Dealing With Shame and Guilt in the Family System - Episode 38
Apr 15, 2024
Lawrence Joss
Embarking on a heartfelt exploration, with myself, Geo, as guest host this week, we grapple with the heavy shadows of shame and guilt, those unwelcome companions that have trailed many of us from childhood to the labyrinth of parenthood. With the sagacious Allison Garner, an executive coaching connoisseur, our roundtable pulses with the shared beat of parent's hearts, including tales from Anna and Juli. The dialogue weaves through the textures of leadership and parenting, discovering how the tenacity we admire in boardrooms can also fortify the bonds with our children, and how self-compassion serves as a beacon through our most testing times.
This episode doesn't just recount personal crossroads; it lays bare the transformative journey that follows. Through the act of journaling—a simple yet profound tool—we learn to 'get complete', fostering a deeper understanding with our children and ourselves, even amidst the stormy seas of adolescence.
Yet, the odyssey doesn't end there; it's in the ruins of a family breakdown where the seeds of discovery are often sown. I share the solace found in the embrace of Parental Alienation Advocates(PAA), where self-work became the cornerstone of my healing. Our candid discussions traverse the rocky terrain of divorce, co-parenting, and facing false accusations, concluding that transparency and ongoing dialogue are the golden threads in the tapestry of rebuilding trust and understanding within our families.
Don't forget to Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@parentalalienationadvocates
If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:
Email- familydisappeared@gmail.com
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss (All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)
Please donate to support PAA programs: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=SDLTX8TBSZNXS
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR ARTWORK TO THE FAMILY HOPE PROJECT: https://pa-a.mykajabi.com/questionnaire
This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team: Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager Kriztle Mesa - Social Media Manager Gen Rodelas-Kajabi Expert Kim Fernandez - Outreach Coordinator
Embarking on a heartfelt exploration, with myself, Geo, as guest host this week, we grapple with the heavy shadows of shame and guilt, those unwelcome companions that have trailed many of us from childhood to the labyrinth of parenthood. With the sagacious Allison Garner, an executive coaching connoisseur, our roundtable pulses with the shared beat of parent's hearts, including tales from Anna and Juli. The dialogue weaves through the textures of leadership and parenting, discovering how the tenacity we admire in boardrooms can also fortify the bonds with our children, and how self-compassion serves as a beacon through our most testing times.
This episode doesn't just recount personal crossroads; it lays bare the transformative journey that follows. Through the act of journaling—a simple yet profound tool—we learn to 'get complete', fostering a deeper understanding with our children and ourselves, even amidst the stormy seas of adolescence.
Yet, the odyssey doesn't end there; it's in the ruins of a family breakdown where the seeds of discovery are often sown. I share the solace found in the embrace of Parental Alienation Advocates(PAA), where self-work became the cornerstone of my healing. Our candid discussions traverse the rocky terrain of divorce, co-parenting, and facing false accusations, concluding that transparency and ongoing dialogue are the golden threads in the tapestry of rebuilding trust and understanding within our families.
Don't forget to Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@parentalalienationadvocates
If you wish to connect with Lawrence Joss or any of the PA-A community members who have appeared as guests on the podcast:
Email- familydisappeared@gmail.com
Linktree: https://linktr.ee/lawrencejoss (All links mentioned in the podcast are available in Linktree)
Please donate to support PAA programs: https://www.paypal.com/donate?hosted_button_id=SDLTX8TBSZNXS
Website: https://parentalalienationanonymous.com/
PLEASE SUBMIT YOUR ARTWORK TO THE FAMILY HOPE PROJECT: https://pa-a.mykajabi.com/questionnaire
This podcast is made possible by the Family Disappeared Team: Anna Johnson- Editor/Contributor/Activist/Co-host Glaze Gonzales- Podcast Manager Kriztle Mesa - Social Media Manager Gen Rodelas-Kajabi Expert Kim Fernandez - Outreach Coordinator
It was a lot and and apparently I didn't manage my emotions very well and I see that I get that, but I did the best I could and it's really hard, you know.
Speaker 2:
You want to feel like you did everything you could to take perfect care of this fresh little, brand new baby you had in your arms, and I certainly tried, and it's hard when your kid says you did it all wrong, mom.
Speaker 3:
There was a time in my life when I was overwhelmed and underwater. Those days are the inspiration for this podcast. This is by far the ultimate healing journey for all of us. Healing ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically is paramount to this journey. From this place of grounding we can all go out into the world and change all our interactions and relationships. We can engage people from an integrated and resourced place. This is a journey of coming home to ourselves. In today's episode we'll start to explore some of these issues. Let's begin the healing journey today. Welcome to the Family Disappeared podcast.
Speaker 4:
Hi everyone, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Family Disappeared podcast. Hi everyone, thank you for joining us for another episode of the Family Disappeared podcast. Today, I get to sit in the driver's seat as host, and today's episode was hard to do. A near and dear topic for me is something that I've been walking through my entire life, and it's shame and guilt. Whether I deserve it or it's self-imposed, it is a heavy backpack and my shame and guilt goes all the way back to being a child, where I felt responsible for taking care of my mother and her wounds, and it is something that I've learned and estrangement from my two older children. There are cycles of both guilt and shame that flow throughout my day-to-day life and after getting into a 12-step program as PAA Parental parental alienation advocates I started to find support and relief and talk to people who are walking through some of the same situations. We all love our children. We are beating ourselves up for the people we were trying to be coming out of our own family, of dysfunction, because a lot of times that's where it starts, and though we try to avoid making those same mistakes by default, we have become our parents, and that is not to say I blame my mother and father. It it just is so.
Speaker 4:
Today we have Allison Garner, who will be joining us. She works in the corporate world as a coach and also she works on an individual basis. She has written a few books, one of which is called Unconditional, where she talks about her own journey with her child, and we have two guests joining us just to have a sort of a round table where we can sit and talk about the effects of shame and guilt in our lives, and Allison brings to the table some beautiful thoughts about how we can walk through those times in our life and give ourselves some grace. I think we all need to remember. We need to give ourselves grace as we journey through this. Also, if you could remember to subscribe to the podcast, send an email, tell us about your experience, or if you'd like to even be a part of the podcast. It's a really great way to get involved. Also, we have a donate button and everything that Allison has to offer her website, her books, her TEDx talk that will all be in the show notes. So hang on tight and welcome to the show.
Speaker 4:
Today on the show, we will be having guest Allison Garner join us, alongside Anna, who has been on a few podcasts, and introducing Julie, who's going to be joining us, to have a discussion with Alison about shame and guilt. As alienated parents, we carry the heavy baggage of shame and guilt for things we have done, things we maybe have not done and, a lot of times, just false beliefs. We have that we've carried along our journey from the very beginnings of our existence. So, before we get into things, I'm going to introduce Allison and give her an opportunity, just to give you a little bit of background as to what she does. So, allison, welcome to the show. Thank you for having me. We are so lucky to have you here, so why don't you just share with us a little bit about what you do?
Speaker 5:
So I run a company called Thoughtly and we do executive coaching and leadership development. What's interesting about any of that is where I learned how to have really tough conversations with people and be able to walk a journey with people when they are scared, they're drowning in blame and shame, they're unsure of where to go, they've got all sorts of people problems and they don't know how to deal with conflict. Where I actually learned those skills was in family therapy with my own kids, and I come from an engineering background, so that's a very unlikely trajectory for you know, an engineer who designed oil refineries to suddenly be able to have really deep, meaningful conversations with people and be able to hold that container. And I credit the therapeutic work I did not only in Al-Anon. My husband's in recovery and I come from a long line of addicts, so I found Al-Anon and then I have two children, both of whom struggled mightily with mental health issues.
Speaker 5:
I have one son who is also an addict and they both have been in different therapeutic programs, therapeutic programs and it was those programs where I think I learned a lot of the skills that I now bring into leadership circles, because I feel like parents are leaders and families are just another type of organization that humans tend to create in their lives. So that's why there's like this crossover, I think, with what I do with leaders of companies and executive teams, and I also work with parents inside of families, with kids who are struggling or have, you know, alienated their own parents, and so I see a lot of similarity in both of those places. I'm not sure other people do, but that's how this all happened. Georgette knows that about me.
Speaker 4:
You have done quite a lot. In fact, allison has written a book and she walked through a difficult period of time with her own daughter. It may not have been an alienation, but she's a parent nonetheless. And when we parent whether it's alienation or your child is going through depression or mental illness we carry sometimes shame and guilt for the things that we don't know how to fix or we want to fix. And I met Allison at a time of my life where I really didn't know what was happening with my own alienation with my children. I couldn't recognize it. And for me I've been alienated, estranged really from my two children, my two older children, for about 18 months now. It's funny because two and a half years ago my oldest, who is estranged from me, introduced me to Allison. She did a lot of work for her and I went to an event called the Captain of Control and isn't that funny. She invited me to that and that is where I kind of dipped my toe into hmm, is this me? And then I found PAA a few months later, parental alienation. That's where I continued the journey. So we're just going to jump into things with shame and guilt part of it.
Speaker 4:
As I was thinking about shame. I had to ask you know, is it? Is shame something that is innate in us? I feel as though you know, you think when we're potty training our kids, you know as they learn about themselves and their bodies, you know they hide, they know what's going on. Is that shame? So where? Where does that fit in our life? So where does that fit in our life, julie? Do you find yourself having shame or guilt about what you may have done or didn't do when your kids were small?
Speaker 1:
Absolutely. I don't find me a parent that doesn't but talking about what we first brought up was kids, when they're young, and I think as parents, we tend to use shame and guilt as a tool to help guide our children in the right direction, what we feel is the right direction, and to some degree I think it can be helpful. I tend to live my life Well. I mentioned earlier, I worked for a hotel company and and one of the things they taught us was don't do anything that if it's reported on the New York times tomorrow, you will be ashamed of yourself. And we lived that, um, and I think to some degree I tried to pass that onto my son. Like if this gets reported about in the school newspaper tomorrow, like if this gets reported about in the school newspaper tomorrow, how are you going to feel about that? And to some degree, I think it can be a positive thing.
Speaker 1:
Obviously, it can be taken to extremes, where you do get mired in guilt and shame for mistakes that you've made, because we've all made mistakes. I mean, I've told Gio that I've been fired more than once from a job, and sure I want to say that it was all the fault of the employer, but I clearly have responsibility there and the hard part was getting over that setback and getting past the shame of, yeah, I screwed up and it's big, I got fired. I have to tell people I got fired. I have to figure out how to report that on my resume. I have to figure out how to answer that question the next time I go into a job interview. And it's hard and I wish I could say that I didn't have to go through it more than once, but I did and you do learn how to pick yourself back up and just I mean, one thing I've learned is just to be honest and say, yeah, I got fired from that job and explain it Right.
Speaker 4:
And you know, allison, when you're dealing with, you know families, or even you know you know families, or even you know people are people, whether you're in the job, in your workspace or you're a stay at home mom. We are all still walking through life and, for whatever reason we, whatever we've learned in our past, we bring it in to every facet of our life. So, as we're dealing with this, how do we change the way we approach? When we see our kids failing, or we see them going down the wrong path, or they're slipping out of our fingers because we don't know how to control it, how do we?
Speaker 5:
reframe that up. One of the things that I learned when our daughter was in a residential program she was in that program for over a year, so I mean it was a significant, significant program and then we would have family weekends where we would go and we got supported as well. So we would have therapy with a therapist, our daughter would have therapy and we would have therapy with our daughter. All of this was done virtually and then we would travel there every six weeks. It's very intensive. And the thing that they pointed out very early on and I didn't know this and I think it's one of the main reasons that my daughter still talks to me today and it is that the only collateral that we have is the relationship. And when they reframed that for me, I didn't get it, because they said relationship before task and I was like, and my husband's like, ah, light bulbs went off and there were other people in the room and the light bulb went off and I was like what are they talking about? And my husband's like, oh my God, it's so great it's. You know, you put the relationship before the task and I'm like what the hell does that mean? And and anyway. So now I've come to understand that it's like the way that I word it now is we go through the relationship, not around it.
Speaker 5:
So when my daughter or my son is melting or unraveling or having some kind of a conflict or whatever they're struggling with something, I start at the relationship now, and I didn't. I didn't know that. And now that I can start there, because what I want to do is is tell them what to do. I want to control things, I want to fix it, I want to save them and I want to rescue them, manipulate them, whatever, like. I'm a people pleaser and recovering people pleaser, but it's part of how I parent, it's part of how I be in the world and I'm working on it. And when I see somebody that I love so I'm so invested in them and their suffering I almost can't not solve it for them. Right, and when I learned this relationship before task, it like gave me a reason to pause and say, okay, put the relationship first. And what I do then is I get my daughter or I get my son or I get the person in front of me. When I say get them, I listen to what it is they are saying to me and I validate, I get curious. I open my heart. Instead of having all the answers in my intellectual monkey brain up here, I drop down into my heart and I connect with them. And I don't know that either of my kids would talk to me today.
Speaker 5:
Okay, my son, we had him gooned. If you guys know what that is, you know he was 17. He was a raging alcoholic already. We were seeing the days of our control slowly slipping away. And when you have a kid gooned, you have them escorted with two giant men in the middle of the night. It's probably one of the worst days of my entire life. They just show up in your house at like four in the morning and you just hope that your kid doesn't flip out, and then they put them in a van and they take them to the airport and they take them to the program. And how did your son? Oh, he was real pissed. He was real pissed and that was six months of like F you and how dare you? And I'm going to run away from the program when I turn 18 and all of that.
Speaker 5:
And we just kept putting the relationship first, like it wasn't about him running away, it wasn't about what had happened. It was like we care so much about you. This is the only thing that matters. I understand you're angry. I understand we just kept going in through the relationship and we have. I think it's really the only reason that he talks to us anymore, because we just kept showing up for him and not making it about all of the stuff that was happening. It wasn't about the drinking. It wasn't about the gooning. It wasn't about not giving him enough chances. It wasn't about all the times he'd been arrested and you know he's flunking out of school and all of that, like. It wasn't about any of that. It was like we want to be able to trust you, we want to be able to connect with you. That's the only thing that matters in this world.
Speaker 6:
I need tips for people to be able to. I get what you're saying and I try and model that myself, but in order to to keep that sort of a neutral stance when you're talking to him about this is about, this is about the relationship. So you're not, you're not bringing to the table what he's done, what he hasn't done what he needs to do.
Speaker 5:
How, for yourself, were you able to keep showing up like that? You have? That's a great question. Um, I have a practice that I use, um, where I call it getting complete.
Speaker 5:
I don't know if that makes sense, but essentially I run through like how did things go, you know, and I let myself be a victim, like it's a journaling exercise. I say all the things I've ever wanted to say. Nobody ever sees what I write, but I, just I be the victim. Right, I say all the horrible, terrible, no good, very bad things, I just let it all out. I get it out of my system energetically. I'm just going to release all of it. So I write it all down and I keep going until I run out of steam. And then, when I'm done with that part, then I write how did I contribute? Right, not how did I cause, but how did I contribute? How did I contribute to my son, to his drinking, to his dropping you know getting arrested, to his you know bad behaviors? How did I contribute? I didn't cause any of it, but what was I doing that could have contributed to that impact and to the dynamic that was being created and that? So I call it mad, sad, glad because that's mad is like, yay, I get to be a victim. And then sad is like, oh, I actually have some you know ownership here.
Speaker 5:
And then the final, the final letter is, or the final journaling exercise is how do I acknowledge who he is in the world? Not how he's showing up, not all of the behaviors, but, like in my language, I say who is he being? Who does he be in this world? My son, like he be connection, he be grace, he be seeker, he'd be seeker, he'd be oasis, like he's all of these beautiful attributes. And when I can get back to who he is deep down inside, not all of the mess that he is on the outside sometimes, then I can relate to him there. But that's a practice and I've been practicing that for years. The first few times I did it I'm like this is stupid and I hate these letters and I don't want to do it anymore.
Speaker 4:
That was a great question, anna, and you know I'm thinking back as I've walked through the disintegration of, you know, my family with my kids. I did not have a good set of tools like that to be able to have the wherewithal to maybe look at my kids during my divorce and be able to make that connection, to speak to them in that way. I piled my own life is messy, like you say, it's life is messy, and it was messy messy like you say, it's life is messy and it was messy and it seemed as though I put all this responsibility and shame on myself. I didn't know how to navigate that until I got into PAA Parental Alienation Anonymous and I was able to and it does.
Speaker 4:
It takes time to see you know, the part that we play in our messes or in our kids' lives and how that looks, and it takes a while to deconstruct the scaffolding. Or you know that we had in our lives previous to walking through this and I think, a lot of what we learned in our early years and in our past with our parents, and this isn't to blame our parents, it just is and it's carryover and I truly did not know how to save myself at the time and with my kids at the time and with my kids, and so you know. Even, ladies, anna, while you were walking through, you know, this very tumultuous time with your family, you know, as it was dissolving and your kids were struggling and you could feel it and see it, did you feel like you knew how to save it, like you could grasp with all that you were putting I'm putting on yourself, trying to survive? How did that feel?
Speaker 6:
that's a great question, dear. I told myself I could save it. I wanted to. I lent into my dysfunctional behaviors and I told myself I would be the champion of the day and that I would change the outcome for my family and the family I created, because I didn't want it to mirror my family of origin. So I had all of that narrative and dialogue in my head and was repeating the same dysfunctional behaviors and I realize now expecting a different result at the same, in the same breath. I mean I have through program, I have compassion for my younger self, myself as a parent, because I didn't know how to do any differently. But there is guilt and there is shame around that, because a lot of the decisions I made, I told myself that I made them for the good of the family as a whole and especially for my kids. But in reality a lot of the decisions I made were based on what my nervous system felt like and I responded the way I had been modeled for me, which, in the same instance, is not blaming my parents, it's the way I was raised, and so I kept going back to those behaviors and then I've been unpacking that in recovery and am able to identify it and have compassion for my younger self as a parent. But it did.
Speaker 6:
It was interesting. I felt like I think I felt like I was in control, but I was also so disconnected from myself that I was doing damage control and I was trying to navigate. I was trying to protect my kids and I was going to say trying to protect myself. I wasn't really because I didn't value myself enough to even think I wasn't on the radar. It was about my kids at that point and was even when I left the marriage and was really until I joined PAA and discovered a program that translated to me to be working on myself. And when I have a good connection and relationship with myself, then I come to the table and I'm able to have a healthier relationship with other people, and not just my kids, but with people. I work with friendships that I have, and I knew I didn't have the skills to do that earlier on in my life, but I didn't know what it looked like.
Speaker 6:
And I mean I, yeah, I channeled a lot of my energy into my kids and I did the best that I could as a parent with the tools that I had. But there is guilt and there is shame around that, and it's interesting that I thought that I was in control and I'm desperately trying to control a whole series of everything that was going on. That was very dramatic. I had no control over any of it, but I was programmed to. Okay, I'm going to do it, I'm going to grab it, I'm going to take on all this negative energy and then I will save the day, and that was my mantra. It kind of feels icky saying that out loud, but that was all I knew how to do. And now, thankfully, because of the program, I have a broader perspective and I have more compassion for myself and everyone involved in my family dynamics the family that I married into and the family generations going back as well, because this is really challenging stuff.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, it's challenging and it's baffling. In my situation, you know, for a good 10 years in my own situation and I was, you know, preparing for this podcast. It took me down a road and I could handle it. I handle it better now because I'm in a place of healing and really I don't know if I know all my blind spots, but I am hungry to learn and wipe this unrealistic focus on myself to shame myself. I literally took everything at the time that was coming in that was negative. I wrote down on a piece of paper nearly 11 years ago my ex had told me you don't stand a chance with your children and you never will. And for some reason I wrote that down, I dated it and I put it away and I found it and I'm trying to understand what the reasoning behind, where that came from. The shame. Like you, oh, it's all you and I can throw that away. I can throw that away. But, allison, help us understand what is that. Why do we do that to ourselves?
Speaker 5:
The way that I tend to look at things is that if something hits a nerve, he knew that that would hit a nerve. It's why he said it. The purpose of him saying that was to hurt. Okay, and he did it because he knew it would hurt. Because you've got a raw nerve for being a shitty mom.
Speaker 5:
One of your deepest fears and probably your deepest belief is that you are a shitty mom. So when people touch that nerve or even like sneeze on it or look at it wrong, you're just like and it hurts. You have a reaction to it. And when we can start to look at these deep-seated beliefs that we don't even want to admit that we have it's like what Anna is saying is then, okay, we don't look at those and then like, make them wrong about ourselves. We look at them and we have grace and compassion for those parts of ourselves. It's normal to be afraid that we're shitty moms. That's normal, that's a good thing. We should worry about that because it means we probably want to do a good job and yet there's still we. I don't know about you, but when people point at my children as though they are a reflection of my parenting, there's a real raw nerve there.
Speaker 1:
And.
Speaker 5:
I, oh my God, still still. Or when people talk about their kids and their accolades and their accomplishments, it hits that raw nerve. Even though it has nothing to do with me, I think it's it's it hit because it's something that you, you are still wrestling with in yourself. Probably, if someone said you had purple hair, you wouldn't be like oh, I'm going to write that down and keep it.
Speaker 4:
Right, and it's just, it was so long ago and I think about you. Know, julie, right now you know kind of explain your situation with your child, what that looks like.
Speaker 1:
So I am the alienated mom of a 14 year old son. He's about to be 15. Actually, I walked into 12 step program 12 years ago to the day today. I did not know, when I married my first husband, that he was a drug addict. I had no idea. And you know, everybody says how do you not know? I didn't know. And I was married to him for five years and I finally figured out what was wrong, where the money was going, why he had these mood swings, why he came home at seven o'clock in the morning. I finally figured it all out and I left him and then found out I was pregnant and he, of course, said he was going to be better, everything was going to be better, and it was for a while. But 12 years ago today, he and I got in a fight, with my two away, and I felt like I had about 15 minutes to decide the rest of my life and I said you don't have to go to rehab, but you can't stay here. And that was it. That was the end. And, um, you know, I felt like I had to do that to protect my son, and so my son had to deal with having a divorced family starting at age two and, despite my ex's problems, I wanted to make sure that my son had both of his parents in his life.
Speaker 1:
So we split custody and my son had a lot of trouble. He had a lot of trouble in school. He had he had a diagnosis that's now disputed, but he had a lot of trouble in school. He had a diagnosis that's now disputed, but he had a lot of outbursts and flash forward. He started a new school for eighth grade and I knew that this could be trouble because he doesn't do well with change. And about a month into school they had an anti or a suicide awareness assembly and he came home and said Mom, I think I need to tell you I want to kill myself. So I immediately got him a therapist and he saw the therapist and the next thing I knew he was hospitalized. And the next thing I knew after that I got an email that said my custody had been revoked because my son made allegations that I was abusive, which have since been disproven, and my son has admitted that he made that up.
Speaker 1:
He needed a reason to explain why he was so sad and that was his reason, and I know more now that it has to do with the divorce and he just hated having two houses and he feels that it was all it was. It was my fault. It's my fault that he has two houses and it's hard, you know I I have told him, you know, we know in the program that secrets keep you sick. So I have always tried to be honest with him at ages that I thought he was ready for it. And when he asked me point blank, you know, is my dad an alcoholic? I said yes.
Speaker 1:
And as he got older he asked if it was more than alcohol. Was he also a drug addict? And I said yes. And one of the things that I'm in so much trouble for is saying yes and telling him the truth. But I felt it was important for him to know the truth and to know his family history. And sure, I contributed to the divorce in some ways and being a single mom and having his dad was not supportive for a while. He eventually came around um, you know, single mom with a kid who was having numerous outbursts and they were threatening to kick him out of school. I mean, from the time he was three they were threatening to kick him out of school. He had to have a full-time shadow for two years that I had to pay for. It was a lot and and apparently I didn't manage my emotions very well and I see that I get that, but I did the best I could and it's really hard, you know.
Speaker 2:
You want to feel like you did everything you could to take perfect care of this fresh little, brand new baby you had in your arms. And I certainly tried. And it's hard when your kid says you did it all wrong, mom. So it's hard, I mean, just last night. I have him for a few hours a week.
Speaker 1:
And just last night he was telling me you know, the divorce is your fault, the reason I have two houses is your fault, the reason I've been separated from you for 15 months is your fault and I I think the hardest thing is I could admit that I, I contributed. I have a hard time understanding how to have that conversation with my 14 year old and there's so much that I want to say of like it wasn't all me but I know that that's not helpful, and it's last night.
Speaker 1:
I ended up just trying to stay quiet Cause I felt like there's nothing I can say that's going to come out positive.
Speaker 4:
And shame is a heavy, is a heavy wet blanket to carry around. You know, and with that shame, do you turn into it and acknowledge it, do you turn away from it and do you bring that up to your kids? What you are going through with that shame, you know, as I am not afraid I want to uncover, I'm very aware of, oh my gosh, I was walking in shame. I wanted to hide from sporting events. They thought I didn't love them. You know I would go to sporting events and my kids would act like they didn't hear me. I tried to show up at places I picked and I would pick and choose what felt safe for me.
Speaker 4:
And all those years and I never spoke my truth I was fully open. I stepped away from my marriage and I was making decisions at the time that were not me, my kids. I raised my kids in a Christian home. My daughters called me the Proverbs 31 mom and I shattered that In my pain on my journey of my own life. I changed the trajectory of their life and I'm sure there's plenty of people out there that you know I love, I love, and that is a heavy burden to carry.
Speaker 4:
Julie. Still, you know she has a connection. She has a child that's coming and going, and what do we do with that? How do we work through that and do we address it with our kids that, hey, this is where I'm at or do we wait for them to come back to us? We hold the keys Holy cow.
Speaker 4:
Yeah, this stuff is real and it hurts, and you can see through the emotion that this is stuff that is hard to uncover, it's hard to walk through and as parents we just want to love our kids and talking about our shame and guilt is really part of the healing and the only way we are going to be able to move forward is to heal ourselves. And when that healing starts to happen, we affect everyone else around us and it might be scary, different and my experiences with my children they don't know who I am anymore and I don't experience things the same way that I used to, and I'm working on me to try to change the trajectory of what the future might look like with my kids. And in the meantime, we're gonna keep walking through this topic of shame and guilt. So join us again next week for the second half of Shame and Guilt with Allison and remember to always subscribe, share.
Speaker 4:
Put this stuff out on your own social media. The only way we are going to heal ourselves and shed some light on this is life. This is a journey we are all walking through in some way, shape or form, and we just want to love our kids. And if anyone hasn't told you today, you are lovable, you are worth it, you are worthy and take care. See you next time.
Speaker 3:
Thanks for taking the time to join me on this episode of Family Disappeared Podcast. Do you know someone who can benefit from what we're discussing on today's episode? If so, please share this podcast with them and anyone else in your community that might be interested in changing their lives. Together we'll continue the exploring, growing and healing journey. I will see you on our next episode. Until then, happy days to all.