Blended Families

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Transcript

0:33

Blended families. This feels raw. And if you listened to my last podcast, I shared that I'm recording this from my hotel room in Phoenix, Arizona. Because although I'm back and forth between Australia and America, living a hybrid life, um, I have links to Arizona because my son's dad lives here. And we've been doing this dance of co parenting across the seas for almost 11 years now. I like to say openly and proudly that we have a great relationship and know when me. the level of toxicity that we typically see in marriages that end in divorce or separated families. I'm really proud of that. And I, I believe my part, no doubt his part as well, but my part, I'm able to come to the relationship without needing to spit vile or negative stuff about him or our past, of which there isn't any enough to be vile. because I continue to clean my trauma. I speak about this as openly as I can on my social media pages and part of the reason why I do the work I do is because I feel for so long we have all kept quiet and silent about our traumas and part of decolonizing it where we were told to keep it secret and nobody needs to know your business, don't air your dirty laundry, how you do it is the bit that I believe. People of my generation or my work need to be adding to the story. If you want to talk about it, do it. How do you do it? Are you doing it in a way that you re traumatize yourself and everybody in the story? Or do you do it with a sense of reflection, curiosity, but also gift for others? I share my story because I want the gift to be that we do have an alternative to caring and co parenting. When there has been hurt and pain, there is another option, but for so long, decades, I grew up with it always being awful. And of course, I appreciate that when hurt people are hurt, they subconsciously and sometimes consciously hurt other people. And I knew having experienced that hurt and been the person who has hurt someone else with the separation with my daughter's dad, I wanted to make a conscious decision to do things differently this way. And my goodness, I think we've both done a good job for the last decade. Now I'm conscious that I'm speaking here for myself. If you're to speak to my son's father, he might have something very different to say. And I guess I bring it to the podcast of decolonizing trauma because my curiosity says, why do we not feel like we have access to a different narrative when it comes to co parenting and blended families? Why do we have conflict? Why does one parent? Sometimes feel the need to completely villainize and alienate the other parent. Ah, big sigh, I have to say. Because I've experienced it. I am experiencing it. And without giving the details, and because as I said earlier, it's about how we do it, but really wanting this to be something that I can unpack by delinking from the dominant narrative that says, If someone says X about me, my only way to respond is to defend myself. And that has been the turmoil I have been in over the past couple of days, weeks, months, years. Which is, if we are all going to follow the narrative, that after Divorce, hell must break loose and kids must choose one parent. What is an alternative narrative if I de link it? And does, does it have to mean that the only way I can survive in this divorce is to smear the name of the other parent? Or involve the kid in the drama and the trauma. And so I created a narrative that sees me extend myself, sometimes overextend myself. In this instance, it's flying to America to drop my son off, and then I find out a couple of days before I get to America that his passport has expired. And I go, Oh, fuck. And while I realized his passport was expired at this point, I'm trying to get him to his football tournament. And. in Canberra, which is another state in Australia. However, we needed to renew the passport in Sydney and we were due to fly a couple of days after and I'm flapping around like a chicken who's trying to escape being eaten for dinner. And I'm like, shit, is, is this what healthy conscious co parenting looks like? Is this what I need to do to delink myself from the narrative that typically would have had me want to just call up his dad and say, why do I always have to deal with this? And that's not true. I don't always have to deal with it. It's just in that moment, it was very inconvenient. And at what point are you going to come and pick him up and bring him back and do this? And, and trust me, I did these things. And there's, and I had this kind of, um, heated, aggressive reaction when it came to the relationship with my daughter's dad. We both did. And it's something that I just want to change this time round. And cleaning my trauma has allowed me to manage my nervous system because the pain and emotion of not having your kid with you. And I've had that for about two years of Levi's life, where he's lived with his dad in America and not with me. And I'm more conditioned to be able to deal with this having grown up in a family and communities where it's always taking the village to raise a child. And, you know, I live with my grandma for a bit, so I'm a bit differently built to that. So that's why it was okay. Even when people came into my ear saying, Yemi, is it a good idea? Your son goes to live with his dad for a year. It was meant to be a year. It eventually turned to just under two years. Like, what if he doesn't return him? Those fear mongering was put into my head. And I had to work hard to differentiate between the fear and what is real. And I've had to do that a lot, like I said, over the past couple of weeks, months and years, and hope that the trust that has been built over time continues. But here's the message I want to leave with you today. If you resonate with this, you know someone who could resonate to this, please share. But the question I pose to you is, whatever Thorn has been triggered or kind of whatever wound has been picked at again. Firstly, as always, look at the event that happened, the traumatic event that really has that thorn and that wound still sensitive to the point that it could be brushed against and it gets you into a position that you want to completely annihilate the other parent. And if you could see me, I have my eyes closed and my hands up, almost like I'm in church saying hallelujah, that is me. It's for you to just pause and take the deep breaths and in the words of Brene Brown, ask yourself, what is the story that I am telling myself here? What is the fear that is driving this and most time it's the fear of losing the access or love to the kid. And what is that fear doing? So what story have I created and therefore what version of myself am I about to bring into the table to the world? resolve. And that is tough and rough as nails. But it's the work we need to do so we do not keep on recycling the child wound because it is the children that suffer. And so I've called this blended families because I don't want to just give the impression if you follow me on social media that it's all hunky dory. No, it takes work. It takes work. And sometimes it takes time. So much time that, despite being with my partner, my fiancé, of who I get married to, in a couple of months, despite being with him for over half a decade, we're still not a blended family. Our kids haven't connected. I haven't been able to connect fully with my partner's kids. And it's rough, and it's not something I want to share on my social media page, but it's something I definitely wanted to bring to the podcast. And if you have any words of wisdom or insight, please share your notes. Share this with somebody else, come into my DMs and just let me know, so I can bear witness to your story too. Okay, that's enough for now. As always, sending you love, light, healing, and And I love you.