11- If I don't Laugh, I'll Cry

This week, I’m taking you through the wild, chaotic, unbelievable collection of stories that built me: three marriages, discovering I was adopted at 36, cancer, miscarriage, raising six kids in four different eras, losing my home in a tornado, and surviving the kind of grief that splits your life into before and after.

But this episode isn’t about trauma. It’s about resilience — the real kind. The kind that looks like chaos, humor, stubbornness, motherhood, and choosing to keep going even when you have no idea how. As I say in the episode: “Resilience isn’t strength… it’s the choice to keep going.” 

You’ll hear how my blended family came to be, why six kids kept showing up in my life (“It wasn’t chaos for chaos’s sake. It was my purpose.” ), how losing my son reshaped me, and how every chapter — even the painful ones — built the version of me sitting in this car today.

If your life feels messy… if your story feels chaotic… if you’re in the middle of your own plot twist… this episode is for you.

Next week: What To Expect When You’re Expecting — SPOILER: Nothing Accurate.

Transcript

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All right. Welcome back to Friends with Benefits. I'm literally sitting in my car right now because honestly, who doesn't do 90% of their emotional processing in the car? So today I am going to tell you a story. I'm actually going to tell you a whole collection of stories. Kind of stories that make people look at me and ask, how are you still standing? And honestly, I have no idea. At this point, I am running on caffeine and chaos. We have been deep in the emotional trenches the last several episodes. And today we are coming up for error. Today I need to come up for air. And we're just going to sit in my car and I'm going to tell you something absolutely wild. If you are tuning into our podcasts, this is where we are today. I have this blended family that shouldn't make sense, but somehow works better than anything I have ever experienced. We do dinners, we do holidays, we make decisions together. We give strangers something to talk about. We show up at parent-teacher conferences together. We show up for each other. And you might think, oh wow, that's so healthy and functional. And it is. But the road to get here was not. And it was paved with chaos and trauma and character development that nobody asked for. We all have our own story to share, but buckle up because today you are going to hear the highlight version of how I got here. The version of me sitting in the car today. She was built. She was shaped. She was forged in fire. And honestly, I was probably left in a little too long. I'm just going to run through the highlight real, real fast. I have been married three times. Not once, not twice, three. I'm adopted and did not find out until I was 36. 36. Most people get a baby book. I got emotional trauma. I have been part of raising 15 kids. I've had a miscarriage. I've had cancer. I have lost a child. The kind of loss that splits your life into a before and an after. I lost my entire home in a tornado because I don't know. Apparently, I needed to add a natural disaster to the list. We wrestle, we do jujitsu, we are healing and fighting all at the same time. And like all good stories, my story started once upon a time in church. I grew up in the church, like in it. Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night, Iwanas, youth group, mission trips, church camp, worship teams. If the doors were open, I was there. But here is the twist. I was not the perfect church kid. I wasn't the golden child. I was not winning purity awards. I was the kid who did not accept anything blindly. I needed the why. I needed answers. And when I did not get them, I pushed, I questioned, I misbehaved, I snuck out. I tested every boundary like it was my job. And if I knew then what I know now, of course I did. I grew up in a family where the truth was edited, where information was missing, where things didn't add up. And so I went looking for answers anywhere I could find them. And that started with church. I was dedicated. I was committed. I went on mission trips to Jamaica. I sang in a Christian folk band. Please, please don't unfollow me. And looking back, it makes perfect sense. I was trying to fill in the blanks of a story I didn't know was incomplete. So naturally, I went to college for biblical studies. I thought I was going to be a missionary or a pastor's wife or the girl leading the worship team. But that chapter ended exactly where it needed to. Um, because life had other plans for me. They were louder, messier, more chaotic plans, but they were bigger. Before the marriages, before the tornado, before the absolute chaos, there was my first fiancee, the one I never married. And this man, this man came with a daughter and an ex who became my friend almost instantly. Like we'd known each other in a past life. We would travel together, we did holidays together. I would watch all her kids so she could go on date nights with her husband. We were co-parenting superheroes. And this was my first taste of healthy co-parenting. No ego, no competition, no weirdness, just adults choosing what mattered. And once you've seen healthy co-parenting, you cannot unsee it. It ruins you for all of the dysfunctional stuff. Like, imagine experiencing a top shelf margarita and then somebody trying to hand you a skinny margarita and call it the same. No thanks, not the same. We did not make it to the altar because life threw us a curveball. We got pregnant and we lost the baby. And that is how I found out I had cancer. Doctors told me that I would probably never have kids. And fast forward, I've had six kids under my roof four separate times in my life. It's like, I don't know, God said, What do doctors know? Nothing. So after that chapter, after the engagement, after the loss, after the cancer, I walked into my next season with this blueprint on my heart. Even when I didn't realize it, I kept trying to rebuild that sense of unity that I had experienced, even when the relationships weren't right. It took me three marriages to get there. So my first marriage was a nightmare. Like the kind of nightmare you wake up sweating and checking for monsters under the bed and realizing the monster is sitting on your couch, acting like nothing's wrong. It broke me in ways I didn't even know were possible. It gave me scars that I still carry to this day. It introduced me to an anxiety level that I thought was reserved for people in straight jackets. But it was also a dream because it gave me the one thing that I had wanted my entire life. I became a mom. I still remember the day the doctor told me I had healed and I could carry a child to term. I can't even describe the feeling. It was like someone handed me my purpose in the form of the most perfect little girl and little boy. My second marriage was a lesson. This one taught me what I don't want, what I won't tolerate, what the definition of a walking red flag is. And spoiler alert, it was him. Sometimes the lesson is very simple. Sometimes the lesson is run. Now I'm in marriage number three. This is the one where I finally chose someone who chooses me back. Someone who shows up, someone who parents with me. Kyle is my best friend and my partner. And my absolute evidence that the universe sometimes does get it right. He is the person who understands that love alone, it's not enough to make a marriage work. Marriage takes effort and intention and patience and humor and a lot of late-night snacking. Kyle is my person. Kyle is my family. And here's the thing about my life. Kids have always found me. Not because I'm trying to collect them like Pokemon guards, but because I've always been the safe place. Kids show up in my story like a plot twist. Suddenly, dramatically, and always teaching me something. I didn't realize it until much later, but every chapter of my life came with kids who needed stability, um, structure, love, or just a house where someone listened. And that's how I ended up in what I'm going to call lovingly the four eras of six children. Yes, four. At this point, I deserve a punch card. Like, congratulations, your next mental breakdown is free. So, post-divorce number one, my two kids, his two kids, and then I dated a guy with two more. So, six kids, one woman trying to relearn who she was and the absolute wild west of rebuilding after the divorce. Post-divorce number two. After my marriage ended, my best friend moved in with me and her two kids. And my ex-husband left his two kids with me. Nothing screams red flag louder than a man bragging about being a devoted single dad while his kids are living with his ex that isn't even their mother. That is not the flex you think it is. So I was back to six again. No man. Just loyalty, chaos, survival, and food. Lots and lots of food. So eventually, my ex sent someone to retrieve his children. Yes, you heard that right. Then came Kyle. He came with one son and one stepson. And Jess and her kids were still living with me and my two. So here we are, six again. Things did eventually settle. Jess and her kids moved back to Vegas. Andrew moved in with his dad. And it was just our three kids, Ella, Arlen, and Archer. And then we got a call that there had been an emergency in Alabama. No hesitation. We drove through the night to go and get my sister-in-law and her three kids and move them in with us. So we were back at six again. It's like the universe has said more than once give her a whole basketball team and a substitute. I didn't understand it then, but every time I had six kids in my house, it wasn't chaos for chaos' sake. It was my purpose. It was identity forming. It was the universe shaping me into the woman I needed to become. It was preparing me for the blended family I have now. It was preparing me for the grief I didn't know was coming. And it was preparing me for the resilience I would need. It taught me something that I never learned in my own childhood. Family isn't just biology. Family is who shows up. And let's let's let's talk about biology for a second. Let's talk, let's let's talk about the adoption thing for a second. Imagine being 36 years old, fully grown, fully formed, thinking you know who you are. And then finding out that you're adopted. It's like someone handed me a new identity. And the wildest part about it is it explained everything and nothing at the same time. It explained why certain things never made sense. It explained why certain parts of me felt like they didn't belong and why I always felt like I was missing a chapter. But it also opened a door to a whole new life that I didn't ask for, a whole new family, a whole new history. And I had to figure out how to hold all of that while still being a mom and a wife and a friend and a human. And let me tell you, it takes medication. I did the test for fun, just to compare with my sister, just to fill in some blanks. And the results came back, and I remember thinking, that's that's not right. And not because I thought there was fault in the science, um, because there was fault in the family story I had been told. So I called my mom immediately, and she brushed me off. She made excuses and I pushed and I continued to push, and she finally admitted that she is my biological mom, but my dad is not my biological dad. He adopted me. But here's the part that I struggle with still today is my sister has a different dad than my brother and I too. But she knew, we all knew, she got the truth while I was handed a performance. So from there, I went to tell my adopted dad because I thought he deserved to know. I told him he needed to sit down for the news. Gave him the whole reveal. And he just said, Oh, I didn't need to sit for that. I already knew. And in that moment, I didn't feel rage or heartbreak. I felt like I had momentarily stepped outside of my body to watch my own life unfold into a drama series. And that is when I realized the black sheep thing, the questioning, the pushing back, the rebellion, that was not defiance. It was not drama. It wasn't me being too much. It was me knowing something was off before anyone would tell me the truth. It was intuition. And just for the sake of timeline, this adoption reveal came about six months prior to the tornado. But the tornado changed everything. It shook our home, it shook our safety, it shook our foundation, literally and emotionally. And losing Arlen, that changed me at a cellular level. It rearranged my DNA. It stripped away everything that wasn't real. It made me intentional. It made me honest. It made me choose peace. I'm not sitting in grief today. But I do want to honor it because it is stitched into my story. Rebuilding a home while rebuilding your nervous system should count as a college degree. And honestly, I should have graduated with honors. We rebuilt walls, we rebuilt routines, we rebuilt ourselves. And somewhere during that rebuilding, I became the woman who could handle the family I have now. The family, the one I have today, this is the one that feels like home. This is the one that makes all that chaos make sense. This is the one that makes me look back at every twist and turn and say, Oh, that's why that happened. People hear my story and they say, you're so strong. And I laugh. Not because it's funny, but because if if I don't laugh, I will cry so hard until the earth tilts. It's not strength. It is survival. It is motherhood. It is stubbornness. It is trauma with a sense of humor. It's resilience, but not the pretty kind. And not the inspirational quote kind. Not the she believed she could, so she did kind. Not the hallmark card kind. People talk about resilience like it's a personality trait. Like some people are just born strong. And that is not how that works. Resilience isn't strength. It is not confidence. It is not bravery. Resilience is a choice. It is a choice that you make on the days that you don't feel strong, on the days that you are tired, on the days that you are grieving, on the days that you are rebuilding. On the days that you are staring at a truth that you did not ask for. Resilience is saying, I don't know how I am going to get through this. But I'm going to keep going anyway. I didn't just learn resilience from the big things, like cancer or failed marriages or a tornado or losing a child. I also learned it from the small things, from the unanswered questions, from the missing information, from the childhood confusion that I carried quietly throughout my life, from rebuilding myself piece by piece, without a manual. When I look back at everything, there's one thing that ties it all together. I kept going. Not gracefully, not quietly, and not with perfect hair, perfect timing, but I kept going. And that's what resilience actually looks like. It's not the big triumphant moments, but the tiny ones, the messy ones, the ones that no one sees. Every chapter of my life, even the painful ones, built the version of me sitting in this car today. I am the mom who tells the truth. The woman who asks the hard questions and has the hard conversations. The partner who chooses peace, the friend who shows up, the parent who gives her kids transparency that she never received. The woman who rebuilt her life when it fell apart. And the woman who survived things she never thought she could. Hear me. You can survive things you never thought you could. And resilience isn't strength, and you're not born with it. It's the choice to keep going. You're not behind. You're not broken. You are becoming. Today, it wasn't about grief. It wasn't about trauma, although there's plenty to go around. It wasn't about the heavy stuff. It was about the fact that somehow, through all of it, I'm still here. I am still laughing. I am still loving. I am still raising kids. Still building a life that makes sense to us, even if it makes zero sense to anyone else. It's about the fact that resilience doesn't always look like strength. Sometimes, sometimes it does look like chaos. Sometimes it looks like humor. If your life feels chaotic, if your story feels messy, you're not alone. Sometimes the craziest stories make the strongest people. And sometimes the chaos is the proof that you are still fighting. You are still growing and you are still here. And before I go, I do want to let you know what's coming up next week. We're doing a what to expect when you're expecting episode. And spoiler, it is nothing accurate. Because if you've ever been pregnant, you know that the only accurate thing about pregnancy books is the table of contents. We're going to talk about everything from when your morning sickness started to the moment every mom realizes that, oh, they're actually going to let me leave this place with this baby. If you need a laugh, a real one, come back next week. And remember, you can survive things you never thought you could. And resilience isn't strength. Nobody's born with it. It is the choice to keep going. All right. I'll see you next week.