S2E18: Leaving a Toxic Family

Jennifer Cross is a published author and podcaster who uses her talents to inspire and uplift other people. She writes about a variety of topics ranging from self help, relationships to trauma recovery. Jen uses her podcast, A Wild and Precious Life, to promote her writing on Medium and highlight experts in various fields who all work to promote authentic and healthy living. Jen's next project is a young adult fantasy novel, Stella Daniels and The Guardians of Light, a story about the importance of resilience, love, and kindness. It will be released in episodic format on a podcast of the same name starting January 2022!

Social media and contact information: @jencrosscreative.co
https://cjencross.medium.com
A Wild and Precious Life Podcast: https://awildandpreciouslife.buzzsprout.com

Podcast Transcript:

[00:00:00] Damaged Parents: Welcome back to the Relatively Damaged Podcast by Damaged Parents where inspiring, loving kind people come to learn. Maybe just, maybe we're all a little bit damaged. Someone once told me it's safe to assume 50% of the people I meet are struggling and feel wounded in some way. I would venture to say it's closer to 100%.

Every one of us is either currently struggling or has struggled with something that made us feel less than like we aren't good enough. We aren't capable. We are relatively damaged. And that's what we're here to talk about. In my ongoing investigation of the damaged self, I want to better understand how others view their own challenges.

Maybe it's not so much about the damage, maybe it's about our perception and how we deal with it. There is a deep commitment to becoming who we are meant to be. How do you do that? How do you find balance after a damaging experience? My hero is a damaged person. The one who faces seemingly insurmountable odds to come out on the other side, whole.

Those who stared directly into the face of adversity with unyielding persistence to discover their purpose. These are the people who inspire me to be more fully me, not in spite of my trials, but because of them. Let's hear from another hero.

Today's topic includes sensitive material, which may not be appropriate for children. This podcast is provided for informational purposes only and is not intended as advice. The opinions expressed here are strictly those of the person who gave them.

Today, we're going to talk with Jen Cross, she has many roles in her life, mother, daughter, sibling, and more. We'll talk about how she grew up in a toxic family and how she found health and healing let's talk

 Welcome back to Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. Today, we have Jennifer Cross with us. She is a published author and podcaster who uses her talents to inspire and uplift other people. I think we're on the same page here, Jen. She writes about a variety of topics ranging from self-help relationships

to trauma recovery. Jen uses her podcast, A Wild and Precious Life to promote her writing on Medium and highlight experts in various fields who all work to promote authentic and healthy living. Again, we're on the same path here Jen's. Next project is a young adult fantasy novel Stella Daniels and The Guardians of Light, which already sounds super interesting to me.

And it's a story about the importance of resilience, love, and kindness. It will be released in episodic format on a podcast of the same name starting January, 2022. Thank you so much for coming on the show, Jen.

[00:02:49] Jen Cross: Thank you so much for having me, Angela. I'm so excited to be able to talk to you and to all of your listeners.

[00:02:55] Damaged Parents: I know it's super exciting. I love that we have the goal is to inspire and uplift between the two of us. So hopefully we will achieve that goal today.

[00:03:06] Jen Cross: We'll either do that. Or a lot of people will be scratching their heads and be like, who are these ladies either way? We'll be entertaining. I think so.

[00:03:14] Damaged Parents: That's the best kind. Right. Okay. So your struggle from what I understand is negative self-talk in that, like this sense that you don't deserve to be here, not, here on the podcast, but like I'm thinking, you mean like here in this life or this earth, or however you would describe, can you tell us about that?

[00:03:38] Jen Cross: Absolutely. So fortunately it's a struggle that I've overcome, but it was a struggle that I suffered from from many, many years. And it ranges all the way back from when I was a very young girl, constantly trying to prove myself, trying to prove my value in my work, particularly in my family of origin and that family unit, I grew up in a very dysfunctional, toxic family of origin.

There was a lot of chaos. There was a lot of narcissism, emotional, verbal, and physical abuse. On the outside, we looked like the perfect family. We were always the best dressed. We had literally the biggest house in the neighborhood. We have the nicest cars most of the time. But on the inside, it was just a constant game of one-upmanship, even between the siblings scapegoating, a lot of put downs.

And I know you were going to ask me this, but I'm the youngest child. So I absorbed and everyone's toxicity, everyone's trauma. And I watched it replay as I had much older siblings get married and watched it play out in their marriage and how they treated their children. And so I really struggled to find a place because there were a lot of roles already filled in our family and there was also a very set dynamic of you needed to stay in your space and stay in your lane and your role. So being the youngest, there was not a whole lot expected of me in some ways except to follow the family line, to follow whatever the family's expectations were of me. So I might've had larger ambitions to do certain things and they were Encouraged, but really it wasn't important that I do important things because we already had siblings in those roles that were fulfilling that from my very narcissistic mother and my borderline father, they were the ones that were the golden children. Particularly when it comes to boys versus girls, girls were more of we just need you to get along.

We need you to do what you're supposed to do. We need you to major in something very feminine and find a husband and be taken care of. That's just fine. And we grew up in sort of that society. My parents are a little bit older, so very old school, very country club, very the wives all stay at home.

They go to college, but it's for the Mrs. Degree. So anything that I wanted to do kind of outside that box was ridiculed criticized really kind of put down. And so I internalized all that

[00:06:04] Damaged Parents: Yeah. So you were literally the play was already written and to shifts. Or change in any way or be different than what your role is, was just not okay.

[00:06:18] Jen Cross: No that upset the apple cart to the point where, when it was time for me to make a college decision, there was no decision that was going to be made. I was told where I was going to school. I was given one college application and It's a great school. Don't get me wrong. Was it the right fit for me? Probably would have been a better fit if I had felt any sort of autonomy and what I majored in what area of campus I lived in, all of that was prescribed I mean, I was in a very, very boxed in life. And it's not like I was a wild child that needed that sort of guidance. I worked in bookstores in high school for Pete sake.

You know, I had one steady boyfriend. I did not sneak out. I didn't have any desire to sneak out why. I mean, so it's just really ironic. There was no, they didn't want me to self explore too far because I think the threat was. We can't let her shine brighter than the siblings that we already have a spotlight on the ones that we really want to highlight that have done us proud.

We just need her to do as proud, but in the right way.

[00:07:20] Damaged Parents: Ouch I mean, was there any point any time the sense of, I absolutely must rebel, before you know, like into college. Cause it sounds like you were saying you've worked at the bookstores, you did what you needed to do, you crossed your T's and dotted your I's but at what point was it like I've got to rebel, I've got to declare my independence.

[00:07:43] Jen Cross: Well, I left that school after a couple of years and went to a school that was smaller than I felt was more suited to what I wanted to do. And that was a big deal. Like any sort of initiative to do something that was kind of a big deal, but I did make that decision. I'm not really like someone who had a real rebellious path in me or anything like that.

I mean, it wasn't like I just went off and did my own thing. It really was not until I was, After my divorce I'd gotten married around 25, was married for 11 years, had three children. All of that. It wasn't until I was really started getting into therapy and things that I realized that just how toxic I knew that there were issues.

I knew there was issues like in certain individuals, each had their own individuals, but the toxic system was just not something I was aware of as much, because it just. It's not like I had a rough life, I was able to stay home with my children. We had a very nice lifestyle. We lived in a great home. You know, There were things that, I think that when I got to be a certain age, I started almost like it was like, my marriage was sort of that propelled to rebel because I got to the point where it was just like, I was bored. I had taken writing classes and I had been writing and all of that, but even that was being discouraged even in my new family home. So I was like, something isn't right here. So what, after my divorce, it still took a couple of years, but after I really, you know, I went and had a lot of therapy and I realized just how toxic in chaotic at what my whole upbringing was. And then that was the point where I started distancing myself from my family of origin.

And eventually it got to the point, anytime you put a boundary with toxic people, they don't like that. And it got to the point where it became so strained and it just became so irrevocably damaged that it was just best for me and my children to just cut ties. And just have nothing to do with a lot of them and doing that was such a freeing experience, but it's difficult.

It was a difficult experience as well, because you feel a little unfettered, you feel a little bit like who am I? What's wrong with me because they're still a unit. Well, yeah. Yeah. They're a unit of garbage. It doesn't make them great. You know, I Mean, that's great that they're all like feeding off of each other and their negative energy and the things that they bring to the world. I needed to leave that. And along the way, I was fortunate. I had some mentors and some people that guided me even back in high school, I had a very awesome English teacher who knew my mother, my mother taught at our school and my mother had just one day. Got flown off the handle for me. I attended this school too.

And just flew off the handle like overreaction about something. And I remember the English teacher taking me aside and going. You are not anything like them. You were like this rose in a garden because she knew my family well, and she was just like you need to understand that you are so separate from everyone there. And that was something that I held for a long, long time. And along the way, there were other people that also recognize that that whatever they look like on the outside, they can work as many range rovers as they want their driveways. They are still horrible people and that, you know, and so, understanding that gave me the strength to say, I don't want my children's subjected to their behaviors, the bullying the narcissistic cruelty, the gossip, the backbiting that I was fixed, subjected to and just removed us and tried to create a more healthier dynamic in our own family home.

[00:11:18] Damaged Parents: So that must have been really hard. But do you think that negative self-talk came from, that like maybe you needed,, to keep yourself small in that dynamic. And so it just kind of perpetuated throughout life.

[00:11:32] Jen Cross: Yes. Yes, definitely. I internalized a lot of the negative self-talk that, the negative talk that they gave me I put on myself and any time I had any struggles even after I was separate from them, I would always go back to, oh yeah. I'm not the one. That's good enough. I'm not the one that really has anything to offer.

I really should stay small. I really shouldn't share this or I shouldn't try to do this because people will laugh at me because that's what I had experienced anytime I put any effort into anything, literally people laughing in my face, my siblings laughing in my face, as if I wasn't competent as if I didn't score better on the LSAT than either of my brothers, but that's not important.

The important thing is, is you're a girl and it's a big joke that you want to even have something and create something for yourself that's not your role in this family. Those sorts of messages, just repeatedly drilled into you and those images as people that you would think would support you and want the best for you, mocking you. Or even when you reach out for advice, you, you send a text and reach out for advice, and then you get back a screenshot of your text and you realize that someone is screenshot in your message and sending it to someone else saying, oh, look who wants help? You know that it's not a safe place.

So the world becomes an unsafe place and you tell yourself I don't have a place to really be who I fully am. And it took a lot of work. It took a lot of therapy. I'm a big believer in therapy. It took a lot of self-work. It took a lot of creating positive affirmations and positive, positive words that I can speak and read to myself about myself to break that cycle and in it, but it's something that's a daily practice and it's something that it's necessary for me to do every day to speak positive things to myself out loud, because at the end of the day, whoever you are, whether you've had this sort of background. And I think everyone's had people that have put them down in the past that have hurt them. They may not be a significant of a relationship as your family of origin, but you still get that niggling voice in the back of your head. And I think no matter who you are, you have to find a few key things that you can tell yourself every day to remind yourself that at the end of the day, you have to be your own champion.

You have to be that person that shows up for yourself every day. And so that is how I was able to kind of come through and it doesn't mean that I still don't feel it. When I feel a disappointment or I get concerned about something, or maybe I make a mistake, I start thinking, oh wow I am that and I'll stop, myself.

I'll just stop myself stop now. I am not this mistake. I am not this rejection or whatever. I have so much to offer. I have so much to offer, but it's not something I don't think that goes away. Really ever for anyone because we're always going to carry insecurities. And that's part of being human. It's just having some insecurities, but there's a part of being human, of having insecurities. And there's a part of being human when you've been traumatized and emotionally abused that those insecurities can fester and grow. And all of a sudden you're carrying them around and almost nurturing them. So you have to starve them.

The only way to starve them is to flip the script

pour positivity into yourself.

[00:14:56] Damaged Parents: Right. And I'm thinking that was extremely difficult to start doing, I'm thinking? It wasn't like big, giant steps at first. Maybe it was a little tiny steps where you could be successful.

[00:15:08] Jen Cross: Well, I'm a big,

I'm a big believer. Anyone who's gone through any sort of trauma in therapy, particularly EMDR therapy. And the first steps for me was to go to therapy and to work with an EMDR trained therapist who could help me process and rework some of those those brain wiring synopsis, so that I could start the process of feeling more positive on the inside you know, And from there, small steps that, people can take or things like that, journaling, even just a gratitude journal, just something small, like people think, oh, I've got to sit down and write for 30 minutes. No, sit down and write like something for just 10 minutes or even five or even three, just write down three things.

You're grateful for. Write down three things you love about yourself. Small things like that. And another thing for me, something that probably helps me more than anything is physical fitness. And it's no coincidence that my choices for physical fitness involve movement sensation, similar to EMDR.

So I love to walk. I walk. About three miles a day. And it's helpful because I have two very active labs and they need three miles or I won't get anything done the rest of the day. Cause they will follow me around harassing me. So I walk them to wear them out in the morning. And yoga and Pilates are some things that I do and they are something that I prioritize over almost anything else is making sure I get that daily, the daily exercise in, and that's a promise. I keep to myself and that right there helps me trust myself. And when I start to feel down on myself, I can always come back to. I do really good things for myself. I take care of myself. this is a promise.

I keep to myself every day and it's a small promise, but it's something that I do every day. And those sorts of things help you to have a more positive outlook, because if you can accomplish, you know, just get those little check marks off and accomplish a few things. It's really hard to be, down on yourself.

When you see yourself achieving the things that you've set out to do.

[00:17:10] Damaged Parents: Yeah. And I really love that you said trust myself because I don't think we consciously. Regularly even think about whether or not we trust ourselves and how we show up for us. And gosh, that's just, I don't think I've really thought about that before. So

[00:17:28] Jen Cross: Yeah. So here's the thing that, that I actually have. I don't think I've written on this yet I was going to write on this on my Medium account. But the thing is, is that people always will say something like, oh, I'm going to set my alarm and get up early. And then that happens and they don't they end up snoozing through. I am very very guilty of that. Or I'm going to set up my running clothes, I'm gonna go for a run tomorrow or I'm going to Senate for yoga class this week and things like that. And all of us do these sorts of things where we, decide we're going to do something. And then, inevitably, we just don't do it.

We just, we blow it off. And it's not because we can't, it's not because something else came up, we just don't do it. If you were continuing to break promises to yourself, cause that's a promise you made yourself, you are showing yourself that you're untrustworthy. Your subconscious does not understand your subconscious is about the age of an eight year old.

So imagine telling an eight year old, I'm going to take you to get ice cream. And then that time just comes and goes. And then the eight year old is like, oh, Well, I can't rely on anything that person says, cause they're there, they're a child. They have that mentality. That's your subconscious, your subconscious is what is responsible for you feeling like you can trust yourself and you can make things happen. If you.

continually let your subconscious down by telling yourself things like I'm going to go for a walk and then you don't do it. You're telling yourself you can't be trusted and it makes it much harder for you to achieve goals and to stay in a positive mindset. So it's really

important that you honor your commitments to yourself because it may feel like well it's not hurting anything. I mean, if I miss a three mile walk on a day, it's not going to hurt anything. Like I'm not going to, become overweight. My dogs aren't gonna suffer from one day, but. It does hurt something because internally it's something that I know needs to be done. And it's something that I let myself down on in doing so particularly if it's just because I just don't feel like it And so, you know what I mean? Cause if it's rainy or it's really cold, we may not get that walk in the morning. We may not get it in at all. It'll just, it just depends.

If it's something just because I just don't feel like doing it. I just decided I don't want to do it. Or even just, I'm just feeling lazy. That's letting yourself down and that is just propelling that whole idea of I'm not working. I'm not worth keeping a promise to myself. So for me I always have a plan. I plan my days. I have to, because I have so many projects going on and I just do better with the list. If I noticed that I've missed something on my list, I always think, okay, well, I missed that. I'm not going to feel bad about it, but I'm going to figure out a time that I can come back and circle back to it, or I'm going to decide, you know what, that wasn't a priority today. So a good example this morning, I was going to get up at five.

I had some things I was going to knock out pretty early before I had to run my youngest to school. Well, I didn't set my phone alarm because I was trying to use this alarm clock that we had not used for a long time, but I wanted to use it. It's from, there's a light alarm clocks. Well, I didn't set it right.

And didn't go off. So I woke up naturally at 7:30, so I kind of missed a block of work I was going to do, instead then I was like trying to like shuffle and figure out, okay, when during the day can I get this other step done? And of course, one of the things on my list was walk and it takes about an hour to walk these two dogs and I'm, I'm no speed walker. I was like, that's the one thing I can't skip, like what I need to do as I need to just go ahead and do that. And then when I come home, I'll be much more centered and focused to do everything else. And by doing that, yeah, I had to shuffle some things and move some things over, but then guess what? I was supposed to have a meeting with someone who wanted to come on my podcast today around. 11 and it ended up not happening. There were technology issues on her side, so we weren't able to do it. So it was just like, oh, look, the universe kind of took care of that for me, because now I've bought myself a little bit more time.

And then as I looked at my list for later today, I was like, oh my gosh, I actually had purposely not scheduled a lot this afternoon after our chat. I was like, oh, that stuff I was going to do early. Now it can get, I mean, it's just funny, but if I had just been in like stressed out mode and didn't like, oh, I'm not going to take care of myself.

And what I know I need every day first then I wouldn't have been as focused to get as much time.

[00:21:50] Damaged Parents: Right. And it sounds like you had to give yourself a little bit of grace then that self care took priority over the tasks.

[00:22:00] Jen Cross: And the thing is, is that, to talk about giving myself grace, that's something that was hard earned because in the past I would have been like, gosh, I can't do anything. Right. I missed the alarm. Great. Now I have all this stuff. What am I going to do? And instead what I did was this I tapped into, okay, well that sucks all this kind of work stuff I had to do was just, it's not anything it's in my own personal deadline. It's not affecting anyone else. What are the things that are going to affect the people around me and what it's going to make me feel best about how to start the day. And it was immediately like, let's just go ahead and get these jobs out of here.

Let's go walk to the lake, take care of that, get home. And then I can focus on a project that does have deliverables for a client. Focus on that. and like I said, that call ended up getting canceled. It was perfect timing. I was like, great. But before it would have been, it would have been. Great. This is just totally messed up everything. This is great. Now I've got all this stuff to do. I got, oh, I don't know what order to do it in I would either have tried to overcompensate and go ahead and do all that kind of a personal agenda stuff I needed to do, or I would have used as an excuse to blow off the walk And I would have even likely put myself into the mindset of when tomorrow comes around. Well, I missed the walk yesterday. I'm in such a still in that kind of zone that then it would've been like, well, then all of this, you know, I went to yoga last night so I can skip the walk. I would've justified all this stuff when I know what works best for me and how to do it.

And I just have to trust myself that things are gonna happen and get done, how they're supposed to.

[00:23:33] Damaged Parents: Yeah. And it sounds like what I hear you saying is before you would have, in some ways, punished yourself and, gone into maybe even panic mode and not even been able to see the schedule because already it's panic. Right. and now that doesn't happen. It's oh, well, shoot. That's not cool. And.

It's probably going to work out somehow.

[00:23:53] Jen Cross: Yes, it will all get done. That's the thing. It will all get done. It becomes understanding that it'll all get done and not all of it has to be done and all it has to be done perfectly in just one way. It's okay. For things to slide.

[00:24:09] Damaged Parents: How long did it take for you to notice once you realized that there was this problem with the negative self-talk that you were starting to shift and give yourself more grace? Like, If you could, I don't even know if it's possible to put a timeline to that process, but.

[00:24:24] Jen Cross: I really, I really don't think that I could give you an accurate timeline. I would say that, Over the past 10 years or so it's been a gradual process. I would feel that probably in the past couple of years, I've gotten a lot stronger at it. And probably really started to like manifest and really aligned with my pur-

I think that part of it is aligning with the purpose of what I want to put out in the world, the type of work I want to do and things like that. And that's really happened more. So in the last six months where I've really felt strongly about really, really staying true to what my purpose is and what it is that I want to put out in the world and work product-wise whether it's the work that I do with my writing, whether it's my podcasting or it's the work that I do on a professional level, which is also marketing and working with companies that are also aligned with the appropriate visions that I feel are important.

[00:25:21] Damaged Parents: Right. And so it sounds like to me, it was, as you shifted into alignment with your values, things became a bit easier.

[00:25:29] Jen Cross: Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that that's true for anyone. I mean, it may not seem easier on the surface but things have a way of becoming easier as you stay true to it. And you kind of get, you have hurdles but as you pass it over those hurdles, you start to kind of see how things are all coming together.

[00:25:47] Damaged Parents: I'm wondering if it brought an increased level of peace. And if that felt weird at first.

[00:25:53] Jen Cross: That's a really good question, because I actually wrote an article about how people of trauma often seek comfort from chaos because they're used to chaos and uncertainty, and that feels really comfortable. I've had repeated times where I have felt that sort of like that peace and it's been very uncomfortable and I have felt the need to self sabotage. I feel like it always feels hard to feel peaceful when you've had to live in fight or flight for so long. So it's definitely kind of an uncomfortable feeling. It's something that you have to work through. Sometimes when I'm feeling peaceful. If I start to feel that kind of restlessness, I kind of try to ground and sit on myself and go through meditation or journaling.

Like, why am I having this urge? Why do I feel like this change, which would create chaos would be the thing to do. And so that's also been something that it's just like a gradual thing that you have to work on to become comfortable with, having peace and having calm. , not even externally necessarily, but internally. And when you have it internally, then it reflects externally. And even when it's not happening externally, because of course it's outside of your control. you realize that you have the ability to keep that peace and calm for yourself

[00:27:06] Damaged Parents: In some ways, are you saying that even if it's chaotic on the outside, you can still have that peace on the inside. Or as I would say, you can find joy in the midst of the storm

[00:27:17] Jen Cross: that's a really, really good analogy. Yeah. I think that it's something that you can do but it is something you have to develop. And I think that it's not always, it's not always easy to do, even if you've practiced and you've tried to do it, but that's definitely the goal. Definitely the goal is to develop that inner strength.

[00:27:37] Damaged Parents: And I'm betting you know, you, you had said you kind of cut ties with the family. So what did you do to find a support system around you, but beyond, going to get therapy and get help like that? Like how did you build that?

[00:27:51] Jen Cross: I already had that?

I have lifelong friends and I had friends that I've been friends with for a really long time through, having my children and. I already had a really great support system of friends. And the thing is, is that cutting ties with my family was really it really did not change that much.

It wasn't like we had, they were not my support system ever, so it's not like. I really relied on them for everything. no one was babysitting for me. No one was helping me with my kids. That was all my children or caregivers, or, you know, all my children's like, the mom friends I had or things like that. So as far as that goes, I mean, I was a grown adult. I already had my own life and

that was sort of the point of it was, I already had my own life. I already had my own community. I didn't live near them by choice. I lived on the other side of Dallas from them by choice. I had my own community of people that I saw all the time. I'm talking about cutting ties with them, meant that I stopped going to bullshit holidays

and seeing them once a year in pretending like we had anything in common or anything to talk about. Just stopped stopping the pretending that there was anything for us to talk about or engage about.

They effectively didn't really have a whole lot to do with me either. So my situation is very different than someone who maybe is really in gnashed because I was not, I separated myself as much as possible throughout my adult life. So when we got to the point where it was just insufferable to even be around them, Two hours on Christmas or, I just was ready to just be done.

And so Yeah. so it was a little different for me because I already had a support system. It wasn't like I was relying on them for anything when it came down to it.

[00:29:28] Damaged Parents: Yeah, except the continuation of that negative self-talk which clearly you were done with, right? Like you knew you could go there if that's how you want it to feel.

[00:29:37] Jen Cross: Exactly. Exactly. I didn't need them anymore. I had their hateful voices in my head. And just getting rid of that was, I mean, it was a big relief. It was a big relief.

[00:29:47] Damaged Parents: Yeah, and this word paradox keeps coming up for me. Like it is possible to have that negative self-talk and still have a great support system of outside people that didn't contribute to that. And then still need to do work on it.

[00:30:02] Jen Cross: Oh, absolutely. No one can eliminate what's internally happening with you. And a lot of times in these situations, no one really necessarily knows the extent. I mean, I have friends that in my writing, I just started to become a lot more open about some of the situations that I've been through. And I've had friends that have been friends with me since I was 12 that are like, I had no idea. It was like that. And I'm so glad that, you're saying something now, so,

[00:30:30] Damaged Parents: Okay. So for anyone listening to this podcast, what are the top three things that you would say if they are struggling with negative? Self-talk that, you know, go focus on this.

[00:30:42] Jen Cross: Okay. Well I think that the number one thing is that make sure that you have someone that you can talk to, to deal with either your past trauma or with your low self-esteem that's causing the negative. Self-talk I'm a big believer in therapy. There are so many ways to access therapy in this day and age.

There is a sliding scale for a lot of therapists. I feel like, there's such a value in having someone that you can speak to about this. The other thing is, that, the internet is a great resource. I listened to a lot of different podcasts that highlight people's struggles. I share a podcast that does that. So there are great podcasts. There's great things you can find online to learn more about, self image, positive self concept, things like that. Great reading, not, not as heavy as a book, although I think books are great too.

And then last, I think find something that you can do that really lights you at something that as my friend, Denise Drinkwater says is for you. And because of you, but only you, and it's something that you can do that you can make a promise to yourself to do for yourself every day, whether it's a small gratitude journal, rather it's reading from an inspirational book or taking a walk, you don't have to go through miles like I do. You can take just a couple of things around the block and use that time to practice talking to yourself.

Maybe do it silently because if you do it out loud, if you're taking a walk and people might think you're crazy, but also talk to yourself. Out loud in the mirror. Sometimes you'll feel really cheesy at first. It's going to be corny. Don't get me wrong. the more you can start treating yourself the best version of yourself, the more that best version of yourself will start to emerge. And it's small things really. Don't try to just do some sort of like major overhaul of your life to become this entirely different person. Start out small and find the things you need.

So again, that's find someone that you can talk to, to help challenge some of this negative self-talk. Go and be an information, searcher, look for audio books, podcasts, anything that interests you about the idea of the things you've gone through and how to heal from them. And then last be your own cheerleader. Find something you can do to really pump yourself out. Talk positively yourself about it. Keep those promises to yourself and just get out there and do it.

[00:33:03] Damaged Parents: I love those now. They can find you cJenCross. medium.com

[00:33:09] Jen Cross: Yes.

[00:33:10] Damaged Parents: Medium.com and then AWildandPreciousLifethatBuzzsprout.com. So you just, just look up the wild, A Wild and Precious Life podcast, and you will find her. Is there anywhere else you want people to find you.

[00:33:25] Jen Cross: Yeah, Wild and Precious Life it streams on all major podcast services. So you can find me on Spotify, whatever. Like that. I have an Instagram it's @JenCrossCreative, then my new book that's coming out for kids, Stella Daniels and the Guardians of Light. If you. want information about that, you can go to Instagram. It's @StellaDanielsPodcastForKids. It'll also stream on all major streaming services and it drops the first three chapters. There'll be three different episodes. Drop January 26th.

[00:33:56] Damaged Parents: Yay. Well, we've certainly enjoyed having you on the show. Thank you so much for coming today, Jen.

[00:34:02] Jen Cross: Thank you so much for having me.

[00:34:04] Damaged Parents: Thank you for listening to this week's episode of Relatively Damaged by Damaged Parents. We've really enjoyed talking to Jen about how she escaped the clutches of a toxic family. We especially liked when she spoke about giving herself grace and how things usually work out for the better. To unite with other damaged people connect with us on facebook look for damaged parents will be here next week still relatively damaged see you then