Connect Before You Correct: Breaking Generational Patterns, with Lacey Tezino

ABOUT THE EPISODE:

Lacey Tezino grew up believing her biological mother was dead. That’s what her family told her in the ‘80s when she was adopted, and she carried that story until she was 19 years old. Hungover on just one more motherless-Mother’s Day, Lacey somehow found the nerve to call ‘information’ to see if that was true. Her mother picked up the phone. That call became a decade-long relationship that Lacey describes as beautiful, heartbreaking, and nothing she was prepared for.

The complications didn’t end with the reunion. Lacey’s mother had her own life, her own rhythm, and her own relationship with alcohol. So did Lacey. And when her mother received a stage four lung cancer diagnosis, the urgency it created forced them both into a kind of honesty they had never quite managed before. They sat through chemo appointments and asked the hard questions. They talked about what they’d each been holding. And Lacey has spent the years since wondering why it took running out of time to get there.

Lacey is the founder of Passport Journeys and the author of Therapy After Mom Died. She now works with mothers and daughters to help them heal together before a crisis forces their hand, matching them with therapists, building structured connections, and asking the eight questions that reveal exactly where a relationship has come apart.

This conversation goes somewhere I don’t hear talked about often enough: the way our kids watch us reach for a drink at the end of a hard day, and what they quietly absorb from that. Lacey tells the story of her own Friday night ritual, margaritas that offered tired parents decompression, the moment she realized her children were watching all of it, and what they might be learning. 

If you have a daughter - or son - you love and a relationship that feels like it’s missing something you can’t quite name, this one is for you.

YOU’LL LEARN:

• What Lacey said when her mother, who she thought was dead, picked up the phone
• The unhealthy Friday night ritual she couldn’t unsee once she saw it
• The gap she keeps finding between what moms believe and what daughters feel
• Why, as a parent, you have to connect before you correct
• What it took for Lacey and her mother to finally be honest with each other

EPISODE RESOURCES:

• Passport Journeys website
• Therapy After Mom Died - Lacey’s book 

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Transcript

Lacey Tezino

[00:00:00] Hey, Lacey. Welcome to Hope Stream. Thanks for joining me. Good morning. It's good to see you. You too. I am so glad that we got to meet each other at a cool event that we went to. You told your story, I think probably an abbreviated version because you only had, like, an hour to tell your story which- I know clearly needed more time 'cause you wrote a book about it. Yes. It's a wild ride. I feel like I went on a wild ride reading the book, and I just have to... For those of you who are watching on YouTube, this is Lacey's book. It is so good. Therapy After Mom Died. I also thank you for making it this long, for those of us who, like, have a really hard time getting through a thousand-page book. And I don't know how you did it, but you got across so much in a short book. Yeah and obviously I have it tabbed and highlighted. I do this with my books. My husband thinks I'm 

[00:01:00] bananas, but I love it ... it's so awesome. So there's, like, a million questions I have obviously after reading it but I would love for you to give the version of your story that will give people enough to go, "Oh, okay. I see what she's talking about," because I think we need that kind of grounding before I dive into all my million questions. Yeah. Sure. So I'll just start by saying why I created the book and, you know, how it happened. So I met my mom at 19. I was adopted at birth, and so I didn't meet her until I was in college. And then I met her, and we had this wild rollercoaster of a ride for 10 years. It was beautiful, heartbreaking, incredible, but, you know, really, really hard journey of us just getting to know each other and spending time and we got a stage four lung 

[00:02:00] cancer diagnosis, and that really put things into perspective around our relationship and how we don't last always, and you've gotta get your things in order. And so it put this urgency on our relationship that unfortunately and fortunately created a beautiful ending to our story and so after she passed away, I thought, "Man," like, "why did it take, you know, her getting sick? Why did it take us, you know, running out of time for us to reconcile our relationship?" And through my grief, I found a therapist that I went to her and she said, "You know, what brings you here?" And I said listen, my mom died. I've got a lot of stuff going on, and I wanna process this in 10 sessions. She just laughed. She's like, "So that's not exactly how it works, but we can try our best." And so we started down this therapy journey, and she was like, "So you've got a lot 

[00:03:00] more than just Mom dying." And so what I did with the book is I tried to just do short versions of our sessions and kinda how I walked through processing my grief, but also a life well-lived and a complicated adoption and all of those things down to, like, 110-page book. Right. It's a, it's a lot to do. That was a big ask. So and I know there's a lot to your adoption story that I think could be helpful for our parents to hear because, you know, parents who are listening to Hopestream have kids who are struggling with all kinds of things and some of the themes that I sort of picked up from your book was this in your childhood growing up adopted and then losing your dad, which is, I mean, there's just, like, so many layers to your onion, as they say- Yeah peeling back all the layers. But it seems like there was, there were 

[00:04:00] these feelings of disconnect from your roots and knowing that you were loved, you had such an amazing family, and yet there was still this sort of, like, disconnection there some unworthiness that kind of I picked up on and also this real desire for validation, which I think you ended up really getting through your therapist and your mom too eventually. Mm-hmm. But the parents listening hear of kids who are struggling with all of those things, right? They are kind of lost in the world, dealing with things like ADHD or dyslexia or being on the autism spectrum, or they just don't fit in, which was another theme that I picked up on. So maybe you could talk about that a little bit, just the what was going on in your in- in your internal landscape growing up and Yeah how that kind of shaped who you became. Yeah. I'll start by saying I did 

[00:05:00] this exercise the other day that really got, you know, what you're asking me right now, it brought things into such beautiful perspective, and it was, like, a little Lacey project and I got all of these pictures of when I was around six and seven years old and a young child, and I glued them to this big poster board and I wrote Little Lacey on it and my question in the internal work I was doing was, "What have I still been carrying that, you know, Little Lacey was dealing with?" And in those pictures it was, like, around the time when my dad passed away. Mm.  So six years old, and there's pictures of he and I. And then, I mean, I was sobbing doing this exercise because it brought me back to kinda what was happening. And my therapist told me that, you know, when your parent dies that young and you have this disrupted attachment, kinda what comes from that and so I was able to see real clear in my young adult life some of the things that I have struggled 

[00:06:00] with around you know, drinking and just trying to escape what that came from. And so growing up, like you said, I had a extremely loving family. I had a beautiful childhood. I grew up in a homogenous environment, all white community, where I was a, you know, the only Black child there in that community, in my family, in my church, everything like that and so I was in a space with a lot of love, and I was also in a space where no one looked like me, and that can be pretty confusing as a child and so there was a big attempt for me to fit in, and especially after my dad died, not to burden anyone and to really make people happy and make people feel good and so I really took that on as a young child, and that was really heavy, right? My mom wasn't there at the adoption, so when my dad adopted me at birth, 

[00:07:00] he raised me on his own, and then he got sick. And so we moved in with his parents, in this small, southeast Texas town, real country Oh, boy ... kind of backwoodsy. Yes. So we moved there and, you know, amazing place, amazing friends, but, you know, there definitely was that confusion and that identity piece that I struggled with early on. Yeah. And then not having parents and being raised by my grandparents and so I didn't realize until later on that that kinda became my thing. I kinda became this, like, temperature checker in the room who wanted to make sure everyone was happy and later on I didn't really care if I fit in, I wanted to make sure everyone else felt comfortable. So I spent my childhood really working to make sure I felt comfortable and I fit in, and then I was like doing the opposite. If I see anyone in a room who 

[00:08:00] looks like they feel uncomfortable, I'm like, "Come here. Let's, you know, bring you in." And so that's a long roundabout way to explain that I think later on what I struggled with through identity and through those things with my childhood were really about, like, wanting to belong and then wanting others to belong, and then just wanting to escape all of it with my, you know, fun drinking and drugging and all of that. Yeah. Well, it makes total sense. So we have a specialty group in our private community for moms of adopted kids, because of the attachment issues that they have. So but then you had, like, a double whammy, 'cause first of all, you were adopted, so you had that attachment issue. Then your dad dies, your adopted dad dies. There's an attachment loss at such a young age, it makes so much sense why you would be always sort of on the lookout for where do I belong, how do I belong 

[00:09:00] and I'm curious, when you talk about reading the room and where is everybody and how is everybody, and I think so many of us moms do that, 'cause we're just wired to, like, "I gotta make sure everybody here is good, and then I can be good. But I can't be good until everybody here is good."  Yeah.  What does that look like for you now? Are you a recovered sort of over Mm-hmm tearer? I am working on it. Yeah. I'm working on it, but I am definitely a mood monitor. Mm. And the good part about that is I think that I have realized that I can't let everyone else's, in the house or in the office or, I can't let other people's moods affect mine. So I still monitor. I'm still checking my kids, checking my grandma, checking my husband. Where is everyone at for the day? And instead of letting it push me into a different space, I'm just kinda monitoring, but then saying, 

[00:10:00] "Okay, that's gonna determine how the day, how the activities- Mm ... happen." So I'm recovering in that I'm trying to make it a positive thing. Yes. It's hard. It's a hard one to let go of, you know? So gosh, where do I wanna go? There's so many different places. Let's go back to you're growing up in a small, very white town as somebody who is not white, not from the country doesn't have a traditional-looking family, 'cause you're now living with your grandmother after your dad died. And I have to believe as a teenager, that was a lot to be growing up in. What was your sort of method of coping with a pretty unusual dynamic for a teen girl in Southeast Texas? Hmm. So part of me wants to say that I took 

[00:11:00] advantage of the situation, which was I was being raised by older grandparents, and so they weren't as vigilant, and they were really loosey-goosey, and so everyone wanted to come to my house. You know, it was the- Lacey's house is the place to be Oh, yeah. We can go there. We can smoke. We explored weed. We were... You know, my cousin lived next door and would buy us alcohol young and so I took advantage, I think, in those, like, you know, we started drinking early. We started exploring with drugs early, and we had a place to do it where there wasn't, no one was watching us. And so I think that was sort of a high school story for me and I had a lot of friends. I was very, like, you know, played a lot of sports, you know? Very popular, homecoming queen. Like, I had a great experience, and my grandparents were 

[00:12:00] super involved, never missed a basketball game, never, you know- Mm-hmm in terms of school activities but socially, they had a lot of trust that we were just doing the right thing, and it just, now that I look back on it, I'm like... we had this mobile home, like, trailer, you know, whatever you call them, Winnebago-type thing. It was in the front yard. And so when my friends would come over, they would let us go out to this little travel trailer, and we would hang out, like, camping in the front yard, and they would never come check on us. And I'm just like- Now that I have kids, I'm like, "No one's going anywhere."  Oh, that's not happening. Yeah, "But we're going camping." It's like, do y'all have any idea? And my grandma lives with us now. She's 87 years old. Oh. And she's watching me mother my kids. Mm-hmm. And I will ask her, I'm like, "Did you have any idea what we were doing out there?"And she's like, "Of course we did." And I thought they had no idea. Right. And she's like, "Do you think we were stupid?" And I'm 

[00:13:00] like, "No, but y'all never asked any questions. Y'all never said anything." She's like, "And y'all were gonna do what you were gonna do. You were safe." And I'm like, "Boy." I mean, that could've gotten a lot differently. Yeah, that could've gone a different direction, Grandma. Yeah. Oh, I love it. Yeah. Wow. Well, and that sounds pretty typical because I think there's the experimentation factor, right, of just kids are curious about that, and then there's also the coping factor and I think we see kids today really turning to substances to cope with a lot of heavy stuff, right? There's just so much going on in the world, and the access to the entire world in the palm of their hand is not helping, I would not say. Yeah. So you met your mom because you sought her out. That's a fun story in the book. We can't go through all the fun stuff, but you just have to read the book but you end up meeting your mom as a high school...You're just graduating from high school, right? Yeah. 

[00:14:00] How crazy is that? I was 19, so I was coming out of my freshman year of college, and it was Mother's Day. Yeah. Mother's Day and you just make a phone call. Mm-hmm. She must've- Yeah, I was curious. Yeah. I was like, I was like, "Let me find out information," but the very interesting thing is that I thought she was dead because my family had told me that my mom had HIV, and she disclosed that to my father when he was gonna adopt me and so in the '80s, like, you know, what my family knew, small country town is, oh, they heard HIV and it went like AIDS. Like she's- Sure ... dead, she's dying. So when I was growing up, they told me that she was dead, and so that was the story I had. So when my dad died, I was like, "I don't have parents." You know, I meet her at 19, and so me calling information was, I wanna find out who this woman was. Let me hear some more about 

[00:15:00] her and when she picked up the phone and I heard her voice for the very first time at 19 years old, and me having to say like, " I think I'm your daughter," was like beyond. Beyond. Like the little emoji- Beyond ... with the brain exploding. There's like no words, no explanation for just like telling someone at that point, like, you know, on the phone, "I think I'm your daughter," is wild. But I met her that day and oh my gosh. It's the... I love that part where you describe going to meet her for the first time, and I just can't... I mean, obviously, unless you live it, you can't fathom the emotions that would've been there. Because didn't you also meet your brother at that time? She had- Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So you're like- I have this brother ... meeting your mom. Yes. You're meeting your brother. Hello and that morning when you woke up, you had zero clue that was gonna happen.

[00:16:00] Oh, I was just like, "It's another Mother's Day." I was hungover. I wasn't thinking anything, you know? It was a, like a random day that turned out changing my entire life. It changed everything. Yeah. There's those decisions or moments or days in your life where you see, like when you look back, I'm a very visual person, you see the road split, right and it's like- Yeah wow, that was a road-splitting decision to call her, to go meet with her, and then to have a relationship with her for 10 years. Like- Yeah ... that's massive and she sounds like just a bigger than life person, really amazing and you describe in your book...uh, Lacey, can you still hear me? I can, but it just dropped down lower.  Oh, that's so weird. Um, my thing is telling me something. What is it telling me? "We've disabled 

[00:17:00] incoming video due to poor network conditions. Your video's still being recorded." Oh, good. "To remedy this, improve your network performance, hardwiring..."Okay, like I know how to do that. Well, I'm glad that we are still getting video, so Manny, you're just gonna have to do your thing on this. Chop it together. Chop it together. Um, uh, where was I? Uh... You're clearer again now. I don't know if it got better or- Okay. Yeah, I still can't see you, but that's okay. Um, where was I? Oh, you had this relationship for 10 years, and you find out a lot about her. I'm curious because you hadn't had a mother-daughter relationship to this point in your life. You knew your grandmother. What changed when you ended up now having a mother in your life? Everything. 

[00:18:00] Literally everything. Looking back after I met her, how I thought about myself, how I thought about the world, and how I now felt tethered by this person- Mm ... and was such a strange feeling because I had never navigated the world with this feeling that I had a parent, right? My da- you know after my dad died, it was sort of I'm on my own. Yeah. And so to meet her and to start this relationship, there was this sense of responsibility that I placed on her. That I quickly realized she was not ready for. But, you know, it was this sense of, "Hey, you're my mom, and now you have this role to play, and I have expectations," and I put a lot on her because immediately that's what I felt. I felt like, "Oh, now I can be a child. Now I 

[00:19:00] can be a kid- Mm ... because there's this present parent." And we struggled with that. We struggled a lot. Well, I imagine if I put myself in her shoes, she's just going about her life and her day, right? And then she all of a sudden has a daughter now. I mean, she knew she had a daughter, but now she's really there. That had to have been for her a really confusing time as well. I mean, joyful, surprising, but also a little confusing I would imagine. What... Did she give you insight about how she felt? Oh, yeah. We, we did- Oh, yeah. This was one, one of the few... Oh, yeah. We had such beautiful conversations, that final year of her life just... You know, we sat through a lot of chemo and radiation appointments, and we did a lot of reflecting, and I asked a lot of hard questions. Mm and, you know, she was very honest, because she was just like, "I have nothing to lose. I want you 

[00:20:00] to know everything." Mm. So, I asked, like, "What were you feeling?" And she said, "I did not feel ready." She said, "Yes, I was excited and I love that you came in my life," but she had just gotten a promotion at work. She had thrown herself completely into her career, and she was finally kinda moving up and she said and then I came into her world, and my mom was, because she was in, like advertising and in PR, she was wining and dining clients a lot, and she was out. And so she just felt like it was like, whoa, this out of the blue. Yeah. And the, you know, she explained it, and she was trying not to hurt my feelings. She was like, "You know, it's not that I didn't want you around." She said, "It was just such a big change," because now once I met her, I was like, "Let's hang out every weekend." And I was driving- Right ... up from college 'cause I wanted to spend time, and she had this life that she had jam-packed. So she did explain to me at first it was just 

[00:21:00] like, whoa, it felt sudden, and it felt, you know... and I felt the disappointment in that and she said, "I could see it. I could tell- Mm-hmm that you were disappointed because you wanted more from me, and I felt like I was giving everything that I had." And so, ugh, she was honest. Yeah. And, you know, we worked through it, but I understood it. It was hard. Yeah and she eventually did have you meet your biological dad, which sounded like a really difficult meeting. So I'm just imagining you, like you've been through these, all these different relationships and reconnections, and in chapter five you talk about your mom's drinking, and that was something that you started to realize as you got to know her, that alcohol played a pretty big role in her life. What did that look like for the two of you as you're 

[00:22:00] navigating, like, this whole new world together? Yeah. Drinking was our thing. I'll say it like that. Mm-hmm. I'll say that it was our connection point. It was what we did, right? Come in on Friday nights, let's get margaritas, let's hang and so drinking was a big part of her life. I was a sophomore in college, so it was a big part of my life. Naturally. And so it was like something that we- Yes. ... we just connected over and then I meet my biological father and he's also a drinker. Oh. So we meet for the first time at a wine bar. She and I are already a bottle in, and we're, you know? Yeah. So I quickly realize, like, whoa, this dynamic and that's, like, where these light bulbs start to go off in my head in terms of, like, okay, I'm looking at both of them. I'm watching how alcohol really runs their 

[00:23:00] life. They were daily drinkers. And I kept saying to myself, "Man, I don't think this is it. I don't think this is what I want for myself." But I was only able to do that because I was looking at both of my parents- Mm ... saying, "I, ugh, this doesn't..." You know what I mean? Like- Yeah ... they're not their best version of theirselves. 'Cause it would just get really messy, and they would cry, and we would hash these same conversations- Right over and over again and it started to sort of annoy me, because I was like, "We're not really going any deeper. We keep going back to these drunk, rambling conversations." Yeah and so alcohol had a big part in my relationship with both of them. Yeah. Well, I thought it was interesting because it was interesting to read in that chapter how you did start to look at it through a different lens. You're like, "Huh, this is really problematic in my mom's life. I don't want it to be problematic in mine," and that you talk to your therapist about it and she really challenged you to, like, 

[00:24:00] say, "Hey, what would life look like without alcohol for you?" And then did you do that? Did you cut alcohol out at that point? I can't remember the details of what happened with that. Yeah. I started doing this on my birthday. Every other year I would go dry and so I would do 365 days without alcohol, and I did that every other year for four years. Wow. And then I said, "Okay, what is my deal? Like, why do I, like, why do I..." 'Cause people would say, "So you just cut it off for a whole year, and then on your birthday you just pick it back up?" And I was like, "Yeah." And I would see people's reaction to it. I was like, "Well, this isn't that, this isn't, like, normal." And so then I was sitting there like, you know, again, processing with therapist, and I said, "Why am I... Like, why do I go back to it? Why do I want to, if I've done so well and I have admitted to myself that I am my best version when I'm not drinking, why am I doing 

[00:25:00] this dry/wet, dry/wet year thing?" Mm-hmm and then I was like, "Okay, like, that's enough. Like, let's just stop calling it dry year. Like, let's just stop drinking."Mm. And I'm currently on that journey. I'm currently dry and I'm just like, "Let's just keep it going." Yeah. And so it's... That has been a really rough thing for me but it also, I keep looking at my kids and I keep looking at the experience and I'm like, "You're doing great." Yeah and I remember my mom saying, like, "When you have kids, just don't drink." And I was like, "Easy," you know. Easy for you to say. Yeah, easy for you to say, with a toddler on my ankles. Yeah. Yeah. So- It's hard. It's hard, and I think that relationship with alcohol is so confusing for so many people, especially when it's been part of the dynamic with your parents, as it is for so many families, right?

[00:26:00] Like, this is not a unique thing. So many families connect over shots at the beginning of the holiday celebration, or, you know, through the wine club membership, or whatever it is. Like- Yeah ... it's very, very normal and so how old are your kids now? Like, what are you thinking as you look at them through this lens of not drinking? So I've got a seven-year-old, a nine-year-old, and a 13-year-old. Wow, you are in it. I am in it and they are all eyes on me Oh, yes they are and I can, I mean, I can see that so clearly. They watch my every mood, every move. They are also mood monitors like me and so I- you did a good job raising little mood monitors Little. Oh my gosh. So I think I, because I have that clear in my mind and I can see them, and I'm 

[00:27:00] sober, and I'm watching them, and I'm saying like, "This is for the best. This is for the best for them. This is for the best for me" And so, I can tell and they'll say, you know, they'll say things about drinking and they'll say... They're, even though they're young, they can see when people are drinking wine. Mm-hmm And they can see, you know, all these things and I'm like, "Okay, Lacey, just keep this going," right? Yeah. But there are times where I'm just like, "Oh, after this dry year, I can go back to having my margaritas and my wine and my things."But then I go back and I think about, you know, why did it take alcohol for my mom and I to get to an honest place? Because it would. It would take those margaritas, it would take that tequila to bring the barriers down and I thought because we didn't know how to have the conversation, we didn't have the tools. Yeah. We weren't going through therapy together and I thought, if we had that, if there was a therapist intervention, if we were 

[00:28:00] getting structured professional help- Yeah ... would we have been able to navigate that complexity of our relationship without alcohol? And I think the answer is yes. Mm. That's- I really believe that it is that's super insightful. It's like you can either have tequila or a family therapist, but the family therapist is gonna do a much better job at helping the conversation be productive. Yeah. Yeah. And I mean, to be honest, knowing us, we probably would have had the shots of tequila sitting there, did our therapy appointment- and then we would've navigated both. Yes. But I think having the support to say, "Let's have the conversation without the alcohol. Let's talk through the dynamics of our relationship. What's the conflict that keeps coming up for us?" Right. Right Instead of doing it in this kind of sloppy, uninhibited 

[00:29:00] way that we tried to go at it over and over again. Yes and we do that, right? We just do that. I mean, I am guilty of that with my husband and I don't drink for the most part anymore, and it is shocking how much more productive we are with our conversations and how little things don't become big things. They just become things that you talk about, and then you move on with your day. So I think that's really interesting, and it's just a good reminder for the parents who are listening about our kids, is they feel that need to lower the barriers to conversations, and to lower the inhibitions. Because, we all can flash back to those times in high school where we are so uncomfortable in our bodies. They're gangly. They don't work the way we want them to. We have acne. We, you know, like, all the things that just make us so ew, and then you have a beer or whatever they're doing today, that just kinda all melts away. It's 

[00:30:00] like, oh. Oh. This is good.  Yes. Yes. And we're mo- you know, you just, you literally just brought me back to this thought that I had about our kids. So this is what they were seeing. On Friday nights, right, we pick them up from school. Our routine, Mexican food and margaritas. Like, they knew it. We had this restaurant we would go to and so we would be really anxious. My husband and I, super high-pressure jobs. We, pick them up. We get these, like, toys and little things for them to do, go to the Mexican restaurant, and we're having a margarita. Like, you know, and we're talking about our day. So they would see this, like, really amped up version of- Mm-hmm ... my husband and I, right? We're pushing through, we're pushing through. We're at the dinner table. They're playing with their toys, but I'm like... I was, I don't know if I was kidding myself, if I was in denial or what, that they could see that here, really high-strung here, 

[00:31:00] Mom and Dad start taking these sips of this margarita, and now they're asking about our day, and everyone's relaxed and all that and it was like, was I modeling to them that I needed that to bring the day down, to now be able to have this fun connection with them? And I was just like- Mm-hmm. You know, so it started making me really sad, to be honest. It made me- Yeah ... super sad, and I had a lot of guilt. And that's all work, right? That's all work that you've gotta do, whether that's journaling, whether that's with your therapist. But to say, I had to get really clear about who do I want them to see me as, and what is the connection? 'Cause I want to connect with my kids. And I said, "What type of connection do I want them to have with me?" And I just said, "Man, alcohol is messing with that." Mm. That's a hard place to get to. Hard. Ugh. Hard place to get to and I think it doesn't just happen once, you know? I think it's that ongoing, like you said, you have the lingering 

[00:32:00] things in the back of your mind, like, "Well, yeah, you know, next year I could do this." And I remember at some point, I don't know how old my kids were pretty young and 'cause I worked in advertising as well, and one of my clients was a winery, like one of the three largest wine conglomerates in the entire United States. So of course, wine was a huge part of my world. And I remember coming home after a very stressful day and saying to my kids, "Oh my gosh, mom needs a glass of wine, and then I can deal with blah, blah, blah, blah, blah." Like, it never, ever, ever, ever occurred to me that that might not be the best way to position - Yeah ... alcohol with my kids. But it was just that, especially when you're in that culture, like- Mm-hmm in advertising, and maybe this is how it was for your mom, 4:00, sometimes 3:00, the... Because we also had an airline as a client, we 

[00:33:00] literally had an airline cart that they complete- Like, we got it from our client, the airline, and then we decked it out and we had a little, like, fun committee, and they would start about 3:00, between 3:00 and 4:00, and roll the cart through the entire agency serving drinks. Yeah. That was just- Yeah ... it- It's just part of it. I mean, and it's everywhere that you look. It is and I am like, no shame about this, we still have friends over. We still, go to the Mexican restaurants. We still do all the things, but now I'm just, like, hyper-aware of how it's just- Right everywhere. Yeah and it's a part of it and I don't have it all figured out because I am in the middle of it. None of us do. None of us do. Join the Don't Have It Figured Out club. Yeah ... I would love to tap into your wisdom and all the insights you have around mother-daughter relationships, 'cause I know you do a lot of work in that area. I have four boys. I 

[00:34:00] don't know what it's like to be a mother to a daughter. I know what it's like to be a daughter to a mother and fortunately, I have a really great one. But, Great ... I see a lot of the moms in our community, the mother-daughter relationship is unique and special and complex. Maybe not as complex as yours. I think you take the cake on- ... that level of complexity and if you read Therapy After Mom Died, you will understand why. But talk a little bit about that and why you're so passionate about helping mothers and daughters in particular really connect in, in a real way. Yeah. So once I realized that meeting my mom gave me this, completely different perspective and access to a new way of navigating how I felt about myself, how I felt about the world, that really- Shine the 

[00:35:00] light to me on how important the mother-daughter relationship is Mm-hmm Like, every parental relationship is important, but there was something extremely impressionable and powerful about how I was connecting with my mom, the woman who birthed me. Yeah. Right? There was something that, I mean, it just felt extraordinary, and it felt just like this, you know, monumental thing that nothing else could be and because I was, adopted, I thought it was that. I thought, "Man, I'm experiencing this, like, ripple, explosive relationship because of my dynamic." The more and more I would talk to my friends, other women, and I would hear the effect that their mother-daughter relationship would have on their life, I was like, "Oh, while my situation is complex the dynamic is the same." Mm. Right? I am hearing how important this relationship is, whether it's 

[00:36:00] healthy, whether it's unhealthy, whether there was lots of conflict, super close. I realized very quickly that the mother-daughter relationship was pivotal. It was an essential part of how these women, my friends, my colleagues, how people were... These women were walking around in the world, and what they felt about their mother, what they felt about the relationship they had, whether they were saying it or not, I was just observing how important and how impactful it was. And after my experience with my mom, and having the beautiful opportunity to walk her all the way to the end- Mm ... of life and do it our way- Mm-hmm ... and do it in this curated ... I say that because I'm just like, we were like, "Let's just have a lot of fun, and let's be honest, and let's do these things." When I, when we did it that way, I thought, "Man-" There has to be a way that we can craft and 

[00:37:00] structure support for mother-daughter relationships so that they don't get stuck. Yeah. So that they have someone they can talk to, so they have activities they can do, so they have conversations they can have. So I wrestled with that, and it just would not leave me alone. I tried to outrun it. I tried to bury myself, and I was climbing the ladder at a hospital. I was like, "I'm gonna be the chief information officer." I was director of IT, and this work just kept calling me every day. I was obsessed with the mother-daughter relationship. The stories were just falling in my lap. People would just come to me, and it was so blatant in my face. I have my own daughter. My grandmother lives with us, and I finally told my husband, "I have got to focus on this. This has to be my work in the world," which is helping mothers and daughters heal, because the relationship is too important not to intervene. Like, I've gotta do something. Yeah. And it sounds, like, corny. It was a 

[00:38:00] calling that I could not run from, and so now that I'm still obsessed with it. I am obsessed with the relationship every day. I've got a mother-daughter community walk coming up. We've got 200 mothers and daughters that are just coming to experience connection and a slow morning together, and I'm always- Mm ... thinking about how can I help in these micro and macro ways mothers and daughters connect. I want them to bond. I want them to fix it. I want them to just have... Oh, my God. It's like a gift. When I hear a mother and daughter who comes, because I have a therapy program, and I've got therapists that'll see the mother-daughter pairs biweekly. When I hear the stories I'm just like, "Yes, another one." Like, ah- Yes. It's like a... Yes. I'm like, "We got it, another mother, daughter feeling better about themselves," and I'm just like, that's how I know I'm doing the work I'm supposed to be doing.  It's massive because you see patterns 

[00:39:00] over time, what would you say are some of the, maybe the top two or three fractures that you see or things that get in the way of mothers and daughters having the kind of relationship that is healthy and supportive and all of those things? Just, I'm just curious if you've seen- Yeah ... some typical things that you see over and over, like, "Oh, there that is again." Yeah. Of course. I have been surprised by the trends and patterns we've been seeing because I was thinking there was, like, this lack of love or this lack of attention that was happening, and that's not it. You know, these mothers and daughters, there's not a lack of love, there's not a lack... Like, there is still a desire to be close, but there's a lack of healing, there's a lack of feeling understood. Mm. And the teen years are really rough on a mom and a daughter. Teen years are, 

[00:40:00] they're hormonal, there's so much identity. There's all these things at play, and so getting through and surviving the teenage years with a daughter are really, really difficult and complex without support and so what we see is, 'cause we do 14 and up- Mm ... so we see very different things, but our sweet spot we've seen are these 30, 30 to 40-year-old daughters who want to talk about their teen years- Interesting and their young adult. They, that is what we see, and I'm like, "Okay." And it seems to be this pattern of I want my mom to come and I wanna talk about what happened in these years that caused the disconnect for us. Mm. I wanna talk about what she was going through. I wanna talk about why I feel like she doesn't know me and I was thinking we were gonna have this explosion of young, you know, moms with teenage daughters, and we do have some, but the sweet spot on what we're seeing, and it's a 

[00:41:00] lot of daughters who now have their own kids and so it's the cycle of now I'm raising my kids, you're now a grandmother. Yeah. And I want us to work on why I don't feel understood, why I don't feel connected to you, you know? Why I feel like you're not showing up for me the way I need you to now that I'm a mother and we're actually seeing a lot of just old wounds- Mm ... being talked through with a therapist in a safe way, in a structured way where they're able to actually do something about it. So, they're talking about the wound, talking about the hurt, healing together with the therapist, having conversations that maybe they've had 100 times before, but it's different now because the therapist is helping them not interrupt each other. Get your side out, get your side out, and helping them actually mend.

[00:42:00] And so we're seeing a lot of I don't feel heard, I don't feel like my mom understands me. And now we've created this scale, this mother-daughter relationship scale, and it's eight questions, and it's getting us crystal clear on what's happening. We ask, you know, "Do you trust your mom? Do you respect your mom? Do you feel comfortable spending time?" So we've got these eight questions that we baseline. Then after you've spent three months with us, we ask those same questions again and six months we ask the same questions. The goal is your trust between each other grows, your respect for each other grows, your quality time that you spend together grow. You know, that's what we're trying to do. We're trying to engage them in a way that helps heal and also brings the components of their relationship that were low, we wanna bring that up. We want you to trust each other. Yeah. We want you to feel respected. We want 

[00:43:00] you to feel like you understand your mom. But to get there, you've gotta, you gotta talk and in my opinion, talking with a therapist present, having activities that you do that you're really intentional and focused is a lot better and a lot easier to navigate than trying to do it on your own. Or do it with tequila. I think, think your therapist idea is a good one. Very good one. I think it just, it just helps the process a bit. It definitely does. Yeah. And how interesting is it that you started out this journey with therapy like, "I'm doing this in 10 sessions, thank you very much. I don't need more than that," and now look at you. I know. I know. Anytime something feels off I'm like, "I'm going for a tune-up. I gotta, " "... let me find... You know, I will hop in and out of therapy so quick now. But before I was like, "Let's just get this on the, let's get this show on the road." But now 

[00:44:00] I trust it, I believe in it and I know that I need it when things are just going off the rails and I hope I'm modeling that for my kids. Like, my daughter will tell people all the time, "Oh, we have a mother-daughter app. Like, it's ours." And-  Oh, I love that ... they, yeah. So that my kids know, like, what we're doing is we're matching therapists with these families so they can work through their issues, and I'm hoping that's doing something in the background for them. Hoping. It's beautiful because I think what that tells them is therapy isn't something where you have to go and get fixed because something's broken. Therapy should just be woven through, if you're fortunate enough to be able to afford it and all that, to weave it into your life as just another sounding board- So you can learn more about yourself. And why am I doing things this way, and why do we do these things when we're together, and you know. Yeah. So I think it's a really positive message for them to see, oh, this is just something that you do. It isn't like, oh, something's wrong with you, why are you going to therapy, 

[00:45:00] you know? Yeah. Yeah. There was one, I mean, one powerful thing that one of our therapists said, and I have now brought that into my own parenting journey, but I just hadn't thought about it this way. She said she loves that we assign these activities between the therapy sessions, right? So we assign a bonding activity, we assign them to do a journal, things to keep them engaged between and I asked her, I said, "What do you think the importance of us doing that is, besides just doing the talk therapy?"And she said, "Well, a lot of parents will try to fix or correct their child, but they're not connected to their child." Mm. Right? They're not connected to their daughter. So she said, "What we're doing is we're creating these micro simple moments of connection that build safety so that when they do want to offer some correction, they have the connection. They have created that, and it's not this big, hard 

[00:46:00] conversation and now you trust me and now we're safe," she said. Right. It's the little simple moments, and you have to connect before you correct them and I was like, "Oh." Makes sense. That makes a lot of sense. Makes a lot of sense. Yes, the building that up and at the same time, you learn a lot about somebody when you're doing a little activity or a game or something like that. You start to see the personality, like the uniqueness of that person's personality that you might not see if you don't take the time to engage in an activity and I think a lot of what you said that you hear from the folks that work with you guys, that people are saying, "My mom doesn't know me," and how heartbreaking is that, right? Like, the person who, maybe it's an adoptive mom, but if they birthed you into the world, either way, like, that's the person who's probably 

[00:47:00] been the closest to you physically and emotionally in all kinds of proximities and yet you're saying, "She doesn't know me." It's painful. It's so painful. It's painful. Because, you know, on our scale, on the survey that we give them, it is very common to see a mom answer the question of, "I feel like I understand my daughter" very high, right? We've got, agree, strongly agree, and then it is very common to see the daughter when she says, "I feel," the question, "I feel understood by my mother," to be very low. And you see that disconnect. The mom says, "I strongly agree." Mm-hmm. "I understand my daughter," and daughter says, "I strongly disagree. I do not feel understood." And I'm thinking, they're just passing ships. They're literally missing it and feeling like, you know. But it's painful as a mom to hear your daughter say, "I don't feel like you understand me," and you think you've 

[00:48:00] got it completely. But then it's saying, "Okay, I want to. I want to." Yeah. And having the desire and saying, "Okay, I thought I understood you. I'm sorry. I want to understand you the way you want me to. Let's go deeper. Let's talk further. Give me more so that I do understand you." And doing that in the presence of a therapist is softer and safer. Absolutely and I think you could still do that without a therapist, but it would be much harder- Yeah ... because we let our own, we let our own defensiveness get in the way. Like, "Well, of course you under- of course I underst- you know, I know all of this about you." And so we let that stuff come up if we're trying to do this just between ourselves. So I love the idea of having a therapist, even if it's not forever, but somebody to guide you in how to have these conversations. Yeah. So like you, maybe you go to 10 sessions and then you know, like, okay, now we know how to have this 

[00:49:00] conversation. 'Cause sometimes I think people hear therapy and they think it's like a lifetime sentence. And it's like, no. Yeah. It's actually, we can learn a lot just by learning how to have conversations with each other, how to- Right ... lower our defenses, right? So, well, I think that's it's so beautiful what you're doing. Can you tell people how they would find how to connect with you? Because I think there's probably a lot of little bells going off in people's brains right now. I can hear them right now through the podcast machine.  Yeah. So passportjourneys.org. And we've got two ways, two paths. So if one of you live in Texas, either the mother or the daughter, all of our therapists are licensed in Texas. We can do the therapy path. If you're not in Texas and you're joining from anywhere else in the world, we do have a global hub of resources and you can join, and it'll have like these activities, and have these 

[00:50:00] conversations, have these things that you can start doing with your daughter or with your mother without a therapist. So they're self-guided, and so passportjourneys.org  I love it. I love it. What a cool, cool thing. I just... Wow. It's gonna be helpful. Now, you gotta find a guy who can do this for the dads and the sons. I know. I know. I'm sure people have said that to you before. My husband said... Oh, all the time, and my husband said, "I'm gonna let you do all the hard work of like, you know, figuring it all out, and then I'll just copy it. I'll just do it for...""I'll take your framework," and I'm like, "You know, that's not a bad idea. I do feel a little bit offended, but it's not a bad idea." It's not a bad idea. I know. Well, we... You know, our community is only for moms and people, and I feel bad. Like, I know the guys need support too, but I don't know. I can't do it. I'm not a dad. I don't have that experience. So anyway. Well, if you find a guy, let me know and I will do the same and you'll do the same thing. I will. Just give 'em the framework and say, "You can do 

[00:51:00] what we do for moms. You know, I... You guys need this help too." Like Yes. Well, tell us the exciting news, because it sounds like there's a bit of a production in the works that I would love for people to know about. Yes. So right now, I am working on a movie script. So a film about the, you know, the, my story, about the things that I've shared with you guys today, things I share in the book. And so we're gonna be shopping it over the next six months and hope to get it bought by one of the streamers and but it is an incredible script, a mother-daughter love story, going through all of the ups and downs and what that looks like. And so I really hope to see this film made in a beautiful way so that it can touch others and bring moms and daughters closer. That's my goal. Mm. It's gotta be a little, I would imagine, like it's so personal, right? 'Cause it's your story, and then you're sort of like ripping your 

[00:52:00] whole heart wide open to the world. I mean, a book is one thing, but like bringing it to life on screen would be- Yeah ... crazy. When they sent the first draft of the script, I read it, and it was like an out-of-body experience. I was reading my character, my mom's character. I was reading the scenes, and I thought, "I don't even know what to do with this. This is like..." Again, we talk about this. Mine. Yes. I don't... i'm still, it's unreal to me. Until like, actually see it, I'm just like, "What are we doing here?" It's incredible. It's wild Well, I will be in the front row the first day it comes out. Absolutely. So thank you so much for your time. You're welcome. Thanks for telling us your story and some thoughts on mother-daughter relationships. I know it is something that is so tricky, and I love what you're doing. Thank you for doing it. Thank you for bringing a space into the world 

[00:53:00] where mothers and daughters can heal, and then that just rolls down at generation after generation, right? So- Absolutely ... the more healed we are, then the more healed our kids are and lucky for your kids, too. Yeah. Yeah. It's not too late. If there's a mom who's been listening to our conversation and you're thinking, "Man, it's, I've, we've had some rough times," or, "I'm feeling really down," I wanna leave you with it's not too late. There's... Repair is possible for you and your daughter. Mm-hmm. So that may be for someone. Someone needed to hear that, for sure. Thank you, Lacey. I appreciate it so much. Thank you