Well, hello and welcome to another episode of the Family Business with the Alesssies. I'm Steve Alesi, and I am here with my precious wife, Mary Alesi. Because family is everybody's business. Yes, it is. We are going into uh our third season, Mary. That's amazing. It is very proud I am too. Super proud of us, super proud of John, who's in the back. That's right. Alan Paul, who's in the back, and Ashley, who's in the room with us. And sometimes she turns red from all the exciting information that we share. But this is pretty cool. Yes. Just on the front end of this, we are right about 30 episodes in, which is a half a year. So I don't know if it's helped our podiums at all, but it sure has helped our family. This is like our own counseling session. Therapy for sure. It's been cool. Uh we're here. We are um uh looking at a half year doing this, seeing people, hearing from people, seeing people respond the way they have. It's been really cool. It has what we do in this podcast booth is talk about things that we can't talk about on Sundays.
SPEAKER_03Yes.
SPEAKER_04And so here we are, uh excited about uh new season going into this and just laying our lives out there.
SPEAKER_01This is really us talking about things that we talk about on our patio or in our soap in the living room, when we wake up over coffee and when we're in the car and we start talking about resolving issues and things we hear, things we see, and we always take it to the podcast booth. So it's great. And I want to say that we've gotten such great feedback on so many of our family conversations. So I encourage you to go back if you've not watched that or listen to those, go back. If you're raising kids, it's just been really neat to hear the feedback from people that are avid listeners.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And how it is something I had a friend recently in our church say she's raising two little twins, and she said, I can't get enough of the podcast. I feel like it helps me every single day. And that means a lot. That's good feedback.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, uh, Debbie Villasuso said to me last night at the event we were at. She said, Um, gosh, I wish I was at your house during the holidays. You guys have quite a good time together.
SPEAKER_01That was a good one.
SPEAKER_04That was fun talking about the holidays. Absolutely. Uh, that's not what we want. We don't want people coming and moving in. We just hope that just listen to the podcast. Our world will help be a blessing in one way or another. Something that we say or um something that's just the transparency of it is helping people realize that it's down to earth. We're in this every day trying to make a go of life while we operate our family business, which is our ministry.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And truly, in our line of work, there is no ministry without the family being healthy and getting along and working together.
SPEAKER_01So which is what everybody wants is a healthy family.
SPEAKER_04And there's ways that you can go ahead and uh pass this on to others. All that information you'll hear at the end. Uh, and if you're enjoying this as an audience, your uh questions that you send in, your comments, things that we're hearing, yes. Yeah, let us know. And uh you'll hear about all that at the end. Okay, so here we are into a new year, which uh 2022 should be quite exciting for us. We've had a couple of rough years so far. Yes. The 2020s have not been that
good to us. But it's really a matter of perspective as well. And thankfully, we could say about our lives and some of the people we see close around us, life's been good to them, even though things on in the global scale don't look that good. Right. We we're seeing them that really doing well in life. And we're very blessed and encouraged to see that. But Mary, some of the things we want to talk about as we get ready for this new year is starting fresh. Yes. New Year's resolutions. What can I do now and commit to that's gonna make my life better in this year? We all want to do better. We we want to strive for more. We have dreams that we want to see realized. Sure. People refer to a bucket list. What can I mark off my bucket list this year? Well, so there's always this mentality that I want to do something different in the coming year that's better than what I've done in the past year. Previous years, sure. And the previous years things don't have to be bad, but we just want it to be better. Right. However, there are some things that have happened in the last year or previous years that have not been positive and the best force. Yeah. And so that's another reason why many of us look forward to a new year so we can wipe the slate clean and start all over again. Yeah. So that being the case, as we're talking
about how to make this 2022 even better, a new year ahead of us, um, we've got to talk about people that uh maybe need to be distanced from. We we have to distance ourselves from because those people can cause us some pain. Yeah, absolutely. And uh that's where I want us to go in the next two episodes. How do we distance ourselves from toxic people that have hurt us in our past and maybe be even be, you know, because they're family or close friends still in our friendship circle.
SPEAKER_01Right. Or family, like you said. Family.
SPEAKER_04How do we go about moving forward in this new season without that influence of toxicity or dysfunctionality hurting us as we go forward?
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Wow, this is a big one. Um, I can say for both of us, we personally have experienced this with um friends and family throughout the years. We've had different environments where we've had to exercise this uh principle and knowing this information, and it's not easy. No one ever said it was easy. It's not going to be easy, especially if you've had a toxic parent. You don't know anything other than that relationship. And it's very hard to know how to decipher what you're responsible for and what you're not.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And that's very difficult. Gosh. Um, you know, I go back, I allude to my father, the experience with my own personal father who passed away three years ago around the holidays. And it had been almost 30 years of just toxic nothingness, really. It was always one way. And I'm fortunate that I had you in my life, who, as a very strong personality, said, we're not bringing that into our home. We're not bringing that into our children's lives. We're we're not bringing that in. But at the end of the day, I ultimately had to be the one that said, this far and no farther. And where it gets cloudy and very hard and painful is when it's a relationship with somebody you care about and you love. It's easy to walk away from somebody who's toxic that you don't care anything about, somebody on the job, you know, somebody that, you know, you knew from high school, whatever. But, or an old friendship that's out of your life. It's very hard when that person is in your life all the time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01That is a very difficult thing to navigate. It's very difficult because, especially as Christians, we feel like, wow, we have to have grace for everybody. You have to love everybody. I have to have empathy for this person. But what we learn with toxic nature is that it's generally very manipulative. And you can't be empathetic ever because empathy will get you poisoned.
Yeah. Yeah. We're going to hit this. So let's put a little warning out there. All right. This may not be the warning. The information you're going to hear with us is definitely stuff that you're not going to hear on Sunday.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_04Because we can't necessarily from a you know Bible perspective or a being a Christian. This these are things that require a little uh digger dive, uh deeper dive.
SPEAKER_01Deeper dive, yes.
SPEAKER_04So we just can't hit it in the few minutes that we share. No. But some may say, what are you talking about? You're Christians, you can't treat people this way. And we're not talking about hurting anybody here.
SPEAKER_01No.
SPEAKER_04What we're talking about uh is protecting ourselves from influences that have been hurt and then are hurtful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_04Something happened in their world that's caused them this pain and they then bring it over into your life. Yes, that's true. That's where you have to sit back and you're gonna have to come to grips with a very difficult decision of putting up boundaries to protect yourself going forward. Because if the person that were that's caused you some pain in the past was able to get healed of that pain, they would not be bringing it over into your present.
SPEAKER_02That's right.
SPEAKER_04If you want to be a person that then continues the cycle of that pain and bringing it into your kid's life or other friends' lives, then don't worry about distance yourself or getting healed from it. Right. But if you want to be different, if you want to stop the curse with that influence and not allow it to be carried on, then you have to say, this year is gonna be different for me. And I'm gonna control to the best of my ability, not the person, but the person's influence that they're gonna have in my life. That's right. We actually have to be uh upfront and say, let me press past or see past the person here. I'm not hurting a person, I'm not doing this to hurt anybody. I'm doing this to protect and help myself from the influence of the person who's been exactly hurt people, hurt, hurt people. Cursed people, curse people. That's true. And some have had experiences in their past, and for whatever reason, they have not dealt with that hurt or that curse, and they then want to continue to bring it on to us. We have to say, wait, that influence, if I'm gonna be feeling different in the future, I've got to remove that influence out of my life. And I got a feeling this will be one of the hardest thing some of our listeners have ever had to do. Right. Because it means letting
people just be themselves. Because you can't change them.
SPEAKER_01No, you can't change people, and it's very hard for us when our hearts are tied to those people. You know, one of the things that I had to learn is that that toxic nature and some of the manifestations of that and the behavior was not my fault. And I had a very hard long road in believing that because it's just, I think it's a good healed heart that says, if I do something different, if I do something good, then I'll reap good from this person. And who wants to believe that that's not going to be true, that you could do something good for someone and not get good back? But when you're dealing with a broken person, a wounded person that isn't coming into the relationship saying, listen, I've been wounded, I've been hurt, and I need to get healed. When people can't talk healthy and do healthy things for themselves, then for the most part, you're not gonna reap the harvest of anything good from that person because they don't even know how to treat themselves right.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01They stay in a place of brokenness.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So it's not, it's not an easy task, but it is something that is required. You've got to do it if you want to stay healthy. You said it's not easy for some of our listeners. The reality is there's a lot of people that won't ever do it. They'll stay in a toxic cycle forever. And I decided I wasn't gonna stay in that toxic cycle because I loved my relationship with you too much. I wanted to save my marriage. I did not want my kids to have to know what manipulation from a parent looked like.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01I never wanted them to experience that because that wasn't in you and that is not in me. And I had to kill it and cut the head off of it so that it wouldn't go into the next generation.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because it is learned. You know, it's it's a responsive thing that you can easily pick up on and learn. And I was not allowed about to let any one of my four kids be a target.
SPEAKER_04Now, you know, the people look at you and think, oh, she's so sweet. Look at Pastor Mary. Well, there's a strength to you that you had to definitely learn. Yes. And this experience that you had with your father uh is what gave you that strength. Right. Um, we can go back, oh goodness, just before we got married, and your mom is in our world, and she tells a story to our kids about when she was dealing with the dysfunctional behavior of your father. Yeah. And we don't want to speak ill of him. He's past, uh, but this is just for the sake of people being aware. Right. Okay, so we're sharing a little being transparent here, sharing a little personal things here. Um, but he was not good to your mom. And so she was in the kind of minister's wife, evangelist's wife seat, thinking, I gotta love him, I gotta love him, I gotta pray for him, I gotta get him through this,
and I gotta stay with him. And then I came across a book from James Dobson way back in the day when I used to listen to his ministry, and it was simply Love Must Be Tough. Yeah. And introduce that book to your mom. It changed her life. That changed her life. That let her know wait a minute, real love is strong. And confronts. It has to confront. Yes, yes. The reason you confront this situation, either passively or not, uh, or aggressively, is because you want to say to the person that you love, I love you too much to let you stay the same. That's right. And not keep bringing that kind of hurt to our relationship. I love you that much, but I also love myself.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_04And if you're not willing to make the change, then I have to make the change for myself as well. That's right. And that helped your mom stand up, get up on her legs, and be strong. And ultimately, your dad made the decision to end the marriage, not your mom.
SPEAKER_02Not my mom.
SPEAKER_04Because your mom was willing to hang in there and love them, but she set the right boundaries and he couldn't respect those boundaries. So he then had to make a decision for himself, which then opened the door for your mom to experience a level of blessing by a man that walked into her life just a couple of years later. Oh, yeah, and blessed her abundantly. And you know. Oh my gosh, the story's incredible. It would have never happened, though, man. No, no, if your mom didn't get strong. And then you were left with a dad. Your mom walked away from that after he filed for divorce. Y'all still had to deal with that.
SPEAKER_01Yes, we did.
SPEAKER_04And that's when we saw you. Your heart was out there. You wanted a relationship with your dad. You loved your dad. Yeah. Uh, you still respected him, you still honored him.
But then now our kids get older, come on the scene. Our kids are older, and what happened?
SPEAKER_01I saw that the pattern or the behavior was not changing. I also realized that in my little girl daughter's wish heart, what I was fantasizing would happen, would happen in in my life that okay, I'll get his attention, I'll be strong, and it didn't work. I'll confront him and I'll tell him the truth, and then he'll respond, and he didn't. My sisters will band together and we'll confront him. Nothing. We'll get married and he'll love our husbands, and then he'll want to be around us more and he'll want to do things right. No, didn't did not move the needle with dad. He just kept trying to figure out how he could play us all in the chess game. Then I thought, I'll have a son, and he'll, you know, we'll give him the middle name after my father and be a namesake, and that'll do it. That'll turn his heart, that'll soften his heart. And none of that was happening. And it wasn't really moving the needle, it was setting me up for almost more opportunities for me to get hurt. Because dad just was not, he just felt more threatened. It was never better. It seemed to always be worse. And I remember you and I would, you, you stayed out of it to the best of your ability. I have to say, you handled that very well. You had to trust me and you had to trust God, but you also let me know how you felt about things.
SPEAKER_04Right. You were getting hurt. I was, I kept getting hurt. Seeing you hurt all the time.
SPEAKER_01And it was awful. And I remember the kids were very, very small, and I drove to where he was and we met to talk. And I had seen him several times before that, and he did not even know my kids' names. And you you can chalk that up to, you know, a grandpa that's not thinking, but it wasn't. He was still so stuck in himself and his own bitterness and anger. Because brokenness turns to bitterness if you don't get healing. And then we're all stuck with that bitter taste in our mouth too.
SPEAKER_04Say it again though.
SPEAKER_01Brokenness turns to bitterness if you don't get healing. Yeah. And once someone gets bitter, I mean, I can't heal my father, I couldn't heal my father. You can't heal the person in your life that's got that toxic nature. It, you're, you're not equipped. I was not equipped to heal my dad. That wasn't my responsibility to heal my dad.
SPEAKER_04Counselor told us that. You're not your father's counselor. No. You're his daughter.
SPEAKER_01That's it. And he was responsible to reach out and get healing and get wholeness. That wasn't on me, but I felt somehow like, well, you know, we're his daughters and we're the only ones and we could reach him. When I found out that wasn't true, and I released that and let that go, I did feel like somebody took a key to a lock on my heart and just said, hey, you're free now. This is not your responsibility. That is literally
what it felt like. Yeah. That I could say, I don't have to go and sit in a mall and meet with you and have you not know my kids' names and have you sit there and go, now which one is that one?
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You know, I don't have to do that. That that was hurtful. I don't have to pick up the phone every single time you call with something dramatic, or you leave a long message on my phone, or thank God back then we didn't text, because that he probably would have blown up my phone. But I don't, I don't have to do that. You we can set the terms of this relationship in my direction.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Because I'm not gonna set the terms in your direction anymore. You're not healthy. Um that's not easy. But the first thing that helps you get there is to decide that's what you're going to do.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_01You don't have to make the steps right away to do that. But the hardest thing is to decide, now I know what's right. I've made a decision. This is what I'm gonna do. Get some help and some counsel, how to lay that out. We've got phenomenal studies on how to set boundaries that are available to us, great resources. You don't even need to go to a counselor.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. I didn't even realize how much of our early years in marriage was absorbed in this until I went back and I started cleaning out a library of books that I had. And Mary, talk about boundaries. We're discussing it. We did a whole study on boundaries. Did that whole love must be tough. Um, because we deal with people and people are hurt, people sometimes are dysfunctional. We have to always prepare ourselves for that one that really does not want to do what it takes to get healed. No, it's true, and be a blessing to people in their life. So we kind of we can't let our bleeding heart just lead us, or else, even as leaders in what we do, we could get bogged down in people's dysfunction, right? Thinking, oh, we'll pray them through it, or God'll show up and help them. But, you know, your dad, he went through a tough time in his years, early years. Uh, something happened as an adult with his father that really hurt the family, and he struggled with that, but he had a choice. He had a choice to choose healing and not allow that dysfunction to continue on into now his relationship with his kids. Right. So I I want to be sympathetic to people that are going through things, but I also want to say to them hey, stop, yeah, figure out a way. Way to get healed. And we're going to talk about that in the next episode. How we should respond then to people that are not willing to go get healed. That's right. In order to protect ourselves. You uh and I were listening to uh an audio book, and there's when it comes to pinpointing who this
person is and how they are just wrong and toxic and dysfunctional. And the person said, Listen, if one person is doing something that is so erratic, so hurtful, stop and ask yourself, What are the 99 other friends of mine or influences doing? Are are they doing the same thing? That's right. If that person is the only one out of a hundred in your life that's acting that way, then that person needs to be dealt with in your heart.
SPEAKER_01That's right.
SPEAKER_04It's not you, it's not you, it's it's not your fault. No, no, it's not your responsibility to fix them, it's not you. Because if 99 other people in your world aren't acting that way, then it should show you there's something up with them. And you're gonna have to protect yourself. Which, how do I become aware of this, Mary? And you have a great story about when we were in Georgia going down to look at this beautiful blue water uh spring, and what happened?
SPEAKER_01So I was raised by a grandfather that liked to get out in the woods and uh taught us a lot about the woods. So I hadn't been in the woods in years, but when we started building our house out there, immediately everything that I knew as a girl, being in that familiar environment, all flooded back. So I would say to you, we need snake boots, we need to walk through the woods with a stick, and you're like, What? We need a stick for. Oh, I just I remembered all that knowledge of what to look for and how to look for snakes came flooding back. And you know the patterns, you know the temperature and the environment, the habitat for snakes. So we went to look. Now, mind you, we'd tromped through our own property, we tromp through other people's property. We had not seen any snakes. But I also would tell you walk heavy because snakes feel the vibration. And so on the ground. Stomp on the ground. And you laughed at me. Some of our friends laughed at me. I'm like, I know what I'm talking about. I can spot snakes. I've seen them. I've my grandfather has taught me how to see them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And so we went to go pick up some lumber from a neighbor. Yep. And our contractor, who's from Georgia, all these guys are Georgia boys, met us out there, and it's very remote.
SPEAKER_04Five or six of us walking in through the woods.
SPEAKER_01All men, I'm the only girl. Yeah. And we're walking through, and I'm, I immediately, he's he says, I'd like for you guys to see my blue lagoon. Beautiful. It's gorgeous, and it's down through this little pathway. So we're walking through this very uh woodsy, woodsy area down to this water, and all I can think of is snakes. Not out of fear. I was not afraid. Yeah. Because I had everything I needed to protect myself. We all did. But I started looking. And as the story goes, our friend was standing right next to a I think it was a country.
SPEAKER_04No, we're all we're all there looking at the beautiful water. Yes. All the guys were mesmerized by the water. That's it. And we're just staring down into this dark hole of water. And there you are saying, Don't move.
SPEAKER_01There's a snake right behind your foot.
SPEAKER_04All the guys, the country guys up in there, nobody saw the snake.
SPEAKER_01Nobody saw the snake but me. And and the reason why, and I it's such a a revelation of understanding that when you've been through something, especially with somebody who has a manipulative mindset, you become a snake spotter. I mean, I don't know any other way to say it. And that sounds so cruel to some people that you would refer to be strong, be strong a person, but you you have to understand that sometimes you have to see them with evil intentions. You love that person, but there's evil intentions because they're not well. And you've got to be good at spotting that snake that is out to truthfully suffocate you and be aware that that poison, that venom that's in them, they can't help themselves, don't want to help themselves. We know the story of Eve. She was deceived by a snake, by a serpent. That's an incredible story in the Bible. That how the Bible uses the imagery of a snake, the story of a snake. And it's so, so important for us. Now, there's not snakes. I'm I don't look for manipulation in every man I meet, right? Or every person that's around me.
SPEAKER_04I'm one out of a hundred. If they show up and they're acting like a snake and all your other friends are not snakes, be careful.
SPEAKER_01And you don't, the point of it is you don't keep inviting the snake into your living room. You you don't keep pursuing that snake like it's not dangerous. Because I knew, okay, I can't, I couldn't keep saying, oh, my dad's a good man, he's a good man. Wait a minute. There's there's some really bad qualities here that are poisonous to the future of my life and my children. So in being able to not only recognize snake behavior, but the environment of snake behavior, it kept myself, my sisters from walking in the door of more pain and hurt.
SPEAKER_04Yes.
SPEAKER_01Because I knew the holidays would come and the phone would go, we're gonna get together, we're gonna meet, and there I would go. Well, all I did was set myself up in the habitat, in the environment to get hurt again. And when I would reach out and make the call, when it wasn't the holiday or when it didn't wasn't convenient for him, but it was more convenient for me, never, he was never free. He was never available, could never come. So the minute I started practicing, okay, let's take this relationship out of the terms of the deal that only work, I'm sorry, for the snake. Yeah. And does it work for me? I quickly realized this there's not anything in this for me under these terms. Yeah. It did not mean that my father was all bad, throw him out. No, but I also knew that I could love him better by not putting myself in an environment continually where I wasn't aware and I wasn't looking for it. I walked into those woods going, this is snake territory. Yep. This is uh, this is the perfect habitat for us not to even see it. People that should see it and don't see it, but I knew what I was looking for and I was aware. I didn't go in with this girly fantasy, oh, he called and he wanted me to come and he's gonna work it out. Okay, hold on. What are the boundaries here? Let's just be careful, let's be mindful, keep our boundaries in place. And sometimes you're gonna have to see if the terms of the deal in that relationship, and I know that might sound crazy for somebody, but I know somebody's listening that goes, that's me. That's exactly where I'm at. Yeah, that's who I'm talking to. That has been so bound up almost to a point where it's a boa constrictor that's wrapped itself around you and you can't find your way out. There's a lot of young girls that aren't married right now because they've got a toxic relationship with a dad or with a mom. And they don't know how to let go and know what's healthy and what's not healthy. And if you're a a grown adult, at some point you have to learn I have my life and I can't keep allowing this toxic nature and this poison to affect my future. And here's the freedom: you don't have to. You don't have to. You're not expected to. Yep. You can walk away. You can set some terms of the deal. Now, we'll get into this in the next session.
SPEAKER_04Yep.
SPEAKER_01That how to do that, that because that's not an easy thing.
SPEAKER_04Right.
SPEAKER_01But it can be done.
SPEAKER_04Yeah. Well, we've just given somebody uh after Christmas gift. I think so. Giving you permission to say, I don't have to live with a dysfunctional person influencing my life every day. That's right. It's gonna be tough to step away. It's gonna be hard to get in when you're around that snake to say all of a sudden see them as a snake. Right. I loved your analogy because dysfunctional people are a snake. They are if you you you see that image, that's right. Like Eve, absolutely. What you don't want to do is sit there and carry on a conversation with it, listen to it, let it influence you. No, you you need to remove yourself from that environment. We're gonna talk about that in our next episode. But Mary, I think this is an eye-opener for some, a heart opener for some. And our desire for this audience is that they would look at this new year that is ahead of them
and be given the opportunity to walk in their dreams and desires and aspirations. Absolutely. And not be slowed down in their head or their heart. They have no headspace, no heart space for anybody that is toxic. No, that's going to slow them down. If you are obsessed by the toxicity of somebody around you and you don't realize it, that it is toxic, then just the fact that you're obsessed and you're feeling bad and you're angry and you're insecure and you're looking at yourself in the mirror, wondering what's wrong with me, all because that person is making you feel that way. Listen, you don't have to carry that person with you into this new year. You can set up the right kind of boundaries, go into this new year free from that. It's going to take you a little bit. Yeah. And that's why we want to invite you to our next episode coming up. How do we deal with the snakes? Great job today, Mayor.
SPEAKER_02This was good.
SPEAKER_04Thanks for joining us again on another episode of The Family Business. We went deep today, talk some business. Glad you were with us.
SPEAKER_00You've just enjoyed another episode of the Family Business Podcast with the Alesssies, and we can't thank you enough for being a part of our podience today. Now that you've learned more about us, here's how you can join in in the family business. First, make sure you're following our podcast right now and download this episode so you can hear it at any time. Second, think of someone you know that might need or enjoy this episode and share it with them. You'll be helping them and helping us to spread the word about the family business. Third, go to AlesiFamily Business.com and tap the Ask the Alessies button. This is really cool. You could use it to record a voicemail comment or question, and we can add your voice to our conversations. Finally, while you're on our page, tap the reviews tab and you'll see a link to leave a review on Apple Podcasts. We love reading your reviews and we might even share them on the show. Thanks again for joining us, and we'll see you next time at the Family Business with the Alessis because family is everybody's business.