dr. Gottman says this, he says, contempt is the intention to insult and psychologically abuse your part. And this looks like by the way, in a relationship, it looks like name calling. It looks like sarcasm. It looks like mockery.

Defensiveness is really the result of criticism and contemporary. We feel so attacked. We just put up our shield and defend ourselves. And this looks like blaming. It looks like making excuses and being unwilling to take responsibility. Stonewalling is a result of all these, right. These go into progression.

Stonewalling is where we just feel so overwhelmed. We're just done. We just emotionally check out. We shut down. We avoid our spouse at least emotionally. And, uh, supposedly 85% of Stonewall's are men. So this is something that we need to look out for our guys, especially, but these four signs is for bad signs.

Don't mean that your marriage is due. They just mean you're you're in trouble. And if these become habits, you're really heading off of a ledge. And so you need professional hub. Like now, if you see these in your relationship, those are the bad ways to handle conflict. How do we handle conflict in a healthy way?

There's five tips from that book, saving your marriage before it starts with the one at which I want to share with you, the first one is pick your battles, pick your battles, let the small things go get used to giving your spouse. This has been so helpful for me in my own marriage. My wife makes a lot of mistakes.

No, I'm just kidding. I'm definitely the one who makes more mistakes. Um, but you really, we can let things go. You don't need to voice your opinion about every little thing that your spouse does. Like you can let things go. You can bite your tongue. If they're big things, obviously bring those up. You can let the small things go extend grace.

Another thing you can do is practice. Put yourself in their shoes. It really requires you to detach from your emotions because in conflict, it's really hard to do this. And so one tactic they recommend is repeating what you hear your spouse saying, just to make sure you can fully understand where they're coming from.

Say it back to them. They say to define the real issue. So when tensions rise, you can ask the question, like, what are we really fighting about? Define what the fight is really about until both of you understand a little hint. It might not be the thing you're actually fighting about. It's usually something that's under the surface.

It's bigger than you really need to address. Take a break. They say, so our marriage, counselor, my wife, and I've been in marriage counseling. Uh, he taught us this little tactic called calling a time out. So when things get intense, uh, you needed to call a time out. So how does this work? It's a simple tactic before conflict.

You agree to a timeframe for a timeout. Okay. And it sounds like we're in a preschool, but it's sometimes we feel like that. But this is really good. So anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours, you set a set time. Let's say it's like an hour. And then in a conflict, when you guys are struggling, one of you can say, Hey, like I need, I need a time out.

And so then you take the time out. And then the person who calls a time out, they're the ones who keeps track of the time. And there were zoom the conversation as well. This is so helpful. It's been really helpful for my wife and I, because when we're emotional, especially when we're angry, our counselor taught us that our IQ.

By about 30 points or for those of us like me with an average IQ, that means like in the range of 70, which psychologists say is like the level of mental disability. And so we're literally trying to fight when we're super disabled and then finally actually resolve conflicts. So growing up, uh, we, my siblings and I barely saw conflict.

My parents. And they would tell you this, the way that they handle conflict, they would fight things, get loud. And then one or both of them will walk their separate ways. Like, I'm sure you guys have experienced that in your homes as well. So it set a horrible example for us to the point where I became really afraid of conflict and really unsure about how to handle it.

And so guys make sure you actually resolve conflict follow through here. And when you become parents, this is super, super important. When you become parents, make sure that your kids know that you've. Problems that they saw come up. Okay. So if you have a fight in front of your kids, make sure they know it's resolved.

Whether you do that in front of them, or later you go to them and say, Hey, mommy and daddy, we resolve this. My wife and I are trying to get in this habit. Now we've been doing pretty well with it. Um, where if our daughter who's seven months, right? She's, doesn't have an explicit memory at this point. Um, she sees this fight.

This is us fighting. We try to show her that, okay, we've made up we're we're good. Now we resolve this and we even say, sorry to her, that she had to experience. And so super good to make sure you resolve things. So if you want more tips like that, get the book, saving your marriage before it starts a few final things on handling conflict, uh, build trust, right?

Uh, conflict is so much easier when trust is high. Okay. How do you build. Th this is a whole nother talk too, but two, two quick things, vulnerability and consistency, vulnerability inconsistency, opening yourself up to even a scary extent and then continuing to show up so that, you know, you can rely on the other person, a business writer, pat Lencioni, Catholic business writer, pat Lynch.

He only says that trust makes conflict. The pursuit of truth. Trust makes conflict, that pursuit of truth. And so basically when we trust each other, when there's a conflict about maybe like, what should we do in this situation? That conflict is ordered to finding the best possible solution. It's not just a battle of egos.

Money is a huge area of conflict. It's the biggest area of conflict for married couples. It's one of the top causes of divorce, as I'm sure you guys have heard. So talk about it. Talk about money, make a plan for your money. Get on the same page with your money. I recommend Dave Ramsey's course. You can just look up financial peace university.

It eventually did really help my wife and I, and we have a good handle on our finances. So tip number five, learn to handle conflict. Tip number six, love your spouse. How they want to be loved.

If you want to listen to the whole talk, you can go to restored ministry, ministry, singular. Dot com slash marriage talk again. Restored ministry.com/marriage talk. Marriage talk is just one word, or you can just click on the link in the show notes. And in case you're not aware of one of the things that we offer as a nonprofit is coming into your school university, church, or event to give talks like the one you just heard.

And we have talks specifically for people who come from broken families and then more general talks as well. And so I've given talks for the archdiocese of Denver. The diocese of San Diego focus, the fellowship of Catholic university students, Franciscan university of Steubenville, avid Marine university, and the archdiocese of San Francisco.

And so if you're interested in booking a speaking engagement, we'd love to speak with you. You can email us@eventsatrestoredministry.com. Again, events@restorativeministry.com. We'd love to speak with you about possibly serving you. The resources mentioned during the show notes at restored minutes. Dot com slash 70.

Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful, feel free to subscribe. And if you know, someone is really struggling because of their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them. Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#070: Want a Great (Future) Marriage? Learn to Handle Conflict | Part 2

After his parents’ divorced, Joey feared repeating the same mistakes in his own marriage. He wanted to know, “How do I not repeat my parents’ mistakes?” He wanted authentic love but had no idea how to build it. It set him on a quest for answers and a roadmap for love. 

In this episode, you’ll hear a talk which offers a roadmap based on research, time tested couples, and the wisdom of Christianity. You’ll also learn:

• 4 signs that your relationship or marriage is headed off a cliff, according to researchers

• The biggest area of conflict in marriage and what to do about it

• Practical tips to make conflict healthy

• The one thing that makes conflict less scary and more manageable

• A resource for handling conflict better

If you want a build a healthy relationship and great marriage, this episode is for you.

Listen to the whole talk: 7 Tips to Build a Thriving & Divorce-Proof Marriage

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Inquire about an event: events@restoredministry.com

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you’ll receive our free ebook, 5 Practical Tips to Cure Loneliness!

Transcript

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

After my parents separated and later divorce, I feared repeating the same cycle in my own relationship and marriage one day. And so I became obsessed with the questions. How do I avoid that? How do I not repeat my parents' mistakes? Because I wanted authentic love, but had no clue how to build it. I think that's true for some many of us, we all want.

But if we're honest, we're not quite sure how to go about building a healthy relationship and great marriage. I think that's even more true for those of us who come from broken families. Nobody's showed us how to build love and a marriage. And that leaves us feeling discouraged and even hopeless to the point where we give up on love.

We give up a marriage, we give up on commitment and we even settle for the. In this episode, I'm going to share a talk that offers a simple roadmap to build authentic love. And so you're going to hear a snippet of that talk, which touches on a few things. First four signs that your relationship or marriage is headed off a cliff.

According to researchers, the biggest area of conflict in marriage and what to do about it. Practical tips that you can use to make conflict healthy. The one thing that makes conflict less than. And more manageable and finally, a resource that you can use to handle conflict better to make conflict healthier in your relationship.

And so if you want a healthy relationship in great marriage one day, whether or not you come from a broken family, keep listening.

welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents. Separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Poncherelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 70 and that's part two of a small series. And what you're about to hear is a talk I gave to the college students of Ave Maria university in Florida.

The talk is titled seven tips to build a thriving and divorce proof marriage, actionable advice from research, the church and time tested. And so the content of the talk is not just my opinion or my limited experience within marriage, but it's really based on psychological research advice from really beautiful married couples who have built amazing marriages and finally wisdom from Christianity on marriage.

By the way, if that's not what you believe, you're not a Christian, you're still going to get a lot out of this. Talk, my challenge to you is just go into it with an open mind. There's a lot of human wisdom overall in this. I've given the sock primarily to college students and young adults. I think it's perfect for that audience, but older audiences have found it helpful as well.

But some of the feedback we've gotten from the young people, one woman who happened to be a newlywed, she was just married in the last six, seven months when she heard the talk, she listened to it three times in a row because she found it so helpful that the host of one of the events where I gave the talk said this, she said, a girl I just talked to on the phone, said that she was watching over zoom and thought it was so good.

Another young woman said it was probably the best talk that she's. Heard so lots of good feedback. I don't say that to boast, but just to assure you, this is worth your time. And so here's a snippet of that talk.

So tip number four, set healthy expectations for your marriage. Tip number five, learn to handle. This is so important. Um, one book said that conflict is the price you pay for intimacy. Conflict is the price you pay for intimacy that comes from the book, saving your marriage before it starts by doctors, Les and Leslie Parrott.

They're two psychologists. They're a married couple of men and a woman with the same name. It's hilarious. And so it's so true. It's so true. As you got close to someone in your life, conflict is inevitable. And in fact, if you're avoiding conflict in your serious relationship, it's usually not a good sign.

It either means you're a Saint or there's something off. And so the goal is not to avoid conflict, but rather to make conflict healthy, to make conflict healthy. So how do you do that? Dr. John Gottman, you might've heard of him. He and his team of researchers have researched. Marriage and conflict that for the past.

And what they would do is they invite married couples to their lab, which was this fancy apartment in Seattle, and then invite them out there on the west coast. And they would observe them over a weekend, let's say, and especially observed how they handle conflict. And now, supposedly this is kind of insane.

Supposedly they can predict with about 95% accuracy. Whether the couple is going to stay married or eventually get divorced. 95% accuracy. They're looking for four things, four bad signs that say the marriage is in trouble. Dr. Gottman calls those four signs, the four horsemen of the apocalypse. I'm going to list them off quickly and then we'll go through each.

The first one is criticism. Two is contempt. Three is defensiveness for his Stonewall. Criticisms psychologists say that criticism and complaining are different. They're not the same complaining is saying something about someone's actions, right? It's critiquing actions. Let's say, whereas a criticism is attacking a person attacking their character.

They're not the same. Contempt is similar to criticism, but different. Dr. Gottman says this, he says, contempt is the intention to insult and psychologically abuse your part. And this looks like by the way, in a relationship, it looks like name calling. It looks like sarcasm. It looks like mockery.

Defensiveness is really the result of criticism and contemporary. We feel so attacked. We just put up our shield and defend ourselves. And this looks like blaming. It looks like making excuses and being unwilling to take responsibility. Stonewalling is a result of all these, right. These go into progression.

Stonewalling is where we just feel so overwhelmed. We're just done. We just emotionally check out. We shut down. We avoid our spouse at least emotionally. And, uh, supposedly 85% of Stonewall's are men. So this is something that we need to look out for our guys, especially, but these four signs is for bad signs.

Don't mean that your marriage is due. They just mean you're you're in trouble. And if these become habits, you're really heading off of a ledge. And so you need professional hub. Like now, if you see these in your relationship, those are the bad ways to handle conflict. How do we handle conflict in a healthy way?

There's five tips from that book, saving your marriage before it starts with the one at which I want to share with you, the first one is pick your battles, pick your battles, let the small things go get used to giving your spouse. This has been so helpful for me in my own marriage. My wife makes a lot of mistakes.

No, I'm just kidding. I'm definitely the one who makes more mistakes. Um, but you really, we can let things go. You don't need to voice your opinion about every little thing that your spouse does. Like you can let things go. You can bite your tongue. If they're big things, obviously bring those up. You can let the small things go extend grace.

Another thing you can do is practice. Put yourself in their shoes. It really requires you to detach from your emotions because in conflict, it's really hard to do this. And so one tactic they recommend is repeating what you hear your spouse saying, just to make sure you can fully understand where they're coming from.

Say it back to them. They say to define the real issue. So when tensions rise, you can ask the question, like, what are we really fighting about? Define what the fight is really about until both of you understand a little hint. It might not be the thing you're actually fighting about. It's usually something that's under the surface.

It's bigger than you really need to address. Take a break. They say, so our marriage, counselor, my wife, and I've been in marriage counseling. Uh, he taught us this little tactic called calling a time out. So when things get intense, uh, you needed to call a time out. So how does this work? It's a simple tactic before conflict.

You agree to a timeframe for a timeout. Okay. And it sounds like we're in a preschool, but it's sometimes we feel like that. But this is really good. So anywhere from 15 minutes to 24 hours, you set a set time. Let's say it's like an hour. And then in a conflict, when you guys are struggling, one of you can say, Hey, like I need, I need a time out.

And so then you take the time out. And then the person who calls a time out, they're the ones who keeps track of the time. And there were zoom the conversation as well. This is so helpful. It's been really helpful for my wife and I, because when we're emotional, especially when we're angry, our counselor taught us that our IQ.

By about 30 points or for those of us like me with an average IQ, that means like in the range of 70, which psychologists say is like the level of mental disability. And so we're literally trying to fight when we're super disabled and then finally actually resolve conflicts. So growing up, uh, we, my siblings and I barely saw conflict.

My parents. And they would tell you this, the way that they handle conflict, they would fight things, get loud. And then one or both of them will walk their separate ways. Like, I'm sure you guys have experienced that in your homes as well. So it set a horrible example for us to the point where I became really afraid of conflict and really unsure about how to handle it.

And so guys make sure you actually resolve conflict follow through here. And when you become parents, this is super, super important. When you become parents, make sure that your kids know that you've. Problems that they saw come up. Okay. So if you have a fight in front of your kids, make sure they know it's resolved.

Whether you do that in front of them, or later you go to them and say, Hey, mommy and daddy, we resolve this. My wife and I are trying to get in this habit. Now we've been doing pretty well with it. Um, where if our daughter who's seven months, right? She's, doesn't have an explicit memory at this point. Um, she sees this fight.

This is us fighting. We try to show her that, okay, we've made up we're we're good. Now we resolve this and we even say, sorry to her, that she had to experience. And so super good to make sure you resolve things. So if you want more tips like that, get the book, saving your marriage before it starts a few final things on handling conflict, uh, build trust, right?

Uh, conflict is so much easier when trust is high. Okay. How do you build. Th this is a whole nother talk too, but two, two quick things, vulnerability and consistency, vulnerability inconsistency, opening yourself up to even a scary extent and then continuing to show up so that, you know, you can rely on the other person, a business writer, pat Lencioni, Catholic business writer, pat Lynch.

He only says that trust makes conflict. The pursuit of truth. Trust makes conflict, that pursuit of truth. And so basically when we trust each other, when there's a conflict about maybe like, what should we do in this situation? That conflict is ordered to finding the best possible solution. It's not just a battle of egos.

Money is a huge area of conflict. It's the biggest area of conflict for married couples. It's one of the top causes of divorce, as I'm sure you guys have heard. So talk about it. Talk about money, make a plan for your money. Get on the same page with your money. I recommend Dave Ramsey's course. You can just look up financial peace university.

It eventually did really help my wife and I, and we have a good handle on our finances. So tip number five, learn to handle conflict. Tip number six, love your spouse. How they want to be loved.

If you want to listen to the whole talk, you can go to restored ministry, ministry, singular. Dot com slash marriage talk again. Restored ministry.com/marriage talk. Marriage talk is just one word, or you can just click on the link in the show notes. And in case you're not aware of one of the things that we offer as a nonprofit is coming into your school university, church, or event to give talks like the one you just heard.

And we have talks specifically for people who come from broken families and then more general talks as well. And so I've given talks for the archdiocese of Denver. The diocese of San Diego focus, the fellowship of Catholic university students, Franciscan university of Steubenville, avid Marine university, and the archdiocese of San Francisco.

And so if you're interested in booking a speaking engagement, we'd love to speak with you. You can email us@eventsatrestoredministry.com. Again, events@restorativeministry.com. We'd love to speak with you about possibly serving you. The resources mentioned during the show notes at restored minutes. Dot com slash 70.

Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful, feel free to subscribe. And if you know, someone is really struggling because of their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them. Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#069: Want a Great (Future) Marriage? Do This | Part 1

After his parents’ divorced, Joey feared repeating the same mistakes in his own marriage. He wanted to know, “How do I not repeat my parents’ mistakes?” He wanted authentic love but had no idea how to build it. It set him on a quest for answers and a roadmap for love. 

In this episode, you’ll hear a talk that offers a roadmap to build love based on research, time-tested couples, and the wisdom of Christianity. You’ll also learn:

• An ingredient that research shows is essential to build a healthy relationship and great marriage

• Answers to the questions:

  • Can love actually last?

  • When feelings fade in your relationship, does that mean the end is near?

  • Is love worth the risk and possible hurt?

• A challenge to build love that lasts

If you want a build a healthy relationship and great marriage, this episode is for you.

Listen to the whole talk: 7 Tips to Build a Thriving & Divorce-Proof Marriage

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Love and Responsibility by Karol Wojtyla

• The Four Loves by C.S. Lewis

• Inquire about an event: events@restoredministry.com

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you’ll receive our free ebook, 5 Practical Tips to Cure Loneliness!

Transcript

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

After my parents separated and later divorce, I feared repeating the same cycle in my own relationship and marriage one day. And so I became obsessed with the questions. How do I avoid that? How do I not repeat my parents' mistakes? Because I wanted authentic love, but had no clue how to build it. I think that's true for so many of us, we all want.

But if we're honest, we're not quite sure how to go about building a healthy relationship and great marriage. I think that's even more true for those of us who come from broken families. Nobody's showed us how to build love and a marriage. And that leaves us feeling discouraged and even hopeless to the point where we give up on love.

We give up a marriage, we give up on commitment and we even settle for the. In this episode, I'm going to share a talk that offers a simple roadmap to build authentic love. And so you're going to hear a snippet of that talk, which touches on a few things. First, it touches on an essential ingredient that research shows is necessary to build a healthy relationship and great.

The talk answers. The questions can love actually less. So many of us doubt that when feelings fade in your relationship, does that mean the end is near and is love even worth the risk and the possible hurt. And then finally the talk offers a challenge for you. And so if you want a healthy relationship in great marriage one day, whether or not you come from a broken family, keep listening.

welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pontarelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 69 and it's part one of a small. Series. And what you're about to hear is a talk I gave to the college students of Ave Maria university in Florida.

The talk is titled seven tips to build a thriving and divorce proof, marriage, actionable advice from research, the church and time tested. And so the content of the talk is not just my opinion or my limited experience within marriage, but it's really based on psychological research advice from really beautiful married couples who have built amazing marriages and finally wisdom from Christianity on marriage.

By the way, if that's not what you believe, you're not a Christian, you're still gonna get a lot out of this. Talk, my challenge to you is just go into it with an open mind. There's a lot of human wisdom overall in this. I've given the sock primarily to college students and young adults. I think it's perfect for that audience, but older audiences have found it helpful as well.

But some of the feedback we've gotten from the young people, one woman who happened to be a newlywed, she was just married in the last six, seven months. When she heard the talk, she listened to it three times in a row. Because she found it so helpful that the host of one of the events where I gave the talk said this, she said a girl I just talked to on the phone, said she was watching over zoom and thought it was so good.

Another young woman said it was probably the best talk that she's ever heard. So lots of good feedback. I don't say that to boast, but just to assure you, this is worth your time. And so here's a snippet of that talk.

Find a virtuous bouts or help your spouse build virtue. Tip number three, purify your idea of love. So marriage research shows that one of the essential ingredients to a great marriage is a realistic concept of love. In other words, knowing the truth about love it's Catholics. We kind of have an advantage here, but even for us, there's so many lies in the world when it.

To love. And so one of the lies that I fell into, and perhaps you can relate to this is thinking that love didn't actually last, like eventually it would crash and burn. It would fall apart and seeing my parents for a marriage fall apart, seeing them get divorced. This was ingrained deep inside of me. I really believe that love didn't last.

And even if it could last for some people, I didn't think it could last forever. But the truth is that love can last marriage can last, I've seen it. I've seen really beautiful couples. There's two in particular that I always think of that have been such an inspiration and even mentors to me, they've proved to me that love can not only last, but it can be really good and really beautiful.

I want my marriage to be like theirs. I hope you guys have couples like that in your life who can prove to you that love can last, especially. If you're doubting it because of what you've seen growing up, what you've seen around you and love can also last because we can choose to make it last love is a choice.

Another lie that I fell into was believing that feelings equal love, like intellectually. I knew this wasn't true, but for a long time on a subconscious emotional level, I definitely believe that feelings were the measure of love. More feeling more, love, less feeling, less love. And so in my relationships, when feelings would begin to fade, as they naturally do over time or change, I would freak out.

I become really anxious, like, wow, like is love ending. Am I going to lose this person? And so what I needed is, was to purify my idea of love. And John Paul, the second who really showed me the truth, when it came to love, says that love is not merely a feeling. It is an act of the will that consists of choosing in a constant manner.

The good of the blue. To the good of oneself and so feelings, they're a part of love, but they're only a part and there's certainly not the measure of authentic love. And so in your relationships, like all of you, like in your relationships, wherever you go in life in your marriages, when you're feeling start to fade, your love is not doomed.

It's actually just an invitation to love on a deeper, more mature level. And it's actually a good thing if you think about it, because you're forced to choose. What do I love more the feeling or the person? And so in our dating relationship, I would say it's problematic. If you've never had a romance like romantic feelings for a person, I think you should have romantic feelings for someone at least initially.

Um, but it's really important that we don't make decisions based on emotion alone. Like when in life is a good to make a decision on emotion alone and the real danger, if we just trust our emotions with these. So we'll end up walking away from a good relationship or even a marriage because we just don't feel it.

There was a study that asked divorce people. Why did you get divorced? And one woman, one woman said that. She said, I realized it was the lack of commitment on my part because I really didn't feel romantic toward him. I always felt like he was more of a friend to me how tragic, like obviously their romance needed a spark, but how sad to walk away?

From your relationship because you didn't feel romantic. Another lie that I believed was that love is too risky. It's not worth the risk. And it's true. Like if you love someone, if you put your heart out there, you're probably going to be hurt. It's going to happen. Any of you have been through breakups, you already know this.

I don't need to tell you this, but you know, it's more dangerous, you know, what's worse than being hurt. Never loving. CS Lewis. He said it the best CS Lewis said that she said to love it all to be vulnerable, love anything in your heart will be rung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give it to no one, not even an animal rapid, carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries of what all entanglements lock it up, safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness.

But in that casket, safe, dark motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken. It will become unbreaking. Impenetrable irredeemable to love is to be vulnerable. So that's the danger that if we don't love, we don't risk. If you don't be vulnerable, our hearts will become hard. And the truth that I've learned is that love is worth the risk.

Sure. There's pain involved, but if you work at it, the good far outweighs the bad and your life won't become easier. When you got married, when you choose to love. But your life will get better. And if you struggle here, if you struggle with this fear of being hurt, fear of intimacy, love marriage, all that.

I totally get this. That was me in high school. And even in college, I was terrified of love, relationships, dating, all that stuff. And it was primarily rooted in the fact that my parents' marriage fell apart. And I just didn't want that to eventually happen to me too. And so to overcome that fear, what I had to do is slowly begin to be vulnerable, especially in my relationships.

Relationships and by relationships, I mean my friendships. And so I did that in little ways and helped so much eventually to the point where I was able to pursue and date women one at a time. But, but slowly I was able to continue to overcome it and where it didn't control me, it didn't control me. And so I felt free.

I felt free to the point where, when I met my wife, I was able to pursue her, to ask her, to marry me. And now we're married and we're building our family. We have a baby girl she's seven months old. She's the. Thing ever. We're completely obsessed with her. Like

I was a guy. I would show you guys a picture if I could, but I don't think we have that all set up, but, but I I'm just, I'm just in awe that like, by God's grace, I don't say credit for this, but by God's grace, I am where I am, because I just kept taking little steps, relying on his grace to overcome this fear.

If I can do it, you can do it too. If that's. Do it scared do it gradually. Don't wait for your fear to disappear. Don't wait for that. It's not going to happen. Do it scared. Do it gradually act in spite of your fear, which is really the definition of courage. And it's okay for those of you, especially who come from broken families and you're really scared.

Um, it's okay. If you have to go a little bit. So my challenge for you guys here is to purify your idea of love. One exercise that you can go through with this is make a list of what you believe about love. Like on a subconscious level, it takes some time, take some work to identify those lies that you believe in are like acting on.

But once you know them, you can seek the truth. You can set up. Those lies with the truth. And so the question that you can think about pray with make lists, journal, all that good stuff is what lies do you subconsciously believe about love? So tip number three, purify your idea of love. Tip number four, set healthy expectations for your marriage.

Another central ingredient.

If you want to listen to this. Talk, you can go to restored ministry, ministry, singular.com/marriage. Talk again. Restored ministry.com/marriage talk. Marriage talk is just one word, or you can just click on the link in the show notes. And in case you're not aware, one of the things that we offer as a nonprofit is coming into your school university, church, or event to give talks like the one you just heard.

And we have talks specifically. People come from broken families and then more general talks as well. And so I've given talks for the archdiocese of Denver, the diocese of San Diego focus, the fellowship of Catholic university students, Franciscan university of Steubenville, avid Marine university, and the archdiocese of San Francisco.

And so if you're interested in booking a speaking engagement, we'd love to speak with you. You can email us@eventsatrestorativeministry.com. Again, events at restorative ministry. Dot com we'd love to speak with you about possibly serving you. The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 69.

Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful, feel free to subscribe. And if you know, someone is really struggling because of their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them. Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#068: An Underrated Tactic to Heal from Your Parents’ Divorce | Salvatore Fiorenti

If you’re from a broken family, did your parents’ separation or divorce drag out for years? That was the story of our guest today. 

In this episode, you’ll hear what happened in his family and how it affected him. We also discuss:

• How he learned from an early age that his needs weren’t going to be met, so he had to figure out things for himself

• How our parents seem to have grown during the separation and divorce, but as their kids, we can’t help but ask the question: Why couldn’t you grow together?

• An underrated healing tactic that will help you heal, grow, set better boundaries, have healthier relationships, and feel at peace

• An important skill you have to learn if you want to heal, grow, and feel whole again

Buy Joey’s book: It’s Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain & Problems from Your Parents’ Divorce (affiliate link)

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Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Salvatore Fiorenti’s Email

  • fiorenti@cua.edu

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To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you’ll receive our free ebook, 5 Practical Tips to Cure Loneliness!

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

If you're from a broken family, I'm curious, did your parents' separation and divorce drag out for years? That was the story of my guest. Today, as you'll hear in this episode, you also hear what happened in his family and how it affected him. In addition to that, we discussed how at an early age, he learned that his needs.

Weren't going to be met. So he had to figure things out for himself. He shares how we fell into bad habits, but after getting away from those, he then struggled with focusing so much on others and trying to rescue them that it became unhealthy too. We also talk about how our parents seemed to have grown during their separation and divorce, but as their kids were kind of torment with the question, why couldn't you just grow together?

He shares an underrated healing tactic that will help you heal, grow, set, healthy boundaries, have healthier relationships and feel at peace. We also discuss an important skill. You have to learn if you want to heal, grow and feel whole again. So keep listening.

Welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is. 68, as you might have heard. My new book is live on Amazon. It's titled it's not your fault, a practical guide to navigating the pain and problems from your parents' divorce.

The sad truth is that for a lot of teens and young adults who come from broken families, the most traumatic thing that they've endured is their parents' separation and divorce, but nobody shows them how to handle all the pain and all the problems that stem from their family's break down. And without that guidance.

They continue to feel alone and struggle in serious ways with emotional problems, unhealthy coping relationship struggles and so much more. And I experience these problems firsthand. It really shouldn't be this way. My book, it's not your fault is an answer to that problem. It features 33 questions and answers on the most pressing challenges faced by teen to young adults from broken families, such as after my family broke apart, I felt abandoned, unwanted and adequate, and even rejected is something wrong with me.

What's your advice for navigating the holidays and other life events? How do I avoid repeating my parents' mistakes and build a healthy marriage and so many more questions? The content is based on research, expert advice and real life stories. And after reading, it's not your fault. Teens and young adults will learn how to handle the trauma of their parents' separation or divorce, how to build healthy relationships, how to overcome emotional pained problems.

They'll learn healing tactics to help them feel whole again, they'll learn how to navigate their relationship with their parents, how to heal their relationship with God and how to make important decisions about their future. So if you wanna buy the book or even just get the first chapters for free, go to restored ministry.com/books.

Again, restored ministry.com/books, or just click the link in the show notes today. My guest today is sale fear. Entity sales parents had a drawn out divorce and are not UN speaking terms. As a student of life. He has learned to advocate for himself and reflect on personal growth challenges. Sal is currently in school for his master of social work degree and enjoys spending time with his dog.

Charlie he's creative, funny and caring. Sal has only recently started talking about how his parents failed marriage has affected him. He's interested in connecting and supporting individuals wherever they may be in the process. He wanted to give a special shout out to resort's community for which he is grateful.

So shout out to everyone in resorts, online community. And here's my conversation with Sal

Sal. It's great to have you on the showman. Thanks for making time for us. Thank you, Joey. I know we have a lot to talk about, so I wanna dive right in. Uh, how old were you when your parents separated and divorced? So my parents got separated. I wanna say maybe when I was around nine or 10 years old. And at that time I really wasn't too sure what plants my parents had in terms of their marriage.

It might have been introduced as, uh, your dad needs some time to figure things out. You know, it was unclear. and that wasn't, that wasn't the final, I guess, conversation about, about that. Uh mm-hmm so my parents, I think, tried to make it work throughout my, uh, childhood in young adult years, but most of my childhood and young adult years, my parents lived separately and my childhood home, uh, was finally sold at the start of the pandemic.

So my parents. Dragged out the separation and divorce for quite some time. And I am 30. I will be turning 32. So maybe 2019 is when you know that that last piece of the divorce was sort of finalized. Okay. No, I follow you. Wow. That that's very drawn out. So things were kind of tumultuous or at least disjointed for you for years growing up and then kind of got finalized just recently.

So this is pretty fresh for you within the last, you know, few years, at least. So I appreciate you, you coming on and sharing what, what happened between your parents that led to all. I would say a main, the main issue really was, uh, a breakdown in communication, uh, between my dad and my mom, my dad, he is very short with his, uh, responses and he, he does tend to be pretty controlling.

My mother is somebody that likes to, uh, weigh options, have conversations about things. I would just say a lot more, uh, emotionally intelligent. and, um, it just from the get go, now that I'm older and I've had relationships and I, and I know how challenging they can be as well as, as, as rewarding for them to.

Go about life and try to figure, figure things out together as a team. Uh, they're just, their communication styles were completely different. So it was, uh, it was very hard. It, it, it seemed from what I can remember, uh, that either my dad had his way or my mom had her way. And I, I just, I struggle remembering a time where, you know, maybe both of their input created some sort of result or some.

Okay. Yeah. So you, what you witness over the years, like you said, was not them minutes like this United front a team working together to, you know, make the best decisions to resolve any issues that came up, but rather kind of them living on their own, which ultimately played out in them, not living together for.

You know, periods of your childhood. So that all makes sense. How did you see all of that that happened in your family, the breakdown of your parents' marriage, the separation, the later divorce, how did you see all that affect you personally? I think the main thing that really came up for me was in, in all the craziness, uh, I learned that my needs weren't going to be met and, uh, I didn't, I didn't really advocate much for myself at that age.

Uh, I didn't go up to a teacher and say, Hey, you know, what's going on at home is pretty crazy. Mm. Or, you know, when I was at my dad's workplace, you know, I could have, I could have pulled one of his colleagues aside and, and could have asked, you know, what's he like when he is here? You know, I definitely kept a lot of stuff to myself and just really focus on a lot of other people to sort of distract, distract myself from, you know, my, my inner Turmo.

So I would say if I'm not advocating for myself, if I'm not aware for my, uh, not aware of my needs, then I probably, I know I struggled with, uh, setting boundaries with people, uh, in relationships, I would say finding the middle ground and, and compromising has been difficult for me. Mm-hmm . so, you know, those are areas that, that I'm still, uh, working on.

No, absolutely. I think it's always a work in progress, even for people who've maybe made some, um, improvements in their life. There it's always, there's this dichotomy to balance in a lot of ways. So that, that totally makes sense. I mean, I wanna go back to something you said about kind of focusing on others.

I noticed that in myself too, uh, for a lot of, you know, the aftermath of my parents' separation. I tended to kind of initially I was so hurt that I just acted out in all sorts of unhealthy ways. Like by getting sucked into pornography, you know, getting, being super angry, having a lot of emotional problems and, and other ways of acting out.

But in time, I was able to kinda, you know, put that in the past that stuff in the past, which was really freeing. Uh, but then I kind of fell into this being a rescuer and trying to, instead of maybe dealing with my own pain and my own needs, I kind of just shoved them down. And I decided to focus on what I thought was loving other people, which in a lot of ways, looked like.

Solving their problems filling their needs. Um, which I think the desire was good, just the way I went about it often. Wasn't the healthiest. And so I'm curious how that played out in your life, cuz obviously, you know, you're becoming a social worker now you're dedicating your life to helping people, which is such a good and beautiful thing.

But as we've talked separately, there's a balancer. Of course. So I'm curious, kind of yeah. How that played out in terms of being a fixer, being a rescuer in terms of maybe distracting you from, uh, the pain that you were dealing. Sure. Uh, well, I just also wanna say Joey, you know, thank you so much for, uh, everything that you do and, uh, you know, really prefacing this question by being transparent and, you know, talking about how you've struggled.

So of course ma'am yes, I, I I've definitely, uh, can relate to so much of what you're saying. Uh, for me, impulse, uh, in my younger years, you know, led me down many of those paths as. And, uh, yes, I mean, I am pursuing social work. Uh, I do work with people that are vulnerable and are working on themselves and there is, there is this reward that I, that I get from it, uh, I think over the years and I probably will continue working on this.

It seems like it's a lifelong journey is I think the more accepting that I am of myself. The less need, I will feel to rescue someone else. Uh, we were talking just before we started the conversation about being a compassionate presence. So, you know, I'm, I'm getting all of this training, uh, but what good is it?

If I can't meet people where they are, I don't wanna start projecting my insecurities on them. You know, I, I can be there for them. Uh, I could show them that I care and that I'm interested in their story. More or less guide them through their journey. Yeah. Not so much about giving them answers or celebrating this epiphany moment.

They may have. It's probably more, it's more or less about setting up guardrails and letting them letting them. Choose a direction how they wanna move in. Okay. No, that makes so much sense. And something you said really struck me about how becoming more accepting of yourself would give you the ability. I I'm paraphrasing here of setting those boundaries properly and not projecting your own needs and your own, um, struggles onto the people that you're serving.

Um, that really struck me as powerful. I, I'm just curious for everyone listening. Who's, you know, learning from you like I am right now. What, um, Yeah. Would, would you maybe elaborate that a little bit? Like to, to a lot of people listening here, here's where I'm coming from with this, it might, they might not make the connection of what you just said.

Like they might not understand, like why is accepting yourself with all your imperfections, all your struggles and all the good things about you too. Why is acceptance key for, you know, setting good boundaries and having healthy relationships? Of course. I mean, I can wake up, you know, tomorrow morning and I refer to him as the, uh, as my monster, the voice on my shoulder, the, uh, self doubt.

And first thing, when I wake up in the morning, that voice can say, you know what, Sal, you don't have this or Sal, you don't run as fast, or as far as you used to. And, you know, I listen to that voice or I give that monster some head space, you know, for. A minute. It doesn't even have to be a minute. And the next thing you know, the whole day can be.

I'm not good enough. What do I need? What do I need to achieve? How can I impress people? How can I be lights as opposed to this is who I am. I can have goals and work towards them, but in the present moment, I'm complete. Mm. And it's just, it's just a total different, it's just, it, it's a, it's a, it's a different mindset and I'm, and I've been struggling with it.

I'll be ruthlessly honest because you know, one week of work, that's a little tough. I. You know, maybe friends, you know, canceling plans, things start to happen. Maybe you get a parking ticket. And then, you know, all of a sudden you're like, you know what, all these things are going wrong. Right? It's like the, uh, the drop of ink that clouds up the whole fish tank.

And then, you know, it, it's just, it's a cycle. You don't, you don't get enough rest. You wake up in the morning and the cycle starts all over again. You know, I'm tired. And if I just have this one thing, then I'll feel better. Wow. As opposed to, you know, working on just really accepting, accepting what you have, um, knowing that we are complete and we are love for who we are.

It's hard, man. I, I, I, it is. I know, I don't, I know I don't have a, a great understanding of it because. I mean, no one, no one is inside my head or, you know, watching me from the curb and saying, oh, Sal just had, you know, this self doubt, you know, mm-hmm let me, let me pull him aside and give him a quick pep talk.

You know, you have to know, you have to know how much space you're giving to that monster throughout the day. And it doesn't have to be, it doesn't have to be this cynical voice. It's not, it's not extreme. It can be very subtle. Yeah. Wow. No, this is so good. You you're nailing on so many points. I think we all need to hear cuz I, I, you know, I deal with that too, where I think we all have these different versions of ourself within us.

Right. And we wanna think that we're just the best version of ourself. Right. Um, but. often we're tempted like that monster, like you said, tempts us to think that no, we're actually that lesser version of ourself. We're that worse version of ourself. But I, I think what you're saying, what I hear you saying is that the there's so much freedom in coming to the realization and acceptance to where even where you like, feel it in your bones.

It's like, you're both. You're the best version of yourself. And you're the worst version of yourself that that's all you. And if you stop trying to, you know, maybe shame that worst version of yourself and pretend that you're only that best version of yourself, um, at least what I've found in my life, there's so much peace.

There's more freedom I'm able to have, like you said, healthy relationships, I'm able to avoid bad habits and. Better habits, healthier habits and on and on and on. And so I, I think this can't be, it seems like it's such a subtle thing. Like, uh, it sounds kind of corny, honestly, when we talk about like accepting yourself to someone who maybe hasn't, you know, been around this sort of, um, Conversation before mm-hmm , but it's so, so key.

And, uh, again, it's something that, that I'm, uh, you know, trying to get better at too. And again, when I've noticed, when I do, when I just have this kind of kindness towards myself, when I just can say, okay, I am the way I am, I, I wanna improve and grow, but I'm not gonna shame myself and, you know, make myself feel horrible for.

You know, struggling in the ways that I have. Again, I'm always trying to improve and overcome my weaknesses, but, but there is that level of acceptance as like, Hey, I am the way I am here. I am right now, I will grow, but I'm not gonna be, I'm not gonna grow by telling myself I'm so horrible. That's just gonna prevent me from growing.

Right. I think, I think some of the best mentors I've had throughout the course of my life would remind me, or encourage me to strive for the best, but know that. Accepting what I have and what I've accomplished and just who I am in the present moment would be the first step on that journey. So good. You made me think of a book.

I haven't read it. Uh, perhaps you have, I think the title was you're not enough and that's okay. And, uh, and I, I think something powerful about that, and that goes to the point that we're talking about right now, how, you know, we, we don't need to be perfect in order to be kind to ourselves to accept ourselves, to even live ourselves, so to speak.

Um, we, we can do that right now where we're at so good. I wanted to shift gears a little bit and talk about your relationships. So in your dating relationships, I'm just curious how you've perhaps struggled and especially struggled in relation to the breakdown of your family, of your parents' marriage.

Um, what, what issues have you seen there? Well, I would say that I probably put a very big emphasis on just being in a relationship and showing to the world. That I can do it, that I can make it work. And, uh, throughout, throughout my life, it's kind of looked, it's kind of looked different, you know, maybe, maybe one girlfriend was very pretty.

Maybe another girlfriend was at the top of her field. And I, I would say that I would say that most people, if not all, would want to be proud, you know, be having a partner that. That, um, adds, adds to their life. Right? Sure. But for me, it kind of, it kind of felt like it kind of felt like, I don't know, like a saving grace and I would say that even, even from my, uh, you know, when my parents, when they par, when they got separated, Maybe even before then, you know, I, I remember going on walks, maybe they had a fight or something like that.

And I would just kind of just kind of tune out in my, in my head and think, oh, well, one day I will I'll have my own family and everything will be fine. Mm. So definitely I definitely would identify as a hopeless, romantic, and I would say dating, dating now. It all, it all goes back to what we were talking about.

Maybe a couple minutes ago about. Accepting accepting myself and finding someone that is really going to add to my life. And if it's someone that I'm trying to rescue, it's probably gonna be a slippery slope. So it's about someone that someone that's gonna make my life better as opposed to making my life worse.

And it's, it's been, it's been a journey. I've been meeting a lot of wonderful people, a lot of interesting people. I've had a couple of knee jerk reactions throughout the years dating. So I know, you know, what I certainly want to avoid, but it's, it's definitely been a while since I've, since I, you know, could call someone my partner, my girlfriend, and, uh, I'm working on it, you know, definitely a work in progress.

Yeah, no, it, it sounds like you wanna partner, not a project. I think so often we fall into looking for a project. Um, like you mentioned, there's numerous reasons maybe for that, that, that makes sense. Do you want someone who's gonna be able to love you and not just. Have maybe a one way relationship. I know a lot of my relationships that even friendships that were turned unhealthy, um, seemed so one sided where I was like giving, giving, giving, but never like receiving, never kind of being loved in return, so to speak.

And not because my friends were evil or malicious, that's not what I'm saying, but just because of the dynamic of the relationship where I was maybe trying to help them or fix them or rescue them. And what ended up happening was. It just became unhealthy and then we got close and then I would pull away because I realized how unhealthy it would become.

And then that caused maybe even more hurt than the original hurt that I was trying to help them deal with. right. So just messy situation. But, um, that, that makes sense. What you're looking for now. And I, I totally get the struggle of, of actually finding it in terms of you being a hopeless romantic. I think that might just be due to the fact that you're Italian.

Because I can I can relate to that one. but no, no kidding. Kidding aside. I'm I, I totally get that. Uh, you know, you wanted something better and perhaps it feels out of reach, even if at one point in time you were thinking like, oh yeah, I'll I'll have a, a better family, a better marriage. Yeah. What were, um, yeah.

Could please, if you had anything to add to that, I'd love to hear. Yeah. It, it, you know, I don't know, I guess, I guess, uh, I don't really remember, you know, in health class or, you know, even in high school, any sort of talk about healthy relationships or, or, uh, you know, what is there to gain from being in a healthy marriage?

What is, what can life look like? Or what is. I guess what could be expected of, you know, a man or a woman in, in a marriage. And I think it would be better to kind of get that, get that in school, as opposed to, you know, flipping through a magazine and seeing pictures of, you know, a Playboy, you know, with girls under his shoulders or, you know, go into the movies and you see.

I don't know, American pie. And you, you think that's what college is gonna be like? Yeah. So, so I would say, you know, it's, it, it's hard being a hopeless romantic, and then maybe being exposed to some of the extreme situations. And not knowing, not knowing what that, I don't know. I don't want to make, I don't wanna say there's a middle ground between, uh, like monogamy and American pie.

uh, but it what I'm trying to say is there there's so much that we we're, there's so many questions that we're really just trying to figure out for ourselves and it, it does take a. Yeah, no, it's a great point. And I know I kind of went back and forth between this, these two extremes. And we've noticed this with a lot of people through this nonprofit, through this podcast, even alone, where on one hand, we just have such a hope for something so much better, almost for like a perfect ideal relationship and marriage.

And then in the opposite hand, we just have this complete doubt, uh, at. Part of ourselves. That's just like, that is not possible. That's not gonna happen. At least not for me. And I dealt with both of those and there's, you know, struggles that come along with each. Um, so, so I totally get what you're saying and even, yeah.

Understanding, seeing beautiful examples of good marriages and how it makes life better. That it's few and far between. I think that we, we see that you're absolutely right. And it's sad because. What I've experienced in marriage now is certainly, there are hard times. I don't wanna glamorize it. I think some people glamorize marriage way too much, but, um, what I've seen is, you know, if you work at it, There's good and bad that comes with it.

But if you work at it, the good does outweigh the bad and there's some such beautiful, you know, seasons and parts of marriage that, um, just make life really beautiful, really joyful brings so much happiness and freedom. And it's hard to explain that until. I, if someone would've went back in time, if you know, someone explained that to me, when I was like, I dunno, 15 or 18 even.

Um, I don't know if I would've been able to quite understand what they were talking about, but I think you're right. We do need to see those beautiful examples and really answer that question. Like what is to gain from a healthy marriage, right? Wanna shift gears to, uh, healing and, and coping. Uh, what were a few things, maybe two or three things that helped you cope in healthy ways and find some healing.

Sure. I would say exercise, uh, when I was younger, uh, I was a big runner and, uh, since I've mellowed out and I don't, I don't necessarily carry that same amount of anger. Um, I haven't been running as much as I would like to, but I mean, I could probably say running running really helped me out when times were difficult.

Music. Uh, I love electronic dance music. It just kind of, you know, it's just, it's just, I, it brings me to the special place. It's just very upbeat. Yeah. It's just, I don't know. I've always, I've always enjoyed EDM. Uh, I would probably say, uh, Aviche is one of my, one of my favorites and therapy. I mean, I'm pursuing, uh, social work.

I've been in therapy for many years. I've done group therapy. So just a desire to understand myself better. Mm-hmm , uh, to cultivate empathy, accept myself and, and work towards, you know, just a, a, a life full of purpose, a life worth, uh, living as. Uh, Marsha Linehan would call it the creator of D B T. Love it.

No, that's amazing. And I've found those, all those things helpful as well. And it's always kind of baffled me about music. Like why is music so helpful? And I think there's a lot to it. Two, two of the things we had some, uh, two, uh, married, couple, uh, husband and wife, uh, duo, who are artists? Come on the podcast.

I forget the, um, exact episode when they came on, but it was cool. We, but I asked them like, why, why is music so helpful in helping us like, not feel alone and helping us kind of deal with the pain in our lives. And there were like two things that they mentioned. One was that it helps us kind of put difficult experiences and emotions into words often.

Like certain songs can, can do that. And then two, it helps us not feel alone, cuz it's like, okay, there's at least this person who's singing the song, the person perhaps who wrote the song as well, who obviously have a deep understanding of this. So they probably have gone through this themselves. Um, so that's, uh, can helps us not feel alone as well, which I, I thought was.

Right, right. I would say for me, you know, if someone were to ask me, how do you feel right now? I would say, well, I don't know, but how about listening to this song? And you know, this, we could talk about it. Like this song means something to me. Uh, if you have a listen, we could talk about it. You could let me know how you feel.

Maybe you don't even like this song, but it could be, it could be have, it could be a conversation worth having. Yeah, no. So good. Yeah. That honestly still is a go-to coping mechanism for me. Like, just like you said, of listening to certain artists, certain music that, um, perhaps expresses in towards, and even lyric or not just lyrically, but even musically what I'm experiencing, what I'm feeling better than I could perhaps do on my own, which is really helpful.

So, so good. Lots of good tips, uh, in this whole interview from you. I do wanna ask. So now. You know, you've been working on yourself, trying to heal, especially as someone who's helping other people, you accurately know that you need to work on yourself first, which is awesome. There's sadly, a lot of people, at least that I've known who go into, um, the helping professions, whether it's medicine or, you know, psychology, and they maybe neglect working on their.

And so I think it's so powerful that you are someone who's going down that path and who's actively working on yourself. So the question is this, like, you're obviously still working on stuff we all are, but I'm curious, how is your life different? How is it better now that you've healed and you've grown some, I think I've just become more trusting of others.

The, the more transparent I am. And the more people I get to know, and, and I get to hear some stories and see where people have come from. And it just, it just always gives me, it always gives me a perspective, a time, a time that really helped me was when I was working as a preschool teacher's assistant, my mind just felt saturated with all of these master's level courses and assignments.

And I'm working towards this degree. Is it gonna make me happy? Is it. Be fulfilling. And then I'm seeing kids just playing and making new friends and things just seemed so simple and pure. And I was just like, wow, like this is, this was really, it was really helpful. Uh, cuz it gave me some perspective. Hmm.

So I think, I think the healing can come when you, when you're not expecting it. And I think it's also a grind. So, you know, being in therapy. Trying to just dig deeper and, and build upon my last sessions, spending the time to think about, uh, what I wanna work on and just, just be open about the therapeutic relationship itself.

It's kind of weird, you know, it's kind of weird sometimes to talk about. If I've had experiences where I was definitely attracted to the female therapist, you know, I don't know. I don't know what the conversation would've been like, but it probably, it would've been challenging for me to have said, Hey, like, you know, the past three sessions, I haven't really been, uh, able to dig deep, you know, and, and kind of talk about the, the vulnerable stuff, because I'm kind of attracted to you or whatever.

You know, and on the other end, too, like, guys can be guys can be trustworthy. So it's, you know, sometimes having a male therapist, I'm like, man, this guy, you know, maybe he doesn't give it about me, you know? So, but then you, you, you, you work on the relationship and you, you, you talk about it. And, uh, and that's, that's been a, that's been a growing point for me too.

Cause uh, quick story. I was reading this, uh, I was reading this, uh, relationship book. Uh, I don't remember the name of the author, but she, she had a lot of Western ideas when it came to dating and relationships and she probably, she's probably a relationship coach or therapist. And she she's told, she's told about some goo guru in India that has foolproof relationship advice, and that she has to make this trip to India and find this guru.

Hmm. So she makes all of the arrangements and she flies to India. She meets the guru. And, um, she leans in to, to hear the guru, give the relationship advice, and she's, she had to take off from work. She flies thousands of miles and the guru just whispers in her ear. Thank you. And this relationship expert is like, what do you mean?

Thank you. And the guru said, that's my, that's my advice. That's what you, that's what you would wanna say to your partner is thank. . And when I read that, I was like, wow, like, you know, that's, that's so simple, but you know, how come I don't do it? You know, how come I don't mm-hmm how come I don't say, you know, thank you to the people that I'm closest to for just being a part of my life or for talking to me, or for sending me that text message, you know, it's easier for me to.

Well, you know what, every time they come over, I treat them to dinner or whatever it is, or the drinks are on me, you know? Sure. And as opposed to, as opposed to starting with the, the thank you and just appreciating, appreciating them for, for the positive impact, I would say that. That the people in my close circle have on me.

Wow. So many good things. The one thing I wanted to go back to, in addition to what you just said was how guys can be trustworthy. I think a lot of us struggle with that, cuz for so many of us. Maybe our dads didn't live up to what we had hoped for live up to what they really should have been. And that can cause us to feel like, yeah, like men are in trustworthy know I've dealt with that too.

So yeah. Being around men like yourself, who, who are good and who are trustworthy, has been really healing and helpful for me too. Uh, about that skill of, uh, really opening up, I guess, uh, it, some people, especially, I think men fall into thinking that's like some sort of weakness to be. Maybe emotional or to talk from like the level of your heart, as opposed to just your mind.

Mm-hmm I grew up in a family where things weren't very emotional. Um, and so kind of expressing feelings wasn't necessarily a normal. And honestly, I had to learn. So like I had to learn how to do that. Like, it was actually a skill, it sounds maybe dumb to some people listening right now, but I literally had to learn like, how do I say something and not just such a cut and dry, like intellectual way, but how do I share what I'm feeling, share something from like the level of my heart.

And like, how do I do that? It literally was something I had to learn. And then as I did it more and more, it became more natural. But man doing that initially was so awkward it was just like, I, I, I didn't know how to do it. And uh, and I think that's something that if you're not there, those of you listening right now, if that's something you struggle with, like I get it.

Um, but I would challenge you there and try. You know, just like Sal saying here, just like the story of the relationship guru who went to, or, or Oxford who went to that guru in India, um, you know, opening up more and just sharing deeper parts of your heart, as opposed to keeping things on the surface or keeping things, just intellectual level, kind of from your head instead of from your heart.

I would say Joey, I think that's great. Um, I, you know, and it's also, you can, you can bond, uh, with people over that, that journey. So I came from a family where let's all be angry at the same thing. And, and maybe that's how we can, we can bond, right? Mm-hmm . But if you surround yourself with people that are supportive and emotionally intelligent and are flexible and are open minded and are looking for answers ultimately for, you know, on their journey.

It's like, Hey, like I'm on a journey. Hey, you're on a journey too. Like traveler recognize as traveler, you know? Yeah. We can be supportive towards one another. So it is, we don't have to do it all alone. Mm-hmm so good, man. This has been such a great interview. I did wanna ask if, uh, if, if you could sit down with your parents, like, let's say your parents were listening right now, what would you want them to know?

What would I want them to know? Hmm. I guess, you know, I guess. I know they've grown so much, uh, being apart from one another mm-hmm , but I think every, I would say every kid who has parents that are divorced wishes, that wishes that they could have made things work. So, yeah. You know, so maybe, maybe some, you know, Hey Sal, you know, we can't do that for you.

And we're really sorry. But yeah, there's always that there's always that why can't, why can't, you know, why can't mom and dad be together. Right. You know? Yeah. I think every, everyone needs, everyone needs, you know, two parents. Yeah. It's just, it's just that simple. Yeah. No it is. And that makes so much sense.

And I, I too have seen my parents grow on their own and in some ways their lives have become better, um, E even apart. And, uh, yeah, for me, my, my feeling, and I know my siblings feel similarly is like, why couldn't you guys just do that together? And, uh, and it is sad and I really wish that, you know, it didn't break apart the way it had.

Um, so, so now I'm right there with you. Um, really appreciate you opening up and sharing so much. If people wanna connect with you, how can they do that? We will, uh, link my email, I guess, to the podcast. That's cool. . Yeah, absolutely. That'll be great. So guys, we'll throw that in the show notes. If you wanna reach out to Sal, you can, um, email him and he'd be happy to, to hear from you and Sal.

I wanna give you the last word. Um, but before I do again, thank you so much for your vulnerability, uh, for just your articulateness. It's everything you've said has just been so good and so helpful. Um, and so while you're sharing your own story, I think there's so many lessons baked into this conversation, which a lot of people, thousands of people for years to come are gonna learn from you.

So thank you so much for being willing to come on for opening up and for sharing your great advice in, uh, in closing. Just what words of encouragement, what advice would you give to someone who feels broken? And who feels stuck in life, uh, because of their broken family, because of the breakdown of their parents' marriage, what encouragement and advice would you give to them?

I mean, it's, it's possible. It's possible right now. There's, you know, a teen sitting on the curb lost in thought, you know, his parents are fighting and he, or she asking themselves, you know, what the hell does this mean? Um, what's gonna happen. What's my life gonna look like all those, all those questions.

and, you know, I still, I still kinda have that self talk, uh, but it's a lot different now. So we're all at different stages, but there's so much that we have in common with the person that is, you know, like I said, sitting on the curb right now. Uh, so I think, you know, what I would want for everyone to, you know, take away from this is.

You know, Joey, I was, you know, telling you, Hey man, I was to do this interview and I needed, I needed more time. And you were like, you're gonna do just fine. Uh, it's really helpful to, to talk with someone, to get those thoughts out there and to just be a human being, you know, to understand that everyone wants to be happy.

And if I can share and be as real as I can be, and someone reaches out to me and. You know what I wanna, I wanna do an interview myself or, or even challenges me or, or offers any sort of criticism. I know that I'm open to it and it's, it's, it's just, I think it's, this is such a, this is such an area for, for growth and for clarity, uh, because maybe that kid on the curb.

Loss in chaos and he may, he, or she may feel like the clarity is never gonna come, but know that it will. So I am also still looking for, you know, for my answers and, and I hope that I can help. And, and I do hope that people can be of help to me. So, Joey, thank you so much for everything that you do for us,

a question for you to reflect. What would it take for you to accept yourself as you are? And to be clear, I'm not condoning apathy. I'm not condoning continuing bad habits, but like you heard us discuss being brutally honest and accepting yourself where you are in life is an essential step to heal and grow into the better person that you wanna be.

So what would it take for you to accept yourself as you are? And that's my challenge work on that next time you wanna beat yourself up for your struggles? Just say to yourself, this is where I'm at right now. And make sure to give yourself some grace, just like you would with a friend who was struggling.

If you'd like to share your story with us, we'd love to hear it. There's three easy steps to do that. But first, some of the benefits of sharing your story, reflecting on your story is actually healing on a neurobiologic level. Further writing your story is healing studies have shown that people who write about emotionally significant events in their lives are less depressed, less anxious.

They're healthier. And they're HAPPI. Additionally, sharing your story with someone else is healing on a neuro biological level as well. And it also gives guidance and hope to people who are struggling, because what we do is we take your story and then we put it on our blog in an anonymous format. So if you wanna share your story, here's how you do it.

Just go to restored ministry. Dot com slash story. The form will guide you in telling a, a short version of your story. It takes a little bit of time, but not long. And then we'll turn it into an anonymous blog article like I mentioned. So if you wanna share your story, just go to restored ministry.com/story, or click the link in the show notes.

The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 68, and that includes sales email address. If you wanna get in touch with. Thank you so much for listening. And this has been useful. Feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's struggling from their parent's divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with.

Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#067: Breaking the Cycle of Dysfunction in Your Marriage | Pierre & Maria Lareau

If you’re from a broken family, becoming independent and breaking the cycle can be extremely attractive. It certainly was for my guests, a married couple where both spouses from a broken family.

They share what happened in their families, how it’s affected them, their marriage, and even their kids. We also discuss:

• Why one of their mentors encouraged them to begin counseling as a dating couple

• The questions their kids have about their divorced grandparents

• How our parents often compete for our loyalty

• Why beating a victim mentality is so freeing

• One thing that helped them deal with the dysfunction in their families

If you come from a broken family and you’re headed toward marriage, this episode is for you.

Tell us how Restored has helped you

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• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Episode 44: Practical Tips for Becoming a Great Parent | Mike & Alicia Hernon

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

For a lot of us from broken families, especially those of us still living at home in the dysfunction, becoming independent and breaking the cycle can be extremely attractive. And that was absolutely true for my guests today, who happened to be a married couple where both spouses come from a broken family, they've actually been long time friends of mine.

I saw both of their parents' marriages and families fall apart. And each of them, their families and their siblings included were a big part of the motivation for this podcast and the ministry behind it. And so in this episode, they share what happened in their families, how it's affected them personally and affected their marriage and even their kids.

We also discuss why one of their mentors encouraged them to begin counseling as a dating couple, we talk about the questions their kids have asked about their divorced grandparents. We touched on how our parents often compete for our loyalty. We talk about why beating a victim mentality is so freeing, and then they mention one thing that has helped them deal with the dysfunction in their families.

If you come from a broken family and you're headed toward marriage at some point in your life, this episode is for you very practical and inspiring episode. So keep listening,

welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey. Pelli thanks so much for listening. This is episode 67. My guests today are peer and Maria Lubo. They've been happily married for almost nine years.

PI works in the concrete construction industry. Maria's a stay-at-home mom and a licensed cosmetologist together. They have four beautiful children. They homeschool, they volunteer at their church and additionally, they're expanding their property, learning how to farm and even become self-sufficient.

They enjoy helping others, camping game nights and learning about farming. Before we dive into the conversation, we talk a little bit about God and faith. They're Catholic Christians. And so that's gonna come up in the conversation if that's not your background, if you don't believe in God, we're really happy.

You're here. My challenge to you is this, listen with an open mind. If you, even, if you take the God parts out, there's still so much good stuff in this episode. So listen with an open mind. I guarantee you're gonna benefit from it. Here's my conversation with my friends, pier and Maria

pure and Maria. Welcome to the show. Hi Joey. Hi. It's so good to have you guys. It's been a long time coming. I've wanted to have you for, for a while, so I'm glad we could finally do this. Um, it's always tough to kind of go back in time, cause I've known you guys such a long time to those dark times in our lives.

When things with our families, uh, were especially bad. But I think for everyone listening, it's so helpful. So let's go there. Um, tell me if you would, how old were you guys when your parents separated and divorced? You wanna go first? ladies first ladies first. Okay. I was 16 when my parents separated and filed for divorce and I believe I was 18 when their divorce was finally finalized.

I'm the oldest of four kids. And so at the time the youngest was 11. Yeah, I'm doing my math. Right. all right. The youngest child was 11. and I was the oldest at 16. Yeah. And, uh, I think I was roughly, for me, it's hard to pinpoint, you know, it, it was, it was more of a gradual your parents separated and got back together.

Couple of times. It was, yeah, there was a couple, quite a few times. It was, it was in the late, my late teen years. So it was probably six, you know, 16. And then 17 is when it got really serious. And then I think it wasn't until I was 18 or 19 until it was more finalized. Um, and I also am the oldest of I'm the oldest of five.

And so my younger, my youngest sibling was, oh, gosh, I don't know, 12, 12 years younger than me. So yeah, she was little 4, 5, 6, 6, maybe. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Six, six. Yeah. So yeah, no, that makes sense. And you guys are in a particularly difficult world, which I want to get into being the oldest. There's so much that you're, threated into.

I sell that with my other brother as well, just taking over so much responsibility. Like you really shouldn't have to take over just because there's this void when, when mom and dad go separate ways. So, uh, that makes a lot of sense. Uh, if you would share to whatever level you're comfortable, what would happened?

You know, I think that for myself, I, I think that I, I can look back on the stories I've heard for my parents' marriage and like what I witnessed fr from a small age up until the point where they did separate that there were a lot of bad habits established in their marriage and even in their dating relationship before marriage.

And I, I remember my parents fighting a lot growing up. Wasn't uncommon. For them to be, you know, tucked away in dad's office, you know, having a screaming match. But I think what really brought it out was when I became a teenager, you know, a teenager, especially being, um, in high school, they want a little more independence.

They wanna do this, they wanna do that. And my dad was not comfortable with us doing a lot of different things or us spending a lot of time doing different things, um, that my mom wanted us to do. And that controlling aspect really manifested itself. And it wasn't something that I even think, I don't think she realized how bad and how controlling he was until he really saw it being manifested in her children.

Or she really saw it being manifested in her children like that. He's trying to control everything that they do. Him being controlling, kind of opened her eyes. Into what was going on in her marriage. What do you think for yourself? For me? I, I think it was a, it was more of a, it wasn't apparent at the time when it was happening to me and more thinking of it now though, I think, I think it was more of a slow, oh, what's the word?

Degradation, degradation degradation of, um, you know, where, where it was just because my mom, my mom was Catholic or is Catholic, I should say. And my dad is, or was loosely Lutheran. Yeah. Lutheran is what it was. Okay. You know, so to start, you know, to start, there was, there was a serious moral difference and religious difference, religious difference, I should say more so, um, that makes sense, you know, and, and it was kind of two worlds trying to work together.

And, and it was a lot of, of my dad not being there cuz he owns his own owns his own company, runs his own construction company, you know, which in itself is a lot of work. Yeah. But then, you know, it dive him diving into that. And then, you know, my mom trying to step in and, and find the, or fill, fill both the roles bearing himself in his work and, and not being the Catholic role model she wanted you to have.

Yeah. Yeah. And because it was, it was almost, oh, I don't wanna say ironic, but he finally went through R C I a became Catholic, I think in 2006. I remember that. Yeah. And, and then, and then a year later, You know, it was, it was, he was, it just exploded and everything hit the plan, you know, so it was almost like there was an appeasement process and then it was just like, you know what, forget this.

And then everything exploded. And, and then things got worse. There was, there was some cheating on his part and, and it just, it kind of got, I don't know, just, it went from there, you know, and got worse and worse slowly. I think your mom had a little in her mind that if he became Catholic and they solved this religious difference, that that would solve their marital issues.

I don't know if it would solve it, but it, she definitely, she obviously as one spouse would want another spouse to become, you know, in this case, you know, Catholic wants their spouse to be Catholic mm-hmm , you know, so I think, I think there was, there was a great wants. and if not a little bit of a pushiness mm-hmm for that to happen or a, uh, expectation that that would happen mm-hmm and then it was, you know, and then I think my dad finally caved and then stuck through it for about a year and instead, forget this and then just, you know, that was about it.

So, okay. That was kind of, that's kind of the meat of the story as, as, as I remember it, I, I suppose. Yeah. And I know for a lot of us, the memory can always be a little bit like spotty and, and there's reasons for that. But I remember both of your stories cuz I was, you know, not intimately involved, but we were all friends.

Yeah. And PI I remember years in particular cuz we were definitely closer than you and I Maria. And um, I remember your dad becoming Catholic and that was like so good. And. I was, yeah. Just thinking like, wow, this is amazing. Your family seemed like they were, you were in a really good spot. You never know what's under the surface though from the outside, like, right.

But, but, um, and then all of a sudden, like, yeah, almost in the blink of an eye, it was like, oh, and now everything's falling apart. And the crazy thing was, there were a lot of families who we knew at the time who were going through some similar, maybe it wasn't like at the exact same time, but within years of each other, you know, it seemed like marriages were just falling apart.

Um, and then the kids obviously had to deal with the, the fallout, which we know intimately and especially looking at our siblings and seeing how they deal with it. It's it's tragic. So, yeah, definitely. That's interesting how each sibling kind of deals with it different. That's how I, I see it. Like my, my four sibling or me and my three siblings.

We have all dealt with it so differently. I see it with his siblings. Like not, not, not one reaction is. The same as the other and where you are in the family line above oldest or middle child, or second to youngest or youngest definitely seems to like play a little bit of a part in it. Yeah. If you could summarize that quickly, what would you say?

And I know it varies by person, like you said, but I'm just curious, like what have you seen the difference in both of your siblings handling the breakdown, your families? Oh gosh. just quickly just in like 30 seconds

novels on this, but yeah. Yeah. and you don't need to divulge, you know, big things about their siblings, but I'm just curious. Cause I think, yeah, I think it's, I think it's more. The higher in the, in the sibling hierarchy, you are, I think there's more responsibility put on you and the lower you are. There's more mooching off both parents.

Well, I wasn't gonna say that ness is the, the more the parents are gonna try and spoil you to try and get you to like them. But the higher you are in the hierarchy, the more you are going to, the more the parents are gonna want you to fulfill the other parent's role. Wow. I, I think that, or the missing parents' role, I should say, depending on how young the child is, I don't know.

What I've kind of noticed is in some ways, Some children have this idea of, okay, well what, what can mom give me? And, and what can dad give me? And who's gonna give me what, and what can I get? Who can I get the most from? I mean, that, that comes from just a normal functioning family.

functioning family should have the United front. The parents. Yes. Yes. But they still, that doesn't doesn't mean they're not gonna try. They might try. They might try. But in this situation they can do, dad will let me do this, but mom won't. So I'll do this at dad's or mom will give me this, but dad would never.

So I'll ask mom for that. Mm-hmm yeah. Or it's exponentially worse. And I'd agree with that. Like the higher you are and the hierarchy, the more sort of responsibility you have. I feel like for myself being the oldest, I, I wouldn't say I was leading my siblings in any way, but. They did look to me like, what are you gonna do about this?

And my mom definitely looked to me like, what should I do next? And we both were really lucky when we entered our relationship, that we had a really awesome priest recommend that we both see a counselor mm-hmm independently, independently. Yeah. And not together because we didn't, he, he saw both of our divorced family situations and he was like, you do not wanna bring these bad habits into your relationship and you do need to, and you do wanna deal with this before getting into a marriage.

And while you're discerning marriage as a vocation or, and religious life as a vocation mm-hmm and he recommended, we see the same counselor, but separately. So we did, he saw the counselor and I saw the counselor separately. And then when we did go. On to get engaged, we would go and he would have a half session with the counselor and I would have a half session with the counselor.

And then we would have, we want a whole session together as a couple on the, on the same day, we'd go together. He'd be by himself for half hour. I'd be by myself for half an hour and then we'd have an hour together and then we'd get lunch. It was like a weird date. Yeah. like a depressing day. No, but super helpful.

Wow. Wow. Wow. That's amazing. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. So good. Yeah. Yeah. It was really good. And it definitely helped us recognize pitfalls and red flags and bad habits as they would pop up. And absolutely. Um, and it would help us work through that or even just like, how do we navigate being engaged with these divorced parents?

Okay. Now, how do we navigate being married with these divorced parents and how do we navigate. Having kids and throwing parties and they're do we invite both of them there and how do we navigate holidays and set boundaries and yeah. Yeah. It was something totally necessary. Especially also for us being married young, we were like, what are we doing?

yeah. Yes. Cause those things are hard to do in normal parent situations, setting boundaries and figuring out those things, but let alone, okay. Now we have our kids four. Now we have, and there's four grandparents, four independent to like rotate. Um, yeah, we did, we did one Easter. We did four Easters in, in the same day and I think I wanted to die.

Yeah. We were like, we're never, ever doing this again. Some things unfortunately are just trial and error, like yeah, yeah. Learning the hard. No, that's so good. Peter. I remember you advising that. We've put that in some of our content. Um, and I mentioned you saying that don't do it all in one day. good.

Practical credit. The worst thing possibly do, and I can attest to that. Cause it it's it's and that's, that's the big thing that was, I think that's a big thing and we still struggle a little bit with that is setting boundaries, you know, with, with everything that, you know, trying to say, okay, this is how it is.

And now our parents, you know, the parents are divorced, they've all got an alled. So technically they're free to see other people date and see other people and it's become more of, uh, attention because, because it's okay. My dad's, you know, dating a girl and oh, now kid's birthday who invite dad? And can he bring his, he bring his girlfriend, you know, so it's, it's.

It's a lot more tension in setting boundaries and it, and it, you know, kind of works all different ways and yeah, it never ends unfortu. No, it doesn't, it, it sucks, but it never ends, but it does get better. That's for sure. It's become a lot easier to make these decisions, but, but you had to work through all that.

And I think that's good for any parents listening right now. You know, we're not hitting on our parents, but I've seen the same thing in my life, too. Those normal situations that can be challenging. And over themselves, like you guys said become exponentially more difficult because there's all these people to please.

And then you have to deal with whose side, you know, you might be appear to be, um, on, and there's just so much messiness. Then you add yeah. Another partner into the situation like boyfriend, girlfriend, it just so such a difficult situation. So many parents listening who may be considering getting a divorce.

I think this conversation I hope is really insightful in saying not only how it will maybe affect your kids in the short term immediately following the separation divorce, but for years to come, this doesn't end. And that's the, your grand babies. Yeah. That's, that's something we've luckily been able is.

Sorry not to cut you off. Sorry, go. . No, you're good. But we've luckily narrow, narrowly avoided the conversation. Cause our oldest, our oldest is seven he's he's gonna turn eight. Yes, little baby, but we've narrowly avoided, you know, the, the conversation. Why does grandpa live at one house? Why does grandma live at the other house?

You know? Right. Actually, no, that's been a huge thing for us having, so we have four children, um, ages eight to one years. Three boys. And one girl, the girl is six years old and the boy is almost eight, a four year old boy and a one year old boy. But anyway, one thing that we have not really used the word divorce with them, but it's just been so crazy for us to see them and their perception of this because they know all of our parents in some sort of context, they're very close with their grandmas.

They know his dad really well. I'm estranged from my dad. So they know who he is. They've seen him, but they don't really have a relationship with him. But anyway, they, they know that these grandparents don't all live together. And so at one point maybe a year ago, half a year ago, we were sitting at dinner.

Oh yeah. And all of a sudden, our six year old daughter just goes, why does Papa referring to his dad? Why does he live in this house? And Grammy lives in that house? Mm. Yeah. And we just kinda looked at each other like, oh, okay. We knew this conversation. Why this came outta the blue, what did we say?

Completely out of the blue. Yeah. And without even skipping a beat, our oldest boy chimes in and he goes, oh, their kids are grown up now. So they, so one of them lives in this house and the other one lives in a different house. since their kids are grown up. Wow. And he just assumed like it's. Yeah. Right.

Okay. This is normal. When you're, when your kids grow up, you don't live together anymore. That was his like perception. His reality of the situation. Wow. Our six year old daughter, she's just like, oh, well then they aren't married. And he's like, no, they are married. They just live in different houses. Cuz their kids are grown.

And we had to like stop him and just be like, whoa, whoa, okay. Like, we want you to know that is not normal moms and dads don't live in separate houses once their kids are grown up. That is not a normal thing. That's not the ideal. Yeah. And, and that's not gonna happen with us. Mm-hmm , that would becoming the normal, but it is not ideal that like, that shouldn't be normal for portraying to them.

And that to try to make them feel secure, like this happened to your grandparents, but this is not gonna happen to your parents. Like, we don't want them to be scared that this is like their future. Yeah. Cuz that's, that's that's the hard part is how do you, how do you tell your kids? Okay, this happened.

Here's your, your grandparents. They got to love. Do you love and you admire. Yes. And. And they, they, they got married, they had children and then they, all of a sudden stopped loving each other or they stopped being married. Right. And they stopped being married. That's how, that's how the child was gonna look at it.

Right. Okay. They must not love each other anymore. They must was like, yeah. Yeah. And then they, so they separated and then they, then the kid's gonna sit there and be like, well, what happens if mom and dad separate and leave and or they stop, they just stop loving each other. Yeah. And then what happens, child mind is so simple, you know?

And then they go, well, what happens if mom stops loving me? Which is the same thing as a child's divorce is, I mean, a grandchild of divorce is the same, almost the same thought process. Yeah. Oh grandma and grandpa don't love each other. Why, what does that mean? That mom's gonna love me anymore. Mm. You know, which is a great issue that, that.

People children of divorce go through. Yeah. And so, so it's, it's to try and, and tell them, no, you know, first off we love grandma. We love grandpa, but their actions were not ideal and that's not the way it's supposed to. That's the way that God ordered it. Yes. It's not the way that God ordered it and that you're supposed to stay together and that we, and reassure them that that's not gonna happen to them.

That we, as their parents is not gonna happen to them. Yeah. And nor should it wow. In the symbols of terms. Yeah. Because yeah, this is, this is one thing, you know, I heard a long time ago is that, you know, when, when talking to a child with either divorce or, or even, you know, And where do babies come from or whatever mm-hmm is to literally try and give the child the least amount of information on, on to stats by their, their thirst, for the knowledge yes.

On these grand huge complex issues. We heard this on another podcast, actually domestic family parenting podcast. Yes. Put a plugin for them, cuz that is, that is a fabulous podcast. Yeah. Second to yours, obviously. no, Michael, they actually came on this podcast a while. Did they? I don't remember the episode number offhand, but uh, yeah, no, they're great.

Oh, I'm gonna look podcast number now. That's yeah. So, but yeah, they, you know, it was, it was to give them, give the child the simplest terms to satisfy their, satisfy their curiosity and, and, and that's pretty much what we ended up doing. And it was just trying to break it down. The simplest of terms and be like, look, this is, this is, this is what's right.

That is what's wrong. Mm-hmm and, and that's all you can really do because they can't understand complex situations. Right? Like that. No, I admire you guys for handling that. And Marie, you mentioned it, uh, child's thinking isn't black and white and it's so difficult to explain the nuances of a situation like that.

Mm-hmm in a way, I think kids think, see things more clearly than we do, and yeah. But what, what a difficult way, like what a difficult conversation to have that you weren't even prepared for, just to finish that this off for people listening, especially who might be, uh, wanting to get married one day or engaged or married, newly married and soon becoming parents, or maybe new parents wherever they're at in that, uh, whole timeline.

I'm just curious, how would you maybe handle that conversation a little bit differently? Um, was there anything that you maybe wish you would've said looking back at it now? Cuz I know hindsight's 2020 always. Um, I think you guys sounded really well by the way, but I just, like, that's a tough conversation to have.

I probably, I probably would've prepared for it a little better. Yeah. Which is would've we, we have discussed, oh my one day, we're gonna have to talk to about this, like dreading that day. Like that was kind of the extent of the conversation. Yeah. So maybe have an idea in mind and don't wing it like we did, but we did give them as little information as possible.

Just saying like, we want you to know this is not the way it normally will be. This is not how it will be with us. Uh, they were married, they are not married anymore. Then there was a lot of questions of like, how do you get unmarried? And we were like, well, in the simplest of terms, we kind of told them being Catholic and what we believe on as marriage, as a sacrament, just that they did not know.

Their catechism and their faith enough to the extent that their marriage was not valid and they are no longer married and they were not married completely in God's eyes. And that just not even another question, that was it. They're like, okay. Yeah. And back to talking about squirrels outside, like that was it like onto the next thing um, like didn't skip a beat and every, so often as something comes up, we just kind of give them as little nuggets of information, tiniest, tiniest amounts of information as possible.

I, I think it only came up maybe once after that. And then it just kinda, it just kind of set. They really don't. They don't really, we emphasize. They are not, not living in the same house because they're adult children are adults. Like their children have grown up. We, when you guys grow up, your mom and dad will still live in the same house.

Yeah. I think, I think, I think that's the biggest thing is that you can, if you can portray anything, make them feel safe, about's re reassurance their environment. Yeah. You know, because you wanna make sure that they know that this is, this is a family that is gonna stick together forever and it's worth being a part of yeah.

No matter what. Mm-hmm mm-hmm one thing I've noticed with Lucy is she gets so happy when she physically sees bridge. And I together just like when we're like getting each other a hug and, and you probably notice that with your kids too, it's so beautiful. Right. And I think that's ultimately what kids want is we just want our parents to be together.

Obviously we don't want all the fighting intention and all that stuff, but if we can snap our fingers and get what we want, we want our families to be whole, we'd want 'em to be together. Right. And I know, I know my siblings and I. Wanted that so much. So I think it's so beautiful that you reassured them that, yeah, mommy and daddy, we're not going anywhere.

We're not gonna be like grandma and grandpa. And, um, this is different and that, you know, I'm sure that's still hard for a kid to wrap their head around perhaps. But, um, but I think you, you guys, it sounds like you're doing all the right things. So this is really good advice. We obviously haven't had that conversation with Lucy yet.

Um but, uh, at some, at some point of will have I pray, you have many years before you have to have a conversation. Yeah, no, a hundred percent. It's it's not an easy one. And man, the, I know a lot of people just talking to someone this weekend and they were saying, I think their dad in particular has been married like six times.

It's like, boy, how, how do you explain that one? You know? So we won't go down that rabbit hole, but, um, I wanna shift gears a little bit to absolutely. So just the way in which you guys were affected, you've already mentioned a lot, but anything else that you would add in terms of how both of you were personally affected?

Um, and then the next stop is gonna be your relationship, but start personally, like, how were you affected by all of this? In addition to what you've already mentioned? I think I felt the sense that I had to be independent and I had to figure out a little more of how I was gonna offend for myself. And I don't know if you Joey have noticed this being with older kids, more like I was talking about younger kids trying to mooch off their parents.

Like, what can I get from this one? What can I get from that one? I felt, uh, this sense of, I don't want help from either of these people or as little help as possible that I can manage. Um, what can I do to get myself out of the situation? And I. Was looking at, okay, what do I want for a career? What do I want, how can I go to college?

And how can I not rely on them financially to do this? And so that's actually how I end up getting my cosmetology license, because I was like, I wanna go away to college and I wanna have a career and get away from these people and not be financially reliant on them. And I don't wanna be financially reliant on them for college either.

So how, what can I do to make more money to pay for college? And that's why I went to cosmetology school so that I could make more money to pay for college. Yeah. And it turns out that it paid off because in 2020, our kids had good haircuts as opposed to every other home home haircut. and you got good haircuts too.

I did too. I got good haircuts too. I'm jealous. So I think like some people have the fight or flight response and. My response was, I'm gonna fight for myself to not ever be in this situation again. And I remember just personally praying in my personal prayer life, a lot of prayer of God, I've dealt with this as a child and as an adolescent, and it's so miserable and it's so awful.

And I, I don't envy my parents and this terrible pain and suffering and hell that they're going through. And please spare me of this as an adult. I lived it as a child and I don't wanna deal with it as an adult. And so it was like a, it was a combination of fight and flight. It was a fight for me, myself.

I'm going to not ever be in this situation personally. Uh, and I'm gonna pray and do everything in my physical power. And I also wanna get away from this situation and not be stuck in this situation. Whereas like, do I, did I wanna help my mom? Did I wanna help my dad? Did I wanna help my siblings? Yes. Did I wanna try to maintain a relationship with them?

Yes, but I didn't wanna be dependent on that. And if things went south or sour, I wanted to have an out. It feels like for survival, doesn't Maria. And we've seen that as a trend too. It's like, we typically have this fierce independence as people who come from broken families and perhaps it veers more towards the older ones, but I've seen it in younger ones too, but we just, for sure, we don't wanna rely on anyone.

And that makes relationships really difficult, which we'll get to in the second here. But I, uh, I certainly still battle with this, to this day in my own marriage and, you know, definitely have grown a lot and made a lot of ground, but that's still kind of my default too, because I think so often what happens and we've said this before in this podcast, but, uh, when our families fall apart, we feel like we have nothing to fall back on.

And so we kind of take on this attitude like, well, no, one's got my back, so I better have my own back. I better just like figure life out. And if I don't, then that's not even an option. Like if I don't, there's nothing for me. And, uh, and so I totally totally get what you're coming, where you're coming from.

Right. Yeah, for sure. And I. . And that was me as a teenager and, you know, going on an older teenager, like getting towards the end of high school and getting towards college. So it's hard for me to think about, okay, what about my brother? Who was 11 mm-hmm you don't really have that option. You can't think of how am I gonna get myself out of the situation?

No, you're 11 years old. Like you're stuck in it. You haven't even made it through high school. You haven't. So, or his younger sister who is six years old. Mm-hmm like, now she's just gonna grow up with this as her normal. Yeah. So in some sense, I considered myself a little bit lucky, like, well, at least I'm older than them.

At least I don't have to go on, but you know, visitation, as long as they do the ability to leave situ the ability to leave the ability to drive well, the physical license to drive a car, whether or not I had a car available to me is a different story, but. Yeah, that pretty much. Yeah, it is a survival. I've kind of realizing how closely our stories are.

Um, at this very moment, but yours was like, I'm just not gonna be around. I, that was, I mean, that was mine. I, I, your coping mechanism, sort of my coping mechanism, you could almost say, I mean, it was cuz I think it was about, I was 17 and it was, there was a big dependence on me to step up and take care of my siblings.

And, and I kind of, I mean, I can't say I've always been the nicest to them, but as an older brother who is, um, but , but I mean, you know, I, you know, when it, when it really, when it really got Harry and the par, you know, with my parents, There was, there was an expectation from, from my parents to step up and more than just being an older brother to almost being a parent, to try and take care of them, like my siblings.

And then, and then I was, it was almost as if I was this, they kind of treated me as this as a friend. They almost tried to, or, or appear, appear where they would. Oh, Hey, you know, your dad's doing this or, oh, your mom's doing this. Or, you know, they really, they, there was a, they were trying to pit me against the other one, you know, which happens.

And I know that happened in your parents a lot too. Is wait, can I just interject to this space? Absolutely. Yes. That in our experience of parents trying to talk negatively about each other to us, That's happened to me. It's happened to him. It probably is something that's fairly normal. I would assume mm-hmm yeah.

The only way that changes is if you put up a boundary. Well, yeah, I was getting there. Oh, I was getting, let me building up to that. The boundary. Oh yeah. Um, you know, and, but my boundary was, I was just, I, I literally, I, I think I was 17 and I just exploded and I was like, I'm done, I'm gone. I don't last hear about this.

And, and you probably remember this, Joey, I pretty much lived up at your house and, and a couple of our other friends for almost six months. I left every weekend. I was gone. Mm-hmm fr I didn't, I did not live at my house on the weekends. I bounced houses. I hung out with friends at every waking moment I possibly can and many sleeping moments.

it's just like, you know, go, go stay somewhere else because the dysfunction was more than I wanted in my life. And so my, you know, COVID mechanism was leave and, and I told him, and, and I still have to, to this day kind of reinforce that boundary, like, look, I, I don't want to hear what you have to say about the other person.

I don't care. Yeah. It doesn't, it's not my, that is not my responsibility. That is not my, that's not my, you know, that's, that's not for me to hear that's even if it's true, it's actually like, even if what the one parent is saying about the other is true, it just leaves such a bad taste in your mouth. I don't wanna hear this.

I don't wanna be dragged down this road. Like don't, don't bring it up. Mm-hmm like, and. And now that you're gonna defend one of the parents when they did something wrong, but it almost gives you this. Like, I don't wanna agree with you even though you're right. Just because this is annoying and this is not fair to me as the child.

You no, it's not to vent it to. And that's what it is. It's, it's not fair to the children, you know, divorce is, is mostly not fair to the children hundred percent and, and it's, it, it, it puts such a strain and it just, it makes me wanna rebel. Like, I wanna just disagree with them just because I know. Right.

Yeah. And it it's makes sense. Yeah. You know, so the, you know, it's, it's, it's too much to pit them against each other because it's not about cuz that's, that's so often I, I I've seen with, I, I think, I think when I, when my family was going through it, I think I knew maybe five or six other families that were going through it at the time.

Yeah, and that's kind of, it was all very similar. And even still, now I talk to other people that, that are either going through a divorce or things like that. And, and so often it's, it's when children are involved, it's, who's the better parent. Mm-hmm , I'm the better parent. No, I'm the better parent and they go back and forth and, oh, I'm gonna give you more.

And I'm gonna, you know, when your mom does this or your dad does that or whatever, it is a little like background, uh, neither of our parents divorces were quote, unquote amicable. If there is such a thing, I know some people are like, oh my parents, they come to parties together and they hang out and they talk and they're like friends now.

Oh no, it's ours are not amicable at all. They can barely be in the same room. Yeah. Far away from each other in the same room. And it's, and it's been a long time, 10, 11, 12, It's been almost 15 years. 13, four. Yeah. It's been, oh my gosh. Wow. you know, so that makes so much sense. And PI, I remember you going through all that and all of us, our whole friend group was worried about, we were, uh, we were worried about you we'd talk about like the situation we were going through.

We saw how it was affecting you. And we were at a point, um, cause my parents was separate when I was 11 and they got back together and then later they divorced. And so, you know, I, I had that reference point, at least. So I knew like, yeah, this really stink this a horrible thing to go through. But yeah, we saw that and we, we were, you know, we're trying to figure out like how, how do we help?

How do we help? And it's such a difficult spot to be in for, for you. Uh, you know, and it makes sense that you kind of, your default was an escape, uh, because it's just too much to bear at times. And Maria, your interaction makes so much sense to me as well. And going back to what you said about. Parents divulging information that we don't need to know.

And some attempt to make us think less of the other parent, that's typically what I've seen happens. And the young people I've talked to, that's typically what goes about, like we, in a workshop, recent workshop we did at Ave Maria university, we were talking about this very topic, how, yeah. There were situations where some of these students, parents were just divulging really inappropriate details about the other parents.

Oh, for sure. And even the marriage that like, they never wanted to know which greatly altered their perspective, not only their one parent, but the other parent as well, and even the marriage altogether. So it can be so, so damaging to just divulge that information. So any parents listening, again, going back to that, like, it does more harm than good.

And if there are situations where you need. Say some sort of truth because maybe things are being twisted so much by the other parent, there has to be like a mature, calm way to do that without getting pulled into this battle, this competition, to be better, like you said, than the other parent. And so, you know, definitely a lot there to talk about you guys hit on so many great points.

I wanna go to your relationship, your marriage, cuz we don't have forever to talk in this episode. how, how, how did you see it particularly play out in the relationship between the two of you? You mentioned that you guys went to counseling, which is amazing way ahead of almost every couple that I've ever heard of.

and so, yeah, I'm just curious, like how did you see this affect your dating relationships and now your own. I mean there's, I mean, don't get me wrong. We're not perfect as much as I would love to believe that. Wait, really? I , I D maybe we shouldn't be doing this podcast episode. This is a condition of the episode that you're perfect.

And you never struggle. Darn. All right. We're gonna have to rethink this, right. Edit that out. Edit that out. Yeah,

no, but I mean, even now, I mean, even being 10, 15 years down the road, I still, you know, I, I still notice things that, that are results of my parents' divorce or, or, or dysfunctional things that even, not even the divorce, just dysfunctional things that my parents did, that I, you know, habits that you pick up or things that you do.

Yeah. Family habits, you know, family habits, you know? Yeah. And. so it's it's but how has it affected us? How has it affected us? I mean, it, it really just, you have to be conscious of it always mm-hmm and you know, a big thing that we have that we've, we've fought about a lot is that, you know, a lot of times, uh, you know, I'll be a jerk and for whatever reason, and then she'll be angry at me for being a jerk.

And so she'll be a jerk back at me. And then we'll both be a jerk it's jerk for tat. Yeah. It's a little tip for tat and start getting into this fighting. And the thing to always remember is, and I think I just said this the other day, I was like, wait, stop, rewind. We love each other. you know, mm-hmm and, and to always go back and remember that we love each other and we're not, you know, anything we do is.

Out of spite, which is what we've seen so much over our lives is that, is that our parents were spiteful at each other. Well, also think that one thing that we personally have had to work on is our communication. Yeah. Being, we both communicate a lot, but sometimes not in the most effective way or not in the way that the other person understands what we're trying to convey.

Or, and I think that we didn't see healthy communication happen. No, we weren't witness to that at all. So the counseling really stad off a lot of potential hazards, so to speak, like any potential bad habits. Because we had this counseling session when we were dating. So we saved off a ton of bad habits when we were dating, we saved off a lot of bad habits being engaged and even being married.

I think we went for the first, like four or five years of our marriage as well. Yeah. We went once a month. Yeah. For about four or five years. Yeah. Into our marriage. And so a total of like seven to eight years of counseling. And finally, she just looked at us and said, go home. yeah, that's beautiful. She's like, I've done all I can.

Yeah. Like when you're not fighting about like, who did, what chore, like then, you know, when you have something more concrete, like come back that's amazing. And not that we're perfect, like you said, but it really, it was finding a good counselor doing the, the footwork in your relationship before even marriage.

And that's huge. Yeah. And discerning, you know, this person, this partner, and if they're right for you and you know, are they gonna really be there for you through sick and thin and yeah. Cause, cause once you get married, you're, you're kind of, I mean, you're really, you're stuck with, you're not kind of stuck.

You are stuck. Well, you're stuck with, well, yeah. I, I, sorry man. Everyone who's not married just really wants to get married right now. And I'm just kidding. well, I mean it is though, but you know, so if, if, but you wanna be good, stuck, like stuck, right? Like where you're stuck. Exactly. This is where I'm going, you know?

So it's, it's, you know, so you wanna figure out you wanna iron out the big wrinkles before, you know, before you can, you know, before you settle down and you get married because cuz if, if you find out. Three years into your marriage. Oh my gosh. There's this huge issue that, oh, he's just this way. And he is never gonna change.

Mm-hmm you wanna find that out while he is dating while you're dating, so you can just walk away with a lot less baggage. Yeah. You know, and, and, and counseling is, I mean, I think every single person in this world should go to counseling with a single person, every single person, we're all nuts. but I, you know, , but at least, you know, at least, you know, going as a couple with an open mind and to find a counselor that pushes you.

Because there's, I I've been to a, a few different ones, you know, that was part of the divorce and all that fun stuff was, oh, go to this counselor, go to that counselor. And there's counselors out there. That'll just tell you what you want to hear or yeah. You know, and then we walk away and you're like, I'm, I'm I feel great.

You know, because I, I, he told me everything and I'm in right. And blah, blah, blah. You know, so to find a counselor that, that pushes you to think, well, what, what could you do? That's better. Even, even, you know, maybe you're no one, no one is a hundred percent in the right. You know, unless you're Jesus Christ.

I mean, that's, that's pretty much it, everybody has, you know, or, or some great Saint or something. But I most average people, especially today, mm-hmm are, have some sort of selfish, ulterior motive, I think. And. and me included. And I think that, I think that, you know, unless you're viewing that and trying to understand, well, okay, what am I trying to get out of this and why, and how can I do this to be more selfless, you know, ESP, when it comes to relationships, you know, anything really, but with relationships to, to, to look at it as, as how can I be more of a selfless person and give myself to my spouse or to my, you know, to my boyfriend or to my significant other, that that would allow me to grow in love for them and in return and holiness and holiness and in return that they, they will see that and, and love me more.

I mean, you know, to find, to find some, a counselor, that'll push you to do something like that is really, I. You know, or, or even a, a spiritual director or, or a, uh, accountability account, not so much a mentor, a mentor. Thank you. Yeah. A mentor, you know, someone to push you further because yeah. You know, let's face it.

We can only be pushed further than we think we are. Yeah. Yeah. And we can always grow more. There, there is no, there is no cap on how much we can grow as a human. Yeah, no, I'm a big believer in that. I, we wouldn't be doing what we're doing here right now, if, if it wasn't and yeah, I, you know, you guys brought up so many good points and a lot of great advice and what you just said.

Yeah. And I, I know just bridge and I, you know, conflict learning to handle conflict, like you said, uh, when our marriage has been especially difficult because, uh, you know, I didn't see that growing up handled well. And, uh, in fact, I saw it handled very horribly. And so that was the example and I was clueless on how to do it the right way, picked up some things along the way that helped, but in such an emotional relationship, which a marriage is like your emotions run high, um, and hot.

Um, it can be really difficult to have that self mastery in the midst of those difficult situations to say the right thing and not hurt the other person, which I mess up. And so. So we've had to learn and, and counseling marriage counseling has been really helpful for us. And, uh, you know, I, one of a few of the tendencies that I've seen in myself, which I'm curious if you guys can relate is, um, just this almost need to defend myself and just almost this need to kind of going back to what we were saying before about.

Feeling so independent or being fiercely independent, feeling the need to just take care of ourselves. Like no one will take care of us. No one will be there for us. Like we just have to do it ourselves. It can very much so feel like survival in the midst of even a, a marriage fight. Yeah. And a lot of times it's just stupid stuff, silly stuff.

I mean, just the other night, it's like we were fighting about something so dumb. It's like, come on and, and thankfully we've gotten to that point. One of the things, one of the concrete girls that we've seen in our marriage is that we get to a point where like, it takes us a shorter and shorter period of time now to recognize that and apologize and reconcile.

I agree. Yeah. Yeah. Have you guys seen that in your marriage? For sure. Yeah. We're like, wait a minute. Like he said, we love each other, right? This is dumb. When we first got married. Fought like cat and dogs. yeah, yeah. No one prepares you for that. I remember we, I remember you made a comment about it and you're like, why are we, we were in a big fight and you were like, why are we always fighting?

And I mean, it was we, and we're, you know, we are. Both. Very, what do you, how do you stubborn? Stubborn? Sure. Come up with a way to say it nicer, but sure. We're stubborn abstinence we're, you know, we're loud and opinionated. Yeah. And so for us, a simple fight, it, you know, could be, you know, a little explosive , but where, you know, quieter people might just, you know, whatever.

Okay. Sure. I think another thing too is , um, we both saw a really bad habit of thinking the one spouse thinking the worst of the other, like mm-hmm , you know, he might have done, you know, he might have left his. Come home with his dirty work boots and kicked them off on the floor and got dirt everywhere.

And I'm like, I just mopped this floor, you know, mm-hmm and obviously this is just a simple example of like, okay, he wasn't doing this to personally offend my perfectly mopped floors but I took my boots off in the garage by the way today. Yeah, good, man. Good man. but me just being like, you have no consideration for me and him being like, this is just me coming home from work and taking off my boots woman, you know um, and that was one of the things I feel like in our marriage, when we went to counseling, when we were married, that our counselor was like, why are you always making the worst to each other?

Yeah, like that was one thing that was routinely brought up until this bad habit was. Even still brutally knocked out of us. Like it's, it's still something that happens, shows up every so often, you know? Right. But thinking the worst of the other person, and when you hear your parents saying the worst of the other parent, it's just something that becomes so habitually ingrained.

And I think it's something also that marriages struggle with anyway. But yeah, when you're, when you've seen it, um, and you've seen, you know, I remember my parents definitely like thinking the worst of each other, um, in a lot of senses or, you know, taking something that someone did not do offensively as this big.

I remember there's been a few times too, where we've noticed in our, or I've come to realize that certain things that my parents did that I thought were normal are not normal. For instance, as a small example, my dad. It was very particular about how my mom spent money. And I remember, you know, going through the McDonald's drive through and her saying, I'm gonna pay with cash.

Don't tell dad McDonald's cause he'll get really mad at me. And one time we were trying to be more frugal, not eat out. And I was really tempted cuz I was out, it was lunchtime and I'm like, I'm just gonna take the kids through the drive through. But here. And I we've made this packed. We're gonna be trying more frugal.

We're not trying not to eat out right now, but I could just pay with cash and I could not tell him. And all of a sudden realizing, like that's such a terrible thing. And then I'm tell my kids, don't tell dad this secret from dad called him crying and being like, I can't believe this. Like, this was like my normal.

And like, I just can't imagine doing this to you. That's just so wrong. It sounds like such a small little dumb thing, but it's just like such a wrong thing to portray to our children and such a wrong thing to do to each other in the smallest of things. Like there's so many bigger things, but like that was like our normal, like hurry up and throw the trash out.

So bury the trash under some other trash. So dad doesn't see the McDonald's wrappers, you know, like, because, so it's been eyeopening too, in a sense of like, I didn't realize how weird and wrong that was. I think people, uh, maybe who don't come from broken families or haven't listened to stories like this, they might think like, what's the big deal, like, come on.

What's the big deal. Mm-hmm and, and, you know, obviously the research is really clear. There's so many stories about this, but the reason that's a big deal is because. And the reason we struggle more in relationships. And again, that's what the research showed. The, the biggest area of our life. That's impacted by the breakdown of our parents' marriage.

And our family is our romantic relationships, particularly our marriages. And the reason is that simple. We learn how to love. We learn how to build relationships and even a marriage within our families. And if we saw bad example of that, it's like going to a bad university to learn, to be an engineer. And then right.

You know, like an aerospace engineer and then being told, okay, build a rocket. It's like build a rocket. We're gonna, we're gonna put some people on this rocket. It's gonna go to space. It's like good luck. Like, so for engineers, I don't wanna be on his rocket. I don't wanna be on his rocket. No, thanks.

exactly. So it's like, we, we literally had this very poor education. Not, not bashing our parents, but it just to be objective and honest, it's like, this is a very poor way to learn how to love, how to build relationships. And we're carrying that with us. And what, you know, researchers have found too, is that once you've formed a habit, that's always in your.

Like that neural pathways alwa it can't be erased. It can't be erased. It could be replaced, but it can't be erased. And that's why PI what you were saying before. It's like this stuff can pop up when it's triggered in certain situations would make yeah. Makes sense. So, um, no, it, that, that's why it's a big deal.

It's like, literally we were school, we got a degree. We were, you know, taught how to build love or, or maybe the lack of in our families. And that, that's why it can be so difficult, even in small situations where we're just have these knee jerk reactions to do something that's ultimately gonna damage the marriage in the family.

Yeah. Yeah. But I don't know. I just wanna say to all the listeners that your parents' divorce while it's always gonna be there, it doesn't get erased. There, there is hope. There was hope in my prayer that, okay, this is not how I'm gonna spend my adult life. There was a lot of don't feel hopeless in the sense of this.

Doesn't have to define you and the rest of your life, and you can still find happiness and you can still go on to have a good marriage like our marriage. Isn't perfect, but I'd say we have a good marriage and we're both very happy. I'm very happy. I'm happy too. and we enjoy our family so much and we feel like it's, in some ways, it, not that divorce is ever a blessing, but we've received the grace of really trying to be so intentional about our marriage and putting a lot of work into it.

I mean, the counseling itself was a lot of work and. Emphasizing always to each other, that divorce is never an option. It's not, it's not the D word. We don't, we don't talk about it. We don't say it. We don't threaten it. It's never, you know, brought up in a fight and we don't even joke about it. Really. We don't joke about it.

It's it's, it's, it's like a cuss word in this house pretty much. Yeah. So good. I love that. No, Maria, thank you for balancing that with hope. I think, you know, we need to do both. We need to see the truth and just acknowledge that, okay. This was really difficult thing to go through, but at this, in the same breath, say what exactly what you said that there's so much hope you can change.

You can't heal. You can grow. That is a possibility mm-hmm a lot of people don't believe that actually, a lot of people have this fixed mindset where they think, well, I'm just am the way I am. I kind of destined to down on the road. That's, that's a, it's a sense of perspective. And to think that, you know, it's a difference of.

Are you going to take the route of the victim mentality? You know, I mean, I, I saw, uh, this, this funny post on Facebook years ago, and it was just a picture of a blank sheet of paper. And it said here's a list of all the things that you're entitled to , you know, and I'm like, that is fricking brilliant because it is, I mean, really think about it.

Yeah. I mean, hundreds of years ago, you know, thousands of years ago, what, what did people do? They, in order to do anything, they had to blood, sweat, and tears to, to live and survive just to survive for God's sakes, you know? And, and now we're, we're living our cushy lives, you know, for a majority of the world.

And we're like, oh my mommy and daddy fight, and this is tough. And I mean, not to, not to lessen, anybody's it, doesn't invalidate people's pain. Yeah. Not to invalidate people's pain because there's pain, but, but it's, but you can rise up from this pain. It's not the worst thing in the world. You know, you're not dying from cancer.

You can get up every day and you can go to work and you can make your life better and, and you can choose not to follow those habits. Yeah. You know, you can choose to set boundaries. Um, yeah. And, and to, to grow and, and become stronger and rise above the issues at hand, some people will struggle with the feeling of worthlessness.

We've definitely seen that in some of our siblings, this feeling of like worthlessness and it's just such a lie. It's just from the, Demonn trying to get his clause into you, whichever way he can. Mm-hmm that you're worthless because. Your parents split up and you weren't worth it to them to, to fix this.

Like you being their child isn't worth it. It is, it is a lie. And then because every person is worth something in the eyes of God and all equally, and yeah, everyone's equally worth and it's, you know, to, to rise above that worthlessness and, and to escape it because if, if you sit there and just continue to wallow it, don't wallow in it.

Yeah. Don't wallow in it. If you continue to wallow it, all it will do is just eat it. You eat at you. And it's just, it's a terrible spiral of, of depression that will only get worse and worse and worse. And, uh, cuz there was, there was a great time. It was quite a, there was a few years that, that I was very severely depressed.

And I don't even know if you know that Joey and, and it was, it was tough. There was a lot of dark thoughts and a lot of big issues that, that I had and I struggled with, and I felt that, you know, I was all alone and well, cuz in some ways you were, I mean, in some ways I was, and like you said earlier, my, we had a, a very good priest friend who was my mentor and spiritual director who helped me see out that.

And then you and you Joey and, and our, our friends helped me a lot too to see beyond that, that there was more than just my pain and suffering, that there was a whole world out there that I could, I can rise above my own issues and to become something greater and better. And, and, and to. In a horrible sense, also learning from our parents' mistakes.

Yeah. Yeah. We're not gonna make this mistake, right. Or that mistake, not, not, not wasting that in so many ways. And man, you guys on some, so many good things. Um, and I think a lot of people listening right now feel that worthlessness and they feel, they struggle with the victim mentality. I know I've been there and uh, there's still tendencies.

They have to fight against. And I think that's one of the biggest things that's just destroying our world right now is that victim mentality. And the reason why people like Jordan Peterson are so popular, cuz they basically speak directly against that, which is amazing. So much good stuff there. I don't wanna cut this short, but I don't wanna keep you guys forever.

I, uh, I did wanna ask you though an important question. Feel free to finish anything you wanted to say there, but then also if your parents were listening right now, what, what would you want them to. Oh, geez. Is this a softball question? oh yeah, it's a softball question. Sure. um, that I wish things were different and I don't think there's anything that can really change that at this point, but I, I want what's best for both of my parents and I hope that we all end up in heaven together someday as one.

Happy non dysfunctional family. Yeah. Trying to say this in the nicest way possible, but quote, my favorite shirt that my wife found for me. Well, no. Oh no, I, you get over it. You know, he's got a t-shirt that says get over it literally it's, you know, I mean, It's like, I mean, like you said, it's, it's over, it's done.

It sucks. Well, it's, it's, it's never this way. Well, the, the initial worst part is over. It happened, it happened, it happened it's there. The fallout just continues, unfortunately, you know, and to just accept the fact, you know, that it sucks. Mm-hmm well, and, and don't complain to us about it specifically. You put yourself there.

Yes. You know, but, but it sucks. And, and to accept it because it, it, it has to happen there. There's no change in it. There's nothing we can do. It's it's the, you know, to have the serenity to accept the fact that you can't change this now, because it's happened mm-hmm and, and to move on and have a courage to change the things you can.

And the wisdom to know the difference. Yeah. So what, if you, what you would tell your parents, if they were listening, is the serenity prayer. I would tell them the serenity pray this, which was a huge, which was a huge help. Uh, for me, um, was the serenity prayer, which, I mean, that was, is there a lot of things that you can't change?

That was I had, I had, I think I was 20 and I had a conversation with a, just a total stranger out in Nebraska at a seminary with this, with this guy at, I think it was one o'clock in the morning and we sat there and I literally just told this guy, random stranger dude, my entire life story. and, uh, to back this up, uh, earlier in the day I ate a couple of really bad tacos.

Um, so then the next morning after I had this whole conversation with this guy, I woke up with food poisoning. ouch. So then he just, he just took this plaque that I still have in my room today and slid it under my door in, in the dorm room. And it was the serenity prayer. And he was like, here you go. And I, that's a really great prayer for people who are feeling hopeless, whether they are divorced or a child of divorce or thinking about it.

It, that got me that really changed my perspective on, I mean, just life in general, but specifically with, with my parents' divorce and everything, you know, cuz there's only so much I can do and everything else is up to God. And that's it. That's freeing that that's really freeing. Do either of you hate your parents hate?

Yeah. No, my, my dad and I are estranged. I don't hate him, but he's treated me ill in a lot of ways. And so yeah, we like with the help of counseling have put up that boundary that it is not in my best interest emotionally or mentally or physically to really have a relationship with him at this point.

Yeah. Makes sense. So, no, I don't hate my dad, but I do hate a lot of the ways he's treated me. Yeah. And that's okay. Yeah. Hate the sin. Love the center. Exactly. Yeah. And that's the thing I think that can be so toxic in families. Like we come from where we might not even feel like we're allowed to talk about in honesty, what has happened.

So I'm so glad we were able to do this. Really appreciate you spending time with us. Um, your wise, it's been just on a personal note, amazing watching you two grow. I know we haven't lived in the same place and haven't always, I haven't always been great with staying in touch with my friends, but I have to say you two are inspiring.

It's beautiful to see. I know probably could have a whole episode about this, but both of you coming from broken families, ads, a particularly challenging, um, can make things particularly challenging. And so it's amazing to watch the two of you just build your family, build your marriage and work through the inevitable issues that come up.

So perhaps you guys it's, uh, it really is inspiring. And not just saying that to give you big hat. It's it's beautiful. Um, so yeah, so with that, I wanna give you guys a last word. Like what words of encouragement, what advice would you give to someone who feels really broken? Feels stuck, maybe feels worthless because of everything they've been through, uh, with their dysfunctional family, with the broken family, with their parents' divorce or separation or whatever is the reality in, in their family.

Like what, what encouragement would you give them? What hope? What advice would you say to them? Hmm. You are the master of your fate. Yeah. I mean that's to, to remember that it's always, it's not the end of the world. It probably feels like it in the moment, but you know, it, it will get better, whether you're five or 15 or 50.

Yeah. And, and to pray. And, and remember, I mean, really to remember that. And I, and I would tell everybody to really pray the serenity prayer, to understand what you have, the ability to change and everything else is all in God's hands, all in God's hands and a any, any of the, the negative thoughts. They're not from God.

No, they're, they're not. And he wants all the best for you. He knows that my favorite Bible verse that gave me hope was Jeremiah 29 11 for, I know the plans I have for you says the Lord plans of welfare and not a wo to give you a future full of hope. And like I said, whether you're older or younger and you feel hopeless, Your future is supposed to be full of hope.

That's what, that's what God has promised. And the SI the sins of your parents are not yours. So don't drag them along with you.

By the way, the episode that I couldn't remember with Mike and Alicia, Hern from the messy family podcast is episode 44. Again, that's episode 44 of our podcast. Hey, if Stewart has helped you, we'd love to hear how we've helped you. And some of the benefits of sharing your story with us, how we've helped you.

It gives us insight into what's most valuable for you guys. It helps us set strategy for the future so we can keep serving you. And then it shows other people the effectiveness of our work, which convinces them to use our content and the tools that we produce. And so we wanna share your testimonial. You can just go to restored.

Dot com slash testimony. Again, ReSTOR ministry.com/testimony can answer the quick questions about how ReSTOR has helped you. It can be totally anonymous. It's your choice. If you want your name on it or not, and then share how restored has helped you in that form. So you can do that again at ReSTOR ministry.com/testimony.

The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 67. Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful for you, feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them, always remember you are not alone, rare here to help you feel whole again, and become the person that you were born to be.

#066: A Resource for Families in Crisis | Anne DeSantis

When you’re 7 years old and your parents divorce out of the blue, it causes confusion and lots of questions. Unfortunately, the struggles for my guest didn’t stop there. 

In this episode, we discuss:

• How her parents divorce has impacted her, even years later

• What to do when your divorced parents become ill and near the end of their lives, especially if you have a tense relationship with them

• An organization that exists to help families in crisis

Get help from the St. Raymond Nonnatus Foundation

Buy Joey’s book: It’s Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain & Problems from Your Parents’ Divorce (affiliate link)

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Anne DeSantis

  • Philly Nonnatus - YouTube

  • Love and Care for the Marginalized

  • Anne DeSantis Website

  • St. Raymond Nonnatus Foundation

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To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you’ll receive our free ebook, 5 Practical Tips to Cure Loneliness!

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

My guest today was only seven years old when her parents divorced and it came out of the blue for her. And it cause her a lot of confusion. It caused her to ask a ton of questions about why things were changing. And so in this episode, we discussed how her parents divorce has impacted her even many years later, we talk about what to do when your parents become ill and near the end of their lives.

Especially if you have a tense relationship with. And then you'll also hear about an organization that exists to help families in crisis. Good stuff. So keep listening.

Welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host joy pond re thank you so much for joining us. This is episode 66. My guest today is Anne DeSantis, Anne, as a. Mother of two adult daughters, Catholic authors speaker model, and actress from the greater Philadelphia area.

Ginger masters in theology in 2021 from St. Joseph's college in Maine. Although she had a career before motherhood spending quality family time will always be one of the best decisions she ever made. She says she'd been a stay at home homeschooling mom to her two daughters from pre-K to grade 12 as she was also a teacher by.

She now hosts a weekly TV show called journeys and faith on Fiat ministry network and a podcast on patchwork, heart radio with bill Schneider, interviewing people, doing good things and spreading. From 2018 to 2020, she hosted the weekly TV show called the positive side and interviewed amazing people.

Now, primarily she is the director of the St. Raymond nanas foundation for freedom, family and faith. She loves this work and feels honored to do it in this episode. You'll hear the fact that Anna is a Catholic Christian. And so we discussed God and faith in this interview. If that's not your belief, we're really glad that you're here.

My challenge to you is this, listen with an open mind. Even if you take out the God parts, you're still gonna benefit from this. I. So here's my conversation with Anne DeSantis,

Anne, welcome to the show. It's been a long time coming. Thanks for your patience, but glad we can finally do this. Yes, I'm so glad to be here with you, Joey. Thank you. You're doing wonderful work on your podcast and your ministry. Thank you. No right back at you. I know you're very active in this area, helping people who come from broken families.

And I know we'll get into that, uh, in a bit, but first I wanna start with your story. So how old were you when your parents separated and divorce? Admittedly, I am not a millennial I am older. Uh, so my parents. In 1972, probably many, many years before your, some of your listeners were born. And at that time I was seven years old.

So at this time I'm 57 years old. It was quite a long time ago. And yeah, so seven years old was when they divorced though. That was a while ago. I mean, there there's so many similarities, as I know, you know, from working with people who come from broken families. Um, so regardless of if it was. Long ago or not.

I, I know you, you have a deep understanding of this problem and yeah. I'm curious what happened in your family? Well, what happened in my family was when my parents married now, that was in the kind of mid to early 1960s. They were both Catholic and they were both, you know, churchgoers people who went to through Catholic school.

People who understood the faith, I believe, but when they got married, There was a lot of communication issues from the very, very beginning. And they, they had four children almost immediately. Um, in fact, my mom and dad, their four kids, basically, there was only a year or two years or so at the most between each of their kids.

And so from my understanding and from my memory is. They, and, and as I said, I was only seven, so my, I don't have clear, clear memories of everything when I was that young. But, uh, they did always have some kind of, uh, relationship issues in terms of not getting along, arguing things like that. So when I was about, yeah, like I said, I was seven years old.

I wasn't given any kind of heads up what was going to be happening, but one. I woke up and my mom said movers were there. People were moving the furniture. And so I was told, you know, we're leaving. And so my mom left my father and we stayed away for a given amount of time, you know, in a hotel, because basically what happened was, is that my dad really did not want this divorce.

And he arrived home from. That day from work and the house was pretty much cleared out. There were some things that were left there, but my mom put those things in storage, and then she didn't tell him where she was, cuz she really wanted to get away from him because of the, the, the nature of their relationship and how not good.

It was mm-hmm . And so she had made that decision that I need to leave him. And so at, at that point, then we were established in an apartment. We lived there for a little while and then eventually got a house. Within, I would say within about three or four years, my mom had gotten another relationship. She did get an Anul egg, did get an annulment and my mom did get remarried and eventually my dad got, got remarried too.

Okay. And so that's kind of like the facts, I guess of it. I mean, of course there's also the feelings involved too. Right. But I wanted to give you sort of that factual information about the divorce. So they were an old, got remarried. My mom and my stepdad now have been married for, you know, going on, I think 47 or 48 years.

Uh, they actually just had their anniversary. Uh, my father is deceased and he was remarried. And unfortunately when my FA my father remarried twice after that, both of his wives died. So my dad was left single at the end of his life. He passed away in 2018. Say, it's been a journey. It's been a journey for me.

And, and that's, you know, the, the, I guess the, like I said, the factual parts of, of what happened back then. One thing I will say is that these days there's something like restored ministries, like the St. Reman or not foundation, where I work as the director mm-hmm . But back then, you know, there were not support systems for people like you and I, who were the adult children of divorce, or even, even for the people who are separated or divorced there wasn't Catholic.

There wasn't as many Catholic resources for them to find the healing and to find. Coming back after going through a trauma, cuz that's pretty much what it is, is going through trauma. Absolutely. And there's such a gap there. I think even still I know where both our organizations are working hard, but there's just so many people to serve.

And a lot of times this problem is just assumed to be normal. And so people might not even be looking for help, even though they do need it, which we can get into. So there's so much work to be done. But yeah, that, that was a similar situation with me. That's the reason why ReSTOR exists at all is because we, um, you know, in my own life, I look for help.

I look for some resource to help me navigate the pain and the problems that I was experiencing to, to find healing. Like I wanted really practical advice on how to heal and when I looked around, I just didn't find that. And so I'm glad, you know, resources like ours. Like your foundation and, and our ministry is, um, is, are sprouting up, but it is man, that must have felt so alone.

So I wanna go, there's so much to what you said, but I want to go into the feeling part of it as well, if that's okay. And, um, yeah. What was going through your mind? What was going through your heart as that seven year old, going through all that. Well, I will say the first feeling that I can remember and recall, of course, like I said, now we're talking 50 years ago, so sure.

Um, is probably just the question marks like, Hey, where are we going? What's happening? You know? Where's, you know, what's gonna happen with our family, that kind of thing. And so I was the oldest too, out the oldest out of four now of course my mom, when I said she remarried my, I have another sister too, from my mom's, uh, second marriage, uh, my youngest sister.

So, um, my, my, my father. I did not have any more children with either of the two wives that he had, as I mentioned, um, he had stepchildren, but I guess the first, like I said, the first thing was the question marks, you know, what do I do? What do I think, what do I say? And I think the biggest thing that I dealt with was realizing that I needed to just learn how to take care of myself in many ways, in terms of what was going on in my own life at a young age, uh, not to say that my parents.

Didn't care about me and do their best, cuz they, they did, especially my mom. I mean, I lived with my mom, my mom raised me, my mom and my stepfather really were the ones that. Were my quote unquote family, because my dad wasn't, he did have a part of my life, but I would say that due to the circumstances, he, wasn't a huge part of my everyday life.

When I was growing up from the ages of seven all the way through, till the end of high school and even through college, the good news is he did have a relationship with me. I mean, he did come to visit and, and take us and take us to see him. But I guess what I'm saying is you hear some stories where the father is very active.

You know, very much wants to be a part of the, the li the life of their kids after a divorce. But with my dad, I would say, not so much, he, he did care. He did pay support, paid the child support. But he wasn't super active in, in my life or even in any of my siblings lives, but that did come full circle. I'm gonna tell, tell you more about that too, because when you're the adult child of divorce, it isn't just from when you're younger, it goes through the entire lifespan and me being one of those older people.

Right. And so, uh, what I was feeling, what I was thinking was pretty much, you know, wanting to get some attention. I think that every child. Once the attention of their parents, but when they're going through some kind of a trauma, the parents are really the spotlight aren't they? They're the, they're the spotlight of what's going on at that time.

And I, I have to say, I think my mom and my step dad, they did a great job doing their best to, you know, to, to really be a big part of, of who I was and everybody in our family. So I commend them for that. For, for everything and for the rest of my family too. But I think, you know, divorce and separation, no matter which way you look at it, whether it's a quote, easy divorce, you know, you hear those stories where people say, well, we're just not getting along.

We're gonna get divorced. And I. They're ending the relationship and they do try to make it as easy quote, unquote, as easy as they can for the kids. Right. But there's still gonna be some kind of challenge, trauma, adversity, whatever, just because the family unit is being separated. Right. So, and I learned a lot about that as I got older, the one thing you were talking about my feelings was that when I got to be a teenager, there was nothing more in my life that I wanted then to get married.

And to be with a person forever. That was my thing. I wanted to find the right person and spend the rest of my life. I, I had that deep desire to do that. I would say from a teenager on and lucky for me, you know, I found the person that I would spend the rest of my life with when I was 19. And I'm still with him now, right?

I mean, we, we dated for a while and then we got married when I was 24 and we're still together. We're celebrating our coming up this year in August. We'll be celebrating, uh, 33 years together. My husband is Catholic. We are both divided to our faith. Thank God. But that was what I wanted. I wanted that. And, and I would say on the feeling end of things, that was my desire was to, to find the person that I wanted to feel very secure with.

And be with in a relationship. And thankfully I did now that came full circle because when my husband and I, uh, were married and were dating, we were Catholic, but I, I can't say Joey, where wed Catholics, did we know what you and I know about the church and about the catechesis part of it and about well theology, the body, I don't even think was really known at that time when we were dating, was we married in 1989?

So I, I think that. After it was written, but maybe before Christopher West came out, Made it a lot more of a popular thing and, and well known in the Catholic church, but we were not super well. Catechized is what I'm trying to say. The way that it came full circle was that I had a life threatening condition in 1999, where I was diagnosed with a disease after my second pregnancy, uh, called peripartum cardiomyopathy.

Heart failure after a pregnancy and talking about the science of all of that is probably for a different program. But in a nutshell, I got the sacrament of the sick and I was healed from it. I mean, I was healed now. It still took me time to get back to normal. After that, it still took me time to. I, I, it took me about a year or so till I was really, really back to normal after heart failure, but it's been 23 years and I'm still doing very well physically, uh, and spiritually.

And that's what happened during that time was that my faith became very, very important to me after getting the sacrament of the sick. and realizing that God was the one that healed me and saved me from dying at a young age, in my thirties, cuz that's how old I was when I got the disease. And then my husband and I, we met some people in our area, uh, who were involved in the charismatic renewal.

I don't know if you've ever heard of the alpha course. Have you ever heard of that before? Yeah. Yeah. I've heard of that. I don't, I don't know if our listeners have though feel free to explain it to me. Yeah. So in 2000, in the year, 2000 and 2001, I took it in 2000. My husband took it in 2001. We did the alpha course, which is, um, it isn't a Catholic course.

Believe it or not, it's a ecumenical, but there is something called alpha for Catholics. The founder of it is Nikki Gumble. He's an, an Episcopal minister in, in great Britain. He is amazing. And the whole course is really about getting to know Jesus, who he is, who he is to you and who is the holy spirit.

Hmm. And my husband and I went on the, what they refer to as the holy spirit weekend. And it was a very much a quote Catholic charismatic retreat where we were prayed over and met a bunch of very Onfi Catholics. And, uh, and from then, I mean, it was like an opening, an opening of the door to us getting to.

Our faith and loving our faith and, uh, and really it has made a big effect. Now, am I still very charismatic? Am I still into that whole idea of praying to the holy spirit? I mean, I still do pray that way, but I sort of have evolved into more of a contemp prayer myself in my faith. I wanted to get more educated too.

And in 2000. 12. I got my certificate in pastoral ministry through my archdiocese, uh, the archdiocese of Philadelphia. And I just got my master's in theology last year, 2001, excuse me, 2021 from St. Joseph's college of Maine. So congratulations. It's beautiful to thank you. It's beautiful to have not only the.

Spiritual side of our Catholicism, but the educational side, right. Getting to know the faith and really understand it and the pastoral side. And so as the story developed, now, I'm gonna continue this story a little aside from the divorce part of it. Right. But in 2013, I was searching for a spiritual director.

I had two spiritual directors die in a year. Both of them had cancer. And I looked all over the place to find a new spiritual director. And I found a religious order, the Arian religious order. And I was referred to by a priest who became my spiritual director and really helped guide me through another difficult time that came in my life.

And so long story short, I became what we call Merced third order. And that is a prayerful lay member of a religious order. So that evolved into me being invited to become the director of this foundation that I'm now working for. As you were alluding to the St. Raymond ANATAS foundation for freedom, family and faith, to end the story about, I said I wanted to go back to my dad and my mom, and just tell you what happened later on was that.

When my father got old and sick and he came to me before he needed a nursing home. And he said, I need you to help me because I, I don't have anybody to mind. My matter, my, my matters if I die, you know, I need somebody to be that power of attorney in the executor too, as well. And so he was in a nursing home for like seven or eight years and my husband and I.

Oversaw, both of us, my husband was actually the executor. Uh, he did that for me as kind of as a favor, uh, because he knows a lot about those things and matters. But what I'm trying to say is for those people, listening is. No matter where you are with your parents' divorce separation is that it comes full circle at the end of their lives.

And at the end, even when you get older ways that you can reach out and make a difference for them. And so I was able to be there for him at the end of that life and be able to plan the funeral, be there and feel like, you know, the mission kind of came full circle into who I could be for my. And even, you know, my mom and my stepdad also are people that I visit every week and spend time with and able to give back to them and help them as they are both not doing very well physically at this time.

And their, my mom just turned 80. So it just comes full circle. You know, when you get older, how you can minister it to them, no matter where they. Despite as you refer to that brokenness that happens in family. Wow. No, that's so good that that's no, it's good. There's so much to, um, talk about. I, I think it is beautiful that you've gotten to that point where, you know, you have that loving relationship with your mom, your stepdad yes.

Where you were able to be there for your dad and his last moments. Uh, you know, we hear from people in so many different situations. So some people who maybe are at such a difficult spot in their relationship with their parents. So I wanna go there for a second if it's okay. And just get your advice, advice on that.

So whether they're younger or older, um, maybe their parents are going through some health issues and they're not on the best of terms, let's say, unlike your situation. And I'm sure there was stuff to work through, but it sounds like you guys were at at least a decent spot to be able to do that. What would be your advice on, you know, as a child trying to improve that relationship, trying to bring some sort of piece, some sort.

Stability perhaps, or at least some sort of union between the child or children and, and their parents who might have had a strained relationship for years. And then you get to this point in life where it's like, well, I might not be with them much longer. Like how do you deal with that? Well, I think the way that you deal with it is when I was going through spiritual direction.

One, one of the things that my Merced spiritual director had talked to me about was that it's a certain acceptance. Right? And so healing. My definition of healing really is understanding and realizing that sin exists in this world in all forms. And that what that means is that, yes, it's gonna exist in marriages, right?

It's going to exist when marriages are dis dissolved or ending, but there's still such reason for hope, because you can be healed in a way of being able to take your. Pain and to being able to help other people. I think that's the best advice I can give is take the pain and what you learned, right? What you continue to learn.

I had a lot of bumps on the road between the age of 57 and seven, starting at age seven when they got divorced. Right. And a lot of learning that happened during that time too, and, and always grow in your faith. Always continue to try to learn. know more about what does it really mean to be Catholic? It isn't a set of rules.

It isn't a set of check boxes. It isn't hopping over a fence and saying, I'm healed now. I'm all better. And now I can teach people to be like me because I still I'm still my, at my age and all that I've been through. I still need some kind. Quote healing. Don't I, me too. I mean, it's not a once and done, right.

It's a continual thing for all of us is that we are continuing to be healed by the more that we give ourselves to other people. The more that we try to take, what we've learned and try to minister to other people. and yeah, we wanna preach good marriages and, and hopefully as Catholics and people who really know our faith, we, we hope to have more healthy marriages and more healthy relationships, including for adult children or divorce.

Right. You're gonna, hopefully you'll get into a, a, a good relationship. And stay there, but statistically they say, I mean, you know, this Joey that sometimes that doesn't happen. Sometimes people are affected by divorce and they wind up getting divorced someday themselves. Mm-hmm . Um, but I think the best way to avoid that is to really pray about it, get to know your faith and put your faith first before you get into that relationship.

Right? I mean, I think that could be good advice is if you are Catholic, if you're C. And even if you're a person of Goodwill is get to know God, get to know the, get to know his will for your life. Right? God doesn't want any of us to have broken relationships. Do, does he, whether they're marriages, whether they're friendships, whether they're next door, neighbors, whatever.

I mean, God doesn't want any, God wants us to all be in communion. Doesn't he? So I think what we learn about is we learn how to foster good relationships with others and learn that forgiveness is a huge part of being an adult. Child of divorce really is. Yeah. The big part about how you get along with your parents.

It's a big part about how you get along with your siblings. You know, sometimes when parents get. Siblings don't get along all the time. There may be one parent, one sibling who loves, loves the charism of mom's side of the family. And another one who likes the dads. I'm not saying that was my situation, but there could be ones that split off that get along better with one parent or the other, but it doesn't really have to be that way.

I think in divorce situations, they like to take sides. Right. But sides are not a good thing. It's better to say that Christ wants communion. Right. He wants some kind of getting along despite the. He wants some kind of like, okay, fine. Our, our parents are divorced, separated, or an old whatever it is, but there doesn't have to be hatred.

There doesn't have to be hatred cuz hatreds the sin it's a mortal sin really is. And so I think we need to unpack that inside of our hearts and say. Despite what happened. We can move on and have love for our enemies. Love for those we get along great with and love for those who we don't get along. So great with.

I appreciate that. No, and, and that all makes a lot of sense. And, um, now it's admirable the way you're able to do that with, uh, with your parents and. There's a, a scene in the movie. Batman begins where Bruce, if you're familiar with the movie, um, those of you listening, you know, um, Bruce Wayne's parents are killed in a robbery.

And so he spends, you know, the next 10 years or so of his life just being so angry and so hateful of criminals and. And, um, he, he goes on this path to learn essentially to, to fight crime. But, um, one of the things that he wants is to rev revenge, avenge his parents' death by killing the man who killed them.

And so in the movie, what happens is essentially that person gets killed before Bruce can get to him. And, uh, and so he's, you know, very frustrated that, that he wasn't able to, to do that. And so he's just so consumed in his own pain basically. And, and there's a valid reason for that, right? He, he was really hurt by what happened and he rightfully was angry towards this person, but his childhood friend, Rachel.

Uh, has a great line and she says, look beyond your own pain, Bruce. And I think that's what I hear you saying here is like, sometimes we need to look beyond our own pain to see, okay, there's other people who are hurting now. I, I wanna caveat that to, to everyone listening, cuz I think it is important to understand that like your, your pain matters.

And what you've been through. And if you do have that anger towards your parents, uh, I would never say, you know, and I know Ann's not saying this either. Just to clarify what we're saying here, we would never say to like, shove that down or ignore it like that, that deserves its place, right. That deserves healing and all that.

But I think there, there are times where we might be, it might be necessary to look beyond our own pain in order to do what's best for someone else, as in the situation of. You know, our parents being ill and, and dying, which is of course a such a difficult chapter in life. So of course, you know, another, another caveat would be, we're not saying to walk into a very toxic or abusive situation that's should be obvious, but just to clarify that, but, but there are those situations where we might need to put our own needs or own wants in the back burner, not forever, but, but for a time, because the situation calls us to, to rise to a certain level.

Mm, I like how you address to the toxic, because I think that is also very important for people to understand that. And if someone is in a bad relationship and it it's truly toxic and, and they go through counseling and things, aren't working, you know, unfortunately, sometimes people do wind up getting separated or divorced.

I see that even with the foundation I represent and sometimes whether it be some kind of a terrible addiction that they just can't give up. something like that, you know, but just realizing that God it's a cliche line. Right. But God does write right straight with crooked lines. I mean, I do believe that I do believe that no matter what has happened in your life or in your family's life is that God loves you.

And he has only great plans, not just for you, but your whole family. Right. Your whole family. And, and sometimes at the end of our lives and at the end of their lives, it seems there's still some broken puzzle pieces there that, you know, you might say, well, I'm so sad that this didn't work out, or there's still some issues in my extended family, but don't give up praying.

Right? Don't give up praying. In fact, um, I, I like to do masses for deceased people all the time. And, um, one thing I do, my, my father died on April 16th. Of 2018 and, and, and that's right around the time of Easter. And so for this year, uh, I'm gonna be doing a mass for his soul. It actually is. On the Eve of Easter, so that Easter vigil, so the Easter vigil at my church will be for my father, you know?

And, and so I think it's just a beautiful way that if people are listening, whether it's a grandparent, maybe it's your grandparent that you like to offer a mask for, but just, you know, don't ever give up praying for your family is what I'm saying. And, and even if there seems to be so many hurtful things from the past, at the end of someone's life, that they still weren't really in your eyes, it doesn't look like they were healed.

But, you know, God continues that healing after death, doesn't he? And when we pray for them, when we offer those masses for them alive, we're dead, you know, you're, you're gonna see some things happen. It might not be in our lifetime, but remember, heaven is the goal and we might not be able to ever see that here on earth, that, that they, they definitely went to heaven were sure of that, but, but just don't give up, don't give up on.

You know, it's okay to have boundaries too, with toxic people. And sometimes with divorces and separations, you know, there might be some toxic relationships, even with your, your siblings, stepparent, uh, you know, extended family. You might need to keep some healthy boundaries there, and there's nothing wrong with that.

But just remember that God does right straight with crooked lines. And I believe that that there are only good things. He only has good things in store for all of. Yeah. Yeah. As a teenager, uh, you had that strong desire to be married and to make it last. And I think that's just a beautiful thing. And it's so inspiring that you've been able to do that, cuz you're right.

Statistically, we're more likely to repeat the cycle that we come from. Tell me a little bit, if you would. Um, how, how has your parents' divorce, the brokenness there affected your dating relationships and then your now, now marriage. Thank you so much. Well, when I was, let me think when I was a teenager, you know, every house has kind of a different sort of rule a different way.

You know, of course we're talking in 1970s, which was a different timeframe than, than now. Right. You know, I think what I. I had this desire when I was that age, where I had a desire to be friends with many people, whether they were male, female, I just wanted to be around people. I wanted to have friends. I wanted to talk on the phone.

I wanted to go places. I wanted to do things. And being that I was in that home that was, you know, from a divorce that's separated. Um, my mom was very busy. Her younger kids all the time and, and she was working and she was a great mom, but let's just say that I learned through trial and error, I guess that, you know, I learned through trial and error that we need to have kind of a boundary with ourselves, even if I have this desire, right.

I have this desire that, you know, I wanna find the right guy when I was a teenager. I want to find a family someday. so that was in my heart all the time. Right. And, and I, and I could say I got hurt some of the times I did get hurt with some of those, like teenage, like before the age of 19, when I met my husband, unfortunately I did get hurt some of the time.

Thankfully, when I met my husband, it was funny how the holy spirit worked. Because as soon as I met him, God, the holy spirit really spoke to me. I just felt like I met this person that I finally really clicked. I almost knew instantly. I know that sounds kind of another cliche thing. Right. But it was almost kind of like that God enlightened my brain.

This is it. You met him. And I remember going home that night and saying to my mom, the first time we went out on a date, I said, I think I met the person that I'm gonna spend the rest of my life with. I said, wow, now he might be listening right now. There's one thing about my husband, as you see, I'm more of a talker.

that's a good thing. I'm a talker, right? I mean, I'm a good listener too, but my husband is a very good listener. Mm he's. The type that can just sit and listen for. A half hour and he won't interrupt you. And so that was what my indicator was. I said, this is the guy because he was not at all being married to me.

I didn't wanna have a guy that I wanted to be equals with someone. Does that make sense? A hundred percent. I didn't wanna have somebody where either I was sort of in charge or that he was like, over me and kind of rolling my life, not to say that that's what marriage is about. It's not about that. There is a head of the household in that, and we know that, right?

Sure. But the whole idea that we're equals and my husband sees me as an equal in every way, in terms of our relationship. And he, my, my opinion is valuable. And in raising our kids, my opinion is also very valuable. And so, yeah. So I think even though, yeah, there were mistakes, there were things in that looking back, I probably.

Maybe should have been a little more like less eager, right? Less eager to find that, that man of my dreams when I was like 17, but in the end of the day, God provided, he, he provided my husband at the age of 19. We've been married ever since. I mean, there there's been tr we've had problems. I mean, I think every marriage let's not lie.

It's not gonna be perfect. All right. If you never argue with your spouse or disagree, I would say that person might be. Because I think that every relationship is gonna have bumps and they're gonna have, you know, times of yelling matches once in a while about this is what I think, no, this is better, you know, mm-hmm but what you do is you learn healthy communication skills.

And so that's my best advice is just, you know, if, if you've had mistakes in your life, just learn about your faith, follow your faith, move forward. And if you need counseling, just. Yeah. And thank you. And, uh, I just, I wanted to give you an opportunity too, if there's anything else you wanna say about the foundation and how people could follow you, how they can contact you aside from what you just mentioned?

Well, all I would say is we did some thinking this past year, we really did some thinking about who we are, what we do. And so I'll just give you some basic information. We have three areas of outreach. Number one is families in. Number two is marriage enrichment. And number three is outreach to divorce and separated Catholics intru, including adult children of divorce.

But our main charism is that families in crisis. So whether it's a relationship issue, as I said, pro-life job loss sickness, hospitalization. Any of those areas, please do reach out to us@nonazis.org. At our website, we offer. Priestly consultation, podcasts and videos and programs and events. We would love to come to your diocese or arch diocese to do, um, any type of presentation O on the outreach that we do, letting them know that we're there, the church cares.

And so does the St. Raymond OAU foundation. That's our little tagline, and we're there for you. And like I said, simply reach out to us on our website. Please do subscribe. We do podcast two. Can I mention that? Sure. Joey's Joey's gonna be a guest on our podcast coming up soon. So you have to listen to that one.

Um, our YouTube channel is called Philly. No. Philly like the city. That's where I'm from. You might have been able to figure that out from the accent. Philly. No NS. Okay. Subscribe to our website and watch our podcasts on families in crisis and outreach to divorce. Thank you so much again. Oh yeah. My wife's a Philly girl.

You guys are tough. Oh, she okay. Yeah. Well, we'll just talk about that more some time, but uh, thank you so much. And I wanted to, uh, wanted to give you the final word. You know, we have people listening, primarily who come from broken families, um, young people, especially. And so what advice, uh, would you give to them?

What encouragement would you give to them? Uh, if they feel broken, if they feel stuck in life because of the trauma they've endured, uh, the final word to you, what would you say? Well, we were just talking about Philly weren't we? One of our famous movie figures is Rocky and it's, it is one of my favorite movies.

And one of the things that he says is. It ain't it ain't about how, how hard you hit it's about how hard you can get hit. And I don't mean physically all the time, right? How much you can get hit and keep moving forward. And that's a secular, a secular quote, isn't it. But no matter where you are in your life, God will help you to get up again.

He will help you to, to keep fighting, fighting for the good in this world, fighting for your family, fighting for your own relationships. And I mean, fighting right in a good way. Not in a physical bad way, right? But fighting for the good fighting for the marginalized people in this world, which could be even your own family members.

Uh, I also wanna mention one of the thing is that I'm the author of the book called love and care for the marginalized. So please do, if you would check out my own website to it and as santas.com and learn about a book that might be able to help you during lent, uh, 40 meditations for Catholics love and care for the margin.

I wanna thank you, Joey. Thank you so much for this beautiful opportunity to share and thank you for all you're doing. You are doing such incredible work. And for those listening to this podcast on our page, cuz I'm gonna put this all over the place on St. Raymond and nots foundation. Please subscribe to Joey's website, restored ministry dot.

Please subscribe to all of his channels everywhere, including all of the podcasting, if you haven't done. So this is a wonderful ministry. I can't say enough. Good about Joey and about the work that he's doing for people like you and I, who are adult children of divorce, Joey. Please, never stop doing this work that you're doing.

I, I personally just am so proud of what you're doing and I thank you

the question for all of you, but especially those of you who maybe are, uh, middle aged, listening to this podcast. What can you do? To prepare to handle the fact that your parents will become ill and approach death. At some point, it's a really good question to think about and perhaps even start acting on because before we know it, as hard as it is to talk about and think about it, we're gonna have to face those difficult realities.

And if we have a tense or really struggling relationship with one of our parents, it might be good to take some steps. So hopefully bring some peace and resolution to that. Relat. If you can, it's not always possible, but it's a good thing to start thinking about and planning. You probably know that my new book is live on Amazon as titled it's not your fault, a practical guide to navigate in the pain and problems from your parents' divorce.

The truth is that for a lot of teens and young adults who come from broken family is the most traumatic thing that they've endured is their parents' separation or divorce, but nobody shows them how to handle all the pain and problems that stem from their family's brick down. And without that guidance, they continue to feel alone and struggle in serious ways with emotional problems.

Unhealthy coping relationship struggles and so much more. And I experience these exact same problems. It shouldn't be this way. We shouldn't be alone in navigating these difficult challenges. It's not your fault. My new book is an answer to that problem. It features 33 questions and answers and the most pressing challenges face by teens and young adults from broken families, such as after my family broke apart, I felt abandoned, unwanted, inadequate, and even rejected is something wrong with me.

What's your advice for navigating the holidays and other life events? How do I avoid repeating my parents' mistakes and build a healthy marriage and so many more questions. The content itself is based on research, expert advice and real life stories. And after reading the book, it's not your fault. Teens and young adults are gonna experience how to handle the trauma of their parents' separation or divorce, how to build healthy relationships, how to overcome emotional pain and problems.

They're gonna learn healing tactics to help them feel whole, again, super practical stuff. How to navigate their relationship with their parents, how to heal their relationship with God and how to make important decisions. About their future. So if you wanna buy the book, you can go to restored ministry.com/books on that page as well.

You can get the first chapters free. If you're not ready to buy again, that's restored ministry, ministry, singular.com/books. The resources mentioned are the show notes at restored ministry. Dot com slash 66. Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful, feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them, always remember you are not alone.

We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#065: A Tool to Heal Your Brokenness and Your Relationship with God | Bob Siemens

If you’re from a broken family, you’ve likely experienced extra barriers in your relationship with God. In fact, you might not even believe in God because of what happened in your family. Wherever you’re at, we’re glad you’re here.

In this episode, you’ll hear how spiritual direction is a tool you can use to overcome those barriers, heal from the trauma you’ve endured, and become spiritually strong. We also discuss:

• Feeling guilty for wanting your parents to get divorced

• Specific challenges when relating to God, such as rejecting God as a way to protect yourself and the question “God, is this how you really treat people who love you?

• Temptation to suicide

• Personal fears, such as “Am I going to be like my abusive dad? Will my marriage end up like my parents’ marriage?

• How deepening your relationship with God helps you heal and feel whole again

If you’ve struggled in your relationship with God and felt far from him, this conversation is for you. 

Join the coaching waitlist for a counselor or spiritual director

Check out Franciscan University’s School of Spiritual Direction

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Bob Siemens

  • Email: rsiemens@franciscan.edu

  • Phone Number: (740)-283-6277

Enjoy the show?

To be notified when new episodes go live, subscribe below.

As a bonus, you’ll receive our free ebook, 5 Practical Tips to Cure Loneliness!

TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

If you come from a broken family, meaning your parents are separated or divorced, or maybe they have a really dysfunctional marriage. You've likely experienced extra barriers in your relationship with God. In fact, you might not even believe in God. As one young person told me he doesn't even believe in God because of everything that's happened in his family and wherever you're at.

We're glad you're here with us. And in this episode, my guest teaches us about a tool called spiritual direction that you can use to overcome those barriers heal from the trauma you've endured on a deeper level and becomes spiritually strong. My guest also shares how he struggled with the questions. Am I going to be just like my dad will my marriage end up like my parents' marriage.

He also opens up about how he felt guilty for wanting his parents to get divorced because things at home are so bad. He gets real about his own struggles and his relationship with God, such as how he rejected. God. As a way to protect himself and how he really wrestled with the question, God, is this really how you treat people who love you?

And most importantly, he tells us what he's done to heal his relationship with God. He also talks about his temptation to suicide as a young person. And he explains what spiritual direction is and how it helps you heal and grow. Now, if you're someone who has struggled in your relationship with God and you feel far from him, especially because of what's happened in your family.

You're really gonna appreciate this conversation. This is gonna be so helpful for you. So keep listening,

welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce. Separat. Our broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Elli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 65. Now, before diving into the episode, I want to give you guys a sneak peek to something we've been working on at restored.

We've built a brand new workshop. The workshop has titled how to heal from the trauma of your broken family tools and tactics to feel whole again, and thrive. And this is a six hour workshop with short. Practical talks and exercises that make healing simple, and we've put together a fantastic team to deliver these workshops.

And we're thrilled to share this with you guys to help you, or maybe the people that you love or lead to heal and grow. And we'll be telling you more about it in the future. Our first one is coming up shortly here. And if you wanna know more about this workshop that we'll be offering and even discuss, perhaps booking an event at your school or church, feel free to contact us at events at resort.

ministry.com again, that's events@restoredministry.com. I'd love to speak with you about it. All right. I'm really excited for this episode because I get to introduce you to my spiritual director, who has played a huge role in my own healing and my own growth. And I'm also excited because one of our goals at ReSTOR is to make healing simple, to make healing simple.

So often healing is made more complicated than it really needs to be. And so we wanna change that. And as I mentioned, one simple tool that you can use to heal. Is spiritual direction, which you'll hear all about in this episode. But first my guest today is Bob Siemens. Bob is the founder and director of Franciscan university's school of spiritual direction.

He was trained in spiritual direction at the Len Terry center for Ignatian spirituality in Denver, Colorado. The program is run by a religious order called the Oblates of the Virgin merit. You may have. Father, Timothy Gallagher. He's his most well known speaker, author and trainer. And Bob graduated from FCAN university with a degree in theology.

Bob's also held various ministry roles, including the director of evangelization at FCAN university. And he is also spoken across the country. Bob is husband de Shannon and the father of their five. Kids. He loves working out gardening, scuba diving, craft beer, and messing with his kids on a personal note Bob's example in the life that he's led have really been inspiring to me.

He's worked so hard to reverse the cycle, especially as a dad. And he's an amazing father. And what, what I've learned from him really is that I can reverse the cycle two in my own life. And that's absolutely true for. As well. So I'm so excited for you to listen to this conversation and to learn from Bob.

So let's dive in

Bob. Welcome to the show. It's so good to have you. Thank you, Joey. It's good to be here. I've wanted to do this for a long time. Uh, and I wanna get into spiritual direction talking about that, how it's helped you, how it's helped me. But before we get to that, I wanna start with your story. So like, so many people listening, you, you come from a broken family.

And so I'm curious, how old were you when your parents separated in divorce? Yeah, well, um, growing up, my parents separated several times, so that question is kind of a little nebulous. Um, Yeah. From the time I, some of my earliest memories was my dad being kicked out of the house, um, because of having affairs being gone for weeks on end.

Um, so. I would have to say probably the first time my dad and mom separated was when I was probably about four, five years old. And then, uh, it just kind of continued on and then, uh, they separated. When I was about 18 and my dad moved to another state with my brother and my mom stayed in the state that I grew up in, and then they got back together and then they were having affairs.

And basically make a long story short. Um, they separated, which ended up ultimately leading into to their divorce. And, um, I was right around the age of 25 when that happened. Okay. So wow. Very drawn out. I mean, for. Basically 20 years of your life, this kind of back and forth, and then finally getting to that stage of the divorce.

And then of course that brings a whole host of issues. You mentioned a little bit of what happened, uh, as much as you're comfortable sharing, uh, yeah. What, any details that you would add to what you've already said? Um, yeah, details. Hmm. I guess. For myself, um, from the very, very, very young age, I had this conflicting feeling inside of me because, um, I, I was religious, um, in particular because of, of my grandmother.

And, uh, she lived a block away. I would spend majority of my weekends, uh, growing up, uh, Friday, Saturday. With my grandparents and, and, and my grandma in particular, uh, was the one who would take me to church and, and whatnot. But I remember from the youngest age thinking, oh God, like, I don't wanna live like this.

And having guilty feelings of, I wish they would divorce. I, I wish I wish they were divorced. This is even, you know, so at the youngest age, I just knew something wasn't working out and it always left a haunting, uh, feeling inside of me too. Like, am I gonna turn out? Like my dad, uh, is my marriage gonna turn out?

Like my parents' marriage? Um, am I destined to have affairs? Yeah. So. It just brought up, uh, a lot of really conflicting feelings inside of me. Um, and, and again, one in particular was like, how can I be religious? How can I be, uh, good virtuous if I actually want my parents to get a divorce? How, uh, how sick is that?

And then I, I, I kept that to myself too. Uh, kind of like a, a buried, uh, something deep and buried. That I never felt really comfortable sharing with either that I, I actually wanted my parents to get divorce. Yeah. And that's actually not uncommon from everything that I've learned. I know when things at home are so tumultuous, so many of us, we just want it to end and.

Especially because the popularity of divorce in our culture, it seems like a solution to a really messy, bad situation. And I think most of us when we reflect kind of back on it, especially as we get older, we kind of realize like, well, the ideal would've been for, you know, my parents or parents to. Heal their marriage and to bring stability into the home.

Um, now, you know, sometimes that's not possible, but that's what I wish every couple would strive for. So, no, I, I, I think it makes sense like that you feel guilty to that you wanted all that to end and before seem like the, the way to do that. Um, we, we, we hear that often. Yeah, you bring up something interesting there too, about just like, you know, what good person doesn't want, you know, their, their, their family to be restored and to be healed, uh, right outta high school.

Well, maybe let me just back up a moment. BA basically my mindset growing up was like, I want to be everything. That's the opposite of my parents. Um, in particular, my dad. So I strove for that. Didn't drink. Didn't do drugs, didn't have sex, all those good kind of things thinking, oh, I've. Got my stuff together, uh, right outta high school.

I, I did a year of ministry and, um, was very involved, uh, with that found a lot of purpose and a lot of meaning, although, uh, I would definitely say I was doing it to, to be loved. It wasn't, uh, a total pure motive. I was thinking, well, I will prove myself to God. I will prove myself to others that I am a, a good human being.

And so I joined this ministry and, um, one of the, kind of the mantras you would say, maybe of the ministry was like, Hey, the more you share, the more God's gonna work in your life. So for the first time in my life, I had these brothers and sisters around me, uh, who were encouraging me to share my life and.

It, it proved to be too much for them. My dad was physically abusive, so I shared that, um, I shared the affairs, um, et cetera, et cetera. And at the end of the day, um, because these were all fairly young people, uh, no therapists in the crowd there, uh, good hearted people, but it was ill advised for me to just share.

Um, so openly, so vulnerably. Without them having kind of any expertise of what to do with all that sharing. Um, I was signed up to go on a, a second year of this, this mission. And, um, at the end of the year banquet, one of the administrators pulled me aside and said, Hey. You can't go on a second year. You have to go back home and, um, get family counseling, get family counseling, which is something you just brought up, you know, who wouldn't want that, who wouldn't want to see their family succeed.

Um, but the funny thing was here, here. I was a, at that point in time, a 19 year old, uh, kid, um, still trying to make his way in the world. This guy had no clue. Um, I looked at him and, uh, you know, bold his bros. I was like, Do you really think that if I couldn't have gotten my family to therapy before now, I, I wouldn't have, it was just ludicrous.

He, he basically, they basically just didn't know what to do with my baggage. And so they thought, well, you know, a nice approach would be for me to go home and tell my mom and dad, they needed to get therapy. And we'd. Go together to therapy as a family, I ended up telling the guy to F off to be really honest with you.

um, it was a pretty bold move on my part. Uh, obviously I didn't do the ministry ever again, after that, you know, again, there was that sense of guilt too. Here was here was the ministry. I equated with God with doing the right thing and he's telling me to do something that will. I can't do mm-hmm I can't get my mom and dad to therapy.

And that led to, uh, to a lot of confusion too. Like, who do I share this with? Who can hold the tension of my life and what I've been through? Uh, who, yeah. Who can hold the tension of, of who I am and want to be and have been through. And that was a very confusing time. Yeah. Very confusing time. No, absolutely.

I would have felt the, the same way and. There's a few things there that you said that I just wanted to touch on. Um, one is just the idea that maybe it was your job to fix your family. Like that's such a harmful idea. And of course, I'm not saying that we, as people come from broken families, we have no hand in helping our family.

It's not true, but we're certainly not responsible for fixing our parents' marriage. Like that's their job. Sure we can influence them maybe in little ways, but it is much less to do with us than I think, uh, as said is talked about. And somehow for one reason or another, we feel so responsible for maybe helping them in fixing their marriage.

But that, that's just a really harmful idea. So even the fact that someone else was telling you, like, Hey, go fix your family and then come back. It's like, well, uh, that might not happen. And nor. My role. So I think it is wise of you to kind of shoot that down. The, the second point I just wanted to make was you were just so alone.

And so you were left on your own to deal with life and left on your own to, and we've talked about this before, but it's just so often people like us just feel like, okay, it's me against the world. Nobody's got my back. Uh, I have to figure this out myself. And so I bet that situation where those people who you're confiding.

They didn't know how to handle what you were saying. I bet that made you feel even more alone. Yeah. Yeah. It was a strange feeling of, uh, actually Hm. I felt very empowered in that moment, because like I told you, I told the guy to F off. And I think that was the first time in my life. I actually stood up for myself and was like, you know, this guy was older than I was, but I could see how ludicrous it was that he would tell me to go and get them help when at the end of the day, I mean, my goodness, the only person we can actually help in, in, in this, I I've come to believe in this world as our.

Period. Uh, we can do little things for other people, but the only person we can really help is ourselves. And we typically do a pretty crummy job of that anyway. So why should we not saying that we shouldn't be there for other people? That's not what I'm saying, but it was an empowering moment for me, but the loneliness came afterwards.

Uh, the loneliness came when I went back home and, uh, was with my mom. My dad had been, was gone by that point in time. And I just remember feeling. So incredibly alone, uh, to the point actually, where I, I became extremely suicidal. Um, it was the first time I actually got therapy myself was because I was driving.

I had contemplated, uh, committing suicide, uh, while at work. and I was driving home, um, after work and, and thought something's gotta change. And if it wasn't for, uh, this little counseling place that had this Jesus fish on their, their little advertisement board outside the place, uh, I probably. Well, I may have committed suicide.

I, I don't know, but I pulled in there unannounced and said, I need to talk to somebody. And that was my first time with a therapist was a, a, a gentleman, um, who was very kind and very loving and very supportive and began to help me make sense out of myself. Um, with all that I had been through. He began to give me words to things that I had never had words to before and to, uh, really help me, um, to understand that the way I was feeling was not the feelings of a crazy person, but my feelings were normal for what I had been through.

And that was. Very refreshing the first time I began to not feel so alone in my mind, if that makes sense. Yeah. No, a hundred percent. And it, I think often that is overlooked. Like just hearing that you're not crazy, like yeah. Actually given what you've been through, this is an appropriate response. It's so freeing.

It's extremely faint. And I know I felt the same way. I know we hear that feedback a lot. When people listen to this podcast or work with our ministry in any capacity, it's like, wow, that's no one, no one said that to me before. And so it's amazing that you, you know, at least had that at that point in your life.

I mean, I bet you wish you would've had it earlier, but. I thank God that it came at that 0.1 tool. Obviously you said that you used to heal and to deal with all this pain and all these problems in your life was counseling. But another tool eventually I became a spiritual direction, both on the receiving and the giving end.

I, I suppose, on. Your healing story was on the receiving end, obviously, but eventually you became a spiritual director. So I'd like to kind of shift gears and talk about that. I'd love to just go and share a story for the next hour, but, um, but I really wanna focus on spiritual direction. So yeah, let's talk about how that in particular helped you to heal and to grow.

Yeah, that's, uh, that's a great, great segue there for me. Um, spiritual direction. Was the ability to have, um, somebody walk alongside of me, not just in a therapeutic role, but, or I'm sorry, the spiritual direction was not therapy at all. This was began to help me make sense out of God, because for the longest time for me, although I had a great love and, and, and respect for God.

I didn't understand him and truth be told, I still wrestle with this. Um, I still wrestle with a thought of how could a good kind loving God really put me in the family that he did. But again, I didn't have the freedom to talk about that. I was scared to talk about that because that's not what a good holy person talks about.

Right. They don't talk about, um, this thought that that God could have screwed. That's that's what I felt. And so I shoved that for the longest time. Um, for me, I mean, even my, my first introduction to, to pornography Joey was from my father. I was 7, 8, 9 years old, and he was pissed at my mom. He threw a Playboy magazine at me, um, said, okay, Hey, it's time for you to grow up and become a man.

I just to piss my mom off, you know? And, um, that, that, that just, just started me on a journey of, of, uh, confusion of, of lost, trying to fill those wounds. And so even in that place there, I was like, God, really? Like, what the hell? Um, is this how you really treat those who love you? So there were all these things.

And I just couldn't make sense out of them. And, you know, in therapy, typically you're dealing with your own thoughts, your own emotions and stuff like that. But in spiritual direction, there, there began to be a, a, a dealing, not only with my, my thoughts and my feelings and my emotions, but also with the concept of, of who God is of who a good loving God is.

Or could be. And I noticed for the first time in my life, a real shift, a shift from saying why God, why God to, where were you? Where were you when I was, uh, You know, four or five and, and, and, and, and, and my mom told me my dad was having an affair and kicked him outta the house. You know, where, where were you?

Uh, when I'd wake up at night and my parents were throwing dishes at one another and screaming, and then it would be two weeks of complete silence, um, in the house because they weren't talking to one another. Where were you? When my dad threw that Playboy magazine at me? And it was for the first time in spiritual direction that I began to, to, to, to hear him clearly say I was, I was right there in the midst of it all.

Um, I wasn't void. I wasn't just sitting back. I didn't just wind you up to let all these things happen to you. And it was the first time in my life. I actually. It felt like the Lord was crying over me as that little boy who was exposed to all these things. God spoke to me. I never meant that to happen to you.

And that was really freeing. And I don't think that that would've happened on my own. If it wasn't. Through spiritual direction. If it wasn't having somebody sit besides me and, and, and, and companion me there, just walk with me, hang with me and the tension of my life and gave me, um, the freedom to, to let God, um, speak to me clear some of the clutter.

Um, that I had in my life, through my wounds, my brokenness, and through my own free will to be able to hear the voice of God, just a tad bit differently. And I think that's really the gift of spiritual direction, uh, is to be able to weed out. What I would say are three voices that are always worrying for our hearts, ours.

Satans and gods and for whatever reason, cuz I, I can't explain it. Gods always seems to be the, the small quiet voice. And so a lot of times we, we tend to not listen to that voice or listen to that voice last, um, spiritual direction has helped me to listen more, uh, attentively to the small, quiet voice that actually speaks truth, um, compared to the other voices.

Wow, thank you for sharing. So vulnerably, and I'm glad you're bringing this topic up because I think so many people listening right now can relate to, to you. And one of the things that bugs me, and I know it bugs you too, is when, um, you know, religious people kind of skip over this. It's the same, like, well, God knows best, God knows best.

It's like, well, this is a deep question that deserves an answer that deserves wrestling with. And there is an answer I'm convinced of that, but. It's not something you should just skip over. And if you know someone listening right now, if you've totally rejected, God, uh, this is something you need to wrestle with.

Like you owe it to yourself to at least give this some thought and just to talk to God, even if you're angry, like let him have your anger. He knows what you're feeling. Anyway. Give it to him, show him. And for those of you, who've maybe. Lived very pious devout lives. Uh, maybe you've never gone here and it might seem kind of scary to you and I get that, but in, in really in order to heal and grow and have a, a better relationship with God, you need to dig into this.

And that's where obviously having the help of a spiritual doctor is so helpful, which we're gonna get into a little bit more. Yeah, I think it is important to say that, like, we need to go to these dark places. We can't just kind of put on this mask, put on this facade and be like, God knows best we're good.

And you know, all that dark stuff that you, you had been through, which is just so, uh, traumatic that needs to be talked about. Yeah, absolutely. I, I, yeah, I really like what you said there about, God's not afraid of our darkness, you know, we are, and, uh, I think that's beautiful. And even just your comment there about maybe, you know, listeners who have rejected God, Hey, Bravo to you that might even sound scandalous, but man, does it ever make sense?

Like it makes sense why people would reject God when they've gone through some of the things that they have gone through. And I think. To me, the rejection of God in that aspect is, is, is actually just a protection. I don't want one more person in my life. Who's actually gonna let me down. So I will reject this individual.

I will reject this person that could indicate. Life, but is really confusing. And again, I think that's another beautiful thing in spiritual direction is, is, um, because you even addressed the real pious listeners who I, I think in some ways have really rejected God or, uh, yeah, rejected God in some ways too, because we cover up actually relationship with God with, with pie.

So there's a certain rejection of, of God in, in, in saying you're actually really not the God that I thought you were gonna be. Um, but I'm not gonna say that I'm gonna ignore that because the Pius, the good thing to do. And I would say that that was me for the longest time, uh, was to ignore all that, because this, this, this doesn't reconcile with a good kind loving God.

But we have to wrestle with it. It's like Jacob wrestling with the angel. We have to wrestle cuz if not, the only thing that's really left is our, is our own just self perseverance. And that, that can again be extremely lonely, always having to take care of ourselves, thinking nobody has got our back.

Nobody really wants our good, um, we're the only ones that can do that and facilitate that and be. So I think you bring up some really good things there. Joey. Really good. Yeah. Likewise. And I'm glad we're kind of diving into this. And one of the things I think's true for everyone is that we have this distorted image of God.

We don't really know often what, who God truly is. And we kind of project our image of him, especially because of what we experienced with our parents. And I know you and I have talked about this in the past, but. I think for those of us who come from broken families, it's like extra true. It's even more distorted.

And so one of the benefits of spiritual direction for me working with you in particular and spiritual duction or spiritual directors I had before you was, UNDSS sorting that image of gotten, trying to see him for who he truly is. And it's still something I'm working on. I've made a lot of ground. Yeah, I, I think that's one of the huge benefits, but I also wanna go back to something you said before that sometimes, you know, it seems like the only way that God communicates is in just a small, gentle, quiet voice, which is kind of frustrating.

it'll be nice if it was more obvious. And, uh, and it reminds me of what CS Lewis said, you correct me if I get this quote wrong, but he said something along on the lines of, in me, Christianity, he said that, you know, God, what is it? He whispers us in our joys. He speaks to us in our conscience and he screams at us in our pain.

Yeah. And I think he says like pain is God's megaphone to Browe a sleeping world, something like that. And, uh, and I, I think man, that, that's such a difficult conversation though, cuz so often we want God to be one way and he's just not. And uh, and that could lead to a lot of frustration, but I do, like you said, have a lot of respect for people who aren't on the fence.

Like they're running in one of the directions. They're either totally rejecting God, which I know a son's kind of scandalous or they're, you know, running after 'em and like trying to wrestle with these things, but the people in the middle. You know, it just kind of, it seems like they get stuck there. And so, um, so I think there is something to be said for people who, you know, are digging into this, either projecting him or, or going after.

Yeah. You know, you bring up something really beautiful about CS Lewis too. And it's so touching to me, if, if for the listeners who, who maybe don't know his life story, he said those beautiful little platitudes about God and about God's voice and. Before he actually, uh, entered into a relationship with his wife joy and, um, again for listeners who maybe don't know it was Joy's, um, dying that caused him to actually have a crisis in faith himself.

And, and, and to really say, Am I actually going to believe these words that I said that, that, that pain really does awaken us, um, to God or, or was it just a nice platitude? I was saying to help, you know, help people just make sense out of their pain, but yet. I haven't lived through it myself. And, um, it's just a really beautiful moment for me too, in, in just realizing that, you know, again, I think you touch upon something else.

How often do we just try to prove to God that we're worthy of love? We, and, and I think through our woundedness, our brokenness, our, our, our, our, yes, through all that we've lived through, um, especially with, uh, divorced, uh, parents and, and, and traumatic experiences and whatnot, that, that, uh, in some ways deep inside of us were constantly saying, I have to prove to God that I'm worth his love because obviously somewhere failed.

And he can't just love me because if he did, he, he wanted to put me in a family like this. And one of the truths that I've, that I am coming to, I shouldn't say that I've come to, but that I'm coming to slowly is that God loves without a, because he doesn't love me because I had good parents or bad parents, or because I was physically abused as a child.

Or not, God loves me, period, but that's something that is super hard. Um, especially through people for people who come through so much adversity, who've experienced so much pain that there's this almost this reward system that we want to set up. to where I I'll earn. God's love. I'll show him that I'm good.

I'll show him or those around me. Maybe your spouse, that I'm not like my mother or I'm not like my father, but in the end it just continues to leave us wanting. But to just sit in that place that God loves me without Acus, he just loves me period. There's something very freeing about that. And that's another one of those places where I think spiritual direction just helps so much to help us understand our image of, of self and our, our image of God.

Uh, the good, the bad, and the ugly of all of it. Um, to come to a place of just understanding who God is. Who I am for God. Mm-hmm, ultimately for me as a spiritual director, that's the first place I go when somebody first comes and sits down with me, tell me, you know, if I was interviewing Jesus Christ on my couch right now.

And I said, you know, Jesus, tell me about who is Joey to you? Joey, what would you say if I were to say, Joey, who is God to you and or Jesus Christ. And he's sitting right here in this room now, what would you say. I always think that's such a beautiful moment of, of, uh, true understanding and clearing away the clutter of who we make God out to be or who we make ourselves out to be.

And then there's this certain place where all the facades just begin to fall between God and us. We are who we are, or as God says, I am who I. wow. A lot to think about a lot to chew on, uh, just in that little bit there. And, you know, we we've mentioned a few benefits of spiritual direction. Is there anything that you would add to kinda what we've already said?

Like something might be thinking like why, why would I go to spiritual direction? But what are those benefits? Yeah. Yeah. You know, I would say the first, um, he's just the, the accompaniment, um, to have somebody walking, uh, with you in the messiness of life. I know that it's just been, uh, something just very, very beautiful for me to have somebody know me and be able to walk with me and the tension of, uh, my, you know, becoming better.

Uh, and, and, and understanding God better to just sit with a trusted individual. Somebody who holds things confidentially, who is non-judgmental. Who can be, um, maybe a spiritual or a spiritual father or a spiritual mother, and I'm not saying replace or make up for, for what our parents have lacked. But that they can just show us, they can just show us love.

Um, sometimes I know when spiritual direct my spiritual direction session is over with my spiritual direction director. All I wanna do is just sit there. I wanna stay there. Um, I kind of feel like the, the, the woman, uh, washing the Lord's feet or, or, uh, you know, Just that sense of like, I just wanna stay at your feet.

I, I can resonate with, uh, Peter, John and James, when they're on the mountain in the transfiguration. And they say, Hey, I let's build some tents and stay here. And I, I, I think that I get that feeling with my spiritual director that I'm held in such high esteem. Um, that I'm, that I'm loved for, for who I am, that I don't have to prove anything.

And there's such freedom there. Um, there's freedom just to be me. Um, there's freedom that God can just be who he is. And, uh, I love that freedom. I love that freedom. One of the biggest benefits for me, um, again, working with you in other spiritual directors I've had, but especially with you, is that just the loving, the affirmation that you receive?

And like you said, so often in our lives, we're deprived of that. And so it's just so freeing to. You know, in a way receive, God's love through your spiritual director, through someone who's there to, to guide you in your spiritual life. And I know in some situations even can become more of like a just life mentorship, which I think is, is so useful as well.

Uh, as we're talking, I'm realizing that it'd probably be helpful for everyone, uh, to kind of define spiritual direction because you know, maybe this is the first time they're hearing it. Uh, so yeah. What would you say to someone who maybe has never really heard of this term spiritual direction? Uh, what exactly.

That's a really good question. What I would like to say, uh, about spiritual direction is that it's, it's a heart encountering a heart. And if you have a really good spiritual director, it's not the directee encountering the director's heart. It's the directee encountering the heart of God. And for me, that would sum it up.

That even though I wanna spend time with my director, I want to like, okay, you know, maybe stay at his feet because I feel loved and affirmed. It's not actually his love or affirmation. I mean, he's a conduit of God's love and affirmation. Yes. I feel it through him. So I have deep respect and love and admiration for him.

But for me, the director is the one who just opens up a door and maybe, maybe it's. Pushing it open just a little bit at first or helping the director. You do that. And sometimes maybe it's just kicking it down. to allow the Direct's heart to finally speak to God again for me, you know, I'll go back to that example of, for so many years of my life, I wrestled with this deep dark, in my opinion, dirty secret of saying God, why.

why, why this, why that? And I was so afraid to be honest with anybody about that, because I had so much anger towards God mm-hmm and it was there finally, where my director was like, Hey, let's kick that door down together. You don't need to worry about saying why. And then he offered me the opportunity, this perspective of maybe changing that.

Why word to, to where. And that was like, that was a floodgate for me. That was healing for me. That was me encountering the heart of God in all of its purity that I longed for all of my life. But I don't think I would've been able to do without a spiritual director. So spiritual direction for me is actually the director getting out of the way of God.

But being a conduit for God being, and having and helping a direct D open a door for God to come in for a heart to speak to a heart. Um, for me, the imagery in scripture is the prodigal son. The father is waiting there for him. The father is seeking him out. The prodigal son comes home. The father doesn't even hesitate.

He embraces him. He doesn't say, Hey, let's first clear the air, nothing. He simply embraces and allow, allows the sun to come back period. And there's something beautiful about that. So that's a, that's just a really beautiful imagery there. One way I've heard you talk about spiritual direction too, is the spiritual lecture is somewhat of an interpreter.

They help you kind of discern God's plan for your life, kind of what God's communicating to you. Uh, but also kind of like you said, poking at those maybe sensitive parts of, of your soul to encourage you to kind of dive into that, to dive in. And it's almost in a way. It's like a doctor for they're like a doctor for the soul.

It's like, okay, you, you know, have some issue here. Let's, let's work on it. Let's heal that. Let's bring that to God. Um, who's the ultimate physician. So I, I know I've found that particularly helpful because so often we're not equipped or maybe not. Brave enough, if that's the right way of saying it to go there on our own, we really need someone to walk with us, especially someone who's trained.

And so I wanna, I wanted to get into kind of training and talk about that for a second. But on the practical side of spiritual reduction, I wanted to mention a few things and of course, love to hear a, you would add anything to it, but typically spiritual reduction looks like, you know, an hour long meeting.

Um, what typically once a month, With your spiritual director and, uh, you know, it can begin with the time of prayer. It can end with the time of prayer and that's just a conversation and, you know, questions are asked and, uh, things are discussed and so on. Um, is there anything you would add on like the practical side of someone who's like, I don't know how this works.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Very, very much. So, first off, just one point of clarification that I just wanna say there, you, you kind of talked about that doctor, doctor, physician kind of thing with spiritual direction. One thing I do want to caution people about though, because. A lot of times we can, we can project this onto a spiritual director is that they're gonna diagnose us.

They're gonna look at us and oh, yep. Here's this issue that you need to work on in prayer with God, here's this issue? Here's this a spiritual director should never diagnose you. Because at the end of the day, there, there is, there is no, uh, there's no set plan because each person that, that, that comes to spiritual direction is, is unique and, and, and beautiful.

It's just a journey or in many ways, I like to call it a dance. Um, that might be a little too intimate for people and that's understandable, but I, I find it this beautiful dance where a director is dancing with their directee. Um, but the directee is always the one who is leading because. That leading just points and goes, goes back to God.

I, so I think that's very, very important to, to make sure that your director is never diagnosing you and then saying, you need to do this that's therapy, or that is like a physician who says you have this health problem and you need to take this medication again. The director. Um, approaches to open up a door, uh, to help that individual listen to the voice of God, to ignore shut down, close off Satan's voice that wants to tell us that we're no good, uh, that, that, that, uh, that we deserve these things, et cetera.

And probably the majority of the time to close down our own voices too. Cuz we can tend to be our own worst enemies too. So, so that's one thing there. Um, I would also just say with the practicals, you know, uh, although there's, there's a se there's kind of a, um, with the word spiritual director, it makes, it sounds like the director is going to direct you and tell you this and tell you that the approach of, of, of.

Uh, spiritual director direction that I espouses is, is one of a called a contemplative evocative. So I to ask extremely open ended questions that that gets the individual to do some real soul searching. Um, and why. So that there's a greater self-awareness, but not just for self-awareness, because self-awareness for self-awareness sake, doesn't really lead us a whole, a long ways.

It's always so that it leads to a greater understanding. And then from that, Self-awareness and that understanding to a greater action that we can actually have action in our, in our spiritual lives. Um, you know, and I'm sure this resonates with many of your listeners right there who have gone through even kind of therapeutic healing.

Uh, nothing is worse than going to a, uh, a therapist and, and all it is is, is talk therapy. With, with no real, uh, maybe, shall we say some understanding now, sometimes there's things that happen to us that are completely and totally out of our understanding, you know, tragedies in our lives. There's really no understanding.

That's that point that I was saying earlier about why God, why, but instead of saying where, and then that leads us to that place of action. When we can finally start to be empowered. To, uh, to take control of the things in our lives that we want to take control of, uh, to realize, um, there are certain things that are just out of our control.

And I think a spiritual director does that in the spiritual life as well, creates a place of self-awareness that leads to a greater understanding that helps individual take steps, uh, in action to become, shall we say the best version of themselves or the holiest person that they can. I'm glad you clarified that maybe the doctor analogy isn't quite appropriate for spiritual reduction.

And, uh, that makes sense what you said that one of the ways that I say it is the spiritual director is not a spiritual commander. They're not there to tell you kind of what to do or what God's telling you to do. And so, uh, thanks for clarifying that, uh, one thing that is so important when you're looking for a spiritual director, Is to find someone who's trained in spiritual direction.

You don't just want anyone directing you. So a few questions for you, one, uh, who trained you and, uh, why, why is that important to find someone who's trained in spiritual direction? Yeah, that's a great question. So first off, um, I was trained by the Oates of the version, Mary in Denver, Colorado at the land Terry center.

Great, great place. Um, and they trained me in this method called the contemplative evocative method. Uh, which really changed my life. The reason why it's so important to have somebody who's trained is because we would never want to actually go to a therapist unless they were trained. Why would we entrust somebody with our spiritual lives unless they knew what they were doing?

Uh, we can have all kinds of good intentions, but at the end of the day, uh, especially a spiritual director is entrusted with a. And the intricacies of that soul and the wrestling of that soul with themselves as well as with God. And that has to be treated with as sacred ground. Um, in many ways, you know, I just think of those, you know, would take off their shoes before they entered into the temple.

And, you know, what would our churches look like? Actually, if we did that kind of thing nowadays with, with taking off our feet, as we entered into holy ground, because we knew it was holy ground. In, in many ways, I envision that when I enter into spiritual direction with an individual that I need to take off my shoes, not them, but me because I am entering into holy ground, which is them and their relationship with Jesus Christ.

And you know, when somebody comes to that vulnerably, we, we need to have people who are trained to handle that kind of vulnerability and not exploit it. Now. So many of your listeners have already been through. Why would we want to put them through anything more by not going to somebody who's trained, who just kind of says, you know, Hey, you know, suck it up, buttercup.

Um, get over your, your, your P PTSD, your whatever it may be, because they just don't know. So I would say having somebody who can really practice that evocative method, who can be non-judgemental and this is what good spiritual direction training programs do. They equip a director to handle the intricacies of the human heart.

To companion them to let them know that they're not alone, but that they are, uh, an individual who is always pointing to God. And that sometimes that directee might want to look at the director more because of that again, that love and that affirmation we were talking about before. But a trained director will always point them back to God because they know in the end, it's never about them.

They're on the exact same journey as their directee they're they're alongside of them. They're not in front. They're not behind they're right alongside just trying to get to heaven. And again, I think that's why it's so important to have a training director who has that humility, who has that training, who has that understanding, uh, who can walk with an individual in that way?

That's helpful. And I know we have some people listening who especially wanna help the people that we're trying to help at restored people who come from broken families and becoming a spiritual director is one way you can do that. And thankfully you have a program at FCAN and university that you, uh, where you train spiritual director.

So tell us a little bit about that. If someone were to, uh, go through. What, what does that look like? What's good to know about your program. Yeah. Um, thank you for asking about that. For many of the listeners may know who Rick Warren is. He was, uh, was, or maybe still is a pastor at Saddleback mountain church in, in the orange county, LA area.

Uh, he has this beautiful quote. He says, you know, you know, um, people are gonna. Um, find some of their greatest healing, uh, through your root brokenness and woundedness. And, um, I would have to honestly say that the spiritual direction program here at Franciscan started from that from my brokenness and my woundedness and, and God pointing that out through me, going through, uh, spiritual direction training and being, uh, being directed and.

My director basically handling the wounds of my heart and saying, Hey. Go and help other people heal now through your wounds. And, um, the program here, uh, was founded about four years ago to train people in a three year process, uh, to actually in many ways, use their own brokenness and woundedness to go out and heal the world to bring people closer to Christ.

So, um, our program. Uh, we have two different options. Uh, the most popular is, is a two week intensive for three summers. Um, so we have our first one coming up or, uh, a new one coming up May 22nd to June 4th. And that'll commence, uh, right around that same time for the next three years. And at the end of it, um, an individual could expect to be trained.

One is a spiritual director and two to lead somebody through the exercises of S Ignatius of loyal. Uh, but in particular, what they could expect by going through our program is that they would be trained to be, uh, a director who could lead somebody in the contemplative evocative method, uh, which is basically.

Opening up space for God to get into an individual's life. We've had two graduating classes. It's been very successful. We'll have a third graduating class coming up, uh, this summer. And I really feel like it's the Lord raising up an army of people to just go walk in and with individuals to, to someday, uh, get to heaven.

God. so good. Uh, I'm glad that you're doing this. There's such a need and I applaud the work that you guys are doing there at Franciscan university. If someone wants to sign up or connect with you, how do they do that? Yeah. Great. Um, so one they can, uh, email me, uh, directly, uh, R Siemens, franciscan.edu. It's R S I E M E N s@franciscan.edu.

Uh, you can call me seven four zero two eight three. 6, 2 77. I sound like an infomercial now. or you can just, uh, Google, uh, Franciscan university school of spiritual direction. And there's a lot more information on there as well. Um, with the application general info, any, anything from there, uh, would love to talk to anybody who's interested in, in becoming a spiritual.

Thank you so much, Bob. And, uh, one thing I, I wanted to go back to for a second here is TIUs we hardly talked about him, but so much of this work and Spiritus reduction in general is based on this Spanish Saint. Yeah. Well maybe another time we can dive into that a little bit more, but, um, yeah, for any of you wondering it's it has a rich history and tradition and it's, uh, very, very beautiful.

And the, uh, what Bob was saying for the spiritual exercises, it's, uh, what a month long or so retreat that you would walk through and. It's very beautiful and very, um, it's such an opportunity to grow and to heal too. And so a lot of good stuff there. We don't have time to get into that as much, but Bob, I just wanted to.

Yeah. Thank you again for coming on the show for sharing what you're doing and sharing your story too. Thank you for. Being so vulnerable. I know I learned a lot as I always do from you. And I know the people listening are better for it as well. In closing out, I wanna just give you the final word. What would you say to, you know, a person listening right now who feels very broken?

Uh, especially because of their parents' broken marriage, their family falling apart, kind of going through all that trauma. What encouragement, what advice would you give to, to someone like that? Who just feel stuck and broken? Yeah, you're not alone. You're not alone. And your brokenness. Is not, uh, you're not so broken that you have no help.

Um, that was a lie that I, I believe for so long was that I was so broken. I was so dysfunctional. Um, I was so wounded that I could never truly be loved for exactly who I am, which is a lie. Um, and I think you, Joey and, and, and the ministry restored is doing so much to help people, uh, come to that. To know that they're not alone, their story is their story, but it can be shared with others finally, and that they can find peace.

They can find healing. Joy and hope and make sense in some ways out of their, their sufferings, their deep, deep sufferings. So my encouragement is to hang in there. Uh, you're not alone. Find somebody clinging to somebody, uh, in, in, in some of this trusted individuals, cuz they can help.

I wanna leave you guys with a question and that. What's one thing that's holding you back from a relationship with God. What's one thing that's holding you back from a relationship with God. And what can you do to find answers to that obstacle? That's my challenge for you. Give that some thought, chew on that a little bit, and then come up with an answer, try to find an answer.

And then most importantly, take action. If you're looking for a counselor or a spiritual director, uh, we wanna help you. We're building a network of spiritual directors and counselors that we trust and we recommend. And so you can tap into that network. And some of the benefits of tapping into the network that we're building is it's gonna save you lots of time and effort in searching for a counselor or for.

A spiritual director. We'll also connect you with a trained professional who can give you the help and tools you need to heal. So you can feel hold again. And then again, like I mentioned, these are people that we vetted that we trust that we recommend. So if you wanna join the wait list for counselor or spiritual director, just go to restored ministry.com/coaching.

Again, ReSTOR ministry ministry is singular. Dot com slash coaching. Just fill out the form of that page and then we'll connect you with a counselor and, or a spiritual director, whatever you request again, that's restored ministry.com/coaching. The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 65.

Thank you so much for listening. And this has been useful for you. Feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who really is struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you are born to be.

#064: Your Broken Family and Mistakes Don’t Need to Dictate Your Future | Maggie Kim

One night, Maggie’s mother left her family without any explanation. Naturally, Maggie felt extremely abandoned. Following that night and her parents’ divorce, she hated her mom. All the pain led her to cope by using drugs, drinking, and sex.

Thankfully, her story transformed. In this episode, you’ll hear:

• How all that trauma led her to attempt killing herself

• How she opened up to her mom and dad about the way their broken marriage and divorce affected her

• Why she feared marriage, but after overcoming that fear, she now has a beautiful marriage and four awesome kids

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

When Maggie was only in middle school, her parents separated and divorced and she didn't know how bad things were in her parents' marriage until they started sleeping in separate rooms. Eventually she learned that the relationship had turned abusive, but before she really knew what was going on, her mom left one night without any explanation, which obviously made Maggie feel super abandoned that led her to hitting her mom to struggling more in her relationship with her dad.

And so many other struggles. Now, thankfully her story doesn't end there in this episode, you'll hear how at such a young age, she had to choose between living with her mom or her dad. She opens up about what she did to cope with her pain and unhealthy ways like drinking drugs, acting out sexually and stealing.

She even shares how all that trauma led her to such a low point where she attempt. To kill herself. You'll hear what happened in the episode, she talks about the conversation she had about everything that had happened with the divorce with her mom and her dad separately. Some really good lessons in this episode and how to talk to your parents about your broken family and how it's affected you.

And finally, she touches on how she really didn't wanna get married. She was afraid of it because of what she experienced in her family. But now she has a really beautiful marriage and four awesome kids. Complete 180. I have so much respect and admiration for Maggie. She's been through so much, really an amazing sword filled with dark times, but also so much hope.

So keep listening.

Welcome to the ReSTOR podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 64. If you're someone who recognizes the pain and problems face by teens and young adults who come from broken families and you wanna help them.

We wanna team up with you. One of the ways that we help those young people from broken families is by offering speaking engagements at your school, church or conference. At this point, we offer three talks. The first one is what I wish someone told me when my parents divorce, how to cope, heal. And build a divorce proof marriage or help someone else.

And this talk is primarily for students, teenagers and young adults who come for broken families, but anyone who loves or leads them will also learn a lot. And in this particular talk, we cover stories and studies on how our broken families and especially our parents' divorce affects people like us. We teach the young people, coping tactics to help them deal with their pain in healthy ways.

Instead of unhealthy ways, we give them evidence based healing, tips, and resources to help them feel whole again. And then we offer practical strategies to build healthy relationships and even a great future marriage. That's the first talk. What I wish someone told me when my parents divorce, the second talk is seven tips to build a thriving and divorce proof marriage, actionable advice from research to the church and time tested couples.

This talk is also for students, teenagers young. It also come from broken families and in it, we cover seven really practical tips on how to build a beautiful marriage. It's not just for people who are married or even close to getting married, but really anyone who wants to get married one day, who, who might want to get married one day, all the content is based on psychological research lessons from beautiful couples and the Catholic church is teaching on marriage.

And we can also offer a secular version as well, or even an evangelical version. If you're. Not Catholic one young woman who is actually on newly wed. She heard this particular talk and she actually listened to it three times in a very short period of time because she found it so helpful. Again, this talk is seven tips to build a thriving and divorce proof marriage.

And the final talk is 10 tips to help someone whose parents are separated or divorced practical tactics for anyone who loves or leads teens and young adults from broken families. And this suck is for anyone who loves or leads young people from broken families, whether you're a teacher school administration, pastor youth minister, a family friend, significant other.

In this talk, we offer insights into how a broken family and especially divorce affects that person that you love or lead. We offer some practical things that you can do to help them cope, heal, and grow into the person they were meant to be. And then we also give resources, you can offer them so they feel less alone and ultimately can heal and grow.

And we'll be offering more talks in the future as well. Some of our clients so far have been Franciscan university of Steubenville, Avi, Maria university focused the fellowship of Catholic university students. We've spoken for the archdiocese of Denver, the archdiocese of San Francisco and the diocese of San Diego.

Now, as you can tell so far, speaking engagements have been for Catholic audiences, but we don't just serve Catholics. We serve anyone who wants us. And so if you're interested in scheduling a live or virtual talk, we'd love to hear from you how just go to ReSTOR. Dot com slash speaking again, restored ministry.com/speaking.

You can view our talks on that page and then you can request pricing, or if you're ready, you can book an event by the way, our pricing is a fraction of the cost of what most speakers charge. And so we love to work with you. You will not be disappointed again. Go to ReSTOR ministry.com/speaking, to learn more and book a talk today.

My guest today is Maggie. Kim. Maggie is a wife and mother to four kiddos. She became a Catholic convert in 2013 after discovering her love for the Eucharist sacred tradition and the powerful intercessory prayers of the saints as a registered nurse, she has a passion for fertility awareness. The pro-life movement and anything else related to mothers and babies in her free time, she likes to read thriller novels, eat desserts and watch movies with a strong cup of coffee.

Her husband, Paul is a Catholic speaker, so she understands the ups and downs of ministry life, but loves being able to serve in this God-given mission alongside her family. Again, great conversation and amazing story with Maggie Kim,

Maggie, thank you so much for being here. It's great to have you. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here before recording. We were kind of talking about how yeah. We just kind of go deep quickly. So if it's okay with you, uh, we'll we'll follow that script. I'd like to know how old were you when your parents separated and divorced?

I. Around. I was in middle school, so I was around 13, I wanna say, uh, when they separated and then they got divorced about a year later when I was 14, 15. Okay. So very formative years, uh, definitely a difficult time. And what, what happened that led up to all that and then of course, through the separation divorce itself?

Yeah, sure. Um, well I think my parents had a very difficult marriage from the very beginning, even before my sister and I were born. They had issues all throughout their marriage. Um, my dad, you know, he was verbally and emotionally abusive. We didn't really see that very often. We would kind of get glimpses of it here and there as kids.

But, um, it was way worse with my mom, you know, they would fight, but it was usually behind like closed doors and we weren't really aware of what was going on. I didn't even really understand or. Realized that they had serious issues in their marriage until my mom started sleeping in a separate room. So we had a guest room in the house and she would sleep there.

And, you know, we were kind of just like, that's strange, but, um, right. They never were open about their issues and never really. Like had serious arguments in front of us. And so very suddenly one night my mom is I, I find her packing up her bags, um, she's planning to leave and it was, you know, it was a very traumatic night.

My sister and I, we were, I just remember crying and begging her not to go. Um, and she, like, she couldn't even look at us. She could barely, you know, she couldn't say anything. She just like had a mission to leave . Yeah. And she was, I just remember watching her, like packing up all these suitcases and, you know, my dad was telling my sister and me, like, don't let your mom leave.

Hmm. Like you gotta say anything to keep her here. And, um, so, you know, we're just like begging her not to go. And, you know, eventually she, she packed up her stuff and she left and that was like, so. Jarring for us. Yeah. Um, we were just like, what is going on? Yeah, it was, it was a very difficult night. Like something that I'll never forget.

And then a couple weeks later she came back and then my parents sat us down and we kind of had that discussion, you know, uh, where we have to, like, you know, they're telling us we're, we're getting a divorce. And, um, at that point they wanted us to decide like who we were gonna live with. Um, so at the time we, yeah, at the time, uh, we were living in orange county in, in Southern California.

And my mom had moved to Los Angeles, which was about like a 45 minute or an hour drive away. Mm-hmm . And so, you know, they're like, so are you gonna live with mom or dad? Like you gotta decide. And. At that point or so. So in those two weeks in between my mom leaving and having that family discussion, my dad, like he was really good at manipulating the situation and telling my sister and, and myself that like, mom doesn't care about you.

She, um, she just wants to go and live her life, like, and just kind of filling up, you know, filling our head heads with like all these lies so that we would choose him. And that's exactly what happened. So it was the fact that my mom had left without any explanation. Um, and also the fact that, you know, we were liking, we didn't wanna have to leave our school and our home and all this stuff.

So we decided we were gonna, uh, stay with dad. So that's yeah, that's when things got real for me. yeah. And, you know, we would do, we did the whole thing, like where we would go stay with my mom over the weekend and blah, blah, blah, blah, which I hated, I, I absolutely hated going, you know, like I would go and see her new apartment and she'd have like all this new furniture and all this stuff, and I'm just like, in the corner, like stewing, like you left us and you're living this new life.

And like, you get all these nice new things. And I just, I hated going. I hated her. I remember like one time just straight up saying to her face, like I hate you and I don't ever wanna see you. And at that point, like we had, like, after that, we hadn't spoken for, you know, a really long time. So yeah. Anyways, um, that, that happened.

I, I live with my dad, um, and he got married shortly after, so. Um, I found this out much later on like, as an adult, but, um, my dad had multiple fairs and then, you know, when they were married and he ended up marrying remarrying, the woman that he cheated with. And so he remarried like very quickly after like the divorce was finalized and yeah, at that point, like I just felt so abandoned.

Um, my mom had left, my dad had gotten remarried and was like off living his life with his new wife. And my sister had gone off to college at that point too. So like she, she had just left. So it's like, I just felt like all this abandonment from like all sides, you know? So yeah. I was very, uh, bitter. I was very depressed.

Um, I, I was, I started to rebel like crazy. Like I. I don't know, I was just like anything that I could do to get into trouble I probably did. Or tried at some point, I, it was like, I was constantly like pushing the, the boundary and, and seeing like what I could do, how far I could go before getting caught.

Cause I, I think, you know, in a way, like I was, I was telling myself, like, I'm not gonna get caught because dad doesn't care. Like he, I was living with him and he was doing, you know, he was providing for, for me and everything, doing what he could, but he was so like checked out. He was so like, I don't know, he was just wasn't emotionally.

For me. And so I, I just figured, like he doesn't care if, if I do all these things, um, I started drinking and doing drugs when I was 15, I was stealing, I was, I was addicted to pornography. I was very like sexually promiscuous. Like all these things to see how far I could go before my dad would actually pay attention.

And so I guess in a way, like, I almost wanted to get caught because then that would mean that he was paying enough attention to me to discipline me or, or whatever it is, you know? Um, and so it was, it was just years of that. And at one point I just, I, yeah, I, I, I guess I, I didn't realize how depressed I was until I tried to take my own life or I, I tried to overdose on, on pain medications.

And, um, it was at that point when I was like, I realized I really needed help. . Yeah. So that's the gist of what went down, I guess. Wow. Thank you so much for yeah. Being so vulnerable. I know everyone listening really appreciates it. It's, I'm learning so much, you know, just listening to you and there's so much to say, but wow.

What, what a pass? Like what, what a heavy thing for, uh, you know, young woman, a girl to go through mm-hmm , especially during those years that are just so formative. I was 11 when my parents separated and it's a lot of similarities to, to your story. And pornography was kind of my drug of choice and it makes sense to me that you rebel so much, it just makes sense.

And, you know, you alluded to just kind of all that being a cry for. And absolutely I could totally see that, you know, kind of wanting the love and attention, wanting the opposite of the abandonment that you experienced and, you know, really not getting that until you got to the point of trying to kill yourself.

Yeah. And it, it totally, totally makes sense to me. I think so often in our world, we see these individual struggles that kids have, like, you know, drugs, sex, you know, alcohol, all this stuff, like suicide attempts, everything that you said mm-hmm and we treat them kind of symptomatically individually. It's like, we treat the symptom, but we don't get to the root of it.

Yeah. And, and I think it's such a disservice because yeah. Maybe you could treat the symptom and it be okay for a little while, but if you never get to the root of it, it's very likely that it's gonna come up again. You're gonna fall into some unhealthy way of coping, which is just so common as you know, for people like us.

Right. So. It just makes so much sense to me. And I've found that suffering to, to hear people say like, okay, you weren't weird for kind of doing what you did. Like yeah. We're not saying that it was good behavior. That sin is a good thing. Of course not, but it just makes so much sense. Absolutely. And it's, I think like, as a child, when you are traumatized, because like your whole world shatters, like everything that you thought was secure and stable and love, it's the whole, like the meanings of all that, like it shatters.

And so as a child or as like, even like a young adult, like, you don't know how to deal with that. If nobody is teaching you in a healthy way, like how to cope and, and it's. Especially if, if feelings of abandonment are there, which most likely they are, it's like, you you're crying out for attention, even if it's gonna be negative attention.

And as a mom now, like, it totally makes sense to me because even for my kids who are toddlers, like they're throwing tantrums and I'm like, well, why are they making such a big deal out of this thing? And that's wrong with you? and I mean, like, that's essentially what we're doing. Like, as you know, as like teenagers or young adults, it's like, you're crying out for attention, even if it's negative attention, even though, even if it's gonna get you into trouble.

Yeah. So it's like, you're doing anything you can to know that. You're like someone is paying attention to you and someone loves you enough to say something. Yeah. Uh, psychia or psychiatrist, or I think he was a psychologist, uh, Conrad bars. He said that he believed that most people, uh, weren't suffering from suppressed emotion, which is what Freud basically said.

He said most psychological problems. Ford said most psychological problems came about because people were repressing emotion and common BARR. Um, he was a Catholic psychologist. He said that he doesn't believe that to be the case. That certainly can be true in some cases. But he said, in most cases, people are suffering when he coined as emotional deprivation, meaning we basically have this hole in us.

That's just longing for love, for affirmation, for, to be wanted. And it just doesn't get filled. And so, because that isn't filled in a healthy way, we look to anything that might somewhat satisfied in an unhealthy way. Yeah. And. That I, I think describes so much of our culture, even people who aren't from broken families, but especially those of us who come from broken families.

Cause like you said, it's so foundational and we tend to think when our families fall apart, we go through life with this expectation of everything falling apart. Like what won't fall apart. What can I hold onto? Which I know we're gonna get into marriage, um, in this conversation, which I'm really excited about because, uh, that just rocks a marriage to think that, oh, this probably is gonna fail one day.

And what I've realized in my own marriage, my wife and I have been to counseling. We talk pretty openly about this, but there's always that kind of fear, even if it's a small voice in the back of your head that, well, this isn't gonna last, my spouse is probably gonna leave me or cheat on me or something mm-hmm and that expectation kind of that impacts the way that we act, which.

Aid and bringing about that reality that we fear right. So it's like this I know, right? Yeah. Go for it. It's so ironic. it is. Yeah. Yeah. So you're exactly right. I mean, like in all the relationships that I had following my parents' divorce, it's, it's exactly what happened. It's like, I would, first of all, like I would do anything to cling onto that person.

It's like, It's like, whoever I was with at the time was like my savior, because they were helping me to like, forget all the pain and like, I could finally like get a chance to feel happy. And so I would do anything to keep that person in my life and, and stay in that relationship. But then in moments where it got, got tough.

It's inevitable in any relationship, you're gonna have moments of conflict and, and hardship. And it's like, I, I just, I knew they were gonna leave me. And so like, a lot of it was either like me just being desperate to do whatever it, it, um, takes to keep them in my life or I would suddenly just shut them out because, um, I'm like, well, if you're gonna leave me, I'm gonna beat you to the punch and I'm gonna leave you first, you know?

Yeah. Yeah. And so it was just like all these defense mechanisms that I just learned to adopt, because that was how I, like, I guess in a way, like I was learning to survive because I, yeah, like you said, it's like deep down, you think everybody's gonna leave you. And so you do what it takes like you do what, what, what it takes to keep that relationship alive, or you do what it takes to protect yourself.

And in a way, like if you shut that person out or if you leave first, it's like, you, you get you protecting. Yourself. Um, so yeah, that, that was really, um, it led to a lot of like toxic, unhealthy relationships, as you can imagine, um, like the codependency and all this stuff. And it was, um, right around when I met my husband, I, you know, like, I think after so many years of like trying to like drink and like do drugs and forget all my issues and numb all the pain, like I knew that wasn't gonna be sustainable.

Like I knew at some point I was gonna like crash and, and in a lot of ways, I, I, I did have moments of like reaching my lowest points and I just, I was so tired of it. Like it was so unfulfilling and so empty and I, I knew I needed something more. And so like, I, right around the time I met my husband, I also started going to therapy.

And man that like, it, it changed my life. I, it was like the first time I could actually acknowledge what had happened and, and like acknowledge the gravity of it. Like, I remember my one, I think maybe it was like my first or second therapy session with the, with like the very first therapist I've ever talked to.

And she was like, let's talk about your childhood, your parents and blah, blah, blah. And I started talking about the, the night that my mom left, you know, just like I did a few minutes ago and I started laughing. It was like the strangest thing, like I was sharing about the night and I started laughing and.

The therapist looks at me. She's like, you know, that's a really interesting reaction to the story you're telling, because you're the story you're telling is very sad and very traumatic. And, um, I just, I find it interesting that you're laughing and I was like, what is wrong with me? Like, I must be going crazy.

um, but it, you know, it's like, again, it's like those defense mechanisms or those coping mechanisms where you're trying to you're so like, You can't like face the, the trauma. And so you, you make light of the situation by laughing about it, right? Like a lot. That's why a lot of like comedians, I, I feel like that they learn how to be funny because they have issues or they have trauma in their life and they learn to like, make light of the situation.

Right. But yeah, so in a way, like that's what I was doing. And, and it was like the first time I like looked at how serious it was and how traumatic it was and how that affected me. So going to therapy was so eyeopening. And then finally, like, I, you know, I met my husband and he was the first man in my life, you know, like in a, in a close relationship where, like I knew he was a good man.

Like, I, I didn't have very good, like positive male figures in my life. At least like, not like close enough to really have like a deep relationship. And so there was just like, I just knew in my heart, when I met my husband, that he was a good man. Um, and that was very healing for me because for a long time, I didn't think that was possible.

Like, I didn't think that men were capable of, you know, being trustworthy or being like loving or, you know what I mean? Like it's just a hundred percent. Yeah. It, it was, um, I was like, wow, like good men are out there. . Yeah, yeah. And no, it, it makes sense. Given what you had been through that you would kind of expect every man to, yeah.

Maybe on the surface they would look good or fine, but behind closed doors, as you learned. They wouldn't be good men. So no, that probably was pretty earth shattering for you, which is beautiful and amazing. And mm-hmm yeah. I want to kind of dive deeper into that. I do wanna kind of close the loop on your relationship with your parents as much as you're comfortable sharing.

Cuz I don't wanna leave people hanging on that. They probably yeah. Right. What happened? So yeah. I'm just curious kind of how has that evolved over the years? And then yeah, I, I have another question, but let me let you answer that first. Okay. Yeah. It took a lot of time to heal a lot of work for sure. And a lot of like self-awareness I think in processing, like what had happened and how it had affected me and then finding the courage to talk to my parents about it.

I think that. Changed our relationship for better or for worse, like with my Mo. So I guess I'll kind of like talk about my mom first. So like I said before, sh you know, we had, I, like, I had so much hate in my heart for her, for leaving us. And, oh, at one point I, I went to go live with her because things at home with my dad were just really difficult.

And so I didn't know where else to go. I just, I seriously like called her up. I was, I think I was like halfway through my senior year in, in high school. And, um, I called her up and I was like, I just, I packed a bag and I have nowhere to go, like, can I come stay with you? And I, I hadn't talked to her in a really long time up until that phone call.

And she was like, of course, like, come over right now. Like, you don't need to explain anything, just come. And so then I started living with her and it was awkward at first because I, you know, we still like hadn't resolved anything, but fi like slowly, little by little, like that door opened up. And as I started going to therapy and kind of processing what had happened, I.

I remember sitting down with her one day and just sharing everything, like everything. I felt everything that she did that hurt me, um, like asking her what happened, like what was going on with you and dad, like what happened in the marriage? And we just had this amazing conversation where she was so open and honest and vulnerable and, you know, like we just had like an opportunity to share and to apologize and forgive each other.

And in that conversation she had even like said, you know, I made mistakes. Like she owned up to her own mistakes too. Wow. And she was aware of how much it hurt me. She was even. Aware of how she had hurt my dad in the marriage. And she expressed that she regretted it and, and I think that conversation was so healing for me and it allowed me to move forward and move forward to forgiveness.

And then, and now we have an amazing relationship. Like she, I, I can't imagine life without her. Like right now we live in two different states and I'm like, and she's planning to move over here. And I'm just so excited to, um, you know, be like 20 minutes away from her now. And so yeah, we have a great relationship and.

What also helped a lot with that was when I became Catholic. I, I converted and became Catholic when I was 23. And, um, I started learning about our blessed mother, mother, Mary, and I, I know not everybody who's listening to. This is Catholic, but I just started learning about her and like growing up, I, I didn't know much about her.

I grew up Protestant and any, like any mention of her was very like negative. And so I was finally starting to like, learn about who. The mother of Jesus was, and kind of like starting to have a relationship with her as well. And I think that really helped a lot of, kind of like those mother wounds that had been left in my heart.

And I mean, that's like a whole nother story, but yeah. So I, I think that allowed me to just find a lot of healing when it comes to my dad. Um, it's kind of a little bit of a different story, you know, like I kind of had that same opportunity to share with my dad, like, just like I did with my mom. I, you know, told him everything that I had experienced and how I had been hurtful and all this stuff.

And it was, there was a very different reaction and I went into it knowing like, not expecting. Him to react in any sort of way. I was just kind of open to like whatever he was gonna say. Um, but he's very good at like, he's very good at blaming other people for, for his mistakes and just kind of, he, I, I think he, he was just very caught off guard by that conversation and he was, he wasn't very willing to kind of own up to it.

And, um, yeah, I don't know. It was just not a great reaction, like, and I was fine with that. Like, I, I just, I went into it knowing like, you know, if he doesn't react the way that I'm hoping to, like, that's okay. It doesn't mean that I have to like hate him, but it certainly affected our relationship. Like it, I'm definitely not as close with him as I would like to be.

I, I mean, he's changed so much, like he's. I know he's a good man and he's, he's changed in so many ways for the better, but, um, I still kind of keep my heart guarded when it comes to him. Um, I don't really, um, we, we, you know, interact maybe like a few times a year we'll call or do like text, um check-ins but, um, nowhere near like the kind of relationship I had with my mom and, and that's okay.

Like, I, I, I think like, as I get older, like I, I'm learning to be more okay with that. So anyways, that that's kind of like, I, I guess that's just kind of how ive ended up. Yeah, no, I mean, that's so beautiful with your mom that you were able to find that resolution and build a beautiful relationship. Yeah.

Like you have right now. And what a man, what a road you've been on and I can relate so much with. Dad, your, your relationship with your dad. It's very similar in my case. And one of the struggles there is exactly what you said, you nailed it. Like he has a really difficult time taking ownership. Yeah. And I love my dad, you know, just like you said, you love both your parents and you know, you don't hate them.

I don't hate my dad. But if I'm honest, that unwillingness to take ownership for the problems that he caused has damaged severely. Oh yeah. His relationship with me and all of my siblings. Yeah. Like I, I could go into that for an hour. It's it's so sad. And so any parents listening? Mm-hmm I know we have parents listening, cuz I know you wanna, you love your kids.

You wanna help your kids. You wanna figure out how to help them through this really difficult time that you're going through. You've been through and you know, just like we just learned from Maggie a second ago, take ownership. take ownership. And I think a lot of people who refuse to take ownership maybe are afraid of.

Turning people off or getting disowned in a way. But I, I honestly think Maggie, like the opposite happens when people take ownership. It's like in my life, when people have taken ownership for the bad things, they've done the way they've hurt me, I just have more respect for them. And it tends to heal the relationship, kinda like you said, with your mom.

And so you can always make excuses parents, but I, I think that it takes a lot of courage to just own up to your portion of what happened. And it doesn't mean you have to say that what the other person did was okay or acceptable. That's, that's not the case, but just take, take ownership of what you contributed to it.

And I don't mean to single out my dad, uh, my mom, you know, in similar ways has had a hard time taking ownership. And so mm-hmm, , it's, um, it's certainly been a struggle, I think, to work through a lot about that. But tho those conversations I think have been really good. So I, I did wanna ask you though, would you advise.

Everyone listening, who, you know, comes from a broken family, like you and me, would you advise that they would have that conversation with their parents? Are there any situations where maybe you wouldn't advise. That's a good question. I would hope that for most people they would have an opportunity to have that conversation with their parents.

I just, I think it is so it's so like an important aspect of the healing process to be able to like share and be vulnerable and honest with the people who have hurt you and, and vice versa. Like, like you were saying, they. Taking ownership of your mistakes is, is so essential because it, it allows that that relationship to go deeper because you're, you're making a decision at that point to be vulnerable.

And when you're vulnerable that opens the door to like intimacy and a deeper relationship. And so, and so when they're, when they choose not to do that, it it's very clear, like where they want the relationship to stay. And so I, I would, I hope, and I pray that for listeners who, you know, who are dealing with their parents' divorce, like that, they get to have an opportunity to do that.

There may be situations where that is not healthy. Like if their parents are extremely toxic and, and abusive, or I, I don't know, like if. If it wouldn't, if it would lead to more harm to have that conversation, maybe like, it wouldn't be a good idea, but I think generally speaking for most cases, I think it, I think it would be a, a great place to start for healing.

I agree with that. And I, I think you deserve to know what happened too. It's always a tricky balance and I'm sure we can go into this a lot, but we'll, we'll try to keep moving, but it's always a tricky balance. I think for parents to figure out like how much to share with their kids. I remember my mom when I was 11 sharing a lot of details that looking back I'm like, I don't know if that was the best, to be honest.

I understand. Like, I'm glad I know, but, uh, man, it was earth shattering. And so yeah, at the same time, I think of the alternative like, well, what if she didn't share those things? What would've happened? I probably would. Figured some stuff out or tried to find answers. And so mm-hmm, certainly a, a tricky situation.

Yeah. And it's, it's interesting because that's one of the questions I asked my mom, like, why did you leave without saying anything? Yeah. Like, why didn't you explain anything to us? And, and even like, just tell us how you were feeling. And, and she was, you know, she, and I think I understand her a lot more now as a mom, myself.

And she said, um, that she wanted to protect us. Like, she, she didn't know how, like you said, she didn't know how much to share, because once you kind of opened that can of worms, it's just like everything. Like we would've known everything and that was, it may have been too much, but at the same time, it's like, just even to have like a little explanation like that, would've been so helpful for me to make sense of what was going on.

And even like now I, in our. Current relationship. Like I'm constantly trying to tell my mom to like, just tell me how you're feeling like open up, like, cause she's, it is just kind of her personality. And also like culturally, like it's, it's not very like common to be like emotionally open to your, with your children, um, as a Korean.

And, and so I'm constantly telling her, like, I wanna know like what is going on? Like even the bad stuff, like even the, like the negative feelings, like I wanna know those things, because that allows me to feel closer to you. And so that's just, that's something that we're like always working on in our relationship.

So yeah. It's and when it came, comes to my dad, that there's another thing I wanted to share that came up. Um, it, I think when it comes to my dad, like, like you said, I, I, I love my dad. Like he, um, I, uh, there's still a lot of hurt there, um, that I think like, I, I might always have to deal with, but I still love him.

And I think something that was really helpful for me to like, get to finally get to this point is I remember like one night I was praying and I, uh, I was at this, I think it was at a time in my life where I was just going through a lot, like processing, going to therapy, all this, all these things. Yeah.

And I was just asking God to like, give me some way to heal or like, like let go of all the hate that I had, um, for my dad. And like, I remember kind of in my prayer, I was imagining myself, like at the foot of the cross, you know, I'm like looking up at Jesus, hanging on the cross and I'm on my knees and I'm holding my hands up like this.

And I was like crying and, and just like. Being aware of like the mistakes that I had made cuz I, I, you know, I struggled a lot and I made a lot of mistakes and I'm telling, I was telling God, I'm sorry. And I remember like kind of having this vision where I like looked to my right and my dad was standing right next to me in the same position on his knees with his hands up like this.

And it dawned on me that like the love that God has for me, he has that same amount of love for my dad. He doesn't love me anymore. He doesn't love my dad anymore. It's like, like the SA the amount of love that he has for us is equal. Even though it's like personal and intimate, like for each of us it's he loves my dad and he's forgiven my dad.

Like just as much as he's forgiven me. And so that was just like, so eye-opening, to me that. I, I can be capable of forgiving my dad too. And yeah, I mean, like going back to, you know, sharing details of, of like the divorce, as I learned more of, of what had happened in my parents' marriage, like it would bring up a lot of those feelings again, of like her and abandonment and just like shock at how, like my dad treated my mom, but like I could, I was still able to like, go back to that vision of like, God still loves my dad.

Like he loves him so much. And so I can love him too. Wow. You're making me tear up this beautiful. Oh gosh. yeah, no, it it's really, really beautiful. And I think there's something so heroic in everything you just shared too, because so many of us get so stuck in the hate. Yeah. And it just leaves us stuck in life, frankly.

That's what I've seen and experience. And so I think there's something so freeing about forgiveness and we've done, you know, episodes on forgiveness and yeah. Um, I, I think that's something that is really difficult, but worth going into, I wanted to ask you, what would you say to your parents if they were listening right now?

It's a heavy question. yeah, it is. You know, I, I think I've, I've said like everything I need to say yeah. Like, thankfully, like, I, I did get a chance to do that, so, but yeah, I, I think I would want them to know that, you know, what happened. Was not okay. Like it, it caused a lot of pain and, you know, we're all trying to still heal from that.

And, and maybe we will continue to work on that until we die. But I don't know. I guess I just want them to know that I love them. I think that's ultimately like I am hurt, but I still love them. And I think I have like a better understanding of why it happened and, and why they felt the need to like, make the choices that they made.

Not saying that. It was okay. But yeah, I think I can understand the pain and the turmoil that they were going through. It, it kind of prevented them from seeing anybody outside of themselves. And I can relate to that. Like, I've had moments too, like as a mom and as a wife, like I've had moments like that too, where I, I, I, all I can think about is myself and how I'm feeling and how I'm struggling, and I don't care about anybody else, you know?

And, and those are, you know, those, aren't my proudest moments, but I can understand why my parents had those moments as well. So yeah, I guess I would, that's what I would say. Like, I understand like why you did what you had to do, doesn't make it okay. But I still love you anyway. So good. I wanna shift gears with the time we have left to marriage.

Sure. Okay. So it it's really inspiring. I just first have to say. How beautiful your family is. Um, your marriage is, I'm sure it's not perfect, but none of us are , but it's, it's just really inspiring to see. And, you know, I knew a little bit of your backstory. Um, there's a great article that you were, uh, wrote for blessed Ashi it's, uh, nonprofit ministry, uh, for women, right.

If I'm getting that right? Yes mm-hmm and, uh, and we'll, we'll link to that article in the show notes guys, but, uh, hearing a little bit of your story through that. And then now hearing you share more deeply here, I have so much respect for you and it's just amazing. Just the life you've built, the marriage you've built, the family you've built.

I, I mean, I bet that if you were to go back to that, what 15 year old self, you probably wouldn't have thought that you could ever have what you have now was that right? Am I oh, absolutely. I didn't. I was like, I'm never getting married. Like, I, I was convinced that like, all marriages were gonna end, you know, like they were all going to fail or that all men would cheat and all this stuff.

So like, yeah, I it's. Thank you so much for those kind words. Um, yeah, it's, it's pretty amazing. Like how, um, how I got here and I have four beautiful kids and a very loving husband. It was definitely like, um, marriage is not what I expected to be like in, in good and bad ways, you know? Sure. Like it's so much more beautiful and like profound and sacred.

And it's, it's this beautiful union that, you know, we come into and then we like have children from it. It it's, it's amazing. Like, I, I, marriage is so beautiful, so I don't wanna. I don't want us to forget that, but it is so challenging. It is. Yeah. I mean, it's, it's way more challenging than I thought it would be.

Even from someone like who experienced my parents' divorce and didn't wanna get married. Like I had no idea what I was, what I was getting into, you know? Yeah. But it's, it's good. Like, I, I think, you know, when, when I saw, when I look back at my parents' marriage, I, I think of the way, like they hardly fought in front of us.

They didn't, they, they, weren't very good at teaching me how to resolve conflict and how to like have healthy arguments. And so. You know, when I got married and we started having fights, you know, like, and having arguments, like, of course that's gonna happen. But every time that happened, I was like, oh my gosh, like we're doomed.

Like our marriage is doomed to fail. I'm gonna repeat my parents' mistake, blah, blah, blah. Like all these fears would come up and. I got really good at avoiding conflict. Like I would just, I would just do whatever it took to like, not go there or if it did get there, I would just shut down and like hide in, in my little shell.

yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. And, and so that obviously, like, that was so frustrating for us. Like that was something that would come up repeatedly, like where my husband is. Like, we're trying to like figure something out. We're trying to resolve an issue. And I'm like, I refuse because if we go down, if we, if we try to like talk this out, like we're just gonna keep fighting and then we're gonna, you're gonna leave me, you know?

Um, and that was like the message that, that, like I was given. And I would like tell myself that, like, if we, if we keep fighting, like we're gonna end up in divorce. And so it was, yeah, it was just a really, like, I had to shift the way I, we view conflict, like. Conflict is gonna happen, like regardless, like it's, it's inevitable.

absolutely. Um, yeah, and I mean, it it's just like any two people with their own issues and their own baggage. Like when you come together, like issues are gonna come up, like let's just, let's just accept that. Right. yeah. Amen. But for me, it was like really hard to accept because I, I thought like our marriage had to be perfect.

Like we couldn't ever fight, we couldn't ever argue. Like, and so over the years it's been, it's been just very surprising to me, like how conflict would actually lead to resolution, which would actually lead to me feeling even more loved and like even more intimate with my husband, because like, I could be so vulnerable.

Like I could show him. All the sides of myself, like the good and the bad and the ugly. And he would still love me. And like, I could, I could just be totally raw and open with like all of the issues or like with my past or whatever you wanna call it. And he's just like, IM not gonna leave you. Like I'm , you know, like he, it was like, he would prove to me that he was fighting for me and he was fighting for our marriage, even in those moments where I was so ready to give up.

When we would just have arguments that seemed to like, not get anywhere, I'm like, I'm done, you know, like I was just so ready to like, just give up and he's like, no, I'm not giving up. Like we are gonna figure this out, you know, . And, and that was just so like, it was just not what I expected and. It, it just ended up with me feeling even more loved, you know, like knowing that I could be truly myself and he would love me.

So yeah. that's so I know that's so beautiful and I bet, I bet that just cuts to the core of your heart when you hear him say something like that, because for so long, you just, you know, like you said, you assumed that anyone who ever loved you or maybe said they loved you would eventually leave you and abandon you.

So mm-hmm, so, so beautiful. You touched on the struggle of conflict, uh, you know, you and I both know, and everyone listening knows that when you come from a broken family, relationships can be extra challenging. Yeah. And you know, similar with you, I was trained. It's kind of funny to say it like that, but we really, I think, need to talk about like this.

I was trained very poorly to handle conflict. Yes. And that training came from the school of love that I went through in my family. Right. Um, which sadly was very broken. And so when it came my turn to build my own marriage, oh yeah. I, I was still lost and you know, I'm still, we're still figuring a lot of it out, but yeah, we, it is beautiful.

Those situations, like you said, where you. Have the conflict and then resolve it. Cause the way I saw it growing up was mom and dad would have an argument, usually get loud and then one or both of them would just walk away. Maybe they resolved it later, but us kids never saw it. And so we just kind of got this bread into our DNA that like, well, that's just kind of what couples do is you fight, you go your separate ways and things never get resolved, which is obviously a recipe for disaster in any way.

right, right. Cause you're like, what does it even look like to have like a healthy argument and to come to resolution? Like it's just, it was never modeled for us. Exactly. Yeah. And I think people who don't come from broken families, um, might struggle with that. And anyhow, I, we, we can go into that maybe a little bit later, but I, I was curious like what, what other struggles have you faced in your relationships and in your marriage that maybe we haven't touched on already?

I think just kind of the way we cope with our emotions. Like I. I learned to adapt to my situation with unhealthy coping mechanisms. And so it's very hard for me not to wanna jump back into those things now, like when I have conflict in, in my own marriage or with, within anybody, like it, it doesn't even have to be within marriage.

Like if I'm, if I feel like conflict with my sister or my mom or with God, like it's like, I will immediately like revert to kind of like the way that I coped back, you know, when I was dealing with my parents' divorce. Yeah. Not, and, and not even like actually going through with it, but like wanting to do, wanting to go back there.

It's so attractive in those moments. Yeah. Yeah. Because it's like, when you're young, when you experience your parents' divorce and you're young, it's. Your, I feel like your brain is just like UN survival mode. Yeah. And so it like it, like I was talking about this with my therapist. It's like, it, you literally, your brain will rewire itself to survive and to protect yourself.

Wow. And so it's like all that work and therapy that I was doing, it, it, it was like rewiring my brain and changing those messages that I had told myself. Like, if you, if you like go and do these things, like you'll feel so much better. You know? And like, obviously they're not healthy ways. So it's just like, I had to learn how to like rewire and then like, figure out what can I actually do?

Like, what are positive and healthy ways to deal with this situation and to cope with, with like my emotions, like think having control of my emotions, or like being able to like regulate my O own emotions was something that wasn't taught to me. And so like now as a mom, it's like, it that's something that like, I struggle with a lot, like with my kids, like learning how to regulate my emotions so that we can help them regulate their emotions.

Like if, yeah. If they see me flying off the handle, like they're gonna, they're not gonna know how to deal with that. And they're gonna also fly off the handle, you know? Sure. So it's just like, yeah, it's just, um, I think. I think the beauty of all of this, like as hard as it was and as painful as it was, it brought up, it, it like brought about so much self-awareness and being aware of the pain that I felt, it helped me to realize, like, I do not want this to happen to my kids.

And, um, and I don't want this to happen to my marriage. And so it's like, I think in a way it was like a, a way to kind of grab the, the power back and be like, I'm not gonna let this happen. I have the power to make choices now to prevent this from happening with my own family. So yeah, that's, that's something that, you know, we're, we're always working on and sure.

I hope, you know, like I know we will continue to work on. Absolutely. And I've seen people, especially who maybe are a little bit further than us along in the path of marriage and family. Um, I've seen them just fight like hell to not repeat the cycle. Yeah. And I hear the same thing in you, and I don't know if anyone will truly ever understand how difficult it can be to like, fight against that.

But, um, yeah, it's so worth it and it is beautiful. And I know we have a baby girl and I just like, love her more than anything in the world. And I, uh, yeah, she's so motivating for me, just like, man, I, I just wanna give her the best of everything and I just don't want her to, you know, have to deal with what my siblings and I had to deal with growing up.

Mm-hmm and so, yeah, I can see how that that's so motivating. Were there any specific lessons or skills that you learned again, you mentioned learning how to handle conflict in a healthy way. Were there any other lessons or skills that were maybe the most valuable in overcoming those struggles that you, you faced?

I think being aware of how I, um, how, how I view, I think for me, like conflict was the biggest thing. Being aware of how I deal with conflict, like gathering tools to kind of go against what my instincts are and to do the healthier thing. Like my husband and I came upon, uh, the Gottman Institute. Have you heard of them before?

Um, John, John Gottman? Yeah. I mean, great work. I don't know if our listeners know, but I love their work. Yeah. Yeah. And like, I mean, just really quick. It's there's um, I believe he's a psychologist. He, he and his wife, I may be wrong. Um, but they have studied married couples for years and years and years and, and studied the way they, um, they argue and how they address conflict.

And they've like somehow have come up with like, A way to like, I, I guess they say that when they, um, like observe how couples argue, they have like this like a 95% accuracy rate where they can tell if they're going to end up in divorce or not. Wow. And it's just like, whoa, like so much. Yeah. Like there's so much that, um, like just the way that you address conflict that can like make such a huge difference.

And, um, and they talk about the four horsemen in, in conflict. So like, these are things that like drive a wedge between you and your spouse and, and can possibly lead to divorce. And, um, do you, do you know, the, the four horsemen are, I, I know one of them is like, um, Can you, can you remind me of that? Yeah, no, no, you're totally fine.

It, it is. Some of them are hard to, to remember. Um, but the, the first one from memory is, um, criticism. Yes. And, and the difference between criticism and maybe critique is that you're attacking a person as opposed to, uh, giving feedback on a situation or something like that. Right. Or their like behavior you're attacking their character and not their behavior.

Exactly. Right. Exactly. Okay. Yeah. And then I think one was like defensiveness. Yeah. I think, yeah. I think the second one, um, I think defensiveness is three. If I remember right. You correct me if I'm wrong. Uh, the second one I think is really related to criticism, which is contempt and a Gotman defines it as the, uh, psychological or the intention to psychologically harm.

Your spouse. So it's kind of, Sadis sadistic in a way. It's like we are in a way trying to get back at them for hurting us. Yes. And then, and then defensiveness, like you said, which yeah. Take it away. Yeah. And then the, the last one was, um, stonewalling, which is where you, you build up like those walls around you and you don't let any, you don't let your spouse in, you don't let anybody penetrate that, those walls that you've built around you.

And that was like, that was the one for me. And so I, I think like just being aware and. Having resources, like going out and, and finding resources and get like, gathering like those tools that we could put into our tool belt so that when things come up, we can remember, we can, we can learn, we can grow. So, yeah, that, that was really helpful for us.

I think for my husband too, like, cuz he comes from an intact family and I know you, you said you wanted to talk about this a little bit where please. Yeah. They, you know, they don't, they don't fully understand like what it's like to be a child of divorce and, and they can't like, they will never fully be able to understand because obviously they haven't gone through it.

But absolutely. I think for my husband, if I could speak to anybody who's in that position, my husband's position, I think what's, what's so helpful. He didn't try to like, solve my issues. Like he wasn't there to fix the problem or to be my therapist. Like, like that's not his role. And it, he was simply there to like, just listen.

Like I think for me, like what I needed to do was just to like share and to let, let it out and kind of have it out in the open and he would listen. And yeah. So I, I think if I could speak to anybody in that position, like, you don't need to fix their issues. You don't need to be there to like fix their family situation.

All, I think all your spouse needs is, is like to know that you're there, that you support them, that you're listening. Um, being a good listener is like, is so important. And to know like that. Like their pro their issues and their family history. It's not too much for you. It's like, it's not too like too much work, you know?

Like, I think that was something that was so, um, that was a big fear for me. Like my husband, like he's, he doesn't wanna deal with all of this. Like, this is too much for him, you know? And it is just, he was just like, you know, proving over and over and over again. Like, no, like I'm here to stay. Like, I'm, I'm here with you till the end.

Like it, it doesn't matter like what you did and, and you know, like what the family situation is. It, it does matter, but it's not gonna change my love for you. Beautiful. Maggie. We're running outta time. I don't wanna keep you forever. We could talk forever I'm sure. Sure. And we'll have to have you back another time, but, uh, if people wanna follow you, how could they do.

You can follow me on Instagram. My, um, handle is at Maggie Kim 49, or you can email me. My email address is M Y E E 49, gmail.com. Um, and I'm also, I, um, contribute blogs to blessed to she, um, which is a great, amazing ministry and organization. And so if I, um, you know, write blogs for them. So you could also find some of my writing there too.

Sounds awesome. Was there anything from blessed to she or anything that you've created that you kind of wanted to make people aware of that maybe would, would help them even just grow as a person, even if they don't come from a broken family? Oh, um, nothing personally, like I've, I've written some blogs here and there, there, there is, um, a blog that I wrote about Saint quotes for broken families.

Um, which I think resonated with a lot of people, but yeah, I. So, this is not something I've done personally, but they, you know, have created like devotionals and journals and retreats and mentoring, like programs that are beautiful and amazing and have been so helpful to so many women. So, um, and I mean, it's not just, just cater to women, it's cater to anybody, but I think what most women would like resonate with them.

So anyways, yeah. It's they have really great stuff there. Okay. Guys, make sure to check that out. We'll link to everything Maggie mentioned in the show notes, including her handle her email. Uh, Maggie, thank you so much for being here. I want to just give you the last word I closing out here. Uh, would encouragement.

What advice would you give to someone who comes from a broken family and they feel really broken. They feel really stuck in life. Maybe they're struggling in some serious ways. What advice? What, what, what advice, what encouragement would you give to someone like that? Yeah, I, I think first of all, I, I wanna say.

I'm so sorry that this happened to you. Um, it's not fair to you and, and I understand like how, how painful it is and how you can feel stuck. But I also want them to know that it's not their fault. I, I think a lot of children who experience their parents' divorce, like they, they think somehow it, it was because of them like that they they're at fault.

And that is so far from the truth. I think that the devil is really good at filling our heads with those lies. And like, I, I, yeah. I mean, I, I think he wants to like, Keep us in, in that darkness. So I think something that would be really helpful is to just like share your story and to bring it, bring light to it.

Because, because when you do that, the devil has no power over you and he no longer has that power over the situation. So if anything, like, I just want to empower people to know, like they can tell their story, they can share their experience. And I think that would bring a lot of healing. And just to know that you aren't.

You have the power to change your family history. Like you don't need to repeat the cycle of divorce. Um, you can make a decision right now to do things differently, um, to make, you know, different choices and that's gonna change, you know, your family for generations and you have the power to do that. So I just encourage people to just be aware of that and to be empowered.

And, and to also know that I'm praying for, for all of you. And I hope that you're praying for me too, because we're all on this journey of healing together and that's okay. Like I think it it's okay to be healing. It's okay to. Be there at the end of that journey of healing yet, but we can do it together.

You guys, you're not alone.

I love that conversation so much wisdom, so much hope. And for all you parents listening, I actually wanna pose a question to you and I don't mean this harshly at all. In what ways? Can you take ownership for the things that happened in your family like Maggie's mom did. And I'm not saying that you caused everything that happened in the breakdown of your marriage and your family, but it's so helpful for us as the children to hear our parents take ownership.

And this honestly has been a struggling point for me and my siblings. And so how can you take ownership of your piece of the brokenness and communicate that to your kids? And that second part is important, communicating that to your kids. And we'll be coming out with more content on how to do that properly, but it's so important to eventually open the door, talking with your kids about everything that happened.

It can be extremely healing for them. And also for you. I just wanted to quickly mention, if you wanna share your story with us, we'd love to hear it. You can do that by going to restored ministry. Dot com slash story. There's a form in that page to help you tell a short version of your story, and then we'll take that, turn it into an anonymous blog article.

So if you wanna do that, we'd love to hear from you. Just go to ReSTOR ministry.com/story, or click on the link in the show notes. Again, if you're interested in booking a speaking engagement, you can go to ReSTOR ministry.com/speaking, or click the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for listening.

If this has been useful, feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's really struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them. Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#063: The Antidote to Trauma | Margaret Vasquez

When your parents’ marriage and family break apart, it’s traumatic for you as their son or daughter. 

That trauma is not only painful, but also has devastating effects on you that last for a long time. As a result, you need to heal. But how? 

Our guest today, a trauma therapist, shares the antidote or opposite of trauma. We discuss:

• The 4 principles you need to live out to prevent and heal from trauma

• One thing you can today, right away, to heal and grow

• Why feeling worthless is a major problem that you need to address in order to feel whole again

If you want peace, freedom, and great relationships, this episode is for you. 

Buy Margaret’s book: FEARLESS: Abundant Life through Infinite Love (affiliate link)

Buy Joey’s book: It’s Not Your Fault: A Practical Guide to Navigating the Pain & Problems from Your Parents’ Divorce (affiliate link)

Links & Resources

Full Disclaimer: If you purchase through the links on this page, your purchase will support Restored at no additional cost to you. Thank you!

• To leave feedback, comment below or contact us.

• Margaret Vasquez

  • margaret@sacredhearthealingministries.com

  • Sacred Heart Healing Ministries

  • Episode 37: Trauma: What It Is and How It Damages You | Margaret Vasquez

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

When your parents' marriage and family falls apart, it's traumatic for you as their son or daughter. That trauma though is not only painful, but also has devastating effects on you that lasts for a long time. And as a result, you need to heal. But how my guest today, a trauma therapist shares the antidote to trauma, the opposite of trauma, as she says, We discussed the four principles you need to live out to prevent and heal from trauma.

She also shares one thing that you can do today right now to heal and grow. We talk about why feeling worthless is a major sign and problem that you need to address in order to feel whole again. Now, if you want peace, if you want freedom, if you want great relationships, this episode is for you. So keep listening.

Welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce. Separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 63. You've probably heard that my new book is available on Amazon. It's titled it's not your fault, a practical guide to navigating the pain and problems from your parents' divorce.

And the sad truth is that for a lot of teens and young adults, the most traumatic thing that they've endured is their parents' separation or divorce, but nobody shows them how to handle all the pain and all the problems that stem from their. Breakdown. And without that guidance, they continue to feel alone and struggle in serious ways with emotional problems, unhealthy coping relationship struggles and so much more.

And I experienced these issues, these problems firsthand when my parents broke apart and it really shouldn't be this way. It's not your fault. My new book is an answer to that problem. It features 33 questions and answers on the most pressing challenges faced by teens and young adults who come from broken families, such as after my family broke apart, I felt abandoned, unwanted and adequate, and even rejected is something wrong with me.

What's your advice for navigating in the holidays? And other life events. How do I avoid repeating my parents' mistakes and build a healthy marriage and so much more? And the content itself is based on research, expert advice and real life stories. And after reading, it's not your fault. Teens and young adults will learn how to handle the trauma of their parents' separation or divorce, how to.

Build healthy relationships, how to overcome emotional pain and problems to learn some healing tactics, to help them feel whole again, how to navigate their relationship with their parents, how to heal their relationship with God and how to make important decisions about their future. Now, if you wanna buy the book or if you want to get the first chapters free, just go to restored ministry.com/books.

Again, that's restored ministry.com. Slash books, or just click on the link in the show notes. My guest today is Margaret Vasquez. After over 15 years of treating trauma clients of all ages presenting to a wide variety of groups in person and through guests appearances on E WTN radio shows and podcasts.

Margaret began serving as a consultant for Franciscan university of Steubenville Institute. For diaconal renewal and presenting workshops and retreats to religious priests, deacons, and lay people. She now makes those same retreats and workshops available to you in her new book, fearless and through online retreats and workshops.

And as you might remember, I interviewed Margaret in episode 37 trauma, what it is and how it damages you. And we heard a lot of good feedback about that episode. This episode is equally as good, and I'm thrilled to. With Margaret again. And before we dive into the conversation, I wanna say that we do talk about God somewhat in this episode.

And if you don't believe in God, I'm so glad that you're here. This show is for everyone, not just religious people. And my challenge for you is this, listen with an open mind, even if you take the God parts out, I'm super confident that you're still gonna benefit from this conversation. And so here it.

Margaret. It's so good to have you back on the show. Thanks for being here. Thanks Joey. It's great to be. I was especially excited to talk with you again, because you're an expert on trauma and what the people that we're serving are dealing with so often is trauma from their broken families. And so I'm excited to speak with you, and I'm excited to tell everyone about this book that you've written because as I understand it, and you correct me if I'm wrong here, the framework that you offer really is an antidote to trauma.

So two questions for you. 1:00 AM I overstating that? And two, is there anything else you would say about the problem that this book solve? I see it as definitely not even just the antidote of trauma, but trauma prevention as well. Like when people are looking to like build their own families. Right. And also like one of the, when I'm, when I'm working with people in, in treatment in my office and I lay out the concept, be behind the book, we use it throughout the week for them to understand the why behind, like, why the things they've gone through.

Are particularly painful, hurtful difficult, because a lot of times people tend to minimize those things and think, well, if I just wasn't a whim or if I just had a thicker skin, or if I just wasn't so sensitive or, or this or that, and or people have been through worse, I hear that a lot. And I think when people can understand why things were painful and hurtful and that it was actually because the situation was not what we're made for, then they're able.

One not minimize it. And then so really be able to experience compassion and be compassionate towards themselves about it. And then also it puts 'em on a better trajectory going forward to be able to understand why those ways are not the ways to relate to others in the future. Right. Cuz they really understand the, the whole picture.

So. beautiful. I love it. It makes me think of, I've heard it said that who's more of the hero, a firefighter who puts out a fire, or maybe a firefighter who puts in a fire prevention system. And in a lot of ways, it's like, well, prevention is, is beautiful. And so either way, if someone's been through trauma, they can benefit from the book.

If they maybe haven't and they. Avoid that, or prevent that from happening, then they can benefit from the book. So really, really beautiful. Mm-hmm what would you say is the outcome or the transformation that you want for each person who, who reads the books and start more than reading it? Who puts it into action?

Who starts living this out? What's that outcome that you want for them simply stated it would be able to, to live, um, in the fullness of, uh, healthy. Connection communion with others and healthy integration with themself, and then hopefully healthy union with God, if for those who are on that track, because it's really like the essence of connection, whether it's to God, ourselves or others, it, it all comes down to the same principles.

So. Beautiful. And let's talk about that a little bit, like abundant life and other words that I would use for that too. And I know you would agree would be thriving or flourishing. Sure. Yeah. What do we mean when we say that? Cause I think for a lot of people, especially who have a really broken background, they may have never tasted that they may have no real concept of flourishing or thriving or some sort of abundant life.

Like, I dunno what that means. What would you say to someone who doesn't really can't relate to. Words. Yeah. Well, I just think, you know, a little bit about my history, right. And I, I grew up in a crazy amount of dysfunction and trauma. And so I, I came by the field honestly. Right. And so, yeah, I never understood that life could really be about something more than trying to like quiet the, the discord and confusion and drama, you know?

So I really like the definition of. Peace. That's more of like Shalom, right? Like, so the definition for that is like wholeness there's sense of completeness and fullness and that kind of thing, as opposed to the absence of discord. So to me, abundant life is such a sense of fullness and, and completeness that then it overflows to the others in your lives as well.

Mm. So good. And I, I would say too, that the byproduct of that is joy, which I think we all want, we want happiness. Oh yeah. Would you agree with. Oh, yeah, absolutely joy. Freedom. Yeah. Yeah. I think both of those words come to mind. beautiful. And I love what you said too. And I think so, so many of us have been there and even the people listening right now might be there right now.

It's just in the survival mode where perhaps even in a victim mode where they've, you know, gone through a lot and they just feel powerless and hopeless. And so I think this is very timely, so many people need, and I'm just really excited to, uh, to dive into this book. So in the book, you'd say that true, authentic.

Healthy connection is the antithesis of trauma. It's the antidote, like we said, why is that? Let's break into that a little bit more. Why is that the antidote? Yeah. Well, I see it like, as, I guess let's say I, I use the word antithesis because I see it as like the opposite of trauma, right? If like trauma is what we are not made for.

And so therefore it does damage to us on all different levels, physically, emotionally, spiritually, cognitively, relationally, you know, and the list goes on. Then, if that's true of trauma, then connection is that for which we're made. And it's really that by which we grow in personal integration, like meaning like our personal sense of self, our really our ability to, to really feel comfortable in our own skin, which is a really big deal.

And to be able to relate to others with a sense of starting with the needle on fall instead of the needle on empty mm-hmm . So we're really able. To relate from a sense of freedom where it's really, I can engage with you from a place of being filled up first. And so then it overflows to you rather than going.

Each interaction, really hoping that this desperate need in me somehow gets filled up by this person. And that's just such a, a setup for crazy making, you know? So I see connection is really, uh, what we're made for, because it's what causes that, that personal integration and that true piece and joy and freedom between people and relationships and that sense of, of growing union with God.

So good. And would you say, let's say someone's listening right now and like, well, I've kind of messed up in my relationships. I've built maybe this unhealthy reliance on another person. Like I feel half empty, you know, all the time, will this book kind of help them course? Correct too. Like, I, I know we're talking about prevention and maybe people in their mind, they might think if I don't use it beforehand.

And then I get in this situation where I'm really broken things. Aren't good. Can this help me course? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So can I share, I'll share a story. So I was doing some follow up work for some people who had gone through trauma therapy and this one particular situation. It was a, a 16 year old boy and his mother.

And there was just a lot of conflict in their relationship because a lots of the stuff that he had been through. So just wrote out the framework really simply it's back. And I had a really simple model of it, and I really just on a page, drew a circle and divided into four quadrants and just wrote in those quadrant.

Boundaries valued, known and openness. I mean, it was just super rudimentary way of describing it to them, but I showed it to both of them and, and said, this is what we all need in relating. And when those things are there, like things are great. And when those things aren't there, everything goes sideways really fast, you know?

And so it was so cool. You know, I didn't like anticipate this cuz it was one of the first settings like that, where I was describing this to people after I'd started seeing. Kind of like a way of understanding human and spiritual integration mm-hmm . But by describing it to this mom and this son, and write, just writing it on this piece of paper and sitting it on the table in front of them.

Now, all of a sudden they were sitting like shoulder to shoulder and looking at this piece of paper and it was like, okay, this is what. We both need. And, and so this is what, where we feel like how you related to, you know, your father and I, what the mom would say, wasn't there, you know, it felt like you've crossed our boundaries or, you know, whatever by violating curfew or what, and for him, it was like, okay, I can understand that.

But like, , I didn't feel like you guys really understood how important going to that event was to me, you know? So I really didn't feel known cuz didn't feel like you, you know, listened to and, and so it was so cool, you know, I'm just like I'm watching this. Interaction take place and thinking how beautiful it was that it went from.

Well, you're a bad kid. Well, you're a mean mom into, before they had that framework of understanding, basically like rules of engagement. Right. And once they had that, then suddenly there was a common. A common goal and a common understanding of we want connection with each other. And I was just like, that was so cool.

And then the, the boy, the teen, he was going to his high school. And, uh, so over the next couple of weeks he would come in and I would be able to ask him about his week in terms of like his relationships with his parents, with his girlfriend or with his friends at school mm-hmm in terms of those connection factors.

And by the first week he came in after, you know, the. Just understanding, you know, explanation. He came in, he was able to explain what was working and what wasn't basically in his life, in terms of those four things. By the second week, he was able to do it without any prompting from me. It was like he had already like, Put his life up against the captain crunch, decoder ring.

Right. And like, knew how to talk about it. By the third week he came in saying that he was able to adjust on the fly in relationships with his girlfriend and his friends and his parents, like in his, just in his mind, like having those simple factors and he was relating to somebody and he felt like, okay, like, there's a block here.

There's a wall here. How this person's responding to me. Something doesn't feel smooth in his head. He just went by those. things and was able to like, yeah. Self correct, like in, in real time. And I was like, wow, that. That was like, that felt like a big victory. Amazing. Yeah. Right. 16 year old that's male, you know, that was like, it felt like a big deal.

Yeah. If it would feel a big deal to be able to teach that to a clinician and have him kind of master it in three weeks, but a 16 year old, it was great. Yeah. No, that's, that's amazing. And you know, Us men, especially when we're teenagers aren't necessarily known for thriving. Well, you know, in the principles of you teach , what was that?

I wasn't gonna say it, but if you want to, yeah. I could say it . Yeah. Some are more advanced than others, but, uh, yeah. Yeah. I was like relating things that I'm learning for the first time, which I'm learning here is something I know. And it makes me think of like a preflight checklist almost. It's exactly a pre a preflight checklist.

I don't know the whole history, but basically after some accidents happened, because pilots who were taking planes off forgot to do really important things. Wow. They put in place, these checklists and these checklists have saved lives basically. Oh wow. Because they force. The pilots to perform this routine, right.

To make sure everything with the plane is healthy. Everything with the plane is functioning and literally it's saved lives. And so it almost makes me think this is kinda like a preflight preflight checklist for relationships. Yeah. And midflight , you can midflight right. There you go. And like we're losing altitude, right?

Like, right. So good love it. So let's get into the principles. So as you mentioned, there are four principles and, uh, I, yeah, I'm just so excited for people to learn them. So if you would teach us, break down these principles, how they work, we can start with value or however you wanna take it. But I was thinking we would start with value.

Cause I think that is the first actually, if, if it's okay with you, I'll start with boundaries because it just kind of makes the most sense to me. So yeah, go ahead. Um, which, okay, so, so I basically look at it like. Boundaries are the first things that we kind of kind of hit up against each other, uh, or hit up against when we're relating to each other.

Right. Is, um, which I would say like a basic sense of safety and respect and because we're body, mind and spirit, we, we get boundaries in all three of those areas. And even more than, than get boundaries, we as a kind of, as a. But like, we have them as a responsibility too. Right. We have a responsibility to set boundaries because those things are, are good self care.

And they enabled me to be able to bring my, a game to a situation. So I think a lot of times we don't get. Taught about boundaries or we get sent, you know, most often people tell me that they got sent a negative message about boundaries, like the boundaries weren't allowed. And I know for myself, got the message, like, who do you think you are if you're setting a, you know, if you're setting a boundary or something.

Hmm. But boundaries are really that first thing that we encounter when we're encountering the other. And, but I think when, when we have a basic sense of safety and respect from that person, then we naturally open. A little bit, you know, okay. I, I feel general sense of safety with this person, but we kind of see what they're about.

Right. And so then that door opens a little bit and I think the next, um, kind of chamber within that, that we reach is value. And I'd say value is if this person's respectful of my boundaries and they continue to relate to me in a way that shows me that they regard me with value based on my dignity as a human person.

or, you know, dignity as a child of God, then, then, okay. Then I feel a little bit safer and I'll even open that door a little bit. You know, it's a very different story when we are relating to somebody and we have a sense that they respect our boundaries. And so we open a little and then all of a sudden we start getting the message.

It's all about what I can get from you. You know what I mean? Right. Or it's based on like your looks or your money or your status or performance or your productivity, you know, there's. there's something in there that I'm trying to get outta you rather than just like, regarding you with dignity because you, you are.

And so then when that door opens a little, then I think what happens next is then we really like, let me let this person like really see and hear a little bit about who I really am. Right. And if they take the time to do that, then there's that sense of feeling known, right? If, if I'd say if. if we experience being seen and heard as an individual, who's very good.

Just very good. Like in our, in our essence, right? Like just again, because we are, it's not something we have to earn. And when that happens, then there's, there's this natural connection, you know, originally when I was seeing it as. Boundaries valued, known, and openness. I had an experience that taught me like, oh, you can't make an end run for openness.

Like, okay, all those things are nice, but I want this person to open. So I'm just gonna try to get my battering Ram out and bash that, that door down. Well, you can't, but when you relate to people, In a way that respects their boundaries and values them inherently. And you take the time to see and hear them as an individual.

Who's very good. That openness naturally happens because it's what we're made for. We're made for connection. I would, I throw chosen in there too, like really at the core, because sometimes the chosen being chosen is more of a it's more time limited, you know, it's not a forever kind of thing. Like really simple example would.

Being in a restaurant and wait staff is coming over and they're throwing the coasters on the table and they're like, hi, how's everybody doing today? You know? And like, good, good, good. If you don't look up, you know, or anything, and everything goes along, you know, just fine. But if you look up and you're like, oh, I'm doing well.

How are you doing? A lot of times they're like, oh, they're kind of taken back. And they're like, oh, I'm doing well. Thanks for asking, you know, it's almost like they kind of stammer like, oh my gosh, you're talking to me, like, I'm a human and not just what's between you and your stake, you know, or something like that, you know?

Yeah. Fair. So that's just being chosen in that moment. You know, it's not, you're gonna send a Christmas card necessarily to this person who waited on you and some relationships are a lot more, they last longer family relationships or friend relationships or things like that. And, and certainly when it.

Talking about it from a spiritual standpoint, it's at the core of our relationship with the Lord. He chose us first. And I think that same way that boundaries are the things we, we meet first with others and then being valued and then being known and then being chosen. I think it's really like when we talk about it from a spiritual perspective, God actually starts on the inside.

Right? Like he chose you out of all the possibilities of people he could possibly. Choose to create and redeem and sanctify and call intimacy with himself. He chose to create you. And then, you know, before I formed you in the womb, I knew you, right? And then his value for us and pouring himself out for us and, and giving himself to us daily.

And then looking at his boundaries, I'd say is protection and provision would be kind of how I look at boundaries that seeing, looking at that from the Lord as, as morality, Really. And so it's like, because I choose, I chose to create you and I know you and I've poured myself out for you. Then I sat before you life and death, please, please, please use life.

It's gonna be so much easier if you do, you know, and in that way, being able to see boundaries from the Lord as. that's what he has for us instead of what he wants from us. Hmm. Because it makes a really big difference in how we receive it. You know, I, for myself, I went through a pretty significant period of time in my life where morality felt much more like what God wanted from me mm-hmm instead of it.

So ended up kind of much more like the older brother and the prodigal son where it's like, you. why is this guy get a fatted calf? And like, I'm over here busting my hump. And I don't even have, you know, a party with my friend, you know, kind of thing, you know, you get bitter and that kind of thing. Totally.

Instead of being able to receive the boundaries as, as gift, you know, primarily as God's protection and, and that kind of thing. So, so yeah, so I think it, it starts at the core. It starts on the inside, cuz God's on the inside, right? Not on the. wow. There's so much there. I know when my parents were going through their divorce and you know, I, I know they probably didn't intend this.

So often I felt like the only time I was involved in maybe their lives on a deep levels when they needed something from me, mm-hmm . And I think so often we see that with the people that we work with is that we almost, we feel used in a way by our parents. And I think just what you said at the end there about God, we just tend to project that image onto God thinking he's the same as our parents.

And so, you know, I, I think that's why a lot of people have an aversion to a relationship with God. It's like. I don't wanna be treated like that. I don't wanna be used. I don't think that he's worth my time, because if he's like my parents then, well, that's not something I'm wanna be a part of. So yeah.

There's a lot there. Anything you would say to that? Yeah. Yeah, definitely. Yeah. I feel like you logged, lobbed it right over the plate on that. So. When I went through trauma therapy, I came back from, from going through, you know, it was like intensive treatment and I came back home and I, I went to pray and I went to the, up to the chapel and I was sitting there and.

God took me like through that in my head showed me like how my father was, but like how he is and how my mom is. So to each one of those takeaway messages about how they parented me to the difference in how he is. And so just this past week with a person I was working with, we ended up with a whole sheet at the end of.

The week of something that, you know, the truth about God, and it was like, dad did this, but God does this, you know, mom did this, but God does that, you know, or that kind of thing. So parents are meant to image God for us. But unfortunately, sometimes that image isn't, it's not very favorable and so very sorted go back.

Yeah. And like rework. no. So true. Yeah, no, I've had to do, you know, a lot of work myself with kind of storing that it's something, right. To be honest, I'm wrestling with a bit right now. Um, just kind of going back to the basics in a way of seeing like, okay, you know, God, do you really want me, or are you just trying to get something out of me?

It's a very honest place to be, I think, especially to take that to prayer. Um, and I realize a lot of people listening might be opposed to that, but I would challenge you if you're listening right now. And you're just very opposed to a relationship with God. Why is that, you know, give us some thought. I think it's, it's worth thinking about it's worth kind of digging into a bit.

And I know it's been very fruitful when I've done that and just ask those honest questions and just wait, listen, see what happens. You know, you probably won't hear an audible voice, but there might be something that happens in your life, whether it's someone. Saying something to you. Some, I don't know a song you hear, it can be something as simple as that, a realization you have, those are sorts of things.

God uses to communicate to me. It's never audible, but it's often through one of those means of a realization or a relationship or something that just kind of comes up in my life. Yeah. It's, uh, it cuts to the heart of so much. I think of our issues with God when we, yeah. You hit the now in the head talking about kind of this problem that we have with seeing God like our parents.

Yeah. Or authority, authority, other people in authority can do that as well. You know, coaches or teachers, they can do the same. Kind of thing, you know, can image God for us in a way that's not necessarily the biggest compliment to God , you know? Yeah. And so then we kind of take that on and go, uh, no, not doing that, you know, at the bottom line, like God disagrees with that every bit, as much as we do , you know, if not more.

Right. And I think that's been something that's given me. Encouragement to like dig into those areas when I just didn't wanna have anything to do with him. Yeah. No, beautiful. That's hard work. Um, it's not something he, it's not something that happens overnight, but that's beautiful. I wanna go back to just this whole framer.

I think it's genius because so often when we talk about these things, it's really kind of like the whole picture of a relationship. It's all the points that you need. To live out a beautiful relationship relationship, a meaningful relationship, a fulfilling relationship. So often I think we maybe just focus on one of these pieces, whether it's boundaries or value or openness, or as we can say, vulnerability, I know it's a big thing that a lot of people talk about.

And so I love that you've kind of put them all together because I, I think they fit together so well. And so going back to. Value. I think this is a big struggling point for a lot of people. We feel worthless. Like, and, and I think that low opinion of ourselves often leads us to even hate ourselves. Mm-hmm um, I know in the past I've had to wrestle with that myself.

And so people might hear this and be like, oh, value, whatever. But I, I think it becomes very practical when you. Kind of dig into it as you explained really well of like, okay, I feel worthless. I feel like I have no value. I feel like I'm not worth loving. I feel like my value only comes from my work or from succeeding in school or sports or mm-hmm , you know, whatever situation like that.

So I think a lot of people listening right now are there right now, they feel worthless. And because of that, All of this other stuff just breaks down. Yeah. And so that's kind why I intuitively I don't know if it was from a past conversation or not, or from the book I intuitively went to value cuz I was thinking, man, that's so foundational, but I, I think it's wise that you started with boundaries.

So yeah, I, growing up, I kind of got that instill in me that your value comes from more of a utilitarian point of view of. The value provided in your job, or like I said, school or sports, things like that, or even money, you know, how big is your bank account? Mm-hmm so when we're talking about value though, you, you hit on it before, but I wanna go a little bit deeper into this.

What do we mean by that? How can we say that people have inherent value? Is that really something that, um, People might disagree with that a little bit. I, I don't, but I, I think, uh, I think it's important to kind of explain a little bit more, so yeah. If you would, yeah. About that, the, yeah, I'd say the meaning of it is that we have an inherent dignity.

That's not contingent on any external factor at all. You know, and even if our, I think for females, a lot of times it's looks, you know, it's based on looks for guys. I think it's more on performance, you know? As in real general sweeping statement. Right. And, but when you take all of that away, there's still like a beauty to the human person, just because we're made in the image and likeness of God.

And so it doesn't matter if, when the wrinkles start to come and, and when you get slower, Running the marathon or, you know, or whatever it is, mm-hmm , then it doesn't matter. There's still a beauty there to, to the, the soul that's like that can't be seen and can't, doesn't have a price tag, you know? And so, and it's actually like, to me, like one of the things that proves the truth of it is actually because when people operate out of that belief and that truth, everything goes well.

And when they operate as though it's not true. Everything breaks down. Right. So, wow. Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. So to me, like it, it is its own proof. You know, this is, it is its own proof of truth. Like, because when people hinge their, their value on some arbitrary metric that's outside of themselves, then they usually either full of anxiety because now I have I'm self-reliant for my own value or.

Like overextending themselves and then super impatient with people who get in their way, because they have so much to accomplish because they're fighting for their own sense of right to be on the planet. And yet when people start from that place of that, they have inherent value. There's just, there's a freedom and a joy, you know, it goes back to those freedom and joy.

That really flows outwards and it, it's not self consumed, you know? And it's yeah. So it, it proves the truth of it to me, you know, within itself. Yeah. And I've seen that in action. Um, I'm thinking of someone right now who just puts so much received so much of their worth or value from their job. Mm-hmm and I remember this particular person was outta work for a long time and it just destroyed.

It just destroyed them. And once they got back into work, it was like they had life again, which mm-hmm I guess it was a good thing. I don't know how to think about that, cuz it wasn't good before that, but I wish there was this alternative, like why, you know, couldn't they see themselves as a valuable human, even if.

They didn't couldn't work. Didn't work, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. And I think that better, we get that worked out before we retire. Right. Or we're gonna be pretty miserable, retired people. Gosh. Amen. Yeah. And one of the things, when you were speaking that came to mind is I think so many people doubt their value because of.

The mistakes that they've made. It's like, well, I've messed up so much in my life. I've mistreated people. I've heard people I've, you know, I have this addiction in my past or, you know, whatever had broken down in their past. I think so much. They, they look at that and they see. Well, I'm not really that valuable.

In fact, I pretty much just deserve to be punished and that's about it. But we're saying here, your value doesn't change based on even your own mistakes. Is that right? Or it might get into murky water there. Oh yeah, no, no, no, absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Our values, of course, I come in from a Christian perspective.

So I'd say, you know, I look at it like when somebody's wearing a, a crucifix or a cross or whatever, like that's their price tag. Like, that's what they're worth, you know what I mean? And that doesn't change. Their price has been set, set and paid and it's not on them to, to pay it. And the price doesn't, it's not, somebody's going around and res stickering the price on them.

No beautiful. And that makes sense. And the book obviously goes into this a lot more, so we'll keep moving. One of the things I wanted to say, one of the most beautiful things about being a dad now is just that I can, you know, attempt to offer my daughter, uh, what I really wish I would've had. And one of the things that.

You know, I've seen a lot just in my life, especially in ministry, working with people, opening up to me is just that. So often there's so many lives we believe, and I think this would be one of them like we're talking about is like, I'm not valuable. I'm not worth anything. I'm not worth loving. Mm-hmm so one of the things I've tried to do, and I encourage parents listening right now, especially new parents to do this is like, I just.

I have this whole litany. I kind of like say to my daughter, I'm like, okay. And I won't go through all of it right now, but one of the things I tell her, I'm like, Lucy, like, you're so worth loving. Like you're so worth loving. Like you're so lovable and you're so worth loving. And my hope it gets me kind of emotional.

But my, my hope is that that just like seeps into her so deep, like down to her bones, like down to her core that. When she, you know, goes through life, like when she's no longer with us, when she's struggling as a teenager, like she will believe that at her core. And maybe there'll be struggles there. I don't doubt that, but I, but I hope that she has like such that foundation that she just goes through life with such peace, with such confidence, with such freedom and joy and all the things that I think so much of us, so many of us want.

So anyway, I wanted to mention that. Cause I think as, as parents, those of us listening, our parents, we can. Um, speak into those places. Almost preemptively kind of like this whole framework is meant to prevent trauma. We can speak into those places into the lives of our children. Yeah. So real quick story.

So I'm not, I don't know if I shared about it in the book, but a friend of mine when her son was 12 he's 18 now, but when he was 12, I was at one of his football games. He was in middle school. And I'll spare you the story to just kind of condense this, but he was playing football and I was at his game. He did something that was like really outstanding, not a football play.

It was a very human interaction with another person. It was like exceedingly, compassionate and good sportsmanship and just like. yeah, really kind of stand out. And so I text his mom who was sitting in the stands and I'm like, do you see him? And she's like, oh my gosh, I love that boy. You know? And so later it, I was at their house because I needed her to show me something on my computer, cuz she was more tech savvy than me.

And, um, he was heading into his room and she went, she was sitting on the arm of the couch, you know, I'm sitting on the couch and she's like leaning down over it showing me, oh, you need to do this and this. And, um, when he goes walking by, she went, oh, you know, just like to herself, like, oh yeah. I wanted to say something to him after, you know, he'd come home and got in a shower and eaten and all that.

So she, she calls him, you know, she's like Zach and he goes, yeah, mom. And she says, I like who you are. Hmm. I'm like, by the time she gets back to the couch, I'm like ugly crying. You know what I mean? and she's like, oh my gosh, are you okay? And I'm like, that's so beautiful. Like how many, how many people never hear?

I like who you are. Yeah. You know, and, and it's, and it's not to villainize saying good job to somebody. Sure. But that's so much the natural. And so then we can take away, like I have good news because I did a good job and like, that's. That's not it. And it's, it's not to say that's necessarily like inherently, mentally unhealthy or something.

Sure. But, but I think there really is something to focusing on applauding somebody for who they are over and above what they did. You know, the courage that it took to do this or that, or the dedication that it took to do this or that, or the integrity, or, you know, whatever, as opposed to the, the job, you know, make it about their being instead of their doing.

Right. So good. I love that. Yeah. And I think even being particular with your language is important there. And instead of just saying good job, like you said, saying, I like, you know how you are. I, I love how you did that. Or even when it comes to kids, I don't mean to make this such a parenting thing for anyone who's like younger, and who's not a parent, not even thinking about a parent, you can kind of put yourself on the opposite end of this.

And, and I can do that with myself too. And thinking like mm-hmm yeah. I would've loved to hear that. That, that would been awesome. Right. It. Thinking back to how, yeah, so many of us just crave that and, and we want that, but you know, we can say someone did a good job and then, but at the same time distinguish, and again, I've my wife and I are kind of working on this right now, but we wanna do that with our daughter.

We wanna applaud her for, um, her efforts. saying, you know, good job like you did really well. You're trying so hard. Like you've grown so much in this area. Mm-hmm but Mo more importantly, just like applaud her for just the person that she is. Right. And not, you know, even using different languages. Like she's really well behaved.

That's about her actions, but she's so good. That's about her right. Inherent value. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. You know, it might seem kind of insignificant, but I think it does, especially after years and years of compounding, if we can speak that into the people in our lives. I think you can have a really, really big impact.

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I, I see it on a yeah. Daily basis when I'm working with people, just the, you can tell. Their, their value of themself is formed based off of whether they, you know, whether it was for getting good grades in school or for being star athlete or being super helpful around the house or being the peacemaker or whatever, you know?

Sure. As opposed to that, there was this unshakeable value that they had, that that was unchanging. And that's, I think that that sense of security is the stuff that like yeah. That peace is made of. Yeah. So good. I love that. That sense of security, cuz so often we talk about insecurities, but the opposite would be yeah, just that deep sense of security.

Mm-hmm I know who I am. I know I'm good. I know I'm worth loving. I know that. Yeah. I have a lot to offer to, to people in my life. Not just for what I can do, but just who I am and so good love this. Can someone who's not religious benefit from this framework. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think that was where I saw it first was, you know, I was, had been practicing trauma therapy for a very long number of years and started noticing this pattern and, but noticed it, and, you know, in terms of human dynamics, wait, these connection is what people bring up to me.

If they come for a week of intensive. Trauma therapy and bring up anything beautiful. Like it always has to do with connection, you know, to God's self for others. And so realized that first and then, oh yeah. It's about boundaries, valued, known, and openness. Like those were always the things. And so it was, I noticed it in, uh, human to human, like relationship first.

It was only like going back, working that backwards. Like wait, when we relate to ourselves that. Then that fosters like integrity and that sense of like human integration. Right. And then like, wait, this is how God relates to us too. So it was only going backwards that, that I found that that was like really, to me, like the higher authority.

that besides just Margaret saying these things are important, but like, wait, this is the way the Lord relates to us. So there must be something solid about this. . Yeah, like I said, you know, I noticed it in human relationships and it, so it, yeah, it gets us just on the, and you know, human relationships with others.

But again, you know, with ourselves as well, so good. Yeah. And no, I, I think that what you said, it's just, it's a human thing. So even if you know, you're not in a place right now where you feel like God could. Kind of in the equation, then it's just a human thing. It'll improve your relationships and it'll improve.

Mm-hmm , you know, the way you feel about yourself, which is so good. You mentioned the story before of the mom and the son, you know, who kind of learned this framework and he started using it. Oh yeah. Did you have any other stories about people who just really benefited from learning these principles and then starting to live them in their own.

Yeah. Yeah. A couple of people come to mind in particular people I've worked with in treatment and a couple of 'em have I continue to have contact with. and then being able to say how their in their living situations, the people they're relating to that are able to just let go of being so annoyed by things that used to annoy them like on a daily basis, uh, you know, feeling disregarded or not listened to, or overlooked or, you know, whatever it was in different community situations.

And so, because of recognizing what was going on and digging back into. Sense of, you know, if I'm, if I don't feel known out here by this other person and that's really grading on me then, oh, I do. I feel known by myself. Yeah. Okay. I, I am regarding myself as someone who's very good. And yet I still feel the need to, to experience that.

Okay. So I can drop anchor so to speak, like in God, like to get that filled up, if I'm feeling like it's some, you know, like an area that's really lacking and as this person's done that. This, you know, kind of more tendency to complain about that and really kind of let that get him down then. Like it's just not there anymore.

And so he just operates with like this degree of peace and. Man. We just keep coming back to that word. Don't we? But yeah. Yeah. Like it's like, it's almost like not even on the radar, you know, so much so. Hmm. So that's so that's cool. Yeah. Also seen it be, uh, become like the rules of engagement, you know, so to speak in relationships like, okay.

Somebody I worked with quite recently, this was a, a woman and she was able to re. Her own behavior is why she had responded the way she did in the situation to her husband. And then also like to take the same thing and apply it to him and go, oh, these are the things he needs as well. Wow. And then, um, so it didn't just lead to, this is how we need to relate, but it actually led her from a place of feeling hurt about something to actually a place of compassion for him.

And so I was. Wow. There's a lot. Once people kind of, once you see it, you can't not see it, you know, as the necessary ingredients. And when you realize, you know, I think there's that first level of, okay, this is what I need and okay. I can get how this applies to me and how this affects me. But when you go, uh, this is what this person needs to.

And then, then you really got it, you know? And then you're, it's not just about yourself and you really understand more of. Why things happen and you're able to not personalize things when hurts happen, you know, not internalize them as personal. so good. Love it. Yeah. And I'm sure you have a million other stories, which we don't have time for, but do I'm the book has more of those stories.

Yeah. There's I, I'm pretty sure there's good bit of stories in there. Kind of how, how the framework came to, to my mind in particular first and yeah. There's different things in there. And a few words, I'm just curious, how have you benefited from it? Cuz this is obviously something you discovered put language to, but yeah.

I'm curious how this has kind of played out in your own. Gosh. So I'm, I'm the kid from the time I was little, I was always why, why, why, why I was that kid, right? so it's helped me understand why to like so many things, like so many things. Well, there's this line in Batman begins. Okay. Which is a highly philosophical movie.

It's a fantastic, that's my favorite movie. That's my favorite. Oh really? Yeah. I Julia, like you even more natural you too. so, you know, he says like, we always fear what we don't understand. And I just think that's you remember the, the who's a, the drug, the mafia guy basically like, right that under Lord guy and yeah, I.

Relationships can just be so confounding, you know, because people can be so complex and we're all also different from each other, as much as we really have more in common. But when there can just be this kind of like swirl of like, why is a person doing this? Or why is this happen? Or why is this bothering me so much?

Or lots and lots and lots of whys. And so to me, it always goes back to, to two multiple choice questions. It's like, okay, is it a breakdown in connection to God's self or others? okay. And then the next question would be, is it about boundaries, value being known or openness? Boom. So like two questions and I'm able to get to the crux of what's going on in a situation and kind of like write the ship, you know, internally when I feel like I'm losing my piece or something.

And so, yeah, so it's, it's been very, it's been a blessing to me, so good. It almost makes me think of like an analogy of. You know, relating to another person is John Paul. The second would talk about like throwing a bridge. It's like we're walking across a bridge to an island that is another person. And it almost makes me think of this framework is the bridge.

Yeah. That, that bridge is the connection. And if you want the connection, you need these four. Pieces in place mm-hmm right, right. Yeah. What we're, it's what we're made for. Right. So if I go up, you know, if we're in the same place and we're having a conversation and, and I like cover your mouth and nose and then expect you to be able to, to be able to survive and be able to carry on the conversation, like that's.

That's silly. It's not gonna work. Yeah. You know, but we do the same thing on this invisible level in terms of, you know, de depriving each other of what, just what we need in order to relate healthily. Yeah. No, so good. I think that we focus so much on the physical and what's before our eyes and our world and our very materialistic world.

So it's. A good reminder, that there's so much more happening below the surface that can't be seen. So good. Uh, aside from buying the book, what's one thing that you would say someone listening right now who wants to live these principles out, what what's maybe one thing that they can do today to begin living out these principles.

I always think it starts with self-compassion when I'm working with somebody and, and they get to that point where they're able to, to really have compassion for themself in whatever painful things they've gone through. It's a game changer. You can't do that based on just, you know, you're not brimming over with warm, fuzzy feelings towards yourself.

Then, you know, if you have a relationship with the Lord, then that's. You can kind of dig into that, right? His compassion for yourself, you know, for you and for your suffering and stuff. And that's, you know, somebody had asked me once, like, self-compassion, isn't that the same as like narcissism? I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no.

Self-compassion is imitation of Christ. Right? Because he has compassion for us, you know, and I really think being able to. To have that and kind of, even if it's a fake until you make it, you know, kind of at first. Sure. And, and just really growing in that, you know, it's the whole idea. You can't give what you don't have, you know, so you have compassion for yourself.

Really your compassion for others is gonna be on shaky ground. But when you're able to be understanding and accepting and compassionate towards yourself, then you're able to more readily give that instead of always looking to like, to get that need met by others. Oh, that makes so much sense. And I think that's something we, we all can grow in, which is such a good challenge, which I love kind of leaving it at that.

But I did wanna just ask you, I know you're starting a, a new ministry. Tell us about that. Tell us what you offer, if you would. Yeah. Yeah, I'm very excited about it. Um, it's just, I've learned so many principles over the last six, 16 years of doing intensive trauma therapy and so really wanna make those available.

I've started doing retreats for, I've done some for, you know, for priests, for deacons, deacons and their wives. And then, um, most recently I did two for, for lay people and just taking basically the same, because these are the principles. Where health and wholeness happen. They're also the same areas where pain happens.

And so taking the same things and making them available in a retreat format. So we can really kind of access those areas where woundedness happens and I've seen. I've seen amazing stuff happen in a very short amount of time that I just never really thought could happen that quickly. And that's really exciting for me because you know, the kind of work I've, done's been one week with the same person, like for the whole week.

And so to be able to reach more than one person, you know, in the retreat format, Through the course of the retreat has been, has been great. So, so retreats, um, father David, ticker, hoof, who's one of the Tor friers and I recorded an online retreat. That's up on my website doing workshops. We're actually like teaching people, the principles and some actual tools to be able to address.

Pain from wounds they've incurred in the past, but also to be able to relate to themselves and the people in their life, more healthily. So workshop, format, retreat format, online retreats kind of thing. Beautiful speaking. Yeah. Yeah. Excited. Yeah. I'm so excited to see how this grows and just the people it helps.

Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Did, uh, was there anything else you wanted say. No, no, no, just excited. Just excited. You know, it's been like a dream come true for, it's been a long, it's been a long haul and I love trauma therapy, but I don't know. There's something about rounding the corner as you get older and going wait, like even if I live to be a hundred, there's only a certain number of people I could reach.

So just wanting to be able to reach more people so good. And if someone wants to bring in to do a workshop or retreat, uh, speaking engagement or anything else that you offer, uh, how can they. Yeah. If they just contact me through my website, then we can get the ball rolling. So sacred heart healing, ministries.com, or email me at Margaret sacred heart healing, ministries dot.

Sounds great. We'll throw that in the show notes guys. So you have easy access to that, but Margaret, thank you so much. You're great. I, uh, always love, uh, talking with you and I'm excited to, to work with you more in the future. And, uh, yeah, I just wanna give you kind of the last word, any final wisdom you'd like to impart to everyone listening when it comes to connection, when it comes to trauma, when it comes to anything related to that, what encouragement would you give to, to everyone?

Wow. Yeah, I would just really say hope because, you know, I mean, I can talk about all this. Like it's, you know, like, like it's so natural to me, but man, if, gosh, as recently as 2003, which I guess is getting 19 years ago at this point, but in some ways it seems like only yesterday when I was. You know, suicidal for 18 months and hospitalized twice and on so many medications and nobody could figure out what was going on.

So, um, so I would just really say hope because I never thought the degree of, of peace and contentment, joy that I live with. Like I never thought was. Possible this side of heaven. so I just say, hang in there. There's more to life than surviving for sure.

Which of the four principles that Margaret taught us is lacking the most in your life. . And in addition to that, what's one thing that you can do today or this week to grow in that area. Give that some thought it doesn't have to be long. It can be a five or 10 minute exercise, but give it some thought, which of the four principles that Margaret taught is lacking the most in your life.

What's one thing you can do to grow in that area. If you enjoyed my conversation with Margaret, you wanna learn more about her connection framework? Just buy Margaret's book fearless. You can get that on Amazon, wherever you buy books, you can click on the link in the show notes as well. The resources mentioned are in the show notes@restorministry.com slash 63.

Thank you so much for listening. If this has been useful for you, feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, share this podcast with them. Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole. And become the person that you were born to be.

#062: The Best of 2021: Restored Podcast Highlights

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TRANSCRIPT

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Welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' divorce separation. Our broken marriage. So can Phil ho again, I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listening. This is episode 62 and as a way to reflect on the gear, my team, and I wanted to share some of the best moments on the restored podcast.

So you're about to hear seven short clips from episodes published last year. If you're new to the podcast, this is the perfect way to sample our content, to see how we can help you. And if you're a veteran listener, I wanna just thank you. Thank you for listening for so long. I hope this has been so.

Helpful useful. And most importantly, practical for you. And I wanted to say to you, this is a perfect episode to share with someone that you know, who really needs to hear this content. The clips are not necessarily in a particular order when we were choosing which clips include. I honestly wanted to choose all of the episodes from last year because they're all really good, but we obviously had to narrow it down.

So we chose seven clips and basically we based it on popularity feedback from you guys and some episodes that just stood. To us, by the way, if after hearing the clip, you wanna listen to a particular episode in its entirety, but maybe you forgot the episode number. Just go to the show notes, to find it@restorministry.com slash 62.

I'll remind you of that link at the end. Our first episode is episode 39, the anatomy of a wound, and how to heal with Dr. Bob shoot. Now, Dr. Baba says psychologist, he's an author, and he spent really his professional life helping people to heal their wounds in this clip. He explains really the anatomy of a wound, how a.

Works.

I wanna switch gears. I wanna talk about the anatomy of a wound. You write about this, uh, in your book, be healed. You write that, you know, there's various pieces and parts to wound, and I think it's really helpful if we wanna heal to understand that. And so if you would please teach us about that, break that down for us.

Yeah. And, and let me put it in the relation to the, to the divorce, because it'll become much more alive in this way, but. And, and be healed and, and other material. I talk about three circles. There's like three levels of the heart or three layers of the heart. And on the inside is just the pain from the wound.

So it's, it's trauma. And as we're finding more and more about trauma, trauma stays in your body until it's released and it stays in your mind and it affects the way your brain's organized and it affects the way every cell of your body. And. You know, it, it affects our physical, emotional, spiritual health.

And typically trauma is too much for us to bear in the moment. That's why it takes us a while to work through trauma. But it's not that the trauma's in the past, it's, it's the trauma remains with us until it's released. And so it's released. Through the experience of, of releasing the pain or the anger or the rage or the powerlessness or the fear or whatever manifestation that has.

But, but our bodies and our minds and our souls pulled on to trauma. One of the ways we do that is through our beliefs. And that's the next band. If you will, the next circle in its the beliefs are of two, two types. It's the things that we believe about ourselves, which affect our identity. The way we see ourselves, that's the beliefs we have about other people and about God and about life, which are we call judgements.

You know, they, they're the ways that filter our perception of reality, both about ourselves and about other people. And so in, you know, in the case of, you know, my, my experience of a trauma of abandonment of my dad, And for you two, and there's a rejection in it. Those are different wounds. There's a powerlessness there's fear.

So what we call the seven deadly wounds, all have beliefs associated with them. And so, you know, one of the beliefs and these aren't just beliefs as at an intellectual level, there's deep, deeply held beliefs of the heart, which is I'm alone. I'm not loved. I can't trust anybody. And there's a hopelessness that things aren't gonna get any better.

All those get, if you will lodged into the heart at a deep level, even if our mind knows a different truth or understanding knows a different truth, those, those things kind of hold. We hold onto them and they hold onto us and we actually hold onto them. As a way of protecting against the trauma, believe it or not, even though they keep the trauma in place and keep us in the trauma.

They're, they're in some ways a barrier to that trauma. Hm. And then the judgements we have to other people, you know, it's like the judgements that I made towards my dad or about marriage are about God or about the church or about women, you know, or about drinking, you know, all those things that, that form perceptions that then play themselves out.

When you get involved in relationships. You know, a lot of those judgements have unforgiveness related to them. Uh, and so we work through a process of forgiveness, but also of really recognizing and releasing the judgements because they filter everything. They're like putting on glasses that color, everything that you see.

And then the final outside circle is what we call inner vows or resolutions of the will of ways we're gonna protect ourselves. So one of mine was, I will never divorce. Like my parents, because I'll never want to hurt my children. Like I was hurt and we were hurt or I'll never want to hurt my wife. Like my dad hurt my mother.

And you say, well, that's a really good vow, right? Yeah. Yeah. But it isn't, it was good when I made it in marriage with the holy spirit. And that's really what I promise and I'm gonna love my wife for better or for worse and sickness and in health. And that vow actually kept us together. But this inner vow wasn't even C.

It was made out of fear and judgment. And in that it, it creates this self-protection that actually almost brought me into a place that was a very thing that I feared. And it's, it's hard to describe that, but it's, it's like I was so in fear of hurting my wife and hurting my children, that I didn't deal with the pain, or even with the conflicts that came up, you know, I was afraid of being afraid of rejecting or afraid.

Being alone or, and so those vows actually led me to insulate and protect and to control, uh, because that's what we do out of fear is we tend to control things rather than trust mm-hmm . And so it creates this whole vicious cycle of destruction that you're not even aware of until you're face to face with it.

And that that really began my deeper healing process. 10 years into my marriage, 10 to 12 years into my marriage.

The key to healing is truly understanding your wounds, truly understanding your brokenness. And you can think of a doctor who can only treat a disease once he diagnoses that disease, once he understands it. And the same is true for emotional. Wounds, you can't heal without first diagnosing without first understanding your brokenness.

And so if you want more check out that episode, that was our most popular episode of the year with Dr. Bob Schutz again, though was episode 39. Next is episode 37. Trauma what it is and how it damages you with Margaret Vasquez. Margaret is a trauma therapist she's been in practice for over 15 years, truly an expert on trauma.

And she's helped so many people heal from trauma, especially people who thought. Healing wasn't even possible, maybe that's to you right now. And so I especially invite you to listen to this clip and then hopefully listen to the full episode with Margaret in this clip we discussed what trauma is and how it affects you.

I wanna start with a, a really basic question. What is trauma? What's the definition of trauma. the simplest definition of trauma that I like to use is any event that overwhelms a person's normal ability to cope. And so kind of, you can kind of imagine, like, in that definition itself kind of contains the idea that that varies from person to person, right.

Because what overwhelms one person might not overwhelm another and that kind of thing. So it's a real, it's real particular to the person. So I kind of like that, that like, understanding that because. If we understand that, then we don't compare and go, oh, well, this didn't bother that person, but it really bothers me.

And so what's wrong with me, you know? So it, it really all has to do with our perspective in the situation and our perception of it, and really our personal experience of it as to if we're traumatized by. By an event or not. Okay. No, that makes so much sense. So if you would, what's an example, I guess, of a traumatic event that you typically see.

I know, based on what you said, it varies for people, but what's something that's kind of a typical traumatic event. And I know some people talk about trauma in terms of like a big tea trauma versus a little tea trauma. What would some examples be to help people listening right now who may not have a handle on that?

Yeah, sure. Um, so one of, so kinda some of the obvious ones would be, um, abusive, any kind. You know, physical, emotional, spiritual, sexual, verbal, natural disaster or accidents can be traumatic as well. It, it, it's so funny because so often people say, well, couldn't it have been worse? You know what? I went through, like, couldn't have been worse and I'll say, well, it could always have been worse or we wouldn't be having this meeting.

Right. Mm-hmm cause we're still alive. You know? So I think it's, I think it's more, it makes more sense to compare it to what we're made for. Instead of could have been worse because if something bothered us, that's enough reason. You know, if it was traumatizing to us, if it overwhelmed my, my whoever's personal ability to cope, then that, and of itself is reason enough for it to be trauma.

I often say like in trainings, I call it trauma. When I'm with my brothers, we call it childhood, you know, so, and I guess it's just kind of make that distinction because people can tend to, to minimize and kind of beat themselves up for, for things bothering. Right. And kind of say, I should have been worth thick skinned or tougher, or I'm being wimpy or self pity or, you know, or whatever that these things are getting to me.

And it's really not a matter of that. So some of the things that people typically think of as trauma are like combat or violent crimes, but it, it can really run the gamut. One of the. Biggest ones that I work with with people is biggest. Meaning one of the ones that that's the most effect most affects people is bullying.

And, and that's really sad cuz that's something that's kind of rampant today. Definitely. Wow. And it's um, I, I think you were a spot on in saying that a lot of people think of trauma as just this huge event in my life. Like you said, a big natural disaster, something very dramatic that happened like going to war, you know, something like that, but it.

A great point that it can be something that maybe is less dramatic. It can be something. Uh, a lot of people may write off as not being very important or being something that they should be able to have a handle on. Yeah. Well, you know, I kind of, I kind of got scolded in this back in the early days of practice and I was working with a young veteran and he had been through a lot of verbal abuse from.

His father. And he said to me, worse for him than hand to hand combat was verbal abuse from, from his dad when he was a little boy and kind of intuitively like just in my gut, that made sense to me. But I just, you know, I just asked him to say more about that. And he said, well, when I, when I went in the army, they gave me a gun and said, people are gonna be shooting at you.

Go defend yourself. That wasn't how it was when I was seven years old, little boy sitting at the breakfast table, eating my breakfast, you know, and my person who was supposed to be protecting me was just verbally decimating me, you know, mm-hmm. And while that kind of really put it in perspective, you know,

that episode is so eye-opening, there's so much more in it about trauma, about how to heal from it. I highly highly recommend it again. That's episode 30. Episode 58 is next forgiveness. The secret to healing and freedom with father John Burns. And we all know that forgiveness is not easy, but is it worth it?

Father John Burns. Who's an expert on healing through forgiveness shares. Why forgiveness is good for you and why unforgiveness is bad for you. And this is not strictly a religious. Conversation, but rather a human one. And so listen with an open mind, especially if you don't believe in God,

unforgiveness is classically defined as a form of hatred. It, it falls under the category of hatred and, and hatred never leads to anything. Good. Hatred is a vice and it's destructive. It's consumptive. So. Even though we may not immediately think of the places where we have unforgiveness as places of hate.

Unforgiveness is a type of hatred. It's where we're, we're throttling our enemy and demanding repayment. And again, especially sometimes an exorbitant repayment or a type of repayment that can't be had. So it's a kind of a futile posture in which we're very often stuck. I think it was Corey 10. Boom, who said to forgive is to, to let a prisoner free and to discover that the prisoner's.

So, so it's liberating because we discover we're clenched up toward our enemies and self-defense posture, survival mechanism, mode, and forgiveness is like a letting go of that, that posture of, of tension and, and a bound up heart putting down the weapons, you know, like not being just like on guard for the next encounter so we can go to battle.

And that all leads us to a certain. Lightness of heart at ease of breathing. I mean like a, a lot of the people I've walked with in, in forgiveness will talk about being able to breathe again after they've forgiven and this living under a constriction prior to that, that they didn't even know about. So it's just liberating aside from increasing our excellence and making our, our lives more like Christ's life, because he's perfectly merciful.

It also frees us up from all kinds of bondage, emotional bondage that has, as you named even a neurological impact. The best way to think about healing is always integration or communion or union and wounding sin, uh, as division separation, fragmentation, our minds even are stories they're fragmented by these painful places is where we shut down or black things out or tried to skip over.

Healing reintegrates or reifies, reifies the, the, the narrative, our own story. Reifies our life into God's life. Reintegrates us into God. Reintegrates our own hearts ends the, the, the war within us thinking, you know, like St. Paul says, like, I. I do the things I do not want to do. And I do not do the things I want to do.

Healing just makes it easier to do the good things and avoid the evil things. And when we notice the other going on it's cuz there's some sin, not only our own, but that which has been inflicted upon us. So forgiveness is just this. I would argue essential and central pathway out of the, the death trap of our wounds.

We, we default to living there, but, but when we discover there's a way out, not only is it hopeful, but it's also totally liberating. And so it's gonna end the hatred. It's gonna end the binding force on our hearts. It's also gonna end all kinds of neurological complexity and physiological complexity.

That episode is. Notch. And if there's someone in your life that you need to forgive, give that a listen for most of us who come from broken families, there's so much hurt. There's so much need for forgiveness. And so if you want grab a pen and paper, open up your notes app and take some notes. There's so much to learn from father John, as he walks through the steps to forgive someone in that episode.

Again, that's episode 58. On deck is episode 56, how virtue results and happiness and freedom with Dr. Andrew Swafford virtue is a habitual disposition to do the good that's the definition that the Greeks use. And it looks like good habits typically, but there's much more than just that it truly does lead to happiness and to freedom, which Dr.

SWER touches on so much more. In this clip,

what exactly are do we mean when we say virtue? What is virtue ? Well, I I'll tell you what, where it really struck me as, as an athlete. And when I had my, my conversion kind of really came to a head in a Christian moral life class with DRS. And I walked in thinking it's about a bunch of rules and the Bible says this church is this can't do that.

And I walked in, I couldn't have been more wrong. It was about freedom, friendship, happys. Virtue. All of a sudden I could see, gosh, this is why you're not happy because you, my friend are made for more. So one of the things that's really deep in the, in the, the classical tradition, uh, in likeso Plato, but, but is just absorbed and enhanced by the Christian tradition is really to see it as an athletic metaphor.

Right? I mean, like any player can hit a lucky shot, but the good player is consistent. Is reliable, can do it on command and, and takes joy in doing it with greater and greater excellence. That's what virtue really is all about. It's not just like on the outside. What do I do? It's what kind of a person, a man role am I becoming?

And the great beauty of this when you really step in is. In each and every action, the choice really is not simply what do I do right here right now? It's who do I want to be? Because I'm actually modifying my very self, just like a picture. Like I joke with my students. I'm like, look so often we wanna say, Hey, I'm a good guy, deep down.

I mean, deep down. I'm a good guy. Despite what I did last weekend, I'm a good guy. It's like, Hey bro. It's like saying I'm a good pitcher. Deep down. I just never throw strikes. it's like, it doesn't work like that because each pitch you throw with poor mechanics makes it more likely you'll throw with poor mechanic.

The next time. And so it's so easy for so many of us to say, Hey, I'm gonna live it up now. And I will get real about life in five years. And in light of virtue, it's like, no, no, no, who, what you're doing now is directly related to you'll be in five years because you are on a journey of becoming you're becoming a certain kind of person.

And so at virtue, does it becomes a, you know, it's, there's different etymology. I mean, veer and Latin means a Manliness or a power, like virtue gives you the ability. To do the good to do it promptly, to do it even effortlessly and to do it with joy. In other words, the moral life is not just, let's always do the hard thing.

It's no become the kind of people who can do the right thing. With ease with joy promptly on demand and thereby attained the freedom to be who you really wanna be. We all wanna be the hero when it counts, but the only way you get there is by being a champion in the little things. And you think about movies like gladiator, right?

So remember when he, you know, he's captured and think about the difference to him as a seasoned soldier. Versus others who have never seen combat. And does that one scene with a guy's like tinkling nose lake. And that probably would be me in all honesty, but, but that's what virtue does. Me too. It makes you a seasoned, moral and spiritual athlete.

So you've been there. You've been tested, you have a pattern of overcoming these things. And so when the big test comes like. You're ready. Whereas you're not just a lucky player who, oops. He hits a lucky shot. Like, no, no, you're you you're Michael Jordan. You you're the one who's who wants the ball in that clutch moment because you've honed in on the skills to play the game of life with excellence.

It's about the art of living and living well. I love that. And I was just watching gladiator last night. That's hilarious. As soon as you, as soon as you were saying that I was like gladiator. Cause yeah, Maximus had spent years and years developing his skills as a warrior. And uh, it's not something that happens overnight.

And I think that's a good reminder. One of my teachers at Franciscan, I went to Franciscan university. One of my teachers, Dr. Um, Ashe. He would always talk about ease, promptness and join. I love that framework cuz you basically to everyone listening. You know, that you've acquired a virtue integrated into your character when you can do it with ease, prominence, and joy.

Right. And so really helpful to remember. Totally. I aerosols got a great line at the beginning of his ethics, where he says, um, the it's really fascinating. The pleasure or pain accompany in an action is an index of my. It's not that the pleasure pain is an index of the action being good or evil. It's not that, but like if I'm especially pained by doing a virtuous action, if it really hurts, that's a sign that I have not yet mastered that virtue.

It's sort of like, I mean, you know, for me, this is pretty smoking fast. I've done it a couple times around a six minute mile, but yeah. And let's say I do that. I throw up everywhere. Right. And it's been a long time since I've done that, but let's say I train for a series of months and then around the same mile, same pace.

It won't be as painful. When I'm in better shape, that's what the virtuous, life's all about.

Dr. Swafford is the man such good episode. I learned so much from him. And if you wanna know more, listen to episode 56 onto the next episode, which is episode 48, fear became reality. I'm just like my father. Bart shoots and Bart shoots is the brother of Dr. Bob shoots, who you heard at the beginning of the episode.

And his story is just amazing. He was at rock bottom. So. So alone and then his life radically changed. And you'll hear a little bit about that in this clip.

After, after a few relationships ended, I, I came to the point of going love doesn't exist. You know, love doesn't exist. And so I just lived for temple pleasure. Now I just walked away from everything I believed and valued and, and just gave up. I was so depressed and so discouraged. So disillusioned, I just gave up on love and it was in that season and I would just feel guilty and I was alone in my room and full of shame and, and self hatred.

All this stuff. And I was like, I gotta change. And you know, I just didn't know how, honestly, I didn't know how until my senior year is like everything caught up to me and then it was like, oh gosh, okay. How do I change? You know, that, that, that, that was that work for me, you know? And I, I think for every one of us to answer your question, I just think.

We each, we each have our own journeys, you know, and the biggest thing I would say is never give up, never give up because, because there's gonna be answers, there are answers and, and you just have to keep persevering. And I knew that. And so I just kept going, you know, I, I, I, I entertained taking my life so many times and I was like, no, I'm not a quitter.

I'm not gonna do that. I'm never gonna quit. I'm gonna persevere. And, you know, little did I know, you know, that I would, I would make my way through it, but I, but I. Amazing. It's hard to, to know that in the moment. Right. Cause everything can just feel hopeless, but you're in a much better spot now. So yeah. I am curious what, what changed?

Like what happened? How did you eventually find healing? It sounds like it was a long journey, but, but what changed? Yeah. Yeah, it was, you know, and you know, through my four, actually five years of college, I, uh, I tried everything, honestly. I tried. I mean, I got into positive mental attitude stuff and you know, and I'd put on this good, positive mental attitude.

And it worked, you know, I, I was able to succeed. I would, uh, go to, you know, psychology. I tried, I tried everything I could think of, you know, all relatively good things. I, I went to church a few times, you know, I, I, I would go and give it a shot and go to church. And that would last me about a week or a month, you know, and then I would go right back.

To my vomit, you know, by my vomit is, you know, after my freshman year, when I just gave up on love, it was just, it was just partying, womanizing, you know, just, just living, just totally lost from who I really was. And just, just totally just, I mean, a good guy externally, but just, just totally lost. So it was.

Senior year, you know, and I remember my dream was to play in the NFL. And so in the football field, I had some successes, ups and downs. Now it's my senior year and I'm starting on that team that I said eventually finished 11 and one number two in the country. And I'm on track for my dream. And I'm like, this is great.

And, uh, got a bunch of friends and success and you know, the team's great, everything looks wonderful. First play of our second game. I got injured and I missed four games. And in that season, I was confronted with my life and it had happened several times over the five years of my college journey, but this one just feels like the last straw.

And, um, I actually, I met this girl. And, uh, we're just talking at a, at a bar and, um, she we're hanging out for about 45 minutes, you know, or drinking and hanging out. And I had intentions, you know, and here we were, and, and she, uh, looks at me and she says, I hate you. I'm like, what, whoa, what are you talking about?

I mean, we just met, you know, and she says, not only do I hate you, my whole sorority hates. I was like, whoa, what do you mean? I mean, your sorority knows me. Yes. And then she mentions three girls. It is painful even to recall. I mean, this is probably 37 years ago, you know, and I it's still painful. And she says, you know, she mentions three girls.

She says, because of you, each one of them tried to take their own lives and went, oh my God, you're kidding me. And I thought to myself, whoa, this isn't a game, man. And then what hit me? What hit me in that? was, oh my gosh. I'm just like my father, you know, I made that vow. I will never be like my father. I will never hurt a woman the way my father hurt my mother.

And I'm worse. And my self hatred man was just like, whew, I just wanted to crawl under a rock and die. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know what to do. I just hated myself. I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm a real jerk. And uh, and then this girl says to me, beautiful girl. She says to me, besides I'm a Virgin, I was like, what?

Tell me about this. I was intrigued. I was like, whoa. And I remembered back to when I was 18 years old. When I was in high school, I said to my buddies, when I get married, I wanna be a Virgin. And they, of course, you know, said that's a wonderful idea. No, they laughed at me. They called me names. Uh, I mean, gosh, I will never say that again.

Within a month of that, I had lost my virginity and then it, it, my story of the next six years, you know, uh, it caught up to me now and this girl says, I'm a Virgin. I'm like, oh my gosh. Wow. Is it possible? Like, is that even possible? This girl obviously chose this, you know, like, is this even possible? And it just, it opened my eyes to like, hope.

Like maybe my life could be different. Like maybe I can change. Maybe I really can change. Maybe I can marry someone. Maybe I can have a good marriage. Maybe I don't have to be like my father. Maybe, maybe things can be different. And, and that began a process.

One of the things I learned from Bart. No matter how bad things get, no matter how hopeless life feels, never give up, never give up. You're never out of the fight. And his story really proves that there is always hope, especially when things feel hopeless. If you wanna hear the rest of his story, listen to episode 40.

Episode 54 is next. How to stop damaging yourself with your words with Chris. And Chris is a very popular speaker and author. And in this clip, he talks about how the words we say to ourselves have a much bigger impact than you might think.

I think this is such a relevant topic for people, especially who come from broken families. And in the book you say that there's a war of words happening in your mind. The outcome of that war. Determines your destiny. That's a bold statement. What do you mean by that? Uh, the, uh, the devil's real victory in our life.

We, we think it's maybe a sin we committed or some, uh, wound we're suffering from, or, or, or something hard we've been through. No, I, I, the real victory is when we experience a, a, a difficulty or commit a sin and then label our. Based on that, because then we continue to live out of that identity for the rest of our lives.

You know, the, the way we speak to ourselves and the way we talk to ourselves and label ourselves shapes how we feel, which shapes how we act, which shapes how our entire life pans out. So really the, so many of the, the spiritual battles we face. So many of the personal battles with getting to the next level.

In relationships in career in happiness. So many of it comes back to when you dig deep enough, how you see. How you talk to yourself, it's that war, a fundamental war of words that determines really the outcome of your life. Mm-hmm uh, and, and a brother. We, we, we really, we really can't get it wrong. We can't keep getting it wrong, you know, and I'm so tired of seeing people get it wrong.

And you could tell there's times where I'm getting it. When people are walking through life, looking like they got the crap beat out of them when they look tired and heavy it's so often because we're beating ourselves up on the inside. I, I think this seems simple on the surface, Chris, but once you start talking about it and think about it, I think it's a little trickier than it seems because.

So often I think the lies that we tell ourselves become so second nature, they're just subconscious they're there. And so unless you really take time to go through your, I am book or the course or something similar where you're doing some deep reflection on this, it can just pass over your head. I know for myself, one of the things that I catch myself doing often just on a subconscious level again, It's calling myself an idiot.

Like, are you idiot? You know, I do. I make a mistake. I do something wrong. You're you idiot, you idiot. So I think there's a real need to dive into this. It can't just be something that oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. I get what you're saying. I shouldn't be mean to myself. Yeah. Yeah. You know, it's simple, but simple is not easy.

Right. In fact, it's very difficult to boil things down to the simple again and much of our lives. We're trying to get back to the simple within marriage. We're crying out loud. Oh, Nothing could look simpler. I love this person. She loves me. I wanna give my life to her. She wants to give her life to me.

the amazing thing. Is it actually, is that simple? But it's not easy to keep it, that, that simple and to work through all the crap that comes in the way of keeping it, that simple, that wants to destroy that, that, that beauty, that pure crystal line beauty , but that's, that's the, uh, the same journey as the, I am.

You know, there's, there is a simplicity that I, I want to introduce people to, because most people, they, they don't win this battle cuz they don't even know that they're in it. They don't show up for it. We're we're passive recipients of the things that go on in our heads.

On the surface. It might seem like the way that you see yourself, the way that you talk to yourself really isn't that big of a deal. But like Chris said, it literally dictates how your life. We'll turn out. If you wanna hear more from that episode, just listen to episode 50. Our final episode is episode 44 practical tips for becoming a great parent with Mike and Alicia.

Heran. If you wanna become a mom or a dad, one day, you need to know about Mike and Alicia Heran they're parents and parenting experts, and they give really great guidance on how to become a great mom. Or dad. And you're gonna hear a sample of that in this clip.

Uh, yeah, I guess the first thing is like, as a new parent, if you could go back in time to yourself as a new parent, uh, and give some advice, uh, yeah. What are a couple of things that you'd say the main points and I'm sure this might echo some of the things you said before before the first, the first thing that comes to mind is chill.

Uh, yeah, we're we're, as, as parents, we, we have to recognize we're playing a long game. It's it's not a sprint. It really is a long race and that there are gonna be cycles and seasons, uh, you know, early on you may get no sleep with a newborn, you know, and, and, and infant, uh, child, uh, or there's gonna be times when you have maybe one or two little kids that are just draining you and you're in the survival.

Mm-hmm they're seasons of life. And, um, and we need to have a longer perspective this isn't. You're not gonna stay in that zone forever. Um, Which is, is good and bad, right? Meaning sometimes you'll get through it quickly, but also, um, there are good moments which, you know, just to really appreciate and, and soak up those moments because, you know, we have two, uh, married children now and, um, you know, three others who are essentially out, uh, out of the house.

They do kids do grow up so fast. So, so one don't get stressed. I know it doesn't feel like it, but they do but, and, and I never believed anybody, uh, who told me that. No, um, but I would, I would say that, that, that don't sweat, the small stuff have a bigger, longer term perspective. Um, and really kind of embrace, uh, each of those moments cuz they, you, for that child, you only have, you know, you have a limited amount of time and it's, and it's a gift.

Right. Uh, and to really embrace that, I, I felt like I kind of felt like I was looking for the right answer to everything. Yeah. Like I wanted to just do it. Right. I wanted to find to be the perfect area. Yeah, exactly. I wanted to find like that perfect method. And I think a lot of people do that today.

Studies showed this. So this is what I should do. But the problem is that you can find studies that absolutely contradict each other about the way that you should raise an infant, as far as like sleep schedules and feeding, and you know, how you respond to them. And you can find studies that are all over the place.

But what you really need to do is just work with unity, with your spouse on what is the best for you as a couple, what is the best thing for your family? And don't worry, don't worry. doing it perfectly. It's okay. Like you were saying before, it's okay to make mistakes. You're going to make mistakes. You're gonna try something to get them to go to sleep and it's not gonna work.

And that's okay. That's totally fine. You can try something else or maybe you just need to try what you were doing a little bit longer. And so I feel like for me, like what I would tell myself, you know, if I was talking to myself as a new. so don't worry about getting it all right. And also just enjoy your children more.

That's part of the great thing about being a grandparent now is that you just enjoy our grandchildren and I have to say that even our younger children, um, like numbers eight, nine, and 10 . I feel like we still. Take more time to just enjoy them and them just play games, games, hang out and just like laugh at them and just realize that, you know what I mean?

Like just kind of relax a little bit and not worry about, well, I have to hurry up and teach them all these things, because this is the important point to teach this blah, blah. You know, it's okay. It's okay. Like it is it, your childhood does go fast, but it's also, you have time to teach them things little by little and a lot of things, times you are modeling.

You're modeling for them, the way that you live your life is more important than anything you say, or any discipline plan that you have or anything like that, loving them and modeling God's love for them. Honestly, I really do think is the most important thing. I think that's more important. Then being really strict and firm on certain rules or having the perfect rules of the perfect system.

Sorry, one, one thing that, that I, as long as you don't contradict me, yes. You, everything you said was perfect. There you go. Um, so if you learn this after 27 years, it's about priorities man battles wisely. Uh, no. So, so, but I, I think I, I Don. I think now I appreciate it more than I did back then. The importance of our marriage.

Yeah. Um, a as much as I loved my wife and we got, well, I think I took things for granted, meaning we, we were good. We were both good people. We were trying to deal with our own stuff. And we were collaborating in this great work of raising these kids. And I would probably look back and say, get a better habit of date nights.

Yeah. On a regular for sure. Uh, going out together. Um, I think that we early on, we were very good about that and then kids just make it more difficult, but I think they make everything more difficult, but I think we, I, I gave up or settled too quickly and then I accepted jobs. Um, that had me traveling a lot for work and I didn't compensate, you know, by saying, okay, now that I'm physically not home, how am I gonna maintain my emotional intimacy, uh, with my wife when we're physically not present?

Um, I, I think that looking back I've, you know, that would be, you know, some of the things that I, I think is strong, We're also seeing the fruit, you know, again, I think we have a great marriage, but it's like not taking any of that for granted and, and really developing early on good habits of yeah. Date nights and communication and so forth because we're seeing some, um, couples now come to us, struggling with even their own kids who now have left.

The faith are not following in their values. And one of the things that, that I, it looked a common theme, a common theme. Was, they had some major challenges in their marriages. And I look at that and I think that has a bigger influence than we may realize. Yeah. Uh, on our kids on like sleeping in separate bedrooms, you know, for years and years, that's, that's gonna affect your children, you know, and that's gonna affect the way that they see marriage and that they.

God and the faith and, and all of that. So, and, and anyway, it's important to work on your marriage and I'm sorry, I know you, I'm gonna just throw this out, just cuz I've seen a couple of people for adult children of divorce who, because they don't wanna repeat. What happened to them as a child, they often pour themselves out into their kids and they pour themselves into forming and loving their children that they actually unintentionally neglect their neglect, their marriage.

Yeah. And, um, and, and by doing that, you're actually. Undercutting the way that you're loving your kids and forming your kids, cuz the, the, um, the number one thing is if you wanna be a great parent, you need to be an even more amazing spouse. And I, I think we sometimes get things disordered. Um, in our parenting,

one of the struggles for those of us who come from broken families is that we believe that we maybe can't become a great mom or a great dad, and I get it. I've been there, but I'm here to tell you that you can't, you are capable of becoming a mom or a dad, a great mom or a great dad. And even if you didn't see that growing up, even if you didn't experience that, even if you didn't.

Receive that you can give to your kids, whether you have kids now, or sometime in the future, you can give to them what you didn't receive growing up and to do. So check out that episode, you can learn some tips and tactics on how to become the parent that maybe you wish you had, or that you want to be.

Again, that's episode 44. That's a wrap. And before we close out the show, if you're someone who recognizes the pain and the problems faced by teenagers and young adults who come from broken families and you want to help them, we wanna team up with you. A speaking engagement at your school at your church or conference could be exactly what those young people.

Need to hear. And our talks are geared toward helping young people from broken families to do a few things first, to navigate their pain and problems in healthy ways. Instead of unhealthy ways, they're also gonna learn simple tactics to heal their brokenness so they can feel whole again, they'll also learn tips on how to build healthy relationships, which can really be a struggle for people like us and so much more.

And some of our speaking engagements have been done. Organizations like Franciscan university of Steubenville Ave, Maria university focus the fellowship of Catholic university students, the archdiocese of Denver, the archdiocese of San Francisco and the diocese of San Diego. And as you can tell so far, our speaking engagements have been for Catholic audiences, but we don't just serve Catholics.

And so if you're interested in scheduling a live virtual talk, we'd love to talk with you. Just go to restored ministry.com/speaking again, restored ministry. singular.com/speaking. You can view the talks that we offer, and then you can request pricing and more info. And, uh, perhaps if you're ready, we could even get an event booked.

I'd love to serve you. We'd love to serve you again, go to ReSTOR ministry. Dot com slash speaking. The resources mentioned during the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 62. Again, all the episode numbers from the clips that you heard are on that page. If you wanna listen to those whole episodes, thank you so much for listening.

If this has been useful for you, feel free to subscribe. And if you know someone who's really struggling from their parents' divorce or broken marriage, Share this podcast with them guys. We really appreciate your support for the podcast in our ministry this year. So many of you have shared the podcast with others or told people about restoring me just can't.

Thank you enough. Thank you so much for everything you've done to support us and to spread this work far and wide from our team at ReSTOR, we're just honored to serve you, and we wish you the best in this new year. Always remember you are not alone. We're here to help you feel whole again and become the person that you were born to be.

#061: Will I Always Feel Stuck? | Alexandra M

When Alexandra was in 7th grade, her parents divorced. Almost immediately, she went to counseling, which led her to believe that the effects of her parents’ divorce were in her past. She thought she was healed.

But in college, poor decisions and failed relationships showed her that perhaps it wasn’t resolved like she thought. She woke up on her birthday feeling sad and stuck, asking the question: Am I gonna be in this same spot for the rest of my life? 

In this episode, she shares the rest of her story and more:

• How working on herself has now led her to a really beautiful, healthy relationship

• How a memento from her past made her realize how much her parents’ divorce was still affecting her

• The answer to “Do you hate your parents?”

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TRANSCRIPT

Transcript produced by artificial intelligence. Please pardon any errors!

Alexandra was in seventh grade when her parents divorced and almost immediately, her parents sent her to counseling for some time, which led her to believe that the effects from her parents' divorce were in her past. She thought she was fine. She thought she was healed, but in college, poor decisions that she made and failed relationships showed her that perhaps it wasn't resolved the way that she had thought.

And it all finally caught up to her. It hit her on her birthday. She woke up on her birthday and she felt really sad. She felt like she hit a dead end in life and those feelings. Caused her to ask some really tough questions. She asked, am I gonna be in the same spot for the rest of my life? What is it in my life?

That's preventing me from having a family of my own. And in this episode, she shares the rest of her story. She explains how working on herself has now led her to really beautiful, healthy relationship. She touches on how. Silence has given her a better understanding of her own brokenness and how it's even helped her heal.

She talks about how a memento from her past made her realize how much her parents' divorce was still affecting her. She answers the question. Do you hate your parents? And she also shares how restored has helped her in her healing journey. Really good conversation. So keep listening,

welcome to the restored podcast, helping you heal and grow from the trauma of your parents' support, separation or broken marriage. So you can feel whole again. I'm your host, Joey Pelli. Thank you so much for listen. This is episode 61. If you're someone who recognizes the pain and problems faced by teens and young adults who come from broken families and you wanna help them, we wanna team up with you.

A speaking engagement at your school at your church or conference could be exactly what those young people need. And our talks are geared toward helping young people from broken families to navigate their pain and problems in healthy ways to learn simple tactics that they can use to heal their brokenness so they can feel whole.

Learn how to build healthy relationships and so much more. And some of our clients, first speaking engagements have been FCAN university of Steubenville Ave, Maria university focused the fellowship of Catholic university students. We've also worked with the archdiocese of Denver, the archdiocese of San Francisco, the diocese of San Diego.

And we'd love to work with you. And as you can tell so far, our speaking engagements have been for Catholic audiences, but we don't just serve Catholics. And if you're interested in scheduling a live or virtual talk, we'd love to hear from you. Just go to restored ministry.com/speaking again, restored ministry, ministry, singular.com/speaking.

You can view the talks that we offer there. You can request pricing, and if you're ready, you can even book an event. So go ahead to restored ministry.com/speak. My guest today is Alexandra. Madrin originally from South Dakota. Alexandra has lived and worked in Denver for the past five years. After hearing about the ReSTOR podcast from her friend, Alexandra began working through the long term effects that her parents divorce left in her life.

Alexandria is enthusiastic about helping others to discover the freedom that comes through personal development and growth, and is an advocate of strong friendships with others who have experienced divorce and the practice of therapy. To heal and grow. She's found that there is hope and goodness after one's parent's divorce and it all comes down to a personal choice to begin again, find healing and trust that your life will be one containing lasting love.

I really loved this conversation with Alexandra. I'm so excited to share it with you,

Alex. It's great to have your friend. Thank you, Joey. It's good to be here. Yeah, we, what we met went earlier this year. It hasn't been too long. We haven't even known each other, I guess what a full year yet, but yeah. Yeah. You've um, you've been through a lot in this last year and we we'll talk about some of that.

I'm sure. But let's go back in time. Let's go back to when. Your parents separated divorce. Mm-hmm . How old were you first of all? When they separated divorce mm-hmm yeah, so they were never really, um, separated. Um, it was kind of a gradual lead up to just divorce and I was in the seventh grade. Okay. Yeah. So you were young mm-hmm

Okay. And that's, that's such a sensitive part of life. Do you remember how old you were at that age? That's like what? 11, 12? Yeah, I think it was like. A lot of it. I don't, I don't really remember, but yeah, in junior high, junior high. Yeah. So however old you are in junior high. Yeah. Yeah. No, for sure. I'm just thinking of like the international people we have.

And so that just such a young tender age mm-hmm what, what happened as much as you're comfortable sharing what happens? Yeah, for sure. So, um, growing up my parents, they fought a. And, and it kind of just got to the point gradually over time, where a lot of, you know, addiction, alcohol addiction, and just some struggles that they were having just got worse and worse and, um, some financial struggles and kind of just reached a tipping point.

I think it was in 2007 or eight where yeah, they're just. One parent had enough and, and filed for divorce. So that's, , that's kind of the gist of the story. There's nothing else really, to it, aside from there was just a, a gradual buildup of, of struggle. Totally. Mm-hmm and that's one of the things I think, and it's important to point that out because.

I think a, one of the misunderstandings that people have when I talk to them about resort and what we try to do mm-hmm is that they think maybe we're solely focused on the event of the divorce mm-hmm , but so often, and this is what I typically say. It's like, it's not like a, an atomic bomb randomly went off.

It's like, there's been problems in the marriage for years and years, usually. Mm-hmm and all that lead up is part of the trauma. It's part of the difficulty it's part of what really affects us. It's not just the event of the divorce, so that in and of itself, it's not worthy to say that that does affect us in a unique way.

Mm-hmm , but everything that led up to a. Is part of it as well. Mm-hmm so I think, yeah, it makes sense that mm-hmm it was gradual, I would say it's probably most people's experience, but how did you see that affect you? How did your parents broken marriage? Mm-hmm their struggles, their divorce. How did that affect you?

Yeah. Um, well, when it was going on, um, I did actually go to a therapist or a counselor at the time, so I was in junior high and then, you know, after they filed, I kept going just during. This time of all of this happening. Um, yeah. So at the time I thought, you know, this is really great. I'm getting the help I need.

And, and then I went off to college and I thought. I thought that I was good to go. I was like, yeah, I I've healed from this. I, you know, my parents aren't necessarily in the super great place, but at least things are kind of settled down now. Mm-hmm and this is the, the new normal, I thought phrase, but , it's the new normal.

Um, and so, yeah, I, I thought I was fine, but in college looking back and I didn't really realize this in the time, but in college I was making a lot of really, really dumb decision. Kind of, a lot of people would consider this pretty normal for college behavior, but, um, for the kind of person that I am and the per the people who raised me, it was not normal for me to act that way.

And so just a lot of partying and getting into things that, that I shouldn't have been getting into. And I look back now and I really, I really see that that was, that was a coping mechanism. I was really trying to, yeah, I'd run away from, from some pain. At that time. Totally. What did that look like day to day?

Like mm-hmm , you know, were you aware that you were coping in unhealthy ways or was it kind of just like, this is my life and mm-hmm then you later realized. Maybe this isn't the best way to live? Absolutely not. Yeah. I would fill my day from like three jobs in college and I would work. Wow. Like one job from at the student center from like 10 to two, so I could study and then I would get up and I'd be the barista at the student center from eight to 11, and then I'd go to class and then I'd teach wow.

Ballet from three to five. And then you. Sleep wow. In, in between. So I was really, yeah. Outside of just making like bad decisions, as far as like drinking, uh, excessively, I was also really just every minute of my day I was doing something mm-hmm, trying to find a place kind of trying to find like, okay, what's, you know, what's my purpose?

Where, where am I supposed to be? And at what time am I supposed to be there? Just kind of every. Filling it up. Were you afraid of solitude? Were you afraid of kind of facing yourself in mm-hmm a lack of busyness, I guess. Yeah. Yeah. And I still struggle with that. I really, yeah. I just, I I'm like such a productive person, but it's, it is hard to just sit and be.

And I think a lot of that is because I know when I'm sitting, um, in silence or yeah, I'm a Christian. So sitting in prayer. Yeah. I tend to navigate towards, you know, the areas of my life, where it's like, okay, I'm struggling in this. So a lot of that navigation goes towards yeah. My parents divorce. So of course it makes sense to just fill that time.

So you don't have to think about it. It's easier. I know, gosh, for so many years I just saw it an escape and I'm still tempted to that. Right. It's like, It's so much easier at times, just to drown out your pain or your problems and not face them and not deal with them. And so totally relate to that. I, uh, speaking of solitude, it, it can be scary.

It's like the scariest person to face, I think is yourself. Mm-hmm . And I remember, uh, at one point I was driving in the mountains alone. So for everyone listening, we Alexandra and I both live in Denver, Colorado. And so we have the beautiful Rocky mountains out here and. You know, I know you love the mountains.

Mm-hmm, , we've been skiing together. We, um, yeah, I I've been at times taking drives and mountains by myself. Um, and, uh, I remember I was meeting up with some friends and I was getting late at night and there was just like, no one in the car with me and I was alone and I was like, so uncomfortable. mm-hmm this is, this is like a few years back.

I'm like, this is like horrible. Like I really need to, I felt that loneliness that I really hadn't felt for a long time. Partly because like, you know, I've filled my life with friends and with my own marriage and now with Lucy, but, uh, yeah, I think it is good to go there even though it is scary. Mm-hmm yeah.

And, and the silence is when you really, you really start to understand what what's missing. I think, uh, for me, when I would go into that silence, I, I would go into kind of the memories too at times, so totally. Never never fun, but yeah, there's, there's work to be done. And, and I think any, yeah, anybody who's gone through a, a divorce or a parent's divorce, I think they can attest to that.

That, um, there's always gonna be work to be done. Yeah. A hundred percent. Yeah. It's not like. yeah, you reach the, the summit and then you check it off your list and never deal with that. Again, mm-hmm, one thing a that struck me when I met you just getting to know you and like what you were up to in life and like your work situation is like, I did, I could tell you were a hard worker mm-hmm like, I could tell you were like structured, have a structured life you, you know, get after it.

And I admire that. And even hearing that about you in college, like three jobs. So you mentioned how it was kind of a way to fill the time and to kinda keep you busy. If you were comfortable talking about this was the financial side, a struggle too, cuz you mentioned. That that was for your parents. Mm-hmm and I know for a lot of us, um, that was the reality.

Like I know my parents like handled money very, very poorly mm-hmm and, um, so my siblings and I have just, you know, I, I don't like pay my parents for it or anything. I think there's been a lot of good lessons in just trying to like, find our own way. Yeah. It's a lot of us like, deal with that. So I'm just curious, was that part of the motivation to work so many jobs or did you just wanna get out and do stuff?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I was, I was entering college at a time where both of my parents couldn't really help a ton with, you know, they couldn't provide full tuition. so sure had to figure that out as some, some capacity, so definitely needed to work the capacity of which I was working in college. Was not necessary.

And, you know, the partying lifestyle obviously comes with expensives. So, okay. A lot of that had to do with, you know, okay. I wanna pay to go to this sorority event or mm-hmm, go to Sioux falls and South Dakota where I, I went to college and yeah. And, and get a new dress for this event or whatever it was.

There was a lot of, um, A lot of unnecessary kind of spending too, so. Totally. Yeah. No. And that makes sense. And one of the things, um, That John Eldridge writes about. He, you know, he's so insightful, John Eldridge. I dunno if you've read anything about him, but he, uh, he wrote wild at heart. Mm. And he talks about it a lot about men mm-hmm

And one of the things he says in his one book fathered by God, is that a lot of times, and I don't know if this is true in your case too, but this is what I've observed in people I've known who come from broken families. Mm-hmm a lot of times guys, especially will. Grow up, get a real job, you know, start making real money.

Mm-hmm and then they start buying themselves like toys mm-hmm and his insight is that part of the reason they do that often is because they weren't like delighted in as kids mm-hmm like they didn't receive the love, the affirmation, the attention that they craved. And so when they get into a position where they can afford it, they start kind of doting themselves, like.

You know, putting, bringing all these gadgets in their life or cars or doing expensive trips and things like that, which in and of themselves, like not bad things mm-hmm , but, um, but there there's a deeper need there and that, that was his insight. So is that something that you can relate to? I'm curious on the feminine side of it, cuz it's different for a guy I think.

Yeah. I don't, I don't think so. A lot of just, yeah, working in college and, and getting nice things was maybe to fill void, but, but mostly just to fill the time. Totally. Yeah. Makes a ton of sense. Dating relationships. Mm-hmm so I know this is like one of the main themes for your story. Yeah. Is there, were there were struggles there?

Yeah. Talk to me about that. How has, you know, everything you went through with your family affected your dating relationships? Mm-hmm yeah, I would say it is the main theme. It's kind of what's brought me to this podcast. I would say. So in college was in some relationships, just super unhealthy, again, coping pain, all that stuff.

And then when I got outta college, I didn't date for a while, but Billy didn't know like what healthy was. Yeah. What , what is healthy? Um, I had, I had friends and family and healthy relationships, but when it came to mine, I was just doing something wrong. So I got out of our relationship late last year and woke.

It was kind of like two weeks before, uh, my birthday or three weeks before my birthday. And I get O I get up in, in the morning of my birthday and I'm just, I'm so sad. And I'm like, why am I so sad? it's my birthday. And I, I just started thinking and I'm like, I don't, I don't know if I'm ever gonna not be in the place that I am.

On my birthday, if I don't kind of seriously change something in my life, um, I really desired a family, but, but not to the extent of like changing my relationships to get there. And that was kind of the, the turning point for me is, is that birthday. And that week of kind of like unpacking what is. In my life, that's preventing me from, from eventually having a family of my own and, um, I would just date not with serious intention.

A lot of 'em went the same, just not towards marriage. And that's something that I desired, but I was like, why can't I get there? Yeah. So. I, I just took a step back and I was like, okay, something's missing here. And then a couple months later, just some events happened. And I found a picture of, of my family when I was a really little girl.

And that, that picture just caused me to, just to stop. I just broke down and I. I just sobbed. And I was like, this is not really a normal reaction of finding a picture of, of your family together. Right. And I started, yeah. I started thinking like, maybe there's something that I thought had been, uh, completed in therapy when I was in the seventh grade.

That is maybe still lingering . Yeah. And decided. Yeah, just with a lot of conversations with my friends that maybe I should go back to therapy and start thinking about relationships and, and what, what I could work on to eventually someday have a family of my own. Yeah. Wow. And that that's a big step. We were talking before we were recording.

We were having dinner actually. And, um, you were saying how. Yeah, that, that takes a lot of courage to just kind of like take those first steps down that path. And, but you did it and you're on the path. Mm-hmm and that's, I think that's such a victory in and of itself because there's so many people who just aren't, you know, they, they feel stuck, like you said, mm-hmm they feel the sadness.

They struggle with, you know, excessive drinking and they struggle with other unhealthy ways of coping mm-hmm , but they never take those steps to kind of, to overcome that, to heal what's at the root of all that. And so, yeah, I just admired you for getting after it and walking down that path, but it took some time, right.

Mm-hmm to get there. Yeah. And I think it's something that a lot of people need to come, uh, to terms with on their own, where they kind of get to this place where they're like, okay, I'm at a dead end again and again, and again, with the things that are important to me in my life. And so, yeah, it takes a ton of courage and I.

I really encourage anyone who's there who maybe today is your birthday or, you know, your birthday's next week and you're waking up and you're saying, gosh, am I gonna be this? Am I gonna be in this same spot for the rest of my life? Because I, I can't deal with, you know, what happened when I was younger.

You can, you can. And, and I know cuz I did and you're, you're so strong. It's so. But nothing is gonna change unless you deal with it. Dang. Wow. sorry. You're good at this. No, that that's me to drop a, a truth, Bob, but there it is. There it is. Wow. No, that's so, and that's so hopeful too, because I think those of us who've been in those really dark places.

I think sometimes we can forget what it's like to be there. Mm-hmm and there there's people listening right now who are right there right now. and so everything you just said, it's like, yes, like that's so, so hopeful. Like you can't, you don't need to have that life. You can have something better, which is just mm-hmm.

so beautiful. Switching gears a little. So often for those of us who come from broken families, there were certain things that we needed from our parents that they never provided for us often, not through malicious intent. Mm-hmm, , it's just, they were so busy with their own pain in their own lives that they just didn't give us what we needed.

Mm-hmm what did you need from your parents that, you know, they weren't aware of or didn't provide for you? Yeah, I'd say probably emotional stability, something that. It's really hard to come to terms with is that, you know, when parents are getting divorced, it's a very unnatural thing. So, uh, no one usually gets married with the intention of divorcing.

And so when. when parents get divorced, um, their emotions, they're dealing with those, you know, all over the place. And yeah, a kid at, at any age really needs, um, yeah, emotional stability from a parent. And so really throughout my life, I've had to learn how to set boundaries with, you know, emotional relationships.

I think I, I have a, a deep mercy for my parents because I know that. I know that they, they probably did the best they could, but as a, as a adult, now I look back and I'm like, yeah, I, I, wasn't given the, the emotional maturity that a parent needed to provide. Totally. And I totally can relate to that too. I, I think a lot of our parents were dealt a bad hand, not to say our generation is perfect, cuz we're not, we have own flaws for.

And not to say that we'll all be perfect parents. We won't we'll screw our kids off in some ways. I'm sure. But I, I think there is like, at least we have something to look back on and see, like our parents grew up through pretty crazy times. Mm-hmm like what? Sixties? Seventies, eighties, like all that. Yeah.

I think now we're starting to look back and unpack like, yeah. The way that a lot of us were parented, just wasn't adequate mm-hmm and you know, like you said, a lot of us say they did the best they can, but objectively we can look back and say it could have been better. Mm-hmm and, um, and that's not, you know, us saying that we hate our parents.

In fact, I wanna ask you, do you hate your parents? Absolutely not. Okay. , that's, that's one of misconception that I think a lot of people have about resort is that they're like, oh, you're trying to get people to hate their parents. And like, no, no, we actually wanna like kill those relationships. Yeah, absolutely.

Yeah. And I think there's a, there's a definite reality that your family can be good again. Hmm. There's a grief that, you know, anybody whose parents are divorced, uh, lives with for the rest of their life. it is it's. yeah, it's sad. And with that sadness is yeah. Grief. And, but the, but on the other, on the other end, there is a light that, that people can change and heal.

And I think that parents can love their kids better throughout their lives, you know? So totally. I, yeah. I love, I love both my parents dearly we have great relationships with both of them, so that's beautiful. Definitely. Yeah. And, you know, I'm sure there's struggles, but we all have those struggles. And I know, yeah.

Lately my parents have been more cordial to each other. Mm-hmm the, the divorce was tough. It was, they were just, it was a three year process and a long divorce mm-hmm is two years mm-hmm and it was like three. So it was just so ugly and messy and full of drama. Thankfully, a lot of that has kind of died out.

There's still struggles though, but, but I could say too, Typically get along with my parents much, much better now mm-hmm than I did in the past. And that's one of the things for any parents listening right now. Uh, we love you guys. We're just often dealing with our own stuff and, uh, we might not totally know how to handle every situation.

It can, it can be hard and. Uh, there can be situations that almost feel impossible to us. It's like, I don't know what to do in this situation. It's, mm-hmm, like a lose, lose situation. I know I've dealt with that, but to any parents watch are listening, you play such a major role in helping us deal with the trauma, with the brokenness in our own lives.

You might not be able to be the one that's there for us through all of it. Um, we might need that space. At least the research I've seen has said that the parents play a huge role in helping us to, to navigate life, um, after the fact. And so, uh, I, I think it, it's good for you as a parent to understand that you are needed, you are important, both parents, mom, and dad.

And so, um, you have an important role to play. So with that, let's get into. coping and healing. So you gave an example of kind of unhealthy coping mm-hmm . How about on the flip side, what were some things that you did maybe two or three things that helped you cope in healthy ways and then ultimately helped you begin to heal as well?

Mm-hmm so the first decision that I had to make to get there was just to do it to acknowledge. Yeah, this is gonna be hard. I might turn into an unpleasant person while this is happening. so, yeah. Did you warn all your friends? And I, I did. I talked to my roommates and I was like, Hey, listen, I'm thinking about, you know, going to therapy to revisit some of the childhood things that happened in my life.

So they knew, and they were super supportive, but. Good for you, by the way, most people wouldn't do that. I was kind of joking, but oh, wow. That's amazing though. That's really good. Yeah. I was like, I better warn them if I'm like gonna be crabby. I don't know. So um, yeah, so I, I actually that's the first thing is I, I sought out a therapist and found somebody I really liked and she's been wonderful and that has been unbelievably difficult, but so worth it.

Um, so if you're even. Considering it, I hope you do go forward with it. Aside from therapy. Um, really finding, I think it's important to have friends who have been in the same situation for me personally, it can be very difficult to have a friend group of. Of friends with perfect families. And I know not every family's perfect, but there's some that are pretty darn close yeah.

Especially comparatively, like, yeah, I know I've looked at my family and then friends of mine, like mm-hmm you have a really good family. Yeah. And I, I'm definitely not advising you to go out and, you know, find a bunch of. Of friends only from divorced parents, but it is helpful to have, um, some friends that really do understand because they've been there.

I have a couple friends that I call upon, um, and that call upon me and we, we really support each other around difficult times. Like the holidays, if there's weddings or whatever, the, the family events are coming up. It's really helpful to have people who understand because they know themselves because they've gone through it.

Totally. Yeah. That's been really helpful for me too. Yeah. Cause a lot of times I think we feel like freaks. We feel alone. We feel like, why am I so bothered by this? Everyone else seems to be fine. Everyone else says it's for the best. Everyone else says my parents, you know, your parents are happier. You should be happy to mm-hmm.

But then we feel this hurt. We feel this emptiness, we feel stuck in life and we know like, no, something's not right. So if you have people who say mm-hmm, actually, that's an appropriate response for what you've been through. You're not weird at all. Mm-hmm , that's suffering. Mm-hmm yeah. Yeah, absolutely. And, and kind of going off of what you just said, there are scars left behind.

So even if it is the, you know, the best or whatever, the situation or whatever anybody's telling you about your parents' divorce, um, there's still a scar left on everyone that was involved and that scar does not go away. And sometimes that scar is more visible around certain times of the year or certain events like, uh, weddings or funerals, whatever it is that brings up those family gatherings, those scars are, are out to, and everyone can see them.

And so, yeah. Yeah. Something to remember. Yeah. It can be hard to deal with. It's like, you know, you fall and cut yourself. Mm-hmm , it's like you can heal the wound. Or, you know, men, the moon a bit mm-hmm but the scar's still gonna be there. Mm-hmm , it's a good reminder. Aside from therapy and friends. Was there anything else that was helpful?

Yeah, I mean, uh, I think as hard as it is spending a lot of time alone, as much as you can, to just really be honest with yourself. So if you see, you know, in different areas of your life, where you are, you're backing away. you're avoiding talking to somebody and your family, or you are you're struggling in relationships, really take, I would recommend.

And this is what I did is I just really took a step back, spent a lot of time alone, reflecting and even outside of therapy. So you do a lot of reflecting in therapy, but a lot of time, you know, just taking some time to be alone and work on yourself. Yeah. It's. Yeah. It's the hardest work you'll ever do, right?

Mm-hmm yeah. Coming from someone who you work hard, right? Yeah. I know you, gosh, you put so much time for studying for the LSAT and now looking at law school and just the jobs mm-hmm , you know, the jobs you've done the job you're in right now. So it is hard work mm-hmm and I'd much rather do a lot of other things than that.

We're always a work in progress. Mm-hmm I know you would say you're working on it still, but mm-hmm, , how's life different for you. How have you seen yourself grow and improve even in, you know, I know you've said this is relatively recent for you. Mm-hmm but yeah, you, you, I could tell you've grown. How have, have you grown?

Yeah. Um, there's such a freedom and, and first acknowledging like, Hey, I need help. I'm, I'm struggling with these, these, um, these memories and, and this grief, um, I think I've changed specifically because I've, I've really been able to learn how to love better around me. And, and I think healing really comes from.

accepting love from others as well. So, um, I'm in a, in a relationship right now and it's, it's going really well. Yeah. Um, and I think that, um, I've learned a lot through this relationship about, yeah. Just how to love someone better. And that's, that's a huge for me, a huge win it's. It's a. , it's a really hard thing to do.

Um, you have to dig with great courage, look at your life honestly, and say, I'm struggling. I need change. But when you do that, the fruit that comes after that is so, so good. You said you were able to learn to love better mm-hmm but that didn't just happen right away. Mm-hmm was there some sort of progression where you, I know you, you know, woke up and saw, man, I have all these failed relationships.

Like they're not going where I want them to go, which ultimately is to marriage and family life. Mm-hmm which, by the way, I know, you know, this mm-hmm that's normal for people like us. We typically have more failed relationships. Mm-hmm which sucks. but it's just part of the deal. Mm. . Yeah. I mean, I'm guessing your friendships played a role in that, but was there anything else in terms of like learning to love mm-hmm that helped you turn a corner or get to a point where you can love the way that you're loving right now in your mm-hmm dating relationship.

Mm-hmm yeah. Yeah. I think, um, there's this, this analogy is like the, um, Adam and Eve. Analogy that I've heard, uh, from a couple different people, but it's basically, um, when you think of the sin that, that you've committed, it really has all comes down to the fact that she was grasping for that apple. Um, it wasn't like freely given to her, you know, it wasn't an act.

It wasn't, it wasn't a gift. Um, it was, it was grasping for something there. And I think when. Adult children are divorced kind of step back and they're like, okay, I'm gonna receive this gift of like, of healing, but also I'm gonna stop grasping for what I think a relationship is. And I'm just gonna pause.

And work on myself until I'm given that gift and that healing, I think that's a really good place to be. So for anybody out there, that's maybe either struggling in relationships or is wondering, like how do I change? Just pause and, um, really work on yourself first mm-hmm because I know I was really grasping for just for things that were not there, which is not loving someone at all.

So when you stop grasping, you're really able to be free to love. that's beautiful. That takes a lot of patience and. courage, like you said before to just kind of be still and not grasp. I think American culture especially is all about grasping mm-hmm right. Where the ambitious culture in a lot of ways, not that others aren't, but in a lot of ways, that's like very signature of American culture.

So that is, that is such a different approach and that's hard, but that's beautiful. They've learned that, uh, I love the point you made about working on your. I think a lot of times, all of us, almost all of us, we really, we want really beautiful relationships. We want happiness. We want love, we want all those good things, but we don't really make the connection that you just made, that your personal condition typically is reflected in your relationships.

Mm-hmm so if you're a mess, your relationships are probably gonna be a mess too. . And so taking that time to begin working on yourselves and mm-hmm or on yourself, and like you said, it's always a work in progress. Mm-hmm , but it is something you can make substantial progress on. And then when you enter in a, a relationship, you're at a point where you can continue that work in the relationship mm-hmm and that's something that you alluded to too.

It sounds like the relationship you're in right now has been healing in itself, which is really beautiful. Did you wanna talk about that at all? Yeah, for sure. so yeah, I was actually, uh, the first person I brought home. Since, you know, early college. So it's kind of a big deal. Yeah. It is a bigger deal. I think for adult children of divorce or, or teens or young adult children of divorce to bring significant others home, because it can be a very messy thing to see.

So it's very vulnerable to put somebody in that atmosphere of, yeah. Hey, this is our family, even though our family's. If somebody's not really privy to that, it can be, yeah, it can be scary. So a very healing experience in my relationship has, yeah, just been able to, to, uh, bring them home and, and reveal reveal our family.

Um, and have that completely accepted. Wow. But there's obviously there's conversations that have to happen before that happens. So working on myself has led to me, realizing those conversations have to happen before, you know, you jump right into, Hey, come. Come meet my family. So it's like a preliminary work to the preliminary work.

Okay. To the event. Nice. Okay. So lots of steps, but yes, it's good. You gotta go through it if it's okay. What were some of those conversations that you had that maybe can give people listening right now who, um, are a little bit behind you on the path? Uh, and a guide to maybe talk about this, talk about that before you get to that point, what were some of those conversations?

Yeah. Yeah, for sure. So , for me, it, it looked a lot like sitting them down and kind of explaining to the level of comfort that you feel mm-hmm , there are some things about my family that I would like you to know before you meet them. Mm-hmm like literally those words. Exactly. I love my family. We are a close family, or we are not a close family.

Whatever your situation is. here's some context as to what it might be like to prepare you for this visit. I, I feel this way around my family and I may act this way around my family because of these reasons. Hmm. At the end of the day, I love my family, but we are all still a work in progress because of what happened.

Yeah. Okay. I'm sure you had other conversations too, but that like that alone is, yeah, that's powerful. It's really helpful. How did he react to that? Not to put him on the spot yeah, no, he was super understanding and honestly, very much more understanding that I thought so for a while it was kind of like, does he come, does he.

And at the end of the day, it was like, this is, you know, when you're seriously dating someone, it's, it's a reality that they're gonna have to meet your family eventually. Yeah. If you're gonna move forward and grow. So it was, for me, at least it was kind of like this has to happen eventually. Mm-hmm and I've been doing the work.

So now is the time I love that. courage. Yeah. Dig deep, you know? awesome. You're getting me pumped up. good. Um, how did it go at home? Great. So much better than I ever thought. Honestly, complete piece. It was a really great situation. So I think it's. It's also a great conversation to have, you know, and maybe think about first, um, before you have that conversation of, okay.

What is, what's a good timeline to bring someone home or what what's too long. mm-hmm yeah. How much time should you spend with certain people? You know, people who maybe. Um, are very triggering or, or cause you a lot of anxiety, maybe don't spend the whole time with them. So just kind of common sense like that.

Yeah. But think about those things ahead of time. And I I'd say it's never a bad idea to just prepare as much as you can. Mm-hmm . But in my experience, it went a lot better than I thought it would. So kind of going back to the, you know, have courage and be brave because it could go really bad, but it could also, it could go really well.

And if, and if that person. is, is the person. And they're gonna understand, and they'll love you through it. Mm-hmm and one of the things you said before struck me just how you kind of warned him, that you may be a little bit of a different person. I dunno if you put it in those words. Exactly. But I know for me, a lot of times, like I kind of go back to my old self when I'm with my family.

I think that's a pretty typical experience. Mm-hmm you go home you're with your siblings. You're with your mom, your dad, whatever the scenario is. And. yeah, you kind of revert to maybe an older version of yourself. So I think it is wise to warn someone be like, I might be a little bit more this way. Mm-hmm than you might know me.

Yeah. That that's really, really good. And you mentioned peace mm-hmm this relationship you told me is, but there's been a lot of peace. Mm-hmm I'm sure there's been. Struggles and things along the way, but for the most part am I, did I hear you right? That there's, there's been a lot of peace, a lot of peace.

Yes. That's beautiful. Contrast that with the past, like, what were your, what did you feel in your relationships in the past? Mm-hmm , you know, I think it's, it's difficult to nothing in life is gonna be peaceful if you haven't kind of done the work for that piece to arrive. So yeah. Had I maybe worked on myself and, and these issues that I was having personally.

Before meeting past boyfriends, maybe they have would've gotten differently. But I think the lack of peace was really, honestly, I think it was a lot on me. Hmm. Because I didn't really know what I wanted because I didn't really believe in marriage I didn't really think that. And that's maybe dramatic, but I didn't believe in marriage for me.

I should say didn't really know what, what could that look like in my life? what, what would it look like to really share my days with someone and have that work out? What decisions would I have to make to, to have that happen? So all of those questions weren't being asked, so it was more of a hobby than a vocation.

Dang. There's a quote. that's beautiful. Yeah. And I think a lot of people approach dating like that, where it's kind of like a, sport's like recreation. It's like something to, like you said, a hobby, something to do. Yeah. As opposed to like a means to an end, which would be figuring out if you're meant to spend your life with this person.

Mm-hmm . Yeah. So that's beautiful. You, you made that switch, uh, you didn't believe that marriage could work for you. Why was that? Why not? You? Yeah, I, I thought that honestly, I just wasn't ready and I didn't think I was ever gonna be ready. I had lost a lot of faith because I had had dated a lot. Mm-hmm and again, if I would've just started doing the work earlier, I wouldn't have dated so much probably, but I don't know.

Maybe not fair. You never know. You could always go back, but you just never know you are where you're supposed to be. I. yeah, that, that makes a ton of sense. Yeah. And you were kind of worn out and mm-hmm, kind of ready to throw the towel in and was part of it too. Were you just skeptical about the idea of marriage lasting cuz you saw your parents fall apart?

Yeah. I had been in weddings for, for friends and those weddings. I totally believed that they and still do believe. That they will work and that their strong marriages, there was just something, I think when it came down to me that because growing up didn't have the example in the home of what a marriage is, is supposed to be.

Like, I never, I wasn't constantly thinking of like on my wedding day or when I have kids. Or my marriage, because when you're not around that all, all the time, you don't think about it for yourself, you know? Yeah. Kind of think of it as like, okay. The senior class, um, in high school, everyone's talking to each other, you're around it all the time.

Who's gonna go on and do what with their lives. We're all talking about it. Right. Mm-hmm but when you grow up with a family, um, is not without a good a marriage. And that ends in divorce. It's not as much talked about as like, what is your, your future marriage gonna look like? You just don't talk about it.

No, no, you don't and yeah, man, there's so much there. A lot of times, I think there's a temptation to, yeah. Either run for men. Just think like that's not really an option for me. Mm-hmm . Or what I've seen on the other end of the spectrum is kind of idolizing it and making it into this thing. That's like, oh, it's gonna be so much better than what my parents had.

And it just becomes this like unrealistic thing that I'm working towards that once I get to it or get in it, it is going to be disappointing because it's not a fairy tale. It's not something that you can make the complete inverse of what your parents had. So there there's a lot there. That makes so much sense.

And it sounds like, um, and I think a lot of people like us deal with this, uh, marriage kind of becomes unattractive. Mm-hmm , it's like, well, why would I do that? I mean, it just seems, you know, looking around at the people in my life or at my parents, it just seems like it just ends in a lot of pain and dysfunction and unhappiness and misery, and like all that stuff.

It's like, mm-hmm who would want that if that's all you've been exposed to. Right. Mm-hmm yeah. And, and would someone ever. Me with all this baggage. Hmm. That's a big lie that I think a lot of, of, um, children of divorce experiences, this who are dating his experience, this lie of, of, you know, I, I just can't give them what they need because I have this part of me that's really broken, but it is, is a lie entirely.

Going back to what you said, you know, the person. That's meant for you that you hopefully marry someday will accept you in, in all of your brokenness. So that's something that I really had to, to call out as a lie and start remembering that, that that's just not true. Dang. That sounds like a long and painful process, but mm-hmm, , you've done so much and I'm sure we could talk forever about that.

Mm-hmm I did wanna ask you. If your parents were listening right now, mm-hmm what would you want them to know? What would you say to them? I think I would tell them that we all experienced in our family, this tragedy and, and at first and foremost would want them to know that I loved them. even though, um, it was really hard for us.

I'd also want them to know that. That the tragedy of their divorce has actually given me kind of a messed up way has given me a lot of freedom to understand myself and to love better. So, and not that I would thank definitely. I would definitely tell them I'm working on myself. I'd really like you to go do the same.

Be. We could just leave it at that, but I do want to, yeah. Let's keep going. yeah, no, I do wanna ask, um, if people wanted to reach out to you mm-hmm how do they, how can they do that? Mm-hmm yeah. I am always free to talk and, and listen, I'm on Instagram. You can email me. Um, my Instagram is, is Alexandra.

Underscore mad, M a T T E R N. Feel free to reach out otherwise. Uh, shoot me an email. Alexandra GMA, Gmail dot. You can also get my information through Joey, if you'd, if you'd like to gimme a call or text, happy to, to be a, a source of encouragement and, um, a friend to walk with you because this is not an easy journey to walk through.

So we gotta stick together. Amen. Not at all. It's not easy, but I do wanna ask you, how has restored helped. Yeah. Not, not to tutor on horn, but just to see, like what's been helpful. What, what is, what have we done that has been useful and helpful to you? Cuz we wanna do more of that. Mm-hmm so what, yeah, what's been helpful.

Yeah. So this podcast, actually, somebody sent this podcast to me on the same week that I found that, that picture of my family. So providential in that way, but yeah, um, this podcast has been unbelievably helpful for me just to realize that there's a lot that I think, you know, growing up, you don't realize that you went through that other people also experienced, so it kind of, it gives you a community.

It also. I, I mean, I would really recommend listening to this podcast with a pen and a paper piece of paper, writing down things that, um, stood out to you and then really sitting with those things afterwards. So I would do that a lot as I would jot something down. Um, I think on a past podcast I wrote down, somebody said it hurts to remember, but it'd be worse to forget.

So. I wrote that down. And I think about that a lot. So it'd be, it'd be worse to forget. So sometimes it's, it's just worth it to remember, you know, so good. Yeah. I wanna give you the last word, first of all, thank you so much for coming on. It takes gots. It takes courage. Like you've been talking about a lot to do something like this to share your story in such a vulnerable way, uh, with people you don't know.

So thank you seriously. Thank you so much. Mm-hmm what words of encourage. Would you give to someone listening right now, especially a young person who just feels so broken in life who feels stuck like you did, especially in their relationships because of what happened in their family because of their parents' broken marriage.

What encouragement, what advice would you give to them? I think I'd want any child, a divorce to know that every day that you decide to start the process of unpacking and adjusting and really dealing with, um, the events that happened. And the reality that is now, you know, your parents' divorce. That is a gift that you're not just giving yourself, but you're also giving to those around you.

So it is not selfish to work on yourself. It is a gift and it is loving the people around you when you choose to, to, um, work on yourself and to deal with these things. And, and you can do it.

One question I loved from the show is when Alexandra. Am I gonna be in this same spot for the rest of my life. And I, I love that question cuz it's such an honest question. I think all of us need to ask that, especially when we feel stuck, we need to look up and really face the reality of where we're at in life.

And I think it's only by doing that, that we'll be able to get unstuck and move ahead in life. Move forward in. Heal any brokenness in our life. That's holding us back. And so how about you? Are, are you gonna always be in the same spot for the rest of your life? And if you want something different, how are you gonna go about healing?

How are you gonna go about growing? Give this some thought this is certainly worth a little bit of time. Like I mentioned at the beginning, if you wanna hire. Stored, if you wanna hire me to come in and do a live or virtual event, just go to restored ministry.com/speaking. We'd love to work with you. The resources mentioned are in the show notes@restoredministry.com slash 61.

Thanks so much for listening. If this has been useful for you, feel free to subscribe, but most importantly, if you know someone who's really struggling because of their parents' divorce or separation, or maybe even just their broken marriage, share this podcast with them and always remember you are not alone.

We're here to help you feel whole again. And become the person that you were born to be.