Speaker A: Welcome to sharing my truth with Mel and Suzie the uncensored version where we bear it all.

Speaker B: We do. 1234.

Speaker A: Hi, babe.

Speaker B: Ali, how are you doing? I'm so good.

Speaker A: How are you? Welcome back to sharing my truth.

Speaker B: Indeed. I'm good. What is it today? I don't have completely lost track.

Speaker A: I don't ******* know. It's like a Thursday or is that incorrect? It might be a Tuesday.

Speaker B: I think it's a Tuesday. God ******* **** it. Anyway, it seems like it's been quite a long week so far.

Speaker A: Yeah, it actually has. I know. I actually feel that too.

Speaker B: I think it's also the sort of January blues. It's like you sort of have this break and then you're like, oh, is that it? Yeah. And that is it. Yeah, that really is. God, okay.

Speaker A: So, Mel, I mean, January is here.

Speaker B: It is.

Speaker A: Everyone's trying new things.

Speaker B: They are.

Speaker A: Because of resolutions.

Speaker B: They are. I know. It drives me mad. On the internet, like, all you can see on the interweb as one of my elderly relatives calls it, is you can see all these honestly, if I see another goal setting resolution bollocks thing, I'm going to scream.

Speaker A: Yeah, same.

Speaker B: Like the day sort of after New Year's Day where everyone's got over their hangover and everyone's running and you know that's going to last for two days. I know.

Speaker A: It's so funny. Going to the gym, like the day or the second day after and everyone's in there and then a week later no, it's literally empty and it's ******* hilarious to me.

Speaker B: It's just like right. I'm over it now because I am over it. Yes.

Speaker A: Do you have any resolutions?

Speaker B: I do have some resolutions.

Speaker A: Do you? I always find them really hard.

Speaker B: Yeah. I'm quite good at I don't actually need the New Year. I'm quite a goal setting person. Right. And I sort of think about what I want to do at this point. By this point? By that point I'm sort of innately.

Speaker A: Like you're extremely organized.

Speaker B: I am quite organized.

Speaker A: It's incredible how organized you are.

Speaker B: I like to be organized.

Speaker A: I really just want to try to be more like you.

Speaker B: Oh, really?

Speaker A: Yeah, I do.

Speaker B: That's very nice. No, it's true. I believe that if you're sort of your surroundings like, I could never go to bed at night and the whole place be messy. I just couldn't do it. I need order in my mind, order in my surroundings, order in the court. Exactly. And then I'm organized.

Speaker A: You could be a great judge. Maybe I could be very fair.

Speaker B: I think I would.

Speaker A: It's another career path for you, Mel.

Speaker B: You should look into that slight problem that I'm not a lawyer. No, you don't ******* hate it.

Speaker A: If they know better, they will hire.

Speaker B: To be a TV judge.

Speaker A: Oh my God.

Speaker B: Next.

Speaker A: Judge Judy.

Speaker B: I feel like I saw her today.

Speaker A: Oh my God. Yes.

Speaker B: Making comments about Prince Harry, which made me laugh. So much.

Speaker A: God, what is happening? Talking about Prince Harry, I thought that.

Speaker B: Was the funniest thing I saw what is happening?

Speaker A: You're obviously British, as we can tell. What is ******* happening with Prince ******* Harry? Honestly, I can't keep up. I can't.

Speaker B: I'm not sure, really.

Speaker A: Okay.

Speaker B: I mean, I think it's a complicated issue.

Speaker A: She just come up with this amazing this book.

Speaker B: Yeah, right. It's supposed to have a bunch of.

Speaker A: ******* bombshells, as they call it.

Speaker B: And it has some very intimate stuff that some people are very upset about. Like about him and his life. Drug taking and sex and whatever intermix of the royal family, which doesn't really go together. But it's a complex question, and it's his life, and we can all have our opinions on that and whether he should have done it or not. And this has absolutely nothing to do with what we're talking about today. But contextualizing it. For Brits, the problem is the view in the United States is very different than the view in Britain because we're taking it much more personally in Britain because the Royal Family is sort of weirdly, intrinsically bound up with our identity. And I don't think it should be. I'm not really a huge monarchist. I'm fairly indifferent to them and I think they really are pretty much a waste of money. But it's very complicated. My view is like, well, if you get rid of the Royal Family, what else do you do? And that's quite difficult. In Canada, for example, there is the path to not having is very, very difficult to get rid of them. Right? So I think people are just very offended in the UK. And the problem is if he comes back and he comes back and this is his family and I understand I'm actually very sympathetic to the fact that he's not getting along with them. I don't get along with certain members of my family. I understand that. It's just he's talking about healing. I think that's kind of burnt that bridge a bit. So I'm very sympathetic to the fact that one thing that drives me mad about the whole Meghan Markle and her dad thing, which they don't really talk that much about it in North America, but in the UK they go on and on about how her dad wasn't at her wedding and she doesn't have all these close relatives and she should talk to her dad. And that's not fair. And I completely disagree because I personally have very difficult relationship with my parents because they both behave very badly in my life. And so I've taken a decision to not I don't have a relationship with either my father or my mother and that is not something you do lightly. So I hate the fact that everyone criticizes her for that. It's not fair. You don't know what's gone on with her father. And just because somebody is your father or your mother or your brother or your aunt does not mean that gives them carte blanche to, under any circumstances, whatever. They do mean you have a relationship with them. So it really irritates me, that side of it. And I don't obviously know either Harry or Meghan Markle, but that particular thing is completely unfair. If your relationship with your parents or any family member is bad because that family member has behaved in a toxic manner, why should you have a relationship with them? Yeah. And that is one thing that really irritates me.

Speaker A: Well, that's an incredible segue to what we're talking about today, isn't it? I have very sympathetic, as well, tendencies towards Meghan and Harry. I think we all grew up with the Royal family, especially in Canada and the UK. Right?

Speaker B: Yeah. They are our royals. Yeah.

Speaker A: And it's like twice, right?

Speaker B: And you have Canadian ambridges. I've got the coach. Honestly, twice.

Speaker A: But, yeah, it's incredible what they've been through. And to watch Diana I mean, everyone ******* loved Diana, right? Like, my mother was obsessed with her. And just to know that that's how you were treated, I mean, it's super.

Speaker B: Complicated and you can look at it from every perspective. And I and at the end of the day, we do not know these people. We think we know them.

Speaker A: I do know them.

Speaker B: We think we know them, and we don't know what was said and who said what and blah, blah, blah. But the point is, this family thing, this kind of toxic family thing, and I firmly believe, because I've lived that.

Speaker A: Truth, their family trauma.

Speaker B: Absolutely. That just because somebody is your mother or your father or your sister or your aunt or your granny or whatever it is, does not mean you have to have a relationship with them if they behave in a terrible way. Yeah, there is a line, and I know because I've lived that. And so that, to me is really important. I wish people would stop saying, oh, and it's their fat, or it's your family. I mean, now we've been talking about the book, but it doesn't matter. People always say, Are they your family? Well, so what? Yeah, if they behave really badly, so what? There is a line, and your life and your mental health is really important. And if people are bringing you down because their behavior is bad, you've kind of got a sink or swim.

Speaker A: Right?

Speaker B: And I can only say that I know that very, very well. So it doesn't matter who we're talking about. We've been talking about the rules, but it doesn't matter whose family you're talking about. I've seen this so many times where people have bad relationships with particularly parents, and then people say, oh, no, you must mend that. Come on, you've got to talk. That's your mom, it's your dad. That's not some kind of qualification.

Speaker A: If someone's not respecting you, then that's it.

Speaker B: If you're married to somebody or you don't stay with them. If they're horrible, you can divorce them. Well, the same with family. Yeah, just because and it is this old saying of sort of blood is thick in the water and all that sort of stuff. I just don't believe that. Yeah, I mean, I have certain family members I'm very close to, I really love, I really respect. They're great, they're very positive, a very positive influence in my life, and they're important to me. But I have family members that should be a good influence in my life, and they're not, and they have never been right? So I'm very sympathetic to people, and it's very, very difficult, particularly if they're your parents and you don't have a good relationship with them or they behave badly or they've done horrible things to you, or they've betrayed you or any of those things. You've got to protect yourself. You've got to live. And you can't be a victim of that. You've got to if you can. And I know it's very, very difficult, it's almost sometimes this thing of sometimes it is difficult to survive, stuff like that. And I mean, on an emotional level. But, yeah, people don't have the right to behave any way they want just because they're related to you. It's a completely mad idea.

Speaker A: 100% agree. I mean, is there a time where you were like, did something switch with your parents or were they always kind of rude or disrespectful to you?

Speaker B: Well, it's very complicated, my relationship. My mother and father is different. My parents had a very acrimonious divorce, my mother has mental illness issues, my mother's bipolar, right? And that's really ******* tough, all sorts of other issues. And as a child, it's very difficult to manage, very challenging. And my mum is very cruel, so she says, and has done from a very young age, will say very, very cruel things. And she said, I mean, pretty much anything you can think of to me from, I wish I didn't have you. She's called me a revolting human being. She's called me everything under the sun because she goes through these cycles of three months of being quite normal, and I say normal in a very light kind of way. I mean, in terms of balance is probably a better word. And then she'll turn and I figured that out when I was very young. That was roughly a three month cycle. Wow. So in one case of my mum, she crossed the line. I told her if she crossed the line, our relationship wasn't going to continue. And she did, and she kept digging the hole, and she continues to dig the hole. But it's very, very difficult for people. And I'm incredibly empathetic to especially if you're a daughter, a woman, and you don't have a great relationship with your mother. It's hard. And then you go on and have children. Well, what's your role model? I mean, in my case, there was no role model. I just decided that the role model was so bad, I would do the complete opposite. Wow. But that is how did you know to do that, though?

Speaker A: Because if you're brought up and that's your only environment, you know yeah. Then how do you know what's better?

Speaker B: You know what I mean?

Speaker A: It's just incredible.

Speaker B: That's a good question. I never thought about that. For me, personally, I'm quite a strong person. Like, my mind is quite strong. I can sort of mentally I could get through it, I could see the end of it. I think. That doesn't mean I don't come with a lot of baggage, because I think you do, but I just knew I wanted to be happy. I wanted a loving home. My kids are teenagers now, but one of my daughters is in university. But she can always come home. She likes coming home. It's a safe place. It's a happy place.

Speaker A: I love that you said that, like a safe place. Because I think even if it's a happy place, sometimes, you don't always feel safe talking to your parents or just like, being yourself. Even if there's a warm bed and you got food and everyone's very nice to each other, it might not be actually an open and safe relationship 100%.

Speaker B: I mean, I think I'm personally not very judgmental, and I've encouraged my kids to talk to me and to say anything about anything, whether it's about sex and everything, drug, alcohol, whatever teenagers are.

Speaker A: Doing, what are they ******* doing?

Speaker B: Well, exactly, I mean, it's really the.

Speaker A: Same **** that I was doing.

Speaker B: Not much it's not so much changed from what I was doing, but I don't know, I don't have sort of hang ups about the fact that they're doing stuff and they're 14 or 15 or 16 or I i don't have I don't know. I haven't I haven't forgotten what I was doing, but maybe so they feel safe. But I think it's really important. I didn't feel safe. I mean, my mother verbally abused me very intensely from a very young age, and I just found a way of kind of tunnel vision, deciding I was going to be healthy and balanced and I was going to live a happy life and I wasn't going to be a victim to it myself. And how did I do that? I don't know. I just made that decision from a very young age. Right. I really do understand how difficult that is. And it can be almost unsurvivable for people, and it depends on your ability or your desire to want to surmount. And I'd like to add that in my case, I met my husband when I was quite young, right? I was 24, he was 23. And he has been a huge support for me. So he knows what particularly my mother says to me, and she still leaves me. I'm 50 years old, she leaves me god knows how many messages a week saying absolutely horrible things to me. God, that I mostly ignore now, but she could call me on a Monday and say, literally, you're a revolting human being, and blah, blah, blah. She says this to you? Oh, yeah. And then the next day, she'll call me or sometimes five minutes later, and leave a message saying, and this was recently about the holiday, so what should we do about Christmas? And you're like what? And then obviously, you know, there's something very sad.

Speaker A: Why don't you block her number?

Speaker B: Well, actually, it is blocked, but the voicemail, it goes into, like, the blocked section, and I don't listen to them because there are literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them.

Speaker A: Oh, my God.

Speaker B: But at a certain point I did, and then I stopped. And actually that's something I did last year. I stopped listening to them because it doesn't matter that even if you've processed information, it goes somewhere into the recesses of your mind and it's not positive. It's very negative.

Speaker A: God, yeah. It's actually hard. I don't have toxic parents, thankfully. Obviously, there are still complicated situations there because they are a little bit there are older parents, so that goes into other not problems, but other issues. But yeah, it's that toxic family member or even just a friend, anyone who is saying or doing toxic, abusive things to you, you don't think about it right then and there because you want to be on their side. Right. You want to kind of be like, oh, they didn't mean that.

Speaker B: Duty, isn't it?

Speaker A: Yeah, so sad.

Speaker B: Especially, I think, with a parent or a sibling. I don't have sibling because I'm an only child. Right, but you feel a sense of duty. I think for a very long time I felt, oh, I can fix this. I can get this to a point where this will be okay. And for me personally, in my situation, what happened is my mum stepped over the line and I realized a sort of light bulb, literally a switch went off. And literally the switch was like, okay, I don't feel the duty anymore. It was almost like the duty flick went off and I was like, It's okay that I can't fix it. I actually felt this sort of overwhelming feeling of, it's okay, if I can't fix this.

Speaker A: That's literal healing.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah, pretty much.

Speaker A: Wow, that's like a breakthrough.

Speaker B: Yeah. I mean, it took me a long, long time and it took me personally a long time to talk to people about it because there's a sense of shame.

Speaker A: I would not even imagine having to have that conversation with someone, whether that's your friend or like, it's shameful.

Speaker B: My mother put me through all sorts of other kind of situations and I felt shame. So I just didn't really tell people. And some of my closest friends that I've known for decades and decades, I probably didn't tell them I'd known them when I was a teenager and didn't tell them until I was in my twenty s. And they're like, what? How are you living like that? How is that going on? But it's almost healing is a really good word. You have to get to a point where you are able to share it because when you're going through something, the desire for other people, they always say, oh, talk to me, tell me what's going on, blah blah blah. But if you're in the middle of something and you're suffering and you're in pain, often talking to somebody else kind of exacerbates emphasizes your pain. You feel even more in pain and you know because you're living it that the situation isn't resolved. So telling somebody who's just going to whoever they are, even if they're your best friend, they're going to have some sense of judgment about the situation doesn't actually help you. So it's a weird thing and I've lived that. But when you're at the other side of something and you sort of lived and processed and healed and whatever the kind of buzzwords you want to use are, it's much easier to talk about it. That's 100% for sure.

Speaker A: So did you realize it was like abuse that you were going through when you were doing it? No. Obviously until you told someone?

Speaker B: Oh no, not until years and years and years later. Wow. I mean, I would say I probably wasn't even until I was in my thirty s or forty s that I realized somebody said to me, like, well that's abuse. That's verbal abuse. And like I said, there's a whole catalog of stuff. It's not just verbal abuse and my mother wasn't physically abusive, verbally abusive and I don't know, sort of I guess made me live in a certain situation. So I don't really know what the terminology for that would be. But years and years later I realized and somebody said it to me, I was like, oh yeah, maybe you're right. And it just hadn't occurred to me really?

Speaker A: Because your parents divorced when you were pretty young, I'm assuming.

Speaker B: My dad left my mum. Well, went off with somebody else when I was about this isn't for the first time, but sort of a permanent person.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Probably was about 13 or 14.

Speaker A: That's pretty young.

Speaker B: Yeah. And they separated around that age and then it took them ten years or not quite ten years to get divorced and literally battered each other financially. So I obviously had a certain view of marriage and a certain view when I met my husband. Oh, well, I'm never going to marry young, I'm never going to get married or I'm going to marry, but much later. Career is really important. And the funny thing is I met the right person and a lot of those views completely changed because you almost have those views to sort of help you survive. It's a kind of strange thing actually.

Speaker A: But you did always want kids.

Speaker B: I always wanted children, yeah.

Speaker A: You always wanted kids, even though this person has shown you yeah.

Speaker B: How? I mean, my mother is the absolute antithesis of somebody who should not have children, right. And she said to me many times, it wasn't fulfilling having you. I wished I hadn't had you many, many times. And she's somebody who's very anxious and yes, she's bipolar and everything else and finds and has a coping mechanism. I mean, that is not even at a zero. She can't cope with anything in her life. Wow. Like, even, like, doing kind of cooking in the debt, like, what are we going to have for dinner? I mean, that is a major somebody called her this week and said, oh, would you like to come? I'm invited she lives in the UK. Would you like to come to Spain for four days? I'll pay for you to come and I'll pay for your airfare and I'll pay for you. She'd be like, no, I can't leave. It takes too much. Takes too much for her to leave all these. Just open the bag and shove the stuff in and get in the taxi. She can't compute that in her brain. She's always been, like, horrible. She can't cope with something that's very, very small. And if you are somebody who can cope with lots and lots of different things going on, which I can, it took me a very long time to actually understand that she can't and we're different and that is okay. It was all the other stuff, but it takes you a long time to go, Hang on a second. If I can do it, why can't you deal with anything? But she just doesn't have a coping mechanism. It just doesn't have one.

Speaker A: You lived with her, I'm assuming.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah.

Speaker A: After your parents divorced or separation, I guess, yeah. And that was horrible, I'm assuming.

Speaker B: Well, my mom decided when I was 16, and this was literally and I told lots of people that because it was embarrassing that my mum had got a job in Italy because I lived in England. And my mum decided, let's move to Italy. That was literally like, okay, today we're having steak and chips for dinner. She's like, oh, we're moving to Italy. That was literally the decision, because she thought in her head, I hate living in England. It's cold and the weather sucks and all my bad memories are there and blah, blah, blah, blah. And she's very good with languages and she's like, well, if I move to Italy, everything is going to change. That sort of classic, I'm going to go and do something else and my whole life will change. Well, of course your life follows you. You go to the next thing. It doesn't matter whether you go to the moon. It's a bit like whether you change job or whatever. It doesn't mean because you're leaving some ****** situation behind that? There's not another ****** situation in front of you. Absolutely. And she just decided to move to Italy. And so I moved to Italy, which is bananas, I know. And I moved to Italy when I was 16 and lived there and went to school and learned Italian, but I literally lived quite a separate life from my mom.

Speaker A: Yeah, you just were out of the house as much as much as I could.

Speaker B: I didn't financially rely on her or anything, so it was quite an odd situation. Yeah, it was pretty odd. And when I look back and I tell, people ask me questions, and it sounds like I'm very sort of flippant a bit. And I'm not being flippant, I'm just very calm about it because I've processed it and I've lived my life, and my life as an adult has been very happy, and I can talk about it, and sometimes when I talk about it, I've told you things. You're like what? That's mad. And you're like, oh, yeah, it is.

Speaker A: A bit much, but it's like it's a bit much. Yeah, I would say so.

Speaker B: You've lived and I mean, there are so many crazy stories.

Speaker A: Oh, my God, I want to hear let's tell our audience at least one of them.

Speaker B: What kind?

Speaker A: I know there's a lot.

Speaker B: There's a lot. Well, the funny thing is my mum has lots of hang ups, right. And she had lots of hang ups about sex. And I knew that from a young age. She was very and unfortunately, my dad told me that that was one of the reasons they split up.

Speaker A: God.

Speaker B: Which is really way too much information.

Speaker A: Yeah, that's great.

Speaker B: But when I moved to Italy, my mum started having a relationship with a 21 year old man.

Speaker A: How old was she?

Speaker B: Well, I was 16, and my mum's 36 years older than me. Wow.

Speaker A: Oh, my God.

Speaker B: 50 something, right? Yeah.

Speaker A: How did she meet this little 21 year old?

Speaker B: Well, that's a good question, actually, I.

Speaker A: Think she was at the supermarket.

Speaker B: It's a good question. But it was a very weird situation, because one day I came home from school early yeah. And I sort of walked and we were living in this really small kind of hotel situation. It was very strange. And I came home a bit early, and my mum was not dressed, and she was with this guy you walked.

Speaker A: In on her ******* kind of post. Oh, my kind of oh, my God.

Speaker B: And I walked in, and because we were in this sort of hotel room where we had lots of rooms, it was one big room, kind of and rather than a parent would be like, okay, apologize. She was very, very aggressive. What are you doing here?

Speaker A: What are you doing here?

Speaker B: Why are you here? Blah, blah, blah, blah. And that's kind of like there are many instances of stuff like that in my life. I mean, even the fact that we moved to Italy is a completely ridiculously, mad thing because my mother was feeling, okay, I've got to do this. For me, when you're a mother, it's a different thing. You're not number one anymore. No. When you're a mum, it's your children's happiness. I would happily if I had to, and I didn't have any money. I mean, I'd do anything for my kids. I'd clean toilets. I'd cut my hand off. I'd do whatever. You're not number one. They're number they're your life because they don't they don't have you.

Speaker A: They don't have like and you've right.

Speaker B: You've pretty much put them in this situation. Yeah. But yeah, I mean, so it sort of goes back to this thing of being very understanding and empathetic of anybody who is in that situation. I got to a point where my mother and I was in my 30s when this happened, that she crossed this line. And I actually said to, if you cross this and you do this talking about your children yeah, well, actually, that was one line. And then I sort of forgave her. And then later on, I'd had my second child, and I put on a lot of weight. I had two very difficult pregnancies, and I put on a lot of weight. And she sent me a letter like a collage. And she'd taken all these photos of.

Speaker A: Me like a stick and glue collage.

Speaker B: Yeah, because my mum doesn't use computers or anything. So she'd taken these pictures of me when I didn't know, and she'd taken pictures of me in very unflattering positions looking very fat.

Speaker A: No.

Speaker B: Yeah. No, I'm serious. And she'd taken them and maybe ten of them and then cut them out and literally with a Prit stick, stuck them on a piece of paper and then put little she was a journalist, so she writes a lot. So she put little bubbles and saying, look how literally she wrote, look how hideous you look.

Speaker A: She put little bubbles on these ******* photos.

Speaker B: And the bubbles said, look how hideous you look here. Nobody's going to want to know you looking like this. And that's what the page said. And it was a page like this with all these pictures of me.

Speaker A: When she posted this to you, she mailed it.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I got it. And then she called me on my birthday, and I was 30 something, 36, 37, and told me about, I'm telling you this because you look awful. You're really fat, and you should know.

Speaker A: What the actual ****.

Speaker B: Yeah.

Speaker A: And I'm horrified.

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. And I said to her, Look, I know I've got to lose weight, but it's not the way you can't do that. You can't say that to somebody. It's not helpful. Yes. If you have a child and you feel they've put on weight and you want to help them, of course that's an issue for parents. There are ways of doing it also.

Speaker A: You just had a ******* baby.

Speaker B: And I also said, it's not against the law. Everyone probably in the world, however slim they are, has put on and lost weight.

Speaker A: She's had her grandchild. She'd say that to you?

Speaker B: Well, this is like there's just so many things, and this is a very short version. I just said, look, you need to apologize to me. And I told her, this is playground politics. If your kids in the playground, kids are in the playground and somebody says something to the other kid and it's nasty, you have to apologize. You can't say once she said to my uncle, her brother, she said, you're an *******. And he said, oh, right, thanks very much. No, I'm telling you, I think that's very useful information for you to know that you're an *******. That is the way her brain thinks. And so she said this to me. I said, you have to apologize. This is really cruel. This is really unpleasant. I want you to apologize. And she said, no. And then she just wouldn't apologize. And she just kept digging the hole, calling me up, saying I was horrendous and horrible. And then it just went on and on. I just said, I'm done. And that sounds kind of a little bit trivial, but it was after many, many years of many, many things. And then I'd sort of almost forgotten about this collage. And I showed this to one of my friends, and I showed this to my aunt who I had.

Speaker A: You kept it?

Speaker B: Oh, yeah. I've got drawers and drawers of letters because my mom sent me, like some of them are like, 15.

Speaker A: Why do you keep them?

Speaker B: I kind of have to keep them because sometimes she's got lawyers involved and.

Speaker A: No lawyers involved to what?

Speaker B: Well.

Speaker A: Sorry, I don't want to get into it.

Speaker B: No, she's tried to because she's also said horrible things about my kids. And so I've said, you have to behave well if you want to see their children and they're impressionable and you can't say these things. And then she's kind of got lawyers.

Speaker A: Involved because she wants to see them.

Speaker B: Obviously.

Speaker A: I mean, you're like, **** that.

Speaker B: Well, it's dangerous for me because my mother's also said, oh, God, I mean, so many things. Wow. I mean, that's what to ******* take in. I'm going to be honest.

Speaker A: That's horrible. I'm so sorry you have to deal with that.

Speaker B: Look, it's not something I would ever obviously, it's not something you want. I wish I had a mother that was supportive, that I could call, let my kids call me. I don't have it. So there's no point pretending that I have it or there's no point wishing that it's going to happen. It's not possible. So you have to kind of go and this sounds very kind of matter of fact, but you kind of have to say, this is what it is. And I just get on with my life. And the one thing I can control in my life is the way I behave, the way I am, the way I am with my kids.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, you are very much like that mother figure to many people, I find.

Speaker B: Right.

Speaker A: Like even when your kids friends come over, it's all very like open hello. Hi. Welcoming. Right. Even to me, it's just what you've come from and where you're going.

Speaker B: It's two very different places. They're very incredible. But it's weird actually, because in my family, I'm very, very close to my aunt. Very warm, lovely, generous, spirited.

Speaker A: Right, so you learned a bit.

Speaker B: It's amazing even that she is sister to this person.

Speaker A: My God.

Speaker B: And my grandmother was a kind of strange character too. So I do think there's some mental illness and bizarre things like depression, alcoholism, lots of not good things. And you just have to kind of understand them. You have to realize that they're there in the sphere of kind of what's gone on in your family. But you don't have to be it, because it's not. Thankfully, luckily for me, it doesn't affect me. I haven't had any of those mental health or mental illness issues. Like, everyone I have a bad day and everyone I feel anxious and I'm a menopausal woman, so you feel anxious and all the rest of it. But in terms of the kind of I hate using the word normal, but the kind of normal range of what a human being feels.

Speaker A: I'm sorry, but trauma does not give you the ******* right to be an ******* to anyone.

Speaker B: No.

Speaker A: Your own trauma, you're not allowed to be. It's no excuse to be an ******* to someone. We all go through trauma.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Just because you're going through some **** in your life doesn't mean you can pass that on to the next person. And the other thing I would also say is you can't be cruel. It's one thing people talk about being honest and we're talking about sharing truth, but being cruel, unnecessarily cruel is a whole different thing. And it's something in my case, my mother revels in. She loves it, and she doesn't, by the way, just do it to me. Like pretty much every one of my family's cut her off. Right? So it's not just me. It's not just, oh, I have a.

Speaker A: Bad she's a daughter.

Speaker B: She doesn't have a relationship with my aunt. She doesn't have a relationship with any of her extended family, and she obsessively calls people. So then they all have to block her number. I mean, it's not a healthy situation.

Speaker A: Yeah, well, again, it's horrible that you went through that, but it's incredible how far you've come from dealing with that. You think about your own situation and we have all these things that happen to us, whether good or bad, and it's amazing.

Speaker B: It's amazing what you've well, thank you.

Speaker A: It's really amazing. I'm really impressed and proud thank you. Yeah.

Speaker B: And maybe sharing, it very nice to say, but sharing it also helps other people that's true. To know you are not alone.

Speaker A: I'm sure many people are dealing with.

Speaker B: This with a parent or cruel, bullying, very difficult behavior. And just to know that this is your life, this is your happiness. So think about that. I'm not encouraging anybody to do anything rash, and I didn't do anything rash. Took a very long time. But your happiness is very important. And if somebody is being cruel or bullying you, just because they're related to you doesn't mean it's okay. And I would encourage everyone, if you are in that situation and you can, to try and seek some help, to try and talk to somebody who's going to listen to you and not judge you, whatever the situation is. And I would encourage everyone to do that. Please, please don't live with that, because you don't have to and you shouldn't. Yeah. Awesome.

Speaker A: Great little advice, Mel. If you have to ask any questions to Mel about trauma, she's the one.

Speaker B: Yeah. And I'm happy. Like, please send us messages. And please, if you are experiencing something and if it would help you to share it with us, please do. There are lots of ways to do that you can see on our homepage, of our website, sharingmytruth.com that there are different ways you can contact us, whether you leave us a voicemail directly on the site, you can email us, you.

Speaker A: Can even send us a DM.

Speaker B: Send us a DM. It's totally anonymous. If it would help you to share and to tell us the story and for us to read it out and talk about it, we really would be happy to do that.

Speaker A: This was amazing.

Speaker B: Thank you so much for sharing, as always. Fabulous. A little bit more serious to talk, a little bit better podcast.

Speaker A: I think it actually is good to get kind of down, especially in the new year, really see where we've come and see where we're going and just looking forward to absolutely. In the future.

Speaker B: Life's messy.

Speaker A: Oh, ****, yeah.

Speaker B: Many different parts to life.

Speaker A: Some of it's good messy, some of it's nasty messy.

Speaker B: Definitely.

Speaker A: Here's to getting messier.

Speaker B: Absolutely. Well, darling, I love talking to you.

Speaker A: I love you, babes.

Speaker B: And we'll be back soon.

Speaker A: Okay, bye. Cheers, everyone.

Speaker B: Bye. Thanks so much for listening. Please rate and review this podcast and follow us on social at sharingmytruth Pod and leave us a voicemail on our sharingmytruth.com to share your stories and experiences with us. We'll see you next time. Bye. Two, one.