Podcasts about Estrangement

Estrangement knocks you down. Way down. Maybe you've been on the floor for a while now. I'm talking about the kind of floor where your spirit lays still… bruised by estrangement, weighted by the ache of being cut off by your estranged son or daughter. You stare at the ceiling, wondering if you'll ever have the strength to get up.  . But here's the thing: you were not intended to make your home down there. There's breath in your lungs. There's purpose woven into your soul. And the same Jesus who spoke life into the void is calling you up, out and forward. . In this episode, we're talking about telling hell, “I'm getting off this floor.” We'll walk through how to shift your mind, anchor your heart, and let your faith lift you until your feet remember how to stand. If you're ready to trade the dust of despair for the ground of possibility… this is where it begins. Come on in, and let's talk about it.  . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

Hello, sister mom. You've just landed on Lesson 3 of the Release series… a free audio class to help estranged mothers let go of what's keeping things that are keeping them stuck in estrangement… and stuck in feeling bad. Today we're talking about how to release the anger that so often comes with being estranged from your adult child. Maybe anger has been simmering under the surface when your child doesn't respond. Maybe it flares when you remember the things that were said… or the moments you were left out of. In this episode, we're not stuffing that anger down or pretending it's not there. We're going to hold it gently, listen to what it's trying to say and invite Jesus in to do what only He can do. If you've been carrying the weight of anger, this lesson was made for you. Warm up your decaf tea or coffee and come on in. Let's talk about it.  . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

This podcast is about therapists and healers doing their own healing work. So now it's my turn to talk about some of my healing. Sarah Buino, host and creator of the podcast Conversations with a Wounded Healer interviewed me recently, and I'm sharing that conversation with you. I love the questions Sarah asks me and I just love Sarah and I know you will too. We talk about a pivotal psychedelic journey I went on, estrangement, authenticity, and how my own healing led to a recent career pivot. Here's some of what we talked about: My pivotal psychedelic healing journey My personal experience with estrangement and how I also help estranged people Learning about Internal Family Systems What Sarah and Annie both have experienced with unconditional love from our spouses Sarah's reflections on how Annie has changed and healed more since our conversation in 2021! Show notes at https://rebeltherapist.me/podcast/251  

What if your estranged adult child sends you an angry letter (or email or text), listing all your flaws and failings as a parent? Should you respond right away? What should you say? What if they tell you not to contact them? In this essential and practical episode, RC Podcast host Tina Gilbertson urges parents to pause when they receive this type of communication from estranged adult children. Instead of rushing to reply to all the points in the letter, send a simple acknowledgement first. And after that, take the time you need to respond more fully. To acknowledge your child's message, Tina offers a three-sentence "script" using your own words. The 3 elements she proposes will both safeguard goodwill and buy you time to gather your thoughts. Don't respond to your adult child's angry letter before listening to this episode. For much more information and tools to repair your relationship with your estranged adult child(ren), read Tina's book, Reconnecting With Your Estranged Adult Child. Club members can discuss this and every episode in the General Discussion forum inside the Reconnection Club. Not a member yet? Learn more and join. Follow us on Instagram. EPISODE LINKS: Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 177: How to Process a Letter From Your Estranged Adult Child (Part 1)  Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 178: How to Process a Letter From Your Estranged Adult Child (Part 2) 

In this episode, I speak with Lynn Chadwick, founder of Themis Resource Fund, about her deeply personal journey from devastating parental estrangement to purposeful advocacy. Lynn opens up about losing contact with all three of her children to trans ideology and how she nearly lost herself in the process. We explore the critical distinction between activism and family relationships—when fighting the broader culture war can actually harm your connection with your own child.Lynn shares the transformative moment that changed everything: turning off her phone, leaving behind the constant stream of trans-related content, and spending two weeks in Mexico with baby whales. This experience helped her reclaim her identity beyond "ROGD parent" and taught her that prioritizing her own healing wasn't giving up on her children—it was the most powerful thing she could do.We discuss why trans functions like a religious system that cannot tolerate doubt, the trauma parents experience in this situation, and practical wisdom about setting boundaries with information consumption. Lynn explains her vital work with Themis Resource Fund, which provides litigation support for detransitioners seeking justice through the legal system. She details the enormous costs and challenges of bringing these cases to trial, and why these lawsuits represent one of the most important frontiers in stopping medical harm to young people.Lynn Chadwick began advocating and supporting parents during her career as a neonatal intensive care nurse. Her story of how her family was affected by gender ideology was first published in the Christian Post in 2019, after which Lynn began advocating for parents both publicly and privately. Lynn has volunteered with the Kelsey Coalition, Parents of ROGD Kids, Partners for Ethical Care, and Genspect. She started a private Facebook group for parents in 2019 which is still active today. She has been interviewed about her life and work including on the Wider Lens podcast. Lynn founded Themis Resource Fund in 2023 to assist detransitioned people with litigation.To join one of the support groups Lynn runs contact parentsupprogd@gmail.comDonate to Themis or learn more at ThemisResourceFund.orgFollow Themis on X @themisrfMy blog post about how to file a complaint against a gender affirming therapist can be found here[00:00:00] Start[00:00:54] Introduction to Lynn Chadwick and Themis Resource Fund[00:06:16] Lynn's personal journey into activism and estrangement[00:14:25] Identity, grief, and transformative experiences[00:22:35] Viewing trans ideology as a belief system[00:34:30] Failures of therapy and the role of family therapy[00:42:30] Parents' courage, honesty, and relational approaches[00:51:00] Introduction to ROGD Repair and peer support[00:59:00] Parental self-care and boundaries with media[01:13:00] Themis Resource Fund's mission and legal strategies[01:35:00] The realities of litigation and detransitioner voices[01:39:00] Hope for the future and closing remarksROGD REPAIR Course + Community gives concerned parents instant access to over 120 lessons providing the psychological insights and communication tools you need to get through to your kid. Now featuring 24/7 personalized AI support implementing the tools with RepairBot! Use code SOMETHERAPIST2025 to take 50% off your first month.PODCOURSES: use code SOMETHERAPIST at LisaMustard.com/PodCoursesTALK TO ME: book a meeting.PRODUCTION: Looking for your own podcast producer? Visit PodsByNick.com and mention my podcast for 20% off your initial services.SUPPORT THE SHOW: subscribe, like, comment, & share or donate.ORGANIFI: Take 20% off Organifi with code SOMETHERAPIST.Watch NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care. Use code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order.SHOW NOTES & transcript with help from SwellAI.MUSIC: Thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude & permission. ALL OTHER LINKS HERE. To support this show, please leave a rating & review on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. Subscribe, like, comment & share via my YouTube channel. Or recommend this to a friend!Learn more about Do No Harm.Take $200 off your EightSleep Pod Pro Cover with code SOMETHERAPIST at EightSleep.com.Take 20% off all superfood beverages with code SOMETHERAPIST at Organifi.Check out my shop for book recommendations + wellness products.Show notes & transcript provided with the help of SwellAI.Special thanks to Joey Pecoraro for our theme song, “Half Awake,” used with gratitude and permission.Watch NO WAY BACK: The Reality of Gender-Affirming Care (our medical ethics documentary, formerly known as Affirmation Generation). Stream the film or purchase a DVD. Use code SOMETHERAPIST to take 20% off your order. Follow us on X @2022affirmation or Instagram at @affirmationgeneration.Have a question for me? Looking to go deeper and discuss these ideas with other listeners? Join my Locals community! 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Hi Listeners. I'd love to hear from you. Send an email to Janet@jesteinkamp. It is not possible to respond to your Fan Mail posts directly.You'll peel back the second layer of the coercive-control “onion” and learn seven concrete ways control shows up: isolation, monitoring and surveillance, degradation and humiliation, control over everyday life, gaslighting, threats and intimidation, and rules with punishments. You'll hear real-life examples (from “just preferences” to silent treatments) and why these patterns so often lead to estrangement. Most importantly, you'll get calm, practical guidance on what you can do right now—how to keep communication gentle and consistent, how to avoid confronting the partner (and why that matters), and how to signal a safe haven without adding pressure. If you suspect coercion in your adult child's relationship, this episode gives you language, lenses, and next steps—at a pace that protects connection.**All stories are an amalgamation of stories shared by clients and podcast listeners.Related EpisodesPeeling the Onion One Layer At a Time (Layer 1) - Overview of Coercive Control and Estrangement — the foundation for this series; defines the dynamics and why they escalate.Peeling the Onion One Layer At a Time (Layer 3) Gatekeepers & Coercive Control  Navigating “gatekeepers” without triggering coercive abuse and further estrangement.#FamilyEstrangement #CoerciveControl #EstrangedAdultChildren #ParentReconnection #Gaslighting #ParentalAlienation #ParentChildReunification #FamilyCommunication #EstrangementGrief #ReconnectionStrategist #EstrangementExpert #DomesticAbuseAwareness #AdultChildRelationships #FaithFamilyHopeSupport the showFor more information, please go to https://www.WhenOurAdultChildrenWalkAway.com to find resources, strategies and tips to prepare to repair! The continuum of estrangement discussed today can be found at https://www.togetherestranged.org/levels-of-estrangement. The stories, examples, reflections, and perspectives shared in this podcast are based on my professional work as an estrangement coach and my personal estrangement journey. Any examples, characters, or stories referenced are either drawn from my own lived experience or represent a composite of multiple real-life situations shared with me over time. The intention of this podcast is not to accuse, label, or defame any individual but to provide insight, validation, and support for those navigating the complexities of family estrangement. All opinions expressed are my own and are shared with you, the listener, from a place of healing and learning.

CC439: Kail shares emotional details of her recent visit with her estranged father, uncovering family secrets and confronting the truth about her narcissistic mother. The conversation shifts to the alarming realities of school safety, as Lindsie recounts an incident with Jackson. Finally, the everlasting dilemma on whether to expand the family again, exploring the complexities of being an only child versus having siblings. Lindsie and Kail talk about the importance of social connections for an only-child and the profound impact of sibling bonds, even across age gaps.Thank you to our sponsors!Beam: Go to shopbeam.com today! Limited time pricing of up to 35% off PLUS 2 free gifts when you use the code COFFEE at checkout.Progressive: Visit Progressive.com to learn more!Thrive Causemetics: Save 20% off your first order at Thrivecausemetics.com/COFFEEWayfair: Visit Wayfair.com or get the Wayfair mobile app.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

   Slam the Gavel welcomes back Heidi Weber to the podcast. Heidi was last on Season 1, Episode 17 and Season 2, Episode 119. Today she updated her case and talked about how her in her last case as a Pro Se Litigant was dismissed five weeks prior to trial in Federal Court. We also included how she will proceed in the future as she reopens the case. STG will follow this case very closely.To Reach Heidi Weber: nostopheidi@gmail.comSupportshow(https://www.buymeacoffee.com/maryannpetri)Maryann Petri: dismantlingfamilycourtcorruption.comhttps://www.tiktok.com/@maryannpetriFacebook:  https://www.youtube.com/@slamthegavelpodcasthostmar5536Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/guitarpeace/Pinterest: Slam The Gavel Podcast/@guitarpeaceLinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maryann-petri-62a46b1ab/  YouTube:  https://www.youtube.com/@slamthegavelpodcasthostmar5536  Twitter https://x.com/PetriMaryannEzlegalsuit.com   https://ko-fi.com/maryannpetrihttps://www.zazzle.com/store/slam_the_gavel/about*DISCLAIMER* The use of this information is at the viewer/user's own risk. Not financial, medical nor legal advice as the content on this podcast does not constitute legal, financial, medical or any other professional advice. Viewer/user's should consult with the relevant professionals. Reproduction, distribution, performing, publicly displaying and making a derivative of the work is explicitly prohibited without permission from content creator. Podcast is protected by owner. The content creator maintains the exclusive right and any unauthorized copyright.Support the showSupportshow(https://www.buymeacoffee.com/maryannpetri)http://www.dismantlingfamilycourtcorruption.com/

Welcome to Lesson 2 of the Release Series. A free audio class series to help estranged mothers release what's standing between them and feeling better and reconciling with their children. Trying to heal a relationship with your estranged child before you heal from the pain is like trying to fix a car while it's barreling down the freeway at 100 miles per hour. You can't do it. In today's conversation, I'll give you a practice you can start today, to release the pain of estrangement from your child. Warm up your decaf tea or coffee and let's talk about it.  . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

At the heart of many family estrangements lies a mystery. Adult kids insist they've told their parents why they're walking away, while parents say they don't understand. Why is it sometimes so hard for parents to hear their kids? And how to get through?From the episode:  Learn more about Becca Bland and her work with families and people surviving estrangement Learn more about Joshua Coleman, subscribe to his newsletter Family Troubles, and read his book New Rules of Estrangement Learn more about reporter Kim Nederveen Pieterse This is a special membership campaign episode! Help us get to 1500 paying Patreon members by Oct. 9th to cover the costs of making another year of emotional investigative journalism! Proxy is an independent podcast and we rely mostly on listeners. To support emotional investigative journalism™️ and help the show keep going, consider joining our Patreon starting at $5 a month. You'll get exclusive premium episodes, ad-free episodes, and access to the chat. To just get our newsletter, join our Patreon for free.Follow us on Instagram: @proxypodcast @yoweishawGet in touch at proxythepod@gmail.com

Alienation. Estrangement. A loss of voice. Across the West, millions feel like strangers in the very places they once called home – but are told they're not allowed to say it. Frank Furedi cuts through the noise and exposes the silent war on language, belonging, and common sense. This is not just cultural drift – it's a deliberate attempt by elites to sever our connection to community, tradition, and truth. From the censorship of patriotic feeling to the vilification of “common sense,” Furedi reveals how we've been robbed of the words to describe what we're living through – and how a new political language rooted in shared reality is urgently needed. This talk is a wake-up call. If you feel silenced, if you're tired of being gaslit by technocrats and media elites who mock your love of country as “hate” – this is for you. This video is a lecture from The Academy 2025. The subject of the weekend event was "Upheaval: Why politics needs a new language". You can find out more here: https://ideasmatter.org.uk/upheaval-why-politics-needs-a-new-language Professor Frank Furedi is executive director of MCC Brussels and a renowned writer and commentator.

One of the hardest times in anyone's life is when we lose someone who is still alive. Perhaps they cut us off, perhaps we cut them off, or perhaps it was mutual. But either way, the pain, regret, blame, and open wound of hope make this type of loss particularly difficult.There are countless books written about grief. When someone we love passes, friends and family offer their support. But when we lose the living, we often suffer alone. Taking time to grieve seems strange and futile. So what can we do when a hole is left in our heart by someone who still walks this earth?In this podcast, I share my own personal stories of family estrangement and family separation, abandonment and betrayal. I talk about what helped me get out of the darkest place of my life. I discuss the lessons I learned, what I wish someone had told me, and the healing that is possible.Please enjoy other episodes where I share meditation techniques, tips and spiritual lessons from around the world for peaceful and stress-free living. Remember to subscribe to stay up-to-date.*****If my words have ever touched your heart or helped you through a hard moment, I'd be deeply grateful for your support in keeping this podcast alive. Support the Podcast And if you'd like to explore these ideas in greater depth, you can find all of my books here.

On this episode, my guest is Stephen Jenkinson, culture activist and ceremonialist advocating a handmade life and eloquence. He is an author, a storyteller, a musician, sculptor and off-grid organic farmer. Stephen is the founder/ principal instructor of the Orphan Wisdom School in Canada, co-founded with his wife Nathalie Roy in 2010. Also a sought-after workshop leader, articulating matters of the heart, human suffering, confusions through ceremony.He is the author of several influential books, including Money and the Soul's Desires, Die Wise: A Manifesto for Sanity and Soul (2015), Come of Age: The Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble (2018), A Generation's Worth: Spirit Work While the Crisis Reigns (2021), and Reckoning (2022), co-written with Kimberly Ann Johnson. His most recent book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work, was released in August 2025. He is also involved in the musical project Nights of Grief & Mystery with singer-songwriter Gregory Hoskins, which has toured across North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.Show Notes:* The Bone House of the Orphan Wisdom Enterprise* Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work* The Wedding Industry* Romantic Sameness and Psychic Withering* The Two Tribes* The Roots of Hospitality* The Pompous Ending of Hospitality* Debt, And the Estrangement of the Stranger* More Than Human Hospitality* The Alchemy of the Orphan Wisdom SchoolHomework:Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work | PurchaseOrphan WisdomThe Scriptorium: Echoes of an Orphan WisdomTranscription:Chris: This is an interview that I've been wondering about for a long time in part, because Stephen was the first person I ever interviewed for the End of Tourism Podcast. In Oaxaca, Mexico, where I live Stephen and Natalie were visiting and were incredibly, incredibly generous. Stephen, in offering his voice as a way to raise up my questions to a level that deserve to be contended with.We spoke for about two and a half hours, if I remember correctly. And there was a lot in what you spoke to towards the second half of the interview that I think we're the first kind of iterations of the Matrimony book.We spoke a little bit about the stranger and trade, and it was kind of startling as someone trying to offer their first interview and suddenly hearing something [00:01:00] that I'd never heard before from Stephen. Right. And so it was quite impressive. And I'm grateful to be here now with y'all and to get to wonder about this a little more deeply with you Stephen.Stephen: Mm-hmm. Hmm.Chris: This is also a special occasion for the fact that for the first time in the history of the podcast, we have a live audience among us today. Strange doings. Some scholars and some stewards and caretakers of the Orphan Wisdom enterprise. So, thank you all as well for coming tonight and being willing to listen and put your ears to this.And so to begin, Stephen, I'm wondering if you'd be willing to let those who will be listening to this recording later on know where we're gathered in tonight?Stephen: Well, we're in... what's the name of this township?Nathalie: North Algona.Stephen: North Algona township on the borders, an eastern gate [00:02:00] of Algonquin Park. Strangely named place, given the fact that they were the first casualties of the park being established. And we're in a place that never should have been cleared - my farm. It should never have been cleared of the talls, the white pines that were here, but the admiralty was in need back in the day. And that's what happened there. And we're in a place that the Irish immigrants who came here after the famine called "Tramore," which more or less means "good-frigging luck farming."It doesn't technically mean that, but it absolutely means that. It actually means "sandy shore," which about covers the joint, and it's the only thing that covers the joint - would be sand. You have to import clay. Now, that's a joke in many farming places in the world, but if we wanted any clay, we'd have to bring it in and pay for the privilege.And the farm has been in [00:03:00] my, my responsibility for about 25 years now, pretty close to that. And the sheep, or those of them left because the coyotes have been around for the first time in their casualty-making way... They're just out here, I'm facing the field where they're milling around.And it's the very, very beginnings of the long cooling into cold, into frigid, which is our lot in this northern part of the hemisphere, even though it's still August, but it's clear that things have changed. And then, we're on a top of a little hill, which was the first place that I think that we may have convened a School here.It was a tipi, which is really worked very well considering we didn't live here, so we could put it up and put it down in the same weekend. [00:04:00] And right on this very hill, we were, in the early days, and we've replaced that tipi with another kind of wooden structure. A lot more wood in this one.This has been known as "The Teaching Hall" or "The Great Hall," or "The Hall" or "The Money Pit, as it was known for a little while, but it actually worked out pretty well. And it was I mean, people who've come from Scandinavia are knocked out by the kind of old-style, old-world visitation that the place seems to be to them.And I'd never really been before I had the idea what this should look like, but I just went from a kind of ancestral memory that was knocking about, which is a little different than your preferences, you know. You have different kinds of preferences you pass through stylistically through your life, but the ones that lay claim to you are the ones that are not interested in your [00:05:00] preferences. They're interested in your kind of inheritance and your lineage.So I'm more or less from the northern climes of Northern Europe, and so the place looks that way and I was lucky enough to still have my carving tools from the old days. And I've carved most of the beams and most of the posts that keep the place upright with a sort of sequence of beasts and dragons and ne'er-do-wells and very, very few humans, I think two, maybe, in the whole joint. Something like that. And then, mostly what festoons a deeply running human life is depicted here. And there's all kinds of stories, which I've never really sat down and spoken to at great length with anybody, but they're here.And I do deeply favour the idea that one day [00:06:00] somebody will stumble into this field, and I suppose, upon the remains of where we sit right now, and wonder "What the hell got into somebody?" That they made this mountain of timber moldering away, and that for a while what must have been, and when they finally find the footprint of, you know, its original dimensions and sort of do the wild math and what must have been going on in this sandy field, a million miles in away from its home.And wherever I am at that time, I'll be wondering the same thing.Audience: Hmm.Stephen: "What went on there?" Even though I was here for almost all of it. So, this was the home of the Orphan Wisdom School for more than a decade and still is the home of the Orphan Wisdom School, even if it's in advance, or in retreat [00:07:00] or in its doldrums. We'll see.And many things besides, we've had weddings in here, which is wherein I discovered "old-order matrimony," as I've come to call it, was having its way with me in the same way that the design of the place did. And it's also a grainery for our storage of corn. Keep it up off the ground and out of the hands of the varmints, you know, for a while.Well that's the beginning.Chris: Hmm. Hmm. Thank you Stephen.Stephen: Mm-hmm.Chris: You were mentioning the tipi where the school began. I remember sleeping in there the first time I came here. Never would I have thought for a million years that I'd be sitting here with you.Stephen: It's wild, isn't it?Chris: 12 years later.?: Yeah.Chris: And so next, I'd like to do my best in part over the course of the next perhaps hour or two to congratulate you on the release of [00:08:00] your new book, Matrimony: Ritual, Culture, and the Heart's Work.Stephen: Thank you.Chris: Mm-hmm. I'm grateful to say like many others that I've received a copy and have lent my eyes to your good words, and what is really an incredible achievement.For those who haven't had a chance to lay their eyes on it just yet, I'm wondering if you could let us in on why you wrote a book about matrimony in our time and where it stands a week out from its publication.Stephen: Well, maybe the answer begins with the question, "why did you write a book, having done so before?" And you would imagine that the stuff that goes into writing a book, you'd think that the author has hopes for some kind of redemptive, redeeming outcome, some kind of superlative that drops out the back end of the enterprise.And you know, this is [00:09:00] the seventh I've written. And I would have to say that's not really how it goes, and you don't really know what becomes of what you've written, even with the kind people who do respond, and the odd non-monetary prize that comes your way, which Die Wise gamed that.But I suppose, I wrote, at all partly to see what was there. You know, I had done these weddings and I was a little bit loathe to let go, to let the weddings turn entirely into something historical, something that was past, even though I probably sensed pretty clearly that I was at the end of my willingness to subject myself to the slings and arrows that came along with the enterprise, but it's a sweet sorrow, or there's a [00:10:00] wonder that goes along with the tangle of it all. And so, I wrote to find out what happened, as strange as that might sound to you. You can say, "well, you were there, you kind of knew what happened." But yes, I was witness to the thing, but there's the act of writing a book gives you the opportunity to sort of wonder in three-dimensions and well, the other thing I should say is I was naive and figured that the outfit who had published the, more or less prior two books to this one, would kind of inevitably be drawn to the fact that same guy. Basically, same voice, new articulation. And I was dumbfounded to find out that they weren't. And so, it's sort of smarted, you know?And I think what I did was I just set the whole [00:11:00] enterprise aside, partly to contend with the the depths of the disappointment in that regard, and also not wanting to get into the terrible fray of having to parse or paraphrase the book in some kind of elevator pitch-style to see if anybody else wanted to look at it. You know, such as my touchy sense of nobility sometimes, you know, that I just rather not be involved in the snarl of the marketplace any longer.So, I withdrew and I just set it aside but it wasn't that content to be set, set aside. And you know, to the book's credit, it bothered me every once in a while. It wasn't a book at the point where I was actually trying to engineer it, you know, and, and give it some kind of structure. I had piles of paper on the floor representing the allegation of chapters, trying to figure out what the relationship was [00:12:00] between any of these things.What conceivably should come before what. What the names of any of these things might be. Did they have an identity? Was I just imposing it? And all of that stuff I was going through at the same time as I was contending with a kind of reversal in fortune, personally. And so in part, it was a bit of a life raft to give me something to work on that I wouldn't have to research or dig around in the backyard for it and give me some sort of self-administered occupation for a while.Finally, I think there's a parallel with the Die Wise book, in that when it came to Die Wise, I came up with what I came up with largely because, in their absolute darkest, most unpromising hours, an awful lot of dying people, all of whom are dead now, [00:13:00] let me in on some sort of breach in the, the house of their lives.And I did feel that I had some obligation to them long-term, and that part of that obligation turned into writing Die Wise and touring and talking about that stuff for years and years, and making a real fuss as if I'd met them all, as if what happened is really true. Not just factually accurate, but deeply, abidingly, mandatorily true.So, although it may be the situation doesn't sound as extreme, but the truth is, when a number of younger - than me - people came to me and asked me to do their weddings, I, over the kind of medium-term thereafter, felt a not dissimilar obligation that the events that ensued from all of that not [00:14:00] be entrusted entirely to those relatively few people who attended. You know, you can call them "an audience," although I hope I changed that. Or you could call them "witnesses," which I hope I made them that.And see to it that there could be, not the authorized or official version of what happened, but to the view from here, so to speak, which is, as I sit where I am in the hall right now, I can look at the spot where I conducted much of this when I wasn't sacheting up and down the middle aisle where the trestle tables now are.And I wanted to give a kind of concerted voice to that enterprise. And I say "concerted voice" to give you a feel for the fact that I don't think this is a really an artifact. It's not a record. It's a exhortation that employs the things that happened to suggest that even though it is the way it is [00:15:00] ritually, impoverished as it is in our time and place, it has been otherwise within recoverable time and history. It has.And if that's true, and it is, then it seems to me at least is true that it could be otherwise again. And so, I made a fuss and I made a case based on that conviction.There's probably other reasons I can't think of right now. Oh, being not 25 anymore, and not having that many more books in me, the kind of wear and tear on your psyche of imposing order on the ramble, which is your recollection, which has only so many visitations available in it. Right? You can only do that so many times, I think. And I'm not a born writing person, you know, I come to it maniacally when I [00:16:00] do, and then when it's done, I don't linger over it so much.So then, when it's time to talk about it, I actually have to have a look, because the act of writing it is not the act of reading it. The act of writing is a huge delivery and deliverance at the same time. It's a huge gestation. And you can't do that to yourself, you know, over and over again, but you can take some chances, and look the thing in the eye. So, and I think some people who are there, they're kind of well-intended amongst them, will recognize themselves in the details of the book, beyond "this is what happened and so on." You know, they'll recognize themselves in the advocacy that's there, and the exhortations that are there, and the [00:17:00] case-making that I made and, and probably the praying because there's a good degree of prayerfulness in there, too.That's why.Chris: Thank you. bless this new one in the world. And what's the sense for you?Stephen: Oh, yes.Chris: It being a one-week old newborn. How's that landing in your days?Stephen: Well, it's still damp, you know. It's still squeaky, squeaky and damp. It's walking around like a newborn primate, you know, kind of swaying in the breeze and listening to port or to starboard according to whatever's going on.I don't know that it's so very self-conscious in the best sense of that term, yet. Even though I recorded the audio version, I don't think [00:18:00] it's my voice is found every nook and cranny at this point, yet. So, it's kind of new. It's not "news," but it is new to me, you know, and it's very early in terms of anybody responding to it.I mean, nobody around me has really taken me aside and say, "look, now I want to tell you about this book you wrote." It hasn't happened, and we'll see if it does, but I've done a few events on the other side of the ocean and hear so far, very few, maybe handful of interviews. And those are wonderful opportunities to hear something of what you came up with mismanaged by others, you know, misapprehend, you could say by others.No problem. I mean, it's absolutely no problem. And if you don't want that to happen, don't talk, don't write anything down. So, I don't mind a bit, you know, and the chances are very good that it'll turn into things I didn't have in mind [00:19:00] as people take it up, and regard their own weddings and marriages and plans and schemes and fears and, you know, family mishigas and all the rest of it through this particular lens, you know. They may pick up a pen or a computer (it's an odd expression, "pick up a computer"), and be in touch with me and let me know. "Yeah, that was, we tried it" or whatever they're going to do, because, I mean, maybe Die Wise provided a bit of an inkling of how one might be able to proceed otherwise in their dying time or in their families or their loved ones dying time.This is the book that most readily lends itself to people translating into something they could actually do, without a huge kind of psychic revolution or revolt stirring in them, at least not initially. This is as close as I come, probably, to writing a sequence of things [00:20:00] that could be considered "add-ons" to what people are already thinking about, that I don't force everybody else outta the house in order to make room for the ideas that are in the book. That may happen, anyway, but it wasn't really the intent. The intent was to say, you know, we are in those days when we're insanely preoccupied with the notion of a special event. We are on the receiving end of a considerable number of shards showing up without any notion really about what these shards remember or are memories of. And that's the principle contention I think that runs down the spine of the book, is that when we undertake matrimony, however indelicately, however by rote, you know, however mindlessly we may do it, [00:21:00] inadvertently, we call upon those shards nonetheless.And they're pretty unspectacular if you don't think about them very deeply, like the rice or confetti, like the aisle, like the procession up the aisle, like the giving away of someone, like the seating arrangement, like the spectacle seating arrangement rather than the ritual seating arrangement.And I mean, there's a fistful of them. And they're around and scholars aside maybe, nobody knows why they do them. Everybody just knows, "this is what a wedding is," but nobody knows why. And because nobody knows why, nobody really seems to know what a wedding is for, although they do proceed like they would know a wedding if they saw one. So, I make this a question to be really wondered about, and the shards are a way in. They're the kind of [00:22:00] breadcrumb trail through the forest. They're the little bits of broken something, which if you begin to handle just three or four of them, and kind of fit them together, and find something of the original shape and inflection of the original vessel, kind of enunciates, begins to murmur in your hands, and from it you can begin to infer some three-dimensionality to the original shape. And from the sense of the shape, you get a set sense of contour, and from the sense of contour, you get a sense of scale or size. And from that you get a sense of purpose, or function, or design. And from that you get a sense of some kind of serious magisterial insight into some of the fundament of human being that was manifest in the "old-order matrimony," [00:23:00] as I came to call it.So, who wouldn't wanna read that book?Chris: Mm-hmm.Thank you. Mm-hmm. Thank you, Stephen. Yeah. It reminds me, just before coming up here, maybe two weeks ago, I was in attending a wedding. And there was a host or mc, and initially just given what I was hearing over the microphone, it was hard to tell if he was hired or family or friends. And it turned out he was, in fact, a friend of the groom. And throughout the night he proceeded to take up that role as a kind of comedian.Audience: Mm-hmm.Chris: This was the idea, I guess. Mm-hmm. And he was buzzing and mumbling and swearing into the microphone, [00:24:00] and then finally minimizing the only remnant of traditional culture that showed up in the wedding. And his thing was, okay, so when can we get to the part where it's boom, boom, boom, right. And shot, shot, shot, whatever.Stephen: Right.Chris: There was so much that came up in my memories in part because I worked about a decade in Toronto in the wedding industry.Mm-hmm. Hospitality industry. Maybe a contradiction in terms, there. And there was one moment that really kind of summed it up. I kept coming back to this reading the book because it was everything that you wrote seemed to not only antithetical to this moment, but also an antidote.Anyways, it was in North Toronto and the [00:25:00] owner of the venue - it was a kind of movie theatre turned event venue - and there was a couple who was eventually going to get married there. They came in to do their tasting menu to see what they wanted to put on the menu for the dinner, for their wedding.And the owner was kind of this mafioso type. And he comes in and he sees them and he walks over and he says, "so, you're gonna get married at my wedding factory."Audience: Mm-hmm.Chris: In all sincerity.Stephen: Mm-hmm.Chris: Right.Without skipping a beat. Could you imagine?Stephen: Yeah.I could. I sure could.Chris: Yeah. Yeah.Stephen: I mean, don't forget, if these people weren't doing what the people wanted, they'd be outta business.Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: No, that's the thing. This is aiding and abetting. This is sleeping with the enemy, stylistically-speaking. [00:26:00] The fact that people "settle" (that's the term I would use for it), settle for this, the idea being that this somehow constitutes the most honest and authentic through line available to us is just jaw dropping. When you consider what allegedly this thing is supposed to be for. I mean, maybe we'll get into this, but I'll just leave this as a question for now. What is that moment allegedly doing?Not, what are the people in it allegedly doing? The moment itself, what is it? How is it different from us sitting here now talking about it? And how is it different from the gory frigging jet-fuelled aftermath of excess. And how's it different from the cursing alleged master of ceremonies? How can you [00:27:00] tell none of those things belong to this thing?And why do you have such a hard time imagining what doesAudience: Hmm mmChris: Well that leads me to my next question.Stephen: Ah, you're welcome.Chris: So, I've pulled a number of quotes from the book to read from over the course of the interview. And this one for anyone who's listening is on page 150. And you write Stephen,"Spiritually-speaking, most of the weddings in our corner of the world are endogamous affairs, inward-looking. What is, to me, most unnerving is that they can be spiritually-incestuous. The withering of psychic difference between people is the program of globalization. It is in the architecture of most things partaking of the internet, and it is in the homogeneity of our matrimony. [00:28:00] It is this very incestuous that matrimony was once crafted and entered into to avoid and subvert. Now, it grinds upon our differences until they are details.And so, this paragraph reminded me of a time in my youth when I seemed to be meeting couples who very eerily looked like each other. No blood or extended kin relation whatsoever, and yet they had very similar faces. And so as I get older, this kind of face fidelity aside, I continue to notice that people looking for companionship tend to base their search on similitude, on shared interests, customs, experiences, shared anything and everything. This, specifically, in opposition to those on the other side of the aisle or spectrum, to difference or divergence. And so, opposites don't attract anymore. I'm curious what you think this psychic [00:29:00] withering does to an achieve understanding of matrimony.Stephen: Well, I mean, let's wonder what it does to us, generally, first before we get to matrimony, let's say. It demonizes. Maybe that's too strong, but it certainly reconstitutes difference as some kind of affliction, some kind of not quite good enough, some kind of something that has to be overcome or overwhelmed on the road to, to what? On the road to sameness? So, if that's the goal, then are all of the differences between us, aberrations of some kind, if that's the goal? If that's the goal, are all the [00:30:00] differences between us, not God-given, but humanly misconstrued or worse? Humanly wrought? Do the differences between us conceivably then belong at all? Or is the principle object of the entire endeavor to marry yourself, trying to put up with the vague differences that the other person represents to you?I mean, I not very jokingly said years ago, that I coined a phrase that went something like "the compromise of infinity, which is other people." What does that mean? "The compromise of infinity, which is other people." Not to mention it's a pretty nice T-shirt. But what I meant by the [00:31:00] phrase is this: when you demonize difference in this fashion or when you go the other direction and lionize sameness, then one of the things that happens is that compromise becomes demonized, too. Compromise, by definition, is something you never should have done, right? Compromise is how much you surrender of yourself in order to get by. That's what all these things become. And before you know it, you're just beaten about the head and shoulders about "codependence" and you know, not being "true to yourself" as if being true to yourself is some kind of magic.I mean, the notion that "yourself is the best part of you" is just hilarious. I mean, when you think about it, like who's running amuck if yourself is what you're supposed to be? I ask you. Like, who's [00:32:00] doing the harm? Who's going mental if the self is such a good idea? So, of course, I'm maintaining here that I'm not persuaded that there is such a thing.I think it's a momentary lapse in judgment to have a self and to stick to it. That's the point I'm really making to kind of reify it until it turns ossified and dusty and bizarrely adamant like that estranged relative that lives in the basement of your house. Bizarrely, foreignly adamant, right? Like the house guest who just won't f**k off kind of thing.Okay, so "to thine own self be true," is it? Well, try being true to somebody else's self for ten minutes. Try that. [00:33:00] That's good at exercise for matrimony - being true to somebody else's self. You'll discover that their selves are not made in heaven, either. Either. I underscore it - either. I've completely lost track of the question you asked me.Chris: What are the consequences of the sameness on this anti-cultural sameness, and the program of it for an achieved understanding of matrimony.Stephen: Thank you. Well, I will fess up right now. I do so in the book. That's a terrible phrase. I swear I'd never say such a thing. "In my book... I say the following," but in this case, it's true. I did say this. I realized during the writing of it that I had made a tremendous tactical error in the convening of the event as I did it over the years, [00:34:00] and this is what it came to.I was very persuaded at the time of the story that appears in the chapter called "Salt and Indigo" in the book. I was very, very persuaded. I mean, listen, I made up the story (for what it's worth), okay, but I didn't make it up out of nothing. I made it up out of a kind of tribal memory that wouldn't quite let go.And in it, I was basically saying, here's these two tribes known principally for what they trade in and what they love most emphatically. They turn out to be the same thing. And I describe a circumstance in which they exchange things in a trade scenario, not a commerce scenario. And I'm using the chapter basically to make the case that matrimony's architecture derives in large measure from the sacraments of trade as manifest in that story. [00:35:00] Okay. And this is gonna sound obvious, but the fundamental requirement of the whole conceit that I came up with is that there are two tribes. Well, I thought to myself, "of course, there's always two tribes" at the time. And the two tribe-ness is reflected in when you come to the wedding site, you're typically asked (I hope you're still asked) " Are you family or friend of the groom or friend of the bride?" And you're seated "accordingly," right? That's the nominal, vestigial shard of this old tribal affiliation, that people came from over the rise, basically unknown to each other, to arrive at the kind of no man's land of matrimony, and proceeded accordingly. So, I put these things into motion in this very room and I sat people accordingly facing each other, not facing the alleged front of the room. [00:36:00] And of course, man, nobody knew where to look, because you raised your eyes and s**t. There's just humans across from you, just scads of them who you don't freaking know. And there's something about doing that to North Americas that just throws them. So, they're just looking at each other and then looking away, and looking at each other and looking away, and wondering what they're doing here and what it's for. And I'm going back and forth for three hours, orienting them as to what is is coming.Okay, so what's the miscalculation that I make? The miscalculation I made was assuming that by virtue of the seating arrangement, by virtue of me reminding them of the salt and indigo times, by virtue of the fact that they had a kind of allegiance of some sort or another to the people who are, for the moment, betrothed, that those distinctions and those affiliations together would congeal them, and constitute a [00:37:00] kind of tribal affiliation that they would intuitively be drawn towards as you would be drawn to heat on a cold winter's night.Only to discover, as I put the thing into motion that I was completely wrong about everything I just told you about. The nature of my error was this, virtually all of those people on one side of the room were fundamentally of the same tribe as the people on the other side of the room, apropos of your question, you see. They were card carrying members of the gray dominant culture of North America. Wow. The bleached, kind of amorphous, kind of rootless, ancestor-free... even regardless of whether their people came over in the last generation from the alleged old country. It doesn't really claim them.[00:38:00]There were two tribes, but I was wrong about who they were. That was one tribe. Virtually everybody sitting in the room was one tribe.So, who's the other tribe? Answer is: me and the four or five people who were in on the structural delivery of this endeavour with me. We were the other tribe.We didn't stand a chance, you see?And I didn't pick up on that, and I didn't cast it accordingly and employ that, instead. I employed the conceit that I insisted was manifest and mobilized in the thing, instead of the manifest dilemma, which is that everybody who came knew what a wedding was, and me and four or five other people were yet to know if this could be one. That was the tribal difference, if you [00:39:00] will.So, it was kind of invisible, wasn't it? Even to me at the time. Or, I say, maybe especially to me at the time. And so, things often went the way they went, which was for however much fascination and willingness to consider that there might have been in the room, there was quite a bit more either flat affect and kind of lack of real fascination, or curiosity, or sometimes downright hostility and pushback. Yeah.So, all of that comes from the fact that I didn't credit as thoroughly as I should have done, the persistence in Anglo-North America of a kind of generic sameness that turned out to be what most people came here ancestrally to become. "Starting again" is recipe for culture [00:40:00] loss of a catastrophic order. The fantasy of starting again. Right?And we've talked about that in your podcast, and you and I have talked about it privately, apropos of your own family and everybody's sitting in this room knows what I'm talking about. And when does this show up? Does it show up, oh, when you're walking down the street? Does it show up when you're on the mountaintop? Does it show up in your peak experiences? And the answer is "maybe." It probably shows up most emphatically in those times when you have a feeling that something special is supposed to be so, and all you can get from the "supposed to" is the allegation of specialness.Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: And then, you look around in the context of matrimony and you see a kind of febral, kind of strained, the famous bridezilla stuff, all of that stuff. [00:41:00] You saw it in the hospitality industry, no doubt. You know, the kind of mania for perfection, as if perfection constitutes culture. Right? With every detail checked off in the checkbox, that's culture. You know, as if everything goes off without a hitch and there's no guffaws. And in fact, anybody could reasonably make the case, "Where do you think culture appears when the script finally goes f*****g sideways?" That's when. And when you find out what you're capable of, ceremonially.And generally speaking, I think most people discovered that their ceremonial illiteracy bordered on the bottomless.That's when you find out. Hmm.Chris: Wow.Stephen: Yeah. And that's why people, you know, in speech time, they reach in there and get that piece of paper, and just look at it. Mm-hmm. They don't even look up, terrified that they're gonna go off script for a minute as [00:42:00] if the Gods of Matrimony are a scripted proposition.Chris: Mm-hmm. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that with us, that degree of deep reflection and humility that I'm sure comes with it.Stephen: Mea Culpa, baby. Yeah, I was, I got that one totally wrong. Mm-hmm. And I didn't know it at the time. Meanwhile, like, how much can you transgress and have the consequences of doing so like spill out across the floor like a broken thermometer's mercury and not wise up.But of course, I was as driven as anybody. I was as driven to see if I could come through with what I promised to do the year before. And keeping your promise can make you into a maniac.Audience: Hmm hmm.Chris: But I imagine that, you [00:43:00] know, you wouldn't have been able to see that even years later if you didn't say yes in the first place.Stephen: Oh, yeah. Yeah. And I wouldn't have been able to make the errors.Chris: Right.Stephen: Right. Yeah. I mean, as errors go, this is not a mortal sin. Right, right. And you could chalk it up to being a legitimate miscalculation. Well, so? All I'm saying is, it turns out I was there too, and it turns out, even though I was allegedly the circus master of the enterprise, I wasn't free and clear of the things we were all contending with, the kind of mortality and sort of cultural ricketiness that were all heirs to. That's how I translated it, as it turns out.So, PS there was a moment, [00:44:00] which I don't remember which setting it was now, but there was a moment when the "maybe we'll see if she becomes a bride" bride's mother slid up to me during the course of the proceedings, and in a kind of stage whisper more or less hissed me as follows."Is this a real wedding?"I mean, that's not a question. Not in that setting, obviously not. That is an accusation. Right. And a withering one at that. And there was a tremendous amount of throw-down involved.So, was it? I mean, what we do know is that she did not go to any of the weddings [00:45:00] that she was thinking of at the time, and go to the front of the room where the celebrant is austerely standing there with the book, or the script, or the well-intentioned, or the self-penned vows and never hissed at him or her, "is this a real wedding?"Never once did she do that. We know that.Right.And I think we know why. But she was fairly persuaded she knew what a real wedding was. And all she was really persuaded by was the poverty of the weddings that she'd attended before that one. Well, I was as informed in that respect as she was, wasn't I? I just probably hadn't gone to as many reprobate weddings as she had, so she had more to deal with than I did, even though I was in the position of the line of fire.And I didn't respond too well to the question, I have to say. At the moment, I was rather combative. But I mean, you try to do [00:46:00] what I tried to do and not have a degree of fierceness to go along with your discernment, you know, just to see if you can drag this carcass across the threshold. Anyway, that happened too.Chris: Wow. Yeah. Dominant culture of North America.Stephen: Heard of it.Chris: Yeah. Well, in Matrimony, there's quite a bit in which you write about hospitality and radical hospitality. And I wanted to move in that direction a little bit, because in terms of these kind of marketplace rituals or ceremonies that you were mentioning you know, it's something that we might wonder, I think, as you have, how did it come to be this [00:47:00] way?And so I'd like to, if I can once again, quote from matrimony in which you speak to the etymology of hospitality. And so for those interested on page 88,"the word hospitality comes from hospitaller, meaning 'one who cares for the afflicted, the infirm, the needy.' There's that thread of our misgivings about being on the receiving end of hospitality. Pull on it. For the written history of the word, at least, it has meant, 'being on the receiving end of a kind of care you'd rather not need.'"End quote.Stephen: That's so great. I mean, before you go on with the quote. It's so great to know that the word, unexamined, just kind of leaks upside, doesn't it? Hospitality, I mean, nobody goes "Hospitality, ew." [00:48:00] And then, if you just quietly do the obvious math to yourself, there's so much awkwardness around hospitality.This awkwardness must have an origin, have a home. There must be some misgiving that goes along with the giving of hospitality, mustn't there be? How else to understand where that kind of ickiness is to be found. Right? And it turns out that the etymology is giving you the beginnings of a way of figuring it out what it is that you're on the receiving end of - a kind of succor that you wish you didn't need, which is why it's the root word for "hospital."Chris: Hmm hmm. Wow.Audience: Hmm.Chris: May I repeat that sentence please? Once more."For the written history of the word, at least, it has meant, [00:49:00] 'being on the receiving end of a kind of care you'd rather not need.'"And so this last part hits home for me as I imagine it does for many.And it feels like the orthodoxy of hospitality in our time is one based not only in transaction, but in debt. And if you offer hospitality to me, then I owe you hospitality.Stephen: Right.Chris: I'm indebted to you. And we are taught, in our time, that the worst thing to be in is in debt.Stephen: Right?Chris: And so people refuse both the desire to give as well as the learning skill of receiving. And this is continuing on page 88 now."But there's mystery afoot with this word. In its old Latin form, hospice meant both 'host' and 'guest.'"Stephen: Amazing. One. Either one, This is absolutely amazing. We're fairly sure that there's a [00:50:00] acres of difference between the giver of hospitality and the receiver that the repertoire is entirely different, that the skew between them is almost insurmountable, that they're not interchangeable in any way. But the history of the word immediately says, "really?" The history of the word, without question, says that "host" and "guest" are virtually the same, sitting in different places, being different people, more or less joined at the hip. I'll say more, but you go ahead with what you were gonna do. Sure.Chris: "In it's proto Indo-European origins, hospitality and hospice is a compound word: gosh + pot. And it meant something like [00:51:00] 'stranger/guest/host + powerful Lord.'It is amazing to me that ancestrally, the old word for guest, host, and stranger were all the same word. Potent ceremonial business, this is. In those days, the server and the serve were partners in something mysterious. This could be confusing, but only if you think of guest, host, and stranger as fixed identities.If you think of them as functions, as verbs, the confusion softens and begins to clear. The word hospice in its ancient root is telling us that each of the people gathered together in hospitality is bound to the others by formal etiquette, yes, but the bond is transacted through a subtle scheme of graces.Hospitality, it tells us, is a web of longing and belonging that binds people for a time, some hithereto unknown to each other is a clutch of mutually-binding elegances, you could say. In its ancient practice, [00:52:00] hospitality was a covenant. According to that accord, however we were with each other. That was how the Gods would be with us. We learn our hospitality by being on the receiving end of Godly administration. That's what giving thanks for members. We proceed with our kin in imitation of that example and in gratitude for it."Mm-hmm.And so today, among "secular" people, with the Gods ignored, this old-time hospitality seems endangered, if not fugitive. I'm curious how you imagine that this rupture arose, the ones that separated and commercialized the radical relationships between hosts and guests, that turned them from verbs to nouns and something like strangers to marketplace functions.[00:53:00]Stephen: Well, of course this is a huge question you've asked, and I'll see if I can unhuge it a bit.Chris: Uhhuh.Stephen: Let's go right to the heart of what happened. Just no preliminaries, just right to it.So, to underscore again, the beauty of the etymology. I've told you over and over again, the words will not fail you. And this is just a shining example, isn't it? That the fraternization is a matter of ceremonial alacrity that the affiliation between host and guest, which makes them partners in something, that something is the [00:54:00] evocation of a third thing that's neither one of them. It's the thing they've lent themselves to by virtue of submitting to being either a host or a guest. One.Two. You could say that in circumstances of high culture or highly-functioning culture, one of the principle attributes of that culture is that the fundament of its understanding, is that only with the advent of the stranger in their midst that the best of them comes forward.Okay, follow that. Yeah.So, this is a little counterintuitive for those of us who don't come from such places. We imagine that the advent of strangers in the midst of the people I'm describing would be an occasion where people hide their [00:55:00] best stuff away until the stranger disappears, and upon the disappearance of the stranger, the good stuff comes out again.You know?So, I'm just remembering just now, there's a moment in the New Testament where Jesus says something about the best wine and he's coming from exactly this page that we're talking about - not the page in the book, but this understanding. He said, you know, "serve your best wine first," unlike the standard, that prevails, right?So again, what a stranger does in real culture is call upon the cultural treasure of the host's culture, and provides the opportunity for that to come forward, right? By which you can understand... Let's say for simplicity's sake, there's two kinds of hospitality. There's probably all kinds of gradations, [00:56:00] but for the purposes of responding to what you've asked, there's two.One of them is based on kinship. Okay? So, family meal. So, everybody knows whose place is whose around the table, or it doesn't matter - you sit wherever you want. Or, when we're together, we speak shorthand. That's the shorthand of familiarity and affinity, right?Everybody knows what everybody's talking about. A lot of things get half-said or less, isn't it? And there's a certain fineness, isn't it? That comes with that kind of affinity. Of course, there is, and I'm not diminishing it at all. I'm just characterizing it as being of a certain frequency or calibre or charge. And the charge is that it trades on familiarity. It requires that. There's that kind of hospitality."Oh, sit wherever you want."Remember this one?[00:57:00]"We don't stand on ceremony here.""Oh, you're one of the family now." I just got here. What, what?But, of course, you can hear in the protestations the understanding, in that circumstance, that formality is an enemy to feeling good in this moment, isn't it? It feels stiff and starched and uncalled for or worse.It feels imported from elsewhere. It doesn't feel friendly. So, I'm giving you now beginnings of a differentiation between how cultures who really function as cultures understand what it means to be hospitable and what often prevails today, trading is a kind of low-grade warfare conducted against the strangeness of the stranger.The whole purpose of treating somebody like their family is to mitigate, and finally neutralize their [00:58:00] strangeness, so that for the purposes of the few hours in front of us all, there are no strangers here. Right? Okay.Then there's another kind, and intuitively you can feel what I'm saying. You've been there, you know exactly what I mean.There's another kind of circumstance where the etiquette that prevails is almost more emphatic, more tangible to you than the familiar one. That's the one where your mother or your weird aunt or whoever she might be, brings out certain kind of stuff that doesn't come out every day. And maybe you sit in a room that you don't often sit in. And maybe what gets cooked is stuff you haven't seen in a long time. And some part of you might be thinking, "What the hell is all this about?" And the answer is: it's about that guy in the [00:59:00] corner that you don't know.And your own ancestral culture told acres of stories whose central purpose was to convey to outsiders their understanding of what hospitality was. That is fundamentally what The Iliad and The Odyssey are often returning to and returning to and returning to.They even had a word for the ending of the formal hospitality that accrued, that arose around the care and treatment of strangers. It was called pomp or pompe, from which we get the word "pompous." And you think about what the word "pompous" means today.It means "nose in the air," doesn't it? Mm-hmm. It means "thinks really highly of oneself," isn't it? And it means "useless, encumbering, kind of [01:00:00] artificial kind of going through the motions stuff with a kind of aggrandizement for fun." That's what "pompous" means. Well, the people who gave us the word didn't mean that at all. This word was the word they used to describe the particular moment of hospitality when it was time for the stranger to leave.And when it was mutually acknowledged that the time for hospitality has come to an end, and the final act of hospitality is to accompany the stranger out of the house, out of the compound, out into the street, and provision them accordingly, and wish them well, and as is oftentimes practiced around here, standing in the street and waving them long after they disappear from view.This is pompous. This is what it actually means. Pretty frigging cool when you get corrected once in a while, isn't it? [01:01:00] Yeah.So, as I said, to be simplistic about it, there's at least a couple of kinds, and one of them treasures the advent of the stranger, understanding it to be the detonation point for the most elegant part of us to come forward.Now, those of us who don't come from such a place, we're just bamboozled and Shanghai'ed by the notion of formality, which we kind of eschew. You don't like formality when it comes to celebration, as if these two things are hostile, one to the other. But I'd like you to consider the real possibility that formality is grace under pressure, and that formality is there to give you a repertoire of response that rescues you from the gross limitations of your autobiography.[01:02:00]Next question. I mean, that's the beginning.Chris: Absolutely. Absolutely. Mm-hmm. Thank you once again, Stephen. So alongside the term or concept of "pompe," in which the the guest or stranger was led out of the house or to the entrance of the village, there was also the consideration around the enforcement of hospitality, which you write about in the book. And you write that"the enforcement of hospitality runs the palpable risk of violating or undoing the cultural value it is there to advocate for. Forcing people to share their good fortune with the less fortunate stretches, to the point of undoing the generosity of spirit that the culture holds dear. Enforcement of hospitality is a sign of the eclipse of hospitality, typically spawned by insecurity, contracted self-definition, and the darkening of the [01:03:00] stranger at the door.Instead, such places and times are more likely to encourage the practice of hospitality in subtle generous ways, often by generously treating the ungenerous."And so there seems to be a need for limits placed on hospitality, in terms of the "pompe," the maximum three days in which a stranger can be given hospitality, and concurrently a need to resist enforcing hospitality. This seems like a kind of high-wire act that hospitable cultures have to balance in order to recognize and realize an honorable way of being with a stranger. And so I'm wondering if you could speak to the possibility of how these limits might be practiced without being enforced. What might that look like in a culture that engages with, with such limits, but without prohibitions?Stephen: Mm-hmm. That's a very good question. [01:04:00] Well, I think your previous question was what happened? I think, in a nutshell, and I didn't really answer that, so maybe see how I can use this question to answer the one that you asked before: what happened? So, there's no doubt in my mind that something happened that it's kind of demonstrable, if only with the benefit of hindsight.Audience: Right.Stephen: Or we can feel our way around the edges of the absence of the goneness of that thing that gives us some feel for the original shape of that thing.So you could say I'm trafficking in "ideals," here, and after a fashion, maybe, yeah. But the notion of "ideals," when it's used in this slanderous way suggests that "it was never like that."Chris: Mm-hmm.Stephen: And I suggest to you it's been like that in a lot of places, and there's a lot of places where it's still like that, although globalization [01:05:00] may be the coup de grâce performed upon this capacity. Okay. But anyway.Okay. So what happened? Well, you see in the circumstance that I described, apropos of the stranger, the stranger is in on it. The stranger's principle responsibility is to be the vector for this sort of grandiose generosity coming forward, and to experience that in a burdensome and unreciprocated fashion, until you realize that their willingness to do that is their reciprocity. Everybody doesn't get to do everything at once. You can't give and receive at the same time. You know what that's called? "Secret Santa at school," isn't it?That's where nobody owes nobody nothing at the end. That's what we're all after. I mean, one of your questions, you know, pointed to that, that there's a kind of, [01:06:00] what do you call that, teeter-totter balance between what people did for each other and what they received for each other. Right. And nobody feels slighted in any way, perfect balance, et cetera.Well, the circumstance here has nothing of the kind going with it. The circumstance we're describing now is one in which the hospitality is clearly unequal in terms of who's eating whose food, for example, in terms of the absolutely frustrated notion of reciprocity, that in fact you undo your end of the hospitality by trying to pay back, or give back, or pay at all, or break even, or not feel the burden of "God, you've been on the take for fricking hours here now." And if you really look in the face of the host, I mean, they're just getting started and you can't, you can't take it anymore.[01:07:00]So, one of the ways that we contend with this is through habits of speech. So, if somebody comes around with seconds. They say, "would you like a little more?"And you say, "I'm good. I'm good. I'm good." You see, "I'm good" is code for what? "F**k off." That's what it's code for. It's a little strong. It's a little strong. What I mean is, when "I'm good" comes to town, it means I don't need you and what you have. Good God, you're not there because you need it you knucklehead. You're there because they need it, because their culture needs an opportunity to remember itself. Right?Okay. So what happened? Because you're making it sound like a pretty good thing, really. Like who would say, "I think we've had enough of this hospitality thing, don't you? Let's try, oh, [01:08:00] keeping our s**t to ourselves. That sounds like a good alternative. Let's give it a week or two, see how it rolls." Never happened. Nobody decided to do this - this change, I don't think. I think the change happened, and sometime long after people realized that the change had had taken place. And it's very simple. The change, I think, went something like this.As long as the guest is in on it, there's a shared and mutually-held understanding that doesn't make them the same. It makes them to use the quote from the book "partners," okay, with different tasks to bring this thing to light, to make it so. What does that require? A mutually-held understanding in vivo as it's happening, what it is.Okay. [01:09:00] So, that the stranger who's not part of the host culture... sorry, let me say this differently.The culture of the stranger has made the culture of the host available to the stranger no matter how personally adept he or she may be at receiving. Did you follow that?Audience: A little.Stephen: Okay. Say it again?Audience: Yes, please.Stephen: Okay. The acculturation, the cultured sophistication of the stranger is at work in his or her strangerhood. Okay. He or she's not at home, but their cultural training helps them understand what their obligations are in terms of this arrangement we've been describing here.Okay, so I think the rupture takes place [01:10:00] when the culturation of one side or the other fails to make the other discernible to the one.One more time?When something happens whereby the acculturation of one of the partners makes the identity, the presence, and the valence of the other one untranslatable. Untranslatable.I could give you an example from what I call " the etiquette of trade," or the... what was the word? Not etiquette. What's the other word?Chris: The covenant?Stephen: Okay, " covenant of trade" we'll call it. So, imagine that people are sitting across from each other, two partners in a trade. Okay? [01:11:00] Imagine that they have one thing to sell or move or exchange and somebody has something else.How does this work? Not "what are the mechanics?" That can be another discussion, but, if this works, how does it work? Not "how does it happen?" How does it actually achieve what they're after? Maybe it's something like this.I have this pottery, and even though you're not a potter, but somebody in your extended family back home was, and you watched what they went through to make a fricking pot, okay?You watched how their hands seized up, because the clay leached all the moisture out of the hands. You distinctly remember that - how the old lady's hands looked cracked and worn, and so from the work of making vessels of hospitality, okay? [01:12:00] It doesn't matter that you didn't make it yourself. The point is you recognize in the item something we could call "cultural patrimony."You recognize the deep-runningness of the culture opposite you as manifest and embodied in this item for trade. Okay? So, the person doesn't have to "sell you" because your cultural sophistication makes this pot on the other side available to you for the deeply venerable thing that it is. Follow what I'm saying?Okay. So, you know what I'm gonna say next? When something happens, the items across from you cease to speak, cease to have their stories come along with them, cease to be available. There's something about your cultural atrophy that you project onto the [01:13:00] item that you don't recognize.You don't recognize it's valence, it's proprieties, it's value, it's deep-running worth and so on. Something happened, okay? And because you're not making your own stuff back home or any part of it. And so now, when you're in a circumstance like this and you're just trying to get this pot, but you know nothing about it, then the enterprise becomes, "Okay, so what do you have to part with to obtain the pot?"And the next thing is, you pretend you're not interested in obtaining the pot to obtain the pot. That becomes part of the deal. And then, the person on the making end feels the deep running slight of your disinterest, or your vague involvement in the proceedings, or maybe the worst: when it's not things you're going back and forth with, but there's a third thing called money, which nobody makes, [01:14:00] which you're not reminded of your grandma or anyone else's with the money. And then, money becomes the ghost of the original understanding of the cultural patrimony that sat between you. That's what happened, I'm fairly sure: the advent, the estrangement that comes with the stranger, instead of the opportunity to be your cultural best when the stranger comes.And then of course, it bleeds through all kinds of transactions beyond the "obvious material ones." So, it's a rupture in translatability, isn't it?Chris: You understand this to happen or have happened historically, culturally, et cetera, with matrimony as well?Stephen: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.Yeah. This is why, for example, things like the fetishization of virginity.Audience: Mm-hmm. [01:15:00]Stephen: I think it's traceable directly to what we're talking about. How so? Oh, this is a whole other long thing, but the very short version would be this.Do you really believe that through all of human history until the recent liberation, that people have forever fetishized the virginity of a young woman and jealously defended it, the "men" in particular, and that it became a commodity to trade back and forth in, and that it had to be prodded and poked at to determine its intactness? And this was deemed to be, you know, honourable behavior?Do you really think that's the people you come from, that they would've do that to the most cherished of their [01:16:00] own, barely pubescent girls? Come on now. I'm not saying it didn't happen and doesn't still happen. I'm not saying that. I'm saying, God almighty, something happened for that to be so.And I'm trying to allude to you now what I think took place. Then all of a sudden, the hymen takes the place of the pottery, doesn't it? And it becomes universally translatable. Doesn't it? It becomes a kind of a ghosted artifact of a culturally-intact time. It's as close as you can get.Hence, this allegation of its purity, or the association with purity, and so on. [01:17:00] I mean, there's lots to say, but that gives you a feel for what might have happened there.Chris: Thank you, Stephen. Thank you for being so generous with your considerations here.Stephen: You see why I had to write a book, eh?Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: There was too much bouncing around. Like I had to just keep track of my own thoughts on the matter.But can you imagine all of this at play in the year, oh, I don't know, 2022, trying to put into motion a redemptive passion play called "matrimony," with all of this at play? Not with all of this in my mind, but with all of this actually disfiguring the anticipation of the proceedings for the people who came.Can you imagine? Can you imagine trying to pull it off, and [01:18:00] contending overtly with all these things and trying to make room for them in a moment that's supposed to be allegedly - get ready for it - happy.I should have raised my rates on the first day, trying to pull that off.But anyway.Okay, you go now,Chris: Maybe now you'll have the opportunity.Stephen: No, man. No. I'm out of the running for that. "Pompe" has come and come and gone. Mm.Chris: So, in matrimony, Stephen, you write that"the brevity, the brevity of modern ceremonies is really there to make sure that nothing happens, nothing of substance, nothing of consequence, no alchemy, no mystery, no crazy other world stuff. That overreach there in its scripted heart tells me that deep in the rayon-wrapped bosom of that special day, the modern wedding is scared [01:19:00] silly of something happening. That's because it has an ages-old abandoned memory of a time when a wedding was a place where the Gods came around, where human testing and trying and making was at hand, when the dead lingered in the wings awaiting their turn to testify and inveigh."Gorgeous. Gorgeous.Audience: Mm-hmm.Chris: And so I'm curious ifStephen: "Rayon-wrapped bosom." That's not, that's not shabby.Chris: "Rayon-wrapped bosom of that special day." Yeah.So, I'm curious do you think the more-than-human world practices matrimony, and if so, what, if anything, might you have learned about matrimony from the more-than-human world?Stephen: I would say the reverse. I would say, we practice the more-than-human world in matrimony, not that the more-than-human world practices matrimony. We practice them, [01:20:00] matrimonially.Next. Okay. Or no? I just gonna say that, that's pretty good.Well, where do we get our best stuff from? Let's just wonder that. Do we get our best stuff from being our best? Well, where does that come from? And this is a bit of a barbershop mirrors situation here, isn't it? To, to back, back, back, back.If you're thinking of time, you can kind of get lost in that generation before, or before, before, before. And it starts to sound like one of them biblical genealogies. But if you think of it as sort of the flash point of multiple presences, if you think of it that way, then you come to [01:21:00] credit the real possibility that your best stuff comes from you being remembered by those who came before you.Audience: Hmm.Stephen: Now just let that sit for a second, because what I just said is logically-incompatible.Okay? You're being remembered by people who came before you. That's not supposed to work. It doesn't work that way. Right?"Anticipated," maybe, but "remembered?" How? Well, if you credit the possibility of multiple beginnings, that's how. Okay. I'm saying that your best stuff, your best thoughts, not the most noble necessarily. I would mean the most timely, [01:22:00] the ones that seem most needed, suddenly.You could take credit and sure. Why, why not? Because ostensibly, it arrives here through you, but if you're frank with yourself, you know that you didn't do that on command, right? I mean, you could say, I just thought of it, but you know in your heart that it was thought of and came to you.I don't think there's any difference between saying that and saying you were thought of.Audience: Mm-hmm.Stephen: So, that's what I think the rudiments of old-order matrimony are. They are old people and their benefactors in the food chain and spiritually speaking. Old people and their benefactors, the best part of them [01:23:00] willed to us, entrusted and willed to us. So, when you are willing to enter into the notion that old-order matrimony is older than you, older than your feelings for the other person, older than your love, and your commitment, and your willingness to make the vows and all that stuff, then you're crediting the possibility that your love is not the beginning of anything.You see. Your love is the advent of something, and I use that word deliberately in its Christian notion, right? It's the oncomingness, the eruption into the present day of something, which turns out to be hugely needed and deeply unsuspected at the same time.I used to ask in the school, "can you [01:24:00] have a memory of something you have no lived experience of?" I think that's what the best part of you is. I'm not saying the rest of you is shite. I'm not saying that. You could say that, but I am saying that when I say "the best part of you," that needs a lot of translating, doesn't it?But the gist of it is that the best part of you is entrusted to you. It's not your creation, it's your burden, your obligation, your best chance to get it right. And that's who we are to those who came before us. We are their chance to get it right, and matrimony is one of the places where you practice the gentle art of getting it right.[01:25:00] Another decent reason to write a book.Chris: So, gorgeous. Wow. Thank you Stephen. I might have one more question.Stephen: Okay. I might have one more answer. Let's see.Chris: Alright. Would I be able to ask if dear Nathalie Roy could join us up here alongside your good man.So, returning to Matrimony: Ritual, Culture and the Heart's Work. On page 94, [01:26:00] Stephen, you write that"hospitality of the radical kind is

When adult children go "no contact" with parents, in some cases it's because of an overdrawn emotional bank account between them. In this thought-provoking episode, host Tina Gilbertson explains the workings of your relationship bank account with your estranged adult child(ren) -- including examples of emotional deposits and withdrawals. Not every rejected parent has an overdrawn emotional account with their estranged adult child. But if the balance between you is in question at all, this episode will help you make a plan to set things right. For much more information and tools to repair your relationship with your estranged adult child(ren), read Tina's book, Reconnecting With Your Estranged Adult Child. Club members can discuss this and every episode in the General Discussion forum inside the Reconnection Club. Not a member yet? Learn more and join. Follow us on Instagram. EPISODE LINKS: Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 199. Validation: What, Why, How and When General Discussion Forum (Reconnection Club members only)

Hi Listeners. I'd love to hear from you. Send an email to Janet@jesteinkamp. It is not possible to respond to your Fan Mail posts directly.In this episode of When Our Adult Children Walk Away, Dr. Janet Steinkamp helps you peel back the first layer of the topic of coercive control. If you've noticed your estranged adult child suddenly changing their identity, distancing from family, or echoing words that don't sound like their own, you may be witnessing coercive influence at work.You'll learn what coercive control looks like and why it is so pervasive in parental estrangement, why it's so hard to detect, and the seven key warning signs to watch for—like social isolation, gaslighting, and control over daily life. More importantly, you'll gain encouragement and practical strategies for keeping the light on in your relationship without fueling the coercive partner's power.This is about giving you clarity and hope as you navigate the painful reality of estrangement while still holding space for love, trust, and reconnection with your child.Mentioned EpisodesWhen Communication Becomes a Power Struggle: Power, Influence, Gaslighting & Coercive ControlFuture mini-series: Seven Aspects of Coercive ControlSuggested Reading: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/it-is-all-coercive-control/202508/when-estrangement-masks-abuse #familyestrangement, #estrangedadultchild, #coercivecontrol, #parentreconnection, #estrangementexpert, #parentalalienation, #adultestrangement, #repairingrelationshipsSupport the showFor more information, please go to https://www.WhenOurAdultChildrenWalkAway.com to find resources, strategies and tips to prepare to repair! The continuum of estrangement discussed today can be found at https://www.togetherestranged.org/levels-of-estrangement. The stories, examples, reflections, and perspectives shared in this podcast are based on my professional work as an estrangement coach and my personal estrangement journey. Any examples, characters, or stories referenced are either drawn from my own lived experience or represent a composite of multiple real-life situations shared with me over time. The intention of this podcast is not to accuse, label, or defame any individual but to provide insight, validation, and support for those navigating the complexities of family estrangement. All opinions expressed are my own and are shared with you, the listener, from a place of healing and learning.

Reaction mode. When you're estranged, it seems like you're constantly reacting to your estranged child's choices… Like a spectator in your own life story, waiting on the other shoe to drop and hoping this nightmare of estrangement will end soon. If you vacillate between hope and hurt, and peace and panic, this episode is for you. We're talking about the Medicine Matriarch: that's a part of you who is wise, steady and called by God to be a calming, healing presence in your family. The Medicine Matriarch is a part of you that might be getting drowned out right now, by all the hard emotions, hurtful words and fears. But when you connect with that part of you, you are no longer at the mercy of your child's emotions. In this episode, I'm walking you through the five-part heart posture of the Medicine Matriarch, and we'll talk about why living from that place changes the course of family estrangement from your child. Let's talk about it.   . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

Quinn gets real about estrangement: when a child requests no contact, how do you keep loving without self-erasure? In this intimate conversation, Quinn shares their experience with an adult son who cut contact in November 2023, the grief of “losing someone who's still alive,” and the radical shift from controlling outcomes to controlling self: nervous system care, boundaries, honest self-inventory, and clean apologies grounded in Pete Walker's framework.Key takeawaysTwo truths can coexist: “I can love you and block you.” Boundaries are love when they protect everyone's nervous systems.Control the controllables: your home's safety, your emotional regulation, your integrity, your consistency for the kids who are present.Own your part—without self-erasure: apologize for your missteps, not for your values (e.g., leaving a religion or a marriage).Clean apology framework (Pete Walker–style):Name the harm specifically → 2) Take full responsibility → 3) Express real empathy → 4) Offer repair → 5) Commit to change.No “but” in the apology. Anything after “but” deletes the apology.Grief is not a problem to fix. It's a process to honor while you keep living a life you're proud of.Pour love somewhere safe: if direct contact isn't available, journal letters you may never send—offerings without hooks, guilt, or demands.Action stepsWrite a one-page self-inventory: “What I did,” “Impact it had,” “How I'll do it differently now.”Draft one clean apology (even if unsent). Keep it under 150 words. Remove every “but.”Create a nervous system boundary plan: What messages/emails you'll read, when you'll pause, and who you'll call for support.Start a love ledger (journal) for the estranged child—write monthly from a grounded state only.Build a present-kid ritual (weekly breakfast walk, game night, study date) to anchor the family you do have access to.Gentle reminder Estrangement is complex. Get therapy or group support if you can. Protect your safety. You don't owe access to anyone who is actively harming you—even if you love them.CTA If this episode helped, share it with a mama in the thick of it. Rate/review to get this message to more post-divorce women.PostDivorceGlowUp.comEmail: quinn@postdivorceglowup.com

In this episode of Ask Rach, Rachel tackles parenting from every angle — breaking free from toxic dynamics with your own parents, learning how to let go as your kids grow more independent, and navigating the rollercoaster of raising a moody teenager. With her signature blend of big sister advice, timeless wisdom, and practical encouragement, Rachel offers honest insight on what it really takes to protect your peace while showing up with love. Whether you're redefining family boundaries or figuring out how to parent through new seasons, this conversation will remind you that you're not alone.Get your copy of Rachel's New Book Here: Audible, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Millon, Bookshop.org, or wherever books are sold!01:06 Welcome and Podcast Subscription Request02:05 Ask R: Navigating Family Relationships04:12 Voicemail 1: Estrangement from Parents25:47 Voicemail 2: Parenting a Teenager42:35 Conclusion and Final ThoughtsSign up for Rachel's weekly email: https://msrachelhollis.com/insider/Call the podcast hotline and leave a voicemail! Call (737) 400-4626Watch the podcast on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/c/RachelHollisMotivation/videosFollow along on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/MsRachelHollisTo learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices.

When estrangement from your child happens, it doesn't just hurt your heart… it rattles your whole nervous system. Estrangement from your child is a trauma, and too often, that part of the conversation often gets left out. You find yourself stuck in cycles of overthinking and physical symptoms… checking your phone with hope and dread in the same breath. If your nervous system is locked in survival mode, healing and reconciliation become so much harder to reach. In today's episode of The Estranged Mom Coach™ podcast, I'm walking you through four emotional regulation tools to help you move out of that trauma loop. There's a better way. Let's talk about it. . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

"You aren't just an 'old soul', you had a toxic parent" Have you ever thought to yourself, 'This is just the way I am'? That could be a result of childhood trauma. In this revealing episode of 'A Millennial Mind,' I sit down with Harriet Shearsmith, an award-winning content creator and parenting advocate, to discuss the often hidden conversations surrounding family toxicity and breaking generational cycles. Harriet shares her insights on addressing difficult family dynamics, establishing healthy boundaries, and improving relationships with in-laws. We delve into the realities of family dysfunction, the impacts of parentification, and provide practical advice on overcoming guilt and obligation in familial relationships. In this episode, we will cover: 00:00 Introduction: The Unspoken Conversation 00:14 The Impact of In-Laws on Relationships 00:33 Personal Growth Through Family Dynamics 00:52 Sponsor Message: Lovable AI Platform 01:47 Introducing Today's Guest: Harriet Shearsmith 02:20 Breaking Generational Cycles 04:10 Understanding Cycle Breaking 04:44 Common Patterns in Family Dynamics 05:56 The Role of Early Childhood in Shaping Behaviour 06:35 Navigating Family Dysfunction 13:27 The Challenge of Confronting Parents 23:31 The Concept of Parentification 35:21 Estrangement and Reconciliation 38:01 Avoiding Confrontation: The Pain of Acceptance 38:58 Healing from Family Estrangement 40:31 The Power of Community Healing 41:19 Practical Tools for Emotional Release 43:41 Navigating In-Law Relationships 52:46 Setting Boundaries with In-Laws 55:57 Understanding Toxic vs. Healthy Family Dynamics 57:57 Choosing Between Partner and Parents 01:01:21 The Importance of Boundaries and Cycle Breaking 01:08:07 Conclusion and Final Thoughts **AD**This episode is sponsored by Lovable, an AI tool that lets you create beautiful, functional websites in minutes just by typing a few prompts. So if you're planning a wedding, launching a brand, or just want a sleek site without the tech stress, Lovable makes it so simple.No tech skills needed. Just your ideas. Give it a go and start your free trial at https://lovable.dev#ad #LovablePartner

How do you heal an estranged relationship with your adult child when there's no contact? Through a recording from a past group Q&A call, host psychotherapist Tina Gilbertson shares her insights about the self-reflexive relationship between parents and adult children, and its potential for healing. Tina emphasizes that lingering emotional injuries in the parent -- who may not be aware of how those wounds continue to compromise them -- can play a significant role in why adult children choose to distance themselves. Recognizing this can be the first step toward healing. Tina encourages listeners to prioritize their own healing and personal growth. Because by working on themselves, parents can create a healthier emotional environment, even from a distance. Healing takes time. But change is possible, and with patience and dedication, estranged relationships can start to transform even before contact resumes. Join Tina as she delivers this challenging yet hopeful message, offering comfort and guidance to those in deep emotional pain. For much more on healing relationships between parents and adult children, including what goes wrong and how parents can respond effectively, read Tina's book, Reconnecting With Your Estranged Adult Child. Reconnection Club members can discuss this and every episode in the General Discussion forum inside the Reconnection Club. Not a member yet? Learn more and join. EPISODE LINKS: Reconnecting With Your Estranged Adult Child: Practical Tips and Tools to Heal Your Relationship Constructive Wallowing: How to Beat Bad Feelings By Letting Yourself Have Them Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 194: Room For Improvement Want to support the podcast? Become a Reconnection Club member and get access to educational content and online events hosted by Tina, as well as our members-only forums. Monthly and annual memberships are available. Learn more.

Send us a textHave you ever experienced the painful distance of an estranged relationship? That space between you and someone you once felt close to—whether a parent, child, or sibling—can feel impossible to bridge. Yet reconciliation might be more possible than you think.In this raw, unscripted conversation, we pull back the curtain on our personal experiences with family estrangement. Gen courageously shares her journey of reconciliation with her mother for the first time publicly, revealing the emotional complexity of moving from disconnection to healing. We explore what happens in that space between the anger, disappointment, frustration, and eventual clarity that can emerge from separation.The heart of our discussion centers on what real healing requires. Self-reflection must precede reconciliation; you can't depend on others to heal your emotional wounds. Communication, both with yourself and eventually with the estranged person, forms the foundation for rebuilding trust. We examine how redefining "normal" within relationships creates space for healthier dynamics to emerge.Perhaps most poignantly, we confront the reality of time—how quickly it passes and how much is lost during periods of estrangement. As the holiday season approaches, this conversation feels especially timely for anyone considering whether reconciliation with an estranged family member might be possible.Whether you're currently experiencing estrangement or supporting someone who is, this episode offers guidance for navigating the journey from disconnection to reconciliation. The work isn't easy, but as we've discovered firsthand, the reward of rebuilding meaningful relationships makes every difficult conversation worth it.Look up, and let's elevate. Support the showhttps://linktr.ee/genthebuilder

Hi Listeners. I'd love to hear from you. Send an email to Janet@jesteinkamp. It is not possible to respond to your Fan Mail posts directly.Jealousy is a natural emotion, and still, it can complicate an already painful estrangement.In this thoughtful episode, Dr. Janet helps parents and adult children understand the role jealousy plays in their strained or fractured relationships.Parents, you're not alone in this. Estranged adult children also tell us they experience jealousy. But the experience for parents and adult children is different. What does jealousy have to do with estrangement? And pointedly, how can jealousy hinder our ability to establish healthy and respectful communication?Listen in to hear compassionate insights and consider practical examples. This episode offers tools to recognize, manage, and move through jealousy in healthy ways.Past episodes referenced in this conversation:The Continuum of EstrangementFriendly Advocate or Flying Monkey (Short)What is the Difference: Gaslighting vs ReframingSupport the showFor more information, please go to https://www.WhenOurAdultChildrenWalkAway.com to find resources, strategies and tips to prepare to repair! The continuum of estrangement discussed today can be found at https://www.togetherestranged.org/levels-of-estrangement. The stories, examples, reflections, and perspectives shared in this podcast are based on my professional work as an estrangement coach and my personal estrangement journey. Any examples, characters, or stories referenced are either drawn from my own lived experience or represent a composite of multiple real-life situations shared with me over time. The intention of this podcast is not to accuse, label, or defame any individual but to provide insight, validation, and support for those navigating the complexities of family estrangement. All opinions expressed are my own and are shared with you, the listener, from a place of healing and learning.

When you're an estranged mother, the silence can echo louder than even their hurtful words. It's tempting to harden your heart, to protect yourself by pulling away or adopting the world's advice—that message that says: Let them go. Move on. Don't look back. But as a Christian mother, you're called to handle estrangement from your child differently. . In this episode of The Estranged Mom Coach™ podcast, I'll walk you through five powerful Scriptures to speak over yourself in the midst of estrangement—verses that steady you, strengthen you, and inspire you to show up well, even when you feel worn down by it all.   I'll also give you a specific method of utilizing these Scriptures to support you on your estrangement journey. Let's talk about it.  . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

Billy English of Bible and Business and OnPath Coaching looks at the issue of debt, the exploitation of payday lenders, and also about what the Bible says about debt and debt forgiveness.  Vaneetha Risner addresses the hard topic of parental and familial estrangement.  Do you know why it happened to you?  How do you move forward?  Faith Radio podcasts are made possible by your support. Give now: Click here

Experiencing estrangement from your child can feel like living in an old movie reel. You replay things repeatedly, searching for the scene that explains why your estranged child turned away. Figuring out why feels like something you should be doing… after all, don't good mothers try to figure it out and fix it?  . In this episode of The Estranged Mom Coach™ podcast, we're getting into what's really driving the deep search for the “why” and how it can actually be a distraction of the enemy. I'll lay out the four pillars that actually do move the needle toward reconciliation - these are a much better use of your emotional bandwidth.  . The devil wants to keep you spinning in the search for why instead of taking these 4 actions. Why? Because he wants your family to stay fractured. This episode is an invitation to move into actions that are focused, rooted in faith and supportive of reconciliation. Warm up your tea, and let's talk about it. . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

Master Phil in Your Corner Episode 135: Stoicism Applied to Familial Estrangement Philosophy Professor, David Kasper, PhD joins our podcast today to speak with Master Phil about a growing issue - Familial Estrangement. Children cut their parents out of their lives, parents turn their backs of their kids, siblings stop speaking. How can we best address this? Is stoicism the answer? @Themasterphil#boxing #kickboxing #fighting #fitness #knife #knifefighting #selfdefense #combat #combatarts #theblox #combatives #blades #kettlebells #knifeordeath #AAAI #strength #physicaltherapy #masterphil #philross #workout #winningmindset #survivalstrong #chiropractors #kettlebellking #bodybellmethod #supplements #masterphilinyourcorner #scwmania

As an estranged mother, you may know the heartbreak of hearing your child recount a memory that feels completely foreign to your own experience… sometimes even flat-out untrue. It can feel like they're rewriting the story, and the sting of being misunderstood cuts deep. In this episode of The Estranged Mom Coach™ podcast, we're exploring the emotional landmine of false memories in estrangement. Where do these distorted memories come from? Are they lies… or something more complex? And how can you respond in a way that honors your truth, protects your peace and opens the door to healing? Come on in. These are memory battles you never saw coming, but you can navigate them as a calm, Christ-centered mother who knows what to say. Let's talk about it.  . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

Today on The Dad Whisperer Podcast, I'm joined by an expert in addressing family estrangement, Sandra Allen Lovelace. With over three decades as a trauma-informed life coach, Sandra speaks and writes on unmasking overwhelm when it comes to messy interpersonal relationships within families. If you're in a place of relational distance with your daughter and need hope, we invite you to join our conversation.

Welcome to Part 2 of my catch-up with Annie Schuessler Zam. If you haven't already, I recommend starting with Part 1: A Continuum of Connection: Parent-Child Relationships, Caregiving, and Self-Healing. I consider Annie as a case study in remaining open to possibility. She embodies a fearlessness that we all possess but often shy away from activating. Courageousness is scary, after all.  GUEST BIO Annie Schuessler Zam (she/they) is a therapist turned healer and the host of the Rebel Therapist™ podcast. She helps people who are estranged from a parent or caregiver who want to heal trauma and live their most beautiful lives. *** Join the Group Practice (R)evolution! GPR is a new platform and podcast series offering insights from owners, employees, and experts, and resources to support this wildly ambitious vision for the future. For a limited time, podcast listeners can get a full year of membership for only $19.99 by using the discount code PODCAST.  Visit: https://tinyurl.com/GPRPodcast and click on “have a coupon” and enter PODCAST to enjoy all the perks of Group Practice (R)evolution for a year!  Get Support! Earn CEs! Care in Chaos: https://tinyurl.com/CareInChaosRec Bridging Heart and Practice: https://tinyurl.com/TheSarahsOnlineSupe  SUPPORT THE SHOW Conversations With a Wounded Healer Merch Join our Patreon for gifts & perks Shop our Bookshop.org store and support local booksellers Share a rating & review on Apple Podcasts *** Let's be friends! You can find me in the following places… Website Facebook @headheartbiztherapy Instagram @headheartbiztherapy

Estrangement isn't just an emotional wound—it's a spiritual battleground. The silence, the unanswered messages, the distance that keeps growing… it's easy to feel powerless. The enemy wants you to believe you have no power in this estrangement from your child, but the enemy is a liar. In this episode of The Estranged Mom Coach™, you'll learn the difference between declaring and decreeing—two Biblical tools that, when used correctly, can shift the atmosphere in mighty ways. This isn't about controlling your estranged child. It's about stepping into the spiritual authority God has given you for emotional healing, restoration, and peace. If you've been grappling with estrangement and wondering what else you can do, this is a conversation you don't want to miss. Warm up your tea, grab your journal and let's talk about it. . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

Thursday of the Fourteenth Week in Ordinary Time. Father Dave shares his appreciation for the friendship he has with his sister, Diana. As in today's readings about Joseph and his 11 brothers, we can find hope that God can reconcile strained relationships. Preached at St. Paul the Apostle Church, New York City, NY on 7-10-25

In this important episode for parents with estranged adult children, therapist and host Tina Gilbertson discusses a common mistake that can keep the distance between them.  Many parents think estrangement is just a form of the “silent treatment” and a reaction to their parenting mistakes. They struggle to understand why all the good things they did -- such as providing support, resources or time --  don't outweigh the issues their child is upset about. This confusion can make parents feel rejected, abandoned, and unfairly treated. By learning the key differences between estrangement and "the silent treatment,” parents can start to understand what their adult children might be trying to communicate through their silence. For information and tools to repair your relationship with your estranged adult child(ren), read Tina's book, Reconnecting With Your Estranged Adult Child. Club members can discuss this and every episode in the General Discussion forum inside the Reconnection Club. Not a member yet? Learn more and join. EPISODE RESOURCES: 8 Differences Between Estrangement and “The Silent Treatment” Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 157: Is It Proportional?

What happens when a mom who helps others heal from estrangement has experienced it from both sides? In this deeply personal episode, Kim shares her raw and honest story of estrangement - both as a daughter who left home at 14 and as a mom whose adult children pulled away.From heated arguments that led to years of silence, to watching her own kids disappear after joining the Marines, Kim reveals the painful patterns that repeated across generations. She opens up about becoming a "desperate victim" in relationships, how it affected her marriage, and the jealousy she felt watching other families.But this isn't just a story of pain - it's a story of hope. Kim shares how she found healing through her L.O.V.E. M.E.N.D.S. framework and discovered that reconciliation was possible on both sides. If you're struggling with an adult child, this episode will remind you that your story isn't over and healing is possible.Grab Your Free Course and Motivational Book: The Parent's Repair Kit and How to Use the L.O.V.E. M.E.N.D.S. Framework https://www.midlifediscoveries.com/LOVE Visit the website at: https://www.midlifediscoveries.com/

Today we're talking about the family stories that don't always get told—Family estrangement is one of those deeply personal experiences that often lives in the shadows—unspoken, misunderstood, and emotionally charged. While we may see stories of reconciliation in movies or TV shows, real life is far messier. People are walking around carrying the weight of broken ties with parents, siblings, or even their own children—and many of them feel very isolated in that pain & shame.

Forgiveness and radical love are the medicine that heals estrangement. Most people overlook it because it doesn't roar. And it requires some stretching on your part. It holds steady when you want to lash out. It softens you when the world tells you to self-protect. And it opens the gates for reconciliation with your estranged child in ways that worldly logic never could.  . In this episode, I'm telling you about S.K.— an estranged mother who said yes to radical love. What happened next? Breakthrough. Before our first coaching session, while she was still doing the prep work I gave her to do. Miracles rooted i radical love. But what is radical love exactly? Come close. Lean in. Let's talk about how radical love—Jesus-style love—is the path that makes the impossible… possible.  . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

Sima Gandhi's professional resume reads like a blueprint for success—but her story reveals a far more complex reality. On this episode of She Pivots, Emily speaks with the entrepreneur, lawyer, and former Plaid executive in her first public conversation about the personal journey that reshaped her life. At the height of her career—helping lead one of Silicon Valley’s most successful startups—Sima was privately navigating a painful and deeply complicated relationship with her family. Rather than break her, that experience pushed Sima to reevaluate everything: what she wanted from her life and how she defined success. In the midst of that personal upheaval, she launched her own company, channeling her energy into building something new while privately carrying the weight of her family estrangement. Be sure to subscribe, leave us a rating, and share with your friends if you liked this episode! She Pivots was created by host Emily Tisch Sussman to highlight women, their stories, and how their pivot became their success. To learn more about Sima, follow us on Instagram @ShePivotsThePodcast or visit shepivotsthepodcast.com.Support the show: https://www.shepivotsthepodcast.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This week Kat and Nic discuss family dynamics and all of the ups and downs of life — and what to do when your family life gets strained

Listen to this powerful episode with Vivien Kalvaria as we discuss her memoir, My Name is not Rifka. In this chat, we discuss silence, intergenerational trauma, the banality of evil, forgiveness and reconciliation.

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[REBROADCAST FROM April 4, 2025] We air highlights from our March Get Lit with All Of It book club event. We read Mothers and Sons by Adam Haslett, a novel about a New York City asylum lawyer grappling with the events that led him to become estranged from his mother.

When your child went no contact, your first instinct was to fix it. To hold the relationship together, even as it shattered in your hands and ran through your fingers. But all the while, you were getting a message that your pain didn't matter much. You learned to walk with an emotional limp and get the boxes checked off day to day… even though inside you were wounded so deeply. . The wounds of estrangement—abandonment, shame, rejection—don't just disappear with time. They need tending. In this episode of The Estranged Mom Coach™ podcast, I'm not talking strategies or reconciliation timelines. I'm talking about you. Your heart. Your healing. If you've been silently carrying the weight of this pain, this episode offers a safe space to lay it down. Let's have a real conversation about the wounds of estrangement. There are things my heart wants to say to your heart. Bring your tea and let me talk to you for a while.  . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

Host Tina Gilbertson continues the conversation from Episode 203 about navigating differences in values within parent-adult child relationships. This episode explores additional factors that can strengthen reconciled relationships, even in the presence of different values. Key Topics Discussed: The concept of "glue" in relationships and what connects us beyond differing values The importance of shared goals and interests in family dynamics Fun as a vital component in rebuilding connections Identifying and focusing on what you have in common The role of respect and validation in fostering connection The significance of rituals and shared history in family relationships Disclaimer: Tina emphasizes that contact is a Step 3 activity on the Road Map to Reconnection. Listeners are encouraged to assess their readiness before taking action based on the suggestions provided in this episode. For information and tools to repair your relationship with your estranged adult child(ren), read Tina's book, Reconnecting With Your Estranged Adult Child. Club members can discuss this and every episode in the General Discussion forum inside the Reconnection Club. Not a member yet? Learn more and join. EPISODE RESOURCES: Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 203: When You Have Different Values Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 97: Road Map to Reconnection (Part 1) Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 98: Road Map to Reconnection (Part 2) Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 99: Road Map to Reconnection (Part 3) Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 198: Validation (Or Lack Thereof) Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 199. Validation: What, Why, How and When Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 200. Validation and You, The Estranged Parent Reconnection Club Podcast Ep. 201. Validation FAQs

When women end a friendship, the heartbreak can be devastating, yet we rarely talk about how hard it is to grieve somebody who is still alive.  Susan Shapiro Barash joins Gretta to explore the complex world of female friendship estrangement based on her groundbreaking research interviewing 150 diverse women. Her new book, "Estranged: How Strained Female Friendships Are Mended or Ended," challenges the lifelong "best friends forever" narrative that has left countless women feeling down when their closest friendships crumble. From the faithless friend who betrays your trust to the green-eyed friend consumed by jealousy, Barash identifies different types of toxic friendships that lead women to the painful decision of ending relationships they once cherished.  Whether you've been ghosted or betrayed by a friend, are healing from a friendship breakup, or seeking to build healthier connections, this episode offers compassionate guidance for navigating one of life's most under-discussed transitions. Connect With Gretta❤️‍

In this bold and deeply reflective episode of Healthy Mind, Healthy Life, host Avik Chakraborty sits down with New York-based attorney and writer Gargi Sen, founder of Unsquashable Girl. Together, they uncover the invisible yet painful layers of familial gaslighting, cultural conditioning in South Asian households, toxic workplaces, and the lifelong impact of childhood emotional abuse. Gargi shares how she overcame these cycles—choosing courage, setting boundaries, and embracing healing with the unexpected support of her dog, Mr. Dempsey. Learn about her viral 3-Column Method to assess emotional safety in relationships and why it's okay to disappoint your family in order to honor yourself. This conversation is a roadmap for anyone ready to stop abandoning themselves and start living free.   About the Guest:Gargi Sen is a New York-based attorney, author, and the founder of Unsquashable Girl—a global movement supporting women to break free from toxic relationships, cultural oppression, and generational dysfunction. Her story of resilience includes escaping an abusive upbringing, breaking cultural taboos, and rebuilding self-worth with the help of her dog, Mr. Dempsey.   Key Takeaways : Healing begins when you stop seeking approval and start honoring your inner voice. Cultural conditioning in South Asian families often normalizes emotional abuse. Gargi's story powerfully challenges this status quo. Her 3-Column Method—positive, neutral, and negative energy mapping—is a practical and transformative way to assess all relationships (family, friends, workplace). It is okay to disappoint your family if it means preserving your peace and dignity. Animals, like Mr. Dempsey, can be our emotional guides—offering us unconditional love and mirroring what safe connection feels like. Toxic leadership in the workplace often reflects unresolved personal trauma; self-awareness is essential to walk away from dysfunction. The phrase “love shouldn't hurt” is central to Gargi's philosophy. If a relationship repeatedly drains or devalues you—it is not love. Estrangement from family can be an act of self-love and emotional survival, especially when safety is at risk.   How to Connect with Gargi Sen: Website: unsquashablegirl.com Book: Spiritual Energy Mapping Journal Instagram: @unsquashablegirl Learn more about Mr. Dempsey: mrdempsey.com Listeners can enter their email in this webpage and join the reader list   Want to be a guest on Healthy Mind, Healthy Life? DM on PM - Send me a message on PodMatchDM Me Here:https://www.podmatch.com/hostdetailpreview/avik CHECK PODCAST SHOWS & BE A GUEST: Tune to all our 19 podcasts: https://www.podbean.com/podcast-network/healthymindbyavik Subscribe To Newsletter: https://healthymindbyavik.substack.com/ Join Community: https://nas.io/healthymind OUR SERVICES Business Podcast Management – https://ourofferings.healthymindbyavik.com/corporatepodcasting/ Individual Podcast Management – https://ourofferings.healthymindbyavik.com/Podcasting/ Share Your Story With World – https://ourofferings.healthymindbyavik.com/shareyourstory STAY TUNED AND FOLLOW US!YouTube – https://www.youtube.com/@healthymind-healthylifeInstagram – https://www.instagram.com/healthyminds.podThreads – https://www.threads.net/@healthyminds.podMedium – https://medium.com/@contentbyavikFacebook – https://www.facebook.com/podcast.healthymindLinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/in/reemachatterjee/ | https://www.linkedin.com/in/avikchakrabortypodcasterPinterest – https://www.pinterest.com/Avikpodhealth/ SHARE YOUR REVIEW Google Review – https://www.podpage.com/bizblend/reviews/new/ Video Testimonial – https://famewall.healthymindbyavik.com/   #podmatch #healthymind #healthymindbyavik #wellness #mentalhealthawareness #podcastshow #selfcare #boundaries #gaslighting #emotionalabuse #southasianvoices #traumahealing #unsquashablegirl #healingfromabuse #doghealing #emotionalresilience #toxicfamily #personalgrowth #podcastepisode

In this solo episode, Whitney explores why siblings from the same dysfunctional family often have completely different experiences and reactions to their emotionally immature parents. She breaks down the common dysfunctional family roles - golden child, scapegoat, lost child, parentified child, and enabler - and explains how these roles create lasting divisions between siblings in adulthood. Whitney then gives guidance on how siblings can come to terms with these different reactions to their different experiences. Have a question for Whitney? Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to whitney@callinghome.co Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles. Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠ Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft ⁠⁠Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity⁠⁠ This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. 00:00 Why Siblings Experience the Same Parent Differently 03:19 The Five Dysfunctional Family Roles 07:29 How Childhood Roles Divide Adult Siblings 13:21 Accepting Different Healing Paths Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Welcome to The Estranged Mom Coach™ podcast. In today's conversation, I want to speak straight to the estranged mother who's been dealing with no contact with her adult child for a while now. The one who has walked this estrangement road long enough to feel the wear in her bones, and in her soul. We're going to talk about what to do in the invisible realm—where your prayers rise and your spirit heals—and also how to care for your nervous system so it doesn't collapse under the weight of it all. Warm up your tea, come in and let's talk about it.  . Next Steps: 1) Apply for your FREE consultation to talk to Jenny 1:1. Find out the exact path forward to feeling better and greatly increasing your chances of getting your son or daughter back in your life. And learn how estrangement coaching can get you there: www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/schedule    ⬇️ 2) Access your audio meditation to help you cast your anxieties and worries about estrangement at the feet of Jesus: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/meditation   ⬇️ 3) Join the free Facebook support community for Christian estranged mothers: https://www.facebook.com/groups/christianestrangedmothers    ⬇️ 4) Download Your Free Guide Of What To Do When Your Adult Child Estranges: https://www.theestrangedmomcoach.com/child-estrangement-next-steps  . Client Reviews… ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐  Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter I cannot express enough gratitude for the incredible support and guidance received in the most tragic time of my life from coach Jenny Good. Her faith, compassion, understanding, dedication and display of radical love has truly been life-changing for me. I was so overwhelmed with feelings of confusion, guilt, and sadness. I felt lost and didn't know how to navigate through the emotional turmoil I was experiencing. However, from the very first call, Jenny created a safe and non-judgmental space for me to share my details. Her ability to listen attentively and empathize while helping me understand a different way of thinking is truly remarkable. She understood my feelings and offered tools each session in ways I have not experienced even from therapy. I am forever thankful for the medicine she has poured into me to be the very best version of myself! This has rippled into all areas of life for me. Jenny's teachings have produced results reconnecting me with my estranged daughter! Thank you for being the vessel of unwavering faith & love that so many of us could benefit from, estranged or not. A true Godsend.  - Melinda Wyman . ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son  Having a coach and mentor who is rooted in Christ is very important. I've experienced so much inner healing with Jenny as my Coach. I am living a truly happy life, and I reconciled with my son! I feel empowered to continue stepping into my full power as a mother and to live a life where my children matter, but they don't determine my worth. I am me again. - Carol Adams

Watch on YouTube Topics: Reflection, Father Issues, Childhood Abuse, Forgiveness, Addictions, Verbal Abuse, Codependency, Adult Children, Estrangement, Anxiety, Caregiving, Grief Hosts: Brian Perez, Dr. Jill Hubbard, Chris Williams Caller Questions & More: Dr. Jill discusses how our childhood shapes our attitude and our attitude shapes our future; take time to reflect and look inside yourself. I let my dad live with me even The post New Life Live: July 31, 2025 appeared first on New Life.

In this Q&A episode, Whitney discusses why AI can't replace real therapy and the privacy concerns with using ChatGPT for mental health support. Whitney also addresses a caller dealing with sibling estrangement - feeling alone and resentful when their brother cut off their emotionally immature mother while they chose to stay and work on the relationship. Have a question for Whitney? Record a voice memo on your phone and email it to whitney@callinghome.co Whitney Goodman is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and the founder of Calling Home, a membership community that helps people navigate complex family dynamics and break harmful cycles. Join the Family Cyclebreakers Club⁠⁠ Follow Whitney on Instagram | sitwithwhit Follow Whitney on YouTube | @whitneygoodmanlmft ⁠⁠Order Whitney's book, Toxic Positivity⁠⁠ This podcast is for informational purposes only and is not a substitute for professional mental health advice. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices