← Don't Cut Your Own Bangs
Loading summary
Transcript52 lines
- [00:00]
A
Foreign. What if some of the things we call boundaries are actually fear? And what if being low maintenance, hyper independent, a real go getter and endlessly fine, isn't always empowerment? What if sometimes it is just a really socially rewarded way of abandoning yourself? And the hardest part, sometimes the thing that is protecting you could also be the thing quietly shrinking your life. Welcome back to don't cut your own bangs, the podcast for high functioning humans with big feelings who are trying to understand themselves more honestly and create lives that actually feel like theirs. I'm Danielle Ireland, a therapist, storyteller and speaker, and someone who has been having a very uncomfortable realization lately. I think that there have been some seasons of my life where self doubt was actually a form of self protection. Where playing smaller, wanting less, overexplaining over, functioning, over boundarying wasn't entirely wisdom, it was fear. Fear of disappointment, fear of vulnerability, fear of needing too much, fear of taking up too much space, fear of wanting something so deeply and maybe acknowledging the possibility of not getting it. And once I started to see it, I can't now unsee it, because I started realizing how many women, especially capable women, are quietly organizing their lives around being lovable, being manageable, being easy, being useful, or being very emotionally low maintenance, trying to find calm not because they're fake, not because they're weak, but because somewhere along the way, the version of themselves that helped them survive an old chapter in life, an old relationship, an old job, an old season, helped them belong, helped them feel safe. But eventually the role that protects you can also become the role that can find you. And the person I immediately wanted to unpack this with is today's very special guest, Teresa Sabatine. Teresa has been on the podcast before. This is her third time around. We're gonna have a five timers club like snl, but every time we talk, I leave feeling like someone opened up a window to a room that I didn't realize had gotten stuffy. Teresa is the founder of Love Lizzie. She leads retreats for women and has built this beautiful, beautiful community grounded by life on a farm. And what I admire so much about her is not that she has everything figured out, but that she is willing to look honestly at herself. She lives a very investigated life. She notices patterns, she asks harder questions, she lets herself evolve and grow and expand. And in this conversation, we talk a lot about the roles that we inherit, the stories we tell ourselves about them, and the compulsive way we over function in response to them. And then what happens when we finally ask ourselves what do I actually want? Which sounds like a deceptively simple question until you realize how long you may have gone, how much life you might have lived without ever answering it honestly. Teresa, welcome back. Teresa Sabatin I welcome back to don't cut your own bangs. You've been through every iteration when the podcast was like a new, sweet little dream. This new version, this new iteration here on video. Thank you so much. And you've evolved, too. Your business. Love Lizzie company, which, like, it's just. I love that you continue to grow and evolve. Your business has continued to grow and evolve and like, that we get to kind of. We get to, like, bounce out of each other's lives and back in and sort of, like, see those changes. And yet the core threads that are still the same.
- [04:01]
B
Yeah. And I just appreciate you continuing to bring me along on your journey because I've had such a fun time being with you as you've grown and learned who you are and become more of yourself. So happy to be here, you know,
- [04:12]
A
and what you just said, that is like becoming more yourself. I think that that language I didn't have until this moment, that really is, I think, an undercurrent or like a core heartbeat of what I want to talk to you about today, which is this idea of boundaries and our relationship with boundaries, and in particular, through my own processing. Is my boundary protecting me or shrinking me? Is it putting up guardrails that are actually serving my energy and creating a container where I can operate safely? Or is my fear of being hurt keeping me from being seen? And what inspired this new thread that I'm exploring? I've been listening to Lena Dunham's memoir, Fame sick, this relationship with boundaries becoming more curious about. And I want to hear what's lighting up for you. This idea of, like, how much of my life have I unintentionally organized around avoiding disappointing people or avoiding disappointing myself? Oh, she's squinting.
- [05:19]
B
Okay, so I've actually not listened to Lena Dunham's book, but I've been listening to her press tour. I love. I love hearing a person who wrote something or made something and then having various conversations with different people pulling different things out. Completely understand. And I actually have a lot to relate to Lena's experience about all the way boundary or no boundary at all, and then the physical manifestation of that, of that pattern. So I, you know, I think if I could use an example, that would feel good to everyone I love. I have the wound of losing the other parent. So when my mom passed, I had Been my mom's caretaker for quite some time. I'm not the only one. We were all her caretaker. She was also our caretaker. It was a very like all family ever, all hands on deck experience. But she was sick for 10 years. And so I think when someone in the family has something that is a reoccurring thing that's happening, that's super stressful and hard, that that just becomes the family story. Like we are all moving around that. Right. And it's to no one's. It's no one's fault or anything bad. It just is what it is. From a very young age, Danielle, I got used to being the caretaker. I was parentified on accident by the family system. I was always the one that had the 360 view. Because as the youngest, like you are on the sidelines. Right. You're not necessarily in the game. You are the last one they remember. You are the one that, like, they, they like. I tell you, my dad has said to me in multiple of our very difficult confronting conversations, he has said, well, I just didn't need to worry about you. I just wasn't worried about you. In one hand is so beautiful because you're like, well, wow, he really believes in me. And like, he sees me as this capable little girl who needed parents and was dealing with the death of her mother at an age where there were not tools available to me that I could access. Right. Without an adult.
- [07:09]
A
Yeah.
- [07:10]
B
That I think just to set the stage for like that relationship. And then mom passes away when I'm 22. The whole family is there. It was a beautiful, tragic day. We had time. You know, I talk to a lot of people now when they lose their parents. Like, they did not know there wasn't that time to really be with each other. All of those beautiful things that you get to do with someone who is alive knowing they're dying. Right. And my dad just went off the deep end, I mean, to put it lightly. And I would. He would tell you this himself. Like, it was like my dad was 18 again. And so I lost a mom and I lost a dad. And both my sisters would agree that, like, my dad's grief kind of made him unavailable as a parent, but his health started to decline. So we lose my mom, and within two years, my dad has his first triple bypass for his heart. So my mom's death literally broke my dad's heart. No, there's a lot of medical reasons why it happened. He's a type 1 diabetic for 50 years. Whatever, whatever. And emotionally the hole in my. Of watching my mom leave Earth and the fear of my father leaving earth drove my behavior. I mean, I would say that, like, I'm not saying it's all I did, but it was a majority of my identity, honestly, until about 18 months ago or 24 months ago, like the last, you know, she's been gone 18 years this June. I would say the last 18 years. Between my sisters and I, we have all taken a turn as the caretaker. And I kind of got the emotional caretaker role because that's how I'm built. Not only the physical care of someone you love being ill, but then also the emotional carrying of their grief, their fear, their sadness, their depression, and all of the things people go through when they're ill. Because illness has its stages of grief and stages of emotion. It's not just physical. You know, your identity gets compromised. You're no longer physically who you were before. Like, there's a lot of shift there. And when you have a parent who is already feeling depressed and lost from something big happening to them and their best friend and their anchor is gone, like, where do they turn, right? Well, to the people that are right there. So that's the system that became right. So that kind of sets the stage a lot.
- [09:22]
A
So within that role of grief, internal family systems, family dynamic caretaking, and then another health scare there, I would imagine there would be many iterations of abandoning your needs for the service of another and then feeling so tapped out and depleted that there's like a major retreat or like just really that pendulum swing. I could see so acutely, I'll say, where this new concept of boundaries started to make itself known to me. Yeah, I'm noticing too, the more I'm talking about it, the more aware, the more I'm seeing it in other places. But because it's so fresh, I'll say, like, one of the places I've noticed it more recently was within my marriage. David, my husband, has, I would say, always been more extroverted. And he'll volunteer on every committee. He'll be on a board. He was. He's an actual big brother. And he's also a big brother in the Big Brother Big Sister program. And like, so he just has a heart for service. And he's also a business owner. And what I, over the course of how we would relate to each other, I would get really focused on my career or my goals or what I was doing, and then he would over commit himself. The best part of him would also lead to overextending and Then I would get so kind of bogged down in my burrow of focus that we would just miss each other. Before kids, what we would do to remedy that or reconnect is we would go on a date or we would take a trip, or we plan that time. And the pressure of having kids and then still having goals, still having businesses, still having our own ambition and dreams, that way of operating. What started to manifest for me was I would, I would call it this low level resentment where the more I would sort of burrow in and focus the way that I did before and, and the story I was telling myself about myself, like, well, I'm more introverted. I don't derive a lot of energy from being around people. Networking events drain me. There were a lot of stories like, and I'm not even saying they were false, they may have been true at one point in time. But the thing about stories you keep repeating is they just continue to feel true. And I wasn't examining the stories. And then when I started working from home and our second kid came very, very, it was almost like one day I woke up and I realized my world was just shrinking around me. And I was also operating under a set of rules that if you had asked me a month ago, I, I, or maybe even two months ago, I wouldn't have had any framework or context to acknowledge this. So I don't think that I was being deceiving myself on purpose. I wasn't aware. But once these little like cracks of awareness, and that's what I want to loop back around to you of where does the awareness shift? Because I'm always curious about how. How, like the how. But what I noticed within myself was that I was so bound and I was binding myself to these rules of how available I needed to be in the morning and after work for the kids, how available I needed to be on the weekends, my beliefs about myself and where I drove energy and where I didn't. And again, the smaller and smaller my world felt and I participated in it becoming that too. I wasn't a victim of anything when what I started to notice when David would come to me and say he would want to talk calendars and there were commitments he wanted to make and what he wanted to check in was, are you in a position for me to leave and not be available to go do these things? So there's a retreat, I need to go on a trip, I need to do a couple of evenings of this. There's an event for the such and such thing. And what I Can see now, or what I'm starting to see now is he was expressing the freedom I was craving, but I didn't believe I had access to. And what was coming up for me, it was. I would feel this heat in my chest, and then what I would want to do is resent him. And what I would want to do was tell a story about how, like, the invisible mental load, like, and. And I'm not. And this is so specific to my situation. I am in no way denying the invisible mental load. But there was. There was something in me that I wasn't aware that I wanted a freedom that I wasn't in touch with, that I wanted that when he would make space and time for himself, because I didn't believe I was as free as he was to claim that for myself. What I would feel with this resentment or this envy, and it would come out in heat, and it would put a lot of pressure on us and him. And then what would really tip it into overdrive? He would say, well, I reflect very honestly. Well, you know, honey, I've just noticed you haven't made plans with your friends in a while. Is there anything you need? And then I got indignant. I was like, don't. Don't try to, like, make plans for me so that you can feel better about. She was right. Which made it even harder.
- [14:37]
B
Totally.
- [14:38]
A
But I was. So. I will say that, like, the awareness that I started to get on my own made past conversations challenging. Conversations we've had make more sense. I'm processing this pretty close to real time, but once I started to recognize that in myself, almost without even trying, I was getting invitation after invitation after invitation to speak. And then I was asked to be a plus one at a dinner. And the sweet friend who invited me had a kiddo who needed stitches, and she was like, can you talk? I was gonna talk at this event, like, so I'm getting invited, literally, to step up onto stages, and I'm getting invited more to social engagements. And I'm going, and I'm saying yes, and I'm having a great time.
- [15:22]
B
That's right. Like, conversation. I love this conversation because it is a difficult one, and we don't get to be nuanced about it because we live in the world of algorithm hot points. And what I will say is that the ability to shift the story in your mind is the only power that you have. It doesn't matter who you're married to, who you're the daughter of, who you're a friend of, who you're the business partner with you control. You cannot control them. You cannot control their behavior. You cannot control how fast they change or who they become or not, whatever. So I love that pinpoint. And it was not a soft landing into this boundary. Okay. It was a decade long effort to shift my relationship with my father because I was stuck in the story of his abandonment since I was little. Like my story of my dad for many years, Danielle, because of my story, I could not remember the good things about my dad in my life. And it wasn't until I started to. I mean, I advocated for myself communicatively with him because communication is my healing tool. Like I need to have the conversation that's becoming less so. But definitely in the development of becoming more myself and understanding what I want and need and how I want to move through the world, there were definitely chapters where I had to communicate to him. I need you to see the pain that you put on me because of your negligence. I need you to remember what it was like and how invisible I felt because of your shit and your. Your anger and your inability, you know, And I was never mean about it. I was a very gentle little flower. But I'm sure for my dad it was not gentle, you know, because it's his kid saying, do you that love me? So cutting all of that to like the. The catalyst of realizing that it was my story. It's like a two part series. My dad in 2024 had a catastrophic life event. And I found him nearly gone in his apartment. He had moved down to Florida, where I live. We don't know is one of his teenage compulsions. This is what he's doing. There was no plan. There was no strategy. This was not a parent making a retirement move. This was a young man who still has not confronted his heartbreak and is still pulling for something externally to save him from him, his own feelings. Now he's 76, girl. So am I going to get him to articulate that? No. Okay. But I'm watching it and I remember the first time I was like, I don't think my dad should move down here. This doesn't feel good. Like my whole body was like, my boundaries are being crossed. I was in a deep place of needing to heal with my father. I had no ability to say no to my dad. I had no ability to say to my dad, hey, when you call me and share how sad you feel every day, it takes 60% of my energy and I have nothing left. And I'm trying to run a business. I'm trying to Keep my house going. I'm trying to pay my bills. Like, do you not see me? Do you not see me? And his story was, this is my daughter, I'm keeping in touch with her, I'm checking in with her. This is our relationship. So first step was he came here and decides he's moving into my town. I live in a little two bedroom bungalow. There's no space at the time. And he has no plan, he's not found a place to live, he has no strategy. So I start finding him a place to live because that's what I do as a parentified child who takes care of this chaos and fixes the problem for everybody and makes sure everybody's okay because nobody can handle their shit. And so my sister calls me, my oldest sister, who's extremely boundaried in a beautiful way. And she's like, just tell him you don't want him to move there. And I'm like, in my head, Danielle, I'm like, how can I tell my father, who I know is going to die and who one day I will never see again, that he should not move here because it doesn't work for me. How do I make the choice? The story I was telling myself, how do I make the choice between being able to be with my father in these last years? So for 18 years I've been living in the story of like, my dad's gonna die. And so my whole life is around the story of I don't want to have the regrets I have with my mom. I don't want to miss out on time. I don't want to, right? So that's driving these decisions in the background. And I'm like, to my sister, I'm like, I can't do that. I'm not going to say that to my dad. My dad has nobody. My dad has nowhere to go. My poor dad lost his wife. My poor dad. What is my dad supposed to do? I can never understand what my dad's going through. Like story after story of the story victimizing him, right? Which is another thing we do. Within a year of him moving here, he falls off a ladder and breaks his hip. So now I am his caretaker again. I'm in the hospital. I'm supposed to be starting a relationship that I thought was going to be my forever relationship. That relationship and my dad's health plan plummet at the same time. God is good. God is great. Danielle. I believe in God, vision, God.
- [20:00]
A
Is this also material that God doesn't give you more than you can handle? And you're like, but God, can you chill? Can you chill?
- [20:05]
B
Can you chill the fuck out, please?
- [20:07]
A
Just a little.
- [20:08]
B
I'm sitting on the floor of a hospital. My dad is in a room over here acting like a child because that's what he does in the hospital. He's got a broken hip, but he won't admit that he's in pain. And I've got a partner who has now revealed to me that he is not who he said he was. This is all in the same weekend while I'm buying my first house, okay? So I'm sitting on the floor looking at bank statements, talking to the lender, trying to figure out how to like get this small business girly alone to buy a house because she's not married and she doesn't have dual income. And she. It's like my dad is in this catastrophic event and the boyfriend is revealing that he's just a liar. So I'm like, okay, cool. So I only had time to triage what I could. Within months, I'm having to ask this person to leave my life. I'm caretaking for my dad's rehab and recovery. He goes to a center, I rehab him there. My sister is flying down to try to help. I mean, it's like all hands on deck. So that was also another moment where I'm looking out and I'm like, I have no one because I've set up my life to be the person for everyone. And I'm sitting here with my dream half manifesting and half on fire at the same time. I thought this partner was like here for this. Like, I chose this partner because I thought I was choosing someone that would be here for this kind of shit, right? Like, I'm no longer alone. I've got a team. No, no, no, no. This person causes a bigger problem at the same time that my father. So God was like, are you gonna look like. Literally it was like, we're not holding back. You're gonna look at every pattern in your life at the same time and you're gonna have to make life altering decisions about your life. While I move into this house by myself when I thought it was going to be whatever. I get my dad to rehab, I grieve the relationship. I realize that like this pattern of being the caretaker lives so deep that I attract people that need me to take care of them. And I take a stance and I say to the higher powers, I'm like, okay, fine. So that's step two. So that's like, okay, are you going to Listen. Well, kind of. I'm going to kind of listen. A year of that, my father, I find him almost nearly gone. I call the ambulance, we go to the hospital. It was the best ER triage I've ever seen in my life. I don't even know if that guy's a real person or seen him again at the hospital. It was like an army, like, general brought my dad to life. There was a nurse who I called Dolly Parton because she was a Dolly Parton replica. And she was the nicest because I live in the south now. So everyone talks like this and everything is darling and everything is okay. This woman, I was like, dolly, is my father going to die? And she was like, we just don't know until tomorrow. But your job is to just hold on to the faith, honey, because we got him through this, and that's step one, and now we're going to take step two. I mean, it was like miracle hour. Then my sister comes because we don't know if my dad's going to make it. He's in the icu. He's like, he's multiple. It was just a triage. And it was about six weeks of hospitalization. My sister standing in my NOW house that I finally bought after all this stuff. And I'm trying to turn into this Love Lizzie retreat center because I realized that God took the boyfriend away so I could pursue the thing that I actually need to be pursuing, which doesn't really come until eight months later when you're, you know, feeling better. And I'm like. I'm like. I'm desperately confused by my sister's, I would call stoicism. Like, I'm in urgent triage mode. I'm having flashbacks to my mother's death. I'm grieving my father while he's alive because I'm doing that thing to prepare for the pain. And my sister's like, dad's going to die. And I'm like, yeah, but maybe not right now. She's like, no, but you need to get it. You need to realize dad is going to die. And I was like, oh, I can't save my father from himself and my sisters who love me. These are the women that love me. Like, get along, don't get along. Bad times, good times. These are my die hards in the universe. And they're both looking at me like, hey, when are you going to get here? Because we're not in this pain anymore. We don't want you to be in this pain anymore. But, like, you are in It. Right. And I'm like, thinking in my mind, like, how insensitive. How do my sisters just not care? And it was like, there's something here. Let me look at it. So I start to look at how the story of I can't lose my dad. I'll never go through that pain again. There's no way I can handle it again. I got to do everything I can to keep that from happening is, like, making this compulsive behavior of just allowing him to use me the.
- [24:53]
A
Okay. Okay.
- [24:54]
B
Yeah. So not even trying, though. Like, let me just say before you say that, like, he's not aware of this at all.
- [25:01]
A
No, no. He's not the villain. He's a mirror. He's not a villain.
- [25:03]
B
That's right. Totally.
- [25:04]
A
Totally. I'm with you.
- [25:05]
B
Yeah.
- [25:07]
A
So there's something you said about the compulsive behavior as you were talking about moments in your story where I literally had a flash of a picture of a child riding a bike with training wheels. And I think there's something to thinking about boundaries, protection, stories, all of that. Our stories keep us safe. Our stories help us. And we come from a storytelling background. Like, stories help us make sense of something. And I think what I. In all of the wisdom I thought I had, what I didn't see was that the boundaries are never fixed. I always told myself that I have the freedom to change my mind. That's one of my favorite things about being an adult, is that I can change my mind, but that I. That, like, I don't want to live my life on training wheels, but there are places in my life where I'm still a little wobbly, where I'm still learning, where the training wheels make sense. They prevent me from harm, but at some point, they're also going to prevent me from really going and really taking off. And I think what my emotions weren't letting me ignore, what my resentment wasn't letting me ignore, what my envy wasn't letting me ignore was that whatever form of protection my walls served, they were also none keeping me from being in the world. And I wanted to be in the world.
- [26:35]
B
Foreign.
- [26:39]
A
I want to take a brief pause to talk about a couple of things that I think can make a big impact in your life or share with somebody. You know, when it comes to conversations like this one, this is exactly why it really matters, to have somewhere where you can actually hear yourself. I believe in journaling for this very reason. Because when all of our fears, desires, disappointments, reactions, they stay spinning in our head, it becomes really, really hard to tell what is intuition and what is fear. That's a big part of why I created the Treasure Journal. Not to journal perfectly, not to get it exactly right, but to create a place where you can reconnect with your own voice again. In my opinion, it's the most important relationship in your life, the one between you and you. And I also created a little book called Wrestling a Walrus. The heartbeat of that is also this. It's learning how to sit with big feelings instead of minim biting them or pretending like they aren't there. And that changes everything. Especially when we are raising littles or adjacent to littles. If you've also been listening to this conversation and thinking, okay, Danielle, this is great. But now I'm realizing I don't actually know what I feel anymore. It just all feels like a lot. I built something for that, too. It is called the Bangs Club. The Bangs Club is not therapy. It's a softer place to land with voice note meditations, guided prompts and reflections, and conversations designed to help you connect to yourself in the middle of real life. And the best part is, it is a continuation of the conversation that we have here on the podcast. Just another place to think. Oh, I loved that part of the episode. I want to go a little deeper with that here. That is for you. If, like me, you've been craving a place where insight can actually become a practice where you can slow down enough to hear yourself again. That is exactly what I'm building here in the Banks Club. There are new pieces dropping every Wednesday. You can find the link in the show notes. But for now, let's get back to Theresa. The cocoon serves its purpose, but also, like, if the butterfly never leaves, it will also die. It's. It's.
- [28:47]
B
And there's a version of your life where you're in the cocoon the rest of your life. And that's just. That's not even, like, one question. I will say, Danielle, that I think you're bringing up for me in that conversation is. I had to ask myself. I have never asked myself what kind of relationship I want to have with my father.
- [29:04]
A
That. That now I think we're getting to, how do you know what your boundaries are serving? Like, what relationship do you want that reminds me so much. And you know, people who have listened to this podcast for a while, if you've heard me talk about writing my children's book, Wrestling a walrus. I was beating my head against a wall, A wall that I erected, but I was beating my head against my own wall. Because I was trying to write the book that I thought would slip in so neatly next to Brene Brown's on the shelf at Barnes and Noble. And I was trying to write that book and I hated trying to write that book. Like, I was like, I need to go into the scholarship, I need to go into the literature. I need to say words like scholarship and literature. And like, you know, it felt like grad school, but my least favorite parts of grad school. And then a beautiful coach named Lachelle Wooten asked me, how do you want to feel when you make this book because you're choosing to do it? How do you want to feel when you make it? How do you want the reader to feel when they read it? And I had never considered that. I had never considered it. Like, what relationship did I want to have with the book? What relationship do you want to.
- [30:13]
B
Let's pause there because that would require someone to be centering themselves. And when you are a people pleasing boundary list and empathetic by person, you never censor yourself. Okay, so you're not asking the question, what do I want or how do I want to feel? Oh, and the beautiful thing about this is there's this question on Instagram where it's like, if you disappeared for three days, he would be the first one to come find you. And I'm like, my dad, my dad, my dad. Because when I don't call him, he's like texting and he's like, just checking in. At least I have voice notes from him I can't delete. Long story, but that guy didn't want me to be boundaryless with him. He went wanting that for me. He didn't want me to be his caretaker. He just was lost and I was there and I love him. He was the one since I was little. Danielle reminding me, you don't have enough self preservation. You're not selfish enough, you don't care enough about yourself. And I kept being like, funny. You say that since you don't seem to mind that I give all my time to you. You know, it's like, funny. And then I started listening and I was like, okay, what kind of relationship do I want with my father? I want to laugh. I want to feel like we're on adventure. I want to feel like I get to lean on him for something. I get to ask him the questions you want to ask your father before he dies instead of being in the story that I'm so afraid my dad's going to die to do Everything to avoid missing out on time. I want to move towards. I want to spend quality time with my dad. What does quality time mean?
- [31:43]
A
So it really comes down to what do you want? It's that meme from the Notebook, Ryan Gosling. But like that, it. I mean, it. It really goes back to that thing that I didn't see in myself that I'm just contin. That's continuing to be revealed to me is that there are the boundaries that I have in place that still serve me, require no energy of me, that still serve me. And there are some that still serve me. Clearly, the ones that don't, when something pushes against it, the resistance that I feel to push it back or keep it up, I don't. I don't always know what the action step will be, but I think what I'm really starting to see is there's something to look at. And I think even starting with if we can bring this home to one tangible takeaway for anybody listening, if any of this is resonating, like revisiting a hundred times a day, a thousand times a week, what do I want? What relationship do I want? Yes.
- [32:52]
B
And let's add to that, let's add to that that this is not an overnight thing that served you for survival or whatever. And that is the self preservation that I thought I was doing was this role was my self preservation. It'll get me belonging and love and connection, and no one will ever be bothered by me, and everyone will love me and it'll be easy to be around me. And if I'm the easiest to be around, no one will ever leave. And it feels dangerous to want something. The selfishness, it's vulnerable. And also it's scary because it. You think it's threatening the relationships that exist. So if I put myself first and I'm no longer doing these behaviors, will we even have a relationship? So the next step there, Danielle, is like, okay, what relationship do I want with my father and for my own life? Because this catastrophic life event for him left me broke. I had to shut down my business for six months. I had to let go of an employee. I mean, there were so many series of events because there was no time. And again, by the grace of my mother, who's no longer with us, but is with us, she brought me a contract with this Irish family that like, transformed my life. But either way, I had no choice. It got to a point where I was so depleted and like Lena talks about we in bed, I would get up, do one phone call back to Bed, get up. Do what? Like, just like my mother's cancer cycle. So then there's the projection of that, too. Is like, all I knew was a woman who is bedridden. All I knew was a woman who didn't have what she needed. All I knew was a woman that was depleted. I became that right pattern. So when I asked myself that question, I want to talk about that moment you're talking about where the boundary hurts. Like, first of all, it either triggers real resentment and anger. So, like, rage is the first thing I feel when I feel like someone has crossed a boundary that I feel like I've communicated a hundred times. I've told you who I am. I told you what I need. What's your fucking problem? How are we here again? Or I can say, okay, this is not going how I want it to go. I don't like this. What is it that I want to say or do here? Okay. I want to keep the relationship. I. This relationship as it is. So sometimes I'll go to somebody and say, okay, I want to honor something in me. I don't know what's going on for you. Every time we get in this cycle where you're doing this, I feel this. And I don't want to feel that anymore. So here are some things I've thought about. Like, I know that you feel sad, dad. And I know that you have this kind of relationship to depression that takes you in and out of some suicidal ideation or, you know, whatever. I have it, too. I'm your daughter. It's in me. Unfortunately, Daddy, when you call me and you tell me these things, it breaks my heart. It makes me so sad. And, Daddy, I want to be there for you. I. I'm your kid. I love you. And if you want me to walk you to death's door, because that's what you need, I will do that. But if there's something else for us here, I want to explore that. Right. That conversation, all he stopped doing was calling me and telling me about his depressive episodes. That one conversation that took 10 years for me to get to say with compassion and not resentment and not anger was like a catalyst for the last 18 months of our relationship. But it also came with other people stepping up, too, like my sister, because he was still here and he needed a lot of care and the whole family wrapped around the decision of what he did next. It was not just me and him, which is normally how I would do it. No, we opened it up. My uncle got involved, my aunt got involved. My sisters Got involved, and it was a family decision about what my dad needs and what Teresa needs. But in order for that to happen, Danielle, I had to let them. I had to let them take care of me. I had to let them see me. I had to call my sister in the way I never called her before in 40 years, other than the day my mom died in such hysterics and overwhelm. And let her see me, Katherine, I can't do it. I can't do it. And she's like, okay, all right, then let's build another plan. And then we talked about it, and we did it together, and it was a team effort, but it was like, until I said what I can and cannot do, what I want and do not want. Even though it was so hard to admit that I was not in a place to take care of my dad, I did not have the financial standing. I did not have the community resources. My sister is resourced beyond measure. She's in the middle of a giant community. Her neighbors come and take her kids, and it's beautiful. I'm not there yet. Please. Out here on a farm, trying to build a business. My sister has health care access like she's got. It was so obvious. But until I said, yeah, I can't do it, and it's not gonna work, no one could help me.
- [37:39]
A
Letting yourself say the thing and then letting the people in your life be affected by that and then make choices from that was I started saying yes to the invitations that were coming where I would normally because. And every reason, every reason I would have given to not be available for a speaking engagement, for a social engagement, for a dinner. What would have been irrefutable? No one can debate that. Kids take up a lot of time. All of my reasons would have been legitimate reasons. The only information that was different, that they wouldn't have known, was this little ache in me that was the cause. That information was between me and my inner knowing.
- [38:23]
B
That's right.
- [38:24]
A
Realize how much I was bracing myself for taking up too much space, taking too much time, the lack of presence in the home I was preparing. And that story did not start from David, but I was preparing myself for being too much, needing too much, and not being available enough. And so instead of being inconvenient, I just stopped. I convinced myself and told myself very convincing stories that I just didn't need as much. Which is so wild to say out loud, because I guarantee you, if someone had asked me that question directly a couple months ago, I would have absolutely been like, no, And I would have had the banner and the sandwich board saying, it's okay to want. And, like, how quick the compulsion. It wasn't a decision. It wasn't grounded. It wasn't. It was just, no, can't.
- [39:24]
B
No.
- [39:25]
A
The thing I was afraid of was true. It got to a point where I had said yes to so many things within a matter of two weeks and was starting to say yes to so many speaking events. David had a feeling about it. He started to have a feeling. Not a wrong feeling, not a negative feeling, but the thing that I was preparing myself for and afraid for. I was actually that version of me was right. Like, people are going to be affected by the choices I make, and that doesn't make them any less worthy or valid. But I had to stand in the white hot heat of him having a response to taking on a lot without me. And I had to watch him internalize and wrestle with and mentally adjust. He's an external processor, which is really stressful for me because he's talking through every thought aloud, which is how he gets to the conclusion. And I have a hard time remembering that, like, this is just the journey to get to the place he's trying to get to. This isn't his capital T. Truth. I made more space for myself and I said yes to things I really wanted to say yes to. And it did impact the family. Like, mom's leaving again. Yeah. Like they had feelings about it. They missed me. I didn't tuck them into bed three nights.
- [40:46]
B
So what I'm thinking as you're speaking is I have to be willing to disappoint others so I don't disappoint myself.
- [40:55]
A
Yeah.
- [40:56]
B
Of disappointing others. When you've spent your whole life making sure no one's disappointed in you. We talked a little bit about this in your head. Like on your podcast with me. We think we're so all powerful and in control because we've used control to get rival and get here. Truth of the matter is, Danielle, is that, like, while those conversations were so hard and it was so hard for me to say, I actually cannot take this on for the family right now. Like, don't have the $50,000 to rehab the garage to move my father in, I can't have him in my small little home because I don't have enough room to do my business and to run my company. I bought this house for a particular reason. It's not to outfit the family. This costs a lot of money. Like, all those things that I'm so ashamed about. There Was also shame that I couldn't fulfill the role. Right?
- [41:42]
A
Yeah, guess.
- [41:43]
B
My dad goes to every single one of my nieces sporting events. He comes over once a week and he brings coins. And the girls carry a jug of water to his car. And every week, Sienna, the five year old, she drops it and breaks it and then they do it again. Like there's all these little things that my sister's getting. She's also getting the responsibility. I'm not trying to say that caretaking for an elderly parent who's slowly, you know, diminishing isn't very freaking difficult. And I want to all the time. My instinct as little sister is to fly home and fix it, but I also have to pause in that compulsion and watch what she's also getting, which is a grandfather for her kids, quality time with her dad at the end of his life. Memories for those girls of their grandfather. None of that possible. If I would have stayed in my obsessive control of needing to be this particular person in the family.
- [42:38]
A
Okay, so there's this idea that the statement you made of like, I have to be willing to disappoint others in order to not disappoint myself. When I look at that phrase through the lens of your story and mine, I'm not actually hearing that anyone in your life was disappointed by what you revealed. A feeling. David feeling the reality and the impact of the decision he supported me in making was also not disappointment. I think that that's sometimes the thing that our fear, particularly our shame, wants to make it so stratified or so black and white. Him having a feeling and a response to that was not him asking me to stop. Was not him asking me to cut back. I'm saying this also for me.
- [43:29]
B
Yeah.
- [43:30]
A
Like we are all so complex. He's allowed to have a feeling. Something can sound like a great idea, but then also the reality of that in action is going to feel different than the idea us talking about me making more time for myself. Sounds great. But then when the reality is you have a child who slipped out of the bathtub and another one that's running around naked and peed on the carpet like that shit's gonna make you tired. I. I think the something else that was occurring to me too when we were talking about like the boundaries that don't feel like work versus when it does feel like work. There's this element that I thought of when I parent my daughter that there are moments where she can have all of these big feelings kicking up and I can be so grounded and present with her. And even in the midst of her tantrum or chaos or whining, it doesn't drain me. Because in that moment when I'm able to recognize it's actually not about me. Completely separate from me, when it drains me or when it depletes me is when it is now about me. It's either result of like this is poor parenting or the biggest one that drains me. It's like, why can't we just get out the goddamn door? But like once it's about me, now it drains me.
- [44:47]
B
Yeah, it just for me there is really powerful because my fear of disappointing them is exactly what drives that. And the uncomfortability for me when they have an uncomfortable feeling about something that happened because I was involved. So my need to be invisible and perfect and not take up space. If someone has an uncomfortable feeling, that means that I've done something I shouldn't have done because now they're having a bad time. And that was my job to make sure nobody has a bad time. Right. So I can't fulfill my goal in life, which is to be invisible and easy. And so easy because you. I. I asked for something and I need it. So it's like me holding that because she's trying to remind me of how much I'm not helping. But if I'm in the wrong place when she makes that call, I hang up the call and go into shame and guilt and oh my God, I'm a horrible sister. I should have taken that on or I should have lived in Indiana. What would I mean, it can go miles. But like you said, if stop. And I say I actually think my sister is capable of holding all of her emotions herself. I think my sister is capable of calling me up at any time and directly asking me for what she needs. Not my job to try to guess and maneuver myself to read her mind so that I can be a good sister of a definition I've made up in my head that I am now pursuing for at whatever cost to myself that she doesn't even know I'm doing right. Yeah, I was sitting in this, she'd call me and be like, what the fuck? Nothing's wrong. Because that's how she talks. Like we're gonna get through it. Who cares? It'll get fixed. Like that's always her state. I didn't want to lose deepness with my sister. I didn't want to lose the love of my sister. And I had the story that if I inconvenience her or make her feel Something when I could have made a different choice. That, that's a bad sister.
- [46:38]
A
What I want to keep coming back to is the idea that your boundaries serve a purpose and, or served a purpose and just because they're in place doesn't mean it's not worth reinvestigating. Is this still serving the purpose? Is this still like. It's kind of like if anyone's ever planted a young tree, sometimes you have to put these like stability poles around it to help it. But like eventually that tree, you know, it's gonna outlive you, it's gonna outlive us. Like it's going to, it's not going to need that level of support and care forever. And it just, I think that as an ever evolving creature, right. That we all are, we're allowed to continue to re examine, to center ourselves in our own story and ask what is it that I really, really want? What do I really want to feel? Because what I recognized by accident, because I didn't enter into this new phase of self discovery with a goal in mind. I just was really taking myself for walks and literally having conversation with myself about wouldn't it be nice? And I would just answer the question, wouldn't it be nice at like one of those like really, really long picnic tables just surrounded by awesome women and like actually feeling good to be there, feeling like I belong there? Wouldn't. And that was an actual answer for me. Like, wouldn't it be nice to belly laugh to the point of tears? When's the last time you've done that? Wouldn't it be nice to hold a microphone again and talk about ideas that really matter to you? And that's literally how it started. And every time I forget about it and I rediscover it, I feel like I've rediscovered, you know, some new scientific principle. But no, no, it's the same. I just, I forget about it and I forget that I'm allowed to re examine it.
- [48:24]
B
Yeah, I think boundaries are kind of like fences. You know, I, I say to my sister sometimes we talk about this a lot, us growing up in the same family. I'm another sister who's more emotionally driven like I am. Like, I don't need you to have a fence up for these people. I need you to have a little moat. And someone pulls their little boat up on the moat, there's water and they can't get in unless you let them. You get to decide when you let them in, how you let them in, what you allow them to do while they're there and at any time you can be like, moats closed, no boats allowed. That's what you want. But I think at the end of the day, I try to think of these boundaries that I've been learning because I also don't want rigidity in my relationships. But as someone who has not centered herself until recent, I thought rigidity was the only way to self protect. So it was like I, that was like an equal sign, right? I can remember one time my sister and I were in a big discussion because she's lives overseas and we don't get to see each other like we want to. And so our relationship just isn't what it could be. And we both feel that. And so there's so much disconnect virtually that would never happen if we were just neighbors. Right? Like we would be in each other's lives all the time. And we got kind of in a tiff about something and I had been very explicitly saying what I did not want. I don't want this in our relationship anymore. I don't want this anymore. What do you want? And I was like, well, all the opposite. Harmony, creativity, laughter, joy, celebration, support, camaraderie, collaboration. Like that's what I'm optimizing for. And that conversation has now led to a trip I planned with her. It's led to us collaborating on this linen project she has going on. Like literally just saying what I want. Danielle.
- [50:07]
A
Well, what I love about that too is that she. Actually that's an important distinction. Cause I, when I work a lot with clients, pain is usually what drives people into self examination and self exploration. You're like, this is uncomfortable. I don't want to feel this. Sure. But like being able to articulate what you don't want or what isn't working isn't a very important step. What I'll say is that the opposite may look different for me than you. Like, I, I think that sometimes knowing what you don't want doesn't always lend itself without some consideration and thought to what you do want. And so the exercise of actually articulating what you want is huge. And also too, the energy, the, the impact of the words, the intention behind the words, articulating what you want actually creates this momentum that you can move towards because not this, you can just, you can almost tread water and not
- [51:05]
B
that all day long. And Dan. Yeah, yeah. The, the practice of changing the story. I never get what I want. There's no space for me. I have to be invisible. Nobody sees me. That story always drove me to desperately communicating that I was not seen, heard, felt, you know, like that was what I needed to get across. Because story I was telling myself is that you are not being seen and loved and cared for by these people. So you have to fight until they see that that's the case because they aren't seeing you. They don't get it. They're not listening. They don't hear you think from. I went to a really great somatic doctor who's going to be on our podcast in a couple of weeks, and she helped me work with the story of I am not the problem. So when I started to realize that, like, I wasn't the problem, it was like, okay, well, if I'm not the problem, then there's nothing to fix. There's nothing to. So then what is my story? Well, my story is how do I create the relationships, the reality that I want and then how do I get good at doing that? Well, that's a practice. So I want to make sure anybody listening is not like, yeah, I'm just going to decide that I know how to ask where I want. And no, I've gone from with a partner of begging and crying and I can't do this anymore to literally drafting tech of what I want to see. Hey, thank you so much for X, Y, Z. That was so meaningful to me. Let me paint the picture of what I hope happens next year. I'm hoping that we are in a place where we blah, blah, blah, and we're able to blah, blah, blah, and. And actually using storytelling, my imagination, which is my favorite tool to imagine a better way for us and invite him into that. Versus crying, nagging, overwhelmed, like you said, Whether that you can believe in the higher power and energetic power. Like, I'm very witchy. I do very much do. Like, you know, I believe if you. What you focus on expands, that's all great in theory. It's very difficult. But whether you believe that the energy affects the outcome or not, if you start with that sentence, Danielle of how do I want to feel the energy of my imagination and creating a vision and drafting a story that I want to live in versus begging for someone to see me and understand me. Don't want to be in that energy. I actually don't have fucking time for it. A lot of cool stuff. I've got a sister. I want to be a girlfriend. I want to be a business owner. I want to be like, I want to be those things. And when I get stuck in the story and I get in that energy and I Swim in that it precludes me from having the energy to show up. So if it's as simple as just saying to yourself, what do I want to feel today, like Danielle's been saying, and then asking yourself what thought and activities help me feel that way, then you get to the action.
- [54:02]
A
I think that that's a really important distinction of clarifying what boundaries are still serving you or what boundaries are needed or what boundaries can we let go of or adapt? Because it's really about preserving energy, right? I need the boundary of the training wheel so that I don't waste energy fearing falling so I can learn how to move my legs. The boundary of, you know, shutting down my computer at 4:30 so that I can regroup my energy for 20 minutes before getting in the car and getting in the pickup line at school. The boundaries that are in service of me serve my energy. The boundaries that I think are old or ready to evolve. It requires so much energy for me to preserve the boundary that the boundary is no longer doing what the boundary
- [54:53]
B
is supposed to do and connecting that dot. If I've centered myself, which is selfish, but not. It's actually not. It's just the lie we've been told. If I center myself and I really ask what do I want and what do I need? I can plan my whole day around that. And everybody. I believe in my experience of living this, everybody gets what they need. Nobody benefits from a depressed, bedrotting, crying version of me. Nobody. Especially me. But no. So when I ask myself what I need today to be the person that I want to be and feel the way I want to feel, then the boundaries get set ahead of time and they're clarified and they don't have to be even spoken to anyone else. I'll give an example. I'm going to Chicago this weekend for a trade show with my boyfriend. I'm so excited. I've been waiting years to be invited to these things. We're finally there. I can't wait. And I know how he's going to be because he is a Olympic level focuser and he's like, that is how he copes. It's like this is what we're doing. He'll be tired, burnt out, because he's going to have millions of conversations, right? This is a sales show. I have been thinking about what I want to feel in my life, Danielle. And lately I've been thinking that one of the things I did when my mom passed away is I got so afraid of staying close to her people because it makes Me miss her so much. So I have actually abandoned a few very critical relationships, I think, to my life that were my mother's people. So I'm sitting there thinking I'm getting all in my head about the trade show and, like, trying to control it. How am I going to make sure I don't get my feelings hurt? And then I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. What do I want right now? I was like, you know what? I want to see my mom's best friend from middle school that I have not seen in 15 years, who is the closest thing to my mother that still exists on the earth, who holds all the stories of who my mother was and the woman that she was and the things in her marriage that were hard. Like, this woman has all of the information I've been trying to see, and she lives 20 minutes from where we're going to be. So I text her, and I'm like, I want to be here. I have some free time now. I have a date with my mom's best friend, who I've not seen in 15 years, but only because I stepped out of compulsion. What do I want out of this weekend? How do I want to feel going to Illinois and being with him? Oh, I want to feel like I'm getting in touch with the better part of me. I want to feel like I'm. I'm getting to have fun and laugh and come up and, you know, do all those things. But now I'm just going to spend the afternoon with this woman who means so much to my life. It makes me cross my own boundary that I created that is not working for me anymore, which is I can't be close to these women because it's too scary and it's too vulnerable. Sure.
- [57:35]
A
Which was true at one point of time, but just isn't anymore.
- [57:38]
B
And now I've, like, let the boat in through the moat, like. And also, he's not wondering if I'm going to be okay because I made my own version of good. And he's still going to have the pressure he's going to have that has nothing to do with me. And I'm going to be able to be what I know I can be for him. And I'm going to help him meet new people and all those things, but I'm also going to do what I want to do. And we can have something from that. Right?
- [58:01]
A
This was everything I hoped it would be. And then more like always. I feel like maybe, like, once a quarter, I should just have, like, a love Lizzie Corner of don't cut your own bangs where I just bring you back on, and it's like, okay, so this is what life has been lifing. I want to get Theresa's take on. We'll call it. Yeah, Teresa's take. I just. I want to get Theresa's take on this new thing. Bringing so much of your story and your personal process into this episode. Because I truly believe that stories are what teach. It's like that life experience that teaches for everyone listening, whether it's through you, related through grief, trauma, parenting, front loading, your grief, sibling dynamics, spousal relational dynamic. Like, wherever it is. I mean, we covered, like, all of it. I think that this did exactly what I hoped it would do, which was one. It helped me better understand my own process, and it gave me a sense of, oh, yeah, like this. It doesn't need to be complicated. It doesn't make it simple. It can still be a big lift. Like a squat is not a complicated movement, but if you add some weight, it will be challenging. And I think that that's kind of really what this is. Asking yourself what it is you really want and what it is you want to feel. It's not a complicated movement, but it doesn't mean it's not a heavy lift, but you can do it. You can do the lift. And I think what's on the other side is more tender experiences. More experiences that light you up and, God willing, some belly laughs, some synchronous moments, some magic, some God winks, some fun. Thank you so much, Teresa. As we put a close to this conversation with Teresa, something that has really stuck with me is this deeper sense of awareness of how easy it is to slowly disappear within your own life while calling it responsibility or maturity or selflessness or boundaries. And I don't think the answer is tearing down every wall that you've ever built and just letting people come out willy nilly. Some walls saved us. Some boundaries were necessary and still are. Some versions of ourselves carried us through impossible seasons of life. But I do think there comes a moment where we have to gently ask, is this still helping me become more of myself? Or am I still living inside of a survival strategy that I no longer need? Teresa said something in this conversation that I genuinely cannot stop thinking about. And I'm probably gonna go on a walk and continue this thought loop. What relationship do I actually want? What do I actually want? Not what role do I play, not what keeps everybody comfortable, not what makes me easier to love or harder to abandon, but what do I actually want. And I think that this question changes everything. Teresa, thank you so much for this conversation, truly, and for everyone listening. If this episode brought someone to mind, send it to them, especially the people in your life who have become very, very good at pretending like they don't need much. I have a feeling, and you know this too, they're carrying more than anybody realizes. And if this conversation resonated with you, if it helped you feel even a little less alone or helped you put language to something that you've been quietly carrying, one of the kindest ways that you can show support to the show is by following or subscribing wherever you listen. That can move mountains for the success of the show, and the impact is huge. That's how more people find these conversations. Thanks so much for being here. I'll see you next time. And in the meantime, don't cut your own bangs.
- [61:55]
B
Sa.