Spoil Your Baby Ep 44 – I’m Right, You’re Stupid: Healing Adult Sibling Wounds

Introduction to Adult Sibling Healing 0:00

And so as we started going through this, it was very clear that adult sibling healing is a universally overlooked population in the mental health field. If you go on Psychology Today and you try to find somebody and they have a list of all the different things that you can you know, single out to try to find just the right fit for you. Nowhere on there does it say adult sibling healing. Everything else exists but that. And so we realized that we needed to create a modality to heal it for ourselves.

That's how this began as well. I love it. Welcome everybody to spoil your baby podcast. I am so excited to be here with sisters today. Jessica and blooma Jessica is an entrepreneur and bloom is a clinical psychologist who has worked for over 20 years with dyads or pairs, including couples parents and children and people who are co-workers. So thank you both so much for being here. I didn't reveal the mystery of the topic yet, but let's first just say hello. Welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having us, Brie.

We're so excited. Yeah. So we connected over your new book that's coming out. Um, we'll have the link for everyone to check it out, um, it's a very exciting new area for us to understand ourselves, understand where we come from, and also to possibly heal and parent. Tell us what it's about. Well, let's see the title first because it is so fun and it just speaks to most people. It's called, I'm right, you're stupid. That's what you say to your sibling.

The Book and the Origin Story 2:00

I am right you are stupid and then growing up your siblings relationship. And we wrote it together. We hate each other our entire lives. Until the pandemic, we figured out slowly on Zooms how to heal our relationship. And early on we realized that no one else is doing this. No one is healing their sibling relationship or not a large portion of the population. So we started documenting it. Because of Bluma's background as a psychologist, she was able to add some pieces of that. But then also we're both love research.

And so we really dove in deep regarding looking at what already exists out there, which is not a lot. So that reinforced that we were on the right path to help other people. That's amazing that you did it through your own experience and sort of just stumbled upon this topic and the healing. Also through Zoom, that's really interesting too. The pandemic really changed things for people in a lot of ways and we prioritized our relationships, I think, during that time. Absolutely. You said stumbled, but I would almost say it smacked us straight in the face because it was just a constant reminder that no matter what work we did in our individual lives to enhance ourselves, to heal ourselves every time Jessica and I got back together, whether it was on the phone or in person.

It was just like something in us drove this origin story of our pain to dominate how we interacted with each other dominate our anything that we would have preferred to have tried a different approach. And so, as we started going through this, it was very clear that adult sibling healing is a universally overlooked population in the mental health field. If you go on Psychology Today and you try to find somebody and they have a list of all the different things that you can you know, single out to try to find just the right fit for you.

Nowhere on there does it say adult sibling healing. Everything else exists but that. And so we realized that we needed to create a modality to heal it for ourselves. That's how this began as well. I love it. So tell us, what is the root then of some of this relationship wounding for siblings. How does it form? Where does come from? What did you discover in that realm? Lots of things. We'll both talk about a few different things A big thing that I wasn't even aware of before is family legacy burdens that it came from one generation to another.

I was a Black sheep and my sister was the favorite. My mom was The Black Sheep.

Family Legacy and Childhood Roles 5:00

Her sister is the favourite. And my grandma was A Blacksheep and her sister's favourite and it goes on and on. Yeah. That's just our mom's side. There's also a dad's. Exactly. We broke those generational ties. Done. Go ahead. Yes, that's important, so important. Because you both have children too. Absolutely. And, you know, Jessica and I, I think the big part of how, excuse me, ladies, a big of part how we were able to even have perspective on how important this was is because in our own motherhoods, which we did not really cross over for the years that we had young children.

We were estranged for, most of that. But, you know, we each have gone through stories that we experienced of seeing our own children, having our reactions to one of them thinking, gosh, oh, he's just like Jessica, or she's like Bluma, and we had those experiences. And also giving us perspective on what we didn't get. and still not knowing how to do it for ourselves and trying to figure out how do do for our kids. So I think that in our book, we talk about like that there's, you know, roots to things within the sibling relationship.

And there are roots things to how the parents, act as barometers for how siblings understand how far you can go with one sibling or another. The roots are deep and they're broad, breath and depth. Well, and when you say that, how far you can go, meaning in front of your parent, like, we'll all give an example of our relationship in our family dynamic. Bluma would verbally and emotionally abuse me and my mom would do nothing and I would be saying, mom, come on, she's saying like it would, it's like she is so amazing with words.

positively and negatively and she's just like this master of words and so it like really hurt me to my core and plus she is my sibling of course, right? She's family. And then then I would act out because like I wasn't being heard. And so I was physically then beat her up. Um, and it just, my mom, then, I, would be punished. Right. So they created this whole dynamic of over and over, over of the same thing throughout our pattern throughout out lives. Well, no, but it's so important, Jessica, because when she's describing it right now, she is looking at it from what happened for her, that I did this thing and she reacted.

From my perspective, I was like, She did thing, and I reacted, And I think that that is a really important part of the root of this sibling aspect of it, right? Because, you know, only in 2017, We're talking about the 70s between us. Did she come to have a realization? Wait, hang on. I was always told that it was my fault, but she did this thing too. And it took until 2019 for me to really be able to internalize that and understand that, yeah, in fact, even though I always felt like I the victim to her abuse, And she felt like she was the victim to mine.

Actually, we both became both roles for each other. And it's very hard to shut down and not shutdown. It's Very hard. To open yourself to an acceptance that you played a role in that dynamic when you only ever thought that You were abused. I realize that that's kind of a controversial thing to say for people who may not want to hear it that way. But as children, you are little, we're three and six, or you know, you don't have the skill set. And that's where the parent role really does need to come in.

That was not really a big part of our story. Yeah, it really takes a lot of maturity to be able to know there's a child's perspective and a children's story, which is probably the story that is still alive in us. Then that story we can have about what happened standing back in this time. Absolutely. Yeah, and a lot of, you know, a lots of the parents that I work with have multiple children and this is hard for them to navigate, right? Like navigate like... For everyone. You know from the young years all the way up.

So what are some things that make, that can like make the sibling relationship healthy? that the parent can do. Like I know you talked about that you know, you felt your mom wasn't protecting you was not mediating or teaching or guiding these kind of interactions. What what would you talk about all of it? Like what? What's your analysis of that? So I want to talk more further about archetypes in a second. But I will say for me as a parent, early on, I was like, my first reaction was my, what I, was taught from my parent, you know, how my parents showed up yelling, like we lived in a somewhat chaotic, or it was very chaotic.

Let me just take ownership. It was chaotic there were no, there weren't really no boundaries. And, and so as a parent when I became one, No, that's not how I want to show up. And partly why I had this realization about that is because I have done 10 years of Del Carnegie, How to Win Friends and Influence People, which showed me how to treat people. I didn't get that teaching from my parents and any of us did in our family. When I got to this point, I Googled and also listened deeply to how I wanted to raise my children, right?

Parenting, Co-Regulation, and Sibling Conflict 11:00

How I want to talk to them in a way when they fought, I did not choose sides, Right? I said, this is how you contributed, This is How You Contributed. And when I gave them, you know, they need to take a break after that. and then when it came back to, okay, let's talk about this, I eventually had them write a letter to each other or, you know, depending on what age they were, if they couldn't write, to explain internally what they loved about this person, their sibling, not anything external. You have pretty eyes, nothing like that.

It had to be who they was as a character, as human being, so that they could see the beauty in each and see beyond what the were currently fighting about. That's really nice, Jeff. I would like to answer it from like two levels, like from the individual level and from, the system level. As a parent, we go through pregnancy and then we have a baby and we're alone with it and everyone says, oh, you'll figure it out or they give you advice and it doesn't work and is very stressful. That period of time that right before you give birth and right after you get birth is this very, I would say stressful time.

When we had our baby, and were going through that, We need support in a way that very likely, I'm sure, you know, your listeners, we talked a little bit about this before that, before we got on the podcast that we feel very alone, abandoned in some ways by our family when we have children. And I think people also just feel angry. They're like, Why am I? Like, this is not supposed to be like this. Where are my people? Why aren't people showing up? Even if it's unconscious. Some people might actually know it.

Like I feel like I need to mothered or have a sister or someone take care of me. But unconsciously, I think everybody feels it because it... And also angry that it's so hard. Like everyone, you know, have this dream of having a baby and then this baby does it and you're tired and all these kind of things. And I think that that plays into a lot of how, my goodness, this talk, how a of this, so how the stress plays out and that's the key piece about the first aspect is the individual. So, maybe your listeners know this was something new for us to learn that, Stress is really cortisol running through our body.

I mean, at least that's the most common in mammals, right? And the way that stress is regulated by mammals is through glucocorticoid receptors, which we could just call GRs, okay? The more GR a person has, the more they can manage stress in a successful way. The major way we acquire GR is though the nurturing that we receive by our mothers or care, primary caretakers. And it's a very critical period in that very early time. What you get is what you can't develop more. I was just going to say this, that's the individual, the partner is the system.

So then what happens if you have a parent who is not necessarily knowing how to co regulate you toward calm, then you're going to code dysregulate. And if you don't learn how To calm your system, you are going To be in a situation of feeling a lot of chronic stress. If the system itself, it operates that way, and you there are siblings, everybody has to figure out what role do they play to bring the System to some version of homeostasis, some Version of calm. And that's where these archetypes come in and everybody sort of figures out what role fits them or what roll is ascribed to them, right?

So Jessica was a very active, excited, curious child who probably didn't want to sleep that much, probably wanted to stay up late. I mean, I have a kid like that as well. And it's exhausting. Honestly, it is. And if you aren't a person who, I mean, our mother was, is a low energy person. And so it was a very mismatch of energy fit. So Jessica became difficult, became spastic, become words that were just became her identity on a level. Then she operated as this difficult black sheep kind of, you know, rebel.

And it goes on with other siblings. And so I think that's another part of how like, you know, I became the favorite in the sense in part because I was so different than Jessica. I wasn't like that at all. I don't agree with energy level. I have a lot of energy. So we both are word nerds. You know, we're both word, nerd. And so I think that was a place that it was not a mismatch. Yeah. Yeah, and I think that's, you know, that you bring up like a big concern of parents, right? You know we talk about, a lot of people ask me like, how close together should I have siblings?

When will I know it's the right time? Or if they do have, I mean, especially if you have two babies, like two under, two or more children under three years old or twins or triplets or multiples. Exactly, yeah. It's all open now. Then they're worried, right? They're like, how do I regulate these two nervous systems? How do how I have multiple children and be that regulator, the co-regulator, or the nurturer and all of these things? So I feel like that's enough. That is a separate question. But I think the question for you, you know, since you brought up that, that is the major role of the mother.

Well, not just the mother, both, but hopefully if you have a husband as well or another person. Mostly the primary caregiver, right? Whoever is with the children the most. Of course, we want both parents to be involved. Like, please be involve. We already talked about how much mothers need help. Yes. But, you know, typically that's what it looks like, right? There's usually like the mother or one parent who's the primary caregiver. Sometimes people split it though, and that is lovely too. But it's almost like comes up in my mind is like if that resource is limited, like or primary caregiver only has a certain amount of co-regulation to give, is that a source like for the children?

I mean, I think, Bluma, you talked about then, if that's true, then siblings will have to kind of figure out their survival. scheme, right? Like they're sort of competing energies, you know, your your competing for, I mean, You are competing For attention and attention can be the kind it can love, it Can be belonging, It can Be harmony, Can Be, fairness, Those are things that we're pulling for. So that we and it is a feeling of survival it feel I mean if you look at little kids They are it's a very black and white time for them.

You know, she gets I don't there's an unless a parent, you know finds a way of doing that It's gonna be I never told my kids would sometimes say oh, he's the favorite and I I Intentionally, I don't have, and I know lots of people's parents say this, that I have a fever, but I found opportunities to, like my daughter for a while was saying, you don' get me. And so I've found opportunity to get her, right? To say, look, well I would show, be in the act of whatever the situation was, And I'd find an opportunity and say look I get you.

Because my mom did the opposite. I mean, she did amazing in lots of other ways, like dyslexia, and she gave me a lot of attention. That's where her focus was with me. And that actually is interesting, Jessica. Yeah. Well, ultimately, the parent is the adult, their prefrontal cortex is fully developed. So many parents are like, let them figure it out. This is where we feel very strongly about that that is not they are the child, they need parental supervision, I get teens to saying, you know, it's what is the saying right now is, um, It's not that deep.

But it is it your job to as an adult, as the parent, to help them learn how to regulate and to create the relationship between them and because the the Relationship with your sibling is the first relationship that you learn How to get along with someone or not get a long with some one and this is how you end up attracting future relationships work relationships and intimate relationships, best friends, people who either abuse you or don't. And 90% of us have siblings and 70% percent of all domestic violence that's reported to the police is from sibling abuse and it's higher than spousal.

We want to put an end to that. It's unacceptable. I'm going to start crying. That bullying is acceptable inside the family and is called rivalry. No. Wow. Really powerful. You know, Jessica, you brought up something which is that, that mom did this thing between us and made you feel excluded and, and and make you like the fall guy, if you will. And then there was this other part of her that showed up in spades for your dyslexia. That was actually something that was really difficult for me because then it meant that my mother would take me out of school sometimes to Taco Bell and have lunch and then bring me back to school just to give me a little time.

So I think that when we try to tell moms I mean, OK, primary caregivers. But I'll use moms as the category of primary care givers just for ease of language. I didn't know how to regulate myself. In fact, that's something that we've learned as we have healed our sibling relationship. Honestly, we rewired the part of us that did not know to do that. And Stephen Porges, maybe he's this really cool you know, I think he's a psychologist, but he wrote a book called The Polyvagal Theory.

Stress, Nervous System Regulation, and Repair 22:00

And we used a lot of that in the way that we learned. We used the science of to look at what we could do for ourselves. This is something that mothers can do. So the idea is that, we have this nerve, there's the vagus nerve and it's in base of your brain, and its the longest nerve in your entire body. It goes all the down into your upper diaphragmic organs, it goes up into you mouth and your ears and eyes. And it is an autonomic nervous system, meaning you are not meant to control it. In fact, you can't control.

You can try to your eyes from blinking for a little bit, but eventually like, oh, it's too hard. I don't feel like digesting right now. All these different things. Sometimes we might like that. The one part of our body that's a part this auto system is our breath. That's the one thing that we can use to tell our fight or flight, which is that, you know, it's like, okay, scary situation. What do I do here? Fear comes up and cortisol levels get high. If you're like us, and I mean, I would say my glucocorticoid receptor development was a little bit small because I didn't feel that I had the ability to calm and stressful situations, I can tell my body as an adult, okay, girl, this is not, you know, a saber tooth tiger, it is okay to breathe and calm yourself down and not read the situation as scary.

and getting yourself into a calm place. And so when your baby, you put your Baby down and you're like, okay, I can go and have a coffee. I go, and just sit in quiet, take a bath and then five seconds after you walk away your, baby starts crying again. That is a very stressful situation for a mother. So to be able to take five, five breaths, three breaths just slow in inhale and very slow piercing your lips like you are blowing through a straw. exhalation and just really squeeze all that air out of your diaphragm.

If you can do that three times, that's like the that would be my golden number. You can get your body to come into a place where all of a sudden now you Can bond again with your baby and connect. And yeah, you might have to do That regularly. But I that something that we can. That's an idea of what Yeah, it's amazing. I love that. you know, You're offering that suggestion to parents to like be present in the disputes between children to regulate them. And the other thing I always advocate for too is to help repair.

Oh, thank you for bringing that up. Yes. Because as you said, this is a very important early relationship. We'll talk about how that can trigger you in other relationships or maybe influence how you pick other relationship or attract other relations later on. But the repair process, I teach my son all the time, and it's still taking hundreds and hundreds of discussions. Of course. We just have to repeat, repeat as a parent. Exactly. Because it gets so annoying. But that is so important, too. I would have loved to have had that in my sibling relationship.

We talk about, you know, perspective taking a lot in our book because, as adults, we have lived with our experience, our lived experience of what it was like to be a child sibling with each other. And so sometimes most siblings don't ever really talk experienced. And so as we were starting to heal our relationship, Jessica telling me her version of events, I was like, Oh, you know, my instinct is to want to correct her error of, of you, how she sees it and vice versa. Because if we take, if, we, take in her truth and say, yeah, that that, i, did that to you.

I, was toxic to, to i was verbally abusive to then suddenly I'm the bad guy, but I told myself this whole time that I am the victim. So there's, it's very difficult to be able to to do that, and so, but it's vital. That's the healing is being able to hear and take in someone's perspective. The earlier we teach that to children, the better chance they have at being to it for themselves. And repair feels so challenging when if we learn it, it is always available. It's actually quite straightforward to repair.

Our hearts always want it. Right? Almost always. Yes. Exactly. Yes, and also going to the breathing, something else that we did together and would be good to include the children in this exercise is grounding, where you stand and go through each part of your body because it helps you, like I'll give an example, you start with your feet and you feel your foot rooted in the ground in wherever you are. It's nice to do it in grass, but not everyone has that. So like if you're in your bedroom, fine. And you'll feel you feet grounding and rooting into the crown and then you go to your ankles and feel being a part of that part your body and then you go to your calves and really feel your cast and see work your whole way up.

And when you're able to do that you actually because when get up when we get dysregulated you are outside yourself. When you start doing this and grounding yourself you get back into who you aren't into your more regulated, calm and connected to God, right? To the universe, to who you are. And when you do that, and when we did that together, it helped us. That was a part, we talk about that in the book too. It really, Dr. Wayne Dyer is, I think is where I learned it first, but oh no, no. I learnt it from this Rathbork woman.

But anyways, It, really does help you and your children to, If you can do that, because you could do it in the bathroom, right? Meaning, if you're at work or if a kid is at school, you go into a stall and do this. You could, obviously, find everyone if they're confident and comfortable to do, but if Do it in a in install and and we just can I use this together just gonna use us together so that we would co regulate each other okay and I think that that's a very key point that you can teach this early early kids know how to breathe.

And you can do deep breath work with little ones. It's easy. That's a lifelong thing, right? So Jessica and I did a lot of like co regulating each other in those moments when we would get stressed. And we will try to before we, you know, if we were trying to solve a problem, and it was just escalating, it let's just do some breathing and center ourselves. And the Gottman's talk a lot about this with work that once your heart rate gets above 100 beats per minute, you are not able to be creative or constructive at all.

So there's no point in trying because it's not gonna work. Rather calm your body down, get your fight or flight back into a calm place where you're like, okay, let us connect again. Let us find our bond. Lets find the place we can feel connected and calm together. I love that our children are so lucky that we can teach them these things and us too, right? Because this can be helpful in our mothering and our relationships and all kinds of things like that. So why don't we shift to the kind of the topic of healing the sibling wounds?

because, you know, I think so much of that discussion we've already had is so helpful for our moms who are thinking either have multiple children or thinking of multiple Children. But they're also interested in healing themselves, rewiring their own nervous systems towards health. A lot of them, like as Booma mentioned, did have low amounts of nurture. as a child and they do have low GR glucocorticoid expression and their whole nervous system, right, is more vulnerable to stress. And they're finding tremendous healing in their mother heads.

I think you two felt that as well. But this is a new topic, healing the sibling wound. So how can that rewire our nervous systems towards calm and that security that we talked about? I first want to say, you know, our titles, I'm right, You're stupid. And what we realized, and that's how people look at it before they do this work. But what realized doing the work together is we're both right. Both our truths are our truth and our right and so to be a witness to what they experienced and being present and curious about that when they're doing, explaining their truth.

and really taking ownership of it, even if you don't remember what happened, but giving that, giving love and compassion to them and vice versa. Then, you know, one person takes a turn and then, then the other person, takes the turn, and you share, you know, if you remember any part of that situation and you say, you don't like, like I don' remember a lot from my childhood because I compartmentalized because it was so chaotic. And so there are things that Bluma said, oh my God, I'm so sorry that I did that even if I didn't remember because that's her truth.

That's what she experienced. and that then helps you have this, your energy can be calm. And then what ends up happening is when you do this together, because it started together. We tried to do work separately individually, but because all of this are trauma, not everyone has so much trauma. Actually a very common thing that most people say is, I don't have issues with my sibling. I just don' talk to them. Right? Which is like, and so ultimately we all, it's our sibling relationship is the most important relationship and you need to go back to it.

We really want to empower you to back it and take baby steps. I want add something. Yeah, yeah. Just let me finish up. Baby steps and we have obviously lots of tools and science behind it in the book. Absolutely. I just wanted to say that with little kids, Jessica brings up such an important thing that we figured out, which is not everybody encodes memory the same way.

Healing the Sibling Wound 33:00

some, you know, and so for Jessica, because she wasn't a word nerd, like I was as a young child, she encoded it differently. And so that when our mother came to ask, what happened here, girls, I would I had a very clear linear chronological way of explaining how things happened. I felt like i was right, cuz that was ripe for what I remembered. Jessica could not compete with that, even though her experience was equally valuable. And so one of the things that we came to clear. Yeah, one things we can to what we talk about how we say it in the book is it's not about accuracy.

It's about authenticity. and we have to it has to be that parents need to understand that sometimes a child may not be able to you know, give you an information about what happened as much as what they felt. So finding ways of looking at their experience and with the perspective that both children have their own experience, and both are valuable. And so it's important to try as you can to give each child the experience first of being heard, of been seen by you as the mother, as caretaker. that first and foremost, that's what needs to happen, right?

Before we then apply whatever we think or feel onto the situation, which may or may not be right, but it's irrelevant for them if we're not, you know, and I mean, we see this as, as you, know as people who are in intimate relationships. If we come and share something with our partner, And they tell us how we screwed up, or like, Hey, hey, hold on. did you hear what I said? Did you take in my position? And I think that we all just as humans want that feeling. We seek that, we long for it. And if we can teach our kids that by modeling it for them and also giving them the lived experience of that.

I that that's a way that mothers could. It really, really reframes like sibling disagreements, right? It's like siblings have a, you know, I feel like old way is like, siblings, have an disagreement. Mom or dad come in as like the referee and call it like okay, but you're right. You're wrong this time. Your fine. you get a punishment. But, looking at it this way, it's coming from, the reflective functioning, kind of approach where it's like, I'm so curious about what's your emotional experience in this disagreement.

I am so curios about yours. We can share that and understand it. And then, you know, later work on, once everyone's calm, we can work like how can we treat each other more kindly next time or like mediate something like this, right? That's so different to look at it that way. Jessica doesn't love this so much, but I feel that it was really helpful for me and helpful to us at different times. If I can't think of what to do and I know whatever my instinct is right now is not what I want to I tried to think what would be the opposite of this thing, you know?

And so there was a moment between Jessica and I when we were fighting, Jessica, as we're on this journey of healing, we are filming our documentary that, roots to our document that we did together. And we were having a disagreement and we just were finding ourselves returning to that energy, not the style. It was our first time also being together in person where we had been on Zoom. So that is an important. That's exactly right. And we were worried about, you know, because one of the ideas in our methodology is that the healing needs to start at a two-dimensional, like on the computer, not in person, okay?

Because we get too triggered by our nonverbal communication. And so it was the first time we are together and, and are standing there trying to be seen and heard by each other. It was not working. I just grabbed her and I hugged her, which was opposite of how I was feeling in that moment. But it just it soothed. And so I find and I do this as a mother also, you know, I my instinct is to say things that is not going to be helpful. So wait, hold it. What do they need to hear right now? What did they mean to feel from you right?

Now, before I, and that that, that it's a practice, it is a skill, a muscle that we have to learn. It's not easy. Yeah, I imagine. I'm sorry, go ahead. Well, the way I did that with my kids is I, so that I didn't know what to say, but I Googled, like, what does every human want to hear? And so I googled those things and I had them in my phone so in that moment that they were blah, and like I would say these things to them to make them feel loved and seen and heard so. And it anchored you. Well, right, exactly.

Yeah, I always say that you can talk to your inner child while you're talking to you. That's exactly right. And Jessica would have loved to have had those things said to her during that moment. You're exactly, we reparent ourselves as we parent our children. I mean, at least That's what I did. Yeah. Amazing. So, you went through this amazing journey, written a book. It's so exciting. Tell us, to sum it up, what have been the benefits for you? How did reconnecting and repairing change your experience?

I mean, honestly, it made it so obvious of who I wanted in my life and didn't anymore. It just became so like clear. And so I had this, I live in Austin, Texas now, but I was in Scottsdale at the time. I told my friend group I'm not going to hang out with this one person anymore, if you invite her to a party I will interact with her, all act normal. But I am not going to invite her to my place. I'm not gonna instigate anything regarding her. She's not nice to me, she's abusive. And everyone even acknowledged to her throughout time that she was abusive and so it just made it so clear of Like, it took the glasses off of how my old way of seeing human beings were because we healed each other.

And then, I mean, the second thing I'll say, and then Bluma, is that it allowed me to pursue what I always really wanted to pursuit of who I'm meant to be in this world. It opened my purpose, even wider lens, which is what I'm pursuing now. It just changes your whole life in a positive way. Amazing. Sounds like a real feeling. Beautiful. Yeah. I think that how I would like to say what happened for me is that I look at these origin stories, these pain points from our past that are like a terrarium, okay?

Like I imagine this terrerium and then like these plants just sort of growing out growth, going up like tentacles, and they're receptors for protecting us from this pain that we never want to experience again because it's so deep and and vital to our survival at such an early age and it's how we learn how to cope. And so by going into those origin stories and healing them, the all of these tentacles to receive danger signals from way up top, suddenly these things started to recede and I wasn't as tender or triggered or reactive to things that had been so definitive for me, defined my personality and my stressors.

And then I suddenly started different than Jessica, I started to feel less in need of controlling my outer environment because I felt safe inside that

Benefits of Reconnection and Family Growth 42:00

I could manage it from my end. And so if somebody showed up that way, in the moment, feel safer and more comfortable to be okay with my with how I reacted instead of worrying that I might overreact and then burn a bridge or not react and resent and all these other things and So, I love that shift, right? Being able, and I found that in my healing as well, through other ways. I haven't looked at this yet. But yeah, you can, know that you have safety inside, You know, love yourself, have these amazing resources inside.

And so you don't need to control and you know you figure that out, that You can't control. And it takes time, you know? Right. And you can hear that. I think when I say I was able to go into my purpose, really, it's there's this quiet voice that you hear inside of you. Yes. You don't listen to it that often because there are all these other energies and emotions screaming, right, to be heard and seen and understood. And when you can, like Bluma was saying, the terrarium, when can like prune it, you know, or love towards it more, then you could hear that inner voice that is quiet whispering to you to listen to.

Beautiful. I imagine also as an opening to look together at some of the wounds, Like the parental wounds. Oh my gosh, I knew that alone. Yes, we had one of the first conflicts that we have as we were healing had to do with our mother. And, you know, in the interest of time, I won't go into it here. But the but you have to address not just how we felt about each other, but then the family dynamic came in. How do we deal with this family dynamics in a way that allows us to still hold the healing that we have worked so hard for and also have these relationships be what they were slash are and actually as we as you heal your adult sibling relationship it does impact.

positively, the family dynamic, you know, it has no other option but to do that, right. So Jessica and our mother ended up starting to have real conversations about things. And our mom, amazingly, has been supportive of our journey this entire time, even though she and listen, our dad has a whole story here too. Okay, I'm not going to go into that. But But, you know, it is a real part of that process too. So they were able to grow that as well. She's a big part the documentary and not in it, but the discussion of it.

And she's gone to multiple, we've been in film festivals, she has gone multiple film festival and people who come ask her, how do you feel about that? And, and she says that's not who I am anymore. Yeah, and also she and I have healed in a lot of different areas and she's 80 something years old and now that I am taking care of my needs and have Bluma and other beautiful people in my life, I can, you know, not allow, but I witness her as her and not need to like Bluma saying control it like just, or if I'm uncomfortable with it, like with me building my business right now, she has a lot of anxiety around things in life.

And I said to her, I don't want to hear it. It doesn't help me. with the path that I'm going on. I already have my own that i'm worrying about and you giving me yours is is making it not healthy for me. So Jessica used to experience that, I think. And I mean, i can say that we have the same thing that Jessica used to really feel frustrated by our mother's intention around that. I think we've come to another part of this healing is that you have the ability to give people grace because you know that a lot of what people are responding to has nothing to do with you.

It's their story. Its their stresses. Yeah. Jessica can have love, can hold love and friendship for our mom. even though she doesn't like what our mothers saying or doing in that moment. And I think that that's, you know, we're using our mom as an example, but that, that is the growth of this.

Resources, Archetypes, and Closing 47:00

That's how powerful this feeling is. If you can get your relationship with your mom, it's pretty much everyone. Yes. Well, thank you so much for this amazing discussion and introduction into your work. We'll put some links down in the episode. Let us know, where can people find out more and get your book and all that fun stuff? So it's your SIB hub, like your, Y-O-U-R, and then SIBC, sibling, S-I-B, then hub A to B. and we're going to also share we prepared for your to specifically for today and archetype.

We didn't go into great detail regarding it, but it's fun to see who you are and who your sibling, well, Luma, you can explain it more. Yeah, right. So we talked just briefly about like this idea of archetypes, so Jessica was the black sheep and I was favorite. You can have a golden child, the rebel, have the overlooked one, invisible one. Everybody identifies in different ways with their role. Each one of us is different. And so we created a little fun quiz for your listeners that if they want, you know, to, verify what they may already know intuitively as who they were and also who maybe their sibling, maybe they'll want to know give their, their siblings the quiz and see or their friend or partner and like see who are.

It gives us a blip about what that role was, what the gifts of that roll is, you know, strengths or maybe areas you could improve. And then just a little way of thinking about it, you just clinically a bit, just teensy tiny bit. So that's on the website. I was just thinking of all the people, when you said the archetypes, I think of the all people I know. Yeah. It is a great place to start to understand yourself. Great. We'll put all of links up and thank you both again. Thank you. Thanks so much for being here.