From Anger to Empathy: Rediscovering My Mother's Story with Stephanie Jones

My guest in this episode is Stephanie Jones. One significant childhood memory involves the first time she remembers discussing death. This incident led to a brief conversation about death, spurred by her grandmother's passing soon after. Growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, death was framed within the context of resurrection and an afterlife, which provided some comfort but also left her with many unanswered questions.

Leaving the Jehovah's Witness faith at 22 was a pivotal moment. She found the religion's misogynistic views stifling and couldn't reconcile her own life choices with its teachings. Married at 18 and a mother by 19, she struggled within a community that didn't support her personal growth. Her breaking point came when religious elders blamed her for her husband's irresponsible behavior, prompting her to leave the church. This departure allowed her to explore her identity, eventually coming out as a lesbian, which led to her being disassociated from the church and estranged from her family and community.

Her mother's death marked another turning point. Her mother died unexpectedly after a battle with cancer, which she had kept secret. The emotional distance and lack of communication left her with a mix of anger and grief, especially as she learned more about her mother's difficult life after her passing. Open and honest conversations with her kids transformed their relationship, fostering understanding and closeness that had previously been missing.

Reflecting on her mother's life and their strained relationship, she now feels empathy rather than resentment. Learning about her mother's hardships helped her understand the woman behind the struggles, providing a sense of closure and forgiveness. This perspective has informed her current work, where she empowers busy moms to manage their time effectively, helping them focus on health and relationships. Through VIP sessions, she guides them in automating their homes, organizing their schedules, and finding balance, aiming to prevent stress and burnout and enhance their quality of life.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] Stephanie: I learned so much about my mom after she died, that had I known she was alive, I'd feel like our relationship could have been better, right? Had I known more and I would not have been so harsh and just cut off. 

[00:00:14] Jill: Welcome back to Seeing Death Clearly. I'm your host, Jill McClennen, a death doula and end-of-life coach here on my show, I have conversations with guests that explore the topics of death, dying, grief, and life itself.

[00:00:27] My goal is to create a space where you can challenge the ideas you might already have about these subjects. I want to encourage you to open your mind and consider perspectives beyond what you may currently believe to be true. In today's episode, I talk with Stephanie Jones about her childhood memories.

[00:00:44] growing up as a Jehovah's Witness and the intense challenges she faced, including leaving the faith at 22 due to its restrictive views and after coming out as a lesbian, which led to family estrangement. She shares with us. about learning about her mother's illness and her mother's death after refusing a blood transfusion, which was a decision rooted in their religious beliefs.

[00:01:08] She also shares how she learned so much about her mother after her death, information that gave her more empathy and understanding that she wished she had while her mother was still alive. This highlights the importance of having open conversations with our children and our parents. Through therapy and personal growth, she navigated her anger and grief.

[00:01:28] Ultimately strengthening her relationship with her children. Thank you for joining us for this conversation. Welcome to the podcast, Stephanie. Thank you so much for coming on today. Can you just start us off? Tell us a little bit about yourself, where you grew up, anything that you want to share with us.

[00:01:43] Stephanie: Absolutely. Thank you for having me. I grew up in Texas. So I moved to Seattle in 1989. I was 16, did not want to come up to Seattle because you know, you're 16. Texas is the only life I knew. And now. I cannot imagine my life any differently because Seattle is completely polar opposite of Texas. And so my mind was just blown from first experience here.

[00:02:08] I currently travel full time with my girlfriend. So that is what we are currently doing. We travel through house and pet sitting and we are in the Pacific Northwest still. And we are headed down the West coast to see her family in Phoenix and then at the East coast and then next year international and abroad.

[00:02:24] Jill: That is amazing. I've actually not been to Seattle, but I'd actually, I've never been to Texas either. I had to think about it for a second, but they do seem like they're very, very different. And I could imagine that at that age, especially, you know, 16 years old is such a transformative age for people to have such a big shift to go from Texas to Seattle must have really I don't know, just been, in some ways, probably really difficult.

[00:02:52] And then also, I think it's pretty cool. I think that's awesome that you did that. And when you were growing up, did your family talk about death and dying? Were they super religious? What was that kind of like for you? 

[00:03:04] Stephanie: You know, I'll tell you the first time, I think it was the first time, I remember really talking about death.

[00:03:10] With my family, I was young. I was in first or second grade, and my mom forgot to pick me up from school. And this is literally like, you know, how ridiculous this is. Our backyard butted up to the playground of the school. So I didn't have to that far to go, but I had to walk, and it was raining, which in Texas is like torrential downpours, right?

[00:03:27] So I was so mad at her that she had forgotten me. And they come home, and she's meeting with a funeral director. planning out and purchasing back then you would purchase plots and the casket and everything for when you died. So your family didn't have to deal with any of that. So that's what she was doing.

[00:03:42] And I was just like, so angry, like, how could you have left me and now you're planning out your death. Right. So I remember taking a bath and we ended up talking about it because my grandmother shortly after that did pass away within like a year. But it wasn't something that we talked a whole lot about.

[00:03:57] And the main reason being, because I grew up as a Jehovah's Witness, and the interesting thing about that religion is they believe in the resurrection. So you don't ever actually really die as long as you're in good standing in the church. You will be resurrected after Armageddon and you'll get to tell of your loved ones again.

[00:04:15] And the only people that go to heaven are the 144, 000 chosen ones. So death just wasn't really on our radar because it was the piece that you were sleeping, right? Until until basically the wrath comes. And so it wasn't ever something that we really talked about a whole lot. 

[00:04:30] Jill: So, and I mean, you might not know the answer to this, but what's resurrection itself?

[00:04:35] Is it the physical body comes back up? Or you even said, then you go to heaven. Well, what's resurrection if it's not going to heaven? I don't know. I don't know that much about it. That's why I'm curious. And that's why I love these 

[00:04:48] Stephanie: conversations. Yeah. So they believe that there's 144, 000 chosen Go to heaven and then everyone else will be resurrected here on earth.

[00:04:54] And so their belief system is that Adam and Eve with the sin of Eve caused us to live in the world that we currently live in. And that once Armageddon happens, which will be the battle, I guess it's the second coming in a lot of other religions, the battle between Jesus and Satan, then kind of that shakedown will happen.

[00:05:12] And then everyone will come back into this paradise or the way we were meant to live in the times of Adam and Eve, which I had a ton of questions about as a kid. Right. They can never get answered because nobody knows. And so it's, it was very confusing to me because I was like, do you, if I die at seven, do I come back as the age of seven?

[00:05:28] Like my grandma died and was in her eighties. Does she come back as 80? Because you come back and you're healthy and you live these long lives. And I was like, I don't understand how any of this works, but it, but it also wasn't well explained. 

[00:05:40] Jill: That was kind of my experience as well. Growing up Catholic, there was a lot of questions I had.

[00:05:45] And I think eventually the nuns got tired of answering my questions, so their response was, you just believe. You just believe. And I was like, but I don't believe if I don't understand. I don't know. Which again, sometimes, you know what, I actually have a little envy. for people that can just believe so fully without having all those questions, because I think sometimes it can give you a sense of peace, and sometimes I'm like, must be good for you, I guess.

[00:06:10] I have lots of questions that don't seem to really have answers, and that's okay too. And bye! So after your grandmother died, was there a service? I'm thinking when I was a kid, we weren't really involved in it, right? If somebody died, it was kind of like you put the kids off to one side. You don't talk to them.

[00:06:27] They're not included. And so then there was always this sense of confusion and not understanding and this grief that we didn't know what to do with. And so what was your experience like with that? 

[00:06:39] Stephanie: Yeah. So again, the Jehovah's Witness religion does things a little differently. So we do a memorial service and it's up to, I guess, the family if you want to have a casket or if you don't want to have a casket.

[00:06:50] Most do not. But my grandmother, they did have a casket and it was an open casket. And my mother, my mother was not well. And so just in general, she suffered from some mental illness. And so we were forced as kids, my brother was So seven and four to go up and to kiss her because it was the last time we would see her, which I will never forget, right?

[00:07:10] I was mortified. I had never seen a dead body. I didn't know what it felt like, but I loved my grandmother tremendously. And I remember afterwards, everybody went back to the house and there wasn't any explanation over it. There wasn't any like, Hey, this is what happens when you die. This is how this works.

[00:07:26] Um, so it was this really sad time. And then all of a sudden it's just everybody's laughing and eating all this food and I was, I was angry. I was mad. I was like, I don't understand why you're all happy. And that's when my dad kind of was like, this is what happens as part of life and try to explain death as best as he could to a seven year old.

[00:07:44] And then, and outside the context of the church, right? And then my mom was more like, we're grieving because she's not physically here with us, but we'll see her again. So again, kind of that mixed, message where I was just like, well, I don't know what to do with these feelings. I guess I'll see her again.

[00:07:56] So it gave me some hope, I guess, but I also just was so confused. 

[00:08:00] Jill: Yeah, that sounds confusing. It is. I've talked to people that there's that belief that we'll see people again. And again, I guess if you really, really believe that I could see how that could bring you some comfort. But there's always that part of me that even like now, I am Buddhist, so there is, in that religious belief structure, the idea of reincarnation, and that you will get potentially reincarnated, but it's not gonna be this me, right?

[00:08:30] It's not gonna be me, it's not gonna be my husband as he is now, it's not gonna be my children as they are now, so, I don't know, I guess if you really believe that when you go to heaven that we will be the same people? I guess but again, I don't know because I feel like our souls are not who we are as people, you know what I mean?

[00:08:46] Like my soul probably does not look like this. My soul does not have the same emotions and experiences that it had in this lifetime that impact the way that I behave in the way that I think in the way that I believe. So even if we did all come back, it's like, I don't know. What do I know? I 

[00:09:02] Stephanie: don't know.

[00:09:02] It's, it's, yeah, it's confusing. It's, yeah, it's, it's confusing. Sure. 

[00:09:07] Jill: It's definitely confusing. And it's also interesting. There's people that, that unknowing is upsetting to them. But to me, just, I don't know. I think It's okay to not know. It's okay to have the questions and to have the conversations. And it doesn't mean that I'm ever going to get answers, but man, I have some really great conversations, so that's always fun too.

[00:09:30] And so are you not Jehovah's Witness 

[00:09:33] Stephanie: anymore? I'm not. I love The church at 22, and I left the church for a multitude of reasons. The biggest one being that they are very, it's a very misogynistic church. So I never saw myself getting married and having kids, but that's what you do in the church. So I was married two weeks after I turned 18.

[00:09:52] My first child was born at 19. I was pregnant with my second child at 21. She was born when I was three, too. And we were young kids, and we didn't have a lot of money, and my husband at the time was spending money that we didn't have to add accessories to his truck, and we were like struggling to put food on the table, and the elders came over to our home and told me that if I was a better wife, he would respect me.

[00:10:17] And I gave him the big F you and that was it. I was looking him out. Growing up, there were tons of questions that couldn't get answered. And it was a religion that I, my whole family was in and my husband's whole family was in. And that was the only community I knew. It's a very isolating religion. I left the church and then I actually came out as a lesbian, which is very not accepted in that religion.

[00:10:38] I actually am. Disassociated from that religion. So not welcome in it at all. And it, that caused me to also lose my, my family, my community. Uh, and I was a single mom, right? That was a really hard time for me just because I was having to figure out who I was, having to figure out my sexual identity when my whole life I had been told how wrong it was, and then just having to navigate.

[00:10:59] I mean, I still had young kids that still had grandparents in that religion, right? Their dad was still in that religion and still is to this day. I was the devil to a lot of my family and a lot of my kids family, but it all worked out. I've healed those relationships with my family and I'm close to my father and my kids are not Jehovah's Witness and are closer to me than they are to their dad.

[00:11:18] I encourage them to have a relationship with their dad, but he makes it difficult. So that's an unfortunate downside to this particular religion. 

[00:11:25] Jill: Did you realize even at the time that you were grieving, were you ever able to really process that as a grief? It is a death. It is an ending, right? It's a death to who you were, to relationships, and there's so much grief that's tied up in that.

[00:11:38] How was that experience? 

[00:11:40] Stephanie: I did. I was in a really fortunate situation to have an opportunity to where expenses were covered for like roughly a year. And so I was able during that time, because I was 21, I was outed by a partner that I was with, which is also my youngest son's father. I was able to really take time and I would go and sit by the river.

[00:11:59] almost every day and either cry or journal, right? And I'm not a journaler. I can't stand journaling. I encourage everybody to do it because I think it's a great practice. I don't like it. But that's what I would do just to get all these feelings out. My dad and I have always been really close. My dad's not as religious as my mom was.

[00:12:14] It created strife between them because my dad would still reach out. And I just was like, we had to just break our relationship for a few years until everything kind of calmed down, I guess, and evened out. And then during that time, my mom passed. So it was, I did grieve that, that piece for quite a while, but I had the space to, and I was really, really fortunate looking back to be able to have that time.

[00:12:36] Jill: Yeah, because sometimes the time is important. It's not when they say that time heals things. Like, I don't know if, It's necessarily that it's the time itself, but it's just, it's a process, right? And we need to go through different steps. And yeah, I go back and forth with journaling where it's, I know how helpful it is.

[00:12:57] There's times in my life when I have journaled a lot because I've needed to. And then there's times like now where part of me is like, I should journal and then I get it out and I look at it, and then I just look at it some more, and then I maybe try to write a couple lines and then I'll be like, well, maybe I need a prompt.

[00:13:15] Maybe that'll help. And then next thing I know, it's like six months later and I'm like, oh yeah, there's that thing still sitting on my nightstand that I never touched. But it does have its place, and I think especially when you're really processing. Like right now, overall, my life is kind of like chill.

[00:13:33] Not that life's ever totally chill, but there's not a lot of healing or processing or anything that I've needed to have a space to go to. And sometimes that's what a journal can really be, is that space to just go to and put down all the thoughts and the things that you just need to get out of your body.

[00:13:50] into something else that is not another person. It's your little journal up to the side. So yes, I'm with you in that work. I tell a lot of people to do it. I'm not often doing it myself, though. 

[00:14:03] Stephanie: That was saying, I agree. Yeah. 

[00:14:04] Jill: And that's okay. Right. That's why I think there is different tools out there and different tools can be good for some people, not for other people.

[00:14:12] Good for certain times of your life, not good for other times of your life. I'm a big fan too, of moving my body because moving that energy. But there's times when I'm getting much better at listening to my body as well, where I can't move it. I'll get out my yoga mats and I'll start to try to do something.

[00:14:31] And I'll be like, actually, you just need to lay here on the floor. And then I just lay there on the floor. Sometimes I'll cry while I'm laying on the floor. Sometimes I'll stretch a little bit, but it's not that pushing that forcing that I used to be where it was like, but no, it's good for you. You have to do this thing.

[00:14:48] Well, no, you don't always have to do that thing. 

[00:14:51] Stephanie: No, I think listening to your body is so important, especially if you are dealing with any, it's important anyway, right? But if you're dealing with anything major in your life, absolutely listen to your body because sometimes laying on the floor and crying is what you need.

[00:15:04] Jill: Yeah, and I don't 

[00:15:05] have any 

[00:15:05] shame in that 

[00:15:06] anymore. I used to. I used to feel, even if there was nobody around, I would feel ashamed. I would feel embarrassed. I would feel all these things that were just stories that were put there in my head by people around me about crying being weak or whatever the stories were.

[00:15:22] And now, I don't know. I don't really care. I'm working still on dropping those stories, but for the most part, I don't care anymore. This is me, this is my process, and that's one of the things, too, that I think becoming a Death Stoola and dealing so much with death and talking so much about death has really shown me that this is my one life.

[00:15:42] I'm going to live it. How I need to live it because I'm not going to get a second chance. Even if I do get reincarnated, it's not going to be this life. It's not going to be this experience. It's not going to be this house, these plants, this family, all the things that I have right now. And so, you know what?

[00:15:59] I don't care what other people think without also harming people. You know what I mean? Like, I think sometimes when people are like, I don't care what people think, then that's like an excuse to go out and do whatever they want to other people, which is a whole different thing. Yeah. This is more, I don't have the shame and the guilt that I'm going to live my life the way that I live it.

[00:16:17] And I don't know, for the most part, I'm pretty happy with how I'm living my life. I love that. Thanks. Me too. And so I know you did mention briefly that your mother had died during the time when you were not speaking to either of your parents. Is that correct? 

[00:16:32] Stephanie: Correct. My kids always saw my parents, but it was that weird, they can't.

[00:16:37] Talk to me because I'm disassociated from the church, right? So we would do the exchange, but it would be like pulling teeth to even be like, what time am I picking them up? Right? It was this weird dynamic. And she did die. She died very unexpectedly. So she had been sick and I didn't know. Died unexpectedly to me, I think.

[00:16:55] I don't know if she died. I expect to lead everyone. She had been sick, and I did not know that. She'd had a mastectomy. And my dad called me one day, was super mad at me, and he was like, Why are you not there for your mother? And I was like, I have no idea what you're talking about, like at all, right? And that was the first that I learned that she was dealing with any kind of illness.

[00:17:13] So she had had a full mastectomy, healed from that, and then, I don't know, one o'clock in the morning, the phone's ringing, and I'm like, that's weird, so I answer it, and she was in the hospital. So she, as I had mentioned, my mother had some mental illness, so she thought that she had eaten too many blueberries during the morning, and she was bleeding all day, and ended up passing out in a Burger King bathroom, which is probably very humiliating, and being rushed to the ER.

[00:17:38] And because the Jehovah's Witnesses do not. believe in blood transfusion. She had lost so much blood, she ended up going into surgery, and they said she won't make it through surgery. And if she does, she's probably not going to make it. So she went through surgery, refusing blood, and ended up on life support for almost two weeks, and before my father finally agreed that she's not actually here, and so we took her off life support.

[00:18:00] Beyond that, she called me randomly probably a week before. All of that had happened to just check in and it was one of those things where I was really surprised because like I said, we'd gone so long at that point. And so I was 33 when she died. So five, almost six years of not speaking and to hear her call me was just really, really odd.

[00:18:20] So I don't know if she knew she was sick. And she was trying to make some sort of amends. It was a really random, like, I can't even tell you what she asked me, but it was not anything of any significance. And so I remember going to the hospital and I had cut my mom off because of her mental illness and the way that we were raised.

[00:18:37] I kind of cut my mom off. a lot younger than that. So I felt like I didn't really have a mom from the age of like, I don't know, 12 to 16 ish. Um, I ended up mostly raising my, my siblings and I moved out of the house at 16. I didn't move out, I was kicked out at 16. And then this whole series of life events had happened.

[00:18:56] And so I was really just like, she's my mom, she's your grandmother. You should know her because family is important in general to know where you came from. But I didn't have a connection with my mother. And so to show up at the hospital, Go into the room, and, I don't know what we said, right? Like, nice to see you, sorry you're here, whatever.

[00:19:12] Walked down the hallway, and I, halfway down the hallway, and I was like, I, I remember thinking, I should tell her I love her, because I won't see her again, but because I felt like it was important to her. And so I went back and said that to her, and that was the last that I was able to speak to her at all.

[00:19:27] And I was really angry for a good, long time after she died.

[00:19:31] Jill: I want to ask two questions, and then I want to get back to the angry part. Okay. So Jehovah's Witness, Won't do blood transfusions only or is there like other medical treatments because like why not blood transfusions, but life support is okay What's the what's the I guess line in what's okay?

[00:19:49] And what's not? Okay. 

[00:19:51] Stephanie: I have been out of the church so long I couldn't tell you the scripture But there's one scripture which talks about spilling of the blood and how the blood supposed to go to the ground So they take that as like literal gospel, right? So there's no blood transfusion. They have since changed their rules, I guess, would be the right beliefs.

[00:20:08] So now you can take blood parts, but you cannot take the platelets of the blood. So you can't take anything that's considered a red blood. So I'm not a scientist or a biologist, that's what it's called. Oh, okay. But you can take the plasma, right? So life support was interesting because my mom also didn't have a clear health care directive.

[00:20:25] So that made that fun. And then a lot of the church show up and, and again, the elders get very involved in family things that, you know. They really probably shouldn't. And they were the whole reason, not the whole reason, but a big part of the reason that my dad did not want to pull her up life support was because the elders were convincing him or trying to convince him that miracles happen, right?

[00:20:48] People have been on life support for 30 years and woken up and we were like, not really, I mean, sure. Like one out of, I don't know what I did. Even though the astronomical number, but it's not like one in a hundred, right? It's not even one in a thousand. And they, they were clear. She's brain dead. There's no, even if she comes back by some miracle, she's a vegetable.

[00:21:08] She doesn't want to live a life like that. And you don't want to go into debt for that. Like this is just, it's ridiculous. So yeah, I don't really know. I know it's based on scripture. I don't know what scripture, and I know that it over time, I mean, it's something they'll never, ever retract because they can't obviously, right?

[00:21:23] To me, people have lost people for lack of a blood transfusion, but that's the only medical procedure that is a hard no for them. 

[00:21:29] Jill: Hmm. Interesting. Okay. Okay. Cause now that you're saying that, I'm like, I do think I remember reading a story about like a 16 year old girl that had been in a car accident and there was like a, almost like a legal battle because the parents were refusing the blood transfusion and they were like, she's gonna die if not.

[00:21:47] And like, yeah. So now that you say that I do remember slightly, but And I mean, I guess, again, part of my brain is like, I guess that makes sense. But also, I don't know. Yeah, it just seems a shame to have people die over something like one little passage out of a book. 

[00:22:06] Stephanie: It also made more sense to me when it was you can't have any blood, right, at all.

[00:22:12] But now that it's like, we can have part of the blood. I'm like, this is ridiculous. Like you guys. And I mean, my family on my dad's side is really not, my grandmother is very much still in the church, but like my dad and his sister aren't necessarily, and they still are very anti blood. There's just those core beliefs that I think will just always be ingrained when you grow up in that religion.

[00:22:31] And yeah, I don't know. It's an interesting thing to be, but there's other things that they'll do that they have no problem with that the religion also goes against. I'm just like, it doesn't make any sense to me, but it's not my life. 

[00:22:41] Jill: Exactly. Not my life, not my decisions to make. Thank you. Cause yeah, when you said that, I was like, all right, I got some questions about this.

[00:22:50] That's, that's interesting. And so you said when your mother died, you had some anger. Where do you think the anger was most directed? 

[00:22:59] Stephanie: I was angry that I would never get answers, I think, was the biggest thing. So I learned so much about my mom after she died, that had I known she was alive, I would have given her a lot more empathy.

[00:23:09] She was one of 13 children. She was the second to the youngest. They were very, very, very poor. They were cotton pickers in Texas, dirt floor poor. At five, she was trying to cook something for her younger sibling and caught the house on fire. I guess it was, She had two younger siblings at that point.

[00:23:26] Anyway, the baby ended up dying in the fire. Her father died at the age of four. Like all of these things that I'm like, okay, like you make a lot more sense to me now, right? Than just this person to me who seemed very vindictive and clearly didn't want to be a mom, but was a mom. And it was like this weird push pull dynamic all the time.

[00:23:46] Um, learning more, I was like, I actually felt, you know, A pathetic for her growing up, right? And I was like, okay, some of that's not her fault. And circumstance created this person. But I was angry not knowing any of the stories. I was 33 and had three kids. I was starting to go through my own health stuff.

[00:24:03] I knew that my mom had obviously had breast cancer. I had learned that almost all of her sisters died from breast cancer. But I didn't have any genetic, any information, right? I didn't know any of our history. I just didn't know anything. And so I was mad about that. I was mad that I would never, the opportunity was taken away.

[00:24:20] And I think still in your 30s, you don't really appreciate, unless you've had a lot of loss, you don't appreciate life to the same extent that you do. I'm 15 now, right? I appreciate it much more. I've had much more loss in my life. It took me a long time to reconcile those things. And I was dealing with teenagers and I didn't want to be the mom that my mom was.

[00:24:38] And so I was involved, but my kids were still angry, which now I know is just teenagers. But at the time I was like, I don't know what I'm doing wrong. And I don't know why I still have these kids that are acting out and slamming doors. And I'm like, okay, that's just part of. Going through teen hood, but I was mad about a lot of those things.

[00:24:56] My dad came back around and I was also a little bit angry about that. It felt kind of disingenuine at first. And like I said, him and I are very close now, but it took a while for, for that relationship to build. 

[00:25:08] Jill: I can understand the not knowing really who your parents are because even for me, there's a lot of things about my mother that I don't really know.

[00:25:17] And my mother's still alive, you know, and then that's when part of me is like, why don't I just ask her these things? But some of it is she doesn't also want to talk about parts of her life. You know, there's things that my grandmother had told me. But my mother would never talk about, even thinking about my dad, my dad and I are not very close.

[00:25:34] I really don't know much about him. And when my parents die, am I going to have these? I wish I would have known. Maybe I would have more empathy for them. I know becoming a mother myself gave me more empathy. for my parents and my stepmother. I can't imagine having stepchildren, what that would feel like.

[00:25:54] I know it's hard enough sometimes with my own kids. So like, I can't imagine if they weren't even my kids, but yet I'm still raising them and like, what that whole thing would be like. So becoming a parent gave me a lot more empathy. For my parents, but then I think even with my children, you know, I lived a whole life before them because I was 32 when I had my first one.

[00:26:15] So at that point, I had lived in California, I traveled in Europe for six months, I had opened a bakery, we had done a lot before our children. And sometimes I forget that, that they don't really know a lot about me and my experiences. And I try to be Open and honest with them in age appropriate ways.

[00:26:36] Eventually, I will have more open conversations about all these different things. But, yeah, you just sometimes forget that, like, your kids didn't know you before you were mom. And so, yes, sharing some of those things. And that's where it goes back to even some of the journaling. Like, I think back on some of my journals, I'm like, those things need to go in a fire pit before my children are old enough to find them.

[00:26:58] Because again, they were happening during what were sometimes really difficult parts of my life. And I also don't want that to be the written memories that they have of me, of like, Oh my God, some of this stuff was really not good. We need to get rid of that, but also not hide our past and who we really were either, right?

[00:27:18] There's like that fine line. And so you said you have three children now. I do. Yeah. And are any of them girls? Or do you have only boys? I have two boys and a girl. She's in the middle. I'm thinking your relationship with your mother, again, thinking on my relationship with my mother, my relationship with my daughter, right?

[00:27:34] There's definitely an interesting dynamic to that I find in mother daughter relationships. And did you find that it was Was it harder with your daughter to not bring in those same patterns that you and your mother played out? Or was it the same with both your sons and your daughter? 

[00:27:53] Stephanie: Yeah, that's an interesting question.

[00:27:55] I would say, so because I grew up in such a chaotic environment, my dad left to work out of state when I was 14. So that's part of how we ended up in Seattle. So, from 14 to 16. My dad wasn't around and so that was when I was really responsible for my younger siblings. So I shut off a lot and going through a divorce at 22 threw me into counseling because my son, my oldest at the time was two and a half, was acting out and I put him in counseling because he was having this really erratic behavior that I didn't know how to handle.

[00:28:29] And the therapist stopped me on the way out one day, right, and said, if you don't get there, it'd be too late. He'll never be okay. And I was like, I am fine. Like I'm, I'm good. But then I went home and thought about it and I was like, what does she mean by that? And so I went back and asked and ended up going into therapy, but I didn't cry probably from the age of like 14 until 27.

[00:28:49] And that's a legit, like, I just did not cry. I just stuffed everything down. I was angry a lot, but I didn't cry. So with my younger kid, my older kids, when they were young, I was really emotionally shut off with all of them. And then as you go through more therapy. You open up more, right? So we started getting closer.

[00:29:05] I'm far more sensitive, or I was far more sensitive with my youngest. I was also a little bit older, right? So I was also a little bit more ready to be a mom. Teenagers with my daughter were really hard. And some of those things played out. And I remember sitting and we had gone to, I don't know if you have Burger Master there, but it's kind of like the old drive up 50s style hamburger place.

[00:29:25] You pull your car in and order the little walkie talkie. thing. We were there and my daughter's very curious, right? She's always asking a bajillion questions about everything and has always been that way. And something came up about the way I was raised or my mom or something. My mom had passed away at this point because they were teenagers and I just finally word vomited, right?

[00:29:44] I was just like, you know what? I didn't know how to be a mom. I didn't have a good example of being a mom. I didn't really ever think I wanted to be a mom. I am a much better person because I became a mom. I grew into something that I don't think I would have ever grown into had I not had children. First, one, therapy, right?

[00:30:00] And two, just, you have to put something else before you. And you do become more empathetic to other people's experiences, as you said, because you have your own children and you start understanding. You do the best you can. And we don't all have the skill sets that we need. And my mother clearly did not have the skill sets that she needed.

[00:30:16] And neither did my dad at that time. That was the first really honest conversation I had had with them, and that changed everything. Like at that moment, our relationship started to become more open and they were a little bit more sympathetic or empathetic to me versus just being mad and very reactive all the time.

[00:30:33] And so we still went through normal kid stuff, but I'm really open and really close to them now. But it's funny because even the other day, my oldest, who's 31, was saying, because I was the president, this is how ridiculous it was years ago, the president of the PTA at the time, and when I was outed as being a lesbian, they asked me to step down from being on the PTA, and it just randomly came.

[00:30:54] I know, homophobia is a real thing. So it came up in a random conversation with him, and he was like, I always wondered why you just stopped being part of the school. He was like, you were always at the school and you were always part of the PTA and he was like, and then just one day you weren't. I was like, yeah, I was asked not to be.

[00:31:08] But I was like, those are things that to your point, like stories that we don't even think about telling them. And so it's interesting. I feel like that our relationship now is definitely much better now that they're adults because I can have much more open conversations with them. Right. They're, my youngest is 25, so he's still, we don't have those same conversations, but like, my daughter is turning 29, my oldest is 31, like, we have much different conversations, because they're adults now, and they've lived a little bit more life.

[00:31:35] Jill: Yeah, yeah, and it's interesting, because as you were talking about that, wait, you were in Seattle still when they kicked you off the PTA, or were you somewhere else? So I was just outside of Seattle in the suburb. Oh, okay. Because I'm picturing Seattle, my head is like super open and super accepting, so.

[00:31:51] Stephanie: Yeah, it is. Yeah, Seattle for sure is. And now even the suburbs more so. But yeah, they definitely were not back then. 

[00:31:57] Jill: Wow. That's crazy. I'm thinking too how your son saying like you were always really involved and then all of a sudden you weren't and the fact that we're always going to make up a story in our head as to why that happened, unless we know the real story so I can only imagine the stories.

[00:32:13] That if I was a child, I would think I did something wrong. That it was my fault that mom stopped doing all these things when it really had nothing to do with him or even the school, like they told you not to be there. And so to me, that's even more of a reason why, again, being age appropriate. But being honest with our children, so that they don't try to fill in the blanks.

[00:32:35] And then being children, we always make it our fault, right? We always make, I guess, even humans, even adults, right? I'll still do that with my husband, where I'll be like, I don't know, this person, and then something, and then I must have done something. And he's like, No, they probably just have things going on.

[00:32:50] It's not you. Why are you always thinking it's you? I'm like, I think that's just what we do. So yeah, so that's interesting. And so now how do you feel about your relationship with your mother? And do you feel like you have closure? Do you feel like you grieved over the whole thing? What do you feel about it now?

[00:33:08] Stephanie: I do. You know, again, I'm a huge proponent for therapy. I think therapy is never bad. So continued therapy. I'm not currently in therapy, but I'm not opposed to it. I feel like that having more open conversations with Healing those relationships with family also gave me a different perspective, right?

[00:33:26] Because obviously, to your point, I was a kid. And so, like, my aunt and my grandma have very different stories, even than what I remember. Some of them are the same, but it's interesting to hear other people's perspective and also to not, not to say my anger is justified, but like, I was like, okay, my experience actually did happen and other people saw it happening, right?

[00:33:47] They saw what was going on, but didn't know. How to step in and help either, and we weren't neglected or abused necessarily. I was just too young to be responsible for the things I was responsible for. So that's helped as well. It's helped me just be like, okay. And it's one of those things where like, my dad was out of town.

[00:34:05] He was always my protector. I'm a daddy's girl. And, and so. There were things that he didn't even know were going on until, I mean, the last five to 10 years when everybody's kind of start opening up and talking about that time period of our lives. My dad and my grandma and my aunt are getting older, right?

[00:34:20] So they're at that age where everybody's starting to kind of share more of those stories. And now again, we're all, Adults with grown children or no kids and it's, it's a different thing. So that I feel now is if I could use any word, it would just be, I'm really empathetic to my mom's story and I don't have guilt around it because it wasn't my fault, but I'd feel.

[00:34:42] Like, our relationship could have been better, right? Had I known more and I would not have been so harsh and just cut off, right? I just was like, if you cut me off, then I'm cutting you off, and that's it. And there's no going back from that. And I don't, I don't think I would deal with that in the same way if it were to happen now or having the knowledge I have now.

[00:34:59] Jill: Yeah, and you were able to parent your children differently and so sometimes we learn what we don't want to do more than what we want to do from the people that come before us, like our parents. I've even said that about bosses. Some of the best things I've ever learned from some of my worst bosses was what not to do when I became the boss of other people.

[00:35:20] So sometimes that's how it works. That's how we grow and that's how we can do better. than the people before us. But that's great though. I'm glad you're feeling better about the situation and you're close with your dad now, which is wonderful because these are our relationships. These are our families, right?

[00:35:39] Nobody's perfect, but it's what we have. And so if we can make the best out of them, and again, that's not to say that if somebody's abusive to you, you should have a relationship with them. But sometimes that is the best we can do is just being like, nope, I need to cut off. But also sometimes if we can just say, look, they're not perfect.

[00:35:57] I'm just going to make the best out of the relationship that way that I can for my sake, right? Not even just for them, but for my sake. Awesome. Well, we're almost at our time to wrap up. And so just tell me a little bit about what you do. I think I was reading your boundaries. Coach, is that correct? 

[00:36:15] Stephanie: I am. I empower busy moms to master their time so they can focus on what matters, which is health and relationships.

[00:36:22] I do VIP sessions every six weeks, and basically we go through four different areas of your life in a small group. So we automate your day. I compare it to like, if you could have a personal assistant and a household manager and a chef or a meal delivery service. How can we put those systems in place without the extra 180, 000 a year in the salary?

[00:36:43] I help with doing that and then bring up the calendar. So there's time for you to actually take care of yourself as a busy mom and Not hit stress and burnout hopefully is the goal, right? And then actually have quality time with your kids and do the things like go on dates with your partner or your husband and go on dates with yourself and your friends.

[00:37:02] Jill: Yeah, because to bring it back to death because I love death. That's one of the things that When we're on our deathbed, we're really going to be grateful that we had that time with our children and with our partners and with our friends, right? We're not going to be thinking about, was my house clean? Did I have the laundry folded and put away?

[00:37:21] Did I answer my emails on time? Did I return the phone calls? All of these things that tend to become more important in our lives day to day, that in the long run are really not what's important. And it's really not what brings us the joy. And it's really not what we're going to. look back on when we're reviewing our life, because unless we die tragically, suddenly in an accident, right, we're really as we age, even we start to look back and review.

[00:37:48] And those are the things that are going to make the difference. And sometimes we do need help making sure that we prioritize those things and tweaks, because I know there's times and even for me, I'm like, I just don't have time, I'm going to have time in the day to do the things. Now. Thankfully because of the work that I do and because I know firsthand that when people are dying, these are the things they're talking about.

[00:38:11] I've been able to just be like, you know what, these other things can get pushed off to the side. My kids want to play a game. I'm going to play a game with them because that's what I want to do. But it took me Talking to so many people that are dying to get there. Not everybody needs to go that route. If they can get somebody like you that can help them prioritize and schedule and do what they need to do, that's amazing.

[00:38:32] Awesome. Yeah. And then what I'll do is I'll get any links, your website, your social medias, whatever you want. I'll put them in the show notes. So if anybody's interested in reaching out to you, is it best to email Facebook? Like what do you like the best? 

[00:38:46] Stephanie: You know, Facebook is where I'm at currently. So Facebook is probably the best.

[00:38:50] I'm on TikTok. I'm getting onto YouTube. Email is always also fine, but pretty much anywhere you can find me at The Boundaries, babe. It's either Steph or just The Boundaries, babe. 

[00:38:59] Jill: Wonderful. Well, I will for sure put all those links in. And thank you for coming on today. It was definitely interesting. I learned some new stuff.

[00:39:07] And thank you for sharing your story about your mother and your family. Your journey through all of that. 

[00:39:12] Stephanie: Well, thank you. 

[00:39:13] Jill: Thank you for listening to this episode of seeing death clearly. My guest next week is Ashley Holmes, a holistic fertility coach who transformed her personal fertility struggles into a mission to support others.

[00:39:28] Ashley and I discussed the grief associated with infertility and miscarriage. Highlighting the importance of acknowledging and honoring this grief rather than suppressing it. She emphasized that moving forward requires addressing these emotions instead of simply trying again without processing the pain.

[00:39:47] Her own life has had some significant losses. including the death of her brother when she was 11 and her stepbrother later in life. These experiences shaped her compassionate nature and her understanding of grief's impact on the nervous system. Ashley discusses her transformative experiences with yoga, highlighting how yin and restorative practices helped her release stored stress and emotions.

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[00:40:45] You can find a link in the show notes to subscribe to the paid monthly subscription, as well as a link to my Venmo, if you prefer to do so. And I look forward to seeing you in next week's episode of seeing death clearly.