Dr. Sherry Campbell (16:23)
I think that all people assume that their parents wanted children to love. And I think that different generations maybe have different children for different reasons, but having children isn't hard. Every uterus is kind of designed to do that. Maybe you struggle with your ovaries. But my point is, is that anyone at any income, any addiction level, any educational level can get pregnant. It's not special that that can happen. What makes parenting special is the way that you love your children. I think there was a time that people had kids because that was the next thing you did, like, on a. You got married. Well, now you need to have kids, right? But I think that there are many parents who have children so that they can have a consistent source of attention and supply. Like in the metaphor in my book is like, I'm born into the house, but it's not owned by me, because developmentally I can't do that yet, right? I'm dependent for quite some time. But there are parents who don't want to hand over the title of the property to the person who is born to inhabit it. And then they make a mess of your porch. So you move them to the yard, then they make a mess in your yard. And all the time, you know, you're communicating with them, like, hey, you know, you just kind of, like, made a mess on my porch. And someone like, my mom would go, oh, it's your porch, right? So after decades of that, I'm like, you know, maybe we'd get along better if I just, like, moved her into the yard, because she's kind of run me out of empathy for her at this point. And when they go to the yard, you're kind of like, you know, they've got issues. I went through this whole phase of they're doing the best they can for where they're at, Right. You know, my mother was married three times before I was 11 or 12. My dad was married five times, my mom four. Both of them very toxic. So in the yard, I spent a lot of time there and a lot of hope. I was so hopeful that when I moved her to the yard, that we would get along better because we would see each other less. Right? Which is sort of sad that to get along with someone you have to see them less. Right? But that's what was going on in my mind, like maybe if I just see her less. So I moved states and I tried to make it work, but she ruined every barbecue, every family get together. She destroyed my yard, ruined my flowers. And so I had to move her off my property to the fence. And that was extremely painful for me because I did not want to do that at all. I was hoping I would find that maybe she was just emotionally immature and that I could find ways to handle her, but I just couldn't. So she went out to the fence because I figured, well, then the HOA can clean up her mess, not me. And so that's like high contact. The yard would be low contact where you have sympathy for them. And then at the fence, I kind of had compassion for her because I lost empathy. So I moved her to sympathy. And then she's at the fence. So she tried to break in a lot, did a lot of destruction to the fence, had a few successful break ins to the yard, messed up the yard. And the more powerful of a no, I said, then she moved herself to the barricades in my neighborhood, metaphorically, and started a smear campaign. And that's where we've been since I had to board up my house for a little bit and stay inside. So that's sort of the metaphor of the book because I think emotional location makes this easier to understand. Whenever a parent gets rejected and they go to the neighborhood cul de sac and you've been trying for 45 years to have a relationship with this person and they go out to the, to the neighbors and go, I don't know what happened. She just suddenly cut me off. Yeah, well, like, what about the porch? And like the decades you were in my yard? And so it's just very gaslighting. And so the book really helps you to know people's emotional location in your life. I would hope very few people are going to have to go to your fence. There's many, many people that you can tolerate in your yard. They may make a TD mess, but they're like, oh my God, I'm so sorry. Right. So they fix it. I just didn't have that. So I created a whole structure. And the reason I wanted to do structure is I'm. This book is like designed to build your identity. I was the type of person who could sit somewhere in Public and not feel settled. But by all accounts, in the outside world, I look so successful, I look so confident, I do all these things, but I'm actually like scanning everybody's body language. Their facial expressions shifts in tones of voice, just reflect flexibly. So then I thought, well, maybe that's just wired that way, right? Maybe I'm just sort of fundamentally flawed or just maybe a bit too sensitive. And it actually just wasn't any of that. I just never had any emotional structure to, to know how to navigate or regulate my emotions. And so I was always in reaction and fear and anxiety and nervousness and so building this little house. I mean, I've been talking this language for a long time. Like there's basement monsters and those are the voices of your inner child. And now I really know when I get triggered from the outside. Let's say an abandonment wound activates and I'm on the top floor. I. I'm on the express elevator, no choice. And I have to go meet that monster. And I don't ever feel anymore. I'm going backward. The elevator isn't about going backwards in this book. It's about going inward. And so I really learned to love my monsters and now I can regulate them because I have a structure. So I think we need structure to heal this. And when we don't get any structure from parenting, which is what parenting is supposed to give us, and we have dysregulated, out of control, immature, toxic parents who are on marriage marathons like my own, or they're addicted, or they're making the oldest child raise all the kids. Whatever your situation is, not all parents are good. Some of them are terrible, terrible abusers. And they don't get caught because they get a label of parenting slapped on them. So it's really wild to me what people could get away with under that label.
