“How can I prioritize what matters to me when I have an under-supportive spouse?” || Coaching call with Emily

Emily is a mother of 6 struggling to juggle the various demands of her life, including finding time for herself to pursue higher education. What started off as a surface level issue of finding the time and focus for her writing, turned into a deeper conversation about family support and communication. This same thing happens quite often when I am coaching, where women think they are struggling in one area but it is really much deeper.

As you listen to this live coaching call with Emily, you can apply some of the questions and thought processes to your own life. In this episode specifically we talk about re-potentializing (I explain it!) and how to manage the support, or lack thereof, from loved ones. We will all experience really good people, even close loved ones, that are not enrolled in our visions. This episode will teach you that you can honor their fears without bending to them.

About a few other things...

Do you struggle to create habits that stick? It's not your fault. The truth is simple: you've been trying to form habits using methods designed for perfect robots--not real women living real lives. It's time to change that. If I could help you gain confidence in creating habits AND guide you to uncover the ONE supportive habit to deeply care for yourself, could you commit 21 days to learning this method? The Sticky Habit Method is a 21-day course that revolutionizes the habit-formation process. It's real habits for real women.

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SHOW NOTES
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TRANSCRIPT

Monica: Emily, thanks for being willing to do this coaching call with me. It's great to have you.

Emily: Thank you. It's wonderful to be here

Monica: Let's start with an introduction. Tell everybody a little about yourself.

Emily: myself. I am a really interesting human being. Sometimes I wish it was easier to feel that way. Among other things, I am, I want to be academic. I'm always trying to figure out a way to go back to school. I am a mother of six kids, which makes the aforementioned rather difficult. And I have started a lot of things I haven't finished.

Monica: And we're gonna talk about why that likely is today we're gonna talk about some of those obstacles that are getting in the way of, of the goals that you have, the things you wanna finish in your life. How about you tell us a little bit more about what you would like to be coached on today, more specifically.

Emily: As I've tried to figure out what is the thing, the habit that I really want incorporated into my life, I did some coaching with someone last year. I. And they're like, Your personality type really needs to be doing deep work. That's what you're built for.

Monica: Yeah.

Emily: And I was like, That feels really true. But when I tried to read the book Deep Work, it was really fortunate it was an audio book or I would've thrown it against the wall.

Monica: By Cal Newport. Yeah.

Emily: there was really, it was like the problems you talk about with a lot of advice about habits and women. It was just totally impractical to apply any of it to my life at the time I read it. And so I felt so discouraged because I felt the value of what it was saying about how the body and brain need to do deep work, but I couldn't see any way to practically apply it in my life while also doing care work.

So I that's, but I recognize I do have that need and that I need to address that in order to be, bring my best self to all the other things I'm doing.

Monica: Mm-hmm.

Emily: And so immediately to mine I was like, What is the habit you most wanna work on? Writing. But it's such a tricky habit because you can protect time to do it.

You can find a slot or a when then for writing, but that doesn't mean that when you sit down to write, your brain will be in the right frame of mind. You'll be able to be productive with that time. And that's been really frustrating for.

Monica: Mm-hmm. So we have a combo of a few things. We have a need and a desire that's competing with reality, and I wanna talk more about that reality. And as part of that, we also have the, when the rubber meets the road, even if you're able to follow through with the actual design of when, and then you're gonna do it, it's the internal, right, the internal struggle of being able to rise up to meet that, am I, am I right with this?

Emily: That sounds right to

Monica: right direction? Okay.

Let me go a few directions with this, okay, Emily. First let's talk about the if we were to have the obstacles removed to reality, what could that look like for you?

Emily: The best scenario I've been able to work out in the past to complete my master's thesis. I had a standing babysitter on Thursdays and she showed up at three. I left the house and I had from three until I was too tired to work. So I was just gone Thursdays afternoons and evenings, and I knew that I could protect that time.

And that is the most realistic thing that has worked the best for me. But I've had a really hard time arranging childcare. I've had a number of, of babysitters not work out and I've not been able to get anyone to commit to a standing appointment for a couple of years now. And so that hasn't been an option, but that was the closest thing to an ideal that I've experienced that felt remotely realistic.

Monica: so it was a set aside day

Emily: Yeah.

Monica: and period of time.

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Monica: Where you could be removed from the obstacles, and when we say obstacles, we're talking about sweet little kids. You know, sometimes not so sweet, right? But we're talking about those kids.

Emily: Yeah. And the environment of the home where everything you look at has a story of. Oh, yes, I've been meaning to do that. Or, Oh, I need to do that. Or, Oh, that's feeling urgent this moment. So being removed from the physical environment also helped.

Monica: Okay, so a set aside day and a period of time removed from responsibilities and distractions. During that time when you did have that standing babysitter, did you feel like you were able to focus in the ways that you needed to

Emily: it was still sometimes a struggle cuz I'd arrived and I was like, I've gotta use this time. Well, and sometimes I had to do the work of getting into the right mindset before I could do the work of the writing or the research. And sometimes it was frustrating to have to use that time in that way.

Monica: Yes. Mm-hmm. sounds like overall it was still happening more times than not, though, like you were able to somehow get into the zone?

Emily: Yeah. And part of that was because the stakes were high. I had to complete the thesis to graduate. I had faculty members checking on me regularly. There was like a fire lit. There was someone besides me that cared if it was completed.

Monica: Okay. Yeah, and that's definitely a factor. Especially when you're carrying the weight of, of now, like the sole weight of, of working towards what your goals are. Right now you are in a place.

You know, this might seem dramatic, but despair, you know that that might seem like a dramatic word, but it feels that way when you keep hitting the same obstacle over and over and over. And despair for me and the woman that I coach comes most often when we feel like we don't have a choice. Is that happening here a bit with this?

Emily: I can think of a lot of instances where that's what it's felt like I come up against my responsibilities or the emotional needs of my kids, and it's like, well, this I guess, trumps everything right now. So I don't feel like I have a choice in those moments.

Monica: Mm-hmm.

Emily: and it's frustrating when I've tried to protect time. And it seems like it's so easy for that attempt to be more or less sabotaged by reality.

Monica: And so what we want to do is to move you from this place of despair to a place of choice again, because that's really what the antithesis of despair is. It's, it's, it's inserting choice. When we are stuck in despair, especially when we keep hitting an obstacle over and over and over again, and it's out of our control, that kind of make us feel like the choice has been removed from us.

We can, in a weird way, be comfortable with that space and it also blinds us from seeing other options because we are thinking at the level of the problem, we can only see the problem. And this isn't to say this is your fault. Like, why don't you just like, you know, think about things differently. That's not what this is.

It's different. Maybe you've heard me do this with other women I've coached or just talked about it in general, and it's called re potentialize. What it is is blowing this out to a bigger picture thing of knowing that. Instead, our goal is to insert choice and we're gonna figure that out together. But as part of that, we're going to re potentialize the situation, and that means we are going to try to insert an objective lens, even though it's ourselves still doing this, of being able to think at the level of the solution and not the problem. That doesn't mean that we pretend the problems don't exist. They do. But we are coming at it from a different perspective of being able to find other possible choices, re potential. We're we're inserting more possibility. Does that sound possible for you? Or is even the idea seeing? I don't think that's realistic.

Emily: No, very much. Part of the optimism I find within myself, even when my life is really crazy and really intense, is that I'm, I'm a naturally, I'm naturally inclined to expand possibilities rather than, than restrict them. So I, I'm totally open to that.

Monica: Okay, great. And actually that's the, the key. It's just to be even open to being, to re potentialize if you can even be open to it. I mean, that's, that's it. Let's start though with knowing that what works best for this scenario is removed time away from the home. And away from their responsibilities and having it more second nature, like right. More predictable. A standing appointment. What are the potential ways, if you were to say, an outsider came to look at this, or your best friend, spouse, whatever it may be.

Like, what, what ideas could they come up with for you? We're just in the brainstorm mode. Opening, opening us up, brainstorm.

Emily: Okay. If I were to sit down with a friend to try to solve this we would open up my calendar, look at. You know, the times when my other commitments are the lightest see what can be offloaded. And and then once we've identify some windows of time, we would probably look for what would be my options for probably mostly childcare during those windows of time.

And try to look at options that I haven't considered before for solving that problem.

Monica: So what would those options be? Let's stick into those a little bit. Let's talk about just the childcare options.

Emily: well the only thing I've seriously considered is, you know, texting people that have watched my kids before and asking them what their availability is like, and usually in a pretty passive way because it's hard. It's really hard to ask for help with childcare. There can be a lot of cultural baggage associated with that. And so saying, I, I need help in that way, even when it's, you know, help, you're willing to pay for. It, it can be emotionally complicated and so looking at. More structured maybe drop in daycare options or looking outside of like the circle. You know, I could look geographically outside of the neighborhoods I've been looking in.

I could certainly be more assertive in solving that problem than I have been. But it's like been the sort of thing where a little bit of discouragement Sets me back quite a bit as far as, Oh, I guess that didn't work. Well, I tried. That was so hard to try. I'm just going to, you know, cower for a little bit.

Monica: Okay. This is interesting. So it's not lack of unpursued options. So there's, That's the great news. There's a lot of options that have not been pursued, even down to maybe the online ones of asking a neighborhood Facebook group or church group, or even like a whole mommy group in the area. And to the actual services like Nanny Lane or care.com.

Even asking friends like, what, you know, what kid is, is doing college right now? Like what, what college age kid needs a job every Thursday for the night? You know, so, so it's not that there's a lack of options, it's more the what is holding you back from pursuing it. Right.

Emily: Yeah, and I, I can see myself being easily talked out of pursuing it aggressively, and I think part of that is because I don't feel like anyone but me values it. So it's hard to commit resources to that.

Monica: You know, Emily, every single woman I do coaching with, no matter how seemingly simple the habit is, like I'm talking about laundry,

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Monica: it always goes deeper. And This is one of the big reasons why we, we as women, need to do habits differently because it is so tied to these emotionally charged experiences or ways we view ourselves and others.

And honestly, I think that's what we need to do. We need to get really clear about what is holding you back from asking for help. You brought up one right there already, feeling like you're the only one who values. Can you tell me a little bit more about that? Or is that more of a

Emily: no, I totally can. I just, then I have to get into like marriage dynamics and stuff, but like when I was,

Monica: Yeah.

Emily: I'm fine. Like when I, the second half as I was trying to complete my master's program and I could feel the resentment building up in my family as it was getting, you know, To the two year mark and the two and a half year mark that I'd been committing so much time to this and had to be more unavailable.

I could feel emotional energy of my family being really annoyed not being super willing in the ways they were supporting me. They still did them because structurally there wasn't much of a choice. But when you can feel that emotional energy of them, Resenting it. That was really difficult for me. And it led me to, once I completed it, feeling like, okay, well first of all, I was eight months pregnant when I graduated with my fifth child.

But I just felt like I have to commit a bunch of time to doing damage control in my relationships because everybody is mad at me. For taking the time to do this for myself. And I do feel like there were a lot of ways in which it was also good for them and good for my relationships with them. But that was my overall feeling by the time I completed was I just need to be available for a while because everyone's so frustrated that I haven't been available.

And, you know, that led me to not setting myself up to have a lot of options right out of grad school. And so I graduated, I had two babies in quick succession and then, You know, with, and then I, after I'd had two babies, I started getting the diagnoses for my kids and realizing just how intense my parenting experience was set up to be.

And that feeling of asking, especially my spouse, do that solo parenting for periods of time so that I can pursue things that are important to me. We can discuss it and we can agree that I do so much of the solo parenting and I carry so much of the mental and emotional load for our family that I do need that time.

But when it actually comes time for him to do that time alone with the kids there's just this energy about it that makes me really hesitant like it has to be. I, every time I feel like I'm going to commit time to doing things that I know are important to me, it's like I have to decide how much am I willing to fight for this, because I know there's going to be relational fallout and that I'm going to have to defend my choice.

I'm going to have to have, They're not major arguments, but just like the little unpleasant conversations that you have. You value something that they value less. And I'm a sensitive enough person. That's difficult for me that I, I feel all of those emotions and I internalize them inherently in a, And I've gotten better at differentiating emotions than I used to be, but I'm still very sensitive and so it's difficult.

Difficult for me to defend and protect those priorities that aren't inherently valued by, you know, the people whose space I share and whose emotional energy I'm always around.

Monica: Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's always so much deeper. It makes so much sense to me that this whole area of your life has been hard to make momentum on when there's so much fear attached to it. Fear of, you know, this is, of course, there's like the fear of all this work that I have to do, not only to arrange these things, but also to to make everyone else okay with the arrangements that is emotionally and.

Physically, spiritually, like always taxing. So that's a heavy weight, and it makes sense that you would want to avoid that by, you know, saying, I tried and you texted some people, or you weren't as assertive as you typically would be. It's like the guise of following through without really following through, right?

Emily: Yeah, it's just kind of that being. Easily kind of gun shy. Like it doesn't take, it doesn't take very much for me to retreat when it can just feel really tender.

Monica: Yeah, and I want to affirm that, you know, we can have really good people in our families who are not enrolled in the visions, you know, of what we need and, and, and honoring what we value it. It can be something they resist. Really good people can resist shifts and dynamics, shifts and responsibilities. And you sensing that, I don't think you're off in that.

And it's not saying like, Wow, that's terrible. Like what a terrible person or what, terrible kids or whatever it may be, whoever's resisting it, right? It's more about looking at it as the big picture of this is what we do as humans. They're used to you being always available. They're used to you putting out the fires and them having to step up in different ways is really challenging and they are resentful.

You know, they might have the guys of following through, just like you've done with this, like right now, like before, they had the guise of following through, but not the heart, not the assertiveness. I think you're right in tracking it. So here's where we have two choices. And both of these choices are founded in the same thing and it's accepting limitations.

We can accept that this is challenging and you are up against some big emotional and also time intensive and you know, work intensive obstacles of your, You have six children that require a ton of. Require a, a really capable person to manage their care. So we can start with those limitations. We can also accept the limitations that in order for you to make progress on this goal, you need time away.

And that those don't have to be competing things that in being away, you can come back. A full person to give from in ways that you otherwise would not. So that's a whole other coaching call. Like we, we could spend a lot of time on that. I just wanted to give that idea to you.

Those don't have to be competing. Right. But as part of accepting these limitations, we also have, we also have to accept that people are not enrolled to the vision.

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Monica: And that means now we're gonna go to the two pathways. If we can accept that this does require more effort. I'm the primary one who has to make these arrangements. This matters more to me than it does in those in my household. Now it's up to what are the choices I'm choosing to make in spite of these limitations, And not even in spite of them, because of them.

Like, were they along for the right. And this is where we remove ourselves from the despair, we're, we're reinserting choice. Now we can't change these limitations without lots of time and work and even therapy, which can all happen and, and could be part of the choices you make in the big picture.

But in terms of this actual thing, like what are some of the choices you can make? And that's where you do it without them. And you know, you're just carrying that load yourself, of making the arrangements and being more assertive and doing it because you know what makes you the person you wanna be as a mom and as a wife, or you do it with them and you accept that that resentment is gonna come along for the ride and it will be more of a long journey to work on being seen and accepted for these, these things that you value and these parts of yourself that you need to be honored.

But it's not, I was actually talking about this with a client the other day. So let me, let me say this one other way. There's a way for us to acknowledge other people's fears in our lives. The people that we are in the closest relationships with, there's a way for us to acknowledge them, validate them, see them, and make them part of the conversation without bending ourselves to them.

Emily: Yeah.

Monica: What's that bringing up for you?

Emily: Just working on having healthy boundaries and limits in all of my relationships. And that can be difficult when you are more sensitive to other people's emotions than the people whose emotions you're sensitive to. And so it just takes more work and more preparation so that you know what you're gonna do or what you're gonna say when those difficult moments come.

Monica: And that also is something that won't be a one time conversation. So this is a longer haul kind of thing. So this is where we're gonna come back to your choices. Again, you can choose to not do that, you know, And I mean that you can just choose to say, This isn't gonna work. I, I, I can't do this alone right now.

I can't bear this weight. And, and with that, you're gonna have to weigh out the tradeoffs. What are they? Are the tradeoffs that I am depleted are the tradeoffs that you show up with resentment because you're avoiding other people's resentment of you. Are the tradeoffs worth it to you though?

You know, you get to decide that. , but you also, again, got to decide if maybe the other way is what you are willing to do to persist in this, in this, in this part of you that matters so much and what those trade offs are that you are willing to accept too.

Emily: Well, again, I kind of feel like that is what I've been choosing for the past five or six years because I have,

Monica: You've done a lot of this. Yeah.

Emily: I've run into that wall a lot of times and basically chosen. I will return my attention to putting out these fires and soothing these feelings, and I will, you know, shelf the things I was trying to do

Monica: Mm-hmm.

Emily: a short time until I have enough bravery to come back to it again.

But every time I go through that cycle, You know, it affects how I feel about myself, that I've made so many efforts to try to start to dig in, to accomplish something, to finish something. And you know, you have enough things that you register in your brain as failures, and it starts to flavor your own resentment towards things in all parts of your life.

And I'm getting to the point where I need to address and honor my feelings and my programming because my own resentment gets really unhealthy,

Monica: Mm-hmm.

Emily: so I need to, it's time for me to start choosing the other path and all of the emotional work that goes with that. Sometimes when I've had to do all of that emotional work to get to the point where I'm now ready to do the deep work, that's important to me. I am so depleted by the emotional work that it gets hard to do the creative work that I fought so hard to be able to do.

Monica: And that's what I wanna make sure we, we hit on before we end, end this coaching call first though, let's, let's make sure we're affirming where we know you are at.

Emily: Okay.

Monica: You know, this, you've lived it, you've also lived out the tradeoffs, and there might be different ways to, to move through the tradeoffs next time too.

 There might be other things you can do as a family to enroll people in the vision in the long term. Yeah. Even if all you can control in that situation is enrolling your children in the vision, more of them seeing this deeper why behind this path for you, because it makes you who you need to be for them and for yourself, you know, and, and what it does for them to, to see their mom pursuing a passion and having something to call her own and having light in her eyes and being herself. And it's not to say we have to have something outside of motherhood to feel fulfilled in it, but a lot of women do. A lot of women do. So there's that part of this, That maybe we can do things differently this time and still accepting those limitations.

Okay, so we are hearing you right though. You know it's time. And you are, because you're acknowledging that time, and we can embrace this deeper why for you, that can be what drives the work to figure out the childcare.

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Monica: Okay? That's, that's what I want to be pushing you. The fears can come along for the ride. The fears of people being disappointed, put out, annoyed, resentful.

The fears of the work they'll take to have those conversations, get people enrolled in the vision, all of that, that's all welcome for the ride, but the deeper why weighs all out, and that's what can push you. Does that sound in alignment with where you're at right now and what you can do?

Emily: Yes. And here's an example of that. So my oldest is 16. He's eligible to get his driver's license on October 18th, which is in seven days, , and the idea of him being able to do some of the driving people around. and the bandwidth that could free up for me is really exciting for me, whereas all my husband can see is that our auto insurance will double and that we, if we buy him a car, he just sees dollar signs.

That's all he sees. And so I trying to help him grasp the vision of like what it would mean for me to get my oldest set up to be able to do some of the chauffeuring of kids. I can tell that's gonna be.

Monica: Yeah.

Emily: A battle. It's gonna require a lot of energy for me to convince him that this is important enough to me that he's going to have to come along, even though it's not a priority he shares with me. So that's, that's something that I'm anticipating eminently, where I am going to have to, you know, stand up for myself, expend emotional energy to set myself up to be. Do things that are a priority for me and I can see right in front of me what it's gonna take for me to do that. And I am absolutely feeling dread about those conversations that I see standing between where I am and where I wanna be.

Monica: And you're not wrong. Again, these are part of the things like, yeah, we have to accept that that is going to be everything you just described, but this is where we go back to two things. One, what's the deeper why here, and that needs to be part of the conversation and that's going to demand a level of vulnerability that.

Maybe you've gone down in the past and hasn't been accepted, so maybe you've shrunk away from that, or you've hidden it or stuffed it down, or you've been resentful of that, whatever it may be that you need to have the courage to bring out, again, of the deeper reasons why the practical for sure matters, but the deeper, deeper part of parts of it.

And as part of that, that conversation we just had about being showing up to this conversation. As your higher self connected to this deeper why. The most loving thing you can do is refuse to bend to the fears because you know what the cost is of doing that and how that will ultimately be more damaging for the relationship and for the family.

Emily: Yeah, and I've experienced what it feels like to concede and concede and to feel. The resentment that I can't avoid feeling when I'm not honoring my own really deep and very real needs. And I know that that's not healthy. And so I'm learning I'm learning that it's worth being more stubborn than I'm, you know, inherently that it's natural for me to be.

Because I know it's better for my relationships in the long run. I don't know that I'm ever gonna get to the point where those conversations aren't really difficult for me. And that's okay. That's okay. I hope that as I work on having more of them communicating lovingly, staying calm, and you know, Insisting on my priorities and my needs being on the table, that the relationships improve and the conversations improve.

I don't have any guarantee that they will,

Monica: a big part of this dread is because, It's not a regular conversation. . And, and not to say like, you need to have these every day and they need to be big. It, you know, we break these out into like, this is an ongoing conversation. It becomes a different way of navigating and showing up to relationships.

But yes, it's part of that. There does need to be at least that initial conversation and that does require an extreme amount of courage and with that vulnerability, and that's where I think what I would advise you to do is to get centered in that vision of who you want to be as a wife, as a woman, as a mother, That you can get centered in that deeper why of why this is the most loving thing to do, is to be more assertive in these areas so that you can show up as that person because of the love you.

Emily: Yeah, and that is a recentering that I think I need to do probably multiple times a day.

Monica: Yeah.

Emily: I've, I've been. Making great progress at making sure I'm not doing things for my kids, for my family, that they are perfectly capable of doing for themselves, just because it's easier for everybody.

Monica: Yeah,

Emily: and helping them all need me less because I know I need to be less available. Not that I need to be unavailable, but I'm working on, you know, making sure that they're as independent as possible that I'm supporting them in smart and intentional ways, and, you know, trying to optimize my interactions as a parent so that I'm not wasting energy doing things that aren't getting us where we want to be. But I still think, I feel guilt for that, and I don't feel like I'm, I'm, I feel like I'm doing it selfishly and not lovingly. So I think having that recentering, that the most loving thing to do is to do what I need to, to show up as a loving person, which involves meeting my own needs and not resenting them for not meeting my needs.

Monica: Mm-hmm.

Emily: It's going to help me not have the emotional baggage of feeling guilty all the time, which I think helps me conserve the emotional energy I need for when I do need to have those difficult conversations.

Monica: and to also just accept, you know, when you talk about accepting limitations a lot, that's one of them. Accept that this, that guilt. That like nagging thought, like, wouldn't it just be easier to stop? Like, or aren't you just supposed to not care about this stuff? You know, those, those kind of things, like those are gonna come and the discomfort's gonna be part of the ride.

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Monica: But one of the great things about resistance is that as you learn to accept it as part of the path, then you're able to be more resilient. Within the resistance,

Emily: Which is exactly what I need.

Monica: I've been so grateful that you've been willing to go down this path with me because you came wanting to work on this habit of writing time, and we can see Now, it's deeper. It's about the fears, it's about the responsibilities, It's about navigating that with its conflict with other people.

And, and this is what real women are living out every single day. I know every woman listening can relate to this in at least some capacity. So you, thank you for the courage to be willing to talk about this, and let's start by knowing that we need a recentering in this vision. And this can be as simple as, Emily, you taking a little bit of time to just cast a vision of what it feels like or what it would feel like to be a woman who is centered and fulfilled. And that's the. That's the vision that we can recenter ourselves in and being, I am, I am a woman who feels these things because I live out this way in a loving, really beautiful way that we can bring back to, it can become a mantra almost like that's like part of an identity statement even so that you can reenter yourself to have the first of ongoing conversations starting with just the.

Here's where I want you to go from here. Okay. Let's just start with casting the vision. What would it look and feel like to be fulfilled in this way for you? You can just send that to me through email. I just wanna hear it. You can I, I'm not trying to give you more work, but maybe that accountability and also someone who, you know, is really interested in this will, will help you feel like you're, you're able to prioritize that.

Let's start with casting a vision

Emily: Mm-hmm.

Monica: and then having that hard conversation we talked about with the car as a start. To other hard conversations to come. We're not doing the whole big thing yet. This is just a sampling, right? And then be more served with childcare, with this vision in mind and starting your work periods.

However, longer short, remove for responsibilities or not with a ritual. The grounding ritual can be very short. It can be as simple as a deep breath and a reminder of what this is really.

Emily: That's fantastic. Thank you. And I, I just love the idea of honoring myself and my own humanness enough to allow that I need that transition of. providing myself with a ritual just feels so kind to myself. I love it ,

Monica: And I hope you can give yourself that kindness too as you're navigating. The fine lines of accepting limitations, but also not bending to the fears, you know, of, of, of other people. It's a long road, but I think it will be a happier, more fulfilling road for you and for your loved ones. It's not just for you.

This is, this is ultimately for them,

Emily: Yeah, I want, I want to show up for them in a more kind and centered way, and I also want to model for them the kind of, you know, healthy approach to relationships and. Model for them what it looks like to take responsibility for meeting your own needs too. So this is important to me in that way too.

Monica: Well, we're here for you and I appreciate that you'd be willing to to talk about this today, and I'm excited to hear how things go.

One moment actually. Brad. What? Yes. Actually. Do you mind doing that? Sorry. He was asking if he needs to go pick up the four year old, and I said, I'll one moment. And then I was like, Oh, no. Wait. I actually wanna make sure I, I, I talk about one more thing with Emily.

Okay.