The Love Decision Every Successful Couple Makes

Do you feel that your relationship has reached a dangerous level of disconnection?
Do conflicts keep turning into blame, control, or emotional shutdown?
Do you want deeper connection—but don’t know how to stop reacting from hurt?

With every thought, action, reaction, word, and choice, we are always coming from either love or fear. When we choose fear, we bring behaviors into our relationships that create harm, distance, and disconnection. When we choose love, we bring behavior that has the power to heal, strengthen, and elevate our connections.

This talk goes beyond surface-level “be loving” advice and explores what acting from love truly looks like in real-life relationships—especially when things get messy. Because love isn’t just affection and harmony. Sometimes love looks like boundaries. Sometimes it looks like not enabling. Sometimes it looks like pausing, self-reflecting, and choosing growth over ego.

We dive into:
📍8 key aspects of acting from Love
📍Key behaviors that create disharmony and disconnection
📍How to build unwavering trust
📍Emotional maturity and empathy
📍How looking within is the best action
📍How to be a refuge rather than a source of pain

If you're tired of the same destruction cyclical patterns, you desire a relationship rooted in safety, truth, and mutual respect and you're willing to do what works—this conversation will be your game changer! ✨

For FREE Resources, 📖 Book Link, 📝 Quizzes, 👚 Self-Love Merch Shop, 🗣️ 1:1 Mentoring and more: https://www.linktr.ee/kristenbrownauthor

Hello Seeker! 👋🏼

If you're enjoying this podcast and would like to show your appreciation, you can help this podcast grow by leaving a 5 star rating and review! Thank you in advance for your time and love.

Onward and upward,

KB 🦋

Transcript

Opening & Inspiration

Definition of "acting from love"

Doing the hard things

8 key aspects of coming from love

Aspect One: Accountability and responsibility

Aspect Two: Empathy and understanding

Aspect Three: Open communication

The opposite of love is...

Aspect Four: Support and growth

Guest One: Imani

Kristen 0:00

Hello everyone and welcome to Empower Hour with KB. My name is Kristen Brown, and I'm super excited to share the next 60 to 75 minutes with you all today. Today I have an amazing topic for you, and one that is crucial. It's just crucial in cultivating healthy and connected relationships. And of course, there was a little inspiration for this talk, as there always is. And I mentioned before that my daughter's always saying, You need to write a parenting book, Mom, you need to write a parenting book. So at some point I asked her, I said, honey, because she always says to me, You raised our hearts. That's something that she says all the time. This is my eldest daughter and she's 31 years old. She always says, Mom, you raised our hearts. So I reached out to her because I wanted to give this talk today about acting from love and relationships. And I thought you might just ask her what she means by that specifically. And she said, and this is a quote, she said, your actions were always and are always rooted in love. You raised and nurtured such beautiful hearts. I truly believe if I wasn't raised by you, I'd be a disaster. Through all the messed up stuff we went through, you did not let the world taint our hearts. That's a quote from my eldest daughter. So, with that, of course, I was um that was a moment of humble pride that I talked about on, I don't know, yesterday or the day before show. I don't remember when I did that. And I just really sat with that. These were through voice memos to each other, and I just sat with it and I said, I really am speechless, but I'm really glad that I knew how to do that. I knew I was glad that I knew how to come from a place of love. And I will say that my motivating factor is hard to pinpoint exactly where this came from, how I knew how to do it, I don't know. I think the main thing that I've come with, come up with year to date, you know, so far on my journey, is that I wanted to give my children's children things that I felt like I needed when I was younger. And this is what people often call, you know, breaking the generational curse, breaking the generational patterns, these type of things. Now, of course, I don't say that I had a horrific childhood or anything like that. There wasn't major things, but there was a lot of things that I really could have used just as a being, just as a child. There's just things that I could have used. And I don't blame my parents for this because they were doing the best they could in the era that they were raising us in and all of that entailed. But I took my parenting seriously. And so one of the most major ways that acting from love has really shown up for me is through the relationship that I not only have with my kids, but that they have with themselves. And that's something else that my daughter went into, but I won't go into all the details of that. But she talked about how she, you know, just thinking about her and her oldest her, her and her brother, which are 19 months apart. My youngest came 10 years after my son. But how she said, you know, no matter what we were going through, no matter what rough period, because they had rough periods, those two. They had some really rough periods. There was at a time when my son did not even want to be around my daughter. So, but she said, no matter what, when it came, when it came to it, I always knew that I could count on his heart being in the right place. This just, I'm I'm just so glad that I was able to have this experience. Of course, it was something that I wanted, though. It was something that I desired and that I set course to have. But it's also something that I not only put towards my parenting, but put towards other relationships in my life as well. So, what does it mean to come from or act from a place of love? What it really means is that your actions and your communication are rooted in care and respect. That's it. It's not super complicated. It's demonstrating to your people that their hearts, their feelings, their experience of life, and their experience of you matters to you. I knew that I wanted my kids to have a good experience of me. I didn't want my kids to hate me later, not want to be around me or what have you. I just, I didn't ever think that, of course, they weren't going to move out, go live their lives, and all that. And of course, that's what I wanted for them. Just wanted to have a good, solid relationship with them. So I asked myself, what is it that I want this person that I love, what is it that I want their experience to be of me? And I think asking that question really helps me to forge this path forward to be rooted in love. Now, it was not only the love of my children, because we all know, those of us who are parents, you love your kids like most people anyway, like, you know, you do anything for them. And, you know, to really try to make their life the best it could. But that what that required was that I went within and started to heal aspects of myself. That I started to become a cleaner, clearer, healthier version of me. And of course, this is on the back side of it. I mean, I still do these things to this day, but you know, the core, they're pretty much grown now. The youngest is 20, going to be turning 20. So, but working on those things has now yielded me the results that I've wanted. But what this meant was that I had to go inside of myself and say, How are you showing up? How are you acting? Are you doing the right things? And in essence, what it boiled down to was, are you coming from a place of love? Or are you coming from something else? And there were times when I was coming from something else. I was coming from fear, I was coming from frustration, I was coming from overwhelm, I was whatever you name it. So I did my best to work consistently on trying to come from a place of love. Now, when I say that, sometimes that means doing the hard things. For example, not enabling, setting boundaries, taking breaks from people when needed. So coming from a place of love, I want to be radically clear, is not about pink fluffy hearts floating around all the time, where everybody's just happy all the time. Because relationships can be messy, raising children can be messy. What it means is staying in or returning to a place of capital L love rather than a place of blame, condemnation, trying to win, trying to control all things that I believe most of us have experienced in our life. So rooting my heart in love, the love that I had for them, that was the lighthouse for me to work on myself. It was the guiding point for me to look within because I had to go within first and say and recognize and take accountability for ways that I was showing up that were harmful, that were not helpful, that were not functional, that were not healthy. And I didn't want to be that. Because there was a lot of great things in my family of origin. But I wanted them to experience something else. And within all of that, I wanted them to trust me. I wanted them to know that I had their backs. I wanted to be a, I didn't use these terms, this term at the time because it wasn't in my wheelhouse, but I wanted to be a great leader. I wanted to demonstrate words and behaviors and perception shifts and things like that, and be the leader in those relationships so that they could bring that forth in their own life as well. So when I talk about acting from or coming from love and relationships, I want to go into what this means. What does this really mean? So I'm going to share with you some key aspects. Let me count one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight. Eight key aspects of what it means to come from a place of love. And I'll start here because this is one I already mentioned, and that is accountability and apology. Nothing says love more than taking responsibility for your actions and apologizing when you've made a mistake. And why does this take personal growth? Because we have to humble ourselves. And some people are stubborn, and some people won't be wrong, or some people say, I can't apologize to my kids or to anybody else because that gives them power. So it's a perception shift, knowing that it is anything rooted in capital L love is where the power is. It is the highest form of energy. Love is the highest form of energy. Dr. Joe Dispenza, who does, oh my gosh, just the most amazing work in the world, he literally said love heals. Love heals. He's a neuroscientist that has been doing his work for probably 25, 30 years now. This is coming from him. It's also coming from much of our spiritual literature. I'm not saying religious, I'm saying spiritual. And it's a concept that I learned in new, of course, you know, like I said, younger wanting to come from that place, but also it just deepened inside of me. And I did a talk, I don't know, not too long ago, and it was a part one and a part two. And that talk was called What Would Love Do? And that's available here on this platform, but it's also available on my podcasting platforms if that's where you are listening to this talk from. You can scroll down and find it's not too far down. What would love do? I did a part one and a part two. And people might think, Oh, how could this go into a two-parter? There's a lot here. I like to break things down in a way that make things very digestible to people. So if that's something that you're interested in, you can go find those on either this platform, Nume Vibe, or you can find them on YouTube or Spotify or Apple Podcasts or whatever it might be. So the first one that I want to say is accountability and apology is so incredibly important because it's a willingness to look within and change or heal what's not serving to the highest good of all concerned. I had to take responsibility that I was doing things that I didn't appreciate, that I wouldn't have liked if I was a child, that would not have felt good to me. So why on earth are you doing this to the people that you love the most? I've talked a lot about my children here, everyone. This is not about parenting. This is for those of you who are seekers, who are wanting to have healthier relationships, that realize that you have power, and that by you shifting, changing, evolving, up-leveling some aspect of you, that you're going to get different experiences. Things are going to change. They can't not, because the energy has changed. And when we change our energy, we change our life. So the second thing is empathy and understanding. And this means listening to your person's feelings, their emotions, without dismissal, and trying to see things from their perspective. Empathy is really about feeling what they must be feeling at this time. So if someone comes to you and says, You didn't text me back and I felt like I didn't matter to you. Well, we can we can spout off and say, of course you matter to me. That's ridiculous, blah, blah, blah. Or we can say, oh yeah, I understand how that can feel. That's I've done that before. I've had that happen too, where someone doesn't message me back or they don't email me or whatever, and then I feel like I don't matter to them. So I get what you're saying. That's just that's what empathy is. It's it's putting yourself in another person's shoes and trying to understand where they're coming from. It's listening to them with an open heart. It's not about trying to make them wrong. This is a key aspect of acting from a place of love. The third one is open communication. And this is about creating a safe space for honest, open, and vulnerable dialogue where both people can feel heard, understood, and respected. This is about a willingness to discuss your needs, your goals, your feelings, and your challenges openly. Why is this rooted in love? Because you are loving yourself enough to honor what is going on inside of you. And self-love is the key. It seems trite, it seems fluffy, it seems like it's just not enough, but it is. And again, all the neuroscientists and world scientists that I follow and listen to, they all say the same thing. And I didn't get that from them. I unknowingly started to practice self-love 15 years ago, and I realized it was the key. But of course, I hadn't heard it from the outer world yet, and then I started to hear it from the outer world, and I was like, oh my God, I'm right about this. Some of the biggest names on the planet are saying this. So when we are willing to love ourselves enough to express what's going on inside of us, we're actually building connections with our people. We're allowing them to understand us too. And when we equally give them that space where we're open and we're receiving and we're allowing them to share what is happening inside of them, that's love. If you think about it, I'm sure you've had this experience before in your life where you're talking to somebody and you feel really heard. Don't you feel loved in that moment? Don't you feel so appreciated for that person? I can have a five-minute conversation with somebody where I just share a few things and the person understands and validates me and allows me to speak my truth and doesn't judge me. And they reflect back to me what I'm saying. I can walk away from a even a two-minute conversation feeling so loved. Because what that person laid on the table before me was their love. They said, come to me. My arms are open, my ears are open, my mind is open, you're safe with me. I will not exploit what you're saying to me. Boy, when people exploit what you're saying to them, I just, oh God, I want to leave a note on their car. I want to say, bro, sis, you are hurting your relationship in the in the worst way. We have to be able to let people come to us and talk to us about what is going to serve them. And sometimes, everyone, it's just that listening that they need it. That's it. Just us holding space for them, shaking our head, like we we understand. Maybe we don't always agree, but we understand. We're seeing where they're coming from, we're allowing them to move this energy out of their body. I will tell you, it is one of the greatest honors that I have experienced in this life. When someone says to me, Do you have a minute? Or I want to talk to you about something, I want to share something with you, or I have this experience. You know what that tells me? That tells me I'm a safe space. Because they're willing to come to me with their deepest, darkest, and their feelings and their emotions, and they trust that I will hold it sacred. I've often told people that I'm a vault. If people come to me and they tell me something, I'll say it's the and and and it's okay that they say this, and I welcome them to say this every single time. Please don't share this with anybody or keep this private. Okay. No problem. Because I want my people to know that what they share with me is not going to go anywhere else. But not only that, it's not they're not going to be judged. A lot of us are so afraid of being judged. Likely because we were in some scenario in our life where we shared something and we were judged, that set up the alarms in our brain, and our brain was like, oh no, don't be talking about things because you're going to go get judged. No one's going to understand you. This is going to be terrible and awful. So we've shut down that sharing aspect of ourselves. So when I have somebody, not only as a mentor and coach, but also as just a friend or a family member or one of my children's friends or one of my husband's friends or whoever comes to me, I know that they have just handed me their heart. Literally. It's like they took it out of their body and they put it in my hands and said, I really hope you treat this with reverence. I hope that you're careful. I hope that I did the right thing handing this to you. I take that seriously. I'm not going to exploit that. Because I want to, at the end of the day, at the end of my life, be a person that slides into home base saying, I demonstrated love as much as I possibly could. The opposite of love is not hate. The opposite of love is fear. Spiritually speaking. And oftentimes when we're not coming from a place of love, we're coming from a place of fear. And when we're in that fear, we say and we do things that are harmful, not helpful, that are unhealthy, not healing, that are dysfunctional, not functional. And many times we don't know we're coming from a place of fear. Think about this, and I've done this before. Let's say my children did something like, you know, ran into a street or walked into a street and there's cars coming or something. And I get angry at them. You know, pull them back in, scream their name, pull them back in, and then yell something at them like, what are you doing? That was ridiculous. Ba ba ba ba-ba. And I start popping off all these things to them. And now they're feeling some kind of way because I'm pounding them into the ground. That came from a peace place of fear, didn't it? Yeah, you scared the crap out of me. And I've done that in certain situations. And I followed it up because I knew I was just like the anger, it was, it was really fear, was coming out of me. I'm like, their faces, and what I was like, oh God, no, this is not the experience I want them to have. So I would follow it up with, listen, I'm not angry at you. You just scared me. And that's how it came out. And I'm sorry. But not only that, I worked to not do that again. To at least take a deep breath. Before I said, sweetheart, you scared the crap out of me. That's so dangerous. I would, I would absolutely die if something happened to you. Please be mindful. There was a place that I could come from love rather than from fear. And so taking that to into account each time. With my people has really allowed me to soften. It's allowed me to be more gentle. I was raised with a bunch of boys. I was very verbal because I didn't have the physical strength. So I was very verbal. Oh, I could cut like a knife. I remember it too. I remember just like it what came, it was like a stream, like it was vomit coming out. It was just a stream of attack. And I also remember thinking how easily that flowed out of me. This is as a young girl. And not really liking the way that felt later. But understanding in the context of it, I didn't have physical stature to do my fighting for me. We did not have a big fighting abusive family or anything like that. But that was my only defense. But as life went on, I thought, Kristen, you got a viper tongue. I didn't want to be like that. That wasn't a place of love. That was a place of fear. And I started to practice. Just even in the world. I remember one time, oh gosh, I'm not going to remember this story well. This is a great story, though. I went into Starbucks, got my drink, was waiting. There was a big pile of people in there. They had a backup for some reason. I don't know if they were down to one barista machine. I don't know what it was, but there was a big backup. And I was just standing there and I'm in peace. I'm in so much peace. This is a great story, you guys. And I'm just standing there, and someone walks up to me and just asks the question like something on the counter, like, is that does that say my name or whatever? I'm like, no. And this guy that was standing like six feet away from me starts screaming at me. I'm not kidding, in Starbucks, saying, You just need to be patient, and these people are working hard, and I come in here every day. Now, by the way, I'm on a first name basis with these people. Number two, the manager would come out from behind the counter and hug me. She, the manager, she would say, I love you. She would tell me she loves me all the time. Trust me, I'm not a jerk. And he's screaming at me. And I don't remember my exact words, you guys. So you're just gonna have to fill in the blanks here. But it was something, as he's going off on me like that, I just remember looking at him and saying, Why are you so angry? I don't think you got this. I I don't think you're seeing what you think you're seeing. I think he thought this woman walked up and then I was complaining. It was very weird because I was just standing there. It was very like there's something going on inside of Bro. I'm just gonna tell you that. There's something going on with him. And then he kind of backed off, and then some lady behind me, because I I don't know, I turned around because there's a lot of people around. I think I was, you know, bumping into someone, and I turned around and looked at this lady, and she goes, Girl, I was about to come out there. And which makes me tear up because this woman I oopsie phone call saw me getting attacked, and she was like, Oh no, not on my watch. And I just looked at her and I said, Thank you for that. She's like, you know, what was that? I I don't know. And she said, But you handled that well. And I think that's just from a lot of practice of my youth and going upwards, where I could have met him at that, ooh, there probably would have been a throw down ten years prior to that. I had been in the practice of, no, I'm not gonna do that. I'm going to be the love, and there's a way to handle this that doesn't look like that. Alright, the next one, and that the fourth key aspect of acting from a place of love is support for growth. This is about viewing the relationship as a catalyst for mutual improvement, support, and supporting your personal your person's personal growth and allowing them to do the same for you. This is about understanding we are the walking wounded. And hopefully everybody is on their healing journey, on their healing path. They are working to fix, change, heal, evolve, grow up-level aspects of themselves. In short, we are basically all works in progress. So when we show up knowing that your people are not gonna be perfect, I was far from perfect, I'm still far from perfect, my kids are far from perfect, my husband's far from perfect, my brothers, my friends, there's nobody that's perfect. But when we show up with the understanding that this person is just as wounded in their areas as I am in mine, and we support them during this growth journey, and this is not without boundaries, by the way. Boom. Love means boundaries too, y'all. I mentioned that in the top of this talk. I said this isn't always about pink fluffy hearts floating around all the time. Relationships can be messy, and it's about staying in or returning to a place of love rather than a place of blame, condemnation, and trying to win. And this includes not enabling and setting boundaries. I think that's really imperative that we all understand is that understanding where a person is coming from is just part of it. Understanding where they're unhealed, understanding where they're quote unquote flawed or in pain or hurting. Beautiful. Sometimes we meet people with that and they start to heal automatically. But sometimes they don't. And we can still support them in their growth journey and remove ourselves from the situation when needed. I'm so happy my beloveds have joined the queue. First up, we have Amani, and then we have Robin. Thanks for joining, ladies. Hi, Amani.

Imani 28:39

Um, this is a great topic. And for me, I had to learn first that the first relationship I have to focus on is the relationship with myself. Because if I don't love me, it's gonna be hard for me to love others and for them to love me in response. I had the whole perspective the wrong way in okay, everyone has to love me, and that's the way it has to be, and all of it was external forces, external forces, external forces. And I didn't love myself yet. I was thinking, okay, well, as long as I can get the love from everyone else, then that's the way it had to be. But I wasn't realizing that I was the example I was setting for everyone else to follow. And they were saying that I didn't love and appreciate myself. So that was the example they were following, but then I was upset and disappointed that they weren't loving and respecting me. And I had to take that time to realize and assess that, hey, wait a minute, I don't love and appreciate myself. So how can I expect something I wasn't even giving myself? And that was a really big eye-opener for me was that I was the example I was setting for everyone else to follow. And so I'm being intentional and really getting to know who I am and loving every aspect of myself, the good, the bad, and everything in between. You know, I'm spending that time with myself so I can know what is my yes and what is my no. It is helping me to create those healthy, safe boundaries that you're mentoring. Because when you don't know who you are, when you don't take that time with yourself, you don't know what you do need to put in place. You don't know what are your morals, what are your values, what do you believe in, what you don't, because you haven't taken that time to address that. You haven't taken time to take stock in that, to know what those things are. And when you do, man, does it like open your eyes to like a whole new paradigm in a sense? It's like a whole another shift in perspective, you know, even though it may not change the situation you're in, but it changes the whole outlook, right? Y'all changes like the whole way you deal with things.

Kristen 31:12

You know, I used to be really negative. When you say paradigm shift, that's really what it is. It's like we almost have stepped into a whole different world because everything will look different when we love ourselves. Absolutely. It's a paradigm shift.

Imani 31:28

You know, that's why people can't believe I used to be so negative. And yeah, I did. I used to be really negative to the point that I was toxic and I was driving people away because they had to save themselves from me. It was that bad. I they had to save themselves from me, but then I had to save myself from myself and take that time to turn things around because my life was just so bad because I was attracting what I was saying. And I had to learn, hey, you are attracting what you keep saying. So if you want the love, if you want the light, if you want the positivity, you have to start with your words. You have to start with your thoughts, dear heart. And then that's what you're going to draw to you, that's what you're going to attract, that is what you're going to naturally see because that is what you're naturally looking for. And once I did that shift, man, did life become lighter and brighter? And I began to see myself for the queen and amazing person that I am.

Guest Two: Robin

Kristen 32:43

Thank you, Amani. Yes, indeed. That is so true. Well, you know, yes, when it comes to who we attract in our life, it is typically a reflection of how we're treating ourselves. So if we're not treating ourselves well, we typically are going to attract that. On another note, I didn't love myself to the way the extent that I love myself now, back when I was raising my kids. But I will tell you that my love for them was there. And I was loving them well to the best of my ability. However, this is where it gets interesting because I if there's a mom that loves her kids, it's this one. Okay, we all can say that, but you know what I'm saying. Here's the thing, though, it was my love for them that promoted me to go within and to clean up aspects of myself because I cared about their experience of me. That was like a doorway into many aspects of my self-love. That was a doorway into many aspects of my personal growth, I guess, is or in development. That's a better way to say that. Because later in life was when I really went through the self-forgiveness, the self-respect, the self-acceptance, the self-compassion, the self-talk, the self-care. All those things came later. But I was willing to adjust my behaviors to be rooted in a loving space rather than an unloving space or a fearful space. Thank you, Amani. Excellent share. I appreciate you so much, sis. And continue to heal well. Always envisioning you in full and complete healing. And next up we have Rs Robin and Stephen. I did get your back channel, and I will respond to that after Robin share. Hey Robin, welcome up.

Robin 34:33

Hey there. So um I think I sent uh a meme earlier that was one of the uh one of the it was like me weighing um whether or not that this person's gonna get the version of myself before or after my healing. I saw one of those yesterday and it was hysterical.

Kristen 34:53

Was it was it with Meryl Streep? Was it with Meryl Streep? Yep, yeah, I saw that. I don't know if you sent it to me, but I saw it last night. So I may have.

Robin 35:01

Yeah, I may have. So um I was laughing because I mean that is is very true. And then I there was another one I saw that was like, what happens when my maiden name decides to come out? Um, so anyway, I I mean I've done a lot of work. I I have, but when the Thanksgiving holiday came up, I was thinking, oh, this is gonna not be as comfortable as I thought it was, because if going back to your, you know, love is is is the most powerful thing, and being able to step up and apologize shows a lot of love. And then you the the love and the fear uh opposites. So I had um, I didn't know what was gonna happen Thanksgiving, but my nephew did not come. And I was kind of like, oh, why didn't you come? And no, I felt kind of felt bad because he's the one that wants me to refer to him as she. And I I just I can't do it. I can't. And people say, you know, oh, well, that's not respectful. And I'm like, you know, is is there a disrespect? No, it's it's is there a fear? Yeah, there's a fear that your life is gonna be very difficult and it's very hard for his parents. So I I don't know, it's just not something I'm going to be able to do. So I just res resort to calling him the child, because he's we've always called him the child. Well, you know, I you do what you can because but it's it's a habit of always, I don't know you, I don't know if I want to know you, I don't know. Um, I love you. So when we had this big blowout, um, and my nephew, my other nephew, was screaming at me, yelling and why don't you do this? Is it hurting you? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And I just said, you know what, it's hurting your parents and it's hurting him, and he's not moving forward. He sits in his room, blah, blah, blah.

Kristen 36:49

Was this a couple months ago when you told us that? Yes. Okay.

Robin 36:52

Yes. And I said, you know, um, I said, I love you. I said, I don't know why you care so much about what I think. It's, you know, what I think doesn't matter. You know, if you want to do what you do, do you, but you can't force your um beliefs or opinions, or you can't demand something from me that it's just not just not something I'm I'm gonna, you know, be on board with. So he um I month or so, a few weeks went by. I sent him, um, I said, I'm I'm sorry that I made you so upset. I love you, I don't want this to ruin our relationship. Um and he said, I accept your apology. Now the so now the other one, um, the oldest one that just screamed and yelled at me, and I looked at him and I'm like, I do not know who you think you're talking to. But I have taken care of you your whole life and given you uh, you know, everything, lots of love and support. And, you know, whether it be, you know, financial or or or emotional or otherwise, I said, I don't know who you think you're talking to, but I'm not one of your, you know, your friends that you can just sit here and scream at. So I get up and left. I got up and walked out because you know, that's that's what it is. Um, you know, I refuse to listen to that. So that's why on Thanksgiving, he's 28. He'll be he's 29. Yeah. He's about the he's about six months from my daughter. Yeah, yeah, he's brown. Um and so Thanksgiving, he walked in. And do you want me to help you carry carry that auntie? Do you want me to help you guys?

Kristen 38:29

He's not the one that apolog that you apologize to. This is the other one.

Robin 38:32

No, no, no. Because I he he was the one that owed me an apology. But I don't think that they have enough emotional maturity to to come to that. I need to apologize to my auntie. Um, I love her, but I I I don't know, maybe I'll just show her that, you know. So he would not, he talked to me, he was helping. He took, and I think that might have been his way. Um I hope too, by the way. Yeah, that's very nice. I hope I hope he continues to grow, but I I I get that, that whole apology thing, because I generally am that person that will do it because that that shows growth and maturity. So it's what is what I do.

unknown 39:10

Yeah.

Kristen 39:11

Thank you. Thanks, Miss Robin. So glad that you had time to come up today. Yeah. Wow, I'm glad. I'm glad that you had that outcome. So that's all kind of cleared up now with those two young men. Yeah, these things aren't easy, are they, guys? Like, I just think about all the so many of situations that I've been in, and I was like, what is happening? What is happening here? Especially if you're someone that is really giving and loving and showing up from the for the most part from a place of love with people, and then they do weird things to you. It's very confusing, and you're not really sure where to go with that. So when I hear there's a positive outcome to things like that, I'm always really happy to hear that. All right, we're gonna bring up Steven. He did send me a question on the back channel, but looks like he's gonna join us. Welcome up, Steven.

Steven 40:01

Yeah, so uh Robin's things kind of ties in a a little bit. This is kind of this would be a combination of okay, when your kids ran out, you were trying to protect them. And then uh using it uh with somebody completely anonymous to you was the gentleman. Oh, I speak that uh loosely, the male in the coffee shop, the dude. That was that was uh that was trying to quote unquote protect the workers. Can you see can you see that? And I have experienced that from a family member, and well, I just need to control what's going on in this house because if I control this, then that's going to save my daughter-in-law the next time. I'm like, this ain't gonna do shit. But you know, thanks for coming down on me like a ton of bricks and making me feel like you know, barely an inch tall. Because I'm like, I'm sorry, I don't recall all the frenzy you were in a year or two ago. I just don't. Because I'm not there. And so when you're in the heat of it, just like that, is you know, I'm sitting there thinking, or like, okay, um I just you know, I could have went like I don't know what you're so upset about, but I tried to stay calm. I was very embarrassed because I'm like, I just can't remember. I'm sorry, I don't remember. This has nothing to do with my character or anything, I just don't remember. And I'm assuming now, because we do make assumptions as of yesterday's talk, that not going off is possibly the best way, although God, it's hard in some situations.

Kristen 42:09

Well, that's why it takes practice. That's why we have to really practice this stuff and really root it into us and set intentions for the day and how we're going to, because of course, when we're attacked, what is it that we want to do? We want to attack back, we're gonna fight back. That's the body's natural mechanism to do that. And it comes from the reptilian brain, right? We're attacked, we fight back. That's just what we do. But we don't need to, you know, we're not threatened by the neighboring tribe anymore or the T-Rex or the saber-toothed tiger. So we don't need to anymore. So it's understanding that we can handle this in a different way and practicing that and setting intentions heading into things that might get a little wonky, like how am I gonna handle if this comes up today? Yeah. But we don't know until we know, Steven. That's all there is to it. That's why we can't shame or blame ourselves because we're doing the best we can.

Steven 42:58

Yeah. Knowing, knowing that we when you were talked about, oh, we're all the walking wounded, and and hopefully we're on the healing journey. I'm like, I'm not gonna hold my breath on that one for other people. But I thought some people never will.

Kristen 43:15

Some people never will, and I hate to say this, you guys, and again, this is from the big scientists in the world, the majority won't.

Steven 43:26

Yeah, that's um that's what's so neat about once you you know like holiday parties and stuff, you wander around here and you and you kind of bump into accidentally bump into another seeker and you just don't realize it, and you're like Oh my god. It's so encouraging. And you know, they'll share stuff like that, and you can share back, and you on you go. But um Robin's thing with the uh nephew, it's like, yeah, he one nephew's trying to protect the other one from Robin, and it's like she's not the

Kristen 44:01

Yeah, yes, yes, we'll see.

Steven 44:04

I mean, that's that's the prime example because the one that was coming down on me was my sister-in-law, and it's like, if I control what happens in this house, maybe my daughter-in-law won't have the allergic reaction to the bananas at the popcorn. Yeah, because you know, the 20th is coming hard and fast, and so there will be more exposure to said person.

Kristen 44:30

So I'm going to invite you, and maybe even because I'm gonna say this word to you because kind of getting to know you pretty well here, Stephen. I'm you you can come back up because you have three seconds left, and I'm saying something to you that you probably want to respond to. But I am going to invite slash challenge you to be the love in this next family gathering that you said is coming up here on the 20th, or whatever that might be. Just see what you can do, you know, play with it. This is what I did is I stopped taking everything so seriously and thought, how can I just approach this differently? How can I show up a little bit different and see what kind of result? Because we were talking about that over Thanksgiving too, by the way. You were supposed to check in about Thanksgiving.

Steven 45:13

Yeah. What was I supposed to do?

Kristen 45:16

So, first, challenge challenge exception, accept it or no?

Steven 45:20

Yeah, I I I accept that because I I think well, that and the one year last year at Christmas, I I went in with the idea of well, everybody's talking about some of this stuff from the victim standpoint, because that was after I left the uh one group at uh small group at Thanksgiving, and I was so sick of being around the victims that it's like, okay, anytime I see a victim, I'm gonna call it out and be like, you know, they're allowed their opinion, they're allowed this, they're allowed that, you know. I don't know why you're talking behind their back stuff. And that was kind of me trying to uh this year. I'm just going to go in and listen and your your thing. That's interesting. I'm just going to try and fix anybody because that's a waste of freaking time. And like Rachel's thing, if it if it gets too much, it's like I'm breaking my head, my uh my earbuds, and I'll go down into my cot in the exercise room that I've been relegated to because I'm just the uh single uncle coming, and everybody else is a couple.

Kristen 46:32

So you get the crappy cot in the basement.

Steven 46:37

It's underneath my it's underneath my brother and his wife upstairs. He's two years younger than me. And with the ear with the foam ear um noise protection. I could still hear him snoring upstairs through the floor.

Kristen 46:55

Oh my gosh, how does she sleep with that?

Steven 46:59

Um, that's not my concern. Quite frankly, I'm worried about me can sleep in. So I bring my white noise machine and then I've got something on my phone. I'm like, if you hear it up there, then I doubt it he hears it.

Kristen 47:12

Okay, Steven, I'm gonna interrupt you and tell the question that you asked on the back channel, because I'm assuming that's okay to be public.

Steven 47:19

Oh, yeah. Yeah. You want to read it?

Kristen 47:22

Yeah. How does one respond when you can see that someone is coming from fear and control? This was such a good question. And I've like, oh, I gotta I have to respond to this one because I see it all the time. And number one thing that we all need to know is that we can't make people see things, which is a huge bummer. I wish we could. I wish we could point it out and they'd be like, oh, you're right, I'm coming from fear and control. Would not be easy. So so just let's let's know that going in. That I'm gonna give you my best possible answer, and it may or may not do anything. But what I've noticed is number one, when they're coming from fear, remember they're coming from fear. So they're activated. So knowing that their nervous system is activated is extremely important. So as calm as you can possibly be, as calm as you can be, because you want, remember, you want them to if we start acting up to them, then that even further amplifies them. So as calm as we can be, this is my best thing is to ask them questions. That's it. Ask them questions, get curious, try to get them to say more. Some people uh through the dialogue and through our calmness will eventually say, Well, yeah, I'm I'm I'm afraid of this. Some people might just deny it until the day they die. Okay, but at least we have a potential in to getting to the root of the issue rather than doing nothing at all or feeding into what they're doing and joining their energy.

Steven 48:54

That makes perfect sense. I think I think going back to my sister-in-law, I think the other thing that was kind of on me was the expectation that I was supposed to remember all this.

Kristen 49:10

Yeah, yeah.

Steven 49:11

And I'm like, I'm sorry. You know, we communicate, I I see them once or twice a year, and even though they're 125 miles, but you know. I think a single dude with a house to keep up and a and a 50-hour week to work. Um, and you don't ride that bike a hundred miles just by getting off the couch and going out there, trust me.

Aspect Five: Prioritizing connection

Aspect Six: Loving through hardship

Aspect Seven: Building trust

Aspect Eight: Creating safety

5 things to avoid

Kristen 49:34

Well, there's there's no there's no grace either, like it was a full, full, full on assault, right? There's no grace. Oh, yeah. So that that doesn't feel good either. And for me, it's about knowing who that person is. Not that it doesn't feel bad, but knowing who they are and that's how they act. But one thing I will do, if someone starts doing that, they get in loud. And I've said this before on the stage, even if my kids are having a conversation, someone's getting a little louder. I'll be like, there is no conversation that needs to have a raised voice. You know, I I show up like that with them. It's like, you don't need to be raising your voice. Let's, okay, okay, okay. You know, because and over time people start to realize they do get a good result without the raised voice because we're listening. We're actually listening more. Because now we've not been attacked, not we've not been disgraced, as I feel like that's how you felt, Stephen. You said embarrassed. And I mean, of course, this woman's coming at you like, how dare you be so forgetful this person could die. And, you know, I understand there was a severity to that, right, Stephen? There absolutely was, because if I remember correctly, someone's allergic to bananas, maybe. I don't remember exactly, but something to that effect. But she could have pulled you aside and said, Stephen, I know you're so sweet that you brought this or did this, but remember that Lisa is allergic to this, and and she will go into anaphylactic chocolate. Like this is a bad one. So thank you though. Way different than someone coming down your throat, isn't it? Once from fear, once from love. So that is a really great example of how we can show up from a place of love. I'm going to go into the last final ones of these in this little bit of time that we have left. But I do want to say thanks to Amani, Robin, and Stephen for coming in and just sharing from your heart. It just feels so great to me. I love when you do that. All right, we're gonna go into number five. And this is how to um these are key aspects, eight key aspects of acting from a place of love. And this is number five. And this is prioritizing connection. And this is about making intentional time to connect and nurture your bond, the same way that you would maintain a garden with water, with pruning, with nutrients, with a net, so that the but the tree um birds and what have you don't get to the garden. It's about priority. It really is. It's about saying, you matter to me. You matter to me when someone reaches out to me that wants to spend some time with me, I prioritize that connection, which means it may not happen today or tomorrow, whatever, but it's on it's in my head. It depends who it is and what the circumstances are and the timing and the who works and living and all where they live, all this stuff. But I will definitely put it into my head because I prioritize my relationships. I want my people to feel good about me, and I want to feel good about them. And this is where connection happens. Connection cannot happen between two people that are not spending intentional time together and nurturing that bond and laughing and having fun and having shared experiences and communication, whatever it might look like for you, it's having those experiences. Even when my daughter and son-in-law will have, they'll say, like, okay, Tuesday night, because they have this new thing through AMC theaters, I think, where they have half-priced movies on Tuesday night or something like that. And she'll say, Okay, Tuesday night's movie is this. Do you guys want to go? And she invites a whole bunch of people. And even though the extent of our talking is standing in line when we're you know about to give our tickets and then maybe go getting some snacks and BSing and laughing, and then sitting all in the seats and talking to each other and sharing our snacks with each other, watching the movie, which is what two hours typically, and then after the fact, so we spend a probably total of maybe 35 minutes like really talking, but it's still bonding because we're talking about the movie, and one of my favorite questions is okay, what do you rate this scale of one to five, five being the best? And we kind of go through and like, what did you like about it? I like this, I didn't like that. And we get to know each other, we're bonding, you know, hugs and kisses, and it's really great. Even though it's something that our attention is going to be on something else for some of the time, it still matters. That 35 minutes matters more than if we didn't do it at all. So keep that in mind. All right, another number six, another aspect of acting from a place of love is loving through hardship. And this can be hard. And this is about showing up for your person, your partner, whoever, during difficult times. This is about offering patience and grace and compassion when they are struggling. Nothing says love quite as much as, well, all these things do, especially like I was saying, accountability and things, but when you're there, I just saw a meme last night on Instagram that I can't remember, it said something like, remember who was there for you when you were at your ugliest, your lowest, your saddest, whatever it was. Send this to that person. And I was like, Yeah, you know, it's so true. When there's those people that are like, I'm here, you're not exhausting me. I'm here, I'm here, I'll take a nap later. What do you need? You know, because they know that right now you're struggling. And of course, I'm not talking about the chronic victims and the people that every single day for 14 years are bitching and complaining and doing all this. I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about someone's really going through a thing, like my tsunami and people that were around me. I don't think I really let a lot of people know how devastating that was to me. I reached out to a couple people here and there, but I didn't want to exhaust them and what have you. But there was my one friend that answered the phone every single time I called. And she was chronically ill too. And that's I didn't, I felt bad about that because I never know if it's a good day or a bad day with hurt. But she would answer and she would talk to me and she would build me up and tell me what I deserve and what's not okay, and you know, these type of things. And I'll never forget that. I will never forget that. That was love. That was love showing up for me. So think about that. When you really take the time to love people through their hardships, it's the I get first you'll build a bond. They'll they'll trust you, they'll they'll want to do the same for you. If they're a healing person and they're not a you know, narcissist or a selfish person, they're gonna want to do it for you back. You were there for me, it's my time for you. I remember not too long ago, I was going through a particular thing, and my son was on top of me like white on rice. He was just like, you need to leave. I'm going to work now. Is there anything I can get you? Can I do this? Can I do that? And I just remember looking at him and I was like, babe, I mean, this is a 29-year-old man. And I was like, you know, he's still my baby to me. And I said, Thank you. Like, I feel like you're being so attentive to my needs that he goes, he goes, You've done it for me, I'm gonna do it for you. Literally what he said. He goes, This is the least I could do for what you've done for me. It makes me tear up. But you know, this is how healthy connections are formed, is because we do show up for people. All right, number seven is building trust. Talked a lot about this already. And this really boils down to do what you say you are going to do. Words and behavior matching. That's it. It's key to cultivating trust. That is built in love. I love you enough that I'm gonna follow through with what even if something comes up in the meantime, even if I'm gonna have to delay it a little bit, I'm gonna be right on top of you, and I'm gonna send you the message back, and I'm gonna say, here you go. I, you know, I can't be there yet, but here's the thing. Respect the person. Respect is an aspect of love. It is one of the five self-love tenets. It's rooted under the umbrella of love. So when you respect a person enough to follow through and to do what you say you are going to do, you are going to build trust in a magnificent way because they know, like there's some people, so interesting to me how I will have somebody show up to me in the most magnificent way, and then I'll have someone else try to tell me that this person is bad or wrong or whatever. I'm looking at them, I'm like, do you not see them? Like, I would trust this person with my life. Do you not see like, no, they don't. They quite literally don't see them. They're seeing them through a lens of their wounds and their fear. But it blows my mind how if we rem if we heal that, if we heal our wounds, like like uh Romani was talking about, self-loving. And this is about healing too. When we work on that stuff, we literally have a paradigm shift. Life looks different. It's I've often said it's like someone takes a muddy filter or film, like as if in window tint, and peels it over the windshield, peels it off the windshield of your life. Things just look different. We start to see people through a completely different lens. I will tell you something, through my own healing journey, forgiveness, grace, compassion, acceptance, all of those things, I started to see others that way. Where before I might have judged them or um condemned them or whatever it was that I was doing, I might have done those things before, but I started to see them through a different lens as well. And I was like, isn't this crazy? This whole thing is just mind-blowing. Energy is mind blowing. And the fact that you we heal our inner worlds and it actually can heal our outer worlds. This is one of the aspects of how that happens. Number eight, creating safety. Again, this has kind of been touched on basically in a lot of these that I've been talking about. But this ensures that the relationship feels like a refuge where the person can be their authentic selves without fear or judgment, or having their voice silenced. This is allowing them to blossom, blossom into a full expression of their whole unique and awesome self. And going back to all the way to the beginning of this talk when my daughter was telling me how what it what was she called? What did she call it? She said, You raised our hearts. That's what she was saying. That's one of the things that she said to me. She sent me three voice memos explaining this to me, because I said, What do you what do you mean when you say I raised your hearts? Go back to the beginning and listen to it. It was a very interesting little section of this talk. And one of the things that she said is this. She said, You absolutely allowed us to be who we are. And they've said this several times through greeting cards and birthday cards, Mother's Day cards, etc. That we all write each other letters and we give a card, maybe, and we write in the card or we write a letter. I kind of stopped buying $8 cards and just write a letter now. They don't care. It's just it's a sentiment. But at any rate, that was just a really dumb sidebar, but you get what I'm saying. Um, that was one of the things is she said you allow us to be exactly who we are. She's like, look at each of us, mom. We're so different. We're so different in so many aspects of what makes us happy, what makes us where our passions lie, uh, where our gifts are, what you know, all these things were so different. She goes, but you never blinked. You're like, you don't want to play, you don't want to play piano? Okay. Or you do want to play piano? Okay. You want to play volleyball? Sure, let's do it. Nope, you don't like it now? Okay. You know, whatever it was, the clothes they wanted to wear. It kind of made me sad because you know how you like to dress your kids in the clothes you like. I was a sad, and I say that lowercase and you know, almost invisible font because it wasn't really sad, sad, but it was like, oh, when they wanted to start pick out the picking out their own clothes because they were like little dolls, you know. I get to put you in this adorable little outfit. But you know what? That was part of it. And some of the clothes they picked out were not something I would pick out for them. But I didn't say, would you like this sure? Do you love it? Do you like the flowers like that? Do you like the this that you know? I didn't want them to be swayed by my thoughts because I didn't want them to have to try to please me. I wanted them, now if something just didn't look right or didn't fit right or whatever, and they're like, I don't think this fits right, yeah, it's kind of big or whatever. You know, I was honest in those things. Again, that's part about cultivating trust too, because when you're honest in a gentle way, everybody with some things, they know that when you're honest about other things or honest about sometimes the insignificant things, they know that when you're talking about other things that you're being honest to, like it really cultivates that trust in in your honesty. So this was you know, it's allowing people to be who they are. It creates safety, it feels they feel safe, they feel like they're wrapped in a hug when they're around you, and they get to just be who they are. They don't have to put on a show, chameleon, become a people pleaser, show up in a certain way. I know I don't like to, and again, a lot of the way I parented was based on what I needed or could have used with the ultimate love and respect for my parents raising us in the era that they did and the way society was at that time. You know, like again, I always say we're Gen X, we were feral, no one was asking me my feelings. You know, I was went through a dark depression for like four or five months after this horrible thing happened when I was 17. Nobody checked in with me. I mean, it's like we were loved, we were safe, we were financially provided for, you know, all those things were in place, but man, the emotional side of it was like completely missing. And that's a lot of Gen X. And so, you know, not every single one of us, probably, but anyway. So that's the last one. So basically, in a nutshell, I'm gonna just share just a quick like five things to avoid. Because most of us know this. I don't even need to say it, but just in case it rings a bell on you, it ignites something in you, it reminds you of something that you've been doing or how you've been acting, you're like, oh, okay. So, what to avoid that is not acted rooted in love, and that is acting out of anger or selfishness or negativity. This hurts a relationship in a big bad way. Okay, when we are acting from that place, when we are coming from that place, when we are addressing our people or the way we're showing up for our people, you are hurting the relationship, you guys. Hurting it. The next one is controlling them, making or trying to make others do what we want them to do so that you feel comfortable. Oh, that was, you know, again, something I had to grapple with. It was like, uh, what am I controlling here? Like, where's my fences? How do I do this? Meaning, when I say fences, I always looked at my kids as having, you know, when they're little bitty, you have a really tight fence around them. But as they grow, we have to expand our fence. To me, this is just the visual. I had the fence is electric. You get too close and you're gonna get zapped a little bit, you know, meaning there's gonna be a conversation, I want to put you back in line or whatever. But those fences had to get wide and wide and wide till they were literally gone. Okay. And, you know, I had to learn how to how to work within that parameter. And I'm using my kids as an example, but this is in any relationship. This is with our partners, this is with our best friends, this is you know, I see people trying to control their best friends, you know, this is not just this, it's relationships in general. So controlling them, letting them do what as long as it's healthy, right? They're not doing something that's destructive to them or you, letting them run their show and do things that make them uh feel uh excited or impassioned or motivated or that fill them up. The next one is we do not dismiss feelings, we don't if it dismiss feelings or emotions. We sit with them, we understand what the person is feeling, we get we offer empathy and compassion where needed, maybe a clearer perspective if someone's spinning out, but we don't dismiss. It's just Yes, this is how you're feeling. I understand that. And, you know, let's let's let's look into that. The another one, another thing that we can avoid is making the relationship feel conditional or imprisoning. Imprisoning is often about control. Conditional means you have to show up in this particular way, or I'm going to withhold love from you. And it's things that are stupid, like you have to bring me flowers every Friday night, or else I'm going to withhold love from you. Or I'm not looking at you or not talking to you. Okay, I'm not talking about the times we need to set the boundaries and we need to move away and migrate away a little bit from them while they're acting in the dysfunctional way. But this is about, here's the thing, I love my people unconditionally. I love them no matter what they do. I'm still gonna love them. But the love doesn't change. That's unconditional love. Now, however, there is conditional behaviors. So that means my condit there are conditions with the way you are going to express yourself to me. Like I'm gonna have to set a boundary, remove myself, or speak up, or do something in that respect. Here's the truth, you guys, when a relationship is conditional, I don't believe that's love. So if you've got somebody that says you have to wear tight dresses and high heels, or always have makeup on, this is just the first thing that came to my mind, or you need to go to the gym every single day and have big muscles and no not go above a certain weight, meaning a woman to a man, maybe. I don't know. Whatever it might be, when you have those type of things, that is not love, sisters and brothers. It's not even close. That is so conditional. All right. And if you've got someone throwing these conditions on you, I will love you, approve of you, keep you around if you are showing up to me in these superficial ways. Nah, you need to really think about that relationship with that person. Now, if it's things, because I always have to have the disclaimers like I need you to stop yelling at me or stop accusing me of things or whatever it might be, just you know, throwing down some healthy boundaries. That doesn't necessarily mean that this person doesn't love you. It means they probably do love you enough that they are doing the hard thing, which is setting the boundary with you. That's a hard thing to do because we don't want to rock the boat. We don't want to lose the relationship either. So it's very difficult. If someone's setting a boundary with you, guys, my God, that's rooted in some serious love. It really is. And the last one is focusing only on your gain, which kind of ties into the selfishness piece of the first one that I spoke about how things to avoid. But this is really about not really considering the other person. It's not understanding that they're having an experience of you. It's really about what can I get from this? This is all about me. You know, the Gottman Institute and so many other places, it, you know, talks about acting in service to your people. How can I make your life better today? And this might just be something as easy as I'm taking the trash out, or I'm asking them how their day is, or I am saying, in which way can I help you today? Or um whatever it might be. But it's really putting your person in the forefront of your mind and knowing that that they matter. And here's what I have discovered. A lot of people are afraid to do this because they think they're gonna get consumed with caring about the other person. Okay, I'm recovering people, please are here, way over give or here. And that never happened because people are doing their own life. Unless they're a user or a narcissist, are they gonna come and try to suck you dry? All right. But for the most part, just showing up to them in a way that is saying you matter in the world to me, and I'm focusing on what I can give rather than what I can get, is tremendously healing to a relationship. Because some people, especially the ones that have not healed from their trauma, they are so rooted in self. They can't see, I say they can't see past the nose on their space. That's what I tell people all the time. So if you have this glorious life in front of you and it's it's a this gorgeous mosaic on the wall, and you have a person that is unhealed, you know, you see everything. You're standing back from the mosaic, you've got the full picture, you're in gratitude, you're in love, you're in healing, you're on the spiritual path, you're doing transformation, all these things. The people that have not healed, their nose is pressed against that wall, and they only see what's right in front of them, which is themselves. It's an extremely difficult relationship to be in because they won't zoom out. They won't look back and say, wow, I'm really affecting this person in a bad way. Not all the time. I don't want to say it won't as if it's an absolute. Unless they start healing, they won't be able to see it. That's a better way to say it. So they'll be right so close up to themselves. They're only going to see this one little tiny aspect of this beautiful mosaic of your relationship and life with them. The healing, what that does is it pulls us back. It makes it not all about us because highly traumatized people and who've not done the healing work have a very, very difficult time accessing their heart. In fact, my beloved Sydney, she said that same thing in our conversation. She said, you know, mom, I feel like people that are really, really traumatized have a hard time accessing their heart. Okay, she's 31 years old, having an open heart. I said it's very, very true. Because the armor goes on, the walls happen. For those of you in my age range, do you remember Get Smart? And it was Agent 99, that was the woman, and I forgot what the guy's name was. And the beginning and the ending of the show is they're walking down this big, like big hallway, because it's, you know, this is undercover spy stuff, and these gates open, and this wall goes up, and then this thing slides shut, and this lock undoes. Like the whole time they're walking down this hallway, all these things are happening, right? Maxwell's smart. Thank you, Robin. Yeah, that's exactly what happens is that when people are traumatized, they've got gate after gate after moat after armor, you know, their heart is so encapsulated and they they they're in pain. They can't see past that. So they don't often see what they're doing to us. And even though it is their responsibility, yes, it's also our responsibility to set up parameters with that if if it's getting out of control. But the thing is, is that there's a bit of compassion and understanding that can come in into this place. The love of this is this is really not about me. This is really about them. They they literally can't see me, they're blind. All they see is themselves and their own pain. That doesn't mean you accept it. That doesn't mean you have to stay in the relationship, it doesn't mean anything. But what it does is it takes us out of they don't love me enough. If they love me enough, they would change. No, they don't even know how to do that yet. They think they're loving you, by the way. Super interesting, isn't it? All right, got a lot of messages on the back channel. I'm gonna read these real quickly. Stephen, yep, no grace. Thanks. Wrote down the calm, ask questions and no raised voices. Love your wisdom. Thank you, brother. Yep, yep, yep. Everybody's saying Maxwell's smart. And then Sarah said, probably because they are trying to self-protect. Yes, absolutely. It's hard to break through the walls. Tunnel vision is hard to move out of. Yes, Sarah. I love you, Sarah. Thank you so much for sharing that. It is, that's exactly right. They're trying to self-protect. And so what would love do? Love sees that that's what's happening, and love doesn't take it personally. All right. Let's say someone's like really, and I'm thinking not, you know, not in, I'm thinking about when people are really abusive and dysfunctional. Okay, they're so guarded they can't see how their behavior is affecting you. It's because they literally can't. They they they do on some level, okay, because they're human, they have a brain, they have um intellect, but they're not really in touch with the empathy of it because their heart is closed. So they don't see it on the depth of level that they could possibly see it from. They don't see it from that. They might know it intellectually. But the problem is, unless we feel something, often we can't change it. So when I felt how it must have felt for my children to be the receiver of me yelling at them, my first two when they were younger. I don't even think I ever raised my voice to my youngest. I was healed so much by then. But you know, um, I think I did like a couple times. Anyway, that's I'm just here I am always trying to be completely honest. But that doesn't feel good. I didn't like that. That was my empathy. That was my empathy, and I course corrected that so quick to this day. I've brought this up to them as adults several times. Like, you know, I used to yell at you guys. They're like, I don't I don't really remember that, mom. Don't you remember? I'd be and they're like, no, not I not really. Isn't that weird? Because one, I corrected it quickly, but two, there was so much love, the the reigning theme was love. So let's say 99, 98% of it was love, and then I yelled at him a couple times. It uh what's the word I'm looking for? It it took over. It the love took over. So yeah, so if somebody's coming at you sideways, it's having compassion for them and grace for that they just they really don't know what they do. That's what it boils down to. They're unconscious, they're sleepwalking, they they know not what they do. As who's did Jesus say that? Yep, I think I think Jesus said that. They know not what they do. That's the truth, and that's where the understanding of the compassion come in. That doesn't mean, however, that you need to sit there and take a bunch of hits. Please know that. Stephen just said the heart that is walled up, no windows or doors, no good can come in or out. That's me adding that, and all the crap stays in too because it can't get out. Yes, I guess you were gonna say that too, Steven. Sorry. Yeah, absolutely. So I hope this cut this conversation really resonated with you guys today. I love speaking to you. I love meeting with you on the daily. Also, know that uh a lot, many of my episodes are uploaded on other platforms on YouTube and uh all major podcasting platforms. They're not in the order and I don't don't upload every one. Okay, it's just I can't keep up with that. I get five talks a week. I just can't, it's impossible. So maybe when I get a team, I've been thinking about getting an assistant to help me with some things, but but thank you guys. I love you. I appreciate you being here. I know that you take time out of your day to to join this talk. And Namaste, hands over heart, I'm very grateful. And I appreciate you and thank you for being just an awesome contribution, even if it's energetically, even if you don't come on stage, you're an awesome contribution to this community, to especially the Empower Hour with KB community. I can only speak for my own, and I just know we've got the most amazing people in here. And when I say your energy, just you being here and listening, trust me, energy is everything and energy is everywhere. Your being here and your energy coming towards all of us is meaningful, and I am so grateful for it. So have an amazing day, everybody, and I will see you tomorrow. Much love.