Episode 239 (Transcript): Let’s Talk About Enmeshment | A Conversation With Julie Hanks
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener Kayla Howell for her work in transcribing this episode!
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JH: And we’re good at it. I mean, I grew up regulating my parents and helping with siblings, and I’m really good at it. I’ve had to work so hard to set emotional boundaries, and I, like, I’ll imagine I’m in a bubble, right? And people st— It’s like I can see it, I can validate it, but it doesn’t sink in. It just hits the bubble and slides down.
I’m so tuned into other people that I can quickly go into that caretaking and like, I’ll be who you need me to be, kind of shape shifting, you know, in order to make you feel better and that just, that hurts us.
SH: Hello, I’m Susan Hinkley.
CW: And I am Cynthia Winward
SH: And this is At Last She Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things, and the title of today’s episode is “Let’s Talk about Enmeshment. A Conversation with Dr. Julie De Azevedo Hanks.” Hello Julie.
JH: Hello. So glad to be here.
SH: We’re thrilled to have you back.
CW: Welcome.
JH: Thank you. Thank you.
SH: I think that you’re a guest who needs absolutely no introduction whatsoever, but is there anything that you’d like to tell our listeners about yourself before we get into the conversation?
JH: I have four adult children, so I get to practice what I preach on a regular basis.
SH: I love hearing that because I’m trying to practice the things you preach and it’s not that easy, I’m just gonna say. So, I think Cynthia’s gonna lead us through the discussion today, so I’m just gonna turn it over to Cynthia to intro the topic and let’s get into it. Take it away, Cynthia.
CW: Alright. Well I am super glad to have Julie here and I feel like Susan, when we have therapists on the show that we often kind of use it as personal therapy for us. So today may not be…
SH: Unfortunate, but true.
CW: Today may not be that different because we need all kinds of help as well in talking about enmeshment.
But, I want to say a couple of months ago, Julie did a social media post. First of all, Julie, I don’t know where you get the energy to do ask-me-anythings, but you do them quite often. And I just love watching how those go down on social media.
JH: They’re so fun. And I usually do ‘em on travel days when I’m like on an airplane—
CW: I noticed.
JH: —hours or, anyway.
CW: That’s awesome. And one of them I think someone had asked you something about this very topic, about LDS families and enmeshment, and I replied, and then you said, oh, can I repost that to my stories? And I said, yes. And here’s pretty much what I had written back to you, that some of the biggest aha moments that I have had in my life have happened over the last year or two when I realized that our church fosters codependency—enmeshment—whatever we wanna call it in parenting and in, in particular in adult children. Or at least that’s what this problem all came to a head for me.
We have practices in our church like fasting and praying for quote unquote wayward family members. I actually had a friend tell me recently that her mom fasted every day for two weeks for her son who had left the church. And I’m like, I don’t even know how physically that can be okay on your body, let alone to your mind.
But we also put names on temple prayer rolls. It’s a lot. There’s a lot that we do. So for me, worrying about an adult child, I could see it was heading towards enmeshment and I was really miserable. And so I talked to friends like Susan, who were a few years ahead of me on this adult-parenting rollercoaster.
And then I talked to another couple of friends and one of them suggested to me, because they had been through just the same thing with a child who had a drug abuse problem, and they talked about the Buddhist practice of non-attachment. Meaning not that we don’t attach to our children anymore, but that we stop attaching to outcomes.
JH: Yeah. It’s the (unintelligible) that get us in trouble.
CW: That saved me. And I just remember listening to some secular Buddhism podcasts, taking copious notes, thinking why? Why isn’t this something that we do in our own religion? If anything I felt like we do the opposite of the Buddhist principle of non-attachment, so, cue Julie Hanks coming in because I thought, I wanna have a whole conversation about this then, with you. So here we are.
JH: Yeah, this is, I love this topic and I’ve seen it. So I’ve practiced in Utah for 30 years, and this is just a core theme that comes up over and over again, whether it’s an adult child who’s enmeshed with the parent, worrying about the parents’ issues or vice versa, or families come in and they’re just—
The boundaries are not clear at all and everything’s everyone’s business. There are several church teachings that actually promote enmeshment [00:05:00] and can I give you a couple of those please? Here’s Elder David A. Bednar: “Parents who diligently strive to teach their children to walk in the ways of truth will be blessed. And if the children choose otherwise, the sin will be upon the heads of the children, not the parents.”
So that has like some truth, but it’s also if you teach them, you will be blessed. How do— how are parents blessed? By their kids staying active in the church? President Boyd K. Packer said, “Mothers, you are accountable to the Lord for the way you rear your children.”
And then there’s the famous, like, “no success can compensate for failure in the home.” And I’m trying to remember who said that.
CW: McKay.
JH: Was that— okay. Oh, here’s Brigham Young: “If parents do not teach their children the ways of the Lord, they will be held responsible for what their children do.”
And here’s just a last one, Joseph Fielding Smith: “Do you not know that parents are responsible before the Lord for the acts of their children until they arrive at the age of accountability? And even after that, they have not taught them. If they have not taught them, the sin is upon the heads of the parents.”
So parents take this and go, oh, if my child leaves the church, or my child is engaged in something I don’t agree with, I must not have done a good job teaching.
And then there’s this effort to try and bring them back to the fold or rehabilitate them. And it becomes kind of this focus on someone else’s life. And, when we cannot control another adult, and it just creates so much misery.
SH: Right. I think—
CW: That’s the right word.
SH: I think we come by this naturally though, because in my personal experience as a Latter-day Saint, anyway, I very much absorbed the idea that I could control outcomes in all kinds of things through my actions, right? And my choices. It’s the same way that people pray for quote blessings and expect them to happen in the way that they think they will, you know? I just feel like Latter-day Saints have this idea that the things we do have a lot more control over life events, our own and the choices other people make as well, than they actually do.
JH: And Susan, some of it’s magical thinking, right?
SH: Yes.
JH: Like, if I do this, then this will happen. It’s like, no. Paying tithing doesn’t mean you’re going to always have money. Like there are lots of starving people who pay tithing in Africa, for example.
SH: Right.
JH: It just doesn’t work that way. Right? It’s not, you do this, you get this, and we’re kind of taught that model and that’s— it’s just not true. If you have family home evening every week, all— you know, all your kids will be in the church. Nope. And so parents just think, well, if I just try harder… I’ll try harder. I’ll pray harder, I’ll fast more, I’ll send more conference talks. And it’s like the opposite of what they need to be doing.
CW: Well, that’s what I needed to hear Julie, about 18 months ago when I was in the depths of despair about certain things. So yes. I totally get it.
JH: And I don’t mean to minimize the pain of family members going through difficult things. Right? Like that’s not my intention at all.
And we’ve been trained, particularly as women, to be enmeshed, to feel other people’s pain for them. And that does no one any good. It doesn’t help them. And it doesn’t help us. It actually hurts the other person. If I take on your pain, I’m saying I don’t trust you, Cynthia or Susan, I don’t trust you with your own life. Like I’m— I have to carry this for you. I’m stronger. And that’s just not true.
CW: I hadn’t thought about it that way.
SH: Well, that leads me to my next question then. Could you tell me how to stop doing that? That would be really helpful.
JH: There’s a really simple model that author Byron Katie came up with. Are you familiar with Byron Katie at all?
SH: Yes.
CW: Uh-huh.
JH: Okay. So she says there are three kinds of business in life. Your business, other people’s business, and God’s business. God’s business is the unanswerable questions. Why do young children get cancer? Why are people starving? Why do tsunamis hit villages? Right?
We don’t— we can’t answer that. So that’s God’s business. Then there’s other people’s business and our business. When we stay in our business, we can have peace. When we get in other people’s or God’s business, we create pain. So when you’re in pain, you can ask yourself, whose business am I in? Usually you’re either in God’s or other people’s business.
And that is, has been the simplest way to kind of explain boundaries. Now it’s hard to do, but it at least is helpful to sort through what’s happening. Right? Like, whose business am I in? Okay. I’m in my sister’s business or my mom’s business. And then set boundaries around that.
CW: Got it. Susan?
SH: No, not at all. Clear as mud. No, I— yes, I do understand it in theory. Of course. I think that makes perfect [00:10:00] sense. What I don’t know how to do sometimes is stop caring so much, I guess, when I see people that I love in pain.
JH: Okay, so it’s not about not caring, it’s about not carrying their load.
SH: Right, right, right. I, yeah, and I knew that’s what you were gonna say. As soon as you said it’s not about not caring, I thought she’s gonna say it’s about not carrying. So I guess really I could— if I were going to ask a professional for help with this, I would be asking for help to set that down. I honestly don’t have any really specific tools in my toolbox for how to do that in a way that will benefit both the adult child and myself.
JH: Yeah. So one strategy that I think can really help is when you catch yourself ruminating and worrying, take action. Do something, if you can. And that may be journal about your feelings, that may be reach out to someone and call them. It may, whatever, but is there an action you can do instead of worrying, because worrying hurts you and it doesn’t help the person who’s going through a difficult challenge. Right?
SH: Right.
JH: And so like, is there a small action you could take when you catch yourself ruminating about, you know, what’s on your mind?
SH: Yeah. I love that. That’s something I can do.
JH: And another strategy, or a question I ask— frequently ask female clients is what would you be doing, thinking or feeling if you weren’t overcome with this other person’s issue? Right?
It can consume so much of us, but sometimes things just fill the void. So if there’s a void there and we don’t have a strong sense of self or you know, we’re too overly involved, it’s because we don’t have the self structure in place.
I’m not taking care of myself or I’m not doing what I want to do, or doing things that I love and enjoy and bring me joy.
Does that make sense?
SH: It does. It does. I can see that in my own life. And as a younger mother, yeah, a younger woman, I don’t struggle with that so much now, but yeah, that very much was a thing. And even as I moved into adult children, when I very first started to have adult children with adult sized problems I remember a therapist asking me, you know, well, just how many times a day are you really thinking about your kids?
And I thought at the time, well, I never stopped thinking about them. What an idiotic question. But as I’ve, you know, turned that question over in my mind through the decades that have passed since she first asked me that, I’ve come to see that it was exactly the right question to ask me.
Because I was very much engaged at that point in my life in moving into the empty nest phase. And that required real adjustments on my part and on the part of my children. That was a really hard transition for me. I’d been a stay-at-home mom. I’d been very involved in my kids’ lives and it really required something. Some really specific and intentional action on my part to pull back from that in appropriate ways.
But that was something I really had to work at and did need professional help to do. And so that’s been one of the most helpful questions, actually, that a therapist has ever asked me over time. So, yeah, I appreciate those tools. Thank you for sharing that with me.
CW: Julie, can we have a section where we actually talk about… I really wanna hear your professional opinion, as someone who’s done this for 30 years, and you’ve seen clients who are LDS and those who are not, are LDS families prone to codependency?
JH: Yes.
CW: More than others?
JH: Yes.
CW: Okay. Let’s talk about it.
JH: Because of some of the teachings. So the idea that being a parent is an eternal calling. That means— so that kind of implies that you’re still responsible for your adult children, when you’re absolutely not. I told my kids like, you’re 18. I resigned from being your parent in this way. Like, I turn your life to you. Legally it’s yours.
Like, you know, I’m resigning from eternal parent calling ‘cause I just wanna hang out with my kids ‘cause they’re cool. But that idea of like, I’m always responsible for my kids, and so I see parents just devastated because their child left the church. Like dev— like not functioning, devastated. Not just like, oh, that’s really disappointing. Right?
Or, you know, parents who are, have a child who’s still single in their forties. Oh my gosh. And they feel responsible. I must not have done something— I must not have— It’s like, you know, really what it does is it makes the issue about the parent instead of about the, right— It’s like, I must have done something wrong. It’s not about you. It’s not about you.
I remember my daughter who was [00:15:00] my second, was fairly rebellious as a teen, and I remember her saying like, this is not about you, mom. Like I need to do these things, but it’s not about you. It’s like, oh, okay. Thanks for the reminder.
So a couple of other teachings are just kind of family unity, right? Hearts knit together in unity and love. I can’t tell you how many families I know— and I think Utah’s unique, but get together with extended family weekly for family dinner. That’s not the norm across America, is my guess.
So if our goal is family unity, it makes it really hard to celebrate diversity and individuality and differentiation, because it’s a threat to the unity. And so the unity and the uniqueness of each person have to kind of dance together. But if you’re just one way toward unity it makes it hard to be an individual in that close-knit group.
And then framing kids’ success in life as defined by the parents. It’s like, it’s all on the parents. And that really creates the enmeshment, right? Like if you did it, your kids will turn out. If you did scripture study every morning, if you go to the temple enough, your kids will— and that’s just not life. We, we cannot control anyone else.
SH: Right.
CW: Okay. We can’t control anyone else. But I’m really glad a few minutes ago you brought up magical thinking. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to bring up that phrase, but you introduced it so I’m gonna go with it, because I don’t wanna discount that there are miracles. I don’t wanna discount miracles. I guess I don’t wanna discount those kinds of things.
But I think there is an element of magical thinking that somehow we think, I don’t know, the spirit, God’s power, whatever, will override someone’s agency and make what we deserve—and I do think, we believe we deserve—if I volunteer in the temple every week, I deserve… I mean, what’s that scripture?
You know, God is bound when we do what he says, and when we don’t, we have no promise. I don’t think that section was geared towards parenting adult children. I could be wrong, but I don’t think it was. So, I think we heavily rely on that scripture and kind of it morphs into magical thinking where we think we can override agency.
JH: Yeah. We try to control someone else’s agency. Yeah. Good luck with that, right? I’m gonna control your agency. Wait, that defeats the purpose.
CW: Our very first episode— we have a franchise called We Don’t Believe Our Own Stuff, and we talk about, you know, faith and grace and all these great elements of the gospel that we kind of really don’t believe in, even though we say we do. And the very first one we had was on agency,
SH: Right.
JH: Yeah. Limited agency.
SH: Yeah, limited agency. Well, I think that’s—
CW: That’s good.
SH: —I think actually now we call it moral agency, which it’s moral—
JH: Yeah. There’s, it’s not free choice. It’s not free.
It’s expensive.
CW: Oh yeah, we stopped using free agency a while ago. For sure.
JH: Moral agency. Yeah. Yeah. It’s so interesting how words change, you know?
SH: It is. All of this makes me think about, though, I don’t know when it first occurred to me that if I had gotten my ego out of my parenting, if I could have separated my ego from my parenting, I would’ve been a much better parent.
It’s sometime in the past, I don’t know, 10 years that this has occurred to me. And there are a lot of reasons why my ego was tangled up in my parenting. And that is not necessarily important to this conversation. But the part that is that my sort of, specifically LDS ego was very tangled up in it because I really did feel in the church, like my children and the choices that they were making were a reflection of me.
JH: That’s exactly what I was thinking before you started. I was going that same direction.
SH: So say more about that.
JH: We are taught to look to our kids for validation about our worthiness, our worth, the job that we did. Especially if you sacrificed, you know, something that you wanted to do to be a stay-at-home mom.
SH: Right.
JH: It’s like that’s your work product. You know, and you wanna get good reviews. It’s like, review my kids, you know?
CW: Ouch.
JH: So I mean, it really, it feels like that, like they’re extensions and reflections of us, but they’re not. And once, once I got that, and it took a lot of pain, a lot of pain with one of my kids to get that. But it was like, it really isn’t about me. And I can just sit back and be curious. Like, I wonder why they’re making that choice, but it has nothing to do with me and it’s not a reflection on me. And she’s not me. And he’s not me. [00:20:00] And it’s so freeing.
SH: Yes.
JH: So freeing.
CW: And who doesn’t want that, that feeling of being free?
JH: And here’s another part to this, parents getting validation from their kids. Is then the kids absorb that and then they feel responsible for your emotional well-being and to validate you.
And that’s not their job. Right? Like, we need to make mom feel like she’s done a really good job, so I’m gonna, you know, please her or, right? Like, to take care of you. And that’s a huge burden. That’s a huge burden.
CW: Yeah. It goes both ways, I guess.
SH: Yeah, I guess just taking responsibility for each other’s happiness or success or choices or whatever out of the relationship just removes a huge amount of weight from that relationship and changes the dynamics of it and of what it can be.
JH: It allows you to love and be curious.
SH: Yes.
JH: All that other stuff that feels like love, is not love.
SH: Yeah.
JH: We’ve talked about this before, right? Worry is not love. Letting go of trying to control actually allows you to do more and be more in the relationship.
SH: And that stuff is… can be hard to learn though.
I talk a lot on this podcast about having learned difficult love lessons from parenting. And I think when I say that it is shorthand for exactly that, I had to learn to let go of a lot of things and get a lot of things out of the way in order to be able to really love my children in the way that I wanted to, in the way that they deserved to be loved. Right?
I had a really hard time looking at them through the lens of all kinds of expectations and responsibility on my part. I had a hard time looking at them in any kind— with any kind of godly love through all of those filters. But it’s like those filters came pre-installed somehow, and when the babies came to me, I feel like those filters were already in place. Whether that was baggage from, you know, my own family relationships that I’d come from, or from absorbing years and years of church teachings and lessons. It really required a lot of work for me to strip that stuff out of the relationship. And it’s an ongoing process, honestly.
JH: Yeah, for sure. And every stage of adult children brings new challenges.
SH: Right.
JH: As parents, I think the most important work we can do is to learn how to self-validate, to meet our own needs so our kids don’t have to reflect our goodness to us.
SH: Hmm, right.
JH: Right? And that’s narcissism, right?
Like, make me feel good about myself. Not personality disorder, but just, you know what I mean?
SH: Right. Yes.
JH: Reflect my goodness to me so I can feel good about myself. Well, if you just feel good about yourself because you’re a great human and you don’t need your kids, you can just be free to enjoy them and they can invalidate you and you’re okay, and they can validate you and you feel good and, you know, it’s just… There’s a free— it’s just more free when you don’t need their choices to validate you.
SH: Right.
CW: I had a line from the couple friend I was telling you about earlier that introduced me to the Secular Buddhism podcast. Well, I had known about the podcast, but they specifically said, listen to this episode, this episode, this episode… Anyway, so as I was talking to them, one of them, she said to me, I have told my adult children, now we are just fellow travelers.
Kinda like what you said, Julie, like when my daughter turned eight— or your children turn 18, you let them know that they are now adults. And I loved that line so much. I’ve said it to each of my children now, specifically when it comes to like, them stepping away from the church.
I said, I see our choices as equal. I see me attending church and you not, I see them as equal choices now. We are fellow travelers, we are fellow humans on this planet now. And that’s how I’m approaching our relationship. And woo! Changed so much, just really. With that filter, you know.
JH: Yeah, I don’t know more— I mean, I have more experience, but I don’t necessarily know what’s right for you.
I don’t necessarily— you know, to your child. Like, I can’t and I realize that like, I can’t know what God’s gonna do with my child. That’s— I don’t know what their life experience is going to, who knows? And so… I apologized to one of my— well I apologize all the time, but to this daughter who, you know, I just said I am so sorry, I thought I knew better, like the path that you should travel and there’s no way I could know that.
And I’m so sorry for trying to push that on you. And that’s on me. That was my mistake, ‘cause I can’t know that for you.[00:25:00]
CW: Well, can we shift to talking about patriarchal cultures and how all of us who’ve been raised in the church, like Susan was talking about a minute ago, about, how did you put it, Susan, you had these lenses that you were born with, or just your conditioning or your family or, you know, we kind of come prepackaged in this patriarchal culture that has a tendency toward enmeshment.
So can you talk about that a little bit, Julie?
JH: Yeah. We talked a little bit about how in LDS culture and teachings, there’s this emphasis on unity of family, being eternal— no empty chairs, right? I’m gonna, I’m gonna make t-shirts that say empty chairs. Mess with people.
So with the emphasis on family, you know, families can be together forever. Sometimes that overshadows the individual’s autonomy and differentiation. And so it makes it really hard because you wanna— so, differentiation of self is being a unique individual while maintaining connection with people you love.
CW: Good definition.
JH: Sometimes being part of a family or community means giving up. Like you have to give up your individuality to belong. And we want— we don’t want that, right? We want to be ourselves in relationship. But in patriarchal cultures, family, unity, and male rule, you have to kind of make sure that whoever’s in charge is happy with you. And that squelches individual development.
There’s also just in, in hierarchies, the person above you can silence you. Because there’s someone— always someone above you in a hierarchy. I like to think of families as more flat structures, right? Like, but we’re taught that family— the father’s, the head, the then the mother, and then the kids, you know, and that’s just not healthy.
It should— we’re all on the same playing field. We’re all here. Fellow travelers like you said.
So the hierarchical structure really discourages individuation, especially for women and children, right? Because they’re below on the hierarchy.
SH: Right. Always.
JH: And then one of my favorite topics is rigid gender roles.
So women in patriarchal cultures are socialized to self-sacrifice, not to maintain a healthy sense of self, right? So we’re taught to over prioritize caregiving. We’re in charge for the tone of the home, and, you know, making home a heaven on earth. And often that means over functioning for other people and trying to keep them happy, and not taking care of ourselves.
And the more we do that, then the more we need from the people around us, right? If we’re an empty bucket, it’s like, fill me, fill my ego. And then, you know, we talked a lot about the, some of the doctrines or teachings already just of the cultural narratives of, you know, parents are responsible for children throughout their life. And that can lead to a lot of enmeshed dynamics as well.
CW: Can I go back to when you were talking about the rigid gender roles in your notes you have here, over-functioning emotionally for others? And I as a woman, feel that so deeply that has been my job, to regulate, like you were saying, the tone in the home, but also I’m responsible—
I mean, there are, how many homes are there where it’s like, you know, your dad’s gonna be home, let’s, you know, let’s be on our best behavior or, you know, different things like that where it’s the mom goes around trying to manage the emotions of her husband, of the children. Can’t we all just get along?
And that’s exhausting. And I remember seeing, like in myself, oh, I’m repeating what I saw in my home and I’m repeat— and my husband, you know, in his home. And it’s like we had to have a conversation where I kind of said, I am not— you’re in charge of this. You know, you’re in charge of your emotions. You’re in charge of your relationship with your own family. I’m not the one doing that. But that’s really hard.
JH: It’s so hard, and it’s— we’re just taught to do it and we’re good at it. I mean, I grew up regulating my parents and helping with siblings. And I’m really good at it. I’ve had to work so hard to set emotional boundaries, and I, like, I’ll imagine I’m in a bubble, right?
And people st— It’s like, I can see it, I can validate it, but it doesn’t sink in. It just hits the bubble and slides down, you know? I’m so tuned into other people that I can quickly go into that caretaking and like, I’ll be who you need me to be kind of shapeshifting, you know, in order to make you feel better. And that just— that hurts us.
CW: So many thoughts on that. [00:30:00] So many life experiences.
SH: You’ll notice I’m in dead silence right now. It’s so hard. I feel like this all goes back to the dawn of my own being in some way. So I think, you know, it’s, so much of it is a reflection of, you know, my own childhood family, but which was also a product of a very deep, Latter-day Saint culture and gender roles and all of those things.
So it, I almost feel like all of this predates me. I’m not sure how I could have stepped into adulthood having the tools that I needed to not repeat some of these patterns.
JH: And that’s totally normal. Everyone grows up in some kind of culture. And part of growing up is deciding what to take with you and what to leave alongside the road as you travel.
And so since Mormonism is our culture, it’s easy to go like, oh man, you know, we’re so hurt by this. Well, everyone has a culture that they have to deal with because we’re not raised in a vacuum. We’re raised in families that were raised by families in a specific area and a specific time, specific political climate, you know, whatever.
And so it’s not a bad thing that you didn’t have those tools earlier. Like, part of the journey is developing those tools when the pain gets painful enough.
SH: Yeah. I guess one of the things that complicated it for me, and it maybe took me longer than it might have otherwise, is that a lot of these things were wrapped up in a moral of some kind.
Like I noticed in your notes, you call it religious or cultural doctrines. Right? And some of this stuff felt deeply doctrinal to me, like this was actually God ordained, this was part of my religion. Right? And so separating out what was actually part of my religion— I mean like just an example would be keeping your child on the covenant path.
Like the idea of keeping your child on the covenant path feels deeply doctrinally sanctioned to me. And yet, you know, it’s a completely unrealistic and problematic approach to parenting. Like, that’s just never gonna work. But, so when there’s this whole layer of doctrinal overlay whether it’s actually there or whether I just absorbed the teachings in a way that saturated my parenting with ideas that felt doctrinal to me, that really complicated it for me when it came time to untangle some of my less ideal approaches to parenting.
JH: Yeah. Makes perfect sense.
CW: Yeah, the idea that God wants it this way. Right?
SH: Right, right.
CW: And I feel like, I mean, it’s been so hard for me since, I mean, yes, they made the endowment a lot less sexist, but then they put preside— you know, Julie was talking about the hierarchy a few minutes ago, the hierarchy of families, and it’s like, but then we put it into the sealing ceremony. We put preside in there as part of the marital covenant.
So what you’re talking about, Susan, it’s like, yeah, when we say this is God— this is how God wants things, God wants the man to be in charge. Like where do you go from there when it’s that sewn into the fibers, you know of— Oof!
SH: You almost have to go into a deconstruction phase in your faith in order to be able to weed some of these things out of your family relationships, I think.
Like, you have to be able to loosen your grip on some of those doctrinal ideas that felt God-ordained or like they were the way that it had to be or was meant to be.
JH: Yeah. It gives it a lot of power when it’s God. It’s not just the expectations of parents or community, it’s God saying this.
SH: Right.
JH: And that gives it a lot of weight.
SH: Yeah.
CW: It’s funny, I was just texting Susan the other day a Father Greg Boyle quote from his book, Barking to the Choir, and he has this quote in there and he said, “What are the odds that God has the same puny ideas that I have, that God shares the same puny ideas that I have?”
And I just think, what a breath of fresh air to just kind of step back and be like, oh wait, you really think you know exactly? That what God is thinking, and it just happens to be what you’re thinking? So yeah when you’re talking Susan about a deconstruction of faith, it’s like that’s how women end up in the At Last She Said It space.
Because those are the things that they realize, oh, this is not serving me well now, maybe it never did, but now I’m willing to do something about it. And I’m sure that’s how they end up in Julie’s office as well.
JH: Yeah. When strategies that we use in relationships work until they don’t work anymore, and we’re in so much pain that we don’t have another choice, or we would keep using the same strategies.
We keep trying to control our kids, but at [00:35:00] some point it doesn’t work. And that’s the point that you go, I gotta figure out another way, or I’m literally gonna be in so much pain that I, you know, I don’t know what to do. And so it kind of just like, I wanna encourage you, Susan, to have self-compassion on that younger version that didn’t know what you know now, you know that like she— she was using the tools she had and as you grow, you get more tools and set things down.
SH: Yeah, no, thank you for that. And that is something that I’ve worked hard on and that I’ve come to actually have a great deal of grace for that younger version of myself. And I guess in large part, because I can look back and understand why I made all the choices that I did, and I think I made really good choices based on the information I was working with at the time. Right?
And so as my information has improved, then I feel like some of my choices have been able to morph to follow that. What I really wish is that I could, like, I, there are a lot of things I loved about doing parenthood as a really young version of myself. Like, I’m not sure I would wanna go back and have my kids in my forties or fifties but…
Then there’s also part of me that would love to have a do-over in my forties or fifties just to see how I maybe would have done it different. I wish that I could know the outcome of, you know, a lot of different paths. But yeah. Thank you for that. I do try to have a lot of grace for younger me.
JH: Okay. You know what’s funny is my former husband and I did that. We had two kids and then nine years later had two more. So we parented in (unintelligible) and then in our, you know, thirties, forties into fifties.
And it was— so we kind of feel like we got a do-over, we get to— so when my older kids are like, you are so lenient on them. You, they, you know, you give them so much. I’m like, yeah, we listened to you. We were too hard on you (unintelligible) differently. We didn’t give you enough cool stuff. We’re giving them more cool stuff ‘cause you were so sad about that.
SH: So interesting.
JH: It’s so funny they can’t, I won’t argue with them ‘cause I’m like, you’re right. We were too strict.
CW: I’d love to know Julie, since I started out this conversation talking about parents who fast and pray for their children— and this, I mean, I hate to make this such a parent-child centric episode, but the fasting, the praying, the putting family members on temple rolls, like how can that be approached from a healthy point of view and not from a white knuckle grip, controlly, enmeshed point of view.
JH: On, on the part of the parents?
CW: Yeah, on the part of the person, whoever it is that they are worried about. A family member, a child, a best friend, whoever that has whatever— left the church or making decisions that they don’t agree with. So they put their name on the prayer roll daily. Yeah. How can those things be done healthfully?
JH: Yeah. The big and most difficult part is recognizing that you are not controlling outcomes when you do that. If you’re doing it and you find comfort in it and you find more love in it, then do it, but don’t do it to get an outcome because that is not gonna happen. It just doesn’t happen that way. So do it for yourself because it makes you feel good not to try to control someone else, because it’s not going to work.
CW: Wow. It really always comes back to love, doesn’t it? Like do those things because you love them. They give you peace. That makes sense.
JH: Right. Don’t do it to try and control. And that’s like we talked about earlier, that’s getting in someone else’s business, someone else’s faith journey, someone else’s, you know, it’s, that’s their business.
And so, like what else could you be spending your time thinking about or praying about or you know, something that you actually can control?
CW: Wow. Alright. Can we move into talking about worry, Julie? Because Susan and I are metaphorically raising our hands right now because when Susan was talking about this earlier, I was thinking the same thing.
Like where is that line between I love my child and I’m concerned for them, and when does it cross over into worry? Anyway, we would just love to hear your thoughts about worry.
JH: Worry is such a waste of energy. It does nothing to help the person you’re worried about and it hurts you. And it actually could hurt them too, [00:40:00] because then the other, like, your child needs to protect you, so you don’t worry so much about them so they don’t tell you things. Right?
It just creates like, oh, I’m not gonna tell mom that. I know people who are like, I’m not telling my mom I’ve left the church. I’m just waiting till she dies because I don’t wanna worry her, or I don’t want her to feel so bad about herself or I, you know. But worry makes us think that we are doing something and making a difference, and that we’re being loving when we’re absolutely not.
CW: Whoa. So it has the opposite effect.
JH: Absolutely nothing— like it hurts you and it doesn’t help them. And if I could wave a magic wand and just remove the worry from the women I know. Because it’s, it feels loving. That’s like the trap of it. It’s like, oh, I love them so much; I’m so miserable. Wait a second, wait.
It actually— and I mentioned this before, it sends a message that you don’t trust them. Like, I will carry this for you. No, you cannot do that. Like that cripples your kids. Like they have to go through their path with you cheering them on and with you loving them and you being a resource, but not carrying it for them. It doesn’t help.
SH: Okay. Can I ask you a question about that? Yeah. How can you give your child the assurance that you are there for them, and that you are mindful of the challenges that they’re facing, and that you are, you know, you stand ready to help them should they ask for your help, without giving them the idea that you’re worried about them? Like, what is the difference between those two messages?
JH: You answered your question. If you go, Hey, I know you’re going through a hard time. I want you to know I love you. I’m here for you, and if you ever need anything, just know I am here for you. And you don’t say, and I’ve been up all night and I’ve been fretting and pacing the floor worried about you.
No, you just say the thing you just said. I love you. I am here for you. You know, whatever you need, I am ready. You have a safe place here. You know, whatever it is. And then you are done.
SH: And will they know I’m lying? That’s my question.
CW: Susan!
JH: Maybe.
SH: Dang it. I’m such a worrier, Julie. I just am. That is just like part of my makeup about everything. It’s not just my kids, it’s everything. Worry is my number one hobby, basically.
JH: Your go-to.
SH: Yeah. I dunno. I wish I knew how to not be that person. I have not figured that out yet.
JH: Well, I then I’ll ask you the question I posed earlier. What would you be doing, thinking about, or feeling if you weren’t worried?
SH: Yeah, I don’t know the answer to that. I’ve never been without worry for one second of my life. That is not an exaggeration. It’s my earliest emotion I can identify.
JH: Let’s, like, what else can you fill that brain space with? A good book…
SH: I don’t know. I feel like I carry a lot of other stuff at the same time. Like I don’t feel like I’ve wasted my life or not paid attention to developing the parts of myself that I have wanted to. I just do it with a hefty dose of worry on the side. I have those programs running simultaneously.
JH: Yeah. So my guess is it’s really hard for you to be present in what you’re doing ‘cause worry is about the future.
SH: Yeah. I’m gonna have to think more about that. I’m working really hard on developing better presence actually. Because I would, I guess how I would describe it for myself is I do very much live in my head in a way that I didn’t, my head is where it all happens.
There’s basically nothing going on in my body at any given time because it’s all happening in my head. And so that is something that I’m actively working on. So maybe figuring out how to get more grounded in my own body and approaching presence from that way would be really helpful.
JH: I love it. Beautiful. You’re right on, on track. I think I have a spiritual gift of not worrying.
SH: Really?
CW: Say more.
SH: Yeah. Has it always been that way?
JH: No. No, I don’t think so. Like when people are like, oh, I’m so worried. Like, I literally cannot relate.
CW: Wow.
JH: I have concerns here and there that pop up, but I have nothing that I’m like— I do not ruminate on other people’s stuff.
SH: Like, or your own, you don’t ruminate on your own stuff either?
JH: No, I don’t have time. I don’t wanna use my energy for that. I wanna be creative. I wanna be connecting with people. Like I just, I, it just feels like a waste of time. But I think it’s a gift. I’ve developed it, but I think I kind of tend toward that, where some people are more highly anxious.
SH: Right. I was just gonna say, you must not really struggle with a lot of anxiety then I would imagine.
JH: I did as a kid. [00:45:00] I did as a child. I’ve done decades of therapy. Medication, like I’ve done my, you know, I’m doing my work.
SH: Right.
JH: But that’s just one thing I don’t, stru— I have a lot of struggles, but that’s just one thing (unintelligible) I’m really, like, I don’t have to, like, I don’t worry about my kids. I think about them. I send good thoughts their way. I, you know, but like, what can I— I can’t do anything other than love them. What else can I do?
SH: I love framing that as a spiritual gift, actually.
CW: I do too.
SH: I really like that. Thank you.
CW: Because spiritual gifts can be developed. So I think if anything is worth having, then it’s worth working for, and dang it, this is just one more thing that we would have to work at becoming better at. So I love that because then that puts the… then speaking of control, that is something I do have control over. To developing that.
So Julie, the last time you were on our episode a couple of years ago, the episode, our favorite title ever was “Get Used To Disappointment.” We actually ended up making stickers for one of our events that said I will disappoint you. Yeah, we probably should have put Julie Hanks underneath that ‘cause we might have swiped it from you. I’m not sure.
But in that episode, you said something, speaking of parenting adult children that kind of changed my life. Can I play it for you and maybe we can talk about it?
JH: Yeah. I’m so curious what it is.
CW: Okay, here we go.
JH: Can I share my one rule for parenting adult children?
SH: Please!
CW: Yes!
SH: Cynthia, lemme get a pencil.
JH: All you need is one thing. Do not give advice, feedback, criticism, suggestions, or anything else without being invited.
CW: Really?
JH: So you can say, Hey, I have some thoughts about how to handle that situation with your kid if you’re open to it.
CW: Oh my gosh. That’s beautiful!
JH: Because if you say something when they’re not open to it, all it does is hurt your relationship.
CW: Okay. Julie, could you hear the smoke coming outta my ears? That was the first time I had ever heard that. But I want you to know, speaking of things that are in our control, I have done that.
JH: Good job.
CW: And it has changed—
JH: Well done!
CW: Thank you Julie! I will take all the accolades ‘cause it’s the hardest thing I have ever done, to bite my tongue.
There may have been blood sometimes, I’m biting it so hard. But is there anything else you want to say about that? If nothing else, I wanted to play that for you and say thank you. I don’t wanna get emotional, but that changed so much for me, because I’ve been through so much in the last couple of years where I just thought, what you said, Julie, I am going to ruin the relationship—
JH: Yeah.
CW: If I say something that is not wanted and I would do exactly what you said, I would approach the child I’m thinking of and saying, I have some thoughts and ideas. Are you open to it? And this child said, Nope. And I was like, this is the worst advice I’ve ever been given. They’re supposed to say yes.
SH: I love that she thought she could say no. I mean, I think that’s marvelous.
CW: I mean, yes. But anyway, Julie, I just, I want you to know how much that meant to me and if you want to give any update to that, add anything else, I want to hear it.
JH: I live by that. And you could ask any of my kids or in-laws. I live by that.
I will not— I feel so strongly about it. And if all parents would do that, we would— you’d have such better relationships between— it’s like, I acknowledge you as a sovereign individual who’s different than me, and I don’t have anything, like, I’m not gonna put anything on you, that’s mine. And if I’ll offer this— but yeah, it just hurts relationships, this intrusive parenting of adult children. It’s… it is unhealthy. It makes everybody miserable. Like everybody miserable.
Parents, take care of yourself. Like, let your kids be grownups, you know, you trust them to drive a car and to have a job. It’s like, trust them with their other choices too. Be there for ‘em, love them, but do not try to insert yourself where you’re not wanted.
It does damage the relationship.
CW: I’m guessing, Julie, that the fruits of that have been ama— like, if you’re known for that, now that you don’t hand out unsolicited advice, then I’m gonna guess that people know you are a safe [00:50:00] person. That they can probably say a lot more to you than they can to someone who they know is gonna jump in and just tell ‘em what to do.
I don’t know. I would love to hear like, the fruits of that for you. ‘Cause that’s amazing.
JH: As I think about it, I think I just do that with all relationships. I just don’t— I mean, unless someone says, Hey, I’d really like to know your thoughts on this, then I’ll— I’m happy to share. But I’ve just really worked the last several years on being a better listener to people in my life, and just being curious and recognizing like, who they are and that they’re trying to figure things out.
And I don’t know. I mean, I have experience, but I’m not living their life. So yeah, if you ever want advice from me, you have to ask me because I won’t just give it.
CW: Goals. I mean, it has been my goal. I’ve been working on that.
JH: You’re doing great. It sounds like you’re doing great, Cynthia.
CW: Thank you. Julie this has been a great conversation as usual. Can we close with our question? We love love, love to ask all the women who come on our podcast, and that is what, do you know? What is one thing you know today?
JH: I know that life is about growth and love. Those two things.
And if you’re growing, even if it’s painful, and you’re learning how to love better and deeper, like you’re on track, those are the two things that we need to focus on: growth and love.
SH: I love that.
CW: Beautiful.
SH: I feel it makes me feel like I’m moving the right direction.
JH: You’re on track. Seriously.
SH: Thank you.
JH: And I think it’s really true, at least in my experience, that if I’m growing and I’m loving people, like I’m good. I don’t have to worry about the checklist and perfectionism and all that achievement and proving your worth. Like that’s crap.
CW: Wow.
SH: Good stuff.
CW: Beautiful.
SH: Thank you Julie.
JH: You’re welcome. I love being with both of you. And thank you for your book. I so enjoy it and I’ve given it to friends, and I just think you are both such important voices in the world of Mormons and particularly women. So thank you. I just admire both of you so much for the grace that you have in having these really hard conversations.
SH: You’re so kind.
CW: Well, thank you.
SH: Thank you.
Voicemail 1: Thank you for your episode on empathy. As a Latino member of the church, I have been deeply heartbroken by the silence of our leaders regarding what is happening in the United States. I feel the silence has emboldened some members to lean further into Christian nationalism. For example, after I posted on social media about loving our neighbors without conditions, a member of my sister’s ward responded that “We love legal immigrants and everyone else can work on becoming that so that we can love them too.”
This sentiment reflects what I have experienced in my own community, and I am once again left disappointed and heartbroken that the church has not addressed this lack of empathy for those who are suffering, regardless of anyone’s political or legal standing. I am frankly so tired of being held eternally hostage by an institution that tells me I can only be empathetic if people are following the rules.
Otherwise, if I empathize too much with those that may be existing outside of our norms, my eternal progression may be in jeopardy. I am also tired by those that say earthly matters are not something to be concerned about and therefore the church can choose to remain neutral. But again, what about those suffering in the here and now?
How can we be Christ-like in temporal matters? Anyway, thank you for your platform and for building a community that helps me know I’m not alone in my struggles with the church.
Voicemail 2: Hi. I was just listening to your episode about empathy, and towards the end you started talking about how we are prioritizing as a church the law over love.
And it just occurred to me that the law is love and Jesus very clearly states that the two great commandments are to love God and to love our neighbor, and that on this hang all the other laws of the prophets. So if we are not loving, we are not following the law.
Voicemail 3: Hi, Cynthia and Susan. Yesterday I had kind of like an extreme Mormon experience and I just wanted to share.
We signed our daughter up for her first BYU sports camp yesterday. She’s 14 and has been a competitive athlete for a few years, so she’ll be attending one of their more advanced camps. Since she’s a competitive athlete, she is very used to being in her athletic uniform, which is a tank top and shorts.
So, she was really excited for the camp and then we were going over the info packet with her. And we got to the part about dress standards, and when she read the line that her tank top and shorts have to be covered whenever she’s not like actively practicing or competing, including when she’s walking around campus, going to eat a meal, even [00:55:00] potentially going to the bathroom.
She laughed out loud, like she thought it was a joke. She asked us if that was serious. We all were kind of laughing with her because we’re like, oh, surely she’s there for sports camp as an athlete. Like she can wear her tank top and her shorts around. No, you can’t. They have to be covered. It was just kind of like, absurd.
So we were all laughing about it together. She does think that she’ll have fun at the camp, but she was just like, I don’t think that this is gonna be a place that I want to attend to go to school. My husband and I did both go to BYU for our undergraduate degrees and we’ve since gone on to attend graduate school in other states, including his being an Ivy League school.
And our children have only been raised in major US cities. So the schools that they attend, and have always attended, are very openly and proudly dress code free. They instead choose to teach children to be responsible for how they look and to make sure that they’re dressed appropriately for whatever they’re doing, instead of making a billion little rules about what needs to be covered and what body part needs to be showing or not showing, and how many inches something needs to be.
And it just is such a contrast to see that a church that’s supposed to be teaching us how to live is the one that’s imposing a billion little rules, whereas the schools and the world that my children live in are the ones that are actively trying to teach them to make good choices about how they present themselves.
Voicemail 4: Hi, Cynthia and Susan. This is Monica. I’m responding to the knowledge that all of my brothers and sisters who are not heterosexual or cisgender have been taught that they must live a chaste, lonely life. One of the deepest strengths that has come to me as an adult is to have a significant person in my life that I share a deep trust with.
And with that trust comes intimacy, both physical and spiritual and emotional. And for us to say, if your person that you find that fills that spot in your life doesn’t help you look like you belong in the Family: A Proclamation to the World, if it doesn’t look celestial like it is printed out in that document, you are not within God’s law.
And I find that so sad. I find that heartbreaking. And I don’t believe that my father in heaven would create children in such a way that they cannot love in the way that he is going to allow it. And then that he would also tell them that they’re not enough and they’re not okay and they’re not acceptable.
And they must also remain single and alone for their earth life. And then just hope that eternity works it all out. I can’t reconcile that. It’s such a cognitive dissonance within my heart and my mind that I’ve rejected completely.
CW: Don’t forget, we have a website: atlastshesaidit.org. That’s where you can find all of our content.
You can contact our team, send us a voicemail, find transcripts, buy our book, subscribe to our Substack, or make a tax deductible donation. Paid subscribers get extra stuff including access to our community chats, and also Zoom events with us. Remember, your support keeps the podcast ad-free. Thanks for listening.