Harriet Shearsmith

In this episode of Just Like Nana, host Amie (Elizabeth) Penny Sayler is joined by Harriet Shearsmith to discuss the balance between honoring our ancestors and drawing firm boundaries around destructive behavior. 

Together, they explore how ancestral trauma is unintentionally passed down through generations, share stories of personal family estrangements, and dive deep into what it truly means to be a cycle breaker. 

About Harriet

Harriet Shearsmith is an accredited empowerment and life coach, trainee therapist, best-selling author, and content creator of over 10 years. She specialises in working with clients who have experienced childhood trauma and are navigating estrangement or toxic family relationships. Harriet is an award-winning blogger and writer of Unfollowing Mum (2024) and Mummin’ It (2021), and has written for and been featured in publications like Happiful Mag, Guardian, Telegraph, BBC, Daily Express, Metro, Internet Matters and more. Harriet is also an award-winning blogger, content creator behind @unfollowing_mum and @harrietshearsmith, and podcaster with over 250,000 social media followers and 100,000 downloads. 

In This Episode, You’ll Learn:

• Generational trauma often moves through sneaky messages that evolve with each generation but maintain the same underlying thread of "you aren't good enough".
• Estrangement is rarely a whim; it is often the result of one party repeatedly asking for changed behavior and being met with gaslighting or a lack of accountability.
• Becoming a parent often gives you what you need to recognize unhealthy patterns, as we realize we would never want our own children to experience what we endured.
• Being a cycle breaker doesn't mean never making mistakes; it means having the courage to apologize to your children, own your "stuff," and engage in the repair process that builds secure relationships.

Resources

• Dr. Emma Svanberg: https://dremmasvanberg.com/  

Connect with Harriet

• Website: https://harrietshearsmith.com/ 
• @harrietshearsmith on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harrietshearsmith/?hl=en 
• Unfollowing Mum Podcast: https://harrietshearsmith.com/podcast/ 
• @unfollowing_mum on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/unfollowing_mum/ 
• TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@itsharrietshearsmith 
• Harriet’s Books: https://www.amazon.co.uk/stores/Harriet-Shearsmith/author/B08N6LV3ND?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1738847828&sr=1-1&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true 

Connect with the Show

Do you have a story about your family? We want to hear from you!

• Website: justlikenana.com
• Share Your Story: If you have a family story or trauma you’re exploring, reach out via our website for a chance to be interviewed.

Connect with Just Like Nana's Website.

A proud member of the Feminist Podcasters Collective.

Theme music by Carter Penny.

Transcript

Introducing Harriet Shearsmith

Amie Penny Sayler 0:22

As many of you know, Just Like Nana is focused on honoring our ancestors. And we understand that sometimes some of those ancestors have engaged in behavior that is harmful or hurtful. And we're not excusing any of that behavior, but we're just acknowledging and recognizing that none of us have walked in that person's world and life. And we want to honor every individual's personal experience with as little judgment as we can. With that said, sometimes there are family members, whether they're ancestors or other types of family members, who currently, for lack of a better phrase, wreak havoc in your life. And can be very destructive, harmful with what you are building and where your future is going. And so we just want to acknowledge that that both of those things can be true. We can want to honor our ancestors, and we can sometimes have family members who we choose not to continue a relationship with as it exists in its current form because it's harmful to us. And so that's what this episode is about. And I just want to acknowledge that it's it's a little bit different than sometimes what we message, but also it's not. You can understand that everyone has their own experience and you can draw a boundary around what makes sense for your life or your children's lives or your family's life. And that's what Harriet is here to address with us today. Welcome, Harriet. So excited to have you here today. Thank you for your time.

Harriet Shearsmith 2:28

Thank you so much for having me. I'm excited to be here.

Amie Penny Sayler 2:31

Your body of work, your books, your podcast, everything you've put out there is just so empowering and such an important message for a lot of people to receive, to contemplate, to think about how do I incorporate this into my own life. So really excited to talk about that with you today.

Harriet Shearsmith 2:55

Thank you. Thank you. I think it's something that affects so many more people, probably everybody. And I feel like that's a really important thing for us to be able to talk about openly.

Amie Penny Sayler 3:06

Exactly. Yeah. Um, without any stigma or shame or guilt. Absolutely. So let's start with I, you know, and if you don't have one, that's okay. But do you have a favorite or powerful memory about one of your grandmas?

Reflecting on Grandma's Behavior

Harriet Shearsmith 3:21

I was thinking about this, and I don't think that I do have a particularly powerful or favourite memory of my grandma's. I only really knew my dad's mum, so I didn't really get to know my mum's side of the family. My mum's mum passed away long before I was born, and she had a stepmum who I think she got on with okay, but we were never particularly close. They lived three or four hours' drive away. We just didn't really see them. But my dad's grandma, yeah, I don't have lots of favourite memories of her, but I do have memories of I think her being kind of what you think of when you think of the stereotypical grandma. Like she'd got the curly white hair and you know, she would knit a lot and all those kind of things. So we think of as the stereotype, I think she really fit them. Where she perhaps didn't fit so well was with that kindness and that empathy and that real kind of loving and accepting feeling. That was not necessarily something that I associated with my grandma, although my personal experiences with her were not necessarily negative. But my mum's attitude towards my grandma could be very negative.

Amie Penny Sayler 4:33

Yes. Okay. And when you're a child, that influences everything.

Harriet Shearsmith 4:39

Yeah, I think it does. I think it has a big impact on the relationship that you can have. And I think my grandma could be quite cold at times, which would have been a fair assessment of her.

Amie Penny Sayler 4:50

I'm curious, looking back on that as an adult and looking back on that with all your education and experience and all the people you've talked with and the books you've written, how do you view that now? Do you see how much she was hurting? I mean, not that it excuses anything, but I'm curious about your perception of it now.

Harriet Shearsmith 5:11

Yeah, I think now as an adult, what I reflect on, particularly with my grandma, is that she was very much a product of her time. So there was a lot of stoicism, particularly in British culture. And I don't know how that transfers for you guys, but particularly in British culture, there was very much that of that generation of, you know, stiff upper lip, you just get on with it. Keep calm, carry on. You see it on all the mugs. That tended to be a really solid life philosophy for a lot of that generation that my grandma would have come from. So throughout all manner of adversity, I feel like my grandma had that we don't really show emotion, we're not particularly affectionate, we're not particularly loving. By contrast, my granddad was much more affectionate, was much more loving. I remember clambering into his lap quite often and wanting to sit with him. Whereas my grandma often felt a bit more withdrawn. And that's not to say that she wouldn't also be looking after me, but I think that her role in her mind was very much to be the person who was kind of, you know, running the house, running the things, you're doing the stuff, I was cooking dinner. She made a mean chicken and white wine sauce. It was delicious. And I think that was to her, okay, these are the jobs I have to tick off. And by the time I've ticked all of those off, it's time to sit down, maybe watch the TV, have a bit of a snooze. And my grandparents as well were older grandparents when I was born, right? Because my parents were older parents. So I think as well, I was coming to their lives as this tiny bundle of excitement, and they were already in that older phase of their life. They were tired a lot of the time and still trying to do the things to run a household. But I often feel like no one had particularly modeled to my grandma how to show that emotion, how to have that affectionate side.

Amie Penny Sayler 7:13

Wow. Okay. Well, thank you for sharing all of that. Let's talk a little bit about, because it kind of comes out of the story with your grandparents. What was your path to get to this amazing body of work that you're putting out into this world regarding, you know, family relationships, estrangement, breaking cycles. What did that look like for you? How did you get there?

The Impact of Estrangement on Harriet's Work

Harriet Shearsmith 7:46

Well, for a start, the catalyst for that was ending up estranged from my mom and no longer having a relationship with my mom. What transpired after that was this feeling of shame, this feeling of not being able to talk about these experiences. And I have been a content creator for 11 years now. I was very used to sharing all of my life experiences, talking about, you know, really controversial topics and never shying away from them. I was very much of the opinion that, you know, anything goes, I'm sharing my life. People are kind of watching along as I'm living it. I will share everything. And this felt like something that I could not share. This felt like something that was, okay, this is, you know, this is going to be awful. I'm going to have this horrible reaction from people. I'm going to be really judged. I'm judging myself. I feel ashamed about this. It's so taboo. And people are going to be thinking, oh, she's had this great relationship with her mum. My mum had lived with us. So when I was no longer in that position and my mum was no longer living with us, it felt like people were really going to judge me. And some did, and that was fine. But actually, what I realized is people were messaging me and saying, Well, where's your mum? I've watched you build her an annex on your property. An annex is like um like a granny house, like a separate little house for her. And I've watched this build happening, and now all of a sudden, there's nobody in it. What's going on? And I started replying to people, Oh, you my mum's moved moved out of there, and she no longer lives with us. And the amount of people that said, hmm, okay, I had that experience too. Or I would say, you know, we weren't getting along so well, so mums moved out. That's where we're at. And people would say, I really thought that some of the things that you would share didn't feel healthy, and they reminded me of my situation with my parents, me too. And it kind of moved out of this feeling of recognizing that I wasn't on my own, but everybody that I was speaking to felt like they were on their own. And recognizing that there was this lack of discussion. You know, I have been through lots of experiences in my life, as many people have. I've been through relationship ups and downs. I've had new babies, I've lost babies, I've experienced various different things. I've talked about termination. There have been so many different things that I have experienced and always found someone talking about it, always found a community where I could find that healing. And there was nothing for this, or it felt like there was nothing. And I I tried pretty hard to find stuff, and there was no discussion. And I thought, okay, I feel like this is a space that I need to create. So from that, I created the Unfollowing Mum page. After I'd started talking about it on my own platforms, Unfollowing Mum became a really big community. I started the podcast and then I re-qualified as a coach, an empowerment coach, and a life coach. And then I started to train as a psychotherapist. I'm now a trainee psychotherapist. I own my own private practice, specifically working with adults who are navigating general trauma generational trauma, who are navigating childhood trauma, and those toxic family dynamics or estrangement.

Amie Penny Sayler 11:24

I just really commend your courageousness. It's interesting because just like Nana is born out of this, you know. So in my family, there was a lot of estrangement, various levels, all sorts of people. And we always called it not talking to, which I never quite understood. Like this person is not talking to that person. And whoever was doing the not talking was definitely the aggressor, the person who was bad, the person who was shamed. So I didn't have access to a lot of my family growing up and kind of felt just unmoored, I guess, from this earth or, you know, like where is my place? Where do I belong? And through a series of events, what I sort of came to realize is well, wait a minute. I could maybe access some of my ancestors without going through my mom. I could have my own direct relationship with them in a really powerful and meaningful way, particularly my grandmas with the name Elizabeth. So when I did a DNA test and I built up my family tree and I found that I had 45 grandmas with the name Elizabeth. I mean, these, you know, going back generations, obviously. And these are, you know, women who weren't related to each other. So it's not as though the name was just following a line. Um, so that just really called to me. But what I also wanted to go back to is just to reflect and honor that for me as a person who didn't talk to my mom or was estranged from her, she's now past that shame and guilt and that feeling of I'm gonna, I'm gonna say the two words, being a bad daughter, you know, not appreciating everything she did for me and, you know, all of that, it's just so powerful and deeply rooted, and as you mentioned, taboo, that it just, you know, thank you for creating a space that feels safe for people to share their experiences.

Understanding Enmeshment and Estrangement

Harriet Shearsmith 13:34

Well, thank you so much for saying that. And I think for me, what has been really important alongside being able to create this space and being able to have this community, has also been how healing it has been for me. I am a big believer and a passionate advocate for group and community healing. And what I've found is that that community of people who have shared lived experiences, despite the fact that all of their lived experiences will be different in some way, it's really powerful and it's really healing for everybody involved. And I think that's why it is so important to talk about these topics. You know, you mentioned that shame there. Shame is such a huge, huge part of any difficult family dynamic, any toxic family dynamic. And it's felt so deeply and on such a fundamental level that it can be really difficult to navigate. But one of the biggest shifts I've noticed for people is when they hear someone else say, Yeah, me too. I experience that as well. And they know they're not on their own. Yes, they then have to go and do their own work, they then have to put that effort in. It's not just a magic fix of someone going, Oh, me too, and then going, Oh, right, okay, I feel better now. Yeah. Magic wand. Yeah, it's a magic wand. It's there's nuance to it, but we've seen time and time again throughout society that having people relating to us and having that relationship where you know someone understands what you have experienced on a different level because they have experienced similar or they have experienced it too, is really powerful in helping to unlock that shame so you can start to work on it.

Amie Penny Sayler 15:28

Exactly. One of the components that I see everyone's situation is different, as you mentioned. There can be a component of in a toxic relationship, some enmeshment and then the estrangement. And that was my situation. And because of the enmeshment, it can look a certain way to people from the outside, you know, and I'm sure as you were talking about, and we built this annex, and mom lived with us, and so that can be a component as well as people's reactions from the outside and not understanding but this is what was happening internally. I want to be clear that like we're never trying to villainize anyone, but also it's okay to just be truthful about your experience of your relationships and your family. And I'm curious about your work with that around just sort of acknowledging and speaking on this is what I experienced and this is how it affected me.

Harriet Shearsmith 16:39

Being able to talk about those things and being able to share my experiences, but also being able to work with people who are having those experiences. Like you say, it's not necessarily about villainizing somebody, it is about being able to speak your truth and share your truth. And what often happens, just talking about that enmeshment that you were discussing then, which I experienced very deeply and heavily relate to, that feeling of being the bad daughter versus being the good daughter. And what we often see in enmeshed relationships is that real drive to be the good daughter, to toe the line. And what happens there is a lack of self because you're so busy trying to cater to your parents' needs and to your family members' needs that you don't develop that sense of self, you don't develop that autonomy. And I think as well, for a lot of people, what they don't realise or what's missed in the discussion sometimes is this can happen completely unintentionally. And for some people, very much intentionally. And that's really important to acknowledge that whilst we don't villainise anyone and we don't demonize anyone, there are plenty of cases where someone does this intentionally and where someone intentionally causes harm. And it's okay for people to speak their truth about that. There are also plenty of cases where you have a family member who views their relationship with their child as, okay, no, we are best friends, we are super close to you. I can't even tell where she starts and I end, and that's amazing. And that's not amazing for your child. In fact, it can be really difficult for your child to navigate and in a lot of instances really harmful. And that sense of being engulfed can often come from a place of real love. And when I think about my relationship with my mum, my mum lost triplets before she had me. They passed away a few years, maybe three, four years before I was born. For her, that had a profound impact on how she viewed me as her child and left unchallenged. And you know, if you look at the broader picture of her own traumas and you look at the broader picture of her own life experiences, the way she was relating to me, the way she was treating me as her child, particularly as I was younger and I was growing up, very much speaks to those experiences. What I often see with clients is that there is a real willingness to understand that and to have empathy for that and to have awareness of that. But on the flip side, when challenged, there's no ability to be accountable. And that's when we see estrangements happen. I have never worked with someone who has had a life experience with a parent and gone, no matter what they say, no matter how much they change their behaviour, no matter what happens, I won't have contact with them. And I've just decided that on a whim. Invariably, what happens is someone begs and begs and begs for changed behaviour, constantly tries to express that, and is met with no accountability and is met with no change in behaviour, and eventually just goes, I can't do this anymore. I can't keep going. And that's when the estrangement happens. And for some people, that estrangement isn't forever. For some people, that estrangement is I need to tap out of this relationship and step away. And I'm aware of what's causing it. But if you can go and work on that, I'll work on me, you work on you. Maybe we can come back together and have some understanding. That's great. But that so often is not the case.

Amie Penny Sayler 20:30

That is an incredibly powerful point that I hope really resonates, and people, my, you know, my listeners can really hear is that oftentimes estrangement isn't just out of the blue, if you will. And it's not, you know, this is what happened in the past. And because of what happened in the past, I will no longer have a relationship with you. Now, possibly for some people, that is how it happens, and that's their truth, and and that's their path, and that's fine. But for many people, it is that attempt to move forward with that relationship in a way that doesn't impede on your adult boundaries and, you know, your own family life. And as you said, there's no sort of for many situations, it's not even that there's not a willingness on the parent side to acknowledge. A lot of gaslighting can happen in that situation of, you know, not only do I not acknowledge what you're saying, that's just wrong. Yeah. This is how it happened, and and all of that. And that's where where the break comes.

Harriet Shearsmith 21:57

Yes, yeah, he would have been.

Generational Trauma and Cycle Breaking

Amie Penny Sayler 21:58

It would have been maybe nine or ten. And you talk about that, and it's a really powerful the way you talk about it. I'm curious about whether you understood or appreciated that you were in a trauma cycle or experiencing ancestral trauma before you had children, or whether the experience and context of mothering your own children helped you to see things differently, if it was a combination of both, sort of how that played out for you.

Harriet Shearsmith 22:29

If you'd have asked me 10 years ago if I could ever imagine not having contact with my mum, I would have laughed and I would have said, no, my mum's my best friend. Yeah, we we have an amazing relationship. We're just super close. However, and I this is a question that I've pondered quite often because I've always talked about how for me, it took me 10 years or so to get to a point where I said no more, and where my relationship with my mum ended. Because right from when I had children, there were things that I'd started to notice that I was so uncomfortable with. And you know that old you'll understand when you're a parent. My parent didn't like what I did understand about her parenting once I became a parent, because I did understand and I didn't like it, and I was aware of how wrong it had been. That trope backfired because yes, I did understand, and I could see actually how wrong some of the things were that before, when applied to myself, I'd passed off as I said, that's okay. You know, that was just the way things were. But when applied to my children or watching patterns repeat with my children, absolutely not. And I do think there is that fierceness that often comes when you become a parent yourself. A lot of conversations that I have, not just with clients but within the community, start with I need to do this for my children, or I need to do this for future children, or I need to make these changes because it's impacting my kids. It almost always is easier, or there is a bigger call to focus on your children, focus on protecting them, where you have allowed that self-sacrifice to happen. However, despite all of that, through a fresh lens, and particularly through gaining the qualifications, through studying so much of this, and through really learning estrangement and toxic family dynamics inside and out and how we work, I think there were so many occasions when I recognised that my relationship with my mum was not okay. And so many occasions where almost stood from the outside, I could see that this was a repeat of behaviour from when I was younger, maybe just slightly different, or this would be a there would be a moment of clarity when I would stand there and go, She's really enjoying this. And this is hurting me, but she's enjoying that this relationship is breaking down, say it was a friendship, or that it was a boyfriend, or whatever it was. Huh. And she really enjoyed that in certain ways when that would happen with my dad, or when I would want to call out my grandpa, whatever it would be, there would be those moments where I would be like, hmm, this doesn't feel right. And then I would very quickly close the lid on that voice and say, No, this is my mum. My mum is my everything, my mum is my best friend, my mum's got me in her interests, I'm all that she has. Let's just keep plodding along. So it was easier to shut that voice down. But as I reflect on it, I do think that that voice could be there at times, but I wasn't ready to hear it until I became a parent myself.

Amie Penny Sayler 25:55

We've been talking about trauma cycles. From your perspective, how do you define that and how do you see it getting passed down through families?

Harriet Shearsmith 26:04

That's a really great question. So when you think about a cycle, it starts somewhere and it starts with a message that we might internalize. That might be something that, say, for example, we have a family narrative, let's think of it in those terms. That message gets passed on. If you think about it as like there's a great reel that goes around on Instagram and on TikTok that is of somebody lighting a match and they pass it to the next generation with a message, and then that's guarded and it's passed to the next generation with a message. And the message might change a little bit, but it's still got that main thread. And it might be something along the lines of weight, for example, you need to lose weight in order to be loved by somebody. That can start with very early, you know, great, great, great grandma. Oh, we've got to keep ourselves looking good for the for the men. And that then gets filtered on to perhaps oh well, you know, a good housewife keeps herself in shape. And then that might get filtered onto something else, and each generation will tweak it slightly with their own cultural and societal beliefs that prop that up. But the vein of it says you're not good enough just as you are, you need to change. So that's where that cycle starts, is it gets passed down and it starts somewhere with a message, and that message will evolve and it will change, but the thread will almost consistently stay the same. So that is often how I think about cycles when I talk about generational cycles with family. There are innumerable cycles that we can have, and so many of them can be outside of our awareness. We have no idea that we're doing these things or that we're carrying on these messages. You might sit there and say, Well, I, you know, I don't make comments about people's weight, so I don't have that message anymore. But actually, you weigh yourself every day, so the the message is still implicit. You see what I mean?

Amie Penny Sayler 28:05

Yes.

Harriet Shearsmith 28:06

So there are so many little things that we carry on, and as I say, they evolve, so they're sneaky. They could be really sneaky. And another area in which cycles and that generational trauma can be really prevalent, are the things that are not said and the inherent biases that we carry throughout our family, the narrative of how our parents parented us, which is our model for how we become parents. So there is an author that I adore, she's a psychologist, she's called Dr. Emma Svanberg, and she talks about how parenting starts in your own nursery. So your experience as a parent starts in your nursery because what you are experiencing from your primary caregivers and from your parents models and gives you the blueprint for your own parenting. So that's a cycle right there. You experience it and you go, ah, this is how to be a parent. Or on the complete opposite of this is how to not parent, I will do the direct opposite, which often leads us into its own sticky situations because we think, okay, I had a very authoritarian parent, I wasn't allowed any freedoms, I wasn't allowed to, I hated that, I'm going to do the direct opposite. So I become a very permissive parent who has no boundaries, who is the best friend. And I think I'm doing an amazing job because I'm not like my parent and I knew that sucked. But actually, I've gone so far the other way that I'm also causing harm with my behavior. So the cycle begins again.

Amie Penny Sayler 29:40

I just want to call out those kind of sneaky cycles, they are really the most powerful because you don't even know what's happening, and they're just so ingrained. So let's talk about a lot of your work focuses on healing this. So let's talk about that because that's your bailiwick and that's what's exciting. Tell me what being a cycle breaker means to you.

Challenges of Parenting and Cycle Breaking

Harriet Shearsmith 30:04

So being a cycle breaker for me means pulling the generational patterns and generational cycles that I have had in my own family line into my awareness. And that's the first big step is being aware what are these cycles and actively choosing to work on them and to work on myself. What I want to note there though is that being a cycle breaker there for me is about pulling things into my awareness, but I am still okay with the fact that there will be things outside of my awareness. I say I'm okay with that. I wish I could have an awareness of everything. If somebody could hand me a checklist and be like, actually, all of this behavior is tough. I'd be like, wow, that's amazing. I'll work on it all, I'll change it. Awesome. Thank you for that. That's not the reality. There will be things that will be outside of my awareness that my children will likely, and I hope, feel empowered to come to me and say, you did that and it wasn't okay and it hurt me. Or you did that and I feel a kind of way about it. Let's talk about it. For me, that's one of my big cycles is being able to empower my children to challenge me. And I have a 14-year-old now who will frequently challenge me when he feels that I am speaking to him in a way that is unfair. And we often joke because he will sort of say, well, or I'll say to him, You wouldn't say that to dad. And he's like, No, I wouldn't, because I know I can say it to you. And a lot of people would hear that and think, oh, you know, that's really bad. He doesn't have enough respect for you. Actually, quite the contrary, he knows I have that respect for him. He knows that he is safe to lose his temper with me, and we will talk about it afterwards. He knows that he can express all those big feelings. And the other day on the phone, he'd been really rude, and I'd said to him, Dude, this is the end of this conversation. The answer is no, you cannot go out with your friends. You have made a commitment, you are gonna have to come home, you've got to sort that out. And actually, after a while, I thought about it and I thought, I'm probably being a bit harsh here. So we rang him back and my husband rang him and said, Your mum's had a think about it. We're gonna we're gonna say this week you can go out, but hey, you've got to pick up this responsibility. He didn't want to go to a club that he'd had, but he'd had a really long week. And I I was being a bit harsh. I was happy to admit that I was wrong. Again, another cycle, something that my mum could very, very rarely do, if ever, admit that she was wrong. So we rang him back and I was there on the phone and I said, Hey dude, yeah, your dad's called you because he wanted something else. And I'm just letting you know, dad's right. I think about it, and actually, maybe I was a bit harsh there. You can skip this, but let's make sure we do double sessions next week. Great. And then this little voice goes, I'm really sorry for how I spoke to you on the phone. Actually, I lost my temper a bit there, and I probably shouldn't have done. Thanks for ringing me and letting me know. And I thought, how powerful is that? That already through modelling it, he knows that he lost his temper there and he's safe to be vulnerable and admit that he was wrong. And he knows that that's not going to be held against him, that's not gonna get him into further trouble. Again, a cycle that's broken there. So all these little things are where we don't recognize that those cycles get broken. And I feel like what's really important to hold is that we will never break every cycle because we'll never be aware of them all. And there will be things that our children will choose to do differently, and that is absolutely okay. But one of the most fundamental things is empowering our children to feel like they can challenge us and they can let us know when we have slipped up, and being able to hear them in that accountable space, being able to hear them in that space and be accountable for when we do make mistakes is one of the biggest parts of being a cycle breaker.

Amie Penny Sayler 34:07

Yeah. I just want to acknowledge too, that can be a really difficult task for someone who recognizes their own toxic relationship with, you know, their own family members, wants to break that cycle, tries their best to break that cycle, and then comes to discover oh, wait, there were vestiges, there were pieces that, you know, remained. And I I'm saying it, I'm calling it a cycle as though it's singular. And the whole point is that they're plural. There are many, many, many cycles. And, you know, I just want to acknowledge that I actually have triplets. They're 25 years old, and the parenting doesn't stop, and the cycle breaking doesn't stop. And it's it's really humbling, powerful, fascinating to hear now their perspectives as young adults of certain situations or things that happened, and to really be able to hear that, understanding that underlying it all is love. No one's saying you didn't love me or I didn't love you, or you know, that sort of idea, but that we can continue to learn and grow and that that can be acknowledged. It's a really fun part of parenting. It's something to look forward to, and it's just been a joy.

Harriet Shearsmith 35:36

It's lovely to hear you speak of it in that way. And as you were speaking, then what's what came up for me was this feeling of your children will trigger you in a way like nothing else. And I think that's really important to acknowledge. But also, you know, we were talking at the beginning of your parenting journey, how that's when you start to pull into your awareness. And that is often when people start to pull into their awareness, okay, these are things that I'm not happy with, there are flaws in my relationship. I would never treat my children that way. Why am I tolerating this behavior? All of those big things. But then there is almost this feeling of okay, when my kids get a little bit older, they'll stop triggering me because I'm a parent now, I've done this for long enough. Absolutely, they will not. Every time your child does something that brings back a memory or a feeling or a ghost of anything from when you were their age, and bear in mind there's always going to be that, you know, your kids are 25 now. Well, you were 25 once. So the things that they might experience that they might feel will bring things up for that version of you. And it's almost like if you think of yourself in uh in multiplicities of having that inner child and then having that in a teenager, my inner teenager right now can stomp her feet something chronic because my teenager is prodding her buttons and going, you didn't get to do that. Or if you'd have spoken to your mum like that, this was the message. So, you know, this remember, this is how your mum would react. And with that, then comes the mm, this is how I'm supposed to parent because this is how my mum would have to come out. And it's a constant battle of challenging those things and sitting with those feelings that your kids bring up and going, ah, yes, that's my stuff. I need to think about that. I need to work on that. How do I do that? And sometimes that'll bleed through. And sometimes that has to be a conversation that says, Hey, that was not about you. This came up for me. That wasn't your responsibility, and I apologize for that.

Amie Penny Sayler 37:36

That's another really powerful message that I hope people hear is that things will happen. You will mess up all of that. The mistakes or the messing up, I don't think are the important part. I think it's the acknowledgement afterwards and the reparations and the moving forward together better.

Harriet Shearsmith 37:55

Yes, absolutely. And I have a whole section in my book about rupture and repair because people think if we if we never have a rupture in our relationship with our kids, then oh, tick, we've done an amazing job. You know, we we bossed out that parenting. Actually, that's super unhealthy. If somebody comes to me and says, I've never ever had a fallout, I've never had any kind of drama, never been never had any kind of issue with my partner, for example. I'm like, oh and it's exactly the same in any relationship because we're autonomous human beings. If there has never been a point at which there has been a rupture in the relationship, then there's been no opportunity for repair. And repair is where we build relationships, repair is where we move forward through relationship difficulties, repair is where the good stuff is. And that's why it's so important as cycle breakers to realize that it is okay if you have a rupture. I hate ruptures with my kids, they feel horrible, and uh everybody does, but when you are somebody who grew up in an environment where you've now ended up in an estrangement, ruptures feel even more scary because you're like, oh, my kid's gonna hate me. You know, I must be doing everything wrong. And there's that real tendency to lean into that fear, yeah, I must be doing everything wrong. You know, my child hates me. Um, I'm terrible. I'm I'm messing this all up. But actually, there's security in knowing that ruptures happen and it's the repair that makes the difference.

Resources for Healing and Cycle Breaking

Amie Penny Sayler 39:35

And it's the repair that teaches children, I'm me, you're you. We have differing views sometimes, and this is how we can interact with one another, even though we're not the same person and we don't think things the same way. Yeah, absolutely. I have two final questions that I want to make sure we get to. What resources do you recommend? You know, if this is resonating with some listeners, where do you think people should start on their own path of sort of healing? And I mean, I know you you looked into everything when you were trying to resource how do I find something for myself.

Harriet Shearsmith 40:13

I did. I did. And I feel like if this is resonating with you, then the Unfollowing Mum community is for you. You can find us on Instagram at Unfollowing Mum. You can find me on TikTok at it's Harriet Shearsmith. And I feel like my book, Unfollowing Mum in the UK or Cycle Breakers in the US, is a really good place to start if you are looking for resources to help you in your parenting journey and to be able to move forward, to be able to say, How do I break these cycles and how do I live as a cycle breaker without it consuming me?

Amie Penny Sayler 40:55

I feel like those are really good places to start. Wonderful. And do you have any sort of last words of wisdom or something that you would want? This is how I want you to think of this topic in my body of work.

Harriet Shearsmith 41:10

I feel like we've really covered that throughout the conversation. I think one of the biggest things for me is that no one is entitled to you just because they are titled to you. No one has to have a relationship with anyone. And I think that's a phrase that I use really frequently. But another area that I think is really important for people to hold in their mind is it's okay that you're not going to break every cycle. It's okay for you to be a cycle breaker and to also make mistakes. It's okay for you to be a fallible human being who is going to make mistakes. It's in that repair, it's in that accountability, it's in moving forward in the relationship and owning your stuff.

Amie Penny Sayler 41:59

I love that. You know, with my adult children, I've tried to let go and recognize that part of their own cycle breaking and healing empowers them. So I so I I don't want to excuse anything that I, you know, did or didn't do or cycles I didn't break or anything, but also just recognizing that it's okay because that's that's their path and I can support that, but that is theirs and I don't need to own it. And that's really powerful and and nice to know. Well, thank you so much for your time. So appreciate it.

Harriet Shearsmith 42:43

Well, thank you so much for having me.