Managing Emotional Exhaustion and Caregiver Burnout

Discussing emotional struggles in caregiving

SPEAKER_02 0:00

What happens when the greatest threat to your family's peace isn't the legal system or the school district, but the weather inside your own head? As kinship caregivers, we're experts at surviving the hurricane, but we're often drowning in the daily drizzle of irritation, resentment, and gloom. Today I'm speaking with a favorite friend of mine, Matt O'Neill, author of The Good Mood Revolution. We're identifying the eight specific bad moods that sabotage our leadership and learning how to flip the switch before the eye roll leads to a blowout. Welcome to Grandparents Raising Grandchildren, Nurturing Through Adversity. In this podcast, we will delve deep into the challenges and triumphs of grandparents raising grandchildren. As we navigate the complexities of legal, financial, and emotional support, I invite you to join us on a journey of exploring thoughts, feelings, and beliefs surrounding this growing segment of our society. Drawing from real stories and expert advice, we will explore the nuances of child rearing for children who have experienced trauma and offer valuable resources to guide you through the intricate journey of kinship care. We'll discuss how we can change the course of history by rewriting our grandchildren's future all within a supportive community that understands the unique joys and struggles. This podcast was made especially for you. Welcome to a community where your voice is heard, your experiences are valued, and your journey is honored. I got the kids off to school the other morning and collapsed back in my chair. The coffee wasn't hot enough. The dog next door was yapping away. And this morning, my grandson had been moving at a pace that I can only describe as geologic. I wasn't just tired, I was in a mood. It was that low-level irritability that makes every question feel like an attack. I realized that if I walked into the hallway with that energy, I was going to trigger a trauma response from my husband before breakfast even started. Being an invisible CEO means realizing that my mood is a contagious piece of the family infrastructure. This conversation with Matt changed how I look at my inner weather and gave me the tactical tools to buy back my joy, even when the logistics are heavy. Matt, it's so great to have you back.

SPEAKER_00 3:19

Oh, Laura, I am so happy to be here. You're one of my favorite people on the planet, and I am so excited for the work you're doing, especially your new book.

SPEAKER_02 3:28

Thank you, thank you. And I feel the same about you. It's so nice to reconnect with you. The first time I met you, and we recorded episode 32. I so needed to hear what you had to say. We'd had the grandchildren for two and a half years, and I felt like I'd just come up for air from the shock of everything. And I met you and I read your book right away, and it totally changed my world. It was just what I needed to hear.

SPEAKER_00 4:02

It is such an honor for you to say that.

Discussing the good mood revolution

SPEAKER_02 4:21

Thank you. I accept that honor. That was October, it was October 29th, 2024, when that episode was released. So that was a year and a half ago. And now four years have gone by, and I can't believe how long change takes sometimes. That day we focused on the good mood revolution and it lifted me from where I needed to be. But one of the things that I notice in my community here online as caregivers, who've been thrown into these unexpected roles, many of us do, feel trapped in a cycle of resentment and exhaustion. And you talk about our eight primary bad moods. So what I'd really love to do is uh talk about those today and how we can flip those around. But when a grandmother is staring, because I know this happens to me, when a grandmother's staring at a sink full of dishes and a teenager who's just slammed the door, she isn't thinking about the good mood revolution. She's trying to survive the next 10 minutes and keep from totally losing her cool and saying something that she shouldn't. And sometimes we do.

SPEAKER_00 5:49

So I'm a I'm a father of four, and I and I've got three daughters, and there's some door slamming, and there's some full dishes, and there's endless Uber driving. I I'm I'm a dad, Uber, a duber in homework, and then also, you know, I have a career, and so I I I also get it. I yeah, I get that feeling of okay, I'm about to snap. I'm about to lose it. And so the first you said three words that I wrote down. The first is trapped. And I want to I want to talk about this idea of feeling trapped. One of the biggest concepts for me that shifts everything is knowing that I never have to sacrifice. Sacrifice is never required. So when I'm I'm looking at the sink full of dishes and I'm feeling like I have to, you know, I have to do this. It's on me, it's all on me. It's I'm like, okay, at that moment, I am thinking I don't have a choice, that I just have to just buck up and take care of all this stuff. But I want I want the person listening to know this is this is a lie. We don't have to do the dishes. We don't have to raise our children. We don't have to raise our grandchildren. In fact, it's sometimes it's a good idea when we feel like we have to, like we're trapped in this situation and we have to do this thing. I will totally stop what I'm doing and I will sit with the idea that I don't have to do it until I know that I have a choice to say, I actually don't have to raise that child. I don't have to do that sink full of dishes. I could choose to not raise that child. I could choose to not deal with this door slamming. I could choose to let the dishes pile up. And I I fully will get into the place where I see that that is an option that I don't have to parent tonight.

SPEAKER_02 7:52

Do you ever leave the house for a little bit to get in that space?

SPEAKER_00 7:56

Of course. Yeah. I'll like I one of the best things that I do is I put shoes on and I just walk. When I'm really charged up, I walk. And it's it's one of those things is emotion creates emotions. So sometimes when we're in a really negative emotion, we're we're making ourselves small, we're breathing really small. So I want to walk, I want to put my chest up, I want to change into a powerful posture, and that definitely changes our mood. But I mean, when I'm really charged up, it could be a 30-minute walk before I start to figure things out.

SPEAKER_02 8:25

I could see that.

SPEAKER_00 8:29

It's a subtle thing, but it's an important thing. You can't sit here and feel like, oh, I have to sacrifice. Because first of all, you don't have to. There are parents every day that walk away from their kids. There's grandparents that say, I'm not going to take care of those kids. I don't actually have to. I could make the choice. I could make the choice not to. You might be thinking, oh, no, no, no, I have to. No, I don't have to. So once you understand I have a choice and I'm choosing to take care of this child. And I may not do the dishes that night if I'm really charged up, because I really don't have to do those tonight.

SPEAKER_02 9:06

No, they can sit in the sink.

SPEAKER_00 9:08

They could sit in the sink if that's a choice. But if I choose to do the dishes, I'm now coming at it from a different angle. I'm saying, I am choosing to do these dishes. It feels like I'll have more joy if I get the dishes done than if I let them pile. But sometimes I will say, I'm choosing not to do those dishes tonight. I need to take care of myself tonight. And continuing to do more chores today is not what's in the best interest of me or my family. And so I'm going to

Choosing and enjoying everyday tasks

SPEAKER_00 9:37

let them sit. And that's totally a fine choice. But if I choose to do one of these things, like take care of my child, do the dishes now from a new place, I'm understanding this is my choice. And then I ask myself another question and I say, if I'm going to do this, how could I do it and enjoy it? And what happens is when you ask this next question, you don't get to ask the question about how could I do it and enjoy it until you understand that you're choosing to do it.

SPEAKER_02 10:05

Right.

SPEAKER_00 10:06

When we feel trapped, we don't know we're choosing it, but we are choosing it. Yeah. Just choosing it with resentment. And that's there's no fun there. But once you say, no, no, no, I want to do it. So

Making Chores Enjoyable

SPEAKER_00 10:17

if I want to do it, how could I do it and have fun? And I might be like, I'm going to put on a podcast. I'm going to put on a podcast and I'm going to eat chocolate. So I'm going to have chocolate, put on a podcast, and do these dishes. Or I'm going to rock some freaking great music and I'm putting the music up to volume seven and I'm eating chocolate and I'm doing these dishes. And then you know what? I'm going to watch the show that I really want to watch. And and that's just what I'm going to do. And so now I get the things done, but I'm doing it in a way that's on my terms.

SPEAKER_01 10:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 10:51

This is this is this is a big, big, big thing because most of us don't know that we have a I'm loving it. So that's that's kind of my thoughts there. But the other the other words you said, resentment and exhaustion. I want to talk about those two things too. But I'll I'll stop here for just a moment just to get your thoughts.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Oh well this is part of the awareness that I had this week. I'm very competent, I'm well organized, I'm a little bit of a perfectionist. And I realized that I was being so efficient. We relocated and got the skins and the kids in the right schools. We're we've got good therapists now and everything. But I feel like there was something missing and it was joy. I've made a choice to take care of these children because I thought it was the right thing to do for so many years, right?

SPEAKER_03 12:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

A really important part of life that I haven't quite gotten to, I hadn't quite gotten to until recently. And I realized that a lot of it had to do with accepting um that I've had this vision of what a grandmother is supposed to be. And it wasn't me. And it just dawned on me. It just dawned on me after four years of doing this. And when I went, okay, I am the vision. I am who I am. I've handled this the way I've handled it. It hasn't been perfectly, but I don't want to do anything else. I am so clear about that. I love doing the research that I do for this podcast. I love meeting people like you and all the other wonderful people that have great information out there. I love sharing it. I love getting the letters. And this is my joy. So I'm in my joy, and I realize that. And suddenly I realized how much more challenging life has been trying to be that other grandmother.

SPEAKER_00 13:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 13:19

And then, and all of a sudden, when I went, it's me. She looks like this.

SPEAKER_00 13:23

She does the things I do. She's quite a good thing. She does the things I do. She's funny. Hey, friend. Yeah, she has she has fun like I do. She chooses to do things a little bit different. She gets tight. It's not all perfect. It's not all Martha's stewardship. The dishes are whatever don't always get done. Yeah, right. Sometimes we're ordering Chick-fil-A.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

But you know, when I was a young mother, I was more, I was easier on myself than I am now. And I and I thought about that and I thought, why? Well, when I was a young mother, I was creating who I was, and I wanted to be there. And as a grandmother, for so long, I thought this was what my life was going to look like when I retired. And so that picture has been there all this time and has been there since I was in my 20s, that it's been hard to shake it off. And suddenly last week I realized that the woman I want to be is me.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

Beautiful. It's the self, this self, the self-acceptance of it.

Staying energetic as a grandma

SPEAKER_02 14:33

I mean, I am a 68-year-old grandmother who is also a mother who is doing. In fact, the woman down the street who is a grandmother who had her child for a few days over a holiday, Mardi Gras, said, I don't know how you do this, Laura. Every day, and you run a podcast and you do this and you do that. And I said, and I thought about it and I go, Well, I don't, I didn't know I was doing anything special, you know. I I'm just doing what I do because this is what I have to do. But I realized that the energy I have and the energy that I got from finding a joyous place about this makes me feel like I'm 30 again.

SPEAKER_00 15:31

One of my favorite quotes is the more energy I expend, the more energy I get.

SPEAKER_02 15:41

There is something about that, Matt.

SPEAKER_00 15:44

And you so you at 68 without the kids would be expending less energy, and you and less would be required, and you would have less. You at 68 with the children are expending more energy, more is required of you, and more is given to you. And it's it and and of course, we know exhaust exhaustion is one of these things that we were talking about too. Yeah. And me at 44, I get exhausted, and I'm not 68, but I get exhausted at 44 too. And um, and it's really uh really, really, really difficult to be happy when we're exhausted. So I want to have some compassion on that. That when we when we really when our energy stores are depleted, this is the end of the day. That's why I really relate to that. There's dishes and the door is slamming. The kids, too. It's the end of the day, and they had a long day too. It's the worst time for me to try to have an adult conversation with my preteen is end of the night. And and I just recognize this. Sometimes it's not that we're unhappy, it's just that we're tired. And I'll ask her to talk about it in the morning because I know that she's spiraling, because she's exhausted. I know that I'm I would spiral if I get into this conversation because I'm exhausted. Sometimes my wife will try to have the conversation, it doesn't go well, and it blows up, and I'm like, and then she'll come into the room and I'm like, you tried to talk to her. And she's got that look on her face, and she's like, I just thought I could say, I'm like, it's not the time. Like, she doesn't, she doesn't, she's so tired that she doesn't have the capacity to be joyful right now, and neither do we. So that's a really good lesson for us on exhaustion is that yes, sometimes we just need rest. And it's really difficult to solve complex problems when we're tired. So it's better to just set it aside and and after we have a night's sleep than have that conversation. The last thing I that you had mentioned I want to talk about is resentment. And resentment shows up because we feel like we've been violated in some way. We feel like somebody has done something to us, that somebody's harmed us or harmed somebody that we care about. And it's just this story. It's a story that somebody has done something that has harmed us or someone we care about, and that's where the resentment comes from. Is that story true? It's only partially true. So I don't want to feel the emotion of resentment because it's not a powerful emotion. It's a it's a weak emotion. It's one that's kind of self-indulgent. It's like if I feel resentment and because somebody's done something wrong and and I've been harmed or people I love have been harmed, well, then that's not fair. And but it's not powerful. I can't do, I can't do good from that place. So it's one of the it's one of the negative emotions, right?

SPEAKER_03 19:02

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 19:02

The good thing to do when we s when we start to feel this emotion of resentment is to write down the story that we're telling ourselves. Write down how we think we've been harmed or how we think somebody we care about has

Finding positives in tough situations

SPEAKER_00 19:16

been harmed. That's it's always coming from that. And then, and then I look at that and I say, is this a hundred percent true? Have I fully been harmed? What about the opposite? Have I been helped? Have I been uplifted? Have I been given gifts from this situation? What if the opposite of this thought that I've been harmed is true as well? That I've been helped, that I've been uplifted, that I've been given gifts from the same situation. And this would be, you know, if I'm thinking about raising a grandchild that I didn't think I was gonna have to raise.

SPEAKER_03 19:55

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

So many gifts. Like so many gifts, so many pleasures, so many things, like all this joy.

SPEAKER_02 20:03

I never thought

Shifting perspective on parenting choices

SPEAKER_02 20:04

I would be saying that, but yes.

SPEAKER_00 20:06

All this love, all these experiences, like, you know, and then we start to say, okay, well, how is the opposite of this idea that I've been harmed or someone's been harmed? Because we could also look at it and say the kids have been harmed. Oh, the kids have been harmed by selfish choices of their parents. Sure, yeah, I like I said it's not that it's not true. It's just let's look at the opposite of it. How have the kids been helped? How are the kids, how are the kids thriving? How are they doing better? There's there's one storyline will make me feel resentment, one storyline will make me feel grateful. And I and they and I just want to counteract the resentment storyline with the grateful storyline. They're both true at the same time. And I'm not, we do, I and I know you taught, you've done a lot of work on forgiveness. We do have to do this work on forgiveness for sure. But forgiveness isn't something that we do for everyone else. It's something that we do for ourselves. Because once we can get past the resentment and the negative, and then we get to full-on acceptance. I fully accept that this is the life that I'm choosing for myself, and that's responsibility too. These are two of the good moods I talk about in the book. But I'm gonna fully accept accept the circumstance and I'm fully taking responsibility that I've chosen this responsibility to take care of these grandchildren. This is my choice. No one is forcing me to do it, and I don't have to do it, but I'm choosing to do it. Well, if I'm gonna choose to do it, it's because it's a thing I want to do. This is crazy. I started to resent lifting weights in a totally different circumstance. But I was I was lifting weights every day, and I started to resent it, and I noticed that I started to Resent it. And I'm like, why would I resent this? And I thought, well, it's because I'm, you know, I'm I'm exerting all this energy and it's taking a lot of time. And then I thought, I don't have to lift these weights. Do I want to? Again, but kind of back to that same scenario. And I was like, no, I think I do want to. I'm like, okay, well, if I want to, then I need to change my storyline about this. And so I started to say, well, what else would I rather do? So now I'll be at the gym. If I start to feel like I don't want to be there, I'm like, I don't have to be here, but if I'm going to be here, is there anything else I'd rather be doing? And then I, and now I have a lot of.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

How can you make lifting weights fun?

SPEAKER_00 22:45

Yeah, well, it truly is the story. It's the story behind it. And there's a lot of fun things to it. I see my friends from the neighborhood, right? And I have this connection there, right? And then I feel good about the way I look and it increases confidence. All these different things that are positive about it. But can you listen to good music? Yeah, yeah, there's great music, right? So I changed the story to there's nothing I would rather be doing. And this is what I would want a grandparent to come to, to this, to this, to this reality. We've chosen to do this, and there is nothing I would rather be doing than raising these grandchildren. Once we get to that point, and I'm not saying everyone's there, but you can get there. Once you get to that point and you realize there's nothing you would rather be doing than taking care of these babies, now we can start to find some joy. Because then we can say, Well, there's nothing I'd rather be doing. How could we do it and have the best time ever?

SPEAKER_02 23:47

Right. I love that. I love that. Yes. Great message for everyone to hear. So is it important that we talk about what the eight moods are?

SPEAKER_00 24:02

I I can list them real quick. Um, but it's really, I think it's more powerful to go into specific specific circumstances where where we start to get triggered. And then how do we get out of the trigger and then get back to joy? Because again, we talked anytime we're in one of these eight negative emotions, it's just anytime we feel negative, anytime we feel down, drained, overwhelmed, you know, anytime we we're just feeling like it's too much or I don't want to be doing this, it's not good for us, it's not good for the kids, it's not good for the world. Well, I think we know if we we know there's those moments that we're parenting and we're parenting as our best self, and we're happy, and they're maybe we're tickling and they're laughing and they're happy, and it's like that's good for us, it's good for them, it's good for the world. Like it that's just a beautiful moment. We want to have more of those days.

SPEAKER_02 24:54

And I think what you fed us is a really good chunk to chew on. I want to encourage people to read your book. It will change your life. The good mood revolution, which is at Matt O'Neal.com.

SPEAKER_00 25:10

Yeah, Matt, yeah, it's on it's on Amazon.

Finding joy in everyday tasks

SPEAKER_02 25:13

We'll provide all those links in the show notes. But I think what you just said, getting to that place where we feel like there's nothing we'd rather do, finding joy in that process. And the little exercise that you gave us uh about knowing that whatever you're doing is what you want to be doing, whether it's washing the dishes, taking care of the kids. If you're not able to travel the way you used to, like we are not. I tell my husband, I still think it's only temporary. The kids get to a certain point, we may choose to travel again, we may not.

SPEAKER_00 25:51

I travel, I we took our three-year-old son to Spain and we forgot the stroller, and he doesn't like to walk. So we carried. I carried him with the other. So we have four kids in Spain for a week, and people people are like, Couldn't you just buy another stroller? We could, but I was a little stubborn about it, so I just carried him everywhere. Good for you. Uh, and then we took uh yeah, we took him to Greece, and he was still three. We took him to Greece for a wedding in August. So four kids traveling really, really far. It is possible. You can definitely travel with children.

SPEAKER_02 26:35

Well, I know there are people out there right now that are listening and saying, Well, I don't have the money to travel anymore because I'm raising these grandchildren, it's costing me money.

SPEAKER_00 26:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 26:47

Well, that's another one of those questions that you have to ask yourself.

SPEAKER_00 26:51

And we won't get into that today, but if we approach it, I wanna I want to address it.

SPEAKER_02 26:56

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 26:57

I do. Everything's choices, and we're spending money on a lot of things. A lot of there's a lot of things we spend money on, but one of the best, it's proven one of the happiest things we can spend money on is experiences. I would rather sacrifice on things. I'd rather sacrifice on possessions, clothes, cars, things, gifts. And I have friends that will say, We're not doing Christmas gifts, we're doing a trip. And they talk with their kids about it. And they, and of course, they'll get a very, very tiny thing, but they're choosing to have this experience, and the kids get on board with this with the idea that we will actually have more fun with the experience than we will with that toy that we're not gonna play with a couple months from now. Right. So I I think I think travel is one of the most and it gets us out of this people waste money on a lot of stuff.

Cutting down on subscriptions

SPEAKER_00 27:56

We're all wasting money. How many TV subscriptions do we have? How many, like if we look at the recurring payments, how many app subscriptions do we have? Like, yeah, we're spending money on a bunch of things, but if we're getting in a rut, we need to get out of this environment that the rut is in and go see something new. Like, literally going to a new place expands our horizons, it expands the kids' horizons. We make memories that then we get to laugh about and talk about. It's just so, so, so joyful. So maybe it's not going to Greece because the plane tickets are expensive or Spain. But I mean, the plane tickets weren't crazy. Like we rented an Airbnb in Spain the week between Christmas and New Year, and it was like $350 a night.

SPEAKER_01 28:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 28:42

And of course, everyone was piling into three bedrooms, and there's six of us. Right. But it was great. It didn't matter about the room, it didn't matter how nice it was.

SPEAKER_02 28:51

My husband and I, when we were traveling before we got the kids, now I know Airbnb prices have gone up since then, but we traveled in countries that were inexpensive. We made that choice because we didn't have the money to travel more expensively. We found that traveling overseas in inexpensive countries was less expensive than living in the United States. So if you think about it, you could rent out your house.

SPEAKER_00 29:22

You could. You could Airbnb your house, it could cover the whole trip. That's right. So so these are just victim excuses. Yeah, they're they're victim thoughts. I can't travel any. That's the resentment of my situation. No, I'm you can give up drinking beer. Right. I'm choosing not to travel and I'm choosing or smoking cigarettes. And I'm I'm prioritizing over travel. Just admit it, I'm choosing not to travel. Right. And then if I'm but if I choose to travel, how could I do it? How could I do it and have fun with it? How could I do it and zero cost it, like you said? Like let's Airbnb out our house. Yeah, we we found like the plane tickets were kind of expensive. I think they were like six or seven hundred dollars a piece, and there's six of us. So that was the big chunk. But the Airbnb that we stayed in was more affordable than anything in the States. The food was really affordable, like it, you know, and we're using buses and subways throughout the city. It was it was an awesome trip.

SPEAKER_02 30:21

Yeah, yeah. Thank you for, I'm glad we spoke about that because I do think the whole money thing is another headspace that we get into and an excuse that we make for not having and doing the things that we really want to do. So thanks for discussing that. Well, is there anything else you want to share before I ask you a few questions?

SPEAKER_00 30:48

I'd love the questions. Let's get into it.

SPEAKER_02 30:51

Okay. Well, I'm asking all of the people that I interview now, and this is for the chapter in the book that you will be a part of, three questions. One is a um systematic question, one is a taboo question, and one is a policy question. So, my systematic question for you is that so I believe that our society often views happiness as a result of success. Please share with our listeners how you think that happiness is actually the infrastructure required for a kinship family to survive systematic trauma.

SPEAKER_00 31:37

I do think that society uh equates success with happiness. I bought that lie. It came from a big lie of consumerism when after World War II we needed to put people back to work, and the war was over, and and it was a decision by government to make consumerism the primary aim, to get people to want to buy things. And then so all this media was put out to make people covet all these things, and then through the media and us coveting these things, we the portrayal of commercials was if you have these things, you'll be happy, like the people in these commercials. And then now they're still going on. Look at all the luxury car commercials and the vacation commercials, and then we're doing it ourselves with Instagram. Look at where I just ate and where I am and how great my lifestyle is. So we're we're doing more propaganda ourselves. That's where the lie starts to come in. And then we think, well, I need success so that I can have the things so that I can have the happiness. It doesn't work. It's like no, it's so far from happiness, it has nothing to do with happiness. There are so many miserable, wealthy people. Because what happiness really is, is love. It is so simple. It's love and kindness.

SPEAKER_03 33:04

Yeah.

Experiencing joy through love

SPEAKER_00 33:05

The more loving, the more love we feel, like without the negative, without the resentment and the hurt and all that stuff, but just the more pure love we feel, when we're feeling love for someone else, that is joy. That's where joy, joy spontaneously flows when we're in loving relationships. And that's why being a grandparent raising a grandchildren or grandchildren can be one of the most joyful things you ever do because so much love can flow from that. So love, though, doesn't require success. In fact, a lot of times it's the opposite because we have to be present. And chasing the success to buy the things that we don't need makes us unpresent with the people that would actually need our love so that we could be joyful.

Helping kids understand tough situations

SPEAKER_02 33:54

That's why we need it in these homes more than anything. And we need to show that to these children so that they become members of society that uh spread this infrastructure with love. It's our legacy. And we have the opportunity to do that with these kids and teach them what wasn't working and why their families are broken and why there's so much pain. I mean, it's a perfect opportunity really because it isn't hidden. It's so obvious, and it's why it needs to be spoken about. These kids, you know, I was telling someone that I hate having to have these very difficult situations with these young children about why their parents pulled guns on each other and knives and why they were neglected and why they were starving and horrible things that really broke their motherboards at a very young age. But I realize that it's not so bad because they already have experienced the nightmare. They've already experienced the trauma. So what we're showing them is a different way. And when they experience uh love and healing and wholesomeness in the way that we're talking about, they get it so easily. The fear goes away, the safety comes, and they get to say, I witnessed this, I will never let this happen in my life. And and if I do, then this will be the result of it. But we so often in our families hide this stuff, ignore it. It's cushioned with money and things and falsities, you know, like relationships that are half real or or half whole. And then we carry on, you know, and then and we've got stuff like addiction going on that we don't talk about, addiction to buying things, addiction to drugs and alcohol, but it's carried on from one generation to other to another. So we have an opportunity as grandparents raising these children that are have experienced the result of all these dysfunctional things in families and changed their lives.

SPEAKER_00 36:31

Absolutely. My dad was one of those maniacs when I was small. And thankfully, my mom got out. But I had the trauma. I had the trauma from an abuser, an emotionally unstable person. And then I got the gift of my mom who said, I will love you no matter what, no matter what you do. I will always love you. Like just this pure, unconditional. And I used to ask her, I'm like, Well, what if I rob banks? What if I kill people? Will you still love me? And she said, I'll come visit you in jail and I will love you so much, but don't do that. And I, and and so, as a grandparent to a child that experienced trauma of neglect or abuse, you get the opportunity to be that unconditional love. You get the opportunity to be the example of God's love, that I will always love you no matter what, and you're always safe in my love. And no, I'm not perfect. You know, my mom wasn't a perfect human being, but her love was unconditional. And it was so healing for me and so safe for me. And now we get to be that. What was great is you said these kids know what that's like, and then they vow they'll never do it. They will probably take it a step further and say, I vow to help people like that.

SPEAKER_02 38:06

I not only if you don't talk about it, if you don't talk about it, they're the ones that are most likely to be the abusers.

SPEAKER_00 38:15

To do it, yeah. Right. Yeah, and that was the thing is my mom was all she always talked to me like an adult. I was five when she got out. And but you know, I I I was an old five because yeah, I know because it at that point, uh, you know, now she's a single mom of four. There's four of us. And it was super hard. She'd cry in her closet every day.

SPEAKER_03 38:38

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 38:39

And but she, you know, she said, Hey, we've got to, we'll, we're gonna get through this together. And the other thing she did, and this is really powerful, she always painted a vision of a beautiful future. We would talk about how great things were gonna be. She talked about how we would go to college. She didn't have a college degree, but she said, You kids are gonna go to college, you're gonna get these great grades, you're gonna be so successful. She was a secretary, her income was $22,000. And she's raising four kids on this income, no child support because my dad, of course, didn't think he did he needed to pay any child support and he couldn't keep a job.

Creating a hopeful future for kids

SPEAKER_00 39:18

But even though there wasn't money for all the things, there was so much love and we had so much fun, and she would just paint this picture of how great the future was gonna be. She was just a remarkable, remarkable woman. And that's something we want to do for these kids too. Yeah, we want to talk about how great the future is gonna be and give them, like you had said, I don't know if it was before the podcast started or during it, that you started to have um a vision of how much joy you can have going forward. You kind of got out of the firefighting phase of just kind of getting it all done to really starting to picture how joyful this life can be at the same time. We need to do that for the kids. We need to tell them how great the future is gonna be. Otherwise, they might start to have pictures of how bad the future is gonna be. They might think, well, the past will repeat. It was bad back then, it's good for a moment, but it could get bad again.

SPEAKER_02 40:15

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 40:16

For me, it was bad back then. It was kind of scary because we didn't know how we were gonna pay for things, but there was a lot of love. And then there was this picture that it's gonna be amazing.

SPEAKER_02 40:26

Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. That's so important. So, my taboo question is let's talk about the grief shame that's involved for many of these parents who are raising these grandkids while they're grieving over what's going on with their own child. I've taken polls of the four main struggles that grandparents raising grandchildren are dealing with. But one of the most important is feeling guilty for wanting to be happy when one of their own children is suffering. I didn't think about it at the time because it's my husband's son grandchildren that we're raising. So I was not grieving for my child, but my husband is. And so many people are, whether or not it's addiction or incarceration or even death in many cases. How do we give ourselves permission, do you think, to choose a good mood when we're under this heavy weight?

SPEAKER_00 41:43

I think sadness is one of the most beautiful emotions. And grief is a beautiful emotion. It shows us how much we love. So love and grief are two sides of the same coin. And we can't have one without the other.

SPEAKER_02 42:02

True.

SPEAKER_00 42:05

So grieving is important, it's important to do, and we can have sadness and joy at the same time. They do coexist and they can be simultaneous. But sadness comes because something's changed and we we wish it hadn't. So I don't know that I would stop grieving a child that made poor choices and maybe was no longer here or was here but was in and out of addiction. I would always be thinking about them and grieving over that situation. But then I'd look at the kids and I'd say, We're gonna have a lot of fun today.

SPEAKER_02 42:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 42:56

Let's be joyful with these kids today.

SPEAKER_02 42:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 43:00

Well, the one thing we can't do though is wish it were different. That's resisting reality. I can grieve over someone that I love that I've lost or that's going through a challenging time and love them. But I if we resist what's actually happening and wishing that it hadn't happened, all we're doing is just creating a ton of suffering for ourselves. So until we get to just full acceptance, this has happened, and I'm choosing to take my part in it to be the responsible person that I can be, and I'm not going to worry about it. Sometimes I think, though, as a parent, we would think maybe I could have done a better job.

SPEAKER_02 43:44

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Maybe I could have done something different. That's just not true. It's not true, and I want to get this point across very strongly. You did your very best. If you could have done any bit It's better, you would have. Every single moment is apparent, we're doing the very best we can. We're doing the best with what we know, with the tools that we're equipped with. We're giving our best. We only beat ourselves up and then create a whole bunch of trauma for ourselves when we think I could have done better than my very best. So we did our very best. We could not have done better. We have to accept that our best is as good as it gets and it's good enough. And that this child made their own choices.

Eternal souls and learning experiences

SPEAKER_00 44:33

They're their own unique soul. I don't think I've got a bigger view on this. I think everyone is learning because we're eternal. We're these eternal souls. And even painful choices that a child makes are helpful in the grand scheme of our soul's evolution. That they're learning things they couldn't learn otherwise. So for us to think that they shouldn't be having the experience that they're having, we don't know God's plan. Sometimes they have to have this painful experience to experience that and learn the things from that painful experience that their soul couldn't have learned any other way. Thinking that their life isn't going the way it should be going, you're not God. You don't know that. So I like I'll look at people that I think are making poor choices that are harming themselves. And I'm like, that's the lesson they're supposed to learn right now.

SPEAKER_02 45:38

And I find that so often we project ourselves on other people as if we would make the choice they're making better.

SPEAKER_00 45:49

They're actually doing the best they can too.

SPEAKER_02 45:51

Right. Right.

SPEAKER_00 45:52

They're making the very best choices they can. They're doing the very best they possibly can at this moment. Everyone's doing the best they can. Yeah. I have another quote that has always stuck with me, and it was from a podcast guest, and she said, Absolutely everything is God's grace. And I'm like, well, that's not true. I said, What about the child that's murdered? And she said, she said, okay. You're not that child that was murdered. She said, the truth is everything is grace. Everything is God's grace.

Understanding personal growth through adversity

SPEAKER_00 46:34

And if you want, you can add the words for me at the end. Because you can only know your own experience, and you can only connect the dots and see that all the painful things in your own experience have actually been God's grace that have helped you grow and become a new version of yourself. You wouldn't have been otherwise. So for the child that we have that is in pain, that's abusing, that is going through hard times, for that child, they are in God's grace right now, too. These experiences that they're having are things that they have to have, they have to learn. We can't look at them and say that's a bad experience that they're having. No, it's the experience they're supposed to be having. God's directing it.

SPEAKER_02 47:21

Thanks for that message. I know a lot of people needed to hear that.

SPEAKER_01 47:30

It's hard to move on from that. But for the book, I have one last question.

SPEAKER_00 47:40

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 47:42

If you were COO of national well-being, what one emotional literacy program would you mandate for every kinship household to ensure that adults don't pass their bad mood motherboard down to the next generation?

SPEAKER_00 47:58

What a good question. We there is no emotional learning. It's not taught in school. We have to learn it from great podcasts like yours, Laura. We have to go and independently study it. But there's so much education out there. So yeah, we have to. And when someone's not being kind, I want I would want everyone to know that it's not about me, that they're the person they're being unkind to, it's about them. So only hurt people are hurting people. This then expands our own kindness. A parent who hurts their child is doing that because they're hurting themselves. They need to heal their own hurt if they want to stop hurting their child. A child who's been hurt has to heal that pain, or they will hurt their own children. The cycle has to stop with them.

SPEAKER_02 49:22

What a great thing. If we only have that to our to these kids.

SPEAKER_00 49:27

Yeah, and they've been hurt, right? They've been through this trauma. Just the fact that their parents aren't raising them can feel like they've been abandoned. What I want the kids though to know is well, God sent you parents. It wasn't the person who birthed you, but God sent you your parents. And then hopefully, as these children grow, and that's what happened to me because my dad didn't want anything to do with me. And I felt so abandoned.

SPEAKER_03 49:59

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 49:59

And as an adult, I was so angry about it. And then, and then I was like, well, wait a minute. But I had an older brother. And then I ended up having a stepdad. But I was omitting these things because it wasn't my biological father.

SPEAKER_01 50:19

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 50:20

And it dawned on me that, oh, God actually sent me fathers. It wasn't the one whose sperm I was from, but he sent me fathers. And so all these children he has sent parents to.

SPEAKER_02 50:37

I did not have my father either. And I spent my whole life resenting him for leaving us and starting another family. And I do not want these kids to spend their whole lives.

SPEAKER_00 50:57

But you don't anymore. You don't resent him now.

SPEAKER_01 51:01

No, no, but I mean how much time I wasted not loving myself because of that.

SPEAKER_00 51:20

Yeah, me too.

SPEAKER_02 51:22

And that gets back to the resentment thing. I I want to be able to share with these children how to deal with that resentment early on so that they don't love themselves any less than they have to.

Exploring family history and shame

SPEAKER_00 51:37

This is the root emotion. So it's the first chapter of my book, and it's the story of my family line. My grandmother's, my grandmother's father died from tuberculosis when she was one. And my grandmother's mom gave her to her parents to raise. So my grandmother was a grandchild raised by grandparents. And she watched her mom raise six other kids and not her with her new family. And then the emotion of shame developed in her. As a child, we have to make up a story about what happened. But children are very self-focused. They're not worldview focused because their brains aren't, they're not fully developed. They can't fully see the real picture. The real picture was it was the early 1900s. Women couldn't just go get jobs and raise their, they could, but it wasn't a thing, right? So her mom made the best decision that she could, which was to ask her parents to raise this child so that she could meet a new husband. And that way her child was taken care of and she was taken care of. That was the best decision that her mom could make. But as a child, my grandmother looked at the situation and said, obviously, I'm unlovable.

SPEAKER_01 53:06

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:08

She loves those other children because they're lovable, but there's something wrong with me. And that was a lie inside of her. It was just a story. It was an innocent story that a child made up that she was unlovable. It wasn't the truth. It was just a story. She never healed that story. Then she passed that story on to my dad. And my dad thought he was unlovable.

SPEAKER_03 53:33

Oh.

SPEAKER_00 53:34

And then my dad passed the story down to me, and I thought I was unlovable.

SPEAKER_03 53:39

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 53:40

And then I broke it. And that's what we need to do.

SPEAKER_02 53:43

Yes, that's my whole goal in life. It's all that matters to me. There's nothing I'd rather be doing than changing that story.

SPEAKER_00 53:53

Yeah, these kids are so lovable. We love them so much. And we just need them to if so that is probably the most important thing we could be doing for the grandkids that are being raised by the listener. Make sure they know they are lovable exactly as they are. This is their parents' choices, are nothing about them. And they just have to know they are completely loved and lovable, and there's nothing wrong with them.

SPEAKER_02 54:21

And stop passing that story down in the next generation.

Healing flawed beliefs exercise

SPEAKER_00 54:25

If we don't heal that one thought, though, that well, sure, my grandparents are raising me, but I'm flawed because my own mom isn't raising me.

SPEAKER_03 54:34

Right.

SPEAKER_00 54:35

If we don't heal that, that flawed thought, it will get passed down. We have to heal that flawed thought. We have to find it. The first chapter of my book, I have an exercise called Exposing the Lies. And um, you can download that exercise for free at my website. It's it's called Exposing the Lies, and it's on mattoneil.com. And it's a really simple exercise. I'll explain it. The first thing you do is you write down all the lies that you believe about yourself that make you feel bad. For me, it was I deserve to be abandoned. I deserve to be abused. I'm unlovable. I deserve punishment. There's something wrong with me. These were all just these were true thoughts in my subconscious when I did this exercise. And I put them all on this paper. Now, of course, I have other thoughts, but those were just like when I'm feeling my worst. These are these were the thoughts that my childhood brain put in there in my subconscious from the experience that I had growing up. And then next to each one, I wrote the truth. So the the left side is the lie, I'm unlovable. The right side is the truth.

SPEAKER_02 55:53

I'm gonna have these kids do that exercise.

SPEAKER_00 55:55

Do it, do it. It is it's super powerful. So every time the lie is exposed to the truth, it gets weakened. The lie is darkness, and anytime light touches darkness, the darkness disappears. So when you write the truth next to the lie, and then you recite the truth, and what I did is I would just read my truth list over and over, and then I took my lie list and I burned it. There's something really symbolic too about watching those lies burn and just dissolve into nothing.

SPEAKER_03 56:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_02 56:37

Thanks, Matt. It's always a life-changing experience talking with you. I thank you so much for your time, and I can't wait to pass this message on.

SPEAKER_00 56:49

Laura, thank you for having me. I love your show. I love your work.

Managing bad moods effectively

SPEAKER_02 56:54

Matt walked us through the eight bad moods today. Which one was your primary weather this week? Was it the overwhelmed fog or the resentful storm? Ask yourself, am I letting a bad mood become a permanent personality trait? What is one 60-second shift you can make today to clear the clouds? Remember, a CEO doesn't lead from a place of emotional chaos. They lead from a place of intentional presence. I hope you'll join us next week for episode 120 with another favorite of mine, Catherine Giovanni. She's amazing. Catherine's back on the show to dismantle one of the most toxic phrases in the kinship community. Just forgive and move on. As a stage three cancer survivor and childhood trauma overcomer, Catherine knows that just forgiving is a hollow platitude when you're standing in the middle of wreckage you didn't create. We're talking about how to clear your emotional motherboard without surrendering your boundaries. We are moving mountains, relocating lives, and choosing to find the sun even when the storm hasn't fully passed. Your heart is the most important asset on the balance sheet. Keep nurturing, keep leading, and I'll see you in the next boardroom.