[COVID Crisis Series 1 of 25] Mental Health in Relationships

The following is a full transcript of a Facebook Live, where Susie is speaking  extemporaneously – she is unscripted and unedited. 

(00:00):

Can take a few seconds cause now I don’t even have, I have, I can see you. Hi. Hi folks. I don’t even know your…. Hi John. Recording is paused screening live on Facebook. Okay. It says it is, but I’m on Facebook and I don’t know where it is. So, but go to my page, I guess my Susie. Yeah, hopefully it’ll work. Okay, got the chat box open. Okay. You guys, technology stuff is not my thing, but I am learning. I am learning. Okay. I’ve got the chat box open. We’ll wait a few more minutes cause we’re here to start. Um, I’m so excited working on Facebook because I think it just saw me so I’m going to keep that, keep the camera on. I keep a camera on you. Okay. Oh the camera is on me.

(00:52):

How’s the camera there everybody view. Okay. Can you all hear me type yes if you can hear me or not. Okay, great. Okay. Fabulous. More people are coming. Hi iPhone. Somebody. Thanks for joining. I don’t know why Karen, it’s on you. But um, y’all can see me and we can, should be able to see everybody. Um, it’s not working. Okay. It’s just showing the whole screen, which is fine cause I want this to be a discussion. My whole thing with this doing it this way, you guys was so we could all talk about this together versus me just talking cause I could just be on Facebook talking. I’m doing a live, which I am going to do some video shorts, what I call shorts videos probably later this week where I’m going to cover in little bite sized pieces, some of the questions that people are having and then we’ll archive those somewhere so you can have them.

(01:41):

Um, but I wanted to do this so we could have discussions because we’re all socially isolated today. I saw this term, well let me try on recording. Hold on. Recording paused record please. Jesus bring me a tech person who’s born. They’re like, this is my effort at being green with her happy st Patrick’s day for everybody. Got all little green ring. I’d never wear green. Cause with olive skin you look green. And so I was like, Oh, how many big battery day. So if you are a st Patrick’s day fan and you are missing out on your fun with your friends at the bar, kudos to you. Congratulations to you. If I had a green beer, I would toast you right now because you’re doing what they’re asking us to do. And I am trying really hard at not being mad at the people who aren’t.

(02:27):

Um, because I am a high risk person. And so one of the things I want to talk about is what we, we’re gonna talk about mental health and then all this together time. But what can we control? We’re all feeling vulnerable. We’re all feeling a little edgy. Maybe you’re feeling a little irritable. I don’t know. Um, I am a little bit, as you could just tell. Um, I heard about the Clearwater beach, Florida. My mom was talking to me and she said, have you seen the pictures of Clearwater beach is packed with kids? And I was immediately angry and I had thought, okay, anger spikes my blood pressure and my heart rate and stress hormones and that’s not going to help me. I cannot control what they’re doing. What can I control? I control what I, what I say to myself. I can’t control what I think.

(03:09):

I can’t control necessarily what I feel, but I can control what I do with what all comes up in my heart in those moments. And so one of the things I would invite you to do is look at, like we talked about yesterday, what is going on? What am I feeling about what’s going on and what do I want to say to myself or navigate this? So for me, with let’s use the Clearwater Florida one, I was like, okay, I, I hope that these kids, parents call them and tell them to come home, but I can’t let this get me upset. What can I do? I can turn off the news. I can choose to not pay attention to the people who might get me boiling cause they’re not doing what I think they should be doing as an EDM at Graham eight, I have an opinion about what everybody should be doing, so I then can take a deep breath.

(03:53):

It was interesting. I had to monitor, I have to monitor my pulse ox, which monitors my, um, my heart rate. And I put my little pulse oximeter on [inaudible]. So a couple of deep breaths to a couple of deep cleansing breasts. If I had had time, I would have put on a music or a calm app or my friend uses Headspace. Um, just to get myself centered about what am I in charge of, what am I in charge of? I’m in charge of me. So repeat after me. I’m in charge of me. I can’t hear you, but that’s okay. One of the things that I do to help me remember, um, John, either you’re got an eight too. Yeah, we have, we have plans for everybody is I have, I’m what I call Ebenezers or reminders in the Bible. They talk about stacks of stones that people built to show that God was here.

(04:38):

I remember number God was here. And so for me, I’m so visually oriented and sometimes I think I have the attention span of a gnat. I need reminders. So on one of my hands I wear rings that have words on them. That means something to me. This one I started wearing a little bit ago, it says be still on it. And every time I looked down at my hand to write something, I see these words be still. I would love it if I would as the kind of person who could just hear it and remember it forever. But I almost feel like God has to have my face like this, like a little child. Okay, Susie, remember be still. And so in that moment I took a deep breath, look down at my hand. It was like, okay, be still, be still and know that I am God.

(05:12):

Be still and know that this is not a surprise to you. We still, I know that I am doing all the things in my control to take care of me and my people. And that’s all you can do. If you could see my desk, I would show you if I had any quick way of moving this. But who knows what will happen to the tech. If I do that, I have post it notes up to remind me of truths. So one of the things I invite you to do is to put up some reminders for you. What do you need to talk to? Tell yourself in the moments where you are ready to throw a punch or people. And I use, I’m going to pull your hair out. One of my friends used to say to her kids, you’re working on my very last nerve.

(05:52):

And that was her kids. Um, clue that they better have listening ears and get it together. Um, I don’t think that I should use the word throat punch for people because it seems so violent. But there are moments when you just want to go, boom. Can you listen up? So all this together time we’re going to talk about tonight, but we have to start with us. What can we be in charge of? And one of the things I want to invite you to do and then invite your people in your house to do is make a little post a note of what do I need? What do I need to stay sane in this time? It might be some space today on social media. I saw something that I’m going to post tomorrow and somebody said, I’m trying to remember who it was. I’m not going to, why don’t we call it physical distancing instead of social distancing because we can be physically distant but socially connected.

(06:40):

And I really liked that because I think this idea of social distancing has us all up in arms because we need our social life. Um, to some degree. Now if you’re an introvert, that’s a whole nother stack of stuff we’re going to talk about. Um, I am, uh, on the border. I love people, but I recharge internally. I’m an introvert in those ways. And so I spend a lot of time alone. And so physical distancing may help you navigate it if you’re a extrovert, cause you can think, Oh I’m just going to be physically distant but we can be on a zoom call like this or I can call my friends. One of my, um, one of my friends I saw at her page, they had her TV up or her screen up and there were four of them having lunch together because they had office stuff.

(07:19):

You know, they had, they had where you sending office lunches together and so they had office lunch on their screen altogether. We, as I’ve said last night, we live on the road full time by ourselves. So we have had cocktail hour with some of our closest friends via zoom. Again, it’s not quite the same as being there in person, but it sure is better than being alone. So social connectedness and physical distancing, maybe a better paradigm for extroverts. And so you can write down what do I need as an extrovert? I may need to plan into my day calling a few people and connecting with them. As an introvert, I may need to say to my spouse and my kiddos, I need 30 minutes where nobody’s talking to me. Nobody’s touching me. Nobody’s wanting anything from me. Because if not, I will throw a punch. My people, I will not be the best version of myself.

(08:07):

One of my clients, a very wise woman I know, talks about how do I bring the best version of myself to this moment. And so, um, I, I really want to talk about that before we switch into this together time. But I think this really applies to the together time. Viktor Frankl talked about stimulus and response and I’m going to mess up his quote because it’s over here in one of my notes, but really [inaudible] the way I frame it is reaction versus response. Something comes in. We have that moment that he talks about a stimulus and then we get to choose how we respond. And that is so key for our together time. All this together time. How am I going to handle what comes in? I talk about it. Um, we get to respond. We get to choose how we respond. We don’t have to react.

(08:51):

And sometimes in those moments we might have to take a deep breath, count to 10 you know, I have one client who twist their wedding ring while they’re waiting to to count to 10 and catch up with all the people to catch up to them. [inaudible] deep breath, shoulders down. I joke about wearing my shoulders and earrings. Can I get very stressed? So shoulders down, deep breath. How do I want to respond to the situation? So this situation is just beginning. We have not as a community, as a culture, spent a lot of time with our people all day long. We have businesses, we work, we, our kids go to school and all of a sudden we’re crammed altogether in what feels like very small spaces. And so we’ve got to step back and say, what do I need? What does he or she need? What do they need with our kids?

(09:34):

No matter what age they are because everybody has needs. And so sometimes one parent might be better suited to handle a defense frickin better personality wise, better suited. We had one of our kids, my husband was much better suited to talk with her about things and help her cause they, they kinda ran on the same logical wavelength. I always had a feeling weighed like then she had a much more logical wavelength. And so those are some just one tip. Like who in your house is better suited to handle whatever’s happening with that kid? Okay. Um, with all this together time we’ve got to have physical distancing in our own. Oh, I’ll never forget the time. Like I’m a physical touch girl. I rarely want physical distancing. And I remember when we were living in our house, in our townhouse before we hit the hit the road, our loft town house, there was a couple of evenings.

(10:22):

I had a lot of alone time. I was kind of getting better from another sickness. And John had come home one night and I was looking forward to snuggling on the sofa with him. And he kind of looked at me and he goes, I just need some space. I need some mental, emotional and physical space. So if we’re going to watch a movie, can we sit on opposite sides of the couch? And I was like, okay, thank you. I mean, inside I was like, what? You don’t what was wrong with me? But I was so proud of him for asking for what he needed. And it was really important in that moment that that stimuli of, you know, feeling something came out and was processed to, what do I want to say? I want to thank him for sharing what he needs. I want to respect what he needs and honor what he needs.

(11:00):

And so we actually watched the movie sitting, you know, separately. Um, because that was better for him. And in that moment, my needs were less big and less, less loud than his. And so I want you to write down your needs, have your people write down their needs, and then look at how do we navigate that together. Here’s the bummer. Everybody’s needs are not going to get met all the time. And so one of the things I talk a lot about with my clients is especially like if they go on vacation or if they have a big event coming up, what are the expectations? What’s the one or two things that will make this a win for you? You know, at the end of the day, um, for you and your kiddos and your spouse, what will make it a win? If you’re a high introvert, it might be, I get some time when I’m physically distant from you and the kids to just recharge.

(11:45):

If you an extroverted spouse, noise and chaos and kids interrupting him or her is not going to bother them and drain their battery. Like it might drain yours. So you have to, you have to name that and ask for that. And it might not be today, it might be tomorrow that you get that time because let’s be honest, we’re talking 24, seven with people. Well hopefully they sleep. So 12 hours a day at least, you know, waking up together, going, you know, going to work in the same house, doing school in the same house doesn’t mean you have to be in the same space. So I’d love to hear some creative ideas that you may implement about how you partion up your space, you know? Um, can he work in the dining room if you are, you know, and, and have an office and can you have a post it note on the door to a bedroom and where you might be like office hours.

(12:31):

I’m busy. Now of course, if you have littles, it’s gonna look a little different. But the goal is how do I internally, how do I take care of myself in this kind of almost internal quarantine? One of my friends said I need, and I love the idea of not quarantine but physical distance. How do I create physical distance with all this together time. Now that’s going to be necessary whether you’re an introvert, an extrovert, or you know, love people all the time because we all need to recharge. We all need that, that we drain our battery, we need to recharge. And so I would invite you to have in this together time some sort of schedule for physical distancing in your together time. Little kids need time alone in their room to recharge and rest and have nothing going on. Big teenage kids need time alone in their room where they have, you know, or reading or listening to music or not having external stimuli come in.

(13:22):

That is what we are all going to need at different points. You may need it and even your extroverted spouse or if you’re the extroverted one, they needed a, you know, you may need it, they may need it. Your introverts in your world really need it, which is why I want you to start with, okay, we have all this together time. We know when it started most for most people it started on Monday. So we’re only into Tuesday, you know, maybe for some Thursday or Friday. But literally I think the world kind of went, Oh, we better be kind of not quarantine. What’s the, um, Seattle sheltering in place, you know, to be safe. How are we going to navigate this for a week, two weeks, three weeks? And the faster you get into a routine, the faster you talk about expectations. The sooner you address what people’s needs are, the more calm you’re going to find in your home.

(14:09):

The more calm you’re going to find in yourself and the more calm you’re going to find in your relationships. One of the questions that came in today was, what happens when we’re already bad at communicating? We’re already struggling with our communication skills and we were just doing morning routine, bedtime routine with the kids and then some TV at night and now we’re together all day. What do I do with my spouse who’s not? We were not communicating well and I just pause for a minute. I was like, that is so hard. But to be honest with you, every couple I know struggled with communication. Every couple I know struggles with communication. So first let me normalize it for you. There’s nothing you know, bad broken. You’re one of a kind on your way to divorce. It’s okay, we’re not well. How can we communicate better? And one of the best ways to start is to write down what you need and ask your spouse to write what they need and then negotiate.

(15:01):

One of the things I talked about with one of my CEOs was bring your business skills home with you. This brilliant CEO would pull up in the driveway and dread going in because he knew he was going to get it wrong and communicating well with his wife. And I was like, what if she was your best customer, your most, you know, lucrative customer? What if this was your most valued team member? How would you handle it differently? Bring those communication skills back to the, you know, to your home. And so I would invite you in those moments to ask two questions. How would I communicate with this person if it wasn’t so emotionally charged? You know, what would I say? What would I, what would I, what would I posture be? What would I want them to hear? And then the other thing I would say is how would I listen to them?

(15:44):

How would I receive what they say if it wasn’t so emotionally charged? That is so important in looking at building new communication skills and communication skills are just like every other skill or habit. You know, we, we build new ones, we build, um, what I say, we don’t know what we don’t know, you know, so ask your spouse and you know, did you feel like I heard you? You know, did you feel like I listened well to you? Ask your teenagers, your kiddos, this is a big one. What do you need here? And then it’s okay. We had a question last night from a gal who asked about what do I do with my adult kids? It’s okay to get their input and maybe even your little, it’s like, what do you need here? You know, I need some play time. You may know more than they need use of outside time, but in that moment, what do you need and how can I help meet that need?

(16:28):

And then don’t forget to say here’s what I need. And then sit back in the evening at some point in time with your spouse, with your kids, kiddos, and map out a plan. So at least one need for everybody is getting met a day. Because if you martyr yourself and you get no needs met, you’ll be exhausted and angry and then you will set up this chaotic pattern where you’re constantly putting out fires. So that is a really important thing to do. Let me look at my notes here about what else I wanted to tell you. Making sure, okay. If things go sideways, if people have moods or snippy Enos or you know, you can feel their anxiety. It may not have anything to do with you, a tense moment. Um, a jab, um, uh, come apart from one of your kids may not have anything to do with you.

(17:13):

It may not be personal at all. It may be circumstantial. They may be frustrated about something they may be at, you know, the waterline. I talk about the waterline. They may be at the max and they may need space. So before you take it personally, pause, give them the benefit of the doubt. This isn’t about me not going to tell myself the story of I’m being a bad mom or my spouse and I can’t talk to each other. This is to pause and go, okay, what do you need in this moment? What do you need from me? What’s going to help us move from this tension or this upsetness or this impasse to a smoother, calmer place? Because we all are navigating a ton of together time that we’re not used to. The last thing I want to say before I open it up for questions is to flip it on its end.

(17:58):

What if together time is good? Where can you connect, snuggle, play a game, have a conversation, eat dinner. You know, one of my favorite dinner games or things we did with our kids was we did high lows. What’s your high of the day? What’s your low of the day? And people just shared, there was no commentary. There was the sharing just to get to know each other and what was happening in each other’s world. So again, that could be interesting to have when you’re all at home together. But if you can flip that on its end and go, what’s good about this together time, my spouse and I who haven’t learned to communicate or get to learn how to communicate better. I who have been taking care of the whole house and have huge needs, I’m going to have to learn to share my needs. My kiddos who are used to getting X, Y, Z are going to have to bend and grow. What positives are coming from this difficult time? That’s another way for you to kind of flip it and reduce the anxiety. And the, I’m in this by myself, I have to carry it alone. So those are some tips for us tonight. Um, I want to open it up for questions so if we have any questions, pop them in the, in the chat box and I’ll answer them. Um, let’s see here. I’m getting any, or if you want to unmute you can unmute and ask your question a little bit, like having a conversation. Woo. Okay. [inaudible]

(19:17):

okay. Somebody asks, how do I structure my day? Well, we’re both working from home. Um, I think that goes back to communicating about expectations. Nobody should have to do all the stuff all the time. Um, let me remember that wrong. Oh, what I working from home, but he still leaving. Sorry, I wrote that wrong when I’m working from home and have the kids home from school and he’s still leaving. Oh gosh, honey, that is so tough. So I think at this point, what you’re going to need to do, um, at some level is again, go back to my needs, my kids’ needs, you know, structure. I know there are people who are first responders who are physicians who are on the front lines and have to go to work. There’s also people whose offices haven’t closed and they’re expected to show up. So what does that mean?

(20:04):

I think you can actually expect more of your kids. Uh, eh, I don’t know the kids’ ages in this same situation and really ask them to, you know, the olders the bigs to help with the littles if you can. Um, I think it’s okay to look at your meeting and if possible, um, I talked with a client today and they said I was in a meeting with a parent. It’s a teacher and my little kid came wandering up and I just had to be, you know what? I’m sorry. Let me just handle this real quick. And they handled it. I think people are more gracious about that. I think if you have a spouse who leaves when they come home for the day, it’s really okay to go, here you go, here’s the kiddos. They’re yours. I need to have some space. But you’ve got to talk about all that expectation-wise ahead of time.

(20:46):

Here’s what I want to say. Expect it to be tense. Expect it to be hard. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. That just means we have to have some more conversation around it and more conversation to kind of work through again needs, what are your needs? Because at the end of the day of being with kids and trying to work your waterline, maybe I’m here, you’re like, I’m drowning. I don’t care if they watch a movie and eat hot dogs, I just need some space from them. And so internal, um, navigating that internal energy and asking for what you need. Now, every spouse I know would say I worked all day too. Correct. We’re not getting in a battle about who’s more tired. What we’re trying to do is navigate how we’re going to do this well together and we might have to take turns. You might have to draw straws, but whenever you can, whenever you do start from a place of needs and expectations, hopes and dreams or dreams is a little big, but hopes for how an evening might go when your spouse gets home.

(21:36):

You know, you might have to lower your standards. I had one gal I talked to today whose house is usually pretty, I’m organized and she was like, it’s a mess. Everything’s a mess. And I was like, okay, if your standard might come down a little bit with toys and the things that you pick up, you might have to lower your expectations in some places or adjust them. You know, it might be like, okay, here’s the laundry basket, throw everything in the laundry basket, put it in the corner so at least the floors clean. You know, we’re going to get creative about some of this. One of the things I am going to talk about, I think on Thursday is a bunch of kid ideas. I’ve been collecting them for how to deal with some stuff with your kids and, and, and grow from there. All right, other questions?

(22:15):

Let’s see what I’ve got here. Uh, okay. Okay. Introvert and extrovert. Okay. Um, and processing. I want to process and talk about things and he doesn’t. Okay. Let’s go back to what I said in the beginning. Um, that happens in my house to make you feel more normal. Um, why can you do with your needs? Like I need to process my anx honey, I need to process my worry if process my fear. I do this thing about called dumping your box internal processors. If you, we gave an internal processor, an external processor, a box of stuff. An internal processor is going to take their box away. You know, look at all the things in it, think about all the things and about three days later come back with their maybe two sentences about what’s in their box. What do you think about your box? You know, and they’re going to have one or two things to say and you’re gonna be like, how do they get there?

(23:07):

And they’re not going to have to answer that question because they just internally thought it through. Okay. An external processor is going to take the box, dumping out, pick up everything, talk about it while they’re picking it up, trying to decide what they think about it. And at the end of 30 minutes, they’re going to have an idea of what they think and internal processors look at me and go, which of all their thoughts am I supposed to believe? And I’m like, just, just wait till they get to the end. They’ll come to a conclusion. But that’s a really different way, especially when it comes to processing anxiety, fear differences. Do we need to go to the grocery store? Who should go? Did you wash your hands? You know, what about the kids? Do we have enough? You know, Plato and crafts or I’ve got to get the work done.

(23:43):

It’s much harder to be calm when what you’re processing is tense. So if you just pause and use this as a strategy, I tell my clients, if you are an external processor, what you do is you will look at your spouse or your friend and you say, can I dump my box? I just needed up my box. I don’t need you to fix it. I don’t need you to, to commentary on it. I just need you to help carry it. And usually an internal process, she’ll go, okay, and then you do it and you’re done. But your expectation can’t be that they interact with you on that because that’s not how they’re wired. An internal processor, you might have to say, you know what, I don’t have margin to listen to that right now, but I will in 30 minutes. Let me go sit in my room and a dark room and have nobody talked to me for 10 minutes or 30 minutes and then I’ll come back and have some energy for you.

(24:24):

We want to talk about energy management. You’ve got to begin to have these hard conversations. My husband and I were sitting outside in our little RV park the other night and he said, Oh my gosh, what are these families going to do? They’re spending all this time together and nobody’s used to it. And I kind of chuckled and I was probably a little snarky cause I was, you know, frustrated with just the whole reality of being stuck in a few fears of my own anxiety. And I kind of paused and I looked at him and I was like, I guess we’re going to learn some new habits. We’re going to develop some new muscles. Now the we being the universal, we [inaudible] cause my kids aren’t here anymore. My kids aren’t living at home. But there are times and there are places where we have to do that with John and I were living in this little tiny house and the habits of getting in each other’s way.

(25:09):

Or when I want to talk about something and he’s knee deep in a meeting, I want to look at you and give you some, I don’t know whether it’s permission to muddle through, permission to muddle through, um, but not permission to be hard on yourself while you’re muddling through, you know, learning new habits. Um, developing new skills takes time. If you went to the gym and you were trying to do a new workout, you wouldn’t expect yourself to get it perfect the first time. Well, maybe you, what if you’re a perfectionist and then that’s a whole other thing. Email me. Well, we’ll work on it, but you need to be gracious with yourself and understand that things are going to take time. This habit, these things are training your spouse or your kids to do or even yourself to do in, in this altogether time is going to be messy and muddled.

(25:55):

And it’s okay. It doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. It means you’re changing from what has always been the way we do it, to figure out the new way of being. And if you can do that with some grace and gentleness, not just with yourself but with all your people, it will again, it will bring the calm, the, the chaos down. It will bring more calm laugh. It may be a huge disaster. Your idea for this big, I had this big idea at one time for this fun family bonding time and my kids hated it and I, you know, I could have gone two ways. The story I told myself could have been I’m a failure or we kind of laughed and went, well that didn’t work. What else can we try? Laughter and levity. One of my, um, my husband’s business partners, SHA sends him with these silly memes every day and they crack me up.

(26:38):

What about, don’t be friends with Tom Hanks. He got stuck in the airport, stranded on the Island, uh, lost in a volcano and I think his ship was, was, uh, taken over. So, you know, don’t ever travel with Tom Hanks. Like things that make you laugh. Get a time where you can laugh together as a family. Find some comedy. Even with, even with the tension, if you can sit with your spouse in the tension and your kids and remember this, this thing, your relationship is bigger than this moment. Your relationship is bigger than the tension of this moment. How can I be warm? How can we connect in the midst of this? Because so much of life that we’re going to live right now is in the midst of chaos, anxiety, sadness, grief, struggle, disorganization, Mmm. Maybe not even knowing how you’re going to get through the next day and that’s okay. Name it, own it. What do I need? How can we get through this together? Those are some things that are going to help you. Okay. I’ve got about three minutes left cause I’m really committed to ending on time. So we only do 30 minutes here. If you want more, you can always email me. We’re going to do this again tomorrow night and I’m working on some ideas for next week. Um, but okay, one more question. Can’t process.

(27:50):

This is a great thing. You cannot have, sorry. You can’t have expectations of them to process with you. If that’s not how they’re wired. So how do you manage those expectations in real time? You know, that’s a great question to Anna and I think off the top of my head it’s going to be disappointing. It’s going to be really disappointing and we hate disappointment. So what we tend to do with disappointment is we throw it on the other poor person or we shove it in ourselves and I think if we can go, you know what? I’m disappointed and I, I’m not going to say this out loud to them. I’m really disappointed that you can’t handle. I’m disappointed that this is the reality right now. I’m disappointed that they can’t navigate what I need from them right now. They may be disappointed that I need something they can’t navigate.

(28:34):

I’m going to name my disappointment and at this point, if you can’t process it, I’m a big fan of putting it in a box when it put this disappointment a box, because right now dwelling on it is going to S not going to serve me. And it may be that by the end of the week you have a closet full of shoe boxes of all the stuff you’ve got a process and then you know, maybe you need some help processing that. Maybe there’ll be a time when you could say, you know, there’s some things I want to talk to you about. When would you have energy? And it may be that it won’t be as soon as you want. And I think it’s okay to be disappointed. I think it’s okay to be frustrated. I think when we’re having those feelings and we think we shouldn’t, we box our suit, we box ourselves in a different way.

(29:13):

We, we put ourselves in a double bind and then it slides out somewhere. So I think it would be okay to name for yourself. Really disappointed. This is my reality. You know, I know for me, and this is so small compared to what people are going through, but um, so we live in a very small home to 340 square feet and we live in a place where it’s sunny and getting outdoors is great, but the allergies here are off the charts and tree pollen is in the red zone. And my doctor said, you need really stay in because if you get a cough or a sinus problem, it could go to your lungs. We don’t want that. So my life just went from this beautiful trailer, this sweet, tiny home in this beautiful park to just this tiny home. And I was really disappointed and angry and I started jabbing, making snarky comments and I kind of at my husband or at the kids on the Clearwater beach, clearly there’s no reason for me to be that invested in them.

(30:02):

But I was so mad at them and I thought, what are you so mad at? You’re so mad you can’t be outside. You’re so disappointed you can’t be outside. And if you feel that and name that it will have less power. So all this together, time is going to bring all that stuff to the surface for all of us. There’s things about your kids, you’re going to learn that you don’t like. There’s things about yourself you’re going to learn that you are going to want to change. There’s certainly things about your spouse that you’re not going to like or that you’re going to want to change. And you can’t always do that. One of my favorite stories, well it’s favorite now cause it’s over, but I’ll tell you the story to end. There was a season where my husband and I were going through some pretty stuff, tough marital stuff and we were both working on it and he was doing his work and um, things were kind of getting better.

(30:46):

We’d come out of the crisis and we were in the better stage and my sister had come over to spend some time with us and she made this comment about you and John seemed to be doing really well or doing better. And I was like, yeah, we are. We’re really connecting. And things are better. And so, you know, being the share that I am, um, John and I were in the car the next day running an errand or picking up the kid from a car pool or going to a soccer game. I don’t even remember where we were going, but I said to him, Hey, um, any recognize that I, that we were doing better and she made a comment that we really are doing better and I just wanted you to know I see your hard work and we are doing better. And I’m just really happy about that. And my husband, who is very logical and very literal said to me, well that’s cause we’ve learned to tolerate each other. [inaudible]

(31:29):

literally folks, I think my head spun around, I’m sure fire shot out of my eyes and steam out of my ears as I looked at my husband and said, you tolerate me. You tolerate me. Because clearly that word had tons of weight and he’s bad belly go, no, no, no, no, no, no. All I mean is that we’ve learned to live with make allowances for cover with grace. The things that annoy us about each other because there’s things about me that annoy you and honey, believe it or not, there are things about you that bothered bug me and I was like take a couple of deep breaths and was like, okay, that’s fair. So maybe in this time one of the things you could do is also have a box for the tolerate stuff. I’m tolerating this about my kids. I’m tolerating this semester for my husband.

(32:11):

I’m even tolerating this about myself and I’m going to handle it with grace because that’s going to get us through. There will be days to deal with all this stuff later. What’s the gracious, what’s the most kind and giving and gracious person I can bring to this moment? The best version of myself when all this together time has me pulling my hair out. So those are some answers. Chosen some tips for the questions today. It’s eight 32 so I want to, I want to honor your, I do have this resource for you. I have to look it up again. Let me share, hold on if I can do this. Hold on one second. I have this, um, Nope, I don’t. So I will post it in, um, on Facebook. Um, but it’s, um, bit dot auditors is down here. If you want to get my secret 16, you just go to VIT. Dot. L Y forward slash Susie’s 16 and I’ll post that again. If you want a Facebook reminder about this tomorrow, shoot me a Facebook message. I sat on a bunch of reminders today. Um, and I will see tomorrow at eight o’clock. Thanks so much for being here and know that you are all in my thoughts and prayers as you go through this, all this together time and I will see you tomorrow.

(33:23):

And recording. Stop recording. Yes. And end the meeting.