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The Life of And podcast is for high-achieving women and working parents who are ready to stop living a life of “have to” and start designing a life they actually want. It’s a space where we talk honestly about the things we’re often afraid to admit — even to ourselves. The exhaustion. The ambition. The loneliness. The joy. The tension of wanting more without losing yourself in the process.
If you’re in the thick of it — feeling stretched, tired, hopeful, driven — this is your invitation to take a breath, get real, and find your way back to your own Life of And.
[00:00:00] Michelle Gambs: Secrecy builds shame. We are no longer in that type of a world. We know so much more about trauma. We need to be talking. So yes, let’s not be lonely and cause our own suffering. Let’s suffer well.
[00:00:15] Tiffany Sauder: I’m Tiffany Sauder, entrepreneur, wife, mom to four girls, and a woman figuring it out just like you. Come on, let’s go build your Life Of And. There are seasons in life that are just hard and when you’re a parent, hard doesn’t just belong to you. It lives in your house. Your kids feel it. They watch you. They pick up what you don’t say as much as what you do. I’m going to keep it real here for a minute. My husband and I, we are going through something really difficult right now in our marriage and it’s reached a point where we sat down and talked to our girls about it. That decision about what to say, how to say it, how to keep showing up as parents inside of a hard season. That’s where we are right now and it sent me straight to my favorite parenting expert.
[00:01:02] Tiffany Sauder: Because hard seasons come in a lot of different shapes. We are not the only family to have to go through something hard out loud. Loss, illness, financial crisis, infidelity, divorce, depression. Each one of those seasons asks something different of us as parents and to have to show up well for our kids when we are bleeding ourselves. Those are the questions that I have today for Michelle Gambs. She’s back on the podcast with me. She’s a psychotherapist, a parenting coach, and more importantly, one of the most grounded voices that I know when it comes to parenting in the real world, not the perfect world, because my perfect world doesn’t exist anymore. My kids’ perfect world doesn’t exist anymore. We all have to live in this real big, complex life together and I’ve told my kids we have to be as united in the good as we are in the hard and we’re learning how to be united in the hard.
[00:02:03] Tiffany Sauder: So Michelle, thank you for coming back to this microphone with me.
[00:02:09] Tiffany Sauder: I have some questions written down that I want to ask you, but before I get to that, I’d like to give you and my listeners a little bit of background about why I’m choosing to share this right now. I’m not going to go into the gory specifics of my husband and I’s situation on this podcast episode. I think it feels a little bit too soon and maybe disrespectful of just where we are in the processing of it. But in other seasons of my life when I’ve gone through something gut wrenchingly difficult, I have talked about it a lot after it’s over because you know the end of the story and you can speak to the narrative in a way that feels more confident because you know where it’s going and right now I don’t know where it’s going. And I think I want to normalize that vulnerability with this conversation to say I don’t get to know the end.
[00:03:13] Tiffany Sauder: And I think specifically as leaders, it can be very difficult to show the gaping wounds because we are paid to be together.
[00:03:28] Tiffany Sauder: So I am not all together. I may appropriately cry in this episode. That’s all okay. I know that, but that’s part of why I’m doing it now. I have two core values I have several, but one is to be vulnerable. And so I’ve asked myself, how do I live that authentically in this journey? I don’t want to jump on the podcast in nine months and be like, “So worst time of my life, everybody. Let me get you updated.” It just feels performative and not real. And another is to pursue family. And to me, that word pursue is a proactive choice to not just love them, but to pursue them. And in that pursuit right now, I think there needs to be some space for me to respect that maybe all the details aren’t important right now for everyone, but to know that we’re going through something hard feels really honest and to ask these questions out loud that I think probably are not unique to me because I know we’re all asked to show up for life in a way that is consistent even when everything around us is very disorienting.
[00:04:44] Tiffany Sauder: So that’s where I am. Great.
[00:04:46] Tiffany Sauder: Anything you want to say before I start asking questions, welcome to the podcast. Yeah.
[00:04:51] Michelle Gambs: As I said earlier, deep end of the pool. We’re in it.
[00:04:56] Tiffany Sauder: I didn’t give Michelle any warning about what we were talking about. I was like, “Hey, let’s just prep for a minute.” She’s like, “We are in the deep end girl.” Deepest end.
[00:05:03] Michelle Gambs: Yep.
[00:05:05] Tiffany Sauder: There is a particular sensitivity for us as parents that we want to protect our kids and we had to get to a place where we felt like truth was more powerful than protecting them. I guess when you think about that intersection for a parent, how do you help them know how do you guide them to what is, I’ll say right in quotation marks because I know that’s a relative thing.
[00:05:41] Michelle Gambs: I prefer healthy.
[00:05:42] Tiffany Sauder: Healthy. I like that word better. Yeah. What’s healthy and how do we know what’s healthy to share with them versus to protect them from? I like that word healthy. That’s good.
[00:05:52] Michelle Gambs: Yeah.
[00:05:53] Tiffany Sauder: Because we all have that threshold you have to decide to cross or not cross because it’s kind of a point and no return. So let’s start there.
[00:06:03] Michelle Gambs: Okay.
[00:06:03] Tiffany Sauder: We’ve already shipped ours so you can ask me why and how for sure if that’s relevant. But for those that are sitting on that threshold, how do you make that decision?
[00:06:14] Michelle Gambs: I like this adage, I guess. Parenting to protect must shift to parenting to prepare or we’ve not prepared our children. I’ll unpack that a little more.
[00:06:25] Tiffany Sauder: Say
[00:06:25] Michelle Gambs: It
[00:06:25] Tiffany Sauder: One more time.
[00:06:26] Michelle Gambs: Parenting to protect must shift to parenting to prepare or we have not prepared our children. So it is instinctual for every parent to want to protect. We’re here to protect our kids and if that’s all you do, you have not prepared them. They are not prepared. So it is a fine line, what you’re saying, what you’re asking. It’s fine line of … And I like to think of it like, I don’t know, early tweens where we have to shift, begin to shift, where you’re no longer protecting them, you’re preparing them, expecting more from them, not softening and making everything comfortable. Yes. It’s a very gray space and necessary because otherwise if we don’t prepare them and we haven’t handed things over to them for them to wrestle with, be challenged by, face planted with, I know we’re not specifically the hardest things, but then they don’t build muscle.
[00:07:32] Tiffany Sauder: Totally.
[00:07:33] Michelle Gambs: And they leave us without that. So then that’s not a prepared adult.
[00:07:39] Tiffany Sauder: So help because your brain goes weird things when you’re in the season. What are the things that these moments are specifically preparing them for?
[00:07:49] Michelle Gambs: Okay, thanks. So we don’t want our kids to feel pain.
[00:07:53] Tiffany Sauder: Right. No
[00:07:54] Michelle Gambs: Disappointment or- All the negative feelings because it’s instinctual to protect your child.That’s born in. If we don’t allow them to feel disappointment, confusion, pain, hurt, sadness, challenge in all the ways, they don’t know how to navigate that.
[00:08:18] Tiffany Sauder: Well, we started to feel like there was this choice of honesty or pretending and manipulation. If we don’t say what’s going on, our alternative is to pretend and it starts to, I feel like begin this really inauthentic journey for our family where I’m like, “I don’t know how you come back from that. “ You know what I mean? If you don’t ever say anything.
[00:08:45] Michelle Gambs: These are not sort of like global things about all children. It’s an age thing. So you have to kind of gauge, but children can sense what’s going on in a family. And so therefore, if I’m sensing something and you’re my mom and I’m checking in and you’re denying it, what that does is make me confused about my own feelings and distrust myself. So that’s the downside of inauthenticity. I’m not here for all the shared anything, all the shared details on any topic. Parents think if a child asks you about sex, then I have to open the whole file on sex. No, at five, you need to just give them the basics. At eight, you’re going to give more. At 12, you’re going to give more. But they think, oh my gosh, I can’t open up that topic. And so they’re afraid. It’s like you need to just piecemeal.
[00:09:38] Michelle Gambs: So I’m not saying open up everything about what’s going on in any season that’s challenging. You don’t want to burden them with every detail of anything. It’s age appropriate. And you want them to be validated that their sensing is accurate. Yeah, there’s things going … And you don’t even have to say it. You could just validate there is something and I’m just not at a space to talk about it with you yet or when you’re old, you can say whatever.
[00:10:06] Tiffany Sauder: Totally. Well, our kids are very far apart, 17, 14, 10, and five. And so we knew, just like sheer comprehension and vocabulary is different. These have to be very different conversations that we have with them.
[00:10:24] Michelle Gambs: Yes.
[00:10:25] Tiffany Sauder: And one of the things that I started to take the lead on, some of their questions actually inform the level of depth because it starts to help you know the comprehension. Going back to your sex question for a five-year-old. It’s like, well, what questions do you have? Their questions are going to somewhat limit what they even have the ability to comprehend and it informs it. So that was helpful to be completely honest. Now say, what questions do you have?
[00:10:53] Michelle Gambs: That’s a great thing to ask them.
[00:10:55] Tiffany Sauder: Turned it into a dialogue instead of like guessing, because we were very much like, yeah, I mean, you’ve just got really different ages and stages and- Completely. … personalities and all of that.
[00:11:06] Michelle Gambs: So your instincts were good.
[00:11:09] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah. Well, yes. I think one of the things too about telling kids a hard thing is that you feel like you hear all of the time that like stability is important for kids and consistency is important. It’s like, well, I’m putting an arrow right through that balloon
[00:11:34] Michelle Gambs: And
[00:11:34] Tiffany Sauder: I know that. And so you have this fear as a parent that I’m taking away one of the things that are the most important, like I think about like a stool, like a leg on the stool. I just took a leg away. So how do you navigate that? Do you repair it? You know what I mean? Help me think through like what does this … Okay, I just took a leg out of the stool. Some of the things that you’ve thought to be true are not and that’s disorienting. How do we reform that? Are there other ways that we create stability? Does that question make sense?
[00:12:14] Michelle Gambs: It totally does. It goes back to the protect versus get honest because the tendency is to want to protect, but I must be authentic.
[00:12:25] Michelle Gambs: So I have been working with a family of some children whose father was killed and I explained to them early on, because it was the last place they wanted to be, was in therapy. And I explained to them early on that while this is not fun, there’s nothing about this, this is fun, you are required to learn some skills now to navigate a whole lot of feelings, grief, major late grief, anger, all the feelings that come with grief, which is, that’s a whole different topic. You’re required to navigate something very, very difficult that you didn’t ask for, you didn’t want. And what I explained, I could highlight the oldest daughter first because she was an early teen and she’s now a young adult and she said as a senior to me, I totally get what you are saying now, you’re going to develop skills that you don’t want to have, but they’re going to benefit you for your whole life.
[00:13:32] Michelle Gambs: And so as a senior, she began to feel that. She’s like, wow, yeah, I’m different than my peers in regards to emotional intelligence, her ability to navigate things, her ability to know herself, because she had to develop them.
[00:13:47] Michelle Gambs: And I don’t pity people. I don’t pity clients. I don’t pity kids. I mean, it’s horrific the things that we must go through as humans and this is your path and we’re going to do our damnedest to help you get through that path the best way you can, which I always go back to that word healthy, the healthiest way we can. We don’t get to choose it, but this is the path and we’re going to do it as healthy as we can. And to that end, I love this other little phrase to suffer well. Sounds like an oxymoron, but it’s not. And I mean, I navigate a lot of suffering with people and that’s the most important piece of suffering is that you have support, period, of any kind. That’s the distinguishing factor of people that emerge on the other side in a healthy way versus not, I’m not talking about a therapist necessarily.
[00:14:37] Michelle Gambs: I’m just saying support in any way and we’re going to go through and I explain, I don’t sure code it, I’m very direct, we’re going to go through some rough things here and we can do this poorly or we can do it well. We can suffer well or we can suffer poorly. And what that looks like is by suffering well, like you said, pursue family, it’s like we can navigate this as healthfully as we can talking about things. We can have healthy habits of sleeping well, eating well, exercising, getting ourselves help, connecting with people who love us, all of those things, or we can do it really poorly and there’s no shortage of poor coping out there. You know all of those.
[00:15:20] Tiffany Sauder: Totally. Well, I think that is the very core of why I felt like I had to do this episode, this idea of, well, other times I’ve been through things, I did not change the size of my community to meet the size of my problem that I was going through because I was like, my job is to take care of everybody else. I’m a mom, I’m a leader, I’m like a business. It’s like those people aren’t there to serve my problems, I’m there to serve theirs. And some of that is self glorifying. You know what I mean? Okay, you’re not allowed to have problems is kind of what I had told myself, but
[00:15:56] Tiffany Sauder: I love that. A couple things that you said is this idea of I don’t have pity on my clients, this acceptance of the situation. There is this transition you have to get to to stop pitying yourself too. What does that look like? Because most things that suck we don’t want to have happen to us. No, no, no. So we have a choice to sit in that pity. I don’t want this story, I don’t want this to be true, I don’t want to drive to this therapy session, I don’t want to have this conversation with my kids, I don’t want to tell my best friend, I don’t want other people to think different things of me. All of that is this like pity
[00:16:37] Michelle Gambs: And I don’t want to take that away that that’s necessary initially. Absolutely. Which is this the first stage of grief, shock and denial.This shit ain’t happening to me. This is not happening. That’s shock and denial. That’s exactly
[00:16:54] Tiffany Sauder: Right.
[00:16:54] Michelle Gambs: Yeah. It’s a defense mechanism to protect us. I don’t want this to happen. It’s not happening. And so that’s yes, of course. And then the sooner we get to this is happening and how am I going to do it? So denial, I want to normalize that and we should and need to feel the hurt, sadness, pain, depression, all of that. Yes, I’m not minimizing that. That’s real. And when they’re coming to me or we’re talking about it, like these are people who want help to navigate through this. And so what it comes down to, the word that I prefer most about this is capable that you don’t want this path, it’s not your preference. Us humans, we are all about our preferences, keeping ourselves comfortable in our preferences. You don’t grow there. That’s in a comfort zone, you don’t grow. You don’t grow in your … So it’s like I might have a preference for ease.
[00:17:53] Michelle Gambs: I have a preference for chocolate ice cream. That doesn’t mean I can’t eat vanilla. We have preferences everywhere. And the sooner we get over ourselves and realize like this is where I am and I better do the best I can with this thing, we build our capacity, as you said, around the support group growing to meet my particular situation, like our capacity grows. That’s why I don’t pity people. Your capacity is invited to grow around this thing and you don’t understand how it’s going to benefit you in the future. I can just assure you it will. It just will.
[00:18:31] Tiffany Sauder: Well, if people have been listening to the podcast for a while, this is not the first time I’ve talked about us going through a really hard season in our marriage. Do you go through these stages of grief more quickly if you’ve seen maybe that specific thing again, or if you’ve seen just hard before it’s like, I have more resilience, I have more confidence in my ability to be able to make decisions in scary situations.
[00:19:01] Michelle Gambs: You have tools in your toolbox because you’re not as shocked in that. I like the word, maybe what you described earlier or when you first go through something foreign and you get face planted, it’s like you’re shell shocked. You just walk around shell shocked because you have no capacity to navigate this. You have no idea. You’ve just been face planted. And so when you have to go through that and build then the muscle, the capacity. So then when something else face plants you, you kind of know how to navigate. Yeah,
[00:19:37] Tiffany Sauder: That’s so true.
[00:19:38] Michelle Gambs: You do. You’ve built muscle. And so that’s why I believe in human capacity. I believe, like same with children. I believe in, no, we didn’t want this and it’s going to build your capacity, period. You’re being capable. And nobody … I mean, we go, I don’t want … Okay, I understand about we don’t want it and it’s here. So the less time we spend and the I don’t want it and the resistance, because that’s normal too, Tiffany, like resistance is human. We want to resist because I don’t want to do that thing. I don’t want to take that medicine. I don’t want to go to exercise. I don’t want to do this homework. I don’t want … It’s resistance and that’s normal. And the sooner we get through our resistance and deal with the thing, every one of my clients gets this question, how do I cause my own suffering?
[00:20:25] Michelle Gambs: How do I cause my own suffering? If I eat too much and I feel like I’ve caused my own suffering. If I go to bed late and I’m tired the next day, I’ve caused my own suffering. If I drink too much and I feel terrible the next day, I’ve caused my own suffering. Okay. Well, guess what? If you do those things, you can also stop doing those things. You can stop causing your suffering. You can take accountability for that. That’s what we’re learning here. One of the ways that we cause our own suffering is being at war with what is.
[00:20:56] Tiffany Sauder: You have to say that again.
[00:20:58] Michelle Gambs: One of the ways we cause our own suffering is being at war with what is. It’s the resistance because we’re using our energy, girl, to resist that thing instead of deal with that thing. And we only have so much energy. So we need to use it to deal with that thing. So that’s the part about not sitting in the pity. It’s like, I got to use my energy to deal with this thing. And then we’re talking about kids so this is what is.
[00:21:29] Tiffany Sauder: Totally. And I think that I so much see the way a family operates as a team and it’s like just like a company has like, if you have a clear vision and aligned values and clear roles that like everybody can work together for the common good. I use that same structure in my family. And so it’s like if not everybody knows the major priorities, one of which is figuring out how to get through this, I’m causing my own suffering in the dissonance between what I know and how I’m expecting them to be able to show up because there’s so much dissonance between those two things. Yes. So interesting. I never could have framed it that way, but that’s really powerful. It is. Really, really powerful. Yes. So can we finish the stages of grief? Other people might know them, but I do not. So shock and denial,
[00:22:20] Michelle Gambs: This is
[00:22:20] Tiffany Sauder: Happening.
[00:22:21] Michelle Gambs: Yeah, shock and denial. Then comes bargaining and bargaining is, well, if then if I would have, this could have happened, if we would have, this could have happened. If I would have driven down a different street, I wouldn’t have had that car accident. If I would have … We bargain. Okay. These are normal.
[00:22:36] Tiffany Sauder: And that’s sort of vying for control in a world where we have none or where does that come from?
[00:22:41] Michelle Gambs: Power, agency, control. It’s a resistance to what is. Yes. I don’t want it to be this way. So if I could have played through scenarios where it wouldn’t be this way, it’s just human. These are just humaning. I always tell people, clients, I’m like, I don’t make up the rules of humaning. I deeply know them. I deeply know them. So don’t shoot the messenger. This is the rules of humaning. So the sooner again, we don’t cause our own suffering, we deal with what is, we’re going to do better here. We’re going to suffer well.
[00:23:12] Tiffany Sauder: Yep.
[00:23:13] Michelle Gambs: Okay.
[00:23:14] Tiffany Sauder: Bargaining.
[00:23:14] Michelle Gambs: Shock, denial, bargaining, and then we get into depression. Depression, we’re sad. Well, oh, I’m sorry. Third is anger.
[00:23:24] Tiffany Sauder: Yep. Okay.
[00:23:25] Michelle Gambs: Sorry, third’s anger, but anger is really a secondary emotion. It’s not the first. It readies you to do something. You’re violated in some way. So anger is really about, am I hurt, scared or sad? Hurt, scared or sad is more vulnerable and honest. So
[00:23:44] Michelle Gambs: Especially men in the world, anger American men, it is blessed as the negative male emotion a man is allowed to feel. Anger. We got a lot of angry men. Well, really what’s under is to ask yourself, “Am I hurt scared or sad?” Because that’s the real thing. So then we’ve got anger, then we have depression, sadness. We accept our sadness around this thing and then we have acceptance after depression, sadness, acceptance. We’re no longer at war with this thing. It is this. And then I think it’s 10 years ago or whatever, Elizabeth Cooper, Ross and David Kessler added a sixth step and it’s meaning.
[00:24:33] Tiffany Sauder: Where you make sense of it?
[00:24:34] Michelle Gambs: Yes.
[00:24:35] Michelle Gambs: It used to be five steps now eventually, which is what I’ve explained, there will be meaning around this. I know you don’t have it now, but I promise you you will eventually. I like the stair step concept of growth, like growing our capacity. It’s like if you’re leveled here on the stair and now we’ve gone up a few stairs and you feel good, you can see I’m not here, I’m not at this step where I was, and you’re like, “I’m good.” And I’m like, “I can assure you you’re also not going to be the same as where you are in a few more steps. You’re going to look back at this version of yourself and go, Oh, I thought I was okay there.” And I’m like, “Girl, you will understand so much more of the meaning if you just keep going on the stairs and then you’ll look back at these versions of
[00:25:24] Tiffany Sauder: Yourself.” I want to take a quick moment to thank my partners at Share Your Genius. For the past four years, they have been an incredible part of my journey behind the microphone. Share Your Genius is a content and podcast production agency that helps leaders and brands bring their message to life. So whether you’re trying to find your voice, develop a content strategy or get your leader behind a microphone, they’re going to help you make it simple, strategic, and impactful. So when I think about this process of grief,
[00:25:54] Tiffany Sauder: I’m going through it. My girls are going through it at some octave as well and we’re going to go through it for different seasons, like different speeds, I should say. So how will that feel? I may move to acceptance much more quickly because I’m 45, I’ve been through hard things and one of my daughters may sit in anger and that might feel like a real disconnect in our relationship with the experience because I’m through that and she’s wanting me to still be mad and I’m wanting her to be through it because I was already mad. I’m just sort of fortunate, but help me think through that. This is so
[00:26:37] Michelle Gambs: Great. Okay.
[00:26:39] Tiffany Sauder: And also how I don’t let them sit in … It’s like we did that. And maybe it’s just therapy, but help me think through that.
[00:26:46] Michelle Gambs: Yeah. Yeah. So this is brilliant what you’re saying because it’s very different. Okay. I always answer the question. I just give you some things first. Okay. I have like 35 YouTube videos out there. One of them is what’s the dumbest question we ask our kids? Dumbest. You have any idea?
[00:27:10] Tiffany Sauder: Why did you do that?
[00:27:11] Michelle Gambs: Yeah. Just why? Why are you saying that? Why are you doing that? It’s the dumbest because they don’t have a clue. Children behave and act out their feelings. They behave them out. So especially the 10 and five year olds are going to be acting them out. The other ones too, but they’re going to have a little more insight. The 14 and 17 are going to have a little more insight into themselves, which is why I’m not a big fan of kids under 11 being in therapy because you’re taking … They have no idea. They are acting it out. Interesting. They’re behaving it out. A kid over 11 I can have different conversations with, but before that it’s really parents who need to be managing it twenty four seven, interpreting the behavior of the child and helping them understand themselves because not only am I acting it out, my anger, frustration, hurt, sadness, I’m acting it out, you’re asking me why I’m behaving like I’m behaving and I can’t give you any answers.
[00:28:08] Michelle Gambs: I’m simply acting out. So I have kids who have gone through all kinds of things and I tell the parents like, “Yeah, I fully expect their grades to drop this year. You want to know why they did all that? Let’s remember what they did, what went on in your family last year.” So yes, I fully expect their behaviors to alter, and that is them processing.
[00:28:30] Tiffany Sauder: And it’s just that.
[00:28:31] Michelle Gambs: Yes, it is. It’s just
[00:28:31] Tiffany Sauder: Processing.
[00:28:32] Michelle Gambs: Yes, it is.
[00:28:33] Tiffany Sauder: And I don’t have to come in and rescue it or change. I just
[00:28:35] Michelle Gambs: Have to parent
[00:28:35] Tiffany Sauder: It.
[00:28:36] Michelle Gambs: No, you do. And you have to allow space for it. Like, oh, well, you used to get all these great grades. You used to read all these books. You used to do all these things. They’re behaving it out. They’ll return back eventually and it happens and I see it all the time, but you need to give them space to act it out, which again, parents don’t want to do because I don’t want you in pain. I want you to stay on the rails, just us to go off the rails over here. It’s like, no, no, they’re acting it out. And so to answer your question, yes, you at 45 are going to navigate and go deep and get skills and support and explore and learn and grow. Theirs may not come until much later in life when they want to look back at when they were five and 10 and 14 and 17 and navigate through what went down then that they couldn’t proces then, which I do all the time with adults.
[00:29:33] Michelle Gambs: I’m like, “We’re talking about what happened when they were four or seven or 10.” Yeah.
[00:29:37] Tiffany Sauder: So with the five and 10 year old, this like acting it out,
[00:29:40] Michelle Gambs: When
[00:29:40] Tiffany Sauder: You know that this is playing out, do you loosen your standards as a parent for a season and say- You give grace. You give
[00:29:51] Michelle Gambs: Grace.
[00:29:55] Tiffany Sauder: Let’s say my girls, they would be like, just add each other more.
[00:29:59] Michelle Gambs: Yes. You
[00:29:59] Tiffany Sauder: Know,
[00:30:00] Michelle Gambs: Yes.
[00:30:00] Tiffany Sauder: Bugged, competing for position. My 10 year old had a fever and my five year old was like, she needed to tell me something. And she’s like, I just feel like you love Ivy more than me right now. So that’s kind of like they’re fighting. It’s like they compete for energy and attention. Yes. So you’re saying for me as a parent, say there is no way that they, A, we told them, hey, there has been some hurt in our family and we talked about just some of the things that we’re working through and that we love them, it’s not their fault and all of that. So it’s like we’ve told them something’s happening. So you’re saying to me in this season, not to lose them, but just sort of like give them some grace, just like let them a little bit.
[00:31:00] Michelle Gambs: Yes.
[00:31:01] Tiffany Sauder: Okay.
[00:31:02] Michelle Gambs: And yes, that’s the passive version. The more active version is- Yes, give me that one. Yeah.
[00:31:09] Michelle Gambs: Well, the grace needs to happen period, which I like the term low resourced, low resource. So when you put all the kids to bed across every family in America, it’s the most low resource time of day. You have the lowest in your battery. They have the lowest in theirs and we’re all trying to do this bedtime thing. Low resource, let’s be honest. Well, in a stage where a family is in somewhat of a crisis or destabilized in any way, let’s be honest, everybody is more low resourced. So that’s what I mean about grace. We need to understand we’re low and they, especially the younger ones, but all of them cannot articulate. They’re just acting it out. Okay? So the more active thing though would be to observe them and this is just across the board with all children observing them helps them understand themselves. So could it be that dad and I haven’t been around much this week and you’re missing me and that’s why you don’t like your sister being sick and us caring for her.
[00:32:17] Michelle Gambs: Yeah. And she can go. What will happen is her shoulders will like go, yes, that’s it. But she could never have articulated that to you. Yes. When you go, why are you doing that? She doesn’t have a clue.
[00:32:29] Tiffany Sauder: I like, could it be?
[00:32:31] Michelle Gambs: Yes. Could it be, I wonder if seems like might this, those soft lead-ins and then they’re like, yes. Or no, that’s not it. But you’re helping me understand myself by observing me.
[00:32:46] Tiffany Sauder: I like that so much.
[00:32:47] Michelle Gambs: Yes.
[00:32:48] Tiffany Sauder: Because I like to make sense of things and I like my girls to make sense of things. We are not victims to our emotions, but we do need to stop and understand them.
[00:32:59] Michelle Gambs: Good girl. Yeah, I’m here for that.
[00:33:02] Tiffany Sauder: Good
[00:33:02] Michelle Gambs: For that. That’s
[00:33:03] Tiffany Sauder: How we try to do it. We’ll
[00:33:04] Michelle Gambs: See. Okay, great. Great.
[00:33:08] Tiffany Sauder: What emotion is it healthy, I’ll use that word, for them to see me have. Meaning if I am having just a tearful, hard day, is it I keep correcting my vocabularies. Is it okay for them to see me? Is it healthy for them to see me cry? Is it healthy? I think that’s probably the one. Our family culture is not of the boisterous fighting flavor. It’s not our way. So it’s more like they can sense it because they see my eyes are red or they can just tell I’m crying.
[00:33:54] Michelle Gambs: These are all great questions. Really? Good. Again, back to them sensing it, they can sense and see it to rewind. As your child, I need these tall, big people around me to take care of me. That’s what’s going on underneath their fear of watching you be any kind of low resourced. Again, they cannot articulate that, but that’s what’s underneath it is if you’re not okay, who’s going to take care of me? The rest of us
[00:34:26] Tiffany Sauder: Are super screwed,
[00:34:27] Michelle Gambs: Is how they feel. Yeah, exactly. But that’s not, again, they can’t articulate it, but that’s what’s going on. So I would just want to validate both that I’m really fragile today, raw. I’m feeling a whole bunch of feelings and I’m okay and I’m still going to be able to make you dinner. It’s the and. Your and, Life Of And.
[00:34:54] Tiffany Sauder: Life Of And, yeah.
[00:34:54] Michelle Gambs: There, it’s your and. Because that’s what they need understood. So even when families are going through divorces and I’m like, they come in and ask me, “We’re going to talk to our kids and we just want advice about how to talk to our kids.” And I’m not laughing about that. I’m laughing about like my answer is it’s far more simple than you think because they just need to know where am I staying? Who’s picked me up from school? Am I still in soccer? They are concrete. So that’s what I’m saying. You’re reassuring them about, I’m still going to be able … It’s very egocentric. Is somebody still going to take care of me? Who is and when? That’s
[00:35:35] Tiffany Sauder: What
[00:35:35] Michelle Gambs: We’re validating.
[00:35:36] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, that’s really helpful. And even when we talk to our big girls, I told JR, I was like, “There are two questions. We’re remodeling a house right now and we’re displaced.” It’s a layer of disorientation,
[00:35:54] Michelle Gambs: Let’s call it. You could say that.
[00:35:56] Tiffany Sauder: And I said their two questions are going to be, are you getting divorced right now and are we still moving into our house?
[00:36:02] Michelle Gambs: Concrete.
[00:36:02] Tiffany Sauder: Those are going to be their primary. That’s all they’re going to be able to process.
[00:36:06] Michelle Gambs: It is. Teenagers are three. They can only see three inches in front of their face. It’s all about them.
[00:36:14] Tiffany Sauder: What about this? We have told the girls, you can ask us any questions you want. I don’t want you to feel like there’s anything. And there have been surprisingly few is my observation. We’re N equals lower than I would have expected. Give me insight into that. Am I asking the wrong question? No, you’re not at all. They don’t have any?
[00:36:42] Michelle Gambs: No. It’s exactly what we were talking about, which is I’m cared for. I’m good.
[00:36:47] Tiffany Sauder: Okay.
[00:36:48] Michelle Gambs: I’m good if I’m cared for. And their unpacking will be much later in life, likely when they’re not living with you because they don’t have the language to understand or articulate what they’re going … It’s just, okay, we’re going through this thing. Is somebody taking care of me? We’re good. Okay. Then I’m going to … And especially teenagers, they cannot be bothered with what’s going on with their parents. They just want you to support me with my friends. Wallet and the ride, sister, wallet and the ride.
[00:37:19] Tiffany Sauder: Wallet. It’s so true.
[00:37:21] Michelle Gambs: Yeah, wallet in the ride. That’s it, which is so egocentric, but that’s what that … We’re just bottom lining it here. Which I hear you’re like, “Don’t you all see this kind of big what’s happening?” No, they will later. They will completely later understand all that, but not now.
[00:37:39] Tiffany Sauder: So one of my ideas, which might not be, I’m curious is for my teenagers. I don’t observe right now that their behavior is super different than before. They’re pretty engaged in the same way in their lives, I think in part because the wallet and the ride haven’t changed. So one of my ideas, just best parent in the world going through crisis ideas was what if I, even though I don’t necessarily see a need for therapy right now, put them in two or three sessions just to sort of give them an idea of like, what is it like? What are the kinds of things just to kind of demystify the word, the room, the experience as a primer for their 20s and 30s. I don’t know, is that just being a little extra about it all? Is that a good idea?
[00:38:37] Michelle Gambs: Okay. So this is great
[00:38:38] Tiffany Sauder: Too. I love our
[00:38:39] Michelle Gambs: Topics.
[00:38:40] Tiffany Sauder: As a primer for the crisis that they’ll go through in their married adult life where they question everything.
[00:38:46] Michelle Gambs: Yeah, no. Well, okay.
[00:38:48] Tiffany Sauder: My
[00:38:48] Michelle Gambs: Brother-in-law
[00:38:48] Tiffany Sauder: Says you want to give your kids just enough trauma that make them funny.
[00:38:52] Michelle Gambs: Oh, perfect. Comedians, right? Okay. Okay. When kids become teenagers, we parents get demoted and peers are promoted. Yeah. Okay? So that’s what these older two are in where peers are promoted and y’all are demoted. And when that happens, we still have that fifth need of experimentation, exploration going on. And so teenagers are experimenting, exploring, and their parents are demoted. That is a bad combo. Yep. Bad combo, especially our world of where everything is possible with all the experimentation. My son said as a junior, he’s like, “Mom, I could get any drug I want within an hour.” That’s not unique to his school.That’s everywhere. No, it’s not. Okay. So this is the reality of what our kids have going on and then they don’t want to hear it from you. Therefore, teenagers, this is my belief all teenagers need help. I’m not saying they all need to be in therapy, but they all need help.
[00:39:56] Michelle Gambs: They need coaches, teachers, aunts, uncles, anybody, therapists, whomever, because they don’t want to hear it from the parents. So my answer to you is yes.
[00:40:07] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah.
[00:40:08] Michelle Gambs: Yes.
[00:40:08] Tiffany Sauder: Actually, that’s very helpful for me. Even my oldest in particular, she’s an internal processor, but she’ll talk to my mom. She’ll talk to … I’m like, “You’re like mom’s the word with me. “ Are you afraid of-
[00:40:23] Michelle Gambs: No, that’s normal.
[00:40:23] Tiffany Sauder: Piling on or it’s just
[00:40:25] Michelle Gambs: That- Normal. So it’s like we all need to rotate one over. You give me your daughter and I’ll give you my daughter and we all rotate because you remember that when you’re a teenager, you talk to you- Try to do. Because parents are demoted. They’re tired of hearing it from us and they’re doing that developmental stage of individuation. So for me to individuate from you, I must detach and push against you, which is that push pull of teens. It’s not fun, but it’s necessary so that they can leave you. If I’m just listening to you all the time, then I got to leave at 18 and then you better be moving with me.
[00:40:58] Tiffany Sauder: That is very helpful to me. Wildly helpful because that individuating is happening for my 17 year old who’s going to be a senior next year at the exact same moment in time as this crisis is and I’m sort of mixing them in a way where I’m seeing it as potentially avoidant behavior, but it’s really not.
[00:41:19] Michelle Gambs: It’s not. And I would still get her help.
[00:41:22] Tiffany Sauder: Yes, right.
[00:41:23] Michelle Gambs: I would just because she doesn’t know the help she needs and she’s an oldest and oldest tend to be perfectionistic, high achieving, highly responsible, need to be right, perfect superior. So she’s going to be the one- We just got everything on the bingo card on that. Yes, that’s an oldest. And so they need permission to not be okay and she doesn’t have that. So we just need to just help her, get support to just build tools because she’s going to be leaving the house. And so we just want you to have support and have somebody talk to you because you don’t want to talk to us about everything and that’s normal. And so yeah, yes, yes, yes. I
[00:42:01] Tiffany Sauder: Think that’s really wise. Okay. Last question.
[00:42:03] Michelle Gambs: Yes.
[00:42:04] Tiffany Sauder: For the woman listening right now who’s in the middle of the hard thing and trying to hold herself together while also holding her kids, what do you want her to hear right now? The woman holding it together who’s also holding her kids.
[00:42:21] Michelle Gambs: You need somebody to see you because it’s leveling what you’re doing. Somebody needs to show up for the kids and you’re the one doing it, which is admirable and you need help too, period. And it’s okay and necessary to need help and let’s please not cause our own suffering. Let’s not cause more of her own.
[00:42:49] Tiffany Sauder: So good. The loneliness that sets in when you realize there’s a lot of people who can hold your hand through it, but you’re the one who has to walk it is intense.That’s amazing advice, but can’t do it alone.
[00:43:08] Michelle Gambs: Secrecy builds shame. We just got to let that go. It’s historically how everything was handled with secrecy. Teenagers get pregnant, they go away, have a baby come back, nobody talks about it, gave up for adoption. Somebody dies, we don’t talk about it. It’s so true. Secrecy builds shame. We are no longer in that type of a world. We know so much more. We know so much more about trauma. We know we need to be talking. So yes, let’s not be lonely and cause our own suffering. Let’s suffer well.
[00:43:46] Tiffany Sauder: I love it so much. It’s such a perfect ending. And I think it really is. There may be a day where I feel peaceful and JR feels peaceful about coming on the microphone and telling the full of our story because I believe what you just said with every ounce, every cell in my body that secrecy builds shame. And when we allow light to expose darkness, we have so much agency over it and we can share that pain. People who have been through what we’re going through, their generosity and being able to give us the gift of their own experience and healing and the inner knowing of having been inside the same jar is powerful. And when we allow secrecy to reign, that can’t be the case. It can’t be the case.
[00:44:37] Michelle Gambs: Yeah. Whenever you’re going through something, it’s super helpful to find somebody that’s walked the path ahead of you because you learn so much from them in anything. As you know, mentoring in business is the same personally. Find people who have walked ahead of you because they have insight.
[00:44:55] Tiffany Sauder: That’s so true.
[00:44:56] Michelle Gambs: Yep.
[00:44:57] Tiffany Sauder: I’m going to close this out, but thank you for doing this with me, Michelle. I feel like I’m on … As a kid on the playground, there was the, not the merry-go-round, but the one that you did manually.
[00:45:11] Michelle Gambs: The metal one?
[00:45:12] Tiffany Sauder: Yeah, the metal one. Yeah, not like the fan. The metal one. I feel like I’m on that right now and this conversation helps slow it down.
[00:45:19] Michelle Gambs: Good.
[00:45:21] Tiffany Sauder: I’m not off it, but it just slowed it down so I can see a little bit more clearly. So thank you for that gift. Really
[00:45:27] Michelle Gambs: Brave what you’re doing.
[00:45:29] Tiffany Sauder: Thank you. Thanks for walking it with me.
[00:45:34] Tiffany Sauder: There’s so many things that Michelle said that’s going to stay with me for a really long time and just be an important partner to be in this journey. I think we have to remember that our kids don’t trust our perfection. They trust our honesty. I know for sure we’re not going to get this right every time. We’re going to have days where we’re too depleted to be the parent we want to be. We’re going to say the wrong thing and be a little too quick. We’re going to have to walk back into the room and say, “I’m so sorry, honey. I was wrong. Let me try that again.” This is not failure perhaps. It’s maybe just the most honest part of parenting that there is. Hard seasons are going to come and they’re already here for some of us. And what our kids need most is not a parent who has it all together.
[00:46:18] Tiffany Sauder: They need a parent who’s going to stay in the room with them. So let’s stay in the room and Michelle, thank you for joining me in this room.
[00:46:28] Tiffany Sauder: It’s a privilege. If this conversation met you where you are today, I would just be so grateful if you would share it with someone who needs it. You probably know someone who’s in a hard season right now. Will you just send it to them? If you want more from Michelle, her book, Stay Away from Option D…and You Will Be a Perfect Parent: A Simple Philosophy for Parenting. A Simple Philosophy for Life. is on Amazon and her courses and workshops are at michellegambs.com and you know we’ve got you. Links are in show notes. Michelle always shows up for real hard conversations and we’re excited for you to share this episode. Michelle’s been on the podcast other times too. We’ll put a link to those episodes and show notes. Sam will do that for us and I’ll see you next week. Thanks for joining us.