CPS: Once, twice, thrice.

 After her father unjustifiably called CPS on her... THREE TIMES,  Briar shares with us how to cope as well as thrive after estrangement. Briar also shares her view on forgiveness and how it had led to a thriving life helping others cope with similar trauma and loss.

If you would like more information about this guest, please click the link below or send us and email at wtbbpodcast@gmail.com

http://www.briarharvey.com

https://buymeacoffee.com/wtbbpod

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

The following is a Kingfisher Media podcast. You are listening to When the Bell Breaks with your host, Alexis Aralim. The following content may be disturbing for some listeners. Discretion is advised.

SPEAKER_02: 0:21

So tell me a little bit about you and how you decided to be on this show.

SPEAKER_01: 0:30

Oh goodness, where to start? Uh, okay. We'll probably have to start at about 10, my parents divorced. I had a three-year-old brother at the time. My I think up until then, my childhood was relatively normal. Um, and then my mom kind of went nuts and figured out that she could, she decided she didn't want to be a mom anymore, basically, and went off and did a bunch of drugs. So I was 10, my brother was three. We ended up living with my dad full-time, which was not that great either, although at least functional and stable through my early teenage years. And then let's see, my mom died when I was twenty one. I had just given birth to my first child. Our very last conversation involved her asking me for money to bail her boyfriend out of jail. I said no. She called me a cunt, and then she died two weeks later. My dad uh was up and down with him as a teenager when my daughter was six. My daughter is autistic, and at six years old, she was still not potty trained, and she was nonverbal. And we were sort of working with early intervention at the time, but we were we were living in Phoenix, and public school at that point for her involved putting her in a classroom with about 40 other students, half of whom did not speak English.

unknown: 2:40

Right.

SPEAKER_01: 2:40

And she was nonverbal. So we were we were obviously we were struggling with this a lot. My father was in a different state, not around. So my younger brother got married, and we went out. My daughter and I went out, and when we got back, he promptly, rather than ever having a conversation with me, or you know, doing normal parent type things, right, called CPS on me and reported me for endangering my child. Not once, not twice, three times. At which point I cut him off. Right. And that meant, you know, I cut him off. That m also meant cutting my stepmother off, which was no loss there, but it also meant losing my brothers, which was a loss. Right. You know, I would I'd send them Facebook messages for their birthdays for several years, and then I realized one day that that was the only contact I had with them, that they never reached out and talked to me. Right. And all I ever wanted, you know, was an apology. This was I wanted my father to admit that he had behaved badly, that he had misjudged me, and that I was doing the best that I because he had decided that I was on drugs. And that was that was the nature of his report. Not not that there might be something wrong with my child that I was working on. He had decided that I was on drugs, and so I was endangering my child, and that was it. There was no conversation whatsoever. Right. And I just I just wanted him to acknowledge that he'd fucked up. Can I cuss? Yes, yes. Yes, you can.

SPEAKER_02: 4:41

I allowed myself to start cussing in therapy because I was like, I need to be able to like really say what I feel. And so I started out, so I was like, when I started the show, I was like, I I don't think we can talk about any of this stuff and not be, you know, not ever have a curse word slip out. So I was like, I'm just gonna make the whole show explicit and let everyone know and just give everyone the freedom to say what they feel they need to say. So yeah, you can you can talk freely.

SPEAKER_01: 5:07

Sometimes they're the only words that work. So that was, yeah. So that was the loss of my brothers, that was the loss of my father. I have since lost the rest of my father's family. I lost most of my mom's family when she died simply because she was the one that anchored me to her family. So I have a I have a maternal aunt that I speak to about once or twice a year, and that's it. That's the sum total of my relationship with my family. And I miss them often, but I don't miss the drama, and I certainly don't miss the toxic behavior, and I don't miss the gaslighting and the rewriting of my history. Right. Which happened so relentlessly. I remember when my husband and I first met, I explained to him, you know, as we started dating, the nature of my family. And it's not that he didn't believe me, but he just had no experience with what these kind of behavior patterns look like. Right. It took, it took actually, so what it really took was my mom grabbing his ass and my dad threatening to beat him up, and those were two separate conversations for him to go, oh wow, yes, your family is fucked up.

SPEAKER_02: 7:03

Right. Yeah, and it took my spouse a while to really like understand. Like when he first started, he started noticing things even before, like, like this was all my normal, right? So he comes into the picture and he's like, Do they always treat you like that? Like, what do you mean? Yes, and he's like, Do they always talk to you like that? I was like, Well, it's just that's just how they are. He's like, That's not right. Like, he's like, we didn't treat each other, he's like, My family had problems, we didn't treat each other that way, and so it's like, yeah, I get that.

SPEAKER_01: 7:35

You know, and you recognize, I think, even as small children, we recognize fundamentally that there's a lot of behavior that's not quite right, but because it's totally normalized and tolerated, yeah. Exactly. That we we internalize it in ways that I mean continue to manifest well into adulthood. I'm almost 40, and there are still things like I at about 20 or so, I realized that I apologize to everyone all of the time for everything, and so I stopped. And in sto I mean, and then I went the other way. I I now have a very difficult time apologizing, even when I have done something wrong, and I know that I need to apologize because it feels so conditioned that I need to apologize for something, not because I'm wrong, but because I exist.

SPEAKER_02: 8:34

Is it because you want to make sure that like you're you you are um communicating that for the right reasons? Like, is it because you don't want to you don't want to feel like you're apologizing because you're conditioned to apologize? You want to make sure that it's like sincere and genuine for you? Is that what you mean?

SPEAKER_01: 8:50

Yeah, that's what it's become for me. And so those apologies have become very difficult. Very difficult. I've overcre corrected to not apologizing at all, which I'm trying to get better about.

SPEAKER_02: 9:06

I was gonna say, what's the contrast? Like, what are the pros to that? Because it sounds like, yeah, because I whenever I made changes, like sometimes I'd be like, I'd make a change and be like, oh, this is working really good, but then I'd like go to the extreme, be like, okay, we'll like fall back a little bit, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 9:24

Well, that's fine, but then I'm not going to apologize to you. And sometimes that really doesn't feel that great.

SPEAKER_02: 9:33

So when so when do you now feel like it's appropriate for you to apologize in situations? Because that's like because I was always I was raised the same way. How do you feel about you know apologizing for things now? I know you said it's difficult, but you know, when you do apologize, where's kind of like your line for that?

SPEAKER_01: 9:56

I so this sounds counterintuitive, but now I apologize for me. I apologize because I feel like I need to apologize. Not that I need a po that I don't need an apology accepted anymore. That's where the transactional difference is for me. It's no longer about having an apology accepted because for so long I would apologize and expect to be, you know, forgiven. It's conditional forgiveness, right? You know, it's not real can forgiveness, but it that's what you were supposed to be receiving. So now when I apologize, I'm not looking for forgiveness. I'm looking to apologize because it makes me feel better.

SPEAKER_02: 10:50

Yeah. So what was it like for you growing up? Like because you had those views of or you know, the conditional forgiveness kind of thing, what was it like for you with your relationships with your family when someone would wrong each other?

SPEAKER_01: 11:15

Man, that's a tough question. I was definitely the black sheep of the family. So and I'm not sure I can readily identify which of my brothers was the golden child, just that I was not, right? And so there were a lot of things that were very stacked and weighted against me. I honestly have to believe that some of it was due to the fact that I was not a boy. And because I was treated much differently as a small child before my brother was born. I think that I was the golden child for a while, and then my brother was born, and then I was not.

SPEAKER_02: 12:10

That happens sometimes. They switch roles. Yeah, sometimes like um I hear you using like a lot of terms we hear like in the narcissistic personality kind of thing. I don't want to ask like if they're if that's what they have or anything like that, but like it you're using a lot of those terms, and so I'm thinking that's kind of maybe what it is, but yeah, the black sheep, I I get I get that whole thing. Like some parents they'll pick one kid that's like doesn't belong or whatever, and then there's one kid that kind of like outshines everyone else and can kind of do no wrong, but I feel like also there's those narcissistic parents or have narcissistic narcissistic tendencies, maybe not the personality, but they kind of pick and choose whatever's convenient for them at the time, like if this child is showing them more attention or more gratitude, you know, more uh causing better attention for them or something like that, they might be favored more. And then when the other kid does something good, then they're going to be showered and with attention and stuff like that. So it kind of can switch roles and leaving everyone confused sometimes.

SPEAKER_01: 13:18

Oh, definitely, definitely. And you know, I think it's important to know. So my mother was diagnosed bipolar. My father has not been diagnosed anything, but he is most certainly a narcissist.

SPEAKER_02: 13:33

And I but I feel like it's important to note that while I use the language, I yeah, it's hard because I'll I can I can maybe explain about it's hard getting people in the door to get help for this and to even get a diagnosis for for these issues. And so, and and it's not like we're trying to label narcissists as any kind of you know bad person per se, but it's like they do have um certain tendencies that cause a lot of um friction and a lot of um chaos and confusion um in their relationships. And so it's hard to talk about it without being so negative because it's not a whole there's not a whole lot of positive aside from you know the actual person, what's really in there, besides aside from what they actually like do to you that hurts you. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_01: 14:25

Yes, you've nailed it. It's it's it's really, you know, and narcissism aside, my dad was also a functional, probably still is a functional alcoholic. He was two, three a day plus a bottle of wine with my stepmom. So, you know, there was always these degrees of what was tolerated versus not tolerated, and you just you learn so many different coping techniques to protect yourself as a child that then do not serve you as an adult.

SPEAKER_02: 15:02

You go out into the world and you try and do these things, and you end up jeopardizing relationships because you're using your coping skills that you actually developed out of necessity as a child that aren't exactly healthy, but that were serving you for the time. Yeah, no, I get that. I still have some of those things that that, yeah, like my sleep habits. Like, I didn't sleep through the night when I was a kid ever. Like I had nightmares like every single night, and I had a hard time going to sleep because I knew once I was asleep I'd have nightmares, but I still knew I needed to sleep. So I used to like figure out how to sleep. I used to do these things in my head at night, but then they were like making me nuts at night, and then it became where it wasn't wasn't enough, so I had to obsess about something else to think about was when I was going to sleep, so it became like frustrating mentally, you know, and it wasn't working. It was like as an adult, just I was like, I need to clear my brain, not put more stuff in it. So I had to switch what I was doing to calm myself because yeah, it doesn't work when you're an adult, that stuff doesn't always serve you forever.

SPEAKER_01: 16:11

No, but because you're not taught healthy techniques as a child, you don't know any better. And because you don't know any better, you build these layers of things that become very difficult to dismantle in reverse, right?

SPEAKER_02: 16:25

And sometimes they're intertwined also. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 16:30

All of these habits and behaviors that we do to protect ourselves that become very, very detrimental, yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 16:38

So regarding your estrangement, you know, from your dad, and you said that, you know, kind of after that everything kind of there was like a domino effect of like losing your relationships with other family members. Did you go through like any kind of grief during that, or was it just kind of like you just were able to kind of acknowledge it and you know, like what were your feelings during that time?

SPEAKER_01: 17:07

Oh well, I still grieve. So uh let's see, it's been almost five years now. Uh, in 2014, my youngest brother was getting married. I had actually planned on going to his wedding. I was all set to go and buy a ticket when I found out I was pregnant. And my due date was exactly a week after his wedding, and no airline in their right mind would let me get on a plane. So I put off canceling and letting him know and put it off and put it off and put it off. And then when I was 36 weeks pregnant, I suffered a complete placental abruption. I very nearly died. The baby did die. Yes. And so at the time, the only person I really was still on speaking terms with was my maternal aunt. And I called her and I told her what happened. And she was going to my brother's wedding. And she called me when she got back, and she told me what had happened at the wedding, and apparently she was defending me to my father and stepmother. And so they knew we were we were completely no contact at this point in time. So but they knew, heard, understood that I had had a child die and still didn't reach out. And that was another kind of loss, right? Because my god, this is my father. Shouldn't if anybody should be able to empathize with me on some level, it should be my fucking dad. But no, never heard, never heard a word. Never heard a word.

SPEAKER_02: 19:22

So I mean, grief is something that's hard to explain. Like, what did that look like for you? Like you just lost your child and your dad didn't reach out, and all this stuff is going on. Like, how did you get through that time?

SPEAKER_01: 19:37

So for me, systems became very, very important. I had two other kids that I was actively homeschooling. I had a business that that that part imploded, but that's a different story for a different day. Oh, gotcha. But I I I had to I had to rebuild my life piece by piece and because of the abruption I uh I lost a lot of blood and I was anemic for months afterward. So I was tired all of the time. And I would I would get up and I would make my bed and then I would collapse right back on it. But there but there was also the making of the bed. There had to be the making of the bed because it was the it was the thing in an extreme loss when you've lost a spouse or a child the the the little decisions, what to eat, where to go, what to do, those things just become insurmountable. And so it's having little routines make it that much easier to not have to make a decision.

SPEAKER_02: 20:58

Right, right. Like making your bed, like you said, like yeah, everybody says, Oh, yeah, make your bed in the morning, but it's like so often we get busy and we just don't do it, or if we're going through a tough time, we're not thinking about that, or we really haven't had time to, you know, really do anything. But then we get out of bed, and if we don't make the stink in bed, we're just gonna get back in it. Right, right. So it's like, and then when you start making the bed, it's like put the pillows on. Okay, well, then you're up and you're doing stuff, and then it yeah, it creates like another domino effect of everything else you kind of need to do. It's like getting up and then just getting started sometimes, like you said, it's just like the hardest thing.

SPEAKER_01: 21:35

I find for people who manage grief that it is in many ways, even if there's not clinical diagnosed depression, it's obviously it functions in much the same way. Yeah, right. For me, I am diagnosed bipolar as well as with generalized anxiety disorder, and now I have post-traumatic stress disorders. So I have this laundry list of oh yes, it's so fun and exciting. And the thing that gets me through it, besides drugs, obviously the drugs help, is being able to predict what's going to happen next. Because as unpredictable as life is and has been for my entire life, these are self-defense mechanisms.

SPEAKER_02: 22:31

Right. You're trying to the anxiety is um is the fear of the unknown or the fear of the future, and so because you're always trying to prepare for it, like something I've been through a lot of shitty things, like something really shitty could happen in this situation, like, and then you really start getting anxious, excuse me, you really start getting anxious, and then you know, like you said, like you get that flight or fight, like you're not sure, and yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 22:57

People who have experienced uh tragedy or loss uh and and manage to thrive from it, and the people who don't is what happened is that people who thrive tend to not catastrophize. And that's for people like us, that that's instinct, right? I catastrophize because that was protection, right? So you have to really unlearn specifically those behaviors to to be able to relearn and rediscover the joy in your life, and that for for me definitely, I would not have been able to done have done that if my the the blessing in disguise is that he didn't contact me because I wouldn't have been able to do it with my father in my life. Right if if he had somehow contacted me, I probably would have forgiven him, and then I would have invited that toxicity back into my life, right, through trauma bonding, right? Right, and there's no whether we miss them or not, there's for some relationships, there's no there's no recovery, there is nothing to be redeemed there whether I miss my father or not, there is no part of that relationship that I am ever going to be able to welcome back into my life in a way that will make me feel safe. Right. So that's it. And I but I had to learn that I had to I had to go through my own trauma to really realize that I'm not forgiving him or me for him. I'm I'm forgiving I'm I'm doing it for me. I have to move on past the boundaries of our relationship. And I have to in order to do that, forgiveness is involved, right? Right. This is something we talk about a lot in therapy. You have to forgive to move on, but I'm not doing it for him. Right. I'm doing it for me.

SPEAKER_02: 25:30

Even if you do forgive him, it doesn't change anything for him.

SPEAKER_01: 25:33

No, it does not.

SPEAKER_02: 25:34

Yeah. Right.

SPEAKER_01: 25:36

I and the often in these kinds of familial situations, you have to ask, does this person actually deserve to be forgiven? Have they earned forgiveness? Because forgiveness, I have learned, is a gift. It's something that I that comes from within that I give to myself. If my relationship with him does not benefit from that, then it's not ever gonna be about him or for him. It's always going to be for me and my healing.

SPEAKER_02: 26:18

Right. You're not responsible for his healing. No, yeah, you're responsible for yours.

SPEAKER_01: 26:25

Exactly.

SPEAKER_02: 26:26

Yeah. No, I think that's a great approach to it because so many times we're expected to be people pleasers, and you know, I think that the world is coming to find out that you have to kind of make your own happiness. You have to kind of create that for yourself, you have to create environments where you're around people who care about you and who are for you. You can't ex you can't change people, and you can't uh deny who you are in order to please others, and forgiveness isn't something that that is something tangible that we can hand someone, it's just releasing that debt, it just frees you, you know.

SPEAKER_01: 27:05

Exactly, exactly. If I hadn't been able to forgive and move on, I certainly haven't forgotten, and that because I can't, right?

SPEAKER_02: 27:18

You some some behaviors are not forgettable, and some keep continuing, which makes it more difficult for us to keep providing forgiveness. And that, you know, it's not like um, you know, I at first when I was first estranged, you know, people kept saying, Well, why did you stop talking that what happened? And I was like, Well, it wasn't really one thing that just happened. Yeah, there was one thing that kind of initially uh, you know, gave me the uh idea that yeah, it's time to cut it off, but it was a whole lifetime of things.

SPEAKER_01: 27:50

And I couldn't just break camel's back is not ever actually the right, right.

SPEAKER_02: 27:59

It was it was like after I'd you know spent time trying to fix things, and you know, yeah, it was the last straw. I was like, okay, I can only handle it up to this point, and then finally it got up to that point, but I wasn't able to forgive them until after I cut it off from them. I wasn't able to forgive them if I was if I was still in that relationship in that situation because they were still gonna keep doing it, they were just gonna keep piling up their debt against me, really. And so once I cut it off, I could forgive, and then there's no more new debt building piling up, so I can deal with my own stuff. Is that yeah, that makes sense? Like, yeah, that's I don't know, that's kind of how I felt about it. When did you start feeling better, you know, after that?

SPEAKER_01: 28:41

It's always a process. I mean, I still every year when my brother's birthdays roll by, I think of them and miss them a little bit. I grief itself is a process. I have lots of little rituals for the things that I did for, you know, I plant my mom died on Earth Day, so I always plant flowers or seeds on Earth Day. And I always do something for my son's birthday. But there's no there's a there's no real like anniversary in which to commemorate this kind of loss, and in a way that presents a difficulty because I at least have some I d man, I hadn't even thought about this. I mean maybe if I could do it on a birthday or say, no, this is this is this is good. Like I should find someday where I can go, hmm, hi dad, fuck you. I is that horrible.

SPEAKER_02: 29:55

Well, it isn't it isn't because no, I gotta tell you, like, I tried so hard not to talk about myself on my own show, but like, no, that happened to me. Like, um, you know, a lot of my nightmares I mentioned, I had them all my life, and you know, my mom she said it was because I had a demon inside of me. And I was like seven years old. I'm like seven years old, so now I'm really freaking out, okay? Like, oh my god, like now I gotta worry about this. So I'm like seven, I'm like shitting my pants practically because of what my mother said. But I had these these uh nightmares all through my life, like even as an adult, they got worse. Like when I got married, my husband would leave for work like kind of early and I'd still be asleep, and immediately when he would leave, I would start having nightmares again. So I was having like separation anxiety like as an adult because of this stupid nightmares, and it wasn't until like it wasn't until one day I told my sister, I was like, Okay, I can't talk to you anymore. Because I was like, because you keep treating me the way that I don't like to be treated, and I can't do this anymore. And then my nightmares, they stopped, and it took me several weeks to kind of figure out like why they stopped. And I was like, and I have not had nightmares like that since, and it's been it's been like four years of a nightmare free. Like, I don't know, like what kind of freaking miracle is that? I mean, you say no and stuff happens subconsciously, like it happens, yeah.

SPEAKER_01: 31:20

Yeah, that's yeah. I'm I'm gonna actually have to put some thought into that because I do I'm never going to have a relationship. I I say never. The odds of me having a relationship with my father are virtually nil. That said, I would still like to, I don't know, mourn that loss. Right. So I think there is something in that for me. I do because my relationship with my mom was obviously very toxic in and of itself, but I still have the ability to kind of memorialize that every year for her. And there it would feel good to me to have some kind of way to memorialize what were the good parts of my relationship with my father, because there were a few. A few. Sure, sure. Right. What were some of those things? Oh, my favorite. When my dad was in the early 80s, my dad lost his job. He was a landman, and he had to go and get a job to pay the bills, delivering milk. So his hours changed completely. And for the first time in my life, he was home when I got home from school. And this was before my brother was born, and he would fix me a bowl of at that time my favorite snack was sliced strawberries with some milk on it. And we would sit on the front porch and we would talk about school that day. And it was lovely.

SPEAKER_02: 33:16

So when you think about those things, I know that you said there's a little bit of good there, but there must be some sadness too.

SPEAKER_01: 33:26

Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 33:28

Yeah. Yeah. I feel like sometimes I have no happy memories really, because I feel like they're always attached to something really bad that happened. Do you feel like that sometimes?

SPEAKER_01: 33:38

Oh yeah, because I can tell you the how the rest of that story goes is that after he found, so he he hated being a milkman, so he went and got a job as a li as an in oil and gas in North Dakota, where he then proceeded to have an affair, which is the antecedent to my parents' divorce. Right. I mean, there were still he taught me how to drive. Aside from the yelling, I do have slightly fond memories of that one.

SPEAKER_02: 34:16

Right, right. Aside from the yelling, yeah, I can say that too.

SPEAKER_01: 34:19

And now I have a teenage daughter. So as the parent of a teenager, I can the yelling is totally excusable. And in fact, there are so many things in my life that, you know, I'll look back on and go, yeah, I really was a terrible teenager. I would have, if if, if I had a good relationship with him, I would totally call and apologize for being a bitch when I was a teenager.

SPEAKER_02: 34:47

Right, right. So, how did you get to like from there to like what you're doing now? Like, what are you doing now? Like, since your estrangement and everything, how are things different for you now?

SPEAKER_01: 35:00

Well, so it's been let's see. My daughter will be 18 this year. My brother's wedding was 12 years ago, so it's been 12 years. Uh I since we've been completely and totally non-contact. I would have dealt with him for my younger brother's wedding had I been able to go to that, but that would have been the only breach I have not seen or heard from him otherwise. So, you know, now I do I do systems work, and that was mostly for me born out of the death of my son. Prior to that, I was working as a relationship coach. And it was difficult to work with people on their postpartum relationships because that's mostly what I was doing when I didn't have a baby of my own. Yeah, that was it must have been rough. So I kind of didn't work for a couple years. My husband supported us, and then I got slowly back into writing, and I did some ghostwriting and copywriting, and now I'm doing course design and systems work. And you know, I am surprisingly not a prostitute. I am amazingly still married to my husband of almost 20 years now. We'll be so we'll be renewing our vows next year. I'm not inviting anyone in my family. I might invite my aunt, but there's no one else I really wish to invite because they haven't been a part of my life for the last 20 years. Right. The first time we eloped because I didn't want to deal with the drama of having to of my family at my wedding. And now I don't have to worry about that. So I'm planning, we're planning a big elaborate renewal in my mother-in-law's yard. She is making me this beautiful bespoke gown. I'm just wow. My life is good without my family because I've been able to build my own. It took some time, it took a lot of work, uh, a lot of therapy, a lot of just self-work to be able to get to this place where I don't need my family in my life because I have this beautiful, vibrant family that I've built.

SPEAKER_02: 37:47

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:49

If you are experiencing estrangement from a family member and would like to be a guest, please email us at wtvb podcast at gmail.com. Your privacy is important to us. Guests have the option to remain anonymous.

SPEAKER_02: 38:11

So can you tell me a little bit about like your life coaching stuff?

SPEAKER_01: 38:18

So basically, I work uh I work primarily with uh women mostly who are doing all the things and struggling to implement systems. About half of my clients own their own business, half are working in some other way, and they just have a million things that they're doing all of the time: balls in the air, plates to manage, however, whatever analogy you would like to throw in there. They're doing it all and they don't have time and they feel insane. And I just go in and we prioritize and we take a look at what their values are, and then we build the life they want from that. For women in particular, the ability to say no, and man, so many of us have trauma, right? There's just so much trauma legacy right now. I find in my work that all of my clients deal with some significant disadvantage in some way. It's either mental health or trauma, or it's, you know, racism or sexism or other isms that they're dealing with on a daily basis, oppression that just weights their soul. We so many of us are feeling. This burden right now, and it is self-care then becomes a form of resistance, right? You have to be able to take care of yourself and your life and your surroundings to be able to thrive. It's not a choice anymore to be able to construct your life in a way that's beautiful and healthy for you. And I feel like societally, socially, governmentally, we're not doing the work necessary to make those things happen. And so we have to individually work around the system. I feel like that's the best way for us to so we build and create these structures for ourselves in our lives that allow us to thrive despite the daily onslaught that we're still dealing with. It never goes away for so many of us. It never really goes away. I lost my son, I've lost my family. Those losses have will never go away, but I still have to construct my life in a way that allows me to thrive.

SPEAKER_02: 41:21

It sounds like you just that's what you do for these people. Like it sounds like you're just giving them something that you've learned yourself. How does that make you feel?

SPEAKER_01: 41:35

I really love the work that I do. I I've you know, for a lot of years before my son died, I would I had a lot of little things that I like to do that I siloed off into little different pieces of me. And I've stopped doing that. So I have I have this podcast that I love. We talk about kids' movies. It's called Latch Key Movies. It's adorable, it's absolutely and totally unrelated to any of my work. That's fine. I run a local women's circle where we get together. There's not that many of us yet, but we're building. And as we build, we're growing and supporting each other and creating community because that's what I wanted. And I couldn't find it in quite the way that I wanted it, so I built it. And that's kind of what I continue to go out and do. I'm seeing that there are all of these things that I want in my life and they don't exist, so I just built them.

SPEAKER_02: 42:45

I'm glad that you talk about building community because that was something that I was really trying to kind of bring to the surface here on this show. Because when you estrange yourself from someone or when someone cuts you off, you don't just lose that relationship. You lose like your whole community. Like when I was little, like I was basically scapegoated when I was a child, and I lost my community then. I lost everybody who cared about me. Nobody cared about me at all. I had, and I mean, I had to move out of the house, you know, and find care for myself and how to figure out how to do that, like as a young teen. And uh that was really challenging for me. And so I really love hearing stories from people like you who are out there building communities where there are needs for that kind of community because there's different kinds of communities, right? There's communities for women and men, and co-ed and estranged and mothers, fathers, you know, siblings. I mean, there's all kinds of communities. And I think that each of us has a responsibility to the communities that you know that we need and build this. Is what I was trying to do with the podcast, just trying to build a community of people to figure out how we can support each other. So it's great that you bring that up. I really love that.

SPEAKER_01: 43:56

Community is what keeps us going. I mean, in the aftermath of the death of my son, that was what held me together. My mother-in-law's church sort of adopted us, and they brought us meals and they supported us, and they carried us, and then I had online internet friends who raised money for us and just, you know, community we can't live without it, and we can't always communicate. Yeah. Yeah. We can't count on the ones we're born with, though, necessarily. I I do envy the people who can. I sometimes I look at my husband's family, which is honestly quite dysfunctional in its own ways, and it's still so much more vibrant than what I had to deal with. There were the difference in health of relationships is just phenomenal to me how I mean again, not fully functional because I think most families probably really aren't. I think every family has their dysfunction, but I think that there are degrees. Right.

SPEAKER_02: 45:28

And sometimes there's people willing to do the work to uh fix those problems in the relationship, but then sometimes, like in your case and like in my case, there's they're not. You know, so then we have to build our own communities and move on. Before we end this segment, do you have anything else that you want to talk about or say to our listeners?

SPEAKER_01: 45:51

I think that we've talked a lot about forgiveness, and I think that I have yet to talk about how I uh include that as a daily practice, which is something that's really important to me. Yes, daily thing. I for me, that's a matter of journaling. I use OneNote currently, but really, whatever system you use, whether it's actual ink and paper, morning pages work really well for this as well. Whatever you do, forgiveness is something that you have to really incorporate into your life on a daily basis. You're because it's that gift, right, that you're giving yourself, and because it's for you, you have to be reminded of it. It's right, it's it's kind of like gratitude. You you think you're aware of it, you think you recognize it in your life, but it's not until you go and list those three or five things every day that allow you to recognize oh, there is great abundance in my life. There are things to be grateful for, much like gratitude. Forgiveness works really the same way as a daily practice. I have to acknowledge every single day that I am worth forgiving, that I am worth beautiful things, and that my life has meaning and value and purpose, and that it is okay for me to go out and share that gift with people. And those are hard words to say.

SPEAKER_02: 47:32

Yeah. Well, Briar, I have to say, this has been a really great show. Thank you. It's been it really has such a pleasure to talk with you, Lexi. We'll have to do this again some past. Absolutely.

SPEAKER_00: 47:49

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