This is Here After and I'm your host, Megan Divine. This week's show is a repeat performance. We'll be back with season two soon enough, but for right now, enjoy this episode and visit the back catalog of episodes two while you're at it. This is Here After and I'm your host, Megan Divine. Each week we tackle big questions from advocates, therapists, and regular old humans trying to show up with skill and kindness after life goes horribly wrong. This week, it's all about boundaries, how to make them, how to keep them, and sometimes how to breach them. With special guest Dr Alexandra Solomon, host of Reimagining Love. This is part one of a two part special on boundaries. So stay tuned, everybody. We'll be right back after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note, while I hope you find a lot of useful information in our time here together, this show is not a substitute for skilled support for the license mental health provider, or for professional supervisi related to your work friends. So one of the questions I get asked the most often is some variation of how do I get this person to do what I want them to do? When they don't want to do it. That sounds a little bit creepy, right, It sounds manipulative. How do I get this person to do what I want them to do and they don't want to do it. Here's the thing, though, it's normal for people to want things from other people, things like connection or some kind of action or a change in behavior. Requests of other people are not manipulative, not by their very basic nature. That relational give and take between people is normal. But it does get tricky when you've got conflicting needs and interests. That results in some relational lines drawn in the sand that might not feel very good. So we either need to create boundaries in order to keep somebody out of our lives or some aspect of our lives, or we're encountering barriers somebody else has put up when we'd really like to be let back in. Now I've actually put off a show on interpersonal boundaries for a bit, waiting for just the right guest to dive into this tricky territory. Boundaries and relationships are really messy. So you know who I turned to when relationships get complicated. Dr Alexandra Solomon. Dr. Solomon is one of the most trusted voices in the world on relationships, and her work on relational self awareness has reached millions of people around the world. She's a licensed clinical psychologist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University and the author of two best selling books, Loving Bravely and Taking Sexy Back. You might know her from her popular Instagram channel or from her podcast Reimagining Love. Dr Solomon and I recorded an episode for her podcast a few weeks ago, and now she is back in the studio with me for this week's show. Alexander, I am so glad to be together with you again, one of my favorite people in the world. I like where this relationship is heading. I'm here for it. I love this relationship building right now on air. Everybody. Okay, one of my favorite things about your work is how you dive straight into the complicated heart of things. It's also why we're friends. So no fluff or anything. On your website. You wrote something really interesting. You said, our best and bravest work is to practice relational self awareness so that we can meet differences with curiosity and compassion rather than criticism and derision. So that is a bit of a mouthful. If you're trying to follow that. Everybody a bit of a mouthful out of context. But you and I are about to dive into some complex interpersonal boundary work. So can you tell me a little bit about how you see that relational self awareness as like, I don't know the gateway to navigating differences with curiosity rather than criticism. What do you mean by that? Relational self awareness is the through line of all of the work that I do. And one of the principles of relational self awareness is that we are willing again and again to kind of run a complicated relationship dynamic through the following formula that I call the golden equation of love my stuff plus your stuff equals our stuff. It's so easy in relationship to get caught up in these cycles of blame and shame. Right blame is when I imagine that our stuff is because of your stuff. Right shame is when I believe that our stuff is because of my stuff. And so we we come back to curiosity and care and mindfulness when we piece apart. Okay, so what am I bringing into this dynamic and what are you bringing to this dynamic? And how is that creating the Petri dish? You know of interplay where I'm misunderstanding you and you're misunderstanding me, and I'm stepping all over your old wounds and you're stepping all over my old wounds. Those are the conversations where we don't fall into the answers, we sit in the complexity. Yeah, and I love that. What did you call it? The golden equation of relationships? The golden equation of love, the golden equation of love. I love I love love equations. It's the only kind of math I really like. What I really really like about what you just said is you know this, this tendency we have because we are human, is to think that either everything is all about us, or everything is all about the other person, right they're doing this terrible thing to me, or I'm not getting what I want in this relationship because I'm doing something horrible. I mean, I've said this a million times, like binaries don't work on humans at all, and this one person is all right and the other person is all wrong. I mean, that's a binary system that doesn't work right. That's right exactly. And I think sometimes we miss it because by the time we start analyzing what's going on, we've become so polarized, right, our positions have become we've become cut off from each other, or we've said things that are so big and so extreme. You know, I spend so much time in therapy and teaching rewinding the tape, right, rewinding. So in chapter five it looks like you are behaving like a complete a hole. But in chapter one, you know, I said something that hurt your feelings and you bit your tongue and then you pulled back. And when you pulled back, then I pursued. And when I pursued it and then we got to the point where we were so polarized. So it's that a lot of that, like looking in the rear view mirror to understand how did we get here? In the service of going forward, right, we don't look in the rearview mirror in order to assign ultimate blame. We look in the rear view mirror to see what was the first moment of misunderstanding that we didn't tend to, What was the first moment where I bit my tongue instead of inviting you to sit with me in a little bit of truth. And that's oftentimes what leads up to these big the big explosion, the big cut off, the big drama. Yeah, so a lot of this sort of relational detective work. And I love that that the way that you talk about that it's rooted in kindness, right, It's actually rooted in loving action. That we're not sort of doing this relational review in order to find more facts to persecute somebody more fully or to persecute ourselves more fully. We're really doing this as a way of looking at what's actually happening here, and how do we treat what's happening with kindness and tenderness. Yeah, I mean I feel like I'm sure you'l like this too, Like as a therapist, like I have infinite compact, Like when I'm sitting with a couple, Oh my gosh, I my heart is just like wide open to both people right about. Oh my god, that moment must have been so painful for you, and this moment must have been so painful for you, right that it's it's not hard to hold. I mean, sometimes the things we do when we feel hurt are really gnarly and shady McGrady. But the pain underneath the self protective strategy, the pain underneath, it's so easy to have infinite amounts of compassion for I felt so unseen, I felt so devalued, I felt so afraid of losing you. Right, those kind of core tender pieces just pull you know so much compassion forward. Yeah, I mean, these are the complex interpersonal and personal relationship issues that you you deal with with such I don't know the word I want here, like precise compassion. I really really love that about your your language and your approaches. So that foundation that you have of greeting those complex interpersonal relationship issues with both kindness and self awareness is obviously why I wanted to have you on specifically this week to talk about some challenging interpersonal boundary stuff. This week, we've got to listener questions related to keeping someone in your life when they really aren't so happy to be there, and then cutting somebody out of your life when they really want to stay close to you. So two big, thorny boundary interpersonal issues. Are you ready to dive into the first one with me? I'm so ready. Let's do it. Okay, let's do it. So this listener wrote, I have two adult stepdaughters that have cut me out of their lives since my husband passed away. From sudden cardiac arrest late last year. I feel like I want to reach out to them, but I have so many concerns about how to do this. We haven't had any contact since about a month after he died. My husband's birthday is coming up, and I would really like to reach out to his daughters. But should I If I do, what do I say? I doubt myself in everything these days? So where do we go with us? Mm hmm. There's a lot of layers here that that I'm really I'm grateful that she sent this question to you, because I think there's this this is going to land. I think different parts of it will land, you know, for different listeners. You know, I was so touched in this last sentence of I doubt myself and everything these days, And I know you have so much to say about grief and self doubt. Right. This is while she probably was a she was a stepmom for some length of time, and it was very likely the first time in her life she ever had been a stepmom, which, by the way, I think is probably one of, if not the most difficult role in the family system. And so that was her first time being a step mom, and then she lost her husband, and so it is her first time being a widow, and so self doubt makes so much sense. It's so understandable because these are spaces she has not been in before, right, and her emotions are big and I'm sure threatened to overwhelm her at times, and now she's approaching the first birthday without her husband. There are so many different moving parts to this. I love that you said this is the first time she's had to do these roles or sort of act in these roles, and that is something that we don't want to underestimate the power of or the pressure of, to be honest, like, I don't want to screw this up. I need to do this correctly, And I really hear that in this listener's question, like tell me exactly what I'm supposed to do here, because this relationship is really important to me and I don't want to screw it up. We're talking a bit more these days about cut offs, and my understanding of the research around cut offs, is this the way this one is playing out. It's it's pretty typical that most often it is the adult child generation that cuts off the parent generation cut off to go in that direction more often than a parent generation cutting off a kid and then um families. You know, blended families are more at risk of cutoffs than not blended families. So in some ways they've got a couple of risk factors here for this to happen. And this, you know, the man, this man was kind of the fulcrum of the system, right. He was the tie for the daughters, and he was the tie for this wife. And so these two women, the step daughters and this step mom, they don't have a tie, a blood tie, right if and as they were to continue their relationship, it would be really based on choice someone of history. We don't know how much history, but it really would be a relationship truly of choice, not duty, not blood, and you know, all that factors in. That's a really good point that you brought up there, that we don't know the backstory here. We don't know what kind of relationship this listener had with the stepdaughters before her husband's death. Was it a tense relationship, was a good relationship. We don't have a lot of backstory there, But I think that we can make some guesses here that the relationship right now feels broken or tenuous and tender I love what you said they're about. If they're going to move forward with a relationship, it's a relationship of choice, right, It's not a relationship of obligation or duty or you know, even something that really has a good roadmap to it. No, yeah, that's right, there's not. These would be three women choosing a kind of relationship that certainly has got his memory as part of it, like as sort of the connective tissue. But it would be a relationship that they would choose, and to see each other I imagine highlights perhaps the pain of his loss. Right. When she's looking in those women's eyes, they look like if they look like him, right, So she has face to face with all the ways that he lives on in them, and they when they look at her, they see the marriage, whatever that marriage meant to them. So I imagine there's potentially pain that maybe these daughters are protecting themselves from, but also then a really important gateway to reminiscence and memory. And yeah, I think there can be a real longing. And I hear that in this listener, This this real longing for a continued relationship. Right, it sounds like not only her husband died, but she also lost a relationship that mattered to her, whatever that relationship looked like. Right, So she's in a way grieving three losses, and that's something that we want to bring into the room here too. So there's there's just really that longing and it's not like being connected is going to solve anything for anybody. You brought up how much pain there is involved in all of this. You know, we don't know if these adult children, one or both of them, if it's too painful for them, Like, we don't know what's going on for them. We don't really know what's going on for any of them until we sort of get to the point where we can have that conversation. Well, that's one of the things that I was thinking about with this question, is the step mom story, is that the daughters have cut me off. You know, we were saying before, like the way in which these these sort of like chapter five may look like the girls cut her off. But I wonder if the girl's story is in chapter one she didn't follow up after the funeral, or she didn't do this, or when we asked for this, she didn't you know, respond. There there may have been things in which the daughter's story might be she really pulled away from us, and that is not I am not saying that at all in any way to blame or put responsibility on this question. Writer. I am just inviting the possibility that she has put together the data in a particular way that may not be the way this story lives inside of one or both of the daughters. And that's really what you said when we we first started chatting here, is like, we want to widen out the scope of the story and wonder about the other characters and what's their perspective and what what is their reasoning, what does their story look like, and how do those stories compare. I think sometimes we could be like, oh, the step mom clearly did something terrible and that's why these people don't want to talk to her anymore, Right, Like, I don't know, maybe we we certainly don't have enough information on that. But one of the things that you really said so clearly is that nobody is to blame in any of these directions, Right, We really just need to be curious about sort of the full breadth of the story in order to build this relationship of choice. Do you think that in terms of like applying just a really strict grief lens. Do you think it's possible that the step daughter is like in an effort to almost like bind the enormity of the grief. It's sort of like easier to somehow blame, like maybe they do. Yeah, if she, if she hadn't blah blah blah, then would still be here. I think, especially with a sudden death. Certain certainly happens in other kinds of losses as well, but in a sudden death that really sort of messes with your understanding of the safety and predictability of the world. There is a big temptation to point a finger, and I think for a lot of people, anger is a much easier emotion than intense sadness. It's easier to sort of be hot and angry. And if you hadn't done this, this wouldn't be happening like that as a normal human impulse. So we really don't know the full story here, and honestly, in a lot of ways, I don't think we need to know the full story in order to talk about where does this listener go from here? So you said something on your Instagram recently that kind of speaks to where where do we go from here you wrote the difference between walking on eggshells and quote handling with care is whether you can talk together about how tender the dynamic feels. Handling with caution is a kindness we can offer each They're building trust without compromising authenticity. So one yet another awesome thing that you write on your Instagram. Everybody should follow you. But what are what are some ways that this listener might handle this tender dynamic with caution? I really do love the idea of her reaching out if she can do it with zero attachment to the outcome right, and of course she's going to have preferences of how it goes or doesn't go, But if she can, if this conversation helps her feel really grounded in curiosity and care and love, then I imagine whatever words she chooses to reach out with will convey that, and then that way she can just allow their reaction to be what it is right, and it can be sort of almost like a data gathering like that. She's, you know, she's doing her work to ensure that she doesn't have an angle or an ax to mind. She is reaching out with curiosity and care and love and then just releasing the outcome, which is so darn hard to then whatever happens next, then she gets to go from there. Right, She's got too. There's this beautiful Martin Luther King quote about how hard it is to take the first step when you can't see the full staircase. That's what I would invite her to do. If it feels like she's you know, well resourced, and she can do this without feeling like then the outcome will devastate her, you know, or be too much for her, then I would like her to kind of take it that first step even though she can't see the full staircase. I love that idea, idea and air quotes here, the idea of letting go of outcome. This is sort of like the whole like, don't care about the outcome? No like that. Okay, so that's not really gonna happen. However, I think we can have sort of as a practice or an operating principle that I will reach out, I will take this action with as much skill and self awareness and reflection as I am able to access, and I can't control their reaction to that. That's I think that's just slightly different, a different approach than like I don't care what happens, whatever the outcome is like no, no, no, like that. Let's let's be realistic here. But I do think that it can take some of the pressure off to feel like it's all on you to do this perfectly, and if you don't do it perfectly, the future relationship is screwed. Right. I think that is that is undo pressure to me. This is really about taking the time to really ask yourself what am I hoping for here, what would be the best possible outcome in this situation, and what is it that I really want to convey to these people that I very clearly care about, right, and spending some time in that self reflection, that relational self awareness that you talk about, spending some time in that so that you can show up with skill to a very tender dynamic. I think that's a really important distinction that you're making, and that she will right. There are particular outcomes that she has a preference for, in particular outcomes that she fears or dreads, and if it goes in a way that it is one of the feared or dreaded outcomes, I would I would wish her sadness, but not shame, right, I would wish that she could kind of stay with sadness and notice if there's an urge to kind of turn it against herself, right, that that any sort of like sense that she did it wrong or this happened because of some aspect of her character, Which is why I think it's so important how you're focusing her on the kind of skill and gentleness going in that will help her hopefully sit with whatever next step happens on there. And that she has absolutely no control, absolutely no control. Yeah, and having just come off of the loss of her partner over which she also had no control. Lack of control is really challenging. So really, briefly, if we want to talk about some scripting maybe for this person, so I would suggest something like, you know, after you've done your reflection, after you've really looked at what's my goal here? What would I really like? You don't want to really like dump all of that information onto somebody after no contact, you know, like here's a text that's seventeen thousand words long. No, maybe something more like, don't send a text to both of the adult children at the same time. So individual contact is important here, and to say something like, I know we haven't been in touch since your dad died, and I have wanted to really respect your privacy and your timing. His birthday is coming up, and I just want to let you know that I would love to continue a relationship with you, whatever that might look like. I feel like my whole chest open as you as you provide that scripting keep going nice. I love that. I love a visceral reaction. It's it's really what we're going for. Here is some elegance in the difficulty. And of course you know, when when I give you or when Alexander gives you suggest for scripting, you want to make things sound like you and not like us, right because you want to be able to maintain it without having to, like, you know, go back and listen to us. But I think the message here is I've wanted to respect your space and your timing, and I want to extend an invitation and let you know that I would love to see what kind of relationship we might grow together, if there is one, and what that would look like like. There's a real permission giving in there that I really appreciate. There's a complete and total absence of should or obligation or duty or good people x ys that you know, there is just permission and some vulnerable. Right, there's a bit of vulnerability on her part. I would love to continue, So she's she is stating what she would like, and that's vulnerable. It's vulnerable to state what you would like. But in that language, you're inviting her to say, I would love to continue a relationship with you. However that would look to you. I mean, it sends a very strong message, doesn't it. I think that the subtle or maybe not so subtle message is like I am aware and skilled enough to do a really skillful, elegant request of you into this really awkward territory. Like I think we're always we're always we're always demonstrating our skill set to other people, right, We're always demonstrating what we're standing on. I love that you came up with shame there, Like if you instead you did a message like your dad would really want us to keep in touch, like, oh, red Flag City. If I am the adult child, I'm like delete, not talking to you. So we we really do want to be mindful of like, no matter how high the emotion is, no matter how much we desperately want to have that connection for a multitude of reasons. You want to watch for a language that will accidentally send the other person running away, and certainly any kind of should language or your dead dad would want us x y Z like, oh, that's sort of omniscient stuff doesn't work in any kind of support. But especially when you're in this this sort of tender navigation of love, you want to be mindful of the message that you're sending. Megan, why did you start by saying that you think that she should send a text to each of them individually. Texting to each one of them individually recognizes them as individuals rather than a unit. I think that's really important. People like to be seen as who they are. We also don't want to assume that both of these adult step daughters have the same reasons for radio silence. If you think about it, like we always have different relationships with different family members. I'm sure that she didn't have the same relationship with each one. Like they don't come as a unit. I mean, maybe they present as a unit sometimes because they're good friends, But these are individuals that we're talking about. Each one of those step daughters had an individual, unique relationship with their dad. They probably each have different fears, annoyances, desires as it relates to their grief and any ongoing relationship with their step mom. I think there's a measure of respect in addressing them as individuals, because they are individuals. So we aren't kidding everybody when Alexandra and I say that almost every issue can be like boiled down to this is a boundary issue. We had so much good information to discuss and dissect around boundaries and relationships that we split the show into two parts so that you can do what we've been talking about, which is some you know, self reflection and some questioning into your own ideas about boundaries. So part two is coming next week, and that's also when you're going to find your questions to carry with you. Don't miss that next week, friends. You know how most people are going to scan through their podcast app looking for a new thing. They're going to see the show description for hereafter and think, I don't want to talk about that stuff. Well, here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here. We talk about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your workplace, in your social world on social media and click through to leave a review. Subscribe to the show, download episodes, and send in your questions. Want more Here After? Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. Life is full of losses, from everyday disappointments to events that clearly divide life into before and after. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic think positive posters is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for every human trying to make their way in the world after something goes horribly wrong at Megan Divine dot c. O. Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Kanya Jujas and Elizabeth Fossio, Edited by Houston Tilly, and studio support by Chris Yuren. Music provided by Wave Crush h

This is Here After and I'm your host, Megan Divine. This week's show is a repeat performance. We'll be back with season two soon enough, but for right now, enjoy this episode and visit the back catalog of episodes two while you're at it. This is Here After and I'm your host, Megan Divine. Each week we tackle big questions from advocates, therapists, and regular old humans trying to show up with skill and kindness after life goes horribly wrong. This week, it's all about boundaries, how to make them, how to keep them, and sometimes how to breach them. With special guest Dr Alexandra Solomon, host of Reimagining Love. This is part one of a two part special on boundaries. So stay tuned, everybody. We'll be right back after this first break. Before we get started, one quick note, while I hope you find a lot of useful information in our time here together, this show is not a substitute for skilled support for the license mental health provider, or for professional supervisi related to your work friends. So one of the questions I get asked the most often is some variation of how do I get this person to do what I want them to do? When they don't want to do it. That sounds a little bit creepy, right, It sounds manipulative. How do I get this person to do what I want them to do and they don't want to do it. Here's the thing, though, it's normal for people to want things from other people, things like connection or some kind of action or a change in behavior. Requests of other people are not manipulative, not by their very basic nature. That relational give and take between people is normal. But it does get tricky when you've got conflicting needs and interests. That results in some relational lines drawn in the sand that might not feel very good. So we either need to create boundaries in order to keep somebody out of our lives or some aspect of our lives, or we're encountering barriers somebody else has put up when we'd really like to be let back in. Now I've actually put off a show on interpersonal boundaries for a bit, waiting for just the right guest to dive into this tricky territory. Boundaries and relationships are really messy. So you know who I turned to when relationships get complicated. Dr Alexandra Solomon. Dr. Solomon is one of the most trusted voices in the world on relationships, and her work on relational self awareness has reached millions of people around the world. She's a licensed clinical psychologist at the Family Institute at Northwestern University and the author of two best selling books, Loving Bravely and Taking Sexy Back. You might know her from her popular Instagram channel or from her podcast Reimagining Love. Dr Solomon and I recorded an episode for her podcast a few weeks ago, and now she is back in the studio with me for this week's show. Alexander, I am so glad to be together with you again, one of my favorite people in the world. I like where this relationship is heading. I'm here for it. I love this relationship building right now on air. Everybody. Okay, one of my favorite things about your work is how you dive straight into the complicated heart of things. It's also why we're friends. So no fluff or anything. On your website. You wrote something really interesting. You said, our best and bravest work is to practice relational self awareness so that we can meet differences with curiosity and compassion rather than criticism and derision. So that is a bit of a mouthful. If you're trying to follow that. Everybody a bit of a mouthful out of context. But you and I are about to dive into some complex interpersonal boundary work. So can you tell me a little bit about how you see that relational self awareness as like, I don't know the gateway to navigating differences with curiosity rather than criticism. What do you mean by that? Relational self awareness is the through line of all of the work that I do. And one of the principles of relational self awareness is that we are willing again and again to kind of run a complicated relationship dynamic through the following formula that I call the golden equation of love my stuff plus your stuff equals our stuff. It's so easy in relationship to get caught up in these cycles of blame and shame. Right blame is when I imagine that our stuff is because of your stuff. Right shame is when I believe that our stuff is because of my stuff. And so we we come back to curiosity and care and mindfulness when we piece apart. Okay, so what am I bringing into this dynamic and what are you bringing to this dynamic? And how is that creating the Petri dish? You know of interplay where I'm misunderstanding you and you're misunderstanding me, and I'm stepping all over your old wounds and you're stepping all over my old wounds. Those are the conversations where we don't fall into the answers, we sit in the complexity. Yeah, and I love that. What did you call it? The golden equation of relationships? The golden equation of love, the golden equation of love. I love I love love equations. It's the only kind of math I really like. What I really really like about what you just said is you know this, this tendency we have because we are human, is to think that either everything is all about us, or everything is all about the other person, right they're doing this terrible thing to me, or I'm not getting what I want in this relationship because I'm doing something horrible. I mean, I've said this a million times, like binaries don't work on humans at all, and this one person is all right and the other person is all wrong. I mean, that's a binary system that doesn't work right. That's right exactly. And I think sometimes we miss it because by the time we start analyzing what's going on, we've become so polarized, right, our positions have become we've become cut off from each other, or we've said things that are so big and so extreme. You know, I spend so much time in therapy and teaching rewinding the tape, right, rewinding. So in chapter five it looks like you are behaving like a complete a hole. But in chapter one, you know, I said something that hurt your feelings and you bit your tongue and then you pulled back. And when you pulled back, then I pursued. And when I pursued it and then we got to the point where we were so polarized. So it's that a lot of that, like looking in the rear view mirror to understand how did we get here? In the service of going forward, right, we don't look in the rearview mirror in order to assign ultimate blame. We look in the rear view mirror to see what was the first moment of misunderstanding that we didn't tend to, What was the first moment where I bit my tongue instead of inviting you to sit with me in a little bit of truth. And that's oftentimes what leads up to these big the big explosion, the big cut off, the big drama. Yeah, so a lot of this sort of relational detective work. And I love that that the way that you talk about that it's rooted in kindness, right, It's actually rooted in loving action. That we're not sort of doing this relational review in order to find more facts to persecute somebody more fully or to persecute ourselves more fully. We're really doing this as a way of looking at what's actually happening here, and how do we treat what's happening with kindness and tenderness. Yeah, I mean I feel like I'm sure you'l like this too, Like as a therapist, like I have infinite compact, Like when I'm sitting with a couple, Oh my gosh, I my heart is just like wide open to both people right about. Oh my god, that moment must have been so painful for you, and this moment must have been so painful for you, right that it's it's not hard to hold. I mean, sometimes the things we do when we feel hurt are really gnarly and shady McGrady. But the pain underneath the self protective strategy, the pain underneath, it's so easy to have infinite amounts of compassion for I felt so unseen, I felt so devalued, I felt so afraid of losing you. Right, those kind of core tender pieces just pull you know so much compassion forward. Yeah, I mean, these are the complex interpersonal and personal relationship issues that you you deal with with such I don't know the word I want here, like precise compassion. I really really love that about your your language and your approaches. So that foundation that you have of greeting those complex interpersonal relationship issues with both kindness and self awareness is obviously why I wanted to have you on specifically this week to talk about some challenging interpersonal boundary stuff. This week, we've got to listener questions related to keeping someone in your life when they really aren't so happy to be there, and then cutting somebody out of your life when they really want to stay close to you. So two big, thorny boundary interpersonal issues. Are you ready to dive into the first one with me? I'm so ready. Let's do it. Okay, let's do it. So this listener wrote, I have two adult stepdaughters that have cut me out of their lives since my husband passed away. From sudden cardiac arrest late last year. I feel like I want to reach out to them, but I have so many concerns about how to do this. We haven't had any contact since about a month after he died. My husband's birthday is coming up, and I would really like to reach out to his daughters. But should I If I do, what do I say? I doubt myself in everything these days? So where do we go with us? Mm hmm. There's a lot of layers here that that I'm really I'm grateful that she sent this question to you, because I think there's this this is going to land. I think different parts of it will land, you know, for different listeners. You know, I was so touched in this last sentence of I doubt myself and everything these days, And I know you have so much to say about grief and self doubt. Right. This is while she probably was a she was a stepmom for some length of time, and it was very likely the first time in her life she ever had been a stepmom, which, by the way, I think is probably one of, if not the most difficult role in the family system. And so that was her first time being a step mom, and then she lost her husband, and so it is her first time being a widow, and so self doubt makes so much sense. It's so understandable because these are spaces she has not been in before, right, and her emotions are big and I'm sure threatened to overwhelm her at times, and now she's approaching the first birthday without her husband. There are so many different moving parts to this. I love that you said this is the first time she's had to do these roles or sort of act in these roles, and that is something that we don't want to underestimate the power of or the pressure of, to be honest, like, I don't want to screw this up. I need to do this correctly, And I really hear that in this listener's question, like tell me exactly what I'm supposed to do here, because this relationship is really important to me and I don't want to screw it up. We're talking a bit more these days about cut offs, and my understanding of the research around cut offs, is this the way this one is playing out. It's it's pretty typical that most often it is the adult child generation that cuts off the parent generation cut off to go in that direction more often than a parent generation cutting off a kid and then um families. You know, blended families are more at risk of cutoffs than not blended families. So in some ways they've got a couple of risk factors here for this to happen. And this, you know, the man, this man was kind of the fulcrum of the system, right. He was the tie for the daughters, and he was the tie for this wife. And so these two women, the step daughters and this step mom, they don't have a tie, a blood tie, right if and as they were to continue their relationship, it would be really based on choice someone of history. We don't know how much history, but it really would be a relationship truly of choice, not duty, not blood, and you know, all that factors in. That's a really good point that you brought up there, that we don't know the backstory here. We don't know what kind of relationship this listener had with the stepdaughters before her husband's death. Was it a tense relationship, was a good relationship. We don't have a lot of backstory there, But I think that we can make some guesses here that the relationship right now feels broken or tenuous and tender I love what you said they're about. If they're going to move forward with a relationship, it's a relationship of choice, right, It's not a relationship of obligation or duty or you know, even something that really has a good roadmap to it. No, yeah, that's right, there's not. These would be three women choosing a kind of relationship that certainly has got his memory as part of it, like as sort of the connective tissue. But it would be a relationship that they would choose, and to see each other I imagine highlights perhaps the pain of his loss. Right. When she's looking in those women's eyes, they look like if they look like him, right, So she has face to face with all the ways that he lives on in them, and they when they look at her, they see the marriage, whatever that marriage meant to them. So I imagine there's potentially pain that maybe these daughters are protecting themselves from, but also then a really important gateway to reminiscence and memory. And yeah, I think there can be a real longing. And I hear that in this listener, This this real longing for a continued relationship. Right, it sounds like not only her husband died, but she also lost a relationship that mattered to her, whatever that relationship looked like. Right, So she's in a way grieving three losses, and that's something that we want to bring into the room here too. So there's there's just really that longing and it's not like being connected is going to solve anything for anybody. You brought up how much pain there is involved in all of this. You know, we don't know if these adult children, one or both of them, if it's too painful for them, Like, we don't know what's going on for them. We don't really know what's going on for any of them until we sort of get to the point where we can have that conversation. Well, that's one of the things that I was thinking about with this question, is the step mom story, is that the daughters have cut me off. You know, we were saying before, like the way in which these these sort of like chapter five may look like the girls cut her off. But I wonder if the girl's story is in chapter one she didn't follow up after the funeral, or she didn't do this, or when we asked for this, she didn't you know, respond. There there may have been things in which the daughter's story might be she really pulled away from us, and that is not I am not saying that at all in any way to blame or put responsibility on this question. Writer. I am just inviting the possibility that she has put together the data in a particular way that may not be the way this story lives inside of one or both of the daughters. And that's really what you said when we we first started chatting here, is like, we want to widen out the scope of the story and wonder about the other characters and what's their perspective and what what is their reasoning, what does their story look like, and how do those stories compare. I think sometimes we could be like, oh, the step mom clearly did something terrible and that's why these people don't want to talk to her anymore, Right, Like, I don't know, maybe we we certainly don't have enough information on that. But one of the things that you really said so clearly is that nobody is to blame in any of these directions, Right, We really just need to be curious about sort of the full breadth of the story in order to build this relationship of choice. Do you think that in terms of like applying just a really strict grief lens. Do you think it's possible that the step daughter is like in an effort to almost like bind the enormity of the grief. It's sort of like easier to somehow blame, like maybe they do. Yeah, if she, if she hadn't blah blah blah, then would still be here. I think, especially with a sudden death. Certain certainly happens in other kinds of losses as well, but in a sudden death that really sort of messes with your understanding of the safety and predictability of the world. There is a big temptation to point a finger, and I think for a lot of people, anger is a much easier emotion than intense sadness. It's easier to sort of be hot and angry. And if you hadn't done this, this wouldn't be happening like that as a normal human impulse. So we really don't know the full story here, and honestly, in a lot of ways, I don't think we need to know the full story in order to talk about where does this listener go from here? So you said something on your Instagram recently that kind of speaks to where where do we go from here you wrote the difference between walking on eggshells and quote handling with care is whether you can talk together about how tender the dynamic feels. Handling with caution is a kindness we can offer each They're building trust without compromising authenticity. So one yet another awesome thing that you write on your Instagram. Everybody should follow you. But what are what are some ways that this listener might handle this tender dynamic with caution? I really do love the idea of her reaching out if she can do it with zero attachment to the outcome right, and of course she's going to have preferences of how it goes or doesn't go, But if she can, if this conversation helps her feel really grounded in curiosity and care and love, then I imagine whatever words she chooses to reach out with will convey that, and then that way she can just allow their reaction to be what it is right, and it can be sort of almost like a data gathering like that. She's, you know, she's doing her work to ensure that she doesn't have an angle or an ax to mind. She is reaching out with curiosity and care and love and then just releasing the outcome, which is so darn hard to then whatever happens next, then she gets to go from there. Right, She's got too. There's this beautiful Martin Luther King quote about how hard it is to take the first step when you can't see the full staircase. That's what I would invite her to do. If it feels like she's you know, well resourced, and she can do this without feeling like then the outcome will devastate her, you know, or be too much for her, then I would like her to kind of take it that first step even though she can't see the full staircase. I love that idea, idea and air quotes here, the idea of letting go of outcome. This is sort of like the whole like, don't care about the outcome? No like that. Okay, so that's not really gonna happen. However, I think we can have sort of as a practice or an operating principle that I will reach out, I will take this action with as much skill and self awareness and reflection as I am able to access, and I can't control their reaction to that. That's I think that's just slightly different, a different approach than like I don't care what happens, whatever the outcome is like no, no, no, like that. Let's let's be realistic here. But I do think that it can take some of the pressure off to feel like it's all on you to do this perfectly, and if you don't do it perfectly, the future relationship is screwed. Right. I think that is that is undo pressure to me. This is really about taking the time to really ask yourself what am I hoping for here, what would be the best possible outcome in this situation, and what is it that I really want to convey to these people that I very clearly care about, right, and spending some time in that self reflection, that relational self awareness that you talk about, spending some time in that so that you can show up with skill to a very tender dynamic. I think that's a really important distinction that you're making, and that she will right. There are particular outcomes that she has a preference for, in particular outcomes that she fears or dreads, and if it goes in a way that it is one of the feared or dreaded outcomes, I would I would wish her sadness, but not shame, right, I would wish that she could kind of stay with sadness and notice if there's an urge to kind of turn it against herself, right, that that any sort of like sense that she did it wrong or this happened because of some aspect of her character, Which is why I think it's so important how you're focusing her on the kind of skill and gentleness going in that will help her hopefully sit with whatever next step happens on there. And that she has absolutely no control, absolutely no control. Yeah, and having just come off of the loss of her partner over which she also had no control. Lack of control is really challenging. So really, briefly, if we want to talk about some scripting maybe for this person, so I would suggest something like, you know, after you've done your reflection, after you've really looked at what's my goal here? What would I really like? You don't want to really like dump all of that information onto somebody after no contact, you know, like here's a text that's seventeen thousand words long. No, maybe something more like, don't send a text to both of the adult children at the same time. So individual contact is important here, and to say something like, I know we haven't been in touch since your dad died, and I have wanted to really respect your privacy and your timing. His birthday is coming up, and I just want to let you know that I would love to continue a relationship with you, whatever that might look like. I feel like my whole chest open as you as you provide that scripting keep going nice. I love that. I love a visceral reaction. It's it's really what we're going for. Here is some elegance in the difficulty. And of course you know, when when I give you or when Alexander gives you suggest for scripting, you want to make things sound like you and not like us, right because you want to be able to maintain it without having to, like, you know, go back and listen to us. But I think the message here is I've wanted to respect your space and your timing, and I want to extend an invitation and let you know that I would love to see what kind of relationship we might grow together, if there is one, and what that would look like like. There's a real permission giving in there that I really appreciate. There's a complete and total absence of should or obligation or duty or good people x ys that you know, there is just permission and some vulnerable. Right, there's a bit of vulnerability on her part. I would love to continue, So she's she is stating what she would like, and that's vulnerable. It's vulnerable to state what you would like. But in that language, you're inviting her to say, I would love to continue a relationship with you. However that would look to you. I mean, it sends a very strong message, doesn't it. I think that the subtle or maybe not so subtle message is like I am aware and skilled enough to do a really skillful, elegant request of you into this really awkward territory. Like I think we're always we're always we're always demonstrating our skill set to other people, right, We're always demonstrating what we're standing on. I love that you came up with shame there, Like if you instead you did a message like your dad would really want us to keep in touch, like, oh, red Flag City. If I am the adult child, I'm like delete, not talking to you. So we we really do want to be mindful of like, no matter how high the emotion is, no matter how much we desperately want to have that connection for a multitude of reasons. You want to watch for a language that will accidentally send the other person running away, and certainly any kind of should language or your dead dad would want us x y Z like, oh, that's sort of omniscient stuff doesn't work in any kind of support. But especially when you're in this this sort of tender navigation of love, you want to be mindful of the message that you're sending. Megan, why did you start by saying that you think that she should send a text to each of them individually. Texting to each one of them individually recognizes them as individuals rather than a unit. I think that's really important. People like to be seen as who they are. We also don't want to assume that both of these adult step daughters have the same reasons for radio silence. If you think about it, like we always have different relationships with different family members. I'm sure that she didn't have the same relationship with each one. Like they don't come as a unit. I mean, maybe they present as a unit sometimes because they're good friends, But these are individuals that we're talking about. Each one of those step daughters had an individual, unique relationship with their dad. They probably each have different fears, annoyances, desires as it relates to their grief and any ongoing relationship with their step mom. I think there's a measure of respect in addressing them as individuals, because they are individuals. So we aren't kidding everybody when Alexandra and I say that almost every issue can be like boiled down to this is a boundary issue. We had so much good information to discuss and dissect around boundaries and relationships that we split the show into two parts so that you can do what we've been talking about, which is some you know, self reflection and some questioning into your own ideas about boundaries. So part two is coming next week, and that's also when you're going to find your questions to carry with you. Don't miss that next week, friends. You know how most people are going to scan through their podcast app looking for a new thing. They're going to see the show description for hereafter and think, I don't want to talk about that stuff. Well, here's where you come in your reviews. Let people know it really isn't all that bad. In here. We talk about heavy stuff, but it's in the service of making things better for everyone. So everyone needs to listen. Spread the word in your workplace, in your social world on social media and click through to leave a review. Subscribe to the show, download episodes, and send in your questions. Want more Here After? Grief education doesn't just belong to end of life issues. Life is full of losses, from everyday disappointments to events that clearly divide life into before and after. Learning how to talk about all that without cliches or platitudes or simplistic think positive posters is an important skill for everyone. Find trainings, workshops, books and resources for every human trying to make their way in the world after something goes horribly wrong at Megan Divine dot c. O. Hereafter with Megan Divine is written and produced by me Megan Divine. Executive producer is Amy Brown, co produced by Kanya Jujas and Elizabeth Fossio, Edited by Houston Tilly, and studio support by Chris Yuren. Music provided by Wave Crush h