Fractures

This episode explores the fractures we carry, some visible, like a broken toe, and others buried much deeper, like a broken maternal bond. Alexis reflects on the mother wounds so many people carry and the complicated work of releasing pain that began in the very place where love and safety were supposed to live. It’s an episode about acknowledging what broke you without allowing it to keep you broken, and remembering that sometimes, the cracks are exactly where the light enters.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

It's just all about love and life and living and freedom. That's what that's what it's all about for me now. Welcome to the Rich Spencer Podcast. And I hope you all had a fantastic week. You know, this week is starting off in a really weird way. Let's start with this. I broke my goddamn toe. I broke my toe, you guys. And it's an it's an ugly, swollen red and blue mess right now. I wish I had like a really cool story about how I broke my toe. I would love to be like, yeah, we were on vacation. There's no great story to tell. Just sounds like some ridiculous, clumsy ass shit, which it was. I stubbed my toe on a chair. And that bitch broke. And it broke like I knew it instantly. I knew it instantly. I screamed and I was just like, yeah, it's broken. It's broken. How do I deal with this? That's that's literally what was going through my mind. And I'm gonna keep on doing life, broken toe and all.

unknown 1:16

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 1:16

I saw this morning that actress Hayden in a tear. Anyway, this actress passed away at 36. Um, I'm not sure what the cause is. There are reports, possible overdose. I don't know what it is, and it doesn't matter, it's just really sad. But I had no idea that she was a big adult star. I remember Hayden when she played Lizzie on the guiding light. Do y'all remember that? I just wasted coffee all over my white gauzi shirt. Coffee. Just just just wasted all on my goddamn shirt, you guys. Like what I'm gonna do is continue recording the podcast anyway, because you know what we don't do is let bullshit stop us. That's not the energy I'm putting forward. I am going to move forward. Speaking of moving forward, my niece is moving into her college dorm today. And I don't know how I am feeling about this. It's so surreal. My niece and nephew are like officially adults, and it's crazy to me. What's also maybe a little crazy is that I do have her school schedule now, her college schedule on my phone. And I have access to Life 360, so I can look and see where she is at any time. Okay. Look, I think about myself, who I was when I left for college. Felt like I was going off unprepared. Like I'd been raised, right? So I knew right from wrong. You know, people are always telling people, know who you are. You have to know who you are in life. And that's not true. I don't think it's important to know who you are. I think it's important to know who you aren't. And that is what I knew when I left for college. I did not necessarily know who I was, but I knew who I wasn't. And I knew what I wasn't going to do. I knew what my boundaries were when I was really firm and had no issue being firm with those. But I learned so much about other people and also learned just a lot about myself. And so I'm excited for her to learn those things. So anyway, she's moving into her college norm today. And I am hit with just a feeling of nostalgia. I have a lot of grace on some level for people who choose to parent because parenting looks like a really hard job. And for people who consciously make the choice to parent, uh, I commend those people because that is a serious job. It's it's a long job, it's often thankless, and the pay sucks. When I was thinking about the actress who passed away, Hayden, I remember hearing a part of her story and she talked about the distance that she's had with her mother and the struggles that she had with that relationship. I don't think people talk enough about the absence of mothers, but also sometimes the harm that present mothers present. If y'all have ever seen a woman who is jealous of her daughter, you have seen something ugly. A lot of times, especially daughters, experience mothers who are jealous of them. And they live under the tyranny of this insecure adult who they love because that's their mother, but that adult is also causing them the most harm. We talk a lot about absentee fathers, but we don't talk enough about mothers who would have probably been better to us had they been absentee. I have seen many women be jealous of their daughters, who pick on their daughters in the home, who target them. Oftentimes, a mother can be a daughter's first bully. So if the mother is usually the first bully, shit, going into school and trusting girls and women as a woman, can you imagine that the challenge that puts forth? Well, wait a minute. If I can't trust my mama to not hurt me physically or emotionally, if I can't trust my mama to keep me safe, who the fuck can you trust? Who in the world is safe for me? So you have to create your own safety. You have to heal from that. And healing from that, you know, people always say that they're healed. Healing is not a one-time event, it's a practice. Healing is a practice. I think being a mother is a calling. I don't think that everybody who has children was called, though. People shouldn't be ashamed of that if they had a mother who wasn't present or if they had a mother who was present, but you wish she weren't. And I'm not even saying that this is just with mothers and daughters. I've seen this mothers and sons. Because I see people all of the time struggling when Mother's Day comes around and they're looking at those cards and they're like, yeah, that's not it. Yep. And if you didn't have a great mother and you're a great person, feel proud of that. Because you did that. You did that. That is your legacy. I used to feel as though growing up, like I was missing something. I did not live with my mother, did not have a connection or love for my mother in a way that people have love for their mothers because my mother was essentially felt like a stranger to me. And when I did see her, she felt more like a person, like a cousin who was visiting from out of town than a mother. I didn't feel that. But I also didn't have a super emotional closeness to my mother figure in the house, which is my grandmother. But not having those natural bonds was a challenge for me growing up. And I didn't trust other women because I had never felt safe with women really in my life. It was men in my life who made me feel the most safe, the most loved, the most seen. I don't believe that I came from a family of particularly warm women. I respond to warmth. I haven't been able to stand you since you were seven. My grandmother, she literally looked me in my eyes and said that. And do you know what I felt in that moment? Validation. I felt validation because she told me something that I felt. I felt that she never even had to say that, but I feel like her saying it was one of the biggest gifts that she could have ever given me. It was the gift of validation, the gift that I wasn't crazy because she looked me in my face when I was trying to talk to her about my feelings. She said, I haven't been able to stand you since you were seven. I think anybody else, it really would have hurt them. It would have crushed them. But especially that being your only mother figure, but not me. I wasn't hurt, it was validating. Black women have a tendency to teach their daughters how to be tough, how to survive the world, and all of that. But oftentimes those daughters have to survive them first. So what happens when the person who is the key to your survival becomes the person that you have to then survive? And I consider it a flex for me to have such love and reverence for black women when black women were the primary source of my trauma. So, how do we love that which represents our trauma? That's work. And we are too proud, especially as women of color, we are way too proud of being strong. Oftentimes, when you're showing the world strength, what you're really showing the world are your scars. And again, I'm not talking to y'all who have the great mothers. Y'all, people who have great mothers, y'all can just skip this part of this is for people whose mamas weren't shit.

unknown 9:40

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 9:44

Just kidding, just kidding. I I wouldn't be as educated as I am without my grandmother. I I there's there's so many things or that I would not be, so many positive things that I would not be were it not for the teaching and the rearing of my grandmother. A hundred percent loving, trusting relationships between women. That I had to figure out on my own. How to be safe with another woman, how to be soft with another woman, how to treat her tenderly, how to be tender with myself. Because we skipped those lessons. There's always gonna be things in life that pop up that force you to face your trauma. And when you face it, you are better for it. There's no other power like a like the power that a mother wields over her children a lot of times. And and that power should only be in hands of responsible, emotionally mature people. But most of us, hey, it's just the luck of the fucking draw. Okay, most of us, the mother you got is just the luck of the fucking draw. And if you're out there and you had a mother who was incredible, I think that that is a beautiful thing. Not only is a relationship with the mother the most important relationship in the child's life, but it can be the most damaging. Once I understood that nothing that ever happened to me had anything to do with me, the light turned on. And unfortunately, if you're a child, you are at the mercy of your parent, and usually you're really at the mercy of your mother, because the mother is usually the primary caretaker of the child. You got a lot of unhealed people raising people, and they're not in any way prepared to take care of their emotional needs. Her story is not your story. You did not come from her, you came through her. And once you know that, you're on your way. There are people right now dealing with abusive mothers, and they're doing something for them every day. My grandmother was wonderful at the things that she was wonderful at, but she just wasn't wonderful emotionally when it came to me. But once I realized that was her stuff, my job at that time was to just survive it. A lot of people, when it comes to their mothers, especially people when I see them struggling in May looking at cards. When they're in that card section struggling in Mother's Day, all right, I absolutely know what that shit is about. That Mother's Day card section is a struggle. And so I want to acknowledge that shit for people out there who've never had that acknowledged. And yeah, I'm not talking to the people, I'm not talking to those of you whose mothers are angels. I'm talking to people whose mamas ain't shit. Shout out to the people out there whose mamas ain't shit. If you survived a mother who had mental illness, if you survived abandonment, if you survived verbal, physical, or sexual abuse by the hands of your mother, if you survived a tyrannical relationship with your mother, shout out to all of those people who don't have the ideal story, but they're still living their lives and they know that they're enough anyway. Y'all, I was trying to think of things that I could put in a care package for my niece as she goes off to college. I'm planning on like sending her things every month, hopefully having a little theme to it. I'm really thinking this all out, right? And I want it to be something that she looks forward to, but also something that's meaningful each time I send it. So yeah, I'm planning on that, but I'm like looking at the things that I thought like I wanted to send her, and then looking at the price of shipping, and I'm like, it is five dollars more than it used to be. Why is everything so expensive? I thought Jesus paid it all. I mailed a package the other day. How much was that package? It's damn near $40 to send a package, so I don't know. I might have to scale back these the idea of these care packages because it with $40 a pop, plus you got to fill the care package, that could easily end up $400. That's not happening. Maybe I'm gonna have to send her some inspiration via text, because that's free. You guys, so this past week, I was listening to music while I was cleaning, and if I put on music to clean the house, the house is good as cleaned, okay? And depending on what I put on to, like if I put on Anita Baker's Greatest Heads, let's let me tell you something from top to bottom, from rooter to tutor, this house will be cleaned, okay? So, but I was listening to Kenny Rogers, and I was listening to that song Lucille. So, yeah, like this guy was in a bar in Toledo, and he was talking to this woman, and this woman's husband was in the bar and he was peeping them talking, and he walked over and he was like, You picked a fine time to leave me, Lucille, is what he said. He's like, He got four hungry children and crops in the field. He was upset about this shit, right? So I'm listening to Kenny Rogers talk about this, and he's hurting. And let me tell you something, this man is hurting bad. And even after their husband confronted her, the bitch still wanted to go to a hotel with him after her husband caught them in the bar in Toledo. So, anyway, I'm listening to this country song, and then it occurred to me. These hoes ain't loyal. Stay with me now. You picked a fine time to leave me. Lucille walks so these hoes ain't loyal could run. Because it is almost the same song, it's the same sentiment, okay, to Chris Brown's hoes ain't loyal. Lucille won shit. Just trying to tell you. Anyway, my point is I will be putting on some music today so I can kind of get this house cleaned. I said I was gonna do some good news every week, and you know what? When I put that clip out last week, so many people started emailing me their good news. I really wanted them to kind of put it in the comments, but they started emailing me their good news, which I love actually. One, my friend Jen sent me the story of this guy who was a baseball player, and he really wanted to make it to the major leagues, not so much for himself, but for his father. And his father passed away, so we didn't see him get signed to the majors, but he played in his first major league game. And not only did he get a home run and then get a second one, but he got a third one. He made history by getting three home runs in his first major league game. So I was watching that and tearing up and just feel feeling so wonderful. And then um, another one of my subscribers wrote to me and told me that he sold two of his original paintings. I am just thrilled, one, that that happened, and two, that he shared that good news with me. Because it can be so disheartening to be an artist of any kind and not get the support that you need just to continue with your art. We have to support artists, whether it's buying a necklace, buying their paintings, or going to see them perform, or freaking sharing their stuff on social media. It matters. So kudos to all of those people out there who are still dreaming and all of the people who are supporting those dreamers. Okay, you guys, I gotta go ice my fucking toe. What a way to end the podcast. I gotta go ice my fucking toe. Thank you for listening to the Rich Spenster Podcast. You can listen to this podcast anywhere you listen to podcasts. You can also watch the podcast in its entirety at Rich Spenster on YouTube and follow me on Instagram at Rich Spenster. Have a wonderful week, everyone, and I will talk to you soon.