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Steel Roses Podcast
Steel Roses is a podcast created for women by women. Social pressures for women are constant. Professionals, stay at home moms, working moms, we are here to tell you that you are not alone! This podcasts primary focus is providing real honest content shedding light on the daily struggles of women while also elevating women's voices.
All women are experiencing similar pressures and hurdles, and yet, no one is talking out in the open. If these topics continue to only exist as whispered conversations then we further permeate a culture of judgement and shame.
Join Jenny weekly as she discusses topics that effect women in a relatable, honest way.
Steel Roses Podcast
Susan Schwartz and The Unseen Impact: How Absent Fathers Shape Daughters' Lives and Relationships
Jungian analyst Susan E. Schwartz explores the profound impact absent fathers have on daughters' psychological development, relationships, and sense of self-worth. Through personal stories and psychological insights, this episode reveals how paternal absence creates unconscious patterns that affect women throughout their lives.
• Absent father effect manifests in daughters through self-sacrifice, self-hatred, and destructive relationship patterns
• Cultural norms often give fathers a "pass" while daughters learn to rationalize their absence
• Women frequently excuse absent fathers with "that's just the way it was" rather than acknowledging their pain
• Paternal absence affects a woman's relationship with her body and her ability to honor her own needs
• The "house of cards" collapse that many women experience in midlife can lead to creative awakening
• Healing requires acknowledging difficult emotions rather than suppressing them
• Jungian analysis connects conscious and unconscious patterns through dreams and relationship dynamics
• True healing happens when women stop excusing absent fathers and honor their authentic feelings
• Finding your voice and challenging patriarchal expectations is part of the individuation process
Check out Susan's website for more information about her books and work at susaneschwartzphd.com
https://www.linkedin.com/in/susanschwartzphd/
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Hello everybody. This is Steel Roses podcast. This podcast was created for women, by women, to elevate women's voices. I am very honored to introduce you to our guest today. We have Susan E Schwartz with us. She was trained in Zurich, switzerland, as a Jungian analyst. She has appeared on many podcasts and presents at numerous Jungian analytical conferences and teaching programs in the USA and worldwide. Her expertise goes across a range, but we're going to focus in on the absent father today. But, susan, I would love it if you could introduce yourself to the listeners, tell them about yourself and the area of focus in absent Father. But I think we also might want you to give layman's description or layman's explanation of what exactly is Jungian analysis Like? How does that work? What is it?
Speaker 2:I will do that. Sure, do you want me to start? Yes, okay, great, jenny, thank you so much for having me to begin with, and let me say that I'm going to answer your question about what is Jungian analysis, because it fits with the absent father effect on daughters, because that's what we're talking about. So one of the differences with Jungian analysis and some other approaches are is the emphasis on connecting the unconscious to the conscious and within that. So we find out about that through people's dreams, their relationships, things that happen to us, which seem out of the blue and they're not. They're meaningful. Even the lousy things are meaningful. The point is, how do you learn from them?
Speaker 2:The issue about the absent father and how I got interested in it is that a lot of the women who come to see me, who came to see me for analysis, I would ask them about their father, and they had about one sentence to say almost all of them that was it because the father had been absent. This is historically, transgenerationally. So the father, where was he? I don't know. He was working, he was divorced, he was separated, he was drunk, he did drugs, a lot of different things, but he wasn't emotionally present and all the daughters excused it. They said well, that's just the way it was.
Speaker 2:Then I looked in the literature. By the literature I mean anything psychoanalytic, jungian psychology, even Jungian psychology, even very little. Until the last maybe 20, 25 years has much been written on the father. Usually, again, there's about one sentence he was X and that's it. But you know, when there is absence it has a huge effect. Whatever has been absent in our lives, it doesn't just go away. It goes underneath, it lives in the unconscious. We don't know about it and it can come around in a rather destructive fashion. So one of the things that I felt. So I'm just going to go on a bit and then we'll talk.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm taking notes, keep going.
Speaker 2:One of the things that I found as well is the effect of the father on a woman's body. So that also is not talked about very much. But and also culturally. So culturally, because I know the United States, that's the culture that I reflect, but many other cultures have a very similar absence of father. It manifests itself differently, but it's there. There are hardly any. It's happening more now.
Speaker 2:Many men that I see are not absent fathers. They want to be present, but the history is they're not there. I think what happens to the daughters? This relates to their psyche and their body. They forget about themselves, they don't take care of themselves, they don't treat themselves well. They might get into self-sacrifice, self-hatred, self-denigration, hurting themselves. I don't mean just cutting, I mean hurting psychologically their relationships. Their inner relationship is where you can repair it. But the relationship's also fraught and fractured, and the book is not meant to just be negative, it's to recognize how absence is to be filled, and that is the point. That's the point maybe, of why we are talking as well how absence is filled, so it doesn't just remain some kind of abyss inside of oneself. We become creative, we become energetic, we become alive, not numb. So a rather long introduction.
Speaker 1:No, I love it. So I'm going to circle back a little bit. Let's see here. Okay, so, and just for the listeners, I did pull up um, uh, like a little brief definition and you tell me if this sounds accurate to you. A lot, um. So a young yin, um, young analysis and psychotherapy. It's a licensed mental health professional who helps people understand themselves and their motivations through psychoanalyst psychoanalysis that focuses on the unconscious mind. So I just wanted to sum up, like what you said, and then I am. I don't think people realize how much and this is for men and women, it's not just specific to women. I know that's the focus, I always focus on women, but it's really not our unconscious mind. There's so much there and if you suppress or try to suppress and try to ignore exactly what you just said, susan, it will come out and present itself in other ways.
Speaker 2:It's true, yeah, and the reason it does is we're supposed to know a lot. We're not supposed to just repress things, we're supposed to know a lot. And again, it isn't really popular to access the unconscious, I'm not sure why. It is not difficult. It appears all the time. It appears even in you know what you choose to have for breakfast sometimes. You know and you need to know why. So why am I doing this? What is happening? Even what is the meaning of our interview?
Speaker 2:You know, I always think that there's meaning in it. It makes life so much more valuable because then you have meaning and you're not just walking around suffering and in pain, You're finding the value within yourself, and that, to me, is really the focus of Jungian psychology. There's one other part that's kind of different than other psychoanalytic approaches and that is the value of one's spirituality. I don't mean religion, I mean an approach to life which involves rituals and images and the life force, et cetera. And we cannot miss culture. So I work mostly one-to-one, or I have worked mostly one-to-one and you would think, well, does that really have much of an effect? But actually, if you think about it, as we gain consciousness, then everyone we speak to we have an effect. It's like with your podcast the people that listen there's an effect and they're going to tell somebody else and it increases consciousness. It's like sparks that go out. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's, um, it's. I'll use myself as an example. When, um, well, you know what I'll actually the absent father effect, like you know what, I'm going to make a couple of statements and then I want you to kind of, you know, do your thing. Basically so, until I was about 13, my parents were married and then, when I got to high school, I had already had a sense, you know, that things were not right. And I remember when I was in seventh grade, when I was about 12, I remember telling my cousins like I was, like I don't think my parents are gonna make it, like I think they're gonna, I think they're gonna divorce and they were like, no, no, like your family's perfect.
Speaker 1:You know you guys are all going to church together all the time, this and that, the next thing. And I remember saying like, no, like, I have a sense, something's not right. And I was able to I don't know if it's the empath intuitive I picked up on it and, sure enough, about two years later, when I was 1415, um, my parents separated. Now, at the time I self preservation found a way to compartmentalize that and put my feelings in a box and put it to the side. That was me trying to survive the situation Flash forward from the age of like 15 to the age of about 21, 22,. I went through this really destructive phase.
Speaker 1:Now I know why now and I have to tell you, when I was in my mid-20s, early 20s, I actually started reading a lot of books about women coming of age, young girls coming of age. One of the books that I read that really like knocked me for one was Reviving Ophelia, and I read that one and I was like crying reading that book because I was like, oh my God, like I went through this, like this is stuff that I went through. Because I was like, oh my God, like I went through this Like this is stuff that I went through and now like speaking with you, if you don't mind for the guests me going through that trauma of my parents' separation and having that destructive period all ties into the fact that that divorce happened, of course.
Speaker 2:Well, if you think about it, when there is a rupture, there's a rupture and you're around that age. It's such a change time that it's not surprising. Anyway, we go through this kind of identification who am I at that age? But you did a couple of very interesting things. One is you had good intuition and you knew that the image of the family together was false. I think that saved you your intuition In a strange way.
Speaker 2:You had to act out, what is acting out, you had to express, and then you had to compartmentalize and put it in a box. One because you had to grow up. I mean, we do anything to survive and then, because it's so destructive inside, or feels that way, that in fact it's not until later that we start to go. Wait a second, because even when you said about a destructive phase, usually it's connected up with being numb. So I would ask you, if you don't mind, we can use you as an example, because your situation, although yours, is very common If you think about it, when you're like an early teenager girl, female you're like growing, deciding who am I? How does your father deal with you? How does he comment about your body changing? How does he comment about your intellect, your talents, your athletic abilities? How does he and is he present to do that? So we could say well, when there's divorce, does that mean the father is just gone? Oftentimes, sadly, it does, and then again the feeling doesn't come back until quite a bit later.
Speaker 1:Right, and that's and honestly that's and I remember. I now and I went through and I'll explain to about when I eventually came back to myself, but in that time I do distinctly remember that. You know, it's very interesting too, susan. I have two brothers and I remember my older brother during this phase, like when we were going through this with our family. My younger brother, I was about 15. So he would have I told him, like you know, I'm like I I don't know if I'm blocked, I don't know what it is, but for some reason there's these spots of time where I don't remember him and I must have been because I was going through my own journey and my own crisis. I have no recollection of even reaching out to him to be like, hey, like we were all living in the same house, obviously, but like I don't have any recollection of even reaching out to him and to be like hey, like we were all living in the same house, obviously, but like I don't have any recollection of like, well, what did he do during that time?
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know when you can't remember, so here's part of the absence. So you can't remember who was there, and you actually didn't answer when I asked you about was your father present?
Speaker 1:Oh, I can answer that.
Speaker 2:But you know, I think what I'm saying is that the places where the memory is not there, it kind of compensates and allows you to be able to focus on yourself and kind of go inward and preserve yourself. And then it's always interesting how many people don't remember what happened, or they don't remember so-and-so, or they became numb, yeah, yeah. And so as you follow each of the events, they kind of one adds to another, to another. And again, where did the father go?
Speaker 1:Now he was the way that I look at it. Now he was present in like a topical way exactly topical yes, yes.
Speaker 1:So it was very much like and at the time I again was like I'm, I can handle this, I can, I can carry this weight on my shoulders of my parents separating, like I can help my mom through this, for example, me 16 year old me was like I can save you.
Speaker 1:This was like when I was heavily like, heavily developing my codependence skills basically is what was happening here. And so I remember saying to myself well, I excuse his behavior because he's going through something and I have to put my own feelings aside here because he's going through something. He's have to put my own feelings aside here because he's going through something. He's, you know, he's figuring out his own way and I have to be, like you know, supportive across the board and not cause any additional ripples for my parents. They already have enough on their plate. I need to just kind of help keep the peace, keep things moving forward. And so I remember rationalizing it in my head and I was very sad for a long time. But I remember trying to like rationalize my head like, well, it's okay, because he needs to go through this and it's okay that he's going through like. That was the. Those were the thoughts that I was using to help me, like get through it.
Speaker 2:Yes, but you know, the he that you're referring to could also be the he that many daughters refer to when they're talking about their father. And they take care of him by excusing him. So they say well, you know, he did this, well, he didn't do much, but they rationalize and make it better than it was. And the other thing is it's such an interesting denial of one's own feelings to think that you're strong enough to take care of mother or never challenge father, so he doesn't really get challenged. Why Is he fragile? Is he able? And then you could say what do you take in, what do we take in of that kind of modeling? So if you think the father is fragile and he's not taking care maybe of himself as well, then how do we learn to take care of ourselves, right, right? So throughout history there's been this deal of it's the mother. She affects the child most of all. Well, that was when the nuclear family was of a different nature than it is now. And then where are we left? We're kind of left nowhere if we don't pay attention to the father and how he has affected us. It's so amazing. I'll give you an example.
Speaker 2:I gave a lecture on the absent father quite a long time ago with a group of analysts and one of them was so honest. The person said you know, I forget to ask about the father. This is an analyst. I was amazed, I was so appreciative that that person could be that honest and part of the forgetting, it's like you forgot about your brother. You didn't forget, you didn't forget. It was just too much. Too much. So, in a way, if you open the deal about the father, there's the can of worms that starts to open up and it's got reverberations, reverberations and reverberations. I don't want to say that the absence is always destructive, but it can be because we rationalize it away. I could handle it just like you said. You said it in relation to your mother.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:But we could apply it. We can apply it because we just can. It happens Also to the father and he gets off the hook. The destruction stays inside, like with you. But you could also say what happens. I mean divorce, separation is so common in many ways. Usually what happens the mother stays and the father goes Almost ubiquitous I mean percentage-wise it's pretty much what happens. And the father might retain some contact, but not so much.
Speaker 2:And how you find out how you're affected. You can look at your dreams. Is there a father? Does he ever come in the dreams? And how does the relationship with him get projected onto relationships with a partner? Now, the partner doesn't have to be a male partner, it can be anybody, because we've all got these characters hanging around inside. So, whoever you're with, how are you projecting you onto them? Or their own absent father projected onto you? So it becomes so. This is very Jungian in a way. Many layers, many, many layers. How did this happen? How did that happen? What are you carrying and what are you carrying of the absent father inside yourself?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'll say this because it ties into what you just explained. It's almost like I have to be honest, it's very interesting, slash, scary a little bit to hear like how spot on what I went through is in comparison to like what you're talking about. So I know listeners are probably hearing this and maybe pulling over to be like wait, what is happening? Um, so I had that experience with my parents separating and there was a point in time where I got to the point where I had said to myself no matter what my father does, I'm going to look the other way and excuse it, because it's either I lose my father or I accept everything he does. Now I carried that with me into my very first serious relationship and it was a terrible relationship and it took me about a year and a half and it took a death in my family for me to shake myself out of that relationship.
Speaker 1:To be like wait, I don't want to.
Speaker 1:I don't want to live my life like this, like what is, and I didn't know enough to how to get myself out of it.
Speaker 1:But I knew that it was not good what I was doing and I started pursuing psychologists for myself just because I was like something's not right.
Speaker 1:I know something's right, not right inside, and I have to figure this out now Because I remember a lot of times I'll have these moments where I'm like I need to figure this out because I want to eventually get married, like I don't want to live my life like this, like how can I address this so I can become better or get you know, get a better understanding of what I've been through? But it was very interesting now to look back and see like I went through this in my really formative years and it affected a lot of decisions that I made all the way up until I was about 25. When I finally got to the point where I was like I feel like I've gone through enough therapy, where I felt like I was safe enough to date and you know, get serious about people because for a long time I had a lot of poor, toxic behaviors that I just kept repeating over and over again, right?
Speaker 2:Well, there's. There's several things in what you're saying. One is that you know the brain doesn't solidify until we're 25. Well, that's several things in what you're saying. One is that you know the brain doesn't solidify until we're 25. That's interesting, amazing, isn't it? It's totally amazing. So it takes a long time. But then the other thing that actually takes a long time is to learn to honor yourself. So you can be 25 and you get the ego functioning, you get yourself into your world, you have I don't know career, et cetera. You decide how you want to have your life. But then later, because the pain was so profound, people don't usually explore it until a bit later in depth.
Speaker 2:So that's the deal. I mean, that's what I do. It's more in depth. And there is another thing that I have found Several, quite a few women who contacted me and they say you know, I'm in my 70s and I need to figure out about my father. Yep, in other words, it has been underneath that long. My relationships, just like you're saying, have been affected by this. I have to figure it out now. I mean right, if not now, when? And they say I want to go into deeper work to figure out what has happened. In other words, the process of knowing about yourself is lifelong. The other thing that happens with the absent father is it's promoted in our culture. You did it.
Speaker 2:You said it, give him a pass. But our culture is very patriarchal. Yes, right, so the masculine, whatever that means, is elevated. And then who are you to question that? And who you are as a person who needs to question it? And then you gain not then, but you gain your strength. So what you're talking about is that intuition which just knows. It just knows, and then you learn to listen to it. But our culture is a little on the outside story. That's exactly right. And don't question, don't look too deeply inside, don't trust your intuition. Don't trust your intuition. And then it is also said intuition is feminine, whatever that means.
Speaker 2:It's a put down, but it's a put down to women and to men as well, but also to men. And so it becomes divisive and we want to bring the personality together. It does not mean so there's another piece. It doesn't mean you forgive your father. I mean people say I'll just forgive him and it'll be okay. No, it isn't. I go, how is he going to be okay? And how do you? Also, what happens if he's dead? So how do you? Or you haven't seen him for a million years, you know a long time. You don't just forgive somebody. Forgiveness is a. We talk about it, we discuss it, we see, do we have a relationship or not? What are we going to do? Right, yeah, challenge, not just yeah. Challenge the status quo. Well, it's not popular, and yet that's what's needed.
Speaker 1:It's interesting that you say that, because I remember there were several moments throughout my adult life where I would say you know, I feel like I've made my peace with this or I forgive him, like you know, and for everything that has happened. But then, ultimately, time would pass, some trigger would happen and it would feel like it was being ripped open all over again, nice and fresh, and even to this day. You know, I'm 41 years old, you know, for me, now I'm like I'm much more aware of myself and much more like respectful of my own feelings and really, again, single attention to my intuition and to my feelings as a barometer of, like well, how do I really feel about this scenario? And now more than ever, I make it a point to be honest about things and I'll kind of take stock, like if something happens, like do I really feel okay with this or am I just putting a bandaid over it? And I make sure I don't do the bandaid thing anymore as much as I can, because I'm like I need to be able to live my life to the best of my ability, for the example of my children as well, because I think about the trauma and things I've been through, and I know that there's a weight that still carries with me, but because I'm trying to be so mindful of it, I really don't want to pass that on to my kids and Susan.
Speaker 1:Prior to our recording, I had been able to share with you a little bit about my husband and how his approach as a father, and when we first got together I remember I was astounded at the level of commitment he had to his children. I mean, I was because I have. I had been through what I went through, where I had to prioritize. I felt like I was prioritizing my father versus versus like the other way around, right. And then I started dating this person that wholly committed to his children. Nothing else mattered to him, and that was like our very first date. He told me I have two children, they are my priority, they're up front. He's like you have to be comfortable with the fact that they will come first all the time. And I remember being like as a divorced child. I was like wow, really I was totally shocked to see that, because I've never seen that before.
Speaker 2:No, because you know you had given father a pass. Yeah, I've never seen that before. No, because you know you had given father a pass. Yeah. And then you could say psychologically that absence led you to find presence. Oh yeah, so it led you to find what you needed. There's a French psychoanalyst that I refer to quite a bit. I just love him. It's Andre Green, and he came up with this concept of the dead mother effect, but he also spoke about the dead father. What he means is not dead, dead like buried.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:He means depressed, he means absent, vacant, emotionally stunted, stopped somewhere. And so what happens is? You described it well. Actually, you compensate, you try to make the parent come alive, you give them a pass. They're not so bad, it wasn't so awful. I'll try to repair it, but that doesn't work, because then you're constantly giving your blood to him.
Speaker 2:It's a horrible analogy, but you really are like draining yourself over to him, or you might be draining yourself, not even to your actual father. Maybe you learned to drain yourself period in life and you're not really doing yourself period in life and you're not really doing yourself.
Speaker 2:So you're going along with I'm going to use this word again, I mean it in a general sense You're going along with the patriarchy which still has an effect to say the women still are not wherever they totally want to be, that's, anyone feminine in general, whatever that means. So it's like the equality within the psyche is not equal. So I'm just going to go back. So Andre Green in a way parallels Jung, because Jung talks about the negative father complex. So it's like it's functioning inside in a negative way. Sometimes we're not even aware of how bad it is because we're used to it. Or people say oh really, that's as good as it gets. Your standards are too high. Oh, that's a big one, that's a big one. Why are you going after so much? Well, the answer is because you should, because this is your life and you want to. But there's a subtle that's what I mean. Truly, we're supposed to be content with less. Now, that's true for men as well. I don't know who wins in that story, but it's not going to be anybody. Yeah, once again, I think, if we look at the absence as a means to fill it, it's like your example of why you met your husband, you know, because it had to be filled.
Speaker 2:It's like this empty space sitting there and psychologically, unconsciously, you're like I don't know, going out doing this and that, and then the whatever right is right for your psyche at the time comes along to fill the space. But you also have to do the work Right. So, partners, don't do the work for us, forget it. That doesn't happen. Oh no, not at all. Yeah, that's, that's too late, that's not real. But we're challenged then to really go back and say, wow, what did I really miss, what did I really need and who am I? And to make sense out of the suffering. You can't deny the suffering, you can't get over it. You make sense of it and provide meaning. Who knows, it might be part of what. Had you do these podcasts?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it was very interesting. I was waiting for you to get there because I had a feeling you were going there. I was waiting for it. I was like she's going, I can see where she's going. So, going through, I'm sharing, like you know, basically like blocks of time with you. So I met, meet my husband and it was very interesting because when we met, nobody in my family was okay with the relationship.
Speaker 1:Nobody was and they were like he's because he's older than me. He's nine years older than me, so I was 26 when we met and they were like you know, he already has kids. You know it? This isn't this, you know, or he's too much older than you. They have this perception of he's controlling you. And the reality of it was that what had started to happen was for from like 23 to like 26 or so. I was just there for everybody. I was consistently like I'm here for everybody, I'll show up to everybody's things. I'm, you know, showing up for everybody else's kids and their own things. And I had gotten to a point where I was like I, I'm not doing anything for me, nothing is for me. So when I met my husband, I I had started at that point the practice of checking in with myself and my own feelings about the situation. Everybody was being very loud around me about how much they didn't think this was good for me, and I kept taking stock and I would have a quiet moment with myself and say, look, I'm like everyone's giving me a hard time, like are you happy, jenny? Do you feel respected, jenny? Do you feel like this is a positive relationship, jenny? And it was always yes, which is why I'm married now. But it always came back with if I'm happy at the end of the day, when I lay my head down. This is what's important here. And so I got to a point with my family where I said to them I'm like, you have to get on board, like, and if you don't, that's your choice, but this is my choice. So I basically drew a line. Everybody they know me well enough to know like, if I'm saying this definitively, then get on board or like. That's it. So that was 15 years ago, during the time that we were married.
Speaker 1:I definitely in the beginning, especially after we had kids, fell into habits that I had picked up from my parents and from my mother specifically. Do you want me to pause? No, go ahead. Okay, my mother specifically. There was habits there, but there was also habits from my fathers and watching my, my parents with their relationship.
Speaker 1:Um, my dad worked, my mom didn't, and he controlled all the finances. This was something that was like a thorn in my side the entire time I was growing up, because all I would watch was like my dad had all these things. He was always spending money on suits and this and that or whatever, and my mom had like t shirts and sweatpants. You know like it was very like uneven to me. And so, while I was growing up, I swore to myself like you're not ever going to be in that position, like Jenny, you're going to make sure that you're showing up too. So I had the full career you know I was, even though I had three kids, three infants. I was like I'm going to do it all, I'm going to show up financially, I'm going to show up there. I was ultimately burning myself out quite quickly. Um, I did that for I want to say like five years or so. For a very long time I burnt myself out, and then I got to about 37 and it was like this house of cards had started to fall Collapse.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And everything that I thought I wanted and that I thought I should be doing just started to crumble, and even my career I was like it was. The career was going great, but it didn't feel great, and so I got to a point where I was like this isn't right, like something's not right, like I'm not. I'm not me here, I'm not Jenny, I'm not showing up as Jenny. I feel like I'm just like going through the motions and pushing ahead and constantly looking to the next thing. But what's going on here that I don't feel like I'm being filled up anymore. I'm not happy with what's going on. This is also when the podcast idea really came to life.
Speaker 1:So I had this pivotal moment where I was on this project for work and I was working. I got put on this project even though I requested not to, and it was a really, really heavy workload. So there was about three weeks where I was working like 70 hours. I wasn't seeing my kids, even though I work from home, but my kids were little they're about four and five years old. For about three weeks I didn't see them. I just for baths and breakfast. That was it. And so I get to this end of this period of really, really heavy work and I was like totally shattered. I was burnt out. My kids looked bigger. I was crushed because I had missed it.
Speaker 1:This is where I started to kind of turn and say like I need to make a change here, kind of like every other moment in my life where I had a moment of I need to change this. And it's when I started to look into podcasting. And then it's also when I discovered, like meditation and starting to turn inward to clear up everything that was stuck, because that's what it started to feel like Susan. It started to feel like a drain had been clogged full of so much trash that I was just shoving in there as band-aids and this and that, and it's okay. And the meditation that really pushed me to be like I need to really start focusing on like healing these old wounds that had just left there.
Speaker 1:There was this meditation. I was following somebody, I was taking a class, so I this meditation she had us do. You basically are reflecting on your other, jenny's basically. So you acknowledge 20 something, jenny, but then you're also acknowledging eight year old Jenny, right, right. I remember I came out of this meditation crying like hysterically and I was messaging the other people and I was, like, is anyone else crying from? Like having to do this meditation? Because it felt like I had finally started to acknowledge these other Jennys that had gotten pushed deep down and never really healed from it everything that I had gone through.
Speaker 2:Yes, well, you know it's interesting Jung speaks about. He calls it the middle part of life. Who knows when it is. It hits people in a variety of ways, but what happens is exactly what you said the house of cards crumbles, it's gone. What you thought it was going to be doesn't work anymore and out of it comes exactly what you said creativity, however, it comes as well when you start to realize what you didn't have. So you start to realize loss, you start to mourn, you start to grieve, you start to see parents for who they really are and you start to also see your father because that's who we're talking about for what he could give and what he could not give, so how he hurt you and how he left open the places of your own desire. And if you read fairy tales, so this is one of the beauties of Jungian psychology is looking at fairy tales and myths, legends. They tell you about the psychological process. The one I speak about in the book is the Handless Maiden. Do you know that fairy tale?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:Well, I'm going to tell you the horrible part. So the horrible part is that in order to save the father, the daughter agrees that her hands can be cut off so then he doesn't have to be taken by the devil. It's a whole story. And what she does is she leaves. She does is she leaves. So in every fairy tale, the princess, the female, the male, they always leave the beginning place, go through quite a difficult time, come out the other side. It's not that she marries the prince, it's that she finds herself. I mean, that's really what happens. But in this fairy tale it's really one of the worst and it actually speaks about a psychological incest Because if you think about it, it's a castration. The hands are cut off, she has no hands anymore.
Speaker 2:How herself develops, it's pretty parallel to what you're saying. She went and lived alone, or you could say alone inside for a period of time and then her nature, her real nature, came back. Yeah, and she had a child. Of course it's. You know Grimm's fairy tales, that's what it is. They're kind of male oriented, so she always has a male, but we'll excuse that. So she has, she has. In other words, she gives birth to herself. And this is often where women because that's who we're talking about get stuck. They don't know how to give birth to themselves. Your house of cards that fell down forced you into finding another part of yourself, and in a way you're lucky it didn't happen later in life.
Speaker 2:Sometimes it does, you know, whenever it happens. It happens, but the issue is that what you believed it's so hard, it has to crash so you find who you really really are. Jung calls it the process of individuation. So it means you're not just going along with the herd, it means you are going along with yourself, which is exactly what you said. It's finding you, going along with you. From the absence you come to see how much you've got, how much creativity there is, what your new ideas are, how you're going to reach out in the world in a different way, because you don't just find yourself to stay hidden in your house. You find yourself to move out into the world and affect other people.
Speaker 1:So you did that? That was like the most perfect explanation. Did that? That was like the most perfect explanation and it's honestly it it's almost like a breath of relief to hear you say it like that, because that's how it felt and it it truly felt. I was telling my husband the other night I'm like I think about me now and then like the me when we met and I am so vastly different different, oh for sure and I feel like now I was, and I had this conversation recently with somebody. I feel like now, in my forties, after going through all this and then this reawakening of like, a resurfacing of like who Jenny really is, I feel like my forties is like this is this, is it? Now I really know who I am and I and I feel like I'm putting my best face forward and I feel really fulfilled. And it was very interesting Because when I was younger, before all this, I was very creative.
Speaker 1:I love writing, I loved art, I loved all those things and I completely stopped for a period from like, the age of like I want to say 15 or so all the way until I started podcasting. I stopped all creative outlets because I was and I've done the work to think this through, but it was like the ego taking over to say, like you know what you go to the side, your feelings will push us aside. We need to just drive really fast forward, get through this and preserve ourselves. Just keep your head down and keep going. And I did that for so long that now I look back and even when my kids were little I mean I had, I had my kids very back to back.
Speaker 1:I had my son in 2016, and the twins in 2017. So I had three. I had three infants at the same time and even in that moment, when I was working full time, had my three babies at the same time, I was like keep your head down, keep moving forward. And I operated like that for so long that now I'm like no, I'm going to soak in every single moment, every moment that I can be present, I'm going to make sure I'm present. I will make sure that I'm prioritizing, like my children. I work really hard, susan, to make sure that they all feel acknowledged. Because there's three. I mean it's very hard, but I'm also very honest with them. I'm like mommy's just one mommy Like let's just give me a break.
Speaker 2:Yeah, but you know, yeah, but you know, again, I think there's that push sometimes can overcompensate what we didn't have. So we're pushing from a place, which is true, but it's also a little artificial and it is to override the pain, the discomfort I'm not going to. You said it, you put the emotions in a bag over there. Well, probably in a casket is probably a nailed it down, because that's what we, that's what the culture promotes as well. Right, don't be too emotional. Well, I don't know how you get through life without being emotional. And this can also happen with the father who, as I said earlier, is emotionally absent, so he doesn't know how to show you how to manage emotions or how to be loving as you need, as you individually need. What I would want to say as well it's really the fathers who suffer also. They can't enjoy their daughters, they don't know how, or they don't know how to take time and say, oh, let's hang out together, let's take a walk, let's run, but you know we'll do a sport together, something. Too often they don't do that. Again, I think it's changing, I don't think it's changed enough, and so hence that was the point of writing the book.
Speaker 2:The other thing that's interesting is, I'm going to add culturally. I remember I gave a lecture and a woman from China came up in rather a subdued tone after and said you know, we're not supposed to challenge fathers in China, not supposed to. They rule, they're the ones. And I said I don't think it's just in China, I think it happens. But it's interesting to me because she couldn't really say it in a very loud voice even, and express her disappointment, and even to do that would feel too rebellious. So there's the other thing Isn't a girl, as she grows up, supposed to be healthily rebellious?
Speaker 2:Isn't she supposed to argue with the dad if he's around? Isn't she supposed to be as the dad if he's around? Isn't she supposed to be as smart as she possibly wants to be? Isn't she supposed to make tons of money if that's what she wants? Isn't she supposed to find her own way? The other part that happens is sometimes people will say my father wanted me to be this. The question is what did you want? Sadly, some people don't go inside like you did and the crash has to be bigger. You know, it takes a long time.
Speaker 1:I know that I've thought quite a bit about that. That's also part of the reason why, when I have guests such as yourself on this podcast, I try to share as much as I can as yourself on this podcast. I try to share as much as I can the vulnerability there, because I do think that many of us won't go inside and try to fix it. It's a lot, it's a lot to go through and it can be hard to deal with it. And I mean I will readily admit now like I still have residual feelings, like I still have feelings about it and my, my cousin and I will joke sometimes and say like oh, it's the divorce kid syndrome and like it's, you know, because we both went through divorces with our parents and you know, there's almost always something, some trigger, some form of something that comes up that incites this like madness, this rage, this sadness, and I'm much better now at acknowledging and accepting and like paying homage to it because I'm like it's there, like I have to be, you know, be able to acknowledge this.
Speaker 1:That's a big part of the journey that I went on over the past like three or four years was being okay with not being okay, like acknowledge the fact that this happened. It happened. We can't you can't bury this. What can we do with this? I've had countless women the podcast has well over a hundred episodes and so many women have come on here and shared how a trauma that they eventually addressed turned into them helping other people where they used what they went through, they acknowledged it, they worked on it and then they decided, made the decision like. I need to use my voice here to talk about this because there's probably someone else going through the same thing. We need to let people know like this happens to a lot of us we're all going through this.
Speaker 2:I think you're right. I think there's something also about expressing your voice and using it in your own individual way, and also to know that you see it's kind of tricky. Some people will say yes, I've gone through a lot, therefore I want to help other people. I think that's. One of the difference with analysis is that an analyst has to have done the work, so you don't just go and read a book. You figure yourself out as much as you can and then, quite like you're saying as well, you realize that through your life you're going to keep on figuring. Yes, I mean, it just doesn't end.
Speaker 1:Oh, it doesn't's what I'm saying. I still, which is fine. I think that's part of the journey, though this is life. There is no end point. This is it, this?
Speaker 2:is it, but you know it should be ideally interesting. Okay, it's difficult, but you know, nothing wonderful is easy anyway. So go through the difficulty, find your strength, be able to realize you can do it. Use your creativity in a different way than what you thought, because not all trees have green leaves. See, we learn it very early. I think also, females still learn to not be too rageful, don't be too angry. Be a little more docile. It's so old-fashioned, it's so old-fashioned, it's ridiculous, but it's still there. It's still there, you can see it. And so the more that we know and the more we break out of old bonds, the better it is actually.
Speaker 2:Because we always stay a little bit unconscious anyway. Nobody can be conscious 24-7. So we don't need to expect it, but to honor the difficult feelings. That's the deal. Yes.
Speaker 1:That was like the perfect summary that you could have. I was going to ask you for a final thought, but you did it so that I don't even have to answer the question. Susan, thank you for coming on with me today. I greatly appreciate it. I think this has been so insightful, even for me personally. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2:Well, you know. I thank you very much for asking me, but you can tell in our interactions how already there was a click.
Speaker 1:You can tell it through the, you know, through the email through the oh, I can usually tell pretty easily and very quickly the guests that I'm going to really connect with Exactly.
Speaker 2:It's there. So thank you for the opportunity for us to have such a lively discussion.
Speaker 1:Oh no, this has been so wonderful Listeners. Thank you so much for joining us today. I'm going to link Susan's website her information in the description of the podcast If you want to look into anything further. Definitely I recommend exploring her books. I've already earmarked a couple that I'd like to purchase myself, because this is important, and you've all heard me say before how critical it is for us to be really living authentically. And I don't mean a buzzword, authentic, I mean like, truly do the work, because once you get through that, there's a hump of emotion that you have to get through, or there's a hump of work you have to get through. The light that comes to you when you do this afterwards is phenomenal. So, susan, thank you again for joining me today.
Speaker 2:Thank you, Jenny.
Speaker 1:Have a good one, thank you.
