Real Talk with Tina and Ann
Tina and Ann met as journalists covering a capital murder trial, 15 years ago. Tina has been a tv and radio personality and has three children. Ann has a master's in counseling and has worked in the jail system, was a director of a battered woman's shelter/rape crisis center, worked as an assistant director at a school for children with autism, worked with abused kids and is currently raising her three children who have autism. She also is autistic and was told would not graduate high school, but as you can see, she has accomplished so much more. The duo share their stories of overcoming and interview people who are making it, despite what has happened. This is more than just two moms sharing their lives. This is two women who have overcome some of life's hardest obstacles. Join us every Wednesday as we go through life's journey together. There is purpose in the pain and hope in the journey.
Real Talk with Tina and Ann
How trauma shaped us, how truth freed us, and how we learned to love differently.
What if the love you learned was never love at all—but performance, peacekeeping, and fear dressed up as care? Ann sits down with Denise Bard to tell the truth about growing up inside conditional love, the survival roles that helped them get through, and the slow, stubborn work of building a love that heals instead of hurts. This is a tender, unsparing, and ultimately hopeful conversation about worthiness, boundaries, and the courage to stop disappearing.
We trace the childhood blueprints that formed our early ideas of public perfection masking private harm, attention mistaken for affection, and approval fused to identity. Denise shares how a shelter caseworker embodied unconditional love and rewired what was possible. Ann reflects on seeking safety in performance, hiding family trauma from partners, and the moment parenting shifted everything: presence over fear, repair over reactivity, and an actual “no matter what” for her kids. Together we explore how to break generational cycles, end contact with unsafe relatives, and create a home where truth doesn’t cost you belonging.
You’ll hear practical ways to rebuild self-worth affirmations that actually land, journaling that tracks progress, and boundaries that protect love rather than punish it. We talk about putting down burdens that were never ours, refusing to apologize for someone else’s harm, and letting “wanted” become part of your identity. If you’ve ever confused peace with people-pleasing or chemistry with chaos, this conversation offers language, tools, and a pledge to love differently: to be seen, to stay whole, and to choose connection without conditions.
If this resonates, tap follow, share with someone who needs it, and leave a review to help others find Real Talk with Tina and Anne. What’s one belief about love you’re ready to release?
Welcome to Real Talk with Tina and Anne. I am Anne, and today we're diving into the one of the most vulnerable and powerful chapters of my book, Loving Differently. Now, it's not out yet. I am currently working on it, but I shared it with Denise Bard, and we agreed that this chapter was episode worthy. So here we are. And so here is Denise Bard, one of my favorite people. This is this is kind of a conversation that I wish that our younger selves would have had and would have heard as we were still trying to figure out what love really looks like. Because if love was absent, conditional, or confusing in childhood, we often build our adult dreams on shaky ground. And like me, maybe you carried stories about love that was never really ours to begin with. So let's talk about loving differently. What does it really mean to love differently, to unlearn, to redefine, to rebuild love in a way that actually heals instead of hurts? There is not one way to love, but I do know that there's ways not to love. What are our childhood images of love? Denise, do you have uh memories of your childhood and when you were little? What did you think were the definitions of love?
SPEAKER_00:Well, it's interesting because I first learned love at 14 from a caseworker at a um a shelter for runaway abuse and homeless leaves who taught me what unconditional love was. So until then, I looked at love as conditional. So it was more of um, am I taking a side? Because you know, growing up in the um trauma of uh of abuse, it was whose side are you taking? If you take my side, I'm going to love you. If you take my side, I'm going to love you. So it really kind of came down to um what I can do for someone else and you know where what where my allegiance lied. It was never to, you know, that unconditional, like I love you no matter what love.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. Yeah, that's hard because you can't please both.
SPEAKER_00:No.
SPEAKER_02:There was no pleasing both.
SPEAKER_00:No, your definition or or perception of love is not really truly love, but you didn't know any better. You thought that this was just a norm thing, but I don't even know that you understand, like, I don't know that you put love in a definition. Do you know what I mean? I don't know if it was just a word. So it was just a word, not a feeling, not a doing. Okay. Just literally a word.
SPEAKER_02:Okay, that makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I mean, that's really interesting. I I don't know if I really understood what love meant either, because there was so much dysfunction in my family. But where I got definitions of love for me, where I witnessed it was on TV a lot of times. Um, my my favorite shows had families with dads or moms that I connected with, and I would take those parents with me to school and really everywhere. And I loved, and I'm probably dating myself right now, but I loved ADEs enough.
SPEAKER_00:I uh I watched that too. I like that. Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. I mean, I loved Dick Van Patten and but Betty Buckley as parents, and even though she was like the stepmom that came in, and you know, because the mom had passed away, she was just such a great mom. And I saw Betty Buckley actually in person on stage probably a couple years ago now, and that parental feeling came back just watching her up there on stage. It was just so cool to see her in person, and I also would learn from my parents' friends. I was a watcher of people, and I would watch everyone, and I would see family dynamics and and I would copy them. And I I actually still do that at times, but I watch the adults to see what adult love looked like because I didn't have a dad, and the only way that I witnessed healthy adult love was for me to observe families. What did you think adult love looked like as a kid? You know, like some kids can be at home and they watch their parents and and their love language could be, I'm gonna bring you flowers.
SPEAKER_00:No, I I think I was similar to you, where you looked um elsewhere, where it was of course television. I mean, I, you know, my thoughts and dreams were, you know, of these people who I wished were my parents because of um how they how they acted towards their children. And I don't know that I understood that as a love language, but it made me feel good. Um, and as far as like looked at again was probably um TV. Yeah, those family episodes where, yeah, like um you said eight is enough. And I think of um, oh my gosh, I forget the name of it. Um Kirk Cameron.
SPEAKER_02:Kirk Cameron was the name of the grilling pains.
SPEAKER_00:That's it. And I loved that. And and why dynamics. And you know, the thing about that is there were so many different dynamics where it wasn't perfect. And I loved any shows that I could find that had that imperfection in them because to me it was like I didn't feel so um out of place. I know that kind of sounds weird. It's like because you know, you tried to decide if you were good enough, but when you found those imperfections in some of those TV shows, it almost made it that you can envision yourself in it. Do you know? Yeah. Because I was a kid who got in trouble. So am I gonna be loved? So when I found a show on TV where the kid gets in trouble and yet they're still loved, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, see, that's so good. Yes, it's not conditional. I mean, that's just such a beautiful thing. I mean, some people would say that love was yelling. Oh, yeah, some would say hitting, some would say absent. Yeah, how do you take these examples into adulthood and love, truly love your kids and partner? Because I mean, it would be so hard. So many of us associate love with the wrong things, and I mean, let's talk about this. So many of us associate love with earning or pleasing because love was conditional growing up. And if we were quiet, helpful, impressive, agreeable, you know, we were okay, we would be seen. But if we weren't, love could be intentionally withheld.
SPEAKER_00:Yes, and that's that's exactly what um with what I had, you know. And you're right, you kind of like you look at all these people, and you like for me, honestly, I was kind of scared to grow up and and know what a relationship was for love because I didn't see it. I saw it maybe with friends, I saw it with their parents. It was like the outside sources. I remember being scared, like trying to figure out am I gonna know how to love? Am I gonna know what, you know, if I'm gonna meet somebody and I'm gonna know, but I don't know about you. But I when my husband and I met and everything, and I I just knew it was him. I did a lot of um, I did a lot of apologizing. And he would always say, Stop apologizing. Because I was so used to they're gonna walk away, you know. As a kid, you know, you had to be this, this, this, if you wanted to be loved. And I didn't know how to take it in genuinely, like for somebody who unconditionally cared for you. But I would say this um the counselor that I had as a kid, uh, I was 14, that was the first time I think that I had some connection with love. And I didn't know what it was at first, and so it was so when you feel love for the first time, even though you think you know it from the shows that you watch and all these things, when you actually feel it, it's it's it's hard to put into words, and I think for each of us might be different of like that feeling of what it is, you know, you've or whatever.
SPEAKER_02:I um have you know, I think it's hard for a child to define love or know what it really is, and I guess I I think some adults do too. I mean, it is a feeling, and it is absolutely something that we internally feel, and then it's actually something in the mind. Sometimes we just we just know that we love somebody and it and it isn't attached to a feeling, but we just genuinely know that we love somebody. Yeah, you know, I I think that that right word gets thrown around so much that people really water it down and and they really don't know what it means. You know, my mom was a perfectionist when it came to appearance, and it it was the times, I think, because you know, it was that sit up straight, tuck your shirt in, appear perfect in public, and appearance was everything back then, right? And it's not how it's not how I love you in private, it's how I love you in public.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:Matters.
SPEAKER_00:Wow.
SPEAKER_02:And you know that that's really that's a big deal for me to say that out loud because I've said that in different ways, but I've never really said it like that before. And uh, yeah, it's not how I love you at home. It's I'm gonna love you out there in public. And you know what's interesting is how come they were different? How come they were different? And that's where I think people could pick up as a child. And maybe I picked up as a child saying, wait a second, you don't yell at me like that in front of other people. You don't talk down to me like that in front of you, don't hit me the way that you do in front of other people when we're homeless like this. When we're out I loved going to my aunt's house in New Jersey because my cousin and I would all the abuse was gone, you know. Yeah, and I could just be a kid and enjoy. And my mom was preoccupied with her um aunt or whoever she was, you know, in the family, and they just would talk and talk, and my cousin and I could just be, and I could just be, and it was just really great to just be and not have to worry about those things. But yeah, I mean, one way in public, one way in private.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, it's funny. It's funny that you said that because now I'm thinking about it, and you're right. If I we were at big family gatherings, it was so different. It was like a happiness. There wasn't arguing, there wasn't the like um their dynamic. I always said it's like a facade, you know what I mean? They they portrayed the perfect person out in public, but you never knew what was behind closed doors. Like it wasn't in my grandmother would always say, it's nobody else's business, it's nobody else's business, but she she was in in public the perfect person. So that's really interesting. But yeah, like I think about it, when I would go to, I think my fondest memories, because yeah, they're crowded by a lot of um abuse and dysfunction and stuff within the house, was those um holidays where you know, I come from an Italian family. So every holiday it was going over to a great aunt's house and everybody came and it was just like loud, but in a good way, loud. Um, like you laughter, just just not what it was at home. It was just that feeling of, and I did probably that's what I looked forward to, because every holidays or anything, there was always arguments, there was always fights. Somebody fought, you know, and again, there comes my sides. Whose side do you take? Um, yeah, your family's house. It was a whole different, um, yeah, because you're right, they always wanted to show a different side of themselves on the outside. Um, yeah, yeah. And so that that is hard to to decide uh, you know what love is.
SPEAKER_02:I I used to think that being lovable meant being perfect, yeah. That if I just did enough, if my mom was happy, then I was okay. If I said the right things, if I did the right things, and it was such a temporary thing, you know, because then the next moment I'd be trying to do it again to make her happy or feel okay again. So it was 100% based on approval. Love and um approval, I think, were so enmeshed with me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think that that's that's what we all kind of uh look at too, is that approval from somebody. And I think growing up, even into an adult, um, you know, it was trying to to to be that perfect person, like even as you're as an adult, and I was looking at these people from the adults in my past that I wanted so to see me and hear me. And it was like, you know, if they look at me now, what would they think of me different? Like, would they it's the approval, and I don't know if I would I would say uh that's love, you know what I mean? But at the same time, you know, I don't think when you know what true love is or or that you your perception of everything and how you intake things becomes really clouded, and even as an adult, I think we're still trying to figure out, at least I am, to really truly understand who is it that I honestly can say I love because there's a difference between I care about someone and I love someone, and so you know, I know the people that I absolutely love, and there are the people that I care about, and you wonder, are you, you know, I wonder, is that enough? Like, should I be like loving them too? Or is it okay just to care for somebody? Not it doesn't mean I'm on I'm not a lovable person, it doesn't mean that I don't know how to love. It's just, I don't know, I'm learning that, or I'm I should say I'm recognizing more and more that I have two separate categories, whether that be normal or just something associated with me. Um, it is something that I think as adults who grew up without that, I think it's something we just really kind of are working our way through.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah. And uh real love should not feel like a performance, you know. I mean, I think that that's what I did most of my childhood was perform. I think that that's one of the reasons I think for kids that are raised in a dysfunctional home that it's hard to figure out who you are because you're trying so hard to be what everybody else wants you to be. So, you know, and the more that we do, the the more we do, the more we feel loved. That is very toxic.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I mean, have you ever loved by doing like shrinking yourself or staying silent just to keep peace?
SPEAKER_00:Oh, absolutely, especially in a household where you know there was so much fighting, there was so much abuse. It was like how yeah, you just I mean, and that's the thing, find like wanting to be the peacekeeper in such an abusive situation. And as kids, I think that we don't even realize we're doing it or what we're doing it, it's just kind of second nature.
SPEAKER_02:We're like, okay, that's exactly right.
SPEAKER_00:You know, can we just yeah, I I absolutely think stayed silent and played the game of I love you, even though I didn't, you know.
SPEAKER_02:I mean, I learned really young to be the invisible one in the room. And my sister was given away to the system, which you know, I've mentioned that in other episodes. And I was afraid as an adopted person that if I didn't conform, if I didn't do what my mom wanted, that you know, I I don't know what if I really went there in my head, but I was always afraid and I wanted her to be happy and I wanted to to um not make her mad at me. That was it. I didn't want her to get mad at me, and I was beat on a regular basis, and I've never shared that on the podcast before. Now, my mom beat my sister and she beat myself. Do what you were told, or you're gonna be hit. Be good, and you are loved. Now, you should still make good choices, but I mean it shouldn't be based on how somebody's going to treat you because you know we all made bad choices as a kid, and it shouldn't be based on, okay, I'll be good, I'll be good, you know. No, okay, I'll be good. I promise. Just love me. You know, it it shouldn't be bait, it shouldn't be about that.
SPEAKER_00:It's funny. I was I was I guess in middle school, I became kind of a bad kid in elementary school. I was a good kid. I was that kid who was trying to, I thought that if I was good enough, somebody would come and rescue me. And so I was always going to be what other people wanted me to be, or at least what I perceived that they wanted me to be, in order to be saved. So I would really go out of my way and observe and say, okay, that kid looks like a good kid. Let me be like that. And that was all through elementary school. Now, when I got to middle school, I kind of, you know, was bad. Um, but I have to tell you, I had gotten into a couple physical fights with people, and I recall not getting in trouble for that. It was more of, well, did you dominate? Did you get to, you know what I mean? It was like if you were, you know, and it was you got praise. And praise obviously is is, I think, some kind of um way we think people love us as kids. Um praising you, you're doing something you're doing something well, right?
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Similar to you, there was a lot of abuse, and on a daily basis, I had a lot of um psychological and verbal where nobody's gonna love you, you know, and and I would hear that a lot. It's like, well, I used to hear I don't love you. I heard that and I heard I hate you. And so you really have a hard time. If somebody says I don't love you, how do you know, you know, what's gonna make them love you? Because it can be I'm doing the same thing day after day, but one of those days I'm gonna catch her off guard and that's gonna rub her the wrong way, and she's gonna hate me and not love me, you know. And here is my other thing too. I don't know that I seeked love from my mother. I didn't seek that, and I didn't seek love from my grandma. I I wanted it from the outside world that for me was a safe world. That's like the craziest thing to say. But um, so and as far as like not being bad outside of my home, but being bad in my home, as a bad kid doing something that I, you know, that you and I would say, Oh, that's a that's bad. That kid shouldn't have done that, that kid's bad. Um, in a in a nice like, we're like, oh, that's a bad kid. That that kid's not doing whatever. I could be doing something that my kids would do, and I don't feel that that's bad enough for me to not love them. Like my daughter used to say this a lot. She's 21 now, but she went through that stage, and it was like I wanted her to always know that I loved her. So I would always go, you know what? I will always love you, but right now I do not like you.
SPEAKER_01:I love you. Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Now it's it's one of those where you know that you're not gonna be, at least, you know, as an adult. Now I look back, I'm not always gonna be a good kid. I'm gonna make mistakes, like you've said. Um, but I should still be loved, even though I made the mistake.
SPEAKER_02:I find it really interesting that you said that you did not seek out your mom's love. No, I oh my gosh, I really never thought about that, but I know that, and I'll tell you why. And that you might have done this and what I did. I mean, when you see somebody is unsafe, the child doesn't back up first. The child doesn't cut love off first. No, and and so I really think that the adults in your life and and mine and whoever else has felt that way as a child, that the adults around you were unsafe and you knew it. And you knew you were gonna get hurt, and so then eventually it's the hardening that we do, you know, and then you do eventually not seek them out because you're no, you know, you're they're not the person that you can trust to reach out for love.
SPEAKER_00:Right, right, and that is it, because with and when I say about not seeking her love is I knew that anytime I was with her, there wasn't it wasn't a good time. There wasn't a good time, and it was that fear of always being with somebody, like you said, like you don't know, you know, you know you're not safe. So I didn't want, I felt like what I saw in the very um horrible part of the of the abuse that I, you know, experienced, which was the sexual abuse and things like that. I did not want that if that was love.
SPEAKER_02:Oh right, and so that puts a whole other dynamic.
SPEAKER_00:Like that's probably why I didn't seek love from her. Even my grandmother, who didn't sexually abuse me but still abuse me, I there was a roughness there. And I don't know that I I didn't want love, but I didn't want to get like we don't want to get abused. I wasn't looking further love, I was looking for the calmness in the storm.
SPEAKER_02:Okay. Being an adopted person, and I have two moms, you know. I mean, I had my adoptive mom and I had my birth mom, and I don't really talk about her on the show very often. But when you started saying that you were told that you were hated, they said those things to you. I mean, I just that's just so horrific that you went through that. I my uh biological mom didn't say those words to me, but in many different ways she could have. She just would, you know, it was like a punch in the gut.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And I knew that she didn't want me. So I mean, that's another layer, right? When your mom doesn't want you, and you know, that's pretty difficult. So I really I I I wanted to unlearn all of this, and I've done a lot of my own therapy over the years, you know. I mean I I've become a pretty success, pretty I'm the word isn't successful, it's productive, I guess. I'm not the same person that I was when I was hurting that deeply, and I don't heat hurt that deeply at all now. So I've really come a long way. And so it's talking about how can we unlearn this? And when love comes with conditions, we internalize a dangerous message. If I'm not useful, I'm not valuable. If I don't do what I'm told, I'm bad. If I speak against, I need to be, I need to be quiet. So this is a question are we showing up in relationships as our full selves or real selves, or just the parts of us that we think is lovable with the particular, with that particular person? I know for me that I was very, I guess you could say, a very promiscuous gal um growing up in my high school, college, all the way up until I ended up getting married at 21. And I always had a date, always, and I was always on that dance floor three nights a week, from the time I was 15, actually till I was 30, but up until I got married, I from 15 to 21, everybody was game. I mean, you know, it was I am I would find somebody every single night and I would flirt and you know whatever would happen would happen.
SPEAKER_00:Do you think it was that you were looking for love and hoping that that was a way to find it?
SPEAKER_02:I think I thought that was love. I think I felt loved by getting somebody's attention in that way, and then of course, alcohol was involved. And you know, I just I thought it was fun, it was my way of escape. I don't know if I really looked at it as that they loved me because I mean there was that escape, there was that somebody's paying attention to me in my real life at home, or you know, I'm not getting paid attention to. I felt important for that little bit of time. Somebody's looking at me and they're thinking, hey, I'm something. And uh yeah, I mean, I didn't hate it. Oh no, I don't know how to say that, but uh yeah, I mean, I didn't not like it. So so, but I mean, that is how we can get into a bad pattern of trying to find love in the wrong places, really. And eventually I did find a serious boyfriend, and I really did think that I was gonna marry him. And I think I really, you know, we showed up for each other. We really showed up for each other, and I didn't have to fake it, I didn't have to pretend at all. We just really were with each other. Do you show up to relationships as your full self?
SPEAKER_00:Not in the beginning, no, because I was hiding so much of my family. I was so afraid that if they saw all of me, they would see that abuse. Even with my husband, and we've been married almost 25 years. I think he saw a lot of it in the beginning. But I mean, for the first half of our marriage, I didn't really, I don't want to say I wasn't myself. I was myself because I absolutely loved him. And I will say I was promiscuous as well. Um it was the time, it was whatever. Um, but you know, with my husband too, and and with a lot of them, I think my family interrupted that. And so my family was the interruption to any kind of a relationship that would be. Um, I I dated someone who would find out right away that my family was abusive and he couldn't stay. He just couldn't. It was too much because he didn't want to see how I was. And because of that, when I met my husband, which was right after him, I kind of sheltered into place where I protected that side of I didn't want him to know about my past. Um, and I I just wanted him to know me for who I am, but I'm still learning who I am still. Like I said, in the beginning of the relationship, you were trying to people please. I didn't want him to leave because I really did care about him. I loved him. It was like that feeling that I just, you know, he was my person, you know. And so I um I guess like now as I'm I'm going through therapy and everything, I am allowing myself to be me. I'm still the me he knows, but that now it's it's I'm even more, you know what I mean? I'm even more because I think um, you know, it's just you're able to be more authentically yourself and to have that authentic self love someone at the same time and have them love you. And it's a scary thing when you've gone through that kind of abuse, you are still learning about love to be able to allow yourself that vulnerability that they won't leave you. And I think that's one of the things with love is that that's something that you want is no matter how broken you are, that you can still be loved. And so I can definitely say now. I'm I'm starting. And again, I've been married for 25 years. Um, and it's been going well up even with not showing, at least when I say showing myself, it's allowing that vulnerable side of my background to come out and be okay because that background doesn't define the love I have today. That that that background doesn't define what I what I the love I have for my husband.
SPEAKER_02:I'm cautious. I think um, you know, I see people as outsiders and it takes a while to let somebody in. I'm friendly, but most of the time I keep people at a distance and I gradually test and see if I can let them in. And I think childhood pain, or really any pain, um, any kind of a destructive relationship, no matter how old you are, can keep people at a distance. So, but I instantly keep people at a distance, and I gradually see if you're one of those people that I can let into my circle.
SPEAKER_00:I was opposite. I wanted everybody in the circle because that's how I thought acceptance was. That's how I thought maybe love was and everything. But now at an older age, I am like you. I'm I'm I was always guarded, but I wanted my circle to be so big because that's how I thought love and acceptance was. But now I can say truly that I am very guarded. And I just had, and we've talked about it. I just had two experiences that I let myself open up and truly feel love for this other person, not in a relationship wise, but uh maybe people in a parental level. And um, I got the wind knocked out of me, and that happens, and then all of a sudden you put up your wall, and you're like, hell no, I'm not gonna let anybody come that close to me.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, what changed for me with all of that was being a mom myself, and that love surpasses all love here on earth, and there is nothing but parenting a child, and I really think that that is where I found true love.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, absolutely, you know, as we were growing up and we, you know, talked earlier about envisioning these these TV families, things like that. I wanted to be able to give that. I didn't know I could, but that's I want them to feel the way I looked at people and felt. And so um, yeah, becoming mom, oh my gosh, that was it was it's life-changing, especially for someone like us. It's like, you know, you never knew you could love somebody so much until you love your child.
SPEAKER_02:There's nothing like holding your child, yeah, yeah. I I don't think that there's any greater feeling.
SPEAKER_00:No, and you know, we're both parents of children or child with autism, and I think that brings a whole other dynamic of love to, you know, it does knowing, you know, and and having and because they teach us too.
SPEAKER_02:Oh, absolutely, all of that.
SPEAKER_00:So I feel like I've learned, I think I learned more and more about how to, you know, unconditionally love someone just from the way that they are with everyone, you know.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, sometimes maybe, you know, we just want to be, we just want to love for just being, and we have to give ourselves permission to take up space. We wake up in the morning and say to ourselves, you know, I am lovable because lovable because I just exist, because I just am. I am worthy just because my, you know, my friend, who is one of my bestest friends in the whole world. Um, I just absolutely love her. Um, shard, uh Miss Love Freely, one of my closest friends, she does this thing as a singer, she's in many, many groups, and she gets up on stage and she does all these positive affirmations, and she has everyone in the crowd say these words after her, and they're just so empowering. And she's done it with my kids, and it's pretty interesting to watch her do it with them, and she's done it with me, and she'll just look right at you and she said, Look, say, I am loved, I am beautiful, and I want you to say it after me. And do you know that you know it's hard? I've tried to do that with my nine-year-old, and he can't say those things, and I don't know if it's because he really doesn't feel those things, it's almost embarrassing for him to say those things at this age, but you know, when I really internalize it when I'm saying it, it's hard. Yeah, yeah, it's not something that's easy to replace negative self-talk with positive. Now, I I have really grown on that, but talking inwardly to yourself, like I love you to yourself, you are beautiful. Um, you deserve only good things, you don't allow any toxic people in your life, you know, you don't deserve any toxic people in your life, those types of things. I think it's it's hard, but it's needed.
SPEAKER_00:I am an overthinker. And so as an overthinker, I always had a problem. You know, people would say, Oh, you're doing a great job. Look at how much you've grown. Look at how especially you know, I was coming through therapies and stuff. You you've come so far, you've done this, you are incredible, like you know, all these things. And I it was hard to take that, you know, it was really kind of hard to like really truly believe that because you you're so used to people just, and I say used to when I was younger, people would just say something, but not truly mean it. It was just words that were being thrown out there. Um, but to have people like truly mean what they say to you. I I have to say it it's probably been within the last month, really, that I I started. So I listened to Mel Robbins. I absolutely love Mel Robins. A lot of her her thing, um, this new thing I'm uh is about keeping silent, right? And and taking things in and keeping silent. And as I did that, I started to look within me and seeing that, you know, um I am enough. And so um the I had the same thing when people would say, oh, you know, tell me your like repeat after me. And I've you know always felt uncomfortable. So now actually what I've started to do because I've just been listening to her thing, um, I've written it down. I'm kind of pulling over my notebook and like I have things written down, like, you know, I am making progress. I'll write that down. I am making progress. And when I say I'm making progress, all of a sudden I see the good in me and I see all the things that, you know, I am worthy of. Like I am worthy of love. Like I am worthy of this. I am a lovable. Kind of different when just I don't know. I don't know if there's a specific time in life that it clicks. Um, because I think you and I have talked and and we'll say you're so far ahead of me as far as where you've come to peace and and understanding different things, not the same, whatever. Um, and I'm like, oh, I want to be just like you someday because I'm getting, you know. But yeah, I think I've just started to get into the area of my life where I'm like, man, yeah, I'm like really, I'm I'm yeah, I am, you know what I mean? It's the I am. And you have to love yourself.
SPEAKER_02:Yes, self-love.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:And and being able to internalize that, even if people, even if people have given you many mixed messages, yeah, really treated you awfully, made you feel like you're just the least important person in the room. You still have to try to figure it out how to self-love eventually as you you get out of that, and not allow those people's definitions to be inside of you because right, correct. They are wrong. I mean, every single person is important, you matter. Yeah, and you know, for those of us who are peacekeepers, for us not to confuse peacekeeping with love, because I think that we can do that. If everyone's happy, then I'm loved. I mean, that's that's just so wrong. If no one's mad, then I'm safe. If I sacrifice my needs, maybe they'll choose me. And yeah, right. And one of my biggest ones for me that got me into the most abuse before I was healed from my past trauma is I will do what you say, just like me. I will shut down, I will uh whatever you want, I'll I'll be this ragdoll for you, uh, and say uh whatever you want because fear is taking over my body and I can no longer stand up for myself. Just like me, though. I just want you to like me.
SPEAKER_00:I don't know that I said I would do what you say or whatever. Again, not that you like me. If we're talking about my younger years, I I'll go back to I wasn't seeking love from my grandmother or my mother, but I didn't want to be the ragdoll, and I knew that. I knew that so instead of anything else, I just kept quiet. But you're right, fear. I mean, fear control, it's a prison, you know. Fear is a prison because it encompasses so many different things, so many different layers, and each of us has a different, I don't know, shifts everything.
SPEAKER_02:I was the reason why I believe I got that way. Well, for one thing, being autistic, but another reason was because um fear overtook me. I was held captive by my past. And and the the fear that consumed me, took me into my 20s were my worst time of my life. I allowed it to happen because of who I was, because I was being held captive by my past. And I couldn't figure out a way out, I couldn't find my voice, and it really did shape me. I did find a way out though. Um, one of the things that saved me from that was I met my kids and I adopted my two older ones, and I learned as time went on to parent with presence instead of to parent with fear. And the day that I got them, and I was so afraid to be that parent because you know, of where I'd come from, and here I am with my um, I had a girl that used to live with us, and we were really close. Well, not live with us, she used to stay with us all the time and uh weekends and spend the night all the time. We were very, very close. And at this time when I got my girls, they she was about a teenager age, and oh my gosh, I was she could see the panic in my eyes the first night that I had the kids. I mean, I had no kids, and now I have two kids. Um and she saw the panic in my eyes, and she pulled me into the bathroom, and she was just like, You got this, you got this. Yeah, and I will never forget that. And I realized that I had a choice and I was going to break that generational cycle. And I think that that was part of the fear. You know, what was your first sign that you knew you were breaking the your mom's patterns?
SPEAKER_00:The patterns in my family were a very cycle of abuse, so they were already there even before I came in. So when I had my kids, I was fortunate enough not to live in the state that they were because my husband was military and we moved. So it was just really my husband and myself, and you know, my daughter first, my son. And I think because I had friends around me that didn't know my past, not at all. But I think once I was starting to watch how they were with their children and I was trying to do the same at home, I noticed that I was still living on pins and needles anytime my family would call me. Like I was, you know, I hated when the phone rang because I lived this separate world. I always kept my world separate, even growing up, because like my school world and my home world, right?
SPEAKER_02:Oh, me too.
SPEAKER_00:I don't want to say that I was living in this storybook with my kids, you know, because I I wanted the depictions of what I had when I was growing up, what I wanted, and I didn't understand this. As I'm telling you this right now, I didn't understand until the last five years, to be perfectly honest, or maybe even a little bit like eight, ten years. I wanted what I imagined I had always wanted when I was a kid. And as I'm not living in the same state as them and we're just living separately, um, I did different things with my kids. It wasn't there wasn't that extended family around me. When you ask me when did I know that I broke the cycle, is when I ended contact with my mother in 2014. Because even though I was different as a parent than she was, than my grandmother was, even up until that time, it wasn't until 2014 when I ended contact with them, because everybody, you know, left me because I ended that contact, um, was my first sign of changing the pattern because I no longer allowed that cycle to continue. So it was me, you know, cutting them off and saying, nope, this is what we're gonna build right now. This is our family, this is what we're going to do. But my fear of turning into my family was constant. And again, I'm gonna go up until like even today, I question some things, you know, here and there, because I never want to be like, but it's weird because yeah, I did know that I was being different, but it wasn't until really 2014 that that break from my family allowed me to just be the parent that I was going to be, not the influence of what I was going to be.
SPEAKER_02:There were lots of things that I did that I knew I needed to be different. First of all, I I wanted my the choices that affected our family to be a family choice. No, okay. And I did not want to be the person making decisions for my kids when I knew that it could affect them deeply. And so um I would talk to them, I kept open communication, I made sure that we um knew where each other stood with different things, and um I wanted them to feel the same way with me, you know, and I wanted them to be able to come to me with anything. I was afraid of my mom. I didn't feel like I could go to her for anything, and I never wanted to throw uh this is hard to say, I never wanted to throw a family member away. And I knew that I was different when I chose and I have worked very hard to um love my kids, even though things uh are hard.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:For whatever reason, my mom made the choices that she did, and I'll never ever ever understand why she did what she did with my sister and things, but I knew that no matter what, with my kids, that I would love them no matter what. Because that's what we all want. I just wanted everything to be different. Healing feels so unnatural because it's not what we're used to, but when you begin to walk down the aisle of healing, it eventually becomes a habit and it becomes who we are.
SPEAKER_00:Um, I have to go back to this with the um the the love. As I talked about my Michelle, she was my caseworker and and counselor when I was 14 at a nonprofit shelter in Trenton, New Jersey called Anchor House. I learned from her that I could do no wrong and be thrown away. Like she's still in my life since I was 14. I have done so many stupid things that she could have walked out of my life. Yeah, she could have easily walked out, but she never has, even on the times where I'm like, oh my god, why didn't you run? And she's like, mm-mm, because I love you. See, and that is what I wanted my kids to feel.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:And so um I was learning, and as I was learning, I was giving. So as I continue to learn what love is or how really true love is, I'm learning it, but I'm also giving it at the same time. Like I said before with my daughter, she with you know, those teenage years, and and I would say, I love you, but I don't like you right now. And I made sure of it, like, listen, I love you no matter what. Something that I did when my my daughter came out um as being part of the LGBTQ community, it was okay, I love you no matter what. When I tell you you are my child and I love you no matter what, that means that there is no condition to who you have to be in order for me to love you. I want you to be you, it becomes who we are. Is again, I feel like I'm still learning through this process. As I've had Michelle, you know, teach me this unconditional love, as I've reconnected with teachers that I've had that were really influential in my life where I saw, like my one teacher, there was a simple moment in eighth grade where um I had been in the shelter and something happened at school. So I was, you know, going through really the difficult times of abuse at home and I got away from it. And a simple, simple sentence kind of helped like reshape things as far as like I've learned to bring with me. And I feel like this part of the whole love language was she's like she introduced me to someone as this is my Denise. It was just a sentence, right? Was it a literal thing from her? No, however, that sentence filled me with I was wanted, and I think that being wanted helps you to become loved or helps you to know that you are loved because you know, loved and being wanted are are you know, they're in fine, and so um that is something that I want my kids to continue to feel.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I want my kids to know that they're wanted, yeah, yeah, really important to me.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_02:Now reversing that again to you know, another one big one is to put down what isn't ours because I think that we can carry, and I know that I carry things that were not mine forever. And I I felt I was the one that did the sins of my mom, and I and I really did blame myself for what happened with my sister. I don't know why, because I guess I didn't speak up when she was walking out the door, but I was told not to. So I don't know. I mean, I know, but I've owned that forever, and I felt like it was my fault when my dad died, and I don't know why. I don't know why I feel responsible to I don't know why I felt responsible to make my mom feel happy all the time. And I had to put those things down, and I still once in a while I will pick them back up again, but my mind really does know that it's not my fault. I have to still, I'm like I said, I have to convince myself at times. Do you have things that you carry or or have carried that are not yours to carry?
SPEAKER_00:I think the generational abuse, I keep, you know, it's a hard thing to put into words what I, you know, what you carry. I think I'm the same way where I took responsibility for everything. Well, it's my fault that that happened. You know, when you are conditioned, my mother all the time would say, it's your fault that I don't have. It's your fault that I don't this. She was 16 when she had me. And so when we talk about like the not wanting, I've heard that. I never wanted you, I never this, I never that. Um, and then you know, as she was, you know, a teenager growing up, it was my fault that she didn't have these things because I was the the added weight to things, if that makes sense. And so I think that that is it's my therapist will will tell me sometimes too, she's like, you know, that's not your fault for that. And it's hard because that's what you were conditioned to feel like, especially when they tell you it's your fault because, and even though we know that that's not the truth, like we know we're adults, we're like, you know, we're uh smart individuals and and you know, logical that we know it's not our fault. But I think when you're conditioned with it so much that you do take the blame for it, you do think, well, their misery or the reason their life didn't turn out like my life is because you know, that I did something. And I I did spend a lot of my childhood questioning everything because I was told it was my fault. I believed everything, the abuse was my fault. You you know, if you weren't bad, you wouldn't be hit. Well, if you weren't this, this wouldn't happen to you. So I thought that all the things that happened to me were because I did something wrong. It in fact it wasn't, it was the things that had happened to her.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, I don't know why we do that. I've always done, and I I don't think it comes from they really blamed us, you know. And when somebody's and you're young, you really internalize what they're saying. And so then when you're old enough to even believe, like I'm not the one that did that, they did that. Why am I owning it? Right. I I just think it's just so ingrained in who we are because they said it so many times, or they really did make you feel like that. And so it's really hard to shake. I have no trouble shaking the, you know, I I know I've done something wrong, I own it, I work through it, I talk to the person I've wronged, or whatever, you know. I mean, but the things that I carry that were somebody else's, I don't think that we can really work through that process, that same process. We just can't work through it the way that we can when it is legit something that we did. Yeah, so it's just something that still continues to try to live with us, it would live within us when and we can't shake it the same way. We can't because it's not it, we can't go through that process. There's no way you can you I can't go to anybody and apologize and try to work through with them with something that I didn't even do, right?
SPEAKER_00:Right.
SPEAKER_02:So why do I keep owning it?
SPEAKER_00:And why are um, you know, and that's the thing. Like, I'm not gonna apologize for the abuse you you gave me. I'm not gonna apologize for why you didn't love me. I'm not gonna be sorry about that. I didn't do anything for you not to, and then you know, because mine was generational, there's a lot of people who would say, Well, I had this happen, and I'm I'm just gonna throw him under the bush. My my father recently, and you know, we've reconnected my he had read my book and he had said, you know, I had a lot to think about. I was like, Well, what the heck does that mean? And then we were talking, and he's like, Well, you, you know, because I talk about the abuse, I talk about all the things I'd gone through. And he was like, Well, can you imagine what it was like for your mother and what she went through? Why is that my fault? Right? So it was almost as if I'm to feel sorry for her. Yeah, and I have why is that my? I mean, why is it my fault that she went through that? It's not my fault. I didn't I didn't go through that, but I had a lot of guilt too, I will say. I was so fortunate to have the teachers that I had in my life that I learned from, um, that I took a little bit here and there from that um, so I'm fortunate that I have a lot of these teachers who have that are still in my life that were in my life as a teenager going up and whatever, who saw the other side of me. Um, because I had my two sides, I had my school side and my you know, home side or whatever. They saw, they didn't see the weight, they didn't see that dysfunction or that, or that um, you know, the cycle.
SPEAKER_02:I think, and I want to add this, and this is another thing that I really never talk about on this podcast. I think I've met I have mentioned it in an episode, but it's been a really long time, is that I was a product of rape.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So I was told that too. So yeah, that's interesting.
SPEAKER_02:I I thought so. And so that's an instant like um a negative feeling about who you are. I mean, you in negatively were consummated in this really awful way, and you know, it was an angry, awful thing, and then you came out of it. So I don't know, and and it was used against me. It was said to me, and I won't say who said this to me, but it was a family member who said that my biological mom didn't want me there. Um, because after all, I was just a rape to her.
SPEAKER_00:I uh yeah, and you know what? My mother used to just tell that to me. She was like, you know what, I only have you because I was raped. And I remember hearing that for the very first time when I was four. When I was four, and I didn't know what it meant. I didn't know what it meant, but it was something that stuck with me because you know, a lot of people go, Oh, how can you remember that? Well, I will say this when you were a child that was um raised in trauma and abuse, two things that happened to you. Either you repress everything to protect yourself, or you're like me, and you remember things almost down to the detail. And I never understood what that meant until I got obviously a lot older and understood what that was. Obviously, my father, because I did connect with him, there's two different stories. I don't know whose is true. I really don't, and I'm not here to say I know because I wasn't there, and I'll never tell someone that you weren't raped because I wasn't there, and I'm not gonna ever shame you or do that, even to my own mother. But yeah, I same thing. It was like you and that takes away from love too. You weren't you weren't chosen, you know, and I don't I'm not an adoptive parent, but in my mind, I wasn't loved from the get-go, and I think that in the you know, I it I wasn't built out of love.
SPEAKER_02:Yeah, well, I mean, lots of kids that they know that their parents love each other so much, and they were a product of their love. Correct. I mean, that's a beautiful thing, yeah. And um, but when you don't have that, it does really put a different definition on love. And I just want to put a pledge out, you know, I to make a pledge to love differently, to do whatever it takes, to be different than today was tough. We talked about a lot of really tough things and we laid some heavy things down. I just don't want to pick them back up. If you're if you're listening and realizing that maybe that you have been carrying love uh in all the wrong ways or in the hard ways, and you don't really know the definition of love. Please know that you're not alone. You can rewrite what love means, you can rebuild it, and you deserve a version of love that doesn't ask you to disappear to receive it, that you don't have to be someone else's puppet. Thank you, Denise, for being here. I really appreciate you being here and talking about this. I I was, you know, I was right away, I was like, Well, uh, I know the perfect person to have on for this topic. So awesome. Yeah, so thank you so much for being on. And thank you to our listeners for showing up for yourself today. Because if you listen to this, you showed up for yourself. And remember that, as we always say, that there is purpose in the pain and there is hope in the journey. Subscribe to Real Talk with Tina and Ann. And until next time, keep loving differently, where the best kind of love allows you to finally be seen.
