*WARNING: This podcast mentions suicide, sexual abuse & trauma and may be triggering.
Episode Summary
In this conversation, Lisa and Natasha explore the complexities of family dynamics, grief, and the unexpected paths life can take. They reflect on their personal experiences of having a child move abroad, the impact of toxic family cycles, and the importance of gratitude and presence in navigating life's challenges.
This conversation emphasizes the need to mourn the life we thought we would have while also finding joy in the present and keeping ourselves open to new possibilities.
Episode Sponsored by The HelpHUB™
Struggling with your mental health? Feeling lost, overwhelmed, or just alone? Well, you're not. Welcome to The HelpHUB™—your online destination for mental health resources, treatment options, content, and tools to help meet you exactly where you are in the moment. Visit TheHelpHUB.co to get started.
Takeaways
- Life often unfolds differently than we expect.
- Grief can stem from the loss of imagined futures.
- Daily communication can strengthen family bonds despite distance.
- Toxic family dynamics can necessitate difficult choices.
- Support from friends can sometimes outweigh family support.
- Creating stability is possible even amidst constant change.
- Gratitude can help us appreciate what we have now.
- Mourning the past is a natural part of moving forward.
- New opportunities can arise from unexpected changes.
- Hope is essential for navigating life's uncertainties.
Chapters
00:00 Reflections on Life's Expectations 03:13 Navigating Family Dynamics and Grief 06:04 The Impact of Distance on Relationships 09:07 Understanding Grief and Loss 11:58 Breaking Away from Toxic Family Cycles 14:55 The Complexity of Family Support 18:08 Creating Stability Amidst Change 21:08 Finding Joy in Unexpected Paths 24:01 Embracing Change and New Beginnings 27:07 The Power of Gratitude and Presence 30:07 Hope and Moving Forward 33:02 Closing Thoughts on Life's JourneyMental Health Resources
- If you or someone you know is struggling, please call 988 for help.
- The Survivors Podcast Website – https://thesurvivors.net/
- The HelpHUB™ – Mental health resources, tools, and support networks – https://www.thehelphub.co/
- National Domestic Violence Hotline – Call 1-800-799-SAFE (7223)
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See you next week! In the meantime, keep surviving.
00:00:00 --> 00:00:04 Hey friends, before we dive into this week's episode, just a heads up.
00:00:05 --> 00:00:09 Our podcast talks about suicide, sexual abuse, and other trauma,
00:00:09 --> 00:00:13 and some of what you hear may be triggering. So please listen with care.
00:00:13 --> 00:00:18 This is The Survivors, real stories, raw conversations, and the truth about
00:00:18 --> 00:00:21 what it means to keep going after the hardest things.
00:00:21 --> 00:00:25 We're so glad you're here. Let's keep surviving together. Heather.
00:00:26 --> 00:00:32 You know, I've been thinking a lot lately, and I get like this at this time of year.
00:00:33 --> 00:00:37 I've been thinking a lot lately about the life that I have, which I love,
00:00:38 --> 00:00:40 grateful beyond words, right?
00:00:41 --> 00:00:44 Versus the life that maybe I thought I was going to have.
00:00:45 --> 00:00:49 I don't think a lot of people talk about often.
00:00:50 --> 00:00:53 And the reason why I feel this way,
00:00:53 --> 00:00:58 why this is like something that's in my thoughts around this time of year,
00:00:58 --> 00:01:05 is because I now am in a new routine in my life these last few years,
00:01:05 --> 00:01:09 where I am only with my family, my whole, when I say my family,
00:01:09 --> 00:01:14 I mean Dave and I and our kids are all together under the same roof twice a year.
00:01:15 --> 00:01:20 And that, as a mom of two daughters who I'm super close with,
00:01:20 --> 00:01:22 my two daughters are my best friends in the world.
00:01:22 --> 00:01:29 I mean, excluding Dave, obviously, but I never in my wildest dreams imagined
00:01:29 --> 00:01:36 that I would have the majority of my relationship with one of my children through a phone screen.
00:01:37 --> 00:01:43 That is not the life I thought I would have. We are from such a close family. We are such a,
00:01:44 --> 00:01:47 like connected, bonded family unit.
00:01:47 --> 00:01:52 And around this time of the year, I actually feel like this incredible sense
00:01:52 --> 00:01:54 of loss. Like we just got back from Japan.
00:01:54 --> 00:01:59 It's where I've been the last three years in December for the holidays.
00:02:00 --> 00:02:06 And I always have this incredible sense of fulfillment when I'm there.
00:02:07 --> 00:02:10 Like that's my happiest place when everybody's under the same roof.
00:02:11 --> 00:02:15 But then when I leave, it's like full-on active grief.
00:02:17 --> 00:02:21 It is. And I'm glad we're talking. I know we were going to talk about this today,
00:02:21 --> 00:02:23 and I'm glad. It's like I'm not grieving a person.
00:02:24 --> 00:02:26 I'm not grieving like a single moment or an event.
00:02:27 --> 00:02:33 Like, I guess it was just grieving a life that I thought would be very different.
00:02:34 --> 00:02:40 Like, had this little image of all of us kind of living close together and sort
00:02:40 --> 00:02:44 of nearby or at least present in a way that if I had to, I could hop on a train
00:02:44 --> 00:02:46 or, you know, take a quick flight if I had to.
00:02:47 --> 00:02:51 And that's not what it is. It's very different. And so when you say through
00:02:51 --> 00:02:54 a screen, you guys have FaceTime phone calls every day? Every day.
00:02:55 --> 00:02:57 Every day. I'm like, I'm really lucky in that way. Like I think about what I
00:02:57 --> 00:03:03 have and I know that I'm probably honestly a lot closer than a lot of moms with
00:03:03 --> 00:03:07 their children who are living. So we live just north of Boston.
00:03:08 --> 00:03:12 I have so many friends whose kids live in the city or maybe live in New York.
00:03:12 --> 00:03:16 And they talk to them like once every week or once every couple weeks.
00:03:17 --> 00:03:21 And they see them maybe almost as infrequently as I get to see one of my kids.
00:03:22 --> 00:03:27 And so I do consider myself lucky that my daughter literally five days a week when she is a teacher.
00:03:27 --> 00:03:32 And when she's on her way to school, she calls us in the morning.
00:03:32 --> 00:03:38 It's nighttime for us. But she calls us every day like a religion.
00:03:38 --> 00:03:41 I love that. Which I love. And it's amazing. And it's a quick call.
00:03:41 --> 00:03:44 It's like less than 10 minutes. But we get connected.
00:03:44 --> 00:03:48 How was your night? How's your day? What's going on? quick pulse check,
00:03:48 --> 00:03:50 and then we catch up at night or on the weekends.
00:03:50 --> 00:03:55 But I just think that this is such a hard kind of grief to name,
00:03:55 --> 00:03:59 because there's no definition of it.
00:03:59 --> 00:04:02 There's no beginning or ending. There isn't a funeral.
00:04:02 --> 00:04:07 There wasn't a point that you can say something changed. It just...
00:04:08 --> 00:04:12 It's like the big picture just didn't end up the way you thought it would be
00:04:12 --> 00:04:15 in your head, and it just unfolded in a different way.
00:04:15 --> 00:04:18 Has that been—do you connect with that?
00:04:18 --> 00:04:22 Oh, absolutely. Yeah. 100%. Yeah. You know, thinking that my life was going
00:04:22 --> 00:04:28 to go a certain way, and almost nothing in my life has panned out the way I
00:04:28 --> 00:04:29 had planned it was going to go.
00:04:29 --> 00:04:36 And it's incredibly hard and painful at times, especially as I've now no longer
00:04:36 --> 00:04:41 have any contact with my family and realizing we're such a big part of each
00:04:41 --> 00:04:43 other's lives for many, many years.
00:04:43 --> 00:04:46 But then as time has gone and it's just
00:04:46 --> 00:04:50 we've at least me I've faded
00:04:50 --> 00:04:53 into the background for many people and you know
00:04:53 --> 00:04:57 in fact I wanted to tell you that the fact that you speak to your your children
00:04:57 --> 00:05:02 every day you know that's not normal like that's not usual oh I know oh I did
00:05:02 --> 00:05:05 in fact when you and I first you know started to getting to know each other
00:05:05 --> 00:05:09 and then we were texting every single day and you wanted to know what was going
00:05:09 --> 00:05:10 on in my day-to-day life,
00:05:11 --> 00:05:13 that was very foreign to me.
00:05:13 --> 00:05:17 I had never had that kind of a relationship with what I consider,
00:05:17 --> 00:05:21 you and I kind of have like a maternal kind of, you know what I mean?
00:05:22 --> 00:05:27 And so it just was very foreign to me that somebody that I would consider kind
00:05:27 --> 00:05:30 of to be a mother figure to me would want to know the day-to-day.
00:05:30 --> 00:05:33 Let's call it an older sister. Come on now. Okay, I know.
00:05:33 --> 00:05:36 I'm just kidding. I'm just kidding. You are. Yes, you are an older.
00:05:36 --> 00:05:39 You're definitely not old enough to be my mother. Of course not.
00:05:39 --> 00:05:45 It's crazy talk, man. Come on. Oh, she's not. But that's just the kind of energy
00:05:45 --> 00:05:50 that Lisa has, is just very welcoming and warm, and just, she cares.
00:05:51 --> 00:05:53 And that was just not something that I was used to.
00:05:54 --> 00:05:57 And, you know, like when I started my new job a couple of months ago,
00:05:57 --> 00:05:59 she was like, call me a second.
00:05:59 --> 00:06:01 You know, when you get out of your work, I want to hear about your first day.
00:06:01 --> 00:06:03 And I was like, what? What?
00:06:03 --> 00:06:07 Person wants to know about my first day at work. Somebody other than my husband.
00:06:09 --> 00:06:13 So, yeah, it's, I have to say that I love that you guys have that in your family.
00:06:14 --> 00:06:17 And I hope that that's something that I can have with my children, too.
00:06:17 --> 00:06:22 You know, where we're involved in everybody's, in their day-to-day and things like that.
00:06:23 --> 00:06:28 I have to say, if my kids move away from me, that's going to be hard.
00:06:29 --> 00:06:30 I know, I know. It's funny.
00:06:31 --> 00:06:34 Was it this morning? Yeah, this morning or last night, I think.
00:06:35 --> 00:06:38 So I have, for anyone who's listened to the podcast, you know that I have a
00:06:38 --> 00:06:41 daughter who lives in Japan, who's my oldest, been there for three years,
00:06:42 --> 00:06:43 just got engaged, actually.
00:06:43 --> 00:06:48 And she and her fiancé are going to be building a life in Japan.
00:06:48 --> 00:06:50 So that means that that is the normal.
00:06:51 --> 00:06:54 That is the new normal. That is the rhythm of our life and the
00:06:54 --> 00:06:59 way that our family unit interacts is they come home in the summer to Boston
00:06:59 --> 00:07:06 and we go there in December and hopefully Dave and I can sneak a trip in in
00:07:06 --> 00:07:09 the spring because there's absolutely no way on this earth I can be separated
00:07:09 --> 00:07:13 from one of my kids for seven, eight months at a time. I just can't do it.
00:07:13 --> 00:07:15 So we're, you know, where there's a will, there's a way. We'll figure it out.
00:07:15 --> 00:07:21 But I mean, I'm very, very lucky that I have that kind of relationship.
00:07:22 --> 00:07:26 And I don't take it for granted for a second. But I was talking about it with
00:07:26 --> 00:07:28 my younger daughter who lives four miles away.
00:07:28 --> 00:07:31 And she's just like, Mom.
00:07:32 --> 00:07:36 You know that if I ever move, like she and her boyfriend are very serious and
00:07:36 --> 00:07:38 we know that they're planning on getting married.
00:07:39 --> 00:07:45 And she's like, if we move somewhere, like you and dad have to come with us, right?
00:07:45 --> 00:07:49 Like that's, oh, oh, she fully is like, you know you have to come.
00:07:49 --> 00:07:53 And it's really sweet because we're very, very, very close with her boyfriend.
00:07:53 --> 00:07:57 And her boyfriend says the same things. His family, he's about to have a complete
00:07:57 --> 00:08:04 shift, kind of like what we had happen, where our child moved away.
00:08:04 --> 00:08:09 Now his parents, his family's from Ghana, and his parents are actually moving
00:08:09 --> 00:08:13 home to Ghana after like 30-something years of living in the U.S.
00:08:13 --> 00:08:17 Oh, wow. So he will be here, and his parents will be the ones to move away.
00:08:18 --> 00:08:21 So we're all talking about, all of us who are here in the States,
00:08:21 --> 00:08:25 we're talking about, well, we'll just have like a compound, and we'll all just kind of.
00:08:25 --> 00:08:30 You know, wherever we are, we want to make sure that we're close together.
00:08:30 --> 00:08:34 And he says the same thing now she says. No, no, no, you guys are coming with us wherever we go.
00:08:34 --> 00:08:39 You'll come with us. So yeah, it's just, it's interesting when you take a step
00:08:39 --> 00:08:43 back and you look at kind of where you're at and where your imagination may
00:08:43 --> 00:08:45 have been at one point about,
00:08:45 --> 00:08:48 you know, like I imagine my life to be this or when your kids are little,
00:08:48 --> 00:08:50 you never expect that your kid is going to say.
00:08:51 --> 00:08:54 I'm gonna live in another hemisphere you just you
00:08:54 --> 00:08:57 don't I mean I know there are millions of people out there who do that but
00:08:57 --> 00:09:01 in my case it just I
00:09:01 --> 00:09:04 never expected it until you know she was
00:09:04 --> 00:09:06 of the age where she started saying this is what I think I want to do with my life but
00:09:06 --> 00:09:12 but this conversation isn't just about that it's not just about like what happens
00:09:12 --> 00:09:15 when your kid moves around you know to the other side of the world this is also
00:09:15 --> 00:09:25 like like look at look at my mom what happens when you You are what my mother was 40 when I was born.
00:09:25 --> 00:09:29 And then, no, my mother was 40 when my father passed away. She was 30 when I was born.
00:09:30 --> 00:09:35 My mother turned 40, and two months later, my father died. My father took his life.
00:09:37 --> 00:09:42 So talk about living a life that you never imagined. Like, my parents had been married for 18 years.
00:09:42 --> 00:09:46 They were so happily married. Such a beautiful couple.
00:09:46 --> 00:09:51 No sign, no signal that anything was wrong. And then all of a sudden, my dad's not there.
00:09:51 --> 00:09:54 And now my mom is a single parent raising me all by herself.
00:09:54 --> 00:10:01 You know or or the person whose like it was whose spouse one day says this isn't
00:10:01 --> 00:10:07 what i want anymore and they leave yeah you know that's why that kind of that's grief that's all.
00:10:08 --> 00:10:14 Grief and and loss and it's you know we all have these assumptions about the
00:10:14 --> 00:10:19 life that we're going to lead about family closeness look at you or where you're
00:10:19 --> 00:10:22 going to live in relation to your family or traditions or togetherness and things like that.
00:10:22 --> 00:10:26 And when reality looks really different, it can be really, really disorienting.
00:10:27 --> 00:10:32 Yeah, absolutely. I mean, people don't understand that when you have to take
00:10:32 --> 00:10:37 a step back for your own mental sanity from family members, which is what I've had to do.
00:10:38 --> 00:10:44 My husband and I, we chose to move from Utah, which is where I grew my entire
00:10:44 --> 00:10:47 life, 30 years, lived in Salt Lake County, Utah.
00:10:48 --> 00:10:52 And we wanted something different. We had two little kids. We had wanted to
00:10:52 --> 00:10:54 always live by the ocean.
00:10:54 --> 00:10:57 We'd picked up without knowing us all, and we moved to Virginia Beach,
00:10:57 --> 00:10:59 Virginia, across the country.
00:11:00 --> 00:11:02 It was beautiful. It was great. We loved it.
00:11:03 --> 00:11:07 Slowly over time, I lost contact with my family as I, you know,
00:11:07 --> 00:11:10 stopped putting in the work to keep the relationship active.
00:11:10 --> 00:11:13 And I realized, oh, wow, I'm the one that's keeping these relationships going.
00:11:13 --> 00:11:18 And then one by one, and then I didn't have a relationship with anybody.
00:11:19 --> 00:11:21 And then COVID happened.
00:11:22 --> 00:11:28 The world changed and we ended up moving and a whole other set of circumstances changed.
00:11:29 --> 00:11:33 We ended up back in Utah in 2022. And I thought, you know, and by then I'd repaired
00:11:33 --> 00:11:35 most of the relationships. Everything was good.
00:11:35 --> 00:11:39 And I thought, you know, this will be different. We're all grown adults.
00:11:39 --> 00:11:42 We're in different places. The trauma bonds didn't seem to be there anymore.
00:11:43 --> 00:11:47 And then, you know, we lost multiple family members of the course of five months.
00:11:47 --> 00:11:52 And it just, And I thought, I really honestly thought that after we had,
00:11:52 --> 00:11:58 you know, then buried now four brothers to suicide, we lost our dad to cancer,
00:11:58 --> 00:12:02 I thought we could get over our shit and really come together as a family.
00:12:03 --> 00:12:08 And then I really realized, I was like, oh, wow, we're just repeating the same
00:12:08 --> 00:12:11 cycles over and over and over again.
00:12:12 --> 00:12:18 And then I realized I've got to get out. And I actually We had been back in Utah for nine months,
00:12:19 --> 00:12:24 And just a casual conversation with friends And George had mentioned that he
00:12:24 --> 00:12:27 would Move back to Virginia in a heartbeat And I hadn't told him that I had
00:12:27 --> 00:12:29 been having those feelings for months,
00:12:30 --> 00:12:31 And I was like, oh,
00:12:32 --> 00:12:36 so you would consider moving back to Virginia? He's like, absolutely.
00:12:36 --> 00:12:38 And I said, okay, well, I've been feeling it too.
00:12:38 --> 00:12:43 And I said, well, we need to go. Because if I stay here, if I stay here in Utah
00:12:43 --> 00:12:48 around my toxic family, I said, I won't make it to 40.
00:12:50 --> 00:12:54 And, you know, what you may not know if you haven't heard of previous episodes,
00:12:54 --> 00:13:00 but I have survived three suicide attempts in the early 2000s for various reasons.
00:13:01 --> 00:13:04 A lot of it stemming from, you know, childhood trauma, things like that.
00:13:04 --> 00:13:10 But I know for me, and I've learned enough about my triggers to know that my
00:13:10 --> 00:13:16 family's are huge triggers for me and the same toxic cycles that we seem to have.
00:13:16 --> 00:13:20 And so I just was very honest and real with myself and I said, we got to go.
00:13:20 --> 00:13:27 And we've been back here in Virginia for a year now and lost another brother
00:13:27 --> 00:13:31 nine months ago, brother number five, to suicide.
00:13:33 --> 00:13:37 I flew home, handled the funeral arrangements with my mother,
00:13:37 --> 00:13:40 all the things, and what do you know?
00:13:41 --> 00:13:48 Same toxic cycles returned. And so I've just really decided that it's just not
00:13:48 --> 00:13:55 worth my mental peace to continue to beg for love from people who don't actually care.
00:13:55 --> 00:13:59 Blood does not mean that they care. It just means you share blood.
00:14:00 --> 00:14:05 Yeah, well, you and I talked about this before we ever even recorded today about
00:14:05 --> 00:14:10 how it is so unfortunate in so many situations where you can't pick your family.
00:14:10 --> 00:14:16 But on the other side of that, we are so fortunate that we do get to choose
00:14:16 --> 00:14:19 our friends in a lot of cases.
00:14:19 --> 00:14:27 And in so many cases, what we gain by choosing those people who intentionally
00:14:27 --> 00:14:31 show up, who want to bring out the best in us, who want to support us,
00:14:31 --> 00:14:36 by being able to do that, we kind of counteract ourselves.
00:14:36 --> 00:14:41 What we couldn't get from the people that we love. And that's what I just said
00:14:41 --> 00:14:42 is what we're talking about here.
00:14:42 --> 00:14:47 It's when our life doesn't turn out the way we expected it to,
00:14:47 --> 00:14:53 or the way we just naturally assume that it will because, oh, hey, we have a family.
00:14:53 --> 00:14:56 So we naturally assume that our family will always support us and be there for
00:14:56 --> 00:15:03 us and lift us up and be there to catch us when we fall.
00:15:03 --> 00:15:07 And in your case, like you and I come from really, really drastically different
00:15:07 --> 00:15:11 families. I mean, I'm an only child. You are a child of 20.
00:15:11 --> 00:15:16 Right there, that's a little different. You were raised in a polygamy cult.
00:15:17 --> 00:15:24 I was not, you know, raised by just my mom and my dad and in a,
00:15:24 --> 00:15:28 you know, affluent middle-class town north of Boston.
00:15:29 --> 00:15:35 Very difficult than being in a compound with, you know, fundamentalist,
00:15:35 --> 00:15:40 Latter-day Saints community the way you were.
00:15:42 --> 00:15:48 And yet you still, when you were a kid, I'm sure, kind of expected that your
00:15:48 --> 00:15:50 family would be there for you.
00:15:50 --> 00:15:55 I mean, I know it was a tough upbringing for you, and you have a lot of trauma,
00:15:56 --> 00:15:59 and a lot of baggage that you carry from your childhood, But I'm sure somewhere
00:15:59 --> 00:16:05 in there, you still kind of figured out that everybody would support you or be there for you.
00:16:05 --> 00:16:08 Like, you never expected to be estranged.
00:16:09 --> 00:16:13 Looking for mental health resources that actually fit who you are and where
00:16:13 --> 00:16:15 you come from? Then you need to check out the Help Hub.
00:16:16 --> 00:16:19 It's not another generic wellness site. It's a free, inclusive,
00:16:20 --> 00:16:23 online platform built for real people living real lives.
00:16:24 --> 00:16:31 People managing stress, anxiety, depression, trauma and abuse, grief or suicide loss.
00:16:31 --> 00:16:35 At the Help Hub, you'll find the resources, tools, treatment options,
00:16:35 --> 00:16:39 and trauma-informed content you need in the moment without having to dig through
00:16:39 --> 00:16:41 endless tabs or start from scratch,
00:16:42 --> 00:16:48 it's your place to land to take a breath and to find exactly what you need when you need it most,
00:16:48 --> 00:16:52 visit the helphub.co where the help you need is just a click away.
00:16:58 --> 00:17:01 No I didn't and and I you know I have I'm
00:17:01 --> 00:17:04 number 13 of 20 and a lot of
00:17:04 --> 00:17:07 my siblings had children at very young ages they got married very young they
00:17:07 --> 00:17:14 had children very young and you know I was super involved with them and raising
00:17:14 --> 00:17:17 their children and being there babysitting doing all the things spending day
00:17:17 --> 00:17:21 to day in fact I worked for one of my my dad and my sister went into business
00:17:21 --> 00:17:23 together and I worked for them.
00:17:23 --> 00:17:30 So, I was there in their home office every day for five years. Wow.
00:17:31 --> 00:17:35 And so, I was an everyday part of her children's lives.
00:17:35 --> 00:17:39 And so, I thought, you know, for sure that, you know, and I wasn't going to
00:17:39 --> 00:17:42 have children at first, but then I, we ultimately decided to have children.
00:17:42 --> 00:17:45 And I just, I noticed there was a big difference
00:17:45 --> 00:17:48 in the way people showed up for other people
00:17:48 --> 00:17:51 in my family versus other you know
00:17:51 --> 00:17:54 like certain you know it was almost very clicky and
00:17:54 --> 00:17:57 the favoritism and I was like
00:17:57 --> 00:18:00 oh okay so and I
00:18:00 --> 00:18:03 realized once I started having kids my kids were really young because
00:18:03 --> 00:18:08 I had two kids in two years I was like oh okay so I I'm not going to get the
00:18:08 --> 00:18:15 same support okay got it yeah so I learned very early on in my motherhood journey
00:18:15 --> 00:18:18 That it was going to be up to me I was not going to get that same level of support
00:18:18 --> 00:18:22 And then I was like So what's the point in staying I'm The.
00:18:23 --> 00:18:27 The close family ties and bonds that I thought we were going to have and carry
00:18:27 --> 00:18:31 on with our children and, you know, them being a part of each other's lives
00:18:31 --> 00:18:34 and their aunts and uncles, you know, actually caring what goes on or showing
00:18:34 --> 00:18:36 up to sporting events or whatever.
00:18:37 --> 00:18:41 I was like, what's the point in staying? There's no point in continuing to stay here.
00:18:42 --> 00:18:45 And that's when we decided to just go off on a new adventure.
00:18:46 --> 00:18:49 And it was scary I'm not gonna lie but my
00:18:49 --> 00:18:52 goodness if I did not find some amazing people
00:18:52 --> 00:18:56 along the way and have some amazing adventures but
00:18:56 --> 00:18:59 what what and I'm so glad that you did I'm so glad that
00:18:59 --> 00:19:07 that positive part happened to you what what were the hardest parts of leaving
00:19:07 --> 00:19:13 behind the expectation of I came from a big family I want my own little unit
00:19:13 --> 00:19:18 now you and George and your kids to be a part of that extended family?
00:19:18 --> 00:19:21 Like, what was it like to have to break away from that?
00:19:22 --> 00:19:23 What was the hardest part of that?
00:19:24 --> 00:19:31 Or was there a hard part? You know, it was basically the last year that we were
00:19:31 --> 00:19:34 there that I really just slowly pulled back altogether.
00:19:35 --> 00:19:42 So it was a gradual, I'll pulling back and withdrawing because I knew it was going to be hard.
00:19:43 --> 00:19:49 The hardest part, though, and where I really cried was when I had to say goodbye to my dad.
00:19:50 --> 00:19:53 And, you know, because my dad was always like, he's a handyman.
00:19:53 --> 00:19:55 He was a general contractor.
00:19:55 --> 00:19:59 He loved to help around the house or whatever, whatever project you had,
00:19:59 --> 00:20:00 he was there. A hundred percent.
00:20:01 --> 00:20:04 You know, after having a baby for all of his daughters, he's like,
00:20:04 --> 00:20:07 I get to bring you your first meal after the baby's delivered.
00:20:08 --> 00:20:09 Just things like that. That's sweet.
00:20:10 --> 00:20:15 And so that was really hard knowing that I wasn't going to get to see my dad regularly.
00:20:16 --> 00:20:18 By then he had moved to Southern Utah, so I only saw him, you know,
00:20:19 --> 00:20:22 every few months, but still very active but
00:20:22 --> 00:20:26 the other one that was really hard was saying goodbye to jenny's
00:20:26 --> 00:20:29 youngest son logan because i
00:20:29 --> 00:20:32 you know essentially helped raise him the first five years
00:20:32 --> 00:20:36 of his life because i was there every day working and so
00:20:36 --> 00:20:39 realizing that i wasn't gonna get to see him and be
00:20:39 --> 00:20:43 a part of his life regularly and he
00:20:43 --> 00:20:46 was also very close with my children that was
00:20:46 --> 00:20:49 hard that was almost like saying goodbye to one of my children
00:20:49 --> 00:20:52 and that really i i cry and
00:20:52 --> 00:20:55 he was like six so he didn't
00:20:55 --> 00:21:00 understand yeah and why is auntie crying and saying goodbye and and things like
00:21:00 --> 00:21:05 that and so that was that was the hardest part for me was not being involved
00:21:05 --> 00:21:13 in the children's lives that i had grown to cherish and and enjoy being around and yeah.
00:21:13 --> 00:21:17 I think any kind of loss
00:21:17 --> 00:21:25 of what we expected is just learning how to hang on to the reality of what things
00:21:25 --> 00:21:35 are and find the beauty and the joy and the adventure and the love of what is.
00:21:35 --> 00:21:37 I just think it can be so hard.
00:21:38 --> 00:21:41 I mean, I know for myself, having expectations,
00:21:41 --> 00:21:45 and I try not to have a lot of expectations, but there are certain things that
00:21:45 --> 00:21:47 you just kind of inherently have expectations about that,
00:21:47 --> 00:21:53 you know, that you just don't expect that you're going to pick up one day and
00:21:53 --> 00:21:59 just move from where your entire huge extended family is and never look back
00:21:59 --> 00:22:02 because it's too toxic to look back.
00:22:02 --> 00:22:07 And for me, I never expected my kid would move, you know, 7 miles away.
00:22:08 --> 00:22:10 And, you know, now I think about,
00:22:11 --> 00:22:17 the future of, well, what if I have grandchildren? And how will that look?
00:22:17 --> 00:22:21 And I know what I, my grandmother lived with us. My mother's grandmother lived with her.
00:22:22 --> 00:22:29 We've always had that kind of a family structure where everybody's been very
00:22:29 --> 00:22:32 close by each other and everybody's been very involved in everybody's lives.
00:22:32 --> 00:22:36 And I actively, I grieve that.
00:22:36 --> 00:22:39 Like, I feel the grief of that. I don't want to.
00:22:40 --> 00:22:44 And I wish I didn't. I wish I knew how not to.
00:22:44 --> 00:22:49 But it's really, really hard. So I just try and stay positive and stay focused
00:22:49 --> 00:22:56 on the things that I know I have, that I know that my daughter doesn't go to
00:22:56 --> 00:22:59 work a single day of the week without calling us.
00:23:00 --> 00:23:05 And she lives that far away. And I try to think about the positives as much
00:23:05 --> 00:23:11 as I can and just be here and be present with what is versus, you know,
00:23:11 --> 00:23:16 trying to hold on to an idea of something that I thought would be.
00:23:16 --> 00:23:21 But I mean, I really do think that we all have to give ourselves the ability
00:23:21 --> 00:23:27 to miss or mourn or whatever word you want to use the life we thought we might have had,
00:23:28 --> 00:23:32 you know, especially those people whose lives were abruptly
00:23:32 --> 00:23:35 changed because someone passed away suddenly or
00:23:35 --> 00:23:38 a job was lost and all
00:23:38 --> 00:23:42 of a sudden you had to move or there was some kind of trauma like we're allowed
00:23:42 --> 00:23:48 to sit in that for a while we have absolutely i mean and mourning the loss that
00:23:48 --> 00:23:52 of the life that you thought you'd have for example i'm actually in the midst
00:23:52 --> 00:23:58 of right now my husband and i are moving for the ninth time in ten and a half years.
00:23:59 --> 00:24:03 Three of those have been cross-country. I am so tired of moving.
00:24:03 --> 00:24:08 I never thought in a million years that I will have moved this time as a grown adult.
00:24:08 --> 00:24:14 Especially being that I lived in the house that my dad built for the first 15 years of my life.
00:24:14 --> 00:24:19 And here we have, yeah. And trust me, I feel guilt beyond you would not believe
00:24:19 --> 00:24:23 dragging my kids across so many different states and doing all these things
00:24:23 --> 00:24:27 and not giving them a quote-unquote stable childhood.
00:24:28 --> 00:24:32 Well that could be debatable we can debate that all day long because if you
00:24:32 --> 00:24:35 and your husband you know you and George are,
00:24:36 --> 00:24:41 creating that stability wherever you are like that that it doesn't matter like
00:24:41 --> 00:24:47 you know the roof that's over your head in theory shouldn't matter you know
00:24:47 --> 00:24:50 you you can have people moving,
00:24:51 --> 00:24:56 all over and having absolutely terrible or the other way around you can have
00:24:56 --> 00:25:01 people staying in one place being completely permanent where they are and being
00:25:01 --> 00:25:09 terrible parents and having terrible relationships with your kids and people are unhappy on that end.
00:25:09 --> 00:25:14 Or, you know, you've got people like you and George who are creating a loving
00:25:14 --> 00:25:16 home no matter what home you're in.
00:25:17 --> 00:25:20 That's true. But I do understand what you're saying. I do understand what you're
00:25:20 --> 00:25:22 saying. We moved around a lot, too, when the kids were little.
00:25:22 --> 00:25:29 I mean, we probably moved around six or seven times by the time we settled in our house of 20 years.
00:25:30 --> 00:25:35 So I get it. I get that feeling. Yeah. And just, I want, you know,
00:25:35 --> 00:25:37 I thought we'd be living in our house.
00:25:38 --> 00:25:41 We'd be raising our kids in the same house and they'd have all these memories
00:25:41 --> 00:25:45 and within that house and they don't get to have that.
00:25:46 --> 00:25:50 And that's really hard for me to realize that they're memories of,
00:25:50 --> 00:25:52 you know, because you look back at your childhood home and you're just,
00:25:53 --> 00:25:57 it reminds you of things and you go back to that childhood home over and over again.
00:25:57 --> 00:26:01 And so it's just, you know, unfortunately, circumstances, no, we're not military.
00:26:02 --> 00:26:05 It's just circumstantial that we've moved that many times.
00:26:05 --> 00:26:10 And right now we're moving, it'll be my shortest move. We're moving across the street.
00:26:11 --> 00:26:16 You can basically chuck things from the front lawn into the other house, right?
00:26:17 --> 00:26:22 Yeah, so it's across the street and down one. So yesterday we started the process
00:26:22 --> 00:26:26 and cleared out the garage and things like that. But yeah, we just,
00:26:26 --> 00:26:28 we bought little, we have some wagons.
00:26:28 --> 00:26:32 We just, everything was just getting tossed into wagons and just one,
00:26:32 --> 00:26:35 one cart, you know, load full at a time. And.
00:26:37 --> 00:26:41 But it's definitely where, you know, you get settled into a home and you're
00:26:41 --> 00:26:43 like, okay, we can get settled, especially with everything that we've been through.
00:26:44 --> 00:26:48 And it's just really hard. So our landlord, who is now our friend,
00:26:48 --> 00:26:51 I'm like, please, can we stay here until we build our house?
00:26:51 --> 00:26:54 Because, you know, we're finally here where we live currently in Virginia.
00:26:55 --> 00:26:58 Like, this is home for us. We want to find some land, build a house.
00:26:58 --> 00:27:03 And so I was like, please do not kick us out of this house. And it really just
00:27:03 --> 00:27:06 is circumstantial that the house we're living in now, it's the person that owns
00:27:06 --> 00:27:09 it is military and his coming back.
00:27:10 --> 00:27:14 So he wants his house back. So ungrateful.
00:27:14 --> 00:27:17 So right. You're taking such good care of it. I know. I know.
00:27:18 --> 00:27:22 But yeah, it's definitely a grieving process of, dang it, we don't get to have
00:27:22 --> 00:27:26 all these wonderful memories within a solid household that the kids will remember.
00:27:27 --> 00:27:31 And I thought we would be halfway to having our house paid off by now.
00:27:31 --> 00:27:37 And after 15 years of owning, you know, homes or, you know, it's just a lot
00:27:37 --> 00:27:38 of different things where you
00:27:38 --> 00:27:42 have to look at the life that you dreamed of having and then you're like,
00:27:42 --> 00:27:47 oh, crap, circumstances change, which they often do and derails your plans.
00:27:47 --> 00:27:52 And really just learning to be flexible and just roll with it.
00:27:53 --> 00:27:58 Yeah, it's that. And it's also it's also intentionally being grateful about
00:27:58 --> 00:28:03 what you do have. And a lot of the time, honestly, too—.
00:28:04 --> 00:28:09 Even though, like, just because we didn't maybe follow the path we expected
00:28:09 --> 00:28:13 that we would follow or that we wanted to follow doesn't mean that what we have
00:28:13 --> 00:28:19 and the path we're on now isn't an even better path for us, isn't a more joyful path.
00:28:19 --> 00:28:23 Like, one thing doesn't have to cancel out the other.
00:28:23 --> 00:28:28 Like, we're still allowed at the end of the day to kind of miss or mourn or
00:28:28 --> 00:28:33 grieve the kind of life we thought we would have versus where we're at.
00:28:33 --> 00:28:35 But we can also love the life you're living.
00:28:35 --> 00:28:40 It's, you know, I think it's really just a whole conversation about being present.
00:28:41 --> 00:28:47 Just being present and about allowing yourself to feel the good bits and the
00:28:47 --> 00:28:53 bad bits and recognize that it's life and not everything is going to fall into
00:28:53 --> 00:28:56 place the way we expect or want it to. Right.
00:28:56 --> 00:28:59 And along the lines of what you said, being grateful for what you have,
00:28:59 --> 00:29:04 because I've looked back and I'm like, okay, if we hadn't moved this time or
00:29:04 --> 00:29:10 done that, we wouldn't have met people that are still in our lives that we never would have met.
00:29:10 --> 00:29:13 The kids would have never met these certain friends. In fact,
00:29:13 --> 00:29:18 one of them is two boys that we met, and they spent a week with us during the summer.
00:29:19 --> 00:29:22 They were just here for four days over the holidays.
00:29:23 --> 00:29:29 And had we not moved four times in 18 months during 2020 and 2022,
00:29:30 --> 00:29:31 we never would have met them.
00:29:33 --> 00:29:35 And again, finding the positive...
00:29:36 --> 00:29:40 You know, we talk about this a lot, just allowing yourself to feel whatever
00:29:40 --> 00:29:45 it is you're going to feel and allowing it to move through you and to be grateful
00:29:45 --> 00:29:50 for what we have, but still allowing space for the sadness and the grief for what was not.
00:29:50 --> 00:29:55 Absolutely. Absolutely. You just reminded me of like the perfect example of
00:29:55 --> 00:29:58 all of this is one of my daughters is the one who lives abroad.
00:29:58 --> 00:30:00 So I don't know how much I've told you about this situation,
00:30:01 --> 00:30:05 and I really don't talk that often about it on the podcast or write about it.
00:30:05 --> 00:30:11 But my daughter, when she graduated from college in 2019, was supposed to move abroad.
00:30:11 --> 00:30:15 She was supposed to move to Japan, which is where she ultimately ended up going.
00:30:15 --> 00:30:19 And she was supposed to teach English as a second language, do that for a couple
00:30:19 --> 00:30:21 of years, and then potentially go off.
00:30:21 --> 00:30:25 And she was in the communications field at the time and do her thing and dive into her career.
00:30:26 --> 00:30:31 She was supposed to leave right after she graduated, but her group was so big
00:30:31 --> 00:30:33 that they split it into two sections.
00:30:34 --> 00:30:38 And one of them went right after graduation, and the other one went in March of 2020.
00:30:38 --> 00:30:41 She was the one who was chosen to go March of 2020.
00:30:41 --> 00:30:47 So she had her ticket. She had a lease for her apartment. She had a job that she had committed to.
00:30:47 --> 00:30:50 And the day before she was supposed to leave, they shut down the borders,
00:30:50 --> 00:30:55 and that completely dissolved. and it took her four years to,
00:30:56 --> 00:31:00 to get to where she ultimately wanted to go.
00:31:00 --> 00:31:04 But the interesting thing about, and this is talk about like grieving a loss
00:31:04 --> 00:31:06 of your life that you dreamt of.
00:31:06 --> 00:31:11 I mean, she put so much heart and soul and effort into learning the language
00:31:11 --> 00:31:19 and getting her life organized in Japan from the U.S. to try and build a life for herself.
00:31:19 --> 00:31:23 And then in a matter of a day, this dream that she had had for years,
00:31:23 --> 00:31:26 just poof, it just evaporated.
00:31:26 --> 00:31:30 And, I mean, it was a rough time. This was right in the middle of the pandemic.
00:31:31 --> 00:31:32 All four of us were in the house.
00:31:32 --> 00:31:36 She was now prevented, and we were the ones. I mean, we took the hit.
00:31:36 --> 00:31:42 She wanted to go, and we were the ones who said, the world is not a world where
00:31:42 --> 00:31:47 you should be taking this chance and going, and ultimately she stayed. Yeah.
00:31:48 --> 00:31:55 It was a rough time for her because she was in deep, deep grief over the life that she dreamt of.
00:31:56 --> 00:31:59 And somehow she just, you know, she sat in it for as long as she had to sit
00:31:59 --> 00:32:03 in it and then eventually kind of found her way again to a new path.
00:32:03 --> 00:32:06 And, okay, if I couldn't go this way, I'm going to go that way and then set her sights again.
00:32:06 --> 00:32:09 And four years later, she ended up there.
00:32:09 --> 00:32:13 And four years later, she ended up in a different area. She wasn't in the same
00:32:13 --> 00:32:19 area. It was because she had waited all that time and ended up where she ended
00:32:19 --> 00:32:22 up that she ultimately ended up meeting her boyfriend, who is now her fiancé.
00:32:22 --> 00:32:27 She ended up finding a love for teaching again, changed her whole degree program,
00:32:27 --> 00:32:31 is now a teacher, is now marrying the man that she adores.
00:32:32 --> 00:32:37 And not all setbacks turn out the same way.
00:32:37 --> 00:32:41 But in her case, it did. And there was a lot of grief and a lot of pain.
00:32:41 --> 00:32:44 But this is what I was saying. This is proof of what I was saying before that
00:32:44 --> 00:32:48 sometimes what does happen, even though we get derailed, can turn out to be
00:32:48 --> 00:32:51 better than what we had imagined.
00:32:51 --> 00:32:55 So in her case, that is what the outcome was.
00:32:55 --> 00:32:58 But oh my God, did she sit in it for the longest time?
00:33:00 --> 00:33:06 Because everything she thought she was going to be doing in her life blew up in front of her face.
00:33:06 --> 00:33:10 Yeah. I'm sure that was incredibly hard for her, especially when you're so young
00:33:10 --> 00:33:15 and you're filled with so much hope and dreams and all the things,
00:33:15 --> 00:33:21 and that just was shattered in a matter of a day for her, and it's such a rough time. Oh, my gosh.
00:33:21 --> 00:33:27 I'm so proud of her for sticking with it and making sure that she fulfilled
00:33:27 --> 00:33:29 that dream. Yeah, so are we.
00:33:29 --> 00:33:35 I mean, you know, she is proof that, you know, she imagined that life for the longest time.
00:33:35 --> 00:33:40 And grieving that future that even though it was an imagined future, that was real grief.
00:33:41 --> 00:33:45 Like, that was as debilitating as any other grief I could ever have imagined.
00:33:46 --> 00:33:51 She, you know, she found her way through and she let it be what it was.
00:33:51 --> 00:33:53 And it was a shit show for a long time.
00:33:54 --> 00:33:59 And, you know, accepting it doesn't erase the pain of it. It just makes space
00:33:59 --> 00:34:01 for you to change direction.
00:34:01 --> 00:34:05 And that's what I think is so important for anybody listening to this conversation.
00:34:05 --> 00:34:12 Like, you can still feel that pain of loss of what you didn't have,
00:34:12 --> 00:34:16 but as long as there's a little bit of space for hope,
00:34:17 --> 00:34:21 that you can find a way to move forward.
00:34:21 --> 00:34:29 And you can do it and sometimes be beautifully surprised by what happens on the other side. Right.
00:34:29 --> 00:34:36 And realizing that it may not be right now, like you might not get to have that, but maybe later.
00:34:36 --> 00:34:40 You know, where one door closes, a window opens.
00:34:40 --> 00:34:44 So many times I've had that happen in my life where I was dead set on something
00:34:44 --> 00:34:47 and it didn't work out and I just had to be patient.
00:34:48 --> 00:34:55 And then a whole other avenue opened up for me in ways beyond what I could have
00:34:55 --> 00:34:57 imagined in such a beautiful way.
00:34:57 --> 00:35:03 That is the best way, I think, to finish this conversation, because at the end
00:35:03 --> 00:35:07 of the day, if we just give ourselves permission to sit in it and have a little
00:35:07 --> 00:35:11 bit of faith that things will change, they will.
00:35:11 --> 00:35:15 They will, and they could absolutely change for the better in ways we never expect.
00:35:16 --> 00:35:19 Absolutely. I love that. Amen. Hey, I love you, too, by the way.
00:35:20 --> 00:35:24 I love you. Aw. More than you know. Oh, I do know. I do know.
00:35:24 --> 00:35:26 It's right back to you, believe me.
00:35:27 --> 00:35:29 Let's come back and do this all over again next week.
00:35:30 --> 00:35:33 Deal. Can we do that? And you know what next week actually will be, believe it or not?
00:35:34 --> 00:35:40 What? It is going to be our season recap episode because we're done with season three next week.
00:35:41 --> 00:35:46 Nuh-uh. Yeah, huh? Are you for real? I am absolutely a thousand percent serious
00:35:46 --> 00:35:53 that next week is our season recap, and we are going to be jumping into season four right after that.
00:35:53 --> 00:35:57 Oh, my. That went way too fast. I know, right? It's crazy, huh?
00:35:57 --> 00:35:59 Just like that. Three months. Poof.
00:36:00 --> 00:36:03 Mm-hmm. As I liked, no, I'm not going to say that. No, go ahead.
00:36:03 --> 00:36:04 Oh, you can say it. I'll bleep it.
00:36:04 --> 00:36:10 It's one of my favorite sayings is it vanished like a fart in the wind. Oh, that F word.
00:36:12 --> 00:36:17 It did. It did. But we have so many more ahead. Yes.
00:36:19 --> 00:36:22 All right. I'll see you next week. Have a good one. All right. Bye, babe.
00:36:23 --> 00:36:27 Thanks so much for listening and for being part of the Survivors community.
00:36:27 --> 00:36:32 No matter where you are in your story you're not alone and you're definitely not broken,
00:36:32 --> 00:36:36 healing takes time and it looks different for everyone the
00:36:36 --> 00:36:39 fact that you're still here and still trying means you're
00:36:39 --> 00:36:43 already doing the hard work if something in today's conversation resonated with
00:36:43 --> 00:36:47 you please share it with someone who might need to hear it too that's how we
00:36:47 --> 00:36:51 keep these conversations going and remind each other that there's always hope
00:36:51 --> 00:36:55 and if you or someone you know is struggling, please remember,
00:36:55 --> 00:36:56 help is always out there.
00:36:56 --> 00:37:01 You can call or text 988 anytime to reach a trained crisis counselor like me.
00:37:01 --> 00:37:05 And for more mental health resources, tools, treatment options,
00:37:05 --> 00:37:08 and content to support your mental health, visit thehelphub.co.
00:37:09 --> 00:37:12 We're so grateful you're part of the Survivors family, and we'll be back next
00:37:12 --> 00:37:16 week with another honest conversation about life after the hardest things.
00:37:16 --> 00:37:21 Until then, take care of yourself and your people, and keep surviving.
00:37:23 --> 00:37:24 Thank you.