#33 – From Overwhelmed to Grounded: Healing Codependency in Parenting

This episode discusses the journey of healing from codependency in parenting, emphasizing self-awareness, boundaries, and modeling healthy relationships. Join us as we share snapshots from our own stories, along with practical tips and spiritual insights to empower parents on their healing path.

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Transcript

Understanding Codependency in Parenting

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome to the Road Back Podcast. We're so glad you're here. I'm Melissa and I'm Desiree. We're two trauma-informed coaches and real life friends.

SPEAKER_01 0:11

If you're returning to yourself, your dreams, or your sense of belovedness, this podcast is for you.

SPEAKER_00 0:19

We'll pull from our own stories and hard-earned wisdom to support your journey. So take a breath and remember, you belong exactly as you are.

SPEAKER_01 0:33

Hey friends, welcome to this week's episode. We are very excited to dive into our third week on discussing codependency in parenting. And the last couple of weeks we've laid a foundation, talked a little bit about what codependency is and how it can show up in our relationships, specifically as moms or parents. This week we want to talk a little bit about ways that we have learned to begin healing some of the codependency and some of the fruit that we've seen as a result, how it's affected our children, the ways that we've seen the growth and development in our own lives. And really, we're pulling from the years of therapy and the probably thousands of dollars that we have spent on our own healing journey. And then even in our work with other people, I almost see it like a smorgasbord of some of the growth and fruit that we've seen because it's definitely been something that's affected both of our lives. And getting to share some of the breakthroughs and the tools and the keys that we've learned is a big part of why we wanted to uh do this episode today.

SPEAKER_00 1:42

Yeah. Yeah. We're excited to share the process with you. Um, it feels so similar to our own journey because maybe you might not have had any awareness of like what is codependency or can you be codependent as a parent?

SPEAKER_01 1:55

I think that's such a good place to start today's conversation from because you can't fix something if you don't know that it's broken. When you grow up in your home environment that you're in, your environment

When Your 'Normal' Isn't Healthy

SPEAKER_01 2:11

feels normal to you until you are exposed to something else. And so there were a lot of things in my relationships in general that I would try to fulfill in terms of the roles I would play and the ways that I would seek connection that felt very normal to me. And I didn't realize that there were healthier ways of doing things until I started going on my own healing journey in many respects. And also sometimes it was just a matter of even looking at the fruit of my life and going, hmm, this feels like something's not quite right. I'm sure there's other ways of doing this. What could they be? I think that that's been a big factor in being open to recognizing that the way that I've always done it doesn't necessarily mean that that's the best way to do things. And I know growing up in a faith-based environment and there's a lot of great foundations that were laid in my life, but I also had a view of God from quite a young age that God wanted to control me into obedience and control me into doing the right things. And that inadvertently fed a belief system in my life that ended up wanting to control other people into obedience and doing the quote right thing. Not from a place of uh malicious intent, but actually from a sincere place of going, oh, it's really important that people make good decisions and right decisions. So how can I fix them into doing the right thing? How can I coach them into doing the right thing? It was coming from a place of my understanding of loving people well looks like helping to manage them and stop them from making bad decisions. And that flowed not just into my children when I was a mom, but it would flow into my other relationships too. I remember having a conversation with a counselor one time where I had been really struggling with some decisions that a loved one of mine had been making, and I had been pulling out all the stops to try to stop them from going down this path that was quite destructive. Yeah. And I remember my counselor saying to me one day, he was just like, Melissa, you need to give this person permission to have a shitty life, was exactly the words that he used. And I remember that being an incredible aha moment for me because it was simultaneously giving me a tremendous amount of freedom and permission to take off the load that I had been carrying, the responsibility of I need to make sure you don't make mistakes, but also really challenged me to begin looking at some of the ways that I had been, quote, loving people into doing the right thing and helping me really go on another level of the journey of recognizing, hey, God doesn't even control me from making my decisions good or

The Role of Control in Relationships

SPEAKER_01 5:07

bad. Why am I putting so much effort into controlling the people around me, into making the best decision? You're giggling too, does.

SPEAKER_00 5:16

Can you see yourself in this? I can just so relate to this and I love the release or the freedom of you don't have to control this. That's actually not your job. That doesn't equal love, that doesn't equal care to manipulate, control, manage that person's experience in life. And um, very similarly, I think because I got married very young, but in a cross-cultural experience. And so having a husband from a different culture right away, a lot of different ways of thinking about things and doing things. But if you even can use that context to think about everyone's familial culture is quite different and how we were raised and the cultural context of our own spiritual upbringings really matter as well. I had modeled to me that godly motherhood included this ability to intercede until I could get God to somehow take depression away or challenging emotions or temptation. I thought that was actually my responsibility to somehow connect to God and God would go in through the back door somehow and click alleviate it. Maybe this sounds extreme, but as I sat with this, I really understood the context of why codependency actually felt like the most normal thing to me because of this inherent belief that somehow having a sense of control or being able to go in and over-associate, over function around other people's emotions or experiences was a pseudo-sense of connection. And we've talked about this in other episodes, that this is an adaptive behavior to meet our connection needs. And I when I realized, huh, that's actually not connection, that's control. And I was like, oh my God, what if what if what if God doesn't want to relate to me that way? This touched a lot of my God beliefs or a theology of what he believes and how he connects with me. And so undoing this hook has helped me really sit into

Recognizing Emotional Triggers

SPEAKER_00 7:38

undoing a lot of what has felt like we're talking about normal and natural and the modeled way for us to parent, separating out what is my own discomfort around a person's painful experience, their painful emotions. Like you said, your loved ones' painful decisions, you probably felt really uncomfortable with them choosing to blow up their life. You know, it's it's uncomfortable. We want to validate it is hard. It is really devastating to see someone you love do that. But sitting and supporting with yourself, really the way forward to really create a safe enough environment for your life and for true connection to exist.

SPEAKER_01 8:20

What we're getting to the crux of really is I was viewing people around me through a lens of not believing that they were powerful. I saw people as powerless and therefore needing rescuing and needing help and needing me to manage them. And in a way, it was because I, on some level, saw myself as powerless to doing things. And so if I can help you make the right decision, that helps reinforce a sense of safety in me to feel okay. And we thought that this is the way God wanted to relate to people. And so even healing our own relationship with God has helped us see that, oh, when he gave people free will, he actually gave people free will. He is let he's like, I've told you not to eat out of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And you've chosen to do that. And I have redemptive plans in place, but I'm not going to stop you from reaping the consequences of your own decisions. Learning to see people through a lens of you are powerful and you are not needing to be rescued all the time has helped shift not only the way I pray, because we both believe in prayer as mothers. We're not throwing out the idea of prayer and intercession, but it's not coming through on this lens of desperation, of like, oh my goodness, I have to stop you because I am responsible for the outcomes of your life. As we've learned to heal and become more at peace with our own journey and our own humanity, that in turn

The Lifelong Journey of Healing

SPEAKER_01 9:57

has helped us release that same grace to the people around us, especially our children.

SPEAKER_00 10:02

I think that desperate energy is such a good way to describe what codependency feels in my body. It's like, I can't be okay unless something changes inside of you, or about your experience, or about how you're responding to me, about how you're acting, what you're believing about me. And I'm so glad you said this. Like I totally still pray for my kids every day. But it sounds really differently. It feels really differently in my system now. It's really nuanced. And it's really about those motivational, energetic things. Healing my heart from codependent tendencies and really feeling safe in connection that isn't controlling or that doesn't leave myself and overattached to other people's experiences, is my lifelong journey. I think to myself, I'm like, that is probably one of the biggest ways I will actually truly know the love of God, is by helping support my own system and healing this part of me. And so I just believe in what the listeners, as we break down a couple thoughts and ideas for support moving forward, if you find that you relate to any of this, is that this is a lifelong process. There's no shame. Again, this is a human, human experience. It deserves so much compassion. And if you can have compassion and empowerment of this idea of like, I can actually change this, I can actually do something, I can actually support myself in a different way. It we're we're just gonna be able to move right through these things as they come because having kids, Lord knows, there's so many opportunities for healing with my kid. I'm like, oh, it's just gonna keep coming every day opportunities. So um, the number one thought is kind of notice inside of you what you feel when your kiddo, whatever the age, is it your toddler, is it your teenager, is it your school age kid, is it your adult kid outside of the home? When they're struggling, when they're experiencing challenge, when rent is due and da-da-da-da-da-da, like whatever it is that's happening, can you notice that urge inside of you to rescue or to change that experience so that you can get rid of your own feelings? Mal, do you have any things that you've noticed in your undoing or supporting yourself when you

Navigating Shame in Parenting

SPEAKER_00 12:30

felt this urge that's had an impact in your in your mothering?

SPEAKER_01 12:34

Something that we've learned about in our own emotional training has been intolerable emotions or things that we don't have capacity to feel because I almost think of it as like a knee-jerk reaction. Certain intolerable emotions for me in the past might have been shame, it was a big one. I couldn't handle the feeling of shame because it was such a strong force in my life. And, you know, you talked about how do I feel when my kids feel discomfort, or, you know, for instance, for me, if my kids were little and they fucked up in public, because shame was such an intolerable emotion for me, I would immediately switch into trying to rescue and manage and shut down, like, okay, let's let's manage this. And how do I get rid of this feeling as quickly as possible? And so I think it started for me in a place that I didn't recognize that I was reacting from my own discomfort right away. As I began getting curious and asking questions, then what would start to happen would be this little level of awareness would start to creep in. It wasn't just like, oh, I suddenly see all the ways I'm reacting to my children misbehaving or having a hard moment or struggling and it triggering a shame spiral in me. There's often incremental steps where first we don't recognize what we're doing, and then we see something, we start to get curious. For me, it's been something where I've had to consciously grow in my awareness. And then as I've recognized, oh, okay, I'm actually feeling shame about this. How can I begin to support myself? Because this isn't about my child right now. Yes, they're doing something and they do need some sort of parenting response, but how much of in this moment am I responding to my own discomfort from a knee-jerk reaction as opposed to parenting them from a place of this is what a healthy, regulated mother who's really grounded in love and peace right now? How would she respond? And how do I begin to continue to create space for her to kind of show up and come on the scene while also tending to those

The Importance of Self-Care

SPEAKER_01 14:45

parts of me that really struggle to handle the feelings of discomfort, often from my own childhood wounds, which we can lean into.

SPEAKER_00 14:53

I would love to tell like a real life story based on exactly what you said. I had so much shame. So the feeling when my kids had a challenge experience, I would feel a lot of shame about my parenting. I would think that somehow that was uh an indicator that I've not enough as a mom. And I had an experience with two kiddos. It's almost I got to repeat. The first time I had a it was a freshman, and he wanted to quit swim. And I had so much shame. And there are so many meanings that I was believing like he won't be able to finish things in his life, and he's not gonna be prepared. And that means that I failed as a mom and like this whole story, and I wouldn't let the kid quit. Fast forward two years. My next kiddos in swim team, she's like, oh my God, I hate it. I'm gonna quit. And I'm like, I felt all the shame inside of me about like two kids, you know, like and I was like, I'm not gonna parent from shame. I'm actually not gonna make this parenting decision to avoid feeling like the story that's being told to me is that I'm a failure. That's like a fearful way to parent. That's a protective, self-soothing way. So I sat with the kid, we talked it out, we made a path, like you said, like that adult brain. I'm like, okay, what are the steps that she needs to own this decision in her life? And believe it or not, my first kiddo came back to me a couple of years later and said, I can't believe you let her quit. And he called me out. And I love this story because he called me out. He's like, what the heck? And what was beautiful about this is I got to do cleanup for parenting him in shame. I said, You are so right. It makes so much sense that you're feeling upset. You're feeling that this isn't fair, that there's injustice because I made that decision from a place of total fear and had nothing to do with you. And I'm so sorry for the ways that affected you. I'm so sorry for the ways that made a mate you believe or feel. Is there anything else you want to tell me about how that made you feel? And we just sat and we just talked and he got to share. And I think that this is one of the benefits of kids and why I say that life will continually give you opportunities for me to lean into noticing what's going on in my parenting. So

Empowering Yourself as a Parent

SPEAKER_00 17:09

I just thought I'd share that.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

My question to that is what changed over those two years? Was it just you'd been doing your own internal work? Obviously, you had grown and healed as a mom. Were there any specifics that come to mind that you think, oh, this, this, this really helped me become aware of the shame and helped me change some of that narrative?

SPEAKER_00 17:32

Yeah. What really helped was doing my own internal work and working on my own relationship with shame. So I noticed I didn't just have shame in parenting. I had shame all over the place. And so doing that work, I could recognize it in myself. And all this is what I took ownership for with my son. I wasn't actually talking to him about what he needed. I wasn't present. I was more present with my own shame. And I think that's what the gift of this work will do. It you can manage your own experience, and then you can show up as a parent and and parent in the way that you would want to do. It took just two years going hard and fast. And I I talk about shame probably more than any other topic because we're besties. Shame has been a big protector for me over the years and a lot of the ways that I tried to manage myself to make sure I could get connection and be good and be lovable. So yeah, that was that was the work. And I still have shame every day and in my parenting all the time. And that's why I really want the listener to hear like this is a process that comes in in waves and and more experience and opportunities to practice shame resiliency.

SPEAKER_01 18:51

So I think it's part of choosing to heal in your parenting is giving yourself permission to one, to have needs and two, recognize that investing in yourself is not taking away from your children. I know initially when I really started going on some of my own healing journey, what it brought up in me in terms of the fears was a fear that I was being selfish and that me taking time out from myself, me having needs was somehow going to take away from my ability to be fully present as a mom. If I'm taking time away for some self-care, if I'm taking time away because I need to go for a walk or I need to have a coffee with a friend, and that means that my kids are not going to have access to me 24-7, or it might mean I need to put some boundaries around my time. That was a significant decision that I had to make and even a hurdle I had to come overcome because I had some belief systems around what it meant to be a good mom that had not let me really take a lot of time for myself because something in me had told me, oh, in order to be a great mom, it looks like you are completely available to your kids. Something that I've come across with other moms as well. There can be a significant amount of mom guilt that sometimes

The Importance of Self-Care in Parenting

SPEAKER_01 20:13

we have to confront in order to give ourselves space to heal. Because if something in me tells me it's not okay for me to take time out, it's not okay for me to take a weekend away with my friends because that actually would be recharging. It's not okay for me to go to the women's conference or the retreat because, oh my goodness, I've never left my children with a babysitter before. Are they going to be okay? Can I trust anybody else to take care of them? There's a whole cascade of almost like a ripple effect of things that will come up in our lives when we choose to make a conscious decision that going after my own healing and restoration and wholeness is not only a valuable and worthy pursuit, but it's not selfish. I really feel like there's some people who need to hear that today. It is not selfish for you to set a place for yourself at the same table with which you are serving your family.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah, I I love that you're sharing this because I didn't equate being a good mother to taking care of myself. And the results of actually tending to your heart, and I would highly encourage therapy, like time away, walks, whatever it is, it's counterintuitive. The results are such an abundant expression of your more true self. Just like in the example of what I was saying with my son, I was so wrapped up in the story about my own shame that I couldn't be there for him. I couldn't actually parent him in the way he needed to be parented at that time. And so by taking care of myself, I show up differently to my kid. I can actually be present to the things that that's going on inside of them and not just that story

Understanding and Nurturing Our Inner Child

SPEAKER_00 21:59

that's constant. Taking up space. You know, those parts of us that learned to be a good girl, to be a helper, to be easy, to have no needs. You know, a lot of these younger versions of ourselves show up in parenting. If we can tend to them and let them know that their needs matter, that they're allowed to have needs, that they're cared for, the expression of a more authentic, healed, loved sense will emerge. A different type of parent will emerge because those younger parts get their needs met. Is there anything that you did in your journey to support the part that wanted to fix people or alleviate pain in people's stories?

SPEAKER_01 22:40

I actually stumbled onto some of this without, I didn't know anything about really parts work in that respect. I didn't know the language for it. But what I had come across was a bunch of teaching just on the heart. And it had come from a biblical perspective. And I'd found an excellent teacher who taught a lot on how our inner world will create our outer world. And so I had gone on quite an intentional journey, really out of necessity, because when my oldest two were very young, we had a very large financial crisis in our lives at the time. And I was a young mom with two very young children, and I recognized enough to know that I am not in a good mental place right now. I need to find some resources because of the financial pressure we were under

Investing in Personal Growth for Better Parenting

SPEAKER_01 23:30

and just the, you know, just the day-to-day overwhelm of a mom with two very young kids. I went on my own internal journey because I did understand that my internal beliefs will affect my outer experience. That was really when some of those, is it selfish for me to invest in self-care beliefs came up. I think I knew enough on an intuitive level that I had to put my metaphorical oxygen mask on first in order to be able to parent in the way that I needed to so that I wouldn't drown myself. It was one of those things that came from necessity. I thought I don't fully feel permission to take all this time for myself, but I knew that if I didn't, things would be worse. It was uncomfortable but necessary. And then what happened is I started seeing positive fruit coming from the teachings I was listening to. I didn't have money for therapy at the time, but I was really intent on feeding myself with whatever resources I could find. My inner world was more peaceful, which then started creating fruit in my outer world and just my home and my environment and my health. I started seeing early wins, which then helped me realize, oh, I'm onto something here. While it felt counterintuitive, like you said, the fruit that I saw helped me override some of the discomfort I felt because I went, oh, okay, I'm actually just seeing good, good fruit from this. Because I made a decision to start investing in a really intentional way when my children were very young, I knew that there were some things I was going to need to change about my parenting. And I wasn't exactly sure what it all was, but I started reading some parenting books. And then also my husband and I made the decision to get involved in a church

Creating a Safe Environment for Children

SPEAKER_01 25:15

environment that had a lot of value for creating a space for people to learn and grow and even make mistakes, like create space for people to be powerful. I started seeing from a very young age that my children would show up powerfully. And even though I didn't always know exactly how to parent them through that, I knew, okay, this is good because if my children are feeling confident enough to kind of show up and share their opinions or share their thoughts, it helped reinforce the fact that they are feeling safe enough to be themselves in this space. And I learned to begin valuing the connection over forcing compliance on them all the time. Yeah. And so I think for my boys, when I look back, I think my boys especially really had a strong sense of autonomy and being powerful from a young age, thanks to in part, I think the environment they were in. And also, I think it was just probably a hefty dose of the grace of God because I didn't always know what I was doing. But when I look back, I was like, oh, they've always had a kind of way of standing up and saying what they thought. And it wasn't always comfortable for me. And sometimes I didn't know what to do with it or how to handle it. This is where I think that God, when he sees our intention, even when we don't know how to do it yet, but we're like, oh, Jesus, I want to be a healthy mom and I I want to break generational cycles or patterns of the ways that maybe it was handed to me. And he's like, I see your heart. Let me swoop in with my grace and help you walk this out, even when sometimes it's not clear to you.

SPEAKER_00 26:50

Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. I love that you highlighted one of the ways that you noticed healing or truth is now compliance doesn't equal connection. It's almost like compliance is like a pseudo-level of connection, or compliance is a pseudo-level of love. And I think that that's really important. I think God understands that really well, which is why he gives a free will, which is what every codependent heart needs to understand and learn and trust. I love how you also spoke to Grace, because there's just so much grace in all this. And I think that for any listener who's realizing or seeing themselves and in this process, there were so many

Navigating Autonomy and Boundaries with Teens

SPEAKER_00 27:31

times that I would freeze because where I used to respond and then I didn't have the next step, and I just go, boom, I just sort of shut down, but then I can go back. I'm sorry, I shut down and you know, whatever. But I think that there is so much grace. We don't even have to do this perfectly. We can just work and try to be good enough moms and dads, you know? It's so important. One of the ways I've learned to support myself is in this establishment of feeling safe inside of me when my kids have a sense of agency and they put up boundaries towards me, has been a whole process. It's this idea of like, my kids are allowed to not tell me everything. And why is that true? Why is that safe? Like, I help my system understand, like, this is actually a really good thing because they have a sense of themselves. They have a sense of knowing what they do want to share and don't want to share. I want them to have that skill. Like, I don't want them to go and tell every Tom, Dick, and Harry in the world all their things. If I have little check-ins where I, if I could flip it, is it also true? And that helps my knower of like, is this really true? And I think to myself, yeah, I hold things back from them as well. And that's really good for them that I don't tell them everything, that I also have boundaries and I have a sense of agency and I have a sense of these are my things. You don't need to know about all of them. I think that this can be a really helpful unhooking of I have to know all the things, I have to feel all your things for connection. And it's a good rewiring of actually I can have connection with boundaries. Those are healthy relationships. If you think about your friendships, hopefully they're boundaried relationships. If you think about your relationships with people in church or your neighbors, like, of course there's boundaries. So even with our with our kiddos, it's very supportive to the connection roles that we probably really want to have, especially as they become adults as well. Of course, when they're younger in age-appropriate ways, but especially as they become older, more and more of that, that where you're allowing agency as a way for more secure attachment to be formed, for connections to organically happen between two autonomous adults, because that's what they're becoming. They're becoming adults, they're becoming their own people.

SPEAKER_01 30:00

That's really good. I think that was something that was challenging for me at times when my boys became teenagers, was not taking things personally when they wanted to share something with their friends instead of me, for instance. And like we're saying, this is a nuanced conversation. There's certainly things that you don't want your children to be keeping from you. And there is that natural growth into independence as our children get older that is going to mean that the relationship is redefined as they continue to mature and grow. And where do I notice myself getting upset or feeling rejected because they are actually growing in a healthy way? Um, and where's the invitation for me to continue to examine

Modeling Ownership and Accountability

SPEAKER_01 30:47

my own growth and reactions? It is a nuanced conversation. Defining what healthy connection looks like for you and even with each child is going to be an individual process. There's certain things that I have to lean in, and this is where I don't want to do this without Jesus. I don't want to do this without the Holy Spirit's wisdom and input. I don't always know where the lines are, and that's where you're having that good dose of grace of like, hey, how can I show up the best that I know how today? And I'm gonna stumble and make mistakes at times, but how can I continue to set my own healthy boundaries in place and understand that this is where my responsibilities start and stop? And this is where I get to learn to release and to grow and continue to um empower my children by example, setting an example of this is what it looks like. You're nodding your head. What are you thinking, girl?

SPEAKER_00 31:45

Something you spoke to was just the feelings of rejection that we can somehow have sometimes have in parenting. And I think this is such a relatable experience. I I feel rejected by my kids all the time. I know my friends do, and I know my clients do. And so this is why I really wanted to state this as even a really practical thing, is I believe that my rejection is my responsibility to take care of. If rejection comes up in me, if shame comes up in me, I just want everyone to hear. I think that this is one of the fruit of doing the work, is now I feel empowered to understand that it is my role as a mom to take care of the things that come up in me as I parent my kids. It's not their job. It's not their fault that they're making me feel away. I'm not saying they're not responsible for what they do in their with their own emotions, but I'm saying is if I feel that they put a boundary and then I feel rejection, I'm responsible to take care of that rejection and support and respect the boundary and not make them feel guilty about it, not make them feel like they owe me something because my kids don't owe me anything. Their very existence is healing my soul. And I chose to have them. They didn't choose that. I think that this restoration of roles, it's kind of the opposite of that codependent, desperate, I need you to change so I can feel better. It is now flipped on its head and saying, I'm feeling a certain way. It is my job to take care of those things. I'm powerful to support those things that come up to me. Whether it's that rescuer part or the discomfort in me, that's what's been one of the most practical overflow and the fruit of doing this work in the last five or six years for me. I didn't start when my kids were little. I didn't get that gift. And so my kids will have a lot of therapy because of it. But we're also repairing and redoing so much. And the more I can own what's happening in me, the more likely I'm able to have the type of connection that I actually really want to have with my kids, which is true connection, not that desperate, I need you to do something connection so I feel better.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

I love what you're talking about because what I really hear you saying is you are learning and growing in modeling ownership. That has been a huge growth point for me, too. Something that has always been quite important to me has been learning how to model apologizing and saying sorry when I recognize that I have actually messed up myself. And that wasn't something that I saw growing up. I didn't see adults or authority figures apologize when they made mistakes. Being somebody who is willing to take ownership and model ownership to my children has been a significant growth point for me, not only in seeing myself as powerful, exactly like you're saying. I recognize this stuff coming up in me. I am going to own it and I am going to take proactive measures to change that rather than doubling down and trying to get my children to behave a certain way in order to make my discomfort or my dysfunction feel better. And that has been a massive place where I've also seen fruit. My husband has done this as well, is because we've really leaned into modeling ownership. I see my children willing to take accountability when they have messed up as well. And it doesn't always make it comfortable. There's still a place for having to humble yourself is not easy, but modeling that is something that I definitely see growth and the same thing coming out in my children too. And I aim to lead by example. I feel like that's one of the biggest gifts that we can give our children is going emotional, spiritual, physical health is important to me. How do I model this for my children? By leading by example, rather than don't just say, do what I say, but actually model so that they can actually do what I do, because children will feel the energy with which we do things, children will feel our nervous system. I mean, the the unspoken ways that we show up, the body language, like we say, verbal communication is only 10% of our actual communication of what we're doing. Our children are picking up in our home and in our environment whether we are actually practicing what we're preaching or whether we're being hypocritical in what we're saying. Now that I've been on that emotional healing journey for the years that I've been on, I feel like looking around and when I see fruit, it's because I'm going, oh, my children are now modeling not just what I'm telling them to do. They're actually modeling after the ways that I am learning to show up powerfully. And it is affecting the

Leaving a Legacy of Health

SPEAKER_01 36:46

ways they show up too.

SPEAKER_00 36:48

I think that what you're saying, Mel, is so powerful. I can zoom out and see this whole relational dynamic, like how important this parent-child relationship is, but also how it is the foundation and for all the relationships they will have in their life, their marriages, their partners, their friendships. It's so, so vital. In my work, and oftentimes I sit with a lot of moms. We don't realize that we have the right, we have the invitation, we have the responsibility to do this work for ourselves and how our families benefit from us doing it. It's so hard to believe sometimes. But once you start it, you're like, oh, it's revolutionary. I think of this story of a friend, and she's in her 60s and her parents are in her 80s. And so this is like one of those cross-cross-generation truths. And when we're talking about her being a daughter, I think about this, like this work is so important because our friend, who's a daughter and a mother, and a grandmother, because we're all many things. I'm also a daughter and I'm a mother. I, when we were checking in about her her parents, she said, I feel so safe and loved by my mom and dad when they have a sense of themselves. They go to bingo, she goes to the Bible study, she goes to quilting, she gets to her doctor's appointments. She's saying, when my parents are being powerful, when they're taking care of themselves, doing the things that they need, even in their 80s, she feels deeply loved by that. And that's the truth for our kids. Our children will feel very loved when we do the deep work, whatever it is that we need. Go to the doctor, go to therapy, go to Bible study, go get drinks with friends, whatever it is that communicates that we're gonna get our needs met. We're gonna take ownership, we're gonna take that responsibility, we're gonna do the modeling that is so important for our kids. And I'll just take this a step further to help me really feel supportive when I see my kids expand into their independence. I think to myself, this is really good for them. I believe it to be true about them. This is where I kind of check it from all angles. It's so good when my kids are powerful, when they know what they need, when they have limits, when they have boundaries, when they go and take care of themselves and they have time away. And I think that that's just a really holistic view of the parenting life and how a lot of the things we we've talked about even in these episodes adds to this holistic view of healing the way we view relationships and the way we interact and what we kind of determine as being safe for our families.

SPEAKER_01 39:57

Yeah. It's showing that if it's true for one generation on a principle level, yes, me taking care of myself benefits my children. Therefore, if it's a true principle, it also means that my children learning to take care of themselves is actually a benefit to me. Yes. The street goes both ways. I I feel inspired by our friends, really her testimony from this, because it's like uh being an outside perspective of looking in and going, oh, this is someone's firsthand fruit that they are experiencing.

The Long Game of Parenting and Healing

SPEAKER_01 40:32

Oh, that motivates me to keep going, to keep doing the work. And on the days when I struggle and think, oh my goodness, you know, am I screwing my kids up? Oh, is this beyond repair? Can I fix it? Can I can I actually find redemption in some of these moments? Because we've all made mistakes. Just hearing stories from other people always feels inspiring and encouraging to stay the course. Keep doing the work. So good. And that's our heart with the listeners today, too, is that you would be inspired to take whatever that next step looks like for you. And and Des, I'm curious, even as we wind down today's episode, are there any thoughts or insights that you would want to leave the listener with as they're in the midst of wherever their journey may be and they're wanting to take proactive steps towards creating a healthy environment in their home?

SPEAKER_00 41:23

Wherever you find yourself on the spectrum of healing or self-awareness or supporting yourself in this journey, whether you're the child or the or the mother, or most often we're both, I would just encourage you to trust that having compassion on how you have understood relationships, the more compassion I have about my shame and my rejection and about my all those things, my codependency, the more likely I am to keep engaging. If I just shame out and be like, this is unlovable, I stop. I stop the process. So I would encourage compassion. Give yourself compassion. Our our humanness makes a ton of sense. And we're all messy and we're all doing the best we have. And we started with what we started with. And I just would encourage you that 1% growth is great, really matters. So if I'm 1% less codependent with my kids today, I'm feeling pretty good. You're allowed to celebrate that. You're allowed to notice that that is healing because so often this is such a slow-going reframing of relationships. It's like I'm reframing my brain, I'm reframing everything I've understood relationally, I'm reframing things I thought about God. This is quite an intense process. So I would just encourage the listener. 1% is good.

SPEAKER_01 42:47

It's growth. Yes. The pace of healing is often slower than what we want or we think it should be. I love that you're talking about the 1%, because when we can let go of desperation and fear, or we can lean more into trust and love. And I don't have to fix this all by yesterday. And when we can embrace my humanity and your humanity and recognizing that this isn't always going to go as fast as I want, but the work that I'm doing is meaningful. And I am laying foundations that future generations can build upon. When I can zoom out a little bit and think about the legacy that I am choosing to create by healing and growing and getting my own breakthroughs, that often helps. Just put a little bit of perspective on it. That can be important when sometimes we're in the thick of it in the day to day. I remember when my children were little, I mean, sometimes the days would just blur together between feedings and diapers and sleeplessness and nursing and, you know, all those early years can just feel so intense. And And then you have challenges and rewards each step of the way. We're playing the long game. This isn't a sprint. This is a marathon. And so pacing yourself, making sure that you have the fuel that you need, I don't think can be overstated. Hmm.

SPEAKER_00 44:17

I just had this thought, maybe you've been a parent for a while and you're like, I'm so late at this. Like, I'm, I'm, it's too late. I'm too far behind. And I would just tell you that if anybody my parents' age would decide to be like, you know what? I'm going to learn to take care of myself. I'm going to learn to take ownership. I'm going to make sense of my own internal world. I just would want you to hear that that would benefit any child at any age. It's never too late to start. So I just really want to encourage you. It's just the right time. Yeah, just the right time.

SPEAKER_01 44:53

Yeah. If this message is crossing your path today, it's because it's the message that you need for right now. Next week we're doing a part four of this series, and it's going to be on the topic of our children and their spiritual lives, their salvation. It is definitely something that we have confronted in our own lives and at people we love and have worked with questions, what about my children's eternity? And how do we unhook from codependency when it comes to our children's spiritual choices, their choices around their belief in God? And we wanted to devote a whole episode to it because it's definitely something that has a lot of nuance in it. And it is something that we've both leaned into in our own journeys and feel like there's some thoughts that we'd like to share with you. So if you're interested in that, that will be part four coming up next week. And again, thanks for being here. Bye, friends. We'll see you next week.