Series Wrap And The Destination

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Hi. Welcome back to the Post Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Black. This is the closing episode of our Good Girl Contract series. In part one, we named the contract and where it came from. In part two, we walked through what happened when we took it into adult intimate relationships. Part three, named the mirror problem. Part four, walked through what holding boundaries can look like in real time. And we spoke about the reframe that the contract's purpose was never really to make us good, but rather to make us interchangeable. And in part five, last week's episode, we named the way that the contract can be transmitted, the way that it doesn't end when a problematic relationship does, and what our children can absorb when we're still operating from the conditioning of the contract. Today we're going to be talking about the destination, not as some kind of triumphant place that we will one day arrive at where all the work's done, all the discomfort's gone. That wouldn't be realistic. Rather, the destination is a lot more imperfect than that. The work can be ongoing. We'll be talking about what our children actually need from us, what we're actually building towards, and why the fact that you simply willing to be here to listen to these episodes is already the start of providing your children something different to what you yourself inherited.

Grounding And Regulation Together

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I'd like to invite you to take a deep breath, to hold it, to release it slowly, to unclench your jaw, your hands, to lift your shoulders up to your ears, hold them there tightly for a second or two and then let them drop, release. Feel some of that tension dissipate. Perhaps notice where your body is making contact or connection with the furniture, if you're sitting, if you're standing. This is part of our grounding and regulation work, and it can really be helpful every now and then throughout the day to check in with ourselves, with our bodies, to take a deep breath, to release some of the tension in our bodies, in our muscles. And as I've said before, we're here together, you're here with me for this conversation, so why not do some grounding and regulating at the same

Free Resource And Mailing Lists

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time? And before diving in, I'd like to remind you of something that I've mentioned in the a previous couple of episodes, which is that if there's something in this conversation that has given language perhaps to patterns that you've seen in your life but perhaps have struggled to name, if you'd like to dive a little bit deeper into this work, even when our good girl contract series ends with this episode, then I'd love for you to come to the website danielleblackcoaching.com.au, because I've created a free resource to help you explore the Good Girl contract and how it shows up for you a little bit more deeply. The first resource is called the Contract That You Never Agreed To. It's available in PDF form as well as an audio format. You can choose to download either of those or both. It's right at the top of the home page, you'll see the link that will take you to this particular resource. This is a developing body of work as well. For those of you who sign up for that particular resource, you'll also be joining the mailing list specific to this work where you'll get some more information in your inbox specific to the Good Girl contract. So if that's something that you're interested in, if you'd like to have further conversations with me about that, please do head to the website. And if you're interested in the other things that we talk about, so specific to post-separation parenting, to post-separation financial matters, post-separation abuse, all other things post-separation. If you scroll further down on that home page, you will also see a spot where you can subscribe to our general mailing list. You can subscribe to either one or you can subscribe to both the good girl contract work and the general post separation work.

No One Can Do It For You

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And you know, I was almost going to re-record that framing of things, you know, calling it work, but you know what it really is? The people who get the best results on this journey are the people who recognise that for the vast majority of us, a fantastic outcome isn't just going to be handed to you. As I've said on previous podcast episodes, as I've said to clients in the past, no one's coming to save you. No one's going to fix this for you. It does not matter how good your lawyer is, it doesn't matter how good your coach is, it doesn't matter how good any particular resource is, there is no one person or no one thing or no one product that can do the work for you or that can make up for the fact that you don't really want to do the work or you don't really have the time to do the work or you've overwhelmed and are struggling to do the work, you know, all the things. And I know that that can sound really harsh, but I just don't think I would be doing my job. I wouldn't be helping anyone if I made it sound like I could solve everybody's problems, or if I made it sound like the blueprint could solve everybody's problems, or that literally anything out there could solve what it is that you're navigating. It's an unfortunate reality that optimizing your outcome does take time. It does take effort. And I just really like to recognize those of you who really are seeing results in your world because of the work that you're doing, whether that's working with me one-on-one, whether that's working with another member of the coaching team, whether you're a blueprint member, whether you're simply tuning into the podcast, but doing everything that you can in the background to be building your knowledge and growing your capacity so that you can more effectively, credibly, and sustainably advocate for yourself and also for your children if you have children. You know, those of you who are doing the work, you know, thank you. I see you, I know how hard it can be, I've been there. That's one of the reasons why I do this work, because I think navigating this journey when you've got somebody else that you can connect with, and even being able to connect with a community of people, which our coaching package clients have access to, it does make a difference. It really does make a difference. And in saying that, there are some people for whom seeing a difference in their outcome doesn't happen until closer to final trial. That can also be a reality of this work, that you can be working your little backside off and thinking, okay, when am I going to start to see the benefit of this? And that can be really challenging, I get it, but the reality is that truly, particularly when we're talking about the family law system, sometimes the best results happen at final trial or after final trial or close to final trial. It oftentimes can take a while to start to reap the benefits of the work that you've done. And for some clients, one of the most significant benefits that they often report is just simply how much they have changed as a person. And I'll be honest, that was true for me as well, you know, not just optimizing my overall outcome at the very end of it, but you know what, throughout the process I really did just have to grow the fuck up. I had to put on my big girl panties and level up in all the ways, including with my emotional maturity. It's very strange for me sometimes to look back and reflect on who I was before I'd went through all things post-separation, and this is going back 18 years ago, more than that now, and just recognising how immature I was in a number of ways, and you know, to the point that I'm almost embarrassed about that. And that's incidentally part of the contract training as well. But again, you'll you'll be able to learn more about that, how it can manifest in those ways if you sign up to that mailing list, that separate good girl contract mailing list at the website. Now this was a little bit of a segue, but suffice to say that you know it does take work. I don't want to soften that, and I know that that might turn some people off because hey, if work's not really what you're wanting, you know, something else to do, um, yeah, you might switch off, you might find another podcast, you might find some, I don't know, other other people working in this space that make it sound a little bit smoother, a little bit easier, a little bit less like work, and absolutely go for it. But if you're listening to this and something about what I'm saying is resonating with you and you're thinking, yeah, you know what, I don't know that I really want to do the work, but something about this is resonating with me. I want to I want to learn more, I want to hear more, I want to do more, I want to level up, I want to grow up, I want to handle this like an adult. And stay tuned because that's what we're about. You know, it's not about blaming and shaming what we've done in the past, mistakes that we've made, those sorts of things. Rather, it's simply about striving for better where we can and reaping the rewards of that afterwards, because I tell you what, not only can you optimise your outcome post-separation when you level up things in your life and when you level up yourself, but the rest of your life improves exponentially.

How To Apply This Anywhere

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Now, before we go further, I also just want to acknowledge that this whole series has been largely framed around protective parents, and that's in large part because that's a really big part of the community that we serve here at Danielle Black Coaching. Two, we're primarily serving directly with our coaching practice, but everything that I'm going to say today, and everything that I have said, it also applies to anyone who's doing this work, whether or not you have children, whether or not you're currently in a relationship with a romantic partner, whether or not your particular contract-shaped relationship is with a former partner, a current partner, a parent, a sibling, a boss, a friend, or with yourself. Where we're heading with this work, the destination, and what we're going to be talking about in this episode is relevant to any woman who's doing this work, regardless of your specific circumstances. The parenting framing of some of what we'll talk about today is a specific application of the work, but it's not the only one. So if you're listening to this episode but you're not a parent, please reflect on how you could apply what we're talking about with the specific parenting content. How you could apply that to whatever it is that you happen to be navigating, your own situation. Take the coaching and see how you can apply it to your situation. And incidentally, this is often something that we're inviting our coaching clients to do when we're hosting group coaching calls. I think I've mentioned on previous episodes that people that work with me or another coach on the team via a coaching package that also gives them access to a secure online community, and we have regular group coaching calls. So there's obviously then a group of people on the one call, and understandably, when someone's talking about their own situation, asking a question, seeking some guidance or support, whatever the situation might be, understandably there will be a whole heap of people on that call for whom it's not necessarily directly relevant, either because, you know, for whatever reason, you know, the age of their children is different, or maybe they're working with us for financial or property settlement reasons as opposed to parenting, or you get the idea. But we're often inviting everyone on the group call to still think about the coaching that each person receives and to think about how they can apply it to their situation. And so that's what I'd like to invite you to do with this episode as well. If there's specific examples that I provide are not directly relevant to you, that doesn't mean that nothing in the content is relevant. Think about how you could reframe it to apply to you in your situation.

Your Children Are Not Doomed

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I also want to acknowledge that there were some things that we raised in in the previous episode, part five. We spoke about some things that I know could have been quite difficult for you to hear. And it's really normal if you're carrying a lot of feelings from that episode or other episodes or or this episode, including fear. Fear that your children have potentially been damaged through what they've absorbed in a way that can't be changed, in a way that they're not simply going to recover from, that the harm has happened, that the harm has shaped them, and that it will follow them into their adult lives, into their own relationships, into their own capacity to love and be loved. And I think that what can then make that land even harder is to then take take on the blame yourself, to to believe that it's your fault, to believe that you didn't protect them, all the things. And I just really want to say here that you know, if you take nothing else away from this episode, please know that your children are not doomed. Not by what has happened, not by what's occurred, not by what they've absorbed. I was that child once upon a time, I'm not doomed. You potentially were that child as well, if you've stayed with me for these episodes, I'm assuming that there's something that's really resonated with you. You're not doomed. You know, for me, I'm okay. I am loved in a very healthy way. I'm also capable of loving my partner, my children, other people in my life in a way that is healthy. I have relationships with both of my parents on my terms with boundaries that I have set, independent relationships with each of them because they're no longer married. I have periods, you know, I have times of connection with them that I value. I've built a family of my own, a healthy marriage, a healthy relationship with my kids. What happened in my childhood shaped the beginning of my story, but it has not at all determined the ending. The rest has absolutely been mine to build, and I'm really proud of what I've built. I'm really proud of the work that I've done across many years to interrupt what happened to me, you know, to interrupt that and to stop that from continuing to define me. And all of that to say that recovery from all of this is very real. Now that's not a promise that everything's going to be absolutely a okay and fine, but rather to say that children that have been through significant harm can grow into whole connected functional adults, not by pretending that the harm didn't happen, but by doing the work that comes next. And I guess that sort of connects in with what we were saying before. That it it takes work. You know, we're not just going to get through this and overcome this and set healthy boundaries and have better relationships with ourselves and other people, just I don't know, by osmosis, it's not just going to filter into a set of nowhere while we're sleeping. It is going to take some work. But in my view, you know, it's it's work that is very worth it. Your outcome, your children's outcome is not set in stone. It it can be shaped differently with what happens next, with what is chosen next, and a large part of that is in your hands. And I think that's really powerful. So if you're afraid that your kids are doomed, please hear me when I say that I was that child and I am not doomed. And I think that means that you know your kids are not doomed either.

Let Kids Choose Their Timeline

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Something that can be challenging to sit with is that that recognition that our children have two parents. Over time as they get older, they will determine how they want each respective relationship to look. And that whatever relationship they choose with the other parent is not a threat to your relationship with them. And rather that's what growing up and becoming an adult actually means. And that was part of my journey. My parents separated and divorced when I was in my late teens, and I have a relationship with each of them, but it's a relationship that is very independent from my relationship to the other parent, if that makes any sense. And I think that's important for you for me to mention because I also want to make it to make the point that it is not our job to push for our kids to see the quote-unquote truth about the other parent on our timeline. And that might be hard for you to hear if you've spent years watching your kids navigate a relationship with a parent who has caused them harm, who might still be causing them harm, and if you've been quietly hoping that one day they're going to clearly see, you know, what that other parent has done. But that is out of your control. It's really not yours to manage. Your child might see what you want them to see, and they might not. And even if they do see and make some of those connections, they might still choose some degree of connection anyway. Now they might see, they might make those connections and choose to walk away. They might see partially at different ages with different implications for their relationship with the other parent at different life stages, but all of this to say that none of that gets to be your call. None of it is your project. You know, you don't get to be the project manager of that. All of that is for your child to manage and to determine themselves as their own autonomous being. I saw what my parents were, I saw what happened, I saw how it affected me, and I chose on my terms, on my own timeline, with my own reasoning to maintain relationships with both of them. On my terms, with my boundaries. At times there have been periods of extended silence. But at the end of the day, I'm the one who's chosen what those relationships look like for me, not my parents, not anyone else, not my former husband, not my current husband, me. That's what children. Who have been harmed do. They can see, they can understand what happened, and they can still choose some degree of connection. We are, as human, social creatures, and there is often a pull towards the people who raised us as a form of survival instinct, and it doesn't necessarily switch off just because people caused us harm. And I wanted to mention that because the reality is that your kids might do the same thing. They might see what the other parent has done and still love that parent. They might see what that other parent has done, whether you know, to you, to themselves, to siblings, to whoever, and still want a relationship with that person. They might be able to name specifically in words exactly what happened and how it's impacted, and still choose to walk towards that parent rather than to walk away. And none of that is evidence that you've failed to protect them. None of that is evidence that they are confused. None of that is evidence that there's some kind of alienation or further abuse happening. Ultimately, as your children get older, and this is particularly true for when their children are entering their teens and young adult years, ultimately your children's relationship with their other parent is not yours to design, to control, to manage, none of it. And that can be incredibly uncomfortable to make space for, but it's nevertheless true. Your job is to be the parent whose relationship with them is not contingent on which parent they choose to be close to at any given time. They need to know that their relationship with you does not have conditions, that they don't have to cut off contact with the other parent in order for you to be okay or in order for you to be happy or in order for you to feel that tick, job as a protective parent done. And that can be a lot harder than pushing them to see what you see. But it's what actually serves them. Holding space, being a safe space for them, being a welcoming space, being a genuinely unconditionally loving space, that's what that looks like. It looks like you backing the fuck off at some point and letting them navigate their relationship with the other parent on their terms. Now this might be hard for you to comprehend to mat to imagine at all if you've got tiny tots at the moment and if them negotiating, you know, what their relationship with the other parent looks like is, you know, quite far away for you. But even then, even if you've, you know, got a five-year-old, well, it's going to be within ten years that this is going to start to be happening. Children do start to pick up on dynamics, they do start to connect the dots to re-evaluate relationships, and then particularly as they head further into their teen years and then into their young adult years and beyond, they're going to be doing even more thinking. You know, that process continues. But again, none of that's ours to design. We get to be there to support them. But if we have a vested interest and have a hope in, oh yes, you know, oh, really hoping that they have nothing to do with the other parent. You know, we've got to be careful with that because do you want to protect your kids? Of course. Am I sad that my child from my previous relationship currently has nothing to do with their other parent? Am I sad about that? No, because I think that, you know, my child in this situation has made the safest decision for them. But I've always been really, really careful not to let that out, not to not for any of that to be obvious, and always made it very clear that I was supportive of absolutely anything that my child chose and that I would be there to support them in whatever way they needed me to, no matter what. That's a healthy relationship. Something that we also need to be aware of is that children who have been abused can often strive for years to achieve the love and acceptance from the parent who has caused them harm. Sometimes for decades, sometimes for the rest of their lives. And that is not evidence of manipulation by the other parent. It's not evidence that the child doesn't understand what's happened to them. It's not evidence that anyone's failed them, but rather it's just evidence of the deepest human drive that we have, and that is to be loved by our parents, to be acknowledged, to be seen. And, you know, I'm closer to 50 than 40. I've processed my history in years of substantial therapeutic work. I have relationships with both of my parents on terms that I've set, and there is some part of me still now at this age that wants both of my parents to be proud of me. Sometimes, some days, there's still a tiny part of me that really wants their approval. And I guess I'm saying that to say that the desire for that doesn't go away because we recover. We can be holding it differently, interacting with it differently, but that doesn't mean that it ever completely disappears. And I think it's important that we normalize that. I'm sharing this with you because if you're a parent, I want you to hear that if your kids are showing signs that they're striving for the love of the other parent, an abusive parent, if they're seemingly hoping that that parent's going to change, that they'll start showing up, that hoping this time will be different. Well, that's not evidence that they're not understanding the dynamic at all, that they're not understanding that there's something unhealthy going on. It's evidence of the human need for parental love. And I think an important thing to sit with here is that this is not something that we should be striving to eradicate from our kids. That's never been the point. The point you know is not to have our kids stop loving the parent who caused them harm. The point is not to have them see the harmful parent as the enemy. The point is not to have them reject the other parent completely. Rather, in my view, loving our children and supporting them to be the best versions of themselves, healthy, functional, boundaried, with the ability to choose the relationships that they want on the terms that they want with the parameters that they want. To me, that's the point. For me, for my child, that has always been the point. For my child to be able to be the best version of themselves, healthy, functional, with boundaries, to choose the relationships that they want and the parameters that they want for those relationships, that's been the point. Not for my child of my first failed abusive relationship to stop loving the other parent, not for them to see the other parent as the enemy, not for them to reject the other parent, but rather to feel confident choosing on their own terms what that relationship would look like. So if part of your child is still hoping for the other parent's approval, that's not evidence that you failed. It's just evidence that your child's human. What we're building for them is not the extinction of that hope of the approval and the love. Rather, what we're helping them to build is their capacity to hold on to that hope without letting it dictate their choices. And I think that's that's a different, much more retainable goal, a healthier goal, and in my view, it's what recovery from all of this actually looks like. It's not the absence of the longing for a healthy relationship with a parent, but it's the capacity to hold on to that longing without being driven by it, which is what I hold within myself in my relationship with my parents at nearly 50 years of age. And that's what your children will hold to in their own way, on their own timeline. So now we get to your job because I've been spending so much of this episode telling you what not to do, and you know, I think it's important that we that we be specific about what we can do because I think there's so much of protective parenting content that is kind of a bit vague, and I do like being specific where possible. We're now at that place in our journey of unpacking the good girl contract together, or at least part of it. Look, I'll be honest, we've scratched the surface here. We really are at the tip of the iceberg, which is why I've invited you to go deeper with this work if it's something that interests you by heading to the website, having a look at that resource that I've created for you on the first master clause of the contract, and joining our mailing list so that you can hear more about the contract and more about the work that we're doing to support those of you who are wanting to go deeper with this because I know that there are many of you that have found that so many of the things that we've unpacked in this series have unlocked some things for you, or have answered some questions for you or have encouraged you to reflect more deeply on your own experience. I know that some of what we've covered has really helped so many of you to get clarity on what's been missing in your understanding of what you've experienced and in understanding how you've ended up where you actually are at but then to start to answer that question of well, where to now? Where to now? And I think it's so important that we do dive into that work for those of you who are interested because as I said to you, you know, you will get to a point where you are no longer in the thick of the court system or battling it out with parenting arrangements. You will get to a point where things are just no longer feeling anywhere near as intense with your former partner, whether we're talking for parenting or for property, and yet you can feel that there's still a lot of things that are unresolved. And I would go so far as to say that part of the reason for that is that your ex is not the primary reason or the only reason that you've experienced the things that you've experienced. There's more to it than that, and I think when we dive beyond the superficial and the surface level, when we really get to the to the deeper core of ourselves and really sit with that question of who am I and what is it that I want for my life? That's really powerful.

Four Things Children Need Most

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But in terms of what our kids need from us, well, there are four main things that we're going to unpack in this episode. The first one is that they need our protection, particularly when they're younger. That's not to say that our active protection stops when they reach a particular age. Protective parenting can exist, I think, for forever, really, in some way, shape, or form. But obviously it changes, it morphs, it evolves depending on what our kids are navigating, irrespective of how old they are. So protecting our kids while we can in the ways that they need us to. We're going to dive into that. The second thing that our kids need from us is for us to model healthy boundaries and to be showing up specifically as ourselves. They need us to be authentic, but they need us showing up authentically in a healthy way. And healthy authenticity means not being all access to all people. The third thing that our kids need from us is for us to accept their boundaries with us, and this becomes exponentially more important as time goes on and as they get older, particularly when our kids are in late childhood and entering into the adolescence years, the teen years, and absolutely in the young adult years, accepting their boundaries with us is key. And our kids need us to be someone, to be a person, to be a parent who does not require managing. If you're listening to this podcast and if you have children, your children likely have one parent in particular that requires managing. They likely have one parent in particular who holds them responsible for their emotions, for for the adult's emotions. They likely have one parent in particular where the love, the affection, the acknowledgement, the attention, the connection where it's conditional, where that relationship and that parent requires managing in some way, shape or form. So part of what our kids need from us is for us to be a parent and a person who does not require managing. What they require from us is for us to be responsible for us, who does not require reassurance, who does not require regular touch points so that we know that we are loved. That's our job. Our job to reassure ourselves emotionally and to become the person and the parent who doesn't require managing from anyone. You know, that's what it is to be emotionally mature, so that our kids can genuinely just be our kids. We're going to dive into all of that in this episode, and there is a bit of it that's going to feel pretty darn uncomfortable to hear, I know, and again, none of this is judgment, none of this is about blaming or shaming. Again, as I've said so many times, please don't ever use content of mine or you know from anyone on your team against yourself. That's absolutely not what this is for. You know, aga it's not about blaming, it's not about shaming. It's not about sitting in in you know and wallowing in guilt and regret, but at that same point in time, you know, we absolutely need to have compassion for ourselves and for things that we've said and done in the past that you know when we when we know better, we look back on and we regret and we wish that we could change. That's actually really healthy. But what's even healthier is to be able to hold that compassion and strive for more and strive to do better, and be able to say, you know what, I have not always parented the way that I should have. I have not always parented in a way that's healthy. I haven't always been an adult in a way that's healthy. I think there are many of my clients, actually, many of you potentially listening, who would acknowledge that you've spent quite a significant part of your adult years being quite emotionally immature. That can be challenging to sit with and to acknowledge, but it can also be incredibly powerful because once there is that acknowledgement, well, you know, we can work with that, we can do something about that. And how incredible is that to then be able to make a commitment to yourself to be showing up with increasingly, you know, deeper levels of maturity, taking responsibility for yourself and not making that somebody else's problem. Taking responsibility for yourself and your emotions, truly becoming the best version of you. Not because the work's never done, not because we need something else to prove ourselves, you know, we're not gonna be buying into any more toxic good girl contract bullshit. But just because we want to be authentically us, however that ends up looking, so that we can enjoy that for ourselves but also model that for our kids. That's what we're gonna be covering in today's episode.

Active Protection Over Peacekeeping

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So for those of you with young children who are needing active protection, that's your role. Not passive active. Don't be agreeing to overnight time for young kids when you know that the other parents got drug abuse problems or alcohol problems, you know, without having particular protections for that shit in place. You know, active protection. Not agreeing to however many overnights for kids that are young that have never been cared for by the non-primary caregiver where there is no emotional attunement. It's about striving for arrangements that are safe. Physically safe, but also emotionally and psychologically safe. Documenting the patterns that matter, advocating for the developmental science in professional settings, being able to link that developmental science, attachment science, the post-separation parenting arrangement research to what you're seeking when you're having conversations with lawyers and other professionals. Bringing the knowledge that your lawyer was not trained to have, you know, and again, that's why I created the blueprint. Refusing to accept arrangements that harm your kids, even if you refusing, increases the conflict, as we've said before, and as is mentioned on the website. You can't be both conflict avoidant and protective. And there are some people who try to use my words against me by saying, Oh, but Danielle, you've said that you know what harms kids is exposure to conflict, not separation in and of itself. And I'm just like, for fuck's sake, that does not mean we agree to arrangements that are harmful purely to avoid conflict. Putting our kids in situations that are harmful, whether we're talking physical, you know, potential physical harm, or whether we're talking harm to their nervous system, harm is harm is harm. And if there's an opportunity to prevent harm from occurring, that's what we have to do. So please don't anyone be thinking, oh well, actually by avoiding conflict I think I'm being protective because then they're not being exposed to the conflict. No, they're being exposed to fucking harm. This is where doing the work and just levelling the fuck up comes into it, and I'm not sitting here for a second thinking that it's not hard. I fucked up in my own situation for years avoiding conflict instead of protecting my child. That's why I'm so passionate about this. Because I know that there's so much harm that occurred to my child that I could have prevented, but back then I didn't know what I what I didn't know. I didn't know how to go about it, I didn't know what to do, and that's why I do this work now, because I want better for your children than what I was able to do for my own. And our kids get older, and so the protective work changes, it changes shape because it has to. And that doesn't diminish it in any way, it just means that it's you know it's slightly different, particularly when we've got kids voicing their own opinions, who are choosing to spend time with a parent, and when we've got serious concerns about the nature of that relationship, the protective work then is is different. It's no less important, but it's different. And this is partly where modelling healthy boundaries comes in.

Model Boundaries And Be Specific

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Because children learn so much of what they learn from watching us, which means the way that we hold boundaries in all aspects of our lives, but also with our children's other parent and with our own parents, all of that becomes part of their internal template for what healthy relating looks like. Whether we want it to or not, whether or not we think that they're consciously watching, there are they are absorbing this, which is why the personal work of this whole series matters so much, not just for us, but also for our kids. Because when we interrupt what the contract has done within us, we're not just doing it for our own sake, we're interrupting it so that we can help to. Impact what our kids are going to carry into their own relationships. And as we've discussed in other episodes, our kids need to see us not just as someone who has healthy boundaries, who can acknowledge when they need to be set, who can set them and who can maintain them. But our kids also need to see us as a specific named person, a specific named person with likes, with dislikes, with preferences that we don't apologize for, with refusals that we don't bend over backwards to soften, to protect everybody else's feelings. Because if all they see is a mother who holds boundaries but has no specificity, then they're still going to absorb that frame that we're just people who play a particular role when what we want them to absorb is that women are specific named people who also happen to have healthy boundaries. Part of this work with our kids in interrupting the contract with ourselves and with our children is also accepting our children's boundaries with us.

Accept Your Child’s Boundaries

SPEAKER_02 45:05

And this might land hard with some of you listening, but I'm nevertheless going to say it, because it's important. You know, accepting the boundaries of our children can look like accepting that our kids don't want to answer the phone when they're with the other parent, that they might not reply to a text message immediately or for a long time, that they might not want the same amount of time with us that we want with them, that they might not want to talk about their relationship with the other parent when they spend time with us, that they might not want to talk about specific things with us, that they might not see the harm on our timeline, that they might see the harm and acknowledge it in some way, but still love the other parent and want significant time with that other parent. Every one of these is our children having a boundary in some form, and all of those things can activate the same abandonment and rejection wiring in us. Again, it can be that mirror problem, but showing up in the parent-child relationship where we can struggle to accept another person's boundaries. All this to say that our job here with ourselves and with our children is not just to model healthy boundaries, it's also our job to accept our children's boundaries with us, which can be much harder. Because their boundaries with us can activate hurt. It can make us feel that they must be pulling away from us, even when what they're really doing is just becoming themselves. They're becoming more autonomous, they're exercising the muscle of their own agency, of their own autonomy, of choice. Learning to receive our child's boundaries with us without collapsing, without personalizing it, without turning it into some kind of emergency. That is one of the specific things that we need to do in order to become the parent that they need. And incidentally, it's also one of the things that our contract training is really going to resist, because it's going to activate some of that original training. But we want to be a person, a parent, who does not require managing from our kids.

Stop Requiring Your Kids To Manage

SPEAKER_02 47:23

Because that's partly how the contract passes on to other generations. When children become the emotional managers of their parents, one of the greatest gifts that we can give our children is the experience of a parent, of a mother, who does not require managing. A parent who can hold their own emotional state, who doesn't need them to reassure her, a parent who does not require a child to soften bad news, to hide their real feelings or to make her feel comfortable. Not a mother who's an emotional robot, not a mother who's just completely unaffected, not a mother who's just stoic in ways that suggest that her feelings are, you know, dead. A mother who has feelings who can name them, who can work with them, who can take responsibility for them, and who does not make the burden of managing them her children's job. One of the greatest gifts we can give our kids is the experience of a parent that doesn't need to be managed. The contract required us to manage our parents' emotional states. If we can be the parent that doesn't require that of our children, we're interrupting the transmission, the passing on of the contract. So what we've spoken about, protecting our kids while we can, modelling healthy boundaries and being specifically ourselves, accepting our children's boundaries with us, and being the person who does not require managing. All of that is actually part of protective parenting, because all of that is about preserving a healthy, connected, safe relationship with our children, and that's protective. Our jobs are not to be parents who do everything right because that's just impossible. So please don't have that as your goal. Rather, our job is to be the parent that's doing the work, the ongoing work of interrupting the contract in ourselves imperfectly each day, so that what our children are absorbing from us is a parent who's becoming more herself, not less. That's what our kids need, and that's what they'll carry into their own adult relationships when the time

The 20 Year Relationship Question

SPEAKER_02 49:56

comes. I'm going to ask you a question now that I want you to sit with because I think this question, when you truly do reflect on it honestly, can really inform your parenting. In twenty years, what kind of relationship do you want with your child? What do you want them to remember about you when they're reminiscing with siblings or friends about their childhood? What do you want them to say about their childhood and about their relationship with you specifically? I want you reflecting on this question because our children are children for a very short time. I know if you've got young children at the moment, that might be a really hard thing to wrap your head around. I know how endless it can feel when you're inside it. The mornings, the schoolwork, the meltdowns, the schedules, the negotiations around screen time, bedtime routines, early morning wakings. I s I still remember those years when the two two children that I have in the middle, so number two and number three in the birth order who are only 15 months apart, I still remember when their wake up time was about 5 a.m. And just the amount of work that Drew and I put in to get them into a routine and a and a sleeping schedule that um ended up with 7am as the as the wake up time. Believe it or not, they do actually reach an age where they sleep in. Now that my eldest is well and truly an adult and number two's thirteen and number three is twelve, I can absolutely assure you that you are going to get to a point in time where they're sleeping in and where the parenting does not feel quite so endless. And then they're adults. It still is something that's really hard for me to wrap my head around sometimes that my eldest is now an adult. It just it's almost like you blink and it's gone. And then we still have a relationship with our children for potentially another 60 or 70 years, maybe more, on whatever terms that have been established across the first eighteen. Many parents are parenting in what can only be described as a bit of a survival mode, particularly when we're post-separation, reacting to the immediate issues, trying to get through the day, and all of that's very understandable, I remember it all too well, but it's not sustainable as our entire parenting philosophy. The survival mode parenting that might get us through today is not the parenting that's going to build the relationship with our kids that we actually want in the decades to come. So this question that I asked you of in 20 years, what relationship do you want to have with your children? This is about inviting you to think further out, to stretch out that horizon a bit, to invite you to make decisions today that might not actually pay off for years, but that can be the right decisions anyway. To potentially give you a way to distinguish between the small stuff that doesn't really matter and the substantial patterns that will shape the relationship that you have, the adult to adult relationship that you have with your children when they're actually no longer children. So what does looking 20 years out look like if we're thinking about a framework for parenting decision making now? Some of the questions that I've sat with as part of this include will my children remember me as a mother who was always in her own feelings about their other parent? Or as a mother who held her own and stayed a whole person? Will my kids remember me as the mother who required them to reassure me? Or as the mother who took responsibility for herself? Will my children remember me as the mother who tried to script their relationship with their other parent? Or as the mother who loved themselves regardless of the shape that their relationship with the other parent took? Will my children when reminiscing about their childhood either on their own or maybe with their siblings or with anyone else describe a mother who was a specific authentic person or someone who performed a series of functions and bent over backwards for everybody else. And this question is not just about what your child will say about you when reflecting on their relationship with you, but it's also about what they will carry into every relationship of their own in their adult life. And I understand that, you know, that absolutely feels like much bigger stakes than any single day's parenting decisions. But this is why holding that question even briefly can impact what our daily parenting decisions look like. And it's not about having to answer the question perfectly. It's not about having to know exactly what shape our relationship with our children, you know, what that's going to look like in five, ten, fifteen, twenty plus years. But rather it's just about being willing to have that question in the background of our parenting and allowing it to inform decisions. And it can actually change a lot about how we tackle what can feel like the daily grind of parenting because we recognise that we're not just making decisions to get us through the day, rather we're building something that will be here in the decades to come. And that's a completely different scale of the work, of the parenting. There's something that I want to give you not not a not as a mantra, not as something to just make you feel better a platitude, but rather something that is a decision, not just a flowery statement.

This Ends Here With Me

SPEAKER_02 56:55

And that is that this ends here this ends with me. This ends here this ends with me. You can say it out loud or say it silently you can write it, you can journal about it, however you engage with those words. It's about making a decision that the impact of the contract and the transmission of the contract throughout generations of your family that it stops. It stops here, it stops with you. It means the contract was passed to me, I did not consent to receive it, I didn't realise I had it, but once I saw it, once I could name it, I refused to pass it on. What was made in me by my parents, by the culture, by what happened will not be what I make in my children. I am choosing something different today, now, in real time. Now you might not be ready to say those words yet, or if you are ready to say them, you might not be ready to act on them. You might not be ready to let them inform your decision making in a significant way, and that's okay. Some of you might have already said it, he might even be living it in some way, shape, or form without having had those exact words. All of that is important, all of that is real work. This ends here, this ends with me. And that sentence doesn't require you to have it all worked out and to have finished the work, it doesn't require you to be perfect, it doesn't require you to have interrupted the contract completely, because again, as I've said, we've really just scratched the surface with what we've covered in this series of podcast episodes. But rather, this is about requiring that you be willing to continue interrupting it from this point forward. And that's a decision that is available to all of us at any point in time, with any circumstances, and it is a decision that changes what our kids will inherit from us. This ends here, this ends with me. Say it, hold it silently, whisper it, wait until you're ready, however, it is that you meet it, whatever your relationship with it looks like or feels like, that is the moment that the contract is no longer operating to anywhere near the same depth or intensity that is the moment when the transmission is no longer just mindlessly bang past from one generation to the next. That is the moment when I think significant, genuine, meaningful intergenerational change happens.

Refuse Interchangeability Claim Your Name

SPEAKER_02 1:00:10

Before we close this series, there's something else that I want to communicate, and that is that across these six episodes I've named in various forms the contract's purpose, which is not, as the surface story would have us believe, to make us quote good, but rather to make us interchangeable, to make us functions rather than specific people, to make us wife, mum, girlfriend, colleague rather than the specific person who has a name. The contract has been what teaches girls and women to accept in their actual lives that we are just the functions in the credits of the film at the end. We don't have names, we have roles, we have functions. We might as well be called dishwasher, washing machine, vacuum cleaner roles that any similarly trained woman could fill. And this is why in closing this series, where we're heading is not to simply learn to say no. It is not about becoming bad or becoming rebellious. All of those things are still operating inside the contract's own moral vocabulary. Our closing move is to claim our names, to become so specifically unmistakably ourselves that we cannot be substituted for another woman doing similar roles, to take up space. Taking up the space that being a specific person requires, to refuse to sand off our specificity and particularity, so that we just slot neatly inside the categories that other people find comfortable. Because that is what happens when the contract is burned. We stop being production line replicas, and we come alive in ways that cannot be easily labelled, and we help one another on that journey as well. We don't sit back and criticize and critique and say, Oh, who the fuck does she think she is? And oh I wish she was actually more like that person over there and oh she's just a bit too much. You know what? Some people may call that too much. Some people may think I'm too much, and to that I say, Well, I'm just getting started. This is what refusing to be interchangeable looks like to be a person specifically, unmistakably, unsubstitutably you or me in my own situation. And when I think about me and who I am and who I'm becoming and who I am specifically and how that relates to my children, this is not just about what I want my kids to remember of me in twenty years. I also want them to know me now, to know my name, to know what made me uniquely me. My particulars, my specificity, my whiskey and the tracksuits that I wear instead of pajamas and my tattoos and my favourite Louis Vuitton fragrances and my big words and my bushwalking and my luxury hotels, and the specific texture of who I am in the world. Because when they know me as a specific person they will absorb that they too are meant to be specific people, that they are not roles, that they are not functions, that there's only one of them in the world. That is what I want to pass to them instead of the contract. And as I've said before, I would rather be one person's shot of whiskey than everyone's cup of tea. And tea is what the contract produces, pleasing, agreeable, no boundaries, functionally identical and interchangeable to every other woman. Your children don't need you to be everyone's cup of tea. They need you to be you. They need you to know your name, they need you to know what makes you uniquely you, which is available to you right now. This is the closing episode of the Good Girl Contract series, despite the fact that there's an entire body of work coming on this topic because as I said, we've we have really only just scratched the surface. But thank you for being here with me for this conversation, for the difficult parts, for the complicated parts. Thank you for being willing to look honestly at yourself, at your own situation, at your own history, your own patterns. It's important. Even just being willing to be part of the conversation and to reflect on things is incredibly important. You did not sign the contract. You were enrolled in it before you could read. And something else that uh does make me chuckle is the fact that, you know, part of my training was also to just sit down and shut the fuck up, to be seen and not heard. You know, I got in significant trouble for daring to have an opinion, for daring to have emotions, to voice those emotions, to voice my dislike of particular things. I won't go into what that punishment was, but suffice to say that it had a significant impact on me, and yet here I am with my own podcast. This is me claiming my name. I am Danielle Black, and I thank you so much for being here with me. You know how much I appreciate you and your time. Actually, because this is my podcast and I can do it. This is one of the songs that was created for the separation podcast. I think you appreciate the way in which the lyrics learned so perfectly what we've been talking about in terms of the Good Girl contract.

Final Thanks And Next Steps

SPEAKER_02 1:06:42

Learning the Good Girl contract. And most importantly, so if you have an extra couple of minutes in your day, please do listen and if what you have heard across this series of podcasts has resonated with you, if what you hear in the lyrics of this particular track resonate with you, please do come on over to the website. Please do explore that resource that I have created. Please do subscribe to a specific claim or name mailing list. If you'd like to explore this work a little bit more deeply, enjoy the rest of your day, however, that looks for you. And I'll see you next week.

Closing Track Choosing Me

SPEAKER_01 1:07:55

Bent myself to fit the frame. Forgot my voice, forgot my fire, put everyone else above my desire. But something in me wouldn't stay gone. A quiet truth that kept holding on. I'm choosing me. But because I desire a life that feels a bad step. Not who I was, but someone knew. It's not a waste. It's learning how to take up space. To feel the grief and still move on. I don't have to have it all worked out. I just have to trust what I'm about to think of because I don't need to I was but so much quietly goes in smallest places, no bottom nose, and one day you look up and you see you didn't lose yourself, you came back to be choosing me again and again through every ending to everybody to feel okay.