Discover your power of finding common ground despite someone else's differences and the importance of not taking things personally.
Come along with Suzi as she shares the nuances of family dynamics and how past experiences can cloud our perceptions, sometimes creating rifts in relationships. She will discuss strategies to look beyond these differences, especially during family gatherings, aiming to foster connections that are deeper and more meaningful.
Learn to observe others without judgment and focus on joy as you enter into this holiday season.
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
Discover your power of finding common ground despite someone else's differences and the importance of not taking things personally.
Come along with Suzi as she shares the nuances of family dynamics and how past experiences can cloud our perceptions, sometimes creating rifts in relationships. She will discuss strategies to look beyond these differences, especially during family gatherings, aiming to foster connections that are deeper and more meaningful.
Learn to observe others without judgment and focus on joy as you enter into this holiday season.
Music credit to Kalvin Love for the podcast’s theme song “Bee Your Best Self”
Tune into our CHW Streaming Radio and the full lineup at cominghomewell.com
Download on Apple Play and Google Play
Online-Therapy.com ~ Life Changing Therapy Click here for a 20% discount on your first month.
Contact Suzi at suzigma@gmail.com or (818) 470-2013 and share your story.
suzilandolphi.com
vetsandplayers.org
wildhorserescue.org
Thank you for listening! Be sure to SHARE, LIKE and leave us a REVIEW!
I'm Susie Landolfi and welcome to Be Crazy. Well, oh, that's good coffee. I didn't like coffee for a long time. I don't know, maybe I didn't start drinking coffee till my 30s or 40s, or something like that, and I didn't like wine. I still don't like garlic. Think about that for just a second. I'm half Italian and I don't like garlic. Now why is that? Because I'm only half.
Speaker 1:And what happened was my mother white, anglo-saxon, protestant, lawn, blue-eyed, from New England, so part of the whole Putnam clan marries the son of an Italian immigrant, and so the two families didn't speak to one another. Actually, she lobed and then he went off to war, world War Two, and they didn't see each other for five years. So he comes back and they start a family and the two families cannot reconcile their differences. So one grandmother smelled like ester-lodder and had very light skin and put powder on her face and always wore very muted clothes, and every Sunday afternoon we had roast beef and the only spice we had in the house was salt and pepper. Cut to going to the other family, everything was colorful. None of it matched. It was very colorful and of course there was plastic on the sofa and the drapes were always pulled in the living room so it didn't fade, and my grandmother Italian grandmother was always cooking and what was different about her was, first of all, she spoke no English, so we never actually spoke. She just handed me the knife, so we never actually spoke. She just handed me things Like she handed me big pieces of bread, italian bread with butter, and a Fanta orange soda, and then we pull me on her lap, but the problem is she had garlic coming out of her pores 72-year-old garlic coming out of her pores, and as a child I did not know what that smell was, because we didn't have that in the other house. So I never really got to enjoy the fact that I had these two very different families.
Speaker 1:It was traumatizing to go back and forth from one to the other. So my mom and dad divorced when I was about five or six and then we were shuttled back and forth between these two families and one family. The English family didn't talk about anything, Like everything was hidden, everything was fine, you didn't discuss anything, you overlooked everything and you pretended that everything was lovely. And of course, there was an undertow, like an undercurrent, much like in an ocean, where it looks very safe on the top of the ocean. When you go into the water and then you go under and you feel this undercurrent, it starts pulling you out. So that's one family. The other family was like a storm, it's like high waves. You walked in, everybody was yelling, everything was chaotic on some level, everybody was loud and everything was on the surface, like everything showed, everything mattered. There wasn't ever a time that people could overlook anything at all.
Speaker 1:So I went back and forth between these two families and as a child I kept being concerned and worried about why can't I get out of this. I kept being concerned and worried about why can't we all get along, why can't we all be together. And I remember going out in the backyard of both families and each of them had quite a big backyard, an opposite side of this little town in New England called Danvers, massachusetts, which was part of Salem Village and the whole witch trail. And I'd go out in the backyard I'm always the kid that wanted to be outside and I'd walk through their gardens. That's right. They both had gardens and I would walk through the gardens and I noticed that both gardens are almost exactly the same Everything from the zinnias, the flowers they planted to the vegetables, how neat they kept it, how they harvested the food, and we ate it. And I'm thinking how is it that these two very different families don't even know? Because they won't talk to each other, they won't visit each other, and the minute that they would see each other's gardens, they would be able to be best friends, they would have one thing that they could focus on, that they do well and that they love. And it was heartbreaking to me as a kid. Kids notice these things and we're like well, they have the same garden. Why aren't they able to see that? Because they won't show up for each other, because they only could see all the differences that they had.
Speaker 1:So when we focus and I'm guilty of it, trust me, I'm guilty Because the first thing we do is when we see somebody, we look how different they are from us. Sometimes we look and see, oh, how similar they look to us. Maybe another woman with long gray hair, I might go oh, that's only one thing we have in common, and maybe, just maybe, there's lots more we have in common. Or maybe that gray hair, that long gray hair, is something that we have in common and we actually. This person actually isn't very safe. So I get that it's hard. I get that it's difficult to figure out how similar we are and how different we are and what do we get to focus on? And we all just went through Thanksgiving and I know that there were some of us that spent time with family members. Sometimes family members we see every day, sometimes family members that we may only see once a year.
Speaker 1:And I'm wondering how we handle when we look at someone and we only see all the differences or the past hurt or the judgment that we carry with us because of the past hurt, because maybe that person has changed, but because we're still so hurt from what they did before, we can't see it. I am told over and over and over again from people that I work with and they will say to me my mom, my dad, were really. They drank, they did this when I was a kid and blah, blah, blah and I can't be in around them, but my kids love them, but my kids love them. That should give you a hint. It might give you a hint that maybe your mom and dad actually changed, that they're not the same struggling human beings that they were when they were raising you and they've come to some wisdom and some change that now your children are actually able to enjoy. Now maybe they haven't changed and maybe you still have to keep that distance. Maybe you've changed. Are you the person that you were 10 years ago, 20 years ago, 30 years ago? Are you able to become the person that you deserve to be? Is there a way that you could look at them differently and find something that maybe is a possibility? You can see, a possibility of having some kind of connection? I tell people all the time when they have to go home and they say I have to go home and I dread it. My dad, my mom, my sister, my brother, my uncle, my ex I hear that a lot and I said do you ever go to a movie theater, watch a movie and take it personally?
Speaker 1:Great coffee. They go. What do you mean? Of course not. I'm just watching. And I said do you get some pleasure from that movie? And you get some fear and you get some sadness. Have you ever cried at a movie about people you don't know and it's fictional? I said, of course, that's because you're able to watch it without taking it personally. What you are taking in is the connections that human beings have with joy, fear and sadness. So you watch this movie, you get all wrapped up in the character and what's happening to them and what's going on, even the villains. And then you walk out of the theater and you may talk about it, you may even tell people to watch that movie. You don't sit there and go wow, that person just dis me, that character, that villain just did that to me. Of course you don't.
Speaker 1:So I'm wondering would it be possible to sometimes go back into family, go back into friendships and watch them as if they were a movie? I've asked people to do this a couple of times, actually many times. And I said go home. And I had one combat veteran went back all the way back to Maine from Los Angeles and, by the way, he writes movies. And I said go back and just look at them like a movie, like the characters you write and the stories you write about. And he said, really. And I said, yeah, first of all, you're really good at that. Second of all, why not? And he went back home and we talked afterwards and he said I saw things I never saw before because I didn't take it personally. I saw the anxiety of my mother, I saw the anxiety of my dad. I saw some of the gifts. I saw my sister and how she tries to keep everything together. I saw, I saw, I saw and he was able to look at things without having to protect himself or try to change something. See, that's the other thing that watching. You don't stand up in the movie and yell at the characters. Don't go in the garage, don't go in the cellar, don't do that, walk away. You don't do that. You allow the characters to do what it is that they're going to do in this story.
Speaker 1:I'm wondering if it's possible for us to do that with our families more, that we kind of watch without judgment, we watch to understand, we listen to understand and then we don't give unasked for advice. I was trying to tell someone that the other day. I said I remember when I first heard that it was an Al-Anon, which is the 12 step program for those of us that grew up in families with people who had trauma and then tried to leave that trauma through drugs and alcohol, and I remember they'd say don't take anything personally. And then I read this book, the Four Agreements, and it said the same thing don't take anything personally. And I'm like what the hell. What do you mean? Not take something personally? That person's over there is calling me a asshole. Why, how is that not personal? I'm going on and on and I just I remember closing the book on. That's the dumbest thing I ever heard. And then I thought, oh, look at you and your judgment. And so I said, okay, I'm going to try it.
Speaker 1:And sure enough, I started to see people doing things because of their trauma, not because of what I was doing. So all of a sudden I was kinder to myself because I wasn't taking on that somehow I was making them do that or that. It really was about me. And the reason why I thought it was all about me was because my dad used to tell me. It was to the point where he said to me once I wish you were never born. That's pretty personal. Yet it wasn't. It was said to him as a child he wasn't wanted as a child, he wasn't good enough as a child. He was bullied as a kid because he had one eye that turned in. So all of a sudden, all that hurt and all that lack of self-worth and care that came down on me. The other problem was I looked like my mother and because they had separated and he was so hurt about that I was an easy mark. So, yeah, I took a lot of stuff personally.
Speaker 1:I really thought and I really believed as a child that I was the problem, and so as I started to do my own healing work, I understood that no, really I'm not the problem. I know when I'm the problem. Someone doesn't have to tell me anymore I'm the problem or I did something. Because now that I don't take everything personally, I look for the things that I do deserve to fix the hurt that does come out of my mouth, the things that I do do that are not okay for other people. I see those quicker, deeper, faster than anybody else can see them now. So I don't have to defend myself. I don't have to defend myself because I'm owning it. I still have to write that book called Own your Shit. I know I have to do that. Remind me, will you so during this continuing holiday season? If you made it through Thanksgiving without a big argument, congratulations. And what about for the next four weeks Till up until the new year?
Speaker 1:Every time you're with your kids, your family, boyfriend, girlfriend or both I don't care if you got both and people at work, wherever you go, and if you don't have a lot of family, you're not going to be with a lot of people the people around you in the grocery store, wherever you are. What if you watch them like a movie? What if you decided that you wanted to understand more than judge, that you wanted to figure out, sort of, where your place is, where do you stop and where do they begin? How is it that they might have had this kind of a day or this kind of a life? And that's what was pushing them, that's what was irritating them, that's what was making them sad and scared. Or, even better, what about those people that are actually joyful? I mean, think about that for a second. What if you watched people who were joyful and you thought I want to have more of that. I want to be more joyful, I want to be able to walk this planet with a smile.
Speaker 1:So I'm going to tell you a quick story. I was in New York City. I hadn't been there for years, and my brother used to live in New York City. He has passed, and so I would go there to see him.
Speaker 1:And then, if some of you know this, during the AIDS crisis I opened up the first condom store. It was a condom store in the United States. It was not a sex shop you could bring your teenagers in. So myself and a young man from New York put our money together and we opened up a 400 square foot store in New York City called Condomania. It was on Bleecker and West Tenth, for you that know New York City, and we brought in condoms from all over the world. Why? Because everybody needed to use them and we didn't make the best ones in the United States. We wanted to educate people and we then opened up several more and now we're online because we don't need. We changed the pharmacies. Actually, some of you are old enough to remember if you went into a drugstore pharmacy to buy a condom, they were actually behind the head of the pharmacist. They would stand there and you'd have to point to the condom you wanted while people are in line behind you and of course, it would be like, yeah, give me that extra large over there. And or they were behind the checkout counter so they were not in the aisles. So once the pharmacies finally figured out that we should have accessed anything we want at any time, we didn't have to have the store anymore.
Speaker 1:But the reason I tell you that is because being in New York City now, I love being in the country, like I love being outside, I love green, I like tall trees better than tall buildings. So it's a big, it's a big ask for me to go into that city and I decided I was going to go into that city for three days and enjoy. I was going to be in the joy of the city. Now everybody says, oh, people aren't friendly and they're going to be dangerous and all of this stuff. You hear this all the time, right? So I go and I have to give a speech for a student veterans at Columbia University and I stay in Harlem and I remember I also grew up in a black family, so that's my comfort zone and I'm two doors down from the Apollo Theater.
Speaker 1:So for most of you that don't know, the Apollo Theater is this amazing theater in Harlem where it had comedians and singers and musicians and all these wonderful artists would have an opportunity to perform. Why? Because they couldn't be in the other theaters, like segregation, of course, and racism still alive and well. So the Apollo Theater was the place to go for African American artists to be seen, and without it I can't even imagine how much, how many wonderful artists that we appreciate now and back then would not have had a place to go. So I went two doors down.
Speaker 1:I did this on purpose and I went to the Apollo Theater on amateur night and I'm going to hold something up here. Let's see if there we go. So they give you this hand-held placard here this is yes, and this part says boo, and you get to hold this up when somebody is performing and so the audience actually picks the performer. Now I didn't get to use that night because it was the regional finals or something like that, where all of these people had made it and they were gonna then go to the next level, so some were still eliminated. So we did get to vote at the very end and I wanted to tell you just the amount of fun that I had.
Speaker 1:And here's the best part not only was the Apollo Theater as friendly a place as I've ever been people saying hi and all of that. The most diverse audience I've ever been around, which was just beautiful to see. People from all over the world were there. When I went out on the sidewalks to walk around and look for some places to eat. There were wonderful sidewalk vendors and every single one of them said hello. Now I know, oh, that's just because I wanna sell you something. No one asked me to buy anything. And there was a wonderful those two of them that were playing some great music and I was moving to that music and people actually smiled, moved with me.
Speaker 1:It was a true community and opportunity to connect with one another on the streets of New York City. Now I could say that I brought that with me, because I do bring that with me. So, yeah, I'm part of the joy. I brought that with me and it was obvious that people there at this particular time in this particular place, wanted that joy and had some of their own. And all we needed to do was connect on the joy level. Not did we have the same color hair, the same color skin. Not was where they old relatives that I still have a resentment towards. So I can't connect with them except on that resentment. This was a new start. This was an opportunity for all of us just to be human beings, connecting on the joy.
Speaker 1:And I thought if this was a movie, then, wow, that would be. Oh wait, there is a movie like that it's called the elf. He brings his joy everywhere and everything. He takes nothing personally at all, like everybody had to, including his father, had to work really hard to bring him down from his joy, to try to let him believe that there was something wrong with him. So I am going to ask that all of us, for the next four weeks, we bring our joy game, we say hi to people, we smile, we go to family functions and we watch them as characters in a movie and we don't take it personally that we actually might sit down and listen to that uncle or that aunt or that brother or sister who only talks about themselves and doesn't really wanna hear about anything, about you. And this time maybe you ask some questions, maybe you actually want to hear and listen, to understand. Last thing I'm gonna say is I do know that there are some people that are not safe and I'm not recommending that you necessarily make amends with someone who's not safe.
Speaker 1:I always think of this time of year, about the peanuts, thanksgiving and the big pumpkin and Christmas and all of the specials that we're gonna see on television, and one of them is with the peanuts characters, excuse me and I think about Charlie Brown wanting to kick the football that Lucy continually promises to hold for him, that he can kick it, and he, no matter what she says or what she does, he believes that he's going to give it another try and no matter what she says, no matter what she promises, she pulls that football away every single time. I still have a lot of respect for Charlie. You know I'm thinking well, how many times would I try to kick that football? Because maybe that one time she'll hold it for me? Or, better yet, maybe there should be a Peanuts cartoon where he goes to kick the football and then he takes the football from her what mean? Just takes that football and said you know what? I'm going to kick that myself. I can hold it myself and kick it.
Speaker 1:So I'm wondering whether or not we can go through this holiday and carry our own football and be able to watch and listen, to understand and to be able to bring the joy game. I'm going to try, I'm going to do it. I'm going to do my best to bring my joy game. All right, everybody, I hope that. I hope that you have this end of this year and a beginning of a new year in your hands. That's what's personal. The only thing that's personal is what comes out of your mouth and your actions, not somebody else. So bring your joy game. All right, have a great day and I'll see you crazy. Well, see ya, bye.