Conversations with My Sisters' Keepers
TRIGGER WARNING -
THIS PODCAST CONTAINS THE STORIES & EXPERIENCES OF THOSE WITH LIVED EXPERIENCES OF GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE. CONTENT MAY BE TRIGGERING.
Welcome to "Conversations with my Sisters' Keepers," dedicated to normalizing the trauma recovery experience of survivors of complex trauma and gender-based violence (GBV). We bring awareness, share stories, and promote healing-centered conversations for lived experience professionals and allies in the gender-based violence and recovery sectors. By sharing authentic stories and experiences, we hope to break down stigma, promote understanding, and celebrate the self-discovery within healing.
Together, we’ll explore strategies, resources, and insights to support wellness, recovery, and leadership. Join us as we challenge stigma, celebrate autonomy, and normalize the healing journey.
Let’s build a community of understanding and empowerment—one conversation at a time.
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Conversations with My Sisters' Keepers
Dina Unger (Part 1) Her Path to Innovation Within the Counter Trafficking Movement
What if technology could be a lifeline for survivors of trafficking? This episode features an eye-opening conversation with Dina, a dedicated advocate who has turned her own harrowing experiences into a mission of hope and support. We explore her tireless work with Even For One, a nonprofit she founded to empower trafficking survivors. Dina shares the inspiring story behind the impactful photo that propelled her advocacy, and how the development of a secure web app is revolutionizing access to essential services for survivors. Her passion for ensuring accountability in the counter-trafficking movement and helping survivors regain their agency and voice is nothing short of inspiring.
As we dive into the complexities of supporting survivors, Dina opens up about the intersection of trauma-informed practices and the financial realities of their work. We discuss ethical challenges, the need for UI/UX design expertise, and the critical role of donations in maintaining long-term support. Dina's personal journey of overcoming childhood abuse and trafficking, while managing dissociative identity disorder, highlights the resilience and strength required to drive meaningful change in the nonprofit sector. Her story is a powerful reminder of the importance of safeguarding the well-being of those we aim to help.
Parenting through trauma presents its own set of challenges, and this episode sheds light on the emotional complexities involved. Dina shares candid reflections on overcoming the fear of abandonment, the bittersweet nature of watching children grow independent, and the difficult balance between nurturing and letting go. Her insights into breaking generational cycles and creating future leaders are both moving and motivational. Join us for a deep, heartfelt discussion that emphasizes the transformative power of community support and the enduring journey of healing and growth.
Welcome to Conversations with My Sisters' Keepers, the podcast where we bring awareness, share stories, and promote healing-centered conversations for lived experience professionals and allies in the gender-based violence and recovery sectors.
I'm Shamin Brown, and together, we’ll explore strategies, resources, and insights to support wellness, recovery, and leadership. Join us as we challenge stigma, celebrate autonomy, and normalize the healing journey.
hi dina, I'm really happy to have you here today. You were telling me about your photo, so please share with us.
Speaker 2:Thanks, shamim, thanks for having me today. It's a blessing to be here. Yeah, I have. I had this picture on my different platforms that I do meetings and a lot of people smile at it and they go, whoa, that's really epic. And I had one one person say, hey, I do cosplay too. And I smiled and I was like it's not cosplay, got about 10 years of live sword training and it is not a wall hanger, it's a live blade. And it is always that reminder of for me, the fact that my words bear that double-edged sword reality and to always walk with strength.
Speaker 1:Love that. I love that so much. Behind Even for One's acute advocacy-based referral database and networking system, which are designed to help survivors and overcomers of trafficking reclaim their agency and their voice as they navigate the intense journey from their exploitive circumstances to supported stability within safe and vetted programs. As a lived experience expert and credentialed advocate, dina brings a depth of personal experience and compassion to her process of championing the needs of overcomers and helping them find and understand the resources available to their pursuit of healing. Dina's fierce mama bear heart motivates her to fight every day to ensure trafficking survivors discover hope and are given a chance at a new life. Dina is also here with us today as our G100 Canada's first official member, and she is located. Where are you now? Where are you? Where are you home now, dina?
Speaker 2:I live about five hours north of Winnipeg northwest in a really tiny, small little community of about 46 people.
Speaker 1:Okay, and that's where you're doing your work from. Would you like to tell us a little bit about what you're doing right now and the work you share? Yeah, Absolutely.
Speaker 2:I have the blessing of working from home every day, minus travel, realities and speaking engagements, which is an incredible blessing in so many ways. It allows me to be home with my husband and wonderful, growing up too fast teenage daughter. Yeah, do you want me to share like about even for one, like any of our like foundations, who we are? Absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yes, I'd love to hear what Even For One is doing in the community, some of the projects and services that you're working on. And then you also were telling me some things that you, as a lived experience expert, are doing in different communities.
Speaker 2:I'd love to hear that as well well, yeah, so even for one started off under a technology company and it was an internal project with a desire to leverage technology to step into the counter-trafficking fight and was hired on and almost an experimental. They wanted to move into that space and one of the owners had heard my story and invited me into that space and we weren't sure what was going to develop. But where we're at now is a very different space. We started off essentially trying to do referrals the old school way and it would just take forever and I realized that there really had to be a much better way to do things and unfortunately, the other discovery was that there was a lot of play actors in the space of organizations and individuals trying to walk with survivors of trafficking and that was one of my most disturbing revelations was just because you want to do good doesn't mean you are and there is very little accountability in the counter-trafficking movement and that's really hard for survivors. That was something I wanted to see changed big time. For myself, stepping into the advocacy space for years and walking with survivors in that capacity, I heard a lot and my heart was how do I best meet their needs where they're at, when they need it and where we're at now is we actually launched in gosh February as our own official nonprofit entity, 501c3, based in Indiana, and we should be getting our official status here pretty quick. We're right at that, couple weeks away from the six-month mark, where we can nag the IRS to make it come through more quickly, but anyway it should be coming through, which is amazing, and we function both in the United States and in Canada for referrals and we actually have someone that donated their time and efforts with an incredible blessing that actually is building us a wireframe or a prototype for our web app right now. That should be available before the fall, which will allow us to essentially beta test it with survivors and service providers and get feedback so that we can actually fully develop this in the next year, and it is designed to be a web app platform so that survivors can connect in.
Speaker 2:They have a safe place to store all of their documentation, whether that is birth certificates or photo identification or anything that they would need essentially to access services anything from sobriety letters to medical documents or service animal qualifications to access care, anything like that. They have a place that they can securely store their information at all times so that if phones are lost or laptops are lost, they always have a safe space where their documentation resides, so that when they go to access service they don't have to go through that process of getting their ID restored, which is a nightmare for them. So that was one of my main primary goals. And then they can plug in, they can fill out an intake form.
Speaker 2:We understand the trauma response that often shuts down a survivor's ability to navigate a lot of big things immediately, especially immediately after intervention and immediately after leaving exploitive circumstances, and so my heart was how do we take the trauma, as much re-traumatization, out of the process of seeking help?
Speaker 2:So our goal was to have a form that they fill at one time and that's applicable for every service provider across the board, so that they never have to go through that process again, because most survivors are not in a safe place to relive their traumatic experiences and don't have safe supports around them.
Speaker 2:And then, when they fill that out, they can go through our database, and the goal right now if I have my pipe dream, if we can make this technology work is for them to be able to check off what they want for services and for our system to be able to shake out the applicable services that match what they're looking for and then to automate systems that they can connect to those resources quickly and those service providers can get back in touch with them.
Speaker 2:By streamlining everything, our heart is to cut down on how long it takes survivors to actually access services, from a lot of times, two, three, four weeks to three days is my goal, in that we also work with service providers. We have a very deep vetting process, because I believe that service providers should be accountable. I believe that they should have qualifications, I believe they should have good policies and procedures to protect themselves in a lot of things and that they should essentially be able to maintain themselves financially, and so we want to make sure that they're in a place to take in the survivors that they would like to care for and they're able to maintain themselves long-term.
Speaker 1:So we don't want to send survivors just anywhere. What's part of that vetting process?
Speaker 2:Yeah, again in the process of developing the full process of what that looks like. But we have a tiered process for service providers that just reach out to us and they want to enter into that and basically, are they a young organization? Do they have two, three, four, five years of experience in place? Do they have basically four or five years of experience in place? Do they have? Basically, how do I word this? Do they? So when you are a nonprofit, you are accountable to the public and you are accountable to the survivors that you're serving. So are they seeking feedback from the survivors that they're serving on a yearly basis? Not for statistics, but for feedback into the programs that they are delivering? Because, again, knowing and understanding how survivors are being impacted is how you do better for them.
Speaker 2:So that's one of my main goals in that as well as, like I said, going through internal policies and procedures, trauma-informed practices, education and best practices. Financials, anything like that where are grants coming from? Because in the US financials, anything like that where a grant's coming from? Because in the US, for example, many that receive the OVC grant have requirements for them to basically confirm trafficking experiences, and organizations can oftentimes take that too far and ask very inappropriate questions and justify it for the OVC grant. And that's one of my frustrations again is if a survivor wants to disclose, it's up to them when, where, how and how much. So that's one of those things we take into account. Same thing are you getting government funding? Okay, that's absolutely amazing. What are the requirements to maintain that funding and what does that put on survivors that are coming into your program? So those are the things to maintain that funding and what does that put on survivors that are coming into your program.
Speaker 1:So those are the things in my head Some really trauma-informed processes, right when you're thinking about. Who are the people that are coming to the table? Are they able to participate in the ways that they hope to? What do we do to protect folks? And also, what do we do to empower them to protect themselves? Or think about some of those areas where they might need to consider how is this going to affect my personal wellness? So really doing some of that safety, creating a safety container for folks it sounds like Absolutely, absolutely.
Speaker 1:And then we have internally trained advocates.
Speaker 2:Sorry, I was going to say we have internally trained advocates to help survivors navigate the system at any point if they would like help.
Speaker 1:Beautiful, yeah. And when you say that the programming is developmental, where are you at? When do you figure that it's ready to be launched? And then next I would say let's tap on that If anyone would help. Do you need, and how can people reach you if they want to get involved?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so we should have our prototype by end of summer, and then we need somebody that has design skills that can help us with our UI UX interfacing, to be able to get that to testing stage so that, like I said, survivors and service providers can interact with it in order to give us feedback for a while, for us to be able to take that and let up and functional and all of our vetting processes in place and laid out within our system, and all the technological aspects in place and then the processes that we'll actually work through by that point as well. So, for anyone willing to donate we need technology. People that would be willing to donate their time and efforts towards this build would be absolutely amazing. We are a 501c3 in the US, so we can receive donations. For anyone that would like to see this developed further, it would be an incredible blessing. And then, within Canada, we will, hopefully by next year, launch our Canadian entity of ourselves as well, enabling us to do donations. But that is a big process and big lift too.
Speaker 2:So right now, we're partnered with an organization called CEO Ministries, that's Christians Empowering Organizations, and they help us do donations in Canada and enable donors to receive those really helpful tax credits for themselves. We have all the processes on our website for how to.
Speaker 1:Did I do that? I'm so sorry. That was totally my fault.
Speaker 2:No worries.
Speaker 1:I think I got it. I was trying to highlight you and I muted you instead. Please start from a little bit earlier so I can cut and rebuild.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So basically, if you are a Canadian donor and really desiring those really valuable tax receipts, we partner with CEO Ministries and that is all. The information for how to donate to us is outlined on our website. Those are our biggest needs and then for us, for myself and my incredible co-worker, to be able to keep doing what we do every day, to have that funding would be an incredible blessing. So I know just to get a little vulnerable for myself, but being in the nonprofit space for myself can be incredibly triggering, because knowing where my finances are coming from every single day provides the stability that I need. Otherwise, I struggle with that and my mind goes immediately back to those stress responses and that is definitely a hard place for me to be. So I know donors that are willing to invest over the long term can be some of the biggest blessings for us.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, and so you talked a little bit there about your own history. Do you want to share a little bit more with us about really whatever you want in terms of where you're coming from and how this, how who you are has shaped the work that you do and how some of the experiences that you've had have shaped your passion?
Speaker 2:Yeah, thank you. That was the harder part for me in a lot of ways. But I grew up with childhood abuse and in every form possible and in that also childhood trafficking situations and basically for myself, I moved around a lot. I didn't have a lot of safety, security and stability in my life. I had a family that moved around a lot and had a lot of very deep struggles for stability as well. I know I had a mom that tried her absolute best to provide what she could, but there was a lot of stress growing up and in that I developed actually just to be completely vulnerable something called dissociative identity disorder and from childhood abuse and being able to cope with that.
Speaker 2:And for myself it's been a healing journey to figure out truly what my past has been, truly where I've been and who I am and how to actually walk in healing and safety now. For myself has been a journey. But I moved out at 16 and I found my place in the world. I worked to graduate high school. I lived with multiple different families, I went to Bible college and even there my own stress and need to provide for myself.
Speaker 2:I lived a double life in a lot of ways and I was going to Bible college and, at the same time, I was working the streets, because that's what I knew, that's how I knew to survive, that's how I knew I could get an income, and that is a really interesting dichotomy to walk out in a lot of ways. And so that's actually the where I met my now husband of 18 years, which is absolutely incredible. And, yeah, we have a beautiful 14-year-old daughter and an adopted daughter who is 21 now and absolutely amazing, and I am thankful for the journey that I've been on. I would never look back and say I'm thankful for the brokenness, I'm thankful for the trauma in any way, but I will say this going through what I've been through and standing where I am now, I'm thankful for the resilience that my mind and my body and my abilities have brought me to where I am now and, honestly for myself, I wouldn't be where I am if not for my relationship with Yeshua Messiah, because he saved my life multiple times as well.
Speaker 1:Love that and I'm a firm believer too right. And a lot of these experiences that we've had, they're relational and that trauma and that pain and that hurt was caused from that. Not just when we think about sexual abuse, domestic violence, sex trafficking, not just the things that happen later on, but even as we're kids and we're growing up, there's those relational experiences that really impact us. But, like you're showing us, when you find somebody that you can feel safe with, a lot of healing happens there.
Speaker 2:A lot of safety is created.
Speaker 1:What would you say that the turning point was for you in all of this?
Speaker 2:Honestly, I would say when I was, I was going to a church and I had the blessing of having a crazy family that basically were walking with my husband and I as mentors and they became adopted family for me and the actual love and acceptance and pouring in that was done in my life, that that changed everything for me and they're still family. That's who I'm staying with now while I'm here in the city, before some adventures and honestly, yeshua Messiah's work through them and love poured out through them has been probably the biggest catalyst and reality in my healing journey.
Speaker 2:So I really, for the first time in my life, find myself wrapped around or family wrapped around me that are supportive and always there, and that's just yeah. It's incredible and that's what is one of the biggest realities that provides the strength that I need to do what I do every day. So we, in all reality, we, cannot do this alone. I just delivered a message in Saskatoon at a church, and one of the biggest calls that I have to the church and to anyone is community the fact that we cannot exist alone. We cannot do this alone, and we need people wrapped around us to be able to function. If you're a survivor of trafficking or not, none of us can exist alone. We are designed to exist within community.
Speaker 1:Yes, yeah, yeah, I agree. It's a collective healing experience and there's a relationship, and even when you think about things on a grander scale and not to go far too far into this, but even those folks who end up hurting survivors at one point were survivors of something themselves and just haven't received the relationship and the healing that they needed.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely, which is?
Speaker 1:sometimes a hard thing to think about, but I know that I've been someone else's, I've hurt, I've been that person to someone else in one way, shape or another. I'm in my own trauma experiences and survival experiences, right.
Speaker 2:Absolutely. We all have a past, we all have a history, we all have mindsets that we function out of that make it hard to navigate the people around us and our relationships and everything, and that the biggest thing that I see is accountability. Are we willing to be accountable to ourselves and to those around us for when those trauma responses kick in?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I love that. I love that. I'm a big fan right now of Sean Ginwright and I'm still learning, so I don't know if I've got shoot, I'm still learning. So I don't know if I've got everything that's down pat. But from what I'm understanding, there's this idea of radical healing when we think about healing centered engagement, healing centered work, which is, I believe, a step up from trauma-informed. It's not just about knowing it, it's now putting that work into practice, putting that knowledge into practice and responding to trauma in different ways and creating different pathways of understanding for that. But one of the things that he talks about is how we're healing on a personal level and then we're channeling that healing into our professional work. Right, and there is a major disconnect if we can't be accountable for that healing within ourselves and be open to growth within ourselves, because how are we teaching others then?
Speaker 2:Absolutely. When we're working with other vulnerable populations and in any place, being able to learn how to regulate ourselves is necessary.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. And on the topic of regulating ourselves and being accountable for our healing, what are some of the things that you've struggled with along the way, both in your early recovery and now? So what do I have here, for example? Oh yeah. So, like, when we're thinking about romance myself I'm a parent I can think about, like lots of ways in which my trauma not only impacted my children which, of course, like you, can't get away from that but how it made parenting harder for me, and same thing with romance and things like that. So, just curious, when you're thinking about early recovery versus now, what are some of the roadblocks?
Speaker 2:Yeah, oh, my goodness. If I look back at the person I was like 15 years ago, I'm an entirely different person and that's hard. I look at who I was as a parent at the beginning of my daughter's life and a lot of how I parented was out of trauma and out of fear and that is incredibly hard to navigate. But at the same time, I am a big believer that we cannot and should not run from triggers. I believe that they are good in the sense that they show us what's going on inside our hearts, inside our brains, in every aspect of our life and if we hide from them we can't actually find healing. But if we're willing to take those triggers and look them square in the face and address the root causes, it changes our life and it changes the life of those that interact with us.
Speaker 2:So at the beginning, like parenting my daughter, I know I struggled with like panic attacks and struggling with I'm going to fail and I felt daily like I was failing and a lot of anger responses and shutdown responses and I would go up to my room and scream, cry into a pillow and seriously debate and yell actually at God a lot and be like what did you do.
Speaker 2:Why did you give me a child? Because I obviously can't do this and at the same time, it was a lot of working that out and letting him show me that there was a path through and, honestly, my daughter is a beautiful human being and she is strong-willed like me and is resilient like me in so many ways and she a lot of days was like looking in the mirror and her responses really showed me how I needed to respond better and how I needed to learn how to regulate myself and learn techniques, even when you feel like you're, for myself, dissociating in intense stressful moments, and learning how to stay present. That's probably been one of my hardest struggles, both as a wife, as a mom, as a friend in my daily life is learning techniques to stay present and engaged and not be numb or dissociate. That's all crazy hard and it's been a long, a long journey, honestly, so hard.
Speaker 2:A lot of how many books can I?
Speaker 1:read. I'm like I'm a workaholic and I'm pretty sure when I'm not working I don't feel okay and I've been catching myself late and I'm like I think this is, this is I'm using this now to numb, right, I'm using it to numb and to run. I'm having to, like, look at my work schedule and go all right, where do I make time for my family and friends and how do I? Also, I think sometimes our work is, it is an area of it can be a place of safety, because it's somewhere where we know what we're doing, we know what we're talking about and in recovery, I don't know about you, but I've had multiple experiences where people have told me that I don't know where I'm going, who I am, what I'm doing. It just made me feel really confused about my worth even, and so sometimes that workspace when you found the right workspace, when you have the right team and you have autonomy and your ideas are respected and acted upon that can be a really safe place. That can be a really rewarding place.
Speaker 2:What are some of the?
Speaker 1:ways you find yourself dissociating, when you talk about numbing and dissociation.
Speaker 2:I was going to go back to one thing that you said, but like that that pouring into work aspect. One of the best pieces of advice I was actually ever given by someone really precious to me was we are human beings, not human doings, and for myself, learning how to be a human being, learning how to be present, be engaged, not check out, not run, is probably one of my hardest struggles and that, for me, does show up in dissociation. It will find myself. I don't know how to explain it except to say I will start, everything will get foggy and I'll just pull back and it'll seem like I'm present, but I'm really not.
Speaker 2:I'm listening, I'm engaging, but I'm actually not listening and engaging with you and I've probably heard almost nothing that you've said in all honesty, but I look like I have heard what you've said and it makes havoc later Someone will be like oh, you were there, you said you agreed, and I'm like, oh shoot, that's hard because those triggers come and sometimes we we can't control the responses that happen and we learn very quickly how to apologize and how to help people around us understand truly what trauma looks like and how to help us be more present as well, and that's part of that community.
Speaker 1:Yeah if and when they're willing to listen right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, you were talking about parenting. Earlier I had written some stuff down I was like, oh yeah, I love that you talked about like how children, the children teach you and like bring some things to your awareness, because I found absolutely I'm always thinking about that verse and a little children, child to lead you right in the Bible, but also even when we look at like indigenous beliefs, that eighth fire prophecy, right, like, children do teach us, they do lead us, we teach them what we know, and then they take that and they make it something more beautiful, and it's our responsibility to listen to that right and allow ourselves to be led, and I think sometimes our ego gets in the way.
Speaker 1:And I think it's the same way in terms of survivors, survivor leaders, because initially, when they move into the movement, they're much like children, but they grow up. At some point They've learned what they need to learn and it would be helpful to ensure that there's spaces where they're being listened to when that happens for them.
Speaker 2:Right. Honestly, if I can adjust that, my goal as a parent is to help my daughter stand on my shoulders and be taller than I am, to be more brave than I am, to have more strength than I have, to be more equipped for the world that she faces than I was. And as survivors in this movement. That's our job. For those coming behind us, we need to stop being gatekeepers.
Speaker 2:We need to prepare and stand with and help those that are coming up behind us, mentorship and stand with them and equip them and not judge and provide them those safe spaces to be seen, heard, understood, but also champion them to go further than we could ever imagine, because that's the design, that's how we're meant to walk this out. We can't do it all, and if we think we can, we need to check our ego really quick.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I agree with that. I think to even take that a step further. That's our role as survivor leaders. Yes, but it's those who engage us, those organizations, those non-survivors, those allies who engage us, that also have a responsibility to support those of us who have that, the responsibility to support others, to support us in doing that right. Those spaces need to be created for us just as much as they needed to be created for those that we're creating those pathways for. So that's for betterness, absolutely, yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and the fear of parenting like I think I have not heard one single survivor yet. Maybe I will one day watch, I'll get emails after this episode, but so far I haven't met one single parent who hasn't had the fear that they're going to get it wrong. Or for myself, like I, had CFS involved. So when they came home, even though CFS never became involved again after the last time, I was always so scared that everything was going to be seen as a reflection of my parenting, almost to the point of an enmeshed relationship. So I was so afraid that they were going to come take them away again.
Speaker 2:I have had the same experience.
Speaker 1:I'm like, be careful, those bruises. They're going to think I beat you. It was such a crappy space to be in again because of not having support right, not having enough support in the right ways.
Speaker 2:And then we parent out of that freedom or, sorry, out of that fear, rather than the freedom that our kids deserve honestly.
Speaker 1:Yes, yes, I actually remember saying to my kids one day again, as part of my own healing right Radical healing I think that folks threw into parenting as well as professional work. I think that healing funnel threw into everything like who we are as professionals, who we are as parents, who we are as friends. When we heal ourselves, we have that space to be present in the healing of others. It isn't coming from a defensive place or a wounded place, but anyways, yeah. So I remember saying to my kids I'm parenting from a place of fear and I don't want you to become anxious like me. I know that I'm struggling with fear and I know that sometimes it's not rational. So don't be afraid with me, just humor me Until I feel like you're old enough to keep yourself safe. And that was just the rhetoric. Like even now, sometimes they're like oh, mom's just worrying about stuff, which can be annoying, because I'm a lot better now and usually I'm not just worrying about stuff, it's actually valid.
Speaker 2:But honestly, my daughter, those attachments I don't know whatever the attachment styles, but anyway it's developed with our kids too. My daughter is this summer at camp for four. She's actually going to be at camp for six weeks out of the entire summer and I didn't know what to do. Like again, there's part of that. We find ourselves and our identity wrapped up in our kids as well, and so that's been a really, this summer, a very big check inside of myself as I find myself crying and I'm like I miss my baby girl and at the same time I'm like, yeah, but there's more here.
Speaker 2:I honestly have anxious attachment with her and that's hard, but it's real, and the fear that inside myself just to be even more vulnerable that she's going to grow up and leave me, and that is terrifying. And you parent from that I have to do everything. Absolutely perfect, because then every aspect of that it impacts and we never really see it coming until it hits us upside the head and we're like, oh dang, where'd that come from?
Speaker 1:Absolutely the emptiness syndrome. To like, my youngest is 17. And I actually told him a few months ago I sat down with both of my boys I have three, actually, but two younger ones and I had sat down with the two younger ones and I had said I realized, because I've been doing so much like I was putting myself in debt, and I was like why I'm not having any boundaries here, I'm doing all these extra things, why am I doing this? And I realized and I said to them I have been overextending myself because I am afraid that if you don't need me, you'll leave me. And I said, but what's funny about that is, if I've done my job, you should leave me. And so I need to make some changes.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But it was like just acknowledging I'm not scaling back because you've done anything bad. I'm scaling back because that's what needs to happen in order for you to be able to grow and me to be able to let go.
Speaker 2:Exactly, and it's terrifying. It is absolutely terrifying, like she's my daughter's 14 and stepping into that space of camp leadership and every aspect of that, and I'll be honest, it was probably one of the most beautiful things. We surprised her at camp the other day because I was driving down and just seeing her there operating without me was really beautiful and just witnessing who she is and who she's growing up to be is one of the most beautiful things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I know, it's so cute. They used to say things that they would do and I'd say don't do that. And they'd say you used to do it. And I'd always say to them I don't want you to be like me, I want you to be better than me. And now I can look at them and say hands down, they all are Like. They have exceeded in their lives already what I accomplished in mine by their age.
Speaker 2:And I am just so grateful because I know that it could have gone another way. Yeah, very much. It's that breaking off of generational realities in so many ways, that's a hard place to be.
