Hey Julia Woods
Join me, Julia Woods, a couples coach and wife of over 3 decades, as I share some of my client's stories and my own so that you can be encouraged, inspired, and gain new results in your marriage.
Hey Julia Woods
How Healing Helped Me Reclaim Two-Thirds of My Day
"How Healing Helped Me Reclaim Two-Thirds of My Day"
Have you ever considered how much of your day is spent carrying the weight of past wounds? In this episode, we dive into how healing and self-awareness can free up emotional and mental space, allowing you to reclaim two-thirds of your day. Join us as we explore the power of transformation and how letting go of old patterns can create more peace, clarity, and connection in your relationships.
In this episode, I sit down with Melinda, a spouse of 43 years to explore the hidden ways we build walls in our relationships—through busyness, avoidance, and unspoken conversations. She shares her powerful journey of breaking free from distraction, embracing vulnerability, and choosing growth over control. Tune in to discover how reclaiming your "backyard" can transform your marriage and deepen your connection.
💥💥Everything you need to grow the marriage you long for is waiting for you in the Marriage Growth Community:
https://beautifuloutcome.com/marriage-growth-community
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💥💥Everything you need to grow the marriage you long for is waiting for you in the Marriage Growth Community:
https://beautifuloutcome.com/marriage-growth-community
🎁 Free Gift for you! 100 Prompts and Ideas to Connect with your Spouse!
🎁 FREE GIFT: Turn Defensiveness into Connection! https://beautifuloutcome.com/e-guide
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👉 Take the free communication quiz! What’s YOUR communication type?! https://beautifuloutcome.com/communication-quiz
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Where you can find me:
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FAC...
Welcome to hey Julia Woods podcast. I'm your host, julia Woods, founder of Beautiful Outcome, a coaching company focused on helping couples learn to see and understand each other, even in the most difficult conversation. Share with you aspects of my relationship and the couples I coach in a way that you can see yourself and find the tools that you need to build the marriage you long for. Welcome to another episode of hey Julia Woods. I am so excited I'm having a repeat guest. That got a lot of interest from you all as listeners the last time she and her husband were on and I invited her to come back solo and to just really be able to look at what goes on in the mind of a woman behind the scenes as we walk in this transformation of our own backyard and the transformation of standing at the fence, peering into our spouse's backyard and what it looks like to actually begin to do the work in our own backyard.
Speaker 1:For those of you that might be listening for the first time, that's an analogy I use a lot in this work of transformation, in that it's easy to find ourselves In a marriage.
Speaker 1:It's like we are neighbors with our own fenced-in backyards and in our own fenced-in backyards we have our own thoughts, our own feelings, our own judgments, our own limiting beliefs, our own crazy cycles of how we deal with life.
Speaker 1:And what's easiest to do in a marriage is to find ourselves standing at the fence, peering into our spouse's backyard and looking at what they need to feel, how they need to feel different, how they need to think different, how they need to do less of this and more of this.
Speaker 1:And while we do that, our back is turned to our own backyard, where we need to look at what we're doing that isn't working, that's muddying up and making the neighborhood of our marriage ugly and toxic and lacking what it is that we long for. And as we begin to turn away from that fence and begin to do the work in our own backyard, all of a sudden the neighborhood of our marriage begins to get beautiful and be what we long to be. So on one of the coaching calls you and I were in, you were talking about how you filled your days with tasks so that you didn't need to sit with your stuff. Can you describe to the listeners more of what that? What did it mean to not want to sit with your stuff and what did it look like in the busyness of tasks?
Speaker 2:Well, I think that filling my day with tasks came natural from my upbringing because I was a military child. So you know everything was very task oriented and had a list and everything was completed and judged, and so that was kind of my first glimpse into relationship really. And so by filling my day with those tasks it just helped me not sit and think about the reality of myself and what I was bringing to the table in all of my relationships. And another thing that comes with the military is seeing everything black and white for most people, and in doing that it almost handed me permission to be judgmental. So if it wasn't occurring in the black space or the white space, the gray space was I could judge that because I felt safe that that was unacceptable.
Speaker 2:And so what I noticed for me by filling that and not really sitting down and thinking about my own backyard and that the tools that I could use to cultivate good relationships, was that it was especially alarming that that feeling like time, specifically my life, was just rapidly flying by, like in the past. I pretended that that was how life was supposed to be right you were busy, you had kids and you had jobs and you had tasks around all of those things, including neighbors and schools and things that didn't have anything to do with mine and Jeff's relationship specifically, relationship specifically. But it was almost like I felt unaware, but somehow was intentionally building this state that kept me from having to deal with learning what I didn't know. I didn't know about my belief system.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I love giving the listeners context. I'm a very visual learner. No-transcript.
Speaker 2:I think for me I filled my days with like I went to work at the school and never sat down with Jeff and had a financial discussion about whether or not that was a good move for us as a couple and a family.
Speaker 2:I accepted the position working at the school not enough money to pay the taxes on our house but my not conversation with Jeff.
Speaker 2:But my delivery to Jeff was basically you know, I'll be with my kids 24-7 and I'll get to know all the teachers and all the parents and it'll be good for our family and it'll be good for our family Not sitting down and talking about the half a dozen things that immediately came to mind that were impactful on our relationship, because I could avoid talking about what personally we needed by just going and taking that job, because literally I was out of the house all day and, jokingly, jeff would say things like well, I guess you're not outspending, so you're really making more money.
Speaker 2:But hey, we never sat down and had conversations about things like finances and things like it would. Just, we waited until things would come to a head and I don't mean like, oh my gosh, you spent a hundred dollars last week, we had two children and we don't have enough money for that, for, you know, extra income, but more about being able to have the conversation in the beginning, before we were at the explosive state, and because we're both so tolerant and, I think, nice and that wasn't doing us any favors because we weren't asking the tough questions to make us respect each other and respect each other's moves and things that. So when you're a couple, you think you're having these discussions because you're succeeding in life at the end of the day, when you sit down as a family and you have dinner and you put the kids in bed and everybody's alive. Yeah.
Speaker 1:So you think, you've succeeded.
Speaker 1:Okay. So this is powerful. It's connecting for me deep as a human, and what I want to share is what I hear you say, and you can edit whatever's not true for you, and so this may not be what you're saying, but it's what I hear you saying and we'll see if that connects for you. So what I hear you saying is that you recognize now that you and Jeff were both lonely in the relationship, that there was some bitterness being produced for Jeff in how you were spending and some bitterness for you in maybe his lack of availability, and so it became easiest just to go and do the job at the school and busy my life. So we don't need to talk about what we actually want and need from each other in our relationship and in our connection. It feels like I'm doing the right thing to go to work and be available to the kids, helping with finances, and this will be a cover. So we don't actually need to talk about the loneliness and what's missing for us in the marriage. Is that what you're saying?
Speaker 2:It is, and I think that you know the first title that you gave the podcast that Jeff and I did together. You know, walking our separate paths in the same marriage is a good analogy, where you know, kind of the same thing occurred with Jeff where it's. I'm going to take this job and even though we live, you know, in the north part of Houston, I'm going to drive down to NASA near the water. You know, an hour and a half each way because I think I might like this job instead of sitting down and saying you know, the same half a dozen things that I said immediately came to mind about me taking mine, because it was. I kind of felt like that would. I was relieved that, you know that would add that commute time, which meant less time for us to chat about things. And when I say that, he would say that as a joke where he would say, well, I guess at least you won't be spending money, so maybe you're making like twice your salary. I mean, it was so sad.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:So we used humor, because of our personalities and our kindness, to mask what we were missing from each other.
Speaker 1:So powerful? Because, as humans, it's the and with right. We're both. In each of us is the hero and the villain. In each of us is the good and the evil, and so it doesn't mean that taking the teacher's job there wasn't good in it.
Speaker 1:The question is what creates the disconnection in a marriage? What is it that I'm avoiding talking about and just going to do and making myself look like the hero in the story? I'm doing this to help us, I'm doing this because it's good for us and I am a villain. I don't want to talk about this, and I don't want to be honest about the hurt that I feel and the loneliness I feel at home not doing these things, and the resentment I feel about how long you're gone every day because you chose this job that has a three hour or hour and a half commute. We don't want to talk about those things, but they reveal themselves in the cynicism. They reveal themselves in the cynicism. They reveal themselves in the jokes that sting a little, but we laugh it off because it's easier to do that than say, wow, what is the cost? There's always benefits and there's always costs to every choice we're making, and we like to just ignore the benefits we'd rather not admit. Like I get to be bitter.
Speaker 2:Because you've chosen this job over your family, and I might feel like I'm doing more tasks, but I got to be right, which always needing to be right, always needing to make myself right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and in this case I get to be the good parent. You're robbing so much time from the family and I'm going to show our kids how available I am because I'm going to take a job at the school and I'm projecting into that. I don't know if that's true for you. That's my own story of how much of what I did with the kids was about trying to show them I was the good parent, that Jeff was the absent parent. Did any of that come up for you?
Speaker 2:Oh, absolutely Absolutely. And as Jeff and I have kind of unwoven that, what I feel like was just this blanket smothering us. I see that as we've unwoven that in our own relationships with our parents as children. You know, it's just in the same type of joking comments made by the mothers of Jeff and I or the silent mess of our fathers, because I give Jeff so much credit for all of this work that we've done together. I mean, even though I went to him and I'm the one that asked him to do this with me, first of all he said yes, which is pretty unusual. And second of all, you know, just realizing, you know that every set of parents does the best they can with what they're given and their original belief system. And you know, I mean I have regrets that I can talk to my children now in their 30s and give them my insight, but would it have been better to show them that as they're growing up? It absolutely would have. But you know what? That's just hope for my grandkids someday.
Speaker 1:Yes, it's the generational.
Speaker 2:It is.
Speaker 1:You and Jeff are choosing to say, hey, I don't want to recreate what my parents have. We want something different. And it's not comfortable to look at what we're choosing and how we're recreating, subconsciously, things that we didn't even know we were recreating. We're willing to stop and sit in the uncomfortable and do the work in our backyard and acknowledge the things we'd rather not acknowledge about our humanness, of our narcissistic tendencies, of our tendency to be a coward. For me, I don't like acknowledging how I can be bitchy. I don't like to acknowledge how I hide right, my way of hiding. I've glamorized it. In my mind it looks pretty right, but in reality it's the ugliness of how I hide and avoid showing up in the vulnerability I long for in my marriage. And so there's so much connection that comes when I can come out of hiding and stop pointing all the fingers at how my husband's hiding and acknowledge, do the work in my backyard to see what my hiding looks like. My hiding looks like which is more of a male thing.
Speaker 1:A big wound in Jeff and I's marriage is my survival strategy is to be the provider. I make money very easily. I learned at eight years old to start providing because I wanted. I didn't want hand-me-downs. That was what I was going to get from my two older sisters. So I learned to start providing for myself at a very young age, and that's a part of how I hide is I'll go and make the money and if you're not showing up, I need to go to work because I feel lonely with you in this conversation, or I need to go take care of the kids because you know I'll be the good parent here. And so, man, that vulnerability and the honesty of how I hide has been painful to look at. And yet coming out of hiding is what allows us to show up vulnerably, honestly, in the beauty of the connection I long for.
Speaker 2:And not only in our marriages but in every other relationship in my life.
Speaker 2:In every other relationship in my life I mean even my children, who I feel like you know, I've just had a fantastic close relationship with, and I still do today.
Speaker 2:And you know we still do lots of things with our children, but just the deeper conversations and the things, the curiosity that the kids have around it, which I knew our lovely daughter-in love's would, because they're just the best women on the planet. Our sons grew up with a military mom, so they're very disciplined, they're very quiet, they're very private, and so it's been eye-opening. And you know, I, just I, I just have great hope for the future. I mean, when Jeff and I did the first podcast, you know, the first thing we worried about was, you know, public and the boys, and then we sent them a little link and they thought that was great and we just said to them you know, this is our legacy, it's mine and your dad's, and when you have children you'll figure that out for yourselves, but at least you'll have some good groundwork to work in your own backyard and figure that out before they get here.
Speaker 1:So I want to make sure that the listeners get an opportunity to just connect with their own human experience. So is there an example of something that is a tension for you, that example of something that is a tension for you that in the past you would have just busied yourself to not need to be with it, and what does it look like for you today to allow yourself to be with, to sit with? You describe it as I didn't want to sit with that stuff, so I busied myself and made my to-do list and my days just flew by because I was busy, busy, busy. So what is an example that you would be willing to share with the listeners of a current day tension that's there for you and what it actually means to be willing to sit with it and as you sit with it, kind of what's unfolding, willing to sit with?
Speaker 2:it and as you sit with it, kind of what's unfolding. I mean, for me some of it was mostly self-care. I mean I was giving that up to be the bigger person, right To make myself feel like it's almost like that. My belief system was, if I wasn't giving something up or suffering in some way, that I wasn't being the best version of myself. But the reality is it's just like when the flight attendant says, put your own oxygen mask on first and then put your child's on. That's for a reason. It's so that when you have oxygen you can take care of those around you and you can work on yourself, spend that time on yourself and hopefully that will then make me a better version of myself for myself and that really shows up to other people. But I would feel that list I would make every morning kept me from doing things like even just working out, Because that was my excuse, Because somebody else needed something.
Speaker 1:And I think this self-care piece it's something I personally struggle with. I often have said you and I feel like you're my sister from another mother that we think rather similarly, and so I had a very skewed view of what self-care meant. I often heard things on social media and different things where I was like self-care, ugh. I made up that self-care was going to the spa and getting my nails done and getting facials and going out to do things with having weekend get-togethers with women, and not that anything of those are wrong, nothing wrong with those things. They weren't my quote unquote cup of tea and I began to discover that self-care was very different than what I made up. Have you experienced that? What is your experience with what you thought self-care was versus what you're discovering? What you mean when you now say self-care?
Speaker 2:Well, what I thought it was was the same thing you were saying. So everything in. I mean, when you now say self-care, well, what I thought it was was the same thing you were saying. So everything in. I mean. You know, we have access to so many things in terms of viewing the outside world than our mothers did. You know social media, you know doctor visits from the house. I mean just things that were kind of crazy but that weren't available to our moms. But what I figured out, so my definition of self-care was exactly what yours were. I wasn't doing what all the other women were. I wasn't going to the spa. I hate people touching my face. You know I wasn't getting my nails done because it hurt, you know that kind of thing. It was like, well, I just don't get. You know the whole love around all of that and it almost for self-care kind of fell in place. So for me it's.
Speaker 2:I use forgiveness every day. I use the intentional prayer that you gave me, because if anyone tells you you can pray that prayer one time and forgive somebody 100%, they're not telling you the truth. I was not getting, I was not sitting with my stuff and figuring out. You know what it was that was going to make me be able to just clear my mind from all of that stuff and gives myself the care that I need, and what I ended up finding is that that forgiveness.
Speaker 2:Is that that forgiveness, the prayer and the journaling were for me? It really opened up my days and it was crazy how much my days stopped flying by. Personally, it has been like I get almost two-thirds of my day back. Now. I have time to sit and journal and make my gratitude list and have intentional prayer around forgiveness and around those in my life. Then I look up and, oh, I have time to do a little yoga and so for me, those things that felt like they were extras that everybody else was doing for self-care have kind of fallen into place. As a matter of fact, one of mine and jeff's favorite date nights now is to go get a pedicure. So he figured out that he liked them and that's one of our favorite dates.
Speaker 1:Now I love it. I love it. Now, melinda, I am sitting here imagining listeners listening and I'm thinking you just proclaimed that you got two thirds of your time back. Now that could be a million dollar course for people. It'd be like tell me how to get two thirds of my time back. So I want to slow that down. I hear you, I've walked the journey with you and I also want to make sure that the listeners are able to connect to what you're saying. So can you like just express, like tell us more. How did you get two thirds of your time back? By journaling and gratitude lists and you know forgiveness prayers? Like, tell us more.
Speaker 2:Well, I think that. So the first thing that comes to mind that is huge for me was what I found important when we had our year together, you and me and Jeff. It was that I was a. I built walls, so every time I would think I was right and Jeff was wrong. I would add a stone to the wall of contempt, and when you've been married 35 years, that looks like the great wall of China. So I'm just going to say that my walls were massive.
Speaker 2:When you are within the confines of your walls and the only thing you are thinking about is the negative stones that built that wall, that takes away it took away hours of my day. So you know some little things that I've changed is I got off all social media, except I still have my old Facebook from when my kids were little so I could spy on them but I, so I can do marriage thrive and tea time and all of that. That's the only thing I do on Facebook and on social media. I have Instagram so I can get kiddos pictures. I maybe follow like 40 people which are like you and my kids and their friends, so that I can see everyone having babies now, and just the things that are positive light in my life. So I'm not going to lie, that wall is not down yet because it was really big, but one stone at a time, journaling and forgiveness and prayer and changes, major changes in my life where if I had a relationship early on that I didn't like, I didn't have the curiosity or the forgiveness to work on it, I built a wall.
Speaker 2:I put another stone in the person wall other than you know, marriage wall, right? So when you enclose yourself like that, the only thing that allows you to do is deal with the negative thoughts in that space Exactly. And when you get rid of those negative thoughts and you start I mean just things like the programs that we're doing with you where I can listen to either recordings or participate with like people in marriages I mean I don't think anybody on there that so far has been married as long as we have, but that couple that's been married two years. We have so much in common with them and so to be able to sit with them and hear that. You know, it started early for us and we let it go because we were kind and tolerant, and thank goodness we did, because if we had walked away and never learned how to deal with it. You know, it would just suck.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, I know two couples in there that have been married longer than you. You've been married for 46 years. So beautifully said, melinda. What I hear you saying is that wall of bitterness. Wow, I resonate deeply with that. I thought it was my husband putting those stones in the wall. I thought it was the choices he was making right. You did this. So now there's this stone in my wall and you keep building this great wall of China. If you'll stop doing what you're doing, this wall will stop building. It was my self protection. I was the one thinking I need to put this stone because I got to protect myself from him.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:Behind that wall. What I hear you describing is that. That bitterness and that resentment, that loneliness is so painful that I needed to fill my day with all this busyness to numb the pain. I gave up all my time busying my day from being with the suffering that was begging me to come out and start addressing the wall.
Speaker 2:Right, and it is. It's just it's deafening the bitter sounds and the thoughts. I mean the way I let negative thoughts infiltrate my mind. I mean I consider myself a pretty smart woman but it seems that I allowed it to take over my mind because it beat being in the midst of my stuff. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I'm not going to lie, it's hard work every single day. And I mean we worked together for a year and I know that you know how far we came in that year, but still, I mean nobody ever tells you that the knight rides up on the horse and scoops you up and takes you away for your marriage. Nobody ever tells you that it's hard. Nobody ever just says the word it's hard every day. So I just assumed that when I became an adult, especially being raised military and perfectly following the rules of the land, that I thought I would become an adult and those tools for me to use in my relationships would just be inherent within me.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I'm telling you what I learned in Marriage Thrive in one year. I applaud the young couples that are coming in realizing that now, because you know I would change things. But I'm not living in the past anymore. I'm living in the future, and the future is definitely hopeful.
Speaker 1:I love it. I love it and you know. In closing, I just want to kind of encapsulate what I hear in what you're saying is you're describing the war between the villain and the hero within every human being. That hero knows it's made for relationship, knows it's made for deep intimacy, to be seen and to be known by another human being. It's the most beautiful experience this world offers, the biggest adventure, the biggest connection, the biggest thing that allows us to feel like we belong and we matter. It's the greatest partnership that can exist on this earth.
Speaker 1:And our villain is made to believe I need no one. And our wounds from our childhood, when loving caregivers were doing their best and they weren't able to be there for us and kids at school and hurtful, traumatic things happened. And our villain said see, you need no one, See, you're better behind that great wall of China, self-protecting, living in self-reliance. And our marriage brings us face to face with that war between the villain and the hero. I know I'm made and created to connect with another and others and that villain that says no, it's too scary, it's too dangerous.
Speaker 2:You don't need anyone.
Speaker 1:I love you and Jeff are both choosing. I agree. You said yes to hey, I want to do coaching and I want to go through Marriage Thrive. And in that year the two of you kept saying yes more to your hero than you were saying to your villain. You said yes to your villains many moments.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, that's going to be the journey of life. But yes to your hero, more bricks or more stones in that wall and instead say no, I'm not willing, I'm coming out of hiding, I'm not willing to put another stone in the wall and in doing that, it's helping remove the old stones at the same time.
Speaker 2:It is, and let in the light, and let in the positive.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Which, you know, our villain does not like us to have.
Speaker 1:No, it's beautiful. Thank you, melinda. I again, sisters from different mothers. I don't resonate with you and I think the listeners deeply resonate with your journey because it's human. We're not that different from each other and I'm grateful to be in the journey with you, and same to you, yes. So thank you so much for joining us and thank you, listeners, for joining us.
Speaker 1:If you resonated with what Melinda was sharing, I ask you to share this podcast with others. Give it a five-star rating if you're connecting with it and share it with others. That helps it grow and get out to more people. Others, give it a five-star rating if you're connecting with it and share it with others. That helps it grow and get out to more people. So thank you again, melinda, and thank you all who joined us today. That's going to do it for this episode of hey, julia Woods.
Speaker 1:Now I have a quick favor to ask of you If you've ever gotten any value from this podcast and you haven't already, please leave us a five-star rating and a quick review in the app that you're using to listen right now. It just takes a couple seconds, but it really goes a long way in helping us to share even more valuable marriage growth tips and interviews here. This episode shares the power of what can happen when a spouse takes responsibility for who they are, being one conversation at a time. And if you want the marriage that you long for, click that first link in the show notes and this will take you straight to the resource that's going to solve that for you. I can't wait to connect with you inside my membership, where you can get the support you need to grow the marriage you long for 24-7. All right, that's going to do it for the show. My name is Julia Woods. I'll talk to you next time, thank you.