Speaker 1: 0:12

Welcome back to the Practical Spirituality Podcast. We are so excited to have you on this journey with us, where we explore all elements of mind, body, emotions and soul through the lens of everyday life. In this week's episode, we begin to explore family relationships and how they tie into our spiritual contract.

Speaker 2: 0:39

The one thing that came up actually quite a lot this week throughout my call to my clients was around the subject of family. Family has come up in different ways but I think it's one that we've put on the long finger of maybe approaching because, like most things we approach, it's quite a large subject. When I know through this conversation, it's that some of the things we talk about people might be able to relate to. Sometimes people won't be able to relate to it because everyone experiences so different and I think even the definitions around what family is. There's something that evolves and changes over a period of time as well.

Speaker 2: 1:14

I noticed a lot this week in the conversations I was having with my clients. We were talking a lot about family. We were talking about the growth that comes from the challenges, the experiences, sometimes the traumas that most of us might have from different experiences. Then also roping it back in which was interesting even for me, of how it links back into our contract, of how we actually chose our family members, how we chose them be a part of certain experiences. That naturally brings up a lot of different interesting emotions in us because often if we're in our family stuff and then someone tells you, it's a part of your contract and you chose these people to be your family. The response is no, I didn't. I would never would have chose them to be my sibling, my mom, my dad, my cousin, whatever it might be. I think it'd be very interesting conversation to have from your family perspective, from mine and then just our overall experiences, I guess, from doing the work. Also, Where should we start?

Speaker 1: 2:14

I think we can start about how so many people don't understand the actual spiritual growth our family is meant to give us.

Speaker 1: 2:24

So some people are lucky I don't know if I say lucky but some people have these uneventful family environments where they grow up, where they like to think they have uneventful family environments that they grow up Like.

Speaker 1: 2:37

I say, no one survives childhood without something. Instead of taking it personally that it was our family, i think one of the things that we can look at and really dive into and talk about is the fact that it is the rich ground where we find some of our best growth, if we're willing to go in and have an honest look about the different relationships we had in family and what they meant to us and how they have played out over the years. So like, for example, i've often said and I often, when I first speak with my clients and I tell them about me, i start straight away with I'm the sixth child out of 10. And that statement alone says a lot to people, because I'm in the middle of all of these kids and already their mind is starting to play out the scenarios. So we can talk about the position if you want to, or we can talk about how it is part of our contract. We can talk about why do we even want to look at family when we talk about spirituality?

Speaker 2: 3:43

I think it's often that even I guess the traditions or expectations is an interesting place that comes with family, no matter what age we're at And let that be if you have a husband, wife or partner and your own kids, versus the family hierarchy or structure from your own family when you grew up, i feel like you're suddenly become a part of a lot of different families and their rules and expectations and traditions for each of them, and I think that can become a very challenging thing to navigate for any adult and child. But I think as an adult, especially moving forward, you begin to tiptoe and maybe walk on eggshells and it just can become a very confusing emotional experience that once again, like a lot of the subjects we talk about, we've never been taught how to navigate or we've never even realized that we have permission to redefine it for our own needs nowadays. And I think when we realize we actually have the opportunity to do that and begin to walk on, what's stopping us from redefining it that suits our needs now and let go a lot of the guilt that comes along with allowing ourselves to redefine it, it can be a very freeing experience And I think that's why, through having this conversation with each other. I think it'll offer some very interesting internal questions for people to start questioning their own interactions with what they define as family, and my own experience is that of course I love my family.

Speaker 2: 5:07

I have three siblings of my mom and my father who passed on and we talked about in good grief.

Speaker 2: 5:12

Those relationships were always up and down and constantly evolving and changing as time goes on.

Speaker 2: 5:18

But ever since I left home and actually traveled quite a bit and exposed myself to new people around the globe, one of the interesting realizations that I never had been exposed to was realizing that family isn't all is blood And a lot of the people that I actually really connected with, who quote unquote got me of where I was and not have in my life. It was often the people that you least expected, more often than I even say that when you and I connected when I traveled to Brisbane at that time was one of those moments. I don't always speak for myself, but it was that as time went on, you just knew that there was a spark or click or something that was different. Do I automatically have that with everyone in my family? No, but I think it's just not something we often give ourselves permission to question, because either we're scared of what it may bring up in us, but we're also maybe scared of what it would actually bring up in the other person who would actually have that honest conversation in that way.

Speaker 1: 6:18

You know, of course I love my family, all my siblings and my parents, who both passed on. But that was such a huge amount of people in that house that the relationships that you had were at different times. And I often say I have two of my siblings that I was quite close with growing up, that I continued to hold very dear in that, in that way that we were like I used to call us the three musketeers. But having said that, we got to a certain point in our life and I felt very betrayed by them because they both joined the military and we had always sworn we wouldn't. Because we were raised in a military household And also for me, because of my upbringing and because I was so different than so many of the people in my family, i always felt like the outcast in the family And it was a role that I took on and lived with for quite a while. So I, once I left home, i was always seeking family outside of the family, the biological family unit, because I'd never felt completely accepted in that unit. Now, that's not that they didn't accept me. That's how I felt in the perception that I had at the time. So for me, for most of my adult life, family often came from other places than my biological family.

Speaker 1: 7:37

Having said that, even in my marriage, the traditions that came with what I was raised with caused a lot of dramas, because that's what normal was for me And I married someone that was from halfway across the world, a completely different continent, completely different culture, and they did things very differently, and I was like, no, that's not the right way, which became issues in the relationship, and so that was a very huge dynamic for me, because I could. I'd love to tell them the story. When I first got married, one of the biggest fights that we often had was over how to fold towels, because I was raised in a military family and you fold a towel a certain way and they had to stack a certain way and that's just the way it was, and he wasn't, and they folded it in a much more gentler way or wasn't as rigid, and I deemed that as wrong and messy and blah blah. So it's those sorts of things that you have to explore as you grow up, and definitely, holidays and traditions were extremely different in our household And that was a challenge.

Speaker 2: 8:49

Definitely, and I think it is one of, as we were mentioning, one of the many challenges that come along with it, and it's that I think sometimes we were never taught that we can actually outgrow our own family at times. And what I mean by outgrowing our family does not mean ignoring them, closing them out of our lives, any of those things. It's about understanding the role that they played in the position that they had at that time in your life, in the past, and it's that, if we keep trying to live under those conditions or expectations, that we're limiting our own growth, and no wonder it gets more challenging to actually have a relationship or a friendship with them or any sort of communication, because it's based off old traditions that everyone has outgrown But nobody knows how to grow past certain experiences or traumas, and therefore that's why we all get stuck in the loop of having this expectation of each other. And I think what's interesting I'm sure most people will find relatable is that, especially when everyone meets for the holidays or for birthdays, or everyone has to sign and paint on this face for the photographs and everyone has to be who they're expected to be, that every, or the person that everyone recognizes, in order to try to keep the peace with everyone, is always some character in the family just trying to stop everyone from fighting or trying to keep everyone just for once. Can we not fight?

Speaker 2: 10:07

And but this is why often what we don't look at as, say, as siblings with each other or from our parents perspective, is that everyone now suddenly adults. These are all adults who live very different lives from one another. We are not the same people living on the same household anymore, who all have their own relationships, their own experiences, sometimes even their own kids, their own careers, their own pressures, and it's that. Yet we have this huge expectation that once everyone's together, they have to try to get along, whereas if you pull 10 people from the supermarket and put them in the same room, you wouldn't expect them to have to get along. Yet we have these expectations within our own households. Is if we all know each other, but in reality is we all knew our version of each other, but we don't all know each other today, and that's a concept that we find really hard to wrap our head around because we never think about it.

Speaker 1: 10:58

We don't think about it, but we don't also realize that we freeze each other in those traditional roles that we grew up in. And so you know, especially for me, for so long I was viewed as a certain way And I would. I hadn't lived near my family for a very long time and I would go home for a visit And everyone expected me to be this basket case, this, you know, this mess all the time, and I used to laugh at it because I can see other family members struggling far more than I did at those times, and nobody had ever seen my journey through recovery, seen how I grown, seen who I'd become, or had very little exposure to my experiences, yet continued to want to pigeonhole me into that old frame of mind or that old role that I had. And I have a really good friend who became my sister, you know. So I have two older sisters that I was never really close with, and this person that I met early on in my recovery became my sister.

Speaker 1: 12:01

My kids, when the first time they went to the States, were so shocked to find out I had two other sisters and their name wasn't Patty, because they had always known Patty as Aunt Patty and they hadn't really had a lot of exposure to the other two. So it's really it's really interesting. And what was also interesting about it is when my mother passed away. Of course, patty flew in. Now, patty had only ever had limited exposure to my biological family, but she was my sister. My mother died, she was going to be there, and that was a very interesting time for my family because they were like what, what? the Yeah.

Speaker 1: 12:40

And they didn't know how to take that relationship. But she was the closest thing to me as a sister at that time And so you know it was great. I mean everybody did get along and they started to understand because they had known over the years when I would come home. I'd go home for a certain period of time and I'd fly up to my friend's house And they'd go you spend more time with your friend than you do with your family. I'm like she's just another version of my family And so I go and see her as well.

Speaker 2: 13:10

But I think that does bring up a very interesting conversation of how the definition of what family is evolves and changes with time. And I think it's that for me at this stage it comes back down to my ability to be communicative and expressive in mind, body, emotions of actually what's going on with me in the present And as well as having the fluidity to be able to talk about things that happened to me in the past if and when it comes up. So it is having the ability to have that two way conversation for both of us involved, for it to be just to have healthy communication. But I think it's safe to say that for most of us that is not what we experience with our biological families or the people that we grew up with. More often than not, on the rare occasion we might have that, if we're lucky enough to have that with certain individuals, then if you start looking at the spiritual angle to why it's designed to be that way is also the interesting perspective, because if we were to have an amazing relationship with all of these individuals that we grew up with, it's that we wouldn't find reason to actually go off and define our own voice, to have our own experiences. A lot of us would have actually stayed at home, stayed in the same village or town, city. We wouldn't have actually been potentially forced to leave the nest and actually to go out and have new experiences, both positive and negative.

Speaker 2: 14:29

And sometimes we do end up attracting similar kind of characters into our life who are similar to our biological families or our families in general, because they're the ones we're used to being around.

Speaker 2: 14:39

So we attract the people that we had exposure to or that we consider family or those traits as family member traits. So it is such a It exposes you to such vast experiences that the end of the day will continue to get to know yourself better, and I think that is kind of the journey is that you end up creating a family outside of your family that you grew up with. And when you visit either, it actually shows you the different masks that we tend to wear, as we would have talked about in season one, of the different versions of ourselves, how much we have grown or whether there still is growth to be had. I think that's also a really important point, because it's not saying that we were We would have talked about before. If you want to see how spiritual. You are move back in with your family for a week and that'll soon tell you there is that you still have to work on, but that is part of the wonderful but chaotic design of actually of having these people as part of our lives.

Speaker 1: 15:33

Well, i was one of those people. When I first heard that, you know, i chose to have these people as my family members. Now, i would never want them to take offense at the fact that I was like, no, no, i didn't. But I think what I really felt like was I didn't choose to be in the middle of all this chaos, or I didn't choose to be where I was in the pecking order or where I was in what was happening in that family at the time. But as time has gone on, i've seen exactly how perfect that has been for me And, especially because I work with so many people, i go, you know, those first years, those formative years that we are with those biological people, whether they are caregivers, whether they're our immediate family, whether they're a foster family they are rich with the experiences that we then go on to discover who we are through those experiences.

Speaker 1: 16:28

And we, you know, we don't know that straight away when we're going through it And of course we feel like we want to blame or we want to be resentful or bitter. But the more that we grow, once we've grown, we can respect that relationship in a completely different way. It doesn't mean we have to have a daily engagement with it.

Speaker 2: 16:46

Definitely. But I think that's where it even comes back to our ability to allow ourselves to move on from certain relationships as well, even if they are blood relatives or if we do consider them family. It's that it's not talked about enough that we can outgrow these individuals, because it's that they did play a role for a period in our lives. There's no doubt about it. But it's no different to say having an ex-partner. It's that just because they were your husband or wife at one stage, or they were your relationship, and even when it's over, does not mean you stay in touch. And if you felt obliged or forced to have to stay in touch all the time, it wouldn't be a very healthy position to put yourself in more often than not. So there is times where, and depending on the circumstance, with any member of your family, if they're not willing to grow or change or evolve or take responsibility for their part of the equation, not everyone has the opportunity to, not everyone's meant to spiritually either. But this is why, more often than not, the focus does need to come back on yourself as the individual of actually of what's right for you And I often say to people is that you can shut the door in certain relationships but don't lock the door And saying if someone comes knocking of someone, if you want to open the door, if they come knocking, you can open the door and do and check in with them, because when it comes to families that you're always going to care to some degree, you're always going to make sure that they're safe and that they're well.

Speaker 2: 18:11

You would never often wish any harm on to them. But I think there's two different conversations going on there, because there's a difference between that and then also understanding that trying to build a relationship or have a relationship with someone that just isn't there and actually causes more harm for both parties or more challenges for both parties, that maybe doesn't need to exist. But we're only doing it because out of guilt or out of expectation or out of tradition And at some stage, once we go through enough of that hurt, you begin to question is it necessary at all?

Speaker 1: 18:45

Right. And sometimes it's not just out of the guilt and the expectation. Sometimes it's out of that genuine desire that if I can actually achieve having a civil and loving relationship with this family member, then I will be okay, because maybe that view of myself is well, i was the problem. So, therefore, if I can mend bridges with these people and we can actually have a close connected relationship, then I've healed. But that's not always the case either. Sometimes the healing comes in and going OK, i've shown up, i've done as much of the work as I can. I can still love this person, but I don't have to be in their life all the time.

Speaker 1: 19:24

Exactly, and I think we're afraid of that, and so I just had that conversation with somebody else in my family And it's we. There's so much expectation, and I personally sometimes think it's because of the societal pressure in the television shows that we grew up with, where we were always watching either the Waltons or the 30 minute sitcoms where everybody ends up happy at the end, and we kind of grew up with that expectation that that's what our family is supposed to look like, and when it doesn't, we have that disappointment. But that doesn't necessarily mean now I have I have friends that have large families and they're quite close and they genuinely get along with each other, and I can tell you that sometimes I see those and I kind of freak out about it. I just go, wow, that's weird. Having said that, i have a few members of my family that are quite close, that interact all the time, and they're quite happy doing that.

Speaker 2: 20:22

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:23

I don't have that same relationship And that's not about them And it's just about where I am in my growth and where. Not that I'm better or worse than it's, just it's different.

Speaker 2: 20:35

Everyone's needs are different. Everyone's expectations are different as well, and it's that sometimes it's coming to a realization. Not the family members that we have. They can't give us often what we need or what we want from them, but neither us to them. Also, and because people I'm sure a lot of the siblings or our parents would love to have relationships with us as a person, but often is that that's often quite conditioned as long as we behave a certain way or vice versa, and that's what is going to be ongoing breakdown, because as long as anyone is trying to condition any kind of relationship, family or not, there's always going to be resistance, pushback and tough lessons involved, but a lot of personal growth nonetheless when we allow ourselves to sit with it, to process it a little bit deeper.

Speaker 1: 21:26

And you know the same goes to when you become a parent and you're raising children. You know, i know, as a parent, how much I love my children and how much I love spending time with my children And I love being in their presence. But also, as they started to grow up, i had to really do a lot of work on me to go. Okay, this is the point where they get to go off and live their life and it's not about me and my connection with them. I will always have that connection. I will always love them unconditionally And, yes, anytime they want to come and spend time with me, i'm going to with open arms. But at the same time, i have to respect that they need to have their experiences, they need to have their growth.

Speaker 1: 22:10

You know, at the moment I have one of my children that's about to move overseas and everybody goes Oh, how are you doing with that? And I go Well, really, it's not my business, it's not my choice, it's not about me. You know, and I'm always going to have the connection, regardless of where the child is, and I want my kids to feel like that is the choice they get to make, whether they come back and experience the exchange with me or not? Does that make sense?

Speaker 2: 22:39

But it's correct saying that your three kids, like they all, get on quite well with each other. They do have a good relationship with each other, independently away from you as their mom, right.

Speaker 1: 22:50

I think sometimes they have a better relationship away from me. I mean, they don't argue At least not I never see them arguing. I mean they debate quite a bit, but I wouldn't call it arguing and they do get along quite a bit, you know. And of course I feel like sometimes when they come it's out of obligation And I'll take that because I want to spend time with them. I like who they are as people, you know, but I don't want to guilt them into thinking that is something they have to do.

Speaker 2: 23:19

But I'm curious to say, as a mom, yourself as a mother, and when you're talking to them as individuals and I know you've done a lot of work on yourself over the years and the way your parenting style has changed a lot but over the years would you have asked them, you know, or been trying to guide their relationship with each other, or got involved in certain ways or wanted that? I know the answer to this, but I'm going to ask it anyway. Is that? but have you called such and such lately, or have you been in contact with them, Like never, of course, i'm lying about that.

Speaker 2: 23:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 23:56

Of course I have, because I love them, and sometimes what I've witnessed as a parent is I can say something 10 times and it feels like it falls on deaf ears. Somebody else can say the same thing once and they hear it differently. So, yes, i have to admit that I'm very guilty of that. I don't do it anymore, but I certainly did for a while.

Speaker 2: 24:20

But I think it's interesting.

Speaker 2: 24:22

Do you feel, since you've become a mother and with your kids that are now all grown adults with their own independent lives, that you can understand elements of your own mother now and ways that she wanted her kids to have relationship with each other?

Speaker 2: 24:35

Or I know this is different, by the way, for every single person. But the reason why I'm asking this from your experience as being a mother is that when I was talking to my own mom about this, is that she would ask me this is in the past. She would have asked me have you been talking to such and such, or even have you been talking to your brother lately? And I would ask have you been talking to yours lately? And she said too, say, meaning I was like you're asking us to do something you won't do yourself, like your mother would have asked you to do. So it's, but I get it in the sense of every mother or father or parent or caregiver wants the best for their own kids and for them to have relationship. Maybe they didn't have with theirs or they never could for their own reasons.

Speaker 1: 25:15

Yes.

Speaker 2: 25:16

But for you and your experience, I guess.

Speaker 1: 25:20

So you know I'll tell a funny story and you know this story because it pertains to one of my brothers. So I do do. I have done that with my kids in the past And I have to admit that you know they might have done it kicking and screaming. I don't remember my mother asking me to do that. I remember hearing a lot about how the others are having problems And I didn't know if that was to balance it out.

Speaker 1: 25:44

But I do know that I held all of my siblings in a higher regard than myself for such a long time, and so recently I had something come up and you and I talked about it, where my brother had actually called me and I was talking to him and two times in a row I got off the phone early and you said you know, you need to be honest with your brother And I was like I can't And you were like you need to be And I went I can't And you asked me why And I said I'm afraid he'll reject me. And you had said to me well, you're already rejecting him. And that hit home for me. And so I picked up the phone and I called him and I had that conversation with him about how I was afraid I was going to reject him And he was so shocked He was like you know. That's holding me back to 40 years ago, kim, and that's not exactly how I operate today The journey that's been on since.

Speaker 1: 26:39

But it was that fear from my own childhood And so so, yes, mothers do do that. We just, i think everybody wants to have the best And we have these perceptions of what family is supposed to be, and if we think our family isn't being that, of course we're going to want to try and steer it a little bit. I think that's human nature, isn't it? But at the same time, i think it's also great that they feel independently, secure enough within themselves that they do speak to each other without me having to say that to them. I think that in my own family I have a few of my members of the family, a few members of my family, that we do do that, but not the whole family.

Speaker 2: 27:25

So I think in one of the conversations with one of my clients, we were talking about again this subject in the family dynamics and the relationship that we have with our siblings, we have with our parents, and as we would have been talking about the automatic hierarchy of how we should behave depending on the conversations with these people, one of the exercises that we actually started to work on our talk out was if your mother or your father was just a neighbor and wasn't actually related to you by blood, or you didn't have all this experience with them and they were just a random person, how would you behave or act differently towards them? or how would you respond differently to a smart comment they might make or a piece of gossip that they might share? or how would you just respond differently? And how the conversation actually developed is that for a lot of us as adults, an interesting question is that what age do we actually stop needing a mom or a dad within our lives?

Speaker 1: 28:25

So I think that's a tricky one, and I think it just depends on how secure we are in feeling ourselves. I know that, you know, because I hadn't done so much of the work, i needed my mom to be my mom for a long time And I found it very difficult to let go of that. Having said that, as a mom, i don't think my kids needed me to be a mom as long as I needed my mother to be a mom.

Speaker 1: 28:50

And I definitely relate that to where I was at in the crossroads of my own growth at that time. I also think it's a hard thing to navigate as a parent in learning how to do that Disconnecting, cutting the apron strings for lack of a better way of saying it and giving them permission to treat you as an adult. So, like I know, my oldest is in a relationship and has a child and you know I go and visit and I see those things And I know how careful I am about where I choose to step in or where I don't choose to step in because this is their relationship. I'm here as another adult. That doesn't mean I get to say whatever I want to say when I want to say it. Does that make sense? But I don't know how many people are taught how to navigate that change. But they're not And we both know that.

Speaker 2: 29:49

And I think why it's an interesting subject to think about internally is because when it comes to letting go of your parent, in the sense of needing a mum or dad especially if you're a 40 year old person, i know that is layered, as you mentioned, because we have our inner child, we have traumas, we have experiences, there's traditions, there's expectations, everything that we have talked about.

Speaker 2: 30:10

But even if we do that journey to actually question what parts of me still needs to have a mum or dad in that definition, instead of just having Kim, instead of calling her mum, why can't I just call her Kim and have a relationship with Kim As a person, instead of having to see her through the lens of her being a mother? I'm speaking, obviously, on your children's behalf in this example. But in that sense, even if we do that work doesn't mean that often our parent or parents are willing to let us go in the sense of them looking at us as their son, daughter or as their child in general. So, in beginning to allow ourselves to grow up and to be at the parent to ourselves, I think that's what is interesting to mature ourselves and actually giving ourselves that independence without often sacrificing the relationship with the parent, i do feel, with approaching the work in the right way for you. you can have both. I absolutely think you can have both.

Speaker 1: 31:07

And I think it's really important. And so, you know, i can only just share my own journey. Gareth, and I know that you know used to live halfway across the world and I'd go home every so often. I bring my kids home. I couldn't wait to see my mom And it was because it was like I really felt like I needed it and I needed my mom.

Speaker 1: 31:28

And I remember one particular trip. I went home and I had tried to prepare for six months. you know that we were coming and I had three kids and the cost and everything else And I arrived in the very first night. I'm there, she's got plans to go away for the weekend And I was gutted and talk about the rejection and I was like how could you do this? But what was the beautiful part about it was it was that trip that I realized wait a second, i still want to crawl into my mommy's arms and let her tell me that I'm going to be OK And she can't do that anymore. I need to do that for me. And that was a huge shift because I stopped looking for mom and started finding mom in me and parenting myself, which allowed me to have a beautiful relationship with my mom as an adult and not as someone I depended on.

Speaker 2: 32:24

And I think, on that note, either way, more often than not, that is part of often the cycle of the journey that we all have to go on in some way, because for me is that I would love people to understand that that option does exist, where you can be the parent to yourself without having to lose your parent and you can have a grown relationship with a deep history with another human being, which can be quite special.

Speaker 2: 32:45

And I know we talked about in Good Grief when my father died. It's that that was when I done that journey that you talked about is then having to recognize that I had to be my own parent to me because he was no longer here, but that forced me to do that journey, to mature and to grow up in that way. But now I'm realizing that I have that with my mother now, knowing that I actually love her as a person and I go to her as a person with experience and a vast experience, who happens to know me. I just don't turn to her Just because she's my mom, right, right, and that's the evolution I guess that I have, both now and it's not, and even after, depending on who goes first, either me or her, what I'm saying. If she was to pass, i know I'd miss her as the person and not just oh, i'm grieving my mother Right.

Speaker 1: 33:40

And some of the best advice that I tend to give my clients or help them with is understanding that parenting lasts for so long, and then from parenting we go to coaching And then from coaching we move on to adult to adult relationship and respect everybody's choices. I mean, my children need to respect my choices as much as I respect their choices, and that, to me, is a healthy transition that we make. But, like you said, very few people are taught how to make that transition.

Speaker 2: 34:13

But it's not easy for parents, because it's not, and what I mean by that is that for decades of your life, really and depending on how many kids that you have, of course is that this has been your role. Every single thought and emotion is dedicated to all your kids. You are a mother, you are a father, you are a parent, and it becomes a huge part of your identity. So suddenly, when, per se, your kids don't need you anymore which is a harsh way of putting it when your kids actually become adults themselves and have independence no one talks about this. They have actually. What that means for parents, or what does that mean for their identities, for them moving forward, this part of it that feels like freedom, but then it was also such a huge part of your life. So what does that role become? What does the relationship with your kid or kids become? That's not often explored, talked about in any way, shape or form, and that's what makes it so hard.

Speaker 1: 35:07

Well, i think one of the hardest parts for me was, you know, we talk about it in a sense of we say empty nesters, like okay, the nest is empty and you get to have all this freedom. And as my kids were growing up, i used to make a joke Well, i'm going to be one of those empty nesters where it's all going to be fine. But of course, you know what happened As soon as my youngest left home and I was absolutely on my own, i spent two or three days a week sitting out on my back patio crying, going. I'm completely redundant and I could die here and nobody will know for two weeks and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1: 35:43

And I say it dramatically like that, but it was dramatic for me because I wasn't prepared for that shift that was going to happen And I also knew that I had to navigate that on my own because otherwise I would want to try and reel them back in And I knew that wouldn't be healthy either. And so, knowing that you're going to have those emotions, to whatever degree that you have them, and being okay with that, and knowing that, like we talked about in good grief, it is just a grieving process because you're letting go of that role.

Speaker 2: 36:17

But it forces the perspective back onto you as an individual, and it's that what I love about.

Speaker 2: 36:24

That is, even when kids leave home, it is a grieving process, as you mentioned. That is a huge transition, but it allows you to focus on yourself without actually losing your children or child long term either, because you're still going to have that, always have that connection with them. You're going to have that all communication with them when they remember to call, because most of the time it's not always not a matter of thing that they do, but it's that. That's what people I think are not used to doing is having that permission, the time, the ability to suddenly focus on their own needs And I think that's also what I've seen is that a lot of the people that I work with you know they start doing the work on themselves when they're basically 60, 65 and over at times, because that's when they suddenly have either retired from their job, their kids are starting their own lives. They now have the time for the first time in their lives since they were 18 or often, not to actually focus on themselves, and that is a huge transition.

Speaker 1: 37:24

Yes, it's a very big transition. It's a very big transition and nobody really prepares you for it And I can't tell you how many times that I've had a thought of my own mom and gone. I'm so sorry, So sorry for all the times I didn't call. I'm so sorry for all the times that I thought you would just be okay over there in America all on your own after having 10 children. You know like I'm so sorry that I didn't think about what that would feel like.

Speaker 1: 37:50

But then at the same time, like not so long ago, I had a big birthday and we went away as a family and there wasn't supposed to be any presence because I had said the trip away was going to be the present And my oldest had bought a present, and I won't go into the whole story, but it had a very emotional meaning. And when I opened up that present on the morning and I looked up at him with the tears in my eyes, my response, which really shocked him, was oh, you really do love me. He was like of course I do, But because he had remembered something from quite a few years earlier and I had thought it had been long forgotten.

Speaker 1: 38:32

And it just really touched me and it made me realize, see, they do remember just as much. It's just that they don't always bring that to the forefront.

Speaker 2: 38:40

People. They have their own lives and they have their own stuff going on And I think sometimes as individuals, sometimes a part of big families, we forget that even for our siblings, each of our lives are equally as complex and as advanced as the next persons And I think sometimes that escapes us.

Speaker 1: 38:57

I think it's because we're so involved in trying how to navigate our own life that it's really easy to forget how complex somebody else's life is, whether it be our parents, whether it be our siblings. I had a thought about my youngest brother the other day and he had quite a traumatic entrance into the world to say for lack of a better way of saying it And I'd always seen him because he was so much younger than me as someone that always got everything he ever wanted. And the other day I was having a thought about him all these years later and I was thinking, wow, how traumatic the first few years of his life was. That I never gave a second thought to that now plays out in his life in a regular basis, and he might not even understand why it's playing out that way. I mean, i don't know whether he does or he doesn't, so I don't want to say one way or the other, but that was the first time at my age that I even thought about him and how it was for him.

Speaker 2: 40:00

But, as you said, we don't know what we don't know. But we're also just so stuck in our own perspective because we can't even process the perspective that we're currently in and never mind viewing anyone else's. We don't have any brain space or emotional space.

Speaker 1: 40:12

Well, i would agree with that. And so one of the things that I would point out in closing on that is when my little brother was quite ill and passing away at HIV and lung cancer And we were having a conversation one day and he said to me you know, have you ever thought about what goes on in our family? And I went so many times and I can't figure it out. And he said well, you need to think about it like this. It's like there were so many kids in that family and mom was so busy trying to raise us, but she actually had 10 only children.

Speaker 1: 40:45

And when he said that, i kind of sat there and he said we were all dying for mom's love And we all had the perception that somebody else was getting more love than the other, and even as young adults because we were young adults at that stage, you know, we're still kind of doing that in a way And it really opened my eyes because I went ah, helped me look at my entire family differently, because I had held so much judgment about what had gone down in the family and how different people were reacting to his illness and how sick he was. In fact, i had one brother that didn't want to know him And then, soon as he passed away, he's throwing himself on the coffin with grief and pain. And of course it was just because we all were trying to figure out how to get the love.

Speaker 2: 41:34

And this is where the family will never not bring up stuff innocent in its own way, and I think that's the beauty within it, but also the scary part of the fearful part of it as well. But that's as we're talking about. That's why it is designed to be that way And it's never not going to be that way, but it'll always show a theory that we still need to work on.

Speaker 1: 41:54

Absolutely, or to understand or explore. Absolutely.

Speaker 2: 41:58

And I think that's what we were kind of laughing at before hitting record as well, was you always see those kind of images in social media where it's like you know, i'd give my sibling a kidney but I wouldn't let them borrow my phone charger?

Speaker 1: 42:09

Yes.

Speaker 2: 42:10

But I think, in summary, of actually of talking about family from a spiritual perspective, because you and I, as you know, could sit here for hours and talk about many, many different experiences on the realizations that we had from our own perspective, but even from our different family members perspective as well, that family is designed to be complicated and messy.

Speaker 1: 42:30

Yes.

Speaker 2: 42:30

It's not designed to be perfect as what we saw on TV, because I still don't know anyone that has experienced that. Not for one second.

Speaker 1: 42:38

No.

Speaker 2: 42:39

And I think it's that it's built to trigger us. It's built to have the last have exposure to experiences. It's built to be puzzling and often puzzles that were meant to do the individual journey on to solve. And I think, when we look at it that way, that it shines a new light on our own relationships of our own family in the past and in the present, and even what family might look like from moving forward. But myself and Michael are always big advocates of. I never feel as we should ever shut the door and lock it because there's all. there's a reason why all of these people are either were part of your life or are currently part of your life, and what their role might be in your life moving forward. We're still to be told, but it's always about doing the work on you and doing your journey with it, and that's what it needs to keep coming back to.

Speaker 1: 43:22

Absolutely, it does Absolutely. Thanks so much for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode. If you would like to explore these topics more with us, please go to wwwpatreoncom. Forward slash practical spirituality podcast. Not only will that help us keep producing these shows, but you'll also get advanced access to each new episode. The opportunity to ask questions directly of Gareth and I. Input into what topics we will cover on the show. Access to exclusive content not available anywhere else. See you over on Patreon.