Rethinking Family Estrangement: Why Cutting Off Family Isn’t Always Healing (And When It Might Be) feat. Victoria Volk

I've had my own personal experience with the Strangement of a family member and and I think what I think about two with that is I feel like that a Strangement stemmed from my childhood and I don't know that and then as a result I've created some really firm boundaries around that relationship and but I'm still cordial I would still have a conversation with this person I just choose how that person is in my life respectfully yeah and I still love this person as a person but as you touched on values right there's different values there there's different you know living with integrity and different things like that it's very nuanced I don't think it is it's such a complex issue I think when we get into family dynamics because we have not only the collective influence but then we also have our family influence and then we have our immediate family like extended family and then we have our immediate family and then we have in loss right if we're married and marry into a family yeah it's very multi-layered that's right that's right and I think you're touching on on the main topics I think values and culture has shifted values around family I know what I've witnessed and I'm what 44 so I grew up kind of in the 80s and 90s but seemingly right in the last kind of 20 years now more I mean more than that this has been happening for a long time but you know we are willing to fly across the country move to chase you know a job that's paying five thousand dollars more a year than the job in our hometown right or or sometimes hometowns literally offer no jobs at all and it shifted and I I have to move but mom and dad aren't you know don't they're set up there and then my siblings move right and in other words families are scattered just across the country never to be kind of in the same city again right and other cultures right Filipino or you know more recent immigrants from different countries are still keeping kind of more of a hey no no we're like we're in this together and we're all sticking and setting up shop in this one area right and maybe we're we're living multi generationally you know on the same plotter you know whatever the case may be so there's definitely been shifting of just literally we're physically not as close to each other as before I think that also with kind of the prevalence of everyone going to college and by the way I'm going to a different college than my sibling and then this sibling is going to a different college now all of a sudden we're exposed to completely different world views and all of a sudden we're coming back to Thanksgiving and we all have completely different ideologies right I don't I don't think that is you know historically been the case I think back in the day there was a lot more where we all kind of shared value shared kind of ideologies and beliefs and you know we may have differed here and there but we weren't like diametrically opposed to each other's beliefs so I think that's another major factor in what's happening right now is that is much harder than having a disagreement with your uncle or your mom but really you know 99% of the stuff you're in agreement with you just hit this one topic right that's happening I think less and less and less right now we're now we're talking about hey let me see the list of issues and topics we disagree on and that list is growing right because we've all had different life experiences because again there's just so much out there right that that you can take in and and change your belief system nowadays does that make sense yeah it also what comes in my two of the other thing I've I I find interesting is we are more apt to seek mental health than we ever were before and so more and more people I believe are in therapy and things like that and so what what is like it's like is that a contributor to people just deciding that it's like I think we we can have healthy boundaries and then we can have boundaries that completely swing the other way yes I totally agree I I 100% agree I think a lot of that two stems from expectations a lot of our work and grief recovery is reminding people that that you know from our perspective expectations equal plan disappointments you know and the minute that I have an expectation on exactly how dad is going to act and exactly what he's going to believe and exactly how he's going to you know embrace my night new idea of my or my new thought and then that doesn't happen right that that sets me up to really be upset with him or angry with him versus me being on the hook with hey I created a bunch of expectations my head I didn't even bother delivering these expectations to him and then I expected him to react exactly like I want him to react and that's not really how human being human beings work and therefore I don't know what to do with those feelings so I need to cut you out so I think a lot of these assignments are around you know not again this isn't the whole part of the picture but again I wanted to put in expectations equal plan disappointments and a lot of the time we are estranged from people because we had expectations that they were never going to meet because they're a human being too and they're going to have their their side and you know on those kind of things going back to the little blurb that we talked about says the assignment often involves adult children cutting ties with parents siblings and other close relatives due to years of unresolved conflict we know that can agree for care we can help with that emotional abuse we know that grief for care we can help with that mismatched values to a different degree I think we can help with that or neglect right so those are the four topics that they're talking about and obviously grief recovery is right in the wheelhouse of this being you know this this helping because again I have seen Victoria like you said I've seen people do grief recovery and and the the kind of thing they figured out in that work was whoa this was a massively toxic relationship it's not safe for me to be in this relationship and I my choice is to cut them out of my life and my children's life completely right for now right and again there could be resolution later we don't know but for right now that's the safest thing so I've seen grief recovery actually lead to an estrangement so I'm not saying it's it's always a bad thing but again you got to take a really cold hard sober look at things and and do your work emotionally to be able to sit there and actually say that versus being unfinished with a bunch of stuff and making a call that maybe is unnecessary like maybe this person isn't the monster I have them it dreamed up to be in my mind because I'm just emotionally unfinished with some stuff right so that's where I just want to be respectful in this conversation for people who are listening who are estranged from people they may be upset with what we're saying which is I think sometimes people are estranged completely for reasons that don't need to be right and and and again I think grief recovery can help in helping you assess the reality of your situation once you can actually get complete with a bunch of the emotions have been floating around for a long time one of the things that comes up for me is we are so much a social media or texting or like not even like a deep conversation one to one we're getting like it's like we're farther away from that and how can you understand someone else's perspective unless you one are emotionally honest with yourself then with the other person and then also how can you be an active listener and hear the other person's perspective when you have that unfinished business like you're not going to hear you're not going to hear what you need to hear and I think what happens I've seen this and I've heard stories about this with it's like what I just want to ask people to consider what I don't know what I don't know and I think context matters in a lot of situations and sometimes we just don't know what we don't know is this estranged is this like let's say you have a father and son and the son is estranged from the father because he believes the the father was kicked out or just left left him as a child okay but he was actually kicked out and maybe there's I just feel like there's secrets in family dynamics that we don't know I've experienced that myself like there's things like stories that are passed down generations or you know from your parents or from the grandparents and it's said and shared as truth when it might not be true right and so what if it's not true and you've been estranged from this person for 20 years and come to realize through one deep conversation that now what you have is a lot of missed time because of a secret that wasn't shared timely or something that was done that you were never told that impacted you in your relationship with that person because what comes up to is when people have skin in your game right like when you it's a parent child especially you know so many kids are used as ponds and relationships and I just I think it's tragic that we grow up not realizing that we do have a sense of agency that we can make choices and decisions for ourselves that we don't have to buy into the stories that were told to us for years and years that we can be the chain-breaker we can be the person that says enough is enough.

Yep yep and that goes to something I've been thinking about as you've been discussing this is the other thing that grief recovery really does well is it teaches people how to apologize that maybe aren't familiar with apologizing for their own stuff and it also teaches people how to forgive in in a world where there's not a lot of emphasis on forgiveness right as as people as the culture kind of turns more and more secular you know a lot of these ideas around forgiveness are not really applied or really taught in my in my opinion and and we simply don't know how to do that so it's like I agree with you a lot of the time there are secrets and families and you don't know that and you're operating off of a whole different playbook and and and you're not aware and that's really sad and then there's also times when flat out that person did hurt you and they did wrong you and they did make a bad decision because there's human being and again you have a couple of things you can withhold forgiveness and write them off forever or you can forgive the person for being a human being right and you can again either choose to have a relationship or not so again we're not saying that the resolution is always hey you have to you have to become on a strange with that person sometimes a strangeman is is protecting you and is the right choice and then sometimes a strangeman is absolutely a mistake you made and an over-raction on your part because you don't have these other tools in your toolbox and it's really sad for everyone involved including your parents who love you more than you know anybody on earth you know arguably and then and they've been cut out because you you had some some list of rules that they must follow or else you know they don't get to see the kids or or else you know we're not hanging out and that's really sad and I and I've seen that right and I think most of the time everybody has a part the parents have a part in messed up in ways and the adult child has a part in messed up in different ways and what grief recovery does is it gives you the tools to help see your part and fix your mistakes apologize and then also forgive them for mistakes maybe they made and then also identify a bunch of really significant emotional statements maybe you have been suppressing about how wonderful this person has been at times in your life and that may open the door for you to love that person once again right so reconciliation can happen and we see it happen time and time again agree for recovery but again if you don't have those tools there's nothing wrong with you you just don't have those tools yet and that's the beauty of what we we can provide in this method is some tools and looking at it in from some different angles yeah so does that that makes sense anything on that Victoria? yeah I think back to my experience with grief recovery when I heard the concept of taking 1% responsibility that was huge for me yeah and and let's say this let's just make sure that people hearing this understand what we're saying we're saying 1% responsibility for our reaction to whatever her our feelings okay so we're not saying you know you could feel like you're not responsible at all for the the fight or the conflict and the astrangement or abuse or abuse right where you were victimized and you were the victim of that what we're saying is we're really big on looking at at least 1% you could look at more but at least 1% about how you are going to react to that moving forward right that gives us back control it gives us back power in a good way on how to put the pieces back together for us so that's that's what Victoria said so please continue I just want to clarify yeah I think it gives you the power of choice it lets you allows you to see that you have choice and I think when we're so caught up in our own grief and trauma and generational stories and generational trauma I think it's really easy to be a victim yes and I think there's a lot of people walking around feeling like a victim that feel like they don't have a choice yes or it swings like we're talking about it swings a completely different way and it's kind of like you bowl those through life and you know and through anyone who gets in your way and so I feel like there is a balance there needs to be a balance there yes yes how we get there is through the tools learning new tools new knowledge new education and that I don't think you get with traditional therapy to be honest yeah I agree with that and and again not and not only therapy I don't think a lot of emphasis is put in modern society on self-reflection so you're not getting it from family a lot of the time you're not examples of people going inward to to to modify or tweak things about themselves that they they're they are not comfortable with or that they feel are holding them back there's again it's about watching the Kardashians it's about watching sports it's about you know Netflix it's about outward kind of consuming of things not sitting there quietly without a smartphone looking at internally what can I do to grow as a human being right and and that's that's kind of another topic that that I want to talk about a little bit that's another concept of of grief recovery that I think people can understand is we're taught incorrectly growing up that others are responsible for our feelings and therefore we are responsible for other people's feelings right when the reality is we create biologically the feelings we have internally okay therefore we are responsible again for our feelings and we're responsible even more importantly than that for our reaction to when our feelings are hurt right but it's not really taught that way so there are let's say I'm 20 years old okay at 20 years old you're going to be a lot more open-minded to just taking whatever ideas that are floating around in society okay and your 40 or 50-year-old parent may be a little bit more quote-unquote set in their ways now we're not even talking about by the time your 40 you may have feel different about your ideas that you thought were awesome at 20 okay I have a ridiculous koi fish tattoo on my left arm that I thought was awesome at 18 and I would never get at 44 years old right and I could show you other tattoos are completely absurd that I thought that I thought were totally awesome well this is not only in tattoo choices when we're young right we can pick up ideological stuff belief stuff value stuff that we can throw out the window up 40 the problem though is when we are so righteous in our beliefs in at 20 or 30 and we have an expectation that our parent is going to just absolutely accept whatever new idea or thing we're doing and when they don't we think we can't be happy unless they do something and then we'll be happy so when they expect when they accept my choice or they accept my idea or they accept my belief system on this that or the other thing then I will be happy and that is not the way your actual physiological things work right I can be happy regardless of whether my father thinks my koi fish tattoo on my left arm is cool or not right I don't need him to accept my tattoo choice for me to be happy but that's not how we do stuff now I'm being a little silly but I'm trying to be light obviously I want the listener to apply this to real topics where you've been heard or you feel like hey my mom or dad has to accept this choice I've made or this way that I'm living my life or this political belief I have or this opinion on COVID that I have whatever it is unless someone else accepts it and then verbally says I'm okay with that I can't be happy unless they do that and we're being set up to fail because that's not how human beings work right when we gather our belief system we are gathering it as this is the correct idea Victoria is wrong and I am right and I am willing to burn villages over my rightness you know that's when we get into trouble and that's where we need to have skills and tools to be like hey being happy in my life accepting me and my choices that's up to me period doesn't have to be my mom doesn't have to be my dad they don't have to sign off on this and in fact if they disagree with this or they're worried about this or they have arguments about this I can just forgive them and keep loving them and just be like hey there's a lot of good there we don't agree on this thing I've done some forgiveness work over here with this grief recovery tool they don't even know I've done that forgiveness work but it feels better when I'm at Thanksgiving or Christmas right versus I'm so unfinished because they got to tell me that they were wrong and they have to tell me that they're sorry and they got to tell me that they've been reviewing their position and their position was archaic and they're all dinosaurs and now they are with the program which is my belief system and you know that conversation guys is almost never going to happen and if it does happen it's going to happen and you're going to sense that it's not genuine and you've manipulated them into reading basically a hostage negotiation letter because they want their son or their daughter back right and it won't ring true and it won't feel complete for you because it's not because again you're you're making someone do something so I can feel better or I can feel different and that's not how it works in your body right and so that's another piece of this that we teach in grief recovery is the happiness the emotional work the sense of completion that's all done by you for you right your responsibility and it's your responsibility that's huge that's huge for me in learning that yeah now if I go do a bunch of work on my again this isn't my story I'm making up a story right now I just want to I sometimes I think I can be confusing if let's say theoretically I had this abusive dad and he was a drunk and he beat me and then I go do a bunch of grief recovery work and I forgive him for that stuff and then I go back over to his house and I have my son with me and you know I open the door and he's fall over drunk and take swings at me okay I may say hey for the safety of me and my son I'm glad I did that work and I resolved my unfinished emotional business with dad but me and dad ain't having a relationship and certainly my son's not seeing his grandfather because that's just all toxic right and I'm I'm drawing a line for the safety of me and my children they're not going to have a relationship with dad if you do something like that more more power to you I we got no problem with that but if you're like hey dad when me and my son come over just read this list of rules that you have to follow and everything will be okay okay I'll be happy and my kid will be safe and you just have to you just got to follow this script okay just follow this script and be the this part in my play that I'm directing and we'll be all good if you're leaning towards that you may want to look at your own stuff and I hate to be that direct but and don't worry and agree for cover I won't be that direct on a podcast I will I'm gonna let you find that for yourself on your relationship graph you know if you go do your relationship graph and you have a bunch of stuff that you're like oh in this context I feel like I need to apologize for that maybe I was a little overbearing here and maybe I was a little unfair and setting them up to fail over here if that a lot of that stuff comes out you may find dang I really did have too many expectations for dad and it was unfair to expect him to be just a part in my play because that's not that that wasn't fair on my side you know so you may find and this may be painful but again pain as part of the process too right have letting go of your ego letting go that rightness a lot of that time that can really heal and mend relationships you know and so these are the skills that we that we offer and agree for cover and you're right Victoria I'm a fan of therapy in a lot of ways I don't necessarily think that the these tools are are given in the way we look at things and I I think that sometimes again I don't know the factors I make it in trouble for saying this but I think estrangements at times have risen by traditional therapy out there where people whether it's the therapist or just the person hearing the therapy is misconstruing the concept of boundaries I think boundaries is a very very kind of silly term if you are emotionally incomplete with the past right everyone says hey you got to create boundaries but if you're incomplete with the past you with your heart in the past and you try to set boundaries you don't know what you're doing right because the boundaries are going to be these giant 12 foot walls when they don't need to be right if you get complete with the pain in the hurt they just may need to be seven foot walls but if if again if you're making the idea or you're thinking about the height and the thickness of the walls when you have a whole mountain full of unresolved grief with that person it's going to be the perceptually the wrong size wall and you're stuck behind the wall with the mountain of unresolved grief so you're still stuck in emotional jail so that's right it's conscious and intentional boundaries is the difference yes yes and you know the other thing too and I'm guilty of this myself and it's you know created some some pain in my life about man I wish I didn't handle it this way or that way and I think in modern society especially with the internet we can sever relationships like that we don't even have to have a conversation with the person we don't even need to reply to forget about a text message we could just pretend we're dead or they're dead or you know whatever you know and and there's terms like ghosting and you know there's terms for this stuff and if we get really comfortable doing that in romantic relationships then we'll do it in our friendships if we can do it in our friendships then we'll do it in our in our family relationships and so we have also been very very comfortable with just like clicking the leave button on the zoom even though the zoom is real life right and then and then filling that hurt and that pain and that void with more entertainment or more consumption of this or that right and I think that's another really really big piece of this that we need to square as a society is we need to learn how to again either end relationships with a more character right communicate things those those type of things because I think that is again trickling into all these other areas where it maybe historically it it wasn't it's easier to just quit somebody now right it's especially if I'm you know across the country it's like oh mom and dad don't understand I only see them twice a year anyway like not like what's a big deal right and so I think that's also something we're seeing is people are just severing relationships with maximum speed and kind of no regard for the the kind of human feelings on the other side of it I'm excited to announce our premium in-person certification training individuals who have a desire to help other people with grief and loss join us for a four day event that you will remember forever this is based on the proven four day certification we've done before the curriculum is the same but now you're going to get a ton of stories and education and training from Sandy these are tangible tools that help people in any area of their life you're going to get a ton of stories and education and training from me we will have double the amount of trainers to answer questions you have want to help people I'm missing information this missingly I'm an advocate for the grieving process because I know that's like why would you not tell somebody to heal there's going to be some tears in there and there's going to be some tissues but well I think what will surprise people that are considering this training is if you sat outside of the room when this training is happening you wouldn't believe how much laughter is happening in this training you wouldn't believe how much joy and hope you can see on people's faces as we're breaking and people are coming out of the room it's everything the thing she was saying made me feel seen and normal and validated and not insane I saw grief as this really bad dark thing instead of seeing it as the actual healing process as someone who's been in this field for 15 years now I would have loved to have been trained under these circumstances it's just such a premier training you're going to probably walk away with some like lifelong friends we did not want to say goodbye to each other at that end of that four days be able to help walk them through that and and give them that same light bulb that came on in my head it was it's transformative it was such a rich time of learning and engaging listening to people's stories being present being focused with who you're talking to is such a big part of the grief recovery work I had done a lot of things I'd done coaching I'd been in therapy I'd had done a lot of other modalities and they were helpful but when I did the grief recovery method and when I walked through the method and continued to use the tools life began to have color I went from being very emotionally disconnected to being very connected do not wait seats are filling up sign up you will not regret it I cannot wait to see you have a great day one thing that I learned that I'd never learned before I went through grief recovery was about enshrinement and be double mint and I I know people in my life who have you know they talk about this person or someone in their life like they could never make a mistake they've never like right they're on this pedestal and they're enshrining this person I'm like that's not really honest I mean we all have flaws right we all make mistakes and but learning about that and especially with a relationship that's been hurtful or painful or traumatic or what have you to find some sliver of good in that person brings the human humanness to the relationship it humanizes the person yes and I think that's where you know severing ties or you know we I let to your point about I think we forget that there's actually another human on the other side of the relationship well and that's right and this is where this first started coming on to my radar is I I was you know I've been doing this the certification trainings now for 15 years and I've I've done a lot of them and I saw more and more and more specifically but not not not not exclusively but specifically a lot of mothers who were grieving an assrangement from their adult child and these women were heartbroken right it felt like there was no difference if the if the their child died in a car crash or the the hurt and the pain that they were going through by not seeing them for five years or six years and they have a baby and they don't get to see their grandchildren and it was this deep deep deep pain and when I was working with this woman right this this mom of this adult child I could tell this mom was not a monster this mom this mom did not need to have 15 foot high 20 foot that concrete walls up placed there by her daughter was this woman perfect no far from it just like me you know just like you did she have flaws did she make mistakes in parenthood of course right and by the way she was showing them on the relationship graph she was owning her stuff she was wanting to apologize you know all these things this was a good human being yet her daughter wanted nothing to do with her and that's when this started my spidey senses started my hackles were not my hackles but kind of that that like what what is this phenomenon happening more and more because I saw it more and more and I saw these moms that were well intentioned good you know good kind people that were completely cut off from their children their adult children and and that's I think why I'm so fired up right now is because there are so many people estranged and both parties are good people and both parties are heartbroken you know and and it doesn't need to be this way it's about again expectations that are not realistic that you're placing on other people it's the notion that if they just do something my way I'll be happy when that is not how it goes right and then we don't know how to forgive we don't know how to apologize we don't really know how to look at our part and stuff we like to go right to black and white right and it just cut and dry this is that and that that's just not how real life works right I think also kind of Victoria like what you were talking about the other problem in my opinion and society is that everything almost everything is kind of done for us to where like shelters taking care of food is taking care of water is taking care of security is taking care of so you know back in the day community had to rely on each other you know that's kind of why I love living where I live in Idaho because I rely on my two neighbors right if we don't all plow the two miles of road to get out we are stuck right and I don't want this to turn into a shining situation right where I'm stuck on the mountain so you know I if my plow truck is down like I flat out cannot leave go get food I can't do those things without my neighbors right if my neighbor gets stuck in in the ditch I have to come help them right and vice versa and and and that creates a bond and a love that you just can't discard so quickly right and I feel like right now in modern society a lot of communities not every community I love that you started with the Philip the Filipino community you know in your area because again that that emphasis on community and helping each other survive and you know that is alive and well obviously you know in this community that you're referring to where in a lot of traditional American communities like that that isn't the case anymore I feel like all my needs are met and literally if I cut my mom out of this it's it's kind of not a big deal I mean that doesn't affect my net survivability strip all that away though right and who would be who would be there for you that's right that's absolutely right you know and again it just doesn't have to be this way these years and years and years that we're missing with our parents you know these years where they don't get to see you and they don't get to see their grandchildren it is heartbreaking heartbreaking stuff right and with some different tools you may have made a different decision or you maybe may make a different decision in a month from now or a week from now you know and so again here's my here's my little plug for a grief recovery we have thousands of grief recovery specialists all over the country who are highly trained less abrasive than me a lot more loving non-judgmental and they won't compare and they'll sit there and they'll be a heart with ears and they will share these tools with you so that you can reevaluate where maybe you're out with mom or dad maybe the relationship graph will help you find a lot more above the line happy memories that you have and remind you oh no this isn't a monster they're flawed or they make a mistake or we just disagree on this on this way to do so but they are not the monster that I kind of saw them to be right and then here's another thing that I want to say for the the parents on the estranged side one thing in grief recovery we talk about we have a couple of definitions of love that that I really appreciate okay one is loving myself is the willingness and ability to allow myself to make my own choices without any insistence that they satisfy others right that's that can be very very freeing for people when maybe they grew up in a in a world where they could not make any choices they had to make this choice this choice and this choice to make mom and dad happy and then they ingrained oh I only get love with other people when I do exactly what they say okay so this can be very freeing to people that grew up in that kind of world on the on the flip side of that loving others is the ability or gaining the ability to allow others to make their own choices without any insistence that they satisfy me and I want my my parents to hear that because sometimes as parents again we have this illusion and again it's not it's not conscious but it's definitely going on in the back of our head if this child doesn't make this choice this choice and this choice I won't be happy if this child doesn't go to the college that I want them to go to I won't be happy if this child doesn't go down this career path then I won't be happy and you get busy behind them trying to manipulate and force them to go down a path for your own happiness and I will say that a lot of the time in these estranged relationships where that where their parent is estranged that is their major part in in this estrangement so again I'm not trying to say the adult child who made the decision to a stranger the parent is 100% at fault because a lot of the time the other part of that and this may be painful to hear but the other part of that is an overbearing pushy manipulative mom or dad who push push push push push and then finally the parent or the child just said if you're not watching on video I'm giving the middle finger okay at some point the adult child said you know what I'm done being badgered and bullied I actually like the direction I'm going I actually like the things I accomplished I actually like the career choice I made I actually you know or whatever and I'm so fed up you're done you're out of here okay so again we all have a part to play in this and I'm just trying to tell the truth because I care about all parties involved in this situation and I want people to know the work is done on both sides right we can't heal a marriage unless both people are working we can't hear heal a mother daughter estrangement and those both sides are working at it okay so everybody plays a part but the bottom line is without grief or covering and without letting go of the hurt and the pain from childhood or from you know that big fight that you've never really resolved from it's very hard to do these things it's very hard to forgive if I'm not unfinished with the with the emotional pain it's very hard to apologize if I'm not unfinished with my rightness in this argument even though I had a part in argument right these are all things that again going back to that last sentence the estrangement often involves blah blah blah blah blah relatives due to years of unresolved conflict grief or cover helps with unresolved conflict emotional abuse grief or cover helps with emotional abuse mismatched values or neglect grief or cover helps with mismatched values or neglect why because you can forgive them for the values you don't agree with indirectly of them so we don't even have to get enough fight about this and I know this sounds impossible but through this process if you forgive your dad or your mom and you can do that to just another person in the room hearing that forgiveness you will feel a sense of resolution with mom or dad and you don't even have to mention hey dad by the way you know last weekend in Seattle I did this grief workshop on you actually as it comes to find out and I did a bunch of forgiveness work and let me tell you the forgives I gave you don't do any of that because they will have their side of the story they're gonna you know have their rebuttals and then all of a sudden I've lost the sense of union and it can um it completely should work that I did so again we'll teach you how to do all of that but that is that and we're getting into the weeds here and I apologize but those kind of things we will show you how to do so me and my mom my mom grew up and I don't want to date her but she grew up you know in a different era than I did and guess what we're not gonna see the world eye to eye ever my mom's never probably gonna see my the way I look at the world growing up in the 80s as a as a white male right and I'm not gonna see the world that she grew up you know in the other decades as a white female right I we don't need to we don't need to see the world exactly to say we never will right can I love her and can I let go of some of this stuff I don't agree with without nuking the whole relationship that's the name of the game right well okay well all right I've been ranting a lot good no really what I hear is acceptance right it's just uh-huh honoring acceptance yep of the humanness that we are the complexities that we bring to relationships yes yes and and you know again right we all I think we all know we've never been more divided in this country and if we extend this out past family uh uh uh uh a strangements like the look we know this the the country is estranged um the country is estranged right uh uh along some major major fault lines and I think that's sad and I I wish we could get some healing done okay but sometimes people come to grief recovery and they want to start by doing grief work on the major fault lines on the big riffs in society and I give them a hug and I welcome them and I say I'm glad you're here let's start with mom yeah exactly let's start with dad let's start with our strangement from our brother let's start with the death of our uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh uh of our sibling like let's start with the personal relationships and and the hurt that is right here and right now and let's learn these tools in all of these relationships that we're interacting with like on a daily basis or you know again we wish we could be interacting with this person or whatever let's start there and then let's use those tools to to maybe you know be a little bit more understanding our neighbors take on this or that right and again I don't have to agree with them but I can also uh honor that they're a good person in a lot of ways and then we just vehement vehemently disagree on this topic and this topic but it doesn't mean that they're a bad person you know it just means we disagree with that so like you said acceptance and just understanding that like your rightness is kind of part of who you are right but again it doesn't have to be somebody else's belief for us to get along well and I would ask too like before you come into before you show up in a relationship whether it's you know meeting for coffee or whether you to phone call or it's the family gathering or Christmas Thanksgiving or whatever it's like what what are you doing in your personal life that beforehand like what are you how who is the you that's showing up and is the you at your core and at your heart who you are in your heart the one that's present with the other person or is it all the emotional nervous system activation of watching the news for the past month and seeing all this tragedy and trauma and it's almost like we're addicted to it like means like are we becoming addicted to drama and trauma and violence and all of these things so you're watching all this stuff and then you're showing up to the people who you're in relationship with and is that really you it's a great point he talks from the collective drama trauma for a month and see how different you show up in your relationships and maybe even for yourself you might have more time to devote to your own healing and wellness I love that I love that I think that is a great great point obviously we are being right now we're we are the product right I mean in terms of social media harvesting our data keeping us online keeping us on watching scrolls you know and again right they they they the powers that be the people that are making money off of us know exactly what they're doing right they they want this division and again I won't put on my tinfoil hat too much here but I think we call all all agree that that whoever's pulling the levers of television and radio and media and social media they they they put stuff on there that we get addicted to and we can't take our eyes off of and that's exactly the state they they want us in and so I love what you're saying which is like hey detox that stuff do some work on your own heart and then see how you show up at the next holiday thing versus I'm you know three weeks into like a TikTok spiral and now and now I'm you know so fired up and then feeling like crap about yourself maybe too right because that's yeah you know or yeah feeling crap about yourself but on the top of that maybe feeling like your opinion is totally right and I've just been an echo I've been an echo chamber for three weeks with this scroll and everyone in this scroll because the algorithm sees it exactly my way and so now I'm even more high in mighty at the at the Thanksgiving table and you are all wrong and I got three weeks of TikTok spiraling to prove it and I think that's what Grief Recovery does too it seriously is the gift that keeps on giving I tell my clients that it is the gift that keeps on giving because even now six years later seven years later it shows up in my life in the most beautiful ways I mean we've had very deep conversations about emotional responses within our home are like you know an emotional response that wasn't necessarily justified right like we had an event happen and then my older two they're 20 almost 21 and 19 and we my husband and I and we the four of us had this really great conversation about emotional response to a situation that it has an impact it rip us yep and look look at what you're teaching because I know in that conversation on emotional response right I know you're teaching whose responsibility is it yes it's yours right and that is the truth and that is the great lie that we teach our kids growing up is you know don't wake up your dad you're gonna make him angry right that's not the truth the truth is dad wakes up and makes himself angry he could just as well wake up and be like I'm so grateful for your little critters yeah yeah yeah you were being loud but I love you and I'm not gonna let that room my day that's his reaction is his control but that's not what we teach right we teach if you go to college you're gonna make mommy so happy oh I think if you hit that home run you're gonna make dad so happy right well kids are smart and they go okay well I guess I'm responsible for other people's feelings they're for they're responsible for my feelings it's as simple as that and we ingrain that and we we enforce that uh and then you know again now we're in our 20s and our 30s and it's like dang mom is not doing what I need her to do to be happy well the solution is get rid mom's got to be out of the picture and sorry go ahead and that know that can be like even well intentioned right like oh you make me so proud I have been like that is the one thing that I really got from grief for recovery too was yes was that like to not words matter like how you say things matters and so to say to my kids oh you make me so proud I ask them do you how like doesn't that make you feel proud of you yes yes like having them reflect on what that experience or what that accomplishment made them feel like correct yes should be proud of yourself you worked really hard you did this and that you you know you put the work in you did that I'm so glad that you mentioned that because I do that constantly as well and I catch myself constantly doing that right even though I teach grief recovery and I grew up in the grief recovery household it's still so easy to want to say I'm so proud of you you know and and the reality is look they're producing those feelings inside let's honor their feelings and say you know you must be so proud of yourself I know you worked really hard for that you must be so proud of yourself you you know you you faced all of these adverse things to get to where you wanted to be wow that's amazing how you know what's going on with you right now what's how are you feeling in your heart put it put it to them they're producing those feelings start teaching them even if they like I'm not stopping there and being like okay son do you know what I did right there I teach I taught you that that you're producing your feelings not me I'm not doing that I'm just role modeling the way it actually happens in real life and therefore that they can understand that you know when they're 20 and they come to dad or mom and they've made a decision on the career path they want to pursue they know that uh mommy and daddy understand that their happiness is not contingent on this conversation I'm about to have with them right now again as a parent I may want to guide them or help them and I can't help myself because I'm a parent and we have we're all wise and all knowing when that's also kind of a joke as well but but again I will think that um and then I will just have to be busy on my side as the parent of this this kid turning into adult I in my mind in the back of my mind I will be saying love is the willingness to allow others their own you know they're allowing them the ability to make their own choices and they don't have to satisfy me now again with my six year old I don't allow him to like play in traffic okay so this is adult definitions of love right there are things that I cannot do with my six year old but boy when he is 17 and 18 and 19 and navigating adulthood I got to loosen the reins a little bit and I can be there and I can offer constructive criticism but I can't be hovering them over over him with this whole like make the right call or daddy won't be happy make the right call and or you're gonna see dad who's who's very very uh you know nonverbly not happy with your choice like that stuff gets old for kids approaching adulthood and again if you don't have skills to grieve and complete the child that you had you're gonna be unfinished with that child and you're gonna be treating this 23 year old like a child and they do not feel good about that that's another reason that this is all happening is because people just haven't learned yet that grief is about change and so you're grieving the little boy that's turning into the young adult you're grieving the young adult that's turning into the the full adult you're grieving these relationships and if you don't say goodbye to those relationships you won't have room or the presence to just allow them to be who they're they're being in the next part of the journey and that is another part of this is I'm unfinished with this kid you know so I'm treating this this person as a kid and that's not familiar that's not fun for them right I had to when I started working with my father you know in grief recovery I had to go and do a whole graph on him and a whole letter with him so I can complete all the stuff I was unfinished with him so that I could have a business relationship with him and meanwhile I know he and Russell his business partner are going and grieving and completing who I once was so they don't just see me as a 10 year old that you know they've known forever and they would allow me to make business decisions and participate in conversations because all of a sudden I'm I'm 28 I'm not the 15 year old they remember who was a total train wreck you know what I mean and so we all had to do grief recovery to get complete with the past so we could actually have a present that wasn't being dictated by years of unfinished moments or times or memories right does that make sense yes absolutely when I first worked I remember I had a job at 16 no maybe 18 with with grief recovery and I was a train wreck I was like one of the worst employees ever my my life was not in order you know and I had a lot of growing up to do well that's all Russell saw of me right so when I come back at 28 or 29 it's like I'm so glad I and I know he did work on me because we talked about it but I'm so glad he did things to forgive or to let go of that so that he could see oh this is this is now a different guy you know and then we could have a good business relationship wasn't perfect but it wasn't you know big drawn out fights and issues because again we grieved some stuff we needed to grieve in living relationships and that gave us an opportunity to have a new relationship and I think that brings up just the fact of even though you do this work if the people that you have in your life are not doing this work there's grief in that too right yes it's great point that's why it's a continuous a continual thing that you need to it's like I was looking up recently do just doing some research and one of the questions that apparently a lot of people are googling is how long does grief last uh-huh and it's like well I I think grief feelings last can last forever right like we're always going to have grief it's not something too fixed it's not something to get rid of yeah but it's it's fluid yes when you have the tools though it's you know it's going to be a roller coaster of course but like I said this is the gift these tools and grief recovery are the gift that keep on giving it you know just as unresolved business unresolved emotional trauma and weight that you're carrying around the rocks in the backpack are affecting your life for you know negatively or impacting your relationships in a unhealthy way just so too can this have the opposite effect and I it's a continual work I don't think we we never fully arrive to these enlightened and perfect beings we're always going to be flawed and we're always going to have moments of you know our when our best character isn't putting the best foot forward but yep that's why these tools are so amazing to have in your back pocket and in your toolbox yeah absolutely absolutely well we are I can't believe it but we're we're at the hour mark and so thank you for listening if you're still with us we we appreciate it and we hope that you found some value out of this and if you're new to grief recovery again a great place to start is getting a copy of the grief recovery handbook you know reading through that I would I would advise you not to do the actions in the book I'd advise you to kind of read the book see the context if it speaks to you my next step would be finding a grief recovery specialist either locally in your area or finding one online and then going through the actions of the grief recovery method with that specialist that will give you a very very thorough deeper dive than you could get from just the book right or the book and and just somebody you you've met or a friend or like again that's not that's not a bad idea like move but my my whole thing if it was a family member of mine or a friend of mine I would be wanting them to work with a specialist because we train a specialist to go very deep deeper than the book could right and you they'll be insights there and the format they're using will be much deeper than just the book so again that's a great place to start and again I want to I know I was probably a little fired up and a little brass here and I don't want to negate look if you've made the decision to a strange someone from your life obviously that there was a painful road leading up to making that decision but I don't know how to do this and I've struggled with my friendships I only know how to tell the truth because I care about people uh well that came out wrong I have lied definitely in my life but I with with with my friendships and and people I love I tell the truth sometimes to a fault but it's out of it's out of like good intentions okay so the truth of the matter is in an estrangement there is usually two parts and usually you messed up and they messed up and the work is you know again ideally done by both parties to understand we all had a part in this relay in this estrangement um and I don't know of a better tool than grief or recovery to figure out was that a strangement valid was this a safe choice was this a choice I had to make for the safety of me and my family or did I overshoot the mark by quite a bit and this person's actually a good human being and maybe they made some really massive mistakes but can I forgive them for that because they're my family because we've been friends for years whatever the case is the work is to be done in both sides and most of the time both parties have fault in it that's the truth of what I've seen if that hurts I'm sorry if you want to get angry at me versus looking at it that's fine you can do that but I've worked with hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people around this method and this is the stuff I see is as human beings we tend to step on each other's toes emotionally that hurts we want to escalate stuff now we're in an arms race and then it ends with an estrangement when it doesn't need to be we just need some other tools on how to kind of let go of some of that emotional pain that we've accumulated in that relationship yeah final thoughts from you yeah Victoria final thoughts from you yeah we project from our unresolved pain right like that's and I'm totally adding onto my website that this is a tool for vetting relationships it's really is it's true yeah really is yeah absolutely um and again now more than ever 2026 coming out of COVID coming out of all the political turmoil there's never a better time to get new tools to go review some relationships and maybe men's some old estrangements you know I have some friends that I don't talk to anymore because of old stuff I have some family members that I don't talk to and so I'm saying this as much to me as anyone listening right like like Victoria said there's no gurus in grief recovery there's nobody in grief for cover that does the stuff perfect perfect including me and so just as much as I'm saying this to you guys I'm saying it to me these are tools to help you go review relationships with with people in the past that are you know probably really really cool and you kind of lost sight of that so anyway I want to thank you for listening please like and subscribe and share this podcast with other people leave a review make sure that these tools get out there in a world that needs them now more than ever um again there's a lot of pursuits and we're not saying we're the only game in town therapy can be great often getting coach by someone can be great uh having faith and and and going through spiritual pursuits of uh you know can be great but I'm telling you grief recovery is the secret that not enough people in the world know about I would agree I cannot stress that enough I can't tell you how many times we have people who have tried a lot of things and quote say I should have just started here first and so again if you're listening and any of this is interesting to you look and agree for cover look into working with a specialist look into the book um and I will end there but again Victoria thank you for your time again at some point we're having you for round three I love having conversations with you I love how your mind works and uh and again I thank you for helping as many people as you do with these tools yep what we resist persists right yep yep 100 percent thank you for this opportunity of course of course all right so anyway have a great rest of your day or evening and we will see you next time on the feel free again podcast take care everybody bye