Transcript
Speaker: Welcome to Enlighten Up the Hilarapy podcast with Lizzie Allen and Karina Lauren.
Speaker: We take hard topics, throw them up in the air and dissolve them with laughter.
Speaker: Each week we feature a comedian from the Hilarapy course and we discuss topics from their set.
Speaker: From sexual shame to getting older, we tackle it all with humor and heart.
Speaker: Our goal is to awaken the masses, promote love and increase connection by dissolving shame, all while making you laugh until you pee your pants.
Speaker: So let's enlighten up and get started.
Speaker: Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to episode three of season two, the Hilarapy Recovery Project on Enlighten Up, a Hilarapy podcast.
Speaker: I'm your host, Lizzie and Karina.
Speaker: Karina, Karina, Karina.
Speaker: And how proud are you of us right now?
Speaker: I am so proud.
Speaker: We're in season two, which is almost a miracle for two people who do not finish things.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: We're kind of, well, our past selves were non-finishers, under-functioners, but look at us now, bitches.
Speaker: Look at us now.
Speaker: We're finishers.
Speaker: Finishers, yeah, in every sense of the word.
Speaker: In every sense of that word.
Speaker: Finishers and not over-functioners, we're balanced functioners.
Speaker: Today we are.
Speaker: Today is a good day.
Speaker: Today is a good day.
Speaker: A good day to finish and a good day to balance.
Speaker: So, yeah, joy, happiness.
Speaker: Happiness.
Speaker: It's December, man.
Speaker: Yeah, but I've been thinking so much about...
Speaker: the importance of joy and play and laughter.
Speaker: Because I get so much of my joy.
Speaker: Have I got a boogie?
Speaker: No, no.
Speaker: She touched the nostril and I thought, oh, what?
Speaker: Have I got a flapper in and out as I breathe?
Speaker: By the way, I love how the Brits say boogie instead of boogie.
Speaker: Because boogie means something else to you.
Speaker: Boogie means dance.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it also does mean dance for you as well.
Speaker: It does, yeah.
Speaker: It has a double meaning.
Speaker: Boogie.
Speaker: Boogie.
Speaker: It doesn't have it.
Speaker: It's bogey.
Speaker: It's always been bogey.
Speaker: Anyway, let's not get off drag.
Speaker: Let's not get off drag.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: We're focused individuals.
Speaker: I suppose that bogeys and farts, toilet humor, all of that stuff, it's all room.
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: That fart humor will always make me laugh.
Speaker: My sister says, if you have a bogey, she'll go, bat in the cave.
Speaker: Bat in the cave.
Speaker: Which I like.
Speaker: I thought that was funny when I first heard that.
Speaker: But I love the humor that it's like...
Speaker: I got to take the Browns to the Super Bowl.
Speaker: Or I got to drop the kids off at the pool.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Brown trout.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: This is going to... You know what?
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: We love it.
Speaker: It's fine.
Speaker: We love it.
Speaker: But for some of our more sophisticated listeners, and we know you're out there.
Speaker: You up there on the West End Hill.
Speaker: I don't know what that is, but... You up there in your ivory tower.
Speaker: We see you.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You probably don't even fart.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: Moving back on.
Speaker: You don't fart because you're too important.
Speaker: Oh, look at the swallows.
Speaker: I had a very... That's a story from my childhood, right?
Speaker: My dad's parents were really like middle class and just very kind of sort of tight and buttoned up.
Speaker: And my grandmother...
Speaker: I was outside with her and my grandfather outside the kitchen.
Speaker: I remember it.
Speaker: And I was only about 10 years old and she farted.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And she just quickly went, Oh, look at the swallows.
Speaker: And I just, I just was like, Oh,
Speaker: And I ripped inside.
Speaker: I ran inside and I found my sisters and my cousins and I went, grandmother, George, farted.
Speaker: Went, ooh, look at the swallows.
Speaker: And I did that impression for freaking years.
Speaker: She never, not in front of her though.
Speaker: I'm going to use that though from now on.
Speaker: If that happens, I'm going to say, look at the swallows.
Speaker: I know, it's like, gosh, you know, they're like, hey, we're all here.
Speaker: We can acknowledge that.
Speaker: You let out a little Tommy clapper.
Speaker: It's okay.
Speaker: The point is it's okay because you said we want to have fun and play more.
Speaker: This is welcome to adulthood.
Speaker: We're laughing so much because we're so excited about our performer today.
Speaker: um, from the HilariP recovery project, a dear friend, Dineen.
Speaker: And, uh, she has all, she's got so much joy.
Speaker: So I'm looking forward to getting involved with that.
Speaker: Um, getting, you know, sharing that with you.
Speaker: Getting involved with that.
Speaker: Let me get involved with Dineen.
Speaker: Dineen is, oh wow.
Speaker: Dineen's laugh alone brings joy to my heart.
Speaker: It's, it's like, I'll laugh, but the truth of it is it's,
Speaker: Pure joy.
Speaker: I can feel it coming out of her.
Speaker: She's such a beautiful woman.
Speaker: She is.
Speaker: Oh, my God.
Speaker: What's going on with you?
Speaker: My zipper's all the way down, and it's in the back, which means my butt's showing.
Speaker: Oh, calm down.
Speaker: I'm glad this isn't a live studio audience.
Speaker: Keep it in your pants, Karina.
Speaker: God damn it.
Speaker: My effect on women.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: Do you remember the Carry On films?
Speaker: No.
Speaker: What is that, British?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well then how would I know it?
Speaker: Or in Canada.
Speaker: Oh my God, you would love them.
Speaker: I don't know them.
Speaker: There was a whole load of them and they came out in the like 70s, 80s and 90s.
Speaker: Oh, not even the 90s, probably the 70s.
Speaker: And it's called Carry On?
Speaker: They were called Carry On.
Speaker: So it could be like Carry On Camping or Carry On This, Carry On That.
Speaker: And it was so funny.
Speaker: And it was all like racy kind of innuendo stuff.
Speaker: You're going to love it.
Speaker: You and me have to have a movie date with these because they were just comedy gold.
Speaker: Let's do it.
Speaker: Yeah, let's do it.
Speaker: Have you heard of this thing?
Speaker: I'm going to go off piece here.
Speaker: Have you heard of this idea that crawling...
Speaker: Like a baby.
Speaker: What, curb crawling?
Speaker: No, no, no.
Speaker: What?
Speaker: Curb crawling sounds like being a prostitute.
Speaker: No, when you're looking for a prostitute.
Speaker: Oh.
Speaker: No, no, no, no.
Speaker: Not that.
Speaker: I mean, go in your house on the carpet and crawl.
Speaker: Like you're a baby.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: It's supposed to rewire your brain.
Speaker: Oh, for God's sake.
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: Isn't that nuts?
Speaker: Rewire brain for... Blame?
Speaker: For play.
Speaker: For play.
Speaker: So, yeah, to be like, let your inner child out.
Speaker: Can you... I'm just going to do my knees in.
Speaker: No, but when I heard that...
Speaker: What made me laugh was thinking about a high powered male CEO going home, right?
Speaker: In his full suit.
Speaker: No, you're going into dominatrix fricking territory where men dress as babies.
Speaker: No, just crawling around.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: And that's how he grounds himself.
Speaker: If you're a high powered CEO, please message into the show if you do that.
Speaker: It's a bit like, what's his name?
Speaker: Um,
Speaker: from diehard who gets off a flight and starts fisting up his feet in the carpet.
Speaker: Yeah, that's right.
Speaker: Grabbing the carpet.
Speaker: Okay, let me ask you this.
Speaker: What have you done in the last week that you could call playful?
Speaker: Well, it would be obviously the games in the HilariP Recovery Project are really playful.
Speaker: But I'm facilitating that.
Speaker: But it is really...
Speaker: I guess it's my part in facilitating the play and then I enjoy what comes out of it.
Speaker: I enjoy witnessing everyone just, you know, these grown ass people just like, you know, making comedy gold in front of me through play.
Speaker: I guess that's it really.
Speaker: Um, I I'm laughing with my friends quite regularly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: When was the last time?
Speaker: So my daughter and I have this thing where we call it disco anywhere.
Speaker: We'll be in like shoppers drug mart or the grocery store and a song comes on and we'll just look at each other and go disco anywhere.
Speaker: And we'll start dancing.
Speaker: I love that.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: I'm going to do that.
Speaker: Should we issue a challenge?
Speaker: It's not, the challenge is to play.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So over the next couple of weeks till our next episode, your challenge is to find a moment where you forget maybe that you're supposed to be a stiff upper lip adult and just play.
Speaker: So that could look like dancing.
Speaker: It could look like blowing bubbles.
Speaker: My personal favorite.
Speaker: It could look like playing a prank on someone.
Speaker: You know, there's all kinds of ways to play.
Speaker: You know, like saying something slightly inappropriate or, you know, just like what we were talking about in the last episode about breaking out of.
Speaker: conditioned rolls and boxes is to say something that you're thinking that you usually would not bother saying.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: Because people love that.
Speaker: 100%.
Speaker: They love it.
Speaker: When you say something that you shouldn't really say, but everyone's thinking it.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Or just eat a candy off the floor.
Speaker: No.
Speaker: Don't do it.
Speaker: Karina just made this right.
Speaker: We were in a class the other night and Karina made this whole song and dance.
Speaker: She went, ha.
Speaker: And everyone was in a circle.
Speaker: She went, ha, ha, wait, wait, wait.
Speaker: Then she picked up a skittle off the floor of an art room and she ate it.
Speaker: But she ate it as a sort of piece of performance art.
Speaker: And everyone went, oh.
Speaker: They went, don't eat that.
Speaker: Too late.
Speaker: Already eaten it.
Speaker: It's absolutely fine.
Speaker: And then I got high as a kite.
Speaker: From the sugar.
Speaker: Bouncing off the wall.
Speaker: And the whole class, there was a crushed skittle next to me.
Speaker: And I kept meaning to say, Karina, did you want this one too?
Speaker: I won't eat stepped on candies.
Speaker: I didn't think so.
Speaker: That's my boundary.
Speaker: But you know what?
Speaker: This is the challenge.
Speaker: Play, have fun.
Speaker: What is life for if to not have fun?
Speaker: Did that sentence make sense?
Speaker: It sounded like I went all Shakespearean.
Speaker: You did.
Speaker: And I like that.
Speaker: What is life like to not have, to play, to not have fun?
Speaker: Old English.
Speaker: To be or not to be.
Speaker: That is the question.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: What are we all doing here?
Speaker: Bequeath.
Speaker: I don't like the word bequeath.
Speaker: It sounds a little too, we won't get into it.
Speaker: Bequeath me.
Speaker: Bequeath me.
Speaker: Listeners out in listener land.
Speaker: We are so excited that you are still with us on this HilariP Recovery Project season.
Speaker: We are so excited because not only are we presenting these beautiful comedians to you, we are also teaching and well, I'm teaching and Karina is taking part in another wave of the Hilarity Recovery Project.
Speaker: And I just want to highlight that these performers from the last course, the ones you're listening to and have listened to in the last couple of episodes, have been going out into different community events and to organizations and to galas and things like that, where they've been sharing this beautiful message of recovery and living life.
Speaker: And like you say, having joy.
Speaker: What is life if not to be for joy?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Because joy is...
Speaker: A distillation of love.
Speaker: Do you like that?
Speaker: Oh my God.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: If love was like this bandwidth, like a sort of stream of energy, joy would be the central core to it.
Speaker: Do you like that?
Speaker: I feel bejoyed right now.
Speaker: I am also bejoyed.
Speaker: I'm bejoyed.
Speaker: Just bejoyed.
Speaker: I feel like I'm in the rainbow.
Speaker: Oh, stop.
Speaker: And that reminds me of the skittle you ate.
Speaker: Me too.
Speaker: I was like, taste the rainbow, baby.
Speaker: I'm going to eat a dusty old sweet off the floor.
Speaker: You're like, there, I did it.
Speaker: I played.
Speaker: Ate a dusty old sweet.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So speaking of being in the rainbow, in the love, it's sandwiched in there.
Speaker: Cushioned in the pillows of joy.
Speaker: Oh, Deneen is literally that for me.
Speaker: Like she, and by the way, I don't know if we've mentioned it, but Deneen is helping, um, support, support the HRP course, which is so lovely because just her laugh alone, as I've said it on, I'm trying to think of how to, it envelopes me.
Speaker: Her laugh alone envelopes me in love and joy.
Speaker: So it's,
Speaker: such a gift having her there and I cannot wait for you all to hear her set.
Speaker: So shall we roll it?
Speaker: Let's please put your hands and your feet together.
Speaker: Your diggers.
Speaker: Put your hands, feet and buttocks together for Dineen.
Speaker: You guys having a good time tonight?
Speaker: How about that vulva business, eh?
Speaker: That was pretty funny.
Speaker: Well, I'm, you heard my name, I'm Deneen, and I'm a half-Indigenous Scottish woman, okay?
Speaker: So, that makes me a bargain hunter.
Speaker: Okay, so my dad's indigenous and my mom is Scottish mainly.
Speaker: So I want to introduce you to her mama and that's Grandma Millie.
Speaker: Okay, so Grandma Millie is
Speaker: She's a pretty, she was from Purdy, Missouri, okay, that's in the USA.
Speaker: So she comes from a long line, okay, of farmers, hay chewers, and fiddle playing folk, okay?
Speaker: So this lady, okay, I'm sure you guys have grannies, right?
Speaker: Shout out if you have a granny that's a tea toddler and she likes to give you cookies and lots of encouragement and love and all those things.
Speaker: Come on, you can, some of you, right?
Speaker: That wasn't Grandma Millie, okay?
Speaker: She wasn't one of those, okay?
Speaker: She would say it for how it is, okay?
Speaker: So she'd say things like this to her grandkids.
Speaker: Um, Dineen, those jeans are so bloody tight, you're gonna ruin your chances of having children.
Speaker: Then she'd say things like, Dineen, put those legs down, quit showing everybody your monkey.
Speaker: All right, now.
Speaker: She'd say, okay, when we go to Auntie Pauline's house, you make sure you turn your cheek right away.
Speaker: Don't let her kiss you on the mouth.
Speaker: Because you don't know where those old lips have been.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: I'm like, okay.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So then she says, okay, Denise, quit that smoking, because your lips are going to turn out to be looking like an old asshole, like Auntie...
Speaker: Like Auntie Pauline's.
Speaker: And Auntie Pauline, right?
Speaker: She said she puts that red lipstick on and it goes all down in the cracks.
Speaker: Yeah, she'd crack me up, that grandma.
Speaker: She'd say, hey, you see your uncle out there?
Speaker: She said, quit smoking pot.
Speaker: Don't be smoking it because look at him.
Speaker: His brain's about mush.
Speaker: And I'm like, okay, Grandma.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So she had all this worldly advice.
Speaker: Anyways, my grandma, okay, she would call a few barn dances in Saskatchewan, okay?
Speaker: So she could fiddle, I mean, she could yodel, okay?
Speaker: And she'd sing all these songs.
Speaker: So I thought, well, I'm going to impress Grandma, and I'm going to really practice her favorite song.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: So I'm like, okay.
Speaker: Well, I'm going to perform it first.
Speaker: So I'm like, Grandma, I've been practicing.
Speaker: I'm going to sing it.
Speaker: She goes, okay, go ahead.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: I've got to put this up here because this is really good.
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: You guys ready?
Speaker: Okay, so I'm like, okay, Grandma, get ready.
Speaker: I'm like, okay.
Speaker: Okay, get ready.
Speaker: How does it go again?
Speaker: I was practicing it in the bathroom.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I'm leaving on that Blue River train.
Speaker: Come on.
Speaker: I'm leaving on that Blue River train.
Speaker: That same old train that brought me here is gonna carry me away again.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: E-U-E-D-A-E.
Speaker: D-A-E-O-O-D.
Speaker: She says to me, if I sound anything like that, I'm going to stop singing.
Speaker: LAUGHTER
Speaker: I'm like, oh, thanks, Grandma.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: So, you know, for me, okay, I didn't take Granny's advice about the smoking, okay?
Speaker: I didn't listen to her.
Speaker: I smoked everything.
Speaker: And out of everything, okay?
Speaker: And out of everything.
Speaker: You know, I had a Cheech and Chong bong.
Speaker: Oh, there's a different... And that got confiscated.
Speaker: I was pissed off.
Speaker: And then I had, oh, smoked out a few pop cans, right?
Speaker: Sarah doesn't know about that.
Speaker: Because she... I'm sure there's a pop can smoker in here, a few of those.
Speaker: Anyways, you know, you name it, I did it, right?
Speaker: So then another thing that I managed to do was drink like my grandma, and she really liked to drink.
Speaker: Oh, I forgot, again, never mind that.
Speaker: We can't make it into a Netflix special, right?
Speaker: So we'll leave that.
Speaker: So anyways, she, yeah, so I drank, right?
Speaker: Pretty good too.
Speaker: So I'm gonna give you guys some advice about what not to do while you're drinking, okay?
Speaker: So, you decide, you're driving in a vehicle with your friends, and you decide that you don't like the dress you have on, okay?
Speaker: So you say, okay, well, this is a good idea.
Speaker: I'm going to throw my dress right out the window.
Speaker: And then we're going to the after-hours bar, so I want to stop at home and get changed, okay?
Speaker: So I say, okay, pull over, bring me home, I'm going to get changed, okay?
Speaker: So I'm like, okay, shit, what am I going to do now?
Speaker: So here's another thing you don't do, okay?
Speaker: So I looked at the mailbox, and I'm scrunched behind the bush, right?
Speaker: Because I'm wearing, okay, if you guys lived in the 90s fashion, okay, you always wore nylons, okay, with no knickers, Lizzie.
Speaker: LAUGHTER
Speaker: Okay, no knickers, right?
Speaker: So I'm like, oh shit, I gotta ring the doorbell, I forgot my key.
Speaker: And don't do that, don't forget your key.
Speaker: Especially if you plan on getting naked.
Speaker: So I'm like, what am I gonna do?
Speaker: I look at the mailbox, I'm like, oh, there's a newspaper in there.
Speaker: So I wrap myself in newspaper.
Speaker: And I ring the doorbell, okay?
Speaker: So my brother-in-law, okay?
Speaker: Your dad, Kara.
Speaker: Answers the door, okay?
Speaker: And he's like, oh, what happened?
Speaker: And I just raced right past him, right?
Speaker: I just ignored him.
Speaker: And then he went upstairs and he said, hey, Michelle, like, there's something, I think your sister's been violated or something.
Speaker: She's got no clothes on wrapped in a newspaper.
Speaker: So she comes down there, she's like, are you okay, Janine?
Speaker: Is everything okay?
Speaker: I'm like, yeah, mind your own business, fuck off.
Speaker: Right?
Speaker: Like, I'm getting prepared to go to the after hours bar.
Speaker: So, and she was always sticking her nose and everything.
Speaker: Anyways, you know, don't do all those things.
Speaker: But all jokes aside, I'm telling you this, is that, thank God that I have 16 years coming up of sobriety.
Speaker: Seven, how many?
Speaker: 17?
Speaker: Oh, I'm gonna be 17, see?
Speaker: All that drinking caused some damage, I don't even know.
Speaker: Irregardless.
Speaker: I'm telling you, being a part of HRP has totally been a blessing for me because we all walk around with that shame and stigma about addiction and alcoholism and it's rampant in a lot of our families.
Speaker: And I know for me, I've lost family members, I've lost friends to the disease, and you know, it's all over our community.
Speaker: We just like to pretend that it's not, and it's there, and it's killing everybody.
Speaker: So you know what?
Speaker: If you're around here and you're getting sober, stick and stay, because you know what?
Speaker: It really pays.
Speaker: You get to ride the pony.
Speaker: And you know what else I'm gonna tell you?
Speaker: Okay?
Speaker: A word of advice.
Speaker: Put your legs down, stop showing your monkeys, okay?
Speaker: And your, okay, this is nasty.
Speaker: And your snakes, okay?
Speaker: But you know, no, you don't have to do that.
Speaker: Go ahead, do whatever you want.
Speaker: And I gave my friends this advice, there's no shame in a little slap and tickle.
Speaker: All right, Deneen.
Speaker: Deneen.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: The joy.
Speaker: Oh my goodness.
Speaker: So funny.
Speaker: Just the way she just laughs and laughs and laughs.
Speaker: It's just pure confidence.
Speaker: There's also, there's a presence about her that I really love where she just gets up there and she knows who she is.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: You'll see some comedians.
Speaker: There's one I can't think of his name right now, but he's very like deadpan and he'll just get up there and he'll talk like this and he never laughs.
Speaker: Nothing.
Speaker: It's deadpan, but that's who he is.
Speaker: And it's funny with her.
Speaker: She's just up there.
Speaker: She's like larger than life.
Speaker: That's how I feel about Denise.
Speaker: She gets up there and she's like, okay, like she's does her thing, but it's like, I want to be in her world because it's funny.
Speaker: I just love it.
Speaker: Just the confidence, the pure confidence, which I think is a testament to her recovery and to the work that she's done up to this date.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: But there is something that she didn't really dissect the meaning of it, but the part where she was talking about her grandma Molly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And Millie, that's actually what I wrote, but I can't read my own writing.
Speaker: And here we are.
Speaker: Okay, Grandma Millie.
Speaker: So Grandma Millie had a lot of advice.
Speaker: She sounds like she reminded me a bit of my grandma, like very opinionated, right?
Speaker: And would just dole out the advice that you haven't asked for.
Speaker: But she said something along the lines of, you know, Grandma Millie would put on these events and she was a singer and she was a yodeler.
Speaker: And there was a part where I could see little Dineen
Speaker: wanting to fit in, like be accepted by her grandma because she learned a whole song, right?
Speaker: She learned the whole song, she still knows it and was yodeling to try to be like, yeah, look at me.
Speaker: Like I've done this.
Speaker: And the grandma's response was like brutal, really.
Speaker: You know, if I sound like that, I'm gonna stop singing.
Speaker: And that's the humor.
Speaker: That's the humor that's like, I recognize that kind of biting wit
Speaker: in my family system as well.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And that, uh, you know, that kind of like undercutting and it's, and I think there's so much love behind it because you can imagine the grandma just enjoying this child singing this song and then, you know, and then they, they have to, they just have to have to make a joke.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Well, and we, we both, you and I both come from that as well.
Speaker: Like,
Speaker: where my heart felt like it broke a million times in childhood because of comments like that, but it made me who I am today.
Speaker: Like the comedy that I do, it's all, and same with you, like it's all shaped and formed from these comments, but as a child, yeah.
Speaker: You're just trying to like, okay, I'm not going to do that again.
Speaker: I'm going to do it this way.
Speaker: And I, oh, I won't do it this way.
Speaker: Next time I'll do it this way.
Speaker: So I can be funny enough and good enough.
Speaker: And I could feel it sort of like a knife in my heart when, you know, I'd get, that's five minutes.
Speaker: I'll never get back.
Speaker: Or, um, guess you had to be there like deadpan or like, yeah, get to the point, Karina.
Speaker: Like we don't have all day for this, you know, all that kind of stuff where it's like, oh God, it's so hurtful at the time.
Speaker: But it's shaped us, all of us.
Speaker: Even Deneen, too.
Speaker: I'm like, what a beautiful woman who's just owned her story and who she is.
Speaker: And you can see there is healing and recovery there.
Speaker: Or she wouldn't be doing what she's doing.
Speaker: She wouldn't be saying what she's saying.
Speaker: But yeah, I thought that was really cool.
Speaker: She didn't really talk about it.
Speaker: But I could feel it where it's like...
Speaker: if I sounded like that and trust me, I am the worst offender as a parent.
Speaker: Like I have definitely said, I've told my kids, like I acknowledge that I have definitely been impatient and tried to get a laugh and a joke and have said things that have may or may not hurt you.
Speaker: But if they have, please tell me anytime.
Speaker: Like I'm open, I'm here for it.
Speaker: Like I, I'm not going to be offended or hurt.
Speaker: If you say mom, that time you said, you know,
Speaker: hurry up or whatever, whatever it hurt.
Speaker: I'm, I'm open to hear all of that kind of stuff, which is a healing, which is a testament to your recovery and to recovery in general, that we know, and we identify where we have made unconscious errors in the lives of others.
Speaker: You know, this is just, this is just part and parcel of it.
Speaker: Like no one is innocent of stepping on other people's toes.
Speaker: And it's all about, you know,
Speaker: Our own need as people and parents to fit in and to kind of, you know, in some way gets validation even from our kids by getting a little laugh.
Speaker: And you do get a little laugh.
Speaker: That's the thing.
Speaker: It is funny to witness our parents say those things.
Speaker: But at the same time, the underlying message is you're not good enough.
Speaker: All right.
Speaker: You're not good enough.
Speaker: Do better.
Speaker: But that's not necessarily true.
Speaker: It's just that part of it.
Speaker: And so when we as parents, and I know I have to stop that kind of behavior coming up in me with Sydney, my daughter who just turned 13, is this very same thing.
Speaker: I immediately get a joke in my head, but it's very belittling and it's a habit.
Speaker: And I don't say it as much as I kind of, ooh, you set me up for that one, but I don't.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And it's because, you know, I grew up in that, you know, in those family, those very sort of British toxic environment families where it was like that.
Speaker: Just, you know, get a laugh, get a laugh, get a laugh because everybody's wanting to break that tension.
Speaker: There's just been so much collective trauma, I guess.
Speaker: I mean, just, just go reeling back a couple of generations in my own
Speaker: family system and just in general in the UK, you know, they had a brutal time during world war one and world war two, a lot of trauma.
Speaker: And so I'm sure a lot of like, you know, the humor ramped up a fair few levels just to cut through some of that pain and just release some of the, the heavy valves that were building up.
Speaker: You know what else I've been thinking about?
Speaker: I've been thinking about the family system and like, um,
Speaker: You know, Deneen said something too, like family and addiction.
Speaker: Like, I mean, there's family and addiction.
Speaker: You look at Deneen's story about walking in at her sister's place and it's like F off basically.
Speaker: Like I'm right.
Speaker: But, but what I've been thinking about is generational, like generational healing.
Speaker: So if you look back, you touched on world war one, world war two.
Speaker: I was thinking about my great, great grandmother who committed suicide during world war two under Hitler's reign.
Speaker: They were in Germany.
Speaker: And she wrote a suicide note.
Speaker: And it was about how basically at that time, the propaganda from Hitler's minions was so bad that it would say, if the allies come into your town, they're going to rape you and torture your children in front of you.
Speaker: They're bad.
Speaker: And she...
Speaker: Her husband had just passed away two years prior and she could not cope.
Speaker: She was like, I can't, I cannot cope with this.
Speaker: Like the world is too much.
Speaker: I'm feeling too much.
Speaker: I can't watch you go through this.
Speaker: And she, she took rat poison, like strictly.
Speaker: It was, it was brutal, brutal.
Speaker: But what I started realizing is I thought about the effect that had on my great grandma and my grandma, which was like, don't feel, right?
Speaker: Move on.
Speaker: We don't talk about this.
Speaker: We don't feel because it's too painful.
Speaker: And look what happened.
Speaker: And I was like, that gets passed down generationally.
Speaker: And so you do get that kind of not, I don't want to say cynicism, but it's sort of like a...
Speaker: Like, deal with it.
Speaker: Like, move on.
Speaker: Ha ha ha.
Speaker: Like, this is a joke.
Speaker: Like, we don't have time to think about your feelings and how you're doing because no one should have time to do that because you're just going to get hurt.
Speaker: Exactly.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And like, yeah, what have you?
Speaker: You don't I mean, this is a big one that comes down from my dad's side, and I think he must have dealt with it so much growing up.
Speaker: So you don't have anything to cry about.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: You don't have anything.
Speaker: Like, you know, you want me to give you something to cry about?
Speaker: Well, he never said that luckily, but he was just, um, he was just like, none of my stuff.
Speaker: gets validated by him because he had it so much worse.
Speaker: And then, of course, whoever went before him had it 10 times worse than that and so on.
Speaker: And if you do go back, the more you go back, the more brutal we treated one another, right?
Speaker: Medieval times?
Speaker: Yeah, but forget it, mate.
Speaker: You'd be lucky if you come out with your thumbs.
Speaker: Or your tongue.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Thumbs and tongueless, gentlemen and ladies and non-binary folk out there.
Speaker: Like if you didn't get the Black Plague, you could.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or live in a sewage house.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Or have scabies, leprosy or any of the other unmentionables.
Speaker: Like we're all sitting on a hotbed of trauma, basically.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: And that's the joy of life.
Speaker: That is the joy of life.
Speaker: The joy of life is recognizing that
Speaker: You are not alone in your trauma.
Speaker: It is, being alive is traumatic.
Speaker: So for goodness sake, pull yourself out of that nosedive.
Speaker: And get back on the hobby horse.
Speaker: Today's episode, we are talking about fun, joy, play, laughter.
Speaker: Those are the things that release the valve of tension, but we want to do it in a healthy way, don't we?
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Like part of that, one of the challenges we said, you know, go out there and have joy, do something playful.
Speaker: The other thing I've started to do is like, I went to Costco recently and it was madness, right?
Speaker: And in the past, I used to get like,
Speaker: Costco is the perfect place for me to detach from my body.
Speaker: It's like an out of body experience, right?
Speaker: Where I just sort of like become like, I just hang onto the cart and I just follow where Shane's going.
Speaker: Cause I'm like a child.
Speaker: But what I realized is like, that's the perfect place to find the joy.
Speaker: Like just observe, watch life is batshit crazy.
Speaker: And when you go to somewhere like Costco, that's where it's the craziest.
Speaker: Everyone's in there.
Speaker: Like, like a bunch of ants, right?
Speaker: milling about trying to get all their stuff.
Speaker: It's packed, it's crowded, but you can just sit back and be like, this is the human experience.
Speaker: Like, wow.
Speaker: Look at all these humans.
Speaker: Look at all their little, what are they thinking?
Speaker: What are they feeling?
Speaker: And some of them incredibly unconscious, scrabbling around, right?
Speaker: Trying to stay away from themselves, away from the feelings, away from the horror of
Speaker: of being alive.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's people watching, right?
Speaker: And I think a lot of people like people watching, but you can do it anywhere.
Speaker: You don't have to be sitting in a fancy cafe at the street side in Paris.
Speaker: You can do it anywhere.
Speaker: Well, I've decided this trip I'm doing in December back to England, or it is December now, but at the end of the month for Christmas,
Speaker: I'm going to people watch my family.
Speaker: So I'm going to detach in the middle of the, because Christmas in my family in the UK is lots of people coming through and lots of gatherings of eating together and all of these things.
Speaker: And everybody's tired.
Speaker: Everybody's kind of crotchety.
Speaker: Everybody's desperate to get into their own place and space.
Speaker: And yet there are these moments to connect and all of those things.
Speaker: And I'm just going to be shoved in the middle of it with Elaine and Sid.
Speaker: And, you know, Elaine and I are uncoupled.
Speaker: We're not in a relationship, but we are in relationship.
Speaker: We are best friends navigating our family and, you know,
Speaker: And my parents and my other family members don't really understand the dynamic of that.
Speaker: But it is important.
Speaker: I just want to say this just for my own self is really important that in a gay family and they're coming apart.
Speaker: I mean, Sydney is not my biological child, but she is my child as in a chosen family.
Speaker: And I don't know if my
Speaker: all my family members really don't understand the magnitude of what that means to me and how important it is for me for them to recognize Sydney as their own, right?
Speaker: That they are in relationship with Sydney because she's desperate to go back to England and see everyone.
Speaker: And she's just 13 year old living in her innocence, you know, just loving England, loving my family, you know,
Speaker: So yeah, just feeling a little bit of emotion come up with that just because not everyone recognizes that when they're straight and they're just, well, it's not your child, fuck off, you know?
Speaker: Honestly, this is not even just a gay thing.
Speaker: Sorry, but you know, this is a blended family thing.
Speaker: Right.
Speaker: And any person out there who has a blended family knows.
Speaker: Like it's having a blended family.
Speaker: I was told once having a blended family is the hardest kind of family.
Speaker: And then you add recovery to it.
Speaker: And that's, you've doubled up on the hardness.
Speaker: Like it's difficult.
Speaker: It's challenging.
Speaker: And I've been in that experience where, um, not on my family's side, but on my husband's family side, they did not, my boys have not been accepted as their own.
Speaker: And sometimes like the, the point is like, you're powerless.
Speaker: There's nothing you can do.
Speaker: Actually, that's not true.
Speaker: What you can do is just love harder.
Speaker: Like that's all that comes and have an open conversation.
Speaker: Like I did with my boys and, you know, my husband was with me and we chatted with them about their experience and how they felt.
Speaker: And we let them know how upset it made us so that we address the elephant in the room.
Speaker: Cause it was, it was pretty pain.
Speaker: It is, it's hard to watch children go through that at the hands of an adult.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: where you're just kind of like, open your heart.
Speaker: God, how hard is it?
Speaker: But yeah, well, me and my sister, you know, we, from, from the age of six, we were with my stepdad.
Speaker: Um, and then he had two more children when we were teenagers and his parents just did not accept us as part of their brood.
Speaker: And so it got really embarrassing at Christmas.
Speaker: We went, I just got to tell you this very quick story.
Speaker: We went over for Christmas one year and, um,
Speaker: They were handing out all the Christmas presents to my other cousins, my step cousins, if you will, and to my own brother and sister.
Speaker: And then they gave me and Becca those free little packs you get on the airplane with just the one pair of disposable socks and a disposable.
Speaker: And it was so humiliating.
Speaker: And it was humiliating for my mom and
Speaker: I think for my stepdad and of course for us.
Speaker: And we never went back to another family gathering at their house again.
Speaker: And when we were little, we used to go there and absolutely love it because we were none the wiser.
Speaker: But my poor mum was sitting in the mix of it all, just feeling so out of place and just feeling like she just wasn't
Speaker: you know, accepted because of the stigma around, you know, their precious son getting with a unwell, you know, and, you know, divorcee with kids.
Speaker: Like, couldn't you start fresh with somebody innocent, a good girl?
Speaker: This is just it.
Speaker: So, yeah, I think, um,
Speaker: That's exactly what my boys went through and us as a family.
Speaker: And we didn't go back for that kind of gathering.
Speaker: That was our commitment to them.
Speaker: Like, we're not going to put you in that situation again.
Speaker: So I think it really is like you do what you can do and you make it as comfortable and as loving.
Speaker: Like you guys have so much love in your hearts.
Speaker: And I think that comes through and that's all you can really do.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: And my family, like my mom, more than anyone,
Speaker: She knows not to do that.
Speaker: Oh, yeah.
Speaker: She is incredibly good with young people anyway.
Speaker: So she just brings Sydney in.
Speaker: You know, she has all.
Speaker: Bless Wendy.
Speaker: She's got photos of Sydney up in her house, you know, along with the other grandchildren.
Speaker: So in that way, I'm fine.
Speaker: It's just sometimes just other members of my family.
Speaker: They just go, whoa.
Speaker: you're not going to be in white rock for the rest.
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, I am.
Speaker: I'm based here.
Speaker: I'm based around my family.
Speaker: Yeah, I'm going to go off and do my thing, but I'm always going to be here.
Speaker: No, no, you're not.
Speaker: And I'm like, yeah, I am.
Speaker: Stop telling me what you think I am going to do.
Speaker: You think I'm so like rudderless or rootless that I'm not going to stick by the people I love and I've made a commitment to.
Speaker: This is, this harkens back to our other episode where we talked about roles in families and how families put their expectations on you based on how you were or how you have been.
Speaker: Or even how society operates.
Speaker: No, when you break up with someone, you leave.
Speaker: You freaking leave.
Speaker: And it's like, well, not in this case.
Speaker: Yeah, no, it's absolutely true.
Speaker: And I think...
Speaker: Oh, and actually like, sorry.
Speaker: No, go ahead.
Speaker: Well, I was just going to say, because we did go away.
Speaker: I don't know how that subject came up, but at one point in Deneen's set, she does mention her niece who's in the audience.
Speaker: Yes.
Speaker: I mean, this is the family, the family healing.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: So there's her niece, her sister's, or it might be her brother's child.
Speaker: I don't even know.
Speaker: I don't even know.
Speaker: No, it's her.
Speaker: It's, I think it's her sister's child because her brother, her brother-in-law opened the door.
Speaker: to her wearing the wrapped in newspaper, which just makes me think she's been to the butchers, you know?
Speaker: I know.
Speaker: And the way that we rip through our families, like she said, I just ignored it.
Speaker: I just said, yeah, just walk and then said like, fuck off.
Speaker: I'm going somewhere.
Speaker: Leave me alone.
Speaker: Like, you know, that's, that's the selfishness of addiction through and through, but it was just so precious and nice to have that family, um,
Speaker: uh, connection in the audience, you know, the niece witnessing this, you know, this, this loving family member of hers, 17 years clean, um, just, you know, living her best life, living her joy vibes, just, you know, sharing her heart with the world.
Speaker: Um, yeah, I'm just super proud of you, Deneen.
Speaker: You're so fricking cool.
Speaker: I love you to bits.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Deneen is doing what Deneen is living the gift of recovery, like truly, and having that healing journey with the family.
Speaker: Like you said, the fact that that family that she was talking about in her set was sitting there in the audience.
Speaker: Like how cool is that?
Speaker: So we can, we can be the joy bringers, right?
Speaker: In,
Speaker: In Christmas, in Christmas, in Christmas town.
Speaker: With Christmas forthcoming.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Now is the time to be joyful.
Speaker: So that is the challenge over the next couple of weeks.
Speaker: Find the play, find the joy, be an observer, watch people and find the funny in it.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: It's quite comical actually.
Speaker: And when you go into your Christmas experiences, um, whether, you know, you're around lots of people or
Speaker: perhaps not so many people, just practice observing, you know, be the people watcher in those situations because it can separate us from being sort of fully immersed in the drama and the chaos of family systems and all of that jazz.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: Okay.
Speaker: I think that kind of wraps up this episode.
Speaker: Yeah.
Speaker: We love you so much.
Speaker: Love, love, love.
Speaker: Joy, joy, joy.
Speaker: Joy, recovery.
Speaker: And yeah, lean into
Speaker: Growing, learning, joy, fun.
Speaker: And farting.
Speaker: Lean into it.
Speaker: Lean into it.
Speaker: Goodbye.
Speaker: Dear listeners, we are a two-woman shop here, and this is a little labor of love.
Speaker: So anything you can do to show us some love, our love language is subscribing, sharing on social media, and coming to one of our many shows.
Speaker: And if you're feeling really adventurous, take a course.
Speaker: Don't be afraid of a good time.
Speaker: We love you.
Speaker: We love you.
Speaker: We love you.
Speaker: We're out.
