S6 Ep 3: Festival Mná, Blended Families, What's online? and Healthy Anger

so yeah get yourselves there all definitely i'm god we go to every single one now since we've been there we can't not go there we would never miss out on that again an opportunity to be with all those women and for everything to be as amazing as it was we wouldn't miss out on that again so you know um so that was really fun today is father's day i'm recording on sunday in my home it's father's day and yeah i uh i this is a tricky day for many many of us it used to be a very tricky day for me i used to always kind of feel resentful that i didn't have a dad that took care of me i used to I used to feel upset about the fact that my dad never did anything for me or, you know, tried to reach out to me or take care of me or protect me or, you know, like I used to have a lot of anger and resentment around Father's Day.

As I got older then, I used to celebrate my mom because she was an independent parent and she She parented us, the mother and father role, our whole lives.

And I'm very grateful to her for that.

That's a really difficult job.

That's a really hard way to live, as I know, because that cycle continued with me.

I was then a teenage mother.

I was then an independent parent.

and that's the nature of generational trauma you know when we don't address the things that are going on or maybe the the patterns that have caused a cycle to continue the cycle will just continue you know so I um I talk a lot on the podcast about how I've addressed that with Brooke and how I am ensuring that Brooke is not going to be another teenage parent independent parent we're choosing real men here we're choosing real partners whatever we do we're not having losers who don't take care of their kids in our lives in this family anymore

okay

okay um so yeah it's father's day and um i feel really blessed that kev is in our life i think he is a really good but when i met kev brooke was just 13, 12.

What age is she now? 17.

So she would have been 12.

So yeah, when I met Kev, Brooke was 12.

And at that stage, it's a tricky stage because I think if you met somebody amazing when the kids are so young that they don't really remember life without the man or the new partner, I think... it's it's a maybe the stepdad transition is easier or something I don't know but when I met Brooke when I met Kev when Brooke was 12 Brooke was a very Brooke knows our vibe you know like we're very clear at that stage I had started a good bit of healing and I I am the matriarch of our family I set out what's gonna happen what's right what's not who disciplines it's me it's all me so I thought that Kev would come into our lives and that he would be a cool influence in the house but certainly not a father figure or a stepdad or anything I thought it was kind of too late for that and to a certain extent it is if we're honest it is it's he's never going to discipline Brooke he's never going to you know do any of that that's my role I'm her mom I'm her safe place Kev is here and absolutely we have conversations that need to happen no doubt about that no doubt about it but I am the one if something difficult needs to be said or be dealt with it's me because I am her parent and I have established that bond with her since she was small so Kev's role when he joined our family when we were blending our family was very much like he was here with us and we love having him around but he's not the dad he's not the parent he's not it doesn't do any of the difficult stuff he's here for the fun stuff the good times and he's there to support me when things are difficult in parenting which they are from time to time they can be quite difficult he's there as a support to me um he's also there as like kind of practical support and making sure that when i my time and my energy is taken up being a parent in difficult times that he carries on and keeps all keeps the house going and keeps the keeps things ticking over you know like that's kind of the roles that we slid into um and Brooke is now nearly 18 and we're five years together two years married and um I think it's really precious how their relationship has evolved over time into this gorgeous kind of stepdad daughter kind of element you know it's really precious I'm really proud of it and I think that we navigated that really well I think like when you're a woman who has been treated badly and who has had experience of abuse and violence and being lied to and gaslit and just like all of the terrible ways you could damage someone's self-esteem, when you have experienced that, you feel, I'll speak for myself, I felt as I felt like I was a failure as a mom.

I felt I was a failure as a woman.

I felt that I didn't set boundaries well enough.

I didn't, you know, do the things that women who are empowered do.

You know, I wasn't doing it right.

And I suppose like.

I think that we put that expectation on women that like, oh, why didn't you just set boundaries? Why did you tolerate it? I feel like the question is like, why is he such a loser? Why is he so entitled that he feels that he can behave that way? You know, certainly we have things to learn.

Self-responsibility is really important.

I think more responsibility if not all most of it 90% of it goes on the abuser you know but when you go through things like that the thoughts of bringing another person another man into your child's life is really daunting and really like I cannot fuck this up again I cannot make this huge mistake again I cannot have a person in our lives that's going to treat me badly again and have Brooke witness her mom be upset and just constantly in survival mode, you know, constantly trying to survive.

I need to pick someone good.

And I suppose I did a lot of work and you can go back through any of the rest of the seasons to listen about that work.

And yeah, now we just have Kev in our life.