A Life-Defining Conversation With My Mother

Align Podcast

Aaron Alexander

Health & Fitness, Alternative Health, Nutrition

4.8 • 900 Ratings

🗓️ 10 November 2020

⏱️ 76 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

How often do we extend the effort to connect with our parents as the humans they truly are? Do we really know who they were before their parent roles and who they are beyond?

This episode is truly special: My mother, Tina Louise Thomas, and I have a deeply intimate and vulnerable conversation that we initially were hesitant to release. Although, we decided if it helps even just one person connect more deeply with their parents or child, it's worth it.

We talk about holding in emotions (and why my mother felt the need to hide her emotions during my upbringing), accepting aging and death, dealing with regrets, navigating forgiveness, moving forward after divorce and so much more.

This has been a beautiful moment in which we felt deeply connected to each other, and probably one of the most important moments of my life.

What we discuss:

[00:05:48]: - The legacy my mom wishes to leave to her children

[00:07:00] - My challenging emotional openness

[00:07:53] - Holding emotions and covering up suffering

[00:10:53] - Feeling joy even when circumstances are difficult

[00:12:37] - Letting thoughts flow

[00:14:45] - Accepting the cycle of life

[00:18:32] - Self-love, growth, and self-expression

[00:21:26] - Fears around ageing and death

[00:22:48] - Beauty vs. value and expectations

[00:26:32] - Why my Mom stayed for years in the relationship with my father

[00:27:45] - My Mom's upbringing regarding expression of emotions

[00:33:51] - My mom feeling understood and loved by her children

[00:34:46] - Feelings of not belonging

[00:40:03] - Being worthy of love

[00:48:53] - Knowing my mom as a person

[00:55:35] - Regrets and forgiveness

[00:59:25] - My father

[01:00:46] - My Mom's spiritual experiences

My mother is a brilliant and very musician and artist, former Miss Pennsylvania and Miss America scholarship pageant national talent winner and runner-up.

This to her music here: https://soundcloud.com/tina_louise_thomas

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Welcome back to the Line podcast. My name is Aaron Alexander. This is a place that we bring together,
0:04.8	the world's leading experts in all things health and wellness to help you optimize your mind, body, and movement.
0:10.8	This conversation was one of the most vulnerable, most different
0:18.0	episodes that I've done. This was with my mother. So I've been out in Pennsylvania, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, visiting the family for the last
0:26.1	week and while I was here I've been doing a lot of, I would say, digging, uncovering into kind of childhood patterns that I think I've
0:38.4	been holding on to for years and years.
0:40.8	And a big part of that was exploring my relationship with my parents.
0:45.0	So a part of the way that I did that while I was here was interviewing my mom without any intention of actually releasing the conversation.
0:55.8	So this would be an interesting exercise for people.
0:58.5	Even if you don't host a podcast or something of the sort, you're not a journalist. You could still. a
1:02.8	journalist, you could still host an interview with someone that you really care about.
1:08.8	I think doing it with your parents is a really beautiful idea because for me at least I feel like my
1:17.3	relationship with my parents in many ways has been kind of more mother-father son as opposed to human human human and I'm
1:27.2	really interested personally in getting to know both my mom my dad and
1:31.2	you know my brother and relatives as for who they are as opposed to my idea of their
1:37.7	roles.
1:38.7	And so this was an interesting opportunity to get to explore.
1:43.2	And so my mom and I had been having a lot of kind of like deep conversations around death
1:49.2	and fears and things of the sort and, you know, I think for anybody for me I really want my parents to be in a place that they feel at ease and they feel at peace and they feel at peace and they feel content and calm and loved and
2:07.4	anchored and they're not afraid of anything.
2:11.4	So that was kind of what we got into in this conversation was digging into some
2:16.4	patterns that I have and patterns that my mother has and those patterns came from probably her mother and her father and those patterns all the way back through the chain.
	...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Previous episode | Next episode

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Aaron Alexander, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of Aaron Alexander and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.