Welcome to The Necessary Conversation. I'm Chad Colchin. With me today is my sister,

Haley Pope, fellow lefty, my parents, Bob and Mary Lou, and a very special guest, Karen,

aka Happy Mom and Grandma on Instagram and TikTok. We have had her here once before. As I said in that

episode, we've always talked about having a family therapist. Come on here to have some

conversations with us. Karen is a family therapist. But before we begin this, I do have to say

Karen is a licensed marriage and family therapist here today in an educational and conversational

role only not as anybody's therapist. She's not going to be providing therapy, diagnoses,

or individualized mental health advice, as she is not licensed in all the states

where we live, she's just going to be talking generally about family dynamics, communication,

and what research and clinical experience can show about political conflict in families.

With that said, thank you for being here again.

Karen, I think last time you were were here you kind of got my dad

to open up about his childhood being adopted etc etc yeah it was really it was really touching

i thought really moving um and thank you guys so much for having me back it means a lot that um

you'd be willing to chat with me again. Yeah. Thank you.

Thank you. I wanted, so I kind of wanted to start because, as you said, last time, you know, it did get a

little bit vulnerable.

And I wanted to check in with everybody kind of like how that last time we got together and

chatted was for you.

Was that comfortable or did it feel like you shared

more than you were comfortable sharing or maybe just general thoughts about how that was for you

when we last got together? Who are you asking? My dad. Everybody in general.

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