Real Love, Real Life
Real Love Real Life dives into the unfiltered reality of relationships—dating, marriage, heartbreak, healing, and everything in between. It's honest talk about love and life, filled with real stories, hard truths, and the kind of laughs that come from lived experience.
No fluff, just facts, feelings, and a whole lot of growth.
Real Love, Real Life
EP 24: Why We Keep Fighting the Same Battles
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Healing from family trauma isn’t just leaving, it’s unlearning that pain is normal.
In this episode, they get real about growing up around domestic violence, chaos disguised as love, and the ways early experiences shape money choices, partners, and even memory. They unpack survival mode, hard boundaries, and practical steps to break cycles without breaking yourself.
From recognizing red flags and choosing safe relationships to using therapy to reclaim life, this conversation is about moving from silence to voice and survival to stability.
Listen, follow, and share with someone who needs to hear it. Leave a review to help others find these stories and start their own path to healing.
Today we're talking about struggle and how I don't know about you, but me, I kind of grew up thinking that struggling was normal because I I saw it so much in the household. Um, aka my mom. Yeah. And so I grew up just thinking, like, oh, it's normal. Struggle is normal everywhere in finances, in love, in relationships, you know, all of that just seemed so normal until I hit rock bottom and it was like so exhausting. And it's like, that's not normal.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Like, yeah, there's somewhat like beauty in struggle, like kind of like me when I started my social media, like a little bit of struggle here and there, like it's kind of what makes you. But when you're just so used to struggling with every single thing, yeah, it's like, no, that's not life. You're not living, like you're literally just surviving.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's tough.
SPEAKER_00:So I can literally go back to where it all started, like seeing my mom in abusive relationships all the time. Not just with my dad.
SPEAKER_01:It was like same type of dude.
SPEAKER_00:It was like my dad left, he's out the door, and here comes another guy, worse, worse. And when we're little, you know, we're just seeing it all happen and we can't do much about it. Finally, it gets to the point where like my sisters are a little bit older and they know how to like use the house phone and stuff. And I remember one time my sister called the cops on the guy. He was drunk. Yeah, I don't think I've ever told you this story. So we lived on the house right there on 83rd.
SPEAKER_01:Dang.
SPEAKER_00:And my mom had this like really drunk boyfriend, and he would beat out of her, like all the time for no reason. And we were little, so like, you know, we couldn't really do much about it. And that's crazy. Again, it was so normal that it was just kind of like, oh, he's he's like, you get home, he's beating on her, you just like okay, let me go to the room. We would like go to the room, or like if we heard him, like, if we would hear him get there, like, okay, it was normal. Like in the face and everything. We knew that beating was coming. He would send her to the hospital.
SPEAKER_01:Oh man.
SPEAKER_00:He would send her to the hospital. And actually, I mean, how do you his daughter actually follows me on social media? So that'll probably be if she watches this, it'll probably be raw for her. But she knew, and that's exactly why her mom left him. My mom picked it up, thought it was somebody's trash was her treasure. But literally, the guy would like send my mom to the hospital. We thought this was normal. This is normal. Obviously, like we didn't like it, but we're like, okay, we saw it with my dad. Can't you do it by the dad? Now we're seeing it with my mom's boyfriend. And finally, like one one day my sister calls the cops, they pick up the dude. Three days later, he's back at the house. My mom has us in a jail visiting him.
SPEAKER_01:What?
SPEAKER_00:All of us were visiting him.
SPEAKER_01:Downtown?
SPEAKER_00:Yes. And hold on, not only that, not only that, we're toxic. We would go far to see him. Like after he got, you know how you get like transferred? Transferred to different prisons. You're going to prisons and stuff like that.
SPEAKER_01:From jail to prison, bud.
SPEAKER_00:We were we were over here like in different like prisons. Like if this man was like our dad and stuff, like visiting this dude after like all of them.
SPEAKER_01:So homie was a straight criminal.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So again, this is what I mean. Like, imagine putting your daughters through all of that and then still taking them. Taking them. And again, little us, we thought that was so normal. We're going on a trip. We're gonna go see my mom.
SPEAKER_01:Going to the prison, you're gonna be.
SPEAKER_00:We're gonna go see my mom's abusive boyfriend.
SPEAKER_01:It's like that's a that's a that's a trip. Like you're getting out the house and going on a trip to Lewis Prison over there by passing bucka.
SPEAKER_00:That was our trip. Like we we were so we were getting quarters, like we knew we were gonna get stuff like from the snack machine. And like the fact that we knew that my mom struggled now that I'm older and I think about it and I like so my childhood is a blur a lot. Like, I don't like to, I mean, you always like try to ask me stuff about my childhood, and I'm like, back up. Like, yeah, don't bring up my childhood. It just gets me in a bad mood, and I don't like it.
SPEAKER_01:Um get you in a funk.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. So what now that I think about it, I'm like, my mom was always struggling, literally, paycheck to paycheck, all the time. And she was wasting her money on gas, on vending machine money, like for you know, you that's what you eat when you go visit somebody in a jail. I don't know if you've ever visited someone, but there's vending machines and you have to take quarters. Everything's really expensive. You get like five bucks for a freaking hot pocket. And so she would like cash out like a hundred bucks in quarters, in quarters, so we could go visit him. And uh again, to my point, struggle, but it's it's normal.
SPEAKER_01:It's like she's taking food off your guys' plate to feed homie who beat her and then went to jail.
SPEAKER_00:But we didn't understand that then. To to us, that was so normal and so like you know, she's not doing anything wrong. Now that I am an adult and I protect my kids from things like that so much, I'm like, what the heck was wrong with her? And that is exactly why, I mean, on our way here, you were like, Have you talked to your mom? The last time I talked to her, I think was May 30th.
SPEAKER_01:Dang.
SPEAKER_00:And that day, I actually so I talked to her that morning, and that night I had a conversation with my sisters. And it was about this that we're talking about right now. We talked for almost two hours on the phone. We cried, we talked about all of these things that my mom kind of did and just kept like sweeping under the rug.
SPEAKER_01:You guys start remembering too. Once you start thinking back, everybody's brain starts.
SPEAKER_00:So it was like, hey, you know, my my mom's always kind of like played like this like victim and stuff. And yeah, like she's my mom and I love her and all this, but it's like, hey, you chose this for us. Like you woke up every single day and chose for us to see you getting beat, for for us to see you struggle, things like that. So now I'm like, maybe I just need therapy because I I feel like I can't, after that like conversation I had with my sisters, and we opened up and we all agreed like how messed up that was to put us through that. I don't, I don't want to. Like, I don't, I love her, and you know, I still send her money, I still pay some of her bills that I have been like for the past two years, but I lately like nothing in me wants to talk to her because I'm like you you made it like almost normal for me to think that struggling, that abuse, that all of that was completely normal. So, what happened when I was 14? Oh, I see the first abusive guy, biggest red flag on his forehead. So I'm like, take me with you.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, save me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, so then again, there goes me repeating literally my mom's spitting image. Literally, getting hit every day, like drunk, drunk boyfriend, all of this stuff. And and it's like, why? Why would you teach your kids that you you think like oh I I love them so much, and because she does like any chance she gets, it's I love you, I love you here, I would do anything for you, I miss you guys so much. This, so it's almost like she paints herself as like this like mother that would do anything for her kids, but it's like, why didn't you save us? Why didn't you save us from seeing you get beat every day?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, that's crazy.
SPEAKER_00:And I just I I don't know. I don't know. Hopefully, one day I can you know, I wouldn't say like forget this stuff, but get past it.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, you because the only way you can get it.
SPEAKER_00:That wasn't just the like that wasn't the only one. I mean, then there was the boyfriend that like that I talked to you about that went as far as S S A, I don't know if you could say that word. Yeah, me when I was like 11, 12, yeah, six, six, and she knew and she knew, and like for her to just like want to like keep a boyfriend and stuff, like let him do that, that's it, is absolutely like now I'm like I think back and I'm like so does my mom like really love me? She says she does, but she did everything that shows that she doesn't. Like I would prefer that you be a deadbeat, like my dad, like washed his hands and walked away, then you have done all that to me. Because my dad, like, he he walked away, he left, but I don't feel like resentment towards him. It's weird.