Welcome back to become a calm mama. Today on the

podcast, I am interviewing Tracy Yocus,

who is the author of a memoir called bloodlines,

a memoir of harm and healing. And on the

podcast, we talk about her journey as a mother of

a teenager who went through a mental health

crisis, particularly dealing with eating disorders and self

harm in terms of cutting. And Tracy so

beautifully describes in her book and on this podcast sort

of what the struggle was, like, what how hard it is to have a

child going through a mental health crisis, and then some of the things that

she learned through the process that helped her cope and

heal and have, her daughter heal as well.

Now, this memoir is written 10 years later, and so

her daughter is healthy and and they have a beautiful

relationship, and her daughter gives her permission to share her story. I

wanted to first just let you know that if this

episode might be difficult for you to hear about these

things or it might if it might scare you to think about

a teenager going through something hard, like, maybe you have a 4 year old and

you already have some anxiety about them when they're teenagers, you don't have to listen

to this episode. Like, you could just skip it. But if you have a a

daughter or a son who has some mental health issues and

you are struggling with them and you you're worried about them or

you're in any sort of area of your life or your kids,

either they have a medical crisis or they have a health mental health crisis,

then this episode is gonna be really, really helpful for

you. I'm gonna just tell you a little bit about Tracy, and then we're gonna

hop right into the episode. Like I said, Tracy Yocas is the

author of Bloodlines, a memoir of harm and healing. The book came out

this past year. Tracy earned her master's degree in counseling

psychology, and she lives in Newbury Park near me with her

family, her cats, and her fish. And when she's not writing about

mental health, she can be found with playing with paint,

glitter, and glue. She loves to bring

people together through art in order to help

women in their journey towards authenticity. And she

creates safe spaces where art words and vulnerability

meet. I think you will love this episode with her. You're gonna

love listening to her and learning more about her journey.

Yeah. We talk about how important compassion is and

what it's really truly like to sit in a big feeling

cycle when your child is really struggling and how to be that

compassionate witness that we always talk about on this podcast. So without

further ado, let's get into it.

Alright. I am so excited to introduce to you all

Tracy Yocus. I introduced her in our, intro.

And so welcome, Tracy. I'm so happy to have you here. I'm very

excited to be here. Thank you. Yeah. I was just

telling you that we just met, and it's so great. Like, you know, so nice

to meet you. And I was saying to you that I loved your book. If

you could just tell us a little bit about your book, the title,

and kinda share a little bit about it, and then we'll get into, like, all

the part that I loved and the nitty gritty of it all. Oh, the juicy

goodness. Yes. Thank you. So the name of the book is Bloodlines, a

memoir of harm and healing. I like to start out by saying

2 things. 1 is it took me over a decade to write it, so it

was definitely a labor of love. And I didn't

realize as I was going through the process, but it was a huge component.

Coming back to the page over and over and over again was a huge component

in my own healing journey, so I just like to set the stage

with that. And I also like to say that I feel

like it should be obvious, but it's not in today's day and age that I

have my family's permission. We are all, in our own ways,

very passionate advocates for talking about mental health,

mental illness, recovery. So I just like people to know

right off the bat that, yes, I had my family's permission

to tell our story. Yeah. Right. Because the book is

a very intimate journey into kind

of a year in your life when you were handling or dealing with a

mental health crisis with your teenage daughter, Faith, at

the time she was in 8th grade. Yeah? Like, 13 to

14? Correct. It was the summer. My mom passed away

suddenly the summer before her 8th grade year. So it started a little

before that, but then, yes, through that and slightly beyond.

Yeah. And and now she you know, a decade later, she's like a grown

adult, and so we can all feel very hopeful that the things that

you learned through that experience and what faith learned and how you grew together

really set you all up for, you know, the the future. Of course,

it's not perfect. None of us have a perfect, you know,

Mary Poppins world. We're all dealing with things, but you both

created and your husband too a foundation for having these deeper,

meaningful, connected conversations, and how to support each other, and

all the tools and stuff we're gonna get into. So beautiful. Percent.

Yeah. Thank you. So, I was

kinda summarizing that the book is about, you

know, healing from grief, which

I do really think about grief in a very specific way. It's not

just sadness. It's like a loss of something that you cannot get

back. And then this case, it was your your mom passing away

suddenly like you said. So you're in your grief process. Your daughter

was close to her, so you're both kind of experiencing grief.

And then generational trauma, so your own kind

of childhood woundedness and whatever you brought to parenting,

which we all do. And then how that

affected faith and what kinda showed up for her was this eating disorder,

self harm, depression, anxiety. So it is,

like, precipitating things coming into the to the soup

and then what, you know, what that journey looked like for faith.

So we're gonna talk a lot about kind of your experience

having a child go through a mental

health crisis, in particular, her eating

disorder and and self harm. So I wondered if you could just start by

talking to us about what you learned about eating disorders

and, and self harm in that process.

Because for a lot of us, you know, if you haven't dealt with that yourself

or had a family member, you're thrown in. You don't even know what

you don't know what you don't know at that time. Mhmm.

Exactly. Yeah. And well, thank you for that intro. That

covered a lot of ground. Yes. So that

was her first symptom about 3 weeks after my mom passed

away as you eloquently pointed out. And just anecdotally,

the more of these conversations I have, the more often I hear the same

story that the young person experienced the loss

of someone significant in their life, and that precipitated a much

more significant mental health crisis.

So I hope that whoever studies this sort of

thing, is really doing some more

in-depth work around that because it feels to me and, again,

I am, not a clinician. I do have a master's degree in

counseling psychology, which I had before my daughter became ill, which back

then was just one more thing I used to punish myself for somehow

being unable to prevent, you know, this from happening to us.

But, I really think there's a a piece of something missing there. I

don't know what it is. I don't pretend to know what it is, but something

about this idea of loss at that critical phase

in our development in those teen years

that we're we're missing about how to help our kids with that experience.

But that aside, yes, I mean, she woke up one day, and she just

suddenly wasn't, you know, as hungry as she was, and she began eating

less. But that very quickly escalated

into not really wanting to eat anything at all. And I knew

quickly, so it was not something that took months months months to identify.

I knew pretty quickly that she was not consuming

enough food to stay healthy through puberty, and she was an athlete and all the

things. So we went to visit the pediatrician

who, for the first visit, was, you know, you need a little more

nutrition. Let's try this, that, and the other, and me patting myself on my

back because, you know, yeah. That's good mothering. I didn't, you know, do

all whatever. So, I mean, obviously, we know

already it that did not help, and so it was a kind of a steady

decline. So what I learned about any dis disorders,

which I hope people really hear this because I

think we're so skewed in

this culture about the female form and food

and weight and body image. And, you

know, the idea that thinness has been so popularized and is so

important, it can be easily missed by people who don't have experience with these

sorts of things that this is a serious mental illness. It is a real

illness. It's not someone who's just vain, and this was

reinforced as we got into the treatment with her first therapist

and nutritionist. Eating disorders are not

about retaliation to us as parents. They

are really about someone struggling in their own

life with powerlessness and control issues and

someone who really has low self esteem.

And I know that was true in my own case in my childhood, which I

try to chronicle in the book, my own journey and the patterns in

my family early on with weight, food, and body image issues.

And I didn't really overlay that with myself until much

later down the line. But these are

not ways that were just like, you know, oh,

I'm you know, I just wanna look better, so I'm

gonna not eat at all. I mean, it's much more complicated than that. Yes. For

sure. I loved it in your book. You said,

eating disorders are an unhealthy attempt to change low self

esteem, and their coping mechanism for being terrified

of not measuring up. And I have shared on

this podcast about my own struggle. I am in recovery for eating

disorder, and it it really was like to

hear see one sentence like an unhealthy attempt to change low self

esteem and then a coping mechanism. And one thing we talk about

on this podcast a a lot is that all

behavior is a strategy to communicate,

cope, or change our circumstance. And

when we go into you you we're gonna wrap up the podcast later

about talking about compassion. But when you really

deeply understand that the it's a strategy

for something that's going on inside, even if it's an eating disorder

or self harm, and it's not against you, it's not personal, it's not

because you did something wrong, It's just where they're

at. That's their way that they have found to relieve the

pressure or, you know, get control back or or

maybe control the way they look or or the way they appear.

And, yeah, just really deeply

understanding that I think is so helpful for for anyone who's

struggling with themselves even like, oh, I'm in restrictive dieting or I'm

overeating or whatever it is because I don't feel good inside.

Not because I have, I don't know, I'm lazy or

I'm not I don't know whatever negative self talk we have.

How are eating disorders and self harm tied

together? Because I do see this in my practice a lot with young

women, young girls, that it kinda go together. And I I you

really articulate that in the book, and I wondered if you could share about that.

Well, I appreciate that. I mean, that was something that I learned through doing

my own research. So why that is true, I don't

really know. I mean, it's just been proven in study and study and

study after study that it is true. And what I

am trying to do in the book, which is not a clinical

way of describing these things, but is to broaden the perspective because

we all have unhealthy coping coping mechanisms.

They might not be classically identified as self harm the

way we mean it when we're talking about what happened in my family

situation or when we're talking about it in a clinical setting, but

I feel that way that many of us, most of

us, all of us, use some form of cope

coping mechanisms sometimes that could be

considered self harming. So for me Overeating. I mean,

overworking, over shopping, like, you know, not

balancing my own budget, spending money when I don't have it, or Drinking

an entire bottle of wine every night. Yes. Exactly. Self flagellating

even is self harm. Right? If I if I look good and I got it

all together and I'm super mom, but then deep down, I'm always just

criticizing. Like, you talk about that. You're yourself self out flagellating.

That's self harm. Right? Like, we're hurting ourselves. And so, yes, all

of these are strategies. I do like one thing that you pointed out in the

book was that and I think this is really helpful if someone has

a a child who's kind of in the self harm

cutting, you know, essentially we're talking about cutting,

and also restrictive dieting or

overeating or bulimia. That as one as

one gets kind of, settled, like, the if you've like,

okay, I'm eating well and I'm not I'm not overeating, I'm not undereating,

There you'll see the coping I mean, the cutting come back. And then

cutting declines, and you might see the anorexia, or the

bulimia, or the restrictive dieting come back. And I was

like, woah, those are really tethered. And,

it's like when you lose one coping strategy,

sometimes you just replace it with another harming

one. And, like, until you really replace all, like, both of

them with new strategies, you might see this back and

forth. And, you know, as a parent, you're like, we've already

dealt with that one, and then it's back. Like, I I, yeah,

wondered how much you saw that kind of back and forth. Well,

100%. And, I mean, that was the way that one of

the, women who ran one of the clinics that my

daughter attended described it as the whack a mole. You know, as soon as

you get one symptom down, something else pops up, and then you're working on that

one. Something else pops up. You know? And that's exactly

what our experience was like. And, you know, you're also talking

about teenagers, so there's already, like, the

whole teen aspect of things that is chaotic in and of

itself. And, again, I'm gonna say this. I might sound like a

broken record by the time we're done, but it's like, we

all do that. Yeah. So it maybe is more

certainly more dramatic when the behaviors are endangering

someone someone's life. That is something that was very true

in our circumstance for my daughter, and, especially,

self harming has an addictive quality to it so that

the person needs to engage in more of it to feel the same internal

relief. And, again, I just wanna say the reason

I wanted to be so open and vulnerable about this with

our story is because, first of all, of how many people are

experiencing things similar to what we are going through. We

know, especially post pandemic, all the metrics are headed in the wrong direction.

So we just have to start talking about this stuff. But it's also

because if we take just a slightly wider

view, I mean, we all have the tendency to judge, and,

like, we're just gonna be honest about it. Like, people listening to this might be

like, oh my god. That's so this, that, and the other. But if we just

broaden out a little bit, it's really not that different than so many

things that any of us engage in when we're not feeling great about

ourselves. So and I'll be the first person to say me. I

mean, I did not my own coping skills were

not great at this time. So how did I cope? I gained £40

over the 1st year. I drank a lot because

my need to numb the pain of what we were experiencing

was just so high. And, also, because of the

type of past that I had, I had no other skills,

but this is not conscious. Right? I'm not I didn't sit down going, I'm going

to Oklahoma. I'm gonna do to cope? I'm gonna eat and drink. Yeah.

No. I mean you know? But because of my past and the

issues that I didn't even realize I was fully grappling with,

I didn't have other healthier ways to deal with the pain

that I was experiencing and feeling so powerless to help my

child. So, again, I I'm just trying

to show we're, you know, normal people sitting here. We're not you know,

whatever, and yet these things can happen. They can happen to

anyone. So if you are listening and this is your situation right

now, I just want you to know that you are not alone.

Yeah. It's so good. I think I was laughing about it's not

conscious until it is, then when you become really aware of your

strategy, then they lose a little bit of the, like,

effectiveness. You know, I'm like, my new one of my strategies

right now is, I do a little, like, boredom

online shopping. And I can I I there's, like, a certain period

of time during the week when I think I'm a little restless, a little and

I, like, find myself buying stupid stuff? And I'm like, oh, I'm

doing it. Like, it must mean that I have some

unmet need or something. So even, like,

looking on the outside, you would be like, well, that's such a terrible habit. It's

not. Sometimes we do harming 1, sometimes we don't. But we

the more aware we are of why we're doing it and what's happening.

And I love that you said symptom. I think it's so

beautiful to think about these behaviors, especially in a mental

health crisis like this as a symptom

because, like, in the medical world, right, a symptom is

because there's a root cause. And so, yeah, if you just

keep trying to prevent this symptom from happening or

prevent this behavior, we're gonna do abstinence over here and we're gonna, you

know, take all the sharps, which you need to do. But also,

your daughter had to kinda get to the bottom of where she was coming

from, what was going on inside, and learn that self inquiry

and that root the root issues. And that's what we

all have to do. Right. I agree. And I think, you know, that that

was part of our journey was just enough time going

by that she had the work that she was doing in her own

therapy and in treatment and all the steps that we took

to start to mature a little bit and explore what was going on

in her. And I think, you know, that's such an important point

because a huge part of this book, and we'll probably touch on

it again, but is we can only actually do

our own work. So as parents, of

course, especially as moms, we want to fix,

we want to eliminate the pain. I mean, that's a normal

thing to feel, especially then we want the behaviors to stop

because the behaviors are what we see. They're what we're experiencing.

So, you know, that's chaos every day. That's impacting

everybody in the family. That's all the

angst and everything going on, and there's very little

reprieve from that when you're actually in the throes

of, you know, the the situation in full force.

But, ultimately, I think it did us a disservice, and I

again, this is not something I could have identified at the time, but it did

us a disservice to be so hyper focused on the

behavior. It's not like we didn't know there was more going on, but, again,

because the behavior is what you see, the behavior is what you experience,

the behavior is what scares you, the behavior is what

overwhelms you, it gets very easy to

get lost in that aspect of it, and that's where we

can lose our compassion if we even know how to have

it in the first place. It just becomes very complicated

when you're facing these things day in and day out and day

in and day out. Yeah. Yeah. I think we think,

oh, if we can get them to just stop, like, just eat a banana, and

everything will be okay. Right. I think there was, like, one part in your book

where, like, she ate a banana and you're like, okay. And, you know

but then you find that there she's cutting again or you know? And it's

just you know? It can be so

difficult to have those behaviors, and we're they're

scary. Right? They're like health her her health, her well-being,

her physical body was, like, in danger. And so as a mom, it's

very scary, of course. It's one thing if

you have, like, a perfectionist kid who's just really obsessed with their homework, you're like,

that's not healthy, but, like, it's okay. But, like, it's

okay. Like, college, here we come. Yeah. Like,

it won't hurt them that much. I mean, we but we are still worried. But

when you see somebody hurting their body, it could be you're like, just stop doing

that, please. And she's like, I can't, and it's feels

so difficult. You're both kind of at odds. I

wanted to get into because I have

coached a lot of people through my career that have gone

through these mental health crisis with their teens or their even their younger

kids or their young adults. And I wasn't real

as I was reading your book, really kind of, like, the visceral

experience of how all encompassing it is and the toll of it.

And I wanted you to talk a little bit about it so that it can

normalize for those who are going through it. I love you

said everyone else went about their lives.

We went to appointments. If that doesn't

summarize what it's like when you have a kid in crisis, I don't know what

else does. It's like yeah. So I wanted you to

tell us a little bit more about, like, what that was like to

lose sort of, I don't know, time and all

and all that. Yeah. What was it like to

experience the that loss? Yeah. I mean, the short answer is

devastating. You know? I mean, whatever normal

means, you know, whatever that is, our lives were normal.

And then literally almost like the flip of a switch, they

know it no longer was. And so that looked

different over the course of time, but the ultimate

fact remained the same that we had been going about our lives, and

my daughter had her life and her thing and my husband and I when we're

you know? And then we didn't. And it is hard

to describe to someone who has had no experience with

something like this, how isolating it is, how

terrifying. I mean, I think, of course, when you someone

says something on the surface, oh, yeah. That must be really hard. But

unless you've actually experienced what it means to have

your the rug pulled from under your feet relative to every

part of your life, So withdrawing from my own friends,

withdrawing from my own activities,

I was so

committed in a very unhealthy way, I wanna say.

Again, I didn't understand it this way at the time. It was just what I

needed to do. I'm gonna solve this. I'm gonna get on this. I'm gonna do

the research, read the books, learn the thing, solve the problem,

and that is a product of sort of

the my again, my childhood and the kind of enmeshed

and overidentified relationships that I experienced on one

hand. And so you

mom mom world a little bit. There I mean, I wanna, like people

will listen to this podcast because they're like, I want solutions. I wanna have to,

like, figure out how to parent my kid. Right? Like, there's this

almost misbelief that if we had more information,

it would be okay or something. Like, we could find the right

blankety blank. So, yeah, it's like your own trauma and your own

background and hyper productivity and solving your problems and things like that,

coping. But then also there's a fallacy in in

mom world, I think, that yeah. 100%.

I mean, I completely I could not agree with you anymore. 100%.

I mean, it's just an entire misunderstanding.

And as you already said, we're gonna get to self care again later. But, like,

what is the point of self care and what you know, why do we,

as moms, actually do need to put ourselves first and and

just let go of the myth that that means we're selfish or fill in the

word that's right for you? All the all the things that are tied up in

that, which is a lot. But 100%, I mean, I was

operating under a bunch of false assumptions about what I was

supposed to do and how I was supposed to be and then having

those core wounding from my way, way, way, way, way, way back

of not being good enough and all of that stuff being

100% ignited and exacerbated

because of the loss of control over my

family's well-being. That's a fallacy. Of course, I actually had no control,

but I didn't really know that. You had no control in the beginning, and you

so you didn't really lose anything, but the perception that you lost it, that you

had to get it back. Yeah. Uh-huh. Exactly. Exactly. Which was, you know,

large part of my journey was actually

changing my thinking on things. Mhmm. So it's not

like, you know, it's it's not a Cheryl Strayed book where I

walked, you know, 1500 miles, and suddenly, I'm like a new person. I mean,

I emotionally walked probably 1500 miles, but you know what I'm saying. I

do. Yes. I mean, we just we don't even know the baggage a lot

of the time that we carry with us because we're conditioned

before we have thoughts and words and, you know,

we're going back to really old business, and we just know what we

know, and we don't know what we don't know. And when it comes to

this kind of stuff, until there's a reason, we don't even question

any of that. So it was like I didn't have a reason to

question, to this degree. Like, I had

had relationships, friendships particularly,

not pan out time and time again, and that was very painful. But

until it was my daughter, till the suffering

was so extreme, and the person I

love most in the entire world far more than I loved

myself was suffering, and there was nothing I

could do about it that I hit my emotional rock bottom and

realized I I can't go on like this.

Like, my work is the only work I can actually do, and

I need to start doing it. Yeah. And I do

wanna clarify for anyone listening, including us,

because we have a lot of agency. We actually

do. We have a lot of influence over our kids and our family.

But we don't need to change the circumstance

to feel better. And I think we get stuck on, like, once I can

solve this problem, quote, unquote, problem that my child is having,

then I'll feel better or then we'll be okay. And it kind of is

flip. It's like, let me get be okay in this

circumstance and figure out how to come to peace, which

is actually just such a mind fuck to say, like, let me get to let

me come to peace with my child arming themselves and starving. Like,

that it that's so counterintuitive, but it

actually is a big part of your journey was sort of getting to a

place of, I really can't fix, quote,

unquote, fix, nor is it my job to fix faith, your

daughter's name. And, you know, so I've gotta figure out

something else. And you started to pivot and grow inside

of yourselves and and heal. And you're, you know, the a memoir of harm and

healing is really your story more than it

is Faye's, like, her memoir is gonna be different

when she writes her story. 100%. Yeah. You're telling

your journey in this book of, like, what you were

working on with your therapist and what you were learning by going to, you know,

whatever parent ed stuff and all that.

So if I before we go there, I wanna talk all about what you learned

and, like, the the things that you shifted. I just wanna,

like, put a pin right where we were just were because it really

is hard. That period of time, it was, like,

October to you know, really

till the end of the till the next school year, start the whole school year,

that, you know, people are going you had to cancel the 8th grade trip.

She didn't get to go to DC. You know, your holidays were

wonky. You didn't get Thanksgiving was kind of a shit show. Like, it just was

like though that granular

experience of it being so

odd and off, and, like, everyone's, like, what are you doing for summer? Are you

going to summer camp? And you're, like, we're going to residential.

Like, I just I just feel

for you in that period of your life and any mom who's going through that.

It just it's like you feel like you don't belong in the mom world

anymore or something like that, or as your family is broken.

And yeah. Absolutely. And, you know, if you

feel like I mean, what you just described is a perfect

reason why people isolate. Because, you know, why are

you gonna wanna go out to coffee with your friends if they're gonna be talking

about dress shopping for prom or, you know, all the

things, like like you said, DC, when none of

that is within your realm of possibility?

So you already are terrified and exhausted

and overwhelmed and all the things, and then you, of course, are gonna

withdraw from your life because it seems like there's

nothing you have nothing to say. There's nothing that you can

add to those conversations, and you don't wanna hear those conversations because

your child isn't able to participate in any of those activities.

So why would you wanna be present to listen to people talking about how

great x, y, or z is? So on one hand,

it makes complete sense to withdraw from your

own life and to withdraw from activities and even things

that maybe don't involve, like, your normal school mom

friends or whatever, but, like, everybody's going about their lives and you're

not. The other side of that coin, though, is

that the isolation is,

a vicious cycle, I guess, I wanna say. So you're

feeling, at least I did, I only speak for myself, feeling

so bad because of, again, my some of

my skewed thinking about what I was supposed to be doing and what I did

could control and what I couldn't and all the things that that

exacerbated within me. So that pulled me further and

further and further away. Yes. So

Yes. You you isolate because you can't relate or you don't feel

relatable, but then you actually then are

even more disconnected within yourself and others. So then you're like, well,

something's really wrong with me, and I'm really now a mess. And you just yeah.

You keep spiraling Right. Away from becomes a self

fulfilling prophecy because, like, you don't wanna be around anyone.

You're convinced no one wants you around, and, you know, this shit's hitting the

fan everywhere, so why would you be around anyone anyway? And that

was definitely a part even though she wasn't presenting it to me that

way. Why my therapist kept asking me what I could do

was, you know, encouraging me to figure out for

myself what was something that would enable me to

be less alone. And part of the process I I

should say part of the process excuse me, part of

the process requires us to not be alone in the

sense of going to treatment. So as treatment escalated,

so did our participation. It was required. So, when

she ended up going to the eating disorder clinic, that's where there was

couple therapy and family therapy, and I had gotten in my own

individual therapy right away. So I don't wanna say

we never were around other people because we

were, you know, which can

be validating in the treatment setting. I mean, that's why, you know, they do

it. But it's it's it's hard to describe

if you haven't been through it, but it's a a different quality of

togetherness, and it's not the

things that you used to do that gave you joy

and peace and contentment and connection and

all those things that you get by being in relationship and

community with people doing joyful things, going

to therapy in a family group setting is

really not that joyful, especially starting out.

So it's it's a it's a different granular quality that

anyone who has had to do it will know exactly what we're talking about.

Yeah. But it's a very it's based on a

symptom almost. Right? It's based on a circumstance.

Although we do create communities around what kids our kids go to this school or

they're in this program or whatever it is. But we have these relationships

either within that community or outside that community that aren't just

about that. Like, we go to coffee or we go for a hike or, you

know, we, like, get together for a book club, like, stuff like that. That's

not let's talk about our child's, you know,

painful behavior. It's you get to you

have a little more freedom in what you're gonna discuss because it's the you know,

the environment's different. Exactly. Mhmm. And, you know, it's

it's not, not that it should be, but it you know,

it's, again, it can be reassuring, but it's not, like,

fun to hear other families talking

about the struggles with their children. So it's not

like, you know, you're going to family group therapy and you're gonna come out and

you're gonna be, like, energized and be like, yeah. That was

awesome. I mean, you know, that's just not what it's about. No.

Yeah. Everybody is in pain and that's what you're talking about.

So, yeah, I kinda yeah. I wanted just to really, you

know, every it becomes all in con encompassing when you have a child

who's in mental health crisis or ill. Like, I've also had clients who've

had kids with illness, you know, and they're in the hospital all the time and

they're, you know, their child has a lot of, physical problems,

and that is really drains on your time, your money, your

connectedness with others, your health, your marriage, just so much

toll. So just to normalize that. And then, also,

maybe give hope because that was a period of time,

and it started to shift. It felt like in the book, like,

almost as you shifted, she shifted. And,

I do notice this in my work where and in

myself. Like, if I'm struggling with

one of my children's behaviors or I'm anxious or I have a lot of fear

or I'm very angry or something like that, we're almost like in a

we're stuck in it. And I sometimes

call it, like, magic. It's, like, energetic. It's not. It's actually

compassion, the but we shift and we

kind of take care of ourselves, we understand our child in a

different perspective, see it from their lens, then they can

maybe see it from their own lens with loving care, you're

caring for yourself. It becomes sort of that becomes yourself fulfilling

prophecy of, we're okay.

And then you become okay, and your child

needs to believe that. I like how

your therapist said to you, faith wants to see you taking

care of yourself. Faith wants to know you're doing okay.

And I think that's so important as a mom because we

sometimes think I don't get to until my kids are okay.

And there was a couple different lines on that in your book,

how it's like you're only as happy as your unhappiest child or

whatever it was. And it's like, no.

That's actually not true. And I think of it this way, like,

say my kid is struggling with something and they're sort

of wondering if they're gonna be okay. And they're, like, see all

the adults and all the parents staring at them, like, woah, that's, you

know, you're a bad kid, you know, they're not doing their homework, or they're acting

out, or whatever it is. And then they look at you, and

you're like, oh, god. I don't know. It's real this is bad.

Where do they get their hope from? They're like, even the person who loves me,

knows me the best, cares about me the most is terrified. Like,

I'm fucked. Like, I feel like a little kid even is like, I

I obviously, I'm screwed because my mom even thinks I'm a disaster.

And we shifting into, like,

I'm okay. You're okay. We're gonna get through this.

You're strong. That building that up and then your kid looks at

you and sees that, I think that is is really, really

important. Yeah. Yeah. Well, there's

a lot to say about that, and I I agree, again, agree with everything you

said. But for sure, like, where I talk about this

most in the book, anyway, at least I think, is in relation to

the decision to, send our daughter to residential

treatment. I mean, obviously, the message we

were not trying to give her was that she was so broken

that she couldn't even stay home anymore, Like, that the situation

was so bad to your point that there was nothing

we could do, and, like, we were so scared and all

the things, except that was all sort of true only in the sense

of there was nothing we could do, and

we were all terrified that her self harming had escalated to the point

where she could easily have accidentally died by suicide or

maimed herself or something. But, you know

yeah. So here we all are, this big system

and all the people in it and the parents saying

to her, like, this is so bad that this

is what you have to do. Again, that's not the message we were

trying to give her, but it makes sense that that would be especially

someone who is struggling with mental health issues. So, you

know, they're we're not talking about someone who's fully capable of being

rational with, you know, their thinking. So

it definitely compounds the problem. And

I use the word system specifically not only in relation to, like, the

medical system, but I I'm a family systems person in terms of a

family as a system. So to your point, if one

person in the system begins to change, then

the whole is impacted because that's how it works. There's

no choice but for that to be true. I do wanna be careful not

to imply that somehow magically as

soon as I was able to be more accepting, you

know, the the sun came out and there was a rainbow

and, you know, we lived happily ever after. We we are, in

fact, living happily ever after to your point, not

perfectly because no one is perfect, but it it wasn't

it wasn't so immediately cause and effect. But And that's

not the reason to do it either. Exactly. Oh, let me get better than my

q it's like, no. Let me just figure out how to be okay.

Right. Let me just this is the worst thing that could ever

happen to me. I'm in the absolute hell and

I still get to be a human and

have all the scope of humanity, all the feelings. I get to

feel joy. I get to feel sadness. I get to, you know,

feel productive. Whatever it is that you want to, you know, feel,

you get you're entitled to that.

Yeah. So let's get into how what that what what that was like for

you because I have kind of in my head looked at

your healing journey in these three areas of

the first was no. I don't know about first, but, like, for me with the

way I read it, like, self care, like, you began to

understand. Like, Kim was, like, Faith wants to know you're doing

okay, and Faith wants to see you taking care of yourself,

and you start to do some some things there. And then

self trust and then self love. Like,

self love for me is, like, self love, self acceptance, self kindness, self compassion. It's

all like this one bucket of Yeah. This thing that is, like,

basically self love. So wondered if you could speak

to those things, like, how did you tap into deeper levels

of self care? What did that look like? How did you tap into some

self trust when, you know, everyone is like,

send her here, do this. You should have this kind of therapy, this modality, you

know. She should be home, or she shouldn't be home, whatever. What did you

how did you find that? And then, like, this self love and self acceptance. So

you can kinda like it could be a soup. You can talk about all of

them. Yeah. Well yeah. So one thing I should say

starting out, especially with my therapist, is she asked me that for over a

year, maybe closer to 2 years, and I completely

100% missed that she was asking me to do the same thing that

we wanted my daughter to do, like, take better care

of myself. I was so lost again in that

low self esteem and that ruminating, all the thinking that I had

relative to, again, being an outcropping of a particular

type of childhood. And this is not to blame my parents. I

mean, like, I have more compassion for my parents, myself,

my daughter, everybody, than I ever had before now that I've been through this

journey. So it's not about that, but it is about understanding what constrains

us. So I was very constrained in that department and,

yeah, had a completely skewed view that, you know,

a good mother fully self sacrifices. Like,

everybody else has to be okay first. And, you

know, if you even get to put yourself on your list, you know, maybe you

run out for a mani pedi, which, of course, I love, or a massage.

That's all great. But yeah. So the first thing I had to do when I

finally realized well into this process

that I had hit my emotional rock bottom, that I actually couldn't

control anyone else but myself, that actually

seeing a representation of my low self esteem on a piece of

paper in an in an exercise we did in residential treatment and

seeing that my daughters closely resembled mine,

like, that there were reasons for that and that that was

my responsibility, that taking care of myself, healing

myself, starting all of this work was my was where

my response yes. I have to facilitate the best treatment I can for my daughter

as a mom. That's my job, but I have to do my own work.

And so when she asked me and I finally realized, oh, okay. I

do have to start taking care of myself. I had to get

quiet. Like, I didn't know what that meant. I didn't know what I

needed. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know where to look.

So I just I had never learned how to tap

into my intuition or why that would even be important or what it

even meant. So I just kinda got quiet for a

little while, and the thing that came to me was a return to a

creative practice because I had been a very creative child. And

that was another part of me that I just kind of lopped off. It was

like, if you can't make a living at it when you grow up, you know,

it's a waste of time, and nothing could be further

from the truth, first of all. And I could never

have imagined where, ultimately, creativity would lead me and

all the benefits I would get from it, but then it

was just a matter of using it as a

vehicle. Again, this re really wasn't as conscious as it is

now, but tapping into my own

self, creating, getting back into

finding color and texture and words and

listening to inspirational,

speakers or reading an inspirational book and pulling parts of that

out and applying that to myself and understanding

bumping up against that same discomfort that if something

doesn't look the way I want it to, so my perfectionistic tendencies

and my want to control the process, and what do you do

if something doesn't look the way you want and you wanna rip it to shreds

and, you know, scream at the sky. It it sounds

a little dramatic because it was back then, to be honest. Like,

I did not really have any kind of relationship with

with myself except demeaning and mean.

And we can try to hide that as much as we want to from the

world, and we can put on a smile, and we can do all the things.

And, you know, we're we're ultimately, we're not actually

fooling anybody, especially our kids. Not our cell ourselves or our

kids. Yeah. For sure. Mhmm. Because that plays out in

ways that are some ways that are obvious, in many ways that are not obvious.

But, anyway, it was such an important part of

beginning to understand what taking care of

myself really meant, which I believe self care is totally

misunderstood by people in general today. For me, yes, all

the external stuff is great. I love all the external stuff, but I'm but

self care in terms of understanding our own patterns,

our own tendencies, how all of that self harming

stuff that, you know, we do, the coping mechanisms

that for me, you know, I'm trying to move away from the word negativity

because coping is coping. And, like, we have coping mechanisms because

they help us cope. Yeah. So but for me, like,

the more unhealthy ones move us away from connection

rather than towards it. And so why am I choosing those

things? Why am I drawn to doing that? Why,

you know, am I so convinced, not that I I no

longer am, but that, you know, I'm such a shitty person. Like, I'm not I'm

actually awesome. Like, where I'm resilient. I'm all these things.

You know? So I guess what I'm trying to say is my

relationship with all of these things, you know, you

start where you start. You just start, and then it

all morphs and changes over time. But self trust, I

mean, yeah, I didn't have that.

And I think when you can't trust

yourself, you don't know what

well you're drawing from in terms

of how to make decisions or what's

guiding you. So our values can fall into that. I didn't know I

didn't have a conversation about my values until I was in my forties. Like,

I didn't even know that was a thing, or, like, I could pick my own.

You know? Like, my family never talked about that. It's family of origin.

So just one more example. So why is self trust

important? Well, particularly in the context in which you mentioned it.

If we are having to make decisions, and we're basically on our own because don't

let anybody fuel you. We're we're basically on our own Yeah. When

our kids are ill for a number of reasons. How are

we making those decisions, and what happens when they don't turn out the way

we they hope we hope they will? Because, inevitably, that's

gonna happen. So how do you stay connected to

yourself and feeling, to your point, like, that sense of

agency or, okay, what's next, And being okay

with each step of the process is

trusting the well from which you're making these decisions and

how you feel about yourself in the process. And I totally,

you know, didn't really understand that as we we were

going through all of this. And I think to your last

point, the self love, I mean, that is really

hard. You're someone for

whom, you know, saying, oh, I love myself or, like, like, I have a

book somewhere that said, you know, look in the mirror every day and say, I

love you to your reflection. I mean, that literally made me wanna barf.

Like, there's just, like, no. So the I but the idea

of allowing myself to think, I wanna allow myself to like

me and, you know, work through all of this

stuff again as part of

the process that became

true. I didn't, like, set myself

that particular goal one day where I woke up and said, by the end of

this month, I am going to love myself. Although I don't mind

it. I don't mind it as a goal. Like, as a life coach, you know,

we talk a lot about intention and goal setting, and I'm like, yeah. You

could do that. And like, just move the needle a little bit. Like, go ahead,

mamas. Just decide, you know. Yeah. I'm gonna love myself more this month than I

did last month. Or certainly be open to the possibility.

Yes. I remember, like, bridge thinking is like,

I'm gonna love myself. I'm going to consider loving

myself. I'm gonna be willing to consider loving myself.

Like, whatever you gotta do to get closer is

great. Mhmm. 100%. And I mean, I totally get Again, I

probably said this already, but, like, if you

are someone like, I thought everybody thought the way that I did because that's just

what we think. Like, I thought everybody overruminated. I thought

everybody had these people pleasing tendencies. I thought everybody,

you know, had levels of enmeshment and codependency. I thought

no one knew what a boundary was, you know, because I didn't had never even

heard of that. I mean, we just assume, you know, that, like,

we're human, so we're kind of all the same. And we kind of all are

the same, but we're also super not the same. So

if you're someone who didn't have a childhood like mine, you may be going,

god. I mean, you know, like, what the

hell? All the all these things. But, like, a lot of us

who whether you're you know, you like the the

phraseology of, like, emotionally immature parenting

or my also specific brand was,

narcissistic parent. Yeah. New person. Yeah. Like, neglect and

rejection. So there is a whole other level there of

thinking and feeling that was true for me that it was a

shock to realize not everyone has. So these

are patterns. Right? So when we talk about self care, for me,

I had to become aware, and it took a long time,

that this was my reality. Like, I really did not know that for

and I've been in a lot of therapy. I really did not know that for

a very long time through the process and then what that meant

about what I had to learn about the things you're talking

about, about self care, about self trust, about self

love, and why those deficits existed for me

and that that was my work or your, like, reparenting language.

You know, whatever way you like to say it, it ultimately kinda boils down to

the same thing. Yeah. We heal we heal,

and our kids inevitably heal

because we interact with them differently. That's just what happens, like you said, about

the system changing. I have, like, 100 thoughts going through my head of

things I wanna say right now. I remember for

me doing, ACEs, the Adverse Childhood

Experience Survey. And it was when I was in a parent

education program, oddly enough, that was very intensive when I learned

nonviolent communication. And we did a lot of

intensive work in that program and I we did the ACES. And

to see my childhood quantified like that, I

my score is 9 out of 10. And, I was like,

woah. Like, woah. Oh, ah. I the other people are like,

1, 2. My husband did it. He's like point 5 ish.

Like, I was like, oh, we all have different

stories here and different experiences and different things we're healing

from, and that journey is gonna look unique, and that's

okay. Yeah. Well and what I wanna say about that is I'm really glad

you brought that up because I my score is probably the same as your

husband's. So I never identified

myself as an adult living with any kind of trauma because I

didn't see myself in that kind of language. Yeah. So it

is very important to have identifiers like that, and

I they serve a very important purpose, but they're

also completely missing out

on a whole realm of persons

like myself who didn't have any of those experiences,

and yet then so I'm in my fifties. By the time I

figure out finally that the relational trauma

I experienced was so high that I actually now do

have a diagnosis of, you know, chronic PTSD

Mhmm. I would have

laughed in your face a few years ago if you would have told me that

was me. Mhmm. So so, again, it's

just that's why these conversations are so important because,

yes, there's people who see themselves very clearly and their

experiences, and they're validated, and they understand through

metrics like that. But there's a whole host of us

who don't have that kind of experience who are left out

going, I don't fit in here. I don't fit in anywhere. So

that's the key. Little t traumas. Sometimes we think of them that way. But

Right. In your story, you really talk about having a

neglectful, almost absent parent. Right? Your mother was

just very unavailable, emotionally unavailable. And so, yes, we do

need better metrics to describe how

how your parenting affects you. How you were parented affects

you. And, you know, most anyone listening

to this podcast is, like, working very hard to not be

neglectful or too permissive or too authoritarian

because we want to be, like, that guiding steady

beat, you know, that's present and compassionate and loving.

And that is what you found

in your journey of getting to that place with faith.

It's not like you weren't very attuned to

parent, like, or very present and, like, you were, like, super involved in her

life. But there's this little, like, not little, but

this, like, little piece of your story that is

so, so important. And it's late in the book

that you talk about it. And it really is when you learn to

I the way lang language I use is to become a compassionate witness

of faith and of her pain and

struggle. And there was, you know, so so much

beauty in this one page, that I

was wanting you to read what you wrote for us.

Because when well,

I teach this concept a lot about being

compassionate with your children when they are in pain.

I have phrases like be comfortable with your kids' discomfort.

And, you know, fix fix it, change it, stop it, solve it is one of

the things I say. Like, we don't we wanna get out of that fix it,

change it, stop it, solve it. It's not an emergency, like, really

slowing down. Sometimes we then call that legit calm,

deep calm. And in your process, it's

very so clear you go through this process of self

love, self care, self trust, and you get to these deeper, deeper

levels of calm, which this podcast has become a calm

mama. And that is what I'm always trying to get

us towards. And then when you are

there, you're able to show up the way that you showed up. And so

I wondered if you could just talk talk through that. It's

247, if you just I can read it and talk through

it because, ultimately I mean, I think one of the things that I had to

discover was that

again, I agree with everything you said, except we have to back the bus up

even further. So that I

thought I was being compassionate. I thought

that taking my daughter to appointments and putting my

life on hold and doing all these things was compassion.

Mhmm. Mhmm. And what I had to come to realize

with my therapist was that there's those things are important,

but human to human compassion is about more than taking

somebody to appointments. It's so true. And to your point,

like, so so we can talk about compassion, and we can talk about

healing, and we can talk about lots of big words, which I

think most of us, I realize now,

take for granted that we all mean the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

So, you know, we don't. We don't. And

so that was what was such a shock is, like,

you can think you know something, and you can, you

know, be it can be only the tiniest sliver. And

so, yes, coming to this understanding

relative to compassion between human beings, why

that's important and what it means was a hugely

life changing part of our process for sure. Yeah.

Okay. Before you read it, I'm gonna read this one part that you wrote because

I think this is, like, where you started. You said, I had no

trouble telling Faith I loved her. But conversations around the harder

emotions, they were usually Theo, your husband, and me

talking, Faith listening, and us minimizing her feelings or

full on arguments. It's like, that's

so much what parenting looks like in

these in, like, little homes everywhere. And then

how you what you get to, what you're about to read is where we all

wanna be getting to, and it's that journey from

tucky, tucky, tucky and telling, telling, telling and dismissing

or, like, sure. You get to be sad, but it it's like this other

thing that you do is so beautiful. So go for it. Just start there. Thank

you. Thank you. And I just wanna say, like, it's completely makes sense that most

of us parent that way because we were parented that way. Yeah.

So that's why these conversations are so important. I think the younger

generations I see my adult nieces and nephews with young kids.

They're so much smarter about this stuff. Mhmm. But I want us older

folks to be less afraid to

understand that things about how we learned

are just not that healthy and great. Like Yeah. It makes

complete sense. So let's just be like, okay. I know

there's other ways. You know? It doesn't mean we're bad people. It took me a

while to figure that out, but, you know, it's okay. Like, it just makes

sense. Okay. So, yes, from where you asked me to

start, when this regulation happened, because, of course, it

did, Faith would cry. In her bedroom or the living

room, she might fall to the floor, curl into a ball, and

wail, painful thoughts, feelings, and emotions pouring out

of her. If Theo was home, I ordered him to the garage, and

he'd usually comply. Progress. Instead of reacting

in fear, despair, and confusion, now, at least on

the outside, I could respond differently. Calmness,

concerted, and focused had required discussion with

the therapists, input from faith, trial

and error, and lots of practice for which life afforded me

opportunity. Over time, I improved. I learned to

sit on the floor, breathe, remain quiet, and very

still, preventing my own body and my own emotions from

being hijacked. Okay. Just pause there because I'm gonna read it again because it's like

this is really what it looks like. Sit on the floor,

breathe, remain quiet and very still,

preventing your own body and your own emotions from

being hijacked. That's this

that's it right there. What I think even what you

said, like, the younger generations, like, they're good at it.

They're it's very hard for any of us to do this.

When our child you describe a little a girl who's on the floor,

curling into a ball and wailing and painful thoughts and feelings and pouring out of

her, and you're gonna sit and remain quiet,

your brain is like, the mom brain in that moment is

broken because you're like, I should be doing something.

But if this is doing something. It's actually the

thing our kid needs. And then go on to I could witness

there. I could witness faith's pain

without trying, at least most of the time, to intervene or to

fix without floating away on waves of my own

anxiety, without being swept up in currents of fear.

It made complete sense to feel terrible when she felt terrible. Pithy

quip. A parent is only as happy as their least happy child,

but that dynamic exactly was what required my attention.

Sweaty and spent, Faith would calm down because she would

always eventually calm down. Occasionally, when she

wanted to, we'd talk about what had upset her, usually something

to do with school. But often, she was too exhausted for words,

and I'd encourage her to recuperate with rest, sleep,

music, art, or by watching a lighthearted TV show.

Perfect. Perfect. Is I I it's so good. It's so beautiful, Tracy. Thank

you for writing this book and for for

remembering the deep, deep pain and the moments that

you so beautifully talk about in this book. And I

just sweaty and spent, Faith would calm down

because she would always eventually calm down.

In in this podcast and in my work, I call it

big feeling cycle. And I use the word cycle because the cycle always

ends. And it's better than a temper tantrum

or a meltdown because those don't there was that. How do you like, if you

can remember that this will come to an end and you're just there to be

a witness, problem solving, dealing with the behavior, talking about it

all later. And I just think you

really beautifully demonstrated what becoming a

calm mama is all about. Like, just

so so beautiful. So I I do I

do recommend your book. Like, I've already sent it to some clients because I'm like,

you guys need to read this, because they're going through this this

thing right now. So tell us how to buy

your book, which is obvious, but, you know, tell us how to buy your book.

And, and maybe just a little bit if people wanna follow you or what

you do. Wonderful. Thank you. So it is available everywhere books are sold.

So wherever is your favorite place to buy your books from, you'll find it

there. So there's that. And then, yes, I have a website.

It's my name, tracyyokas, tracyyokasandthewordcreates.com.

And I am endeavoring to build a community. You know?

I'm I'm, inviting anyone, moms in particular,

but anyone who's interested in learning about this stuff, who's

working on their own toolkit, who's trying to understand how to make more

conscious choices in life, how to be more connected, compassionate, and

grateful to come on over and check it out. Yeah. So the book is

Bloodlines, a memoir of harm and healing. So be

sure to get a copy. And I read it I read it really fast. I

just spent the afternoon you know, I read really quickly, but I

I could not put it down. Like, it's really

compelling the way that you wrote the story. And so it's it's

like it's it's a little juicy. So, you know, not to,

like, make your life juicy, but it was it was

just really compelling story. So I really appreciate it. Thank you for coming and being

so honest and sharing with the call mamas and,

yeah, super grateful. So thank you. Thank you so much.