Become a Creator today!Start creating today - Share your story with the world!
Start for free
00:00:00
00:00:01
Breaking Family Cycles with Becky Allender and Beth Bruno
161 Plays8 months ago
Is there a cycle you have inherited in your family that feels nearly impossible to break? Becky and Beth are right there with you. Together these beautiful women open their hearts to give you a window into their mothering practices as they each work to rewrite their family stories with generous boundaries and permission giving energy for their children. Their conversation is candid, encouraging, and right in the moment as they allow listeners to take a peek into their real world family challenges and dynamics. Snuggle up for a comforting, brave conversation with the women of Red Tent Living.
For more stories from brave, ordinary women, join us at Red Tent Living.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction to Red Tent Living Podcast
00:00:01
Speaker
Hi, I'm Tracy Johnson, and this is the Red Tent Living Podcast, where brave women host honest conversations about their beautiful and hard ordinary. This season, we connect on stories of family. We're excited for you to join us. Welcome to our table.
Vulnerability in Present Issues
00:00:20
Speaker
Today you get to listen in on a conversation between Becky Allender and Beth Bruno. And one of the things that I noticed in this episode is that Beth and Becky are both talking about things that are very current in the here and now for them.
00:00:37
Speaker
It is one thing to share stories that are in the past and sort of processed and lived through and that you're looking at in the rearview mirror. And it is a different level of vulnerability to bring something that is current.
00:00:54
Speaker
And so I just invite you to enter in gently and with curiosity as Beth and Becky both demonstrate such bravery as they invite us into their here and now and what they're discovering and living out around breaking the cycle.
Emotional Reflections
00:01:17
Speaker
Well, hi, Becky. How are you today? I'm good here in the Pacific Northwest. It's very foggy at the moment. And how are you in Colorado? It's just as it's typically foggy for you. It is typically a sunny day for me. Lucky. I know. It's lovely.
00:01:40
Speaker
Yeah, I'm coming in. I don't know how you're coming in this morning. I'm coming in feeling far more vulnerable and fragile about what I'm going to bring today than I have in other spaces with other stories. What are you coming in with, feeling, knowing what you're going to share? I think mine is newer and therefore it doesn't feel like I've got a whole
00:02:08
Speaker
grab on what's ahead. So maybe yours is more vulnerable than mine. I feel like I'm going to display something ugly to the world in the story I share, but it feels like the most honest one I could bring. I love that. I don't want to actually do this, but I'm going to.
00:02:35
Speaker
You're so brave. I really appreciate it. Well, your kind voice is going to help. So should I start? Why don't you start? Yeah. Well, I wrote it. I'm going to read it. And I'll just start.
Challenges with Family Dynamics
00:02:53
Speaker
On a Friday night, not too long ago, I go to my room to get ready. I change out of my work from home attire and into a cute sweater
00:03:03
Speaker
different earrings and do the whole makeup routine prepared to go out with friends. I come downstairs ready to play my part, put on my shoes and coat, grab the keys, but I've already achieved the desired result. There will be no date, just reheated leftovers with our teenager and a night of Netflix, exactly the way we wanted it. Rewind an hour.
00:03:28
Speaker
My husband and I are enjoying a drink in our cozy blue chairs as we conclude a tiring week. We're not having a particularly deep conversation, but we are conversing about our lives, connecting, doing what we do, and thoroughly prepared for a night of nothing. It's 5.30. The doorbell rings and we look frantically at each other, knowing who it is and knowing we're stuck.
00:03:55
Speaker
The lights are on and my car is in the driveway. I put my half empty glass down as my husband opens the door. I say hi as I purposely walk upstairs to my daughter's room. We just hosted him for dinner two nights ago.
00:04:12
Speaker
already heard all the things he had to say and already shared the one sentence answer to the one question that approximated curiosity about our lives. He walks in at 5.30 p.m. on a Friday night asking about a document, not about our plans or the inconvenience of the drop-in or anything about our lives. He sits in my blue chair.
00:04:35
Speaker
Upstairs, I scroll through Pinterest on my daughter's bed, hiding and fuming until my husband texts, say we're going out with friends and I know what I have to do. I look at my understanding teen and say, I cannot believe this is my life. I have successfully taught her two things, how to lie to difficult relatives and what curious connected conversation really looks like.
00:05:02
Speaker
And I guess I have him to thank for both. It's a dreadful vignette, I know. I sound like a horrid person. Were I to tell you more about his current circumstances, I would sound even worse.
00:05:18
Speaker
And yet I'm married to the one who has actually suffered most from his lack of interest, who experiences the document drop in as consumption rather than connection, who regularly feels dismissed, not delighted in. And we've spent 30 years trying to break that cycle.
00:05:39
Speaker
This year of all years, I've seen it and heard it from our young adult kids the most, this breaking of cycles we've tried to do, how we've created a culture of curiosity in our own family. After a camping trip, one kid asked my husband,
00:05:55
Speaker
So did you grow up sitting around talking about your feelings too? The same kid is currently studying the refugee crisis overseas and frequently calls home to talk about all her feelings in ways none of her classmates care to. Our youngest, nearly done with high school, recently asked a classmate who was teetering on bullying her, are you doing okay? Seems like maybe something is going on for you or between us. The girl has been shockingly kind since.
00:06:25
Speaker
Seeing someone doesn't take a lot. Offering a tiny bit of curiosity about a story deeper still can overcome so much, including bullying, apparently. But for as little as is required to offer curiosity, the absence of it creates an enormous void.
00:06:46
Speaker
And though it's that absence that my husband and I have spent 29 years of marriage trying to fill, I'm not unaware that the dynamic between us and this relative is absolutely one of mutual unseen.
00:07:03
Speaker
Hiding from relationship is not us. It's not who we have become.
Breaking Familial Cycles
00:07:08
Speaker
To return dismissal with dismissal, it's nearly as brutal to experience as it is to dole it out. And so I picture these two spinning circles. The one is our nuclear family, curious, interested, attuned, and the other is the one with him.
00:07:28
Speaker
They're spinning apart, but just close enough that occasionally we enter his orbit again and we spin a few cycles together in sync before we break off. The dance of freeing yourself, I guess. It makes me feel crazy. It makes me think we haven't broken any cycles at all. It makes me feel so very human. Wow.
00:07:58
Speaker
Thank you. Thank you. I'm so honored to engage your story. Have you engaged this story at all before? This is very recent. It's my current reality and so it's I think why it feels most vulnerable is it's being lived out right now.
00:08:26
Speaker
It sounds pretty intense. It's a gross bind, isn't it? Yes, yes.
00:08:35
Speaker
Is there a direction that you would like to take first? No, I'm just curious, I guess, what kind of tension you hear in that and what are some of the humanness of like, yeah, we live in that tension. We live in ugly binds that aren't black and white.
00:09:02
Speaker
We can't always let ourselves off the hook with excuses and explanations. What I'm hearing, it seems like you have held the family together with such great cost. That feels true. And with that, just the added weight of the sorrow seems to be in your voice as well.
00:09:27
Speaker
Yeah. I'm curious, I'm not sure I quite understood the person that showed up. For a while, I thought it was your son, but now is it a different relative? Yes, it's my recently widowed father-in-law. Oh, whoa. Well, there's a bomb that just went off. Oh my God.
00:09:56
Speaker
which is why it feels even more gross. Can you say more about that? There's moments I have great compassion and then I'm back into the lived reality that my husband has had.
00:10:13
Speaker
you know, for 50 years and what we all experience from him. And it's that cycle of it's so hard to not be seen and to not be, to not have any interest or curiosity about us. It's just hard to want to return that. And so it's like it becomes this, we
00:10:34
Speaker
We are somebody that we're not actually, we're not like that with our kids, with our friends, with our world. But we are with him and it's just, it's such a hard cycle to know that where we enter over and over again. It's such a effing reality.
00:10:58
Speaker
That seems like there's quite a bit of control from your father-in-law to bring this into every room and every setting. Yes. Is there a place that you feel that you have to be a buffer? I do play that role. I protect my kids. I no longer require engagement from them because it
00:11:28
Speaker
is too hurtful. I never asked the teen to exit her room to say hi that night, for example. I think that sounds really good. Is that a first? It's not a first, but it's been growing over the last couple of years as she's been the last one at home. And I have not wanted to require more from her
00:11:57
Speaker
heart then feels there to ask of her. And so that's been hard to let her leave a relationship with a grandparent, one that's, you know, technically not an abuser or not violent or not. There's none of the reasons one might so easily exit a relationship with a grandparent. But it's the absence, it's all, it's the absence that he brings.
00:12:27
Speaker
that feels so hurtful to all of us. Well, I think the kind word of absence is actually it seems more like it's, you know, like a landslide of sludge. And so I just want to commend you on
00:12:51
Speaker
how you're parenting the last child at home in a new way, does that feel empowering? It makes me think maybe there is a cycle I've broken. Oh, yes, yes. Oh, that's huge. And how does Chris, your husband, feel about that? Yeah, I think he's grateful to have some of my strength. Wow.
00:13:21
Speaker
Wow, it seems like a new beginning of conversation arising in your new way of parenting. Can you own that? Oh, good. Yeah. Thank you, Becky. Oh, Beth, I'm so proud of you. I really am.
00:13:47
Speaker
Ah, it's your hell no. And I think you've got a big heaven, yes, that's much greater and brighter than that. That feels life giving. Thank you. Thank you for going to a hard place. That's been hard for a while, it appears. Yeah.
00:14:09
Speaker
Well, thank you for your kindness and listening. Do you want to come ahead? Yes, I'll go ahead. Okay.
Struggle with Perfectionism
00:14:17
Speaker
Amanda, our second born, cut the thick rye bread on a cutting board across from the sink and the remnants of the bread scattered over the counter onto the floor. I bent down to sweep up the debris and she said, I have always felt the weight of your perfectionism.
00:14:37
Speaker
Annie, our firstborn, and I were talking on the phone and she was recounting a conversation with her internal family systems or IFS colleagues. They had inquired about my perfectionism and wondered how many generations it had been in our family lineage. Annie hoped that I could let go of that so she and her siblings would not have to bear the weight and pass it on to their children.
00:15:06
Speaker
In a two-day period, I had been blasted with sentences that should have been talked through with curiosity. But the timing was such that there was too much to do to keep busy grandchildren occupied. My husband tells me that I am a defensive person.
00:15:23
Speaker
which has helped me to learn to be quiet and not offer a comeback sentence as a volley. Instead, these encounters with my adult children left me wondering about my mother, grandmothers, and great-grandmothers. Growing up in the 1950s, I saw countless TV family sitcoms with a mother in heels, an apron, and pearls on while cooking in a macular kitchen. This was pretty much how I grew up, and so did my friends.
00:15:52
Speaker
My mother was a perfectionist. She showed her love through how she cooked and presented meals. She was a child who grew up during the Great Depression and was put into an orphanage due to her mother's incompetence to provide care.
00:16:10
Speaker
This helps me understand her bent for perfection. Her daughters were well behaved, quiet and obedient. And she knew everything about childbearing until my younger brother came along and threw a wild curve ball into her life. It's easy for me to see how different I am from my mother. I see myself as a woman who sees flaws and thinks, Oh, in heaven, I will have a home that will be what I want.
00:16:36
Speaker
I was a perfect nine on the Enneagram long before its popularity in this last decade. For instance, I gave up trying to put bibs on our grandchildren a decade ago. My mother would have wrangled her grandchildren and insisted on a bid. She would have also not allowed a child to touch walls or windows, which is amazing to me.
00:17:00
Speaker
But I do have a lot of my mother in me. And now at this stage of life, I still like things orderly and clean. And I find it attainable now that there's no one living in her house except my husband. But with my daughters calling for change, I'm listening and I'm wondering about a phrase of beginner's mind that my yoga teacher often uses.
00:17:23
Speaker
Some of the thinking of a beginner's mind is that past knowledge and preconceptions can cloud your judgment and stop you from seeing a familiar situation clearly. Even if you're an expert in a topic or situation, it may become increasingly difficult to find solutions for new problems. But with a beginner's mind, you can approach a problem with creativity.
00:17:49
Speaker
I find this like Micah 6-8 says to walk humbly. Walk humbly means to not presume I know more than
Embracing a Beginner's Mind
00:17:57
Speaker
I do and to open my body and mind to what is required for me to act justly and love mercy. You see with the beginner's mind, I can rediscover the joy of experience in something new. A beginner is never always right. And as a result,
00:18:15
Speaker
He or she can enjoy new learning experiences. Letting go of the need to be right is exactly what the doctor ordered. I really want to aspire to this. Along with a humble mind is the understanding that perfection is not the goal. It's imperfection that is truer. Living into that reality offers a kind of liberation.
00:18:42
Speaker
Supposedly it allows us to be easier on ourselves. I am all for that. I will be seeking to make a seat at the table of my life for imperfection. This table might be the table where my daughters are hoping to join me.
00:19:01
Speaker
Oh, that's such a beautiful picture. And I'm aware that your daughters are adult women with children of their own inviting you to start anew and you're willing to do that with so much life already lived with them and you're on your own to start anew, to re-see something differently. I love that, Becky.
00:19:31
Speaker
It almost feels like I'm going to be in a fight. It sounds like it's going to drive me crazy because I just like peace and beauty, but I think they're calling me more than just the externals. Of course. What do you think they're inviting you to in that space?
00:19:59
Speaker
Oh, I think they're inviting. And as you said that the word longing came in for me to kind of put down some of the Christian guardrails that we raised our children in. So I think it's more than just objects. I think it's a leaf.
00:20:25
Speaker
Wow. So the breadcrumbs are merely a metaphor for deeper theological, spiritual things that they feel you would like to eat more. And I had no idea that 60 seconds ago that that would come out of my mouth. So I really thank you for sitting the way you did and responding because
00:20:52
Speaker
I hadn't even thought of that one. That is a big one. It's a tricky one. Yeah, it is. Wow. Have you had those sorts of conversations with them? And if you have, have they not gone well? No, they didn't go well. But I don't want to continue in that groove. I want them to go well. I want to lay down.
00:21:20
Speaker
all sorts of things that maybe seem scary to put down. You don't seem like a scared person or mother, Becky. Well, I guess even some of the scared things would be like a little bit varying from my husband's thoughts and understanding. Yeah. Yeah.
00:21:51
Speaker
Yeah, like who am I and what do I believe? And shouldn't I have that figured out by now? We all want to feel that. But I think the beauty of even as you describe what you learn and practice in yoga, having that posture of beginning anew, you know, every time you come to the practice,
00:22:21
Speaker
And I don't do yoga, so I might be saying all of that wrong, but my understanding is coming to the practice in a beginner posture or pose or intention. And the way you're bringing that to this part of your life now, it's encouraging. And you're right, it is scary. Thank you. Thank you. I think there's a fine line with dogma and the fine line to know which to let go.
00:22:51
Speaker
And I, I, yeah, I guess I, I guess that's part of the beginner's mind. If I goof, mess up, then that's just the goodness of my imperfection. Do you think your kids will have grace for that? I do. I do. I'm certainly having to try and have more grace for their journeys and want to completely cheer them on.
00:23:20
Speaker
Yeah. And they're probably still feeling like they're evolving in all of their thoughts. Yeah. I think sometimes they think they know their thoughts more, but no, I think the conversation can be fluid and that's what, that's my heart's desire. Like with my daughter's and daughter-in-law, which she's my daughter too, I need to step back a little bit in what I know.
00:23:50
Speaker
and see them. Yeah. Wow. I think what you're describing, I mean, how your story was, you know, the
Family Relationships and Imperfection
00:24:01
Speaker
external, this image of the 1950s Beverly Cleaver home that you grew up with, but that too is a metaphor for the faith that you probably grew up with also, you know, tidy, clean lines, very defined, very contained.
00:24:19
Speaker
And those homes, so to speak, metaphorically, don't exist anymore. So how do we create beautiful, clean homes that are a truer reflection of all of the change that we've had internally and externally and all the thoughts that we are still unsure of? I thought you captured that really well, whether you knew it or not. Thank you. Thank you, Beth.
00:24:49
Speaker
Well, this was a whole new direction that I had even envisioned, which is so beautiful. Thank you for how you opened up between the lines. Yeah. That's really good, Beth. Yeah, Becky, thank you for sharing that. It feels like your story is also being lived out right now. It's also your current reality.
00:25:14
Speaker
So both of us, that's just a vulnerable space to bring people into our current world. Yeah, yes. As I consider what you've shared, I'm going to go into this next week, even with my adult kids being slower to speak.
00:25:33
Speaker
and just listening with more expansiveness inside. That's the posture that I want to take with them. That sounds so good. Wow. So good. Thank you. Yeah. And may you do it with the kindness that you did with allowing your teenage daughter to stay in her room. That is a very big deal and a very big change.
00:26:02
Speaker
I love that we're going to new territories as beginners. Me too. Thanks for modeling that. You're welcome.
Conclusion and Reflections
00:26:14
Speaker
Well, I hope you enjoyed that episode as much as I did.
00:26:21
Speaker
Again, I think I'm mostly struck by how much generosity and bravery Becky and Beth both brought to us in the vulnerability of how they shared the stories that they chose for today.
00:26:39
Speaker
I loved listening to Becky respond to Beth. And Beth naming that this story and how she found herself in it at the end, she said she just feels so very human. And I love the permission she gave herself, even in naming that.
00:27:04
Speaker
I noticed that Becky found Beth in the places that I would say it seemed that Beth had shame. And Becky noticed.
00:27:19
Speaker
the goodnesses that could be found inside those places of shame. She noticed the cost and the sorrow. She noticed the goodness of how Beth has created buffers and named the weight of what Beth has been carrying. And I think my favorite moment was when she just commended Beth's parenting of her teenage daughter.
00:27:47
Speaker
And it almost felt to me that as a woman further down the road and having really adult children and grandchildren, there was this matriarchal energy that Becky was able to bring to Beth. And I found myself smiling when she just told Beth, I am so proud of you.
00:28:10
Speaker
And it felt like such blessing that she gave in that space to Beth. And then as Becky started to bring her story, just her exquisite honesty about her daughters, her adult daughters, sort of coming to her and naming her perfectionism and what it's cost them,
00:28:39
Speaker
It was just beautiful to listen to. And Becky is such a kind and thoughtful woman as she pulled the thread from the past, the sort of legacy of how this has been handed down to her through her family. I
00:28:59
Speaker
I loved what Beth noticed in her curiosity. You know, Becky said she felt like her daughters were calling her to something more than just the externals. And Beth kind of put her finger on that and just asked Becky, what do you think they're calling you to? And it opened up sort of this revelation for Becky as she named that she felt like there was a longing that was there.
00:29:26
Speaker
that her daughters were wanting her to put down the Christian guardrails. And where the conversation went from there, I think, you know, surprised Becky, but just resonated so much for me as I think about my own adult children and what our conversations around faith and beliefs have been.
00:29:55
Speaker
I also loved Beth blessing the beginning again, that beginner's mind that Becky talked about. And I thought, bless, Beth had such beautiful words for her there.
00:30:15
Speaker
And then the last thing is just, I also was struck when Becky named the goodness in her imperfection. Like in that beginning of breaking a cycle, if she doesn't get it right, that there can be beauty in the imperfection of that also.
00:30:33
Speaker
It was rich. I have a lot of things I could say about this episode, but I hope that you're finding yourself invited into some places inside your own narrative. Whether you're a daughter or a mother of grown daughters or wherever you find yourself, I think there were some great
00:31:00
Speaker
invitations in this episode for connection. I know for me like one of the things that I'm taking out of the conversation today is just that idea that breaking a cycle requires the bravery of beginning again.
00:31:20
Speaker
And that beginning again isn't just a one time, it's probably at some level more daily. It's that willingness to have a practice of willing to begin again and again and again because so often I think these cycles
00:31:39
Speaker
are generational. They've been with us for a long time and so the breaking of them requires a dailiness to it and I think we got invited to a more gentle way of doing that than often is the case. So that's what I'm taking into this next week and I hope you give it some time to think about what are you going to bring into your week with
Podcast Credits
00:32:07
Speaker
you. Until next time,
00:32:10
Speaker
The Red Tent Living podcast is produced by Katie Stafford and edited by Aaron Stafford. Our cover art is designed by Libby Johnson and our guests are all part of the Red Tent Living community. You can find us all at redtentliving.com as well as on Facebook and Instagram. If you love the stories shared here, we would be thrilled if you would leave us a review. Until next week, love to you, dear ones.