001_Divorced Mommy Podcast Introduction

You're listening to the Divorced Mommy Podcast with Julie C.R.D. Episode 1. I'm Julie C.R.D. and I want to help you create the life you want and your children need. Let's go. Hi there. This is Julie C.R.D. and I can't even tell you how excited I am to launch the Divorced Mommy Podcast. I feel so passionately about this. I feel that a divorced home and kids that live in a divorce environment are not from a broken home. They're from a different kind of home and it can be a home completely filled with love. It can be a childhood that is amazing. Just because kids have divorced parents does not mean that they are doomed to have a terrible childhood. Absolutely not. And we need to flip the script on that. That's why I'm starting this podcast. I have been divorced. I'm a mom of three, although my older two are from a previous marriage. I have been divorced now for, let's see, my daughter Caroline is going to be 15. So for about 12 years, 11 years I guess 11 years. 11 years now. And I don't have all the answers. I am by no means perfect. But what I can tell you is that I have a lot of experience now 11 years in. And 11 years of trying to be as intentional as possible in how I am trying to raise these kids in my relationship with their dad with their dad's fiance with my now husband and their relationship. And just how we are operating as a family. And so this podcast was actually on my heart well before they were podcast. Pretty much right when my kids dad and I were sitting at the mediator's office, you know, he turned to us and said, can you guys just promise me that you'll write a book or try to share. You're experienced with others because he enjoyed working with us and how we were being very intentional about putting the kids first. And so I kind of took that to heart. And then when I first got divorced 11 years ago when my older two children were only, let's see four and two. Yeah, they're about four and two years old. So, you know, when that happened in others kind of saw things that were happening. So for example, their dad and I even after we were divorced, we took them together to Disney World. We wanted to experience that together. We stayed in separate rooms and we made it work. And I was seeing someone at the time. He wasn't quite yet. And I just had to let the other person know that I was seeing, hey, like this is important to us. This is important to my children. And I remember people saying to me, are you guys insane? Like, how are you doing this? And we would get this all the time and we'd all be all always here. You're so lucky. You're so lucky to have the relationship that you have with their dad or you're so lucky for how things are turning out. And that just always hit me because I'm going to be honest with you. Luck had nothing to do with it. It was work. It was mindset. It was intentional living and making choices that weren't always easy. It was biting tongues and deciding not to say something because it could be detrimental. Not easy work. Not luck. And so about 11 years ago, again, before we were listening to podcasts before podcasts were a thing, I started to write. I had a file that I just would write on my computer as different things would happen as we experience different situations, new experiences, issues, good times. I would write them down. And it was also quite frankly before blogging was anything either. And I just kind of kept it in a file and said, okay, someday, someday I am going to do something with this. I thought it would be to write a book, which I hope to do as well at some point. And then all of a sudden, you know, time went by and the world changed and we started to have this amazing thing called podcasting and blogging and all of that. I said, okay, there here's my chance to at least start to start sharing our story, sharing the experience with the hopes that it could help somebody else. And I procrastinated quite some time, you know, probably in another podcast. I'll share a little bit more about how divorce mommy came about. But I was procrastinating. I had a lot going on in my life. My kids are now 15, 13 and 4. And we're busy. As I'm sure any mom that's listening to this podcast knows we are so busy. And I just kept procrastinating. And then I was listening to a podcast myself called the life school coach with Berkastio. And I she said something that just kind of stopped me in my tracks. And she said that the longer you wait to do something because you want it to be perfect or the right time. And the longer you delay providing your value or service or support for someone else. She said, so get it out there even if it's B minus work. Get it out there. Your B minus work is going to help somebody else. And not just hit me. So here I am. I am in my bedroom. I am recording this podcast. I took a podcasting course from an awesome guy by the name of Pat Flynn, who has an awesome podcast himself smart pastive income podcast. And he has a podcast course. So I said, all right, we're going to do this. I need to get the message out there. I need to share at least my experience. It's not going to help everybody, but it could help some people. And what I really want all of you that are listening to know is that if you're in a situation, maybe you, you know, are about to get divorced. Maybe you have been divorced recently or for some time, but you have kids and you love them and care for them as I know you do. And you also care about yourself. I want you to care about yourself. You have to care about yourself. If you don't know one else will. And if you care about yourself and you love your kids so much like I know you do, then you want to be intentional about your life. And you want to create a life that you want, but also one that your kids need. I look at childhood as a very, very important time. And there's no one recipe for a wonderful childhood. And even the most wonderful childhood has its bumps and bruises and things that are helping to shape your little human beings that you brought into the world that is helping to shape them into amazing people who have to go through some things. They just do my two kids going between two homes, having to pack their things up and go between two homes and two homes that have very different styles. You know, we're different people. They're dad and I are different. That's creating something in them. That's going to make them who they're meant to be. So, you know, as I share with you the way I'm going to structure this podcast initially is I'm going to share with you in each episode different areas that we've experienced, the good and the not so great, the lessons learned in hopes to help you in your situation. And then I eventually plan to have people that I'm interviewing. I want to get some experts on the podcast experts in things like mindset and trying to live an intentional life. I also want to get some experts on childhood and psychology and things like that. to help us all out. And then I also want to get awesome other, I don't even want to use the word success stories because let's face it, life's a journey. You don't hit a certain point and say, wow, that was super successful. I can't sit here and say, I'm a success story. I'm not yet. I'm doing the best I can every day. And there's always something new to learn, to encounter. So I won't say I want to have success stories on my podcast, but what I would love to have is other women who share what they've been through. And how they've encountered it, and that we can all learn. Myself as well, we can all learn from each other as we go through the ups and the downs of being a divorced mom, because here's the other thing. Once you're a divorced mom, even if you get remarried, I'm remarried, I have another child, I'm always gonna be a divorced mom, meaning that my two kids are always going to have me and their dad in their lives not married, right? Not together. So what does that look like? And one of the big things that I want to leave you with in this very first short episode that kind of introduces what the podcast is about, is this really important point, just because you are divorced. And when you got married, you said, okay, you know, 'til death do us part, that still rings true. That might be scary and you might be saying, what do you mean, you know, we were divorced. It's no longer 'til death do us part. But if you have kids, it's the truth. I mean, whether it's your kids birthdays or it's their graduation from high school, or it is their wedding, or you become a grandparent, how do you want that to be? Do you want to be in a situation where you can't be in the same room at the same time? Do you want to have it be conflict and issues and anger and anxiety because in these most beautiful life moments, like becoming a grandparent, you have to now have these terrible feelings attached with it because your ex-husband is there. No, I know you don't want that. I don't want that. That is why I want to have this open discussion, have these podcast episodes to share our journey so that we're getting to a place where we can be holding that new grandchild. We can be standing there at our daughter's wedding with pure joy. Even if your ex-husband happens to be standing in the next row, okay, that's the vision. Now, to go from where we are to there, that takes time, it takes intentional living and choices. It's not always easy, but I want that vision to be what we're striving for, right? Because we get one life, one shot at this, and we need to make it the best one we possibly can for ourselves, for our kids, for this family, that is still a family. It's just different. It's not quote unquote traditional, and I say quote unquote traditional because, I don't know that there's much traditional anymore, right? We are hopefully moving into a very open, loving, caring world where things don't have to be a certain size or look a certain way to be okay. They don't have to. So I'm gonna leave you with that for now, and the next episode, I'm gonna share a little bit more about my story and how I got to this point, and I can't wait. If you liked this first episode or you're excited to hear more, please do follow me on @devourstmommy on Facebook, on Instagram. I'd love to get more feedback from you, and I wanna hear from you on what topics or questions or things that you want to hear on this podcast. So thank you so much for listening. It means the world to me, and I can't wait to talk to you again. Bye. (upbeat music) (upbeat music)