Episode 2: Breaking Cycles Without Breaking Yourself Part 2

Come on in. ♪ Welcome. ♪ Oh, I'm glad you're here. ♪ Please, come in and have a seat. Let's see where the conversation takes us. ♪ The moment when your adult child looks at you and says, "You were a good parent. Let me tell you how fulfilling and rewarding that is, mind blowing." It had not been my intention to be such a big crybaby on this, but I really don't know how to share this without the emotion. So, I apologize for the waterworks portion of it, not for the feelings part, but, you know, this show runs on the sweat of fairies and wood sprites and strong coffee. If you'd like to support the fairies and wood sprites or just by Angela a coffee, we would all appreciate it. The fairies know she can be testing without caffeine and nobody wants that. Head to [email protected]/angelaaslivingroom and the fairies will thank you. Okay, I had a moment to compose myself and my four-legged friend has gone out and enjoyed the beautiful outdoors and his returns, so hopefully he'll curl himself up for a little nap and disturb us no further. But I wouldn't place bets. I'm just saying. So where did we leave off? Well, we had talked about the breaking of generational curses, the fact that my child had two home addresses, his whole childhood, three schools, one at each level, one elementary, one middle, one high. I am beyond proud of myself for that. I mean, it affected every decision I made. All right, I was really super careful about. Can we hear them? Don't make me. Oh. I was really super careful about. Yep. Are we good now? Are we good? Are you all done? Is there anything else you need, sir? Moist tell that? No? All right, how about you lay down and take a nap and I'll bump up. I love that dog. He is such a hot mess and I love every little bit of him. Okay, so welcome back. When we had left, we were talking about the breaking of the generational curses. Okay. There were so many intentional decisions that were made throughout his childhood to help ensure that he didn't experience the instability, the insecurity, the angst, the traumas, the tension. You know, when you are living in an abusive home, whether it's physical abuse, emotional abuse, mental abuse, any of those, there is a tension because you never know what's going to trigger the next round of abuse. And I wanted to make sure that my child didn't have to live with the weight of that tension. It impacted who I dated when I dated. I can tell you that so Tyler's father was not a part of our story for the majority of his life. He made a brief appearance when Tyler was 12 and then once again removed himself by the time Tyler was 14. I'm not going to name him and I'm not going to bad mouth him. I didn't do it throughout Tyler's childhood and I won't do it now. But he made choices that kept him from being a part of Tyler's life. And as disappointed as I was that he didn't step up to be the father that Tyler deserved, I was actually really grateful that when he chose not to participate, he did it fully. And what I mean by that is there were no broken promises because he didn't promise anything. There was no missed expectations because he wasn't there to expect anything from. It was a clean break and we had a couple of really hard conversations at the expected stages. When he was three or four, I've got the where is my dad, who is my dad. And I always kept it real. He doesn't live with us. And it was never a blame. It was, you know, he's just not able to be here. But you have me and you have Graham and you have your aunts and you have your uncle and, you know, you got all the people who love you and he loves you too. He's just not able to be here. It was never I didn't want to put on to my child. The disappointments I had in that relationship, you know, your child is part you, part the other parent. And if you disparage the other parent, then they take ownership of those comments, of those attributes of those qualities. So I always wanted to be very careful that I never spoke negatively about him within the vicinity of him ever. And nor did I allow anybody else. God bless my mother. She tried a few times and it was, we're not doing that. It was a firm, steadfast rule that I had that he if you don't have nothing nice to say, don't say nothing at all. And that we lived by that. And I provided for his needs. I was able to support him with the help of my family. You know, I'm not saying I did it all by myself. I had an amazing community of support between friends and family who stepped in to provide clothes and toys and baby sitting and, you know, resources and time and energy and effort and care and all of those things that you need to grow a healthy happy child. He had a village that loved him to pieces. He wanted for nothing. Even when I struggled financially as a single mom, he wanted for nothing. He had everything he needed, including discipline. I was very much of the school of thought that my child was not my friend. My child was my child and I was his parent and it was my responsibility to have rules and expectations and boundaries and. But that they were reasonable and that they were relevant and that they were loving. And he was a, he was such a good kid. He was so fun and funny and, you know, we, I was a single mom, we struggled. The first four years of his life, I didn't date at all. Period. I was mom. I wasn't interested in finding somebody to hook up. I had friends of both sexes, but they were all platonic. I would go out and do social things, but it was never in a couple. The first four years of his life, I did not date, and it's not that I did not get asked out on dates because it did, but it just wasn't my priority. I keep in mind. I had Tyler two weeks before my 30th birthday. I was a whole grown up at that point. I had survived my 20s, barely, but I made it. I had already had and lost a child. I had moved across country and lived independently from my family and then come back home again. I mean, well, what transients consider home. We had had so many addresses. It was the current home, which is here in Florida. Even after four years, when I did start to date, Tyler had no idea because he did not meet any of them. He didn't hear about any of them. He wasn't impacted by them. If I was going on a date, he would spend the night with his grandma, or with his Oma, which was my mom's mom. He would go over to his auntie's house and hang out with his cousins. It wasn't a matter of he was just. I wasn't just telling him, "Mom, he's got a date." No, mommy had plans. Mommy was going out, but he didn't know I was seeing anybody until Michael. Michael earned his way in. Let me tell you, I did not make that easy. I did not make that easy. We had been dating for quite a while before he got to meet my son. All of those decisions, all of those choices were to ensure that he was impacted by the instability that relationships, the romantic relationships, can bring to a child's life. My mother, God bless her. She really, really, really, really struggled with prioritizing when it came to men in her life. She often put the relationship first, and she would tolerate really dangerous behavior to maintain the relationship. I never wanted to be in that position. I was so guarded about who could be around my child, and at what stage in our relationship we had to be before they could even consider being introduced to my child in a large group setting. Let alone this is who mommy is dating. There were even times when I had to enforce boundaries within my family. I mean, I went a period of time where we didn't speak to my mom because she had trouble respecting boundaries and not saying things around my child that I didn't want her to say. My mother comes from a generation where certain language was normal, and that language wasn't to be tolerated around my child because it wasn't language I ever wanted him to think was appropriate to use. So, you know, I would enforce a boundary until she would agree to adjust her behavior accordingly. And that does were challenging times, but it was important that I control the influences that came into my son's life. And all of those decisions, all of those choices added up to him reaching the age of maturity and being able to join the military and leave home a whole complete person. I mean, did his childhood have challenges? Sure, he didn't get everything he wanted. You know, we struggled financially for years, but he always had food in his pantry. Food he wanted to eat. There's a whole other story. God gave birth to the world's pickiest eater, and it took the navy to open up his palate and get him to try things, but at least it happened. Still can't figure out how a foodie like me gives birth to somebody who can't even tolerate condiments. Like he didn't want, his hot dog was hot dog and bun. Once I got him to wrap the hot dog in cheese, it was slightly better, but he still ate that bread dry. I can't even. I am the queen of condiments and sauces and layers of flavor. And I make my own hot sauce from scratch, and my child wouldn't even eat ketchup. But he grew up healthy and strong. Right? That's what really matters. And peer pressure got him to start experimenting with his foods. You would not believe it. Well, I didn't believe it. You might believe it, because you didn't know him. But I certainly couldn't believe the fact when he called me and told me, guess what? I had for dinner last night. I don't know, child of mine. What did you have? I had curry. He had curry. I mean, it was the mild curry, not the hot curry, but still he ate a dish covered in sauce. He's still my heart. There's hope for his palate yet. Oh, so, where does this bring us? We get to choose the life we want to build, and we make those choices every single day. And we, every single day that we wake up, we have the opportunity to define who we are and what our life will be. In my family, my mother was the black sheep. She was the wild child. The one everybody was certain was going to end up dead or in prison. Okay, so maybe she did a few months, federal time, but it was really because of her husband at the time, you know, federal tax papers. They make both parties sign them. She signed a tax document, so she did some federal time for tax evasion. But that isn't why they thought she was going to end up in jail. They thought it was going to be far more nefarious than that. And it was prophesized by all that my sisters and I would end up, you know, addicts on the pole, prostitutes. Yeah, oh, we were destined. There's no way we were going to turn out. Surprise. We're homeowners with happy marriages and professional careers and beautiful families in that just amazing because we get to choose who we want to be. It is pre-determined. And just because you were raised in trauma in chaos does not mean you have to perpetuate that trauma in chaos to your next generation. Right? But it doesn't happen on its own. You can't just wake up one morning and decide I'm going to be all different now because before you can change your broken behavior you have to recognize what's broken in you. You have to become aware of who you are and how you move throughout the world, how you impact those around you, how how your traumas affect how you react. You have to know what your own triggers are. You have to know what your buttons are. And that's the first step, right? They're getting to know yourself, getting to recognize what your challenges are, getting to recognize what your traumas are. But just identifying them isn't the end of the journey. Okay? Just identifying them and saying, "Well, this is my trigger and making it everybody else's responsibility to avoid your triggers is not how the world works." See, you have to identify your triggers and then you have to learn how to safeguard them yourself because you can't control what others do. You can only control how you respond to it. You can only control the choices you make based on that. But before you can control those choices you have to recognize where they're coming from. And boy, what a journey that is. And that's what we're going to be talking about folks. That's a journey I'm inviting you to come take with me. I want to thank everybody for listening. And if any of that spoke to you, please share in the comments. Let me know, are you a generational curse breaker? Or do you hope to be? Tell me all about it. Let's chat. It's been really great chatting with you today. Always appreciate it when you stop by. Make sure you follow me on social media at Angela's Living Room on all platforms. If you'd like to support the show, you can subscribe to my Patreon and see all the behind the scenes action and some extended episodes. Have a great day.