Full Transcript for Abdicating Agency

really responsible for speaking up, and we feel, uh, like we're accomplishing something by s- by speaking up even if it doesn't go our way. Kimberly: Yeah. And this is where I, I mean, honestly, I would say abdicating felt like the right word at the time because I just gave it up without a fight. And, um, in that instance, I, I really wish that I had... I, I didn't have the skill set at that time to do that. Michelle: Sure Kimberly: So I've been working on that quite a lot over the last few years, which is part of why I wanted to talk about it today, is because it is one of the things that I've been really intentional about in my life right now. 00:06:36.000 --> 09:07.000 Small wins are good practice for big wins Kimberly: And it, it can spill over into smaller things too. So th- I was sitting at a restaurant yesterday with Mom, we were having lunch, and I didn't realize that it was a weekend, I try not to go out into the wild on the weekends very specifically, 'cause there's other people out there in the wild on the weekends. So we were in this restaurant that we've been to a number of times during the week, and it's always real quiet and everything goes great, and this, it was crazy busy. we were sitting at this table, and we had both finished eating, and it's hotter than hell here in Minnesota right now. And even being indoors, the heat just saps it out of you. And I c- was just like, I could see on Mom's face that she was ready to go, and I, I was ready to go. And I'm looking around this restaurant, and the waitress was, like, way over the, on the other side, and I thought to myself in that moment, the socially appropriate thing for me to do right now is to just sit quietly and wait for her to come round, 'cause she's super busy and I don't wanna be that person, that person that makes a fuss in, in a, in a restaurant. And then I thought, "No, you know what? We're ready to go. We've sat here for a little while. We've had our visiting. We've, you know, we're ready to go." And so the next time that she came anywhere near my eye contact, I waved her over. And it's a stupid little thing, but most of my life I did not have that, that skill set to just be able to say, like, "No, it's, it- we're ready to go." And I, it's not like I stood up on the table and s- made a scene. I just was ready to go. And even coming into the restaurant, there have been times recently where p- the, waitstaff will want to sit me somewhere, and I'll be like, "Yeah, that one doesn't really work for me, and here's why, and I'd really rather sit over there." It's so silly and it's so small, but when you add those little things up over a period of time, just claiming that agency feels so good. It feels so good and it feels empowering, and it doesn't feel like I'm having to step on other people to do it Michelle: So really what we're talking about is having agency, meaning speaking up for yourself, using your voice to advocate for what, what you think is right or advocate for

yourself. So it's, it's interesting. 00:09:07.000 --> 10:57.000 Bubbles or blubber Michelle: I, we have a series coming out soon, if not already posted, about, uh, high-control groups, church being one of them. And I also have a story of not having agency in church, and it was actually about my son. Uh, he was two years old, and the kids were gathered up in front, and the pastor was giving out packs of bubbles, the blowy, blowy bubbles things. And they had a whole bunch of them, and the kids all got one, except for my son, because he's really shy and quiet, and he was standing in the back. And the pastor said, "Did everyone get one? Here, I can give out seconds." And the kids were pushing my son around, trying to get to the seconds. And so I kind of brought him forward, and I said, "He didn't get his first one yet." And finally they gave him the first one. But if he, if I hadn't been there to speak on his behalf, he wouldn't have gotten the bubbles. And I could see on his face when they said, "We're giving out seconds," that he wasn't gonna get one, and he had a little bit of a, of, a panic. And like, just a, just a slight, "I want one of those, but I'm not gonna push my way forward. I'm the tiniest one here." So it's that same... I, I wonder if there's something about the church and high-control groups and encouraging us not to have agency. So I think that's a silly example, 'cause of course the church wanted my son to have bubbles. But in the case of the church, this is the way the church goes, and you go along with it because you're part of that high-control group. I also have something to say about the tables, though. I dated a guy who was probably too much on the spectrum of owning his agency, because he had this habit. This is one example. We were at a, a, a restaurant, 25 maybe, 25 parties waiting for the, the tables, right on the beach, beautiful sunset, all this. And he saw a table that was empty, uh, right on the, the waterfront. And he, he just walked right in the restaurant with me in front of everybody else and just sat at that table. He didn't wait to be seated. He didn't wait to put his name in. He just sat down at that table. And we got served, and we got our dinner, and we left. Like, that's not owning his agency. That's not saying, "I would rather have that table than that table," or, "I'm done eating, I'm ready to go." That's, that's the complete extreme of that. 00:10:57.000 --> 13:21.000 Don't call me Karen Michelle: So interestingly, we talked about this a little bit earlier, and I, I said something about how the extreme of owning our agency could be seen as being a Karen, which we agreed is a terrible word to use and a way to keep women small. But it immediately t- came to my mind that my boyfriend who did this would never have been considered a Karen. So as always, we come back to misogyny and patriarchy. So I, I propose that we talk about, uh, owning our agency as women, and we don't use the opposite end of that spectrum

as Karen or entitled or pushy. It's not the case. We are so far on the other side of that spectrum that we're discussing how do we speak up for ourselves in a restaurant by not sitting at a crappy table. We're not talking about cutting in front of 25 parties to, to get our table. We're not even close to that end of the spectrum Kimberly: No, there's a, there's a vast, vast g- gully between, um, uh, speaking up for yourself and the entitlement that makes you feel like you should get things more so than other people and are willing to step over other people to get those things. When Karen first came out, I actually really appreciated that we finally had a word for people that were entitled, but as things tend to do, it got way out of hand. And so now people are using the label of Karen as a means to shut us down. So now, sometimes when I am speaking up for myself, I worry a little bit that s- that people are gonna think I'm a Karen or call me a Karen simply because I have the audacity to speak up for myself. then I remember that I don't care what they think or what they say. So, uh, but I do think we need to stop. I think we need to stop calling absolutely every person a woman. We need to stop calling every woman who speaks up for herself a Karen, because that's not what that is. That is supposed to be entitlement. It was originally entitlement. I'm not for entitlement. I don't think we should be entitled, but we gotta stop calling people Michelle: I'm on board with that. Let's not use the word Karen. And we're not even talking about that. We're not talking about excessive entitlement. We're talking about speaking up for ourselves. We're talking about owning our agency, being the one in charge of our own stuff 00:13:21.000 --> 17:57.000 Intertwining of agency and consent Kimberly: So one of the other little things that happened recently that, that got me thinking about this is that I have a son that's disabled. He's eight. he has some challenges with his communication. Um, but I'm so guarded about his agency. And so last week, um, when we got to the bus, I said, you know, "Hi, bus driver Steve." And I said, "Hi, you know, bus, bus driver Priscilla," the, the aide. And I said to him, "You can say hi." that's how I say it to him. I don't say to him, "Can you say hi? Can you say hi? Say hi. Say hi. You need to say hi." I always present it as, this is an option that you have. you know, I say, "You can say hi," and sometimes he does, and sometimes he doesn't. And when he doesn't, I don't berate him for it because as a disabled child, he has so little agency already that if I can give him agency in his ability to say or not say to a person And this comes back, when we were kids, it was a much bigger deal. It wasn't just about you had to say hi, but you had to hug people, and you had to kiss people, and you had to give them all kinds of physical attention and, and affection, I don't I'm not for that. I don't, I have not done that with any of my kids. I've

never made my kids hug people they don't wanna hug, and I've never let people tickle them if they didn't wanna be tickled. Um, but it's just so important. It's so important that we teach our kids to claim their own agency Michelle: are we distinguishing claiming our own agency versus consent? Because that's a whole discussion that n- needs to be had many, many times over. But we're talking today about agency Kimberly: So I think that if we are teaching our children not to claim their agency, it makes consent much harder for them. So yes, they're, they're separate things, but I think that they're intertwined a little bit in that you and I were taught to always abdicate our agency to the person in authority in the, in the space. Like, whoever is the person who holds the power perceived or, or, or real. as kids, that was always whatever adult was, was in the room. because we were taught that, it, it made it really hard as an emerging adult, and then now as an adult, to, to advocate for myself. And it, and it, and that, and that goes along with k- our kids don't learn then, and we didn't learn, how to, how to consent or to withhold our consent. And that's where I think, uh, that teaching agency is a really critical... Or claiming it for ourselves is, is a, it's a critical tool in our tool, in our toolkit So have there been times when you have willingly or unwillingly given up your agency in situations where you kind of wish you hadn't? Michelle: I've been thinking about this, and I am... I think there, there are two quirky things about me. One, I don't like giving up my agency, and I've behaved in many ways and made many major decisions of my life so that I didn't have to give up my agency. Um, and two, I kind of go my own way. So if someone is telling me, "No, go this way, go this way," I typically don't unless I really want to. Um, I remember in, in grad school, I was, uh, I was studying... Well, my, my PhD is in neuroscience, and so we were studying brains, and I did a lot of microscopy where I would analyze all where all the connections are and things like that. And so I came up with this brand-new way of calculating the structure of a, of a particular brain structure. And my advisor came to me and he said, "Oh, well, no one's doing that." And I said, "Yeah, that's great." And he's like, "But no one's doing that." And I said, "The- I'm doing that." And so I created my own way, so I wasn't, I didn't give in to the way that everybody else does it in that situation. I, I created my own way. So I, I don't know that Me not having my own agency is one of my bigger problems because I... Well, here's my reaction. I can be pretty pushy, but having your own agency is not pushy. I still am, am sort of leaning toward that, oh, I'm, I'm entitled. I'm al- I'm way to, I can get my own way. But it's not about getting your own way. It's about speaking up for your own, advocating for yourself. 00:17:57.000 --> 23:55.000 The doctor's not always right Michelle: I,

I do, I do have a situation when I was in my 20s, I ended up in the hospital with diabetic ketoacidosis, and that doctor was terrible at treating diabetes. Terrible at it. I think he was an intern or something, but he would come in with orange juice, and then as the blood sugar would go up, he'd pump a bunch of insulin in based on some formula that didn't reflect my body at all. And it was about 24 hours of up and then down, and up and then down, and up and then down. And every time I was dropping down, it would take... I know I'd ring the bell, and it would, they would take 10, 15 minutes to come in. "What do you need?" "I need orange juice. I'm g- you know, my blood sugar is super low." And then they'd go and they'd get the orange juice 15 minutes later. So that's like 30 minutes of suffering low blood sugar. And then, of course, it would be, they'd bring all the sugar I would need, and I would drink it all, and then it would go high. It was, it was terrible. And I, I should have spoken up for myself earlier, but it was 24 hours of that. And then I said, "It's not that easy to control this, is it?" And the young doctor said, "Okay, you're discharged. You're out of here." So that, in that case, I should have spoken up earlier, and I actually did speak up at one point. I think I'm really good at speaking up for myself and advocating for myself. When I had my son, he was really premature. Healthy as he could be. He had a little bit of jaundice, but really nothing else wrong with him. He was premature. And just because he was premature and sometimes he stopped breathing while he was eating, they wanted to keep him in the hospital. But I'm a single mom, and I had an eight-year-old at home at the time, and I, I... they were making me choose to be a mother to my daughter or be a mother to my son. I couldn't do it at the, I couldn't do those two things together. And I really wanted him at home. And I told them, "I, I wanna take him home. He's fine. He hasn't stopped breathing for longer than 10 seconds or five seconds," whatever it was. And the lady in the hospital told me, the nurse told me, uh, if I took him home, then they would have to call CPS and say that I was, um... What's the word? You just used it the other day. That I was, Kimberly: against Michelle: that I was leaving with my newborn son against medical advice. And I wasn't gonna have them call CPS on me, so I let him stay there. And I said, I said that day after she threatened me like that, I said, "Show me the data that says he's gonna do better here in the hospital than he would do at home." And she said, "No, it's just my feeling of be- having been a nurse for 20 years. There's no, there's no data on that." So I was stewing. I don't know if you remember. I was stewing that entire night. I was mad. Guess what they did first thing the next morning? They let me go home with my son. Kimberly: Damn straight. Michelle: So that's that's kind of my way. And I'm, I, I think it's led my life to

be kind of more difficult because I always want to do it my way. Kimberly: Oh, that's interesting. I, I don't personally feel like my claiming my agency is going to lead me down a path that n- n- is gonna make it more difficult me because I always wanna do things my way. So that's, that's, that's interesting that you would s- say Michelle: I'm, I, I, I'm seeing myself over, over-negativizing . Making o- overly adding negative connotation to me doing it my own way. Or, or, or like having agency, claiming my own agency, I'm turning that into doing it my way or being pushy or I, I'm continue to use negative words when I'm talking about having my own agency. But I think it's, I think I've done it well Kimberly: I think that th- this is exactly why the, the Karen conversation is so important. reason that people, label other women or, or other people, um, is because it's effective. It works. When we, when we put all of those n- negative labels on, it works. It works our, its way into our brain to say that we don't deserve to have this space or this, this way, or that we don't, you know, that, that, that it's, that it's too much or that we're extra. And this is why I wanted to have this conversation because if you really... mean, what you just said was, it makes my life more difficult because then, because, because I do things my own way." And then you said, "No, but wait a minute. actually, I'm really happy with the way that I've done things my own Michelle: Yeah, I am Kimberly: Yeah. And that's where I think w- that's where I, I, I'm moving towards. Like f- f- I'm pretty far along, but that's where I'm moving towards and that's what I wanna encourage other women to get to. That the most I think that the most negative consequences that we would face is just other people putting a label on us. And okay, so, you know, uh, ultimately, y- if you're doing what's best for you and your son and your daughter, who gives a rat's ass what the nurse thinks about you? Right? Michelle: Well Kimberly: like, yes, it would be terrible to have CPS called on you, but that's only one person's opinion. And o- obviously, you were able to convince other people in the hospital that you knew what you were doing. One of the things that I often come to when I'm trying to make a major shift like this is, is to play out the consequence, "Okay, so what if? So what if? So what if? And then what? And then what? And then what?" Play it out to the end. So if I do this, the consequence could be X, Y, and Z. I really think that the biggest consequence that'll come out of claiming agency, the biggest negative consequence is someone else will label us. And then it's like, okay, so we, then we get to a place where we learn not to care about what other people think about us. But the most positive consequence is that then we start to live into our own truth. We get to live into our ... Like, uh, I get to live more comfortably in my own skin because I'm not being tossed to and fro at the whims

of other people 00:23:55.000 --> 27:43.000 Is it time to quit a therapist? Michelle: I- while you were speaking, I thought of another example of when I didn't have my ... I didn't own my own agency, and it's an interesting sort of meta case. Michelle: While you were speaking, I thought of another example of when I didn't have my ... I didn't own my own agency, and it's an interesting sort of meta case. And that is after my daughter was born, I was diagnosed with postpartum depression, it was a mild case of postpartum depression, and I ended up with a talk therapist. And it was fine. It worked well for me. Um, I brought my newborn infant because I didn't wanna hire a babysitter for an hour and a half while I went to therapy, and she didn't really speak English yet. So I wasn't gonna cloud her with all of that. So then the therapist wouldn't let me bring my daughter. She's- she thought it was distracting me or that somehow I was not focused. The bigger problem with this therapist and being in talk therapy at the time was that I kept saying, "You know, it's, it's three months in, it's four months in. I'm feeling pretty good right now. I think there's not a whole lot of work I need to do, and I'm gonna take a break from therapy." And the therapist would use this, I don't know if it was like a therapist technique of saying, "No, therapy takes a very long time, and you're giving up right before you're going to get through a breakthrough. Or you're not really feeling better. You're not quite done." And I s- I felt stuck for a very, very long time. I couldn't figure out a way to get out of that therapist's care, I suppose. And I might be making it, I might be making it sound much worse than it was, but I really feel stuck, like I wasn't speaking up for myself. I wanted to stop therapy, and for some reason, she talked me into staying for a really long time Kimberly: I think that that's probably more common than you think. It's really hard to get out of a therapy, of a Michelle: Is it? Okay, good. It's not just my experience Kimberly: I got into a group one time. A therapist was leading a group of women, and sh- what she said was, "I think that you all have some similar challenges, and so if you wanna, you know, come together and we, you can be part of this, this group session." so I did, and after a period of time I realized that the one thing that we all had in common was we were married to shitty, shitty husbands. I think that the group was sh- this was, like, her attempt at help having us sort of see in one another the issues that we also were having so that hopefully we would start to think, like, "Oh, maybe it's time for me to get out of this relationship." But the rules that she set for this group was that if you wanted to leave the group, you had to let the group know on one week, and then the following week everybody had the opportunity to, like, say goodbye to you. So you couldn't just leave. I had to, I had to, literally I had to give them notice. And what's a group like this gonna do if you give them a week's notice and then they have a week to say goodbye to you? They're gonna try to talk you out of leaving. So, like, the whole, the whole group's dynamic was designed to keep you in Michelle: Yeah, I don't think that's a great... Well, it probably works for the therapist and works for the people who really are benefiting from the therapy, but not for the people who want to be out of it Kimberly: we could probably do a wh- a whole series on some of the pitfalls that can happen in a therapy situations. I h- per- personally have mostly had really good, positive experiences with talk therapy. It has changed my life, uh, multiple times, so I will not speak bad about therapy. I will say that it, it can be difficult to claim your agency if you're working with a therapist that has a little bit of a power trip 00:27:43.000 --> 30:38.000 Agency in personal relationships Michelle: So I think therapy is, is a subset of a category that I wanna dive into, which is having agency in personal relationships. So do you have your seatbelt on? You have your seatbelt on. Okay, let's dive in, let's dive in shallow first, and that is a story from when I was about 15 years old, 16 years old, just about when I was learning to drive. And we had, we, we had this amazing youth group who became, like, personal friends. We had this great group of people who had older people in it, you know, like 20-somethings who were the counselors. And then we had the people who were, had sort of graduated from the youth group, and they were in the college now. And so a bunch of us, eight, nine of us, decided we're gonna get a, a barbecue. We're gonna get some hot dogs and some sodas, 'cause we were all, you know, young kids. And well, some of them weren't that young. We were just gonna go get this little party and go to the beach. And the beach at, from our small town was about an hour's drive through the mountains and everything. So once you're at the beach, you're there for a while, and then you could probably find someone to come back with you. But it was not a, you know, just I'm just gonna get an Uber back home. There was no situation like that. It was gonna be at the beach. So at, over this, the whole afternoon while we're all planning this, we're going to the store to get the stuff, and the this and the that, and who's gonna drive who, and who's gonna have the car, and who's gonna bring the briquettes. It whittled down to me and a 25-year-old and, like, a 19-year-old, and I was about 15. And I was super uncomfortable. Like, I didn't wanna go to the beach anymore. I felt zero fear that either one of them would hurt me. These were people who I knew really well. They were Christian people. They were nerdy, just the kind of nerds that I love. They were not gonna hurt me, but I did not wanna go spend a whole evening at the beach with two older guys. Th- th- there's not gonna be fun for me. And so we were just about, just

had gone to the last store to get the last stuff. The car was packed with a bunch of stuff, and I pulled it together to say, "I don't wanna go anymore." And they're like, "What? What are you talking about? What's..." You know, and they, 'cause they were frustrated. Like, the rest of the eight people had also bailed at the last minute. And I felt so much pressure to go, but I didn't want to, and I didn't. But it's that relationship you have with people that you don't wanna let them down, right? And where the seatbelt comes in is when we give up our agency in a relationship, and I think too often women do that. I dated a guy that I didn't wanna date as long as I did for way too long. And I even, I feel like I tried to get out of it, and I just couldn't. And I think there's this, this conditioning that we are taught as, as young girls that once we find a person, that's our person, and we can't get out of that relationship. And if, if the man doesn't agree that we should be s- broken up, then something's wrong with us, not something wrong with the relationship. I feel like you've had similar, a similar experience. Kimberly: Yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah, I, uh, give me a second to s- to decide how much I wanna, how much I wanna put Michelle: Maybe you talk about your feelings of agency 00:30:38.000 --> 33:48.000 The burden of sunk costs Kimberly: Okay Yeah, I definitely think that there are, that p- specific- specifically in romantic relationships, can be really, really hard to get out of. Partly, I think, because there was obviously a reason that I got into the relationship in the first place, which was that there are some really positive things about it. And I think that for me, my fear of getting out of that, th- that relationship was, what if, what if the bad things that I've already invested in... It's like a sunk cost, you know? Like, I've already invested so much of my time and my energy into fixing the things that were wrong. What if this is the last wrong thing, and right around the corner is just gonna be a whole decade of just positive things? And, and I think that there's a, it seems silly when you say it out loud like that, but in the moment, there is kind of this fear of, of I'm gonna lose all of that time I invested And, um, I'm really glad to be out. Michelle: You don't know. So, so this is our conditioning. I was in 10th grade and I sat behind this redheaded angel called Scott, and he once turned around and wrote in my notebook, "Don't give up five minutes before the miracle." Oh, and for the most part, that changed everything in my life. I, uh, perseverance and, you know, putting your heart behind it and, and keep rolling that stone up that hill. And that's how we go into relationships. And sometimes the relationships are awful, but we don't wanna give up five minutes before the miracle. I mean, at some point, 10 years in, 12 years in, 15 years in, if it's getting worse and worse and worse, what do we s- expect is gonna happen tomorrow that

will turn it all around and make it worth staying? Kimberly: I think we also have this romanticized idea of like that all relationships, if they just hang in there, they're gonna be like that couple from the movie Up. Like, like, and you're gonna miss it. You're gonna miss those glory days on the porch sitting, you know, s- s- sipping your, your sweet tea and s- and rocking on the porch together. And enough... I've, I've met enough older couples that when they get to that phase of life, they love to talk about how we just weathered through the t- difficult years and, and these last few years have been like sailing, like sailing into the, into the deep, into the blue. I think most of those people are a little delusional. Michelle: Probably by necessity Kimberly: that, I don't think that all couples who get to that point are really quite as blissfully happy as they make it seem, I think they way undersell how difficult some of the difficult times can Michelle: If the difficult times, weathering through that storm of being married and, and learning how to live together only lasted through one Disney song, we could all do it. But it's decades Kimberly: Yeah. Yeah, that's exactly right. exactly right. 00:33:48.000 --> 35:40.000 Alone yet delightfully whole Kimberly: And I think that there is also a fear of what happens after. 'Cause we also, and I do th- and I do think that this has a lot to do with conditioning. I don't think this is all just what we f- what we desire. I think that we are also a little bit conditioned to believe that we can't be whole if we're not with another person. Like, uh, like we're just not complete. You complete me, right? Like, I don't have another romantic person in my life right now, and I feel more complete and whole now than I have for the, for ever, e- ever in my life. I have people, and I have love, and I have activities, and I have, I have a really full life, and I don't have to have that romantic person to complete me. I think part of what took me so long to get out of a relationship that was just not healthy for me was that fear of, "What if I'm alone forever?" And now I'm like, "Well, maybe I can be alone forever." You know? It's like a totally different vibe to it now that I'm actually experiencing it. And a lot of that came with, ov- the last few years of that relationship, my practicing claiming my own agency in other arenas to where I finally had enough, I'm gonna say courage. It was scary as hell. I had enough courage to sit down one day and say, "I- I'm done. Like, I c- I can't, I can't do it anymore. I just, I can't do it." And the terrifying thing then is to, is to know that once that, once that's said, you can't take it back And now that I'm on the other side of it, I'm so happy that I, that I finally claimed that particular agency for myself, and I, and I wouldn't wanna take it back 00:35:40.000 --> 37:37.000 Claiming agency out loud Michelle: Let's, let's explore. I'd like to explore a little bit of the, the areas that we give up agency in a relationship, not just the agency that I wanna get out and I can't get out, but what are some of the other ways that you see, I would say particularly women, giving up their agency? One big example is not verbalizing that we feel inequity in the relationship. That we're doing, we feel like we're doing more than half, or more than, more than our share So I, I had a relationship where this dude constantly spoke over me, and he claimed auditory processing disorder. Un- un- unexplored, undiagnosed auditory processing disorder. Like, he couldn't tell, he couldn't tell when I was speaking. Which seems so ridiculous right now, but I got to a point where I was... And, and this is petty. I was young. This is petty. But whenever he interrupted me, I would say, "Oh, sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you." And then he'd be like, "Oh, you didn't? No. Oh." And then like he realized, after a while of me doing this, he realized that I was calling him out for interrupting me. Or not, he wasn't even interrupting. He was just speaking over like I wasn't speaking. Like sometimes when you and I are out of sync time-wise on this video, I can say something and then you don't hear it for 20 more seconds, and so I'm saying something, and you just start talking. But that's because it's, it's an actual technological disorder. So I was petty, but I actually did use my agency to say, "S- guy, dude, stop talking over me. Stop stepping on my words like I'm not even speaking." Kimberly: I think that it, he probably was disordered, but I would call it a narcissism disorder, not a audio product- processing disorder. I'm just gonna put that out there Michelle: It was a, it was just a big old excuse is what it was Kimberly: Yeah, it is. It... I mean, girls, we're gonna go down Michelle: Let's go down this road 00:37:37.000 --> 41:29.000 Every spoken need becomes fight Kimberly: I have a, an interesting relationship with music. So for a lot of years, I could not listen to music from the 1970s and early '80s like, a trauma response to it, and I don't gonna go into all of the reasons why that was. But if I heard so- specific songs from that era, uh, it, uh, my whole body reacted. I happen to be married to somebody who never grew musically beyond about, like, 1983-ish. So all of the music he listened to was from then, which in 1990 was not awful. 2025 or 2020, it was pretty freaking awful because I have had to listen to this music for decades. And whenever we would drive anywhere, he would always be the driver. It was... That was just sort of one of those places I gave up agency, 'cause I also didn't want listen to him yapping on about that I should be going this way instead of that way, or I should speed up or slow down or go the other way. It was just so much easier not to drive with him in the car. So I would let him drive in the car, and he played this, like, th- this, this, like... And we, we have this rule in my house, too, and it, it

actually works most of the time, which is, you know, um, driver picks the music, rider shuts his pie hole, Michelle: Who made that rule? Kimberly: the music. Um, I think that was Dean in, in, Dean in, from Supernatural Michelle: Okay Kimberly: But anyway, yes, it was a man. So, so for decades, we listened to the music he wanted to listen to, and I would just have to, like, physically find a way to shut myself down. And I finally started speaking up and saying, "I just cannot listen to this music." And he used to get so mad at me he just thought I was just being difficult. He never, never, never grasped that the music brought me into a trauma response. I explained it every which way, up and down and backwards and forwards multiple times. He just never could quite get it. So being able to claim the agency to say, "I don't wanna listen to this music anymore," which then led to more fights down the road, was one of the th- one of the multiple things that got me to where I was like, every time I speak my own need, it would... this turns into a fight. And at some point, I just have to step away from a relationship where I don't ever get to have my own needs met. Michelle: So it's interesting you're bringing up reasons why we don't claim our agency, because we could be punished for it Kimberly: Yeah. Yeah, that's a good Michelle: Right Kimberly: That's a good point Michelle: But that's not a reason not to do it. If, if it ends up that we, to s- to speak our agency, to speak our truths, to say something that, that, to even voice our needs gets us punished, I don't think that's a relationship you need to stay in Kimberly: I think you just said it. If the person that we're with doesn't have space to allow us to speak our needs, then, then that relationship is ultimately gonna keep us stuck and keep us quiet. I mean, it conditions us to stay quiet. And what I'm proposing here right now is that we be loud Michelle: I totally hear you. I even said that really loud. We have our seatbelts on, but I'm just gonna suggest some scuba gear 'cause I'm gonna get ugly. This is gonna be an ugly conversation Kimberly: Deep dive. Let's go 00:41:29.000 --> 48:51.000 Deep dive of agency in motherhood Michelle: We talked about personal relationships with therapists, we talked about with friends, we talked about with romantic partners. There's one relationship where I would not encourage leaving when it's a difficult relationship, and that is as a mother. We, I, I'm gonna speak for I, give up so much of my agency for my children, and I do that willingly and aware that that's what I'm doing, and I think I would do it again if I started over with the knowledge that I have now. But it leads to some problems. Like, I'm never, ever, ever gonna break up with my children. Never. And at the same time, I abdicate, I abdicate a lot of my agency as a mother Kimberly: Okay. If we're gonna go scuba deep diving on this one, I think that that is yet another area that we could be pushing back on. I don't think that we have to give up all of our agency for our children to nurture and care for them. I think that we tend to. I think that it feels natural to. It feels way more natural for me to, to give up my own needs is to provide f- things for my children. And I don't mean things, but, you know, like, like, it's gonna be, you know, 90 degrees out. Y- absolutely you can have my car. I'll, I can walk. It's f- like, it's fine. Uh, it's just right there." Uh, a- and I think that there just has to come a time where we say, "You know what? That, that's just not gonna work this week. Like, I'm s- I'm sorry that it's really hot for you, and maybe we can come up with some other solutions, but, but I need this now for me." And I think that, I think that as, as moms, we sometimes abdicate more than we need to Michelle: I think we're evolving in the sa- in, in the right direction. I s- I feel like I give up... I never said all of our a- agency, but I had an aunt who I lived near, and if I said something, she would go and buy it for me. Like, "Oh, that, that steak commercial's... Okay, let's go to dinner. A steak." She would get me everything, and I didn't even know her that well. She was just that, in that era of I will do anything for you. And I ended up moving apartment to apartment, and she said, "Here, take my broom. You can use it to clean up stuff." And I said, "You need a broom. You don't, you don't have a broom. What are you gonna do?" And she said, "No, no, you take the broom." Completely serious. "You take the broom. I'll just sweep this stuff up with my hands." And I, I think about that today, to today, because I wouldn't do that for my children. I wouldn't sweep up dirt with my own hands to give my daughter a broom, right? If it was my last meal and she was hungry, I would give that to her, but that's a different situation, right? This is just, this is just turning into a little bit of martyrdom, right? So I'm not suggesting something that, that extreme, but I think that's the way our parents and our grandparents were raised, and we're in a different era right now. But we still are on that, I think, it, it... I personally am imbalanced on how much I abdicate my agency for my children. And I, I wonder, I'm very curious if I could come back in 30 years, and see where my children are with their a- their agency around their children Kimberly: Yeah. That's interesting. I think it would be fascinating to l- go, to get, like, 20 years down the road and look back to today and see if 20 years from now you would agree with h- how you have chosen to abdicate for, f- for them Michelle: The way I see it, it's at, at the same time the most comfortable position for me to be in to give up a lot of my agency for my children. It's also really uncomfortable. Like when you have an infant, mothers don't eat hot meals. We just don't. And there's nothing we could say to cha- I guess there's some, there would be something we could say to change that. Like, "Hey you, get up and fix me a hot plate while I feed the baby." Um, and maybe we s- just don't do that. Maybe that's something we could start doing as mothers Kimberly: I wonder how much of this is generational because you and I are Gen Xers. We're f- we're the feral generation. We were raised go play, you know, see you in, you know, 16 hours. Find yourself some food on the way. And I think for me, part of my reaction to that has been to overcompensate and make sure that my children never ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever felt like I wasn't immediately right there the very second they needed absolutely Michelle: Right Kimberly: And um, three of my four are adults now, and so with the eight-year-old, um, I, I do it a little bit differently. There are times when he doesn't get absolutely everything he wants immediately because right now there's something else that's a bigger priority, and I'm ... He's definitely not being neglected. Michelle: No, no, right? Right? Kimberly: Not at all. Um, but I find that then when I do give him of myself, I'm full enough to be able to give him Michelle: Right Kimberly: Right? Like I'm not coming to him empty, and I find it more fulfilling for myself, but I also think it's more fulfilling for him too because then when I'm present I'm really, really present. not halfway present all the time. I'm like all of the way present half the Michelle: Or obliged to be present Present but regretting it Kimberly: Yeah. Michelle: Yeah Kimberly: Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I mean, since we're doing the scuba deep dive, it's perfectly typical, I think, for moms, specifically moms in our generation, sometimes resent it. And I think that's part of what happens when we give up a little bit too much of Michelle: Right Kimberly: in favor of giving that to our children, is that we, we come to resent it. And I, and I think that it's also kind of taboo to say that out loud, so I'm saying that out loud. There are times that I've resented how much I had to give for my kids. Um, I didn't resent the Michelle: Right So it's not the same thing. Kimberly: it out Michelle: Right Kimberly: But, but I think to be able to acknowledge it helped me to move to a place where I recognized that, that for, f- for a lot of the time with my oldest three, I probably gave too much and came to them empty. And now it's much more balanced, both with my eight-year-old, but also with the three of them. I come to them way more balanced And, and, and I think that our relationships are pretty Michelle: So finding that balance is extremely important, not just for ourselves, but for the relationship we have with our kids. If we show up to them empty or fail to show up or show up resenting, that's gonna show. They're gonna see it. It's gonna affect the relationship Parenting's hard. Uh, is that taboo to say? Parenting is hard Kimberly: N- no, that's not taboo. just fact 00:48:51.000 --> 52:02.000 Coming Soon: I Can Do It Myself!