EXPERT: Turning Toward Your Partner in Hard Seasons with Julia Woods

Hello Brave Friends! Welcome to today’s expert episode, #260, with relationship advocate and speaker Julia Woods.

These expert episodes feature conversations with professionals, advocates, and community voices whose work supports caregiving parents and families navigating complex life experiences.

In this episode, hosts Jessica Patay and Susanna Peace Lovell sit down with Julia for a powerful conversation about marriage, emotional connection, and navigating suffering together as partners.

Julia shares her personal journey and the experiences that shaped her work supporting couples through hardship and transition. Together, the conversation explores how caregiving, stress, grief, and changing family dynamics can deeply impact relationships—and why emotional honesty, vulnerability, and compassion are essential during difficult seasons.

Jessica, Susanna, and Julia discuss practical ways couples can strengthen connection, improve communication, and remain emotionally present for one another even when life feels overwhelming. The episode also highlights the importance of support systems and community, particularly for men who are often socially conditioned to navigate pain and stress in isolation.

Throughout the conversation, Julia emphasizes that partnership does not require perfection. Instead, healthy relationships are built through honesty, empathy, shared support, and a willingness to turn toward each other during suffering rather than away from it.

This episode is a compassionate and encouraging reminder that even in life’s hardest seasons, connection and support remain possible—and deeply important.

Find more information about Julia Woods here. 

Follow Julia on Instagram here. 

Find more information about Life Coach, Susanna Peace Lovell here.

Find Susanna’s book, Your True Self is Enough here.

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Find our second book from We Are Brave Together, Suddenly Brave Together here. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_02 0:00

Welcome to Brave Together Podcast, an empowering resource for the parents of children with disabilities, neurodivergence, and all unique needs.

SPEAKER_00 0:13

When that kind of thing is going on, right, when I was trying to do it all, because I was trying to earn love, and if I could be the best mom and the best wife and the best house cleaner and the best cook, then surely I would be loved. But what I was actually doing was setting up a system to make myself right that I wasn't worthy of love. That's what we do. And so every moment I was failing, any complaint from the kids, any complaint from my husband threw me into defensive rage because of course you're telling me I'm not worthy of love because I didn't do this well. Treating it like a business, you you separate all that. And it's no longer about who I am or my worthiness, it's about, hey, we need each other.

SPEAKER_02 1:01

Hi, brave friends. This is Jessica Patei, brave mom and founder of We Are Brave Together. And I'm joined by my wonderful co-host again, Susanna P. Who's an author, life coach, and advocate for disability families. On today's expert episode number 260, we're joined by relationship advocate and speaker Julia Woods for an honest and heartfelt conversation about marriage, suffering, vulnerability, and connection. Caregiving can place enormous strain on relationships, and many couples find themselves struggling to stay emotionally connected while navigating stress, exhaustion, and grief, and changing family dynamics. In this conversation, Julia shares both personal insight and practical encouragement for couples learning how to face hardship together instead of in isolation. Suzanne and I talk with Julia about the importance of turning toward each other's suffering with compassion, creating emotional safety in relationships, and building stronger communication during difficult seasons. We also explore the role community and support systems play for both men and women and how vulnerability and honesty can strengthen partnership even when life feels really overwhelming. This episode is a thoughtful reminder that while caregiving may change the shape of a marriage, connection, support, and partnership still matter. Just a quick reminder, Bravies, to please rate and review this podcast, share episodes with your friends, follow us on social media, check out our episodes posted weekly on our We Are Brave Together YouTube channel. And now, please enjoy our conversation with Julia Woods.

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Hello. Hi everyone. Hi Jessica. Welcome, Julia. We're so happy to have you today. Thank you. We get questions all the time in our We Are Brave Together community about seeking out support for relationships. You know, it's a stressful world in our lives as caregivers, as to, you know, kiddos with unique needs and disabilities. And so even though I know we are all going through something in life, we're really happy to have you. And, you know, Jessica and I sort of represent like two particular situations or um models of partnership. And Jessica, she can talk about her amazing relationship with her husband of 20. How many years have you celebrated? 29. 20, 29. And I, you know, was married and divorced. Uh, and we have lots of questions for you about all of the above. And I come from a family where my parents have been married for 54 years. And so we we are so excited to sort of jump in and dive in.

SPEAKER_02 3:47

And Julia, tell our listeners, you know, how did you come to care so deeply about marriage? Tell us a little bit about you.

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Oh, well, um, if you saw my life, if you could see it from a bird's eye view, you'd probably be like, wow, I don't know how she came to be that passionate about marriage. And I don't know, I don't have a logical answer other than it was born into me. It is a calling, it is a passion. I grew up watching a very, very painful, significant amount of suffering in my parents as they walked through their marriage and um eventually divorced. And I thought for myself, I'm like, oh, my husband and I, we are so in love. We are a match made in heaven. And then we began to repeat very similar things that was happening in my marriage that I saw happening in my parents' marriage. And I was like, uh-oh. This is bigger than just love. This is bigger than just actually what I began to learn is that loving is the bravest thing we get to do in our life. And marriage calls us to that very, very brave entity that it uh it's the biggest mirror that life offers. And here I am crying five minutes in. Um okay, it's okay. We hold you. It calls us the challenges in my husband and I's marriage began to reveal the pain that we had not dealt with. It began to reveal the suffering that love on the outside of wonderful, fun dates and laughing together and all those things is not gonna take you to the depth of the healing that love will call you to. And so, out of my own suffering in my own marriage, it called me to recognize that I needed to learn what it meant to heal and to grow and to become a spouse that I wanted to be. And that led me into this transformational work. It began to transform who I was as a person and how I did life. And I was a photographer for 25 plus years, and I consulted photographers on how to run their business. My husband and I ran our business together as a couple, and so we attracted a lot of couples who work together, and the tension in their marriage is get got exposed because when you work together and you live together, tensions and what's underneath the hood really began to get exposed. And so that brought us to start me to start working with a lot of couples, and um, they began to ask me about what was happening in my marriage and how that was happening, and that led me to sell my photography business and begin this coaching company. I I started out just coaching broadly, and then the focus began to quickly shift to marriages.

SPEAKER_02 6:42

Well, thank you so much. I feel like your your passion comes through and your your care and your compassion for couples and relationships and marriage comes through, not just now, but when I, you know, look at you know your Instagram account, it really, really does. And I it's so practical. There's so many practical posts. I just love that. It's not like pie in the sky. It's really, really practical for our listeners. You'll definitely have to check out Hey Julia Woods on Instagram and really consume some really helpful content. Our audience is, you know, living with chronic hardship and you know, crises that come and go. How do you create connection under such hard, hard circumstances when your attention is so focused on, you know, your child or children. If you've got multiple children with high support needs, extra needs, unique needs, everyone is just exhausted, right? And it's like, I know I need to pause and connect with you. I know I need to pause and ask you some good questions, you know, and like sit, sit, not with a phone nearby, not talk about the business of marriage and partnership and and life management, but real questions. How do we start when we're just like, I'm too tired? I'm just too tired.

unknown 8:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 8:06

Well, that is a very we could go really, really deep with that question. Um, but ultimately what I hear you saying is that um your audience tends to have extra suffering in life. There is deep suffering that you're walking through. And in suffering, there is a lot of suffering that that triggers inside of us and creates inside of us. It brings us right up to the edge of what we believe to be true about ourselves, what we believe to be true about others, and what we believe to be true about life. And man, that's some hard wrestling. And ultimately, that's what your audience is dealing with is a much more in your face wait. What is life? Who am I in this suffering? And who is this person that I'm meant to be with in this suffering? Because it doesn't feel like we are in this together. Because what they're walking through and what you're walking through in the same suffering is often feels light years apart. So that's the hard part about connecting. And it's really easy to think we just need some light-hearted questions and just find a way to connect. And that would be that is needed sometimes. The easiest temptation is to numb. You both want to numb the suffering. Let's just get a Netflix series that helps our mind shut down and we can sit next to each other on the couch and hold hands and pretend like we are connecting because we just need a break from the suffering. And that may be real sometimes. And at the same time, you must find a way to turn into each other in the suffering. The challenge in that is when you're suffering, it feels beyond your capacity to hold more space for someone else's suffering. When their suffering feels counterintuitive to your suffering, right? Like, wait, this is what I'm upset about, and now you're upset about that. Like, I don't have space to be to hear what you're upset about because what I'm upset about feels way too big for me to handle on my own. However, the gift is when you can actually turn into each other's suffering with your heart, without needing to fix it, without needing to change it. If you've ever been in a household where all your kids are sick at once and you're sick too, you don't know how you're gonna survive, you don't know how you're gonna make it, but you just find a way to, when you can find a way to snuggle together and just hold each other in your suffering and pass the puke bucket around, you know, somehow there's comfort in the togetherness. That's what is the connection. Us a couple facing hardships in life's needs is that ability to just hold each other tight in the midst of the suffering and hold a safe space for the other person to share their suffering without needing to fix it. Because every one of us wants things to change. We don't want to feel what we're feeling, but often we need a safe place to be able to say those things in order to hear ourselves saying us, saying them and move through to feel what we're feeling, to move through to the courage to say, okay, I cannot change this, and here's what I can change. And I had to grieve, I had to say it out loud with another human being to be able to get there.

unknown 11:27

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:30

That was a lot.

SPEAKER_02 11:31

Hopefully it makes sense.

SPEAKER_01 11:32

That's a lot, but that was so it was a lot of it was a lot of goodness and truth. And I felt a little bit uncomfortable. What I also am hearing you saying is that, you know, we have to make a choice, right? There has to be some choice, as opposed to just continuing to numb or continuing to ignore or continuing to escape, whatever our, you know, style is of not having to deal with what's real and true right now in this moment. And so I guess my question for you would be so what if one of the people in the marriage, what if one person is like, okay, I this is so hard and it's so challenging, and I want to feel different. I want to let's start from there. Like this is painful and I want it to be a different. Do we now need to then have a conversation about the other person and if they're available and if they're ready? And how, I mean, how do we even start, especially when there are so many different processing, you know, styles of how we go through some painful things.

SPEAKER_00 12:40

It's really about being in the present because we like to overcomplicate it, right? Well, we can't, my my spouse and I, we can't seem to connect. So I'm it's not even worth trying tonight. Okay. Well, that's in the past. That may have been last night, that may have been every night this week, but that doesn't, that's not present in today. And in today, if I will get present, that younger version of myself, that childlike version, that five-year-old that says, I'm hurting so bad, I just need a hug. I just need you to hold my hand in the suffering. When we get present, we'll own, I need you. And often that's what our spouse needs is the simple aspect of I need you, and what I need with you right now is for you just to hold my hand. Or what I need is you just to be a listening ear. That I I you I don't need you to fix this. I I know you cannot change it. Are you able for me in this moment just to be a listening ear? Hold a space for me to feel. So it's really about getting present and letting my heart speak. What is it that I need, and how can my spouse meet that in a way where I can ask them if they can give that to me now? Because often we just start, and then our spouse is like, you know, I've got this major work stress going on, and I didn't know this is what was gonna happen right now. And it's the truth and the honesty of, hey, I need you. I also know that you have a lot going on, and I need to share with you what I need and see if this is a time that you could offer that to me.

SPEAKER_02 14:22

We are going to take a brief break. Stay with us. There is a moment most caregiving mothers remember with startling clarity. The moment before and the moment after. Before the diagnosis, before the phone call, before the doctor walked into the room. That invisible threshold that divides a life into two distinct halves, and on the other side, a version of yourself you never auditioned for, doing things you never imagined you could do. You have been suddenly thrust into altered motherhood. Bravies, our second book is here. Suddenly Brave Together, letters to caregiving mothers at a defining moment in their lives, captures the voices of women who lived that pivotal moment written from a place of hard-won wisdom, decades in the making. Imagine 30 seasoned, savvy, compassionate moms reaching across the universe to share their stories, their transformations, and everything they wished someone had told them. This is not just a book, it is an open door. A reminder that somewhere in this wide world, there is a mother who has already walked the road you are on. And she is holding out her hand for you. Written with new and newer caregiving moms at heart, Suddenly Brave Together will validate and inspire every parent caregiver who picks it up. Grab your copy today. The link is in the show notes. And what if even that, even saying even saying that, what if that causes the other person to bristle a little? Like they it even though you do you just you said it beautifully, you said, I what I need, and and this is what I'm asking for, and you're not doing any you messages, and you aren't a good listener, so I need to tell you how to listen. Like you're not doing that, you're doing it all right, like you just said and described, and yet they still can't seem to receive it. They they bristle or they go silent or even get defensive, even though you came in such a non-threatening way.

SPEAKER_00 17:01

Yes, yes, and that's very real, right? Because even in the best intentions, I can get defensive, but defensiveness reveals what's going on inside that person that doesn't have anything to do with you, right? And so when you're walking through significant challenges together, it is very real that you're going to most often, there are going to come times where you're going to need a mediator to be able to be in the middle, to be able to help you hear each other, to be able to help you communicate what you need and what to do when you feel overwhelmed by your spouse. Because what I'm discovering in most, in many, many marriages, um, especially the ones that I get the honor to work with, is most children learn to turn out in their suffering. They learn to turn out in their emotional, spiritual, and mental suffering. They didn't have a safe space where someone said, Hey, you're hurt right now. Come and let me hold you. I'm not going to correct you for being hurt. I'm not going to tell you you shouldn't be hurt. I'm not going to tell you the other person was right in what you're hurt. I'm just going to hold you and let you talk it out. Most children that of the couples that I'm working with, they didn't have that. So when their spouse, when they're suffering, they don't naturally want to turn into each other. And it's not by chance who was attracted to each other. So you usually two people who don't know how to turn into each other in their suffering are attracted to each other. And then when life brings you great suffering, because it does, then you have these natural tendencies to turn out. So you get to look at your marriage and say, okay, is there a pattern where I bring a very specific real need to them and they're not able to hold a space for it? Or is this a rare occasion where they're having a really tough day or it's we're dealing with some hard places? If it's those things, then what's really important is you each have your support system. Men need men to process together and to grieve together. Women need women to process together and grieve together. So when the spouse is having a rough day, okay, got it. No problem. I'm gonna go to my support team. And then you can come back together and you can talk about later, hey, what was happening for you? What did you need? Is there anything we need to talk through? If it's a pattern, then it's like, okay, if we aren't able to find a way to turn into our suffering with each other, this is gonna, this suffering will tear us apart. And what do we want to do about that? And in that, hopefully there's the willingness to say, okay, we are one in a crash course of trying to learn how to face suffering on a day-to-day basis, and we're in a crash course of learning, trying to learn how to do this thing called marriage, when neither one of us had the awareness of what it looked like to turn into each other. So are we willing to prioritize this marriage in the midst of all this suffering? Are we willing to prioritize this connection above all else because we're committed to each other and doing this together? Because neither of us can do this on our own. In that case, then there's the opportunity to get a mediator and support in learning, having someone else give you the training wheels to be able to do it on your own.

SPEAKER_01 20:29

I think that's beautiful. I I love how you said like men need to process with men and women need to process with women. I feel like we have been so blessed as a community of all of these brave mamas and we are brave together. And so that, you know, when I found Brave Together, it definitely was a missing piece in my life. And I'm wondering if you can talk about like the fact that men and women are are really just very different. And so I think about I think about the men in my life, and I'm like, who are their male support teams? Right? I don't know. Is it let's go play golf and we can talk about things at the ninth hole? I don't know, and I'm not trying to, you know, overgeneralize. I just know how I get giddy when I'm with my girlfriends because I know there's support on the way, you know. What can we do?

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yeah, it doesn't seem that men seek out support like we do. And I don't even think some of them know that they need the support that they need. Right. You know, whether you're carrying hardship or not.

SPEAKER_00 21:35

Yeah. Well, it's a newer thing in our modernized world where food is for sitting there for us on the on the grocery shelves, right? So men innately for most of this world's existence have been forced to face suffering together. They were forced to go into facing the risk of their lives. Together, right? This bear, while I need it for my family for the winter, it could kill me. And so they were forced into learning to overcome challenges, learning to take great risk, learning to find the courage and the bravery to face really hard and scary things together. That's very different than what you're going to do on the golf course. On the golf course, there's not a major threat other than to your ego, right? And so they tend to by nature want to isolate, but the way the world was set up up until more recently, they didn't have the option to isolate. They would die if they isolated. It is a challenge of the current day age that men need to see this. If they didn't see this patterned by their father, they will need to find that awareness on their own of how much they need men. And I don't mean just men that, you know, yes, hang out together, but men who actually live in community with them, men who they are able to talk about the temptations and the challenges and their fears and their insecurities about when life gets really challenging. And I've watched men that I coach do this, where they just start realizing I need this. So I'm going to take a stand for it. And I'm going to start reaching out to men who I know are willing to be more honest and say, hey, here's what I need. Do you want to be in this with me? And they begin to put together a community of two to three other men that meet consistently over Zoom, whatever. And an hour every week, they're just talking about the real honest challenges that they face as men and partnering together in that.

SPEAKER_02 23:49

That's so ideal and so rare.

SPEAKER_00 23:53

It is. And yet the men who do it, I watch them become like the joy that they feel in their lives, the connection that they feel in their lives, the meaning that they're putting into their lives, the conversations they're having with their kids, our legacy changing, like powerful things because men need men. And without that, men's greatest fear is I'm not enough. And they need other men to come around them with that same fear where they're like, okay, what the heck? If we believe this, where does it take us? What's it producing in our life when we believe this? And what's an alternative? The truth is, I'm designed to not be enough. Men, when men get with men, they begin to learn, oh, I'm not enough. I was wired for community. And the reason I'm not enough is because I need you and I need my wife and I need other people that come alongside of me and can help me where I don't know what to do because all of us are wired to need other people. But men by nature grow up believing I'm to need no one. And in that, the loneliness and the shame begins to drive them away from being able to show up in life.

SPEAKER_02 25:09

And then we're trying to do life with men who are not getting their, you know, their own emotional and community and friendship needs met. Our partners or spouses can't be everything. We can't be everything for them as well. Could we switch gears and could I ask about like a very practical something that happens probably every week in our lives? And I'm sure this happens in everybody's relationship. Women stereotypically carry the mental and physical load of the household and you know, caretaking and parenting. You know, we're always encouraging our brave moms to ask for help. You don't have to do everything, it's an equal partnership, and you can ask your partner or your spouse for help for breaks for could you take this off my to-do list? But that can be a really hard conversation. And men can go silent, partners can go silent because it they're not enough wound is being touched, it's being pricked, it's being poked, right? And that's not what you know. Yes, again, some people will communicate this well and some people won't, right? Some will be attacking because they are at their wits' end. Some are gonna come with, I have realized I can't do all these things, you know, and and and they'll be the best communicator like you described at the beginning of our of our conversation, but it can still affect them where they go silent or shut down. So I loved one of your posts about when you know men go silent and what what do we do? What do we do about that?

SPEAKER_00 26:54

Well, I want to start with from the foundation and reframe what we need as wives, right? Because by nature, women are they believe that, well, ultimately the women's biggest fear is that I'm not worthy, I'm not um enough, or I'm not um valuable, right? I'm not, I've gotta earn my, I've gotta earn love. Okay. So by nature, it's really easy, and especially in this beautiful Instagram world of, you know, the house is all perfectly tidy, and it's the most beautiful meals put on the table, and you know, all these things, women begin to shoot on themselves a whole lot. Oh, yeah, and tell themselves all the things they should do, right? And so the tendency is that again, life has changed drastically, and where the woman's main role was caring for the home, and the husband's main role was to be the one who produced the resources for the home, that has drastically changed. And so now women are trying to both partner in finding the resource for the home, but often still taking on the mental load of I'm supposed to be this everything, this be all end all in the home. When women are uh when we're invited to ask for help, it creates the mindset that this is all mine to carry. And sometimes I don't have what it takes to carry it, so I need some help. But the framing of that sets up the whole mentality. So the truth is I can't do this on my own, right? I cannot be all to all. I need you, I need a partnership with you. So, can we get honest about the way that we have this set up? And can we get honest about the needs of the household? Honest about the needs of caring for the special circumstances that we walk in, the needs for caring for our marriage, the needs for um building in, you know, traditions into our household and all these things. Let's get honest as though this were a business. And we have all these different departments in the household, in the umbrella of our relationship, and let's partner. What are your skill sets? What do you want to take on? What are my skill sets? What do I want to take on? What do we need help with outside of the two you and I? What do we need the children's help with? Right. And so when we come at it as a partnership where each person takes ownership and has autonomy, when I began to implement this in my household, I had kept asking for help, kept asking for help, was getting more and more bitter. Both of us were growing more and more bitter, more and more resentful because I was sure he didn't want to help. And anytime he did try and help because I had done everything for so long, he didn't do it in a way that was very helpful to me. So I was redoing it. And so then he's like, What the frick? No matter what I do, it's not good enough for you. So big wedge in between us. Yeah. So I asked my husband, like, what of this? Can we look at this and we, you know, decide what we want to take on? And much to my surprise, my husband said, laundry. Well, I hated laundry, and he also said cleaning the bathrooms. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like my two least favorite things. I had no idea. Um, but of course, by that time we had four children. The youngest was five. We were, it was laundry for a household of six, very busy um lives. And so he started taking on laundry. And if I can just say it was a crap show because, you know, he'd never done it before. And so I needed to learn a whole lot of skills in keeping my mouth closed and reminding myself that look, you've been doing laundry since you were a young child. You, each child, each baby that came along, you learned how to do it. You learned how to expand your capacity. You learned don't put reds and whites together, right? And so I just was like, okay, kids, here's how we're dividing this. Dad's got laundry. If you have any laundry questions, it's dad. When they would come to me, I'd be like, Who's got laundry? Dad, right? So he began to take on that. And in the first few weeks, it was chaos. Like there was laundry all over the house. And he in I had learned how to do a couple loads a day. He waited until everybody was out of laundry and then he would start doing it. But gradually he started building the neural pathways in his brain to take on laundry for a load of six people. And there were requests I needed to make when my beautiful white sweater came back pink. I was like, okay, so here's my request. I appreciate you doing the laundry. I'm gonna make a special pile of my things and wash those on my own. Does that work for you? Yes, great. That works, right? And so that was, oh gosh, 20 years ago. And he has done laundry, and now there's not a day that he doesn't do a load of laundry, even though it's just him and I. Um, but he took on a hundred percent autonomy, and he doesn't help me with the laundry, he does the laundry, and that makes a whole different thing, right? You've got two people working, you have a lot of responsibilities that need divided and conquered. So do it from a business place, not a this is all mine, will you help me with this? Because then that has a total different feeling in in the conversations. So good. So true.

SPEAKER_01 32:56

Such a minor seemingly seem seemingly but major like mind shift, yes, right? Because then we can release that from one more thing that we feel like we're not being supported with, right? Yep, yep. That's probably where the resentment builds up so quickly and easily, you know, it does, it does.

SPEAKER_00 33:21

And it's it's multiple times every day when that kind of thing is going on, right? When I was trying to do it all, because I was trying to earn love. And if I could be the best mom and the best wife and the best house cleaner and the best cook, then surely I would be loved. But what I was actually doing was setting up a system to make myself right that I wasn't worthy of love. That's what we do. And so every moment I was failing, any complaint from the kids, any complaint from my husband threw me into defensive rage because of course you're telling me I'm not worthy of love because I didn't do this well. Treating it like a business, you you separate all that. And it's no longer about who I am or my worthiness, it's about, hey, we need each other.

SPEAKER_01 34:07

And honestly, I feel like that makes it so much more palatable to a male brain as well. Like, you know what I mean? You know how sometimes you'll ask your husband, or in my case, my ex-husband, you know, well, you know, I just wish you would have done this. And he would often say to me, like, I just need you to tell me what to do, right? I just need to have like so I can visualize a list and the expectation and this is very eye-opening. And I I feel like this is very, you know, helpful, even in terms of I'm partnered now, but I'm, you know, I don't have a partner in my home, right? So it's me and my daughter, who's 19, almost 20. You know, I'm just thinking of the way, because I'm always trying to be like, well, we're a team, you know, which means why am I doing everything? But I'm even just even gleaning some hints and tips from you right now in terms of like, okay, so let's how about let's let's break it up. Tiny little tasks, right? Little things, even. Yes. Gosh, that would make me feel so much less like, oh, I'm the one picking up every single sock off the floor, right? While you're just sitting there, where's my dinner? You know what I'm saying? This is so helpful. Ah, this is great.

SPEAKER_02 35:26

Thankfully, I have always had a hands-on, helpful husband. I don't know that that's not what was necessarily modeled with his parents in that generation. Um, and I grew up with a single mom, so I didn't see people sort of in an equal partnership or you know, sharing the load, so to speak. What would you encourage or advise women who do not have hands-on, you know, naturally pitching in partners or spouses and or have, and this is gonna sound super judgy, but like the old school mentality of like, no, you that's your job. That's whether they're working or not working, that's your job. That's under your domain. I don't pick up kids from club volleyball. You know, like that's that's your that's your domain, that's your job, which to me is just so, so, so, so old school. But so how do we encourage women who are grappling with that? Whether they've created, I do everything, because there are women who do that, right? I'm gonna control everything, I'm gonna take care of everything. Again, I'm trying to prove my worth, I'm trying to prove that I'm, you know, a good mom, an amazing mom in the midst of these really hard circumstances, you know, with my child with medical complexity or what have you. Either way, whether you have sort of an old-fashioned partner or you've gotten yourself into this pattern of I do everything, and then you're like, holy cow, 10 years in, I am burnt to a crisp.

unknown 37:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

I can't go on this way.

SPEAKER_00 37:04

Yes. It really starts with personal ownership of getting clear about who you are committed to be as a person, right? Because I was who you described. I wanted to control it all. I wanted to do it all. My husband was uh only child, and I was the middle of seven children. So I learned to do a lot. Um, he learned to do nothing. His parents believed that his childhood was and growing up was for him to have fun, and that when he got an adult, he would learn how to do things. So we came in with the worst case scenario. So what began to happen is I began to realize who am I committed to be? And I am committed to be loving and kind and patient. What am I contributing to not being those things? And I started realizing that this mentality of working to earn love and doing it all was keeping me from being who I was committed to be, and that I was taking over responsibility. So as I began to own that, I began to realize, okay, I cannot do this on my own. So what is it that I need? And my encouragement is to begin to get really clear about what you can and cannot do, right? And to be able to go to your husband and say, look, I am being, you know, to my husband, I'm like, hey, I'm being bitchy and that's not working for me. And I own that. And here's what I'm realizing is partially contributing to that, and I can't keep going at the pace that I'm going. And so here's what I am willing to do. Would you partner with me in figuring out what we can do with these things I cannot do? Does that look like we hire resources? Is there these any of these things that you are willing to take on? Here's my limits, here's my boundaries on what I can do. Um, because my biggest commitment is to be loving and kind and be able to actually enjoy this life with you and the kids.

SPEAKER_01 39:12

I love this word partner so much. Thank you for bringing that into the conversation. And I'm curious too, like, have you seen all the work that you've done with couples, are do you have like a surefire list of hints and tips of what not to do, like in sort of initiating conversation? Like, what is like almost guaranteed to like crash and burn in terms of how we as women can like approach, yes.

SPEAKER_00 39:43

Some of the simplest you know, surefire things is um things like blaming, when my communication is you, you aren't doing this, you should be doing this. Um, I need you to do this, right? Surefire blow up. You're gonna get defensiveness every time, right? When we exaggerate things, when we are like you always do this or you never do this, boom, you are going to trigger a major defensive reaction, right? And when we begin to project onto them our shoulds, when we think we know what they should be doing, what they shouldn't be doing, boom. World war five. Uh, and so the the biggest key is personal responsibility, right? I have noticed that when you do this, I feel lonely because I'm telling myself you don't care. Can you help me understand more of what's going on for you? Because that's the only way I know how to interpret it. And I can see that you do care. However, in this situation, it's really hard for me to see. Can you help me help myself stop feeling so lonely? And also, and here's what I really need from you. Is that something that would work for you? Right? So it's really personal ownership. Here's what's going on for me. I'm taking 100% responsibility for what's going on for me. You're not to blame for what I feel, you're not to blame for what I think, you're not to blame for what I'm doing. That's all on me. But I do need some help with this because I'm struggling to find a new option of what might be going on under other than what I know to come up with in my own way of looking at the world. And so it's it's personal responsibility, which is the heart and soul of what I teach in the work that I do, is what does personal responsibility look like? You're not a victim in your relationship, you're not stuck. You can have the marriage you long for without your spouse needing to actually um change, right? Which is often what people say is until my spouse changes, this is just the marriage I have. I'm just stuck until my spouse changes. No, it actually only takes one to begin to move the in the direction you want. Yes, your spouse will need to join you. But when your spouse begins to stop feeling like they need to defend and protect themselves from you, they will start to take curiosity in what you're doing and want to join you in the work, is what I find most often. So good.

SPEAKER_02 42:27

This is so good. It is so, so helpful, such really rich reminders about the part we play versus focusing on the other person.

SPEAKER_00 42:42

It's so much easier to focus on them, but it produces no results except more bitterness.

SPEAKER_02 42:47

Say that again for the people in the back.

SPEAKER_00 42:52

As human beings, our default is to when something isn't going the way we want it to go, we look for someone or something to blame. That's default in our DNA, it's not gonna go away. The problem is all it does is create more bitterness and more resentment and more loneliness. And so when we we must stop the blame and start taking responsibility.

SPEAKER_02 43:15

Wow, this has been a wonderful conversation. We have to have you back again. We're gonna come up with another list. So good. Julia, where can everybody find you and learn about your work?

SPEAKER_00 43:25

Hey, Julia Woods is the best place to find me. You can find me on Instagram, on podcast, and on YouTube under that. And then you can always reach out to me at hello at beautifuloutcome.com.

SPEAKER_02 43:38

Lovely. Well, it's so good to be with you, and it was so nice to meet you. Thank you for being with us.

SPEAKER_00 43:45

Thank you so much for having me. And you guys asked great questions that just spoke to the passions within me. So thank you.

SPEAKER_02 43:57

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