February 7, 2024 • 41 mins
Iyanla’s caller this week joins with a very interesting dilemma: Her adult daughter lives in her house, but won’t speak to her. They haven’t talked in two weeks. Iyanla immediately realizes that there’s more to the story – What led up to this and why did she move back home? Iyanla explores what went wrong during parenting that the daughter wants to be re-mothered as an adult.
Do you want to be on the podcast? Follow Iyanla on social media for the latest call-in information!
instagram & twitter: @IyanlaVanzant
facebook: @DrIyanlaVanzant
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
I am a yamla. I had a baby daddy relationship.
I spent time in a relationship with a married man.
I had to learn the skills and tools required to
make my relationships healthy, fulfilling, and loving. Welcome to the
r Spot, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
(00:36):
How many of us, as mothers, loving from a broken place,
raising our children from a broken place, see what our
children do as hurtful to us, not as an opportunity
for healing. When your daughter says or does something that
(00:59):
hurts you, or that scares you, or that reminds you
of your brokenness, rather than seeing that as an opportunity
for healing, we go into making them wrong and trying
to fix the situation, or into denial. The thing that
so many mothers don't understand is that your children know
(01:20):
you from the inside out. They may not know what
they're looking at, they may not have the words for it.
But Mama, that baby know you because she lived in
your body. He lived in your body. This is mothers
and their children. How many mothers live and parent from
(01:42):
their brokenness, from their brokenness, from their wounds, trying not
to do to their children, what was done to them,
trying to give their children more than they didn't have,
trying to do things for their children that weren't done
for them. Loving from your brokenness means you miss the
(02:04):
opportunity to love from the place you are right now.
You love him from the past, your love, and from
what didn't even go on. You're loving from what isn't
going on anymore. You're loving from a brokenness, a woundedness
that may have absolutely nothing to do with what your
(02:26):
child needs, what your child wants, what's good for your child.
You're loving from your lack, your wound, your brokenness, and
that's not what our children need. And what ends up
happening is we are not the parent that they need
us to be. Take a listen. Greetings beloved, and welcome
(02:51):
to the R Spot. Today we are talking about the sacred,
complicated relationship between mothers and daughters. So are you a
mother or a daughter? And what do you bring into
the table?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I am a mother, Okay, I'm hoping to get some
issues result or some help to navigate the conflict that
me and my daughter is having. It appears that we're
going to peer it is that she's very angry with me,
and she says that she's not, but everything that she does,
(03:26):
you know, her actions show that yes you are. But
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
How old is your daughter?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
He's thirty?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
And tell me what is your relationship like? What does
it look like? How do you all interact?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
What's happening right now? It's we live in the same
house and we don't speak to each other, and we
don't speak to each other because she.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Says, wait a minute, hold up, hold up, hold up,
let me take a breath. You'all love to tell these
shocking stories and keep on running. You and her live
in the same house together, Yes, her house or your house?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
My house?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
So your thirty year old daughter lives in a house
with you and doesn't speak to you.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Correct?
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Do you speak to her?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Not anymore?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Oh? Okay? So how long has this been going on?
How long this has.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Been going on? Maybe maybe two weeks?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
And how did you get there? How did you get
to the place where a person living in your house
is not speaking to you?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Okay, let's unpack this, yes please, Okay, So it went
out my ex Okay, this is big, right.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Okay, my ex husband her father. No, okay, So your
ex husband violated her. What does that mean? He raped her,
he fondled.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Her, he raped her. Okay, she was maybe sixteen or seventeen.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Okay, take a breath. What's going on in your brain?
I can hear your brain clicking.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Okay, just unpacking it because I didn't find out about
it until later later in her she was in her twenties.
Maybe when I found out about it. How'd you find
out she exposed it to me? She let me know.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
She didn't tell you when it happened.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
No, why, I'm not sure why. I don't know whether
she felt like I wouldn't believe her, or she was afraid,
or I don't know. I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
So in her twenties, how did she tell you that?
She blurted out? Were y'all arguing? Did y'all go have tea?
What happened?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
She was going through some counseling, and I think it
was advised to her that she should talk to me
about it, And she just told me she was going
through some other things, and I think she was just
trying to clear her her chick list or something, and
she that was one of the things on it to
have a conversation with me. So we had that conversation.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And what did you say when she told you?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I apologize that it happened to her. I embraced her,
I told her how sorry I was that that took place.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Were you still with him when she told you we.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Were still together? When she told me? Yes?
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And what did you say to him?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I don't know if I can repeat that?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Oh, okay on the network. Okay, thank you? Uh huh,
My ears are not worthy of such wonderfulness.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Right right, right right?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It was?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, it was a come to Jesus meeting?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Okay, So how did that? What does that have to do?
Would while y'all stop speaking two weeks ago?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Okay? I think it all. I think it all is
together in that, And I think she felt like I
should have known or done something at the time. I
think she feels like I was more you know, I
have always been a you know, I get it done,
I work, you know, my clothes. I you know, I'm
(07:25):
more of a father figure, should I say, than a mother.
I'm not the lovey w okay, yeah, your father? Right? Yeah,
so I'm not that nurturing kind. I'm trying to be
more like that, you know now. But I've missed that
that window. So I have never been like a nurturing mother.
(07:46):
I'm just like, Okay, you gotta do this. I check boxes, Okay,
we got to get this done. I gotta get that done.
But the nursing box, I wasn't checking.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
What happened two weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Okay, And it's amlation of a lot of things. Now.
She suffers from anxiety and depression and she lost her jobs. Well,
she didn't lose her job, she her car got stolen
from her, and she's been having some financial difficulties and
she's just had a lot of life situations start happening.
(08:20):
And my and my gut feeling is saying that, Okay,
she has seen how I handle things throughout life and
just kept going. And she she often says, I'm not you. Now.
I've never expected her to be me, but I hear
her saying that, and so I take from that that
(08:43):
maybe somehow she's trying to do things the way that
I was able to do things being a single mom
with three kids and still making stuff happen. I don't.
I don't, I really don't know, and I'm probably getting
off from the question. But she's had a lot of
life situations happen to her that have been hard things,
and then I will try and jump in and help.
(09:04):
But then it's like, you don't want my help, but
then you do want my help.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Oh, help me.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Make sense out of it? Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Well, I don't have to make sense out of it.
When I started the show today, I said that help me, lord,
because I know my guests are going to bring my
issues to the table, because you just stole my story.
I had three children. I was a great, great father
(09:35):
and a horrible mother. Horrible. I had to have my kids.
They had to be in line, they had to do
a certain thing in a certain way, because you know,
I had to pay the bills. I had to take
care of everything. So I was a horrible mother, horrible.
I was a great father, and I broke my children.
(09:58):
I did in addition to being dysfunctional and crazy as hell,
probably depressed, maybe psychotic, narcissists. I don't even know. I
can't I don't even remember who I was. But I
taught my children that they couldn't trust me emotionally. I
(10:23):
taught my children that I didn't have time for your problems.
I got to get to work, I got to pay
the bills. I taught my children that their voice didn't matter.
What mattered was what I needed them to do so
that I could do what I needed to do. I mean,
of course I didn't sit down and make a to
(10:44):
do list. I'm going to destroy my children and damage
their self worth. And then when I woke up until
like oooh, this is really not how you need to
be for yourself. And in the process of you not
being who you need to be for yourself, you have
(11:06):
destroyed your children. And I've always said everything my children
needed I learned way after they needed it. The one
thing they needed was my heart. I gave them my head,
I gave them home, I gave them food and clothes,
and they needed my heart.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Navigate that that's correct, that is oh so yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
She is angry with you. Absolutely is angry. And even
though you didn't know what had happened. As a mom,
your job, your responsibility is to protect your children. You
brought the predator right into.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
The house, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And probably the reason she didn't tell you was because
a part of her didn't want to destroy what she
thought made you happy.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
That's absolutely correct. And she has always been the one
you know, she's my child, So I will hurt me
before I hurt you. I'll take something on me.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
That's not a good thing. It's not We'll talk about
that when we come back. Welcome back to the R spot.
Let's pick up where we left off. You say you
don't want her to be like you, but I can
(12:41):
tell you from experience when you have a high achieving mother,
When you have a high achieving mother with a closed heart,
nothing the kids do is ever good enough, even if
you don't say it. That's that's how they end up being.
Did you stay with him after she told you? Yes,
(13:04):
betrayal betrayed her, So she's she's not mad at you,
she's not angry with you. She is in high piosity,
high perosity. You better sleep when one eye open.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yes, with my door locked, do you hear me?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Do you hear me? Yeah? I do, And that's a
that's a good step. Are you still with him?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
No? Okay, I had to plan. I had to do
an plan. I had to do an exit plan. And
I couldn't sit down and tell her I have an
exit plan. But you know, once that happened, I started
trying to figure out, Okay, what am I going to do?
And how am I gonna do this? And that's what
I did.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
So she's come home to be remothered. Does she have children, yes?
Are they in the house also?
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yes? Oh lord, yes, two daughters, yes.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And I bet you have a good relationship with them,
don't you.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I love them, yes, and they love me. They're me me,
and and it gets to the point where, you know,
it's like I love the way she mothers them, you know.
And I often tell my daughters, I love to see
how you guys interact with your children, because I never
was that way with them, So it makes me proud
(14:30):
to see that. But it's now at a point where
she even tries to keep them away from me, even
though we're in the same house.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Well, because she's jealous, not the grown thirty year old woman,
but the little girl. And her is jealous. Yeah, that
you give her those little girls what you didn't give her.
This is a hot mess, you know. Yes, So now
let me ask you this. Does she pay rent in
your house?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
No, ma'am?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Okay, Well then she's a If she's in your house
using your lights and your toilet water and your toilet paper,
she don't get to not speak to you, mother, she
don't get to do that to her mother. Now, if
she wants to pay rent and be your tenant, then
(15:24):
she can do whatever she wants to do. So you're
all gonna have to make some decisions here. You want
to be a tenant and live here, here's the rules,
here's your rent, this is when it's due. You do
what you want to do. But if you who pass
through my body are going to live in my house,
we have to work together. We can't do this and
(15:47):
this is not how I want my grandchildren to see
two women interacting. Yeah, we're not setting a good example
for them. You don't get to be in my house,
under my roof, using my toy toilet paper, in my electricity,
and don't speak to me. I'm the mama, Yes, ma'am,
I'm the mama. Like me, don't like me, mad at me.
(16:10):
We can work that out, but that you won't do. Now.
You want to be a tenant. Your rent is this amount,
and this is when it's due. Because you're still the mama,
even though you was horrible at your job.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I wonder what would happen. I wonder what would happen
if children could fire their mothers right, your guilt, Your
guilt and your shame will allow you to let her
treat you anyway? No, no, no, no. Would you have
a girlfriend, would you have a friend of yours, another
(16:44):
sister woman living in your house not speaking to you?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Absolutely not?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So then why are you allowing her to do that.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Because of the guilt and the shame and not wanting
her to retaliate and probably take the kids someplace else where.
I right now I know where they are, but then
outside of my sight, I don't know what might happen.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
See, you can't rescue her and persecute her. At the
same time, you can't rescue her if you don't trust her.
How old are your granddaughters.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
At eight and two?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Well, Mama, you got to be willing to give them
out to maintain your dignity. You got to be in
the throne. You got to put the queen in the throne.
Mama can't run the house. The queen runs the house.
Mama can have conversations with her daughter. You can't have
it both ways. And if she's a good mom, she
(17:42):
won't take your grandchildren away. Not if she's a good mom.
Now she's a good mom, then that's a whole another situation. Okay,
I'm glad you tell her that too. And can I
say this, because it's right up in your house, right
up in your face, and clearly you don't have the
skills to deal with it. Find out if you and
(18:03):
her can go to counsel. Do you think she would
be willing to do that?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
That is a confirmation, because that's something that I've been
kind of wanting to introduce to her because she goes
and I was like, you know, even when I saw
or I felt like, Okay, you're saying that you like me,
love me, this, any other, but those are not the
actions that you're exhibiting.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Okay, wait a minute, Hold hold up, hold up, Hold up, daddy,
Hold up, daddy, because right there, you're making her wrong.
You're making her wrong, even if you know in your
soul she's really pissed and she really has a right
(18:52):
to be pissed. You didn't protect her. You brought the
predator in the house. And hear me, I'm not judging
you or making you wrong for this. I'm sitting on
I've got on her shoes right now. I'm just putting
her shoes on and telling you what she's walking in Okay.
Can you hear me, Mom? I don't want you to
hear me making you wrong. I'm just walking in her shoes.
(19:14):
You brought that beast into this house. Yes, your job
was to protect me and take care of me. You
let him do this to me, and yes, stayed with him.
That's in her shoes. Now, you and I know maybe
something else was going on. You had no awareness. But
(19:37):
here's the peace, Mom. She didn't trust you enough to
tell you take a breath. You're not breathing, Come on, breathe. Yes,
So there's that, and then there's a part where loving you,
(19:58):
wanting you to be happy. She didn't want to destroy
what she thought made you have. That's another reason she
didn't tell you. So she's got that conflict going on
inside of herself. Here's what I can tell you, Mama.
You're gonna have to own all of that, and not
from a place of I know I didn't do this,
and I know I didn't do that, but I did
(20:20):
this and I had to do No. No, no, no,
no no. That's not how you're gonna own it. I
failed you. I failed you. Breaks my heart to know
it to say it, But I failed you, and I
hope one day you can forgive me and then you've
just got to let her let it out. But she
(20:43):
gonna tell you how you failed her. But that's not
something y'all can do at the kitchen table over cheese
and crackers. You need third party intervention. You need a
neutral third party. But this is to the bone stuff
right here. And you're gonna hear things about yourself that
(21:05):
you it's gonna be hard for you to hear and believe.
And I'm not whitewashing her because she's not dealing with
you as a thirty year old woman. She's dealing with
you as a broken little girl. That's what kids do.
I'm not your friend. I'm not gonna speak to you.
Wait a minute, hold up, boo, you in my house.
(21:29):
And at the same time, you can't say, oh, you
will speak to me. No, you can't say that. The
thing is because she never got your heart. She doesn't
feel safe with you. But she thinks you're gonna correct her.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Right, And that's something that I hear her say as well,
because you know her truth is that I'm very judgmental, okay.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
And you are judgment Oh yes you are, Yes, you are, Yes,
you are ask me how I know? Ask me how
I know? I had asked, how do you know? None
of your business? None of your business. And what happens
(22:10):
is she probably feels you as distant, cold, mean, Dutch
metal and I'll just speak from a place of knowing
of myself. Okay, this is just between you and me.
Because I had so much to do, I didn't have
(22:33):
time for little childhood imperfections. I just I didn't have
time for that. And then, you know, a born perfectionist,
I wanted them to be perfect, so I was extremely critical.
I never forget when my son, who you know, in
(22:55):
my eyes was the only son in the world. Everybody
else had boys. I had a son and he was
gonna do right and be right because I had him
at sixteen and he was not gonna shame me in
the world. Now, that's how I handled that. And when
he grew up and did everything that I told him
(23:16):
not to do, everything I taught him not to do,
he did and ended up in God's Vacation Retreat Center
aka prison.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
You got one of them too, No, I don't have one.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
You Okay, Well I did. I ain't shamed, and I'll
never forget the day he said to me. He said,
you are the reason I am the way I am.
You it's your fault. And he said to me, you
(23:51):
your fears for me were not the fears that I
have for myself. You gave me enough rope to hang
my myself and then you beat me up about it.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
You never told me what I could do. You always
told me what not to do. And I grew up
thinking and believing I couldn't trust myself because you didn't
trust me. Okay, that's what my son told me from
the prison phone on a collect call that I was
paying for. And you know what I said, because instead
(24:30):
of defending myself and instead of making him wrong again,
I said to him, I hear you. Tell me how
I can do it better now. We'll talk more about
it when they come back. Welcome back to the R spot.
(24:53):
Let's get back to the conversation. Tell me how I
can do it better now. And what he said saved
our relationship. He said, stop being my mother and be
my friend. And that's what I did. I stopped correcting him,
I stop criticizing him, I stop asking him his business.
(25:19):
And if he didn't come to me, I didn't go
to him. And sometimes even today at fifty four, my
son will go to other people before he comes to
me because that little boy in there still doesn't believe
that he has my heart. Wow, she's in your house
because she wants you to rescue her. But she treats
(25:40):
you like her persecutor. It's a vicious thing, so she
can manipulate you out of fear, your fear that she's
gonna take your grandbabies. Yeah, and it hurts your feelings, right,
it does. It does that you're providing for her and
doing everything that you can to the best of your ability,
(26:01):
whether she likes it or not, hurts your feelings. See,
if you let her know that, then she'll know. Oh,
she does have a heart. She's not just a cold
cow eating grass in the fields. So can I ask
you a question? What happened to your heart? Baby? What
(26:22):
happened to your heart? Mama? So here we go. You
go to therapy on Tuesday, and you and her go
together on Friday because you're healing. Really, your deep level
of healing will happen when you can share your story
as a woman, woman to woman. She don't know your story,
(26:45):
but something happened to harden your heart and We don't
have to go into that now. But that's where you're healing,
is I ask me how I know?
Speaker 2 (26:56):
I dare not. You learn quick. I won't know.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
And if for whatever reason, you can't get her to
go to counseling, you go because you still need to
soften your heart. You need to heal your heart. Here's
a little secret. Don't tell anybody I told you this. Okay,
(27:28):
you promise, promise not to tell nobody.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I won't tell anyone.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Okay, don't tell anybody I told you. Mama. She lived
in your body. The first thing she heard was your
heart beat and your voice. She knows you from the
inside out. She may not know how to put it
(27:57):
in words, she may not underst stand what it all means,
but she knows you from the inside out. So some
of the things that you deny about yourself, she knows
they're truth because she lived in your body. Take her breath,
(28:19):
you really stop breathing, Come on, breathe.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
I just I took that in, you know, I took
deep rest and I was just receiving all of that
because that's so true. And it's like she knows me,
you know, she watches me. She observes me. She's very observant,
and that's why I think that she knows how to
maneuver and do certain things because she knows how I'm
(28:44):
going to react to it.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
She manipulates you from your fear, but she also manipulates
you from her intuitive knowledge. She lived in your body.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yes, So some of the things she says about you
that you can't hear your judgmental, No, I'm not. Yes,
you are. We all are. Were you mean it? What
makes us crazy as hell? But she knows what your
judgments are. She knows what broke your heart. She may
not know the story, but she knows your heart is
broken and that's why she knows. She didn't get it
(29:21):
and she doesn't trust it or you. So whether she
goes to counseling or not, and I don't, I want
to encourage you not to tell her, invite her, invite her.
I want to heal. You mean the world to me
(29:42):
and you're my heart and I want us to heal.
And I don't know how to do it. And I
want to know if we can go to counseling together.
And does she have an income at all?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
She does?
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And ask her say, I pay for most of it,
but I also want you to invest. I don't care
if it's ten dollars. Let's do this together for each other,
not that you mom take it on and do it,
because then in her mind, you're controlling it. She's got
to make an investment. You pay for your own. Like
I said, you go on Tuesday, you'll go on Friday, right.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
And I'm listening to how you're saying to say this
because I wanted to come off like you're saying it,
because that's exactly what I'm what I my intentions. But
sometimes when I say it, it's like the control thing. Okay,
we're gonna go do this, and we're gonna go do that,
and I think it'll be good, you know. But I
need to let her know, you know how I miss
(30:45):
her and how she does mean the world to me,
and I don't want this brokenness to continue. I want
it to be mended, you know. I want to be healthy.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
So here's what I want you to do. When you
get to your therapist. I want you to tell her
a couple of things. You can tell her, I said it.
Tell her that your heart is closed. You're what I
call neck down dead you live below, then you live
above the neck, not below it. Tell her to help
(31:15):
you understand how you control. Tell her to get to
the root of your judgments, and tell her to help
you diffuse your anger. I want you to start there,
and let me tell you why, because you are heady
and you'll be in therapy for six and a half
years telling your stories and justifying your bad behavior. So
(31:39):
let's go in. Let's go in with a game plan
because you ain't got a lot of time. Okay, Yeah.
The thing that I want you to know is that
the heart has a voice. If you can get out
of your head and get into your heart, the heart
will start speaking and it'll say things that you would
(32:01):
never think of, things like I know I failed you.
I know I didn't protect you from the predator. I
bought it now. But this is unacceptable. It scares me,
It hurts my feelings. We cannot be in this house
together and not to speak that that that's not working.
Tell me what you know now that you didn't know
(32:23):
when you called me today.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I know now that my queen has to take over
as far as the house is concerned, and not let
my daughter walk through there and not speak to me,
that's not acceptable.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Yeah, and it feelings and it hurts your feelings, and
it frightened and it frightens me. Yeah, now those are feelings.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I know that her little girl is operating and not
the thirty year old woman. Right, So we did have
a woman to woman conversation. But I knew that before
our I called you, I didn't know that. But now
I know how to have that conversation. I know how
to introduce us going to therapy and not be it
(33:12):
necessarily my idea, but let her know that my brokenness
and how I want to resolve it, and let her
know how well how I feel, so that she's not
seeing me as the judgmental, you know person, that she sees.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Me as as a judgmental, controlling person. I have been
on it, and I can say that to you because
I know me right, and it's okay, it's okay. I
could probably tell you your story. Well, that'd be a
whole other episode if I hear it in your voice,
(33:53):
constantly trying to prove your worth, your value, constantly trying
to prove your right, and you will fight, be right,
fight anybody. You're a fighter too. You scrap it out
in the streets. I'm not gonna tell you to ask
me how I know. But the piece that you don't understand,
(34:16):
and this is what has created this rift between you
and your daughter somewhere, and I'm guessing between maybe eleven
and thirteen, possibly earlier. Not only were you abandoned by someone,
you abandoned yourself. You abandoned yourself, and you abandoned your
(34:37):
daughter emotionally.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Third, great, I can see it now.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah you were eight eight nine, Okay, yep, you abandoned yourself.
So right now you're operating on autopilot, survival autopilot. That's
why I say, get thee to a therapist quickly. How
old are you, my love?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I am fifty four.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Okay, this is critical. You don't this is it. You
gotta do it right here, because if you don't do
it right here, this situation is going to continue to
you're sixty three.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
It won't.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Yeah, no it no, I don't choose for it to happen.
Tell me something good you can do for yourself today.
Tell me what would make you feel good, like is
there a Starbucks drink you like? Or can you get
online and buy yourself something stupid? What can you do good?
For yourself today.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Now here you go, get me Asahi bowl.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Okay. I want you to do that. You know why,
because you did good work today.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Ma.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
You haven't resisted at all, you haven't fought, and I
feel your heart. I feel it now. I want you
to celebrate yourself today because your pattern is to do it,
hit and rock, do it, get it done, get it done,
on to the next thing. But I want you to
go get you a SAYI bowl and sit there and
(36:07):
eat it, maybe eat it with your fingers, so that
your little girl can have fun. Can you do that?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I will do it.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
You promise me.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I promise you, I will do it.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
And you know what, bring one home for your daughter. Breathe,
don't talk, but don't think she's not going to receive it.
She don't have to receive it. You bring it home
for her. And all you have to do is say,
I got myself one, so I got you or whatever
she likes. Yes, does she like those bowls?
Speaker 2 (36:38):
That's what I was thinking. She didn't like those bowls.
But I know what she does like.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Okay, what does she like? Okay? Get it. After you
get your bowl, to celebrate the good work that you've done,
go out of your way, get her what she likes,
bring it home, give it to her, whether she accepts
it or doesn't accept it or whatever. I got myself
something nice today, So I got you something, and then
(37:04):
turn around and walk away. And then after that you
can say this is unacceptable. We can't do this in
front of the children. We can't do it. Yes, ma'am,
go get your bowl. May you did good work today.
Thank you for trusting me with your story.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Thank you for helping me with my situation.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Bye, mama, I have a great fan.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Thank you you two.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Thank you. Let me just be honest here. I know
that I have lived most of my life, my adult life,
as an awful woman. I know how to do. I
know how to provide, I know how to protect. I
know how to check the boxes off and get it done.
(37:51):
And I am a casualty of the masculinization. That's a word, right,
masculine nation of women were masculinized. If that's a word,
somebody correct me. And one of the challenges the difficulties
(38:15):
of being an alpha masculine woman is you lose access
to your heart, you lose access to your feelings. You
have a vacant emotional library and as women, as mothers.
Our children could feel us before they could see us.
(38:36):
They need our hearts. And when we don't have access
to our heart, when we don't have a well stocked
emotional vocabulary and emotional grounding, our children feel abandoned. They
feel lonely, and they don't trust us. When we're correcting
(38:57):
and directing and guiding all the time supposed to nourishing
and nurturing, when our hearts are close to us, when
our hearts are close to the world, when our hearts
are close to love, our children feel abandoned because they
know us from the inside out. And when they can't
(39:20):
feel our hearts, they feel like they're by itself. That
is absolutely going on here. One of the things that
I had to learn as I healed my heart to
be better for myself so I could be better for
my children is this. And I want you, moms and
grandmoms and all of you out there, I want you
(39:42):
to write this down. It is unkind and unloving to
ask yourself to do something that you've never been taught
how to do. Nobody taught me how to affirm myself
my children. No one nurtured me and nourished me, so
(40:03):
I didn't nurture and nourish my children, and it was
unkind and unloving for me to expect that I could
have should have done that when I didn't know how
to do it. So the key to healing that is forgiveness.
I have to forgive myself for believing I should have
(40:24):
been able to do something I didn't know how to do.
And I had to ask my children to forgive me
for not being who they needed me to do, but
not giving them what they needed me to give them
because I didn't have it. How many of you out
(40:47):
there can get on that step with it. I hope
that you know something now that you didn't know when
you tuned in. And until we meet again, stay in peace,
not pieces. The R Spot is a production of Shondaland
(41:08):
Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
I am a yamla. I had a baby daddy relationship.
I spent time in a relationship with a married man.
I had to learn the skills and tools required to
make my relationships healthy, fulfilling, and loving. Welcome to the
r Spot, a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio.
(00:36):
How many of us, as mothers, loving from a broken place,
raising our children from a broken place, see what our
children do as hurtful to us, not as an opportunity
for healing. When your daughter says or does something that
(00:59):
hurts you, or that scares you, or that reminds you
of your brokenness, rather than seeing that as an opportunity
for healing, we go into making them wrong and trying
to fix the situation, or into denial. The thing that
so many mothers don't understand is that your children know
(01:20):
you from the inside out. They may not know what
they're looking at, they may not have the words for it.
But Mama, that baby know you because she lived in
your body. He lived in your body. This is mothers
and their children. How many mothers live and parent from
(01:42):
their brokenness, from their brokenness, from their wounds, trying not
to do to their children, what was done to them,
trying to give their children more than they didn't have,
trying to do things for their children that weren't done
for them. Loving from your brokenness means you miss the
(02:04):
opportunity to love from the place you are right now.
You love him from the past, your love, and from
what didn't even go on. You're loving from what isn't
going on anymore. You're loving from a brokenness, a woundedness
that may have absolutely nothing to do with what your
(02:26):
child needs, what your child wants, what's good for your child.
You're loving from your lack, your wound, your brokenness, and
that's not what our children need. And what ends up
happening is we are not the parent that they need
us to be. Take a listen. Greetings beloved, and welcome
(02:51):
to the R Spot. Today we are talking about the sacred,
complicated relationship between mothers and daughters. So are you a
mother or a daughter? And what do you bring into
the table?
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I am a mother, Okay, I'm hoping to get some
issues result or some help to navigate the conflict that
me and my daughter is having. It appears that we're
going to peer it is that she's very angry with me,
and she says that she's not, but everything that she does,
(03:26):
you know, her actions show that yes you are. But
I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (03:32):
How old is your daughter?
Speaker 2 (03:33):
He's thirty?
Speaker 1 (03:35):
And tell me what is your relationship like? What does
it look like? How do you all interact?
Speaker 2 (03:39):
What's happening right now? It's we live in the same
house and we don't speak to each other, and we
don't speak to each other because she.
Speaker 1 (03:47):
Says, wait a minute, hold up, hold up, hold up,
let me take a breath. You'all love to tell these
shocking stories and keep on running. You and her live
in the same house together, Yes, her house or your house?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
My house?
Speaker 1 (04:04):
So your thirty year old daughter lives in a house
with you and doesn't speak to you.
Speaker 2 (04:08):
Correct?
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Do you speak to her?
Speaker 2 (04:10):
Not anymore?
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Oh? Okay? So how long has this been going on?
How long this has.
Speaker 2 (04:19):
Been going on? Maybe maybe two weeks?
Speaker 1 (04:21):
And how did you get there? How did you get
to the place where a person living in your house
is not speaking to you?
Speaker 2 (04:29):
Okay, let's unpack this, yes please, Okay, So it went
out my ex Okay, this is big, right.
Speaker 1 (04:40):
Okay, my ex husband her father. No, okay, So your
ex husband violated her. What does that mean? He raped her,
he fondled.
Speaker 2 (04:52):
Her, he raped her. Okay, she was maybe sixteen or seventeen.
Speaker 1 (05:04):
Okay, take a breath. What's going on in your brain?
I can hear your brain clicking.
Speaker 2 (05:11):
Okay, just unpacking it because I didn't find out about
it until later later in her she was in her twenties.
Maybe when I found out about it. How'd you find
out she exposed it to me? She let me know.
Speaker 1 (05:29):
She didn't tell you when it happened.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
No, why, I'm not sure why. I don't know whether
she felt like I wouldn't believe her, or she was afraid,
or I don't know. I don't know why.
Speaker 1 (05:41):
So in her twenties, how did she tell you that?
She blurted out? Were y'all arguing? Did y'all go have tea?
What happened?
Speaker 2 (05:50):
She was going through some counseling, and I think it
was advised to her that she should talk to me
about it, And she just told me she was going
through some other things, and I think she was just
trying to clear her her chick list or something, and
she that was one of the things on it to
have a conversation with me. So we had that conversation.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
And what did you say when she told you?
Speaker 2 (06:16):
I apologize that it happened to her. I embraced her,
I told her how sorry I was that that took place.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Were you still with him when she told you we.
Speaker 2 (06:30):
Were still together? When she told me? Yes?
Speaker 1 (06:37):
And what did you say to him?
Speaker 2 (06:38):
I don't know if I can repeat that?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
Oh, okay on the network. Okay, thank you? Uh huh,
My ears are not worthy of such wonderfulness.
Speaker 2 (06:51):
Right right, right right?
Speaker 1 (06:53):
It was?
Speaker 2 (06:54):
Yeah, it was a come to Jesus meeting?
Speaker 1 (06:56):
Okay, So how did that? What does that have to do?
Would while y'all stop speaking two weeks ago?
Speaker 2 (07:02):
Okay? I think it all. I think it all is
together in that, And I think she felt like I
should have known or done something at the time. I
think she feels like I was more you know, I
have always been a you know, I get it done,
I work, you know, my clothes. I you know, I'm
(07:25):
more of a father figure, should I say, than a mother.
I'm not the lovey w okay, yeah, your father? Right? Yeah,
so I'm not that nurturing kind. I'm trying to be
more like that, you know now. But I've missed that
that window. So I have never been like a nurturing mother.
(07:46):
I'm just like, Okay, you gotta do this. I check boxes, Okay,
we got to get this done. I gotta get that done.
But the nursing box, I wasn't checking.
Speaker 1 (07:56):
What happened two weeks ago.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
Okay, And it's amlation of a lot of things. Now.
She suffers from anxiety and depression and she lost her jobs. Well,
she didn't lose her job, she her car got stolen
from her, and she's been having some financial difficulties and
she's just had a lot of life situations start happening.
(08:20):
And my and my gut feeling is saying that, Okay,
she has seen how I handle things throughout life and
just kept going. And she she often says, I'm not you. Now.
I've never expected her to be me, but I hear
her saying that, and so I take from that that
(08:43):
maybe somehow she's trying to do things the way that
I was able to do things being a single mom
with three kids and still making stuff happen. I don't.
I don't, I really don't know, and I'm probably getting
off from the question. But she's had a lot of
life situations happen to her that have been hard things,
and then I will try and jump in and help.
(09:04):
But then it's like, you don't want my help, but
then you do want my help.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Oh, help me.
Speaker 2 (09:09):
Make sense out of it? Yeah, I can't.
Speaker 1 (09:14):
Well, I don't have to make sense out of it.
When I started the show today, I said that help me, lord,
because I know my guests are going to bring my
issues to the table, because you just stole my story.
I had three children. I was a great, great father
(09:35):
and a horrible mother. Horrible. I had to have my kids.
They had to be in line, they had to do
a certain thing in a certain way, because you know,
I had to pay the bills. I had to take
care of everything. So I was a horrible mother, horrible.
I was a great father, and I broke my children.
(09:58):
I did in addition to being dysfunctional and crazy as hell,
probably depressed, maybe psychotic, narcissists. I don't even know. I
can't I don't even remember who I was. But I
taught my children that they couldn't trust me emotionally. I
(10:23):
taught my children that I didn't have time for your problems.
I got to get to work, I got to pay
the bills. I taught my children that their voice didn't matter.
What mattered was what I needed them to do so
that I could do what I needed to do. I mean,
of course I didn't sit down and make a to
(10:44):
do list. I'm going to destroy my children and damage
their self worth. And then when I woke up until
like oooh, this is really not how you need to
be for yourself. And in the process of you not
being who you need to be for yourself, you have
(11:06):
destroyed your children. And I've always said everything my children
needed I learned way after they needed it. The one
thing they needed was my heart. I gave them my head,
I gave them home, I gave them food and clothes,
and they needed my heart.
Speaker 2 (11:28):
Navigate that that's correct, that is oh so yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:33):
She is angry with you. Absolutely is angry. And even
though you didn't know what had happened. As a mom,
your job, your responsibility is to protect your children. You
brought the predator right into.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
The house, right exactly.
Speaker 1 (11:57):
And probably the reason she didn't tell you was because
a part of her didn't want to destroy what she
thought made you happy.
Speaker 2 (12:07):
That's absolutely correct. And she has always been the one
you know, she's my child, So I will hurt me
before I hurt you. I'll take something on me.
Speaker 1 (12:19):
That's not a good thing. It's not We'll talk about
that when we come back. Welcome back to the R spot.
Let's pick up where we left off. You say you
don't want her to be like you, but I can
(12:41):
tell you from experience when you have a high achieving mother,
When you have a high achieving mother with a closed heart,
nothing the kids do is ever good enough, even if
you don't say it. That's that's how they end up being.
Did you stay with him after she told you? Yes,
(13:04):
betrayal betrayed her, So she's she's not mad at you,
she's not angry with you. She is in high piosity,
high perosity. You better sleep when one eye open.
Speaker 2 (13:20):
Yes, with my door locked, do you hear me?
Speaker 1 (13:23):
Do you hear me? Yeah? I do, And that's a
that's a good step. Are you still with him?
Speaker 2 (13:32):
No? Okay, I had to plan. I had to do
an plan. I had to do an exit plan. And
I couldn't sit down and tell her I have an
exit plan. But you know, once that happened, I started
trying to figure out, Okay, what am I going to do?
And how am I gonna do this? And that's what
I did.
Speaker 1 (13:51):
So she's come home to be remothered. Does she have children, yes?
Are they in the house also?
Speaker 2 (14:00):
Yes? Oh lord, yes, two daughters, yes.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
And I bet you have a good relationship with them,
don't you.
Speaker 2 (14:08):
I love them, yes, and they love me. They're me me,
and and it gets to the point where, you know,
it's like I love the way she mothers them, you know.
And I often tell my daughters, I love to see
how you guys interact with your children, because I never
was that way with them, So it makes me proud
(14:30):
to see that. But it's now at a point where
she even tries to keep them away from me, even
though we're in the same house.
Speaker 1 (14:40):
Well, because she's jealous, not the grown thirty year old woman,
but the little girl. And her is jealous. Yeah, that
you give her those little girls what you didn't give her.
This is a hot mess, you know. Yes, So now
let me ask you this. Does she pay rent in
your house?
Speaker 2 (15:01):
No, ma'am?
Speaker 1 (15:02):
Okay, Well then she's a If she's in your house
using your lights and your toilet water and your toilet paper,
she don't get to not speak to you, mother, she
don't get to do that to her mother. Now, if
she wants to pay rent and be your tenant, then
(15:24):
she can do whatever she wants to do. So you're
all gonna have to make some decisions here. You want
to be a tenant and live here, here's the rules,
here's your rent, this is when it's due. You do
what you want to do. But if you who pass
through my body are going to live in my house,
we have to work together. We can't do this and
(15:47):
this is not how I want my grandchildren to see
two women interacting. Yeah, we're not setting a good example
for them. You don't get to be in my house,
under my roof, using my toy toilet paper, in my electricity,
and don't speak to me. I'm the mama, Yes, ma'am,
I'm the mama. Like me, don't like me, mad at me.
(16:10):
We can work that out, but that you won't do. Now.
You want to be a tenant. Your rent is this amount,
and this is when it's due. Because you're still the mama,
even though you was horrible at your job.
Speaker 2 (16:22):
Thank you.
Speaker 1 (16:23):
I wonder what would happen. I wonder what would happen
if children could fire their mothers right, your guilt, Your
guilt and your shame will allow you to let her
treat you anyway? No, no, no, no. Would you have
a girlfriend, would you have a friend of yours, another
(16:44):
sister woman living in your house not speaking to you?
Speaker 2 (16:47):
Absolutely not?
Speaker 1 (16:48):
So then why are you allowing her to do that.
Speaker 2 (16:51):
Because of the guilt and the shame and not wanting
her to retaliate and probably take the kids someplace else where.
I right now I know where they are, but then
outside of my sight, I don't know what might happen.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
See, you can't rescue her and persecute her. At the
same time, you can't rescue her if you don't trust her.
How old are your granddaughters.
Speaker 2 (17:16):
At eight and two?
Speaker 1 (17:19):
Well, Mama, you got to be willing to give them
out to maintain your dignity. You got to be in
the throne. You got to put the queen in the throne.
Mama can't run the house. The queen runs the house.
Mama can have conversations with her daughter. You can't have
it both ways. And if she's a good mom, she
(17:42):
won't take your grandchildren away. Not if she's a good mom.
Now she's a good mom, then that's a whole another situation. Okay,
I'm glad you tell her that too. And can I
say this, because it's right up in your house, right
up in your face, and clearly you don't have the
skills to deal with it. Find out if you and
(18:03):
her can go to counsel. Do you think she would
be willing to do that?
Speaker 2 (18:11):
That is a confirmation, because that's something that I've been
kind of wanting to introduce to her because she goes
and I was like, you know, even when I saw
or I felt like, Okay, you're saying that you like me,
love me, this, any other, but those are not the
actions that you're exhibiting.
Speaker 1 (18:31):
Okay, wait a minute, Hold hold up, hold up, Hold up, daddy,
Hold up, daddy, because right there, you're making her wrong.
You're making her wrong, even if you know in your
soul she's really pissed and she really has a right
(18:52):
to be pissed. You didn't protect her. You brought the
predator in the house. And hear me, I'm not judging
you or making you wrong for this. I'm sitting on
I've got on her shoes right now. I'm just putting
her shoes on and telling you what she's walking in Okay.
Can you hear me, Mom? I don't want you to
hear me making you wrong. I'm just walking in her shoes.
(19:14):
You brought that beast into this house. Yes, your job
was to protect me and take care of me. You
let him do this to me, and yes, stayed with him.
That's in her shoes. Now, you and I know maybe
something else was going on. You had no awareness. But
(19:37):
here's the peace, Mom. She didn't trust you enough to
tell you take a breath. You're not breathing, Come on, breathe. Yes,
So there's that, and then there's a part where loving you,
(19:58):
wanting you to be happy. She didn't want to destroy
what she thought made you have. That's another reason she
didn't tell you. So she's got that conflict going on
inside of herself. Here's what I can tell you, Mama.
You're gonna have to own all of that, and not
from a place of I know I didn't do this,
and I know I didn't do that, but I did
(20:20):
this and I had to do No. No, no, no,
no no. That's not how you're gonna own it. I
failed you. I failed you. Breaks my heart to know
it to say it, But I failed you, and I
hope one day you can forgive me and then you've
just got to let her let it out. But she
(20:43):
gonna tell you how you failed her. But that's not
something y'all can do at the kitchen table over cheese
and crackers. You need third party intervention. You need a
neutral third party. But this is to the bone stuff
right here. And you're gonna hear things about yourself that
(21:05):
you it's gonna be hard for you to hear and believe.
And I'm not whitewashing her because she's not dealing with
you as a thirty year old woman. She's dealing with
you as a broken little girl. That's what kids do.
I'm not your friend. I'm not gonna speak to you.
Wait a minute, hold up, boo, you in my house.
(21:29):
And at the same time, you can't say, oh, you
will speak to me. No, you can't say that. The
thing is because she never got your heart. She doesn't
feel safe with you. But she thinks you're gonna correct her.
Speaker 2 (21:42):
Right, And that's something that I hear her say as well,
because you know her truth is that I'm very judgmental, okay.
Speaker 1 (21:49):
And you are judgment Oh yes you are, Yes, you are, Yes,
you are ask me how I know? Ask me how
I know? I had asked, how do you know? None
of your business? None of your business. And what happens
(22:10):
is she probably feels you as distant, cold, mean, Dutch
metal and I'll just speak from a place of knowing
of myself. Okay, this is just between you and me.
Because I had so much to do, I didn't have
(22:33):
time for little childhood imperfections. I just I didn't have
time for that. And then, you know, a born perfectionist,
I wanted them to be perfect, so I was extremely critical.
I never forget when my son, who you know, in
(22:55):
my eyes was the only son in the world. Everybody
else had boys. I had a son and he was
gonna do right and be right because I had him
at sixteen and he was not gonna shame me in
the world. Now, that's how I handled that. And when
he grew up and did everything that I told him
(23:16):
not to do, everything I taught him not to do,
he did and ended up in God's Vacation Retreat Center
aka prison.
Speaker 2 (23:26):
You got one of them too, No, I don't have one.
Speaker 1 (23:30):
You Okay, Well I did. I ain't shamed, and I'll
never forget the day he said to me. He said,
you are the reason I am the way I am.
You it's your fault. And he said to me, you
(23:51):
your fears for me were not the fears that I
have for myself. You gave me enough rope to hang
my myself and then you beat me up about it.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (24:04):
You never told me what I could do. You always
told me what not to do. And I grew up
thinking and believing I couldn't trust myself because you didn't
trust me. Okay, that's what my son told me from
the prison phone on a collect call that I was
paying for. And you know what I said, because instead
(24:30):
of defending myself and instead of making him wrong again,
I said to him, I hear you. Tell me how
I can do it better now. We'll talk more about
it when they come back. Welcome back to the R spot.
(24:53):
Let's get back to the conversation. Tell me how I
can do it better now. And what he said saved
our relationship. He said, stop being my mother and be
my friend. And that's what I did. I stopped correcting him,
I stop criticizing him, I stop asking him his business.
(25:19):
And if he didn't come to me, I didn't go
to him. And sometimes even today at fifty four, my
son will go to other people before he comes to
me because that little boy in there still doesn't believe
that he has my heart. Wow, she's in your house
because she wants you to rescue her. But she treats
(25:40):
you like her persecutor. It's a vicious thing, so she
can manipulate you out of fear, your fear that she's
gonna take your grandbabies. Yeah, and it hurts your feelings, right,
it does. It does that you're providing for her and
doing everything that you can to the best of your ability,
(26:01):
whether she likes it or not, hurts your feelings. See,
if you let her know that, then she'll know. Oh,
she does have a heart. She's not just a cold
cow eating grass in the fields. So can I ask
you a question? What happened to your heart? Baby? What
(26:22):
happened to your heart? Mama? So here we go. You
go to therapy on Tuesday, and you and her go
together on Friday because you're healing. Really, your deep level
of healing will happen when you can share your story
as a woman, woman to woman. She don't know your story,
(26:45):
but something happened to harden your heart and We don't
have to go into that now. But that's where you're healing,
is I ask me how I know?
Speaker 2 (26:56):
I dare not. You learn quick. I won't know.
Speaker 1 (27:07):
And if for whatever reason, you can't get her to
go to counseling, you go because you still need to
soften your heart. You need to heal your heart. Here's
a little secret. Don't tell anybody I told you this. Okay,
(27:28):
you promise, promise not to tell nobody.
Speaker 2 (27:32):
I won't tell anyone.
Speaker 1 (27:34):
Okay, don't tell anybody I told you. Mama. She lived
in your body. The first thing she heard was your
heart beat and your voice. She knows you from the
inside out. She may not know how to put it
(27:57):
in words, she may not underst stand what it all means,
but she knows you from the inside out. So some
of the things that you deny about yourself, she knows
they're truth because she lived in your body. Take her breath,
(28:19):
you really stop breathing, Come on, breathe.
Speaker 2 (28:24):
I just I took that in, you know, I took
deep rest and I was just receiving all of that
because that's so true. And it's like she knows me,
you know, she watches me. She observes me. She's very observant,
and that's why I think that she knows how to
maneuver and do certain things because she knows how I'm
(28:44):
going to react to it.
Speaker 1 (28:48):
She manipulates you from your fear, but she also manipulates
you from her intuitive knowledge. She lived in your body.
Speaker 2 (28:58):
Yes, ma'am.
Speaker 1 (28:59):
Yes, So some of the things she says about you
that you can't hear your judgmental, No, I'm not. Yes,
you are. We all are. Were you mean it? What
makes us crazy as hell? But she knows what your
judgments are. She knows what broke your heart. She may
not know the story, but she knows your heart is
broken and that's why she knows. She didn't get it
(29:21):
and she doesn't trust it or you. So whether she
goes to counseling or not, and I don't, I want
to encourage you not to tell her, invite her, invite her.
I want to heal. You mean the world to me
(29:42):
and you're my heart and I want us to heal.
And I don't know how to do it. And I
want to know if we can go to counseling together.
And does she have an income at all?
Speaker 2 (29:58):
She does?
Speaker 1 (30:00):
And ask her say, I pay for most of it,
but I also want you to invest. I don't care
if it's ten dollars. Let's do this together for each other,
not that you mom take it on and do it,
because then in her mind, you're controlling it. She's got
to make an investment. You pay for your own. Like
I said, you go on Tuesday, you'll go on Friday, right.
Speaker 2 (30:24):
And I'm listening to how you're saying to say this
because I wanted to come off like you're saying it,
because that's exactly what I'm what I my intentions. But
sometimes when I say it, it's like the control thing. Okay,
we're gonna go do this, and we're gonna go do that,
and I think it'll be good, you know. But I
need to let her know, you know how I miss
(30:45):
her and how she does mean the world to me,
and I don't want this brokenness to continue. I want
it to be mended, you know. I want to be healthy.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
So here's what I want you to do. When you
get to your therapist. I want you to tell her
a couple of things. You can tell her, I said it.
Tell her that your heart is closed. You're what I
call neck down dead you live below, then you live
above the neck, not below it. Tell her to help
(31:15):
you understand how you control. Tell her to get to
the root of your judgments, and tell her to help
you diffuse your anger. I want you to start there,
and let me tell you why, because you are heady
and you'll be in therapy for six and a half
years telling your stories and justifying your bad behavior. So
(31:39):
let's go in. Let's go in with a game plan
because you ain't got a lot of time. Okay, Yeah.
The thing that I want you to know is that
the heart has a voice. If you can get out
of your head and get into your heart, the heart
will start speaking and it'll say things that you would
(32:01):
never think of, things like I know I failed you.
I know I didn't protect you from the predator. I
bought it now. But this is unacceptable. It scares me,
It hurts my feelings. We cannot be in this house
together and not to speak that that that's not working.
Tell me what you know now that you didn't know
(32:23):
when you called me today.
Speaker 2 (32:24):
I know now that my queen has to take over
as far as the house is concerned, and not let
my daughter walk through there and not speak to me,
that's not acceptable.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Yeah, and it feelings and it hurts your feelings, and
it frightened and it frightens me. Yeah, now those are feelings.
Speaker 2 (32:47):
I know that her little girl is operating and not
the thirty year old woman. Right, So we did have
a woman to woman conversation. But I knew that before
our I called you, I didn't know that. But now
I know how to have that conversation. I know how
to introduce us going to therapy and not be it
(33:12):
necessarily my idea, but let her know that my brokenness
and how I want to resolve it, and let her
know how well how I feel, so that she's not
seeing me as the judgmental, you know person, that she sees.
Speaker 1 (33:31):
Me as as a judgmental, controlling person. I have been
on it, and I can say that to you because
I know me right, and it's okay, it's okay. I
could probably tell you your story. Well, that'd be a
whole other episode if I hear it in your voice,
(33:53):
constantly trying to prove your worth, your value, constantly trying
to prove your right, and you will fight, be right,
fight anybody. You're a fighter too. You scrap it out
in the streets. I'm not gonna tell you to ask
me how I know. But the piece that you don't understand,
(34:16):
and this is what has created this rift between you
and your daughter somewhere, and I'm guessing between maybe eleven
and thirteen, possibly earlier. Not only were you abandoned by someone,
you abandoned yourself. You abandoned yourself, and you abandoned your
(34:37):
daughter emotionally.
Speaker 2 (34:40):
Third, great, I can see it now.
Speaker 1 (34:42):
Yeah you were eight eight nine, Okay, yep, you abandoned yourself.
So right now you're operating on autopilot, survival autopilot. That's
why I say, get thee to a therapist quickly. How
old are you, my love?
Speaker 2 (35:01):
I am fifty four.
Speaker 1 (35:03):
Okay, this is critical. You don't this is it. You
gotta do it right here, because if you don't do
it right here, this situation is going to continue to
you're sixty three.
Speaker 2 (35:14):
It won't.
Speaker 1 (35:16):
Yeah, no it no, I don't choose for it to happen.
Tell me something good you can do for yourself today.
Tell me what would make you feel good, like is
there a Starbucks drink you like? Or can you get
online and buy yourself something stupid? What can you do good?
For yourself today.
Speaker 2 (35:36):
Now here you go, get me Asahi bowl.
Speaker 1 (35:40):
Okay. I want you to do that. You know why,
because you did good work today.
Speaker 2 (35:45):
Ma.
Speaker 1 (35:46):
You haven't resisted at all, you haven't fought, and I
feel your heart. I feel it now. I want you
to celebrate yourself today because your pattern is to do it,
hit and rock, do it, get it done, get it done,
on to the next thing. But I want you to
go get you a SAYI bowl and sit there and
(36:07):
eat it, maybe eat it with your fingers, so that
your little girl can have fun. Can you do that?
Speaker 2 (36:13):
I will do it.
Speaker 1 (36:14):
You promise me.
Speaker 2 (36:15):
I promise you, I will do it.
Speaker 1 (36:17):
And you know what, bring one home for your daughter. Breathe,
don't talk, but don't think she's not going to receive it.
She don't have to receive it. You bring it home
for her. And all you have to do is say,
I got myself one, so I got you or whatever
she likes. Yes, does she like those bowls?
Speaker 2 (36:38):
That's what I was thinking. She didn't like those bowls.
But I know what she does like.
Speaker 1 (36:41):
Okay, what does she like? Okay? Get it. After you
get your bowl, to celebrate the good work that you've done,
go out of your way, get her what she likes,
bring it home, give it to her, whether she accepts
it or doesn't accept it or whatever. I got myself
something nice today, So I got you something, and then
(37:04):
turn around and walk away. And then after that you
can say this is unacceptable. We can't do this in
front of the children. We can't do it. Yes, ma'am,
go get your bowl. May you did good work today.
Thank you for trusting me with your story.
Speaker 2 (37:21):
Thank you for helping me with my situation.
Speaker 1 (37:24):
Bye, mama, I have a great fan.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Thank you you two.
Speaker 1 (37:29):
Thank you. Let me just be honest here. I know
that I have lived most of my life, my adult life,
as an awful woman. I know how to do. I
know how to provide, I know how to protect. I
know how to check the boxes off and get it done.
(37:51):
And I am a casualty of the masculinization. That's a word, right,
masculine nation of women were masculinized. If that's a word,
somebody correct me. And one of the challenges the difficulties
(38:15):
of being an alpha masculine woman is you lose access
to your heart, you lose access to your feelings. You
have a vacant emotional library and as women, as mothers.
Our children could feel us before they could see us.
(38:36):
They need our hearts. And when we don't have access
to our heart, when we don't have a well stocked
emotional vocabulary and emotional grounding, our children feel abandoned. They
feel lonely, and they don't trust us. When we're correcting
(38:57):
and directing and guiding all the time supposed to nourishing
and nurturing, when our hearts are close to us, when
our hearts are close to the world, when our hearts
are close to love, our children feel abandoned because they
know us from the inside out. And when they can't
(39:20):
feel our hearts, they feel like they're by itself. That
is absolutely going on here. One of the things that
I had to learn as I healed my heart to
be better for myself so I could be better for
my children is this. And I want you, moms and
grandmoms and all of you out there, I want you
(39:42):
to write this down. It is unkind and unloving to
ask yourself to do something that you've never been taught
how to do. Nobody taught me how to affirm myself
my children. No one nurtured me and nourished me, so
(40:03):
I didn't nurture and nourish my children, and it was
unkind and unloving for me to expect that I could
have should have done that when I didn't know how
to do it. So the key to healing that is forgiveness.
I have to forgive myself for believing I should have
(40:24):
been able to do something I didn't know how to do.
And I had to ask my children to forgive me
for not being who they needed me to do, but
not giving them what they needed me to give them
because I didn't have it. How many of you out
(40:47):
there can get on that step with it. I hope
that you know something now that you didn't know when
you tuned in. And until we meet again, stay in peace,
not pieces. The R Spot is a production of Shondaland
(41:08):
Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio,
visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
to your favorite shows.
Popular Podcasts
1. The Podium
The Podium: An NBC Olympic and Paralympic podcast. Join us for insider coverage during the intense competition at the 2024 Paris Olympic and Paralympic Games. In the run-up to the Opening Ceremony, we’ll bring you deep into the stories and events that have you know and those you'll be hard-pressed to forget.
2. In The Village
In The Village will take you into the most exclusive areas of the 2024 Paris Olympic Games to explore the daily life of athletes, complete with all the funny, mundane and unexpected things you learn off the field of play. Join Elizabeth Beisel as she sits down with Olympians each day in Paris.
3. iHeartOlympics: The Latest
Listen to the latest news from the 2024 Olympics.