Before They Were Mom & Dad

Before They Were Mom & Dad.

How well do you really KNOW  your parents?

What does it actually mean to KNOW someone?

I think most of us would say we know our parents.

*You know their real name

 *maiden name

 *birthday

 *what they do- or did for work

*you may know what foods they like

* if they like animals

*you  know their habits

You know a lot of facts  about them. 

But…

knowing facts about someone isn’t really the same thing as knowing someone.

I think there is a difference between knowingabout a person and actually knowing the person.

To truly know someone is to understand more than the facts about their life- you understand their experiences, their emotions, their values.

 To truly know someone, I think you need to know the layers of them:

Who they were. 

Who they are.

And 

What shaped them…

And maybe most importantly…

what they wanted before life handed them something else?

 And what do they wish someone understood about them?

That question can tell you so much about a person-because we all have things about ourselves the other people don’t completely see.

Knowing about someone is knowing their facts.

Knowing someone is knowing their story.

Now by that definition... how well do you know  your mom. Your dad. Your grandparents?

In this food for thought conversation, we will talk about why we rarely ask about those chapters, why our parents and grandparents are living history books, and how one genuine question asked with curiosity can uncover stories you never knew existed.

Knowing about someone is knowing their facts.

Knowing someone is knowing their story.

Now by that definition – how well do you know  your mom. Your dad. Your grandparents?

The whole objective?

Is to uncover a story, not just collect the facts.

Have I convinced you to start asking questions? 

If I have, you don’t need a plan, and you don’tneed to conduct a 3 hour family history interview! 

You just need one real question.. asked with real curiosity.

And try not to make it an interrogation.

Just start a conversation.

There are so many questions you could ask, but here are a few I have used that really dug up some fun interesting conversations.

Start with this one:

“who were you before you were mom and dad”?

And then let that question take you wherever it goes.

*what were you like before your name change?  

*Did you like sports/ did you play any?

*Were you an adventurous kid?

*What was your favorite band when you were 16? 

Did you go to any concerts?

And then maybe…

“set the stage for me. What was it like when you had your first crush?

*what about your first kiss? First love?

*Did you get along with your parents and siblings?

* what made you fall in love? And did your family like him?

* was there an invention or a change in the world that actually scared you?

Here’s  another good one.. in my opinion.. 

what is something your parents got wrong-that you swore you would do differently?

Again, there are so many questions.. if you want more suggestions let me know.

Another good question is …

what do you want me to remember about you that has nothing to do with being a parent?

It’s a hard question.

 Then just listen.

Don’t turn the conversation back on you.

Just listen.

Let them run with it for as long as it takes.

 Keep in mind you are not trying to get through a list.. you are trying to get to know  a person.

And one little tip..

Try and ask questions that can’t be answered with just a yes or no.

The whole objective is to uncover a story, notjust collect facts.

Enjoy!

Joanne

The Aging Mask - A Lifestyle Medicine Podcast

(949)236-1529

Follow along on Instagram:
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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hi, welcome to the Aging Mass Podcast, a lifestyle medicine podcast where together we explore lifestyle, wellness, and our everyday choices that shape the way we age. I am Joanne de Murs, your weekly wellness companion. Thank you for tuning in today. I appreciate it. And I hope your day is going great. Today is another Food for Thought episode. And I wanted to get you thinking. This topic actually came to me at my mom's birthday party. And this was a couple weeks ago. I've been sitting on this topic for a few weeks. We were playing a game where my mom was asked 10 personal questions. She would be asked the questions and we would write down what we think her answer is or was. And the goal was to see how well her kids knew her. And somehow, miraculously, out of all of her kids, I, number eight, won. I won. I got all but two answers right. I know it was shocking. I'm still shocked. The funny part is because I knew it's not funny, but because I knew most of these answers, my youngest sister, the baby of the family, kept accusing me of cheating. She couldn't believe or understand how I knew all of these things about our mom. She just kept wanting to know how that was possible. I cannot tell her enough times I didn't cheat. I was given the time to get to know our mom and I took advantage. And I reminded my sister that a few years ago, I basically lived with our mom for about three weeks while I was waiting for my first grandbaby to be born. We got to spend a lot of quality one-on-one time together, just her and I. And in our big family, that's really rare. So rare that it never happened. You just don't get one-on-one with my mom, and you didn't get one on one time with my dad. It just can't happen. But during that three weeks, my mom and I had a lot of conversations. I asked her a lot of questions and I listened. And the more questions that I asked, the more curious I got. So I would ask, she would talk, and I listened. And I got to know my mom in a way I really hadn't before. I only knew her as mom. I remember sitting there thinking, I've known this person my entire life, and I never knew that about her. I never knew her as a person. And that made me sad. I had never stopped to get to know the person she was before she was my mom. Before she was my mom and my dad was my dad, they were people. Now, bad news is my dad passed away a while ago before I got to get to know him as a person. But the good news is, by asking and listening to my mom's stories, I have now seen glimpses of my mom's life before us, before her kids, as a girl, a teen, a wife, and a grown adult woman, not as the mom or grandma that I've always known her to be. And it was awesome. It's so awesome. And it got me thinking: how well do you really know your parents? Not mom, not dad, but the person underneath those names. Well, today we're gonna talk about it. Today's conversation is titled Before They Were Mom and Dad. Before we go any further, I know not everyone listening has parents to ask. Some of you may have lost them, some of you may be estranged, so that door isn't open right now. Maybe it never will be. So if that's you, please don't think this episode isn't for you because it really isn't an episode about parents specifically. It's really about just getting curious about the people who came before you, which can include your grandparents, your aunts and uncles, or even that family friend who played an important role in your life. It's about the stories that exist beyond what you know, stories that are just waiting to be told. And maybe there's someone in your life whose story you've never really heard. So whoever that person is for you, stay with me and enjoy the episode. Here's the thing about parents: we meet them as parents. We didn't get the beginning of their story. We didn't know them when they were five. We didn't know them at 16. We didn't know who they were before they fell in love, before they got married, and before they had you. We basically showed up in the middle of their story, and from that point on, that's the only version of them that we know. Mom, dad, that's how we met them, and that's how we continue to see them. But the crazy part, if you stop and think about it, before they were mom and dad, they were you. They were young, they had hopes and dreams, they had challenges, they had hobbies, they had a favorite song, a best friend, a first crush, they had their first love, their first kiss, and their first heartbreak. They had things that they were good at and things they weren't so good at. And they probably made some really bad choices and some really stupid decisions, just like you do. And they probably did things their parents never knew about. Things they were afraid of. They had dreams that they achieved and some that they didn't. They were just trying to figure out who they were, just like you are. And somehow, once they became mom or dad, it's almost if that previous version of them just poop up and disappeared. They changed their names to mom and dad, and you never really went back and looked for the person who was there before you. Your parents have entire chapters of their lives that happened before you ever existed. And again, that makes me wonder: do we really know our parents? We know the roles they played in our lives, but do we really know the person behind the role? What does it actually mean to know someone anyway? What does it actually mean to know someone? I think most of us would say that we know our parents. Of course, we know our parents. Of course, you know their real name, you know their maiden name, you know their birthday, you know what they do for work, you know what they did for work, we know what foods they like, we know if they like animals, you know some of their habits. We know a lot of facts about them. But knowing facts about someone isn't really the same thing as knowing someone. I think there is a difference between knowing about a person and actually knowing the person. To truly know someone is to understand more than the facts about their life. You understand their experiences, their emotions, their values. To truly know someone, I think you need to know the layers of them, like who they were, who they are, what shaped them, and most importantly, what did they want before life handed them something else? And you want to know what do they wish someone understood about them? That question can tell you so much about a person because we all have things about ourselves that other people don't completely see. Again, knowing about someone is knowing their facts, knowing someone is knowing their story. Now, by that definition, how well do you know your mom, your dad, and your grandparents? The question is, why don't we know our parents better? Is it that we're just self-absorbed? I don't I don't think it's just because we're self-absorbed, maybe a little portion of it. I think for most of us, this is how growing up works. Think about your childhood. And I would think that I'd speak for most of us when I say that we spent our childhood asking our parents for things. Will you buy this or that? Will you help with this or that? We spent it asking our parents for things. Then you grow into adulthood and it shifted to telling them things. You went for at from asking our parents for things to telling them things. You were telling them about your relationships, your jobs, your problems, and your life. And somewhere in there, during those years, the actual asking about them never really happened. And that's okay. It's not because you don't care or you don't love them, it's just that you really never thought to ask. And as a kid, you are wired to see your parents as fixtures in your life. Just fixtures, mom and dad. They're just there, they're not people with their own story. That's almost developmentally necessary when you are young, and it's actually a little tragic that it often never gets corrected once we're all adults. Maybe could it be a little bit of fear? It may be that we're afraid, and it's not just that we are self-absorbed. Maybe we're a little afraid. What happens when we start asking our parents about themselves? We might hear things that they were afraid of, regrets they had, dreams they gave up. Maybe deep down we're afraid to make them human. It's easy, it's safe, it's comforting to think of mom as mom and dad as dad. Those roles are safe. We don't want to be uncomfortable. When we make our parents human, we will be reminded that they weren't always the people that we know today. Maybe we're simply afraid of seeing our parents as people because once we do, we realize they were never just our parents. They were people first. Really, though, maybe this is exactly why we should ask. Plus, we should start asking questions because on the other side of that fear, our parents and grandparents are living history books. Have you thought about that? Our parents and grandparents, especially our grandparents, are living history books. Not the textbook kind, the real kind, the first person history book. Okay? They were there. They lived through things we only read about. They experienced it. They have a true first person version of history that exists nowhere else. Think about how much the world has changed during their lifetime and what they've been witness to. All that true life experience they hold that we never ask about. Have you ever asked about the invention of their appliances? The washer, the dryer, the blender, the microwave. Oh my gosh, we don't think about those things. They were there, they got that invention firsthand. The evolution of cars, airplanes, TV, color TV, home phones, dating, mail, computers, cell phones. The list is so long. The world they grew up in may look really foreign to us, but they lived it. Imagine asking your mom or your grandma, if they're older, what dating was like when they were 20. There was no texting, there was no dating apps. It's crazy. Here's the thing: we can read about all that evolution in books or on the computer, or you can ask someone who has actually lived through them. So get curious and ask them questions, have conversations. I bet, I would bet you that your mind will be blown so many times you won't even be able to take it. We tend to think of history as something that happened a long time ago, centuries and centuries ago. But for our parents and grandparents, some of that history is their life. Every one of them is carrying a version of the past that only they can tell. And the sad part, the really sad part is those stories will disappear when they do, and not metaphorically, literally. If you think about it, when a parent or a grandparent passes away, we lose so much more than that person. We lose their memories, their experiences, their perspectives, their family stories, their funny stories, their sad stories, and the stories about their people that we'll never get to meet. The story goes with them unless someone carries it. Take the time to ask, be the holder, the carrier of their stories. Not because it's your duty, but because it's a privilege most people don't realize they still have time for. You get perspective, you will understand them differently. And sometimes through these conversations, you will understand yourself differently. Remember, meaningful relationships are part of our well-being. We aren't meant to live disconnected from one another. Being heard matters, being seen matters, and feeling that you matter matters. And these aren't small questions. They're not small talk questions that I'm talking about. They're the kind of questions that change how two people see each other. You stop seeing them as fixtures, and they get to be seen as the person that they are. And that again is good for both of you. So have I convinced you to start asking questions? If I have, you don't need a plan, and you don't need to conduct a three-hour family history interview. You just need one real question. One real question asked with real curiosity. And try not to make it an interrogation. Try not to make it an interrogation. Just start a conversation. There are so many questions that you could ask, but I've come up with some that I used, and I think they're really fun. They were great conversation starters, and I learned a lot about my mom. And I'll give you, I'll just give you one. I'll give you a couple. Anyway, doesn't matter. I'll start with this one. Okay. Who were you before you were mom? But you can say, who were you before you were mom and dad? If you happen to talk to your dad. Who were you before? Okay. And then let that question take you wherever it goes. Who were you before you were mom and dad? And again, let that question take you wherever it goes because it's gonna go places. It'll what were you like before your name change? Meaning, when did they go from Dorothy to mom? Like, what were you like as Dorothy or Steve? Did you like sports? If you did, did you play any? Were you an adventurous kid, or did you like to stay inside? What was your favorite band when you were 16? And did you go to any concerts? These are good questions. And you know what? You can see the smile on their face when they answer, and then it's like you can see them literally going back in time. It's really cool. And then maybe ask okay, set the stage for me. What was it like when you had your first crush? And then I'll take you to the first kiss, the first love. Did you get along with your parents and Your siblings? What made you fall in love and did your family like him or her? Was there an invention or a change in the world that actually scared you? Oh, here's another good one, in my opinion. This is a good one. What is something that your parents got wrong that you swore you would do differently? That one's good too, because it's never just one thing. Again, there are so many questions. And if you want more suggestions, let me know. You can text me at the aging mask because I have a lot of them. And I'm still not done asking. I'm waiting for that next time where we won't be interrupted, where I can just ask and she can just talk. Another good question is what do you want me to remember about you that has nothing to do with being a parent? Now, that's a hard question, but as they ponder it, a lot of information comes out. A lot. And again, just listen. Okay. That question again was what do you want me to remember about you that has nothing to do with being a parent? Again, just listen. Don't turn the conversation back on you. Just listen. Let them run with it for as long as it takes and enjoy it. And you will be in for a nice surprise. I'm telling you. Not only are they living history books, but when they start talking, it's like watching a movie in real life. I can't. You're going to do it, and then you'll understand. They're just not words to describe it. And keep in mind something important. Keep in mind you're not trying to get through a list. You're just trying to get to know a person. And one little tip, one other tip, try and ask questions that can't be answered with just a yes or a no. Right? You want to ask questions that can't be answered with a simple yes or no. The whole objective is to uncover a story, not just collect facts. Okay? The objective is to uncover a story, not just to collect facts. I have a challenge for you. Just ask one question. Every time you talk with them in person, just ask one question that you haven't asked before. That's it. If your parents are still here, ask. If your grandparents are still here, ask. And don't worry about having the perfect question. Just be curious. Just be curious because one day, hopefully, fingers crossed, there will be someone wanting to get to know you. And you may realize that before you became a mom or a dad, grandma, grandpa, aunt, or uncle, you were just you, a person with dreams, fears, stories, and just a person who was once young. And I think that's another one of those great gifts that we can give another person. And that's having the curiosity to really get to know them. And not just for the role that they played in our life, but for the person that they were before they were mom and dad. Hmm. Thanks for spending time with me today. I greatly appreciate it. If this episode made you think of someone, maybe just don't think about them. Call them. Get together with them and ask them something that you've never asked them before. Make it something fun. You could say, it's time for the question of the day. Trust me, you'll be so happy that you did. That's all I have for today. Thank you again for listening. I'll talk to you next week. And until then, live in gratitude, keep on moving, and go live your best day yet. If you enjoyed this episode and just can't wait to hear and learn more, don't forget to subscribe to the Aging Mask, a lifestyle medicine podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. And I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode. So please leave a review on the Aging Mask Instagram. Or if you don't have socials, feel free to text me at the Aging Mask 949-236-1529. We can you can ask me some more questions to ask your parents. We could talk about this episode or any of my prior episodes. Let's have a conversation. Enjoy, and we'll talk soon.