Most listened to episode in 2025: How to break unhealthy patterns and become the parent you wish you'd had - with Harriet Shearsmith

0:00Hey, welcome to Motherkind. It is me, your host Zoe Blaski. I am so happy you are here and I cannot wait for you to hear this episode one of our most downloaded in the world. This week's episode is about family dynamics, specifically what to do if you have a family member whose behaviour you struggle with. My expert this week is Harriet Shearsmith, family dynamics coach and author of a new book, which is brilliant, called Unfollowing Mum. Break unhealthy patterns and be the parent you wished you'd had. This is such a powerful episode and in many ways a difficult one because Harriet shares her own personal story of realising that she actually had a very unhealthy relationship with her own mum, which she realised while they were actually living together.

1:11And she tells us what happened next. I was blown away by Harriet's story, but also her knowledge and her deep desire to support anyone who is navigating a tricky family relationship. Not only does she normalise this, but she also offers so many pearls of wisdom and advice to empower us to stop ignoring it, just hoping that it will go away and actually begin to face it. We talk about the signs of an unhealthy family relationship, how on earth to work out what to do next when you start to see some of those signs, what to do if you get pushback and the guilt that can come up and ultimately how to find peace, even with the difficult people in your life.

2:03I really think this is one of those episodes that is going to change many people's lives. I also think it's an episode that's going to get shared a lot. So if you know someone in your circle who is struggling with this or has struggled with it, please do share this episode. Be that mother in your community, in your world who is sharing experts like Harriet, sharing the solution and offering hope. Here it is. I hope you love it.

2:36welcome to the podcast harry i'm so excited to not only have you here but to have this i just think really important conversation that doesn't happen enough so thank you for being here oh well thank you so much for having me i'm curious did you ever think that you would be here like having written a book about estrangement and toxic parents and cycle breaking is that something that was ever sort of in your path? No, not even slightly. I think if you'd have asked me maybe 15 years ago, if I'd have been talking about these topics, I would have said no, not, you know, I've got an amazing relationship with my mum.

3:13She's my best, best friend. I would never in a million years be talking about any kind of thing about toxic relationships, maybe with my dad, but I don't generally talk about that. And I would have just trotted along and said, you know, know, my inspiration for parenting was my mum and all this kind of thing, I would never have really, never really considered it. So what changed? Well, I think when you have children in general, you start to really reflect on your experiences. One of the things that we talk about is how your parenting journey starts in your own nursery. It's how you were parented that kind of lays the foundation sets your blueprint for what your parenting experience will be like and when you've not necessarily had the most healthy experience with your own parents that's going to have a big impact but often we don't recognize that we've not had a healthy experience with our parents we don't even consider it when we get to adulthood there are so many societal messages I think as well as messages that are within your family unit of you know be grateful to your parents after all I've done for you and all these kind of things.

4:21And especially when you have what we would call an enmeshed relationship, like I had with my mum, which essentially for anyone who doesn't know, is where you have that kind of ultra close relationship where there perhaps isn't an end to you and a beginning to them. You've maybe grown up experiencing a lot of adult things before adulthood, experiencing perhaps being their best friend, standing spouse, standing therapist, what we would call parentification. And you don't really recognise how unhealthy that can be until you become a parent. And then you start to look at this small bundle that you've been given and you go, oh, I would never want to treat you the way I was treated or I wouldn't want you to feel like that?

5:10And then you start to reflect, well, was my childhood great? Maybe I'm just making it up. And one of the things I ask people to do when I work with them as clients is to start to think about your childhood and ask yourself, would you want that to be your child's childhood? And then you generally have your answer. You generally come back if you haven't had a healthy experience with, absolutely not. Or, oh, well, maybe it was that bad then. And I think when I had my own children there were so many ways in which I started to look at my relationship with my mum and think this really isn't healthy in the now and it wasn't healthy in the then.

5:48I wouldn't want them to have the experiences that I had but looking at the relationship that I had in the now when I first became a mum there were so many ways in which I think I felt this level of shame and and codependency with my mum of kind of needing her there. I think one of the things you're taught when you first become a parent or when you first find out you're pregnant even is this idea of how your mum's going to be there to support you through it and you're going to have this wonderful experience with your mum and I certainly felt like I had that in my first pregnancy but then when I reflect back on it there were a lot of ways in which she made it quite difficult for me and my partner to enjoy that experience together because it became more about me and her and more about what she would want.

6:38You know, she was present at the birth. I certainly wouldn't have felt like I could say no to that. So when you lean into your parenting experience more and you start to notice the red flags and then you start to call them out, that's quite often when you find you have the most difficult experiences because there's that pushback and the more I reached for my autonomy and the more I settled into my role as a mum and the kind of mum that I wanted to be in particular the more the fractures in the relationship grew and grew and grew to the point where it really just became really toxic. So much of what you said I think is fascinating and will resonate with a lot of people.

7:23What were some of those specific signs? So you said one was, I didn't feel I could say no to certain things without there being a reaction or what else was some of those signs for someone who's like, oh, interesting. My mum feels like my best friend and it feels maybe a bit off. What other are the specific signs that people could notice? I think when you are struggling to have any kind of identity outside of what your parent wants you to be, that's a pretty big sign that things are not right. If you are constantly trying to live up to expectations, constantly feeling like you're at odds with who you want to be and how you want to parent, try and please your parent, I think that's a pretty big red flag for people.

8:08And that can be things like wanting to do things a certain way and your parent constantly poo-pooing it, your parent constantly slapping it down, telling you that that's wrong. and then you have things like crossing your boundaries. So if you are someone who says, hey, I don't want my child to have sweets, that's entirely your choice. And that's something that every parent should be able to make a choice in. Every parent should be able to set these kind of boundaries. And you then find out that your parent is constantly undermining that. It might seem quite harmless, but eventually you start to notice that they're doing it with other things.

8:48And when you reset the boundary or you reestablish the boundary and you say, hey, I said they weren't allowed that. I'm the parent, remember? That's not okay. And it becomes, you know, you're so sensitive. Lots of what we'd call gaslighting language. You're so sensitive. You're overly dramatic. You make such a big deal out of everything. It's so unnecessary. Oh, I'm a grandma or grandma. I'm allowed to do it. All of those things that just really make you doubt yourself as a parent they're pretty big red flags as well yeah you hear that quite a lot don't you like oh I meant I meant to spoil them yeah I meant to break the rules yeah and so what I find so fascinating about this is that so many people rely on grandparents for child care and for help and actually would be really stuck without it and this is something that I think about quite a lot you know with my community I get asked this a lot which is I kind of really need their support and I really don't want them to have YouTube and suites or whatever else is going on how is it about figuring out how important is that to you or is it actually this is a pattern where I'm not being disrespected at all and I'm gonna have to do something about this how would you help someone unpick that I think it's exactly that I think it's looking for the patterns you know it's looking for the things that come at the detriment of you.

10:07If you are a bit miffed because your parent is undermining your boundary a bit, but it feels relatively harmless to you and it doesn't feel like a big deal, then that's something you can have a conversation about. If that's something that is bothering you and you feel you can't have a conversation about it, that's when we need to start looking at what's going on in that relationship. And I think what I would say to somebody who was navigating that experience is it's about finding a balance between what is comfortable, what is acceptable, what is healthy around your children. One of the things that my mum in particular used to do that we would constantly ask her not to would be make very racist or homophobic remarks in front of the kids.

10:55She would let them watch TV whilst she was watching say some kind of thriller or crime program but they'd be maybe three or four and it would be well if they want to be in my space then they have to deal with the things that I want to do and there was kind of that centering of self as opposed to oh I'm the adult here I need to look after them and for us those were big no-nos those were big things that would cause a problem and if it gets to that point where you are weighing up is this a really big issue for me is this something I either can't have a conversation about or when I do it's not being heard then at that point you have to consider what are my alternative options and that's really difficult for a lot of people it doesn't feel like there are alternative options but there has to be sometimes.

11:46Yeah yeah so that's one pattern or flag to look out for is when you're being disrespected when you feel like you can't say no what are some of the other big ones that you see? I think some of the biggest ones that you see is when you're expected to perhaps encourage your parent to be a part of daily life. So in my experience, I would be expected to ring my mum if we went out somewhere to let her know, you know, when we'd be coming back, what we were doing, what was going on, that kind of thing. And there was that real sense of not having a divide between where I started and ended and where she started and ended and that real sense of not really being allowed to have my own individual identity or to be able to enjoy things as a family without including her in it and I think that's quite an underrated flag to look out for is when you have a parent who feels that they need to be the centre of your universe because as a parent yourself your children are the centre of your universe.

12:50And on top of that, you're also dealing with work pressures, you're dealing with relationship pressures, you're dealing with just trying to keep yourself going. You know, it's being an adult is hard. The last thing you need to do is then become responsible for your parent on top of everything else. Yeah, that's so interesting. And so how did you go from having described your mum as like your best friend, she was at your birth. It sounds like she was really centered in your family life. What did that process look like to today where you're estranged and you have no relationship with her at all?

13:23It was a really tough one. It was. And I think my experience can sound quite dramatic. So for a lot of people listening, it might be, well, mine became a more gentle fizzle out of the relationship. I set some boundaries. It didn't go well. We gradually stopped contact. But for me, my mum lived with us. and I know I know which you would now see as a bit of a flag potentially I think and I don't get me wrong I do think that that can work in certain circumstances however it has to work with very firm boundaries and it has to work with a firm understanding of where everybody everybody stands what are you know the things that make this family tick what are the roles within this family and in my experience it generally doesn't work and I have had numerous clients who have had very similar situations where they have lived with parents or parents have lived with them and the problems generally stem because they start to feel like they are being treated like a child by their parent and to their parent it's just well I'm treating you how I've always treated you you are my child and a lot of people probably hear that phrase of well you are my child But when you're an adult with your own children, that becomes quite confronting.

14:37So I'm not saying it can't work and I'm not sort of doomsdaying anybody who is in that situation. But I think it certainly comes with the caveat that it has to have strong boundaries. And that was something that me and my mum never had. We never had any boundaries. You know, I, from the age of four, was her confidant. I was the person who she would tell all of the details of her divorce to, the person who she would talk about explicit sexual things with you know I was the person that was there constantly and often the one who was responsible for her emotional well-being so after my husband and I had been living in my childhood home for quite a long time we'd gone to mum and said ultimately we need to be able to say we've got something to show for all of the things we're doing at this point.

15:25We're adults now. We've got kids to think about. We would like our own home. And that either means we're going to buy this home from you and we can build an annex or we're going to go and buy our own home. But that did mean that mum would have to sell her home because we'd been paying the mortgage for a time. So it had already created quite a messy financial situation. So that sounds messy. Yeah, messy. And it was already a messy financial situation and this is the problem with not having boundaries it extends beyond just the emotional and the physical day-to-day it becomes messy financially it becomes messy with everything and it it's like a death by a thousand paper cuts it happens so slowly and often so unintentionally you know you think you're doing the right things but it actually becomes quite catastrophic in the end and we'd talked about it we'd drawn up agreements we'd said what we were going to do was build mum and annex and we would go from there if anything didn't work out then we would make sure that mum was in the financial position to get her own home we'd discussed it all we thought we were green-lighted ready to go and as soon as we built that annex it was like a red rag to a bull all the cracks in the relationship all the ways in which it was difficult all the reasons that we wanted to really have our own home and the boundaries that we wanted to set the divide that we wanted to create so that there was an us and a mum they just became massive cracks in the relationship and mum's behaviour became really toxic to the point where I was expected to cook dinner for her every night and either bring it over or she would come and eat with us then there would be as I said before you know racist homophobic remarks that we'd call out she would make more then there would be shouting abusive names at me in front of the kids and it just went from wow this relationship is really enmeshed to this relationship is completely unbearable.

17:30That can often happen is it and I think we see this in abusive relationships as well that as one person becomes stronger in their own boundaries which is essentially what you were doing with the kind of annex move, the behaviour ramps up. Oh yeah, absolutely. And I think when we look at abusive relationships in a romantic sense, we can see that, we can accept that, we can acknowledge it. But when we look at a parent to child relationship, it's still an abusive relationship, but we're very quick to almost defend the parent. I think it's because we inherently know how difficult parenting is. None of us have got, as much as I've written a book, none of us have got a complete book that tells you exactly step by step what to do.

18:09and that you're never going to make any mistakes, you will. You absolutely will get it wrong. And it's where you can't acknowledge that you've got it wrong and where you can't make those repairs that these problems come in. And when I would speak to mum about these things, either there would be a very brief apology or there would be a lot of defensiveness and nothing would change. So eventually it well and truly put my marriage on the rocks. It caused... I was going to ask about that. How tricky is that? It made it so difficult. And I think, you know, myself and my husband would both agree. It was a real cutting point for us.

18:48It was a real point at which we didn't really have a relationship or much of a positive relationship at all. The only thing that we could kind of be united in was that we didn't want my mum having influence around the children. My husband would say, I don't want your mum to have them whilst we go away because the last time she had them, you know, my eldest would say, grandma didn't make us go to school today. And she just let us stay home because she was in her PJs. She was comfy. They were comfy. I don't like it at school. So she said I didn't have to go. And it would be these little things that he would tell us.

19:24And a lot of that came out after the move. I mean I went to speak to my mum and I said to her you know this is causing so many problems in our lives you're not happy I'm not happy we fight more or less every day and it was a bit like you would imagine a breakup having to go and say hey mum you're gonna have to move out as we discussed and we'll make sure that you've got all of the you know the funds to find yourself a home as we'd previously agreed. We're going to set you in exactly the same position you would be if you'd sold the house to a total stranger. And that's what we've talked about. And she said no.

20:07So that ensued a several months long legal battle to have her removed from the annex. And eventually she did move out and it was messy. It was really hard. It was really difficult having my mum who was causing so much strife and essentially just being difficult for the sake of being difficult living six foot from my door. God I can't imagine how hard that must have been. It was really difficult it was and I think there was a part of her that thought if I just dig my heels in. If I just show her how wrong she is and how naughty she's being, for lack of a better word, then she'll comply, as she always has done.

20:59And I've spoken before about how two weeks after this massive blow up, this conversation where I'd asked her to move out and told her that I no longer wanted her living in my home. And at this point, I had no intention of completely cutting contact. My hope was that she would move out as we'd previously discussed, things would carry on, we'd maybe have a little bit of time apart and then hopefully be able to have what I would have termed a low contact relationship, which to everybody means something different. The majority of my clients, when they tell me they mean low contact, they mean they see their parent perhaps once a year, maybe twice a year.

21:38I meant once a month, once every other week, that felt like low contact to me. So that kind of puts into context how enmeshed we were. And I think I genuinely thought this will go this way. And I remember my husband saying to me, this is not going to go how you think it is. This isn't going to go the way that you're hoping. This isn't going to work, Harriet. And I was like, no, no, no, it'll be fine. She wouldn't do that to me and she did and I think she genuinely thought that I would come round and she'd messaged me just a simple text message two weeks after all of this to say can you come and fix my Sky TV because to mum this was not a big deal this was just oh well she's had a blow up we'll draw a line under it and that that actually is pretty representative of a lot of my childhood there would be big blow-ups and then 15 minutes later as if nothing had happened and that's very common in toxic parent-child relationships of this big explosion and then nothing

22:51so how did you something that I hear from my community people struggle with a lot is they'll say you know I can see that the relationship my parent is is not great actually it's not making me feel like that sort of autonomous it's just bringing me more stress than joy but what about the kids because I think it's one thing isn't it the relationship that we have with our parents but particularly your children were older it sounds like they were quite close to her how on earth did you manage that and what do you sort of professionally recommend for how people if they want to stop contact or go lower contact how do you talk to your children about that without I guess sort of shaming or blaming the grandparent it's a really difficult situation and yes for me my kids were a little bit older so at the time I think my eldest who got the brunt of a lot of my mum's attention was nine and it was a really difficult situation I remember taking my kids for a walk not long after we had asked mum to leave and they turned around to me and we were all sat throwing rocks into a stream and it was COVID time as well.

24:02That makes sense when you're just sat by a stream for hours. Just sat by a stream, just a couple of rocks, it just screams COVID time and I remember them saying to me, will we see more and more is what they're called or will we see more and more again? And I said, I hope so. I can't make any guarantees as to what's going to happen there. And they'd said, well, what about for Christmas and things? And I'd said, well, again, it would be really nice if, you know, we did, but I don't know at this moment in time. And I just had to be honest with them and tell them the truth in an age appropriate way.

24:39And I remember a few days after that, we'd had a chat with my mother-in-law and she'd said to me, your eldest is starting to come out with some comments about things that have been going on and what transpired after a few months was that he'd started to share bits and bobs of what my mum had been saying to him, behaviours and things that had been happening, things like daddy's not the right person for mummy or daddy's not a very good man or I don't like daddy and daddy doesn't like me but I really love mummy she'll always be mine and these are the kind of things that were just happening in day-to-day conversation and there are still things now that he will come out with four or five years later that will go you've you've never told us that and I go oh yeah and just carry on and that that in itself is a trauma for him so when people say to me, I feel really guilty and like I'm taking away their grandparent.

25:42I feel that. I really, truly feel that. What I think you have to ask yourself is, well, there's a couple of questions. If you don't feel that this person is safe to be around you, why do you feel they're safe to be around your children? And then perhaps your answer to that is, well, they're a really different person around my children. They're a brilliant grandparent, but a terrible parent. They have no respect for me. They don't treat me well, but they adore my children and they have a lot of respect and love for my children and the relationship is so different. Okay. Do you feel able to facilitate that with strong boundaries?

26:22Yes. Green light, off you go. No. Okay. You've got some hard questions to ask yourself there because our children are not our parents do over and nobody is entitled to someone just because they are titled to them. You can have the title of grandparent but that doesn't give you the right to have access to that child if you can't maintain a safe and secure relationship with their parent and a safe and secure relationship with them. and quite often what happens is you think they're a great grandparent you think that things are okay like we did and then under the surface you realize there are lots of little things happening that start to red flag to you and that you start to notice or perhaps you don't and your child starts to point out that's when you have to really start to think is this a relationship that I can facilitate and ultimately that guilt and that pressure that we feel to create a relationship for our children with their grandparent that shame that isn't ours to hold it's a consequence to someone's actions if they can't have a relationship with a child you're not responsible for your parents choices and if their choices lead to them not having a relationship with that child then that's not on you that's on them and you can feel free to go ahead and hand that guilt and that shame straight back to them because a lot of what we are taught to do when we grow up in toxic environments is to hold on to things guilt shame and to internalize them to think that it's our fault that we're the ones to blame and if you have a parent who is treating your child badly or is treating you badly and your child is witnessing that because that's a form of abuse as well to be witnessing your parent being abused and to not stop that that is your responsibility as a parent to ensure that your child is not exposed to that kind of thing which I understand is really hard and confronting to hear that that's on you especially if you are the person who is the victim of that abusive behavior but that is on you as a parent that is that's that's your responsibility to find a way to shield your child from that and to get out of that situation and that's tough it is tough it is tough especially if you've been kind of conditioned as you were saying in that way to sort of have that denial about it like you had I guess 15 years ago when you were saying you know no we have a great relationship how did you find the courage because you hear this about people leaving abusive relationships don't you that it took doesn't it take on average seven times for someone to leave an abusive relationship Is the same true with these family kind of toxic, abusive relationships?

29:09Do you find that people going kind of back and forth and then finally finding that courage to say no? Yeah, I think it's harder in many ways because our first attachment figures, if we look at it from a psychology point of view, our first attachment figures are our parents. They are the foundation of everything that we learn, the foundation of all our relationships. So that seven times to leave an abusive relationship, you've got so much more of a stake in it when it's your parent. We are taught that we will eventually grow up and move on and that we will fly the nest, this kind of thing. But we're taught that that's what will happen.

29:51But that that comes with this security bubble of having your family and your support. and we're given all these messages of, you know, having this relationship with family and having this supportive family and family is everything. Family means the world, you know, but it's your mum, but it's your dad. You've got to stay in some kind of, you owe them for something. And that kind of debt mindset that is really prevalent in society and especially in different cultures, we see it all the time. So it's incredibly difficult to step away from a toxic relationship with a parent. It's incredibly difficult to set boundaries, nevermind step away from it completely.

30:34And I do find that people will frequently say to me, well, we had a period of no contact or we had a period of low contact and then things have crept back in. And then we had a period of no contact again, which is the coming back and forth. And yeah, absolutely that does happen. And I'm, I'm never sure if it's about the courage for me as more of it was the necessity. I think I look back and I personally harbour a lot of guilt and yes, shame, I think. And there are two different things. I talk about that in the book about how there's a big difference between guilt and shame. And I think I harbour a lot of guilt, perhaps more so over allowing my children to be exposed to that situation for such a long time and for not really feeling like I could break out from it until it got to the point where it really threatened my family yeah I get that equally you've broken that cycle what three decades earlier than it was broken with you right which is just a huge win yeah it is and I think that's that's definitely the way in my more positive moments I look at it yeah and I'm like yes you know I've broken the cycle and don't get me wrong I think there is this attitude when we talk about cycle breaking that we will you know break the cycle and we'll break them all and everything will be different yeah and I wish that could be the reality but there will be cycles that you don't even know you are continuing that one day my kids will turn around to me and go mum and I hope they have the ability and we have the relationship where they feel like they can call me out on it and where they feel empowered and confident enough to turn around to me and go mum you shouldn't have done that or this really hurt me.

32:17And I think that's the big part of parenting relationships is creating that environment where you can be accountable for your behaviour and for your mistakes. And your children can feel safe and secure and empowered to come to you and tell you that you've made those mistakes. And that's quite a difficult thing to create. So for me, that's really important that I can do that. And that's my big part in kind of, like I said before, there will still be things that my eldest will come out with. And that's trauma. That is a trauma for him. And it was an avoidable trauma for him. And that's something that I'll have to hold as a parent.

32:55And I'll have to move through with him. Yeah. And I wonder if that's one of the big differences between a kind of toxic parent and a healthy parent, just to be binary about it, that it isn't about making mistakes. It's about our ability to own those mistakes, just like you have, you know, yes, I put you in that situation and you will work with him. That to me is like healthy. It's not about trying to be perfect. It's about, whereas if your response was, well, no, I didn't have a choice and it wasn't my fault. And, you know, you're on your own type of thing. I wonder if that is the big difference.

33:28Yeah, that is what I would say. That is your big difference between what is healthy and what is toxic and what creates a healthy dynamic. make you, it's quite unhealthy to reach for perfection. For a start, it's completely unattainable. You've talked about this in your book, that myth of perfection and how it's not about being perfect because none of us ever are. We are human, we are fallible, we are going to make mistakes and we're going to make big ones as parents. And then societal attitudes will change towards parenting. We will discover new things about how children tick. That is just life and that's what's going to happen.

34:06But the big difference in how we create those healthy relationships, not just with ourselves, but also with our children and with our parents, if it's still possible, is accountability and being able to hold your hands up and go, oh, you know what, actually, I've made that mistake and that's hurt you. And that was not my intention. But the impact is way more important than the intention here. And while I can say, wow, I didn't mean to do that, I can see it has had that impact. So let's work on how we can change this behavior of mine so that we can move forward. And that's an apology is not really an apology without a change in behavior and without validating what's going on.

34:50my eldest is now in his teens and he will routinely call me out and say don't speak to me like that and it's really hard especially if you are someone who didn't have a positive relationship with your parent it's really difficult when your child pushes back at you because if I'd have done that I'd have had a slap or you know for somebody it might have been that they would have been shouted at or they would have been locked in a room or whatever that might be that was too scary there was no way you could have that voice whereas he can yeah because he feels safe he does feel safe yeah I mean he he's now six foot and he will kind of look down at me do you feel safe but he he does and he he will have that moment and sometimes as well which I really love which is where I think it becomes really apparent that those cycles are breaking and that we're doing that work is when he will call himself out and he will he's a teenager so he'll shout at me and I'll look at him and he'll go sorry sorry right okay fine and then it'll be back into discussion mode and I love that because he's also fallible yeah he's also a human being he is learning how to be a young adult he's learning how to be a human in this space as we all are and we're constantly learning that but to be able to empower him to say that's not okay mum don't do that or to come to me afterwards he'll sometimes go to his dad afterwards and he'll sit in my bed and like the way you spoke to me there shouldn't have done that and his dad his dad will look and be like yep okay give me a minute it's great to be able to see those moments and to be able to recognize that that's what I didn't have and what so many people don't have and part of that is generational parenting because we were taught you know children should be seen not heard that was very much my generation and older generations that's how we parented or how we were parented and now we're recognizing that kids can have that voice and that we can have those moments of relating to each other and working collaboratively in this.

37:08I wanted to ask you about grief because I can imagine that you know you have this big sort of breakthrough really huge breakthrough almost like the scales fall from your eyes and you see something as it really is you know you see your mum as she really is as opposed to how you kind of you know saw it before you know we're best friends and I wondered did that feel like a grief and how did you go through that sort of huge healing and almost I imagine like questioning everything while also doing all the sort of day-to-day parenting and you know everything that we have to do what did that look like yes it is a grief and I think that's something that we we miss in these conversations is how much of a grieving process needs to happen that ultimately it's a loss but that person is out there living and that's really complicated and messy and difficult I think one of the biggest things for me was getting myself into therapy which is how I I developed an interest in helping other people.