The Emotion Translator

Have you ever felt like your feelings were too big, too much, or just wrong? This week, Jen and Nancy Ann get into something that started as a casual conversation and turned into one of their most powerful blends yet — the idea that the women who raised us were never taught how to feel, and now we're the ones trying to unpack it all.

Transcript

Jennifer 0:00

Hey, besties. Welcome back to The Bestie Blend, the podcast where two best friends get real, get deep, and get into it. I'm Jen

NancyAnn (2) 0:09

And I'm Nancy Ann, and we are so glad you're here with us today

Jennifer 0:14

Okay, so today's episode, I have to say, this one hits a little different for us when we're talking about it. We're calling it the emotion translator, you know, a call about our moms

NancyAnn (2) 0:24

And if you've ever felt like your feelings were too big, too much, or just wrong, this one is for you. Grab your coffee, get cozy, and let's blend. The Emotional Translator: A Call About Our Moms Okay, so I've been thinking about something and I don't know if this makes sense yet. It's like moms or women the age of our moms, including my ex-mother-in-law, they're so conditioned to not have emotions about terrible things I feel like. Like the things done to their kids. Not always sweeping it under the rug, but sometimes, basically it just is

Jennifer 1:06

Mm-hmm.

NancyAnn (2) 1:07

and sometimes it's making light of it. Like, if you joke about it, it can't hurt you. my mother-in-law said to me once, she told me the reason why I was so angry was because I didn't like being rejected. And that literally made me so angry. And in that moment, I remember thinking, yeah, that's absolutely not it. That's not what this is." But then I started asking myself, what did they do with the anger when they were younger? What did they do with their grief, with the betrayal, with the fear? all of the issues that they had when they were younger. Because when I look at the stories My mother-in-law's marriages, my mom and her marriage angry, off at the injustice done to them, They just had to move on. They had to keep the house running and make dinner and go to work and smile at people like nothing was wrong, and I don't mean like a character flaw. it's like a survival skill that got mistaken for a personality. Sometimes I wish there was an emotion translator. when a mom says it wasn't that bad, what she might mean is, "If I let myself feel, I don't know if I'll stop." When she says she's too sensitive or you're too sensitive, what she might mean is, "No one let me be sensitive, so I don't know what to do with yours When she jokes about it, what she might mean is, "This is the only way I'm allowed to touch it." And then they raise kids who feel everything they were trained not to feel, who walk around with anger that looks too big because it's carrying more than one generation. And then when we finally say, "That hurt me," the response can sound like, "Don't dwell. Be grateful. And you start wondering if you're crazy or just super dramatic, or like I was told, afraid of rejection. Like how stupid is that? But what if it's not rejection? What if it's your body recognizing injustice and refusing to pretend it's fine? I'm trying to hold two truths at the same time. One, they did what they had to do to survive, and two, I don't want to inherit the silence. That sentence to me is so strong. I don't wanna joke my way around pain. I don't wanna call it moving on.

Jennifer 3:28

When it's actually never gonna have the feelings

NancyAnn (2) 3:33

Because I don't need them to fix the past

Jennifer 3:35

just need someone to stop minimizing it

NancyAnn (2) 3:38

I need someone to say, "Yeah, that was wrong." We start talking, and then God just goes, "Here you go, girls." A video about how a whole generation learned to swallow their emotions

Jennifer 3:49

And now we're the ones trying to spit them right back out into the light Okay, so I wanna jump in here. You know how we touched on my mom's note or the letter that I wrote her a little bit in our delulu episode, but I wanted to go into a little bit more about what happened, with my mom So the episode drops, which was I think episode four, right? Of my story. And

NancyAnn (2) 4:17

yeah

Jennifer 4:17

really what I was expecting, but I never heard a single thing from my mom, like nothing, crickets. And I'm just sitting over there thinking, "Okay, she hasn't listened yet. Give her some time." Then come to find out she never listened to it at all because she was too busy. Now, she'll never admit to me that she's too busy, but that is always her excuse is that she's too busy

NancyAnn (2) 4:42

Oh my gosh, after everything you put into that episode?

Jennifer 4:45

so yes, I did the only thing that I could think of, and I sat down and I wrote her a letter. And honestly, it was the only way that I can get my feelings out without turning it into something else. I can get everything I needed to, and hopefully she could understand everything, and really kinda dive deep into my feelings

NancyAnn (2) 5:08

Did she read it?

Jennifer 5:09

She did. And then brace yourself, she binged watched all of our episodes

NancyAnn (2) 5:16

She binged

Jennifer 5:17

And then I got my response back, which felt huge. But here's the thing, she still doesn't get it. She still doesn't fully understand the depth of how much she hurt me or how much I genuinely want her to get some help. It's all about I'm the one that told her that I needed my space, so in her mind, that means I don't wanna talk to her, I don't wanna have a relationship with her, and that is not at all what I was trying to get across

NancyAnn (2) 5:48

That's the hardest part, isn't it? When someone makes the effort and it's still not enough. Not because they don't care, but because they just don't have the tools to go where you need them to

Jennifer 5:58

And I keep coming back to that emotion translator idea because that's what's missing. There's no translation happening. She's reading the words, but she literally can't feel what's underneath them. And so when I threw out the whole therapy thing, I truly feel that that would help her get there

NancyAnn (2) 6:15

Yeah, for sure. So now I have to tell you about my dad's wife situation because that's a whole

Jennifer 6:22

Oh, please. Let's listen.

NancyAnn (2) 6:23

Okay, so my dad's wife, out of nowhere, reaches out via Facebook, and She's going on about how sad it is that my siblings and I don't talk to my dad or to her. Like she's upset about it, publicly sad about it

Jennifer 6:39

Wait, on Facebook?

NancyAnn (2) 6:41

On Facebook. And I'm reading it like, "Okay, relax." I'm literally at dinner with my sister because there are so many layers underneath that disconnect that she has zero clue about. She wasn't there for any of it. She didn't live it, and now she wants to grief about my family distance and my issues that supposedly I have with her and my dad.

Jennifer 7:07

That's the part that gets me. People who weren't in a situation suddenly having feelings about the fallout

NancyAnn (2) 7:14

And here's the thing, if you actually cared that much, you'd have my dad reach out. That's the move. Don't go to Facebook. Go to him, because that's where the real repair would need to

Jennifer 7:25

So

NancyAnn (2) 7:26

But instead, she's just leaving a comment on a picture saying how sad it is that I have, not had a relationship with my dad

Jennifer 7:35

So true. I think that if people are genuine and they really wanted relationships to work, people would honestly figure out a way to make relationships work and not try to butt in where they're not wanted,

NancyAnn (2) 7:51

Seriously, because I swear I'm not trying to blame all of them. I'm just trying to name this

Jennifer 7:58

And it's even like when I grew up with my stepmom, there were things that happened in her past that I know very little about. She really never talked about them. So to have her treat me the way she treated me as I grew up, she kind of went through the same thing. But yet that was never discussed or talked about. Again, hush, hush, keep it quiet

NancyAnn (2) 8:22

Sweep the stuff under the rug. Sweep the hard stuff. Don't have emotions

Jennifer 8:27

And now as adults, we are so not like that.

NancyAnn (2) 8:32

No

Jennifer 8:33

my truth and I have zero filter, and if you know me, you know that.

NancyAnn (2) 8:39

that's why we're best friends. I used to be that way, and then I was conditioned to not be that way 'cause my feelings didn't matter. And now I am back that way almost in a bad way.

Jennifer 8:56

Yeah, I think it just closes us up until we're comfortable in our own skin, so it's hard to open up to other people and be the, you know, happy-go-lucky kind of girl that people think we should be. But I am not that way, and I don't,

NancyAnn (2) 9:12

yeah

Jennifer 9:13

I- I've never been that way because I've always had to protect myself.

NancyAnn (2) 9:17

I hate the term nowadays, but nowadays when we raise our voice and we speak what we're feeling and we need to get those things out, and we have our anger to deal with, and we wanna deal with it, not just, push it down, I hate the reaction to it. It's like we're the bad guys, but we're really not the bad guys. We're just trying to deal with the grief, and anger, and sadness, and emotions that we have. And I think to the detriment of younger kids these days that they need to learn to deal with their emotions, not just push them down. And we have to do better. I'm not a parent, but to younger parents, have to do better 'cause I know that... Yeah, I don't know. It's hard for me to speak on this sometimes 'cause it's a lot for me. And it really resonates with me, and I'm just thankful that you could share your story that you're dealing with the same thing. 'Cause even though we have two totally different situations, comes together with the same way that we were raised and the way that our families or our moms were raised. It all encapsulates all of itself in the same thing. I'm repeating myself so many times, but I'm so emotional about this. And it just started with us having this moment of talking about, wow, holy cow, that this is a really important subject

Jennifer 10:40

I just always wondered, you know, coming from on my mom's side of the family, everybody's really, really loving, where that stopped or that maternal love, where did that stop? It, like, skipped over my mom because she's n- was really never that way, and if she was, it was like, you know, the cool mom. But knowing that your

NancyAnn (2) 11:03

Yeah

Jennifer 11:04

is hurting and I'm suggesting things that could help it, where are you? that was how long ago that I talked to you when you said that you

NancyAnn (2) 11:13

Right?

Jennifer 11:13

letter, and yet you've not reached out. I'm sorry, but the ball is in your court to go figure out a way to make our relationship better because I've tried that for the last,

NancyAnn (2) 11:24

Yeah

Jennifer 11:25

you know, I'm, I'm old as dirt, but for the last almost, you know, 40, 40-plus years. And to say that's how you grew up

NancyAnn (2) 11:32

it's

Jennifer 11:33

not gonna work anymore because we grew up that way, but yet we're talking about it and we are recognizing our faults

NancyAnn (2) 11:39

it's a cop-out. It's a way to, it's the continuation of the same situation that put them there in the first place. they need to dig deep. and you and I both know going to therapy has helped us both in a huge way. And maybe, if you share this episode with your mom, maybe she'll understand. I know my mom has dealt with it, and she's learning through my therapy. She's learning so much about herself how she dealt with things, and it has been a huge thing for her because she never had that opportunity 'cause she had to raise us three kids. So maybe share this with your mom and ask her to listen to this episode, and maybe if you're feeling brave, see what happens.

Jennifer 12:22

Yeah

NancyAnn (2) 12:23

Maybe you could go to therapy with your mom

Jennifer 12:25

That ball's in her court, 'cause I have my own therapist.

NancyAnn (2) 12:29

Yep.

Jennifer 12:30

I'm not sharing her anymore. I mean, well, I am, but

NancyAnn (2) 12:34

No. We should have her on for a future episode soon,

Jennifer 12:35

Yeah, people can ask questions and we can have her answer them for us. Like,

NancyAnn (2) 12:41

Oh,

Jennifer 12:42

like,

NancyAnn (2) 12:43

We could do a

Jennifer 12:43

yeah, like the whys and how do we... Give us some tips type thing. She's given us a lot of good tips of how to handle things even just in my marriage. just fun things to work on

NancyAnn (2) 12:55

it's so eye-opening and she gives so much insight, but also is super blunt to look at ourselves. put up the mirror and look at ourselves and be like, "What the heck?" I think it's a really good thing that you don't have to be in a horrible place to be in therapy. I think that I should've been in therapy a long time ago, and I'm just thankful that I'm in it now, and I know that you feel the same way, I really do believe, we really do believe that naming things is how we stop letting them run us, I think that's the whole blend for today. Okay. Thank you for letting me put this into words, and thank you besties for sitting with us in it

Jennifer 13:30

And if this episode resonates with you, share it. Send it to a friend. Send it to your mom if you're feeling brave

NancyAnn (2) 13:38

We really do believe that naming things is how we stop letting them run us for real. That's the whole blend for today,

Jennifer 13:43

Hmm. Until next time, I'm Jen

NancyAnn (2) 13:47

And I'm Nancy Ann. Stay real, stay connected, and keep blending, besties. We'll see you next week