March 15, 2023 • 40 mins
For years Michelle Miller has been keeping you in the know as a national correspondent for CBS News and as a co-host of CBS Saturday Morning, and now you’ll get to hear from her about her own fascinating life story. Michelle returns to the podcast to talk with Carol about what she learned from the village that helped raise her after she was abandoned by her mother at birth, and how she came to write her memoir “Belonging: A Daughter's Search for Identity Through Loss and Love”. Michelle shares how she coped with growing up as “her mother’s secret”, and how her feelings about her mother shifted in unexpected ways over the years. She talks to Carol about how she valued the parenting lessons of her childhood enough to create a village of her own to help care for her children. Michelle candidly reflects on her decades-long search for belonging in this compelling episode that you won’t want to miss. Follow us at @GroundControlParenting and on groundcontrolparenting.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hello, and welcome to Ground Control Parenting, a blog and
now a podcast creative for parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I talk with them really interesting people
about the job and the joy of parenting. Today, I
am welcoming the amazing Michelle Miller back to the podcast.
She originally joined me with her husband Mark Moreal, president
(00:26):
of the National Urban League, back in twenty twenty during
the first season of the podcast, and now she's back
for a solo term. Michelle is the co host on
CBS Saturday Morning and she's an award winning national correspondent
for CBS News and now she's also an author. She's
written her memoir called Belonging, a Daughter's Search for Identity
through Loss and Love. Michelle and Mark have a son, Mason,
(00:48):
who's twenty, and a daughter, Margot who's seventeen. Her stepdaughter,
Kimma and her husband recently have a baby. So now
Michelle's a proud grandmother as well. So welcome back to
Ground Control Parenting, Michelle, Yaya, were glad to be back.
I'm so happy to have you back. So in your
last visit to the podcast. We talked about a lot
of things, but including your family story, how we were
(01:11):
born to black father and Hispanic mother and raised in
Los Angeles by your paternal grandmother and your father. And
now you've written a fascinating book that dives into the
details of your life, your development as a person as
a journalist, your efforts over the years to reconnect and
establish a relationship with your mother, and how all of
that has impacted your life. So I can't wait to
(01:32):
dive into this with you. So let's get started. So,
first of all, did you like the book? Oh my gosh. Okay,
First of all, I have to say, see, for all
my listeners out there, I read books people, I talk
to people about them. I really do. None of this
cliff notes, you know, little book jacket thing. I read
the book. I could hear your voice. You know. It's
great to actually read things about people that you know
(01:54):
because you think you know them, and then you learn
all these really interesting things about the way they think.
And then, my good this you have had such an
amazing life. So what surprised you, Carol? What surprised you?
I'm going to wait, miss journalist. Well, well I will
tell you. You know, doing this parenting work and having
(02:15):
this parenting podcast, I tend to view a lot through
the prism of parenting, right, And that's really why I'm
excited to talk to you about this, because I really
did think a lot about all the parenting aspects of
this book. I mean, obviously, the big one is that
you grew up raised by your grandmother and your father,
and your mom was out of steady predence in your
life growing up. But also I don't want to give
(02:35):
anything away about the book, because there were things revealed
to me in the book that were surprising that I
think the readers should come to as they read. But
I think I was surprised at the degree to which
your your true voice came out. Your voice comes through
very strongly in this book. I mean, you're very much
true to yourself, your very authentic persona, and that comes
(02:55):
through clearly in life, but it also comes through clearly
in the book. I mean, it feels like in many
instances that I could have been having a conversation with you,
and you you say in the next paragraph the thing
that I was wondering about. It's such a thought provoking book,
and often when you're reading a memoir you kind of
get caught up in what the person did a lot.
I mean, then I did this and that, and that's
(03:16):
really interesting. But so much of your book really will
make the readers think about their own thoughts about belonging,
their own thoughts about parenting. And so it's kind of
it's not as detailed an answer as I'd like to
give because giving a more detail would reveal too much.
Can I just say this is the perfect way to
have a conversation about this book, because as I'm thinking
(03:38):
at it through having this conversation with you, the book
is many things to me, but it really is a
seminal question to that I think I answered, And the
question is who and what is a parent? Who and
what is a parent? And who and what can be
(03:59):
a parent? And parent is someone who is there for you,
loves you, gives you guidance, advice. They can be a friend,
a neighbor. They can be your grandmother, obviously your father.
They can be your father's friends, they can be your girlfriends.
I mean, like, so that word parent has so many
(04:21):
different meanings to me because all of those people parented me.
There were girlfriends who parented me, there were women who
came in and out of my life who parented me.
There were women who quite frankly, I don't know why
they chose to border with me, live with me, and
(04:43):
parent me. But all of those sacrifices, all of those
gifts were part of what made me who I am.
And it's so funny, like in talking about them, I
feel so strong in a way that when I just
talk about like in my own head, I don't sometimes
feel that way. But they really did give me. They
(05:07):
gave me voice, and they gave me reason, and they
gave me purpose and validity. And you know the other
thing that I have to tell you know, we have
children who sometimes are very unforgiving to us, who are
cut us, no slack, we cannot do anything right. And
(05:27):
there's so much regret in not being able to tell
some of those people how much I appreciated them in
my life. And so I hope this is a lesson.
I hope it can be a lesson to people who
come from you know, disjointed, non normal, non quote unquote normal,
whatever your sphere, even children in nuclear families. To show
(05:52):
your parents grace because they're people too. Carol, you were
there in the moment that all of this was happening.
The book was in the process of becoming. Right. I
love to like quote Michelle Obama's book Becoming, because there's
kind of a funny story how it came to the
title of my book, because my title was supposed to
be something else, and my publisher was like, nobody's going
(06:16):
to remember that. And I was like, what, Like, okay,
why don't okay, I'm gonna fall in the line of
my girl Michelle, my other Michelle, how about belonging? And
she was like, oh God, I love it. I was like,
I was kind of kidding because it's so closely associated.
But Michelle Obama's book I think of as the caterpillar butterfly,
(06:41):
and this book, to me, is all about the journey,
the destination, and the ever flowing evolution of like because
we're always looking for belonging, because you're always trying to
find your space. But so let me let me you know,
I want to I want to go back and add
(07:01):
one more thing to what you're to answer your question
about what surprised me. One of the things in reading
this book surprised me was your vulnerability. And you've taught
I've just heard you talk about this that you really
opened your heart. You put yourself out there in this
book in the sense that you are telling life stories
and circumstances that are very personal and are dealing with
(07:24):
a lot of topics that are pretty emotional and so
and you do a really good job of being consistently
vulnerable throughout the book. And that leads me to so,
I hope you don't mind that I want to ask
you some questions that sort of revealed that vulnerability. So
you're raised in Los Angeles and you live with your grandmother.
Your father with elsewhere, but he was a regular and
(07:45):
loving presence in your life. You always knew that your
mom wasn't around. I mean, it was your grandmother was
raising you. But can you take us to the moment
when you consciously understood the not only was your mom
not around, meaning that you wouldn't see her, she wasn't
of a presence at all, but that she wanted to
keep your identity a secret. I mean that to me
(08:07):
is a lot to process at any age. But can
you remember how you were able to process that? And
I'm sure the people around you helped a great deal
so well, My father and grandmother never really gave away
much about my mom. My father never really wanted to
talk about her. All that he would say is and
(08:29):
he always speak about my origin story and in a
third person. So it was your mother and father fell
in love and they had to you, but they couldn't
be together, and you live with big Mom and me,
So it's almost like daddy was different from your father,
Like so growing up, like it took a second for
me to come, oh, daddy and father are the same person.
(08:53):
And there is a point in the book where I
meet my mom very briefly, and then another point in
the book in which I find her. But it wasn't
until I had my own kid that I felt as
though I was the secret, like where that the acknowledgement
(09:15):
of me became very important, like and that was I
was in my thirties when I had one like this
need for acknowledgement in my head, in my head like
like a conscious, concerted effort, and two where I was like, oh, yeah,
and of course I was a secret. But where you
(09:37):
like sometimes it's hard for you to find the words right.
And it was probably because one of my colleagues, who
was like one of my best friends at work, a
guy by the name of Anthony Mason, who's incredible storyteller,
and I told him my story and Anthony said, You've
got to write a book, which is like it was
a piggyback on what my husband Mark had been telling
(09:58):
me all along. I was like, who wants to read
my book about? Oh? Well with me? I'm pretty Look,
I'm successful, I got a good husband, I got a
good job. I wants to read about like like my
little sob story. Right, so many people are in the
space that I'm in. And we were dining with divas yesterday.
I don't know what this is arian, but we were
(10:20):
at we were at a luncheon in Harlem at the
Apollo Theater. I had the great opportunity to be able
to showcase, you know, my book, and a woman came
up to me, dynamic, very accomplished, gorgeous, brilliant, and she
(10:40):
said to me, I too, and my mother's secret and
secrets have permeated certainly the stories and tales the fabric
of the black experience, but they are they are everywhere.
They are all over the diaspora of people from all
(11:02):
over the world. Like people hold secrets for shame, for
a class, for I mean race, for you name it.
There are secrets out there that people are living, and
they're living in either the shame or in the acknowledgement thereof.
And it's so much like when you were hiding something
about yourself, you know. I think of like when we
(11:22):
talk about people who had the clear opportunity to pass
and deny their identity, they were hiding something. When people
in the gay and lesbian queer community hide who they are,
there's something you leave behind it. You aren't able to
be your true, authentic self. And so I think that
(11:44):
when people are able to live authentically in their voice
and in their experience, it's all the better. I don't
know what the original question was, but I think I
hit on it. Yes, no, you did. You got it
and more. You didn't have to process it when you
were little because the people around you, i'm sure from
(12:04):
their advantage point, were lovingly protecting you from feeling anything
other than that you belonged. I mean they you belong
to them, You belong to your grandmother, you belong to
your father, and so good on them for not trying
to tell a very small child that there was someone
that might normally be there that wasn't there, that it
was abnormal in quotes that she wasn't there, So it
(12:27):
is it's good. I think that you didn't sort of
have to grow up feeling actively every day that there
was when you were young, that there was someone that
you were missing. I know I did feel abandoned. I've
did feel thrown away. I did feel And here's the
crazy thing. And I'm a child who is embraced in
(12:51):
her community and yet still is like all the messaging
coming from like the media is telling me that's not enough,
and like trying to fight through that. And so interesting
because part of the book showcases of family in south
central LA who really they like like were like this.
(13:13):
They were true north, They were driven and all of
these kids in that family could have been anything because
they were so brilliant, but for you know, money and
access and race, they weren't able to get there. And
these people are When I think of the Woods family,
I think they root me on to this day, like
(13:37):
they tell me how proud they are me. So I
think of like the kind of support you that is
one unfiltered and completely unconditional. This is the family I
think of. It isn't rooted in anything, but they liked me,
they cared for me. So I want to get to
how growing up in this differently parented world impacted you
(14:01):
as you being at a parent. But before I even
get there, there's something I've been wrestling with after reading
the book and listening to you and thinking about this concept,
and thinking especially about when you gave birth to Mason.
As you describe in the book, this fresh pain of abandonment.
You felt it anew because you couldn't imagine as you
looked into the eyes of your newborn child having that
not be something you would always worn around. Your book
(14:24):
is going to speak to more than people who had
your exact same circumstances as the woman who came up
to you did. It's going to speak to people who
by choice gave their children up for adoption. It's going
to speak to people that, by perhaps not the same
level of choice, but we're unable to care for their children.
Do you feel like that fresh pain of abandonment is
one that is universally felt by people who are not
(14:47):
with their birth parents, or do you feel like it
was different because of the particular circumstances that you experienced.
So there are many layers, and here's the truth about
that quote unquote abandonment, because as it evolves, like the
way I felt about it as a child, as a preteen,
(15:07):
a teen, an adolescent, young adult, adult, mom, grandmoms, it's
so different. I think I had a really adult way
of thinking about it in my twenties. When I actually
met her, there was so much I understood it. It
was very clear to me there were no easy answers
(15:31):
for her, Like I understood, she was in love with
my father, and my father was probably in love with her.
He was in a bad marriage and they were doing
the best they could, but at some point, like her,
the pull of her family's discontent of her even dating
(15:52):
this man. Because see, when they found out that she
was dating a black man, she was pregnant with me,
and so imagine all of whatever they said to her
when they found out she was dating this black man,
concentrated with I love my family, I don't want to
be a band, I have this kid in the horn,
all of that. It's like I had such an open
(16:14):
mind about it, and that all changed when I have
my own kid and I sent her a notice about it.
She didn't answer the notice, and when I eventually spoke
to her, she didn't even ask about my son and
waxed on about her step granddaughter. It was so I
just felt so I was hurt because I thought, Okay,
(16:39):
well you didn't have a shot with me, but here's
your grandchild. You have no other children by blood, and
so that was also a clue for me that blood
alone does not make a parent, right. So sometimes like
blood does not really connect, we discover these things throughout life.
(17:03):
And that's when I got really mad. I got angry.
And then when she when I found out like all
those people, like the husband that she married, the mother
and the father when they were gone, I was like, okay,
now you need to let everybody know you had a kid.
And my children were also like who is this woman?
(17:26):
We want to meet her? Blah blah blah blah. I
was like, wait, why can't you acknowledge your circumstances now?
And you'll read about it in the book, But it
really unleash like this rage. I have this rage. I
hate to say, like, you know, we think we're we
(17:46):
get through things and over things with age. And I
was more angry as a forty year old woman about
my circumstance than I was when I was like that
nine year old kid, that twenty three year old kid.
That makes sense. And so we look at things so
(18:07):
differently depending on our circumstances in our age and the
evolution and who we become and what has entered our lives.
And there are no I have no answers for anyone
other than like to say, hey, I gave myself the
grace to feel all of these things and to speak
out loud my truth. And yeah, I heard some feelings,
(18:29):
and maybe I cut off a relationship, but I got
to say what I felt. You know. I told her
at one point in time, I thanked her for having me.
I thanked her for giving me to two incredible people.
She told me, you would not be the woman you
are today if not for your big mama. Right, if
(18:52):
I had raised you, you would not be this strong.
And I believe her, I really do. That's the other Again,
not to give too much away, but the interesting thing
about the story is that it's not as if she
goes away forever. She's there. I mean, she's a round.
You are able, over the course of your life to
connect with her at points, which is her luck. I mean,
(19:16):
it really is a stroke of luck that everything fell
in a place the way I did, and I had
access to information the way I did. But yeah, she
could have just as she had lived in a foreign country.
She moved halfway, she moved all the way across the country,
and it just sheer luck. I caught her at at
(19:36):
the point which I catch her, and that, regardless of
other things that she may have said or not said,
she could give you a gift. All things considered, you
are better off. You are a better person because of
how you are raised versus how I could have raised you.
I mean that that's kind of a gift in the
(19:57):
sense of to the exmit that everybody who is feeling
like they are missing someone, you wonder what life would
have been like if you've had that someone. But I
imagine it's important to just hear and to understand that
the grass is always green. Earning the side it would
have been you would have had that, you would have
had a very different life. I know, it's so funny.
(20:18):
I'm like seeking to do a piece on a book
by one of my colleagues, Mary Calvey, who's an anchor
for WCBS. She wrote a book on Teddy Roosevelt in
his First Love and I Love to quote Teddy Roosevelt,
and one of his most famous quotes is, comparison is
the thief of joy. And the thing is that we
(20:43):
are always in a state of comparison. We are looking
what we think normal is. We are looking at what
we think happy is. We are looking at what we
think successful is, and not realizing that whatever all that
other stuff is, the life you're giving is the life
you're given, and that's the life you have. You can
(21:03):
make it happy, you can make it successful, you can
make it authentic, you can make it whatever you want
to make it. But really you are in charge of it. Yeah,
no question. We'll be right back after these messages. Welcome
back to the show. So I just have to ask
you circling back. So you have these children, and you're
(21:26):
in this loving family, you're married to the wonderful Mark Morel,
and you have these two children. So what was in
the well that you drew from to have parenting instincts? Because,
I mean, you had people that were around you, but
you know you said when you had your son, you're like, ooh,
you got angry. I mean that the concept of mothering
(21:47):
was not You didn't think, oh, let me just do
what was done for me. I mean what was in
that well? The well was I got help. I surrounded
myself with people could help raise my children, with friends
and people who were professional caregivers who ended up being
(22:07):
the most wonderful people in my life. Did you feel
like there was a void that you needed to fill? No,
I went back to work and the circumstances of my
work life and proximity and time commitments. Like so a
person who works and commutes in a place like California
or in a place like New York City, like you're
(22:30):
out the door at seven thirty and you don't get
home until seven thirty. You know, So I almost feel
like I was like I was absent a lot. You know,
part of me has you know, I have a little
bit of guilt when it comes to how much I
was in my kids' life, and then too, like what
(22:51):
I gave them? So what did I give my kids?
Did I give my kids experiences? Did I give my
kids lessons? Did I give my kids an example? Did
I give my kids love? Did I so, like, you know,
the things that make a child's life pleasant, livable, enjoyable,
(23:12):
You know they had enough of that? Yeah, the day
to day yeah, I got some complaints on that I
wasn't at the pickups to school, but but fundamentally you were.
You were there, and you were definitely there. You were staring.
And I remember games, and I remember Halloween's and I
remember checker seats and Christmases, and I remember pageants, and
(23:35):
I remember the things I had to do to get
to where I had to get for those kids that
they aren't even thinking about, the being upset with my bosses,
and I gotta go to get to you know, Like
that's the thing I don't know anything about. It's like
my dad living way down in Long Beach, which is
an hour and a half away from where I went
(23:57):
to school, and how I learned and my tenth anniversary,
my tenth reunion to the junior high school that I
went to, having a conversation with my history teacher saying,
how is your father? How is doctor Miller? He remembered
my dad's name. I was like, you're, of course I do.
(24:17):
It was it was the best president of the PTA
we ever had. My dad was president of the PTA.
And your grandmother is she's still living. This is ten
years after I had left that school, and I was
like one of two black kids in school. And I
don't know if you know this, but Otis Livingston. Otis
(24:39):
Livingston is a sports anchor at w CBS, which is
we share. We're in the same company. We're like, right,
we're in the same building. Right. We grew up five
minutes ten minutes away from each other, ended up going
to junior high school together. So the fact that we
wound up in the same space, the same profession, and
(25:02):
they remember his mama too, and we were the only
two black kids in the program that we were in.
I think it says something, you know, I think it
really does. So it sounds like the well of parenting
you drew from was you had people in your life.
You started out this conversation by talking about parenting, and
it's much bigger than a mother and a father or
even you know, a grandmother and a grandfather. It's a
(25:24):
village that gets you where you need to be. And
so then you know, taking that forward you one of
the things you were able to do instinctively when you
had kids. As a look, it could have gone a
lot of different ways. You could have said, I'm never
leaving their side because I know what it feels like
when people leave your side. I mean you do you
obviously and smartly did not do that, but instinctively you
(25:47):
knew to surround them with enough people, including yourself, certainly yourself,
but with other people as well who are going to
be their parenting village. So it makes all the sense
of the world to me. And it also I think
should mitigate against guilt, which is a kind of a
It is a generally a useless emotion. I mean, it's
too present in women's lives. Just saying that guilt is
(26:09):
is a default feeling for so many of us. But
but I think it makes it really makes a lot
of sense to me that you know, I really pondered
thinking about your circumstance, like how would you know how
to parent? But you knew how because you were parented
in the biggest sense of that word, in the way
that you have redefined it, so that that does that
my parents, my parenting experience. That's exactly right. Emil has
(26:34):
raised the kids right, right. No, can I just say,
Can I just say, um, like my son made me
so proud. Um. Mason goes to the University of Pennsylvania,
which is your alma mater, my husband's alma mater. So
he comes home from school over the holiday, over the
Christmas holiday, and he says, he just mentions. He says,
(26:56):
you know, I eat in the Kosher dining hall and
the food is really great, and he said, and the
workers are awesome, but something really awful has happened. One
of them lost his son to gun violence and wasn't
able to come back to work because he missed a
couple of days and they basically let him go. And
(27:17):
the other one had a stroke and doesn't have proper
health insurance and therefore can't come back to work and
he has no no buffer. And we don't think that's fair,
and we're going to do something about it. And this
week my husband gets a note from a friend who
(27:38):
came across an article in the Pen paper where they
wrote a letter to the editor and they basically called
out the contracting company to right the wrong and say,
you know what, Penn is responsible for this too, because
while they don't employ these people, they contract the people
(27:58):
who do and they represent the Pen community and this
is not what Penn stands for. And as a student Pen,
we're gonna stand up for the ideals of the University
of Pennsylvania. And these people care for us and we're
going to be there for them, and he's launching this
whole campaign. It was part what his dad does as
(28:21):
an activist, part of what I do as a journalist.
But more importantly, it shows this kid is kind, he
has a sense of awareness and his fellow human beings
that he sees pain and he wants to help. And
so I am the village to raise this boy, young man.
(28:45):
You right, No, absolutely right, And you know it's funny.
Usually the end of the podcast conversation, I asked I
do a little lightning realm, which I hadn't planned to
do with you because you did it for the last
time we were together. But one of my questions is
tell me the moment you feel like you nailed it
as a mom and you just described that moment. Yeah,
you just describe that moment. Yep, yep. Now absolutely so
(29:08):
well done, Well done, mom. So just a few more questions.
So you've you've written this book, this book that I
hope everybody that's listening will run out and by because
it's such a really interesting, very deeply layered and fascinating story.
So many women who are mothers will be reading this
from their various perspectives. What do you most want to
(29:30):
say to mothers? In this book? You've given us a
lot of different people to think about, the child, the
mother who was put in a circumstance where, for whatever reason,
she felt like she had to do what she had
to do, the other women who stepped up. I mean,
is there is there a mothering story that you want
this book to tell or is there something that you
(29:50):
want mothers to take away? I think I think it's
a parable a lesson of us just being there for
whoever needs us to be there for. I was a
kid who needed care after my grandmother got sick. I
(30:11):
needed care from just just the presence right and my
dad was there, but he wasn't able to be in
two places and once when your grandmother got sick. Because
my grandmother died and my dad was I could have
gone to live in a very crowded home with my dad.
Thankfully I wasn't forced to do that. I wouldn't have
(30:32):
been a very happy kid. I had a safe space
and a and I had a friend of the family.
You came in to live with me, and at the
time I had really close friends who took care of me.
I had an aunt who was just like the effervescence
(30:53):
of life for me. So parenting, I feel, is a
very kind of loose term to me because you can
you know, it can take on the meaning of advisor,
mentor teacher, someone, but just somebody who's there that gives
(31:13):
you a gift like that. And I take great pride
in like having done that for a number of people
in my life who I've helped, because that's what those
were the gifts to me. There were people who did
that for me. There were mentors then just dropped gifts
like that in my life. Direct They direct you on
(31:35):
a path and then you go and you move from
there and you may never see them again. Absolutely, And
it sounds like you want sort of not just mothers,
but everyone to know that what they do matters, what
they do makes a difference, what you do, what you
do matters how It's like what Maya Ajelo said, You know,
what you say, what you do, but how you make
(31:58):
someone feel is impact. And when you make them feel worthy,
feel love, feel acknowledged, the sky's the limit. There's direction,
there's purpose, there's followed through, there's all of these opportunities,
and so you know, I have to because I'm human.
(32:20):
I like do really dumb stuff all the time. And
my husband always tells me, you need to be more patient.
My kids tell me that mommy tone. Oh my goodness.
I'm always rushing and if things aren't happening fast enough,
I get aggravated and frustrated and I'm impatient. So like
(32:42):
the fact that my children are now parenting me is
a really it's a powerful it's a powerful lesson and
it's also an acknowledgement that you know they have they're
empowered in knowing right from wrong. Right, absolutely, absolutely, yes,
It's so it's a wonderful thing when your children can
(33:02):
turn the tables on you, because I'll let you know
that you must have poured in enough for them to
get the right idea. When they can, they they can
help you out. So, Michelle, you know I earlier I
talked about the vulnerability of the book, and it is.
It's it's such a story of your interaction with your mom,
which which is really an arc through the book. The
(33:22):
book is bigger than that. It's a story of you
and your life and how things worked out. But there
really is this thread of your interaction with your mom
and you said in this conversation that you know you
felt differently with your twenty and then when you're forty,
and then as time goes on, you feel differently. But
there's still to some extent an unresolved nature of it.
I mean, with this book, frankly, you are no longer
(33:42):
making this a secret, and so there is a good
shot that someone that she will know about the books
you'll read about the book. She's named in the book.
I mean, it's very much that's not her real name.
So I think my promise I said I would not
actively expose her, I wouldn't name her. I wouldn't you know.
But now that is not her real name. But there's
(34:03):
a good chance that she will see this book. That
she will and hopefully she will read it. What would
you want her? How would you want her to feel?
And how would you want her to respond? What for
you would be the best possible outcome of her it
affect This book is a long conversation you're having with
her to let her know all the things that she
(34:25):
didn't encounter it, And so what what would you like?
What would make you feel the most settled and resolved?
What reacting would you like from her, So I honestly,
the only thing she could do would be just to
say out loud she has a daughter, and this is
(34:46):
why she did it. I have a particular disdain for
the brother of my mother because she named him as
the chief. Okay, I'm gonna say something. This is pretty
harsh that she racist in the family, and I don't
know she she had a great love for her father,
and she said her mother was very you know, dominant.
(35:10):
But when it came to calling out like reasons why
she couldn't be with this black man, he was. He
was the chief culprit and he has very set ideas
based on what I know, which aren't very they aren't
very flattering. But I hate when people like that win. Yeah,
(35:35):
we can't let people like that win. So it would
be like, I know that there isn't going to be
a great relationship between my mother and I don't expect
any of that. But I just want him to know
he didn't win, Like his mindset didn't win, his hatred,
his racism, his classicism, you know, because he wasn't even
(35:59):
it was like my grandparents were working glass people. But
you know he's a classist now. But that's even a word,
he said, yeah, you know what I mean. Though I
do know, I do, I do, but he has turned
into one of these people who believes he's better than
(36:20):
other people. I'm like, well, just part of you want
I don't. And by the way, I don't even know
I'm basing this all on what. I based all of
this on the description. I haven't looked him up. I
don't know all his I don't know any of that
about him, but just the narrative that has been exposed
to me. Yeah, I don't I want him to know.
(36:43):
Guess what you have all the black niece right right right,
who knows who she is. I understand the anger that
would go towards him, because it seems like he's the
big influence. But I would imagine you'd also want a
woman who gave birth to you to be of a
mindset that she'd want to turn away from that. Well,
(37:04):
I guess she did because she connected with your father,
so she you know, and she had a moment of
self discovery too, as a Chicana who went back to
discover her roots in Mexico, and then something happened. I
think maybe the you know, reality set in. But she
talked about this great awakening that she had and being
(37:27):
proud of like her Mexicana roots, and you know, like
my little you know story. I don't think there's gonna
be any resolution. I really don't. I'm I'm an eternal optimist.
But there there, there is always time for other people,
because you know, these circumstances are ongoing in people's lives,
(37:48):
and people can learn from my situation all the better.
I hope people will learn the lesson of Aunt Edna,
and the lesson of Aunt Edna is you make your
own self happy. I asked my aunt and if her
husband made her happy, She's so, honey. No, you make
your You are the answer to your happiness. It is
(38:12):
a choice, and it is your choice. And circumstances are
out there. They're awful, all that unfairness, all that stuff
is there, but you have power in moving beyond power
in making a choice. I think about people who don't
have anywhere of what we have, and they find a
(38:34):
way to find joy. And so that's what I do,
find a way every day to find my joy, and
I hope you will too. Wow, Michelle, I thank you
so much for this conversation, and I will say it
again everyone. When you finish listening, stop what you're doing
and buy a copy of Belonging by Michelle Miller and
(38:56):
Rosemarie Robota, my co writer. She's awesome. She helped absolutely,
but Michelle's face is on the cover, so look for
Michelle anyway. Best of luck with this amazing book, and
thank you so much for coming and helping us get
the parenting slant on it. Thanks for your second time
at Ground Control Parenting. Thank you, Carol sut Lewis. I
(39:20):
hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation and that you'll come
back for more. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you
listen to podcasts and tell your friends. For more parenting
info and advice, please check out the Ground Control Parenting
blog at ground control Parenting dot com. You can also
find us on Instagram and Facebook at ground Control Parenting
(39:40):
and on LinkedIn under Carol Sutton Lewis. The Ground Control
Parenting with Carol Sutton Lewis podcast is a part of
the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartMedia. Until
the next time, take care and thanks for listening.
Hello, and welcome to Ground Control Parenting, a blog and
now a podcast creative for parents raising black and brown children.
I'm the creator and your host, Carol Sutton Lewis. In
this podcast series, I talk with them really interesting people
about the job and the joy of parenting. Today, I
am welcoming the amazing Michelle Miller back to the podcast.
She originally joined me with her husband Mark Moreal, president
(00:26):
of the National Urban League, back in twenty twenty during
the first season of the podcast, and now she's back
for a solo term. Michelle is the co host on
CBS Saturday Morning and she's an award winning national correspondent
for CBS News and now she's also an author. She's
written her memoir called Belonging, a Daughter's Search for Identity
through Loss and Love. Michelle and Mark have a son, Mason,
(00:48):
who's twenty, and a daughter, Margot who's seventeen. Her stepdaughter,
Kimma and her husband recently have a baby. So now
Michelle's a proud grandmother as well. So welcome back to
Ground Control Parenting, Michelle, Yaya, were glad to be back.
I'm so happy to have you back. So in your
last visit to the podcast. We talked about a lot
of things, but including your family story, how we were
(01:11):
born to black father and Hispanic mother and raised in
Los Angeles by your paternal grandmother and your father. And
now you've written a fascinating book that dives into the
details of your life, your development as a person as
a journalist, your efforts over the years to reconnect and
establish a relationship with your mother, and how all of
that has impacted your life. So I can't wait to
(01:32):
dive into this with you. So let's get started. So,
first of all, did you like the book? Oh my gosh. Okay,
First of all, I have to say, see, for all
my listeners out there, I read books people, I talk
to people about them. I really do. None of this
cliff notes, you know, little book jacket thing. I read
the book. I could hear your voice. You know. It's
great to actually read things about people that you know
(01:54):
because you think you know them, and then you learn
all these really interesting things about the way they think.
And then, my good this you have had such an
amazing life. So what surprised you, Carol? What surprised you?
I'm going to wait, miss journalist. Well, well I will
tell you. You know, doing this parenting work and having
(02:15):
this parenting podcast, I tend to view a lot through
the prism of parenting, right, And that's really why I'm
excited to talk to you about this, because I really
did think a lot about all the parenting aspects of
this book. I mean, obviously, the big one is that
you grew up raised by your grandmother and your father,
and your mom was out of steady predence in your
life growing up. But also I don't want to give
(02:35):
anything away about the book, because there were things revealed
to me in the book that were surprising that I
think the readers should come to as they read. But
I think I was surprised at the degree to which
your your true voice came out. Your voice comes through
very strongly in this book. I mean, you're very much
true to yourself, your very authentic persona, and that comes
(02:55):
through clearly in life, but it also comes through clearly
in the book. I mean, it feels like in many
instances that I could have been having a conversation with you,
and you you say in the next paragraph the thing
that I was wondering about. It's such a thought provoking book,
and often when you're reading a memoir you kind of
get caught up in what the person did a lot.
I mean, then I did this and that, and that's
(03:16):
really interesting. But so much of your book really will
make the readers think about their own thoughts about belonging,
their own thoughts about parenting. And so it's kind of
it's not as detailed an answer as I'd like to
give because giving a more detail would reveal too much.
Can I just say this is the perfect way to
have a conversation about this book, because as I'm thinking
(03:38):
at it through having this conversation with you, the book
is many things to me, but it really is a
seminal question to that I think I answered, And the
question is who and what is a parent? Who and
what is a parent? And who and what can be
(03:59):
a parent? And parent is someone who is there for you,
loves you, gives you guidance, advice. They can be a friend,
a neighbor. They can be your grandmother, obviously your father.
They can be your father's friends, they can be your girlfriends.
I mean, like, so that word parent has so many
(04:21):
different meanings to me because all of those people parented me.
There were girlfriends who parented me, there were women who
came in and out of my life who parented me.
There were women who quite frankly, I don't know why
they chose to border with me, live with me, and
(04:43):
parent me. But all of those sacrifices, all of those
gifts were part of what made me who I am.
And it's so funny, like in talking about them, I
feel so strong in a way that when I just
talk about like in my own head, I don't sometimes
feel that way. But they really did give me. They
(05:07):
gave me voice, and they gave me reason, and they
gave me purpose and validity. And you know the other
thing that I have to tell you know, we have
children who sometimes are very unforgiving to us, who are
cut us, no slack, we cannot do anything right. And
(05:27):
there's so much regret in not being able to tell
some of those people how much I appreciated them in
my life. And so I hope this is a lesson.
I hope it can be a lesson to people who
come from you know, disjointed, non normal, non quote unquote normal,
whatever your sphere, even children in nuclear families. To show
(05:52):
your parents grace because they're people too. Carol, you were
there in the moment that all of this was happening.
The book was in the process of becoming. Right. I
love to like quote Michelle Obama's book Becoming, because there's
kind of a funny story how it came to the
title of my book, because my title was supposed to
be something else, and my publisher was like, nobody's going
(06:16):
to remember that. And I was like, what, Like, okay,
why don't okay, I'm gonna fall in the line of
my girl Michelle, my other Michelle, how about belonging? And
she was like, oh God, I love it. I was like,
I was kind of kidding because it's so closely associated.
But Michelle Obama's book I think of as the caterpillar butterfly,
(06:41):
and this book, to me, is all about the journey,
the destination, and the ever flowing evolution of like because
we're always looking for belonging, because you're always trying to
find your space. But so let me let me you know,
I want to I want to go back and add
(07:01):
one more thing to what you're to answer your question
about what surprised me. One of the things in reading
this book surprised me was your vulnerability. And you've taught
I've just heard you talk about this that you really
opened your heart. You put yourself out there in this
book in the sense that you are telling life stories
and circumstances that are very personal and are dealing with
(07:24):
a lot of topics that are pretty emotional and so
and you do a really good job of being consistently
vulnerable throughout the book. And that leads me to so,
I hope you don't mind that I want to ask
you some questions that sort of revealed that vulnerability. So
you're raised in Los Angeles and you live with your grandmother.
Your father with elsewhere, but he was a regular and
(07:45):
loving presence in your life. You always knew that your
mom wasn't around. I mean, it was your grandmother was
raising you. But can you take us to the moment
when you consciously understood the not only was your mom
not around, meaning that you wouldn't see her, she wasn't
of a presence at all, but that she wanted to
keep your identity a secret. I mean that to me
(08:07):
is a lot to process at any age. But can
you remember how you were able to process that? And
I'm sure the people around you helped a great deal
so well, My father and grandmother never really gave away
much about my mom. My father never really wanted to
talk about her. All that he would say is and
(08:29):
he always speak about my origin story and in a
third person. So it was your mother and father fell
in love and they had to you, but they couldn't
be together, and you live with big Mom and me,
So it's almost like daddy was different from your father,
Like so growing up, like it took a second for
me to come, oh, daddy and father are the same person.
(08:53):
And there is a point in the book where I
meet my mom very briefly, and then another point in
the book in which I find her. But it wasn't
until I had my own kid that I felt as
though I was the secret, like where that the acknowledgement
(09:15):
of me became very important, like and that was I
was in my thirties when I had one like this
need for acknowledgement in my head, in my head like
like a conscious, concerted effort, and two where I was like, oh, yeah,
and of course I was a secret. But where you
(09:37):
like sometimes it's hard for you to find the words right.
And it was probably because one of my colleagues, who
was like one of my best friends at work, a
guy by the name of Anthony Mason, who's incredible storyteller,
and I told him my story and Anthony said, You've
got to write a book, which is like it was
a piggyback on what my husband Mark had been telling
(09:58):
me all along. I was like, who wants to read
my book about? Oh? Well with me? I'm pretty Look,
I'm successful, I got a good husband, I got a
good job. I wants to read about like like my
little sob story. Right, so many people are in the
space that I'm in. And we were dining with divas yesterday.
I don't know what this is arian, but we were
(10:20):
at we were at a luncheon in Harlem at the
Apollo Theater. I had the great opportunity to be able
to showcase, you know, my book, and a woman came
up to me, dynamic, very accomplished, gorgeous, brilliant, and she
(10:40):
said to me, I too, and my mother's secret and
secrets have permeated certainly the stories and tales the fabric
of the black experience, but they are they are everywhere.
They are all over the diaspora of people from all
(11:02):
over the world. Like people hold secrets for shame, for
a class, for I mean race, for you name it.
There are secrets out there that people are living, and
they're living in either the shame or in the acknowledgement thereof.
And it's so much like when you were hiding something
about yourself, you know. I think of like when we
(11:22):
talk about people who had the clear opportunity to pass
and deny their identity, they were hiding something. When people
in the gay and lesbian queer community hide who they are,
there's something you leave behind it. You aren't able to
be your true, authentic self. And so I think that
(11:44):
when people are able to live authentically in their voice
and in their experience, it's all the better. I don't
know what the original question was, but I think I
hit on it. Yes, no, you did. You got it
and more. You didn't have to process it when you
were little because the people around you, i'm sure from
(12:04):
their advantage point, were lovingly protecting you from feeling anything
other than that you belonged. I mean they you belong
to them, You belong to your grandmother, you belong to
your father, and so good on them for not trying
to tell a very small child that there was someone
that might normally be there that wasn't there, that it
was abnormal in quotes that she wasn't there, So it
(12:27):
is it's good. I think that you didn't sort of
have to grow up feeling actively every day that there
was when you were young, that there was someone that
you were missing. I know I did feel abandoned. I've
did feel thrown away. I did feel And here's the
crazy thing. And I'm a child who is embraced in
(12:51):
her community and yet still is like all the messaging
coming from like the media is telling me that's not enough,
and like trying to fight through that. And so interesting
because part of the book showcases of family in south
central LA who really they like like were like this.
(13:13):
They were true north, They were driven and all of
these kids in that family could have been anything because
they were so brilliant, but for you know, money and
access and race, they weren't able to get there. And
these people are When I think of the Woods family,
I think they root me on to this day, like
(13:37):
they tell me how proud they are me. So I
think of like the kind of support you that is
one unfiltered and completely unconditional. This is the family I
think of. It isn't rooted in anything, but they liked me,
they cared for me. So I want to get to
how growing up in this differently parented world impacted you
(14:01):
as you being at a parent. But before I even
get there, there's something I've been wrestling with after reading
the book and listening to you and thinking about this concept,
and thinking especially about when you gave birth to Mason.
As you describe in the book, this fresh pain of abandonment.
You felt it anew because you couldn't imagine as you
looked into the eyes of your newborn child having that
not be something you would always worn around. Your book
(14:24):
is going to speak to more than people who had
your exact same circumstances as the woman who came up
to you did. It's going to speak to people who
by choice gave their children up for adoption. It's going
to speak to people that, by perhaps not the same
level of choice, but we're unable to care for their children.
Do you feel like that fresh pain of abandonment is
one that is universally felt by people who are not
(14:47):
with their birth parents, or do you feel like it
was different because of the particular circumstances that you experienced.
So there are many layers, and here's the truth about
that quote unquote abandonment, because as it evolves, like the
way I felt about it as a child, as a preteen,
(15:07):
a teen, an adolescent, young adult, adult, mom, grandmoms, it's
so different. I think I had a really adult way
of thinking about it in my twenties. When I actually
met her, there was so much I understood it. It
was very clear to me there were no easy answers
(15:31):
for her, Like I understood, she was in love with
my father, and my father was probably in love with her.
He was in a bad marriage and they were doing
the best they could, but at some point, like her,
the pull of her family's discontent of her even dating
(15:52):
this man. Because see, when they found out that she
was dating a black man, she was pregnant with me,
and so imagine all of whatever they said to her
when they found out she was dating this black man,
concentrated with I love my family, I don't want to
be a band, I have this kid in the horn,
all of that. It's like I had such an open
(16:14):
mind about it, and that all changed when I have
my own kid and I sent her a notice about it.
She didn't answer the notice, and when I eventually spoke
to her, she didn't even ask about my son and
waxed on about her step granddaughter. It was so I
just felt so I was hurt because I thought, Okay,
(16:39):
well you didn't have a shot with me, but here's
your grandchild. You have no other children by blood, and
so that was also a clue for me that blood
alone does not make a parent, right. So sometimes like
blood does not really connect, we discover these things throughout life.
(17:03):
And that's when I got really mad. I got angry.
And then when she when I found out like all
those people, like the husband that she married, the mother
and the father when they were gone, I was like, okay,
now you need to let everybody know you had a kid.
And my children were also like who is this woman?
(17:26):
We want to meet her? Blah blah blah blah. I
was like, wait, why can't you acknowledge your circumstances now?
And you'll read about it in the book, But it
really unleash like this rage. I have this rage. I
hate to say, like, you know, we think we're we
(17:46):
get through things and over things with age. And I
was more angry as a forty year old woman about
my circumstance than I was when I was like that
nine year old kid, that twenty three year old kid.
That makes sense. And so we look at things so
(18:07):
differently depending on our circumstances in our age and the
evolution and who we become and what has entered our lives.
And there are no I have no answers for anyone
other than like to say, hey, I gave myself the
grace to feel all of these things and to speak
out loud my truth. And yeah, I heard some feelings,
(18:29):
and maybe I cut off a relationship, but I got
to say what I felt. You know. I told her
at one point in time, I thanked her for having me.
I thanked her for giving me to two incredible people.
She told me, you would not be the woman you
are today if not for your big mama. Right, if
(18:52):
I had raised you, you would not be this strong.
And I believe her, I really do. That's the other Again,
not to give too much away, but the interesting thing
about the story is that it's not as if she
goes away forever. She's there. I mean, she's a round.
You are able, over the course of your life to
connect with her at points, which is her luck. I mean,
(19:16):
it really is a stroke of luck that everything fell
in a place the way I did, and I had
access to information the way I did. But yeah, she
could have just as she had lived in a foreign country.
She moved halfway, she moved all the way across the country,
and it just sheer luck. I caught her at at
(19:36):
the point which I catch her, and that, regardless of
other things that she may have said or not said,
she could give you a gift. All things considered, you
are better off. You are a better person because of
how you are raised versus how I could have raised you.
I mean that that's kind of a gift in the
(19:57):
sense of to the exmit that everybody who is feeling
like they are missing someone, you wonder what life would
have been like if you've had that someone. But I
imagine it's important to just hear and to understand that
the grass is always green. Earning the side it would
have been you would have had that, you would have
had a very different life. I know, it's so funny.
(20:18):
I'm like seeking to do a piece on a book
by one of my colleagues, Mary Calvey, who's an anchor
for WCBS. She wrote a book on Teddy Roosevelt in
his First Love and I Love to quote Teddy Roosevelt,
and one of his most famous quotes is, comparison is
the thief of joy. And the thing is that we
(20:43):
are always in a state of comparison. We are looking
what we think normal is. We are looking at what
we think happy is. We are looking at what we
think successful is, and not realizing that whatever all that
other stuff is, the life you're giving is the life
you're given, and that's the life you have. You can
(21:03):
make it happy, you can make it successful, you can
make it authentic, you can make it whatever you want
to make it. But really you are in charge of it. Yeah,
no question. We'll be right back after these messages. Welcome
back to the show. So I just have to ask
you circling back. So you have these children, and you're
(21:26):
in this loving family, you're married to the wonderful Mark Morel,
and you have these two children. So what was in
the well that you drew from to have parenting instincts? Because,
I mean, you had people that were around you, but
you know you said when you had your son, you're like, ooh,
you got angry. I mean that the concept of mothering
(21:47):
was not You didn't think, oh, let me just do
what was done for me. I mean what was in
that well? The well was I got help. I surrounded
myself with people could help raise my children, with friends
and people who were professional caregivers who ended up being
(22:07):
the most wonderful people in my life. Did you feel
like there was a void that you needed to fill? No,
I went back to work and the circumstances of my
work life and proximity and time commitments. Like so a
person who works and commutes in a place like California
or in a place like New York City, like you're
(22:30):
out the door at seven thirty and you don't get
home until seven thirty. You know, So I almost feel
like I was like I was absent a lot. You know,
part of me has you know, I have a little
bit of guilt when it comes to how much I
was in my kids' life, and then too, like what
(22:51):
I gave them? So what did I give my kids?
Did I give my kids experiences? Did I give my
kids lessons? Did I give my kids an example? Did
I give my kids love? Did I so, like, you know,
the things that make a child's life pleasant, livable, enjoyable,
(23:12):
You know they had enough of that? Yeah, the day
to day yeah, I got some complaints on that I
wasn't at the pickups to school, but but fundamentally you were.
You were there, and you were definitely there. You were staring.
And I remember games, and I remember Halloween's and I
remember checker seats and Christmases, and I remember pageants, and
(23:35):
I remember the things I had to do to get
to where I had to get for those kids that
they aren't even thinking about, the being upset with my bosses,
and I gotta go to get to you know, Like
that's the thing I don't know anything about. It's like
my dad living way down in Long Beach, which is
an hour and a half away from where I went
(23:57):
to school, and how I learned and my tenth anniversary,
my tenth reunion to the junior high school that I
went to, having a conversation with my history teacher saying,
how is your father? How is doctor Miller? He remembered
my dad's name. I was like, you're, of course I do.
(24:17):
It was it was the best president of the PTA
we ever had. My dad was president of the PTA.
And your grandmother is she's still living. This is ten
years after I had left that school, and I was
like one of two black kids in school. And I
don't know if you know this, but Otis Livingston. Otis
(24:39):
Livingston is a sports anchor at w CBS, which is
we share. We're in the same company. We're like, right,
we're in the same building. Right. We grew up five
minutes ten minutes away from each other, ended up going
to junior high school together. So the fact that we
wound up in the same space, the same profession, and
(25:02):
they remember his mama too, and we were the only
two black kids in the program that we were in.
I think it says something, you know, I think it
really does. So it sounds like the well of parenting
you drew from was you had people in your life.
You started out this conversation by talking about parenting, and
it's much bigger than a mother and a father or
even you know, a grandmother and a grandfather. It's a
(25:24):
village that gets you where you need to be. And
so then you know, taking that forward you one of
the things you were able to do instinctively when you
had kids. As a look, it could have gone a
lot of different ways. You could have said, I'm never
leaving their side because I know what it feels like
when people leave your side. I mean you do you
obviously and smartly did not do that, but instinctively you
(25:47):
knew to surround them with enough people, including yourself, certainly yourself,
but with other people as well who are going to
be their parenting village. So it makes all the sense
of the world to me. And it also I think
should mitigate against guilt, which is a kind of a
It is a generally a useless emotion. I mean, it's
too present in women's lives. Just saying that guilt is
(26:09):
is a default feeling for so many of us. But
but I think it makes it really makes a lot
of sense to me that you know, I really pondered
thinking about your circumstance, like how would you know how
to parent? But you knew how because you were parented
in the biggest sense of that word, in the way
that you have redefined it, so that that does that
my parents, my parenting experience. That's exactly right. Emil has
(26:34):
raised the kids right, right. No, can I just say,
Can I just say, um, like my son made me
so proud. Um. Mason goes to the University of Pennsylvania,
which is your alma mater, my husband's alma mater. So
he comes home from school over the holiday, over the
Christmas holiday, and he says, he just mentions. He says,
(26:56):
you know, I eat in the Kosher dining hall and
the food is really great, and he said, and the
workers are awesome, but something really awful has happened. One
of them lost his son to gun violence and wasn't
able to come back to work because he missed a
couple of days and they basically let him go. And
(27:17):
the other one had a stroke and doesn't have proper
health insurance and therefore can't come back to work and
he has no no buffer. And we don't think that's fair,
and we're going to do something about it. And this
week my husband gets a note from a friend who
(27:38):
came across an article in the Pen paper where they
wrote a letter to the editor and they basically called
out the contracting company to right the wrong and say,
you know what, Penn is responsible for this too, because
while they don't employ these people, they contract the people
(27:58):
who do and they represent the Pen community and this
is not what Penn stands for. And as a student Pen,
we're gonna stand up for the ideals of the University
of Pennsylvania. And these people care for us and we're
going to be there for them, and he's launching this
whole campaign. It was part what his dad does as
(28:21):
an activist, part of what I do as a journalist.
But more importantly, it shows this kid is kind, he
has a sense of awareness and his fellow human beings
that he sees pain and he wants to help. And
so I am the village to raise this boy, young man.
(28:45):
You right, No, absolutely right, And you know it's funny.
Usually the end of the podcast conversation, I asked I
do a little lightning realm, which I hadn't planned to
do with you because you did it for the last
time we were together. But one of my questions is
tell me the moment you feel like you nailed it
as a mom and you just described that moment. Yeah,
you just describe that moment. Yep, yep. Now absolutely so
(29:08):
well done, Well done, mom. So just a few more questions.
So you've you've written this book, this book that I
hope everybody that's listening will run out and by because
it's such a really interesting, very deeply layered and fascinating story.
So many women who are mothers will be reading this
from their various perspectives. What do you most want to
(29:30):
say to mothers? In this book? You've given us a
lot of different people to think about, the child, the
mother who was put in a circumstance where, for whatever reason,
she felt like she had to do what she had
to do, the other women who stepped up. I mean,
is there is there a mothering story that you want
this book to tell or is there something that you
(29:50):
want mothers to take away? I think I think it's
a parable a lesson of us just being there for
whoever needs us to be there for. I was a
kid who needed care after my grandmother got sick. I
(30:11):
needed care from just just the presence right and my
dad was there, but he wasn't able to be in
two places and once when your grandmother got sick. Because
my grandmother died and my dad was I could have
gone to live in a very crowded home with my dad.
Thankfully I wasn't forced to do that. I wouldn't have
(30:32):
been a very happy kid. I had a safe space
and a and I had a friend of the family.
You came in to live with me, and at the
time I had really close friends who took care of me.
I had an aunt who was just like the effervescence
(30:53):
of life for me. So parenting, I feel, is a
very kind of loose term to me because you can
you know, it can take on the meaning of advisor,
mentor teacher, someone, but just somebody who's there that gives
(31:13):
you a gift like that. And I take great pride
in like having done that for a number of people
in my life who I've helped, because that's what those
were the gifts to me. There were people who did
that for me. There were mentors then just dropped gifts
like that in my life. Direct They direct you on
(31:35):
a path and then you go and you move from
there and you may never see them again. Absolutely, And
it sounds like you want sort of not just mothers,
but everyone to know that what they do matters, what
they do makes a difference, what you do, what you
do matters how It's like what Maya Ajelo said, You know,
what you say, what you do, but how you make
(31:58):
someone feel is impact. And when you make them feel worthy,
feel love, feel acknowledged, the sky's the limit. There's direction,
there's purpose, there's followed through, there's all of these opportunities,
and so you know, I have to because I'm human.
(32:20):
I like do really dumb stuff all the time. And
my husband always tells me, you need to be more patient.
My kids tell me that mommy tone. Oh my goodness.
I'm always rushing and if things aren't happening fast enough,
I get aggravated and frustrated and I'm impatient. So like
(32:42):
the fact that my children are now parenting me is
a really it's a powerful it's a powerful lesson and
it's also an acknowledgement that you know they have they're
empowered in knowing right from wrong. Right, absolutely, absolutely, yes,
It's so it's a wonderful thing when your children can
(33:02):
turn the tables on you, because I'll let you know
that you must have poured in enough for them to
get the right idea. When they can, they they can
help you out. So, Michelle, you know I earlier I
talked about the vulnerability of the book, and it is.
It's it's such a story of your interaction with your mom,
which which is really an arc through the book. The
(33:22):
book is bigger than that. It's a story of you
and your life and how things worked out. But there
really is this thread of your interaction with your mom
and you said in this conversation that you know you
felt differently with your twenty and then when you're forty,
and then as time goes on, you feel differently. But
there's still to some extent an unresolved nature of it.
I mean, with this book, frankly, you are no longer
(33:42):
making this a secret, and so there is a good
shot that someone that she will know about the books
you'll read about the book. She's named in the book.
I mean, it's very much that's not her real name.
So I think my promise I said I would not
actively expose her, I wouldn't name her. I wouldn't you know.
But now that is not her real name. But there's
(34:03):
a good chance that she will see this book. That
she will and hopefully she will read it. What would
you want her? How would you want her to feel?
And how would you want her to respond? What for
you would be the best possible outcome of her it
affect This book is a long conversation you're having with
her to let her know all the things that she
(34:25):
didn't encounter it, And so what what would you like?
What would make you feel the most settled and resolved?
What reacting would you like from her, So I honestly,
the only thing she could do would be just to
say out loud she has a daughter, and this is
(34:46):
why she did it. I have a particular disdain for
the brother of my mother because she named him as
the chief. Okay, I'm gonna say something. This is pretty
harsh that she racist in the family, and I don't
know she she had a great love for her father,
and she said her mother was very you know, dominant.
(35:10):
But when it came to calling out like reasons why
she couldn't be with this black man, he was. He
was the chief culprit and he has very set ideas
based on what I know, which aren't very they aren't
very flattering. But I hate when people like that win. Yeah,
(35:35):
we can't let people like that win. So it would
be like, I know that there isn't going to be
a great relationship between my mother and I don't expect
any of that. But I just want him to know
he didn't win, Like his mindset didn't win, his hatred,
his racism, his classicism, you know, because he wasn't even
(35:59):
it was like my grandparents were working glass people. But
you know he's a classist now. But that's even a word,
he said, yeah, you know what I mean. Though I
do know, I do, I do, but he has turned
into one of these people who believes he's better than
(36:20):
other people. I'm like, well, just part of you want
I don't. And by the way, I don't even know
I'm basing this all on what. I based all of
this on the description. I haven't looked him up. I
don't know all his I don't know any of that
about him, but just the narrative that has been exposed
to me. Yeah, I don't I want him to know.
(36:43):
Guess what you have all the black niece right right right,
who knows who she is. I understand the anger that
would go towards him, because it seems like he's the
big influence. But I would imagine you'd also want a
woman who gave birth to you to be of a
mindset that she'd want to turn away from that. Well,
(37:04):
I guess she did because she connected with your father,
so she you know, and she had a moment of
self discovery too, as a Chicana who went back to
discover her roots in Mexico, and then something happened. I
think maybe the you know, reality set in. But she
talked about this great awakening that she had and being
(37:27):
proud of like her Mexicana roots, and you know, like
my little you know story. I don't think there's gonna
be any resolution. I really don't. I'm I'm an eternal optimist.
But there there, there is always time for other people,
because you know, these circumstances are ongoing in people's lives,
(37:48):
and people can learn from my situation all the better.
I hope people will learn the lesson of Aunt Edna,
and the lesson of Aunt Edna is you make your
own self happy. I asked my aunt and if her
husband made her happy, She's so, honey. No, you make
your You are the answer to your happiness. It is
(38:12):
a choice, and it is your choice. And circumstances are
out there. They're awful, all that unfairness, all that stuff
is there, but you have power in moving beyond power
in making a choice. I think about people who don't
have anywhere of what we have, and they find a
(38:34):
way to find joy. And so that's what I do,
find a way every day to find my joy, and
I hope you will too. Wow, Michelle, I thank you
so much for this conversation, and I will say it
again everyone. When you finish listening, stop what you're doing
and buy a copy of Belonging by Michelle Miller and
(38:56):
Rosemarie Robota, my co writer. She's awesome. She helped absolutely,
but Michelle's face is on the cover, so look for
Michelle anyway. Best of luck with this amazing book, and
thank you so much for coming and helping us get
the parenting slant on it. Thanks for your second time
at Ground Control Parenting. Thank you, Carol sut Lewis. I
(39:20):
hope everyone listening enjoyed this conversation and that you'll come
back for more. Please rate, review, and subscribe wherever you
listen to podcasts and tell your friends. For more parenting
info and advice, please check out the Ground Control Parenting
blog at ground control Parenting dot com. You can also
find us on Instagram and Facebook at ground Control Parenting
(39:40):
and on LinkedIn under Carol Sutton Lewis. The Ground Control
Parenting with Carol Sutton Lewis podcast is a part of
the Seneca Women Podcast Network in partnership with iHeartMedia. Until
the next time, take care and thanks for listening.
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