Behind the Curtain: Honest Conversations about Foster Care and Adoption
Each episode will feature a conversation between host Rebecca Harvin and foster/adoptive caregivers or members of the community who support foster care and adoption.
Behind the Curtain: Honest Conversations about Foster Care and Adoption
Rebecca Unedited: Unknotting Our Stories
Vulnerability and authenticity are explored through personal experiences of motherhood, therapy, and relationships. By unpacking the burdensome narratives around love and acceptance, the episode inspires listeners to reflect on their own stories and choose healthier paths toward autonomy.
• Navigating the complexities of vulnerability in relationships
• The impact of books on parenting and boundaries
• Confronting the stories we tell ourselves
• Understanding the significance of personal autonomy
• Embracing healing through awareness and compassion
• Invitation to explore narratives that shape our sense of self
Hey guys, this is the second time that I'm coming to you completely unedited, but this time I'm coming by myself. My job at Haven often requires me to stand up in front of a room full of foster and adoptive moms and authentically share my own journey as a mom, as a way of clearing the path of vulnerability. I tend to say that I don't mind it, and there's truth to that. I'm built for this work. For some reason, public vulnerability doesn't feel nearly as vulnerable to me as being vulnerable in my closest relationships. But, like you, I'm human and there's always this nagging thought that maybe I'm the only one who struggles the way that I do. I convince myself that I'm alone, and to take a microphone and authentically share my lived experience would be social suicide. Hi, I'm your host, rebecca Harbin. Hi, I'm your host, rebecca Harbin, and I'm not actually unique in the ways that I convince myself that I am. So today, on Behind the Curtain, we're going to do an unedited version of what I'm learning right now. It's you and me today, and sometimes you might hear kids in the background. I'm recording from my bedroom at home and in my head we're driving in a car together. You just stopped at Starbucks to get your favorite coffee, and I don't drink coffee, so I'm drinking my diet Coke.
Speaker 1:I am, admittedly, in a lot of therapy these days. In fact, just an hour before recording this, I finished a therapy appointment. I talk about it a lot on this show because it's a huge part of my life and it kind of has been for a couple years. Brad and I, back at the beginning of us being in therapy together, we were sitting in a session and our therapist at the time started talking to us about boundaries. He took out the sheet of paper and he started drawing like some diagram on it, and after a few minutes of talking and drawing, he looked at me and he said I'm sure that this is just a review to you, but I wanted to make sure that I said it just in case. And, guys, I looked at him like he had grown two heads and I started laughing and I said, sir, there is nothing on that sheet of paper that my brain can comprehend. I didn't understand a single thing. You just said to me Y'all, I was 41 when this happened, a couple years before that give or take 13,.
Speaker 1:The day that I found out I was pregnant with my daughter. I asked Brad to take me to Barnes and Noble. I am completely convinced that the answer to life's problems can be found in a book. So I strolled through the pregnancy and parenting aisle praying that I would find the right book, and my focus specifically was on parenting, not pregnancy. I just kind of figured that my body would know what to do. If you were listening to this and you are not pregnant yet, or you're about to be anyhow, get a book on pregnancy. Your body doesn't know what to do and we don't have the wisdom of our elders in the same way that we used to. But I didn't know that at the time. I what I knew is that, um, I didn't have the tools that I wanted. Um, I knew that my mom, as much as she tried, she was not able to parent her children in a way that I wanted to parent mine. I wanted healthy parenting structures. I knew that I didn't have any. I wanted to have a better relationship with my adult children and I knew that I could repeat the same things as my parents before me or I could change for the next generation.
Speaker 1:There was this little tiny book with a green spine that just called my name off the shelf. It was called Loving Our Kids on Purpose and it's written by Danny Silk. This book became my Bible. The foreword is by Bill Johnson. At the time that was a solid recommendation for me, and it's based off of the book Love and Logic. So two sets of parents that I deeply admire so that they base their parents off of that parenting model. Again, if you're looking for a parenting model, I highly recommend Loving Our Kids on Purpose and Love and Logic. If you're parenting kids from hard places, I would also say, throw in the connected child.
Speaker 1:But at the time I wasn't. I was parenting my own biological children, and loving our kids on purpose became this literal Bible for me. I read it and I reread it and I reread it until it was deep in my veins. It taught me to use phrases like on a good day, the only person I can control is myself. It taught me to say what I was going to do and then follow up on it, that my words could be powerful or they could be weak, and people would respond accordingly. Powerful words are like self-contained, and an example of that would be something like my car is leaving for church at 9.15. And then, at 9.15, your car leaves for church, regardless of who's in it. It talked about connection first, and empowering your kids to be brave, strong, capable humans that they are. It was the first time in my life that I caught a glimpse of life outside of codependency.
Speaker 1:To talk about boundaries and not tell you that I am actually really good at boundaries with kids would be a misuse of this time because of that book. It's one of my strengths as a mom. I'm not the best at physical boundaries Like my bedroom is not a second living room, get your crap out of it. But when pushed to my limits, I can even enforce boundaries there. In general, though, I am pretty decent at boundaries with kids. I say what I mean. I mean what I say. I only talk about things that I can control and I enforce those things, and when you do that for just a small period of time, kids are brilliant and they really will go oh, okay, mom means what she says, right.
Speaker 1:So because of this book and my ability to implement them, I actually became somebody that people talked to about. Like how do I do this with my kids? Or I would be talking to friends and I'd be like, oh, my gosh, um, this is happening in adult relationships Like this. This actually applies to all kinds of relationships, but I really only knew how to apply it to kids, um, and I knew it to a point that, like I was, like I'm like, so good at this, I should write a book, um, but that same person was sitting in a therapist's office 13 years later going. I have no idea what you're even talking about with boundaries, because what I had never done before, it never occurred to me that boundaries were't have to do the work for both me and you the you being anybody else my parents, my husband, my closest friends I thought my job was to do my work and their work.
Speaker 1:I completely missed the memo that adults are autonomous and that part of being an adult is that we're responsible for our own gardens. I have a picture hanging up in my bathroom of a person like tilling a garden, and it is literally a daily reminder to me that my job is to focus on my own garden and that I can't do what other people are doing and I I can't. I can't do their guard, I can't do their work, right, um, I'm just, I'm just for funsies. Um, in one of my business coaching sessions, my, my business coach slash. Um, he does like fundraising in soul care and he said you know that adults can be disappointed, right? And I was like nope, didn't know that one, I didn't know. I thought I had to please people 100 of the time.
Speaker 1:So you can imagine with this talk that the work that I'm doing in therapy currently is all around boundaries. So there was a session back in December and the kind of therapy that I do is called EMDR. My therapist uses EMDR and inter-family systems combined, so EMDR and IFS. But for today we're just going to talk kind of about the EMDR side of it. And when you're doing EMDR it can be a real, actual memory or your brain can imagine a scenario and that's kind of where we were. My brain took me back to when we lived on a Navy base in Virginia and I could tell that this event didn't happen in real life, that this session was going to work on this concept. So we were going to be working toward, like my brain, because of how my brain EMDR kind of asks a question to a brain and then you I don't really want to explain all of it right now, but your brain supplies answers and it's going after things that are stuck in process and it's helping it reprocess in real time.
Speaker 1:Okay, so this belief system came in this scene and in this particular scene, I'm standing in front of my mom and she asks me to do something that I don't want to do. And I look at her and I say, if I bend, will you love me? If I concede to what you want from me, will you love me? If I concede to what you want from me, will you love me? If I disappear, will you love me? But that word if I bend, will you love me? And I just wonder how many of us ask that question. If I bend, will you love me? If I twist myself into a pretzel, abandoning myself at every turn so that I can gain your approval, will you love me? If I say yes, of course, when what I want to say is no, or when I say no worries, when somebody has hurt my feeling, we're totally fine. I completely understand.
Speaker 1:When somebody cancels last minute for the third time in a row, will you be thankful for how easygoing I am? Will I get credit for being like the most laid back person ever? If we disagree on something and I concede immediately, will you love me on something and I concede immediately will you love me With my kids if I do everything right, run myself ragged, trying to give you the childhood that I didn't have? Will that be enough? Will you love me If I say yes to everything that you ask of me, regardless of the cost to my sanity, of the cost to my sanity? Will you love me If I never have a problem? Will you love me If I bend? Will you love me? I can tell you guys, story after story after story, of how this has played out in my life, and while I'll save all of us that drama and just pay for therapy, my experience and sitting with moms in the work that I do it's taught me that I'm not alone here. There's a good chance that you're listening to this and you struggle with boundaries too. There's a good chance that you're listening to this and you would describe yourself as a people pleaser to a fault.
Speaker 1:In my 20s, I used to say I was the nicest doormat you've ever met in your entire life. I was the happiest doormat you've ever met in your entire life and, god, I could tell you stories. The thing is is that it's human nature to want to be loved. We need acceptance and we need autonomy. But if we can only get one, we're going to choose acceptance and belonging. Every time Today, my work in therapy was if I behave, can I belong? This is the question that so many of us ask all of the time. What are the rules to belonging? Tell me and I'll follow them right.
Speaker 1:In that EMDR session she asked if there was a different time in my life when I felt like that. And then I was 16, right. So EMDR kind of goes through these and inter-family systems kind of goes through these different ages, and I hope that I'm not oversimplifying what happens in those sessions. But I was 16 and I was bent all the way into a pretzel. Like I looked like a circus performer in a pretzel. Like I looked like a circus performer in a pretzel. And at 42, I moved, I moved again, I like leapt forward to 42 and I was still pretzeling.
Speaker 1:She asked me if I could try to maybe take one of my arms out of the pretzel, unwind it just a little bit. I did, and then I unwound a little bit more and a little bit more. She asked me if I could find a place that felt safe to stand all the way up. And when she did that, I imagined myself in this field of wildflowers, and it's at the base of the mountains and it's this place that I go to all of the time when I need to picture something like this. And I was standing in that field and my arms were raised in this like wild, carefree delight, and I was basking in the sunlight, and we sat there for just a second, like just enjoying this feeling. And then people came and they were asking things of me, or telling me that they needed something or all of the demands of normal life, nothing like nothing dysfunctional here, just all of the all of the demands of normal life. And I saw myself swaying not bending but swaying, and like things would come up, things would. I would say yes to some things, I would say no to some things, I would, but it didn't bend, it didn't snap, it didn't break, I just swayed. There was so much freedom in that image that it changed me in an instant.
Speaker 1:Granted, that is part of the goal of EMDR is to rewire neuro processes. But, um, I think it's fair to say that on most of the healing journeys I've been on, I kind of trudge slowly through like muck and mire, inch by painful inch. Some, some issues can some like issues I want to call them issues Some I can wrestle with something for a year, or I mean just it can be so, so, so slow, and then it's like I turn a corner that I never even knew was there. And then one experience creates this like burst of healing um, and it's like this catalyst to this high speed. Healing that happens, um, and all of the pieces just kind of start clicking together and healing um begins to feel simultaneously pretty intense, um, and kind of disruptive um, but also peaceful and, um, dare I say, final, like I'm going to move forward with the rest of my life. But from this new perspective of whatever the thing was right, like um and I, I guess what I'm trying to say is, once I hit a certain spot in healing, there's no going back for me, but there is, even in that spot, healing can still also feel like a war inside of me.
Speaker 1:The old parts and the behaviors and the patterns, the ways of thinking push solidly against a new belief system and it can feel really disruptive, which is what I'm untangling in real time right now, because when you spend a lifetime bending and then you realize that you can't bend any longer, that you can't abandon yourself and become a pretzel, like literally. I know this has happened. Okay, so I just I want to be like, fully transparent. There have been moments since this one therapy session where I have felt myself bend, but the realization of the bend is so quick. It's like in the moment I know that I'm bending. I want to sway, I want to remain autonomous in this situation. I want to feel freedom. I want to know that I can fully show up, vulnerably and authentically, and also that I am safe and I am in control of my safety, not other people around me. But if you've spent a lifetime never doing that and then you all of a sudden do, it can be really disastrous. And if you've spent a lifetime twisting into a pretzel, it can feel really, really, really incongruent to stand and sway.
Speaker 1:And bonus, because I love to complicate things if you're a person of faith and in my case, a Christian, you find that you've also applied this way of thinking to your theology. And well, now the party is just really getting started, right? Um, but if you, there's another layer, there's another layer, and it is that. Um, because both, both of these things are happening for me at the same time, like I've been on these two separate kind of healing paths one about boundaries and then the other is this concept of story for several years now. They started at kind of the same time and they've been working separately, but the way that I'm experiencing it right now is that these two things are kind of coming together at a head and creating this like alchemy that is wild and joyful and free and beautiful and so risky and scary and anyhow okay.
Speaker 1:So story, let's go into story. Humans are people of story. We love, love, love stories. Our brains are created to process our lives through stories, so we connect with other people through stories. We create stories to understand what happens to us. We learn our deepest truths through stories. If you think about this and you kind of like go back hundreds of thousands of years ago, our ancestors spent hours in the evening around a campfire telling stories. And they weren't just telling stories about their day, they were telling stories about their way of existing. Right, the Bible was told as a story for hundreds of years before it was ever written word. We can do this over and over and over again, right? We can do this over and over and over again, right. But the thing that's most important to understand is that we tell ourselves stories about the way that life should be and we fall in love with that story about the way that life should be and we focus on that story and then how our reality is kind of incongruent with that story, right? So stories like this can increase our suffering because they live at conflict with reality, and it would be unfair to talk about this and not tell you that I learned these lessons from this renowned psychiatrist named Dr Kurt Thompson.
Speaker 1:I was sitting in the front row of a room full of like 300 people and Dr Thompson was teaching a session called Suffering and the Neuroplasticity of Hope, and I looked at my schedule and I thought that sounds like a good one, but the reality is that I was in a season of deep, deep suffering this was in the fall of 2022. And I was deep in grief in that season. I was deep in grief in that season, and so I'm in the front row and, as he's like talking about different types of suffering, he says that one of the ways that we suffer is from stories we tell ourselves that increase our suffering. And then he leads with this example he says are suffering. And then he leads with this example. He says my father will never love me in a way that I need him to is a story that you're telling yourself. That increases your suffering.
Speaker 1:He was walking like he was away from the stage but when he said that, but then he started walking towards my side of the stage and he locked eyes with me. I'm not, I cannot make this up. I am not making this up. This really did happen. He locks eyes with me and he said are you with me? Do you understand what I'm saying to you? And I'm sitting there in the front seat and I shake my head and say no, because in fact, my father has never loved me in a way that I needed him to. He stopped on the stage mid-teaching. He's standing at the edge of the stage. I'm in the front row. He bends over, holds eye contact with me and says my father will never love me in a way that I need him to. Is a story that you are telling yourself. That increases your suffering. Do you understand me now? And I nod my head yes, and I am like frozen to the spot. I cannot overestimate to you how that moment changed a season for me how that moment shifted the grief that I was experiencing.
Speaker 1:I sat with that sentence for a really long time. I didn't understand. I said yes to him, but that was like kind of just to get out of the hot seat right. Like I still couldn't. I couldn't like wrap my head around what part of that sentence was a story? Because my father never did love me the way that I needed him to. My father wasn't currently loving me the way that I needed him to, so my brain didn't understand, like what's the story? Where's, where's the lie? Understand like what's the story, where's, where's the lie? Friend, I want to tell you that the lie is in the will.
Speaker 1:Never those two words remove all hope from the sentence and I just want to say, like let's just take a second and say where else do we apply those two little words to and experience suffering because of it? Off the top of my head, I can tell you that I experienced this in my marriage and with my kids. Those are two really big ones that I put a will. Never in this sentence, based off of previous experiences, I create a future that can sometimes be void of hope. Present day, my dad doesn't love me the way that I need him to, but I'm no longer suffering because of it.
Speaker 1:I stopped telling myself that story. I'm no longer suffering because of it. I I root myself in reality, right Like. So, let's be also, let's be fair. Uh, it doesn't mean that I don't tell myself other ones. Uh, one of the things that I'm untangling right now is that fairy tales are real, and not like Disney. Fairy tales are real, but like the fairy tales that I've created in my head about how life should be, what marriage should look like, what attachment with my kids should look like. A friend of mine used to call these stories magical thinking and all of this stuff with boundaries. It's rooted. It's like it's rooted in this question If I bend, will you love me? That question becomes a story that I tell myself If I bend, then you will love me. If I do X, y or Z right, then I'll be loved, and then I'll get my happy ending. What I'm learning right now is that there's a way to write a different story, a better story, a story that's rooted in reality, and, in fact, a reality that you become deeply in love with, instead of a predefined ending, though. Instead of a predefined ending, though, this one is being written page by page, it's being written slowly.
Speaker 1:Plot twists are happening in real time. Plot twists can feel so scary when you're experiencing them in real time and when you are leaving them as what they are and not applying them to the future ahead. Right, when you take away the like known ending of a of a happy ending, the one that you've written, that like, if I do X, y or Z, then this thing will happen, then I'll be loved when you, when you take that away, it can feel really scary, it can feel really frustrating for characters to develop in real time. Theology for me is being dismantled and rewritten in real time and that friend is scary as hell. But it's also like really exciting because I wonder what it will feel like to feel autonomy in all of my relationships, including my relationship with God. I wonder what it will feel like to look at my four littles and not be completely overwhelmed by the future ahead of us.
Speaker 1:I wonder if truths are like anchors in a storm, because they keep us rooted in this present reality, rather than being tossed by waves that are like I mean well, rather than being tossed by waves that are like I mean well, really, just, you know, pick your poison. For some of us, waves. We're tossed in waves of anxiety and others were tossed in waves of codependency and for some of us it's hyperindependence. And those waves are the responsibilities that we piled on, that we're crumbling under the pressure of responsibilities that we piled on, that we're crumbling under the pressure of. I'm not here to diagnose all of the ways that we cope with life and, honestly, I've learned to have so much compassion for all of the ways that we cope with life and maybe we're going to just leave this podcast here in the middle. I'm not. I'm not at the beginning anymore, but I'm not at the end. I'm right in the middle.
Speaker 1:I'm reading this book called Strong Like Water and it talks about the transitional strength, like the survival strength that's needed to survive, and then this transitional strength that you get in the middle ground between survival and like real resiliency. You get this transitional strength and having. I'm in that window. I'm not in that survival spot anymore. I'm not in. I'm not in that survival spot anymore. Um, but, but this is like really, this is getting worked out in real time in my closest relationships. Um, it feels like war inside of my body, um, but also, simultaneously, it feels like more peace than I have ever experienced before.
Speaker 1:This past January, I experienced three solid weeks where my nervous system was fully regulated, and by that I mean like if ever it got out of sync it could get right back in it, right Like we move through regulation and dysregulation, but a regulated nervous system knows how to come back to center. I've never felt anything like that in my life. In my entire life I have never experienced a regulated nervous system for three weeks in a row, experiencing it for the first time. That only felt like a gift, but it kind of became my new life's goal, like I know what that feels like now. And if you are listening and you have a regulated nervous system, god, I'm so happy for you. What a gift to know what that feels like and to live from that place. But if you are listening and you are like me and you have lived in survival for so much of your life that your nervous system feels safer in survival than in regulation, I want us to know that it's possible.
Speaker 1:So here's to the middle place, to writing a new story and unpretzeling, to learning new ways of interacting in relationships and tending my own garden. My encouragement to you with as much self-compassion as possible is to get curious with yourself. Are there stories that you're telling yourself that are increasing your suffering? Are you kind of a little bit like me and you're a perpetual people pleaser? How can you walk in a little bit more freedom this week? What does that look like for you? Anyhow, thanks for listening to this section of my journey. I hope that my sharing it in real time is helpful to at least somebody. That somebody listening feels a little bit less alone today.